Inculcating loyalty in the Highlands and beyond, c.1745–1784

ABSTRACT

The Jacobite rising of 1745–1746 saw several thousand Scots rebel against the British crown. Yet it also provided opportunities for Scots to demonstrate their loyalty to the crown. After the rising was over, a brutal pacification was accompanied by significant legislative and institutional changes which sought to inculcate long-term loyalty in the Highlands. Once again, numerous Scots participated in the framing and implementation of these changes, which eventually also provided an opportunity for the disloyal to enter the imperial fold. This article examines the roles of loyalist Scots during and after the rising. In doing so it demonstrates understandings of loyalty, neutrality, and disloyalty during this transformative period and illustrates the important role of Scots in inculcating loyalty in the Highlands. It argues that the experiences of Scots, and the British more generally, in this domestic setting influenced the British imperial state's attempts to actively craft loyalty elsewhere in the British Atlantic World, particularly in North America.

KEYWORDS:

• Loyalism
• British imperialism
• independent companies
• militarisation
• Scottish Highlands

By 1745, the Anglo-Scottish union was well-established, and Scots were beginning to enjoy some of its promised benefits. Although Scotophobia proved a continuing challenge to the development of a British identity, Scots actively participated in the British Atlantic World as soldiers and army officers, colonial governors, and through the establishment and expansion of commercial networks.¹ However, the persistence of the Jacobite threat during the first half of the eighteenth century meant that the status of Scots in the British Atlantic World was contested, particularly those in the Highlands. Highlanders remained an “other” even within Scotland: associated with incivility, alien customs and language, and the clan system. During the Jacobite rising of 1745–1746 (the Forty-Five), far more Scots remained ostensibly loyal to the crown than joined the Jacobites. The Jacobite army reached a maximum effective strength of nine thousand, with the total number involved during the rising somewhere between eleven and fourteen thousand.² Support for the Jacobites was widespread throughout Scotland and, to a lesser extent, northern England. However, British army officers and government officials falsely characterised the rising as a Highland rebellion. This allowed them to both consciously and unwittingly draw upon the idea of the “other” and frame the rising as a foreign, Highland invasion, emphasising the threat it posed to both domestic and imperial security.

Geoffrey Plank demonstrated that such a characterisation caused British army officers to label Jacobites as criminals guilty of treason whilst also labelling the general Highland population savages, guilty of Jacobitism and disloyalty by association.³ Loyalism represented an “amalgamation of values, practices, laws, and politics” facilitating the categorisation of “loyal subjects,” deserving of rights and protections, and those who were “disloyal,” against whom punitive measures were employed.⁴ The blurring of definitions of rebellion and savagery in the Highlands therefore led army officers to increasingly utilise indiscriminate violence against the disloyal whole in their attempts to restore peace.⁵ However, the characterisation also afforded Lowland Scots and Highlanders the opportunity to demonstrate their personal loyalty to the crown by actively supporting the British military effort during the rising and the pacification that followed it. This study will examine the active role played for the crown by some Scots during and after the Forty-Five, demonstrating their understandings of loyalty, neutrality, and disloyalty during this transformative period and illustrating the role of Scots in inculcating loyalty in the Highlands, a geographical fringe of the British Atlantic World. It will argue that direct and indirect experiences in this domestic setting influenced attempts of the British imperial state to actively craft loyalty elsewhere in the British Atlantic World, particularly in North America.

Loyalty and the Forty-Five

The loyalty of those Scots who remained in their homes during the Forty-Five can rarely, if ever, be proven, and even service in the British or Jacobite army cannot be taken as a guarantee of allegiance. Some did clearly display their convictions towards the Jacobites or the crown through active military service. Bob Harris made a “conservative estimate” that at least three thousand Lowland volunteers took up arms for the defence of the Hanoverian regime, alongside the approximately 1,700 strong Argyll militia and approximately two thousand who joined the Independent Companies.⁶ Others affirmed their allegiance to one side or the other by helping supply the army with provisions or intelligence, or through church sermons or addresses of loyalty to the relevant royal family. Yet loyalty was a fluid concept for many Scots.⁷ Highlanders had to manage numerous, sometimes competing, influences from their family, clan, religion, and monarch. Certainly, some of those Highlanders who remained at home during the rising did so not from a sense of duty to the British government and Hanoverian monarchy, but rather due to a concern that the rising would not succeed. Individuals might privately remain drawn to the Stuarts, even demonstrating symbolic support, but their failure to rise in arms against the state was enough for them to argue that they were indeed loyal and therefore ought not to be punished. For others, such as Norman MacLeod of Dunvegan and Alexander Macdonald of Sleat, turning loyal meant actively aligning themselves with the government and raising Independent Companies, contrary to their clans’ actions during the 1715 rising (the Fifteen). For both clan chiefs, concern that the rising stood little chance of success was a motivating factor for their loyalism but for Macdonald, his recent repurchasing of his family’s estate after its forfeiture after the Fifteen also likely influenced his decision making.⁸ However, the persistent rumours of the inaction of the MacLeods and Macdonalds in Skye whilst Charles Edward Stuart attempted to evade capture suggests that any loyalty to King George II was not particularly steadfast, at least amongst the soldiers if not the chiefs.⁹

Many in the Highlands had little or no choice in their outward displays of loyalty or disloyalty. Clansmen were expected to follow their chief’s lead and were cajoled or threatened if they did not, with both armies using the threat, and instances, of violence to encourage recruitment. Desertion to the opposition during the rising was also common and Darren Layne identified at least two hundred British soldiers, including those in the Independent Companies, who joined the Jacobite army in such a way, whether because they felt a genuine attachment to the Jacobite cause or they felt it their only option after capture.¹⁰ Matthew Dziennik demonstrated the importance of pragmatic loyalty, for both elites and ordinary men, in driving decisions around enlistment. For ordinary men, enlistment offered a method of protection both personally and for their cattle given banditry and cattle theft were common during periods of unrest.¹¹ Other studies have investigated the general motivations of eighteenth-century army recruits, and more recently Jacobite recruits, yet individual ideas about what it meant to be loyal or disloyal remain largely unrecorded.¹² It is unsurprising that the ideas and understandings that were recorded and have survived are those that drove several Scottish elites to demonstrate personal loyalty to the state. Investigating the actions and attitudes of these elites can deepen historians’ understanding of the myriad Scottish loyalties in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic World.

Demonstrating loyalty through the Independent Companies

During the Forty-Five, the British army waged a campaign of irregular warfare concurrent to its regular campaign. The Argyll Militia played a role in this irregular campaign, but it was the Independent Companies raised in the Highlands under the orders of Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Lord President, and commanded by John Campbell, fourth earl of Loudoun, that were primarily responsible for it. Independent Companies were to be kept in the Highlands to hamper Jacobite recruitment efforts, prevent any who did rise from linking with Jacobites further south, and to ensure a supplementary force was available that could be sent to strengthen the main body of the army if required. Independent Companies had first been raised with the aim of keeping the peace in the Highlands in 1603 and had been raised and disbanded on numerous occasions thereafter.¹³ Such troops had not played a role during the Fifteen as the government had relied on lord lieutenants to raise local militia forces to protect their county, although these positions had been made extinct in Scotland by the 1720s.¹⁴ Forbes was granted permission to facilitate the raising of up to twenty Independent Companies in September 1745, a month after Charles Edward Stuart had landed in the Western Isles. He was ordered to grant commissions to well-affected clan chiefs and gentlemen in the Highlands to raise one or more company of one hundred men, plus officers, for the service of the government.¹⁵ The recruitment process provided an opportunity for those involved to demonstrate their personal loyalty to the crown and, for some, to inculcate loyalty more broadly throughout the Highlands to defeat Jacobitism.

