Culloden and the '45 E-Book

Jeremy Black

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 483

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The Jacobite '45 rebellion was one of the greatest challenges to the eighteenth-century British state, and the Battle of Culloden in which it culminated was certainly one of the most dramatic of the century. Based on extensive archival research, Culloden and the '45 examines the political and military context of the uprising and highlights the seriousness of the challenge posed by the Jacobites. The result is an illuminating account of an episode often obscured by the perspectives of Stuart romance.

Leseprobe

For Timothy James Black

Note on Dates

All dates are given in the old style with the exception of events occuring on the continent where the new style (eleven days in advance) was in operation.

Cover Image: Battle of Culloden, 16 April 1746: print published by Laurie and Whittle, London, 1797. (Bridgeman Art Library)

First published 1990

This edition published 2021

The History Press

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© Jeremy Black, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2021

The right of Jeremy Black to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9926 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

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eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

P

REFACE

I

NTRODUCTION

One

A C

HANGE OF

D

YNASTY

Two

C

IVIL

W

AR

, P

LOTS AND

R

ISINGS 1689–1723

Three

D

ECLINE AND

R

EVIVAL 1723–43

Four

T

HE ’44 AND THE

B

ACKGROUND TO THE ’45

Five

F

ROM THE

W

ESTERN

I

SLES TO THE

E

NTERPRISE OF

E

NGLAND

Six

T

HE

I

NVASION OF

E

NGLAND

Seven

F

ROM THE

R

ETURN INTO

S

COTLAND TO

C

ULLODEN

Eight

C

ULLODEN AND ITS

A

FTERMATH

N

OTES

Preface

Seven months as a schoolteacher in Strathspey in 1975 was my introduction to Culloden and the country of the ’45 and I must thank Alan Sutton, who asked me to write this book, not least for bringing back many memories. Jacobite studies have offered me various experiences: the pleasant hospitality of the Royal Archives in Windsor Castle, as well as the farcical evening when Frank McLynn, Henry Summerson and myself, having taken part as expert witnesses in a television trial of Lieutenant-Colonel James Durand, who surrendered Carlisle Castle to the Jacobites in 1745, subsequently dined at the cautious expense of the BBC, and returned at 11.30 p.m. to what purported to be the best hotel in Carlisle and were unable to gain entrance. The front door was locked, the building was unlighted and both bell and telephone were unanswered. Having failed to awaken the building or push the door in, we summoned the police, who climbed in at the back and opened the door for us. Mentioning my two colleagues of that evening gives me an opportunity to say how much I value their friendship and that of other scholars on Jacobitism. Three good friends, Eveline Cruickshanks, Frank McLynn and Philip Woodfine, have made valuable comments on earlier drafts of this work, which Linda Heitmann has produced in an exemplary fashion. I have also benefited from the advice of J. Michael Hill. I would like to thank Her Majesty the Queen and Lady Lucas for permission to use material from their collections and the British Academy, Durham University, the Huntington Library and the Wolfson Foundation for supporting my research.

Those who work on Jacobitism have been accused of ‘revisionist obscurantism’ and nostalgia. Having published extensively on Walpole and British foreign policy, I hope I will not be charged with only seeing one side of the hill. I personally feel that study of both Jacobitism and the ’45 is salutary. The former reminds the reader that many were not comprehended within the Whig consensus and that both the Revolution settlement and the Hanoverian regime were only established by force. Consideration of the ’45 is a useful corrective to deterministic approaches to eighteenth-century Britain and challenges those who find it easiest to see the past in terms of patterns. One wonders whether they would like to be explained and dismissed in a similar fashion.

I finished the first draft of this work five days after the birth of my second child, but the book is dedicated to her elder brother as hopefully he will be able to read it first, or at least to find in the pictures a passing distraction from the joyous world of Duplo and sitting in the mud, a world which in many respects I wish I could regain.

J. Black

Exeter

Introduction

The British state faced three serious civil wars in the eighteenth century. The shortest occurred in Ireland in 1798. The rising of the United Irishmen was bloodily suppressed and, other than in Ireland, tends to be overlooked in what was by any standards a tumultous decade throughout Europe. However, the impact of the rising on the government in London was serious and casualty figures were considerable. The American revolution was more successful. The British attempt to defeat the rebellious colonists failed and the Loyalists were consequently disheartened and terrorized successfully.

Neither of these movements – the terms rebellion, revolution and civil war are fraught with complications and can arouse a surprising degree of emotion today – sought to overthrow established authority in mainland Britain, though the American cause had considerable sympathy there, and their military impact on the mainland was indirect, with the exception of American privateers.

The Jacobite movement was different. The Jacobites sought not to drive British power out of a portion of the dominions of the British Crown, though that was an objective of some Scottish Jacobites, but to change the identity of the wearer of the Crown. The movement sought support, therefore, throughout Britain. There was no continuous civil war and Jacobite conspiracies varied considerably in their nature and intentions, as did episodes of military activity, but there was a common theme of loyalty to the exiled Stuarts and opposition to those who wielded power within Britain. This was a constant theme from the invasion of England by William of Orange (William III) in 1688 until the effective destruction of Jacobitism as a plausible candidate for effecting the removal of the Hanoverians through military action. This occurred in 1746, though Jacobite conspiracies and international plans involving Jacobitism occurred thereafter, and was a result of the Jacobite defeat at Culloden and its consequences. Culloden brought to an end the ’45, the most serious crisis to affect the eighteenth-century British state, and that is the subject of this book.

