English Jacobitism, 1710–1715; Myth and Reality

A complaint frequently voiced by historians of Jacobitism is that their subject is plagued by a breed of authors with a passion for secret agents, romantic uprisings, and princes in the heather. It is not so often admitted, however, just how intractable the professionals themselves find the topic and their substantial failure to give any coherent account of it. Jacobitism appears as the major issue in British politics in the early-eighteenth century; it was associated with wide-spread disorder, recurrent national crises, and a series of rebellions and attempted invasions; but its actual organization and the extent of its support remains surprisingly obscure. This is partly so because the source-material is notoriously difficult to handle and ranges from a mass of ciphered correspondence in the Stuart papers to the diplomatic archives of half-a-dozen European states. To study it is to enter a world both of illusion and deliberate misrepresentation. Would-be revolutionaries tended to imagine themselves perpetually on the verge of success, while it often suited the interests of the British government to assert that the nation was threatened with subversion and imminent invasion. But the weakness of Jacobite historiography is more fundamental than a problem with the sources. It lies in an addiction to detailed narrative unsupported by adequate analysis and a fixed assumption that the importance of the movement was its potential for effecting a revolution by armed force. This paper adopts a different approach. It examines the structure of the Jacobite organization and questions whether it was at any time between 1710 and 1715 capable of realising its aims; it argues rather that its activities contributed to a great popular myth, which was to be of critical significance in the struggle of men and parties which preceded the establishment of the Whig oligarchy.