For those who accepted a commission from Forbes, such as William Sutherland, seventeenth earl of Sutherland, recruitment offered an opportunity to prove his loyalty that might see him rewarded with place or patronage. A representative peer, Sutherland had closely aligned himself with the ministry at court in previous years and his family had a strong history of loyalty; both his father and grandfather had commanded Sutherland men for the government during the Fifteen and the attempted rising in 1719. As Dziennik highlighted, those who had previously benefited from the patronage networks and political management of the fiscal-military state were most likely to respond to the opportunities afforded by serving the state in the Forty-Five.¹⁶ Sutherland had offered to raise his clan for the government as early as 1744 in response to a rumoured French-sponsored Jacobite invasion, and he repeated the offer upon hearing of Charles Edward Stuart’s landing.¹⁷ When responsibility for recruitment was given to Forbes, Sutherland immediately agreed to the Lord President's request that he raise first one, and shortly later two, companies. His first company had been recruited and sent to muster in Inverness within a month of Forbes’ September request, with the second following shortly thereafter.¹⁸ Forbes praised Sutherland’s “very becoming zeal” in raising his troops so quickly in a letter to John Hay, fourth marquess of Tweeddale, Secretary of State for Scotland, and Loudoun reaffirmed this upon his arrival in Inverness.¹⁹ Despite the vast size of the Sutherland estate and its relative distance from Inverness, Sutherland had raised his troops and sent them to the town quicker than any except George Munro of Culcairn, who mas much closer.²⁰ Sutherland asserted his authority as clan chief to raise the troops requested of him, but he also offered concessions to volunteers including forgiving outstanding rent arrears and delaying new payments.²¹ His tactics demonstrate both the difficulty he faced in persuading ordinary clansmen to volunteer and his own determination to serve the British state.

When the Jacobites took Inverness in February 1746, the Independent Companies retreated into Sutherland and Skye. The earl again demonstrated his willingness to do all in his power for the service. Acting once more on Forbes’ request, he raised militia units in Sutherland for short-term engagements to support the British defence of the county.²² He had previously employed men privately in a similar manner to prevent Jacobite recruitment in Sutherland and to guard the pass between Caithness and Sutherland in response to rumours that Jacobite arms were being landed on the north coast of Scotland.²³ When the Jacobites advanced and threatened the earl’s seat at Dunrobin, Sutherland was forced to abandon the castle. He chose to sail to Aberdeen to join the army under William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, in order to continue to serve the British effort. Meanwhile, his militia remained active, gathering intelligence and harassing Jacobite forces.²⁴ They were able to apprise the Independent Companies of the movements of the Jacobite troops under George Mackenzie, third earl of Cromartie, which led to the Jacobites’ defeat at the Battle of Littleferry, near Golspie, on 15 April. This action deprived Charles Edward Stuart of several hundred men at Culloden the following day.²⁵

Despite Sutherland’s exertions for the government, he felt it necessary to regularly reaffirm his loyalty in writing. In December 1745, he was alerted to rumours that alleged he had been slow in raising his troops and had not raised a sufficient number, despite the two hundred Sutherland men who were in arms at that juncture being the full quota requested by Forbes. Sutherland wrote to Forbes in late December hoping that the Lord President would put a stop “to such malicious suggestions and insinuations” and offered himself and the entire clan for the service should they be required.²⁶ He likewise wrote to Cumberland from Dunrobin in April, concerned about rumours that his returning home was “a backwardness in me to attend your Royal Highness” and noting that he had returned to Sutherland on Cumberland’s orders to command his men as they sought to capture Simon Fraser, eleventh Lord Lovat.²⁷ Rumours regarding the strength of Sutherland’s loyalty were likely stoked by his friendship with Cromartie, particularly after the Jacobites took Dunrobin Castle. Indeed, Sutherland did little to disassociate himself from Cromartie, even attending him on several occasions at the Tower of London after Cromartie’s conviction of high treason.²⁸

The high rates of desertion from Sutherland’s companies over the winter also raised questions of the strength of their loyalty.²⁹ Desertion was by no means unique to the Sutherland troops. It was a common problem within the Independent Companies as well as within the ranks of the Jacobite and British armies. However, British officers tended to suggest that auxiliary troops such as the Independent Companies were prone to desertion and considered them less reliable and less talented than regulars. Soldiers deserted for numerous reasons including local attachments, a lack of opportunities to supplement their pay, concerns about the realities of military service, and the mundane nature of some aspects of military life.³⁰ Economic opportunism appears to have encouraged some soldiers to abscond from a regiment and re-enlist with another to take advantage of the bounty money.³¹ This was most common within an army rather than a reason for desertion to the enemy and Dziennik demonstrated that protest, either due to a political alignment with the Jacobites or a social protest against their treatment, is a more likely explanation as to why significant numbers of Loudoun's 64th and the Independent Companies deserted to the Jacobites.³²

Stephen Conway challenged the extent to which regular troops held a significantly different view of military service than auxiliary forces, noting both groups were concerned with their rights and obligations as soldiers and British subjects and were aware of the terms of their service.³³ Rather the terms of service themselves help to explain variations in desertion rates. Andrew Mackillop argued that for Highland soldiers, conflict and military service was tied closely to the needs of the agricultural sector, leading to shorter campaigns and temporary absences of troops during harvest periods.³⁴ During the Forty-Five, the British reliance on locally raised troops enabled Highlanders to use their negotiating power to demand furlough when required, both for security reasons and to assist with the harvest.³⁵ Such absences were viewed as temporary by the men and their officers, if not by British military commanders or government officials. Indeed, Sutherland argued his troops had returned home when the Jacobites left Scotland because they were surplus to requirements and possessed a “natural desire to return for the harvest,” clearly suggesting they would return when needed.³⁶ The French-Canadian militia likewise undertook temporary absences, with or without leave, during the 1759 siege of Quebec that were similarly driven by agricultural concerns. Matthew Ward highlighted that many would return after a short absence and although the French officers were as outraged by the practice as the British officers were by the Highland troops, they had little choice but to tolerate some level of temporary absence so that they had supplies for the winter.³⁷

Highland desertion during the Forty-Five also fits a broader pattern, that desertion was much more common when troops were operating in their home country or a country with shared language and culture. This made it easier for deserters to blend into society, return to their homes and families, or find assistance from the local populace. Desertion did occur even when the army was campaigning in unfamiliar territory and indeed it was a constant problem for the British during the siege of Quebec.³⁸ Yet, as Conway highlighted, desertion rates fluctuated depending on circumstances and desertion from the British army was more common when the army was stationed in Ireland compared to when it was stationed in places like Gibraltar where opportunities to escape were low.³⁹ This helps to explain rates of desertion within both the Indpendent Companies and Jacobite army during the Forty-Five.⁴⁰ Desertion did not simply equate to disloyalty, yet British officers often equated the two and were particularly likely to view auxiliary troops as prone to desertion and, therefore, disloyalty.

The “othering” of Highlanders increased such expectations and the rumours of disloyalty that followed Sutherland and his troops reflected the general distrust felt within many in the British army and government towards the Highland troops and population. Although Cumberland recognised the need for the Highland troops and even went as far as to praise their bravery on occasion, he did not trust them. He frequently made barbs about their loyalty and discipline in letters to Loudoun, claiming that he observed “a very great inclination in your People to desert.”⁴¹ John Dalrymple, second earl of Stair, the Scottish officer who had proposed the granting of commissions for Independent Companies, highlighted his distaste for allowing the unregulated arming and rising of the Highlands, even if for the explicit purpose of opposing the Jacobites.⁴² The general conviction of Highland disloyalty within government and military circles illustrates the difficulties Sutherland faced in demonstrating both personal loyalty and the loyalty of his clan. Recruitment provided an opportunity for him, and other Highland elites, to try and disprove such convictions but it was not particularly successful in this. Indeed, Sutherland failed to gain recompense for the expense he was put to during the rising and even lost his seat in the House of Lords and his position as commissioner of the police just a year after the rising had ended, reflecting lingering distrust.