There is a mass of fine work already in print both on Jacobitism and on the ’45. The figure of Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, has attracted attention ever since he was born in the late afternoon of 31 December 1720. The recent bicentennary of his death saw the appearance of a number of biographies, including a first-rate one by Frank McLynn. This study does not focus on Charles Edward but rather on the military aspects of the ’45. These are not, and cannot be, separated from the political context, especially the international setting, for, like the United Irishmen and the rebellious Americans, the Jacobites in the 1740s looked to France for assistance. The ’45 has to be seen against several different backgrounds but one of the most important, certainly in explaining the policies of the British and the French governments, was that relatively understudied conflict the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–8). However, just as the origins of Jacobitism can be pinpointed accurately in the events of late 1688, so the causes of Anglo-French hostility can be substantially traced to the events of that year.

ONE

A Change of Dynasty

PROBLEMS OF INVASION

The last successful invasion of England occurred in 1688. It is of importance for any history of the ’45 both because it set in motion the process that was to culminate at Culloden and because in its success it was so obvious a contrast to the ’45. It thus opens up the question of what was necessary in order to mount a successful invasion of England, for the central fact of Jacobite plans in 1744–5, as of the ’15, was that they were designed to lead to the conquest of England. Scotland was a means to an end, indeed in many respects in 1745 a second best, after the failure of the plans for the invasion of England the previous year, though equally for William III Britain as a whole was largely a means to his desired end of a successful war with France. The removal of James II was the result of a combination of domestic conspiracy and foreign invasion. The latter was crucial militarily. The military limitations of domestic risings unsupported by foreign troops had already been made abundantly clear in 1685. After the death of Charles II and the accession of his Catholic brother James, Charles’ illegitimate and Protestant son James, Duke of Monmouth sailed from the United Provinces (modern Netherlands) and landed with eighty-two companions and plenty of arms at Lyme Regis. On 6 July 1685, less than a month after the landing, Monmouth, who had been proclaimed king at the market cross at Taunton on 19 June, was defeated at Sedgemoor. Monmouth’s rising had been supported by action in Scotland by Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll, who had been living in exile in the United Provinces for a number of years. Argyll sailed with about 300 men but, like Monmouth, increased his force considerably after landing. However, Argyll’s operations were affected by divided counsels and the speed of the governmental response, including the appearance of two frigates, which took Argyll’s ships, a blow that was much more serious in the lands around the Clyde than where military operations did not directly require naval assistance, as in the West Country. Argyll’s position was weakened by the donation of his confiscated jurisdictions to rivals. The Marquis of Atholl was placed in command of the Campbell stronghold of Inverary. Argyll found it impossible to gain the support he had envisaged. His force of about 2,000 advanced to confront a royal army near Dumbarton, but his wish to fight was overruled and the troops retreated. During the retreat the cohesion of Argyll’s force was lost and its numbers fell as clansmen disappeared back to their homes. Argyll left his men, was captured on 18 June and beheaded on 30 June 1685.

These failures recall the earlier defeats of the Covenanters, Presbyterians in south-western Scotland, who had risen as recently as 1679. They had defeated an outnumbered royal force under John Graham of Claverhouse at Drumclog, but were in turn defeated at Bothwell Bridge (1679) and Airds Moss (1680). An earlier rebellion in 1666, the Pentland Rising, had also been defeated. It is easy to jump to the conclusion that only a substantial trained force could gain victory and that this could only be provided for a rebellion from abroad. William of Orange’s success appears to prove this case, and the defeat of the ’45 thus appears predestined. Yet the pre-Jacobite military legacy was somewhat more complex. The forces that had defeated royal authority in Scotland and northern England in 1639-40 in the First and Second Bishop’s Wars, had led the successful Irish rebellion of 1641 and that had finally defeated Charles I in England were not foreign in composition or leadership, though it is true that some of the men and more of the officers, especially among the Scots, had had military experience abroad, particularly in the Thirty Years War then raging in Germany. However, the argument that a successful rebellion required an invading foreign army, that this was ‘proved’ by 1688 and that therefore the ’15 and the ’45 were bound to fail has to consider the events of the 1630s and 1640s.

Factors of time and timing were of course important. In the 1630s and 1640s amateur forces had time to develop into trained units, a process that was pursued extensively on the Parliamentarian side in England, where the creation of the New Model Army produced a force that was to play a major role in the defeat of a foreign army, the prestigious Spanish Army of Flanders at the battle of the Dunes in 1658, a conflict in which the future James II fought on the losing side. The question of timing is more complex. Did Britain essentially alter in the mid-seventeenth century so as to make the raising of amateur forces less militarily feasible? This has been argued, especially for England, thus creating a new apparent geo-politics of insurrection, in which only Ireland and Scotland remained as kingdoms that could serve as the base for such insurrections, so that any successful rebellion would have to involve the invasion of England from abroad: from Scotland, Ireland or the continent. It is, however, dangerous to write off the possibility of raising forces in England. It was simply not the case that there were no soldiers except regulars. Militia forces might perform an undistiguished role, as against Monmouth at Axminster or in Cumbria in 1715, but the militia did fulfil useful military roles against Monmouth, for example holding Bath. During the invasion scare of 1690 the City of London raised, besides its militia, 7,400 auxiliary troops. In 1745 volunteers were raised to support the government. These took two forms: local associations where companies of volunteers were raised under the supervision of the Lord Lieutenants and financed locally, and in addition fifteen regiments were raised by loyal nobles, the men enlisting for a short term for the specific purpose of confronting the ’45.

