History of the Stewarts | Battles and Historic Events
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There were considerable doubts about the King both north and south of the border, however many Scots who had supported the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 were by 1715 much less supportive. Some despite their doubts about the Union were unable to get over the King´s Catholicism and this meant they would not support the Jacobite cause. However popular support was there. From France, as part of widespread Jacobite plotting, James Stuart, the Old Pretender, had been corresponding with the Earl of Mar. In the summer of 1715, James called on Mar to raise the Clans. Mar, nicknamed Bobbin´ John, rushed from London to Braemar. He summoned clan leaders to "a grand hunting-match" on 27 August 1715. On 6 September he proclaimed James as "their lawful sovereign" and raised the old Scottish standard. Mar´s proclamation brought in an alliance of clans and northern Lowlanders, and they quickly overran many parts of the Highlands. Mar used the widespread discontent at the union with England to encourage men to join him. ´ The late unhappy Union´ said Mar´s proclamation ´ which was brought about by the mistaken notions of some and the ruinous and selfish designs of others, has proved so far from lessening and healing the difference between His majesty´s subjects of England and Scotland that it has widened and increased them..Nor can anyway be found out to relieve us, and restore our ancient and independent constitution, but by restoring our rightful and natural King.´ In Scotland 1715, is sometimes misleadingly called the first Jacobite rebellion (or rising), which overlooks the fact that there had already been a major Jacobite rising in 1689.
Mar´s Jacobites captured Perth on 14 September, without opposition. His army grew to around 8,000 men. A force of fewer than 2,000 men under the Duke of Argyll held the Stirling plain for the government and Mar indecisively kept his forces in Perth. He waited for the Earl of Seaforth to arrive with a body of northern clans. Seaforth was delayed by attacks from other clans loyal to the government. Planned risings in Wales, Devon and Cornwall were forestalled by the government arresting the local Jacobites.
This should have been King James, ´the Old Pretender´s´ ideal opportunity but the campaign proved a shambles. The main force under the Earl of Mar achieved some early success, capturing Perth and at the battle of Sheriffmuir - proclaimed a victory by Mar but in reality a defeat.. The battle of Preston in England was also a defeat for the Jacobites and the English Jacobites were very harshly punished. The campaign lacked impetus and James himself lacked the charisma that his son, Charles Edward Stuart, had so was unable to turn the campaign when he arrived in Scotland in December after having been delayed in France through no fault of his own having been ill.
He arrived in Peterhead on December 22 1715 and entered into Perth on January 6th 1716. On January 31st the Jacobites left Perth, leaving their guns behind them. They crossed the Tay and took the road to Dundee. On February 4th , James and Mar boarded a French ship Maria Theresa which was waiting for them at St Malo and sailed for France. The Jacobite army melted away. Argyll returned to Edinburgh on February 27th and at the beginning of March left for London.
James spent the rest of his life in exile, mainly in Rome.
In the aftermath of the ´Fifteen´, the Disarming Act and the Clan Act made some attempts to subdue the Scottish Highlands. Government garrisons were built or extended in the Great Glen at Fort William, Kiliwhimin (later renamed Fort Augustus) and Fort George, Inverness, as well as barracks at Ruthven, Bernera (Glenelg) and Inversnaid, linked to the south by the Wade roads constructed for Major-General George Wade.
On the whole, the government adopted a gentle approach and attempted to ´win hearts and minds´ by allowing the bulk of the defeated rebels to slip away back to their homes and committing the first £20,000 of revenue from forfeited estates to the establishment of Presbyterian-run, Scots-speaking schools in the Highlands (the latest in a series of measures intended to promote Scots at the expense of Scottish Gaelic) and Presbyterianism at the expense of Episcopalianism and Roman Catholicism..
Reference: The Warrender Letters 1715