Jacobitism and Banditry PDF

Septembre 2014
Stphane Robin
Mmoire de Master 1 Recherche Littratures et Langages
Jacobitism and Banditry
Sous la direction de M. Norbert Col
UFR Lettres Langues Sciences Humaines et Sociales
Septembre 2014
Stphane Robin
Mmoire de Master 1 Recherche Littratures et Langages
Jacobitism and Banditry
Sous la direction de M. Norbert Col
UFR Lettres Langues Sciences Humaines et Sociales
Remerciements
Je souhaite remercier M. Norbert Col pour son aide et son soutien tout au long
des processus de recherche et de rdaction de ce mmoire, ainsi que pour mavoir
transmis sa passion de lhistoire britannique et notamment de la priode du dixhuitime sicle.
Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1
1.
2.
3.
Bandits as part of the Jacobite movement .............................................................. 4

1.1.
Tories, Rapparees and the Munster Whiteboys ............................................... 4
1.2.
The Blacks of Windsor and Hampshire ......................................................... 12
1.3.
The English smugglers .................................................................................. 22
Confusion between Jacobites and bandits ............................................................ 34

2.1.
Jacobitism as a coincidence of objectives for bandits ................................... 34
2.2.
Jacobitism as an excuse to hunt bandits and criminals .................................. 39
Historiographical and literary approaches to Jacobitism and banditry ................. 45

3.1.
Bandits as folk heroes in Jacobite propaganda and myths ............................ 45
3.2.
Bandit ideology related to Jacobitism in major literary works : the example of
John Gays The Beggars Opera ..................................................................................... 53

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 58
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 63
Introduction
Jacobitism is mainly remembered as a succession of political plots and
conspiracies, of armed rebellions and pitched battles. Most would think of the Battle
of the Boyne of 1690, of the Sieges of Limerick of 1690 and 1691, the 1715 Battle of
Sheriffmuir or that of Culloden in 1746. But Jacobitism also benefited from popular
support beyond these conspicuous events. Jacobitism was a movement that, for most
of its existence, relied on secrecy. When there were no open conflicts, clandestine
agents were in action and Jacobitism was set in the minds of the people. Converting
the people was as necessary as winning pitched battles in order to take over an entire
country.
In many past and present cases of rebellion, the armed wing of the people can be
represented by bandits. Bandits indeed are used to violence, secrecy and illegality.
Their activities can vary from the clandestine and peaceful, but nonetheless illegal,
actions, like the smugglers, to a form of guerrilla warfare, as for instance the rapparees
in the case of Ireland or the hajduks in the Balkans, among many other examples.
Banditry thus easily represents the people in a social struggle against a rule that is
considered oppressive. This corresponds to Eric J. Hobsbawms concept of the social
bandit1. According to him, banditry can become a revolutionary movement when it
becomes the symbol of resistance by the whole of the traditional order against the
forces which disrupt and destroy it2. Though Hobsbawns extremely Marxist-oriented
interpretations and examples of social banditry can be discussed, his concept is very
useful to the approach of banditry linked to insurgent movements, with still a
modicum of reserve because of his heavily Marxist points of view and his
romanticism. Hobsbawms portrait of the social bandit is that of a noble robber, like
Robin Hood or Dick Turpin, a bandit who fights only the local gentry, nobility, clergy
and authority but who still pledges allegiance to the king as fount of justice. This latter
affirmation attests the quite romantic approach of Hobsbawm, since the motives of
bandits, even Hobsbawms social bandits, do not easily yield to understanding, and
thus cannot be generalised and entirely theorised.
1
The social bandit is a term and concept created by Eric J. Hobsbawm, in Primitive Rebels: Studies in
Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Century, Manchester, Manchester University
Press, 1959.
2
Eric J. Hobsbawm, Bandits, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969, p. 27.
Jacobitism was a cause that concerned the whole of the British Isles and its people.
Accordingly, the movement cannot be summarised by a number of plots and battles.
The Stuart cause involved the entire population, regardless of its social position. What
remained for people was a choice of political alignment: pro-Stuart, pro-Revolution
Settlement or neutrality. Jacobitism was indeed a phenomenon concerning armies,
noblemen, politicians, etc. but there was also a popular Jacobitism, which concerned
the common folk. Then, bandits appear in some cases to be a manifestation of popular
discontent against a tyrannical or unjust government. The implication of bandit
underworlds in Jacobitism seems to have been relegated to anecdotes and peripheral
analyses, thus forgetting one aspect of popular Jacobitism and oppositionalism. The
question one might ask oneself is: to what extent was banditry involved with
Jacobitism ?
In order to answer this question, the following work proceeds from the most factual
to the most abstract aspects of the possible links between banditry and the Jacobite
cause. Banditry is approached, obviously and simply so, according to what was
considered as outlaw activity by the people of the time, but also according to a
definition given by Eric J. Hobsbawm:
For the law, anyone belonging to a group of men who attack and rob with violence is a
bandit, from those who snatch payrolls at an urban street corner to organised
3
insurgents or guerrillas who happen not to be officially recognised as such .
It will be necessary to first frame this study with factual data and explore the
different bandit underworlds of the British Isles and their involvement with
Jacobitism, along with the governments reaction to such acknowledgement. But,
though a bandit implication with the Stuart cause can be found, one must face reality
and see that the situation was not a black and white one, as many instances prove that
these bandits did not all act in a disinterested manner and were often motivated by the
old saying the enemy of my enemy is my friend or by pecuniary motives, and the
government was prompt to try a bandit for Jacobitism or vice versa when the situation
required or when it best suited their political or personal needs. Finally, banditry and
Jacobitism also had a more abstract relationship through the image of banditry in the
eyes of the people and of the government. It indeed was a way for some Jacobite
officials, like the Pretender, to attain the Robin Hood-like reputation of a social
Hobsbawm, Bandits, p. 17.
bandit. And conversely, banditry could be a means to recall the usurping and
profiteer reputation of the Revolution Settlement.
This study does not exhaustively present several bandit underworlds of the British
Isles, namely the tories, rapparees and Whiteboys from Ireland, the Blacks of
Hampshire and Windsor, and the South-Eastern English smugglers. Ireland was the
first land to know major Jacobite troubles with the Williamite war, and Ireland was
also an obvious target for this work since the Irish were considered to be rogues by
birth: as Paul Monod affirms, the Irish were often portrayed in the Whig press as a
criminal class, determined to undermine the law and social order as well as the
Williamite regime4. The Waltham Blacks and the smugglers were also extremely
notorious bandits of the time, in South-East England, and they were proved to be
closely or remotely associated with the Jacobites, though less conspicuously than their
Irish counterparts.
Working on a matter like banditry presents the risk of romanticisation and of
sympathising with the accounts of rogues with links to Jacobitism, making them
appear like Robin Hood late-seventeenth-and-eighteenth-centuries copycats. Many
instances proved that some bandits were motivated by the profit that could be gained
in times of political unrest. Moreover, some ruthless bandits could also be tempted to
declare themselves defenders of the people and supporters of the Jacobites in order to
fit with the description of the social bandit and thus gain a form of legitimacy. On
the opposite side, the government was also tempted to use the Jacobite spectre to
impose merciless rules on outlawry and thus have all means to hunt bandits effectively
and rapidly.
Banditry and Jacobitism were not only linked on the field but also in minds and on
paper. A whole Jacobite ideology partly using banditry could be found in Scotland,
using the savage and roguish stereotype of the Scot and more precisely, the
Highlander, to make the Scottish Jacobite a social bandit by reputation. Outlawry
was also used in major literary works. The example of John Gays The Beggars
Opera is addressed in this work. This ballad opera from 1728 used the image of the
bandit in order to both criticise the government and especially First Minister Sir
Robert Walpole, and at the same time praise the nobleness of the pro-Jacobite
gentlemen robbers.
4
Paul Klber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1989, p. 111.
1. Bandits as part of the Jacobite movement

This chapter consists of a non-exhaustive typology studying diverse expressions of
possible links between banditry and Jacobitism. It is limited to a few groups labeled as
bandits or resorting to bandit-like techniques through the British Isles. This limitation
of the field is established by both the feeble amount of sources that can be found
concerning Jacobitism, especially when it comes to Jacobite banditry, and conversely
the important number of documents on banditry in general in Great Britain and
Ireland.
This work thus tries to focus on these bandit groups which were clearly involved
with the Stuart movement, as well as those which were deeply suspected of being proJacobite rogues.
1.1.
Tories, Rapparees and the Munster Whiteboys

The rapparees were the successors to those who were called tories before the
Exclusion Crisis. Tory became the insulting nickname of the political party, the
Abhorrers5, which supported the High Church and the Jacobite succession in favour of
the future James II. The rapparees are called thus because of their frequent use of a
half-pike, called ropair in Irish Gaelic.
A tory, coming from the Irish Gaelic traidhe, means an outlaw and came to
designate an Irish Catholic highwayman. And these highwaymen, more than being
average bandits, represented an expression of popular, and especially Catholic,
discontent. They were known to have fought the Cromwellian Wars in Ireland for
instance, in order to help defend the Catholic population from the persecutions of the
Puritan New Model Army. Some tories such as Michael Galloping Hogan became
famous heroes for the population due to their involvement in the fights then. Then the
rapparees indeed wielded their weapons for their beleaguered king in 1688. According
to Eamonn O Ciardha, they revived the seventeenth-century tradition which gave a
The Tories were probably nicknamed thus because of their support for the suspected Catholic heir
James, Duke of York, whose religion is evoked through the Irish insult, Ireland being a mainly Catholic
land, one very supportive of the Stuarts. Conversely, the Petitioners became known as the Whigs,
coming from the Scot whiggamore, meaning cattle driver, which echoes the Presbyterians of Scotland
and so their support for a Protestant succession during the Exclusion Crisis.
political dimension to the depredations of their predecessors, the woodkerne and

tories, and their activities were endorsed under the signet of King James himself6.
It is important in the first place to understand the situation of the Irish during the
Glorious Revolution period. Irish Catholics had felt discriminated since the adoption
in the statute books of the popery laws, or penal laws. Eamonn O Ciardha adds
that as the Popish population was feeling persecuted, whether or not that legislation
was being imposed, the penal laws did not change their feeling about discrimination,
or it obviously did not improve their sentiment. The penal laws were undoubtedly a
cause of the appeal of Jacobitism for the Irish Catholics7. So, the Papists rejoiced to
see a Catholic monarch on the throne and after he was overthrown, wished to see him
back, in order to put the Protestant Ascendancy8 low. Irish Jacobitism was thus clearly
linked to Catholicism, the religion to which the Stuart Pretender belonged9. The
rapparees, being bandits coming from the average population, were obvious
representatives of popular discontent, and as they were composed of Catholics10, they
found in the Jacobites and the Irish Catholic army of Lord Tyrconnell an ally. This
popular dimension concerning the rapparees can be found even in the way they were
sometimes recruited, during public masses for instance. O Ciardha affirms that
rappareeism was an illustration of not only popular discontent, but popular Jacobitism.
As O Ciardha says, Pikemen, tories and rapparees were the most visible
manifestation of Irish popular Jacobitism between the invasion of Schomberg and the
Treaty of Limerick11. The Williamite armys massacres among the Irish Catholic
population as a form of punishment, during its Jacobite hunts, only reaffirmed the
popular aspect of and support for the rapparees12. The rapparees thus engaged into
Eamonn O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause 1685-1766 : A fatal attachment, Dublin, Four
Court Press, 2004, p. 85.
7
O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 28.
The term Protestant Ascendancy, or simply Ascendancy, is an anachronistic expression in this

