Cromwell & King Charles 2 in Scotland

Cromwell and Charles II

It should have been one of the greatest Scottish military victories of all time - a sensational defeat of the English as glorious as Robert the Bruce's success at Bannockburn.

Yet the Battle of Dunbar turned into one of Scotland's most shameful moments. It was a fight which the Scots should have won by a mile, but which - thanks to the stupidity of narrow minded Calvinists - became one of the country's worst ever military routs.

If the Scottish forces had won, then the whole history of present day Britain would probably have been changed. Instead, defeat led to the capture of Scotland by Cromwell's forces, and the beginning of the end of its political independence from England.

The battle between the Scots and the English was caused by the fact that following the execution of Charles I, the Scots had finally managed to reach an accommodation with the new heir to the throne, Charles II, allowing him to become their king.

Despite the arrangement, there was little real love north of the border for Charles. The Scots were only prepared to tolerate him because he had finally agreed to sign the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant which committed him to protect Presbyterianism and to attempt to enforce it on Anglican England.

The relationship between the king and his Scottish subjects wasn't an easy one. He was made to sign a Declaration of Repentance for the sins of the past. His parents were deliberately humiliated to his face and he was attacked by the Presbyterians his father had so hated.

When Charles was eventually crowned in 1651, it was not in the great cathedral of St Giles in Edinburgh, but by the Earl of Argyll in a small church at Scone in Perthshire. In short, Charles was treated more likely a naughty schoolboy than the legitimate king of Scots.

However, if Charles's return to the throne caused consternation among some Scots Presbyterians, it provoked fury and deep concern among the parliamentary forces who had deposed and executed Charles I in England.

The English parliament saw the acceptance of the Stewart monarchy in Scotland as an unacceptable threat and ordered its greatest General, Oliver Cromwell, to mount a full scale invasion. He crossed the border in July 1650, bringing more than 10,000 soldiers with him.

Art first, things went badly for Cromwell. The campaign proved more difficult than he had imagined and the Scots forces, under David Leslie's skilled command, harried him in a series of classic guerrilla attacks and succeeded in stopping him taking control of Edinburgh.

By September, Cromwell was in deep trouble. He was stuck in Dunbar in East Lothian, with 23,000 Scottish soldiers pursuing his exhausted and sick troops. Supplies were running low, as the Scots had already stripped the fields of any crops which might be useful.

Worst of all, however, came the realisation that Leslie had blocked the pathway south by taking a position on high ground which was all but impregnable. Cromwell realised that he was in an impossible position, and was about to suffer his worst ever military defeat.

He knew he had only two choices - to sit and starve to death, or to try the suicidal military manoeuvre of taking on a much bigger enemy force which happened to be at the top of a hill.

Yet, incredibly, it was the Scots who were about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Covenantors, under the control of the so-called Kirk party, were deeply suspicious of Charles and used their power to take control of the army.

They mounted a purge among the Scottish troops, accusing some of the very best soldiers and officers of having loose morals and even of swearing in public. The result was that the elite of Leslie's army - one of the finest in Europe at the time - were sent home.

Leslie's best chance of defeating Cromwell came on Sunday, September 1 1650. He asked the Convenantors for permission to attack but, because it was the Sabbath, this was refused. The English were given time to build their defences, and Leslie's opportunity was lost.

The following day, the Covenantors insisted that instead of waiting for the English to starve, Leslie should bring his troops off the hill to prepare for battle the following morning. Leslie was furious and saw the consequences, but had no choice but to obey.

Cromwell watched in astonishment as the Scottish soldiers came down, and recognised he had been given a chance in a million. Instead of waiting for the attack he knew would come, he launched his own assault under cover of nightfall.

Leslie's men were caught asleep and totally by surprise. They attempted to recover, but Cromwell hit them at a weak spot and burst through the line. It quickly became a turkey shoot for the English.

