Our Flag Means Death - Bonnett

[watervole]

 There's an interesting article I just found in the Smithsonian Magazine  suggesting that one of Bonnet's reasons for taking up piracy is that he was a Jacobite - ie. PIracy would be attacking the illegitimate king.

 

 

Comments

[vivdunstan]

At the Jacobite seminar/workshop I attended online the other day there was some discussion about Jacobites and piracy. The speaker wasn't sure as many pirates as people think were Jacobites. But piracy could be a Jacobite tactic. Some of the new research discussed examined ships in Peru and around about, their owners, and also the names of the ships, which sometimes were pro Jacobite choices. There was also an example mentioned of a pro Jacobite named ship in Russia.

[watervole]

Bonnet's ship was called 'Revenge'. It was a common pirate ship name, but it could be read as revenge against the king.

Also - Blackbeard - "With room for 300 crew and 40 guns, the vessel, renamed Queen Anne's Revenge – thought to be a nod to Blackbeard's Jacobite beliefs and his desire to see the Stuart dynasty and Queen Anne's heirs restored to the throne – became the flagship of his fleet."

[vivdunstan]

Not sure about the Queen Anne's heirs thing there - Anne was very much anti Jacobite. But revenge against her could certainly be a thing. Personally I think the name Bonnet also used "Royal James" is more of a Jacobite hint, probably to the Old Pretender.

[watervole]

Well, I guess it depends on how much Blackbeard actually know about Queen Anne...

I mean, she had no surviving children, and it appears to be a moot point as to whether she hated the Hanoverian succession more than she wanted to avoid James getting the throne!

She refused to allow the Hanoverians into England until she was dead. So 'Queen Anne's Revenge' could be Jacobite in intent.

Do you know how Anne's successor was determined? (I don't think it was her decision, and wondering how it looked to outsiders)

[igenlode]

I think the Act of Settlement pretty much dictated the line of succession to the Hanoverians as soon as Anne's own son died, before she ever inherited the throne. https://www.royal.uk/act-settlement-0
It would have had to have been repealed before any member of the Catholic Jacobite line of descent could have become King, and that was party political business. http://www.northumbrianjacobites.org.uk/pages/detail_page.php?id=23§ion=24

[vivdunstan]

The successor was determined by the Act of Succession of 1701, enacted after Anne’s son died, to rule out Catholics succeeding, including her half brother. That meant the next in line was Electress Sophia. The act was enacted during William’s reign, but Anne never publicly opposed it. There was opposition to the English Act of Succession from the parliament in Scotland, where attempts were made to secure as heir a Protestant descendant of Scottish kings, but different from the person chosen by the English. The resulting Scottish parliamentary act for that eventually got royal assent from Anne. Though that would also rule out the Catholic Jacobites. But it was later revoked, after the 1707 Union.

[igenlode]

I've just been reading "The Republic of Pirates" by Colin Woodard (re-issued as "the book that inspired the NBC TV series 'Crossbones'"!), and he goes into the Jacobite connection in some detail; apparently Archibald Hamilton, who became Governor of Jamaica in 1711, is suspected of having tried to set up a secret Jacobite Navy in the West Indies in support of the '15 by recruiting and encouraging privateers sympathetic to the cause. After the failure of the rebellion he was sacked and brought back to England to undergo an enquiry into his actions (although, as Woodard points out, he appears to have entirely reconciled himself with Hanoverian rule by the time of the '45).

Apparently he was also the father of Sir William Hamilton of Nelson fame (friend of Henry, Lord Pembroke, whose family's letters I have been reading -- diplomatic circles were a small world in the 18th century!)


Woodard's comments on Stede Bonnet are not complimentary -- he comes across in the historical record as incompetent and seriously unbalanced, an amateur playing at piracy with predictably hopeless results...

[watervole]

How much of the support for the Jacobites do you think was based on a desire for a Catholic monarch? And how much for someone more favourable to Scotland?

Bonnet knew nothing about sailing...

Why he wanted to be a pirate is something I guess we'll never be certain of, though it may (or may not) have been a mix of being a Jacobite, short of money and being in difficulties in his marriage...

[igenlode]

I don't think many people specifically wanted a Catholic monarch (though some may have hoped for a repeal of the anti-Papist laws); it was just that some people found the Catholicism of the direct descendants of James II to be an active turn-off, whereas others were more turned off by the fact that the only Protestant claimant was a foreigner whose claim to Stuart descent was extremely distant and couldn't even speak English. And Jacobitism in Scotland was tied up with anti-English sentiment, resentment of the Act of Union signed under Queen Anne and internal Scottish religious politics. https://www.nls.uk/exhibitions/jacobites/background-to-1715/

If Stede Bonnet had Jacobite sympathies, they could only have been dilettante ones, as he had a comfortable position at the heart of the Establishment. (In fact he attempted to start his nautical career under a pseudonym, perhaps in order to save his family reputation, but failed to manage that as well.)