In 1715, the Old Pretender James Francis Stuart launched one of British history's most audacious and longest running rebellions to reclaim his throne from the Hanoverian king George I.
The Jacobite struggle has often been dismissed as a dynastic spat that culminated in Bonnie Prince Charlie's tragic defeat at Culloden in 1745. But rather than a Scottish story, Dr Clare Jackson reveals the Jacobite campaign took place on a European stage and inspired a nexus of international intrigue and covert plots. In this second episode of The Stuarts in Exile, Dr Clare Jackson reveals why so many law-abiding Scots and English were prepared to support the catholic Stuarts and how the new protestant Hanoverian regime hung by a thread, as George I and II struggled to impose their authority on frequently hostile and anti-European subjects.