Stuart Papers Research Articles

Fit for a Queen: The Material and Visual Culture of Maria Clementina Sobieska, Jacobite Queen in Exile

Tracing its manifestation across three phases in her biography — marriage, separation and funeral — this article considers the image of Maria Clementina Sobieska (1702–35). Examining the objects and portraits which surrounded Clementina’s life and death offers a new historiography for the Jacobite queen in exile. It reinstates her place not only in Stuart and Jacobite history, but in the history of early modern European monarchy and queenship. Supported by documentary sources in the Stuart Papers at Windsor, it will be argued that the Stuart court in exile, their supporters and, importantly, Clementina herself, successfully fashioned for the Stuart consort an image which identified her as an early modern queen. Doing so supported the status of her marital dynasty as exiled royals. However, her image was not singular and it could be manipulated to meet the needs of personal and political agendas, beyond explicitly Jacobite ones.

Literature and Party Politics at the Accession of Queen Anne. Joseph Hone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xi+209.

<i>Literature and Party Politics at the Accession of Queen Anne</i>. Joseph Hone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xi+209.

United Islands?: The Languages of Resistance (Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution) ed. by Michael Brown, John Kirk, and Andrew Noble, and: Robert Fergusson and the Scottish Periodical Press by Rhona Brown, and: The Correspondence of Samuel Thomson (1766–1816) ed. by Jennifer Orr

Michael Brown, John Kirk, and Andrew Noble, eds. United Islands?: The Languages of Resistance (Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution). No. I. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012. Pp. 272. $99. Rhona Brown. Robert Fergusson and the Scottish Periodical Press. Famham, UK: Ashgate, 2012. Pp. 280. $134.95. Jennifer Orr, ed. The Correspondence of Samuel Thomson (1766-1816). Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012. Pp. 242. $70. Over the last two decades there has been been a serious readjustment of Romantic studies away from anglo-centrism towards a more view of relations between England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. This archipelagic turn, if I may add another methodological twist to recent scholarly tergiversations, has been propelled by a growing awareness about varieties of nationalism in our own time. Among the landmarks in this process are Katie Trumpener's Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire (1998), Ina Ferris's The Romantic National Tale and the Question of Ireland (2002), Ian Duncan's Scott's Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh (2007), and Murray Pittock's Scottish and Irish Romanticism (2008); the list could go on. All these books are important contributions in different ways, but each of them has wrestled with the recognition that if the Romantic period saw the idea of nation emerging into a recognizable modern sense, that sense does not map easily onto the complications and irregularities of the cultural experience of the time. Pittock, for instance, is committed to the idea of Irish and Scottish traditions as distinct from an English Romanticism identified with literary London and its provincial others (most obviously in the Lake District), but he is also committed to a sense of irreducible relatedness in Irish and Scottish traditions. The term archipelagic, first drafted into use in Renaissance studies, usefully signals the interculturalism of what otherwise might too readily be constituted as national traditions, acknowledging also that the very word tradition may too readily imply an originally evolving autonomous entity. It might be added, of course, that the roles of the Irish, Scots, and Welsh, not to mention the regional English, for instance, in literary London warrant further study. Going to the great wen was not always an act of disaffiliation. It is instructive, for instance, how many Scots were involved in the London radical movement of the 1790s, as the historian Bob Harris has shown. They include Robert Watson (some-time secretary to Lord George Gordon), Robert Thomson (radical songwriter and brother to the eminently respectable George Thomson, editor of Burns), both of whom fled to France in the 1790s, and the founder of the London Corresponding Society itself, Thomas Hardy. None of these abandoned their Scottish interests in order to concentrate on London or even global radicalism. Indeed after the LCS had been driven underground, Hardy became a major figure in the setting up of the William Wallace Society, while Watson, by this time styling himself the Chevalier Watson, brought the Stuart papers back to Britain from Rome. Hardy played a major role in helping Thomson and Watson set themselves up when they returned to London after the defeat of Napoleon, visiting Watson to see the Stuart papers, and helping Thomson with the application to the Literary Fund and with the publication of a sadly execrable poem on Wallace. A sense of the complexity of these literary relations between the four nations characterizes each of the three volumes covered by this review. Rhona Brown's excellent study of Robert Fergusson aims to rescue him from being seen simply as John the Baptist to the Christ of Robert Burns (to use a formulation of Robert Crawford's). Previous studies have tended to discount Fergusson's English poetry in favor of the presumed authenticity of the Scottish vernacular poetry. Brown does valuable work in showing the diversity of resources on which Fergusson drew for the volume he produced before his death at the early age of 24. …

