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Charles Wogan (1684–1754) was a Jacobite activist, also known as the Chevalier Wogan.
Early life
Wogan was the eldest son of Patrick Wogan and his first wife, Mary Dempsey. His great-grandfather, William Wogan of Rathcoffey (1544–1616), was twelfth in descent from Sir John Wogan, Chief Justice of Ireland.
Career as soldier
In 1715 Charles and a relative, Nicholas Wogan, were members of a small group of Jacobites charged with organising a rising in Northern England in support of James Stuart, the Stuart claimant to the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland. Charles Wogan served as aide de camp to Thomas Forster, the commander of the rising in Northern England. A leading member of Forster's force was Colonel Henry Oxburgh. The Jacobites surrendered to General Charles Wills at Preston on 14 November.
In the following April the grand jury of Westminster found a true bill against Wogan, and his trial for high treason was appointed to take place in Westminster Hall on 5 May 1716 (cf. Hist. Reg. Chron. Diary, p. 221). At midnight on the eve of the trial Wogan took part in the successful escape from Newgate prison planned by Brigadier Mackintosh. He was one of the lucky seven (out of the fifteen) who made good their escape, and for whose recapture a reward of 500 pounds was vainly offered (Griffith, Chronicles of Newgate, i. 313).
He succeeded in getting to France, where he took service with James Stuart and, for a time, managed a clandestine operation in Lyon, France, for the secure transmission of Jacobite correspondence. In November 1717, Wogan was commissioned to tour the minor courts in Central Europe in search of a suitable bride for James Stuart. His efforts turned up a serious candidate in the form of Maria Clementina Sobieska, granddaughter of the famous John Sobieski. Clementina, on her way to join James Stuart at Bologna, was arrested by the order of the emperor (to whom the goodwill of the British government was of paramount importance) at Innsbruck, whence Wogan, with three kinsmen, Richard Gaydon, Captain Missett, Captain Luke O'Toole, Misset's pregnant wife, and her French maidservant released her in a romantic manner and escaped through the Alps to Bologna (27 April-3 May 1719). For this exploit the pope, Clement XI, conferred upon Wogan the title of Roman senator (13 June 1719). James rewarded Wogan with a baronetcy.
Wogan then took service as a colonel in the Spanish army. In 1732 he distinguished himself as the commander of the infantry component in the covering force protecting a convoy resupplying the fort of Santa Cruz, the key to Oran, then held by the Spanish and besieged by the Moors under the Bey Bigotillos. Wogan was wounded in the action and repatriated to Spain. His failure to obtain any recognition for his service during the siege of Oran led to his decision to retire from active service in 1735. In 1744 he was made corregidor (civil governor) of the San Clemente District in La Mancha, Spain. The following year he received a letter from James Stuart's son, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, seeking Wogan's assistance for the Prince's projected invasion of Scotland (the 1745 Jacobite Rising). Wogan went immediately to the Spanish Court where he obtained financial and material support. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general and commanded a contingent of Irish officers in the Spanish service who were sent to France to take ship for Scotland in order to join the Prince. In 1746 the Chevalier Wogan was with the Duke of York at Dunkirk in the hope of being able to join Prince Charles Edward (see Stuart MSS. at Windsor, Wogan to Edgar, 1752). However, the collapse of the Rising meant that Wogan never made it to Scotland. He was recalled to Spain where he resumed his post of corregidor at San Clemente.
Later life
Wogan stepped down from the position of corregidor of San Clemente a few years after his return to Spain in 1746 and was posted to the staff of the garrison of Barcelona in 1750. He died there in 1754.<ref>O’Kelly, Count, Memoire historique et genealogique sur la famille de Wogan (Paris, 1896), pp 70-71; Jacobite Epilogue. In 1731 he sent to Jonathan Swift a parcel of his writings with a view to their publication. Swift wrote him in return a characteristic letter deploring that he did not see his way to get Wogan's effusions published: ‘Dublin booksellers,’ he says, ‘have not the least notion of paying for copy.’ On 27 February 1733 Wogan despatched to Swift, in his capacity as the ‘mentor and champion of the Irish nation,’ a long budget of grievances (printed in Scott's Swift, xvii. 447–97) and a cask of Spanish wine, the merits of which Swift acknowledged in another entertaining letter (ib. xviii. 341).
References
- Hugh A. Law, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (1937), vol. 7(2), p 253
- Rev. Robert Patten, A Faithful Register of the Late Rebellion (London, 1718).
- Calendar of Stuart Papers, vol. 3, pp 147-149 and 222.
- Calendar of Stuart Papers, vol. 5, pp 234-235.
- J.T. Gilbert, Narratives of the Detention Liberation and marriage of Maria Clementina Stuart (Dublin, 1894).
- The Political State of Great Britain, vol. 45 (1732-1733), pp 378-387 (April 1733).
- H. Tayler, Jacobite Epilogue (London, 1941), p 302.
- Jacobite Epilogue, pp 304-321.