Melfort: a Jacobite Connoisseur
Edward Corp revalues the contribution, as emigre statesman and trend-setting art-collector, of one of the leading Jacobites at Saint-Germain.
John Drummond, Duke of Melfort, has traditionally been regarded by Whig historians as the epitome of the evil Jacobite. Even the so-called revisionist Jacobite historians have found few words of praise to give him. For them he was the councillor who helped bring about the fall of James II, and who helped ensure that he would never return. The vocabulary used to describe him has been loaded with hostility. We are told, to take some examples at random from recent publications, that Melfort was an 'unprincipled careerist', both 'mischief-making' and 'rascally'. His friends and supporters are described as 'croanies and toadies'.
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