Introduction to History of Scotland
Ancient Scotland was settled by various peoples who arrived by a number of routes from southern, central, and northern Europe. When the Romans came to the British Isles in the first century B.C., they found in the Scottish Highlands a Celtic-speaking people whom they called Caledonians (later known as Picts). In the Lowlands and Southern Uplands were Britons, the Celtic people who had settled present England, called Britain after them.
The boundary of Roman Britain was considered to be as far inside Caledonia as the Roman legions could protect themselves against the fierce natives. Under Agricola, the Romans crushed the Caledonian forces at the battle of Mons Graupius in 84 A.D. Two Roman walls were built to protect Britain—Hadrian's Wall, 122?–28, south of the Cheviot Hills, and the Wall of Antoninus, about 142, between the firths of Forth and Clyde.
Formation of the Scottish Kingdom
Early in the fifth century the Roman legions were withdrawn. At the end of the century the Scots, a Gaelic branch of Celts in Ireland, migrated to the coastal region of Scotland northwest of the Firth of Clyde. They established a kingdom named Dalriada; the region became known as Argyll (from “coast land of the Gael").
In the seventh century the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic people who had conquered central Britain, extended their rule to the Firth of Forth. In the Highlands, the Picts (Caledonians) grew in strength and gradually imposed overlordship on the Scots.
Early in the ninth century Norsemen—mainly Norwegians—began raiding Scotland in the north and down the west coast. Kenneth MacAlpine, king of Scots, gained the Pict throne about 843 and united the Picts and Scots in the kingdom of Albany (or Alba), consolidating resistance to the Norsemen. However, many Norse coastal settlements were founded in the 10th century. The Picts and Scots (whose country soon took the name of Scotland) fought the Anglo-Saxons (English), but were defeated by them in 937. About 1016, however, Malcolm II, king of Scotland, won a victory over the English north of the Tweed River, extending Scotland's southern boundary to its approximate present location.
There was constant rivalry for the Scottish throne. Malcolm II killed all the rivals of his grandson Duncan, who succeeded him in 1034. Macbeth, whose wife was the heir of one of Duncan's slain rivals (possibly Kenneth III), murdered Duncan in 1040. In 1057 Macbeth was slain by Duncan's son Malcolm (III) Canmore, whose house then ruled Scotland for the next 200 years.
Conflict With England
The Normans who conquered England in 1066 were soon in conflict with Malcolm, whose wife Margaret was of the Anglo-Saxon royal house . However, numerous marriages between the Anglo-Norman and Scottish royal families brought a period of peace. This was shattered in 1173 when Henry II of England reneged on an earlier promise to transfer certain domains to Scotland. War broke out between Scotland and England. William I of Scotland was captured at Alnwick, England, in 1174 and forced to acknowledge Henry as his overlord. He was released from this obligation by Richard I in 1189.
Meanwhile, the Norsemen were being driven out of Scotland. Their last Scottish domains, except the Orkney and Shetland islands, were relinquished by treaty in 1266.
The Canmore line died out in 1290, and Edward I of England was invited to arbitrate between the competitors for the Scottish throne. Although the Scots preferred Robert Bruce, Edward's arbitration council chose John de Baliol, who did homage to Edward. The Scots soon rebelled against English domination. In 1296 Edward marched north, defeated the Scots, carried the Stone of Scone (the Scottish coronation seat) back to England, and declared Scotland his.
A Scottish revolt led by William Wallace collapsed in 1304. Two years later Robert Bruce, grandson of John de Baliol's rival, had himself crowned king of Scots. His progress against the English was slow, but his victory at Bannockburn in 1314 was decisive, although fighting continued until 1323. In 1328 England conceded Scotland's independence.
David II, Bruce's son, succeeded to the throne in 1329. In 1332 Edward de Baliol, son of John de Baliol, seized the throne and, after receiving much-needed English support, did homage to Edward III of England. The majority of Scots refused to accept Baliol. In 1356 Edward removed him and the next year restored David to the throne. In 1371 David was succeeded by his nephew Robert Stewart.
Scotland Under the Stuarts
For more than 150 years, Scotland, although independent and for the most part free of English aggression, was torn by clan feuds and stormy resistance to the authority of the Stewart (or Stuart, as the name eventually came to be spelled) rulers. James I (reigned 1406–37) was murdered by a resentful baron. James III (1460–88) met his death fighting rebellious subjects. His son James IV (1488–1513) was a gallant and popular king who brought order to much of Scotland, although the Highlands were not altogether subdued. In 1503 James married the English princess Margaret Tudor. When Margaret's brother, Henry VIII, went to war against Scotland's ally France, James invaded England and was killed at the battle of Flodden Field.
Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, was reared in France, married the dauphin (the heir to the French throne), became queen of France in 1559, and was widowed the next year. Catholics considered her—rather than her Protestant cousin Elizabeth I—the rightful claimant to the English throne, through her grandmother Margaret Tudor.
In 1561 Mary returned to Scotland, where under the leadership of John Knox Catholicism had been rejected and Calvinism made the official religion. Mary did not oppose the new kirk (church), but lost the support of the Scots in 1567 when she was suspected of being involved in the mysterious death of her second husband, Lord Darnley. Upon her marriage to Darnley's presumed murderer, the Earl of Bothwell, the Scots rose against her and proclaimed her infant son, James (VI), king. Mary fled to England, where she was held prisoner until put to death in 1587 for plots against Elizabeth.
James, godson of Queen Elizabeth and next in line (after the death of his mother) to the English throne, was brought up a Protestant and succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 (as James I), uniting Scotland and England under a single monarch, although they remained separate countries.
The Scottish Parliament established a presbyterian form of church government in 1592. Parliament's enactments, however, left the king with a great deal of power over the church, which he used in 1598–99 to reintroduce bishops into Parliament and then to superimpose them on the kirk government. In 1638, during the reign of Charles I, the Scots expressed their discontent with royal policy in a document, the National Covenant. The issuing of this document was the beginning of a movement that eventually overthrew the bishops (the Bishops' Wars of 1639–40) and restored the presbyterian form of government to the Scottish church.
After the Great Rebellion against Charles broke out in 1642, the English Parliament and the Scots signed the Solemn League and Covenant (1643), by which England would become Presbyterian and Scotland would support the rebellion. Oliver Cromwell and the Independents (Congregationalists) opposed the Scots and prevented the implementation of the covenant. The beheading of Charles in 1649 horrified the Scots, who proclaimed his son Charles (II) to be their king. Thereafter the Covenanters were allied with the royalists against the Puritans, who conquered Scotland, 1650–52.
When the monarchy was restored in 1660, Charles II reestablished episcopacy in Scotland. His brother James, a Catholic, was made commissioner for Scotland in 1680, and persecution of Convenanters became intense. After his succession to the throne in 1685, James (VII of Scotland and II of England) quickly antagonized his subjects in both countries and was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Under his daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange, Presbyterianism was reestablished in Scotland (1690). Mary's sister Anne came to the throne in 1702 and recommended the union of England and Scotland under a single Parliament. The Act of Union in 1707 joined the countries into the nation of Great Britain.
Scotland In the Union
Many Scots wished to restore James to the throne and to continue the Stuart line. These people were known as Jacobites. When Anne was succeeded in 1714 by George I, a German, the Jacobites rose in rebellion. James Stuart, son of the late king and later known as the Old Pretender, landed in Scotland in 1715 but, finding his local forces ineffectual, departed.
In 1745 James's son Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), the Young Pretender, raised the Highland clans in rebellion. He soon won most of Scotland and proclaimed his father king (as James VIII); Charles then moved into England but was forced by his clan chiefs to withdraw. A few months later Charles was defeated at Culloden, and the rebellion ended.
As part of Great Britain, Scotland developed economically. Agriculture improved, textile mills flourished, fisheries thrived, and an iron industry developed. Meanwhile, dissension arose in the Presbyterian church following the Act of Union, which had made it the official Church of Scotland. Various factions within the church vied for control in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the result that many groups seceded and founded non-establishment churches.
A feeling of being treated politically as inferior to England created periodic discontent. A growing national consciousness led to a demand for home rule in the 1880's that gained support from the Liberal party, but no legislation was passed. In the 1920's a movement for independence developed and led to the formation of the Scottish National party (SNP). The SNP had its first election successes in 1945. Its strength began growing in the late 1950's and increased in the early 1970's. In 1975 the British government announced plans to give Scotland limited home rule. In a 1979 referendum, however, the proposal failed to win approval by a required 40 per cent of the Scottish voters. In a 1997 referendum voters approved the restoration of Scotland's Parliament in 1999.
Meanwhile, in the late 1960's oil and natural gas were discovered in the North Sea off the Scottish coast. These fields were developed extensively in the 1970's and still yield enormous amounts of oil and natural gas. In 1993 a massive oil spill occurred off the Shetland Islands when a tanker ran aground.