JACOBITES by Pamela Hill
Whilst being a tremendously well-researched work on Scottish heraldic heritage,
this is not simply an account of Scottish history. The fact is that this book
contains the stories of men and women who genuinely believed in their
inheritance, their diversity and their ability to regain for Scotland and
England a truly great kingdom; they are the Jacobites.
From the time of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and James II’s fleeing the country, the Jacobite cause has existed. A strong belief that they
should serve the proper and rightful King was their strength and ambition, and
this feeling of existing for, and belonging to, the Jacobite movement is
something which has been passed down in many families throughout Scotland
across the intervening centuries.
The original mantle was passed from James II to James III and VIII de jure, and
then on to Charles Edward Stuart, the man known to all as Bonnie Prince Charlie
who fought at Culloden. Whilst this latter figure has been romanticised over
the years, with his flight from the battlefield aided by Flora MacDonald, this
book tells the story of all those others involved in the great Jacobite cause
before that fateful day. It includes the stories of many other truly heroic
women such as Clementina Sobieska, James III
’s wife and mother to Charles Edward, who travelled across the Alps incognito to
marry the man she loved although she had never yet seen him in person.
These individual stories of men and women bound by a single cause make an
interesting and compelling read, if sometimes tragic, and not all have
previously been published except as parts of family genealogies. So this is
probably the first comprehensive chronicle of those following that proud
Jacobite cause.
Pamela Hill
Full-time writer Pamela Hill was educated in Scotland and originally trained to
be a teacher. She has written around 91 books in various different categories
of fiction and non-fiction, but it is her historical work which now takes
precedence. From her home in Hertfordshire she is presently working on her
latest work of non-fiction, with recent published titles including
Lady Kate, the story of Lady Katherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly; Prinny Remembers – the Private Reflections of His Majesty King George the Fourth and A Tale of Strawberries – Shakespeare’s Journeys in Scotland.
