The man whose victorious death spelled the end for James VII
February 7, 2010 by Diane Maclean · 23 Comments
“Oh, for an hour of Dundee” – Anonymous Highland Chief at the Battle of Sherrifmuir, 1715
John Graham of Claverhouse
Claverhouse died on the Battlefield of Killiecrankie aged 41, a Jacobite military mastermind whose death is said by many to have finally broken the link between the Stuarts and the Scottish throne.
He was born near Dundee and began his military career in France in the service of Louis XIV. He returned home to support the Stuart Kings, first Charles II and then James VII of Scotland, II of England. It was in service to these men that he earned his less salubrious nickname – “Bluidy Clavers” after his persecution of the Covenanters – Presbyterian Scots opposed to interference from the Crown.
His success dealing with the Covenanters brought him to the attention of first Charles then James and led to a swift rise through the ranks. He even attempted to put backbone into the vacillating James II, whose inertia in the face of a rebellion led the way for William and Mary to take the vacant throne.
Once James II had fled to France, Claverhouse continued petitioning for a restitution of Stuart kingship through the Scottish Parliament where his attempts to raise support failed. With political options closed he retreated home to Dundee where he reacted to a public denouncement of him as a traitor by fighting back.
On the 13th April 1689 he gathered an army of Highland Clans and raised the Jacobite standard on Dundee Law. Thus began the first of the Glorious Rebellions. And it might have worked. Andrew Murray Scott, author of Bonnie Dundee: John Graham of Claverhouse believes that: “In 1689 the country was still biddable. They were defending an existing king and it could have gone either way.”
The “either way” was decided at the Battle of Killiecrankie, when the military genius and charisma of Dundee saw the largely Highland forces loyal to James II crush William of Orange’s army. But it was a pyrrhic victory. During the charge, Dundee was mortally wounded when a musket misfired and struck him beneath his armour. The battle was won, but without leadership the forces foundered and failed to capitalise on the victory.
Scott believes that had Dundee survived then the course of history might have changed: “It is not staking too great a claim that with Claverhouse’s death, King James’s cause disintegrated.”
Scott is not the only one who thinks that the death of the general lost the Jacobites their momentum. Even William of Orange, when he heard of the battle several days later declared: “he knew the Lord Dundee so well, that he must have been either killed or mortally wounded, otherwise, before that time, he would have been master of Edinburgh.”
For Scott, the Battle of Killiecrankie not only represented the collapse of the First Jacobite uprising, but foreshadowed the Union of Parliament in 1707and the second unsuccessful Jacobite uprising.
“The dynastic ambitions of the Stuarts,” says Scott, “were dashed not at Culloden … but – paradoxically – in the victory on the slopes of Killiecrankie.” Thereafter, he says, the Jacobite cause “became shabby and shoddy”.
This glorious victory but crushing defeat is celebrated still. Each year close to the anniversary, the Battle is recreated by a number of re-enactment societies. But today, the danger comes not from the whisper of a flintlock musket, but from the proximity of the A9, and the reactions of drivers startled by the sudden fleeting image of a Jacobite army in full Highland charge.
Related posts:
- Useful Gaelic word – Buaidh Buaidh – victory This was the concept which eluded the...
- Royal Scots: Still flying the flag after 377 years The “poor bloody infantry” arguably had one of the toughest...
“..and then James VII of England, II of Scotland.” No, it was the other way round! James VII (of Scotland) and II (of England). With you title I thought you were going to talk about the real James II (16 October 1430 – 3 August 1460) who was King of Scots from 1437 to 1460.
I can never understand why the current monarch never styled herself Elizabeth I and II, following precedence In the words of the song, “How can there be a second Liz when the first yin’s never been.”
Report This Comment
Well said, they had to change the post boxes after a few unfortunate incidents showed them the error of their ways.
A great pity that James Stewart (second of that name) was so cruelly butchered by his own kinsmen, going by what I’ve read about him, had he lived I think he could have done great things for our country. The some could probably be said of James IV.
Cheers Andy……
Report This Comment
Andy, it was James I who was assassinated. James II died by accident at the siege of Roxburgh Castle when one of his guns misfired and exploded.
Report This Comment
Thanks for that Andrew, a genuine mistake I assure you. Yes James I, second son of Robert III, spent about 18 years held at the court of Henry in England, where (grudgingly) I admit, he probably learned a great deal that helped him on his return north.
Report This Comment
I do believe that at the time of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne her designation of Elizabeth 11, was put forward by the then cabinet and Prime Minister.
The very fact that those persons were flying in the face of history gave the hotheads the opportunity to create mischief eventually lead to the current situation, where the insignia used in Scotland has no numeral, but uses the crown symbol, elsewhere 11, check the post office vehicles’.
A quick run through the newspaper files of the time, should verify my thoughts, and identify the perpetrators, but that again was the way of the time dictation within a so called democracy, still no change then.
Report This Comment
Excellent online paper. Can I point out that you have put King James down as being the VII of England and II of Scotland. I would also like to add that, though an informative article, I find the usual bias towards our southern neighbours prevails once more, this being in the use of the title James the II, to avoid this in future I would suggest that he be known a King James, or simply the King.
