The King Shall Have His Own Again: The House of Stuart Sequence, #2

By George Kearton

It is January 1st, 1746.

The victorious Jacobite armies, led by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, are entering London.

George II has been forced into exile in Hanover and James Stuart will shortly be crowned as King James III.

"The King Shall Have His Own Again" tells the story of a restored Stuart monarchy up to the year 1800 and how history, as we know it, could have changed.

From French India to Drumossie Moor, from Australia to the Caribbean, from Yorktown to Malta and across a Europe totally changed by The Stuart Doctrine the world is turned upside down. Slavery, Free Trade and Revolutionary politics all come into focus in very different ways.

"The King Shall Have His Own Again" is volume two in "The House of Stuart Sequence"; a six-volume series of alternative history covering the years 1745 to 1900.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sea Lion Press
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386325994

Book preview

The King Shall Have His Own Again

Volume Two of the House of Stuart sequence

George Kearton

First published by Sea Lion Press, 2016

Prelude

In the summer of 1745, Prince Charles Edward Stuart and a small band of companions left France to launch an uprising against the Hanoverian King of Great Britain, George II.

An accident to a carriage separated the Prince and his companions into two groups.

Colonel John William O’Sullivan, the Prince’s Chief of Staff, landed in Ireland and, with local support, conquered the island for the Stuarts.

The Prince landed in Scotland, raised many Highland clans, defeated the only government army in the country and then launched an audacious invasion of England during which he was also able to galvanise support from many English and Welsh supporters of the House of Stuart.

Joined by O’Sullivan’s men, the Jacobites outfought and out-manoeuvred all the forces the government sent against them and, with French help, the Prince and his army entered London on the 31st of December 1745.

This history of a world that might have been resumes on the following day.

Restoration – London and beyond – January to March, 1746

Even before the Prince had officially entered London he had sent a large number of messengers to various destinations to announce his victory.

Some of these went, of course, to his supporters across the Three Kingdoms. One went to France to thank the French government for their support. But the most important message, carried by the Prince’s younger brother, Prince Henry, Duke of York, went to their father James Edward, in exile in Rome for over 20 years.

James Edward could at last return home. He had last been in London as a newborn infant in 1688 and had spent the years in between variously in France, Lorraine and Italy, surrounded by a fading court and subsidised by French Kings and by two Popes.

The journey was a long one, especially in winter. The first stages were by carriage, exactly following the route taken by his son Charles in 1745. The final stage was to be by ship – the Du Teillay which had carried his son to Scotland. By coincidence, Captain Walsh of the Du Teillay was the grandson of the man who had carried James Edward’s father to exile in France in 1691. The Du Teillay was escorted across the English Channel by L’Elisabeth, the former French man o’ war which had landed Prince Charles’ Chief of Staff Colonel O’Sullivan in Kinsale in 1745. Walsh was subsequently created Baron Castleinch in recognition of his, and his family’s, long service to the Stuart cause.

A properly royal arrival was planned when the King landed on the 23rd of February 1746 (by coincidence, the birthday of Prince Henry). He would transfer to a Royal Barge at Greenwich and then sail upriver, accompanied by many other small vessels with music playing and an artillery salute from the Tower of London.

A Royal Barge was readily to hand. Over 63 feet long and highly ornamented, it had been built by William Kent in 1732 for Frederick, Prince of Wales, the Hanoverian heir apparent from 1727 onwards. Although estranged from his father, Frederick and his immediate family went into exile with George II.

Frederick had two other essentially English connections. He was an enthusiast for the game of cricket (actually playing for Surrey in 1733) and his patronage was responsible for that most British of songs, Rule Britannia, which was composed by Thomas Arne with words by the Scottish poet James Thomson.

Despite its Hanoverian connections, Rule Britannia was appropriated for the ceremonies and was sung as James entered Westminster Abbey for his coronation.

There was, of course, another highly suitable piece of music for the King’s entry into London. The Water Music suite had been written by Georg Friederich Handel for King George II in 1717 for exactly the same purpose, a Royal progress down the Thames.

Handel was, however, an ardent Hanoverian, having been in the service of the Electors’ court since 1710. Highly thought of by the Hanoverian establishment, he had even been loaned military kettle drums from The Tower of London for use at the premiere of his oratorio Saul in 1738.

Handel flew into a rage when it was suggested that his music should be played for a Stuart King, and burned the original manuscript rather than allow it to be used. Other copies were found, however, and so the music accompanied King James as he was rowed up the Thames by 21 oarsmen.

