Jacobites support restoration of the
House of Stuart to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Following the defeat of the
Jacobite rising of 1745, Jacobitism was rigorously suppressed, and Jacobite sympathisers had to form secret clubs and societies to discuss their ideas in private. One prominent example was the "Cycle of the White Rose" usually known as the
Cycle Club, which had been founded in 1710 by the
Williams-Wynn family in
North Wales. The Cycle Club continued to meet under the family's patronage until the 1860s.
Formation In 1886, Bertram Ashburnham circulated a leaflet seeking Jacobite sympathisers, and amongst those who replied was
Melville Henry Massue. Together they formed the Order of the White Rose, a Jacobite group that was the spiritual successor to the Cycle Club. The Order was officially started on June 10, 1866. The Order was influenced by the
Oxford Movement of the 1830s and 1840s which promoted
Anglo-Catholicism and held up
Charles I as a martyr. The Order attracted Irish and Scottish Nationalists to its ranks. While these various interests gathered under the banner of restoring the House of Stuart, they also had a common streak against the scientific and secular democratic norms of the time. Some even planned (but did not execute) a military overthrow of the Hanoverian monarchy, with the aim of putting
Princess Maria Theresa on the British throne.
Neo-Jacobite revival In 1889, the
New Gallery in London put on a major exhibition of works related to the House of Stuart, organized by
Henry Jenner. Ashburnham - the president of the gallery - persuaded Queen Victoria to lend a number of items to the exhibition, as did
Princess Helen of Waldeck and Pyrmont (Victoria's daughter-in-law), and families with Jacobite sympathies and pasts from England and Scotland donated items. and revived public interest in the House of Stuart generally, and Jacobitism specifically. The popularity of the exhibition sparked a renewed interest in the political ideals of the Jacobite cause, especially amongst monarchists and Anglo-Catholics. Immediately following the exhibition, new Jacobite groups began to form. In 1890, Vivian and Erskine co-founded a weekly newspaper,
The Whirlwind that espoused a Jacobite political view. Ashburnham was not a proponent of the political side of the movement, and in 1891 The Order of the White Rose split, when Vivian, Erskine and
Melville Henry Massue formed the
Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland. Vivian and Massue were leading members of the neo-Jacobite revival, while Erskine soon focused his political endeavours on the related cause of
Scottish Nationalism. The League was a "publicist for Jacobitism on a scale unwitnessed since the Eighteenth Century". The Order was the leading society for the artistic and historical side of Jacobitism. Art dealer
Charles Augustus Howell and journalist
Sebastian Evans were members of the Order, and
Andrew Lang Closure In 1914, just after the start of the First World War,
Prince Rupprecht – the legitimate king of England, Ireland and Scotland according to the
Jacobite Succession – appeared in German uniform in support of
The Kaiser. Public sympathy immediately turned against the Neo-Jacobites, many supporters left, and the Order was quickly closed. ==References==