Inculcating loyalty through the Independent Companies

For Forbes and Loudoun, recruiting and commanding the Independent Companies was not only a way to demonstrate personal loyalty but also a method of inculcating loyalty throughout the Highlands. Forbes recognised the importance of providing offices and commissions to Highland elites to integrate them within the British fiscal-military state and encourage their submission to the crown.⁴³ Working together, Loudoun and Forbes successfully filled eighteen of the twenty warrants for Independent Companies between October 1745 and February 1746, recruiting approximately two thousand troops.⁴⁴ Ronald Black highlighted the success they met with in the Highlands, particularly emphasising the role the Lord President played in corresponding and negotiating with the various clan chiefs, despite conflicting loyalties, local politics, and inter-clan rivalry complicating his task.⁴⁵ The numbers raised demonstrated a significant loyalist core within the Highlands and represented a blow to Jacobite recruitment hopes, particularly when those who had previously aligned themselves with the Jacobites in 1715 accepted commissions from Forbes. This was the case with the Macdonalds and MacLeods of Skye, who raised eight companies between them, thereby depriving Charles Edward Stuart of over eight hundred men he had hoped would join him. Forbes believed that the actions of the two chiefs had encouraged others to either remain neutral or become actively loyal, whilst proving a severe disappointment to the Jacobites.⁴⁶

The numbers Loudoun and Forbes succeeded in raising is testament to the vigour with which they acted and was a clear demonstration of their personal loyalty to the crown. It also highlights their understanding that loyal subjects ought to display due adherence and subordination to the crown and to act in a way that furthered the imperial state’s aims.⁴⁷ Their recruitment efforts were important to the British war effort even when they did not result in expressions of active loyalism amongst the population. The mathematician Colin MacLaurin, writing in late 1745, noted that the efforts of Loudoun and Forbes negotiating with, and cajoling, clans had persuaded several to remain quiet.⁴⁸ In doing so these clans were demonstrating due subordination to the crown through their neutrality, although they certainly could not be classed as active loyalists contributing to fulfilment of the state’s aims. Even when those with whom they were negotiating did align themselves with the Jacobites, as was the case with Lovat, the negotiation prevented men from immediately strengthening the Jacobite army. Lovat, notorious for switching his loyalties to suit his personal ambitions, spent weeks negotiating with Forbes and Loudoun whilst considering sending Clan Fraser out for the Jacobites. As a result of his wavering, the clan did not seriously begin to mobilise until October and it was not until the Jacobites had almost reached Derby that Lovat’s support for Charles Edward Stuart was made explicit.⁴⁹ The delay in Fraser support contributed to declining Jacobite morale as the army advanced, and to the decision to turn back at Derby. Poor communications left the Jacobites with “little or no intelligence from any quarter” as they marched southwards, and therefore unaware of the numbers continuing to rise for the cause in the Highlands.⁵⁰

Loudoun was willing to assume that not all on Lovat’s estate were rebels, even when Lovat himself had openly displayed his disloyalty and raised the clan for the Jacobites. By late November, Fraser men had cut off communications between the Independent Companies in Inverness and troops stationed at Fort Augustus, and the Jacobites were reportedly using violence and intimidation to force out Fraser men.⁵¹ When Loudoun marched his troops through Fraser lands, he found the cattle driven off and men in arms. They claimed they had been warned that Loudoun would “drive their Cattle and burn their Houses.”⁵² Loudoun informed them that if they countined in arms he “must treat them as Rebells,” but if they returned to their homes he would not disturb them and would protect them from the Jacobites.⁵³ Loudoun's actions aligned with the policy of amnesty exemplified by General George Wade's 30 October proclamation, which offered clemency to ordinary Jacobites who returned to their houses and became “faithful to his Majesty and his government” by 12 November.⁵⁴ The policy sought to encourage desertion from the Jacobite ranks, recognising that many had been cajoled or forced into service.⁵⁵ Although Loudoun's encounter with Fraser men took place after the deadline and with men who were out in arms, he was acting in accordance with the army's policy, and he recognised that the violent context of the rising on both sides made it almost impossible to differentiate between those who were in arms for the Jacobites and those who were attempting to defend their homes.⁵⁶ Importantly for Loudoun, if those in arms returned to their homes and remained quiet then they were demonstrating subordination through neutrality. Indeed, Loudoun believed his encounter with the Fraser men had been beneficial for the security of the Highlands as they “parted in great friendship.”⁵⁷

The Independent Companies played an important role in the British victory. They primarily engaged in irregular warfare, which required troops to use their knowledge of the environment to assault the enemy on the march, hence why Highlanders were thought best suited to the task.⁵⁸ During the rising, they were tasked with securing routes of communication, garrisoning military posts, disrupting Jacobite supply lines, harassing parties of Jacobites remaining in the Highlands, and destroying the settlements of those who had left them undefended. It was believed that burning crops and driving away the sheep and cattle of those who had joined the rising would persuade the men to return home to take care of their families.⁵⁹ Such tactics deliberately targeted morale and sought to encourage desertion. In this, the Independent Companies were similar to other auxiliary forces on both sides of the conflict who provided protection for a local area. However, unlike other such forces, the Highland troops did undertake campaigns more reminiscent of regular warfare. Aside from the Battle of Littleferry, Loudoun successfully relieved Fort Augustus with 600 men in December 1745. Later the same month another detachment was defeated by the Jacobites in a skirmish at Inverurie.⁶⁰ But their primary role was one of harassment. This was confirmed by Cumberland in March 1746 when he ordered Loudoun to remain in the Highlands and prevent men from rising to reinforce the Jacobite ranks, rather than joining forces with the main body of the army.⁶¹ In this role, the Independent Companies were effective, and the contemporary opinion and scholarship deriding their contribution fails to recognise that their benefit lay in checking the Jacobites through guerrilla warfare rather than through battles or sieges.

Inculcating loyalty in the short-term

The experiences of Loudoun and Forbes in the Highlands influenced their conceptions of loyalty, neutrality, and disloyalty, which were markedly different from the majority view of the British army and ministry, typified by Cumberland, that classed all Highlanders as disloyal, savage, and guilty by association of Jacobitism. Cumberland's views drove the campaign of “military execution” undertaken during and after the rising. Thousands of houses were burnt, provisions and cattle destroyed or driven off, and the countryside scorched indiscriminately in areas where Jacobites had been openly disloyal or where civilians had refused to comply with the orders of the army or were suspected of doing so.⁶² Little care was taken to save the property of those who had remained in their homes or even those who had fought with the British, with the populations’ supposed collective disloyalty used by army officers as justification for their actions. Cumberland expressed this feeling of general disloyalty, arguing that “The Jacobite rebellious Principle is so rooted in this Nation [the Highlands], that this Generation must be pretty well worn out before This Country will be quiet” and advocating the deportation of several clans to the West Indies as the only way to prevent a future rising.⁶³ Those who remained in their homes and Loudoun and Forbes classed as neutrals, Cumberland described as enemies who simply had not risen on this particular occasion.⁶⁴ Similar understandings of the pervasiveness of Highland disloyalty were also common in the ministry. Secretary of State for the Southern Department Thomas Pelham Holles, duke of Newcastle, argued that the “power of the Highlands” had to be “absolutely reduced” to prevent France from playing “the Pretender upon us whenever she pleases.”⁶⁵ Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Philip Stanhope, fourth earl of Chesterfield, extended this to all Scots, arguing that as all were closet Jacobites, “while that favourall distinction remains of loyall and disloyal, the rebellion will never be extinguish’d” and recommending that the Scottish companies be disbanded.⁶⁶

