Devolution - The 1960s in Scotland

The Sixties may have been swinging in places like London, Paris and San Francisco - but in Scotland, there wasn't much to smile about.

High unemployment, shipyard closures and the troubles of traditional industries all contributed to a mood that the country was sinking, and little could be done to stop the slow death.

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Devorguilla Balliol

• Name  : Balliol
• Born  : c.1209
• Died  : 1290
• Category  : Famous Historical Figures
• Finest Moment : Foundation of Balliol College, Oxford

'She was buried with her husband's heart at Sweetheart Abbey'

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The Great Disruption of 1843

Ever since the days of John Knox and the Reformation, the vast majority of the Scottish people had thrown their weight and support behind the Kirk.

However, the unity of the Church of Scotland was finally blown apart by one of the most important and far-reaching events of the nineteenth century - the co-called Disruption of 1843.

This split in the Kirk caused bitter divisions, left ministers without homes and salaries, and meant that whole congregations found themselves without churches to worship in.

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Dr John Hope

• Name  : Hope
• Born  : 1725
• Died  : 1786
• Category  : Scientists and Inventors
• Finest Moment : Creation of a Botanic Garden on Leith Walk, Edinburgh

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Montrose & the Civil War

Marquess of Montrose & the Civil War

His name may not be as well known as that of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace - but James Graham, Earl of Montrose, was one of the greatest heroes Scotland has ever produced.

Like the Bruce and Wallace, Montrose was a brilliant strategist and fearless fighter who had the gift of being able to inspire his men on to dazzling victories.

The greatest difference was that while Scotland's two great medieval warriors were patriots who fought exclusively for their country, Montrose fought for his king and the royalist cause of the Stewart monarchs.

James Graham's campaigns on behalf of Charles I were so remarkable that they gave heart to Royalists right across Britain who were fighting the parliamentarian forces in the Civil War.

In Scotland, Montrose's enemies were the Covenantors - the Scots who had signed the National Covenant of 1638 in an attempt to protect the Reformed Calvinist faith against King Charles's attempts to impose an English and Anglican form of worship on Scotland.

In theory, Montrose should have been beaten at virtually every turn. Instead, he fought so cleverly and with such determination that he routed his enemies and claimed slices of Scotland for the king time after time.

By the time the Civil War started in England, Montrose has been made a marquis and officially appointed as the King's Lieutenant in Scotland. As well as his own cunning, he also had a major advantage in that he had the support of the brilliant Alastair MacDonald of Colonsay, who came originally from Ireland and was also known as Coll Keitach. In 1644, with only 2200 men, the pair captured Dumfries from the Covenantors and then went on to seize the Northumberland town of Morpeth.

Montrose won an even more spectacular victory later that year when he routed the Covenanting army at Tibbermore near Perth. He still had less than 3000 men, while his enemy had more than twice that number.

Most of Montrose's troops came from the Highlands, and they went home after helping to win the battle at Tibbermore. Montrose, however, pressed on and moved north. By the time he reached Aberdeen, he had just 1500 men.

This, however, did not put him off a further fight. Once again, he took on a vastly superior Covenanting army and once again he won. He took Aberdeen, where he was able to obtain reinforcements and prepare himself for further battle.

By now, Montrose felt confident enough to try and strike at the very heart of the enemy. He decided to take on Archibald Campbell, the fiercely Calvinist Earl of Argyll, on his own territory in the mountainous stronghold of Inveraray.

His tactics appeared little short of lunatic. Winter was setting in, and the Campbell position at Inveraray, with sea on three sides and the mountains on the fourth, looked virtually impregnable. But when Argyll heard that Montrose was on his way, he panicked and fled down Loch Fyne, leaving hundreds of his troops as easy pickings for Montrose's men.

The following February, Montrose launched another attack on Campbell. He staged a daring dawn guerrilla raid, with Coll Keitach's MacDonalds racing down the slopes of Ben Nevis at Inverlochy. Once again, Argyll himself escaped and once again, his men were put to the sword. The final body count was 1500 Covenanting dead, while only 10 royalists perished.

Victory after victory followed. Montrose continued to use his talents of charismatic leadership, speed of attack and surprise in battle to rout the enemy. He captured Dundee and won a series of other skirmishes until the Highlands were effectively his.

