Scotland

SCOTLAND PART I.—HISTORY.

1. Roman Period.— The first certain lines of the history of Scotland were written by the Romans. Their account of its partial conquest and occupation for more than three hundred years gives the earliest facts to which fixed dates can be assigned. The invasion commenced by Julius Caesar reached in Agricola’s last campaign limits never afterwards exceeded. It was in the last year of Vespasian’s life that Julius Agricola, the ablest general bred in his camp, came to command the army in Britain. Landing in midsummer 78, he at once commenced a campaign against Wales. In his second campaign he passed the Solway and, defeating the tribes of Galloway, introduced rudiments of Roman civilization in the district where Ninian taught the rudiments of Christianity three centuries later. This was the first conquest within modern Scotland. Two main roads, of which traces can still be seen, mark his advance: the western, from Carlisle through Dumfries and Lanark, extends across the Clyde to Camelon on the Carron; and the eastern, from Bremenium (High Rie-chester) in Northumberland, passes through Roxburgh and Lothian to the Forth at Cramond. Next year Agricola subdued unknown tribes, reached the estuary of the Tay, and occupied camps at various points of central Scotland, in the future shires of Stirling and Perth. Traces of them are still visible at Bochastle near Callander, Dalginross near Comrie, Fendoch on the Almond, Inver-almond at the junction of the Almond with the Tay near Perth, Ardargie on the north of the Ochils, and the great camp at Ardoch south of Crieff. The fourth year of his command was devoted to the construction of a line of forts between the Forth and the Clyde. This barrier, strengthened by a wall in the reign of Antoninus Pius, guarded the conquests already made against the Caledonians—the general Latin name of the northern tribes of the forests and mountains, the Highlanders of later times—and, in connexion with camps already occupied in the lowlands of Perthshire, formed the base for further operations. In the fifth year Agricola crossed the Clyde, and, without making any permanent conquest on the western mainland, viewed from Cantyre the coast of Ireland. Statements by one of its chiefs as to the character and factions of that country, whose ports were already known to Roman merchants, led to the opinion communicated to Tacitus by Agricola, that with a single legion and a few auxiliaries he could reduce it to subjection. The number of legions in the Roman army of Britain was fixed at five, besides auxiliaries and cavalry,—a total of perhaps 50,000 men. The resistance of northern Britain explains why the easier conquest was not undertaken. A year was required to explore the estuaries of the Forth and the Tay with the fleet. The absence of camps indicates that no attempt was made to conquer the peninsula of Fife, perhaps a separate kingdom; and Agricola prepared to advance against the Caledonians. Two years’ fighting, although Tacitus chronicles only an assault on the advanced camp of the IXth legion (at Lintrose (?) near Coupar Angus), passed before the final engagement known in history as the battle of the Grampians (84). It was probably fought in the hilly country of the Stormont near Blairgowrie, the Celts descending from strongholds in the lowest spurs of the Grampians and attacking the Romans, whose camp lay near the junction of the Isla and the Tay. It decided that the Roman conquest was to stop at the Tay. Galgacus, the Caledonian leader, was, according to the Roman historian, defeated; but in the following winter Agricola retreated to the camps between the Forth and the Clyde, while the fleet was sent round Britain. Starting probably from the Forth and rounding the northern capes, it returned after establishing the fact, already suspected, and of so much consequence in future history, that Britain was an island,— planting during its progress the Roman standard on the Orkneys, which had for several centuries been known by report, and sighting Shetland, the Thule of earlier navigators. Agricola, with one legion—probably the IXth, which had suffered most—was now recalled by Domitian.

The absence of any notice of Britain for twenty years implies the cessation of further advances,—a change of policy due to the reverses in the Dacian War and the financial condition of the empire.

The indefatigable Hadrian came to Britain (120) with the VIth legion, named Victrix, which replaced the IXth. He began, and his favourite general Aulus Plautorius Nepos completed, between the mouth of the Tyne near Newcastle and the Solway near Carlisle, the great wall of stone (see Hadrian, Wall of), about 80 miles in length, 16 feet high, and 8 feet thick, protected on the north by a trench 34 feet wide and 9 deep, with two parallel earthen ramparts and a trench on the south,— proving the line required defence on both sides. Massive fragments of the wall, its stations, castles, and protecting camps, with the foundation of a bridge over the North Tyne, may be still seen. It was garrisoned by the VIth legion, and by the XIth and XXth, which remained throughout the whole Roman occupation. The conquests of Agricola in what is modern Scotland were for a time abandoned. Hadrian’s wall was the symbol of the strength of Rome, and also of the valour of the northern Britons. There must have been a stubborn resistance to induce the conquerors of the world to set a limit to their province, though the roads through the wall showed they did not intend this limit to be permanent. The first step had been taken. The country between the Tyne and Solway and the Forth and Clyde, including the southern Lowlands of Scotland, was now within the scope of Roman history, if not yet of Roman civilization. The country north of the last two rivers remained barbarous and unknown under its Celtic chiefs. Hadrian had thus resumed the task of Agricola, in one of the rapid campaigns by which he consolidated the empire through visits to its most distant parts; but it is doubtful whether he passed beyond the wall, which continued to separate the Romans from the barbarians. In the reign of his successor, Antoninus Pius, Lollius Urbicus recovered the country from the wall of Hadrian to the forts of Agricola, and built an earthen rampart about half the length of the southern wall, 20 feet high and 24 thick, protected on the north by a trench 40 feet wide and 20 deep. It was known later as Grim’s or Graham’s dyke. Remains may yet be seen between Carriden near Borrowstounness on the Forth and West Kilpatrick on the Clyde, with forts either then or subsequently erected at intermediate stations, connected by a military road on the south of the wall.

About this period Ptolemy composed the first geography of the world, illustrated by maps—probably constructed somewhat later —of Ireland and Britain, still called Albion. South of modern Scotland the plan and description of the distances are generally accurate, but north of the Solway (Itunae Aestuarium) and the Wear (? Vedra) the island is figured as lying west and east instead of north and south. Learned ingenuity corrects this error and, by other modifications and the use of a few points deemed certain, applies the names of Ptolemy to places on the map of modern Scotland. But the certain points are almost confined to the Clyde (Glotta Aestuarium), the Forth (BoderiaAestuarium), the Tay (Tava Aestuarium), and perhaps the Wear (Vedra) and the Nith (Novius), the Caledonian Wood (Caledonia Silva), and the Orkneys (Orcades). Even if the other identifications were clear, it would not add much to our knowledge of ancient Scotland. The names of Ptolemy are names on his map and in books only. No tribe (except the Caledonii), no town, no river (except the Forth and Clyde and Tay), no island (except the Orkneys), was, so far as we know, called before or since by the names which there appear. No inscription or coin confirms them. No mountains in this land of mountains are to be found on the plan of the geographer. Etymological conjecture, after allowance for mispronunciation and errors of transcribers, fails to reconcile the names of Ptolemy with the oldest names of Celtic origin still retained by the rivers and hills. Yet the attempt represents the highest knowledge embodied in writing to which the Romans attained of this distant and disputed part of the empire, for the Itineraries, except the forged one attributed to Richard of Cirencester, stop at Hadrian’s wall. His treatise remained until the revival of learning the only written geographical description of the country from which the learned could picture northern Britain. With all its imperfections and mistakes, it conveyed in rough outline the figure of a country to the west of the European continent, to the north of the Roman province of Britain, to the east of Ireland, surrounded by the German Ocean, the Northern Ocean, and the Irish Channel, with bold promontories and many rivers (several tidal), peopled by various tribes, its towns chiefly on the rivers or the coast, and in its centre the vast forest to which the Caledonians gave or from which they received their name, itself the northern part of the largest British island, with groups of smaller isles lying off its northern and western shores. This region was unknown to Caesar and imperfectly known to Tacitus,—the only writer of the first century to whom we can resort. Yet the description of the Britons by the greatest historical genius of Rome, based on the account of one of its greatest generals, attempts a discrimination between the Celtic tribes first and those afterwards conquered, which may perhaps be applied to the inhabitants of the north as contrasted with those of the south of Britain.

“Whether the inhabitants of Britain were indigenous or foreigners, being barbarian, they did not take the trouble to inquire. The different character of their bodily appearance in different parts of the island gave rise to arguments. The red hair and big limbs of the natives of Caledonia point to a German origin. The coloured faces of the Silures, their hair generally plaited, and Spain being opposite give credit to the opinion that the ancient Iberi had migrated and occupied these settlements. Those nearest the Gauls were like them, whether on account of the enduring force of descent or the position of the sky determining in lands adjoining the character of the races. On a general view it is credible that the Gauls occupied the neighbouring island. You may detect the same sacred rites and superstitions. There is not much difference in their language. There is the same daring in demanding, the same fear in declining danger. The Britons exhibit greater fierceness, as a long peace has not yet softened them. For we have heard that the Gauls also were distinguished in war, until sloth came with ease and valour was lost with freedom. This too has been the case with the Britons formerly conquered. The rest remain what the Gauls were. Their strength is in their foot; some tribes, however, fight also from chariots. The noble drives; his followers are in front. Formerly they obeyed kings. Now they are distracted by parties and factions amongst their chiefs, and the want of common counsel is most useful to us. An agreement between two or three states to resist a common danger is rare; so while they fight singly the whole are defeated.”

In the account of the battle of the Grampian Mount and the speech of Galgacus there is little that is local or individual. What the Celtic chief said in an unknown tongue can scarcely have been literally interpreted to the Romans. The historian trained in oratory embodies in Latin eloquence the universal sentiments of freedom. It may be thought, however, that the soil and air of Scotland favour independence of action and thought, and that the words, whether of Tacitus or of Galgacus, contain an unconscious prophecy of passages in its future annals and traits in the character of its people not yet obliterated. In the first century of the Christian era Scotland was the scene of events which belong to universal history.

The necessity of the walls of Hadrian and Antonine to protect the Roman province soon appeared. It is doubtful how long or during what intervals the country between them remained subject. Few coins of emperors later than Antonine have been found to the north of Hadrian’s wall.

In the reign of Aurelius, the philosophic emperor, war was not encouraged; but Calphurnius Agricola had to be sent (161) as legate and propraetor to Britain to prevent incursions of the northern tribes. In that of Commodus a more formidable invasion passed the wall, but Ulpius Marcellus drove back the Britons and repaired it, gaining for Commodus the title of Britannicus. While Septimius Severus was removing rivals from his path, his legate, Virius Lupus, purchased peace (201) from the Meatae, a tribe of central Scotland now first named, who along with the Caledonii supersede the older designations of Tacitus and Ptolemy for the population in the vicinity and to the north of Antonine’s wall, until in the latter half of the 4th century the Picts and Scots appear. Seven years later (208) Severus, with his sons Caracalla and Geta, came, like Edward I. in his last campaign, worn out in body but not in spirit, to Britain. After repairing the breaches in Hadrian’s wall he not only reconquered the country between it and the wall of Antonine, which he restored, but, passing beyond the steps of Agricola, carried the Roman eagles to the most northern points they reached. The traces of Roman roads from Falkirk to Stirling, through Strathearn to Perth, thence through Forfar, Mearns, and Aberdeen to the Moray Firth, and of Roman camps at Wardykes (Keithock), Raedykes (Stonehaven), Norman Dykes (on the Dee), and Raedykes on the Ythan belong to this period and represent an attempt to subdue or overawe the whole island. The historian Dion does not conceal the failure of the enterprise, which he ascribes to the illness that terminated in the death of Severus at York (211). He adds a little to our knowledge of the Caledonians by describing the painting of their bodies with forms of animals, their scanty clothing and iron ornaments, their arms—a sword, small shield, and spear, without helmets or breastplates—their chariots, and their mode of warfare by rapid attack and as rapid retreat to the forest and the marsh. Being without towns, they lived on the produce of herds and the chase, not on fish, though they had plenty. Their mode of government he calls democratic, doubtless from the absence of any conspicuous king rather than of chiefs.

From the death of Severus to the accession of Constantius Chlorus, a period of nearly a century, the history of northern Britain is unknown. In the first (305) of the two years of his reign Constantius defeated the tribes between the walls called by Eumenius the Panegyrist “the Caledonians and other Picts,”—a name now first heard, and by this association identified with the Caledonians. Next year Constantius died at York; and for more than fifty years a veil is again drawn over northern Britain. It was during this period that Constantine was converted to Christianity, which his father Constantius had favoured during the persecutions of Diocletian. So rapid was the progress of the church in the British province that only ten years after the martyrdom of St Alban Celtic bishops of York, London, and Caerleon— probably the place of that name on the Usk—were present at the council of Arles. In 360 the Scots are for the first time named, by Ammianus Marcellinus, who records their descent along with the Picts upon the Roman province in terms which imply that they had before passed the southern wall. Four years later the Picts, Saxons, Scots, and Attacotts are said by the same writer to have caused the Britons perpetual anxiety; but Theodosius, father of the emperor of the same name, repulsed them and recovered the country between the walls, which became (368) a fifth province of Britain, called in honour of the reigning emperor Valentia. It remained so for a very brief space: the revolt of Maximus (391), which reduced the Roman troops to two legions, led to fresh raids of the Picts and Scots. A legion sent by Stilicho drove them back to the northern wall. But it was soon recalled, and the garrisons were permanently removed prior to 409.

The Roman empire in Britain left widely different results in the southern and in the northern portions of the island. The former became an organized, and in the centres of population a civilized province, in which Latin was spoken by the educated, the arts cultivated, Roman law administered, and Christianity introduced. The latter, with the partial exception of the district south of Antonine’s wall, remained in the possession of barbarous heathen races, whose customs had altered little since Roman writers described them as similar to, though ruder than, those of the Celts in Gaul before its conquest. The condition of the population between the walls was probably intermediate between that of the. southern provincial Britons and that of the northern savages of the same original Celtic stock, more nearly resembling the latter, perhaps not unlike the condition of the people of Wales, which the Romans in like manner overran, but could not hold, or of Afghanistan as compared with British India. No Roman towns existed, and only one or two villas have been found north of York, and quite near to that place. The camp, the altar, the sepulchral monument, possibly a single temple (the mysterious Arthur’s Oven or Julius’s Hof on the Carron, now destroyed, but described by Boece and Buchanan and figured by Camden), the stations along the wall, the roads with their milestones, a number of coins (chiefly prior to the 2d century), and a few traces of baths are the only vestiges of Roman occupation in this part of Britain. So completely had Britain passed beyond the serious attention of the emperor of the East that in the beginning of the 6th century Belisarius, Justinian’s general, sarcastically offered it to the Goths in exchange for Sicily; while Procopius, the Byzantine historian, has nothing to tell of it except that a wall was built across it by the ancients, the direction of which he supposes to have been from north to south, separating the fruitful and populous east from the barren serpent-haunted western district, and the strange fable that its natives were excused from tribute to the kings of the Franks in return for the service of ferrying the souls of the dead from the mainland to the shores of Britain.

2. Early Celtic Period to Union of Picts and Scots by Kenneth Macalpine.— It is to the Celts, the first known inhabitants of Britain, that our inquiry next turns. This people were not indigenous, but came by sea to Britain. A conjecture, not yet proved, identifies as inhabitants of Britain before the Celts a branch of the race now represented in Europe only by the Basques. Amongst many names of British tribes in Latin writers three occur, two with increasing frequency, as the empire drew near its close — Britons, Picts, and Scots — denoting distinct branches of the Celts. Britain was the Latin name for the larger island and Britons for its inhabitants; Albion, a more ancient title, has left traces in English poetry, and in the old name Alba or Albany for northern Scotland. The Britons in Roman times occupied, if not the whole island, at least as far north as the Forth and Clyde. Their language, British, called later Cymric, survives in modern Welsh and the Breton of Brittany. Cornish, which became extinct in the 17th century, was a dialect of the same speech. Its extent northwards is marked by the Cumbraes—the Islands of Cymry in the Clyde—and Cumberland, a district originally stretching from the Clyde to the Mersey.

The Picts, a Latin name for the northern tribes who preserved longest the custom of painting their bodies, called themselves Cruithne. Their original settlements appear to have been in the Orkneys, the north of Scotland, and the north-east of Ireland—the modern counties of Antrim and Down. They spread in Scotland, before or shortly after the Romans left, as far south as the Pentland Hills, which, like the Pentland Firth, are thought to preserve their name, occupied Fife, and perhaps left a detachment in Galloway. Often crossing, probably some times using, the deserted wall of Hadrian, they caused it to acquire their name,—a name of awe to the provincial Britons and their English conquerors. Their language, though Celtic, is still a problem difficult to solve, as so few words have been preserved. Its almost complete absorption in that of the Gaels or Scots suggests that it did not differ widely from theirs, and with this agrees the fact that Columba and his followers had little difficulty in preaching to them, though they sometimes required an interpreter. Some philologists believe it to have been more allied to Cymric, and even to the Cornish variety; but the proof is inconclusive.

The Scots came originally to Ireland, one of whose names from the 6th to the 13th century was Scotia; Scotia Major it was called after part of northern Britain in the 11th century had acquired the same name. Irish traditions represent the Scots as Milesians from Spain. Their Celtic name Gaidhil, Goidel, or Gael appears more akin to that of the natives of Gaul. They had joined the Picts in their attack on the Roman province in the 4th century, and perhaps had already settlements in the west of Scotland; but the transfer of the name was due to the rise and progress of the tribe called Dalriad, which migrated from Dalriada in the north of Antrim to Argyll and the Isles in the beginning of the 6th century. Their language, Gaidhelic, was the ancient form of the Irish of Ireland and the Gaelic of the Scottish Highlanders. No clear conclusion has been reached as to the meaning of Briton, Cruithne, Scot, and Gael.

The order of the arrival of the three divisions of the Celtic race and the extent of the islands they occupied are uncertain. Bede in the beginning of the 8th century gives the most probable account.

“This island at the present time contains five nations, the Angles, Britons, Scots, Picts, and Latins, each in its own dialect cultivating one and the same sublime study of divine truth. . . . The Latin tongue by the study of the Scriptures has become common to all the rest. At first this island had no other inhabitants but the Britons, from whom it derived its name, and who, carried over into Britain, as is reported, from Armorica, possessed themselves of the southern parts. When they had made themselves masters of the greatest part of the island, beginning at the south, the Picts from Scythia, as is reported, putting to sea in a few long ships, were driven by the winds beyond the shores of Britain, and arrived on the northern coast of Ireland, where, finding the nation of the Scots, they begged to be allowed to settle among them, but could not succeed in obtaining their request. The Scots answered that the island could not contain them both, but ‘ we can give you good advice what to do: we know there is another island not far from ours, to the east, which we often see at a distance, when the days are clear. If you go thither you will obtain a settlement ·, or, if any should oppose, you shall have our aid.’ The Picts accordingly, sailing over into Britain, began to inhabit the northern part of the island. In process of time Britain, after the Britons and Picts, received a third nation, the Scots, who, migrating from Ireland under their leader Renda, either by fair means or force secured those settlements amongst the Picts which they still possess.” “There is,” he says in another passage, “a very large estuary of the sea which formerly divided the nation of the Picts from the Britons, which gulf runs from the west far into the land, where to this day stands the strong city of the Britons called Alclyth. The Scots arriving on the north side of the estuary settled themselves there as in their own country.”

This statement in its main points (apart from the country from which the Picts are said to have come) is confirmed by Latin authors, in whose meagre notices the Picts appear before the Scots are mentioned, and both occur later than the Britons; by the legends of the three Celtic races; by the narratives of Gildas and Nennius, the only British Celtic historians, the Irish Annals, and the Pictish Chronicle. It is in harmony with the facts contained in the Life of Columba, written in the 7th century, but based on an earlier Life, by one of his successors, Cumine, abbot of Iona, who may have seen Columba, and must have known persons who had. The northern Britain brought before us in connexion with Columba in the latter half of the 6th century is peopled by Cruithne or Picts in the north and central Highlands, having their chief royal fort on the Ness, and by Scots in Argyll and the Isles, as far north as Iona and on the mainland Drumalban, the mountain ridge which separates Argyll from Perth and Inverness; there is a British king ruling the south-west from the rock on the Clyde then known as Alclyth or Alclyde, now Dumbarton; and Saxony, under Northumbrian kings, is the name given to the district south of the Forth, including the eastern Lowlands, where by this time Angles had settled. The scarcity of Celtic history belonging to Scotland indicates that its tribes were less civilized than their Irish and Welsh kin.

It is in the records of the Christian church that we first touch historic ground after the Romans left. Although the legends of Christian superstition are almost as fabulous as those of heathen ignorance, we can follow with reasonable certainty the conversion of the Scottish Celts. Three Celtic saints venerated throughout Scottish history —Ninian, Kentigern, Columba—Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, David, the patron saint of Wales, and Cuthbert, the apostle of Lothian and patron saint of Durham, belonging to the Celtic Church, though probably not a Celt, mark the common advance of the Celtic races from heathenism to Christianity between the end of the 4th and the end of the 6th century. The conversion of Scotland in the time of Pope Victor I. in the 2d century is unhistoric, and the legend of St Rule (Regulus) having brought the relics of St Andrew in the reign of Constantius from Achaea to St Andrews, where a Pictish king built a church and endowed lands in his honour, is, if historical at all, antedated by some centuries. There is no proof that amongst the places which the Romans had not reached, but which had accepted Christianity when Tertullian wrote, there was any part of modern Scotland; but, as Christian bishops from Britain without fixed locality begin to appear in the 4th century, possibly the first converts in Scotland had been made before its close.

Ninian (q.v. ), the son of a British chief in Galloway already Christian, after converting or reforming his countrymen—one of his converts being Tudwalla, king of Alclyde (? Tothael, father of

Rydderick Hael)—and organizing a diocese, went as a missionary to the southern Picts, who lived amongst or near the mountains north of the Forth and Clyde in the modern counties of Stirling, Perth, and Forfar. His fame grew with the church, and as far north as Shetland, as far south as Westmoreland and Northumberland, churches were dedicated in his name. His wonder-working relics in the shrine of Candida Casa (at Whithorn in Galloway) became an object of pilgrimage for more than a thousand years. Three other missionaries belong to the period between Ninian and Kentigern, his successor amongst the Britons of the west: Palladius, sent to the Christians in Ireland by Pope Celestine, died at Fordoun in Mearns labouring amongst the Picts, and his disciples Serf and Ternan converted respectively the Picts of Fife and those of the lowlands of Aberdeen. Kentigern (q.v.) of Strathclyde was supported by Rydderick or Roderick, called Hael (“the Liberal ”) from his bounty to the church. Columba visited Kentigern at the cemetery of Ninian, on the Molendinar Bum, where courtesies were interchanged between these representatives of the two branches of the Celtic Church in western Scotland, shortly before the British bishops declined at the meeting at St Augustine’s oak to submit to the Roman missionary who had converted the Saxons of southern England. Jocelyn of Furness states that Kentigern was at Rome seven times and obtained the privilege of being the pope’s vicar free from subjection to any metropolitan. The prince of Cumbria is even said to have acknowledged his precedency. These are inventions of a later age; but the large possessions, extending over the whole western kingdom, conferred by Rydderick, and after a long lapse of time found by the inquest of David I. when prince of Cumbria to have belonged to the see, may be historical. He died about the beginning of the 7th century, and a long period of darkness hides the British kingdom and church of Strathclyde. St Patrick (q.v.), succeeding where Palladius failed, Christianized Ireland in the middle of the 5th century. A passage in his Confession, if all of it applies to Scotland, seems to prove the existence of the church in Scotland for two generations before Patrick’s birth, and the allowance during these of marriage to the clergy.

Scotland gave Patrick to Ireland, and Ireland returned the gift in Columba. A rare good fortune has preserved in Adamnan’s Life the tradition of the acts of the greatest Celtic saint of Scotland, and a picture of the monastic Celtic Church in the 6th and 7th centuries, —an almost solitary fragment of history between the last of the Roman and the first of the Anglo-Saxon historians. Born in 521 at Gartan in Donegal, Columba (q.v.) spent his boyhood at Doire Eithne near Gartan, his youth at Moville on Strangford Lough under Abbot Finian, called the foster-father of the Irish saints from the number of his disciples. Here he was ordained deacon, and, after completing his education under Gemmian, a Christian bard, at the monastery of Clonard, he received priest’s orders. In 561 he took part in the battle of Culdrevny (in Connaught), when the chiefs of the Húi Neill (Dalriad Scots), his kindred, defeated Diarmid (Diarmait), a king of eastern Ireland. Excommunicated by the synod of Teltown in Meath, the country of Diarmid, for his share in the battle—according to one account fought at his instance —and moved by missionary zeal, he crossed two years afterwards the narrow sea which separates Antrim from Argyll with twelve companions and founded the monastery of Iona (Hy), on the little island to the west of Mull, given him by his kinsman Conall. The Dalriad Scots, who had settled in the western islands of Scotland and in Lorn early in the 6th century, were already Christians; but Columba soon after visited the Pictish king Brude, the son of Mailochon, at Craig Phadrich, the isolated hill fort on the Ness, whom he converted, and from whom he received a confirmation of Conall's grant. Columba, on the death of Conall, gave the sanction of religion to the succession of his cousin Aidan, and at the council of Drumceat in Derry obtained the exemption of the Dalriads of Iona from tribute, though they were still bound to give military service to the Irish king, the head of the Húi Néill. He frequently revisited Ireland and took part in its wars: the militant spirit is strongly marked in his character; but most of his time was devoted to the administration of his monastery of Iona, and to the planting of other churches and religious houses in the neighbouring isles and mainland, till his death in 597. None of the remains now found in almost every island—not even those in Iona itself—date from his time, when wood was still used for building. But the original foundations of the churches of Skye and Tiree were his work; those extending from Bute and Cantyre—on Islay, Oronsay, Colonsay, Mull, Eigg, Lewis, Harris, Benbecula, and even the distant St Kilda—to Loch Arkaig on the northern mainland of Scottish Dalriada are to be ascribed to him or his immediate followers or successors in the abbacy, as well as those in the country of the Picts, from the Orkneys to Deer in Buchan. The churches which received his name farther south were later foundations in his honour. The most celebrated of his disciples were Baithene, his successor as abbot; Machar, to whom the church of Aberdeen traces its origin; Cormac, the navigator, the first missionary to the Orkneys, who perhaps reached the Faroes and Iceland; and Drostan, the founder of the Scottish monastery of Deer.

The character of the Celtic Church of Columba was, like its mother church in Ireland, modified by migration to a country only in small part Christian. It was a missionary church, not diocesan but monastic, with an abbot who was a presbyter, not a bishop, for its head, though the office of bishop for ordination existed, and bishops were, in Ireland at least, more numerous than in the later church. It spread, not by the erection of parishes and the care of parochial clergy, but by the reproduction of similar monasteries, the homes of those who adopted a religious life, the only schools in an age of war. It preferred islands for its monasteries for safety, and, in the case of some of its members, who sought, in the language of those times, ‘‘ a desert in the ocean,” as hermitages where they might live and die apart from the world. But these were exceptions. The idea of the Celtic monastery was that of a Christian celibate society. Its inmates regarded themselves as being, and often were, members of a family or clan, preserving the customs of their race so far as consistent with celibacy and religious discipline. Of eleven successors of Columba as abbot nine were of his kin. The rule, though its confession is primitive, adapted to an infant and isolated church planted in a heathen world, did not differ greatly from that of later orders. Implicit obedience to the superior, poverty, chastity, hospitality, were the chief precepts. The observance of Easter according to the ancient cycle, the use of the semicircular instead of the coronal tonsure, and a peculiar ritual for mass and baptism were its chief deviations from the practice of the catholic church as fixed by the council of Nice, to which it yielded in the beginning of the 8th century; frequent prayer, the singing of psalms and hymns, the reading of Scripture, the copying and illuminating of MSS., the teaching of children and novices, and the labour to provide and prepare the necessary food (the service of women being excluded) were the occupations of the monks. A similar conventual system of which St Bridget, abbess of Kildare, was foundress enlisted the fervour of her sex, and had followers in Darlugdach, abbess of Kildare, who founded Abernethy, in Aebba at Coldingham, and in Hilda at Lindisfarne. It was a form of Christianity fitted to excite the wonder and gain the affection of the heathen amongst whom the monks came, practising as well as preaching the self-denying doctrine of the cross. The religion of the Celts is a shadowy outline on the page of history. Notices of idols are rare. They had not the art necessary for an ideal representation of the human form, though they learnt to decorate the rude stone monuments of an earlier age with elaborate tracery. They had no temples. The mysterious circles of massive stones, with no covering but the heavens, may have served for places of worship, as well as memorials of the more illustrious dead. The names of gods are conspicuously absent, though antiquaries trace the worship of the Sun in the Beltane fires and other rites; but in the account of their adversaries we read of demons whom they invoked. Divination by rods or twigs, incantations or spells, strange rites connected with the elements of water and of fire, “choice of weather, lucky times, the watching of the voice of birds,” are mentioned as amongst the practices of the Druids, a priestly caste revered for superior learning and, if we may accept Caesar as an authority, highly educated. This, rather than fetish or animal worship, appears to have been their cult. It was, so far as scanty indications allow a generalization, by an empirical knowledge of the minor and secondary rather than the greater phenomena of nature that the Druids of Britain and Ireland exercised influence,— the tempest and its elements—wind and rain and snow, thunder and lightning—rather than the sun, moon, and stars. Whatever its precise form, this religion made a feeble resistance to the Christian, taught by the monks, with learning drawn from Scripture and some acquaintance with Latin as well as Christian literature, and enforced by the example of a pure life and the hope of a future world. The charms of music and poetry, in which the Celt delighted, were turned to sacred use. Columba was a protector of the bards,—himself a bard.

“It is not with the ‘screod’ our destiny is,

Nor with the bird on the top of the twig,

Nor -with the trunk of a knotted tree,

Nor with a ‘ seadan ’ hand in hand.

I adore not the voice of birds,

Nor the ‘screod’ nor destiny nor lots in this world,

Nor a son nor chance nor woman;

My Druid is Christ the Son of God,

Christ, Son of Mary, the Great Abbot,

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

Adamnan relates miracles of Columba scarcely above the level of the practices of the Druids. But superstition is not vanquished by superstition. Celibacy was a protest against the promiscuous intercourse for which Christian fathers condemn the Celts. Fasts and vigils contrasted with the gross, perhaps cannibal, practices still in use. The intense faith in Christ, of lives such as Patrick’s and Columba’s, won the victory of the cross.

When we pass to civil history our knowledge is restricted to a list of names and battles; but the labours of recent scholars allow a brief account of the Celtic races from the end of the 6th to their union in the middle of the 9th century, in part hypothetical, yet a great advance on the absolute blank which made historians of the 18th century decline the task in despair.

The Britons, whose chief king had ruled at Alclyde, were separated from their fellow-countrymen, the Cymry in Wales, shortly after Columba’s death by the rapid advance of the Anglian kingdom of Northumberland, founded in the middle of the 6th century by Ida of Bamborough. One of his successors, Ethelfred, struck the blow, completed by the wars of the next king, Edwin, which severed modern Wales from British Cumbria and Strathclyde. Even Mona, the holy isle of both heathen and Christian Britons, became Anglesey, the island of the Angles. A later incursion towards the end of the century reached Carlisle and separated the kingdom of Alclyde, which had for its boundary the Catrail or Picts’ trench between Peel Fell and Galashiels, from English Cumbria (Cumberland south of the Solway), and reduced for a short time Strathclyde to a subject province. When Bede wrote in 731 an Anglian bishopric had been established at Whithorn, which continued till 803. The decline of the Northumbrian kingdom in the 8th century enabled the kings of Strathclyde to reassert their independence and maintain their rule within a restricted district more nearly answering to the valley of the Clyde, and in Galloway, in which there are some faint indications of a Pictish population, till it was united to the kingdom of Scone by the election of Donald, brother of Constantine II., king of the Scots, to its throne.

Of the Scots of Dalriada somewhat more is known. Their history is interwoven with that of the Picts and meets at many points that of the Angles of Northumberland, who during the 7th and the beginning of the 8th century, when their kings were the greatest in Britain, endeavoured to push their boundaries beyond the Forth and the Clyde. The history of this kingdom—see Northumberland (Kingdom of) —forms part of that of Scotland during these centuries. It planted in Lothian (q.v.) the seed from which the civilization of Scotland grew. To an early period of the contest between the Angles and the Britons, and to the country between the Forth and the Tweed and Solway, perhaps belong the battles magnified by successive poets who celebrated the hero of British mediaeval romance. Whether these battles were really fought in southern Scotland and on the borders, and Arthur’s Seat was one of his strongholds, still “unknown is the grave of Arthur.” Before Edwin’s death (633) his kingdom extended to the Forth, and the future capital of Scotland received the name of Edwinsburgh from him in place of the Mynyd Agned and Dunedin of the British and Gaelic Celts. During the reign of Oswald (635-642) the Northumbrians were reconverted by Aidan, a monk whom Oswald summoned from Iona; and who became monastic bishop of Lindisfarne—a southern Iona—from which the Celtic form of the Christian church spread amongst the Angles of the north and east of England, until the council of Whitby and the election of Wilfrid to the see of York restored the Roman ritual and diocesan episcopacy, when Colman, their Celtic bishop at Lindisfarne, retired with his monks to Iona. Oswald’s brother Oswy extended the dominion of Northumberland over a portion of the country of the northern Picts beyond the Forth. In his reign lived Cuthbert (q.v.), the apostle of Lothian, where the monastery of St Aebba at Coldingham, the church on the Bass, the three churches of St Baldred at Auldham, Tynninghame, and Preston, and the sanctuary of Wedale (Stow) kept alive the memory of the Celtic Church. His name is preserved in St Cuthbert’s church at Edinburgh and in Kirkcudbright. To the same period belong two inscriptions, tho earliest records of Anglian speech, one on the cross of Bewcastle in Cumberland, commemorating Alfred, a son of Oswy, the other, taken perhaps from a poem of Caedmon, at Ruthwell in Dumfries. Neither the Tweed nor the Solway was at this period a line of division. Oswy was succeeded by his son Egfrid (685), against whom the Picts successfully rebelled; and the Scots and a considerable part of the Britons also recovered their freedom. Anglian bishops, however, continued to hold the see of Whithorn during the whole of the 8th century. The Northumbrian kings, more successful in the west than in the east, gradually advanced from Carlisle along the coast of Ayr, and even took Alclyde. In what is now England their power declined from the middle of the 8th century before the rise of Mercia. Shortly before the commencement of the 9th century the descents of the Danes began, which . led to the conflict for England between them and the Saxons of Wessex. The success of the latter under Alfred and his descendants transferred the supremacy to the princes of the southern kingdom, who, gradually advancing northwards, before the close of that century united all England under their sceptre.

Before its fall Northumberland produced three great men, the founders of English literature and learning, though two of them wrote chiefly in Latin,—Caedmon, the monk of Whitby, the first English poet; Bede, the monk of Jarrow, the first English historian; and Alcuin, the monk of York, whose school might have become the first English university, had he not lived in the decline of Northumbrian greatness and been attracted to the court of Charlemagne. It is to this early dawn of talent among the Angles of Northumberland that England owes its name of the land of the Angles and its language that of English. The northern dialect spoken by the Angles was the speech of Lothian, north as well as south (in Northumberland) of the Tweed, and was preserved in the broad Scotch of the Lowlands, while modern English was formed from the southern dialect of Alfred, Chaucer, and Wycliffe. This early Teutonic civilization of the lowland district of Scotland, in spite of the Danish wars, the Celtic conquest, and border feuds, never died out, and it became at a later time the centre from which the Anglo-Saxon character permeated the whole of Scotland, without suppressing, as in England, the Celtic. Their union, more or less complete in different districts, is, after the difference in the extent of the Roman conquest, the second main fact of Scottish history, distinguishing it from that of England. Both, to a great degree, were the result of physical geography. The mountains and arms of the sea repelled invaders and preserved longer the ancient race and its customs.

It is necessary, before tracing the causes which led to the union of races in Scotland, to form some notion of northern Scotland during the century preceding Kenneth Macalpine, during which—the light of Adamnan and Bede being withdrawn—we are left to the guidance of the Pictish Chronicle and the Irish Annals. The Picts whom Columba converted appear to have been consolidated under a single monarch. Brude, the son of Mailochon, ruled from Inverness to Iona on the west and on the north to the Orkneys. A sub-king or chief from these islands appears at his court. The absence of any other Pictish king, the reception of the Columbite mission in Buchan under Drostan, a disciple of Columba, and perhaps Columba himself, the foundation of the church of Mortlach near Aberdeen by Machar, another of his disciples, favour the conclusion that the dominion of Brude included Aberdeen as well as Moray and Ross. Its southern limits are unknown.

