Clan Erskine · 1715
Bobbing John raises the standard at Braemar
On the morning of the sixth of September 1715, in the Braes of Mar above the head of the Dee, John Erskine, sixth or twenty-third Earl of Mar (the regnal numbering depends on which catalogue), formerly Secretary of State for Scotland under Anne, formerly Tory loyalist under George I, and now suddenly the leader of a Jacobite rising, raised the standard of King James VIII of Scotland (James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender) on a hillside above his ancestral hunting-lodge at Invercauld. The flag had been brought up from London by the Earl of Linlithgow's daughter sewn into the lining of her riding-cloak. By the testimony of the Aberdeenshire factor Thomas Strachan who was on the hill, the gilt ball that crowned the standard fell off as the standard was being raised, an omen the Highland people present took for certain. Mar's army of about five thousand grew to twelve thousand by November. He held back from a decisive engagement with Argyll for ten weeks, fought the indecisive Battle of Sheriffmuir on the thirteenth of November (which he could have won) and the rising disintegrated through the winter. Mar was attainted, fled to France, and lived out his life in exile, an embittered Jacobite intriguer earning the nickname Bobbing John for his repeated changes of allegiance.
It is a quarter past ten on the morning of the sixth of September 1715, on the open ground above Invercauld House, on the Braes of Mar, with the heather just turning and the wind off Lochnagar coming down the Dee. He is forty years old. He is John Erskine, born in November 1675, twenty-third Earl of Mar in the medieval line and sixth in the post-1565 re-grant, formerly Secretary of State for Scotland in Queen Anne's last ministry, formerly Treasury commissioner, formerly the most successful Court Tory in Edinburgh since the Union, presently in his second month back in Scotland, in his fifth week back at Mar after a hunting party at Aboyne that turned, by careful arrangement and not by accident, into the muster of the country.
On the platform of cut turf in front of him, eight gentlemen of the country are standing in a half-circle. Lord Pitsligo. Lord Drummond. The Earl of Linlithgow. The Marquess of Huntly. The chiefs of Glenbuchat, of Cluny, of Atholl, of Lord George Murray's father the Duke of Atholl. Behind the gentlemen, three hundred armed men of the country in plaid and Lochaber-axes and broadswords, and at the back of them, two hundred women and children of the lairds' households who have come up to see the standard raised. The standard itself is leaning against the turf cairn that has been built for it; it is a long shaft of pine, a gilt ball at the head, the silk of the flag wound round the shaft and tied with a cord.
He thinks: I have been a Tory in London for ten years and a Whig before that and a Country member before that. The men in front of me know all of this.
He thinks: I have promised them, in the proclamation Pitsligo brought up from Edinburgh on Sunday, that James will land at Peterhead in October with five thousand French troops. I do not have the French troops. I have a letter from Bolingbroke saying the French troops will not come. I have not shown the letter to Pitsligo.
He thinks: if I do not raise the standard today, the gentlemen go home, and Stair has me in irons in Edinburgh by the eighth.
He thinks: if I do raise it I have to take the country south to Stirling within four weeks before the central-belt commitment goes off.
He thinks: I do not know whether I am a soldier of the calibre to manage the central-belt commitment.
He gives the cue to the standard-bearer at twenty past ten. The young man unwinds the silk from the shaft. The wind catches it. The flag is the white silk of the Old Pretender, with a gold thistle on the obverse and the motto No Union embroidered in green silk on the reverse. The flag goes up the shaft. The shaft is heavy. The bearer's hands are shaking, by Strachan's testimony. The shaft is set into the cairn.
And then the gilt ball at the top of the shaft, a ornament of brass and gilding screwed into the wood, comes off and falls down the shaft and lands at the foot of the cairn at Mar's feet.
There is, by the testimony of Strachan and three others, a silence on the hill of perhaps fifteen seconds.
Lord Pitsligo, who is sixty-seven and has commanded men in three previous risings, picks the ball up off the heather, puts it in his pocket, and says, in a voice that is meant to carry to the back of the assembly: the Earl will have a new ball turned for the standard tomorrow morning. The standard is up. God Save the King.* The crowd takes the cry. The ceremony goes on.
Mar held the country at Perth from late September. He was joined through October by the chiefs from the western Highlands, from the central Highlands, from Aberdeenshire and Banff. By early November he had between ten and twelve thousand men under arms, the largest Jacobite army of either rising. The Duke of Argyll at Stirling had between three and four thousand under government commission. Mar's task was to march south past Argyll to take Edinburgh, link up with the English Jacobite rising in Lancashire, and get a Stuart on the throne in London by Christmas. He did not march. He held a council of war for ten days at Auchterarder. He met Argyll at Sheriffmuir on the thirteenth of November in an engagement of about eight thousand a side.
Sheriffmuir was, in the tradition of the bothies of Strathearn, the battle in which neither side won. The Jacobite right under Mar broke the government left and pursued it five miles. The Jacobite left under General Hamilton was broken by the government right and ran for ten. By dusk both wings of both armies had vanished off the field and the centres were in confusion on the high ground. Mar withdrew to Perth that night. He had not, in operational terms, been beaten. He had not, in operational terms, won. The Stuart cause needed a clean victory. Sheriffmuir was not a clean victory. The Jacobite ranks began to drift home through the next four weeks.
James VIII landed at Peterhead in late December with no French troops and a fever. He spent six weeks in Scotland, was unable to galvanise the army, and went back to France with Mar in February 1716. The rising collapsed. The Earl of Mar was attainted by Westminster, his estates forfeit. He spent the rest of his life in exile in France and Italy, intriguing for the Stuart cause, twice falling out with successive Old Pretender ministries, taking a small pension from the British government in 1721 in exchange for keeping Bolingbroke under observation in France, and earning the nickname Bobbing John by which he is now generally remembered. He died at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1732, fifty-six years old. The standard he raised at Braemar in 1715 is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery; the gilt ball, after Pitsligo took it off the hill, was carried south through the campaign and lost at Sheriffmuir, by tradition. The hillside above Invercauld is now part of the Mar Lodge Estate of the National Trust for Scotland; a marker on the path notes the day the standard was raised. The locals, who have it from their grandparents who had it from theirs, will tell visitors at the marker, with no expression on their faces, that the gilt ball came off.