Coming of Christianity to Scotland

The Coming of Christianity to Scotland

Period Years 350 AD — 1005

350 AD Ninian born.

411 AD The Romans finally abandon Britain.

563 AD Columba arrives on Iona.

597 AD Columba dies.

612 AD Death of St. Kentigern.

664 AD Synod of Whitby.

685 AD Battle of Nechtansmere.

795 AD Skye and Iona raided by Vikings.

843 AD Kenneth MacAlpin crowned King of Alba.

997 AD Kenneth III begins his reign as King of Alba. He is known as the brown haired one, and is thought to have been the grandfather of Macbeth's wife Gruoch.

1000 The end of the first millennium. Scotland, like the rest of Europe, is gripped by fears that the world will end. It doesn't, so everyone goes back to killing each other again.

1005 Macbeth born, most probably in the North east of Scotland. His father is Finnleach, High Steward of Moray.

1005 Kenneth III murdered by his cousin Malcolm at Monzievaird, who then takes the throne of Alba (Scotland) as King Malcolm II.

The arrival of Christianity on these shores was to be a major force in binding together the people. The new faith, taught by early missionaries such as Ninian, Kentigern and Columba, helped to begin to bring the different races of what would eventually become Scotland together. However, the move towards unity was to be a long struggle, with much blood spilt on the way.

CHRISTIANITY has been one of the most potent forces in the whole history of Scotland - but when it arrived here, it did so almost imperceptibly.

The story of the life of Jesus Christ was brought initially not by great saints such as Ninian and Columba, but quietly by word of mouth from the continent.

No-one knows for sure exactly how and when Christianity arrived, though it seems likely that word originally spread through Roman soldiers and also from sailors trading goods such as oil and wine from the Mediterranean.

What we do know, however, is that the messages of the Gospels helped to pull post-Roman Scotland together into a nation.

Before Christianity arrived, the country was essentially divided into four main racial groupings. The Picts, who are believed to have been related to the ancient Caledonians who fought against the early Romans, were based mainly in the East, and in particular in Fife.

Another grouping, the Britons, lived in present-day Strathclyde, with their main base the rock at Dumbarton. Their kingdom was extensive, taking in lands in Cumbria and even Wales, meaning it was difficult for them to maintain unity as a people.

The Scots, who originally came from Ireland, settled near Lochgilphead in Argyll and later colonised the Western Isles and moved east, though they too were not really a single united people. The fourth and last group were the Angles, based from the Humber up to the Firth of Forth, including present-day Northumbria.

As Christianity spread, so each group began to adopt its own saints. St Patrick, for instance, was a Briton born in Strathclyde, and spent much of his life travelling between Scotland and Ireland.

St Kentigern - later known as St Mungo - was thought to also be a Briton from Wales or Cumbria. He went on to found Glasgow Cathedral. St Oran was a Scot, and is thought to have established early monasteries in Iona, Mull and Tiree.

Other early saints included St Machar, a Pict from Aberdeen; St Miren, an Irish monk who founded Paisley Abbey; and St Conval, who is said to have prayed with such power that he floated across the sea from Ireland and up the Clyde on a block of granite.

Yet the most significant of the early Scottish saints was undoubtedly Ninian. He began his pilgrimage as a bishop, having been born in about the year 350AD. He was sent to Rome for religious instruction after his parents adopted the faith from Roman soldiers.

Ninian, a Briton, then returned to Scotland and began his missionary work at Whithorn in Galloway, where he established a church called the Candida Casa, or white house. He is thought to have later travelled throughout the country, converting the Picts of Angus and Fife and possibly conducting missionary work as far north as Orkney and even Shetland.

The greatest Scottish saint of all, however, is undoubtedly Columba. Ironically, he is thought to have come to Scotland by force rather than choice, having fled Ieland in a dispute over ownership of a rare Gospel.

Columba arrived on Iona in AD563, when he was 42. He quickly established the island as a centre of religious learning, and rapidly became a revered, almost mystic figure. His colleagues claimed he talked to the angels and was sometimes bathed in light as he prayed.

Despite having established a powerful monastic retreat on Iona, Columba did not stay on the island. He was a tireless missionary, often dealing directly with kings to obtain safe passage on what could be extremely dangerous journeys converting their people to Christianity.

