Tag: prisoners (page 3 of 5)

Lost Lectures

What follows below are the abstracts for two papers that were accepted for presentation this spring at two respective conferences in Florence and in Glasgow. Due to the dangers posed by the coronavirus pandemic early in the year, both of these events – like thousands of other conferences and gatherings around the world – have been canceled. We can hope that these will be rescheduled in the near future and I will be sure to report here and on JDB1745’s social media accounts when and if new dates are chosen. More important than any conference, of course, is our collective health, and the entire JDB team hopes that yours remains or once again becomes robust.

Both of these papers stem from my extended work on the nature of plebeian Jacobite culture through the collection and analysis of large-scale prosopographic data compiled from archival and published sources. Please take care of yourselves; we have much to discover together!

Yours,
Darren


Fifth Colloquium of the Jacobite Studies Trust
Middlebury School, Florence
22-24 May 2020 (Canceled)

By Hook or by Crook
A Modern Reassessment of Jacobite Impressment

Little scholarly debate surrounds the ubiquitous tale of recruits being forced to join and fight in the Jacobite armies during the 1715 and 1745 risings. The general historiography of the later Jacobite era flatly consigns the widespread prevalence of impressment tactics to the status of myth, or otherwise marginalises claims of forcible recruitment as simply a means to evade punishment. Many of these assertions, however, are built upon incomplete, published transcriptions of prisoner lists or without the extensive analysis of large bodies of archival case records. This paper addresses some missed opportunities by considering the context and process of the British penal system in the mid-eighteenth century to re-examine how cases of impressment at Jacobite trials were handled and how they were resolved. Using a prosopographic approach to collect, analyse, and track hundreds of impressment accounts juxtaposed with primary-source evidence that illustrates the nature of Jacobite recruitment through the final campaign in 1745-6, a modern, data-driven reassessment will be presented. This study will also consider the role of the Scottish Presbyterian clergy in vouching for those claiming force, as well as the distinction of Jacobite recruiting tactics compared to other coeval eighteenth-century European armies. The results in total provide some fresh perspectives about the popularity of Jacobitism in its final stage and what that meant to the ‘legitimacy’ and effectiveness of the cause.


Outlander International Conference
University of Glasgow
2-6 June 2020 (Canceled)

‘What Makes Heroic Strife?’
Practical Jacobitism and its Burial at Culloden

The early Outlander novels and television episodes are set against the dramatic background of the final Jacobite rising in Britain and they portray both the movement and its adherents in an uncomplicated and decidedly alluring manner. An entirely new audience has therefore been exposed to the concept of Jacobitism and its place within a larger historical context. But what did it really mean to be a Jacobite in the mid-eighteenth century and how accurately are the common people characterised in the world of Outlander? This presentation digs a bit deeper into the historical reality of the Jacobite ‘cause’ and specifically examines the conflict between ideology and practice and the crossroads between them as exemplified on Culloden Moor in April of 1746. Was it only the hopes of a Stuart restoration that died with the hundreds of Jacobite soldiers on that bleak spring day, or something far greater? Dispelling the myths and casting light on the realities of popular Jacobitism using the latest research on motivational agencies of the numerous Jacobite causes, this brief paper explores the experience of the common soldier against the backdrop of a calamitous civil war.


Darren S. Layne received his PhD from the University of St Andrews and is creator and curator of the Jacobite Database of 1745, a wide-ranging prosopographical study of people concerned in the last rising. His historical interests are focused on the mutable nature of popular Jacobitism and how the movement was expressed through its plebeian adherents. He is a passionate advocate of the digital humanities, data and metadata cogency, and Open Access.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

A note about Edward Gibson, an important witness involved in prosecuting Jacobite prisoners

To reinforce our recent discussion of critical thinking about the historical data used within a project like JDB1745, this week’s post illustrates an example of that application in action. While looking through some of the published trial records related to government prosecution of the Manchester regiment, team member Bill Runacre found a data conflict that took a bit of detective work to iron out. In the 1816 trial transcript of Captain James Bradshaw, published in Vol. XVIII of Howell’s (or Corbett’s) State Trials, amongst the witnesses who took the stand against the Manchester officer was one Henry Gibson, allegedly a soldier in Elcho’s Jacobite cavalry troop. Some character notes about Gibson are described within the transcript:

Henry Gibson was also produced and sworn, who said, That he himself was unfortunately seduced into the rebel army, and entered into lord Elcho’s troop of horse-guards; that the prisoner, Mr Bradshaw, marched with them as a private man in the said corps; that the troop was drawn up at the battle of Culloden, and that he there saw the prisoner on horseback in the said troop, with pistols, and a broad sword by his side, and a white cockade, and that he continued with the said troop till he was taken prisoner by his royal highness the duke of Cumberland’s army.1

Much of Gibson’s testimony against Bradshaw sounds quite similar to that of dozens of other witnesses brought in to inculpate suspected Jacobite prisoners in the years following the failure of the final rising. Pertinent details which the government found most helpful often included firsthand descriptions of the defendant’s presence within the Jacobite army and specific duties in that station, persons of repute with whom they were seen conversing, and the identification of clothing and arms that were worn during their tenure in Jacobite service. The collective depositions by Gibson and those of at least eight other witnesses were enough to condemn James Bradshaw, and he was thus found guilty and subsequently executed in London on 28 November 1746. As it turns out, however, Henry Gibson did not actually exist.

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Points of Order

John Sharpe’s memorandum of various judicial processes to be completed, 20 January 1747

To-do lists are not only productivity tools for busy modern lives. They were also used extensively by eighteenth-century British government officials to keep pressing topics close in mind, and some even fashioned their memoranda as checklists to ensure they did not miss anything especially important. We see this practice in a document from the British National archives, where Sir John Sharpe, Solicitor to the Treasury during the Jacobite prosecutions after the Forty-five, lists a number of tasks to complete in the winter of 1746-7.1 It is a particularly interesting archival document because it gives us some idea of what critical topics of conversation concerning the prosecution of Jacobites kept government officials occupied. The fact that this task list was written nine months after the Battle of Culloden demonstrates just how much judicial red tape still existed well after the last rising itself had burned out.

Paraphrasing Sharpe’s list of to-dos, we may look in on numerous important points of policy as well as how Jacobite prisoners under charges of treason were processed and treated:

Item #1

Considering the method of how to send prisoners-of-war in French service back to France.

Sharpe notes that he needed to speak at length with Sir Everard Fawkener, the Duke of Cumberland’s secretary, about a peculiar issue: just how to discern which of the prisoners-of-war were really from France, and which were actually born within the Three Kingdoms. This was an important distinction because both the rights and the treatment of prisoners facing charges of treason were different depending on whether they were ‘subjects of the crown’ or legitimate foreigners under the protection of Louis XV. Perhaps unsurprisingly, more than a few of the captured Scottish and Irish soldiers in French service feigned foreign provenance in hopes that it might secure them a lighter sentence – or even freedom altogether. After the recapture of Carlisle by the British army, for example, a Jacobite adjutant in Lord Kilmarnock’s cavalry troop masqueraded as a French officer until a corporal from Hamilton’s Dragoons revealed him to be an Irishman with whom he had already been familiar.2 The Lord Justice Clerk Andrew Fletcher, however, saw no difference between those born in Britain or beyond, stating that anyone should be answerable to charges of high treason if they ever ‘had Residence in the King’s Dominions before the Rebellion’.3 

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