Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Real Outlander

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

How real to true events is the Outlander series?The Jacobite uprising of the 18th century was led by Bonnie Prince Charlie to reclaim the thrown of Great Britain for the Stuarts.Recruiting Highland clans along the way, they put up a good fight.Anyone who's followed the series will know how brutal it could be, but what really happened? Did Prince Charles really flee the British army dressed as an Irish spinning maid? And were the sex scenes accurate to the time?Today Kate is joined by Sarah Fraser, author of The Last Highlander: Scotland’s Most Notorious Clan Chief, Rebel And Double Agent. Sarah has family connections to the Fraser clan who fought in the uprising, so who better to speak to!This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts.Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code BETWIXTTHESHEETS1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Lovely, betwixters. Sorry. I thought I could do a Scottish accent when I started that and then what came out my mouth was just dreadful. I'm so sorry, betwixtus. I should have given you a fair news warning for that.

All right, I will desist with the Scottish accent. But the reason that I was attempting that is because today we are talking about the history of the real outlander and it is pretty juicy. Let me tell you. So you do need a fair do's warning, and here it is. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adult, other adults about adulty things and an adulty way, anchoring a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too.

And now we've got that little lot out of the way. On with the shore. On the defeat at the Battle of Collodon in 1746, Bonnie Prince Charlie, leader of the Jacobian uprising, was forced to flee for his life to the Highlands. The pursuing Redcoat army were hot on his tail, and seeking retribution. He met an unlikely ally in Flora MacDonald, who had plenty to risk herself, by the way,

with both a stepfather and a fiancé fighting for King George II. But she agreed to help, disguising Prince Charles as an Irish spinning maid called Betty Burke, and arranging for boatsmen to take him across to the Isle of Sky. Although swathes of Highlanders met the wrath of the British army, Charlie managed to escape with his life. His escape was immortalized in the 1884 tune Sky Boat Song Now the theme to the hit TV show Outlander

But what about the man behind that legend? What was he really like? I am ready to find out if you are. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny.

Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. And welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. One aspect of being a history buff is getting to indulge in all the historical programs

that get made. And in this instance, when I say historical programs, I mean Outlander. And when I say indulge in, I mean specifically the realm of, rather delicious Sam Hewain in various states of undress. It's all for history. That's what I'm here for is the history, even if that history has particularly nice legs. But that's what being a historian is all about, isn't it? Well, it's one part of it. But behind Outlander is the fascinating true story of the

Jacobite uprising and the seeds of division that is still felt to this very day. It's packed full of drama, action and romance, and joining me today to delve into this. world is Sarah Fraser, author of The Last Highlander, Scotland's most notorious clan chief, rebel and double agent. Sarah is especially well placed to write and talk about this, as she even has connections to the Fraser clan herself, and they were heavily involved in the uprising. What became of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who led the fight for the crown? How close to victory did he actually get? And what is their legacy today? I am ready to find out if you are. And welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Sarah Fraser. How are you doing?

I'm doing really well, thank you. I've been walking around the park on a frosty, sunny morning, thinking about Highland Sex, which is what you've invited me to think about. You're a granny, but I'm a granny, so no one can see inside my head. I love that. So my first question was going to... be your research about what's the real history behind the Highlander series, I think we might have just answered that of why it's so interesting. It's the lovely Jamie Fraser's legs, isn't it? That's what's caught your attention. I know. My sort of great, great, great, great, granddad, I suppose he is. Oh, shit. If he exists. Am I lusting over one of your relatives? Exactly. If only.

Oh, no. But you did marry into the Fraser clan, didn't you? Yes, twice. Wow. And I have bred four of them and written about another one who is supposed to be Jamie Fraser's grandfather, old Lord Lovett of the 45. And then I did a PhD on obscene Gallic poetry. And my special area is the 18th century, one of the premier, He's called Alastair MacVeisjad Alastard or Alexander MacDonald, who wrote both classic

Jacobite, come on boys, let's fight for Charlieverse, but also some very ripe, bawdy satire. I'm quite well rooted into this subject. You are. How have we not heard you on this podcast before, quite frankly? This is almost like researching your family history. Yes, it was. It's the area. I mean, in that way of it, you know, women are brought in to.

