Letter written by the young Prince Charles Edward Stuart to his father, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart

This letter was written by the seven-year-old Charles Edward Stuart, who was more popularly known as ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’. In this letter, the young prince appears to be responding to a reprimand from his father for upsetting his mother, Princess Maria Clementina. Writing from Palazzo Muti, the Stuart residence in Rome, Charles promises to:

strive too obey you in all things … [and] be very Dutifull to Mamma, and not jump to near her. 

At the time this letter was written, Maria may have been pregnant (although she later lost the child), and so it is possible that the concern for her welfare being expressed here might be connected to her pregnancy.

This letter, written by the young ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, is just one of the thousands of documents of the exiled Stuarts that now form a substantial collection in the Royal Archives. The Stuart Papers not only reflect the efforts made by the Jacobites to reclaim the throne for the Stuart royal line, but also the private and domestic lives of two generations of this family.