Maria Clementina Sobieska was a titular queen of England, Scotland and Ireland by marriage to James Francis Edward Stuart, a Jacobite claimant to the British throne. The granddaughter of the Polish king John III Sobieski, she was the mother of Charles Edward Stuart and of Henry Benedict Cardinal Stuart.

James Francis Edward Stuart, nicknamed the Old Pretender by Whigs and the King over the Water by Jacobites, was the son of King James VII and II of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and his second wife, Mary of Modena. He was Prince of Wales from July 1688 until, just months after his birth, his Catholic father was deposed and exiled in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. James II's Protestant elder daughter Mary II and her husband William III became co-monarchs. The Bill of Rights 1689 and Act of Settlement 1701 excluded Catholics such as James from the English and British thrones.