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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.
Golden Age of Learning in Scotland
Anyone who studies the Wars of Independence can be forgiven for thinking that Scotland was populated only by bloodthirsty warriors who liked nothing better than taking on the English in battle.
In fact, the 14th century marked the beginning of a golden age of learning which marked the start of the Scots' reputation as one of the most civilised and well read peoples in Europe - a reputation which persists to this day.
This was the time when education began to be prized, and when the country's two most ancient universities - St Andrews and Glasgow - were first founded.
Incredibly, however, the students who were lucky enough to get places in these institutions - many of whom were priests - were so rowdy that they would put today's lager-swilling, denim-clad undergraduates to shame.
They almost certainly drank huge amounts, smashed up the pubs fairly regularly, and played noisy games which infuriated locals such as kicking a pig's bladder down the street.
Dr Michael Brown, a lecturer in Scottish history at St Andrews University, explains: "It was a pretty hard drinking society, and student life would have been pretty raucous at the time.
"The first university in Europe was probably in Paris. There were quite a lot of incidents there involving violence between different nationalities of student, or between the townspeople and the university students.
"They'd drink too much, they'd bust up the pubs and they wouldn't pay their rent. Even the priests who were studying there would have been involved. They may have been churchmen, but they were also the products of a seriously violent society."
Those who set up Scottish universities must have known the social risks involved, but they were determined that bright clergymen and youngsters should have the chance to be educated at home rather than going abroad to receive their education.
Until the early 15th century, Scots who did want to gain university degrees had to travel abroad to European centres of learning such as Paris, Orleans or Bologna in Italy to do it.
They could also have gone to Oxford University - founded in the 13th century - but Scotland and England were still constantly fighting each other during this time and any Scots student who risked studying there would probably have had a pretty tough time of it.
Why were universities set up at this time? As usual, the battles with the auld enemy played a major part. Robert the Stewart had succeeded the disastrous King David II as king of Scots in 1371, but he was old and infirm when he took the throne and was not really powerful enough to stamp his authority or influence on the running of the country. The crippled Robert III followed him in 1390 and was equally feeble, dying in 1406.
During this time, the by now normal clashes with the English continued unabated, though not as fiercely as they had under Wallace or Robert the Bruce. The English Richard II burned Edinburgh, Perth, Dundee and Melrose in 1385, though the Scots won the Battle of Otterburn three years later. When James I became king in 1406, he was almost immediately seized by the English and held as a prisoner for 18 years.
It was hardly any surprise, then, that the Scots decided it would make sense to educate their cleverest people at home, rather than risk them being torn limb from limb in England or making the dangerous journey abroad.
The first Scottish university to be established was at St Andrews. It is first mentioned in records of 1410, though the date of its birth is usually given as 1412, when its founder, Bishop Henry Wardlaw, received its charter.
Michael Brown explains that St Andrews was a leading centre of the Scottish church and was initially set up to provide clergymen with a high-level education. "It would have been for aspiring clerics who wanted to get to the top of the church. They would be careerists who perhaps wanted to become bishops.
"There wouldn't have been many of them to start with - perhaps 30 to 40 students a year - and they would have been educated in a range of liberal arts subjects such as logic, rhetoric and geometry as well as theology."
One of the reasons for the establishment of the university was because of a bizarre mix-up over Popes at the time. Two separate Pontiffs - Benedict XIII and Martin V - were both claiming the title and each had different supporters.
The Scots, typically, decided to back Benedict because the English supported Martin. The French also supported Benedict, but they then changed their tune and as a result Scots students became unwelcome there. So it made sense for Scotland to have its own higher education institution.
St Andrews was the obvious place because it was the seat of the country's major bishopric at the time. It already had a tradition of clerical learning because of its cathedral. "There would have been great pride in the town and in the church when the university was established", says Dr Brown.
Gaining a Master of Arts degree at the university - the only qualification on offer at the time - would have taken up to seven years, but it would have opened all sorts of doors for clergymen. It would have put them in the top five per cent of priests and allowed them to win lucrative jobs in rich parishes or else to go into teaching themselves.
Learning would be through lecture sessions - this, remember, was before the days of mass printing of books - and students would have to get through examinations, which would usually be spoken rather than written. "But there would have been much less of a pass or fail culture than today", Michael Brown says. "Serving your time and completing the course would have been the most important thing."
