John Smith Labour Leader

Labour leader from 1992 until his death in 1994. He set the stage for the emergence of New Labour in the 1997 election. 

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John Stenhouse Scientist

• Name  : Stenhouse
• Born  : 1809
• Died  : 1890
• Category  : Science
• Finest Moment : First gas mask

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Joseph Black Scientist

• Name  : Black
• Born  : 1728
• Died  : 1799
• Category  : Science
• Finest Moment : Rediscovery of carbon dioxide

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Kenneth Grahame

• Name  : Grahame
• Born  : 1859
• Died  : 1932
• Category  : Writers
• Finest Moment : The Wind in the Willows (1908)

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Killing Time - Restoration of Charles II

The Killing Time  - Charles II to William & Mary

When Charles II was restored to the thrones of Scotland and England, he should probably have clambered onto his knees and thanked God for his return to power.

His father had been executed, he was viewed with suspicion by his own subjects, and he had been forced into exile after losing a battle against parliament's forces. Given his track record, it is astonishing that he was given another chance to rule.

However, instead of simply being grateful and trying to do a good job as monarch, Charles brought his vengeance and arrogance back with him. The result was that Scotland was virtually plunged into yet another spell of religious intolerance.

Once restored to the Scottish throne, the king decided to get his own back on the Scots Presbyterians who had lectured him and ridiculed his family when he had first been given power. Those who supported Scotland's Covenant, he decided, were to be taught a harsh lesson.

The Scottish parliament, the Estates, was recalled in 1661. It became known as the Drunken Parliament, but its actions were far from slow or muddled. It wiped out all the Covenanter legislation of the previous 30 years, The Privy Council was brought back, bishops were restored to the Kirk, and the covenant was declared illegal.

The new Estates decided to keep the efficient system of tax gathering that had been instituted under Cromwell, but much else was changed. The main trouble was caused by an edict that said Kirk ministers could no longer simply be chosen by local congregations, but had to be approved by local patrons and bishops.

All ministers were ordered to conform to this ruling. They were furious, and more than 250 of them resigned their charges instead of complying. Instead of preaching in churches, they began to do so on the Scottish moors.

These meetings quickly became known as Conventicles, and those who attended them were named Covenanters. By 1665, they had become extremely popular, though attending them was a dangerous business. Attending them was illegal, and government troops were often despatched to break them up and levy fines. In reply, the Covenanters often stationed their own guards nearby when services were in progress.

Tensions between the two sides grew, particularly in strong covenanting areas of the country such as Galloway. In 1666, the Covenanters captured the commander of government troops in south western Scotland, Sir James Turner, and paraded him towards Edinburgh in his nightshirt.

This act of insurrection led them into direct conflict with General Tam Dalyell, the commander of the army in Scotland. At Rullion Green near Edinburgh, a force of 900 of the covenanters was defeated by Dalyell. The leaders of the rebellion were hanged, others tortured or imprisoned, and even women and children murdered.

Charles II's secretary for Scotland, the Earl of Lauderdale, tried to soften the policy on Kirk appointments, but things simply went from bad to worse. By 1670, attending a Conventicle was viewed as treason and to preach at one was a capital offence. The effect of this kind of repression, needless to say, was to turn the covenanters into martyrs.

In 1679, tensions between the two sides rose yet again when the Archbishop of St Andrews, James Sharp, who was driving home in a carriage, was stopped, forced out and hacked to death. Only days later, government troops were defeated by a covenanter force at Drumclog on the Ayrshire-Lanarkshire border.

The government forces struck back later in the year at Bothwell Bridge, when they won the battle and put nearly 1200 prisoners on a forced march to Edinburgh.

Charles II was determined that no quarter should be given to the rebels, and that the Kirk should be run his way. A small group of Covenant hardliners known as the Cameronians, named after the Fife-born rebel Richard Cameron, who was executed after challenging Charles in 1680, published an Apologetical Declaration declaring war on the enemies of God and the Covenant.

The government insisted that anyone who failed to reject this declaration could and would be shot. Still, however, the Covenanters held fast. The 1680s became known as The Killing Time, and some appalling atrocities took place as Charles sought to keep the unruly Scots in line.

