The prosecution of alleged and suspected Jacobites continued for many years after the last rising was emphatically crushed at Culloden. Mortal combat on the field of battle gave way to legal clashes in the courtroom as the machinery of justice spun up to prepare for thousands of potential criminal cases. Published and archival sources recount both the British government’s official and unofficial efforts to punish those accused of explicit acts of treason, but very rarely do we learn about civil litigation brought by loyal British citizens against their Jacobite kindred and communities. Yet in the years directly after the rising, an unusual legal drama played out in and around the north-eastern harbour town of Stonehaven that demonstrates how accounts of personal cruelty during the Jacobite occupation of Scotland could be prosecuted by those who felt victimised.
In the winter of 1745-46, while the bulk of the Jacobite army was marching to