Another big advantage of establishing St Andrews was that money to educate students could be spent here at home rather than being drained off abroad. However, the new university wasn't a popular choice with bright people living in the west of Scotland at the time, as it was a very long way away and regional parochialism in Scotland was much stronger then than it is now.
For this reason, Bishop William Turnbull of Glasgow saw the sense in setting up another university attached to his own cathedral. He received backing from the king for the idea - by this time it was James II, as James I had been murdered in 1437 - and established his new institution in 1451.
Dr John Durkan, senior research fellow in Scottish history at Glasgow University and the author of a book on the foundation of the university, said the university would have taught subjects such as arts and civil and canon law as well as theology. "Arts would almost exclusively be philosophy, and the students would probably have had to qualify in arts before they moved on to a law degree, All in all, they would probably have studied for seven or eight years."
At Glasgow - where the proportion of priests to other students was not as high as at St Andrews - undergraduates would probably have started their studies at about the age of 16. After qualifying, they could well have achieved good jobs as lawyers or become masters at the university themselves.
As at other universities of the time, however, there is evidence that the students could be pretty unruly. "Some of them really didn't behave at all well", Dr Durkan says. "There was a case in the Papal Court, for instance, of a student who lost his sight. He'd been hit in the eye when someone threw a cabbage at him."
Meanwhile...
It was the war to end all wars - and it very nearly put an end to the entire flower of Scotland's manhood too.
The Great War was one of the most awesome, bitter and ultimately destructive conflicts in Scottish history. It wiped out a generation of young men and meant the nation had to practically rebuild itself from the ground up.
Of course, Scots had been dying in wars for centuries, generally against England. This conflict, though, was different. The country's brightest and ablest youngsters were not dying fighting the English, but alongside them.
Easily the best Scottish mountaineer over the first two decades of the 20th century, Harold Andrew Raeburn was born on July 21st, 1865, at 12 Grange Loan, Edinburgh. The fourth son of William and Jessie Raeburn, he grew up to enter his father's occupation as a brewer. It is not documented how or why he began climbing but a fair guess would be that his deep interest in ornithology led him up steep places he otherwise would not have ventured. Living under Edinburgh's Salisbury Crags and possessing a wiry, athletic build he soon adapted to the vertical world of rock and ice.
His other sport was sailing, racing yachts in the Firth of Forth and here too there may have been a connection with his third life-long passion, ornithology. With his brother John, they raced as members of the Royal Forth Yachting Club, based in Granton. They were successful enough to win the club's Corinthian Cup three times. Being presented with the Cup, they in turn presented it back to the RFYC, who re-named it the Raeburn Trophy. This is the name under which it is still raced for. His diaries on the sea birds of the Shetland Islands are lodged with the National Library of Scotland.
As to his character, he very obviously possessed the necessary determination and drive of any ambitious and hard mountaineer. Lord Mackay provided a good description of Raeburn writing that he was "..physically and mentally hard as nails, trained by solitary sea-cliff climbing after birds' haunts, he was certain, unyielding and concise in every movement, both mental and physical." Mackay went on to remark that Raeburn had a capacity of grip that was astonishing. "He was possessed of strong muscular fingers that could press firmly and in a straight downward contact upon the very smallest hold."
Raeburn remained a bachelor all his life, occasionally climbing with the ladies, including his sister Ruth, herself an expert climber. The Scottish Mountaineering Club was founded in 1889. Raeburn joined it in 1896 and within a few years became its leading climber, recording many classic routes throughout Scotland. There are quite a few "Raeburn's Gullies" scattered across the land!
On Ben Nevis in particular he left a superb legacy of quality routes. A solo first ascent of Observatory Ridge (V.Diff.) in June 1901, Observatory Buttress (V.Diff.) solo in June 1902, his outstanding eponymous Arete (Severe) two days later on North-East Buttress, with Dr and Mrs Inglis Clark, and the first winter ascent of Green Gully (IV,4) in 1906. The latter ascent, with a Swiss alpinist called Eberhard Phildius was barely recognised in a later guidebook, as he had not climbed the rocks of the Comb on the left but had instead followed snow and ice in the gully. Indeed Raeburn's ascent was completely forgotten by 1937, when Jim Bell made the second winter ascent, thinking it was the first.