The King was greeted at Westminster Steps by his son Prince Charles Edward and the senior officers who had led the Stuart armies in their conquests of Ireland, Scotland and England. The party walked to Westminster Abbey for a Coronation service conducted by Thomas Deacon, the non-jurant Bishop of Manchester, and Hugh MacDonald, Catholic Bishop and Vicar Apostolic for the Highlands.

Among the anthems sung at James’ coronation was God Save The King, the words of which had been engraved onto many a secretly-held Jacobite drinking glass before 1745. The plainsong tune had originated in 1619, if not earlier, and was reminiscent of the Scots carol Remember O Thou Man.

That the Coronation was conducted jointly by an Anglican Bishop and a Catholic Bishop was unique for the time and was, perhaps, the first of many indications that the Stuarts had learned many lessons in the course of their exile.

Another indication of change came some three weeks later, when Prince Charles married Clementina Walkinshaw of Glasgow, his constant companion during the campaign through England in 1745. The wedding was held in St Paul’s Cathedral, and was conducted by Thomas Coppach according to the rites of the Anglican Church – to which both Charles and Clementina had officially converted. Coppach had travelled south with the Jacobite army from Manchester and had been appointed Bishop of Carlisle by the Prince.

By these two acts, the Stuarts removed much of the earlier opposition to their reign; no longer could Anglicans thunder against the dangers of a Catholic monarch. A Protestant succession, the rallying cry of many who had opposed the Stuarts in the past, was now assured.

And in his subsequent actions, King James would clearly demonstrate that religious toleration, officially at least, was now to be considered the accepted policy across his Kingdoms.

The coronation of the King and the marriage of the Prince were totally unopposed within London. The Common Council of the City was overwhelmingly Jacobite in sentiment, and there was an acknowledgment among the political and merchant classes, however grudging, that power was passing back to the Stuarts and that the artificial legitimacy of the post-1688 monarchy had melted away. It was the Hanoverians, not the Stuarts, who might now be more properly termed as Winter Kings.

Exile and the politics of defeat – Hanover, January 1746 and after

As King James travelled across France, George II returned to Hanover. He was accompanied by his immediate family but few, if any, English courtiers came with him. A small company of infantry under the command of Brigade Major James Wolfe were his only military escort, but a few days behind him was General Henry Hawley with an army of some 8,000 men, successfully evacuated from Portsmouth.

Their arrival in Hanover was sombre. Waiting for them there was George’s younger son, William, Duke of Cumberland. If he not been wounded in battle the year before he may well have commanded the armies facing the Jacobite rebels. Had he done so, the end result of the campaign may have been very different.

There were many different reasons for the defeat of the Hanoverians in 1745. Firstly, their initial responses to the Jacobite landings at Kinsale and in the Hebrides had been totally complacent. Granted, it had been thirty years since the last armed Jacobite uprising but government and royal inaction led to O’Sullivan and the Prince both being able to seize not only momentum but also large parts of Ireland and Scotland before any military action was taken to oppose them.

Part of this government inertia was due to the fact that there was no centralised command. True, the armies of Wade, Ligonier and Hawley had to be widely dispersed because, until later in the campaign, there were no clear indications of the directions from which the main Jacobite threats would emerge. But there was also an awareness of the way in which General John Cope had conducted his operations in Scotland. Cope had made a grand, almost scenic, tour of the Highlands with marches, counter-marches, retreats and a sea voyage only to see his army defeated at Prestonpans in a matter of minutes. His fellow generals had not wanted to fall into the same trap, so in the main they chose to let the enemy come to them.

Even when the Hanoverian military did bestir themselves, their generalship was abysmal. Cope, Wade and Ligonier were all out-bluffed by the Jacobites. Cope and Ligonier were outfought by them and Wade’s two abortive Pennine crossings led to nothing but suffering among his mainly conscripted men who finished their military service as outlaws scavenging East Yorkshire in the depths of winter. Hawley’s sole forward movement had led to the massacre of hundreds of innocent civilians in Walsingham, which brought disgrace on him and on the government as a whole and which also alienated a major region of England which should have been steadfast in its support.

The succession of Whig governments whose fortune at the polls had been born out of support and concern for a Protestant monarchy had lost their way and were increasingly seen as autocratic and out-of-touch, especially after the departure of Robert Walpole from the posts of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1742. After 20 years of the Whigs many felt it was