Kings and Queens of Scotland
The Hanoverian Monarchy
The English government, before the Union, had already sought out a suitable candidate for the throne in a German prince whose mother was a granddaughter of James VI, and who satisfied the two chiefs requirements: a drop of Stuart blood in his veins and firm adherence to the Protestant persuasion. So in 1714 began the long line of German Georges. "Wha the de'il hae we gotten for a king, but a wee, wee German lairdie!" sang the Jacobites in derision. Dissatisfaction with the Union, ancient loyalty, and for many, religious sympathy with the Stuarts, produced the 1715 Rebellion. "James VIII", the Old Pretender, arrived in Scotland for a few wintry weeks, but left when failure was obvious. although Jacobitism, backed by French money and intrigue, continued to trouble the central government, the landing of James's 25 year old son, Prince Charles Edward, at Moidart, in the western Highlands, in 1745, came as a surprise. With a Highland army he occupied Edinburgh, defeated a government force at Prestonpans and marched into England. But England did not rally to him. He reluctantly retreated to Scotland and into the Highlands again, to the ultimate defeat at Culloden in April 1746. Five months of hiding followed before he escaped to France and a long, undistinguished retirement, signing himself "Carolus Rex" to the end. His younger brother Henry, a cardinal at the Papal court, then assumed the futile title Henry IX. "Bonnie Prince Charlie" in his youth had taken a bold risk, and through him a tinge of glamour and romance still clings to the lost Stuart cause. He had an illegitimate daughter, to whom he gave the title Duchess of Albany, and she had a son, who died childless in 1854. Though many royal, and non-royal, families, would claim Stuart ancestry, the Stuart dynasty was dead.
Hanover to Windsor
Political reform and the development of the modern british state meant a steady reduction of royal power through the later 18th and 19th centuries. The king, though still influential, no longer determined policy, and the monarch's role became an increasingly ceremonial one. The only member of the House of Hanover to be much involved with Scotland was the Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II, the victor at Culloden, and known as "Butcher" for his actions afterwards. George I and II were more interested in their German domains, and neither they nor George III throughout his lengthy reign ever set foot in Scotland. The Northern kingdom remained ignored until the famous visit of George IV to Edinburgh in 1822, a public relations exercise masterminded by Sir Walter Scott, which even saw the portly monarch rigged out in a kilt and flesh pink tights. A more enduring link between the royal family and Scotland was established with Queen Victoria's purchase of Balmoral; by mid-century the railway could transport her there in ease and comfort. The earnest Queen took great pride in the remote Stuart element of her pedigree and, with the Stuart line safely extinct, was even something of a Jacobite. Scotland became the royal family's summer retreat, to the pleasure of many Scots, whose interest in the royal family increased again when Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, daughter of the Earl of Strathmore, married the future King George V1 in 1923. Many Scots were displeased when the twentieth century kings such as Edward VII, Edward VIII and later Queen Elizabeth 11 were not officially recognised in Scotland, where their predecessors of the same name had never ruled, as Edward I and Edward II, and Elizabeth I. It was as if history had been rewritten by London bureaucrats, making Plantagenets and Tudors rulers of Scotland, and ignoring that long lines of kings, stretching back into the remote mists of Celtic history, as if they had never been. Yet it was precisely that Scottish ancestry which gave the German born royal house its claim to reign in the United Kingdom. The union of two countries under one crown can still create controversy, even after some four hundred years.
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