This elaborate set of travelling cutlery and two wine beakers
was made by the Edinburgh goldsmith Ebenezer Oliphant in 1740-41,
and may have been a 21st birthday gift for Prince
Charles Edward Stuart. Oliphant was a member of the staunchly
Jacobite family of the Oliphants of Gask, in Perthshire, and his
father and brother (both called Laurence) were ‘out’ with Prince
Charles’s army during the 1745-6 Rebellion.
Who was Bonnie Prince Charlie?
Charles Edward Stuart or Bonnie Prince Charlie as he
became know was born in Rome in 1720. He was the grandson of the
deposed Catholic King James II who had fled to France from
Protestant William of Orange's invading army in 1688.
The supporters of the deposed king and his descendants the
Jacobites had support in Britain and in continental
Europe, but the main stronghold was the Highlands and Islands of
Scotland.
The Stuarts, in exile across the Channel, nursed their ambition
to reclaim the throne. In 1745, Charles travelled to the Highlands
to raise the Scottish clans in rebellion against the current
British monarch King George II. His plan was to make his father,
James Stuart, the 'Old Pretender', king.
When did the canteen arrive in Scotland?
Charles brought the canteen with him in 1745, when he arrived in
Scotland to lead an attempt to regain his father’s lost crowns.
When the Rebellion came to a disastrous end in April 1746, with the
complete rout of the Jacobite army at Culloden, Charles had the
canteen with him in his baggage.
The victorious government commander, William, Duke of
Cumberland, captured the canteen and gave it to one of his aides,
George Kepple, later the Earl of Albemarle, and it remained in his
family until 1963. The canteen was finally acquired by the Museum
in 1984, after a successful public fundraising campaign to prevent
it being sold abroad.
Silver canteen in detail
The outer
case of the canteen is decorated with the three-feathered badge of
the Prince of Wales, and the Collar and Badge of the Order of the
Thistle.
In Jacobite eyes, Prince Charles was created Prince of Wales on
his birth in 1720, and was made a Knight of the Thistle shortly
after.
The canteen contains 31 pieces in all, including a cruet and a
corkscrew/nutmeg grater.