Biography

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Jacobites

The name 'Jacobite' is used to denote the followers of the deposed House of Stuart. The name 'James' in Latin is 'Jacobus' - hence Jacobite.

In the so-called 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688, the Catholic King James II was deposed by a group of Whigs who wished to remove the King and replace him with the Protestant foreigner William of Orange, who was married to the elder daughter of James II. These men were Lord Danby, the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Lumley, Edward Russell, Henry Sidney and Bishop Compton of London.

James fled into exile with his wife and young son; from then on until after 1746, those people in Britain who wanted to see the restoration of the rightful monarch were called Jacobites. Several attempts made to restore the Stuarts to the throne, all of which ended in failure.

• Battle of Killiecrankie, July 1689
• Battle of Dunkeld, 21 August 1689
• Battle of the Boyne, 1 July 1690 (old style - the Protestant victory is now celebrated by the Orangemen on 12 July)
• First Jacobite rising 1715
• Second Jacobite rising 1745

On the death of James II in 1701, his son James took the title James III; he is known to history as the 'Old Pretender'. On his death, his son Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) took the title Charles III; he is known as the 'Young Pretender'.