The Signet Library 200th Anniversary Online Exhibition
signet library collection guides
the 1745 collection
The 1745 Collection is an umbrella title encompassing materials about the entire recognised period of Jacobite rebellions from 1688 until the dying of the echoes after the 1745 rebellion met its doom at Culloden.
An officer’s commission signed by the Chevalier shortly before the Jacobite victory at the Battle of Prestonpans
The largest part of the collection consists of printed accounts and memoirs, along with a substantial collection of contemporary pamphlets and printed ephemera.
Pamphleteering during the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion
An early acquistion: a 1715 pamphlet collected by the last Georgian Signet Librarian Macvey Napier WS before 1837.
Newspapers began to come into their own in Scotland in the modern sense over the course of the Jacobite rebellions, and the collection contains a substantial holding of the principal Edinburgh and Scottish newspapers for the period, some bound together specifically in reference to the '45 itself. A bound set of court and other papers covering the trial of Provost Archibald Steuart, who was accused of handing Edinburgh over to the Chevalier without a fight after General Cope's defeat at Prestonpans includes a handwritten moment-by-moment account of the fall of Edinburgh to Prince Charles (which is subsequently reproduced in printed accounts of his trial, at which he was acquitted).
The Caledonian Mercury, printed in Edinburgh during the city’s occupation by the Jacobite forces of the 1745.
Manuscript timeline of the days leading up to the entry of the Jacobite armies into Edinburgh, as deployed at the trial of Provost Archibald Steuart.
he Signet Library was bequeathed the papers of the Reverend John Jardine by the great Victorian archaeologist and psychiatrist Sir Arthur Mitchell, whose son, Sidney Mitchell, was the WS Society's architect. Jardine had collected extensive papers, first hand accounts and other materials relative to the 1745 Rebellion when his sudden and early death brought to a halt what would have been one of the great Scottish Enlightenment works of historical scholarship. The bulk of these papers have been placed on deposit at the National Records of Scotland where they may be consulted under reference GD1/1440.
A small but interesting subsection of Jardine's papers remain housed at the Signet Library, including a fascinating list and characterisation of the women of Edinburgh drawn up by Provost George Drummond and Jardine. This was edited by Dr. Anita Gillespie and published by the Scottish Record Society in 2021. Other manuscript materials pertaining to the Jacobite Rebellions include songs, poetry and a sequence of correspondence relating to the health and upkeep of Jacobite prisoners in prison following the '45.
Cataloguing of the collection is at a relatively early stage, but it is intended that a full list of all items of all kinds relevant to the Jacobite rebellions be made available in due course.
A series of Jacobite toasts from the 1715 Rebellion
The title page to Provost George Drummond and the Reverend John Jardine’s lists of Edinburgh women