On the Buachaille in Glencoe he made the first three ascents of Crowberry Gully, including a wintry 1909 ascent, and the second ascent and first Scottish ascent of Crowberry Ridge Direct (1902), then the hardest rock climb in Scotland. His style of rock climbing was very muscular, holding himself close to the rock, while his particular attention to the exact times of ascents could frequently drive his companions to exasperation. There is a humorous reference to this when a fellow club member called Newbigging made a first ascent on Ben Nevis and called it "Newbigging's 80-Minute Route", this being an echo to "Raeburn's 18-Minute Route" climbed the previous year.
In the greater ranges too he recorded fine climbs, including the first British guideless ascent of the Zmutt ridge of the Matterhorn in 1906, the ascent of the North Face of the Disgrazia in 1910 with his friend Willie Ling, the first solo traverse of the Meije, as well as first ascents in Norway and the Caucasus. He made two interesting expeditions to the Caucasus, in 1913 and 1914. During the first they made first ascents of five mountains and attempted Uschba, being turned back by conditions. In 1914 four new mountains were climbed, Raeburn descending to find that a World War had broken out. From 1902 on Raeburn climbed without guides. He joined the Alpine Club in 1904.
Raeburn became Vice-President of the SMC in 1909, later turning down the Presidency. His book "Mountaineering Art" was in MS when World War I broke out and long, hard hours in an aeroplane factory for the next six years stopped all climbing. (At 49, he was too old for the Royal Flying Corps.) As a celebration following the end of the war, in 1919 Raeburn returned to the Alps and made a solo traverse of the Meije ridges.
In 1920 his book was finally published, having been postponed due to the war. In this he was unlucky, as by then it was probably already becoming somewhat dated. In Easter of that same year, during the SMC Meet at Fort William, Raeburn made what was probably his finest ascent in Scotland -the first winter ascent of Observatory Ridge on Ben Nevis. With fellow members Mounsey & Goggs and using a 100ft rope, the three finished the route in just under six hours. One long axe each and no crampons. The mental and physical control required of all three climbers was barely short of miraculous.
In 1920 Raeburn was on an Expedition to Kanchenjunga and in 1921 he lead an Everest Reconnaissance party. He worked desperately hard at organising and preparing the party, while suffering from influenza. By the time the expedition reached Tibet dysentery had broken out. One member of the party died, and Raeburn himself had to be carried down, spending two months in hospital. Against common sense, he returned to the expedition but he was now exhausted and never really recovered. Declining health eventually led to his death five years later. He died in Edinburgh, on December 21, 1926.
With two earlier SMC Huts - Ling in Torridon and the Charles Inglis Clark (CIC) on Nevis - named after prominent past members, it was fitting that with the building of a new club hut, opened in 1988, it should also be named for one of the club's finest pioneering mountaineers - Harold Raeburn. The Raeburn Hut stands by the road between Dalwhinnie and Newtonmore. Close by is Creag Dubh on whose steep rocks Raeburn was, typically, the first to climb.
Born at Torphichen, Linlithgow, Bell was apprenticed to a millwright in Scotland, and also modelled ships, before moving to London to work and learn from John Rennie, another Scots engineer. He returned to Glasgow, working as a carpenter for some years, before moving to Helensburgh on the Firth of Clyde.
In 1800 he submitted plans to the Admiralty for a steam-propelled vessel. Until then, ships were at the mercy of winds and currents. Commerce was more expensive and dangerous, warfare distinctly tricky, and just to set sail on a long voyage meant saying goodbye to one's loved ones with a good chance that it meant goodbye.
In 1812, Bell's own steamship, the 28-ton Comet, was launched from Port Glasgow, plying a trade in passengers and freight on the Clyde for some years. He built and operated other steam ships. This successful project opened up an entire new era in transportation. Think about it. Big ships could sail up big rivers, against a current. Ships could operate with a more meaningful timetable, being unaffected by calm conditions or slowed by headwinds. Bell's Comet was indeed an exciting blaze of light across the skies.
He died in Helensburgh, on 14 November 1830, presumably watching the steam ships plying their trade up and down the Clyde estuary.
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