On the 22nd December 1715,
a ship anchored off the north-east coast of Scotland.
Ashore stumbled a sick, bedraggled man.
Behind him, servants hauled a chest of gold.
The gold was to finance a rebellion, and the man
was a king back to claim his kingdoms.
For this was James Francis Stuart, rightful heir
to the thrones of Scotland, England and Ireland.
But there was no coronation party to greet James, no trumpet fanfare
no bonnets in the air, just a cold, empty beach
and a secretive dash into the dunes.
For this young king's return was a momentous one.
James and his family had been banished from these islands
nearly 30 years before.
But now he was back to retake his throne by force.
It was a pivotal moment in our history
and one that divided Britain.
To some, the Stuarts
and their Jacobite supporters were discredited relics of a bygone era.
Traitors intent on breaking apart a united, protestant Britain.
While, to others, the Stuarts were the solution to a broken Britain.
One ruled by corrupt governments, that had fought
illegitimate and unpopular wars, and crippled the country with debt.
But was the return of an outlawed royal dynasty really the answer?
By 1715, it was time to choose.
Are you for the Stuarts, or against them?
The answer would prove one of the greatest turning points
in European history.
TRUMPET FANFARE
At the 2015 state opening of Parliament,
Scottish Nationalist politicians could be seen wearing white roses,
in a modern poetic allusion to Scottish nationhood.
My government will also bring forward legislation to secure
a strong and lasting constitutional settlement,
devolving wide-ranging powers to Scotland and Wales.
But, for over 300 years, a white rose signified, emblematically,
a very special day.
The birthday of James Francis Stuart,
the man who arrived on that Scottish beach in 1715.
For his birth had transformed both the history of Britain
and the Stuart dynasty forever.
In 1688, James Francis Stuart was born as son
and heir to the king of these islands.
James VII of Scotland and II of England and Ireland.
James was the latest in a line of Stuart monarchs who had ruled
Scotland for centuries, and England and Ireland since 1603.
But, in 1688, James' reign was in crisis.
A devoutly Catholic King,
his actions had convinced many he was trying to return
his Protestant kingdoms to the Catholic Church.
From town boroughs to the army,
James was handing out high ranking jobs
to Catholics and Protestant nonconformists.
And when James' queen gave birth to a son and heir in 1688,
the concrete prospect of a permanent Catholic succession
brought James' kingdoms to the brink of civil war.
The solution was simple. He had to be stopped in his tracks.
It was time to find a more flexible ruler.
And, as luck would have it, one was available.
William of Orange, a Protestant prince.
William had married King James' protestant daughter, Mary,
and theirs was a union that enabled a new royal succession
without breaking the Stuart bloodline.
At the invitation of a small group of prominent politicians
opposed to James, William daringly sailed to England in November 1688
with a 15,000 strong invasion force.
And, here on Salisbury Plain, James planned to confront William
with an even bigger army of his own.
By James' side was a man whose job it was to stop
William in his tracks.
John Churchill, a loyal follower of King James
and one of his key military commanders.
But then something happened that changed everything.
John Churchill had, like many others, grown privately
disillusioned with James' brand of Catholic rule.
He was a canny political operator,
and was well aware that public opinion was turning against his king.
Churchill sensed the change in the wind and one thing was certain -
he had no intention of being on the losing side.
And, so, in the early hours of the 24th November 1688,
Churchill took a momentous decision.
Along with 400 other officers,
he deserted the royal camp and rode to join William instead.
Churchill had abandoned his king.
While James, rather than fighting for his crown,
fled the country with his infant son and wife.
Meanwhile, John Churchill was handsomely rewarded for his change
of sides by the new King William...
..as explained by Churchill archivist John Forster.
So, John, what are we looking at here? Well, this dramatic
and powerful document has massive historical importance.
It very much is at a key point,
a turning point in the whole history
of the house of Stuart, really,
where John Churchill
has supported the incoming William, deserted James,
and so he's given his reward, he's given the earldom of Marlborough.
And this is the significant part of the document here where you
see the actual first appearance in the history of this family,
later Dukes of Marlborough,
but here the first appearance of Marlborough.
And how significant was the creation of an earldom?
Well, it's absolutely critical, really,
because it indicates a massive change of commitment
from one political affiliation to another,
the winning side, if you like.
