On the Trail of the Jacobites

Ian Whyte, Kathleen Whyte

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781032001548
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000387568
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1990 this book focusses on the main manoeuvres that took place in Scotland and England between 1688 and the Battle of Culloden in 1746. It provides a detailed chronological narrative of places, people and battles. Many of the sites associated with the Jacobites have not changed greatly in the last two centuries, and the book is extensively illustrated with photographs and specially drawn maps. The book examines objectively the often contradictory and imprecise accounts surviving from the time in order to discover the real events and significance of the Jacobite risings.

1
REVOLUTION AND REBELLION, 1688–9

THE PATH TO REVOLUTION

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 is one of the strangest events in British history. On November 5th 1688 William of Orange landed at Torbay with an army of 15,000, the best organized and most successful invasion force since the Norman Conquest. He had come partly in response to invitations from leading members of the English nobility. He believed that dissatisfaction with the authoritarian and arbitrary rule of James II was so widespread — in Scotland as well as England — that a political coup was possible. He was right: a month later, after his attempts to bring William’s army to battle had ended in mass desertion and personal humiliation, James fled into exile.

The Stuarts had been hereditary monarchs of Scotland since 1371. Their line had been durable but in many ways unfortunate. Robert II and Robert III were timid and ineffectual. James I and James III were murdered. James II was killed by a bursting cannon and James IV died in battle at Flodden. James V died young and his daughter, the feckless Mary, Queen of Scots, went to the scaffold. James VI, shrewd and canny, worked hard to be made heir to Elizabeth I of England. In 1603 he travelled triumphantly southwards to take the English throne. The seeds of conflict between monarch and Parliament were already sown in England when James died in 1625, but it was his son Charles I whose inflexibility and intransigence precipitated rebellion in both kingdoms, and led to his execution. After the upheavals of civil war and Cromwell’s Protectorate the restoration of his son Charles II to the thrones of England and Scotland in 1660 was generally welcomed. Charles was determined not to ‘go on his travels’ again and by a combination of charm, astuteness, cynicism, and deviousness he successfully survived various clashes with Parliament.

On the death of Charles in 1685 his younger brother James inherited a monarchy which, superficially, seemed more stable than it had been for generations. Yet within three years he had so undermined the confidence of his subjects that some of the most powerful of them were openly inviting William of Orange to invade. This was partly the result of James’ authoritarian approach to government which caused him to ride roughshod over established rights and procedures of decision making so that many people feared that he was trying to emulate Louis XIV and establish himself as an absolute monarch.

There was also the problem of his religion. Many Protestants had reconciled themselves to James’ Catholicism. Had he left well alone this area of conflict might have died down. Unfortunately James, an enthusiastic convert himself, wanted to spread the Catholic faith widely and rapidly through English society. Many people thought that he was trying to bring back Catholicism as the established religion and oust the reformed church. Whether or not this was true his efforts to improve the position of English Catholics certainly gave that impression. To do this quickly required him to take measures of dubious legality which caused increasing alarm among the population. While his marriage to his second wife, the Catholic Mary of Modena, was childless and his heir was Mary, the eldest daughter of his first, Protestant wife, many people were prepared to wait and see whether matters improved. However, the birth of a son in June 1688 seemed to assure a Catholic dynasty and helped to precipitate revolution.

James’ daughter Mary had married William of Orange who was himself a nephew of the King. He was a staunch Protestant engaged in a perennial struggle against the expansionist policies of Louis XIV of France. If James had manifest faults William comes over as even less likeable. Undersized, weak, and unhealthy, his face pitted by smallpox, William was plagued by ill health. Despite this he was determined and hard-working though contemporaries found him morose, reserved, and serious. His cause, his life’s work, was opposing French expansion in Europe. As time was to show he had little real feeling for his adopted country, England, and even less for Scotland. In 1688 he may have been genuinely concerned about affairs in England but his real interest was to the wider issues of European politics. A Catholic-directed England would make a potential ally for France. He took a remarkable gamble in assembling a fleet of several hundred vessels and attempting to invade England in November, denuding the Low Countries of troops and leaving them vulnerable to a French attack. The gamble paid off though. He landed at Torbay on November 5th and began to move towards London. After a hesitant start support for him grew rapidly. James ordered his larger professional army westwards to meet William. There was serious disaffection among James’ senior officers, however, many of them resenting the way in which Catholics had been given preference in the army by James. From the royal camp at Salisbury men began slipping away to join William.

