St Andrew's Flag
 ____________________________ The National Flag of Scotland. The blue flag with a white diagonal cross is the national flag of Scotland and is often called the saltire or the St Andrew's Flag after The Patron Saint of Scotland.
ST ANDREW St Andrew was one of Jesus' apostles who taught The Gospel throughout Scythia, Epirus and Achaia. St Andrew was crucified in Patras, Achaia where he preached to the crowds for 2 days - managing to convert many listeners before dying. St Andrew thought himself unworthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus and requested to be crucified in another manner - hence the shaping of the white of the flag. St Andrew is also the patron saint of Russia.
Legend has it that St Rule (Saint Regulus), was charged with the safe keeping of St Andrew's relics after experiencing a vision in which he was told to take certain of Saint Andrew's bones to the most westerly part of the known world by an angel. This he did at a place called Kilrymont, where he built a church and became the first bishop - the town later became known as St Andrews. St Andrew's day is celebrated on the 30th of November.
HISTORY OF THE SALTIREIn 832AD Angus MacFergus the High King of Alba was defending the land with his army of soldiers against an English invasion lead by Northumbrian warrior Athelstane. Thinking that they were facing a superior force King Angus began to pray. He thought his prayers had been answered when he saw a saltire shape in the clouds of a white St Andrew's Cross on the blue sky and promised that if they won the day with Saint Andrew's help, he would be adopted as Scotland's patron saint. The Scots won the battle and from that day the Saltire became the flag of Scotland and the emblem of the Scottish people. By 1286 the seal of Scotland bore the crucified image of St Andrew and the saltire appeared in coin by about 1350. By 1385 an Act of Parliament bade that any Scot's soldier invading England would wear a white St Andrew's cross. This lead to many Chieftains adopting the saltire to their family arms and standards. By 1500 the saltire started to appear on flags at sea and on the land. In 1542 the Royal Arms of James V featured the saltire. The saltire became the national flag whilst at sea in 1606 which also saw the first Union flag combing the St George's and St Andrew's flag. Most modern buildings that host flags have the Union Jack flag and the St Andrew's flag flying side by side. In the churchyard at Athelstaneford, East Lothian, the flag of St Andrew always flies and is floodlit at night.
The saltire is said to be one of the oldest national flags of any country. There is no official shade of blue., and dark blue and pale sky blue have all been used. Nor is there an official size, although a ratio of 5:3 is generally used.
|
AD 80 - Julius Agricola Arrives in ScotlandJulius Agricola was sent in the year AD77 to be governor of Britain for the Roman Empire. He pushed the Empire’s reach northwards with advances to the valley crossing Scotland from the Clyde to the Forth in AD80. He enforced the front with a row of forts before continuing with campaigns up the east of Scotland in AD83 as far as the Moray Firth, using a fleet to supplement the supply lines.
The Highlands were not penetrated by the Romans, whose legions were in fact soldiered not by men of Rome but by Romanians, better suited to the bitter climate.
AD84 - Battle of Mons GraupiusOn an untraceable site, called Mons Graupius by Tacitus, thirty thousand Caledonii amassed, led by Galgacus, to battle with the Empire. With their unique formations, weaponry and tactics the Romans won the day. After taking hostages however, the Romans retreated, whilst their fleet sailed to Fair Isle and Orkney to investigate the topography of the British Isles.
Agricola returned to Rome in AD87 with distinction. Archaeologists believe Mons Graupius to be in the north-east around Raedykes.
793 - Beginning Of The Norse InvasionsThe Viking invasions of Scotland heralded a new type of warfare. By equipping their boats with keels, a significant number of warriors could be accommodated on sea journeys that presented little problem to the highly developed Norse navigational and rigging skills.
Their terror is first recorded in 793 with the destruction of Lindisfarne monastery. Attacks on Iona began in 794 whilst Orkney and Shetland became Norse colonies, followed by the entire Hebrides and areas of the mainland.
843 - Kenneth McAlpin CrownedThe Danes, already well-established through the Hebrides and on the mainland and supported with on-going North Sea crossings, battled with Alba’s Picts in 839 and utterly defeated them. The North of Scotland experienced a gradual population migration, under the Norse pressure, with the Scots of the west encroaching on the Picts of the east.
Four years later in 843 Kenneth MacAlpin, ( Cináed mac Ailpín) son of Alpin, 34th King of Dalriada, asserted himself as the first King of the Picts and Scots.
1018 - Battle Of CarhamWith Malcolm II as king and Owen of Strathclyde supporting him, an important battle was fought against Earl Uhtred of Bamburgh and his Northumbrian army at Carham, near Roxburgh. The outcome was victory for Malcolm and the restoration of Lothian to Scotland.
1040 - MacBeth Crowned KingWhen Duncan I took the Scottish throne, his grandfather had the blood of several relatives on his hands, having murdered the way clear for Duncan.
With such ill feeling as there must have been, Duncan would have been wise to pacify his remaining family, especially his senior cousin Thorfinn the Mighty, Earl of Orkney, his uncle, MacBeth, and the person closest to his throne, Queen Gruoch, wife of MacBeth.
By 1040, however, he had been murdered and the crown belonged to MacBeth. MacBeth, his name meaning Son of Life, reigned over Scotland through a period of peace and prosperity. His time was ended by Malcolm III (Canmore), who first invaded with an army from England in 1054, then returned with them to kill MacBeth at Lumphanan in 1057
1098 - Magnus Barefoot Lands In The Western IslesMagnus Barefoot (or Barelegs) came to the throne of Norway in 1093. Like his countrymen he enjoyed the conquest of other countries. In 1098 he drew up the first formal treaty with a Scots king, Edgar, confirming in writing that all the Western Isles and the peninsula of Kintyre belonged to Norway.
On a journey which had included plundering the Hebrides yet again, before taking over the Isle of Man as a base for his invasion of Wales, Magnus landed in Ireland in 1103, from where he made an unscheduled journey to Valhalla. The treaty between Scotland and Norway survived until 1266.
Top of Page
1263 - Battle Of LargsKintyre and the Western Isles had been acknowledged as the property of the Norwegian crown in a treaty between Edgar, King of Scots and Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway, in 1098.
By the mid-12th century the Norwegians appeared uninterested in their Scottish lands, and by 1156 Somerled, descended from Dalriada royalty, had become their lands’ ‘sub-king’ and son-in-law of Olaf, King of Man. In 1263, Alexander III made an offer to Haakon IV to buy Kintyre and the Isles back. Haakon rejected his offer and instead, hearing of Scots attacks on Skye, set sail with a fleet to do battle with Alexander.
Sailing via the Hebrides to collect additional men and ships, the fleet eventually numbered some two hundred ships. Ewan MacDougall was now on the Isles. Trying to remain neutral, he refused to join Haakon but surrendered the islands to him. With his men hungry to pillage, Haakon sent part of the fleet to Bute and Loch Lomond, which was reached by dragging fifty galleys across the land at Tarbet. he main fleet was sailed past Alexander’s position at Ayr and anchored off Largs.
On the 30 September a gale struck the area, wrecking and sinking the galleys. A sea battle began which lasted for four confused days. When the gale subsided on the 5 October Haakon withdrew and headed for the Isles. Ewan had, by this time, decided which horse to back, and attacked the remaining Norse fleet. Haakon died in Orkney at the year’s end. In 1266 the Treaty of Perth returned the Isles and Kintyre to Scotland.
1295 - The 'Auld Alliance'With Edward I on the throne of England, John Balliol of Scotland and Philip IV of France drew up an offensive and defensive alliance which became a treaty in 1295. This was to have been endorsed with marriage between Balliol’s son Edward and Philip’s niece. The unnecessary disaster of Flodden in 1513 however, brought the alliances into question.
The spreading success of the English Reformation and the quality of Scottish soldiers were among the reasons France continued to promote the alliance, while the Jacobites of the eighteenth century relied heavily on French support.
With cultural as well as political associations, Scotland has taken French influence into its architecture, law and vocabulary. In the ensuing Wars of Independence the treaty proved valuable to Scotland.
Robert the Bruce renewed the alliance with the 1326 Treaty of Corbeil. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the countries assisted each other against English aggression six times.
1297 - Battle Of Stirling BridgeScotland was entirely submissive to England by 1296. Following English victories at Dunbar and Berwick, John Balliol had surrendered himself and was taken as a prisoner to England. Edward I toured his new possession as far north as Elgin and removed the Stone of Destiny from Scone to take it back to London. He installed the Earl of Surrey, John de Warenne as Governor of Scotland and Hugh de Cressingham was made the treasurer.
Until now, William Wallace was considered by the English as merely an irritating criminal. Likewise, the self-important feudal hosts of Scotland gave him little credence. When he joined his rebellious volunteers from the south-west with Andrew Murray’s north-eastern force, the relentless, successful strikes upon English installations forced Surrey to act. In late August he and Cressingham left Berwick with a large army of well trained and equipped soldiers to stamp out the rebellion.
On 10 September the English reached the Forth. To save time and therefore money, Cressingham chose to bring his vanguard across the river at the nearby wooden Stirling Bridge, rather than travel the further few miles to where the river was forded.