The Picts of Stirling, Perth, and Forfar, corresponding to Strathearn and Menteith,—Athole and Gowrie, Angus and Mearns, had been already converted by Ninian in the 5th century—may have already come under a single king ruling perhaps at Abernethy, with mormaers under him. It seems certain that Abernethy was earlier than Dunkeld a centre of the Celtic Church distinct from Iona, and the seat of the first three bishops of Scotland. Its round tower cannot be safely ascribed to an earlier date than the 9th century, but may have been preceded by a church dedicated to St Bridget either in the 5th by Nechtan Morbet, or in the 6th century by Garnard, son of Donald, a later Pictish king. Although there exists a complete list of the Pictish kings from Brude, son of Mailochon, to Brude, son of Ferat, conquered by Kenneth Macalpine, and of the Scots of Dalriada from Aidan (converted by Columba) to Kenneth Macalpine, with their regnal years, it is only here and there that a figure emerges sufficiently distinct to enter history. Parts of these lists are fictitious and others doubtful, nor do we know over what extent of country the various monarchs ruled. Of the figures more or less prominent amongst the Pictish kings are Brude, the son of Derili, the contemporary of Adamnan, who was present at the synod of Tara when the law called Kain Adamnan, freeing women from military service, was adopted, and who died in 706, being then styled king of Fortren. Nechtan, another son of Derili, was the contemporary of Bede, who gives (710) the letter of Ceolfrid, abbot of Wearmouth, to him when he adopted the Roman Easter and the tonsure. Six years later Nechtan expelled the Columbite monks from his dominions. They retired to Dalriada, as their brethren in Northumberland had done when a similar change was made by Oswy. Nechtan also asked for masons to build a church in the Roman style, to be dedicated to St Peter, and several churches in honour of that apostle were founded within his territory. Shortly after, Egbert, an Anglian monk, persuaded the community of Hy (Iona) itself to conform, but too late to lead to the union of the churches of the Scots and the Picts, which were separated also by political causes.

Fifteen years later the greatest Pictish monarch, Angus MacFergus, after a contest with more than one rival, gained the supremacy, which he held for thirty years (731-761). In revenge for the capture of his son Brude by Dungal, son of Selvach, king of the Dalriad Scots, he attacked Argyll, and laid waste the whole country, destroying Dunnad (? on Loch Crinan), then the capital, burnt Creich (in Mull), and put in chains Dungal and Feradach, the sons of Selvach. He next conquered (739), and it is said drowned, Talorgan, son of Drostan, king of Athole, one of his rivals, and, resuming the Dalriad war, reduced the whole of the western Highlands. The Britons of Strathclyde were assailed by a brother of Angus, who fell in battle at Mugdoch in Stirling; and Angus, with his ally Ecbert, king of Northumberland, retaliated by burning Alclyde (756). About this time (752) Coilin Droighteach (the Bridgemaker), abbot of Iona, removed most of the relics of his abbey to Ireland, and this is the most probable date of the legend of the relics of St Andrew being brought from Patras to St Andrews, where the sons of a Pictish king, Hungus (Angus MacFergus), who was absent in Argyll, or, according to another version, Hungus himself, dedicated Kilrighmont (St Andrews) and the district called the Boar’s Chase to St Andrew. The ascription of the foundation to an earlier king of the same name in the 4th century was due to the wish to give the chief bishopric of Scotland an antiquity greater than Iona and Glasgow, greater even than Canterbury and York. After the death of Angus MacFergus no king is connected with any event of importance except Constantine, son of Fergus (died 820), who is said to have founded the church of Dunkeld,—226 years after Garnard, son of Donald, founded Abernethy. This fact, though the earlier date is not certain, points to the Perthshire lowlands as having been for a long time the centre of the chief Pictish monarchy. Probably Scone was during this period, as it certainly became afterwards, the political capital; and the kings latterly are sometimes called kings of Fortren. If so, the chief monarchy under the pressure of the Norse attacks had passed south from Inverness, having occupied perhaps at various times, Dunottar, Brechin, Forfar, Forteviot, and Abernethy as strongholds; but it is not possible to say whether there may not have continued to be independent Pictish rulers in the north.

The annals of Dalriada are even more perplexing than those of the Picts after the middle of the 6th century. There is the usual list of kings, but they are too numerous, and their reigns are calculated on an artificial system. The forty kings from Fergus MacEarc to Fergus MacFerchard, who would carry the date of the Scottish settlement back to three centuries at least before the birth of Christ, have been driven from the pale of history by modern criticism. The date of the true settlement was that of the later Fergus, the son of Earc, in 503. From that date down to Selvach, the king who was conquered by Angus MacFergus about 730, the names of the kings can be given with reasonable certainty from Adamnan, Bede, and the Irish Annals. But the subsequent names in the Scottish chronicles are untrustworthy, and it is an ingenious conjecture that some may have been inserted to cover the century following 730, during which Dalriada is supposed to have continued under Pictish rule. This view is not free from its own difficulties. It is hard to explain how Kenneth Macalpine, called by all Scottish records a Scot, though in Irish Annals styled (as are several of his successors) king of the Picts, succeeded in reversing the conquest of Angus MacFergus and establishing a Scottish line on the throne of Scone, in the middle of the 9th century. This difficulty is supposed to be solved by the hypothesis that Kenneth was the son of a Pictish father, Alpine, but of a Scottish mother, and was entitled to the crown by a peculiarity of Pictish law, which recognized descent by the mother as the test of legitimacy. The records which speak of the destruction of the Picts are treated as later inventions, and it is even doubted whether the connexion between Alpine and Kenneth and the older race of Dalriad kings is not fictitious. and Harold the Fairhaired, who in 872 became sole king of Norway, soon after led an expedition against the vikings, who had already seized Orkney and Shetland, and established an earldom under Rognwald, earl of Moeri, whose son Hrolf the Ganger conquered Normandy in the beginning of the next century. The position of Scotland, therefore, when Kenneth united the Picts and Scots was this: central Scotland from sea to sea—Argyll and the Isles, Perthshire, Angus and Mearns, and Fife—was under the dominion of the king who had Scone for his capital; the south-west district—the valley of the Clyde, Ayr, Dumfries, and Galloway—was under a British king at Dumbarton; the south-east district or Lothian was part of “Saxon or Sassenach Land,”—the general Celtic name for the country of the Anglo-Saxons, but now owing to the divided state of Northumberland held by different lords; the north of Scotland was under independent Celtic chiefs, as Moray and Mar, or already occupied by Norsemen, as Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, and the Hebrides. The whole Celtic population was Christian; but the Norse invaders were still heathen. Their religion was similar to that of their Anglo-Saxon kin, of a type higher than the paganism of the Celts. It resembled the Celtic indeed in the absence or infrequency of idols, but a complex mythology peopled heaven with gods—Woden and Thor, Freya and Balder, and others of inferior rank—devised legends of the origin of earth and man, Valhalla the hero’s paradise, and a shadowy hell for all who were not heroes. Some of its legends are coloured from Christian sources, and underneath the mythology may be detected a ruder and more ancient superstitious belief in omens and divination,—a nature-worship more like that of the Celts. But it is the later form which represents the Norse character as it was when it came into contact with the nations of Britain,—its daring defiance of man and the gods, its struggle with, yet in the end its calm acceptance of, the decrees of fate. The Norsemen both at home and in their colonies in Scotland embraced Christianity under Olaf Tryggvason in the end of the 10th century; but along with Christianity they retained the old heathen sentiments and customs, which, like their language, mingled with and modified the Celtic character on the western but far more on the northern coasts and islands, where the population was largely Norse. A strain neither Celtic nor Teutonic nor Norman occasionally meets us in Scottish history: it is derived from the blood or memory of the Norse vikings.

3. Later Celtic Period: Growth of the Kingdom of Scone from Kenneth Macalpine to Malcolm Canmore.— During this period, though the Celtic annals are still obscure, we can trace the united Celtic kingdom growing on all sides under Kenneth’s successors,—southward by the conquest of Lothian on the east and by the union of the Strathclyde kingdom on the west, and for a time by holding English Cumbria under the English kings, and northward by the gradual incorporation of Angus, Mearns, Moray, and possibly the southern district of Aberdeen. Kenneth Macalpine’s reign of sixteen years (844-860) was a time of incessant war. He invaded Saxony (Lothian) six times, burnt Dunbar, and seized Melrose (already a rich abbey, though on a different site from the Cistercian foundation of David I.), while the Britons (of Strathclyde) burnt Dunblane and the Danes wasted the land of the Picts as far as Cluny and Dunkeld. After they left Kenneth rebuilt the church of Dunkeld and replaced in it Columba’s relics. He died at Forteviot and was buried at Iona.

He was succeeded by his brother Donald I. (861-863), who, with his people the Gaels, established the laws of Aed, son of Eachdach, at Forteviot. Aed was a Dalriad king of the 8th century; but the contents of his laws are unknown.

Perhaps tanistry, by which the successor to the king was elected during his life from the eldest and worthiest of his kin, usually a collateral in preference to a descendant, was one feature, for it certainly prevailed amongst the Irish and Scottish Gaels. The next king, who succeeded in accordance with that custom, was Constantine I. (863- 877), son of Kenneth. His reign was occupied with conflicts with the Norsemen. Olaf the White, the Norse king of Dublin, laid waste the country of the Picts and Britons year after year, and in 870 reduced Alclyde, the British capital; but, as he disappears from history, he probably fell in a subsequent raid. He is said to have married a daughter of Kenneth, and some claim in her right may account for his Scottish wars. In the south the Danish leader Halfdan devastated Northumberland and Galloway; while in the north Thorsten the Red—a son of Olaf by Audur, the wealthy daughter of Ketil Flatnose (called Finn, “the Fair,” by the Celts), a Norse viking of the Hebrides, who afterwards went to Iceland and figures in the sagas—conquered the coast of Caithness and Sutherland as far as Ekkials Bakki (the Oikel). But he was killed in the following year. Constantine met with the same fate at a battle at Inverdovat in Fife in 877, at the hands of another band of northern marauders. His death led to a disputed succession. His heir, according to the custom of tanistry, was his brother Aodh, who was killed by his own people after a year. Eocha, the son of Run, a king of the Britons, claimed in right of his mother, a daughter of Kenneth, according to the Pictish law, and governed at first along with Ciric or Grig, his tutor; then Grig ruled alone, until they were both expelled from the kingdom and Donald II., son of Constantine, came to the throne (889). The Pictish Chronicle reports that during the government of Grig the Scottish Church was freed from subjection to the laws of the Picts (meaning probably from liability to secular service). Grig is also said to have subdued all Bernicia and “almost Anglia,” a statement which if confined to the north of the Northumbrian kingdom is not improbable, for it had then fallen into anarchy through the attacks of the Danes. The church of Ecclesgreig near Montrose possibly commemorates Grig and indicates the northward extension of the monarchy of Scone. In the reign of Donald II. (889-900), son of Constantine I., Scotland was again attacked by the Norsemen. Sigurd, the Norse earl of Orkney, seized Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, and part of Moray, where he built the fort of Burghead, between the Findhorn and the Spey. Farther south the Danes took Dunnottar, where Donald was slain. After his time the name of the kingdom of Scone was no longer Pictavia, but Albania or Alba, a more ancient title of northern Scotland, perhaps resumed to mark the growth of the Scottish-Pictish monarchy in the central and eastern Highlands.

Donald II. was followed by Constantine II. (900-940), son of Aodh and grandson of Kenneth, and his long reign is a proof of his power. He was the greatest Scottish king, as Angus MacFergus had been the greatest of the pure Pictish race. In the first part of it his kingdom was still beset by the Norsemen. In his third year they wasted Dunkeld and all Alba. Next year they were repulsed in Strathearn. In his 8th year Rognwald, the Danish king of Dublin, with earls Ottir and Oswle Crakaban, ravaged Dunblane. Six years later the same leaders were defeated on the Tyne (? in East Lothian) by Constantine, who had been summoned to assist Eldred, lord of Barnborough. Ottir was slain, but Rognwald escaped and reappears some years later as king of Northumberland. This is a battle whose site and incidents are told in a conflicting manner by different chronicles; but it appears certain that Constantine saved his dominions from further serious attacks by the vikings. He had now to meet a more formidable foe,—the West Saxons, whose kings, the descendants of Alfred, were steadily moving northwards. In spite of his wars, Constantine found time in the early part of his reign for two important reforms,—one ecclesiastical, the other civil. In his sixth year (906) he, along with Cellach, bishop of St Andrews—the first of twelve Celtic bishops of Scotland—swore on the Hill of Faith at Scone (906) that “the laws and discipline of the faith, and the rights of the churches and the gospel, should be preserved on an equal footing with the Scots.” This obscure notice of the Pictish Chronicle indicates the establishment or restoration of the Scottish Church, which the Pictish kings had oppressed, to an equality with that of the Pictish. As a sign of the union the crozier of St Columba, called Cathbuadth (“victory in battle”), was borne before Constantine’s armies. Two years later, on the death of Donald, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, Constantine procured the election of his own brother Donald to that kingdom. Though he thus strengthened church and state, Alfred’s successors were too powerful for him. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records of Edward the Elder, that in 924, having built a fort at Bakewell, in the Peak of Derbyshire, “the king and nation of the Scots, Rognwald the Northumbrian and others, and also the king of the Strathclyde Welsh and his people, chose him for father and lord.” His son Athelstan is related by the same authority to have subjugated all the kings in the island, amongst whom are mentioned by name Howell king of the west Welsh, Constantine king of the Scots, Owen king of Gwent, and Eldred of Bamborough, who “made peace with oaths at Emmet and renounced every kind of idolatry.” These entries are not beyond suspicion. The Peak was a distant point for the Scottish king. Rognwald, the Northumbrian, died in 920, according to the Irish Annals. Howell and Constantine were already Christians and could not have then renounced idolatry. If there is any truth in the submission of the Scots to Edward the Elder it did not last, for some years later the Chronicle states that Athelstan went into Scotland with a land and sea force and ravaged a great part of it. A league of the northern kings against Athelstan was dispersed (937) by his great victory at Brunanburgh (? Wendun, between Aldborough and Knaresborough, according to Skene). The forces allied against him were those of Constantine, his son-in-law Olaf, son of Sitric (called also the Red), and another Olaf, son of Godfrey, from Ireland, besides the Strathclyde and north Welsh kings. For Athelstan there fought, in addition to his own West Saxons, the Mercians and some mercenaries from Norway, amongst them Egil, son of Skalagrim, the hero of a famous Icelandic saga. No greater slaughter had been known since the Anglo-Saxons, “proud war-smiths,” as their poet calls them, overcame the Welsh and gained England. A son of Constantine was slain, four kings, and seven earls. Constantine himself escaped to Scotland, where in old age he resigned the crown for the tonsure and became abbot of the Culdees of St Andrews. Athelstan died two years after Brunanburgh, but before his death granted Northumberland to Erik Bloody-Axe, son of Harold Haarfagr, who was almost immediately expelled by the Irish Danes. Athelstan, even after so great a victory, could not annex Northumberland, much less Scotland, to his dominions.

Constantine’s successor, Malcolm I. (943-954), son of Donald II., began his reign by invading Moray and killing Cellach, its chief king. Meantime the Danish kings of Dublin had been endeavouring to maintain their hold on Northumberland with the aid of the Cumbrians, whose country they had already settled, and in this attempt the two Olafs had a temporary success; but Eadmund, the successor of Athelstan, expelled Olaf, son of Sitric, from Northumberland, and in the following year, to prevent the Cumbrians from again aiding the Danes, he “harried Cumberland and gave it all up to Malcolm, king of Scots, on condition that he should be his fellow-worker both on sea and land.” This was the same policy which led his father to call in the aid of Erik Bloody-Axe. The kings of Wessex wisely granted what they could not hold to the best northern warrior, Celt or Scandinavian, under conditions which acknowledged more or less strictly their supremacy. The Cumbria so granted was the country south of the Solway to the Dee, but it may also have included Strathclyde, for at this period Strathclyde Waelas and Cumbrians are frequently used as equivalent names. Malcolm lent no aid to Erik Bloody-Axe, when in the reign of Eadred he tried (949) to recover Northumberland, but he joined his brother-in-law Olaf, Sitric’s son, in an expedition with the same object, when they laid waste the country as far south as the Tees. Three years later Erik again returned, and finally drove Olaf back to Ireland, where he founded the kingdom of Dublin, which lasted till the battle of Clontarf. Malcolm died fighting either against the men of Mearns or of Moray. Three kings followed (954-971),—Indulf, son of Constantine, Duff, son of Malcolm, Colin, son of Indulf; in the reign of Indulf the Northumbrians evacuated Edinburgh, which thenceforward was Scottish ground. A Saxon burgh, a fort, perhaps a town, was now for the first time within the Celtic kingdom.

Kenneth II. (971-995), son of Malcolm, soon after his accession made a raid on Northumberland as far south as Cleveland. The statement of two English chroniclers (John of Wallingford and Henry of Huntingdon), that Lothian was ceded to him by Eadgar on condition of homage, and that the people should still use the language of the Angles, is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon or any Scottish chronicle. Nor is it easy to believe the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as amplified by Florence of Worcester, that Kenneth was one of the kings who rowed Eadgar on the Dee in sign of homage. At this time, in the north and west, the Orkney earls were all-powerful, and Kenneth was occupied with contests nearer his own territory,—especially with the mormaer of Angus, whose grandson, through his daughter Fenella, he slew at Dunsinane, and in revenge for which he was himself treacherously killed at Fettercairn in Mearns by Fenella, whose name is still preserved in the traditions of that district. The foundation of the church at Brechin is attributed to this king.

Kenneth was followed, as he had been preceded, by insignificant kings,—Constantine, son of Colin, and Kenneth, son of Duff. His son, Malcolm II. (1005-34), gained the throne by the slaughter of his predecessor Duff at Monzievaird, and at once turned his arms southwards; but his first attempt to conquer northern Northumberland was repelled by Ethelred, son of Waltheof, its earl, who defeated him at Durham. About the same time Sigurd, earl of Orkney, having defeated Finlay, mormaer of Moray, became ruler, according to the Norse saga, of “Ross and Moray, Sutherland and the dales” of Caithness. He had conflicts with other Scottish chiefs, but appears to have made terms with the kings of both Norway and Scotland, —with Olaf Tryggvason by becoming Christian and with Malcolm by marrying his daughter. He fell at Clontarf (1014), the memorable battle near Dublin, by which Brian Boru and his son Murcadh defeated the Danish kings in Ireland and restored a Celtic dynasty. Malcolm conferred the earldom of Caithness on his grandson Thorfinn, the infant son of Sigurd; and Sigurd’s Orkney earldom fell to his sons, Somerled, Brusi, and Einar; while Moray again came into the possession of a Celtic mormaer, Finlay, who is called king of Alba by one of the Irish chronicles, and the Hebrides probably into that of a Norse earl, Gilli, from whom they were afterwards recovered by Thorfinn. While the Celts of Ireland were thus expelling the Danish invaders and in Scotland there was divided possession, the result of compromise and of intermarriage, England fell under the dominion of the Danish kings Sweyn and Canute. Canute committed Northumberland to Erik, a Dane, as earl; but Eadulf Cudel, a weak brother of the brave Oswulf and son of Waltheof, the Anglian earl, still retained the northern district as lord of Bamborough. Profiting by the distracted state of northern England, Malcolm again invaded Northumberland with Owen of Cumbria, called the Bald, and by the victory of Carham (1018) near Coldstream won Lothian, which remained from that time an integral part of Scotland. Canute, on his return from a pilgrimage to Rome, is said by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to have gone to Scotland, where Malcolm and two other kings, Maelbeth and Jehmarc, submitted to him, but he held Scotland for only a little while. Maelbeth is supposed to be Macbeth, then mormaer of Moray, afterwards king, and Jehmarc, a Celtic or Scandinavian chief in Argyll. The hold which Canute, who was trying to grasp Norway and Denmark as well as England, had upon northern Britain must have been slender as well as short; but the acknowledgment of the supremacy of so great a king was natural. At his death his overgrown empire fell to pieces, and Scotland was left to itself. Two years before Malcolm II. died. His conquest of Lothian perhaps led to the new name of Scotia (now generally applied to his kingdom), which was to become its permanent name. The Scotland he governed still had its centre at Scone, but included besides the original Pictish district of Perthshire, Angus and Mearns, Fife, the southern district of Aberdeen, and Lothian, his own conquest, while Moray and western Ross, and perhaps Argyll and the Isles, owned his suzerainty. But the Norse earl, Thorfinn, at this time held the Orkneys, Caithness, Sutherland, and the Hebrides, whether a Cumbrian king still ruled Strathclyde and Galloway is doubtful. After Owen the Bald, who fought at Carham, the next king mentioned is Duncan, son of the grandson and the successor of Malcolm. Malcolm II. was liberal to the church, as we know from his gifts to the church of Deer; but the foundation of Mortlach (Banffshire), the future see of Aberdeen, belongs to the reign of Malcolm Canmore. The laws attributed to him are spurious, introducing into the Celtic kingdom a fully developed feudalism, which was not known in England, still less in Scotland, till after the Conquest. As he left no male heir, Malcolm’s death led to a doubtful succession and a perplexed period of Scottish history.

The Scottish historians and the Norse sagas can with difficulty be reconciled. Little light can be got from either the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or the Irish Annals. Shakespeare seized the weird story of Macbeth, as told by Boece and translated in Holinshed, and history can hardly displace the tragedy, so true to the dark side of human nature, by the meagre outline at its command. This outline is supported by authentic evidence, and agrees with the situation which existed between the death of Malcolm II. and the accession of Malcolm Canmore.

Malcolm II. was succeeded by his grandson Duncan (1034-40), son of his daughter Bethoc and Crinan, a lay or secular abbot of Dunkeld; but his right was probably from the first contested by Thorfinn, who had become the most powerful of the Norse earls. If the Orkney saga could be relied upon, he had as many as eleven earls or mormaers subject to him, and a modern but unsafe in-

terpretation of one passage extends his dominion as far as Galloway. Duncan, after an unsuccessful attempt on Durham, turned his arms to the north to check the further advance of his kinsman, but was defeated on the Pentland Firth. Moddan, whom he had tried to set up as earl of Caithness, was burnt in his own house, and Duncan himself was killed at Bothgownan near Elgin by Macbeth, his own general. Macbeth was son of Finlay, mormaer of Moray, and his wife Gruoch was daughter of Boete, son of Kenneth II.; thus he had a possible pretension to the crown if it could descend by females. But his real position appears to have been that of a successful general asserting the independence of the northern Celts against Duncan, who by his marriage with the daughter of Earl Siward, the Northumbrian earl, had shown the tendency to unite Saxon with Celtic blood which was followed by his son Malcolm (III.) Canmore. Macbeth reigned seventeen years (1040-57). He was, as far as records state, an able monarch, who succeeded in repelling the attacks of Siward on behalf of his grandson, who showed liberality to the church, as the foundation of himself and his wife at Loch Leven testify, sent money for the poor to Rome, and possibly went with it on a pilgrimage; but he fell at last in the battle of Lumphanan in Mar, where the young Malcolm was aided by Tostig, son of Godwine, the great West Saxon earl who had become earl of Northumberland. A few months later, Lulach, the son of Gillecomhain, a former mormaer of Moray, who had continued the war, and is nominally counted a king, though called fatuous, was slain at Essie in Strathbogie (N.W. Aberdeen), and Malcolm Canmore became king. With his reign a new and clearer era of the history of Scotland commences.

The Scottish Gaels had proved themselves capable of government. The united monarchy of Scone lasted for two centuries in spite of its powerful neighbours, but it was dependent almost entirely on the attachment of the clans to their chiefs and of the whole race to the hereditary king. It was traditional, not constitutional, with some accepted customs, otherwise it could not have held together, but with little settled law and no local government. It wanted the elements of civil life, for it had no organized towns or assemblies of the people. There was little commerce or trade. Cattle and sheep were the chief commodities and the medium of exchange. There is no trace of an independent coinage. Christianity had not yet leavened the whole population, though the monasteries were centres of light within limited circles. The Celtic character, alien to set and quick forms of business, was alive to the pleasures of the imagination, oratory, and song. Its cardinal defect was a light regard for truth. Its chief virtue was devotion to a leader, whether priest, chief, or king. The Christian Anglo-Saxons of the Lothians, the Norsemen, only recently and half converted, in the islands of the north and west, brought qualities and customs into the common stock of the future Scottish people which were wanting to the Celts. The Anglo-Saxon in his original home, as in Britain the inhabitant of the plain—“the creeping Saxon,” as he was called by an Irish bard—developed in the house and the town a better regulated freedom,—the domestic and civic virtues. His imagination, even his poetry, had a touch of prose, but he possessed the prosaic qualities of plain speech, common sense, and truth,—the essence of trust. The contact—for it was a contact, not a conquest—with this race was of the highest value to the Scottish nation of the future. The Normans introduced new elements, the spirit of chivalry and the too rigid bonds of the feudal law. The changes due to these new elements began in Scotland in the reign of Malcolm Canmore, and were completed in those of his descendants. The Scottish Celtic kingdom became gradually civilized under Saxon and Norman influences, while retaining its native vigour. The result was the establishment of the independence of Scotland within its present bounds during the prosperous reigns of the Alexanders (1107-1285).

4. Transition from a Celtic to an Anglo-Norman Feudal Monarchy: Malcolm Canmore and his Descendants.--

Malcolm Canmore (1058-93) spent his boyhood in Cumbria, his youth at the court of Edward the Confessor of England. He was by race only half a Celt, for his mother was an Anglo-Dane, sister of Earl Siward. The court which helped to form his character was already sub- ject to Norman influence. The Confessor, like Canmore, had been educated in exile, at the Norman court, and favoured the Normans. Though the course of events led Malcolm to ally himself with the Anglo-Saxon royal house, the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods of Scottish history were not, as in England, separated by several centuries, but were nearly contemporaneous. If Malcolm, Edgar, and the first Alexander may be regarded as Scoto-Saxon, David I. and his successors were truly Scoto-Norman feudal monarchs. Apart from the customs and language of Lothian, which descended from Anglian Northumberland, Scotland received scarcely any pure Saxon institutions. Those it did receive have a mixed Saxon and Norman imprint. There were no tithings, wapentakes, or hundreds, no trial by compurgation, no frankpledge. No witenagemot or folkmotes preceded the great council which became parliament. In short, the system of government we call the Anglo-Saxon constitution never existed in Scotland, although the court of the four southern burghs and the customs of the towns of Lothian copied from those of Newcastle, and a similar association of burghs, the Hanse of Aberdeen, of which there are faint traces in the north, had a Teutonic origin. And some traces of Anglo-Saxon criminal law are to be found in the early Scottish charters.

Canmore ascended the throne (1058) not long before England was subjugated by William the Conqueror. The only recorded event of his reign prior to the Conquest was his quarrel with Tostig, his “sworn” brother, when he made a raid south of the Tweed and violated the peace of St Cuthbert by ravaging Lindisfarne. The early years of his reign were devoted to establishing his rule in the northern districts, where his marriage to Ingebiorg, widow of Earl Thorfinn, related by the Norse but not the Scottish writers, may have aided him. Ingebiorg, already old,, cannot have long survived the union, nor is the fact of the marriage certain. The victory of Hastings brought to the Scottish court as refugees Edgar Atheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside, and his three sisters. Their father, Edward, had found shelter in Hungary in the reign of Canute and married an Hungarian princess. The eldest daughter of the marriage, Margaret, became the wife (1068) of Malcolm Canmore. Her virtues more than his wars make his reign an epoch of Scottish history. This alliance and the advance of the Conqueror on Northumberland in the third year of his reign rendered a collision inevitable. Malcolm twice harried Northumberland during the reign of the Conqueror with the view of restoring the Atheling. In the interval between these expeditions William retaliated by invading Scotland as far as Abernethy, where he forced Malcolm to do homage. After the second he sent his son Robert, who reached Falkirk; but he returned without having accomplished anything, except that he built Newcastle as a frontier fortress. In this reign Northumberland itself was never really subdued, and William laid waste the district between the Humber and the Tees as a barrier against the northern Angles and Danes. After the Conqueror’s death Malcolm prepared for war, but peace was made before he had left Lothian, and he again took an oath of homage. Next year William Rufus succeeded in reducing Cumbria south of the Solway, then held by Dolphin, lord of Carlisle, a vassal of Malcolm, rebuilt the castle of Carlisle, and made the adjoining country for the first time English. He then summoned Malcolm to Gloucester; but the meeting ended, like others when a summons to do homage at a distance from the border was sent to the kings of Scotland, in settling both in a more hostile attitude. Malcolm on his return raised his whole forces for the last expedition of his life, in which he was slain (1093) in an ambuscade near Alnwick by Morel of Bamborough. He left to his successor a kingdom bounded on the south by the Tweed, the Cheviots, and the Solway, though there was much debatable land along the borders, and the English king claimed Lothian as successor of the Northumbrian Angles, while the Scotch claimed English Cumberland as a dependency dating from the grant of Eadgar. Malcolm’s defeat of the mother of Maelsnechtan, son of Lulach and mormaer of Moray, is the only event recorded to indicate that his relations with the Celtic population were not peaceful, but the materials are too scanty to make it clear how far the northern chiefs asserted their independence. The foundation of Mortlach by Malcolm is proof that the Aberdeen lowlands at least were within his dominion.

The brightest side of Malcolm’s reign was the reform due to Margaret. Her life by Theodoric, a monk of Durham, or her confessor, Turgot, though coloured by partiality for a good woman, the patron of the church, bears the marks of a true portrait. The miraculous element in the lives of the Celtic saints, diminished but still present in Bede, disappears. The chief changes in the Celtic Church effected by Margaret with the aid of monks sent by Lanfranc from Canterbury were the observance of Lent, the reception of the Eucharist at Easter, which had fallen into neglect, the use of the proper ritual in the mass, the prohibition of labour on the Lord’s day, and of marriage between persons related by affinity. She restored Iona, long desecrated, founded the church of Dunfermline in commemoration of her marriage, and protected the hermits, still common in the Scottish Church. Her severe fasts and her liberality to the sick and aged are especially noted. She washed the feet of the poor and fed children with food she had prepared, procured freedom for captives, and on either side of the ferry called Queensferry after her she erected hostelries for pilgrims. Nor did her piety lead her to neglect domestic duties. The rude manners of the Celtic court were refined by her example. The education of her children, her chief care in her husband’s frequent absence, was rewarded by the noble character of the saintly David and the good Queen Maude. She did not long survive her husband: hearing of his death she thanked the Almighty for enabling her to bear such sorrow, to cleanse her from sin, and after receiving the sacrament died praying. The chapel on the castle rock at Edinburgh, erected in her memory, is the oldest building now existing in Scotland, with the exception of the meagre ruins of the Celtic Church in the western Highlands.

After Malcolm’s death there was a fierce contest for the crown (1093-97), which showed that the union of Celtic and Saxon blood was not yet complete in the royal house, much less in the nation. Before the corpse of Margaret could be removed to Dunfermline for burial, Donald Bain, brother of Malcolm Canmore, besieged the castle, and its removal was only accomplished under cover of mist. Donald, who had the support of the Celts and the custom of tanistry in favour of his Claim, was king nominally at least six months, when he was expelled by Duncan, son of Malcolm and Ingebiorg, assisted by an English force, in which there were Normans as well as Saxons; but his tenure was equally short, and Donald, aided by Edmund, the only degenerate son of Malcolm and Margaret, who slew his half-brother Duncan, again reigned three years. This was the last attempt of the Celts—though partial risings continued frequent—to maintain a king of their race and a kingdom governed according to their customs. Edgar Atheling, who had become reconciled to the Norman king, led an army into Scotland and by a hard-fought battle dispossessed Donald and restored his eldest nephew, Edgar, to his father’s throne.

The reign of Edgar (1097-1107) was unimportant. chief event was the cession of the Sudreyar or islands on the west coast to the Norse king Magnus Barefoot, who also conquered Man and Anglesea. The terms of the treaty which, after two expeditions, he extorted from Edgar were that every island was to be his between which and the mainland a helm-bearing ship could pass, and by carrying one across the mainland he included Cantyre. Magnus was killed in Ulster; but the Hebrides remained in the hands of the Norse kings or lords, and acknowledged their sway till the battle of Largs ( 1263). Their cession was the necessary price for the consolidation of the Scottish monarchy in the south of the kingdom. Edinburgh was the capital of Edgar, a circumstance which marked the removal of the centre of the kingdom to its southern and Saxon district. His standard had been blessed at Durham when he recovered the crown, and it was to Durham or Dunfermline, where he was buried, that his benefactions were made. Iona had passed into the hands of Magnus, but he, being a Christian, respected its sanctity. Scone was henceforth only the scene of the coronation ceremony.

Edgar, dying childless, was succeeded by his brother

Alexander I. (1107-24). Educated by his mother, and after her death in England, Alexander, like his brothers, brought to the government of Scotland Saxon combined with Norman culture. The singular will by which Edgar left Cumbria to his younger brother David was not to Alexander’s taste; but the support which the Saxon population and the Norman barons, now beginning to hold land in that district, gave to David forced his brother to acquiesce in the division of the kingdom. It was now restricted to Lothian, Merse, and the country beyond the firths, as far as Mar and Buchan. His hold of Moray and Ross, Sutherland and Caithness, must have been rather as suzerain than as sovereign; the mainland of Argyll was now or soon after in the possession of Somerled, ancestor of the lords of the Isles; the northern isles (Nordreyar) as well as the Sudreyar remained Norse. The chief towns of Alexander were Edinburgh, Stirling, Inverkeithing, Perth, and Aberdeen. At Scone he founded a monastery for canons of St Augustine; but St Andrews was still the sole Scottish bishopric. Alexander married Sibylla, a natural daughter of Henry I. of England, and secured peace with that country. His only recorded war was with the men of Mearas and Moray, who surprised him at Invergowrie. He pursued them to the Moray Firth, where a signal victory (1114) gained for him the epithet of “The Fierce.” The change from the Celtic to the Roman form of church government commenced by his mother and his brother Edgar was continued. Anselm congratulated him on his accession, and asked protection for monks sent to Scotland at Edgar’s request. On the death of Fothad, the last Celtic bishop of St Andrews, Alexander procured the election of Turgot, his mother’s confessor and prior of Durham. His consecration was delayed through a dispute between Canterbury and York, and, having failed to effect the anticipated reforms, he went back to Durham. On his death Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury and chronicler of note, was selected for the office by Ralph, archbishop of Canterbury. The choice was confirmed by the clergy and people; but a quarrel with Alexander as to his investiture led to his return to Canterbury. Robert, prior of Scone, became bishop in the year of Alexander’s death, but his consecration also had to be put off. These disputes as to the consecration and investiture of the bishop of St Andrews turned on the rival claims of Canterbury and York to be the metropolitan of Scotland, and the refusal of Alexander to cede the independence of the Scottish Church, though anxious for an English monk to organize the diocese. National feeling was already strong in Scotland, even in a king with English sympathies.

λVithout the aid of Turgot or Eadmer, Alexander himself laid the foundation of diocesan episcopacy. The first bishops of Dunkeld and Moray date from his reign, and the first parish on record, Ednam in Roxburghshire. At Inchcolm, as well as Scone, he introduced the canons regular of Augustine, and on an island of Loch Tay a cell from Scone was built in memory of his wife Sibylla. He restored the “Boar’s Chase” to St Andrews and increased the endowments of Dunfermline. The offices of chancellor, constable, and sheriff also now appear; and the mormaers of the Celtic districts are designed as earls (comites) in one of his charters. The transition from the Celtic to the feudal monarchy had begun. Alexander was a learned monarch, like his father-in-law Henry Beauclerk, pious and friendly to the church, but severe to his subjects.

David I. (1124-53), the youngest son of Malcolm and Margaret, became king at the ripe age of forty-four. He had been trained at the court of Henry I. and his sister Matilda, so that “his manners were polished from the rust of Scottish barbarity.” After Edgar’s death he served an apprenticeship for the royal office as earl or prince of Cumbria, where his power was little short of regal. He married a Saxon, the daughter of Waltheof, earl of Northumberland, widow of Simon de St Liz, Norman earl of Northampton and his friends and followers were chiefly Norman. His marriage brought him the earldom of Huntingdon, and he was guardian of the earldom of Northampton during his stepson’s minority, so that he entered into feudal relations with the Norman king of England. In the government of his principality he succeeded in reducing a wild part of Scotland into order, using for this purpose the agency of the church.

