Last modified: 2004-08-07 by rob raeside
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In response to a question from Jesús del Campo, "Do you know about the banners of the Jacobites at Culloden battle?":
Most of the flags of the Pretender's army that were captured at Culloden were burnt by the public hangman in Edinburgh. A list was made of those flags, but only contains brief descriptions:
1 "a white silk colour with the Stewarts arms [and the motto] God Save the King" The arms are presumably those of the U.K., rather than just Scotland, since the whole Kingdom was being claimed. This may have been the colour of the Prince's Lifeguard of Foot.
2 "a large plain white colour, said to be the standard" A completely plain flag as the Prince's standard?? Another account refers to the standard as being red with a central white square.
3 "a white colour with a blue saltire" Just possibly, this may have been carried by the Second Battalion of Atholl's Brigade under James Spalding of Glenkirchie, but the Spalding arms are blue and yellow. The First Battalion of the same brigade under Archibald Menzies of Shian are known to have carried white colours with red saltires, from the colours of the Menzies arms.
4 "a white silk colour St. Andrew's cross in the canton" Possibly carried by a contingent of the Bannerman family.
5 "a white linen colour, motto Terrores Furio" Attributed to the Chisholm family at the time.
6 "a blue silk colour with the Lovat arms [and the motto] Sine Sanguine Victor" These are not the colours or motto of Lord Fraser of Lovat; they may be those of his second-in-command, and the man who led the clan on the day, Charles Fraser of Inverallochie.
7 "one of Lord Lovat's camp colours" No other description survives.
8 "a blue colour [with the motto] Sursum Tendo" Possibly belonging to the 2nd battalion of Ogilvy's Regiment, commanded by Sir james Kinloch - the colours are same as the Kinloch arms and the motto is similar.
9 "a blue colour [with the motto] Commit The Work To God" Unknown. the motto is that of the Sinclair family, but none are known to have been out with the Prince.
10 "a white linen colour belonging to the Farquharsons" No other description survives; the family arms were red and yellow; the motto was Fide Et Fortitudine.
Other colours known from this period are:
- Prince's Lifeguards of Horse carried a guidon taken from Gardiner's Dragoons at the battle of Falkirk. It may have been green; it certainly bore the motto Britons Strike Home.
- Cameron of Lochiel's contingent: a red flag with a central green square which bore the full arms of the family, including crest and supporters
- Gordon of Glenbucket's contingent: white with the arms of the Marques of Huntly in the centre (Glenbucket was Huntly's lieutenant colonel in the 1715 Rising).
- Lord Ogilvy's regiment: blue with a white saltire that does not reach the corners of the sheet; in the top quadrant a white scroll with Nemo Me Impune Lacessit in black and gold letters, above a thistle in natural colours.
- Stewart of Appin's regiment: blue with a yellow saltire, the colours coming from the family arms
A discussion about the list of burnt colours and other Jacobite flags appears in Military Illustrated number 38 (1991) pp.39-45
Ian Sumner, 15 March 2000
From 5 August 2003 Glasgow Herald:
Banner carried against the Jacobites unfurled in Scotland again
by FRANK RYAN
A Scottish banner raised by opponents of the Jacobites during the 1715
Rebellion, has been repatriated from Australia after almost a century.
The painted silk standard was carried by the Gordon family, of Earlston, near
Kirkcudbright, as they fought to prevent Bonnie Prince Charlie's father, the Old
Pretender, from regaining the throne for the Stuarts.
It remained in the area until the second decade of the twentieth century, when
it was sent to a branch of the family which had settled in Australia and had
inherited the baronetcy of Earlston and Afton.
From 1920, the Earlston Banner was a treasured exhibit in the Hall of
Remembrance in the Scots Church in Sydney, but when the building was scheduled
for demolition in 2001, Sir Robert Gordon, the flag's owner, and the church
authorities sought a new home for it.
They contacted the Stewartry Museum in Kirkcudbright and a Heritage Lottery
Grant was obtained to bring the banner home and have it conserved by the
Scottish Museum Council's conservation unit in Edinburgh.
Yesterday, it was unveiled in its new home by Alex Fergusson, Conservative MSP
for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, who congratulated the museum for co-ordinating
the project that brought the banner back home "where it once boldly flew".
David Devereaux, Stewartry curator, said the banner would help to present and
interpret a complicated period of history.
"The religious upheavals of the seventeenth century and subsequent Jacobite
rebellions had a major impact on Kirkcudbrightshire," he added. "National events
crashed in on local affairs."
Rob Raeside, 5 August 2003
I yesterday saw a TV programme which referred to the battle of Culloden, that
famous 18th century battle which ended Scotland's attempt to regain independence
from England. Very briefly shown was a shot of the battleground, on which two
flags now stand, representing the starting positions of the English and Scottish
forces. They show, respectively, a stylised white flower on red and a stylised
black flower on yellow, but I didn't see enough of them to get any further
details. Does anyone know anything more about these flags?
James Dignan, 19 April 2004
I would guess that these represent the Jacobite White Cockade and the
Hanoverian Black Cockade, cockades being a distinguishing mark worn on the
headdress. This was not a Scottish war for independence; it was a dynastic
struggle between the Stuarts and the Hanoverians, the Scottish house of Stuart
having inherited England in 1603, and having lost both thrones through the
stupidity of James II in 1685-88 and lack of heirs in 1714. The Jacobite wars
(named for the party owing allegiance to James II and his heirs) were Stuart
attempts to regain the throne of Scotland AND England. Scots were fairly evenly
divided in this struggle, and since clan tartans did not exist at the time, the
cockade was the method of identifying friend and foe on the battlefield. The
Jacobites especially had no other uniform.
The White Cockade Society sometimes carries a banner of a white cockade on a red
field. I doubt this existed in 1745-46. The yellow background for the black
cockade is probably just a good contrasting colour.
T.F. Mills, 20 April 2004
A websearch on "the White Cockade Society" did provide a beautiful picture at
http://www.highlanderweb.co.uk/culloden/inmemory.htm which shows two of the
WCS's flags, plus the red and white flag that I originally referred to, at
Culloden Moor (it is the one on the far right*). From other sites (such as
http://www.robertwhite.co.uk/Gallery/AllanJamieson/Photo03.htm it appears
that the flag I was referring to is not that normally flown by the WCS.
James Dignan, 20 April 2004
* This flag which can be seen in the photo is in fact the banner flown at
Culloden Battlefield by NTS to mark the Jacobite lines and is not being carried
by the Society although it does look as though it is in the photo.
Janette Hannah, 20 July 2004
I've just been watching a video about the battle of Culloden Moor, which
might have given a few more clues to the flags. The expert (from the British
National War Museum, I think) referred at one point to the "black government
army cockade and the Jacobite white cockade". At another point the comment is
made "The government army were lined up where the yellow flags are [meanwhile,
the Jacobite ranks] are marked by a row of red flags...". It seems to me that
this does indicate the yellow flags have a black cockade, and the red flags have
a white one.
James Dignan, 3 May 2004