The army of Wallace and Murray had been waiting up on the Abbey Craig and on the morning of the 11th, once roughly half of Cressingham’s men had crossed the bridge, the rebels attacked. Those English on the north side were soon butchered and with the bridge blocked solid with corpses, Surrey and the second half of his army could not aid the first.
Amid huge English losses, Surrey turned and ran for Berwick. Cressingham’s skin was used to make souvenirs. Although Scottish casualties were small, Murray was fatally wounded. The beautiful Wallace Monument was built upon Abbey Craig.
1298 - Battle Of FalkirkContinuing from his success against the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, William Wallace had continued his ‘liberation of Scotland’ with the recapture of Berwick and raids across Northumberland. In the name of the absent John Balliol he was made a Guardian of the Realm in the March of 1298.
Edward I, the ‘Hammer of the Scots’, was determined to crush Wallace’s rebellion and that June he brought a great army together at Newcastle. With his feathers no doubt still ruffled from his year before, an advance party was taken ahead by the Earl of Surrey.
The advance party took back Roxburgh Castle on their way to Linlithgow where they rejoined Edward. The English force had over three thousand cavalry and a considerable number of archers.
Waiting at Falkirk, Wallace had gathered only half as many men, mostly armed with spears, backed by a modest cavalry made up predominantly of a number of nobles, led by Sir John Comyn, known as the ‘Black Comyn’.
When the combat began on 22 July, the Scots used their schiltron formations of spearmen in variable squares. Under the ferocity of arrows, then cavalry, the patriots were soon annihilated. The self-interested nobles on horseback would not come into the combat to support Wallace and their men and instead left the area. Edward and Surrey had their revenge for Stirling Bridge.
Wallace managed to elude them however and after stepping down as Guardian of the Realm left for the Continent to seek military support for Scotland.
Top of Page
1306 - Murder Of The 'Red Comyn'In 1304, John Comyn II, known as the Red Comyn after his grandfather, moved his allegiance over to England’s Edward I and sat on his ‘Scottish Council’.
When Robert the Bruce set his plans to resume the War of Independence in 1306, he and Comyn met together in southerly Dumfries at the isolated Franciscan priory Church of the Minorite Friars. Either because he would not back Robert, or because he threatened to expose his intentions, Bruce stabbed Comyn to death at the altar rails.
As well as the military benefits, Comyn’s death that 10th of February also favoured Bruce by removing another competitor to the throne of Scotland.
1306 - Coronation Of Robert The BruceAfter murdering John Comyn, the way was clear for Robert the Bruce to become King of Scotland without challenge. His grandfather had first contested the Bruce family’s claim to the throne back in 1286. It was the hereditary office of the Earl of Fife to enthrone a Scottish king as they sat upon the Stone of Destiny, which itself sat upon the mound at Scone.
This coronation would have to be different however, since Edward I of England had stolen the stone in 1296. Also, the 1306 ceremony had no Earl of Fife, as he was in prison. His daughter Isabella rode at speed to Scone to represent him. When the twenty-year-old arrived Robert had already been crowned.
Such was the importance of Fife’s role, the ceremony was performed again.
1314 - Battle Of BannockburnDuring the Wars of Independence, Philip de Mowbray agreed to surrender Stirling Castle if not assisted by England. Edward II therefore came across the border and by the time he left Edinburgh for Falkirk on the 22 June, he had amassed an army of sixteen thousand infantry and two and a half thousand knights on horseback.
The army’s supply train was twenty miles long. Robert the Bruce prepared to meet him with six thousand spearmen, five hundred light horse and a few archers. He pitched in a deer park which had a half-mile of farmland on its east, a moor on its west and Bannock Burn along its south. The Burn flowed to a bog then into a gorge, whilst the farmland ended steeply into the tidal Forth.
The first contact was made on 23 June when English cavalry attempted a strategic strike and suffered badly. The next day the cavalry initiated the fighting again. The Scots had grouped into four battails using their schiltron formations of spearmen in variable squares.
The ground had been covered in balls of spikes called caltrops to disable the horses, and Edward’s infantry were inoperable on the narrow front they were given. The Scots forced the English back and into the Burn where self-defence was all but impossible.
Edward meanwhile had fled with five hundred of his knights to Stirling Castle. Mowbray could see which side to back however and would not open the gates.
Side-stepping the battle, Edward headed for Winchburgh, then Dunbar and escape, pursued by Douglas, while the Earl of Pembroke made for Carlisle with two thousand Welshmen.
Bruce ensured that those taken prisoner be treated well and he was remembered by them for his humanity.
1320 - Declaration of ArbroathBefore Pope John XXII, Scotland had been recognised as an independent nation by the papacy. Pope John preferred Edward II’s version of who was ruler of Scotland however, and in 1319 he accused four Scottish bishops of rebellion and summoned them to answer to him. Robert I had been King of Scotland for thirteen years yet the Pope’s letters still addressed him as ‘Robert Bruce, Governor of Scotland’.
Bernard of Linton, Abbot of the Abbey of Arbroath wrote, in Latin, the Declaration of Arbroath. Sealed by eight earls and thirty-one barons, it is also known as the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration begins by describing the origins of the Scots and the adoption of St Andrew as Patron Saint. It identifies the treatment England served upon the Scots and how Robert I: ‘..has brought salvation to his people through the safeguarding of our liberties’,
‘Yet, even the same Robert, should he turn aside from the task and yield Scotland or us to the English king or people, him we should cast out as the enemy of us all, and choose another king to defend our freedom; for so long as a hundred of us remain alive, we will yield in no least way to English dominion. For we fight, not for glory nor for riches nor for honour, but only and alone for freedom, which no good man surrenders but with his life.’
1333 - Battle Of Halidon Hilln 1332 during an Anglo-Scots peace, Edward Balliol sailed with eighty-eight ships from the Humber to Fife and fought his way to Scone. His father John had abdicated in 1296 and Edward, claiming his family as still the true royal line, had himself crowned King of Scotland.
David II’s claim had the endorsement of the Scottish Parliament and so Sir Archibald Douglas, guardian of David II, immediately swept Edward out of the country ‘with one leg booted and the other bare’.
The puppet-king returned in 1333 leading an English army across the border and laying siege to Berwick. Edward III joined with him in the May and together their men set in upon Halidon Hill, a perfect vantage point giving command of all approaches to Berwick. Sir Archibald Douglas was in Northumberland and made for the town to relieve it.
The only means of attack for the Scots was by working their way through a bog before clambering up the hillside. As they attempted this the English archers picked off their targets at ease.
By the end of that 19 July Sir Archibald, six Scottish earls, seventy barons, five hundred knights and an unknown number of spearmen were dead, while England’s dead numbered fourteen. Unsaveable Berwick fell.
Top of Page
1388 - Battle Of OtterburnThe Battle of Otterburn is remembered as the fight where ‘a dead man won the field’. A Scottish attack was made in Northumberland on Henry Percy and his estates, led by James Douglas, 2nd Earl of Douglas, on the 5 August 1388. During the fighting, Douglas was very badly wounded.
He told his officers to hide him in a bush so that news of his mortal injuries would not sway the battle. The fighting continued brutally all through the night until Percy eventually recognised defeat and asked a Scots knight to whom he should surrender.
The battle was won by the Scots, though Douglas was dead. Henry Percy was to be the source for Shakespeare’s ‘Hotspur’.
1411 - Battle Of HarlawThis battle, regarded by many today as the conflict between Highlanders and Lowlanders which killed the expansion of Gaelic influence, was one of the most brutal in Scottish history, becoming known as ‘Red Harlaw’. While James I was growing up in English jails, Donald, Lord of the Isles made it his business to secure the Earldom of Ross’ estates before the Stewarts or Albany, the Governor of Scotland could, bringing his army westwards into Inverness and over the River Spey.
It may well have also been his desire to plunder and destroy Aberdeen.
His advance was met two miles past Inverurie at Harlaw. Coming from their north-eastern lands were a force of Keiths, Forbes', Leslies and Irvines, led by the Earl of Mar. They battled for most of 24 July until Donald’s men withdrew.
There were no winners or losers on the day but when James I returned to Scotland in April 1424 he quickly set about routing his foes.
1437 - Murder Of James IIn 1424, when James I returned from eighteen years imprisonment in England, he set about dealing with those who declined to aid his release from prison earlier and curbing the power of Scotland’s nobles. His continual law-making added to the number of enemies he acquired for himself.
The Earl of Atholl was the only surviving son of James’ grandfather, Robert II. He became the chief conspirator in a 1437 plot which eventuated in the Blackfriars in Perth, the royal lodging, where James was murdered by Sir Robert Graham.
1468 - Orkney & Shetland Return To ScotlandFor six centuries the Orkney and Shetland Islands remained under Norwegian sovereignty, geographically central in a sea-faring Scandinavian civilisation which reached across the Atlantic. The earldom of the islands was of great Norwegian importance. In the fifteenth century however, Norway had fallen under the control of Denmark, and the Danes held little interest in their acquisitions to the west.
Christian I was King of Denmark and Norway and in 1468 his daughter Margaret married Scotland’s James III. Her dowry was set at sixty thousand florins of the Rhine. Christian pledged his lands and rights in Orkney for the first fifty thousand florins due, and was to pay the remaining ten thousand in coins. He could only spare two thousand, and so pledged the Shetlands to cover the remaining unpaid eight thousand in 1469.
