Thursday 18 November – ‘It was a’ for our rightful King’ (Burns) – a Talk by Maureen Kelly.
There is a school of thought that the Jacobite cause and its rebellions (and even that word is hotly contested, being itself a hostage to history’s fortune) of 1689, 1715, 1719 and 1745/6, are best regarded as the long rumble of the earlier Bishops’ War in Scotland. Be that as it may, it is a fascinating and complex topic, one that Maureen’s lively lecture brought vividly to life, with the various political, social, economic, personal and dynastic entanglements enthusiastically explained. Of particular interest was her detailed research on the local dimension – how the struggles impacted the lives of local people. The King may have been ‘over the water’ and with him his cause, but local communities bore the brunt, and hold the memory.