exile

Stories from the Jacobite Court in Exile: Sir David Nairne and his daughter, Lady Ramsay

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Jacques Rigaud, Vue du Vieux Chateau de St Germain en Laye, engraving, 1725, and letter from Marie Ramsay to James Edgar

│By Edward Corp, retired Professor of British History at the Université de Toulouse│

A couple of years ago I published a biography of Sir David Nairne.1 He worked in the political secretariat of the Stuart court in exile for thirty years (1689-1728), and the Stuart Papers contain a great many letters written by him or to him during that period. I read and used those letters, and also consulted a private diary that he kept during the first half of that period. Unfortunately the diary comes to an end in 1708, and there was one thing that I was never able to discover. It might seem unimportant in itself, but it is significant in the context of a biography.

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The Mystery of the Jacobite Poet

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A poem by James Murray, the Jacobite Earl of Dunbar, early 1721. Source location: RA. SP Box 3/9/2

│ By Edward Corp, retired Professor of British History at the Université de Toulouse │

There is a poem in the Stuart Papers written by James Murray, the Jacobite Earl of Dunbar.2 Although it is undated it must have been written in January or February 1721 when Dunbar was obliged to leave the Stuart court in Rome because he was so unpopular. The poem reads:

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The Cook, a Journey, the Queen, and her Husband – a snippet from exiled Jacobite Court history

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│By Julia de Mowbray, Publisher at Gale│

While reviewing the content recently loaded into the online archive The Stuart and Cumberland Papers from the Royal Archives Windsor Castle, one document caught my eye: a plan of a journey with daily stops for meals or a night’s rest. Descriptions of journeys and itineraries, plotting out where someone travelled at a particular time, especially from earlier centuries, can transport me back to that time – placing my feet on that road or piazza, in that carriage or train – to experience the same journey in my imagination.

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