We’ve been keeping a photo log of “The Old Pretender” panel since work started on it just before Christmas. Here’s a panel as it develops from start to finish…
Keen observers will by now have worked out that this panel shows James Francis Stuart, whose birth in London triggered the expulsion of King James II & VII from the British throne in 1688. The Stuarts, who had served as Scotland’s royal family since 1371 and England’s since 1603, were exiled to France. King James was granted an extensive palace complex by the French king, and from then on the Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye became the focal point for Stuart sympathisers. The royal court in exile occupied the palace all through James Francis’ childhood and into his maturity, and he continued to live there after his father’s death in 1701. But after his own failed bid recover the throne in 1715, the French bowed to diplomatic pressure and moved James outside the border of France to the Duchy of Lorraine, then to Papal territory in Avignon, and ultimately on to Rome. The official court in exile remained in Rome thereafter, but in France Saint-Germain-en-Laye would continue to house Jacobite exiles and Stuart supporters right up until the French Revolution.