Kingdom of Scotland

Coordinates: 57°N 4°W / 57°N 4°W / 57; -4
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Kingdom of Scotland
Rìoghachd na h-Alba (
Scottish Gaelic)
Kinrick o Scotland (Scots)
Kongungdum Skotland (Norn)
843–1707
(1654–1660: Commonwealth)
Royal Arms (1565–1603) of Scotland
Royal Arms
(1565–1603)
Motto: 
Scone (c. 843–1069)
Dunfermline (c. 1069-1452
Edinburgh
(after c. 1452)
Common languages
Religion
Monarch
 
• 843–858 (first)
Kenneth I
• 1702–1707 (last)
Anne
Legislature
Early modern
• United
9th century (traditionally 843)
• Lothian and Strathclyde incorporated
1124 (confirmed Treaty of York 1237)
• Galloway incorporated
1234/1235
• Hebrides, Isle of Man and Caithness incorporated
1266 (Treaty of Perth)
• Orkney and Shetland incorporated
1472
24 March 1603
1 May 1707
Area
1482–1707[citation needed]78,778 km2 (30,416 sq mi)
Population
• 1500[citation needed]
500,000
• 1600[citation needed]
800,000
• 1700[citation needed]
1,250,000
CurrencyPound Scots
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Dál Riata
Cat
Ce
Fortriu
Fib
Strathclyde
Galloway
Northumbria
Earldom of Orkney
Kingdom of Great Britain
Today part of

The Kingdom of Scotland (

King of England, joining Scotland with England in a personal union. In 1707, during the reign of Queen Anne, the two kingdoms were united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain under the terms of the Acts of Union
.

kirk sessions helped consolidate the power of local lairds
.

Scots law developed in the Middle Ages and was reformed and codified in the 16th and 17th centuries. Under James IV the legal functions of the council were rationalised, with Court of Session meeting daily in Edinburgh. In 1532, the College of Justice was founded, leading to the training and professionalisation of lawyers. David I is the first Scottish king known to have produced his own coinage. After the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603, the Pound Scots was reformed to closely match sterling coin. The Bank of Scotland issued pound notes from 1704. Scottish currency was abolished by the Acts of Union 1707; however, Scotland has retained unique banknotes to the present day.

Geographically, Scotland is divided between the

guerre de course. Land forces centred around the large common army
, but adopted European innovations from the 16th century; and many Scots took service as mercenaries and as soldiers for the English Crown.

History

Origins: 400–943

From the 5th century on, north Britain was divided into a series of petty kingdoms. Of these, the four most important were those of the

Cínaed mac Ailpín (Kenneth MacAlpin) as "king of the Picts" in the 840s (traditionally dated to 843),[3] which brought to power the House of Alpin.[4] When he died as king of the combined kingdom in 900, one of his successors, Domnall II (Donald II), was the first man to be called rí Alban (King of Alba).[5] The Latin term Scotia would increasingly be used to describe the heartland of these kings, north of the River Forth, and eventually the entire area controlled by its kings would be referred to, in English, as Scotland.[6] The long reign (900–942/3) of Donald's successor Causantín (Constantine II) is often regarded as the key to formation of the Kingdom of Alba/Scotland, and he was later credited with bringing Scottish Christianity into conformity with the Catholic Church.[7]

Expansion: 943–1513

Battle of Flodden Field in 1513 and the death of the King James IV. A long period of political instability followed.[18]

Consolidation and union: 1513–1707

James VI, whose inheritance of the thrones of England and Ireland created a dynastic union in 1603

In the 16th century, under

Calvinism, leading to widespread iconoclasm and the introduction of a Presbyterian system of organisation and discipline that would have a major impact on Scottish life.[20]

In the late 16th century, James VI emerged as a major intellectual figure with considerable authority over the kingdom.[21] In 1603, he inherited the thrones of England and Ireland, creating a Union of the Crowns that left the three states with their separate identities and institutions. He also moved the centre of royal patronage and power to London.[22]

When James' son

Covenanter state in Scotland.[23] It also helped precipitate the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
, during which the Scots carried out major military interventions.

