Prince James is shown here wearing a red sash and the ribbon of the Order of the Garter. He was the son of the deposed Roman Catholic monarch James II of England and claimant to the English and Scottish thrones. When the Protestant ruler William of Orange, Stadtholder (head of state) of Holland, deposed James II in 1688, Prince James was taken to France, where his father set up a court in exile. Upon the death of James II in 1701, the French King Louis XIV proclaimed James King of England. In 1708, James, called the Pretender, set out in French ships to invade Scotland, but he was driven away by the British before he could land. In 1714, he refused to accept suggestions that he renounce Roman Catholicism and become an Anglican in order to be designated Queen Anne's heir to the throne of England. John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar, raised a Jacobite (from the Latin 'Jacobus', meaning James) rebellion in Scotland in 1715. James landed in Aberdeen, but within a few months the uprising had collapsed and he returned to France. He passed the remainder of his life in or near Rome. In 1719, James married Maria Clementina Sobieska, a granddaughter of John Sobieski III of Poland. They had two sons, Charles Edward, called the Young Pretender, and Henry, later Cardinal York.

The miniature is based on a portrait by Jacques Antoine Arlaud painted in 1703 and given to Simon, Lord Lovat. It is a weak derivative and is not thought to be by the hand of Arlaud himself.