Abstract:

In this talk, I trace the the 1715 Jacobite Rising (pre-cursor to the more famous 1745 Rising) to its earliest moments as I suggest that it began to be shaped into a site of cultural memory in the crucible of news networks even as it was unfolding. I examine the early mediation of the events of 1715-16 Jacobite Rising within the context of a mediascape for news that featured both the continuing presence of manuscript newsletters and an increasing number of printed newspapers and periodicals. I compare reports about the developing conflict found in the official manuscript newsletters sent to the Newdigate family between May 30th to September 29th, 1715 with those that appeared in five representative printed newspapers during the same time period suggesting that the affordances of the newspaper form amplified the sense of discontinuity in the news about the Rising. At the same time, I suggest, the events of the 1715 Rising further encouraged the transition in the media networks of news communication by providing an opportunity for newspapers to position themselves as more authoritative forms of information than manuscript newsletters during a crucial period of crisis for the government. I conclude by considering popular histories written in the immediate aftermath of the Rising, such as the anonymous Compleat History of the Rebellion (1716), Robert Patten’s The History of the Late Rebellion (1717) and Peter Rae’s The History of the Late Rebellion (1718). By re-presenting information originally found in newsletters and newspapers within the context of a continuous narrative leading logically to the suppression of the “unnatural Rebellion,” these works minimized what had been a significant political threat, helping to reduce it to what Richard Steele referred to as a temporary “absurdity” within the history of Jacobite unrest.