Jacobite Prisoners of the 1715 Rebellion: Preventing and Punishing Insurrection in Early Hanoverian Britain (review)

If military accounts of the 1715 Jacobite rising are scarce compared with those of 1745, then analysis of the aftermath of the former is even more minimal. That was the case until the appearance of Sankey's volume, which reveals not only what happened, but also indicates how the treatment of Jacobite rebels has implications for the broader development of British political institutions.

Sankey has thoroughly researched and analyzed the topic, producing a seminal, if not definitive, work. The majority of the book (chapters one to five) deals with the prisoners taken in Preston, Lancashire, following the Jacobite surrender on discretion. Although those prisoners were held in English prisons and tried by either courts-martial (six half-pay officers) or the civil courts in England, the majority of prisoners were Scots, making the episode truly British in scope. Indeed, the transportation of approximately 600 (of 1,500) men to British colonies on the North American continent and in the Caribbean gives a British imperial aspect to the story. (On the mainland some played important roles in colonial development. In a military sense that was especially true in South Carolina, where the governor purchased the indentures of thirty-two men so they could serve in frontier garrisons against tribes at war with the colony.) Sankey then deals with the purely Scottish Jacobites (chapters six-seven), who received more lenient treatment than the prisoners in England. In the south, government policy, and the workings of the patronage network, had limited executions to forty-nine and restricted transportation to two-fifths of the prisoners. Yet in Scotland only a soldier involved in trying to betray Edinburgh Castle was executed, and no one was transported (despite national precedents during the Restoration, which Sankey overlooks). A combination of the government's desire to make deals with individuals, the patronage connection of Jacobites with members of the government or royal family, and clever legal defenses rendered their trials pointless. Subsequent attempts to have Scottish grand juries indict Jacobites ended embarrassingly. The final chapter on the forfeited estates shows how the government succeeded in its policy of suppressing Jacobitism and Roman Catholicism in northern England, but singularly failed in Scotland due to a combination of the differing legal situation and the depth of support for the Jacobites.

The value of the book for a military historian is limited to a few discrete areas. One should turn elsewhere for accounts of the campaigns and forces. The military's role in dealing with guarding and moving prisoners in England is detailed, as are its courts-martial of the half-pay officers. Also, in the rebellion's aftermath the army garrisoned the seats of rebellion, and joined with the militia in maintaining public order. Sankey does refer to the commander-in-chief in Scotland (Argyll, who was also a major politician and regional magnate), disobeying his orders to swiftly crush the rebellion. (Being outnumbered by more than two-to-one during his tenure, the order was rather unrealistic.) Argyll, fearing a prolonged war such as had recently vexed the French and Austrians, vainly sought permission to negotiate. He was replaced, but his policies became those of the Scottish Whigs. The army had an extremely limited role in assisting the Commissioners of Forfeited Estates in Scotland, and a broader, but scarcely more effective one, in enforcing the Disarming Act. Broadly characterized, the book has examples of how the military can play positive and negative roles in the battle for hearts and minds in the aftermath of a civil war.

Sankey's book will prove useful to postgraduates and academics, particularly if they possess a background in the period. The book explains the general quiescence of Scottish Jacobites for a generation (being honor bound for good behavior to their Whig patrons who had saved their lives and estates), despite their retention of economic and social...