Charles Edward Stuart, Count Roehenstart

Charles Edward Augustus Maximilian Stuart, Baron Korff, Count Roehenstart ( May 1784 – 28 October 1854) was the natural son of Prince Ferdinand of Rohan (1738–1813), Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cambrai, by Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany, herself the natural daughter of Charles Edward Stuart, the "Young Pretender". She was legitimised after the birth of her children, and Roehenstart was later a passive Jacobite pretender to the British throne.

The name of "Roehenstart" given to him in infancy combined the names of both of his parents, Rohan and Stuart, while failing to proclaim their identity, which at the time would have been a cause for scandal.

Life

Roehenstart was baptised into the Roman Catholic faith on 13 May 1784 at the parish church of Saint-Merry in the rue de Saint Martin, Paris, when he was described as a son of Maximilian Roehenstart and of Clementine Ruthven. He was named Charles Edward after his royal grandfather. and one son, all fathered by Ferdinand de Rohan. The daughters were Charlotte Maximilienne Amélie, born during the summer of 1780, Victoire Adélaïde, born between 1781 and spring 1783, and possibly Marie Victoire, who was baptised at the Château de Couzières on 19 June 1779, as well as Marie Aglaë, who may be identical with one of her sisters or whose fate is otherwise unknown.

Roehenstart's grandmother Clementina Walkinshaw lived until 1802, in her later years taking up residence in Switzerland, and Roehenstart was raised in the reformed faith. During the years of the French Revolution, his father paid for his education in Germany. Most of the remainder of his fortune, one hundred thousand roubles, was invested with a Russian banker named Sofniev. He lived in Philadelphia from 1811 to 1813. He remained in America until 1814.

In 1816, after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, Roehenstart went to Scotland and again to England, unsuccessfully renewing the Stuarts' pursuit of their old claim on the dowry of Queen Mary Beatrice of Modena, his great-great-grandmother. Louisa Constance lived until 20 October 1853, dying at Paris, but there were no children of either marriage.

In 1853, Roehenstart lost his wife, and in 1854 he revisited Scotland. While there he was fatally injured in a road accident, while travelling in a carriage which overturned. He was buried in the graveyard of Dunkeld Cathedral.

In the twentieth century Roehenstart's papers came into the hands of the American scholar George Sherburn, who produced a comprehensive account of him from them.

Claims to the throne In order to lay a claim of his own to the British throne, Roehenstart maintained consistently that his grandfather Prince Charles Edward had married his grandmother, Clementina Walkinshaw, and also that his mother the Duchess of Albany had married a Swedish nobleman named Maximilian Roehenstart. The first is unlikely, although not an impossibility, but it lacks evidence; nothing has come to light to support the second claim, apart from Maximilian Roehenstart being named as Roehenstart's father when he was baptized in Paris; but there is no Swedish noble family named Roehenstart. On the contrary, Charlotte's relationship with Rohan is well evidenced.

Although he laid claim to the Jacobite succession, Roehenstart made no practical attempt to regain the throne of his Stuart ancestors. He did seek to maintain links with leading Scots and at the time of his death was returning from a visit to the Duke of Atholl at Blair Castle in Perthshire.