The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain

by Allan Massie

  On another occasion his reflections were equally sympathetic, even pitiful:

  The poor Lady was again under a severe fit of the Gout, ill-dressed, bloated in her countenance, and surrounded with plasters, cataplasims and dirty-like rags. The extremity of her pain was not then upon her, and it diverted her a little to see company with whom she was not to use ceremonies, otherways I had not been allowed access to her. However, I believe she was not displeased to see any body, for no Court Attenders ever came near her. All the Incence and Adoration offered at Courts were to her Ministers, particularly the Earl of Godolphin, her chief minister, and the two Secretaries of State; her palace at Kensington, where she commonly resided, was a perfect solitude, as I had occasion to observe several times. I never saw anybody attending there but some of her guards in the outer room, with one at most of the Gentlemen of her Bedchamber. Her frequent fits of sickness and the distance of the place from London, did not admit of what are commonly called Drawing-Room nights, so that I had many occasions to think that few Houses in England belonging to persons of Quality were keept in a more privat way than the Queen’s Royal Palace of Kensington.

  Despite her wretched health, Anne had her amusements. Chief among them was horse-racing. In the early summer of 1711, while out for a carriage drive, she halted on the common at Ascot, and seeing that it appeared to have been designed by nature for her favourite sport, ordered that a racecourse be laid out, and declared that she would present a challenge plate for the inaugural meeting. The work was done quickly – more quickly than subsequent improvements to the course – and the first meeting was held that August, the Queen driving from Windsor Castle and presenting ‘Her Majesty’s Plate of 100 guineas’ to the winning owner. If little about the poor Queen is memorable, her invention of Royal Ascot at least should not be forgotten.

  The war dragged on with no great victories after Malplaquet (1709), a fierce encounter where the allied losses were greater than those of the French. It became more and more unpopular and a Tory ministry came in determined to make peace. Marlborough was dismissed and sent into exile; there was much talk of corruption. Meanwhile the Whigs spoke angrily of peace negotiations being a betrayal of their allies, the Dutch and the Habsburg emperor. But it had proved impossible to dislodge the French prince from Spain, and all the other aims of the war had been achieved. In particular France’s power had been given a stiff blow. There would be no French aggression for decades, so badly had this war gone. Jonathan Swift wrote a pamphlet, The Conduct of the Allies, which demolished the Whig case for continuing the war – at least in the opinion of the Tories. Swift thought his services to his party deserved a bishopric, but he had to be content with the deanery of St Patrick’s in Dublin. He told his favourite correspondent, ‘Stella’ (Hester Johnson), that he thought it would be a good peace for England, and he was right.6

  Poor Anne’s health continued to deteriorate. Swift went to court and reported to Stella that he had seen the Queen carried in a chair into the garden or to chapel; she had almost lost the use of her legs. Yet she continued to do her duty as she understood it. Though she was queen by the will of Parliament and the old Stuart claim to divine right was dead, she still ‘touched’ for the king’s evil (scrofula), the last monarch to do so. One of those she ministered to in this way was the infant Samuel Johnson.

  In 1714 she was failing fast. With the Tories in office the great question was whether they had the will, or the courage, to change the succession and bring back Anne’s half-brother, James Edward. Certainly one of the two leading ministers, Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, was in communication with the Jacobite court at St-Germains; but he was scarcely on speaking terms with his chief colleague, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, the Lord Treasurer. Anne was known to dislike her distant Hanoverian cousins – the Elector, though heir to the throne, had been forbidden to come to England. Many thought she had a tenderness to her half-brother, even if it was provoked by feelings of guilt for her conduct in 1688. Perhaps if he had been prepared to become a Protestant, she might have favoured his succession. But he refused, and Anne’s loyalty to the Church of England was stronger than any family feeling. In any case, to change the succession would have required Parliament to amend or repeal the Act of Settlement, and there was no majority for that. Even if Bolingbroke was planning a coup d’état, he was prevented by the rapidity of the Queen’s decline. Antipathy between him and Oxford was now open. Almost Anne’s last act was to dismiss Oxford, who had turned up completely drunk at a Council meeting, and then deny Bolingbroke the treasurer’s White Staff, which she offered instead to a moderate Whig, the Duke of Shrewsbury.