Before long, 3000 Scots soldiers were dead, with thousands more fleeing the battlefield in panic. Some 10,000 were taken prisoner. Some claim that Cromwell may have lost as few as 40 men in the battle. It was a military defeat which, quite simply, ought never to have happened.

Leslie fled to Stirling, leaving Edinburgh open for occupation by Cromwell only days later, though the soldiers in the well fortified Edinburgh Castle held out until December.

However, the Scots refused to immediately capitulate to Cromwell's New Model Army, They continued to harry him, making his capture of Scotland slow, and by following year they were still strong enough to try and take on the parliamentary forces again.

This time, Charles II decided to march into England, try and gather the support of English Royalist forces, and march upon London. He headed south with 13,000 men but, on reaching Worcester, couldn't decide whether to attack London or march on Wales instead.

Cromwell, who had also headed south from Scotland, caught up with Charles' army and once again routed the Scots. It was a bloodbath, and one of the very few Scots to get off the battlefield alive was Charles himself, who quickly fled into exile in France.

The defeat of Charles meant that Cromwell had united Scotland and England in a common protectorate. A total of 30 Scots were admitted to the English parliament in London, while commissioners were appointed north of the border to administer justice.

For the next eight years, the Scots were to be under the rule of Cromwell and his troops. They soon found that occupation was an expensive business - they were heavily taxed to pay for the privilege of being occupied.

However, Cromwell's parliamentary forces were clever. They minimised the risk of another military campaign against them not only by outlawing the holding or arms and restricting rights of assembly, but also by lowering taxes for those who promised to be of good behaviour and take an oath of loyalty.

Cromwell wanted to rid Scotland of its aristocracy - not a difficult task to achieve, since by then most of them had fled the country. He wanted to see the middle classes rule instead, with committees taking the place of bodies such as parliament, the government and the Privy Council.

Many of the placemen Cromwell put in positions of power were extremely able, though it was difficult to find Scots who wanted to take up jobs alongside them. Among the few who did were Patrick Gillespie, who was Principal of Glasgow University, and the lawyer Johnston of Wariston, who is widely believed to have been deranged.

There were attempts to unseat the new government - a rebellion, for instance, was started in 1653 by the Earl of Glencairn, - but none was successful, mainly because the opposing forces could not agree among themselves. At the end of the day, it was the death of Cromwell in 1658 which brought about the end of the Protectorate period.

It was General George Monck, Cromwell's right hand man in Scotland, who sought a restoration of Charles II to the throne not only of Scotland, but of England, too. The English parliament agreed, and the deed was done.

Charles II returned from France and went to Edinburgh, where he was proclaimed King of both countries. Three months later, his first act as King of Scots was to order the recall of the Committee of Estates - the Scots parliament.

The Scots were once again masters of their own house, and it finally looked as if the country might be set for a golden age of peace. However, the real tragedy was only just beginning?.

Meanwhile...

• 1651 Thomas Hobbes writes "Leviathan" in defene of absolute monarchy
• 1651 Goivanni Riccioli produces a map of the moon
• 1658 Johann Palmstruck, a Swedish financier, devises the first bank note
• 1659 Alessandro Scarlatti, the Italian composer, is born
• 1660 A pencil factory is established in Nuremberg by Friedrich Staedtler
• 1660 Dutch Boers settle in South Africa

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Darien

Darien Adventure

After the horrors of the Massacre of Glencoe, King William of Orange realised that he would have to do something to quell widespread anger in Scotland at the way his government had behaved towards the clans.

His answer was to give the reluctant go-ahead to a venture so tragic and disastrous that it ended up making the slaughter of the MacDonalds look like a tea party - a disaster to which his own policy was to contribute.

The Darien adventure was meant to create prosperity for Scotland through a glorious trading empire which would reach across the world. However, it quickly became an expedition to Hell which left investors broke, caused thousands of needless deaths and finally helped push Scots into full union with England.

