Jacobites

“ Jacobites were originally followers of Jacob who went about in various parts of the country for preaching purposes.
(2) Jacobite was the name given to the followers of Jackade. Jackade was a person who pretended to be Duke of York. he marched through London at the head of 6000 men: he went to Ireland and tried to deceive them his followers were called Jacobites and Jacobin was the name given to his government.
(The two next may need a note: they refer to the Rebecca Riots in Wales, blended with Jacob, son of Rebekah. I think Rebekah had no daughter.) ”

“ Forster, was communicated at this time.
At first the result of the battle of Preston was represented to the Jacobites at Perth in a very different light to that in which the defeat of the English Jacobites afterwards appeared. The following is an extract of a letter from Lord Mar, dated the twentieth of November. "This day we hear from good hands that they (the English Jacobites) have had a victory, for which we have had rejoicings, and I hope in God they are in a good way by this time. Let me hear from you often, I beg it of you, and I'll long for the particulars of that affair. ”

“ Clear from any direct imputation, had he then given himself up, he would have been released; and he might have been deterred from a participation in the disastrous scenes which ensued. He had now two children, a son and a daughter. He had many valuable considerations to forfeit for the one abstract principle of indefeasible right to the throne. Few men had more to venture. Many of the Jacobites went into the field with tarnished characters, and with ruined fortunes: they might gain,—they could not lose by the perilous undertaking. ”

“ The history of the Jacobites properly begins with the brave and conscientious men who followed James the Second to France, or fought and bled for him in the United Kingdom. Of the few nobles whom that Monarch had distinguished by his friendship when Duke of York, or graced with his favours when King, three only in Scotland remained attached openly to his interests: these were the Duke of Gordon, the Lord Balcarras, and Claverhouse of Dundee, who may be regarded as the parents of the Jacobite party in Scotland. ”

“ All Jacobites, it was agreed, were in want of something, and if they could overturn the throne and King George with it, carry fire and sword into England, as their chaplains recommended in their sermons, and divide property amongst themselves, there would be a fair chance of happiness under a new state of things, for the accomplishment of which they had had the prayers of all the harlots in the kingdom! ”

“ The sympathies of the modern reader can scarcely fail to be enlisted in the cause of the Jacobites, who appear henceforth in the character of the valiant defenders of their hills and homes, their hereditary monarchy, their national honour and rights. Whatever an Englishman may have felt on beholding the incursions of a Highland force in his own country, the sen [Pg 159] timent is altered into one of respect and of compassion when he views the scene of the contest changed, and sees the hopeless struggle fought on Scottish ground. ”

“ Christmas cheer gave many Jacobites a courage to which they would not have given expression at another time, considering how death, fines, transportation, imprisonment or whipping had been inflicted on outspoken and more active Jacobites during the year. One John Humphreys, a lawyer’s clerk, displayed no ordinary audacity in Mr. Read’s Mug-house, Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, by proposing the health of James III. For such a Christmas toast, however, he was carried before a magistrate, who sent him to Newgate, to answer for his boldness—the last Jacobite victim of the year. ”

“ The genuine Jacobite ballads excited much attention; old Jacobites were amused rather than gratified by viewing Cumberland in Hell, and younger people whose sympathies had first been awakened (in 1805) by ‘Waverley,’ were subdued to a sentiment of love and pity for the Stuart whose sufferings are detailed in song, and the loyalty of whose adherents is so touchingly illustrated in ardent, sometimes ferociously attuned, minstrelsy. ”

“ As for resisting the Jacobites, the Highlanders were described as too powerful to be resisted. It was certainly in ridicule of such exaggerations that a story ran for a few days to the effect that those terrible Highlanders had cut off the Dutch auxiliaries, had put on their breeches, and, advancing on an English detachment which did not recognise them, had cut the Whig soldiers to pieces. It is quite as certain that the London Jacobites claimed the victory at Preston for their side, and were not silenced till the cavalcade of Jacobite captives was passing from Highgate to the London prisons. ”

