The Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland was a Jacobite society founded in 1891 by Herbert Vivian, Melville Henry Massue and Ruaraidh Erskine [1] following a split from the earlier Order of the White Rose. The League was considered one of the key groups in the Neo-Jacobite Revival of the 1890s.
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 throughout Britain, and Jacobite sympathisers went underground, forming 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. [2] The Cycle Club continued to meet under the family's patronage until the 1860s. [3]
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. [4] The Order was officially started on 10 June 1866. [5]
Ashburnham was principally interested in the artistic and cultural aspects of Jacobitism. He was president of the New Gallery in London, and in 1889 the gallery put on a major exhibition of works related to the House of Stuart, organized by Henry Jenner. Ashburnham persuaded Queen Victoria to lend a number of items to the exhibition, as did the Duchess of Albany, the wife of her son Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany and families with Jacobite sympathies and pasts from England and Scotland donated items. [4] The exhibition was a great public success and sparked a renewed interest in the Stuarts and the Jacobite cause. [6]
Several of the Order were displeased by the group's focus on art. They wanted to start a political movement with the aim of overthrowing the British monarchy and replacing it with the descendants of Charles I. In 1890, Vivian and Erskine co-founded a weekly newspaper, The Whirlwind that espoused a radically Jacobite political view. [7]
In 1891, unable to persuade Ashburnham of the merits of taking a political stance, key members of the Order left to form a new society, the grandly-titled Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland, led by Vivian, Erskine and Melville Henry Massue. [8]
Several other Jacobite and Legitimist societies formed in the early 1890s, and though serious in intent, they were widely greeted with amusement and disdain. [9]
The league organised a number of protests and ceremonies.
In late 1892, the League applied to the government for permission to lay wreaths at the statue of Charles I at Charing Cross on the anniversary of his execution. Permission was refused by Gladstone, but the League attempted to lay their wreaths anyway on 30 January 1893. Police were dispatched to stop the League; after a confrontation, members of the League led by Vivian were allowed to complete their ceremony. [10] The League made the most of this conflict and obtained significant coverage in the press, though much of it mocked them. [11] [12] [13]
The 1892 protest led to an annual wreath-laying event organised by the League, but in 1901, permission was refused. A question was asked in Parliament about this refusal, with Akers Douglas replying that: "on the 30th January last our late revered Sovereign was lying dead, and the special circumstances of this case seemed to require that, for this occasion, on grounds of good taste and feeling, the customary decoration should not take place" [14]
Massue was President of the League in 1893, 1894 and 1897.
In 1891, the delegates of the Central Executive Committee of the League were: Walter Clifford Mellor, Herbert Vivian, George G. Fraser, Melville Henry Massue, the Baron Valdez of Valdez, Alfred John Rodway, R.W. Fraser. [15]
Mellor's wife, Lady Helen Clifford Mellor, attracted a measure of fame when on 19 June 1897, she greeted Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria at Victoria Station and presented him with a bouquet of white roses. [16] Rupprecht was a descendant of Charles I of England and the claimant to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in the Jacobite succession. [17]
In June 1893, there was a split between Massue and Vivian, and Vivian attempted unsuccessfully to continue to League with the support of Viscount Dupplin, W. C. Mellor and others. [18] Vivian left the League in August 1893, [19] but continued to promote a strongly Jacobite political philosophy.[ citation needed ]
In 1914, just after the start of the First World War, Prince Rupprecht appeared in German uniform in support of The Kaiser. Public sympathy immediately turned against the Neo-Jacobites, many supporters left, and the League ceased to exist shortly afterwards. [5]
The League's principals and beliefs are well summarised in this quote from the 1910 Legitimist Kalendar:
The raison d'etre for the Jacobite party today is the maintenance of the principle of the hereditary as opposed to the parliamentary right to the throne of these realms. There is still a Representative of the elder line living, and every day shows more and more clearly how now, when socialistic and revolutionary doctrines threaten to overthrow all law and order, it is necessary for the Sovereign to have some higher title to the throne than a mere paper one that can be torn to shreds at any moment. It is in order to teach the nation where to look for the Sovereign whose claim to govern is derived from God alone, and to instill into men's minds a little of that spirit of loyalty and chivalry which animated the hearts of so many good and brave men and women in the past, to oppose the false and impractical ideas of liberty and equality... that the Jacobite party exists today
The League published a number of books and newspapers, either directly or through its members.