work. It was first used by Sir Boyle Roche before the Irish House of Commons in 1782 and used after
that to designate the Protestant dominating society over Ireland after what was established by the Penal
Laws. The expression was made famous out of Ireland by Edmund Burke in the early 1790s.
9
Murray G. H. Pittock, Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth Century Britain and Ireland,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 124-125, 194.
10
Rapparees were considered a threat to Protestants, and sometimes directly attacked the Irish
Protestant community, which they linked to the Williamites, who were for them the oppressors of
Ireland.
11
12
some religious, and sometimes even communal, fight. They indeed performed some
sort of retaliation on the Protestant population who was more likely to support
William. But this Protestant support of William was not always simply a matter of
allegiance, it developed because the Catholics were prone to generalize and consider
all Protestants as enemies, and since William of Orange and his forces focused their
actions on the Papists, it is then easy to believe that the Protestants considered the
Williamites as protectors against these Catholics who were against them. The
rapparees indeed, as is reported by O Ciardha, showed no mercy for Protestants, and
especially English ones. For instance, as O Ciardha puts it, it was reported that they
harried and shot the stragglers of Wrtemburgs Danish contingent13. It was also
observed by the Danish Colonel Munchgaar, who had joined the Williamite army, that
the rapparees concentrated on the English forces in particular :
They give no quarter to English Protestants but spare Danes, Dutch and French
Recently they captured a land constable with a Danish trooper in Dungarvan. The
constable offered 100 that he might live long enough to write a letter to his wife but
they would not allow it as he was a Protestant.14
More than only fighting like mere rogues, the rapparees also had military training,
strategy and counseling. They took part in the Williamite-Jacobite War. Their
participation in the first siege of Limerick in August and September 1690 was
remarkably efficient. They were under the command of Patrick Sarsfield, 1st Earl of
Lucan, one of the main officers of the Jacobite regular army in Ireland, who was said
to be advised by none but the famous tory of the Cromwellian War, Michael
Galloping Hogan. For instance, Hogan, accompanied by 600 men from Sarsfields
cavalry, intercepted the siege train at Ballyneety and destroyed the cannons and
ammunition, which forced William of Orange to delay the bombardment of Limerick
and wait for another train to come from Waterford. The head of the Jacobite army,
Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, who was a staunch supporter of the Stuarts and
already fought for them during the Cromwellian War, surviving the sack of Drogheda
in 1649, personally wanted the rapparees to join his military force, even defending
them against Williamite propaganda. Tyrconnell asked for the support of the rapparees
13
Wrtemburg to Christian V, 7 Jan. 1691, in Danaher and Simms, ed., Danish Forces, p.95, in O
Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 74.
14
Munchgaar to Harboe, 10 Jan. 1691 in Danaher and Simms, ed., Danish Forces, p. 96, 98, in O
for the decisive Battle of Aughrim, in June 1691. The relationship between the
rapparees and the Jacobite army was only about the rapparees as a subdivision of the
greater Tyrconnell army. Indeed, the force of the rapparees knew a great rise as the
Jacobite armys strength was decreasing. Many Jacobite soldiers, because of
inadequate resources and lack of funds, disbanded and joined a more popular
movement, and that was repeatedly reported in the correspondence of the French
comte dAvaux15. The Jacobite army and the rapparees thus appeared as some form of
partners, allies, and not only a smaller element under the command of a greater one. It
is interesting to note that Eamonn O Ciardha, when he refers to all these events
between the rapparees and the Irish Jacobite army, sorts them in his books index with
the term association, which clearly denotes what kind of relationship there was
between these two factions. The bureaucratic, political and economic breakdown of
the Jacobite war machine16 linked the plundering of the rapparees to that of the
Jacobite soldiers, who resorted to outlawry, as did their irregular and bandit
counterparts. Jacobite regulars were then no better than bandits, and on the contrary,
rapparees who continued to attack Williamite soldiers, burning the officers houses,
stealing horses for the Jacobite cavalry, were thought to be official Jacobite soldiers17.
This phenomenon of a confusion between Jacobite soldiers and bandits was not
limited to Ireland ; as O Ciardha puts it, post-war dislocation in England and Scotland
drove many ex-soldiers and highlanders onto and beyond the legal periphery18. The
French general, the Marquis de St Ruth, who died at the decisive Battle of Aughrim,
which was a Jacobite defeat, was given the nickname the rapparee saint on his death.
Finally, the Treaty of Limerick, which formalized the end of the war, could help prove
the acknowledgement of the link between the rapparees and Jacobitism in the eyes of
the Williamites. Indeed, the Dutch general serving under William of Orange, Godert
de Ginkel, ordered in October 1691 that those known by the names of rapparees,
volunteers or creaghts do return to their respective parishes, deliver up their arms and
enter their names with some of his majesties justices of the peace19. The fact that
15
16
17
18
19
George Walter Story, A Continuation of the Impartial History of the Wars of Ireland, Oct. 1691, p.
262, 269, in O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 76.
many rapparees accepted and submitted to the terms of the Treaty of Limerick was the
proof they were engaged in the Jacobite war effort20.
After the Treaty of Limerick and the end of the William War in Ireland, James II
was discredited in the eyes of some of his Irish supporters. His cult fluctuated with
the vicissitudes of war from the elevated heights of court poetry [] to the
disrespectful doggerel of the popular literary and folk traditions of the war period 21.
Lord Tyrconnell and Patrick Sarsfield, like many other Irish Jacobites, focused on a
more European Jacobitism, with the flight of the Wild Geese for example and their
involvement in many European armies, like those of France or Spain. They still
followed the residual activities of the rapparees of the late 1690s and eighteenth
century22. But that did not mean Jacobitism would die in Ireland. King James exile
and death helped rebuild his heroic image and his son and heir James Francis Edward
could be worshipped as the hero and guide of the remaining Jacobite agents and
freedom fighters of Ireland. The position and motives of the Irish Jacobites under
William, Queen Anne and the succeeding Hanoverians could be represented, as O
Ciardha says, by an aphorism from Dinneens dictionary : D olcas Samas, is measa
bheith na egmas (As bad as James was, it is worse to be without him)23. The Irish
Jacobite cause, as is shown by this quote, sounded like a desperate one, waiting for its
hero to come back, and living in the memory of the Wild Geese. O Ciardhas chapter
on the following years after the Jacobite War is called The Shipwreck, which quite
clearly underlines this image of the rapparees and remaining Irish Jacobites as
castaways waiting for the arrival, or in that case the return, of a rescue mission, or
invasion. Still, rappareeism represented a threat that could not be neglected by the
post-war Williamite authorities. Lord Chancellor Porter thought that the priority was
to disperse the remaining Jacobite armies and get rid of the soldiers and officers thanks
to a resort to transportation. Indeed, officers of the Jacobite army, if they did not leave
for continental Europe, were most likely to form a rapparee group with their soldiers,
20
The civil and military articles of Limerick, p. 25, in O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 76.
21
22
23
Dinneen [Ua Duinnn], Foclor, p. 1004, in O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 86.
or join an already-existing gang. These officers were mostly from the aristocracy or
lesser nobility, and thus could provide a legitimate leadership to an outlaw group24.
While on the Continent in 1695-96, James II, Lord Berwick25 and Louis XIV were
debating upon a potential Jacobite invasion and expedition, which led to Louis XIVs
decision to postpone the invasion, limiting the threat to discussions and debates, in
Ireland the rapparees were still physically representing a menace for the Protestant
interest, which the Williamite authority closely linked to Jacobitism. Though some
Irish Jacobite idealists and poets saw them as the rearguard of the movement which
would carry on the fight until the return of the Wild Geese, many others started to
consider they were merely some ruffians drawing the attention of the authorities on the
whole Catholic community, and thus taking the risk to make the Papist population
suffer from the severe retaliation of the Williamites26. That shows that only about 5
years after the end of the Jacobite War and the Jacobite political supremacy over
Ireland, the activities of the rapparees were already seen as a danger, even by those
who supported them beforehand. Their activities were potentially disruptive, and that
was underestimated by Lord Chancellor Porter for instance, who did not care for his
lords justices warning27. They were a thorn in the foot of the Williamites and they had
to be dealt with in order to ensure that Ireland would not rise again. The newspaper,
the Dublin Intelligence, constantly reported atrocities performed by the rapparees and
what the newly formed Williamite Protestant militia suffered from them 28. So, because
of the clandestine and stealthy nature of rapparee attacks, the authorities retaliated on
the Catholic community as a whole, and they more precisely attacked certain parishes
and their priests, as J. G. Simms reports, saying the lords justices issued a
proclamation which punished the Catholic population of a given county for any
rapparee action taken there29. But of course, all this does not mean that the entire
Catholic population was against, or unsupportive. Although a less significant and
visible manifestation of popular Jacobitism than before, rapparees retained a close
24
25
James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, was one of James IIs illegitimate sons with Arabella
Churchill, John Churchills sister. Berwick lived from 1670 to 1734.
26
27
28
J. G. Simms, Jacobite Ireland, 1685-91, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969, p. 198, 199.
29
Simms, Jacobite Ireland, p. 199.
association with Jacobites, privateering and the recruitment for foreign service 30 in
the early eighteenth century. Indeed, popular Jacobitism, under Queen Anne and the
early Hanoverian reign of George I, was expressed either by rappareeism or
recruitment for foreign service, that is to say in the Irish Brigades of the different
European armies, and especially the Irish Brigade of the French army, which
represented the alliance or association of the Jacobites with the Kingdom of France.
And though these Irishmen were serving in a foreign army, they did take shipping for
foreign service, invariably, as far as they were concerned, for the service of James
III31, which gives evidence of this Jacobite motive in the enlisting to the Irish
Brigades. Rappareeism, even it was not as conspicuous, visible and strong as during its
climactic period of activity that was the Williamite-Jacobite War of 1690-1691, was
still existent and notorious during the following fifty years. Many famous tories and
rapparees, like Redmond OHanlon, Samus Mac Mhuirchidh, or Muircheartach O
Suilleabhan Barra joined James III and Charles Edward Stuart, considering them as
symbols of popular defiance for the Irish32. The reports of rapparee activity became
linked with reports of possible invasions, which deepened Protestant anxiety and
rejoiced the Catholics33. The importance of their actions coincided with the threats of
imminent invasions.
After the Fifteen, the rapparees focused more on the defying actions of the Irish
Catholic community, as when a crowd gathered on the road from Crumlin to Dublin in
order to see the apprehended rapparee Captain Fitzgerald 34. Their actions then
toughened as a way to avenge the persecution of the Catholics, as for the branding of
priests. This propensity to have resort to vengeance led to more brutality in the
retaliations from the Protestant Ascendancy. For instance, in August 1725, the Duke of
Bolton wrote to Secretary Craggs recommending castration of Catholic priests. The
bill was rejected, but it was greatly feared by the papists, showing that penal
legislation had a tremendous effect on the Irish Catholics minds35. The years from the
30
O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, pp 114, 115.
31
32
33
34
A full and true account of the surprising and apprehension of Captain Fitzgerald, 5 Dec. 1717, in
35
10
Treaty of Limerick in 1691 to what O Ciardha calls the Jacobite twilight, from 1752
to 1766, saw a gradual decrease in rapparee activity, with the exception of some
booms coinciding with invasion threats. Their eagerness to avenge and fight for the
Catholic community, as they were self-appointed protectors of the people, made the
authorities of the Protestant Ascendancy toughen the penal legislation and thus
rappareeism became mostly linked to recruitment for the continental Irish Brigades as
a first step or a recruiting network, while before that, it was another solution than
enlisting for those who were willing to fight and take actions against the Protestant
domination. As O Ciardha points out, rappareeism, as well as outlawry in general,
along with the image of the Stuart king and of the Wild Geese and the Irish brigades,
had become prominent a figure in popular literary tradition and had been continually
associated with Jacobitism throughout this period36. One example might be the
laments composed on the death of the aforementioned rapparee Muircheartach O
Suilleabhan Barra, a Franco-Austrian recruiter, smuggler and proclaimed tory, who
had been shot and impaled on 4 May 175737.
Another outlaw movement appeared in 1752 in Munster and Leinster and revived
the Jacobite spectre. It was the agrarian movement of the Munster Whiteboys, who
were mostly active in counties Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford and Kilkenny38.
This re-emergence coincided with the imminent outbreak of the Seven Years War,
which lasted from 1756 to 1763. They represented, like the rapparees, Irish Catholic
popular discontent, through their agrarian grievances, and they were also associated
with the Irish migrs of the Irish brigades. They emerged as considerable troublemakers as their aim was to motivate popular unrest, in hope of a French invasion in the
Wars context. Jacobitism was then a way to legitimize their actions, and to point at
the sort of alliance between the Irish Catholics and Jacobites and the Kingdom of
France. And indeed, the Whiteboys clearly showed Jacobite allegiance as they wore
white shirts and cockades, and sang The king shall enjoy his own again to the tune
of the Jacobite anthem, the White Cockade39. The Whiteboys were thus clearly seen
as Jacobites, or at least pro-Jacobites, by the Protestants until the mid-1760s, at a time,
as O Ciardha remarks, when Britain dared allow Jacobitism to recede into the
36
37
38
O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, pp 327, 328, 331.
39
11
background40. That recession mostly appeared because the Pope declared the
Hanoverian regime legitimate. Jacobitism lost its aspects of justice and nobleness
which made every of its supporters, though they were maybe beyond the legal barrier,
fight for the restoration of the lawful and true king. The Whiteboys, as well as the
Dublin mob in the late 1750s and its cosmetic Jacobitism, prove that Jacobitism
survived though at a popular level, their political interests coincided with an older
movement which was Jacobitism41. More, it shows that Jacobitism was no longer a
real movement, but more of an ideology and a cause in the late 1760s and after. What
Eamonn O Ciardha says is telling and evocative :
The fortunes of Irish Jacobitism subsided between the end of the War of the Austrian
Succession and the death of James III in 1766. The poets still clung to their affection
for the Stuarts. They longed for the arrival of Charles Edward and the Irish Brigades
to dismantle the penal code, restore the fortunes of the Catholic Church, re-establish
the dispossessed aristocracy and gentry and banish the Protestants42.
1.2.
The Blacks of Windsor and Hampshire

Another important group of criminals was suspected of Jacobitism in South East
England. It was the gang of poachers and highwaymen called the Blacks, or Waltham
Blacks. This gang was composed of local petty criminals, or bullies, who were, in the
first ten years of the Hanoverian regime progressively raised to the status of traitors.
Their name, the Blacks, mostly came from the fact that they used to blacken their
faces and wear black clothes, masks and gloves in the first place as a means of
camouflage, but this make-up then became some sort of symbol of their cause or fight.
The origins of the Blacks differ from one author to another. The author of The
History of the Blacks of Waltham in Hampshire ; or Those Under the Like
Denomination in Berkshire43, seems to say that the Blacks were born as a revenge
against the Bishop of Winchester, Dr. Jonathan Trelawney. Trelawney was a fierce
opponent to the Stuarts, he was indeed one of the Seven Bishops who were jailed for
refusing to endorse James IIs Declaration of Indulgence in 1688. According to the
author of The History of the Blacks, Trelawney was not so indulgent as his great
40
41
42
43
The author of The History of the Blacks is assumed to be Daniel Defoe by Pat Rogers in The
Waltham Blacks and the Black Act, The Historical Journal, Vol. 17, n3 (September 1974), p. 466.
This theory is viewed as quite possible by E. P. Thompson, as he points in Whigs and Hunters, p. 298.
12
Predecessor Dr. Peter Mew in letting his Neighbours make bold with some of his
Venison44. The Episcopal park was raided by some poachers, they were said to be too
poor to feed on meat because they suffered from the schemes of the South Sea
Company, which laid waste what the Industry and good Husbandry of Families had
gather'd together. This raid was performed in October 1721 and the poachers stole
deer from the park of Farnham, fighting the keepers. The Bishop of Winchester
managed to have some of the sixteen deer-stealers arrested and sentenced to the pillory
for an hour, imprisoned for a year and a day, and fined twenty pounds 45. So, according
to the author, the Blacks assembled in response to this event. They meditated revenge
against the Bishop, swore oaths to stand by one another, and organized under the
leadership of a mock Kingly Government46, the King of which was to be a
gentleman. Thus, what started as an illegal hunt of deer, which were usually shared by
the former Bishop Dr. Mew, degenerated to some sort of personal revenge against the
current Bishop of Winchester in targeting his property and his keepers, and this
revenge then expanded to several other domains owned by local landlords, and it went
as far as raiding the Royal forests and properties.
E. P. Thompson sees the origins of the Blacks four years before what is described
in The History of the Blacks. According to him, the Blacks were created in Windsor
Forest after the meeting of the Swanimote Court in 1717. Severity in forest laws
changed radically from Annes to George Is reigns. The Swanimote Court of Windsor
Forest of 1708, which was the last in Queen Annes reign, issued no true bills against
forest offenders47 while the 1717 Court issued 91 bills as early as George Is first
visit to Windsor Forest. Moreover, this corresponds to the appointment in June 1717
of the Hanoverian Whig, and Member of Parliament for Ipswich, Colonel Francis
Negus as deputy to the head warden, or Constable, of Windsor Forest, the Whig
military adventurer Sir Richard Temple, who was even called by Jonathan Swift
the greatest Whig in the Army48. Temple was made 1st Viscount Cobham in 1718,
he was also known for his service in the army with John Churchill, Duke of
44
The History of the Blacks of Waltham in Hampshire; and Those Under the Like Denomination in
Berkshire, A. Moore, 1723, p. 2.
45
The History of the Blacks, p. 3.
46
47
E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977, p. 44.
48
Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p. 202.
13
Marlborough49. It is assumed, at least by Thompson, that Negus was an ally to Lord

Townshend and to Sir Robert Walpole. So, forest law enforcement knew greater
severity as soon as the Hanoverian Whigs came to power. It was said that under Queen
Anne, forest law enforcement knew great laxity, to which Thompson adds that her sole
presence in Windsor Forest could have been enough to deter bandits from committing
crimes in the forest. The poet Alexander Pope, who spent some of his childhood in
Windsor said in his poem Windsor Forest : Rich Industry sits smiling on the Plains,
/ And Peace and Plenty tell, a Stuart reigns. This may lead to think about the
agreement between Anne and the Jacobites, who promised not to attempt anything
against her while she was on the throne, at least after the failed rising of 1708. The
Jacobites held no actual grudge against Anne, whom they viewed as more or less
sympathetic to their cause, and in any case a Stuart, unlike the loathsome Hanover
dynasty (though the latter was, obviously, related to the Stuarts). If it could seem too
soon to assume Jacobite links with the forest bandits, it might be possible to think that
under Queen Anne, bandits were less prone to poach in the royal forests than they
were under the Hanoverians.
Though Thompson was uneager to see links of any kind between the Jacobites and
the forest rogues, there seems to have been some. Indeed, the Swanimote court not
only assembled as a means to counter forest outlawry and enforce forest laws against
them, but suspicions linked to Jacobitism seem to have appeared. Amidst Thompsons
account of countless extremely severe judgments by the Swanimote appears James
Barlow of Winkfield. He was indicted not only as a Black but also as a suspected
Jacobite for building a cart-house and enclosing four pole of land50. Thompson
then considers that this radicalization in forest law enforcement by the Swanimote
court of 1717 created a sentiment of solidarity between the foresters and poachers
which led to the creation of a greater criminal network than mere separate bandit cells.
With the Swanimote court in 1717 as a temporal starting point, one could observe the
49
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was initially a Tory. He helped defeat the Monmouth
Rebellion in 1685 against James II, whom he betrayed in order to support William of Orange in 1688
and be a companion to the Whigs, while remaining officially a Tory for the sake of his career, under
Queen Anne for instance when his powers, fortunes and career reached a climactic level.
50
14
beginning of another kind of association among forest dwellers, hunters and outlaws,
it brought men together, in roles to which they had long been allocated51.
This radicalization of forest laws came along with the development of the
Hanoverian Whig capitalistic ideology. James Barlow was one victim to this
ideology. The Whigs tended to expropriate forest dwellers in order to make a profit of
the land they had just acquired. Thus, in order to protect this property, forest laws were
toughened, at the same time destroying the privileges of the foresters. James Barlow,
who was convicted as Black but also in Crown notes as a Jacobite, was beforehand
gamekeeper of Cranborne, Old Windsor and Egham Walks under Queen Anne, and he
was also given in 1713 two acres to enclose for his own use. In April 1715, he had his
job of gamekeeper taken from him and it was given to Baptist Nunn, who appeared to
be an agent to the Whigs and Sir Robert Walpole among the Blacks. Barlow then had
an inn in Cranborne which was said to be a great meeting house where Blacks
assembled until he was arrested in 1717. Thompson adds that Nunn and the
Hanoverian Whigs motives behind the control of the forests were not really
economic, like the exploitation of timber for instance. They seemed to be more prone
to restore some sort of feudal system within the forests and use deer as a screen to hide
their own interests. Indeed, as is stressed by Eveline Cruickshanks, Thompson
insists on the strengthening of forest laws and the adoption of the Black Act as a
means to reaffirm the Hanoverian authority in the areas threatened by the Blacks.
These outlaws fought, among other motives, for the restoration of their forest rights
while Whig landlords wanted more efficiently exploitative procedures, backed by
ferocious legislation52. The interests of older and smaller gentry and yeomen, like
James Barlow for example, were stifled.
Thompson sees also a possible link between Jacobite conspiracies, forest law
enforcement and Catholic discrimination near Windsor. The Thames valley near
Windsor was an area of multiple Catholic settlements, many of which maybe came
after the order to all Papists to withdraw then miles away from London in 1695. Along
with the sensation of Jacobite conspiracies in May 1722, perhaps linked to the
Atterbury Plot, arms were searched for in many Catholic households of the forest and
the valley. It might also be useful to note that one important Black was Charles
51
Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p.54.
52
Eveline Cruickshanks, Howard Erskine-Hill, The Waltham Black Act and Jacobitism, Journal of
British Studies, Vol. 24, n3 (1985), p. 358.
15
Rackett, Alexander Popes Catholic brother-in-law. He was arrested according to a

schedule dressed up by the M.P. and Secretary to the lords justices Charles Delafaye.
However, despite all these accounts of potential Jacobite links within the Black
gang, E. P. Thompson denies them as of little credibility and thinks Walpole and
Townshend had no concern about those foresters who only represented a threat for the
forest wildlife and for the local authority of the landlords. Thompson also rests a lot on
the manifesto of the Waltham Blacks leader, namely King John of the Blacks, who
declared in Waltham Chase, after the adoption of the Black Act in 1723, that he was
loyal to the Hanoverian settlement. Thompson thus directly dismissed what the
government was considering Jacobitism as a reason for the adoption of the Black Act.
The issue of King Johns declaration will be dealt with later in this work. Thompson
also considered that the Blacks had strictly nothing to do with Jacobitism because even
if their main targets were Whig estates, they still attacked the Tory Earl of Arrans
property at Bagshot, near Waltham Chase, but Professor Pat Rogers said that they
were raiding the estate of that ineffectual Jacobite53, which leads to think that the
Blacks might have been employed to perform the Jacobites dirty work. But for E. P.
Thompson, the attack on a Torys estate was a proof that they were not involved into
Jacobitism, as most Jacobites were Tories. This is not wrong but he may not have
thought of all the possible motives behind such an attack. Thompsons view on
Jacobitism linked to Blacking was proved erroneous by Eveline Cruickshanks and
Howard Erskine-Hill in The Waltham Black Act and Jacobitism. They found among
the Royal Archives of Windsor Castle what they consider to be a vital piece of
evidence of this link between the insurgent movement and the gang, a letter written in
1723 by Sir Henry Goring to James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender54.
May the 6th. 1723

