The Jacobitism: Part 1 Historical Background

The king James II of England, rightful monarch for the Jacobites from 1685 to 1701, but deposed since 1688

It is very difficult for a modern monarchist to establish an objective and prudent position in front to the Jacobitism, for that I will dedicate some entries to the Jacobitism, a royalist movement in the Great Britain of the late XVIIth century and a good part of the XVIIIth century.

First of all let's define the term "Jacobitism" a world coined after the King James II/VII of England and Scotland, in latin his name is spelled JACOBUS and holds a relation to the spanish name JACOBO, thus the Jacobitism is the support for the deposed king James II.

Historical Background

Arms of the Stuarts from 1603 onwards

In 1603 the celebrated Elizabethan age of England came to an end when the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I of England died, her dead without any direct heir meant that the throne should pass to the reigning king of the Scots, James VI a great-grandson of Margaret Tudor (Eldest daughter of Henry VII of England) this through both the paternal and maternal sides.

So James was proclaimed James I of England, becoming the first monarch reigning in the hole island of Great Britain, in the so celebrated and remembered Union of the Crowns, that was in fact just a Personal Union (The official merging of the crowns came more than a century later in the Act of Union of 1707 creating the Kingdom of Great Britain).

With the ascension of James I a new dynasty became the ruling House of England, the Royal Stuarts. This was going to be a troubled dynasty, specialy in matters of religion and parliamentary disputes, they had an undeniable tendency to autocracy and absolutism.

James I believed in the divine right of the kings, and in fact his son ans succesor, Charles I of England was even more absolutist than his father, this cost him his throne and his head. In 1642 the English Civil war erupted because of the differences between the parliament and the monarch, the former wanted more power and the monarch was not willing to give up it's royal political influences.

This resulted in the establishment of a kind or republic in the British Islands, in 1649 Charles I was beheaded and Oliver Cromwell proclaimed Lord Protector, however this republican experience (For the luck of all of we the moanrchists) lasted for a little time, from 1649 to 1660 when Charles' eldest son was called to reign and the monarchy restablished, he reigned as Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Charles II was married to Catherine of Braganza a catholic princess, this caused digust among Charles II anglican subjects, however Catherine failed to produce any heir to the throne, this in clear contrast with the numerous illegitime sons that Charles II procreated with his many mistresses.

Charles II died in 1685 leaving a direct succession to his brother the Duke of York, a catholic, that became James II and VII of England and Scotland. Most of his subjects didn't want a catholic to become monarch of the British Islands so he was unpopular during all of his reign, and when he showed clear signs of autocracy and absolutism, his fate was signed.


James III, eldest son of the deposed king James II, also known as "The old Pretender"

Going against the principles of the good relation between subjects and monarch, a revolution erupted in 1688, after the catholic wife of the king, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a male heir to the throne, James Francis Edward Stuart, Prince of Wales in his own right.

The now called glorious revolution of 1688 ended with the deposition and exile of the monarch and his family, except for his two protestant daughters born from his first marriage to Anne Hyde. The eldest became Mary II of England in a co-reign with her husband, William of Orange that became William III of England. The younger would succeeded in 1702 as Queen Anne.

However a well amount of the population remained faithful to the deposed Royal Family (Specialy in Scotland), they were exiled to France were they received support from the sun king Louis XIV. Spain, France and Modena in fact refused to recognize the new line of monarchs until the Treaty of Utretch was signed in 1713.

The movement that was born in suport for the deposed Stuarts became known as "Jacobitism" and it was going to survive as a political force for more than a century to come.

The lack of fertility in the two protestant daughters of James II (Mary II died young and Anne gave birth to seventeen children all of whom died in infancy or were stillborn, William, Duke of Gloucester was the eldest to survive, living for barely eleven years) lead to the extinction of the protestant branch of the House of Stuart, the parliament had expected this since long before, when in 1701 the Act of Settlement was enacted, establishing that in the case of the extinction of the line of Anne, then the throne should pass to Sophia, Electress of Hanover, a grandaughter of king James I.

So in 1714 when Anne died, the throne passed to the eldest surviving son of the Electress of Hanover (That died a few weeks before Anne), George of Hanover became George I of Great Britain, the first of the Hanover dynasty that reigned in Great Britain from 1714 to 1901. However the first monarchs of the Hanover Dynasty (Up to George III) had to deal with successive revolts supporting a restoration of the Royal Stuarts.

Even today the catholics are excluded from the line of succession to the British throne, and the Act of Settlement is still in force, all the people in the line of succession is directly descended from Sophie, Electress of Hanover. Jacobitism is still active (But with very little support), even the male line of James II died out in 1807 with the death of Henry (IX) Stuart, the line went first to the Savoys, then to the Modena ducal family and up to the present to the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria in the person of Franz, Duke of Bavaria.

We will explore the hole history of this romantic movement and try to establish a personal position that recognizes the right of the Stuarts to claim the throne, but also leave clear the fact that I do personally recognize the rule and reign of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and her predecessors.