Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1945 MEMORIES OF “THE ’45”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 1 December 1945, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1945 MEMORIES OF “THE ’45”

TRAGEDY has dogged the footsteps of many royal houses, but few have such a continuous record of ill-fortune as the Scottish House of Stuart. The family took its name from Walter, the High Steward of Scotland, who married Marjory, daughter of Robert Bruce. Their son came to the throne as Robert 11, and from him were descended seven kings and queens who sat on the throne of Scotland before the union with England. Of these, two were murdered, two were slain in battle, one was executed, and one perished miserably in failure and disgrace. “It is a series of disasters unparalleled in history, even in Scotland in an age when life was short and death was violent.” Even after the union with England, when the Stuarts passed into a more decorous environment, disaster still pursued them. Charles I met a shameful death on the scaffold, and James II was driven from his kingdom in ignominious flight. With him the main line of Stuart sovereigns came to an end. but both his son and his grandson made determined attempts to recover their lost inheritance. The second of these incursions was the famous “Forty-Five,” whose bicentenary falls this year; for a few brief weeks it came close to success, and its varied fortunes provide one of the most colourful stories in British history.

Its leader was Charles Edward, better known as ’ Bonnie Prince Charlie,” the young Pretender, and on a superficial view few men could have been better fitted to lead a gallant enterprise. He was young, bold and handsome, with a full share of that grace and charm which enabled the Stuarts to exact a passionate loyalty from men far better than themselves. Vowing to raise his standard in his native land, “if he took but a single footman with him,” he derided the caution of his French allies, and landed in the Highlands on 25th July, 1745, with only seven followers. The chiefs were at first aghast at his rashness, but the Camerons- and Macdonalds soon caught his enthusiasm, and in a few weeks he was at the head of 1500 men. Marching south, he entered Edinburgh and took up his quarters at Holyrood Palace. At Prestonpans, on the road, to Dunbar, he won his first notable victory. “The enemy ran like rabets,” wrote the Prince (the spelling is his own); “not a single bayonet was blood-stained.” All Scotland acknowledged him as King, and after skilfully evading an army at Newcastle he marched into England by way of Carlisle and Manchester. On 4th December, 1745, two hundred years ago almost to the day, he entered Derby, only 125 miles from London. Here he paused to make his preparations for the final march; but at this very moment, when success seemed within his grasp, the members of his Council suddenly advised that he should go no further. The Prince’s mortification was intense, for if he agreed the hopes of years must be dashed to the ground.

On the face of it he might well have stuck to his own opinion and

continued the advance. His army was elated with an unbroken run of four months’ success, and in London the agitation bordered on panic. The

shops had put up their shutters and the banks were crowded with anxious customers; the King was prepared to retire to Hanover; the Secretary of State Newcastle was pacing his room in an agony of doubt as to whether he should join the insurgents himself. There was, however, good reason for the action of the Prince’s Council. In England Jacobite feeling had clearly shown itself to be lukewarm; only 200 adherents had come forward during the march from Carlisle to Derby, and Manchester, from which much had been expected, had contented itself with a bonfire and a gift of two thousand pounds. Two armies were closing in on either side of the rebels, and a third covered London. Wisely or unwisely, the Prince gave the order to turn back, and on 6th December—2oo years ago on Thursday next —the long retreat commenced. The Highlanders reached Scotland safely and won a victory at Falkirk in January; but on 16th April 1746 the last campaign fought on British soil came to an end with the utter defeat of the insurgents on Culloden Moor, near Inverness. The Jacobite army fought with desperate bravery, the bodies of the dead lying three and four deep. The Prince proved himself as bold and resourceful in failure as he had been in success; for four months he remained in the Highlands, eluding his enemies only by his own vigilance and the clansmen’s; loyalty until he was rescued by a French vessel and taken to the Continent.

The rebellion thus collapsed in utter failure; and no further attempt to restore the exiled Stuarts was ever made, although there is good reason for believing that Charles Edward returned secretly to England in 1748. and spent some weeks in London. Looking back from the vantage point of two hundred years, we can see now that the attempt could never have attained permanent success: the Prince might conceivably have seized London if he had pressed on, but the Hanoverian tradition of peaceful government was too firmly established to be overthrown by an adventurer. Moreover, it is doubtful whether Charles Edward, for all his bravery and charm, had the solid qualities necessary to establish a new regime. After the Forty-five he went rapidly downhill: in later life he became a heavy drinker, which he naively attributed to the need for fortifying himself against the rigours of the Highland climate. When he died in 1788 he had long ceased to count for anything in the world of affairs. His pretensions passed to his brother Henry, styled Cardinal of York, who lived in Rome as a pensioner of the English King to whose throne he had once aspired. With his death in 1807 the cider line of Stuarts came to an end. and the Jacobite cause passed out of the realm of serious politics, to be remembered simply as an interesting and romantic episode in English history.