Sorry about the negative comment, but I feel that the CALEDONIAN Mercury should have a more patriotic approach to this often sensitive subject.
Keep up the good work.
Andy……….
Report This Comment
Yes, indeed you are quite correct. Thank you to you and the other commenters who pointed out we’d got our II and our VII mixed up. The article has now been corrected.
Stewart Kirkpatrick
Editor, The Caledonian Mercury
Report This Comment
Hmmm … is this the same “military mastermind” who led his bloodthirsty stormtroopers into a bog at the Battle of Drumclog, June 1, 1679, there to be set about and roundly thrashed by a motley force of Covenanters?
It’s true Bluidy Clavers was ordinarily a talented leader (with forces of brigade size or less), but at the end of the day he was just one “heavy” acting for the Stuart forces of oppression: these in turn relied ultimately on “the Highland Host” for support, and consequently had no chance of ever winning over “Middle Scotland”.
Report This Comment
…he was just one “heavy” acting for the Stuart forces of oppression: these in turn relied ultimately on “the Highland Host” for support, and consequently had no chance of ever winning over “Middle Scotland”
———————————————————————————-
Yes, those nice people the Covenanters are shamefully neglected. At least in Afghanistan and Pakistan the Taleban recalls, in an Islamic context, something of their character,
“Middle Scotland” is a curious anachronism. The ordinary folk in those days did as they were told. In 1679, with bishops still running the Kirk, there was a ready-made anti-Covenanter propaganda vehicle. Only with the accession of the Catholic King James in 1685, did sentiment move against the Stuarts -accelerated by the birth of The Old Pretender in 1688. This threatened the succession of Pricess Mary and her husband Villem van Oranje, who was also James nephew and third-in-line to the throne in his own right.
Report This Comment
Now that would never have happened on the Scotsman.
The correction and the apology I mean.
Report This Comment
Agree with the tone above! James II? Not of MY country! If you people want to be taken seriously, and so far, generally, you’ve “done no’ bad” then make sure such blatant errors are avoided. Simply put, to call James VII, James II is unacceptable and intolerable.
I can see that you’ll find “reasons” for your error – but an error ir remains!
Daibhidh
Report This Comment
Just a typo that was acknowledged and corrected – unlike the deliberate mistakes of the misogynist Unionist meejah hacks.
Report This Comment
Congratulations on your paper, which so far has proved to be interesting, informative, and so far well balanced and unbiased, which is why it has become my homepage.
I’d like to point out however that your photo caption is incorrect. The date of the Battle of Killiecrankie, and therefore of Bonnie Dundee’s death was 27th July 1689, not 13th April as stated above. Furthermore, he was not killed by misfire of a musket, but by presumably perfectly deliberate fire from an enemy musket.
Report This Comment
Cool doon Daibhidh Stevenson. It was an honest error promptly corrected. Although numbers for monarchs is an important issue it is not the over-riding matter that should get yer dander up. Up to very recent times nationalists were characterised by the politics of grievance. The country has moved on and we are now in an era of aspiration and determination. It is the unionists who are now mired in the politics of grievance and negativity.
Report This Comment
“Thus began the first of the Glorious Rebellions.”
This was neither ‘glorious’, nor a ‘rebellion’. James VII’s forfeiture of the crown and William’s kingship of Scotland was not corroborated by a parliament but by a Convention of the Estates – on dubious authority. Consequently Dundee and others resorted to arms in defence of their established monarch. To categorise their actions as a rebellion is spurious.
The English like to call this episode the ‘Glorious Revolution’, but what might have been a bloodless coup for William in England could only be achieved on battlefields in Scotland and Ireland – hardly glorious, rather violent.
Report This Comment
Hermiston: does it matter, ultimately, how James VII/II’s abdication was corroborated? He ran away – and subsequently drenched Scotland and (particularly) Ireland in blood trying for a “recount”. I’ll grant you it was a fairly cynical and inglorious coup d’etat, for all that, but as the Chinese would say the Stuarts had “lost the mandate of Heaven” … as was apparent in 1708 when a well-equipped French force of 6,000, with the putative James VIII/III aboard, sailed up the Forth to deafening lack of support from anybody in … Middle Scotland.
Teemackell: Well, yes, the Covenanters were bampots all right – the Taleban comparison is not inappropriate – but they were also a “popular” movement supported by a great many ordinary people prepared to die for their beliefs, odd as we may find these today.
I agree the Stuarts became wildly unpopular (in fact their rule arguably became untenable) with the accession of James VII/II, but by around 1640 their support in Scotland (at the time of the “Bishops’ War”) was already in freefall – which is why a Scottish army of 14,000 marched south so cheerfully (or dourly cheerful) in 1644, besieged Newcastle and played the decisive role in the English parliamentary victory at Marston Moor. This cost Charles I the north, and, within a year, his kingdom. Montrose’s gallant but pointless antics in the Hielands, where he led an army of caterans and Catholic Irish mercenaries, were the extent of Stuart support. When Charles II wheedled his way to the throne after Cromwell’s demise it was only after deeply and mutually hostile exchanges with the Scots, during which he threw Montrose to the wolves as part of his “blood price” for the dynasty’s readmission. To put it bluntly, James IV, of blessed memory, was the last Stuart with any great claim to popular affection in Scotland, and any to real ablity.
