History documentary charting the birth and growth of the Scottish nation.
Bitterly divided by politics and religion for centuries, this is the infamous story of how Scotland and England came together in 1707 to form Great Britain. Over time the Union matured into one of the longest in European history, but it very nearly ended in divorce.
Exploiting the Union's unpopularity, the exiled Stuarts staged several comebacks, selling themselves as a credible and liberal alternative to the Hanoverian regime. Neil Oliver reveals just how close they came to succeeding.
Bitterly divided by politics and religion for centuries, this is the infamous story of how Scotland and England came together in 1707 to form Great Britain. Over time the Union matured into one of the longest in European history, but it very nearly ended in divorce.
Exploiting the Union's unpopularity, the exiled Stuarts staged several comebacks, selling themselves as a credible and liberal alternative to the Hanoverian regime. Neil Oliver reveals just how close they came to succeeding.
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TVTranscript
00:00In December of 1688, the British King James arrived in Paris at the court of Louis XIV.
00:21He was a fugitive.
00:26James had been kicked off his throne by the Dutch usurper, William of Orange.
00:36Of his vast fortunes as King of England, Scotland and Ireland, James had managed to escape with
00:41just £23,000.
00:44His wife, Mary of Medina, had brought her jewels.
00:47Third and last from the wreckage, far from least, they'd managed to save their son and
00:52heir, little James Francis Edward.
00:54He was just six months old.
00:56He was their future.
00:59Louis XIV was generous to a fault.
01:02He gave them a home, his second best palace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris.
01:12It was anything but small.
01:15It was the opposite.
01:19It was a place in which elegance was magnified, stretched, extended to levels at which the
01:24mind of a mere mortal might easily freeze.
01:29It was a place in which illusions could sustain themselves.
01:32It was a place in which a man who had once been king could pretend that he still was.
02:02King James VII and II had lost his job.
02:27His redundancy had cost several other people their careers, men with their families, many
02:33of them Catholics like James himself.
02:38These Jacobites came to live in France to share his borrowed palace.
02:43He gave them tasks and titles.
02:48In his French court, he built a shadow government.
02:57The shadow court settled down to a rhythm of impoverished display, all paid for by Louis
03:02XIV.
03:04And Louis sent daily deliveries of flowers from his greenhouses at Versailles to cheer
03:09the Queen.
03:11Chilly blossoms, cold comfort.
03:14James could only watch from France as William of Orange settled into his powers and his
03:19palaces and started telling stories, started spinning.
03:25The invasion that had cost James his kingdom was given a name, the Glorious Revolution.
03:35Shorthand for a longer myth, William, a conquering Protestant hero, champion of liberty and limited
03:42monarchy, had come to oust the tyrant James VII and II, a Catholic king who rode roughshod
03:49over the treasured civil liberties of his freedom-loving subjects.
03:54Spin, old spin now.
04:00More than three centuries old, but that doesn't make it any truer.
04:06William of Orange wasn't interested in liberties, he was interested in war.
04:11The whole point of his invasion had been to prevent a Catholic alliance between England
04:15and France.
04:18Once the dust had settled and the blood had dried, William's plans were simple.
04:23He wanted to make war on France and England could do that on its own.
04:28Scotland's job?
04:29Keep quiet, don't get in the way.
04:41So in Scotland, William's Glorious Revolution was about management, not liberty.
04:55There were no elections, William allowed the emergency meeting that had decreed him king
05:00to stay on as Scotland's parliament.
05:05And the last ingredient in the recipe was someone to manage that parliament so that
05:10he could ignore it completely.
05:16It was a job for someone reliable, someone reliably self-interested.
05:23William eventually found his man in the Duke of Queensbury, who soon erected around himself
05:28a clique, the Court Party, which cheerfully enacted the king's wishes in Scotland.
05:35And that was that, the Glorious Revolution.
05:38Not very glorious at all, but like all good spin, it contained a solid grain of truth
05:44that James could not deny.
05:46As a king, he had been authoritarian, he had shown favour towards Catholics.
05:52So he spun back, return of service.
05:55In 1693, he dispensed with his Catholic advisors and produced a decree.
06:02The Shadow King promised that when he was once again the true king, there would be no
06:06more absolutism, no more religious intolerance and inequity.
06:12Parliament's rights would be protected, the religious settlement would not be tampered
06:15with, and there would be no revenge taken, no punishments at all for those who had fought
06:21against him.
06:28He remained, of course, a Catholic himself, for which the supporters of William of Orange
06:33can only have been profoundly grateful.
06:36After 1693, there was nothing else to choose between them.
06:40The proclamation ticked every box.
06:43It raised the ghost of a Stuart restoration.
06:58But in the 1690s, Scots were more worried about what to eat.
07:06Thousands had died in the revolution, the famines that followed killed thousands more.
07:12Scotland desperately needed money for food, but England was in the way.
07:21Trade with the French was impossible because the English were fighting them.
07:25Trade with England's juicy colonies in America would have been nice, but the English refused
07:30to allow it.
07:32God helps those who help themselves.
07:35In 1695, some of Edinburgh's merchants founded the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa
07:41and the Indies.
07:43And better still, a financial genius had come to town.
