Bonnie Prince Charlie – retreat.

000106_hartington_exterior_001.jpgThe Jacobites left Derby on the 6th December but William Augustus (the duke of Cumberland) didn’t get the information until the next day.  He set off in hot pursuit hoping to catch Charles on English soil.  Meanwhile the Jacobites headed back the way that they came with brief interludes for making local legends.  For reasons best known to himself and the original story teller Bonnie Prince Charlie  allegedly diverted off the main road at Ashbourne for a quick jaunt around the White Peak – he also allegedly stayed in Hartington where he took a mistress – one night stand might be a more apt description- who died presumably from love and who continues to haunt Hartington Hall waiting for her prince to return, pictured above.  Far more likely is the tale of the landlord of the Royal Oak by the River Dove who failed to part with his horse when the Jacobites demanded it and was shot for his pains.

Anyway, as Cumberland pursued the Jacobites north, General Wade who’d made it all the way to Yorkshire headed towards Lancashire in a bid to cut the Jacobite army off – clearly not a resounding success. Cumberland also wrote a sternly worded note to the local magistrates of Cheshire telling them it was their duty to slow the Jacobites down so that he could catch up with them.  It would appear that many magistrates nailed their letterboxes shut or suddenly found they had pressing engagements elsewhere not least because in the aftermath of the Jacobite army heading south many of the local militias had been disbanded having been palpably useless during the Jacobite advance. Oates makes the point that there wasn’t a Cheshire militia because the focus had been on building Chester’s defensive strength. By the 16th December Cumberland was in Preston and not amused by the fact that the citizens of the North West of England had failed to intercept the Jacobites.

There were the occasional skirmishes.  In Macclesfield one Jacobite was shot dead and in Manchester loyalists threw clods of earth at the retreating army but swiftly ran away themselves when the rear guard took exception to their treatment.

By the time the Jacobites arrived in Westmorland and Cumbria (to avoid confusion with the duke) the situation had changed.  The retreating army was less chivalrous than it had been on its march south.  The men who made up its parts were now looting and pillaging – they were becoming steadily more desperate. The regular army was catching up – as Bonnie Prince Charlie got up in the morning and rode off his hosts barely had time to change the bed sheets (if indeed they did) before the duke of Cumberland arrived looking for a bed for the night!

The advance party of Jacobites arrived in Kendal on the 14th December.  It was market day.  There were scuffles. A Jacobite was killed and in the exchange of gunfire that followed so was a Kendal cobbler.  In total four men died that day. The Jacobite advance party headed for Penrith via Shap and Orton.  The country was alight as it had been in the days of the border reivers with beacons being lit to warn of the Jacobite approach and skirmishes between the Scots and rural Cumbrians.

By now Cumberland was writing to those in authority demanding that they tear up roads and fell trees to stop the Jacobites in their tracks. The road from Kendal to Shap was broken.  With this information and the speed of the retreat its no wonder that horses fell in their traces on the pull up the hills over Shap. On the  16th December, the main  part of the army was at Shap. However, the rear guard commanded by Lord George Murray was delayed because of the difficulty of moving the wagons and what artillery they did have.  Many of the wagons broke or were simply too heavy to haul up the road.  Smaller carts had to be requisitioned and the contents of the wagons redistributed. The remnants of a cart and a horse skeleton would be found in a ravine demonstrating the difficulties of transport in the eighteenth century.  Every delay saw Cumberland drawing closer.

DSC_0077-54.jpgclifton war grave49.jpg It was at Clifton,outside Penrith that Cumberland’s advance party clashed with the Jacobite rearguard who had been ordered to conceal themselves behind two hedges.  It was the 18 December and was to be the last battle on English soil.  As the sunset the two sides met and both sides claimed victory – whilst the Redcoats retained the field the Scots could very justifiably argue that their retreat had not been impeded. The St Cuthbert’s Church, Clifton contains a memorial to the men of Bland’s regiment who fell during the skirmish and there is a roadside memorial to the battle.  Cumberland stayed the night at Townend Cottage.

A site known as the Rebel’s Tree in Clifton was where 15 Jacobites were thought to have been buried but an archeological dig preluding a housing development failed to uncover their grave although it did yield rather a lot of musket balls.  The archeological report noted that the railway embankment could have destroyed the graves or that the bodies lay within the restricted 20m zone around the tree which is protected not only because of its links with the battle but because it was also the local hanging tree.

On the morning of the 19th December the Jacobites were back in Carlisle and the recruits of the Manchester Regiment were having to decide whether to continue with the army or disperse and go home.  Cumberland would arrive outside Carlisle’s gates on the 21st December. Carlisle found itself under siege but this time, unlike so many in the past – the Scots were inside the city gates rather than outside.

Oates, Jonathan D. (2006) The Jacobite Invasion of 1745 in North West England. Lancaster: Lancaster University

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The grocer and Bonnie Prince Charlie

bonnie prince charlie.jpgBonnie Prince Charlie’s entry to Carlisle on a white horse followed by the declaration of his father as James III at the foot of the market cross all seems very straight forward but as with much to do with the rebellion of 1745 an element of farce is never far away.

