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The Reverend John Jardine, born in 1716, was brought up in Dumfriesshire in the west Borders, where his father Robert was minister, successively of the parishes of Cummertrees, Glencairn and Lochmaben. After studying divinity at the University of Edinburgh, Jardine was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Lochmaben, and was presented to the parish of Liberton near Edinburgh in 1741. Prominent among Jardine's parishioners there was Andrew Fletcher, Lord Milton, whose residence was at Bruntstane and who was Lord Justice Clerk and agent of the 3rd Duke of Argyll. While at Liberton Jardine married Jean, eldest daughter of George Drummond, Lord Provost of the city of Edinburgh in the 1720s and again after 1746.
Jardine was minister at Liberton at the time of the Jacobite rising of 1745. During that time he conceived the idea of writing a history of the rising, based largely on contemporary original sources, some of which he intended to print as appendices to his narrative. In a draft introduction to the work, Jardine presented himself as only the collector and publisher of what had been said and written by others. By letting these sources as far as possible speak for themselves, he hoped to deflect the censures that he foresaw as the consequences of writing a history of a civil war 'while the principal actors are still upon the stage and the civil feuds and dissensions are far from being extinguished' (GD1/1440/1/5). The material for this history, in the form of draft texts, notes of queries and amendments, draft advertisements, and original and copied source material, forms the bulk of the papers in this small collection. It is testimony to the extreme sensitivities of the times that very little of Jardine's source material is either signed or addressed.
Jardine planned a work of 2 volumes, and the first of his draft advertisements and printing proposals was dated as early as 7 June 1746. The first volume seems to have been well advanced by April 1748 when another of his printing proposals gave an outline of its contents and announced that subscriptions were being taken by the booksellers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen (GD1/1440/1/8). In the event, however, the history was never published. It was thought by the Rev. Thomas Somerville, who was a young man at the time of Jardine's death, that the reason for this was the evidence he had found of the 'wanton cruelties' perpetrated by the Duke of Cumberland and his officers after the battle of Culloden (T. Somerville, My own Life and Times, 1741-1814, ed. W. Lee, p.93).
The text surviving here (GD1/1440/2/1-20) includes an advanced draft of the contents of the first volume. Starting with an account of Jacobite activities in Scotland, England and France in the years leading up to 1745, it covers the earlier part of the rising itself and describes in detail the government's slow reaction to it. It concludes with the Jacobites' march south from the Highlands to the outskirts of Edinburgh and General Sir John Cope's decision to move his army south by sea from Aberdeen. The draft for Jardine's projected second volume describes in great detail the divided response in Edinburgh to the Jacobite threat, preparations to defend the city, and its rapid surrender following the diversion of government troops away from the town. Jardine devotes four overlapping sections of his narrative to this part of the story, a reflection of the extent of first-hand knowledge he and his influential contacts in Edinburgh had of these events as well as the continuing conflict there was between Lord Provost Archibald Stewart and his supporters and the much more bullish stance of Jardine's father-in-law, George Drummond. The continuous text ends with the reception of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the city and his arrival at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Besides these surviving sections of text, there are also two long accounts, copied apparently by Jardine in a form suitable for publication and probably intended as major appendices to the history. One of these consists of surviving parts of the journal of John Murray of Broughton, Secretary to the Young Pretender. The other is an account composed by Sir John Cope covering his proceedings as Commander-in-Chief in Scotland from the outbreak of the rebellion to his retreat to Berwick after the battle of Prestonpans. After this point in the rebellion, the surviving source material in the collection is sporadic, but notably includes two eye-witness accounts of the battle of Falkirk, one by a Jacobite, the other by a junior government volunteer (GD1/1440/5/26-27). About the battle of Culloden and the activities of the Duke of Cumberland and his forces afterwards there is almost nothing. Jardine himself played a role in the conflict, as a strong Hanoverian supporter and exhorter of his congregation, but we also know from the correspondence of Lord Milton preserved in the National Library of Scotland that in December and early January 1745/6, Jardine, mostly using the pseudonym John Robertson, was acting as one of Lord Milton's informants about the activities of Jacobite troops in south west Scotland and Carlisle, a role for which his local knowledge and family connections must have rendered him well suited. (e.g. NLS MS 16611, ff. 118-123). This evidence is supplemented by a set of instructions among Jardine's papers on how to report back information on the rebels in the vicinity of Carlisle (GD1/1440/5/21).
Another letter from Jardine in Milton's correspondence makes clear that the former was sending drafts of the text of his intended book to Milton and others, seeking supplementary information and, regarding Edinburgh at least, deliberately giving them the opportunity 'to point out the proper softnings, which I know it must have before it go to the Presse'. (NLS MS 16660, f. 80, 8 Apr. 1748). This is the probable explanation for the presence among Jardine's papers of pages of notes on his draft material, but in handwriting which is clearly not his.
A handful of papers in the collection concern events in the years after the '45 rebellion. Most notable among these is a letter passed to Jardine to read, but written from London, most probably by his friend the Rev. Hugh Blair to William Robertson in May 1763, vigorously lamenting the release of John Wilkes from imprisonment in the Tower (GD1/1440/5/46). By this time Jardine was minister of the Tron Kirk in Edinburgh and was well established as one of a circle of moderate ministers, prominent in clerical and literary affairs in the Edinburgh of the Enlightenment period. Jardine's career, however, was abruptly cut short when, at the age of 50, he suddenly collapsed and died in the midst of the church's annual General Assembly on 30 May 1766.
For further information on John Jardine's life and career, especially in his later years, see Richard B. Sher, 'Jardine, John (1716-1766)', in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. |