Many army officers, including numerous Scots, were fully engaged with Cumberland’s belief that punitive measures were required as a first step to peace and loyalty in the Highlands. Captain Caroline Scott quickly gained a distasteful reputation for the vindictiveness and violence with which he pursued the pacification, hanging three unarmed men who were suspected of Jacobitism in Lochaber in May 1746 rather than referring them to a justice of the peace.⁶⁷ Others, including Captain John Fergussone, Major William Lockhart, and Captain George Munro of Culcairn, demonstrated their approbation of Cumberland’s strategy through their actions.⁶⁸ Although it seems inconceivable that Munro, himself a Highlander, could have shared the general conception of Highland disloyalty, he clearly identified with such an understanding as it related to those who had not joined the British army.

Loudoun and Forbes’ ideas about what made a subject loyal, as well as their ideas regarding how best to inculcate loyalty in that region, stand in contrast to the general conceptions and understandings within the army and government, even amongst many of their fellow Scots. They, along with others including Archibald Campbell, third duke of Argyll, and General John Campbell of Mamore, encouraged and adopted a moderate stance in relation to the pacification of the Highlands. Despite Cumberland’s orders to disarm all after Culloden, Loudoun negotiated with some clan chiefs, allowing them to be answerable for the conduct of their men so that numerous Highlanders continued to possess weapons.⁶⁹ In doing so, Loudoun demonstrated his trust that the loyalty they displayed during the rising, whether by remaining neutral or by actively supporting the British army, was genuine. Meanwhile, both Forbes and Argyll advocated the use of peaceful measures to disarm the Highlands. They believed that wanton destruction of land would not help ensure peace but rather would lead to the economic ruin of both loyal and disloyal Highlanders, potentially increasing resentment.⁷⁰ As both would suffer financially from an indiscriminately violent campaign it is likely their desire for moderation arose at least in part from self-interest. Yet there is evidence that moderation had good effects on the population. Loudoun’s conciliatory approach to the pacification led to his “Mildness, Civility and Moderation” being recognised and praised by some in the local population and encouraged compliance with his requests for disarming and submission to the crown.⁷¹

Those who advocated moderation aimed to make the Highlands loyal through the immediate rehabilitation of Highland elites into British imperial society, where they could productively work towards the realisation of the state’s aims, rather than through widescale violence. Because the majority shared Cumberland’s conception of Highland disloyalty and because the commander had the “King’s entire approbation” of his Highland strategy, the immediate pacification was bound to follow his punitive model.⁷² One thing all agreed was that loyalty demanded the allegiance of the individual to the crown and state. This required the subversion of local loyalties at the family or clan level and their replacement with an overriding loyalty to the crown. One method of quantifying loyalty was through the administration of oaths. Oaths of allegiance and abjuration were a requirement to hold civil office, for military service, and from those disarmed after the Fifteen and Forty-Five.⁷³ Episcopalian ministers had to swear the oaths in order to legally perform worship after the Scottish Episcopalians Act 1711 (10 Anne, c. 10), often known as the Toleartion Act of 1712.⁷⁴ Although some took the oaths with mental reservations and others took them sincerely, yet later switched sides, successive ministries used them to gain a measure of the loyal and to identify the obviously disloyal. The non-juring status of the majority of Scottish Episcopalians was held as evidence of their intransigence and disloyalty and used to justify widespread reprisals against that group after the Forty-Five, especially in the North-East. Numerous meeting houses were burned and previous legislation was extended to impose stricter penalties on ministers who had not sworn the acts and to limit the numbers that could attend services.⁷⁵

Inculcating loyalty in the long-term

As well as the short-term measures implemented, there was a belief within both the army under Cumberland and the Pelham ministry that long-term measures were also required to ensure peace, prevent any future Jacobite rising, and inculcate loyatly. The measures taken centred on one hand on a military occupation of Scotland and the intimidation and subjugation of the population, and on the other the civilisation and assimilation of the Highlanders. Few of the steps taken were novel as the British used earlier examples in the Highlands and Ireland to guide them.⁷⁶ And, at the same time as measures to civilise Highlanders were imposed from above, Highlanders from all levels of society and from within both Whig and Jacobite circles implemented changes from below through their active engagement with improvement ideology.⁷⁷ Numerous Highland elites undertook considerable work on their estates, and some tenant farmers also made alterations due to changes to the rental system which provided them with longer leases.⁷⁸ Improvers believed that traditional clanship was incompatible with improvement as clanship was viewed as a military, rather than an agricultural, system. Such an understanding had been developing amongst Highland landowners for decades, contributing to a decline in clanship prior to the Forty-Five. The systematic steps taken by the government helped to accelerate such changes, but they did so in tandem with a broader shift towards “commercial landlordism” and an engagement in both legal and illegal domestic, European, and imperial trade that was undertaken by Jacobite and Whig entrepreneurs alike.⁷⁹

As they had during the Forty-Five, Scots played a central role in the military occupation that followed. A strong military presence was retained as fifteen thousand troops were posted to Scotland by September 1746, with significant numbers spread throughout the Highlands. A year later, approximately ten thousand remained.⁸⁰ Many were garrisoned in the major barracks at Edinburgh, Blackness, and Sitrling Castles and Berwick barracks during the winter, but would spend the summer season in long-term cantonments of various sizes, from where they would undertake regular, rotating patrols that camped in small outposts or were quartered on local populations.⁸¹ This meant many Scots lived in close proximity to soldiers on at least a temporary basis in the years following the rising. The Independent Companies were inititally part of this occupying force before being incorporated into Loudoun's 64th Regiment or being disbanded.⁸² There was also substantial investment in military infrastructure. Forts and garrisons that had existed prior to the Forty-Five were improved and expanded, enabling them to quarter more troops, whilst new structures were built in strategic locations such as Fort George, near Inverness. Proposals were made for a chain of garrisons and barracks to link together throughout the Highlands, with castles turned into temporary barracks and many small outposts built, enabling a strong military presence throughout the entire region.⁸³ As Jeremy Black highlighted, this was unusual in a domestic setting as fort building was normally reserved for overseas locations, thereby demonstrating the threat the British state felt continued to emanate from the Highlands, as well as the perceived alienness of that region.⁸⁴

The rising highlighted that General Wade’s earlier road-building efforts had not extended far enough and proposals to extend his work were made by many, including James Erskine, Lord Grange. Like many Scots with divided loyalties, Grange had initially communicated with Charles Edward Stuart and encouraged his endeavours, before deciding to remain neutral after realising Charles had failed to secure significant foreign support.⁸⁵ After the rising’s failure, Grange sought to reiterate his loyalty to the crown and affect his reintegration into British imperial society, advocating road building as a method of ensuring timely access to the most remote regions should another rising occur.⁸⁶ Grange’s plans were based on his own, and others, earlier ideas, again emphasising that ambitions of inculcating loyalty in the Highlands dated back well before 1745, with the transformation of Highland society already underway and driven by Scots, including numerous Jacobites and those with divided loyalties. That another rising might take place remained a realistic prospect during the War of the Austrian Succession should France sponsor a Highland rising as a distraction from the continental war. The threat was demonstrated by the continuing disorder and banditry in the Highlands months and even years after Culloden.⁸⁷ The Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle in April 1748 made a French-sponsored rising less likely, but the British government remained determined to limit Highlanders’ military capabilities. Construction of the new roads began immediately after Culloden and, by 1767, roadbuilding parties under Wade’s successor Major William Caulfield had laid approximately nine hundred miles through the Highlands. In doing so, they helped to tame the landscape, making the region more accessible to soldiers and providing commercial links to the Lowlands and England.⁸⁸