The history of the church in Strathclyde since Kentigern’s death is obscure. The records of York claim the consecration of a bishop of Glasgow in the middle of the 11th and another at the commencement of the 12th century; but they are unknown in the records of Glasgow, and were perhaps invented to support the metropolitan claim of York over that see. Glasgow certainly was restored after some considerable lapse in the person of John, the tutor of David, who at his request was consecrated by Pope Paschal II. This was a parallel step to the summons of Turgot and Eadmer to St Andrews, but David, like Alexander, maintained the independence of his own bishopric, and, though pope after pope sent letters and legates exhorting obedience to York, neither John nor his successors yielded it. A new see erected at Carlisle by Henry I. and the restoration of Whithorn by Henry II., both subject to York, were counter measures on the part of the English sovereigns. The independence of the Scottish from the English Church (with the exception of Galloway and some places of Lothian still under Durham) thus asserted by the rulers of Scotland was of great moment in its subsequent history, and was promoted by the liberality of David and his brothers. The inquest by David’s order by which the land of the see of Glasgow was made may refer to ancient possession, but it had the effect of a new grant. Its extent—covering lands in the dales of the Clyde, Tweed, Teviot, Annan, Nith, and in Ayrshire—corresponds to the district of Cumbria under David and, with slight deviations, to the future diocese of Glasgow. While David’s province did not include all of ancient Cumbria, it did include some parts of ancient Lothian, the future shires of Berwick, Roxburgh, and Selkirk. The Cumbrian nobles were a mixed class,— some Saxon and others Norman. There were few of pure Celtic blood.

Three years after his accession David was present at the council of London, where, along with the English barons, he swore to accept his niece Matilda as the successor of Henry I., who had lost his only son by the shipwreck of the “White Ship.” Soon after a rising of Scottish Celts under a natural son of Alexander and Angus, a grandson of the mormaer of Moray, was defeated at Stracathro (Forfar) by David’s troops in his absence in England, and four years later another under Wimund, who pretended to be Malcolm MacHeth, a chief in Ross, aided by Somerled of Argyll, who had acquired some of the adjacent isles, was put down by Wimund’s capture. The death of Henry I. and the claim of Stephen to the English throne led to the invasion of England by David, in support of Matilda, with an army drawn from all parts of his kingdom, —the men of Galloway, Cumbria, Teviotdale, Lothian, Lennox, the Isles, Scotia (the country south of the Forth or Scots Water), and Moray. Their defeat at the battle of the Standard at Cuton Moor (1138) near Northallerton by the barons of northern England was due to the want of discipline of the men of Galloway, and, though signal, was not decisive. At Carlisle peace was made on condition that David’s son Henry should hold Northumberland as an earldom under Stephen, with the exception of the castles of Bamborough and Newcastle. David gave hostages, but retained Carlisle and Cumberland without any condition of homage. Two years later, when Matilda seized London, David joined her; but she was unable to maintain her advantage. David was forced to return to Scotland, and did not again engage in active hostilities against Stephen. His death was preceded by that of his only son; but his power was so firm that he procured the acknowledgment of his grandson Malcolm, a boy of twelve, as successor to the Scottish crown, while William, his younger grandson, succeeded to Northumberland and the English fiefs his father had held.

The comparative peace of his last twelve years gave David opportunity for the ecclesiastical and civil organization of the kingdom. He found three and left nine bishoprics, adding to St Andrews, Moray, and Dunkeld the new sees of Glasgow, Brechin, Dunblane, Aberdeen (transferred from Mortlach), Ross, and Caithness. Closely connected with their establishment was the suppression of the Celtic Culdees at Dunkeld. St Andrews, and Loch Leven, and perhaps also at Dunblane and Dornoch, where canons regular of St Augustine became the chapters of the bishop. The abbeys, chiefly Cistercian, which he founded were Holyrood, Newbattle, Melrose, Jedburgh, Kelso, Cambuskenneth, Urquhart, and Kinloss. He added to the endowments of his father and mother at Dunfermline, and so lessened the crown lands that James I. called him “a sore saint for the crown.” The division into dioceses stimulated the formation of parishes endowed by the bishops or by the lords of the manor; but the first steps of the parochial division of Scotland are obscure. The diocesan episcopate now included the whole of Scotland except what was held by the Norsemen, who had bishops of their own for the Orkneys and the western isles, subject to the metropolitan of Drontheim. It preceded the civil division into sheriffdoms, which also began in this reign, but took a longer period to complete. The Celtic chiefs in the north and in Galloway were as yet too powerful to allow royal officers to hold courts within their territory, and regalities with the full rights of the crown in matters of justice were more lavishly granted in Scotland than in England, where they were confined to the few palatine earls or bishops on the border. The feudal system in Scotland, erroneously antedated to the reign of Malcolm II. or Malcolm Canmore, really took root in that of David. The king administered justice in person. The great judicial officer of state, the justiciar, who went circuits in the king’s name, appears either in this or the preceding reign ; so also do the seneschal or steward of the royal household and the chamberlain who collected the royal revenues. The tenure of land by charter, of which there are a few examples by Edgar in favour of Durham and by Alexander I. in favour of Scone, now became common. The charters of David to the abbey of Holyrood, to Robert Bruce of Annandale, and others are in the regular style of the Norman chancery. There are also instances of subordinate grants by subjects, which the king confirms. Though no charter to a burgh is extant, David refers to Edinburgh, Perth, and Stirling as his burghs. The inquest in favour of the see of Glasgow is, by the verdict of those best acquainted with the facts, similar to the Norman inquest. The laws of the four burghs of Lothian—Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling—are records of customs existing in this reign, while a variety of other laws called assizes, chiefly relating to tolls and matters of criminal jurisprudence, were the legislative acts of the king, assisted by the council of his great nobles. The beginning of the feudal system in Scotland was invigorated by the personal character of David. The absence of any large body of settled Celtic or Saxon customs gave full play to its assimilative influence. In the reigns which followed Scotland became a purer example of a feudal state than England, where a large number of Teutonic customs contributed to form the common law. A few of these found their way into Scotland, chiefly through the burghs or the medium of Norman charters, in which they had been incorporated. But the Scottish common law was in the main derived from the Roman code through the canon law, and not from Anglo-Saxon customs. Though never canonized by the church, this great monarch, for his faithful administration of justice and the purity of his domestic life, was deemed a saint by the people.

David’s grandson and successor Malcolm IV. (1154-65), called “The Maiden,” died too young to leave a permanent impression. A rising by Somerled, lord of the Isles, and the sons of Malcolm MacHeth, mormaer of Moray, was suppressed in the early years of his reign, and peace was made with Somerled in 1158. A treaty by which Malcolm surrendered Northumberland and Cumberland to Henry II., and his following that king (who knighted him at Tours) in an expedition to Toulouse, led to the revolt of the earl of Strathearn with five other chiefs. This brought him suddenly home. An attempt to take him by surprise at Perth failed, and next year he succeeded in reducing Moray and Galloway, whose earl, Fergus, had also taken advantage of his absence. Moray was occupied by foreign settlers (1160), amongst whom, besides Norman barons, were Flemings,—a race fitted to civilize a new country by their industry. It is to this settlement that the permanent subjection of Moray to the Scottish kings, and perhaps the peculiar dialect and character of the inhabitants of that part of Scotland, were due. Four years later Somerled again attacked the west coast, but was defeated and slain at Renfrew, when the isles south of Ardnamurchan, which he had won from Godred the Black, son of Olaf, king of Man, were divided amongst his sons Dugall, Reginald, and Angus. Next year (1165) the young king himself died at Jedburgh. "While he was reproached for yielding too much to the powerful English monarch, his service abroad enabled him to obtain the necessary experience to contend with the Celtic chiefs. The reduction of Galloway and Moray more than compensated for the loss of the earldoms in northern England, the possession of which by the Scottish king must have been precarious. Before his death Bute had been taken by the steward of Scotland,—the first footing the Scotch got on the larger isles, but it was afterwards recovered by the Norwegian king Haco and restored to Ruari, a descendant of Reginald.

Malcolm, dying childless—though he had an illegitimate son who predeceased him—was succeeded by his brother William the Lion (1165-1214). His reign, the longest of any Scottish monarch, though not so uniformly successful as that of his grandfather, was an important era in Scottish history. It is divided into nearly equal portions by the accession of Richard Coeur de Lion. The first consists of the war with Henry II., in which William was captured (1175), and this made him the subject of the English king for fourteen years. In the second he recovered his independence, and, resuming the task of his predecessor, consolidated the Scottish kingdom in the north and west. William commenced his reign by taking part in the war with France as vassal of Henry II. for the fief of Huntingdon; but, being disappointed of the promised restoration of the northern earldoms, he entered into negotiations with Louis VII. of France. This memorable event is the first authentic connexion between Scotland and France, and was afterwards antedated by a fiction to the time of Charlemagne. Dictated by the situation of the two countries, equally exposed to danger from the power of England under the Angevin or Plantagenet kings, the alliance between France and Scotland continued with few breaks until the close of the 16th century, and even in the 17th and 18th was relied upon by the last of the Stuarts. France proved a broken reed to the Scottish kings; but the intercourse between the two countries brought the Scottish people, when war with England after the close of the 14th century shut them out from the advancing civilization of that country, into contact with the chivalrous manners of the court and the learning of the schools of France during the best period of French history. Nothing came of the alliance at this time, and two years later William and his brother David, in whose favour he resigned the earldom of Huntingdon, attended the coronation (during his father’s life) of the younger Henry at Windsor. That ill-judged step and the murder of Becket led to a domestic revolution, and William, tempted by the promise of the earldom of Northumberland, joined the young king against his father (1173). He failed in the sieges of Wark and Carlisle, and next year was taken prisoner at Alnwick by Ranulph de Glanville and sent by Henry’s order to Falaise in Normandy. To procure his release he made a treaty with Henry by which he became his vassal for Scotland and all his other territories. The Scottish Church then for the first and last time owned subjection to that of England. This treaty settles the disputed question of the Scottish homage. It was only by conquest and the captivity of its king that such terms could be obtained. To secure the observance of the treaty the four burghs of Scotland were to be placed in Henry’s hands and hostages given till their delivery. The ambiguous terms of the clause as to the church enabled the Scottish bishops to refuse obedience to the see of York, and, Canterbury having advanced a rival claim, Henry, not displeased to see ecclesiastics quarrel, allowed the Scottish bishops to leave the council of Norham without acknowledging it. The foundation of the abbey of Arbroath in memory of Becket, whom he had known at Henry’s court, was almost the only endowment of William. At home he put down revolts in Galloway, Ross, and Caithness. A long dispute with successive popes as to the see of St Andrews afforded a signal example of the perseverance of William. He also procured a distinct acknowledgment of the independence of the Scottish Church and its immediate subjection to Rome alone, which Henry II., now approaching the calamitous end of his reign, could not prevent; nor was he able to enforce payment of the Saladin tax from the Scottish bishops. Immediately after Henry’s death Richard Coeur de Lion, moved by the necessity of money for the crusades, consented for a payment of 10,000 marks to the abrogation of the treaty of Falaise (1189) as having been extorted from William when a captive, and restored Scotland’s ancient marches.

The second part of William’s reign was occupied with internal affairs. Richard’s absence and John’s disputes with the pope and his own barons gave a relief from English war. The raising of the ransom tried the resources of Scotland, and was met by an aid from the clergy and barons. Risings by Harold, earl of Caithness, and his son Torphin (1197), and another by Guthred (1211), a descendant of the mormaer of Ross, were quelled. The birth of a son strengthened William’s throne. He at one time contemplated an invasion of England, for which John’s weakness afforded a good opportunity, but desisted, it is said, in consequence of a vision, perhaps remembering his own age and that of his heir. The proposed erection by John of a castle at Tweedmouth to overawe Berwick led to a rupture; but, after protracted negotiations and threats, a treaty was made (1209) by which William agreed to pay 15,000 marks. John was to procure suitable matches for his two daughters, and Tweedmouth was not to be rebuilt. The barons promised at a council in the following year to raise 10,000 and the burghs 6000 marks. This is the first mention of a contribution by the burghs to a feudal aid. William was their great benefactor, as Henry the Fowler in Germany and Richard in England: many of their charters date from his reign. Legislation continued in the form of assizes, which required the sanction of a great council. As in England, the necessity of raising money first gave rise to municipal rights and to facilities for some discussion of public affairs in what afterwards grew to be the parliament. This assembly was still the curia regis of the vassals of the king, and the Scottish parliament never lost marks of its origin. William died at Stirling in 1214 in the seventy-second year of his age. The lion rampant, which he took for his seal, became his epithet, and represents his chivalrous and determined character. He set the example, which his son and grandson followed, of cultivating friendly relations with the English sovereign, and his efforts to maintain the independence of Scotland were rewarded by internal peace. It was only in the outlying districts that risings had now to be feared. The number of shires where the king’s sheriff, frequently (by a policy wise at the time, but afterwards dangerous) the chief baron of the district, administered justice at the head towns increases, and this, as well as the growth of trade, brought into prominence the burghs, each with a royal castle where the king in his frequent progresses held his court, and if needful summoned the great council of his realm. The chief burghs whose charters date from this reign are Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness, Dumfries, Lanark, Irvine, Ayr, Forfar, Dundee, Arbroath, Montrose, Inverurie, Kintore, Banff, Cullen, and Nairn. Their number and sites, spread over the whole country, mark a settled policy and the progress of the kingdom in the arts of peace. A new diocese—Argyll —was founded by separation from Dunkeld, to which John the Scot, then bishop, sent his chaplain as knowing Gaelic; and, though the Hebrides were still Norse, this was a step towards the complete organization of the church and to the extension of the kingdom which followed in the next two reigns, when the Isles also were added (1266) to Scotland.

Alexander II. (1214-49), son of William, was crowned at Scone in his seventeenth year, in time to take part in the great struggle in England for Magna Charta, which had reached its crisis. He sided with the English barons, who made an agreement by which Carlisle and the county of Northumberland were to be given to Alexander. In fulfilment of his part he besieged Norham, while the barons inserted in Magna Charta a clause by which John promised to render to Alexander what was his right with reference to the marriage of his sisters and his kingdom, unless the charters of his father William authorized otherwise, and this was to be decided by the judgment of his peers in the curia regis. The position of the Scottish king as one of the English barons in whose favour Magna Charta was granted is pregnant evidence of the fact that he was not, like John, Henry III., and Edward I., a monarch with imperial tendencies, the adversary of the rights of the barons and the people. The Scottish kings in this century and Bruce in the next were popular sovereigns, and their memory supported the crown when it was worn by less worthy successors. Next year John broke the charter, reduced by the aid of mercenaries the northern counties of England, and, advancing into Scotland, stormed Berwick and burnt Roxburgh, Haddington, and Dunbar. On his return he pillaged Coldingham and set fire to Berwick. Alexander retaliated by wasting England as far as Carlisle, which town, but not the castle, he took in the autumn; then, marching to Dover, he did homage to Louis, the son of Philip Augustus, whom the English barons had chosen as king. Next year (1217) he again invaded England, but made peace with Henry III., which was confirmed three years later at York. Alexander agreed to restore Carlisle, do homage for his English fiefs, and obtain release from the excommunication which the pope had declared against the barons and their allies. Henry promised to give Alexander one of his sisters in marriage and to procure suitable husbands for the Scottish princesses. Accordingly, Alexander married Joan, the elder daughter of John, while Margaret, his sister, became the wife of Hubert de Burgh, earl of Kent, and Isabella of Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, both nobles who took a prominent part in the Barons War. These alliances rendered the peace with England more secure, and allowed Alexander to devote himself to the reduction of the periodical insurrections of the Celtic and Norse chiefs on his northern and western borders. He reduced Argyll (1222), which he created a sheriffdom, and forced John, earl of Caithness, to surrender part of his lands and pay compensation for his share in the burning of Adam, its bishop. The wisdom of his settlement of Argyll was proved by the inhabitants repelling an attack by Haco, the Norse king. He was equally successful in quelling the risings of two chiefs of the same name, Gillescop, one in the west, the other in Moray. Five years later (1230) a disputed succession in Galloway gave him the opportunity of chastising that turbulent province and dividing it among three co-heiresses. The fall of Hubert de Burgh and the succession of Peter des Roches to the chief place in the council of Henry III. changed the attitude of that king towards Scotland, but Otho, the papal legate, preserved peace by a compromise of the rival claims. A little more than a year after the death of his wife Joan without issue, Alexander married Mary de Couci, daughter of a French noble house, which counted itself the equal of kings, and Alexander III., the child of the marriage, was betrothed when an infant of a year old to Margaret, daughter of Henry III. Two years later (1244) a serious rupture, fomented by Walter Bisset, a Scottish exile, and caused by a projected alliance of Alexander with France and the erection of castles on the border, was averted by the treaty of Newcastle, by which the kings of England and Scotland bound themselves not to make alliances with the enemies of each other. The last year of his life was occupied in putting down a second rising in Galloway, and in preparing for an expedition against Haco, with the view of annexing the Hebrides; but he died of fever at Kerrera, in the Bay of Oban, while mustering his fleet. These expeditions, all successful, are proof of the active character of the king, who must have been called “Peaceful” because he preserved peace with England, for he was in fact a warlike monarch, enforcing the feudal levy, which, according to Matthew Paris, amounted in his time to 10,000 horse and 100,000 foot, and extending the feudal civil government. Like his predecessors, he was a benefactor of the church, especially of the new mendicant orders, whose monasteries were founded in all the principal towns. The most important of his statutes were the substitution of trial by jury for the ordeals of fire and water, and the regulation of trial by battle, with provision for the case of women and the clergy. He was deemed, like David, a protector of the poor.

Alexander III. (1249-85) was only eight years old when his father died. A succession of contests for the regency between a party of nobles who favoured English influence and a national party was the consequence. The former tried to delay the coronation on the pretence that the young prince was not a knight; but Cornyn, earl of Menteith, baffled them by the proposal that the bishop of St Andrews should perform both ceremonies. The rehearsal of his descent from the Celtic line of kings was made, according to a custom becoming old-fashioned, for the last time by a Highland sennachy, to please the Gaelic subjects, while the translation of the corpse of St Margaret into a precious shrine at Dunfermline was calculated to have a similar effect in the Lowlands. Henry III. had asked the pope to declare the coronation illegal without his consent, but the pope refused. Foiled in this, Henry celebrated at York the nuptials of his daughter and the young king, whom he asked to render homage for his kingdom. The reply that he had not come to answer such a question and must advise with his counsellors implied that he had counsellors little likely to grant it. About this time Durward the justiciar and Robert the chancellor were dismissed, and the earl of Menteith held the chief power for five years. A secret mission of Simon de Montfort led to the earl of March, Durward, and other nobles seizing the young king and queen, and at a meeting with Henry at Kelso the Cornyns and their supporters were removed from office (1255) and other regents appointed. Two years later the bishop of St Andrews got the pope to excommunicate Durward and the English regents. Next year a compromise was effected and a joint regency appointed, consisting of the queen dowager and her husband, the earl of Menteith and Durward, and the supporters of both parties. When Alexander was nearly of age the earl of Menteith died, whereupon the king took the government into his own hands (1261). Henry, engaged in the dispute with his barons, could not interfere. Alexander at once resumed his father’s project for the reduction of the Hebrides; but Haco, the Norwegian king, forestalled him by invading Scotland, when a storm, which dispersed his fleet, and the loss of the battle of Largs (1263) forced him to retire to the Orkneys, where he died. Magnus Olafson, king of Man, the chief Norse feudatory, a descendant of Godred the Black, submitted to Alexander, and although some of the islands held out they were reduced by the earls of Buchan and Mar and Alan Durward. At last Magnus, the son of Haco, concluded a treaty at Perth (1266), by which he surrendered Man and the Sudreyar for a payment of 4000 marks and an annual rent of 100; the rights of the bishop of Drontheim were reserved. From this time the western isles were subject to Scotland. At the parliament of 1284, which settled the crown on the Maid of Norway, their great nobles, descendants of Somerled, attended as vassals, and the subsequent revolts (of which there were many) were instigated by the English king, who found useful allies in the chiefs of the Isles. In the Barons War Alexander aided his father-in-law, on whose side three Scottish barons, John Cornyn, Robert Bruce, and John Baliol, fought at Lewes, where the first two were taken prisoners. In the matter of the independence of his kingdom Alexander was as firm as his predecessors, and would not allow Henry himself or the legate Ottobon to collect within it a tithe for the crusade which the pope had guaranteed to the English king. On the accession of Edward I. (1272) Alexander attended his coronation, but neither then nor six years later, when specially summoned to Westminster, would he do homage for Scotland. The closing years of Alexander were saddened by domestic losses. His wife died in 1273, his younger son David in 1281. His only daughter, Margaret, married two years before to Erik of Norway, and his elder son, Alexander, both died in 1283. The following year the estates at Scone recognized the succession of Margaret, the Maid of Norway; but Alexander, in hope of a male heir, married Joleta, daughter of Count de Dreux. At the festivities in Jedburgh in honour of the marriage a ghostly figure in the masque was deemed an omen of the king’s death, which followed from a fall near Kinghorn (1285). The prosperity of Scotland in his reign was celebrated in one of the earliest verses preserved in the Scottish dialect—

‘‘ Quhen Alysander oure kyng was dede,

That Scotland led in luve and le,

Away wes sons of ale and brede,

Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and gle,

Oure gold was changed into lede.

Cryst, born into virginite,

Succour Scotland and remede That sted in his perplexitie.”

Under the wise rule of three kings, extending over more than a century—a circumstance rare in that age— Scotland attained a degree of wellbeing before unknown, which did not return till the 18th century. The extent of the revenue is attested by the returns of the sheriffs to the chamberlain and by the accounts of the tax which Boiamund de Vicci, the pope’s representative, levied from the clergy for the crusade. Berwick, the chief Scottish port, was likened to Alexandria, and attained an importance it never recovered after its union with England. Its customs were reckoned as equal to a third of those of all England,—a statement hardly credible till we remember that the trade of Britain was chiefly with France and Flanders, and that a harbour for small craft was sufficient. The personal character and bravery of these kings subdued the turbulence of the outlying districts and kept in check the ambition of the nobles. The bounds of the kingdom were almost as they now are, and the name of Scotland permanently passed to the whole country south as well as north of the Forth. In spite of differences of race, the unity of the nation had been secured, and its independence was acknowledged by the pope and other sovereigns; the English alone kept up a nominal claim to rights which had for short periods been held by Canute and the Conqueror, and for longer by the second Henry, until they were abandoned by the treaty of Canterbury. But now all was to be changed. Three centuries of war, though diminishing in intensity as time went on, display heroic character, but imply an amount of suffering to the people which cannot be told. Perhaps a contest between the two proud nations which shared Britain was inevitable, yet the reigns of the Alexanders suggest a different possibility. That the contest came when it did was due to the disputed succession on the death of Margaret, the Maid of Norway. This gave to the ambition of Edward I. an opportunity to reduce the whole island to his sway, which he was quick to seize.

5. War of Independence; from Death of Alexander III. to Accession of House of Stuart.— The Maid of Norway, whose right was at once acknowledged (for Scotland, like England, knew no Salic law), was not to wear the crown.

A regency administered the kingdom for five years after Alexander’s death. A conference at Salisbury between commissioners of Erik of Norway, Edward I., three of the regents, and Bruce, lord of Annandale, agreed that Margaret should be sent home unbetrothed. Her marriage to Edward’s son, for which a dispensation had been got from Rome, was sanctioned by an assembly at Brigham near Roxburgh (18th July 1290), in a treaty which made anxious provision for the independence of Scotland. This country was to remain free, and, saving the right of the king of England in the marches or elsewhere, separate from England by its lawful bounds. No parliament was to sit, and no Scottish suit to be tried, out of Scotland. Edward confirmed this treaty by oath; but the death of Margaret in the Orkneys rendered it abortive. To prevent an armed contest for the crown, Fraser, bishop of St Andrews, invited Edward to intervene, and certain Scottish nobles made a similar request. He accordingly summoned the Scottish estates to meet him on 10th May, and the English parliament on 3d June 1291, at Norham near Berwick. When the Scots came Edward refused to judge the cause of the Scottish succession unless his title as superior of Scotland was admitted. After some delay the barons and clergy gave the admission, as also did the claimants—no fewer than thirteen—but the representatives of the commons withheld any such acknowledgment. The court for the decision of the cause was then appointed. Forty members were named by Baliol and as many by Bruce, between whom the competition really lay, while Edward chose twenty-four. On the following day the competitors agreed that sasine of the kingdom should be given to Edward; a week later the regent surrendered the kingdom of Scotland and the keepers the chief castles into his hands as lord paramount. He restored possession after adding several Englishmen to the regency. After another adjournment the competitors put in their claims. Three descendants of David, earl of Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion—all English barons, though one, Bruce, had large estates in Scotland—were alone serious. John Baliol claimed as grandson of David’s eldest daughter Margaret, wife of Alan, lord of Galloway; Robert Bruce as son of David’s second daughter, wife of the lord of Annandale; while David de Hastings, grandson of the third daughter Ada, contended that the kingdom was partible. This last question was postponed until the claims of Baliol and Bruce had been considered. After two long adjournments it was at last decided (14th October 1292) that the case was to be ruled by the law of the kingdom applicable to titles of earldoms, baronies, and other indivisible inheritances, and “that by this law in every heritable succession the more remote by one degree descended from the eldest sister was preferable to the nearer in degree from the second.” Edward accordingly decided (17th November 1292) in favour of Baliol. Two days afterwards the regents were ordered to give sasine to Baliol; the day following he swore fealty to Edward at Norham; ten days after he was crowned at Scone; within a month he did homage to Edward at Newcastle.

The judgment was just, according to the principles of feudal law afterwards fixed, though then imperfectly established, in favour of primogeniture; the acknowledgment of the suzerainty of Edward was a different matter. In the course of the proceedings Edward obtained from the cathedrals and religious houses of England returns of homage by Scottish kings. No such returns were asked from Scotland. Those from England recited the well-known cases of isolated conquest followed by homage to Saxon, Danish, and Norman kings, Edward the Elder and Athelstan, Canute and the two Williams, and the treaty of Falaise by which William the Lion surrendered the independence of Scotland. They ignored the treaty of Canterbury by which it was restored, the clause of Magna Charta relating to Scotland and the rights of its king, the refusal of the last two Alexanders to render homage for their kingdom, and the treaty of Brigham by which Edward had acknowledged the independence of Scotland. One result of the submission to the English king overlooked by the eager competitors, but not by the lawyers who advised Edward, immediately emerged. An appeal was soon taken from the court of Baliol to the court of his superior at Westminster. Baliol referred in vain to the express clause in the treaty of Brigham that no Scottish suit was to be tried beyond Scotland; Edward replied this was an appeal from his own officers during the interregnum, but asserted his right to hear appeals in all cases. Other appeals followed, and Baliol weakly surrendered his claim to independent jurisdiction. Shortly afterwards (October 1293) he was himself summoned to Westminster as defendant in a suit by Macduff, son of the earl of Fife. Declining to appear, he was condemned for contempt, and three of his principal castles were ordered to be seized. He again yielded and promised to attend next parliament. There could be no longer doubt what had been the effect of submitting the dispute as to the crown to Edward. Instances of homage had not been difficult to find; but the records might be ransacked in vain for an example of what would now become frequent,—the adjudication by the court of the English king on the rights of Scotsmen. The execution of this decision by force in Scotland carried with it at no distant date the subjection of the kingdom. Baliol quitted Westminster suddenly in 1294 to escape service in the Gascony war. By yielding in the question of appeal he had lost the confidence of the Scottish barons. In the parliament of Scone a council was appointed to control him, and all fiefs held by Englishmen were forfeited. In the following year he formed an alliance against England with the French king, and his son was promised the daughter of that king’s nephew, the count of Anjou, in marriage. The Scottish army headed by six earls then invaded England, but was repulsed at Carlisle (28th March 1296), and Edward, leaving his French campaign, at once marched northwards. Before the end of March 1296 he stormed Berwick. While there the abbot of Arbroath brought him a renunciation of Baliol's homage. Dunbar was taken soon afterwards by the earl of Surrey; Roxburgh, Jedburgh, and Edinburgh fell before the end of June; Stirling, Perth, and Scone surrendered without a blow. At this time no Scottish town was walled and no resistance could be made against the English feudal levy led by such a general as Edward. In the churchyard of Stracathro in Forfar Baliol renounced his alliance with France, and a few days afterwards (10th July) surrendered Scotland to Anthony Beck, bishop of Durham. Edward marched as far as Elgin, but it was a conquest of Baliol, not of Scotland. This impotent monarch was carried captive with his son to London and vanishes from Scottish history. He died at one of his French fiefs twenty years afterwards, never having attempted to regain the kingdom. On his homeward march Edward took and recorded in the Ragman Rolls the homage of the Scottish nobility, and carried to Westminster the sacred stone of Scone, on which the Celtic monarchs had been crowned, and the black rood of Margaret, the hallowed relic of the Saxon line. Surrey was appointed guardian, Sir Hugh Cressingham treasurer, and William Ormsby justiciar of Scotland; the nobles were treated with lenity and the bishops bribed by the privilege of bequeathing their movables like their English brethren. The most important result of the campaign was the capture and fortification of Berwick. That city, the key to the Lothians, was the commercial capital; and Scotland was left without one until the rise, after the union, of Glasgow and the mercantile centres of the Clyde.

When the fortunes of Scotland were at the lowest, when the country was deserted by the king, and its nobles and clergy were making terms with the conqueror, Wallace, the man of the people, appeared. The second son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie near Paisley, his name indicates a remote Celtic origin from a Welsh or Cambrian stock. In the spring of 1297, in revenge for the murder of his wife, Wallace slew Hazelrig, sheriff of Ayr, and burned Lanark. Collecting a band of followers animated with like patriotism, and aided by a single noble, Sir William Douglas, he surprised and drove Ormsby, the justiciar, from Scone and Beck, the bishop of Durham, from Glasgow. Some of the barons, headed by James the Steward, joined him, and Wallace and Douglas carried everything before them in Lennox and Galloway,—districts more favourable to the national cause than Lothian. The nobles fell away from Wallace almost as soon as Percy appeared at the head of an English force, and Douglas, the Steward, Bruce the future king, and others capitulated at Irvine (9th July 1297). Wallace, while engaged in the siege of the castle of Dundee, heard that Surrey and Cressingham were advancing on Stirling, and he marched to its relief. There at the bridge over the Forth near Cambus-kenneth he won his most famous victory (11th September). The English were totally routed and Cressingham was killed. The disparity of numbers was great, for the English had 50,000 foot and 1000 horse, against at most 40,000 foot and only 180 horse. The generalship of Wallace, who tempted his adversary to cross the bridge in his face and held his troops in hand until the moment of the charge, won the day, the first in which a feudal army was beaten by light-armed peasants. Wallace attempted to organize the kingdom he had won. He assumed the title of guardian of the realm in name of the Lord John (Baliol), and associated with himself Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell, son of the only baron who stood by him and who fell in the battle. He held the nobles in awe, while he rewarded his adherents. The grant (fortunately preserved) of the office of constable of Dundee to Alexander Scrymzeour can scarcely have been a solitary one. He introduced better discipline in the army, and tried also to revive trade. Shortly after the battle of Stirling Wallace carried the war as far as Hexham, whose monks he protected. That he penetrated farther south and won the favour of Eleanor, Edward’s wife, is one of the romantic additions to his scanty history in the poem of Blind Harry. Edward recognized the crisis and, leaving Flanders, sent a force before him under Pembroke, following in person at the head of 80,000 foot and 10,000 horse. For a brief space success attended Wallace, who defeated the English in Fife and Ayr; but the bishop of Durham retook the castle of Dirleton, and Edward himself, by the victory of Falkirk (22d July 1298), in which the nobles again proved false to the popular cause, reversed that of Stirling. Wallace took refuge in France, and, although the French king at Amiens offered to surrender him, he was soon released and provided with a safe conduct to the pope. Papers found on him when captured show that he received similar letters from Haco of Norway and Baliol. Whether he went to Rome is not certain, but he may have been one of the Scots who at this time induced Boniface VIII. to claim the superiority of Scotland. The claim was indignantly repelled by the English barons at the parliament of Lincoln; Edward, however, thought it prudent to lay before the pope a statement in which he advanced not only the instances of homage collected for use at Norham but the fable of Brute the Trojan, from whose eldest son Locrinus he claimed descent, and therefore superiority over the Scottish kings sprung from Albanactus the second as well as those of Wales descended from Camber the third. Baldred de Bisset, the Scottish commissioner at Rome, in his answer admitted the pope’s right, but replied to Edward’s fiction by another as bold,—the descent of the Scots from Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh. A more solid argument was founded on the treaty of Brigham. The pope delayed judgment, and in 1302 suddenly changed sides and exhorted the Scots, by several bulls, to submit. Edward had not waited for this sanction; the period between the battle of Falkirk and the taking of Stirling was a continuous and bloody struggle. In person he laid waste Galloway and took Caerlaverock (1300); in 1302, his general Sir John Segrave, having fought a battle of doubtful issue with Cornyn and Fraser at Roslin, Edward returned (1303), marched as far as Caithness, and reduced the whole east of Scotland by the capture of Stirling (24th January 1304). Scotland was subdued, yet Wallace lived, and we catch glimpses of him, in the woods of Dunfermline, in the forest of Ettrick, in the neighbourhood of Lanark. A price was set on his head, and at last he was betrayed by a servant of Sir John de Menteith near Glasgow and taken to London, where, after a mock trial in Westminster Hall, he received the traitor’s doom (23d August 1305), though he denied with truth that he had taken any oath to Edward.

This time Edward, in order to make the conquest of

Scotland permanent, proceeded to incorporate it in the empire of England. With apparent fairness an assembly was summoned to Perth to elect ten representatives to attend a parliament at Westminster to treat of the affairs of Scotland. Nine commissioners came to London, where they were associated with twenty Englishmen. The result was the “Ordinacio facta per dominum regem pro stabilitate terrae Scotiae” (1305). Though never fully carried out, this document, on the model of similar ordinances for Wales and Ireland, discloses Edward’s designs. English nobles were appointed to administer the government of the country, and eight justices to administer the law. The law and usages of Scotland (except those of the Brets and Scots, which were abrogated) were to be observed in the meantime; but the lieutenant (John of Brittany, the king’s nephew) and council were to amend what was contrary to God and reason, or in case of difficulty refer to Edward at Westminster. The whole country was divided into sheriffdoms, the sheriffs being removable at the discretion of the lieutenant. The office of coroner, more important then than now, was also regulated; certain persons were nominated constables of the chief castles; and many nobles were fined and others banished. Bruce (the competitor’s grandson) was ordered to put Kildrummy Castle (Aberdeen) in charge of an officer for whom he should be responsible. The ordinance was suitable to its object,—moderate, even humane. The banishment of the nobles was limited as to time. Relief was given in the payment of fines. Many old officers were continued. Edward’s aim at this time was to pacify the country he had conquered, to put down resistance, but to encourage submission. It is as wrong to call him a tyrant as Wallace a rebel: the one was a statesman king with imperialist aims, the other a patriot leader with keen popular sympathies. The king triumphed; but before his death his well-laid plans were shattered: Scotland again rose in arms, and this time the nobles joined the people, under the leadership of Robert the Bruce.

The position, as well as the character, of Bruce contrasted with that of Wallace. Instead of being a cadet of the ordinary landed gentry, Bruce represented a family in which for more than two centuries the purest Norman blood had flowed. The English branch of Skelton in Cleveland and the Scottish branch of Annandale divided their large possessions; but those of the latter sufficed to make its head one of the most powerful nobles in Scotland, who still retained, as so many did, English fiefs. More than one of his ancestors had intermarried with the royal house of Scotland (see Robert the Bruce, vol. xx. p. 592). On his father’s death Bruce succeeded to Annandale. He held besides several manors in England. During the early part of the War of Independence, like many barons with conflicting interests, he had wavered, sometimes supporting Wallace, more frequently the English king. In 1303-4 he assisted Edward in the preparation for the siege of Stirling. He had been consulted with regard to the ordinance of 1305. But there were already signs of mutual distrust. The provision in the ordinance as to Kildrummy shows that Edward was aware special precautions had to be taken to secure the loyalty of Bruce, and on 11th June 1304 Bruce secretly met near Cambuskenneth Lamberton, bishop of St Andrews, and entered into a bond referring to future dangers from Edward. Of all the Scottish clergy Lamberton had been most friendly to Wallace, and this bond was a link between the two periods of the War of Independence and their leaders. Bruce had attended at Westminster when the ordinance was settled, but left suddenly, arriving at Dumfries on the seventh day. There he met in the church of the Friars Minor John (the Red) Cornyn of Badenoch, Baliol’s nephew, and slew him before the high altar (10th February 1306). The die was cast, and indecision vanished from the character of Bruce. Collecting his adherents at Lochmaben and Glasgow, he passed to Scone, where he was crowned by the bishop of St Andrews. It at first seemed likely that a saying of his wife would prove true,—that he was a summer but would not be a winter king. His defeat at Methven (19th June 1306) was followed by another at Strathfillan (11th August), and Bruce took refuge in the island of Rathlin (off Antrim, Ireland). The tales of his hairbreadth escapes, his courage and endurance in all changes of fortune, were gathered by Barbour from the mouths of the people, who followed the life of their champion with the keenest interest. Meanwhile Edward came north and gave a foretaste of his vengeance. But his severity strengthened the party of Bruce, which grew daily. All classes now made, with few exceptions, common cause against the enemy of all. Edward’s death at Burgh-on-Sands (7th June 1307) at once changed the whole aspect of the invasion. Edward II. wasted in the ceremony of a funeral and the diversions of a youthful court the critical moment of the war. Bruce seized his opportunity, and by the close of 1313 Berwick and Stirling alone remained English. The independence of Scotland was finally determined by the ever-memorable victory of Bannockburn (24th June 1314).