Sir
I receiv'd your majesties most Gracious Letter of 15th. of march it is great
pleasure to me to hear your majestie the Queen and Prince are in perfect health
I pray God to keep you so & to send you a numerous Issue which will be a
great Blessing to your selfe & Kingdoms. your majestie will have seen before
53
Pat Rogers, The Waltham Blacks and the Black Act, The Historical Journal, Vol. 17, n3
(September 1974), p. 470.
54
Windsor Castle, Royal Archives, Stuart MS 67/16. In transcribing this letter, archaic abbreviations
have been expanded but no other changes made. This long section in italics was printed by J. H. Glover,
ed., The Stuart Papers, London, 1847, in an appendix to letter n24, p. 97-98, in Cruickshanks,
Erskine-Hill, The Waltham Black Act and Jacobitism, p. 359.
16
this can come to you, the examination of mr Phil: Caryll, (which I am sure has
given me noble [troble?] enough) he is Nephew to the late Lord Caryll who
died at st Germains & Elder Brother to mr John Caryll who was Gentleman
Usher to the late Queen, a Roman Catholick & a man I thought so intirely
attach'd to your majesties interest that he would have stood the Question
sooner than have betray'd any thing that could be in the least prejudicial to it,
this man I chose (with these considerations) to put some confidence in, as
knowing him to be a man of good sense few words & well acquainted with
most of the Gentlemen of Hampshire that were well inclin'd, & it being
impossible for me to carry on my project alone, I made choice of this Wolfe in
sheeps Cloathing to be in the nature of an Aide d'Camp to me he knew that
Countrey very well was us'd to travell alone, knew all by Roads so I thought
there coud not be a properer person for that purpose, besides all this, he was as
fitt to advise as to execute, & indeed I thought my selfe very happy in such a
man I had so great confidence in his friendship to me perticularly, that I left
the settlement of my Estate in his hands, which I made about two years since
to cover my Estate in case of any accident, being unwilling to divest my selfe
of the power of it, till it was absolutely necessary; in his information he says I
told him the Duke of Ormond was to land near Bristol Lord Lansdowne in
Cornwall. I never told him so nor was there any occasion; for the Duke's being
to land in the West & Lord Lansdowne in Cornwal was very much expected
and as publicly talked of in every place as The price of Corn I hear Lord
Lansdowne is very angry with me about this which I am sure is without reason
for the Letter he wrote himselfe to sir John st. Aubin (which was printed)
sufficiently declar'd what he was to do, as I was unfortunate in my choice of a
friend, so I was fortunate in not trusting him with a great deal more than I did,
for I had settled an affair with five Gentlemen of that Countrey who were each
of them to raise a Regiment of Dragoons well mounted and well arm'd which I
knew they coud easily do, for the men had Horses & Armes of their own, &
were, to say the truth most of them, the Persons who some time since rob'd the
late Bishop of Winchesters Parke, & have increas'd in their number ever since
they now go by the name of the Waltham Blacks tho' few of them live there,
which is a most loyal Town your Father call'd it his little Green Town, for as
he was passing thro it to Winchester or Portsmouth, they got a great number
of green Bowes & dress'd the Town up that there was hardly a house to be
seen: I once saw two Hundred and upwards of these Blacks in a Body within
halfe a mile of my own house they had been running of Brandy there was 24
Customs House officers following them who they abus'd heartyly & carried off
their Cargo. I am told there is not less than a thousand of them & indeed I
believe it, they have now taken Loyalty into their heads, & will I hope prove
very usefull, this mr Caryll was the Person who I intended to send to give
these Gentlemen before mention'd, their orders when to rise & to tell them the
place of Rande-vous, but I thought it was not necessary to acquaint him with it
till nearer the time, so I did not tell him of it, not out of any distrust neither, I
yet cannot but thinke they have usd some torture to this man to get from him
what they have, whither by fire or Water or Chains tis pretty indifferent, &
when a man is in a messenger's hands tis very easy to punish privately, & that
poor Plunket tho indeed with more firmness. I have indeed trusted this man
too far, but twas because I had too much confidence in him, which I heartyly
aske your majesties Pardon for, and as it was im-possible for me to do any
thing for your service without trusting some-body, so I hope your majestie
will judge the more favourably of me, & forgive what I have done amiss, I am
sure whenever I offend it shall be innocently, & beg your majestie will be
persuaded to believe, there is no man alive wishes you and your Royal family
better than
17
your majesties
most Dutyfull
& most Loyal subject
This letter, written by Goring, who played a central role in the organization of the
conspiracy known as the Atterbury Plot55, is for Eveline Cruickshanks and Howard
Erskine-Hill the proof of a link between Jacobites and Blacks. Acknowledging the
involvement of Goring with the Blacks, Thompson timidly answered the duet of
scholars in a postscript in Whigs and Hunters :
It does suggest that the Waltham Blacks were more numerous than I supposed, that
gentry (and perhaps Jacobite gentry) were in touch with them, and the testimony as to
the Jacobite loyalty of Bishops Waltham is significant. And, if Gorings plans
reached the ear of the Government, by whatever route, it may afford a little excuse for
the hasty passage of the Act.56
Goring was trying to recruit some Blacks in order to form regiments of dragoons for
the Pretenders army and incorporate them in a greater Jacobite invasion, combined
with the landings of Lord Lansdowne in Cornwall and of the Duke of Ormonde near
Bristol. If it were not for the suppositious treason of Phillip Caryll, who was in fact
captured and interrogated by Walpoles messenger, that is to say an agent, the
Blacks might have been part of the official Jacobite army, as an irregular force, in
the same manner as the rapparees in Ireland. Still, the Blacks managed to surprise the
authorities with military-like tactics during their raids. Some of these Blacks in fact
benefited from the military knowledge of Sir Henry Goring who had served in the
army. He is also considered by Cruickshanks and Erskine-Hill as a mastermind of
the Waltham Blacks activities but also a major Jacobite officer and conspirator.
Sir Henry Goring was indeed an able army officer and protg of the Duke of
Ormonde57, he was also a Court Tory under Queen Anne and Member of Parliament
for Horsham (1707-8) and Steyning (1709-15). He was unseated on petition later in
171558 and deprived of his regiment by the Hanoverian Succession, hence his financial
difficulties. Gorings family was found to be notorious for being staunchly loyal to the
Stuarts and its involvement in the smuggling trade in 1698.
55
Cruickshanks, Erskine-Hill, The Waltham Black Act and Jacobitism, p. 363.
56
57
58
18
This involvement with the Blacks could also appear as a way to train the future
dragoons he is talking about in his letter to the Old Pretender. Nonetheless, the clear
links between Jacobitism and the Waltham Blacks cannot be limited to this sole event.
Another similar case was noted in Dawney, near Maidenhead two years before, in
1721. The butcher Richard Fellows was arrested on suspicion of High Treason. As a
butcher, he was considered to be an excellent contact for the sale of venison. He was
also accused of confederating the Blacks and enlisting them for the Pretender. Popes
brother-in-law, Charles Rackett, was also suspected of being a hard-core Black59 but
also a Jacobite. A keeper indeed reported to have seen him destroy deer in Windsor
Forest. But the Crown notes did not stop to Blacking only, it was jotted beside
Racketts name Jacobite worth 20,00060. Charles Rackett was arrested with his
son Michael, who managed to escape. The case of Rackett was dropped by the
Treasury Solicitor, perhaps thanks to the good offices of Alexander Pope, who had
close relationships with his brother-in-laws family. However, Michael Rackett
disappeared overseas, perhaps the fathers liberty was the sons outlawry61.
Cruickshanks and Erskine-Hill considered that Walpole was clearly trying to prove
a link between the Blacks from Berkshire and Hampshire and the Jacobites, which
could explain the sending of several agents among the poachers like Baptist Nunn or
Thomas Power, who were expressly sent to find people who had treasonable
intentions. If they were not considered a real threat, the First Minister would not have
sent agents, even if he was inclined to have a whole network of spies wherever he
thought useful intelligence could be gathered. It is also stated that Walpole and the
government did not learn about the connection between the Atterbury Plot and the
Waltham Blacks from Caryll, as Goring did not let him know of his commission to
the Blacks. What was important for Walpole, according again to Cruickshanks and
Erskine-Hill, was the statement of three witnesses who testified that recruits were
enlisted by a well-dressed man who gave the Blacks five guineas each, the promise of
a horse, and a further fifteen shillings a week for the horses feed62. It was this
discovery that brought the Waltham Black Act into Parliament. One could indeed
easily imagine a Jacobite agent, such as Sir Henry Goring, portrayed by the well59
60
State Papers 35.47, fo. 72, in Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p. 93.
61
62
19
dressed man who would enlist for the Pretenders army. The letter indeed
demonstrates a coincidence of economic, social and political factors and hints at
the existence of popular Jacobitism at this time63, personified by the Waltham Blacks
who, as was reported by Pat Rogers from Sir William Blackstone, modeled
themselves on the Roberdsmen or followers of Robin Hood64 and Cruickshanks and
Erskine-Hill added that they had sworn to protect people even against King
George65.
The issue of the Waltham Blacks leader, William Shorter, also known as King
John, and his loyal declaration is a matter of debate. Upon hearing of the adoption of
the Black Act in 1723, he made a statement with 15 other Blacks in front of a crowd of
300 people in Waltham Chase66. What is clear is that King John and the Blacks
represented a form of expression of popular discontent, but what is on the contrary
quite unclear is his and his fellows allegiance. He made it clear in his speech that he
was loyal to King George, and he and his fellow bandits drank the Prince of Wales
health later on. This declaration also appeared right after a symbolical attack by the
Blacks, who intercepted a consignment of wine intended for the Prince of Wales, on
the road of Winchester and Alresford67, adding thus Lse-Majest to their list of
misdeeds. So, how could the gang of King John, supposedly loyal to His Majesty
George I, attack the royal familys property thus, and King John himself feast on the
Princes wine ? Either he was lying in his declaration, or as suggested, he was not a
representative of his whole groups beliefs. Pat Rogers rests his argumentation on the
History of the Blacks, which reported King Johns declaration. It seems paradoxical in
this pamphlet to see King John being criticized thus while he is making a loyal speech,
so this raises questions about the loyalty of the Historys author. Why should a loyal
person, even a bandit, be despised instead of being encouraged to carry on this loyal
way ? One could also see that declaration as in the same vein as Sacheverells sermon
in St Pauls Cathedral in 1709, The Perils of False Brethren. While explicitly
expressing a total and faithful loyalty and trust to William of Orange and implicitly his
63
64
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, 1778), IV, p. 255. The parallel
was originally suggested by Mists Weekly Journal on 26 Jan. 1723; in Rogers, The Waltham Blacks
and the Black Act, p. 466-467.
65
Cruickshanks, Erskine-Hill, The Waltham Black Act and Jacobitism, p. 358-359.
66
67
Rogers, The Waltham Blacks and the Black Act, p. 470.
20
Whig minions too, Sacheverell was implying the total contrary. Concerning the loyal
toasts and drinks to the health of the Prince of Wales, all this celebration of one head
of supreme authority by a bandit leader and his fellows seems rather provocative than
really loyal. Even Rogers acknowledges that Nathaniel Mists account on King Johns
loyal toast is flippant and dismissive68. Nathaniel Mist was known for his Weekly
Journal, which was one of the main Jacobite and opposition newspapers. Mist was a
Jacobite of strong convictions and he fiercely opposed Sir Robert Walpoles
government. So, either he did not get King Johns irony in his declaration, or he was
pointing towards a traitor to the Stuart cause. And since it was Mist who originally
made the parallel between the Waltham Blacks and the Roberdsmen which was
referred to by Rogers, maybe he was implying that the Blacks were righteous, virtuous
bandits, the kind of social bandits that must be praised. They indeed were worthy of
a heroically complimenting parallel and the support of a staunch Jacobite like Mist.
So, his stern account of King John might express his disappointment towards such
supposedly treacherous behaviour. Or, it could be thought that Mist was simply being
careful not to be charged with high treason. His dismissive account of King John was a
shield while he was giving all the elements that a careful reader could build up into a
Jacobite reading. That was quite similar to Sacheverells method.
The Waltham Blacks clearly represented popular discontent and maybe popular
Jacobitism. They benefited from the support of the population and could blend in it. It
was clearly stated in The History of the Blacks that it was impossible to arrest the
Blacks at their public convention since the populace was on their side, as for instance
during the declaration of King John at Waltham Chase. Thompsons anachronistic
comparison saying that the Blacks could easily hide into the folds of popular
concealment as did the Vietcong is telling enough. If the people present at Waltham
Chase at the moment of King Johns speech really wanted to stop the Waltham Blacks,
they could have done it, they were a crowd of 300 people facing 16 bandits, the odds
were in their favour if they were to take action against the outlaws. The Blacks were
indeed common people, perhaps led by gentlemen, such as William Shorter, but they
were people from the forests whose rights and property were endangered. The Blacks
were purely and simply some of these people and they decided to act. Their profits
from deer-stealing maybe benefited them only, as nothing seems to prove they shared
68
Rogers, The Waltham Blacks and the Black Act, p. 469.
21
the product of their hunts, but the message they sent, harrying and challenging the
Whig landlords authority and their grasp on the forests was perhaps what attracted the
sympathy of local people who did not dare voice their grievances. The question now is
about their political affiliation, if there was any. They were reported several times to
have drunk the Pretenders health, and had many contacts, as was recognized by
Thompson, with the Jacobites, like Sir Henry Goring and Richard Fellows among
others, who tried to recruit them and constitute a potential pro-Stuart armed force. But
the declaration and manifesto by King John should not be ignored. It is hard to believe
that the Blacks were really politically neutral. If they did not all have Jacobite
sentiments, they must have had at least some resentment towards the Hanoverian
Establishment, and its political background incarnated by the Hanoverian Whigs who
undertook to appropriate the lands these foresters clung to, thus destroying their rights
and privileges. Controlling the forests was a clear Whig objective since they quickly
replaced the former constables and keepers by Whig ones, who could exercise quasimartial control on the forests since some were former soldiers and officers from
Marlboroughs armies, like Viscount Cobham and Colonel Francis Negus.
1.3.
The English smugglers