In modern times the idea of irregulars standing up to regulars successfully is far from implausible, but it relates particularly to guerilla campaigns. These appear to be a long way removed from the apparently well-ordered conflicts that characterized the eighteenth century prior to the French Revolution, with their set-piece battles, geometric battle formations and cautious, often predictable, strategy and tactics. This interpretation is based on a misunderstanding of eighteenth-century conflict, and the gap between regulars and irregulars was less weighted in favour of the former than might be imagined. This observation is equally pertinent for other European conflicts of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, especially those in Hungary, but more generally in eastern Europe. Clearly the nature of the society in question was important, especially in terms of horse-ownership and experience and more generally in the existence of social groups that were accustomed to weapons and organized semi-military activity. Regular troops could offer, if well trained and motivated, disciplined fire-power and battle field manoeuvres that were generally better controlled than those provided by irregulars, but by no means all conflicts enabled them to employ these advantages. Factors of terrain, leadership, morale and surprise still counted for much. The decisive shift in Europe towards regular forces had occurred in the related fields of fortification and siegecraft. Heavy artillery trains and skilled engineers were expensive, difficult to develop and in Britain only possessed by the royal government. New-model fortifications, the widely-spread low-profile earthworks that were more resistant to cannon than the stone walls of medieval castles, were similarly expensive, difficult and time-consuming to construct, and they were rare in Britain. By western-European standards Britain was poorly fortified, helping the invader and minimizing what might otherwise have been an important consequence of military changes.

These military themes will be discussed again in this work, but they have been introduced at the outset to encourage the reader to appreciate that the actual and potential military dimension of political possibilities and changes was far from clear to contemporaries and that any attempt to present the ’45 as inevitably doomed militarily is very questionable.

* * *

If a man was to rob a house he would never tell the people within, whose doors were shut, that he designed to rob them and take away their money or lives, but only would enter to keep him warm or to find out some fellow that had done him mischief etc.

That was the sardonic comment of Thomas Lane, a fellow of Merton College, Oxford who had accompanied Francis Taafe, 3rd Earl of Carlingford, on his embassy to Vienna, on William of Orange’s letter to Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Austrian Habsburg dominions, appealing for Leopold’s support, or at least forbearance, during the attack on a fellow-Catholic sovereign. Lane summarized William’s letter:

Its preamble is the King of England’s engagements with France contrary to the interests of the Empire and Kingdom, the body of it, that he does not design to act anything either against the king’s person or government or against the Prince of Wales and the just succession . . . that he would not disturb the Catholics in England either in their persons or free exercise of their religion, but would have the Protestant religion secured so far, that their adversaries should never be in a condition to offer violence to it, and that these were the utmost of his designs he protests before God and the Emperor’

Whether Lane’s career at Merton – as bursar he suddenly left without rendering his account, carrying with him a sizeable sum belonging to the college – made him especially adept at detecting fraud is unclear, but he was right to suspect William’s intentions. Politically the Glorious Revolution, as it was first termed in November 1689, revealed the value of determination in a crisis. William invaded, hoping to seize the Crown, but had to dissimulate his intentions in order to leave sufficient domestic and international opinion in the state of uncertainty and wishful thinking that would permit him to obtain his goals.

James II had made himself unpopular by the extent to which his support for Catholic initiatives had appeared to challenge existing privileges and property rights. He thus undid the effective coalition between the Crown and the Anglican establishment in the Church and, crucially, in county society that had enabled Charles II to consolidate his position after seeing off the challenge posed by the Popish Plot (1678) and the Exclusion Crisis (1679–81), an attempt to take anti-Catholic feeling to the point of altering the succession by excluding James. Charles’ ability combined with his skilled use of the royal powers of dissolving and proroguing parliament enabled him to defeat the exclusionists in the sphere of legitimate political activity, while they were unwilling to foment a civil war and were faced with a king who had an adequate army and, from April 1681, French subsidies.

However, having dispensed with parliament in 1681, a condition of the French subsidies that Charles was not reluctant to accept, Charles did not rule by force. His alliance with the Tories, as those who supported Crown and Church against the Whigs, essentially backers of Dissenters and supporters of Exclusion, was known, ensured that England during his last years was relatively quiescent. Monmouth rejected the advice of the Whig leader Shaftesbury to foment a rebellion during a popular tour of the north-west in 1682, while plans for a rising and for the assassination of Charles and James, the Rye House Plot, were exposed in 1683 and led to the execution of a number of Whig leaders. As Charles strove to preserve his position, fostering royal power to that end rather than in order to pursue any agenda for expanding royal authority, his policies proved acceptable to the Tories and not intolerable to most Whigs. Monmouth enjoyed little support from former Whig gentry in 1685. In his last years Charles was like an old tiger. He had lost neither the cunning that had allowed him to survive until his old age, nor the use of his claws, but he was content to doze for most of the time.

James, in contrast, was frenetic, consumed with a sense of mission and uneasily aware that his real and alleged views were anathema to the bulk of the Crown’s natural supporters. The Popish Plot had been a rude reminder of the strength of anti-Catholicism and its savage consequences. James wished to have Catholics given equal civil and religious rights and to foster Catholicism in the nation. James II’s objectives were fairly moderate but his brusqueness in enforcing them alarmed Anglicans. Concern about the existence of Catholic army officers led to a breach between king and Tories in the parliament of 1685. Parliament was prorogued, new-found opponents dismissed from office and James was forced to seek a new constituency of political support. This led him to present his goal of a more secure position for Catholics as part of an attempt to create a wider-ranging religious toleration that would benefit Dissenters. A minority of Whigs cooperated with James but the majority remained suspicious of his intentions and opposed to his offers and in that position, though not in their political views, they were joined by many Tories, disenchanted by the growing breach between James and the Church of England.

