Abstract
It is well known that there was a great deal of religious tension between Protestants and Catholics in eighteenth century Britain. What is far less well known is that this tension reached into the heart of the Jacobite movement. Protestant Jacobites were determined to prevent Catholicism coming back with King James ‘III and VIII’ if they succeeded in restoring him to the throne, and pressed him hard to make religious concessions that would limit the extent of Catholic power at the exiled court and in the event of a Stuart restoration. This essay analyses the political dynamics of the struggle that ensued and thus sheds new light on the internecine politics of the Jacobite movement and the character of the shadow monarch as he grew into his role as king over the water.
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Notes
- 1.
The term ‘Jacobite’, derived from Jacobus the Latin translation of James (as in James II and VII), referred to all the secret (and some not so secret) supporters of the exiled dynasty.
- 2.
See for examples of these: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Stuart Papers Belonging to His Majesty the King Preserved at Windsor Castle, 8 vols (1902–20; thereafter HMC, Stuart), i. 218–20, 236, 343–5, 361–2, 520–4.
- 3.
For examples of which see: Memoirs of Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury. Written by Himself, ed. W. E. Buckley 2 vols (Roxburghe Club, 1890), i. 319, 325; Letters of George Lockhart of Carnwath, 1698–1732, ed. Daniel Szechi (Scottish History Society, Edinburgh, 1989), pp. 181–2: Lockhart to James III and VIII, [Dryden?] 7 Dec. 1722.
- 4.
[Whitelocke Bulstrode], A Letter Touching the Late Rebellion, and What Means Led to It; and of the Pretender’s Title (1717), 30.
- 5.
[Anon], The Interest of England in Relation to Protestant Dissenters: In a Letter to the Right Reverend, the Bishop of ______ (1714), 27.
- 6.
John England, Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem. A Sermon Preached at Sherborne in the County of Dorset on the Publick Fast, March 15, 1709/10, a Little After the Rebellious Tumult Occasioned by Dr Sacheverell’s Tryal (1710), 7.
- 7.
Original Papers; Containing the Secret History of Great Britain, from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover, ed. James Macpherson, 2 vols (1775), i. 607.
- 8.
Bodleian Library, MS Carte 208, fol. 224a.
- 9.
HMC Stuart, i. 434, 443, 445: James to Bolingbroke, [Bar-le-Duc? and] Commercy, 30 Sept./10 Oct. and 10/21 Oct. 1715; i. 435: Bolingbroke to James, Paris, 7/18 Oct. 1715; i. 449: Bolingbroke’s draught of a declaration, amended by David Nairne [Oct. 1715]; i. 455: James to Lewis Innes, ‘Larmoisi’, 29 Oct./9 Nov. 1715; Lord Mahon, History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Aix-La-Chapelle, 3 vols (2nd edn, 1839) i., appendix, xxxvii–xxxviii.
- 10.
Stuart Papers Relating Chiefly to Queen Mary of Modena and the Exiled Court of King James II, ed. Falconer Madan, 2 vols (Roxburghe Club, 1889), ii. 425: [Early July, 1713]. Queen Mary implied she was willing to make this degree of commitment to the status quo on James’s behalf as early as 1702: National Records of Scotland (hereafter NRS), GD 26/8/139: Secretary of State Sir Charles Hedges to Chancellor James Ogilvy, earl of Seafield (copy), Whitehall, 19 May 1702 (this is an informer’s account of negotiations with the Jacobite Court by John Hamilton of Biel, baron Belhaven, on behalf of the Duke of Hamilton).
- 11.
HMC, Stuart iv. 13: James to [his Council?], [Perth] Jan. 1716.
- 12.
HMC Stuart, v. 515: James to Fr Honoré Gaillard, Fano, 17/28 Feb. 1718.
- 13.
In contrast to the interpretation advanced here it must be acknowledged that in 1715 James signed a secret agreement with the Spanish government promising to do his best to restore the British Isles to Catholicism (L. B. Smith 1982, 163). This, however, had more to do with Spanish politics than Jacobite ambitions. To receive promised financial support from Spain in 1715 the future King James was required to promise to deliver something meaningful in a Spanish political context. There is also a world of difference between doing one’s best within the restrictions of the law and the realms of the possible and being willing to do anything necessary to achieve a particular result. Hence, in the opinion of this writer, James’s conduct and statements in other contexts are more significant than his secret treaty commitments to Spain.
- 14.
Westminster Diocesan Archive, Old Brotherhood MSS, III pt 3, ep. 259: memo of a conversation with James II and VII by Sir Edward Hales, [St Germain] 23 May/2 June 1693.
- 15.
Original Papers, i. 606–7: ‘Copy of his Majesty’s Instructions sent into England’, 20 Feb./3 Mar. 1702.
