Jacobites of Perthshire, 1745

Description

The reign of the House of Stuart came to an end in 1689 when the pro-Catholic monarch James VII of Scotland (James II of England) fled from London to France. In exile in Rome and Paris, adherents to the cause of the restoration, who were known as Jacobites, worked to regain the throne for the Stuarts. In Britain, Jacobite support came mainly from High Church Anglicans and Catholics and was centered in the Scottish Highlands. Since the great Scottish landowners of Perthshire were either Anglican or Catholic, Perthshire was an area to which Prince Edward Stuart looked for support in 1745, notwithstanding the unsuccessful Jacobite campaigns of 1715 and 1719. The Prince was eventually joined by Lord James Drummond, the Duke of Perth, and leaders of the Macgregor, Stuart, and Robertson clans, among others. The Jacobite campaign of 1745 culminated in the disastrous defeat at Culloden in April 1745, where a goodly portion of the Jacobites either died in a futile assault on the superior Hanoverian position or were among the wounded who were slaughtered on orders from the British Duke of Cumberland. Many of the Scottish survivors of this Jacobite war, or their families, were ultimately exiled to the Americas.

This is the third volume of genealogical records pertaining to the Scottish Jacobites compiled by Frances McDonnell and her husband, David Dobson (see Items 9234 and 9214). Drawing on papers at the Public Record Office in London and the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh, Frances McDonnell has amassed as much as we are likely to know about the Jacobites of Perth. Arranged in alphabetical order, upwards of 1,000 combatants are identified, at the very least, by rank, position, disposition at Culloden, and source. In addition, many of these same Jacobites are referred to by other campaigns served in, civilian occupation, physical appearance, and, where applicable, ship and date when transported to America. All of this makes for a crucial piece of genealogical scholarship on the Scottish Jacobites.