After Charles I's defeat, the Scots backed the king in the Second English Civil War; after his execution, they proclaimed his son Charles II king, resulting in the Anglo-Scottish War of 1650-1652 against the emerging republican regime of Parliamentarians in England led by Oliver Cromwell. The results were a series of defeats and the short-lived incorporation of Scotland into the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland (1653–1660).[24]

After the 1660

Claim of Right Act 1689,[25] but the deposed main hereditary line of the Stuarts became a focus for political discontent known as Jacobitism, leading to a series of invasions and rebellions mainly focused on the Scottish Highlands.[26]

After severe economic dislocation in the 1690s, there were moves that led to political union with England as the Kingdom of Great Britain, which came into force on 1 May 1707. The English and Scottish parliaments were replaced by a combined Parliament of Great Britain, which sat in Westminster and largely continued English traditions without interruption. Forty-five Scots were added to the 513 members of the House of Commons and 16 Scots to the 190 members of the House of Lords. It was also a full economic union, replacing the Scottish systems of currency, taxation and laws regulating trade.[27]

Government

Coronation of Alexander III of Scotland at Scone Abbey; beside him are the Mormaers of Strathearn and Fife while his genealogy is recited by a royal poet.

The unified kingdom of Alba retained some of the ritual aspects of Pictish and Scottish kingship. These can be seen in the elaborate ritual coronation at the Stone of Scone at Scone Abbey.[28]

While the Scottish monarchy in the Middle Ages was a largely itinerant institution, Scone remained one of its most important locations, with royal castles at Stirling and Perth becoming significant in the later Middle Ages before Edinburgh developed as a capital city in the second half of the 15th century.[29]

The Crown remained the most important element of government, despite the many royal minorities. In the late Middle Ages, it saw much of the aggrandisement associated with the New Monarchs elsewhere in Europe.[30] Theories of constitutional monarchy and resistance were articulated by Scots, particularly George Buchanan, in the 16th century, but James VI of Scotland advanced the theory of the divine right of kings, and these debates were restated in subsequent reigns and crises. The court remained at the centre of political life, and in the 16th century emerged as a major centre of display and artistic patronage, until it was effectively dissolved with the Union of the Crowns in 1603.[31]

The Scottish Crown adopted the conventional offices of western European courts, including

Chamberlain, Lord High Constable, Earl Marischal and Lord Chancellor.[32] The King's Council emerged as a full-time body in the 15th century, increasingly dominated by laymen and critical to the administration of justice.[33] The Privy Council, which developed in the mid-16th century,[34] and the great offices of state, including the chancellor, secretary and treasurer, remained central to the administration of the government, even after the departure of the Stuart monarchs to rule in England from 1603.[35] However, it was often sidelined and was abolished after the Acts of Union 1707, with rule direct from London.[36]

The Parliament of Scotland also emerged as a major legal institution, gaining an oversight of taxation and policy.[37] By the end of the Middle Ages it was sitting almost every year, partly because of the frequent royal minorities and regencies of the period, which may have prevented it from being sidelined by the monarchy.[38] In the early modern era, Parliament was also vital to the running of the country, providing laws and taxation, but it had fluctuating fortunes and was never as central to the national life as its counterpart in England.[39]

In the early period, the kings of the Scots depended on the great lords of the mormaers (later earls) and toísechs (later thanes), but from the reign of David I, sheriffdoms were introduced, which allowed more direct control and gradually limited the power of the major lordships.[40] In the 17th century, the creation of justices of the peace and the Commissioner of Supply helped to increase the effectiveness of local government.[41] The continued existence of courts baron and introduction of kirk sessions helped consolidate the power of local lairds.[42]

Law

The Regiam Majestatem is the oldest surviving written digest of Scots law.

Scots law developed into a distinctive system in the Middle Ages and was reformed and codified in the 16th and 17th centuries. Knowledge of the nature of Scots law before the 11th century is largely speculative,

Britonnic, Irish and Anglo-Saxon customs.[44] The legal tract, the Leges inter Brettos et Scottos, set out a system of compensation for injury and death based on ranks and the solidarity of kin groups.[45] There were popular courts or comhdhails, indicated by dozens of place names in eastern Scotland.[40] In Scandinavian-held areas, Udal law formed the basis of the legal system and it is known that the Hebrides were taxed using the Ounceland measure.[46] Althings were open-air governmental assemblies that met in the presence of the Jarl and the meetings were open to virtually all "free men". At these sessions decisions were made, laws passed and complaints adjudicated.[47]

The introduction of feudalism in the reign of

feudal land tenure over many parts of the south and east that eventually spread northward.[48] Sheriffs, originally appointed by the King as royal administrators and tax collectors, developed legal functions.[49]
Feudal lords also held courts to adjudicate disputes between their tenants.

