A history of England

by Charles Oman

Mar was a mere politician; he was destitute of force of character, and had earned the dishonourable name of "Bobbing John" by his fickle and shifty conduct. No worse leader could have been found to command the horde of high-spirited, jealous, and quarrelsome mountaineers whom he had called to arms.

Failures of the insurrection in the West of England.

When the news of Mar's rising was noised abroad, the Jacobites in the Scottish Lowlands and in Northumberland gathered themselves together according to their promise. But the insurrections in Devonshire and Wales, on which the Pretender had been counting, did not take place. The Whig Government had sent most of its available troops to the West of England, and had arrested the chief Jacobites of those parts, so that the Duke of Ormonde, on landing near Plymouth, found no support, and hastily returned to France. But Scotland and Northumberland were all ablaze, and it seemed that the throne of George I. was in great danger, for the army available against the insurgents was less than 10,000 strong, owing to the reductions which the Tories had carried out after the peace of Utrecht.

Battle of Preston.

But the mistakes and feebleness of the Jacobite leaders sufficed to wreck their enterprise. The insurgents on the English and Scottish Border united, and advanced into Lancashire, where Roman Catholics were many and Toryism strong. But their imbecile and cowardly leader, Thomas Forster, allowed himself to be surrounded at Preston by a force of 1000 cavalry under General Carpenter, and tamely laid down his arms after a slight skirmish, though his men outnumbered the regulars by three to one. He and all his chief supporters, the Earls of Derwentwater, Nithsdale, Nairn, Carnwath and Wintoun, and Lord Kenmure, were sent prisoners to London (November 12, 1715).

Battle of Sheriffmuir.

Meanwhile Mar had gathered an army of 10,000 men, and had seized Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and the whole of the north of Scotland; but, with an unaccountable sluggishness, he lingered north of the Tay, and made no attempt to capture Edinburgh or to overrun the Lowlands. He allowed the Duke of Argyle, who had taken post at Stirling with 3000 men, to maintain the line of the Forth, and to keep separate the two areas of insurrection. It was only on the very day of the surrender of Preston that Mar at last consented to move southward from Perth. Argyle advanced to meet him, and then ensued the indecisive battle of Sheriffmuir. In this fight each army routed the left wing of the other, and then retired towards its base. Mar's bad generalship and the petty quarrels of the clans had neutralized the vast advantage of numbers which the Jacobites possessed (November 13, 1715).

Mar's army disperses.

Mar brought his army back to Perth in a mutinous and discontented condition; each chief laid on another the loss of the expected victory, and the Highlanders began to melt away to their homes. It was to no purpose that James Stuart himself at last appeared, to endeavour to rally his dispirited followers. The Pretender was a slow and ungenial young man, with a melancholy face and a hesitating manner. He failed to inspire his followers with the enthusiasm which he did not himself possess, and his cause continued to lose ground. When Argyle, largely reinforced from England, began to move northward, James deserted his army and took ship for France. The remnants of Mar's once formidable host then disbanded themselves; the chiefs fled over-sea or submitted to Argyle, while the clansmen dispersed to their valleys.

Thus ended in ignominious failure the great rising of 1715. The Whigs took no very cruel revenge on the insurgents. Two peers, the Lords Derwentwater and Kenmure, [51] were beheaded, and about 30 persons of meaner rank hanged. As the years went by, most of the Jacobite chiefs were pardoned and returned to England. Even Bolingbroke was allowed to come back from exile in 1722.