1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Scotland
SCOTLAND, the name given in modern times to that portion of Great Britain which lies north of the English boundary; it also comprises the Outer and Inner Hebrides and other islands off the west coast, and the Orkney and Shetland islands off the north coast. With England lying to the south, it is thus bounded on the N. and W. by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the E. by the North Sea. It is separated from England by the Solway Firth, the Sark, Scotsdyke (an old embankment in 55° 3′ N., connecting the Sark with the Esk), the Esk (for one mile), the Liddel, the Kershope, the Cheviot Hills, the Tweed and a small area known as the “liberties” of Berwick. The mainland lies between 58° 40′ 30″ (at Dunnet Head in Caithness) and 54° 38′ N. (Mull of Galloway in Wigtownshire), and 1° 45′ 32″ (Buchan Ness in Aberdeenshire) and 6° 14′ W. (Ardnamurchan Point in Argyllshire). Including the islands, however, the extreme latitude north is 60° 51′ 30″ (Out Stack in the Shetlands) and the extreme longitude west 8° 35′ 30″ (St Kilda). The greatest length from Cape Wrath in Sutherland to the Mull of Galloway is 274 m., and the greatest breadth from Buchan Ness to Applecross in the shire of Ross and Cromarty 154 m., but from Bonar Bridge at the head of Dornoch Firth to the head of Loch Broom it is only 26 m. wide, and 30 m. from Grangemouth on the Forth to Bowling on the Clyde. The coast-line is estimated at 2300 m., the arms of the sea being so numerous and in several cases penetrating so far inland that few places are beyond 40 m. from salt water. The total area is 19,069,500 acres or 29,796 sq. m., exclusive of inland waters (about 608 sq. m.), the foreshore (about 498 sq. m.) and tidal water (about 608 sq. m.).
The name Scotland for this geographical area of northern Britain (the Caledonia of the ancients—a name still poetically used for Scotland) originated in the 11th century, when (from the tribe of Scots) part of it was called Scotia (a name previously applied to what is now Ireland); and the name of Scotland became established in the 12th and 13th centuries. The name of Britain or North Britain is still firmly associated with Scotland; thus English letters are generally addressed, e.g. “Edinburgh, N.B.,” i.e. North Britain; and Scottish people have long objected to the conventional use south of the Tweed of the word “English,” when it really means (as they correctly, but sometimes rather pedantically, insist) “British.”
I. Geography
Physically, Scotland is divided into three geographical regions—the “Highlands” (subdivided by Glen More into the North-Western and South-Eastern Highlands); the Central Plain or “Lowlands” (a tract of south-westerly to north-easterly trend, between a line drawn roughly from Girvan to Dunbar and a line drawn from Dumbarton to Stonehaven); and the Southern Uplands.
The Highlands.—Nearly all this region is lofty ground, deeply trenched with valleys and sea lochs. The only considerable low-lying area embraces the eastern part of Aberdeenshire and the northern parts of Banff, Elgin and Nairn—tracts which, ethnologically, do not fall within Highland territory. Along both sides of the Moray Firth a strip of level land lies between the foot of the hills and the sea, while the county of Caithness, occupying a wide plain, does not, strictly speaking, belong to the Highlands. Seen from Strathmore or the Firth of Clyde the Highlands present well-defined masses of hills abruptly rising from the Lowland plains, and from any of the western islands their sea front resembles a vast rampart indented by lochs and rising to a uniform level, which sinking here and there allows glimpses of still higher summits in the interior. The Highland hills differ from a mountain chain such as the Alps not merely in their inferior elevation but in configuration and structure. They are made up of a succession of more or less parallel confluent ridges, having in the main a trend from north-east to south-west. These ridges are separated by longitudinal and furrowed by transverse valleys. The portions of the ridge thus isolated rise into what are regarded as mountains, though they are really only loftier parts of the ridge, along which indeed the geological structure is continued. It is remarkable how the average level of the summits is maintained. Viewed from near at hand a mountain may seem to tower above the surrounding country, but from a distance it will be seen not to rise much above the general uniformity of elevation. There are no gigantic dominant masses obviously due to special terrestrial disturbance. A few apparent exceptions occur along the western seaboard of Sutherland, in Skye and elsewhere, but examination of their structure at once explains the reason of their prominence and confirms the rule. The surface of the Highlands is rugged. The rocks project in innumerable bosses and crags, which roughen the sides and crests of the ridges. The shape and colour of these roughnesses depend on the nature of the underlying rock. Where it is hard and jointed, weathering into large quadrangular blocks, the hills are more especially distinguished for the gnarled bossy character of their declivities, as may be seen in Ben Ledi and the heights to the north-east of it. Where, on the other hand, the rock decays with smaller debris, the hills assume smoother contours, as in the slate hills running from the Kyles of Bute to Loch Lomond. But, regarded broadly, the Highland mountains are monuments of erosion, the relic of an old tableland, the upper surface and former inclinations of which are shown approximately by the summits of the existing masses and the direction of the chief water-flows.
The Highlands are separated into two completely disconnected and in some respects contrasted regions by the depression of the Great Glen, extending from Loch Linnhe to Inverness, by which the ancient plateau was severed. In the north-western section the highest ground is found along the Atlantic coast, mounting steeply from the sea to an average height of 2000 to 3000 ft. The watershed consequently keeps close to the western seaboard, and indeed in some places is not above a mile and a half from the shore. From these hills which catch the first downpour of the rains from the ocean, the ground falls eastward. Numerous eminences, however, prolong the mountainous features to the North Sea and south-eastward to Glen More. The difference of the general level on the two sides of the water-parting is reflected in the length of their streams. On the west the drainage empties itself into the Atlantic after flowing only a very few miles, on the east it has to run 30 or 40 m. At the head of Loch Nevis the western stream is but 3 m. long, while the eastern has a course of some 18 m. to the Great Glen. Throughout the north-western region uniformity of features characterizes the scenery, betokening even at a distance the general monotony of structure. But the sameness is relieved along the western coast of the shires of Sutherland and Ross and Cromarty by groups of cones and stacks, and farther south by the terraced plateaus and abrupt conical hills of Skye, Rum and Mull.
The south-eastern region of the Highlands, having a more diversified geological structure, offers greater variety of scenery. Most of the valleys, lakes and sea lochs run in a south-westerly and north-easterly direction, a feature strikingly exhibited in west Argyllshire. But there are also several important transverse valleys, those of the Garry and Tay being the most conspicuous examples. The watershed, too, is somewhat different. It first strikes eastwards round the head of Loch Laggan and then swings southwards, pursuing a sinuous course till it leaves the Highlands on the east side of Loch Lomond. The streams flowing westward, however, are still short, while those running to the north-east, east and south-east have long courses and drain wide areas. There is a marked contrast between the configuration of the north-eastern district and the other parts of this region. In that area the Grampians rise into wide flat-topped heights or moors often more than 3000, and in a few places exceeding 4000 ft. in height, and bounded by steep declivities and sometimes by precipices. Seen from an eminence on their surface, the inference is irresistible that these plateaus are fragments of the original tableland, trenched into segments by the formation of the longitudinal and transverse valleys. Farther to the south-west, in the shires of Perth, Inverness and Argyll, they give place to the ordinary hummocky crested ridges of Highland scenery, which, however, in Ben Nevis and Aonach Beg reach a height of over 4000 ft.
Besides the principal tracts of low-lying ground in the Highlands already alluded to, there occur long narrow strips of flat land in the more important valleys. Most of the straths and glens have a floor of detritus which, spread out between the bases of the boundary hills, has been levelled into meadow land by the rivers and provides almost the sole arable ground in each district.
The Lowlands of Mid-Scotland, or the Central Plain, constitute a broad depression with south-westerly to north-easterl trend lying between the Highland line that runs from the head of, the Firth of Clyde to Stonehaven and the pastoral uplands that stretch from Girvan to Dunbar. They may be regarded as a long trough of younger rocks let down by parallel dislocations between the older masses to the south and north. The lowest of these younger rocks are the various sedimentary and volcanic members of the Old Red Sandstone. These are covered by the successive formations of the Carboniferous system. The total thickness of both these groups of rock cannot be less than 30,000 ft., and, as most of them bear evidence of having been deposited in shallow water, they could only have been accumulated during a prolonged period of depression. The question arises whether this depression affected only the area of the midland valley, or extended also to the regions to the north and south; and so far as the evidence goes there is ground for the inference that, while the depression had its maximum along the line of the lowlands, it also involved some portion at least of the high grounds on either side. In other words, the Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous rocks, though chiefly accumulated in the broad lowland valley, crept also over some part of the hills on either side, where a few outliers tell of their former extension. The central Lowlands are thus of great geological antiquity. During and since the deposition of the rocks that underlie them the tract has been the scene of repeated
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| Drawn and engraved by Justus Perthes, Gotha, Germany. |
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terrestrial disturbances. Long dislocations have sharply defined its northern and southern margins. By other fractures and unequal movements of upheaval or depression portions of the older rocks have been brought up within the bounds of the younger, and areas of the younger have been enclosed by the older. On the whole, these disturbances have followed the prevalent north-easterly trend, and hence a general tendency may be observed among the main ridges and valleys to run in that direction. The chains of the Ochil, Sidlaw, Pentland, Renfrew, Campsie and Fintry Hills, and the valleys of the Strathmore, Firth of Tay, and the basin of Midlothian may be cited as examples. But the dominant cause in the determination of the topographical prominences and depressions of the district has been the relative hardness and softness of the rocks. Almost all the eminences in the Lowlands consist of hard igneous rocks, forming not only chains of hills such as those just mentioned and others in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, but isolated crags and hills like those on which stand the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling, and others conspicuous in the scenery of Fife and the Lothians.
Of the three chief valleys in the central Lowlands two, those of the Tay and the Forth, descend from the Highlands, and one, that of the Clyde, from the Southern Uplands. Though on the whole transverse, these depressions furnish another notable example of that independence of geological structure already referred to.
The Southern Uplands extend from the North Channel in the south-west to St Abb's Head in the north-east and form a well-defined belt of hilly ground, and though much less elevated (their highest point is 2764 ft. above the sea) than the Highlands, rise with scarcely less abruptness above the lower tracts that bound them. Their north-western margin for the most part springs boldly above the fields and moorlands of the Central Plain, and its boundary for long distances continues remarkably straight. On the south and south-east their limits in general are less prominently defined, but are better seen west and south-west of the Nith from which they extend to the sea and Loch Ryan, terminating in the extreme south-west in a plateau of which the loftiest point is little over 1000 ft. above the sea. The Cheviots do not properly belong to the Uplands, from which they are separated by Liddesdale and other hollows and on which they abut abruptly. But though geologically the one set of mountains must be separated from the other, geographically it is convenient to include within the Southern Uplands the whole area between the Central Plain and the Border. A survey of the Uplands, therefore, presents in succession from south-west to north-east the Kirkcudbrightshire and Ayrshire mountain moors, the Lowthers, the Moffat hills, the Moorfoots and the Lammermuirs. Distinguished especially by the smoothness of their surface, they may be regarded as a rolling tableland or moorland, traversed by many valleys conducting the drainage to the sea. This character is well observed from the heights of Tweedsmuir. Wide, mossy moors, 2000 ft. or more above the sea, and sometimes level as a racecourse, spread out on all sides. Their continuity, however, is interrupted by numerous valleys separating them into detached flat-topped hills, which are comparatively seldom marked by precipices of naked rock. Where the rock projects it more usually appears in low crags and knolls, from which long trails of grey or purple debris descend till they are lost among the grass. Hence, besides being smooth, the uplands are remarkably verdant. They form indeed excellent pasture-land, while the alluvial flats in the valleys and even some of the lower slopes are fitted for grain and green crops.
This uniformity of aspect is doubtless traceable to the prevalence of the same kind of rocks and the same geological structure. The Silurian greywackes and shales that underlie almost the whole of the Uplands weather generally into small angular debris, and at a tolerably uniform rate of disintegration. But slight differences may readily be detected even where no feature interferes noticeably with the monotony. The bands of massive grit and coarse greywacke, for example, break up into larger blocks and from their greater hardness are apt to project above the general surface of the other softer rocks. Hence their line of trend, which like that of all the other strata is in a north-easterly direction, may be traced from hill to hill by their more craggy contours. Only in the higher tracts are there rugged features recalling the more savage character of Highland scenery. In the heights of Hartfell (2651 ft.) and, Whitecoomb (2695), whence the Clyde, Tweed, Annan, and Moffat Water descend, the high moorlands have been scarped into gloomy corries, with crags and talus-slopes, which form a series of landscapes all the more striking from the abrupt and unexpected contrast which they offer to everything around them. In Galloway, also, the highest portions of the Uplands have acquired a ruggedness and wildness more like those of the Highlands than any other district in the south of Scotland. For this, however, there is an obvious ecological reason. In that region the Silurian rocks have been invaded by large bosses of granite and have undergone a variable amount of metamorphism which has in some places altered them into hard crystalline schists. These various rocky masses, presenting great differences in their powers of resisting decay, have yielded unequally to disintegration: the harder portions project in rocky knolls, crags and cliffs, while the softer parts have been worn down into more owing outlines. The highest summit in the south of Scotland—Merrick (2764 ft.)—consists of Silurian strata much altered by proximity to the granite, while the rest of the more prominent heights (all in Kirkcudbrightshire)—Rinns of Kells (2668 ft.), Cairnsmuir of Carsphairn (2612), and Cairnsmore of Fleet (2331)—are formed of granite.
The watershed of the Southern Uplands is of much interest in relation to their geological history. It runs from the mouth of Loch Ryan in a sinuous north-easterly direction, keeping near the northern limit of the region till it reaches the basin of the Nith, where it quits the Uplands altogether, descends into the lowlands of Ayrshire, and, after circling round the headwaters of the Nith, strikes south-eastwards across half the breadth of the Uplands, then sweeps north and eastwards between the basins of the Clyde, Tweed and Annan, and then through the moors that surround the sources of the Ettrick, Teviot and Jed, into the Cheviot Hills. Here again the longest slope is on the east side, where the Tweed bears the whole drainage of that side into the sea. Although the rocks throughout the Southern Uplands have a persistent north-easterly and south-westerly strike, and though this trend is apparent in the bands of more rugged hills that mark the outcrop of hard grits and greywackes, nevertheless geological structure has been much less effective in determining the lines of ridge and valley than in the Highlands. On the southern side of the watershed, in Dumfriesshire and Galloway, the valleys run generally transversely from north-west to south-east. But in the eastern half of the Uplands the valleys do not appear to have any relation to the geological structure of the ground underneath.
Characteristic Features.—Though Scotland is pre-eminently a “land of mountain and of flood,” yet its leading physical features Valleys. are not the lofty ridges carved out of the primeval plateau—apparently the dominant characteristic—but the valleys which have been opened through them by the agencies of water and weather, and which are therefore its fundamental topographical element. The longitudinal valleys, which run in the same general direction as the ridges—that is, north-east and south-west—have had their trend defined by geological structure, such as a line of dislocation (the Great Glen), or the plications of the rocks (Lochs Ericht, Tay and Awe, and most of the sea lochs of Argyllshire). The transverse valleys run north-west or south-east and are for the most part independent of geological structure. The valley of the Garry and Tay crosses the strike of all the Highland rocks, traverses the great fault on the Highland border, and finally breaks through the chain of the Sidlaw Hills at Perth. The valley of the Clyde crosses the strike of the Silurian folds in the Southern Uplands, the boundary fault, and the ridges of the Old Red Sandstone, and pursue sits northwesterly course across the abundant and often powerful dislocations of the Carboniferous system.
The crumpling of the earth's crust which folded the rocks of the Highlands and Southern Uplands probably upraised above the sea a series of longitudinal ridges having a general north-easterly direction. The earliest rain that fell upon these ridges would run off them, first in transverse watercourses down each short slope, and then in longitudinal depressions wherever such had been formed during the terrestrial disturbance. Afterwards the pathways of the streams would be gradually deepened and widened into valleys. Hence the valleys are of higher antiquity than the mountains that flank them. The mountains in fact have been hewn out of the original bulk of the land in proportion as the valleys have been excavated. The denudation would continue so long as the ground stood above the level of the sea; but there have been prolonged periods of depression, when the ground, instead of being eroded, lay below the sea-level and was buried sometimes under thousands of feet of accumulated sediment, which completely filled up and obliterated the previous drainage-lines. When the land reappeared a new series of valleys would at once begin to be eroded; and the subsequent degradation of these overlying sediments might reveal portions of the older topography, as in the case of the Great Glen, Lauderdale, and other ancient valleys. But the new drainage-lines have usually little or no reference to the old ones. Determined by the inequalities of surface of the overlying mantle of sedimentary material, they would be wholly independent of the geological structure of the rocks lying below that mantle. Slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the land, they might eventually reach the older rocks, but they would keep in these the lines of valley that they had followed in the overlying deposits. In process of time the whole of these deposits might be denuded from the area, and there might even remain no trace of the younger formations on which the valleys began and which guided their excavation. This is probably the explanation of the striking independence of geological structure exhibited by the Tweed and the Nith.
Among the valleys certain prevailing characteristics have been recognized in their popular names. Straths are broad expanses of low ground between bounding hills and are usually traversed by one main stream and its tributaries—e.g. Strath Tay, Strath Spey, Strath Conon. This name, however, has also been applied to wide tracts of lowland which embrace portions of several valleys, but are defined by lines of heights on each side; the best example is afforded by Strathmore—the “Great Strath”—between the southern margin of the Highlands and the line of the Sidlaw Hills. This long and wide depression, though it looks like one great valley, strictly speaking includes portions of the valleys of the Tay, Isla, North Esk and South Esk, all of which cross it. Elsewhere in central Scotland such a wide depression is known as a howe, as in the Howe of Fife between the Ochil and Lomond Hills. A glen is a narrower and steeper-sided
valley than a strath, though the names have not always been applied with discrimination. Most of the Highland valleys are true glens, Glencoe being the best-known example. The hills rise rapidly on each side, sometimes in grassy slopes, sometimes in rocky bosses and precipitous cliffs, while the bottom is occupied by a lake. In the south of Scotland the larger streams flow in wide open valleys called dales, as in Clydesdale, Tweeddale, Teviotdale, Liddesdale, Eskdale, Nithsdale. The strips of alluvial land bordering a river are known as haughs, and where in estuaries they expand into wide plains they are termed carses. The carses of the Forth extend seawards as far as Bo'ness and consist chiefly of raised beaches. The Carse of Gowrie is the strip of low ground intervening between the Firth of Tay and the Sidlaw Hills. Brae signifies the steep bank of a river, and so any slope or hill-side.
River-gorges are characteristic features in many of the valleys. In the Old Red Sandstone they are particularly prominent where River-gorges. that formation has lain in the pathway of the streams sweeping down from the Highlands. In the basin of the Moray Firth some fine examples may be seen on the Nairn and Findhorn, while on the west side of the Cromarty Firth some of the small streams descending from the high grounds of the east of the shire of Ross and Cromarty have cut out defiles in the Conglomerates, remarkable for their depth and narrowness. Towards the south margin of the Highlands notable instances of true canyons in the Old Red Sandstone are to be seen where the Isla and North Esk enter that formation. The well-known gorge in which the Falls of Clyde are situated is the best example in the Lowlands. (For the chief rivers see the separate articles on them, and also the section on the physical features in the article on the different shires of Scotland.)
The topography of the country being the result of prolonged denudation, it is reasonable to infer that the oldest surfaces likely to Types of mountain and hill. be preserved are portions of some of the platforms of erosion successively established by the wearing down of the land to the sea-level. Relics of these platforms occur both in the Highlands and among the Southern Uplands. Allusion has already been made to the flat-topped moorlands which in the eastern Grampians reach heights of 3000 to 4000 ft. above the sea. The most familiar example perhaps is the top of Lochnagar, where, at the level of 3500 ft., the traveller finds himself on a broad undulating moor, more than a mile and a half long, sloping gently towards Glen Muick and terminating on the north in a range of granite precipices. The top of Ben Macdhui stands upon nearly a square mile of moor exceeding 4000 ft. in elevation. These mountains lie within granite areas; but not less striking examples may be found among the schists. The mountains at the head of Glen Clova and Glen Isla, for instance, sweep upwards into a broad moor some 3000 ft. above the sea, the more prominent parts of which have received special names—Driesh, Mayar, Tom Buidhe, Tolmount, Cairn na Glasha. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that there is more level ground on the tops of these mountains than in areas of correspond in size in the valleys below. That these high plateaus are planes of erosion is shown by their independence of geological structure, the upturned edges of the vertical and contorted schists having been abruptly shorn off and the granite having been wasted and levelled along its exposed surface. Among the Southern Uplands exist traces of a similar tableland of erosion. The top of Broad Law on the confines of Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire, for example, is a level moor comprising between 300 and 400 acres above the contour line of 2500 ft. and lying upon the upturned edges of the greatly denuded Silurian grits and shales. An instructive example of the similar destruction of a much younger platform is to be found in the terraced plateaus of Skye, Eigg, Canna, Muck, Mull and Morven, which are portions of what was probably originally a continuous plain of basalt. Though dating back only to older Tertiary time, this plain has been so deeply trenched by the forces of denudation that it has been reduced to mere scattered fragments. Thousands of feet of basalt have been worn away from many parts of its surface; deep and wide valleys have been carved out of it; and so enormously has it been wasted, that it has been almost entirely stripped from wide tracts which it formerly covered and where only scattered outliers remain to prove that it once existed.
It is curious that broad flat-topped mountains are chiefly to be found in the eastern parts of the country. Traced westwards, these forms gradually give place to narrow ridges and crests. No contrast, for instance, can be greater than that between the wide elevated moors of the eastern Grampians, and the crested ridges of western Inverness-shire and Argyllshire—Loch Hourn, Glen Nevis, Glencoe—or that between the broad uplands of Peeblesshire and the precipitous heights of Galloway. Geological structure alone will not account for these contrasts. Perhaps the cause is to be sought mainly in differences of rainfall. The western mountains, exposed to the fierce lash of the Atlantic rains, sustain the heaviest and most constant precipitation. Their sides are seamed with torrents which tear down the solid rock and sweep its detritus into the glens and sea lochs. The eastern heights, on the other hand, experience a smaller rainfall and consequently a diminished rate of erosion. No doubt, too, the preponderance of rainfall in the west has persisted for an enormous period.
Regarding the existing flat-topped heights among the eastern Grampians as remnants of what was once the general character of the surface, we can trace every step in the gradual obliteration of the tableland and in the formation of the most rugged and most individualized forms of isolated mountain. In fact, in journeying westwards across the tops of the Highland mountains we pass, as it were, over successive stages in the history of the origin of Highland scenery. The oldest types of form lie on the east side and the newest on the west. From the larger fragments of the denuded tableland we advance to ridges with narrow tops, which pass by degrees into sharp rugged crests. The ridges, too, are more and more trenched until they become groups of detached hills or mountains. In the progress of this erosion full scope has been afforded for the modification of form by variation in geological structure. Each ridge and mountain has been cut into its shape by denudation, but its outlines have been determined by the nature of the rocks and the manner in which they have yielded to decay. Every distinct variety of rock has impressed its own character upon the landscape. Hence, amid the monotonous succession of ridge beyond ridge and valley after valley, diversity of detail has resulted from the varying composition and grouping of the rocks.
The process by which the ancient tablelands have been trenched into valleys and confident ridges is most instructively displayed among the higher mountains, where erosion proceeds at an accelerated pace. The long screes or talus-slopes at the foot of every crag and cliff bear witness to the continual waste. The headwaters of a river cut into the slopes of the parent hill. Each valley is consequently lengthened at the expense of the mountain from which it descends. Where a number of small torrents converge in a steep mountain recess, they cut out a crescent-shaped hollow or half cauldron, which in the Scottish Highlands is known as a corrie. It is doubtful whether the convergent action of the streams has been the sole agency in the erosion of these striking cavities, or whether snow and glacier-ice have had a share in the work. No feature in Highland scenery is more characteristic than the corries, and in none can the influence of geological structure be better understood. Usually the upper part of a corrie is formed by a crescent of naked rock, from which long trails of debris descend to the bottom of the hollow. Every distinct variety of rock has its own type of corrie, the peculiarities being marked both in the details of the upper cliffs and crags, and in the amount, form and colour of the screes. The Scottish corries have been occupied by glaciers. Hence their bottoms are generally ice-worn or strewn over with moraine stuff. Sometimes a small tarn fills up the bottom, ponded back by a moraine. It is in such localities that we can best observe the last relics of the glaciers that once overspread the country. Among these high grounds also the gradual narrowing of ridges into sharp, narrow, knife-edged crests and the lowering of these into cols or passes can be admirably studied. Where two glens begin opposite to each other on the same ridge, their corries are gradually cut back until only a sharp crest separates them. This crest, attacked on each front and along the summit, is lowered with comparative rapidity, until merely a low col or pass may separate the heads of the two glens. The various stages in this kind of demolition are best seen where the underlying rock is of granite or similarly tough material, which at the same time is apt to be split and splintered by means of its numerous transverse joints. The granite mountains of Arran furnish excellent illustrations.
Where a rock yields to weather with considerable uniformity in all directions it is likely to assume conical forms in the progress of denudation. Sometimes this uniformity is attained by a general disintegration of the rock into fine debris, which rolls down the slopes in long screes. In other cases it is secured by the intersection of joints, whereby a rock, in itself hard and durable, is divided into small angular blocks, which are separated by the action of the elements and slide down the declivities. In many instances the beginning of the formation of a cone may be detected on ridges which have been deeply trenched by valleys. The smaller isolated portions, attacked on all sides, have broken up under weather. Layer after layer has been stripped from their sides, and the flat or rounded top has been narrowed until it has now become the apex of a cone. The mountain Schiehallion (3547 ft.) is an instance of a cone not yet freed from its parent ridge. Occasionally a ridge has been carved into a series of cones united at their bases, as in the chain of the Pentland Hills. A further stage in denudation brings us to isolated groups of cones completely separated from the rest of the rocks among which they once lay buried. Such groups may be carved out of a continuous band of rock extending into the regions beyond. The Paps of Jura, for instance, rise out of a long belt of quartzite which stretches through the islands of Islay, Jura and Scarba. In many cases, however, the groups point to the existence of some boss of rock of greater durability than those in the immediate neighbourhood, as in the Cuchullins and Red Hills of Skye and the group of granite cones of Ben Loyal, Sutherland. The most impressive form of solitary cone is that wherein after vast denudation a thick overlying formation has been reduced to a single outlier, such as Morven in Caithness, the two Bens Griam in Sutherland, and still more strikingly, the pyramids of red sandstone on the western margin of the shires of Sutherland and Ross and Cromarty. The horizontal stratification of some of these masses gives them a curiously architectural aspect, further increased by the effect of the numerous vertical joints by which the rock is cleft into buttresses and recesses along the fronts of the precipices and into pinnacles and finials along the summits. Solitary or grouped pyramids of red sandstone between 3000 and 4000 ft.
above the sea are mere remnants of a continuous sheet of red sandstone that once spread far and wide over the western Highlands.
Stratified rocks when they have not been much disturbed from their original approximate horizontality weather into escarpments. Such cliffs may run for many miles across a country, rising one above another into lofty terraced hills. In Scotland the rocks have been so dislocated and disturbed as to prevent the formation of continuous escarpments, and this form of rock-scenery is consequently almost entirely absent, except locally and for the most part on a comparatively small scale. The most extensive Scottish escarpments are found among the igneous rocks. Where lava has been piled up in successive nearly horizontal sheets, with occasional layers of tuff or other softer rock between them, it offers conditions peculiarly favourable for the formation of escarpments, as in the wide basalt plateaus of the Inner Hebrides. The Carboniferous lavas of the Campsie and Fintry Hills and of the south of Dumfriesshire and Roxburghshire likewise rise in lines of bold escarpment.
The lakes and water-basins may be classified in four groups, each Lakes. with its own peculiar scenery and distinct mode of origin—(1) glen lakes, (2) rock-tarns, (3) moraine-tarns, (4) lakes of the plains.
1. Glen lakes are those which occupy portions of glens. They are depressions in the valleys, not due to local heaping up of detritus, but true rock-basins, often of great depth. Much discussion has arisen as to their mode of origin, but it is probable they were caused by the erosive action of ice, since glaciers occupied the glens where they occur and wore down the rocks along the sides and bottom; but it is a point of difficulty in this theory whether ice could have eroded the deepest of the hollows. In any circumstances the lakes must be of recent geological date. Any such basins belonging to the time of the folding of the crystalline schists would have been filled up and effaced long ago. Indeed, so rapid is the infilling by the torrents which sweep down detritus from the surrounding heights that even the existing lakes are visibly diminishing. Glen lakes are almost wholly confined to the western half of the Highlands, where they form the largest sheets of fresh water. Hardly any lakes are to be seen east of a line drawn from Inverness to Perth. West of that line, however, they abound in both the longitudinal and the transverse valleys. The most remarkable line of them is that which fills up much of the Great Glen, Loch Ness being the largest. Other important longitudinal lakes are Lochs Tay, Awe, Ericht and Shiel. The most picturesque glen lakes, however, lie in transverse valleys, which being cut across the strike of the rocks present greater variety and, usually, abruptness of outline. Lochs Lomond, Katrine and Lubnaig in the southern Highlands, and Lochs Maree and More in the north, are conspicuous examples.
2. Rock-tarns are small lakes lying in rock-basins on the sides of mountains or the summits of ridges, and on rocky plateaus or plains. Unlike glen lakes, they have no necessary dependence upon lines of valley, but are scattered as it were broadcast, and are by far the most abundant of the Scottish lakes. Dispersed over all parts of the Western Highlands, they are most numerous in the north-west, especially in the Outer Hebrides and in the west of the shires of Ross and Cromarty and Sutherland, where the surface of the Archean gneiss is so thickly sprinkled with them that many tracts consist nearly as much of water as of land. They almost invariably lie on strongly ice-worn platforms of rock, and are obviously hollows produced by the gouging action of the sheets of land-ice by which the general glaciation of the country was affected. In the Southern Uplands, owing to the greater softness and uniformity of texture of the rocks, rock-tarns are comparatively infrequent, except in Galloway, where the protrusion of granite and its associated metamorphism have reproduced Highland conditions of rock-structure. In the rocky hill-ranges of the Central Plain rock-tarns occasionally make their appearance.
3. Moraine-tarns—small sheets of water ponded back by some of the last moraines shed by the retreating glaciers—are confined to the more mountainous tracts. Among the Southern Uplands the best-known and one of the most picturesque is the wild and lonely Loch Skene, lying in a recess of Whitecoomb at the head of Moffat Water. Others are sprinkled over the higher parts of the valleys in Galloway. None occurs in the Central Plain. In the Highlands they may be counted by hundreds, nestling in the bottoms ofgthe corries. In the north-western counties, where the glaciers continued longest to descend to the sea-level, lakes retained by moraine-barriers may be found very little above the sea.
4. The Lakes of the Plains lie in hollows of the glacial detritus which is strewn so thickly over the lower grounds. As these hollows were caused by original irregular deposition rather than by erosion, they have no intimate relation to the present drainage-lines. The lakes vary in size from mere pools to sheets of water several square miles in area. As a rule they are shallow in proportion to their extent and surface. They were once more numerous than they are now, but some have disappeared through natural causes and others have been drained. The largest sheets of fresh water in the Lowlands are lakes of the plains as Loch Leven and the Lake of Menteith.
The eastern and western seaboards present a singular contrast. The eastern is indented by a series of broad arms of the sea—the firths of Forth and Tay, Moray and Dornoch firths—but is otherwise relatively unbroken. The land slopes gently to the sea or to the edge of cliffs that nave been cut back by the waves. The shores are for the most part low, with few islands in front of them, and cultivation Coast-line. comes down almost to the tide-line. The western side, on the contrary, is from end to end intersected with long narrow sea lochs or fjords. The land shelves down rapidly into the sea and is fronted by chains and groups of islands. The explanation of this contrast must be sought in geological structure. The west side, as we have seen, has been more deeply eroded than the eastern. The glens are more numerous there and on the whole deeper and narrower. Many of them are prolonged under the sea; in other words, the narrow deep fjords are seaward continuations of the glens. The presence of the sea in these fjords is an accident. If they could be raised out of the sea they would become glens, with lakes filling their deeper portions. That this has been their history hardly admits of question. They are submerged land-valleys, and as they run down the whole western coast they show that this side has subsided to a considerable depth beneath its former level. The Scottish sea lochs must be considered in connexion with those of western Ireland and Norway. The whole of this north-western coast-line of Europe bears witness to recent submergence. The bed of the North Sea, which at no distant date in geological history was a land surface across which plants and animals migrated freely into Great Britain, sank beneath the sea-level, while the Atlantic advanced upon the western margin of the continent and filled the seaward ends of what had previously been valleys open to the sun. In this view the Outer and Inner Hebrides were formerly one with themselves and the mainland, and the western isles therefore are truly grouped with the Highland province of Scotland. Nearly the whole coast-line is rocky. On the east indeed, the shores of the estuaries are generally low, but the land between the mouths of these inlets is more or less precipitous. On the west the coast is mostly either a steep rocky declivity or a sea-wall, though strips of lower ground are found in the bays. The cliffs vary in character according to the nature of the rock. At Cape Wrath, precipices 300 ft. high have been cut out of the Archean gneiss. The varying texture of this rock, its irregular foliation and jointing, and its ramifying veins of pegmatite give it very unequal powers of resistance. Here it projects in irregular bastions and buttresses, there retires into deep recesses and tunnels, but shows everywhere a ruggedness of aspect eminently characteristic. In striking contrast to these precipices are those of the Cambrian red sandstone a few miles to the east. Vast vertical walls of rock shoot up to a height of 600 ft., cut by their perpendicular joints into quadrangular piers and projections, some of which stand out alone as cathedral-like islets in front of the main cliff. The sombre colouring is relieved by vegetation along the edges of the nearly flat beds which project like great cornices and serve as nesting-places for sea-fowl. On the west the most notable cliffs south of those of Cape Wrath and the Cambrian sandstones of Sutherland are to be found among the basaltic islands, particularly in Skye, where a magnificent range of precipices rising to 1000 ft. bounds the western coast-line. However, the highest cliffs are found among the Shetland and Orkney Islands. The sea-wall of Foula, in Shetland, and the western front of Hoy, in Orkney, rise like walls to heights of 1100 or 1200 ft. Caithness is one wide moor, terminating almost everywhere seaward in a range of precipices of Old Red Sandstone. Along the eastern coast most of the cliffs are formed of rocks belonging to this formation. Beginning at Stonehaven, an almost unbroken line of precipice varying up to 200 ft. in height runs to the mouth of the estuary of the Tay. On the east the Southern Uplands plunge abruptly into the sea near St Abb's Head in a noble range of precipices 300 to 500 ft. in height, and on the west terminate in a long broken line of sea-wall, which begins at the mouth of Loch Ryan, extends to the Mull of Galloway, and reappears again in the southern headlands of Wigtown and Kirkcudbright. Among the most picturesque features of Scottish sea-cliffs are the numerous stacks or columns of rock which during the demolition and cutting back of the precipices have been isolated and left standing amidst the waves. These remnants attain their most colossal size and height on the cliffs of Old Red Sandstone. Thus the Old Man of Hoy in Orkney is a huge column of yellow sandstone between 400 and 500 ft. high, forming a conspicuous landmark in the north. The coast of Caithness abounds in outstanding pillars and obelisks of flagstone.
The low shores on the west coast are frequently occupied by sand-dunes, as on the western margin of North and South Uist, and in many bays from the north of Sutherland to the coast of Ayrshire. They are more abundant on the east coast, however, especially on the shores of Aberdeenshire, between the mouths of the two Esks in Forfarshire, on both sides of the mouth of the Firth of Tay, and at various places on the Firth of Forth. Raised sea-beaches likewise play a part in the coast scenery. These alluvial terraces form a strip of low fertile land between the edge of the sea and the rising ground of the interior, and among the western fjords sometimes supply the only arable soil in their neighbourhood, their flat green surfaces presenting a strong contrast to the brown and barren moors that rise from them. Most of the seaport towns stand upon platforms of raised beach. Considerable deposits of mud, silt and sand are accumulating in many of the estuaries. In the Tay, Forth and Clyde, where important harbours are situated, great expense is involved in constantly dredging to remove the sediment continually brought down from the land and carried backwards and forwards by the tides.
While no islands except mere solitary rocks like May Island, the Bass Rock and Inchkeith diversify the eastern seaboard, the western presents a vast number, varying from such extensive tracts as Skye to the smallest stack or skerry. Looked at in the broadest way, these numerous islands may be regarded as belonging to two groups or series, the Outer and the Inner Hebrides. In the Outer Hebrides most of the ground is low, rocky and plentifully dotted over with lakes; but it rises into mountainous heights in Harris, some of the summits attaining elevations of 2600 ft. The general trend of this long belt of islands is north-north-east. The Inner Hebrides form a much less definite group. They may be regarded as beginning with the Shiant Isles in the Minch and stretching to the southern headlands of Islay, and their irregularity has no doubt been chiefly brought about by the remarkable diversity of geological structure. Archean gneiss, Cambrian sandstone, Silurian quartzite, limestone and schist, Jurassic sandstone and limestone. Cretaceous sandstone, and Tertiary basalts, gabbros, and granitic rocks all enter into the composition of the islands.
Influence of Topography.—The influence of the topography of the country on the history of its inhabitants has been all-important. How power full the configuration affects the climate is shown in the remarkable difference between the rainfall of the mountainous west and of the lowland east. This difference has necessarily modified the character and employment of the people, leading to the cultivation of the soil on the one side and the raising of sheep and cattle on the other. The fertile low grounds on the east have offered facilities for the invasions of Romans, Norsemen and English, while the mountain fastnesses of the interior and the west have served as secure retreats for the older Celtic population. While, therefore, Teutonic people have spread over the one area, the earlier race has to this day maintained its ground in the other. Not only external configuration but geological structure also has profoundly influenced the progress of the inhabitants. In the Highlands no mineral wealth has been discovered to stimulate the industry of the natives or to attract labour and capital. These tracts remain still, as of old, sparsely inhabited and given over to the breeding of stock and the pursuit of game. In the Lowlands, on the other hand, rich stores of coal, iron, lime and other minerals have been found. The coal-fields have gradually drawn to them an ever-increasing share of the population. Villages and towns have suddenly developed and rapidly increased in size. Manufactures and shipbuilding have grown and commerce has advanced with accelerated pace. Other influences have of course contributed largely to the development of the country, but among them all the chief place must be assigned to that fortunate geological structure which, amid the revolutions of the past, has preserved in the centre of Scotland those fields of coal and ironstone which are the foundations of the national industry.
Geology.
Archean Rocks.—The oldest rocks of Scotland and of the British Isles are known, from their antiquity, as Archean, and consist chiefly of gneiss (called Fundamental, as lying at the foundation of the geological structure of the country, and Lewisian and Hebridean, because it is well developed in the island of Harris and the Outer Hebrides), which varies from a coarsely crystalline granitoid mass to fine schist. The coarse varieties are most abundant, intermingled with bands of hornblende-rock, hornblende-schist, pegmatite, eucrite, mica-schist, sericite-schist and other schistose accompaniments. In a few places limestone has been observed. No trace of any organism has ever been detected in any of these rocks. Over wide areas, particularly on the mainland, the bands of gneiss have a general north-west trend and undulate in frequent plications with variable inclination to north-east and south-west. The largest tract of Archean rock is that which forms almost the whole of the Outer Hebrides, from Barra Head to the Butt of Lewis. Other areas more or less widely separated from each other run down the western parts of the shires of Sutherland and Ross and Cromarty, and are probably continued at least as far as the island of Rum.
Eastern or Younger Schists.—The central, southern and eastern Highlands are occupied by metamorphosed sedimentary and igneous rocks, to which has been provisionally assigned the name of Dalradian, from the old Celtic kingdom of Dalriada. Their true stratigraphical position has not yet been ascertained, and it may appear that more than one group of rocks is included in the series. Eastward of the Archean gneiss in the west of Sutherland the effect of enormous underground pressure has been to upraise masses of the ancient gneiss and Torridonian sandstone and thrust them westward over the younger rocks. It is not possible to say what was the original character of many of the disrupted materials, for they have been rearranged and re-crystallized into granulitic, flaggy gneisses and schists (Moine schists). The extend from the north-east of Sutherland as far south as the Sound of Mull. To the east of the dislocation of the Great Glen these puzzling rocks may also be met with, though in that tract most of the surface comprises sedimentary and igneous rocks, the metamorphism of which has varied much. Immense sheets of dolerite, gabbro, or allied basic rocks indicate eruptive materials intruded as sills or poured out as lavas contemporaneously with the sedimentary formations among which they lie. On the other hand, there occur bands of conglomerate, pebbly grit, quartzite, graphitic shale and limestone in a certain ordered sequence and over a wide area. Traces of annelids have been detected in some of the quartzites, and some of the less changed parts of the limestones may be searched for fossils. This great series of metamorphic rocks, the geological age of which is still unsettled, has had a powerful effect on the scenery, especially along-the Highland line. Where a thick group of coarse hard grits intercalated in the sedimentary rocks crops out it rises into a chain of lofty rugged hills, of which Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich are examples. The slate hills, weathering more readily, assume gentle slopes and rounded ridges, as in the high land from Holy Loch to the Kyles of Bute. The quartzite's rise in conical hills, such as those of Jura and Islay. And to the soil created by the decay of the limestones is due a greener verdure than that of the surrounding moors.
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Torridonian Sandstone.—Above the Archean gneiss lies a series of red and chocolate-coloured sandstone (Torridon sandstone), which form a number of detached areas from Cape Wrath down the seaboard of the shires of Sutherland and Ross and Cromarty, across Skye, and as far as the island of Rum. They rise into prominent pyramidal mountains, which, as the stratification is usually almost horizontal, present in their terraced sides a singular contrast to the neighbouring heights, composed of highly plicated crystalline schists. In the Torridon district they can be seen towering bed above bed to a height of about 4000 ft., but they must be at least 10,000 ft. thick. They are not met with anywhere else in Scotland. Traces of annelids and probably other organisms have been found in the bands of shale occurring in the south-west of the shire of Ross and Cromarty, in the isle of Raasay, and at Cailleach Head, and are the oldest relics of animal life yet found in Great Britain.
Cambrian.—In the north-western Highlands masses of white quartzite, resting unconformable in Torridonian sandstone, run from Loch Eriboll to Skye, forming in places great conical hills and
sometimes capping isolated mountains of red Torridon sandstone. They constitute the lowest group of the most interesting series of strata in the Highlands, and yield a large number of fossils. In descending order they embrace the following subdivisions, whose thickness in the district of Durness is estimated at about 2000 ft.: (e) limestones, dolomites and cherts, with numerous organic remains; (d) grit and quartzite, with Saltarella and Olenellus (Serpulite Grit); (c) calcareous shales and dolomites, with many annelid casts and sometimes Olenellus (Fucoid Beds); (b) Upper Quartzite, often crowded with annelid pipes (Pipe Rock Quartzite); (a) Lower Quartzite—their original upper limit can nowhere be seen, for they have been overridden by the Eastern Schists in those gigantic underground disturbances already referred to, by which these rocks, the Archean gneiss and Torridonian sandstone, were crumpled, inverted, dislocated and thrust over each other. The quartzite's themselves have also been subjected to extraordinary horizontal displacement, amounting in places to not less than 10 m. The rocks overlying them to the east of the line of disturbance in the shires of Sutherland and Ross and Cromarty are fine flaggy schists. The Cambrian system—including the Upper (Durness-Eriboll Limestone) and the Lower (Serpulite grit, Fucoid Beds, Quartzite)—forms a narrow band which can be traced for 100 m. from the north coast of Sutherland to Skye. Rocks of Cambrian age have not been identified elsewhere in Scotland, though it may ultimately be shown that the quartzites and limestones of the Central Highlands are equivalents of those of the north-west coast.
Ordovician and Silurian.—In the Southern Uplands a great development of Ordovician and Silurian rocks is found. In that belt they consist mostly of greywacke, grit, shale and other sedimentary rocks, but in the southwest of Ayrshire they include some thick lenticular bands of limestone. They have been thrown into many folds, the long axes of which run in a general north-easterly direction. It is this structure which has determined the trend of the southern Uplands. The plications of the Highlands and the chief dislocations of the country have followed the same general direction, and hence the parallelism and north-easterly trend of the main topographical features. Abundant fossils (grapholites principally) in certain parts of these rocks have shown that representatives of both the Ordovician and Upper divisions are present. By far the larger part of the Uplands belongs to the former. The Upper Silurian shales and sandstones appear only along the northern and southern margins. The coast on both sides of the country shows good sections of the rocks, the Berwickshire cliffs being particularly fine. Those of Ayrshire and Galloway are lower and more accessible, and permit of study of the plication of the strata. Among the best localities for fossils are Moffat Water, in Dumfriesshire, for graptolites, and the Pentlands, in Midlothian. Balmae, on the southern shore of Kirkcudbrightshire, the coast south of Girvan and the limestone quarries of the Stinchar and Girvan valleys, in Ayrshire, for shells, trilobites, corals, &c.
