This is fascinating, thank you! Much of it was new to me.
It seems it wasn't as spontaneous as I'd thought before
Oh, good lord, no. No matter whose side you were on, everyone knew the Hanover succession was going to happen, and everyone was making their plans well in advance. How much the specific details of the '15 were worked out in advance, I don't know, but the part where the Jacobites knew there were going to be protests at the Hanoverian accession and planned to take advantage was understood for years was kind of inevitable. Kind of like how everyone knew starting in about 1661 that the War of the Spanish Succession was going to happen, and planned for it until it finally happened in 1701; and everyone knew the Medici line was dying out by the 1720s, so they were laying their plans until 1737...Military and political details obviously had to respond to current events and couldn't be planned 40 years in advance, but if a succession crisis could be anticipated years in advance by anyone with half a brain, it was, and the maneuvering via correspondence, diplomatic negotiations, and treaties would go on.
Berwick (an Irish military commander in French service)
For cahn, not just any Irish military commander in French service, but James II's illegitimate son, and thus James III's half-brother! Berwick had already proven himself a very capable commander in the War of the Spanish Succession, and Philip V basically owed his throne to him (that and the fact that most of the Spaniards were fine with keeping Philip and reluctant to support the Habsburg claimants).
Prior to this, Berwick had fought for his father, James II, in Ireland, as he tried to get his throne back. He was present at the Battle of the Boyne, and he stayed in Ireland even after James had fled to France. (I'm not sure how much Berwick is himself "Irish", but he definitely had commanded troops in Ireland, and since he ended up going from there to France, he may have been called "Irish" because he had arrived as the head of Irish troops. He was born to English parents in France and raised in France, though.)
As we've pointed out before (luzula, you weren't here for this), Berwick's mother was Arabella Churchill, sister of the Duke of Marlborough. Horowski, predictably, makes a lot out of the tight family connections on both sides of the War of the Spanish Succession.
But the French government forbade Berwick to take part
The timing is critical here. The War of the Spanish Succession has just ended. The Peace of Utrecht has just forced France to recognize the Protestant Succession and banish James III from France.
Per Wikipedia (pay attention to the dates I've bolded):
Believing the great general Marlborough would join him, on 23 August James wrote to the Duke of Berwick, his illegitimate brother and Marlborough's nephew, that; "I think it is now more than ever Now or Never".
27 August: The Earl of Mar holds the first council of war, in Scotland.
September 1: Louis XIV dies. Philippe d'Orleans becomes regent.
6 September: The Earl of Mar raises the standard of James III/VIII.
This means that by the time Berwick needs permission to leave France, the big Jacobite supporter and personal friend of James II Louis XIV is dead. The new regent is Philippe d'Orleans, son of gay Philippe. If anything should happen to child Louis XV, Philippe d'Orleans is next in line to the throne. Except that Philip V of Spain, who had renounced the throne of France, is making it pretty clear that promise wasn't worth the paper it was written on. If anything happens to Louis XV, he's invading with his Spanish army and claiming the throne. The two Philip(pe)s are thus complete enemies.
It's also becoming increasingly clear that Philip V is going to try to get back the lost Spanish territory he just signed away. So Philippe the Regent needs an ally to try to force Spain to adhere to the terms of the Peace of Utrecht. The ally he wants is England. (This is why Rottembourg and Whitworth are working together in Berlin.) This will lead to the 1716-1731 Anglo-French alliance, in which they will fight on the same side against Spain in 1718-1720, which will thus lead Spain to try to put James III on the throne in 1719.
So up until September 1, 1715, the sympathies of the French monarch were with the Jacobites. Post September 1, the French regent has every reason to support George I against the Jacobites. Hence Berwick being refused permission. (Berwick will later be sent back into Spain to fight against Philip V, thus on the opposite side of the war that he just finished, where he was fighting *for* Philip V. Berwick was not happy about this.)
Berwick will eventually die at the Battle of Philippsburg, getting his head ripped off after a "Do you know who I am??!!" exchange with the guards who tried to save him from himself. See my write-up here.
it gives examples of other countries being taken out of commission by civil wars and how great a way it was of breaking the military deadlock.
I would love to see these examples.
He goes through various countries one by one and their diplomatic contacts with the Jacobites over time and reasons for why the countries acted as they did.