- 16.
HMC Stuart, i. 218–20: ‘James VIII to his good people of his Ancient Kingdom of Scotland’, St Germain, 18/29 Feb. 1708; i. 343–5: Declaration for England, [Bar-le-Duc?] 3/14 Jan. 1715; Royal Archives, Windsor, Stuart Papers, Box 6/26: ‘His Majesty’s Most Gracious Declaration,’ Pesaro, 10/21 Mar. 1717.
- 17.
HMC Stuart, v. 244: Urbino, 18/29 Nov. 1717.
- 18.
HMC Stuart, ii. 187: formal opinion by Lewis Innes and Dr John Ingleton on whether James III and VIII can promise, ‘to protect and maintain the Church of England as established by law’, 15/26 May 1716.
- 19.
HMC Stuart, ii. 187: formal opinion by Innes and Ingleton, 15/26 May 1716.
- 20.
HMC Stuart, ii. 188: formal opinion by Innes and Ingleton, 15/26 May 1716.
- 21.
HMC Stuart, i. 449: Bolingbroke’s draught of a declaration, with amendments by James’s confidential secretary for Catholic correspondence, David Nairne [Oct. 1715].
- 22.
Mahon, History, i., appendix, xxxvii: Bolingbroke to James, Paris, 22 Oct./2 Nov. 1715; Sir Richard Steele, A Defence of the Crisis, Written by Mr. Steele. Containing, a Farther Vindication of the Late Happy Revolution. And the Protestant Succession to the Crown of England, in the Illustrious House of Hanover (1714), 22–23, 25. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Manchester – John Rylands. 9 Sept. 2010.
- 23.
The Life of James the Second, King of England, &c. Collected out of Memoirs Writ of his own Hand, ed. J. S. Clarke, 2 vols, (1816), ii. 508–10.
- 24.
Scottish Catholic Archives (thereafter SCA), BL 2/210/6: [David Nairne] to Thomas Innes, [Chaillot] 22 July/2 Aug. 1716.
- 25.
Stuart Papers, Box 6/26: ‘His Majesty’s Most Gracious Declaration,’ Pesaro, 10/21 Mar. 1717.
- 26.
Westminster Diocesan Archive, AAW, B6, item 21a: account of Richard Grahme, viscount Preston’s trial at the Old Bailey [in Roger Palmer, earl of Castlemaine’s hand], 17 Jan. 1690; AAW, B6, item 244: anon memo, 16 Dec. 1690; Old Brotherhood MSS, III pt. 3, ep. 231: copy ‘Sir William Ellis’s paper on occasion of the late earthquake’, [1692?]; La Courneuve, Archives étrangères, Correspondance politique (Angleterre; thereafter AECP (A)) 251: Ambassador Charles François de la Bonde, marquis d’lberville, to Jean Baptiste Colbert de Croissy, marquis de Torcy, [London] 10 Apr. 1714.
- 27.
See for example Middleton’s reaction to James II and VII telling him that he only ever intended to ensure there should be one Catholic college at Oxford: Old Brotherhood MSS, III pt 3, ep. 259: [Addendum in Hales’s hand but unsigned] 2/13 Oct. 1694 (n.b. in the collection’s catalogue the ‘M’ referred to in the addendum is misidentified as John Drummond, earl of Melfort; in fact ‘M’ is certainly Middleton).
- 28.
MS Carte 180, fol. 3r: ‘His Majestie’s Most Gracious Declaration to all his Loving Subjects of his Kingdom of England’, Bar-le-Duc, 9/20 July 1715; HMC Stuart, i. 448: Declaration for England by James (draughted by Bolingbroke), Commercy, 14/25 Oct. 1715.
- 29.
Correspondence of Colonel N. Hooke, Agent From the Court of France to the Scottish Jacobites, in the Years 1703–7, ed. W. D. Macray, 2 vols (1870), ii. 330–31: memo on a restoration by James Grahme of Newton, June 1707; ii. 332–3: memo of reasons for the restoration of James VIII by Anne Drummond, dowager countess of Erroll, June 1707; ii. 335–6: [statement by the Jacobite ‘Juncto’] June 1707. That such an approach to the problem of the constitutional relationship between a Catholic king and a Protestant people was being mooted from the beginning of James’s reign as Jacobite king may be seen from: NRS, GD 26/8/139: Hedges to Seafield (copy), Whitehall, 19 May 1702.
- 30.
Correspondence of Colonel N. Hooke, ii. 335.
- 31.
Correspondence of Colonel N. Hooke, ii. 333–4.
- 32.
