Prince Henry Benedict Maria Clement Stuart (1725-1807) was the younger son of Prince James, the Old Pretender. His father bestowed the Duchy of York upon him. In 1745, Prince Henry went to France to accompany the army that was to invade England under the terms of the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau. After the Forty-Five failed, Henry seems to have regarded the cause as lost and, with James's consent, was ordained a Cardinal-Deacon in 1747. Prince Charles realised that this was offensive to British Protestants and, enraged, broke all communication with his brother Cardinal York until 1764.

By then, the Cardinal was deeply involved in his ecclesiastical career. Despite an early reputation for frivolity, he was Vice-Chancellor of the Church. Pope Benedict XIV said of this serious man that, if all the Stuarts were as dull as Cardinal York, he understood why the English had driven them out!

The French Revolution deprived him of most income from his benefices and the invasion of 1798, in which the Pope was made prisoner, forced him to flee to Venice. Cardinal Borgia alerted Sir John Coxe Hippisley to his poverty and Sir John informed George III, who decided to pay him a pension. Although he left his Venetian exile in 1800 and regained some of his previous income, George III's pension of (4,000 a year was very welcome to the old man, who died praising George as "a generous and beneficient Sovereign" at his beloved Frascati in 1807. He was the last in the direct male line of The Royal House of Stuart