Loyalism, legitimism, and the neo-Jacobite challenge to the Anglo-Scottish Union

ABSTRACT

Those who continued with its cause into the late Victorian age, framed loyalism as a principled challenge to the constitutional settlement that culminated in the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. The case for restoring the House of Stuart, the focal point of their efforts, had become a distinctive strand within British loyalism but in many respects remained tangential to the movement for home rule in Scotland. Restoration of the Stuarts necessitated the acts of Settlement and Union be set aside and thus represented a more fundamental challenge to the Imperial parliament than the constitutional reform sought by home rulers. The article examines those late Victorian loyalists who recast the home rule cause to advance the tenets of loyalism as their forebears in revolutionary America had done – within the day's foremost democratic debate on rights, freedoms, and the limits of governmental power.

KEYWORDS:

• Loyalism
• legitimism
• neo-Jacobitism
• home rule
• federalism
• Theodore Napier

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Scottish Home Rule Association (hereafter SHRA), The Union of 1707, 212–233; SHRA, Prospects, 1; SHRA, “Scottish Home Rule Manifesto,” The Times, 18 February 1888, 15; SHRA, Series of Letters; Waddie, How Scotland Lost her Parliament; Waddie, Historical Lessons; Anon [Publicist]. “‘Federalist’ or ‘Devolutionist’?: A Canadian Example.” Scots Magazine, January 1894, 183.

2 Sandiford, “Gladstone and Liberal-Nationalist Movements,” 31; Quinault, “Gladstone and Disraeli,” 571.

3 Morton, “Scotland is Britain,” 127–141; Lloyd-Jones, “Liberalism, Scottish Nationalism and the Home Rule Crisis,” 862–887; Mitchell, Strategies for Self-government, 73–74. Finlay, A Partnership for Good?, 41, 48–51; Hutchison, “Anglo-Scottish Political Relations,” 264; Elliott, Scots & Catalans, 189; Finlay “Scotland and Devolution,” 30; Kane, “Debate on Scottish Home Rule,” 116; Jackson, Two Unions, 231–250; Dunn, “‘Forsaking their ‘Own Flesh and Blood’,” 205–206.

4 Palmer, Age of the Democratic Revolution, 143–184; Mitchell, “Britain's Reaction to the Revolutions,” 83, 86–88.

5 Blackstock and O’Gorman, “Loyalism and the British Worlds,” 5–17.

6 Reid, “‘An Experiment in Constructive Unionism,’” 333.

7 Lloyd-Jones, “The Liberal Party in 1886,” 117–119; Lloyd-Jones, “Liberalism, Scottish Nationalism and the Home Rule Crisis,” 865–869; W. E. Gladstone. Midlothian Campaign. Political Speeches Delivered in November and December 1879 and March and April 1880. Edinburgh, 1880, 4; “Scotch Home Rule and Mr Gladstone.” The Times, 13 December1888, 8.

8 Morton, Unionist Nationalism, 196–197; Morton, “First Home Rule Movement,” 115–120.

9 Jackson, The Two Unions, 283–305; Townshend, “The Home Rule Campaigns in Ireland,” 102–103; Kendle, Ireland and the Federal Solution, 8–31; Blackstock and O’Gorman, “Loyalism and the British Worlds,” 4.

10 Townend, The Road to Home Rule, 26–37.

11 Dicey, “Home Rule from an English Point of View,” 77; Kendle, Ireland and the Federal Solution, 22.

12 Dicey, England's Case Against Home Rule, 158, 168.

13 Pittock, Invention of Scotland, 151–153.

14 Ruvigny and Raineval, Legitimist Kalendar, 43.

15 Mason, “Loyalism in British North America,” 165–168.

16 The Scotsman 12 April 1899, 8.

17 The history of this transformation is covered in Mitchell, Strategies for Self-government.

18 Hroch, Social Preconditions, 23–24.

19 Smout, ed., Anglo-Scottish Relations from 1603–1900; Miller, ed., Anglo-Scottish Relations from 1900; McLean and McMillan, eds., State of the Union; Devine ed., Scotland and the Union; Kidd, Union and Unionism.