Old Red Sandstone.—Scotland is the typical European region for the deposits classed as Old Red Sandstone. These rocks are grouped in two divisions, Lower and Upper, both of which appear to have been deposited in lakes. The Lower, with its abundant intercalated lavas and tuffs, extends continuously as a broad belt along the northern margin of the Central Plain, reappears in detached tracts along the southern border, is found again on the south side of the Uplands in Berwickshire and the Cheviot Hills, occupies a tract of Lorne (Oban and the vicinity) in Argyllshire, and on the north side of the Highlands underlies most of the low ground on both sides of the Moray Firth, stretches across Caithness and through nearly the whole of the Orkney Islands, and is prolonged into Shetland. The Upper Old Red Sandstone covers a more restricted space in most of the areas just mentioned, its chief development being on the flanks of the north-eastern part of the Southern Uplands, where it spreads out over the Lammermuir Hills and the valleys of Berwickshire and Roxburghshire. The Lower Old Red Sandstone is rich in remains of plants and fishes, notably in the Hagstones of Caithness, Orkney and Forfarshire. The volcanic rocks of this division form ranges of hills in the Lowlands, such as the Pentlands, Ochils and Sidlaws. They have in some places a thickness of 7000 ft. The lavas are usually porphyrites, which occur in sheets, with intercalated bands of volcanic tuff that are sometimes strongly felsitic. One of the vents by which such materials were ejected occurs in the Braid Hills on the south side of Edinburgh. Fossils are less common in the Upper Old Red Sandstone, though they are found—particularly fishes—in large numbers in certain spots, as at Dura Den, near Cupar-Fife. Traces of contemporaneous volcanic action exist in the Orcadian island of Hoy.
Carboniferous.—The areas occupied by Carboniferous rocks are almost entirely restricted to the Central Plain or Lowlands, but they are also found skirting the Southern Uplands from the mouth of the Tweed to that of the Nith. In the basins of the Forth and Clyde the following subdivisions are well marked: (5) Upper Red Sandstone series (red and grey sandstones, fire clays, shales, marls); (4) Coal Measures (white and grey sandstones, dark shales, fire clays, coal seams, ironstones); (3) Millstone Grit (massive sandstones and grits, with fire clays, thin limestones and coal); (2) Carboniferous Limestone series—(c) sandstones and shales, with three or more seams of limestone; (b) sandstones, shales, coals and ironstones, but with no limestone bands; (a) sandstones, shales, fire clays, coals and ironstones, with thin limestones towards the top and the Hurlet (Renfrewshire) limestone at the bottom; (1) Calciferous Sandstone series—(b) Upper or Cement Stone group, consisting of white and grey sandstones (of which the city of Edinburgh was built), black shales, thin limestones (Burdiehouse, near Edinburgh), and occasional coal seams; (a) Lower Red Sandstone group, with reddish and greenish marls and shales, passing down with the Upper Old Red Sandstone. The coal-fields contain two main groups of seams, the lower in the middle section of the Carboniferous Limestone, and the upper in the Coal Measures. The thin seams of the Calciferous Sandstone are not workable, but the bituminous shales in the Firth of Forth basin are largely worked for the manufacture of mineral oil. The plant-life of the Carboniferous was exceedingly luxuriant and varied, and the system is rich also in fossils of fishes, crustaceans, mollusca, insects and other forms of animal life. There was great volcanic activity during the deposition of the Calciferous Sandstone, Carboniferous Limestone and Millstone Grit series. The two leading types of volcanic areas are the plateaus, in which sheets of porphyrites, basalts and even trachytes were emitted, sometimes with wide discharge of volcanic ashes, and the puys, or isolated vents, or scattered groups of vents, which discharge comparatively a small amount of lava and ashes. The Campsie, Kilpatrick and Dumbarton hills, the high ground from Greenock to Ardrossan, and the Carleton Hills in East Lothian are examples of the plateaus, while Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh and the Binn of Burntisland illustrate the puys. Most of the hills and crags in the Carboniferous area are volcanic, and many of them—such as the castle rocks of Edinburgh and Stirling, Binny Craig in Linlithgowshire, North Berwick Law and the Bass Rock—mark the sites of actual events of eruption.
Permian.—Rocks assignable to the Permian system occupy only a few small areas in Scotland. They fill up the valley of the Nith for a few miles north of Dumfries, and, reappearing again in the same valley a little farther north, run up the narrow valley of the Carron to the Lowther Hills. Other detached tracts cover a considerable space in Annandale, one of them ascending the deep defile, known as the Devil's Beef Tub, at the head of that valley. Another isolated patch occurs among the Lead Hills; and lastly, a considerable space in the heart of the Ayrshire coal-field is occupied by Permian rocks. Throughout these separate basins the prevailing rock is a red sandstone, varied in the narrow valleys with intercalated masses of breccia. There can be no doubt that the valleys in which these patches of red rocks lie already existed in Permian time. They seem then to have been occupied by small lakes or inlets, not unlike fjords. Numerous amphibian tracks have been found in the red sandstone of Annandale and also near Dumfries, but no other traces of the life of the time. One of the most interesting features of the Scottish development of the Permian system is the occurrence of intercalated bands of contemporaneously erupted volcanic rocks in the Carron, Nithsdale and Ayrshire. The actual vents which were the sites of the small volcanoes still remain distinct, and the erupted lavas form high ground in the middle of Ayrshire.
Triassic.—The Triassic system is only feebly represented. The largest tract occurs in the south of Dumfriesshire between Annan and the head of the Solway Firth. To this division are assigned the yellow sandstones of Elgin, which have yielded crocodilian and other reptilian remains, the discovery of which led to the rocks being separated from the Upper Old Red Sandstone, to which they had previously been thought to belong. There occur also below the Lias on some parts of the west coast unfossiliferous red sandstones, conglomerates and breccias, presenting lithological resemblance to the Rhaetic group of England. Such strata are well seen in the isle of Raasay and near Heast in Skye. Red sandstones and conglomerates, probably of the same age, attain a thickness of several hundred feet at Gruinard Bay on the west coast of the county of Ross and Cromarty. On the east side of Scotland, where so many fragments of the Secondary rocks occur as boulders in the glacial deposits, a large mass of strata was formerly exposed at Linksfield to the north of Elgin, containing fossils which appear to show it to belong to the Rhaetic beds at the top of the Trias. But it was not in place, and was probably a mass transported by ice. Rhaetic strata no doubt exist in situ at no great distance under the North Sea.
Jurassic.—The Jurassic system—comprising, in descending order, the subdivisions of Upper Oolites (Portlandian Kimmeridge Clay), Middle Oolites (coal limestones; Oxford clay), Lower Oolites (Great Oolite series; Inferior Oolite series), Lias (Upper, Middle, Lower)—is well represented on both sides of the Highlands. Along the east coast of Sutherland good sections are exposed showing the succession of strata. Among these the Lower and Middle Lias can be identified by their fossils. The Lower Oolite is distinguished by the occurrence in it of some coal-seams, one of which, 3½ ft. in thickness, has been worked at Brora. The Middle Oolite consists mostly of sandstones with bands of shale and limestones, and includes fossils which indicate the English horizons from the Kellaways Rock up to the Coral Rag. The lower part of the Kimmeridge Clay is probably represented by sandstones and conglomerates, forming the highest beds of the series in Sutherland. On the west side of the Highlands Jurassic rocks are found in many detached areas from the Shiant Isles to the southern shores of Mull. Over much of this region they owe their preservation largely to the mass of lavas poured over them in Tertiary time. They have been uncovered, indeed, only at a comparatively recent
geological date. They comprise a consecutive series of deposits from the bottom of the Lias up to the Oxford Clay. The Lower, Middle and Upper Lias consist chiefly of shales and shelly limestones, with some sandstones, well seen along the shores of Broadford Bay in Skye and in some of the adjacent islands. The Lower Oolites are made up of sandstones and shales with some limestones, and are overlaid by several hundred feet of an estuarine series of deposits consisting chiefly of thick white sandstones, below and above which lie shales and shelly limestones. These rocks form a prominent feature underneath the basalt terraces of the east side of Skye, Raasay and Eigg. They form the highest members of the Jurassic series, representing probably some part of the Oxford Clay. The next Secondary rocks (Cretaceous) succeed them unconformably.
Cretaceous.—Rocks belonging to the Cretaceous system at one time covered considerable areas on both sides of the Highlands, but they have been entirely stripped off the eastern side, while on the western they have been reduced to a few fragmentary patches, which have survived because of the overlying sheets of basalt that have protected them. Some greenish sandstones containing recognizable and characteristic fossils are the equivalents of the Upper Greensand of the south of England. These rocks are found on the south and west coasts of Mull and on the west coast of Argyllshire. They are covered by white sandstones and these by white chalk and marly beds, which represent the Upper Chalk of England. Their existence under the basalt outlier of Ben Iadain in Morven, at a height of 1600 ft. above the sea, shows notably how extensively they have been denuded, but also over how large a portion of the Western Highland seaboard they may have spread. They are a prolongation of the Cretaceous deposits of Antrim (Ireland). Enormous numbers of flints and also less abundant fragments of chalk are found in glacial deposits bordering the Moray Firth. These transported relics show that the Chalk must once have been in place at no great distance, if indeed it did not actually occupy part of Aberdeenshire and the neighbouring counties.
Older Tertiary.—Above the highest Secondary rocks on the west coast come terraced plateaus of basalt, which spread out over wide areas in Skye, Eigg, Mull and Morven, and form most of the smaller islets of the chain of the Inner Hebrides. These plateaus are composed of nearly horizontal sheets of basalt—columnar, amorphous or amygdaloidal—which, in Ben More, in Mull, attain a thickness of more than 3000 ft. They are prolonged southwards into Antrim, where similar basalts overlying Secondary strata cover a large territory. Occasional beds of tuff are intercalated among these lavas, and likewise seams of line clay or shale which have preserved the remains of numerous land-plants. The presence of these fossils indicates that the eruptions were subaërial, and a comparison of them with those elsewhere found among Older Tertiary strata shows that they probably belong to the Oligocene stage of the Tertiary series of formations, and therefore that the basalt eruptions took place in early Tertiary time. The volcanic episode to which these plateaus owe their origin was one of the most important in the geological history of Great Britain. It appears to have resembled in its main features those remarkable outpourings of basalt which have deluged so many thousand square miles of the western area of the United States. The eruptions were connected with innumerable fissures up which the basalt rose and from numerous points on which it flowed out at the surface. These fissures with the basalt that solidified in them now form the vast assemblage of dykes which cross Scotland, the north of England and the north of Ireland. That the Volcanic period was a prolonged one is shown by the great denudation of the plateaus before the last eruptions took place. In the Isle of Eigg, for example, the basalts had already been deeply eroded by river-action and into the river-course a current of glassy lava (pitch-stone) flowed. Denudation has continued active ever since, and now, owing to greater hardness and consequent power of resistance, the glassy lava stands up as the prominent and picturesque ridge of the Scuir, while the basalts which formerly rose high above it have been worn down into terraced declivities that slope away from it to the sea. A remarkable feature in the volcanic phenomena was the disruption of the basaltic plateaus by large bosses of gabbro and of various granitoid rocks. These intrusive masses now tower into conspicuous groups of hills—the Cuillins in Skye, the mountains of Rum and Mull, and the rugged heights of Ardnamurchan.
Post-Tertiary.—Under the Post-Tertiary division come the records of the Ice Age, when Scotland was buried under sheets of ice which ground down, striated and polished the harder rocks over the whole country, and left behind them the widespread accumulation of clay, gravel and sand known as Glacial Deposits. The Till or Boulder Clay, the most universal kind of Drift—which covers much of the Lowlands to a depth sometimes of 100 ft., and along the flanks of hills reaches a height of 2000 ft. or more—was pushed along by ice radiating from different centres, evidence of which is to be seen in the direction of the striae on the rocky surface of the country as well as in the dispersion of boulders and stones from recognizable districts. Thus remains of Highland schists have been borne across the Central Plain and deposited on the northern margin of the Southern Uplands. Above the Boulder Clay are found sands and gravels, along with perched boulders which, by their source and position, indicate the direction and thickness of the ice that carried) them. Moraines of the last of the glaciers are numerous throughout the Highlands.
Recent.—The youngest formations are the raised beaches—consisting sometimes of ledges cut in the rock, as on Lismore and other parts of Loch Linnhe, and sometimes of heaped-up beds of sand and gravel—river terraces, lake deposits, peat-mosses, tracts of blown sand—notably seen in the dunes of Culbin, Rattray Head, Aberdeen, Montrose and Tents Muir on the east coast, and at Stevenston, Troon, Ayr, Glenluce and along North and South Uist on the west. These are related to the present configuration of the land and contain remains of plants and animals still living on its surface.
Climate
In considering the climate of Scotland the first place must be assigned to the temperature of various districts during the months of the year, since this, and not the mean temperature of the whole year, gives the chief characteristics of climate. Thus, while the annual temperatures of the west and east coasts are nearly equal, the summer and winter temperatures are very different. At Portree (on the east coast of Skye) the mean temperatures of January and July are 39° and 56.8° F., whereas at Perth they are 37.5° and 59.0°. The prominent feature of the isotherms of the winter months is their north and south direction, thus pointing not to the sun but to the warm waters of the Atlantic as the more powerful influence in determining the climate at this season through the agency of the prevailing westerly winds. In exceptionally cold seasons the ocean protects all places in its more immediate neighbourhood against the severe frosts which occur in inland situations. While this influence of the ocean is felt at all seasons, it is most strikingly seen in winter and is more decided in proportion as the locality is surrounded by the warm waters of the Atlantic. The influence of the North Sea is similarly apparent, but in a less degree. Along the whole of the eastern coast, from the Pentland Firth southwards, temperature is higher than what is found a little inland. In summer, everywhere, latitude for latitude, temperature is lower in the west than in the east and inland situations, but in winter the inland climates are the colder. The course of the isothermal lines in summer is very instructive. Thus the line of 59° passes from the Solway directly northwards to the north of Perthshire and thence curves round eastward to near Stonehaven. From Teviotdale to the Grampians temperature falls only one degree; but for the same distance farther northwards it falls three degrees. The isothermal of 56° marks off the districts where the finer cereals can be successfully raised. This distribution of the temperature shows that the influence of the Atlantic in moderating the heat of summer is very great and is felt a long way into the interior of the country. On the other hand, the highlands of western districts by robbing the westerly winds of their moisture, and thus clearing the skies of eastern districts, exercise an equally striking effect in the opposite direction—in raising the temperature.
There is nearly twice as much wind from the south-west as from the north-east, but the proportions vary greatly in different months. The south-west prevails from July to October, and again from December to February; accordingly in these months the rainfall is heaviest. These are the summer and winter portions of the year, and an important result of the prevalence of these winds, with their accompanying rains, which are coincident with the annual extremes of temperature, is to imprint a more strictly insular character on the climate, by moderating the heat of summer and the cold of winter. The north-east winds acquire their greatest frequency from March to June and in November, which are accordingly the driest portions of the year.
The mountainous regions are mostly massed in the west and lie generally north and south, or approximately facing the rain-bringing winds from the Atlantic. Thus the climates of the west are essentially wet. On the other hand, the climates of the east are dry, because the surface is lower and more level; and the breezes borne thither from the west, being robbed of most of their superabundant moisture in crossing the western hills, are drier and precipitate a greatly diminished rainfall. It thus happens that the driest climates in the east are those which have to south-westwards the broadest extent of mountainous ground, and that the wettest eastern climates are those which are least protected by high lands on the west. The breakdown of the watershed between the Firths of Clyde and Forth exposes southern Perthshire, the counties of Clackmannan and Kinross, and nearly the whole of Fife to the clouds and rains of the west, and their climates are consequently wetter than those of any others of the eastern slopes of the country. The driest climates of the east are in Tweeddale about Kelso and Jedburgh, the low grounds of East Lothian, and those on the Moray Firth from Elgin round to Dornoch. In these districts the annual rainfall averages 26 in., whereas over extensive breadths in the west it exceeds 100 in., in Glencroe being nearly 130 in., and on the top of Ben Nevis it may reach 150 in.
II. Economic Conditions, &c.
| Civil Counties. | Area in Acres. |
Population. | Pop. per sq. m. 1901. | |
| 1891. | 1901. | |||
| I. Northern. | ||||
| 1. Shetland | 352,889 | 28,711 | 28,166 | 51 |
| 2. Orkney | 240,476 | 30,453 | 28,699 | 76 |
| 3. Caithness | 438,878 | 37,177 | 33,870 | 49 |
| 4. Sutherland | 1,297,849 | 21,896 | 21,440 | 11 |
| 2,330,092 | 118,237 | 112,175 | 31 | |
| II. North-Western. | ||||
| 5. Ross and Cromarty | 1,976,707 | 78,727 | 76,450 | 25 |
| 6. Inverness | 2,695,037 | 90,121 | 90,104 | 21 |
| 4,671,744 | 168,848 | 166,554 | 23 | |
| III. North-Eastern. | ||||
| 7. Nairn | 103,429 | 9,155 | 9,291 | 57 |
| 8. Elgin (or Moray) | 305,119 | 43,471 | 44,890 | 94 |
| 9. Banff | 403,364 | 61,684 | 61,488 | 98 |
| 10. Aberdeen | 1,261,887 | 284,036 | 304,439 | 154 |
| 11. Kincardine | 243,974 | 35,492 | 40,923 | 107 |
| 2,317,773 | 433,838 | 460,941 | 127 | |
| IV. East Midland. | ||||
| 12. Forfar | 559,171 | 277,735 | 284,082 | 325 |
| 13. Perth | 1,595,774 | 122,185 | 123,283 | 49 |
| 14. Fife | 322,844 | 190,365 | 218,840 | 434 |
| 15. Kinross | 52,410 | 6,673 | 6,981 | 85 |
| 16. Clackmannan | 34,927 | 33,140 | 32,029 | 587 |
| 2,565,126 | 630,098 | 665,215 | 166 | |
| V. West Midland. | ||||
| 17. Stirling | 288,842 | 118,021 | 142,291 | 315 |
| 18. Dumbarton | 157,433 | 98,014 | 113,865 | 463 |
| 19. Argyll | 1,990,471 | 74,085 | 73,642 | 24 |
| 20. Bute | 139,658 | 18,404 | 18,787 | 86 |
| 2,576,404 | 308,524 | 348,585 | 87 | |
| VI. South-Western. | ||||
| 21. Renfrew | 153,332 | 230,812 | 268,980 | 1123 |
| 22. Ayr | 724,523 | 226,386 | 254,468 | 225 |
| 23. Lanark | 562,821 | 1,105,899 | 1,339,327 | 1523 |
| 1,440,676 | 1,563,097 | 1,862,775 | 827 | |
| VII. South-Eastern. | ||||
| 24. Linlithgow | 76,861 | 52,808 | 65,708 | 547 |
| 25. Edinburgh | 234,339 | 434,276 | 488,796 | 1335 |
| 26. Haddington | 171,011 | 37,377 | 38,665 | 145 |
| 27. Berwick | 292,577 | 32,290 | 30,824 | 67 |
| 28. Peebles | 222,599 | 14,750 | 15,066 | 43 |
| 29. Selkirk | 170,762 | 27,712 | 23,356 | 88 |
| 1,168,149 | 599,213 | 662,415 | 363 | |
| VIII. Southern. | ||||
| 30. Roxburgh | 426,060 | 53,500 | 48,804 | 73 |
| 31. Dumfries | 686,302 | 74,245 | 72,571 | 68 |
| 32. Kirkcudbright | 575,565 | 39,985 | 39,383 | 44 |
| 33. Wigtown | 311,609 | 36,062 | 32,685 | 67 |
| Grand Total | 1,999,536 | 203,792 | 193,443 | 62 |
| Scotland | 19,069,500 | 4,025,647 | 4,472,103 | 150 |
In 1901 there were 150 persons to each square mile, and 4·3 acres (excluding inland waters, tidal rivers and foreshore) to each person. The distribution of population is illustrated in the preceding table, which gives the names and areas of the counties and other particulars.
In the northern, north-western and southern divisions the population declined during the decade, the fifteen counties thus affected being, in the order of decrease, beginning with the shire in which it was smallest, Inverness, Banff, Argyll, Kirkcudbright, Shetland, Sutherland, Dumfries, Ross and Cromarty, Clackmannan, Berwick, Orkney, Roxburgh, Caithness, Wigtown and Selkirk. It will thus be seen that the far north and far south alike decreased in population, the decline being largely due to physical conditions, though it need not be supposed that the limit of population was reached in either area. The most sparsely inhabited county was Sutherland, the most densely Lanark. The counties in which there was the largest increase in the decennial period—with Linlithgow first, followed by Lanark, Stirling, Renfrew, Dumbarton and thirteen others—principally belonged to the Central Plain, or Lowlands, in which, broadly stated, industries and manufactures, trade, commerce and agriculture and educational facilities have attained their highest development. In every county the population increased between 1801 and 1841, the increase being more than 10% in each county with the exception of Argyll, Perth and Sutherland. After 1841, however, the population in several Highland shires—in which the clearance of crofters to make way for deer was one of the most strongly-felt grievances among the Celtic part of the people—in the islands, and in some of the southern counties, diminished. The next table affords a comparison of the numbers of the population as grouped in towns, villages and rural districts, and in the mainland and islands.
| Groups. | Population. | Percentage of Pop.& in each to total Pop. | ||
| 1891. | 1901. | 1891. | 1901. | |
| Towns* | 2,631,298 | 3,120,241 | 65·37 | 69·77 |
| Villages* | 465,836 | 466,053 | 11·57 | 10·42 |
| Rural districts | 928,513 | 885,809 | 23·06 | 19·81 |
| Total | 4,025,647 | 4,472,103 | 100·00 | 100·00 |
| Mainland | 3,865,748 | 4,316,551 | 96·03 | 96·52 |
| Islands | 159,899 | 155,552 | 3·97 | 3·48 |
| Total | 4,025,647 | 4,472,103 | 100·00 | 100·00 |
*Villages have populations of from 300 to 2000; towns from 2000 upwards.
Table III. gives the population of towns with more than 30,000 inhabitants.
| Town. | 1881. | 1891. | 1901. |
| Glasgow | 551,415 | 565,839 (of enlarged area, 658,198) | 760,468 |
| Edinburgh | 228,357 | 261,225 (of enlarged area) | 316,523 |
| Dundee | 140,239 | 153,330 | 160,878 |
| Aberdeen | 105,189 | 121,623 | 153,503 |
| Paisley | 55,638 | 166,425 | 79,354 |
| Leith | 59,485 | 67,700 | 76,668 |
| Govan | 50,492 | 63,625 | 76,350 |
| Greenock | 66,704 | 63,423 | 67,672 |
| Partick | 27,410 | 36,538 | 54,281 |
| Coatbridge | 24,812 | 30,034 | 36,991 |
| Kilmarnock | 23,901 | 28,447 | 34,165 |
| Kirkcaldy | 23,632 | 27,151 | 34,063 |
| Perth | 28,980 | 29,899 | 32,886 |
| Hamilton | 18,517 | 24,859 | 32,775 |
| Motherwell | 12,904 | 18,726 | 30,418 |
The burghs in which the largest proportion of Scottish-born persons lived in 1901 were Kirkcaldy (with 95·997 in every 100 of its inhabitants), Aberdeen (with 94·997), Perth (with 94·442) and Kilmarnock (with 94·046) The largest proportion of English-born were found in Edinburgh (with 5·438%) and Leith (with 4·481). Irish-born were most in evidence in Coatbridge (with 15·158 in every 100), Partick (with 12·05) and Govan (with 11·51). Welsh nationality was most marked in Motherwell (with 0·250%) Those of British-Colonial birth were most numerous in Edinburgh (with 0·933%), and foreigners in Glasgow (with 0·890), Leith (with 0·741) and Hamilton (with 0·720). In addition to the 17,654 resident foreigners there were 4973 foreigners casually in Scotland at the taking of the census in 1901 (1839 men and women on board foreign and British vessels), raising the total of foreigners actually enumerated to 22,627 (males 14,448), of whom 10,373 were of Russian nationality, 4051 of Italian, and 3232 of German.
Table IV. shows the nationalities of the people in 1891 and 1901.
Table IV.—Illustrating Nationalities in 1891 and 1901.
| Where Born. | Scotland, 1891. | Scotland, 1901. | ||
| Number. | Percentage of Pop. |
Number. | Percentage of Pop. | |
| Scotland | 3,698,700 | 91.63 | 4,085,755 | 91.361 |
| Ireland | 184,807 | 4.84 | 205,064 | 4.585 |
| England | 108,736 | 2.70 | 131,350 | 2.937 |
| Wales | 2,309 | 0.06 | 2,673 | 0.060 |
| Isle of Man and the Channel Islands | 927 | 0.02 | 1,058 | 0.024 |
| British Colonies | 13,607 | 0.39 | 15,907 | 0.355 |
| British born abroad[1] | 8,051 | 0.20 | 12,642 | 0.283 |
| Foreigners | 8,510 | 0.21 | 17,654 | 0.395 |
| Total | 4,025,647 | 100.00 | 4,472,103 | 100.000 |
Table V. gives the number of persons, exclusive of children under three years of age, who spoke Gaelic only, and Gaelic and English, with their percentages to the population in 1901. The counties in which the highest percentages obtained of persons speaking Gaelic only were Ross and Cromarty with 15.92% (12,171 persons) and Inverness with 13.01% (11,722 persons). But in no fewer than eighteen counties the proportion of Gaelic-speaking persons was under 1%.
Table V.-Showing Number of Persons aged three years and upwards speaking Gaelic only and Gaelic and English in 1901.
| Area. | Population. | Gaelic only. | Percentage. | Gaelic and English |
Percentage. |
| Scotland | 4,472,103 | 28,106 | 0.63 | 202,700 | 4.53 |
| Northern portion | 1,753,470 | 27,854 | 1.59 | 160,915 | 9.18 |
| Southern portion | 2,718,633 | 252 | 0.01 | 41,785 | 1.54 |
| Northern division | 112,175 | 489 | 0.43 | 17,084 | 15.23 |
| North-western division | 166,554 | 23,893 | 14.34 | 82,573 | 49.58 |
| North-eastern division | 460,941 | 20 | 0.01 | 5,125 | 1.11 |
| East-midland division | 665,215 | 95 | 0.01 | 13,818 | 2.06 |
| West-midland division | 348,585 | 3,357 | 0.96 | 42,315 | 12.14 |
| South-western division | 1,862,775 | 162 | 0.01 | 34,289 | 1.84 |
| South-eastern division | 662,415 | 89 | 0.01 | 7,002 | 1.06 |
| Southern division | 193,443 | 1 | 0.00 | 494 | 0.26 |
Vital Statistics.—In Table VI. is shown the number of births, deaths, marriages and illegitimate births for the decades ending 1870, 1880, 1890 and 1900.
Table VI.—Births, Deaths, Marriages and Illegitimate Births, 1861-1900.
| 1861-1870 (inclusive). |
1871-1880 (inclusive). |
1881-1890 (inclusive). |
1891-1900 (inclusive). | |
| Births | 1,120,791 | 1,232,311 | 1,251,930 | 1,280,044 |
| Deaths | 706,195 | 763,948 | 743,582 | 781,860 |
| Marriages | 224,222 | 253,550 | 259,388 | 298,664 |
| Illegitimate births | 110,061 | 108,260 | 102,128 | 90,981 |
Table VII. gives the percentages to the population of the births, deaths and marriages in the four decades specified, along with the ratio of illegitimacy to the total number of births in the same periods. The counties in which the highest percentages of illegitimate births were found were Wigtown, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright and Peebles in the south; Elgin, Banff and Aberdeen in the north-east, and Caithness in the north; the shires showing the lowest percentages were Clackmannan, Dumbarton and Shetland.
Table VII.—Birth, Death and Marriage Ratio, 1861-1900, and Percentages of Illegitimacy to total Births.
| Rate. | 1861-1870 (inclusive). |
1871-1880 (inclusive). |
1881-1890 (inclusive). |
1891-1900 (inclusive). |
| Birth | 3.48 | 3.47 | 3.22 | 3.01 |
| Death | 0.19 | 2.15 | 1.91 | 1.84 |
| Marriage | 0.69 | 0.71 | 0.66 | 0.70 |
| Percentages of illegitimate births to total births |
9.81 | 8.79 | 8.15 | 7.11 |
Occupations of the People.—Table VIII. divides the people according to occupations. The most noteworthy feature in this connexion is the great diminution that took place within the intercensal period (1891-1901) in the unproductive class, which to some extent accounts for the increase in the number of the industrial and commercial classes.
Table VIII.—Occupation of the People in 1891 and 1901.
| Occupations. | Number engaged in each Class of Occupation. | Percentage engaged in each Class of Occupation. | ||||||||
| 1891. | 1901. | 1891. | 1901. | |||||||
| Males. | Females. | Total. | Males. | Females. | Total. | Males. | Females. | Males. | Females. | |
| Total occupied and unoccupied [2] | 1,446,209 | 1,599,453 | 3,045,662 | 1,656,081 | 1,790,242 | 3,446,323 | 100.00 | 100.00 | 100.00 | 100.00 |
| Engaged in occupations | 1,203,909 | 543,828 | 1,747,737 | 1,391,188 | 591,624 | 1,982,812 | 83.25 | 34.00 | 84.00 | 33.05 |
| Retired or unoccupied | 242,300 | 1,055,625 | 1,297,925 | 264,893 | 1,198,618 | 1,463,511 | 16.75 | 66.00 | 16.00 | 66.95 |
| Classes. | ||||||||||
| 1. Professional | 59,053 | 23,051 | 82,104 | 67,827 | 33,234 | 101,061 | 4.08 | 1.44 | 4.10 | 1.86 |
| 2. Domestic | 29,163 | 190,057 | 219,220 | 26,755 | 174,475 | 201,230 | 2.02 | 11.88 | 1.61 | 9.75 |
| 3. Commercial | 174,558 | 10,276 | 184,834 | 221,579 | 24,136 | 245,715 | 12.07 | 0.64 | 13.38 | 1.35 |
| 4. Agriculture and Fishing | 205,827 | 30,018 | 235,845 | 196,581 | 40,730 | 237,311 | 14.23 | 1.88 | 11.87 | 2.27 |
| 5. Industrial | 735,308 | 290,426 | 1,025,734 | 878,446 | 319,049 | 1,197,495 | 50.85 | 18.16 | 53.04 | 17.82 |
| 6. Unoccupied and non-productive | 242,300 | 1,055,625 | 1,297,925 | 264,893 | 1,198,618 | 1,463,511 | 16.75 | 66.00 | 16.00 | 66.95 |
Poor Relief.—Before the Reformation, relief of the poor had been the duty of the Church, for early legislation aimed at suppressing rather than aiding poverty. Those, indeed, who were absolutely dependent on alms might receive a licence to beg within the bounds of their own parish, but the able-bodied poor were severely dealt with. The act of 1579 directed the magistrates in towns and the justices in rural parishes to propose a register of the aged and impotent poor and to levy a tax on the inhabitants of every parish for their support. One consequence of the denial of relief to the able-bodied was that the workhouse, so familiar in the English poor-law system, was not established in Scotland, though almshouses are found in many towns, and poorhouses, where those indigent who are alone in the world without any one to care for them ind food and shelter, began to be general in the 19th century. Hence arises the prevalence of out-relief, one of the distinctive features of the Scottish poor law. The act of 1579, however, proved largely inoperative. The provision of relief passed from the justices to the ministers and kirk-sessions, who by an edict of the Privy Council, in 1692, were required to draw up a list of the poor twice a year, and rates were levied only when collections in the church “plates” were insufficient. For 150 years nothing was done to systematize poor relief, and even in 1842 about half of the parishes were yet unassessed to the poor. The total inadequacy of the voluntary system to cope with genuine distress, in respect both of contributions and the dispensing of alms, led in 1845 to the passing of an act which made the parish the poor-relief area, substituted the parochial board for the kirk session where recourse was had to a rate, made the appointment of inspectors of the poor and medical officers compulsory, and set up a system of central administrative control known as the Board of Supervision for the Relief of the Poor, with headquarters in Edinburgh. The act did not provide for compulsory assessment, but this was virtually accomplished by the vigilance of the Board, which demanded of local authorities increased care and more liberal relief, with the result that in 1894 only 46 out of 848 parishes remained unassessed. In this year a change in the governing body was affected, the Local Government Board for Scotland being constituted and replacing the Board of Supervision, while the parochial boards made way for parish councils. As the authorities cannot give relief to those able to work, there are no casual wards in Scotland, vagrants having to pay for their night's lodging, or find it in the police station or elsewhere. Every parish has to support its own poor, that is, natives or those who have acquired a settlement by living in it for five years, but relief is given in the parish in which it is applied for, the cost being recovered from the parish of birth or settlement afterwards. For the sick poor the larger towns provide hospitals and dispensaries, besides medical attendance at the homes of the poor, while in rural districts there are cottage hospitals, village sick-rooms, and sick wards in the poorhouses. The mentally afflicted are sent to the asylum if they are dangerous, or kept in the licensed wards of poorhouses, or, if they are harmless or imbecile, boarded out. The expense of pauper lunacy is only partially borne by the parish. The district lunacy board (practically a joint-committee of the county and burgh councils), aided by a parliamentary grant, is charged with the provision and upkeep of the asylums, the poor-law authorities only defraying the maintenance of their own patients. Orphan or deserted children, or the children of paupers, are boarded out and reared like ordinary children, attending the public schools and growing up without the “pauper taint.”
Police.—It was not till the middle of the 19th century that a regular police force was established in Scotland. Till then dwellers in rural districts had practically to provide for their own safety as best they could, while some towns maintained a paid watch and others enrolled volunteer constables, every citizen being expected to take his turn in patrolling the streets to protect person and property. At first an adoptive act was introduced, under which the Commissioners of Supply, who then managed county business—resident landowners in possession of landed estate to the annual value of £100—were empowered to raise a police force in the counties; but the want of common policy and initiative led in 1857 to the compulsory institution of a police force throughout the country. Burghs having a population of more than 7000 might furnish their own police, and smaller burghs were policed as part of the county to which they belonged by the standing joint-committee (composed equally of Commissioners of Supply and members of the county council), but no new police burgh the population of which was under 20,000 was to be free to police itself. All the constabulary forces, excepting the Orkney and Shetland police, are annually inspected as to efficiency and reported on to the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Education. (a) Elementary Schools.—The system of schools which prevailed till the Education Act of 1872 dated from 1696, when the Act for Settling of Schools was passed—one of the last but not the least of the achievements of the Scots Parliament—providing for the maintenance of a school in every parish by the kirk-session and heritors, with power to the Commissioners of Supply to appoint a schoolmaster in case the primary authorities made default. The schoolmaster held his office for life, co-education was the rule from the first, and the school was undenominational. The various religious secessions in Scotland led to the founding of a large number of sectarian and subscription schools, and at the Disruption in 1843 the Free Church made provision for the secular as well as the religious instruction of the children of its members. The Education Act of 1872 abolished the old management of the parish schools and provided for the creation of districts (burgh, parish or group of parishes) under the control of school boards, of which there are 972 in Scotland, elected every three years by the ratepayers, male and female. Since that date the most important changes effected in the elementary education system were the abolition, in 1886, of individual inspection of the lower standards—afterwards extended to the whole of the standards, the inspectors applying a collective test, the “block-grant” system, to the efficiency of a school—and the abolition of school fees (1889) for the compulsory standards, the loss being made up principally by a parliamentary grant, and partly by a proportion, earmarked for the purpose, of the proceeds of the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act 1890, and the Education and Local Taxation Account (Scotland) Act 1892. The capitation grant in relief of fees is at the rate of 12s., of which 10s. is furnished by the parliamentary grant and 2s. by the other sources. King's Scholars, trained at one of the training colleges, and King's Students who attend one of the universities, form the chief source of supply of certificated teachers.
(b) Secondary Schools.—Records of the existence of schools in the chief towns occur as early as the 13th century. They were under the supervision of the chancellor of each diocese, and were mainly devoted to studies preparatory for the Church. Before the Reformation schools for general education were attached to many religious houses, and in 1496 the first Scottish act was passed requiring substantial householders to send their eldest sons to school from the time they were eight or nine years old until they were “competentlie founded and have perfite Latin.” In 1560 John Knox propounded in his First Book of Discipline a comprehensive scheme of education from elementary to university, but neither this proposal nor an act passed by the privy council in 1616 for the establishment of a school in every parish was carried into effect. In several burghs grammar schools have existed from a very early date, and some of them, such as the Royal High School of Edinburgh and the High School of Glasgow, reached a high standard of proficiency. They were largely supported by the town councils, who erected the buildings, kept them in repair, and usually paid the rector's salary. By the act of 1872 their management was transferred to the school boards, and they may be conveniently classified into higher-class public schools, such as the old grammar schools and the liberally endowed schools of the Merchant Company in Edinburgh, and higher grade schools, with a few years' preparatory course for the universities, while some of the ordinary schools have earned the grant for higher education. In 1885 the Scottish Education Department, of which the secretary for Scotland is the virtual head, was reorganized. It was separated from the English Department, and undertook the inspection of higher class schools (public, endowed and voluntary), and two years later instituted a leaving certificate examination, the pass of which is accepted for most of the university and professional authorities in lieu of their preliminary examinations. In 1898 the functions of the Science and Art Department, as far as Scotland is concerned, were transferred to the Department, which makes substantial grants for instruction in those subjects for which science and art grants were formerly paid. A Technical Schools Act, passed in 1887, was applied by a few local authorities; but in 1890 funds were by chance made available from an unexpected source, and devoted to the purposes of technical and secondary education. Parliament had introduced a measure of public-house reform along with a scheme for compensating such houses as lost their licence. This feature was so stoutly opposed that the bill did not pass, although the chancellor of the exchequer had provided the necessary funds. Government proposed to distribute this money among local authorities and expend the balance in relief rates, but a clause was inserted in this bill giving burgh and county councils the option of spending the balance on technical education as well as in relief of rates. Advantage was largely taken of this power, and the grant came to be succinctly described as the “Residue” grant (£97,000 a year). The Department established in each county a body known as the secondary education committee, chosen by the county council and the chairmen of the school boards, which is charged with the expenditure of its share of the grant. The committee exists also in a few of the largest burghs, the members being in this case appointed by the town council, school board, and sometimes the trustees of educational endowments. In virtue of a Continuation Class code, technical and specialized education is given in day and, chiefly, evening classes in various centres, the principal being the Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh; the Edinburgh and East of Scotland College of Agriculture; the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College; the Glasgow School of Art; the Glasgow Athenaeum Commercial College; the West of Scotland Agricultural College; the Dundee Technical Institute; Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen; the Edinburgh Royal Institution School of Art, and the Edinburgh School of Applied Art; but well-equipped classes are held in most of the large towns, and several county councils maintain organizers of technical instruction. As regards agricultural education, the county is found to be in most cases too small an area for efficient organization, and consequently several counties combine to support, for instance, the East of Scotland Agricultural College—a corporation consisting of the agricultural department in the University, the Heriot-Watt College and the Veterinary College in Edinburgh,—the West of Scotland Agricultural College, Glasgow, and the agricultural department in Aberdeen University. The leading public schools on the English model are Trinity College, Glenalmond, Perthshire; Loretto School, Musselburgh, and Fettes College, Merchiston Castle and the Academy in Edinburgh. (c) Universities and Colleges.—There are four universities in Scotland, namely (in the order of foundation), St Andrews (1411), Glasgow (1450), Aberdeen (1494) and Edinburgh (1582), in which are the customary faculties of arts, divinity, law, medicine and science. In 1901 Mr Andrew Carnegie gave £2,000,000 to the universities. The administration of the fund was handed over to a body of trustees, who devote the annual income (£100,000) partly to the payment of students' fees and partly to buildings, apparatus, professorships and research. The court of each university is the supreme authority in regard to finance, discipline, and the regulation of the duties of professors and lecturers. The universities are empowered to affiliate other academical institutions, and women students are admitted on an equal footing with men. Under the act of 1899 the University College of Dundee was incorporated with St Andrews University, and Queen Margaret College became a part of the university of Glasgow, the buildings and endowments, used for women students exclusively, being handed over to the University Court. St Mungo's College, Glasgow, incorporated in 1889 under a Board of Trade licence, has medicinal and law faculties, and Anderson's College Medical School, Glasgow, was instituted in 1887. These are on the same basis as the extra-mural medical schools in Edinburgh, their medical curricula qualifying for licence only and not for Scottish university degrees. The United Free Church maintains colleges at Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and there is a Roman Catholic college at Blairs near Aberdeen, besides a monastery and college at Fort Augustus. The Church of Scotland and the United Free Church each possess their training colleges for teachers, the Episcopal Church supports one and the Roman Catholic Church one. The Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art has been transferred to the Scottish Education Department.
Agriculture.—Though Scotland is a country of great estates, this circumstance possesses less significance from the agricultural than from the historical standpoint. The excessive size of the properties may to some extent be accounted for by the fact that most of the surface is so mountainous and unproductive as to be unsuitable for division into smaller estates, but two other causes have also co-operated, namely, first, the wide territorial authority of such Lowland families as the Scotts and Douglases, and such Highland clans as the Campbells of Argyll and Breadalbane, and the Murrays of Athol and the duke of Sutherland; and secondly, the stricter law of entail introduced in 1685. Thus the largest estates remain in the hands of the old hereditary families. The almost absolute power formerly wielded by the landlords, who within their own territories were lords of regality, hindered independent agricultural enterprise, and it was not till after the abolition of hereditable jurisdictions in 1748 that agriculture made real progress. The Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture, founded in 1723, ceased to exist after the rebellion of 1745, and the introduction of new and improved methods, where not the result of private energy and sagacity, was chiefly due to the Highland and Agricultural Society, established in 1784. Further stimulus was also supplied by the high prices that obtained during the Napoleonic wars, and, in spite of periods of severe depression since then, the science of agriculture has continued to advance. The system of nineteen years' leases had proved distinctly superior to the system of yearly tenancy so general in England, although prejudicially affected by customs and conditions which, for a considerable time, seriously strained the relations between landlord and tenant. But the abolition of the law of hypothec in 1879—under which the landlord had a lien for rent upon the produce of the land, the cattle and sheep fed on it, and the live stock and implements used in husbandry—the Ground Game Act of 1880, the several Agricultural Holdings Acts, and the construction of light railways improved matters and established a better understanding. The period of general depression which set in before 1885 was surmounted in Scotland with comparatively little trouble. A large amount of capital was lost by tenants, and a few farms were thrown here and there upon the landlords hands, but in no district was rent extinguished or were holdings abandoned. The sub-commissioners who reported to the Royal Commission on Agriculture in 1895 found nearly everywhere a demand, sometimes competition for farms, persisting throughout the crisis. In Banff, Nairn, Elgin and several southern counties rent reductions varied from 25 to 30%. In Perth, Fife, Forfar and Aberdeen the average was 30%; but in nearly all the counties, towards the end at least of the period of depression, the coexistent demand and competition for farms were observable. In some districts in the west rents fell very little; in others, especially sheep-farming districts, the fall was very severe. In Ayrshire the figure varied from 5 to 20%; for Dumfriesshire 16% was given as a fair average, but here too the distressed farmer was compelled to admit that if he gave up his holding there were others ready to take it. Afterwards, owing to the increased attention given to stock-fattening and dairying, and to a rise in prices, farming reached a condition of equilibrium, and the most noticeable residuum of the period of depression was the large intrusion of the butcher and grazier class into the farmer class proper. Caithness-shire was declared to be the greatest sufferer by the period of depression; rents fell in that county by 30 to 50% on large farms, 20 to 30% on medium, and 10 to 60% on small farms. Nevertheless, the decline in the value of land was serious. According to the reports of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, the gross income derived from the ownership of lands in Scotland was returned in 1879-1880 at £7,769,303. After that year a continuous fall set in, and in 1901-1902 the amount returned was only £5,911,836, a drop in twenty-five years of £1,857,467. These figures refer to land, whether cultivated or not, including ornamental grounds, gardens attached to houses when exceeding one acre in extent, teinds or tithe-rent charge commuted under the Lands Commutation Acts, farm-houses and farm-buildings.
