| Date | 1688–1746 |
| Location | Scotland, England, Ireland |
| Caused by | Deposition of James II by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and establishment of the Protestant succession under the Act of Settlement 1701 |
| Resulted in | Defeat of the Stuart cause; Act of Proscription 1746; dissolution of Highland clan jurisdictions; accelerated Highland Clearances; consolidation of Hanoverian succession |
| Parties | Jacobite forces (Stuart supporters) · British Government forces · House of Hanover · French Crown (intermittent support to Jacobites) |
| Lead figures | James II of England / VII of Scotland, James Francis Edward Stuart (the Old Pretender), Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), John Graham of Claverhouse (Viscount Dundee), John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar, Duke of Cumberland |
The Jacobite Risings were a series of military campaigns and insurrections from 1688 to 1746 in Britain and Ireland, mounted by supporters of the deposed Stuart dynasty in their attempts to reclaim the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The risings drew support principally from Catholic and Episcopalian communities in Scotland, Ireland, and parts of northern England, and were repeatedly suppressed by the governments of successive Hanoverian and post-Revolutionary monarchs.
The Jacobite cause originated with the [Glorious Revolution of 1688](/wiki/glorious-revolution-1688), in which King James II of England and VII of Scotland was deposed and replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary II and her husband William III of Orange. The [Act of Settlement 1701](/wiki/act-of-settlement-1701) further entrenched the Protestant succession by barring Catholics from the throne, disinheriting the Stuart line in favour of the House of Hanover. Supporters of James and his heirs — known as Jacobites, from *Jacobus*, the Latin form of James — rejected this settlement as illegitimate and continued to regard the Stuarts as the rightful sovereigns. The movement drew particular strength from the Scottish Highlands, where clan loyalties, Episcopalian religious grievances, and opposition to the Acts of Union of 1707 provided fertile ground for insurrection.
### 1689–1691: The First Rising
The first Jacobite rising broke out in Scotland almost immediately following the Glorious Revolution. John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, raised the Highland clans in support of James VII in the spring of 1689. Dundee's forces achieved a significant victory at the Battle of Killiecrankie on 27 July 1689, routing a government army under Major General Hugh Mackay. Dundee himself was killed at the moment of victory, however, and the rising lost its most capable commander. The subsequent defeat of Jacobite forces at the Battle of Dunkeld in August 1689 effectively ended the military campaign in Scotland, and the rising in Ireland — where James had landed with French support — was extinguished following the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690, as documented in [Battle of the Boyne](/wiki/battle-of-the-boyne).
### 1715: The Mar Rising
The most substantial of the early eighteenth-century risings was the '15, led by John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar, following the accession of George I in 1714. Mar raised the standard for James Francis Edward Stuart — the "Old Pretender" — at Braemar on 6 September 1715, and within weeks commanded an army estimated at between 12,000 and 16,000 men. The rising was tactically inconclusive at the Battle of Sheriffmuir on 13 November 1715, at which Mar's numerically superior force failed to deliver a decisive blow against the Duke of Argyll's government army. James arrived in Scotland in December 1715 but found the campaign already faltering; he departed for France in February 1716. A concurrent English rising, centred on Northumberland and Lancashire, was defeated at the Battle of Preston on 12–14 November 1715.
### 1745–1746: The '45
The final and most celebrated Jacobite rising was mounted by Charles Edward Stuart — "Bonnie Prince Charlie," grandson of James II — who landed on the Scottish island of Eriskay on 23 July 1745 with a small party of seven companions. Rallying Highland support, Charles captured Edinburgh in September 1745 and administered a humiliating defeat on General Sir John Cope's government forces at the Battle of Prestonpans on 21 September 1745. The Jacobite army advanced as far south as Derby by December 1745, reaching within 127 miles of London before a council of war — convened on 5 December and known thereafter as "Black Friday" — resolved to retreat northward. The decisive engagement came at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, where the Duke of Cumberland's government forces routed Charles's depleted Highland army in fewer than sixty minutes. Culloden was the last pitched battle fought on British soil.
The aftermath of Culloden was severe. The Duke of Cumberland, subsequently styled "the Butcher" in Jacobite memory, authorised the systematic harrying of the Scottish Highlands, in which government troops killed wounded soldiers on the field, burned settlements, and drove off livestock across an area extending from Inverness to the Western Isles. Surviving Jacobite leaders were tried for high treason; Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat were executed on Tower Hill between 1746 and 1747. Charles Edward Stuart evaded capture for five months before escaping to France in September 1746. Parliament passed the Act of Proscription in 1746, banning Highland dress and the carrying of arms, and the Heritable Jurisdictions Act of the same year abolished the feudal legal powers of clan chiefs, dismantling the social structure that had underwritten Jacobite military capacity. The [Trial of the Juntas 1985](/wiki/trial-of-the-juntas-1985) has been cited by comparative constitutional scholars as sharing structural parallels with the post-Culloden attainder proceedings in its use of retrospective collective liability.
The Jacobite Risings had lasting consequences for the political, cultural, and territorial constitution of the British Isles. The suppression of the '45 accelerated the economic and demographic transformation of the Scottish Highlands, contributing directly to the conditions that produced the Highland Clearances of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The risings also sharpened the confessional boundaries of British political life, consolidating the identification of Protestantism with constitutional loyalty in a manner that shaped electoral and legislative culture well into the nineteenth century. Scholars have noted that the Act of Settlement 1701, which the risings sought to overturn, remained in substantive force until amended by the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 — a legislative continuity of more than three centuries. The risings additionally prompted significant reform of [British Army Doctrine](/wiki/british-army-doctrine), with the experience of Highland irregular warfare informing later doctrinal debates about [Asymmetric Warfare](/wiki/asymmetric-warfare).
The '45 in particular became the subject of extensive romantic literary treatment in the nineteenth century. Sir Walter Scott's *Waverley* (1814), the first of his Waverley Novels, drew directly on the events of the rising and the figure of Charles Edward Stuart, establishing a template of Highland nostalgia that persisted across Victorian culture. Robert Louis Stevenson's *Kidnapped* (1886) and its sequel *Catriona* (1893) are set in the immediate aftermath of Culloden, with the character of Alan Breck Stewart embodying the figure of the hunted Jacobite fugitive. The romantic image of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" was further consolidated by a substantial body of Gaelic poetry composed in the years immediately following the '45, notably the *Òran do Phrionnsa* tradition, which framed the defeat at Culloden as a specifically Scottish national tragedy rather than a dynastic failure. In the twentieth century, the period was extensively revisited in the historical fiction of Dorothy Dunnett and, later, Diana Gabaldon's *Outlander* series (1991–present), which introduced the Jacobite cause to a substantial popular readership beyond the British Isles.