Smugglers also represented an important group among outlaws with potential
Jacobite allegiance. These bandits were present on all coasts in the British Isles, but
some of them were more active and important than others, and among them some were
more active when it came to Jacobite activities. The smugglers who were the most
notorious, and probably the most conspicuous in the eyes of the government, were
those who acted in the South-East of England, in Sussex, Essex, Kent and the
surroundings of London. They were indeed a real threat for government authority in
these areas and, like the Blacks, were an obvious menace that had to be dealt with.
The smugglers, like many sorts of bandits, represented a form of popular
discontent, like the rapparees and the Blacks. Cal Winslow, as Paul Monod puts it,
considered that the smugglers belonged to a pantheon of social criminals, along with
the Blacks69. An interpretative cleavage exists between scholars who tackled South69
Winslow, Sussex Smugglers, Thompson, ed., Albions Fatal Tree : Crime and Society in
Eighteenth-Century England, London : Allen Lane, 1975, p. 202, in Paul Kleber Monod, Dangerous
Merchandise : Smuggling, Jacobitism, and Commercial Culture in Southeast England, 1690-1760,
Journal of British Studies, Vol. 30, n2, April 1991, p. 151.
22
East English smuggling. Winslow, as for Thompson and the Blacks, denies there is a
link between smugglers and Jacobites. Monod, on the contrary, is one of the very few
to have studied this association at length. Most of the studies on smuggling generally
make a politically neutral approach to this form of banditry, or are limited to
acknowledgements of popular and social oppositions.
The origin of these smugglers is not really clearly stated, as it might be supposed
that smuggling always existed, regardless of the political situation. What can be
interesting to notice is the degree of participation in the contraband business, what
notorious heads might be discovered in these affairs, and whether these bandits
received help and from whom. The motives of the smugglers are also important to take
into account, since their business rests on illegal trade, so a situation of political
conflict and unrest is profitable for these outlaws, contrary to the Blacks or
highwaymen in general, for instance, whose activities would not change. Concerning
smugglers, being caught with a cargo of Jacobite agents, information, letters,
pamphlets, etc. would be considered a crime of high treason, while smuggling without
any Jacobite implication would still be punished, but not as hard as if Jacobitism was
involved. Still, Paul Kleber Monod notes that Jacobitism was a crucial component in
the emergence of an organized network of contraband trade in South-East England70.
As for the Blacks, the rise of smuggling appeared after some sort of expropriation,
mainly performed by the Hanoverian Whigs. Indeed, smuggling appeared as an
established means of supplementing low rural wages, and became a way of life for
many in Southern England71. This sort of expropriation of a source of profit led to
illegal activity as the only way-out, but that could also breed some kind of hatred
regarding Whig rulers, and eventually to consider the good old times of the Stuarts as
preferable, hence a temptation to join, directly or indirectly, the Jacobite ranks since
the Stuart movement considered that usurpation had brought about the ills of the
nation. Monod indeed claimed that their enemies were not the landed classes, but the
vile Whigs who grew fat on stock-jobbing, government contracts, monopolies and
taxation72. Local industries indeed collapsed because of some Whigs who desired
70
Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 154.
71
72
23
economic advantages and profits through the establishment of some sort of capitalist
system among the rural population.
The organization of the English smuggling trade is interesting. It was both
organized as a local business in the coastal regions of Sussex, Essex and Kent mostly,
but also had its implications in London through a business based on Jacobite
connections [] but also merchants across the Channel and in the City 73. This illegal
trade was intertwined with political activities and created a real commercial structure.
The smugglers had quite a large range of activities. Of course, the main one was the
trade of illegal goods from one shore of the Channel to the other, and in the case of the
South East English smugglers, it was mostly between France and England. They also
practiced land-smuggling and held a firm grip on some towns and areas. Eventually,
some of these land-smugglers turned out to become members of the Waltham Blacks.
The smugglers firmly held the coast from Portsmouth to the tip of South East England
at Canterbury. Their main territories were the town of Hastings and the smuggling
hub of Romney Marsh, in the mouth of the Rye, for the sea-smuggling gangs like the
Transports or the Hastings Outlaws, but also the towns of Hawkhurst and Mayfield for
the land-smuggling gangs. Their activities were really diverse when they were linked
to Jacobitism. They were used to transport agents, letters, information, correspondence
from the Jacobites of France to those in England, but they also acted as disturbing
elements in riots, challenged the Hanoverian forces, were supporters for many local
opposition leaders and sometimes served as some sort of exfiltration unit,
anachronistically speaking, for Jacobite agents who had to flee governmental pursuit.
Monod argues that the smugglers were able to offer the adherents of the Stuarts secret
transport, a postal route, and a means of quick escape74.
Smugglers were thus clearly involved in Jacobitism, and Jacobites were also
involved in smuggling. This can be seen in the behaviour of many families with
Jacobite reputations such as the Gorings, the Carylls and the Oglethorpes, among
many others, regarding rogues. These important families were thus involved in the
organization of the smuggling business, but were also part of a larger phenomenon that
could be witnessed among local landlords. It was what could be called paternalism.
It was not only practiced by landowners with Jacobite feelings, but also by many
73
74
24
Tories and Roman Catholics whose affiliation to the Stuart cause was not always
clearly voiced. This paternalism was in fact a protection to the bandits who looked for
shelter on their domains. It was also practiced by several local landowners whose
industry was destroyed. Paternalism served to preserve the economies of rural
communities, fostering not blind deference but active collaboration between the
landlords and their dependents, which could be profitable for both.75 These
relationships were then reinforced by personal ideologies, and the ideologies that
corresponded to paternalism were Toryism, Roman Catholicism and Jacobitism, so
paternalism was not just a benevolent behaviour regarding outlaws, but a real
doctrine serving the opposition to the Hanoverian usurpers and their Whig minions.
The notorious smugglers William Jackson and William Carter, for instance, were
captured in 1748 near Godalming in Surrey, where the fervently Jacobite Oglethorpe
sisters held considerable properties76. The Carylls, too, had the title of lord of the
manor of Ore, near Hastings and New Winchelsea and both these cities were infested
with smugglers77. But more than simple paternalism, these famous families were also
involved in the business. The coincidence of the location of all their domains and that
of the gangs, plus the relationship of all these landlords with the Jacobites or the
Stuarts cannot be meaningless. Some families were clearly involved in smuggling, like
the Gorings or the Carylls of Ladyholt. The Gorings were famous for their staunch
loyalty to the Stuart dynasty and family and for their smuggling activities in the 1690s.
The Carylls were involved in many smuggling activities all along the South East
English Coast. But more than only being involved in smuggling, they also financed a
seditious newspaper in the early 1750s, the True Briton, and Phillip Caryll, cousin of
the Ladyholt family, was involved, as seen above in connection with Sir Henry
Goring, with the Waltham Blacks. Paul Monod states that the first gangs were
actually formed around 1714, and there is evidence of a coordinated smuggling
activity in the 1690s78. As the implication of Sir Henry Goring with the Blacks was
attested by the 1723 letter discovered by Eveline Cruickshanks and Howard ErskineHill, one could be led to think of a possible involvement of the Goring family in the
75
76
Patricia Kneas Hill, The Oglethorpe Ladies and the Jacobite Conspiracies, Atlanta, 1977, p. 80 ;
Historical Manuscripts Commission, Stuart, 6:331, 392, in Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 155.
77
Victoria County History, Sussex, 4:153, 234-35, 6, pt. 1:42, 108, 149, 9:88, 91, in Monod,
Dangerous Merchandise, p. 156.
78
25
establishment of that coordinated smuggling as early as the 1690s, as Sir Henry

Goring did with the Blacks, as a sort of military counsellor. It might be possible to see
the organization of a powerful smuggling network as a response to the recent
accession of William of Orange to the throne, right after the Glorious Revolution.
Monods account of the formation of the gangs in 1714 may lead to think of a possible
coincidence with the approaching Jacobite insurrection and attempted invasion in
1715, the Fifteen. One might think of the smugglers then as a possible means to
weaken the Hanoverian authorities in South-East England, the nearest point from the
French coast, allied country to the Stuarts.
The peaks of smuggling activity seem to appear at three temporal points : around
the Assassination Plot of 1696, the years near the Fifteen and the Atterbury Plot in the
early 1720s, and the period called the invasion years, that is the 1740s, which
includes the other important Jacobite insurrection, the Forty-Five. These peaks of
activity could be perceived through smugglers actions but also through governmental
response.
In the first ten years of William of Oranges reign over England, smugglers were
considered a possible threat for the government. The Williamite War in Ireland was
proceeding, and France could represent a threat for the new establishment. In 1689, the
year of the Revolution Settlement and of the arrival of William III on the throne, the
owlers79 of Romney Marsh ferried one Jacobite operative across the Channel twenty
times, and an innkeeper of Lydd was hanged, drawn, and quartered in the following
year for carrying treasonable letters to the French fleet80. Four years later, the Earl of
Ailesbury, for instance, was brought to France by a smuggler known as James
Farmer Hunt in 1693. As this link was recognized or at least feared, agents were
sent to investigate on the matter. In 1695, the government spy Richard Kingston
investigated in East Kent for possible links between smuggling and sedition, he found
innkeepers in Canterbury with strong Jacobite sentiments, disaffected customs offices
at Margate and suspicious army officers everywhere81. In that same year of 1695, an
79
The common term owler designated a smuggler of sheep and wool who illegally traded from
England to other countries and particularly France. Their name of owlers is assumed to derive from
their preference to perform their activities at night, at the time of owls.
80
George Campbell, Imposter at the Bar : William Fuller, 1670-1723, London, 1961, p. 42-43 ;
Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 6
vols., Oxford, 1857, 2:124, 135, in Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 160.
81
26
unnamed speculator bought two ships at Dover and entered into a partnership with
some smugglers in order to carry what was called the best merchandise, that is to
say Jacobite agents, from Calais and Ostend in Flanders. It must be noted that many
former officers of the army under the Stuarts, who were disbanded, turned to banditry
like highway robbery or smuggling in order to serve the Stuart cause in an indirect
manner. Sir Henry Goring is a good example, as he represented the epitome of this
image, being at the same time an ex-officer and an influential Jacobite agent and
conspirator. The principal smuggling system was crushed by the government, soon
after the Assassination Plot of 1696. A major investigation uncovered a network
involving ship captains, innkeepers and merchants like, as Monod reports, a woman
selling Indian wares at Picadilly82. The contraband trade also served as a means to
spread Stuart seditious propaganda over England. For instance, in 1699, seven
thousand medals of James, Prince of Wales, were secretly sent to a Kentish Jacobite
captain, and several years later during the reign of Queen Anne, prints of the Pretender
were smuggled into England83. The government acknowledged that there was a
potential threat from smugglers on the South East coast of England. That could be
seen with the adoption of the Smuggling Act in 1698 and in the significant rise in the
number of mounted customs officers known as Riding Officers, who increased from
50 to 300 in Kent for instance. This act and the lawmen enforcing it represented a
serious setback to this organized free trade84.
Though smuggling played a role in Jacobite affairs until the end of the seventeenth
century and the arrival of Queen Anne on the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland
in 1702, the Jacobite owlers lacked something to make them really important, a sense
of widespread popular adherence to the cause85. That popular dimension appeared in
the years surrounding the Fifteen. The event that gave birth to a popular Jacobite
smuggling activity was the Hanoverian Succession in 1714 and George Is ascent on
the throne, and indeed efforts by Stuart supporters to shape smuggling for their ends
82
HMC, Downshire, 1, pt. 2 :678-79, 707, 756-57 ; G. P. R. James, ed., Letters Illustrative of the Reign
of William III. From 1696 to 1708. Addressed to the Duke of Shrewsbury, by James Vernon, Esq.,
Secretary of State, 3 vols., London, 1841, 1:319-20, 329-30, 332-38, 341-45, 350-55, 361-64, 370, in
83
Manchester, ed., 2 :114 ; Public Record Office, State Papers, 44/79A, p. 2-6, 44/84, p. 164-65, in
84
85
27
increased after 1714. In part, this was due to the enlarged scale of Jacobite
operations86. The Hanoverian Succession did not only rally common people to the
cause of Jacobite smugglers, sentiments for the Stuart cause spread quickly among
common people all over England. There was a resentment in witnessing the coming to
power of the intrusive outside forces that were the German House of Hanover and
their Whig ministry87. Popular Jacobitism was thus rising in all areas of England, and
in South East England, it expressed itself through smuggling88. This rise of Jacobite
sentiment among the common people was also promoted by local Jacobite or proJacobite gentry.
In 1714 at Canterbury, where there resided several landed families with Jacobite
inclinations, like the Hales and the Hardreses, a major riot broke out and was
supported by the Tory mayor on the day of King George Is coronation. Three years
later at Canterbury, it was reported by a French ship captain that people of Canterbury
had made huge bonfires and forced passersby to drink King James health, in order to
protest the imprisonment of a Jacobite M.P.89 It could be noted that the smuggling
hub of Romney Marsh was at this time very close to the estates of the Nonjuror Earl of
Winchelsea and of the Jacobite Scott family of Smeeth90. The town of Ashford was
also a theatre of popular Jacobite activities as, in 1718, local labourers celebrated the
Pretenders birthday, in that town which was considered as way station for illegal
goods from Romney Marsh91. The case of Humphry Parsons in Harwich, at the North
of London, also testifies to the implication of the Jacobite gentry in smuggling affairs.
Humphry Parsons politicized popular discontent and smugglers to make them
interesting for the Jacobites. He was one of the chief supporters of the Pretender in
England and London, a notorious London merchant, and was elected as a Tory M.P.
for Harwich in 1722. The Whig government must have considered him a threat as they
used the Harwich customs house to manipulate the elections of Harwich. Parsons and
a mob of smugglers and Tories led a riot against the house and thus secured his
position in Harwich. He then established a smuggling and commerce network between
86
87
88
Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 161-162.
89
90
91
28
Harwich and London that could benefit the cause of the Stuarts92. Such kingpins were
essential to the smugglers as they needed to have their goods sold and they also
needed financial support. So, kingpins like Humphry Parsons, but also other City
bankers, merchants and industrialists like Matthew Blakiston the independent
grocer, William Belchier, etc. had a firm hold on the smuggling networks, as Monod
stresses saying that they were the hidden players in the contraband network93. And it
is worth noticing that most of these kingpins were Tories and had strong Jacobite
sympathies94.
The smugglers had become key players in the formation of Jacobite conspiracies.
After the Fifteen, the Bishop of Rochester, Francis Atterbury, employed one smuggler
named John Davis. The latter was a part-time Admiralty employee and was
recommended to him by the Jacobite Anne Oglethorpe95. After the failure of Francis
Atterburys plot and rising in 1722, his friend Lord North tried but failed to flee to
France from the Isle of Wight, also with the help of a smuggler, David Boyse, who
appeared to have played a key role in the conspiracy and plot 96. This period of
approximately 1714 to 1723 saw another lucrative commerce thrive, that of the secret
recruitment for the French and Spanish armies, Catholic potential enemies of Great
Britain. The recruits were enlisted in London and were mostly Irish immigrants, they
were then brought to the marshes of South East England, in Essex and Kent, and
transported to the Continent by land and sea smugglers. These smugglers were
engaged in several forms of criminal activities, like the Jacobite recruiter Captain
James Lennard, who was engaged in highway robbery and smuggling97. The interest in
this, from a Jacobite point of view, is that the regiments of these Catholic powers, and
especially the French army, conspicuously served the Pretender, who represented an
ally against the British rival. Helping a seditious movement like Jacobitism could help
keep Great Britain low, and in the case of a Jacobite victory, make Great Britain an
92
93
94
Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 175-176.
95
Winslow, Sussex Smugglers, E. P. Thompson, ed., Albions Fatal Tree, p. 202, in Monod,
96
Royal Archives, Stuart Papers 65/16 ; Eveline Cruickshanks, Lord North, Christopher Layer and the
Atterbury Plot : 1720-23, in The Jacobite Challenge, ed. Eveline Cruickshanks and Jeremy Black,
Edinburgh, 1988, p. 101, in Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 163-164.
97
Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, p. 100-101, in Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 164.
29
ally in French debt. So the recruitment to the Irish brigades was beneficial for both
Jacobites and France, since these Irish soldiers would be in French pay but fight for
the interest of the Pretender. The smugglers thus helped strengthen the Jacobite and
pro-Jacobite force. The profit-making transportation of Jacobite recruits through the
marshes of South East England helped shape the popular political sentiments of these
areas. Money from the Stuart court and its supporters flowed into Romney Marsh and
other areas, to the hands of people who were personally linked with, and partially
protected by, the Jacobite cause98.
Land-smugglers were also important challenges to the government authority in
South-East England. They assembled into gangs after 1714 and the Hanoverian
Succession, taking the names of the town that served to them as depots. One could
then find the gangs of Hawkhurst, Mayfield, Groombridge, etc. The Mayfield Gang
was maybe the most notorious of these bands and were clearly involved in Jacobite
activities. In 1716, the purveyor general of the Riding Officers in Kent claimed that
they were handing copies of the Pretenders recent declaration99. They also staged a
daring rescue at Lydd in 1721, which led the desperate captain of the Rye revenue
cutter to ask the government to send a Company of Dragoons to take up these
Villains or in a Short time they will rise in Rebellion the Number of them is not less
than 200 & every man of them for ye Pretender100. It appeared then that the Mayfield
Gang was not politically neutral as it had just made an arrangement with none other
than Sir Henry Goring, the same who tried to recruit the Waltham Blacks and turn
them into dragoons for the Pretender and who is also described by Monod as an
ardent Jacobite101. Monod assesses that the Mayfield Gang and the Waltham Blacks
could be confused because of their resembling procedures, and they also benefited
from the military counselling of Sir Henry Goring. The Carylls were also involved in
both smuggling and Blacking. Indeed, the Carylls of Ladyholt were known for their
involvement in smuggling and they had several estates all along the smuggling coast
and near the important towns and hubs, and a cousin of the family, Phillip Caryll of
98
99
Calendar of Treasury Books, 31, pt. 2:159-60 ; HMC, Stuart,3:183-84, in Monod, Dangerous
Merchandise, p. 165.
100
East Sussex Record Office, Sayer MS 266, in Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 165.
101
30
North House, was also involved with Sir Henry Goring with the Waltham Blacks. But
he was captured by a messenger of Walpole, as indicated above.
After 1722, both Jacobite activity and smuggling declined, except for Sir Henry
Gorings personal actions as he smuggled wine through Littlehampton in 1731, in
league with the Carylls and the Middletons, but the Mayfield gang had long since
broken up102. What could be considered as the third important wave of smuggling
since the Glorious Revolution started in 1736, as customs officers from Kent
witnessed the appearance of a group of Irish smugglers who operated between Dover
and Folkestone. Until 1744, the Irish gang progressively developed its domination
on the seaborne contraband trade between Boulogne and the English coasts103 along
with other groups, such as the Transports and the Hastings Outlaws. The
Transports also collaborated with the Hawkhurst land-smugglers. Though it is proved
that some particular gangs came to prominence in the region, there is no evidence that
the competition between them came to a conflict. Their trade was performed with
France as they had a special relationship with the authorities there, and they were also
evidently connected with the French recruiters. Indeed, a Riding Officer claimed, in
May 1744 :
the Transports and one Betts of Rye have leave from the French King, to go out and
in, at any of the Harbours and Ports in France the Land Smugglers [the Hawkhurst
Gang] have been so Impudent, as to Publicly Drink the Pretender, and his sons health,
with Success to their Arms, And Confusion to his Majesty King George. 104
It was then soon affirmed that the Hastings Outlaws had taken oaths of allegiance to
the King of France. What was most important in the analysis of Jacobite smuggling
activities in the 1740s was the relationship with France. It was the period called the
invasion years, specifically 1744 and 1745, when a Jacobite invasion backed by the
French was feared. Smuggling thus appeared as a means to prepare the invasion,
gather soldiers, information, sneak Jacobite agents into British territory Organised
smuggling reached a whole new level, with the support of both France and the
Jacobites. The smugglers were useful to spy the coastline, its defences, the British
fleet, and make agents and intelligence cross the Channel. Contrary to the previous
102
British Library, Additional MS 28, 229, fol. 442, in Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 166.
103
Collier Papers, p. 629, 674-75 ; BL, Add. MS 32, 702, fol. 149, in Monod, Dangerous
Merchandise, p. 167.
104
Collier Papers, p. 613, in Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 167.
31
periods of the 1690s and around the Fifteen, the 1740s and the invasion years seem
to have seen a quasi-military engagement of the smugglers, as some sort of scouting
element as well as a means to infiltrate enemy territory. Admiral Vernon claimed in
1745, when he was assigned to check the French invasion menace, that smuggling
has converted those employed in it, as dangerous spies on all our proceedings for
the enemys daily information.105 That was proved in 1742, when some Essex Tories
became involved in a conspiracy which consisted in bringing smuggling pilots over to
France so that they could guide a French invasion fleet to a landing place near
Maldon106. Smugglers were also part of a logistic element during the Forty-Five. As
Charles Edward Stuarts army was advancing southward in the direction of London,
smugglers on the Rye were carrying French agents from Boulogne under orders of the
Comte de Lally-Tollendal, who commanded a regiment of the Irish Brigade from the
French military107. Concerning the authorities, they were often backed by Whig
aristocrats and magnates, such as Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond. Cal Winslow
makes a long portrait of the Duke of Richmond. He was from West Sussex and for a
time mayor of Chichester, a place fouled with numerous smugglers. The Duke,
pressing Prime Minister Henry Pelham, took actions against the smugglers himself.
Though Winslow seems to deny any Jacobite implications with the smugglers, he
reports that the Duke of Richmond wrote to the Duke of Newcastle in 1746 about the
smugglers that wherever they go, they declare themselves rebels 108 and that he
considers them as a much more serious threat than the government does in London. It
is likely that Lennox was acknowledging that these smuggling networks were more
organized than simple rogues. The smugglers declared to be rebels, so very likely
Jacobites, at a time which quite coincides with the invasion years and while the
French invasion threat was getting more and more serious. Finally, in 1749, the
destruction of the Transports was a fatal blow to the effective collaboration between
the Jacobite and the smugglers. The governments victory was made possible by the
105
B. M. Ranft, ed., The Vernon Papers, Navy Records Society, London, 1958, 99:446, in Monod,
106
Eveline Cruickshanks, Political Untouchables : The Tories and the 45, London, 1979, p. 43-44, 6263, in Monod, Dangerous Merchandise, p. 164.
107
Collier Transcripts, p. 140; Maurice Hennessy, The Wild Geese: The Irish Soldier in Exile,
Greenwich, Connecticut, 1973, chap. 8; Cruickshanks, Political Untouchables, pp. 90, 96, 99, 102, in
108
Winslow, Sussex Smugglers, E. P. Thompson, ed., Albions Fatal Tree, p. 140.
32
smugglers themselves, who became more brutal and led several attacks on property,
the effect of which was an erosion of community support, and particularly of
landowners109, who were substantial in order to provide protection against law
enforcers. Without any popular nor paternalist support, the smugglers were on their
own, defenceless targets for the government authorities. Jacobite smuggling could
work only by respecting this statement by Paul Monod, stressing the need for the
smugglers to respect a form of unity between popular support, economic and political
interest :
From the disjointed and often perplexing history of Jacobite smuggling, the much
broader picture of an alternative commercial culture has slowly emerged. It was
shaped less by individualism than by the concept of community in which diverse
interests coalesced for the good of the whole. 110
109
110
33
2. Confusion between Jacobites and bandits

