Conspiracy Theories About Our Founding Fathers

Conspiracy Theories About Our Founding Fathers

Steve - August 3, 2019

Conspiracy Theories About Our Founding Fathers
Portrait of Queen Anne (1665-1714), the last Stuart monarch, by the Workshop of John Closterman (c. 1702). Wikimedia Commons.

3. It has been argued the entire American Rebellion in the Colonies was designed by Jacobites to permit a return of the Stuarts to the British throne

Following the installation of George I as King of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714, over the better claims of more than fifty of his relatives who were disqualified for being Catholic, the reign of the House of Stuart was ended in favor of the House of Hanover. Terminating also the Jacobite belief in the divine right of kings, with Parliament instead selecting who would fill the vacant throne and not God, the political movement repeatedly sought to restore what they perceived to be the rightful Stuarts to their proper place. Culminating in failed uprisings in 1715, 1719, and 1745, as well as several more minor instances, the Jacobite cause has been connected to the American Revolution.

Failing to successfully provoke rebellion in Britain, repeatedly crushed in decisive fashion, following the disastrous defeat in 1746 and the end of Jacobitism in Great Britain it has been alleged adherents entered into a protracted conspiracy designed to weaken the British Crown prior to a renewed effort. Supposedly responsible for provoking the seismic unrest throughout the American Colonies in the years preceding the revolution, in a manner similar to conspiracy theories involving ulterior French designs, it has been argued that Jacobites orchestrated the American Revolution in order to provide more fertile grounds in Europe for their seditious activities.

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