to freshen the blood, hybrid vigour, so that you produce lovely, lusty little phrases. But also it's having moved to the Highlands from Essex, I wanted to know about it. And often, as you know, I mean, this is your field of expertise more than mine, the history of sexuality is the social history of the area, of what they value and why and what they choose to praise and dispraise and what they find acceptable and not acceptable in the behaviour of,

the community. Absolutely. As somebody who has researched the real history behind the Outlander series, and we'll get to exactly what that history is and what the context was. I suppose my first question is, would the Highlanders have really been that good looking in the 18th century? Because Jamie has got like a six-pack and perfect teeth and very, he's very beautiful. Would they have actually looked like that in 18th century Highland of Scotland? I think, well, Lovina the 45th, who is supposed to be his grandfather was six foot tall. Holy hell, wow. So he was a big guy.

No, most Highlanders were smaller. They wore their hair long, but were clean-shaven mostly. They wore bonnets, they wore plaids. And there is enough correlation, because the 18th century is kind of closer to us in certain ways in its openness and the things it values. I mean, we are very open about our sexuality, and so were they. I mean, that was not a taboo.

That became a taboo in the Victorian era, and particularly in the Highlands, after a narrow, puritanical religious revival, got rid of all the bawdy verse and song that had gone before and just excised them out of all the collections, censorship, basically. But Jamie's not hairy enough. I mean, he's a little bit smooth and shiny.

But he's a charming man, Sam Hewain. He's an absolute delight. Oh, you bet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were doing, he and Graham McTavish were doing a series called Clanlands. And they wanted to come to our area, Beaufort, you know, and the, the Buley first where Jamie Fraser, that's his heartland, sort of. And, you know, they wanted to interview me about that. And they were just, they're funny, they're relaxed, the generous, as is Diana.

You know, I mean, Diana is Diana Gabaldon has sold nearly 40 million books. in about 38 countries. It's so popular. She does her research, but she's sitting within two cultures. She's Diana sitting in 21st century, Arizona, and she's also trying to write out of the 18th century as well. And there's a lot of sex goes on between Jamie and Claire, as we know.

They probably wouldn't have taken their clothes off as much as they do now. No, I do think that. You know, there was a lot of. more up against the wall or on a sofa and basically up with the skirts and that was it. I don't think they generally tended to get naked as much as us. And the clothes were so, like, this is well before zippers and convenient poppers and things like that, wasn't it, it'd be a right mission. Well, you'd have gone to the sort of post-coital fag before you'd actually untied your corset.

God, you really would. It just wouldn't be worth it. It just wouldn't be worth it. Let's just put on a box set or whatever, a box set. of traditional folk songs, whatever it is. So the whole of the Outlander series, I mean, there are numerous reasons where people come and watch it. It's a great story. It's very beautifully shot.

It's protagonists of very pretty people doing very nice things to one another and also doing some pretty horrible things to one another. But it's got all of that, but it is actually set in real Scottish history. It tracks against what was actually happening at the time. And you hear a lot about Jack have been this and Jack have been that

and Jacobite that. But just for anyone they might be listening, who's heard that word, and isn't really quite sure what the hell that was. What were the Jacobin was in Scotland? They were to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne. The Stuarts had been thrown off

when the Georges came in, the Georgian era. One, James, James II, fled the throne. And the Latin for James is Jacobus, hence Jacobite. His followers were then Jacobites. And they wanted to restore the original line. It was very much tied into nationalism for a lot of Scottish Jacobites as well, who had loathed the Union in 1707, which created Great Britain. And the last hurrah of that effectively was Bonnie Prince Charlie landing on the west coast of Scotland in 1745 to reclaim the throne

of his ancestors. And I have a lot of sympathy for his ambition, because I have a lot of sympathy. As he said about himself, you know, a Caesar or nothing, what else can I be? What's he's born for? I mean, we have that discussion with about the royal family these days. What are you there for? Well, he had the same schick, but for him, the stakes were so much higher because you're kind of ruling as well as reigning. I mean, our royal family quite rightly only reign.

So the stakes were very high. And he really had no choice but to try and be restored. and he swept a lot of the Highlands along with him. And Jamie Fraser in Outlander is a Jacobite. And half the tension in the early books is that his wife, Claire, comes back from 1945 to effectively 1745, and she knows this is only going one way, which is catastrophe for the Highlands. it will destroy traditional society in the form it then existed. And she tries to stop him.

