The 1715 rebellion

The Earl of Mar

Queen Anne's death in August 1714 was followed by the peaceful succession of the Elector of Hanover as King George I of Great Britain. English Jacobites, who were thought to be planning an uprising in Wales, Devon and Cornwall were promptly rounded up, but in Scotland more ambitious plans were drawn up by John Erskine, Earl of Mar.

Mar was one of Scotland's most influential politicians and had actively supported the Union. But finding himself dismissed from his high government offices by the new King, he immediately opened negotiations with the exiled Jacobite court. At Braemar in September he raised the standard of the Old Pretender, proclaiming 'James VIII and III' as the Scots' lawful monarch and promising an end to the Union.

Within weeks Mar succeeded in mobilising a military force of 16,000 men, two-thirds of whom were from some 26 Highland clans and from the staunchly Episcopalian trading area of the north-east. He soon controlled much of the Highlands. His propaganda made use of anti-union sentiment to target those in the Lowlands otherwise unlikely to support Jacobitism. Support came from some of the wealthiest families in the Lowlands and included 18 Scottish peers. It was a rising of almost national proportions and expressed a vivid and threatening dissatisfaction with the Union.

Sheriffmuir: the rebellion disintegrates

But though the government forces commanded by the Duke of Argyll were outnumbered by three to one, Mar was an incompetent commander, and wasted his advantage, when the two sides met at the battle of Sheriffmuir, near Dunblane, on 13 November. The fighting was confused and inconclusive, but Mar withdrew his troops to his base at Perth, thinking he had won, rather than finishing off Argyll's much depleted force. Instead, Argyll gained time to regroup his forces. A Jacobite rebellion in England had meanwhile been put down by government forces at Preston in Lancashire.

Belatedly, the Pretender landed at Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, in December, but by then the initiative was lost and further military operations achieved nothing. Early in February 1716 the Pretender, accompanied by Mar, fled back to France.

Securing the British state

The 1715 rebellion exposed the critical weakness of the British state. The scale of the uprising showed that the government's problem was not simply of pacifying and controlling the Highlands, but of all of Scotland. Yet it was slow to act, lacking adequate resources. Punishment was confined only to leaders of the rebellion, a few of whom were executed or deprived of their estates, but many disaffected areas were left untouched. Legislation designed to subdue the Highlands through peaceful means was largely ineffectual.

It was not until the unrest and economic hardship of the mid 1720s that the government took firmer action, fearing the possibility of a new Jacobite rising. In 1724 General George Wade was put in charge of policing the Highlands, and over the next fifteen years he supervised the construction of a chain of fortresses and garrisons linked by 250 miles of roads and bridges, to enable the speedy movement of government troops around the region. It was confirmation of the government's continuing concern about the threat posed by Highland Jacobitism to the British state.