The Jacobites were supporters of the claim to the British throne of the deposed James II and his son James, the "Old Pretender." Though a few of the old Tories in England worked secretly for the Jacobite cause, the chief centers of Jacobite resistance were in Scotland and Ireland, and were supported, of course, by the French, with whom the English, at the time, were more or less continually at war. For sixty years after the "Glorious Revolution" in 1688, there were real or imaginary Jacobite plots, though there were only two serious revolts, in 1715 and in 1745. The "15," a rising under the "Old Pretender" in Scotland and Northumberland, was an attempt to overthrow the recent succession to the throne of the Hanoverian George I. The "45" involved a much larger rising of the Scottish Jacobite Highland chiefs under "Bonnie Prince Charlie," Charles Edward Stuart, whose army won several victories in Scotland and invaded England -- ruled at the time by George II -- only to be forced back and slaughtered at the batttle of Culloden, effectively ending the Jacobite cause forever.
Last modified 1987.