Jacobites were the followers of James II (Latin: Jacobus), deposed in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688-9, and his heirs. There was some overlap between Jacobitism and the early Tories; Jacobites rejected the succession arrangements of 1689 and 1714, whereas Tories tended to be doubtful and troubled about them. During the Hanoverian period the main areas of support for the Stuart ‘Pretenders’ were outside England, principally in the Highlands of Scotland. The Jacobite cause was effectively dead after the last and greatest of rebellions, the ‘45’, which was ended by the government victory at Culloden, in April 1746. Since that time political theorists have continued to cite Jacobitism as an example of a body of belief which rejects the technical legitimacy of a particular system of government even if it is, in other respects, far from radical.

— Lincoln Allison

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Jacobite

In British history, a supporter of the exiled Stuart king James II (in Latin, Jacobus) and his descendants after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The movement was strong in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and it included Catholics and Anglican Tories. The Jacobites, especially under William III and Queen Anne, could offer a feasible alternative title to the crown, and several attempts were made to restore the Stuarts. In 1689 James II landed in Ireland, but his army was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne. In the Fifteen Rebellion (1715), led by John Erskine, 6th earl of Mar (1675 – 1732), Jacobites tried to seize the crown for James Edward, the Old Pretender. In the Forty-five Rebellion (1745) Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, took Scotland, but the Jacobite army was crushed at the Battle of Culloden (1746).

For more information on Jacobite, visit Britannica.com.

British History: Jacobitism

Jacobitism was a series of political movements which supported the restoration of the exiled house of Stuart after James II had been ousted from the throne at the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and had fled to France. Jacobites continued to support the claims to the throne of James's son James Francis Edward Stuart (the Old Pretender or ‘James III’) and his two grandsons Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender or ‘Charles III’) and Henry Stuart (the cardinal duke of York or ‘Henry IX’).

Jacobitism had a religious, as well as a political, dimension. James II and his son and grandsons were catholics, whose refusal to convert to protestantism made their restoration virtually impossible other than by armed invasion. However, most of their supporters were protestants, and a great many were non-jurors, who had refused the oaths of loyalty to William and Mary, and consequently had lost their secular or religious offices. In Scotland, where Jacobitism was strongest, the episcopalian church had been disestablished at the Glorious Revolution, and subsequently many episcopalians became Jacobites. Jacobitism in Scotland also became a refuge for many who opposed the Union with England in 1707.

That Scotland was central to Jacobitism is shown by the two main risings which took place in 1715 and 1745. Many Highland chiefs and clansmen, who did battle for the Stuart cause, paid for their loyalty with their lives. Few English Jacobites came out in support of either rebellion. Jacobitism was largely crushed as a political force after the retreat from Derby by the forces of the Young Pretender and the defeat at Culloden in 1746. Thereafter the romantic and cultural aspect of the movement, which had always been a potent factor in attracting supporters, became dominant.

Columbia Encyclopedia: Jacobites

(jăk'əbīts') , adherents of the exiled branch of the house of Stuart who sought to restore James II and his descendants to the English and Scottish thrones after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. They take their name from the Latin form (Jacobus) of the name James. Theoretical justification for the Stuart claim was found in the writings of the nonjurors, who maintained the principles of hereditary succession and the divine right of kings. But the Stuarts' continued adherence to Roman Catholicism, the rash and incompetent leadership of their military ventures, and the duplicity of foreign courts cost the Jacobite cause much support.

After James II's Ouster

When William III and Mary II ascended the throne after the flight of James II to France, strong Stuart partisans remained to offer rebellion. However, the death (1689) of John Graham, Viscount Dundee, at Killiecrankie ended armed resistance in Scotland, and William III quashed Jacobite hopes in Ireland by his victory over James's forces at the battle of the Boyne (1690). Thereafter the exiled English court in France became a center of intrigue for men like Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, and others like him who were out of favor in London. At home many Roman Catholics, high churchmen, and extreme Tories adhered to the Stuart cause.

Under the Old Pretender

At the death (1701) of James II his son James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, was recognized as James III by the courts of France and Spain and proclaimed by the Jacobites. An invasion of Scotland in 1708 by the new claimant proved totally abortive. Each subsequent attempt also failed, and in each the Jacobites were the dupes of French or Spanish policy. After the death (1714) of Queen Anne and the accession of the Hanoverian George I, there was the rising known by its date as “the '15.” Led by the incompetent John Erskine, 6th earl of Mar, it ended in the disastrous battles of Preston and Sheriffmuir. The Old Pretender, discredited by failure, retired first to Avignon and finally to Rome. Spain supported another Jacobite invasion of Scotland in 1719.

Under Bonnie Prince Charlie (the Young Pretender)

After the failure of the 1719 invasion of Scotland, hope lay dormant until the Old Pretender's son Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender or Bonnie Prince Charlie) reached manhood. Acting on the assumption that renewed French hostility toward England would bring support for a Jacobite invasion, the prince rashly sailed for Scotland, raised the clans in what was called “the '45,” and won an initial victory at Prestonpans in Sept., 1745. An advance into England stalled at Derby for lack of support from English Jacobites and French allies.

Despite Charles's objections, his council of war voted to retreat, an action skillfully managed by Lord George Murray. Disaster followed for the Jacobites at the battle of Culloden Moor (1746). Charles escaped to France, and Stuart hopes were extinguished, although a claimant to the throne lived on until 1807, in the person of Henry Stuart, Cardinal York. Jacobite sympathies lingered, particularly in Scotland and Ireland, where Jacobitism had been practically synonymous with national discontent, but the movement ceased to be a serious political force.

Bibliography

Jacobite activities gave rise to much ballad literature and were the theme of such later literary works as Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy, Waverley, and Redgauntlet, W. Thackeray's Henry Esmond, and R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped. See also studies by G. P. Insh (1952), G. H. Jones (1954), J. C. M. Baynes (1970), F. McLynn (1981, 1985, and 1998), and C. Petrie (rev. ed. 1988).