It was his reward, really, I mean earldom is really the first
significant step to high status in the peerage.
There are only two ranks above from there. There's Marquess
and, from there, there's Duke, both of which he later became.
So, Churchill very physically becomes Marlborough in this document.
Exactly that, yes.
The transformation from Churchill to Marlborough was a key moment.
It not only marked the birth of one of British history's most
iconic names, but, for the new King William,
it also signified the beginning of a crucial relationship.
Marlborough was a gifted military strategist
and William wanted him by his side.
But, whilst the new king admired Marlborough as a soldier,
he still doubted his loyalty.
And with good reason.
"Will I always, with the hazard of my life
"and fortune, endeavour to preserve your royal person and lawful rights,
"with all the tender concern and dutiful respect that becomes
"Your Majesty's most dutiful and most obliged subject and servant?"
This is from a letter that Marlborough wrote to James
within days of deserting him in Salisbury.
In the letter he apologises to the exiled king
and confirms his commitment to the Stuart cause.
Not exactly the sentiments you'd expect from someone who was
now clearly on the other side.
But this was the problem.
This letter was just the first of serial flirtations
between Marlborough and the exiled Stuart court
that lasted for the rest of Marlborough's life
and constantly casts doubt as to where his true loyalties lay.
Was he really still with the Stuarts, or was he against them?
It was a question that haunted James for many years.
But, in 1688, this was the least of his problems.
For James and his family were now homeless royal exiles,
destined to be guests to whatever foreign power would host them.
Luckily, there was one king who would.
Louis XIV of France.
Phenomenally powerful, Catholic,
and a valuable friend to the exiled Stuarts.
In Louis' eyes, James was no fugitive,
but was still the rightful ruler of England, Scotland and Ireland.
And the French king vowed to help him reclaim his thrones.
He accommodated James and his court in the grand opulence
of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a royal palace just outside Paris.
But Saint-Germain was something of a mirage.
Behind the magnificence of this palace's facade,
lay a different reality.
Saint-Germain had seen better days.
The palace was unpopulated and sparsely furnished.
But, strange as it may seem, this dilapidated French palace
which has been described as a labyrinth of misery, became
the command centre for Jacobite resistance over the next 20 years.
James surrounded himself with a motley crew of political advisors,
some totally committed, others cynically duplicitous.
But James Stuart's quest to regain his rightful thrones
would start from here.
And the first step in achieving that goal was for James to win
the support of his former British subjects.
From Saint-Germain, a remarkable propaganda machine was created,
churning out powerful stuff.
A battery of poetry and verse was commissioned,
aimed at reviving nostalgic memories of James' father, Charles I,
the martyr king who had been tried and executed years earlier
by the English parliament.
Adieu, false Brittains. My royalties I have trampled on....
My glory...
..be the stars which did ordain the Whigs...
..who by their damned rebellions brood
laid the three kingdoms all in blood.
This kind of rabble-rousing propaganda
was powerful and effective.
It instilled the idea that a great wrong had been committed,
that what would become known as
the Glorious Revolution had in fact been an illegal
and treacherous coup d'etat.
And it wasn't just poetry that was used to spread the message.
This was a multi-media blitz.
# Beware in bed, sir, every man When the English horse...#
Popular music of the day, cleverly infused with seditious
messages are now sung aloud
on the streets of Britain's towns and cities.
While pro-Jacobite newspapers and pamphlets were distributed
in their thousands and read in public houses and inns,
the hotbeds of Jacobite dissenters became known
as the Coffee House Militias.
Private clubs and societies also started to meet and discuss
the exiled king and his cause.
Clandestine rituals and symbols sustained Jacobite hopes.
Such as wearing the white rose of James and raising a glass
above a bowl of water to toast their exiled King across the sea.
And then there was the visual propaganda.
Images like this were reproduced en masse
and circulated throughout James' former kingdoms
so that, come the day of his return,
everyone would know exactly what their king looked like.
An artist's brush became the camera shutter of the day.
It all helped to sustain a powerful information network that
reminded subjects throughout Britain of the king they had lost and ensured
that his voice was still heard loud and clear from across the Channel.
It was persuasive stuff and propaganda remained by far
James' most effective weapon in his early years in exile.