A key part of the military occupation and subjugation of the population after the Forty-Five was a military surveying and mapping programme. Such maps had always been essential for securing and defending Scotland from internal and external threats.⁸⁹ After the rising, renewed emphasis was placed on military surveying through the creation of an accurate national military map, the Military Survey of Scotland, 1747–1755, more commonly known as the Roy Map. In addition to providing intelligence and tactical support, the map was to act as a method of military intimidation and imposition and to enable effective governance of a remote, occupied region.⁹⁰ Proposed and overseen by Scottish military surveyor and engineer Lt. Col. David Watson, the survey was undertaken by another Scottish military engineer, William Roy, and a small team of junior engineers.⁹¹ Combined with the road and garrison building campaigns, the British army had more intelligence and infrastructure than ever to support its occupation and to enable commanders to respond to any future rising originating in the Highlands. The presence of surveyors on the land and the detailed sketches drawn of towns and villages, and even individual farms, acted as an explicit expression of British military might and a threat to those who continued to harbour hopes of a renewed Jacobite attempt. This process of military occupation and investment focused primarily, though not exclusively, on the Highlands and it sought to inculcate loyalty within the population through intimidation and subjugation.

The second strand of long-term efforts to inculcate loyalty and ensure peace in the Highlands was the attempted civilisation and assimilation of the population. Immediately after the rising, forty-one Scottish estates belonging to members of the landed gentry who had openly supported the Jacobites were forfeited to the crown. Whilst the majority of these were sold to pay debts or raise revenue, thirteen Highland estates were annexed inalienably to the crown in 1752. The Annexing Act (25 Geo. 3, c. 41) was crafted primarily by Lord Chancellor Philip Yorke, earl of Hardwicke. Much of the parliamentary debate around the Annexing Act was concerned with whether the Commission for the Annexed Estates would reduce or increase corruption in Scotland and whether the oversight it provided was contrary to improvement.⁹² Such arguments were linked to Jacobitism, and Newcastle argued that the act would “drive a wedge between the Highland people, who would discover a new prosperity under the Crown, and their former clan leaders.”⁹³ The act itself explicitly linked its aims to the recent rising, noting that its purpose was “for the better Civilizing and Improving the Highlands of Scotland and Preventing Disorders there for the Future.”⁹⁴ Land forfeiture had been a common punishment in Scotland for centuries, including after the Fifteen, but this annexation was unique as estates were to act as models for improvement, industry, and commerce.

The focus on civilisation as a stated aim of annexation was concurrent with the emergence of stadial theory in Scotland in the writings of Adam Smith. Stadial theory suggested that Highlanders had the potential to progress from their current state as pastoralists, through agriculture, to a civilised state of commercialism.⁹⁵ Whilst the parliamentary debates took place, others put forward their own proposals for the Highlands and many drew on these emerging enlightenment philosophies. Grange identified agriculture as the foundation of wealth for a society and the first step towards industry, whilst both he and Lord Justice Clerk Andrew Fletcher lauded improvement as a national objective in which the emphasis ought to be on commerce.⁹⁶ In a joint proposal with commander-in-chief of the British army in Scotland Humphrey Bland, Fletcher also argued that government control of property was vital to hold power over the inhabitants and force their compliance with improving objectives. Fletcher argued:

To the best Judgement I can form, of that, Barbarous, Lawless countrey, the shortest and easiest way of civilizeing it, and reduceing it to the Obedience of the Law, is to Vest the absolute Property in the Crown of as much of it as possible: which, of course, gives his Majesty the absolute Disposal of all the Inhabitants

.⁹⁷

Fletcher argued for the same steps that Hardwicke, Newcastle, and others were pushing forward in Parliament and he explicitly connected the annexation of property with civilising the Highlands. Such proposals may not have held much weight in Parliament given such debates were already well underway, but they demonstrate that the belief that the civilisation of the Highlands was essential for the long-term peace and security of the British state was commonly held both within and outwith Scotland.

The Commission for the Annexed Estates was tasked with investing profits from rents in the Highlands to affect more general improvements: funding manufacturing, road and bridge building initiatives, and the establishment of planned villages. The commissioners appointed were Scots and included noted agricultural improvers and enlightenment thinkers such as Henry Home, Lord Kames, the Marquess of Tweeddale, and James Ogilvy, sixth earl of Findlater and third of Seafield.⁹⁸ They and other improvers directed the steps taken and the policies recommended. The Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) had been attempting to educate and convert Highlanders for decades. From the 1750s it worked closely with the commission, establishing charity schools to teach English and placing Presbyterian ministers in Highland parishes.⁹⁹ At the same time, a focus was put on ensuring that children grew up as loyal, Protestant subjects. Some children were removed from the Highlands to be raised by Lowland, Protestant families, whilst the apprenticeship scheme coordinated by the commissioners for the annexed estates provided education in crafts, including spinning and weaving.¹⁰⁰ The purpose of the scheme was twofold. By providing them with an education it was hoped the children would grow up loyal to the crown and by requiring apprentices to return to their home parish to practice their craft once their education was complete it was hoped that industry and commerce would spread throughout the region.

The measures implemented in the Highlands had mixed results. Dziennik demonstrated that legislative steps were hampered by parliamentary divisions that moderated the bills put forward and by a reliance on Highlanders to enforce the acts, who were able to shape them to better suit local conditions and private ambitions.¹⁰¹ The annexed estates generally failed to facilitate widespread improvement. Kames admitted that much of the money spent had been “no better than water spilt on the ground.”¹⁰² However, the civilising mission was perceived to be much more successful and within three years of the commission’s establishment reports indicated that its intervention had contributed to a decrease in theft and rapine.¹⁰³ This downward trend continued so that when the estates were restored in 1784, the Disannexing Act (24 Geo. 3, c. 57) proclaimed that no inhabitants of Britain were more loyal or dutiful than the Highlanders.¹⁰⁴ The British elite believed the annexation had served its purpose. The Jacobite threat had all but disappeared. James Stuart had died in 1766, Charles would follow in 1788, and Henry had been ordained into the Catholic Church. Highland elites were becoming increasingly entrenched within the British aristocracy, demonstrating their allegiance to the crown. Crucially, Highlanders were regularly displaying their domestic and imperial loyalty.

At the same time, the recruitment of Highland soldiers into the British army on a vast scale to fight as defenders of empire in imperial theatres of war had contributed to a general softening of attitudes towards that population. Mackillop illustrated that although the British government did not view military recruitment as a method of pacification, it quickly became the most successful government policy for assimilating Highlanders within the empire.¹⁰⁵ This was particularly true for elites who were able to effect recruitment at a local level despite it being a central government policy. Ignorant of the weakening of clanship ties, the government relied on clan chiefs to encourage enlistment. Chiefs exploited the government’s lack of understanding of local politics to obtain patronage through the recruitment process.¹⁰⁶ Recruitment therefore allowed Highland elites to participate as members of the wider British imperial elite, rehabilitating themselves in the eyes of the state. It did similar for Highland soldiers, and even ex-Jacobites, who had previously been classified as rebels and savages but increasingly came to be viewed as brave and loyal soldiers of empire. Attitudes towards the population did not change immediately, with comments regarding Highland incivility remaining common even into the nineteenth century. By the time of the American Revolution, however, when the loyalty of another imperial population group, North American colonists, was actively being questioned, Highland loyalty to the British crown was taken as guaranteed within Britain and Scots had played an important role in implementing the measures that had led to that point.

