Henry Stewart Darnley
- Name : Darnley
- Born : 1545
- Died : 1567
- Category : Famous Historical Figures
- Finest Moment : Marriage to Mary, Queen of Scots (1565)
History of Scotland
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.
Heritage Great Scots
Biographies of Great Scots
Talent will out, no matter what. But the Scots have not needed such encouraging words over the years. From century to century they have continued to shine, bringing innovations and inventions, recording record times, making the written word dance and communication go the distance.
Science, sport, literature or silver screen - in every field a Scot with a claim to fame. It's a race that has changed the world we live in, a race that has given us tools and conveniences essential to daily life. This is the story of the great Scots achievers, a success story that speaks volumes for hard work, enthusiasm and natural talent - a story that doesn't stop here.
Renowned architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, inventor of the television John Logie Baird and author Neil Miller Gunn - all their records and more can be viewed totally free.
Search for Great Scots
Scottish History Timeline
Whether its MacBeth or Hardie, the Reformation or Post-war Reconstruction, you are one click away from discovering Scotland's historical wealth.
It's all here - the people, places and events that made Scotland what it is today, in summary form as well as full feature overviews, linked to related places to visit, books and Great Scots. We've broken it down for you by century or by historical period, but you can also search with keywords like a person's name, a place, or even a specific year, which makes this timeline a handy reference for research.
Highland Clearance
Highland Clearances
They called them the Improvers - but they brought so much tragedy and misery to the Highlands that they are still hated to this day.
The Highland Clearances are still regarded as one of the most shameful episodes in Scottish history. Whole families were forced off the land and literally chased to the ends of the Earth - to make way for sheep.
Tens of thousands of people were evicted from the lands which their families had held for generations by the ruthless factors of landlords who were often absentees. In many cases terrified Highlanders were burned out of their homes and entire glens emptied.
In many cases, these wretched tenants only found peace and managed to build a new life for themselves by sailing across the Atlantic to America and Canada.
Highlanders had always face a struggle living off the land - but, until the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746, they had been protected to some extent by the Clan system, which assured they paid fair rents and their basic needs were met.
After Culloden, the population of the Highlands actually increased, largely because of the beginning of potato planting and advances in medical treatment. However, this created its own problems - with more people living off the same relatively unproductive land, there were fewer resources to go round.
As a result, emigration started, and it increased in the 1780s after the American War of Independence. Even before then, however, people were sailing off to try and make a life for themselves in North America.
The end of the clan system after Culloden made the work of the tacksmen - the men who collected rents on behalf of the chief - redundant. Many of them left Scotland, taking their families and often their local communities with them.
The real pressure for change in the Highlands, however, came when the so-called Improvers - those who sought to make the difficult Highland economy more productive - realised that they could make good money out of populating the area with sheep.
The economic advantages were obvious. Many Highlanders scrabbled a living off poor quality cattle, but by the 1770s, the demand for wool had grown and its price had doubled in just ten years. In addition, the animals could also be slaughtered for mutton.
Contrary to popular belief, Highlanders were not simply torn from their lands and put on boats to North America. The process was a much more subtle one than that.
Initially, they were moved to the coast to places such as Thurso and Brora where it was believed they could make a living in other industries such as fishing or kelping - the processing of seaweed into alkali for use as fertiliser, which was also a booming trade at the time and was highly labour intensive.
The Highlanders had no choice about leaving the land of their ancestors. They simply didn't have the cash or the experience to buy sheep and tend them. Instead, sheep farmers who did have the necessary background were brought in by the landlords from the lowlands or England.
The landlords believed that by moving their subjects to the coast, they would be able to earn a far better living than they could off the impoverished Highland land.
Those who were moved were given small parcels of land known as crofts, and they became known as crofters for the first time. However, it often wasn't of much use to them. Sometimes it was so poor that they were forced into industries such as kelping anyway.
Even if the land was productive, the luckless tenants were often charged such extortionate rents that they couldn't afford the land - once again forcing them to look to other forms of work.
If tenants tried to stay on their existing lands in the Highland glens, the local factors usually removed them by using brutal force. A favoured method was to pull down the roofs of their homes while they looked on and then set fire to the roof tresses to ensure that they could not be rebuilt.
Some of the evictors, such as Patrick Sellar (see interesting copy of his will), the factor who worked for the Countess of Sutherland, acted despicably. Sellar personally directed the clearance of 430 people from Strathnavar, and was charged with the murder of an old woman of whom he is said to have remarked: "She has lived too long - let her burn." The trial was held in Inverness, but the jury was packed with local landowners and Sellar was found not guilty and allowed to carry on with his work. The law officer who brought the charge against him was sacked.
The Countess of Sutherland and her husband the Marquis of Stafford were regarded as the worst landlords of all. By 1811, some 15,000 of their tenants had been moved to make way for sheep, with huge social and economic consequences. The brutal work of thugs such as Sellar only served to increase their notoriety further.
