Eye - 16 March 2018

'Queen of the Reapers'

In the graveyard attached to the Friends’ Meeting House in Wisbech there is a simple headstone with the initials ‘JS’ engraved on it.

An age and date are also engraved on the headstone: ‘88’ and ‘1742’. This is the final resting place of Jane Stuart, who is believed to be a natural daughter of James II.

The inscriptions, according to folklore, were written down by Samuel Peckover, a prominent Cambridgeshire Quaker, some thirty years or so after her death.

It is believed that Jane Stuart was born in Paris and was an illegitimate daughter of James, duke of York, who was then in exile. He had escaped England in 1648 when confined to St James’s Palace by parliamentary leaders.

Jane later became a maid of honour and remained at the English Court from the Restoration (1685) to the Glorious Revolution (1688), but she has never been officially recognised. After the Glorious Revolution Jane escaped the Court and finally found refuge in Wisbech, living a life of simplicity and piety.

Before this, however, there was a further intriguing twist to her story, which led to her being named ‘Queen of the Reapers’. Although the Court of James II was Catholic, it is understood that Jane Stuart became influenced by the principles of the Quakers.

Like with similar radical beliefs, she was imprisoned because of her association with the movement. An extract from the Portfolio of a Man of Letters was published in a journal of the period called The Monthly Magazine:

A natural daughter of king James 2nd, was convinced of Friends’ principles, and imprisoned for the same with Thomas Ellwood.

Thomas Ellwood was a very important and influential Friend in the early days of Quakerism. During this period Jane was engaged. Tragically, a coach she and her future husband were travelling in was overturned and he was killed.

Following this tragedy, it is said that Jane remained in London for some time before eventually setting off, on foot, towards the Isle of Ely. She was probably extremely poor, even penniless, and enquired at several houses about employment. She was asked what she could do and answered that she was prepared try anything.

Tradition holds that at one house Jane was asked: ‘Canst thou reap?’ She replied that she didn’t know but was willing to try. So, she was sent into the field. Before evening Jane was discovered to be so proficient at reaping that she was called Queen of the reapers.

In Wisbech she is believed to have lived in a basement room in a white house at the far end of the Old Market looking towards the Town Bridge. Today, the house is more familiar as ‘Granny’s Cupboard’.

She apparently supported herself by earning her living reaping in the fields in the summer and spinning wool and flax in the winter. She led a humble existence and remained, for many of the locals, an enigma, as a further story suggests that neighbours witnessed her reading the New Testament in Greek.

A union of English parliamentarians and William of Orange overthrew James II in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. He fled to France, where the king of France provided him with the use of a chateau at St Germain-en-Laye.

Although several Quakers visited James II at St Germain, there is no record of Jane Stuart ever being there; nor did James II, a tender father to his natural children, ever mention her.

During the rising of 1715 she is alleged to have hired transport to take her to Scotland to see her half-brother, James III (James Francis Edward).

Jane Stuart died in Wisbech on 12 September 1742, aged eighty-eight, and was buried in the Quaker burial ground. She never married.

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