Published June 30, 2024 | Version CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0
Journal article Open

Imprisoned Petticoats: Data from the Prison Records of the Jacobite Rising of 1745

Creators

  • 1. Department of History, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, United Kingdom.

Description

Abstract: Women of the Jacobite Rising of 1745 significantly contributed to the military power of the Jacobite army. Their participation with the legal system reveals important information about women’s place before the law in eighteenth-century Britain. Women of the period were able and willing to engage in Jacobite intrigue with a lessened degree of danger from capital punishment which made them important to the Jacobite movement by allowing them to assist with escape attempts, military recruitment, and espionage without the danger from judicial repercussions that their male counterparts could face. They proved to be a significant force for the Jacobite political movement, and the hopes of the Stuart claimants would not have lasted as long without the significant support received from the female demographic in eighteenth-century Britain.

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.54105/ijssl.D1127.03040624
EISSN
2583-0643

Dates

Accepted
2024-06-15
Manuscript received on 22 May 2024 | Revised Manuscript received on 01 June 2024 | Manuscript Accepted on 15 June 2024 | Manuscript published on 30 June 2024.

References

  • Darren Scott Layne, "Spines of the Thistle: The Popular Constituency of the Jacobite Rising in 1745-6" (dissertation, 2016), pp. 20-21.
  • The accounting for Carlisle is difficult to place precisely since the prison records do not always differentiate whether the women were captured at Carlisle or sent to Carlisle and captured elsewhere. It does not appear in the records that women were shipped from other prisons to Carlisle giving credence to the assumption that the prisoners held at Carlisle were most likely captured at the city. Additionally, the location of Carlisle was not suitable to serve as a long-term prison site. Women captured later in the rising and during the pacification of the Highlands were often stowed in prison ships, Edinburgh, and eventually London.
  • Frank McLynn, The Jacobite Army in England 1745; the Final Campaign (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1983), p. 31.
  • The executions of prisoners at Kensington Commons had a deleterious effect on the English population who felt sympathy for the victims. Evidence for this sympathy was present in the case of James Dawson whose betrothed died from the horror of seeing the archaic execution method of hanged, drawn, and quartered being inflicted upon her fiancé. Thomas Bayly Howell, ed., A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors, vol. XVIII (London: T. C. Hansard, 1813), pp. 375-376.
  • NLS MS.287
  • Hugh Douglas, Flora Macdonald: The Most Loyal Rebel (Stroud: Sutton, 2003), p. 63; Maggie Craig, Damn' Rebel Bitches: The Women of the '45, (London: Mainstream Publishing, 1997), p. 86.
  • The development of this viewpoint likely comes from two areas. First, female Jacobites were not above referencing their plight in order to garner public sympathy. Second, governments on the continent were not above executing women for participation in treasonous activity. A prime example can be seen in the case of France's assimilation of Rousillon in the seventeenth century and the execution of Theresa de Camprodon I d'Armengol, among others. While Camprodon was executed for charges of murder, her family was identified as leaders in the Catalan resistance leading to the execution being politically motivated. David Stewart, Assimilation and Acculturation in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Roussillon and France, 1659-1715 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997), pp. 88-91.
  • NLS MS.289 leaf 4
  • Bruce Gordon Seton and Jean Gordon Arnot, eds., The Prisoners of the '45, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish History Society, 1929), pp. 84-85; William Anne Albemarle, The Albemarle Papers, Being the Correspondence of William Anne Albemarle, Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, 1746-1747: With an Appendix of Letters from Andrew Fletcher, Lord Justice-Clerk, to the Duke of Newcastle, 1746-1748. Edited with Introduction and Notes by Charles Sanford Terry (Aberdeen: Printed for the University, 1902), p. 349.
  • Bruce Gordon Seton and Jean Gordon Arnot, eds., The Prisoners of the '45, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish History Society, 1929), p. 353.
  • James Johnstone, A Memoir of the 'Forty-Five', ed. Brian Rawson (London: Folio Society, 1970), pp. 169-170.
  • Ibid.,.
  • Douglas, Flora Macdonald: The Most Loyal Rebel, pp. 54-56.
  • Ibid., pp. 72-73.
  • Ibid.,
  • Ibid., p. 80.
  • Flora Fraser, Pretty Young Rebel: The Life of Flora Macdonald (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2023), p. 82-83.
  • Van Keppel, Willem A., Letter from the Earl of Abermarle to the Secretary of State, From The National Archives, (Accessed February 18, 2023).