The Jacobite risings of 1689, 1715, 1719, and 1745 were not simply rebellions against the Hanoverian succession. For the Highland clans that formed the backbone of the Jacobite armies, they were expressions of a complex web of loyalties — to the House of Stuart, to the Catholic or Episcopal faith, to the Highland social order that the post-1688 settlement threatened, and to the chiefs who embodied all of these commitments in their own persons. The clans that came out for the Jacobite cause did so knowing the risks, and when those risks materialised most catastrophically at Culloden in April 1746, the consequences fell on entire communities, not merely on the men who had carried weapons.
It is important to remember that Scotland was not uniformly Jacobite. The Presbyterian Lowlands were broadly supportive of the Hanoverian succession, many Highland clans remained neutral or actively served the government, and even within the families that came out for the Stuarts there were often divided loyalties — brothers on opposite sides, chiefs and their tenants in disagreement, men serving in government forces whose fathers had fought for the Jacobite cause a generation before. The Jacobite story is more complicated than the romantic narrative that developed around it in the nineteenth century, but it is no less powerful for that.
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Cameron of Lochaber: The Most Committed Jacobite Clan
Clan Cameron under Donald Cameron of Lochiel — the Gentle Lochiel — was probably the most crucial Jacobite clan in the 1745 rising. When Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Moidart in August 1745, it was Lochiel's decision to join him that effectively started the rising. The Camerons fought at Prestonpans, Falkirk, and Culloden, where Lochiel was wounded and had to be carried from the field. He escaped to France and died in exile in 1748, his clan's lands forfeited and his people subjected to the brutal reprisals that followed the battle.
MacDonald: The Jacobite Standard-Bearers
Clan MacDonald of Clanranald provided essential early support for the 1745 rising, their territory in the Uists and Moidart being the first Scottish ground that the Prince trod after his crossing from France. MacDonell of Glengarry brought their men out as well, fighting through the campaign that culminated at Culloden. The MacDonalds' traditional claim to the right of the Jacobite line was a point of honour that shaped their conduct at every engagement.
MacPherson, MacKintosh, and the Chattan Clans
Clan MacPherson of Badenoch under Ewen MacPherson of Cluny was a committed Jacobite force in 1745, though a tactical delay meant the regiment arrived when the battle was effectively already lost. Cluny MacPherson's subsequent nine years hiding in the Highlands — sustained by loyal tenants and neighbours — before his eventual escape to France became one of the most celebrated episodes of the post-Culloden period. Clan MacKintosh presented the extraordinary spectacle of a divided household: the MacKintosh chief served in the government forces while his wife, Anne Farquharson MacKintosh — Colonel Anne — organised the clan's Jacobite regiment. The skirmish at Moy in February 1746, where a handful of people are said to have stampeded a government force of fifteen hundred, became one of the more improbable stories of the entire rising.
MacGillivray and the Chattan Charge at Culloden
Clan MacGillivray of Dunmaglass were among the most committed fighters on the Jacobite left at Culloden, their charge temporarily breaking through the government line before the weight of disciplined fire overwhelmed them. Alexander MacGillivray of Dunmaglass was killed in the battle, his fall marking the end of the clan's front-line role in the rising and the beginning of the reprisals that fell on Strathnairn and the wider Chattan country in the weeks that followed.
Clan Fraser: The Old Fox and His Men
Clan Fraser of Lovat brought their men to the 1745 rising under the direction of Simon Fraser, the eleventh Lord Lovat — the Old Fox — whose labyrinthine political career had kept him alive through the 1715 rising and whose ambition eventually committed him to the Jacobite cause in 1745. Lovat himself did not fight at Culloden but was captured shortly afterward, brought to London, and executed on Tower Hill in 1747 at the age of approximately eighty, the last person to be beheaded in Britain. The Fraser regiment fought at Culloden and suffered heavily. Lovat's son, Simon Fraser the younger, subsequently rebuilt the family's position by raising the Fraser Highlanders for British service in the Seven Years War.
Clan Murray: Lord George and the Jacobite High Command
Clan Murray contributed the most capable military mind in the Jacobite cause in Lord George Murray, whose tactical skill at Prestonpans and Falkirk demonstrated what a disciplined Highland army could achieve against conventional forces. His relationship with Bonnie Prince Charlie was difficult throughout the campaign — the prince trusted his Irish advisers more than his Scottish general — and his advice to avoid the open moor of Culloden in favour of a night attack or a withdrawal to the Highland glens was overruled with catastrophic consequences. Lord George Murray escaped to France and died in exile, never reconciled with the Prince he had served with more ability than he received credit for.
Clan Gordon, Ogilvy, and the Jacobite Northeast
Clan Gordon had a complex relationship with the Jacobite cause — some branches joined the rising while the main Gordon family navigated carefully. Clan Ogilvie of Angus were more straightforwardly committed, the Ogilvy regiment fighting through the 1745 campaign and the Earl of Airlie's family paying the price in forfeited estates and exile.
Clan MacKay and Clan Munro: The Government Clans
Not all Highland clans were Jacobite. Clan MacKay of Strathnaver served consistently on the government side, their Protestant commitments and their disputes with their Jacobite neighbours making them reliable supporters of the Hanoverian cause. Clan Munro of Foulis similarly remained loyal to the government throughout the 1745 rising, their Easter Ross territory a Protestant enclave in a region where Episcopalian and Catholic Jacobitism had many adherents.
The Earlier Risings: 1689 and 1715
The 1745 rising was the last and most dramatic of the Jacobite attempts on the British throne, but it was not the first. The rising of 1689, when Viscount Dundee — John Graham of Claverhouse — raised the Highland clans for James VII immediately after the Glorious Revolution, produced the Battle of Killiecrankie where the Jacobites won a spectacular if tactically limited victory before Dundee himself was killed at the moment of triumph. Clan Graham produced in Claverhouse one of the most dramatically gifted Jacobite commanders, his death at Killiecrankie ending what might otherwise have been a more sustained military campaign.
The 1715 rising, the largest of the Jacobite attempts before 1745, drew support from across the Highlands and from significant Lowland Episcopalian communities. Clan Farquharson of Braemar was at the centre of the 1715 rising — the standard was raised at Braemar — and the Farquharsons remained committed to the Stuart cause through 1745 and beyond.
The Aftermath of Culloden
The government response to Culloden was systematic and severe. The Disarming Acts prohibited Highland weapons and dress. The heritable jurisdictions that gave clan chiefs their legal authority over their people were abolished. Government forts and military roads were extended through the Highlands to prevent any future rising. And the military reprisals that followed the battle — the burning of houses, the killing of wounded men, the driving off of cattle — caused suffering across the Jacobite clans that went well beyond the political and military defeat of the rising itself.
The Jacobite clans were transformed by the aftermath of 1746. Their chiefs lost their jurisdictions and in many cases their estates. Their people lost the social structures within which clan life had operated. And the emigration that followed — voluntary in some cases, forced in others through the Clearances that the post-Culloden economic transformation helped create — sent Jacobite clan descendants across the world, particularly to the Scottish communities of Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and the Carolinas.
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