Ditto, I'd be interested in that. Diplomatic history of the 1700-1730 period is apparently of great interest to me (pace Blanning :P).
Berwick will eventually die at the Battle of Philippsburg, getting his head ripped off after a "Do you know who I am??!!" exchange with the guards who tried to save him from himself.
Me: Oh, that Berwick! That's me: remembers funny anecdotes; does not remember other things... I also don't think I knew anything about James II, so would never have been able to keep in mind that Berwick was James II's illegitimate son. Now that I do know a lot more about James II, I hopefully will be able to rememebr Berwick as well :D
(Berwick will later be sent back into Spain to fight against Philip V, thus on the opposite side of the war that he just finished, where he was fighting *for* Philip V. Berwick was not happy about this.)
Aw man. Yeah, I wouldn't be happy about that either :(
Edited (nouns are used instead of pronouns for a reason) 2021-11-21 04:57 (UTC)
I know nothing about Mar except as a name connected with the Jacobite rising I barely studied, so I can't comment on Grundy's assessment of his personality.
Lol Wikipedia:
Mar married his second wife Lady Frances Pierrepont, daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. The match was a success in that it finally provided Mar with the funds to begin to clear his inherited debts. Lady Frances went mad in 1728 due to the stress of his exile in France.
That's a hell of a segue. "The match was a success in that the husband got money! The wife went mad."
Just to play Horowski‘s game of showing how interconnected and related the nobility is:
So, Lady Mary‘s brother in law (to her great regret, she oculdn‘t stand him) was the Earl of Mar, instigator of the 15. Her son in law was the Earl of Bute, educator and first PM to G3, bete noire of Fritz for cutting his subsidies in the last year of the 7 Years War. Lord Bute‘s younger brother is also the guy who was Barbarina‘s lover and temporary fiance when Fritz had her dragged to Prussia from Venice. And given Lady Mary‘s pining for Algarotti, this means we can connect all the early Jacobites within six steps to Algarotti, too, even without using the brothers Keith (who of course have the closest connection, due to sitting at the same table with him).
I think my head is exploding a little! That is... really interconnected :) (It's also kind of amazing that I generally speaking know who these people are now! :P )
Re: Oglethorpe, and we still wouldn't know if not for a footnote to the historical-criticial edition of Boswell's German travel diary! (Which manages to explain why Mitchell editor Andrew Bisset, publishing mid 19th century before Boswell's journals got published, had no idea.) Some day in the far, far future when I have way more time, I really must write that Black Sails crossover this immediately brought to mind for me in order to aquaint the world at large with the fact.:)
I'm pretty excited myself about us being able to make all these connections. And hey, that's why cahn won my Frederician Quiz. :)
Let's see what Bruce Lenman says about him (a consistently snarky historian, you should see him snark on the topic of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat--it's epic).
Mar had been a very active champion of the Act of Union. After raising the standard of rebellion he had to try to talk this episode away but it was in fact typical, for Mar was a government man through and through. He loved office, revelled in the deference which a minister of the King could extract from his contemporaries, and appreciated the salary. Political principles were never Mar's strong suit. (from "The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689-1746")
It goes on to describe how he was one of those Tories brought down when Queen Anne died. I enjoy this sort of snark, but at the same time wonder how the author feels able to judge people's character like that! I mean, maybe he had read lots of the guy's letters or something, but...
Here's his sister-in-law's biographer having a go at him right when he's introduced to the tale. The Sister-inlaw was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the bit about Paradise and Hell is what she, her sister Frances and their friends as young girls had invented as catagories for suitors - "Paradise" is the guy you want yourself, "Hell" is an unwanted guy your family makes you wed, and "Limbo" is a compromise guy who you don't love but think you can get along with for life. Lady Mary, btw, had married a limbo, but one she'd picked for herself.
