§ 1. Historical Facts
1. What is the evidence of Scotland’s early history?
Probably the first people to settle in Scotland arrived after 2500 B.C. These were the small, dark people of the Late Stone Age. They came probably from the Mediterranean and were hunters, sailors, herdsmen, and farmers. One of their villages still exists at Skara Brae in the Orkneys. Later came the tall, blond Beaker Folk, named for their earthenware cups.
After 1000 B.C., at several different times, Celtic peoples came from western and northern Europe. They brought with them an advanced civilization. The earliest Celtic immigrants did fine work in bronze, and the later ones used iron, a still more useful metal. These Celtic peoples soon controlled the people who had come before them. They were the Britons found by the Romans when they invaded southern Britain in 55 B.C.
The northern Britons were called Caledonians by the Romans. They were fierce fighters, and the Romans built the great wall of Hadrian, along the Tyne River, to keep them out of Roman territory.
During six centuries after the Romans had left, the country of the Caledonians was invaded from four directions. Britons from the south, fleeing from the Anglo-Saxon invaders, took refuge in the southwest. Their kingdom was called Cumbria. The Scots, a Christian people from Ireland (who were later to give their name to Scotland), founded the kingdom of Dalriada in what is now Argyll. The Angles and Saxons, who were conquering southern Britain, stretched their northern boundary to the Forth and overran Lothian. The Caledonians, or Picts (as they came to be called), had to retreat northward.
Late in the 8th century began the most terrible invasions of all - those of the Northmen. They plundered and named the territories of Scottish Dalriada, and conquered and settled the northwestern Pictish Highlands.
2. Who were the Picts?
The civilization of the Picts began with the coming of Christianity. There were Christian
converts among them even during the Roman occupation. In the 5th century the British Saint Ninian had spread the gospel to the far north. But the greatest teacher of all was the Irish Saint Columba, who completed Saint Ninian's mission to the Picts. His abbey at Iona, founded in the 6th century, was a center of learning for all Christian Europe. In the 7th century Oswald, the Christian king of the heathen Angles, called in Saint Aidan, a monk of Iona, who brought Christianity to Northumbria.
In 843 Kenneth MacAlpine, king of the Scots, became king of the Picts as well. At the time, one kingdom stretched from the Clyde River to the lands held by the Northmen. In the next century this kingdom came to be known as Scotland. Two important dates mark the pushing of its borders farther south. The first was 1018 when King Malcolm II defeated Canute, the Danish king of England, and added the area of Lothian; the second was 1034 when Malcolm's grandson Duncan I inherited the throne of the British kingdom of Cumbria in the southwest.
In 1040 Duncan I was murdered by Macbeth, a general who then set himself up as king. Duncan's son Malcolm killed Macbeth in 1057, and became King Malcolm III. With his Saxon queen Margaret, he ruled successfully for 36 years.
One of the new ideas introduced was the feudal system. In the Lowlands this system was made to fit the framework of the clan. English culture, and the English and French languages, were brought to Scotland. Queen Margaret started to reform the church to agree more closely with Rome and with the European church. During the reign of David I (son of Malcolm III and Margaret), the offices of government were organized.
3. What were the first steps towards independent Scotland?
The English often tried to make the kings of Scotland vassals to the kings of England. In 1174 it seemed as though they had achieved this. When William the Lion was captured by Henry II of England, he was forced by the Treaty of Falaise to accept English overlordship. But in 1189 the treaty was cancelled when Richard the Lionhearted (Henry's son) sold his title of overlord to pay for the Third Crusade.
In 1292 Edward I of England tried again to gain control of Scotland. At that time several people claimed the Scottish throne. Edward announced that it was his right as overlord of Scotland to decide which claim should be recognized. The Scots did not agree. Led by Sir William Wallace, they routed the English in the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297. Wallace was defeated the next year, but the English hold was broken. At the same time Scotland joined France in an alliance against England.
In 1306 Robert Bruce became King of Scotland even though the English occupied the country. In 1314 he drove the English out of Scotland at the Battle of Bannockburn. Though Scotland was now independent, border warfare with England continued.