07:50William Paterson.
07:52He talked a good game.
07:54The year before, Paterson had been involved in the foundation of the Bank of England.
07:58He was sacked from its board shortly afterwards, but Paterson rarely mentioned that.
08:03Now he was in Scotland and had helped to found the Bank of Scotland too.
08:10He had an air about him of mysterious financial knowledge.
08:15He knew that if you rubbed the numbers the right way, then a company could almost magically
08:20grow in size.
08:21Trade will increase trade, he said, and money will beget money.
08:32The Company of Scotland had originally planned to trade to West Africa.
08:36The risks would be slight and the profits would be small.
08:39Paterson had another plan.
08:41He knew exactly where the best basket was for all of Scotland's eggs.
08:45They should set up a massive port on the land bridge between the Americas in a place called
08:51Darien.
08:52There they would become the middleman in all the trades of the new world.
08:57They would make a mint.
09:02All that optimism ended up on the front page of the Company's minute book.
09:09It's a fantastically grand and optimistic cover, isn't it?
09:13The logo.
09:14Absolutely, and I think it shows that the people who were doing this had an eye to the
09:18fact that they were making history and they were going to be making history to put that
09:21right on the front page of your first volume of minutes.
09:24Would it have stood out in amongst a collection of similar documents at the time?
09:28Oh, absolutely.
09:29You wouldn't expect something this glamorous on the front of what is essentially a working
09:33document.
09:33The rising sun symbol, which was the symbol of the Company.
09:36This glamorous and exotic and Native American and African.
09:40This is a Native American, supposedly, right?
09:43Absolutely.
09:43Their idea of what one would have looked like.
09:45They're carrying these horns of plenty with this fantastic, glamorous golden fruit.
10:00Patterson's scheme was a runaway success.
10:03Scotland's nobles, Scotland's merchants, Scotland's boroughs and cities all went home
10:07and dug money out from under mattresses, emptied strongboxes and socks.
10:12By some estimates, fully a quarter of Scotland's liquid cash ended up in the coffers of the
10:17Company of Scotland.
10:18Even the Duke of Queensbury punted 3k on Darien.
10:22This was money that the Scots could ill afford.
10:25But what could possibly go wrong?
10:29The bank has the benefit of all monies which it creates out of nothing.
10:33Patterson is reputed to have said about banking practice and principle.
10:37Of course, these days, phrases like that have a hollow ring.
10:41In the 1690s, Patterson was every bit as much of a banker as our current crop.
10:47In the Darien scheme, Patterson would take a substantial slice of Scotland's money
10:53and make it, as if by magic, disappear.
11:01Darien never stood a chance.
11:03The King had told the Scots he didn't want them trading on the toes of his English interests
11:07in the Americas or on the toes of his Spanish allies.
11:10He told bankers in England and Holland not to invest in Darien.
11:14The colony collapsed and within five years,
11:17it was clear that of over £150,000 sterling, there was nothing left at all.
11:24Not a brass farthing.
11:26No doubloons, no ducats, no dosh, no nothing.
11:31William Patterson did the sensible thing.
11:33He moved to London.
11:37Darien left a double legacy.
11:39A Scottish governing class who blamed King William for their poverty
11:43and a King William who could not trust Scotland to keep his peace.
11:49He had taken steps to secure his revolution.
11:51The English Parliament had passed laws to exclude Catholics from the throne.
11:56But he had no heir.
11:58His sister-in-law, Anne, was a Protestant.
12:01But after her, the nearest Protestants with a claim were a German family, the Hanoverians.
12:08William secured their agreement to take the throne once Anne was dead.
12:15As for Scotland, in 1603,
12:18James VI and I had become king of both countries.
12:21Two kings had become one.
12:24For William, it was now a matter of the highest urgency.
12:27The kingdoms must do likewise.
12:30He must have union.
12:37In September of 1701, James VII and II, the king in exile, breathed his last.
12:45He was buried here, in the church at Saint-Germain.
12:51The Shadow King was still warm when Louis XIV proclaimed his teenage son, James,
12:57King of England, Scotland and Ireland.
12:59And the Pope and the King of Spain added their similar declarations at once.
13:06William of Orange was still warm too.
13:09And these declarations made him positively hot.
13:13He broke off relations with France and set about all the preparations necessary.
13:19He was the first of his family to be crowned king.
13:23He was the first of his family to be crowned king.
13:25He broke off relations with France and set about all the preparations necessary for a full-scale war.
13:32In the midst of this entirely characteristic flurry of activity,
13:36William decided to take a brief rest.
13:39He had a new horse and he took it for a ride in the grounds of his favourite residence, Hampton Court.
13:45The horse stepped in a molehill and fell.
13:48William broke his collarbone and infection set in.
13:56Almost at once, the mole responsible became the subject of a Jacobite toast
14:02to the little gentleman in black velvet.
14:08William died two weeks later.
14:10His place on the throne was taken by his sister-in-law, the last Protestant steward, Anne.
14:17Anne was dangerously overweight.
14:20Seventeen pregnancies had left their mark.
14:23Seventeen pregnancies had left their mark.
14:25But ill health aside, she knew her duty as a Protestant.