Bruce reigned fifteen years after Bannockburn and (if the Irish expedition of his brother Edward be left out of account) with almost uninterrupted success. On his return from Ireland he reduced Berwick (March 1318) and converted it from an English to a Scottish frontier town. His recognition by the pope was followed by the acknowledgment of Flanders and France; and the long truce which Edward II. had been forced to agree to before his death became in the new reign a formal treaty known as that of Northampton (April 1328). By its leading article “Scotland according to its ancient bounds in the days of Alexander III. shall remain to Robert, king of Scots, and his heirs, free and divided from England, without any subjection, servitude, claim, or demand whatsoever.” In pursuance of another article Johanna, Edward’s sister, was married to David, the infant son of Bruce, at Berwick on 12th July. As an administrator and legislator he showed an ability not inferior to that which in his earlier years he had manifested as a warrior and a general. He obtained from the estates a settlement of the succession, reformed abuses in the feudal law, regulated the courts, providing equal justice for poor and rich, and framed strict Acts against sedition. He also encouraged trade, especially shipbuilding, foreseeing its future importance to Scotland. Never off his guard, amongst his most anxious legislative provisions are those relating to the defence of the kingdom, —arming all able-bodied men, prohibiting exports of arms, fortifying the towns and castles on the borders, arranging signals to give notice of invasion. Though attacked by leprosy contracted in his campaigns, he remained active to the last,—a monarch such as occurs only once in many centuries, brave, liberal, wise, and pious, like the English Alfred, the darling of the nation he had delivered. (For fuller details, see Robert the Bruce, vol. xx. p. 594 sqj) The wise provision that Bruce made for the regency secured the peaceful succession of his son David II. (1329- 70), who was the first Scottish king anointed at his coronation,—a privilege conceded to Bruce in a bull which reached Scotland after his death. According to the ideas of the age this placed the Scottish king on an equality with the sovereigns of Europe. The War of Independence quickened the sentiment of Scottish nationality, and left the country poorer in wealth but richer in spirit. The memories of Wallace and of Bruce educated the people and produced in the next generation their earliest literature. England, unconscious of the benefit, gained by its own defeat. But for the resistance of the Scots it might have become earlier than France a centralized feudal monarchy. The distinct character of the Scots—a blend of the Celt, Saxon, Norseman, and Norman—strengthened by variety the collective force of Britain. The loss which must be balanced against the gain was the bitter hatred between two races of kindred origin within one narrow isle, which for centuries retarded the progress of both, especially of the smaller kingdom.

The almost contemporaneous reigns of David II. and Edvard III. reversed the position of the two countries: Scotland had now one of its feeblest and England one of its most powerful kings. Had not the love of liberty become the life-blood of both nobles and commons in Scotland it must have succumbed in the desperate struggle. After the death of Robert, Randolph, earl of Moray, governed with wisdom and vigour for three years. On his death the estates chose Donald, earl of Mar, another nephew of Bruce, whom he had passed over, foreseeing his incapacity. Encouraged by the divisions of the nobles, Edward, son of John Baliol, with the barons who had lost them land by espousing the English side, suddenly landed at Kinghorn. Nine days after his election, Mar was met and worsted by Balid on Dupplin Muir (11th August 1332), where Mar himself and many nobles were slain. Baliol was crowned at Score; but Perth was immediately retaken, and Baliol, having been defeated at Annan by the young earl of Moray, left Scotland Next year Edward came with a large army to his support and defeated at Halidon Hill (20th July 1333), chiefly through the skill of the archers, the Scots led by Archbald Douglas, lord of Galloway, who was now regent. Berwck capitulated and Baliol surrendered it to England, pledgng in addition the castles of the Lothians, including Edinburgh and Linlithgow, in security for an annual tribute of £2100. Like his grandfather, Edward III. made a new ordinance for the government of Scotland, but his officers never obtained possession of their posts. Meantime David and his queen fled to France, where they remained seven years. Fortunately for Scotland a new race of patriotic leader appeared: Moray of Bothwell handed down the traditions of Wallace and Bruce, while Robert the Steward, Douglas the knight of Liddesdale, and Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie sustained the fame of Bruce, Randolph, and Douglas. The attraction of a French campaign with the crown of France as prize prevented Edward from ever using his whole force against Scotland, and a French fleet made a diversion by attacking the Channel Islands and threatening the Isle of Wight. Edward retaliated by assuming the title of king of France, and after two years’ preparation invaded that country from Flanders. The armies met at Vironfosse (26th September 1339), where David of Scotland was present. Never was the pomp of chivalry seen in greater splendour, but the first act of the Hundred Years’ War, which seemed destined to make French and English eternal enemies and French and Scots perpetual allies, passed without a blow.

Two years later the recovery of the Scottish castles and the repulse of Salisbury’s attempt on Dunbar made it safe for David to return to Scotland, which Baliol had abandoned. Though scarcely eighteen, he assumed the government (30th March 1342). Before his arrival Edinburgh had fallen, and next year Roxburgh was taken by Sir Alexander Ramsay, whom David unfortunately rewarded by the sheriffdom of Teviotdale, which the knight of Liddesdale claimed, and Ramsay, seized by treachery, was starved to death at the Hermitage by the knight of Liddesdale, who entered into correspondence with the English king, and dishonoured his name of the “Flower of Chivalry.” Bullock, an ecclesiastic who had risen to the office of chamberlain under Baliol and transferred his services to David, met the same fate at the hands of the king on a suspicion of treason. Other signs of weak government were not wanting. On the conclusion of a brief truce, David, tempted by Edward’s absence, invaded England in spite of the defection of some of his chief nobles, and was defeated at Neville’s Cross (17th October 1346) near Durham by the archbishop of York and the northern barons, the king and several of his nobles being taken prisoners. The rigour of David’s captivity (which lasted eleven years) was relaxed so far as to allow him to return frequently to Scotland and try to persuade the people to raise his ransom, which the English king urgently required. Though Baliol was still acknowledged as nominal king by Edward, he resided in Galloway, while Robert the Steward, elected regent in the name of David, really governed. At length by the treaty of Newcastle (13th July 1354) David’s ransom was agreed on, sufficient hostages being taken for its payment. Next year the French king resumed the Scottish war by sending Eugène de Garancière with men, money, and arms. Several border engagements followed, but Edward, advancing to the frontier, took Berwick, and obtained from his puppet Baliol an absolute surrender of the Scottish kingdom for an annuity. He ravaged the Lothians in the raid called the Burnt Candlemas, but failed really to reduce the country. Edward’s victory over the French at Poitiers, in which many Scots were slain, forced the Scottish parliament to grant the terms dictated by the English king. Peace was finally concluded by the treaty of Berwick (3d October 1357), and confirmed at Scone,—the ransom being raised and the condition as to hostages made more severe. David at once returned to Scotland. But his sympathies had become English; he revisited that country almost every year, and it required all the strength of the Scottish estates to prevent the son of Bruce from making a surrender of his kingdom more ignominious than Baliol's. The enormous ransom pressed hard on so poor a country. An attempt to induce France to resume the war failed, and David, like a debtor dealing with a money-lender, had to renew his bills at usury. Negotiations for this purpose went on till 1365, when a truce for four years was agreed to. Edward and David latterly devised schemes for payment by another process,—the transfer of the crown at David’s death to an English prince. At the parliament of Scone David proposed that Lionel, duke of Clarence, should be recognized as his heir; but the estates replied with one voice that no Englishman should rule Scotland, and renewed the settlement of the succession by Bruce on Robert the Steward. Hatred of foreign aggression and the weakness of the king enabled the Scottish barons to play a part similar to that taken by the nobles of England in the reigns of John and Henry III., and obtain guarantees for the constitution by limiting the monarchy. Such was probably the origin of the committees of parliament (at a later date turned to an opposite use) for legislation and for judicial business which first appear in 1367,—the statutes for the more regular administration of justice, purity of the coinage, and the revocation of the grants of royal revenues and estates. It was expressly declared that no attention was to be paid to the royal mandate when contrary to law. About this period David entered into a secret agreement with Edward, promising in return for a remission of the ransom to settle the crown on him failing heirs of his own body, but the public negotiations for its payment went on. In the same year his marriage with his second wife, Margaret Logie, a daughter of Drummond, a lesser baron, led to a revolt. He quelled it and threw the steward and at least one of his sons into prison, making lavish grants to Margaret and her relatives. Her influence did not last long, as she was supplanted in the king’s favour by Agnes of Dunbar. Margaret was divorced by the Scottish bishops, for what cause is not known, and, though her appeal to the pope succeeded, David did not survive the decision. He died on 21st February 1370, childless, and the succession opened to Robert, son of Bruce’s daughter Marjory, the first of the Stuarts who were to govern Scotland for the next two centuries.

6. House of Stuart from Robert II. to James IV.— The descent of the house of Stuart is traced from Walter Fitz-Alan, a Norman, steward of David I. His estates were in Renfrew, to which Alexander, the fourth steward, added Bute by marriage. Walter, the sixth steward, was scarcely one of the chief nobles; but his prowess in the War of Independence gained him the hand of the daughter of Bruce. Robert II. was their only son. Such was the prosperous record of the family before it ascended the throne. Its subsequent history presents a series of tragedies of which that of Mary Stuart is only one, though the most famous. While the fate of kings excites the imagination, history must trace the growth of the nation and the slow changes which transformed the bulk of the Scottish people from loyal subjects to bitter enemies of their native kings and its kings from patriots to tyrants.

Robert II. (1370-90), already fifty-four, continued rather than commenced his government on the death of David II., for he had been twice regent during David’s exile and captivity. He did not ascend the throne without opposition, but the memory of Bruce was too fresh to admit of his settlement being put aside. The earl of Douglas, whose great estates on the border made him more formidable as a competitor than his claim by descent from a daughter of David, earl of Huntingdon, was conciliated by the marriage of the king’s daughter Isabella to his son and by his own appointment as justiciar south of the Forth and warden of the eastern marches. This impediment removed, the coronation proceeded, and it was followed by a public declaration of the settlement of the crown on Robert’s son John, earl of Carrick, at his father’s death. A still more explicit settlement was made two years afterwards on the king’s sons by his first marriage with Elizabeth More,— John earl of Carrick, Robert earl of Fife, and Alexander lord of Badenoch; and failing them on those of his second with Euphemia Ross,—David earl of Strathearn and Walter his brother. A question as to the legitimacy of the children by Elizabeth More rendered this declaration necessary. The first fourteen years of Robert’s reign passed with scarcely anything worthy of record. The king, whose portrait is drawn by Froissart as a man “not valiant, with red bleared eyes, who would rather lie still than ride,” left the cares of government to his sons, especially the second. England, after the death of Edward III. (1377), was occupied with the necessary arrangements for a new reign and with the rising of Wat Tyler (1381). The absence of any movement in Scotland similar to this or the French Jacquerie perhaps indicates a better relation between the peasantry and the upper classes; but a third estate of the commons was as yet unknown in Scotland. John of Gaunt, who had invaded Scotland the year before, now took refuge there and was hospitably received in Edinburgh till the young Richard II., by putting down the rising, made it safe for him to return. This visit led to the first entrance into the northern kingdom of the principles of Wickliffe and the Lollards, whom Gaunt favoured. The French, still anxious to incite the Scots to attack England, sent a small party of free lances, who landed at Montrose and were allowed to make a raid on their own account. They were followed by John de Vienne with 1000 men-at-arms and many followers. The licence of the French knights did not promote good feeling; but the interest of the two countries prevented a rupture. After the French left the Scots made another raid into Northumberland, in retaliation for an expedition in which Richard II. wasted the Lothians. Three years later, under the earl of Douglas, they attacked Newcastle, but were repulsed by Henry Percy, who, true to his name of Hotspur, in order to recover his pennon, pursued them to near Redesdale, about 20 miles from their own border, and fought the battle of Otterburn (1388). Douglas himself fell, but the victory went to the dead man, for young Percy and his brother were taken captive, and the bishop of Durham would not venture to intercept the retreat of the Scots. In 1388, Robert’s inactivity increasing and his son the earl of Carrick being disabled by a kick from a horse, the earl of Fife was chosen regent by the estates under condition of annually accounting to them for his administration. In April 1390 his father died. His prosperous reign rather than any personal quality except an easy disposition gained Robert the praise of Wyntoun, who, writing under his son, prays God to give him grace

“To govern and uphold the land In na war state nor he it fand,

For quhen his fadyr erdyt was Of Scotland was na part of land Out of Scottys mennys hand,

Outwith Berwick, Roxburgh, and Jedburgh.”

This prayer was only partially fulfilled. The English did not acquire more of Scotland, but the border war was not so successful, and the royal house was the scene of tragic events which threatened to change the order of succssion.

Robert III. (1390-1406)—for under that name the earl of Carrick was crowned to avoid the hated name c John —was even less active than his father. He is briefly but truly described by an historian as a good man but not a good king. He scarcely reigned, for the regency of his brother continued after his accession till it was succeeded for a few years by that of Robert’s son, on whose death the earl of Fife again became regent. There was a truce with England for nine years, during which the irrepressible love of fighting had to satisfy itself within Scotland. The king’s younger brother, Alexander, called the Wolf of Badenoch, who had been created earl of Buchan, quarrelled with the bishop of Elgin and burnt his cathedral. The Wolf and his sons were constantly engaged in private wars. The earl died in 1394, but his son Alexander continued to defy the law, which the Government was too weak to enforce in the northern Highlands. Policy was used to suppress the violence of the clans. Such seems the explanation of the combat between thirty of the Clan Kay and as many of the Clan Chattan before the king on the North Inch of Perth, which ended in the slaughter of nearly all the combatants on both sides. In the council or parliament of 1398 a change was made in the Government due to the general distrust of Fife and the rising spirit of the earl of Carrick, the king’s eldest son. The form of it was a compromise. The young prince was made lieutenant for three years, but with the advice of a council, of whom his uncle Fife was one; they were created dukes of Rothesay and Albany respectively, the first of that title in Scotland. Other acts of this council were designed to restrain the monarchy by constitutional laws. Parliament was to meet annually. The king, if accused of misgovernment or breach of law, might, “to excuse his defaults,” arraign his officers before the council. No one was to ride through the country with more followers than he could pay for. The grant of £11,000 for the common weal and profit of the kingdom by the three estates— barons, clergy, and burghs—was made under protest that it was not to be a precedent, and the burghs stipulated that in future they were not to pay more than under Robert II. In the following year the revolution took place in England which led to the deposition. and death of Richard II. and the accession of Henry IV. An impostor who had assumed the name of Richard took refuge in the Hebrides and was received at the Scottish court. The expedition of Henry to Scotland (1400), partly due to this, was also prompted by the desire to distinguish a new reign and by the invitation of the earl of March, indignant at the preference given to the daughter of Douglas over his own as wife for Rothesay. Reviving the old claim of feudal superiority, which was now supported by the forged charters of Hardyng as well as the fictions of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Henry cited Robert to do homage at Newcastle, and, on his failing to appear, marched to Edinburgh. Rothesay successfully defended the capital, and Henry was suddenly recalled by the rising of Owen Glendower and the Percies. Next year (1401) occurred the death of Rothesay by starvation at Falkland, where he had been committed by his father at Albany’s instance on account of his bad government and dissolute conduct. The declaration of the council at Edinburgh, which acquitted Albany of all concern in the death, was enough for the moment, but in after times, like Bothwell's acquittal, a corroboration of guilt. The last years of Robert were clouded by private and public misfortune. His queen, Annabella Drummond, his son-in-law, the earl of Douglas, and Trail, bishop of St Andrews, one of the wisest of his council, died within a short interval. The son of Douglas, though brave, was unequal to the task of holding the border against the Percies and the earl of March, and so constantly lost battles that he was called Archibald Tyne-man. The Scots were signally defeated at Nisbet Muir

(14th September 1402) in Merse and at Homildon Hill near Wooler by Percy, where the slain and prisoners equalled the number at Otterburn. Nor could order be maintained within Scotland itself, of which the forcible marriage of the countess of Mar by Alexander, a bastard of the Wolf of Badenoch, was an example. Afraid of Albany, and warned by the fate of Rothesay, Robert sent his remaining son James to France (1405); but the ship in which he sailed was taken by an English cruiser, and the future king was a prisoner in England for nineteen years. This last blow broke the weak heart of Robert, who died at Dundonald and was buried at Paisley. Though his reign was inglorious, the tradition of the War of Independence still warmed the heart of the nation and produced the earliest writers in Scottish literature,—Barbour, Fordun, and Wyntoun. The Bruce of Barbour became the national epic.

The year after Robert’s death the first martyr in Scotland, James Resby, an English priest, was burnt at Perth by Albany, who is described by Wyntoun as “a constant Catholic.” Resby was condemned at the instance of Laurence of Lindores, called the Inquisitor of Scotland, for forty theses from the books of Wickliffe. The Lollard doctrines continued to be secretly held by a small sect, chiefly in the west. Knox traces the descent of the first Scottish Reformers—the Lollards of Kyle—from Wickliffe and Hus. This religious movement was destined to exercise a profound influence on the history of Scotland. The time when the church was a civilizing and purifying power was passing away. Its enormous wealth, a contrast to its early poverty, its developed so different from its primitive doctrine, celibacy, and the confessional in a lax society, that was no longer moved by the fervour of a new faith, produced a corruption which forced itself on minds of a reforming tendency. Catholicism allowed no place for individual reformers, and their protests, often carried to extremes, were deemed attacks upon the church itself, which became (unwillingly on the part of its best friends) the defender of its worst abuses. From first to last in Scotland the movement was popular, though not at first democratic. It did not at all or only to a slight extent change through political causes as in England.

Though he was a captive, the right of James I. (1406-37) on his father’s death was at once acknowledged by a general council held at Perth; but the appointment of Albany as governor boded ill for his return. He held the office thirteen years, administering it till his death so as to conciliate all classes and pave the way to his own accession to the throne, which would have been his by right had the young king died. The recovery of Jedburgh (1408), long in the hands of the English, gave the regent an easy opportunity of popularity. It was decided by a general council that its walls should be razed and the expense defrayed by a poll tax, but Albany refused to burden the people and paid it out of the royal customs. Next year Albany and Douglas (now released from captivity in England) entered into a bond of alliance. With the earls of March and Mar and others similar engagements were made; but Douglas, who had acquired the lands of March, which, however, were now restored, had to be conciliated by a grant of Lochmaben and Annandale, the patrimony of the Bruces. The more independent nobles of the north could not be so easily gained, and Donald, lord of the Isles, disappointed in a claim to the earldom of Ross, invaded Aberdeenshire with a great host, whose defeat by the earl of Mar at Harlaw (17th May 1412)—the Otterburn of northern ballads—was followed by the capture of Dingwall, his chief castle on the mainland, and his final defeat at Lochgilphead.

The first Scottish university—St Andrews—was founded by bulls granted a year later at the instance of James and Bishop Wardlaw, who had been his tutor. The higher education had already been to some extent supplied by cathedral and monastic schools; but Scots who sought a complete curriculum had to resort to Oxford or Paris. One of their number, Major, expresses his wonder that the Scottish prelates had not earlier thought of a national university. That now founded was destined to play an important part in promoting the Reformation and along with the later universities in civilizing Scotland.

Little of note occurred during the remaining years of Albany’s regency. His futile siege of Roxburgh (1415), soon abandoned, got the name of the Fool’s Raid. Greater credit attended the Scottish arms in France, where the earls of Douglas, Buchan, and Wigtown won battles for the French king, and lands and honour for themselves; but the defeats of Crevant and Verneuil effaced the honours of Beaugé (in Anjou), and, though the remnant of the Scots remained as the king’s bodyguard, no considerable number of troops from Scotland afterwards went to France. Albany died at Stirling in his eightieth year (3d September 1419). His son Murdoch assumed the regency as if hereditary; but, himself indolent and with lawless sons, he did not retain the influence of his father. In 1423 ambassadors sent by the Scottish parliament to England at last arranged terms for the return of James from his long exile (12th May 1423).

Exile had its uses, and, except at the beginning and again after the accession of Henry V., his captivity had not been rigorous. Sir John Pelham was his governor, and he was instructed in Latin grammar, oratory, and poetry, as well as in bodily exercises,—wrestling and the use of the spear. Though distinguished for physical strength, his bent was to the Muses, and he became proficient in dancing, music, and poetry. Buchanan blames this taste as carried beyond what became a king, but nothing in his after life showed he was ever led by amusements to neglect graver studies. When thirty he was taken by Henry V. to France with the view of detaching the Scottish allies of the dauphin, but refused to be made a tool of, saying he had as yet no kingdom and they owed him no allegiance. He proved his soldiership by the capture of Dreux. On his return to England he married (11th February 1423) Johanna Beaufort, daughter of the earl of Somerset and grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. In the Kingis Quhair he describes his love at first sight in the language of his master Chaucer, but with original genius. The marriage facilitated his release, which was negotiated for a sum of 60,000 marks. He confirmed the treaty at Melrose and was crowned with his bride at Scone (21st May 1423) by Wardlaw,—Albany, as earl of Fife, placing him on the throne.

He lost no time in addressing himself to the task of restoring the royal authority and the obedience to the law which the long regency had weakened. From this time dates the conflict between the king and the nobles,—the latter not maintaining, as in England, constitutional rights, but contending for exorbitant privileges. The experiment of government without a king had been tried too long not to make those who had exercised unrestrained power desire its continuance. The nature of the country—divided by rivers, mountains, and arms of the sea—the absence of great cities and the number of strong castles, the close connexion of the principal nobles by marriage and bonds of alliance, the large jurisdiction within their territories, the clanship not only in the Highlands and on the borders but in some measure throughout the whole country, which made fidelity to the chief a natural duty, strengthened the aristocracy and weakened the crown. The sovereign had to rely on the people and the clergy, on foreign alliances, on the influence due, partly to the virtues of his predecessors, partly to the magic which in that age encircled the name of king. The first parliament of James at Perth passed quietly, but with indications of a policy long meditated and now to be put into operation. One Act forbade private war; another imposed the penalty of forfeiture of life and goods for rebellion; and a third directed an inquest by the sheriff what lands “pertain to the king or has pertained” in the time of the last three kings and in whose hands they now are. The choice of the privy council was significant. It was headed by Lauder, bishop of Glasgow, who had negotiated the king’s release, but none of the greater nobles were included. In their stead appear an unusual number of minor gentry, some holding high offices. The parliament held at Perth in the following year was the scene of a coup d'état (12th March). Albany, his younger son Alexander, Alan of Otterburn his secretary, and Sir John Montgomery were seized on one day, and immediately after Isabella, Albany’s wife, whose father, the earl of Lennox, had already been arrested. The only one of Albany’s kin still at large, his youngest son James, made a short resistance, burnt Dumbarton, and slew the Red Stuart of Dundonald, the king’s uncle, but, being hotly pursued, fled to Ireland. Parliament, at an adjourned sitting at Stirling, proceeded to the trial of Albany and his adherents, which was held with feudal solemnity before an assize. Albany, his two sons, and Lennox were condemned and executed on the Heading Hill. Clemency was shown to those who had not been his intimate supporters. Historians are divided as to the policy or necessity for such severity. But it secured its immediate object; it was felt that Scotland had again a king to defend his rights. James for twelve years carried out, not without murmurs, but without successful opposition, his projects of reform.

Foreign states recognized his power. At the request of the Flemish estates Middelburg was restored as the market for Scottish trade; in return the privileges of the Scots were guaranteed and Flemish merchants undertook to raise part of James’s ransom. Flemish artisans and manufacturers settled in Scotland. More than one embassy passed to and from Rome with regard to the affairs of the Scottish Church, which James, while strictly repressing heresy (a Bohemian doctor, Crawar, being burnt as a disciple of Hus), showed his intention of reforming. The new pope Martin V. had put an end to the schism. The bitter enemy of the English king on account of the regulations which culminated in the Statute of Praemunire, he welcomed James’s advances. James, while showing his attachment to the church by founding a Carthusian monastery at Perth and a Franciscan in Edinburgh, asserted his right to remedy abuses of the ecclesiastical courts, and addressed a letter to the Benedictine and Augustinian monks reproaching them for laxity. To Erik of Norway he sent an embassy and obtained a commutation of the arrears due for the Hebrides under the treaty of Largs. A marriage between the dauphin and Margaret, his infant daughter, previously arranged, was celebrated shortly before his death. He thus established friendly relations with the Continent, and, though his position as regards England could not be the same, the truce was only twice broken towards the end of his reign—by a raid of the English, who were defeated at Peferden (1425) by the earl of Angus, and his own attempt to recover Roxburgh. During the fourteen years of his actual reign James held thirteen parliaments, prov- , ing his desire to obtain the support of the nation in his reforms. In 1426 he introduced the session, a royal court for civil causes sitting in the principal towns, to provide the justice too often denied in the baronial courts. Next year he summoned a parliament to Inverness—an unusual place of meeting—for the purpose of restoring the peace of the Highlands. Its records are lost; but the chief event was the seizure of Alexander, earl of Ross, lord of the Isles, and his mother, along with as many as forty chiefs. Two were beheaded and a third hanged, but most of them, including the lord of the Isles, after a short imprisonment, were released. Ross at once raised the standard of rebellion and burnt Inverness, but was defeated by James at Lochaber, where the clans Chattan and Cameron deserted to the royal side. On the Sunday following the former killed in a church the whole of the latter clan who were present. Another internecine conflict took place in Caithness seven years afterwards. Such private feuds, traditional amongst the Celts, were one cause of the success of James and of the ultimate subjugation of the Highlands. So completely was the power of the lord of the Isles broken that he came as a suppliant and placed his sword in the king’s hands at Holyrood. His life was spared, but he was confined to Tantallon castle. In a parliament held later in the same year at Perth an Act was passed for the representation of the shires and the election of a speaker; but this imitation of the English House of Commons was not acted on. The Scottish parliament continued to sit in one chamber of lords, clergy, and commons, and it was only in the reign of James V. that representation of the shires was admitted. The following parliament (1428) provided that an oath of fealty should be taken to the queen by all persons succeeding to lands or dignities, which shows that James knew the danger of his policy. In 1429 an Act was passed for the protection of the tillers of the ground, who were not to be removed for a year, and provision was made for arming all landowners and burgesses. The birth of twins—Alexander, who died young, and James, afterwards king—strengthened the king’s position by interposing two lives besides his own against any attempt at revolution. Two years later Donald Balloch, a kinsman of the lord of the Isles, renewed the rebellion; but, though he defeated Mar and Caithness, on the approach of James himself he fled to Ireland.

In 1434 the king applied the statute of his first parliament as to the resumption of lands to which no sufficient title could be shown. The estates of the earl of March were forfeited on the ground that Albany had exceeded his power in restoring them. He was created earl of Buchan with the intention no doubt of removing him from the border and conciliating him for his loss. The death in 1435 of Alexander Stuart, earl of Mar, led to the lapse of that earldom to the crown on account of his bastardy, and the following year the earldom of Strathearn was resumed on the ground that it was a male fee and did not pass to the wife of Patrick Graham, the heir-female. It was bestowed in life-rent on the king’s uncle, the earl of Athole, and Malise, the son of Patrick Graham, was made earl of Menteith. This assertion of right on the part of the king to deal with the estates of the nobles though fortified by legal documents and recognized possession was certain to make enemies. It is more surprising that James so long succeeded in maintaining his authority than that he at last perished for doing so; but he had the people on his side. In the summer of 1436 he was obliged to relinquish the siege of Roxburgh owing to the barons’ refusal of support. In October when the forfeiture of Strathearn was made in a parliament at Edinburgh, Sir Robert Graham, uncle and tutor of the young heir Malise, denounced the king in the boldest terms and urged the barons to seize his person; but, failing, he was banished from the court. As in other cases, this leniency was not requited. In his Highland retreat Graham formed a conspiracy with Athole, the king’s uncle, who aimed at the crown, and Sir Robert Stuart, Athole’s grandson. James was to spend Christmas at Perth. Before he crossed the Forth he was warned by an old Highland woman that if he passed he would never return. She tried unsuccessfully to get access to him again at the Dominican monastery at Perth, where he lodged. At midnight, when he was half undressed, Graham with 300 men surrounded the monastery. Their approach was heard; but it was found that the bolts had been removed by treachery. James was hastily concealed in a vault underneath the room. Before the conspirators entered a brave attempt was made by Catherine Douglas, one of the queen’s maids, to bar the door with her arm, but the fragile obstacle broke and Graham burst in. The fall of another of the maids into the vault discovered the king, who fought fiercely for his life. The queen was wounded in trying to save him, fulfilling an unconscious prophecy of the Kingis Quhair. At last, after killing two of his assailants, he fell, overcome by numbers (February 1437). Vengeance speedily overtook the murderers, who had made no provision to follow up their deed. Within a month they were all executed in a manner exceeding even the barbarous usages of the time. James was buried in the Carthusian monastery, where his doublet was long kept as a relic and seen by the people with veneration. Such was the sad fate of the best of the Stuarts, —a king in advance of his age and too rapid in his reforms.

James II. (1437-60), an infant of six, called “Fiery-face” from a red stain on one cheek, was crowned at Holyrood five weeks after his father’s death, and there commenced one of the long minorities which the early deaths of the Stuart kings made common, and during which history is chiefly occupied with the contest for the person of the king. These have been truly represented as weakening the royal authority. The possession of power rendered the nobles impatient of restraint and accustomed to licence; but they had also a reverse effect. When the monarch succeeded he was received with favour by the people as a deliverer from the oppression of the barons, too often petty tyrants. A rule of law allowing him to revoke grants in his minority was often used with great effect. On the whole, monarchy, in spite of the weakness and vices of the kings, was popular in Scotland until the Reformation and the fatal chain of events in which Mary was involved introduced a democratic tendency, which grew under the bad government of her successors. The nobles, though their word was law with their kinsmen and retainers, were seldom favourites of the people. Archibald, fourth earl of Douglas, the greatest of the Scottish nobility and duke of Touraine in France, was lieutenant-general of the kingdom from James’s accession till his own death the year after; but Sir William Crichton, master of the household of James I., who was keeper of the castle of Edinburgh, where the young king was detained, appears to have exercised the chief power. Shortly after the death of Douglas James’s mother carried off her son, on the pretext of a pilgrimage, to Stirling, of which Sir Alexander Livingstone of Callander was governor. Livingstone laid siege to Edinburgh, but made terms with Crichton, who became chancellor. The alternate struggles and reconciliations of these rivals continued till James was fourteen, when he favoured Douglas (the eighth earl) in order to free himself from their control. This was a time of civil or rather of private wars. The only contemporary chronicle marks almost every year with the seizure of a castle or a party fight. Douglas brought the earl of Crawford and his retainers from the Highlands, who ravaged the estates of the bishop of St Andrews, and himself besieged Edinburgh castle. The castle surrendered; but Crichton, one of the adroit statesmen who rise after every fall, continued chancellor, and soon after, by negotiating the marriage of James with Mary of Guelders (1448), ensured his favour with the court. Shortly after the cele- bration of this marriage Livingstone, now chamberlain, with many of his kindred and friends, was suddenly arrested and tried before a parliament at Edinburgh; two were executed, and the others, including the chamberlain, attainted and placed in strict ward in Dumbarton. Douglas and Crichton received part of the forfeited estates. James was chiefly advised at this period by Bishop Kennedy, whose counsel was the old one of “divide et impera.” He now determined to do to the more powerful Douglas as he had done to the Livingstones. The earl had shown no moderation in prosperity. His revenue and retainers equalled those of the king: 1000 horsemen were his ordinary train, and he attended the king’s marriage with five times that number. His courts on the borders were almost parliaments. In the year of jubilee (1450) he went to Rome with a large suite. On his return he visited the new king of England, Edward IV. At the parliament of Edinburgh (1451) he submitted to the king’s mercy, and at the request of the queen and estates received a regrant of his lands and honours. He was already suspected of treason, and had in fact renewed a secret bond with the earls of Crawford and Ross, the most powerful nobles in the north, which threatened the royal authority. James felt a crisis had come and summoned Douglas to Stirling at Shrovetide. There the young king, in violation of hospitality and a safe conduct which he had given the earl, when Douglas refused to break the bond with the other earls, struck him with his knife and killed him (21st February 1452). An appeal to arms necessarily followed. Douglas’s brother James, the ninth earl, came to Stirling and burnt great part of the town. But the clergy and commons and other nobles, some even of Douglas’s own kin, not sorry at the fall of one who overtopped them, stood by the king. Parliament sanctioned James’s act and declared Douglas had deserved death. At length, after repeated struggles, Crawford was defeated at the Muir of Brechin and Douglas fled to England. His estates were of course forfeited. The lordship of Douglas was granted to Angus. Ettrick Forest and Galloway were annexed to the crown. Some years later Douglas made another desperate effort against James, but after wasting Merse was totally defeated by Angus (1458). The energy of James in visiting all parts of his kingdom was conspicuous during the last period of his reign. The good relations with the French and other Continental courts continued. With England—one brief interruption excepted— peace had been preserved during the reign of Henry VI. Henry even agreed to restore Roxburgh and Berwick to Scotland in return for assistance against the duke of York. When Henry was taken prisoner at Northampton, his queen and her young son fled to Scotland, and James was called on to fulfil his engagements. He laid siege to Roxburgh, which for more than a century had defied his predecessors, and after a stout resistance it was taken; but James did not live to enjoy the triumph. When inspecting the discharge of a new gun it burst, and he was killed (3d August 1460). He had not reached his thirtieth year.

His reign had been singularly fortunate, for he succeeded (where his father failed) in restoring the royal authority and reducing the power of the nobles. This may have been partly due to the counsels of Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, and Crichton; but James showed skill in government and vigour in war, though the murder of Douglas has left a stain on his character. The crown was richer at his death than it had been since the time of Alexander III., by many forfeitures secured from alienation by the Act of Annexation (1455, c. 41). The royal prerogative was strengthened by the first statute defining treason (1449, c. 25). Provision was made for the execution of criminal justice by the king, his justiciar, and sheriffs, and of civil justice by the session. Stringent rules were laid down against violent spoliation of lands and goods (1449, c. 30). The coinage was regulated, an attempt made to preserve its standard, and to prohibit export of gold and silver (1451, c. 23). Towards the end of the reign, when war with England was impending, statutes were passed for the defence of the borders, giving the king more direct control, and declaring that the office of warden should not be hereditary. The progress of agriculture was furthered by the famous Act for the encouragement of feu farm, an existing form of tenure becoming more common, and another giving fixity of tenure to leases until the expiry of their terms notwithstanding alienation of the lands. There were also many minor laws which had for their object the welfare of the people. Though the legislation of James II. was not so large, it was perhaps as important as that of James I.

On the Sunday after his father’s death James III. (1460-88) was crowned at Kelso. A regency was formed consisting of the queen, Kennedy, and others. A parliament followed at Edinburgh, which was blamed by the nobles for leaving so much power in the hands of a woman; but there was a full appointment to the offices of state, and, though Mary of Guelders aimed at more than the guardianship of her son, it does not appear that she really exercised royal authority. After the defeat of Towton (29th March 1461), Henry VI. and his queen took refuge in Scotland. In return for their reception and in hope of further aid, Henry surrendered Berwick (23d April) to the Scottish king, in whose hands it remained till its final annexation to England at the close of the reign. Edward IV. retaliated by a treaty (13th February 1462) with the banished earl of Douglas, the earl of Ross, lord of the Isles, and Donald Balloch, by which Douglas was to be restored to his estates, and the whole country north of the Forth divided between the two Highland chiefs. George, earl of Angus, who had risen on the ruins of the house of Douglas, made a counter-league with Henry VI., by which he was promised an English dukedom and valuable lands between Trent and Humber, but was to preserve his allegiance to the Scottish king. These were paper promises, and all that came of them were an ineffectual rising in the north and the relief of Alnwick, which had been besieged by the Yorkists. Next year the Lancastrian cause having received a fatal blow by the defeat of Hexham, a singular offer by Edward IV. to marry the queen dowager of Scotland—one of the many schemes of the king-maker, earl of Warwick—was frustrated by her death or perhaps by the discovery of an intrigue with Adam Hepburn of Hales, whose wife was alive. Kennedy, who had the chief control of Scottish affairs, negotiated the release of Alexander, the king’s brother, who had been taken by an English cruiser, and secured a truce between England and Scotland for fifteen years. He understood the nature of his countrymen better than any man, and was always ready to give counsel in parliament, while his learning, especially in the civil law, made him respected by foreign powers. When he died the country wept for him as for a parent.