Having disarmed Campbell, Montrose turned his attention to the lowlands. He marched into Glasgow, though at this point Coll Keitach left him to return to the Highlands and eventually to Ireland. Montrose's Highland troops, too, deserted. Even now, however, he was able to take Edinburgh, though the Covenantors retained control of the castle.

With Campbell at a safe distance in Berwick, Montrose began to form a Scottish government in the name of King Charles. However, his glory was to be short lived. The Covenantors' best general, David Leslie, had come back to Scotland with a force of 4000 men, and his army blocked Montrose's attempts to link up with Charles in England.

The two sides met at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk. This time it was the covenanting army, under Leslie, which sprang the surprise. The fight which followed turned into a bloodbath and as it became clear he had lost the day, Montrose had to be persuaded to flee the battlefield for his own safety.

With their greatest Scottish enemy neutered, the Covenanting forces came into the ascendancy. Under the terms of the Solemn League and Covenant they had signed with the anti-royalist parliamentarian forces in England, they were already fighting Charles I south of the border. When he surrendered at Southwell near Newark in 1646, it was to a Scottish army.

After trying unsuccessfully to persuade the king to sign the Covenant, The Scots finally handed him over to the English in return for their battle expenses. However, there was still a way out for the defeated king. One of the principal architects of the Solemn League and Covenant, the Earl of Lauderdale, travelled to see him and offered Charles the support of the Scottish military if he would convert England to Presbyterianism for a trial period of three years.

The king, with nothing left to lose, agreed. But the move, known as The Engagement, split Scots Presbyterians and finally petered out when a Scots army led by the Duke of Hamilton and fighting for this deal was defeated by the parliamentarians under Oliver Cromwell at Preston in Lancashire.

For Charles, it was the end. He was tried by the English parliament, found guilty and beheaded outside Whitehall in January 1649. Montrose, who by now was in exile in Brussels, vowed that he would work to avenge his death.

The king had left an 18-year-old son, also Charles, who was proclaimed King of Scots in Edinburgh on his father's execution. However, he could not actually take the throne until he had signed the document his father had turned away from - the Solemn League and Covenant.

Montrose warned Charles II against signing the document, saying that he would win him the throne by military means instead. The king secretly continued to talk with Argyll about signing the covenant, but agreed that Montrose could embark on a campaign to restore his monarchy.

Montrose began his new military expedition by landing on Orkney with a force of about 500 mercenaries recruited from Germany and Denmark. He then gathered local recruits before heading for the mainland. But his venture was a disaster.

When he fought the Scots forces at Carbisdale, his army was destroyed. Montrose fled the battlefield and hid in the wilderness of Sutherland, but he was captured only two days later.

After being taken to Edinburgh, preparations were made for his execution. There was no need for a trial - conveniently, the Covenantors had declared him a traitor back in 1644. He was to be hung, drawn and quartered at the Mercat Cross.

As was always the case with executions, a mob gathered, but this time they were crying instead of jeering. After being hung, his head was placed on a spike in Edinburgh's Tolbooth, while other pieces of his body were sent to Aberdeen, Glasgow, Stirling and Perth.

What Montrose did not learn before his death was that the unsavoury Charles II had double crossed him. He had struck a deal with Argyll and finally signed both the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant.

For Charles, it was a hollow victory. He was forced to accept the rule of the Presbyterians, who distrusted him, and unable to rule effectively. And there was another problem. In England, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector and victor in the Civil War, had his designs on Scotland too?.

Meanwhile...

• 1642 Isaac Newton - mathematician and natural philosopher - is born
• 1644 The Dutch settle on the island of Mauritius
• 1645 Work begins on the Dalai Lama's residence in Lhasa, Tibet
• 1645 John Milton, the English poet, writes, "L'allegro" and "Il Penseroso"
• 1645 The University of Palermo is founded
• 1646 Athanasius Kircher, a German mathematiian, constructs the firs projection lantern
• 1646 The English occupy the Bahamas
• 1648 The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years War
• 1648 George Fox founds the Society of Friends, often called Quakers
• 1648 Mirrors and chandeliers are manufactured in Murano near Venice

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Ebenezer Erskine

Ebenezer Erskine / Religious Figures

• Name  : Erskine
• Born  : 1680
• Died  : 1744
• Category  : Religious Figures
• Finest Moment : Formation of the Associate Presbytery, 1740.