By 1688 James was widely unpopular in England and from the perspective of subsequent developments it is easy to present his position as irredeemable. However, all the monarchs of England since Elizabeth had been seriously unpopular, the political situation in early 1688 was far less tense than it had been during the Exclusion Crisis, let alone in 1640 or for much of the 1620s, and it is far from clear that the movement towards what has since been generally termed, in the case of the continental monarchs, ‘absolutism’ was impossible in England. The foundations of a political system that would be called absolutist had it occurred on the continent had already been laid in Scotland and Ireland, and William of Orange’s proclamation to the Scots aroused little response.

In England most of those who disliked James’s policies were unwilling to take any illegal steps against him. Protection of privileges, refusal to heed royal lobbying and remonstrances in defence of the Church of England did not amount to intrigue or insurrection. James might receive the petition of seven bishops against the distribution and reading the Declaration of Indulgence in May 1688 by exclaiming ‘This is a standard of rebellion’, but it was only such if he chose to treat it thus. The political culture of the period, indeed of early-modern Europe as a whole, was not a simple matter of obedience or disobedience. The deference that a hierarchical and religious society owed God’s Anointed monarch was matched by traditions of good kingship and good lordship, expectations of political behaviour and, crucially, patronage that provided a context within which royal conduct was judged and obedience elicited. There was therefore, whether explicit or implicit, a contractual element to kingship. However, if the monarch infringed the bounds of what was generally, or at least widely, held to be acceptable behaviour that did not mean that rebellion was the natural response.

Contractualism referred to attitudes rather than behaviour. It was not only prudential considerations that kept people from rebelling in 1687 or 1744. There was also no clear political course for those who were disenchanted, no institutional expression of national discontent that could organize a major rebellion. In addition, the contractual element related in general not to the renunciation of loyalty to a monarch or dynasty but rather to a willingness to defy particular policies or ministers. Most early-modern European rebellions can be seen as massive demonstrations designed to secure royal support against unpopular men or measures and to persuade the monarch to change direction, not to change the identity of the monarch or the nature of the constitution. The natural resolution of such a crisis was compromise, the abandonment of unpopular steps and the eliciting of the consensus between Crown and social elite that was the hallmark of early-modern government.

Tory hostility to James II in 1688 should be regarded in this light. Had the Tories played the major role in the crisis of 1688 then it is likely that such a compromise would have been obtained, but they neither took such a role, nor was it likely that they would have done so. Not only was James securely in control of both Scotland and Ireland, unlike his father Charles I in 1641–2, but there was no tradition of concerted secret Tory political action. Some Tories did act against James in 1688. Danby was one of the seven who signed the famous invitation to William and he seized York in late November 1688. When James’ younger daughter by his first, Protestant, marriage Princess (later Queen) Anne fled London she was accompanied by several Tory peers-in-arms and by Henry Compton, Bishop of London. However, the Tories in 1688, though willing to try to take advantage of William’s invasion in order to persuade James to act in an acceptable fashion, would neither have acted without William nor were interested in any change of sovereign.

It was conspiracy and invasion that drove James out, not any nationwide political movement. The conspiracy was secondary to the invasion. Though it was apparent in 1688 that James’ efforts to win widespread support for his policies were unsuccessful, it was also clear that his power could only be challenged from outside England. James had built up the army of 8,565 he had inherited from his brother to a force of about 40,000 by November 1688. He also controlled a large fleet. These would be rich prizes for any ruler able to gain the alliance of Britain and that became increasingly important as the uneasy peace in western Europe established in 1684 became steadily more precarious, a process that culminated in 1688 in the outbreak of the Nine Years War, also known as the War of the League of Augsburg. The rulers best placed to win this alliance were Louis XIV and William of Orange. Louis (1638–1715) had, since he acquired effective control of France in 1661 on the death of his chief minister Mazarin, gained a reputation for aggressive diplomacy and a propensity for violence that was substantially justified, though in their own fashion other rulers acted in a similar manner. Initially Louis’ energies were directed against Spain. He had grown to manhood during a long Franco-Spanish war (1635–59) and his first war, the War of Devolution (1667–8) was an attack on Spain. However, Dutch opposition led Louis to the conviction that he could only acquire the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium and Luxemburg) if the Dutch had been crushed. His attack on them in 1672 precipitated the rise to power of William III of Orange, who as a result became stadholder (governor) of the leading province Holland. Thereafter William and Louis duelled for military success and diplomatic influence in western Europe.

Antipathy to the Dutch as Calvinists, republicans, commercial rivals and recent enemies had led to the Second Anglo-Dutch war (1665–7) and in 1672, in furtherance of his secret Treaty of Dover (1670) with Louis, Charles II attacked the Dutch again. The war (1672–4) was far from glorious for Charles, but it indicated the potential importance of British military strength, as did the possibility of military intervention against Louis in 1678 during the period of Anglo-Dutch rapprochement which followed the marriage of William and his first cousin, James’ eldest daughter and then heir, Mary in November 1677. To weaken William Louis helped to destroy his associate Lord Treasurer Danby by having his duplicitous negotiations with France revealed in the Commons at the end of 1678. Thus, prior to 1688 there was a tradition of both Louis and William intervening in British domestic politics. Precisely because they were able and willing to intervene and because many British politicians were keen to obtain their support and money, it was important for Charles and later James to try to ensure that such intervention was either friendly or unsuccessful. Danby’s fall was an object lesson in the dangers of provoking Louis, but James was careful to avoid associating himself too closely with Louis’ policies. However, the ambiguous nature of his support for Louis became less acceptable to William as international relations deteriorated. Individual steps, such as the Catholicization of the English army and the attempt to recall British soldiers serving in the Dutch army, appeared threatening in the light of the danger that James would assist Louis and in turn seemed to prove this danger. In early 1688 William decided to intervene in England, but concern about his likely reception and about James’ military strength led him to insist on an invitation which was sent by the ‘Immortal Seven’ in June, the month when the birth of a son to James’ second wife, the Catholic Mary of Modena, appeared to threaten the establishment of a Catholic dynasty.