Charles was based at Blackhall but heard that Wade was moving from Newcastle to intercept him, so the prince shifted to Brampton where he stayed in what is now known as Prince Charlie’s House on High Cross Street. It has a blue plaque.  In Carlisle the deputy mayor had a rush of blood to the head at the Jacobite departure. Thomas Pattinson wrote a niftily worded note to the government  and the London Gazette to the effect that Carlisle had routed the enemy and that it had outdone Edinburgh – he also managed to infer that it was all thanks to him.

Unfortunately for Pattinson the Jacobites returned the following day and behaved in a most unchivalrous way by turning the locals into human shields.  Pattinson surrendered and offered up two thousand pounds if the Scots would promise not to ransack the place.  This happened on the 15th of November as you may recall from my previous post.

Inside the castle, Captain Durand took an audit of their situation. Durand had received a letter on the 10th November from Wade saying that he probably wouldn’t arrive in Carlisle in time.  The castle was not what it had once been- it was likened at one point in its history to a ‘chicken coop,’ the militia refused to fight and the castle was garrisoned by the elderly and the infirm. Prior to the rebellion extra groups had been requested but this had been turned down on the grounds that it would have cost too much money.  Fifty pounds could have halted the Jacobites in their tracks – medieval monarchs were well aware of the importance of Carlisle as a strategic key to the kingdom.  The knowledge had been lost and in November 1745 the Scots were able to take advantage of the situation even though they didn’t have much in the way of canon.  The castle surrendered the next day and after the rebellion Durrand was court-martialled but acquitted. In addition to being hobbled by the state the Government had left Carlisle in there was the small matter of the Jacobites forcing local women and children to walk ahead of them rather preventing Durand from firing the castle guns.  The city folk were also quite keen that the castle surrender asap because the Scots refused to accept the town’s surrender without the castle.

Meanwhile all was not well in the Scottish camp.  Lord George Murray had not been impressed by Prince Charles’ failure to rotate troups according to Riding so resigned his commission. It was symptomatic of the difficulty that Charles would increasingly face as the Jacobites travelled further south.  His men were not a cohesive body and prone to their own jealousies and agendas.  The Duke of Perth also resigned his commission whilst the Jacobites were in Carlisle added to which there was dissension amongst Charles’ advisers about whether they should advance further into England or return to Scotland.  The main problem seems to have been the lack of support – folk were not flocking to the Stuart colours – only two notable Cumbrian gentlemen arrived to swell their numbers, though once the Jacobites arrived in Lancashire which was more Catholic the numbers of recruits rose.  I should add that whilst the 1715 uprising had been almost entirely Catholic in flavour the 1745 rebels were Catholic, Episcopalian and there were even some Presbyterians amongst their number it was simply that not many people wanted the Stuarts back including some of those who’d merrily been drinking toasts to the ‘king over the water.’

Ultimately Colonel John Hamilton was left in charge of Carlisle’s Jacobite garrison with a hundred men and Sir John Arbuthnot who was named governor of Carlisle whilst the prince and the rest of the army headed down the A6 towards Penrith where the prince spent the night in what is now the George Hotel but which was then known as the George and Dragon; Kendal on November 20th where the mayor promised not to resist (but didn’t manage an entire song about it).  The Jacobites remained in Kendal for forty eight hours.  The prince stayed in a house on Strickland Gate (yes- there is a plaque- there are plaques all over the countryside from Carlisle to Derby based on Bonnie Prince Charlie’s pronouncements and sleeping habits) and the Angel Inn gained a legend that a child was saved from certain death at the hands of a Jacobite by the appearance of a helpful angel. Part of the reason for the decision to continue south was that the fall of Carlisle in the aftermath of Prestonpans and the fall of Edinburgh gave Prince Charles the prestige of victory.

Tomorrow’s post will take the Jacobites south to their fateful meeting at Exeter House  in Derby and the decision to turn back at a point where had they but known it London was in a state of chaos.  The Jacobites would be back in Kendal on the 13 December 1745 and they would be back in Carlisle by the 19th December with William Augutus better known as the Duke of Cumberland in hot pursuit.

Meanwhile the deputy mayor of Carlisle had become the topic of a ballad – and it wasn’t terribly flattering:

O Pattison ! ohon ! ohon !

Thou wonder of a Mayor !
Thou blest thy lot thou wert no Scot

And blustered like a player.

What hast thou done with sword or gun

To baffle the Pretender ?
Of mouldy cheese and bacon-grease

Thou much more fit defender.

front of brass and brain of ass

With heart of hare compounded,
How are thy boasts repaid with costs

And all thy pride confounded 

Thou need’st not rave lest Scotland crave

Thy kindred or thy favour ;
Thy wretched race can give no grace,

No glory thy behaviour.

 

The reference to cheese and bacon grease is made because Pattinson was actually a grocer and whether it was fair is another matter entirely as much of our understanding of the period comes from a source personally hostile to the deputy mayor.

Riding, Jacqueline. (2015) Jacobites: A New History of the ’45 Rebellion London:Bloomsbury Publishing

Carlisle in ballad and story. A lecture delivered before the Carlisle Scientific and Literary Society, on October 31st, 1911; and … to the Cumberland and Westmorland Association of London, on February 21st, 1912