History 1450-1789: Jacobitism

Jacobitism was the underground cultural and dynastic movement that supported the restoration of the main line of the Stuart dynasty to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Development

Jacobitism took its name from Jacobus, the Latin form of James, and stemmed directly from the Revolution of 1688 (also known as the Glorious Revolution, the English Revolution, or the Bloodless Revolution), in which the Catholic James II (ruled 1685–1688) was overthrown by a Dutch invasion (led by his Protestant nephew and son-in-law William of Orange, subsequently William III [ruled 1689–1702]) and widespread rebellion in England. James II, who became convinced he was liable to be murdered by the supporters of the Revolution, known as Revolutioners, fled to France in December 1688. There he found a refuge at the royal palace of St. Germain en Laye and (at least intermittent) support from Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715), who saw in James's cause an opportunity to display his credentials as an upholder of both monarchical government and the Counter-Reformation. When support for James and the Jacobite cause did not conflict with his other objectives, Louis provided substantial military resources to back attempts to restore James II and subsequently his only surviving son, "James III" (the Old Pretender, a sobriquet fixed on him by Whig propagandists). These attempts began in March 1689 when James II and a small French force landed at Kinsale in Ireland. The Catholicizing regime brought in while James was king was at that point still in control of most of the island, but serious rebellions had broken out against his authority in Ulster, where Irish Protestant rebels had seized the towns of Londonderry and Enniskillen and were holding out for the newly proclaimed King William III. Despite the goodwill of the great majority of his Catholic Irish subjects, James proved unable to construct the administrative and military infrastructure necessary to maintain the large army of volunteers he found waiting for him in Ireland. This was in part the result of Ireland's relative poverty and in part that of a rift between James's objectives and those of the leaders of the Irish Catholic community. Whereas James simply sought to turn Ireland into a steppingstone for his reconquest of England, the Irish Catholic political nation wanted the overturning of the post-1660 land settlement, which had left nearly 80 percent of Ireland in the hands of the descendants of earlier Protestant colonists, and the sharp attenuation of the constitutional power of the English Parliament to dictate policy and law to Ireland's Parliament. The upshot was that Londonderry and Enniskillen were never retaken, and the Irish Jacobite army was in a poor state to face William III when he landed in Ireland with a large veteran army in the summer of 1690. At the battle of the Boyne on 1 July, William defeated James and routed his army. James fled the country on 3 July, ungratefully (and unfairly) blaming the Irish for the disaster. With the help of French reinforcements, resistance continued in the west of Ireland until 12 July 1691, when the Jacobite army was again defeated at the battle of Aughrim and forced to fall back on its last stronghold at Limerick. After a brief siege, the defenders of Limerick surrendered on 3 October 1691 on generous terms that allowed the evacuation of 12,000 of them to France, where they subsequently became the basis of the elite Irish brigade that served the Bourbons until 1789. With the collapse of Irish Jacobite resistance, the Highland rebellion it had inspired in Scotland also came to an end. There, after an unexpectedly good start when James Graham, Viscount Dundee, defeated a Williamite army at Killiecrankie on 17 July 1689 (despite the fact that he himself was killed in the closing moments of the battle), the war in Scotland had settled into a bitter pattern of raid and counterraid that bankrupted the Scottish state and ravaged the Highlands without reaching any conclusion. Hearing of the surrender of Limerick and with it the end of any hope of reinforcement from Ireland, the Scottish Jacobites negotiated a cessation in the autumn of 1691. Brinksmanship over the taking of oaths of loyalty to the Williamite regime by several clan chieftains, and bad faith combined with malice on the part of key government officials, then led to a punitive expedition against the technically holdout Macdonalds of Glencoe. The troops entrusted with the operation duplicitously quartered themselves on the Macdonalds and then on the night of 13 February 1692 perpetrated an infamous massacre on their hosts that shocked the Scottish political nation.

From 1691 until the death of Louis XIV in 1715 Jacobitism in the British Isles revolved around plotting for risings against the new order. Louis several times (1692, 1696, and 1708) provided troops and ships to support and/or precipitate a Jacobite rising, but on each occasion matters went awry. The major obstacles to a French invasion were the Royal Navy, the unpredictability of the weather, and the difficulty of coordinating a rising in England or Scotland with a French invasion. Basically, the Jacobites wanted a French landing first, after which they would rise, while the French wanted a Jacobite rising first, after which they would land. In addition, the French navy, facing mounting odds in its struggle with the Royal Navy and its Dutch allies in both the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1714), was increasingly reluctant to undertake an operation that would be tantamount to a death ride for the ships and crews involved. In between plotting for invasions, the Jacobites sought with equal energy to subvert and undermine the post-Revolution political order through propaganda and conventional politics, both at Westminster and on the streets. Throughout the reign of Queen Anne (1702–1714), the Jacobites were somewhat more restrained in their plotting than under William III, partly out of liking for the pious Tory queen, and partly out of the mistaken belief that she favored the restoration on her death of the main line of the Stuarts, in the shape of her half-brother, the Old Pretender.

As she lay dying in August 1714, however, Anne ensured that the Act of Succession of 1702 would be enforced, and rather than the Old Pretender succeeding, her Parliament-approved successor, George, elector of Hanover (a distant, but reliably Protestant, relative) peacefully inherited the throne. For Continental political reasons George I (ruled 1714–1727) had aligned himself with the Whigs in the bitter parliamentary struggles of Queen Anne's last years, and when it subsequently became clear that he would continue to favor the Whigs, the Tories rapidly became alienated. The process began when the Whigs took the first opportunity to be revenged on their old enemies in a series of parliamentary impeachments of members of Queen Anne's last, Tory, ministry. This drove a significant minority of the Tories into the arms of the Jacobites. Meanwhile, in Scotland support for the Jacobite cause had been boosted by the constitutional union of Scotland and England (which was primarily driven by English determination to ensure that Scotland adhered to the Hanoverian succession), forced through the Scots Parliament in 1706–1707, which had outraged a great many Scots. Thus when England erupted in Tory/Jacobite rioting in the summer of 1715, the Scots Jacobites, led by John Erskine, the earl of Mar, felt emboldened to rebel in September. The rebels rapidly won control of most of northern Scotland, more by dint of the fact that the Whig ministry was determined to secure southern England and so kept the bulk of the army there, than by their own abilities. Though Mar was able to build up a formidable force at Perth that far outnumbered the government army at Stirling, he was paralyzed by indecision. It appears that he expected to be quickly reinforced and replaced as commander by Jacobite professional officers in French pay, most notably James Fitzjames, duke of Berwick and marshal of France, and had no idea what to do in the interim. When forced by a conclave of Jacobite leaders to march south, he was met by the government army under John Campbell, duke of Argyll, at Sherrifmuir on 13 November. A battle ensued which Argyll may be said to have won insofar as the core of his army survived despite being outnumbered in the region of three to one. Mar retreated north, back to Perth. He was joined there at the end of December by the Old Pretender, who had finally managed to slip through a dragnet of British agents and Royal Navy warships to get to Scotland. The Old Pretender's arrival, however, closely coincided with the commencement of a winter campaign by Argyll, which took Perth in three days and chased the dwindling Jacobite army north. On 4 February 1716 at Montrose, Mar and the Old Pretender took ship for the Continent. What was left of the Jacobite army retreated north into the Highlands, and within a month the government was back in control of the whole of Scotland. A small Jacobite rising in northern England in October–November 1715 was trapped and forced to surrender at Preston on 14 November.