20 Whatley, Scots and the Union; Macinnes, Union and Empire.

21 Victoria deployed this symbolism extensively, including domestically: Victoria, Leaves from the Journal of Our Life.

22 Scott, Hints Addressed to the Inhabitants of Edinburgh; Anon. Carle, Now the King's Come: Composed on the Occasion of His Majesty, King George IV's Visit to Scotland in August 1822. Stirling: W Macnie, “Auld England held him lang and fast/And Ireland had a joyfu’ cast/But Scotland's turn has come at last –/Carle, now the King's come.”

23 Anon [A Traveller]. "Restoration of the Parthenon." Scots Magazine, February 1820, 99–105; Report of the Proceedings of a [ … ] Meeting of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Scotland held [ … ] with a view to the Erection of a National Monument in the Metropolis of Scotland, etc (1819); Second Report to the Adjourned Meeting of Directors of the National Monument in Scotland (1828).

24 “Sir Walter Scott to Walter Scott, August 1821,” Letters of Sir Walter Scott ed. Grierson, vii, “Letters 1821–1823,” 1.

25 “Coronation of His Majesty” (1821) [Broadside]. National Library of Scotland (hereafter NLS), L.C.Fol.73(131a); Fulcher, “The Loyalist Response to the Queen Caroline Agitations,” 481–502; Colley, “The Apotheosis of George III,” 94–129.

26 Succession to the Crown Act (1707), c.41 (6 Ann), clauses I, IV X–11; Treason Act (1708) c. 21 (7 Ann), clause I.

27 Kidd, “Rehabilitation of Scottish Jacobitism,” 74–75.

28 Impetus for the movement was rehearsed by Vivian in the pages of The Whirlwind during 1890–1891; Ruvigny and Raineval, Legitimist Kalendar, 106; “Aims and Objectives of the Legitimist Jacobite League,” Belfast Newsletter, 9 June 1892, 4.

29 Ruvigny and Raineval, Legitimist Kalendar, 44. The Kalendar was denounced as “a pathetic example of the perversity of those who, in the teeth of progress, live in the past”; with its editors condemned as “harmless enthusiasts.” Westminster Review 151, no. 6 (June 1899), 711–712.

30 Ruvigny and Raineval, Legitimist Kalendar, 52–54, 76–77; Schwoerer, “Celebrating the Glorious Revolution,” 11.

31 M. H. B. “Jacobite societies,” Notes and Queries, 8 March 1894, 234.

32 The Jacobite, 1 November 1923, 66.

33 Ibid.

34 The Jacobite, 1 June 1904, 41; The Jacobite, 1 May 1922, 41.

35 Royal Standard, 20 September 1900, 33.

36 Whatley, Scottish Society, 3, 5; Clark, “Farinelli as Queen of the Night,” 321; Donaldson, Jacobite Song, 3–4.

37 Trevor-Roper, Invention of Scotland, 211; Newman, “Ballads and Chapbooks,” 21–22; Ferris, “Melancholy, Memory, and the ‘Narrative Situation,’” 82–84; Leneman “A New Role for a Lost Cause,” 111, 118.

38 “The Jacobite Lairds of Gask.” Notes and Queries, 16 July 1870, 65; The Jacobite, 10 June 1931, 161.

39 Christian, “Gendering the Scottish Nation,” 681–709; Dixon, “Lady Nairne's Jacobite Songs,” 511–512.

40 Pittock, “Plaiding the Invention of Scotland,” 43–44, notes that Wilson & Co had been sending tartans to the Sobieski brothers since 1829; Reynolds, “Stuart. John Sobieski Stolberg”; McCrone, Understanding Scotland, 183–184; Pittock, Invention of Scotland, 104–105.

41 Scott, Hints Addressed to the Inhabitants of Edinburgh, 4; Stewart, Sketches, 66–67, 75, 186, Appendix (xxi–xxii); Robertson, First Highlander, 134–140; Stuart, Vestiarium Scoticum, 104.