The paperwork has never been completed for these transactions and so the lands pledged have not been formally transferred.
In 1667 this was questioned, with the conclusion that Scandinavia still had the right of redemption. Under Norse law, the man who worked a piece of land was the owner of that piece of land, but the new Scottish masters soon reduced the islanders' lives to misery, using fraud and violence to strip them of their rights and develop a regime of extortion and slave labour.
1488 - Battle Of SauchieburnJames III’s policies infuriated many noble families, whilst drawing closer to him many more. His unhappy opponents won to their side the King’s son, fifteen year old Prince James, and made it known that they intended to install him as monarch. This was the motivation behind the battle on 11 June at Sauchieburn, near Stirling.
Events of the battle are not well recorded. What is known is that the King was thrown by his horse and hurt badly in the fall. It is believed that he called for a priest, and the chaplain who responded to his spiritual needs took the opportunity to finish him off with a dagger.
His body was found the next day but since his challengers claimed they only wished to bring him to terms but never endorsed killing him, his death was regarded as an accident. His son was given the crown he desired, but would wear an iron chain in self-punishment for his father’s death.
Top of Page
1513 - Battle Of Flodden Flodden was a disastrous and unnecessary confrontation for Scotland. James IV of Scotland was married to the sister of England’s King Henry VIII and a treaty of friendship existed between their countries.
The auld alliance between Scotland and France had been recently renewed. There had been English attacks made upon Scottish ships at the time when Henry VIII, on behalf of the papacy, invaded France. James IV declared war immediately, with nothing to gain and ties to both England and France that their war neutralised. With the whole nation behind him, James amassed twenty thousand men with ease, both Highlanders and Lowlanders. His fleet set sail and his army crossed the border into Northumberland with the intention of drawing upon England’s numbers in France.
Norham Castle was among the places captured before confronting the English defenders, led by the Earl of Surrey and his son, west of the River Till, near Branxton, on 9 September.
The Scots took the advantageous high ground. With slightly fewer numbers but superior equipment and artillery, the English moved around the Scots on their west and opened with cannon fire. They struck their target with great success, which the Scots could not match.
James dropped strategic tactics and ordered all to attack. Initially gaining the upper hand, the Scots were again thwarted by England’s superior equipment, the long halberd with its axe, hook and spike bloodier than the spear in hand-to-hand conflict.
English losses were heavy but the dead Scots numbered between five and ten thousand. It is said that ‘the slaughter struck every farm and household throughout lowland Scotland’.
There was an unusually high number of aristocracy who came down into combat that day and among the slain were dozens of lords and lairds, at least ten Earls, some abbots, an archbishop and the body of the King himself.
1542 - Battle Of Solway Moss Following the success against the English at Haddon Rig in the August, James V gathered an army of ten thousand and sent them, under the command of Oliver Sinclair of Pitcairns, to push as far into England as they could.
Their advance was met at Solway Moss by Sir Thomas Wharton and his three thousand men. Although James V thought highly of Sinclair, it emerged that the nobles he was to command did not. Internal politics turned to in-fighting and even nobles leaving the field before the battle.
Among the foot soldiers, the Borderers reviewed their loyalty to a King who had persecuted them throughout his reign. Many regarded capture by the English favourable to death for a tyrant.
The battle, on 24 November, was uncoordinated and resulted in few deaths and twelve hundred prisoners, including the upstart Sinclair.
The King, who had waited, fled to Edinburgh. Henry VIII of England did not retaliate however, and James died a fortnight after the battle at Linlithgow.
1542 - Birth Of Mary, Queen Of Scots Born on 8 December 1542, Mary’s life was complicated from the first week when her father, James V, died and made her Queen when she was six days old.
With James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, as Governor, Scotland was achieving closer ties with England. Queen Mary was betrothed, in 1543, to Edward, the six-year-old son and heir of Henry VIII. Edward was the male heir Henry had re-married for, and Mary’s Roman Catholic, pro-French guardians stepped in to have the marriage plans cancelled. Enraged, Henry invaded Scotland with a number of attacks over three years which came to be known as ‘the Rough Wooing’.
The English occupied south-eastern Scotland after the 1547 Battle of Pinkie, and in return for French support in expelling them, Mary moved to Catholic France. Mary and the fourteen-year-old Dauphin, Francis, married in April 1558. He became King of France the following year, but then died at the end of 1560.
Catherine de Medici took control of France and Mary found herself no longer welcome.
Scotland had been reforming during this time, and was questioning Papal and French obligations. In England, Elizabeth had become Queen in November 1558. Again Roman Catholics rejected the status bestowed on the children from Henry’s many marriages, which meant Mary, the English throne’s heir presumptive, should be their Queen.
Mary returned at Leith on 19 August 1561 and, upon advice, officially recognised the reformed church. On 29 July 1565, despite offers from England and across the Continent, Mary married Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, who stood after her in line to the English throne. The marriage brought indignation from all directions, including an attempted rebellion by the many enemies of the Darnley family. The marriage was a disaster anyway.
Mary’s French secretary and intimate friend, David Rizzio, was murdered by Darnley and a band of Protestant lords in front of the Queen, who was six months pregnant with James VI, on 9 March 1566. Mary had become fond of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, when, on 10 February 1567, Darnley was himself murdered. The ‘Casket Letters’ were used as evidence to implicate the Queen in Darnley’s death, though these were rejected. Bothwell was the prime suspect but a show trial cleared him. Then, scandalously, on the 24 April, Mary and Bothwell staged her own abduction, Bothwell divorced his wife, then Mary married him in a Protestant service on 15 May. Outraged nobles imprisoned Mary in Loch Leven Castle and compelled her to abdicate on the 24 July 1567.
She escaped on 2 May 1568, lost the Battle of Langside on 13 May as she tried to reach Dumbarton Castle, and ended up in England seeking Elizabeth’s protection by 17 May. Mary was detained in England until a decision could be made regarding her restoration, though the decision would never come.
Top of Page
1547 - Battle Of PinkieThe Battle of Pinkie, on the banks of the River Esk on 10 September 1547, was another catastrophic waste of life encouraged by lack of discipline and weak command.
The Duke of Somerset brought his troops, cavalry and guns to the area, with naval support for his sixteen thousand men having to make their way along the beach. The Scots meanwhile, numbering around thirty-six thousand, held the best position behind the river, but lacked experience and an effective cavalry.
They were led by James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran, whose lack of military ability caused him to misinterpret an English manoeuvre as their preparing to retreat. He brought his men across the river in an all-out attack, losing his advantage, and Somerset’s artillery laid in. When Huntly regrouped his men in the chaos, Arran thought they were deserting.
Meanwhile, instead of attacking more of the enemy, many of the Highlanders were spending the crucial time robbing the bodies of the dead. The efficient army of Somerset slew fifteen thousand Scots and captured fifteen hundred, while losing only five hundred of their own.
‘Black Saturday’ was a disaster for Scotland with so many lives lost, but it was also non-productive for victorious England since it forced Queen Mary further away from Prince Edward to the Dauphin.
1557 - Signing Of The Covenant A covenant is a contract between God and the people. In 1557 a group of Protestant nobles opposed to Mary marrying the Roman Catholic Dauphin of France, signed a covenant to state that they would promote the ‘blessed work of God and his Congregation against the Congregation of Satan’, the former being the Protestants and the latter the Catholics.
The doctrine was regarded as the first bond of the Lords of the Congregation of Christ. Among the covenant’s signatories were the Earls of Argyll, Morton, Glencairn and John Erskine of Dun.
1559 - John Knox Ordained The most influential person of the Scottish Reformation, John Knox, was first ordained as a Catholic priest. Knox spent time in the company of George Wishart before he was arrested and burned for heresy in March 1546 by Cardinal Beaton. Knox joined the Reformers, who murdered Cardinal Beaton the following May.
He continued on a path of theological study that took him across a changing Europe and ever further from the weakening Vatican. St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh was where, in 1559, John Knox was ordained as a minister, and his sermons there helped push Catholicism out of Scotland.
1568 - Battle Of Langside Queen Mary’s reign was in tatters when she escaped from Loch Leven Castle on 2 May 1568. A week later she had gathered six thousand men willing to fight for her as she headed for the safety of her strong Dumbarton Castle, which Lord Fleming was holding for her.
Lord James Stewart, her half-brother, recognised the security Dumbarton Castle would give her and moved his smaller, better-trained army to intercept. The forces confronted each other at Langside, then a village south-west of Glasgow, now a suburb. Few were killed during the forty-five minute confrontation which resulted in Mary’s followers fleeing the area.
The Queen fled too, first to Dundrennan, then England.
1582 - Ruthven Raid In 1581, Esmé Stewart was created Earl of Lennox.
He was in support of Queen Mary and acknowledged Catholic concerns at a time when the Reformation was well established in Scotland. The Presbyterians believed Lennox to be an agent for the Counter-Reformation and a Catholic spy.
Although both the King and Lennox had declared themselves for the Reformation, rulings made and appointments given by James, particularly those overturning General Assembly proceedings, had the Presbyterians convinced he was being influenced by Lennox.
