You can move up and down the timeline using the date bands: the bottom band moves you along centuries quickly and the middle bank moves along decades. Click on individual events to see more details and description.
Our ongoing history of Scotland that chronicles the events in Scotland over the past million years with a special focus on the last thousand as you might expect. We have also digitised a copy of Patrick Tytler's History of Scotland which is an eccentric but wonderfully written history of the the mediaeval years in Scotland. The project of chronicling Scotland's history is ongoing, as is the process of organising and structuring and linking the pages together.
He mounted the first Jacobite rebellion in 1715, and fathered 'Bonnie Prince Charlie'.
'Betrayed by a MacLeod and hanged in Edinburgh, enemies marvelled at his courage'.
Graham was the 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Montrose, and was brought up in Kincardine Castle. Education was at St Andrews University. He was one of four noblemen who drew up the National Covenant at Greyfriars' Kirkyard in Edinburgh in 1638.
This Covenant renewed and expanded that of the one drawn up in 1581 into a public petition which presumed a direct Scottish relationship with God, without the interference of a king (in this case Charles I of course) and without 'all kinds of Papistry'. It was emotive and drew from upwards of 60 Scottish Acts of Parliament and many theological statements. In the end, over 300,000 signatures were appended in churches throughout Scotland.
Montrose was a moderate Presbyterian, and though fighting initially for the Covenant in the Bishops' War, he later distanced himself from the more extreme Presbyterians. After he refused to support the union of the Scottish Parliament with the English Roundheads, in effect bonded by the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, he was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle for five months. Made a change from the Tower of London.
The following year he was appointed King's Lieutenant in Scotland. He showed a great flair for military strategy and leadership, winning six battles in one year, despite leading an undisciplined Scottish-Irish force. With depleted forces however he was defeated by David Leslie at Philiphaugh near Selkirk, in 1645.
He escaped to Norway, having been ordered to disband by the captured King, but returned to Scotland to avenge the death by execution of Charles I. His return was fated; shipwrecked in Orkney he survived with only 200 men. This small force was defeated at Carbisdale on 27 April 1650 and Montrose was betrayed by MacLeod of Assynt for a sum of £25,000, a huge sum in those days.
In Edinburgh, the Scottish Parliament were obviously in no mood for clemency or even justice; without a trial they sentenced him to death and he was hanged and disembowelled on 21 May. His remains were given a proper tomb and monument in St Giles, Edinburgh, in 1888. Along with high standards of honesty, generosity and decent dealing (all conspicuously absent otherwise in 17th century Scottish politics), he has a claim to be a fair poet, with the publication of his collected works in 1990.
'Scotland's glory, Britain's pride, As brave a subject as ere for monarch dy'd Kingdoms in Ruins often lye But great Montrose's Acts will never dye'.
(Verses under his engraving by William Faithorne.)
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'One of the more eccentric medics, mixing patent medicines with vegetarianism'
James Graham was born in Edinburgh, in the Cowgate area. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, but it is unclear as to whether he graduated; probably not, as he went on to make a name as 'a quack, and possibly a madman'.
It may be that he was regarded as a madman by some due to his promotion of vegetarianism, long before it became popular, but he was certainly regarded as a 'quack' due to his peddling of patent medicines and cures. This he proceeded to do throughout Britain and America, claiming members of the aristocracy and even minor royalty as clients.
An enthusiastic self-publicist, he was imprisoned several times for fraud. He died in 1794.
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Plots, counterplots, and yet more plots. This story has it all. Best known as being the third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, Bothwell succeeded to the earldom when he was 21. He was a Protestant and strongly anti-English; this led him to support Mary of Guise, who was regent for the young Mary. On the death in 1560 of Mary of Lorraine, Mary Stuart assumed control of the government. A year later Bothwell became a member of her Privy Council.
In 1562, Bothwell was accused by the powerful but mad Earl of Arran of plotting to kidnap the Queen, and he was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle in March of that year. He escaped the following summer, and after a period of detention reached France in September 1564.
Bothwell was recalled to Scotland in 1565, to help Mary suppress a rebellion by her half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, who had opposed her marriage in July 1565 to Lord Darnley. Bothwell acted with great resourcefulness, especially following the murder of her secretary, David Riccio (at the instigation of Darnley), in March 1566. By the end of the year, Bothwell was the most powerful noble in southern Scotland, and, after abducting Mary (probably with her persuasion), he divorced his own wife and married Mary.
Did I forget to mention that Darnley himself had been bumped off earlier in 1567' Bothwell almost certainly was involved in this murder, but covered his tracks well, marrying Mary on 15 May, 1567. Darnley, who was an effete waster, did manage to produce a child with Mary, a boy who would be James VI of Scotland, and James I of England, born in 1566.
Mary created Bothwell Duke of Orkney and Shetland the day before they married, and the couple were soon facing a series of revolts by both Protestant and Catholic nobles, who considered Bothwell a usurper. Mary's forces met the rebels at Carberry Hill near Edinburgh on 15 June, but her troops refused to fight. She then surrendered, on condition that Bothwell be allowed to flee. He went north at first, to Orkney and Shetland, then Norway.
In Norway, Bothwell was taken into custody by King Frederick II. In June 1573, following the ultimate collapse of Mary's cause in Scotland, Bothwell was locked up in solitary confinement where he died, insane, five years later. Mary meanwhile, had obtained an annulment of their marriage in 1570.
As a grotesque finale, Bothwell's body was embalmed, and exhibited in a church at Faarevejle in modern-day Denmark.
Founder of the Labour party and a still resonant political figure who is seen as the foundation and iconic figure in one strand of left wing Scottish political philosophy.
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