The crofters of the Highlands and islands had their grievances also. During the first half of the 19th century wholesale clearances had been effected in many districts, and the crofters were compelled either to emigrate or to crowd into areas already congested, where, eking out a precarious living by following the fisheries, they led a hard and miserable existence. At last after agitation and discontent had become rife, government appointed a royal commission to inquire into the whole question in 1883. It reported next year, and in 1886 the Crofters' Holdings Act was passed. Amending statutes of succeeding years added to the commissioners' powers of fixing fair rents and cancelling arrears, the power of enlarging crofts and common grazings. Since then political agitation has practically died out, though the material condition of the class has not markedly improved, except where, with government aid, crofter fishermen have been enabled to buy better boats; but in some districts, even in the island of Lewis, substantial houses have been built. After the passing of the act (1886) the Crofters' Commission in 15 years considered applications for rent and revaluation of holdings which amounted to £82,790, and fixed the fair rent at £61,233, or an annual reduction of £21,557; of arrears of rent amounting to £184,962 they cancelled £124,180, and also assigned 48,949 acres in enlargement of holdings. Under the Congested Districts (Scotland) Act of 1897, £35,000 a year was devoted within certain districts of Argyll, Inverness, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, to assisting migration, improving the breeds of live stock, building piers and boatslips, making roads and bridges, developing home industries, &c.
Table IX.—Classification of Holdings above 1 Acre
| Years. | 1 to 5 Acres. | 5 to 50 Acres. | 50 to 300 Acres. | Above 300 Acres. | ||||
| No. | Acres. | No. | Acres. | No. | Acres. | No. | Acres. | |
| 1895 | 20,150 | 65,891 | 33,921 | 608,390 | 22,802 | 2,935,184 | 2766 | 1,284,461 |
| 1903 | 19,560 | 63,961 | 34,018 | 610,669 | 23,075 | 2,970,325 | 2730 | 1,268,843 |
| 1905 | 18,685 | ... | 34,673 | ... | 23,055 | ... | 2718 | ... |
In Table IX. will be found a classification of the holdings in 1895, 1903 and 1905. The figures show that the holdings under 50 acres constituted fully two-thirds of the total holdings and that, though no very decided alteration in the size of farms was in progress, the larger portion of the cultivated land was held in farms of between 50 and 300 acres. The average holding in 1905 was 61.7 acres.
Table X.—Acreage under Cultivation.
| Total Area, including Inland Water, but excluding Foreshore and Tidal Water, 19,458,728 Acres. | ||||||||
| Crops. | Average 1871-1875. |
1905. | ||||||
| Acres. | Acres. | |||||||
| Total area under Crops and Grasses.[3] | 4,560,825 | 4,880,985 | ||||||
| Permanent Pasture— | ||||||||
| For Hay | . . | 148,342 | ||||||
| Not for Hay | . . | 1,302,384 | ||||||
| Total | 1,084,983 | 1,450,726 | ||||||
| Arable Land | 3,475,842 | 3,430,259 | ||||||
| Grain Crops— | ||||||||
| Wheat | 122,513 | 48,641 | ||||||
| Barley or Bere | 252,105 | 212,134 | ||||||
| Oats | 1,007,339 | 962,972 | ||||||
| Rye | 10,480 | 5,598 | ||||||
| Beans | 26,746 | 10,346 | ||||||
| Peas | 2,332 | 910 | ||||||
| Total | 1,421,515 | 1,240,601 | ||||||
| Potatoes | 167,880 | 144,265 | ||||||
| Turnips and Swedes | 503,709 | 445,306 | ||||||
| Mangold | 1,748 | 2,389 | ||||||
| Cabbage, Kohl-Rabi and Rape | 4,656 | 14,725 | ||||||
|
15,828 |
| ||||||
| Total | 693,821 | 617,941 | ||||||
| Clover, Sainfoin and Grasses under Rotation— | ||||||||
| For Hay | . . | 427,686 | ||||||
| Not for Hay | . . | 1,130,591 | ||||||
| Total | 1,338,106 | 1,558,277 | ||||||
| Flax | 731 | 4 | ||||||
| Small Fruit | [4] | 6,493 | ||||||
| Bare Fallow | 21,669 | 6,943 | ||||||
Table X. shows the total area, the cultivated area and the area under grain crops, green crops, grasses and miscellaneous crops. Comparison between 1905 and the average for 1871-1875 clearly demonstrates the change which Scottish agriculture had undergone. Though practically the same amount of land was brought under the plough, there was a considerable fall in the acreage under grain and green crops, but this was rather more than balanced by the increased area under grass, showing that the tendency towards the raising of live stock has become more widespread and more pronounced. Only a little more than one-fourth of the area of Scotland is cultivated, while in England only one-fourth is left uncultivated, but it should be borne in mind that “permanent pasture” does not include the mountainous districts, which not only form so large a proportion of the surface but also, in their heaths and natural grasses, supply a scanty herbage for sheep and cattle, 9,104,388 acres being used for grazing in 1905. Oats remain the staple grain crop, and barley, though fluctuating from year to year, is steadied by the demands of the distillers. Wheat showed a marked decline in most years from 1893 to 1904. Table XI., however, shows that in most cases, even when the acreage occupied by crops is smaller, the estimated yield to the acre shows a distinct improvement, the result of enhanced skill and industry, and the adoption of more scientific methods. In 1905 the yield of hay from clover, sainfoin and rotation grasses amounted to 666,985 tons, or 31.19 cwts. to the acre, and from permanent pasture 209,908 tons, or 28.46 cwts. to the acre, or 876,893 tons of all kinds of hay from 575,220 acres.
Table XI.—Showing Yield of Chief Crops to the Acre.
| Crops. | Estimate Total Produce. | Average Yield to the Acre. |
Average Yield to the Acre. | |
| 1885. | 1905. | 1885. | 1905. | |
| Wheat—Bushels | 1,893,501 | 2,065,381 | 34.33 | 42.46 |
| Barley—Bushels | 8,245,820 | 8,004,446 | 34.72 | 37.73 |
| Oats—Bushels | 33,407,127 | 35,277,807 | 31.93 | 36.63 |
| Beans—Bushels | 709,577 | 364,818 | 30.67 | 36.76 |
| Peas—Bushels | 37,464 | 17,108 | 21.41 | 27.16 |
| Potatoes—Tons | 803,523 | 979,541 | 5.39 | 6.97 |
| Turnips and Swedes—Tons | 6,496,189 | 7,162,794 | 15.39 | 16.08 |
Table XII. shows the number of live stock in 1905, with the average for the period 1871-1875, and illustrates the extent to which farmers have turned their attention to stock in preference to crops. The cattle stock has risen steadily, and a regular increase in the number under 2 years points to the healthy state of the breeding industry. The breeds include the Ayrshire, noted milkers and specially adapted for dairy farms (which prevail in the south-west), which in this respect have largely supplanted the Galloway in their native district; the polled Angus or Aberdeen, fair milkers, but valuable for their beef-making qualities, and on this account, as well as their hardihood, in great favour in the north-east, where cattle-feeding has been carried to perfection; and the West Highland or Kyloe breed, a picturesque breed with long horns, shaggy coats and decided colours—black, red, dun, cream and brindle—that thrives well on wild and healthy pasture. The special breeds of sheep are
the fine-woolled of Shetland, the black faced of the Highlands, the Cheviots, natives of the hills from which they are named, a favourite breed in the south, though Border Leicesters and other English breeds, as well as a variety of crosses, are kept for winter feeding on lowland farms. The principal breeds of horses are the Shetland and Highland ponies, and the Clydesdale draught.
Table XII.—Illustrating Increase of Live Stock.
| Stock. | Average 1871-1875 |
1905. |
| Horses— | ||
| Used for agricultural purposes[5] | . . | 156,520 |
| Unbroken | . . | 49,668 |
| Total | 178,652 | 206,188 |
| Cattle— | ||
| Cows and heifers in milk or in calf | 392,252 | 437,138 |
| Other cattle, 2 years and above | 267,920 | 276,330 |
| Other cattle, under 2 years | 467,165 | 513,827 |
| Total | 1,127,337 | 1,227,295 |
| Sheep— | ||
| Ewes kept for breeding | . . | 2,918,544 |
| Other sheep, 1 year and above | 4,735,008 | 1,383,200 |
| Other sheep, under 1 year | 2,426,114 | 2,722,467 |
| Total | 7,161,122 | 7,024,211 |
| Pigs | 166,148 | 130,214 |
Orchards and Forests.—The acreage devoted to orchards rose from 1562 in 1880 to 2482 in 1905. The chief areas for tree and small fruit are Clydesdale and the Carse of Gowrie, but there are also productive orchards in the shires of Haddington, Stirling, Ayr and Roxburgh, while market-gardening has developed in the neighbourhood of the larger towns. In 1812 woods and plantations occupied 907,695 acres, of which 501,469 acres were natural woods and 406,226 planted. Within sixty years this area had declined to 734,490 acres, but with renewed attention to forestry and encouragement of planting the area had grown in 1895 to 878,675 acres; by 1905, however, the acreage was practically unchanged. Inverness, Aberdeen and Perth are naturally the best wooded shires. The modern plantations consist mostly of Scots fir with a sprinkling of larch.
Deer Forests and Game, &c..—Deer forests in 1900 covered 2,287,297 acres, an increase of 575,405 acres since 1883. The red deer is peculiar to the Highlands, but the fallow deer is not uncommon in the hill country of the south-western Lowlands. The grouse moors occupy an extensive area and are widely distributed. Ptarmigan and black-cock are found in many districts, partridges and pheasants are carefully preserved, and the capercailzie, once extirpated, has been restored to some of the Highland forests. Hares and rabbits, the latter especially, are abundant. Fox-hunting is fashionable in most of the southern shires, but otter-hunting is practically extinct. The bear, wolf and beaver, once common, have long ceased to be, the last wolf having been killed, it is said, in 1680 by Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochlel. The wild cat may yet be found in the Highlands, and the polecat, ermine and pine marten still exist, the golden eagle and the white-tailed eagle haunt the wilder and more remote mountainous districts, while the other large birds of prey, like the osprey and kite, are becoming scarce. The islands, rocks and cliffs and some inland lochs are frequented in multitudes by a great variety of water-fowl.
Fisheries..—The Scottish seaboard is divided for administrative purposes into twenty-seven fishery districts, namely, on the east coast, Eyemouth, Leith, Anstruther, Montrose, Stonehaven, Aberdeen, Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Banff, Buckie, Findhorn, Cromarty, Helmsdale, Lybster, Wick (15); on the north, Orkney, Shetland (2); on the west, Stornoway, Barra, Loch Broom, Loch Carton and Skye, Fort William, Campbeltown, Inverary, Rothesay, Greenock, Ballantrae (10). The whole of the fisheries are controlled by the Fishery Board for Scotland, which was established in 1882 in succession to the former Board of White Herring Fishery. In 1903 the number of fishermen directly employed in fishing was 36,162, there were 17,496 engaged in curing and preserving the fish landed, while 32,201 were employed in subsidiary industries on shore, making a total of 85,859 persons engaged in the fisheries and dependent industries. In 1905 the herring fishery yielded 5,342,777 cwts. (£1,343,080); in 1909, 4,541,297 cwts. The most prolific districts are Shetland in the north, Fraserburgh, Peterhead, Wick, Aberdeen and Anstruther in the east, and Stornoway in the west. The principal herring market is continental Europe, Germany and Russia being the largest consumers, and there has been a growing exportation to the United States. In 1905 the total catch of fish of all kinds (excepting shell-fish) amounted to 7,856,310 cwts., and in 1907 (the highest recorded to 1910), 9,018,154 cwts. (£3,149,127). The annual value of the shell-fish (lobsters, crabs, oysters, mussels, clams, periwinkles, cockles, shrimps) is about £73,000. The weight of salmon carried by Scottish railways and steamers in 1894 was 2437 tons, and in 1903 it was 2047 tons. In 1894 the number of boxes of Scottish salmon delivered at Billingsgate market in London was 15,489, and in 1903 it was 15,103, being more than half of the salmon received then from all parts of Europe, including Irish and English consignments. In 1903 the Tay rentals came to £22,902, the highest then recorded. The other considerable rentals were the Dee £18,392, Tweed £15,389 and Spey £8146.
Roads.—In the 12th century an act was passed providing that the highways between market-towns should be at least 20 ft. broad. Over the principal rivers at this early period there were bridges near the most populous places, as over the Dee near Aberdeen, the Esk at Brechin, the Tay at Perth and the Forth near Stirling. Until the 16th century, however, traffic between distant places was carried on chiefly by pack-horses. The first stage-coach in Scotland was that which ran between Edinburgh and Leith in 1610. In 1658 there was a fortnightly stage-coach between Edinburgh and London, but afterwards it would appear to have been discontinued for many years. Separate acts enjoining the justices of the peace, and afterwards along with them the commissioners of supply, to take measures for the maintenance of roads were passed in 1617, 1669, 1676 and 1686. These provisions had reference chiefly to what afterwards came to be known as “statute labour roads,” intended primarily to supply a means of communication within the several parishes. They were kept in repair by the tenants and cotters, and, when their labour was not sufficient, by the landlords, who were required to “stent” (assess) themselves, customs also being sometimes levied at bridges, ferries and causeways. By separate local acts the “statute labour” was in many cases replaced by a payment called “conversion money,” and the General Roads Act of 1845 made the alteration universal. The Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act of 1878 entrusted the control of the roads to royal and police burghs and in the counties to road trustees, from whom it was transferred by the Local Government Act of 1889 to county councils, the management, however, being in the hands of district committees. The Highlands had good military roads earlier than the rest of the country. The project, begun in 1725 under the direction of General George Wade, took ten years to complete, and the roads were afterwards kept in repair by an annual parliamentary grant. In the Lowlands the main roads were constructed under the Turnpike Acts, the earliest of which was obtained in 1750. Originally they were maintained by tolls, but this method, after several counties had obtained separate acts for its abolition, was superseded in 1883 by the act of 1878.
Canals.—There are four canals in Scotland, the Caledonian, the Crinan, the Forth and Clyde and the Union, of which the Caledonian and Crinan are national property (see Caledonian Canal). The Forth and Clyde Navigation runs from Bowling on the Clyde, through the north-western part of Glasgow and through Kirkintilloch and Falkirk to Grangemouth on the Forth, a distance of 35 m. There is also a branch, 2¾ m. long, from Stockingfield to Port Dundas in the city of Glasgow, which is continued for the distance of 1 m. to form a junction with the Monkland canal. This last has a length of 12¼ m., and runs from the north-east of Glasgow through Coatbridge to Woodhall in the parish of Old Monkland. It was begun in 1761 and opened for traffic in 1792. The Forth and Clyde canal was authorized in 1767 and opened from sea to sea in 1790. In 1846 its proprietors bought the Monkland canal, and in 1867 the combined undertaking passed into the hands of the Caledonian Railway Company. The Union canal, 31½ m. long, starts from Port Downie, on the Forth and Clyde canal near Falkirk, and runs to Port Hopetoun in Edinburgh. Begun in 1818 it was completed in 1822, and in 1849 was vested in the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company, which in turn was absorbed by the North British Railway Company in 1865. The Forth and Clyde canal has a revenue of about £120,000 a year, including receipts from the docks at Grangemouth, and the expenditure on management and maintenance is about £40,000. The Union canal earns between £2000 and £3000, and its expenditure is but little less than its revenue. Three other canals formerly existed in Scotland. The Aberdeen canal, 1814 m. long, running up the Don valley from Aberdeen to Inverurie was opened in 1807, but did not prove profitable and was ultimately sold to the Great North of Scotland Railway Company, by which it was abandoned. The Glasgow, Paisley and Johnstone canal, 11 m. long, was opened in 1811 and was bought in 1869 by the Glasgow and South-Western railway, which in 1881 obtained statutory powers to abandon it as a canal and use its site, so far as necessary, for a railway line. The Forth and Cart Junction canal was only half a mile long. It ran from the Forth and Clyde canal to the Clyde, opposite the river Cart, and was intended to allow vessels to pass direct from the east coast up that river to Paisley. The Caledonian railway, which acquired it together with the Forth and Clyde canal in 1867, obtained powers to abandon it in 1893.
Railways.—The first railway in Scotland for which an act of parliament was obtained was that between Kilmarnock and Troon (934 m.), opened in 1812, and worked by horses. A similar railway, of which the chief source of profit was the passenger traffic, was opened between Edinburgh and Dalkeith in 1831, branches being afterwards extended to Leith and Musselburgh. By 1840 the length of the railway lines for which bills were passed was 19114 m., the capital being £3,122,133. The chief companies are the Caledonian, formed in 1845; the North British, of the same date; the Glasgow and South-Western, formed by amalgamation in 1850; the Highland, formed by amalgamation in 1865; and the Great North of Scotland, 1846.
Table XIII. shows the advance in mileage, goods and passenger traffic and receipts, from both sources, since 1857.
| Year. | Mileage. | Passengers. | Passenger Traffic Receipts. |
Goods Traffic Receipts. |
Total. |
| 1857 | 1243 | 14,733,503 | £916,697 | £1,584,781 | £2,501,478 |
| 1874 | 2700 | 38,220,892 | 2,350,593 | 3,884,424 | 6,235,017 |
| 1884 | 2999 | 54,305,074 | 2,931,737 | 4,426,023 | 7,357,760 |
| 1888 | 3097 | 68,413,349 | 3,163,195 | 4,564,627 | 7,727,822 |
| 1900 | 3485 | 122,201,102 | 4,715,592 | 6,431,693 | 11,147,285 |
| 1905 | 3804 | 115,580,000 | 5,014,452 | 6,803,286 | 11,817,738 |
The total capital of all the Scots companies in 1888 was £114,120,119; by 1910 it exceeded £185,000,000. Since the passing of the Light Railways Act 1896, the Board of Trade has sanctioned several light railways. By 1910 the total railway mileage was 3844.
Mining Industry.—Coal and iron, generally found in convenient proximity to each other, are the chief sources of the mineral wealth of Scotland. The principal coalfields are Lanarkshire, which yields nearly half of the total output, Fifeshire, Ayrshire, Stirlingshire and Midlothian, but coal is also mined in the counties (usually reckoned as forming part of one or other of the main fields) of Linlithgow, Haddington, Dumbarton, Clackmannan, Kinross, Dumfries, Renfrew, Argyll and Peebles, while a small quantity is obtained from the Oolite at Brora in Sutherlandshire. The earliest records concerning coalpits appear to be the charters granted, towards the end of the 12th century, to William Oldbridge of Carriden in Linlithgowshire, and in 1291 to the abbot and convent of Dunfermline conferring the privilege of digging coal in the lands of Pittencrieff. The monks of Newbattle Abbey also dug coal at an early date from surface pits on the banks of the Esk. Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.), who visited Scotland in the 15th century, refers to the fact that the poor received at church doors a species of stone which they burned instead of wood; and although the value of coal for smith's and artificer's work was early recognized it was not used for domestic purposes till about the close of the 16th century. In 1606 an act was passed binding colliers to perpetual service at the works where they were employed, and they were not fully emancipated till 1799. An act was passed in 1843 forbidding the employment of children of tender years and women in underground mines. In 1905 there were 492 coal and iron mines in operation, employing 109,939 hands (89,516 below ground and 20,423 above). The total output in that year amounted to 35,839,297 tons, valued at £10,369,433. The total quantity worked up to the end of 1898 was 1,514,062 tons, the quantity then remaining to work being estimated at 4,634,785,000 tons. The quantity of coal exported in 1905 from the principal Scottish ports was 7,863,511 tons, and the quantity shipped coastwise to ports of the United Kingdom amounts annually to about 212 million tons in addition.
The rise of the iron industry dates from the establishment of the Carron ironworks near Falkirk in 1760, but it was the introduction of railways that gave the production of pig-iron its greatest impetus. In 1796 the quantity produced was 18,640 tons, which had only doubled in thirty-four years (37,500 tons in 1830). In 1840 this had grown to 241,000 tons, in 1845 to 475,000 tons and in 1865 to 1,164,000 tons, almost the height of its prosperity, for in 1905 the product of 101 blast furnaces only amounted to 1,375,125 tons, and in the interval there were years when the output was below one million tons. More than one-third of the iron ore (that chiefly worked being Black Band Ironstone) comes from mines which also yield coal. The iron-producing counties in the order of their output are Ayr, Lanark, Renfrew, Linlithgow, Dumbarton, Fife, Midlothian and Stirling, the first three being the most productive. In 1905 the quantity of ore raised was 832,388 tons, valued at £320,875 and yielding 249,716 tons of metal. The imports of ore in that year amounted to 1,862,444 tons of the value of £1,420,379.
The oil shale industry is wholly modern and has attained to considerable magnitude since it was established (in 1851 and following years). Linlithgowshire yields nearly three-fourths of the total output, Midlothian produces nearly one-fourth, a small quantity is obtained from Lanarkshire, and there is an infinitesimal supply from Sutherland. The mineral is chiefly obtained from seams in the Calciferous Sandstone at the base of the Carboniferous rocks.
Fire-clay is produced in Lanarkshire, which yields nearly half of the total output, and Ayrshire and, less extensively, in Stirlingshire, Fifeshire, Renfrewshire, Midlothian and a few other shires. With the exception of the counties of Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, Sutherland and Inverness, granite is quarried in every shire in Scotland, but the industry predominates in Aberdeenshire, and is of considerable importance in Kirkcudbrightshire; limestone is quarried in half of the counties, but especially in Midlothian and Fife; large quantities of paving-stones are exported from Caithness and Forfarshire, and there are extensive slate quarries at Ballachulish and other places in Argyllshire, which furnishes three-fourths of the total supply. Sandstone, of which the total production in 1905 was 1,142,135 tons valued at £320,761, is quarried in nearly every count, but the industry flourishes particularly in the shires of Lanark, Dumfries, Ayr and Forfar. Lead ore occurs at Wanlockhead in Dumfriesshire and Leadhills in Lanarkshire. In 1905 there were produced 2774 tons of dressed lead ore, of the value of £25,823, yielding 2167 tons of lead in smelting and 11,409 oz. of silver. Gold has been found in the county of Ross and Cromarty. A small quantity of zinc is mined in Dumfriesshire and of barytes at Lochwinnoch in Renfrewshire. The precious metals were once worked at Abington in Lanarkshire and in the Ochils, and lead was mined at Tyndrum in Perthshire. In 1905 there were 66 mines apart from coal and iron, employing altogether 5329 hands, and 1127 quarries employing 7390 persons inside the quarries and 4797 persons outside, or 12,187 in all. Alumina is treated at works near Foyers in the shire of Inverness, where abundant water power enables electricity to be generated cheaply. The Foyers installation is the largest water-power plant in the United Kingdom.
Iron and Steel.—In 1901 the number of persons engaged in working of the raw material was 23,263, of whom 8258 were employed in steel smelting and founding, 7781 at blast furnaces in the manufacture of pig-iron, and 7224 at puddling furnaces and rolling mills. All the great iron foundries and engineering works are situated in the Central Plain or Lowlands, in close proximity to the shipbuilding yards and coalfields, especially in the lower and part of the middle wards of Lanarkshire, in certain districts of Ayrshire and Renfrewshire, at and near Dumbarton, in south Stirlingshire and in some parts of East and Mid Lothian and Fife. In 1901 the number of persons employed in engineering and machine-making—including 24,122 ironfounders, 24,944 blacksmiths, 26,567 fitters, turners and erectors, 9767 boiler-makers and 18,618 undefined—amounted to 118,736. In miscellaneous metal trades, embracing tinplate goods, wire workers, makers of stoves, grates, ranges and fire-arms, makers of bolts, nuts, rivets, screws and staples, and those occupied in several subsidiary trades, the number of operatives in 1901 amounted to 13,209. n the same year there were 7279 persons employed in the
making of cycles, motor cars, railway coaches and waggons and carriages and other vehicles. In the whole group of industries connected with the working in metals and the manufacture of machinery, implements and conveyances the total number of persons employed amounted in 1901 to 205,830.
Manufactures. (a) Wool and Worsted.—Although a company of wool Weavers was incorporated by the town council of Edinburgh in 1475, the cloth worn by the wealthier classes down to the beginning of the 17th century was of English or French manufacture, the lower classes wearing “coarse cloth made at home,” a custom still prevalent in the remoter districts of the Highlands. In 1601 seven Flemings were brought to Edinburgh to teach the manufacture of serges and broadcloth, and eight years later a company of Flemings was established in the Canongate (Edinburgh) for the manufacture of cloth under the protection of the king; but, notwithstanding also the establishment in 1681 of an English company for the manufacture of woollen fabrics near Haddington, the industry for long made little progress. In fact its importance dates from the introduction of machinery in the 19th century. The most important branch of the trade, that of tweeds, first began to attract attention shortly after 1830; though still having its principal seat in the district from which it takes its name, including Galashiels, Hawick, Innerleithen and Selkirk, it has extended to other towns, especially Aberdeen, Elgin, Inverness, Stirling, Bannockburn, Dumfries and Paisley. Carpet manufacture has had its principal seat in Kilmarnock since 1817, but is also carried on in Aberdeen, Ayr, Bannockbum, Glasgow, Paisley and elsewhere. Tartans are largely manufactured in Tillicoultry, Bannockburn and Kilmarnock, and shawls and plaids in several towns. Fingering and many other kinds of woollen yarns are manufactured at Alloa, the headquarters of the industry. In 1901 the number of operatives in the woollen industry (including combers and sorters, spinners, weavers and workers in other processes) amounted to 24,906. In 1850 the employed numbered 10,210.
(b) Flax, Hemp and Jute.—The manufacture of cloth from flax is of very ancient date, and towards the close of the 16th century Scottish linen cloths were largely exported to foreign countries, as well as to England. Regulations in regard to the manufacture were passed in 1641 and 1661. In a petition presented to the privy council in 1684, complaining of the severe treatment of Scotsmen selling linen in England, it was stated that 12,000 persons were engaged in the manufacture. Through the intercession of the secretary of state with the king these restrictions were removed. Further to encourage the trade it was enacted in 1686 that the bodies of all persons, excepting poor tenants and cotters, should be buried in plain linen only, spun and made within the kingdom. The act was renewed in 1693 and 1695, and in the former year another act was passed prohibiting the export of lint and permitting its import free of duty. At the time of the Union the annual amount of linen cloth manufactured in Scotland is supposed to have been about 1,500,000 yards. The Union gave a considerable impetus to the manufacture, as did also the establishment of the Board of Manufactures in 1727, which applied an annual sum of £2650 to its encouragement, and in 1729 established a colony of French Protestants in Edinburgh, on the site of the present Picardy Place, to teach the spinning and weaving of cambric. From the 1st of November 1727 to the 1st of November 1728 the amount of linen cloth stamped was 2,183,978 yds., valued at £103,312, but for the year ending the 1st of November 1822, when the regulations as to the inspection and stamping of linen ceased, it had increased to 36,268,530 yds., valued at £1,396,296. The counties in which the manufacture is now most largely carried on are Forfar, Perth, Fife and Aberdeen, but Renfrew, Lanark, Edinburgh and Ayr are also extensively associated with it. Dundee is the principal seat of the coarser fabrics, Dunfermline of the table and other finer linens, while Paisley is widely known for its sewing threads. The allied industry of jute is the staple industry of Dundee. In 1890 the number employed in the linen industry was 34,222, which had declined in 1901 to 23,570. Inf 1890 the operatives in the jute and hemp industry numbered 39,885, and in 1901 they were (including workers in canvas, sacking, sailcloth, rope, twine, mats, cocoa fibre) 46,550.
(c) Cotton.—The first cotton mill was built at Rothesay by an English company in 1779, though Penicuik also lays claim to priority. The Rothesay mill was soon afterwards acquired by David Dale, who was the agent for Sir Richard Arkwright, and had the invaluable aid of his counsel and advice. Dale also established cotton factories in 1785 at New Lanark, afterwards so closely associated with the socialistic schemes of his son-in-law, Robert Owen. The counties of Lanark and Renfrew are now the principal seats of the industry. The great majority of the cotton factories are concentrated in Glasgow, Paisley and the neighbouring towns, but the industry extends in other districts of the west and is also represented in the counties of Aberdeen, Perth and Stirling. As compared with England, however, the manufacture has stagnated. The number of hands employed in 1850 was 34,325, in 1875 it was 35,652 and in 1901 (including bleachers, dyers, printers, calenderers, &c.) it was 34,057.
(d) Silk and other Textiles.—The principal seats of the silk manufacture are Paisley and Glasgow. In 1885 the number employed amounted to 600 and in 1901 to 2424. The weaving of lace curtains has made considerable progress, in 1878 only 45 hands being employed against 2875 in 1901. Hosiery manufactures, a characteristic Border industry, with its chief seat at Hawick, employed 11,957 hands in 1901. The total number of persons working in textile fabrics in 1901, exclusive of 21,849 drapers, mercers and other dealers, but including 43,040 employed in mixed or unspecified materials (hosiery, lace, carpets, rugs, fancy goods, &c., besides a large number of “undefined” factory hands and weavers), amounted to 174,547 persons.
(e) Whisky and Beer.—Scotland claims a distinctive manufacture in whisky. Though distillation was originally introduced from England, by 1771 large quantities of spirits were already being consigned to the English market. The legal manufacture of whisky was greatly checked in the earlier part of the 19th century by occasional advances in the duty, but after the reduction of 2s. 4¾d. per proof gallon in 1823—the duty amounted in 1904 to 11s. per proof gallon—the number of licensed distillers rapidly increased, to the discouragement of smuggling and illicit distillation. In 1824 the number of gallons made amounted to 5,108,373; by 1855 this had more than doubled; in 1884 it was 20,164,962; in 1900 it reached 31,798,465; and in 1904 it had receded to 27,110,977. More than four-fifths of the distilleries at work in the United Kingdom are situated in Scotland. The leading distilling counties are Argyll, Banff, Elgin, Inverness and Aberdeen, Perth and Ross and Cromarty, while the industry is found in seventeen other shires. In 1893-1894 the total net duty received for home-made spirits amounted to £5,461,198 and in 1903-1904 to £7,276,125. The production has attained to colossal dimensions. In 1893-1894 the quantity of proof gallons in bond was 61,275,754, and in 1903-1904 it amounted to 121,397,951, the production having practically doubled itself within ten years. Ale was a common beverage as early as the 12th century, one or more breweries being attached to every religious house and barony. So general was its use even in the beginning of the 18th century that the threatened imposition of a tax on malt in 1725 provoked serious riots in Glasgow and clamour for repeal of the Union; and sixty years afterwards Robert Burns in certain poems voiced the popular sentiment concerning the “curst restrictions” proposed by the Excise on beer and whisky. Though ale has been superseded by whisky as the national beverage, brewing is extensively carried on in Edinburgh, whose ales are in high repute, Leith, Alloa and elsewhere. In 1885 the number of barrels of beer, duty-paid, amounted to 1,237,323; in 1893-1894 to 1,733,407; and in 1903-1904 to 1,877,978. In 1893-1894 the duty (6s. 3d. the barrel) yielded £473,311 and in 1903-1904 (7s. 9d. the barrel) £649,080. After 1893-1894, when the number of brewers licensed to brew for sale numbered 149, there was a steady fall to 117 in 1903-1904, alleged by the Inland Revenue Commissioners to be due to the disappearance of the small brewer. The practice of private brewing exhibits a still greater decline—from 272 to 84 in the years named. Notwithstanding the enormous turnover and output and the large capital invested, neither distilling nor brewing gives employment to many hands, the figures for 1901 being 1330 maltsters, 2052 brewers and 1970 distillers.
(f) Miscellaneous.—Paper, stationery and printing are industries in which Scotland has always occupied a foremost position. A paper mill was erected in 1675 at Dalry on the Water of Leith in which French operatives were employed to give instruction, with the result, in the words of the proprietors, that “grey and blue paper was produced much finer than ever was done before in the kingdom.” Midlothian has never lost the lead then secured. The paper mills at Penicuik and elsewhere in the vale of the Esk and around Edinburgh are flourishing concerns, and the industry is also vigorously conducted near Aberdeen. Stationery is largely manufactured at Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. In 1901 the number of persons employed in the paper and stationery industries amounted to 19,602. Ever since it was established by Andrew Myllar and Walter Chepman, early in the 16th century, the Edinburgh press has been renowned for the beauty and excellence of its typography, a large proportion of the books issued by London publishers emanating from the printing works of the Scottish capital. Printing is also extensively carried on in Glasgow and Aberdeen, and Cupar once enjoyed considerable repute for its press. The number of persons engaged in the production of books and other printed matter (including lithographers, Copper, steel plate and “process” printers, bookbinders, publishers, booksellers and distributors) amounted in 1901 to 24,139. The first sugar refinery was erected in 1765 at Greenock, which, despite periodical vicissitudes, has remained the principal seat of the industry, which is also carried on at Leith, Glasgow and Dundee. The making of preserves and confectionery flourishes in Dundee, Aberdeen, Paisley and Edinburgh. Kirkcaldy is the seat of the oil floor-cloth and linoleum industries, the latter introduced in 1877. The headquarters of the chemicals manufacture are situated in Glasgow and the vicinity, while explosives are chiefly manufactured at Stevenston and elsewhere in Ayrshire, and at certain places on the Argyll coast. Among occupations providing employment for large numbers were trades in connexion with building and works of construction (136,639 persons in 1901), and furniture and timber (39,000), while the conveyance of passengers, parcels and messages employed 163,102 (railway, 43,037; roads, 53,813; sea, rivers and canals, 20,451; docks, harbours and lighthouses, 10,659; and storage, porterage and messages, 35,142).
Commerce and Shipping.—That Scotland had a considerable trade with foreign countries at a very early period may be inferred from the importation of rich dresses by Malcolm III. (d. 1093), and the enjoyment of Oriental luxuries by Alexander I. (d. 1124). His successor, David I., receives the special praise of Fordun for enriching “the ports of his kingdom with foreign merchandise.” In the 13th century the Scots had acquired a considerable celebrity in shipbuilding; and a powerful French baron had a ship specially built at Inverness in 1249 to convey him and his vassals to the Holy Land. The principal shipowners at this period were the clergy, who embarked the wealth of their religious houses in commercial enterprises. Definite statements regarding the number and tonnage of shipping are, however, lacking till the 18th century. From two reports printed by the Scottish Burgh Record Society in 1881, it appears that the number of vessels belonging to the principal ports—Leith, Dundee, Glasgow, Kirkcaldy and Montrose—in 1656 was 58, the tonnage being 3140, and that by 1692 they had increased to 97 of 5905 tons. These figures only represent a portion of the total shipping of the kingdom. At the time of the Union in 1707 the number of vessels was 215 of 14,485 tons.
Table XIV.—Showing Registered Tonnage in Port in Specified Years.
| 1850. | 1860. | 1870. | 1884. | 1900. | 1905. | |||||||
| No. | Tons. | No. | Tons. | No. | Tons. | No. | Tons. | No. | Tons. | No. | Tons. | |
| Sailing vessels | 3432 | 491,395 | 3172 | 552,212 | 2715 | 727,942 | 2065 | 827,295 | 1104 | 709,430 | 918 | 578,340 |
| Steam vessels | 169 | 30,827 | 314 | 71,579 | 582 | 209,142 | 1403 | 866,780 | 1980 | 1,528,032 | 2330 | 3,139,558 |
| Total | 3601 | 522,222 | 3486 | 623,791 | 3297 | 937,084 | 3468 | 1,694,075 | 3084 | 2,237,462 | 3248 | 3,717,898 |
Table XIV. gives the figures of the registered tonnage in port in 1850 and later specified years, which are interesting as showing how, while sailing vessels declined during the half century to one-third of their number in 1850, steam vessels increased thirteen fold. It is true that the tonnage of the 918 sailing vessels of 1905 was considerably in excess of that of the 3432 sailing vessels of 1850, but even so it was a declining figure from a higher tonnage of the middle of the period. On the other hand, during fifty-five years the tonnage of steamers had grown to be a hundred times as large as it was in 1850. Table XV. illustrates the development that took place in the shipping trade with foreign countries and British possessions, as well as the expansion of the coasting trade, in 1855-1905, certain years being taken as types.
Table XV.—Foreign and Colonial and Coastwise Trade: Tonnage of Vessels.
| Year. | Coastwise. | Colonial and Foreign. | Total. | |||
| Entered. | Cleared. | Entered. | Cleared. | Entered. | Cleared. | |
| 1855 | 1,963,552 | 2,057,936 | 668,078 | 840,150 | 2,631,630 | 2,898,086 |
| 1880 | 6,628,853 | 5,691,136 | 2,700,915 | 3,001,897 | 9,329,768 | 8,693,033 |
| 1889 | 7,188,763 | 6,998,516 | 3,931,010 | 4,412,607 | 11,119,773 | 11,411,123 |
| 1898 | 9,256,233 | 8,937,481 | 5,510,927 | 6,296,555 | 14,767,160 | 15,234,036 |
| 1900 | 7,213,574 | 6,791,959 | 5,657,200 | 6,602,545 | 12,870,774 | 13,394,504 |
| 1905 | 9,928,674 | 9,500,160 | 6,268,745 | 7,478,579 | 16,197,419 | 16,978,739 |
Table XVI.—Showing Growth of Foreign and Colonial Trade since 1755.
| Year. | Imports. | Exports. |
| £ | £ | |
| 1755 | 464,411 | 535,576 |
| 1790 | 1,688,337 | 1,235,405 |
| 1795 | 1,268,520 | 976,791 |
| 1800 | 2,212,790 | 2,340,069 |
| 1815 | 3,447,853 | 6,997,709 |
| 1825 | 4,994,304 | 5,842,296 |
| 1851 | 8,921,108 | 5,016,116 |
| 1874 | 31,012,750 | 17,912,932 |
| 1880 | 34,997,652 | 18,243,078 |
| 1884 | 30,600,258 | 20,322,355 |
| 1889 | 36,771,016 | 22,310,006 |
| 1898 | 36,224,982 | 23,643,143 |
| 1900 | 38,691,245 | 32,166,561 |
| 1903 | 40,396,280 | 32,301,198 |
Table XVI. exhibits the growth of the foreign and colonial trade at specified dates since 1755, showing how it advanced by leaps and bounds during the latter part of the 19th century. Though the value of imports into Scotland is less than one-eleventh of that into England, this does not represent the due proportion of foreign wares used and consumed in Scotland, for the obvious reason that large quantities of goods are brought into the country by rail, nearly all the tea, for example, consumed in Great Britain being imported into London, while several ports have almost a monopoly of certain other imports. Foreign and colonial merchandise transhipped was valued at £989,289 in 1889 and at £746,246 in 1903. The customs revenue rose from £1,965,080 in 1894 to £3,399,141 in 1903. Judged by the combined value of their imports and exports the chief ports are as shown in the first section of Table XVII. Their status is modified by the movements of shipping, and for purposes of comparison the entrance and clearance tonnage of the trade with British colonies and foreign countries and of the coastwise traffic are exhibited in the second and third sections of the same table. The favourable position occupied by Greenock in the third section is due to its preponderating share of the traffic with the west coast and the islands. Its share of the Irish and coasting trade likewise accounts for the position of Ardrossan in the same section. It should be added that on the figures of import and export value in 1909, Aberdeen had changed places with, Methil, and Burntisland with Granton. The figure for Glasgow in that year was £41,238,867.
Table XVII.—Chief Ports (1905).
| Port. | Order. | Imports and Exports. £ |
Order. | Colonial and Foreign Tonnage In and Out. |
Order. | Coastwise Tonnage In and Out. |
| Glasgow | 1 | 38,291,762 | 1 | 4,472,071 | 1 | 4,257,957 |
| Leith | 2 | 17,975,978 | 2 | 2,210,015 | 4 | 1,410,160 |
| Grangemouth | 3 | 6,273,317 | 4 | 1,425,978 | 6 | 859,177 |
| Dundee | 4 | 5,657,583 | 7 | 320,103 | 7 | 807,159 |
| Greenock | 5 | 2,046,457 | 10 | 202,336 | 2 | 3,348,928 |
| Methil | 6 | 1,127,931 | 3 | 1,716,355 | 8 | 542,244 |
| Aberdeen | 7 | 1,035,233 | 8 | 217,410 | 3 | 1,613,966 |
| Granton | 8 | 933,480 | 9 | 202,901 | 10 | 230,458 |
| Burntisland | 9 | 846,741 | 5 | 1,305,945 | 9 | 294,261 |
| Ardrossan | 10 | 651,124 | 6 | 326,356 | 5 | 1,094,439 |
Shipbuilding.—Many of the most important improvements in the construction of ships, especially steam vessels, are due to the enterprise and skill of the Clyde shipbuilders, who, from the time of Robert Napier of Shandon (1791-1876), who built and engined the first steamers for the Cunard Company, formed in 1840, have enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for the construction of leviathan liners, both as regards mechanical appliances and the beauty and convenience of the internal arrangements. The principal Clyde yards are situated in the Glasgow district (Govan, Partick, Fairfield, Clydebank, Renfrew), Dumbarton, Port Glasgow and Greenock. At several of the ports on the lower firth, as at Ardrossan and Fairlie, famous for its yachts, the industry is also carried on. On the east coast the leading yards are at Leith, Kirkcaldy, Grangemouth, Dundee, Peterhead and Aberdeen, which, in the days of sailing ships, was renowned for its clippers built for the tea trade. There are yards also at Inverness.
Postal Service.—Towards the end of the 16th century the practice arose of regular communication by letter between the magistrates of the larger towns and the seat of government in Edinburgh. After the accession of James VI. to the throne of England, the necessity for an ordered method of intercourse between the Scottish capital and London became urgent, but the plans adopted involved extraordinary delay, for it not infrequently happened that there was an interval of two months between the despatch of a letter and the receipt of a reply. Such a leisurely fashion of transacting business soon grew intolerable, and in 1635 a system of relays was instituted which enabled the journey between the two cities to be accomplished in three days, the charge for a letter being 8d. The service was reorganized in 1662, and in 1711 the postal establishments of the United Kingdom, hitherto conducted independently in each country, were consolidated into one. When this reform was effected the cost of a letter to London was reduced to 6d. Three years before this date a local penny post had been provided in Edinburgh by private enterprise, carried on by a staff of seven persons, and after the success of this effort had been demonstrated the concern was taken over by the post office. Subsequently postal business stagnated, mainly owing to the greatly increased charges (the postage of a letter from London to Edinburgh is stated to have cost 1s. 4½d.), until the system of uniform penny postage came into operation. The telephones are mainly conducted by the post office and the National Telephone Company, but the corporation of Glasgow has a municipal service.
Religion.—The bulk of the population is Presbyterian, this form of Church government having generally obtained, in spite of persecution and other vicissitudes, since the Reformation. It is accepted equally by the Established Church, the United Free, the Free and other smaller Presbyterian bodies, the principal point distinguishing the first-named from the rest being that it accepts the headship of the sovereign. The Episcopal Church of Scotland, which is in communion with the Church of England, claims to represent the ancient Catholic Church of the country.
See Scotland, Church of; also Free Church of Scotland; United Presbyterian Church; Presbyterianism; and Scotland, Episcopal Church of.
Parliamentary Government.—By the Act of Union in 1707 Scotland ceased to have a separate parliament, and its government was assimilated to that of England. In the parliament of Great Britain its representation was fixed at sixteen peers elected in Holyrood Palace by the peers of Scotland at each new parliament in the House of Lords, and at forty-five members in the House of Commons, the counties returning thirty and the burghs fifteen. The power of the sovereign to create new Scottish peerages lapsed at the Union, and consequently their number is a diminishing quantity. By the Reform Act of 1832 the number of Scottish representatives in the Commons was raised to fifty-three, the counties under a slightly altered arrangement returning thirty members as before, and the burghs, reinforced by the erection of various towns into parliamentary burghs, twenty-three; the second Reform Act (1867) increased the number to sixty, the universities obtaining representation by two members, while two additional members were assigned to the counties and three to the burghs; by the Redistribution of Seats Act in 1885 an addition of seven members was made to the representation of the counties and five to that of the burghs, the total representation being raised to seventy-two. The management of Scottish business in parliament has since 1885 been under the charge of the secretary for Scotland.[6]
Law.—At the Union Scotland retained its old system of law and legal administration, a system modelled on that of France; but since the Union the laws of England and Scotland have been on many points assimilated, the criminal law of the two countries being now practically identical, although the methods of procedure are in many respects different. The Court of Session, as the supreme court in civil causes is called, which is held at Edinburgh, dates from 1532, and was formed on the model of the parlement of Paris. Since the Union it has undergone certain modifications. It consists of thirteen judges, acting in an Inner and an Outer House. The Inner House has two divisions, with four judges each, the first being presided over by the lord president of the whole court, and the second by the lord justice clerk. In the Outer House five judges, called lords ordinary, sit in separate courts. Appeals may be made from the lords ordinary to either of the divisions of the Inner House, and, if the occasion demands, the opinion of all the judges of the Court of Session may be called for; but whether this be done or not the decision is regarded as a decision of the Court of Session. Appeals may be made from the Court of Session to the House of Lords. The lord justice general (lord president), the lord justice clerk and the other judges of the Court of Session form the High Court of justiciary, instituted in 1672, for criminal cases, which sits at Edinburgh for the trial of cases from the three Lothians and of cases referred from the circuit courts. The latter meet for the south at Jedburgh, Dumfries and Ayr; for the west at Glasgow, Inveraray and Stirling; and for the north at Perth, Aberdeen, Dundee and Inverness. The law agents who undertake cases to be decided before the supreme courts are either solicitors before the supreme courts (S.S.C.) or writers to the signet (W.S.), the latter of whom possess certain special privileges. The lawyer authorized to plead before the supreme courts is termed an advocate. The principal law officer of the crown is the lord advocate, who is assisted by the solicitor-general and by advocates depute. The practical administration of the law in a county is under the control of the sheriff-depute, who combines with his judicial duties certain administrative functions. The office, which once implied a much less restricted authority than at present, is as old as the reign of Alexander I. (d. 1124), when the greater part of the kingdom was divided into twenty-five sheriffdoms. In the latter part of the 13th century they numbered thirty-four, but now there are only fifteen sheriffs in all, who, excepting the sheriff for Lanarkshire, need not reside in the counties to which they are appointed and are not prohibited from private practice. They are assisted by sheriffs-substitute upon whom the bulk of the work falls, who must be residential and are debarred from private practice. At one time the functions of the sheriff-principal were confined to one county, but by an act passed in 1855 it was arranged that as sheriffdoms fell vacant certain counties should be grouped under the control of one sheriff-principal. Thus Aberdeen, Kincardine and Banff form one group, and the three Lothians with Peebles another. The public prosecutor for counties is the procurator-fiscal, who takes the initiative in regard to suspected cases of sudden death, although in this respect the law of Scotland is less strict than that of England. Justices of the peace, who are unpaid and require no special qualification, but as they are recommended by the lord-lieutenant, are generally persons of position in the county, once exercised a wider subordinate jurisdiction than now devolves upon them, their chief administrative function being to act along with certain members of the county councils, as the licensing authority for public-houses in the county and in police burghs, and as a court of appeal from the decisions of the bailies in royal and parliamentary burghs.
