The church and the origins of Scottish independence in the twelfth century

No abstract available

The declaration of Arbroath: pedigree of a nation?

No abstract available

The presence of witnesses and the writing of charters

No abstract available

The Treaty of Union, 1707

When James VI of Scotland also became sovereign of England as James I in 1603 he made an unsuccessful attempt at establishing closer links between his two countries. Over a century later, in the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell forced a union on England and Scotland but it was an unpopular arrangement imposed on a reluctant Scottish population.2 Towards the end of the reign of William III, who died in 1702, it became apparent that the two separate kingdoms needed to enter into a more comprehensive partnership as the only solution to the problems of theAnglo-Scottish relationship. William III, however, never succeeded in effecting the Union during his reign, the king's reputation in Scotland having plummeted in the late seventeenth century, particularly following the Glencoe massacre (1692) and the Darien disaster (1698-99). Ultimately, the more comprehensive partnership was worked out during the reign of Queen Anne. "We shall esteem it as the greatest glory of our reign" was the queen's message to the Scottish Parliament on 3 October 1706.3 By the time Anne came to the throne (1702) her last surviving child (William, duke of Gloucester) had died in 1700, and the Westminster parliament had already passed the Act of Settlement (1701) by which the succession to the English crown after Anne was settled upon the grand-daughter of James VI and I, Sophia and her husband George, Elector of Hanover, and their issue. Sophia, however, died in 1714 not long before Queen Anne, nevertheless, the German-speaking George was crowned king of Great Britain

MacBeth, King of Scots, 1040-1057

Scotland in the eleventh century was very different from Scotland even in the twelfth or thirteenth century. It was almost entirely a tribal Celtic area, speaking almost entirely Celtic languages: the ancestor of Welsh in the south, and Gaelic in the central, north eastern and western Scotland. But the area nominally within the area of influence of the High King or Ard-Righ -a man of exalted dynasty who ruled over a number of petty kings -did not include the far north of Sutherland and Caithness, or the Orkneys and the Western Isles which were Norse areas under the sway of the king of Norway, at least at the time our story begins. In the early part of the eleventh century Scotland was divided into six tribal areas ruled by Mormaers, derived from a Gaelic word meaning High Steward. I There were also two petty kingdoms in the south. To use modern versions of the original Celtic descriptions the tribal areas were Moray, Athol!, Angus and Mearns, Marr and Buchan., Fife and Strathearn. The largest of these stewartries was Moray which ran from the east coast all the way across Scotland to the west coast.2 Atholl was the next largest. The name Atholl is derived from the original Gaelic name which means 'New Ireland'.3 The stewartry of Strathearn included the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth, which in later times became the political and economic heartland of Scotland.4 The area south of the Clyde and the Forth, worked differently. It was governed by a Petty King -a man who to all intents was a sovereign ruler of his territories but who often acknowledged a more powerful neighbour as his overlord B--who accepted the High King as his superior or suzerain. There was a kingdom of Strathclyde with its capital at what is now Dumbarton

Would the Real William Wallace Please Stand Up

The object of this paper is to give a brief outline of the life of William Wallace, and to make references in passing to the film, Braveheart, loosely based on the life of William Wallace, starring the Australian actor Mel Gibson. Without wishing to detract in any way from the marvellous spirit of Scottish nationalism which the film produced, the comments on the film will inevitably point primarily to just a few of the film's historical inaccuracies. Films for popular consumption should perhaps not be expected to be historically accurate. The image of Wallace in the minds of such parts of the public who have heard of him at all, is largely myth. Great historical figures gather myths around them and the Scots are among the great myth builders. Braveheart the film builds on the myths of Wallace, but at the expense of adding invention where there was no need. Edward I of England is portrayed as deliciously evil, by Patrick McGooan, but the most evil thing Edward I did in Scotland, the sack and slaughter of Berwick in 1298, does not appear in the film. When there was so much real horror, heroism, honour and deception in reality, what is the need for more myth building