Some of the worst suffering took place in southern Scotland. One of the most horrific instances was at Wigtown in Wigtownshire, whew two female Covenanters, Margaret Wilson and Margaret McLauchlin, were tied to a stake in the river estuary and allowed to drown as the tide slowly rose.

Slowly but surely, the Covenanters were losing the fight. Brave though they undoubtedly were, they could not withstand the might of Charles's forces. Then, in 1685, the king suddenly died, and the whole religious nature of both Scotland and England suddenly changed.

Charles was succeeded by his second son James, who had become a convert to Catholicism and who introduced a new period of religious toleration. But his enthronement infuriated many in Scotland and England, who wanted to depose him and replace him with the Protestant Duke of Monmouth instead.

A rebellion in favour of Monmouth was organised in Scotland under the Marquis of Argyll, but the government moved quickly to head if off and Argyll was captured near Renfrew and executed.

However, James was in deep trouble in England, where his policies of religious toleration were invoking suspicion over his Catholicism. With much of the country ranged against him, he fled in 1689. The English parliament than asked his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange to rule jointly.

In Scotland, the decision as to who should rule was left to the Estates. It was clear from the outset that it, too, would choose William and Mary, though James did not help by writing a letter to the parliament which was little short of insulting.

The deal was that if William took the throne, the Episcopal form of church government insisted on by Charles should be dropped. This was agreed, and Scotland once again became officially Presbyterian. The killing time was over.

However, other tensions emerged to take the place of the religious problems the country had suffered. James VII, now in exile, was the last of the Stewarts, and he had plenty of supporters who wanted the family to return to the throne. Those who supported the cause of James found a new name applied to them - Jacobites.

An attempt by John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, to raise an army in support of James in the Highlands led to an uprising which government troops were sent north to quell. The two sides clashed in the Pass of Killiecrankie. James's supporters probably came off better, but Dundee was killed in the battle and his cause then quickly fizzled out after the subsequent Battle of Dunkeld fought around Dunkeld Cathedral

With James gone for good and a tolerant but firmly Protestant monarch on the throne, the Kirk once again found itself master of its own house. Royal authority over the church was abolished, deposed ministers were reinstated, and the Westminster Confession of Faith first drawn up in 1647 was adopted.

For the first time in Scotland's long history, church and state were starting to unravel from each other and become distinct entities. Both would face huge problems in the century ahead, but they would never again operate in forced unison with each other. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, the structure of modern Scotland was beginning to emerge.

Meanwhile...

• 1666 The Great Fire of London destroys much of the city
• 1687 Nell Gwyn, actress and mistress of Charles II, dies
• 1687 The University of Bologna is founded
• 1689 Louis XIV declares war against Spain and England
• 1689 The French playwright, Racine, writes "Esther", a biblical tragedy

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King David in Scotland

You are here: Heritage | Timelines | King David's Time

King David's Time

IT was a golden age for Scotland. The 12th century was an era when we finally became a nation, earned the respect of the rest of Europe - and learned how to live with the English instead of constantly fighting them.

The period after the death of the great king Malcolm Canmore and his wife St Margaret of Scotland in 1093 was one of the most important in our country's history. We started to trade internationally, to mint our own coins, and to build some of our very first towns and cities.

But it was also a dangerous period - because our new found friendship with England almost ended up with Scotland losing its identity and being absorbed into the auld enemy for good.

After centuries of fighting with the English, the Scots began to soften towards their historic foes when Malcolm's wife Margaret - a Hungarian princess who has been brought up in the English court - came north and brought many of her Anglo-Saxon customs with her.

When she and Malcolm died, Malcolm's brother Donald Bane took over the Scottish throne. He quickly tried to assert his authority, and his first act was to drive out all those who supported or served Malcolm who were either English or pro-English.

However, Donald didn't get very far - he was deposed after less than a year by Malcolm's son, Duncan II. Soon after, Duncan was killed and Donald was restored to the throne again. He was deposed again three years later by Edgar, Malcolm's eldest son, who got rid of him with the help and support of the Normans, who had first come to England at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Edgar's rule over Scotland was the beginning of a remarkable period of peace between Scotland and England. This was a period of great change in Europe, and Kings and nobles finally started to realise how much they had in common with each other. For this reason, Scottish kings started to spend more and more time at the English court, to the point where some of them virtually started to accept English kings as their superiors.

