James Francis Edward Stuart, “The Old Pretender”
The popular outcry in Scotland against the 1707 Act of Union may well have convinced Louis XIV of France that the time had come to play the Jacobite card, especially as James Edward Stuart was now nearly twenty years of age. In fact, after Marlborough’s victories at Blenheim (1704) and Ramillies (1706), the French king had already dispatched Colonel Nathaniel Hooke to Scotland to assess Scottish support for a French invasion aimed at restoring the Stuart dynasty. However Hooke’s glowing report of Jacobite sentiment among the Scots, largely gained at second hand, was mostly wishful thinking. And so it proved in 1708, when Louis finally authorised a naval expedition to land James Edward Stuart upon the shores of Scotland.
French preparations were substantial enough to demonstrate that the expedition was no mere diversionary tactic. A fleet of five warships, together with more than twenty frigates, mostly French privateers, assembled at Dunkirk during January and February 1708. When the fleet finally set sail on 6 March 1708, 5,000 French troops were aboard the ships in twelve battalions, with enough arms to equip another 13,000 men. However, the two Frenchmen in command of the expedition itself had no interest in its success. Marshal de Matignon had to be bribed with the promise of honours before he would even accept command of the troops, while Admiral de Forbin told the French king to his face that the whole scheme was just a `forlorn hope’.
James, Duke of Berwick, evidently said much the same thing to Louis XIV. He was the natural son of James VII of Scotland by Marlborough’s sister Arabella Churchill, making him an elder half-brother to James Edward Stuart. Now a Marshal of France and an outstanding general, he was the natural leader of any such expedition, since he enjoyed the full confidence of the French king. But he evidently knew nothing of the plans, arriving back at Versailles from service in Spain only a few days after the invasion force set sail.
The French fleet sailed north from Dunkirk through the North Sea, intending to land James and his forces on the southern shores of the Forth to a pre-arranged signal. The expedition seemed to be accident prone from the start, having been delayed because James had gone down with an attack of measles and, barely recovered, had come on board at the last moment. The icy waters of the North Sea were stormy and James and his attendants were all horribly seasick. The fleet sailed too far north through faulty navigation, missed the original rendezvous and eventually anchored off Crail at the mouth of the Forth. A small party went ashore at Pittenweem but they were met by only a handful of James’s supporters, and the French commanders refused James’s desperate pleas to be landed. By now, it was clear that the Jacobite promise to Louis XIV that `the whole nation will arise upon the arrival of its king’ was an empty boast.
Next morning, sixteen men-of-war under Admiral Sir George Byng arrived off the Firth of Forth, after pursuing the French fleet north from Dunkirk. A running battle then began as the French ships sailed north towards Buchanness, chased by Byng. He then returned to Leith, in case the French fleet had doubled back south. In fact, it sailed right round the north coast of Scotland to arrive back in Dunkirk, after losing several ships in atrocious weather to the west of Ireland. The whole expedition had proved an utter flop, although it did cause panic in London with a run on the Bank of England, demonstrating the vulnerability of the government in London to the Jacobite threat.
On landing, James had planned to issue a `Declaration to the Scottish Nation’, urging the loyal people of his ancient realm of Scotland to break the Union with England. A free Parliament would then be called in Edinburgh to decide upon the constitution, especially with regard to the Church. However, he only attracted the support of some gentry in Stirlingshire, whose `erratic journeyings’ were later judged as hardly significant enough to make them guilty of treason. Otherwise, the country remained quiet, as might have been expected in the Lowlands. The Presbyterian majority to the south of the River Tay had a vested interest in the 1707 Act of Union, which had finally guaranteed the very existence of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, established by law as the national Church. They were not likely to rise to restore a practising Catholic to the throne of a Protestant country.
Equally, the great magnates could not be expected to rally to the Jacobite cause, at least not for the time being. After all, only a year previously, it was the peers of the realm, supported by the gentry and the burgesses, who had pushed through the 1707 Act of Union against much popular opposition. They had especially benefited from its financial provisions, which had granted compensation to the shareholders of the now-defunct Company of Scotland, wound up under the Act itself. Indeed, the original capital invested in the Company was repaid to all its shareholders with interest at 5%, amounting to the grand sum of £232,884 sterling. All levels of society benefited but the great magnates gained most of all, since they had invested the largest sums in the Company of Scotland.
Nevertheless, the government acted swiftly in the aftermath of the failed invasion, arresting all those Scots suspected of Jacobite sympathies, including the Dukes of Atholl and Gordon, the Earls of Aberdeen, Breadalbane, Erroll, Nithsdale and Strathmore, and the Earl Marischal. They eventually obtained their freedom by finding financial security for their future conduct, with payments varying between £3,000 and £5,000. Several Highland chieftains, such as Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, Alan MacDonald of ClanRanald, Coll MacDonald of Keppoch, Alasdair Mac- Donald of Glengarry and Robert Stewart of Appin, were also taken into custody at the same time.
On his return to France, James Edward Stuart took service with Louis XIV, like his father before him. At the Battles of Oudenarde (1708) and Malplaquet (1709), he, therefore, found himself facing the very country- men he claimed as his own subjects. James distinguished himself with great courage, especially at the Battle of Malplaquet, where he charged twelve times at the `enemy’ lines with the Maison du Roi, (the king’s bodyguard). Afterwards, the two armies faced one another indecisively for more than a year. By July 1710, James was a familiar figure to the enemy troops serving Queen Anne in the Allied army. Soon it looked as if they might even declare their loyalty to him, since they cheered and waved their hats whenever he was seen riding along the French lines on a white charger.
As Sir Charles Petrie commented in The Jacobite Movement:
It has rightly been said that this was the moment of all others when an almost bloodless revolution and restoration might have taken place, and had James possessed the initiative of his elder son [Charles Edward Stuart] he would have paid a surprise visit to the British camp, in which event the course of history might well have changed; but James III was not Bonnie Prince Charlie, and . . . much water, and not a little blood, had to flow . . . before the succession to the three crowns [of England, Scotland and Ireland] was finally settled.
Eventually, James returned to Saint-Germain in September 1710 after his spell of active service in the French army, while his cause seemed to gain hold at Westminster.
