The Lion’s Ghost: The First Jacobite Rising in Scotland, 1689–1691
The Revolution of 1688—the so-called Glorious Revolution—was many things to many people. To English Whigs, it was a deliverance from tyranny; to continental Protestants, a bulwark against French absolutism; but in the Highlands of Scotland, it was a funeral for a king not yet buried. The removal of James VII of Scotland and II of England, a Catholic king with absolutist ambitions, and his replacement by the Dutch Protestant William of Orange, did not mark a revolution so much as a rupture. And from that rupture would rise a flame that flickered first in 1689, burned with fury in 1715, and nearly consumed a kingdom in 1745. But it began with the First Jacobite Rising—a war of clan, crown, and conviction, wrapped in tartan and driven by loyalty to a monarch in exile.
The roots of the conflict lay in the long-standing tension between the Scottish Highlands and the centralizing ambitions of Edinburgh and London. The Highlands had always been viewed by the Lowland Scots as wild, feudal, and barely governable. But to the Highlanders, it was not law or parliament that held their world together—it was allegiance. And their allegiance, like their ancestors’, was personal, not ideological. When James VII, the last Stuart king, was deposed and fled to France, many Highland clans—particularly the Catholic and Episcopalian ones—remained loyal to him.
In March 1689, John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, answered the call. A soldier, courtier, and staunch royalist, Dundee had once fought for William of Orange in the Netherlands but remained loyal to James. He raised the royal standard at Dundee’s Law, and with it, began the First Jacobite Rising. “Claverhouse,” writes historian John Prebble, “was no mere adventurer. He was the last knight of a fading world, and he rode not for gain, but for the ghost of his king” (Glencoe: The Story of the Massacre, 1966, p. 74).
Opposing him was Hugh Mackay of Scourie, a seasoned professional soldier loyal to William. Mackay commanded a well-trained but poorly equipped government army, many of them raw recruits or unwilling militia. While William consolidated power in London and fought Louis XIV on the continent, Scotland became a proxy battlefield.
The central event of the rising was the Battle of Killiecrankie, fought on 27 July 1689 in the narrow gorge of the same name. Dundee, though outnumbered, used the Highland charge to devastating effect. The Jacobite forces, screaming war cries and descending at full speed, shattered Mackay’s line. Over 2,000 government troops were killed or wounded. “It was not a battle,” wrote one survivor, “it was a slaughter.” But the victory came at a fatal cost—Dundee himself was killed, struck by a musket ball under the arm. With his death, the Jacobite command structure unraveled.
Despite subsequent skirmishes, including at Dunkeld in August 1689, the momentum drained away. The Highland clans, never united by more than loose loyalty, began to drift home. The Battle of Cromdale in May 1690—a minor but symbolically significant defeat for the Jacobites—marked the effective end of the uprising. By 1691, most clans had submitted to William’s rule in exchange for pardons.
But the legacy was not yet finished. William’s attempt to enforce order through submission produced one of the darkest stains in Scottish memory: the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692, where government troops under Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon murdered thirty-eight members of the MacDonald clan for failing to pledge allegiance in time. “It was not an act of war,” wrote Prebble, “but a warning—a bullet to the back meant for all of the Highlands” (Glencoe, p. 181).
Politically, the First Jacobite Rising achieved little. James never returned. The Stuart cause lost its immediate credibility. But it ignited a sense of grievance and martyrdom in the Highlands that would outlive generations. “It was a war not for victory,” writes historian Daniel Szechi, “but for remembrance” (The Jacobites: Britain and Europe, 1688–1788, 1994, p. 27). And in the smoky glens of Scotland, remembrance was fuel.
It might have written: “In the rising of 1689, the Highlanders did not fight to win a kingdom—they fought because a man they called king had been driven from his throne like a thief in the night. That was enough.”
References:
- Prebble, John. Glencoe: The Story of the Massacre. Penguin Books, 1966.
- Szechi, Daniel. The Jacobites: Britain and Europe, 1688–1788. Manchester University Press, 1994.
- Lenman, Bruce. The Jacobite Risings in Britain, 1689–1746. Eyre Methuen, 1980.
- Mackinnon, James. The History of Edward the Third. Longmans, Green and Co., 1900.
- Pittock, Murray. Jacobitism. Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.