cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 32

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:) Still talking about Charles XII of Sweden / the Great Northern War and the Stuarts and the Jacobites, among other things!

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From:

selenak

Maybe he did! Incidentally, I noticed that the Monmouth Rebellion happened with huge Scottish participation - the Scottish branch was known as Argyll's Rising, see here, with Mildred's favourite thing, lots of maps. (I only just found this website which is all about this particular rebellion, it seems.) It's not the first time that I wondered whether the Scottish/Jacobite connection was a case depending on James NOT being King and far, far away, and later, after his death, his son never having been in Scotland at all, for as long as James was King, Scotland doesn't exactly come acrosss as a stronghold to him.

Re: pettiness, though, how's this for James being petty even before his daughter and son-in-law toppled him, but after they were bff with Monmouth:

(Mary) was dismayed when James refused to help when the Catholic king of France, Louis XIV, invaded Orange and persecuted Huguenot refugees there. In an attempt to damage William, James encouraged his daughter's staff to inform her that William was having an affair with Elizabeth Villiers, the daughter of her childhood governess Frances Villiers. Acting on the information, Mary waited outside Villiers's room and caught her husband leaving it late at night. William denied adultery, and Mary apparently believed and forgave him. Possibly, Villiers and William were not meeting as lovers but to exchange diplomatic intelligence. Mary's staff was dismissed and sent back to Britain. (From Mary's wiki entry.)

Sarah Churchill, wife of not yet Marlborough, after Mary has returned to London and shows signs of being glad to be back in England: Wow, you're such a bad daughter. How can you be happy when you and your husband just kicked your old man out!

Btw, since you and Mildred are the military experts: takes on why Monmouth (and Argyll) and BPC both failed, and William scored with the invading and driving the current King into exile? Was it just that James had managed to piss off way more people in the intervening years (between Monmoouth the Glorious Revolution) than G2, or was William just better armed and organized? Both?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Btw, since you and Mildred are the military experts

Haha, well, two problems. 1) Monmouth and William were 17th century, which bored me to tears despite my best efforts as a teenager, so I never even remotely looked into the military history there. 2) Jacobite military history falls under "I can't let myself give into the temptation to rehash this or I'll never stop, and I have too many new things I need to learn ~~like German~~."

My off-the-cuff response is that William had the kind of support he needed to go straight for London, whereas BPC didn't, and James had managed to piss off way more people, which improved William's chances and harmed BPC's. But BPC also made some *cough* questionable military decisions (that drove Lord George Murray crazy), and there I must stop.

From:

luzula

I'm sorry, I haven't read much about the details of Monmouth's and William's rebellions! But it's an interesting question--and that's interesting too about the Scottish component of Monmouth's rebellion. Yeah, the Argylls were consistently Whigs, although there were minority branches of the Campbell clan who fought in all the Jacobite rebellions as well.

Although actually the largest rebellion in this time period, in terms of popular support (measured by number of British people who took up arms in favor of it), was neither of these three rebellions, but the '15. Of course, it hardly had any foreign support.

It's not the first time that I wondered whether the Scottish/Jacobite connection was a case depending on James NOT being King and far, far away, and later, after his death, his son never having been in Scotland at all, for as long as James was King, Scotland doesn't exactly come across as a stronghold to him

Ha ha, yes. The grass is always greener with the monarch you don't have... Anyway, he alienated the Scottish burghs by trying to limit their independence, and of course the Presbyterians and Covenanters were always against him. But actually he had, as the Duke of York, been in the Highlands and strangely enough it seems that he didn't piss them off, but instead cooperated with the clans to suppress banditry, instead of blaming the clans for it and repressing them with military force. (This is from a book called Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603-1788 by Allan I. Macinnes (1996)). So I guess that might explain why a fair number of the clans fought for him later.

But earlier than that, the Stuarts were always trying to impose royal authority on the Highlands, so it's not like there was any love lost there, historically speaking.

From:

cahn

I gotta say that after your previous comment on this, my headcanon for this is something like the following:

Mary: You were having an affair with Elizabeth Villiers! I saw you leaving her room late at night!
William: I was totally not having an affair with her. We were exchanging diplomatic intelligence!
Mary: Uh-huh, likely story.
William: I mean, you know I couldn't have having an affair with her because... well... I prefer guys.
Mary: You... what? Wait. This explains a lot. Like the way you were all over my cousin Jemmy.
William: I mean, he's really hot. Don't deny it, you think he's really hot too.
Mary: ...Hmm. Let's think about this a little more.

From:

selenak

:) I can see that! BTW, Mary, like her younger sister Anne with Sarah Churchill, had a (female) childhood friend she was passionately attached to, Frances Apsley. Quoting wiki: From about the age of nine until her marriage, Mary wrote passionate letters to an older girl, Frances Apsley, the daughter of courtier Sir Allen Apsley. Mary signed herself 'Mary Clorine'; Apsley was 'Aurelia'. In time, Frances became uncomfortable with the correspondence, and replied more formally.

(Sister Anne and Sarah Jennings, the later Sarah Churchill, wrote to each other as Mrs. Morley (Anne) and Mrs. Freeman (Sarah), respectively.)

A case thus could be made that James the ultra Catholic managed to produce not one but two bi daughters, though of course that's speculative.

(FW: I would say I sympathize except I don't. Firstly, thankfully I died before learning I had not one, but two wretched sons, and secondly, I don't sympathize with goddam Papists. No Popery! P.S. I still think you should have made me your heir, William.)