  Anne died on 1 August 1714. The Protestant succession was assured. The new German king came in, the Whigs were rewarded, Marlborough recalled, the Tories dished, and the Stuart monarchy was at an end – except in the eyes of the exiles and the Jacobite sympathisers at home.

  Chapter 17

  James VIII and III: Jacobites

  James Edward Stuart was born in the Palace of Whitehall and reared in the gloom of St-Germains. Thirteen years old when his father died and Louis XIV with rash chivalry hailed him as King of England, Scotland and Ireland, he would pass all his life in exile, a king who never ruled. He would be known as the Chevalier de St-George, as the Pretender (or Claimant) and then as the Old Pretender; for many in England as well as Scotland he was ‘the King over the water’, and in company that was not all of their opinion, they would pass their glass over the water jug when invited to drink the King’s health. The longer he lived, the more the hope of a restoration faded, and well before his death in 1766 he was resigned to failure, piously accepting it as the unfathomable will of God.

  But it was different in his youth. James was a soldier then and served in the French army, displaying a courage and disregard of danger that won him the respect not only of his own commanding officers but of those whom he considered his rightful subjects now arrayed against him. Some cheered him when they saw him riding along the French lines; others were happy to drink his health, if only in admiration of a brave young man.

  Hopes of a restoration were still high, and would remain so as long as France and Britain were at war. The 1707 Treaty of Union was known to be unpopular in Scotland, and the Jacobites there were fierce against union. Their leader, George Lockhart of Carnwath, whose father, the Lord President of the Court of Session, had been murdered in the high street of Edinburgh by a disappointed litigant, had been the only out-and-out opponent of union among the commissioners appointed by Queen Anne to consider it. Without union, there was a chance of a Jacobite restoration; this would be much diminished if union was achieved – which was after all the prime purpose of any union in the eyes of the English government.

  The treaty was made, but its immediate unpopularity raised Jacobite hopes. Louis was persuaded to sanction an invasion. Six thousand French infantry were put aboard a fleet of more than twenty ships commanded by the Comte de Forbin, a famous privateer. He himself was sceptical, consenting to take the command only when the troops were transferred from slow transports to fast-sailing privateers. He had reason to be doubtful, for British spies were active, and ships of the Royal Navy appeared off Dunkirk, where, by mischance, the young King was confined to bed with measles. But then the wind changed, James recovered, and Forbin consented to sail. He was contemptuous of the quality of the Jacobites on board and declared that the young king – James was not yet twenty – was the only one who showed any courage. Forbin displayed no great spirit himself. His little fleet entered the Firth of Forth, but was shadowed by vessels of the Royal Navy. James begged to be put ashore, alone if necessary, but Forbin would have none of it, and aborted the enterprise.

  James had prepared a proclamation to be issued on landing. It would appeal ‘to his good people of his ancestral Kingdom of Scotland’ to break the parliamentary union. He would leave everything, he promised, to a newly elected Scottish parliament. Such an appeal would have won him support, for implicit in i
t was an undertaking not to disrupt the Church settlement of 1688–9 that had re-established the Presbyterian Kirk at the expense of the Episcopalians – unless Parliament chose to amend it. But there was no landing.

  The danger of invasion and a Jacobite rising alarmed the government. Any noble or laird suspected of Jacobite sympathies who could be apprehended was put under arrest. But most remained at liberty and Edinburgh was almost undefended. The castle garrison was tiny and short of ammunition. Its commander, the Earl of Leven, was ready to withdraw. An English agent reported that the little Scottish home army – most of the regiments were serving under Marlborough in the Netherlands – was ‘debauched’ and would join the Pretender.

  This might have been the best chance the Jacobites ever had. It was the only time when France supplied a sizeable force that came within sight of Scotland. Union then had few supporters in Scotland. If Forbin had landed his troops, James might have been master of his ‘ancestral kingdom’. But unnerved by the presence of the English ships that chivvied him up the North Sea, Forbin did not dare to follow his orders. James wept in anger and shame.