“ The superstition of the Jacobites is more abject, their fasts more rigid, their intestine divisions are more numerous, and their doctors (as far as I can measure the degrees of nonsense) are more remote from the precincts of reason. Something may possibly be allowed for the rigor of the Monophysite theology; much more for the superior influence of the monastic order. In Syria, in Egypt, in Ethiopia, the Jacobite monks have ever been distinguished by the austerity of their penance and the absurdity of their legends. Alive or dead, they are worshipped as the favorites of the Deity ”

“ About the same time, and as if in obedience to some word of command from France, there was a general and almost simultaneous outburst of Jacobite demonstration in England, amounting in most places to riot. In London, and all over England, so far as one can judge, the popular feeling appears to have been rather with the Jacobites than against them. Stout Jacobites toasted a mysterious person called Job, who had no connection with the prophet, but whose name contained the initial letters of James, Ormond, and Bolingbroke ”

“ The Jacobites in England don’t choose to communicate any of their schemes to any of the Irish or Scots, from the latter of whom all that they desire, is a rising upon a proper occasion;—That he does not personally know much of the heads of the Party in England—only as he has seen lists of their names in the Pretender’s and Ld. ”

“ In the meantime, through mutual factions, the influence of the Jacobites had gradually waned until the election of the Patriarch Benjamin (620) . On the other hand, during the contest between the Jacobites and Melchites (Catholics) , so completely had the spirit of sectarianism extinguished the feeling of nationality that at the time of the Saracen invasion the Jacobites did not hesitate, in their animosity towards the Melchites, the imperial or Byzantine party, to give up (638) their cities and places of strength to the invaders (see Mohammedanism) . ”

“ So far as statistics are available the number of Jacobites is somewhat larger than was that of the Nestorians when the Dominicans began to lead them back to obedience to [310] Rome. They are scattered throughout Syria and Mesopotamia and Malabar. Their Patriarch, who always takes the name Ignatius with the title of Antioch, resides at Mardin or Diarbekir on the Upper Tigris to the northwest of Mosul. Although they all talk Arabic, the Jacobites use the Syrian liturgy of St. ”

“ The Jacobites say masses for the dead, but do not believe in purgatory; they invoke the Virgin Mary, venerate the cross and relics of saints; they recognise only three sacraments, baptism, marriage (which they always celebrate on Sundays) and the mass; they prescribe auricular confession before mass, and at the mass administer the bread dipped in the wine; they recite the Eastern form of the Nicene Creed, and discourage laymen from studying the Bible. The Reformed Syrians differ from them in most of these points. The Jacobites observe the ordinary festivals of the church ”

“ He saw the end of the Jacobites and the rise of the demagogues. His early letters describe the advance of the Pretender to Derby; they tell us how the British public was on the whole inclined to look on and cry, 'Fight dog, fight bear;' how the Jacobites who had anything to lose left their battle to be fought by half-starved cattle-stealers, and contented themselves with drinking to the success of the cause ”

“ On the whole, it must be acknowledged that qualities more repulsive and a career more culpable, have darkened no narrative connected with the Jacobites so unpleasantly as the biography of the Master of Sinclair. A disgrace to every party, he appears to have joined the adherents of the Stuarts, only in order to disturb their councils, and to vilify their memory with personal invective. ”

“ The Jacobites, he says, do all they can to perswade the Nation that their pretended King is a Protestant in his Heart, tho’ he dares not declare it while under the Power of France; that he is acquainted with the Mistakes of his Father‘s Government, will govern us more according to Law, and endear himself to his Subjects.
They magnifie the Strength of their own Party, and the Weakness and Divisions of the other, in order to facilitate and hasten their Undertaking; they argue themselves out of their Fears, and into the highest assurance of accomplishing their purpose. ”