By the 14th century, some of these feudal courts had developed into "petty kingdoms" where the King's courts did not have authority except for cases of treason.[50] Burghs also had their local laws dealing mostly with commercial and trade matters and may have become similar in function to sheriff's courts.[51] Ecclesiastical courts had exclusive jurisdiction over matters such as marriage, contracts made on oath, inheritance and legitimacy.[52] Judices were often royal officials who supervised baronial, abbatial and other lower-ranking "courts".[53] However, the main official of law in the post-Davidian Kingdom of the Scots was the Justiciar who held courts and reported to the king personally. Normally, there were two Justiciarships, organised by linguistic boundaries: the Justiciar of Scotia and the Justiciar of Lothian, but sometimes Galloway also had its own Justiciar.[53] Scottish common law, the jus commune, began to take shape at the end of the period, assimilating Gaelic and Britonnic law with practices from Anglo-Norman England and the Continent.[54]

Institution of the Court of Session by James V in 1532, from the Great Window in Parliament House, Edinburgh

There is some evidence that, during the period of English control over Scotland, Edward I of England attempted to abolish Scottish laws in opposition to English law as he had done in Wales.[55][56] Under Robert I in 1318, a parliament at Scone enacted a code of law that drew upon older practices. It codified procedures for criminal trials and protections for vassals from ejection from the land.[57] From the 14th century, there are surviving examples of early Scottish legal literature, such as the Regiam Majestatem (on procedure at the royal courts) and the Quoniam Attachiamenta (on procedure at the barons court), which drew on both common and Roman law.[58]

Customary laws, such as the Law of Clan MacDuff, came under attack from the Stewart Dynasty which consequently extended the reach of Scots common law.[59] From the reign of King James I a legal profession began to develop and the administration of criminal and civil justice was centralised.[60] The growing activity of the parliament and the centralisation of administration in Scotland called for the better dissemination of Acts of the parliament to the courts and other enforcers of the law.[61] In the late 15th century, unsuccessful attempts were made to form commissions of experts to codify, update or define Scots law.[62] The general practice during this period, as evidenced from records of cases, seems to have been to defer to specific Scottish laws on a matter when available and to fill in any gaps with provisions from the common law embodied in Civil and Canon law, which had the advantage of being written.[63]

Under James IV the legal functions of the council were rationalised, with a royal Court of Session meeting daily in Edinburgh to deal with civil cases. In 1514, the office of justice-general was created for the Earl of Argyll (and held by his family until 1628).[64] In 1532, the Royal College of Justice was founded, leading to the training and professionalisation of an emerging group of career lawyers. The Court of Session placed increasing emphasis on its independence from influence, including from the king, and superior jurisdiction over local justice. Its judges were increasingly able to control entry to their own ranks.[65] In 1672, the High Court of Justiciary was founded from the College of Justice as a supreme court of appeal.[66]

Coinage

Penny of David II

David I is the first Scottish king known to have produced his own coinage. There were soon mints at Edinburgh, Berwick and Roxburgh.[67] Early Scottish coins were similar to English ones, but with the king's head in profile instead of full face.[68] The number of coins struck was small and English coins probably remained more significant in this period.[67] The first gold coin was a noble (6s. 8d.) of David II.[69] Under James I pennies and halfpennies of billon (an alloy of silver with a base metal) were introduced, and copper farthings appeared under James III.[69] In James V's reign the bawbee (1+12 d) and half-bawbee were issued, and in Mary, Queen of Scot's reign a twopence piece, the hardhead, was issued to help "the common people buy bread, drink, flesh, and fish". The billon coinage was discontinued after 1603, but twopence pieces in copper continued to be issued until the Act of Union in 1707.[67]