Inculcating loyalty in the Atlantic World

The British faced similar challenges attempting to inculcate loyalty elsewhere in the British Atlantic World. During the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the decision was taken to remove the Acadian population of Nova Scotia due to their refusal to swear oaths of loyalty. Although Acadians had pledged loyalty to the British crown after the Treaty of Utrecht granted Nova Scotia to Britain in 1713, most repeatedly refused to swear an unconditional oath of allegiance that would entail military service or compromise their Catholicism. Following Cumberland's suggestion to deport several clans to the West Indies to secure peace in the Highlands in 1746, the idea of deporting the Acadians was also raised in Nova Scotia amidst suspicions they were colluding with the French.¹⁰⁷ In peacetime the British could not justify such a removal, but with the outbreak of war collusion became a pressing concern. Oaths of allegiance, similar to those that had been required in Scotland, were demanded from the entire Acadian population. When the majority refused, seven thousand Acadians were forcibly removed and resettled throughout British North America. ¹⁰⁸ Drawing on a similar rationale that had influenced policy in Scotland, it was believed that a wide dispersal of the population would aid assimilation, leading to religious conversion and anglicisation.

In 1760, General James Murray was concerned with rertaining Quebec as the British sought to secure the final conquest of Canada, before acting first as military and later as civil governor of the region. The Scottish precedent influenced Murray throughout his time in Quebec. Although he had not been directly involved in the Forty-Five or the pacification that followed it, Murray well understood the questions of loyalty it had raised as the suspicion of Jacobitism closely followed his two elder brothers, with Alexander lending the family name to the Elibank plot of 1752 due to the key role he played in it.¹⁰⁹ Murray’s actions in Quebec reflected those of Scots like Loudoun and Forbes in the Highlands. Murray proved willing to act punitively whilst the siege of the city was ongoing, but quickly moved to mildness and moderation where possible after Britain’s victory, only sanctioning violence against those who failed to submit to British authority or who broke their oaths of allegiance.¹¹⁰

The longer-term measures implemented by the British army and state in Quebec also reflected those trialled in Scotland a decade earlier. Investment in military infrastructure and a large-scale mapping project of the St. Lawrence Valley region once again sought not only to provide intelligence about a geographical fringe, but to act as a method of subjugation and intimidation towards the local population. Murray, who was aware of the Roy Map and the rationale driving it, took the lead in the mapping project, ordering surveys of various parts of Canada and a census detailing the number of men capable of bearing arms in each parish.¹¹¹ Although careful to allow and indeed to advocate for short-term toleration of Catholicism in Quebec, Murray also mirrored British imperial attempts to enlighten and anglicise a suspect population through improvement and commercialisation. In 1762, he highlighted the agricultural potential of the colony and urged moves towards the production of hemp and flax, alongside a shift in focus from the fur trade to the fisheries.¹¹² Murray echoed earlier memorialists discussing the Highlands when he noted that, as it was certain he was to remain in Canada, he proposed “doing all the good I can, by exciting the People to industry, and promoting the improvement of Agriculture by setting a good Example.”¹¹³ Murray believed improvement would quickly spread throughout the province. In Scotland and Canada, both geographical fringes of the British Atlantic World, improvement and enlightenment were perceived by the British state as methods of naturally turning a potentially hostile population into loyal imperial subjects.

Similar ideas likewise drove attempts to inculcate loyalty amongst Indigenous peoples in North America. After 1763, British commander-in-chief Jeffrey Amherst classified all Indigenous peoples, even those who had fought with the British, as conquered peoples, unworthy of, and unentitled to, any rights as subjects of the crown. However, from 1765, in the wake of the pan-Indigenous risings commonly known as Pontiac's War, Indigenous peoples increasingly came to be viewed by the British as another group of imperial subjects to be governed.¹¹⁴ Again, military occupation was viewed as a first step for ensuring peace by intimidating the population into remaining quiet. A significant military presence was retained throughout the interior for several years, spread across strategic forts and garrisons.¹¹⁵ At the same time, civilising measures similar to those adopted by both the state and missionary groups in the Highlands were encouraged by the army to encourage the spread of Protestantism and the English language. Military management of commerce was proposed in the Plan for the Future Management of Indian Affairs. Though not drafted until 1764, the plan had been under the consideration of the Board of Trade since 1754, just two years after the annexation of the Jacobite estates to the crown.¹¹⁶ The plan aimed to create a trade that was open to all but centrally regulated by the crown and managed by the army. Although it was not implemented in its entirety, various aspects of it were and the military was responsible for regulating Indigenous-colonial trade and interior garrisons.¹¹⁷ British ministers and army officers hoped that introducing state control over commerce would help to ensure long-term peace and security in the interior, as they believed the commission for the annexed estates was achieving in the Highlands. The situation in North America was more complex than that in Scotland as the British sought to ensure peaceful relations between frontier settlers and Indigenous peoples as well as preventing a pan-Indigenous rising. Yet army officers responsible for implementing empire on the ground again drew on both direct and indirect prior experience in Scotland, whilst adapting to the local conditions they faced, in their attempts to actively craft loyalty amongst a broadening range of imperial subjects.

Loyalism was a complex concept for Scots during the Forty-Five. Numerous influences and practical considerations affected both individual and collective decisions regarding whether to display loyalty to the Hanoverian monarchy, the exiled Stuarts, or to try to not get involved. For many, the decision was simply not theirs to make. Highlanders, even if active loyalists, were viewed with suspicion, as many Britons perceived them as uncivilised “others” who were incapable of loyalty to the crown and thereby guilty of Jacobitism by association. Indeed, the experience of Sutherland demonstrates that even active service was not always enough to overcome suspicions of disloyalty. Yet, some Highland elites were able to use their active role in resisting the rising to reiterate their personal loyalty to the crown whilst making important contributions to the British victory. Questions of loyalty did not disappear in the aftermath of the rising, as the British state proved determined to prevent any future Jacobite uprisings and to inculcate loyalty throughout the Highlands. Again, Scots played an important role in both proposing and implementing the measures which sought to undermine clanship and replace Highlanders’ local loyalties with an overarching loyalty to the crown. The long-term pacification of the Highlands provided Scots whose loyalism had been suspect, or less than enthusiastic, during the rising the opportunity to reaffirm their position within society. In turn, the measures implemented, alongside military service in Britain’s empire for Highland soldiers, provided an opportunity for the disloyal to enter the imperial fold. As the loyalty of other populations within the British Atlantic World came to be questioned over the following decades, Highlanders were held up as an exemplar of imperial loyalty. Direct and indirect experiences in that region would serve as a precedent for British army officers, including numerous Scots, grappling with questions and conceptions of loyalty throughout the British Atlantic World.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council; Eccles Centre at the British Library; European Association of American Studies; Canada-UK Foundation; Royal Historical Society; Society for Army Historical Research.

Notes on contributors

Nicola Martin

Nicola Martin is transatlantic military historian, specialising in eighteenth-century British imperialism and Jacobitism. A Lecturer at the University of the Highlands and Islands since 2019, her research is focused on British army officers throughout the long eighteenth century. She is completing her first monograph on the overarching cultural frameworks, individual circumstances, and local conditions guiding the actions and understandings of British army officers as they waged war, pacified hostile peoples, and attempted to assimilate “other” population groups within the British Empire.