'Split the Church of Scotland into two, when he spoke up for the common man'

Erskine was born at Dryborough in 1680, and was educated at Edinburgh University. He became chaplain to the Earl of Rothes before ordination to Portmoak, in Kinross-shire, in 1703. In 1712 the Patronage Act came into being, by which the rights of lay persons to appoint ministers was reasserted, having ceased in 1690. Landowners in Scotland were by now wanting their man in the manse to be friendly, and to share the landowner's general outlook.

Ebenezer Erskine was an evangelical, opposed to this Act. 'I can find no warrant from the word of God to confer the spiritual privileges of His house upon the rich beyond the poor: whereas by this Act the man with the gold ring and the gay clothing is preferred unto the man with the vile raiment and poor attire'. So rang the sermons of Erskine from the pulpit, and the poor in their 'vile raiments' must have warmed to this.

In 1731 he transferred to Stirling. Two years later he was suspended for his views, but was allowed to preach until 1740, when he led four ministers including himself to form an Associate Presbytery. This secession led ultimately to the emergence of four new dissenting Presbyterian churches: the Old Licht Burghers and the New Licht Burghers, the Old Licht nti-Burghers and the New Licht Anti-Burghers. They all held stubbornly held differences about the lawfulness of taking oaths to the civil authorities, and about whether the historic covenants were binding, or could be departed from in time.

All of these changes split the Church of Scotland, eventually leading to the major Disruption of 1843,when yet again the argument was over patronage. Erskine died in 1754, having being the father of both the Secession Church, and of fifteen children.

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Edinburgh Old Town History

Edinburgh Old Town

Edinburgh is one of the world's most beautiful capitals - but it has taken more than 1000 years of history to make it the historic city which is known and loved by visitors and Scots alike.

However, it only became the country's greatest city by the skin of its teeth - and if one of our greatest heroes, Robert the Bruce, had died just a few days earlier, then the shape of modern Scotland might have been very different.

It was The Bruce who first granted a charter to Edinburgh in 1329, only 10 days before he died. If he had not done so, then Berwick, which at the time was the biggest and richest burgh in Scotland, might well have become the Scottish capital instead.

That could have meant Edinburgh staying as a town rather than the great European city it has since become - but at the same time Berwick could have evolved as the nation's capital and may well have stayed a Scottish town instead of finding itself in England, as it now.

People have lived on the present site of Edinburgh's most famous attraction - the castle - since the 6th century, though nearly the development in the so-called old town which you see today dates from the middle ages or later.

Edinburgh may be a spacious and elegant city now, but as it evolved into Scotland's capital, it became so dirty and overcrowded that people living there almost choked to death on the grime and the smell.

Buildings in and around the historic Royal Mile from the Castle down to the Palace at Holyrood may look desirable and attractive these days, but in the middle ages, the area was so squalid that it became known as Auld Reekie - a nickname which has stuck right up to the present day.

Edinburgh was always going to be a prime site for human settlement, because its geographic position near the River Forth made it both attractive and highly defensible.

With its high and steep walls and commanding views of the countryside, the rock on which the castle is currently built was a perfect spot for a fortified settlement. However, serious building didn't really start to take place until the 11th century, when a small town began to grow up around the site which had been fortified by Malcolm Canmore and his wife, Saint Margaret of Scotland.

The Abbey of Holyrood was founded in 1128 by David I, and the existing Canongate grew up around it. David is also thought to have founded St Margaret's Chapel at Edinburgh Castle - the oldest part of the building, which still survives to this day.

In David's time, there was no real capital of Scotland - the king and his retune simply travelled round various residencies. However, Edinburgh Castle became one of their regular stopping off points, and a population slowly grew up around it.

David's influence on Edinburgh marked the start of its growth into the great city we know today. In 1130 he granted it the status of a burgh, which meant that it had permission to act both as a market and as a centre for early manufacturing industries such as cloth weaving. This helped build its prosperity, as did the king's decision to allow the first ever Scottish coins to be minted in the town.

As Edinburgh expanded, so houses were built on the ridge between the castle and Holyrood - in other words, along the present Royal Mile. King David continued to encourage population growth, finding that French, Flemish and English craftsmen were keen to move in.

Even in these early days, Edinburgh was turning into an international community. Leith, two miles away on the banks of the Forth, was already established as a port and trading with the Baltic states and the Low Countries such as Holland.

