The Jacobite Rising was an attempt by James Francis Edward Stuart to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the exiled House of Stuart.
History[]
Background[]
James II of the House of Stuart was deposed in 1688, after repeated conflicts between him and Parliament. He was succeeded by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, King of theDutch Republic William of Orange. James and his son, James Francis Edward Stuart, fled to France. James II died in 1701, and his son resumed his father’s efforts to regain the throne.
Queen Anne, the last monarch of the House of Stuart, had named George I of the House of Hanover, a German nobleman and her second cousin, as her heir, as James was forbidden from inheriting the throne as a Catholic.
James and his Jacobite supporters sought to use the War of the Spanish Succession to their advantage, and plotted to regain the throne using French support. The war was in a deadlock, and the Spanish and French Empires hoped that an uprising in Scotland would force the English to withdraw troops from Continental Europe.
The Rising[]
The French assembled a large fleet of 30 small but fast privateer ships to transport the French troops to Scotland, where they would rendezvous with their supporters there. The fleet also had 5 warships to bolster their naval force. However, theRoyal Navy had been monitoring French activity for months.
After repeated delays in departure due to James’ illness with measles, as well as a storm, the French fleet arrived in Scotland. However, they struggled to find a suitable landing site, allowing the Royal Navy to catch up to them. Unable to do battle with the warships of the Royal Navy, the fleet was forced to flee back to France. Many of the Jacobite supporters in Scotland were arrested.
Aftermath[]
Stuart fled back to France, and would continue to try and shore up support to claim the throne. Benjamin Hornigold, an English privateer who had been a supporter of Stuart’s, fled to Nassau, where he became a pirate. He told his crew that if they remained with him, they would be soldiers fighting in a rebel navy to put the rightful king on the throne. Eventually, he realized that he and his men were nothing more than thieves. However, he still had contacts in Edinburgh in 1715, who informed him that they began calling Stuart the Old Pretender.
Trivia[]
- It is unclear which Jacobite Rising the show was referring to, as there was one in the year that the show begins (1715). However, Hornigold says that he has been a pirate for a decade after a failed Jacobite rebellion, making the failed invasion that occurred in 1708 in real life the closest event.