The collapse of the 1715 rebellion initiated a long period of fruitless plotting and dashed hopes. For thirty years plots were hatched in the British Isles while Jacobite diplomats from the shadow court sought the military backing of a European great power. At various times Sweden, Spain, the Habsburgs, Russia, and France negotiated with them, either to put diplomatic pressure on Britain or out of genuine sympathy. Only Spain, in a moment of desperate crisis during the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–1720), actually attempted an invasion of Britain, but it was forced back by storms on 18 March 1719. A separate, diversionary Spanish force led by the Earl Marischal managed to reach Lewis on 9 April, and subsequently raised a small rebellion in the Highlands, but the Jacobite army was defeated at Glenshiel on 5 June, which put an end to the affair. Only in the 1740s, as virtually all of the great powers became involved in the War of the Austrian Succession, did real openings for Jacobite diplomacy reemerge. Negotiations inaugurated by the leaders of a faction among the Tories led in due course to French preparations for an invasion, to be backed up by a Tory/Jacobite rising, in February 1744. Once again a storm and the Royal Navy prevented French and Jacobite plans from coming to fruition.

The Old Pretender's oldest son, though, had been secretly invited to France from Rome, where his father was by this time in exile, to head the invasion force. Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender or Bonnie Prince Charlie) was a young man in a hurry, and when the French abandoned their invasion plans in favor of renewed campaigning in Flanders he opted to try and go it alone. With the help of Irish merchants, well established in the ports of western France, he surreptitiously gathered a force of volunteers from the Irish brigades and arms for many more and invaded Scotland in the summer of 1745. By various mishaps he arrived on Eriskay in the Hebrides on 23 July with only one ship, few arms, and little money, and was promptly advised to go home by local Jacobite leaders. Using his considerable charm Charles Edward broke down their resistance, and within a month was on the march with a small, but growing, force composed primarily of Highland clansmen. In a whirlwind campaign commanded mainly by Lord George Murray, the Jacobites were able to capture Edinburgh, apart from the castle, and rout a government army at Prestonpans on 21 September. After gathering further recruits, Charles Edward cajoled the Scots Jacobite leaders into undertaking an invasion of England that swept as far south as Derby by 5 December, causing panic in London and a crisis of confidence in the Whig ministry. The premise of the campaign was, however, that if they were shown what the Scots could achieve, the French would invade and the English Jacobites would rise. Neither transpired. The French government was desperately throwing together another invasion force, but it was not ready to depart until the very end of December, and the English Jacobites dithered until the opportunity had passed. So at a council of war in Derby on 5 December 1745 Charles Edward was forced to turn back by his commanders. Despite the Jacobite prince's sour obstructionism, the Jacobite army reached Scotland safely on 20 December, and there regrouped in time to defeat another government army at Falkirk on 17 January 1746. The victory could not, though, hold back the numbers of government troops converging on southern Scotland, and the Jacobites were forced to retreat into northern Scotland. At the insistence of Charles Edward, the Jacobite army ill-advisedly tried to make a stand at Culloden on 16 April 1746 and was badly defeated there by a government force commanded by William Augustus, duke of Cumberland, second son of George II. Even so, the Jacobite army rallied at Ruthven and offered to fight on, but was abandoned by Charles Edward, who chose to try to escape to France. The Jacobite army dispersed and when several Highland chieftains refused to comply with Cumberland's demand that they surrender unconditionally, Cumberland launched a savage campaign of repression that ravaged the Highlands and is still bitterly remembered throughout Scotland and the Scottish diaspora. Charles Edward was meanwhile sheltered by sympathizers in the Highlands and eventually escaped to France, arriving there on 30 September 1746.

The failure of the '45 is usually taken as the death knell of the Jacobite movement, but in fact Jacobite plotting and negotiations with great powers such as France, Prussia, and Spain continued into the late 1750s. The defeat of the rebellion sapped the Jacobites' strength and credibility in Scotland, yet there was still a strong Jacobite diaspora loyal to the Stuart cause in France and Spain. The last Jacobite invasion attempt, which was largely the brainchild of Arthur Tollendal, comte de Lally, commander of the Irish brigade, was only defeated by the victory of the Royal Navy at the battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759. Charles Edward eventually succeeded his father as the Jacobite "Charles III" in January 1766, by which time he was a paranoid, bitter alcoholic. Though he lingered until 30 January 1788, the Jacobite cause may fairly be said to have been dead by that time.

The Jacobite Threat

The threat to the post-Revolutionary order posed by the Jacobites is the subject of much debate among historians. The debate ultimately revolves around the level of support they enjoyed in the three kingdoms. Since those who expressed Jacobite sympathies in any form were liable to severe punishment, we can never know exactly how many English, Welsh, Scots, and Irish truly favored the restoration of the Stuarts. Our only tangible measures are the numbers who turned out to fight in rebellions, and records of crown prosecutions of suspected Jacobites. Moreover, the numbers yielded by even these sources are obviously flawed. How many Jacobite soldiers were obliged to fight against their own inclinations, by their clan chieftains or landlords, or, conversely, would have joined a Jacobite army if one had passed nearby? How many Jacobite ballad singers, roisterers, or rioters escaped prosecution by the crown? We have, therefore, to assume that both the numbers of Jacobites in arms and the numbers caught committing Jacobite crimes are merely the tip of an iceberg. That said, it seems likely that the strongest support for Jacobitism lay in Scotland and Ireland. In England and Wales there was a small Nonjuror church that split with the Church of England over its acceptance of William III as monarch in 1689. This church remained loyal to the Stuarts to the very end, and its adherents shaded over into the more extreme, High Church wing of the Church of England, but the best guess would put their numbers combined at less than 5 percent of the English and Welsh population. To this we must add the small Catholic minority, which comprised around 2.5 percent of the population by the eighteenth century. There may well have been further sympathizers, but it is impossible to even guess at their numbers, which makes an estimate of 5–10 percent of the English population inclined to Jacobitism as good as we can get.

In Scotland the situation was quite different. The Episcopal clergy forced out of the Presbyterian Kirk in the 1690s soon established their own independent church that from the start adhered to the Stuarts. In large parts of the Highlands and in Lowland Scotland north of the Tay, this church probably included a majority of the population, and may have amounted to 30–40 percent of the population of Scotland as a whole in the early eighteenth century. In addition, the tiny Catholic minority (1–2 percent of the population), which tended to be concentrated in particular clans, were steadfast Jacobites. To this number we should add a small minority of Presbyterians who were so incensed by the Union of England and Scotland bulldozed through the Scottish Parliament in 1706–1707 that they tended to be inclined to Jacobitism thereafter. Deducting neutralist/loyalist Episcopalians, maybe as many as 30 percent of Scots were inclined to support the Jacobites.

