Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume II. — Reading Companion

Genealogical Foundations and Clan Origins

Each memoir begins with a detailed family history. For the Frasers, Thomson recounts a fable that a Norman nobleman named Julius de Berry presented Charles the Simple with a dish of strawberries, earning the surname Fraize—hence the strawberry field in the Fraser coat of arms. She then traces the family from Normandy to Scotland under Malcolm Canmore, through marriages and land acquisitions in Tweedale, Aberdeenshire, and Inverness-shire. The castle of Beaufort, “anciently a royal fortress,” was granted to the Frasers in 1367. Thomson notes that the name was once written Frezeau or Frisil, and she presents alternative Scandinavian origin theories. This genealogical scaffolding gives each Jacobite a deep historical root, linking personal loyalty to centuries of clan tradition.

Recurring Images of Fortresses and Ruins

Castles and fortresses appear as both physical settings and symbols. Carlaverock is a “noble ruin”; Beaufort is described as “built on a part of the ground originally occupied by a fortress,” on a “beautiful eminence near the Beauly.” Thomson mentions that Beaufort was besieged by Edward I’s army using catapults at seven hundred yards. A subsidiary fortress, Lovat, “heretofore inhabited by one of the constables of the Crown,” also fell to the Frasers. These descriptions anchor the narrative in specific topography and evoke the decay of once-powerful strongholds, mirroring the decline of the Jacobite cause itself.

Acts of Fidelity and Sacrifice

Thomson highlights dramatic instances of personal loyalty. In the Fraser section, she recounts how Sir Simon Fraser, “commonly called the Patriot,” thrice remounted Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Methven. After Fraser was captured and sentenced to death, his follower Herbert de Norham and armour-bearer Thomas de Boys swore they would not survive him and “died voluntarily on the day of his execution.” Thomson calls this “one of those romantic instances of Highland devotion, which appear almost incredible to the calmer notions of a modern era.” Such episodes of self-sacrifice recur across the memoirs, emphasizing a code of honour that transcends political calculation.

Movement Between Public and Private Spheres

The memoirs shift between battlefield or political narrative and intimate family scenes. The Nithisdale memoir moves from the earl’s capture to the countess’s “determined and heroic affection” that engineered his prison escape. Thomson presents this as a point of pride for descendants, linking “courage and fidelity” in public rebellion to private devotion. The Fraser narrative similarly alternates between sieges and genealogical details of marriages and inheritances. This oscillation between the public stage of rebellion and the domestic realm of family honour gives the volume a dual focus: the Jacobite risings as both a historical event and a family drama.

Readers will find that Thomson’s method—opening each memoir with a clan’s medieval origins, then narrowing to the crisis of 1715 or 1745—creates a cumulative effect. The volume is best approached not as a continuous narrative but as a series of self-contained family histories, each with its own cast of fortresses, loyal retainers, and moments of sacrifice. Pay attention to the recurring motifs of ruins and rescue; they give the work a consistent emotional register.

Those Jacobite stories linger like candlelight on old stone—especially the Countess sneaking her husband out in a gown. That quiet defiance feels kin to the frontier hardship chronicled in The Winning of the West, Volume 4 Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 — Edition Insights. Both deal in loyalties that demand everything, and leave you sitting still, afterward, staring at nothing.