A Short History of Scotland

If we could see in a magic mirror the country now called Scotland as it was when the Romans under Agricola (81 A.D.) crossed the Border, we should recognise little but the famil...

To the Scots, through St Columba, who, about 563, settled in Iona, and converted the Picts as far north as Inverness, we owe the introduction of Christianity, for though the Rom...

In a work of this scope, it is impossible to describe all the wars between the petty kingdoms peopled by races of various languages, which occupied Scotland. In 603, in the wild...

The reign of Malcolm Canmore (1057-1093) brought Scotland into closer connection with western Europe and western Christianity. The Norman Conquest (1066) increased the tendency...

With the death of Alexander I. (April 25, 1124) and the accession of his brother, David I., the deliberate Royal policy of introducing into Scotland English law and English inst...

The prominent facts in the brief reign of David's son Malcolm the Maiden, crowned (1153) at the age of eleven, were, first, a Celtic rising by Donald, a son of Malcolm MacHeth (...

The Estates of Scotland met at Scone (April 11, 1286) and swore loyalty to their child queen, "the Maid of Norway," granddaughter of Alexander III. Six guardians of the kingdom...

The position towards France of Edward I. made it really more desirable for him that Scotland should be independent and friendly, than half subdued and hostile to his rule. While...

The heroic generation of Scotland was passing off the stage. The King was a child. The forfeiture by Bruce of the lands of hostile or treacherous lords, and his bestowal of the...

Robert II. was crowned at Scone on March 26, 1371. He was elderly, jovial, pacific, and had little to fear from England when the deaths of Edward III. and the Black Prince left...

On March 28, 1424, James I. was released, on a ransom of 40,000 pounds, and after his marriage with Jane Beaufort, grand-daughter of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III. The story...

Scone, with its sacred stone, being so near Perth and the Highlands, was perilous, and the coronation of James II. was therefore held at Holyrood (March 25, 1437). The child, wh...

James II. left three sons; the eldest, James III., aged nine, was crowned at Kelso (August 10, 1460); his brothers, bearing the titles of Albany and Mar, were not to be his supp...

The new king, with Angus for his Governor, Argyll for his Chancellor, and with the Kers and Hepburns in office, was crowned at Scone about June 25, 1488. He was nearly seventeen...

The new times were at the door. In 1425 the Scottish Parliament had forbidden Lutheran books to be imported. But they were, of course, smuggled in; and the seed of religious rev...

When James died, Henry VIII. seemed to hold in his hand all the winning cards in the game of which Scotland was the stake. He held Angus and his brother George Douglas; when he...

The death of Cardinal Beaton left Scotland and the Church without a skilled and resolute defender. His successor in the see, Archbishop Hamilton, a half-brother of the Regent, w...

In England, on the death of Edward VI., Catholicism rejoiced in the accession of Mary Tudor, which, by driving Scottish Protestant refugees back into their own country, strength...

The revolution was now under weigh, and as it had begun so it continued. There was practically no resistance by the Catholic nobility and gentry: in the Lowlands, apparently, al...

On August 19, 1561, in a dense fog, and almost unexpected and unwelcomed, Mary landed in Leith. She had told the English ambassador to France that she would constrain none of he...

"Let none of them escape" was Elizabeth's message to the gaolers of Mary and her companions at Carlisle. The unhappy queen prayed to see her in whose hospitality she had confide...

On March 4, 1578, a strong band of nobles, led by Argyll, presented so firm a front that Morton resigned the Regency; but in April 1578, a Douglas plot, backed by Angus and Mort...

James, in reducing the Kirk, relied as much on his cunning and "kingcraft" as on his prerogative. He summoned a Convention of preachers and of the Estates to Perth at the end of...

The reign of Charles I. opened with every sign of the tempests which were to follow. England and Scotland were both seething with religious fears and hatreds. Both parties in En...

During the nine years of the English military occupation of Scotland everything was merely provisional; nothing decisive could occur. In the first place (October 1651), eight En...

There was "dancing and derray" in Scotland among the laity when the king came to his own again. The darkest page in the national history seemed to have been turned; the conqueri...

While Claverhouse hovered in the north the Convention (declared to be a Parliament by William on June 5) took on, for the first time in Scotland since the reign of Charles I, th...

The Scottish Parliament of May-July 1695, held while William was abroad, saw the beginning of evils for Scotland. The affair of Glencoe was examined into by a Commission, headed...

The Scottish Parliament was not dissolved at William's death, nor did it meet at the time when, legally, it ought to have met. Anne, in a message, expressed hopes that it would...

For a year the Scottish Jacobites, and Bolingbroke, who fled to France and became James's Minister, mismanaged the affairs of that most unfortunate of princes. By February 1715...

Leaving the fortunes of the Jacobite party at their lowest ebb, and turning to the domestic politics of Scotland, after 1719, we find that if it be happiness to have no history,...

For long we have heard little of the Kirk, which between 1720 and 1740 passed through a cycle of internal storms. She had been little vexed, either during her years of triumph o...

While the Kirk was vainly striving to assuage the tempers of Mr Erskine and his friends, the Jacobites were preparing to fish in troubled waters. In 1739 Walpole was forced to d...