Local Government.—The largest administrative unit is that of the county, but the areas of counties may be adapted to meet various public or political requirements. They may be altered for the purposes of the registrar-general, and for police purposes part of the area of one county may be brought into the area of another. For parliamentary purposes some counties have been united, as Clackmannan and Kinross, Elgin and Nairn, Orkney and Shetland, and Peebles and Selkirk, and others divided, as Aberdeen, Ayr, Lanark, Perth and Renfrew, while others retain in certain respects their old subdivision, Lanarkshire for assessment purposes being still partitioned into the upper, middle and lower wards. Originally the counties were synonymous either with sheriffdoms or stewartries. Stewartries ceased with the abolition of hereditary jurisdictions in 1748, though Kirkcudbrightshire still bears the designation. The counties are thirty-three in number, Ross and Cromarty constituting one, while Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee are each a county of a city. The highest county dignitary is the lord-lieutenant, the office dating from 1782. Nominated by the crown, he holds office aut vitam aut culpam, represents the crown in military matters, recommends for commissions of the peace, holds the position of high sheriff, and is a member of the standing joint committee. The office, however, is little more than honorary. In olden times there were three classes of burgh. Those created by charter directly from the Crown were styled royal burghs: they number seventy in all, of which no fewer than seventeen belong to Fifeshire. Those holding their charters from a feudal superior and not from the crown were called burghs of regality, their magistrates and council being usually appointed by the overlord or his representative. Being small and unimportant, these burghs were not affected by the act of 1833, but in 1892 were required to adopt the constitution of police burghs. Towns that received their charters from bishops were burghs of barony, their magistrates and council being appointed by the superior. When the bishop’s jurisdiction was abolished, the burghs as a rule assumed the position of royal burghs. Police burghs are wholly modern, dating from the middle of the 19th century. They were called into existence by the rapid growth of certain districts caused by the development of the coal and iron fields. The principle on which they are established may be briefly stated thus: towns with a minimum population of 800 can, on a poll demanded by the ratepayers showing a majority in favour of it, acquire the status of a police burgh subject to representations from neighbouring burghs, a proviso devised to check the growth of “parasitic” burghs in the immediate vicinity of a great centre of population and industry, enjoying all the public improvements initiated by their powerful neighbour and yet contributing nothing towards the cost and upkeep of them. It should be noted that, according to Scottish usage, “police” includes drainage, the suppression of nuisances, paving, lighting and cleansing, in addition to the provision of a constabulary force, and that in point of fact, paradoxical as it appears, the bulk of the police burghs do not manage their police. Royal burghs derive part of their income from ancient corporate property known as “the Common Good” and consisting mostly of land and houses. It is devoted to objects for which the rates are not applicable. Glasgow, for example, might found a chair in the University from the Common Good but not from the rates, and Edinburgh maintains from the same source the city observatory and defrays part of the cost of the time-gun. Only Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Greenock, Aberdeen and Paisley have private and local acts, conferring powers exceeding the general law, to deal with, e.g. overcrowding, the obnoxious display of advertisements, the compulsory acquisition of land for gas, water or electric-power enterprises, all the other burghs being governed by Public General Acts. This is in marked contrast with the practice in England, where almost every large borough has its own private act. The corporation of the burghs consists of the provost (or lord provost, in the cases of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee), bailies and councillors, with certain permanent officials, of whom the town clerk is the most important. The course of reform may now be concisely summarized. In 1833 Scottish burghs were for the first time entitled to be governed by directly-elected bodies, and at various times since that date fuller powers of legal self-government were granted in different directions. In 1845 parochial boards were created for relief of the poor, their powers being afterwards extended to deal with the statutes concerning burial-grounds, the registration of births, deaths and marriages, vaccination, public health, public libraries and other matters. In 1872 school boards were set up throughout the country; county councils followed in 1889 and parish councils in 1894. These reforms profoundly modified and in some cases abolished older organizations which had grown inadequate to modern wants. The Commissioners of Supply, originally appointed to apportion and collect the national revenue and afterwards entrusted with the regulation of the land tax, the control of the county police, the raising of the militia, and the levying of rates for county expenditure, were practically superseded by the county councils, which are also the local authority under the Contagious Diseases (Animals) and the Public Health Acts in all parishes (burghs and police burghs excepted), perform the administrative duties formerly entrusted to the justices of the peace, and may also enforce the Rivers Pollution Act each within its own jurisdiction. The county councils are strengthened by certain special committees, such as the secondary education committee, whose duties have already been defined, and the standing joint committee—one half appointed by the county council, the other half by the Commissioners of Supply—which manages the county police and whose consent in writing must be obtained before the county council can undertake any work involving capital outlay. All but the smallest counties are subdivided into districts, and the Road Acts and Public Health Acts are administered in these areas by district committees, composed of members of the county council for the district and one representative of each parish council within the area. The act of 1894, as we have seen, not only established the Local Government Board, consisting of the secretary for Scotland, the solicitor-general, the under-secretary and three appointed members—a vice-president, a lawyer and a medical officer of) public health—but also replaced the parochial boards by parish councils, empowered to deal among other things with poor relief, lunacy, vaccination, libraries, baths, recreation grounds, disused churchyards, rights of way, parochial endowments, and the formation of special lighting and scavenging districts. (J. A. M.)
III. Political History.
Scotland, to political observers of the middle of the 16th century, seemed destined by nature to form one homogeneous kingdom with England. The outward frontiers of both were the sea; no difficult physical barriers divided the two territories; the majority of Scots spoke an intelligible form of English, differing from northern English more in spelling and pronunciation than in idiom and vocabulary; and after the Reformation the State religion in both countries was Protestant. Yet, in spite of these causes making for union, and in spite of the manifest advantages of union, it was by a mere dynastic accident that, in the defect of nearer heirs to the English throne, the crowns of both kingdoms were worn by James VI. (1603), while more than a century of unrest and war had to elapse before the union of England and Scotland into one kingdom in 1707. Even later there broke forth civil wars that, apart from dynastic sentiment, had no political aim except “to break the Union.” Thus for seven hundred years the division of the isle of Britain was a constant cause of weakness and public distress. Nothing did more to bring the two peoples together than religion, after the Reformation, yet, by an unhappy turn of affairs, and mainly thanks to one man, John Knox, few causes were more potent than religious differences in delaying that complete union which nature herself seemed to desire.
The historical causes which kept the nations separate were mainly racial, though, from a very early period, the majority of the people of Scotland were, if not purely English by blood, anglicized in language and, to a great extent, in institutions. All questions of race are dim, for such a thing as a European people of pure unmixed blood is Early conditions. probably unknown in experience. In A.D. 78–82 Agricola, carrying the Eagles of Rome beyond the line of the historical border, encountered tribes and confederations of tribes which, probably, spoke, some in Gaelic, some in Brythonic varieties of the Celtic language. That the language had been imposed, in a remote age, by Celtic-speaking invaders, on a prior non-Celtic-speaking population, is probable enough, but is not demonstrated. There exist in Scotland a few inscriptions on stones, in Ogam, which yield no sense in any known Indo-European language. There are also traces of the persistence of descent in the female line, especially in the case of the Pictish royal family, but such survivals of savage institutions, or such a modification of male descent for the purpose of ensuring the purity of the royal blood, yield no firm ground for a decision as to whether the Picts were “Aryans” or “non-Aryans.”
It is unnecessary here to discuss the Pictish problem (see Celt). That their rivals, the Scots, were a Gaelic-speaking people is certain. That the Picts were Teutons (Pinkerton) is no longer believed. That they were non-Aryan, the theory of Sir John Rhys, seems improbable; for the non-English place-names of Scotland are either Gaelic or Brythonic (more or less Welsh), and the names of Pictish kings are either common to Gaelic and Welsh (or Cymric, or Brythonic), or are Welsh in their phonetics. Mr Skene held that the Picts were a Gaelic-speaking people, but the weight of philological authority is with Mr Whitley Stokes, who says that Pictish phonetics, “so far as we can ascertain them, resemble those of Welsh rather than of Irish” (see Zimmer, Das Mutterrecht der Pikten; Rhys, Royal Commission's Report on Land in Wales, Celtic Britain, Rhind Lectures; Skene's Celtic Scotland; J. G. Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, p. 247; Macbain's edition, 1902, of Skene's Highlanders of Scotland).
The Roman occupation has left not many material relics in Scotland, and save for letting a glimmer of Christianity into the south-west, did nothing which permanently affected the institutions of the partially subjugated peoples. In A.D. 81-82 Agricola garrisoned the Roman frontier between Forth and Clyde, and in 84 he fought and won a great battle farther north, probably on the line of the Tay. His enemies were men of the early iron age, and used the chariot in war. They fought with courage, but were no match for Roman discipline; it was, however, impossible to follow them into their mountain fortresses, nor were the difficulties of pursuit thoroughly overcome till after the battle of Culloden in 1746. The most important Roman stations which have hitherto been excavated are those of Birrenswark, on the north side of Solway Firth; Ardoch, near the historical battlefield of Sheriffmuir (1715); and Newstead, a site first occupied by Agricola, under the Eildon hills. Roman roads extended, with camps, as far as the Moray Firth. It is not till A.D. 300 that we read of “the Caledonians and other Picts”; in the 4th century they frequently harried the Romans up to the wall of Hadrian, between Tyne and Solway. About the end of the century the southern Picts of Galloway, and tribes farther north, were partially converted by St Ninian, from the candida casa of Whithern. The Scots, from Ireland, also now come into view, the name of Scotland being derived from that of a people really Irish in origin, who spoke a Gaelic (see Celtic) akin to that of the Caledonians, and were in a similar stage of higher barbarism. The Scots made raids, but, as yet, no national settlement.
The withdrawal of the Romans from Britain (410) left the northern part of the island as a prey to be fought for by warlike tribes, of whom the most notable were the Picts in the north, the Scots or Dalriads from Ireland in the west (Argyll), the Cymric or Welsh peoples in the south-west and between Forth and Tay, and the Teutonic invaders, Angles or English, in the south-east.
If the Picts had been able to win and hold Scotland as far south as the historic border, the fortunes of the country would probably have been more or less like those of Ireland. After the Norman Conquest, England would have subjugated the Celts and held Scotland by a tenure less precarious and disputed than they possessed in the western island. Scotland would have been, at most, a larger Wales. But in the struggle for existence it chanced that the early English invaders secured a kingdom, Bernicia, which stretched from the Humber into Lothian, or farther north, as the fortune of battle might at various times determine; and thus, from the centre to the south-east of what is now Scotland, the people had come to be anglicized in speech before the Norman Conquest, though Gaelic survived much later in Galloway. The English domain comprised, roughly speaking, the modern counties of Selkirkshire, Peeblesshire, Berwickshire, Roxburghshire and most of the Lothians, while south of Tweed it contained Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire to the Humber. In later days the Celtic kings of northern and western Scotland succeeded in holding, on vague conditions of homage to the English crown, the English-speaking region of historic Scotland. That region was the most fertile, had the best husbandry, and possessed the most civilized population, a people essentially English in language and institutions, but indomitably attached to the Celtic dynasties of the western and northern part of the island. It was the English-speaking south-east part of Scotland, gradually extended so as to comprise Fife and the south-west (Lanarkshire, Dumfriesshire, Stirlingshire, Dumbartonshire, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire), which learned to adopt the ideas of western Europe in matters political, municipal and ecclesiastical, while it never would submit to the domination of the English crown. This English element, in a nation ruled by a Celtic dynasty, prevented Scotland from becoming, like Wales, a province of England.
On the west of the northern part of the English kingdom of Bernicia, severed from that by the Forest of Ettrick, and perhaps by the mysterious work of which traces remain in the “Catrail,” was the Brython or Welsh kingdom of Strathclyde, which then included the territory and population, later anglicized, of Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Dumfriesshire, and, south of the historic border, Cumberland and Westmoreland to the Derwent. Strathclyde was essentially Welsh, and it may be noted that this region, centuries later, was the centre of the recalcitrant Covenanters, a people enthusiastically religious in their own way. Later, this region was the hotbed or “revivals” and the cradle of Irvingism. Whether the influence of Cymric blood may be traced in these characteristics is a dubious question.
While southern Scotland was thus English and Cymric, the north, from Cape Wrath to Lochaber, in the west, and to the Firth of Tay, on the east, was Pictland; and the vernacular spoken there was the Gaelic. The west, south of Lochaber to the Mull of Kintyre, with the isles of Bute, Islay, Arran and Jura, was the realm of the Dalriadic kings, Scots from Ireland (503): here, too, Gaelic was spoken, as among the “Southern Picts” of the kingdom of Galloway. Such, roughly speaking, were the divisions of the country which arose as results of the obscure wars of the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries.
As regards Christianity in these regions, Protestantism, Presbyterianism and patriotism find here a battle-ground. The Christianity. mission of St Ninian (397) was that of a native of the Roman province of Britain, and the church which he founded would bear the same relation to Rome as did the church in Britain. There are material relics of his church, bearing the Christian monogram, and there are stones with Latin epitaphs; these objects are wholly unlike the Irish crosses and inscriptions of the Gaelic church. If Bede is right in saying that Ninian was trained in Rome, then the early Christianity of Scotland was Roman.
In 431 the contemporary Chronica of Prosper of Aquitaine record that Palladius was ordained by Pope Celestine as the first bishop “to the believing Scots,” that is, to the Irish. If there were “believing Scots” in Ireland before the first bishop was ordained, their ecclesiastical constitution cannot have been episcopal. Fordun, in the 14th century, supposed that the clergy, before Palladius, were presbyters or monks. As Hector Boece, “that pillar of falsehood,” dubbed these presbyters “Culdees,” “the pure Culdee,” a blameless Presbyterian, almost prehistoric, has been claimed as the ancestor of Scottish Presbyterianism; and episcopacy has been regarded as a deplorable innovation. The Irish church has paid more reverence to St Patricius than to Palladius (373-463), and the church of St Patricius, himself a figure as important as obscure, certainly abounded in bishops; according to Angus the Culdee there were 1071, but these cannot have been bishops with territorial sees, and the heads of monasteries were more potent personages.
The Dalriadic settlers in Argyll and the Isles, the (Irish) Scots, were Christians in the Irish manner. Their defeat by the Picts, in 560, induced the Irish St Columba to endeavour to convert the conquering Picts. In 563-565 he founded his mission and monastery in the isle of Iona, and journeying to Inverness he converted the king of the Picts. About the same date (573), the king of Cymric Strathclyde summoned, from exile in Wales, St Kentigern, the patron saint of Glasgow, who restored a Christianity almost or quite submerged in paganism, Celtic and English. The pagan English of Deira (603) routed under Æthelfrith the Christian Scots of Argyll between Liddesdale and North Tyne; and pagan English for more than a century held unopposed the region from Forth to Humber. In 617 Æthelfrith fell in battle with the English of East Anglia, and his sons, Eanfrid and Oswald, fled to the North. Eanfrid, by his marriage with a Pictish princess, became the father of the Pictish king Talorcan, while Oswald was baptized into the Columban church at Iona. In a season of war and turmoil Oswald won the crown of the north-east English kingdom, stretching to the Forth, with its capital at Eadwinsburgh (? Edinburgh, a dubious etymology), and in that kingdom St Aidan, from Iona, erected the Columban churches under the auspices of Oswald, whose brother Oswin dominated Strathclyde and Pictland up to the Grampians; the English element, for the time, extending itself and anglicizing more and more of the Scotland that was to be.
Thus the Dalriadic Scots had handed on the gift of Irish Christianity, with such literature as accompanied it in the shape of Latin, and reading and writing, to the northern English from Forth to Humber. The ecclesiastical constitution thus introduced was one of missionary monastic stations, settled in fortified villages. The Celtic church, unluckily, differed from the Roman on the question of the method of calculating the date of Easter, the form of the tonsure, and other usages, one of them apparently relating to a detail in the celebration of the Holy Communion. From a letter to Pope Boniface IV. of an Irish saint Columbanus, who led twelve Irish monks into Gaul and Burgundy, the Celtic church appears to have denied that the papal jurisdiction extended beyond the limits of the Roman empire. Consequently Rome would have no jurisdiction in the affairs of the Irish church established in Scotland and the north of England. The results would be the severance of these regions from the main current of western ecclesiastical ideas. Conceivably these sentiments of Columbanus never wholly died out in the Scottish kingdom of later history, whose kings were always apt to treat Rome in a cavalier manner, laughing at interdicts and excommunications. A papal legate, in Bruce's time, was no more safe, if his errand was undesirable, than under John Knox, when Mary Stuart wore the crown. “All the world errs, Rome and Jerusalem err, only the Scoti and the Britones are in the right” is quoted as the opinion of the Scoti and Britones in 634. It appears that Scotland was naturally Protestant against Rome as soon as she was Christian.
Meanwhile Rome was too strong, and in 664, in a synod held at Whitby, St Wilfrid procured the acceptance of Roman as against Celtic doctrine in the questions then at issue. The English Christians overcame the Celtic divines of Iona, and in 710 even in Pictland they came into the customs of western Christianity. The church of the Celtic tribe thus yielded to the church of the Roman empire.
There followed an age of war in which the northern English were routed at Nectan's mere, in Forfarshire, and driven south Wars of Picts and Scots. of Forth. In the quarrels of Picts and of Scots of Argyll, the Pictish king, Angus MacFergus (ob. 761), was victorious while in his prime, and then consolidated Pictland; but (802-839) the Scandinavian sea-rovers began to hold large territories in Scotland, weakened the Picts, and made easy their conquest by Kenneth MacAlpine of Kintyre, the king of the Dalriad Scots of Argyll. In 860 this Scot became king of the Picts. Old legends represent him as having exterminated the Picts to the last man; and the Picts become, in popular tradition, a mythical folk, hardly human, to whom great feats, including the building of Glasgow cathedral, are attributed, as the walls of Tiryns and Mycenae in Greece were traditionally assigned to the energy of the Cyclopes. In 1814 Sir Walter Scott met a dwarfish traveller in the Orkneys, whom the natives regarded as a “Pecht” or Pict.
There was, of course, in fact, no extermination of the Picts, there was merely a change of dynasty, and alliance between Picts and Scots, and that change was probably made in accordance with Pictish customs of succession. Kenneth MacAlpine, though son of a Scottish father, was probably, though not certainly, a Pict on the mother's side, and in Pictland the crown was inherited in the female line. The consequence was that what had been Pictland came to be styled Scotland. The king of Alban was a Scot in the paternal line. His conquest was not achieved at a blow, but his language, Gaelic, prevailed. Henceforth, despite the incursions of the Scandinavians, and partly because of them, the ecclesiastical and royal centres of life are moved to the south and the east, though the king of Alban (Ardrigh) is not always master of his Ri, or subordinate princes of the seven provinces (Mortuath). His position is rather that of an overlord, or Bretwalda, like Agamemnon's among the Achaean anaktes. He allies himself with Cymric Strathclyde, and by constant raids, and thanks to English weakness caused by Danish invasions, he extends his power over English Lothian. A marriage of the daughter of Kenneth MacAlpine with the Welsh prince of Strathclyde gives Scotland a footing in that region; in short, Scotland slowly advances towards and even across the historic border.
Through this contact with and actual tenure of English lands arose the various so-called “submissions” of kings of Scotland Connexions with England. to the English crown. Thus (924) the English Chronicle asserts that Constantine, king of Scotland, “chose Edward King to father and lord.” It is impossible with here to analyse the disputes as to whether, in Freeman's words, “from this time to the 14th century” (he means, to Bannockburn) “the vassalage of Scotland was an essential part of the public law of the Isle of Britain.” In fact this vassalage was claimed at intervals by the English kings, and was admitted by Scottish kings for their lands in England; but as regards Scotland, was resisted in arms whenever opportunity arose. Each submission “held not long,” and the practical result was that 945) Malcolm acquired northern Strathclyde, “Cumberland, Galloway (?) and other districts,” while another Malcolm (1018) took Lothian, the northern part of Northumbria, after winning a great battle at Carham on the Tweed.
The Celts, Scoto-Picts, of Alban, had thus annexed a great English-speaking region, which remained loyal to their dynasty, the more loyal from abhorrence of the Norman conquerors. The English or anglicized element in Scotland was never subjugated by England, save during the few years of the Cromwellian Commonwealth, and was supported (with occasional defections, and troubles caused by dynastic Celtic risings) by the Celtic element in the kingdom during the long struggle for national independence. Scotland, in short, was too English to be conquered by England. Poor, distracted, threatened on occasion by the Celts on her flank and rear, anglicized Scotland preferred her poverty with independence, to the prosperity and peace which England would have given, if unresisted, but never could impose by war. Her independence, her resistance, curbed the conquering ambitions of England abroad; and it went for something in securing the independence of France, and the success of Protestantism, where it succeeded.
A sturdy and stoical temper was developed in the nation, which later helped parliamentary England in the struggle against the crown (1643-1648). Habits of foreign adventure and of thrift were evolved, which were of advantage to the empire when, too long after the union of 1707, Scottish men were admitted to participate in its privileges and in its administration. Such were the consequences, in the sequel, of what seemed a disastrous event, the absorption, by a Celtic kingdom, of a large and fertile region of northern England.
The English element in the realm of Malcolm II. (1005-1034) was the conducting medium of western ideas which naturally Dynasty of Malcolm II. appealed to the interests and the ambitions of that prince. On looking at the genealogical tree of the dynasty of Kenneth MacAlpine, we see that from the date of his death (859) to the accession of Duncan on the death of Malcolm II. (1034) no monarch is succeeded by his own son or grandson. The same peculiarity appears in the list of the ancient kings of Rome, but these are entangled in mythology. In the dynasty of Kenneth the succession to the crown alternated thus: he was succeeded by his brother Donald, who was followed. by his nephew, Kenneth's son, Constantine; Constantine's brother, Aodh, followed; and henceforth till 957, the kings were alternately chosen from the houses of Constantine and Aodh. It was the custom to appoint the successor to the king, his “Tanist,” at the same time as the king himself. Malcolm II. succeeded his own cousin, and, in accordance with the native system of royal inheritance, should have been followed by the unnamed grandson of his own predecessor, Kenneth III. But Malcolm is accused of putting his legitimate successor out of the way, and thus securing the succession of his own grandson, Duncan, a son of his daughter, Bethoc, and her husband Crinan, protector of the abbey (or lay abbot) of Dunkeld. Malcolm thus set the example of advance to the western system of royal successions, while in Crinan's lay tenure of the abbacy of Dunkeld we see the habit of appropriating ecclesiastical revenues which again became so common about a century before the Reformation.
The innovation of Malcolm II. brought no peace but a sword. Boedhe, son of Kenneth III., left a daughter, Gruach, who inherited the claims of the unnamed son of Boedhe slain by order of Malcolm. Gruach married Gilcomgain, and had issue male, Lulach. After the death of Gilcomgain, Gruach wedded Macbeth, Mormaor (or earl in later style) of the province or subkingdom of Moray; Macbeth slew Duncan, and ruled as protector of the legitimate claims of Lulach. From Lulach descended a line of Celtic prétendants, and for a century the dynasty violently founded by Malcolm II. was opposed by claimants of the blood of Lulach, representing the Celtic customs adverse to the English and Norman ideas of the family in possession of the throne. Thus Celtic principles, as opposed to the western principles of chartered feudalism, did not perish in Scotland without a long and severe struggle.
Meanwhile the dynasty of Malcolm II. was brought into close connexion with the English crown, and relied on English support, Malcolm Canmore. both before and after the Norman Conquest. The genius of Shakespeare, in his Macbeth, based on legendary materials borrowed by Hollinshed from Hector Boece, and on the dynastic myth of the descent of the Stuart kings from Banquo, has clouded the actual facts of history. To the Celts of Scotland, or at least to those of the great subkingship or province of Moray, Duncan, not Macbeth, was the usurper. Duncan left sons, Malcolm, called Canmore (great head), and Donald Ban; and in 1054 Siward, earl of Northumbria, defeated Macbeth, whether acting under the order of Edward the Confessor in favour of the claims of Malcolm Canmore, or merely to punish Macbeth for sheltering Norman fugitives from the Confessor's court. The latter casus belli is the more probable, though the chronicler, Florence of Worcester, asserts the protection of the sons of Duncan by England. Siward did not dethrone Macbeth, who was defeated and slain by Malcolm in 1057; Lulach fell obscurely in 1058, leaving claimants to his rights, though these did not trouble much the crowned king, Malcolm Canmore. His long reign (1058-1093), and his second marriage (1068) with Margaret, sister of Edgar Ætheling, of the ancient English royal blood—dispossessed by the Norman Conqueror—intensified the sway of English ideas in Scotland, and increased the prepotency of the English element in political, social and ecclesiastical affairs. The anarchic state of Northumberland and Cumberland after the Norman Conquest, which did not soon assimilate them, was Malcolm's opportunity. He held Cumberland (1070), and supported the claims of his brother-in-law, the Ætheling, while his relationship with Gospatric, earl of Northumbria, who retired into Scotland, gave him pretexts for invading the north-east of England. William the Conqueror's earl of Northumberland, Robert de Comines, was slain at Durham in 1069, and the houses of Gospatric (earls of Dunbar and March) and of de Comines (the Comyns of Badenoch) were long puissant in Scottish history.
In 1072 William marched north and took a disputed homage of Malcolm at Abernethy, receiving as hostage the king's eldest son (by his first wife, Ingebiorge), named Duncan. As to the nature of Malcolm's homage, whether for Scotland (Freeman), or for manors and a subsidy in England (Robertson), historians disagree. Malcolm subdued “the King of Moray,” son of Lulach, who died in far Lochaber, though his family's claims to the crown of Scotland did not lapse. In 1091 William Rufus renewed the treaty of Abernethy with Malcolm and fortified Carlisle, thereby cutting Malcolm off from Cumberland; Malcolm was summoned to meet Rufus at Gloucester; he went, but declined to accept the jurisdiction of the Anglo-Norman peers, or to “do right” to Rufus, except on the frontier of the two realms, wherever he may have supposed that frontier to be. He was an independent king, no vassal of England; as such (1093) he invaded Northumberland, and was slain at Alnwick. His wife, St Margaret, did not survive her sorrow; she died in the castle of Edinburgh. Her reforms in church matters had apparently made her unpopular with the Celts, but under cover of a mist her body was conveyed to and buried at Dunfermline.
Margaret, in fact, completed the reduction of the Celtic church in Scotland to conformity with western Christendom, and some recent presbyterian writers have not forgiven her. Beautiful, charitable and pious, she mollified the fierce manners of her husband, who, according to her director and biographer, Turgot, acted as interpreter between her and the Gaelic-speaking ecclesiastics at their conferences. Certain obscure religious usages, as regards Lent, the Communion, the non-observance of Sunday, non-communicating at Easter, and the Forbidden Degrees in marriage, were brought into conformity with western Christendom. The last Celtic “bishop of Alban” died at this time; and when the dynasty of Malcolm Canmore was established after an interval of turmoil, English ecclesiastics began to oust the Celtic Culdees from St Andrews.
Malcolm would have been succeeded by his eldest son by Margaret, Edward, but he fell beside his father at Alnwick, and the succession was disputed between Duncan, son of Malcolm by his first wife; Edmund, eldest surviving son of Malcolm and Margaret; and Donald Ban, brother of Malcolm. The Celts (apart from the claimant of the blood of Lulach and the house of Moray) placed Donald Ban on the throne; England supported Duncan (by primogeniture Malcolm's heir, and a hostage in England); there was division of the kingdom till Duncan was slain, and Edgar, son of Malcolm and Margaret, was restored by Edgar Ætheling. He put out the eyes of his uncle, Donald Ban, and in unsaintly ways established the dynasty of the English St Margaret and of the Celtic Malcolm. In 1103 Edgar's sister, Eadgyth (Matilda), married Henry I.; the dynasty of Scotland now shows, by the names of its members, that the English element in it was predominant. After Donald Ban no Scottish sovereign bears a Gaelic Christian name save Malcolm the Maiden; and perhaps no later king knew Gaelic.
Edgar, before his death, established his brother, Alexander I., as king of Scotland, north of Forth and Clyde, with Edinburgh, Alexander I. which looks as if he considered Forth and Clyde the frontier of what was legally Scotland; while his younger brother, David, as earl, ruled Lothian and Cumbria. The reign of Alexander I. is marked by war with the northern Celts, and by the introduction of English bishops of St Andrews, while the claims of the see of York to superiority over the Scottish church were cleverly evaded at Glasgow (David's bishopric), as well as at St Andrews, where English Augustinian canons were now established, to the prejudice of the Celtic Culdees. We observe that the chief peers of Alexander, who signed the charter of his monastery at Scone, are Celts—Heth, earl of Moray (husband of the daughter of Lulach), Malise of Strathearn, Dufagan of Fife, and Rory. After the death of Alexander I. (1124) his successor, David I., is attended by men of Norman names, Moreville, Umfraville, Somerville, Bruce, FitzAlan (the ancestor of the Stewards of Scotland, and himself of an ancient Breton house), and so on.
David, educated in England by Normans, was the maker of a Scotland whereof the anglicized part at least was now ruled by David I. Anglo-Norman feudalism and Anglo-Norman municipal laws in the burghs. Marrying Matilda, widow of Simon de St Liz and heiress of Waltheof, David received the earldom of Huntingdon and supposed himself to have claims over Northumberland, a cause of war for three generations. With Anglo-Norman aid he repelled a Celtic rising—the right of the claimants to represent the blood of Lulach is exquisitely complex and obscure in this case—but in the end David annexed to the crown the great old sub-kingdom or province of Moray, and made grants therein to English, Norman and Scottish followers.
Some of the most eminent of his southern allies could not stand by David when, in the reign of Stephen and in fidelity to the cause of his niece, the empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I., he invaded England. The towns of Northumberland and Cumberland opened their gates, but he and Stephen met in conference at Durham, and David's son Henry, prince of Scotland, received the Honour of Huntingdon, Carlisle, Doncaster “and all that pertains to them” (1135). Stephen's relations with Henry became unfriendly, and in January 1138, in pursuance of Henry's claim to Northumberland, David again invaded. A holy war against him was proclaimed by the archbishop of York, and on the 22nd of August 1138 Bruce, Baliol, and others of David's southern allies renounced fealty to him, and he was defeated at the battle of the Standard, near Northallerton. David regained the shelter of Carlisle, a legate from Rome made peace, and Prince Henry received the investiture of Northumberland, without the strong fortresses of Bamborough and Newcastle.
The anarchic weakness of the reign of Stephen enabled David to secure his hold of northern England to the Till, but the death of his gallant and gentle son Henry, in June 1152, left the succession to his son, Malcolm the Maiden, then a child of ten, and David's death (24th of May 1153) exposed Scotland to the dangers of a royal minority.
David was, if any man was, the maker of Scotland. The bishoprics erected by him, and his many Lowland abbeys, Social and political growth. Holyrood, Melrose, Dryburgh, Kelso, Jedburgh and others, confirmed the freedom of the Scottish church from the claims of the see of York, encouraged the improvement of agriculture and endowed the country with beautiful examples of architecture. His charters to landowners and burghs (charters not being novel in Scotland, but now more lavishly conferred) substituted written documents for the unwritten customs of Celtic tenure, and converted the under kings of provinces into earls of the king, while vice-comites, or sheriffs, administered local justice in the king's name, though Celtic custom still prevailed, under a thin veneer of law, in the Celtic regions, as in Galloway. Where Anglo-Normans obtained lands in Moray and Renfrewshire, there seems to have been no displacement of the population: though a FitzAlan was dominant in Renfrewshire, the “good men,” or gentry, still bore Gaelic names, till territorial names—“of” this or that place—came into use. In Lothian the place-names recorded in charters were already, for the most part, English. Beneath the freeholders and noblesse were free tenants, farmers paying rents, mainly in kind, and in services of labour and of war. Below these were the nativi, attached to the land, and changing masters when the land changed hands. These nativi were gradually emancipated, partly through the influence of the church, partly for economic reasons, partly through the rule that any vilein became free after a year's residence in a burgh.
Thus Scotland never saw a jacquerie or servile rising. The burghs were not actually the creations of David and William the Lion, but the rights, duties and privileges which had gradually developed in the towns were in the time of these kings codified and confirmed by charters; the towns had magistrates of their own election, courts, and legalized open markets. The greater burghers had a union, and made laws and regulations for municipal affairs. In addition to royal burghs, there were burghs of nobles and of bishops, and the provostship was apt to become, by custom, almost hereditary in a local noble family, which protected the burgesses.
The germ of a parliament existed in the crown vassals and the royal officials—chancellor, steward, constable, marischal and the rest—with bishops, priors, earls, barons and other probi homines. The term tota communitas, “the whole community,” appears to denote all freeholders of gentle birth, who might be present at any important assembly for the discussion of national affairs. Burgesses do not yet receive mention as present on such occasions.
Scotland was as yet, and in fact remained, destitute of constitutional history as it appears in England. There was, technically speaking, no taxation. The king “lived on his own,” on rent of crown lands, feudal fines and aids, wardships, marriages, and the revenues of vacant bishoprics. Opposition used the mechanism of conspiracies; and changes of administration were effected by the seizure of the king's person, especially during the many royal minorities.
In the matter of justice, royal succeeded to tribal authority. Offences were no longer against the individual and his kin, but against the king's peace, or against the peace of subordinate holders of courts—earls, thanes, barons, bishops and abbots. Compurgation, the ordeal, and trial by battle began to yield to Visnet, Jugement del Pais, the “good men of the country,” giving their verdict, while sentence was passed by the judge, sheriff, alderman or bailiff. “The Four Pleas of the Crown,” murder, arson, rape and robbery, were relegated to the king's court, under Alexander II. ruled by four grand justiciaries. While Roman law became the foundation of justice, a learned clerk was needed as assessor and developed into the Lord justice Clerk. The vice-comes, or sheriff, as the king's direct representative, was the centre of justice for shires, and his judicature tended to encroach on that of noble holders of courts. Royal authority, sheriffs, juries and witnesses gradually superseded ordeal, compurgation, and trial by battle, though even barons long retained the right of “pit and gallows.”
In the matter of education, the monasteries had their schools, as had the parish churches, and there were high schools in the burghs, and “song-schools.” From the time of David to the death of Alexander III. Scotland was relatively peaceful, prosperous, and, in the south, anglicized, and was now in the general movement of western civilization.
Malcolm the Maiden, before his early death in 1165, had put down the menacing power of Somerled, lord of the Isles, a chief apparently of mixed Celtic and Scandinavian blood, the founder of the great clan of Macdonald, whose chiefs, the lords of the Isles, were almost royal; Malcolm also subdued the Celts of Galloway, sometimes called Picts, but at this time Gaelic in speech.
Malcolm's brother, William the Lion (1165-1214), initiated the French alliance, fondly ascribed to the time of Charlemagne. William the Lion. William's desire was to seize Northumberland; in 1173 he was allied with Henry, the rebellious son of Henry II., himself in alliance with France. The capture of William at Alnwick, in July 1174, permitted a Celtic revolt in Galloway, and necessitated the Treaty of Falaise, by which for fifteen years Scotland was absolutely a fief of England, though the clergy maintained their independence of the see of York, which was recognized by Pope Clement III. in 1188. In a quarrel of church and state the legate had been authorized to lay an interdict on Scotland; William and the country merely disregarded it; and in 1191 a new pope absolved the Scottish king. The Celtic risings now were made in defence of the royal claims of a descendant of Duncan, son of Malcolm Canmore; there were also MacHeth claimants to the old rights of Lulach; Galloway and the Celtic north were ceaselessly agitated.
After the death of Henry II. in 1189, Richard I. sold back to Scotland all that his father had gained by the Treaty of Falaise, and William only became Richard's man—for all the lands for which his predecessors had been liegemen to the English kings, a vague phrase but implying that the king of Scotland was not liegeman for Scotland. To John, William did homage (1200) salvo jure sua. In 1209 he promised to purchase John's goodwill with 15,000 merks, and gave hostages. Peace was preserved till William died in 1214.
In the reign of his successor, Alexander II., the risings of Celtic claimants died out; he converted Argyll into a sheriffdom, Alexander III. and (1237) resigned the claims to Northumberland, in exchange for lands in the northern English counties with a rental of £200 yearly. His death in 1249 left the crown to his son, Alexander III., a child of eight, in whose minority began the practice by which parties among the nobility seized the person of the sovereign. At the age of ten, Alexander, at York, wedded a child bride, Margaret, daughter of Henry III. His boyhood was distracted by vague party strifes, but Henry did not attempt to administer his country. In 1261 his queen bore, at Windsor, a daughter, Margaret, who later, marrying Eric, king of Norway, became the mother of “The Maid of Norway,” heiress of Alexander III.; the girl whose early death left the succession disputed, and opened the flood-gates of strife. Alexander (1260) won the western isles and the Isle of Man from Norway, paying 4000 merks, and promising a yearly rent of 100 merks. In 1279 Alexander did homage to Edward I. at Westminster, salvo jure sua, and through the lips of Bruce, earl of Carrick. The homage was vague, “for the lands which he holds of the king of England,” or according to the Scottish version, “saving my own kingdom.” On the death of Alexander’s daughter, Margaret of Norway (1283), and of his son, the prince of Scotland, without issue, the estates, at Scone, recognized Margaret’s infant daughter as rightful successor. At this assembly were Bruce, earl of Annandale; Robert de Brus, earl of Carrick (later king), his son; Comyn, earl of Buchan; John Baliol; and James the Steward of Scotland, of the house of FitzAlan. On the 19th of March 1286 Alexander died, in consequence of a slip made by his horse on a cliff near Kinghorn during a night ride. His death was the great calamity of Scotland, and is lamented in a famous fragment of early Scottish verse. The golden age of “The Kings of Peace” was ended.
The first step of the Scottish noblesse (mainly men of Norman names), after Alexander’s death, was to send a secret verbal message to Edward of England. Six custodians of the realm were then appointed, including the bishop of Glasgow (Wishart) and the bishop of St Andrews Bruce and Baliol parties. (Frazer). Presently the nobles formed two hostile parties, that of the Bruces and that of Baliol. The Bruce party took up arms, and from the terms of their “band,” or agreement, obviously contemplated resistance to the rights of the Maid of Norway, while declaring their fealty to Edward. In 1286–1289 Scotland was on the verge of civil war. Edward procured a papal dispensation for the marriage of the Maid of Norway to his son Edward; the Scots were glad to consent, and preliminaries were adjusted by the Treaty of Birgham (18th of July 1290). All possible care was taken by the Scots to guard their national independence, but Edward succeeded in inserting his favourite clause, “saving always the rights of the King of England, which belonged, or ought to belong, to him.” As the Bruce faction had asserted their fealty to Edward, the carefully patriotic attitude of the Scots may be ascribed to the two bishops, who did not consistently live on this level. In August Edward ventured a claim to the castles of Scotland, which was not admitted. By the 19th of August it was known that the child queen had arrived in the Orkneys. An assembly was being held at Scone; the Bruces did not appear, but, by the 7th of October, they arrived in arms, on a rumour of the queen’s death. The bishop of St Andrews tells Edward of these events, and urges him to come to the border, to preserve peace. The bishop of St Andrews was for Baliol, he of Glasgow was for Bruce; and the Baliol party, the seven earls complain, was ravaging Moray. These seven earls appear to represent the old rulers of the seven provinces of Pictland, and asserted ancient claims to elect a king. The Bruces placed themselves under Edward’s protection. In March 1291 he ordered search to be made for documents bearing on his claims in the English clerical libraries, and summoned his northern feudal levies to meet him at Norham on Tweed, fully armed, in June. Hither he called the representatives of Scotland for the 10th of May; on the 2nd of June the eight claimants of the crown acknowledged him as Lord Paramount, despite a written protest of the communitas of Scotland; obscurely mentioned, and not easily to be understood. Edward took homage from all, including burgesses even, at Perth; his decision on the claims was deferred to the 2nd of June 1292 at Berwick.
The choice lay between descendants in the female line of David of Huntingdon, younger brother of William the Lion. John Baliol was great-grandson of this David, through his eldest daughter; Bruce the old was grandson of David through his second daughter, and pleaded that, by Scottish John Baliol crowned. custom, he was David’s heir. He also pleaded a selection of himself as successor by Alexander II., before the birth of Alexander III., but of this he had no documentary evidence. On the 17th of November 1292 Edward decided, against Scottish custom (if such custom really existed), in favour of Baliol, who did fealty, and, amidst cries of dissent, was crowned at Scone on the 26th of December.
Edward instantly began to summon John to his courts, even on such puny matters as a wine-merchant’s disputed bill. He appeared to aim at driving Baliol into rebellion and annexing his kingdom. In 1293 Edward refused to obey a similar summons from the king of France, and Intervention by England. in 1294 was fighting in Gascony. Baliol declined to follow his standard and negotiated for a French alliance. Edward ordered Baliol’s English property to be confiscated; Baliol renounced his fealty, and English merchants were massacred at Berwick. The Comyns failed in an attack on Carlisle, and (30th of March 1296) Edward took Berwick, seized William Douglas (father of the Good Lord James), and massacred the male populace. A disorderly levy of Scots, appearing on the hills above Dunbar, left their strong position (like Leslie later) and were defeated with heavy loss. Robert Bruce was now of Edward’s party; the nobles in a mass surrendered and Edward was unopposed. He seized the Black Rood, the coronation stone of Scone, St Margaret’s fragment of the True Cross, and many documents; then he marched north as far as Elgin. The Ragman’s Roll contains sworn submissions of all probi homines outside of the western thoroughly Celtic region; and, in October 1296, Edward returned to England, with Baliol his prisoner, leaving Scotland in the hands of the earl of Surrey as guardian, Cressingham as treasurer, and Ormsby as justiciary.,
Agitation at once broke out, and, when Edward went abroad in June 1297, he left orders for suppression of assemblies (conventiculae). Now Sir William Wallace came to the front, a younger son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie, near Paisley. The family probably came from England with Wallace. the FitzAlans, the hereditary Stewards of Scotland. The English chroniclers call Wallace latro, “a brigand,” and he probably was a leader of broken men, discontented with English rule. Sir Thomas Gray, son of an English gentleman wounded in a rising at Lanark in May 1297, says that Wallace was chosen leader “by the commune of Scotland,” and began operations by slaying Heselrig, sheriff of Clydesdale, at Lanark. The Lanercost contemporary chronicler writes that the bishop of Glasgow and the Steward began the broil, and called in Wallace as the leading brigand in the country-side. Wallace, in fact, was a gentleman of good education. Percy and Clifford led the English forces to suppress him, and (7th July) made terms with the bishop, the Steward and Robert Bruce, who submitted; but Wallace held out in Ettrick Forest. Sir William Douglas was kept a prisoner for life, but Andrew Murray was out in Moray, with a large following. The nobles who had submitted made delays in providing hostages, and Warenne marched from Berwick against Wallace, who, by September 1297, was north of Tay.