But Jamie, he's a Jacobite and he's got to follow his own fate, his own karma. It plays a glory stuff, isn't it? Yeah, it is, it is. And that's a very good emotional twist because we all do know what's going to happen. And she can't interfere in history, although she tries. But neither can he. He's got to follow his fate. and there's a lot of emotional power to be got from that in those first few books.

It's a good tension, isn't it? I often think that Claire could have done a bit more to really lay it on thick with what was happening or perhaps abandon that particular tactic and thought, I'm just going to go up and buy a load of stocks and share. They're going to buy property around London that'll be in my family for the next 300 years. But then there wouldn't have been a book series, would it? That'd have been a rubbish show. It would have been an economic history of London in the mid-saint-sit history.

Pretty shit history. Yeah, that's why they didn't do that. Okay, okay, well done. Moving on. So Bonnie Prince Charlie, he is this super romantic, Scottish figure, hero. And I want to know if the story about the cross-dressing is true, and we'll get to that in a minute. But if I'm right, and I might not be,

but he grew up mostly in Italy, right? He wasn't like born and bred in Scotland at all. He had to go back to Scotland to do this. He was born in exile in Rome, and he died in Rome as well. he had to go back there. They created a court in exile, which is always, I think, probably a very forlorn thing because it's a kind of ghost echo of the real thing.

And his father had more or less given up. He wasn't that bothered. He reconciled himself to his exiled fate. But Charles Edward Stewart, the eldest, Bonnie Prince Charlie, had not at all. And he trained every day, this is definitely where he was going. And when his father said to him one day,

you know my son, you know, we find we no longer miss the cares of ruling. And that to his son, it may be in a classic father, son standoff, was death. You know, what you're saying to me is you've given up and I've got to reconcile my fate to being a hollow man, a nobody, a cipher.

for any young person of ambition and a bit of vigour who's got a bit about them, you just think, well, no, I mean, I deserve my throw of the dice. He was determined to do that, come what may, which is how it all unraveled as it did. And he ended up coming after various plans that France would send 10,000 men and they'd land outside London and they would more or less walk in. There were setbacks. And he ends up with just a handful of men on the West Coast. of Scotland in July 1745.

Big dream. Oh, no, that's not good. No. So how on earth then? So he's arrived in Scotland, from Italy. He was supposed to have all of these armies that has dwindled down to like a couple of people. He must have been stood there going,

what the shit is going on here? I'd just go home. I'd be like, do you know what? This isn't going to work. How does he like get the clans to support him? How does he raise an army from that point? He does by calling on pre-examination. previous declarations of loyalty, although you're right. I mean, he never thinks about going back,

but several chiefs come up to him and say, go home, sire. And his classic response is, I am come home. That is why, you know, and he, and some of them think, our necks are going to pay for this, but we have said, honour, loyalty, your name, which is what they really do value. They don't value sexual propriety. They value your name and your reputation. and your honour, and in honour, they have to come out for him and affection. It's this battle, this classic battle. We all have it between your head and your heart. Many, many of them are emotional and heartfelt Jacobites,

but their heads tell them you've got to strike your deal with the Georgian regime, George the second it is by now. But that tussle goes on and enough of them come out and rise for Charlie and they bring their clans along with them. And that's where Jamie is. Jamie's one of those emotional Jacobites, intellectual Hanoverians. He knows you can't square this circle

and you're just going to have to have a go. If it goes wrong, it couldn't be worse. I teach medieval literature to university students. One of the things that we always grapple with is this concept of honour because obviously it's so prevalent in older texts right up to the 18th century. It's like my word is my bond.

I've said that I'm going to do something. And it seems like I'm not sure we have that anymore because we're going through this stuff. I'm trying to explain to them of like, no, no, no. The reason that he's going headlong into a battle, even though he knows he's going to die, is because he said he would.

And they just look at me blankly, like, well, that's fucking stupid. The reputation of your name was pretty much one of the most important things that you had at the time. Yes, your word is your bond. Manners maketh man. These things had real resonance.