But the Jacobite court knew it would need more than pictures
and words and claims of past injustices to reclaim the thrones.
For, in James' absence,
William's kingdoms were changing fast in ways that
threatened to eradicate any residual attachment to the Stuarts.
And much of this change was the work, not of the new king,
but a powerful new faction on the rise.
Hello, good morning, I'm standing for parliament in this constituency.
This is Alistair Henderson...
I'm standing for the oldest and the newest political party in Britain.
..hoping to represent the Whig Party, launched in 2014.
We're trying to offer a genuinely values based
and principled vision of what a good society would look like.
The emblem of a fox is a historical clue to the type of new Whig politics
that Alistair is promoting.
So, what is the new Whig party?
Well, we are a bunch of people who have been feeling
kind of disillusioned with the current political scene
and in particular feel that Britain needs once again
a party that's unashamedly idealistic, that's optimistic and
excited about the future, excited about change, open to the world and
really keen on getting
as many people as involved in democracy as possible.
We just think it needs revitalising.
But Alistair's progressive 21st century politics is directly
inspired by the Whig agenda that became dominant the 1690s.
Late 17th century Whigs had been determined to ensure
a permanent transfer of power from monarch to parliament.
And that ambition had made them the real architects of change in 1688.
To safeguard that change, the Whig leaders retained the initiative
and drew up a Bill of Rights.
From then onwards, Parliament became a permanent constitutional fixture.
Since that date, it's only been with MPs' consent
that taxes have been raised and foreign wars have been fought.
Never again would a monarch rule without parliament.
And King William gladly agreed.
What he most wanted was military might to fight his greatest enemy,
Louis XIV.
And now that the English Parliament had control of the country's
purse strings, MPs were willing to pay.
And the man who would help to fight William's French wars was
none other than the Earl of Marlborough.
Keen to prove his outward loyalty to the new king,
Marlborough set about helping William weaken the French.
While the exiled king that he'd betrayed could only sit back
and watch as William went to war against his only ally.
Louis.
Although James had worked hard to keep the Stuart claim alive
during the 1690s, the future looked bleak.
The exiled Catholic king was frail, ill and consumed by self-pity.
But consoled by dreams of possible sainthood.
In September 1701, James died at Saint-Germain.
But hopes for a Jacobite restoration remained alive.
They were now pinned to James' 12-year-old son and heir.
James Francis Stuart.
And, within months of his father's death,
Jacobite hopes gained ground
as fate stepped in to lend a hand.
While out riding in Hampton Court,
King William had an unfortunate encounter.
His horse stepped on a molehill
and threw him to the ground.
William later died from his injuries.
As Jacobites made a toast
to their little friend in the velvet waistcoat,
William was succeeded by his ageing and childless sister-in-law
Queen Anne.
Recognised as the next in line by the kings of France and Spain
and by the Pope himself,
the young James Francis Stuart had reason to be confident
he might yet be King
but a major obstacle lay in his way.
English MPs remained determined
to exclude the Catholic Stuarts from power.
And, to make sure,
they had passed a new law...
..the Act of Settlement,
which stated that only a Protestant claimant
could succeed Queen Anne on her death.
But, in their haste to shut the door on Jacobite claims,
English MPs had not paused to consider
another of the Stuarts' kingdoms...
..Scotland,
the ancient homeland of the Stuart dynasty.
As subjects of an independent kingdom
with its own separate parliament,
Scots did not relish the English assumption
that succession to the Scottish Crown
simply followed the dictates of English legislation.
But the English couldn't risk the possibility
of a Jacobite restoration in Scotland
followed by a French-backed invasion to reclaim the English throne.
And the way to ensure that both countries chose the same monarch
was to have the same parliament.
And, in 1707,
that's exactly what happened...
..by the Act of Union,
a constitutional marriage between Scotland and England
that lasts to this day.
Great Britain was born
and the union was meant to kill off Jacobite hopes permanently
but, ironically, the resentments it provoked,
especially in Scotland,
only strengthened them.
James was just 18 when the Act of Union was passed in 1707.
His entire life had been spent
pacing the corridors of the palace here at Saint-Germain,
carefully groomed to reclaim his blood right.
By the time he reached adulthood,
James was imbued with a single purpose -
to become King.