Jacobitism was largely a 17th- and 18th-century movement that supported the restoration of the senior line of the House of Stuart to the British throne. The name is derived from Jacobus, the Latin version of James.
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Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr was a Scottish nationalist political activist, writer and Scottish Gaelic language campaigner.
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Henry FitzJames, titular 1st Duke of Albemarle in the Jacobite peerage, was the illegitimate son of King James II of England and VII of Scotland by Arabella Churchill, sister of the first Duke of Marlborough.
Thomas Erskine, Lord Erskine was the son of John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar. He could not inherit the title of Earl of Mar due to the Writ of Attainder for treason passed against his father in 1716 for his role in the First Jacobite Rebellion (1715).
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Melville Amadeus Henry Douglas Heddle de La Caillemotte de Massue de Ruvigné, "9th Marquis of Ruvigny and 15th of Raineval" was a British genealogist and author, who was twice president of the Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland.
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The Marquess of Trelissick is a title in the Jacobite Peerage of England. It was the only non-subsidiary title at the rank of Marquess in the English Jacobite Peerage, before becoming a subsidiary of the Duke of Tyrconnell. It was awarded to James Paynter, a leading Jacobite, who played a prominent role in the Jacobite uprising in Cornwall.
Herbert Vivian was an English journalist, author and newspaper owner, who befriended Lord Randolph Churchill, Charles Russell, Leopold Maxse and others in the 1880s. He campaigned for Irish Home Rule and was private secretary to Wilfrid Blunt, poet and writer, who stood in the 1888 Deptford by-election. Vivian's writings caused a rift between Oscar Wilde and James NcNeil Whistler. In the 1890s, Vivian was a leader of the Neo-Jacobite Revival, a monarchist movement keen to restore a Stuart to the British throne and replace the parliamentary system. Before the First World War he was friends with Winston Churchill and was the first journalist to interview him. Vivian lost as Liberal candidate for Deptford in 1906. As an extreme monarchist throughout his life, he became in the 1920s a supporter of fascism. His several books included the novel The Green Bay Tree with William Henry Wilkins. He was a noted Serbophile; his writings on the Balkans remain influential.
The Neo-Jacobite Revival was a political movement that took place during the 25 years before the First World War in the United Kingdom. The movement was monarchist, and had the specific aim of replacing British parliamentary democracy with a restored monarch from the deposed House of Stuart.
Marie, Duchess of Ratibor, Princess of Corvey, Princess of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst was an Austrian aristocrat and consort of Victor II, the last reigning Duke of Ratibor and Prince of Corvey.
The Order of the White Rose was a Jacobite society founded in 1886 by Bertram Ashburnham as a successor to the Cycle Club. The Order attracted many writers and artists and began the Neo-Jacobite Revival that flourished in the 1890s. The Order closed during the First World War, but in 1926 the Royal Stuart Society was formed to carry on its ideal and mission.
The Whirlwind was a short-lived British newspaper, published in 1890 and 1891. It was known for its Individualist political views and its artwork by Walter Sickert and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. It was also strongly Jacobite and played a leading role in the Neo-Jacobite Revival of the 1890s.
The Secretary of State was one of the senior ministers of the Jacobite court in exile following the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
The "Legitimist Jacobite League", the "White Cockade Club", the "Order of the White Rose" and the dozen or more other Jacobite associations take themselves, however, most seriously, much to the amusement, doutbtless, of the outsiders who know of their existence
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