Portrait of James VIII and III by Alexis Simon BelleABDUA:10119

When the Protestant William of Orange landed in England in 1688, he ushered in what was described at the time as ‘The Glorious Revolution’. The deposed Stuart monarch, the Catholic James VII and II, fled to the court of Louis XIV of France. There he established his own court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, where exiled sympathisers found refuge until the French Revolution.

For over a century, the Stuarts used diplomatic efforts to secure the support of the Catholic royal courts of Europe and to achieve their ultimate goal - the restoration of the Stuarts to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Propaganda and the creation of images of prestige and power preserved a strong Jacobite identity. The court refused to acknowledge that its status was diminished or that the new regime in Britain had any validity. The struggle for Scotland’s identity was a European concern.

Following the death in 1715 of Louis XIV, the Stuart court moved to Rome. There they continued to try to build diplomatic and military support for the Stuart claim. These hopes became unrealistic after the defeat at Culloden in 1746.  The diminished illusion of a royal court lasted until the death in 1807 of Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart, grandson of the deposed James VII and II.