For a year the Scottish Jacobites, and Bolingbroke, who fled to France
and became James's Minister, mismanaged the affairs of that most
unfortunate of princes. By February 1715 the Earl of Mar, who had been
distrusted and disgraced by George I., was arranging with the clans for a
rising, while aid from Charles XII. of Sweden was expected from March to
August 1715. It is notable that Charles had invited Dean Swift to visit
his Court, when Swift was allied with Bolingbroke and Oxford. From the
author of 'Gulliver' Charles no doubt hoped to get a trustworthy account
of their policy. The fated rising of 1715 was occasioned by the Duke of
Berwick's advice to James that he must set forth to Scotland or lose his
honour. The prince therefore, acting hastily on news which, two or three
days later, proved to be false, in a letter to Mar fixed August 10 for a
rising. The orders were at once countermanded, when news proving their
futility was received, but James's messenger, Allan Cameron, was detained
on the road, and Mar, not waiting for James's answer to his own last
despatch advising delay, left London for Scotland without a commission;
on August 27 held an Assembly of the chiefs, and, _still without a
commission from James_, raised the standard of the king on September 6.
{254a}
The folly of Mar was consummate. He knew that Ormonde, the hope of the
English Jacobites, had deserted his post and had fled to France.
Meanwhile Louis XIV. was dying; he died on August 30, and the Regent
d'Orleans, at the utmost, would only connive at, not assist, James's
enterprise.
Everything was contrary, everywhere was ignorance and confusion. Lord
John Drummond's hopeful scheme for seizing Edinburgh Castle (September 8)
was quieted _pulveris exigui jactu_, "the gentlemen were powdering their
hair"--drinking at a tavern--and bungled the business. The folly of
Government offered a chance: in Scotland they had but 2000 regulars at
Stirling, where "Forth bridles the wild Highlandman." Mar, who promptly
occupied Perth, though he had some 12,000 broadswords, continued till the
end to make Perth his headquarters. A Montrose, a Dundee, even a Prince
Charles, would have "masked" Argyll at Stirling and seized Edinburgh. In
October 21-November 3, Berwick, while urging James to sail, absolutely
refused to accompany him. The plans of Ormonde for a descent on England
were betrayed by Colonel Maclean, in French service (November 4). In
disguise and narrowly escaping from murderous agents of Stair (British
ambassador to France) on his road, {254b} James journeyed to St Malo
(November 8).
In Scotland the Macgregors made a futile attempt on Dumbarton Castle,
while Glengarry and the Macleans advanced on Inveraray Castle, negotiated
with Argyll's brother, the Earl of Islay, and marched back to
Strathfillan. In Northumberland Forster and Derwentwater, with some
Catholic fox-hunters, in Galloway the pacific Viscount Kenmure, cruised
vaguely about and joined forces. Mackintosh of Borlum, by a
well-concealed movement, carried a Highland detachment of 1600 men across
the Firth of Forth by boats (October 12-13), with orders to join Forster
and Kenmure and arouse the Border. But on approaching Edinburgh
Mackintosh found Argyll with 500 dragoons ready to welcome him; Mar took
no advantage of Argyll's absence from Stirling, and Mackintosh, when
Argyll returned thither, joined Kenmure and Forster, occupied Kelso, and
marched into Lancashire. The Jacobite forces were pitifully
ill-supplied, they had very little ammunition (the great charge against
Bolingbroke was that he sent none from France), they seem to have had no
idea that powder could be made by the art of man; they were torn by
jealousies, and dispirited by their observation of Mar's incompetence.
We cannot pursue in detail the story of the futile campaign. On November
12 the mixed Highland, Lowland, and English command found itself cooped
up in Preston, and after a very gallant defence of the town the English
leaders surrendered to the king's mercy, after arranging an armistice
which made it impossible for Mackintosh to cut his way through the
English ranks and retreat to the north. About 1600 prisoners were taken.
Derwentwater and Kenmure were later executed. Forster and Nithsdale made
escapes; Charles Wogan, a kinsman of the chivalrous Wogan of 1650, and
Mackintosh, with six others, forced their way out of Newgate prison on
the night before their trial. Wogan was to make himself heard of again.
Mar had thrown away his Highlanders, with little ammunition and without
orders, on a perfectly aimless and hopeless enterprise.
Meanwhile he himself, at Perth, had been doing nothing, while in the
north, Simon Frazer (Lord Lovat) escaped from his French prison, raised
his clan and took the castle of Inverness for King George. He thus
earned a pardon for his private and public crimes, and he lived to ruin
the Jacobite cause and lose his own head in 1745-46.
While the north, Ross-shire and Inverness, were daunted and thwarted by
the success of Lovat, Mar led his whole force from Perth to Dunblane,
apparently in search of a ford over Forth. His Frazers and many of his
Gordons deserted on November 11; on November 12 Mar, at Ardoch (the site
of an old Roman camp), learned that Argyll was marching through Dunblane
to meet him. Next day Mar's force occupied the crest of rising ground on
the wide swell of Sheriffmuir: his left was all disorderly; horse mixed
with foot; his right, with the fighting clans, was well ordered, but the
nature of the ground hid the two wings of the army from each other. On
the right the Macdonalds and Macleans saw Clanranald fall, and on
Glengarry's cry, "Vengeance to-day!" they charged with the claymore and
swept away the regulars of Argyll as at Killiecrankie and Prestonpans.