  Nevertheless, Jacobite hopes rose again as the war became unpopular in England and the Tories – the High Church party – returned to power determined to make peace. Their leaders were even ready to contemplate changing the succession. They were in contact with the exiled court. If James was to change his religion and abjure Catholicism, might he not be more acceptable than his distant German cousin, the Elector of Hanover? But James, though of an amiable temper, had all the characteristic obstinacy of the Stuarts.

  Surely, he suggested, his own constancy in this matter was proof that he would keep his promise to maintain the religion of his kingdoms as by law established? This was hardly good enough. Memories of his father’s conduct and policies were too recent, still warm. If he became a member of the Church of England, he might be king. While he remained a Catholic, he must remain an exile.

  Anne died, and the Elector of Hanover became George I. The Tories, whom the new King disliked and distrusted, were dismissed from office and found themselves in the wilderness. Among those rejected was John Erskine, Earl of Mar, formerly a promoter of union. He took umbrage and became a Jacobite. Now a man of forty, Mar had, like others, already played both sides in his time; nevertheless, his switch surprised many, and his inconstancy would earn him the nickname of ‘Bobbing Johnnie’.

  His actions may have been prompted by pique, but he was not alone in being ready to conspire or even rebel. Tory England was rife with discontent. Even the Duke of Ormonde, Marlborough’s successor as captain-general of the army, had been dismissed. The Tories were out, and saw no prospect of returning to office while George was king; they might, however, come in again with the Pretender. It was no longer only the wilder spirits among them who were tempted by the Jacobite alternative. Plans were laid for a rising in England, and both Ormonde and Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, were involved. Then Bolingbroke blundered. Highly intelligent, but a poor judge of men, nervous about what might be known of his correspondence with James, he consulted Marlborough, whom he had treated shamefully, and who consequently disliked him. Marlborough, not innocent of communication with St-Germains himself, hinted that Bolingbroke was indeed in danger of arrest – though in truth there was no evidence against him. Alarmed, he now provided the evidence by fleeing to France. By July 1715 he was James’s secretary of state, a shadow minister in a shadow government-in-exile.

  Unrest was widespread. In May there had been a Jacobite riot in Oxford where the authorities, being themselves sympathetic to the exiled King, took no action. The same month the Foot Guards demonstrated outside St James’s and seemed on the point of mutiny. On 10 June, the Pretender’s birthday, there were more Jacobite demonstrations: in Manchester, Leeds, Somerset and Gloucestershire. The Riot Act was renewed; impeachments of Tory leaders moved in the Commons. Troops were brought into London and billeted in Hyde Park. The Guards were purged of suspect officers and a colonel in the First Regiment of Foot Guards was arrested, accused of having accepted a commission from the Pretender and of having started to enlist men on his behalf. Ormonde was impeached, though no warrant for his arrest was issued. Then he too slipped over to France to join James at St-Germains.

  Such was the mood when Mar came north to his estate on Deeside. He left plans for a simultaneous rising in England. Sir William Wyndham, formerly Secretary at War, Lord Lansdowne and Sir Richard Vyvyan would raise the West Country. Lord Derwentwater, grandson of Charles II, and the actress Mary Davis (and therefore James’s second cousin) would lead the Jacobites of northern England along with Thomas Forster, MP for Northumberland; and of course there would be help from France. No wonder there was high excitement in St-Germains, chilled only by awareness of the ubiquity of Hanoverian spies.

  In the late summer of 1715, Mar sent out invitations to a hunting party in the hills above Braemar. This was a traditional event at that time of the year, and so provided adequate, if not wholly convincing, cover. Invitations were dispatched to all known sympathisers in the north-east and Highlands. Mar made what a contemporary but hostile historian described as ‘a publick speech, full of invective against the Protestant Succession in general and King George in particular’.1 He explained that though he had formerly been active in support of the Treaty of Union, he could now see his error, and would do what he could to make the Scots again a free people, enjoying their ancient liberties, now, on account of ‘that cursed Union’, delivered into the hands of the English.