Walpole's Tax On Catholics

General Cadogan, who had succeeded the Duke of Marlborough as commander-in-chief of the Army asked for an increase of 10,000 men in the armed forces, after the discovery of the Atterbury Plot in 1722. Robert Walpole knew that additional taxation for the standing army was unpopular in Parliament and in the country at large. He, therefore, decided to impose a tax of £100,000 on Catholics to pay for it. This was over and above the double land tax which Catholics and Protestant Nonjurors had paid since 1689. The land tax at the time stood at 4s in the pound. The Atterbury Plot was a Tory Anglican plot, not a Catholic plot, as Walpole well knew. Walpole suspected, probably rightly, that Catholics were generous in sending money to the Stuart Court in Rome. He could not prove it and neither can we for the receipts of money in the Stuart papers in Windsor Castle do not reveal the names of the donors.

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Clandestine Marriage in England, 150–850. By R.B. OUthwaite The Later Tudors. England, 1547–2603. By Penry Williams Thonias Nortorz: The Parliament Man. By Michael A.R. Graves Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution. By Glenn Burgess The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1621–1641. Henry Parker and the English Civil Way. The Political Thought of the Pirhlic's ‘Privado’. By Michael Mendle Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640. Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649–1776. By Markku Peltonen Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649‐1776. Politics and Society in Great Yarmouth 1660–1722. By Perry Gauci Ireland in the Stuart Papers. Correspondence and Documents of Irish Interest from the Stuart Papers in the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle. Cuto's Letters. Or, Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects. By John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon The Correspondence of Sir Roger Newdigate of Arbury, Warwickshire. Imagining the Middle Class. The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780–1840. By Dror Wahrman Popular Politics and British Anti‐Slavery. The Mobilisation of Public Opinion Against the Slave Trade, 1787–1807. By J.R. Oldfield Religious Routes to Gladstonian Liberalism. The Church Rate Conzict in England and Wales, 1832–1868. By J.P. Ellens Parliament, Party and Politics in Victorian Britain. By T.A. Jenkins The Era of the Reform League: English Labour and Radical Politics, 1857–1872. Documents Selected by Gustav Mayer. Politics and Law in the Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. By John Hostettler Conceptualizing the State. Innovation and Dispute in British Political Thought, 1880–2914. By James Meadowcroft Turncoats: Changing Party Allegiance by British Politicians. By Robert Leach SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party. By Ivor Crewe and Anthony King The Conservative Party and the Trade Unions. By Peter Dorey Party Politics and Decolonization. The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa 2951–1964. By Philip Murphy The Winds of Change. Macmillan to Heath 1957–1975. By John Ramsden

Ireland in the Stuart Papers. Correspondence and Documents of Irish Interest from the Stuart Papers in the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle, Volume I: 1719-1742, and Volume II: 1743-1765, ed. by Patrick Fagan

