ABSTRACT

Most accounts of the end of the rising have concentrated on the fates of those Jacobites who surrendered at Preston. Traditionally it has been asserted that their punishments were ‘savage reprisals’ and a recent popular history also makes this assertion. 1 Detailed scholarly studies, though, have argued that this was not the case; punishments had to be made as examples, but clemency was also exercised in order to knit back the civic society that rebellion had wrenched apart, the latter being due in part to the actions of both Tory and Whig elites as well as of the government. 2 This author would agree with this thesis, and adds to it by concentrating on the fates of those in the North West. The fate of the Jacobite prisoners is an important one, but there were other important facets to the North West of England at this time – celebrations for the government’s supporters being one, and the continuance of support for Jacobitism being another – showing that the struggle was not entirely over.