Before his death a plot had been formed which threw the young king into different hands. Amongst the barons who received office at the commencement of the reign one of the foremost was Robert Boyd of Kilmarnock, the justiciar. Boyd determined to play the part of Livingstone in the last reign, and usurp the supreme power by seizing the person of the king. Bonds with this object were entered into between him, Fleming of Cumbernauld, Lord Kennedy, a brother of the bishop, and others. While holding a court at Linlithgow James was carried off to Edinburgh by Boyd. Kennedy made a feint to save him by seizing his bridle, but was overpowered; perhaps the attempt was real, for Kennedy afterwards separated from the Boyds. In parliament Boyd went through the form of asking pardon of the young king in presence of the estates, and was immediately entrusted with the custody of the royal person (October 1466) and that of his brothers Albany and Mar, as well as the fortresses of the kingdom. Next year he was made chamberlain, which gave him control of the revenue. The marriage of his son Thomas, created earl of Arran, with the king’s sister Mary, marked the height of his ambition. The fall of Boyd, as sudden as his rise, whom with his brother Alexander James at first favoured, was due to the same cause as that of Livingstone, —the king’s marriage and his desire when major to assert his independence. Negotiations for an English match having fallen through, an alliance with a Norwegian princess was determined on, and an embassy sent to Norway by parliament. Christian of Denmark and Norway readily assented. He promised his daughter a dowry of 60,000 florins, besides a surrender of the claim of arrears of the annual payment for the Hebrides. But, as it was inconvenient to pay the dowry, both the Orkneys and the Shetlands were mortgaged to Scotland, and have remained ever since under the Scottish crown. Two years later (July 1469) the princess Margaret arrived in Scotland, when the marriage took place. Arran on his arrival at Leith with the king’s bride received a message from his wife warning him that James had conceived a great hatred against him; accordingly he fled to Denmark. In the parliament his father and his uncle, Sir Alexander Boyd, were attainted. The chamberlain saved himself by flight; Sir Alexander was executed. The specific charge made was the seizure of the king’s person; but a general clause had reference to the immense estates they had annexed. The king’s sister, divorced from Arran, was married to Lord Hamilton, who thus laid the foundation of a family whose head more than once aspired to the crown.

The refusal of parliament in 1473 to sanction the proposed passage of James to France, to aid Louis XI. against Charles the Bold, on the score of the expense and risk, was the first indication of the difference between the king and the nobility which led to the disasters of the close of his reign. The parliament of 1476 took a bolder step. At its adjournment it committed its whole powers to certain members, of whom the duke of Albany and the earl of Mar, the king’s brothers, were the principal,—a measure which indicated a want of confidence in the king. He had shown himself, like Louis XI., disposed to govern by new men who owed their elevation to himself,—a policy which alienated the aristocracy. Of these favourites the chief were Robert Cochrane, originally, it was said, a mason, who proved himself a skilful architect; Roger, an English musician; and Andrews, a physician, who dealt in astrology,—all able to gratify tastes of James. There were besides a few young men of birth who gained favour by flattery or other arts. Cochrane became all powerful and disgusted the nobles by sumptuousness and arrogance, and the people by debasing the coin. He succeeded, it was reported, by relating a prophecy that a lion should be devoured by its whelps, in producing in the king’s mind an aversion to his brothers, whose characters and knightly accomplishments made them popular. James seized Mar: and sent him to Craigmillar castle. He soon after died (1479) in Edinburgh under circumstances which gave rise to suspicion of foul play. The gift to Cochrane of the vacant earldom or its revenues strengthened the suspicion of his complicity. Albany, committed to Edinburgh castle (1480), escaped to Dunbar and thence to France. He there married Anne de la Tour d’Auvergne, whose son was the regent Albany in the reign of James V. Failing to induce Louis to do more than urge his restoration, two years afterwards he quitted France and at Fotheringay entered into a treaty (1482) with Edward IV., by which, in return for the empty title of Alexander IV., he owned the subjection of the country to England and made other humiliating promises. Supported by the earl of Gloucester and the exiled earl of Douglas, Albany laid siege to Berwick, while James collected his forces on the Boroughmuir of Edinburgh and advanced to Lauder. There the chief nobles, indignant at the favour shown to Cochrane, mutinied, and, led by Angus, who then acquired his name of “Bell the Cat,” seized Cochrane and some of the other favourites of James and hanged them before his eyes. Berwick fell and was never afterwards recovered by the Scots. The nobles, distrusting Angus, who had made secret terms with Albany and the English king, were induced by Schivas, the archbishop of St Andrews, to effect a reconciliation between the king and his brother, who received the vacant earldom of Mar and for a little became chief minister. A parliament in December appointed Albany lieutenant-general, but his continued intrigues with the English king being discovered he was attainted for treason and fled to England (1483), and thence to France. James had now a brief period of peace, during which the revolutions in England freed him from the danger of war in that quarter. New matrimonial projects were tried. It was proposed that the prince of Scotland should marry a niece of Richard III., Anne de la Pole, daughter of the duke of Suffolk, and after Richard’s deposition a marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., was suggested. On the death of Queen Margaret James himself made an offer for the hand of the widow of Edward IV. Such proposals, though abortive, were signs of a better understanding between the two countries, or at least between their sovereigns. When the rebellion broke out in the following year the nobles and James accused each other of treasonable correspondence with England, but no assistance was got by either, for England was still scarcely released from its own civil war. In 1487 the greater part of the Scottish barons rose in arms. James had abandoned himself to another favourite, Sir John Ramsay, whose life had been spared at Lauder. The chiefs of the party were the earls of Angus and Argyll, Blackadder, bishop of Glasgow, and the Homes and Hepburns, powerful barons on the border. Having seized the person of the young prince, whom they already designated king, they pretended to act in his name. James retreated to Aberdeenshire, for the northern barons still adhered to him. Father and son, at the head of their respective forces, first met at Blackness (May 1488) on the Forth, where a pacification was agreed to on terms which showed the king’s party was the weaker. In the following month the rebellion was renewed and the king was slain at Sauchie (11th June), within sight of Bannockburn. He was buried at Cambuskenneth, being only thirty-five years of age. He did not fall, like his father, through the strength of the nobles, for they were much divided, and he commenced his independent reign master of the situation. The Wars of the Roses gave him an opportunity, which he missed, of strengthening his kingdom in relation to England, whose monarchs adopted a new attitude towards Scotland from that of the Plantagenets,—seeking alliance rather than war. His own weakness, his love of favourites and of money, his passion for music and art perhaps inherited from his grandfather, but carried to excess and not counterbalanced by the qualities of a statesman and general—proved his ruin. The rebellions, first that of his brother, then that in the name of his son, were fatal precedents in the reign of Mary Stuart.

James IV. (1488-1513) was already sixteen when crowned at Scone. His reign is an interlude in the record of almost constant battles, murders, and executions with which Scottish history abounds. There were not wanting causes of offence between England and Scotland, but the politic Henry VII. avoided war and effected what previous kings had failed in the marriage between the royal houses. James, a popular monarch, succeeded better than any of his predecessors and successors in keeping on good terms with all classes. His court was one of splendour for a small country; indeed Scotland, almost for the first time, possessed a court which set the fashion of civilization and culture. The death of James III., instead of exciting the horror awakened by the death of James I., was treated with indifference, almost as a relief. The chief offices of state were distributed amongst the supporters of the young king. The first business of the parliament, which met in Edinburgh, was the treason trials. The persons put on their trial were not those who fought against but those who supported the late king. Several were condemned, but prudently treated with great leniency. All were charged with correspondence with England as well as with their presence at the field of Stirling (Sauchie). There followed a curious transaction called in the records “the debate and cause of the field of Stirling,”—the first debate in a Scottish parliament of which we have any account. The result was a unanimous resolution “that the slaughter committed in the field of Stirling, when our sovereign lord’s father happened to be slain, was due entirely to the fault of him and his privy council divers times before the said field.” There was not a single execution. Heritable officers who had fought against the prince were only suspended, not deposed, and the heirs of those slain were by special grace admitted to their estates. The only person who felt compunction was the young king. His frequent pilgrimages and an iron belt he wore were due to his remorse for his father’s death. The leniency of James was rewarded by the loyalty of the nobility, except a few northern barons headed by Lennox and Huntly, and these, after being defeated by James in the following year, were also treated with clemency. The only trace of rebellion during his reign was a secret intrigue between Henry VII. and Angus, who succeeded to the traditionary policy of the Douglases.

A determined effort was made by parliament to put down robbery and theft by special commissions to certain lords who were to be responsible for different districts. It was provided that the king in person should attend the justice air (eyre),—a provision which James acted upon. A new master of the mint was appointed to restore the purity of the coinage. The penalty of treason was to be imposed on those who purchased benefices from Rome. An active spirit of reform, a desire to remedy the evils of the late reign, was displayed by both the king and his advisers. The personal character of James showed itself in a liberality contrasting with his father’s avarice, and in a love of chivalrous display encouraging tournaments and martial exercises, as well as in the care of the navy.

From the time of Bruce we hear of ships and shipbuilding, natural in a country with so large a seaboard; Scottish merchantmen now began to make distant voyages, and their ships, half privateers, half traders, were commanded and manned by sailors who were a match for those of any country. The most famous commander, Wood of Largo, with the “Flower” and the “Yellow Carvel,” cleared the Forth of English pirates. Stephen Bull, an English captain, promised to take Wood dead or alive, but was captured himself; James sent him back to Henry λ III. with a chivalrous message that the Scots could now fight by sea as well as land. Wood was made one of the king’s council. By his advice James built the “Great St Michael” for a crew of 300 and 1000 men-at-arms. It exhausted all the woods in Fife except Falkland, and cost £30,000. The king’s policy was not confined to building ships of war: every town was to have vessels of at least 20 tons. The navy was for the protection of trade, to which the national instinct pointed as a source of wealth.

The marriage of James early attracted the attention of parliament, and embassies were sent to foreign courts to seek a suitable spouse; but James had formed a connexion with Lady Margaret Drummond, and could not be persuaded to a political alliance. The chief events of his reign prior to his marriage to Margaret Tudor were his expeditions to the north-east and the western Highlands. He adopted with the chiefs a similar policy to that which had succeeded with the barons, attaching them to his person by gifts, offices, and favours, and committing to them the suppression of crime. In 1496 the impostor Perkin Warbeck came to Scotland and was recognized by James, who gave him his kinswoman, Catherine Gordon, daughter of the earl of Huntly, called for her beauty the White Rose, in marriage. Raids were twice made across the border on his behalf, but there was only one engagement of any consequence, at Dunse (1497), and an unsuccessful siege of Melrose. Henry VII., whose talent lay in diplomacy, approached the Scottish king with the tempting offer of the hand of his daughter Margaret. Commissioners met to consider this at Jedburgh, and, though James refused to give up Perkin Warbeck, a truce was arranged, and Perkin left Scotland. The marriage of James and Margaret was soon afterwards agreed to and a peace concluded. The papal dispensation was procured in 1500, but the final treaty was not ratified till two years later (8th August 1502). Some of Henry’s counsellors sought to dissuade him from the marriage, for if his son Henry died James would be next in succession to the English throne; but he replied that if so Scotland would be an accession to England and not the reverse, recalling the example of Normandy and England. Margaret, a girl in her fourteenth year, made a triumphal progress to Scotland, where she was received with pomp; but the marriage was one of policy, and the young wife was discontented with her new country and her husband. Their court as it is painted in the poems of Dunbar was merry, but not moral. The licence which prevailed and was tolerated by the church was shown by the elevation of one of the king’s bastards by Jane Kennedy to the archbishopric of St Andrews when a youth of eighteen. Others received rich benefices, and Jane Kennedy herself married the earl of Angus. Scottish history during the six years after the king’s marriage was uneventful.

Henry VII.’s death (1509) changed the relations between Scotland and England. Henry VIII. had not liked his sister’s marriage, and his refusal to deliver to her a legacy of jewels left by his father led to a coolness. The mutual attacks of English and Scottish privateers and border frays increased the bad feeling. Andrew Barton’s ship the “Lion,” after an obstinate conflict, in which Barton was killed, was seized (1512) in the Downs by the sons of Howard, the English high admiral, and James’s request for redress was met with the contemptuous answer that kings should not dispute as to the fate of pirates. But it was Henry’s Continental policy which in the end provoked the war. The struggle in Italy between Louis XII. and Pope Julius II. gave him an opportunity, and he allied himself with the latter and invaded France. He attempted before leaving England to secure peace with Scotland by promising to redress its grievances. But James had renewed the old alliance with France, and the only answer given to the first embassy in 1512 was an offer to mediate between France and England. In 1513 the message was, that if Henry passed to France war would not be declared without a herald being sent. The French queen (Anne of Brittany) had given James a ring with a substantial subsidy, and he had already made up his mind for war. Like Henry, he longed to win his spurs. Henry went to France in June, and soon after his arrival at the camp at Térouanne, the Scottish Lord Lyon brought the threatened declaration of war (11th August 1513). The grounds stated were the seizure of Scotsmen on the borders, the refusal of Margaret’s legacy, and the death of Barton. No time was lost by James in carrying the declaration into effect; but the war was disliked by the nation. The earl of Arran, sent with the fleet to aid the French, sailed instead, in defiance of orders, to Carrickfergus. James himself called out the whole land force contrary to the advice of his council, mustering at the Boroughmuir 100,000 men according to English accounts—probably exaggerated, but doubtless as large an army as had been seen in Scotland. Crossing the border, he took Norham, Wark, and Ford. At the last of these castles the wife of Heron, the proprietor, then a prisoner in Scotland, beguiled James by her beauty, causing him to waste several days and betraying his movements to the enemy. In the conduct of the battle (9th September 1513) which followed he committed almost every fault a general could commit,—neglecting to engage when the enemy were crossing the Till, allowing himself to be outflanked by Surrey, who got between him and the Scottish border, abandoning his strong position on the hill of Flodden, and finally exposing his own person on foot in the centre of the fight. Some Scottish writers claim that the battle was a divided success and that the total number of English killed was greater; but Hall, an exact chronicler, says 12,000 Scots fell and only 1500 English, as appeared from the book of wages when the soldiers were paid. What made Flodden so great a disaster was the quality of the Scottish loss. The king himself, his son, the archbishop of St Andrews, two bishops, two abbots, twelve earls, and fourteen lords, besides many knights and gentlemen, were left on the field. There was scarcely a noble family which did not mourn some of its members. Surrey did not follow up his victory by invading Scotland, since his object was gained: the diversion by the Scots in favour of France was at an end. Scotland was again left with an infant king, scarcely more than a year old.

The character of James IV. was on the surface. An excellent observer, the Spanish ambassador Ayala, notes his good looks and agreeable manners, his knowledge of languages and history, his respect for the service of the church and its priests, his liberality and courage, “even more than a king should have, not taking the least care of himself,” his bad generalship, “beginning to fight before he had given his orders,” and his wise statesmanship, deciding nothing without counsel, but acting according to his own judgment, which was generally right.

The reign of James fell within the era of the revival of learning, and Scotland, though late, came within the circle of the intellectual which preceded the religious reformation. It was common for Scottish scholars to complete their education and sometimes to remain teaching in the universities of France. One of these, Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen, who founded its university, brought another,

Hector Boece, the historian, to be first principal of King’s College, Aberdeen. James himself engaged Erasmus as tutor to his son, the future archbishop. Two other Scotsmen passed to Paris in the beginning of the next reign, John Major and his pupil Buchanan, who brought back less of the critical but more of the Reforming spirit. These and other learned men neglected a reform as essential as any,— the use of the mother-tongue in their writings, and the neglect has lessened their fame; but it had its exponents in Dunbar, Henryson, Sir David Lyndsay, and Gavin Douglas. The printing press also found its way to Edinburgh, and Chepman and Myllar published their first broadsheets with works of Dunbar, Douglas, and the remains of the older poetry (see p. 540 sq . below).

7. The Reformation, its Antecedents and Consequences.— James V. (1513-42), scarcely eighteen months old when he succeeded, was at once crowned at Scone, where a parliament met, chiefly attended by the clergy. The queen dowager was appointed regent,—a secret message, however, being sent to John, duke of Albany, to come from France and assume the regency. The son of the exiled brother of James III., Albany had by his marriage to his cousin, the heiress of De la Tour d’Auvergne, become a great noble in France, where he held the office of high admiral, and neither he nor the French king, Louis XII., was willing that he should quit France. The Sieur de la Bastie came as his representative. The precipitate marriage of the queen, four months after the birth of a posthumous child, to the young earl of Angus, and a dispute as to the see of St Andrews, to which Margaret appointed Gavin Douglas the poet, her husband’s kinsman, although Hepburn the prior had been chosen by the chapter, led the Scottish estates to renew their request that Albany should come to Scotland. He arrived at Dumbarton on 18th May 1515 and was at once appointed regent. The queen refused to give up her son, but Albany besieged Stirling and forced her to surrender. Her new husband fled to France, and Margaret first to Dacre, warden of the marches, and then to her brother’s court, where she was joined by Angus. At Harbottle in Northumberland, on her journey south, she bore a daughter, Margaret Douglas, afterwards Lady Lennox, Darnley’s mother. Henry VIII. asked the Scottish parliament to remove Albany from the regency, but was met with a decided refusal; for, though a party of nobles, especially the border barons Lord Hume, the chamberlain, and his brother, were opposed to him, he was supported by the nation. The young duke of Ross, Margaret’s younger son, having died suddenly, Albany procured a declaration from parliament that Ross’s elder half-brother was illegitimate and himself next heir to the crown. Hume and his brother were seized and executed at Edinburgh (26th October 1516). These events aroused suspicion that Albany aimed at the crown; but the suspicion appears to have been unfounded. His tastes were French; hence he quickly tired of trying to govern Scotland, and in autumn obtained with difficulty leave of absence for four months. Before leaving he put Dumbarton, Dunbar, and Inchgarvie (in the Forth) in charge of French garrisons under De la Bastie, who held the post of warden of the marches; but an interim regency was appointed. Margaret now returned to Scotland; but she was not permitted to take part in the government. Shortly after his arrival in France Albany negotiated the treaty of Rouen (20th August) by which an alliance between France and Scotland was agreed on against England, and a promise given that the Scottish king should marry a daughter of Francis I., or if that failed another French princess. In September De la Bastie was murdered near Dunbar by Hume of Wedderburn with the connivance of Dacre. The perpetrators were forfeited, but never brought to justice, although Arran, who succeeded to the office of warden, was sent for that purpose. The absence of a supreme authority gave free scope to the licence of the nobles.

A serious rising in the Highlands to support the claim of Macdonald of Lochalsh to the lordship of the Isles lasted for several years, till the death of the claimant and the vigour of the earl of Argyll, the head of a house now rising into pre-eminence, led to its suppression. The chief disturbances arose from the ambition of Angus: Archibald, his uncle, was chosen provost of Edinburgh; his brother William seized the priory of Coldingham; his uncle Gavin, though he failed to secure the primacy, retained the see of Dunkeld. Angus was supported by the earls of Crawford, Erroll, and Glamis, by Forman, archbishop of St Andrews, and most of the other bishops, except James Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow and chancellor. The English warden, Dacre, was also on his side and tried by intrigue and bribery to foment dissension and prevent Albany’s return. The opposite faction was headed by Arran, Lennox, Eglinton, Cassilis, Semple, the bishop of Galloway, and the chancellor. Scotland was thus divided between an English party, strongest in the east, and a French party, chiefly in the west. Their disputes reached a crisis in a street fight in Edinburgh, which got the name of “Cleanse the Causeway” (30th April 1520), in which Angus drove Arran out of the town and seized the castle. Sir Patrick Hamilton, a brother of Arran, was slain by Angus,—an injury never forgiven. Meantime Margaret quarrelled with her husband, and, though there was a temporary reconciliation, mutual accusations of infidelity were too well grounded to permit of its being permanent.

Next year Albany returned and the queen, who had been in secret correspondence with him, entrusted him with the custody of the young king. Henry VIII. again requested the Scottish parliament to expel Albany; but they again refused, and Angus made terms with Albany on condition that he should himself withdraw to France. War was now declared between England and Scotland (1522); but, although Albany advanced with a large army as far as Carlisle, he was persuaded by Dacre to a month’s truce and soon after went back to France, leaving the king in charge of a regency of which Beaton, Arran, Huntly, and Argyll were the leaders. Albany returned in the following year and again with a large force invaded England, but failed to take Wark, while Surrey, the English commander, ravaged the border. This failure lost Albany his credit with the Scots. In 1524 he went to France on condition that if he did not come back before 31st August his regency should end. He never returned, and during his absence Margaret carried off her son from Stirling to Edinburgh, where, although only a boy of twelve, he was declared king. Angus made an agreement with Wolsey to support the English interest; and at a parliament in Edinburgh Albany’s regency was declared at an end (12th February 1525), and Angus and Beaton obtained possession of the king’s person and governed in his name. The queen, who had now openly broken with her brother, in vain appealed to France and Albany. The French were occupied with the war against the emperor; but she obtained from James Beaton, now archbishop of St Andrews, a divorce from Angus and married Henry Stuart, son of Lord Avondale, creating him Lord Methven.

For three years Angus retained the supreme power and filled all offices with his adherents. Beaton, with whom he quarrelled, was required to resign that of chancellor, and Angus nominated himself as his successor. The indignant nobles made unsuccessful attempts to seize the person of the king, who at last, on 23d May 1528, effected his escape from Falkland, riding at night to Stirling, where he was welcomed by the governor. Before parliament met a pro clamation forbade any Douglas to remain in the capital. A new ministry was appointed with Gavin Dunbar, now archbishop of Glasgow, who had been the king’s tutor, as chancellor; Cameron, abbot of Holyrood, as treasurer; and the bishop of Dunkeld as privy seal. The Douglases were attainted and their estates divided amongst the nobles of the opposite faction. A truce was made with England for five years. During the minority and duress of James the Scottish nobility became accustomed to bribes either from England or France. The French, to which the higher clergy belonged, were in the ascendant at the court of the young king, who naturally felt ill-will towards the Douglases and leant on Albany, and after a time on Cardinal David Beaton, bishop of Mirepoix in France and nephew of the archbishop of St Andrews, whom he afterwards succeeded. Beaton was the Wolsey of Scotland; but James V. was not Henry VIII., and the ambition of the great prelate was baffled, not by the king, but by the nation. Three months before the king’s escape Patrick Hamilton (q.v.), abbot of Ferne, was burnt for heresy at St Andrews.

James, only seventeen when he gained his independence (1528), showed, like other Stuarts, activity in government, and the fourteen years of his actual rule, while not marked by outstanding events, were a period of renewed order and prosperity. He first turned to the borders, where constant wars with England had bred a race of lawless freebooters. By the severity of his measures he succeeded in doing what Angus and his predecessors had in vain tried to do. The borders continued till the union to trouble the ministers of the law; but the clans who lived by plunder and blackmail were first really broken by the expedition of James V. But it was not only borderers who required to be taught that a king was again on the throne: Argyll, who had sought to make himself independent, was deprived of his lieutenancy and imprisoned; Bothwell, the father of Mary’s husband, was beheaded for the favour he showed the borderers; and the estates of the earl of Crawford were forfeited. James made a progress through the Highlands and was sumptuously entertained by the earl of Athole. While criminal justice was strictly enforced, a step was at last taken to organize a central civil court (15th May 1532), which had been a settled plan of the kings since James I. The College of Justice or Court of Session was founded in Edinburgh by the influence of Albany with the pope,— funds being got from the bishops’ revenues for the payment of the judges. Of the fifteen judges eight, including the president, were to be clergy, and the barons were conciliated by the anomalous office of extraordinary lords.

The relations between James and Henry VIII. continued hostile and there were mutual raids till peace was concluded in 1534. Henry was then at the critical point of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and anxious to secure an ally. France and Spain were also competing for the favour of the Scottish monarch, and Charles V. proposed a marriage with Mary of Portugal. But he had already indicated a preference for a French alliance, selecting Mary, daughter of the duc de Vendôme. The pope addressed James as defender of the faith, a title Henry VIII. had forfeited. The clergy by Beaton’s advice granted him a large allowance out of their revenues. These inducements and the influence of Beaton and Dunbar, the two archbishops, kept James firm in his attachment to the old church, in spite of the temptation which Henry held out in its endowments and of the satires in which Sir David Lyndsay, his old tutor, and Buchanan, the tutor of one of his bastards, exposed its abuses. In 1537 he went to France to see his bride, but, falling in love with Madeleine, daughter of Francis I., obtained her hand instead. After an absence of nine months he returned; but the young queen died within a few weeks after landing. The following year he married Mary, dowager duchess of Longueville, daughter of Claude of Lorraine, duke of Guise. Next year (1539) Henry made another attempt to gain James through his envoy Sir Ralph Sadler, but, though the succession to the English crown in the event of Prince Edward’s death was held out as a bait, James remained unmoved. In 1540 the king made a voyage round Scotland,—the first circumnavigation of his dominions by a Scottish sovereign. The Irish are said to have offered him their crown, and the barons of the north of England, whose sympathies were Catholic, were inclined to favour him. The position was perilous for Henry, many of whose subjects still remained Catholics at heart. He made a last attempt to induce James to meet him at York, but the Scottish king would not go so far across the border. Henry now ordered the marches to be put in a state of war, and Sir James Bowes, accompanied by Angus and Sir George Douglas, crossed the border, but was defeated in Teviotdale by Huntly and Home. The duke of Norfolk advanced with a large force, and, efforts to avert war having failed, James assembled the whole Scottish army and marched to Fala on the Lammermuirs, where he was reluctantly obliged to disband his force through the refusal of the nobles to go farther; they even thought of repeating the tragedy of Lauder, but could not agree as to the victims. James raised a smaller force and gave the command of it to Oliver Sinclair, whose promotion was ill received by the barons. Their discord allowed an easy victory to Dacre, who routed them as they were passing over Solway Moss (25th November 1542), taking Sinclair and several of the leaders prisoners. The news, brought to James at Caerlaverock, together with the disaffection of the nobles, broke his heart. A few weeks later at Falkland he heard of the birth of Mary Stuart, but the news brought him no comfort. His saying, “The crown came with a lass and will go with a lass,” has passed into history, although the prophecy was not fulfilled. Outwardly his reign had been, with the exception of the closing scene, successful. He had restored order along the borders, and put down all attempts of the nobles against his person. He had maintained the church, supporting the bishops by severe laws against heresy. He had secured by his marriage the alliance of France and was on good terms with other Continental states. His powerful neighbour had not succeeded in wresting any land from Scotland. He was, like his father, a popular king, mingling with the people in their sports, and respected because of his strict administration of justice. But his foreboding was not without cause. The power of the nobles had only been restrained, not destroyed. The aristocracy had too many heads to be cut off by one or several blows. The principles of the Reformation were gradually spreading in spite of the attempts to stifle them, and the infant to whom he left the crown had to encounter rebellion at home and the hostility of England, not the less dangerous that she was heir to the English crown and its rulers veiled their hatred of her by professions of friendship. Knox describes James as “a blinded and most vicious king.” Buchanan, who knew him better, is more fair, ascribing his faults to his time and bad education and doing justice to the qualities which made him loved by the people.

Mary Stuart was deemed queen of Scotland from 14th December 1542 till 29th July 1567, when her son James VI. was crowned in her stead. This period of a quarter of a century is more crowded with events than any other part of the Scottish annals, except the War of Independence. It was the epoch of the Reformation, and it became a question of European as well as national importance which side Scotland would take. Closely connected with the religious question was the political, affecting the union of Scotland and England. The life of Mary, who united the personal charm of her race and its evil fortune, adds tragic interest to the national history. It falls into three parts,— from her birth to her return from France as the young widow of Francis II. in 1561; from her arrival in Scotland till her flight in 1568; and from her arrival in England till her execution in 1587; but only the second of these enters into the direct current of Scottish history. During the first Scotland was under the regency, first of Arran, then of Mary of Guise. It was rumoured that Cardinal Beaton forced James V. on his deathbed to sign a will naming him regent, or had forged such a document; but the principal nobles proclaimed the earl of Arran heir-presumptive to the crown, governor of the realm, and tutor to the queen, and this was confirmed by parliament in the following spring. Beaton was thrown into prison, but soon released. The death of James suggested to Henry a new scheme for the annexation of Scotland by the marriage of the infant heiress to his son Edward, and he released the nobles taken at Solway Moss on easy terms under an assurance that they would aid him. Angus and his brother George Douglas also returned to Scotland from their long exile on the same promise. Sir Ralph Sadler, one of the ablest English residents at the Scottish court—half envoys, half spies—was sent to conduct the negotiations. Arran was tempted to favour the marriage by the offer of the princess Elizabeth for his son and the government north of the Forth. But the queen dowager, though she pretended not to be averse to it, and Beaton did all they could to counteract Henry’s project. One part of it, the immediate delivery of Mary and the principal castles to the English king, was specially objected to. A mutual alliance between the two kingdoms was agreed to on 1st July 1543, and Mary was to be sent to England when ten years old. Soon after a party of the nobles opposed to the match got possession of the young queen and removed her to Stirling. The English treaty was ratified by parliament; but Beaton and his partisans did not attend, and a few days later the regent, as Sadler expresses it, revolted to the cardinal. It was evident that the assured lords, though in English pay, were not to be relied on, and Henry resolved on war. His first act— the seizure of Scottish merchantmen in English ports— roused the patriotic feeling of Scotland. Before the close of the year the Scottish estates declared the treaty with England null and renewed the old league with France. Lord Lisle was sent with a fleet to the Firth of Forth, along with Hertford (afterwards the protector Somerset) as commander of the army, and Leith was sacked and Edinburgh burnt, though the castle held out. Lisle on his voyage home ravaged the ports of the Forth, while Hertford destroyed the towns and villages of the Lothians, aided by the English wardens, who made a raid across the border. Hertford returned The following year and destroyed the abbeys of Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose, Dryburgh, Roxburgh, and Coldingham, besides many castles, markettowns, and villages. Such barbarous warfare renewed the memory of the War of Independence and the intense hatred of England, which had greatly abated. Lennox and Glencairn alone of the nobles sided with the English, and the Reformers saw with regret the nation driven to a French alliance as at least preferable to English conquest.

Beaton at this time really governed, imposing his will on the vacillating regent and sternly repressing heresy. George Wishart, the chief preacher of the Reformers, was seized, found guilty of eighteen articles of heresy, mostly taken from Calvin, and burnt at St Andrews. The war of religion, now openly declared, could not be carried on without bloodshed on both sides. Beaton was assassinated less than three months after Wishart’s death in his own castle by Norman Leslie and other young men, some with private grievances, all desiring to avenge Wishart. The effect was adverse to the Reformers. Leslie and his associates, joined by a few others, of whom Knox was one, being shut in the castle, held it for a short time against the regent, but were forced to surrender to Strozzi, the French admiral.

The death of Henry VIII. (1547) did not put a stop to the war with England. The protector Somerset proved to be an implacable enemy, and, partly to strengthen his position as regent, determined to strike a more signal blow. Invading Scotland simultaneously with a large fleet and army, he defeated the Scottish regent at Pinkie (18th September 1547), took Edinburgh, and placed garrisons in several castles. Scotland had suffered no such reverse since Flodden. The progress of the capital was thrown back at least a century; scarcely a building remains prior to the date of his savage raids. Somerset was not in a position to follow up his advantage, for he had to return home to counteract intrigues. The young queen was sent from Dumbarton in the following summer (August 1548) to the court of France, where she was brought up with the children of Henry II. by Catherine de’ Medici. Before she went a French force had been sent to Scotland, and in the camp at Haddington the estates had, by a majority led by the regent and queen dowager, agreed to Mary’s betrothal to the dauphin. The regent was promised the dukedom of Chastelherault in return for his part in the treaty. For two years a fierce intermittent war continued between England and Scotland; but the former country was too much engaged in home affairs and the French war to send a large force, and the Scots recovered the places they had lost except Lauder. The issue of the French war was also adverse to the English, who were forced to agree to the treaty of Boulogne (24th March 1550), in which Scotland was included. In September the queen dowager went to France and obtained the transfer of the regency from Arran to herself. On her return, Arran not being prepared to relinquish his office, she proved herself a skilful diplomatist, gaining over the nobles by promises and the people by abstaining from persecution of the Reformers. A single execution—that of Adam Wallace, “ a simple but very zealous man for the new doctrines”—took place in 1550 under the sanction of Archbishop Hamilton, natural brother of Arran, who had succeeded Beaton; but that prelate, whose natural disposition was towards compromise, authorized a Catechism in 1552 which minimized the distinctions in doctrine between the church and the Reformers, and was conspicuous for omitting all reference to the supremacy of the pope. At this time a large section of the clergy and people were still wavering, and the necessity of retaining them by moderation and reform was evident. The death of Edward VI. and the accession of Mary in 1553 had an important influence on the progress of the Scottish Reformation. The Scottish Reformers who had taken refuge in England had to escape persecution by returning home or going abroad, and the powerful preaching of Harlaw, Willock, and Knox, who came to Scotland towards the end of 1555, promoted the new doctrines.

In the spring of 1554 the queen dowager at last succeeded in obtaining from the reluctant Arran a surrender of the regency. Mary had now attained her twelfth year and a nomination by her of her mother as tutor gave the form of law to what was really the act of the queen dowager, the French king, and the nobility. The people acquiesced, for all classes were tired of a governor whose chief object was money. His actual investiture in the French dukedom removed any scruples in relinquishing a dangerous dignity. For the next six years the queen dowager was regent and conducted the government with such prudence that her real aims were only seen through by the most penetrating. Knox has been accused of a harsh opinion of her; but the upshot of her policy if successful would have been to subject Scotland to France and to that party in France so soon to be the relentless persecutors of the Reformers. She knew well how to bide her time, to yield when resistance was impolitic, to hide her real object, but this she pursued with great tenacity of purpose. A variety of circumstances favoured her,—the condition of England under Mary Tudor, the ill-will Arran had incurred, the absence of any leading noble who could attempt to seize the supreme power, the safety at the French court of her daughter, in whose name she governed, and the knowledge of her adopted country acquired by long residence. Yet her first step was a mistake so serious as to have wellnigh provoked revolution. In appointments to offices she showed such preference for her own countrymen as created intense jealousy on the part of the Scottish nobility, and would probably have led to open action but for the fact that many Scotsmen got offices and pensions from the French king. The new regent applied herself at once to the perennial work of every Scottish Government, the repression of disorder in the Highlands, and first Huntly, afterwards Argyll and Athole, were sent to Argyll and the Isles; but the presence of royalty was, as had before been found, the best remedy, and she made next year a circuit in person with more success than any of her lieutenants. Under the advice of her French counsellors she now garrisoned Dunbar with French soldiers and built a fort at Eyemouth (1556). She even ventured to propose to levy a tax for the maintenance of a standing army; but the remonstrance of 300 barons, headed by Sir John Sandilands, forced her to abandon a project so fatal in that age to liberty. Next year, at the instigation of the French king, she endeavoured to force the country into an English war. No time could have been worse chosen, for commissioners from England and Scotland had actually met at Carlisle to adjust differences between the two countries. The Scottish barons refused to fight, and from that date, Bishop Lesley notes, the queen regent could never agree with the nobility, and sundry of them sought by all means to raise sedition against her and the French.

In the parliament at the close of the year commissioners were appointed to go to France for the marriage between Mary and the dauphin. Their instructions were to obtain a promise from both to observe the liberties and privileges of Scotland and its laws, and a ratification of the Act passed in 1548, when it was first proposed to send the young queen to France. The contract of marriage provided that their eldest son was to be king of France and Scotland and the eldest daughter (should there be no son) queen of Scotland, to be given in marriage by the joint consent of the king of France and the Scottish estates. In the event of her husband’s death Mary was to be free to stay in France or return to Scotland. The marriage was solemnized at Notre Dame on 24th July 1558. But prior to the public contract a secret arrangement had been made, by which Mary, in three several deeds, made over the kingdom of Scotland to the king of France and his heirs if she died childless, assigned to him possession of the kingdom until he was reimbursed in a million pieces of gold for her entertainment in France, and declared that, whatever documents she might afterwards sign by decree of parliament, this arrangement expressed her genuine intention. After the return of the commissioners the crown matrimonial, with the title of king, was granted by parliament to the dauphin.

