ONE of the great problems for Prince Charles Edward Stuart before and during the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46 was that he and his father – known to Jacobites as King James VIII and III but to history as the Old Pretender – were both Roman Catholics.
I have written before about how this United Kingdom is an institutionally sectarian state as decreed by the Act of Union of 1707 with its infamous Article II: “That all Papists and persons marrying Papists shall be excluded from and for ever incapable to inherit possess or enjoy the Imperial Crown of Great Britain and the Dominions thereunto belonging or any part thereof.”