The University and the '45

The Jacobite Army of Charles Edward Stuart ('Bonnie Prince Charlie') occupied Edinburgh between 16 September and 1 November 1745. In anticipation of their arrival, University classes were suspended, a pro-Government company of University volunteers was formed (including William Robertson (1721-1793), the future Principal), and Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746), Professor of Mathematics, was employed as a military engineer to fortify the city.

Colin Maclaurin Fortifies the City

Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746) had held the Chair of Mathematics since 1745. In a letter of 9 December 1745 to his friend Duncan Forbes, Lord Culloden, he wrote that 'as soon as the danger from the Rebels seem'd imminent', he left his country house in Dalkeith and came to the capital. Here he joined the pro-Government Volunteers and did his utmost to raise the spirit of resistance 'amongst the Gentlemen in hopes it would have been raised likewise amongst the Burghers & trades'. Immediately 'the care of the walls' was assigned to Maclaurin. He tells Forbes that he 'laboured night & day' to fortify the city 'under infinite discouragements from superior powers'. He was promised 'hundreds of workmen' but 'could hardly get as many dozens'. Despite daily complaints to the City Council (whose Lord Provost, Archibald Stewart, was suspected of Jacobitism), he was only given the assistance he required in the last two days before the Jacobite occupation, and that, he writes, was too late. MacLaurin was incensed because he firmly believed that:

the Town was in a condition to have stood out for two or three days against men improvided with Artillery unskillfull & then unarmed, and there was a double expection of relief viz. from the Dutch & Sr John Cope

According to Alexander Carlyle, Maclaurin's former pupil and volunteer in the College Company, very few tradesmen could be prevailed upon to work on the fortifications, as they were occupied in the annual election of their deacons. Whatever the reason, Maclaurin's orders were, according to Carlyle, 'but ill obeyed'. Carlyle recalls visiting Maclaurin when he was 'busy on the walls on the south side of the town, endeavouring to make them more defensible, and had even erected some small cannon near to Potterrow Port'. Maclaurin was convinced that he could make the wall invulnerable against a sudden attack but complained of lack of support.

Maclaurin's biographer Patrick Murdoch supplies further details: 'he made plans of the walls, proposed the several trenches, barricades, batteries, and such other defences as he thought could be got ready before the arrival of the rebels'. For Murdoch, 'the anxiety, fatigue, and cold to which he was thus exposed; affecting a constitution naturally of weak nerves, laid the foundation of the disease of which he died'.

At the time of the city's surrender, Maclaurin tells Forbes, he was 'loading the cannon at the Westport, & pressing the finishing of some works there. Maclaurin bitterly regretted that the Volunteers let their arms fall into enemy hands rather than delivering them to General Guest's garrison at Edinburgh Castle which held out throughout the Jacobite occupation. According to Murdoch, Maclaurin was himself able to smuggle a telescope into the castle and to contrive a way of keeping the garrison supplied with provisions.

Following his victory, Charles Edward Stuart issued a proclamation, promising an indemnity to all Volunteers who submitted to his Government within twenty days. 'Determined to make no submission', MacLaurin 'endeavour'd to settle my family at Dalkeith as well as I could and crost the border of England on the 19th day of those allow'd' (letter to Rev. John Hill, 20 October 1745). He would rather entrust his family to the 'Protection of Providence' than have 'communication with the Rebels'. From the safety of Newcastle he wrote, that:

I have never yet entertain'd any Fear of the Conclusion of this Affair, tho' deeply concerned for the dishonour and distress it brings on some parts of the Country, and particularly on Edinburgh' (ibid.)

In England, he accepted an invitation to lodge with Thomas Herring, Archbishop of York. In his absence, no fewer than eight Jacobite soldiers were quartered on his house in Dalkeith. His wife, Anne Maclaurin (nee Stewart) 'tho' indisposed' had entertained them well and endeavoured to extract information from them as to the strength of the Jacobite army. MacLaurin made his way safely back to Edinburgh on 14 November 1745, but at great cost to his health. Crossing snowbound country between Morpeth and Wooler, he caught 'the most dangerous cold I ever had' (letter to Forbes, 9 December 1745). Within a week, he was endeavouring to raise a new body of volunteers but was hampered by continuing illness. Indeed MacLaurin's health never seems to have recovered from his exertions to defend Edinburgh against the Jacobites. He died on 14 June 1746, two months after the final defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden. He was tended on his death bed by Alexander Monro ''primus'' (1697-1767), the the first Professor of Anatomy at Edinburgh University (1720-64) and founder of Edinburgh Medical School. At the first meeting of the Senatus Academicus after the reopening of Edinburgh University, Monro read an oration in praise of his late friend.

According to MacLaurin, university classes resumed on 21 November 1745 but 'promise poorly'. Certainly no graduations are recorded for the academic year 1745-1746.

Other Reponses

The great majority of the teaching staff and the students of the University appeared to have remained loyal to the Hannoverian government. Charles Mackie (1688-1772), the University's first Professor of History is reported to have spread spurious tales of Jacobite atrocities as the city prepared for the arrival of Charles Edward Stewart's army. When challenged as to their veracity, Mackie cheerfully acknowledged that they might be unfounded, but argued that they served a purpose in rousing loyalist sentiment. Edinburgh University's Laing Collection contains papers belonging to Mackie, including letters providing eyewitness accounts of the '45 and a set of 'proposals for raising four regiments of women in the three Lothians' to combat the Jacobite. One was to comprise of wives, one of widows, one of old maids, and 'one of young lasses fullgrown and fit for action'. There is a fifth proposed of 'wives and daughters of the Presbyterian clergy'. The only qualification required is 'that they be prooff of shot and able and willing to parry a thrust' (La. II. 90/7).

Sources

• Alexander Carlyle, Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk: Containing Memorials of the Men and Events of his Time (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1860)
• A Catalogue of the Graduates in the Faculties of Arts, Divinity, and Law, of the University of Edinburgh since its Foundation (Edinburgh: Printed by Neill and Company, 1858)
• David Bayne Horne, A Short History of the University of Edinburgh, 1556-1889 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967)
• Colin MacLaurin, The Collected Letters of Colin MacLaurin, ed. Stella Mills (Nantwich: Shiva, 1982)
• Patrick Murdoch, 'An account of the Life and Writings of the author', in Colin Maclaurin, An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries (London: A. Millar and J. Nourse, 1748)
• Nicholas Phillipson, 'The Making of an Enlightened University', in Robert D. Anderson, Michael Lynch, and Nicholas Phillipson, The University of Edinburgh: An Illustrated History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), pp. 51-102.
• Erik Lars Sageng, 'MacLaurin, Colin (1698–1746)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [[1], accessed 12 June 2014]
• L. W. Sharp, 'Charles Mackie, the First Professor of History at Edinburgh University', Scottish Historical Review, 41 (1962), 23-45.