2 - Jacobitism and religious belief in the British Atlantic world

Summary

Religious belief provided much of the intellectual foundation for Jacobitism. In order to appreciate fully the extent, appeal and significance of Jacobitism throughout the British Atlantic world, it is necessary to understand its complex relationship with the variety of religious beliefs which nurtured it. Roman Catholics, members of the Church of England and Scottish Episcopalians each in their own manner held to notions of loyalty which helped to perpetuate Stuart claims to the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the empire throughout the Atlantic. Jacobitism was, for example, an integral aspect of Scottish Episcopalian belief from 1689 through to at least 1745. Similarly, it energised religious controversies that plagued the Church of England throughout the eighteenth century. Older works on nonjurors have also illustrated the complex relationship between religious beliefs and Jacobitism. English Catholic Jacobites also expressed Jacobitism in terms of both support for their co-religionist James and also an abiding royalism. Religious beliefs, therefore, were integral to the ideological foundations of the Jacobite movement and thus bred, nurtured and inculcated Jacobitism at all levels of society.

Despite the relationship between Jacobitism and religious beliefs, little attention has been paid to the intriguing possibilities that this connection presents in the broader context of the British Atlantic. Scholars have only recently wrestled with the complexity of Jacobite ideology in a British context, and little of this scholarship has survived an Atlantic crossing. This is partly because in the immediate aftermath of 1688 the ideology of Jacobitism was itself somewhat broad and ill-defined. Initially, Jacobites in the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland had little to bind them together other than a belief in the hereditary right to the throne of James vii&ii. If this were true for the various states of the British archipelago, it was equally if not more true for the entire British Atlantic.

Yet, over the next twenty-five years, as the process of anglicisation promoted a degree of ideological conformity among the various Episcopalian Churches, it also effected the development of a more coherent Jacobite ideology. Though possessing divergent goals following a restoration, various groups of Jacobites increasingly drew on a shared ideology.