Ireland in the Stuart Papers. Correspondence and Documents of Irish Interest from the Stuart Papers in the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle. Volume I: 1719-1742, and Volume II: 1743-1765. Edited by Patrick Fagan. (Dublin: Four Courts Press.1995. Pp. vii, 341; v,303.) Ireland in the Stuart Papers consists of Patrick Fagan's edition of the Irish items of the 80,000-item collection of the correspondence of the court-in-exile of James Frances Edward Stuart, which the British government acquired after the death of the last of the Stuarts, the Cardinal of York, in 1807.The whole collection is now available on microfilm in the British Library Document Center. In his introduction Dr. Fagan notes as source of Irish history the Stuart Papers been largely neglected by historians (I, 5), with the exception of those specializing in Catholic Church history. A superficial examination of the correspondence may seem to justify its limited use since much of it deals with the nomination and appointment of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, an area in which James Stuart had major responsibility. However, closer reading of the correspondence provides valuable insights into several areas of early modern Irish history which have been neglected by historians. One finds, for example, specific information about the Catholic middle class and gentry who remained active during the Age of the Penal Laws. The correspondence reveals the intense rivalry between the regular and the diocesan clergy and the degree to which the latter protested the number of Dominicans and Franciscans appointed to the hierarchy.We get firsthand knowledge of the Irish Colleges on the continent, especially as they debate the issue of whether to accept ordained Irish priests or to restrict membership to young men in the early stages of preparation for the priesthood. The papers reveal, as Fagan puts it, a hierarchy, in predominant degree, intensely loyal to James and virulently opposed to any accommodation with the Hanoverian Succession and ready to nip in the bud any movement in direction (1, 3).The papers also reveal Catholic hierarchy who greatly exaggerate the prospects for Jacobite restoration. A number of the letters from Ireland throw light on the workings of the Protestant-dominated Irish Parliament, especially when body was considering anti-Catholic legislation. One of the many letters of Sylvester Lloyd, Bishop of Killaloe, contains sophisticated analysis of the fall, 1729, session of the Irish Parliament. Referring to body as our Parliament and that great assembly, he intelligently discusses the Lord Lieutenant's revenue requests. …

Lord Cowper, Lord Orrery, the Duke of Wharton, and Jacobitism

For the past twelve years one Whig historian after another has attempted to turn back the tide of Jacobite studies, meeting with as much success as King Canute. The purpose of this article is to challenge Clyve Jones's conclusions in this journal (“Jacobitism and the Historian: The Case of William, 1st Earl Cowper,” supra, 23, 4 (Winter 1992): 681-96) that Lord Cowper never became a Jacobite, that Lord Orrery was not a key player in the Atterbury Plot, and that the Duke of Wharton was not a committed Jacobite until the end of the plot. Jones uses a discussion of the evidence of Lord Cowper's involvement with Jacobitism as a means of dismissing the whole subject, using the same arguments as previous Whig critics. “James III” and his advisers were wildly optimistic about the prospects of a Stuart restoration and, therefore, their testimony may largely be disregarded. James, on the contrary, was pessimistic by temperament and may be criticized for over caution rather than rashness. The Stuart papers, Jones argues, are not complete. What historical collection is? Despite the gigantic size of the collection, some papers that were brought to England from Rome have disappeared, notably the letter written from the Tower by Lord Oxford in 1716, expressing the utmost indignation at the harsh treatment meted out to him by George I and the Whig ministers and offering his services to James in the management of Jacobite affairs in England. This letter was found by Sir James Mackintosh when the collection was first deposited at Carlton House, but it has disappeared since. An additional difficulty is that after the discovery of the Atterbury Plot by Walpole and Townshend in 1722, Atterbury, Lord Stafford, and Lord Orrery, leading conspirators, destroyed most of their papers before being arrested. Similarly, Lady Cowper destroyed a large part of her diary and a substantial part of her husband's papers at the time of the Atterbury Plot. The papers destroyed were probably more significant than what remains and this helps to explain why Walpole could find so little evidence about the plot that would stick in a court of law. A good deal of material, nevertheless, has survived, and is it too much to ask that it should be used in the same way as any other historical evidence?

Jacobitism and the Historian: The Case of William, 1st Earl Cowper

In the past twenty years there has been a renaissance in Jacobite studies in Britain and North America. It started with the publication in 1970 of Romney Sedgwick's The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1715–1754, in which the post-1715 Tory party was resurrected from the untimely death to which earlier historiography had consigned it in the face of the so-called Whig hegemony under Walpole and his successors. This section of Sedgwick's volumes was the work of Eveline Cruickshanks, who not only showed that there had been an active Tory party under Walpole, but also claimed that it had been essentially a Jacobite party. Dr. Cruickshanks has, since 1970, produced a book, several articles, and essays expanding her thesis. She has been joined in the quest for Jacobites by many others, and the flow of work on Jacobitism seems unabated. This body of work has, however, left other historians with a good deal of unease, not only over the conclusions reached, but also the methodology used and the sources upon which these conclusions are based (most notably the uncritical use of the Stuart Papers in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle).

