A Royal Stuart story line from Glasgow
People ask where I find stories and the answer is they find me. I’ve talked already about my interest in the Stuarts and in order to justify something in Bubbles in the Cauldron, I turned to them and found Bonnie Prince Charlie’s grandson was buried in Dunkeld. I did some idle browsing about him and found a story asking to be written. When Charlie was making his way through the area Bubbles is set in, he met and had an association with a girl called Clementina Walkinshaw, the youngest of ten girls. She followed him to the continent and they had a daughter, Charlotte. With her father-in-law’s help Clementina left Charlie after years of abuse and went into a convent in France. Charlie refused to give her any support and it was the same father-in-law, James, The Old Pretender, who supported her. Charlotte wrote to her father and he invited her to Rome, provided she left her mother behind. Charlotte refused to do that at first but when she eventually did, she was created Duchess of Albany. Charlotte decided to marry but, being of royal blood needed her father’s permission, which he refused. With no other option she became the lover of Ferdinand de Rohan, the Archbishop of Bordeaux and from that union came the lad buried in Dunkeld. In the end, Charlotte did leave her mother to go to care for her drunken sot of a father.
It is interesting to note that Clementina’s father has a story himself. Having been captured with the Old Pretender’s army, escaping from Stirling Castle to live in France until reprieved by the British government, he started a weaving company, Calton. (mentioned in a Burns song?) Being a Protestant, he refused to help his daughter after she converted to Catholicism, but was he the reason his great grandson was visiting Scotland when he died?
So many possible story lines and I have only mentioned the grandson in passing.