14:29At the head of her to-do list was William's priority number one.
14:35Union.
14:38She ordered her parliaments north and south of the border to make it happen, quickly.
14:47A new party had formed in Scotland's parliament,
14:50the Cavaliers, loyal to the exiled Stuarts.
14:53George Lockhart of Carnwath was one of its backbenchers.
14:57Lockhart kept a journal and served as a doormat
15:01to the acknowledged leader of this dissident tendency, James Douglas, the Duke of Hamilton.
15:06The Hamiltons were closely related to the Stuarts
15:09and traditionally regarded as Scotland's most senior nobles.
15:13This entitled them to grace and favour apartments rent-free in the palace of Holyrood House,
15:19which was fortunate because the Duke of Hamilton, not to put too fine a point on it, was poor.
15:25All the poorer since Darien.
15:27He'd invested a thousand pounds.
15:31In parliament, Hamilton locked horns with the Crown's representative,
15:36the Duke of Queensbury.
15:38It looked like a life-and-death struggle for Scotland.
15:40It looked like a life-and-death struggle for Scotland's political independence.
15:45It was actually professional wrestling.
15:48Pure theatre.
15:49A leading supporter of the union later revealed that Hamilton
15:53made several visits to Queensbury's apartments by night.
15:56These weren't social calls.
15:58He was looking for an income.
16:00Various letters that survived describe his desperate need for money.
16:04He must have his debts paid, said one.
16:07Another described him as a room for rent.
16:11First on the agenda, the committee to discuss the terms of union.
16:16It was vital that the Scots retained the right to make their own nominations to this committee.
16:21But the rentable Duke of Hamilton called a vote when most of his party had gone home for dinner,
16:27with the result that the right to name the committee was placed entirely in the hands of the Crown.
16:33Everything that followed was bitter farce.
16:36Hamilton had opened the door.
16:38The English stuck their foot in it.
16:41They would keep it open until their business had been done.
16:56The following summer, the commission to negotiate the terms of the union got underway.
17:01To the astonishment of none, the nominated commissioners were overwhelmingly pro-union.
17:07Apart from George Lockhart, who got a place on the committee entirely by mistake.
17:15The commission met in London, in Whitehall.
17:19The Scots sat in one room, the English in another.
17:23And the two parties communicated with each other only in writing.
17:28The committee soon reached the heart of the matter.
17:31Money.
17:32Money.
17:33Union would subject the Scots to higher English taxes.
17:37The English proposed to pay something called an equivalent.
17:41A sum of money to help the Scots cope.
17:44Lockhart raised a question.
17:46How could this money be given to the poor?
17:48They would need it most.
17:52Nobody answered.
17:58In due course, the size of the equivalent was agreed.
18:02And of its £400,000, £217,000 were to go directly to those who had invested in Darien.
18:10Lockhart finally got what the equivalent was.
18:15It was a bribe.
18:16Payable to a Scottish elite whose losses in Darien had turned them against the English.
18:21Now, they would get their money back, with interest.
18:24And their anti-English hearts would soften accordingly.
18:28For Lockhart, it was the last straw.
18:30He refused to sign the final treaty.
18:36Nobody minded.
18:37Or even noticed.
18:39The treaty was sent to the Scottish and English parliaments for approval.
18:45When the terms of the treaty were published, they proved unpopular.
18:49The whole nation appears against the Union, wrote Lockhart.
18:52Ministers roar against it from their pulpits.
18:55He was writing to Hamilton, who had somehow re-established himself
18:59as the figurehead of resistance.
19:01Lockhart was touchingly trusting.
19:10Outside Parliament, the Union was indeed hugely unpopular.
19:15But inside Parliament, it was not.
19:17Queensberry and his henchman, John Erskine, the Earl of Marr,
19:21found their fellow Scottish nobles quite biddable.
19:24Because more than any other class, Scotland's nobles had had to deal with the fact
19:29that in 1603, their king had simply disappeared.
19:36The King of Scotland was a memory.
19:38He was buried inside the King of England.
19:42Union was a chance to have a king again.
19:46So the nobles voted consistently for bread with English butter,
19:50by a factor of two to one.
19:52Queensberry and Marr brokered a deal with the Church as well,
19:55promising it to the Presbyterians forevermore.
19:59Clause by clause, the Act of Union slowly passed.
20:05The pulpits that had roared quite recently began to purr instead.
20:10George Lockhart became increasingly depressed.
20:14It was time for the last resort.
20:16The anti-Unionists would call a vote
20:19and accept the Hanoverians as an independent Scotland.
20:23Hey presto, no Union necessary.
20:26It was universally agreed that the man to call the vote
20:29should be the Duke of Hamilton.
20:31The vote was planned for the 9th of January,
20:33and on that morning,
20:34Hamilton's supporters eagerly awaited his arrival.
20:37A note arrived instead.
20:39I have a toothache, it said, and cannot attend Parliament today.
20:45As long as Hamilton was there,
20:46whenever one door closed,
20:49another one would shut.
20:51Six days later, the Act of Union passed in its entirety.
20:55The Duke of Queensberry touched the Act with the sceptre.
21:02It was law.
