London on 21 September 1715 on a charge of being ‘engaged in a design to support the intended invasion of the kingdom’. After an unsuccessful attempt on Newcastle he joined another body of rebels north of the border and a detachment from Mar's army. Although having no military experience, Forster, as a Protestant, was elected to lead all Jacobite forces in England. Under his direction Lancelot Errington captured the island of Lindisfarne. Forster relied on advice from Henry Oxburgh, an Irish former soldier. The Jacobites moved southwest from Northumberland into Lancashire, but were faced with converging forces of the British Army under Charles Wills and George Carpenter. In November 1715 Forster was heavily defeated at the Battle of Preston and surrendered. He was imprisoned in Newgate Prison, but escaped to France in 1716. The details of his escape and the text of the royal proclamation ordering his arrest were published by the contemporary commentator Boyer (1716). He was attainted and expelled from Parliament on 2 February 1716. Several of his former comrades including Derwentwater and Oxburgh were executed. Forster managed to reach Paris, where he was sent money by William Dicconson, the Pretender's treasurer. He then joined the English Jacobites at the Stuart court, where he was made steward of the Household. He had been excepted from the Act of Indemnity, and his brother John succeeded to Adderstone in 1725. His nephew Thomas remarked, in correspondence, that he held out ‘little hopes’ of his ‘getting anything from the succession’. After the Pretender moved to Avignon from Rome he summoned Forster there in October 1727. Death and legacy Forster died unmarried in Boulogne, France on 27 October 1738, aged 55. His body, after being initially buried at Boulogne, was returned to England and reburied at Bamburgh on 7 December. Physical description Forster was described as follows in the 1716 royal proclamation ordering his arrest: A person of middle stature, inclining to be fat, well shaped except that he has stoops in the shoulders, fair complexioned, his mouth wide, his nose pretty large, his eyes grey, speaks the northern dialect". Further reading Dorothy Forster, historical novel by Sir Walter Besant References External links Northumbrian Jacobites 1683 births 1738 deaths British MPs 1708–1710 British MPs 1710–1713 British MPs 1713–1715 British MPs 1715–1722 English Jacobites Escapees from England and Wales detention History of Northumberland Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies