Quote:
Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
More like ex-pat, anti-haggis, pants wearing traitors, who outlawed my family under penalty of death, for 200 years.
If Scotland produced significant potatoes, the truth would be more evident.  |
*chuckles*
ahuh.
I am guessing tnen that your ancestors were part of the 45ers.
The 45 rebellion was not a battle between the English and the Scots - it was a battle between the old line of the monarchy (catholic) versus the new line ofthe monarchy (protestant). It was, at its core, a religious conflict and there were sympathies on both sides in England and Scotland. It gets played out as a nationalist conflict because the Highland Scots saw it that way - they were predominantly supporters of the original catholic line and saw the conflict in terms of a push for Scotish nationhood, though in fact what they were seeking was a return of the House of Stuart to the
British throne. And there was certainly an element of English nationalism on the other side, who saw the conflict in terms of putting down a 'Scottish' rebellion. But there were catholic monarchists in England too (tories) and there were protestant suppporters of the new line in Scotland (mainly in the lowlands).
It was a vicious conflict - but one of the things that made it so vicious was that the catholic supporters of the old line drew military support from the French against the rest of Britain. This was right in the middle of the War of the Austrian Succession - with the British fighting the French on the continent. As far as many in Britain were concerned (Scottish and English)this was treason. British soldiers, French and Scottish were engaged in a bloody war against the French forces, and there was a general fear of a French invasion at this time.
The way the Jacobites were treated (and indeed the way catholics in general were treated) was truly terrible. The protestant majority were terrified of a return to an absolutist monarch in line with the other catholic monarchs of Europe, and in particular the French king - they had only recently shaken off absolutist monarchy in favour of a parliamentary system with the king at least partially subject to and his powers limited by that parliament. They also feared that the return of the House of Stuart would effectively allow a 'puppet' king for the French (given his reliance on French support) to sit on the British throne.
The Jacobites bringing in French support and inviting the French to invade England on their behalf heightened that sense of danger from catholic absolutism. The timing of it, when most of the British army was on the continent fighting the French and their allies heightened the sense of the Jacobites as traitors.
So much so that it heralded another two hundred years of anti-catholic sentiment in Britain.
In reality it wasn't even the Scotish Highlanders who invited the French in - it was the English Tories. They were ardent supporters of the old monarchy, both in terms of many of them being catholics but also in terms of being traditionalists (they had opposed the settlement that brought in the protestant line as a break from the natural line of succession).
Things are rarely as simple as they appear at first glance - doubly so for pretty much anything that happens in the British Isles :p
This gives a decent potted history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_rising_of_1745
The result of the uprising, whicih ended in the appallingly bloody Battle of Culloden was that the British government sought to ensure such an uprising never happened again. Because the Stuart powerbase in britain was primarily in the Highlands of Scotland, actions were very much focused on the Highland Scots - there was an act passed to remove the heritable jurisdictions from Scottish lords, and the wearing of traditional highland dress was prohibited.
It gets remembered in terms of a Scottish battle against the English for independent Scotland - but that's not what it was at the time. The Highland Scots were not attempting to break away from the union - they were supporting an attempt to restore the original Scottish monarchy to the British throne. Their support was garnered in part by calls to a sense of Scottish nationalism.