STUART, HENRY BENEDICT MARIA CLEMENT

known as Cardinal York, 1725–1807, claimant to the British throne, b. Rome. Second son of James Francis Edward Stuart (the Old Pretender), he was the Jacobite duke of York until the death (1788) of his brother Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender), when he became royal claimant as Henry IX. He was the last of the direct male line of James II and the last pretender to press a claim to the throne (see Stuart, family). He was in France in 1745, ready to help in the Scottish Jacobite rebellion, and on his return to Italy was made (1747) a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1761 he was also made bishop of Frascati, where he lived and worked for years. His villa was sacked by the French in 1799, and he fled eventually to Venice. George III of Great Britain granted him a pension, and in gratitude Cardinal York bequeathed to George IV (then prince of Wales) the crown jewels of the Stuarts.

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