As for “Middle Scotland” – a clumsy way of summing up 17th century demography, I admit, but it works nonetheless. By the mid-17th century there could be no doubt that extreme hodden grey religion worked very well with the psyche of peasants in Ayrshire or Lothian: “the Highland Host” were a despised alien race, to this mindset, barbarians openly allied to the heathen Papist Irish … the fault lines and prejudices were increasingly well-delineated.
Re Bluidy Clavers’ death wound: this unquestionably came from a musket shot fired at him by the opposition, rather than from a “mis-fire”: his breastplate (which sadly for him, but not for the relatives of his victims, was ineffective) – or rather the large hole in it – proves as much.
Report This Comment
@Myrmillo the Great:
I think it matters how James’ forfeiture was corroborated. James, after all, was an absentee king of Scots and his departure from Whitehall did not affect his constitutional position in Scotland. Thus the English could get away with saying that James had ‘absented’ their throne. Scots, on the other hand, returned to Buchananite and Covenanter precedents of elective kingship, which inevitably polarised political and religious positions in the country with violent consequences in church and state. Many supporters of James had misgivings about his abuse of his prerogative powers and his Catholicism but did not see a lunge back towards Whig and Presbyterian principles as the solution. Many Jacobites were not blind followers of James but supporters of his right to the office of monarch and the constitutional arrangement he represented. To decry them as ‘rebels’ (especially in the period 1689-91) undermines the integrity of their stance and does not challenge the narrative of history as told by the victors.
Report This Comment
Teemackell: “Only with the accession of Catholic King James in 1685 did sentiment move against the Stuarts.”
This is at odds with the facts; at around the time Jenny Geddes and the serving women in St Giles were palpably showing that they would NOT do what they were told, vis-a-vis the sinister “Popish” (as they saw it) Service Book, the minister of Kilwinning wrote: “…there was in our land never such ane appearance of a sturr; the whole people thinks Poperie at the doores…no man may speak for the king’s part, except he would have himself marked for a sacrifice to be killed one day. I think our people possessed with a bloody devill, farr above any thing I could ever have imagined.”
The conflict between monarch and people was already well underway long before 1685; the brittle carapace of monarchical control of the church through puppet bishops was splintering long before James II/VII was born. Clavers and his goons were incidental to the plot.
Report This Comment
As regards William of Orange’s opinion of Claverhouse, he also allegedly said after Killiecrankie, “Armies are needless. The war is over with Dundee’s life.”
Report This Comment
KIng Billy wasn’t actually a terribly good general, it has to be said, as witness the gory drubbings he received from the French at Steenkerke and Neerwinden (premier league battles which dwarf Killikrankie in size and importance), but in a land of relative mediocrity he may have had a point about Clavers – who certainly made up in raw aggression what he may have sometimes lacked in prudence (eg his ignominious defeat by a supposed mob of rustics at Drumclog).
The war did not end with his death, however … it moved to Ireland, and to the bloodbaths of The Boyne and Aughrim, and all that followed.
Report This Comment
Aye, it certainly didn’t end, it’s still alive and killing to this day, thanks to the brain deads who can’t move on.
Report This Comment
Well said, Andy Nicol: amen.
Report This Comment
Hermiston: apologies – posts seem to pop up and down like marmosets on this web board, and I’ve only just seen your reply to mine; I posted a really longwinded one, which appeared, then disappeared, then reappeared again – by which time I’d added another, so it looked as if I am even more pompous and tedious than is really the case.
On your actual point; you are completely correct – when I said it didn’t matter I was overstating the case: what I really meant was that it didn’t ultimately “matter” to the rising tide of popular anti-Stuart feeling: once a rebellious popular mood prevails any serious challenge to the regime is off to a head’s start.
The original claim on the banners of the Solemn League was “For God, King and Covenant” – a piece of sophistry which made out that the king was really a hapless victim of wicked (Papist) advisers: and of course world history is littered with such examples.
I suppose to elaborate on your point you could add that a “king” needs the trappings of constitutional rectitude to be effective: the denigration of the latter Stuart supporters as “rebels” was in the legalistic sense simply not true, but is a stance that had to be adopted by the putative legit usurper(s) – or they would be tacitly accepting that they were themselves the “rebels”.
You’re also completely right about the notion of challenging the victors’ version of events (which of necessity must also be self-justifying.)
In the drive to gain all of the moral and legal high ground the victors silence not only opposition but any nuance of opposition – it has nothing to do with any kind of justice and everything to do with the lust for power and the determination to keep it at all costs. Anyone interested in history should definitely seek out the sort of nuances of attitude you outline in your post.
Report This Comment