Battle of Culloden

The term ‘Jacobite’ is the name given to those who supported James VII after his deposition in 1689. When Charles Edward Stewart, James VII’s grandson, died in 1701, his son James Francis Stewart (also known as the ‘Old Pretender’) became the legitimate Scottish king (James VIII) in the eyes of the Jacobites. James planned to gain Scottish support by portraying Jacobites as the true Scottish nationalists. His plan was to recruit support, and eventually rule both Scotland and England. When the Act of Union was accepted by the Scottish Parliament and united the two countries in 1707, James VIII saw it as an opportunity to unite Scots to his cause. The lowland Scots had always traded with the English, though, and they were not willing to resist their army. The clans of the northern areas of Scotland remained the sole supporters of the Jacobite cause as a result of this attitudinal differences between the Highlanders and Lowlanders. The Jacobites rose up as a force of contention against the English from 1689 to 1746, when in the Battle of Culloden, the final Jacobite rebels were effectively squelched.