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.

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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

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James Keir Hardie & Labour Conditions

Scotland may have been a wealthy country in the Victorian era - but much of its prosperity was created at the expense of its workers.

Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children toiled in factories and down mines to build business empires for their employers.

They often worked for long hours in appalling conditions. Inevitably, there had to be a backlash sooner or later. When it came, it was in the formation of the Scottish Labour Party.

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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

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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

Quick Links

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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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

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Lords of the Isles

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Lords of the Isles

They were proud, warlike and fiercely independent - and they kept their own firm grip on a large chunk of present day Scotland for hundreds of years.

The Lords of the Isles were so powerful that they managed to maintain control of much of the highlands and islands as a separate kingdom right up until the year 1493.

They built a tough but civilised and largely democratic society where people used sailing ships much as we use cars today.

The hardy islanders traded not only with each other, but also with places as far away as the continent - teaching the Europeans, for instance, about the delights of smoked salmon by selling it to them.

In return, they received fine French wines. The notion that the kingdom of the isles is the place where whisky first became popular is largely a myth - because most folk enjoyed swilling this claret instead!

The Lordship of the isles is often perceived today by many lowlanders and non-Scots as being something which was remote, empty, heathen and practically barbarian.

Certainly the people could - and would - fight if they had to. But by and large built a fair and just society where the king of the Isles was answerable to his nobles and where the population was probably actually larger than it is today.

There is considerable debate about when the lordship of the isles actually began, though it is generally reckoned by historians to have been around 1330. In the centuries before then, the islands and much of the western fringe of Scotland had been ruled by the Vikings.

The isles were reclaimed for the Gaels in the 12th century by a strong but probably relatively low status warrior from Argyll called Somerled - the name means summer traveller - who mounted an assault on the Norse kingdom. In 1156, his fleet, which was said to number 80 galleys, won a great victory off Islay and captured the nearby islands, including Mull and Jura.

When Somerled died in 1165 - he became too ambitious and was killed while mounting an unsuccessful raid on Glasgow - his lands were split between his three sons Donald, Dougal and Rauri. Interestingly, these men and their followers each became responsible for the formation of three of Scotland's greatest clans - McDonald, McDougal and McRory.

Over the next 200 years or so, the McDonalds gradually grew in strength through battle and inter-marriage while the McDougal lands became reduced to an area round Oban. The McRorys ruled the small isles such as Rhum, Muck and Eigg and a slice of the mainland in what is present day Knoydart and Moydart.

The start of the Lordship of the Isles is generally dated to the period around 1330 when the so-called Good King John of Islay - a McDonald - started to use the title of Lord and later married his distant cousin Amie McRauri. With this marriage, he reclaimed the lands which had originally belonged to the Rauri side of the Somerled family.

By then, the lordship extended to the southern Hebrides, the current Lochaber area around Fort William and Lewis as well as islands of Jura, Islay, Mull, Coll and Tiree - though not Skye, which was part of the earldom of Ross and didn't become part of the kingdom until 1450.

John based his kingdom or lordship - the two terms are really interchangeable - around Finlaggan on Islay where his parliament met on an island in the middle of a loch. It was a sophisticated gathering, passing its own laws and acts, and by the standards of the time, was about as democratic as you were likely to get.

The parliament, or council, was made up of 16 men representing the different classes of society at that time - four lords, four sub-lords, four squires and four freemen. Appeals of decisions made by judges in the different territories of the lordship could also be made to this body.

Alex Woolf, a lecturer in Celtic and early Scottish history at the University of Edinburgh, explains how it would have worked. "People would have gathered at Finlaggan from all parts of the kingdom. The parliament would have been democratic in that it would have operated by consensus.

"The king's vote would obviously have counted more than any other individual, but if everyone else was against him, he'd have backed down. If had hadn't have done, he'd simply have been murdered, which was the usual way of solving political disputes in those days."

Although the population of the area then was almost certainly greater than it is today - there were perhaps as many as 150,000 people living there at the time - there would be no towns or urban settlements. No single centre of population would have been bigger than about 200 people.

Some of the bigger communities would have been gathered around the walls of castles owned by the richest men in the region. Many of these structures, such as Tobermory on Mull and Dunstaffnage in Argyll, can still be seen today.

