HERO OF THE HIGHLANDS

How did a half-Polish prince born in Rome win such an enduring place in hearts and history as dashing Bonnie Prince Charlie?

- NEIL JONES

Ye windows were full of Ladys who threw up their handkerchiefs and clap’d their hands and show’d great loyalty to ye Bonny Prince,” an onlooker wrote after watching Charles Edward Stuart ride through Edinburgh in 1745. His whole manner and appearance seemed “Cut out for enchanting his beholders and carrying People to consent to their own Slavery in spite of themselves.”

Such is the popular image of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ that has prevailed across three centuries: a charismatic young man whose adventures to reclaim the British Crown for the House of Stuart became the stuff of romantic Scottish legend; his heroic failure and flight wistfully lamented in The Skye Boat Song. But how did a half-Polish prince raised in Rome become such a glamorous icon and does his story hide a darker truth?

The tale begins with the ‘Glorious Revolution’ (1688–89) that ousted Charles’ grandfather, the Roman Catholic Stuart king, James II of England/VII of Scotland, from his thrones in favour of the joint Protestant monarchs William and Mary. From their exile on the Continent the Stuarts had made several attempts to regain power but all had failed including, notably, the 1715 uprising led by Charles’ father James, ‘the Old Pretender’. Jacobites – the name given to Stuart supporters (from Jacobus, Latin for James) – would soon look to ‘the Young Pretender’ Charles.