21:14On April 28th, 1707,
21:16the Scottish Parliament passed the Act of Union.
21:18On April 28th, 1707,
21:21the Scottish Parliament dissolved itself.
21:24Apparently forever.
21:26Certainly this room would never see another.
21:29The Chancellor signed a shortened version of the Act
21:32and said as he did so,
21:34Now there's an end of an old song.
21:39The Chancellor had worked assiduously with Queensberry and Marr
21:42to see the Act through Parliament
21:44and must have spoken with a certain amount of satisfaction.
21:46Lockhart disapproved, of course.
21:49Here was a day never to be forgotten, he wrote,
21:51a day on which the Scots were stripped of something
21:53they had maintained gallantly for centuries,
21:56their independence and their sovereignty.
22:14It's hard not to admire the professionalism.
22:16The sheer slickness of the process
22:18by which Scotland was groomed for union.
22:23But there it was, Lockhart's unpleasant truth.
22:26The Glorious Revolution had been at last and irrevocably secured.
22:31Scottish independence had been sold
22:33for the sake of English security.
22:43The wounds of the Union were fresh.
22:45Louis XIV decided it was time to apply the salt.
22:51He was losing his war with Britain,
22:53but the Shadow King, James VIII and III,
22:56was 19 years old, a card ripe for playing.
23:01Louis set the date for the invasion to restore his throne,
23:04spring of the next year.
23:07James had waited all his life for this,
23:10become a restrained, methodical, focused young man,
23:14too methodical.
23:15James had a talent for administration.
23:18While the French set about preparing an invasion fleet,
23:21James prepared his pitch to the Scottish people.
23:27The Union was deeply unpopular.
23:30He would offer himself as the King of Scots first and foremost.
23:33He would dissolve the Union.
23:35He would leave the settlement of the Church in Parliament's hands
23:38and he promised that Parliament itself
23:40would be free of any interference on his part.
23:43Once again, the exiled Stuarts
23:45were offering their people greater freedom,
23:48more at least than they currently enjoyed.
23:54In Scotland, George Lockhart calculated,
23:57there were 30,000 or 40,000 men
23:59who would rise if James should land.
24:02Most of the government's troops were at war abroad.
24:05There were only 2,500 regulars left in Scotland,
24:085,000 in England.
24:11It was going to be a walkover.
24:14The French fleet set sail on March 17th,
24:17followed by a British fleet from the very first.
24:21The weather was appalling.
24:23For James, the experience was unpleasantly novel.
24:27The French fleet anchored off Crail in Fife.
24:31It was James's first sight of Scotland.
24:33His feet itched to walk there.
24:36And then the British fleet appeared astern.
24:39James begged the French admiral to put on ashore,
24:42but the admiral refused.
24:44He'd been briefed by Louis.
24:46Whatever else, James must return alive.
24:52They sailed north.
24:53They anchored off Slayne's Castle, north of Aberdeen.
24:57James begged once again to be set ashore,
25:00and he was once again refused
25:02as the British fleet hove into view.
25:05The chance to land was gone.
25:07The French fleet sailed round the north of Scotland
25:09and struggled back to Dunkirk.
25:12♪ DRAMATIC MUSIC ♪
25:27Lockhart despaired.
25:29Had the weather been better,
25:30or the French admiral less fearful of Louis' wrath,
25:34James would have landed.
25:36Ordinary Scots hated the Union.
25:39Surely they would have risen for their king.
25:42But the chance was lost.
25:44The Union stood.
25:48And the Union disappointed.
25:51♪ DRAMATIC MUSIC ♪
25:59It disappointed even those who had helped bring it about.
26:03Free trade had been one of the promised perks of Union,
26:06but the benefits of free trade
26:07spread with excruciating slowness.
26:09In the summer of 1711,
26:11the Earl of Marr wrote a letter of complaint
26:14to the Crown's leading minister.
26:17"'I have not yet grown weary of the Union myself,' wrote Marr,
26:21"'but the attitude of the English Parliament
26:23"'is beyond all sense, reason, and fair dealing.
26:26"'If nothing is done to encourage our trade,
26:28"'it will be more than flesh and blood can bear.
26:31"'And what Scotsman will not grow weary of the Union
26:34"'and do all he can to end it?''
26:36And that was a letter from one of the Union's friends.
26:38♪ DRAMATIC MUSIC ♪
26:44As the Union grew less popular,
26:47the Queen gained weight.
26:50Her health was failing.
26:52It would soon be time to see if the British north
26:54and south of the border
26:56could really hand the crown to the Hanoverians
26:58with their distant claim.
27:01The Queen's health was failing.
27:03James wrote Anne a letter.
27:06"'God and nature call you, madam.
27:08"'Settle the succession in the right line once again.
27:11"'Make me your heir.'
27:14It was worth a try, but Anne never wrote back.
27:19She sent another sort of answer.
27:22"'Twelve years of war between Britain and France
27:25"'were coming to an end.
27:26"'The British negotiators made it a case
27:29"'that we should not have a war.
27:31"'The British negotiators made it a condition
27:33"'of the peace treaty
27:34"'that James should be expelled from France.
27:37"'Louis XIV was tired, old and on the losing side.
