page_title: Henry Benedict Stuart
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Benedict Stuart / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Henry Benedict Maria Clement Stuart, Cardinal York (1725-1807)
context_page_description: Henry Benedict Thomas Edward Maria Clement Francis Xavier Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York was a Roman Catholic cardinal, as well as the fourth and final Jacobite heir to claim the thrones of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland publicly. Unlike his father, James Francis Edward Stuart, and brother, Charles Edward Stuart, Henry made no effort to seize the throne. After Charles's death in January 1788 the Papacy did not recognise Henry as the lawful ruler of England, Scotland, and Ireland, but referred to him as the Cardinal Duke of York.
  He spent his life in the Papal States and had a long career in the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, rising to become the Dean of the College of Cardinals and Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and Velletri. At the time of his death he was one of the longest-serving cardinals in the Church's history.
  In his youth, Henry's father made him Duke of York, and it was by this title that he was best known. Upon the death of his brother in 1788, Henry became known by Jacobites, and within his personal entourage, as Henry IX of England and Ireland, and Henry I of Scotland, although publicly he referred to himself as Cardinal-Duke of York nuncupatus.
context_section_description: Henry was born in exile at the Palazzo Muti in Rome on 6 March 1725 and baptised on the same day by Pope Benedict XIII, 37 years after his grandfather James II and VII lost the throne, and ten years after his father's failed attempt to regain it. His father was James Francis Edward Stuart, known to his opponents as "the Old Pretender". His mother was the Princess Maria Klementyna Sobieska, granddaughter of the Polish King and Lithuanian Grand-Duke, John III Sobieski. Henry was apparently an intelligent child who could spell and write better than his older brother Charles. More introverted than Charles and more cautious in his approach to problems, Henry is described as pious and mild-mannered.
  Henry went to France in 1745 to help his brother, Prince Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie", or "the Young Pretender") prepare the Jacobite rising of 1745. Attached to the French army, he was in nominal command of a cross-channel invasion force of some 10,000 men that never made it out of Dunkirk, and subsequently served under Maurice de Saxe at the siege of Antwerp. After the defeat at Culloden, Henry Stuart returned to Italy.
caption: Henry Benedict Stuart, age 13, by Louis Gabriel Blanchet (1738)
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