The Act of Union was yet another attempt to extinguish those ambitions
but, instead, the Jacobite court saw it as an opportunity.
The game of crowns that had, for almost 20 years,
been a furious propaganda war of words
was about to get a lot more serious.
James eagerly sent one of his agents, Nathaniel Hooke, to Scotland
to sound out likely levels of support for a Jacobite rising.
It was all enticing stuff,
and when Hooke returned to France
brandishing a document signed by ten Scottish nobles
and promising that the whole nation
will rise upon the return of its king,
the young and ambitious James was itching to act
and, in March 1708, he did.
James and his entourage, with 30 vessels and 6,000 French troops,
set sail from Dunkirk
en route to the east coast of Scotland.
As James saw it,
he was at last returning to the British shores he'd left as a baby
and it was time to reclaim his family's honour.
Except that it didn't prove to be quite that straightforward.
In an incident that would set the tone
for ensuing years of Jacobite rebellion,
young James' uprising didn't quite go to plan.
First, James had been struck down with measles before leaving France
delaying his departure.
Alerted to the suspicious massing of thousands of troops
on the French coast,
a twitchy English government was quick to act.
While Marlborough was ordered to strengthen England's borders,
the Scottish coastline was left undefended and ripe for attack.
James and his French armada were further hampered by winter storms
that blew them off course
and away from the planned invasion point in the Firth of Forth.
By the time they finally arrived,
government forces were waiting.
The game was up.
And James' French armada commander, Claude de Forbin, knew it.
Forbin had been given strict instructions by Louis himself
either to deliver James safely or not at all.
The French king needed a living Catholic monarch,
not a dead royal martyr,
and, with the prospect of an English fleet bearing down on him,
and with only a handful of Jacobite soldiers
having actually materialised on the mainland,
Forbin knew it was all over.
He upped anchor and dashed back to France.
The 1708 Jacobite uprising had failed.
But, while Queen Anne mocked James with a new nickname,
Old Mr Misfortunate,
in truth, the Jacobites had caught her government by surprise.
And, to make matters worse,
the very man who had contributed to Stuart misfortunes in 1688
now went from strength to strength.
Marlborough was by now not only a Duke
but also a British national hero.
A brilliant military strategist,
he'd won stunning victories on the Continent
from Blenheim to Ramillies.
He'd been made Captain General of the army,
while building work began on his most lasting physical legacy...
..Blenheim Palace,
Marlborough's prize
and a gift from a grateful Westminster Parliament,
which had started to fund its construction.
Hi, Peter. I'm Clare. Hi. Welcome to Blenheim Palace.
Thank you. Wow. Certainly got the wow factor.
Well, as you can see here, we have a 24-carat gold-leaf ceiling.
Well, it makes a statement, doesn't it? It makes a big statement.
That's what this is all about.
It's really a statement about how powerful he was.
He was a very popular hero at that time.
Blenheim was the clear embodiment of Marlborough's success.
An opulent palace full of the trappings of fame and wealth.
But, as he basked in his military glory,
Marlborough's very reputation was about to haunt him
as 18th-century British politics
took an unexpected turn.
Britain's aggressive warmongering on the Continent
might have benefited Marlborough
but, to his enemies, his victories were only distractions
from foreign wars that had been ruinously expensive
and of limited strategic gain,
and, as the Whigs' conquering hero, Marlborough was seized upon
as symbolising everything associated with Whig misgovernment.
To the Tory opposition,
Marlborough had primarily benefited himself
during the years of Whig dominance.
He'd amassed a great fortune,
was building this grand palace,
was demanding his military position be made permanent
and was behaving as though he were King.
Marlborough had to go
and so too did his Whig backers.
The Tory opposition was gathering strength
and, as a political party,
they couldn't have been more different to the Whigs.
The Tories now promoted themselves as the party of peace,
the prudent, country party,
and the champions of old English values.
In short, the attractive alternative
to an unpopular Whig government.
But the Tories were also something else.
They were staunch royalists
and their party contained a significant number
of Jacobite supporters,
which made them a powerful ally for James.
And, in 1710, they won a landslide parliamentary election.
For Marlborough, this was a disaster.
With the Whigs out of office, he, too, was out in the cold -
public enemy number one
and now the focus of a vindictive Tory witch hunt.
