Charles, lonely, ill, and evidently near death, now summoned to Florence his natural daughter, Charlotte Stuart, the child of Clementina Walkinshaw, born at Liege in October 1753 and hitherto neglected by the prince.
Returning from Spain, James married Maria Clementina Sobieska, daughter of Prince James Sobieski, a pretty bride whom Charles Wogan rescued from durance in Innsbruck, an adventure of romantic gallantry.
The marriage was unhappy; James was eternally occupied with the business of his cause and the feuds of his adherents; Clementina lost her gaiety and became causelessly jealous; and her retreat to a convent in 1725 was a greater blow to the cause than the failure of Atterbury's plot (1720), the alleged treason of Mar and the splits in the Jacobite party.
Clementina, however, was the mother of two sons, Charles Edward, the hope of his party, and Henry.