By the late seventeenth century there were hundreds of baronies in Scotland; however, in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745-1746, the British government enacted the Heritable Jurisdiction Act of 1747, which reduced the powers of barons and the nobility in general.

For this work, Mr. Dobson has traced the origin and line of descent of nearly 1,000 Scottish baronies and baronetcies, including some whose progeny eventually moved to the Americas. In assembling this unprecedented collection, Mr. Dobson consulted numerous primary and secondary sources. His principal source was the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland from about the year 1320. This required him to examine over 20,000 documents written in Latin. Typical of these descriptions is the following one for Hector McLean, Baron of Duart:

MCLEAN OF DUART IN ARGYLL. On 9 January 1540, King James V granted several properties in Inverness-shire incorporated into the Barony of Duart to Hector McLean, son and heir apparent of Hector McLean of Duart; on 12 November 1542 King James V granted Hector McLean, son and heir apparent of Hector McLean of Duart, the lands and Barony of Duart; on 4 February 1549, Queen Mary granted Hector McLean of Duart the lands and Barony of Ardgour in Inverness-shire; John McLean, alias Makaleer, a merchant in Gothenborg, Sweden, was enobled there in 1649, and later was created a Baronet by King Charles II during his exile, McLean died in Gothenborg when his son Sir John McLean succeeded to the title. Sir Hector McLean, son of Sir John McLean, a Jacobite who fought at the Battles of Killiecrankie and at Sheriffmuir. [An Anglicisation of the Gaelic Mac Gille Eoin meaning ‘son of the servant of John’, examples date from the thirteenth century.] [John McLean, a rebel, was transported to Jamaica in 1685, while Donald McLean, a merchant, died in St Augustine in 1778.] [The Jacobite Peerage, Edinburgh, 1904].

The work includes a list of principal sources and an appendix consisting of Scots-Irish baronetcies established in Ireland and in the New World.

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The population was relatively sparse with only a few small burghs mostly lying along the east coast, all of which had medieval origins. The burghs were Dingwall, Tain, Fortrose, Cromarty, Dornoch, Wick, and Inverness, with Scrabster and Thurso by the Pentland Firth, and Kingussie lying within the highlands. The only sizable burgh was Inverness. The people at the time were overwhelmingly Gaelic speakers, with Lowland Scots — who spoke a dialect of English — settled in the burghs. Similarly, placenames were predominantly in Gaelic though a few were based on Norse originals, such as Ullapool, based on Ulapul — Norse for ‘Wolf farm’– or Wick, from Vik the Norse for ‘bay’. Several local surnames superficially in Gaelic include a Norse element, such as McLeod or MacLeoid from the Norse ‘son of Ljotr’, or MacCorquodale based on the Norwegian personal name ‘Thorketill’.  There are also a few placenames indicating a Pictish origin, dating before 1000 AD, such as Petty, or Pitcalnie, or Pitkerrie. The Picts inhabited much of Scotland before the early Middle Ages, while the Norse Vikings settled in the Northern Isles, the Hebrides, and what is now Caithness and Sutherland [Suderland in Norse]. In the Medieval period the inhabitants spoke Norn, a Norse dialect, in such localities. However, by the seventeenth century Gaelic and Scots English were predominant.  The Reformation of the sixteenth century resulted in Scotland becoming officially a Protestant nation; however, in parts of the Highlands there were Roman Catholic enclaves, notably in Inverness-shire and on Barra.

Migration outwards from the Northern Highlands was initially small scale, apart from mercenaries who were recruited to fight for Scandinavia and the Netherlands, many of whom settled there. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1638-1651, led to enforced emigration or the transportation of prisoners of war, most of whom were captured at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 or the Siege of Worcester in 1651. These men were banished to the English colonies in the Caribbean, notably Barbados, or to Virginia and New England; they can be identified by their distinctive local surnames. Large-scale emigration from the Northern Highlands began in the eighteenth century and especially after the Highland Clearances of the mid-nineteenth century. The main clans or families during the seventeenth century were Sinclairs, Mackays, Sutherlands, McLeods, Rosses, Stewarts, McKenzies, Munros, Urquharts, Frasers, McDonnells, Chisholms, MacPhersons, McGillivrays, Davidsons, Gunns, McKinnons, MacDonalds, McLeans, Camerons, and Roses.