Meanwhile the prospect of sister Frances's wedding crept closer. It was two years since Frances had confided to Philippa her misery at losing her Paradise and her belief that 'ev'ry living body shou'd fear hell above all other things'. Now her father had chosen for her a widower fifteen years her senior, father of a schoolboy son: John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar. He was a Tory (though his family were Presbyterians), markedly Scottish in his speech. His portraits show him as handsome, though his body was said to be crooked. He claimed to have been long in love with Lady Frances. He was doing well under Queen Anne, as a Privy Counsellor and Secretary of State for Scotland (a post carrying a house in the Privy Garden, Whitehall), and a pension of 3.000 Pounds secured for him by Lord Oxford. But neither his circumstances nor his character would stand scrutiny. His rental income was only 261 Scottish Pounds (with odd shillings). His debts and his late father's came to over 150,000 in the same currency, though he gave assurances that they could not 'touch' his estate or the money he would receive from Lady Frances. Besides, as she was later to know too well, the rental from Scottish estates was by custom paid in arrears, and in kind. The initial arrears would be doubled by the haggling ncessary to convert kind to cash. And Mar's character: an associate later thought it 'impossible for him to even play a fair game, or to mean but one thing at once'. A historian calls his letters 'models of ineptitude and tergiversation'. For Lord Mar the beneffits of this marriage were clear: Lady Frances was a catch. Twelve years later he tried to justify his second marriage to his son by his first (who might 'repine' at the income he proposed to leave his second wife if he died). He insisted he had married to serve 'the good of the family'. He could hardly have been more open about his marrying for what he could get. On the other side, it was a strange marriage for a daughter of Evelyn Pierrepoint, Marquess of Dorchester. Lady Mary thought Frances was pressured by Aunt Cheyne and a Mar relative. One of Dorchester's Whig circle wrote, 'there's a good Whig marr'd by taking a Scotch Jacobite for her Husband'. Did Dorchester miscalculate, seeing the high office and the estates, failing to note the debts? His 'design to marry himself' made it urgent for him to dispose of his remaining single daughter. But also, with Queen Anne's health in rapid decline and the succession uncertain, eminent Whigs were hedging their bets. Marlborough did this; Dorchester may have done so, too. If the Elector of Hanover succeeded to the throne, well and good; but if it should be James III. after all, a Scotch Jacobite son-in-law might be handy.
Interesting, thanks! Yeah, Scots noblemen were in general much poorer than English ones. Tory + Presbyterian seems an unusual combination.
And interesting about the hedging of bets...I mean, the Whigs had been making up to George-I-to-be for a while, since they were so shut out during Anne's reign (and would soon shut the Tories out in their turn), so they must've been pretty sure of coming into power so long as George I got on the throne. But yeah, there might be a rebellion, which of course there was.
The Hell/Limbo/Paradise thing is cute (teenage girls: the same over space and time??) but like luzula says, poor Frances! :( But Lady Mary seems to have done pretty well for herself with a Limbo?
She got along well with her husband. Though after the first few years, it was always a long distance marriage even before she went to Italy to live with Algarotti. (And we know how that turned out.) It also has to be said that she knew him pretty well by the time she married him (to avoid a "hell" her father had in mind for her, and after losing a "paradise"), so they both knew what they were getting and entered into the marriage clear-eyed. Originally, she had been friends with his sister Anne. Then young Edward decided he found young Mary intrigueing, and comandeered his sister's correspondence with her. I.e. he started to reply, roleplaying Anne. (And also dictating to Anne, so the different hand writing wouldn't give up the game.) Then Anne died young (of typhus), and after a few weeks Edward wrote as himself, confessed what he'd done, and started to woo her. They kept corresponding and meeting and breaking up and reconciling etc. for a good while (he was pretty bossy at first, which she didn't take well to) until she decided to accept his proposal and run away with him. (Which they had to since Dad wanted the Hell guy for Mary.) But while Lady Mary always kept up writing to her husband even during her years of living in Italy till he died, Grundy and Halsband both think she was never in love with him, and it was always friendship for her.
Mind you, given what happened when Lady Mary really truly deeply fell in love, the "Limbo" was definitely better!
The good news is that even without Algarotti, she liked Italy enough to spend the rest of her life there, until her husband died and she came back to England, then died herself there a year later.
Aww, that is really a cute story actually! I... guess i can't say I ship them, but I am HERE for their quasi-platonic "limbo" friendship, Lady Mary & Edward yay! (I'm not sure whether I find the Anne roleplaying cute or creepy -- probably a little of both -- but I have way lower standards for the 18th century, and I guess since he confessed in the end it more-or-less turned out okay?)
It reminds me of what Heinrich said about love, or at least passion -- that friendship was much better and long-lasting :P <3 (I tried to find the quote for luzula but couldn't -- but I know you guys know it :) )
Oh, good lord, no. No matter whose side you were on, everyone knew the Hanover succession was going to happen, and everyone was making their plans well in advance.