27:43"'Early in 1713, he agreed.'"
27:49The treaty was concluded in April
27:50and James became a wanderer.
27:53He had lived with his shadow court
27:55in the Palace of Saint-Germain for 23 years.
27:58It had sustained all of his illusions.
28:01Now, his court was to be allowed to stay,
28:03but he would have to leave.
28:05It would be harder, in the absence of this palace,
28:09to pretend.
28:23He was offered asylum in Lorraine,
28:25a small dukedom sandwiched uncomfortably
28:28between Germany and France.
28:30The home of quiche, the land of cakes,
28:33birthplace of rum babas, macaroons and madeleines.
28:37It was agonising.
28:38James was no tourist.
28:40He was a painfully serious young man
28:42whose reason for living was across the English Channel.
28:48But then the English broke a promise.
28:50At the Union, they had guaranteed the Scots
28:52a permanent holiday from certain taxes.
28:55But in 1713, they ordered the Scots to pay a tax on malt
28:59and at the English rate, there were riots,
29:02there were strikes.
29:03The Scots in the House of Lords moved to dissolve the Union
29:07and lost by just four votes.
29:10And Queen Anne, at last, felt properly ill.
29:18Soon, the Hanoverian George would be king.
29:21It was known that George felt the recent treaty with France
29:24had been criminally kind to the French.
29:30While Anne was breathing, the jobs in government
29:33of those who had made it were safe.
29:36As soon as she stopped, those jobs were history.
29:43Anne died in August of 1714.
29:48The coffin she was buried in was square.
29:56The new king arrived a month later.
29:59He was a stereotype.
30:01Humourless, stolid, unimaginative.
30:08His reshuffle was even more thorough than expected.
30:12The Earl of Marr was one of those who found himself without a job.
30:16So he went back home to Scotland.
30:21And he arrived there an instant revolutionary.
30:24He spread malicious rumours that the English planned taxes
30:27on land, corn, cattle, meal, malt, horses, sheep, cocks and hens.
30:35And then he raised the standard of the Jacobites on September the 6th.
30:41The reliably pro-Stuart Louis XIV had died five days before he did so.
30:47Perhaps Marr should have waited.
30:49Perhaps he should have changed his plans.
30:52But the word plan doesn't belong in any sentence describing what Marr did.
30:57All historians agree.
30:58When they write their accounts of the Jacobite rising of 1715,
31:01their vocabularies converge on words like
31:04farce, buffoon, idiocy, incompetent, worst possible time,
31:09disintegrate, pathetic, half-cocked, botched up, monstrous,
31:14fumbling, damp squirrel, stupid,
31:18monstrous, fumbling, damp squirrel, stupid, fatuous, paltry...
31:28But the cause, unlike the union, was popular.
31:3210,000 men rallied to Marr from Scotland's northeast and the highlands.
31:37In the north of England, a small group of Jacobite aristocrats gathered.
31:42James set forth from France, bringing money.
31:45But Marr was no general.
31:47At Sheriffmuir near Stirling,
31:49he met a government army less than half the size of his and failed to beat it.
31:54And the next day, the English Jacobites were captured almost to a man.
31:59Now, only a dramatic entrance could save the rebellion.
32:03The arrival of a Catholic Stuart on the mainland for the first time in 26 years.
32:09The Shadow King, trailing clouds of glory.
32:16James arrived late in December, near Aberdeen.
32:19All was a bad sailor. He was carried ashore by the captain.
32:23There were no clouds of glory.
32:25There was just James, two attendants and a chest full of money.
32:29Ordinary on the beach at Peterhead.
32:45James rendezvoused with Marr, who had returned to Perth.
32:49The army had shrunk.
32:51James estimated their total at 4,000.
32:57There were many things they might have done.
33:00Scone, where the kings of Scotland were traditionally crowned, was hardly far away.
33:05It would have been a moment of great resonance.
33:08If James had come here, if the crown or a reasonable substitute
33:13had been placed upon his head, it might have lit a fire, set the heather burning.
33:23It never happened.
33:25Reality got in the way.
33:27James was, by all unbiased accounts, a fine man.
33:31But he was not a charismatic leader.
33:33He was a bureaucrat.
33:35He buckled no swash.
33:38The rebellion evaporated like the morning dew.
33:43A little more than three weeks later, James embarked on a ship in Montrose.
33:52Marr was with him.
33:54So was his sense of failure.
33:57And Marr's nickname, Bobbing John, was with them too.
34:02James left Scotland a note of apology, together with a large amount of money
34:06for distribution amongst some of the villages he'd been obliged to damage during his retreat.
34:11For two months, James had trod the earth of his ancestral kingdom.
34:15It had shown him up.
34:17He would never return.
34:24In May of 1716, with the recent comedy of the rising as an excuse,
34:29Parliament passed an act reducing the frequency of elections to once every seven years.
34:35The great freedoms of the glorious revolution continued to shrink.
34:41James had not given up.
34:43He began looking for two things.
34:45A wife.
34:46It was time to secure the future of the dynasty.
34:49And a military sponsor to replace France.
34:54It was his quest for a wife that bore real fruit, in the shape of Princess Clementina Sobieski.
