Background: the Glorious Revolution and Hanoverian succession James II and VII, a
Roman Catholic, was deposed, in what became known as the
Glorious Revolution, when his
Protestant opponents forced him to flee from England in 1688. The
English parliament deemed that James had, by fleeing his realms, abdicated his thrones. A
Convention of the Scottish Estates took a different approach to the English parliament, and declared that James, by his wrongdoing, had forfeited the crown. Both offered the crowns, not to James's infant son, but to his adult Protestant daughter
Mary and to her husband and cousin, James's nephew,
William of Orange. William and Mary were succeeded by James's younger daughter and Mary's sister,
Anne, also a Protestant, who became Queen in 1702. The
Act of Settlement 1701, passed shortly before Anne's accession, fixed the line of succession in law with the aim of permanently excluding James's descendants, and Roman Catholics in general, from the throne. The 1701 Act both confirmed these provisions and added to them by clarifying the line of succession should Anne die without surviving issue. As an English
Act of Parliament, it was originally only part of
English law, applying to the throne of England, but also to the throne of Ireland as the monarch of England was automatically also monarch of Ireland under the Irish Parliament's
Crown of Ireland Act 1542. By virtue of Article II of the
Treaty of Union between England and Scotland (put into law by the
Acts of Union 1707), which defined the succession to the throne of
Great Britain, the Act of Settlement became part of
Scots law as well. The succession after Anne (who would die without leaving surviving children) was effectively settled on the Protestant
House of Hanover. The Act named Anne's first cousin once removed,
Sophia of Hanover, a granddaughter of
James VI and I, and her descendants, as Anne's successor. Sophia died a few months before Anne, and Sophia's son,
George I, consequently acceded to the British throne on Anne's death in 1714. By the
Peace of Utrecht, France and Spain switched their recognition to the Hanoverian succession in 1713, although France subsequently recognised James as "King of Scotland" during the 1745 rising. Even the Papacy withdrew its recognition of the Jacobite succession when James, the Old Pretender, died in 1766. With the defeat at the
Battle of Culloden in 1746, Jacobitism was dealt a death blow and the Jacobite succession lost its significance as a dynastic alternative to the Hanoverians. Jacobitism went into a rapid decline and with the death of Charles, the 'Young Pretender' in 1788, the Jacobite succession lost what was left of its political importance. His younger brother, Henry, Cardinal of York, died in 1807 and the Royal House of Stuart thereby became extinct. With the death of the last Stuart, the House of Hanover was completely established as the only credible dynasty for the British throne.
Line of succession after the Stuarts Applying
primogeniture, the notional rights to the Stuarts' claim then passed to Henry's nearest surviving relative,
Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia, and from him on to other members of the
House of Savoy, and then to the Houses of
Austria-Este and
Wittelsbach over the subsequent two centuries. Neither Charles Emmanuel in honor of his father
Albrecht, Duke of Bavaria, just as the
Jacobites once did. Franz recounts:
Charles, then Prince of Wales, "was often in Munich, and we were often teased about it. He responded with great wit." When Charles visited Franz at
Nymphenburg Palace in 1987, reporters asked him about Franz's claim to the British throne. He jokingly replied that this claim was probably better than his own. While Franz′ brother
Max Emanuel is the heir presumptive of both the Bavarian and Jacobite claims to a royal throne, the two lines of succession will diverge after him. This is because, according to
Salic law, the Bavarian claims to the throne are inherited exclusively through the male line, whereas under British succession law, the Jacobite claim also passes to female descendants. This means that after Max Emanuel, his eldest daughter
Sophie, Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein, would be the heir to this claim, followed by her eldest son,
Prince Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein, who is second in line to the
Liechtenstein throne after his father. He would not be the first Jacobite pretender to rule another country, but the first since the
Old Pretender in 1688 to be born on British soil (1995 in London). ==Pretenders and subsequent heirs==