The Jacobite rising of 1745 was an attempt to regain the British throne for the exiled House of Stuart. The last in a series of Jacobite risings that began in March 1689, it proved to be the end of Jacobitism as a major factor in British politics.
The uprising was formally launched by Charles Edward Stuart on 19 August 1745 at Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands, with the rebels capturing Edinburgh and winning the Battle of Prestonpans in September. In early November, the largely Scottish Jacobite army invaded England, expecting to be joined by English sympathisers and a French landing in Southern England. This failed to materialise, and after reaching Derby on 4 December, their leaders voted in favour of retreat.
Although supported by the vast majority of the Scots who formed Charles' army, the decision caused an irretrievable split within the Jacobite senior command. Despite winning a narrow victory at Falkirk Muir in January 1746, defeat at Culloden in April ended the rebellion. Charles escaped to France, but was unable to win support for another attempt, and died in Rome in 1788.
Background
The 1688 Glorious Revolution replaced the Catholic James II & VII with his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William, who ruled as joint monarchs of England, Ireland, and Scotland. Neither Mary, who died in 1694, nor her sister Anne, had surviving children, leaving their Catholic half-brother James Francis Edward Stuart as the closest natural heir. Since the Act of Settlement 1701 excluded Catholics from the succession, when Anne became queen in 1702, her heir was the distantly related but Protestant Electress Sophia of Hanover. Sophia died in June 1714, two months before Anne, and her son succeeded as George I in August.
Louis XIV of France, the primary source of support for the exiled Stuarts, died in 1715 and his successors needed peace with Britain in order to rebuild their economy. The 1716 Anglo-French alliance forced James to leave France; he settled in Rome on a Papal pension, making him even less attractive to the Protestants who formed the vast majority of his British support. Jacobite rebellions in 1715 and 1719 both failed, the latter so badly its planners concluded that it might "ruin the King's Interest and faithful subjects in these parts". Senior exiles like Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke accepted pardons and returned home or took employment elsewhere. The birth of his sons Charles and Henry helped maintain public interest in the Stuarts, but by 1737, James was "living tranquilly in Rome, having abandoned all hope of a restoration."
At the same time, by the late 1730s French statesmen had come to see British commercial strength as a threat to the European balance of power, and the exiled Stuarts a potential option for weakening it. However, financing a low-level insurgency was far more cost-effective than an expensive restoration, especially since the Stuarts were unlikely to be any more pro-French than the Hanoverians. The remote and undeveloped Scottish Highlands were an ideal location for launching such an attempt, while the feudal nature of clan society made it relatively easy to raise troops. However, even Jacobite sympathisers were reluctant to support an uprising they recognised could be devastating for the local populace.
Opposition to taxes levied by the London government led to the 1725 malt tax riots and 1737 Porteous riots. In March 1743, the Highland-recruited 42nd Regiment of Foot was posted to Flanders, contrary to an understanding their service was restricted to Scotland, causing a short-lived mutiny. However, mutinies over pay and conditions were not unusual and the worst riots in 1725 took place in Glasgow, a town Charles noted in 1746 as one "where I have no friends and who are not at pains to hide it."
Trade disputes between Spain and Britain led to the 1739 War of Jenkins' Ear, followed in 1740–41 by the War of the Austrian Succession. The long-serving British prime minister Robert Walpole was forced to resign in February 1742 by an alliance of Tories and anti-Walpole Patriot Whigs, who then excluded their partners from government. Furious Tories like Henry Scudamore, 3rd Duke of Beaufort asked for French help in restoring James to the British throne. While war with Britain was clearly only a matter of time, Cardinal Fleury, chief minister since 1723, viewed the Jacobites as unreliable fantasists, an opinion shared by most French ministers. An exception was René Louis de Voyer de Paulmy d'Argenson, who was appointed Foreign Minister by Louis XV after Fleury died in January 1743.
Post-1715 Jacobitism in the British Isles
Historian Frank McLynn identifies seven different ideological drivers behind continuing support for Jacobitism in 1745, Stuart loyalism being the least important. These divisions became increasingly apparent during the Rising, exacerbated because Charles himself was largely ignorant of the kingdoms he hoped to regain. In addition, many of his senior advisors were Irish exiles, who wanted an autonomous, Catholic Ireland and the return of lands confiscated after the Irish Confederate Wars. His grandfather James II had promised these concessions in return for Irish support in the 1689 to 1691 Williamite War in Ireland, and only a Stuart on the throne of Great Britain could ensure their fulfilment.
Such concessions were firmly opposed by Protestants who were the overwhelming majority in England, Wales and Scotland, while estimates of English support in particular confused indifference to the Hanoverians with enthusiasm for the Stuarts. After 1720, Robert Walpole tried to bind English Catholics closer to the regime by refusing to enforce laws against them. Many became government supporters, including Edward Howard, Duke of Norfolk, unofficial head of the English Catholic community. Sentenced to death in 1716, he was reprieved and remained in London during the 1745 rebellion, visiting George II to confirm his loyalty.
Most English Jacobite sympathisers were Tories who resented their exclusion from power since 1714, and viewed Hanover as a liability which involved them in expensive Continental wars of minimal benefit to Britain. These sentiments were particularly strong in the City of London, although diplomats observed opposition to foreign entanglements was true "only so long as English commerce does not suffer." However, even this group was far more concerned to ensure the primacy of the Church of England, which meant defending it from Charles and his Catholic advisors, the Scots Presbyterians who formed the bulk of his army, or Nonconformists in general; many "Jacobite" demonstrations in Wales stemmed from hostility to the 18th century Welsh Methodist revival.