  He then displayed his commission from James as major-general of the army in Scotland, and promised French help and a simultaneous rising in England (which some may have thought sat oddly with his promise to end the union); and things were under way – even though James himself had not yet arrived in Scotland.

  Under way but not exactly on the move. Mar dithered. Though he had some seven thousand men by mid-October and had occupied Perth, he hesitated to commit his army to battle against the much smaller Hanoverian force commanded by the Duke of Argyll, which was based at Stirling. It should have been obvious that the Jacobites had to defeat Argyll before he received reinforcements from the south, but Mar was no general. One small detachment of the Jacobite army, commanded by Mackintosh of Borlum, crossed the Forth and linked up with the English Jacobites, only to be defeated at Preston. Meanwhile the promised help from France did not appear.

  At last, in November, Mar moved towards Dunblane to engage Argyll at Sheriffmuir in the foothills of the Ochils. The battle was mismanaged on both sides, Argyll, though a veteran commander under Marlborough, making almost as many mistakes as Mar. But the Jacobites had the advantage in numbers and should have won. However, Argyll held his ground and Mar withdrew. Though regarded by both sides and many historians as a drawn and inconclusive battle, Sheriffmuir was in reality a serious strategic defeat for the Jacobites.

  Effectively the rising was over, in Scotland as well as England, for Argyll was now reinforced by six thousand Dutch troops commanded by another Marlborough veteran, General Cadogan. Yet there was still a last melancholy act to be played. James himself arrived in Scotland, landing at Peterhead on 22 December, six weeks after Sheriffmuir. He had been delayed, once again, by adverse weather – the Stuarts rarely had luck with the weather – and also by the attempts of the British ambassador in Paris, Lord Stair, to arrange his assassination – a grisly task for which Stair’s heredity well suited him, since his father, the first Earl, had been the prime organiser of the Massacre of Glencoe. But James was too late. There was nothing he could do – not even raise the spirits of his army, which was melting away like snow-wreaths in thaw. He left for France early in February, and never saw Scotland again.

  Still, he did not give up. The failure of the ’15 rising was regarded as a check; no more. Admittedly things were running against the cause. Treatment of the captured English Jacobites had been severe enough to render others cautious in the future, uncomfortably aware that they ha
d a joint in their neck. Moreover, Louis XIV, constant in friendship to James as to his father before him, had died in 1715, and the French government, now headed by his nephew the Duc d’Orléans as regent for the infant Louis XV, was so eager for good relations with Britain that it expelled James from the country and he withdrew to Avignon, still a possession of the Pope. But European politics were lively and there were other possible allies. There was the warrior-king of Sweden, Charles XII, who loathed the Elector of Hanover; but unfortunately a sniper’s bullet did for him in 1718. That left Spain, now at odds with France, and with an ambitious chief minister, Cardinal Alberoni, an Italian by birth, who loved intrigue and saw advantages for his adopted country in the restoration of the Stuarts. So James, in disguise and by a tortuous route, to evade English spies and assassins, made his way to Spain. Ormonde joined him there, and in 1719 a new enterprise was hatched.

  A Spanish fleet would land Ormonde and Spanish troops in the west of England, while another smaller force commanded by the Earl Marischal of Scotland would be put ashore in the north. Once again the wind turned against the Jacobites. Ormonde’s fleet was scattered in a storm. Meanwhile the Earl Marischal had sailed with a few hundred Spanish soldiers. He would be joined by his brother, James Keith, and the Marquis of Tullibardine, son of the Duke of Atholl, with another small force. Tullibardine believed he had a commission to take command, and produced what purported to be one, and the Earl Marischal yielded place. Unfortunately while the Earl Marischal had had a plan of campaign – to march rapidly on Inverness – Tullibardine had none. So though his brother, Lord George Murray, came up with a detachment of the Atholl men, and the outlaw Rob Roy Macgregor appeared with a small band of ruffians, this rising, lacking any sense of direction and winning no new support, never got going. A government force met them in Glenshiel. The Jacobite leaders made off as best they could, while the wretched Spaniards were taken as prisoners to Edinburgh, whence they were in time repatriated. And that was the last Jacobite rising for a quarter of a century.