Origins of the 'Forty-five : $b and other papers relating to that rising
History
Origins of the 'Forty-five : $b and other papers relating to that rising
Jacobite Rebellion, 1745-1746
These papers, picked up after Culloden, are fragmentary and are not
easy reading without a knowledge of their general historical setting,
and this I have endeavoured to give in brief outline in the preceding
pages. They are particularly interesting as throwing glimpses of
light on the origins of the last Jacobite rising. They were written
before the collapse of that rising and before Murray, after the great
betrayal, had become a social outcast. Murray’s _Memorials_, edited for
the Scottish History Society by the late Mr. Fitzroy Bell, were written
thirteen years after Culloden as a history and a vindication. These
papers may be considered as memoranda or records of the business Murray
had been transacting, and they view the situation from a different
angle.
Some of the events mentioned in the _Memorials_ are told with fuller
detail in these papers; they also contain thirteen hitherto unpublished
letters, consisting for the most part of a correspondence between
Murray and the Chevalier de St. George and his secretary James Edgar.
But to my mind the chief interest of the papers lies in the fact that
they present a clue to the origin of the Jacobite revival which led up
to the ’Forty-five; that clue will be found in Murray’s note on page 25.
In 1901 the Headquarters Staff of the French Army issued a monograph
based on French State Papers, giving in great detail the project for
the invasion of Great Britain in 1744, and the negotiations which
led up to it. The book is entitled _Louis XV. et les Jacobites_, the
author being Captain Jean Colin of the French Staff. In his opening
sentence Captain Colin tells how the Chevalier de St. George was
living tranquilly in Rome, having abandoned all hope of a restoration,
when about the end of 1737 he received a message from his subjects
in Scotland informing him that the Scottish Highlanders would be
able, successfully, to oppose the Government troops then in Scotland.
In no English or Scottish history, so far as I am aware, has this
message from Scotland been emphasised, but in the French records it
is assumed as the starting-point of the movement on the part of the
French Government to undertake an expedition in favour of the Stuarts.
Murray refers to Glenbucket’s mission in the _Memorials_ (p. 2), though
very casually, and as if it were a matter of little moment, but the
insistence in French State Papers of the importance of the Scottish
message made it necessary to investigate the matter further.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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