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Most family names found in this book were of Gaelic origin. Clans traditionally located in this region were the Campbells, Lamont, McIntyres, McGregors, McEwan, McCorquadale, McMillan, Malcolms or MacCallums, McLachlan, and Macleans.

During the seventeenth century, Scotland was subjected to several wars and rebellions. The Campbells of Argyll were prominent Presbyterians, and their clansmen opposed the forces of King Charles I of England; however, the king’s execution and the establishment of the English Republic by Oliver Cromwell was rejected north of the border. In response, Cromwell brought an army to Scotland and defeated the Scots at Dunbar in 1650. Charles II of Scotland sought to replace Anglicanism with Presbyterianism in England, and on that basis leaders such as the Earl of Argyll, with his men, joined the king’s invasion of England and were defeated at the Siege of Worcester in 1651.

In 1685 the Earl of Argyll raised an army from among his tenantry and kin in rebellion against King James II of England (James VII of Scotland), which was defeated on 27 May 1685. After this failure, the Earl was executed, many of his followers were captured, and some were transported in chains for sale in the Americas and the West Indies.

This book is largely based on documents located in the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh, including those of the Argyll Sheriff Court, church records, the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, sasines (property records), deeds, and military rolls. This work provides evidence of seventeenth-century links from Argyll with Ireland, Nova Scotia, New England, New Jersey, Jamaica, and Barbados. These early links led to significant emigration to Jamaica and North Carolina in the eighteenth century.

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Before 1800 Ireland was a separate kingdom but subject to the British king. The last king of Ireland was the Catholic King James II who encouraged the formation of Irish regiments. After James’ defeat at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 most of his forces, around 2,000 men, went to France, in what is known as the “Flight of the Wild Geese”, where they formed regiments in the French Army such as Montcashel’s, O’Brian’s, and Dillon’s. Irish soldiers fought in various campaigns in Europe and in Canada, and probably the Caribbean, until the French Revolution when they were disbanded.

The British Army did not enlist Irish Catholics during much of the 18th century as they were considered likely to be unreliable when opposing the forces of Catholic countries such as France and Spain, which contained many of their countrymen. Ireland was garrisoned mainly by British regiments, though new regiments were raised in Ireland, such as The Royal Regiment of Foot of Ireland and the Inniskilling Regiment.

Irish settlers in colonial America were recruited into local militias, such as the Virginia Regiment or the Montserrat Militia, which are identified in this book. During the American Revolution people of Irish origin could be found in both Loyalist and Patriot units, including the “Volunteers of Ireland”. The Loyalist Claims proved very useful in identifying Irish fighting men.

Between 1789 and 1815 Britain was at war with Napoleon’s France, necessitating an expansion of the British Army. In the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo the British government settled substantial numbers of demobilised soldiers, including Irishmen, in Canada. From about 1780 onwards the British regiments enlisted at least one-third of their recruits in Ireland; this increased to about 40% by the early 19th century owing to demand from the British Army and the East India Company.

For additional information about Irish recruits that served in the Colonies, see “A Historical Record of the 27^th [Inniskilling] Regiment”, by W C Trimble, [1851];  Richard Cannon’s “Historical record of the 18^th [Royal Irish] Regiment of Foot”, [London 1848]; and Steven M Baule’s “Protecting the Empire’s Frontier, Officers of the 18^th [Royal Irish] Foot”, [Ohio, 2013]; as well as the journals of the Army Historical Research Society, and those of the “Irish Sword”.

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Since the medieval period Scottish soldiers could also be found in the service of France–for example, during the One Hundred Years War between France and England. The 17th century saw Scots soldiers fighting for or against France. In 1627 King Charles I sent 2,000 Scottish fighting men to aid the English in the defense of the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle, which was besieged by the French Army. Conversely, Scots Catholics could be found in French or Spanish armies of the period, such as those of Colonel Sir John Hepburn or Lord George Gordon, Captain in Chief of Company of Men at Arms in the Service of King Louis XIII of France in 1625.

