By the usurpation of Cromwell the Stuarts were excluded from the throne from the defeat of Charles I. at Naseby in 1645 until the restoration of his son Charles II. on May 8, 166o. On the death of Charles II. without issue in 1685, his brother James, duke of York, ascended the throne as James II., but he so alien ated the sympathies of the nation by his unconstitutional efforts to further the Roman Catholic religion that an invitation was sent to the prince of Orange to come "to the rescue of the laws and religion of England." Next to the son of James II., still an infant under his father's control, Mary, princess of Orange, elder daugh ter of James II., had the strongest claim to the crown; but the claims of the prince of Orange also, even apart from his marriage, were not very remote, since he was the son of Mary, eldest daughter of Charles I. The marriage had strengthened the claims of both, and they were proclaimed joint sovereigns of England on Feb. 12, 1689, Scotland following the example of England on April 11. They left no issue, and the Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, excluding Roman Catholics from the throne, secured the succession to Anne, second daughter of James II., and on her death without issue (1714) to the Protestant house of Hanover, descended from the princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I., wife of Frederick V., count palatine of the Rhine. George, elector of Hanover, eldest son of Sophia (youngest child of the princess Elizabeth), and Ernest, elector of Brunswick-Liineburg, or Han over, became sovereign of Great Britain and Ireland. The female issue of James II. ended with the death of Anne. James, called James III. by the Jacobites and the Old Pretender by the Han overians, had two sons—Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, who died without legitimate issue in 1780, and Henry Stuart, titular duke of York, commonly called Cardinal York, on whose death in 1807 the male line of James II. came to an end. Henry
was also the last descendant in the lineal male line of any of the crowned heads of the race, so far as either England or Scotland was concerned. In the female line, however, there are among the descendants of James I. representatives of the royal Stuarts who are senior to the house of Hanover, for Philip, duke of Orleans (brother of Louis XIV.), married, as his first wife, Henrietta, daughter of Charles I., and, as his second, Charlotte, granddaugh ter and heiress of the princess Elizabeth (daughter of James I.).
By the former, through their daughter, the queen of Sardinia, he was ancestor, among others, of the princess Maria Theresa of Bavaria, who in 1910 was "heir of line" of the house of Stuart, her eldest son, Prince Rupert, being at that time heir to the throne of Bavaria.
See Sir George Mackenzie, Defence of the Royal Line of Scotland (1685), and Antiquity of the Royal Line of Scotland (1686) ; Craw furd, Genealogical History of the Royal and Illustrious Family of the Stuarts (17io); Duncan Stewart, Genealogical Account of the Surname of Stewart (1739) ; Andrew Stuart, Genealogical History of the Stuarts (1798) ; Stodart, House of Stuart (privately printed, 1855) ; An Abstract of the Evidence to Prove that Sir William Stewart of Jed worth, the Paternal Ancestor of the Present Earl of Galloway, was the Second Son of Sir Alexander Stewart of Darnley (18oi) ; Riddell, Stewartiana (1843) ; W. Townend, Descendants of the Stuarts (i858) ; R. W. Eyton, History of Shropshire (1858), vol. vii.; Bailey, The Suc cession to the English Crown (1879) ; Skelton, The Royal House of Stuart (189o) ; J. H. Round, Studies in Peerage and Family History (19oI) ; S. Cowan, The Royal House of Stuart (1908) ; and T. F. Hen derson, The Royal Stewarts (1914). The best chart pedigree of the house is that which was prepared for the Stuart Exhibition by W. A. Lindsay.