On hearing of Warenne’s advance, Wallace occupied the Abbey Craig at Stirling, commanding the narrow bridge over the Forth; the Steward and Lennox; attempted pacific negotiations; a brawl occurred; and next day (11th of September) the English crossed Stirling bridge, marched back again, recrossed, and were attacked in deploying from the bridge. The general, Warenne, was old and feeble, Cressingham was hasty and confident; counsels were confused, the manner of attack was rash, and the rout was sanguinary. Cressingham was slain, and Warenne fled to Berwick. Pursuing his victory, Wallace ravaged Cumberland, most English writers say with savage ferocity; but Hemingburgh represents Wallace as courteous on one occasion, and as confessing that his men were out of hand.
By the 29th of March 1298 Wallace appears, in a charter granted by himself, as guardian of the kingdom, and, with Andrew Murray, as army leader in the name of King John—that is, the captive Baliol. By June 1298 Robert Bruce is active in the service of Edward, in Galloway. Edward was moving on Scotland, and on the 22nd of July he found Wallace in force, and in a strong position, guarded by a morass, at Falkirk. The Scottish horsemen fled from the English cavalry, but the archers of Ettrick fought and died round Sir John Stewart of Bonhill, brother of the Steward. The schiltrons, or squares of Scottish spearmen, were unbroken by Edward's cavalry, till their ranks were thinned by the English bowmen and could no longer keep out the charging horse. Wallace had made the error of risking a general engagement in place of retiring into the hills; to do this had, it is said, been his purpose, but Edward surprised him, and Wallace disappears from the leadership, while the wavering Robert Bruce appears in command, with the new bishop of St Andrews, Lamberton; Lord Soulis; and the younger Comyn, “the Red Comyn” of Badenoch. For want of supplies, Edward returned to England through Annandale, burning Bruce's castle of Lochmaben. Stirling still held out for England. There is certain evidence of fierce dissensions in some way connected with Wallace, among the Scottish leaders (August 1299). Wallace was going to France; the Scottish leaders were reconciled to each other, and took the castle of Stirling, which they entrusted to Sir William Oliphant. The Scottish cause seemed stronger than ever, under Bruce, the Steward, the Red Comyn and Lamberton, but in June 1300 Edward mustered a splendid array, and took Carlaverock castle, but, on the arrival of the archbishop of Canterbury with a letter from the pope approving of the Scottish cause, he granted a truce till Whitsuntide 1301. The barons of England angrily refused to submit to the papal interference, but nothing decisive was attempted by Edward, though Bruce had again entered his service. By 1303 France (which doubtless had moved the pope to his action) deserted the Scots in the Treaty of Amiens, and Edward, with little opposition, overran Scotland in 1303.
On the 9th of February 1304 Comyn with his companions submitted; they hunted Wallace, who had returned from the continent, and on the 24th of July the brave Oliphant surrendered Stirling on terms of a degrading nature. Among his officers we see the names of Napier, Ramsay, Haliburton and Polwarth.
The noblest names of Scotland now took part in the pursuit of Wallace, who, as great in diplomacy as in war, had visited Rome (he had a safe-conduct of Philip of France to that end), and had at least secured a respite for his country. It seems probable that Wallace remained consistently loyal to Baliol, and hostile to the party of the wavering Bruce. He was taken near Glasgow, in his own country, and handed over to England by Sir John Menteith, sheriff of Dumbartonshire. Menteith certainly received the blood-money, £100 yearly in land, and Wallace, like Montrose, was hanged, disembowelled and quartered (at London, August 1305). Tradition attributes to Wallace strength equal to his courage. His diplomacy in France proves him to have been a man of education, and his honour is unimpeached; he never wavered, he never was liegeman of Edward, while bishops, nobles, and, above all, Bruce, perjured themselves and turned their coats again and again. The martyr of an impossible loyalty, Wallace shares the, illustrious immortality of the great Montrose, and is by far the most popular hero of his country's history. His victory at Stirling lit a fire which was never quenched, and began the long and cruel wars of independence on which Scotland now entered.
For an hour there seemed as if there might be no raising of the fallen standard of St Andrew. Edward had not yet alienated Bruce. the country by cruelty, save in the case of Wallace and the massacre of Berwick. He aimed at a union of the two countries, and Scottish representatives were chosen to sit in the English parliament. The laws of David I. were to be revised. Eight justices were appointed, the sheriffs were mainly Scots of the kingdom; the bishop of St Andrews was one of the Scottish representatives. The country was being reorganized, ruined churches and bridges were being rebuilt. The “commons,” the populace, were eager for peace; nobles like Bruce were Edward's men. Bruce had been actively engaged in the siege of Stirling, and had succeeded his father as earl of Annandale. Yet, during the siege of Stirling (11th of June 1304), Bruce had entered into a secret band with Lamberton, bishop of St Andrews, for mutual aid. Early in February 1306 he stabbed the Red Comyn before the high altar, in the church of the Franciscans at Dumfries: Comyn's uncle was also slain, and Bruce, from his castle of Lochmaben, summoned his party to arms; he was supported by the bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow, and by Sir James of Douglas, and was promptly crowned by the countess of Buchan, representing the clan MacDuff, at Scone.
The cause of the slaying of Comyn is unknown; the two men had long been at odds, but the evidence does not confirm the story that Comyn had betrayed Bruce to Edward. It is more probable that Comyn merely refused to be drawn by Bruce into a rising, and that the deed was unpremeditated. Be that as it may, Bruce had now no place of repentance for a sacrilegious homicide; he could not turn his tabard again; he was outlawed, forfeited and excommunicated. He had against him, not merely England, but the kith and kin of Comyn, including the potent clan of MacDowall or MacDougall in Galloway and Lorne; on his own side he had his kinship, broken men, and the clergy of Scotland. Heedless of the excommunication they backed him, and the preaching friars proclaimed his to be a holy war.
Bruce was warring in Galloway when, in May 1306, Aymer de Valence led an English force to Perth. Bruce followed, and was defeated in Methven wood; the prisoners of rank, his brother Nigel, and Atholl, with others, were hanged, and his two bishops were presently secured. “All the Commons went him fra,” says Barbour, the poet chronicler. His queen, with Lady Buchan and his sister, were imprisoned; and his castles were held against him. He took to the heather, making for the western seas, hewing his way through the MacDougals at Tyndrum and marching over the mountains to Loch Lomond, which he crossed in a canoe. Sir Nial Campbell of Lochow, founder of the house of Argyll, secured shipping for him, and he reached a castle of Macdonald of Islay (Angus Og), his ally, at Dunaverty in Kintyre. He was driven to an isle off the Irish coast; he thence joined Douglas in Arran, and by a sudden camisade he butchered the English cantoned under his own castle of Turnberry in Carrick. Two of his brothers were taken in Galloway and hanged at Carlisle, while King Edward, a dying man, lay with a great army at Carlisle, or at the neighbouring abbey of Lanercost. Aymer de Valence, Butetourte, Clifford, and Mowbray were sent to net and “drive” the inner wilds of Galloway, where Bruce lurked in the forests and caves of Loch Trool and Loch Dungeon. Now he evaded them, now he and his valiant brother Edward surprised and cut them up in detail, doing miracula, says a contemporary English chronicler. Douglas, an excellent guerilla leader, captured his own castle and butchered the English garrison. By the 15th of May 1307 a writer of a letter from Forfar says that if Edward dies his cause in Scotland is lost. Bruce slipped into Ayrshire and defeated de Valence at London Hill; so Edward, a dying man, began to move against him with his whole force. He died (7th of July 1307) at Burgh-on-Sands, leaving his incompetent son to ruin himself by his own follies, while ferocious hangings and dragging of men to death at horses' heels roused the Scottish Commons, and the men of Ettrick and Tweeddale, renouncing their new lord, de Valence, came over to the wandering knight who stood for Scotland.
In the winter of 1307 and in 1308 Bruce ruined Buchan, a Comyn territory, and won the castles of Aberdeen and Forfar, while Edward Bruce cleared the English out of Galloway. In the summer of 1309 Bruce fell on the MacDougals, on the right side of the Awe, where it rushes from Loch Awe at the pass of Brander, and, aided by a rear attack led by Douglas, seized the bridge and massacred the enemy. He then took the old royal castle of Dunstaffnage and drove the chief, John of Lorne, into England; Menteith, the captor of Wallace, changed sides, and Edward, after a feeble invasion in 1310, retreated from a land laid desolate by the Scots.
In 1311 Bruce carried the war into England, seconded by the most audacious if the least skilled of his captains, his daring brother Edward. For two years the north of England, as far south as Durham and Chester, was the prey of the Scots, and some English counties secured themselves by paying an indemnity. The castles of Carlisle and Berwick, however, repelled the assailants, but Perth was surprised, in January 1313, Bruce himself leading the advance. Randolph, earl of Murray, took the chief hold in the country, Edinburgh castle, by scaling the precipitous rock to the north, while a feigned attack was being made on the accessible southern front. In short almost every castle held by the English was captured, and the fortifications were destroyed.
In the spring of 1313 Edward Bruce invested Stirling castle, the key of Scotland; on midsummer day he accepted a pact for the surrender of the place if not relieved within a year. This was a heedless piece of chivalry on Edward's part. It gave the English king, less opposed by his nobles since his favourite, Gaveston, was slain, time to muster a large army, which Bruce must meet, if at all, in the open field. Edward II. not only summoned English but Irish levies, and knights of Hainault, Bretagne, Gascony and Aquitaine crowded to his standard. The estimates of numbers by the old writers are usually much exaggerated; modern authorities reckon King Edward's army at 50,000 of whom 10,000 were cavalry. Old accounts put the infantry at 100,000, the horsemen at 40,000. Bruce had but five hundred horse, under Keith the Marischal; Douglas led the levies of his own district and Ettrick Forest; Randolph commanded the men of Moray; Walter Steward, those of the south-western shires; and Angus Og brought to the Scottish standard the light-footed men of the Isles, and, probably, of Lochaber, Moidart, and the western coast in general. Bruce commanded the people of Carrick and probably of his old earldom, Annandale.
Moving out from the Torwood forest, Bruce arrayed his force so as to guard either the Roman road through St Ninians, or Bannockburn the way through the Carse, which was then studded with marshes and small lakes. The former route appeared to be chosen by the English, and Bruce stationed his army in a position where it was defended by a cleugh, or ravine of the Bannockburn, and by two morasses between which was a practicable but narrow neck of firm land. Randolph, on Bruce's left, was to guard against a rush of English cavalry to relieve Stirling castle. The Macdonald tradition is that their clan was on the right wing, under Angus Og; the old accounts place them with Bruce's reserves. Three hundred English horsemen appear to have stolen round Randolph's flank unseen by him, and Bruce is said to have warned him that “a rose had fallen from his chaplet.” Randolph advanced with his footmen against the English horse, who unwarily accepted his challenge and were defeated by his spearmen. While Edward's army paused, Bruce, mounted on a palfrey, was attacked by Sir Henry Bohun. Bruce evaded his spear and slew him with an axe stroke; the axe shaft broke in his hand. The omens were evil for England; and her forces bivouacked, reserving the general attack for the following day. Bruce is said to have proposed retreat and a guerilla war, but his council were for fighting.
In the general engagement, next day, the English cavalry could not break the “impenetrable wood” of the Scottish spearmen, who, however, were galled by the arrows of the English bowmen, which had broken their formation at Falkirk. Bruce bade Keith, with his five hundred horse, charge the archers in flank: apparently they were unprotected by pikes; they were broken, and the great peril passed away. The Scottish archers charged with axe in hand, and the Scottish right front was protected by a mass of fallen English horses and fighting men; the rear ranks of the English, clogged and crowded, could not reach the foe, and the line of Scottish spears pressed steadily and slowly forward. Now a panic was caused by a rush of camp followers from the “gillie's hill”: the English wavered; Bruce commanded an advance of his whole line: the English rout was general, and, had Bruce possessed cavalry, few would have escaped. The Bannockburn was choked with the fallen, and it was only by hard spurring that Edward and his guards reached Dunbar, whence he sailed to Berwick. An immense booty and many ransoms rewarded the Scots, whose victory was one of the decisive battles of the world. It was won by the generalship of Bruce and his captains; by the excellence of his position, by the steadiness of his men, and, obviously, by the reckless fury of the English cavalry, and by the folly which left their archers open to defeat by the Marischal's handful of horse (24th of June 1314).
Bruce now swept the country, but Carlisle he could not take. He married his daughter, Marjory, to the Steward, and from this union came the Stewart (Stuart) dynasty. The invasion of Ireland by Edward Bruce failed (1315-1318), and Edward fell in battle: after which (1318) parliament settled the crown in the Steward's line, failing male descendants of Robert Bruce. He disdained the pope's efforts to make peace with England, except on terms of absolute independence for his country. He took and held Berwick, and (14th of October 1322) defeated Edward with heavy loss near Byland Abbey in Yorkshire, where the highlanders scaled a cliff and drove the English from a formidable position. A thirteen years' truce was arranged in 1323: the pope removed his excommunication from Bruce, and acknowledged him as king: a son, David, was born to him in 1324.
The murder of Edward II. (1327) was followed by successful Scottish raids in the north, and in May 1328 the Treaty of Bruce's death and work. Northampton sealed the triumph of Scotland. David Bruce was to marry Joanna of England: Bruce was recognized as king: former owners of forfeited lands, with three exceptions, were not to be restored. This led, after Bruce's death, to an invasion by the disinherited English ci-devant lords of lands in Scotland, and to a long war from which Scotland was only “saved as by fire.” Bruce died, outworn by war and hardships, on the 7th of June 1329: his body was buried in Dunfermline abbey; his heart, which Douglas was bearing to the Holy Land, was brought home again, after Douglas's chivalrous death in battle with the Moors in Spain.
Bruce, previously so shifty, had never wavered or turned back since he smote the Red Comyn at Dumfries. In face of obstacles apparently insurmountable he had made a nation, consolidating all the forces which Wallace had stirred into life. There is, perhaps, nothing in the history of medieval Europe which so closely resembles a voice from ancient Greece as the reply of the nobles and the whole communitas of Scotland to the pope (parliament of Aberbrothock, 6th of April 1320). They will be liegemen of Bruce only so long as he resists England. As long as a hundred Scots are left alive, they will continue the war for freedom, “which no good man loses save with his life.” They show that the barbarities of Edward I. (which he regarded as reprisals) have made it eternally impossible for Scotland to yield to an English king. Their excommunication by Rome does not trouble them at all. They are free from Rome, from England, from all alien powers. Henceforth, through good and evil fortune, this was the spirit of the nation.
The most important point in constitutional history was the action of a parliament at Cambuskenneth, near Stirling, in 1326. The representatives of the burghs were present: they made a grant of all tenths to the king during his life; while they covenanted with him that he should collect no other taxes and should exercise the privileges of prisiae et cariagia with moderation. The long wars had been adverse to commerce, for which ransoms and the booty of Bannockburn made inadequate compensation. But the great abbey church of St Andrews was, none the less, completed, to stand for some two hundred and forty years, and was dedicated in the presence of Bruce.
The brilliant and sustained effort which made Scotland independent
was almost paralysed by the deaths of Bruce and the Good Sir James of Douglas, during the minority of David II.
(crowned, 24th of November 1331). The disinherited lords,
David II.
Struggle with Edward Baliol.
deprived of their lands by Bruce, were headed by
Edward Baliol, claiming the crown of Scotland as heir
of John Baliol, and secretly backed by England.
Randolph died in July 1332, and in August Edward Baliol,
with the disinherited lord of Liddesdale, and Beaumont,
the disinherited earl of Buchan, and the English claimant of
the earldom of Atholl, landed a filibustering force in Forfarshire.
They were opposed by the new regent of Scotland, the earl of
Mar, who was routed with heavy loss and was slain, at Dupplin,
on the 12th of August 1332. The English owed the victory to
their archers, whose shafts rolled up a courageous charge by the
Scots. Edward Baliol was enabled to seize and fortify Perth
and was crowned at Scone, as Edward I. of Scotland (24th of
September). On the 23rd of November, at Roxburgh, Baliol
acknowledged Edward III. as his liege lord and promised to
surrender Berwick and large lands in southern Scotland. The
hands on the clock were then put back to the time of the reign
of John Baliol. But the earl of Murray, son of Randolph, and
Archibald, youngest brother of the Good Lord James of Douglas,
surprised Baliol at Annan and drove him, half clad, into England.
The struggle was now (1333) for Berwick, which was besieged by Edward III. Archibald Douglas tried to relieve it, just as Relations with Edward III. Edward II. strove to relieve Stirling, and found his Bannockburn on Halidon hill (19th of July 1333), where he was routed and slain, with many of the leaders of the Scots. Scotland was never again to hold Berwick for any length of time: meanwhile a few castles stood out, but the child king was sent over to France for safe keeping. A parliament held by Baliol at Edinburgh (February 1334) ratified the promises made by him to England at Roxburgh: the disinherited lords were in power and many patriots turned their coats. At Newcastle on the 12th of July Baliol surrendered to Edward III. the southern shires of Scotland with their castles: he had already done homage for the whole of Scotland; and Edward III. would have succeeded where Edward I. failed, had not the partisans of Baliol come to deadly feud over matters of their private interests and ambitions. Some took part with Sir Andrew Murray, son of a companion of Wallace, and with the Steward, who contrived to occupy the castle of Dunbarton, the key of western Scotland. These two men, with Campbell of Loch Awe, and Randolph's son, the earl of Moray, held up the national standard and were joined by the English claimant of the earldom of Atholl.
Randolph's daughter, too, the famous Black Agnes of Dunbar, brought over her wavering husband, the earl of March, to the side of the patriots, and there was a war of partisans, while Edward III. again and again invaded and desolated southern Scotland. In 1335-1336 the English party prevailed, and patriots began to come into the English peace: Atholl again changed his side, but the sister of Bruce held out in Kildrummie castle. Andrew Murray, March and a Douglas, the Black Knight of Liddesdale, went to her relief and slew Atholl: Edward III. (1336) again waged a victorious summer campaign, from Perth as his base, and again found Scottish resistance revive in winter. His rupture with France in October 1337, caused by his claims to the French crown, tended to withdraw his attention from Scotland, where, though the staunch Sir Andrew Murray died, Black Agnes drove the English besiegers from Dunbar (1338), while the Knight of Liddesdale recovered Perth. By 1342 Roxburgh, Stirling and Edinburgh castles were again in Scottish hands, though the Knight of Liddesdale captured and starved to death, in Hermitage castle, his gallant companion in arms, Sir Alexander Ramsay, who had relieved the garrison of Dunbar. With this Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, a ruffian and a traitor, may be said to begin the long struggle between his too powerful house and the crown.
King David, a lad of eighteen, had returned from France and had removed this Douglas from the sheriffdom of Teviotdale, superseding him by Alexander Ramsay. Douglas revenged himself on Ramsay, as we have seen, and though David was obliged to overlook the crime, the Knight of Liddesdale henceforth was not to be trusted as loyal against England. It is David's captivity. probable that he was intriguing for Baliol's restoration, and he certainly was securing the favour of Edward III. An ill-kept truce of three years ended in October 1346, when David attempted to lead the whole force of his realm, including the levies of John, Lord of the Isles, and of the western Celts in general, against England. As the Celts marched south the earl of Ross slew Ronald Macdonald, whose inheritance was claimed by John of the Isles. As a result, the Islesmen went home: David, however, crossed the border, plundering and burning the marches. Near Durham he came into touch with English levies under Henry Percy and the archbishop of York. David was a knight of the French school of late chivalry: he was not a general like Bruce or Randolph. In this affair of Neville's Cross (17th of October 1346) he copied the mistakes of Edward II. at Bannockburn; his crowded division was broken by the English archers, and the king himself was wounded and captured. Moray, the last male representative of Randolph, with the Constable and Earl Marischal of Scotland, was slain; the Steward made his escape: and, henceforth, the childless David regarded his heir, the Steward, with jealousy and suspicion. The Steward, during the king's captivity, was regent, and the Douglas of Liddesdale (the son of Archibald and nephew of the Good Lord James) drove the English out of Douglasdale, Teviotdale and the forest of Ettrick. A truce till 1354 was arranged between England, France and Scotland, while the country strove to raise the royal ransom, and David, who preferred English ways to those of his own kingdom, acknowledged Edward III. as his paramount. It became David's policy to secure his own life interest on Scotland, while the crown, on his decease, should go to one of the English royal family. The more loyal William Douglas, in 1353, slew his kinsman, the shifty Knight of Liddesdale, on the braes of Yarrow, and a fragment of one of the oldest Scottish ballads deplores his fall.
In July 1354 an arrangement as to David's ransom was made: his price was 90,000 merks sterling (for the coinage of Scotland David's agreement with Edward. was already beginning to be debased). Negotiations were interrupted by the arrival of French reinforcements in men and gold: Berwick was recaptured, only to be recovered by England in 1356. In the same year Edward Baliol, after handing over his crown and the royalty of Scotland to Edward III., retired from active life, and Edward wasted the south in the raid of “The Burned Candlemas.” In October 1357 David was permitted to return to Scotland, giving hostages and promising 100,000 merks in ten yearly payments. The country, crushed by inevitable taxation, was discontented, and not reconciled by Edward's grant of commercial privileges. In May 1363 David put down a rising headed by the Steward, and then, in October, went to London, where he and the earl of Douglas made arrangements by which the countries were to be united under Edward III. if David died childless. Scotland was to be forgiven the ransom, receive the Stone of Scone and retain its independent title as a kingdom: her parliaments were to be held within her own borders; her governors and magistrates were to be Scots, freedom of trade was guaranteed, and the earl of Douglas was to be restored to his English estates, or to an equivalent.
This scheme would have saved Scotland from centuries of war and from a Stewart dynasty: there would have been a union of The union rejected by Scotland. the crowns, as under James VI.; or (by an alternative plan of November, December 1363) a son of the king of England, not Edward III. himself, would succeed to David. In March 1364 David laid the projects before a parliament at Scone, which firmly refused its assent. Possibly David had, as one motive for his scheme, the very dubious legitimacy of the children of the Steward, a probable cause of civil war and a disputed succession. He had also private reasons for disliking the Steward, who was on bad terms with the widow, Margaret Logie (by birth a Drummond), whom David had married on the death of his first wife. The country, resolved to stand by the Steward and the blood of Bruce, preferred the heavy taxation and the turbulence inevitable under such a king as David to union under an English prince. On the 20th of June 1365 Edward granted a four years' truce, with the ransom to be paid in yearly instalments of £4000. But the necessary taxation was resisted by various nobles, including John of the Isles (1368), who had married a daughter of the Steward. John was in arms, divisions and distress were everywhere, a famine prevailed, and Scotland had to face the prospect of yielding to Edward, when, in 1369, that prince proclaimed himself king of France, and, having his hands full of war, made a fourteen years' truce with his northern neighbour.
David was now free to subdue John of the Isles, to repudiate all his own debts contracted before 1368, and to make preparations for a crusade. From this crowning folly death delivered him on the 22nd of February 1371. The whole of his ransom was never paid, and his absurdities and misfortunes gave the Estates opportunity to strengthen their constitutional position. They established the rule that no official should put in execution any royal warrant “against the statutes and common form of law.” The reign also saw the introduction of the committees, “elected by the Commons and the other Estates,” which did the actual business of parliament, thus saving time and expense to the members. But these committees, later known as the Lords of the Articles, were to exercise almost the full powers of parliament in accordance with the desires of the crown, or of the dominant faction, and they were among the grievances abolished after the revolution of 1688-1689. The whole reign was a period of wasteful turmoil, of party strife, of treachery, of reaction. But the promise of peace and prosperity in exchange for absolute independence was rejected with all the old resolution; and the freedom which a Bruce desired to sell was retained by the first of the Stewart line, Robert II.; for Mr Froude erred in alleging that James I. was the first Stewart king of Scotland.
Robert II., the grandson of Robert Bruce, had lived hard, and when he came to the throne, was weary of fighting and of politics. Stuart line: Robert II. Nothing proves more clearly the firm adherence of the nation to the blood of Bruce, and the parliamentary settlement of the crown in his female line, than the undisputed acceptance of the Steward's children as heirs to the throne. Several of them had been born to Robert's mistress, Elizabeth Mure of Rowallan, before a papal dispensation permitted, in 1349, a marriage which the canon law seemed to render impossible. The pope might have said, like a later pontiff on another day, “remittimus irremissibile.” By a second marriage, undeniably legal, Robert had a family whose claims were not permitted to give trouble at his accession, though the earl of Douglas, the fellow conspirator of David II., would have caused difficulties if he had possessed the power. His eldest son, the earl who fell at Otterburn, was married to Robert's daughter, Isabella, but by her had no issue. The new prince of Scotland, John (an unlucky name, later changed to Robert), was a fainéant: the king's second son, Robert, earl of Fife (later first duke of Albany), was a man of energy and ambition, while the character of the third, Alexander, is expressed in his sobriquet, “The Wolf of Badenoch.”
When the new reign opened, Edward III. made no secret of his claims to be king of Scotland, and the southern regions were still in English hands. From 1372 to 1383 Scotland was in truce with England; and Robert II. had no desire to aid France and accept from Rome a dispensation from the oaths of truce. The southern nobles, under the Douglases and March, kept up a semi-public feud with the Percy on the border, after the accession of Richard II., still a child, and, piece by piece Scottish territory was recovered, mainly in Teviotdale and Liddesdale. In 1380 and 1381, Lancaster, uncle of Richard II., arranged truces, but difficulties were caused by the late proclamation, in Scotland, of a truce made with her ally, France, on the 26th of January 1384. With the tidings of this truce arrived, in April, a body of French knights who desired to enjoy fighting, and though dates are obscure they seem to have caused, by a raid in April, a retaliatory foray by the Percies in May or June. The king smoothed matters over, but in 1385 a great band of French knights landed in Scotland, forced the king's hand, and penetrated England as far as Morpeth. Here they might have had lighting enough, as Lancaster led a force against them, while Richard II. followed with a large army. But Douglas, to the disgust of the French, refused battle, and allowed the English to do what mischief could be done in a thrice stripped country. The French deemed the Scots shabby, poor and avaricious: their grooms were killed by the peasantry when they went foraging: the nobles were churlish and inhospitable.
In August 1388 Douglas led the famous raid as far as Alnwick castle, which culminated in the battle of Otterburn, fought by moonlight. Here Douglas fell in the thickest of the melée, but his death was concealed and Henry Percy, with many other English knights, were captured and held to heavy ransom (15th of August 1388). These battles were fought in the spirit of chivalry, and were followed, in 1389, by a three years' truce.
The second son of King Robert, Albany, was appointed governor, his father being in ill-health and dying in 1390. He Robert III. was succeeded (14th of August 1390) by his son Robert III., whose own health was so bad that, in the previous year, his brother Albany had been preferred before him as governor. The reign of a weakling was full of anarchy, complicated by the feud between his eldest son, the wayward duke of Rothesay, and his ambitious brother, now duke of Albany. These two are the first dukes in Scotland. There was peace with England till the death of Richard II. in 1399, and till the parliament of January 1399 Albany still undertook the duties of the king.
Here commenced the tragedy of the Stuarts and of Scotland. For nearly two centuries each reign began with a long royal Regency rule. minority, increasing the power and multiplying the feuds of the nobles. The remainder of each reign was, therefore, a struggle to re-establish the central power, a struggle in which cruel deeds were done on all sides. Meanwhile, now England, now France, secured the alliance of the men in power, or out of power, and threatened the independence of the kingdom. The cause of the miseries of these two unhappy centuries was beyond human control: no Stuart sovereign, after Robert II., escaped from the inevitable evils of a long minority, while Robert II. himself was as weak as any child. Under his nominal rule, the Celts of the north and west, in 1385, became troublesome, while Robert's son, the Wolf of Badenoch, who was justiciary, with his own wild sons, rather fanned than extinguished the flames. They slew the sheriff of Angus (1391-1392) in a battle, and then two clan-confederacies, quarrelling among themselves, put their cause to the ordeal of fight, in the famous combat of thirty against thirty, on the Inch of Perth (see Scott's Fair Maid of Perth). Though we know the cost of fencing the lists, from entries in the treasury accounts, we are ignorant of the cause of the quarrel, and even of the clans engaged. The names are diversely given, but probably the combat was only one incident in the long wars of the Camerons with the great Clan Chattan confederacy. In 1397, at Stirling, the Estates denounced the anarchy “through all the kingdom,” and, in 1398-1399, were full of grievances arising from universal misgovernment. By this parliament, David, prince of Scotland and duke of Rothesay, was made regent for three years; with his uncle, duke of Albany, as his coadjutor. Peace between Albany and the wayward Rothesay was impossible, and Rothesay, by breaking troth with the daughter of the earl of March, and marrying a daughter of the third earl of Douglas, added a fresh feud to the general confusion.
Meanwhile Scotland, to vex Henry IV., adopted the cause of the “Mammet,” the pretender to be Richard II. This enigmatic personage appeared in Islay, and rather had his pretences thrust on him than assumed them; he was half-witted. Meanwhile the insult to March caused him to seek alliance with Henry IV., who crossed the border—the last English king to do so—and appeared before Edinburgh castle. Rothesay held it in his contempt, and, as Albany declined a battle in the open, Henry returned with nothing gained.
In 1400 Albany, and the 4th earl of Douglas (brother-in-law of the duke of Rothesay), confessed before the Estates that they had arrested the prince, and were cleared of the guilt of his subsequent death. They kept him, first in the castle of St Andrews, and then at Falkland, where he perished; some said of dysentery, others, of starvation.
Restored to the regency, Albany permitted his son, Murdoch, with Douglas, to retort on a successful raid by Percy and the traitor March. They were defeated by English archery, as usual, at Homildon hill: Murdoch and Douglas were captured. Percy, dissatisfied with Henry's treatment of him in the matter of ransoms, led an army into Scotland which was to have trysted at Cocklaw with Albany and the whole forces of the realm, and invaded England. But Douglas and Percy left Cocklaw before Albany came up, and hurried to join hands with the Welsh rebel, Glendower. The hostile forces met at Shrewsbury, and Shakespeare has made the result immortal. Percy was slain; Douglas was the prisoner of England.
The young prince of Scotland, the first James, was on his way to seek safety in France, during an interval of truce, but was James I. captured on the high seas by English cruisers. (The dates are obscure, but James was in the Tower by February-March 1405-1406.) His father's death followed (4th of April 1406). Albany sent, within a year, envoys to plead for his release; and again, in 1409, but vainly. An interval of peace occurred, among a series of border battles, and the heresy of Lollardy was attacked by the clergy; Resby, who had been a priest in England, was burned in 1407 at Perth. The embers of Lollardy, not extinguished by the new central fountain of learning, the university of St Andrews, smouldered in the west till the Reformation.
“The wicked blood of the Isles,” the Macdonalds, descendants of island kings, now made alliance with England; Donald, eldest son of the Lord of the Isles, having an unsatisfied claim on the earldom of Ross, which Albany strove to keep in his own family. The greatest of highland hosts met at Ardtornish castle, now a ruin on the sound of Mull: they marched inland and north, defeated the Mackays of Sutherland and were promised the plunder of Aberdeen. The earl of Mar, with a small force of heavily-armoured lowland Cavaliers, stopped and scattered the plaided Gael at Harlaw (1411). The knights lost heavily, but Donald did not plunder Aberdeen (see Elspeth's ballad of Harlaw, in The Antiquary). Next year Albany received the submission of Donald at Lochgilp in Knapdale, and the Celts were, for the moment, useless to their allies of England.
Time went on: Albany's son, Murdoch, was set free, but in 1410 the captive King James much resented Albany's neglect of himself. His letter is written in Scots. Albany died in 1420; his regency, with that of his son Murdoch, produced the anarchy which James, when free, combated at the cost of his life. Meanwhile France demanded and received auxiliaries from Scotland, who fought gloriously for French freedom. Their great victory, where the duke of Clarence fell, was at Baugé Bridge (1421), where the Stewarts and Kennedys, under Sir Hugh, were specially distinguished. In 1424 the Scots, with the earl of Buchan and the earl of Douglas, were almost exterminated at Verneuil, some five months after King James, already affianced to the Lady Jane Beaufort, was released. He never paid his ransom, and his noble hostages lived and died south of Tweed: one cause of his unpopularity.
Tradition tells that James vowed “to make the key keep the castle, and the bush keep the cow,” even though he “lived a dog's life” in the endeavour. His reign was a struggle against anarchy and in the cause of the poor and weak. He instantly arrested Murdoch, son of Albany, and Fleming of Cumbernauld, met parliament, dismissed it, retaining a committee (“the Lords of the Articles”), and took measures with landlords, who must display their charters; appointed an inquest into lay and clerical property; and imposed taxes to defray his ransom. The money could not be collected, and the edicts against private wars and the maintenance of armed retainers were hard to enforce. James next arrested Lennox and that Sir Robert Graham whose feud proved fatal to the king. In March 1425 he met his second parliament, relying on a council of barons with no great earl but Mar. He next arrested Albany's secretary and the Lord Montgomery: the story, accepted by our historians, that he also seized twenty-six notables, has been finally disproved by Sir James Ramsay. No Scottish king ever embarked on such a coup d'état as the arrest of “the whole Scottish House of Lords,” and Knox, who attributes a much, larger design to James V., must have been deceived by rumour. Albany (Murdoch), his son, and Lennox, were tried and executed: Albany's son, James, in revenge burned Dumbarton. The king appears to have been avenging his private wrongs, or destroying the three nobles pour encourager les autres. Parliament now insisted on inquisition for heretics: an act was passed (which never took effect) against “bands” or private leagues among the nobles: the Covenant was called “the great band,” by Cavaliers in days to come. More important was the establishment of a new court of justice, the court of Session, to sit thrice in the year. Yeomen were bidden to practise archery, to which they much preferred football and golf.
The highlanders were next handled as the lowlanders had been; a parliament was held at Inverness and a number of chiefs who attended were seized, imprisoned or executed. The Lord of the Isles, when released, burned Inverness (1429), but, being pursued, he was deserted by Clan Chattan and Clan Cameron (probably the clans represented on the ordeal of battle on the Inch of Perth). The Lord of the Isles made submission, but Donald Balloch, his cousin, defeated Mar near Inverlochy, later fled to Ireland, and was reported dead, though he lived to give trouble. James was unjustly repressing highland anarchy: from the highlands came his bane.
James now granted his daughter, a child, to the Dauphin, later Louis XI.; but, as Jeanne d'Arc said, “the daughter of the king of Scotland could not save Orleans,” then (1428-1429) besieged in a desultory manner by the English. In February 1429 the Scots under the oriflamme were cut to pieces in “The Battle of the Herrings” at Rouvray. The surviving Scots fought under Jeanne d'Arc till her last success, at Lagny, under Sir Hugh Kennedy of Ardstinchar in Ayrshire, but James (May, June 1429) made a treaty of peace with Cardinal Beaufort, which enabled Beaufort to send large reinforcements into Paris, where the Maid, deserted by Charles VII., failed a few months later.
In October 1430 was born the prince destined to be James II. The king and the Estates were curtailing the judicial privileges and jurisdiction of the clergy; and the anti-pope, Peter de Luna, quarrelled with the country on this ground. Scotland then deserted his cause for that of Martin V., but quarrels between church and state did not cease, and a legate arrived to settle the dispute a few days before the king's murder. James had already threatened the Benedictines and Augustines for “impudently abandoning religious conduct,” and had founded the Carthusian monastery in Perth, that the Carthusians might offer a better example. A reformation by the state seemed at hand, but the religious orders fell deeper in odium and contempt during the next hundred and thirty years. Doctrine, too, was endangered by heretics, one of whom, a Hussite named Paul Crawar, was burned at Perth in 1433.
In 1427 James seized, as a male fee, the earldom of Strathearn, gave the earl by female descent the title of Menteith, and sent him to England as a hostage for his ransom. He was nephew of the Sir Robert Graham whom James had arrested at the beginning of his reign: Graham's anger was thus rekindled. The earls of Mar and March also lost their lands, on one pretext or another: James's policy was plainly to break the power of the nobles.
The English translation (1440) of a lost contemporary Latin history of the events avers that Sir Robert Graham rose in Death of James I. parliament, denounced James as a tyrant and called on the barons to seize their king: Graham was taken, was banished from court, was confiscated and fled to the Atholl hills. He thence intrigued with the old earl of Atholl (heir to the crown if the ancestors of James by Robert II. and Elizabeth Muir were illegitimate), and he drew into the conspiracy the king's chamberlain, Atholl's grandson. By his aid 300 highlanders were brought into the monastery of the Black Friars in Perth, where the king was keeping the Christmas of 1436, and there they slew James, who had fled into a vault. The conspirators were seized and tortured to death with unheard-of cruelties, but lawlessness had won the battle. James had failed, practically, even in his effort (1427-1428) to anglicize parliament, by introducing the representative system; two “wise men” were to be chosen by each sheriffdom, and two Houses were to take the place of the one House in which all Estates were wont to meet. But constituents were averse to paying their members, no Speaker was elected, the reform never came into being. Till the Union, all estates sat in one room during parliament. The court of session was the most valuable and permanent of James's innovations, and his poem “The King's Quhair” attests his real genius. He had attempted to reform the country too hurriedly; and treachery, by all accounts, was one of his methods. He left a child as king, and the old round of anarchy began again; oppression, murder, feud, faction and private war. History repeats itself, and the evil practices were checked, not by the Reformation, but by the increased resources and entire safety enjoyed by James VI. when he succeeded to the crown of England.
Space forbids a record of the faction fights in the reign of James II. Coming to the crown at the age of seven, he was James II. used like the Great Seal, as a sanction of authority and passed from one party to another of the nobles, as each chanced to be the more dexterous or powerful (crowned 25th of March 1437). The Crichtons and Livingstones held the king till the earl of Douglas died, being succeeded by his son, a boy. The queen-mother married Sir James Stewart of Lorne, and their sons, Buchan and Atholl, mixed in the confused intrigues of the reign of James III., but the queen was treated with scant courtesy by the rival parties. From them the young earl Douglas and duc de Touraine, the most powerful man in Scotland, stood apart, sullenly watching an unprecedented state of anarchy. Livingstone and Crichton, previously foes, invited him and his brother to dine with the child king in Edinburgh castle, and there served to him “the black dinner” bewailed in a fragment of an early ballad. The two young nobles, after a mock trial, were decapitated (November 1440).
Douglas was succeeded in his earldom by his grandfather, Sir James the Gross, an unwieldy veteran. On his death in 1443, his son, William, a lad of eighteen, became earl, and waged private war on Crichton, while he allied himself with Livingstone. Crichton lost the chancellorship: and the keys were given to Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews and founder of St Salvator's college in that university. Involved in secular feuds with Douglas, Livingstone and the earl of Crawford, Kennedy destroyed Crawford with a spiritual weapon, his Curse (23rd of January 1445-1446).
On the 3rd of July 1449 James married Marie of Gueldres, seized and imprisoned the Livingstones, and generally asserted royal power. He relied on Douglas, who (1450) was his constant companion, till the earl visited Rome (November 1450-April 1451). In June 1451 he resigned his lands, in which he was at once reinstated. It appears, however, that he was, or was suspected of being, in treasonable alliance with the new earl of Crawford and the ever-turbulent Celtic lord of the Isles. It is certain, from documents, that Douglas was always in the royal entourage from June 1451 to January 1452, so that stories of insults and crimes committed by him at this period seem legendary. Nevertheless, on the 22nd of February 1452, James, who had invited Douglas, under safe-conduct, to visit him at Stirling, there dirked his guest with his own hand. The king was exonerated by parliament, on the score of Douglas's contemptuous treatment of his safe-conduct, and because of his oppressions, conspiracies and refusal to aid the king against rebels, such as the new “Tiger Earl” of Crawford.
The brother of the slain Douglas defied his king, then made his submission, and visited London, where he probably intrigued with the English government against his sovereign and country. In 1455 James made serious war against the “Black Douglases” of the south; his army being led by the “Red Douglas,” the earl of Angus. The royal cause was successful, and the Black Douglas was attainted (10th of June 1455). He fled south and became the pensioner and ally of Edward IV., who reasserted the traditional claim to sovereignty over Scotland—“ his rebels of Scotland!”
From 1457 to 1459 a truce was made between Scotland and the Lancastrian party, then in power, but in July 1460, Henry VI. was defeated and taken, and his wife and son sought James's hospitality. Roxburgh castle was in English hands; James besieged it, and on the 3rd of August 1460 was slain by the bursting of one of his own huge siege guns. The castle was taken, but the second James died at the age of thirty, leaving a child to succeed him in his heritage of woe. James II. had overcome his nobles, but left a legacy of feuds to the coming reign.
The period of James III. is filled with the recurrent strife of the nobles among themselves and against law and order. Slowly James III. and obscurely the Renaissance comes to Scotland; its presence is indicated by the artistic tastes of the king, and, later, by the sweet and mournful poetry of Henryson. But the Renaissance, like the religious revivals initiated in Italy, arrived in Scotland weak and weary; hence the church did not share in the new enthusiasms of the faith of St Francis, and art was trampled on by the magnates who hated poetry and painting.
In politics, the queen-mother, who had the private guardianship of her boys, the king and the dukes of Albany and Ross, turned from the Lancastrian to the Yorkist side, while Kennedy and his party (Lancastrians) were accused of endangering Scotland to please France. This was the beginning of that movement away from the Ancient League to partisanship with England, which culminated in the success of the Protestant allies of England at the Reformation. This, then, is an important moment in the long and weary march to union with England.
In 1461 Henry VI. was driven to take sad shelter with Kennedy at St Andrews. In June 1461 Edward IV. was crowned, and at once made pact and alliance with the banished Douglas and the Celts of the west Highlands and the isles. From Ardtornish castle, John, lord of the Isles, sent ambassadors to Westminster, where (1462) a treaty was made for an English alliance and the partition of Scotland between Douglas and the Celts. A marriage between the mother of James III. and Edward IV. was spoken of, but Kennedy would not meet the English, and in March 1463 the English treaty with Douglas and the Celts was ratified. Douglas invaded Scotland, in advance of an English army, but was defeated by an army under Bishop Kennedy. When France went over to the Yorkists, Kennedy, accepting an English pension, made a long truce between Scotland and England (October 1464). Peace might have been assured, but Kennedy died in 1466. His tomb in his college chapel of St Salvator's at St Andrews, his college and his bridge over the river Eden, have survived as monuments of a good and great man; they passed unscathed through the ruin wrought by the reformers.
On his death the nobles, notably Fleming, Livingstone, Crawford, Hamilton and Boyd, made a band for securing power and place. Boyd, with some borderers, Hepburn and Ker of Cessford, seized the boy king, and Boyd had himself made governor, his son marrying the princess Mary, sister of James.
In July 1469 James, then about eighteen, married Margaret, daughter of King Christian of Norway, who pledged the Orkney and Shetland Isles for her dowry, which remains unpaid. The enemies of the Boyds instantly overthrew them, and the Hamiltons, a race of English origin, arose on their ruins to their perilous place of possible heirs to the crown. The princess Mary was divorced from her Boyd husband and married Lord Hamilton. Their descendants were again and again kept from the royal succession only by the existence of a Stuart child, Mary, queen of Scots, or James VI. This fact, with the consequent feud of the Stewarts of Lennox, themselves claimants, governs the dynastic intrigues during more than two centuries and gave impetus to the Reformation. Never was marriage so fruitful in tragedies as the wedding of Lord Hamilton and the princess Mary.
There followed ecclesiastical feuds, centring round Patrick Graham, the new bishop of St Andrews. These, to the present day, have been misunderstood (see The Archbishops of St Andrews, by Herkless and Hannay, for details). It is not possible here to unravel the problem, but documents at St Andrews, now printed, demonstrate the error of the historians who regard Graham as a holy man, persecuted because he was half a premature Protestant. At Rome he procured, without royal or national assent, the archbishopric for St Andrews; he became insane and was succeeded by the learned Schevez. Glasgow also became an archbishopric.
James now followed a policy in which Louis XI. succeeded, but he himself failed utterly. He surrounded himself with men of low birth, such as Ireland, a scholar and diplomatist; Rogers, a great musician; and Cochrane, apparently an architect or sculptor—he is styled a mason or stone-cutter. This aroused the wrath of the nobles and the two princes of the blood, Albany and Mar. Mar was arrested on a charge of magic, and died, whether murdered or from natural causes is uncertain, while his accomplices are said to have been the protomartyrs of witchcraft, scarcely heard of in Scotland till the reformers began to burn old women. Albany was arrested for treason, escaped to France, and was under sentence of forfeiture.