Sure, makes sense! I think this is just me not having read enough about the '15 before. I'd mostly read about the Scottish side of it, which did not mention enough about the English plotting etc. It really can't have been easy to coordinate insurrections in various parts of Britain with help from France, with all the logistics and communications difficulties.
For cahn, not just any Irish military commander in French service, but James II's illegitimate son, and thus James III's half-brother!
For me, as well! : ) I knew basically nothing about Berwick as a person, so I'll check out the posts you link to. Ha, wow, that is some bad timing for the Jacobites in the '15, re: the French motivations...
I would love to see these examples.
This is not a long section in the book: European great power interest in the Jacobite card directly stemmed from the role of rebellion in international relations in the eighteenth century. For those continental great powers who considered allying with the Jacobites did not see them simply as cannon-fodder, but rather as a force which had the potential, literally, to destroy their British opponents.
These perceptions were firmly based on experience. All those involved in dealing with the Jacobites between 1716 and the 1760s were reared in the traditions of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century statecraft. And although statesmen always professed abhorrence of rebels and rebellion, the siren voices of religion and realpolitik nearly always overwhelmed their, doubtless genuine, repugnance. Thus Elizabeth I of England gave ill-tempered succour to Philip II of Spain’s Dutch rebels for the second half of her reign. Philip, despite his ostensible outrage at Elizabeth’s dirty tactics, showed little compunction about secretly supporting English Catholic plotters who planned to murder her and in sending what arms and monies he could spare to aid Hugh O’Neill in Ireland. In the same vein Cardinal Jules Mazarin overcame his disgust with the English Republicans who had overthrown and executed Charles I sufficiently well to ally with them against Spain 1656–60, and Louis XIV openly supported both the revolt of the Portuguese Braganzas against the Spanish Habsburgs and the rebellions raised by Imre Thököly and Ferenc Ráckózi against their Austrian cousins in Hungary.
What consistently lured the statesmen of seventeenth-century Europe into setting aside their scruples with regard to making use of domestic rebels was, more than anything else, the devastating effects on contemporary great powers of serious internecine strife. The ‘Time of Troubles’ (1598–1613) in Russia traumatised the Russian political nation and put the Muscovite state out of serious contention in the great power game for nearly half a century. The Great Civil War neutralised England between 1638 and 1653. The once mighty Polish empire was permanently weakened by the uprising led by Bohdan Chmielnicki in the 1650s. The decline of the Spanish Habsburg empire was directly attributable to its defeat at the hands of Dutch and Portuguese rebels and the exhausting, bitter struggle to reconquer Catalonia 1640–52. Most pertinently of all, the impressive military machine James II and VII had built up was brought low by an invasion assisted by a nationwide rebellion in England in 1688.
The strategic attractions of using domestic rebels to destabilise enemy polities were enhanced by the chronic stalemate in conventional military operations that set in in the late seventeenth century. [etc, more on that]
I'll put a pin in this: Ditto, I'd be interested in that. Diplomatic history of the 1700-1730 period is apparently of great interest to me (pace Blanning :P).
Ha, wow, that is some bad timing for the Jacobites in the '15, re: the French motivations...
Yeah. :) I mean, some of it is written with the benefit of hindsight, in that I'm talking about what Philippe/France was going to do in 1716 rather than what I can be sure they already had in mind in late 1715, but the point is that France very quickly moved into an alliance with England in the Regency period.
Would things have been different had Louis lived? Maybe, maybe not. His country was exhausted by the most recent war in a nonstop series of wars (anecdotally, he's supposed to have said on his deathbed, "I have loved war too well"), and he was being forced to make concessions to Britain in the peace negotiations. If he'd really wanted to support the Jacobites, the time was in 1714, when George ascended. Instead, one of my sources that I was reading today said he refused James III an audience and told the Jacobites not to expect any support.
But, Louis had been known to acknowledge the Protestant succession before (1697 Treaty of Ryswick) and then turn around and acknowledge James III on James II's deathbed (1701). Maybe he would have let Berwick go, maybe he wouldn't have. Maybe that would have changed things, maybe it wouldn't have. Maybe he would have been more inclined than Philippe to help once things got off the ground in late 1715, maybe not. Louis may have been a Jacobite at heart, but he was also not Charles XII and was capable of facing political realities.