The most prominent Welsh Jacobite was Denbighshire landowner and Tory Member of Parliament, Watkin Williams-Wynn, head of the Jacobite White Rose society. He met with Stuart agents several times between 1740 and 1744 and promised support "if the Prince brought a French army"; in the end, he spent the Rebellion in London, with participation by the Welsh gentry limited to two lawyers, David Morgan and William Vaughan.
After the Jacobite rising of 1719, new laws imposed penalties on Non-Jurists, those who refused to swear allegiance to the Hanoverian regime. By 1745, Non-Jurists had largely disappeared in England, but continued to be a significant element in Scotland; many of those who participated in the Rising came from Non-Jurist Scottish Episcopal Church congregations. However, the most powerful single driver for Scottish support in 1745 was opposition to the 1707 Union, whose loss of political control was not matched by perceived economic benefit. This was particularly marked in Edinburgh, former location of the Scottish Parliament, and among Highland chiefs, many of whom were heavily in debt.
In summary, Charles wanted to reclaim the throne of a united Great Britain and rule on the basis of divine right of kings and absolutism. Both principles had been rejected by the 1688 Glorious Revolution, but were reinforced by his trusted advisors, most of whom were long-term English or Irish Catholic exiles. They differed sharply from the Scottish Protestant nationalists who formed the bulk of the Jacobite army in 1745, and opposed the Union, Catholicism and "arbitrary" rule. At the same time, Jacobite exiles failed to appreciate the extent to which English Tory support derived from policy differences with the Whigs, not Stuart loyalism.
Charles in Scotland
Under the 1743 Pacte de Famille, Louis XV and his uncle, Philip V of Spain, agreed to co-operate against Britain, including an invasion to restore the Stuarts. In November 1743, Louis advised James this was planned for February 1744 and began assembling 12,000 troops and transports at Dunkirk, selected because it was possible to reach the Thames from there in a single tide. Since the Royal Navy was well aware of this, the French squadron in Brest made ostentatious preparations for putting to sea, in hopes of luring away their patrols.
James remained in Rome while Charles made his way in secret to join the invasion force, but when Admiral Roquefeuil's squadron left Brest on 26 January 1744, the Royal Navy refused to follow. French naval operations against Britain often took place in the winter, when poor weather made it harder to enforce a blockade. Unfortunately, this worked both ways, and as in 1719, the invasion force was wrecked by storms. Several French ships were sunk and many others severely damaged, Roquefeuil himself being among the lives lost. In March, Louis cancelled the invasion and declared war on Britain.
In 1738, John Gordon of Glenbucket had proposed a landing in Scotland, which had been rejected by the French, and James himself. Seeking to revive this plan, in August Charles travelled to Paris where he met Sir John Murray of Broughton, liaison between the Stuarts and their supporters in Scotland. Murray subsequently claimed to have advised against it, but that Charles was "determined to come [...] though with a single footman." When Murray returned to Edinburgh with this news, his colleagues reiterated their opposition to a rising without substantial French backing, but Charles gambled that once he was in Scotland, the French would have to support him.
He spent the first months of 1745 purchasing weapons. His spending was backed up by Jacobite bankers, notably by the Scotsman,Aeneas MacDonald and the Irishman, George Waters. Victory at Fontenoy in April encouraged the French authorities to provide him with two transport ships.These were the 16-gun privateer Du Teillay and Elizabeth, an elderly 64-gun warship captured from the British in 1704, which carried the weapons and 100 volunteers from the French Army's Irish Brigade. In early July, Charles boarded Du Teillay at Saint-Nazaire accompanied by the "Seven Men of Moidart", the most notable being Colonel John O'Sullivan, an Irish exile and former French officer who acted as chief of staff. The two vessels left for the Outer Hebrides on 15 July but were intercepted four days out by HMS Lion, which engaged Elizabeth. After a four-hour battle, both were forced to return to port; losing the Elizabeth and its volunteers and weapons was a major setback, but Du Teillay landed Charles at Eriskay on 23 July.
Many of those contacted advised him to return to France, including MacDonald of Sleat and Norman MacLeod. Aware of the likely penalties for defeat, they felt that by arriving without French military support, Charles had failed to keep his commitments and were unconvinced by his personal qualities. Sleat and MacLeod may also have been especially vulnerable to government sanctions, due to their involvement in illegally selling tenants into indentured servitude. Enough were persuaded but the choice was rarely simple; Donald Cameron of Lochiel committed himself only after Charles provided "security for the full value of his estate should the rising prove abortive," while MacLeod and Sleat helped him escape after Culloden.
On 19 August, the rebellion was launched with the raising of the Royal Standard at Glenfinnan, witnessed by what O'Sullivan estimated as around 700 Highlanders. This small Jacobite force used the new government-built roads to reach Perth on 4 September, where they were joined by more sympathisers. They included Lord George Murray, previously pardoned for participation in the 1715 and 1719 risings. O'Sullivan initially organised the Jacobite army along conventional military lines, but when Murray took over as chief of staff, he reverted to traditional Highland military structures and customs familiar to the majority of his recruits.