Career
Wedderburn"s expectations of an inheritance were not fulfilled and he fell on hard times. In 1745 Sir John joined the rebellion of Charles Edward Stuart against the Hanoverian crown, serving as a colonel in the Jacobite army before being captured at the Battle of Culloden and hauled off to London to face trial and execution. He was indicted for treason at Street Margaret"s Hill, Southwark on 4 November 1746, and was found guilty, despite arguing in his defence that he had not personally taken up arms against the Crown, and was executed at Kennington Common on 28 November 1746.
The boy"s mission failed, and he was to witness his father"s execution as a traitor by hanging, drawing and quartering, after which he was forced to return to Scotland where he found himself cut off from his inheritance and, without prospects, obliged to take ship to the New World.
In Glasgow he found a ship"s captain prepared to let him work his passage on a ship bound for the Caribbean.
