Drawing from a wide variety of sources, the goal of Jacobite Database 1745 is to house every name that can be associated with Jacobitism in the years 1740-1759. Because much of the detailed biographical data of accused or suspected Jacobites are scarce or undiscovered, approaching this project using prosopographic analysis will help answer many questions about Jacobite constituency during the final rising against the Hanoverian government of George II. The usefulness of this interpretation is that it allows researchers to establish significant characteristics about a large number of subjects through a broad but detailed examination of facts: the entire collection of what facts are known about them and the way those facts interrelate.
No-one has ever compiled these listings into one consolidated forum; eliminating duplicate names, comparing them against each other to see how the web of relationships was formed, and categorising them by a myriad of different qualifiers to be later examined by a concise and structured thesis. In effect, this database hopes to offer its users an accurate biographical, social, and cultural atlas of the ‘Forty-five.
This rich codification of Jacobite constituency will present everything we currently know about the participants of the ‘Forty-five – with infinite expandability to include future knowledge – and will also provide an invaluable tool for researchers in the fields of history, genealogy, and beyond.
This database is the ongoing work of Dr Darren S. Layne, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (BA), the University of Edinburgh (MSc), and the University of St. Andrews (PhD). The website can be found at http://www.jdb1745.net/