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1639-1651, involved Scottish soldiers in action in Scotland, England, and Ireland. Many Scottish soldiers, with years of military experience, returned from Europe to form the backbone of the Covenanter Army that opposed Charles I. The religious policies of King Charles I led to the Bishops Wars of 1639-1640, when the monarch unsuccessfully attempted to invade Scotland, and to the subsequent Scottish occupation of Newcastle, then the Irish Rising of 1641, followed by the English Civil War in 1642. Scottish soldiers participated in each of the latter upheavals.

The Jacobites were those who supported and fought for the return of the Stuarts to the thrones of England and Scotland from James II in 1688 until the death of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1788. There were several Jacobite risings or rebellions in the British Isles during the late 17th century, notably in Ireland, ending in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and in Scotland, where the Battle of Killiecrankie was most significant.

By the end of the 17th century, the Scottish Military Establishment was working closely with its English counterpart. Scottish regiments would fight alongside English ones against common enemies–for example, in the War of the League of Augsburg in the 1690s, which ended with the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. Several of the Scots soldiers, formerly fighting in Flanders, were recruited by the Scottish Darien Company to defend its settlement on the Isthmus of Panama.

The political union of Scotland and England led to the birth of the British Army and soon Scottish soldiers were fighting under the Duke of Marlborough at the Battle of Blenheim in Bavaria. The Union of 1707 increasingly provided opportunities under the British Crown for Scottish soldiers as the Empire expanded, so the appeal of service in continental armies declined.

This publication, based on original and secondary sources, identifies between 2,500 and 3,000 Scottish fighting men who served in a variety of military theaters in Europe and in the Americas. Dr. Dobson identifies each combatant by name, a location, a date, and the source, and in a number of cases by the names of next of kin, vessels traveled on, place of origin in Scotland, or other particulars.

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In the preparation of this volume, Mrs. McDonnell was able to profit from the Hanoverian government’s intention to gather as much information as possible on the rebels, about whom court records, jail records, and transportation orders abound today. Drawing on records in the Public Record Office in London and the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh, among others, she has here assembled an alphabetical register of 1,000 Highland Jacobites, giving, invariably, each person’s name, rank, date(s) of service, and unit (if military), and frequently the subject’s date and place of imprisonment, date and place of transportation, name of his vessel, and the place of arrival in the Americas. While these expatriates were carried to a variety of places in the New World, a disproportionate number of the Highland Jacobites are known to have disembarked in Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, and other places in the West Indies.

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In 1715 and again in 1745, a significant number of rebellious Scottish Jacobites could be found in the North East, an area dominated by Episcopalian landowners allied to the House of Stuart. This work identifies 2,000 North East Jacobites of 1715 and 1745, any number of whom either fled to France or were forcibly transported to the New World (to Maryland and Virginia, in particular). While the details vary, the biographical notices, in the aggregate, mention the individual’s dates of birth and death, the names or number of his family members, his town of origin, where he participated in the rebellion, and what became of him after the insurrection was put down (capture, imprisonment, execution, transportation, or flight). All in all, this is an important effort at historical preservation and a source of potential clues on eighteenth-century Scottish forebears.

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Who were the people who provided the military and civilian support that was so essential and who, in many cases, suffered transportation, exile, banishment, or a loss of social or economic position within their community? Information on the ordinary Jacobites is generally difficult to find, apart from those who fell into the hands of the government. This volume, however, provides a partial list of Jacobites of 1715 based on manuscript or printed primary sources. This compilation has been accumulated over several years, and some of the data has been used in Mr. Dobson’s previous books, such as Dictionary of Scots Banished to the American Plantations, 1650–1715. At the same time, there is significant new material in the book resulting from more intensive research; for example, from Richard MacGregor, who provided information on those Jacobites held in Lancaster Jail. Another new source was the Sheriff Court of Argyll, where all adult men living in Mull, Iona, Tiree, and other islands, as well on Morvern, were identified as to name, residence, weapons held, and whether they had fought for the Jacobite cause in 1715. Mr. Dobson has also scrutinized burgh records and estate papers of major landowners, such as the Earl of Dalhousie. In all, this mostly new collection identifies about 2,500 Jacobites of 1715 by name, date, place, and source, and in many cases by locality of origin, name of family member(s), name of vessel traveled upon, and destination in the Americas.

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