And they also, I think it's born. out of a society that is profoundly socially enmeshed. Your word is your bond to whom? Who have you given your word to? You've given your word to this or that or the other person. If you're a lord, you are duty bound to protect those who depend on you. You are duty bound to serve your king, even if, as you say, he might end you up profoundly in the keek. And, or the kakh, as we say, up here the shit. And you have to do that. And which is why, of course, you know, you see in those 18th century texts, you tend not to name names. You know, you get H-hyphen, hyphen, hyphen. Whereas the word bot, which is garlic for cock, that'll be there. There's no problem with that. But naming names is

a different matter. And as I say, I think it's a social awareness, which, funnily enough, I mean, to bring it back to the betwixt the sheets kind of raison d'et, is why you get some. And so, as I say, I think, a lot of this sexual satire because it's social commentary. And what you're doing when you misbehave is, of course, you're breaking the social bond and you are behaving dishonorably. I think that's fascinating, actually. And it is, sexual behaviour is often used as a register for how moral or immoral you are. But we're all in a state of cognitive dissidents about it because really the rule is,

as long as you don't get found out. But I think that's fascinating is that sexual behaviour and sexual satire is used as a, is a mark of political context. Oh, definitely. As I said earlier, the poet I wrote about in my doctoral work, my thesis, Alastair MacFauster Alastair,

Alexander MacDonald in English. He was a Jacobite soldier. He taught Bonnie Prince Charlie What Gallic he knew. He was also in his youth, a catech for the SSPCK, the Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. And he is also the most outrageous sexual sex. And all of those roles were considered viable for someone who wanted a coherent life.

And one of the poems he wrote was called Oren Nambotog, The Song of the Old Men who went whoring in Ardnamurchen. And what he is criticizing is one, the lethargy of the young men who are not up and at it. and two, the social wrongness of it being old men who are going around seducing all the young girls. But the imagery also is tied up with a sudden outbreak of gonorrhea in the West Highlands and where that comes from. And part of the imagery has these old men kind of tugging away on their rusty old swords, which are weeping and choked in their scabbards. and they can hardly get them out,

but they're going to give it a damn good try. And the inappropriateness of that, that there's what we call a category error here. Sexual activity belongs rightly to the young men, but they're so supine, they're not getting up and at it. But the old men are desperately going around. You know, it's one of those classic tropes of sexual satire, isn't it?

The bandy-legged, toothless, whiskery old man, toughing a beautiful young woman. And Alexander MacDonald, as I say, was a catechist for the Society of the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and also a Jacobite poet writing for Bonnie Prince Charlie and also had time to look at his community and say, guys, there's something rotten in the state, you know, we're going wrong here. And he wrote another one called Marvarnah Heganich, which is a sort of lament song for a woman who clearly became the go-to, girl for a group of men in a locality. And the lament, the death song, is him imagining them burying her and her former friends and clients. And they're all around and they've got their

little sticks and spades and they're frantically dibbling away into her grave. And the poetry is clearly sexualized. They can hardly bear to let her go until they've had enough. You know, and she's there under the ground. I mean, it is very, very forthright. And people would fall about at the meetings of the Kirk Session or a Cayley at someone's house. And they might say, oh, well, Alistair, that was really a bit rich, you know. But it was all there when he published his first collection of poetry, which was the first ever printed collection of Gallic poetry, Alexander MacDonald. It's got the whole range of Gallic society there in 1750, which is Jamie and Claire's time.

It's got classical verse after Catullus, praise. his pet dove. It's got Jacobite verse saying, Wah hey boys, we're on for Charlie, and on we go. And it's got nature poetry, which is slightly showing inheritances from English nature poetry at the time. And also, it's got a whole bunch of icky, icky, dirty, sticky stuff, which in the Victorian collections, they simply excise. Oh, I bet they do. And you find some of the original collections, it was 1750 it came out and by the time it gets into a Victorian edition

one it's gone but in the addition from which it is excised someone's put Olock OLC now in Gallic that word means it doesn't just mean yuck it means evil wicked that one little word next to those poems tells you how culture has changed that that was perfect your right to put into the first ever published edition of Gallic poetry look at who we are