William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, was the head of Scotland’s militant Presbyterians. Such was their fear of Lennox being near the King they staged a coup. While the King was hunting in Atholl in August 1582, he was abducted by Gowrie and imprisoned in his House of Ruthven until, the next morning, he signed a document proclaiming himself to be quite free and that Lennox was to be banished from Scotland.
Gowrie led a new government which gave the Presbyterians ruling powers, all the while keeping James their captive. Lennox, who had moved back to France, died in 1583. Then in June that year the young King escaped from his imprisonment. Gowrie was charged with treason and had his head cut off.
1603 - The Union Of The Crowns The son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Lord Darnley became King of Scotland upon his mother’s forced abdication in 1567. He was thirteen months old at his coronation and brought up by extremely manipulative individuals. He successfully stopped the draw of power away from his position by the Calvinists, enjoyed torturing witches and Negroes, considered his Highlanders ‘barbarians’ and ordered their extinction so that English-speaking Lowlanders could be installed to replace them.
This seventeenth century ethnic-cleansing, which James called ‘kingcraft’, was eventually executed by him not in the Highlands but in Northern Ireland.
Had Roman Catholicism still been in place across Britain then Henry VIII’s children from his various marriages would not have been recognised as heirs to the throne. The crown of England would then have gone to Mary, Queen of Scots, whose grandmother was Margaret Tudor, Henry’s sister. With Protestantism however, the crown went to Elizabeth.
After she had executed Queen Mary in 1587, and died herself in 1603 without issue, James VI of Scotland became James I of England. This became known as the Union of the Crowns. He moved to England and settled into his greater domain easily, never returning to Scotland. He died in 1625.
Top of Page
1638 - The Second Covenant Charles I’s views of himself, theology and politics became increasingly contradictory to the beliefs of the Presbyterians. Charles tried to bring together the laws and churches of Scotland and England, with all roads leading to himself.
In 1637 he produced the Book of Common Prayer, written without the involvement of the General Assembly. With their belief that Scottish Protestants were related directly to God, not via a King or interference from ‘all kinds of Papistry’, the Presbyterians were compelled to pen The National Covenant in 1638.
A major expansion of their Covenant of 1581, it was signed firstly in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh, with around 300,000 signatures given to copies in churches around the country. Those who signed were described as having been ‘covenanted’.
1644 - Campaign Of The Marquis Of Montrose James Graham, 5th Earl and later 1st Marquis of Montrose, was born in 1612 and studied at St Andrew’s University.
In 1638 he contributed to the National Covenant, and fought for the Covenant in the Bishops’ Wars. As the country moved into ever more turbulent times, Montrose’s sympathies moved back from the Presbyterian extremists towards Charles I. He would not support the Scottish Parliament joining with the Roundheads and was jailed in Edinburgh Castle for five months.
In 1644 he became King’s Lieutenant in Scotland, and with a small, unlikely group of Scots and Irish for an army, used incredible leadership and tactics to claim six victories. Between 1644 and 1645 he defeated the Calvinists and Campbells in battles at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, Inverlochy, Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth, effectively halting their tightening grip on the country.
In the Lowlands however, his already small army’s numbers dropped. Pushing over the border, however, his tiny army was taken by surprise on 13 September 1645 at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk. Although he escaped, his men and their families, who accompanied in those days, surrendered and were rounded up. At first General David Lesley was prepared to spare their lives, but the Calvinists persuaded him to slaughter every man, woman and child.
On his King’s orders, Montrose made for Norway. In Europe he was made a mareschal by the Germans with a similar honour from the French. Vengeful at the news of Charles I’s execution, he returned in 1650 to recover Scotland for Charles II. Shipwrecked in Orkney, only two hundred of his men made it ashore.
His force was too small to defend themselves at Carbisdale on 27 April. He was later captured when betrayed by MacLeod of Assynt for £25,000, and executed without a trial in Edinburgh on 21 May, ordered by the Scottish Parliament to be hanged then disembowelled. His body parts were displayed in cities across the kingdom for ten years, till Charles II was restored and arranged for him Scotland’s greatest ever State funeral.
1644 - Battle Of Tippermuir In the August of 1644 James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose, combined his force of cavalry and Highland foot soldiers with Alasdair MacDonald's Irish soldiers to begin a campaign against the Covenanters for Charles I.
Their first target for reclamation was Perth, and on the 1st September they arrived at Tippermuir, a village four miles to Perth's west. Lord Elcho was in command of the area's Covenanters, more numerous with better equipment than the Royalists.
Montrose had at least reached an area with a slight strategic advantage. MacDonald positioned his men centrally, flanked by Montrose's men and cavalry. When the advancing Covenanters were within a hundred yards of their enemy a section of their cavalry raced ahead to draw the fire. The Irishmen attacked at once with such ferocity that Elcho's men lost their coordination, broke their ranks and began to flee the field.
Only a few Covenanters died on the field but the rout that followed took two thousand of their lives. Perth belonged to Charles and the military genius of Montrose had brought triumph, despite the odds, for the first of many times.
1645 - Battle Of Aldearn Under James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose, the Royalist army had achieved success at Inverlochy and Dundee. He made camp with his 1750 men and 250 horses at Auldearn, around three miles to the east of Nairn. The Covenanters were marching through the night from Inverness to fight him.
Sir John Hurry's men had the advantage of surprise were they to attack at once. The rain had been heavy and Sir John, concerned that their muskets might be charged with damp gunpowder and therefore unreliable, ordered his men to fire and reload.
Scouts from Alasdair MacDonald's Irish soldiers heard the discharges. His soldiers attacked immediately only to find themselves in a bog and in trouble.
The Gordon cavalry arrived at that point and aided them, followed by Montrose and the infantry. Completely surrounded, half of Hurry's Covenanters were killed.
Top of Page
1645 - Battle of Philiphaugh The Marqis of Montrose had contributed to the 1638 Covenant and had served with his opponent of this day General sir David Leslie in the Covenanter's army. However sickened by some of the extremist actions of the Covenanters he had switched to the Royalists. This was to their great advantage as he waged an incredibly successful campaign across Scotland. This was all to come undone at Philiphaugh.
Montrose camped his troops on the nearby moor while his he and his cavalry found more comfortable lodgings across the river in Selkirk. This proved to be a costly mistake as Leslie advanced undetected through Melrose. Leslie's army was undetected also thanks to a thick must which had descended over the area, also by the fact that Montrose, either through arrogance or simply thinking that the Royalist cause was already won had failed to post any lookouts.
Leslie fell on Montrose's sleeping army without warning. Montrose himself only realised the attack was underway when he heard the sound of gunfire and shouting from across the river. He gathered his cavalry and sped to the scene. He desperately tried to recover the situation, cutting his way single handedly through the body of Leslie's troops but the cause was already lost. He was forced to retreat over Minchmore toward Traquair, with him went the fortunes of the Royalist cause in Scotland.
As Montrose fled his worst fears of the zealous extremes of the covenanters were being realised. 400 Irish who had hidden at Philiphaugh farm were massacred. Their families, women and children numbering around 300 were driven into Newark castle and wiped out.
In 1810, excavation work at a school near Newark uncovered large quantities of bones and skulls. The field is known as Slain Men's Lea.
1646 - Charles 1 Surrenders To The Scots Civil War had begun in earnest by 1642. Charles I was the enemy of the Presbyterians in Scotland and the parliamentarians in England. His lack of ability at negotiation and conciliation had compounded his situation. Montrose had done well for him in undermining the Calvinists and Campbells for a time but by 1646 he was defeated and in Europe.
With the power of the Roundheads in England unstoppable, Charles opted to surrender to the Scots army. Yet again negotiations did not go in the King’s favour.
In return for paying an indemnity Charles had promised in the Treaty of Ripon, the Calvinists sold him to the English Parliament. The Calvinists were to learn that the King was more disposed towards them than Cromwell. A faction of moderate Presbyterians, known as the Engagers, therefore helped Charles escape from prison to try and reinstate him.
After their defeat at Preston in 1648, Charles was back in Cromwell’s custody. He was noted for the courage and dignity he displayed as he listened to a biased Parliamentary trial and went to his execution.
1650 - Battle Of Dunbar The Calvinists were in support of Charles II when he became King and signed both the Covenants in 1649. Cromwell, however, was not. With sixteen thousand men he invaded Scotland in July and headed for Edinburgh, expecting to rendezvous with his supply ships at Leith. David Leslie and the Scots army did not let him.
By August Cromwell had backtracked to Dunbar. As the Scots followed, Covenanting ministers dismissed from among them any who did not meet their godly standards. Least satisfactory were the professional soldiers, most of whom were told to leave, and Leslie’s force dropped by five thousand, leaving what was described by an appalled officer as ‘an army of clerks and ministers’ sons’.
Even so, by September Cromwell’s men were pushed up against the sea at Dunbar with no sign of their supplies, and with their premium position on Doune Hill above, the Scots had only to wait for the already weak enemy to surrender. Patience was not among the fervent ministers’ virtues. Ignoring Leslie and knowing nothing of military tactics, they sent his twenty thousand men down the hill. It was the consummate military blunder.
Three thousand were killed and ten thousand captured. Edinburgh Castle belonged to Cromwell by December.
