PETTICOAT PATRONAGE OF THE STUART CAUSE
On 20 December 1746, the lord justice clerk, Andrew Fletcher, lord Milton, and William Anne Kepple, 2nd earl of Albemarle, gave orders for a search of all the suspicious places in the Canongate, Leith and other suburbs around Edinburgh. What, or whom, were they looking for? They were not looking for Jacobite conspirators; nor were they hunting down fugitive rebel soldiers. Five companies of soldiers had been authorised to seek out ‘ladies and other women dressed in tartan gowns and white ribbands’ in honour of the birthday of the Stuart prince. They were ‘to seize them and make them prisoners’. They made one arrest that night. Lady Jean Rollo, sister of the 4th Lord Rollo, who was at home alone and dressed in a tartan gown, was apprehended and questioned by Lord Albemarle, but shortly thereafter released. This is just one example of the extreme reaction of the government toward Jacobite supporters, particularly its women.
Tartan, which had become synonymous with Jacobitism, was banned after the ‘45 by the Dress Act (1746), and was deemed a treacherous, rebellious garment. While the act does not refer to women, the pursuit of tartan-dressed ladies reveals how serious the government considered any form of association with the Stuart cause, and how significant they considered female support of it in the wake of the ‘45.
The involvement of ladies in the many Jacobite plots and risings from the revolution in 1688-89 through to the ‘45, firmly proved to the government the capacity of women to work powerfully for the exiled Stuarts. Their actions enshrined the idea of ‘female rebels’ in the minds of the establishment, which was simultaneously disseminated among the people through anti-Jacobite propaganda. The government had caught on to the intensification of female activity throughout the first half of the 18th century, so