By the end of the 17th century, Scotland's economy was in a dire state. A series of bad harvests had caused a famine so severe that one in six people were forced to beg to keep themselves alive. Thousands were found dead from hunger and disease and people were even urged to eat cats to keep themselves alive.

Further problems were caused by England's wars with France and Holland - Scotland's allies and main overseas trading partners - which cut off exports out and supplies in. And the English made a bad situation worse by refusing to allow the Scots to trade with their own colonies in North America.

If Scotland was to engage in international trading, it was felt, then the best way to do it was for the country to set up its own colony overseas. The idea was first discussed by the Scottish Privy Council in 1681 and in 1693 the Scottish parliament, the Estates, passed an act allowing foreign trading to take place.

There was plenty of enthusiasm for the scheme. Wealthy Scots living in London had seen the success of the English east India Country, and saw a similar operation run by their own country as a chance to make a profit.

The plan had particular appeal to one Scots businessman, William Paterson, who had helped to found the Bank of England and had become one of its directors. Paterson spotted the value of the Scottish trading plan and saw its opportunities.

Darien, he felt, would be the ideal spot for such a venture. It lies at the bottom of the Isthmus of Panama, on the border with present day Colombia and at the very northernmost point of South America. Because the spit of land between Atlantic and Pacific is extremely narrow at that point, Paterson saw the potential for carving a highway between the two coasts, linking trade from the two great oceans together.

On paper, it was a brilliant plan. A new company, the Scottish Africa and India Company, was set up and its directors persuaded to back the scheme. Despite the efforts of the English government to thwart the scheme - even though King William had given it a reluctant blessing - nearly #400,000, an immense amount at the time, was raised to fund it.

A major problem was that the Spanish already had claims on the area, but this was ignored in the fever of enthusiasm at the time. In the frenzy of excitement about the venture, no-one really thought about the problems and the dangers.

Everyone from nobles to commoners, it seemed, was behind the plan. Hundreds of people, ranging from the sons of the landed gentry through to soldiers from the Scots regiments, volunteered to become pioneers and make the trip to establish a colony.

Four ships were built and fitted out for the long journey across the Atlantic. They were loaded up with a range of trading goods from brandy and biscuits to bagpipes, Bibles, pipes and needles. Even tartan plaid and wigs were taken, on the assumption that someone, somewhere would buy them.

However, problems with the journey began almost before it had properly started. The biscuits onboard were soon found to be mouldy and the beef rotten,. It was am miserable three-month journey across the Atlantic to Darien. However, the 1200 men, women and children who made the journey were not put off, and were beguiled by their first sight of Darien, which they thought was a paradise on earth.

It soon became clear, however, that it was anything but. For nine months of the year, rain thrashes down, and the hot, humid jungle is a breeding ground for disease. Yellow fever and malaria quickly struck the settlers, and in less than a year half of them were dead.

The planters attempted to restock by sending a vessel to the West Indies. It returned empty, with the grim news that King William, who did not want to provoke the Spanish or threaten the monopoly of the East India Company, had ordered English colonies to have nothing to do with the Scots venture.

Then the settlers received word that the Spanish were about to attack them. They panicked and decided to abandon the colony altogether. However, only one of the four original vessels, the Caledonia, made it back to Scotland. Three out of every four of the original colonists had perished.

But this was not the end of the disaster. Back in Scotland, where no-one was aware what a hellhole Darien really was, enthusiasm for the venture continued to grow. Absurd stories about it being a gold prospector's paradise quickly spread. Another three ships and 1300 colonists set sail across the Atlantic.

When they finally arrived after another dreadful journey , a desperate sight awaited them. They found only an empty wilderness, with the encampment of the original settlement burnt, ruined and choked with weeds. Something, they quickly realised, had gone very wrong.

Undaunted, they set out to rebuild the plantation, working themselves into the ground to create a proper settlement. Once again, however, disease started to take its toll.

