You're going to get firm but very polarized opinions from most scholars of the period, and here's mine. The 1745 Jacobite rising (or the Forty-five, as some call it) was primarily a civil war within an international context that manifested with all of the various causes and motivations that such a schism typically brings. Of these, dynasticism, religious beliefs, economic concerns, regionalism, anti-Unionism, tradition, and necessity were the most rampant factors. Despite some historians variably holding up Jacobitism as a black-and-white struggle between Scotland and England, Catholic and Protestant, and Highland versus Lowland, I remain convinced that by 1745, to the majority of its participants it was a prism of loosely-connected causes struggling to find the leadership to make it a cohesive and effective revolutionary movement. In short: it was far more complex of an issue than popular history and long memory afford, and it has been misrepresented both in the media and in Jacobite historiography alike for generations, up to and including 2016 – the 270th year since the Battle of Culloden was fought.

The historiography of Jacobitism has been primarily concerned with the motivations and actions of the elites, so it makes sense that the definition of what Jacobites espoused would be biased toward those with larger stakes in the game; characterful men and women of influence and station with something to gain from a Stuart restoration. But there are a few things to keep in mind here that might help keep the later movement in clearer context:

1. Jacobitism had been an opposition movement to the established Williamite and Hanoverian regimes since the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9, and was really only effective as a military deployment through its eventual hundred years of life. It was never officially aligned with a political party (though the Tories arguably subsumed them earlier in the eighteenth century), and its aims and goals may have been static on paper – removing the 'usurping' monarchs William of Orange and the subsequent Georges for the conservative and 'absolutist' Stuart line of kings – but in practice, Jacobite supporters were garnered from a significant cross-section of the British and European populace for a huge variety of reasons. Any movement that lasts an entire century necessarily has an organic component that wiggles with the changing contexts of statecraft, economy, politics, and necessity, and Jacobitism was no different. I can't stress enough how important that is to consider.

2. Within his public proclamations, Charles Edward and his father James played at the idea of dissolving the Union and returning Scotland to parliamentary independence, but the Bonnie Prince's actions belied those promises when boots were actually on the ground in Edinburgh. Regnal union was always going to be a constant, and the Forty-five was repeatedly and outwardly advertised by its instigators as a bid for the combined throne of Britain and nothing less. Claiming Scotland alone wasn't an option, and this is borne out by the Jacobite army's tryst into England in the winter of 1745. Despite a flaccid declaration of a dissolved Union when the army took Edinburgh in the early autumn of that same year, no effective provisional government was set up in Scottish towns to ensure that power could be consolidated as the army made its way southward. Besides, anti-Unionism was just one of the hot-topics at which the Stuarts took aim, and by 1745 the Union was considerably more tolerable by populations on both sides of the border than it was during the last Jacobite effort in 1715 – only eight years after the Articles were first implemented. We also shouldn't forget that the Stuarts were absolutist, Divine Right monarchs with strongly-established political methodologies that were by no means universally accepted in Scotland; nonetheless they were willing to and did reach out to take advantage of any opposition to the Hanoverian government that they could. It is quite clear but seldom pointed out that the only real issue the Stuarts had against the Union is that it excluded them from lineal succession. Yet they claimed to be willing to do away with it if that promise would woo followers to their cause.

3. Nationalism as we know it today was a very different creature in the eighteenth century, not in the least because it was a much rawer phenomenon at that time and the idea of nationhood was less accessible to those who were uninfluenced by national and commercial socio-political factors. In other words, however Marxist the notion, most rural farming communities likely wouldn't have had much to say about who was in control of the country unless it directly affected their subsistence. In Scotland, many people identified by region or family – as a Mackinnon or an Aberdonian or even a North-easterner rather than a Briton or even a Scot first. This of course varied and is not really possible to pin down, but it should be explicitly stated that modern nationalism has very little to do with eighteenth-century Jacobitism and interest in independence definitively was not a prime motivating factor amongst the rank-and-file of those who fought and died for the Jacobite cause – though some elites were certainly passionate proponents of Scottish self-governance. Conversely, modern politicians have appropriated the anti-Unionist facet of the historical Jacobite movement and have warped it for emotional effect, as we see by the Jacobite motifs used during the recent referendum and the purposeful conflation of the '45 Movement', which accurately reflects the 45% who voted Yes rather than the specious connection to the 'rebellious' populace that came out in the Forty-five. The irony in this is poignant, considering eighteenth century Jacobitism was ostensibly in favor of a conservative, absolutist government rather than a roughly left-leaning progressive polity that ended up transforming modern Edinburgh into a robust Georgian capital in the years subsequent to the end of the last rising. Jacobitism was seen by many as atavistic and outdated, however romantic in its 'noble savagery'; unfortunately so were parts of Scotland to those outwith it, and the two became inextricably entwined in the romantic historiography of the movement throughout the Victorian revivalist period and beyond – Tourism 101 care of Sir Walter Scott and his ilk.

4. These points funnel into a greater and more significant one: the collective Jacobite risings fomented a very serious and significant British civil war that played out in an international context. Support for Stuart aims were carried throughout Europe, Russia, and into the New World. Up to 7% of the army of the Forty-five was made up of Irish and French nationals, and significant numbers in previous risings were English. It was hardly a Scottish-English affair and that characteristic must rise to the top. That the majority of punishment for treason was doled out to the Highlands of Scotland post-Culloden is a curious travesty, and further supports the assertion of some scholars that these depredations amounted to pointed genocide against the "backward-facing" feudalistic Highland clan system.

To directly answer your question more succinctly, my own research bears out that independence-minded nationalist sentiment was a relatively small motivating factor in the bottom-up constituency of Jacobite supporters during the last rising. The Jacobite-Nationalist alignment has been subsequently force-fit due to the hot potato of the modern independence issue, and historical Jacobitism in the context of the eighteenth century has been distinctly misshapen by those in privileged positions who, in my opinion, should know better. This is certainly not a commentary on the viability of the nationalist agenda or the legitimacy of an independent modern Scotland, but a frustrated complaint that this vital issue should not be conflated with Jacobitism in a widespread historical tableau. They weren't and aren't the same things, however present a small degree of overlap.

As for Charles Edward's popularity amongst eighteenth-century Scots, the answer is directly linked to the points above. We're talking about a civil war, so naturally there were divided opinions over his right, reason, and ability to reclaim the British throne for his father, who would have been James III and VIII. If you'd like to know more about the details on this subject, my doctoral thesis specifically deals with the popular constituency of the 1745 rising and forms the backbone of the current DB project I'm working on, The Jacobite Database of 1745. This thesis is available for free download in the University of St Andrews digital repository, and it explores a number of themes that help to establish large-scale prosopographic characteristics about the non-elites connected to the martial and civilian sectors of the Jacobite movement in 1745-6.

Best wishes in your continued interest,

Dr Darren S. Layne

(recently of the Institute for Scottish Historical Research, University of St Andrews)