Though some actual links between banditry and Jacobitism were proved by facts,
such as the involvement of the rapparees along with the Irish Jacobite army as a clear
Jacobite armed force, many of these links relied on suppositions and generalizations,
by both the contemporary world of the bandits and, in some cases, the academic world
as well.
It is then important not to see all the bandits of the British Isles of the late
seventeenth century and eighteenth century as potential or clear Jacobite troublemaking agents. Some rogues saw an opportunity to support the Jacobite movement for
the sake of their own personal objectives. And some outlaws were labeled Jacobites
by the government while they were not, in order for the authorities to track them down
more efficiently and in a more severe manner, as indeed they were not just beyond the
legal barrier but considered as felons, who were to be caught and judged for high
treason.
2.1.
Jacobitism as a coincidence of objectives for bandits

As Jacobitism and banditry were both clandestine causes, and their aims and targets
were quite the same, it is logical to see some sort of cooperation between the two
bodies. Indeed, bandits like the Blacks, for instance, wanted to fight the grasp of Whig
landowners and magnates on what belonged to them before they were expropriated.
Many other kinds of bandits, like smugglers, held something against the Whig
establishment. Thus, Jacobitism could have appeared as attractive to them. It also
fought the establishment set by the Whigs in order to restore the Stuart pretender as
lawful king. So, some partnership emerged from this coincidence and quite obeyed the
saying the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Of note is that not all bandits were
Jacobites, not all bandits were neutral, some acted alone and only for themselves,
some chose to work along with the Jacobites for their own profit. And some acted
alone and only for themselves and adopted Jacobite rhetoric for several reasons, which
should be either overtly taunting the authorities or using Jacobitism as a means to
appear more noble and legitimate, to give a purpose to illegal deeds and not appear
34
totally as a blood-thirsty monsters. E. T. Fox thus speaks of the three different layers
of the Jacobite adherents to the cause, using Szechis reasoning :
The first consisted of hard-core, ideologically committed Jacobites [who] brought
up their children to follow the true path after them. The second layer were those who
were driven to Jacobitism by disillusionment with the Hanoverian regime and whose
allegiance might therefore be temporary, while the third was comprised of
adventurers, desperate men who turned to Jacobitism to repair their own
misfortunes and who had little or nothing to lose and everything to gain if the
Jacobites won, which guaranteed their enthusiasm for the cause when it was in the
111
ascendant.
The partnership between bandits and Jacobites can be found on many occasions.
The Jacobites idea indeed seems to have been to unite the different groups of
criminals and rogues into a coherent body 112 that would serve the Stuart cause, or at
least be useful to it. As Frank McLynn puts it, the Jacobites considered that what was
property for the Whigs and their sovereign had been stolen, and so, a bandit taking that
property was not stealing but taking it back. For Jacobites, the post-1688 regime was
illegitimate, the highwayman was claiming back what had been stolen [] all
Hanoverian property was theft113. This coincidence of aims shows that Jacobites were
likely to see outlaws as potential supporters, allies or partners. McLynn shows that this
Jacobite idea of seeing crime as a legitimate reaction to political injustice was real,
quoting from a report on highway robbery to James the Old Pretender from late
1728:
Highway robberies prevail in England more than in any other nation of Europe. Are
not the persons who commit them frequently such as are unwilling to make their
distress public, and, finding themselves sunk in spite of industry, grow desperate and
run the risk of an ignominious death to satisfy these voracious harpies [the Whigs] that
114
occasion all their misery.
Bandits with aggressive methods could be used for some sort of guerrilla warfare or
harrying, or their self-interested actions were passed for Jacobite actions in some
cases, like the assassinations of keepers on Whig aristocrats lands115. The Waltham
111
E.T. Fox, Jacobitism and the Golden Age of Piracy, 1715-1725, International Journal of
Maritime History, XXII, n2, December 2010, p. 278, quoting Daniel Szechi, The Jacobites : Britain
and Europe, 1688-1788, Manchester University Press, 1993, p. 17.
112
Evelyn Lord, The Stuarts Secret Army, London, Pearson Longman, 2004, p. 125.
113
Frank McLynn, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England, London, Routledge 1989, p.
57.
114
RA Stuart, 158/69, in McLynn, Crime and Punishment, p. 57.
115
Lord, The Stuarts Secret Army, p. 125.
35
Blacks, for example, could have appeared as some sort of mercenaries. They were not,
in most cases, overtly Jacobites, but they almost constantly raided Whig estates and, as
Sir Henry Gorings letter attests, were approached to join the Jacobite armed forces in
the event of a landing. This idea of making the bandits serve as Jacobite mercenaries
can be found in the title of Evelyn Lords book, The Stuarts Secret Army. This
secrecy indeed partly refers to bandits through their clandestine activities. Though
their main task was to ship information, agents, propaganda, etc. from one side of the
Channel to the other, the smugglers were also very aggressive when it came to their
hold on their land hubs and lairs. For instance, the Transports of Hastings or the
Mayfield Gang had a firm grasp on the area of the mouth of the Rye, like Romney
Marsh, and the government had to send troops and increase the number of Riding
Officers. As Evelyn Lord states, there was a close relationship between the smugglers
and the Jacobites, and [] smugglers were part of a Jacobite guerrilla movement116.
That explains why the government was taking the smugglers threat so seriously and
sent companies of dragoons on the South East coast of England. Smugglers were
already a threat on their own, as they disrupted commerce and also strongly challenged
the authorities. If they came to be in some partnership with the subversive movement
of the Jacobites, the effect of their misdeeds might help the Stuarts, and heavily
undermine the governments authority first at a local level, and then maybe on a larger
scale. But what was interesting in the Stuarts for the smugglers was also a new
market. Indeed, their situation on both sides of the Channel was profitable for the
smugglers, with the Stuart court in France, and the effective Jacobite theatre and its
agents in Britain and Ireland. As a result, a communication between these two areas
had to be set. As was argued in many works, some smugglers probably had no real
political allegiance or affiliation and were more interested in the money they would
earn from whatever client. Of course, times of war, conflict, or political unrest were
the most fruitful for such workers. Their indispensable nature for a subversive
movement like that of the Stuarts gave them great opportunities. This idea is backed
by Paul Monod, who wrote that smugglers from the South Coast Sussex or Kent
for example, had financial interests in taking part into Jacobitism because their trade
was dependent on the connivance of French authorities, who were allied to the
116
Lord, The Stuarts Secret Army, p. 125.
36
Stuarts.117 Notorious smugglers like Farmer Hunt were no more than mercenaries.
Smuggling was for them merely a business and they had nothing to do with the
romantic Hobsbawmian social bandit. It seems that they were interested in profit,
rather than social change, and fight through criminality. Jacobitism was not
necessarily a cause smugglers would embrace, but it was a substantial source of profit
for them. Still, the question that is raised, as they got involved with Jacobites, is to
understand why they would risk to be caught for high treason, while smuggling,
though its legislation was toughened by the several Smuggling Acts, was a common
crime. Maybe they reasoned according to a quite anachronistic saying get rich or die
trying, or there was a real allegiance, because indeed, they could suffer from
judgment for high treason. For instance, an innkeeper in Lydd in 1690 was hanged,
drawn and quartered for conveying letters to the French fleet118. So, was money worth
all the risks they took, and what they would suffer if they were to be caught ? Indeed,
the smugglers were at first business partners for the Jacobites. But there was a
decline in the number of lone entrepreneurs like Farmer Hunt within the ranks of
the smugglers, and more signs of a stronger and stronger allegiance to the Stuarts. The
Jacobites strengthened the bonds of loyalty on which their success depended119.
Such a coincidence can even be found on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Indeed, the pirates of the Caribbean sometimes seemed to have had some Jacobite
sympathies. Still, as nothing of their booty was sent to St Germain in order to finance
the Jacobite movement and no real action was taken in the name of Jacobitism by the
pirates, making a direct link between those sea-rogues and the Stuarts seems
hazardous. Some sort of affection for the Stuarts appears in the names of the ships, but
also through toasts made in the name of the Pretender, or conversely against King
George. Many pirates converted to their illegal activity after being disbanded
following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which put an end to the War of the Spanish
Succession. The notorious Edward Thatch, commonly known as Blackbeard, was in
the British Navy during the war, and after that became a famous pirate. While no link
between him and Jacobitism can be found, it is interesting to note the name of his ship,
the Queen Annes Revenge. This name sounds strangely Jacobite, when pirates did not
117
Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, p. 112-113.
118
Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, p. 113.
119
Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, p. 114.
37
really focus on politics, but rather plunder and riches, for the sake of fighting misery in
the Caribbean islands. The only political allegiance for such sea outlaws could be
represented by their challenge of the British authority and monarchy, and maybe by
what Colin Woodard called the Republic of Pirates120. Blackbeard was not the only
one whose ship had a name which could be labeled Jacobite. Stede Bonnet,
Blackbeards consort, named his ship Royal James. The least ambiguous was Howell
Davis, who named his ships New King James and Ormonde, named after the Duke of
Ormonde121, the eminent Jacobite in the Franco-British theatre. The suspicions of
Jacobitism among pirates can also be found in their rhetoric. Indeed, they openly
drank toasts to James Stuart and damned the Hanoverian regime. The famous, and last,
pirate of the golden age122 Bartholomew Roberts, damned the turnip man123, that
is to say King George. Apart from these assumptions and these few facts, there is no
real clue about a Jacobite allegiance among pirates. What is most likely is that
Jacobitism represented for them a way to pose an even more serious threat, to
accentuate their defying behavior, and maybe a means to appear as more legitimate
rogues rather than purely and simply blood-thirsty plunderers.
Some wealthy or powerful merchants also saw in Jacobitism an opportunity. Their
partnership with the smugglers represented something interesting for the merchants,
who could use the smuggled goods to get even richer, if it was not already the case.
Indeed, some merchants were already using smuggling as a means to extend their trade
and deal with rarer and more coveted goods. Humphry Parsons is a good example. He
was a chief Jacobite in London, but also a great kingpin who rose to local political
power backed by the mob in the constituency of Harwich, when he became a MP.
Jacobitism allowed to gain Tory support, and that of the smugglers of Harwich, who
could thus get rid of the Whig-held customs house and officers of that part of the
English coast. Parsons thus was able to establish a trade network thanks to the
120
Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates: Being The True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean
Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008. What
Woodard called the Republic of Pirates was the anarchical society of pirates based in Nassau, in the
Bahamas islands, in 1715, free from both British and Spanish rule.
121
Fox, Jacobitism and the Golden Age of Piracy, p. 287-288.
122
The Golden Age of piracy in the Caribbeans, as is stressed by E. T. Fox, refers to the period from
1715 to 1725. It started approximately with the pirate settlement of Nassau and ended with the death of
Bartholomew Roberts in 1725, after ten years of pirate hunt, led for a moment by the famous
governor of the Bahamas and circumnavigator Woodes Rogers.
123
Fox, Jacobitism and the Golden Age of Piracy, p. 288.
38
smugglers from France to Harwich, and then to London. Though he seemed to be a

committed Jacobite, his personal interests were also well served, as such a network
could only make him richer and richer and secure his political hold on Harwich.
2.2.
Jacobitism as an excuse to hunt bandits and criminals

