JAMES (JAMES FRANCIS EDWARD STUART) (1688-1766), prince of Wales, known to the Jacobites as James III. and to the Hanoverian party as the Old Pretender, the son and heir of James II. of England, was born in St. James's Palace, London, on June Io, 1688. The scandalous story that he was a supposititious child has been completely disproved, and contemporary writers allude to his family likeness to the Royal Stuarts. Shortly before the flight of the king to Sheerness, the infant prince with his mother was sent to France, and afterwards he continued to reside with his father at the court of St. Germain. On the death of his father, on Sept. 16, 1701, he was immediately proclaimed king by Louis XIV. of France, but a fantastic attempt to perform a similar ceremony in London so roused the anger of the populace that the mock pursuivants barely escaped with their lives. A bill of attainder against him received the royal assent a few days before the death of William III. in 1702, and the Princess Anne, half-sister of the Pretender, succeeded William on the throne. An influential party continued to adhere to the Jacobite -ause; but an expedition from Dunkirk in favour of James in the spring of 1708 failed, although the French ships reached the Firth of Forth. At the Peace of Utrecht James withdrew from French territory to Bar-le-Duc in Lorraine. A rebellion in the Highlands of Scotland in his favour in Sept. 1715 was checked in November by the indecisive battle of Sheriffmuir and by the surrender at Preston. James landed in Dec. 1715 at Peterhead, and advanced as far south as Scone, accompanied by a small force under the earl of Mar; but on learning of the approach of the duke of Argyll he retreated to Montrose, where the highlanders dispersed to the mountains, and he embarked again for France. A Spanish expedition sent out in his behalf in 1719, under the direction of Alberoni, was scattered by a tempest, only two frigates reaching the appointed rendezvous in the island of Lewis.
In 1718 James had become affianced to the young princess Maria Clementina Sobieska, grand-daughter of the warrior king of Poland, John Sobieski. The marriage was forbidden by the emperor, who kept the princess and her mother in honourable confinement at Innsbruck. Clementina was abducted by a zealous Jacobite, Charles Wogan, reached Italy in safety, and married James at Montefiascone on Sept. 1, 1719. James and Clementina were now invited to reside in Rome at the special request of Pope Clement XI., who openly acknowledged their titles of British King and Queen, gave them a papal guard of troops, presented them with the Palazzo Muti, and made them an annual allowance of 12,000 crowns. At the Palazzo Muti, the chief
centre of Jacobite intriguing, were born James's two sons, Charles Edward (the Young Pretender) and Henry Benedict Stuart. James's married life proved turbulent and unhappy, owing to the hot temper and jealous nature of Clementina, who soon after Henry's birth in 1725 left her husband and spent over two years in a Roman convent. At length a reconciliation was effected, but Clementina died in Feb. 1735. Full regal honours were paid to the Stuart queen at her funeral, and the splendid but tasteless monument by Pietro Bracchi (17oo-73) in St. Peter's was erected to her memory by order of Pope Benedict XIV.
His wife's death affected James's health and spirits greatly, and he began to grow indifferent, so that the political adherents of the Stuarts were gradually led to fix their hopes upon the two young princes. James appeared seldom in public, and much of his time was given up to religious exercises ; he was devot d l'exces, so Charles de Brosses, an unprejudiced Frenchman, informs us. With great reluctance James allowed his elder son to leave Italy for France in 1744; in the following year, he permitted Henry to follow his brother's example, but with the news of Culloden re garded his cause as definitely lost. Henry's adoption of an ec clesiastical career so embittered his last years that he sank into a moping invalid and rarely left his chamber. With the crushing failure of the "Forty-five" and his quarrel with his heir, the once dreaded James soon became a mere cipher in British politics, and his death at Rome on Jan. 2, 1766 passed almost unnoticed in London. He was buried with regal pomp in St. Peter's, where Canova's famous monument, erected by Pius VII. in 1819, com memorates him and his two sons. James was grave, high-prin cipled, industrious and dignified, and the unflattering portrait drawn of him by Thackeray in Esmond is utterly at variance with historical facts. Although a fervent Roman Catholic, he was far more reasonable and liberal in his religious views than his father, as many extant letters testify.