The new Tory administration accused Marlborough of corruption
and embezzling military funds.
Moves were made to impeach him
and, by late 1712, public vilification had become
so intense that Marlborough himself was forced to flee into exile.
It was all music to James' ears.
The very party that had masterminded his family's downfall had
been wiped out at the polls, while many of the Tories
now in power actively favoured a Jacobite restoration.
And, with Anne's health failing,
the end of the Protestant Stuart line was drawing near.
The timing felt right and James smelt another opportunity.
And he wasn't the only one.
Marlborough, it seemed,
was also sensing a possible change in Jacobite fortunes.
I'm meeting historian Daniel Szechi here at Blenheim to find out more.
Can you talk us through the exact nature of Marlborough's
correspondence with the Jacobite court in exile?
He'd always been in correspondence with the exiled courts
since the 1690s.
But there'd been a lapse, and then in 1713, through an intermediary,
he asks for somebody he can speak to.
What do we actually know about the content of the exchanges
that took place between Marlborough and the exiled court?
What Marlborough wanted at that point was to be
protected from impeachment and he said he would like permission from
Louis XIV to be allowed to settle in southern France for his health and
he asked specifically that James III contact Louis XIV and arrange this.
What was the significance of Marlborough
getting in touch for James?
For James, it was always possible
that if Marlborough had genuinely
at last turned to Jacobitism,
then he could be an ace card.
Marlborough was one of the best generals in Europe.
If he was on the Jacobite side,
it would have been an enormous gain in military terms
but, for Marlborough, it's all about reinsurance.
In the event that James returns,
he wants to be able to say,
"Well, I was always your secret friend".
Marlborough was clearly a powerful ally for the Stuarts.
But James also had good reason to doubt the loyalties of a man
who had not only betrayed his father in 1688,
but had also pledged empty promises before.
And James was right to be cautious.
# Hallelujah, hallelujah
# Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah... #
300 miles away, amid the ornate gardens and palace of Herrenhausen
lived George Ludwig of Hanover...
..whose family had been named as the next Protestant successors
to Queen Anne in the English Act of Settlement.
# Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah
# For the Lord God... #
When he wasn't in contact with James, Marlborough spent
much of his time in exile currying favour with the Hanoverians
and paving the way for a peaceful succession.
Once again, he was hedging his bets
and trying to keep in with both claimants to the throne.
# Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah... #
And it would be the signing of an international peace treaty
that finally helped Marlborough to make up his mind.
In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht ended a lengthy war between much
of Catholic Europe and Protestant Britain and her allies.
But Queen Anne's signing of the treaty included one key condition.
James had to be expelled from France.
Louis XIV was war-weary, physically unwell and desperate for peace.
He agreed.
For Marlborough, Louis XIV's expulsion of James
crystallised his own loyalties.
He now pinned his colours to the Hanoverians' mast.
But, for James, it was a major setback.
He now had to find another foreign home.
He finally settled in the town of Bar-le-Duc, in Lorraine -
now a region of north-east France but then an independent Duchy.
But James was isolated here
and more cut-off from his Jacobite supporters than ever before.
And while Marlborough secretly helped to pave the way
for a smooth Hanoverian succession,
back in London, the Tory administration was fatally split.
With the Tories bitterly divided between one faction
keen to persuade Queen Anne to support James' return as king
when she died and the other just as firmly opposed, the Whigs could
focus on the succession of their new king without anyone really noticing.
Frustrating for James,
Britain seemed on course to have a foreign prince with a very
distant claim as its new king,
while the next in line could only watch from afar here in Lorraine.
And, in October 1714, that's exactly what happened.
The Queen was dead - long live the King!
George I.
A new British king and the first in a lineage that continues to this day.
Marlborough was once again rewarded for his loyalty.
He was reinstated as Captain General of the British Army.
He got his Palatial Blenheim back and returned to London
to a hero's welcome.
But the birth of this new Hanoverian era proved divisive among
the people of these islands.
On 8th May 1715, just months after George I's coronation,
the Royal Standard was raised outside
St James' Palace in London to mark the King's birthday.
But the signal was not met by cheers of celebration,
but shouts of angry resentment.
For not everyone warmly welcomed the Hanoverian foreigner that now
sat on the British throne.
