Witness to Rebellion: John Maclean's Journal of the 'Forty-Five and the Penicuik Drawings

Combining a firsthand account of an officer in Prince Charles Edward’s army in 1745 with a remarkable collection of illustrations from the Clerk Collection at Penicuik House depicting participants from both sides of the battle, this volume offers a unique view of the “Forty-Five” rebellion. The journal of Officer John Maclean describes his experiences from Prestonpans and the taking of Edinburgh, through the march into England and Derby and the withdrawal to Scotland, to the final retreat to Drummossie Moor near Inverness, where he was killed in the Battle of Culloden. Both telling and humorous, the sketches were made in part as a factual record but also as an exercise in caricature, perhaps as a diversion from the very real dangers and disasters of the time. This edition also includes a discursive essay that sets the visual evidence of the whimsical images of Highlanders and Hanoverians contained in the Clerk Collection in the context of the society and attitudes that produced them.