35:01A Polish noblewoman whose father certainly couldn't afford a real king.
35:05According to reports, she was a fragile beauty of gentle temperament and fabulous wealth.
35:12Her jewels were legendary.
35:20The Pope was delighted with the marriage.
35:22He declared them King and Queen of Great Britain, and awarded them a generous pension.
35:28They moved to Rome.
35:30British diplomacy had effectively closed the borders of the Kingdom of England.
35:33British diplomacy had effectively closed every other country's doors.
35:39Being in Rome was bad for James's career.
35:42His future crown depended on him convincing his somewhat bigoted subjects
35:46that his association with the Roman Catholic Church was anything but close.
35:51But here he was at last, cornered in Rome, with all its bells and smells,
35:55its cardinals, monks and nuns, tarred with the brush of potpourri.
36:04The Pope made a still more generous gift, one that it was churlish to refuse.
36:10So James made his court here, in the Palazzo del Re, the Palace of the King.
36:19After six years of wandering, James once again had a place upon which to build a better future.
36:25Substantial, suited to his status, with courtyards and saloons where he could hide from the Roman heat.
36:32A shadow palace.
36:38James and Clementina got down to the pressing business of making babies.
36:43On the last day of 1720, the heir of the palace was split by the cries of a very young pretender.
36:51Charles, Edward, Louis, Philip, Casimir, Sylvester, Maria, Stuart.
36:59He was a remarkably bonny baby.
37:02James called him Carluccio, Italian for Little Charles.
37:07His mother stuck to her native Polish.
37:10She called him Carlusu.
37:14He grew.
37:23Charles was a source of intense satisfaction.
37:26Charles was a source of intense satisfaction for his father.
37:30His very existence was proof that the shadow dynasty was real,
37:33that its fortunes would improve, that it would become a reality.
37:38Charles's upbringing was carefully English.
37:41As a young boy, he was taught to speak English.
37:43He ate English.
37:44Roast beef was often on the menu.
37:47James brooded over him.
37:49When the time came for him to take the throne,
37:51he would not be, as the Hanoverians were, a foreigner.
37:55He would be going home.
38:02In 1725, two things happened for the second time.
38:07James and Clementina had a second child, Henry.
38:11And in Scotland, the government tried once more to introduce a malt tax.
38:19The riots that followed were predictable and violent.
38:23They had almost nothing to do with Jacobitism,
38:26but George I's government decided to behave as though they did.
38:30They sent one General Wade to Scotland
38:33with a brief to secure the Highlands against Jacobite insurgents.
38:41The Highlands had remained a nest of Jacobite vipers for so long
38:46because of their inaccessibility.
38:48Wade's job was to tame the Highlands
38:51by subjecting them to bridges and roads.
38:58Between 1726 and 1737,
39:01Wade would construct 260 miles of roads across the Highlands,
39:05studied every few miles with barracks and forts.
39:09It was a massive demonstration of the Union's power
39:12and an indispensable first step in taming the landscape.
39:18MUSIC
39:29The year after Wade began building his roads, George I died.
39:34His son, George II, succeeded to the throne without a hitch.
39:39And in Montrose, the foundations of a house were laid.
39:44When finished, it would be home to David Erskine.
39:48The 13th Laird of Dunn, a close relation of Bobbing John Marr.
39:54Erskine was a pillar of the Scottish legal establishment.
39:58Best remembered for a legal tome
40:00known as Lord Dunn's Friendly and Familiar Advices,
40:03a handy dandy book of tips
40:05for dealing with all of life's little legal emergencies.
40:08David Erskine was hardly a threatening figure.
40:11But his heart, like the hearts of many still in Scotland's northeast,
40:16belonged to James Stewart and his infant heir,
40:19Charles Edward, who was now five years old.
40:25And at the heart of his house,
40:27he allowed himself an expression of his true sympathies.
40:40On one wall, a plea to the sea god Neptune.
40:43Storms had provided the most reliable defence against Jacobite invasion.
41:10These elaborately violent carvings
41:11were commissioned at the last stages of the house's construction in 1740.
41:18They depended entirely on the language of myth,
41:21which was what the dream of Stewart restoration seemed increasingly to be.
41:25The Stewarts had been in exile for over 50 years.
41:42But, in fact, the ice was melting.
41:50The French had decided, after 27 years of peace,
41:53to make war on Britain once again.
41:56And Charles Edward had matured into the sort of leader
41:59his father could never have been.
42:01An athlete of stunning charisma.
42:05And a man of extraordinary talent.
42:12In November of 1743, a request arrived at the Palazzo del Rey.
42:17A request from the King of France
42:19for the pleasure of the company of Prince Charles Edward
42:23on an invasion of Britain.
42:27Charles left a month later, incognito.
42:32He took two documents with him.
42:34The first, in James's name,
42:36declared him sole regent of England, Scotland and Ireland.
42:40His father had decided, sensibly, to recede into the background.
42:44The other document promised religious liberty,
42:47regular parliaments,
42:48a limit on crowned servants in Parliament itself.
42:52All the freedoms that the glorious revolution had still not provided.
42:59Everything he needed, bar the weather.