The Hanoverian succession had been constantly discussed in sermons,
newspapers and coffee houses throughout the country for months.
But when the new king set about exercising his will,
the popular mood began to change.
George was keen to reward those Whigs who had helped to
secure his succession with government posts.
But he was equally keen to punish Tory opponents.
Some were arrested and charged with fabricated offences,
and all Tories, however unjustifiably,
found themselves branded as basically disloyal to the Hanoverian cause.
Ostracized, regarded with suspicion, and excluded from power,
many Tories simply ran into the arms of committed Jacobites
and Tory anger fanned the flames of unrest.
The ugly mood in London quickly spread throughout England
and Scotland, highlighting just how polarized Britain
was at the time its new German monarch arrived.
The people of these islands faced a stark choice.
Did they want a united, Protestant Britain, ruled by a foreign
Hanoverian monarch, and a centralized Westminster parliament,
or the Catholic James Stuart,
a monarch who promised to dissolve the Anglo-Scottish union
and restore England and Scotland as independent nations, with
separate parliaments and toleration of different religious practices?
In short, were you for the Stuarts or were you for the Hanoverians?
The choice was a simple one
and, for the exiled James, it was the incentive to act.
It was time to draw the battle lines of rebellion once again.
Morning, Colin. Hi. I'm Clare. Good morning. Welcome to Lyon & Turnbull.
This is the largest hoard
of Jacobite memorabilia ever to be auctioned.
Well, a man who needs no introduction, the old pretender,
James, sitting here in armour, a very, very strong portrait.
It's part of a sale commemorating the 300th anniversary
of the often overlooked 1715 Jacobite rebellion.
They're lovely small objects that really tell many, many stories
and, as you can see, a great variety.
It was dubbed The '15
and it was one of the most significant flashpoints
in the Stuarts' century-long quest to regain their thrones.
But it's a story that's often neglected in Jacobite history -
a complex, yet fascinating affair,
far removed from the polished trinkets
and relics up for sale today.
First lot in the sale, ladies and gentlemen and bidding on this opens
at £1,200. 1,300, 1,400, 1,500,
1,600, 1,900, 2,000. Start me at 2,000.
Two-six is the telephone bidder.
Selling at £2,600.
By the summer of 1715, while the exiled Jacobites
set about planning James' future restoration, with the help of
French military backing, rebellion continued to brew across Britain.
Support for the Jacobites was particularly strong
in southern England, and was led by the Duke of Ormonde,
a committed supporter of the Stuarts,
an experienced soldier and a former Captain General of the British Army.
Along with other Jacobite supporters, Ormonde started
to orchestrate risings across the towns and cities of the south-west.
But the sudden raising of Jacobite forces instantly raised
the alarm within a twitchy and constantly alert Whig government.
In July 1715, the King addressed parliament, confirming that
the Pretenders' invasion plans were already well known.
A reward of £100,000 was offered to anyone who captured James
should he arrive on British soil, and there were mass arrests
of anyone suspected of Jacobite plotting.
It was the first important flashpoint of the rebellion.
Would the English Jacobites rise up en masse as required?
No, they would not.
With a hefty bounty now placed on his head,
Ormonde abandoned the south-west offensive and fled to France.
Panicked by the loss of their leader,
the English Jacobites gave up the fight and went into hiding.
And it was into this vacuum that one of the key players
of the 1715 rebellion emerged.
The Earl of Mar was a prominent Tory politician
and a man deliberately ostracized by the new Hanoverian regime.
Mar had enthusiastically joined the Jacobite ranks.
but, after the rapid collapse of the south-west offensive,
Mar realised he needed to take the initiative.
Government forces were on high alert
and hunting down suspected Jacobite ringleaders.
Mar needed to act quickly.
He left London in early August 1715,
and headed north to the one place
he knew Jacobite support remained strong.
Mar's plan was to invite influential nobles and clan chiefs
from across Scotland to join him in a major Jacobite uprising.
Here in the Highland town of Braemar,
the Jacobite standard was raised on the 6th September.
Mar then delivered a stirring speech to the gathered crowd
in which he claimed that his eyes had now been opened to the
cursed union and the negative impact of Hanoverian rule.