They, too, quickly learned that the Spanish were plotting against them, and that they would receive no help from the English. The inevitable military clash with the Spaniards came in 1700 and, incredibly, the Scots beat them off. But it was already clearly that there were too few of the planters to hang on to the colony for long.

The next month, under another threat from the Spanish and with 600 people ill with fever, the Scots recognised the inevitable and capitulated. They abandoned the colony and put to sea. One of the three vessels sank on rocks off Cuba, while the other two were destroyed in a hurricane off South Carolina. Everyone on board was lost.

Initially, Scots at home accused the original settlers of cowardice, and the few who did make it back from the first expedition found themselves the subject of vilification and abuse. But the mood quickly changed and the English were blamed for the disaster.

An intense hatred of the English quickly set in, leading to riots against King William breaking out in Edinburgh. After hearing the colony had been completely destroyed, William felt able to be magnanimous - he asked Spain to free those who had been captured during the first expedition. As in the case of the Glencoe Massacre, he was having to extricate himself from a mess which his own anti-Scottishness had foisted on him.

Once again, however, he got away with it. Incredibly, the Scottish Africa and India Company survived the disaster, and continued to trade with the African continent and the Far East.

However, Shareholders had received no return on their investment, and anger throughout Scotland was widespread. People were talking again about bringing back a Stewart king.

William realised that the answer was to buy off the investors and compensate them for their losses by finally uniting the parliaments of Scotland and England. By doing so, he could remove the threat to his throne and finally bring the unruly, independent Scots under control.

William was to die before his plan would see the light of day. By then, however, the case for union between the two countries had built up an unstoppable momentum. For good or ill, it was soon to be put into effect.

Meanwhile...

• 1693 The National Debt begins in England
• 1693 Kingston, Jamaica, is founded
• 1695 Guillame Amontons invest the pendant barometer
• 1697 China conquers western Mongolia
• 1698 A tax on beards is introduced in Russia
• 1698 - Paper manufacturing begins in North America

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Rule of David II

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King David II of Scotland

Robert the Bruce may have been one of Scotland's greatest heroes - but his son was a disaster who very nearly gave his own crown away to the English.

Incredibly, it was only a people's rebellion which blocked King David II from striking a deal with England which could have seen the two countries joining together hundreds of years before the eventual 1707 Treaty of Union.

The row between the king and his own Scottish parliament blew up because of two major factors - money and David's own selfish desire to control the fate of the Scottish monarchy.

Petty jealousies with his rivals and the massive drain of cash from Scotland south of the border led the king to try and demand that his parliament - made up at that time of burgesses and merchants from Scotland's rapidly growing towns and burghs - allow an English monarch to take the Scottish thone on his death.

The members of parliament put their foot down and refused - effectively saving Scotland as an independent kingdom - because they thought that to hand the crown over to the hated English would be an abrogation of everything the Bruce fought for.

While Robert's victory at Bannockburn forced the English to respect and even admire him, his son David was seen as little more than a pushover, and he is regarded as one of Scotland's least effective - although most interesting - medieval kings.

One of Robert's biggest problems in trying to rule Scotland was not of his own making. He was only five when his father died in 1329, leaving him with the throne at an age when most children of today would still be in nursery school.

Incredibly, despite being so young, David was already married - he'd been betrothed the year before to Joanna, the sister of King Edward III of England, as part of an attempt to bring the two warring countries together in a new spirit of friendship and reconciliation.

As usual, however, the attempts at peace didn't last. The Bruce's death led to bitter infighting within Scotland as Edward Balliol, the son of the ousted former Scottish king John Balliol in whose name William Wallace had fought, tried to press his own claim to the Scottish throne.

During the 1330's Balliol's forces - aided by Scottish nobles who the Bruce had disinherited when he was on the throne - overran southern Scotland. They routed the Scottish army at the Battle of Dupplin Moor near Perth (12 August 1332), where thousands of Scottish soldiers were trampled underfoot, in 1332 and again the following year at Halidon Hill near Berwick.