It was the great Scottish king David I, who ruled between 1124 and 1153, who forged the strongest bond between Scotland and England. Alec Woolf, lecturer in Celtic and early Scottish history at the University of Edinburgh, explains: "David was the seventh son of Malcolm Canmore, and so may well have felt he had no chance of succeeding the Scottish throne.

"His sister Matilda became Queen to the English king Henry I, and David, who was about 15 at the time, went south to live with her. He could have decided that he had little future in Scotland and that he would make a career for himself at the English court."

Even after succeeding to the Scottish throne, David kept his interests in England. He retained the land and title he had been given as Earl of Huntingdon and spent a lot of his time down south. One of his most significant moves was to introduce the feudal system - the European organisation of society brought to England by the Normans - into Scotland.

Feudalism involved the King giving land and charters to Norman friends from England who in turn would have let the peasants work the soil. Now-famous Scottish families such as Frasers, Crichtons, Grants, Maxwells and Sinclairs came from England or France in this way.

The feudal system worked well in that it created a well ordered hierarchy which allied the nobles to the King and discouraged them from plotting behind his back. However, it also created a gulf between the monarch and ordinary people - particularly the Highlanders, whose chiefs were not prepared to give their rights away.

David might have been close to the English, but he wasn't by any means a soft touch. He fought hard to have the Scottish church freed from the control of the archdiocese of York and eventually succeeded, persuading the Pope that it should go its own way.

He also founded a diocese in Glasgow and built the first cathedral there. However, this meant that the bishops of Glasgow and St Andrews ended up struggling for supremacy of the Scottish church. The Pope decided to overcome this not by appointing one over the other as archbishop, but by making the Scottish bishops directly accountable to him.

It was during this period that Scotland finally started to pull together as a single, coherent nation. Galloway - at the time a remote area populated by wild tribes - was slowly assimilated into the rest of the country, although it was a slow and tough process getting the fiercely independent population of the region to fall in line.

Galloway folk had a tetchy relationship with the Scottish kings and regularly crossed the border to fight the English - in 1137, they fought a battle as far south as Clitheroe in present day Lancashire. In the 1180s, Galloway actually volunteered to become a part of England - though they proved so troublesome that after five years, the English threw them out again.

The other ancient and largely independent Scottish kingdom, Moray, was absorbed into the rest of Scotland after its own ruler, Angus, fought a battle in protest at David's feudal system at Strathcathro near Brechin in 1130. He lost, though David was compelled to get his English friends to help him put the rebellion down and to secure his new territory.

Interestingly, it was during David's rule that the ancestors of Scotland's two greatest ever patriots, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, arrived in Scotland - one from England and the other from Wales!

The King gave lands in Annandale to his friend Robert Bruce, the grandfather of the great Scots hero, who came up from his native Yorkshire to take them. David also gave Walter Fitz-Alan of Shropshire a chunk of present day Renfrewshire known as Strathgryffe and made him High Steward of Scotland - the forerunner of the Stewart kings.

Fitz-Alan brought a close colleague with him, Roger De Wallais (Roger of Wales) with him when he came north to take the title. De Wallais was the forerunner of the great Scottish hero William Wallace, believed to have been born in Elderslie in 1270.

Scottish kings and nobles were quite happy to cosy up to the English because the notions of Scottishness and Englishness weren't as clear cut as they are today. The aristocrats of the time would have felt more affinity with each other - Scottish or English - than with the common people, and many of them would have owned land on both sides of the border and travelled freely between their estates.

The English even provided the medieval equivalent of comfort stops on the journey to Scotland to make sure that travelling Scottish rulers and their courts didn't tire too much on the way.

Alec Woolf explains: "There were a series of small manor houses all the way up the Great North Road. It was as if they all had their own private Little Chefs. When they journeyed up and down, they'd spend time on these small estates."

The fact that Scotland and England got on well together during this period didn't stop the occasional military skirmish between the two countries. Both sides felt that if they had a grievance to air, the best way to do it was to march into each other's territory and commit a spot of wholesale slaughter.

