Afore the Highlands: The Jacobites in Perth 1715–16

Out of Stock

Published: September 2019

Paperback (225 pages)

ISBN: 9781916477834

Publisher: Tippermuir Books Limited

Afore the Highlands: The Jacobites in Perth (1715–16) | Kathleen Lyle

For a few months in 1715–16, when it was occupied by Jacobite forces, Perth was at a focal point of British and European history. Despite its importance, it is a part of the city’s past that has been largely forgotten.

Perth, which then had a population of around 5,000, became the headquarters for an army of perhaps 10,000 men. Where were they all accommodated? How were they fed? What did the townspeople think of the occupation? Did they all support the Jacobite cause? Questions like this are not often addressed by existing histories of the 1715 rising, which tend to concentrate on military events or national politics.

Afore the Highlands answers these questions and more. It pieces together information from a wide range of sources to illuminate details of the Jacobite occupation of Perth and some other aspects of the 1715 rising. In Afore the Highlands, Kathleen Lyle combines rigorous research with a writer’s skill to offer the reader a fascinating and insightful journey through a key moment in a turbulent period of history.

Kathleen Lyle was born and brought up in Perth, but now lives in Oxford. She studied biochemistry at St Andrews in the 1960s and then worked in publishing for many years, most recently as a freelance copy-editor of scientific and medical books. She is now retired. Her interest in history developed gradually over many years and eventually led to a master’s degree in historical studies which she completed in 2018. When researching for her dissertation on the Jacobite occupation of Perth in 1715–16 she realised how much information about the 1715 rising there is to be found, not only in the local archives but also in rare eighteenth- and nineteenth-century publications. This book is the result.