In the 16th century John Knox led a majority of the Scots into the Protestant faith. Mary Stuart, queen of the Scots, who remained Catholic, was forced to give up the throne, and in 1568 she fled to her cousin Elizabeth I, Queen of England. Mary was imprisoned in England and later executed. However, her son James YI of Scotland was Elizabeth's heir, and in 1603 he became James I of England. His family, the Stuarts, ruled until 1688.
4. What is the historic background of the union with England?
The Scots, however, kept their government separate and their church different. Three times the Scots rebelled when the English tried to force on them their church forms. In 1690 they were granted the Presbyterian form of religion in return for their loyalty to the new English king, William III. Not all Scots, however, were Presbyterians, and not all were in favor of King William.
The family of Hanover, who succeeded to the throne in 1714, was even less popular with many Scots. The family was strongly disliked in the Highlands, where many of the chiefs and clansmen were still Catholic or Episcopalian. In 1715 there was an unsuccessful Scottish rebellion in favor of James, the ‘Old Pretender’, son of James II, the last Stuart king. In 1745 there was another rebellion led by ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, grandson of James II. His defeat at Culloden Moor meant the end of the hopes of the House of Stuart.
In 1707 Scotland and England were formally united under one parliament. By this union Scotland still keeps its own laws, but only now is regaining parliament of its own. By 2000 Scottish peers had sat in the House of Lords, and representatives, elected by the Scottish people, had been members of the British House of Commons.
Scotland had a great literary history after the 15th century; it reached its climax in the 18th century, when Robert Burns was writing his poetry and David Hume, the historian and philosopher, and Adam Smith, the economist, produced their works.
After the union, England and Scotland, especially Lowland Scotland, became more closely tied. They increased their trade with each other and joined together in building the British Empire. During these years the land of the Scottish Highlands failed to produce a good living for the highlanders, so several million Scots left to settle in other parts of the world. Others who stayed in Scotland moved down to the Lowlands with the coming of the Industrial Revolution. The Glasgow area became a great industrial center, its factories and mills providing work for many Highlanders.
The people of Scotland have kept many of their own ways of doing things. They still have a number of their own laws, and in some matters have separate government including their own secretary of state.
5. What are the peculiarities of Scotland’s social history?
One consequence of the ‘progressive loss of morale’ has been the lower state of health in Scotland, and the higher rate of heart disease, alcohol and drug abuse than elsewhere in Britain. Alcoholism, for example, is four times higher than in England. Another consequence is emigration.
Emigration has been a long-standing feature of Scottish social history. Throughout the nineteenth century, the collapse of the highland clan system led to chiefs off clan lands, and allowing their clanspeople to be driven off the land, in what became known as the Highland Clearances. Between 1871 and 1901 half a million Scots emigrated. Emigration has remained an enduring feature. In 1980 alone, over 16,000 Scots emigrated, nearly 10,000 to other parts of Britain, the rest abroad. Scotland's population is in slight decline, 5.1 million today, but likely to fall to 5 million by the year 2000.
Questions:
1. What people lived on the territory of Scotland in the period from 2500 B.C. till the 8th century A.D.?
2. What names and events are associated with the appearance of the kingdom of Scotland?
3. At what periods of its history was Scotland forced to accept English overlordship?
4. What events preceded the Union of Scotland with England?
5. What changes occurred in Scotland after the union?
Additional Reading A Tragic Queen
Prince's Street is Edinburgh's shopping centre and it runs parallel with the Royal Mile which goes from the Castle to Holyrood House. This is the residence of the Queen when she is in Edinburgh and it was also the scene of one of the most famous murders in Scottish history.
Mary Queen of Scots had been brought up in France, and returned to Scotland in 1651. She was a Catholic in a country that was becoming more and more Protestant. This meant that all her life she was involved in religious and political struggles.
Mary made many mistakes in her life. The first real one was her marriage to Henry Lord Darnley in 1565. He was handsome and ambitious but at the same time vain, self-indulgent and weak. Their love did not last. Darnley became suspicious of Mary's Italian secretary, David Rizzio. On 9th March 1566, while Mary and her friends were having supper at Holyrood House, Darnley and his friends broke into the dining-room, dragged Rizzio outside and stabbed him to death. The spot where this took place can still be seen today.
Mary continued to live an unhappy life and was exiled for many years in England. Her cousin Elizabeth I of England had always been suspicious of her and decided that her worries would stop only when Mary was dead. Therefore, in 1587, she finally ordered that Mary should be executed.