English Jacobitism, 1710–1715; Myth and Reality

A complaint frequently voiced by historians of Jacobitism is that their subject is plagued by a breed of authors with a passion for secret agents, romantic uprisings, and princes in the heather. It is not so often admitted, however, just how intractable the professionals themselves find the topic and their substantial failure to give any coherent account of it. Jacobitism appears as the major issue in British politics in the early-eighteenth century; it was associated with wide-spread disorder, recurrent national crises, and a series of rebellions and attempted invasions; but its actual organization and the extent of its support remains surprisingly obscure. This is partly so because the source-material is notoriously difficult to handle and ranges from a mass of ciphered correspondence in the Stuart papers to the diplomatic archives of half-a-dozen European states. To study it is to enter a world both of illusion and deliberate misrepresentation. Would-be revolutionaries tended to imagine themselves perpetually on the verge of success, while it often suited the interests of the British government to assert that the nation was threatened with subversion and imminent invasion. But the weakness of Jacobite historiography is more fundamental than a problem with the sources. It lies in an addiction to detailed narrative unsupported by adequate analysis and a fixed assumption that the importance of the movement was its potential for effecting a revolution by armed force. This paper adopts a different approach. It examines the structure of the Jacobite organization and questions whether it was at any time between 1710 and 1715 capable of realising its aims; it argues rather that its activities contributed to a great popular myth, which was to be of critical significance in the struggle of men and parties which preceded the establishment of the Whig oligarchy.

The Manuscript Tradition of Seneca's Tragedies

The groundwork for a reliable edition of Seneca's tragedies was done fifty years ago by three men who died in the First World War: C. E. Stuart, T. Düring and W. Hoffa. Yet no complete edition since has taken full account of their work. It is even now not widely enough known that the papers of all three are readily available; Stuart's papers (dissertation, handwritten notes, and collations) are now in Trinity College Library, Cambridge,2and those of Hoffa and Düring (including a draft apparatus to all the tragedies exceptOedipusand most ofPhaedra) are in Göttingen University Library.3Stuart's work has lain in particular obscurity, and for my work on the tradition I have given especial attention to it.

Defoe's Hand in "A Journal of the Earl of Marr's Proceedings (1716)"

URING my first visit to the Huntington Library in 1940, it LJ became apparent to me that the Introduction to A Journal of the Earl of Marr's Proceedings must have been written by Daniel Defoe. It was also apparent that the Journal itself was a forgery, issued in London by one of Defoe's principal publishers and, although lacking any significant features of Defoe's own style, conforming closely to his usage in such matters as italics, spelling, and punctuation. Through a minute examination of the Stuart Papers, and especially through a study of the original narrative as it was printed for the Earl of Mar in France,' I have discovered that the Journal was actually a forgery-but first put together by several different hands for the Earl of Mar himself. In this paper I shall show what Mar intended to do with the pamphlet when he had it printed in France, and how Defoe employed it for entirely different purposes when it came to his attention in England. Thus the tract affords an example of an important political writing used almost without change as propaganda for opposing parties. Still more significantly, the tract itself can be traced, with dates, places, and authors' names, from its first inception and through its many revisions to its wide dispersal over western Europe. We have here perhaps the most complete extant example of the development of an eighteenth-century political tract.

Jacobite Epilogue : A Further Selection of Letters From Jacobites Among the Stuart Papers at Windsor. Edited by Henrietta Tayler. Pp. xx, 311. London: Nelson. 1941. 15s.