Ireland, by contrast, was a Jacobite hotbed. Because there were no further Jacobite rebellions there after 1691, many historians have been skeptical about the depth of Irish Jacobitism, mainly because they based their analyses on partial, and misleading, English-language sources. In fact, Irish (Gaelic) sources reveal a general enthusiasm for the Jacobite cause among the majority, Catholic, population despite the shabby treatment of the Catholic Irish by James II and the Stuart dynasty as a whole. Since it is generally accepted that about 75 percent of the Irish population was Catholic in the period 1692–1800, this would make Ireland the key bastion of Jacobitism in the British Isles. This assessment is underscored by the flow of recruits out of Ireland to join the Irish brigades in French and Spanish service. Though some of them were seeking only adventure or an escape from poverty and discrimination, many more were recruited with the promise that they would soon return to the British Isles as part of a victorious army led by their rightful (Stuart) king. The Irish brigades were, in spirit, the Stuarts' army in exile, and certainly tens of thousands of young Irishmen slipped overseas to join them between 1692 and 1760.

The Impact of Jacobitism

Jacobitism was the bane of the post-Revolutionary political order for the first seventy years of its existence. The new order was no more certain of the number of secret Jacobites than we are and oscillated between a general concern and outright panic with respect to how to deal with the threat they posed. Jacobite plotting and invasion attempts in concert with one or another European great power punctuated political life. On average there was a Jacobite-related political "event" every one or two years between 1689 and 1730 and one every three or four years between 1730 and 1760. Always lurking on the fringes of possibility was the chance that the Jacobites would get a European great power's backing, successfully land in Britain, and coordinate a general uprising in support of the Stuart cause. Rather than run the risk of this nightmare scenario ever happening, the ministers of successive post-Revolution regimes worked to forestall Jacobite diplomacy in Europe by alliances and treaties, built up their military forces, and ferreted out conspiracy in the British Isles. In terms, then, of both the dynamics of politics and the development of the British fiscal-military state Jacobitism had a profound influence. Though it started as an expression of dynastic loyalty, Jacobitism came to act as a vehicle for nationalistic aspirations. In Scotland and Ireland a Stuart restoration was linked to the restoration of lost sovereignty and the reattainment of a golden age. If for no other reason, Jacobitism's acting as a conduit for such sentiments among the subsumed polities of the British Isles justifies its inclusion among the most important phenomena of the eighteenth century.

Bibliography

Baynes, John. The Jacobite Rising of 1715. London, 1970.

Bennett, Gareth V. The Tory Crisis in Church and State: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester 1688–1730. Oxford, 1975.

Black, Jeremy. Culloden and the '45. New York, 1990.

Clark, Jonathan C. D. "On Moving the Middle Ground: The Significance of Jacobitism in Historical Studies." In The Jacobite Challenge, edited by Eveline Cruickshanks and Jeremy Black, pp. 177–188. Edinburgh, 1988.

Cruickshanks, Eveline. Political Untouchables: The Tories and the '45. London, 1979.

Fritz, Paul S. The English Ministers and Jacobitism between the Rebellions of 1715 and 1745. Toronto, 1975.

Gregg, Edward. "The Jacobite Career of John, Earl of Mar." In Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689–1759, edited by Eveline Cruickshanks, pp. 179–200. Edinburgh, 1982.

Hopkins, Paul. Glencoe and the End of the Highland War. Edinburgh, 1986.

Jarvis, Rupert. Collected Papers on the Jacobite Risings. 2 vols. Manchester, U.K., and New York, 1972.

Lenman, Bruce. The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689–1746. London, 1980.

Macinnes, Allan I. Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603–1788. East Linton, Scotland, 1996.

Mc Lynn, Frank J. Charles Edward Stuart: A Tragedy in Many Acts. London and New York, 1988.

——. France and the Jacobite Rising of 1745. Edinburgh, 1981.

Monod, Paul K. Jacobitism and the English People 1688–1788. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1989.

ó Ciardha, Éamonn. Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685–1766: A Fatal Attachment. Dublin, 2002.

Pittock, Murray G. The Myth of the Jacobite Clans. Edinburgh, 1995.

——. Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland. Cambridge, U.K., 1994.

Szechi, Daniel. George Lockhart of Carnwath, 1689–1727: A Study in Jacobitism. East Linton, Scotland, 2002.

——. The Jacobites. Britain and Europe, 1688–1788. Manchester, U.K., 1994.

——. Jacobitism and Tory Politics, 1710–14. Edinburgh, 1984.

—DANIEL SZECHI

Wikipedia: Jacobitism

This article concerns the political movement supporting the restoration of the British House of Stuart, not the earlier Jacobean period. For details of the attendant wars, see: Jacobite Rising. It is not about Jacobinism or the Jacobite Orthodox Church.

Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, wearing the Jacobite blue bonnet

Jacobitism was (and, to a very limited extent, remains) the political movement dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England and Scotland. The movement took its name from the Latin form Jacobus of the name of King James II and VII.

Jacobitism was a response to the deposition of James II and VII in 1688 when he was replaced by his daughter Mary II jointly with her husband and first cousin William of Orange. The Stuarts lived on the European mainland after that, occasionally attempting to regain the throne with the aid of France or Spain. Within the British Isles, the primary seats of Jacobitism were Ireland and (especially Highland) Scotland. There was also some support in England and Wales, particularly in Northern England.

Many embraced Jacobitism because they believed parliamentary interference with monarchical succession to be illegitimate, and many Catholics hoped the Stuarts would end discriminatory laws; but people became involved in the military campaigns for all sorts of allegiances and motives. In Scotland the Jacobite cause became entangled in the last throes of the warrior Clan system, and became a lasting romantic memory.

The emblem of the Jacobites is the White Rose of York; White Rose Day is celebrated on 10 June, the anniversary of the birth of James III and VIII in 1688.

Political background

Main articles: Cameronians and Covenanters

From the second half of the 17th century onwards, a time of political and religious turmoil existed in the British Isles. The Commonwealth ended with the Restoration of Charles II. During his reign the Church of England was re-established, and episcopal church government was restored in Scotland. The latter move was particularly contentious, causing many, especially in the south-west of Scotland, to abandon the official church, attending illegal field assemblies in preference. The authorities attempted some accommodation with Presbyterian dissidents, introducing official 'Indulgences' in 1669 and 1672, meeting with some limited success. Towards the end of Charles' reign those with more extreme Presbyterian opinions, known as the Covenanters, who favoured rejecting all compromise with the state, began to move away from religious dissent to outright political sedition. This was particularly true of the followers of the Reverend Richard Cameron, soon to be known as the Cameronians. The government increasingly resorted to force in its attempts to stamp out the Cameronians and the other Society Men, in a period subsequently labeled as the Killing Time.