The young king was kept safe at Dumbarton Castle as the raids went on, and the guardians who actually ruled Scotland in his name, such as Donald Earl of Mar, decided it was far too dangerous for him to stay in the country.

Sending David to England was out of the question - Edward III was a close ally of Balliol - so he was despatched to Scotland's ancient ally, France, instead. King Philip IV accepted his presence without problems, putting him up in grand style in Chateau Gaillard on the Seine.

The French were perfectly happy to look after the Scottish boy king, as England was their sworn enemy and they would do anything to try and disrupt Edward III's own ambitions for conquest on the continent. By the time David was 17, however, it was felt he was old enough to return to Scotland, and so he came home in 1341.

During his absence Scotland had been ruled on a day-to-day basis by a number of guardians such as John Randolph, the Earl of Moray and Robert the Stewart, though these guardians may not have always agreed with each other and there seem to have been tensions about the best way to run the country.

As soon as David returned, he attempted to stamp his authority back on the kingdom. He wanted to try and win recognition of his kingship from the English, has his father had done, and his boyhood hospitality from the French had left him with obligations to fulfil.

His opportunity came when Edward - who had been officially at war with the French since 1337 - was away fighting the Battle of Crecy. The French were in desperate trouble and David attempted to create a diversion by taking on the English on their home soil. His attempt to take on Edward's army may also have been bolstered by the fact that the English king was away in France and so not able to give a fight against the Scots the benefit of his personal direction.

The two armies met at the Battle of Neville's Cross near Durham in 1346. The skirmish turned out to be a disaster for the Scots, as David was severely wounded in the conflict and captured by the English, and most of his nobles were either taken prisoner or killed.

During the attack, David's nephew and supposed ally Robert the Stewart - who, according to documents signed by The Bruce, was the legitimate successor as Scottish king - is said to have fled from the battlefield, taking his troops with him.

After having been taken to London and locked up in the Tower, David was initially left to try and negotiate his own release. It was clear, however, that the Scots would have had to pay a ransom to get him back, and Robert the Stewart, who served as guardian during David's imprisonment, was not too keen on doing this - if only because with the proper king of Scots locked up down south, he could consolidate his own claim to the Scottish throne.

Dr Steve Boardman of the Scottish History Department at the University of Edinburgh, who is an expert on the reign of David II, says that being in custody actually worked out well for the king of Scots. "It meant that Edward would be able to get a ransom and a political deal from Scotland in return for releasing him, so it meant that he, the English king, no longer had to forge an alliance with Edward Balliol."

Nevertheless, as Robert the Stewart failed to make a deal to have David released, the Scots king became increasingly desperate. So he tried to strike an agreement with the English monarch to allow one of Edward's younger sons to become the next king of Scots if he, David, died childless.

If this had happened, then it would have meant Scotland being ruled by an English king. In fact, by offering such a deal, David may have simply been playing a crafty game, believing that he was still young enough to produce his own heir which who, of course, would have been the natural successor and so scuppered the whole plan.

However, he was unable to broker such a deal for the simple reason that the Scots nobles and parliament wouldn't allow it. At the end of the day, in 1357, David was finally released for the huge ransom of 100,000 merks.

The sum was so vast - it was equivalent to seven years' total royal income - that, once back in Scotland, David had huge problems paying it. So, still aware that his now deadly foe Robert the Stewart would succeed him if he died, he tried to do another deal with Edward, allowing the English king to also rule Scotland if only he would agree to scrapping the ransom payments.

Edward seems to have been keen on the plan, but it was again blocked by the Scottish parliament, which was the body funding the Scots royal coffers. The nobles and burgesses wanted to see Scotland's independence and the Bruce's legacy protected.

Says Steve Boardman: "If both crowns had united, it would have had profound implications for Scotland. The survival of the Scottish kingdom during this period was by no means guaranteed."

