The Jacobites in Scotland: a brief introduction

The Jacobite movement has produced some of the most familiar events and personalities in Scottish History. Images of Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora MacDonald are mainstays of Scottish iconography, and from Robert Burns to Outlander, Jacobitism infuses popular culture. Yet the omnipresence of this sanitised and romanticised version of Jacobitism tends to obscure the movement’s real history. So, who were the real Jacobites? What did they believe in? What did they fight for, and how did they go about it? And what, ultimately, happened to them?

Jacobites and Jacobitism

Jacobitism was born in the revolution of 1688-91, which overthrew the Catholic king, James VII of Scotland and II of England, in favour of his Protestant daughter and son-in-law, Mary II and William of Orange. During his short reign (1685-8/9), James’s guiding aim had been to secure toleration for his co-religionists, and in pursuit of this he had often behaved in ways that, to his opponents, appeared tyrannical. His deposition had therefore been widely supported, but certainly not universally so: James continued to enjoy significant support, particularly in Ireland, with its predominantly Catholic population, and in