But it's clear that on September 1, 1715, a monarch whose personal sympathies were with the Jacobites died, which didn't help their odds.
Most pertinently of all, the impressive military machine James II and VII had built up was brought low by an invasion assisted by a nationwide rebellion in England in 1688.
Oh huh, this is interesting to me -- I hadn't got the impression that James II was all that good at military stuff from The King's Touch (luzula, this is a novel I'm currently reading on selenak's recommendation about Charles II/James Duke of Monmouth, with James II as an important minor character, probably becoming more major later on but I haven't gotten there yet) but I guess I wouldn't know from what I've read so far, as he's not king yet :)
I hadn't got the impression that James II was all that good at military stuff from The King's Touch
To be fair: it's actually mentioned in The King's Touch at least twice (once by mother Henrietta Maria and once by Charles) that James spent the exile years distinguishing himself as a soldier before the Restoration even happens, and later there's the scene when young Jemmy - who is present - has to admit his uncle acts courageous mid naval battle when he nearly gets shot, showing complete sange froid. Said occasion, however, is also why Charles then forbids James to take part in a battle again (since James is the successor and hasn't sired a son yet, and while Charles has an increasing number of illegitimate kids, he doesn't have any with his wife), which James takes as an insult and Charles being envious of his military glory. However, I don't blame you for overlooking this on a first reading, because Henrietta Maria saying her son James has been distinguishing himself as a soldier is one sentence opposed to plenty of sentences about her favourite marriage project that doesn't happen (Louis XIV/Minette) and her ire that Charles doesn't listen to her during the same sequence.
Ah, right! I missed the references to the exile years, but I did see the naval battle part. I'd separated a bit being a good soldier and building up a military apparatus, but of course he hasn't had any ability to do the latter yet. (Have read a little further, but Charles is still alive so far...)
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Duke of Berwick
It seems it wasn't as spontaneous as I'd thought before
Oh, good lord, no. No matter whose side you were on, everyone knew the Hanover succession was going to happen, and everyone was making their plans well in advance. How much the specific details of the '15 were worked out in advance, I don't know, but the part where the Jacobites knew there were going to be protests at the Hanoverian accession and planned to take advantage was understood for years was kind of inevitable. Kind of like how everyone knew starting in about 1661 that the War of the Spanish Succession was going to happen, and planned for it until it finally happened in 1701; and everyone knew the Medici line was dying out by the 1720s, so they were laying their plans until 1737...Military and political details obviously had to respond to current events and couldn't be planned 40 years in advance, but if a succession crisis could be anticipated years in advance by anyone with half a brain, it was, and the maneuvering via correspondence, diplomatic negotiations, and treaties would go on.
Berwick (an Irish military commander in French service)
For
Prior to this, Berwick had fought for his father, James II, in Ireland, as he tried to get his throne back. He was present at the Battle of the Boyne, and he stayed in Ireland even after James had fled to France. (I'm not sure how much Berwick is himself "Irish", but he definitely had commanded troops in Ireland, and since he ended up going from there to France, he may have been called "Irish" because he had arrived as the head of Irish troops. He was born to English parents in France and raised in France, though.)
As we've pointed out before (
But the French government forbade Berwick to take part
The timing is critical here. The War of the Spanish Succession has just ended. The Peace of Utrecht has just forced France to recognize the Protestant Succession and banish James III from France.
Per Wikipedia (pay attention to the dates I've bolded):
Believing the great general Marlborough would join him, on 23 August James wrote to the Duke of Berwick, his illegitimate brother and Marlborough's nephew, that; "I think it is now more than ever Now or Never".
27 August: The Earl of Mar holds the first council of war, in Scotland.
September 1: Louis XIV dies. Philippe d'Orleans becomes regent.
6 September: The Earl of Mar raises the standard of James III/VIII.
This means that by the time Berwick needs permission to leave France, the big Jacobite supporter and personal friend of James II Louis XIV is dead. The new regent is Philippe d'Orleans, son of gay Philippe. If anything should happen to child Louis XV, Philippe d'Orleans is next in line to the throne. Except that Philip V of Spain, who had renounced the throne of France, is making it pretty clear that promise wasn't worth the paper it was written on. If anything happens to Louis XV, he's invading with his Spanish army and claiming the throne. The two Philip(pe)s are thus complete enemies.
