The Jacobite rising of 1715, also known as "The Fifteen", was a failed Jacobite uprising against the Whig government of Great Britain that occurred in Scotland and Northern England from 1715 to 1716.
The death of the late King James II of England's daughter and successor Queen Anne in 1714 led to a succession crisis in Britain, as the House of Stuart's Protestant line had gone extinct. The Whigs, intent on excluding Catholics and Tories from power, offered the throne to the German prince George, Elector of Hanover, the son of Anne's Protestant cousin Sophia of Hanover. The pro-Hanoverian Whigs thus enjoyed a period of "Whig supremacy" for the next 30 years, and the Whigs retaliated against their Tory rivals by accusing the Tories of corruption and arresting or exiling many of their leaders. Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, a Tory exile who became the exiled James Francis Edward Stuart's Secretary of State, called on James - as the head of the Tories - to "save the Church and Constitution of England or both must be irretrievably lost for ever." Believing that the Tory general John Churchill would come over to his side, James came to support a rising.
Without sanction from "the Great Pretender", the Earl of Mar raised the Stuart banner at Braemar in the Scottish Highlands on 6 September 1715, initiating "the Fifteen" rising, hoping to restore his prestige and favor by rebelling against his former liege George I. The Earl of Mar assembled an army of 6,000 Jacobites in Scotland, while other Jacobite armies took over northern Scotland and assembled in Northern England. By October 1715, Mar's army had risen in number to 20,000 men and took control of all of Scotland above the Firth of Forth, apart from Stirling Castle. On 13 November, Mar's attack on Stirling Castle resulted in the Battle of Sheriffmuir, an indecisive battle that resulted in the Jacobites' retreat to Perth; at the same time, Inverness surrendered to the Hanoverian forces.
Concurrent to the Battle of Sheriffmuir, a Jacobite uprising broke out in Northumberland shortly after a conspiracy in western England was foiled. The English and Scottish Jacobites joined forces and inflicted heavy losses on the Hanoverians at the Battle of Preston before the arrival of government reinforcements on the second day of battle forced the Jacobites to surrender. Shortly after, 6,000 Dutch troops arrived on the River Thames and at Hull to defend the Protestant succession to the throne. On 22 December 1715, "the Great Pretender" landed in Scotland at Peterhead, but found that the Jacobite army had fallen to 5,000 men by January 1716. On 4 February, James abandoned Scotland, and many Jacobite prisoners were executed.
Gallery[]
