The Jacobite Risings: Loyalty, Rebellion, and Aftermath

What the Jacobites Actually Wanted

The Jacobite cause was, at its core, a dynastic dispute. When the Catholic James VII of Scotland (James II of England) was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and replaced by the Protestant William of Orange, a substantial portion of the Scottish and Irish populations refused to accept the new regime. These were the Jacobites — from Jacobus, the Latin form of James — and their goal was the restoration of the Stuart dynasty.

The Jacobite cause was not primarily about Scottish independence, though it is often remembered that way. Many Jacobites were Irish or English. The movement drew support from Catholics across the British Isles, from Tory politicians who believed in divine right monarchy, and from France and Spain, who saw the Stuarts as useful instruments against their British rival.

In the Highlands, Jacobitism took on a distinctly Gaelic character. Many Highland clans supported the Stuarts — some out of genuine loyalty, some because their rivals supported the government, and some because the alternative (a Hanoverian monarchy allied with the Campbells and the Lowland establishment) threatened their autonomy. The Jacobite risings of 1689, 1715, 1719, and 1745 drew heavily on Highland manpower, and the final defeat at Culloden fell hardest on Highland society.

The Forty-Five

The rising of 1745 — the "Forty-Five" — was the last and most famous Jacobite campaign. Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender (Bonnie Prince Charlie), landed in the Hebrides in July 1745 with seven companions and no army. Within weeks, he had raised the clans and captured Edinburgh. By November, his Highland army had marched into England and reached Derby, 125 miles from London.

The retreat from Derby was the turning point. Charles's commanders, recognizing that the promised English support had not materialized and that government armies were converging from multiple directions, insisted on withdrawal. Charles never forgave them, and the retreat demoralized an army that had been winning.

The end came at Culloden on April 16, 1746. The Highland charge — the devastating close-quarters assault that had won battles at Prestonpans and Falkirk — failed on the boggy, flat ground that the Duke of Cumberland had chosen. The government artillery and disciplined volley fire cut the Highland lines apart. The battle lasted less than an hour. Between 1,500 and 2,000 Jacobites were killed on the field and in the pursuit that followed. Cumberland's orders to give no quarter earned him the name "Butcher."

The Destruction of Highland Society

Culloden was not just a military defeat. It was the end of an era. The British government, determined to ensure that the Highlands could never again produce a rebellion, dismantled the structures of Highland society with systematic thoroughness.

The Disarming Act banned weapons. The Dress Act banned tartan, kilts, and Highland dress. The Heritable Jurisdictions Act abolished the legal authority of clan chiefs. Estates of Jacobite chiefs were forfeited and redistributed. Gaelic-speaking areas were targeted for English-language education. The cumulative effect was to strip Highland society of its distinctive institutions — its martial culture, its visual identity, its legal autonomy, and its language.

Clan Ross navigated the Jacobite period with characteristic complexity. Different branches of the clan supported different sides at different times, a pattern common to most clans. The simplistic narrative of "Highland clans vs. The English" obscures the reality that the Jacobite wars split Scottish society along multiple lines — religious, political, personal, and pragmatic.

Memory and Romanticism

Within a generation of Culloden, the Jacobite cause had been sanitized and romanticized. The same Lowland establishment that had supported the government in 1745 began to celebrate Highland culture as the authentic spirit of Scotland. George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822, stage-managed by Walter Scott, saw the king himself wearing tartan — a spectacle that would have been unthinkable fifty years earlier.

This romanticism was convenient because it was safe. The real Highland society that had produced the Jacobite armies was being destroyed by the Clearances. Tartan and bagpipes could be celebrated because the culture they represented was no longer a political threat.

The Jacobite legacy endures in Scottish culture — in songs, in tartanry, in the tourist industry that surrounds Culloden and the Bonnie Prince Charlie trail. But the real legacy is structural: the destruction of the clan system, the marginalization of Gaelic, and the transformation of the Highlands from a distinct political and cultural region into a depopulated periphery. The Jacobite risings did not cause all of these changes, but their defeat removed the last barrier to them.