It's also becoming increasingly clear that Philip V is going to try to get back the lost Spanish territory he just signed away. So Philippe the Regent needs an ally to try to force Spain to adhere to the terms of the Peace of Utrecht. The ally he wants is England. (This is why Rottembourg and Whitworth are working together in Berlin.) This will lead to the 1716-1731 Anglo-French alliance, in which they will fight on the same side against Spain in 1718-1720, which will thus lead Spain to try to put James III on the throne in 1719.
So up until September 1, 1715, the sympathies of the French monarch were with the Jacobites. Post September 1, the French regent has every reason to support George I against the Jacobites. Hence Berwick being refused permission. (Berwick will later be sent back into Spain to fight against Philip V, thus on the opposite side of the war that he just finished, where he was fighting *for* Philip V. Berwick was not happy about this.)
Berwick will eventually die at the Battle of Philippsburg, getting his head ripped off after a "Do you know who I am??!!" exchange with the guards who tried to save him from himself. See my write-up here.
it gives examples of other countries being taken out of commission by civil wars and how great a way it was of breaking the military deadlock.
I would love to see these examples.
He goes through various countries one by one and their diplomatic contacts with the Jacobites over time and reasons for why the countries acted as they did.
Ditto, I'd be interested in that. Diplomatic history of the 1700-1730 period is apparently of great interest to me (pace Blanning :P).
Re: Duke of Berwick
Me: Oh, that Berwick! That's me: remembers funny anecdotes; does not remember other things... I also don't think I knew anything about James II, so would never have been able to keep in mind that Berwick was James II's illegitimate son. Now that I do know a lot more about James II, I hopefully will be able to rememebr Berwick as well :D
(Berwick will later be sent back into Spain to fight against Philip V, thus on the opposite side of the war that he just finished, where he was fighting *for* Philip V. Berwick was not happy about this.)
Aw man. Yeah, I wouldn't be happy about that either :(
Earl of Mar
BTW, am I misrenembering or was this the guy who married Lady Mary's sister Frances, and in Isabel Grundy's biography of Lady Mary is described as an utter pig?
Re: Earl of Mar
I know nothing about Mar except as a name connected with the Jacobite rising I barely studied, so I can't comment on Grundy's assessment of his personality.
Lol Wikipedia:
Mar married his second wife Lady Frances Pierrepont, daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. The match was a success in that it finally provided Mar with the funds to begin to clear his inherited debts. Lady Frances went mad in 1728 due to the stress of his exile in France.
That's a hell of a segue. "The match was a success in that the husband got money! The wife went mad."
Re: Earl of Mar
So, Lady Mary‘s brother in law (to her great regret, she oculdn‘t stand him) was the Earl of Mar, instigator of the 15. Her son in law was the Earl of Bute, educator and first PM to G3, bete noire of Fritz for cutting his subsidies in the last year of the 7 Years War. Lord Bute‘s younger brother is also the guy who was Barbarina‘s lover and temporary fiance when Fritz had her dragged to Prussia from Venice. And given Lady Mary‘s pining for Algarotti, this means we can connect all the early Jacobites within six steps to Algarotti, too, even without using the brothers Keith (who of course have the closest connection, due to sitting at the same table with him).
Re: Earl of Mar
Re: Earl of Mar
ETA: And yes, it's extremely exciting how far you've come! (And all of us, really, but especially you!)
Re: Earl of Mar
I'm pretty excited myself about us being able to make all these connections. And hey, that's why
Re: Earl of Mar
Re: Earl of Mar
Re: Earl of Mar
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Mar had been a very active champion of the Act of Union. After raising the standard of rebellion he had to try to talk this episode away but it was in fact typical, for Mar was a government man through and through. He loved office, revelled in the deference which a minister of the King could extract from his contemporaries, and appreciated the salary. Political principles were never Mar's strong suit. (from "The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689-1746")
It goes on to describe how he was one of those Tories brought down when Queen Anne died. I enjoy this sort of snark, but at the same time wonder how the author feels able to judge people's character like that! I mean, maybe he had read lots of the guy's letters or something, but...
