The Atterbury Plot (review)

Jacobite studies are at present in a very flourishing state. This owes much to the efforts of the two authors of this scholarly study of the Atterbury Plot, who have already written a great deal about Jacobitism themselves and have encouraged others to follow their example.

While both authors have contributed to all parts of this first detailed account of the Atterbury Plot, Eveline Cruickshanks has been primarily responsible for the bulk of this book—chapters 1 to 9—while Howard Erskine-Hill has been primarily responsible for the Introduction, chapter 10, and the Conclusion. Their research is heavily based on the Stuart papers at Windsor Castle and on the trial records of the plotters who were arrested. These are sources which they claim to have been largely neglected or misinterpreted by other writers. They set out to show that the plot was neither a hopelessly muddled project nor an absurd daydream on the part of the many Jacobite conspirators involved in it. They see this plot as a serious and intelligent project which adapted itself three times to the rapidly changing situation in Britain and Europe.

They first trace the role of the great Scottish economist, John Law, an important Jacobite who did much to effect a rapprochement between France and Spain so that the Jacobite regiments in both countries, under Dillon and Ormonde, could be recruited for an armed descent on England. The collapse of Law's Mississippi scheme helped to undermine this military project, but the near contemporaneous South Sea Bubble crisis in England provided the Jacobite conspirators with a new opportunity and Lord North and Grey and Christopher Layer, in particular, proposed a new rising in England in cooperation with Jacobite troops from abroad. The Earl of Sunderland's need to safeguard the rapidly worsening situation of his administration, after the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, encouraged many leading Tories in England to contemplate a Jacobite rising in 1722. The unexpected death of Sunderland, however, again transformed the situation. The new leading ministers, Walpole and Townshend, received information of Jacobite planning with Cardinal Dubois in France and as a result of their pressure the Jacobite regiments were withdrawn from the coasts of France and Spain. This did not end the conspiracy, though, because the Pretender enlisted the support of the Earl of Oxford and Bishop Atterbury to support a rising to be centred on London and based largely on Jacobite support within England. This scheme foundered when a few plotters were arrested and the intelligent and ruthless Walpole used every effort to expose the Jacobite conspirators in order to reunite the Whigs and consolidate his own hold on power. Although he had little legal evidence to go on, he used threats, forged evidence and illegal proceedings to terrify some of those arrested and to persuade other Jacobites to flee or to withdraw from active politics. Christopher Layer was executed, Philip Neynoe drowned trying to escape, John Plunkett and George Kelly were imprisoned for many years, and Bishop Atterbury was forced into exile by act of parliament. There was little reliable evidence against Atterbury and he could probably not have been convicted in a court of law or even by a parliamentary impeachment, and, hence, Walpole proceeded by a bill of pains and penalties that was passed by the Whig majorities in both houses of parliament.

This is undoubtedly the most scholarly and detailed treatment we have of the series of Jacobite projects known to historians as the Atterbury Plot. There is some excellent material here on the activities of John Law, the efforts made to recruit Jacobite troops in Europe, the comings and goings of the main Jacobite conspirators, the ruthless response of Walpole and Townshend, and the trials and tribulations of the leading plotters. The crises on the Continent and in England clearly gave the Pretender and his supporters several opportunities to plan either an invasion from abroad or a rising within Britain, or conceivably both at the same...