The book is called Asheri Nashan Khanoyne al-Banich, the resurrection of the old Scottish tongue, which is Gallic in his language. But by the Victorian editions, that aspect of it has gone. What we would call sexual satire, the bawdy satire, the very interesting social verse. Telling you what's going on in the area has disappeared. I'll be back with Sarah after this short break. So taking you back to Bonnie Pritch Charles, who I hope would have heard some of this amazing poetry on his campaign, despite the fact that he's kind of arrived with a few people that are getting cold feet, but oh God, we sort of said he would, so all right, we'll do it. He does actually have a few

victories, doesn't he? It starts off really well. Really well. They go from the west coast of Scotland, and remember most of that, there are no roads at this time. The first road that sort of opened up the Highlands was only built between 1725 and 1750. So there are paths and things. There is one road, Wade's Road, but he avoids that. And his Highlanders shoot from the west coast of Scotland on foot mainly to Edinburgh. And he arrives in July and by September he's at the gates of Edinburgh and he's taken Edinburgh. And he doesn't actually have to fight anybody until that point. He has effectively got into Edinburgh and taken Scotland and about three people have been killed in skirmishes between scouts from the Hanoverian,

i.e. the Kings, King George's army and the Jacobites. But he has to fight his first battle at Preston Pans because the British army, the King's Army, get themselves together to get an army and land outside Edinburgh on the coast, the East Coast. And they're pretty sure that this bunch of what they so charmingly called bare-assed banditti, i.e. the Highlanders in their plaids,

are going to be a disorganized rabble they can walk over. And it is a fantastic victory. It's over in 30 minutes. And it's a complete route. And the British establishment in London is stunned. I mean, they've hardly bothered to wake up to this rebellion or uprising until this point. But talk about a wake-up call. They are now awake.

I'm pissed off, I'd imagine. Yes, very alarmed. And they're really frightened because they're fighting. a major war in Europe. So really, all the British troops effectively are either in Germany or Flanders. They don't have the reserves for this, do they at all? No, they don't. No, no, no, no. Which is why Bonnie Prince Charlie's next move, there's a divide. A lot of Scottish Jacobites want him to consolidate and hold Scotland and break the Union, including Jamie Fraser's grandfather, lover of the 45. He calls it a set union infernal, this infernal union, hates it. But Bonnie Prince Charles is determined to take

London, because to him, he wants to be king of Britain, of the three kingdoms. Think big, right? And they charge down the coast via Carlisle, or the West Coast, and they get as far as Derby. And that's when Nemesis happens. It all starts. What happens? What happens in Derby? What did Derby do? Well, not enough people have come to him along the way. He has assumed that nothing succeeds like success. And so he is assuming that a lot of Jacobites, and there are many Jacobites in the north of England, in Carlisle, what we would now call the Lake District, Manchester. He has assumed that there will just be this growing army as he goes south, but very few rise, because they have flipped the coin between head and heart and they've made another decision. and stayed at home. So at Derby there is a big council and they debate and on one side, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his supporters, the council divides, are for going on to London. They think we've got this far. The King's army, George the Seconds army is still on the back foot. We've just got to press home our advantage. And a lot of the others, a lot of the other Scottish Jacobites,

led by Lord George Murray, who is effectively commander and chief of the army, for going back, retreating to Scotland and enforcing that consolidation. And they outvote the Prince. And really, it's game over in a long drawn out way between today, December the 6th. December the 6th. Look at that. Yes. Time of recording.

It's happening now all those years ago. And it's fatal because they start with drawing. And of course, winter's come in. and we've had a wee taste of winter last week. And they are thigh-deep in snow, dragging themselves north, and they don't stop. They have an indecisive battle at Falkirk, which they don't lose.

It has to be said. The Jacobites do not lose it. But again, instead, Falkirk is near Glasgow. So you've got Edinburgh on the east coast of Scotland, Glasgow on the west, and Stirling, the big old forts there. Instead of consolidating Scotland, and they keep retreating north after Falkirk.

So they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And then Kalloden, having never lost. Bonnie Prince Charlie has never lost. And the Duke of Cumberland until Kalloden has actually never won a battle. So they go into it, but he is now properly equipped with a good army, regular troops, they're properly drilled, and the Jacobites are exhausted and hungry and falling apart. and they've lost the initiative and, you know, half victory in anything, any of us do.

You do, I do. Half of the achievement is knowing you're going to do it before you even start, isn't it? Well, they lose that. If they'd kept going, if they'd gone no, ballets to this, we're going to London, do you think they would have won? I think they would have met resistance at some point. It wouldn't have been easy, but it's the big jack-a-like, what-if. there is a chance that they could have taken. Like taking London, I mean, we see it in urban warfare now.