Since the late Middle Ages the Kingdoms of England and Scotland had been evolving towards a quasi-oligarchical or collegiate form of government in which the monarch was held to rule with the consensus of the land-owning upper classes.

The reigns of the last three Stuart Kings Charles I, Charles II and James II and VII were marked by growing Royal resistance to this developing consensual model of government. In part the Kings were inspired by the development of Royal Absolutism in contemporary Europe (see Louis XIV). In part, however, the apologists of royal authority based their claims on a just assessment of the powers claimed by England and Scotland's medieval monarchs.

In 1685 Charles II was succeeded by his Roman Catholic brother, James II and VII. In addition to sharing his family's absolutist views of government, James tried to introduce religious tolerance of Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters. In Seventeenth century Europe being a religious outsider meant being a political and social outsider as well. James tried to encourage the participation in public life of Roman Catholics, Protestant Dissenters, and Quakers such as William Penn the Younger. Such attempts to broaden his basis of support succeeded in antagonizing members of the Anglican establishment.

In Ireland James's viceroy, Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, was the first Catholic viceroy since the Reformation and acted to reduce Protestant ascendancy and to have strong points in Ireland controlled by garrisons loyal to the views of James.

In England and Scotland, James attempted to impose religious toleration, which helped the Catholic minority but alarmed the religious and political establishment. William of Orange, building alliances against France, lobbied the English political élite to have James replaced by William's wife Mary who was James's daughter and next in line to the throne, but they were reluctant to rush a succession expected to happen in due course. Then in 1688 James's second wife had a boy, bringing the prospect of a Catholic dynasty, and the "Immortal Seven" invited William and Mary to depose James. On 4th November 1688 William arrived at Torbay, England and, when he landed the next day, at Brixham, James fled to France: in February 1689 the Glorious Revolution formally changed England's monarch, but many Catholics, Episcopalians and Tory royalists still supported James as the constitutionally legitimate monarch.

Scotland was slow to accept William, who summoned a Convention of the Estates which met on 14 March 1689 in Edinburgh and considered a conciliatory letter from William and a haughty one from James. Forces of Cameronians as well as Clan Campbell highlanders led by the Earl of Argyll had come to bolster William's support. On James's side a more modest force of a troop of fifty horsemen gathered by John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee was in town, and he attended the convention at the start but withdrew four days later when support for William became evident. The convention set out its terms and William and Mary were proclaimed at Edinburgh on 11 April 1689, then had their coronation in London in May.

Religion, politics and adventurers

While Jacobitism was closely linked with Catholicism from the outset, particularly in Ireland, elsewhere in Britain Catholics were a tiny minority by 1689 and the bulk of Jacobite support came from other groups. Catholics formed about 75% of the population of Ireland, but in England only around 1% and in Scotland about 2%.

Ireland

Irish support for James II was mostly from Catholics, though by taking the French side against the League of Augsburg, he was siding against the Papacy. William was allied to many Catholic states, including the Holy Roman Empire and his elite force the Dutch Blue Guards had the Papal Banner with them. The war in Ireland was predominantly a Catholic uprising and after its defeat in 1691 their only military contribution to Jacobite support came from the Irish Brigade of the French army.

Jacobitism in Ireland had its roots in Irish support for the Stuart dynasty dating back to the accession of James I to the throne in 1603. Gaelic poets in Ireland lauded James as the first "Irish" king of the Three Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, because of his family's Gaelic ancestry. James and his successors were also viewed as being less hostile to Catholicism than the Tudors. In the Wars of the Three Kingdoms of the 1640s, Irish Catholics organised in Confederate Ireland pledged allegiance to Charles I and Charles II against the English Parliament. As a result, most Catholic landowners had their lands confiscated after Parliament's victory and the Catholic Church suffered harsh repression. James II, the first openly Catholic king of England in over a century, was therefore viewed as a saviour by Irish Catholics. James appointed an Irish Catholic – Tyrconnell – as Lord Deputy of Ireland, re-admitted Catholics into the army and militia and introduced toleration for the Catholic religion. During the Williamite war in Ireland, he also reluctantly agreed to proclaim the autonomy of the Irish Parliament from the English one and the restitution of lands confiscated from Catholics after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The demands of religious toleration, legislative autonomy and land ownership were the three key elements of Irish Jacobitism, which remained influential until the mid eighteenth century.

England and Scotland

In lowland Britain the Catholics tended to come from the gentry and formed the most ideologically committed supporters, drawing on almost two centuries of subterfuge as a minority persecuted by the state and rallying enthusiastically to Jacobite armies as well as contributing financial support to the court in exile. Some Scottish Highland clans such as the Clan Macdonald of Clanranald remained Catholic, but they were exceptions.

Just as much dedicated support in England came from the Nonjuring Anglicans, which started with Church of England clergy who refused on principle to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary while James still lived, and developed into an Episcopalian schism of the church with small congregations in all the English cities. In many respects, Jacobites perceived themselves as the heirs of the Royalists or Cavaliers of the English Civil War era, who had fought for James II's father Charles I and for the Established Church against the Parliamentarians - who stood for the primacy of Parliament and for religious dissent. Jacobite supporters displayed pictures of both Cavalier and Jacobite heroes in their homes.

Scottish Episcopalians provided over half of the Jacobite forces in Britain, and although Dundee's rising in 1689 came mostly from the western Highlands, in later risings Episcopalians came roughly equally from the north-east Scottish Lowlands north of the River Tay and from the Highland clans. They too were described as Nonjurors. As Protestants they could take part in Scottish politics, but were in a minority and were repeatedly discriminated against in legislation favouring the established Church of Scotland. The clergy could even be imprisoned, as occurred in the Stonehaven Tolbooth after three clergymen held services at the chapel at Muchalls Castle. However many Episcopalians were quiet about any Jacobite sympathies and were able to accommodate themselves to the new regime. About half of the Episcopalians supporting the Jacobite cause came from the Lowlands, but this was obscured in the risings by their tendency to wear Highland dress as a kind of Jacobite uniform.