Relations with England were now unfriendly, and parliament, in March 1482, denounced Edward IV. as “the reiver, Edward.” By May the Douglases brought Albany from France to England, where he swore fealty to Edward, and was to be given the Scottish crown. The duke of Gloucester (later Richard III.) marched north and took Berwick, while the earl of Angus, with other nobles, hanged Cochrane and other favourites of James over Lauder bridge. The domestic mutiny and the English war ended in a compromise, Albany being restored to office and estates. He took Edinburgh castle, in which James was interned, and he was made lieutenant-general. Yet, aided by Angus, he continued to intrigue with Edward for the gift of the Scottish crown. By March 1483 he was reduced, we know not how; he laid down his office, and was forbidden to approach the court. On the death of Edward IV. he lost his chief supporter (9th of April 1483), and was forfeited while absent in England. He and Douglas entered Scotland with a small force (22nd of July 1484), and were defeated at Lochmaben: Albany escaped, went to France, and was slain in a tournament, leaving issue, but Douglas was captured and interned till his death in the monastery of Lindores.
Our information for this period is so scanty that we do not know how James reached his new position, how he overcame Albany and his other rebels. At peace with England, and allied with France, he quarrelled with the church, and it was decreed that the clergy who obtained benefices from Rome were guilty of treason. He planned a set of royal marriages with England, and this was the ground of his subjects' charge against him of servility to England. “James IV. and James V. are constantly upbraided for not doing the very things which James III. is execrated for having done,” namely, securing peace and amity with their powerful neighbour. James III. “died in his enemies' day,” and such accounts as we have of him are written by the partisans of his unruly nobles, Argyll, Lennox and Angus.
They secured the crown prince, James, now aged fifteen, their motive being that under James III. the guilt of their murders and rebellion still hung over their heads. The Estates refused to give them an amnesty for seven years; and the arch rebel, Angus Bell the Cat, with Argyll, the young prince, Lennox and other malcontents, declared that he was deposed, and proclaimed his son as his successor and Argyll as chancellor. Doing what they falsely accused James of having done, they sent, or obtained from England leave to send, members of their party to intrigue with Henry VII. (1st of May 1488). After a half reconciliation, James marched in force to Stirling, the key of the north, but the treacherous commander of the castle, Shaw of Sauchie, held the castle against him. James and his leaders, Atholl and Huntly, with their Stewarts and Gordons, and the levies of burgesses, and the mounted gentry of Fife, encountered the wild border spearmen of Hepburn and Home and the Galloway men, the whole being led by Angus and the rebel prince at Sauchie burn, near Bannockburn. How it chanced we know not; James's horse seems to have run away and thrown him (he was a bad horseman), and the story goes that he was taken into a cottage and stabbed by a priest. In fact, as his rebels put it, “he happinit to be slain” at Beaton's mill. He was accused of having accumulated great treasures. They were never found, or, if found, never accounted for by the finders.
His real history remains unknown; we have only Ferrerius, who is vague, and the late and slanderous gossip of the writers of the Reformation. We know that James was Clement; that the middle and lower classes stood by him; that he was a great amateur in the arts; that he was betrayed again and again by those of his own house, finally by his own son. A hideous tale is told by Buchanan against his private morals, but it is certainly inaccurate in detail, and is uncorroborated, while it appears to turn on a confusion between an alleged royal mistress, “the Daisy,” and Margaret (Daisy), the king's own sister. It is clear to any reader of Ferrerius, Lesley and Buchanan that they all drew from a common source, now unknown, and this source may well have been a chronicle inspired by James's enemies. James III. of Scotland has been almost as much the butt of slanderous charges as the Jacobite James III. of England and VIII. of Scotland, “The Old Pretender.”
With James IV. we enter on the modern history of Scotland. The king escaped the evils of a long minority, was a “free king” James IV. and managed his own policy. He was tall, handsome, strong and recklessly brave. He inherited his father's love of art and of nascent science; but this fault was forgiven him, as his manners were popular, his horsemanship good, and his bearing frank and free. The early Tudor policy of Henry VII. was not to make open war on Scotland, but to intrigue secretly, especially with the treacherous Douglas, earl of Angus, and with Ramsay, earl of Bothwell under James III., but soon dispossessed. They schemed to kidnap the king as vainly as Henry VIII. later planned to kidnap many of his foreign opponents. Under James IV. the houses of Hepburn of Hailes, ancestor of Queen Mary's Bothwell; of the Huntly Gordons; and of the Kers of Ferniehirst and Cessford, rose into new importance; while the Huntlys and Argylls were entrusted with the maintenance of order among the fighting clans of the west and north. They aggrandized themselves at the expense of the Macleans, Macdonalds, Camerons and Clan Chattan, but their sway was far from being peaceful and orderly.
The king, reckless as he was, had more than his share of the Stuart melancholy. His parricidal rebellion lay heavy on his conscience; he practised asceticism at intervals, and dreamed of eastern pilgrimages. But he also fostered a navy, under Sir Andrew Wood, who swept the seas of the English pirates. James threw Scotland into the whirlpool of European politics, dealing with Spanish envoys and with the duchess of Burgundy, the patroness of the mysterious Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Richard, duke of York, son of Edward IV. Meanwhile, to balance the power of the primate, James purchased from Innocent VIII. an archbishopric for the bishop of Glasgow (1492), who laid information against the heretics of Kyle in Ayrshire. They had evolved or inherited anti-papal heresies much like those of the reformers of 1559, but James turned their trial into a jest. He made a secret treaty to defend France if she were attacked by England, but meanwhile a five years truce was concluded (1491). In the following year James was in correspondence with Perkin, then in Ireland; in 1495 he received that prétendant, married him to a daughter of Huntly, and in 1496 raided northern England in his company, — all this in contempt of the offered hand of a Tudor princess. In the autumn of 1497 an attempted raid by James ended in a seven years' truce fostered by the Spanish envoy, Ayala, who has left a flourishing description of the king and his country. Meanwhile Perkin had failed in Cornwall and been captured. Henry VII. kept offering the hand of his daughter Margaret, who was married to James at Holyrood in August 1503. From this wedding, disturbed by quarrels over the queen's jewels and dowry, was to result the union of the crowns on the head of Margaret's great-grandson, James VI., after a century of tragedies and turmoil.
In 1507 the pope failed to draw James into the league formed to check French aggression in Italy. A murder on the borders poisoned Scottish relations with England, and the death of Henry VII. (1509) left James face to face with his blustering brother-in-law, Henry VIII. The Holy League of 1511, against France, found James committed to the cause of the old French alliance. He strengthened his fleet, but his admiral, Sir Andrew Barton, fell in a fight with English privateers equipped by the earl of Surrey and commanded by his sons (1511). Border homicides added their element of international irritation, and James renewed the ancient league with France. In 1513 Dr West, an envoy of Henry VIII., found James in the state of “a fey man,” doomed, distracted, agitated and boastful. In May came the letter and ring of the French queen ordering James, as her knight, to strike a blow on English ground. He wrote to Henry none the less (24th May) with peaceful proposals, but on the 30th of June Henry invaded France.
Strange portents and warning phantasms did not check James: he sent forth a fleet of thirteen ships and 3000 men, Battle of Flodden. which faded into nothingness: he declared war on Henry; and on the 22nd of August he crossed the border with all his force, including the highlanders and islesmen. After securing his flank and rear by taking Norham, Wark and Eitel castles, he awaited the approach of Surrey's army at Ford castle, behind which lies Flodden Edge, a strong position, which he presently occupied. Surrey, who was ill-provisioned, challenged him to fight on the open field of Wooler Haugh. James declined to commit this chivalrous folly; but, for lack of scouts, permitted Surrey to out-manœuvre him and pass, concealed by a range of hills, across his front, to a position north of Flodden, on his lines of communication.
Next day, 9th of September, Surrey crossed the Till, unobserved, by Twizel bridge and Millford, and moved south against Branxton hill, the middle of three ridges on the Flodden slope. The ground was difficult from heavy rains, the English troops were weary and hungry, but James had lost touch of Surrey and knew nothing of his movements till his troops appeared on his rear towards evening. In place of remaining in his position, James burned his camp and hurried his men down hill to the plateau of Branxton ridge. Home and Huntly, on the Scottish left, charged Edmund Howard's force; the Tynemouth men, under Dacre, did not support Howard, at first, but Dacre checked Home (whose later conduct is obscure) and drove off the Gordons. The Percys broke Errol's force; Rothes and Crawford fell, and the king led the centre, through heavy artillery fire, against Surrey. With Herries and Maxwell he shook the English centre, but while Stanley and the men of Cheshire drove the highlanders of Lennox and Argyll in flight (their leaders had already fallen), the admiral and Dacre fell on the flank of James's command, which Surrey, too wise to pursue the fleet highlanders, surrounded with his whole force. The Scottish centre fought like Paladins, and James, breaking out in their front, hewed his way to within a lance's length of Surrey, as that leader himself avers. There fell the king, riddled with arrows, his left hand hanging helpless, his neck deeply gashed by a bill-stroke. His peers surrounded his body, and night fell on “the dark impenetrable wood ” of the Scottish spears. At dawn the survivors had retreated, only the light Border horse of Home hung about the field. The bishop of Durham accuses them of plundering both sides. (That Home's Borderers had but slight loss is argued by Colonel the Hon. FitzWiiliam Elliot, in The Trustworthiness of Border Ballads, pp. 136-138.) Among the dead were thirteen earls, and James's son, the archbishop of St Andrews. The king's death assured the victory, which Surrey had not the strength to pursue, though the townsmen of Edinburgh built their famous Flodden Wall to resist him if he approached.
England never won a victory more creditable to the fighting and marching powers of her sons than at the battle of Flodden. The headlong recklessness of James, remarked on by Ayala, gave the opportunity, but he nobly expiated his fault. The Scots had so handled their enemies that they could not or dared not pursue their advantage; on the other hand, it was long indeed before the memory of Flodden ceased to haunt the Scots and deter them from invading England in force.
Though Ayala's well-known letter certainly flatters the material progress of Scotland, the country had assuredly made great Social progress. advances. While England was tuneless, with Dunbar and the other “Makers” Scotland was “a nest of singing birds.” The good Bishop Elphinstone founded the university of Aberdeen in 1495; and in 1496 parliament decreed compulsory education, and Latin, for sons of barons and freeholders. Prior Hepburn founded a new college, that of St Leonard's, in the university of St Andrews, and Scotland owes only one university, that of Edinburgh, to the learned enthusiasm of her reformed sons. Printing was introduced in 1507, and the march of education among the laity increased the general contempt for the too common ignorance that prevailed among the clergy. The greater benefices were being conferred on young men of high birth but of little learning. The college of Surgeons was founded by the municipality of Edinburgh (1505), and in 1506 obtained the title of “Royal.” The stimulus given to shipbuilding encouraged commerce, and freedom from war fostered the middle class, which was soon to make its influence felt in the Reformation. The burgesses, of course, had long been a relatively rich and powerful body: it is a fond delusion to suppose that they sprang into being under John Knox, though their attachment to his principles made them prominent among his disciples, while Flodden probably began to deter them from the ancient attachment to France. Protestantism, and the disasters of James V., with the regency of his widow, were to convert the majority of Scots to the English party.
The long minority of James V. was fatal to the Stuart dynasty. The intrigues of Henry VIII., the ambition of Angus, who James V. married the king's mother (Margaret, sister of Henry VIII.); the counter intrigues of Albany, a resident in France, and son of the rebellious Albany, brother of James III.; the constantly veering policy and affections of the queen-mother; and the gold of England, filled fourteen years with distractions, murders, treasons and conspiracies. Already Henry VIII. was trying to kidnap the child king, who found, as he grew up, that his stepfather, Angus, was his master and was the paid servant of Henry. The nobles were now of the English, now of the French party; none could be trusted to be loyal except the clergy, and they were factious and warlike. The result was that James threw off the yoke of his stepfather, Angus; drove him and his astute and treacherous brother, Sir George Douglas, into England (thereby raising up, like Bruce, a fatal party of lords disinherited), and while he was alienated from Henry and his Reformation, threw himself into the arms of France, of the clergy and of Rome.
Meanwhile the many noble and dissatisfied pensioners of England adopted Protestantism, which also made its way among the barons, burgesses and clergy, so that, for political reasons, James at last could not but be hostile to the new creed; he bequeathed this anti-protestantism, with the French alliance, through his wife, Mary of Guise, and the influence of the house of Lorraine, to his unhappy daughter, Mary Stuart. The country, ever jealous of its independence, found at last that France threatened her freedom even more than did England, the apparent enemy; and thus, partly from Protestantism, partly from patriotism, the English party in Scotland proved victorious, and the Reformation was accomplished. Had Henry been honourable and gentle, had his sister not shared his vehement passions, James and Henry, nephew and uncle, might have been united in peace; and the Scottish Reformation might have harmoniously blended with that of England.
It is impossible here fully to unfold the tortuous intrigues which darkened the minority of James. Who was to govern the young prince and the country? His wavering, intriguing mother, Margaret Tudor, or her sometimes friend, sometimes foe, Albany, arrived from France; or her discarded husband, Angus, the paid tool of Henry VIII.? By June 1528 the young king settled the question. He had complained to Henry of the captivity in which he was held by his hated stepfather, Angus. In June Angus had prepared forces to punish the Border raiders, and James, rightly or wrongly, seems to have suspected that he was to be handed over bodily to his royal uncle. On the 27th of May he was with Angus in the castle of Edinburgh; on the 30th of May, by a bold and dexterous ride, he was with his mother in the castle of Stirling, with Archbishop Beaton, Argyll and Maxwell. In July he mastered Edinburgh, and bade Angus and his brother, Sir George Douglas, place themselves in ward north of Tay. This he announced to Henry, the paymaster of the Douglases, and the breach between the two kings was never healed. A war broke out between the Douglases and James, but a five years peace, not including the restoration of Angus, was concluded in December 1528. Angus prolonged his outrages on the Scottish border till 1529, when he entered England as a subsidized mischief-maker against Scotland. Not till James's death did the Douglases return to their own country. Meanwhile James visited the Border, hanged some brigand lairds, and reduced such English partisans as the Kers, Rutherfords, Stewarts of Traquair, Veitches and Turnbulls. Johnny Armstrong of Gilnockie, famed in ballad and legend, was hanged, with forty of his clan, at Carlanrigg, in Teviotdale. The tale of royal treachery in his capture is popular; the best authorities for it seem to be the synoptic versions of a ballad and of the fabulous chronicler, Pitscottie.
When James V. became “a free King” the main problems before him were his relations with Henry VIII. and with the nascent Reformation. From 1535 Henry was anxious that James should meet him in England. Henry was notoriously treacherous; to kidnap was his ideal in diplomacy. His pensioner Angus (1531) was to have aided Bothwell in crowning Henry in Edinburgh. In 1535 Henry sent Dr Barlowe to convert James to his own religious ideas, Erastian, anti-papal, the seizure of the wealth of the church. James (1536) was willing enough to meet Henry in England, but his council, especially the clerical members, were opposed to the tryst. James desired to wed none but his mistress, Margaret Erskine, the mother of the Regent Moray. As Henry had once declared that he could only meet a Scottish king, in England, as a vassal, James's council had good reason for their attitude. Had they consented, had James married Henry's daughter, Mary (called “The Bloody”), it is not plain that advantage would have come of the alliance.
In 1536 James sailed to France, and (1st of Jan. 1537) married Madeleine, daughter of Francis I. The die was cast; he was committed to France and to the ancient faith. This was the cardinal misfortune of the Stuarts, but who could trust Henry, and who could join in the fiery persecutions of the new pope-king? In James's absence, Scottish heretics fled to England, while Henry's heretics fled to Scotland. Madeleine died on the 7th of July 1537. “Lady Glamis,” as she was called, a Douglas lady, widow of Lord Glamis, was burned for abetting her brother Angus and devising the king's death by poison. The truth of this matter is obscure; our early historians of this age, Protestants like Knox and Pitscottie, with Buchanan and the Catholic Lesley, are seldom to be trusted without documentary corroboration.
In 1538 James married a lady whom Henry desired to add to his list of wives, Mary of Guise, at this moment a young widow, Madame de Longueville. Mary shines like a good deed in a naughty world; but she was a Catholic, was of the house of Lorraine, and in diplomacy was almost as other diplomatists.
In 1539 David Beaton, the Cardinal, now aged forty-five, succeeded his uncle, James Beaton, as primate of Scotland. He had been educated in Scotland and Paris, held the rich abbey of Arbroath, and for some twenty years at least lived openly with Mariotte Ogilvy, of the house of Airlie. He was a practised diplomatist, and necessarily of the French and Catholic party. His wealth, astuteness, experience and tenacity of purpose, were to baffle Henry's attacks on Scottish independence, till the daggers of pietistic cut-throats closed the long debate. Beaton was cruel: he had no more scruples than Henry about burning men for their beliefs. But the martyrs were few, compared with the numbers of people whom the reformed kirk burned for witchcraft. Some twelve martyrs at least perished in 1539-1540, and George Buchanan, whose satires on the Franciscans delighted the king, escaped to France, in circumstances which he described diversely on different occasions, as was his habit.
In May 1540 James visited the highlands, and later reduced the Macdonalds and annexed the lordship of the Isles to the crown. In 1541 he lost two infant sons, and the mysterious affair of the death of that aesthetic ruffian, Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, was supposed to lie heavy on his mind. There were disputes with Henry, who demanded the extradition of fugitive friars, which James refused. In 1541 he disappointed Henry, not meeting him at York, and this course, advised by his council and Francis I., rankled deeply, while Angus was making a large English raid on the Border in time of peace. The English fared ill, and Henry horrified his council by his usual proposal to kidnap the king of Scotland. Henry's men marauded on the Border, but a force which James summoned to Fala Moor (31st of October 1542) contained but one lord who would march with him—Napier of Merchistoun. About this date occurs the legend of a list of hundreds of heretics, whom the clergy asked James to proscribe. No king of Scotland could dream of executing such a coup d'état; the authority for it is that mythopoeic earl of Arran who later became regent, and told the fable to Henry's agent, Sir Ralph Sadleyr.
Presently ensued the Scottish raid of Solway Moss and the capture of many of the Scottish nobles. The facts may be found in contemporary English dispatches printed in the Hamilton papers. The fables are to be read in Knox's History of the Reformation in Scotland, and in Froude. The secret of the raid was sold by the brother of Angus, Sir George Douglas, and by other traitors. England was prepared, and on the 23rd of November routed and drove into Solway Moss a demoralized multitude of farm-burning Scots. The guns and some 1200 men were taken; many men were drowned. James retired heartbroken from the Border to Edinburgh, where he executed business. He then dwelt for a week at Linlithgow with the queen, who was about to give birth to a child. Next he bore “the pageant of his bleeding heart” to Falkland, where he heard of the birth (8th of December) of his daughter, Mary Stuart. Uncomforted, he died on the 14th (15th?) of December. Accounts differ as to the date. Sheer grief and shame, and, it is said, sorrow for the failure in war of his favourite, Oliver Sinclair, were the apparent causes of his death. Knox appears to insinuate that a rumour declared Mary of Guise and the cardinal guilty of poisoning James, but an attempt had been made to put another sense on the words of this historian, who frequently hints that Mary was the mistress of the cardinal (Knox, vol. i. p. 92).
Again Scotland had to endure a long royal minority. The distraction of Scotland promised to Henry VIII. a good chance Mary, queen of Scots. of annexing the kingdom, whether by the marriage of Edward, prince of Wales, to the infant queen, Mary, or by acquiring, through treachery, her person and the castles of the country. Sir George Douglas at once crossed the border. Angus soon followed, with the lords captured at Solway Moss, all bound more or less to work Henry's will. In Scotland the cardinal; Arran, who was next heir to the throne; Huntly and Murray were proclaimed regents. Knox and others speak of a will of James V., forged by the cardinal, but the stories are inconsistent, and rest mainly on the untrustworthy evidence of Arran. His legitimacy was rather worse than dubious, and henceforth he sided with the party most powerful at each crisis. Now the restored Douglases were most powerful; by the 28th of January 1543 they imprisoned the cardinal, but their party was already breaking up. In March a full parliament was held, the Bible in English was allowed to circulate, and envoys were sent to treat with Henry. But by the 22nd of March Beaton was a free man, liberated by Sir George Douglas. Arran's brother, later archbishop of St Andrews, arrived from France and worked on the wavering regent, while his rival, Lennox, came also from France, and failing to oust Arran, became Henry's pensioner in England. If Arran were illegitimate, Lennox was next heir to the throne, and the consequent Stewart-Hamilton feud was to ruin Mary Stuart. Sir George Douglas went to London and negotiated with Henry for the marriage of Mary and Prince Edward. But the people were still so averse to England that Beaton's was the more popular party: they carried Mary to Stirling: the treaty with Henry was ratified, indeed, but a quarrel was picked over the arrest by England of six Scottish ships; and Arran, who had just given orders for the sack of monasteries in Edinburgh, suddenly (3rd of September) fled to Beaton and was reconciled to the church, just after he had (28th of August) proclaimed Beaton an outlaw.
At once the sacking of religious houses in Dundee, Lindores and Arbroath had begun; the hour of religious revolution had struck; but the godly were put down when the regent and the cardinal were so suddenly reconciled. Arran must have perceived that Henry had infuriated the Scots and that the cardinal might adopt the claims of Lennox and proclaim Arran illegitimate. But Beaton could not keep both Arran, whom he had now secured, and Lennox, who betrayed him, and made for England. The cardinal, however, punished the church-sackers and imprisoned George Douglas, while Hertford in 1544 moved with a large army against Scotland, and Henry negotiated with a crew of discontented lairds and a man named Wishart for the murder or capture of Beaton. Hertford struck at Edinburgh in May, and in the leader's own words “made a jolly fire” and did much mischief. The suffering Commons now began to blame Beaton. Lennox presently married Margaret, Henry's niece, daughter of his sister, Margaret Tudor, by her husband, Angus. Their eldest son was the miserable Henry Darnley, second husband of Mary Stuart. In Scotland arose party divisions and reunions, the queen mother being in the hands of the Douglas faction, while Beaton's future murderers backed him and Arran. Then the Douglases allied themselves with the cardinal, and Henry VIII. tried to kidnap Angus and his brother, Sir George. For once true to their country, they helped Buccleuch to defeat a large English force at Ancram Moor in February 1545, and Henry, seeking help from Cassilis, revived the plot to murder Beaton. Cassilis was a Protestant and the patron of Knox's friend and teacher, George Wishart; Cassilis would not commit himself formally, and the threads of the plot are lost, owing to a great gap in the records.
The Douglases continued to play the part of double traitors; Hertford, in autumn, again devastated the border and burned religious houses (whether he always burned the abbey churches is disputed), but Beaton never lost heart and had some successes. We lose trace of the plot to slay him from the 20th of October 1545 till the end of May 1546, the documents being missing; but on the 29th of May 1546 Beaton was cruelly murdered in his castle of St Andrews. On the 1st of March he had caused George Wishart, a man of austere life and a Protestant propagandist, to be strangled and then burned. To what extent revenge for Wishart was the motive of the Kirkcaldys and Leslies and Melvilles who led the assassins, and how far they were paid agents of England, is unknown. These men had been alternately bitter enemies and allies of Beaton; in 1543 Kirkcaldy of Grange and the master of Rothes were offering their venal daggers to England, through a Scot named Wishart. The details of the final and successful plot were uncertain—the martyr Wishart cannot be identified with Wishart the would-be murderer—but with Beaton practically expired the chances of the French and Catholic party in Scotland.
The death of Beaton brought the Douglases into resistance to Henry VIII., who aided the murderers, now besieged in Beaton's castle of St Andrews. An armistice was arranged; the besieged begging for a remission from the pope, and also asking Henry to request the emperor to move the pope to refuse. The remission, however, arrived before the 2nd of April 1547, and was refused by the murderers.
Henry VIII. and Francis II. were now dead. In mid July French armed galleons approached St Andrews, and the castle surrendered as soon as artillery was brought to bear on it. With other captives, John Knox was put aboard a French galley. In September the Protector Somerset (Hertford) invaded and utterly routed the Scots at Pinkie near Musselburgh. No result ensued, except Scottish demands for French aid, and a resolve to send Mary to France. Ferocious fighting, aided by French auxiliaries, followed: in 1550 the English abandoned all castles occupied by them in Scotland. Mary was now in France, the destined bride of the Dauphin; while Knox, released from the galleys, preached his doctrines in Berwick and Newcastle, and was a chaplain of Edward VI., till the crowning of Mary Tudor drove him to France and Switzerland. Here he adopted, with political modifications of his own, the extremest form of Calvinism.
A visit of Mary of Guise to France (1550) ended in her acquiring the regency, which she administered mainly under French advice. The result was irritation, the nobles looking Religious revolution. towards England as soon as Mary Tudor was succeeded by Elizabeth, while Protestantism daily gained ground, inflamed by a visit from Knox (1555-1556). Invited again, in 1557, he shrank from the scene of turmoil, but a “band” of a Protestant tendency was made by nobles, among them Mary's natural brother James Stewart, later the Regent Murray (3rd of Dec. 1557). On the 24th of April, Mary wedded the Dauphin, and about the same date Walter Milne, an aged ex-priest, was burned as a heretic, the last Protestant martyr in Scotland. There was image-burning by godly mobs in autumn; a threat of the social revolution, to begin at Whitsuntide, was issued on the 1st of January 1559,—“ the Beggars' Warning.” Mary of Guise issued proclamations against preachers and church wreckers, backed by a statute of March 1559. The preachers, mainly ex-friars and tradesmen, persevered, and they were summoned to stand their trial in April, but Knox arrived in Perth, where an armed multitude supported their cause. On the 10th of May they were outlawed for non-appearance at Stirling. Knox accuses Mary of Guise of treachery: the charge rests mainly on his word.
On the 10th of May the brethren wrecked the monasteries of Perth, after a sermon by Knox, and the revolution was launched, the six or seven preachers already threatening the backward members of their party with excommunication. The movement spread to St Andrews, to Stirling, to Edinburgh, which the brethren entered, while Mary of Guise withdrew. She was still too strong for them, and on the 24th of July they signed a compact. They misrepresented its terms, broke them, and accused the regent of breaking them. Knox and William Kirkcaldy of Grange had been intriguing with England for aid, and for the marriage of the earl of Arran (son of the earl of Arran, now also duc de Chatelherault, ex-regent) with Queen Elizabeth. He escaped from threatened prison in France, by way of Switzerland, and though Elizabeth never intended to marry him, the Hamiltons now deserted Mary of Guise for the Anglo-Protestant party. Maitland of Lethington, the Achitophel of his day, also deserted the regent; but in November the reformers were driven by the regent and her small band of French soldiers from Edinburgh to Stirling. They were almost in despair, but, heartened by Knox and Lethington, they resumed negotiations with Elizabeth, who had already supplied them with money. An English fleet suddenly appeared, and drove the French to retreat into Leith from an expedition to the west. In February 1560 a league was made at Berwick between Elizabeth and “the Congregation.” France was helpless, the tumult of Ambroise alarmed the Guises for their own lives and power, and the regent, long in bad health, was dying in Edinburgh castle. On the 10th of June she expired, and hunger forced her French garrison in Leith, after a gallant and sanguinary defence, to surrender.
After an armistice, treaties of peace were concluded on the 6th of July: the treaty, as far as it touched the rights of Mary Stuart, was not accepted by her, nor did she give her assent to the ensuing parliament or convention of Estates. Knox and the other preachers began to organize the new kirk, under “superintendents” (not bishops), whose rule was very brief. The Convention began business in August, crowded by persons not used to be present, and accepted a Knoxian “Confession of Faith.” On the 24th of August three statutes abolished papal and prelatical authority and jurisdiction; repealed the old laws in favour of the church, and punished celebrants and attendants of the Mass—for the first offence by confiscation, for the second by exile, for the third by death. The preachers could get the statute passed, but the sense of the laity prevented the death penalty from being inflicted, except, as far as we know, in one or two instances. The Book of Discipline and the Book of Common Order express Knox's ideals, which, as far as they were noble, as in the matter of education and of provision for the poor, remained, in part or in whole, “devout imaginations.” Not so the Knoxian claims for the power of ministers to excommunicate, with civil penalties, and generally to “rule the roast” in secular matters. The nobles and gentry clung to the wealth of the old church; the preachers, but for congregational offerings, must have starved.
Neglect as well as mob violence left the ecclesiastical buildings in a ruinous condition, but the authority of the preachers, with their power of boycotting (excommunication), became a theocracy. The supernatural claims of these pulpiteers to dominance in matters public or private were the main cause of a century of war and tumult. The preachers became, what the nobles had been, the opponents of authority; the Stuarts were to break them and be broken on them till 1688. In the hands of the ministers a Calvinism more Calvinistic than Calvin's was the bitter foe of freedom of life, of conscience, and of religious tolerance. On the other hand, unlike the corrupt clergy whom they dispossessed, they were almost invariably men of pure and holy life; stainless in honour; incorruptible by money; poor and self-sacrificing; and were not infrequently learned in the original languages of the scriptures. Many were thought to be possessed of powers of healing and of prediction; in fact a belief in their supernormal gifts, like those of Catholic saints, was part of the basis of their prestige. The lower classes, bullied by sabbatarianism and deprived of the old revels, were restive and hostile; but the educated middle class was with the preachers; so were many lesser country gentry; and the nobles, securing the spoils of the church, were acquiescent.
The religious revolution in Scotland, after the work of destruction had been done, was the most peaceful that occurred in any Mary's return to Scotland. European country. On the Catholic side there was as yet no power of resistance. Huntly, the Catholic “Cock of the North,” had himself been compromised in the actions of the Congregation. How the Catholics of the west highlands took the change of creed we do not know, but they were not fanatically devout and attempted no Pilgrimage of Grace. Life went on much as usual, and the country, with a merely provisional government, was peaceful enough under the guidance of Moray, Maitland of Lethington, and the other lay Protestant leaders. They wished, as we saw, to secure the hand of Elizabeth for the earl of Arran, a match which would practically have taken away the Scottish crown from Mary Stuart, unless she were backed by the whole force of France. But Elizabeth had seen Arran in London and had probably detected his hysterical folly. He actually became a suitor for Mary's hand, when the death of her husband the French king (5th of December 1560) left her a friendless exile. Her kinsmen, the Guises, fell from power, and were no longer to be feared by England, so that Elizabeth need not abandon her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, in the hope of securing Scotland by her marriage with Arran. In the spring of 1561, Mary's brother, Lord James Stewart, lay prior of St Andrews, visited her in the interest of the Scottish Protestant party, while Lesley, later bishop of Ross, brought the promises of Huntly. He would restore the Mass in the North and welcome the queen at Aberdeen if she would land there, but Mary knew the worth of Huntly's word, and preferred such trust as might be ventured on the good faith of her brother. She foiled the attempts of the English ambassador to make her ratify the treaty of Edinburgh, and, while Lethington, no worse a prophet than Knox, predicted “strange tragedies,” Mary came home.
Young as she was, she came as no innocent novice to a country seething with all the perfidious ambitions that a religious revolution brings to the surface. She was wise with the wisdom of the Guises, but sincere friends she had none, and with all her trained fascinations she made few, except in the circle of the Flemings, Beatons, Livingstones and Seatons. Lethington, who had deserted her mother, dreaded her arrival; she forgave him, and for a time, relying on him and her brother, contrived to secure a measure of tranquillity.
Scotland was, doubtless, in Mary's mind, a mere stepping-stone to England. There the Catholic party was strong but for its lack of a leader, and to the English Catholics Mary seemed their rightful queen. By one way or other—by a Spanish marriage, by the consent of Elizabeth to recognize Mary as her heir, by the ambitions of her own nobles and the wit of Lethington, ever anxious to unite the island under one sovereign—Mary hoped to wear the three crowns. Catholicism she would restore if she could, but that was not her first object. It was commonly thought that, though she would never turn Calvinist, she might adopt the Anglican doctrine as understood by Elizabeth, if only she could be recognized as Elizabeth's successor. Till she became Elizabeth's captive there was always the possible hope of her conversion, and despite her professions to the pope there was at least one moment when the pope perceived this possibility. Meanwhile she only asked freedom of conscience for herself, and her mass in her own chapel. The bitter fanaticism of Knox on this point encountered the wiser policy of Lord James and of Lethington.
Mary had her mass, but the constant and cowardly attacks on her faith and on her priests embittered her early years of queenhood in her own country. The politicians hoped that Elizabeth might convert Mary to her own invisible shade of Protestantism if the sister sovereigns could but meet, and for two years the promise of a meeting was held up before Mary.
Meanwhile the needy and reckless Bothwell, a partisan of Mary of Guise, a Protestant and the foe of England, was accused by Arran of proposing to him a conspiracy to seize the queen, but the ensuing madness of Arran left this plot a mystery, though Bothwell was imprisoned till he escaped in August 1562. Mary then undertook a journey to the north, which ended in a battle with the Gordons, the death of Huntly and the execution of one of his sons. This attack by a Catholic queen on the leader of the Catholic party has been explained in various ways. But Mary's heart was in the expedition and in the overthrow of Huntly; she was in the hands of her brother, to whom she had secretly given the earldom of Murray, coveted by Huntly, whose good faith she had never believed in, and whose power was apt to trouble the state and disturb her friendly relations with England. She was deliberately “running the English course,” and she crushed a probable alliance between the great clans of the Gordons and Hamiltons.
The question of her marriage was all important, and her chances were not improved by the scandal of Chastelard, whether he acted as an emissary of the Huguenots, sent to smirch her character, or merely played the fatuous fool in his own conceit. He was executed on the 22nd of February 1563 at St Andrews. Lethington then went to London to watch over Mary's interests, and either to arrange her marriage with Don Carlos, or to put pressure on Elizabeth by the fear of that alliance. Now, in March 1563, Elizabeth first drew before the Scottish queen the lure of a marriage with her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, Mary to be acknowledged as her successor if Elizabeth died without issue. Later in the year, and after Lethington's diplomatic mission to France, Elizabeth announced that a marriage of Mary with a Spanish, Imperial or French prince would mean war, while she still hinted at the Leicester marriage, or perhaps at a union with young Henry Darnley, son of Lennox. Elizabeth's real intention was merely “to drive time,” to distract Scotland and to leave her rival isolated. The idea of a Spanish marriage excited the wrath of Knox, whose interviews with Mary did nothing but irritate both parties and alienate the politicians from the more enthusiastic Protestants. The negotiations for the Leicester marriage were prolonged till March 1565, when Elizabeth had let slip on Mary Henry Darnley (the young son of Lennox, who himself had been allowed to return to Scotland), and at the same time made it clear that she had never been honest in offering Leicester.
Till the spring of 1565, Mary, despite the insults to her religion and the provocations to herself, had remained attached to “the Marriage with Darnley. English course” and to the counsels of Moray and Lethington. Her naturally high temper, wearied of treacheries and brow-beatings, now at last overcame her. Darnley was esteemed handsome, though his portraits give an opposite impression; his native qualities of cowardice, perfidy, profligacy and overweening arrogance were at first concealed, and in mid April 1565 Lethington was sent to London, not to renew the negotiations with Leicester (as had been designed till the 31st of March), but to announce Mary's intended wedding with her cousin. Thus the cunning of Elizabeth and Cecil had its reward. Darnley being a Catholic, as far as he was anything, the jealous fears of the Brethren under Knox reached a passionate height. The Hamiltons saw their Stuart enemies in power and favour. Murray knew that his day of influence was over, and encouraged by the promises of Elizabeth, who was remonstrating violently against the match into which she had partly beguiled and partly forced Mary, he assumed a hostile attitude and was outlawed (6th of August 1565). A week earlier Mary, without waiting for the necessary papal dispensation (Pollen, Papal Negotiations with Mary Stuart), had publicly married Darnley, who bore the title of king, but never received the crown matrimonial.
Mary now promised restoration to Huntly's son, Lord George; she recalled Bothwell, who had a considerable military reputation, from exile in France; and she pursued Murray with his allies through the south of Scotland to Dumfries, whence she drove him over the English border in October. Here Elizabeth rebuked and disavowed him, and Mary's triumph seemed complete. Her valour, energy and victory over Elizabeth were undeniable, but she was now in the worst of hands, and her career took its fatal ply. Lethington had not left her, but he was overlooked; Lennox and the impracticable Darnley were neglected; and the dangerous earl of Morton, a Douglas, had to tremble for his lands and office as chancellor, while Mary rested on her foreign secretary, the upstart David Riccio; on Sir James Balfour, noted for falseness even in that age; and on Bothwell.
As early as September 1565 gossips were busy over the indiscretion of Riccio's favour: Darnley had forfeited the good opinion of his wife; was angry because the Hamiltons were not wholly sacrificed to the ancient feud of Lennox and his clan; and Knox's party looked forward with horror to the parliament of March 1566, when Mary certainly meant “to do something tending to some good anent restoring the ancient religion.” She was also supposed to have signed a Catholic league, which only existed in devout imaginations, but in February 1560 she sent the bishop of Dunblane to crave a large subsidy from the pope. Quite ignorant as to the real state of affairs, he raised the money and sent a nuncio, who never risked himself in Scotland, but made the extraordinary proposal later, that Mary should execute or at least “discourt” her chief advisers.
Meanwhile the clouds of hatred gathered over the queen. Lethington (5th of February 1566), wrote to Cecil saying that “we must chop at the very root,” and Randolph, Elizabeth's ambassador, heard that measures against Mary's own person were being taken. Randolph was dismissed for supplying Murray with English gold, from Berwick he and Bedford reported to Cecil the progress of the conspiracy. While Mary was arranging a marriage between Bothwell and the late Huntly's daughter, Lady Jane Gordon, Darnley intrigued with Lord Ruthven and George Douglas, a bastard kinsman of Morton, for the murder of Riccio, and for his own acquisition of the crown matrimonial. Morton and Lindsay were brought into the plot, while Murray, in England, also signed. He was to return to Edinburgh as soon as the deed of slaughter was done, and before parliament could proceed to his forfeiture.
Mary, according to Ruthven's published account, had herself unconstitutionally named the executive committee of parliament, Riccio's murder. the Lords of the Articles, who were usually elected in various ways by the Estates themselves. While Mary was at supper, on the 9th of March, Darnley, with Ruthven, George Douglas and others, entered the boudoir in Holyrood, by his private stair, while Morton and his accomplices, mainly Douglases, burst in by way of the great staircase. There had been an intention of holding some mock trial of Riccio, but the fury of the crowd overcame them: Riccio was dragged from Mary's table and fell under more than fifty dagger wounds. While Mary, Darnley and Ruthven exchanged threats and taunts, Bothwell and Huntly escaped from the palace, but next day, Mary contrived to send letters to them and Atholl. On the following evening Murray arrived, and now even Murray was welcome to his sister. Darnley had taken on him (his one act of kingly power) to dismiss the parliament, but he now found himself the mere tool of his accomplices. He denied—he never ceased to deny—his share in the guilt, and Mary worked on his vanity and his fears, and moulded his “heart of wax” to her will. On his assurances the lords, expecting an amnesty, withdrew their guards from the palace and next day found that the bird had flown to the strong castle of Dunbar. Hence Mary summoned the forces of the country, under Bothwell and Huntly; she forgave Murray; the murderers had no aid from the Protestants of Edinburgh, who as before failed them in their need. Knox himself fled to Kyle, though there is no evidence that he was privy to a deed which he calls “worthy of all praise,” and Morton and Ruthven spurred to Berwick, while Lethington skulked in Atholl. His possessions were handed over to Bothwell. Darnley betrayed some obscure accomplices. He was now equally detested by Murray, by the new exiles and by the queen, while she reconciled Murray and Bothwell. She tried to assuage all feuds; in an inventory of her jewels she left many of them to Darnley, in case she and her child did not survive its birth. The infant, James, was born in the castle on the 19th of June.
On Mary's recovery, her aversion to Darnley, and her confidence in Bothwell, were unconcealed; and, early in September, she admitted Lethington to her presence. She had learned that Darnley meant to leave the country: she met him before her Privy Council, who sided with her; he withdrew, and the lords, including Murray, early in October signed a “band” disclaiming all obedience to him. On the 7th or 9th of October, Mary went to Jedburgh on the affairs of Border justice, and a week later she rode with Murray to Hermitage castle, where for several days Bothwell had lain, wounded nearly to death by Eliot, a border reiver. On her return she fell into an almost fatal illness and prepared for her end with great courage and piety; Darnley now visited her, but was ill-received, while Bothwell was borne to Jedburgh from Hermitage in a litter. While Buchanan represents the pair as indulging in a guilty passion, the French ambassador, du Croc, avers that Mary was never in better repute with her subjects. On the 24th of November Mary was at Craigmillar castle, near Edinburgh, where undoubtedly she held a conference with her chief advisers that boded no good to Darnley; and there were rumours of Darnley's design to seize the infant prince and rule in his name. The evidence on these points is disputable, but now, or not long after, Huntly, Bothwell, Lethington and Argyll signed a “band” for Darnley's murder.
Meanwhile, in December, Mary held the feasts for the baptism of her son by Catholic rites at Stirling (17th of December), while Darnley stood aloof, in fear and anger. A week later, moved by Bedford, representing Elizabeth, and by Bothwell and her Darnley's murder. other advisers, Mary pardoned Morton and his accomplices. She also restored Archbishop Hamilton to his consistorial jurisdiction, but withdrew her act, in face of Presbyterian opposition. Darnley had retired to his father's house at Glasgow, where he fell ill of small-pox, and, on the 14th of January 1567 Mary, from Holyrood, offered to visit him, though he had replied by a verbal insult to a former offer of a visit from Stirling. About this week must have occurred the interview in the garden at the Douglas's house of Whittingehame, between Morton, Bothwell and Lethington, when Morton refused to be active in Darnley's murder, unless he had a written warrant from the queen. This he did not obtain. On the 20th of January 1567 Mary left Edinburgh for Glasgow, her purpose being to bring Darnley back to Craigmillar. At this time (the 22nd-25th of January), she must have written the two first Casket Letters to Bothwell. Letter II. (really Letter I.) leaves no doubt, if we accept it, as to her murderous design (see Casket Letters). What followed must be read in Mary's biography: the end was the murder of Darnley in the house at Kirk o' Field, after the midnight of Sunday, the 9th of February.
Public and conspicuous as was the crime, the house being blown up with gunpowder, no secret has been better kept than Marriage with Bothwell. the details. The facts of Mary's lawless marriage with Bothwell, her capture at Carberry Hill, her confinement in Loch Leven Castle, her escape, her defeat at Langside, and her fatal flight to an English prison, with the proceedings of the English Commissions, which uttered no verdict, must be read in her biography (see Mary Stuart).
Scotland was now ruled by her brother, the Regent Murray, in the name of her infant son, James VI. Murray arrested James VI.: Internal Contentions. Lethington, as accused of Darnley's murder, and Lethington was now lodged under ward in Edinburgh, but Kirkcaldy of Grange released him and gave him shelter in Edinburgh castle, which he commanded (23rd of October). Lethington was to be tried, but his armed friends mustered in great numbers, and, secure in the castle, he and Kirkcaldy upheld the cause of Mary. Lethington's motive is obvious; in Mary's success lay his chance of safety: how he won over Kirkcaldy is unknown. The rebellion in the north of England failed, Northumberland was driven across the border, and it was Murray's idea to barter him for Mary, in the beginning of January 1570. But on the 23rd of January, Murray was shot dead, in the street of Linlithgow, by a Hamilton, with the approval and aid of Archbishop Hamilton and other heads of the house.
The contending parties, queen's men and king's men, now made approaches to each other; neither had a share in the Hamiltons' crime. But Randolph, sent to Edinburgh for the purpose, kept them apart; Elizabeth dispatched Sussex to ravage the Scottish border, in revenge for a raid by Buccleuch, and in May Lennox entered Scotland with an English force and soon was appointed regent (17th of July). This meant a war of Stuarts against Hamiltons, and, generally, of “Queen's men” against “King's men.” Truces and empty negotiations merely protracted disorder. On the 2nd of April 1571 Mary's party lost Dumbarton castle, which Crawford of Jordanhill took by a daring night surprise; and Archbishop Hamilton, a prisoner, was hanged without trial. In May the Hamiltons entered Edinburgh, and later Lennox, in a parliament held at Leith, secured the forfeiture of Lethington. As the year passed by, Argyll, Cassilis, Eglintoun and Boyd went over to Lennox's party, and in an otherwise futile raid of Kirkcaldy's men on Stirling, Lennox was captured and was shot by a man named Calder. In England the Ridolphi-Norfolk plot was discovered, and at the end of 1571 Buchanan's “Detection” of Mary, with translations of the Casket Letters, was published. Though Mar was now regent, Morton was the man of action. In February 1572 he forced on the kirk an order of bishops, “Tulchan bishops,” filters through which the remaining wealth of the church trickled into the coffers of the state, or of the regent.
This was the beginning of the sorrows of more than a century. The kirk Presbyterian was founded on the Genevan model, and Crown and Kirk. was intended to be a theocracy. She had claimed, since the riots at Perth in 1559, the Power of the Keys, with the power of excommunicating even the king, a sentence practically equivalent to outlawry. These pretensions were incompatible with the freedom of the state and of individuals. It became the policy of the crown to check the preachers by means of the order of bishops, first reintroduced by Morton, and worthy of their origin. The kirk was robbed afresh, benefices were given to such villainous cadets of great families as Archibald Douglas, an agent in Darnley's murder; and though, under the scholarly but fierce Andrew Melville, the kirk purified herself afresh and successfully opposed the bishops, James VI. dominated her again, when he came to the English crown, and the result was the long war between claims equally exorbitant and intolerable, those of the crown and the kirk.