The kingdom was almost completely independent of the rest of Scotland. The two sides clashed with some regularity in battle - the most famous of which was a score draw at Harlaw near Inverurie in 1411 - but generally they left each other to govern themselves.

Alex Woolf says: "The lords of the isles would have had a large degree of autonomy from Scotland. They'd have looked after their own defence and foreign affairs, for instance. Technically, the lord would have been a vassal of the king of Scots and there was a vague recognition of Scotland's overlordship, but the royal officials of Scotland such as sheriffs wouldn't go into the territory, and it was very much self governing.

"The kings of Scots probably thought it was their territory but basically left the lords to get on with it. Soldiers from the kingdom would occasionally turn up alongside the Scots to bash the English. The Scots kings would have seen this as a submission to their authority, but in reality it was probably just an opportunity to get hold of some booty."

The poor, scrubby land of most of the kingdom held by the lords of the isles made it difficult for its inhabitants to support themselves off the land, so they had to turn to some of their other natural advantages in order to trade and survive.

What were these? Well, for a start, they were consummate sailors, and a spot of piracy now and then would doubtless have helped keep the coffers topped up. They also made a reasonable living selling mercenaries to Irish chiefs who were constantly fighting each other and the English at the time.

And then, of course, there was international trade. "They'd smoke salmon, which was plentiful in Scottish waters at the time, and sell it in the Mediterranean", says Woolf. "It was a luxury even then. They'd bring back wine in return. Whisky was really the drink of the lowlander. Claret, however, became associated with the islands because of this trade and was even sold under the name Gaelic wine in England as late as the 18th century."

The kingdom finally came to an end in 1493 with its forced absorption into mainland Scotland. The heir to the Lordship Angus the Young - Angus Og - was murdered in 1490 while trying to gain control of the Ross lands nearby, which had been historically linked to the Lordship and which were once again being claimed by it. His nephew Alexander of Lochalsh then took over the campaign but was also killed.

The Scots king, James IV, had become tired of the constant struggles which had taken place, especially in Ross, He felt this was too close to Inverness - which he controlled - for comfort, and decided to settle the matter once and for all.

James moved in, took advantage much greater political and military power, and declared that the lands of the lordship had to be forfeited to him. He got his way. John died in 1503 without ever getting his kingdom back, which by then had passed to Scotland forever.

Various sporadic rebellions took place to try and re-establish the kingdom, and hopes that it would rise again persisted as long as the Jacobite rebellion in 1745. It never happened. But the end of the lordship did mark the beginning of another uniquely Scottish institution - the system of the clans.

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Mary Queen of Scots

Mary Queen of Scots

When Mary Queen of Scots returned to her native land after spending her childhood in France, she hoped she would bring peace to Scotland and win huge popularity for herself in the process.

But she also secretly cherished another aim - to claim, and eventually to take, the throne of England.

However, it was not to be. Her reign turned into a disaster so astonishing that if you made a television drama of her life story today, it would be dismissed as too fanciful for words.

Intrigue, murders, explosions, rape, disastrous marriages and religious strife were all hallmarks of Mary's short but eventful rule over Scotland.

When she returned home as an 18-year-old in 1561, it was very much a journey she would rather not have undertaken. She really wanted to be Queen of France. But her husband, the French king Francois II, had died of a septic ear, and so there was no future for her there.

Mary also had Tudor blood through her grandmother, who was a sister of Henry VIII, which gave her a claim to the throne of England. But there was just one small problem - it was already taken by Elizabeth. That left Scotland as her third choice, but as the only realistic option.

Although young, Mary was shrewd and highly political. She felt that her claim to the English throne was legitimate and one day it could pass to her, but she knew that in order to try and secure it, she would need a power base - the Scottish nobility.

Here, though, lay another immediate problem. Mary was a Catholic, while Scotland was now firmly Protestant. She realised she would have to reach an accommodation with the Reformers if she was to build support for the future.

Unfortunately, she started off on the wrong foot. The very first Mass she held at her private chapel in Holyrood provoked riots in the streets outside. The Protestant leaders, including the powerful John Knox, wanted a monarch who would fight for Calvinism, not Catholicism. They saw Mary, with her strong religious views and enjoyment of good living, as little more than a pagan.

Nevertheless, a compromise was reached. Mary did not seek to convert the Protestant Scots back to Catholicism, and she was left alone and allowed to celebrate Mass in private. However, another problem loomed. She realised that, as a young widow, she needed a new husband who, by providing her with children, would strengthen her claim to the English throne.

