Like many other dissident movements Jacobitism began with a set of fundamental beliefs and only over time developed a full-blown political agenda. Jacobite ideology had three distinct (sometimes contradictory) strands arising from its separate roots in English, Irish and Scots society. There was also a quiet divergence between an official, elite agenda and the popular Jacobitism of the common people. Over time each kingdom’s Jacobites then became progressively more and more radical as the solutions they sought for contemporary political, economic and social problems diverged further and further from the mainstream of socio-political developments.

The period after the Hanoverian succession in 1714 presented the Jacobites with new opportunities which they attempted to exploit by a major uprising in 1715. Despite widespread support for the Jacobite cause (particularly in Scotland because of the Union) George I and the Whig Ascendancy that came in with him were able to hold on to power and comprehensively defeat their Jacobite enemies. In the aftermath the Jacobites had to reconstruct the movement in England and Scotland and find a way to overthrow the Hanoverian kings and their Whig ministers. This led to the English Jacobites’ Atterbury plot in 1720–2, the disiy of which, and the arrests that followed, shattered the movement there for a generation. Meanwhile the Irish Jacobites waged their own cultural struggle against the English-controlled government of Ireland with considerably more success, and Scots Jacobitism steadily revived as a consequence of the Whig regime’s continued failure to deal effectively with Scotland’s grievances as a consequence of the Union.

There were two forms of Jacobite exile: a physical one overseas and a spiritual one at home. In the aftermath of defeat in the British Isles waves of Jacobites fled into exile in Europe and the wider world and had there to make new lives for themselves. Some did so by becoming pirates who made a living by attacking the British merchant marine, but mainly the exiles became soldiers, entrepreneurs and merchants in the service of other European great powers. Tens of thousands of young men also chose voluntarily to leave Ireland (and to a lesser extent Scotland) to enlist in the Irish brigades in France and Spain. These multi-layered ethnic and geographic constituencies created an overseas Jacobite community that was loyal to the exiled Stuarts and sought to sustain and further the Jacobite cause through their networks and influence on the Continent and elsewhere. Back in the British Isles, the waning of the Jacobite community and the final collapse of the cause after 1759 dispersed the movement politically, but the hostility to the prevailing order the cause had engendered among them was transmitted by old Jacobites into new causes and further opposition to the Whig regime.

The failure of the great Jacobite rising of 1715 made it clear the Jacobites could not overthrow the Whig regime without outside support. The Jacobite government-in-exile therefore doggedly pursued every diplomatic opportunity to ally itself with Britain’s enemies for the next forty-three years. As well as the underground struggle in the British Isles there was accordingly a momentous diplomatic struggle between the Stuart court in Rome and the British government. The Jacobite King James and his emissaries sought to persuade the great powers of Europe they could be useful allies in defeating, even potentially destroying, Britain as a great power; the British government attempted by conciliation, intimidation and war to persuade its peers to shun its Jacobite enemies. The British government prevailed most of the time, but in 1719 and 1743–8 it failed and Jacobite risings followed.

The Jacobites were part and parcel of the regular social hierarchy and social order within the British Isles, and the social dynamics of eighteenth-century society in the British Isles are accordingly sketched here. The Jacobites, however, developed a strong subculture which separated the core elements of the movement from the mainstream. In effect the key constituencies: the Catholics, the Nonjurors and the Tory/Anglicans within this subculture then became part of a distinct milieu that sustained a deep, generation on generation opposition to the prevailing order even to the point of death.

The transition of power from Louis XV to Louis XVI took place against a background of unresolved political tension over the Maupeou coup. The funeral of Louis XV in July 1774 required the attendance of the parlement – but which one? The unpopular appointees of the Maupeou parlement? Or the exiled members of the old parlement? The princes of the blood threatened to boycott the ceremony. Ceremony and politics were inextricably linked in the first days of Louis XVI's reign.

The conclusion reviews the findings of the main body of the book and sets them in a wider frame. It addresses their meaning and the broader meaning of monarchy in the context of the coming of the Revolution, recalling Louis XVI's journey to Normandy in 1786 and the attitudes of the deputies of the Estates General and the National Assembly towards the king. It brings together themes running through the work to position this book as part of the 'new court history' and of revisionist political history of France more broadly.

This chapter provides a new insight into the recall of the parlement of Paris, a key moment in the early reign of Louis XVI. Ceremonial considerations played a significant part in the timing and handling of Louis XVI's decision. The venerable ceremony of the lit de justice was exploited by the monarchy to make clear political points on the conditions of the recall and set the stage for the relationship between king and parlement during the new reign.

The royal healing touch for scrofula was performed by Louis XVI after his coronation for the first time in over thirty years. This chapter examines how the ceremony was organised and by whom, drawing on the record left by a Remois woman. It delves into the history of the ceremony and of healing by touch more generally, situating this ritual in the context of contemporary medicine in order to produce an explanation of the attractions of the ritual, which drew over two thousand people to Reims to be touched by the king.