Skirmish at Dunkeld 1715
Who Fought
History & Significance
The Jacobite rising of 1715 was an attempt by the exiled James Edward Stuart to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the Stuarts.
The rebellion was officially initiated on 27 August 1715 at Braemar in Aberdeenshire by the Earl of Mar. On 13 November, his forces engaged a government army under the Duke of Argyll at Sheriffmuir. The result was indecisive, and was followed by a Jacobite defeat at Preston in England the next day.
Although James himself landed in Scotland in December 1715, his presence failed to spark popular enthusiasm for the Jacobite cause. He returned to France in February 1716, ending the uprising.
The 1688 Glorious Revolution replaced the Catholic James II and VII with his Protestant daughter Mary II, and her Dutch husband William III, ruling as joint monarchs. Shortly before William's death in March 1702, the Act of Settlement 1701 definitively excluded Catholics from the throne, among them James's son, James Francis Edward Stuart. Since his Protestant half-sister Anne had no surviving children, the Act named her successor as the distantly related, but Protestant, Sophia of Hanover, who died two months before Anne in August 1714. This made Anne's heir presumptive Sophia's eldest son, George I of Great Britain (who had maternal descent from the House of Stuart), and gave the pro-Hanoverian Whigs control of government for the next 30 years.
French support had been crucial for the Stuart exiles, but their acceptance of the Protestant succession in Britain was part of the terms that ended the 1701–1714 War of the Spanish Succession. This ensured a smooth inheritance by George I in August 1714, and the Stuarts were later banished from France by the terms of the 1716 Anglo-French Treaty. The 1710–1714 Tory government had actively prosecuted their Whig opponents, who now retaliated, accusing the Tories of corruption: Robert Harley was imprisoned in the Tower of London while Lord Bolingbroke escaped to France and became James' new Secretary of State.
On 14 March 1715, James appealed to Pope Clement XI for help with a Jacobite rising: "It is not so much a devoted son, oppressed by the injustices of his enemies, as a persecuted Church threatened with destruction, which appeals for the protection and help of its worthy pontiff". On 19 August, Bolingbroke wrote to James that "…things are hastening to that point, that either you, Sir, at the head of the Tories, must save the Church and Constitution of England or both must be irretrievably lost for ever". Believing the great general Marlborough would join him, on 23 August James wrote to the Duke of Berwick, his illegitimate brother and Marlborough's nephew, that; "I think it is now more than ever Now or Never".
The ground they fought on
The site of Skirmish at Dunkeld 1715 lies on Southern Highland Group, bedrock that formed in the Middle Cambrian. The rock here is psammite and pelite.
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- Jacobite rising of 1715 · Wikipedia
- Battle of Dunkeld · Wikipedia
- How did the 1715 Rising begin? · Culloden Battlefield (blog)