42 Napier, Royal House of Stuart, 7.

43 “Royal House of Stuart,” The Athenaeum, 16 February 1889, 219; Pittock, Myth of the Jacobite Clans, 119–120; Guthrie, Material Culture of the Jacobites, 143–166.

44 Exhibition of the Royal House of Stuart: Under the Patronage of Her Majesty the Queen. London, 1889.

45 The Scotsman 29 October 1887. In 1924, £430 was paid for an Old Pretender glass inscribed with the Jacobite version of the National Anthem, Scotsman, 28 June 1924.

46 Szabo, “Theodore Napier,” 108.

47 Athenaeum, 24 November 1883, 654.

48 Forth Park Mansion House (Former), 30, Bennochy Road, Kirkcaldy, Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland. Edinburgh. Accessed 1 August 2023. https://buildingsatrisk.org.uk.

49 The Scotsman, 3 December 1892, 8.

50 The Antiquary, 27 (February 1893), 65–68.

51 Rosebery and Macleod, List of Persons; Gibb and St. John Hope. The Royal House of Stuart.

52 Paton, ed., “Papers about the Rebellions”; Davis, “New Perspectives,” 10–15; Lewis, “The ‘Lyon in Mourning,’” 38; Guthrie and Grose, “Forty Years,” 50–51; On the decoration and material culture of the House of Dun, see Pittock, “Treacherous Objects,” 57–60.

53 Pittock, Material Culture and Sedition, 93–124.

54 Birmingham Daily Post, 28 October 1891, 8; Glasgow Herald, 29 October 1891, 8.

55 “Notices,” South Place Magazine, VIII, no. 2, (November 1902), 31.

56 Times, 28 October 1891, 6.

57 Howell, A Lost Left, 169–170. Erskine founded the Scots National League in 1921.

58 Glasgow Herald, 29 October 1891, 8.

59 Ibid.

60 This claim is made in Dodge, As the Crow Flies with the suggestion that most of those members resided in Highland Scotland.

61 Figgis, Theory of the Divine Right of Kings, 76–77, 170–178.

62 W. B. Blaikie, a man known for his Jacobite beliefs writing in Genealogical Magazine, May (1900) and cited in De Burgh, “‘Queen Mary IV,’” 76.

63 Morton and Morris, “Civil Society, Governance and Nation,” 355–360; Buchanan, Ten Years’ Conflict; Brown, Annals of the Disruption; Brown and Fry, eds., Scotland in the Age of Disruption.

64 Ruvigny and Raineval, and Metcalfe, “Legitimism in England,” 366.

65 De Burgh, “‘Queen Mary IV,’” 78.

66 Ibid., 79. Ruvigny and Raineval later expanded this genealogical analysis in The Blood Royal of Britain.

67 Liverpool Mercury, 29 October 1891.

68 Ibid.

69 Glasgow Herald, 29 October 1891.

70 The Scotsman, 12 April 1899, 8.

71 Newbigging, Scottish Jacobites, 55–56; MacPherson, “Coronation and the Pseudo Jacobites,” 38–39.

72 Lloyd-Jones, “The 1892 General Election in England,” 81.

73 Pall Mall Gazette, 2 December 1891, 4.

74 Belfast Newsletter, 9 June 1892, 4.

75 Ibid.

76 Birmingham Daily Post, 11 February 1893, 5.

77 Belfast Newsletter, 15 February 1893, 8; Birmingham Daily Post, 15 February 1893, 5.

78 Northern Echo, 15 February 1893, 3. Jackson, “Johnston, William.”

79 Western Mail, 15 February 1893, 6.

80 Hearth and Home, 12 May 1892, 816.

81 Ibid.

82 Funny Folks, 18 December 1891, 426.

83 Judy, 17 February 1892, 75.

84 Ibid.

85 SHRA, Scottish Home Rule Debate; Perthshire Courier, 7 April 1896; W. A. Hunter, The Financial Relations of England and Scotland. Edinburgh, 1892; Kane, “Debate on Scottish Home Rule,” 22–64.