As Jacobitism was not a classic threat, like France for instance, but came from
inside the country, it is easy to understand that some paranoid character might have
settled in the governments minds. Indeed, dealing with a threat like France was
something quite customary. But a domestic menace like Jacobitism was more subtle,
since it might involve every single person in Britain, and everybody could be regarded
as a menace. This Jacobite fear sometimes led the authorities to regard every offence
as a treasonable Jacobite crime and thus many criminals were apprehended as traitors,
and judged and punished accordingly. This politicization of crime could be found in
every corner of the British Isles, starting with the Williamite-Jacobite war in Ireland
and the treatment of the rapparees. In England, this political way of considering crime
led to the adoption of the infamous Bloody Code, composed of the 1715 Riot Act
and of the 1723 Waltham Black Act. Frank McLynn considers that the acts of the
Bloody Code were the laws shock troops in the fight against Jacobitism124. These
acts made several classic offences crimes of high treason. Frank McLynn wonders
why the Whigs clung so much to the notion of high treason. He answered saying that
they considered Jacobitism as a formidable challenge until the Forty-Five, given the
political and social movement that posed a total threat to the post-1688 social
system125. Jacobitism thus clearly influenced the way criminality was dealt with. The
paranoia resulting from this politicization of crime, with the Bloody Code for instance,
went as far as sentencing a 14-year-old girl to die for high treason in 1777: she had
abetted her master in coining by hiding whitewashed farthings in her stays, was found
guilty of high treason and ordered to be burned alive. A reprieve was granted at the
very last moment.126 This case shows to what extremity the authorities were prone to
124
McLynn, Crime and Punishment, p. 157.
125
126
William Andrews, Bygone Punishments, W. Andrews & Company, 1899, p. 94-95, in McLynn,
Crime and Punishment, p. 123.
39
go in their hunt of subversives and insurgents. That seems to attest that some paranoia
was set in the minds of the rulers.
Banditry was considered as a form of opposition to the Establishment, as was
Jacobitism. Highway robbery and smuggling, for instance, were considered as
countering the ideology of property originating from the Whigs127 and the post-1688
regime. Thus, banditry was no better than Jacobitism and Jacobitism was no better
than banditry in the eyes of the government.
The most famous act of the Bloody Code was the Black Act, also known as the
Waltham Black Act. It was enacted to counter the violence and rise of the poacher
gang, the Waltham Blacks. They were haunting the forests of Hampshire and Windsor
and represented a threat for the Whigs rural properties, and as McLynn puts it, the
object of eighteenth-century punishment was always at bottom the safeguarding of
property128. The adoption of the act happened right after the failed Atterbury Plot and
some say, like Eveline Cruickshanks or Howard Erskine-Hill, that a link between the
Blacks and the Jacobites was found or at least suspected as they were reported to be
hired as dragoons for the Jacobite army, as was shown by Sir Henry Gorings letter
and the interrogation of Phillip Caryll by the Kings Messengers. The
acknowledgement of this link might explain the harshness of the law. Indeed, it is
stated that anyone found in the forest with their face blackened, in possession of
offensive weapons, hunting deer on someones property etc. was to be put to death as
in cases of felony, without benefit of clergy129. The punishment might seem hard for
such crimes, so there must have been some other motives than just enforcing law and
order. And the comparison of, for instance, deer-stealing to an act of felony quite
justifies this theory. What made of a poacher a felon or a threat for the nation ? So,
unless he was suspected of being associated with any insurgent movement, the
poacher was only a threat for the property of his victim. He was not innocent, but
maybe not guilty enough to be judged as a traitor. Besides, it was stated that any
people helping, hiding, protecting etc. an offender, according to the Black Act, was to
127
John Locke was one of those who insisted on an understanding of property that broke from the old
communal conceptions, and his views met with the new demands voiced by the Whigs.
128
129
The Black Act, 1723, in Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p. 270-277. In English law, the benefit of
clergy allowed clergymen to claim that they were not in the jurisdiction of lay courts, but had to be
tried by an ecclesiastical court which would be under canon law. Thus, they might avoid the sentence of
high treason. But because of the abuses of this provision, many reforms were passed and in 1823,
benefit of clergy and its reform which created clergy-able crimes were abolished.
40
be sentenced to die as in cases of felony, without benefit of clergy as well as the

offender himself. Furthermore, justices of the peace and sheriffs were entitled to
produce warrants as they saw fit in order to search houses, barns, etc. to find evidence
of Blacking. The arbitrary and violent enforcement of such a severe law can only
suggest that the authorities were suspecting something far more dangerous than a mere
threat to property, even if the Whigs were attached to it. Perhaps they feared actions
linked to the subversive movement of the Stuarts that had just attempted an important
strike through the Atterbury Plot just a few months before.
The implication of the Kings Messengers is also really interesting to note. They
indeed participated in the hunt of the Blacks. Phillip Caryll, who worked with Sir
Henry Goring with the Blacks, was interrogated by a Messenger. The Kings
Messengers were in fact a purely political police force, answerable to the Privy
Council130. Their actions were thus clearly directed by the government. And as Frank
McLynn says, in the first half of the eighteenth century their role was restricted to
surveillance of political subversives and penetration of the English Jacobite
movement131. The Messengers thus interrogated many Blacks in search for Jacobites
or Stuart sympathizers, and they were also involved in tracking down smugglers.
Indeed, in 1722 in Harwich, the customs officers were instructed to search the
contraband ships for Jacobite agents among contraband goods 132. They did not really
care about the smuggled cargo, but what was important were the possible Jacobites
hiding in the ships.
The Irish were not exempt from such treatment which confused Jacobitism and
banditry, or chose the one to incriminate even more the other. Eamonn O Ciardha
indeed affirms that and his account on this matter is really eloquent. He avers, for
example, that the government utilized the spectre of Jacobitism as a cover for the
judicial massacre of the MacDonalds of Glencoe in 1692 and to justify the notorious
Black Act133. This is one of many examples, some others involving the
aforementioned rapparees. The labeling as rapparee was not used only in Ireland to
incriminate the Jacobites, but also the civilian population and obviously especially the
130
131
V. Wheeler-Holohan, The History of the Kings Messengers, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1935, in
132
133
41
Irish Catholics. As O Ciardha says, rappareeism was used as a cover to slaughter

hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent Irish Catholics134. A contemporary report of
the siege of Cahir on 29 September 1692 even said that the garrison was about four
thousand strong, half of them were schnaphanen [rapparees] and about one tenth were
hanged135. It seemed that the massacres of the Irish Catholic population, which was
generally seen as Jacobite, were justified by a mere assumption that they were
Jacobites or schnaphanen. The other logical explanation might be that generalizing
was easier than precisely searching for the rapparees and Jacobites. It would be a more
efficient way to attain peace, that of the graveyard. The Nonjuror Reverend Charles
Leslie said that the vast numbers of poor harmless natives were daily hunted up and
down the fields, as they were following their labour, or shot immediately as
rapparees136. Of course, as a Nonjuror and supporter of the Stuarts, Leslies account
must be regarded with reserve. His speech is very likely to be aimed to create
indignation against the Williamites and subsequently promote the Stuart cause137.
Furthermore, rappareeism was made a motive to hunt former Jacobite officials. O
Ciardha reports from a letter from Colonel William Wolsley of the Williamite army
relating to the pursuit of Irish tories in 1690. It states he killed between 80 and 100
tories. Among the casualties were Andrew Tuite, James Ledwich and Redmond
Mullady, late sheriffs of King James, as they are no soldiers, nor have any
commission for what they do and therefore I conceive are not to be treated other ways
than tories and highwaymen138. This oversimplified confusion gave an excuse to
over-react and thus keep the Catholics, all more or less suspected of Jacobitism, low. It
coincided with the time when the government felt the Jacobite scare. It was a
generalization for the sake of securing, anachronistically speaking, the Ascendancy.
That also goes along with the fact that Catholic civilians and priests were often the
targets of Williamite punishment for rapparee actions, even if they were innocent.
This close relationship between rappareeism and the Jacobite cause served to
134
135
Danaher and Simms, ed., Danish Forces, p. 84, in O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 74.
136
Charles Leslie, An Answer, p. 164, in O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 75.
137
Leslie was Anglican and had no love lost for Catholics. He may have been just as sincerely shocked
as Swift, another Anglican, when describing, at a later stage, the fate of Irish Catholics in A Modest
Proposal.
138
Colonel William Wolsley, quoted by Sir John Thomas Gilbert, ed., A Jacobite Narrative of the War
in Ireland, 1688-1691, J. T. Gilbert, 1892, p. 258-259, in O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p.
75.
42
politicize predatory crime in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, associating the
rapparees with the Jacobite theatre of death and the elevation of the outlaw
rapparee into the Jacobite pantheon in the later 1690s139. The vindictive behaviour of
the Williamites had an ironical outcome, since trying to hunt down and kill Jacobites
and Jacobite bandits led to a strengthening of their reputation, making martyrs of
them.
Scotland also knew quite a similar situation, as was stressed by Allan Macinnes.
Bandits resulting from the outcome of the Jacobites conflicts were treated as results of
the Jacobite influence over Scotland. Some clans were also seen as Jacobites, even
when they were not, just because of some generalization. Post-1745 banditry in
Scotland was the excuse for what Allan Macinnes described as genocide against the
Jacobite clans140. Macinnes took the example of the Lochaber district in the
Highlands to talk about the confusion between Jacobites and bandits as it was for him
the epicentre of Highland disorder and disloyalty from the fifteenth to eighteenth
centuries141. He said that much of the historiography about banditry and Jacobitism
can be reduced to a simple equation : Lochaber is full of bandits, Lochaber was very
supportive of the Jacobites ; therefore, Jacobites are bandits and bandits are
Jacobites142. But what Macinnes states is that bandits, or caterans in Scotland, were
mainly cattle thieves, and that activity had always existed in the Highlands. The
practice of cattle raids sometimes was a competitive sporting endeavour, and
sometimes it had economic purposes. Those who had no job during winters resorted to
cattle theft. But banditry in Scotland, and the Highlands mostly, is deeply associated
with clanship, the latter being also deeply associated to Jacobitism, in the mind of the
British government. Some of those clans were also made bandits by their very name.
The famous clan MacGregor is a good example. The name of MacGregor, associated
with the clan of the notorious Robert Roy MacGregor, was made illegal, and all the
139
The Jacobite theatre of death is an expression created by Daniel Szechi, referring to the speeches
of bandits before their execution, the scaffold providing the scene of this theatre; O Ciardha, Ireland
and the Jacobite Cause, p. 85-86.
140
Allan Macinnes, The aftermath of the 45, Robert C. Woosman-Savage, ed., 1745 : Charles
Edward Stuart and the Jacobites, Edinburgh : Her Majestys Stationery Office, 1995, p. 103-113, in O
141
Allan Macinnes, Lochaber: Bandit Country or Jacobite Heartland? a paper read at The Sunart
Centre, Strontian for The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Tuesday 21 May 2013, Report by Kate Kennedy.
RSE @ Lochaber
142
Macinnes, Lochaber : Bandit Country or Jacobite Heartland ?
43
members of the clan became bandits, as did the folk hero Rob Roy. Thus, some
clans were given bandit associations. Bandits, according to Macinnes equation,
were Jacobites. Thus, clansmen were Jacobites. Whereas Rob Roys cause was more
of a personal vendetta against James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, the image of Rob
Roy is that of a notorious Jacobite, which he became eventually, when he got involved
as a Jacobite officer in the Fifteen.
44
3. Historiographical and literary approaches to

Jacobitism and banditry
The link between Jacobitism and banditry was not always only factual. Sometimes,
banditry was used in a more abstract manner, resorting to the image that banditry had
in the eyes of people to create a feeling of solidarity, or sometimes of disgust.
This abstract link was used by both sides, Jacobites and government. The former
used it to give a more popular image to the Stuart cause and make the Jacobite a
member of the common people, and thus develop a sense of solidarity between such
common people and the Jacobites who were suffering the same fate as the people since
they were treated no better than outlaws and were also dispossessed. This image could
also be used in order to give the government the appearance of bandits, and thus attack
their legitimacy. The government also resorted to this same link to convey the opposite
idea, that of a ruthless Jacobite cause that was no better than the scum that could be
found in the Irish bogs, the English forests or the Scottish mountains. They could thus
tarnish their reputation, in order to defend that of the Williamite and Hanoverian
regimes, in keeping with the Whig interpretation of history which was born under Sir
Robert Walpole and which started associating what was legitimately on the throne
with the Revolution Settlement, thus making the Stuarts a dynasty of the past and
showing the Jacobite insurgents as potential usurpers. Contemporary literature, most
notably John Gays The Beggars Opera, significantly addressed such issues, turning
the tables on the Whig government of Walpole.
3.1.
Bandits as folk heroes in Jacobite propaganda and myths

The idea of the bandit as a folk hero was widely used on the Jacobite side,
especially in Ireland and Scotland. There, people were easily assimilated to bandits, as
could be observed through the punishment of the Irish Catholic civilian population for
the acts of the rapparees, or when certain clan names in Scotland were made illegal,
thus considering all these clansmen as bandits, all for the sake of enforcing order for
the government and keeping the potentially trouble-making Irish and Scots low. But
these images and clichs were turned by the oppositionists to something good, as a
factor of unity and communal pride. This image, when it came from the Jacobite side,
corresponded to what Eric J. Hobsbawm romantically describes as a social bandit.
45
In Ireland, the image of the Irish bandit was that of the Irish hero. Michael
Galloping Hogan is one example of this. He was a tory during the Cromwellian
wars, and was highly regarded during the Irish Jacobite War. During the first siege of
Limerick, which saw a Jacobite victory, the Jacobite troops and their leader, Patrick
Sarsfield, celebrated Hogan as the one who led the defenders to triumph 143. Then,
more than simply celebrating bandits as heroes of the people, Ireland knew, as O
Ciardha puts it, a real cult of the outlaw rapparee in the Irish literary tradition144.
Many poems were written to celebrate these rapparees as the defenders of the people
and of Catholics against the English usurpers and invaders. Jacobitism was considered
a popular cause by the Catholics, that is to say the majority of the Irish population,
since it did not simply aim at restoring a dynasty but also at defending the Catholics
against Protestant discrimination and persecution, at least in the eyes of the people.
Thus, associating bandits like the rapparees with the Jacobites in popular culture was a
way to elevate the outlaws to the status of folk heroes. Indeed, as O Ciardha wrote, the
rapparees were lauded by some Irish poets as a Jacobite rearguard who would
continue the struggle until the return of the Wild Geese145.
In Scotland, the context was quite different. What was a source of debate was the
1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England in order to form Great Britain, and
even after its adoption, it was still not accepted by all Scots. The Jacobites, in order to
gain support from as many Scots as possible, resorted to a pro-Scottish, or anti-Union,
rhetoric. Allan Macinnes stressed that the Act of Union of 1707 was indeed an
extremely important factor which was at the core of the belief in Jacobitism146. The
Jacobites laid stress on the Stuarts Scottish roots, while the Stuarts had, as Murray
Pittock affirms, pan-British concerns. Indeed the Stuarts wanted to be restored, but not
only on the throne of an independent Scotland, but at the head of Great Britain.
From a religious point of view, the idea of an anti-Union Jacobite movement meant
an important support of the Presbyterians who composed the major part of the antiUnionists, but these Calvinists were put aside in favour of the Scottish Episcopalians.
But, all this is merely an ideal representation of the truth as the situation was far more
complex and clichs are easily misleading. For instance, the stereotype wants to
143
Simms, Jacobite Ireland, p. 198-199.
144
O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 36-37.
145
146
46
represent the Highlander patriot and Jacobite as a Catholic henchman. But Professor
Allan Macinnes states that though the Stuarts Catholic confession was an element on
which Jacobitism stood, Catholics represented only around 5% of the Scottish
population. He adds that the majority of the clans which supported the Jacobites were
Protestant Episcopalians, like the Camerons of Lochiel and the MacDonalds of
Glencoe who became non-juring Episcopalians because of their reluctance to give up
the Stewarts147. Catholicism linked to Jacobitism in Scotland was nothing more but a
preconception. After the Forty-Five, Reverend Alexander McBain wrote that
Jacobites are Popish bandits, despite evidence that many Episcopalians were
involved. Additionally, Edward Bruce, a government surveyor, concluded that the
Jacobites lands deserved to be forfeited as they were all Popish and therefore
bandits148. This generalisation easily attests the religious issues of Scotland, where
the different confessions quickly became a source of confusion as all were thought to
be respectively associated with a given cause, while affiliations seemed to concern
individuals and groups more or less regardless of their faith but rather a function of
their social and political beliefs. Religion was thus not the main argument as Jacobites
or pro-Stuarts seemed to come from all confessions.
Instead of religion, what seemed to be more central was the Stuart insistence on the
marginal aspect of Scotland next to England. The Pretender appeared as some sort of
social bandit fighting for the Scottish periphery of Great Britain while being
persecuted by the British authority from London. Such insistence implied that
Scotland had to appear united against English rule. As Pittock says, what was crucial
to this social convergence was the willingness of the officer-class and gentry to unite
in pursuit of what E. J. Hobsbawm has identified as the social bandit ethos149.
Appearing as a social bandit in Jacobite Scotland seemed to be a way to unite from a
social point of view, to reach this social convergence. Thus, Jacobitism linked to
banditry in Scotland appears to be much of an ideology. A factual and concrete link
between them is less obvious. Pittock uses the idea of the Hobsbawmian social
bandit to describe the idealisation of the Stuart pretender. Richard W. Slatta wrote
147
148
149
Murray G. H. Pittock, Jacobite Ideology in Scotland and at St-Germain-en-Laye, Eveline