1671 - Rob Roy McGregor Born Born in 1671 at Loch Katrine, the third son of a Lieutenant-Colonel, MacGregor’s inherited long arms and great strength gave him abilities with the broadsword that made his name known to many. He fought at Killiecrankie for Viscount Dundee in 1689 before joining the Lennox Watch.
When the name MacGregor was again outlawed in 1694 he used his mother’s name of Campbell. His acquisitions of land and cattle brought him prosperity until 1711 when he persuaded a group led by the Duke of Montrose to advance him £1000 for investment in herding. His chief drover made off with the letters of credit, leaving MacGregor to face a charge of embezzlement. He did not answer to the charge or ensuing arrest warrant and was declared an outlaw.
He moved to the Trossachs lands of the Earl of Breadalbane, who was no friend of Montrose, and from there rustled cattle from Montrose’s lowland estates.
In the Rising of 1715, he mustered the Clan Gregor to fight for the Jacobites. He led his men in successful raids around Loch Lomond and Callander. Despite his inactivity during the Battle of Sheriffmuir, he was charged with High Treason.
From 1716 he lived at Glen Shira on the Duke of Argyll’s land. He was twice captured and twice dramatically escaped with style that added to his fame.
In 1725, following his decision to turn himself in to General Wade, he received a pardon from the King and after thirteen years was no longer an outlaw.
Top of Page
1679 - Battle Of Bothwell Bridge Following success against the military at the recent Battle of Drumclog, the Conventiclers’ support had swollen to six thousand when they came together at Hamilton in June 1679.
Differences between Covenanters which had undermined them through the 1650s, again created factions among their numbers. While some argued that their direction should be decided by a General Assembly which acknowledged the established powers, others denounced the governing bodies and their ‘Indulgences’. Meanwhile, with ten thousand men and discipline, the Duke of Monmouth, the Earl of Linlithgow and the vengeful Graham of Claverhouse mustered by the Clyde Bridge at Bothwell.
On 22 June they attacked the disorganised Covenanters and won easily.
Although deaths on the field were few, two hundred were killed later. Of the fourteen hundred who were captured or surrendered, another two hundred and fifty eight were shipwrecked while being transported in The Crown of London.
1689 - Battle Of Killiecrainkie Near Pitlochry in Perthshire is the Pass of Killiecrankie, a gorge with a six feet wide riverside track.
News came to Jacobite leader Viscount Dundee, John Graham of Claverhouse, that General Hugh MacKay would be moving his men from Stirling to Blair Castle. Dundee, known by his supporters as Bonnie Dundee and by the Covenanters as Bloody Clavers, took his twenty five hundred Highlanders over the Drumochter Pass near Blair on 26 July 1689. Meanwhile MacKay was in Dunkeld, and with four thousand foot-soldiers, two divisions of cavalry, twelve hundred supply-laden horses and three cannon, he dismissed Dundee’s pack.
Next morning, while the Jacobites moved into the Pass of Killiecrankie and up onto a high crest, sniper Farquhar MacRae kept MacKay’s progress slow. When he eventually came into the Pass, his scouts detected Dundee’s presence and MacKay ordered cover to be taken uphill, three ranks deep, below the Jacobite position. For two hours Dundee did nothing while the Williamites discharged their cannon into them.
At seven o’clock, with the sun now behind him, the Jacobites rose to their feet and came screaming down the hillside. Discharging and dropping their one-shot firearms, they tore through the Williamites swinging their broadswords. Bodies on the track blocked supplies while the remaining flanks of MacKay’s formation were taken on. Both sides took heavy losses, including Dundee, who died in the initial downhill charge.
Despite this, the day belonged to the Jacobites, and news of the victory swelled their ranks everywhere.
1689 - William Of Orange Crowned James had converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in 1668 whilst his brother Charles II was monarch. When the King too converted and tried to re-install Catholicism among his subjects around 1672, there was outrage. Acts were passed in Parliament, such as the Test Act, so only Anglicans could hold positions of office.
The following year the Earl of Shaftsbury’s Exclusion Bill attempted to deny Catholics the throne.When James was crowned in 1685 he promised to protect the Church of England and his word was known to be good. In 1687 he blocked most laws that would religiously persecute.
The following year his only son, James Edward Francis Stewart, who would grow to be ‘the Old Pretender’, arrived in June from Queen Mary. Unfortunately, in October William of Orange arrived from Holland with an army to take his uncle’s throne.
At fifty-five, James had lost his ability to form an effective strategy, which some say was due to syphilis, and he took exile in France. Calvinist William, had all his senses and General Hugh MacKay commanding his powerful Scots Brigade.
The throne was his in 1689. The people who remained loyal and fought to restore James and his line became known as the Jacobites.
1692 - Massacre Of Glencoe While the other MacDonald clans suffered through the 1500s, the MacDonalds of Glencoe survived notably well. Perhaps their greatest protection was their home environment acting like a natural fortress. They certainly never found the need to build one. Also only the strongest of people could develop in such a landscape. The men were described as "large-bodied, stout, subtle, active, patient of cold and hunger".
The revolution of 1688 gave the throne to William of Orange and the Campbells of Glenorchy were his supporters. They were also the neighbours of the MacDonalds and there was a generation of bad terms between them.
The Clan Chiefs were ordered, under pain of the full weight of the law, to present themselves before the nearest civil authority and submit themselves before the 1st of January 1692. Elderly MacIain, Chief of the MacDonalds of Glencoe, did not leave for Fort William until the day before the deadline.
When he arrived the garrison commander there was not authorised to accept his submission. So MacIain had to ride to Invarary, a seven day fight through snow storms. Although he was past the deadline his submission was accepted.
The MacDonalds, therefore, were not suspicious when troops of Argyll’s regiment, under the command of Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, arrived to billet themselves in their homes. If only they had known of the genocide in the mind of Dalrymple who had written, ‘If MacIain of Glencoe and that tribe can be well separated from the rest, it will be a proper vindication of the public justice to extirpate that sect of thieves.’
For two weeks his soldiers enjoyed the MacDonalds’ hospitality.
Then, in the cold darkness, a massacre began. Old MacIain was shot trying to get out of his bed. His wife had her fingers bitten off for their rings and she froze to death stripped naked in the snow the following day.
Thirty eight died but one hundred and fifty managed to escape thanks to the late arrival of more troops who were supposed to block the bottom of the glen. Dalrymple was incensed that some had escaped as it was his intention to swiftly erase all the Camerons and MacDonalds of Glengarry next.
The Campbells were allowed to take the blame but very few of the troops involved were Campbells. It was William of Orange who signed and counter-signed the order for the slaughter.
Dalrymple took the blame from the Scottish Parliament so King William made him Earl of Stair and gave him free reign to destroy Scotland’s parliament in the Union of 1707, when the rights of the Scots were sold to England by the ‘Parcel of Rogues’.
Top of Page
1698 - Darien Venture For twenty years the London East India Company had enjoyed soaring success, bringing incredible fortunes to its stockholders through its virtual monopoly of Eastern trade.
By 1695 competitors in the market were using every scandalous technique to have Bills in their favour passed in England’s Parliament, and in return were being undermined by the EIC happily operating at the same low levels to retain dominance and political favouritism.
The Scottish Parliament passed in that year a plan to establish a similar organisation to be a ‘Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies’. Known in London as the Scottish East India Company, investors championed the proposal and in the space of two weeks £300,000 was raised.
Although based in Edinburgh, the necessary financial minds were not to be had in Scotland, so with half the board of directors living in London, as were half the investors, the Company was also to be managed from there. The EIC was about to lose its monopoly when the House of Lords, followed by King William, then the House of Commons, found reasons to charge anyone who wanted a part of the Scottish East India Company to be breaking the law.
The English finance vanished. Fuelled by renewed anglophobia, fund-raising across Scotland for what had become a national cause brought £400,000. This was said to be half of Scotland’s available capital.
The plan was to have three Indiamen ships built on the Continent and take twelve hundred settlers and supplies to establish a colony at a bay on what is now the Panama - Colombia border, from where an overland route to the Pacific would allow westward trading with the East. The bay area was known as Darien and the endeavour became the Darien Venture. The three 500-ton ships and two others set sail from Leith on the 12 July 1698. The fleet anchored on 3 November at a place the Spanish knew as Acla and the settlers renamed Caledonia. The Indians of the area made treaties with the Scots and offered friendship, but the Spanish in nearby colonies applied pressure on the new arrivals.
The English in Jamaica and the North American coast were under royal proclamation not to trade or offer support to the Darien Venture. In February 1699 fighting with the Spanish ended with the capture of a Scots ship. Dysentery, fever, feuds and desertion brought the Venture to chaos.
The settlers did not know that supplies which may have put things back on track were on the way, and after eight months they abandoned Darien. The return voyage was more life-threatening than anything before. Only one of the ships was not abandoned. Less than seven hundred settlers made it back to Scotland.
1707 - The Act Of Union The crowns of Scotland and England had become one in 1603 and Cromwell had tried to bind the countries’ political systems together fifty years later, but Scotland still wanted to govern its own religious, financial and political affairs.
The eighteenth century began for Scotland with financial ruin following the disastrous failure of the Darien Venture. Although England conspired towards its failure, it appeared to many that Scotland had little hope of successful international trade without England anyway. In London the English Parliament passed the Act of Succession. This offered Britain’s throne to the Hanovarians, declared war on France and chose who would be Scotland’s commissioners in Union treaties, all without proper consultation or representation of the Scottish Parliament.