Notes

1 Colley, Britons; Worth, “Transatlantic Scotophobia.” In their participation in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic World, Scots were continuing an engagement that significantly predated union.

2 Pittock, Myth of the Jacobite Clans, 65–81.

3 Plank, Rebellion and Savagery, 22.

4 Bannister and Riordan, ed. Loyal Atlantic, preface.

5 Plank, Rebellion and Savagery, 22.

6 Harris, Politics and the Nation, 150–159.

7 Bannister and Riordan demonstrated that loyalism was a fluid concept throughout the Atlantic world. Bannister and Riordan, “Loyalism and the British Atlantic,” 6 and passim. For a detailed discussion of the fluidity of loyalty within Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century, see Henshaw, Scotland and the British Army, 87–117.

8 Macdonald and Macdonald, Clan Donald, 88.

9 Black, Campbells of the Ark,192.

10 Layne, “Spines of the Thistle,” 157–159.

11 Dziennik, “Armailt làidir de mhilìsidh,” 171–198.

12 Conway, British Army, 52–57; Brumwell, Redcoats, 112–118; Frey, British Soldier in America, 3–21; Layne, “Spines of the Thistle,” 34–79; Plank, Rebellion and Savagery, 32–33.

13 For a history of the Independent Companies, see Simpson, Independent Highland Companies. See Dziennik, “Armailt làidir de mhilìsidh,” 171–198 for a detailed analysis of the companies during the Forty-Five.

14 Scobie, “Highland Independent Companies,” 5–37 at 5. Posts similar to the lords-lieutenants were used in the Lowlands and England during the Forty-Five for the raising of militia and other volunteer units and the Jacobites created similar positions in the North-East and Perthshire. See Henshaw, Scotland and the British Army, 127–139 and Layne, “Spines of the Thistle,” 90.

15 Scobie, “Highland Independent Companies,” 8.

16 Dziennik, “Armailt làidir de mhilìsidh,” 182–186.

17 Fraser, Sutherland Book, Vol. II, 403; “Earl of Sutherland to Duncan Forbes, 11 September 1745,” in Duff, Culloden Papers, 401.

18 “Forbes to Sutherland, 17 September 1745,” in Duff, Culloden Papers, 406–407; “Sutherland to Forbes, 21 September 1745,” Warrand, More Culloden Papers, Vol. IV, 64–65; “Sutherland to Forbes, 21 October 1745,” More Culloden Papers, Vol IV, 113; “Sutherland to Forbes, 4 November 1745,” Warrand, More Culloden Papers, 125.

19 “Forbes to Marquess of Tweeddale,” 13 November 1745, in Duff, Culloden Papers, 245–249.

20 “Forbes to Sutherland,” 26 October 1745, in Duff, Culloden Papers, 432.

21 Fraser, Sutherland Book, Vol. II, 404.

22 Scobie, “Highland Independent Companies,” 32.

23 Fraser, Sutherland Book, Vol. II, 405–406.

24 Scobie, “Highland Independent Companies,” 26–28.

25 London Evening Post, 10–13 May 1745; Henshaw, “A Reassessment of the British Army in Scotland,” 1–21 at 7.

26 “Sutherland to Forbes, 31 December 1745,” in Duff, Culloden Papers, 467.

27 Royal Archives, CP/Main/14 f.43-43b: Sutherland to Duke of Cumberland, 19 April 1746.

28 Fraser, Sutherland Book, Vol. II, 425. Sutherland’s wife was also rumoured to have Jacobite sympathies. Scobie, “Highland Independent Companies,” 28.

29 Henshaw, Scotland and the British Army, 127.

30 Conway, British Army, 85, 99, 105, 136; Henshaw, Scotland and the British Army, 65.

31 Brumwell, Redcoats, 62.

32 Dziennik, “Armailt làidir de mhilìsidh,” 195.

33 Conway, British Army, 98.

34 Mackillop, More Fruitful, 8, 107. See also Layne, “Spines of the Thistle,”, 163–165.

35 Dziennik, “Armailt làidir de mhilìsidh,” 194–195.

36 Quoted in Henshaw, Scotland and the British Army, 126–127.

37 Ward, A Battle for Quebec, 118–120.

38 Ibid., 117.

39 Conway, British Army, 135.

40 For more specifics on desertion rates on both sides during the rising see Layne, “Spines of the Thistle,” 162–166.

41 Quoted in Layne, “Spines of the Thistle,” 164.

42 Huntington Library (hereafter HL), Loudoun Papers, SCO7644: Earl of Stair to Loudoun, 22 August 1745.

43 It was for this reason that Forbes had been recommending the recruitment of Highland troops for several years, particularly in the wake of the removal of the 43rd Regiment from the region. Henshaw, Scotland and the British Army, 102–106; Dziennik, “Fiscal-Military State,” 161–163.

44 Black, Campbells of the Ark, Vol. I, 186–191; Warrand, More Culloden Papers, Vol. V, 118. The figure includes the eighteen Independent Companies and those recruited to Loudoun’s 64th Regiment.

45 Black, Campbells of the Ark, Vol. I, 189–193. For detail of the negotiations between Forbes and various Highland elites see Warrand, More Culloden Papers, Vol. IV, 55–70 and passim.

46 “Forbes to Tweeddale, 13 November 1745,” Warrand, More Culloden Papers, Vol. V, 119; Simpson, Independent Highland Companies, 157.

47 For more on Loudoun’s understanding of loyalty and subjecthood and the role that played in his command of the Independent Companies during the Forty-Five, see Martin, “Lord Loudoun,” 249–276.

48 British Library (hereafter BL), Hardwicke Papers, Add MS 35889, ff.41–42: Colin MacLaurin to Unknown, 14 November 1745; BL, Hardwicke Papers, Add MS 35889, ff.66–67: MacLaurin to Unknown, 14 December 1745.

49 Duffy, The ’45, 356. For the long negotiations with Lovat, see: Duff, Culloden Papers, 201–261; Mackay, “Unpublished Correspondence,” 1–28.

50 BL, Stowe Manuscripts, MS 254, Extract of Secretary Murray’s examination before the Lord Chancellor, 13 August 1746.

51 HL, Loudoun Papers, SCO7197: Forbes to Loudoun, 30 November 1745.

52 National Library Scotland (hereafter NLS), Campbell Papers, MS 3733/54, ff.108–109: Loudoun to Lord Glenorchy, 23 December 1745.

53 Ibid.

54 ”Proclamation of Wade, 30 October” in Scots Magazine, Vol. 7 (Nov. 1745): 537–538.

55 Layne, “Spines of the Thistle,” 202.

56 Plank, Rebellion and Savagery, 61.

57 NLS, Campbell Papers, MS 3733/54, ff.108–109: Loudoun to Glenorchy, 23 December 1745.

58 Mount Stuart Trust (hereafter MST), Loudoun Papers, LO3/119: Farquharson of Invercauld to Loudoun, 14 January 1748; MST, Loudoun Papers, LO10/48: A Proposal by Lt. Col. George Ogilvie, undated.

59 HL, Loudoun Papers, SCO7636: Stair to Loudoun, 5 October 1745. Stair’s letter suggests Loudoun initially proposed the targeting of Jacobite homes.

60 Black, Culloden and the ’45, 135.

61 HL, Loudoun Papers, SCO9504: Cumberland to Loudoun, 20 March 1746.

62 Plank, Rebellion and Savagery, 62. Plank demonstrated that some Jacobite officers also threatened and implemented military execution against Highlanders when recruiting.