In his younger days James had acquired a considerable reputation as a soldier in the service of France. Later, after his brother’s restoration, he had successfully commanded the English fleet against the Dutch. Now, however, he was vacillating and irresolute. Strong leadership and positive action might still have saved the situation. His army was, on paper, more than a match for William’s and even a minor reverse would have threatened the Prince of Orange’s position. However, James failed to take any effective action and it has been suggested that he suffered a nervous breakdown.

James abandoned his disintegrating army and returned to London. Two weeks later he fled. His first attempt to escape abroad was a dismal failure when his boat was intercepted by fishermen who took him for a Jesuit and roughly manhandled him. James’ escape would have suited William very well but now it looked as if he would have to start negotiating. However, William managed to scare James into a second flight; after a few uneasy days in London he sailed to France and perpetual exile. Had he stayed he would probably have been able to retain his throne through some sort of compromise with William.

James received a bad press from both contemporaries and later historians. He remains an enigmatic character in many ways and was not the sort of person with whom it is easy to sympathize. Perhaps he had been overshadowed by his elder brother for too long. As a young man he was a notorious womanizer with a reputation at least as bad as that of Charles. Pig-headed obstinacy and arrogance were prominent features of his behaviour during his brief reign. Certainly he did not possess Charles Il’s engaging charm nor his flexibility with regard to politics. Instead he stuck rigidly to his principles, a distinctive Stuart trait. Unfortunately, he had no grasp of politics and was unable to appreciate the impression which his authoritarian actions made on other people and felt that as King he did not have to answer for his actions to anyone. He was also singularly bad at judging people and had surrounded himself with advisors who alienated much potential support, a characteristic which came out in his son and grandson.

‘BONNIE’ DUNDEE

If events in England had moved with bewildering rapidity during the winter of 1688–9 the situation in Scotland was even stranger. Scotland was still an independent nation, though since 1603, when the crowns of England and Scotland had been united, Scotland had become ever more closely linked to her southern neighbour. When William’s invasion was imminent James made the mistake of ordering the Scottish army south, thereby depriving the Scottish Privy Council of effective support. After William had established himself in London most members of the Council hurried south hoping to ingratiate themselves, leaving Scotland virtually without any government.

Among the waverers, the men who changed sides, and those who were hostile to James, one man stood out for his unswerving loyalty and his eagerness to take positive action. John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, was a professional soldier who had never had the opportunity to demonstrate his full military talents. As a young man he served as a junior officer in the French army at a time when Charles II had allied himself with France. His fellow officers had included John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough, and Hugh Mackay of Scourie, who was to be his opponent in the first Jacobite campaign.

Claverhouse later served under William of Orange in the Low Countries. His subsequent steadfast loyalty to James and his refusal to go over to William may have stemmed in part from a personal dislike of the Prince of Orange. One story is that he saved the Prince’s life on the battlefield and that William, having promised him promotion, subsequently passed him over, causing Dundee to resign in disgust. From 1678 he was back in Scotland with a commission as a cavalry officer operating against the rebellious ultra-Protestant Covenanters in the south west. His duties were more those of a policeman than a soldier and there was little opportunity to gain military distinction. It was hard, dangerous, sometimes dirty work which earned him the title ‘Bloody Clavers’ from his opponents. Nevertheless, he carried out his duties meticulously and made himself extremely useful to the government.

Claverhouse became a close friend of James, who furthered his career. On the eve of William’s invasion he was made a brigadier commanding the cavalry of the Scottish army which James ordered south to England. A week after William landed James created him Viscount Dundee. When James’ army at Salisbury began to disintegrate with most of its officers deserting to William’s camp, Dundee stayed loyal, vainly urging James to fight, to negotiate with William, or to retreat to Scotland and carry on the struggle from there. After James fled to France, Dundee, having refused to serve William, returned to Scotland with about sixty troopers, the loyal remnants of his former regiment. Dundee was just over forty years old; small, slim, dark haired, and handsome, he was something of a dandy, the ‘Bonnie Dundee’ of Scott’s poem. A typical career soldier, he was ambitious but uncomplicated, though more politically astute than many. He had charisma and his integrity was widely respected. He seems to have modelled himself on his famous ancester the Marquis of Montrose who had upheld Charles 1’s cause in Scotland forty years earlier. The immediate future of the Jacobite cause in Scotland depended on Dundee.