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The Stuart Papers at Windsor: Being Selections from Hitherto Unprinted Royal Archives. With Introduction and Notes, by ALISTAIR and HENRIETTA TAYLER. Published by the Gracious Permission of His Majesty the King. (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company. 1939. Pp. ix, 290. $3.50.)

Journal Article The Stuart Papers at Windsor: Being Selections from Hitherto Unprinted Royal Archives. With Introduction and Notes, by Alistair and Henrietta Tayler. Published by the Gracious Permission of His Majesty the King. (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company. 1939. Pp. ix, 290. $3.50.) Get access The Stuart Papers at Windsor: Being Selections from Hitherto Unprinted Royal Archives. With Introduction and Notes, by Alistair Tayler Henrietta. Published by the Gracious Permission of His Majesty the King. (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company. 1939. Pp. ix, 290. $3.50.) H. N. Fieldhouse H. N. Fieldhouse University of Manitoba Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 45, Issue 4, July 1940, Page 862, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/45.4.862 Published: 01 July 1940

The Stuart Papers at Windsor: Being Selections from Hitherto Unprinted Royal Archives

The Stuart Papers at Windsor: Being Selections from Hitherto Unprinted Royal Archives

The Stuart Papers at Windsor. Alistar Tayler , Henrietta TaylerThe Jacobite Court at Rome in 1719, from Original Documents at Fettercairn House and at Windsor Castle. Henrietta Tayler1745 and After. Alistar Tayler , Henrietta Tayler

<i>The Stuart Papers at Windsor</i>. Alistar Tayler , Henrietta Tayler<i>The Jacobite Court at Rome in 1719, from Original Documents at Fettercairn House and at Windsor Castle</i>. Henrietta Tayler<i>1745 and After</i>. Alistar Tayler , Henrietta Tayler

The Stuart Papers at Windsor: Being Selections from Hither to unprinted Royal Archives. With introduction and notes by Alistair and Henrietta Tayler. Pp. x, 290. London: Murray. 1939. 12s. 6d.

The Stuart Papers at Windsor: Being Selections from Hither to unprinted Royal Archives. With introduction and notes by Alistair and Henrietta Tayler. Pp. x, 290. London: Murray. 1939. 12s. 6d.

Review of Book: The Stuart Papers at Windsor

Review of Book: The Stuart Papers at Windsor

The Duke of Mar in Exile, 1716—32

The reputation of John Erskine, nth Earl—and in the Jacobite Peerage 1st Duke—of Mar, has never stood very high. The incompetence that he showed as leader of the rising of 1715 left him but a scanty title to fame, and his conduct during the sixteen years which he spent in exile was so bitterly criticised by his enemies within the Jacobite party that he is generally remembered only for the ineptitude he displayed as a military commander and political conspirator. Even when anything is known of his subsequent career, it is usually something to his discredit, and the old stories are still in circulation: indeed, the latest biographers of The Old Chevalier go so far as to describe Mar as a “rat,” and call him the “evil genius” of his master. A study of some of the sources for Jacobite History after the '15, and particularly of the Stuart MSS. at Windsor Castle, seems to suggest, however, that Mar has been somewhat maligned and misunderstood in the past. The Stuart Papers, now in part printed by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, certainly throw fresh light on many aspects of Jacobite politics, and in this age of “Historical Revisions” it is but just that Mar should receive his due measure of attention.

Calendar of the Stuart Papers belonging to His Majesty the King preserved at Windsor Castle. Vol. VII. Historical MSS. Commission. 9½ × 6; pp. xxxviii + 857. London, Stationery Office, Imperial House, Kingsway, 1923. 12s. 6d.

Calendar of the Stuart Papers belonging to His Majesty the King preserved at Windsor Castle. Vol. VII. Historical MSS. Commission. 9½ × 6; pp. xxxviii + 857. London, Stationery Office, Imperial House, Kingsway, 1923. 12s. 6d. - Volume 3 Issue 3

Catalogue of the Stuart Papers belonging to His Majesty the King, preserved at Windsor Castle. Vol. VII

Catalogue of the Stuart Papers belonging to His Majesty the King, preserved at Windsor Castle. Vol. VII