Scotland the Brief

Part 2: Imperial Partner
10 A Cause Lost Forever

The Union effectively made the 45 Scottish MPs and 16 elected peers a commodity, to be purchased by English rulers. In return Scottish elites were allowed a great deal of autonomy in their own domestic affairs, lubricated by plenty of patronage. By the 1720s this was beginning to take effect. Through a combination of legal and illegal enterprise, the ports and merchants of western Scotland established a powerful position in the tobacco and later sugar trades. Argylls power, however, remained a highland factor, chiefly because London worried about the threat coming from that region. When Queen Anne died in 1715, and the wee, wee German lairdie succeeded, Mar started a rebellion in the north; this got as far as a drawn battle at Sherrifmuir near Stirling, and then dispersed. In 1719 a Jacobite army sailed into the Forth in French ships, but couldnt land. Thereafter the government's General Wade laid out a network of fortresses and military roads in the Highlands to inhibit another attack.

In 1745 during a further war with the France of Louis XV, Charles Edward Stewart, the son of the Pretender James VIII and III, landed at Lochailort, rallied Catholic and Episcopalian clans, and marched on Edinburgh, ironically along Wades military roads. He defeated a Hanoverian force at Prestonpans just outside the city and commandeered Holyrood palace (though the Castle held out against him) then headed south. His highlanders got to within 100 miles of London, reaching Derby in December 1745, then turned back.

Had the English Jacobites 'come over', had a French army attacked Dover, things might have been different, but the highlanders wanted to return home for their seed-time, and their army melted away. Charles Edward still managed to defeat another Hanoverian force at Falkirk before being pinned down and destroyed by the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden near Inverness in April 1746. He made his escape through the Hebrides: despite a rich reward offered by the government, no clansman betrayed him. But the traditional military tenures of the clans were suppressed and the chiefs converted into orthodox landowners: an experiment so risky that the government had to build up its defences, with one of Europes greatest fortresses only a few miles from Culloden at Fort George.

The outcome was disastrous for the Jacobite cause, yet by incorporating the highlanders in the British Army the London government provided itself with a powerful weapon with which to extend its imperial involvement. Almost certainly, they turned the Seven Years War of 1756-63 in Britains favour, in Canada and India. Thereafter Union, Empire and patronage were firmly linked, after the 1760s in the family which controlled Scotland's relations with all three: the Dundases of Arniston. Unlike the Argylls, they were non-noble, non-Gaelic, Midlothian lawyers. They would dominate Scotland until 1826: sometimes coercive, more often with a mutually-profitable deal up their sleeves. For those with a stake or a connection the way would be made smooth. The cause that was lost was that of the people of the Highlands, ill-led by the old order (8,000 died in 1745-6), and exploited by the new.