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Bodleian Library and Cultures of Knowledge

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Charlotte Stuart (1753–1789)

Charlotte Stuart was born in 1753 in Liège (modern-day Belgium), the illegitimate daughter of Charles Edward Stuart and his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw. Throughout her early years, the family moved constantly around France and Switzerland to evade Jacobite spies. In 1760, when Charlotte was seven, she and her mother left the abusive and possessive Charles and fled to Paris. Initially Charles went to great lengths to retrieve his child—circulating descriptions, dispatching envoys, and ordering police to prevent them leaving France—but without success. With limited financial support from Charles’s father and brother, mother and daughter lived in various Paris convents for the next twenty-four years. Although, as an adult, Charlotte wrote regular letters to her father begging for support, he did not provide for them.

In 1772, Charles married Louisa, Princess of Stolberg-Gedern, and the couple moved to Florence. A proposal to install Charlotte in Charles and Louisa’s household foundered after she refused to abandon her mother, and Charles later withheld permission for Charlotte either to marry or to become a nun. With the threat of Charles and Louisa producing a legitimate heir, Charlotte was forced to look for support and security elsewhere, and she took Ferdinand de Rohan, Archbishop of Bordeaux, as her lover. Between 1779 and 1784, she bore de Rohan three children. Charles’s marriage to Louisa ended without issue, however, and in 1783, ageing and ill, he made Charlotte his legitimate heir, summoning her to join him in 1784.

In Florence, Charlotte was styled Duchess of Albany, and presented in society for the first time. Charles also began to provide for Clementina, although still not allowing her to join them from Paris. Charlotte wrote every few days (more than hundred letters a year) to her mother, in whose care—without Charles’s knowledge—she had left her three children. When Charles died in 1788, Charlotte inherited much of his property and at last was able to provide for her mother. She herself had been in worsening health for several years, however, and the following year she died of liver cancer. She left Clementina a large sum, but her executor, Charles’s brother Henry, released the funds two years later only on condition that all further claims on the estate be renounced.

Partners and Additional Contributors

These letters have been itemized as part of a collaboration between the Bodleian Library and EMLO to extend the work initiated by the ‘Index of Literary Correspondence’ card catalogue (digitized and published in 2012 in EMLO as the ‘Bodleian Card catalogue’). For details of the North Papers, please refer to the main North Family Papers introductory page.

EMLO Digital Fellow Alice Ahearn created metadata in May 2024 for the letters of Charlotte Stuart using the handwritten list provided at the front of each of the relevant guardbooks (MS. North d. 27 and d. 28). Thanks are due to Alice in addition help with the preparation of this introductory text.

Contents

The North Family papers in the Bodleian Library (MSS North d. 27 and d. 28) preserve 350 of Charlotte Stuart’s letters to her mother Clementina Walkinshaw, dating from January 1785 to October 1789, just weeks before Charlotte’s death. The letters are written in French, and concern details of her life with her father in Florence after leaving her mother in Paris to raise her three children, to whom she refers only cryptically. Charlotte describes a busy calendar of social engagements as well as the difficulties of caring for her father in his declining health. Throughout the correspondence, she expresses concerns about her own health and about the faithfulness of her lover, the Archbishop of Bordeaux (‘mon ami’).

The letter numbering indicates that several of the letters may be missing. Also included in the collection are a letter from Ferdinand de Rohan to Clementina in 1787, and one from the Abbé Waters in February 1790, three months after Charlotte’s death. The letters are summarised, alongside those in other collections, in Henrietta Tayler’s Prince Charlie’s Daughter (for full bibliographic details, please see below).

Scope of Catalogue

It is clear that several attempts have been made over the years to number and order the letters within the two volumes in which they are bound (MS. North d. 27 and MS. North d. 28). The inventory in EMLO has been created from the handwritten list preserved at the beginning of each volume. Both listings include a significant number of corrections and alterations. It is advisable, therefore, to treat with caution the pagination numbering provided in EMLO at present, to refer to each letter by date, and to check with a member of Library staff that the correct letter has been identified prior to the placement of a photographic order.

Further resources

Bibliography

Hugh Douglas, ‘Walkinshaw, Clementine, styled countess of Albestroff (c. 1720–1802), mistress of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), retrieved 21 June 2024.

Murray G. H. Pittock, ‘Charles Edward [Charles Edward Stuart; styled Charles; known as the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie] (1720–1788)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), retrieved 26 June 2024.

Henrietta Tayler, Prince Charlie’s Daughter: Being the Life and Letters of Charlotte of Albany (London, 1950).

Launch letters from or concerning Charlotte Stuart