"You have to remember that this wasn't total warfare between the two countries", says Woolf. "These incursions were just a way of making a point. It was a bit like the modern day equivalent of sending a gunboat to stand off someone else's coast. They seemed to be able to make friends together afterwards.

"They were also trying to sort out the question of the exact border between the two countries at this time, but they could never agree. Knights from both countries would meet at some disputed point to try and work things out. All that would happen is that they'd shout at each other a bit, realise they were getting nowhere, get drunk together and then go home."

David I's English background meant he spent a considerable amount of time down south and, by and large, he got away with it because he was a tough character whose friendship with the English didn't compromise Scotland's interests.

However, problems arose when David died and his grandson, Malcolm IV, succeeded him. In 1157 Henry II of England took back Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland - ceded by treaty to David. Malcolm did nothing about it and even went to fight for Henry in France in 1158 - an act taken by the Scots nobles as a sign of weakness and subordination.

Things became worse when William I - "the lion" - took the Scottish throne in 1165. He was forced by the Treaty of Falaise in 1174 to accept Henry II's overlordship of Scotland. The nobles were furious, but luckily the deal didn't last long.

William was able to get out of it in 1189 when Henry's successor in England, Richard the Lionheart, desperately needed to raise cash fast in order to go off and fight a crusade. He did a deal and sold Scotland back to the Scots for the then hefty sum of 10,000 marks - the currency of the time.

The nobles were almost certainly furious at having to spend cash in this way because of William's foolhardiness in giving it away to start with. But it was probably the best money Scotland has ever spent, because it pulled us from the grip of England and secured our future as an independent nation.

At least, until the bloody rule of Edward Longshanks and the heroic campaign by William Wallace to keep the country out of his grip?..

Meanwhile...

• 1099

The crusaders take Jerusalem

• 1107

The colonisation of Polynesia from S. America is believed to have begun

• 1110

The earliest recorded reference to a miracle play - at Dunstable in England - is recorded

• 1118

Thomas a Becket of Canterbury is born

• 1120

Henry I of England's son and heir is drowned

• 1124

The first Scottish coinage is minted

• 1124

Rochester Cathedral is completed

• 1125

The compass is mentioned for the first time in Alexander Neckham's, De Utensilibus

• 1136

Matilda, daughter of Henry I, asserts her claim to the English throne

• 1137

A bishopric is established in Aberdeen

• 1189

Jewish massacre in York.

• 1204

Norman Crusaders capture Constantinople (1204-1261).

• 1115

Founding of Cistercian monestary of Clairvaux.

• 1209

Franciscan order recieves papal approval.

• 1216

Dominican Order formed.

• 1100

Around this time the Jews were persecuted in France and Germany.

• 1189

Jewish massacre in York, England.

• 1215

Lateran Council allows Jews to lend money.

• 1200

Southwestern and Mississippi cultures of North America begin to diminish.

• 1180

Gempei civil war begins (1180-1185). This gives rise to the Minamoto shoguns.

• 1106

Henry IV ends conflict with the pope.

• 1200

Concordat of Worms: An agreement between the Emperor and the Pope.

• 1200

Peak of the political power of the Roman Catholic Church.

• 1168

Tula destroyed in The Americas.

• 1200

Building of the Mississippian temple-cities in The Americas.

• 1200

Rise of the Aztecs and the Incas in The Americas.

• 1092

Death of Malik Shah - Seljuk Empire breaks up.

• 1127

The Jin take north China: The Song retreat to Hangzhou.

• 1095

First Crusade takes Palestine and Syria (1095-1099).

• 1187

Saladin wins back Jerusalem.

• 1189

Third Crusade (1189-1192).

• 1212

Fourth Crusade loots Constantinople (1202-1204).

• 1212

Children's Crusade.

• 1095

Pope Urban II calls for the Crusades.

• 1113

Knights Hospitallers founded.

• 1208

Knights Templars founded.

• 1208

Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars.

• 1133

Ealeanor of Aquitaine is born.