When Scotland rejected English rulings further financial pressures were applied, and when compensation for shareholders hurt by the Darien collapse was offered in return for accepting Parliamentary Union, treaties began to be drawn up. To the powerful who would gain this was talked of as finance due to the country, but for the ordinary people this was simple political bribery to purchase their independence.
John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll and James Douglas, 2nd Duke of Queensberry represented the government and manipulated parliamentary debates into an environment of Member’s personal interests.
The Union was agreed and the commissioners for Scotland chosen by the Queen. The resulting treaty of twenty five articles retained the independence of Scotland’s legal and religious systems, while systems of coinage, taxation, sovereignty, trade, parliament and flag would become one.
The first article was accepted in Edinburgh in November 1706 and the last in January 1707. Scotland’s Parliament was dissolved in the April and independence was over. The Union began in May 1707.
Top of Page
1715 - First Jacobite Rebellion Thanks to the treatment of Scotland before and after the 1707 Union, there was always strong underground support for the reinstatement of the exiled Stewarts to the throne.
Events following the death of Queen Anne in 1714 brought emotions to a level where the man who would lead government forces, John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll believed that nine out of ten Scots, Jacobite or not, would support an overthrow.
John Erskine, 6th or 11th Earl of Mar was not given the position of office he expected from the new King. Such was his disappointment that in 1715 he raised the Jacobite standard in Braemar and drew huge support.
This was the beginning of the first ‘Rising’, also called the ‘Fifteen’.
1715 - Battle Of Sherrifmuir On the 6 September 1715, the 6th Earl of Mar, John Erskine, declared himself for James Francis Edward Stewart, the Old Pretender, and left Braemar carrying the Stewart standard to head south to the Jacobites in England. By the end of the month he had taken over Inverness with twelve thousand men behind him.
When November came he had brought the east of Scotland as far as Perth under Jacobite control. While this was happening, the 2nd Duke of Argyll, John Campbell, assembled four thousand pro-Hanovarians to halt Mar moving any further south than the Forth.
Two thousand of Mar’s army had been sent with William MacKintosh of Borlum to Edinburgh so that when Argyll was confronted at Sheriffmuir on the Ochils slopes near Dunblane in Perthshire, the numbers were ten thousand to four thousand.
Argyll assembled the right flank of his army uphill, with General Whetham administrating over the left flank. The middle and right flanks of the Jacobites were commanded by MacDonald of Clanranald, MacDonnell of Glengarry and MacLean of Duart, who charged their men into Whetham’s in an attack so ferocious that ‘a complete rout and prodigious slaughter’ commenced immediately.
Whetham fled to Stirling to tell of the total defeat of the King’s men. While he was doing this however, Argyll had swept down into Mar’s right flank and battered them back into two miles of retreat and into the Allen Water.
The battle ended in this situation with both sides’ left flanks defeated. Argyll withdrew to Dunblane, Mar pulled back to Perth, and both proclaimed themselves victorious. Still with superior numbers, Mar’s next move had to be to finish off Argyll, but he did not.
When the French and Spanish heard of Mar’s indecision, their faith in the Rising was lost and their support withdrawn. Argyll had won the battle in propaganda terms. The Earl of Mar, known also as ‘Bobbing John’, lost interest in the disintegrating Rising, fled to France, and betrayed many of his Jacobite colleagues by revealing their identities.
1719 - Battle Of Glenshiel The first Rising had failed by 1716, though skirmishes would continue.
1719 saw what was known as the "little Rising". The only battle of this Rising occurred between a government army led by General Wightman and Jacobites under the 10th Earl Marischal at Glenshiel.
The Jacobite cause was supported by France and occasionally Spain. Cardinal Alberoni on behalf of Philip V of Spain sent five thousand men to aid the new Rising. The news of this generated great enthusiasm until a sea journey through terrible weather saw only around three hundred Spaniards reach Scotland at Kintail.
This setback made many potential recruits withhold. Less than a thousand men assembled to be led by Cameron of Lochiel, Lord George Murray and the Earl of Seaforth. Eilean Donan Castle became their supply base while they headed off for Inverness through the Great Glen.
The Hanovarians were aware of their moves and attacked Eilean Donan Castle from the sea, destroying it with the cannon fire of three warships. General Wightman came from Inverness and confronted the Jacobites at Glenshiel on the 10th of June. The forces were well matched and the battle continued for hours with no clear victor.
When expected Jacobite support from the Lowlanders was minimal, spirits fell completely. The Rising was abandoned and the Jacobites headed for their homes. The Spaniards surrendered to Wightman and were eventually sent home after a period of imprisonment.
1729 - Black Watch Raised One of the world’s most famous militia was first raised in 1725 and became a Regiment under the Earl of Crawford as Colonel in 1739. Known then as the 43rd then 42nd Royal Highland Regiment, its Gaelic motto translated into ‘The Black Watch of Battles, First to Come and Last to Go’.
The Black Watch has fought all around the world and by the end of the Second World War had earned one hundred and seventy two battle honours.
Top of Page
1745 - Raising The Standard At Glenfinnan In 1745 news was received of a powerful new Jacobite force to arrive from the Continent, headed by the grandson of James VII, returning from exile in Italy.
At Loch nan Uamh in Arisaig, Prince Charles Edward Stewart came ashore with only seven supporters, known later as the Seven Men of Moidart. With the most unlikely outset, at a time when the Union was well established and accepted, the enthusiasm and charm of the ‘Young Pretender’ rejuvenated the Jacobite cause in all he asked to help.
In August the Jacobite standard was raised in Scotland again by Bonnie Prince Charlie at Glenfinnan.
1745 - Battle Of Prestonpans Bonnie Prince Charlie’s landing on Scottish soil ignited a firestorm of incredible stories and willing recruits so that the myths encouraged the masses, who encouraged the myths in a cycle. While the stories were drawing volunteers they were worrying the established powers. Sir John Cope, commanding the Hanovarians, saw the need to crush the rebellion swiftly and that Edinburgh was where he and his men should be.
He denied himself the use of the Corrieyairack Pass, however, convinced it was covered by three thousand Jacobites. It was not, and his unnecessary journey to Aberdeen to sail down to the Forth saw him disembark at Dunbar on 17 September while Prince Charles Edward was claiming Edinburgh.
Presuming the Jacobites would then challenge him from the west, Cope pitched his army at Prestonpans, near Musselburgh, where reinforcements from Berwick could reach him. Reading Cope well, Lord George Murray brought his Jacobites right around south of the government force and attacked from the east.
Reports time Murray’s victory as taking either ten or fifteen minutes.
The rout of the Hanovarians meant that in the space of a month Scotland was Jacobite but for the strong, important castles of Edinburgh, Stirling and Dumbarton.
1746 - Battle of Falkirk The Jacobites had fought all the way from the Highlands to Derby in England.
Outside of the Highlands it was becoming clear that Prince Charles and his claim was of no interest to Lowlanders or the Northern English, where very few supporters were coming forward. The Stewart intention of using success in Scotland as a stepping-stone towards the throne in England again looked unrealistic. In December they began a careful withdrawal, denying the Hanovarians the chance of a weak spot to exploit.
Back in Scotland the Jacobite numbers rose again to eight thousand and they began a siege of Stirling Castle. To aid the trapped government force, General Henry Hawley left Newcastle with eight thousand troops.
On 16 January 1746, Hawley was in Callendar House, near Falkirk, resting before the Stirling confrontation. He woke, however, to find the Jacobites had come to meet him and were massing on the plateau behind the house. The Hanovarians rushed to get onto the high ground also, but the scramble up the muddy hillside through the morning mist was disorganised and disastrous. Less than fifty Jacobites were lost in the twenty minute rout which took the lives of hundreds of Hawley’s troops.
The Hanovarians made for Linlithgow and the Jacobites resumed their siege.
1746 - Battle Of CullodenCulloden Moor, known then as Drummossie Muir, was the site of the last pitched battle on the British mainland on 16 April 1746.
The Jacobites were pulling back into the Highlands, ending their siege of Stirling as they headed for Inverness. Despite their victory at Falkirk, Jacobite morale was declining. Hunger saw the men spreading out wide to find their own food, some of them breaking ranks for home.
Most of their artillery had been ditched since reinforcements from France were growing more unlikely. Things were very different for the Duke of Cumberland, now leading the Hanovarian army. His army was being well supplied by sea as he followed Prince Charles up the east coast. Lord George Murray advised his Prince that the Jacobites would be best dispersing into the hills to use guerrilla strikes, bringing the army back together in the summer. Charles chose however, to reject the tactics the Highlanders knew best and opted to meet the enemy again in an open area.
On the night of the 15th, a mismanaged strike was launched on Cumberland’s camp which achieved nothing, resulting only in sleepless, hungry Highlanders for the next day. When they met on the Moor near Culloden, the Jacobites numbered four and a half thousand to Cumberland’s nine thousand Hanovarians.