A bawbee minted during the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots

Early Scottish coins were virtually identical in silver content to English ones, but from c. 1300 onwards their silver content began to depreciate more rapidly than their English counterparts. Between 1300 and 1605, Scottish coins lost silver value at an average of 12 percent every decade, three times higher than the English rate. The Scottish penny became a base metal coin by c. 1484 and virtually disappeared as a separate coin from c. 1513 onwards.[68] In 1356, an English proclamation banned the lower quality Scottish coins from being circulated in England. After the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603, the Pound Scots was reformed to closely match coins of the pound sterling, with £12 Scots equal to £1 sterling.[67] The Parliament of Scotland enacted proposals in 1695 to set up the Bank of Scotland.[70] The bank issued pound notes from 1704, which had the face value of £12 Scots. Scottish currency was abolished after the 1707 Act of Unions, with Scottish coins in circulation being drawn in to be re-minted according to English standards.[71]

Geography

The topography of Scotland.

At its borders in 1707, the Kingdom of Scotland was half the size of England and Wales in area, but with its many inlets, islands and inland lochs, it had roughly the same amount of coastline at 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometres).[72] Scotland has over 790 offshore islands, most of which are to be found in four main groups: Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides, subdivided into the Inner Hebrides and Outer Hebrides.[73] Only a fifth of Scotland is less than 60 metres above sea level.[72] The defining factor in the geography of Scotland is the distinction between the Highlands and Islands in the north and west and the Lowlands in the south and east. The highlands are further divided into the Northwest Highlands and the Grampian Mountains by the fault line of the Great Glen. The Lowlands are divided into the fertile belt of the Central Lowlands and the higher terrain of the Southern Uplands, which included the Cheviot Hills, over which the border with England ran.[74] The Central Lowland belt averages about 50 miles (80 kilometres) in width[75] and, because it contains most of the good quality agricultural land and has easier communications, could support most of the urbanisation and elements of conventional government.[76] However, the Southern Uplands, and particularly the Highlands were economically less productive and much more difficult to govern.[77]

Its east Atlantic position means that Scotland has very heavy rainfall: today about 700 mm per year in the east and over 1000 mm in the west. This encouraged the spread of blanket bogs, the acidity of which, combined with high level of wind and salt spray, made most of the islands treeless. The existence of hills, mountains, quicksands and marshes made internal communication and conquest extremely difficult and may have contributed to the fragmented nature of political power.[72] The Uplands and Highlands had a relatively short growing season, in the extreme case of the upper Grampians an ice free season of four months or less and for much of the Highlands and Uplands of seven months or less. The early modern era also saw the impact of the Little Ice Age, with 1564 seeing thirty-three days of continual frost, where rivers and lochs froze, leading to a series of subsistence crises until the 1690s.[78]

Demography

Plan of Edinburgh in 1764, the largest city in Scotland in the early modern era

From the formation of the Kingdom of Alba in the 10th century until before the Black Death arrived in 1349, estimates based on the amount of farmable land suggest that population may have grown from half a million to a million.[79] Although there is no reliable documentation on the impact of the plague, there are many anecdotal references to abandoned land in the following decades. If the pattern followed that in England, then the population may have fallen to as low as half a million by the end of the 15th century.[80]

Compared with the situation after the redistribution of population in the later Highland Clearances and the Industrial Revolution, these numbers would have been relatively evenly spread over the kingdom, with roughly half living north of the River Tay.[81] Perhaps ten per cent of the population lived in one of many burghs that grew up in the later medieval period, mainly in the east and south. They would have had a mean population of about 2000, but many would have been much smaller than 1000 and the largest, Edinburgh, probably had a population of over 10,000 by the end of the Medieval era.[82]

Price inflation, which generally reflects growing demand for food, suggests that the population probably expanded in the first half of the 16th century, levelling off after the famine of 1595, as prices were relatively stable in the early 17th century.[83] Calculations based on hearth tax returns for 1691 indicate a population of 1,234,575, but this figure may have been seriously effected by the subsequent famines of the late 1690s.[84] By 1750, with its suburbs, Edinburgh reached 57,000. The only other towns above 10,000 by the same time were Glasgow with 32,000, Aberdeen with around 16,000 and Dundee with 12,000.[85]