While statesmen were occupied with the queen’s marriage the Reformation had been steadily advancing. Knox laboured incessantly, preaching in Edinburgh ten days in succession and making rapid visits to the central and western shires. He attracted to his side representatives of the nobility and gentry, and had much support in the towns. The earl of Glencairn, Lord Lome, Lord James Stuart, the future regent, and the laird of Dun, John Erskine, in Angus were amongst his earliest followers, as well as many of the tradesmen and artisans. Knox now openly denounced attendance at mass as idolatrous and began to administer the Lord’s Supper after the manner of the Swiss Reformers. He was summoned to Edinburgh on a charge of heresy; but, though he kept the day, the proceedings were dropped. Shortly after he was again summoned, but meanwhile had accepted a call from Geneva. In his absence he was condemned for heresy and burned in effigy at the market cross of Edinburgh. Though absent, he continued the master-spirit of the Reformation in Scotland, and as the result of his exhortations Argyll, Glencairn, Morton, Lord Lome, and Erskine of Dun drew up a bond (3d December 1557) to “defend the whole congregation of Christ and every member thereof . . . against Satan and all wicked power,” themselves forsaking and renouncing “the congregation of Satan with all the superstition, abomination, and idolatry thereof.” This was the first of many bonds or covenants in which, borrowing the old form of league amongst the Scottish nobility, the Lords of Congregation applied it to the purposes of the Reformation. They afterwards passed resolutions that prayers should be read weekly in all parishes by the curates publicly, with lessons from the Old and New Testaments, and that doctrine and the interpretation of the Scriptures should be used privately in quiet houses until God should move the prince to 'grant public preaching by faithful ministers. Argyll at once acted upon the resolutions and protected John Douglas, formerly a Dominican, his chaplain, who preached at Castle Campbell in spite of the remonstrance of Archbishop Hamilton. That prelate next took a fatal step. Walter Myln, parish priest of Lunan near Montrose, an old man of eighty-two, was burnt for heresy at St Andrews (8th April 1558). He was the last Protestant martyr in Scotland. The total number of deaths was small, it is believed twenty in all; but many people were banished or forced to leave the country and many fined, while none were allowed freedom of worship. Immediately after the death of Myln there began, says Knox, “a new fervencie amongst the whole people.” Gathering courage from the popular feeling, the Lords of Congregation presented petitions in rapid succession to the regent. The first laid before her prayed “that it might be lawful to meet in public or in private for common prayer in the vulgar tongue, to interpret at such meetings hard places in Scripture, and to use that tongue in administering baptism and the Lord’s Supper”; in reply permission was granted to preach in private and to administer the sacraments in the vulgar tongue. The second presented at the meeting of parliament prayed for a suspension of all Acts against heretics until a general council, that copies of the accusation and depositions should be given to all persons accused of heresy, that the accused should be allowed themselves to interpret any words charged as heretical, and should not be condemned unless found guilty of teaching contrary to Scripture. “The regent,” Knox remarks, “spared not amiable looks and good words,” but suffered the parliament to be dissolved (2d March 1557) without any answer. In the spring a synod met in Edinburgh and a third petition was laid before it, praying that the canons should be enforced against clergy who led scandalous lives, that there should be preaching on every Lord’s day and on holidays, that no priests should be ordained unless able to read the Catechism distinctly, that prayer should be in the vulgar tongue, that the mortuary dues and Easter offerings should be optional, and that the consistorial process should be reformed. Another point was included according to Lesley, —that bishops should be elected with the consent of the laity of the diocese and priests with that of their parishioners. The synod replied that they could not dispense with Latin in public prayer as appointed by the church, and that the canon law must be observed as to elections of bishops and priests. On other matters they were prepared to make concessions, and passed thirty-four canons in the spirit of the council of Trent directed to the due investigation and punishment of immorality of the clergy and the inspection of monasteries, better provision for preaching by bishops and priests, the remission of mortuary dues to the very poor, and the recognition of the sacrament of baptism as administered by the Reformers. A short exposition of the mass was to be published. These concessions proved the necessity for reform; but, as they were silent on the principal points of doctrine, as well as on the more radical reforms in church government, they could not be accepted. The time of compromise, if compromise had ever been practicable between Rome and Geneva, to which the Scottish Reformers adhered, was now past. Two events had occurred before the synod separated which hastened the crisis. On 17th November 1558 the death of Mary Tudor once more placed on the English throne a sovereign inclined to favour the Reformation. In May, during the sittings of the synod, Knox returned to Scotland and the Scottish Reformers once more had a determined leader.

The regent issued about Easter (1559) a proclamation forbidding any one to preach or administer the sacraments without authority of the bishops. Willock and other leading preachers having disregarded it were summoned to Stirling on 10th May. Their adherents assembled in great numbers, but mostly unarmed, at Perth, a town zealous for the Reformed opinions. Erskine of Dun went from there as a mediator to the regent at Stirling; she promised, but in vague terms, that she would take some better order with the ministers if their supporters did not advance. Notwithstanding they were outlawed for not appearing on the day of trial. Next day, when the news reached Perth, Knox preached his first public sermon (11th May) since his return, inveighing against “idolatry.” Hardly had he ended when a priest began mass and opened the tabernacle on the high altar. A young man called out, “This is intolerable that, when God by His Word hath plainly damned idolatry, we shall stand and see it used.” The priest struck the youth, who retaliated by throwing a stone, which broke an image. From this spark the fire kindled. The people destroyed the images in the church and then proceeded to sack the monasteries. The example of Perth was followed at many other places. The regent could not remain passive when the Congregation was sanctioning such action. But her position was one of grave difficulty. Her main support was from France, and, though she had adherents amongst the Scottish nobility, Argyll and Lord James, who were still with her at Stirling, were really committed to the Congregation. What course the new queen of England would take was still uncertain. On 11th May the regent advanced towards Perth, but the arrival of Glencairn with 2500 men from the west to aid the Congregation led to a compromise, of which the terms were these: both parties were to disband their troops; Perth was to be left open to the regent, but no French troops were to come within 3 miles; the inhabitants were not to be called upon to answer for their recent conduct; and all controversies were to be reserved for parliament. The Congregation, however, remained distrustful; Knox openly preached that the treaty would only be kept till the regent and her Frenchmen became the stronger, and before leaving Perth the Lords of Congregation entered into a new bond for mutual defence. The regent entered Perth the day they left (29th May), accompanied by the duke of Chastelherault and a bodyguard of French as well as Scottish troops paid by French money. The deposition of the provost in favour of a Papist and the occupation of the town by these troops were deemed breaches of the agreement, and Argyll and Lord James now joined the Reformers and took the lead in their proceedings. Their numbers increasing, the regent felt unable to retain Perth, and quitting it marched south, followed by the army of the Congregation, to which she abandoned Stirling, Linlithgow, and Edinburgh, taking refuge at Dunbar. The only conflict was at the Muir of Cupar, where a small force sent to save St Andrews was quickly dispersed by the superior numbers of its opponents. It was made a condition of a truce that no Frenchman should be left in Fife. The Reformers occupied Edinburgh for a few weeks, but were obliged to abandon it upon new terms of truce intended to preserve the status quo. Both parties were engaged in negotiations for active assistance, the one from France and the other from England. The regent had been daily expecting reinforcements, and a considerable number of troops about this time landed at Leith, which they began to fortify.

In the end of June Kirkaldy of Grange began a correspondence, afterwards continued by Knox, with Cecil, Percy, and Sir Herbert Croft. Their scheme was far-reaching. The young earl of Arran, though brought up in France, had become Protestant, and if he, the heir-presumptive to the Scottish crown, were married to Elizabeth the union of the two countries would be secured along with the Reformation. This would be a counter-stroke to the union of France and Scotland under a Catholic, which almost at the moment became for a brief time an accomplished fact, by the dauphin succeeding as Francis II. to the French crown on the death of his father. The policy of the Guises, who continued to control the Government under the new king, almost forced Elizabeth in this direction. Mary quartered the arms of England with those of Scotland, implying denial of Elizabeth’s right both as illegitimate and as a heretic. But Elizabeth knew the value both of her hand and of the state, which, thanks to the ability of her ministers, was daily becoming more loyal. She had special cause for hesitating to ally herself with the Lords of Congregation. Knox had offended her by his vehement Blasts against the Regiment of Women, which, though primarily aimed against the Catholic queens, admitted no exception in favour of a Protestant. Nor could Knox even when supplicating aid adopt the courtier’s language to which Elizabeth was accustomed. She was really afraid of the revolutionary principles of some of the Reformers, which seemed to threaten the throne as well as the altar. Moreover, Arran, who came secretly to the English court, did not please her, and there was an end of the matrimonial part of the scheme. The rest of it would probably also have miscarried but for the consummate statesmanship of Cecil, who saw where the interest of England lay. In August 1559 Sadler was sent with £3000 to the assistance of the Scottish Protestants. Another supply followed, but was intercepted, and in January 1560 a treaty was agreed to at Berwick between Elizabeth and the Lords of Congregation, to whom the duke of Chastelherault had now gone over. The Scots engaged not to enter into an alliance with France, and to defend the country against French aggression. Elizabeth was to support Scotland by an army, but no place of strength was to be left in English hands. If any were taken from the French they were to be razed or retained by the Scots. The Scots were to assist England if attacked by France, and to give hostages for fulfilment of the treaty. Next spring an English army under Lord Grey crossed the Tweed (28th March 1560), met the forces of the Congregation at Prestonpans, and invested Leith, in which the French were also blockaded by sea. The regent had taken refuge in Edinburgh castle, and here on 10th June she died of dropsy. She had been deserted gradually by almost all her Scottish adherents. The last to go was Maitland of Lethington, the most talented but also the most cunning of the Scottish statesmen. His desertion was the sign of a lost cause. Even some of the higher clergy now conformed. Lord Erskine almost alone remained faithful. The regent’s own courage never failed, and, though she received a visit from the leaders of the Congregation and consented to see Willock, she died a firm Catholic. Her misfortunes and her conciliatory policy during her long struggles to maintain the French connexion with Scotland have gained her a lenient judgment even from Protestants, all save Knox, whose personal animosity is palpable, though his view of her policy is correct.

Her death removed the chief obstacle to peace, which the English and the French courts had for some time desired, and the treaty of Edinburgh was concluded on 8th July 1560 upon terms favourable to Scotland. The military forces of both France and England were to evacuate Scotland, except a certain number of French, who were to remain in Inchkeith and Dunbar. Leith and Eyemouth were to be dismantled; Mary and Francis were to abstain from using the arms of England. By separate articles certain concessions were granted to the nobility and people of Scotland showing the length to which the limitation of the monarchy was carried. No French or other soldiers were to be brought into the realm unless in the event of an invasion and only with the consent of the estates. Neither peace nor war was to be made without their consent. A council of twelve (seven chosen by the king and queen and five by the estates out of twenty-four selected by the estates) were to govern the kingdom during the absence of Mary and Francis. The chief officers of the crown were to be natives. An Act of oblivion was to be passed for all Acts since 6th March 1558. Neither the nobles nor any other persons were to assemble in arms except in cases provided by the law. The duke of Chastelherault and his son, Arran, and all other Scots were to be restored to their French estates. With matters of religion the deputies refused to deal; but envoys were to be sent to the king and queen to lay before them the state of affairs, particularly those last mentioned.

Before parliament met an important step towards a new organization of the church was taken. Superintendents, some lay, others clerical, were appointed for Lothian, Glasgow, Fife, Angus, Mearns, Argyll, and the Isles. The principal ministers of the Congregation were planted in the chief towns,—Knox receiving Edinburgh as his charge. The convention parliament which assembled on 10th July and began its business on 1st August 1560 was the Reformation parliament of Scotland. Like Henry VIII.’s famous parliament, its work was thorough. It not merely reformed abuses but changed the national creed and accomplished more in one than the English parliament did in three sessions. The parliament was the most numerous yet held in Scotland, being attended not only by nearly all the nobility but by some bishops and an unusually large number of lesser barons or landed gentry, representatives of the burghs. Its statutes never received the royal assent, but were confirmed by the first parliament after Mary’s deposition. On 18th August the Confession of Faith received the sanction of the estates. On the 24th an Act was passed declaring that the bishop of Rome had no jurisdiction or authority within the realm. Another rescinded all Acts passed since James I. contrary to God’s word; and a third prohibited the mass or baptism according to the Roman rite, and ordained strict inquisition against all persons contravening the statute. The form of church government was not explicitly altered. The archbishop of St Andrews, and Dunkeld and Dunblane alone of the bishops, are said to have voted against the Confession, and Athole, Somerville, Caithness, and Bothwell alone of the nobles. The whole power of the state was at this time in the hands of the party of the Reformation and resistance was useless. The Confession of Faith, the cornerstone of the new policy both in church and state, was drawn up by Knox and five other ministers, but revised by the more moderate Reformers Lethington and Winram. The power of the civil magistrate was declared in terms which indicate the revision of Lethington rather than the original draft of Knox. Its language is certainly such as monarchs had been little accustomed to, though the expression is not so blunt as Knox used in preaching and conversation. Kings, princes, and magistrates in free cities are declared to be those to whom the reformation of religion “chiefly and most principally appertains.” They are themselves to be judged by God, being appointed for the maintenance of the true religion and suppression of idolatry. Resistance to them, but only when vigilant in the execution of their office, is declared sinful.

The same persons who had prepared the Confession were entrusted with the composition of a code of ecclesiastical polity, and a draft, after being first laid before the convention of 1560, was submitted as revised to that of the following year. This First Book of Discipline was not universally approved; several of its provisions, especially those relating to church estates and their application to the support of the ministry, the relief of the poor, and the furtherance of education, were little to the taste of the nobility, and it was never sanctioned by the estates or fully acted on. Other parts of it were, however, embodied in the Second Book of Discipline, which became the law of the Reformed Church. It remains a memorial of the farsighted views of Knox, its author; and the verdict of posterity has been in his favour and against the nobles who prevented its being carried out. See Presbyterianism, vol. xix. p. 679 sq.

The death of Francis II. (6th December 1560) materially altered the political situation. The much feared subordination of Scotland to France was at last averted. Mary Stuart, only nineteen, was young enough to be influenced by a new husband and new responsibilities. Her character was not yet known, but her relations with Catherine de’ Medici were not friendly, and there was little doubt that she would take advantage of the provision in her marriage articles and return to Scotland. Sir John Sandilands’s mission to France to procure the royal sanction to the treaty of Edinburgh and the Acts of the Reformation parliament must have been unpalatable, and he was not favourably received. Before she left France Mary was visited by envoys of the opposite parties into which Scotland was divided. Lesley, official of Aberdeen, afterwards bishop of Ross, and her valiant defender, was sent by the Catholic lords and bishops with a special message from Huntly, urging her to come to Aberdeen, where an army of 20,000 men would be at her disposal. But Huntly had not proved trustworthy during the regency and Mary rejected an offer which would have plunged the kingdom in war from the moment she landed. The very day after she had seen

Lesley her brother Lord James, who had been sent by the Lords of Congregation, met her at St Dizier. She received him favourably, but declined to ratify the treaty till she consulted her council. An attempt was made to capture Mary on her way to Scotland; but, sailing from Calais on 14th August, she landed at Leith on the 19th. She was accompanied by three uncles and a considerable suite, including Castelnau the historian, Brantôme the memoir writer, and the poet Chastelard.

On her return to Scotland Mary showed herself disposed to conciliate the Reformers provided she was allowed the exercise of her own faith. This had been guaranteed her by Lord James. His near kinship to the queen at a time when the stain of bastardy was less regarded, and his close relation with the Reformers, made him necessary to both and gave him an influence which his eminent prudence used for the good of the nation, but with an eye to his own advantage. Without thrusting himself too prominently forward, he led the privy council (ably supported by Lethington), and, without the name, was in fact prime minister. The title of Mar, and, when that was reclaimed by the heir of the Erskines, of Moray or Murray (q.v.), with its large territories, gave him the designation by which he is best known, as well as great wealth, which he dispersed by means not well explained. But the leaven of another influence than that of the statesman was now at work in Scottish politics. This was embodied in John Knox, the most representative Scotsman since Wallace. The first Sunday after Mary’s arrival the mob tried to interrupt mass at Holyrood, and Moray had himself to keep the chapel door to prevent its being broken. “His best excuse was,” says Knox, “that he wald stop all Scotchmen to enter into the mass.” Next Sunday Knox preached in Edinburgh against idolatry, “One mass was more fearful to him,” he said, “than 20,000 armed enemies.” Little likely as such sentiments were to please the young queen, a meeting between her and the preacher was arranged by Moray, the only third party present. On the matter of religion he was unbending, yet not more so than Mary. His judgment of the queen’s character was, “If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty spirit, and an indurate heart against God and His truth my judgment faileth me.” In 1562 Huntly, the chief Romanist in the north, who offered to have the mass said in three counties, rebelled, being indignant at the grant to Moray of an earldom whose estates he then held. Mary, accompanied by her brother, made a progress in the north, where Huntly was defeated and slain at Corrichie, his elder son being imprisoned, his second beheaded, and the lands of Huntly, of his kinsman the earl of Sutherland, and other barons of the house of Huntly forfeited. On her return to Edinburgh Mary again met Knox at Holyrood. He rebuked her for dancing and other frivolities, advised her to attend the public sermons, and told her that it was not his duty to leave his studies in order to wait at her chamber door. There were other interviews, in one of which (April 1563) only Mary seemed to yield a little. She was anxious to use his influence to quiet a threatened rising in the west, and to heal a quarrel between her half sister the countess of Argyll and her husband. Knox promised his aid, but required in return that the penal laws should be enforced against the Papists. This Mary agreed to, and her promise was also apparently kept. Hamilton, archbishop of St Andrews, and fortyseven other persons were prosecuted for hearing confession and celebrating the mass. Yet Knox’s comment in his History is, “This conference we have inserted to let the world see how Marie queen of Scotland can dissemble, and how that she could cause men to think that she bore no indignation for any controversy in religion, while that yet in her heart was nothing but venom and destruction, as short after that did appear.” She was in fact corresponding with her uncle the cardinal of Lorraine, with the pope, with Philip IL, testifying her steadfast attachment to Papacy and her desire to restore the Catholic faith. At a last conference Knox remonstrated against her marriage, then thought imminent, with a Papist, claiming the right of a subject “to speak out on this topic which so nearly concerned the commonwealth,” remaining unmoved by the last argument of a woman, which he savagely describes as “howling and tears in greater abundance than the matter required.” Nothing but perusal of the conversations can bring before us this pregnant passage of history—the abasement of the Scottish monarchy before the religious democracy—of the woman forced to dissemble and weep before the stern man believing he delivered a message from God to the head of a corrupt court. Something was allowed to Knox’s sincere outspokenness. He moved men and women alike by words which, like Luther’s, go straight to the realities of life. He is the typical Scottish divine framed on the model of the Hebrew prophets, and often reproduced in weaker copies. The Reformation in Scotland, in both its strength and its weakness, was his work more than that of any other man. The Presbyterian form of government, of which his friend Calvin was the author, was introduced by Knox from Geneva and continued for long to enforce discipline, first by censure and then, if need be, by excommunication and temporal punishment, entirely in his spirit.

Not only to Knox and the Reformers but to all classes the question of the day was the queen’s marriage. Apart from her beauty, her political position rendered her hand of importance to the balance of power. It held not only the dowry of France and the possession of Scotland but a claim, which might be at any moment asserted, to the English crown. She avowed her inclination to marry, and indeed she required a man to put her in possession of her kingdom. Don Carlos, the archduke of Austria, son of Philip of Spain, Charles IX. of France, the kings of Denmark and of Sweden, the archduke Charles, second son of the emperor, were all passed in review but rejected. Elizabeth pressed the claim of her favourite Leicester,—a project supported by Cecil and Moray. In the end the fair face and fine figure of her young cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, carried the day. A party of the Scottish nobles—Athole, himself a Stuart, Morton, Crawford, Eglinton, and Cassilis—favoured the alliance. David Rizzio, the queen’s foreign secretary, who already had great influence with her, promoted it. But it was her own act, the most dangerous of many false steps in her life. Shortly before the marriage (29th July 1565) Moray attempted to seize Darnley and the queen as they rode from Perth to Callendar near Falkirk. When it was accomplished he rose in arms with the duke of Chastelherault, the head of the Hamiltons, Argyll, and Rothes; but Mary with a large force pursued them from place to place in the Roundabout Raid, from the neighbourhood of Edinburgh through Fife, where she levied fines, and finally to Dumfries, from which Moray fled to England. He had been secretly but not vigorously supported by Elizabeth, who, when she heard of his flight, recalled her orders to Bedford, then on the marches, to place troops at the disposal of the insurgents. Mary still retained some of the popularity of a young queen, and fostered it by an apparent desire to humour the Reformers. For the first time she attended a Protestant sermon. But the consequences of a union between a high-spirited woman, active in mind and body beyond her sex and years, with a vain and dissolute youth were soon seen. His alienation from the queen, the murder of Rizzio, with the intrigues that preceded and followed it, the rapid growth of Bothwell's influence, the pitiable vacillations of Darnley, and his murder at Kirk of Field (10th February 1567) have been sketched in the article Mary (vol. xv. p. 596 sq.). The authors of the last crime were Bothwell, who devised it, and his servants, who executed it. Their confessions leave no doubt of their own guilt. Who were their accomplices has from that day to this been debated without conclusive answer. The great controversy is whether the nobles with Moray at their head had bound themselves to support Bothwell, as he and Mary afterwards declared, or whether Mary, possessed with passion for Bothwell and hate of Darnley, herself instigated her husband’s murder. Some have thought both the queen and the nobles were implicated. The casket letters, alleged to have been found in a coffer that was given to Morton by Dalgleish when intrusted with it by Sir James Balfour for its delivery to Bothwell, must be left out in any fair examination of this question. The mode of their recovery and their production, first partially and secretly before Elizabeth’s commissioners at York, then with apparent but not real publicity at Westminster (for Mary’s counsellors were not allowed to see them), their contents, so different from her known writings, and the disappearance of the originals render their evidence inadmissible. What weighs most against Mary is her subsequent conduct, explicable only in favour of innocence if she was absolutely in Bothwell’s power from the time of the murder to the defeat of Carberry,—an hypothesis not borne out by facts. Though Lennox and his wife urged that the murderers be brought to justice, there was delay till 13th April, when Bothwell was at last brought before an assize. The trial was a sham, and his acquittal on the pretence that there was no accuser could deceive no one.

The strange wooing which commenced when Darnley was just buried, if not before, was continued by the seizure of Mary by Bothwell near Cramond and her captivity in her own castle of Dunbar—a pretence according to her adversaries, an opportunity for an outrage from which marriage was the only escape according to her defenders—at last culminated in the marriage at six in the morning, at Holyrood, on the 15th of May 1567. It was the month when wicked women marry, said the people, writing Ovid’s line on the Tolbooth walls. Before it took place she created Bothwell duke of Orkney, and pardoned him for any violence. She also wrote in palliation of his conduct to the French king. His divorce from Lady Jane Gordon had been hurried through both the bishops’ court and that of the Protestant commissaries,—in the former on the false pretence that there had been no papal dispensation for his marriage to one of near kin, and in the latter on the ground of adultery. Mary had been more than once warned of the consequences of such a marriage by Lord Herries, by the faithful Melville, and by Craig, the minister who, with the utmost reluctance, proclaimed the banns. It was an act which required no warning. She had no alternative, urge her vindicators, to save her honour, and her tears on the morning of marriage are proof that she was forced; but the more scrupulous admit she should have preferred death to union with a man she must at least have known was not clear of Darnley’s murder. Her enemies said then, and historians who take their side repeat, that it was the madness of a passion she could not resist. The view most consistent with the facts seems to be that she accepted, not without fits of remorse, the service of the strongest sword at her disposal on the only terms on which she could obtain it. But, if Mary cannot be acquitted of the degree of complicity implied in accepting the consequences of the murder, many of the leading nobles were involved in equal guilt. On 19th April a bond asserting Bothwell’s innocence and urging Mary to marry him had been signed at Ainslie’s tavern, not only by Bothwell’s few friends, but by “a great part of the lords.” Most of those who signed had in the parliament just concluded received grants of land or remission of forfeiture, and it is urged by Mary’s defenders that they were bribed to acquiesce in Bothwell’s designs. When the bond was afterwards put in evidence against them their plea was that they had been forced to sign it by Bothwell. It is contended on Mary’s behalf that with so many of the nobles committed to approval of the marriage she had no one on whom to rely. There is something in this argument; but it does not meet the point—Why did she rely on Bothwell? That a scheme was arranged before Darnley’s murder to entrap her into this marriage, in order to pave the way for her deposition, and that the casket letters were fabricated to clench her guilt, has been suggested; but the facts necessary to prove so deep a train of conspiracy are wanting. The two Scotsmen who almost alone maintained the character of honest men, Kirkaldy of Grange and Sir James Melville, who were so far from being unfriendly to Mary that they ultimately espoused her cause, believed that she was a willing victim and threw herself into Bothwell’s arms. The narrative in her own despatch to the bishop of Dunblane does not allege that she was forced, but only that “he partlie extorted and partlie obtained our promise to take him as our husband.”

The leading nobles were not disposed to accept a new master in Bothwell, whose vices, unlike those of Darnley, were coupled with a strong instead of a weak character. They kept jealous possession of the young prince, placed in the custody of Mar in Stirling; and, when a muster was called to enforce order on the border, secretly collected their forces to act against instead of for the queen and her husband. Within a month of her marriage she was met at Carberry Hill, near Musselburgh (15th June 1567), by a force of the confederate lords, headed by Morton and Glencairn, Ruthven and Lindsay. Mary, after a fruitless attempt at mediation by Du Croc, the French ambassador, and an offer equally vain by Bothwell to decide the issue by single combat, surrendered to Kirkaldy. Bothwell rode off to Dunbar with a few followers, and Mary was conducted to Morton’s camp. Once in their hands, the lords treated her as a prisoner, and confined her at Lochleven Castle, where she was forced to abdicate, surrendering the crown in favour of her son and committing the regency during the minority to Moray. The young king was crowned at Stirling on 29th July. The prudent Moray, who had kept out of the way in France while these events were transacted in Scotland, now returned and was installed as regent (22d August). Mary remained prisoner in Loch Leven for nearly a year. After her escape on 2d May 1568 the duke of Chastelherault and other Catholic nobles rallied round her standard; but on 13th May Moray and the Protestant lords met her forces at Langside near Glasgow, and the issue of that battle forced her to fly to England, where she placed herself (19th May) in the hands of Lord Lowther, governor of Carlisle, recalling Elizabeth’s promises of protection. Mary, however, found that she was really a prisoner. Like Baliol, she disappears personally from the field of Scottish history; but her life in exile, unlike his, was spent in busy plots to recover her lost throne. It became clear as time went on that she placed her whole reliance on the Catholic minority and foreign aid; even in prison she was a menace to Elizabeth and ready to plot against her as an enemy. The Pro testant party increased in Scotland until it became a majority almost representative of the whole nation; even her own son when he came to hold the sceptre, little inclined as he was to accept Presbyterian principles, regarded her as a revolutionary element fortunately removed. Her knowledge of Babington’s plot for the invasion of England is proved, though her assent to the death of Elizabeth is still an open question. By her will, confirmed by her last letters, she bequeathed the crown of Scotland and her claim to that of England to Philip II. The letters contain this modification only, that her son was to have an opportunity of embracing the Catholic faith under the guardianship of Philip to save his own throne. There was no such reservation as regards that of England. The Armada, from whose overthrow date the fall of Spain and the rise of Britain as the chief European power, was due to the direct instigation of Mary Stuart.

Meantime, in Scotland, four regencies rapidly succeeded each other during the minority of James. The deaths by violence of two regents, Moray and Lennox, the suspicion of foul play in the death of the third, Mar, and the end scarcely less violent because preceded by a trial of the fourth, Morton, mark a revolutionary period and the impossibility of the attempted solution by placing the government in the hands of the most powerful noble. Hereditary royalty, not the rule of the aristocracy, was still dominant in Scottish politics and a regency was an experiment already disparaged in the preceding reigns. Moray, said Sir J. Melville, “was and is called the good regent,” mingling with this praise only the slight qualification that in his later years he was apt to be led by flatterers, but testifying to his willingness to listen to Melville’s own counsels. This epithet bestowed by the Protestants, whose champion he was, still adheres to him; but only partisans can justify its use. He displayed great promptness in baffling the schemes of Mary and her party, suppressed with vigour the border thieves, and ruled with a firm hand, resisting the temptation to place the crown on his own head. His name is absent from many plots of the time. He observed the forms of personal piety,— possibly shared the zeal of the Reformers, while he moderated their bigotry. But the reverse side of his character is proved by his conduct. He reaped the fruits of the conspiracies which led to Rizzio’s and Darnley’s murders. He amassed too great a fortune from the estates of the church to be deemed a pure reformer of its abuses. He pursued his sister with a calculated animosity which would not have spared her life had this been necessary to his end or been favoured by Elizabeth. The mode of production of the casket letters and the false charges added by Buchanan, “the pen” of Moray, deprive Moray of any reasonable claim to have been an honest accuser, zealous only to detect guilt and to benefit his country. The reluctance to charge Mary with complicity in the murder of Darnley was feigned, and his object was gained when he was allowed to table the accusation without being forced to prove it. Mary remained a captive under suspicion of the gravest guilt, while Moray returned to Scotland to rule in her stead, supported by nobles who had taken part in the steps which ended in Bothwell’s deed. Moray left London on 12th January 1569. During the year between his return and his death several events occurred for which he has been censured, but which were necessary for his security,—the betrayal of the duke of Norfolk and of the secret plot for the liberation of Mary to Elizabeth, the imprisonment in Loch Leven of the earl of Northumberland, who after the failure of his rising in the north of England had taken refuge in Scotland, and the charge brought against Maitland of Lethington of complicity in Darnley’s murder. Lethington was committed to custody, but rescued by Kirkaldy of Grange, who held the castle of Edinburgh, and while there “the chameleon,” as Buchanan named Maitland in his famous invective, contrary to the nature of that animal, gained over those in the castle, including Kirkaldy. Moray was afraid to proceed with the charge on the day of trial, and Kirkaldy and Maitland became partisans of the queen. The castle was the stronghold of the queen’s party,—being isolated from the town and able to hold out against the regent who governed in the name of her son. This defection was mourned over by the Reformers. Knox, with the self-confidence which marked his character, sent from his deathbed to Kirkaldy a message of warning that “neither the craggy rock in which he confided, nor the carnal wisdom of the man [Maitland] whom he esteemed a demi-god, nor the assistance of strangers, should preserve him from being disgracefully dragged to ignominious punishment.” It has been suspected that Maitland and Kirkaldy were cognizant of the design of Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh to murder Moray, for he had been with them in the castle. This has been ascribed to private vengeance for the ill-treatment of his wife; but the feud of the Hamiltons with the regent is the most reasonable explanation. As he rode through Linlithgow Moray was shot (23d January 1570) from a window by Hamilton, who had made careful preparation for the murder and his own escape. Moray was buried in the south aisle of St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, amid general mourning. Knox preached the sermon and Buchanan furnished the epitaph, both unstinted panegyrics. His real character is as difficult to penetrate as that of Mary. It is easy for the historian to condemn the one and praise the other according to his own religious or political creed. It is nearer truth to recognize in both the graces and talents of the Stuart race, which won devoted followers, but to acknowledge that times in which Christian divines approved of the murder of their enemies were not likely to produce a stainless heroine or faultless hero, indeed necessitated a participation in deeds which would be crimes unless they can be palliated as acts of civil war. Let us absolve, if we can, Moray and Mary of Darnley’s blood. It remains indisputable that Mary approved of Moray’s assassination and that Moray would have sanctioned Mary’s death.

Moray was succeeded in the regency by Lennox, Darnley’s father, the male nearest of kin to the future sovereign, but really the nominee of Elizabeth. His brief term of office was marked by the renewal of the English war under Sussex and other generals, which made the queen’s cause again the more popular. Lennox, another victim of violence, was slain (3d September 1571) in a hasty attack by one of the Hamiltons on Stirling, from which Morton, the real head of the Protestant party, who at first had been taken and threatened with the same fate, barely escaped. Mar, who had all along held the custody of the young king, was now chosen regent and held the post for a year, when he died (28th October 1572). During his regency the civil war between the queen’s and the king’s party continued. An English intrigue was carried on with great mystery, and never brought to a point, by Randolph and Killigrew to deliver Mary to the regent that she might be tried within her own dominions. On the death of Mar, Morton, who had been the most powerful noble during the last regency, at length reached the object of his ambition by being elected regent. On the day of Morton’s election Knox died. He was “one,” said Morton, “who never feared the face of man.” If we condemn his violent language and bitter spirit, it is just to remember that he lived during the red heat of the struggle between Rome and the Reformation, and died before the triumph of the latter in Scotland was secure. He had felt the thongs of the galleys and narrowly escaped the stake. The massacre of St Bartholomew spread consternation throughout Protestant Europe just before his last illness. Mary and Philip of Spain were still plotting for the destruction of all he held vital. His scheme for the reformation of the church and application of its revenues was in advance not of his own time only. He contemplated free education for children of the poor who really required such aid,— a graduated system of parish schools, burgh schools, and universities, which would have forestalled the most recent educational reform. "While he introduced Presbyterian government by kirk-sessions, presbyteries, synods, and general assembly and opposed even a modified Episcopacy, he saw the advantage of the superintendence of districts by the more learned and able clergy. While he insisted on the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments in the vulgar tongue, his liturgy shows his favour for forms of public prayer. Knox’s first wife was English, and two of his sons took orders in the Church of England. Scottish Presbyterianism had not yet been hardened by persecution into a hatred of prelacy as bitter as that of Popery. It meant separation from Rome, but inclined to union with England, and the question of the form of church government was still open.

Morton, like his predecessor, favoured the Episcopal order, and, acting upon a compromise agreed to at Leith, a modified Episcopacy was restored. The bishops appointed were declared subject to the king in temporal and to the church and general assembly in spiritual matters, and were to have the same jurisdiction as the superintendents. The assembly of Perth protested against the use of certain ecclesiastical titles, but passed over that of bishop. Most of the clergy sanctioned, though with reluctance, the appointment of bishops in the hope of retaining their revenues. The people called them “tulchan” bishops, from the straw counterfeit used to rob the calf of its mother’s milk. Almost the whole church property remained in the hands of the landed proprietors, Moray in the first instance and afterwards Morton receiving a lion’s share. Avarice was Morton’s besetting sin. In other respects he was an energetic and capable ruler. He effected at Perth, with the aid of Elizabeth’s envoy, a pacification with Huntly, Chastelherault, and the Catholic nobles who supported Mary. Only the castle of Edinburgh held out, and this, aided by English artillery, he succeeded in taking after a brave resistance by Kirkaldy and Lethington. Kirkaldy and his brother were executed at the cross of Edinburgh. Lethington escaped their fate in what Melville calls “the Roman manner,”—at his own hands, perhaps by poison. The death of the bravest and the ablest Scotsman of that age put an end to the last chance of Mary’s restoration by native support. Morton, now without a rival, restored order in the borders, and when an encounter occurred between the English and Scottish borderers called the Raid of the Redswyre his prudence prevented it becoming a national conflict. He appointed a commission for the reform of the law,—a far-sighted scheme, often attempted but always stopping short of success, to codify the law, which several Continental states, notably Denmark, about this period engaged in. The time was not ripe for a change which, now that it is, remains unaccomplished. But, while all seemed to favour Morton, there were undercurrents which combined to procure his fall. The Presbyterian clergy were alienated by his leaning to Episcopacy, and all parties in the divided church by his seizure of its estates. Andrew Melville, who had succeeded to the leadership of Knox, was more decided than Knox against any departure from the Presbyterian model, and refused to be won by a place in his household. His expensive buildings at Dalkeith, which got the name of the Lion’s Den, roused the jealousy of the nobles. The arrogance of his favourites exceeded his own. The commons were disgusted by a depreciation of the coinage. The powerful earl of Argyll, incensed by the recovery from his wife, the widow of Moray, of some of the crown jewels, and Athole, a Stuart and Roman Catholic, united with Alexander Erskine, governor of Stirling, who now had the custody of the young king, in a league which received so much support that Morton bent before the storm and offered to resign. The king, whose education had been forced by Buchanan, now barely twelve years of age, nominally assumed the government, but was directed by a council of nobles headed by Athole as chancellor. Morton surrendered the castle of Edinburgh, the palace of Holyrood, and the royal treasures, retiring to Loch Leven, where he busied himself in laying out gardens. But his ambition could not deny itself another stroke for power. Aided by the young earl of Mar, he got possession of Stirling castle and the person of the king. Civil war was avoided only by the influence of Bowes, the English ambassador. A nominal reconciliation was effected, and a parliament at Stirling introduced a new government. Morton, who secured an indemnity, was president of the council, but Athole remained a privy councillor in an enlarged council with representatives of both parties. Shortly afterwards Athole died, of poison it was said, and suspicion pointed to Morton. His return to power was brief, and the only important event was the prosecution of the two Hamiltons, the abbots of Arbroath and Paisley, who still supported Mary and saved their lives by flight to England. The struggle with the Presbyterian clergy continued. The Second Book of Discipline had been presented to the king before he assumed office, and, although the general assembly in 1580 condemned Episcopacy absolutely, parliament did not sanction the condemnation. The final fall of Morton came from an opposite quarter. In September 1579 Esmé Stuart, Lord D’Aubigny, the king’s cousin, came to Scotland from France, gained the favour of James by his courtly manners, and received the lands and earldom of Lennox, the custody of Dumbarton castle, and the office of chamberlain. One of his dependants, Captain James Stuart, son of Lord Ochiltree and brother-in-law of Knox, had the daring to accuse Morton at a meeting of the council in Holyrood of complicity in the murder of Darnley, and he was at once committed to custody. Some months later Morton was condemned by an assize for having taken part in that crime, and the verdict was justified by his confession that Bothwell had revealed to him the design, although he denied participation in its execution. He was executed by the Maiden—a guillotine he had himself brought from England—on 2d June 1581.