• 1133

Henry of Anjou is born

• 1152

Ealinor of Aquitaine marries Louis VII of France: Marriage annulled

• 1152

Henry marries Eleanor of Aquitaine

• 1154

Henry becomes King of England

• 1157

Submission of the King of Scotland

• 1166

Thomas a Becket becomes Archbishop of Canterbury

• 1166

Legal reforms in England (1166-1176)

• 1171

Murder of Thomas a Becket

• 1171

Henry becomes King of Ireland

• 1173

Thomas a Becket made a Saint

• 1174

Rebellions by Henry's sons

• 1189

Henry dies in France

• 1148

Richard de Clare becomes Earl of Pembroke, Ireland

• 1170

Rory O'Connor becomes first King of Ireland since 1014

• 1170

Norman invasion of Ireland led by Richard de Clare

• 1171

Richard de Clare becomes King of Leinster; Henry II annexes Ireland

• 1192

Venice transports Crusaders to Constantinople by ship

• 1081

Venetians gain trade privaleges in Byzantium

• 1081

Venetians gain trade privaleges in Byzantium

• 1090

Around the 1090s, Arab dominance of Mediterranean trade ends

• 1215

King John reluctantly affixes his seal to the Magna Carta

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Great Scots

• Alexander I
• Alexander II
• Alexander III
• Devorguilla Balliol
• John Balliol
• David I
• Duncan I
• Duncan II
• MacBeth
• Malcolm II
• Malcolm III canmore
• Malcolm IV
• Saint Margaret of Scotland

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Kirkpatrick Macmillan Inventor

• Name  : Macmillan
• Born  : 1812
• Died  : 1878
• Category  : Inventors
• Finest Moment : Invention of the pedal bicycle, 1839

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John Knox & Queen Mary

John Knox and Queen Mary

When the reformation finally arrived in Scotland, the old Catholic faith did not collapse overnight - the process of change took place gradually over a period of years.

Part of the reason for this was that, while firebrands like John Knox were desperate to move Scotland towards the Protestant faith, the Scottish rulers were happy with Catholicism and wanted to see it stay.

The battle between John Knox and Mary Queen of Scots was one of the most fascinating tussles between two strong characters in Scotland's history?.and it was a religious war in which Knox would eventually end up as the winner.

When he was sent away to France to work as a galley slave after his part in the murder of Cardinal Beaton, it seemed that the Reformers had fired their best shot and missed. But Scotland was still a highly unstable place, and dissatisfaction with the Catholic church was rampant. It was virtually inevitable that change would come, and that when it did, it would alter the nature of Scotland forever.

Henry VIII, who had converted England to Protestantism in 1534 by establishing the Church of England, was keen that the infant Mary Queen of Scots - born just a week before James V died in 1542 - should marry his five-year-old son Edward, so uniting the two crowns and effectively bringing the Scots under English control.

However, Henry had not reckoned on the opposition he faced from Mary's formidable Catholic mother, Mary of Guise, who opposed the match and eventually forced its cancellation. The result was that a furious Henry invaded southern Scotland and razed towns and border abbeys in a so-called "rough wooing".

Knox and the Reformers recognised that their success depended to a large extent on forging alliances with the English. At the same time, however, the council which was ruling Scotland in the infant Mary's name - which included the French-born Mary of Guise - felt that Scotland's best hope lay in protection from another Catholic nation, France.

When the English attacked Scotland again in 1548, the Scots asked the French to intervene. They sent 7000 troops, but would only agree to use them if the Infant Mary Queen of Scots was betrothed to the future king of France, the Dauphin, Francois.

The aim was clear - to bring the two Catholic nations together under a united French crown - but the Scots were clever enough to allow Francois only her hand in marriage, and not the Scottish succession.

John Knox, meanwhile, had finished his sentence in France and gone to England to try and further influence its Protestant conversion. However, Henry VIII had died, and when his son Edward VI died also, Henry's daughter Mary took the throne. She was a Catholic and, as she attempted to move her country back towards the old faith, Knox fled in fear of his life to the Continent.

He went to Switzerland, where in Geneva he met and heard the preaching of fellow reformer John Calvin. Calvin was a hardline, no-compromise firebrand who believed that the Bible was the only true source of religious truth. It was a much harder type of Protestantism than the Lutheranism on which Knox had cut his theological teeth, and he warmed to it and vowed to take it to Scotland.

