Jacobites

Supporters of the exiled Stuart King James II (Latin: Jacobus) and his descendants. The Jacobite movement was a political movement with the aim of undermining the Hanoverian regime and restoring the Stuarts as the ruling monarchical family. The movement began in the course of the Glorious Revolution (1688) and was crushed as a political force after 1746.

Origins

As a consequence of the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the Catholic James II went into exile and his daughter Mary II and her husband William III of Orange were crowned king and queen. Supporters of James II advocated the succession of the Catholic House of Stuart following the laws of (male) primogeniture and asserted their customary loyalism by revolting against the regime and the Protestant line of succession, especially after the death of the last Stuart monarch, Anne, and the change of dynasties from the House of Stuart to the House of Hanover. Several Jacobite risings took place.

Composition and Forms

Many Jacobites were Scottish and Scotland became "one of the cockpits of conflict" (Speck 18), because the Stuarts retained much more support there. But also English and Irish people became associated with the Jacobite movement, as well as Anglican Tories. Jacobites were both plebeian as well as patrician and Szechi states that "Jacobitism generated an introverted commensality within British society, i.e. it produced a self-sustaining, recognisable minority who rejected the social, political and religious order installed after 1688" (12). Szechi continues by explaining that Jacobite society revolved around networks of kinship and sociability and was rather exclusive. It comprised three layers. There were the hard-core, ideologically commited Jacobites who brought up their children accordingly. Then there were the politcally embittered who had "simply lost in the political game and were seeking a radical way to reenter the fray" (Szechi 17). And then there were some Jacobites who can be seen as simply adventurers that were driven to Jacobitism due to the fact that they had no other means of mending their fortunes. The Jacobite ideology did not only manifest itself through revolts and risings, but also culturally and in every day life. Jacobites sang special songs (e.g. the Cavalier anthem "The King Shall Enjoy His Own again"), read poetry evoking the good old days and hang portraits of the exiled Stuart family in their houses.

Sources:

Cook, Chris; Stevenson, John. The Longman Handbook of Modern British History 1714-1987. New York: Longman, 1983.

Speck, W.A. A Concise History of Britain 1707-1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Szechi, Daniel. The Jacobites. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994.