Restricted by flanking dykes, the Jacobites presented a narrow, dense front. For the first twenty minutes of the hour-long battle the Hanovarian cannons pummelled the crowded area. When the Jacobites advanced the men in the centre found themselves having to squeeze to the right to avoid soft ground. There were so many men in such a small area that muskets could not be used. Nevertheless they butchered on through the Hanovarian left only to meet another regiment behind.
The Jacobite left had not joined the attack, and with two-thirds of the men now in difficulties, Cumberland’s cavalry had little trouble sweeping in to end the battle by two’o’clock. Working at their leisure, they proceeded to slaughter every Jacobite they had until the following day and continued to kill in round-ups for weeks following. The fatalities numbered three hundred Hanovarians and two thousand Jacobites.
Top of Page
1746 - Highland Dress Proscription Act Following the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, the last pitched battle on British soil, Prince Charles fled to South Uist then eventually across to France.
His supporters who remained suffered terribly from ‘Butcher Cumberland’ and his medieval reprisals. To further punish Scotland, Parliament issued imperious Acts to destroy the clans, their identities and economic structures.
New laws imposed abolished heritable jurisdictions, claimed estates for the crown, banned the playing of bagpipes, the wearing of tartans and Highland dress for all except government troops, and restricted the possession of weapons.
The exact wording of the act was as follows:
"That from and after the First Day of August 1747, no man or boy within that part of Great Britain called Scotland, other than such as shall be employed as Officers and Soldiers of His Majesty's Forces, shall on any pretext whatsoever, wear or put on the clothes, commonly called Highland clothes (that is to say) the Plaid, Philabeg, or little kilt, Trowes, Shoulder-Belts, or any part whatever of what peculiarly belongs to the Highland Garb; and that no tartan or party-coloured plaid or stuff shall be used for Great coats or upper coats, and if any such person shall presume after the first said day of August, to wear or put on the aforesaid garments or any part of them, every person so offending.... shall be liable to be transported to any of His Majesty's plantations beyond the seas, there to remain for the space of seven years."
1759 - Robert Burns Born Robert Burns was born in Alloway, Ayrshire on 25 January 1759.
His father was a gardener and tenant farmer, and the life he was brought up in made him acutely aware of society’s unfairness as he laboured hard yet lived in poverty.
In 1786 he published 612 copies of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, the preface of which explains his early need to write to find ’some kind of counterpoise’ in his unhappy life. The book’s success changed that life.
He moved to Edinburgh and was welcomed into the literary circles. With the earnings from an expanded volume of his book, Burns began to travel around his country, drawing inspiration from the environments and people. As important to him as his own writing was the collecting of traditional works he came across.
In time he returned home to farming and trained to become a full-time excise officer in Dumfries. As well as editing volumes of James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum from 1788 until his death on 21 July 1796, he wrote copiously and collected works with almost all his spare time.
With what remained of his spare time he socialised. Whether the women in his life brought to him his romantic words or vice versa, he wrote often of love and loved many women. His tolerant wife was Jean Armour.
With his eloquent identification of the injustices of society and his ability to describe the little sensations that make life bearable, such as the pleasure of drinking, the ‘Heaven-sent ploughman’ is held as a poet who belongs to the workers before the intellectuals, and his work still speaks for people all over the world today.
1769 - James Watt Patents the Steam Engine James Watt, the son of a merchant, was born on January 19, 1736, in Greenock. He worked as a mathematical-instrument maker as a teenager and soon became interested in steam engines, which were used at the time to pump water from mines. His interest really took off in 1763 when he was given a Newcomen steam engine to repair. Watt realised that he could improve the engine's effeciency by the use of a seperate condenser. This made Watt's engine 4 times more powerful than earlier designs.
Watt's genius with invention was matched by his business acumen and entrepreneurial skills. His patent prevented any rival manufacture and the development of any further improvements to the Newcomen engine he had based his invention on so that the 'Boulton & Watt' company he had formed with his backer had a monopoly on production.
Watt compared the output to the engine to the pulling power of horses formerly used in the mines giving rise to the 'horsepower' ratings still used in engines today. Mine owners who used his machine were required to pay him one third of the money they were saving by using his engine. Not surprisingly Watt became very well off as a result.
Though Watt was not actually the inventor of the steam engine, his contribution to it's development was significant and it is recognised that the electrical unit the 'Watt' is named as a mark of respect for this great inventor and pioneer of the industrial age who died in 1819 leaving a legacy of innovation that had changed the course of history.
1771 - Sir Walter Scott Born Novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott was born in 1771 in Edinburgh, one of six surviving infants from twelve. At eighteen months he took ill with poliomyelitis but pulled through although with a lame right leg. He was well educated, studying at Edinburgh University. In 1792 he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates, becoming Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire from 1799 and Principal Clerk to the Court of Session from 1806. He was married in 1797 to French Charlotte Charpentier, who bore him four children.
Fired by the tales and poems he heard as a child recuperating from his illness at his grandfather’s farm, Scott’s first love was literature and writing. His first works were the fusing and re-working of traditional tales and ballads.
Soon this developed into a new form of writing, bringing history into romantic adventures. He produced contemporary works on the history of Scotland, Napoleon, France and past writers. He lived very expensively with a house in Edinburgh on Castle Street during court term and another in the country, Abbotsford, near Melrose, which he purchased in 1812 and had rebuilt, with extensions to his land also.
With income from his legal work, his writing and shares in his publishing and printing companies, his life went well until January 1826 and a collapse of the economy. There was no limited liability at that time and he found himself with debts from his businesses of £120,000. Rather than declare bankruptcy he began an unbearably tough work regime to pay his creditors.
Then, the following May, his wife died. From 1830 he worked through four strokes before dying in September 1832. Scott’s work has moved in and out of fashion and he has even been criticised for writing about history while the American and Industrial Revolutions were occurring.
He explained his need to write tales set in historical Scotland because he was aware of his country ‘daily melting and dissolving into those of her sister and ally’. In his work he tried to capture the essence of an earlier, still independent and proud Scotland. It is a mark of his writing ability that the world’s ‘shortbread tin lid’ perception of Scotland descends entirely from his works of fiction in images today’s historians cannot hope to correct.
Top of Page
1782 - Highland Dress Proscription Repealed The Highland Dress Proscription Act of 1746, designed to punish the clans and destroy their identities and economic stuctures, was repealed in 1782 after thirty six years in law.
The Repeal went as follows:
"Listen Men. This is bringing before all the Sons of the Gael, the King and Parliament of Britain have forever abolished the act against the Highland Dress; which came down to the Clans from the beginning of the world to the year 1746. This must bring great joy to every Highland Heart. You are no longer bound down to the unmanly dress of the Lowlander. This is declaring to every Man, young and old, simple and gentle, that they may after this put on and wear the Truis, the Little Kilt, the Coat, and the Striped Hose, as also the Belted Plaid, without fear of the Law of the Realm or the spite of the enemies."
1785 - Beginning Of The Highland Clearances The clan system regarded the land as belonging to their community, worked areas being passed down through the family while additional lands could be rented. As the generations passed, the clan chiefs became more wealthy and detached from their kinsmen, regarding them as their effects rather than their family. By the 18th century it would have been hard to find a clan chief with the same accent as his clan, and harder still to find a clansman with any legal or humanitarian rights.
Agricultural ‘improvement’ by removing humans from their lands and replacing them with sheep was found to be very profitable across the Lowlands in the mid-1700s. The large Cheviot and Blackface sheep that were given the lands generated more wealth than the landowners could ever have squeezed from their clan tenants.
The people were told to fish at the coast and work the kelp to pay the rents for their new locations. They built themselves homes called crofts and their lifestyles became known as crofting.
The Lowland success encouraged an enormous, devastating ‘improvement’ by the traitor landowners all across the Highlands from 1785 which became known as ‘the Clearances’. Tens of thousands were pulled out of their townships and moved, impoverished, to the marginal areas. Because of the Napoleonic wars, emigration of potential soldiers was not encouraged; and there was money to made from recruits.
The evil Countess of Sutherland, for example, used the threat of clearances to blackmail every young man on her vast estates to enlist in her regiment. She then evicted their families later anyway.
There were two forms of clearance. Firstly came the relocation of people onto poor, coastal plots. From 1820, however, these areas were failing to provide any living. Kelp was not as saleable, fishing was poor yet rents were being pushed up. To cap it all came the 1844 potato famine.
New hardships from the first upheaval induced a second movement of people forced to attempt emigration. As the consequences of relocation were becoming apparent, insatiable landowners were still clearing and selling their estates without regard into the 1850s.
1822 - George IV Visits Scotland King George IV made a royal visit to Edinburgh in 1822. It was the first time a monarch had come to Scotland since 1641 and his tour was stage-managed by Sir Walter Scott. Scott engineered an image of Scotland similar to the country in his romantic novels for the visit.
Highland Games were re-introduced, including at that time ‘twisting the four legs from a cow’, and Niel Gow entertained the King with his legendary fiddle playing.
In the period approaching the visit, the wearing of kilts, trews and all other Highland garb became the height of fashion, accompanied by families finding historical reasons for claiming the various setts as their own.
1842 - Queen Victoria Visits Scotland The second visit of a United Kingdom monarch to Scotland was in 1842 when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert disembarked at Leith.
