George Lockhart of Carnwath, 1689-1727: A Study in Jacobitism

This text is an essay in the retrieval of a lost outlook. The complex of political thought, beliefs about the contemporary world and the perception of history that sustained the Scottish Jacobite community has long remained obscure. In consequence, we know little of the nature and motivation of a subversive community whose influence on the development of state and society in Scotland and the British Isles in the 18th century was immense. Daniel Szechi rectifies this anomaly by an in-depth analysis of the attitudes, beliefs and assumptions – the mentalite – of one of the most active Jacobites of the early 18th century: George Lockhart of Carnwath. Lockhart was almost a stereotypical 18th-century Scottish coming man: a Commissioner for Midlothian in the Scottish Parliament; a member of the Commission charged with negotiating the treaty of Union; M.P. for Midlothian at Westminster; an improving landlord; an accomplished writer and pamphleteer. But most important of all, he was a committed, passionate Jacobite and nationalist who rose to become one of the senior leaders of the Jacobite underground in Scotland in the period between the rising of 1715 and the more famous ’45.The author sheds light on the inner workings of Jacobitism in Scotland during the traumatic years leading up to and following the Union of 1707.