SCA, BL 2/173/10, 16: Fr James Carnegy to the Scots College, [Edinburgh?] 3 June and 16 Aug. 1712; SP 54/9/3b: copy of ‘A Letter from a Gentleman in the Earl of Mar’s Camp to his Friend in the West Country,’ 1 Oct. 1715; AECP 265, fol. 270v: d’Iberville to Torcy, London, 27 Jan./7 Feb. 1716.
- 33.
That the idea was nevertheless lurking in the background of Protestant Jacobite thinking is apparent from the informer’s account of Belhaven’s conversations with Mary of Modena: NRS, GD 26/8/139: Hedges to Seafield (copy), Whitehall, 19 May 1702.
- 34.
MS Carte 180, fol. 293: Memo on projects and affairs in England by Lord Lumb, April, 1711.
- 35.
AECP (A) 242, fol. 137: [Memo from St Germain to Torcy, c. Oct 1712?].
- 36.
AEMD (Archives étrangères, Mémoires et documents) 138: ‘Memoire sur le Genie des Anglois, et sur l’Estat present de la cour d’Angleterre’, 29 Oct. 1712.
- 37.
HMC Stuart, i. 252, 259–60, 273: Berwick to James, St Germain and Fitzjames, 9/20 Nov. 1712 and 8/19 Mar. and 11/22 Aug. 1713.
- 38.
University of Pennsylvania, MS French 139, fols 265–85: Abbé François Gaultier to Torcy, [London] 26 Feb. 1714; AECP (A) 251, fol. 126: d’lberville to Torcy, [London] 18 Feb. 1714; SCA, BL 2/191/8: Lewis Innes to Thomas Innes, [Bar-le-Duc] 23 Jan./3 Feb. 1714.
- 39.
SCA, BL 2/191/6, 8, 9: Lewis Innes to Thomas Innes, [Bar-le-Duc] 16/27 Jan., 23 Jan./3 Feb. and 28 Jan./8 Feb. 1714; AECP (A) 251, fols 148, 209: d’lberville to Torcy, [London] 26 Feb. and 23 Mar. 1714; Westminster Diocesan Archive, Ep. Var. V, ep. 48: Edward Dicconson to [Laurence Mayes], [Douai] 16/27 Mar. 1714.
- 40.
Stuart Papers Relating Chiefly to Queen Mary of Modena, ii. 438 [26 July/6 Aug. 1713]. The Biblical reference here is to the tacit permission given to the convert Syrian general Naaman by the prophet Elisha to accompany his (pagan) king into the temple of Rim and there bow before the idol alongside him; II Kings, 5.
- 41.
L. G. Wickham-Legg, ‘Extracts from Jacobite Correspondence 1711–14,’ English Historical Review, 30 (1915) 506: Gaultier to Torcy, London, 3/14 Dec. 1713.
- 42.
University of Pennsylvania Microfilm, MS French 120/6: Torcy to Gaultier, 8/19 Dec. 1713.
- 43.
Wickham-Legg, ‘Extracts,’ p. 508: Gaultier to [James], London, 6 Feb. 1716.
- 44.
SCA, BL 2/191/10: Lewis Innes to Thomas Innes, [Bar-le-Duc] 6/17 Feb. 1714.
- 45.
SCA, BL 2/173/10: Carnegy to the Scots College, [Edinburgh?] 3 June 1712; HMC Stuart, i. 260: Berwick to James, St Germain, 17/28 Mar. 1713; Szechi 1984, 7, 187–8.
- 46.
MS Carte 210, fol. 409r: [holograph abstract, St Germain] 21 Apr./2 May 1711.
- 47.
MS Carte 210, fol. 409v: abstract of James III’s holograph reply to the English Jacobites, [Bar-le-Duc] 2/13 Mar. 1714.
- 48.
Stuart Papers Box 6/6: A Letter From Mr Lesly to a Member of Parliament in London (1714).
- 49.
AECP (A) 270, fol. 94v: d’Iberville to Torcy, London, 26 Sept. 1715 and AECP (A) 265, fols 251v: d’Iberville to Torcy, London, 10/21 Jan. 1716; HMC Stuart, vi. 166: Charles Boyle, earl of Orrery, to John Erskine, earl of Mar, 6/17 Mar. 1718; Cruickshanks (1979), 13.
- 50.
HMC Stuart, vi. 134: James to Gualterio, 28 Feb./11 Mar. 1718.
- 51.
HMC Stuart, vi. 134: [memo for Gualterio in James’s own hand, 28 Feb./11 Mar. 1718].
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Szechi, D. (2013). Negotiating Catholic Kingship for a Protestant People: ‘Private’ Letters, Royal Declarations and the Achievement of Religious Detente in the Jacobite Underground, 1702–1718. In: Dunan-Page, A., Prunier, C. (eds) Debating the Faith: Religion and Letter Writing in Great Britain, 1550-1800. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 209. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5216-0_7
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