Their exploration of Perthshire, walking, reading and deer-stalking, was so pleasurable that they returned annually. In 1852 they bought Balmoral and had the castle built.
The Queen’s Scottish memoirs and paintings of the scenery were extremely popular and her love of tartan ensured publicity and a healthy business for the tweed industry.
1847 - Alexander Graham Bell Born Born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Bell is best known for his invention of the telephone however he was a remarkable character and brilliant inventor who came up with many inventions such as an air-cooling system, a way of desalinating sea-water and a sorting machine for punch-coded census cards. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, developed Visible Speech, a method of teaching speech to the deaf, Alexander carried on this work and taught the young Helen Keller.
Many other inventors had been working on the idea of sending human speech by wire, but Bell improved upon these developments to the conventional telegraph, the "harmonic telegraph" could send more than one message at a time over a single telegraph wire. Bell realised that it may be possible to pick up all the sounds of the human voice using an adaptation of this idea. a recognisable voice was first transmitted in 1875 and his telephone was patented on March 7, 1876.
His unique intellectual curiosity drove him in later years to experiment with aeronautics and he invented several large kites capable of carrying the weight of a human and producing a hydrofoil craft in 1919 that managed to reach the speed of 70 mph. He died on 2 August 1922 at his home in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Top of Page
1886 - The Crofters Act After a century of being treated worse than the cattle they lost their lands to, the government finally acknowledged that the victims of the Clearances were still being victimised and needed protective legislation.
The Napier Commission studied the situation and put forward recommendations. Ignoring most of the Napier Commission’s work, the government of William Gladstone drew up a Bill which would satisfy the Highland Land Law Reform Association. In 1886 it became the Crofters’ Holdings Act.
This gave the crofters security of tenure, the right to arbitration when faced with rent increases, the right to bequeath their tenancies and the right to compensation when improvements to new locations were required. The Act became known as the ‘Magna Carta of Gaeldom’.
1890 - Forth Bridge Completed Descibed as Scotland’s Eiffel Tower, the breathtaking Forth Railway Bridge stands at Queensferry Narrows, nine miles west of Edinburgh, where it carries trains for a mile and a half over the Firth of Forth.
The cantilever structure, with three 340ft high towers, holding the double railway 150ft above the estuary at high tide, was designed by Sir John Fowler and Benjamin Baker, and constructed by William Arrol. After seven years work, 55,000 tons of steel, 640,000 cubic feet of granite and 57 lives lost, the last of 8 million rivets was driven home at the opening ceremony on 4 March 1890.
1915 Gretna Rail Disaster On the 22nd May 1915 Three trains; a special troop train, a local train and the night express coming north from Euston Station, London crashed at Quintinshill Junction near Gretna on the Scottish border causing one of Britain's worst rail disasters.
The troop train was one of two carrying the Leith based 7th Battalion Royal Scots, Territorial Force bound for Liverpool on their way to Gallipoli as part of 156th Brigade of the 52nd (Lowland) Division.
The signalmen were blamed for the disaster, they had been anxious to complete some paperwork and had simply forgotten about the local train which was sitting outside their signal box and not on a sideline. They gave the all clear for the troop train which ran straight into the local train. A few minutes later the express train traveling north ran into the wreckage setting it alight.
Three officers, twenty-nine non-commissioned officers and one hundred and eighty two soldiers were killed in the disaster. A crowd of thousands turned out for the mass funeral procession through Leith to nearby Roesbank cemetery. The two signalmen were held responsible and were both imprisoned.
1926 - First Television Broadcast It is regarded by some as Man’s greatest invention, possibly more life-sustaining than fire and certainly more entertaining than the wheel; it is regarded by others as the Anti-Christ; and it began with Helensburgh-born John Logie Baird.
The very first television picture was transmitted by him in 1926 from one room to another. In 1927 he successfully sent a moving image along telephone wires from London to Glasgow, and the following year he achieved the first trans-atlantic television broadcast.
Baird also applied his genius to many other revolutionary electronic signal fields such as fibre-optics and, during the war, radar.
1967 Celtic Football Club Win the European Cup On Thursday 25 May 1967 Celtic Football Club became the first ever British side to lift the coveted European Cup after beating Internacionale of Milan 2-1 at the Estadio Nacionale in Lisbon. The feat itself was great but made even more incredible by the fact that this side was made up, not from international football superstars but from local men who all grew up within a 30 mile radius of their home ground, Celtic Park.
Few of the neutrals among the 45,000 who crammed into the Portuguese national stadium would have given Celtic a chance against Inter Milan as the game began. Inter had already seen off CSKA Sofia, Real Madrid and Torpedo Moscow on the way to the final and there was a general feeling that they were turning up to collect the trophy. This feeling was not shared by Celtic under the management of the charismatic Jock Stein.
The game started badly for Celtic when Celtic player Jim Craig brought down Cappellini in the penalty area and Mazolla scored the resulting penalty. However Celtic then began to attack relentlessly and for the remainder of the game pressed Inter back with a display of total attacking football. After 65 minutes Tommy Gemmell scored from an unstoppable shot to level the game.
Celtic continued to press and minutes from the end Bobby Murdoch sent in a powerful shot which deflected off his team mate Stevie Chalmers and into the Inter net giving Celtic a 2-1 lead. When the final whistle came one of the greatest Scottish sporting achievements was complete.
The 11 Celtic players who took to the field on that sunny May afternoon in Lisbon subsequently became known as The Lisbon Lions, and their story is the stuff of modern-day football legends.
Top of Page
1979 - First Referendum From the Mid 1970's onwards there had been building political pressure towards separate parliaments in both Scotland and Wales. Labour's majority had been whittled down in 1974 and after a series of disastrous by-elections had virtually no majority at all. The Scottish National Party was gaining momentum and it was into this environment that a combined Scotland and Wales Bill was introduced in November 1976.
However this bill ended up being debated to death and was withdrawn to be replaced by separate bills. Labour backbencher and Scottish MP representing a London constituency George Cunningham motioned an amendment repealing the Act unless at least 40% of the eligible electorate voted "yes" This motion was carried. This was compounded by Tam Dalyell's 'West Lothian Question' 'is it permissible that the MP for West Lothian be able to vote on legislation for English constituencies while a Scottish Parliament dealt with issues relevant to his own constituency?' The doubt this threw up combined with Cunningham's amendment made the 1978 Scotland Act almost untenable.
On 1 March 1979 the People were asked this question? 'Do you want the provisions of the Scotland Act 1978 to be put into effect ? '
Scotland voted in favour of devolution by 52% to 48% - but only 32.9% of the electorate had joined the majority. The Act was repealed the following month.
The sense of betrayal that the Scottish electorate felt was unrecoverable for the Labour Party and a vote of no confidence in Callaghan's Labour government 27 days later was carried by one vote. The Labour Government collapsed and Margaret Thatcher swept to power where the Conservatives remained until 1997 despite having virtually no support in Scotland.
1995 - Skye Bridge Completed The car ferry making the five minute journey between Kyleakin and Kyle of Lochalsh was finally made redundant in 1995 with the opening of the Skye Bridge. The reasons for and against a large, modern construction in an area of stunning natural beauty, little changed since King Haakon anchored his Norwegian longships there in 1263, aroused much passionate debate. Some were not surprised when the government of the day plumped for the cheapest bridge design submitted.
Although it fulfils its purpose in ending the queues of vehicles waiting for the cramped ferries, the unsympathetic design of the bridge has appalled many. With the ferry gone, residents have been further dismayed by the level of tolls its owners charge.
Joined to the mainland for the first time since the Ice Age, the romantic Isle of Skye looks set to either reap the rewards or pay the consequences of this construction.
1997 Second Referendum In 1997 after nearly 20 years of Conservative rule a labour government swept to power with a landslide victory over largely disorganised opposition. The party had campaigned successfully on the issue of major constitutional reform and among these reforms was devolution for Scotland.
The controversy that had surrounded the 1979 referendum was less of an issue this time around and the West Lothian question was more a subject for intellectual debate than political policy.
The people were asked to vote on two questions:
'I agree that there should be a Scottish Parliament'
'I agree that a Scottish Parliament should have tax-varying powers'
In contrast to 1979 the campaign for the 'yes yes' vote was far more coordinated across the political parties with the conservative 'Think Twice' campaign lacking any real cohesion. On 11 September 1997 the public voted yes on both counts. Following this result, the Scotland Bill was introduced in Parliament in January 1998 and became law as the Scotland Act in November that year.
After nearly 200 years Scotland once again had the government it deserved!
2004 New Scottish Parlimant Building Opened After the success of the Referendum in 1997 the First Minister Donald Dewar announced a competition for the design of Scotland's new parliament building. The winner was the design of Catalan architect, Enric Miralles.
His adventurous design with leaf shaped buildings and upturned boat style skylights was finally opened by the Queen on October 9th 2004.
The building has shouldered more than it's fair share of criticism; Almost 3 years late in completion the final cost of the building is estimated at £431 million. Estimates of the original budget ranged from an early estimate of £40 million to a cost of £109 million based on Miralles original designs making it massively over budget.
Despite the criticism the building nestles proudly in its magnificent setting on the edge of Holyrood park. And recent architectural acclaim are set to make it a landmark building of world renown and one that all Scots can feel proud of.
Top of Page |
|
