Battle of Prestonpans - Cope Exonerated at Court-martial

Cope Exonerated At Court-martial

Despite the conduct of his inexperienced troops and the humiliating fact that Cope had to report his overwhelming defeat personally to the garrison commander at Berwick-upon-Tweed, the frequent accusations that Cope himself fled the battlefield appear to be incorrect. Cope and his officers were exonerated by a court-martial. Martin B. Margulies, writing in History Scotland magazine, notes:

The Report of the Board's proceedings was published in 1749. Anyone who scrutinizes it closely can only conclude that the Board was correct. What emerges from the pages is not, perhaps, the portrait of a military genius but one of an able, energetic and conscientious officer, who weighed his options carefully and who anticipated – with almost obsessive attention to detail – every eventuality except the one which he could not have provided for in any case: that his men would panic and flee.