It was powerful rhetoric, and together with assurances that
King James himself was now en route to Scotland with French
reinforcements, it was an enticing prospect for those listening.
But, as Mar waved James Stuart's declaration of war,
he made a fatal strategic error.
He had declared too early.
For, in France, Old Mr Misfortunate had been hit by yet another setback.
Louis XIV had died just days before Mar's speech in Braemar
and had been succeeded by his sickly five-year-old great grandson.
Control of French policy passed to Louis's nephew,
who did not favour the Stuarts.
So, French support for Jacobite rebellion went cold
and James' invasion plans had stalled.
Louis' death was bad news for the rebellion's chances.
And it was fatal for Mar.
Oblivious to events back in France, Mar had already started
the Scottish Jacobite uprising in earnest.
Supported by many Scottish clansmen and lowlanders, Mar had rallied
a sizeable army and started marching south into central Scotland.
At the beginning of October 1715, most of Scotland
was in fact controlled by the Jacobites.
The nation was theirs for the taking.
And things were looking up elsewhere.
Support for the Stuarts had always been strong
in the north-east of England.
And, as Mar's Scottish rebellion gathered momentum, Jacobites
here in the north-east also began to think about making a move.
The ringleaders were local Tory MP Thomas Forster
and a young nobleman, the Earl Of Derwentwater.
On 5th October, they gathered here at this farmhouse
in the Northumberland village of Bamburgh to plot their uprising.
They agreed that seizing Newcastle was their first priority.
They would then rendezvous with the southern Scots clans who
controlled the border region, and then meet up with Mar's larger army.
It was a sound plan and they easily recruited a small
and willing force of around 1,000, and headed for Newcastle.
They travelled full of hope,
but arrived to find no cheering crowds, and the city gates locked.
Unnerved by the lack of support, Derwentwater
and Forster then headed north towards the Scottish border
to meet the Jacobites there, and somehow combine their two forces.
But what followed only served to increase the confusion.
Both armies gathered here in the Scottish borders
but neither side could decide what to do next.
While Forster, Derwentwater and the English Jacobites wanted
the Scots to join their march into England, the Scots preferred
the idea of retreating north to rendezvous with Mar in Perth.
It was a bizarre deadlock and one that would prove costly.
As they argued over where to go next,
government troops closed in.
Meanwhile, in France, James had finally secured French support.
He set sail for Scotland,
intending to join Mar's by now huge Jacobite army.
During October 1715, Mar stationed 10,000 of his troops in Perth
and, from here, co-ordinated
a number of small-scale local uprisings and raids.
But the Hanoverian administration was quick to react.
Led by the highly experienced Duke of Argyll,
government forces were garrisoned at Stirling Castle.
As winter approached,
Mar decided it was time to push his Jacobite offensive south.
By early November,
his army was marching across the Sheriffmuir Hills,
around eight miles from Argyll's forces in Stirling
and it wouldn't be long before the two sides came face-to-face.
His army might only have been one third of the size of Mar's,
but Argyll was a seasoned campaigner.
He tactically placed his troops in the favourable position
on raised ground, looking down on the Jacobites.
Between them lay two miles of rolling moorland and, as the sun set,
this stark physical landscape became the stage for the great
Scottish battle of the '15 rebellion.
As trouble brewed in Scotland,
the English Jacobites had abandoned their standoff with the Scots
and headed south, eventually reaching the town of Preston.
But the Hanoverian forces were closing in quickly.
When the first government troops arrived outside Preston
on the 12th November 1715,
they found the town's streets and houses barricaded.
From heavily defended positions, the Jacobites opened fire
and the Hanoverians were forced to retreat.
Derwentwater and his men were in fact in a strong position at this point.
Preston, it seemed, was theirs for the taking.
But when government reinforcements arrived,
the Jacobites were quickly surrounded and outnumbered.
As night fell, the Hanoverian commander started setting fire
to parts of the town.
And while many English Jacobites retaliated, others deserted
and drifted away.
And, as morning broke on the 13th November, Mar and Argyll
eyeballed one another across the desolate Sheriffmuir.
While, in England, the battle of Preston was about to play itself out.
In Scotland, Argyll was the first to make his move.
He formed his government army into two attack lines,
facing the Jacobites.
After some hesitation, Mar then gave the order to attack.