Re: Earl of Mar
Meanwhile the prospect of sister Frances's wedding crept closer. It was two years since Frances had confided to Philippa her misery at losing her Paradise and her belief that 'ev'ry living body shou'd fear hell above all other things'. Now her father had chosen for her a widower fifteen years her senior, father of a schoolboy son: John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar. He was a Tory (though his family were Presbyterians), markedly Scottish in his speech. His portraits show him as handsome, though his body was said to be crooked. He claimed to have been long in love with Lady Frances. He was doing well under Queen Anne, as a Privy Counsellor and Secretary of State for Scotland (a post carrying a house in the Privy Garden, Whitehall), and a pension of 3.000 Pounds secured for him by Lord Oxford.
But neither his circumstances nor his character would stand scrutiny. His rental income was only 261 Scottish Pounds (with odd shillings). His debts and his late father's came to over 150,000 in the same currency, though he gave assurances that they could not 'touch' his estate or the money he would receive from Lady Frances. Besides, as she was later to know too well, the rental from Scottish estates was by custom paid in arrears, and in kind. The initial arrears would be doubled by the haggling ncessary to convert kind to cash. And Mar's character: an associate later thought it 'impossible for him to even play a fair game, or to mean but one thing at once'. A historian calls his letters 'models of ineptitude and tergiversation'.
For Lord Mar the beneffits of this marriage were clear: Lady Frances was a catch. Twelve years later he tried to justify his second marriage to his son by his first (who might 'repine' at the income he proposed to leave his second wife if he died). He insisted he had married to serve 'the good of the family'. He could hardly have been more open about his marrying for what he could get.
On the other side, it was a strange marriage for a daughter of Evelyn Pierrepoint, Marquess of Dorchester. Lady Mary thought Frances was pressured by Aunt Cheyne and a Mar relative. One of Dorchester's Whig circle wrote, 'there's a good Whig marr'd by taking a Scotch Jacobite for her Husband'. Did Dorchester miscalculate, seeing the high office and the estates, failing to note the debts? His 'design to marry himself' made it urgent for him to dispose of his remaining single daughter. But also, with Queen Anne's health in rapid decline and the succession uncertain, eminent Whigs were hedging their bets. Marlborough did this; Dorchester may have done so, too. If the Elector of Hanover succeeded to the throne, well and good; but if it should be James III. after all, a Scotch Jacobite son-in-law might be handy.
Re: Earl of Mar
And interesting about the hedging of bets...I mean, the Whigs had been making up to George-I-to-be for a while, since they were so shut out during Anne's reign (and would soon shut the Tories out in their turn), so they must've been pretty sure of coming into power so long as George I got on the throne. But yeah, there might be a rebellion, which of course there was.
Poor Frances, anyway. : (
Re: Earl of Mar
Edward Wortley-Montagu: The Limbo
Mind you, given what happened when Lady Mary really truly deeply fell in love, the "Limbo" was definitely better!
Re: Edward Wortley-Montagu: The Limbo
If you joined salon recently and you don't actually know how that turned out, we have in
The good news is that even without Algarotti, she liked Italy enough to spend the rest of her life there, until her husband died and she came back to England, then died herself there a year later.
Re: Edward Wortley-Montagu: The Limbo
Re: Edward Wortley-Montagu: The Limbo
It reminds me of what Heinrich said about love, or at least passion -- that friendship was much better and long-lasting :P <3 (I tried to find the quote for
Re: Duke of Berwick
Sure, makes sense! I think this is just me not having read enough about the '15 before. I'd mostly read about the Scottish side of it, which did not mention enough about the English plotting etc. It really can't have been easy to coordinate insurrections in various parts of Britain with help from France, with all the logistics and communications difficulties.
For
For me, as well! : ) I knew basically nothing about Berwick as a person, so I'll check out the posts you link to. Ha, wow, that is some bad timing for the Jacobites in the '15, re: the French motivations...
I would love to see these examples.
This is not a long section in the book: European great power interest in the Jacobite card directly stemmed from the role of rebellion in international relations in the eighteenth century. For those continental great powers who considered allying with the Jacobites did not see them simply as cannon-fodder, but rather as a force which had the potential, literally, to destroy their British opponents.
