STUART AND STUARDO: JAMES III AND HIS NEAPOLITAN COUSIN

Abstract

King Charles II's first illegitimate son, the little-known Jacques de La Cloche, married a lady in Naples and had a posthumous son, born in 1669 and known as Don Giacomo Stuardo. Although his father was illegitimate and he himself a Catholic, Stuardo hoped that he might one day become King of England. The Glorious Revolution resulted in opposition between supporters of the Protestant Succession to the British thrones and supporters of the exiled Catholic Stuarts, James II and then his son James III. When the Protestant Queen Anne was succeeded by the unpopular Hanoverian George I in 1714, James III was still unmarried and had no children, so Stuardo hoped that James might recognize him as the Jacobite heir. When James married and had two sons, Stuardo hoped that his cousin would at least receive him as a Stuart prince. All his attempts to meet James III and secure recognition were unsuccessful, and he died disappointed and in poverty in about 1752. In the tercentenary of the Hanoverian Succession, enough archival information finally has emerged to provide a study of the life of this alternative claimant to the British thrones.