“ The Jacobites take their name from Jacob Baradai, who built up a Mono- physite Church in Syria in the sixth century. They are in communion with the Copts. Their rite is a Syriac form of the ancient rite of Antioch, with the liturgy attributed to S. James the Less. We first hear of a Jacobite Bishop of Jerusalem at the end of the sixth century (Severus) , and from 11 40 onwards the succession is regularly maintained. For centuries the office of Bishop of Jerusalem was combined with that of ' Mafrian,' .who was the principal auxiliary of the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch. ”

“ The Jacobite faction had assumed a formidable consistency, and every exertion was being made by them for an invasion of England. They knew that their friends were numerous, and that many who held office under the ruling Government were attached to their cause, and only required such a demonstration to fly to arms with their numerous partisans.
Up to the present, all the machinations of the Jacobites had been carried on with secrecy and dexterity, but now was the time for action and decision. ”

“ Hence being misled by those erroneous opinions, which the Moderns have propagated to the great disadvantage of Asses, the Jacobites have been unwilling to discover any Resemblance between themselves and an Animal which the wise Antients saw in so respectable a Light, and which the ignorance of latter Ages hath highly dishonoured by odious Comparisons with certain Individuals of the Human Species. ”

“ The Jacobites found that, although the lord treasurer was profuse in his expressions of good will for their cause, no steps were taken to ensure its triumph, and they no longer placed reliance in promises which were repeatedly made and repeatedly broken. ”

“ But John of Asia describes him as an untrustworthy and inconsistent man. [11] Other divisions of the Monophysites are more closely associated with Alexandria and the Coptic Church than with the Syrian. But they have lingered on in Syria down to the present day. The Jacobites are now mostly found in Mesopotamia, especially at Mosul and Mardeen. There are scarcely any left in Palestine and few in Damascus. But they have a monastery at Jerusalem, and some of them are to be found at Hamah and Aleppo. ”

“ The Jacobites, who ever since the Revolution had either lived in retirement in the country or plotting against the established order of things in London, recognized the moment to have at length arrived for resuming their old position and returning to Court, where they were received with tokens of favour and welcome not unnaturally exhibited by a King who saw an important body of his subjects men likely to be as useful to government as they had been dangerous in opposition—all at once determined to yield an allegiance no longer nominal but real. ”

“ They were evidently, from Lord Stair's replies to their objections, afraid to have any dealings with him. "As to Lord Mar," writes Stair, "the things that shock you, shock me; but our business is to break the Pretender's party by detaching him from it, which we shall effectually do by letting him live in quiet at Geneva or elsewhere, and by giving him a pension. Whatever his Lordship's intentions may be, it is very certain, in a few months, that the Jacobites will pull his throat out,—you know them well enough not to doubt of it. ”

“ This motion, in the debate on which the Jacobites figured as both a dangerous and a mercenary people, was lost by 222 to 206. Sixteen placemen saved Sir Robert, who had spoken with much plausibility and cunning against the leave asked for. The Bishop of Salisbury in the House of Lords, in the discussion in March on the Pension Bill, could only express a hope that faction would not foster insurrection. The opposition papers maintained that no such thing as faction existed, and that Jacobitism was a name now utterly unknown to the mass of the people. ”

“ The badge assigned to the Macphersons was the water lily, which abounds in the Lochs of Hamkai, upon the margin of which was the gathering place of the Clan Chattan. Some of these distinctions appear to have been used during the year 1745, as we see in the case of the Frasers, but all to have emerged into the one general distinction of the Jacobites, the white rose, first worn by David the Second, at the tournament of Windsor in 1349, when he carried the "Rose argent." ”

“ Such had been their arms in the early part of the Insurrection of 1745, and such they continued until, at the battles of Falkirk and Preston Pans, they had collected muskets from the slain on the battle-field. In addition to these weapons, the gentlemen sometimes wore suits of armour and coats of mail; in which, indeed, some of the principal Jacobites have been depicted; but, with these, the common men never incumbered themselves, both on account of the expense, and of the weight, which was ill-adapted to their long marches and steep hills. ”