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From: "David Roberts" <>
Subject: More on the Scottish Jacobites
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 22:06:03 -0400
References: <46e.1988482.31a85519@aol.com> <004901c680cb$8491c560$1f1a4845@lbowdish>


> The Scots-Irish were for the most part NOT Jacobites. They were
Protestants, mostly Presbyterians, and since the Battle of the Boyne in 1690
they generally supported the "Protestant Sucession" - William & Mary to Anne
to the Hanoverians and generally didn't support the Catholic Stuart line
from James II on to "Bonnie Prince Charlie."

I had forgotten to mention this but the "national holiday" of the Northern
Irish Protestants is July 12th, the anniversary of the victory of William of
Orange over the forces of the deposed Catholic James II at the River Boyne.
Since the "Orangemen" were squarely on the side of William of Orange and are
still celebrating each July this Protestant victory over 300 years ago, few
if any of the Scots-Irish in America or the Northern Irish would be
supporting the Jacobites in 1715 or 1745.

Jacobite support came mostly from the clans in the Scottish Highlands and
not from the Scottish Lowlands or Northern Ireland, which were the main
sources of the people known in this country as the Scots-Irish.

James, Duke of York, was the younger son of Charles I & Henrietta Maria [for
whom Maryland is named]. After the Restoration of the Stuart Monarchy in
1660, James, Duke of York, was next-in-line as heir to the throne held by
his brother, Charles II.

Charles had many illegitimate children by his various mistresses, but no
legitimate children by his Portuguese wife, Catherine of Braganza [the Queen
for whom Queens in New York City is named].

James converted to Roman Catholicism, the religion of his mother, while his
brother was still king. When Charles died in 1685 with no legitimate heirs,
the crown passed to James, Duke of York, who became James II of England [&
James VII of Scotland]. Could England & Scotland survive a Catholic king ?
Well, James had 2 Protestant daughters & a Protestant line seemed to be on
the horizon once again, if James didn't live too long.

But James, a widower, well into middle age, suddenly married a 15 year-old
Catholic Italian princess, Mary of Modena, and soon produced a baby son ....
a son who would get in line before his two much older Protestant
half-sisters. Protestant propaganda had it that James was too old to father
a child and the "prince" was a foundling smuggled into the Queen's bed in a
warming-pan and passed off as the king's child.

Be that as it may, Whigs & Tories got together on this vital issue.
Parliament engineered a coup d'etat and offered the crown to James' nephew &
son-in-law Dutch prince William of Orange. William and his cousin/wife,
James' elder daughter Mary landed with a Dutch army and soon occupied
London. James fled to his Catholic cousin Louis XIV in Paris. William & Mary
were soon crowned King & Queen. The Protestant line seemed assured.

James II lived on in Paris until his death in 1701. His tomb was destroyed
during the French Revolution, when the Paris mob sacked the English
Benedictine church where he had been buried.

Mary died in 1694, before her father, but William was still alive when his
uncle/father-in-law James died in 1701. When William died in 1702, the
English and Scottish crowns passed to his cousin/sister-in-law, Anne,
younger daughter of James II.

So, you have two Stuart claims to the throne. The Protestant claim by Anne,
daughter of James II by his first wife and the Catholic claim by James
Francis Edward, son of James II by his second wife. James Francis Edward,
the "Old Pretender" was proclaimed King James III of England and King James
VIII of Scotland by his relative Louis XIV of France.

Anne had 14 or so children by her husband Prince George of Denmark, but all
died at birth except for one son, the Duke of Gloucester. The future
Protestant king died in his early teens, leaving no direct Protestant heir.
William & Mary had no kids and all of Anne's many, many babies had died.

It took some genealogically digging to come up with the "nearest" Protestant
heir to Anne's throne. Finally, Parliament made Sophia, Electress of Hanover
in Germany, the heir. Sophia was daughter of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia.
Elizabeth was a daughter of James I of England/James VI of Scotland. Sophia
was 1st cousin to James II, but to find her dozens of Catholic Stuarts had
to be jumped over & their claims to the throne set aside.