Though his journeys, Columba gradually began to convert first the Picts and then the Angles to the new religion. His legacy to the Celtic church was immense - he turned Iona into a spiritual powerhouse, and his disciples such as Aidan helped spread the message of the Gospels into places such as Northumbria,

Though his work, Columba began to pull the disparate races of what would one day become Scotland together. But he was not civilising a nation of barbarians, Many of these people were highly civilised.

The Picts, for instance, carved their intricate designs on mysterious standing stones, and many examples of their art remain to this day. They also recycled Roman silver to create some magnificent jewellery.

Although they left no formal record of their lifestyle, history, or language, they did leave us one of their greatest treasures - the Book of Kells, a Bible manuscript created on Iona and later taken to Ireland, where it can be seen to this day.

The conversion of the Picts to Christianity was slow but sure. By the eighth century, an abbot had been settled in the heart of Pictland at Kilrymond, later to be renamed St Andrews.

However, there were already tensions emerging in the Christian church. Columba's church was a Celtic one, celebrating Easter at a different date to the Roman church, whose followers were mainly in the south of Britain.

The issue was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 664AD. The Roman church won the day, and Celtic Christianity started to decline as a result. From then on, Rome's influence gradually gained superiority.

As Christianity fought its battles, so took did Scotland's differing races. The Picts pushed the Angles south into Lothian in a critical battle at Nechtansmere near Forfar in AD685.

However, they were soon forced to face a new and dangerous enemy - the Vikings. Looking for new territory to populate, these Norse raiders arrived in Orkney in AD800 and then quickly captured Shetland.

Later, the Vikings colonised Skye and Lewis and, as their confidence grew, began to attack the mainland itself. The Scots, under their leader Kenneth MacAlpin, moved East and in AD 843 MacAlpin created a new kingdom called Alba, crowning himself on the ancient Stone of Scone.

Gradually Alba began to absorb the differing tribes of Scotland. A new and highly civilised Celtic state was slowly being formed , with the Picts giving way to the Scots. There were still strong links with Ireland - they were to remain for the next 500 years or so - but the character of a new nation was gradually being forged.

Because there was a tradition of sub-kings under the main King, MacAlpin's tentacles spread wide. His relatives ruled the Picts and Strathclyde, appointed by a group of contemporaries.

The system of a king being appointed by his fellow had just one flaw - if they didn't like the man in charge, they killed him off and appointed another in his place. Sometimes the slaughter was wholesale - Malcolm II, for instance, murdered as many potential claimants to the throne as he could find so his grandson Duncan could succeed him.

Unfortunately, he had not calculated on one man, who had a legitimate claim to the throne. His name was Macbeth, and he was to become one of the most prominent characters in early Scottish history.

Q1: Why did Columba become such an important character in early Scottish history? Answer: Because of the tremendous influence he had both in establishing Iona as a Christian settlement and in evangelising Scotland. He was a scholar and a teacher, and had a charisma which allowed him to influence even the kings of the time. He was also a great traveller, taking the Gospels to the people.

Q2: Is he famous for anything else? Answer: Yes - he is believed, during his journeys through the north of Scotland, to have been the first recorded person to see the Loch Ness monster.

Q3: Did he set up monasteries anywhere else? Answer: He's rumoured to have also established a settlement at a place called Hinba. The trouble is that we don't know where it is. Best bets appear to be Jura or Oronsay.

Q4: Were the Vikings as fierce and warlike as we have been led to believe? Answer: Well, you certainly wouldn't have been wise to have taken the mickey out of their funny helmets. In fact, they were highly civilised, with great farming skills, and their longships made them masters of the seas.

Q5: But they didn't care much for Christianity, did they? Answer: That's another myth. True, they didn't have any qualms about desecrating holy ground - they sacked Iona, for instance, at least three times - but they became quite enthusiastic about the new religion. In fact, in 995AD the Norwegian King came to Orkney and threatened to kill anyone who didn't convert.

• The History of Scotland
• The Beginning of the World
• The Romans in Scotland
• Coming of Christianity to Scotland
• Time of Macbeth
• Margaret of Scotland
• King David in Scotland

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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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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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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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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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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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