The Scottish Highlands

To the Scottish Highland clans the conflict was more about inter-clan politics than about religion, and a significant factor was resistance to the territorial ambitions of the (Presbyterian) Campbells of Argyll. There was a precedent for post 1689 Jacobitism during the period of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, when clans from the western Highlands had fought for James's father Charles I against the Campbells and the Covenanters. Another factor in Highland Jacobitism was James II's sympathetic treatment of the Highland clans. Whereas previous monarchs since the late 16th century had been antagonistic to the Gaelic Highland way of life, James had worked sympathetically with the clan chieftains in the Commission for Pacifying the Highlands. Some Highland chieftains therefore viewed Jacobitism as a means of resisting hostile government intrusion into their territories. The significance of their support for the Stuarts was that the Highlands was the only part of Britain which still maintained private armies, in the form of clan levies. During the Jacobite Risings, they provided the bulk of Jacobite manpower.

Opportunists and Adventurers

Another source of Jacobite support came from those dissatisfied with political developments. Some Whigs, most obviously the Earl of Mar, reacted to political disappointments by joining the Jacobites, but while others were courted from 1692 onwards and indicated support, mostly this was just reinsurance in case the Jacobites came out on top.

The Tories were a more likely source of support given their commitment to church and king, but many were reluctant to trust the Church of England to a Catholic king. At times such as 1715–1722 when the Hanoverians appeared to be dismantling Anglican dominance and 1743–1745 when Whig dealings denied the Tories parliamentary victory they would coalesce and turn to the Jacobites, but they were reluctant when it came to serious action. Nevertheless this gave hopes that large numbers of Tories would support a Jacobite rising with a serious prospect of winning, particularly when helped by foreign intervention. The rise and fall of the earlier Tory alliance with the Jacobites forms a major part of the background for Sir Walter Scott's Bride of Lammermoor.

Other Jacobite recruits could be described as adventurers — desperate men who saw the cause as a solution to their (usually financial) problems. Although small in number and varying from unemployed weavers looking for excitement to impoverished gentry like William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock who served Charles as a colonel and became a general after the Battle of Falkirk, they contributed significantly to the daring that brought the Jacobites a prospect of success in their campaigns. However, other such mercenaries often became spies and informers.

Jacobite community, ideology and policy

From its religious roots, Jacobite ideology was passed on through committed families of the nobility and gentry who would have pictures of the exiled royal family and of Cavalier and Jacobite martyrs, and take part in like minded networks. Even today, some Highland clans and regiments pass their drink over a glass of water during the Loyal Toast — to the King Over the Water. More widely, commoners developed communities in areas where they could fraternise in Jacobite alehouses, inns and taverns, singing seditious songs, collecting for the cause and on occasion being recruited for risings. At government attempts to close such places they simply transferred to another venue. In these neighbourhoods Jacobite wares such as inscribed glassware, brooches with hidden symbols and tartan waistcoats were popular. The criminal activity of smuggling became associated with Jacobitism throughout Britain, partly because of the advantage of dealing through exiled Jacobites in France.

Further developments are mentioned under "Jacobitism in England" below.

Official policy of the court in exile initially reflected the uncompromising intransigence that got James into trouble in the first place. With the powerful support of the French they saw no need to accommodate the concerns of his Protestant subjects, and effectively issued a summons for them to return to their duty. In 1703 Louis pressed James into a more accommodating stance in the hopes of detaching England from the Grand Alliance, essentially promising to maintain the status quo. This policy soon changed, and increasingly Jacobitism ostensibly identified itself with causes of the alienated and dispossessed.

Military campaigns and Jacobitism

This section focuses on the political context. For military aspects of these campaigns see the Williamite war in Ireland and Jacobite Risings.

Jacobite war in Ireland

James II and VII had his viceroy Tyrconnell take action to secure Ireland for the Catholic cause, culminating in the Siege of Derry which began on 7 December 1688. By then the deposed James had fled to France, and with support from Louis XIV, who was already at war with William of Orange, James landed in Ireland on 12 March 1689. Having taken Dublin and joined the Siege of Londonderry, to maintain the support of Catholic nationalists he reluctantly agreed to the Irish Parliament's demand for an Act declaring that the Parliament of England had no right to pass laws for Ireland. By August 1689 Williamite forces relieved the siege and cleared most of Ulster of Jacobites.

The following July, William's army was victorious in a skirmish at the Battle of the Boyne. The Jacobite army retreated, little damaged, but James fled to France, acquiring the nickname Séamus an chaca (James the beshitten) and leaving the Irish to fight on until in October 1691 they surrendered and the Irish army was made to leave Ireland to become the Irish Brigade of the French army. Jacobitism lingered on for another century in the ideology of nationalist secret societies, but did not play an overt role again in Ireland.

Dundee's rising

David Morier's painting "Culloden" shows the highlanders still wearing the plaids which they normally set aside before battle, where they would fire a volley then run full tilt at the enemy with broadsword and targe in the Highland charge wearing only their shirts

On 16 April 1689, almost a month after he left the Convention in Edinburgh and five days after it had proclaimed William and Mary, John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, raised James's standard on the hilltop of Dundee Law with fewer than 50 men in support. At that time he was known as Bluidy Clavers for his part in dealing with Covenanters, but nowadays he is sometimes remembered as Bonnie Dundee from the words of a sentimental popular song written by the Romantic novelist, Walter Scott, in 1830. At first he had difficulty in raising many supporters, but after the Williamite commander had proved ineffective and 200 Irish troops had landed at Kintyre he gained support from Catholic and Episcopalian Highland Clans, though not from the Episcopal Bishops of the Scots nobility.

Victory for the Jacobite Highlanders at the Battle of Killiecrankie on 27 July 1689 was marred when Dundee was killed in the fighting. A series of government expeditions to subdue the Highlands eventually led to Jacobite defeat in May 1690 and lingering hopes faded with news of the Battle of the Boyne. A year later the Jacobites were forced to agree to a truce while the Clan chieftains sent requests to the exiled James VII and II for permission to submit to William, and in January 1692 the Jacobite Clans formally surrendered to the government.

William's main interest was in the War of the Grand Alliance in the Low Countries against the French and he paid little attention to Scotland, trying to bribe or coerce the clan leaders. His demands that each chief put in writing the submission authorised by James resulted in the Massacre of Glencoe on 13 February 1692.

James III's attempted invasion

In 1701 James II and VII died. He was succeeded in his claims by his son, James Francis Edward Stuart. He was recognised as King James III of England and King James VIII of Scotland by the courts of France, Spain, and Modena, and by the pope; to his detractors he was eventually to be known as the Old Pretender, while his supporters referred to him as the King Across the Water.

After a brief peace, the War of the Spanish Succession renewed French support for the Jacobites and in 1708 James Francis set out with French troops, but the French fleet was chased away by the Royal Navy and retreated round the north of Scotland back to France.