As people flocked to the coast in one of the worst instances of "ethnic cleansing" ever seen in Scotland, problems increased. Too many people were trying to milk the natural resources to keep themselves alive. This resulted, for instance, in over-kelping.
Giving the highlanders the opportunity to make a living from fishing also proved to be little short of a disaster, since they had little or no knowledge of how to do this. When they were able to exploit the industry successfully, it simply led to overfishing.
Until the 1820s, there had only been a trickle of emigrants, but then the economy took a turn for the worse and the vibrant kelp industry collapsed. Another problem was that the price of cattle - still an important agricultural commodity - fell. To heap on the misery further, the 1830s and 1840s saw the failure of the potato crop, which until then had provided Highlanders with a staple food.
With people being made destitute and the Highlands completely unable to support them, some people headed south to try and find work in the new urban centres such as Glasgow. But many turned to the colonies as their only means of escape from hardship.
By this stage, the landlords were prepared to pay for their travel, since transportation avoided having to find some form of work for them and disposed of the problem of keeping them. For many of the emigrants, there was really no other choice - if they wanted to continue to work the land, they literally had nowhere else to go.
Once in Canada, Scots helped to open up the country, settling in places such as Prince Edward Island, Manitoba and the remote north west and working parcels of land which were assigned to them.
There is also little doubt that Scots shaped the history of the continent. By populating the Red River area of Manitoba, for instance, they established a British settlement there and stopped the Americans from advancing up as far as Hudson's Bay.
If the Scottish settlement had not existed and the by-then independent Americans had been able to push north, then Canada would certainly not exist in its present form today.
But the Clearances changed the Highlands forever, too. Where once cattle had roamed and whole clans had lived, there were now nothing but sheep enclosures and the odd solitary shepherd.
The hatred over what the factors and the sheep farmers did to the ordinary folk of the Highlands lingers to this day - and also helps to explain why, dotted around this remote landscape, you can still see the evidence of long abandoned settlements.
Meanwhile in the rest of the world...
- 1760 Katushika Hokusai, the Japanese painter, is born
- 1792 France becomes a republic and the Revolution begins
- 1792 Alexander MacKenzie travels across Cananda
- 1850 James "Paraffin" Young patents the synthetic oil production
History Of Scotland
Whether its MacBeth or Hardie, the Reformation or Post-war Reconstruction, you are one click away from discovering Scotland's historical wealth.
Hugh Montgomerie
- Name : Montgomerie, 12th Earl of Eglinton
- Born : 1739
- Died : 1818
- Category : Famous Historical Figures
- Finest Moment : Building Eglinton Castle.
Hugh T Munro
- Name : Munro
- Born : 1856
- Died : 1919
- Category : Mountaineers
- Finest Moment : Drawing up the list of Scotland's Mountains, 1891
Age of Invention in Scotland
The Age of Invention in Scotland
In just a few short decades, Scotland managed to transform itself from a remote backwater scrabbling to make a living off the land into one of the greatest industrial nations on Earth.
The genius of its inventors, engineers and businessmen, combined with the hard work of its people, quickly transformed the country during the 18th and 19th centuries into the so-called workshop of the world.
As the economy boomed, cities such as Glasgow became some of the wealthiest places in Britain and the Empire. But there was also a dark side to this new-found wealth - appalling squalor and poverty which condemned thousands to an early death through illness and disease.
Reign of James VI in Scotland
Reign of King James VI
When Mary Queen of Scots (see separate story) fled to England and threw herself on the mercy of her cousin Queen Elizabeth, she had become despised as a monarch in Scotland.
However, her escape left a huge void in Scottish government. Her son, James, was only 13 months old, and a struggle was still going on between Catholics and Protestants for the country's soul.
Despite the fact that he was still only a tiny baby, James was crowned King of Scots at the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling. It was Scotland's first ever Protestant coronation and to show the supremacy of the new faith, John Knox preached the sermon during the ceremony.
Because James VI was little more than a babe in arms, the old time-honoured Scottish tradition of appointing a regent to rule in his name was used. However, Scotland was such a violent place at the time and so full of political intrigue that none of the appointees lasted particularly long.
Almost as soon as Mary had gone, the nobles of Scotland decided that her half brother, the Earl of Moray, should be appointed as his official guardian. However, Moray only lasted for three years before he was shot dead by a rival, James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, as he rode through the streets of Linlithgow.
The next regent was the Earl of Lennox, the father of Mary's second husband, Lord Darnley. But Lennox was also to quickly become a victim of events.
Despite her absence, Mary still had strong supporters among the nobles of Scotland, who held Edinburgh Castle and even had their own parliament in opposition to the Protestant James. As Regent, Lennox commanded the more valid parliament in Stirling.