Language

The linguistic divide c. 1400, based on place-name evidence.
  Scots
  Norn

Historical sources, as well as place name evidence, indicate the ways in which the

Norse in the Early Middle Ages.[86] By the High Middle Ages, the majority of people within Scotland spoke the Gaelic language, then simply called Scottish, or in Latin, lingua Scotica.[87] In the Northern Isles the Norse language brought by Scandinavian occupiers and settlers evolved into the local Norn, which lingered until the end of the 18th century,[88] and Norse may also have survived as a spoken language until the 16th century in the Outer Hebrides.[89] French, Flemish and particularly English became the main languages of Scottish burghs, most of which were located in the south and east, an area to which Anglian settlers had already brought a form of Old English. In the later part of the 12th century, the writer Adam of Dryburgh described lowland Lothian as "the Land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots".[90] At least from the accession of David I, Gaelic ceased to be the main language of the royal court and was probably replaced by French, as evidenced by reports from contemporary chronicles, literature and translations of administrative documents into the French language.[91][92]

In the

Late Middle Ages, Early Scots, then called English, became the dominant spoken language of the kingdom, aside from in the Highlands and Islands and Galloway.[93] It was derived largely from Old English, with the addition of elements from Gaelic and French. Although resembling the language spoken in northern England, it became a distinct dialect from the late 14th century onwards.[94] It began to be adopted by the ruling elite as they gradually abandoned French. By the 15th century, it was the language of government, with acts of parliament, council records and treasurer's accounts almost all using it from the reign of James I onwards. As a result, Gaelic, once dominant north of the Tay, began a steady decline.[94] Lowland writers began to treat Gaelic as a second-class, rustic and even amusing language, helping to frame attitudes towards the Highlands and to create a cultural gulf with the Lowlands.[94]

From the mid-16th century, written Scots was increasingly influenced by the developing

Authorized King James Version of the Bible. In 1617, interpreters were declared no longer necessary in the port of London because as Scots and Englishmen were now "not so far different bot ane understandeth ane uther". Jenny Wormald describes James as creating a "three-tier system, with Gaelic at the bottom and English at the top".[98]

Religion

Dundrennan Abbey, one of the many royal foundations of the 12th century

The Pictish and Scottish kingdoms that would form the basis of the Kingdom of Alba were largely converted by Irish-Scots missions associated with figures such as

calculating Easter. Most of these issues had been resolved by the mid-7th century.[100] After the reconversion of Scandinavian Scotland from the 10th century, Christianity under papal authority was the dominant religion of the kingdom.[101]

In the Norman period, the Scottish church underwent a series of reforms and transformations. With royal and lay patronage, a clearer parochial structure based around local churches was developed.[102] Large numbers of new foundations, which followed continental forms of reformed monasticism, began to predominate and the Scottish church established its independence from England, developed a clearer diocesan structure, becoming a "special daughter of the see of Rome", but lacking leadership in the form of Archbishops.[103] In the late Middle Ages, the problems of schism in the Catholic Church allowed the Scottish Crown to gain greater influence over senior appointments and two archbishoprics had been established by the end of the 15th century.[104] While some historians have discerned a decline of monasticism in the late Middle Ages, the mendicant orders of friars grew, particularly in the expanding burghs, to meet the spiritual needs of the population. New saints and cults of devotion also proliferated. Despite problems over the number and quality of clergy after the Black Death in the 14th century, and some evidence of heresy in this period, the Church in Scotland remained relatively stable before the 16th century.[104]

John Knox, one of the key figures in the Scottish Reformation

During the 16th century, Scotland underwent a

Presbyterian system and rejected most of the elaborate trappings of the Medieval church. This gave considerable power within the new Kirk to local lairds, who often had control over the appointment of the clergy, and resulting in widespread, but generally orderly, iconoclasm. At this point the majority of the population was probably still Catholic in persuasion and the Kirk would find it difficult to penetrate the Highlands and Islands, but began a gradual process of conversion and consolidation that, compared with reformations elsewhere, was conducted with relatively little persecution.[108]

St Giles Cathedral
that sparked off the Bishops' Wars

In 1635, Charles I authorised a book of canons that made him head of the Church, ordained an unpopular ritual and enforced the use of a new liturgy. When the liturgy emerged in 1637 it was seen as an English-style Prayer Book, resulting in anger and widespread rioting.

