A Scottish or English supporter of the exiled royal house of Stuart. The Jacobites took their name from Jacobus, the Latin name for James II, who had been deprived of his throne in 1688. Their strength lay among the Highland clans of Scotland, whose loyalty was personal; the weakness of Jacobitism was that it failed to win over the Tories in England, who might have made it a more powerful and dangerous movement. The Jacobites were politically important between 1688 and 1745. The Fifteen and the Forty-Five were their major rebellions, but neither succeeded and after 1745, with the government’s suppression of the clans, Jacobitism ceased to have a firm political base.