Jacobites transported after the ’45

A member of the Preston History Facebook group, Bradley Gonzales, added a comment to a recent post by Ashley Warren Preston about the battle fought in Preston during the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. Bradley pointed to a Preston man who was transported for his involvement in the next Jacobite Rebellion in 1745.

The man was on a list of those transported, where he is named as James Sharrock, aged 21, a tailor, five feet six inches tall, with dark hair and a fair skin.

The list is found in a book ‘Jacobite gleanings from state manuscripts; short sketches of Jacobites; the transportations in 1745’, by J. Macbeth Forbes:

‘An Exact List and Description of 150 Rebel Prisoners ship’d at Liverpool on board the Veteran — John Ricky, master — for the Leeward Islands; which were taken near Antigua, the 28th June last, by the Diamond Privateer— Paul Marsale, commander — and carried into Martinico, the 30th June 1747.’

Three more men are named as being from ‘near Preston’:

Another Sharrock, this time David, a 19-year-old weaver; Richard Riding, 24, another weaver; and Richard Procter, 20, a maltster. There were also two men from ‘Walton’ (this could be Walton-le-Dale or one of the other Lancashire Waltons): Hugh Johnson, a 27-year-old weaver ‘blind in one eye’, and Thomas Charnley, another weaver, aged 19.

Among those Lancashire men on the list is a George Hume, a writer from Edinburgh, who is described as ‘Black man’. Forbes commented that that ‘colour would, no doubt, suit the West Indies’.

Forbes provides the following information on the men’s fate (I’ve added emphasis to one telling phrase):

‘The island of Martinico or Martinique, into which the prisoners were carried, was in French possession, though taken from the French fifteen years later by Admiral Rodney, to whom its Governor-General, De La Touche, capitulated. It was the chief of all the Leeward Islands owned by the French, and was the residence of the ruler of the French settlements in the West Indies.

‘It was quite typical of the other islands in its character and products. Its exports were sugar, cotton, cocoa, aloes, coffee, cassia, etc., and the climate was more adapted to blacks than whites. … In 1747 it was a sally-port for French privateers in the West Indian Seas …

‘As the articles of the 1762 capitulation make no reference to the 150 prisoners in course of transportation, it is to be presumed that they had previously quitted the island.’

‘The captured vessel was duly claimed from the French in January 1748, but they peremptorily declined to hand over it or the prisoners to the British Government. They were then asked to include the latter in the next cartel for the exchange of prisoners, and again they refused to enter into any engagement implying the return of the unfortunates to English servitude.

‘What the fate of these prisoners — these twice-taken captives — ultimately was, does not transpire from the official papers. Let us hope they achieved their liberty and return to their native land in happier times.’

The book from which this account is taken can be found online here: https://archive.org/details/jacobitegleanin00forbgoog/. It contains more information about Preston and the 1745 Rebellion.