John Sobieski Stuart

John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart were names used by John Carter Allen and Charles Manning Allen, two 19th-century brothers who are best known for their role in Scottish cultural history. As authors of a dubious book on Scottish tartans and clan dress, the Vestiarium Scoticum, they are the source of some current tartan traditions.

John and Charles were born in Wales in the last decade of the 18th century. Later they would claim to have discovered in 1811 that they were descended from the Stuart kings, and on their 1871 census entry they gave Versailles as their birthplace. They moved to live in Scotland and changed their Allen surname to the more Scottish spelling Allan, then to Hay Allan, and Hay. Their father John Carter Allen had Hay ancestry, and was said to have been related to the Earl of Erroll.

In 1840, John would publish a Genealogical table of the Hays. The date of their arrival in Scotland is unclear, but they are known to have been there in 1822. This is the year John published The bridal of Caölchairn and other poems, under the name John Hay Allan. Another edition was published, also in 1822, giving the author's name as Walter Scott. This is now in the British Library's category of "doubtful and supposititious works".

In 1829, they failed to persuade Sir Walter Scott of the authenticity of a document they said was a copy of a "15th century" manuscript about clan tartans. The brothers liked to wear Highland dress themselves, apparently "in all the extravagance of which the Highland costume is capable". In the 1830s they moved to Eilean Aigas on the River Beauly in Inverness-shire, to a hunting lodge granted them by Thomas Fraser, 12th Lord Lovat. Here they "held court" and surrounded themselves with royal paraphernalia: pennants, seals, even thrones. During their time here, they adopted the final version of their names", using the surname 'Stuart', and became practising Catholics (the Stuarts and their supporters, the Jacobites, were Roman Catholic.) They got to know various important Highland chiefs and noble patrons, one of whom was the Earl of Moray, and pursued the aristocratic pastime of deer-hunting. This was the inspiration for Lay of the Deer Forest (1848).

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