From December 1580 to August 1582 the government was in the hands of Lennox and Stuart, now captain of the guard,—a small force which the estates had reluctantly allowed the king to protect his person. Their jealousy threatened but never reached an open rupture. Stuart was rewarded by the gift first of the tutory, then of the earldom of Arran in April 1581. Lennox was created duke, a title seldom granted in Scotland. Their aim, carefully concealed by nominal adherence to the Protestant faith, appears to have been the association of Mary with her son in the government, a breach with England, the renewal of the league with France, and the restoration of the Roman Church. The nobles, bribed by office or the spoils of the church, were men of too feeble character to resist, but the Presbyterian ministers were made of stronger metal. Illegal banishment of the contumacious clergy and arbitrary orders of council were followed by a rising against Episcopacy. The proclamation of an extraordinary chamberlain air—an itinerant court of justice—to be held by Lennox at Edinburgh on 27th August precipitated the coup d'état of the Raid of Ruthven, which took the usual form of Scottish revolutions,—the seizure of the king and the transfer of power to his captors. When on a visit (22d August 1582) to the earl of Cowrie, son of his mother’s foe Lord Ruthven, at his castle of Hunting Tower near Perth, the earl his host, Mar, the master of Clamis, and others, taking advantage of the absence of Lennox and Arran, surrounded the castle with armed men and made James a prisoner, though still ostensibly treating him as king. Arran, returning to Perth with only two followers, was seized and put in prison. Lennox, after taking refuge in the castle of Dumbarton, fled to France, where he died in disgrace with the Catholics, because he had conformed to the Protestant doctrine.

The government was for ten months in the hands of a new council, of which Gowrie as treasurer was the head. There was no parliament, but a convention at Holyrood ratified the consequences of the Raid of Ruthven. A declaration was extorted from the king condoning his capture; but James, no longer a boy, chafed under the tutelage of the Protestant nobles and the admonitions of the Protestant ministers. In June of the following year he escaped from Falkland to St Andrews, which was held by Colonel Stewart. Arran was recalled, the Raid of Ruthven declared treason, Gowrie executed, and the chief Protestant lords banished. Melville and other ministers found it necessary to fly to England. A parliament confirmed the supremacy of Arran, who was created chancellor, and the forfeiture of the chief persons implicated in the Ruthven Raid. The king’s power was declared to extend over all estates and subjects within the realm; all jurisdictions not approved by parliament and all assemblies and conventions without the king’s licence were discharged. A commission was granted to Patrick Adamson, archbishop of St Andrews, and other bishops for trying ecclesiastical causes, and a form of judgment was established for depriving ministers of their benefices for worthy causes. A declaration was required to be subscribed by all beneficed men—ministers, readers, masters of colleges and schools— acknowledging their submission to the king and obedience to their ordinary bishop or superintendent appointed by him, under pain of forfeiture. A few subscribed unconditionally, others with the qualification, “according to the Word of God”; but a large number declined, and suffered the penalty. Early in 1585 Adamson issued a paper declaring the king’s supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, defending the restoration of bishops, and announcing the king’s intention that the bishops should hold synods twice a year, that general assemblies should be allowed provided they had his sanction, but that no jurisdiction was to be exercised by presbyteries. This document, which cut at the root of the Presbyterian system and was a formal declaration in favour of the royal supremacy and Episcopacy, was met with vehement protests by Melville and the exiled ministers.

Meantime a series of intrigues went on between the English and Scottish courts. Elizabeth, while ostensibly favouring the exiles, disliked their political principles. James and Arran, instead of leaning on the papacy as Mary did, had shown signs of accepting a solution of the problem of church government more like that of England than of Geneva. There was here ground for a compromise of the religious controversy which political reasons made so desirable. Accordingly Lord Hunsdon, a favourite courtier of Elizabeth, met Arran near Berwick in the autumn, when it was arranged that the master of Gray, then a follower of Arran and personal favourite of James, should go to London in October. At his instance Elizabeth removed the banished Scottish lords and ministers from Newcastle to London. But Gray was playing his own game, and his suggestions that these lords might return to Scotland, and that the alliance with England should be carried out by their aid and his own influence independently of Arran, were taken up by the queen, who had no personal liking for Arran, and ultimately effected. Elizabeth sent Wotton to Scotland, who won the confidence of James, to whom he promised a pension of £5000 a year, and while openly negotiating with Arran secretly plotted with Gray for his downfall. A mutual league between England and Scotland against the Catholics, called “the Bond anent the True Religion,” was agreed to by a convention of estates in July 1585.

This was a turning-point in the life of James and in the history of Scotland. The choice was made between France and England, Romanism and Protestantism. It was not likely to be reversed when with Elizabeth’s declining years the crown of England was thrown into the balance. The day before the conclusion of the treaty Arran was at the request of Elizabeth’s envoy put in strict ward, under the pretext that he had been privy to the death of Lord Russell, son of the earl of Bedford, in a border fray, and he only escaped at the price of his estates and honours. In November the banished lords—Angus, Mar, the master of Glamis—returned, and along with them the two Hamiltons; and, aided by Gray, they seized the person of the king and the castle of Stirling, and assumed the government. The alliance with England was finally ratified at Berwick by Randolph. James, at the instigation of Gray, wrote a harsh letter to his mother; and at the instance of Elizabeth he allowed George Douglas, who had been concerned in Darnley’s murder, to return to Scotland. The exiled Protestant ministers were restored to their livings; but James was resolute in maintaining Episcopacy and enforcing the laws against all who denied the royal supremacy. Adamson was indeed forced by a general assembly to disclaim any authority as archbishop not allowed by God’s Word, and an Act was passed again dividing Scotland into presbyteries, but the king refused to subject the bishops to their jurisdiction. Mary, deserted by her son, now allowed herself through her immediate confidants, especially her secretaries Nau and Curle, to take an active though secret part in the Jesuit plots which embraced both Scotland and England in their ramifications. That which had for its aim the assassination of Elizabeth was discovered by Walsingham’s spies, and, though forgery was resorted to, it is difficult to doubt that Mary was cognizant of the design. The trial at Fotheringay could have but one result under a statute according to which any attempt against the queen’s life was treason in the person for whom it was made as well as in the actual perpetrators. The execution (8th February 1587) of Mary naturally roused the anger of the Catholic powers and some indignation in Scotland, which James professed to share; yet he did nothing but expostulate. In truth his own crown was threatened by the same enemies. Mary had disinherited him in favour of Philip of Spain, unless he adopted the Catholic faith. The defeat of the Spanish Armada by the sovereign and people of both countries was felt to be a providential deliverance. Nothing could have served better to efface the memory of Mary and extinguish pity for her fate. The fall of Gray, who was tried and condemned for treachery during his English embassy and for correspondence with Catholic princes, left James, now of full age, without what was almost a necessity to his weak nature, —a favourite, though Sir John Maitland, a younger brother of Lethington, was secretary and exercised the chief influence in the government. Advantage was taken of the royal majority to pass an Act annexing to the crown all church lands under certain limited reservations. But, as all prior grants to lay impropriators were saved, and the king was still allowed to grant feus of church lands, the nobles and landed gentry really profited most by this measure, which gave a parliamentary title to their estates derived from the church and the hope of future spoils. The Act was accompanied by a general revocation of all gifts made during the king’s minority or by Mary after his accession. Another statute of constitutional importance renewed, and for the first time carried into effect, the law of James I. by which the lesser barons in the counties were excused from personal attendance and allowed to send representatives to parliament. This was a check on the nobles who had hitherto almost exclusively attended and ruled parliament. It was the first and only large deviation of the Scottish parliament from the feudal model of the curia regis.

Projects for the king’s marriage had been on foot at an earlier period; but at last the choice fell upon Anne of Denmark. Elizabeth opposed the match; but James, perhaps tempted by the offer to surrender the Danish claim to Orkney and Shetland, perhaps also not unwilling to show he could choose for himself, was married to Anne by proxy. Anne set sail for Scotland, but was driven back by a storm. Accordingly James himself went to claim his bride, when the actual marriage was at once celebrated at Copenhagen, where he spent the winter. It was a political advantage both to the king and to Scotland to form a connexion with a kingdom which, though small stood comparatively high at that time in Europe, and was completely independent both of England and of France. After the king’s return the Presbyterian party was in the ascendant. It has been doubted whether the favour shown to it by James at this time was genuine, but without reason. He had been married, and the queen was crowned, by Robert Bruce, a leading minister, for whom he had a personal liking. Shortly before going to Denmark James had published a tract interpreting the Apocalypse in the well-known Protestant sense. Notwithstanding the failure of the Armada, the air was still full of Jesuit intrigues and Spanish plots. At no moment of his life was James less inclined towards the English form of the Reformation, which he described in a celebrated speech as retaining the superstition of the mass “without the liftings.” A severe blow was given to Episcopacy in Scotland by Archbishop Adamson shortly before his death retracting in a published confession his writings against Presbyterianism. In 1592 parliament, led according to James Melville by Maitland, now Lord Thirlestane and chancellor, re-established Presbyterian church government. General assemblies were to meet once a year, and provincial assemblies or synods, presbyteries, and sessions were confirmed. The Act of 1584 conferring jurisdiction on bishops was rescinded, but there was no formal abrogation of the office. The assembly had asked for the repeal of the Act of Annexation of 1587, but this was not conceded. The landed interests were too powerful to allow of the Reformed Church receiving the patrimony of its predecessor. Shortly after the termination of the parliament the discovery of the plot of “the Spanish blanks” showed that the danger of a Catholic rising and foreign invasion was real. The conspiracy proved abortive, and two of its chief promoters (Huntly and Erroll) left Scotland; on their return three years later they publicly renounced Catholicism and conformed to the Protestant faith.

From the king’s majority to his accession to the English throne, his relations to the nobles on the one hand and to the Presbyterian party led by the ministers on the other require to be kept in view as giving the key to a singularly confused and changing course of events. After the death of Thirlestane in 1595, the king had to rely on his own counsel, of the value of which he had an overweening opinion. He had studied the theory of kingcraft and wrote the Basilicon Doron expounding it. He fancied that he really governed, while he was in fact drawn this way or that by the contending forces which emerged in this revolutionary epoch. In spite of occasional displays of resolution, his character was at bottom weak. It was the destiny which conducted him to the English throne that saved him from the dangers of his situation in Scotland. A nobleman, who, although only connected by his mother with Mary’s Bothwell, seemed to inherit the reckless daring of his predecessor in the title, thrice attempted and once for a short time succeeded in seizing the royal person and assuming the reins of government. But James, who was not without adroitness in baffling plotters by arts similar to their own, escaped from his custody. Towards the Catholic lords his policy was not to proceed to extremities, but to keep them in hand as a counterpoise to the extreme Protestant party. He prudently allowed the finances to be managed after Thirlestane’s death by a committee, called from its number the Octavians, on which both Catholics and Protestants acted,—Seton, afterwards Lord Dunfermline, the president of the session, and Lindsay of Balcarres being the leading members. With their advice James set himself against any measures which the Protestant ministers proposed for the restoration or increase of the revenues of the church. It was this critical point of money, the assertion of the royal supremacy in spiritual matters, and the favour the king showed to the Catholics which led to the quarrel between him and the ministers. At a convention of the estates at Falkland and then more strongly as one of a deputation sent by the ministers from Cupar, Andrew Melville, in the spirit and manner of Knox, made his well-known speech to “God’s silly vassal” on the two kingdoms and the two kings. Although James, frightened by this vehement language, made promises that he would do nothing for the Catholic lords till they had made terms with the church, it was impossible that a quarrel, whose roots were so deep, as to the limits of the royal authority and jurisdiction in matters ecclesiastical could be appeased. Neither party to it could see how far each overstepped the bounds of reason. The king was blind to the right of freedom of conscience which Protestantism had established as one of its first principles. Melville and the ministers were equally blind to the impossibility of any form of monarchy yielding to the claim that the members of an ecclesiastical assembly should use the name of Christ and the theory of His headship over the church to give themselves absolute power to define its relations to the state. Other occasions quickly arose for renewing the controversy. A violent sermon by Black at St Andrews gave a favourable opportunity to James of invoking the jurisdiction of the privy council, and the preacher was banished north of the Tay. Soon afterwards a demand made on the king in consequence of a sermon of another minister, Balcan-quhal, and a speech of Bruce, the king’s former favourite, that he should dismiss the Octavians, led to a tumult in Edinburgh, which gave James a pretext for leaving the town and removing the courts of justice to Linlithgow. Supported by the nobles, he returned on New-Year’s Day 1597, received the submission of the town, levying a severe fine before he would restore its privileges as a corporation and withholding from it the right of electing its own magistrates or ministers without the royal consent. Emboldened by this success, James now addressed himself to the difficult problem of church and state. He did not yet feel strong enough to restore Episcopacy, perhaps had not quite determined on that course. The ingenious scheme due to Lindsay of Balcarres was fallen on of introducing representatives of the church into parliament without naming them bishops. This would have the twofold effect of diminishing the authority of the general assemblies and of conferring on parliament a competency to deal with matters ecclesiastical. Parliament in 1597 passed an Act that all ministers promoted to prelacies (i.e. , bishoprics or abbacies) should have seats in parliament, and remitted to the king with the general assembly to determine as to the office of such persons in the spiritual policy and government of the kirk. Accordingly James summoned successive assemblies at Perth and Dundee, where there were two sessions in 1597, and finally at Montrose in 1600, selecting those towns in order to procure a good attendance from the north, always more favourable to royalty and Episcopacy and less under the influence of the Edinburgh clergy. By this and other manoeuvres he obtained some concessions, but not all that he desired (see Presbyterianism, vol. xix. pp. 681-682). It was the Gowrie conspiracy (5th August 1600) whose failure gave him the courage and the ground for finally abandoning the Presbyterians and casting in his lot with the bishops. Repeated investigations at the time and since cannot be said to have completely cleared up the mystery of this outrage. The most probable solution was afforded by the discovery several years afterwards of a correspondence between Gowrie and Logan of Restalrig which pointed to the seizure of the person rather than the murder of James as the object of the plot. More important than this object, which failed, was the sequel. The Ruthvens, who were chiefly implicated, were amongst the most prominent of the Protestant nobility, and the Presbyterian ministers with few exceptions refused to accept James’s own account of what had happened, confirmed though it was by depositions of various noblemen who were with the king at the time. They even insinuated that the plot had not been by but against Gowrie at the king’s instance. Although James by arguments and threats at last extorted an acknowledgment of the truth of his account from all the ministers except Bruce, who was deprived of his benefice and banished for his contumacy, the insult and the injurious suspicions were never forgiven.

In October, with the consent of the convention of estates, he appointed three bishops to vacant sees, and they sat in parliament, though as yet without any place in the government of the church, which was still Presbyterian, and with no sanction of course from the assembly or the ministers. James had to assume the English crown before Episcopacy could really be restored. This crisis of his career was not long delayed. Already Elizabeth’s death was being calculated on, and her courtiers from Cecil downwards were contending for the favour of her heir. She died on 24th March 1603 and James was at once proclaimed her successor in accordance with her own declaration that no minor person should ascend her throne but her cousin the king of Scots. Leaving Edinburgh on 5th April, James reached London on 6th May, being everywhere received with acclamation by the people. Thus peacefully at a memorable epoch in the history of Europe was accomplished the union of South and North Britain. Often attempted in vain by conquest, it was now attained in a manner soothing the pride of the smaller country, without at first exciting the jealousy of the larger, whose interest was, as Henry VII. prophesied, sure to predominate. To James it was a welcome change from nobles who had threatened his liberty and life, and from ministers who withstood his will and showed little respect for his person or office, to the courtier statesmen of England trained by the Tudors to reverence the monarch as all but absolute, and a clergy bound to recognize him as their head. To Scotland, a poor country, and its inhabitants, poor also but enterprising and eager for new careers, it opened prospects of national prosperity which, though not at once, were ultimately realized. It was an immediate gain that border wars and English and French intrigues were at an end. This more than counterbalanced the loss of the court, a loss which probably favoured the independent development of the nation. For the present no change was made in its constitution, its church, or its laws. The Reformation had continued the work of the War of Independence. Scotland no longer consisted only of the prelates, the nobles, and the landed gentry. The commons, imperfectly represented in parliament by the burghs, not yet wealthy enough to be powerful, had found a voice in the assemblies of the church and leaders in its ministers and elders.

Superstition did not fall with the fall of the church of Rome nor licence with the decline of the nobility. Rather, both took new forms of extreme virulence and threatened to impede the national progress; but both were exposed to the light of public discussion and the growth of public opinion. The contact with the more cultured south was of immense value. Scotland, now beginning to use in the services of the church, in the proceedings of the courts, and in printed books the vulgar tongue, which differed only as a dialect from that of England, was admitted to the freedom of the noblest language and literature in Europe, then in its prime. The arts which increase the convenience and pleasure of daily life spread northward with the increase of wealth. Science, starting on a new method taught by the great English philosopher, was introduced and after a time eagerly prosecuted. Commerce, for which the Scots had a natural aptness, found new fields. And all these benefits were procured without any sacrifice of the independent spirit which had been derived from their forefathers. Even the separate intercourse with the Continent—with France, Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia—from which Scotland had already received so much advantage, though not quite so intimate with France as before, continued. But before the blessings of the union could be fully realized a century was to intervene, which at times seemed to hide if not to bury them, —a century of civil war and religious controversy. At the moment when James ascended the throne and proclaimed the virtues of peace it required no far-sighted observer to discern elements of discord which might at any moment burst in storm. To hold Papal Ireland, Episcopal England, and Presbyterian Scotland united under one sceptre was a task of infinite difficulty, not lessened because in each there was a minority who dissented strongly from the prevailing opinion as to church government and doctrine. The sudden separation from Rome gave birth to every variety of religious opinion, and Scotland became even more than England a land of sects. The constitution of the civil government was a problem not yet solved. In England the Tudor sovereigns had sapped the principles of the parliamentary constitution established in the times of the Plantagenets, and fortunately recorded in writings which could not be forgotten. In Scotland such principles had never yet been practically adopted. Ireland was ruled as a dependency on the principle of subjection.

At this point in the treatment of some historians the history of Scotland ends. Juster views now prevail. Neither the union of crowns nor of parliaments really closes the separate record of a nation which retained separate laws, a separate church, a separate system of education, and a well-marked diversity of character. But a great part of the subsequent history of Scotland is necessarily included in that of Great Britain, and has been treated under England (q.v .). Considerations of space and proportion make it necessary that what remains should be told even more rapidly than the narrative of what preceded the accession of James to the English throne. James during the first half of his reign as sovereign of Great Britain allowed himself to be mainly guided by Robert

Cecil, Lord Salisbury, the son of Burghley, an hereditary statesman of great ability as an administrator. But on two subjects closely connected with Scotland the king had decided opinions of his own. He desired to see Scotland bound to England, not merely by the union of the crowns, but by a union of the parliaments and laws, and if not an immediate an ultimate union of the churches. He was equally determined that the church in both countries should combine a moderate Protestant doctrine—a via media between Rome and Geneva—with Episcopal government. Both desires were founded on prudent policy and might possibly have been accomplished by a stronger and wiser monarch. But the former was opposed by the jealousy of England and the pride of Scotland. The latter could not be accomplished in Scotland without force, so deep were the roots which Presbyterianism had struck. James attempted to carry both measures in a manner calculated to raise rather than to overcome opposition. The union scheme was brought before his first English parliament, and commissioners were appointed to treat with the Scottish commissioners nominated somewhat reluctantly by the parliament of Perth. The commissioners met, but differences at once emerged on the topics of freedom of trade between the two countries, to which the English were averse, and the acceptance of the laws of England, which the Scots objected to. Two important points were carried by a declaration of the law rather than agreement of the commissioners,—that subjects born in either country after the accession (post nati) should have the full privileges of subjects and not be deemed aliens, and that those born before should be capable of denization and so of inheriting or acquiring land in England, though not of political rights or offices. The English parliament of 1607, however, refused to sustain the decision of the Exchequer Chamber in favour of the post nati, although it consented to abolish the laws which treated Scotland as an enemy’s country and made arrangements for the extradition of criminals. The religious or ecclesiastical question was first brought to a point in England at the Hampton Court conference, which met on 14th January 1604, in which trifling concessions were made to the Puritans, chiefly as to the observance of Sunday and the removal of the Apocrypha from the Authorized Version. In Scotland Episcopacy was restored by a series of steps which were gradual only for the purpose of overcoming opposition, not because James hesitated as to the end in view. At length the parliament of 1612 repeated the Act of 1592, so that Episcopacy was now once more established in Scotland by law, but contrary to the wish of the majority of the nation and under circumstances which made it the symbol of absolute government. While thus resolute in favour of Episcopacy, James showed no sign of leaning to the Roman Church, although efforts to convert him had been made at an earlier period in Scotland. The Armada, now followed by the Gunpowder Plot, convinced him that he had nothing to hope for from the Papists but open war or secret conspiracy.

After the death of Cecil James gave way to that influence of favourites to which he had shown himself prone in his younger years; but in the affairs of Scotland, which produced much trouble and little profit, Somerset and Buckingham took no interest and James was his own master. After an absence of fourteen years he visited his native country. He had promised to return every three years, but the business and pleasures of the English court detained him. His main object was to carry out still further the uniformity of the church, in which the bishops had not succeeded in establishing the same service as in England. This object was apparently attained in 1618 by the adoption of the Five Articles of Perth (see vol. xix. p. 682), but at the cost of sowing the seed of religious war. From this time to James’s death little occurred worthy of note in the history of Scotland. A parliament in 1621, held under the marquis of Hamilton as commissioner, confirmed the Five Articles, though by a majority that is narrow when the power of the king in a Scottish parliament is kept in view, and only on an assurance from the commissioner that no further ecclesiastical innovations would be proposed. It also introduced a new mode of electing the Lords of the Articles, which practically gave the whole influence to the bishops, the nominees of the crown. As this body prepared the entire business of a parliament in which there was no power of bringing in Bills by private members, this was a long step in the direction of absolute government. James, in fact, declared in one of his speeches to the English parliament that, according to the Scottish constitution, he was master of its whole proceedings, with the absolute power of initiative as well as of veto. His declaration was an exaggeration, for there were well-known precedents of the estates passing laws without the royal assent; but the Scottish constitution was in a fluid state without the guarantee of written charters or clearly defined rules as to the refusal of supplies, and above all without an independent House of Commons to represent the wishes of the people and demand redress for their grievances. The only part of the policy of James on which it is possible to look back with satisfaction was that which concerned colonization, then called “plantation.” This gave an outlet to the increasing population, while it advanced the civilization of the countries to which the settlers went. The earliest of these schemes, the “plantation” of the Hebrides by a number of gentlemen of Fife called “undertakers,” had comparatively little effect, but, apart from it, some progress was made in introducing order and law in the Highlands and islands, where the people were still in a semi-barbarous condition. More important was the plantation of Ulster, chiefly by Scottish farmers, whose descendants still retain a Scottish dialect and a Presbyterian church. But as an augury of the future the colonization of Nova Scotia, though attempted in an arbitrary manner, was of the greatest consequence. It was a commencement of the great migration to the New World across the Atlantic and to the other colonial possessions of Great Britain, in which, equally to their own profit and that of the empire, the Scottish nation in the two following centuries was to play so great a part. On 22d March 1625 James died, leaving to his son Charles a burden of government heavier than when he had himself undertaken it. His apparent success in carrying to a further point the absolute and arbitrary principles of the Tudor sovereigns scarcely concealed the real failure. Ireland, with difficulty kept down, was not really subdued. The parliament of England had given unmistakable signs that it was only waiting an opportunity to restore the constitution on the old basis. The religious and political instincts of the Scottish nation, suppressed by force, were gathering strength to reassert themselves if necessary by revolutionary methods. An exhausted exchequer, which James had attempted to fill by monopolies, and by the sale of offices and honours and so-called benevolences, added to the other difficulties of carrying on the government, but was fortunately, as in the time of the Plantagenets, to afford the occasion for maintaining the constitutional struggle.

8. Period of Civil Wars, Charles I. to Revolution.— Eight years after his accession Charles I. revisited Scotland (1633). During these he had pursued his father’s policy. No Scottish parliament sat, though a nominal one was adjourned annually between 1628 and 1633. No general assembly met, but the restoration of Episcopacy and the uniformity of the churches were steadily prosecuted by royal influence and the exercise of the royal prerogative.

In spite of the opposition of a convention of the estates, which nearly ended in bloodshed, the king carried out the resumption of tithes for the benefit of the clergy from their lay impropriators. The revocation in 1625 of all grants in prejudice of the crown, whether before or after the Act of Annexation of 1587, was superseded by a new measure, ratified by parliament in 1633, declaring the terms on which the tithes might still be acquired and valued by the heritors. Few measures have been of greater importance in their bearing on Scottish history. The revocation alienated the nobles and landed gentry, who dreaded that when so much had been, still more might be, taken from their profits in the Reformation. The new valuation left the parochial clergy in the position of a poor class, with interests antagonistic to the gentry, whose income was diminished whenever the ministers attempted to raise their scanty stipends. The loyalty for which the Scots had been distinguished had received a shock by the removal of the court, and this was a second and more serious blow. Yet when Charles came to Edinburgh and received the crown at Holyrood (18th June 1633) he was well received. The disaffection still lay beneath the surface. Although the Five Articles of Perth were not rigidly enforced, all the court could do was done to introduce the most obnoxious,—the practice of kneeling at the communion, which Presbyterians deemed a relic of the mass. The question of a liturgy was not allowed to rest. It was brought before the Scottish bishops in 1629; their draft was submitted to Laud, who, detecting in it Low Church doctrine as to baptism and traces of Knox’s Book of Common Order, refused his approval and advocated the introduction of the English Prayer Book, by which uniformity would be secured. Though this was not yet attempted, Charles took the same view as the zealous and ambitious churchman who was now his guide in ecclesiastical matters. When he came to Scotland Laud was in his suite, and the coronation was conducted with a ritual which “had great fear of in bringing of Popery.” Edinburgh was created a bishopric. The parliament over which Charles presided passed thirty-one Acts, “not three of which,” says a contemporary, but were most “hurtful to the liberty of the subject.” One in particular declared in a large sense the royal prerogative, and by an ill-omened conjunction gave the king power to regulate the apparel of churchmen. It was disputed in parliament whether this Act was carried, but the presence of the king, who took notes of the votes, overawed opposition. About a year after Charles left Scotland the trial of Lord Balmerino, which grew out of the Acts of this parliament, gave the first impulse to the Scottish revolution. That nobleman, who had possessed a copy of a petition protesting against the Acts then carried, was tried under the old Acts against leasing-making or sedition and condemned by a majority of one upon a single charge,—that of not revealing the petition and its author (March 1635). Although Charles respited the capital sentence, the condemnation deeply stirred the people, who saw almost the only mode of constitutional redress, that by petition, declared illegal and an act capable of innocent interpretation treated as a heinous crime. Before the trial the appointment of Spottiswoode as chancellor, the first ecclesiastic who held the office since the Reformation, and the admission of nine bishops to the privy council, increased the disaffection. In 1636 the Book of Canons, ratified by the king the year before, was published at Aberdeen, containing the most distinct assertion of the royal supremacy and a complete Episcopal organization.

At last on Sunday, 23d July 1637, the much-dreaded liturgy, the use of which had been enjoined by the Canons and announced on the preceding Sunday, was introduced in the service of St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. For the most part a transcript of the English Prayer Book, it deviated slightly in the direction of the Roman ritual. Its use provoked an uproar, of which the stool flung at the dean by a woman, Jenny Geddes or Anne Mein, was the symbol, and brought the service to a close,—Lindsay, the bishop, being with difficulty saved from the violence of the mob. A similar riot took place in Greyfriars church, where the bishop of Argyll attempted to use the book. There had been no such tumult since the Reformation. The privy council arrested a few rioters, but suspended the use of the service book until the king’s pleasure was known, and when Laud at the king’s request wrote that its use should be continued no one dared to read it in Edinburgh or throughout Scotland except in a few cathedrals. Meantime numerous supplications against it and the Canons, joined with accusations against the bishops, were sent to Charles. His only answer was the removal of the courts and privy council to Linlithgow and an order to all ministers who signed the supplications to leave Edinburgh. There followed fresh supplications and protests, in which some of the nobility, especially Rothes, Balmerino, Loudon, Montrose, and a prominent lawyer, Johnston of Warriston, joined with the ministers. Hope, the king’s advocate, secretly favoured them. Traquair, a leading member of the privy council, went to London to press on Charles and Laud the gravity of the situation; but, though ambiguous concessions were made, the king and his advisers were determined to insist on the service book. In a proclamation issued at Stirling (20th February 1638) the king assumed the responsibility of its introduction; but the opposition was too powerful to be put down by words. Its organization, begun by commissioners headed by Rothes, continued in committees of the nobles, lesser barons, ministers, and burghs, was now called “the Tables” from those in the Parliament House, where they sat sometimes separately, sometimes collectively, and formed a standing assembly which defied the king’s council. The Covenant, prepared by Alexander Henderson, leader of the ministers, and Johnston of Warriston, was revised by Rothes, Loudon, and Balmerino, and accepted by upwards of two hundred ministers who had gathered in Edinburgh. It was signed at Greyfriars church on 1st March 1638, first by many of the nobles and gentry, then by three hundred ministers and a great multitude of the people. Copies were at once despatched throughout the country, and with few exceptions, chiefly in St Andrews and Aberdeen, it was accepted by all ranks and classes. Its form was suggested by the bonds for material aid of which Mary’s reign had given so many examples, but the new name pointed to a Biblical origin, and the parties were not the nobles and their retainers but God and His people. While nominally professing respect for the royal office, it was entered into, as it anxiously reiterated, for “the defence of the true religion (as reformed from Popery) and the liberties and laws of the kingdom.” The spirit in which it was signed was that of a religious revival. Many subscribed with tears on their cheeks, and it was commonly reported that some signed with their blood. Charles could not relish a movement which opposed his deepest convictions as to church government and under the form of respect repudiated his supremacy; but, destitute of power to coerce the Covenanters, he was compelled to temporize. Hamilton as his commissioner offered to withdraw the service book and Book of Canons, to give up the Court of High Commission, and to allow the Articles of Perth to remain in abeyance. A new confession called the “negative,” framed on that of 1580, and a new covenant called the “king’s,” on the model of one drawn in 1590, which bound the signers only to stand by the king in suppressing Papists and promoting the true religion, were devised, but failed to satisfy even the least zealous Covenanters.

An assembly at last met in Glasgow, over which Hamilton presided, with faint hope that matters might still be accommodated. Hamilton had orders to dissolve it if it proved to be intractable. The members had been chosen by the influence of the Tables, according to a mode invented in 1597. Three ministers represented each presbytery and an elder the laity of the district. The burghs also sent representatives. The Covenanters had declared their intention of prosecuting the bishops, and a libel laid before the presbytery of Edinburgh was read in the churches. Charles on his side announced that he challenged the mode of election and would not allow the prosecutions. He was already preparing for war. At the first sitting Alexander Henderson was chosen moderator, and Johnston of Warriston clerk. In spite of the commissioner’s attempt to raise the question of the validity of elections, the assembly declared itself duly constituted. A letter from the bishops was read declining its jurisdiction, and the commissioner, while offering redress of grievances and that bishops should be responsible to future assemblies of clergy, declared that the present assembly was illegal in respect of the admission of lay representatives. Discussion was useless between a commissioner and an assembly whose power to act he denied. He accordingly dissolved it in the name of the king and left Glasgow; but this only stimulated its members. It annulled the pretended assemblies between 1606 and 1628, condemned the service book, Book of Canons, Book of Ordinances, and the High Commission Court, deposed the bishops on separate libels which set forth various acts of immorality or crime, many of which were false, declared Episcopacy to have been abjured in 1580, and condemned the Five Articles of Perth. It concluded its month’s labours by restoring Presbyterian church government.

The distance from such an assembly to the field of arms was short, and on 7th June 1639 the army of the Covenanters under Alexander Leslie, a general trained in the service of Gustavus Adolphus, met the royal troops led by the king at Dunse Law. Charles, though slightly superior in numbers, had an undisciplined army and no money to maintain it, while Leslie had trained officers and troops animated by religious zeal. Their colours were stamped with the royal arms, and the motto “For Christ’s Crown and Covenant” in golden letters. Councils of war as well as religious meetings were held daily, and the militant fervour of the Covenanting troops steadily rose. Charles declined to engage such an army and general, and by the Pacification of Berwick (18th June) both parties agreed to disband, and Charles to issue a declaration that all ecclesiastical matters should be regulated by assemblies, and all civil by parliament and other legal courts. On 1st August a free general assembly was to be held at Edinburgh, and on the 20th a free parliament in which an Act of Oblivion was to be passed. The assembly met as appointed and, without explicitly conforming, re-enacted the principal resolutions of that of Glasgow, and declared that the Covenant should be subscribed by every one in office and authority. Before it separated it condemned the Large Declaration, a pamphlet by Balcanquhal, dean of Durham, published in the king’s name, which gave an adverse narrative of recent events in Scotland. The parliament effected little legislation, but showed its disposition by abolishing Episcopacy and reforming the election of the Lords of the Articles, of whom eight were henceforth to be chosen by the nobles, lesser barons, and burghs respectively. The predominance of the king and the church was thus removed from the body which initiated all legislation. Charles had beforehand determined not to sanction the abolition of Episcopacy, and the parliament was prematurely adjourned (14th November) without the royal assent to its Acts. It was evident that the struggle between the king and the Scots would be renewed, and both parties reluctantly had recourse to allies whose choice showed their sense of the crisis. Charles summoned an English parliament; but the three weeks’ session of the Short Parliament was spent in a vain attempt to obtain redress for its own grievances. It separated without granting supplies, and the king had to depend on private loans. The Scots negotiated with the French king; but Richelieu prevented the unnatural alliance of the Catholic king and the Covenanters. The Scots took the first step in the war. The army under Leslie crossed the Tweed and, forcing the passage of the Tyne at Newburn, occupied Newcastle. Charles, who had his headquarters at York, paralysed by the want of money and new demands to summon an English parliament, was driven to accept a truce at Ripon (2d September 1640), under which the Scottish army was to receive a subsidy to relieve the northern counties from contributions. Parliament was summoned to Westminster for 3d November; but its first act was the impeachment of Strafford. Until a pledge was given by his death that Charles would recognize the limits of monarchy, the Parliamentary leaders thought it safer that the Scots should hold the north of England. Peace was concluded by the Act immediately following that of Strafford’s attainder, by which £300,000 was ordered to be raised as “friendly assistance and relief promised to our brethren in Scotland.”

The king now made up his mind to revisit Scotland, hoping there to find a way out of his English troubles. He had received a letter from Montrose (q.v.), urging him to come and gain the Scots by a moderate policy. He came to Edinburgh early in August 1641 and a parliament met under his presidency, when he not only ratified the Acts substituting a Presbyterian for the Episcopal form of church government but sanctioned important reforms. The Lords of the Articles were in future to be elected by each of the three estates separately, the burghs taking the place of the bishops; the Court of High Commission was abolished; arbitrary proclamations were prohibited; the officers of state and the judges were to be chosen with the advice of parliament; and, following an English Bill, parliament was to meet every third year. During his stay in Scotland occurred “the Incident,”—still spoken of as mysterious by historians, some of whom liken it to the English incident of the arrest of the five members. Argyll and Hamilton had led the party which carried all the measures of this parliament. Montrose had been committed to the castle by the estates before the arrival of Charles on a charge of plotting against Argyll by false accusations to the king. From his prison he renewed his charges against both Argyll and Hamilton, whom he accused of treason. Charles about this time unwisely attended parliament with an unusual guard of 500 men, which gave Hamilton and Argyll a pretext for asserting that their lives were in danger and to quit Edinburgh. They soon returned and a favourable committee of investigation let the matter drop. Argyll was now more powerful than ever. In November the king returned to London, which became during the next year the centre of the events which led to the Civil War.

