Since 1690, the court at Saint-Germain had been plotting a landing on the Northumbrian coast followed by the seizure of Newcastle. By 1714, with Jacobite hopes of a constitutional restoration ruined and George I firmly on the throne, the idea began to be discussed seriously once again. Three leading Tories who had all held ministry under Queen Anne had, for different reasons, come over to the Jacobite side, and these three men now took on the planning of an armed Jacobite rising in England. They were John, Earl of Mar, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Secretary of State to Queen Anne, and James, Duke of Ormonde, an Irishman who had been Captain-General under Anne. These three men were able to travel around the kingdom and to France, liaising with leading Jacobites and estimating the strength of Government support. They began to formulate serious plans for a full-scale Jacobite rising in England.

On 1 September 1715 the court in Saint-Germain finally agreed on a plan of campaign. Two Jacobite armies would be raised in the North, one in Northumberland and one in Scotland. These armies would act as a feint, drawing the Government army away from London and then refusing to engage it in battle. Once the Hanoverian forces were committed, the King would land in the South-west, raise the local population, meet with the rebels from Wales, march to Oxford, a Jacobite stronghold, and then on into London. Captain Robert Talbot, an Irish Catholic, took ship for Newcastle carrying orders that the Northumbrian Jacobites were 'to be ready to rise upon warning given' (Patten).