Resolutioners, which became a long term divide in the Kirk.[112]

At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, legislation was revoked back to 1633, removing the Covenanter gains of the Bishops' Wars, but the discipline of kirk sessions, presbyteries and synods were renewed.[113] The reintroduction of episcopacy was a source of particular trouble in the south-west of the country, an area with strong Presbyterian sympathies. Abandoning the official church, many of the people here began to attend illegal field assemblies led by excluded ministers, known as conventicles.[114] In the early 1680s, a more intense phase of persecution began, in what was later to be known in Protestant historiography as "the Killing Time".[115] After the Glorious Revolution, Presbyterianism was restored and the bishops, who had generally supported James VII, abolished. However, William, who was more tolerant than the kirk tended to be, passed acts restoring the Episcopalian clergy excluded after the Revolution. The result was a Kirk divided between factions, with significant minorities, particularly in the west and north, of Episcopalians and Catholics.[116]

Education

Tower of St Salvator's College, St Andrews, one of the three universities founded in the 15th century

The establishment of Christianity brought Latin to Scotland as a scholarly and written language. Monasteries served as repositories of knowledge and education, often running schools and providing a small educated elite, who were essential to create and read documents in a largely illiterate society.

song and grammar schools. These were usually attached to cathedrals or a collegiate church and were most common in the developing burghs. By the end of the Middle Ages grammar schools could be found in all the main burghs and some small towns.[118] There were also petty schools, more common in rural areas and providing an elementary education.[119] Some monasteries, like the Cistercian abbey at Kinloss, opened their doors to a wider range of students.[119] The number and size of these schools seems to have expanded rapidly from the 1380s. They were almost exclusively aimed at boys, but by the end of the 15th century, Edinburgh also had schools for girls, sometimes described as "sewing schools", and probably taught by lay women or nuns.[118][119] There was also the development of private tuition in the families of lords and wealthy burghers.[118] The growing emphasis on education cumulated with the passing of the Education Act 1496, which decreed that all sons of barons and freeholders of substance should attend grammar schools to learn "perfyct Latyne". All this resulted in an increase in literacy, but which was largely concentrated among a male and wealthy elite,[118] with perhaps 60 per cent of the nobility being literate by the end of the period.[120]

Until the 15th century, those who wished to attend university had to travel to England or the continent, and just over a 1,000 have been identified as doing so between the 12th century and 1410.

nominalists at Paris in the early 16th century, of which John Mair was probably the most important figure. By 1497, the humanist and historian Hector Boece, born in Dundee, returned from Paris to become the first principal at the new university of Aberdeen.[121] These international contacts helped integrate Scotland into a wider European scholarly world and would be one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of humanism were brought into Scottish intellectual life.[120]

A woodcut showing John Mair, one of the most successful products of the Scottish educational system in the late 15th century

The humanist concern with widening education was shared by the Protestant reformers, with a desire for a godly people replacing the aim of having educated citizens. In 1560, the

Classical literature and sports.[125]

In 1616, an

Restoration brought a reversion to the 1633 position, in 1696 new legislation restored the provisions of 1646. An act of the Scottish parliament in 1696 underlined the aim of having a school in every parish. In rural communities these obliged local landowners (heritors) to provide a schoolhouse and pay a schoolmaster, while ministers and local presbyteries oversaw the quality of the education. In many Scottish towns, burgh schools were operated by local councils.[126] By the late 17th century, there was a largely complete network of parish schools in the Lowlands, but in the Highlands basic education was still lacking in many areas.[127]

Andrew Melville, credited with major reforms in Scottish Universities in the 16th century.

