While the fallout from the rising of 1715 has been treated in the margins of some relevant studies, the 1715 Jacobite rebellion, and more specifically the case of the Jacobite prisoners, has not received detailed treatment in a generation. Thus Margaret Sankey's Jacobite Prisoners of 1715 is a vital study that takes an important historiographical position. Sankey offers an informed narrative and analysis of the various Jacobite ranks that submitted to Hanoverian forces and the mercy of George I and of the mechanisms and pressures that dictated their subsequent treatment. In her study Sankey displays a willingness to engage with, and occasionally challenge, the scholarship that has shaped academic understanding of the Jacobite prisoners and their masters. Through thorough archival research Sankey provides a comprehensive account of the fate of Jacobite prisoners taken in the rising and an analysis of the effectiveness of government measures.
Remaining sensitive to the influence of class and religion, Sankey initially restricts her focus to those prisoners captured in England. Having discussed the (mainly English) precedents available to George I's administration for dealing with rebels and demonstrated its arrival at an Augustan model of clemency, Sankey accounts for the constitutional and logistical difficulties the government faced. Three methods by which the Hanoverian government intended to eliminate further Jacobite threat are highlighted. First, representative trials and limited executions demonstrated the state's power, but also emphasized the king's show of mercy. The Catholic community, perceived as a continuing threat to the security of the kingdom, was particularly inconvenienced by the second: lengthy, expensive spells in prison. Third, transportation to America was the designated fate for the greater body of rank and file prisoners that had survived drawing lots for execution. Sankey juxtaposes the governmental response with the Jacobite's own tactics of delay, bribery, courting public opinion, and most significantly patronage. In this latter point Sankey's study is particularly successful. Revising the current historiographic view of the effectiveness of transportation to the colonies, Sankey demonstrates that most transported prisoners went to mainland America, not the West Indies, but also that once there, prisoners were often able to shed their indentures, redress chronic labor shortages, and to prosper in their new environment. Such research sits pertinently among the recent scholarship of T. M. Devine. Sankey shows that government measures were diluted by a willingness to accept intercession on behalf of rebels by influential or well-placed government supporters.
With the case of the Scottish prisoners, Sankey shows that patronage is a central issue. The influence of Scottish loyalists had been able to stretch to the aid of prisoners held in England and the government learned quickly that prisoners in Scotland were to be even more difficult to prosecute, thanks to the Scottish courts and the army. Scots loyal to George I reshaped policy toward the prisoners. Sankey demonstrates broad Scottish opposition to government reprisals and emerging policy in Scotland over which the government had little influence. Scottish agents preserved stability by defending unfortunate neighbors in return for quiet behavior and by necessitating further government reliance on, and support of, their strength. The central theme of the study emerges, that punishing the rebels and preventing further insurrection were not possible by the means the government intended to deploy. The measures they in fact took were an evolved response. Sankey's analysis reverberates beyond the issues of the prisoners and ought to invigorate the study of Scottish nationalism in the Jacobite period. The defense of Scottish custom, institutions, and values was not the charge of Jacobites alone. Sankey makes a valuable contribution to debate on the vitality of Scottish nationalism post-Union and on notions of a Scots Patria not bound by partisan inclinations.
Sankey's great achievement, however, is her analysis of the methods used to defeat Jacobitism as a movement. The potential scope of the book is great, and one could lament that Sankey chose to operate only within a defined area. However, her disciplined investigation cradles a subtle understanding of the motivations and actions of Hanoverians and Jacobites alike in negotiating the fallout of the 1715 rebellion. (Sankey appreciates the difficulties of such binary distinctions). This study integrates social, political, and ideological factors into a legal, logistical, and historical context. She looks forward with an assessment of the effectiveness of the government's response to insurrection and makes suggestions as to why militant Jacobitism was all but killed in England and harnessed in Scotland for a generation.
Geoffrey Plank begins on a similar premise, investigating the impact of the reprisals against Jacobite insurgents, in this case after the rebellion of 1745. But Plank takes a different approach. He considers the government's campaign in Scotland to suppress Jacobitism and pacify the Highlands to be the first move in a larger campaign to secure Britain and its imperial interests against French and Catholic meddling and against disloyal subjects. But Hanoverian reprisals were complicated by the responsibilities of sovereignty. The source of tension was that security required military strength, yet a constitutional government could not easily justify using that strength against its own subjects. Plank analyzes British attempts to resolve this conflict of interests and further investigates the impact of the Jacobite rising of 1745 on the British Empire. It is an ambitious study, in line with recent demands for scholarly investigations which would chart the interrelations between the decline of Jacobitism and Britain's colonial project. Using a two-part structure, Plank facilitates a survey of great geographical scope. He traces developments over time and engages with ideological, military, and political imperatives.
Initially Plank traces the precedent set by the government's campaign in Scotland. He identifies a multi-tiered assault on the Highlands: military policing and indiscriminate violence, demilitarization of the inhabitants, forfeiture of property, and the foundation of schools designed to extirpate the language and religion of the younger generation of Gaels. Even the wholesale transportation of the entire Highland community to the colonies was considered. Plank demonstrates the army's responsibility, under the leadership of the Duke of Cumberland, for the formation of such policy and explores how it was acceptable to both the ministry and public. Portraying the Highlanders as savage facilitated measures designed to render them loyal to George II.
In the second part of his book, Plank applies his findings to the subsequent careers of Cumberland's generals in overseas British domains. In order to assert British sovereignty and encourage loyalty, a policy of reform by social and cultural improvement was sanctioned, and implicitly supported by force that often flared into violence. The generals invested in infrastructure and engaged in diverse discourse from practical issues, such as mail systems, to the natures of indigenous races. They even displayed a willingness to absorb “others” into their communities. Nevertheless, Plank argues, the juxtaposition of loyal subjects and savagery was maintained as a means of expanding and consolidating British colonies. By tracing a string of failures and changing political situations that embarrassed or disgraced some generals, while the Duke suffered a complete loss of influence in the ministry, Plank demonstrates that the army's suitability to their task were questioned. Subsequently, its complexion changed, particularly with the introduction of Highland regiments to the colonial project.
Although the second part runs the risk of reading like a series of biographies, Plank invigorates his study with details of the changing European and colonial political contexts and developments in British policy. The monograph does have some problems. Plank incorrectly sees Jacobitism in 1745 as almost exclusively Highland and largely Catholic, discounting the Lowland Scots and Episcopalian elements (80–81). In fact, reprisals against Scottish Protestants conveyed a severe lesson to the American colonies which Plank fails to appreciate. Furthermore, Plank's structure leads to the creation of divergent strands, and his argument requires a strong conclusion to bring them together. However, Plank prefers to enter into an extended metaphor that, while underpinning the intellectual curiosities that sometimes shaped British colonial policies, does little more than provide a botanical finale to his work. In commendation, however, Plank has conducted exhaustive research, particularly in the Huntington Library's Loudon collection, to develop understanding of the international ramifications of Jacobitism and Cumberland's influence over the British colonial project.