Just what type of a person, though, was Knox? It is clear that he thought of himself as the father of the Scottish Reformation, but in reality the change was happening in any case without his presence north of the border.

Father Mark Dilworth, the author and historian who is a former keeper of the Scottish Catholic Archives and an expert on the period, believes Knox may not have been an influential as is popularly thought.

"Most of what we actually know about Knox comes from what he tells us in his own writings", Dilworth says. "He was certainly a strong figure, but he may have magnified his own importance. There is a suspicion among historians that he was an extremely good self publicist, and he may not actually have been as important as people think."

Knox wanted to return to Scotland and tested the water with a couple of preaching visits. By 1559, he felt it was safe to come back for good. By then, the Reformation north of the border was in full swing and, despite Mary of Guise's influence, Scotland's nobles had swung behind Protestantism.

Five of them had titled themselves the Lords of the Congregation and made a covenant to overturn the Roman church and install the Protestant faith instead. Others flocked to their cause, and the tide turned in their favour in 1558 when Mary Tudor of England died and was succeeded by the Protestant Elizabeth I.

Because of this, Mary of Guise once again began to feel vulnerable, and demanded that all Protestant preachers appear before her and declare their allegiance to Rome. Unsurprisingly, none bothered to turn up, so she tried to ban them.

It was a losing battle. More and more Scots were signing up to the Reformed faith, and when Knox returned, he became ordained as Minister at St Giles in Edinburgh. His brilliant preaching abilities had the ability to stir people into action, and when he delivered a sermon in Perth, the mob rioted for two days and destroyed not only most of the fittings in the church, but also two monasteries and an abbey.

Mary of Guise reacted with horror and ordered her forces to march on the Reformers. But the Protestant nobles were also determined to strike while the iron was hot, and they occupied St Andrews and sacked the magnificent cathedral there. Scotland was virtually in a state of civil war, with Knox and Mary of Guise at the heart of it.

Again Mary of Guise - whose daughter had married the French Dauphin the previous year - waited for her French allies to arrive and bail her out. But Queen Elizabeth, who was worried about French claims that Mary Queen of Scots was the successor to her own throne, decided to back the Scottish Reformers.

As a result, the English fleet was sent to besiege the French, who were garrisoned at Leith. The French fought back, but then there was an incredible twist to the tale - Mary of Guise suddenly died. The French then surrendered and concluded peace terms with the English in the Treaty of Edinburgh - a move which effectively marked the end of the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France.

Under the terms of the deal, a council of 12 people was charged with the responsibility of governing Scotland during the absence of Mary Queen of Scots in France, though Mary herself was allowed to choose her own faith. Crucially, however, it gave the Scots parliament real power and the opportunity to call the shots in favour of Scotland's reformed faith.

Needless to say, they took it. The parliament quickly abolished the authority of the Pope in Scotland, and laid down a rule that anyone who claimed his supremacy would be exiled and lose their possessions. The public celebration of Mass was forbidden and John Knox was asked to mastermind a new declaration of the Reformed faith, which came to be known as the Scots Confession.

However, in France, yet another astonishing twist to the drama was unfolding. The husband of Mary Queen of Scots, by now the French king Francois II, had died of a septic ear. Mary was only 17, and grief stricken. Her advisers thought the best course of action was for her to return to Scotland - the country she had last seen at the age of five.

In August 1561, Mary sailed back to her native land. A devout Catholic, she was returning to a kingdom where the Protestants now had the whip hand. With Knox now at the height of his power, it seemed like a formula for division, bitterness and disaster. Which, of course, it was. Follow the story of Mary Queen of Scots

Meanwhile...

• 1542 Antonio da Mota is the first European to enter Japan
• 1557 An influenza epidemic breaks out across Europe
• 1557 "The Sack-Full of Newes" becomes the first English play to be censored
• 1558 Europeans adopt the English habit of taking snuff
• 1559 The University of Geneva is founded
• 1560 Madrid becomes Spain's capital
• 1560 Jean Nicot imports the tobacco plant into Western Europe
• 1561 The Basilica of St Basil in Moscow is completed
• 1561 The first Calvinist refugees from Flanders arrive in England

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