But, as the clans pursued and slew, their officers whispered that their
own centre and left were broken and flying. Argyll had driven them to
Allan Water; his force, returning, came within close range of the
victorious right of Mar. "Oh, for one hour of Dundee!" cried Gordon of
Glenbucket, but neither party advanced to the shock. Argyll retired
safely to Dunblane, while Mar deserted his guns and powder-carts, and
hurried to Perth. He had lost the gallant young Earl of Strathmore and
the brave Clanranald; on Argyll's side his brother Islay was wounded, and
the Earl of Forfar was slain. Though it was a drawn battle, it proved
that Mar could not move: his forces began to scatter; Huntly was said to
have behaved ill. It was known that Dutch auxiliaries were to reinforce
Argyll, and men began to try to make terms of surrender. Huntly rode off
to his own country, and on December 22 (old style) James landed at
Peterhead.
James had no lack of personal courage. He had charged again and again at
Malplaquet with the Household cavalry of Louis XIV., and he had
encountered great dangers of assassination on his way to St Malo. But
constant adversity had made him despondent and resigned, while he saw
facts as they really were with a sad lucidity. When he arrived in his
kingdom the Whig clans of the north had daunted Seaforth's Mackenzies,
while in the south Argyll, with his Dutch and other fresh reinforcements,
had driven Mar's men out of Fife. Writing to Bolingbroke, James
described the situation. Mar, with scarcely any ammunition, was facing
Argyll with 11,000 men; the north was held in force by the Whig clans,
Mackays, Rosses, Munroes, and Frazers; deep snow alone delayed the
advance of Argyll, now stimulated by the hostile Cadogan, Marlborough's
favourite, and it was perfectly plain that all was lost.
For the head of James 100,000 pounds was offered by Hanoverian chivalry:
he was suffering from fever and ague; the Spanish gold that had at last
been sent to him was lost at sea off Dundee, and it is no wonder that
James, never gay, presented to his troops a disconsolate and discouraging
aspect.
On January 29 his army evacuated Perth; James wept at the order to burn
the villages on Argyll's line of march, and made a futile effort to
compensate the people injured. From Montrose (February 3-14) he wrote
for aid to the French Regent, but next day, urged by Mar, and unknown to
his army, he, with Mar, set sail for France. This evasion was doubtless
caused by a circumstance unusual in warfare: there was a price of 100,000
pounds on James's head, moreover his force had not one day's supply of
powder. Marshal Keith (brother of the Earl Marischal who retreated to
the isles) says that perhaps one day's supply of powder might be found at
Aberdeen. Nevertheless the fighting clans were eager to meet Argyll, and
would have sold their lives at a high price. They scattered to their
western fastnesses. The main political result, apart from executions and
the passing of forfeited estates into the management of that noted
economist, Sir Richard Steele, and other commissioners, was--the disgrace
of Argyll. He, who with a petty force had saved Scotland, was
represented by Cadogan and by his political enemies as dilatory and
disaffected! The Duke lost all his posts, and in 1716 (when James had
hopes from Sweden) Islay, Argyll's brother, was negotiating with Jacobite
agents. James was creating him a peer of England!
In Scotland much indignation was aroused by the sending of Scottish
prisoners of war out of the kingdom for trial--namely, to Carlisle--and
by other severities. The Union had never been more unpopular: the
country looked on itself as conquered, and had no means of resistance,
for James, now residing at Avignon, was a Catholic, and any insults and
injuries from England were more tolerable than a restored nationality
with a Catholic king.
Into the Jacobite hopes and intrigues, the eternal web which from 1689 to
1763 was ever being woven and broken, it is impossible here to enter,
though, in the now published Stuart Papers, the details are well known.
James was driven from Avignon to Italy, to Spain, finally to live a
pensioner at Rome. The luckless attempt of the Earl Marischal, Keith,
his brother, and Lord George Murray, brother of the Duke of Atholl, to
invade Scotland on the west with a small Spanish force, was crushed on
June 10, 1719, in the pass of Glenshiel.
Two or three months later, James, returning from Spain, married the fair
and hapless Princess Clementina Sobieska, whom Charles Wogan, in an
enterprise truly romantic, had rescued from prison at Innspruck and
conveyed across the Alps. From this wedding, made wretched by the
disappointment of the bride with her melancholy lord,--always busied with
political secrets from which she was excluded,--was born, on December 31,
1720, Charles Edward Stuart: from his infancy the hope of the Jacobite
party; from his cradle surrounded by the intrigues, the jealousies, the
adulations of an exiled Court, and the quarrels of Protestants and
Catholics, Irish, Scottish, and English. Thus, among changes of tutors
and ministers, as the discovery or suspicion of treachery, the bigotry of
Clementina, and the pressure of other necessities might permit, was that
child reared whose name, at least, has received the crown of Scottish
affection and innumerable tributes of Scottish song.