He is the most romanticised figure in Scottish history, whose doomed bid to claim the throne has been immortalised in film, verse and on shortbread tins. Now the misconceptions and myths surrounding Charles Edward Stuart and the Jacobites are to be explored in an exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland.
David Forsyth, its principal curator, said that the display, the largest in more than 70 years, would be ruthless in challenging long-held beliefs.
“What we are trying to do is to challenge historical illiteracy,” he said. “It’s comforting to put things in black-and-white terms, but it’s just not accurate. That’s why the myth-busting is important.”
The exhibition, which will feature more than 300 artefacts and paintings, aims to finally dispel the lingering perception that Culloden was a battle between the Scots and the English. “The Jacobite challenge for the three kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland was a complex civil war, which pitched Scot against Scot,” Mr Forsyth said.
“There were Highlanders fighting on the government side and lowlanders fighting on the Jacobite side. On the way down to Derby Charles raised a small regiment in Manchester, so there were English Jacobites. There were also Irish soldiers involved.”
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It will also challenge the suggestion that the battle pitted Catholic Jacobites against Hanoverian Protestants. “The religious aspect is quite complex,” Mr Forsyth said. “The Stuarts were Catholic but the bulk of their Highland supporters were actually Episcopalians, while Lord George Murray, the Jacobite general, was a Presbyterian.”
The exhibition will stress that Charles, who was born and died in Rome, spent only 14 months in Scotland and focused chiefly on securing power south of the border.
“We will be displaying the only portrait made of him in Scotland during the time he was here,” Mr Forsyth said. “He is wearing conventional European court dress and the Order of the Garter, England’s premier honour, rather than the Order of the Thistle. That shows that England was the big prize for him. Without doubt Charles would have ruled from London if things had gone differently.”
Paintings and sketches will also show how Charles’ health and good looks faded after he fled Scotland and spent his final years in exile.
“One sketch, in particular, shows him looking haggard, tired and disappointed,” Mr Forsyth said.
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“He is a prince without a kingdom, a man without a mission.
“He was certainly, at times, a heavy drinker and wasn’t always the most pleasant of people when he was in his cups.”
Mr Forsyth said that the exhibition would also have sumptuous costumes, beautiful paintings, poignant mementoes and keepsakes. “Hopefully it will help people to realise that this is a larger, and far more complex, story than just than short battle, which lasted less than an hour, on Drumossie Moor on April 16, 1746,” he said.
Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites will run at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh from June 23 to November 12.