ORIGINAL documents revealing the personal lives and political ambitions of the Stuarts and their Jacobite followers are being published online for the first time.
The newly digitised Stuart and Cumberland Papers from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle will be available to academic institutions and libraries via educational technology provider Gale.
The 245,000 papers are said to offer an “unparalleled” documentation of the Jacobite movement and the opposing forces of the ruling Hanoverian monarchy.
The Stuart Papers bring together the private and diplomatic correspondence of James II, who was forced from the British throne in 1688; his son James Francis Edward Stuart and grandson Charles Edward Stuart.
In one of the most personal letters in the collection, the latter is told by his father after the failed 1745-46 rising: “Do not for Gods sake drive things too far, but think of your own safety, on which so much depends; Tho’ your Enterprize should miscarry, the honor you have gaind by it will always stick by you, it will make you be respected & considerd abroad.”
The collection includes the papers of the Duke of Cumberland, know to Scots as Butcher Cumberland after Culloden, and an account of the battle, pictured above.
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