David never did get his way. Most of the ransom was eventually paid, and so the Scottish parliament ensured that their king could not sell off his crown for English gold.

David never did father a child of his own and, on his deathbed, suffered the ultimate personal ignominy. The Scottish crown, just as the Bruce has directed, passed directly to his enemy Robert the Stewart, who became Robert II of Scotland. The age of the Stewarts had begun.

Meanwhile...

• 1331 The first record of weaving in England

• 1352 Ibn Battuta, an Arab geographer, explores the Sahara deser

• 1354 A mechanical clock is built at Strasbourg Cathedral

• 1360 The first franc coins are minted in France

• 1364 Aztecs build their capital at Tenochtitlan in Mexico

• 1369 The Bastille is built in Paris

• 1370 Steel crossbows are used

• 1371 The Chinese drive the Mongols from Szechwan

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David Beaton

• Name  : Beaton
• Born  : c.1494
• Died  : 1546 (Cardinal)
• Category  : Religious Figures
• Finest Moment : Watching Wishart burn

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David Brewster

• Name  : Brewster
• Born  : 1781
• Died  : 1868
• Category  : Scientists and Inventors
• Finest Moment : Publication of Treatise on Optics (1831)

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David Hume Biography

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David Hume Historian

David Hume / Philosophers and Historians

• Name  : Hume
• Born  : 1711
• Died  : 1776
• Category  : Philosophers and Historians
• Finest Moment : Treatise of Human Nature (1739)

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David Livingstone

Dr David Livingstone / Explorers

• Name  : Livingstone
• Born  : 1813
• Died  : 1873
• Category  : Explorers
• Finest Moment : Viewing the Victoria Falls

Although an ineffective missionary, his explorations through an unknown Africa are astonishing journeys, covering some 30,000 miles. He was born in Blantyre, 8 miles south of Glasgow, on 19 March 1813. Working at a local cotton mill, for 14-hour days, Livingstone had to walk 20 miles during the course of the work. He used this to study, which must have meant some interesting mental control, considering the horrendous noise of most mills.

He was probably influenced by the writings of a German missionary to study medicine before becoming a missionary himself. Finishing medicine at Glasgow University, he arrived in Cape Town in 1841. There he married Mary Moffat, the daughter of Robert Moffat, a well known missionary.

His great explorations led north through the Kalahari Desert, west to the Atlantic at Luanda, then back east via the Zambesi to the Indian Ocean, seeing the Victoria Falls for the first time. He seems to have been unlucky with navigation, as an instrument fault and a rare mistake led him to believe that the Zambesi was navigable into the heart of the Dark Continent. This misconception led to another expedition in 1858, taking a dismantled steam launch up the Zambesi. He would have not been amused on reaching the Kebra Basa rapids.

Turning north he discovered Lake Nyasa. Personal tragedy happened in 1862 when his wife Mary, who had joined him, died after an illness.

He returned to Africa for what was to be the last time, in 1866. His health was now failing, as he attempted to explore the various great river systems. No less than four expeditions were by now looking for him, as his name became known back home. It was the journalist Henry Stanley, a Welsh-born American who eventually tracked him down, meeting him with the immortal words 'Doctor Livingstone, I presume.'

The slave trade was a constant source of anguish for Livingstone, and on several occasions he risked his life to free captured slaves. Bad weather and worsening health paid their inevitable tolls, and in what is now Zambia, at Chitambo, on 1 May 1873, he was found dead by his bedside, on his knees in an attitude of prayer. What followed is an indication of how much he was revered by his followers. Firstly they buried his heart locally, then embalming his body they struggled for 1500 miles with it to the coast, a journey on no inconsiderable personal danger to themselves. His remains were taken home and buried in Westminster Abbey, in 1874.

His work prompted the British government to re-examine the slave trade. In 1873 they stopped the open sales of slaves at Zanzibar, though it would some time before the practice was halted completely.

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