A MAJOR new show about the history of the Jacobites, putting their actions in light of wider European history, is to be staged in Scotland next year.
Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites, at the National Museum of Scotland (NMS), will use more than 300 exhibits to stage the biggest and most detailed exhibition about the Jacobites for 70 years.
The show, which will endeavour to place five tumultuous Jacobite incidents within the context of the “dynastic power-plays” of continental Europe, will be staged at the museum from June 23 next year.
The show will detail the entire Jacobite history, not solely focusing on the Battle of Culloden and the 1745 rising, but will trace the movement from 1689/90 and take in its most important actions in 1708, 1715, 1719 and finally 1745/06.
The exhibition will also explain how Culloden, more than just an English versus Scottish battle, was a battle within a civil war, with Scots on both sides of the conflict.
David Forsyth, the organiser of the exhibition and the curator of Scottish history and archaeology at the NMS, said that, although the show will take a “balanced view” of the Jacobite movement, it will show it firmly within the wider political and religious alliances of its age.
There will also be a detailed look at Bonnie Prince Charlie’s short-lived court at Holyrood in 1745.
It will, he said, also detail the Jacobite courts set up in France at Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and in Rome, as well as the wider Jacobite movement.
This included many English such as John Hyde Cotton – his Highland targe or shield, broadsword and tartan suit will be included in the show.
The exhibition will also show that “the Jacobite court in exile functioned like any other, commissioning symbolic and spectacular objects to promote their dynastic claims.”
Mr Forsyth said: “We are looking at how the Jacobites were affected by the European dynastic power-plays of the time, the influence of France and Rome and Spain – for example the rebellion of 1745 was planned in Rome.
“The story is so much more than England versus Scotland, there were lowland Jacobites, where were many English Jacobites.
“With Culloden, there were as many Scots siding with the Hanoverians as with Charles Edward Stuart [Bonnie Prince Charlie].”
The show will include artefacts brought together with loans from across the UK and France, including glassware, jewellery, costume, documents from the time and paintings.
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