Cruickshanks and Edward Corp, ed., The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites, London and Rio
Grande, Hambledon Press, 1995, p. 119.
47
that Hobsbawm described social bandits who gained fame, Robin Hood
reputations, and popular adulation. These men made themselves admired by flaunting
authority and championing the interests of the folk masses against elite oppression150.
The Jacobite head had to appear as some sort of Robin Hood, to right wrongs, take
from the rich and give to the poor151, which echoes the idealistic view of the fight
between the Scots and the persecuting English, even if the reality was far more
complex than this everlasting clich. This stereotype opposed the Jacobite Highlander
to the pro-British Lowlander, while the situation was more intricate since many
Lowlanders joined Jacobitism while many Highlanders did not and remained isolated
and neutral. Christian Auer confirms this, writing that it is necessary to specify that
support to the Jacobite cause did not only come from the Highlands. The Highlanders
represented less than fifty percent of the Jacobite troops152. But this everlasting
stereotype is quite evocative of an ideology that remained attached to the Scots, as a
clich is often a somewhat distorted, exaggerated and idealised representation of the
truth. The Pretender appeared to the Scots as a fellowman, a powerful man who would
end their troubles, but who was considered as an outlaw anyway in the eyes of the
government. Indeed, Pittock affirms that Jacobite ideology was ready to confuse
Lowland and Highland, rich and poor [] to emphasise its simple patriotism153. As
the Pretender presented himself as a Highlander patriot, his cause as anti-Unionist, it
was at the same time distorting the reality of the Jacobite cause and implying that all
Lowlanders were in favour of the establishment of the British state. Thus, a
propaganda based on stereotypes and typologies came to corrupt the true ideology of
the Stuarts, but it was a powerful propaganda nonetheless.
This idealisation could be an effective means to win hearts and potential supporters
in Scotland, it indeed emphasised patriotism and unity beyond walks of life against the
English ruler. As Pittock affirms, long before the ballad-collecting era of postJacobite times, the folk hero became the vehicle for the political protest of high
150
Richard W. Slatta, Eric Hobsbawms Social Bandit : a Critique and Revision, A Contracorriente,
Vol. 1, n2, 2004, p. 22.
151
Hobsbawm, Bandits, p. 21-22.
152
Christian Auer, Scotland and the Scots : 1707-2007, A Reader, Strasbourg, Presses Universitaires de
Strasbourg, 2013, p. 27.
153
Pittock, Jacobite Ideology, p. 120.
48
culture154. One might think of the famous ballad, the Macphersons Rant, which
narrates the execution of the social bandit Macpherson in 1700. This ballad is about a
Highland hero betrayed in the heart of Jacobite country 155. According to Pittock, the
myth of the Scottish social bandit seems to rely on the image of the Highlander, a
classless man, naturally self-proclaimed gentleman. He represented well, as Pittock
indicates, the cross-class group in both Highlands and Lowlands who rejected the
parcel o rogues who had, for English gold and the establishment structures of the
nascent British state, bought and sold their country156. Jacobites thus used Scottish
patriotism and condemned the corruptness of commerce157, which so much
characterised the Whigs, to serve their cause. Their vision of Scottish folk culture
condemned Whiggism and praised something closer to English Toryism. Jacobites
seemed to use Scottish folk culture, such as the symbol of the social bandit and
patriotic folk-hero from the Highlands. This could confirm that the link between
banditry and Jacobitism in Scotland was more than just the factual caterans 158 and
bandits, but also an ideology, using the everlasting clich of the Scottish bandit as the
representation of the Scottish freedom fighter against an English conqueror and
tyrannical regime. All this coordination of ideologies and objectives is central to
Pittock, when he writes that in that confluence of interests which occurred when the
whole of society (not least its religion) was under threat, we can see the tendencies of
ideology towards wish-fulfilment159. Indeed, using the image of the Scot as bandit in
the eyes of English authorities marginalises them, marks their separation and stresses
their right or even their duty to rebel against the foreign oppressor, while in reality
this was not totally and everywhere applicable in Scotland. From the opposite point of
view, recalling the aforementioned equation of Professor Macinnes, banditry in
Scotland indeed was used as a sort of stereotype by the authorities. Macinnes
commented that the MacDonalds of Keppoch were very much against the grain
[bandit activities] in the area, but for Lowland polemicists they fit the perception that
154
155
156
157
158
The term cateran, coming from the Gaelic ceathairne, referred to a warrior coming from a Scottish
Highland clan. And after Robert II, Alexander Stewart (1343-1405), resorted to a force of caterans as
a private army, a cateran started to refer to a marauder or a cattle-thief.
159
49
if you are Jacobite you are a bandit160. The Scottish anti-Unionist and Jacobite
ideology thus might have used the attacks on their reputation as a justification of their
rebellion, pointing at the unjust accusations they were the victims of.
Jacobitism in Scotland thus seemed to rely on a Scottish patriotic, or anti-Unionist,
movement personified by the Stuart pretender as he stressed the cleavage between the
Scots and the English, portraying himself as the Highlander-like tartan prince in the
case of Charles Edward for instance, inside the British state in order to meet his own
objective. The Pretenders choice for the Highland garb seems to rest on the symbol of
those outfit and image of the Highlander. Given the majority of Lowlanders in the
Jacobite force in Scotland, it would have been unadvisable to have an exclusive
behaviour and thus risk alienating the bulk of the pro-Stuarts in Scotland. The
Pretender thus seems to have been inclusive in his ideological choices. Wearing the
traditional Highland garb as a notorious symbol of Scotland and subsequently of
Scottish oppositionalism was apparently not meant to pinpoint Highland claims, but to
use some famous Scottish symbolism. More, the government and the Whigs
stereotypically considered Jacobitism to be the scum of Scotland, as it was said by
the fierce anti-Jacobite Duke of Richmond161. Jacobitism concerned the entire
Northern kingdom, so dressing and presenting himself as a Highlander, the Pretender
seemed to be only stressing Scottish characteristics. The Highlander image was the
stereotypical representation of the Scot, thus making it easy to differentiate them from
the English. Thus, Jacobitism became a Scottish cause, and Lowlands and Highlands
had to stand united against English and British rule, and pro-Scottish and anti-British
Jacobitism in Scotland was emblemised by the Highlander-portrayed Pretender. But
that would implicitly divert Jacobitism from its true objective, confusing a British
unification under the Stuart banner with a nationalist cause. Indeed, uniting to defend
nationalist ends emblemised in the person of an ideal king, Jacobite society in
Scotland challenged the legitimacy of the British state in a lasting manner, but one
divorced, like poetry, from realisable politics162. This nationalist diversion of
Jacobitism was well illustrated by what was proclaimed by the Jacobite broadswords:
160
161
Winslow, Sussex Smugglers, E. P. Thompson, ed., Albions Fatal Tree, p. 140.
162
50
Prosperity to Scotland, and no Union163, which easily echoes to the famous Scottish
rallying cry Alba gu brth (Scotland Forever) 164.
Murray Pittock refers to this ideology and propaganda which adopt motives of folk
culture into Scottish high culture, like the adoption of popular songs, for the sake of
Jacobite propaganda, as the roots of sentimental Jacobitism165. This mixing of both
high and folk cultures seemed to represent the objective of unity, or social
convergence, in Scotland. This technique of romanticising banditry is indeed a way to
elevate outlaws and make them abstractly subservient to an ideal. Giannes
Koliopoulos reported that in nineteenth-century Greece, the bandit image in poems
and ballads did not correspond to the actual outlaw166, and many instances of this
can be found in eighteenth-century Scotland as well, showing that this phenomenon is
not an isolated one. Pittock adds that, from a historiographical point of view, the
traditional and popular views of the Fifteen and of the Forty-Five as highlands
affairs167 confirms this interpretation of making the icon of the Highlander social
bandit a symbol of the Scottish Jacobite and patriot cause. This ideology laid stress
on the cleavage between Scotland and England within the British state, while the
Jacobites had British objectives, and also on the preconception of pro-Jacobite
Highlands and pro-British Lowlands to some extent. It thus put a stamp on folk and
high culture and comprised the undying myth of the Scottish folk hero and patriot
characterised as a Highlander social bandit mostly, fighting the oppressor, like some
William Wallace-like anachronistic impersonation. All this is quite exemplified by
Belhavens Vision, a speech delivered by Lord Belhaven in the Estates against the
Union which was put into a poem and became some sort of popular motto. Murray
Pittock affirms that its main themes were the Roman and Celtic qualities of the
Stuarts and Scotland, and the vision of history as a struggle for liberty168 :
The Sun two thousand times did fly
Round the twelve Chambers of the Sky,
163
164
The corresponding phrase exists in Ireland in Irish Gaelic. It is the slogan irinn go brch (Ireland
Forever), which is now an unofficial motto for the Republic of Ireland.
165
166
Giannes Koliopoulos, Brigands with a cause : brigandage and irredentism in modern Greece, 18211912, Clarendon Press, 1987, p. 279, in Slatta, Eric Hobsbawms Social Bandit, p. 23.
167
168
Pittock, Poetry and Jacobite Politics, p. 53.
51
Since Fergus formd our MONARCHY ;

And to this Hour,
Our Laws have been controuled by
No foreign Powr...
Our Stewarts, unto peaceful JAMES,

Gordons, Kers, Campbels, Murrays, Grahams,
Heros from Tyber known to Thames,
For Freedom stood ;
And dyd the Fields, in purple streams
169
Of hostile Blood.
This poem clearly shows that Scottish Jacobitism clearly was mixed with antiUnionism, and the Stuart leader was thus a herald of this nationalist cause. He had to
personally appear as a marginal as well in the eyes of the Scots, which could explain
his portrayal as some sort of social bandit. Pittock also says that this deliberate
marginalisation led to the adoption of the iconic image of the Stuart king as Highland
cateran170. But the effect could not meet the Jacobite objective since, as Pittock
affirms, he [the Pretender] was a folkloric type of social bandit rather than the
rightful head of the British state171. After the crushing Jacobite defeat at the moors of
Culloden in April 1746 against the Duke of Cumberlands172 Hanoverian troops,
Charles Edward Stuart had to hide for several months in the Highlands before
escaping173, which ironically seemed to embody his ideological ethos as a Scottish
social bandit.
This ideological social bandit ethos helped unite elite and popular culture.
Another quite similar phenomenon, on a lesser scale, was the cross-class
criminalisation carried out by the Whig government which reinforced the bonds of
common circumstance174. The ideology relied on disturbing the social barriers and
uniting everyone as criminals, but criminals in the eyes of the government, in order to
lead those who felt concerned by this accusation to claim back justice and order,
which was as well the aim of the Jacobites. Paul Sant Cassia argues that bandits are
169
Belhavens Vision, in Pittock, Poetry and Jacobite Politics, p. 53.
170
171
172
Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was George IIs second son. He got the nickname
Butcher Cumberland because of his mass reprisals on Jacobite remnants and suspects following the
Hanoverian decisive victory at Culloden in 1746.
173
Auer, Scotland and the Scots, p. 28.
174
52
often romanticised afterward through nationalistic rhetoric and texts which circulate
and have a life of their own, giving them a permanence and potency which transcends
their localised domain and transitory nature175. Indeed, all this is quite romanticised,
as are all forms of propaganda which take particular characteristics of a system and
society and exaggerate and make them subservient to the propagandists ideas and
cause.
3.2.
Bandit ideology related to Jacobitism in major literary works :