Dutch invasion preparations during the summer of 1688 were too prominent to be kept secret for long, though James remained very unwilling to accept that they were directed against him. Nevertheless, in August naval and military moves were ordered, garrisons were reinforced, and troops ordered to England from Ireland and Scotland. However, these moves took time, and Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven writing from London on 6 October stated ‘that the Scotch forces are coming for England we take for granted . . . once it was said they should meet the Irish at Chester and now that they shall come for York’.2 William’s first invasion attempt in mid-October was defeated by the weather, with the loss of many supplies, including over a thousand horses, crucial to the mobility of any invasion force. This blow helps to explain why on 26 and 28 October the council of war of the English fleet, under George Legge, Lord Dartmouth, decided not to leave their anchorage at the Gunfleet, off Harwich, in order to sail to the Dutch coast and wait for William’s fleet there, as James, a former Lord High Admiral with military experience in the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars, suggested. The anchorage appeared to cover the likely Dutch landing sites, Harwich, Yarmouth and Bridlington Bay, while, far from it being likely that William would seek to evade the English fleet, it was more probable that, as with English plans for landings on the Dutch coast during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch would first seek to engage and defeat it. The alternative was to run the risk that even if the English fleet could be avoided, while it remained undefeated it would be able to attack the Dutch while landing or after they had landed, with very serious consequences.

Yet that was precisely what William intended. Planning to arrive as liberator not conqueror, he wished to avoid battle, which anyway he might not win, while it was too late in the year to risk waiting to invade until after a naval victory had been obtained. As Louis, who had invaded the Rhineland in 1688, might attack the Low Countries the following year, it was unacceptable to wait. Thus, William tried what foreign supporters of the Jacobites were always to be loath to risk, an invasion of southern England in the face of an undefeated navy and a substantial army. His success is a warning against writing off Jacobite plans as bound to fail, but equally it is worth pointing out that chance played a major role in this success. Dartmouth tried to sail on 30 October believing, correctly, that William was about to sail, but the strong north-easterly wind that brought the Dutch out on 1 November made it impossible for Dartmouth to round the Gunfleet shoal on the 30th and the 1st. When he eventually sailed on 3 November, the Dutch were already passing Dover and when William landed at Brixham on 5 November the English fleet was only off Beachy Head. A council of war that day determined not to attack what appeared to be the larger Dutch fleet and thereafter the English fleet was kept from intervening by storms.3

Though he had evaded the royal fleet William was not in a strong position militarily. He had landed at a considerable distance from London and much of the royal army was near the city, unlike in 1745 when it was mostly in the Low Countries. The mobility of William’s men, especially of the cavalry, crucial to any rapid advance, was impaired after the sea crossing and William stayed at Exeter from 9 until 21 November hoping to refresh his troops and win English support. However, Exeter did not offer William the enthusiastic reception Charles Edward Stuart was to receive in Edinburgh in 1745, while relatively few members of James’ army deserted to him. On 19 November James reached his forces encamped on Salisbury Plain. His strength was nearly twice that of William and, unlike much, though not all, of the royal forces in 1745, he was not out-manoeuvred into abandoning the position nearest London. A lot of James’ army had still not been brought over from Ireland. James’ soldiers were mostly loyal, though many of the officers were untrustworthy.

However, 1688, unlike 1745, became a political crisis in which James, having lost his superior military position, was increasingly forced onto the defensive. A failure of nerve, to which poor health, indecision and the seriousness of the situation contributed, led James to agree at a council of war on 23 November to retreat to London, instead of advancing on William and the following day he left the army. This helped to weaken morale among his troops, while James’ general military and political position was eroded by the fact that, unlike in 1745, a number of provincial uprisings took place. By 5 December Derby, Nottingham, York, Hull and Durham had been seized for William, though the extent of loyalty towards James and the role of local circumstances, especially determined leaders, is indicated by the fact that Carlisle, Chester and Newcastle resisted such attempts successfully. Negotiations between James’ commissioners and William began at Hungerford on 8 December, but William refused to halt his march towards London, whence James fled towards France on the night of 10–11 December, ordering his commander in chief to cease hostilities. The French envoy Barrillon reported that many were opposed to William gaining power but he suggested that this opposition would collapse at his arrival and that no one would dare oppose his designs.4 The situation proved far more complex but essentially Barrillon was correct. William controlled the military situation, James reached France on his second attempt and James’ army disintegrated. William made clear that he wanted to be ruler, declaring on 3 February 1689 that he would be neither regent nor prince consort, and thus one of the many innovations of the Revolution Settlement was the creation of a joint monarchy, that of William and Mary. James II and his baby son had been debarred, the former on the grounds that he had deserted the kingdom, while Anne’s rights to the succession were subordinated to those of William. The desertion theory is difficult to sustain as the second time James left London he was ordered out by William under Dutch escort. William’s Declaration alluded to the ‘imposture’ of the Prince of Wales’ birth and said that the ‘facts’ would be established. No inquiry ever took place, which led to complaints by Seymour and Reresby. Parliament did not declare the prince an ‘impostor’, but it debarred all Catholics from the succession. However, far from settling Britain, the events of 1688–9 were to be the first stage in the War of the British Succession, a war that was to involve both conflict in England, Ireland and Scotland and foreign intervention.

