Jacobite succession

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The Jacobite Stuarts who claimed the thrones of England, Scotland, Ireland and France after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 were:

Contents

[edit] Further heirs

At the death of the Cardinal of York, Jacobites viewed the legitimate succession to the English and Scottish thrones as devolving upon the senior living descendant of Henrietta Anne, younger daughter of King Charles I. In 1807 that person was a member of the House of Savoy; to whom the Cardinal's will also left his claims. Since then the succession has passed to the House of Austria-Este and to the House of Wittelsbach where it remains today.

None of the Jacobite heirs since 1807 has actually claimed the thrones of England and Scotland or incorporated the arms of England and Scotland in their coats-of-arms.

1Mary III/II and Mary IV/III were numbered in such a way because some Jacobites regard Elizabeth I of England as illegitimate, and therefore consider Mary Queen of Scots to have been the rightful Queen of England from the death of Mary I.

[edit] Future descent after the Duke of Bavaria

The heir presumptive of Franz, Duke of Bavaria, is his younger brother

[edit] Alternative Successions

While Franz, Duke of Bavaria, is the most universally acknowledged Stuart heir there are several others.

[edit] Alicia

If one discounts the marriage of the Duke of Bavaria's ancestress Maria Beatrice of Savoy as being invalid in British law (she married her uncle) then the succession would have passed from her to her younger sister Maria Teresa who married the Duke of Parma. Her representative today is HRH The Infanta Alicia, dowager Duchess of Calabria (b. 1917) and mother of the heir of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. However, the facts that the marriage was concluded validly under another jurisdiction was valid in English and Scots law of the time, and also in British law now, and that the marriage of Maria Beatrice was valid under Savoy law, count against this argument.

[edit] Victor Emmanuel

In the early twentieth century Frederick Rolfe claimed that King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy was the rightful King of England, as heir to the Kings of Sardinia. Rolfe seems not to have understood that Victor Emmanuel III was not descended from that part of the house of Savoy which was descended from the Stuarts.

[edit] Elizabeth

In his book The Highland Clans, Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk claimed that Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom "is the lawful Jacobite sovereign of this realm". Moncreiffe made the following argument:

by the fourteenth century it had become common law (in both England and Scotland) that a person who was not born in the liegeance of the Sovereign, nor naturalised, could not have the capacity to succeed as an heir - he was in the strictest sense 'illegitimate', though not of course born out of wedlock. This legal incapacity of aliens to be heirs applied to all inheritances, whether honours or lands. The effect of the succession opening to a foreigner in Scotland was that, if he had not been naturalised or if his case was not covered by some special statute, the succession passed to the next heir 'of the blood', who thus became the only 'lawful' heir. It was of course always open to the Sovereign to confer an honour or an estate on a foreigner; the rule of law merely prevented aliens from being 'lawful heirs' to existing inheritances. In Scotland, this law was modified in favour of the French from the sixteenth century, but was otherwise rigorously applied until the Whig Revolution of 1688, after which it was gradually done away with by the mid-nineteenth century. It was precisely because of this law that Queen Anne found it necessary to pass a special Act of Parliament naturalising all alien-born potential royal heirs under her Act of Settlement of the throne. But, of course, from the Jacobite point of view, no new statute could be passed after 1688, and the old law remained static until the death of Cardinal York in 1807. At that time, his nearest heir in blood by the old (and therefore continuing Jacobite) law was not - as is sometimes supposed - the King of Sardinia, for the royal Sardine had not the legal capacity to be an heir in Scotland, unless naturalised (e.g. by marriage to the Sovereign) which he was not. The nearest lawful heir of the Cardinal York in 1807 was, in fact, curiously enough, King George III himself, who had been born in England (and therefore in the technical liegance of James VIII.

However, if Moncreiffe's theory that the "common law (in both England and Scotland) [was] that a person who was not born in the liegeance of the Sovereign, nor naturalised, could not have the capacity to succeed as an heir" were in fact correct, then James VI of Scotland could never have succeeded as James I of England in 1603.

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