Daily Double: The Fifteen

The deposition from the throne of England of Catholic convert James Stuart long sat ill with a section of the English population — and a much larger one of the Scottish — that answers to the name of Jacobite.

When Jamie’s Protestant daughter Queen Anne died without issue in 1714, these malcontents saw an opportunity to contest succession on behalf, now, of the ex-king’s son, “James III” — since the by-the-book succession for the late queen’s nearest Protestant relative dubiously handed the crown to a German noble.

And so they authored “the Fifteen”, a discombobulated 1715 revolt that never got enough traction to put Stuart restoration seriously on the table.

“The Battle of Sherramuir”, Robert Burns‘s song about the Fifteen’s indecisive signature military engagement.

The Jacobites were made for many more years of disappointment, and King George I was made to cement the incipient Hanoverian dynasty … and the monarchy’s decisive submission to parliament.

And on February 24 and 25 of 1716, a number of men made their, er, decisive submission to George I on the scaffold.

Anti-Jacobite folk song “Ye Jacobites by Name”.

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