We've got two massive fields of military activity in Ukraine and in Palestine. And urban warfare, that's what they would have got into. They would have been fighting through the streets of London. And that would have been a very different matter. So I don't know. You need to ask a military historian that. That's a tricky one, isn't it? But they make the decision to go back to Scotland

and kind of the morale, the steam has gone out of it, is supplies are dwindling, people presumably are getting sick as they tend to do on these campaigns, dysentery and all manner of awfulness. And then we get to the final battle, crap, lost that one. How does the story about Bonnie Prince Charles escaping to the Isle of Sky dressed as a woman? Is that true? Is that... Oh, it did?

Yes, it did. It did. Yeah. Flora McDonald's. over the sea to sky and Betty Burke, he's dressed as a maid. After Colloden, he is dragged away and there is a massive debate of, do we keep up a kind of guerrilla campaign in the hills? Because the British want this over and done quick, so they can get back to Flanders and win that war, which in fact they lose and Germany. Or do we run? And he decides to run, go back to France and say,

look what I could have done, if only you'd come in with, men and gold soon enough and arms. And he begins this what, you know, they call the flight through the heather. He is on the run chased by the red coat army, the British army who are wearing red coats, quite a lot of them. They are angry. Retribution, predation, it is not good what happens in the Highlands. War crimes that we would call them are freely committed.

You know, women being raped while they're men foes. are being hung in the trees over their heads and, you know, pregnant women being bayoneted and children being killed. It's really not good. Cumberland issues an instruction to pursue the vermin through their lurking hills. Now, none of us can read the word vermin. An enemy cannot be described as vermin to us without us knowing that is instantly licensing anything. You have dehumanized the person in the worst way. and Bonnie Prince Charlie's running ahead of them the whole time and he has to double back and he goes to an island

then he has to come back. He's trying to stay ahead of them to meet up with a French ship, a clipper or a man of war to take him away. Part of that is his encounter with Flora McDonald's. The McDonald's are a big Jacobite clan. She's not particularly Jacobite Flora actually, but to get him away so he can leave, they dress him as a maid.

He's a great big maid and he's striding along. sort of five foot 10, 11. He can't have been very convincing at all. He's also at that time started, he's drinking very, very heavily. And he will develop full-blown alcoholism in his life. He becomes a wreck of his former self. He hasn't got the character for this. I think he's a case of someone who peaks early.

He is a superb young man, idealistic, all or nothing, he'll go for it. He'll venture everything. but he doesn't mature, he doesn't grow. I mean, he's crushed by defeat. And it is all still pretty heroic so far. And when he gets to France, and he's back in his own gear, he loves dressing up. When he first arrived in 1745, he was dressed as a clerical student.

And he let his beard grow. He had red hair, let his beard grow, and he was scruff. And he left as a lady's maid. You know, he quite likes their cosplay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he'd be great at Comic-Con. And he's received rapturously in France, because they can't actually believe he's achieved what he did.

It was impressive. Oh, very impressive. When he arrived, he set out from France with two ships, the Elizabeth and the Dutti. And they got ambushed off the coast of Cornwall. They didn't know it was Bonnie Prince Charlie. I think they thought they were privateers. You know, they were French smuggling in brandy

for the free trade, you know, I know customs. There was a sea battle. and he lost the ship, the Elizabeth, which was carrying a thousand soldiers and all his arms and most of their supplies. So when he arrives on the west coast of Scotland, there are literally a handful of men. He starts from that. So it's a harem, scerum, period, because it's all done by April the 16th, 1746. He arrives, roughly speaking, July the 25th, 45, shoots to Edinburgh, go to. to Derby, retreats, fighting along the way, manages to get away. April the 16th, Colloden, it's done. He's away again by September. It's a year. It's one year. Wow. A year.

So he kind of comes in, causes absolute chaos and then goes back to France dressed as a wee maid. But what if the people left behind? I mean, I appreciate poor old Charlie is very sad and he turns into alcoholism. He doesn't deal with this particularly well, whatever he's doing. But what about the clans in Scotland? What about the Highlanders that were left behind? Is there any chance? And I doubt, I really don't think that there is, that the English went, well, just don't do it again then and left them to it. They tried that. When in 1714, Queen Anne died, you know, lots of your listeners will have seen the favourite. When she dies, George I comes in. And he has 50 times less good a claim to the throne than the stewards

because Queen Anza Stewart. So there is an uprising then and after that the British say just say sorry, promise to go and live quietly and happy days. 30 years later in 1745 they think well we've tried that guys and it didn't work

and they plan all sorts of things. One is a wholesale transportation of the rebel clans in indentured labour, i.e. slavery in Jamaica. I mean, so many, this is what Jamie and Claire do. They flee.

