Jacobites

The Jacobites were supporters of the Stuart monarchy who sought to restore the dynasty’s claim to the English Crown after James II’s death. Their repeated rebellions tested the political settlement created by the Glorious Revolution: the Young Pretender reached Derby in 1745, only a hundred miles from London, before his forces were defeated. Their failures helped the new order endure, but the book stresses that its survival was never assured.

Origins and the Stuart Claim

After James II died in 1701, his son James Francis Edward Stuart, known as the Old Pretender, was recognized as the lawful heir to the English Crown by France, Spain, the pope, and supporters of the Stuart monarchy in England and Scotland. These supporters were called Jacobites. Their cause challenged the settlement that had placed William of Orange on the throne and had limited the prospect of restoring Stuart absolutism.

The Jacobite claim was not merely a question of succession. The book situates it within a political order whose power was divided among competing interests. The Glorious Revolution had succeeded in part because no single alliance of merchants, industrialists, gentry, or aristocrats could impose its will unilaterally. The Jacobites’ restoration project therefore confronted a pluralistic political arrangement rather than a unified opponent.

Repeated Attempts at Restoration

In 1708 the Old Pretender attempted to recover the throne with the support of French troops, but the attempt failed. Jacobite revolts continued in the following decades, including major uprisings in 1715 and 1719. Their recurrence makes clear that the Stuart cause did not disappear with the first failed intervention; it remained an active challenge to the post-revolutionary settlement.

In 1745–46 the Old Pretender’s son, Charles Edward Stuart, known as the Young Pretender, led another attempt to take back the throne. His army advanced as far as Derby, a mere hundred miles from London, before the British army defeated his forces. The proximity of the advance gives the episode its particular significance: the institutions forged in the Glorious Revolution faced a serious military challenge, not a distant or purely symbolic claim.

Political Opposition and Institutional Stakes

The Jacobites’ repeated efforts formed one external challenge to the political institutions established after the Glorious Revolution. The book contrasts that danger with threats from within: British political elites considered repression rather than further opening the political system, and popular resistance also exposed tensions in the new order. The Young Pretender’s advance in 1745 brought the possibility of restoration close enough to reveal that the settlement’s persistence could not be taken for granted.

The Jacobite cause also belongs to the book’s account of historical contingency. Institutional change emerges from the interaction between inherited arrangements and disruptive events, not from a predetermined march toward inclusion. The Black Death and Atlantic trade are examples of critical junctures that redirected societies; Jacobite efforts, in turn, illustrate how the political settlement formed by one such sequence could still be contested. The Young Pretender’s defeat mattered, but the survival and later strengthening of inclusive institutions depended on both the virtuous circle supporting them and the contingent defeat of challenges that might have unraveled them.