TWO

Civil War, Plots and Risings 1689–1723

Men may very well be excused if for the present they suffer politics and affairs of state to engross their thoughts; because the subject matter is no less than what concerns their religion, property and peace, and he that can be thoughtless or careless of the event of things when an invasion threatens, will justly be suspected of favouring in his heart a change in our constitution.

Lord Perceval, a Whig, 27 August 17151

William’s success in England neither ensured the compliance of Ireland and Scotland nor freed him from the necessity of having to defend his position in England against domestic conspiracy and the threat of foreign invasion. William’s chances were lessened considerably by his success in obtaining what had been his essential purpose in invading England. In 1689 his new dominions joined the coalition arrayed against Louis XIV, thus ensuring that Louis, whose resources were fully stretched on a number of fronts, would provide James with military support. The years 1689–91 were not typical for Jacobitism, as the cause of the exiled Stuarts came to be known from the Latin for James, Jacobus, for during that period James II and his supporters controlled part of Britain, including for a while most of Ireland. This situation did not look forward to that of later Jacobite activity but back to the last period of Stuart dispossession, the misnamed English Civil Wars and the Interregnum. However, William III, like Cromwell before him, was to succeed in having the Stuarts and their supporters driven from Scotland and Ireland, thus forcing them to become reliant on the foreign support that was offered in accordance with a diplomatic and military agenda, timetable and constraints that rarely suited the Jacobites and over which they had little influence, let alone control. The campaigns against William in Ireland introduced the problem of cooperating with France, militarily and politically, and this was to be a central theme until the failure of the ’45.

James’ prospects were best in Ireland, but it was in Scotland that the first battle was fought. On 4 April 1689 the Scottish Convention resolved that James had not abdicated, but had forfeited the throne through his misdemeanours. A Claim of Right laying down fundamental constitutional principles and attacking episcopacy (church government by bishops) was accepted on 11 April and followed by the proclamation of William and Mary as joint monarchs. However, the same month the most active of James’ Scottish supporters, John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, raised James’ standard outside Dundee. The Presbyterians were not as numerous as they claimed to be. Only William III’s backing, which arose from opposition by the Episcopalians to the transfer of the Crown, made them strong. The Episcopalians always claimed to be the majority. Viscount Dundee retired into the Highlands to obtain recruits, pursued by the royal army under General Hugh Mackay of Scourie. The two forces confronted each other at the Pass of Killiecrankie while seeking to control Blair Castle in Perthshire, which commanded a crucial north-south route through the Highlands. Dundee had only 2,000 men. As in 1745, the Highland rising had scant support from abroad or from Jacobites elsewhere, while Dundee faced the classic problem of irregular warfare: keeping his men together. Mackay’s force was twice as large, but on the evening of 27 July 1689 Dundee had the advantage of height. After an inconsequential exchange of fire, the Highlanders threw down their guns and charged with their broadswords. Mackay’s line collapsed at once under the charge, but at the close of the battle Dundee was killed by a musket ball. Victory led the doubtful clans to flock to James’ standard and Dundee’s successor, Colonel Cannon, who had brought 300 infantry from Ireland to reinforce the force, found himself in command of 5,000 men. However, swift moves by Mackay and Cannon’s indecisiveness kept the Jacobites out of Perth and Aberdeen. Cannon refused to engage Mackay and instead attacked the apparently vulnerable garrison of untrained Covenanters at Dunkeld. He was, however, repulsed and retreated to Mull, while the Highlanders dispersed to their homes. Cannon was replaced by Major General Thomas Buchan, but he was surprised and defeated on 1 May 1690 by Mackay’s cavalry on the Haughs of Cromdale. Reinforced by clansmen, Buchan entered Aberdeenshire but he proved unwilling to attack Aberdeen, and loss of support and Mackay’s advance led to his retreat into the mountains in Lochaber where his forces dwindled.

Most of the Highland chiefs swore allegiance to William in late 1691, a process facilitated by indemnity, bribes and being allowed to obtain the permission of James VII (James II of England). The Scottish campaigns are instructive in a number of respects. War was far faster moving in Scotland than it was in the Low Countries and Rhineland, where operations centred around lengthy sieges. The importance of bold generalship and, in particular, a willingness to risk battle were also demonstrated. The cautious war of manoeuvre conducted by, among others, William III in the Spanish Netherlands was expensive, required large forces if positions were to be protected, and was a formidable drain on supplies. It was not surprising that the areas where position warfare was classically conducted, the Low Countries, the Rhineland and Lombardy, were relatively wealthy agricultural regions served by good communications. In Scotland, as in eastern Europe and Iberia, the situation was different. It was not easy for forces, both offensive and defensive, to remain in a given area for any length of time, without exhausting their supplies and a premium was therefore placed on movement. In the context of Scotland this meant an advance from the Highlands to seize wealthier lowland areas. A refusal to engage in battle or attack towns did not preclude troops from gaining food from lowland regions, but it reduced the political significance of their presence. The crucial factor about Killiecrankie was the failure to exploit the victory, a failure that ensured that the battle had more in common in its political consequence with the generally inconclusive engagements in the Low Countries in the 1690s than with the battles in eastern Europe. Charles XII was to show at Narva (1700), when the Swedes defeated the Russians, that a smaller attacking force, boldly led and taking advantage of local circumstances, could defeat a larger army. However, the Swedes were a disciplined force able to exploit advantages and to respond to a strategic plan. Jacobite generals did not enjoy the same degree of control in Scotland.