There is no future for them at home. And they want to eradicate clanship and everything that belongs to it. So a series of acts are passed. You're not allowed to wear tartan. You cannot bear arms. You cannot play the bagpipes. If you think of what the Russians did in the old Soviet empire, you try cultural elimination, all those markers of cultural ideas.

your costume, your clothing, your songs, those shared expressions of who we are as identity. They tried to get rid of all of those. And some people were transported, but they pulled back from the sort of wholesale transporting of an entire clan, which would have just emptied a district, basically. And people were beheaded. I mean, Jamie's grandfather, loved of the 45, was the last peer of the realm to be beheaded. The block and the axe in the Tower of London today has his name on it. It says, you know, Simon Fraser Lord Lubbett.

It's quite a thing, this block. It's almost comfortable. It's worn smooth, so it's clearly had use, where his head would have gone, and the axe next to it. And he's buried there. Why did they cut his head off? Treason. Treason. Yeah.

Yeah. He was really tried by all his peers. He was brought to Westminster Hall, and every single one of his peers, in the House of Lords pronounced him guilty and then he was definitely going to die. But, you know, he was, someone said of him, who was not a friend, said that, you know, he lived like a fox, but he died like a lion.

You know, he did think he was dying for his country. But four of the Jacobite peers were executed, were beheaded. Many, many of the ordinary Jacobites were simply hung, shot, bayoneted, They went after them after Colloden. For example, they would do things like collect the wounded. Those they didn't kill on the battlefield.

They would put into a church. There's a church in Inverness, the old high, and it's got the musket ball marks, you know, where they would just take them out and shoot them. And if there was a physician put in with them, they would take away his bag of instruments so he couldn't actually treat his fellow prisoners. And they had prison hulks in the river ness, in the mouth of the river nests, where they just loaded them in. and when they eventually came to take them out to transport them down to London,

prior to selling them into indentured labour, they opened the hull and one of them. You know, there were dead bodies, there were living people standing up to their waste in seawater and dead bodies. And it shocked even the soldiers who, it was brutal. It was absolutely brutal, which is why the commander of the Hanoverian forces the King's forces, came to earn himself the Subricay butcher Cumberland because he just thought, never, never again, will they ever, ever disturb the peace of the kingdom?

It was carnage in the Highlands. And it was the end of clanship as it had been lived. It's no wonder Scotland hates us, is it, really? I mean, it's just so, I mean, this is ethnic cleansing, really. It's not really. Well, certainly it's been called that. It's been called genocidal intent. by Professor Alan McKinness, who is a, you know, he's a Jacobite scholar.

It wasn't a British, I mean, an English, Scottish thing because there were many supporters of King George in Scotland, and there were many supporters of the stewards in England. I mean, Dr. Johnson, when he went on his tour of the Highlands with Boswell, said that, you know, if you poll, and this is 1770, so we're 20, 30 years later, He said, if you polled the country tonight, that the stewards would be back tomorrow. And that's Dr. Johnson, you know, the prime Londoner, Englishman. And he said, but no one would give a penny to bring it about.

And that absolutely captured. So that sort of, if you link it, that same emotional loyalty to the inherited dynasty of the stewards and rational acknowledgement that the Georges were the way to go was in those first chiefs who appeared on the beach, welcoming Bonnie Prince Charlie, and 30 years later, it still seems to be in Dr. Johnson, who is sort of going around the Highlands pontificating about things he doesn't know about.

Sarah, you have been wonderful. And if people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you? have a website, sarahrafraser.co.uk and my book, The Last Highlander, Scotland's most notorious rebel and clan chief about Jamie Fraser's grandfather is out with Harper Collins. And then I am going to be pitching a Jacobite crime fiction series after Christmas. So I've been working on that. That's what I've been working on. Oh, that, well, the best look with that, we'll definitely have your back on once that's out. Oh, Sarah, thank you so much for talking to me today. You have been

a treat. It was great, really good. All right. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Sarah for joining me. I had so much fun talking to you. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you want us to explore a subject or perhaps you just wanted to write in to say how terrible my Scottish accent was, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We've got episodes on everything from the sex life of Robbie Burns to the history of Karen's all coming your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit.

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