These perceptions were firmly based on experience. All those involved in dealing with the Jacobites between 1716 and the 1760s were reared in the traditions of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century statecraft. And although statesmen always professed abhorrence of rebels and rebellion, the siren voices of religion and realpolitik nearly always overwhelmed their, doubtless genuine, repugnance. Thus Elizabeth I of England gave ill-tempered succour to Philip II of Spain’s Dutch rebels for the second half of her reign. Philip, despite his ostensible outrage at Elizabeth’s dirty tactics, showed little compunction about secretly supporting English Catholic plotters who planned to murder her and in sending what arms and monies he could spare to aid Hugh O’Neill in Ireland. In the same vein Cardinal Jules Mazarin overcame his disgust with the English Republicans who had overthrown and executed Charles I sufficiently well to ally with them against Spain 1656–60, and Louis XIV openly supported both the revolt of the Portuguese Braganzas against the Spanish Habsburgs and the rebellions raised by Imre Thököly and Ferenc Ráckózi against their Austrian cousins in Hungary.
What consistently lured the statesmen of seventeenth-century Europe into setting aside their scruples with regard to making use of domestic rebels was, more than anything else, the devastating effects on contemporary great powers of serious internecine strife. The ‘Time of Troubles’ (1598–1613) in Russia traumatised the Russian political nation and put the Muscovite state out of serious contention in the great power game for nearly half a century. The Great Civil War neutralised England between 1638 and 1653. The once mighty Polish empire was permanently weakened by the uprising led by Bohdan Chmielnicki in the 1650s. The decline of the Spanish Habsburg empire was directly attributable to its defeat at the hands of Dutch and Portuguese rebels and the exhausting, bitter struggle to reconquer Catalonia 1640–52. Most pertinently of all, the impressive military machine James II and VII had built up was brought low by an invasion assisted by a nationwide rebellion in England in 1688.
The strategic attractions of using domestic rebels to destabilise enemy polities were enhanced by the chronic stalemate in conventional military operations that set in in the late seventeenth century. [etc, more on that]
I'll put a pin in this: Ditto, I'd be interested in that. Diplomatic history of the 1700-1730 period is apparently of great interest to me (pace Blanning :P).
Re: Duke of Berwick
Yeah. :) I mean, some of it is written with the benefit of hindsight, in that I'm talking about what Philippe/France was going to do in 1716 rather than what I can be sure they already had in mind in late 1715, but the point is that France very quickly moved into an alliance with England in the Regency period.
Would things have been different had Louis lived? Maybe, maybe not. His country was exhausted by the most recent war in a nonstop series of wars (anecdotally, he's supposed to have said on his deathbed, "I have loved war too well"), and he was being forced to make concessions to Britain in the peace negotiations. If he'd really wanted to support the Jacobites, the time was in 1714, when George ascended. Instead, one of my sources that I was reading today said he refused James III an audience and told the Jacobites not to expect any support.
But, Louis had been known to acknowledge the Protestant succession before (1697 Treaty of Ryswick) and then turn around and acknowledge James III on James II's deathbed (1701). Maybe he would have let Berwick go, maybe he wouldn't have. Maybe that would have changed things, maybe it wouldn't have. Maybe he would have been more inclined than Philippe to help once things got off the ground in late 1715, maybe not. Louis may have been a Jacobite at heart, but he was also not Charles XII and was capable of facing political realities.
But it's clear that on September 1, 1715, a monarch whose personal sympathies were with the Jacobites died, which didn't help their odds.
Re: Duke of Berwick
Oh huh, this is interesting to me -- I hadn't got the impression that James II was all that good at military stuff from The King's Touch (
But anyway, that's fascinating, thank you!
Re: Duke of Berwick
I really hope that slash in your comment is not meant in the fannish sense! : P
Re: Duke of Berwick
To be fair: it's actually mentioned in The King's Touch at least twice (once by mother Henrietta Maria and once by Charles) that James spent the exile years distinguishing himself as a soldier before the Restoration even happens, and later there's the scene when young Jemmy - who is present - has to admit his uncle acts courageous mid naval battle when he nearly gets shot, showing complete sange froid. Said occasion, however, is also why Charles then forbids James to take part in a battle again (since James is the successor and hasn't sired a son yet, and while Charles has an increasing number of illegitimate kids, he doesn't have any with his wife), which James takes as an insult and Charles being envious of his military glory. However, I don't blame you for overlooking this on a first reading, because Henrietta Maria saying her son James has been distinguishing himself as a soldier is one sentence opposed to plenty of sentences about her favourite marriage project that doesn't happen (Louis XIV/Minette) and her ire that Charles doesn't listen to her during the same sequence.
Re: Duke of Berwick