6. The Insurrection of Scotland, 1715

John Sinclair (1683-1750), eleventh Lord Sinclair (known as Master of Sinclair: Master was the honorific title given at that time to the heir apparent to a Scottish Lord of Parliament), was a passionate patriot and opponent of the Union. His Memoirs of the Insurrection in Scotland in 1715 (published by the Abbotsford Club in 1858) are of great value for the light they throw on the inner history of the Jacobite rising. The following passage describes the attempted storming of Edinburgh Castle...