Hanoverians

In March 1702 William died and the throne passed to Mary's sister Anne, the last of James II and VII's children to sit upon the thrones of England and Scotland. Scotland's economy was faltering and the English parliament used trade sanctions to force the Scottish parliament towards union. One Scottish politician who thrived in these unpopular negotiations was the Earl of Mar who, despite his Episcopalian background, ably supported the Scottish Revolution interest and after being a signatory to the Act of Union of 1707 was rewarded by Queen Anne and rose in the new British parliament to a key role in running Scottish affairs, a position formalised in 1713 when the post of Secretary of State for Scotland was revived for him. In that year he was part of the ministry that negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht which ended hostilities between France and Britain, in a deal unpopular with Hanoverians and Whigs.

Widespread discontent gave the Jacobites increasing hopes that James Francis Edward Stuart would gain power when the popular Anne died leaving no immediate successor. However, the Act of Settlement 1701 required the monarch to be Protestant while James Francis was a devout Catholic. The crown therefore passed to Anne's second cousin the Elector of Hanover, great grandson of James I of England and VI of Scotland, who thus became George I. The Whigs acted quickly to bring in this uncharismatic German, forestalling possible arguments. This unattractive foreign figure who spoke poor English revived populist loyalism, still slow to transfer affection to the new regime while the old dynasty lived. His arrival in 1714 was greeted by a winter of riots in England. George favoured the Whigs, and in the spring of 1715 the Tories lost the General Election to the Whigs who then impeached Tory leaders for their part in the peace negotiations with France. Tory fears for themselves and for the High Church of England led to conspiracy for armed rebellion, but when the time came their leaders were paralysed with fear and indecision and an alerted government ordered the arrest of the major players. At the day for the rising in the south-west a large number of Tory gentry turned up for "a race meeting" at Bath, but on receiving a letter from their leader (who was in hiding) saying that all was lost, they went home.

The 'Fifteen'

In Scotland years of famine and hardship provided fertile ground for what is often referred to as the First Jacobite Rising (or Rebellion). Mar had found himself identified with the previous government which thwarted his attempts to continue in office in the incoming Hanoverian government of King George I, and fearing impeachment he turned his loyalty to James, justifying his nickname Bobbin' John.

James Francis corresponded with Mar from France, as part of widespread Jacobite plotting, and in the summer of 1715 he called on Mar to raise the Clans without further delay. Mar, realising that the government had found out about his part in the conspiracy, rushed from London to Braemar and summoned clan leaders to "a grand hunting-match" on 27 August 1715 where he announced his change of allegiance. On September 6 he proclaimed James as "their lawful sovereign" and raised the old Scottish standard, whereupon (ominously) the gold ball fell off the top of the flagpole. Mar's proclamation called on men to fight "for the relief of our native country from oppression and a foreign yoke too heavy for us or our posterity to bear".

While Mar succeeded in raising an alliance of clans and northern Lowlanders, he turned out to be an indifferent and indecisive general. Planned risings in Wales and Devon were forestalled by government arrests. A rising in the north of England joined forces with a rising in the south of Scotland and with a contingent from Mar marched into England, but did not meet the expected welcome and surrendered after a brief siege at the Battle of Preston (1715). Mar's forces in Scotland were unable to defeat government forces. A ship from France belatedly brought James Francis to Peterhead, but he was too consumed by melancholy and fits of fever to inspire his followers. After briefly setting up court at Scone, Perthshire then retreating to the coast, he withdrew to France with Mar on 4 February 1716, leaving a message advising his Highland followers to shift for themselves.

Jacobitism in England

The unpopularity of George and the Whigs continued. Over the next five years, and to a reduced extent afterwards, a significant section of the English crowd asserted loyalism in Jacobite forms, including songs, symbolic oak leaves and white roses worn on anniversaries, attacks on Whigs and hanging or burning effigies of George with cuckold's horns. They derided his marital problems and mistresses (who got nicknames like the Goose and the Elephant) with songs (preserved in Jacobite Reliques) like Cam Ye O'er Frae France which includes the words "Saw ye Geordie's grace, riding on a goosie?". In the minds of many, the "King over the Water" (whom the Jacobites' opponents called the Old Pretender) became a mythical Arthurian figure, a good king who would one day return and put things right. There was also a developing myth of Jacobite martyrs, praising the brave defiance of Jacobites at the scaffold and treasuring relics in an almost religious way. This inspired their supporters, but for most people these hangings merely showed that the Jacobites were on the losing side.

Spanish supported Jacobite invasion

The failure of the '15 convinced the Jacobites that to overthrow the Hanoverians they needed the support of a major European power, and in an age when the Hapsburg empire was collapsing and armies becoming professionalised this gave a lever to any country in dispute with Britain. With France still at peace, the Jacobites found a new ally in Spain's Minister to the King, Cardinal Giulio Alberoni, but an invasion force which set sail in 1719 failed to reach England and the party of Jacobites and Spanish soldiers which reached Scotland met only lukewarm support and the Spanish soldiers were forced to surrender at the Battle of Glen Shiel.

The Atterbury plot

Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester and a passionate High Tory, conspired with Mar who had been appointed "Secretary of State" by James Francis in France, for a rising to coincide with the general election in 1722 aiming to exploit public anger over the South Sea Bubble. English Tories out in their constituencies were to summon their kinsmen, friends and tenants to secure their localities and march on London, while volunteers from the Irish Brigade were to land in the south to join them. While the French were sympathetic, an official request for assistance from the Jacobite court in exile meant that they could no longer turn a blind eye so they informed the English ambassador and posted the Irish Brigade out of temptation's way. Mar was bullied into betraying the conspiracy, which collapsed with arrests, denunciations and flights abroad.

Aftermath of the 'Fifteen in Scotland

In the aftermath of the 'Fifteen, the Disarming Act and the Clan Act made ineffectual attempts to subdue the Scottish Highlands, and efforts at "rooting out of the Irish language" (Gaelic) were renewed. Government garrisons were built or extended and linked to the south by the Wade roads constructed for Major-General George Wade. Jacobitism lingered on amid resentment of economic hardship and the Whig government, and Catholic missionaries increased their influence with some clans, but, generally Jacobitism became more of a secretive game with the glasses of claret being waved over water before the Loyal Toast so that it became a toast to "the King (over the water)".

In 1725 Wade raised the independent companies of the Black Watch as a militia to keep peace in the unruly Highlands, but in 1743 they were moved to fight the French in Flanders.

The Cornbury plot

Robert Walpole's Excise Scheme of 1733 caused a crisis with public disorders, and Lord Cornbury, heir to the Earl of Clarendon, convinced the French ambassador in London and the French Secretary of State in Paris that the Hanoverian regime was crumbling and proposed a French invasion matched with Jacobite risings. The French cabinet considered the scheme then rejected it, their officials were demoted and Cornbury abandoned politics.

