Excluded from the succession by law because of their Roman Catholicism, James's Stuart descendants pursued their claims to the crowns as pretenders.
From 1689 to the middle of the eighteenth century, restoration of the Jacobite succession to the throne was a major political issue in Britain, with adherents both at home and abroad.
However, with Charles Edward's disastrous defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the Jacobite succession lost both its support and its political importance.
James II and VII's other grandson, Henry Benedict Stuart, was the last of his legitimate descendants, as he took a career as a Catholic prelate and as such never married.
Although the line of succession can continue to be traced, none of these subsequent heirs ever claimed the British throne, or the crowns of England, Scotland, or Ireland.
A spokesman for the current heir, Franz, Duke of Bavaria, has described his position in the line of succession as "purely hypothetical" and a question "which does not concern him".
James II and VII, a Roman Catholic, was deposed, in what became known as the Glorious Revolution, when his Protestant opponents forced him to flee from England in 1688.
[a] In practice, James's loss of the Irish crown to William of Orange was because of his defeat in the Williamite War in Ireland in 1691.
[7] The Act of Settlement 1701, passed shortly before Anne's accession, fixed the line of succession in law with the aim of permanently excluding James's descendants, and Roman Catholics in general, from the throne.
[16] Jacobitism was perceived by contemporaries to be a significant military and political threat,[17] with invasions and uprisings in support of the exiled Stuarts occurring in 1689, 1715, 1719 and 1745.