63 NRS, State Papers Scotland, RH2/4/357, f.111: Cumberland to Unknown, 8 May 1746; NRS, State Papers Scotland, RH2/4/356: Cumberland to Newcastle, 27 May 1746; NRS, State Papers Scotland, RH2/4/357, f.112: Cumberland to Unknown, 5 June 1746.

64 HL, Loudoun Papers, SCO9504: Cumberland to Loudoun, 20 March 1746.

65 ”Newcastle to Earl of Chesterfield, 5 March 1746,” in Lodge, Chesterfield, 119.

66 ““Chesterfield to Newcastle, 20 March 1746” in Lodge, Chesterfield, 130.

67 NRS, Campbell of Stonefield Papers, GD14/85: An Account of the Hanging of Three “Rebels”, May 1746.

68 BL, Hardwicke Papers, Add MS 35431, ff.80–81: Glenorchy to Joseph Yorke, 3 May 1746; Macinnes, Clanship, 213; Fergusson, Argyll in the Forty-Five, 117–123, 206–208.

69 HL, Loudoun Papers, SCO11444: John Farquharson to Loudoun, 4 August 1746. For a detailed examination of Loudoun’s response to the rising, see Martin, “Lord Loudoun.”

70 NRS, Campbell of Stonefield Papers, GD14/77: Duke of Argyll to Archibald Campbell, 8 April 1746; NRS, Montrose Muniments, GD220/5/1632: David Graeme to Mungo Graham, 14 June 1746.

71 HL, Loudoun Papers, SCO11909: Janet McDonnell to Loudoun, 28 August 1746; HL, Loudoun Papers, SCO11634: Adam Gordon to Loudoun, 20 November 1746.

72 NRS, State Papers Scotland, RH2/4/356, ff.70–75: Newcastle to Cumberland, 12 May 1746.

73 Layne, “Spines of the Thistle,” 46–51.

74 Brown, “Protestant Dissent in Scotland,” 143.

75 Pittock, Material Culture and Sedition, 10; German, “Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire & Jacobitism,” 181.

76 For previous subjugation attempts see Canny, Making Ireland British; Williamson, “Scots, Indians and Empire”, 46–83.

77 See Macinnes, Clanship, 210–246.

78 Dziennik, Fatal Land, 43.

79 Macinnes, Clanship, 221–228.

80 Tabraham and Grove, Fortress Scotland, 92.

81 Stennis Historical Society, 2020–2022, “Cantonments of the British Army in Scotland, 1745–1756,” Version 2.2, 11/07/2022, https://sites.google.com/stennishs//. Accessed 14 December 2022; Tabraham and Grove, Fortress Scotland, 92, 100–106.

82 Scobie, “Highland Independent Companies,” 32.

83 See: NRS, State Papers Scotland, RH2/4/356, ff.70–75, Newcastle to Cumberland; HL, Loudoun Papers, SCO9337: Alexander Robertson to Cumberland, c.1746; Tabraham and Grove, Fortress Scotland, 93–98.

84 Black, Culloden, 189.

85 Scott, “Erskine, James, Lord Grange (1679–1754).”

86 NRS, Mar and Kellie Papers, GD124/15/1569: Memorial by James Erskine of Grange, October 1746.

87 Zimmerman, Jacobite Movement, 21–47.

88 Tabraham and Grove, Fortress Scotland, 108.

89 Anderson and Fleet, Defending the Nation.

90 Baigent, “Watson, David (1713?–1761).”

91 Anderson and Fleet, Defending the Nation, 118–119. Watson proposed the idea for a military map whilst providing engineering assistance for the roadbuilding works. The proposal was for a map of the Highlands and the decision to extend the survey as a national endeavour was made in 1752. See Baigent, “Watson, David (1713?–1761).”

92 Caffentzis, “Civilising the Highlands,” 175–178.

93 Ibid., 178.

94 NRS, Exchequer Records, Forfeited Estates 1745: Registers of Commissions, E722/1, ff.1–11: Commission Appointing Commissioners for the Annexed Estates under George II, 10 May 1755. Although the decision to annex the estates was taken in 1752, the commissioners were not appointed until 1755. Regarding the annexed estates see: Smith, Jacobite Estates.

95 Meek, “Smith, Turgot and ‘Four Stages’ Theory,” 9–27; Hopfl, “From Savage to Scotsman,” 9–40.

96 NRS, Mar and Kellie Papers, GD124/15/1569: Memorial, October 1746; NRS, State Papers Scotland, RH2/4/366, ff.14552: Andrew Fletcher and Humphrey Bland, Proposals for Civilizing the Barbarous and Rebellious Parts of the Highlands of Scotland, 1747.

97 NRS, State Papers Scotland, RH2/4/360: Fletcher to Newcastle, 15 November 1746.

98 Smith, Jacobite Estates, 38–39.

99 NRS, Exchequer Records, Forfeited Estates 1745: General Management: E730/25/1–10: Papers Concerning Villages and Schools; NRS, State Papers Scotland, RH2/4/367, ff.144–150: Notes Concerning Regulations in the Highlands, 1748.

100 NRS, Exchequer Records, Forfeited Estates 1745: General Management: E730/11/1–9: Various Papers Related to Apprentices, 1763–1774; NRS Exchequer Records, Forfeited Estates 1745: General Management: E730/14/1–3: Various Plans for Supporting Manufactures in Badenoch, Strathspey; NRS, Exchequer Records, Forfeited Estates 1745: General Management: E730/15/1–14: Papers Related to Linen Manufacturing, 1763–1773.

101 Dziennik, “Liberty, Property and the Post-Culloden Acts,” 58–72; Dziennik, “Under ye Lash of ye Law,” 609–631.

102 Quoted in Lenman, Jacobite Risings, 281. Kames was an early proponent of stadial theory and an important enlightenment thinker.

103 NRS, Exchequer Records, Forfeited Estates 1745: Reports to the King and Treasury 1755–1761, E723/1, ff.67–72: Report of the Commissioners and Trustees for Managing the Annexed Forfeited Estates in Scotland, 1758.

104 Millar, ed. A Selection of Scottish Forfeited Estate Papers, 357.

105 Mackillop, More Fruitful, 27–57.

106 Ibid., 41–76.

107 Plank, An Unsettled Conquest, 112–117; Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, 245–364.

108 Plank, Rebellion and Savagery, 164.

109 Martin, “The Cultural Paradigms,” 115–116.

110 Murray had played a role in the fire and sword campaign directed by Culloden veteran James Wolfe during the siege of Quebec. See Ward, Battle for Quebec. Britain’s military occupation of Canada under Murray has generally been assessed as mild. See: Neatby, Quebec, 19; Ouellet, “The British Army of Occupation,” 17–54.

111 Murray, Terra Nostra, 41.

112 BL, Hardwicke Papers, Add MS 35913, ff.136–147: Report by James Murray on the Province of Quebec, 5 June 1762.

113 Library and Archives Canada, Murray Papers, Letterbook of General James Murray 1763–1765, Microfilm Reel c-2225, Murray to John Watts, Quebec, 2 November 1763. For a more detailed consideration of the influence of measures tested in Scotland on Murray in Quebec and other British army officers in North America, see Martin, “Cultural Paradigms.”

114 Martin, “Cultural Paradigms,” 162–174; 187–190.

115 Middleton, Pontiac's War, 24–27.

116 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), CO5/65, ff.123-34: Plan for the future management of Indian Affairs.

117 TNA, CO5/65, ff.110-11: Regulations of Trade with the Indian Tribes in the Southern District; TNA, CO5/65, ff.35–38: Regulations for the Indian Trade around the Province of West Florida.