on both the ‘Tales’ and the ‘Vestiarium Scoticum, with an Introduction and Notes by John Sobieski Stuart’ (folio, Edinburgh, 1842). The latter professed to be from the sixteenth-century manuscript of a ‘Schyr Richard Urquharde, knycht,’ showing the tartans of ‘ye chieff Hieland and bordour clannes.’ John, or ‘Ian,’ or ‘Ian Dubh’ (Gaelic, Black John), rejoined with ‘A Reply to the Quarterly’ (Edinburgh, 1848), where he ascribes the reviewer's hostility to his partisanship of a rival claimant, ‘General Charles Edward Stuart, Baron Rohenstart’ (1781–1854), a soi-disant grandson of Miss Walkinshaw [q. v.], who was killed in a coach accident at Dunkeld, and is buried in the ruined nave of the cathedral. Other works by the brothers were the sumptuous but grotesquely illustrated ‘Costume of the Clans’ (folio, Edinburgh, 1843), and ‘Lays of the Deer Forest’ (2 vols. 8vo, Edinburgh, 1848). Their kingly origin and Napoleonic exploits are dwelt on largely in the latter work (which is not without merits) and in ‘Poems,’ by Charles Edward Stuart (8vo, London, 1869).
On 23 Sept. 1845, writing to Robert Chambers, John announces his marriage next month, in London, to Miss Georgina Kendall, ‘of a very old Saxon family.’ She was the second daughter of Edward Kendall of Austrey, Warwickshire, J.P. ‘My future lady,’ he remarks, ‘has only ten thousand pounds,’ and he goes on to ask a loan of 100l. They seem never to have lived together, though she survived him sixteen years, dying at Bath on 13 Feb. 1888, and though in Eskadale church there is a tablet professing to be erected by her ‘to the dear memory of John Sobieskie Stuart, Count d'Albanie.’ Charles's wife and a sister, Miss Beresford, who lived with them at Eilean Aigas, had between them 1,000l. a year; but there seems to have been a break-up in 1845 or 1846. Books were sold and Mrs. Stuart was even threatened with arrest. Charles was at Prague in 1845–6, and for years the whole family lived in Austria-Hungary, chiefly there and at Presburg, where Charles's wife died, 13 Nov. 1862. Mr. Dunbar Dunbar ‘was told by Baron Otto von Gilsa, chamberlain to the Emperor of Austria, that in His Imperial Majesty's dominions the claim of the Count to royal descent was never doubted. … At Prague, it is said, the military always saluted the brothers as royal personages, and those who were “presented” to them “kissed hands”’ (Documents relating to the Province of Moray, Edinburgh, 1895, pp. 166–171). Meanwhile Thomas Allen, or ‘Thomas Hay Allan, esq., of Hay,’ or ‘J. T. Stuart Hay,’ or ‘James Stuart, Count d'Albanie,’ their father, died on 14 Feb. 1852 at 22 Henry Street, Clerkenwell, where he had resided for seven years preceding his decease, during which time he never left his apartments. He was buried in old St. Pancras churchyard (Introduction to the 1892 reissue of Costume of the Clans, p. xvii).
When or why the brothers left Austria is unknown, but some time before 1868 they both were living in London, where, although desperately poor, they went into society, and, with their orders and spurs, were well-known figures in the British Museum reading-room. A table was reserved for them, and their pens, paper-knives, paper-weights, &c., were surmounted with miniature coronets, in gold. John died on 13 Feb. 1872; and Charles, who, after his brother's death, himself assumed the title of Count d'Albanie, died suddenly at Pauillac, near Bordeaux, on Christmas day 1880 (Comte L. Lafond, L'Écosse jadis et aujourd'hui, 1887, p. 293). Both are buried at Eskadale under a Celtic cross, whose Latin and Gaelic epitaph was written by the late Colin C. Grant, for twenty years priest of Eskadale, and afterwards bishop of Aberdeen.
John left no issue, but Charles had one son and three daughters. The son, Charles Edward, born in 1824, rose between 1840 and 1870 to be a colonel in the Austrian cavalry, and on 13 Aug. 1873 was captured with the yacht Deerhound off Fontarabia running Carlist munitions. On 16 May 1874 he married Lady Alice Emily Mary Hay (1835–1881), daughter of the seventeenth Earl of Erroll, and granddaughter of William IV. He died in Jersey without issue on 8 May 1882. Of the daughters, Marie (1823–1873) died at Beaumanoir on the Loire; Louisa Sobieska (1827?–1897), married Eduard von Platt, of the Austrian imperial bodyguard, and had one son, Alfred Édouard Charles, a lieutenant in the Austrian artillery; and Clementina (1830?–1894) became a Passionist nun, and died in a convent at Bolton, Lancashire.
The brothers were courteous and accomplished gentlemen. But apart from their Stuart likeness, the sole strength of their pretensions would appear to reside in the credence and countenance accorded them by men of rank and intelligence, such as the tenth Earl of Moray, the fourteenth Lord Lovat, the late Marquis of Bute, Sir Thomas Dick-Lauder, and Dr. Robert Chambers.
[Works already cited; The Last of the Stuarts, probably by the Vicomte d'Arlincourt, in Catholic Mag. for March 1843, pp. 182–90;