86 Leeds Mercury, 9 February 1892, 6; Dodge, As the Crow Flies.

87 Graphic, 13 February 1892.

88 Speaker, 4 February 1893, 117.

89 Athenaeum, 27 July 1895, 129.

90 Birmingham Daily Post, 31 January 1894, 3; The Derby Mercury, 7 February 1894, 8.

91 Paul Mall Gazette, 25 March, 1892, 3.

92 Reynolds Newspaper, 7 May 1893, 8; “Legitimist humour,” Outlook 69, May 1899, 556.

93 Judy, 20 May 1895, 261.

94 S. Dewé White. “Revival of Jacobitism.” Westminster Review, July 1896, 417–418, 426.

95 Nineteenth Century 42, September 1897, 362–363.

96 De Burgh, “‘Queen Mary IV’,” 79–80.

97 Punch, 6 March 1897, 117.

98 Ruvigny and Raineval, and Metcalfe, “Legitimism in England,” 362.

99 Ibid.; “The Carlists: Their Case, Their Cause, Their Chiefs.” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, January 1899, 106–119.

100 Ruvigny and Raineval, and Metcalfe “Legitimism in England,” 362. It was labelled “disingenuous” that the legitimists were really Carlists but were using the term Jacobite because of local associations in “A Stuart Restoration,” Speaker, 4 September 1897, 257.

101 O’Hagan, “Home Rule is Rome Rule,” 330–346.

102 Ruvigny and Raineval, and Metcalfe, “Legitimism in England,” 369.

103 Ibid., 363.

104 “The British Federalist. A New Departure,” Scots Magazine, December 1893, 65–69.

105 Ruvigny and Raineval, and Metcalfe, "Legitimism in England,” 366–367.

106 Ibid.

107 Thus supporting the claim of Maria Theresa (1849–1919) and of her son Rupert (1869–1955), and not the claim of Roberto (1848–1907), duke of Parma: Anon [Civis Romanus]. “The Protestant Succession.” The Scotsman, 5 March 1901, 4; “Notes from London.” Western Argus, 2 April 1901, 10.

108 Hansard. House of Commons Debate 22 March 1901, 91 cc.858–859; The Jacobite, III, February 1902–January 1903; The Jacobite IV (1903); The Jacobite, V (1904).

109 Napier, Royal House of Stuart, 6.

110 Szabo, “Theodore Napier,” 102.

111 The Jacobite, III, nos. 1 & 2, March 1902, 4; The Jacobite, III, no. 4, May 1902, 32.

112 The Scotsman, 3 September 1924, 6; Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, 65; Kennedy, “Responding to Empire,” 294; Pittock, Scottish Nationality, 97–98; Morton, “Returning Nationalists,” 116–117.

113 Ribeiro, “Van Dyck in Check Trousers,” 556–559; Argus, 4 September 1924, 13; Argus, 24 September 1932, 6; “Borestone Demonstration. Saturday 24 June 1893: Programme of Procession,” NLS, 3.2820; Argus, 25 February 1893, 11; Argus, 1 March 1893, 6; Glasgow Herald, 2 June 1893, 1; Glasgow Herald, 26 June 1893, 6.

114 The Jacobite, 1 February 1923, 54; Borestone Demonstration; Napier, Bannockburn and Liberty, 2; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 19 April 1899, 6.

115 Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 18 April 1898, 4; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 20 April 1898, 4.

116 In Dumbarton Herald, 23 April 1896, Napier argued “It is reform of Union we demand; or devolution on the Home Rule all round principle; that is, local National parliaments for Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales … together with the establishment of a Federal and Imperial Parliament … ”; see also: Scottish Highlander, 21 May 1896; W. Mitchell, The Political Situation in Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Home Rule Association, c.1893, 11–12; Waddie, Federation of Greater Britain, 10, 15–16.

