History Explorer: the Jacobites
Professor Christopher Whatley and Charlotte Hodgman exploreRuthven Barracks in Badenoch, Scotland – a Highland fort built to suppress Jacobite rebellions in the 18th century
Perched high on a hill in the Spey valley, surrounded by mountains, Ruthven was once one of four infantry barracks built across the Highlands in an attempt by George I to put down further Scottish rebellions in the wake of the great Jacobite uprising of 1715.
The strategic position of the fortification, lying as it does at an important junction of military roads from Perth, Fort Augustus and Inverness, meant that Ruthven was a key stronghold for the British Army – and a target for rebelling Scots. But, despite being completed in 1721, Ruthven didn’t see its first military action until 1745, when a 300-strong Jacobite force attempted to besiege the barracks. (Remarkably, it took just 14 Redcoats to repel the attack, with the loss of just one man.)
Although now ruined – little of the interior structure, and no visible flooring or roofing remains – the layout of Ruthven is still virtually as it was when it was first built. Once they have climbed the steep path to the barracks, visitors can see where the government soldiers stationed there would have slept – 10 men to a barrack-room and two to a bed – walk the small parade ground once used for drilling, and view the spot where the horses were stabled.
Craving power
The Jacobite rebellions against the crown were ultimately triggered by the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the Dutch prince William of Orange seized the English and Scottish thrones from the Stuart king James II and VII to become William III and II.
“The Stuarts had reigned in Scotland for centuries, and the Jacobites craved the reinstatement of the Stuart male line,” says Christopher Whatley, professor of Scottish history at the University of Dundee. “They championed the claim of the exiled James Francis Edward Stuart, son of the deposed James II and VII, the man after whom the movement was named [ Jacobus being derived from the Latin form of James].
“What’s more, many Scots had been antagonised by King William’s imposition of Presbyterianism – a more austere form of Protestantism – as the Church of Scotland. Making James Francis Edward Stuart (the ‘Old Pretender’) king would herald changes to the practice of religion in Scotland.”
The Jacobite rebellions were also, says Whatley, a reaction to the union of Scotland and England in 1707. “The later Stuarts were not especially well loved, but the union was even less so,” he says. “Anti-unionism – and Scottish independence – was a strong component of support for Jacobitism in Scotland in the early 18th century.”
Yet Jacobitism was not a purely Scottish phenomenon. There were thousands of Jacobites in Ireland, too, many of whom were fired by a desire to return their country to Catholicism, and to free it from what they regarded as the shackles of Westminster political control.
English Jacobites were less militant than their Scottish counterparts, although there were substantial numbers of Jacobite sympathisers south of the border.
The rumbles of discontent and scattered episodes of