Oxburgh Hall artwork is rare survivor by colour print inventor

The discovery at the home of the Bedingfield family, who were devout Catholics, suggested they were secret Jacobites – supporters of the Catholic Stuart royal family in exile instead of George I.

The Protestant king inherited the British throne in 1714.

The portrait includes the future James II, the last Catholic monarch of Britain, whose son James Francis Edward Stuart attempted to take back the throne in a failed uprising in 1715.

“Copies of this painting are known to have been popular with those sympathetic to the Jacobite cause, and it would have been quite feasible that the print has spent its whole life at Oxburgh – although we lack enough evidence to prove it,” said Oxburgh collections and house manager, Ilana van Dort.