The decisive battles involving James II’s cause were fought in Ireland. Ireland was more accessible than Scotland to French naval power and, therefore, troops and supplies, better able to support operations than the Scottish Highlands and, in early 1689, more under the sway of James’ supporters. James II left France for Ireland in March 1689, continuing the process that had begun with his elder brother Charles, and that James himself had exemplified by going to Edinburgh during the Exclusion Crisis, of Stuarts visiting Scotland and Ireland only during periods of adversity. Most of the island was soon won for James, but Derry, fearing Catholic massacre, resisted a siege and was relieved by the English fleet in July 1689. The following month William’s army, mostly of Danes and Dutch, landed and occupied Belfast. Naval power thus offered William military flexibility and prevented James from controlling all of Ireland. Arguably the French should have made more of an effort to deprive William of his naval weapon, but the Irish Sea was quite a distance from their principal bases and the English benefited, as they were to do in 1744–6 when moving troops between Britain and the Low Countries, from closer proximity to their bases and from the advantage in terms of naval strength that the Dutch alliance brought.

Arriving in Ireland in June 1690, William marched on Dublin to find the outnumbered Jacobites drawn up on the southern bank of the River Boyne. As with the Spey in 1746, the line of the Boyne was not held. On 1 July William was able to outflank the Jacobite left flank, before crossing with his own left. Defeated on both flanks, the Jacobites retreated to Dublin where James II made the decision to return to France, a move that weakened his cause in Ireland. Dublin was taken easily by William, though he failed at Limerick in August. The following month John Churchill, then Earl of Marlborough, took Cork after an action lasting two days, indicating that the defence did not have all the advantages, while Kinsale fell to him in October. The following year Athlone fell to the Dutch general Ginkel, while his second-in-command Hugh Mackay carried Irishtown by assault after crossing the deep ford of the Shannon. At Aughrim on 12 July 1691 Mackay turned the Jacobite flank by leading his cavalry across a bog on which he had laid hurdles. The Jacobite force broke, their infantry suffering heavy casualties in the retreat. Limerick surrendered and by the Treaty of Limerick all the Jacobite forces in Ireland surrendered, about 11,000 Irishmen, the ‘Wild Geese’, going to serve James in France.

The Irish campaigns had been far from static. Bold generalship had been important and success in battle had been more important than the holding of fortified positions, Though Derry, and Athlone and Limerick had successfully resisted in 1689 and 1690 respectively, the Boyne had given William a number of Jacobite strongholds and Aughrim was followed by the fall of Galway. Both of the major engagements had been won by the attacking force and in each case tactical considerations relating to the terrain and to the ability to take advantage of developments had been crucial, while the vulnerability of armies to flanking attacks had been clearly demonstrated. There was no suggestion that the battles were foregone conclusions, though the greater priority attached to Ireland by William III rather than Louis XIV was important in terms of the resources available to the combatants.

Louis, however, hoped to assist James by an invasion of southern England. On 28 June 1690 the Anglo-Dutch fleet under Torrington with 56 ships of the line was defeated by a large French fleet under Tourville with 75 of the line off Beachy Head. Tourville, whose instructions when he left Brest were to attack Portsmouth and then blockade the Thames, was unable to exploit the victory. There was no army ready to invade and Tourville simply made a raid on Teignmouth. Rumours that the French were going to land in the Romney Marshes, in Sussex or on the Exe proved false. There were only 6,000 regular troops in southern England, but William was fortunate that there was no Jacobite activity there. The militia was raised, the horses of Catholic gentlemen seized and leading Catholics and disaffected nobles sent to the Tower. Whether these measures would have proved more effective than James II’s less determined last-minute moves in 1688 had there been an invasion is unclear, but William was fortunate that the Jacobite cause was not progressing in Scotland or Ireland. It was unfortunate for the Jacobites that they were unable to exploit the longest period in the history of their movement when the French had control of the Channel. Though they were undefeated, the French were less of a threat in 1691 because of the large number of ships the English put to sea and the French decision to concentrate on privateering. The following year Louis decided to invade England in support of James but in an engagement which began off Barfleur on 19 May 1692 the Anglo-Dutch fleet under Russell defeated the outnumbered Tourville, ending the plan. Louis returned to the scheme in 1696 when, unable to defeat William in the Spanish Netherlands and promised Jacobite support in England, he concentrated troops near the coast. A small inner group of officers planned the assassination of William, but neither James nor Louis was party to this and the rest of the Jacobite plot cum invasion was quite separate. However, the plans were not kept secret and the English assembled a formidable fleet of 80 men of war off Dunkirk, dissuading the French from making any move.

The following year Louis made peace at Rijswijk, recognizing William. Sir John Lowther noted ‘the Jacobites are stunned’. The ‘might have beens’ were over for a while. Jacobite chances had not been destroyed by Williamite successes in Scotland and Ireland. Had Tourville waited for the Toulon fleet in 1692 the battle of Barfleur might have taken a different course and had William been killed during the war it is possible that policies of reinsurance on the part of politicians who continued links with the exiled James might have weakened the English response to a French invasion. However, the peace of 1697 left the Jacobites adrift, not least because it was followed by a diplomatic rapprochement between William and Louis as they sought to solve the vexed problem of the Spanish Succession by negotiating two partition treaties (1698, 1700). They were to be rescued from limbo by the breakdown of Anglo-French relations in 1701. Louis’ decision to recognize the prince born in 1688 as King James III on his father’s death that year played a role in exacerbating relations, but the two powers were already on a collision course that stemmed from Louis’ acceptance of the Spanish crown for his second grandson, the Duke of Anjou.