Unfortunately this also made him a target for Mary's supporters, who were known as the Queen's Men. When two of them, Kirkcaldy of Grange and Maitland of Lethington, attacked Stirling in an attempt to seize the young King, Lennox tried to stop them and was shot in the process. The young James actually looked on as he was carried into the palace dying..
Lennox's successor was John Erskine, Earl of Mar. he, too, died within months, this time from sickness. The fourth and last regent was James Douglas, Earl of Morton, who received the job just before John Knox finally died in 1572.
Of all the regents, the shrewd and ambitious Morton lasted the longest and made the most impact on Scotland. He drove Mary's supporters out of Edinburgh Castle with the help of English guns and rebuilt it in the form we know today.
Morton also decided to dabble in the affairs of the Scottish Kirk by appointing a new archbishop and bishops who were put in place to ensure that church monies, of tithes, were passed to the state.
This appeared to almost be an attempt to impose the Episcopal form of worship found in England on Scotland, and it rankled both with the ministers and their congregations.
The Kirk fought back through Presbyterians such as Andrew Melville, who had studied Calvinism in Geneva and began to draft a Second Book of Discipline restating the original aims of the Reformation.
The book brought a new harshness to Presbyterianism, instructing ministers to wear grey, making non-attendance at communion a crime, closing alehouses on a Sunday and condemning witches to burning at the stake.
The book also challenged the authority of James who, while not subscribing to the Catholicism of his mother, favoured an Episcopal form of government with the King at its head. He also believed strongly in the divine right of kings - in other words, that monarchs were ultimately answerable only to God.
James' response was to the Second Book of Discipline was to pass the Black Acts of 1584, which made the king supreme in all church matters and forced ministers to submit to his will.
However James soon found himself with more pressing and personal problems. In 1579, his cousin Esme Stewart arrived from France and James is said to have fallen in love with him immediately. Ever since their meeting, history has always judged James VI to be a homosexual.
Certainly Esme would have known all about homosexuality - he had been Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the depraved Henry III of France before setting sail for Scotland. James is said to have publicly kissed him, and quickly reinforced his affections by making him the new Duke of Lennox.
James' nobles were horrified. They worried that Lennox could be a Catholic infiltrator and recognised that Stewart could cause real problems. But the worst was yet to come.
In December 1581, Lennox arranged for regent Morton to be accused of complicity in the murder of James' father, Lord Darnley, who had been slaughtered while Mary was still on the throne. Morton was arrested and executed in Edinburgh - ironically, by a guillotine-like device of his own invention called The Maiden (a copy is displayed at the Museum of Scotland).
The Protestant nobles recognised the threat that Stewart was causing, so they forged a cunning plan to get rid of him. In 1582, when James was on a hunting trip, he was given hospitality by the Earl of Gowrie.
The next day, Gowrie refused to let the king go until he ordered Esme to leave Scotland.. Reluctantly he did so, and Lennox returned to France where he soon died of a broken heart. Only after he had died did James gain his freedom again by escaping. Gowrie was then quickly executed for his treachery.
James had better luck in his relationships when he married Anne of Denmark in 1589. But he was still not secure. In 1594 an uprising by the Catholic Earl of Huntly challenged his authority by taking on and defeating the King's forces at Glenlivet, though the military victory was not followed up.
James was, however, no fool. Far from it: he was constantly aware that he had a strong claim to the throne of England if, as now seemed certain, Elizabeth died childless. But he continued to face problems at home
The Earl of Bothwell attempted to attack him no less than four times, escaping after every attempt, and in 1600, James was snatched outside Perth by the brother of the Earl of Gowrie, Alexander Ruthven, after being duped into looking at a hoard of gold coins.
James managed to shout out of a window to his supporters, who burst in and rescued him after a struggle. Ruthven and Gowrie were killed, and then, bizarrely, their bodies taken to Edinburgh for "trial" by parliament before being hung, drawn and quartered.
No-one knows the real reason for the affray James may have genuinely been seized as part of an attempted coup or it may have been that he was attempting to seduce Ruthven. Another possibility is that the king, who was never particularly rich, owed the Gowrie family sterling 80,000. Killing off the Earl effectively wrote off the debt.
James was a wily and shrewd character, and continued to press his claim to the throne of England. South of the border, his talents were recognised. He had governed Scotland relatively well, tamed the notorious Scottish nobility, kept the clergy in check and even failed to raise much of a protest when his mother was executed by Elizabeth.
In March 1603, his efforts paid off. Elizabeth died and one of her senior officials, Sir Robert Carey, was sent north with the offer of the crown of England.
It was an honour which James, roused from sleep with the news, did not even have to think about accepting. Within days, he had packed and set off with his court for London.
For the first time in history, the crowns of England and Scotland were united. And, as everyone knows, it has been that way ever since.
Meanwhile...
- 1589 Galileo Galilei becomes Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pisa