One problem the fledgling town faced was that its proximity to the English border made it vulnerable to regular attacks from the auld enemy. In 1296, for example, Edward I pummelled the castle into submission, and in 1385 the English king Richard II burned down the High Kirk of St Giles and the nearby town hall.

However, by the end of the 14th century, Edinburgh had grown into the biggest and most heavily populated burgh in Scotland. It wasn't exactly bursting - it only had about 350 houses - but it had assumed a predominance which it was to maintain right up until the rise of Glasgow 500 years later.

By the middle of the 15th century, Edinburgh had established its own council and suburbs had developed in the area around the existing Cowgate and Grassmarket. After the terrible defeat of James IV and his army by the English at Flodden in Northumberland, a defence known as the Flodden Wall was built around the town to protect it from the invasion which Scots were sure would come.

Until 1437 Perth was the capital of Scotland, but Edinburgh took the title after James I was murdered. However, it was still far from the attractive, elegant city we know today. It may not have been very big, but it was certainly getting very crowded.

The problem was that the Flodden Walls built to keep the English out also served to keep the local population in. Because the walls physically constrained the population inside them, residents were forced to construct new buildings in the only available direction - upwards.

The result was that tall tenements sprung up, along with the characteristic network of wynds and narrow closes which are so familiar in the old town today. In a way, medieval Edinburgh was similar to 20th century New York - people came to gape at the tall buildings, and were astounded to see at least one building which rose to an incredible 14 storeys.

After the union of the crowns of Scotland and England in 1603, the city suffered for a while because some of the business which was previously transacted there moved to London. However, it continued to be the meeting place of the Scottish parliament right through to the Treaty of Union in 1707.

Some of the buildings in the city - St Giles Cathedral, for instance - were by then among the most beautiful in Europe, though the local population almost certainly didn't appreciate the quality of the architecture around them. They were simply too crowded in and too wretched to care.

In the 120 years between 1570 and 1690, the population of the city grew threefold from 7000 to 21,000. Only a few years later, this had risen to 40,000 in a space of just 140 acres. This is the equivalent of packing almost the entire modern city of Perth into about a dozen farmers' fields, and then expecting them to be able to live in that area.

Living conditions, unsurprisingly, were little short of appalling. The plague hit Leith in 1645 and wiped out half its population, and it is only a matter of luck that the centre of the city did not suffer as badly.

People simply threw their stinking garbage into the streets, leaving it to be washed away by the rain or by other rubbish. Rich and poor lived cheek by jowl with each other, and disease and crime were rife.

Eventually, it was recognised that new accommodation had to be provided to allow the city to flourish. In 1752, by which time there had been several serious fires and building collapses in the city, plans were drawn up for the creation of a New Town outside the city walls.

That New Town was to be one of the most imaginative building projects Scotland has ever seen, and its elegant streets and crescents still make up much of the Edinburgh the world knows and loves today. But before it could be built, Scotland and England had to start resolving their age-old differences and come together?

Meanwhile...

• 1639 The first printing press is set up in North America, in Cambridge, Massachussets

• 1707 Billiards is introduced into German coffee houses

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Edward Balliol

• Name  : Balliol
• Born  : c.1283
• Died  : 1364
• Category  : Kings and Queens
• Finest Moment : Beating a disordered Scots army at Dupplin, 12 August 1332

The wretched John Balliol, King of Scotland from 1292-96) had a son, Edward de Balliol, born the elder son and imprisoned with his father in the Tower of London. He later shared his exile in France, though here the word exile has to be taken lightly, as that was the family home, in Picardy.

In 1324, Edward II brought him back to England, as a rival to Robert I. The price of Edward's support was a large slice of southern Scotland. In 1332, during the minority of David II (son of Robert I), Edward Balliol invaded Scotland by sea, landing at Kinghorn in Fife. He defeated a feudal army at Dupplin in Perthshire, on 12 August, and was 'crowned' at Scone on 24 September.

Three months later, this puppet king was chased out of Annan, starting a new life hiding behind English armies. He was back in Scotland several times but was treated with the customary contempt reserved for the likes of those who wear the wrong tie at the wrong time. Finally, in 1356, even Edward III gave up on him, dismissing him with a pension. He slunk back to family home in Bailleul, Picardy, dying in 1364, thankfully childless.

see related article about his splendid mother

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