the example of John Gays The Beggars Opera
The ideology or at least, the parallel between banditry and Jacobite, pro-Jacobite, or
anti-Whig ideas can be found in literature. It could be found in Irish or Scottish poems
as aforesaid, but also in major literary works of the time like John Gays The Beggars
Opera and Polly, Daniel Defoes countless works on banditry and his novel Moll
Flanders, among others, but also in the later book Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott, whose
work marked the beginning of historical fiction and Jacobite romanticism.
John Gays The Beggars Opera is a contemporary work of these Jacobite events. It
was published in 1728, at the time of Sir Robert Walpoles government. John Gays
life and successive political and personal affiliations are quite revealing. In 1714, Gay
became a member of the Scriblerus Club, a group of young literary wits including
Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift which was centred around the Tory politician
Lord Oxford176, previously Sir Robert Harley. The Club was obviously close to the
Tory government, until the death of Queen Anne and their subsequent fall from power.
Gay and his fellows from the Club were soon seen as potential political threats by the
Whigs. John Gay then rested his hopes on his friendship with Princess Caroline,
George Is daughter-in-law, to access to a place at court. He also relied on Mrs
Howard, a friend of his but also mistress to the Prince of Wales. Gays hopes of
patronage disappeared because of the rise of Sir Robert Walpole in 1721 as First
Minister. Walpole was an ally of Princess Caroline, which made her unable to help
Gay who could not rely only on Mrs Howard. Thence emerged a personal rivalry or
175
Paul Sant Cassia, Banditry, Myth and Terror in Cyprus and Other Mediterranean Societies,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 35: 4 (October 1993) :774, in Slatta, Eric Hobsbawns
Social Bandit, p. 23-24.
176
Bryan Loughrey and T. O. Treadwell, ed., John Gay, The Beggars Opera, 1728, Harmondsworth,
Penguin Classics, 2003, p. 22.
53
hatred between John Gay and Sir Robert Walpole. Indeed, when Caroline became
Queen of England in 1727, he hoped for an interesting court appointment, but
Walpoles hold over the government was as strong as ever, and when a new list of
court appointments was published in October, Gay, after years of flattery and intrigue,
was offered only the post of gentleman usher to the two-year-old Princess Louisa,
worth 150 a year. Bitterly, he refused it177.
The Beggars Opera, composed in the autumn of 1727, appeared right after that in
1728. It might appear as a clear revenge on an unfair system ruled by a corrupt and
over-powered politician who ruined his hopes, namely Robert Walpole, nicknamed
Robin. The Beggars Opera does not stand as a clear Jacobite work, but at least as
an obvious anti-Walpole one. Though Gay inspired a rhetoric used by Henry St John,
Lord Bolingbroke178, and John Gay was friend with the chief Jacobite bishop and
conspirator Francis Atterbury, it is difficult to affirm that The Beggars Opera was a
Jacobite ballad opera. Gays friendship with Tories and potential Jacobites like Swift
or Pope, with Lord Bolingbroke who was even clearly considered as a Jacobite by Sir
Robert Walpole, or with Harley and the chief Jacobite Bishop Atterbury can raise
many questions concerning his political affiliations.
Concerning The Beggars Opera itself, the most obvious aspect is the clear antiWhig or anti-Walpole rhetoric of the work. One can see a comparison between Sir
Robert Walpole and Londons most notorious bandit of the time, Jonathan Wild, who
called himself and was also known as Thief-taker General of Great Britain and
Ireland. Wild was the chief of almost all possible gangs in London, but he was also
extremely famous for neutralising 3 bandits out of 4, getting the reward for the
information given against the 3, forcing the remaining one to submit. Thanks to his
contacts in prisons, he could be as much of a fence as a thief-taker. His strategies
allowed him to eliminate his notorious rival Jack Sheppard, and also have another rival
named Blueskin Blake arrested. The latter, during his trial at the Old Bailey, tried to
kill Jonathan Wild, and this inspired John Gays Newgate Garland in which he
associated the criminal milieu of Blake and Wild with more general levels of
corruption and rogues in higher places179. Jonathan Wild was a very notorious bandit
177
Loughrey and Treadwell, p. 24.
178
Lord Bolingbroke was a declared Jacobite when he was in France between 1714 and 1715, and traces
of Jacobitism can be found in his later writings, though they were diluted in Country party rhetoric.
179
54
who used his connections to get richer but also to eliminate other bandits, his objective
was apparently purely lucrative, which echoes the corruptness of Walpole and explains
John Gays wish to compare the two.
In The Beggars Opera, Jonathan Wild appears as Peachum, also a thief-taker. But
one might think that Peachum also represents Robert Walpole in quite an implicit
manner. For instance, at the time, it was perceived by the audience that the quarrel
between Peachum and Lockit, the corrupt jailor, was a direct reference to the real
quarrel which happened between Walpole and his political ally and brother-in-law
Lord Townshend. One could also see in Peachum Walpoles way to get rid of
opponents when he saw it fit, and his use of a whole network of spies and informants.
In The Beggars Opera, Peachum uses Captain Macheaths gang but when he learns
that his daughter Polly is about to marry him, he wants to get rid of him to earn his
fortune thanks to his daughters grasp on it as a wife. A parallel might be thought of
concerning the Waltham Blacks. They were known by the authorities and were
brutally and suddenly fought and tracked down after the 1723 Black Act which was
passed right after the failure of the Atterbury Plot revealing their link with the
Jacobites. Another interesting and more direct comparison is between Walpole and the
bandit Robin of Bagshot, alias Gorgon, alias Bluff Bob, alias Carbuncle, alias Bob
Booty180. Bob Booty stuck to Walpole as a nickname after this until the end of his
career, emphasising his corruption. Walpoles insulting nickname Robin also
appears through the character of Robin of Bagshot. Walpole might also seem to be
compared to a Waltham Black, since Bagshot was in the territory of the Blacks near
Windsor Forest and also a land where there lived the famous Jacobite Earl of Arran.
This whole comparison is clearly pointed out by the Beggar, John Gays narrator-like
character in the ballad opera, as he says :
Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and
low life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine
gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or gentlemen of the road the fine
gentlemen. Had the play remained, as I at first intended, it would have carried a most
excellent moral. Twould have shown that the lower sort of people have their vices in
a degree as well as the rich : and that they are punished for them. 181
180
John Gay, The Beggars Opera, I, 3.
181
John Gay, The Beggars Opera, III, 16.
55
Gays message was that high society was no better than the low one or even the
bandit underworld. That is clearly stated by the Beggar. Loughrey and Treadwell
affirm as well that he [the Beggar] expresses yet again the plays principal theme, the
equivalence between the overtly criminal behaviour of its characters and the
proceedings of the respectable world182.
In search of Jacobite symbols or messages in The Beggars Opera, it is interesting
to observe the character of Macheath. Captain Macheath represents, in a way, the
Highland bandit aforementioned. At that time, many bandits used military ranks in
their bandit name, like Captain Fitzgerald in Ireland, or one might even think of the
fictional Captain Feeney in Stanley Kubricks Barry Lyndon183, which takes place at
approximately the same period. Macheath is a gentleman-robber and a victim of
Peachum, who, as a thief-taker and fence, is not worth more than Macheath. So it
could be considered that even if Macheath is the hero, or anti-hero, Walpole is no
better than a bandit like him. More, Macheath seems to represent the Jacobite bandit
hunted by the First Minister. Indeed, the stereotypical idea of the openly-declared
Jacobite is that he is Scottish, and more specifically from the Highlands. And in the
eyes of many, Scottish Jacobites were bandits, as aforesaid. Macheath, without any
indications on his origins, is most likely to be a Scot judging by the prefix Mac and
the name Heath, evocative of Highland vegetation, and as a bandit, it seems easy to
consider him as a Scottish Jacobite-like bandit, a victim of Walpoles hunt after people
like him. This is quite confirmed by Murray Pittock, who wrote that in uniting the
oppositionalist modes of high cultures with the songs of popular culture, in The
Beggars Opera, Gay created in Captain Macheath an image of the Scottish social
bandit, before Walter Scotts Rob Roy, while holding up to establishment
corruption184. Jemmy Twitchers (a bandit of Peachums gang) statement What we
win, gentlemen, is our own by the law of arms and the right of conquest 185 also
echoes the illegitimacy of the state they live in, since the Hanoverian establishment
had won Britain as a booty, by the right of conquest like the fence and thief-taker
Peachum. Pittock stresses that the author condemned politicians through a comparison
182
183
In William M. Thackerays The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.: Written by Himself (1844), which
was the source of Kubricks film adaptation, the episode is slightly different and the captains name is
Freny.
184
185
Gay, The Beggars Opera, II, 1.
56
with vicious bandits, like Peachum, but also the pirates in his other work, Polly. Gay
seemed to point at the so-called constitution that was in reality formed by politicians
as they saw it fit. As Pittock wrote, the new regime invents its authority as it goes
along186, which echoes the misdeeds of the money-oriented villains of The Beggars
Opera and Polly, namely Peachum and the pirates. In a word, though Gay rather safely
seems to have contented himself with an assimilation of the vices of high and low life,
he was also obliquely drawing sympathy onto bandits and Jacobites via his onomastic
insinuations.
186
57
Conclusion
This work was intended to explore the links that existed between the bandit
underworlds and the Jacobite cause, in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth
centuries. It could be seen that these links appeared in many different manners in as
many contexts, from a purely factual involvement of banditry within the ranks of the
Jacobites, a coincidence of interests against an unjust Revolution Settlement, to finally
an abstract bond which used the image of the bandit in order to convey a particular
message and influence the perception of the reputation of a certain group or political
affiliation.
Banditry, and Jacobitism in some cases, appeared as a means to voice popular
discontent against the recent Revolution, and later Hanoverian, Settlement in the entire
British Isles. The clearest observation of this link could be observed in Ireland with the
tories, rapparees and Whiteboys, as they either directly fought alongside the Jacobites
in the Williamite War or used Jacobite rhetoric or symbolism. These Irish bandits were
also the representatives of Catholic discontent in the island, as well as Jacobites,
whose cause also became a defence of Catholicism against the Williamite and
Hanoverian regimes and forces. In England, the Blacks and the smugglers were not a
manifestation of religious resistance, but that of the people, who were deprived by the
Whig aristocracy of their forest privileges, industries, etc. The Blacks of Windsor and
Hampshire earned popular support as they harried and stole from Whig estates and
taunted the authorities, without trying to steal from the folk. Sir Henry Gorings letter
shows their implication with the Jacobites, and confirms a popular dimension to the
Stuart cause in this area of England. No farther than the South East, smugglers
represented also popular grievances in a different and more violent manner than a
simple declaration. Their commerce was a popular action taken against the Whig
economy, and their land misdeeds were also a challenge to Hanoverian Whig
authority. Their trade led them to cooperate with the Jacobites, whose members were
also from important South East English families who were deeply involved in, and had
a firm hold on, local smuggling. These families paternalist behaviours, combined with
a development of smuggling activities in the region and increasing popular discontent
against Whig appropriations, led to a strengthening of popular Jacobitism in the same
region, which went as far as forcing the government to toughen legislation and send
58
many agents and Messengers with a reinforcement of mounted police members and
dragoons.
But, one must not be blinded by Robin Hood-like mythology of banditry and
consider all these rogues to be whiter than the whitest of the Jacobites. Representing
popular discontent has always been considered to be a noble cause, but it must not be
forgotten that bandits are most of the time seeking profit and work with another cause
if it is profitable for theirs too. Thus, Jacobite bandits and neutral bandits must not be
confused. The Blacks and the smugglers more easily fitted this latter view as neutral
bandits. Indeed, many of them were some sort of bandits for hire. The letter of Sir
Henry Goring proves indeed an involvement with the Stuart cause, but does not show
any complete implication. It proves that the Blacks were approached to become a sort
of mercenary corps for the Jacobites, as they were clearly paid to become dragoons in
the case the Pretender should land. They would become privates in Jacobite pay, but it
is likely that if the payroll did not arrive, they would easily leave and go back to their
forest lairs. As for the smugglers, their involvement was necessary for the Jacobites.
Indeed, the clandestine nature of the Jacobite correspondence and circulation of agents
needed a clandestine merchant. Though some smugglers clearly supported Jacobitism,
some of them saw that period of political unrest as an opportunity to get richer, and
could also see Jacobite paternalism as a means to more easily escape from the
authorities. On the other hand, the government was also prone to resort to that
confusion to facilitate their hunts of both Jacobitism and banditry. As banditry was a
form of popular discontent, it was oppositionalism and was no better than Jacobitism.
The government, using the Jacobite fears, enacted a merciless hunt of the bandits in
the name of securing the Revolution and Hanoverian Settlements. The 1723 Black Act
is a proof of that merciless behaviour, as simple poachers were considered to be
traitors and could easily be sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, without
benefit of clergy. But even earlier, the fate of Irish Catholics is also telling, as many
Catholics and rogues were directly assumed to be Jacobites, and were thus punished
accordingly by the Williamite regime.
Banditry also served the Jacobites in a more subtle manner. Indeed, banditry was a
component of Jacobite identity and ideology in some cases. In Scotland, the
population, especially from the Highlands, was stereotypically considered to be
roguish. The concept of the social bandit was used for the sake of a Scottish identity
and ideology. Jacobitism used the clich of the Scottish outcast to arouse rebellious
59
behaviour against English and pro-British rule. The 1707 Act of Union was at the
centre of Scottish Jacobite rhetoric. It used the marginalisation of the Scottish
periphery of Britain to stress the marginal nature of the Scots in the eyes of the English
rulers. Thus, the Jacobites resorted to a stereotypical representation of the Scot to
enhance this marginal perception, and the hero or champion of this Scottish Jacobite
ideology was the Highlander social bandit, a representation of the whole Scottish
identity. That led to a concrete representation of this ideology, through, for instance,
the use of the Highland garb by the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, who was
nicknamed the tartan prince. But this stress on Scottish patriotism and
marginalisation was an obstacle for a real Jacobite victory over the whole of Great
Britain, since their aim was not to grant Scotland its independence, but to take the
British crown back from the Hanoverians. The bandit image was not only used in
ideological tenets, but also in literary works. Many writers resorted to the outlaw for
his adventurous nature, and sometimes to the nobleness of his actions in order to
convey a certain message or perception, through a character in the vein of Robin Hood
or Dick Turpin. John Gay, in The Beggars Opera in 1728, used the image of the
bandit for two things. He first clearly attacked the corrupt behaviour of First Minister
Sir Robert Walpole, comparing him with the notorious London outlaw Jonathan Wild.
He pointed to his thirst for riches, the corruption of his government, and his
manipulating means. Secondly, Gay seems to have lauded the portrait of the Scottish
Jacobite social bandit. The anti-hero, Captain Macheath, clearly fits this description,
as an almost perfect representation of the Highland hero and gentleman robber. But
though Gay uses a clear anti-Walpole rhetoric, and another Jacobite-like rhetoric that
even inspired Lord Bolingbrokes one, it is difficult to affirm that Gay was a Jacobite.
His obvious hatred for the government makes him a potential pro-Stuart, but his
personal anger against Walpole raises some questions about his political affiliation
which remain unclear.
This work aimed at giving an overview of the involvement of the bandit
underworlds with the Jacobite cause. A more complete study would require far more
complementary enquiries on countless subjects which could fairly complete this
memoir. Indeed, as the work proceeded, many questions came to mind.
Daniel Defoe, who is assumed to be the author of the History of the Blacks by many
scholars, including Pat Rogers, and also to be the author of many works on banditry
like The General History of Pyrates under the pseudonym of Captain Charles Johnson,
60
contributed to the understanding of eighteenth-century banditry. But far more than

journalistic works, Defoe included banditry in many of his stories, and sometimes
Jacobitism could be found. The character of Jemmy in Moll Flanders could be thought
of. Indeed, Jemmy was one of the nicknames of James II, and this character also
appears to be an outlaw, and most likely to be a Jacobite as well. So, as Defoe excelled
in his accounts of contemporary banditry, through his works and interviews of bandits
at Newgate prison in London, his works might be interesting to study in order to find
traces of. Far from only thinking about Defoe, the whole picaresque tradition could be
a source of major studies about both banditry representation but also of Jacobite traces.
Through the study of Scottish ideology and identity, one might also wonder about
Sir Walter Scotts romanticism and historical literary works. Indeed, his famous bandit
hero Rob Roy, inspired by the eponymous Robert Roy MacGregor, seems to fit the
Highland social bandit description and corresponds to the stereotype that quite
defined Scottish Jacobite ideology. Rob Roy, at least the literary one, has always been
considered to be a sort of Scottish Robin Hood, and it makes it quite clear that he
represents the Highland social bandit, an icon of that patriotic ideology.
A more complete study might also be undertaken concerning the birth of a new
identity in Scotland and Ireland, resulting from Jacobite ideology. The case of
Scotland first appears to be clear, as Jacobitism used former clichs and stereotypes of
the Scots to create a new ideology, subservient to their interests. That ideology then
seems to have turned to a new identity of the Scots. It enhanced the anti-Union, or
patriot, behaviour of all Scots, and placed the Highland social bandit as an icon of
Scottish disloyalty to British authority. Murray Pittock seems indeed to convey the
idea that from this Jacobite and pro-Scotland ideology was born a fundamentally new
Scottish identity. Concerning Ireland, Eamonn O Ciardha also seems to put a stress on
the tyrannical nature of English rule over the Irish. Banditry there appeared to be
Catholic banditry and aimed at defending the Popish population against the Protestant
Ascendancy. Rogues then seemed to be part of a Catholic resistance movement and
stood and fought even when Jacobites were gone from Ireland. O Ciardha also points
out that tories and rapparees already existed under Cromwell and already tried to
defend the Catholic population. The everlasting use of the Gaelic language, which can
be found all over O Ciardhas book, also attests the existence of a pro-Irish Catholic
movement or cause. The research from this work cannot provide the birth date of such
a cause, and asks for further investigation. But it might be possible to think that
61
Jacobitism and the fight against the Williamites, the Hanoverians and the hegemony of
the Protestant Ascendancy, which was born under these two regimes, contributed to
the development of a nationalist cause which put the Catholic Irish at the centre of its
ideology. So, witnessing some elements of what happened in Scotland and Ireland, it
might be interesting to enquire into the impact of Jacobite ideology on Scottish and
Irish national identities. The gradual identification of Jacobitism with Ireland and
Scotland gave it a bad name in England, though there remained more or less discrete
Jacobites like Samuel Johnson, who, rather consistently, looked down on the Scots no
matter their connection with Jacobitism.
62
Bibliography
AUER Christian, Scotland and the Scots: 1707-2007, A Reader, Strasbourg, Presses
Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2013.
The Black Act, 1723, found in THOMPSON E. P., Whigs and Hunters, Harmondsworth,
Penguin, 1977, p. 270-277.
British Library, Additional Manuscripts.

CRUICKSHANKS Eveline and ERSKINE-HILL Howard, The Waltham Black Act and
Jacobitism, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 24, n3, 1985, p. 358-365.
FOX E. T., Jacobitism and the Golden Age of Piracy, 1715-1725, International
Journal of Maritime History, XXII, n2, December 2010, p. 277-303.
LOUGHREY Bryan and TREADWELL T. O., eds., GAY John, The Beggars Opera,
1728, Harmondsworth, Penguin Classics, 2003
Historical Manuscripts Commission, Stuart.
The History of the Blacks of Waltham in Hampshire; and Those Under the Like
Denomination in Berkshire, A. Moore, 1723.
HOBSBAWM Eric J., Bandits, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969.
HOBSBAWM Eric J., Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in
the 19th and 20th Century, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1959.
LORD Evelyn, The Stuarts Secret Army: English Jacobites, 1689-1752, London,
Pearson Education, 2004.
MCLYNN Frank, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth Century England, London,

Routledge, 1989.
63
MACINNES Allan, Lochaber: Bandit Country or Jacobite Heartland? a paper read at

The Sunart Centre, Strontian for The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Tuesday 21 May
2013, Report by Kate Kennedy. RSE @ Lochaber
MACINNES Allan, The Aftermath of the 45, WOOSMAN-SAVAGE Robert C., ed.,
1745 : Charles Edward Stuart and the Jacobites, Edinburgh : Her Majestys
Stationery Office, 1995.
MONOD Paul K., Dangerous Merchandise: Smuggling, Jacobitism, and Commercial
Culture in Southeast England, 1690-1760, The Journal of British Studies, 1991,
vol. 30, no 2, p. 150-182.
MONOD Paul K., Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
CIARDHA Eamonn, Ireland and the Jacobite cause, 1685-1766: a fatal attachment,
Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2002.
PITTOCK Murray G. H., Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth-Century Britain

and Ireland, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
PITTOCK Murray G. H., Jacobite Ideology in Scotland and at St-Germain-en-Laye,
CRUICKSHANKS Eveline and CORP Edward T., eds., The Stuart Court in Exile and the
Jacobites, London and Rio Grande, The Hambledon Press, 1995, p. 113-125.
ROGERS Pat, The Waltham Blacks and the Black Act , The Historical Journal,
1974, vol. 17, no 03, p. 465-486.
Royal Archives, Stuart Papers, Windsor Castle.
SIMMS J. G., Jacobite Ireland, 1685-91, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969.
64
SLATTA Richard, Eric J. Hobsbawms social bandit: a critique and revision, A

Contracorriente, 2004, vol. 1, no 2, p. 22-30.
SZECHI Daniel, The Jacobites: Britain and Europe, 1688-1788, Manchester,

Manchester University Press, 1994.
THOMPSON E. P., Whigs and Hunters, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977.

WINSLOW Cal, Sussex Smugglers, THOMPSON E. P., ed., Albions fatal tree: crime
and society in eighteenth-century England, London, Allen Lane, 1975.
WOODARD Colin, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the
Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down, Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, 2008.
65

Jacobitism and Banditry PDF

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Jacobitism and Banditry PDF

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Septembre 2014

Mmoire de Master 1 Recherche Littratures et Langages

Jacobitism and Banditry

Sous la direction de M. Norbert Col

UFR Lettres Langues Sciences Humaines et Sociales

Mmoire de Master 1 Recherche Littratures et Langages

Jacobitism and Banditry

Sous la direction de M. Norbert Col

UFR Lettres Langues Sciences Humaines et Sociales

Bandits as part of the Jacobite movement .............................................................. 4

Tories, Rapparees and the Munster Whiteboys ............................................... 4

The Blacks of Windsor and Hampshire ......................................................... 12

The English smugglers .................................................................................. 22

Confusion between Jacobites and bandits ............................................................ 34

Jacobitism as a coincidence of objectives for bandits ................................... 34

Jacobitism as an excuse to hunt bandits and criminals .................................. 39

Historiographical and literary approaches to Jacobitism and banditry ................. 45

Bandits as folk heroes in Jacobite propaganda and myths ............................ 45

Bandit ideology related to Jacobitism in major literary works : the example of

John Gays The Beggars Opera ..................................................................................... 53

Eric J. Hobsbawm, Bandits, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969, p. 27.

Hobsbawm, Bandits, p. 17.

1. Bandits as part of the Jacobite movement

Tories, Rapparees and the Munster Whiteboys

political dimension to the depredations of their predecessors, the woodkerne and

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 28.

The term Protestant Ascendancy, or simply Ascendancy, is an anachronistic expression in this

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 68.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 53.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 73.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 85.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 85.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 37.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 86.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 86.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 89.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 88.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 89.

Simms, Jacobite Ireland, p. 199.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, pp 114, 115.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 115.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 37.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 120.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 191.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 336.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 336.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, pp 327, 328, 331.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 328.

The Blacks of Windsor and Hampshire

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 331.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 366.

O Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, p. 366.

The History of the Blacks, p. 3.

The History of the Blacks, p. 3.

E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977, p. 44.

Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p. 202.

Marlborough49. It is assumed, at least by Thompson, that Negus was an ally to Lord

Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p. 54.

Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p.54.

Rackett, Alexander Popes Catholic brother-in-law. He was arrested according to a

May the 6th. 1723

Cruickshanks, Erskine-Hill, The Waltham Black Act and Jacobitism, p. 363.

Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, p. 305.