43:02A storm damaged the invasion fleet
43:04and the French cancelled the expedition.
43:07Charles Edward, however, did not.
43:10He bought weapons with borrowed money,
43:12took with him seven chosen companions
43:15and sailed for Scotland in July of 1745.
43:30By the second week of August,
43:32he had landed on Scotland's west coast.
43:35A week later, he was here in Glenfinnan,
43:38raising the Stuart colours,
43:41addressing the faithful Highlanders.
43:45It was like a dream.
43:46A dream he had dreamed all of his life.
43:49I've not come out of divine right,
43:51he told the Camerons, the Kepochs, the men of Clan Ranald.
43:55I have come to make my beloved subjects happy.
43:59The Glen resounded.
44:00The army he addressed was far from large.
44:03Many clans that had once favoured the Jacobites
44:06had switched to the Hanoverians.
44:08Much less than half the country would support him,
44:11but much less than half the country would oppose.
44:15By the 1740s, one note was dominant in the minds of most Scots
44:19where the union was concerned.
44:22The unions were divided on the basis of the number of men.
44:26The majority of the men were of the Highlanders.
44:29The number of men was concerned.
44:32Indecision.
44:37But no matter.
44:38As the echoes died away in Glenfinnan,
44:41Charles was happy and full to bursting with hope.
44:45More than those few would rise and follow him,
44:48he was sure of it.
44:51As they marched, some people joined,
44:54most people simply let them pass.
44:56Their army was small, but quite possibly big enough.
45:01In Perth, they were joined by Lord George Murray,
45:03who'd fought for James in 1715.
45:06Charles disliked him, but Murray was a seasoned soldier.
45:11He became the army's general.
45:13They marched on Edinburgh.
45:18They entered Edinburgh here,
45:20in the early hours of the 17th of September,
45:23to where the city's Netherbole Gate once stood.
45:28The government garrison fled to the castle and stayed there.
45:35Charles' officers went to the Market Square
45:37to proclaim the reign of James VIII,
45:40King of Scotland, England and Ireland,
45:43leaving Charles free to go to Holyrood,
45:45the palace of his ancestors.
45:54Charles' entry to Holyrood Palace was... triumphant.
46:03Afterwards, with the crowds still cheering outside,
46:07perhaps he wandered through its empty rooms,
46:10rejoicing amongst the dustsheets.
46:24For a few days, the shadow monarchy and the real world agreed.
46:29Agreed with Charles' vision of himself as well.
46:32See, the conquering hero comes.
46:39There was a Stuart in Holyrood, of the true senior line,
46:43for the first time in almost 60 years.
46:46One fit for purpose, destined for this, fated for this.
46:51Or so it seemed.
46:53He couldn't stay long.
46:55The government's forces had finally concentrated east of Edinburgh,
46:59at Prestonpans.
47:01Once more, Charles addressed his troops.
47:04Once more, his address was efficient, stirring, short and sharp.
47:09Gentlemen, I have flung away the scabbard, he said.
47:13With God's help, I will make you a free and happy people.
47:17God's help wasn't needed.
47:19A local showed them a path through the marshes
47:21that defended the government position.
47:23The slaughter was awful, but brief.
47:26Charles called a halt to it, appalled,
47:28and ordered his surgeon to attend to the government wounded.
47:31They are my father's subjects, he said.
47:37After Prestonpans, Lord George Murray told Charles
47:40that they should simply take Scotland and keep it.
47:44After all, ending the union had been a Stuart promise
47:47since 1708.
47:50But Charles persuaded his supporters that victory awaited them
47:54in London.
48:01They marched south, hugging the west coast.
48:04Two government armies had been deployed against them.
48:07General Wade marched down the other side of the country,
48:10and there was a second force somewhere ahead,
48:13led by the son of King George,
48:15the Duke of Cumberland.
48:17Charles dragged his army and his increasingly unwilling general
48:21as far as Derby,
48:23and there Murray insisted on a council of war.
48:27Charles urged attack.
48:29London was so close, but Murray was unmovable.
48:33There was Wade to the east,
48:35the Duke of Cumberland to the south,
48:3710,000 men apiece,
48:39and there was a third force.
48:41Murray had a witness.
48:43A man called Dudley Bradstreet.
48:45Yes, said Bradstreet, there was a third force.
48:48It was large, 9,000 men in Northampton.
48:52Charles had Bradstreet ejected from the meeting.
48:56It was too late.
48:58The Jacobite leaders voted to fight another day.
49:05Charles could only watch in horror.
49:07They were voting to make his life meaningless.
49:11But Charles had been right.
49:13Wade was indeed too old and too cautious
49:16to engage the Jacobites,
49:18and the Duke of Cumberland's force was only the size of their own.
49:22As for Dudley Bradstreet, he was an English spy.
49:25There was no third force.
49:27There were only nine men ready to resist in Northampton,
49:30and the Duke of Cumberland,
49:32the Duke of Cumberland,
49:34the Duke of Cumberland,
49:36the Duke of Cumberland,
49:38nine men ready to resist in Northampton,
49:40as Bradstreet later cheerfully confessed.
49:43And to make matters worse,
49:45on the day they met in Derby,
49:47a French army of 15,000 men was preparing to embark in Boulogne.