The death of Mar (28th of October 1572) left power in the stronger hands of Morton, and the death of Knox (24th of November) put the kirk for a while at the mercy of the new regent. Meanwhile Mary's party dwindled away; at a meeting in Perth (23rd of February 1573) her thanes fled from her, and Elizabeth at last reinforced Mary's enemies with men and artillery. On the 28th of May Edinburgh castle surrendered at discretion. Lethington, the heart of the long resistance, died, a paralytic, in prison, and Morton resisted the generous efforts made to save the gallant Kirkcaldy. Knox had prophesied that he would be hanged, and hanged he was.
Despite the ferocity of partisans in “the Douglas wars,” an English envoy reported that the power of the country gentry and the boroughs had increased, while that of the great wavering nobles, Hamilton, Huntly and others, was diminishing. The “navy was so augmented as it is a thing almost incredible,” but none the less £100 sterling was worth as much, Drury wrote from Berwick, as £1000 Scots.
In 1575, at the General Assembly, Andrew Melville, now a man of thirty, and, with Buchanan, the foremost scholar of Scotland, especially in Greek, caused the lawfulness of bishops to be mooted. Thenceforward Scotland was engaged in a kind of “bishops war.” Meanwhile Morton found the old Marian party-feud reviving, and in 1577, knowing his own guilt in Darnley's murder, he attempted to win the alliance of Mary for his own security. In March 1578, a coalition of his public and private foes caused Morton to resign the regency, while the young earl of Mar became custodian of the boy king. On the 28th of May, Morton allied himself with Mar, who commanded Stirling castle, and after negotiations recovered power. Atholl was his chief opponent, but in April 1579 he died suddenly, after dining with Morton; poison was suspected. Morton, with Angus, attacked the Hamiltons, whose chiefs fled the country, accompanied by the worst of traitors, Sir James Balfour. Knowing all the secrets of Darnley's murder, Balfour revenged himself by raking up Morton's foreknowledge of the deed; and here he was helped by the influence exercised over the young king by his cousin Esmé Stuart d'Aubigny (a son of Darnley's paternal uncle, John), who came to Scotland from France in September 1579. D'Aubigny allied himself with Knox's brother-in-law, James Stewart of the house of Ochiltree, captain of the King's Guards, an able, handsome, learned, but rapacious man. The Hamiltons, now in English exile, were forfeited; d'Aubigny received the earldom of Lennox; and, as after Darnley's death, placards, were posted urging the trial of Morton for that crime. As against the new Lennox, Morton was deemed a friend by the preachers, though Lennox professed to be reconciled to the kirk. Throughout 1580 Elizabeth encouraged Morton, with her wonted fickle treachery. In October she recalled her ambassador, and left Morton to his fate. Sir James Balfour secretly returned from France with his information, and Morton was accused and arrested on the last day of 1580. Elizabeth sent old Randolph to threaten and plead, but Lennox and James Stewart were too powerful. Morton was tried on the 1st of June 1581, was found guilty, and, with one Binning, who had accompanied Archibald Douglas to the scene of Darnley's murder, was executed. His title went to the Douglases of Lochleven. James Stewart received the Hamilton earldom of Arran, and under him and Lennox the young king began his long strife with the kirk and his half-hearted dealings with the Catholics and his mother.
It is impossible here to follow the course of the strife, in which the godly were led by the earls of Gowrie and Angus. Gowrie seized James, and power, at Ruthven (August 1582), a step approved of by the preachers. In June 1583, James escaped to St Andrews and was surrounded by his party. In November he made the son of Lennox, who had died in France, a duke; Arran was again in power, and Melville with other preachers fled to England in 1584, after the execution of Gowrie for high treason. The king and council were proclaimed judges in all cases; preachers were to submit to their judicature when accused of political offences, a standing cause of strife.
No longer needing Catholic assistance, James threw over his mother, with whom he had been intriguing, and sent the beautiful Master of Gray to betray Mary's secrets to Elizabeth. At the end of 1585, all James's exiled foes, Douglases, Hamiltons and others, returned across the border in force, caught the king at Stirling, drove Arran into hiding, restored the Gowrie family, and became the new administration. In 1586, the Babington plot was arranged, and discovered by those who had allowed it to be arranged. James practically did nothing to rescue his mother: one of his representatives in England was that Archibald Douglas who helped to slay his father.
The execution of Mary on the 8th of February left James “a free king” as far as his mother's claim to the throne was Death of Mary. concerned, and he had his pension of £3000 or £4000 from Elizabeth. Thus war between the two countries was avoided. Thenceforth, till James came to the throne of England, the history of Scotland was but a series of inchoate revolutions, intrigues that led to nothing definite and skirmishes in the war of kirk and state. The king had to do with preachers who practically held the doctrines of Becket as to priestly pretensions. James was “Christ's silly vassal,” so Andrew Melville told him, and “Christ” in practice meant the preachers who possessed the power of the keys, the power to bind and loose on earth and in heaven. The strange thing is that while Elizabeth warned James against the pretensions of men who “would have no king but a presbytery,” whenever he was at odds with the ministers and with the nobles who kept trying to seize his person with the approval of the ministers, Elizabeth secretly or openly backed the kirk.
The kirk was strong enough to compel James to march, more than once, against the Catholic earls, Huntly, Errol, Angus and others. They, again, constantly intrigued with Spain, and there were moments when James, driven desperate by the preachers, listened to their projects. He was anti-papal by conviction, yet hoped for help from Rome, and was so far implicated in the adventures of his Catholic subjects that, in the interest of his own character, he had to advance against them and drive them into exile. In 1590 he married Anne of Denmark: in 1592 his character suffered through the murder, by Huntly, of “the bonny earl o' Murray,” suspected of favouring the madcap Francis Stewart, earl of Bothwell (nephew of Queen Mary's Bothwell), a man who made it his business to kidnap the king, and who presently, by the help of Gowrie's widow, seized him in Holyrood. In 1592 parliament “ratified the liberty of the true kirk,” leaving little liberty for king and state, since, in the phrase of one preacher, “the king might be excommunicated in case of contumacy and disobedience to the will of God,” as interpreted by the ministers. In the following year (23rd of July 1593) Bothwell, much favoured by the preachers, made his capture of James, but had not the power to hold him long, and a later revolutionary attempt in the same year, by Atholl and the young earl of Gowrie, was a failure.
Gowrie went abroad and passed some time at the university of Padua; to him the eyes of the preachers were hopefully turned after 1596. As Bothwell had become a Catholic, they excommunicated him in 1595: in 1596 James resolved to recall the exiled Catholic peers; the commissioners of the General Assembly, alarmed and infuriated, met in Edinburgh, ordered a day of humiliation, decided to excommunicate the Catholic earls and established a kind of revolutionary committee of public safety. James insisted on his own authority; insisted that a secular court had a right to try a virulent preacher who declined the secular jurisdiction when accused of having denounced Queen Elizabeth as an atheist. The quarrel waxed: the gatherings summoned by the preachers were declared to be seditious; a meeting in a church ended in a threatening riot that raged round the Tolbooth, where James was sitting, and on the following day he with his Court withdrew to Linlithgow (18th of December 1596). The Court of Session was also to be removed, and the burgesses, fearing loss of trade, laid down their arms. The leader of the clerical agitation, Mr Bruce, with a wild preacher named Balcanquhal, fled to England, and James returned in triumph to his capital on the first of January 1597. He followed up his victory; a General Assembly at Perth was obedient to his will: the preachers were forbidden to criticize, from the pulpit, acts of parliament or of the privy council; they were forbidden to call conventions without the royal person or authority and to attack individuals in their sermons.
In the great towns, moreover, ministers might not be appointed to charges without the king's consent, and in this course James advanced, with but slight opposition, till he put the preachers under his feet. In a long series of crafty movements James managed to reintroduce episcopacy (1598-1600) by the aid of packed General Assemblies, later declared void by the Covenanters (1638). He increased Presbyterian emotion by the suspicion that he was intriguing with Catholic powers, and by his book on the rights and duties of a king (Basilicon Doran), which fell into the hands of Andrew Melville. Some cryptic correspondence with the pope, whether actually by James or by Elphinstone, one of his ministers, came apparently to the knowledge of the English court; his secret relations with the earl of Essex were, if not known, suspected; the young earl of Gowrie, returned from a residence on the continent, was too effusively welcomed by Elizabeth in May 1600; and James made a tactless speech when asking parliament for money towards his “honourable entering to the crown of England after the death of the queen.” He was in deep poverty, the Estates were chary of supplies, plotters in Scotland had been offering to Cecil to kidnap the king (1598), and his relations both with the English government and with his own subdued but struggling preachers were bitterly unfriendly.
It is not known whether the mysterious events that culminated in the slaying of the earl of Gowrie and his brother, by John Gowrie conspiracy. Ramsay, in their own house in Perth, on the 5th of August 1600, had any connexion with James's attitude to England and the kirk. The most probable explantation is that Gowrie laid, with the utmost secrecy, a plot to lure James to Perth, kidnap him there, transport him to Fastcastle, a fortress of the profligate and intriguing Logan of Restalrig, on the Berwickshire coast, and then raise the Presbyterian party. If we could accept the evidence of a letter attributed to Logan and produced in 1608, this theory would be valid. But the letter has been proved beyond question to be a forgery, though it may very well be a forged copy of a genuine original (see The Gowrie Conspiracy Confessions of George Sprot, by A. Lang, Roxburghe Club, London, 1902). Certainly no plot was laid by James to entrap the Ruthvens, and the only question is, was the brawl in which they fell accidental, or had a plot hatched in deep secrecy been frustrated by unexpected circumstances? (In James VI. and the Gowrie Conspiracy the writer argues in favour of the latter solution.) In any case the scepticism of the Edinburgh ministers, especially of Bruce, encouraged the tendency of the people to think the worst, and led to the banishment, followed by other restrictions and sufferings, of Bruce himself. The house of Gowrie, so long hostile to Mary Stuart and James, was forfeited and ruined. Charles I. was born just after the trial of the dead Ruthvens (19th of November 1600), and his mother was, as ususal, opposed to the king's recent proceedings.
In 1602 Cecil was engaged in dark plots against James; the rising of Essex (of which James probably was expectant) had James becomes king of England. failed; but by the end of the year Cecil had entered into a secret understanding with James to favour his claims to the English succession. Elizabeth's last letter to the king was of the 5th of January 1603; she died in the earliest hour of the 1st of April, and James, late on the 3rd of April, had the news from Carey. He entered London on the 6th of May, whence he henceforth, as he said, governed Scotland “by the pen.” Entirely safe from the usual turbulent movements of Scottish opposition, and but ill acquainted with Scottish opinion, he could dictate measures which were oppressive to the preachers and unwelcome to the majority of the laity. He kept the kirk for two or three years without a General Assembly, to which they had a legal right, and (with at least a shadow of legal right) he proclaimed unlawful the assembly of Aberdeen (1605). Though the recalcitrants who held it were punished, James's own officials saw that he had gone too far. His bishops were already becoming odious to his nobles; his prorogation of General Assemblies continued, and the brothers Melville, called to England, were treated with unconstitutional harshness. Andrew, who behaved with injudicious violence, was banished to France, James to Newcastle; other preachers were confined to their parishes; and by a mixture of chicanery (as at the pseudo assembly of Linlithgow) and of violence, the king established his tottering episcopacy, and sowed the dragon's teeth of civil war. Catholics were equally or more severely persecuted; and though the Borderers were brought into tranquillity, it was by measures of indiscriminate severity.
A scheme for complete union of England and Scotland, promoted by James and by Francis Bacon, was unwelcome to and rejected by the two jealous countries (1604-1606). But Postnati, subjects born in Scotland after James's accession to the English throne, were allowed to purchase and hold real property, and “to bring real actions for the same,” in England (1608).
In 1610 James had three Scottish bishops consecrated by three English bishops, ensuring for the northern country apostolic succession; and justices of the peace were created in Scotland. The “plantation” of Ulster by Scottish colonists was begun and flourished. Catholics were more and more persecuted, and in 1615 Father Ogilvie was executed, after abominably cruel treatment in which Spotiswoode, archbishop of Glasgow, took an unworthy share. In the same year the king's “Courts of High Commission” were consolidated, and an organ was actually placed in the royal chapel at Holyrood.
In 1617 James visited his native land: ecclesiastical brawls at once broke out, and James vigorously pushed, in face of the disfavour even of his bishops, the acceptance of his famous Five Articles. They were accepted at Perth, in 1618, but were evaded wherever evasion was possible. Communicants were to kneel, not to sit, a thing that had, of all others, been odious to John Knox; Easter was to be observed, also Christmas, contrary to earnest consciences; confirmation was introduced; the Communion might be administered to the dying in their houses; and baptism must be on the first Sunday after the child's birth. These articles, harmless as they may seem to us, were the last straw that Scottish loyalty could bear. In 1621, they were carried in parliament by a fair majority; to the horror and bitter indignation of all men and women of the old leaven. Worse, the English liturgy was used in a college chapel of St Andrews on the 15th of January 1623. James tried to suppress the general irritation by a proclamation against conventicles, and a threat to take away the courts of law from Edinburgh, if people did not go to church on Christmas day. He postponed the threat till Easter 1625, but, says Calderwood, “The Lord removed him out of the way fourteen days before the Easter Communion.” He died on the 27th of March. Encouraged by safety and adulation in England; grasping at the Tudor ideal of kingship, determined to reduce to order the kirk from which he had suffered so many injuries and insults, he sowed the wind and his son reaped the whirlwind.
Only the chief moments in the struggle between Charles I. and the Scots can be touched on in this summary. James VI. Charles I. had succeeded in his struggle with the preachers partly by satisfying the nobles with gifts out of old church lands. Charles I. reunited the kirk and the nobles by threatening, or seeming to threaten, to resume or impair these gifts, and also by his favour towards the universally detested bishops (1625-1629). Mr S. R. Gardiner speaks of the final shape of Charles's measure as “a wise and beneficent reform”; and he did aim at recovering the “teinds” or tithes, and securing something like a satisfactory sustenance for ministers. But he had caused alarm, and he refused all demands for the withdrawal of the loathed articles of Perth. The younger bishops too were not “sound” in Calvinism; many were looked on as Arminians. Protests were uttered in 1633, when Charles entered Edinburgh and held a parliament. Above all, and most legitimately, the revival of General Assemblies, now long discussed, was demanded vainly.
By 1636, Charles and Laud had decided to introduce a liturgy, a slightly, but in Scottish apprehensions “idolatrously,” modified version of the Anglican prayer-book. Anglicanism was a limb of Antichrist; extempore prayers were regarded as inspired: a liturgy was “a Mass-book.” The procedure was purely despotic, and at the first attempt to use the liturgy in St Giles's there broke out the famous “Jenny Geddes” riot in the church (23rd of July 1637). The nobles of the country, the ministers and lairds, met in Edinburgh and sent a petition against the liturgy to Charles. In November were formed “The Tables,” a standing revolutionary committee of all Estates.
Constant meetings hurled protestations against the bishops; no man was more active than the young Montrose. In February The Covenanters. 1638 the Covenant, practically a “band” of the whole country, enforced on reluctant signers, was launched. It made Scotland, like Israel, “a covenanted people” for the defence and propagation of the old Presbyterianism of Andrew Melville, and many devotees held that it was for ever binding on the nation. Legists differ as to whether the band was legal or not, but revolutions make their own laws, and the Covenant could not be more illegal than the imposure of the liturgy. Charles drove on the bishops, who better understood the situation, and he sent the half-hearted Hamilton to negotiate and threaten in Edinburgh, where the Covenanters were blockading the castle. But Charles did grant a General Assembly in Glasgow (21st of November), where, among unseemly uproar, the ecclesiastical legislation of James I. was rescinded, the law and custom of forty years were abolished, conformist clerics were expelled, and the earl of Argyll appeared as leader of the extreme party, while Montrose was the general of the armed Covenanters. In 1639 he was as active in arms in the north as Hamilton, on the king's side, was dilatory and helpless in the south. By May the chief clerical leader, Henderson of Leuchars, was denouncing Royalists as “Amalekites,” and by biblical precedent Amalekites receive no quarter. Prelacy was “Baal worship,” and the kirk thus turned the strife in the direction of religious ferocity.
While Charles hung irresolute on the eastern border, the Covenanters, under Alexander Leslie, took heart, occupied Duns Law, and terrified Charles into negotiations (11th-18th June). A hollow pacification was made: the assembly of August 1639 imposed the signing of the Covenant on all Scotsmen. A parliament (31st of August) demanded the loss of votes (fourteen) by bishops, and freedom of debate on bills formed by the Lords of the Articles, who had practically held all power; while Argyll carried a bill demanding for each estate the right to select its own representatives among these lords. Traquhair, as royal commissioner, prorogued parliament; negotiations with the king in London had no result; and in 1640 the prorogation was contemned, and though opposed by Montrose, the parliament constituted itself, with no royal warrant. War was at hand, but Montrose formed a party by “the band of Cumbernauld,” to suppress the practical dictatorship of his rival and enemy, Argyll, who, he understood, was to be one of a triumvirate, and absolute north of Forth. Argyll allowed the committee of Estates to rule, as before, and bided his time. On the 20th of August Montrose was the first of the Covenanting army to cross the Tweed; Newcastle was seized, and Charles, unsupported by England, entered on the course of the Long Parliament and the slaying of Stratford. In Scotland the secret of the Cumbernauld band came out; Montrose, Napier and other friends were imprisoned on the strength of certain ambiguous messages to Charles, and on the 27th of July, being called before parliament, Montrose said—“My resolution is to carry with me honour and fidelity to the grave.” Montrose kept his word, while Hamilton stooped to sign the Covenant. Montrose lay in prison while Charles I. visited Scotland and met the parliament, The “Incident” perturbed by the dim and unintelligible plot called “The Incident” (October 1641), which seems to have aimed at seizing the persons of Argyll, Hamilton and his brother Lanark. All that is known of Montrose, in this matter, is that from prison he had written thrice to Charles, and that Charles had intended to show his third letter to Argyll, Hamilton and Lanark, on the very day when they, suspecting a plot, retired into the country (12th of October). An agitated inquiry which only found contradictory evidence was disturbed by the news of the Irish rebellion (28th of October). Charles heaped honours on his opponents (Argyll was the one marquis of his name), and hastened to England. The country was governed by fifty-six members of the Estate and by the dreaded commission of the General Assembly, for now the kirk dominated Scotland, denying even the right of petition to the lieges.
The English parliament, at war with the king, demanded aid from Scotland; it was granted under the conditions of the The Great Rebellion. Solemn League and Covenant (1643), by which the Covenanters expected to secure the establishment of Presbyterianism in England, though the terms of agreement are dubious. Scotland, however, regarded herself as bound to war against “Sectaries,” and so came into collision with Cromwell, to her undoing. In January 1644, a Scottish army crossed Tweed, to aid the parliament, with preachers to attend the synod of Westminster. Already some 2000 men from Ireland, mainly of Macdonalds and other clans driven into Ireland by the Argylls, were being dispatched to the west Highland coast. Lanark, from Oxford, fled to join the Covenanters; Charles imprisoned Hamilton in Cornwall; Montrose was made a marquis; Leslie, with a large Scottish force and 4000 horse, besieged Newcastle. Montrose arrived a day too late for Marston Moor (and of July 1644); Rupert took his contingent; he entered Scotland in disguise, met the ill-armed Irish levies under Colkitto, raised the Gordons and Ogilvies, who supplied his cavalry, raised the fighting Macdonalds, Camerons and Macleans; in six pitched battles he routed Argyll and all the Covenanting warriors of Scotland, and then, deserted by Colkitto and the Gordons, and surprised by Leslie's cavalry withdrawn from England, was defeated at Philiphaugh near Selkirk, while men and women of his Irish contingent were shot or hanged months after the battle.
The clamour of the preachers was now for blood, and gentlemen taken under promise of quarter were executed by command of the Estates at St Andrews, for to give quarter was “to violate the oath of the Covenant”—as interpreted by the clergy. It would have been wiser to put the revenges as reprisals for the undeniable horrors committed by Montrose's Irish levies. The surrender of Charles to the Scots, the surrender by the Scots of Charles to the English, for £200,000 of arrears of pay, with hopes of another £200,000 (February 1647), were among the consequences of Montrose's defeat. But the surrender of the king festered in Scottish consciences; for the country was far from acquiescing in the transaction.
Leslie, by the advice of one Nevoy, a preacher, massacred, on his return to Scotland, the Macdonalds in Dunaverty castle. A strife arose between Hamilton, who wished to disband the Covenanting army, and Argyll, and gradually the struggle was between Hamilton and the sympathizers with the imprisoned king and Argyll at the head of (or under the heels of) the more fanatical preachers and Presbyterians. The Scottish commissioners in England, with Lauderdale, and with the approval of Hamilton's faction, signed, at the end of 1647, “The Engagement” with Charles, and broke away from the tyranny of the preachers. The Engagers had the majority in parliament, but were frantically cursed from the pulpits; they and their army mustered for the deliverance of their king. In August 1648, they crossed the border, leaving the fanatics to arm in their rear, but Cromwell, by a rapid march across the fells, caught and utterly routed them at Preston and on the line of the Ribble, taking captive the infantry and Hamilton, who was sent to the block.
This was the kirk's proudest triumph; the countrymen of the preachers had been ruined on “St Covenant's Day.” The Execution of Charles I. preachers, with Lords Loudoun and Eglintoun, Argyll and Cassilis, armed and raised the godly, and occupied Edinburgh. The parliamentary committee capitulated with the extremists, who sent friendly messages to Cromwell, and Argyll met him on the Tweed. Thence Cromwell sent Lambert with seven regiments to Edinburgh, where he himself stayed for some time. A parliament in Argy1l's and the preachers' interest met there in January 1649; only sixteen nobles were present, as against fifty-six in the previous year. The execution of Charles I. (30th of January 1649) left the extreme party in a quandary. How could they keep terms with “bloody Sectaries” that had slain their king, in face of the protests of their envoys? They did pass the Act of the Classes, disabling all “Engagers” from all manner of offices, military and civil, and dividing the distracted country into two hostile camps. On the 5th of February Charles II. was proclaimed king in Edinburgh, if he took the two Covenants. This meant war against England, and war in which the Engagers and Royalists could not take part. The situation developed into ruin under the strife of the wilder and the gentler preachers.
Communications with Charles II. at the Hague were opened, and the Scots accused the English of breach of the Solemn League Death of Montrose. and Covenant. Huntly, as a Royalist, was decapitated at Edinburgh; and the envoys of Charles, thanks to the advice of Montrose, failed to induce him to stamp himself a recreant and a hypocrite by signing any covenants. But Montrose (January 1650) was sent by Charles to “search his death,” as he said, in an expedition to the north of Scotland, while, in the absence of his stainless servant, Charles actually signed the treaty of Breda (1st of May). In April Montrose was abandoned by his royal master, and was defeated at Carbiesdale, on the south side of the kyle, or estuary, of Shin and Oykel; he was betrayed, insulted, bullied by the preachers, and, going to his death like a bridegroom to the altar, was hanged at Edinburgh, on the 20th of May. “Great in life, Montrose was yet greater in his death.” He had kept his word, he had “carried fidelity and honour to the grave” (Gardiner). His head was set on a spike and his quartered limbs were exposed in various places.
Charles came to Scotland; he signed the Covenants, while his tormentors well and duly knew that the action was a base Royalist cause in Scotland. hypocrisy, that they had tempted him to perjury. Cromwell, who now crossed the border, impressed this truth, as far as he might, on the preachers, who made Charles sign declarations yet more degrading, to the discredit of his father and mother. Meanwhile David Leslie, with singularly excellent strategy, foiled and evaded Cromwell in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, till the great cavalry leader was forced to retreat towards England. At Dunbar Leslie held Cromwell in the hollow of his hand, but his army had been repeatedly “purged” of all Royalist men of the sword by the preachers; they are said, and Cromwell believed it, to have constrained Leslie to leave his impregnable position and attack on the lower levels. Leslie appears to have intended a surprise, as at Philiphaugh, but “through our own laziness,” he confesses, the surprise came from Cromwell's side, and few of the Scots except the mounted gentry escaped from the crushing defeat at Dunbar (3rd of September). Of the prisoners an unknown number died of hunger in Durham cathedral, others were sold to slavery in the colonies.
Cromwell had occupied the country south of the Forth, while Argyll was Charles's master, extorting hard terms from the prisoner, who once ran away. The committee of Estates, on hard terms, gave an indemnity to Royalists whose swords they needed; many ministers acquiesced (“The Resolutioners”), the more fanatical dissidents were called “Remonstrants,” and now the kirk was rent in twain by the disputes of these two factions. The Remonstrants, clerical and military (Guthrie and Strachan), would not support Charles while he was not “under conviction,” and Strachan was excommunicated by the Resolutioners. On the 20th of July 1651 Lambert defeated the Royalists at Inverkeithing; Forth no longer bridled Cromwell; Leslie was sure to be outflanked, and, with Charles, he evaded Cromwell, marched into the heart of England (unaccompanied by Argyll), and was defeated and taken, while Charles made a marvellous escape at Worcester (3rd of September 1651).
The conquest of Scotland was soon completed; at last she lay at an English victor's feet; the General Assembly was The Restoration. turned out into the street by “some rats of Musketeers and a troup of horse,” and the risings of Glencairn, Lorne (eldest son of Argyll) and others in the highlands were easily crushed. Argyll, deserted and detested, compromised himself by letters to Monk, containing intelligence as to the movements of the Royalists. While the rival bands of preachers squabbled, Cromwell, like Edward I., arranged that Scottish members should sit in Westminster, and, commercially, as in the administration of fair justice, and the peace of the country, Scotland prospered under English rule. But Monk withdrew his force to London in January 1660, and hurrying events brought the joyous Restoration of the 29th of May.
The festivities in Scotland were exuberant, but it was impossible that tranquillity should be restored. The Remonstrants, that is, the clerical fanatics to whom toleration was more especially abominable, are reckoned (Hume Brown) as the majority of the preachers, but exact statistics cannot be obtained. In their eyes, as Charles had taken both Covenants, he was bound to remain a Presbyterian and to establish Presbyterianism in England, a thing impossible and entailing civil war in the attempt. Even the representatives of the Resolutioners urged Charles not to use the Anglican service, though they confided to Sharp, their agent in London, their opinion that, if the Remonstrants (or Protesters) had any hand in affairs, “it cannot but breed continual distemper and disorders.” Suppose that the kirk was restored by Charles to her position in 1592, with General Assemblies. With the violent party in a majority, refusing the jurisdiction of the state, insisting on the establishment of Presbyterianism in England, excommunicating and scolding, Scotland would be as much disturbed as in the days of Andrew Melville. “Neither fair nor other means are likely to do with them” (the fanatics), says Baillie, principal of Glasgow University, himself a Covenanter from the beginning. He wished to banish the Remonstrants to Orkney.
Historians do not usually seem to perceive that Charles was faced by the old quarrel of church and state, in which “fair means ” were seen to be unavailing, while “unfair means” only succeeded, after some thirty years, in breaking down the old Presbyterian spirit so much that, after 1688, the state could hold her own. Charles, without first summoning the Estates, named his own privy council and ministers, of whom Lauderdale, long a Covenanter, came presently to be governor of Scotland. As Argyll, in face of all warnings, went to court, he was arrested, and during the session of parliament of January 1661 was tried for treason, and, on the ground of his letters to Monk, was convicted and executed, as was the leading Remonstrant preacher, James Guthrie, accused of holding an illegal conventicle, “tending to disturbance, . . . and, if possible, rekindling a civil war.”
The history of the country during the Restoration falls naturally into four periods.
I. In the first (1660-1663) the royal commissioner to parliament was the earl of Middleton, a soldier of fortune who Four periods during the Restoration. had been in arms for the Crown as late as 1655, who had been excommunicated by the kirk, and was determined to keep down the preachers. With him were the Cavalier party, anxious to recover their losses during the civil war. All were impoverished, and greed was the dominant motive of the members of the privy council, the rulers of the country. Meanwhile, in London, the earl of Lauderdale, once a fervent Covenanter, was secretary for Scotland, had the king's ear, and would have restored presbytery, at least by way of experiment. The “creature” of Charles, as he called himself, this burly, violent scholar, buffoon and bully, was reckoned a patriot. As an “Engager” he had seen his country conquered by English arms. His policy was to keep Scotland in good humour by restoring presbytery; to raise in the country a militia strong enough to support Charles against the English parliament, and thus, in both countries, to make the royal prerogative absolute. The first parliament (1661-1663), under Middleton, was obsequious enough to grant the king £40,000 annually, to abolish the covenants and to rescind all but the private legislation of the revolutionary years (1638-1660). The Lords of the Articles were restored, mere nominees of government. Middleton, Tarbat and Clarendon overcame Charles's reluctance to restore episcopacy; Lauderdale fell into the background; The Rev. James Sharp, hitherto the agent of the Resolutioners, or milder party among the preachers, turned his coat, and took the archbishopric of St Andrews. Episcopacy being restored, some three or four hundred preachers were driven from their parishes (1663). “We made a waste,” said Archbishop Leighton, “and stocked it with owls and satyrs,” the detested “curates.” The Shorter Catechism was taught; the liturgy was not brought in; the sole change was in kirk government.
Meanwhile the Cavalier party invented a system of heavily fining men who had been their opponents in the troubles. Middleton coveted the estates of the earl of Argyll, son of the late marquis, and on a trumped-up charge of “leasing making” (he had spoken in a private letter of “the tricks of parliament”) had him condemned to death. He was saved by the exertions of Lauderdale, and Tarbat suggested, while Middleton adopted, a scheme for ostracizing, and making incapable of office, twelve of their opponents, including Lauderdale. But Lauderdale had the skill to turn the cards on Middleton, accusing him of tricking both parliament and king, and of usurping royal prerogative. Middleton and Tarbat were cashiered, and the able but profligate earl of Rothes united four or five of the highest offices in his own person, Lauderdale remaining at court as secretary for Scotland.
II. We come now to the years from 1664 to 1667. Middleton, with Archbishop Sharp, misgoverned the country, established a high court of commission, exiled the fiercest preachers to Holland, whence they worked endless mischief by agitation and a war of pamphlets; irritated the Covenanting shires, Fife and the south-west, by quartering troops on them to exact fines for Nonconformity, and so caused, during a war with Holland, the Pentland Rising (November 1666). This unconverted movement arose out of an act of cruelty by soldiers in the remote Glenkens, and was unsupported by Holland, with which the Covenanters had been intriguing. Crushed at Rullion Green in the Pentlands, by General Dalziel, this movement left the Presbyterians the more angry, by reason of the cruelty of its suppression, and the use of torture to extract information from Mackail, a preacher, and Neilson of Corsack, a laird.
III. Lauderdale again saw his chance; Rothes was deprived of all offices save the chancellorship; Sharp was “snibbed” and disgraced, attempts at concession were begun, and the indulgence of 1669 licensed a number of Presbyterian ministers, under restrictions. The indulgence accentuated the division between those who accepted and those who rejected it. Outrages on conformist ministers were frequent, and conventicles were accompanied by armed men. A popular book, Jus Populi Vindicatum (1669), demanded the restoration of the covenants, which meant civil war, the hanging of the bishops, and even applauded assassination by men who had “a call,” like Phinehas. In a parliament with Lauderdale as commissioner (1669-1673) “clanking acts” were passed against nonconformity, but the laws were too severe to be executed, save spasmodically, and were followed by a second indulgence (1672). Lauderdale having married the rapacious countess of Dysart, corruption was rife; his brother, Haltoun, was an example of reckless greed; opposition arose to a scheme of union, presently dropped, and by 1673 the duke of Hamilton and Sir George Mackenzie led an organized political opposition. Lauderdale's Militia Act gave Charles a force of 22,000 men, who would “go anywhere” (that is, would invade England), at the king's command, and in 1673-1675 Lauderdale was attacked in the English House of Commons. Charles stood by him, but his best allies, Kincardine and Sir Robert Murray, deserted him, while Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh came over to his party, became king's advocate (1677), and till 1686 was the Achitophel and public prosecutor of the government. After an alleged attempt to negotiate through Argyll (1678) with the preachers, in view of the threatening increase of armed conventicles, Lauderdale resolved on suppression. Without money, and without anything like an adequate regular force, he called out the clansmen of Atholl, Perth and other nobles, and quartered “the Highland host” on the disturbed districts. He would either put them down, or, what he preferred, bring rebellion to a head. The gentry, who had proclaimed their inability to suppress conventicles, were ordered to sign a bond making them responsible for their tenants, and were bound over to keep the king's peace by “law burrows,” a method common in private life but unheard of between monarch and people. After six weeks the plundering clansmen were withdrawn, and in the spring of 1678, also of 1679, Hamilton with his allies carried their complaints to Charles. Mackenzie, in a controversy at Windsor (1679), proved to Charles that in Scotland he was as absolute as the kings of France and Spain, over church, state and all his subjects, and indeed, by various acts of James VI. and of his own reign, Charles really was a despot (British Museum, Additional MSS. 23,244, pp. 20-28).
Meanwhile, armed conventicles abounded, and the extreme faction openly denounced and separated themselves from the rapidly growing mass of the Indulged. Early in May 1679 Sharp was hacked to death on Magus Moor near St Andrews. The murderers rode to the west, joined the company of Robert Hamilton, defeated Graham of Claverhouse with a small force of horse at Drumclog, occupied Glasgow, and proved the total inability of the regular forces to cope with a rising. Charles might have been unable, in the frenzy of the popish plot of Titus Oates, to send forces from England, but as he chose the popular Protestant, the duke of Monmouth, to command them, he was allowed to despatch some regiments. The rebels, who were in two hostile parties, Indulged and Separatists, failed to hold Bothwell Bridge, and were easily routed. The duke of York was sent, in honourable banishment, to Scotland, and in the parliament of 1681 was royal commissioner.
IV. Here begins the fourth period (1680-1688), the domination of the duke, Queensberry, Perth, and his brother, Drummond of Lundin (earl of Melfort). Lauderdale was out of favour, and died. Now “by concession” (a third indulgence) “and repression, the once mighty force of Scottish Presbyterianism had at length been broken” (Hume Brown). By “Presbyterianism” we are here to understand, not the Presbyterian form of church government—the kirk whose motto is Nec tamen consumebatur—but the pretensions of preachers to dominate the state by the mythical “power of the keys,” by excommunication with civil penalties and by the fiercest religious intolerance. Presbyterianism can exist and flourish without these survivals of the proudest pretensions of Romanism. To quote Dr Hume Brown again, “When the absolutism of the Stuarts was succeeded by a more rational government (1689), the example of the Indulged ministers, who composed the great mass of the Presbyterian clergy, was of the most potent effect in substituting the idea of toleration for that of the religious absolutism of Knox and Melville.” Save for the fact that the ministers were as intolerant as ever of Nonconformists, Catholics and heretics, this is a just view, but Charles II. had to deal with a kirk in which the Remonstrants, the more fanatical ministers, were potent, whether the majority or not, while, after 1689, government found “the once mighty force of Presbyterianism broken.” It was broken by the two last Stuart kings, who employed methods the most brutal and repulsive for the crushing of consciences trained in the theocratic ideas of Knox and Melville. The memory of the courage and devotion with which men, women and even children faced torture, death and ruin for an ideal impossible and undesirable is dear to the Scottish people.
On the side of the extremists, Cameron was happy enough to die in fair fight at Airs Moss (22nd of July 1680), after publicly disowning the king for his breach of the Covenant. Cargill next excommunicated the king, Dalziel and Mackenzie, and his followers separated themselves from “the ordinances dispensed by any Presbyterian minister.” The followers of these two men, and of their successor, Renwick, who later was hanged, became the armed and organized “Societies,” a large force of yeomen and farmers in south-western Scotland, usually styled Cameronians. After the Revolution, the government left them alone, and could afford to do so.
In 1681, parliament, under the duke of York as commissioner, passed a test act so drafted that no human being could honestly and logically take the test. The earl of Argyll, son of the marquis, added a qualifying clause; he would take the test, “as far as it was consistent with itself.” By the influence of his countless creditors, who desired to be paid out of his estates, and in revenge for his seizure, on claims for debts, of the whole estates of clan Maclean (1674-1680), he was tried and was actually found guilty of treason. He escaped, but was condemned on the old charge after his later invasion of Scotland (1685).
In 1684, while Perth, and his brother, Melfort, who went over to Rome, were in power, Renwick emitted an “Apologetical Declaration,” in which the active enemies of his sect were threatened with secret trials and with assassination (October), and a “curate,” with some soldiers, was murdered. This, coming on the head of the Rye House murder plot (of which the Rev. Mr Carstairs, the agent of Argyll, and probably Argyll himself, then in Holland, were not ignorant), caused the government to demand, at the hands of the military, from all and sundry, an “Abjuration” of Renwick's anarchist utterances. Recusants were shot. The test was carefully framed so as to include no disavowal of religious principles, and was “universally unscrupled, even by the generality of great professors and ministers too,” says Sheilds, an advanced extremist. However, the peasantry found, in the abjuration, matter contrary to their consciences, and while some recusants were shot out of hand, a girl named Margaret Wilson, with an old Woman, Margaret MacLauchlan, were tied to stakes and drowned by the incoming tide, near Wigtown (13th of May 1685). How the penalty came to be inflicted, as the pair had what Wodrow calls “a material pardon,” while there is no record of the withdrawal of the reprieve, remains a mystery. The guilt appears to attach to the local authorities at Wigtown.
In this cruel affair, Claverhouse, who caused to be shot the celebrated John Brown, “the Christian carrier,” had no hand. To quote Dr Hume Brown, Claverhouse “kept strictly within the limits of his commission, and he carried out his orders with the distinct aim of saving blood in the end. To those who he thought had been led astray, it was his policy not to be unmerciful; for, in his own words, ‘it renders three desperate where it gains one.’ On the other hand, in the case of the obdurate, he showed a relentless precision, which gained for him his evil name, ‘The Bloody Clavers,’ the commissioned servant of the powers of darkness.” As constable of Dundee he secured the commutation of the death penalty on minor offenders under his jurisdiction, and his expressed maxim was “in the greatest crimes it is thought wisest to pardon the multitude and punish the ringleaders.” It is no exaggeration to say that, of the governors of Scotland under the Restoration, Claverhouse was the ablest, the most honourable, the least rapacious and even the most clement. But “Bluidy Claverhouse” will continue to enjoy his traditional reputation in popular tracts and popular histories.
Charles II. had died on the 2nd of February 1685, and there were in Scotland some who wept for him. The year of his death was, par excellence, “The Killing Time,” thanks to Renwick and his associates and the Rye House plotters. Now, too, came the attempts of Monmouth and of Argyll, who, owing to divided counsels in his camp, and want of support either from his clan or from the southern malcontents, failed in his invasion of Scotland, was taken, and was executed, suffering like his father with great courage and dignity. Many recusants were penned up, starved and cruelly treated, even tortured when they attempted escape, in the vaults of Dunottar Castle.
In 1686 James claimed and used the dispensing power as to penal laws against Catholics, in face of the opposition of two of the Revolution of 1688. Scottish bishops (who were ejected from their sees) and of parliament. Mackenzie, for his opposition, lost office. The privy council was opened to Catholics, but on the landing of William III. the populace, in 1688, wrecked the chapel of Holyrood and began to “rabble” conformist ministers, or “curates.” Of the guard that defended Holyrood “the gentlemen and the rabble, when they saw all danger over, killed some and put the rest in prison, where many of them died of their wounds and hunger,” a parallel to the Dunottar cruelties not usually mentioned by historians (“Balcarres Memoirs”). A Convention of Estates, without a royal commissioner, met at Edinburgh on the 14th of March 1689, and it is curious that Williamites and Jacobites were not unequally represented. For president, Hamilton, who had been in opposition from 1673 to 1682, was preferred to Atholl by a small majority, but it soon appeared that William's friends were in the ascendant.
Claverhouse, now Viscount Dundee, despairing of his party, and under apprehension of an attack in arms, rode northward Killiecrankie. with a handful of horse, and began to play the part of Montrose, while the Convention offered the crown to William and Mary, adding the claim of right to dethrone a king who had infringed the laws. In May, William, in London, took the coronation oath, but firmly refused to accept, except in some sense of his own not easily understood, the clause, “to be careful to root out all heretics.” The castle of Edinburgh was surrendered by Gordon, and Balcarres was put in that prison where, according to legend, he was visited by the Wraith of Dundee, on the night of the battle of Killiecrankie. While Dundee was raising the clans and outmanœuvring Mackay, a party in parliament was agitating for constitutional reforms, and especially for freedom from the Lords of the Articles. William opposed, and party war was furious, when news came of Dundee's complete victory at Killiecrankie. The terror of the Whigs turned to joy when they heard that Dundee himself had fallen in the arms of victory. Two murderers had been sent by the earl of Nottingham to “seize,” that is to despatch, Dundee. They left London for Mackay's camp on the 19th of July. On the 27th of July Dundee was shot, and on the 21st of October Nottingham wrote that his emissaries “had done very good service to the King” (State Papers, “Domestic,” July 17th, 18th, 19th, October 21st, 1689). Henceforth, for lack of a commander of Dundee's genius, there was no real danger from the clans, and absolutely no chance of a rising of the lowland Jacobites in their support. At Dunkeld the newly raised Cameronian regiment successfully repulsed the highlanders, ill led by General Cannon as they were. They were never again dangerous at this period, were scattered by Livingstone in a surprise at Cromdale haughs, and government began to attempt to buy from chiefs the peace of the clans.
Meanwhile complex intrigues occurred, and were betrayed, between “the Club” (the advanced constitutionalists) and the Jacobites. In 1690 an act restored the kirk to the legal position of 1592, under sixty of the surviving ministers deprived in 1661. An act abolished civil penalties upon sentences of excommunication, and thus broke the terrible weapon which the preachers had wielded so long. Nothing was said about the eternally binding Covenant, which continued to be the fetish of the Cameronians and of later seceders. The General Assemblies, henceforth, under the influence of the diplomatic Carstairs (who had been cruelly tortured in 1684, to extract information about the Rye House Plot), did little to thwart government, though many “placed ministers” were, at heart, attached to the ancient claims of Knox and Melville. Laws as to patronage, an inflammatory question, were made, abolished and remade, causing, from about 1730 onwards, passions which exploded in the great Disruption of 1842. The dealings with the clans culminated in the massacre Massacre of Glencoe of the MacIans of Glencoe (13th February 1692). Through military inefficiency the hill passes were not stopped, and the murders of a peaceful and hospitable population were relatively few. That Dalrymple arranged for actual extermination of the males of the clan is certain, but there is no proof that he knew of the modus operandi, the betrayal of hospitality, “murder under trust.” It is conceivable that William signed the orders under the impression that a “punitive expedition” of the ordinary sort was alone intended, but remonstrance from the Estates brought no punishment on any man except the dismissal, later, of Dalrymple (Viscount Stair) from office.
In 1693-1694 the kirk was much irritated by William's demands for oaths of allegiance to himself, without the consent of the ecclesiastical courts. William gave way, but similar Hanoverian demands later caused great searching of heart and divisions among the preachers. The Episcopal party among the ministers was excluded from a share in church government and tended to dwindle; the bishops had no territorial sees; and gradually Episcopalians came to be Jacobites, professing a strange loyalty to James, who had treated them so unjustly, and later to his son, “James VIII., ” the Chevalier de St George (b. June 10, 1688).
Since the Cromwellian occupation the interest of Scottish men had slowly shifted from religion to commerce; but a tariff Darien Scheme. war between England and Scotland had checked manufacturing and other enterprises. One William Paterson, instrumental in founding the Bank of England, conceived the plan of a Scottish East India Company, which, in 1695, obtained a patent by act of parliament. William complained, later, that he had no notice of the terms of that patent till after it was passed (he was fighting under Namur at the time), and the act not unnaturally aroused the jealousy of the rival English companies. It committed William to conditions which might readily produce a great naval war with Spain, for Paterson's real design was to establish an entrepôt in Panama, at Darien, within the undeniable sphere of Spanish influence. The Scots invested very largely, for them, but their expeditions were ill-found and worse managed; the Spaniards seized one of their vessels with its crew; the colonists deserted the colony; a fresh expedition was expelled by Spain, and William refused to take up the Scottish quarrel (1695-1700). The losses and the apparent injustice caused a frenzy of excitement in Scotland, and William could only express his regret and his desire for an incorporating Union of the two kingdoms. He died on the 7th of March, when the project of Union was to be debated by the English parliament. Under William, Scotland was a constitutional country; the absolute despotism enjoyed by Charles II. ceased to be; a free debating parliament existed, and torture was inflicted only by decree of king and parliament. It was abolished two years after the Union of 1707.
