In 1718 James had become affianced to the young princess Maria
Clementina Sobieski, grand-daughter of the warrior king of Poland, John
Sobieski. The intended marriage was forbidden by the emperor, who in
consequence kept the princess and her mother in honourable confinement
at Innsbruck in Tirol. An attempt to abduct the princess by means of a
ruse contrived by a zealous Jacobite gentleman, Charles Wogan, proved
successful; Clementina reached Italy in safety, and she and James were
ultimately married at Montefiascone on the 1st of September 1719. James
and Clementina were now invited to reside in Rome at the special request
of Pope Clement XI., who openly acknowledged their titles of British
King and Queen, gave them a papal guard of troops, presented them with a
villa at Albano and a palace (the Palazzo Muti in the Piazza dei Santi
Apostoli) in the city, and also made them an annual allowance of 12,000
crowns out of the papal treasury. At the Palazzo Muti, which remained
the chief centre of Jacobite intriguing, were born James's two sons,
Charles Edward (the Young Pretender) and Henry Benedict Stuart. James's
married life proved turbulent and unhappy, a circumstance that was
principally due to the hot temper and jealous nature of Clementina, who
soon after Henry's birth in 1725 left her husband and spent over two
years in a Roman convent. At length a reconciliation was effected, which
Clementina did not long survive, for she died at the early age of 32 in
February 1735. Full regal honours were paid to the Stuart queen at her
funeral, and the splendid but tasteless monument by Pietro Bracchi
(1700-1773) in St Peter's was erected to her memory by order of Pope
Benedict XIV.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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