Anne outlived her father's cousin by a few months. When she died, the now
united crown of "Great Britain," formed in 1707 by uniting Scotland &
England into one country, passed to Sophia's son George, Elector of Hanover.
George could speak no English and never bothered to learn the language of a
country of which he was now king.

OK, here's where the first Jacobite Revolt takes place.
1715, parts of Scotland revolt against their new German king and support
James Francis Edward as their rightful king. James, the Old Pretender,
spends 5 weeks in Scotland, but soon returned to France. The 1715 Revolt
collapsed. The first group of Jacobite prisoners are shipped to the North
American colonies in the years immediately after 1715.

James, the Old Pretender, eventually moves to Rome, living off the charity
of the Pope. He died in Rome in 1766 and is buried at St. Peter's. He,
unlike his father, has a tomb to this day.

There is a political poem from the 18th century, about the Devil, the Pope,
and the Pretender. All 3 are enemies of the English people and their
liberties. Each verse has something to say about the Devil, the Pope, and
the Pretender, about their wicked plots and evil designs on the English
people.

The Old Pretender had two sons, "Bonnie Prince Charlie", Charles Edward, the
Young Pretender, and Henry, who became a Roman Catholic priest and later a
cardinal of the Roman Church.

"Bonnie Prince Charlie" led the larger revolt of the Scottish Highlands in
1745/1746 ... the famous '45. After some initial success and an invasion of
northern England, the Revolt was crushed at the Battle of Culloden in April
1746. Charlie fled Scotland w/ the help of Flora MacDonald and ended up back
in Paris. He soon took to drink. When the Old Pretender died in 1766,
Charlie became King Charles III, a title recognized by just about nobody.
When Charlie died, with no legitimate heirs in 1788, the crown passed to his
brother Henry, Cardinal York, known to the Jacobites as Henry IX.

When Napoleon invaded Italy and carried the Pope off as a prisoner to
France, Henry's source of income from the Papacy was cut off. Oddly, George
III put Henry on the royal pension, even though Henry was the Catholic
pretender to George's throne. I guess old family feuds can heal ! Anyway,
when Henry, Cardinal York died in 1807, he willed the crown jewels of
England which James II had carried off & Henry eventually inherited to the
Prince Regent, later George IV. George IV later had a large memorial erected
at St. Peter's in Rome to the memory of the Old Pretender & his two sons. By
that time, there was no serious Catholic claim on the throne & all this was
"ancient history." There is a current pretender - an Italian, I think - to
the British throne via one of those skipped-over Stuarts, but his chances
rank up there with the various claims on the French or Russian thrones.

LASTLY, from "The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy" by
John Cannon & Ralph Griffiths [1988], p.478:

"After the battle of Culloden, in April 1746 despite attempts to regroup at
Ruthven, the Jacobite cause was broken for ever. The prince ["Bonnie Prince
Charlie"] escaped to France, drifted into marital difficulties, took to the
bottle, and died in 1788. The remaining rebels were hunted down with great
severity, the great majority being TRANSPORTED TO THE COLONIES."

As I had stated earlier, some of these Jacobites were shipped to North
Carolina. As we have seen, some also were sold here in Maryland. I suppose
most of the colonies got some, but North Carolina is the one that is usually
thought of as being the major dumping ground of the '45 Jacobite prisoners.
These '45 Jacobites took their oath to the hated Hanoverians kings so
seriously that during the American Revolution they formed the back-bone of
the Tory movement in North Carolina, supporting the king in America whom
they fought against back in Scotland [Actually, they fought his grandfather
in Scotland]. An oath was an oath in those days.

The Scots-Irish were not involved in all this business & had given no oath,
so in 1775/1776 they were ready to go "hell-bent" for the Revolution. Much
of the brutality of the American Revolution, esp. in North & South Carolina,
can be traced to the hatred between the Lowland Scots-Northern Irish vs. the
Highland Scots ... going back centuries in Scottish history & played out in
bloody massacres, hangings, butcherings in North & South Carolina, esp. in
the years around 1780.

David



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