The widespread belief in the limited intellectual and moral capacity of women, vied with a desire, intensified after the Reformation, for women to take personal moral responsibility, particularly as wives and mothers. In Protestantism this necessitated an ability to learn and understand the catechism and even to be able to independently read the Bible, but most commentators, even those that tended to encourage the education of girls, thought they should not receive the same academic education as boys. In the lower ranks of society, they benefited from the expansion of the parish schools system that took place after the Reformation, but were usually outnumbered by boys, often taught separately, for a shorter time and to a lower level. They were frequently taught reading, sewing and knitting, but not writing. Female illiteracy rates based on signatures among female servants were around 90 percent, from the late 17th to the early 18th centuries and perhaps 85 percent for women of all ranks by 1750, compared with 35 per cent for men.[128] Among the nobility there were many educated and cultured women, of which Mary, Queen of Scots is the most obvious example.[129]

After the Reformation, Scotland's universities underwent a series of reforms associated with

Protestors.[133] After the Restoration there was a purge of the universities, but much of the intellectual advances of the preceding period was preserved.[134] The universities recovered from the upheavals of the mid-century with a lecture-based curriculum that was able to embrace economics and science, offering a high quality liberal education to the sons of the nobility and gentry.[127]

Military

Navy

A carving of a birlinn from a 16th-century tombstone in MacDufie's Chapel, Oronsay, as engraved in 1772

There are mentions in medieval records of fleets commanded by Scottish kings including William the Lion[135] and Alexander II. The latter took personal command of a large naval force which sailed from the Firth of Clyde and anchored off the island of Kerrera in 1249, intended to transport his army in a campaign against the Kingdom of the Isles, but he died before the campaign could begin.[136][137] Records indicate that Alexander had several large oared ships built at Ayr, but he avoided a sea battle.[135] Defeat on land at the Battle of Largs and winter storms forced the Norwegian fleet to return home, leaving the Scottish Crown as the major power in the region and leading to the ceding of the Western Isles to Alexander in 1266.[14]

Part of the reason for Robert I's success in the

Lord High Admiral was probably founded in this period. In his struggles with his nobles in 1488 James III received assistance from his two warships the Flower and the King's Carvel also known as the Yellow Carvel.[139]

Royal Museum

There were various attempts to create royal naval forces in the 15th century. James IV put the enterprise on a new footing, founding a harbour at

major expedition to Biscay.[148] The Scots also returned to the West Indies[149] and in 1629 took part in the capture of Quebec.[150]

During the Bishop's Wars the king attempted to blockade Scotland and planned amphibious assaults from England on the East coast and from Ireland to the West.

Darien Scheme,[158] and a professional navy was established for the protection of commerce in home waters during the Nine Years' War, with three purpose-built warships bought from English shipbuilders in 1696. After the Act of Union in 1707, these vessels were transferred to the Royal Navy.[159]

Army

Scottish soldiers in the period of the Hundred Years' War, detail from an edition of Froissart's Chronicles

Before the

the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513, which saw the destruction of a large number of ordinary troops, a large section of the nobility and the king, James IV.[164] In the 16th century, the crown took an increasing role in the supply of military equipment.[165] The pike began to replace the spear and the Scots began to convert from the bow to gunpowder firearms.[166] The feudal heavy cavalry had begun to disappear from Scottish armies and the Scots fielded relatively large numbers of light horse, often drawn from the borders.[167] James IV brought in experts from France, Germany and the Netherlands and established a gun foundry in 1511.[146] Gunpowder weaponry fundamentally altered the nature of castle architecture from the mid-15th century.[168]

The earliest image of Scottish soldiers wearing tartan; 1631 German engraving.

In the early 17th century, relatively large numbers of Scots took service in foreign armies involved in the

James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1643–1644) and in Glencairn's rising (1653–1654) were mainly composed of conventionally armed infantry with pike and shot.[173] Montrose's forces were short of heavy artillery suitable for siege warfare and had only a small force of cavalry.[174]

At the Restoration the Privy Council established a force of several infantry regiments and a few troops of horse and there were attempts to found a national militia on the English model. The standing army was mainly employed in the suppression of Covenanter rebellions and the guerilla war undertaken by the

King William II's continental wars, beginning with the Nine Years' War in Flanders (1689–1697).[177] By the time of the Act of Union, the Kingdom of Scotland had a standing army of seven units of infantry, two of horse and one troop of Horse Guards, besides varying levels of fortress artillery in the garrison castles of Edinburgh, Dumbarton, and Stirling, which would be incorporated into the British Army.[178]

Flags

Flags and standards
Scottish Union Flag
used between 1606 and 1707.

