Negotiating Catholic Kingship for a Protestant People: ‘Private’ Letters, Royal Declarations and the Achievement of Religious Detente in the Jacobite Underground, 1702–1718

Abstract

It is well known that there was a great deal of religious tension between Protestants and Catholics in eighteenth century Britain. What is far less well known is that this tension reached into the heart of the Jacobite movement. Protestant Jacobites were determined to prevent Catholicism coming back with King James ‘III and VIII’ if they succeeded in restoring him to the throne, and pressed him hard to make religious concessions that would limit the extent of Catholic power at the exiled court and in the event of a Stuart restoration. This essay analyses the political dynamics of the struggle that ensued and thus sheds new light on the internecine politics of the Jacobite movement and the character of the shadow monarch as he grew into his role as king over the water.