Flora Macdonald

This portraitback to top

Richard Wilson was an artist in the circle of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, whom Macdonald had helped to escape from the Battle of Culloden. Wilson painted several portraits of Flora Macdonald that were circulated as engravings and served to reinforce her reputation as a Jacobite heroine. This portrait was probably painted on Macdonald's release from the Tower in July 1747.

Events of 1747back to top

Current affairs

Jacobite Simon Fraser, 11th Baron Lovat is found guilty of high treason and beheaded by axe at the Tower of London; the last man to be executed in this way in Britain.
Abolition of Hereditable Jurisdictions Act breaks the power of the Scottish clans.
Liverpool overtakes Bristol as Britain's busiest slave trading port.

Art and science

Actor David Garrick becomes co-manager of Drury Lane Theatre, London.
Physician James Lind undertakes one of the first controlled medical experiments on the effect of citrus fruit as a cure for scurvy.
Hannah Glasse publishes The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy; eighteenth-century England's most popular cookbook.

International

War of the Austrian Succession: at the First Battle of Cape Finisterre the British fleet is victorious against the French. British forces led by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland are subsequently defeated by Marshal Maurice de Saxe's French army at the Battle of Lauffeld near Maastricht. At the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre the British fleet puts an end to French naval operations for the remainder of the war.

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