49:51Charles could very easily have taken London.
49:58What if Dudley Bradstreet had missed that meeting in Derby?
50:02Charles might have prevailed, taken London,
50:05and set about making good on the promises his family had been making since 1693.
50:11Britain would have been a very different place.
50:15In the real world, the freedoms and reforms that the Stuarts promised
50:19wouldn't come for almost a century.
50:26But now they were marching north,
50:28to Charles' appointment with real history,
50:31his true destiny, his fate,
50:34on Culloden Moor.
50:52By the day of the battle, the 16th of April, 1746,
50:56Charles' relationship with Moray was one of mutual loathing.
51:00There was virtually no communication between them,
51:03and the Jacobites were effectively uncommanded,
51:06left at one point to stand immobile for minutes on end
51:10under a rain of government cannonballs and grapeshot,
51:13as though it was simply weather,
51:15the very heaviest of rain, a mortal downpour.
51:22The defeat was total,
51:24and as the Klansmen melted under his superior firepower,
51:28Cumberland let it be known that any of his officers who showed mercy
51:32would be severely punished.
51:34No punishments proved necessary.
51:37Charles fled the field.
51:46The remnant of the Jacobite army gathered at the nearby Ruthven Barracks.
51:504,000 men.
51:52Enough to try again.
51:54Enough to need a leader.
51:57Charles never came.
51:59He sent a message instead.
52:01He was going to France.
52:03He would return with an army.
52:05Let each man seek his safety how he will.
52:08For Charles' followers, the message was easily decoded.
52:13I'm leaving you to your fate.
52:15There you go, said one of Charles' generals.
52:17There you go, for a damned Italian.
52:20The prince was gone, vanished into the heather,
52:23like an embarrassed shadow.
52:26All flesh is grass.
52:29It said so in the Bible.
52:31The government applied the phrase to the flesh of any Jacobites that it could capture.
52:36The king's son, the Duke of Cumberland, came north for the harvest.
52:44Reports of the horrendous bloodshed must have come to Charles
52:47as he fled in the heather, dressed as a woman.
52:50The news must have caused him pain and guilt.
52:54But he hid the pain and guilt away.
52:59Charles went AWOL.
53:01He returned to France, but not to Rome.
53:04James wrote him letters.
53:06Increasingly desperate letters.
53:08Come home, Carluccio.
53:10He was still a father.
53:12Charles was still a son.
53:14James wrote him letters.
53:16He was still a father.
53:18Charles was still a son.
53:21They could sit in Rome, in a hospitable restaurant,
53:24and talk about their might-have-beens, their near-misses,
53:27their barely-averted collisions with real power,
53:30a real throne,
53:32a real kingdom.
53:37Perhaps that was why Charles stayed away.
53:40His father had learnt to accept failure.
53:43He would only remind Charles of how real this wrong world was.
54:01In Scotland, the reality of Hanoverian rule was putting down roots.
54:07Wade's roads had made the highlands reachable.
54:10Now, Cumberland ordered the highlands mapped.
54:16And within ten years, their rugged grandeur,
54:19their dim valleys,
54:21their secret places were flattened, tamed, and known forever.
54:30As the maps were made, a massive fort was under construction
54:34at the top of the Great Glen.
54:37Fort George nailed the highlands to the Union,
54:40almost the last step in the pacification.
54:47That last step required blood and bone for the mortar in the walls.
54:57In the European wars of the 1750s,
55:00highlanders died for Britain in their thousands.
55:07Hanoverian reality grew stronger,
55:11and the Shadow Kings became, at last, impossible.
55:16In 1766, James died.
55:19His reign, had it been real, would have lasted 64 years.
55:25He was laid here, in the crypt of St Peter's.
55:30Charles returned at last to Rome,
55:34Charles returned at last to Rome.
55:37He applied for recognition as King of Scotland, England and Ireland.
55:42The Pope refused.
55:47For the rest of his life, Charles devoted himself
55:50to desperate schemes for restoration.
55:53He steeped the athlete he'd once been in alcohol.
55:58He never ceased to hate the version of reality he'd been condemned to.
56:04But there was no room in history for Charles,
56:07not since Culloden Moor.
56:11The only place there was room for him was in the realm of myth.
56:15The golden boy, the flight through the heather, over the sea to sky.
56:19The myth was glorious, and it still is.
56:22Not like the real, unreal King,
56:25who died in Rome on the 31st of December, 1788,
56:29when his family had been throneless for just a few months short of a century.
56:43After his death, the Pope relented.
56:46He recognised dead Charles as King of England, Scotland, Ireland.
56:52A monument was given pride of place near the entrance of St Peter's,
56:56dedicated to the Stuarts of Rome,
56:59James VIII, his sons Henry and Charles III.
57:04It drew a veil over Charles' real death.
57:13Overweight, stroke-ridden, obsessed,
57:16alcoholic, unhappy,
57:19and still dreaming,
57:21till the moment that his mind fell silent of what might have been.
57:27The Shadow King was dead.
57:29The Union was real.
57:33The Scots had learnt, long since,
57:37to live with it.
57:49To be continued...
58:19To be continued...