Mary chose Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, a Yorkshireman and also a cousin - a family link which further strengthened her own claim to the English throne - as a suitor. The couple married in 1565, but the relationship turned out to be a disaster. Darnley, who offered so much promise, turned out to be a debauched, stupid playboy.

The marriage was also politically unwise because it alienated those Mary needed most to keep on board. The nobles of Scotland were angry because she had married a Catholic, while Elizabeth disapproved of the marriage because she knew it strengthened Mary's claim to her own throne. Mary's own half-brother James, who had been her most trusted adviser, became jealous of Darnley and walked out.

Mary became pregnant, but her relationship with her husband broke down and, less than a year after they married, she fell into the company of David Rizzio, an Italian singer and musician. However, the friendship angered a jealous Darnley, who thought that Rizzio was the real father of Mary's child.

Along with a number of Scottish earls, Darnley plotted to kill the Italian and frighten Mary into submission at the same time. He and the others broke into Mary's dining room when she was eating with Rizzio, dragged him out and stabbed him to death. Mary herself was jostled and threatened at gunpoint - the conspirators hoped this might make her lose her unborn child.

When her son - the future James VI - was born, it did nothing to bring the unhappy couple back together. But it did give the young Queen the security of having an heir. Mary then fell into a new relationship with James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell, who was both a noble and a Protestant.

The Queen seriously considered divorcing Darnley but eventually ruled the idea out because it carried the risk of rendering her son illegitimate. So another way of getting rid of him had to be found. By 1567, he had fallen ill with a serious disease - some say smallpox, others syphilis.

Estranged from Mary, Darnley was living in a house at Kirk o'Field on the outskirts of Edinburgh. One night, only hours after Mary had paid him a visit, there was a huge explosion. Darnley was injured by the bast and thrown naked from the house into the street. But he was later found strangled.

Exactly who killed him is one of the great remaining unsolved mysteries of Scottish history. Mary had originally intended to stay at Darnley's house for the night before deciding to change her plans and attend a ball, which suggests that she may have been a target as well.

Other possibilities are that Darnley wanted to kill the Queen and became caught up in his own trap, that her half brother James, who had mysteriously left for France beforehand, was involved - or, of course, that the plot was hatched by Bothwell, who was seen having gunpowder delivered to his own house before the explosion.

The Scottish public were in no doubt that it was Bothwell, and he was brought to trial. But the hearing was a judicial farce. Bothwell managed to pack the city and the courtroom with his supporters who were armed to the teeth, and the chief prosecutor was accosted on his way to court. Unsurprisingly, no-one came forward to speak against Bothwell and the jury acquitted him.

Bothwell then asked Mary to marry him. She declined his proposal and went to join her son at Stirling. However, he tricked her by persuading her to go with him to Dunbar castle, claiming that a rebellion was being plotted against her in Edinburgh, and then raped her.

Terrified that she might be pregnant, Mary felt she had no choice but to consent to the marriage. She authorised Bothwell's divorce from his previous wife and then tied the knot with him herself only days later - and only three months after Darnley's death.

Despite the fact it was a Protestant marriage, the nobles of Scotland were furious. They felt Mary was behaving like a whore and making a fool of them, herself, and the country. There was an almost immediate rebellion, and the couple were forced to escape and raise an army to defend themselves.

The two sides met at Carberry Hill in June 1567, but Mary's army was so small that neither side had the stomach for a fight. However, it was effectively the end of Mary's rule over Scotland. Bothwell fled and, after spending a time in Orkney, made for Scandinavia, where he spent the rest of his days.

Mary was taken to Edinburgh and then to Loch Leven castle in Fife. She realised the game was up and quickly renounced her throne. Her son was crowned James VI at Stirling in Scotland's first ever Protestant coronation.

However, there was another twist to the story. The following year, Mary was helped to escape by a group of nobles loyal to her cause. She then faced a loyalist force under her half-brother James - appointed Regent of Scotland, since the new king was still only a child - at Langside, outside Glasgow.

Mary's 6000 strong army was roundly defeated in the battle, and she fled to the country's remote south west. The fight was over and there seemed only one course of action left to take. Mary felt she would have to cross the border and appeal to the goodwill of Elizabeth, Queen of England?..

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