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The Scottish Pretender? 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' wore tartan to woo the Scots
For many, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ has always symbolised the romantic Scottish rebel, the 'young pretender' whose defeat at the bloody Battle of Culloden in 1746 effectively ended the Jacobite uprising.
But a new exhibition at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival seeks to debunk the “shortbread tin image” of the ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, Charles Edward Stuart.
A tartan frock coat said to have belonged to Charles is on display for the first time, and sheds new light on his attempts to fit in with the Scottish clans.
Charles was born in exile in Rome in 1720, and spent most of his life in mainland Europe, only returning to his native Scotland for less than 14 months in total. When he finally arrived in 1745, he had to be reminded of Scottish customs.
“The Duke of Perth, a Jacobite supporter, reminded Charles that he should wear tartan because this was the traditional garb of a highland chief,” said David Forsyth, curator of the ‘Bonnie Prince Charles and the Jacobites’ exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland.
The tartan coat is made from silk velvet, linen and wool, and Charles is thought to have worn it in order to look like and impress the local clan chiefs.
“We start the collection by confronting the visitor with the almost shortbread tin image of Charles Edward Stuart, but then very quickly look at the complexity of the Jacobite story,” said Forsyth.
It took 160 hours of careful conservation work to restore the coat, including a cleaning process to bring out the vibrant reds and greens in the tartan. The coat was also missing its buttons, a fact that actually helps link it to the Bonnie Prince.
“As Charles was running around Scotland after Culloden, he was giving stuff away as keepsakes, so the missing buttons would fit with that,” a museum spokesperson said.
A mysterious family with direct links to the 1745 Jacobite rising, and whose identity can’t be revealed, bequeathed the coat to the museum in 1979.
Interest in the Bonnie Prince has been bolstered by the success of Outlander, the time-travel TV series set during the Jacobite uprising, and based on the best-selling books by Diana Gabaldon.
The museum has embraced the “Outlander effect”, and invited actor Andrew Gower, who played Charles in the TV series, to a private viewing.
“Outlander brought the story of Charles Edward Stuart and the Jacobites to even wider international audiences. It will certainly drive US visitors to the exhibition,” Forsyth told The Telegraph.
‘Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites’ is the biggest exhibition on the subject in 70 years. There are 350 items in total on display, including paintings, medals, documents and weapons. A third of the items are from private collections, and many have never been seen in Britain, including a golden chalice that once belonged to Charles’ younger brother Henry, a Roman Catholic Cardinal.
Inlaid with 130 diamonds, the York Chalice is on loan from the Vatican Collection and has never left Rome before. The chalice and the tartan coat are both centrepieces of the exhibition, which runs until November 12th.
Tickets for the exhibition are £10, and can be bought on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival website or at the National Museum of Scotland.