And the Highlanders charged.
But Argyll had anticipated this,
and sent a flanking force to ambush them on the right wing.
Taken by surprise, the Jacobite charge was stopped in its tracks.
Meanwhile, in Preston,
the English Jacobites were now completely surrounded.
Despite successfully defending their positions the previous day,
Derwentwater and Forster now took cover in a graveyard
where they decided what to do next.
Forster summoned a war council
and immediately suggested they surrender.
While some agreed,
Derwentwater and many of the Scottish Jacobites refused.
A farcical brawl ensued with half the Jacobite army
threatening to lynch Forster if he did not fight to the death.
But Forster was not a soldier - he was a politician
and he had no appetite for a sustained fight.
Surrender was inevitable.
In Sheriffmuir,
the other great battle of the 1715 rebellion was in full flow.
Having easily overwhelmed the first Jacobite attack,
Argyll was now ready to move in for the kill.
But his attempt to finish things off proved less decisive.
Thanks to the uneven rolling ground of this battlefield,
Argyll's other flanking force, coming from the left,
couldn't see the enemy as they approached.
The men became scattered into small groups
and were easily overwhelmed by Mar's much larger army.
But, as the day drew on, exhaustion set in
and both sides slowly began to retreat from the battlefield.
In Preston, white flags of surrender were being raised
by the English Jacobites by 8pm that evening.
Derwentwater surrendered himself first, but, amid the mayhem,
failed to inform his troops, who were surprised when he then appeared
in the churchyard with government soldiers at his side.
Around 200 men were dead
and the last battle to be fought on English soil was over.
The Jacobite rising in England had failed.
And in Sheriffmuir,
the fight for Scotland was also drawing to a curious end.
After effectively abandoning the battlefield,
both armies eventually returned.
Mar simply watched as Argyll regrouped his forces
on the other side and a prolonged face-off ensued.
Neither side, it seemed, had the appetite to carry on.
Sheriffmuir had degenerated into a farcical stalemate
and the battle to take Scotland had resulted in a no-score draw.
As Mar and Argyll marched their armies away in opposite
directions and Jacobite prisoners were rounded up in Preston,
both uprisings did have one concrete outcome.
They had broken the heart of the Jacobite rebellion.
And amid an air of despondency and defeat, the man for whom
the entire 1715 rebellion had been staged finally appeared.
James had set sail from France just as the battle lines at Preston
and Sheriffmuir were being drawn up.
But he was not accompanied by a mass French army
and his hopes of royal restoration were pinned on victory having
already been secured in Britain.
But, like the unlucky chief guest at a banquet that would never take
place, Old Mr Misfortunate instead arrived on an empty Scottish beach.
He was met by a demoralized Mar who was obliged to break the bad news.
The rebellion was already over.
James had failed to reclaim his crown.
Any advance on £32,000?
1715 was, in our history, a moment of genuine potential.
But overambition killed it -
a fatal blend of rash impatience, chronic indecision
and a lack of strategic coordination.
There were serious discontents ripe for Jacobite exploitation,
but, across Britain, the rebellion on the ground was bungled.
And, throughout all this activity, floated James Francis Stuart,
seemingly drifting through the 1715 rebellion,
chasing the empty promises of his various supporters.
And the man whose support he had hoped for most
never even came to the party.
Marlborough remained at Blenheim Palace, orchestrating
the Hanoverian armies that engineered the Jacobites' defeat.
By this time, Blenheim was nearly complete and soon came to
symbolize the new order - a huge Georgian palace that would play
host to the great and the good of Continental Europe for generations.
James, on the other hand, would never recover from the failure of 1715.
He spent barely a month on British soil
before once again fleeing back to the Continent.
But the story of the Stuarts in exile was far from over.
Like a sore that constantly itched,
the Jacobite threat refused to go away.
James eventually found refuge in another Catholic haven,
among the piazzas of Rome, and soon made himself at home.
And amid the disappointments of his attempts to play this
game of crowns, James Francis had achieved one victory -
a son and heir,
a new beacon of hope that would signal the next chapter
in the Jacobite story.
Charles Edward Stuart, the Bonnie Prince who would keep
the family's dreams alive.
The man who would again try to take the Stuarts out of exile,
and place them back on the British throne.