THE CONVENTION IN EDINBURGH

As William had not yet been crowned King of Scotland he could not summon a parliament but various nobles urged him to call a Convention of Estates — an unofficial parliament — to decide on what action was to be taken. The Convention opened in Edinburgh in March 1689. At this time Edinburgh had a substantial population; around 50,000 if the suburbs and the port of Leith were included. Despite this it was one of the smallest, most tightly-packed cities in Europe. The medieval burgh had been established on a gently sloping ridge running down from the steep rock on which the Castle stood. To north and south the ridge fell away steeply into deep valleys. The one to the north, occupied today by Princes Street Gardens and Waverley Station, had been dammed to form the Nor’ Loch, an effective defence and well-used rubbish tip. Because of the awkward topography, the continuing need for defence, and difficulties in acquiring additional land to build on, Edinburgh had grown upwards rather than outwards.

Most of the inhabitants still lived within the Flodden Wall, a line of defence estabished in the sixteenth century following the disastrous Scottish defeat of 1513. Within these limits the two- and three-storey timber-framed houses of the fifteenth century had been replaced by tall stone tenements some of which, built into the steep slope behind the church of St Giles and Parliament House, reached ten or twelve storeys in height. The lower part of the ridge running down from the Castle was occupied by the separate burgh of the Canongate whose main street continued the line of Edinburgh’s High Street to the gates of Holyrood Palace. The Canongate was effectively a suburb, less densely built up than Edinburgh itself, where many noblemen had their town houses.

Since December the Duke of Gordon, governor of Edinburgh Castle, had placed the fortress on a war footing, in support of King James. The Convention met in Parliament House behind St Giles. The Scottish Parliament had only been properly accommodated since 1639 when Parliament House was built on the site of the former St Giles churchyard. The irregular but picturesque seventeenth-century facade of the building was replaced by the present stiff classical front in the early nineteenth century. Inside, however, the hall in which the Convention met, with its finely carved and gilded seventeenth-century hammer-beam roof, is little changed and now forms part of the Scottish central courts. The Convention was not yet fully opposed to James but he had no control over it. Both he and William sent letters to canvas support. William’s letter was conciliatory and vague in its promises, offending nobody. The one from James was arrogant and dictatorial, coldly demanding his subjects’ allegience. It dismayed his supporters and alienated many waverers.

Because of the small size of the city it was easy for an aggressive mob or a small, disciplined force to threaten not only the burgh authorities but also Parliament and the Privy Council. Dundee, with his troop of cavalry, might have been able to influence the Convention had not the city been swamped by an influx of Protestant extremists, Covenanters from the west of Scotland, to whose anti-Stuart opinions was added a fierce hatred of Dundee, who had been so prominent in curbing their activities in the previous few years. Word was brought to Dundee of a plot to assassinate him. He was not the sort of man to be unduly worried: he had been a marked man for years. However, it gave him a convenient pretext for withdrawing from the Convention without making an outright declaration of opposition to William.

On the 19th of March Dundee and his small troop of horsemen left the city by Leith Wynd and rode westwards along what is now Princes Street. It is not clear whether, at this stage, he intended to raise a rebellion in Scotland. He had implied to the Convention that he might go to Ireland to join James’ army there. Another possibility, which failed for lack of support, was to establish a rival Jacobite Convention at Stirling. When he came opposite Edinburgh Castle he left his men and scrambled up the cliff face to a postern gate where he spoke with the Duke of Gordon. He may have urged Gordon to leave the Castle in charge of his second-in-command and join him. Had Gordon gone to his estates in the North East and mobilized his tenants Dundee might soon have had the nucleus of an a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations and maps
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Who Were the Jacobites?
• 1 Revolution and Rebellion, 1688–9
• 2 The Highland War, 1689–91
• 3 The Massacre of Glencoe, 1692
• 4 Union, Unrest, and the House of Hanover
• 5 The Rebellion of 1715: The Scottish Campaign
• 6 The Rebellion of 1715: The English Campaign
• 7 Between the ’Fifteen and the ’Forty-Five
• 8 1745: The Daring Gamble
• 9 1745: Advance and Retreat
• 10 1746: The Reckoning
• 11 The Jacobite Twilight
• A note on further reading
• Index