Jacobitism in Scotland: Episodic Cause or National Movement?

Abstract

The primary purpose of this article is to examine the strength in depth of Jacobitism within Scotland and to reappraise its national impact. Notwith-standing disparaging Whig polemicists and their apologists in Anglo-British historiography, there was undoubted political substance to the appeal of Jacobitism in Scotland that stretched over seven decades. But the search for this substance raises a series of questions. Was Jacobitism anything more than an occasional interruption in the body politic? Can it be viewed as a patriotic agenda that engaged Scots politically and culturally as well as militarily and subversively? Above all, was Jacobitism a sustained political movement or merely an episodic cause in Scotland? Accordingly, the distinctiveness of Scottish Jacobitism is explored through fresh archival research and extensive polemical material prior to determining whether this distinctiveness found expression more as a movement than as a cause. The focus of debate is shifted away from the Stuart courts in exile, from dynastic identification, and from espionage and diplomacy towards Jacobite communities at home and abroad, towards patriotic identification with Scotland and towards issuesof po litical economy. In the process, a political culture of Scottish Jacobitism can be sustained in terms of its confessional and intellectual development, its organizational structure and its commercial and social networking. Nevertheless, the argument favouring a movement over a cause remains finely balanced but is shaded by the distinctive capacity of Scottish as against English or Irish Jacobitism to form alternative governments, nationally and locally in the course of major risings. More than an episodic cause, Jacobitism's persistence provoked a counter movement in Scotland, that of antiJacobitism, a wholly worthwhile area of study that has yet to be examined systematically and with intellectual rigour. It is hoped that this article will provoke such an examination.

The “Glorious” Revolution’s Inglorious Religious Commitment: Why Parliamentary Rule Failed to Secure Religious Liberty

“…A large proportion of Episcopalians refused to renounce their allegiances in 1693 and remained unreconciled in 1712. They were the cement of Scottish Jacobitism; Macinnes (2007) estimates that 75 percent of Jacobites were unreconciled Episcopalians (see also Szechi 1994: 67).…”

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“…But as Macinnes has trenchantly observed, 'whereas the English drank for Jacobitism and the Irish dreamt of Jacobitism, the Scots died for Jacobitism'. 7 And given that the majority of those doing the dying in 1745 were poor Gaelic-speaking Highlanders, we need to hear as much from them as possible. *** importantly, it quietly questioned both the legend of the bonny prince and the Hanoverian winner's version of the story.…”

A Restoration? 25 years of Jacobite Studies

“…14 Szechi's work paved the way for Allan MacInnes's recent claim that Scottish Jacobitism, in contrast to that of England or Ireland, was a sustained political movement rather than an episodic ''cause.'' 15 The most vocal advocate of placing Jacobitism at centre stage in 18th-century Scottish history, however, was a literary scholar, Murray Pittock. His own firm nationalist attachments, defined in distinctive ways and critical not only of Whiggism and English power but also of the Scottish left, made his works at once compelling and controversial.…”

“…15 15 Allan MacInnes, “Jacobitism in Scotland: Episodic Cause or National Movement?,” Scottish Historical Review , 86, 2 (2007), pp. 225–52. …”