During the war of the Spanish Succession, which lasted as far as the English were concerned from 1702 until 1713, France offered the Jacobites far less assistance than during the previous Nine Years War. The situation was clearly less propitious for French action. The previous conflict had revealed the difficulties of mounting an invasion, the English fleet was even stronger, the Jacobites were no longer in control of much of Ireland and Scotland and their claims to be able to create disorder in England had been discredited. The French did not offer assistance, and then far less than in 1692 and 1696, until after the situation had changed. The Union of England and Scotland in 1707 raised hopes of discontent in Scotland, while the failure of France to defeat her opponents suggested the need for a decisive blow against Britain, just as the defeat at Dettingen (1743) was to do. In 1704 at the battle of Blenheim the Duke of Marlborough thwarted the French plan to knock Austria out and in 1706 the French were driven out of Italy and the Spanish Netherlands as a result of defeats at Turin and Ramillies. France was forced back to the defence of her frontiers. The Union was widely unpopular in Scotland and had only been brought about by judicious bribery. It led the Jacobite nobility and gentry to draw up an urgent Memorial for presentation to Louis. They argued that the presence of ‘James VIII and III’ would be essential for success and promised that when he landed an army of 30,000 would be quickly formed. This force would be a national one, Highlanders and Lowlanders, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Catholics. Money, arms and ammunition and experienced officers were requested, as was an invasion force large enough to resist the 2,000 men of the Scots army and any English troops that might be sent. One memorandum said that the son of George of Hanover was illegitimate and could not succeed under the Act of Settlement. In Paris the proposals were given an English dimension by the Duke of Chevreuse. English support was assumed and, looking back to the Bishops’ Wars against Charles I, it was argued that an invading force of Scots would be able to subsist in northern England, where there were no strong fortresses nor any troops. Newcastle and its coalfield were to be seized and London thus put under pressure. Hopefully England and Ireland would rise but, even if they failed to do so, the effect of the invasion would be to force the British to withdraw their forces from the Continent and thus undermine the anti-French coalition. James would be sent from Dunkirk with 5,000 men.

Louis decided to support the project hoping that the recall of British troops would enable France to invade the Spanish Netherlands where plans for a pro-French rebellion were being encouraged. However, secrecy was lost and on 27 February 1708 Sir George Byng anchored a squadron off Dunkirk. The French naval commander Forbin wished to call off the expedition, but James persuaded Louis to order Forbin to sail, which he did on 6 March, avoiding Byng in the mist. Forbin reached the Firth of Forth on 12 March, followed a day later by Byng. Forbin succeeded in evading the superior British force and returning to Dunkirk, but James and the troops were landed neither in the Firth of Forth nor further north. An opportunity had been lost. James and the troops could have been landed on the 12th, especially if the initial landfall had been in the Firth and not, as a result of error, 100 miles further north. Edinburgh Castle was in no state to resist a siege and the Scots army was not powerful enough to block Jacobite plans. On the 12th the Earl of Leven, Anne’s commander-in-chief in Scotland, had written complaining about having ‘few troops . . . It vexes me sadly to think I must retire towards Berwick if the French land on this side the Forth’. Much of the Scottish aristocracy was prepared to rise for James. On 1 April a loyal peer David Carnegie, 4th Earl of Northesk wrote from Edinburgh of his desire to hear that the French had disembarked in Dunkirk:

. . . we have for some time been in great doubts and fears, if it end this way we have reason to be very thankful, for we were on the brink of being destroyed, we cannot doubt but the Queen who has shown so great a regard to this part of the island, will lay down such methods, as may both secure us by sea and land, for it will be very odd if they leave this project, on so slender a repulse as they got, I’m very hopeful, however, it will appear that there has not been such a disposition of rebelling in Scotland as the French have boasted of.2

The immediate British response had been to march ten regiments of foot from Ghent to Ostend and then transport them to first the Tyne and then Leith. Though the troops returned in turn to help Marlborough gain the third of his great victories at Oudenarde, it is clear that the Union would have been defended. Whether 1708 could have prefigured 1745 with the Jacobites gaining effective control of Scotland before invading England is unclear. The English Jacobites pledged no support in 1708, unlike in 1745 when they promised help if the French landed. In some respects James was in a stronger position in 1708. He not only had French troops with him, but the French had clearly committed themselves and were therefore likely to send more assistance if they could. Furthermore, there was more support for the Jacobite cause in Scotland in 1708 than there would be in 1745, as the list of those nobles arrested by the government in 1708 makes clear. The Union was very unpopular, Scotland had been badly battered economically over the previous fifteen years, the Stuarts were the ancient Scottish kings and James appeared a better option than the Electress Sophia of Hanover, who was the alternative, and legally recognized, heir to Anne. As in 1745, the French did not control the sea, while in 1708 the French position in the Low Countries was worse, though this was to become clearer after Oudenarde. Had there been a struggle in northern England between the troops brought back from Ostend and James it is difficult to predict the result. The Scots would have been relatively untrained, while the experience of a French expeditionary force in Ireland in 1690–1 was scarcely encouraging. On the other hand Scotland might well have united against Union to a sufficient extent to permit James to field a large army. Though the size of the British fleet would have lessened the danger of a supporting French invasion that would still have had to be faced, as in 1744–6, and it would have been impossible to recall all the troops from the Low Countries without running the risk of a separate Franco-Dutch peace. The ‘08 was over too fast for its possible military implications to be probed, but it is a reminder of the unpredictability of events in this period, an unpredictability that military success and dynastic chance both displayed.