You're Dead to Me, Charles Radclyffe

8th December 1746.

In 1745, with the majority of the British army off in Europe fighting the War of the Austrian Succession, because heaven knows nobody wants the Austrians to succeed at anything, Jacobite forces had another go at a rebellion when Charles Edward Stuart attempted to regain the British throne for his father, James Francis Edward Stuart. The French joined in on the side of the Scottish, presumably because they had nothing else to do and fighting against the English would pass a Summer or two before they could get back to the usual French business of lounging about all week smoking terrible cigarettes and sleeping with their sisters.

Not many Englishmen joined on the Jacobite side because not many of them either were, or had the balls to openly admit to being, Catholics. Charles Radclyffe, the de jure 5th Earl of Derwentwater, was such a man, although he had spent the previous 30 or so years living in Rome, the home of the exiled Stuart court, where he presumably spent most of his time engaging in the usual Italian business of spending most of the day asleep under an olive tree and then also sleeping with a French person's sister.

In November of 1745, Charles and his son James boarded a French ship bound for Montrose, laden with a cargo of arms for the rebels. Their journey came to an abrupt halt when they were intercepted in the North Sea by HMS Sheerness, and the ship, passengers and crew were seized. Charles had thought this through, or thought that he had thought this through, and announced that he was a commissioned officer in the Franco-Irish Dillon's Regiment, a ruse perpetrated by many Jacobites at the time in order that, upon capture, they would be treated as prisoners of war and not treasonous rebel scum. This cunning plan might have worked for Charles had it not been for the uncomfortable fact that the reason he had spent the past three decades in Italy, swanning about and wearing inadvisably fancy shoes, was that he had escaped from Newgate Prison in 1716 after having been arrested and tried for a being a traitorous cur during the previous Jacobite hissy fit. As such, a warrant for his arrest and execution had been in place ever since.

The irony is that had he not escaped and spent years denigrating himself by living somewhere nice and eating good food, he would, in all probability, have been pardoned for his actions in the 1715 Rising. Although his elder brother, another James, had been a more prominent figure in the uprising and had been executed after they were all captured at the Battle of Preston, Charles was seen as a less important figure and hence would probably have been forgiven.

The title of Earl of Derwentwater ended when James died, but his son, John, adopted the title of de jure 4th Earl Derwentwater. When John died in 1731, he left a legacy to "my kinsman, Mr Thompson", which probably refers to an alias used by Charles, who now styled himself 5th Earl Derwentwater.

Charles' protestations that he was a prisoner of war held no sway and the terms of the 1716 warrant were held to still be in place. Correspondingly, the Lord Chancellor, the 1st Earl of Hardwicke, signed the execution order, and on December 8th 1746, Charles was taken to Tower Hill, London, where he was beheaded, a method of execution usually reserved for nobility, even though he was not technically a peer. The usual punishment for treason would have been to be hung, drawn and quartered.

His son, James, who had decided not to run off to Europe and wear alarmingly tight trousers, was pardoned under the 1747 Indemnity Act, and although he was unsuccessful in a petition to have the Derwentwater estate returned to him by the government, he inherited the title of Earl of Newburgh from his mother's side of the family in 1755.

Thanks for reading! If you’re stuck for a Christmas gift for a loved one, or for someone you hate, or if you have a table with a wonky leg that would benefit from the support of 341 pages of Roman History, my new book “The Compendium of Roman History” is available on Amazon right now! Please check it out by clicking the link below!