As of 1st August 1747 the Act of Proscription prohibits the wearing of highland garb, in particular tartans and kilts, except within the British army.
Although the act became law in 1747, it is called the 1746 act as this is the date the act started it’s journey into legislation.
Perhaps the most widely and frequently repeated ‘fact’ surrounding the early history of tartan is that its use was banned by the 1746 Act of Proscription following the defeat of the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden in April the previous year. The Act has also been credited with banning the playing of bagpipes, speaking Gaelic and gathering family members together in public. In fact, the Act banned none of these.
The post-Culloden legislation followed the earlier, and ineffectual, 1716 and 1725 Acts and was:
‘An act for the more effectual disarming the highlands of Scotland; and for the more effectual securing the peace of the said highlands; and for restraining the use of the highland dress.’
Essentially, the third Act was a revision of the earlier 1725 one but with an extra section added to ban what the Government considered to be a martial dress that was central to the Jacobite identity. The relevant section of the Act stated that:
“That, from and after the first day of August, one thousand seven hundred and forty seven, no Man or Boy, within that Part of Great Britain called Scotland, other than such as should be employed as Officers and Soldiers in his Majesty’s Forces, should, on any Pretence whatsoever, wear or put on the Clothes, commonly called Highland Clothes; (that is to say,) The Plaid, Philebeg or Little Kilt, Trowse, Shoulder belts, or any Part whatsoever of what peculiarly belongs to the Highland Garb, and that no Tartan, or Party-coloured Plaid or Stuff, should be, used for Great Coats or for Upper Coats, under the Penalties therein mentioned; and the Time appointed for laying aside the said Highland Dress was, in certain Cases therein mentioned, further prolonged by several Acts, one made in the twentieth, and the other in the twenty-first Year of the Reign of his said late Majesty King George the Second: And whereas it is judged expedient that so much of the Acts above mentioned as restrains the Use of the Highland Dress should be repealed: Be it therefore enacted by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the Authority of the fame, That so much of the Acts above-mentioned, or any other Act or Acts of Parliament, as restrains the Use of the Highland Dress, be, and the fame are hereby repealed.”
Not only were Soldiers explicitly exempt from the Dress Act but women were implicitly excluded too; and, judging from the number of surviving portraits the ban seems to have been widely ignored by gentry of both Jacobite and Hanoverian persuasions.
The Act proved difficult to enforce in the remote Highlands and the period of grace proved inadequate and had to be extended (except for landowners and their sons); initially to 1st August 1748, and then to 25th December 1748, for the plaid and kilt and to 1st August 1749, for the other proscribed clothing. As seen in the second pic John MacKay of Rosshall in Strathnaver was one of those that ignored the Act. In October 1751 he appeared before the sheriff in Inverness for ‘wearing the Highland Clothes’ (note, it was not for wearing tartan). There is no indication of what clothes he was wearing but, in accordance with the Act, he was convicted and imprisoned for six months
If you look at the third image I have posted you will see the date is 1761, so tartan was clearly being marketed and so, at least in Edinburgh., it would be another 21 years before the act was repealed.