1744 French invasion attempt

Anglo-French relations gradually worsened and the Jacobites tried proposing further schemes, starting in 1737 with John Gordon of Glenbucket suggesting a Highland rising backed by French invasion and continued with lobbying by Lord Semphill as "official" Jacobite agent at the French court. During 1743 the War of the Austrian Succession drew Britain and France into open, though unofficial, hostilities against each other. Through Semphill, English Jacobites made a formal request to France for armed intervention. The French king's Master of Horse toured southern England meeting Tories and discussing their proposals, and in November 1743 Louis XV of France authorised a large-scale invasion of southern England in February 1744. Charles Edward Stuart (later known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender) who was in exile in Rome with his father (James Francis) was invited to accompany the expedition and rushed to France, but a storm destroyed the attempt. The British lodged strong diplomatic objections to the presence of Charles, and France declared war but abandoned ideas of Jacobite risings and gave Charles no more encouragement.

The 'Forty-Five'

Early in 1744 a small number of Scottish Highland clan chieftains had sent Charles a message that they would rise if he arrived with as few as 3,000 French troops, and even against later cautions from his advisers he was determined not to turn back. He secretively borrowed funds, pawned his mother's jewellery and made preparations with a consortium of privateers. He set out for Scotland on 22 June 1745 with two ships, but the larger ship with 700 volunteers from the Irish Brigade and supplies of armaments was forced back. Charles landed with his seven men of Moidart on the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides on 23 July 1745, and though Scottish clans initially showed little enthusiasm Charles went on to lead the Second Jacobite Rising in his father's name, taking Perth and Edinburgh almost unopposed.

The small Hanoverian army in Scotland under Sir John Cope chased round the Highlands, and eventually encountered Charles near Edinburgh where they were routed by a surprise attack at the Battle of Prestonpans, as celebrated in the Jacobite song "Hey, Johnny Cope, are you waking yet?". There was alarm in England, and in London a patriotic song was performed including the defiant verse:

Lord grant that Marshal Wade

Shall by thy mighty aid

Victory bring

May he sedition hush,

And like a torrent rush

Rebellious Scots to crush

God save the King.

This song was widely adopted and was to become the National Anthem (usually sung without that verse).

After Charles held court at Holyrood Palace for five weeks he overcame Lord George Murray's caution by declaring that he had Tory assurances of an English rising and the Jacobite army set for England. Under Murray's command they successfully manoeuvred past government armies to reach Derby on 4 December, only 125 miles (200 km) from a panicking London, with a resentful Charles barely on speaking terms with his general. By then Charles was advised of progress on the French invasion fleet which was then assembling at Dunkirk, but at his Council of War his previous lies about assurances were exposed. They returned to join their growing force in Scotland, with a petulant Charles refusing to take any part in running the campaign until he insisted on fighting an orthodox defensive action at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 and they were finally defeated.

Charles fled to France blaming everything on the treachery of his officers and making a dramatic if humiliating escape disguised as Flora MacDonald's "lady's maid". Cumberland's forces crushed the rebellion and effectively ended Jacobitism as a serious political force in Britain.

Decline of Jacobitism

Jacobitism entered permanent decline after the "Forty-Five" rebellion. The French made every effort to rescue Jacobite chieftains as well as Charles, and gave him a hero's welcome back to France, but soon tired of his badgering them to provide a renewed assault on the Hanoverians. After French victories knocked the Netherlands out of the war, the British offered reasonable peace terms and made the expulsion of Charles from France a precondition of negotiations. Charles ignored the French court's order to depart, continued to demand military action and support for his extravagant lifestyle and flaunted his presence around Paris as peace negotiations for the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle got under way. After British complaints the French government lost patience with Charles and in December 1748 he was seized on his way to the Opéra and briefly jailed before being expelled.

The Elibank plot

From 1749 to 1751 Charles laid the groundwork for a rising in England including a visit to London in 1750 when he conferred with the Jacobite leaders and considered an assault on the Tower of London as well as converting to Anglicanism. The English were clear that they would not move without foreign assistance, and Charles turned to Frederick II of Prussia. While Frederick was indifferent to the Jacobite cause he made diplomatic use of the opportunity, and appointed the Earl Marischal as his ambassador to Paris, in a position to keep him informed and veto any plans. Andrew Murray of Elibank, the liaison between Charles and the plotters, finally realised there was no hope of foreign assistance and ended the conspiracy, but by then Charles had sent two exiled Scots as agents to prepare the clans. They were betrayed by Aleistair Ruadh MacDonell of Glengarry, a spy in Charles' entourage, and while one was arrested the other barely escaped. Typically Charles responded to the failure by denouncing his comrades, drunkenness and beating his mistress. Finally, in a dispute with Marischal and the English conspirators in 1754 a drunken Charles apparently threatened to publish their names for having "betrayed" him, finally forcing his supporters to abandon the Jacobite cause. The English Jacobites stopped sending funds and by 1760 Charles had returned to Catholicism and to relying on the Papacy to support his lifestyle. In 1766, when Old Pretender James (VIII/III) Edward Stuart died, the Holy See refused to recognise "Bonnie" Prince Charles as the lawful sovereign of Great Britain, thus losing the most powerful support, the French one being long gone. In 1788, the Scottish Catholics swore allegiance to the Hanover Dynasty, and resolved two years later to pray for King George by name.

Crushing of the clans

In an effort to prevent further trouble in the Scottish Highlands, the government outlawed many cultural practices in order to destroy the warrior clan system. The Act of Proscription incorporating the Disarming Act and the Dress Act required all swords to be surrendered to the government and prohibited wearing of tartans or kilts. The Tenures Abolition Act ended the feudal bond of military service and the Heritable Jurisdictions Act removed the virtually sovereign power the chiefs had over their clan. The extent of enforcement of the prohibitions was variable and sometimes related to a clan's support of the government during the rebellion.

Government troops were stationed in the Highlands and built more roads and barracks better to control the region, with a new fortress at Fort George to the east of Inverness which still serves as a base for Highland Regiments of the British Army. Highland clans found a way back to legitimacy by providing regiments to the British Army.

Henry IX

When Charles died in 1788 the Stuart claim to the throne passed to his younger brother Henry, who had become a Cardinal, and who now styled himself King Henry IX of England. After falling into financial difficulty during the French Revolution, he was granted a stipend by George III. However, he never actually surrendered his claims to the throne, though all former supporters of Jacobitism had stopped funding. Following the death of Henry in 1807, the Jacobite claims passed to those excluded by the Act of Settlement: initially to the House of Savoy (1807-1840), then to the Modenese branch of the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine (1840-1919), and finally to the House of Bavaria (1919-present).