The earliest recorded use of the

royal coat of arms which, together with a royal banner displaying the same, was used by the King of Scots until the Union of the Crowns in 1603.[180] Then it was incorporated into both the royal arms and royal banners of successive Scottish then British monarchs in order to symbolise Scotland; as can be seen today in the Royal Standard of the United Kingdom.[181] Although now officially restricted to use by representatives of the Sovereign and at royal residences, the Royal Standard of Scotland continues to be one of Scotland's most recognisable symbols.[182]

According to legend, the

Guardians of Scotland, dated 1286.[183] Use of a simplified symbol associated with Saint Andrew which does not depict his image, namely the saltire, or crux decussata (from the Latin crux, 'cross', and decussis, 'having the shape of the Roman numeral X'), has its origins in the late 14th century; the Parliament of Scotland decreed in 1385 that Scottish soldiers wear a white Saint Andrew's Cross on their person, both in front and behind, for the purpose of identification.[184] The earliest reference to the Saint Andrew's Cross as a flag is to be found in the Vienna Book of Hours, c. 1503, where a white saltire is depicted with a red background.[184] In the case of Scotland, use of a blue background for the Saint Andrew's Cross is said to date from at least the 15th century,[185] with the first certain illustration of a flag depicting such appearing in Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount's Register of Scottish Arms, c. 1542.[186]

Following the

Scottish version of this flag, in which the cross of Saint Andrew overlaid the cross of St George. This design may have seen limited, unofficial use in Scotland until 1707, when the English variant of the same, whereby the cross of St George overlaid that of St Andrew, was adopted as the flag of the unified Kingdom of Great Britain.[188]

See also

  • Falkland Palace
  • Linlithgow Palace
  • List of monarchs of Scotland
  • Obsolete Scottish units of measurement
  • Royal Consorts of Scotland
  • Scottish monarchs family tree
  • Scottish Term Day

Notes

  1. Latin
    : 'Nemo me impune lacessit' (There is no one who harms me and goes unpunished), the motto of the King of Scotland and the motto of the Order of the Thistle.
  2. Cumbric languages
    became extinct during the 10th and 11th centuries.
  3. ^ Old English (950–1066), Middle English (1066–1550), Modern English (1550–1707). Overall, English began to have increased influence in Scotland from the mid-16th century.
  4. ^ Old English (until 1066), Middle English (1066–13th century), Early Scots (13th century–1450), Middle Scots (from 1450)
  5. ^ Became the chief language of governance in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and was widely spoken in Scotland at the height of the Auld Alliance.
  6. ^ Widely used for administrative and liturgical purposes.

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Cited works

Further reading

  • Ash-Irisarri, Kate. "Scotland and Anglo-Scottish Border Writing." Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500 (2019): 225–243. online
  • Brown, Keith M. Kingdom Or Province?: Scotland and the Regal Union 1603–1715 (Macmillan International Higher Education, 1992).
  • Lang, Andrew. The History of Scotland – Volume 4: From the massacre of Glencoe to the end of Jacobitism (Jazzybee Verlag, 2016).
  • Macinnes, Allan I. A history of Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2018).
  • Moffat, Alistair. The Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms of Scotland (Birlinn, 2011).
  • Oram, Richard. "'The worst disaster suffered by the people of Scotland in recorded history': climate change, dearth and pathogens in the long 14th century." Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Vol. 144. (2015). online
  • Reid, Norman. "The kingless kingdom: the Scottish guardianships of 1286–1306." Scottish Historical Review 61.172 (1982): 105–129.
  • Taylor, Alice. The shape of the state in medieval Scotland, 1124–1290 (Oxford University Press, 2016).
  • Whatley, Christopher A. "The Union of 1707." in Modern Scottish History: Volume 1: The Transformation of Scotland, 1707–1850 (2022).
  • Wormald, Jenny, ed. Scotland: a history (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Kingdom of Scotland
843–1707
Succeeded by:
Kingdom of Great Britain
1707–1801
Succeeded by:
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
1801–1922
Succeeded by:
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

1922–present

57°N 4°W / 57°N 4°W / 57; -4