Coleman, Keith The Last Jacobites

For most people, the Jacobite story ended on a bitter April day in 1746, when their hopes of restoring the exiled Stuart monarchy were dashed at the Battle of Culloden. Apart from this military defeat, which signalled the end of the 1745 rebellion, there were survivors who kept the cause alive for some time. For some years, Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) and his supporters in exile plotted with European powers to restore his exiled house and regain the British throne, but there was never another military attempt to oust the Hanoverians who had ousted his line in their turn. In Europe, Jacobite networks flourished in France, but also in Scandinavia, and they had an influence on the spread of Masonic ideas in the areas where they were active. Exiles joined the military as far away as Spain and even Russia, while others formerly loyal to the cause found themselves in the New World, either exiled by the British state or as voluntary emigrants hoping for a better life. Ironically, most of them supported the British Empire and faced further difficulties after the American War of Independence, seeing themselves as the losers of two great historical upheavals. The cult of the Scottish Highlands was led by Queen Victoria, who saw herself as the embodiment and successor of the Jacobites. Towards the end of her reign, political Jacobitism became a fringe phenomenon in British politics, fuelling Scottish nationalism and becoming an element of the country's artistic renaissance. The question of what Jacobitism meant to different people in different eras is not easy to answer. Even in its early days, the movement was not simply a political monarchist group dedicated to restoring a dysfunctional dynasty. Its supporters and some of its opponents recognised a mysterious attraction in its ideals and symbolism. What other British royal cult has survived so long, inspiring a succession of pretenders to the doomed romanticisation of a long-defunct line of monarchs?