Anne, from the beginning of her reign, advocated union, which, with the question of the succession, was the subject of The Union. constant and furious debates in the Scots parliament, till, on the 4th of March 1707, the act received the royal assent. Scotland was to have forty-five members and sixteen elected peers at Westminster; the holders of Darien stock were compensated; as a balance to equality of taxation a pecuniary equivalent was to be paid, the kirk and Scottish courts of justice were safeguarded (final appeal being to the British House of Lords), and Scots shared English facilities and privileges of trade, in name, for many years passed before Scotland really began to enjoy the benefits. Mar, Queensberry, Stair (of Glencoe) and Argyll (Red John of the Battles) were the leading statesmen of the Unionist party; being opposed by Hamilton, Atholl and Lockhart of Carnwath as Jacobites; by Fletcher of Saltoun as an independent patriot; by popular sentiment, by mob violence, and by many of the preachers, though not by the General Assembly. Every sentimental consideration was against a union with a prelatic kingdom, “an auld enemy,” which drove a hard bargain by threats of excluding Scottish commodities. The negotiations were constantly disturbed by Jacobite intrigues with France in favour of James VIII.; by Scottish adherence to the Act of Security, which might give Scotland a king other than a Hanoverian in succession to Anne; and by the hanging of an Englishman, Captain Green, for piracy on a lost Scottish vessel (1705). The final debates of 1706 were conducted under apprehensions of an invasion of Edinburgh by highlanders and wild western fanatics of the Covenant; but the astuteness of Harley's agent in Edinburgh, de Foe, the resolution of Argyll and the tact of Queensberry, who easily terrified the duke of Hamilton, carried the measure into haven. The Union was at first rich in causes of friction, and in nothing else; even as late as 1745 it was most unpopular, but Scotland had no choice. The nation would never accept a Catholic king, a Stuart, nor revert, as against England, to the ancient French alliance. The religious objection was insuperable; opportunities of commercial development were indispensable; war with England was not to be contemplated by the common sense of the country; and thus, as de Foe wrote, “The Union was merely formed by the nature of things.” In Lockhart's words, the 30th of April 1707 “was the last day that Scotland was Scotland. I may lament and weep,” he adds, “but truly I have had admirable sport,” with his greyhounds.
Friction about matters of trade was the instant sequel of the Union: so much ill-feeling was provoked that, in the general Jacobite failures. opinion, had King James VIII. landed alone when brought to the Scottish coast by Forbin's fleet in March 1708, he would have carried Scotland with him. But Forbin was chased away from the Firth of Forth by a fleet under Sir George Byng; he refused to allow the young adventurer to land farther north, and the Jacobites doubted that France was never serious in the enterprise. The Jacobites also, through mistrust of each other—none could trust Hamilton—and finally through the intoxication of a pilot who failed to reach Forbin, led to the imbecile fiasco. In the English parliament the Jacobites managed to secure a measure of toleration for the Episcopal clergy, after one of them, Mr Greenshields, had long lain in prison for his use of the liturgy (1711). The kirk was incensed by the growth of Episcopalianism and of Popery, the restoration of patronage, and the pressure to accept an oath abjuring James, which divided a church that was absolutely anti-Jacobite. Repeal of the Union was actually mooted in 1712, and even Argyll was restive. The fatal duel in which Hamilton was slain by Mohun, when on the eve of going as ambassador to France, with the interests of James in his eye, was a blow to the Jacobites; as were the death of Anne, the fall of Bolingbroke and the unopposed succession of George I. (August 1714). Their king over the water had, in a manly and magnanimous letter to his adherents, refused to change his creed, and when Bolingbroke fled from England his evangelical efforts at proselytizing James were fruitless. Berwick and Bolingbroke were his ministers, but Berwick would not accompany him to Scotland, and Bolingbroke did not provide the necessary munitions of war. Through a series of confusions and blunders, Mar prematurely raised on the 16th of September 1715 the standard of King James, and though in command of a much larger army than ever followed Montrose, was baffled by Argyll, who held Stirling with a very small force. Mar never crossed the Forth, and the command of Mackintosh, who did, was captured, with his Northumbrian cavaliers, at Preston, on the very day (12th of November) when Argyll foiled Mar in the confused battle of Sheriffmuir. Mar's highlanders began to desert; his council was a confusion of opinions and discontents, and when, after many dangers and in the worst of health, James joined the Jacobites at Perth, it was only to discourage his friends by his gloom, and to share their wintry flight before Argyll to Montrose. Thence he furtively sailed with Mar to France, a broken man, leaving his army to shift for themselves. Many of his noble supporters escaped, he did his best to provide them with ships, others were executed, while the great Whig, Forbes of Culloden, protested against the bad policy of the repressive measures. Argyll, who had saved the country, was regarded as lukewarm, and lost the royal favour, while James, at Avignon, intrigued with Charles XII. of Sweden and with Argyll and his brother, the earl of Islay, till he was driven from France to take refuge in Italy. Spain backed him in 1719, but the death of Charles XII., and the utter failure of a Spanish expedition to Scotland in 1719, when the Jacobites were scattered, and the Spaniards taken, in a fight at Glensheil, ruined what had seemed a fair chance of success. Returning from Spain, James married Maria Clementina Sobieska, daughter of Prince James Sobieski, a pretty bride whom Charles Wogan rescued from durance in Innsbruck, an adventure of romantic gallantry. The marriage was unhappy; James was eternally occupied with the business of his cause and the feuds of his adherents; Clementina lost her gaiety and became causelessly jealous; and her retreat to a convent in 1725 was a greater blow to the cause than the failure of Atterbury's plot (1720), the alleged treason of Mar and the splits in the Jacobite party. Clementina, however, was the mother of two sons, Charles Edward, the hope of his party, and Henry. The cause slumbered, till in 1742-1743 the outbreak of wars with France and Spain gave Prince Charles a chance of showing his mettle. The Jacobites surrounding James in Rome never ceased to weave at the endless tissue of their plot, but in Scotland nothing more substantial than the drinking of loyal healths was done, between the flight of Lockhart of Carnwath, the manager of the party, and the years of 1737-1744. The old Jacobites were dying out; James never had a minister who was not baited by three-fourths of the party, and denounced as a favourite at best, at worst a traitor; and the Cause would have sunk into ashes but for the promise of his eldest son, Prince Charles.
In Scotland the kirk, as ever, was militant, but it could no longer wage war on kings and their ministers, nor attempt to Parties in the kirk. direct foreign and domestic policy. The preachers thus fell into parties, which attacked each other in a brotherly way. The grounds of strife were the spread of “liberal” religious ideas; on one side heretical and anti-Calvinistic doctrines, and on the other a tendency to stretch Calvinistic principles till they were scarcely to be distinguished from Antinomianism. A Glasgow professor, the Rev. Mr Simson, was attacked for Arminianism and Socinianism as early as 1717; and the battle raged between the more severe Presbyterians—who still hankered after the Covenant, approved of an old work The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1646), and were especially convinced that preachers must be elected by the people—and the Moderates, who saw that the Covenant was an anachronism, thought conduct more important than Calvinistic convictions, and supported in the General Assembly the candidates selected by patrons, as against those chosen by the popular voice. The Marrow was discouraged as verging on Antinomianism (1720); and in 1722 its protesting admirers were rebuked by the Assembly. The Marrow men put in protests, and were clearly on the way to secession from the kirk. The oath of abjuration of James was another cause of division, at least till it was watered down in 1719; and by 1726 a revival of the charges of heresy against Simson, with the increase of agitation against the majority of the Assembly who supported patrons, lighted a flame which burned the slight bonds that kept the extremists in union with the kirk.
In 1732 their leaders were the brothers Erskine, one of whom, Ebenezer, preached a sermon accusing professed Presbyterians as guilty of “an attempt to jostle Christ out of his church.” For this and other severe censures of his brethren, Mr Erskine would not apologize: he had “delivered the utterance given to him by the Lord”: his was the very attitude of the preachers who thundered against James VI. Mr Erskine was rebuked in the Assembly of 1733; he protested with three friends: they were deprived of their charges; they vowed that they were “the True Presbyterian Covenanted Church of Scotland,” and had the power of the keys. They constituted themselves a presbytery, and maintained that the covenants were perpetually binding. The Assembly went as far as was possible in offers of reconciliation, but the seceders were irreconcilable, and were deposed in 1740. In 1744 they made the “Taking of the Covenants” a term of ministerial and Christian communion. It is impossible here to follow the schisms which split the seceding body within itself: the Erskines themselves were handed over to Satan; their very families adopted opposite factions: there were “Burghers” and “Anti-Burghers,” “New Lights” and “Old Lights”; besides the sects which in the 19th century merged in United Presbyterians, and merged themselves later with the Free Church of the Disruption, itself the parent of a small protesting body, popularly styled “The Wee Frees” (see Scotland, Church of). The whole movement, intended as a return to the kirk of Knox and Melville and the Covenanters, was a not unneeded protest against the sleepy “moderation,” and want of spiritual enthusiasm, which invaded the established kirk in the latter part of the 18th century, a period in which she possessed such distinguished writers as John Home, author of the drama of Douglas, Robertson, the historian, and Dr Carlyle, whose amusing autobiography draws a perfect portrait of an amiable and highly educated “Moderate” and man of the world. Naturally the opposite party, whether seceders, or “High Flyers,” as they were called, within the church, had most influence with the populace, so that “the Trew Universal Kirk” of Scotland was broken into several communions, differing but slightly in accepted doctrines, and not at all in mode of worship. Their tendency has been centripetal, and all the “Free Churches” are agreed in their views concerning the prolonged existence of “the Auld Kirk.” The Episcopalians, in this period, were nearly as much perturbed as the Presbyterians, by questions as to the election of bishops in relation to their exiled king, and by the introduction of ritualism in the shape of “the usages.” They passed through much persecution, in consequence of the rising of 1745, but, after the death of their King Charles, they became as loyal as any other religious body, managing their own affairs with no more turmoil than is caused by the coexistence of the Anglican and the Laudian prayer-books, with their different forms of the communion service.
As to civil matters, the country was troubled by riots against the Malt Tax, but the clans submitted to a very superficial The highland class. disarmament; companies of highlanders were employed to preserve order and check cattle-raiding; and one of these, “The Black Watch” (the Forty-Second), greatly distinguished itself at the battle of Fontenoy. Wade drove his military roads through the highlands, and, poor as the country still was, the city of Glasgow throve on the tobacco and sugar trade with America and the West Indies. Yet Duncan Forbes of Culloden, president of the Court of Session, after the outbreak of the war with Spain, reported amazing scarcity of money in the country, and strenuously advised legislative checks on the taste for tea, which naturally diminished the profits of the excise on more generous beverages. The fact is that as English companies for foreign trade had long been in chartered existence, Scotsmen and Scottish capital had no profitable outlets, while agriculture was conducted on slovenly medieval or prehistoric methods; and only the linen trade of the country was really flourishing. Thus, except in the case of the west coast trade with the colonies, Scotland had reaped little commercial benefit from the Union, and the loss of business caused by the abolition of the parliament, and the rush of noble families to London, was severely felt in Edinburgh. Yet there existed no dangerous political dissatisfaction. Though the chief religions of the highlanders, the Episcopalian and Catholic forms, were depressed by persecution, and priests were few, the clans had long been accustomed to lack of religious functions and did not feel the want. But the hereditable jurisdictions and feudal powers, as of calling out tenants by the fiery cross and punishing the peaceful by burning their cottages, had never been abolished; the chief's will was law, and if the chiefs headed a rising, their clansmen would follow them, willingly or “forced out.” They formed a remarkable militia, trained to the use of arms; wonderfully mobile and rapid on the march and dauntlessly courageous.
The years 1737-1739 saw the germs of civil war beginning to take active life. Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, an aged intriguer, Bonny Prince Charlie. conceived discontent against the government for the loss of his independent company, and began to intrigue with France and with James in Rome. In the same year a young Tweedside laird, Murray of Broughton, visited Rome, fell in love with Prince Charles, then a handsome, wayward, stalwart and ambitious lad, with “a body made for war,” and, returning home, Murray practically succeeded to the duties once performed by Lockhart of Carnwath, as Jacobite agent and organizer.
In 1738 the waning power of Walpole and the approaching war with Spain caused Forbes of Culloden to propose the raising of four or five highland regiments for foreign service. Walpole, urged by Lord Islay, brother of Argyll, is said to have approved, but nothing was done. The declaration of war with Spain and the certainty of war with France promised to the Jacobites good fishing in turbid waters; and they entertained futile hopes of enlisting Argyll with his potent clan. Walpole entered into communication with James, who saw through the manœuvre, and in 1741 a Jacobite association was formed, which included Lovat and Lochiel. Their agent was Drummond (Macgregor really) of Balhaldie, who in 1741-1743 dealt with the English Jacobites, and persuaded France that they were powerful and eager. In fact the Scots were feebly organized, and the English Jacobites were not organized at all. Says Murray, “there was not the least ground for encouragement,” but, thanks to Balhaldie, Louis XV. began to mobilize an invading force in November 1743. Balhaldie carried to James in Rome an invitation for Prince Charles to go to France, a verbal invitation, which James reluctantly accepted. Cardinal Tencin was not in the secret, and by the time Charles made his way to Paris in January 1744, James clearly perceived the duplicity of France. The Scottish Jacobites were left in ignorance of the French attempt to land in the mouth of the Thames (February-March 1744), an effort frustrated by a disastrous tempest, and by the slackness of the English conspirators.
Prince Charles was left in neglect and obscurity; till, unchecked by Murray, relying on hasty Jacobite promises brought by him, and encouraged by the French victory of Fontenoy, he started with seven companions for the west highland coast on the 21st of July 1745. His landing at Borradale on the 5th of August brought a few enthusiastic Macdonalds about him; from a sense of honour Lochiel joined with the Camerons. Keppoch and Clanranald would not desert a prince with a reward of £30,000 on his head, but Macleod and Sleat held aloof; and Lovat wrecked the adventure by his doubts and delays. None the less a small ill-armed force of some 2000 men marched south; Cope did not oppose them, but evaded them and went to Inverness, leaving open the road to Edinburgh. At Perth Charles was joined by a skilled soldier, Lord George Murray, brother of the Whig duke of Atholl, a pardoned veteran who had been out in 1715 and 1719.
But Lord George's previous dealings with Cope inspired in Charles a distrust-which was to prove fatal. Charles entered Edinburgh unopposed on the 16th of September, made his quarters in Holyrood, and on the 21st of September routed Cope at Prestonpans. But he had not the force to invade England, or to take the castle, and waited, collecting recruits and money, and encouraged by empty promises from France, till, as he wrote to James (26th of October), “I shall have one decisive stroke for 't, but unless the French land, perhaps none. As matters stand, I must either conquer or perish in a little.” His English adherents did not come in, and, after marching to Derby, his council insisted that enough had been done for honour, that Wade was on their flank and rear, the duke of Cumberland in their front, and an army was gathered to defend London. A broken-hearted man, Charles was compelled to acquiesce in retreat (5th of December). If the chiefs had possessed information now accessible to us, they might not have made “the great refusal,” but with only the intelligence which they possessed they could not have followed their audacious prince to the south. Their force was not more than 5000 men; and they were wholly unskilled in the use of the guns which they had captured at Prestonpans. The retreat was admirably conducted; Lord George and Cluny fought a gallant and successful rear guard at Clifton; they escaped from Cumberland across the border, but Charles, against advice, left a doomed garrison in Carlisle. After a stay to re-fit at Glasgow, Charles moved to besiege Stirling castle, and to join a force from the north, almost as numerous as that with which he had invaded the heart of England.
Cumberland had returned to London, but Hawley marched from Edinburgh with an army which Charles drove to the winds on Falkirk Moor. Hawley's guns were never in action, the Macdonalds charged and scattered his cavalry on the right wing, but pursued too far, and as the pipers Culloden. had gone in sword in hand, they could not be recalled. On the left the prince's men could not load their pieces, their powder being ruined by the tempestuous rain. They were checked by two steady regiments; many fled, all was darkness and confusion, but, on returning into Falkirk, Charles found that Hawley had decamped in a disgraceful rout. He could not pursue; the whereabouts of his right was unknown, and after the battle his best officers felt rather dismayed than encouraged by the conspicuous lack of discipline. In place of advancing on Edinburgh, they dallied round Stirling castle in futile siege, and, on the news of Cumberland's advance, alarmed by desertions which they appear to have greatly exaggerated, the chiefs compelled Charles to a fresh retreat. His expostulations perhaps prove him to have been “the best general in his army,” but he was dragged northwards to Inverness, and with depleted ranks of starving men, outworn by the fatigue of a long night's march to surprise Cumberland at Nairn, he stood on Culloden Moor in defence of Inverness, his base and only source of supplies (16th of April 1746). Charles had some 5000 men, Cumberland had nearly 9000 and eighteen well-served guns. Here for the first time the highlanders were under heavy fire of grape and round shot, to which they could not reply, and though the right wing and centre, Camerons, Atholl men, Macleans, Clan Chattan, Appin Stewarts, under Lord George and Lochiel, fought with even more than their usual gallantry and resolution, the Macdonalds on the left, discouraged by the death of Keppoch, Scotus and other officers in the advance, never came to the shock. Though outflanked, enfiladed and met by heavy musketry fire in front, the right wing broke Barrel's regiment and passed the guns, but the attack was checked by the bayonets of the second line and a rapid retreat became general. Charles did not leave the field till all was lost; so much seems clear from Yorke's evidence; but the price on his head, and probably suspicions urged by some of his Irish officers, induced him to desert his army and hurry secretly to the West coast and the western isles. He was rewarded by five or six months of dangerous and distressful wanderings, and would certainly have been taken at one juncture but for the courageous and wise assistance of Flora Macdonald, while on all hands the highlanders displayed the most devoted loyalty.
Into the ferocious conduct displayed by Cumberland after the victory, and in the suppression of the clans, we need not enter; nor is the list of executions of rebels alluring. The spirit of the clans remained true indeed, but their prince became “a broken man”: his clemency, and courage, and all that had endeared him to his people, perished under the disgusts and vices engendered by many years of a secret fugitive existence, after he was driven from France in 1749 (see A. Lang's Pickle, the Spy, and Life of Prince Charles).
As far as the rising had a political aim and reason for existence, apart from mere dynastic sentiment, that aim was “to break the Union”; in the prince's words, “to make Scotland once more a free and happy people.” But the vast majority of Scots, though not in love with the Union, Modern Scotland. preferred it to the rule of a Catholic king—Charles probably, for James had every desire to abdicate. The failure of Charles had, in fact, the result of assimilating Scotland much more closely to England. A disarming act, and the prohibition of the highland dress, did not indeed break, but it transferred to other fields the military spirit of the clans. The chiefs first raised the highland regiments which have covered themselves with glory from Ticonderoga to Dargai and Elandslaagte. The reward which many of the clansmen of the Peninsula and Waterloo received may be appreciated by those who read the introduction to Scott's Legend of Montrose. They returned to glens desolate of men, deserted, first, by the voluntary emigrations of the clans, and later by forced emigrations in the interests of sheep farms and deer forests. The abolition of hereditable jurisdictions and of the claims of feudal superiors to military service, after Culloden, broke the bond between chiefs and clans, and introduced new social and economical conditions, bequeathing the Land Question to the 20th century. The “planting” of ministers in the highlands, which had since the Reformation been almost destitute of religious instruction, bred a populace singularly strict in the matter of “Sabbath observance,” and, except in districts still Catholic or Episcopalian, eager supporters of the Free churches. In outlying places the old popular beliefs linger; second sight is common in some glens; and the interesting poetical traditions, like Jacobite sentiment, survive in the memories of the people, despite cheap newspapers and modern education.
With the failure of the last armed attempt to “break the Union,” Scottish history is merged in that of Great Britain; it was a British force that routed the Jacobites at Culloden. After 1745 the men of letters of the country continued with intense eagerness the movement initiated by John Knox, when he wrote in English, not in the old Scots that he learned at his mother's knee. Hutchinson, David Hume, Home and Robertson were assiduous in avoiding Scotticisms as far as they might; even Burns, who summed up the popular past of Scotland in his vernacular poetry, as a rule wrote English in his letters, and when he wrote English verse he often followed the artificial style of the 18th-century. The later famous men of letters, Scott, Carlyle and R. L. Stevenson, appealed as much to English readers as to their countrymen, patriotic as each of them was in his own way. As early as 1730–1740, the great English public schools and universities began to attract the Scottish youths of the wealthier classes, and now good Scots is seldom heard in conversation and is not always written in popular Scottish novels. Scotland and England, however, will always remain pleasantly distinct by virtue of their historical past and inherited traditions.
Bibliography.—The best general History of Scotland is that by Patrick Fraser-Tytler (1841–1843). It ends, however, with the Union of the crowns in 1603, and though it is based on thorough research in MSS., many documents now available, such as the dispatches of Spanish ambassadors to England, were not accessible to the learned author. The History by John Hill Burton (Edinburgh, 1867–1870) ends with the Jacobite Rising of 1746. It is of unequal merit, being best in places where the author was most interested, especially in points of the development of law. Here the works of Cosmo Innes are valuable, Lectures on Scotch legal antiquities (Edinburgh, 1872); and Scotland in the middle ages (Edinburgh, 1860). Burton's anti-Celticism, and scepticism as to archaeology, make his work inadequate in the earlier parts. On the Celtic beginnings the best books are E. W. Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings (Edinburgh, 1862) and W. F. Skene's Celtic Scotland (Edinburgh, 1876–1880), with his Highlanders of Scotland in the edition edited by A. Macbain (Stirling, 1902); other views are maintained in Rhys's Celtic Britain (1884). David Stewart of Garth's Sketches of the Highlanders (Edinburgh, 1822) is interesting, though the author leans too much on tradition; and Dr Gregory's History of the Highlands (1881) is excellent, but closes with the Union of the crowns. Scott's Tales of a Grandfather is, of course, full of interest, but is inevitably somewhat behind the mark of later years of research. The Foreign Calendars of State Papers, especially J. Bain's Calendars (Edinburgh, 1881–1888), are useful indices, but not infrequently need to be checked by the manuscripts.
There is much new information among the documents published by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, by the Scottish History Society, and the Register of the Privy Council, edited by Professors Masson and Hume Brown. The volumes of the book clubs, Bannatyne, Maitland, Abbotsford and Spalding, are full of matter; also those of the Early Scottish Texts Society and the Wodrow Society, with the works of Knox, Calderwood and the History of the Sufferings by Wodrow (edited by the Rev. Robert Burns, 1837–1838). Knox, like Bishop Burnet, needs to be read critically and in the light of contemporary documents; especially those in the Hamilton Papers, The Border Papers and English State Papers (Foreign). The most recent general Histories of Scotland are those of P. Hume Brown (Cambridge, 1899), and on a larger scale, but ending at 1746, of A. Lang (Edinburgh, 1900–1907). Mathieson's works deal with the period of the Covenant and Civil War, and, like Mackinnon's, with the Union; while Sir H. Craik's A Century of Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1901) gives a full account of the disruption of the Kirk. Many important manuscripts in muniment rooms are still uncalendared; those of the French Foreign Office are imperfect in places, and have been little consulted; and a complete calendar of the treasures of the Advocate's Library was only recently begun.
Among monographs, Six Saints of the Covenant and The Life of Mary Stuart (up to 1568), by D. Hay Fleming; the Life of Knox, by P. Hume Brown, and John Knox and the Reformation, by A. Lang; Miss Shield's King over the Water and Martin Haile's James Francis Stuart (the old Chevalier); Omond's Lord Advocates of Scotland; Willcock's The Great Marquess (of Argyll); Napier's Lives of Montrose and Dundee; Clarke and Foxcroft's Life of Bishop Burnet; Sir Herbert Maxwell's Robert Bruce and Book of Douglas, with all Sir W. Fraser's family histories, and Patrick's Statutes of the Scottish Church, may on various points prove serviceable. For Scottish constitutional history, what there is of it, Sanford Terry's Scottish Parliaments may be recommended. (A. L.)
IV. Scottish Literature
“Scottish Literature” is taken here in the familiar sense of the Teutonic vernacular of Scotland, not in the more comprehensive sense of the literature of Scotland or of writings by men of Scottish birth, whether in Gaelic (see Celt) or Latin or Northern English. The difference between the two definitions, however, is of small practical concern. The Scottish-Gaelic literature, which is separately dealt with (see Celt: Literature) is, by comparison, of minor importance; and the Latin, though it has a range and influence in Scotland to which it is difficult to find a parallel in the history of the literatures of Europe, is (perhaps for the very reason of its persistency and extent) so bound up with the vernacular that it may be conveniently treated with that literature. It is true that down to the 15th century there were many Teutonic Scots who had difficulty in expressing themselves in “Ynglis,” and that, at a later date, the literary vocabulary was strongly influenced by the Latin habit of Scottish culture; but the difficulty was generally academic, arising from a scholarly sensitiveness to style in the use of a medium which had no literary traditions; perhaps also from medieval and humanistic contempt of the vulgar tongue; in some cases from the cosmopolitan circumstance of the Scot and the special nature of his appeal to the learned world. The widespread use of Latin was, however, seldom or never antagonistic to the preservation of national sentiment. That it was used for other than literary purposes strengthened that sentiment in a way which mere scholarly or literary interest could not have done. The Scottish timbre is rarely wanting, even in places where scholastic or classical custom might have claimed, as in other literatures, an exclusive privilege. And to say this implies no disrespect to the quality of early Scottish Latinity.
In a survey of the vernacular literature of Scotland it is advantageous to keep in mind that there are two main streams or threads running throughout, the one literary in the higher sense, expressing itself in “schools” of a more artificial or academic type; the other popular, also in the better sense of that term, more native, more rooted in national tradition, more persistent and conversely less bookish in fashion. The former is represented by the group known as the Scottish Chaucerians, by the 17th-century Court poets, by the “English” writings of literary Edinburgh of the 18th century; the latter by the domestic and “rustic” muse from Christis Kirk on the Grene to the work of the 18th century revival begun in Ramsay. There is, of course, frequent interaction between these two movements, but recognition of their separate development is necessary to the understanding of such contemporary contrasts as the Thrissil and the Rois and Peblis to the Play, Drummond and Montgomerie, Ramsay and Hume. In our own day, when the literary medium of Scotland is identical with that of England, the term Scottish literature has been reserved for certain dialectal revivals, more or less bookish in origin, and often as artificial and as unrelated to existing conditions as the most “aureate” and Chaucerian “Ynglis” of the 15th century was to the popular speech of that time.
This sketch is concerned only with the general process of Scottish literature. An estimate of the writings of individual authors will be found in separate articles, to which the reader is, in each case, referred.
I. Early Period (from the beginnings to the earlier decades of the 15th century). The literary remains of this period written in the vernacular, which is in its main characteristics “Northern English,” are in the familiar medieval kinds of romance and rhymed chronicle. After the Wars of Independence a national or Scottish sentiment is discernible, but it does not colour the literature of this age as it does that of later periods when political and social conditions had suffered serious change.
The earliest extant verse has been associated with Thomas of Ercildoune (q.v.), called The Rhymer, but the problem of the Scot's share in reworking the Tristrem saga is in some important points undetermined. Uncertainty also hangs round the later Huchown (q.v.), who continues in the 14th century the traditions of medieval romance. Contemporary with the work of the latter are a few anonymous fragments such as the verses on the death of Alexander II., first quoted by Wyntoun in the 15th century, and the snatches on the “Maydens of Englelonde” and “Long beerdys,” quoted by Fabyan. The type of alliterative romance shown in the work ascribed to Huchown continued to be popular throughout the period (e.g. The Knightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane), and lingered on in the next in The Buke of the Howlat by Holland (q.v.), the anonymous Rauf Coilȝear of the third quarter of the 15th century, and in occasional pieces of, burlesque by the “Chaucerian” makars.
Independent of this group of alliterative romances is the not less important body of historical verse associated with the names of John Barbour (q.v.), Andrew of Wyntoun (q.v.), and, in the middle period, Harry the Minstrel (q.v.). Barbour has been called the Father of Scottish Poetry, apparently for no other reason than that he is the oldest writer who has held place in popular esteem. Though his work shows some of the qualities of a poet, which are entirely lacking in the annalistic verse of Wyntoun, he is without literary influence. Later political fervour has grouped him with the author of the Wallace, and treated the unequal pair as the singers of a militant patriotism. That association is not only unjust to Barbour's literary claims, but a misinterpretation of the general terms of his political appeal. The “Scottish prejudice” which Burns tells us was “poured” into his veins from the Wallace is not obvious to the dispassionate reader of the Brus.
II. Middle Period (extending, roughly, throughout the 15th and 16th centuries). To this period belongs the important group of Middle Scots “makars” or poets who, in the traditional phrase of the literary historians, made their age “the Golden Age of Scottish Poetry”; it is in the writings of this time that we find the practice of the artificial literary dialect known as Middle Scots; but there is also in this period the first clear indications of other literary types of great prospective interest in the historical development of the literature of Scotland.
The prevailing influence in the writers of greater account is Chaucerian. These writers, to whom the name of “The Scottish Chaucerians” has been given, broke with the manner of 14th-century verse, and carried over from the south much of the verbal habit and not a little of the literary sentiment of the master-poet. In both respects they are always superior to Lydgate, Occleve and other southern contemporaries; and not rarely they approach Chaucer in sheer accomplishment. The first example of this new style is the Kingis Quair of James I. (q.v.), a dream-poem written in Troilus verse, and reminiscent of Chaucer's translation of the Romance of the Rose. The indebtedness to Chaucer, even when full allowance is made for the young poet's individuality, is direct and clear. The language, like that of the later Lancelot of the Laik and the Quare of Jelousy, represents no spoken dialect. Whether it is to be explained by the deliberate adoption of southern literary forms by the author, which his enthusiasm for Chaucer and the circumstances of his sojourn in England made inevitable, or whether the single text which is extant is a Scottish scribe's rendering of a text purely southern in character, is a nice academic question. The balance of evidence, and the presumption is strongly in favour of the former, which is the traditional view. When the linguistic forms of the other pieces in the Selden MS., presumably by the same scribe, have been carefully examined and compared, it should not be difficult to reach a final settlement.
The later Scots Chaucerian type is less directly derivative in its treatment of allegory and in its tricks of style, and less southern in its linguistic forms; but, though it is more original and natural, it nevertheless retains much of the Chaucerian habit. The greater poets who represent this type are Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and, to a large extent, Sir David Lyndsay—whose united genius has given high literary reputation to the so-called Golden Age. General opinion has exaggerated the importance of the minor writers who shared in this poetical outburst. There is, of course, some historical significance in the drawing up of such lists as we have in Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris, or in Douglas's Palice of Honour, or in Lyndsay's Testament of the Papyngo, but it is at the same time clear that their critical importance has been exaggerated. Several of the writers named belong to an earlier period; of many of the others we know little or nothing; and of the best known, such as Walter Kennedy (q.v.) and Quintyn Schaw, it would be hard to, say that they are not as uniformly dull as any of Occleve's southern contemporaries.
The greater portion of this Middle Scots “Chaucerian” literature is courtly in character, in the literary sense, that it continues and echoes the sentiment and method of the verse of the cours d'amour type; and in the personal sense, that it was directly associated with the Scottish court and conditioned by it. All the greater writers, with the exception of Robert Henryson, were well born and connected with the Household, or in high office. Hence what is not strictly allegorical after the fashion of the Romaunt of the Rose or Chaucer's exercises in that kind, is for the most part occasional, dealing with courtiers' sorrow and fun, with the conventional plaints on the vanity of the world and with pious ejaculation. Even Henryson, perhaps the most original of these poets, is in his most original pieces strongly “Chaucerian” in method, notably in his remarkable series of Fables, and his Testament of Cresseid, a continuation of the story left untold by Chaucer. In his Robene and Makyne, on the other hand, he breaks away, and follows, if he follows anything, the tradition of the pastourelles. Dunbar often, and at times deliberately, recalls the older verse-habit, even in his vigorous shorter poems; and Douglas, in his Palice of Honour and King Hart, and even in his translation of Virgil, is unequivocally medieval. Still later, amid the satire and Reformation heat of Lyndsay we have the old manner persisting in the Testaments and in the tale of Squyer Meldrum.
There are, as might be expected, points of contact between the work of the greater makars and the more native and “popular” material. It is remarkable that each of these poets has left one example of the old manner, shown in the alliterative romance-poem; but the fact that in each case their purpose is strongly burlesque is significant of the change in literary outlook.
The non-Chaucerian verse of this period is represented by (a) alliterative romance-poems and (b) verse of a rustic, domestic and “popular” character. Of the historical romance-poem there is little or nothing beyond Henry the Minstrel's Wallace (supra). The outstanding type is shown in such pieces as Holland's (q.v.) Buke of the Howlat, and in the anonymous poems Golagros and Gawane, The Awntyrs of Arthur at the Terne Wathelyne, Rauf Coilȝear and The Pistill of Susan. These, however, were already outworn forms, lingering on in a period which had chosen other ideals.
Strong as the Chaucerian influence was, it was too artificial to change the native habit of Scots verse; and though it helps to explain much in the later history of Scots literature, it offers no key to the main process of that literature in succeeding centuries. Our knowledge of this non-Chaucerian material, as of the Chaucerian, is chiefly derived from the MS. collections of Asloan, Bannatyne (q.v.) and Maitland (q.v.), supplemented by the references to “fugitive” and “popular” literature in Dunbar, Douglas, Lyndsay and, in especial, the prose Complaynt of Scotlande. Classification of this literature by traditional subdivision into genres is difficult, and, at the best, unprofitable. The historical student will be mainly interested in discovering anticipations of the later style and purpose of Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns, and in finding therein early evidence of what has been too often treated as the characteristics of later Scotticism. It would not be difficult to show that the reaction in the 18th century against literary and class affectation—however editorial and bookish it was in the choice of subjects and forms—was in reality a re-expression of the old themes in the old ways, which had never been forgotten, even when Middle Scots, Jacobean and early 18th-century verse-fashions were strongest. It is impossible here to do more than to point out the leading elements and to name the leading examples. These elements are, briefly stated, (1) a strong partiality for subjects dealing with humble life, in country and town, with the fun of taverns and village greens, with that domestic life in the rough which goes to the making of the earlier farces in English and French; (2) a whimsical, elfin kind of wit, delighting in extravagance and topsy-turviness; (3) a frank interest in the pleasures of good company and good drink. The reading of 15th- and 16th-century verse in the light of these will bring home the critical error of treating such poems as Burns's Cottar's Saturday Night, the Address to the Deil, and Scotch Drink as entirely expressions of the later poet's personal predilection. Of the more serious, or “ethical” or “theological” mood which counts for so much in the modern estimate of Scottish literature, there is but little evidence in the popular verse of the middle period. Even in the deliberately religious and moral work of the more academic poets this seriousness is never more exclusive or oppressive than it is in any other literature of the time. If it becomes an obsession of many of the post-Reformation writers, it becomes so by the force majeure of special circumstances rather than in the exercise of an old-established habit.
Outstanding examples of this rustic style are Peblis to the Play and Christis Kirk on the Grene, ascribed by some to James V. (q.v.), Sym and his Brudir, a satirical tale of two palmers, The Wyf of Auchtirmuchty and the Wowing of Jok and Jynny. The more imaginative, elfin quality, familiar in Dunbar's Ballad of Kynd Kittok and his Interlude of the Droichis Part appears in such pieces as Gyre Carling (the mother-witch), King Berdok, and Lichtounis Dreme. The convivial verse, at its best in Dunbar's Testament of Mr Andrew Kennedy, may be studied in Quhy sould nocht Allane honorit be, one of the many eulogies of John Barleycorn anticipatory of Burns's well-known piece. In the collections there are few examples of the simple fabliau, the best being the Thrie Priestis of Peblis and The Dumb Wyf, or of the social variety of the same as shown in Rauf Coilȝear and John the Reeve. For the latter Sir David Lyndsay remains the chief exponent. Of historical and patriotic verse there are few specimens, but some of the lyrics and love-songs, more or less medieval in timbre and form, are of importance. Of these, Tayis Bank and The Murning Maiden are perhaps the best.
Vernacular prose was, as might be expected, and especially in Scotland, late in its appearance. The main work continued to be done in Latin, and to better purpose by Hector Boece (q.v.), John Major (q.v.) and George Buchanan (q.v.) than by the earlier annalists Fordun (q.v.) and Bower (q.v.). It is not till the middle of the 15th century that we encounter any works seriously undertaken in the vulgar: before that time there is nothing but an occasional letter (e.g. that of the earl of March to Henry IV.), a few laws, and one or two scraps in the Asloan and other MSS., all of the plainest and without any effort towards style. Nor can it be said that the first works of a more extensive and deliberate character show any consciousness of pure art as we find it in contemporary writings in England, though the fact that they are translations has some prospective significance. The earliest books are Sir Gilbert Haye's Buke of the Law of Arms, Buke of the Order of Knighthood, and Government of Princes, preserved in a single MS. at Abbotsford. The dull treatise of John of Ireland (q.v.) lays claim to originality of a kind. The author's confession that, being “thretty ȝeris nurist in Fraunce, and in the noble study of Paris in Latin toung,” he “knew nocht the gret eloquens of Chauceir,” and again that he had written another work in Latin, “the tounge that I knaw better,” is valuable testimony to the difficulties in the way of a struggling Scots prose. Other preliminary efforts are the Portuus of Nobilnes in the Asloan MS.; the Spectakle of Luf, translated by G. Mill (1492); and the Schort Memoriole of the Scottis Corniklis, an account of the reign of James II. In the early 16th century the use of the vernacular is extended, chiefly in the treatment of historical and polemical subjects, as in Murdoch Nisbet's version of Purvey (in MS. till 1901), a compromise between northern and southern usage; Gau's (q.v.) Richt Vay, translated from Christiern Pedersen; Bellenden's (q.v.) translation of Livy and Scottish History; the Complaynt of Scotlande, largely a mosaic of translation from the French; Ninian Winzet's (q.v.) Tractates; Lesley's (q.v.) History of Scotland; Knox's (q.v.) History; Buchanan's (q.v.) Chamaeleon; Lindesay of Pitscottie's (q.v.) History; and the tracts of Nicol Burne and other exiled Catholics. In these works, and especially in Knox, the language is strongly southern. The Scriptures, which had an important bearing on the literary style, as on other matters, were, with the exception of Nisbet's version, which does not appear to have widely circulated, accepted in the southern text. It was not till the publication of Bassandyne's Bible in 1576-1579 that a Scottish version was used officially. Lyndsay in the midst of passages in Scots quotes directly from the Genevan version. The literary influence of the Bassandyne was unimportant. Of the prose books named the Complaynt of Scotlande is the most remarkable example of aureate Middle Scots, the prose analogue of the verse of the “Chaucerians.” This characteristic is by no means strong in Scots prose, even at this time: the last, and most extravagant, example is the Rolment of Courtis by Abacuck Bysset, as late as 1622.
So far in our treatment of the Middle Period we have taken account of the “Chaucerian” and more popular verse and of the prose. There appear towards the close of the period certain verse-writers, who, despite points of difference with their Middle Scots predecessors, belong as much to this period as to the next. In language they are still Scottish; if they show any southern affectations, it is (all echoes of the older aureate style notwithstanding) the affectation of Tudor and Elizabethan English. This poetry, like that of the early half of the period, is courtly; its differences are the differences between the atmosphere of the reigns of the first and fourth Jameses and that of the sixth. When the sixth James becomes the first of England, a more thorough transformation is discernible. In the centre of this group is King James (q.v.) himself, poet and writer of prose; but he yields in literary competence to Alexander Scott (q.v.) and Alexander Montgomerie (q.v.). Their interest on the formal side is retrospective, but it is possible to find even in the persistent reiteration of medieval sentiment and methods, a fresh feeling for nature, and a lyrical quality of later timbre. With these may be named the minors, William Fowler (q.v.), Alexander Arbuthnot (q.v.) and John Rolland (q.v.), the last most strongly influenced by Douglas and the earlier “makars.”
III. The third period begins with the 17th century, with the union of the English and Scottish crowns, if we seek the aid of political history for our literary finger-posts. Strict accuracy would place the date of change earlier than 1600 or 1603, for there is evidence in the 16th century, even outside the region of diplomatic and official correspondence, of the intermingling of the north and south. It is, however, when James is established on his new throne that we have the clearest signs of the changes which had been at work and were ultimately to transform the entire literary habit of his ancient kingdom. The recital of the names of the Anglo-Scots poets will make this clear: Robert Ker, earl of Ancram, best known for his Sonnet in Praise of a Solitary Life; Sir David Murray of Gorthy, who wrote The tragicall Death of Sophonisba; Sir William Alexander (q.v.), afterwards earl of Stirling; William Drummond, laird of Hawthornden (q.v.); Sir Robert Aytoun (q.v.); James Grahame, marquess of Montrose; Patrick Hannay; and the covenanting Sir William Mure of Rowallan (q.v.); a group whose “courtly” style might be assumed, had the literary evidence been less ample than it is. So, too, in prose. There we have Drummond again, and that strange genius Sir Thomas Urquhart (q.v.); a crowd of polemical writers, mostly ecclesiastics; all the historians, including Spotswood and Calderwood. There is small room for the old vernacular here; and less when we take into account the still active Latinity, shown in the publication by the poet Arthur Johnston (q.v.) of the two volumes of Delitiae poetarum Scotorum hujus aevi illustrium (1637), and in the writings of John Barclay (q.v.) author of the Argenis, Sir Robert Aytoun (v.s.), Thomas Dempster (q.v.), the historian, David Hume of Godscroft, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, best known for his prose Staggering State, Sir Thomas Craig, author of the Jus Feudale, Andrew Melville and others represented in Johnston's volumes.
There is nothing in Scots to balance this English and Latin list. The play Philotus, a poor example in a genre rarely attempted in the north, is indebted to the south for more than its subject. The interesting philological tractate Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Briton Tongue by Alexander Hume (not the verse writer, u.s.) is in its language a medley; and William Lithgow had travelled too widely to retain his native speech in purity, even in his indifferent verse. Scraps may be unearthed as mediocre as the Answer to Curat Caddel's Satyre upon the Whigs, which attempts to revive the mere vulgarity of the Scots “flyting.” The only contributions which redeem these hundred years and more from the charge of disrespect to the native muse come from the pen of the Sempills (q.v.). And even here individual merit must yield to historical interest. We are attracted to Beltrees and his kinsmen less by their craftsmanship than by the fact that they supplied the leaders of the vernacular revival of the 18th century with many subjects and verse models, and that by their treatment of these subjects and models, based on the practice of an earlier day, they complete the evidence of the continuity of the domestic popular type of Scots verse.
In the 18th century the literary union of the North and South is complete. The Scot, whatever dialectal habits marked his speech, wrote the English of Englishmen. The story of his triumphs belongs to the story of English literature: to it we leave James Thomson, Adam Smith, David Hume, James Boswell and Sir Walter Scott. If the work begun by Allan Ramsay, continued by Fergusson and completed by Burns, were matter for separate treatment, it would be necessary to show not only that the editorial zeal which turned these writers to the forgotten vernacular and to “popular” themes was inspired by the general conditions of reaction against the artificiality of the century; but that it was because these poets were Scots, and in Scotland, that they chose this line of return to nature and naturalness, and did honour, partly by protest, to the slighted efforts of the “vulgar” muse. Yet even they did not abjure the “southern manner,” and their work in it is matter of some critical significance, whatever may be said of its inferiority in spirit and craftsmanship.
Bibliography.—Authorities dealing with individual authors and their generation are named in the bibliographies appended to the articles on Scottish writers. Reference may be made here to the following general works (given in chronological order): Warton, History of English Poetry (1774-1781); D. Irving, Scotish Writers (1839), and History of Scotish Poetry (1861); H. Ward, The English
Poets (1880-1881), passim; H. Craik, English Prose Selections (1893-1896), passim; W. J. Courthope, History of English Poetry, i. and ii. (1895-1897); J. J. Jusserand, Literary History of the English People, i. and ii. (1895, 1906); T. F. Henderson, Scottish Vernacular Literature (1898); G. Gregory Smith, The Transition Period (1900), and Specimens of Middle Scots (1902); Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1901-1903); J. H. Millar, A Literary History of Scotland (1903); The Cambridge History of English Literature, ii. (1908).
(G. G. S.)
- ↑ By naturalization and at sea.
- ↑ Aged 10 years and upwards.
- ↑ Not including mountain and heath land.
- ↑ Not separately distinguished.
- ↑ Including mares kept for breeding.
- ↑ A separate secretary of state for Scotland was in existence after the Union, but this office was abolished in 1746. From 1782 to 1885 the secretary of state for the home department was responsible for the conduct of Scottish business, being advised in these matters by the lord advocate. The secretary for Scotland is not one of the principal secretaries of state.