117 Napier, Arrogance of Englishmen, 4–5.

118 Waddie, Federation of Greater Britain, 5.

119 Frontispiece [hand-written note], Waddie, The Federation, NLS, 3.2820 (48), 16.

120 Dumbarton Herald 23 April 1896: Fifeshire Advertiser 4 April 1896; Perthshire Courier, 7 April 1896; Dumbarton Herald, 8 April 1896; Ayrshire Post, 10 April 1896; Forfar Herald, 10 April 1896; Montrose Review, 10 April 1896; Perthshire Courier, 21 April 1896; Dumbarton Herald, 23 April 1896; Glasgow Herald, 26 April 1897, Border Advertiser, 29 April 1896; Montrose Review, 1 May 1896; Methodist Times, 28 May 1896.

121 Mitchell, “Seven Years of Home Rule Legislation,” 400–401.

122 Aberdeen Journal, 9 August 1898, 4.

123 Glasgow Herald, 8 August 1898, 6, 8.

124 Fiery Cross, August 1901, 4; Fiery Cross, January 1902, 4.

125 The Scotsman, 17 April 1902, 4.

126 The Jacobite, 1 March 1902, 4. Fiery Cross, July 1902 reports a letter was received from a Scots lady in England who purchased the newspaper upon seeing this advertisement.

127 Ibid., 2. F. J. Murdoch of Melbourne and T. D. Wanliss of Ballarat had worked with Napier and Macrae to petition the British government on the misuse of nomenclature in the 1897 and 1898, Glasgow Herald, 5 February 1897, 12, Argus, 4 August 1913, 5; Wanliss, The Bars to British Unity, 7–8, 13–16, 25, 79–80.

128 Fiery Cross, January 1901, 2–3; Morton, William Wallace, 163–169.

129 Fiery Cross, May 1901, 3.

130 Fiery Cross, July 1907, 7.

131 The Jacobite, 29 May 1903, 33; The Jacobite, 30 June 1903: 41–42.

132 Fiery Cross, July 1903, 2. On the schools, see Fiery Cross, April 1903, 5; Fiery Cross, October 1903, 5, 7.

133 Fiery Cross, August 1901, 4.

134 Fiery Cross, January 1902, 4; Fiery Cross, October 1902, 3.

135 Pittock, Invention of Scotland, 126; Fiery Cross, July 1905, 3.

136 Fiery Cross, July 1912, 8; Argus, 29 September 1913, 9.

137 Pittock, Invention of Scotland, 132. Erskine, The Kilt and How to Wear it.

138 Guthrie, Home Rule Federation, 9.

139 Mackenzie, Home Rule for Scotland, 2, 15.

140 Digby Seymour, Outlines of a Federal Union League, 1; Guthrie, Home Rule Federation, 9; “What is the duty of a Scotsman at the Coming Election?” [handbill], NLS: 3.2820 (14); Reith, Scottish Home Rule Association Circular; W. Mitchell, Home Rule All Round, 24. Mitchell argued that England should welcome home rule as a relief from radical agitation coming from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, in Mitchell, The Political Situation in Scotland, 11; J. Romans. “A British constitution for the future.” Scots Magazine, July 1894, 149–150; Guthrie, “The Victorian Constitution Bill,” 69–75.

141 Napier, Scotland's Demand for Home Rule, 6.

142 Napier, “Bannockburn and Liberty,” 2.

143 Fiery Cross, January 1902, 4.

144 Morton, William Wallace, 175–190.

145 Napier, Celtic Monthly, April 1896, 121–122; Pittock, Invention of Scotland, 122.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Graeme Morton

Graeme Morton is Professor of Modern History at the University of Dundee. He is the author of several books on Scottish national identity and emigration, including Weather, Migration and the Scottish Diaspora: Leaving the Cold Country (Routledge, 2021), William Wallace: A National Tale (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), Ourselves and Others: Scotland 1832–1914 (Edinburgh University Press, 2012), and Unionist-Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, 1830–1860 (Tuckwell Press, 1999).