The progress of the Civil War belongs to English history. Here only the part taken by the Scots can be stated. They were now courted by king and Parliament alike. The campaign of 1642-43 under Essex proved indecisive, and the Parliament sent commissioners headed by Sir Henry Vane to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1643, who agreed to the “Solemn League and Covenant,” already accepted by the Scottish assembly and parliament, and now ratified by the English parliament and the assembly of divines at Westminster. This memorable document, whose name showed its descent from the National Covenant, bound the parties to it “to preserve the Reformed Church in Scotland and effect the reformation of that in England and Ireland in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government according to the Word of God and the example of the best Reformed Churches.” But the alliance with the Scottish Covenanters did not produce the advantage expected from it. The victory of Marston Moor was due to Cromwell and his Ironsides, who were Puritans and Independents. The Scots, who formed the centre of the Parliamentary army, were repulsed. In the autumn, although the Scots took Newcastle, the king gained ground in the west, where Essex, the general who represented the Presbyterians, narrowly escaped capture. Next year Montrose, in the brilliant campaign on which his military fame rests, made a formidable diversion in the Highlands. With dazzling rapidity, at first supported only by a handful of followers, but gathering numbers with success, he erected the royal standard in Dumfries; then, passing to the Highlands, after the victory of Tippermuir he took Perth, and defeated Lord Lewis Gordon at the Bridge of Dee. Next, after ravaging the county of Argyll, he marched to Inverness, but returned to defeat Argyll at Inverlochy, won further victories at Auldearn near Nairn and Alford on the Don, and by that of Kilsyth appeared to have recovered Scotland for Charles. The fruit of all these victories was lost by his defeat at Philiphaugh (13th September 1644) by Leslie. Meantime Charles had lost the battle of Naseby, and next year was forced to take refuge at Newark with Leslie, whom he had created earl of Leven. As the result of his surrender he ordered Montrose, who was again raising the Royalists in the Highlands, to lay down his arms; and the Scottish army in England, no longer on good terms with the Parliament, returned to Newcastle, that, being nearer home, it might dictate the terms of its services. Here it remained eight months, during which a strenuous attempt was made to force Charles to accept the Covenant. Alexander Henderson argued the matter with him in a singularly temperate correspondence. But the king was bound to Episcopacy by hereditary sentiment and personal conviction. Another negotiation was going on at the same time between the Scottish army and the English Parliament for arrears of pay. On 30th January 1646 they surrendered the king to the English commissioners, the question of pay having been settled by the receipt of £200,000 a few days before and a like sum a few days after that date. There was no express condition which bound the two circumstances together, but their concurrence cannot have been accidental.

In his captivity Charles renewed his negotiations with the Scottish estates, over which Hamilton had now acquired influence, and a compromise was at last agreed to at Newport in the Isle of Wight by which he promised to confirm the League and Covenant by Act of Parliament, to establish Presbyterianism and the Westminster Confession, which as well as the Directory had been adopted by the Scottish parliament for three years. After that period it was to be fixed by the king and parliament what form of church government was most agreeable to the Word of God, and this after consultation with the assembly was to be established. The Scots consented that in the meantime the Covenant should not be enforced on those who had conscientious scruples, and that the king might continue to use the English service. The Covenanters who accepted these terms, and who formed the most moderate section, received the name of Engagers. Relying on the promised support from Scotland, Charles rejected the proposals of the English Parliament. That body had now broken with the army, in which the Independents and Cromwell were fast acquiring supremacy. Their division afforded an opportunity for renewing the war, and Hamilton invaded England in the following year, but was routed at Preston (17th August 1648) by Cromwell. A party led by Argyll had opposed the compromise with Charles effected by Hamilton. They were chiefly strong in the south-west, and in the autumn of this year a band of them raised by Lord Eglinton marched to Edinburgh and were met by Argyll, who put himself at their head. Their numbers had risen to 6000, a sufficient force to give them supreme influence over the Government. It was from this—the “Whiggamore” raid—that the name of Whigs took its rise. The meeting of estates now resolved to renew the Solemn League and Covenant, and by an Act called the Act of Classes removed from the courts and all places of public trust those who had accepted the “late unlawful engagement.” The English Parliament at this point took an exactly opposite course and showed signs of conciliation with the king; but the frustration of its action by the energetic policy of Cromwell was quickly followed by the trial and execution of the king. Hamilton, who had been taken after Preston, soon after shared the same fate.

The death of Charles altered in a moment the relations between England and Scotland. In the former Cromwell became all powerful, while in the latter the moderate Presbyterians attached to the principle of monarchy and the hereditary line at once proclaimed Charles II. Charles II. had been brought up with different views of royalty from those of the Covenanters, and Scotland was not prepared to accept a king except on its own terms. A commission from the estates and from the assembly was at once sent (March 1649) to The Hague, where the young king was. Charles promised to maintain the government of Scotland in church and state as settled by law, and particularly the Covenant, Confession of Faith, and Presbyterian system, but declared that he could not impose the Solemn League and Covenant on England and Ireland without the consent of their parliaments. The commissioners returned dissatisfied with this answer and with the presence at court of Montrose, by whom it had probably been framed. But in October Ormonde’s Irish expedition failed, and Cromwell, already master of England, had reduced Ireland by force of arms; both parties felt inclined to renew the treaty. At length it was agreed that Charles should be accepted as king on condition of his subscribing the Covenant, establishing Presbyterian church government and worship, sanctioning the Acts of Parliament passed in his absence, and putting in force the law against Catholics. In return he stipulated for the free exercise of his royal authority, the security of his person, and the aid of a Scottish army. The treaty was closed in these terms on 9th May 1650, and early in June Charles set sail for Scotland. On the voyage he was forced to consent to further conditions which the Scottish parliament ordered the commissioners to impose, in particular to exclude from his court all persons within the first and second classes of the Acts of 1646 and 1649, and to keep the duke of Hamilton, brother of the late duke, and certain other persons out of Scotland. On Sunday, 23d June, at the mouth of the Spey he subscribed the Covenant and landed. Whilst Charles was negotiating with the commissioners, the expedition of Montrose, which he had encouraged but afterwards disowned, had come to an end by the capture of its gallant leader in Caithness. He was executed in Edinburgh a month before Charles reached Scotland.

Alarmed at the prospect of another Scottish invasion, Cromwell with wonderful rapidity transferred his forces from Ireland, and within a month after Charles landed crossed the Tweed and advanced to Edinburgh. Baffled in all attempts against the town by the tactics of David

Leslie, the nephew of Leven, he was forced from want of supplies to retire. His retreat was nearly cut off, but he gained an unexpected victory at Dunbar (3d September 1650) over that able general, who had been induced by the over-confidence of the ministers in his camp to descend from the Doon Hill and attack the English on level ground. So complete was the defeat that the south of Scotland fell into Cromwell’s hands. Meantime Charles had attempted to escape from the restraints of the Presbyterian camp by “the Start,” as it was called, from Perth to Clova, where he hoped to raise the loyal Highlanders; but, not getting the support expected, he returned. In the beginning of next year, after renewing his subscription to the Covenant and submitting to the imposition of a day of fasting and humiliation on account of the sins of his family, he was crowned at Scone on 1st January 1651. Argyll, still the leader of the Covenanters, placed the crown on his head, a circumstance which he recalled when he lost his own. The invasion of England was now determined on, and, Cromwell having been unable to intercept the royal army, it advanced as far as Worcester. Here, after effecting a junction with Fleetwood, Cromwell with a much smaller force routed the king’s army on the anniversary of Dunbar. Charles had a hairbreadth escape from capture, and after many adventures crossed from Brighton to France. The last great battle of the Civil War placed England in the hands of the army and its general.

Scotland offered more resistance; but Monk, whom Cromwell had left in command, stormed Dundee and terrified the other towns into submission. Although a nominal union was proclaimed and Scotland was allowed members in the English parliament, it was really governed as a conquered country. In 1653 the general assembly was summarily dissolved by Colonel Cotterel. Next year Monk was sent by the Protector to quell a Royalist rising, which, first under the earl of Glencairn and afterwards under Middleton, a soldier of fortune, began to show head in the Highlands. Monk, as usual, carried out effectually the work he was sent for and, partly by an indemnity which many leading Royalists accepted and partly by the defeat of Middleton at Lochgarry (25th July 1654), reduced the Highlands. He also dispersed the general assembly, which made another attempt to sit. Strong forts were built at Leith, Ayr, Inverness, and Glasgow, and Monk with an army of 10,000 men garrisoned the country. A council of state, containing only two Scottish members, was appointed, but matters of importance were referred to Cromwell and his English council. The administration of justice was committed to four English and three Scottish judges in place of the Court of Session, with the view of introducing English law. The use of Latin in legal writs was abolished. A sequestration court to deal with the forfeited estates sat at Leith. A separate commission was issued for the administration of criminal justice, and theft and highway robbery were stringently inquired into and punished. In the church the Presbyterian form of service and the system of presbyteries and synods were allowed to continue, but the stipends of ministers depended on their being approved by a commission appointed by Cromwell. Justices of the peace were introduced for local business. Free trade and an improved postal system between the two countries were established. The universities were visited. In all departments of government there was vigour and the spirit of reform, so that it was admitted even by opponents that the eight years of Cromwell’s usurpation were a period of peace and prosperity. There was undoubtedly one exception. The taxation was severe. A land-tax of £10,000 a month, afterwards reduced to £6000, and levied upon the valued rent under a valuation of Charles, far exceeded any subsidy before granted to the crown. Customs and also excise duties, recently introduced from England, were diligently levied; so also were the rents of the crown and bishops’ lands. Altogether it was estimated that a revenue of £143,000 was collected in Scotland. But this had to be supplemented by an equal sum from England to meet an expenditure of £286,000. As nearly the whole was spent in Scotland and the burden of taxation fell on the upper classes, the nation generally did not feel it so much as might have been expected. It was a maxim of Cromwell’s policy to improve the condition of the commons, and in one of his last speeches he claimed in memorable words to have effected this in Scotland. In this respect the Commonwealth and protectorate continued the political effect of the Reformation. The commonalty for the first time since the War of Independence acquired a consciousness of its existence and hope for the future. Cromwell, like former powerful rulers, aimed at uniting Scotland with England, but his proposals in this direction were premature. To Barebones’s Parliament (1653), which met after the dissolution of the Long Parliament, five Scottish members were summoned, there being 134 from England, Wales, and Ireland. By the Instrument of Government and an ordinance following on it, Scotland was granted 30, while England had 400 members; but only 20 Scottish attended the parliament of 1654, and care was taken by Monk that they should be men attached to Cromwell’s interest. When in his second parliament in 1656 he tried the experiment of a House of Lords, three Scotsmen were summoned, the quota of members to the Commons remaining as before. Cromwell’s idea of a parliament was an assembly to ratify, not to discuss, his measures, and this, like his other parliaments, was speedily dissolved. Had it continued the Scottish representatives would have had little weight. Scotland continued to be governed by the council of state. On the death of the Protector his son Richard was proclaimed his successor in Scotland as well as in England, and 30 members were again returned to the new parliament, which, however, was almost immediately afterwards dissolved. The Restoration soon followed, though in Scotland there was no need of it, for Charles II. was already king. However beneficial the rule of Cromwell may be deemed, it had a fatal defect in the eyes of a people proud of their freedom. It was imposed and maintained by force. His death and the restoration of the ancient line of kings were looked on as a deliverance from oppression.

The hopes of the Scots from Charles II. were doomed to speedy disappointment. So far from being grateful for the support they had given him in adversity, he looked back with disgust, as his grandfather had done, on the time when he was under the yoke of the Presbyterian ministers. Cromwell had shown the possibility of governing Scotland by military force and of raising a considerable revenue from it, and Charles took advantage of both lessons. From this date rather than from the earlier or later union Scottish history assumes a provincial character. Scotland was governed without regard to its interest or wishes according to the royal pleasure or the advice of the nobles who for the time had the ear of the king. The power of the clergy had been broken by Cromwell’s policy and their own divisions. The party of the Resolutioners or moderate Presbyterians, some of whom now leant to Episcopacy, and the party of the Remonstrants were still irreconcilable, and their mutual hatred rendered the task of government easier. The burghs were not yet sufficiently organized to be a power in the state, and the nobles again resumed their old position as leaders with no rivals, for the bishops were shorn of their revenues and dependent on royal favour. For the first two years after the Restoration the government of Scotland was in the hands of Middleton, who had been created an earl. The measures of retaliation were few but signal. Argyll was tried and beheaded on a charge of treason, which could not have been established but for the treachery of Monk, who gave up private letters written to him when they both were supporting the Commonwealth. Guthrie, a leading minister of the Remonstrants, was hanged. Johnston of Warriston, two years later, was brought back from France and executed. No hesitation was shown as to the mode of governing Scotland. Parliament, under the presidency of Middleton, passed the Rescissory Act, annulling the Acts of all parliaments since 1640, declaring the Covenant no longer binding, and imposing an oath on all persons in office, not only of allegiance but of acknowledgment of the royal prerogative restored in all its fulness over all persons and in all causes. In August Lauderdale, who acted as secretary for Scotland in London, wrote to the privy council announcing the royal intention to restore Episcopacy, and, regardless of his oath, Charles sanctioned this by the first Act of the parliament of 1662. James Sharp, minister of Crail, who had been sent on behalf of the Resolutioners to Charles before his return, allowed himself to be easily converted to Episcopacy and was rewarded by his appointment as archbishop of St Andrews; his example was followed by other ministers of the same party. But the majority and all the Remonstrants stood firm ; 350 were deprived of their livings, each of which became a centre of disaffection towards the Government, while their attachment to the Covenant was every day strengthened by persecution. The Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant were declared unlawful oaths, and all persons speaking or writing against the royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical were incapacitated from office. Middleton had the immediate responsibility for these measures, and the condemnation and forfeiture of the new earl of Argyll, whose estates he coveted, under the old law against leasing-making increased the hatred with which he was regarded. His fall was due to an attempt to supplant his rival Lauderdale by the Act of Billeting, under which the Scottish parliament named by ballot twelve persons with Lauderdale at their head as incapable of holding public office. This and other Acts were carried out without the previous consent of Charles; Lauderdale persuaded Charles that his personal authority was in danger, and Middleton was called to court and sent as governor to Tangier, where he soon after died. The earl of Rothes was now appointed commissioner, but the chief influence was in the hands of Lauderdale, who continued to act as Scottish secretary in London.

The change in its rulers brought no relief to Scotland. The declaration that the Covenants were illegal oaths was re-enacted and imposed on all persons in office who had not yet taken it. The old mode of electing the Lords of the Articles, which placed the election in the hands of the bishops, the nominees of the king, was restored. Sharp, not warned by the fate of Laud, procured the restoration of the Court of High Commission to enforce the laws against ecclesiastical offenders. Fines were imposed on all who absented themselves from their parish churches or attended the sermons of the deposed ministers. Sir James Turner was sent by the privy council to the western shires to prevent conventicles and field preaching and to enforce the law as to conformity; and his exactions, with the burden of maintaining his soldiers quartered upon all persons suspected of favouring the ousted ministers, led to risings in Galloway, Clydesdale, and Ayr. With their ministers and a few of the gentry at their head the Covenanters marched to Edinburgh, but were defeated at Rullion Green in the Pentlands by Dalziel, a Scottish officer whom Charles had recalled from the service of the czar. The executions which followed, and especially that of Hugh M'Kail, a young and enthusiastic preacher, sank deeply into the spirit of the people. He was the first martyr of the Covenant as Wishart had been of the Reformation. The use of torture, before this rare, now became frequent, and bonds of law-burrows were wrested from their original use to compel the principal landowners to be sureties for the peace of the whole district. Large fines continued to be extorted from all persons who refused to conform to the ecclesiastical laws. Next year a change in the Scottish administration, the cause of which is not well explained, but which was probably due to the fall of Clarendon and the rise of the Cabal ministry, led to a milder but undecided policy in Scotland. Lauderdale, one of the Cabal, still directed Scottish affairs, but Rothes and Sharp were treated as responsible for the rising in the west and suspended. An indemnity was offered to all who would appear before the council and subscribe bonds to keep the peace. A rash attempt to assassinate Sharp in Edinburgh prevented this policy from being adhered to in 1668; but it was renewed in the following year. An indulgence was granted which allowed the deposed ministers who had lived peaceably to return to their manses and glebes, and to receive such a stipend as the privy council might allow. The grace of this concession was undone by a severe Act against conventicles. It favoured a conciliatory policy that schemes for union were in the air. Leighton, the good bishop of Dunblane, proposed a union of the churches upon the basis that the bishops were no longer to exercise jurisdiction, but to act only as perpetual moderators of presbyteries, subject to censure by the synods, and that ministers should be ordained by the bishops, but with consent of the presbyters. There was a meeting at Holyrood with some of the leading ministers, but they would listen to no compromise. The name of bishop was hateful whatever were his functions. It may be doubted whether Charles and his English advisers would have submitted to a curtailment of the bishop’s office and dignity. The subject of the union of the kingdoms was again brought forward in the parliament of 1669, to which Lauderdale was sent as commissioner; and though it was not well received commissioners were appointed in the following year, who went to London in autumn to discuss with English commissioners certain specified points proposed by the king. After several meetings the conference broke up in consequence of a demand by the Scottish members that Scotland should have the same number of members in the united as in its own parliament. The arbitrary government favoured by the want of a settled constitution in Scotland was more to the taste of the king and his advisers. Lauderdale openly boasted, as James VI. had done, that nothing could be proposed in the Scottish parliament except what the king through the Lords of the Articles approved. The “indulgence” entirely failed of the desired effect. The ministers who took advantage of it were despised by the people, who continued to attend the conventicles. In 1672 an Act was passed punishing preachers at such conventicles with death and imposing fines, imprisonment, and exile for having children baptized by deprived ministers and for absence for three Sundays from the parish church. In 1675 letters of intercommuning were issued against about a hundred of those who attended the conventicles, both ministers and laymen, forbidding their friends and relations to have any dealings with them under the same penalties as if they had themselves been present at the conventicles. In 1678 Mitchell, a fanatical preacher, who had ten years before attempted the life of Sharp and mortally wounded the bishop of Orkney, was tried and executed. The feeling of the times, and the cruel manner in which a confession had been wrung from him by torture, led to his being regarded as a martyr. Prior to this year 17,000 persons had suffered fines or imprisonment for attending conventicles. A host of 10,000 men, chiefly Highlanders, was quartered in the western shires in order to force the landowners who favoured the Covenanters to enter into bonds of law-burrows.

It appears to have been the design of Lauderdale, who still governed Scotland absolutely through the privy council (no parliament having been summoned since 1674), to force the Scots to rebel. “When I was once saying to him,” relates Burnet, “‘Was that a time to drive them into a rebellion? ’ ‘ Yes,’ said he, ‘ would to God they would rebel that he might bring over an army of Irish Papists to cut their throats.’” One part of his wish was speedily fulfilled. In 1679 the rebellion so long smouldering broke out. The murder of Sharp (3d May) by Hack-ston of Rathillet and a small band of Covenanters was followed by a still more stringent proclamation against field conventicles, which were declared treasonable, and the possession of arms was prohibited. This severity provoked a rising in the west. A small party led by Hamilton, a youth educated by Bishop Burnet at Glasgow, who had joined the Covenanters, burnt at Rutherglen the statutes and acts of privy council on the anniversary of the Restoration, and being allowed to gather numbers defeated Graham of Claverhouse at Loudon Hill (1st June). The duke of Monmouth, the favourite natural son of Charles, sent with troops from England to suppress the rising, gained an easy victory at Bothwell Bridge (22d June). His desire was to follow it up by a policy of clemency, and a new indulgence was issued, but its effect was counteracted by Lauderdale. All officers, ministers, and landowners, as well as those who had taken part in the rising and did not surrender within a short space, were excepted from the indulgence. Several preachers were executed and many persons sent to the colonies, while fines and forfeitures multiplied. A new and fiercer phase of the rebellion was originated by Cargill and Cameron, two preachers who escaped at Bothwell Bridge, and, assembling their followers at Sanquhar, published a declaration renouncing allegiance to Charles as a perjured king. They were soon surprised and Cameron was killed, but Cargill continued to animate his followers, called the “Society Men” or “Cameronians,” by his preaching, and at a conventicle at Torwood in Ayrshire excommunicated the king, the duke of York, Lauderdale, and Rothes.

The duke of York, who had become a Roman Catholic during his residence abroad, was now sent to Scotland, partly to avoid the discussion raised by his conversion as to his exclusion from the succession. During a short stay of three months he astonished the Scots by the mildness of his administration, but on his return in the following year he revealed his true character. The privy council renewed its proclamations against conventicles and increased the fines, which were levied by the sheriff or other magistrate under the pain of liability if they were remiss in their exaction. Military commissions were issued to Claverhouse and other officers in the southern and western shires empowering them to quarter their troops on recusants and administer martial law. Torture was freely resorted to by the privy council and the duke himself took pleasure in witnessing it. A parliament summoned in 1681, after passing a general Act against Popery to lull suspicion, proceeded to declare the succession to be in the ordinary line of blood and unalterable on account of difference of religion by any future law. The Test Act was then carried, not without many attempts to modify it. Its ambiguous and contradictory clauses make it an admirable instrument of tyranny, a shelter for the lax and a terror to the upright conscience. It was at once enforced, and Argyll, who declared he took it only so far as it was consistent with itself and the Protestant religion, was tried and condemned to death for treason, but escaped from prison to Holland. Dalrymple, the president of the Court of Session, and many leading Presbyterian ministers and gentry followed his example, and found a hospitable refuge in the republic which first acknowledged toleration in religion. They there met a similar band of English exiles. The next two years were spent in plots, of which the centre was in Holland, with branches in London and Edinburgh. The failure of the Rye House Plot in 1683 led to the execution of Russell and Sidney and the arrest of Spence, a retainer of Argyll, Carstares, Baillie of Jerviswood, and Campbell of Cessnock. Against Campbell the proof of complicity failed, and Spence and Carstares, though cruelly tortured, revealed nothing of moment. Baillie, however, was condemned and executed upon slender proof. The Cameronians, who kept alive in remote districts the spirit of rebellion, were treated with ruthless cruelty. Although doubt has been cast on the death of Brown the carrier, shot down in cold blood by Claverhouse, and the Wigtown martyrs, two poor women tied to a stake and drowned in the Bay of Luce, the account of Wodrow has, after a keen discussion, been sustained as accurate. The conduct of the Government in Scotland gained for this period the name of the “Killing Times.”

The short reign of James VII. is the saddest period in the history of Scotland. He succeeded in the brief space of three years in fanning the revolutionary elements in both England and Scotland into a flame which he was powerless to quench. He declined to take the Scottish coronation oath, which contained a declaration in favour of the church then established. A submissive parliament held (28th April 1685) under the duke of Queensberry as commissioner not only overlooked this but expressed its loyalty in terms acknowledging the king’s absolute supremacy. The excise was granted to the crown for ever and the land-tax to James for life. The law against conventicles was even extended to those held in houses, if five persons besides the family attended domestic worship; while, if the meeting was outside the house, at the door or windows, it was to be deemed a field conventicle, punishable by death. The class of persons subject to the test was enlarged. Undeterred or provoked by these terrors of the law, Argyll made a descent upon the western Highlands and tried to raise his clansmen, but, being badly supported by the officers under him, his troops were dispersed and he himself taken prisoner, when he was brought to Edinburgh, condemned, and executed under his former sentence. Next year Perth the lord chancellor, Melfort his brother, and the earl of Moray became converts to the Popish faith. The duke of Queensberry, who did not follow their example, was enabled only by the most servile submission in other points to the royal wishes to save himself and his party in the privy council from dismissal. James sent a letter to parliament offering free trade with England and an indemnity for political offences, in return for which it was required that the Catholics should be released from the test and the penal laws. But the estates refused to be bribed. Even the Lords of the Articles declined to propose a repeal of the Test Act. The burghs almost for the first time in a Scottish parliament showed their independence. The refractory parliament was at once adjourned and soon after dissolved, and James had recourse in Scotland as in England to the dispensing power. Under a pretended prerogative he issued a proclamation through the privy council, granting a full indulgence to the Romanists, and by another deprived the burghs of the right of electing magistrates. A more limited toleration was granted to Quakers and Presbyterians, by which they were allowed to worship according to their consciences in private houses. This was followed by a second and a third indulgence, which at last gave full liberty of worship to the Presbyterians and was accepted by most of their ministers; but the laws against field conventicles continued to be enforced. In February 1688 Renwick was executed under them at Edinburgh. A band of his followers, including women and children, were marched north and imprisoned with great cruelty in Dunnottar.

Meantime the rapid series of events which led to the Revolution in England had reached its climax in the trial and acquittal of the seven bishops. William of Orange, who had long watched the progress of his father-in-law’s tyranny, saw that the moment had come when almost all classes in England as well as Scotland would welcome him as a deliverer. But the Revolution was differently received in each part of the United Kingdom. In England there was practically no opposition; in Catholic Ireland it was established by force. Scotland was divided. The Catholics, chiefly in the Highlands, and the Episcopalians led by their bishops adhered to James and formed the Jacobite party, which kept up for half a century a struggle for the principle of legitimacy. The Presbyterians—probably the most numerous, certainly the most powerful party, especially in the Lowlands and burghs—supported the new settlement, which for the first time gave Scotland a constitutional or limited monarchy. Shortly before his flight James had summoned his Scottish troops to England; but Douglas, brother of the duke of Queensberry, their commander-in-chief, went over to William. Claverhouse, now Viscount Dundee, the second in command, who had the spirit of his kinsman Montrose, after in vain urging James to fight for his crown, returned to Scotland, followed by some thirty horsemen. In Edinburgh the duke of Gordon still held the castle for James, while the convention parliament, presided over by the duke of Hamilton, was debating on what terms the crown should be offered to William. Dundee passed through Edinburgh unmolested, and encouraged Gordon to hold out, while he himself gathered the Highland chiefs round his standard at Lochaber. Mackay, a favourite general of William, sent to oppose him, was defeated at Killiecrankie (29th July 1689), where the spirited leadership of Dundee and the dash of the Highlanders’ attack gained the day; but success was turned into defeat by a bullet which killed Dundee almost at the moment of victory. No successor appeared to take his place and keep the chiefs of the clans together. The Cameronians, organized into a regiment under Cleland, repulsed Cannon, the commander of the Highland army, at Dunkeld, and the success of Livingston, who defeated the remnant under Cameron and Buchan at the Haughs of Cromdale on the Spey, ended the short and desultory war. The castle of Edinburgh had been surrendered a month before the battle of Killiecrankie. Three forts, at Fort William, Fort Augustus, and Inverness, sufficed to keep the Highlands from rising for the next two reigns.

Meantime the convention parliament in Edinburgh had carried the necessary measures for the transfer of the government of Scotland to William and Mary. It declared in bolder terms than the English parliament that James had forfeited the crown and that the throne was vacant. The fifteen articles which contained the reasons for this resolution were included in a Declaration and Claim of Right,—a parallel to the English Declaration and Bill of Rights. Besides the declarations against the Papists with which it commenced—that no Papist could be king or queen, that proclamations allowing mass to be said, Jesuit schools and colleges to be erected, and Popish books to be printed were contrary to law—it detailed each of the unconstitutional acts of James and pronounced it contrary to law. This formidable list included imposing oaths without the authority of parliament; grants without the consent of parliament; employing officers of the army as judges throughout the kingdom; imposing exorbitant fines; imprisoning persons without expressing the reason, and delaying trials; forfeiture upon insufficient grounds, especially that of Argyll; the nomination by the king of the magistrates of burghs; sending of royal letters to courts of justice with reference to pending cases; granting protections for debt; forcing the lieges to depone against themselves in capital crimes; the use of torture without evidence in ordinary crimes; quartering of an army in time of peace upon any part of the kingdom; the use of law-burrows at the king’s instance; putting garrisons in private houses in time of peace without the consent of the owners and of parliament; and fining husbands for their wives. It closed with asserting that Prelacy and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters were insupportable grievances and ought to be abolished, and that it was the right and privilege of subjects to protest to parliament for “remeid” of law and to petition the king, and that for redress of grievances it was necessary parliament should frequently be called, with freedom of speech secured to members. As a conclusion from these premises the estates resolved that William and Mary should be declared king and queen of Scotland during their lives, but with the right of exercising regal power in William alone as long as he lived. After their death the crown was to pass to the heirs of the queen’s body, and failing her to Anne of Denmark and her heirs, failing whom to the heirs of William. Commissioners were despatched to London to present the declaration and statement of grievances and take the royal oath to the acceptance of the crown on their terms. This was done at Whitehall in the following March (1689); but William, before taking the oath, required an assurance that persecution for religious opinion was not intended and made a declaration in favour of toleration.

By desire of William the convention was superseded by a parliament which met in June; but, with the exception of an Act abolishing Prelacy, it transacted no business of importance. The parliament of 1690 was more fruitful. It abolished the committee of the Articles, which had become an abuse inconsistent with the freedom of parliament, and, while it retained a committee on motions and overtures in its place, declared that the estates might deal with any matter without referring it to this committee. The Act of Supremacy was rescinded. The Presbyterian ministers deposed since 1661 were restored and the Westminster Confession approved, though not imposed as a test except on professors. With more difficulty a solution was found for the question of church government. The Presbyterian Church was re-established with the Confession as its formula, and patronage was placed in the heritors and elders with a small compensation to the patrons. These prudent measures were due to the influence of Carstares, the chief adviser of William in Scottish ecclesiastical matters. He was not so well advised in the conduct of the civil government by the master of Stair, who became sole secretary for Scotland. The proclamation for calling out the militia may have been a necessary precaution, but it raised much opposition amongst the landed gentry, and the militia was not then embodied. The massacre of the Macdonalds at Glencoe by Campbell of Glenlyon was contrary to the spirit of the indemnity offered to the Highlanders. While the treachery with which it was executed may be attributed to Glenlyon, it was too plainly proved before the committee of inquiry which the Scottish parliament insisted on that it had been designed by Stair and Breadalbane, and, now that the whole documents have been published, it is also proved that it had been sanctioned by William. It was intended to strike terror; but its partial success was dearly bought, for it kept alive the Jacobite disaffection and gained for it much sympathy. The unfair treatment of the Scots in the matters of free trade and navigation, in which the new Government appeared to follow the policy of Charles rather than that of Cromwell, and acted with an exclusive regard to the prejudices and supposed interests of England, reached a climax in the abandonment of the Scottish settlement at Darien when attacked by the Spaniards. The over-sanguine hopes of Paterson and the Scottish colonists and capitalists who supported his enterprise, so suddenly transformed into a financial disaster overwhelming to a poor country, accompanied by the loss of many lives, embittered the classes on which the Revolution settlement mainly depended for its support. It was the anxious wish of William to have effected the legislative union; but, although he twice attempted it, the last time a month before his death, the temper of the English parliament and of the Scottish people appeared to give small chance of its realization.

9. The Union and its Consequences.— The reign of Anne, so far as it relates to Scotland, centred in the accomplishment of the union. In spite of the disparity of numbers, both nations now met to treat on equal terms. Still there were grave difficulties, and it required all the wisdom of the ministers of the early years of Anne, aided by the glory of Marlborough’s arms, to overcome national prejudices and secure an object plainly for the benefit of both. The memories of Glencoe and Darien and the refusal of equal rights of trade led the Scottish parliament, the year after Anne’s accession, to pass an Act of Security, by which, if the queen died without issue, the Scottish estates were to name a successor from the Protestant descendants of the royal line; but the successor to the English crown was expressly excluded unless there were “such conditions of government settled and enacted as may secure the honour and sovereignty of the crown and kingdom, the freedom, frequency, and power of parliament, the religious freedom and trade of the nation from English or any foreign influence.” Political economy had not yet taught the reciprocal advantage of free trade, and the English jealousy of Scottish traders was intense. An incident about this time warned the English ministers that Scotland might easily revert to its old attitude of enmity. A Scottish ship of the African or Darien Company having been seized in the Thames at the suit of the English East India Company, the “Worcester,” an English East Indiaman, was taken in the Forth by way of retaliation, and Green, its captain, with two other officers, was executed at Leith on a charge of piracy insufficiently proved. An attempt had been already made to complete the union by a commission, which sat from 10th November 1702 to 3d February 1705; but this miscarried through the refusal to grant free trade between the kingdoms. But again in 1705 the English parliament sanctioned the appointment of other commissioners, and new officers of state were nominated for Scotland with the express purpose of press- ing the scheme forward in the Scottish parliament. Though opposed on contrary grounds by the Jacobites and the party of Fletcher of Salton, the Scottish ministry of Queensberry succeeded, by the aid of a third party nicknamed the “Squadrone Volante,” in getting the consent of parliament to the appointment of commissioners by the crown. The Act expressly excepted the church from the matters with which the commission was to deal. The commissioners, thirty-one from each country, met at Whitehall on 16th April and concluded their sittings on 23d July. The nomination by the crown had secured persons anxious to accomplish the union; experience had disclosed the cause of former failures, and the commissioners were guided by the statesmanship of Somers. It had been recognized from the first that the only settlement of the ecclesiastical question possible was to leave to each country its own church. It was wisely decided to treat the law and the courts in the same manner. These two subjects being removed from the scope of the treaty narrowed the debates to four main points,—the succession, trade, taxation, and the composition of the future parliament. The Scottish commissioners yielded on the first, the English on the second, and the remaining two were adjusted by a skilful compromise. The chief articles of the treaty were the settlement of both crowns according to the English Act of Succession on Anne and her descendants, and failing them on the electress Sophia and the Hanoverian line; the establishment of free trade between England and Scotland, and the admission of the Scots to equal privileges as regards trade with other countries; the national debt and taxation were adjusted by the imposition on Scotland of a moderate share (£48,000) of the land-tax, of which England was still to bear £200,000, and there was to be a uniform rate of custom and excise, Scotland being compensated by an equivalent of about £400,000 for becoming liable to a proportion of the English national debt, which already amounted to £16,000,000; forty-five representatives of Scotland were to be admitted to the House of Commons and sixteen elected peers to the House of Lords. Although the terms were on the whole favourable to Scotland, their announcement was received with dissatisfaction, especially in Edinburgh. The loss was immediate, from the abolition of an independent parliament, the reduction of the capital to a provincial town, and the increase of taxation to pay the growing national debt. The gain was in the future and in part doubtful. No one contemplated the rapid and enormous extension of trade. A proud people was unwilling to admit the advantage consequent upon free intercourse with a country in which wealth and civilization were more widespread. It had a natural attachment to its own institutions, though these were less popular than the English. It feared that, notwithstanding the most solemn guarantee, neither its church nor its laws could resist the influence of a country so much larger and more populous, in which henceforth was to be the sole seat of government, and that much of its wealth and talent would be attracted to the south and become English. The last parliament of Scotland was preceded by a stormy agitation against the union, and began its session with numerous addresses praying that the treaty should not be ratified, while none were presented in its favour. The popular feeling was embodied in the speeches of Lord Belhaven from a sentimental and patriotic point of view, and of Fletcher of Salton, who represented the democratic or republican element latent in a portion of the nation. But common sense aided by ministerial influence prevailed. The vote on the first article was prudently taken with a proviso that it was to be dependent on the rest being carried, but it really decided the fate of the measure. The Government commanded a large majority of the peers, perhaps more amenable to influence. They were accused by the Jacobites of being bribed, but the sums received in name of payment of arrears of pension and of debts were too small to justify the charge. The lesser barons or county members and the representatives of the burghs were nearly equally divided; but there was a majority of four of each of these estates in favour of the article. The whole estates voted together and the total majority was thirty-five. This was increased when the last vote was taken to 41, the numbers being 110 for and 69 against, and the Act of Ratification to take effect from 1st May 1707 was carried. The Presbyterian Church received an additional guarantee in an Act passed for “securing the Protestant religion and the Presbyterian Establishment.”

In the English parliament there was less serious opposition, proceeding chiefly from the High Church party, which was conciliated by an Act for the security of the Church of England. On 6th March 1707 the Scottish and English Acts ratifying the union received the royal assent.

Two Acts of the British parliament naturally followed the Act of Union. The Scottish privy council was abolished in 1708. A secretary of state for Scotland continued until 1746 to manage the Scottish department in London; but the lord advocate, the adviser of the crown on all legal matters both in London and Edinburgh, gradually acquired a large, and after the suppression of the office of the Scottish secretary a paramount influence in purely Scottish affairs, though he was nominally a subordinate of the home secretary. In 1709 the law of treason was assimilated to that of England, being made more definite and less liable to extension by construction in the criminal courts. In the later years of Anne, when after the fall of Marlborough power passed from the Whig to the Tory party, two statutes were passed of a different character. Patronage was restored in the Presbyterian Church notwithstanding the protests of the assembly, and proved a fertile source of discord. A limited toleration Act in favour of the Episcopalians, permitting them to worship in private chapels, was opposed by the Presbyterians but carried.

With the union of the parliaments Scotland lost its legislative independence. Its representation in the British parliament for more than a century, based on the freehold franchise in the counties and in the burghs controlled by town councils, which were close corporations, was a representation of special classes and interests rather than of the nation. It almost appeared as if the prophecy of Belhaven would be accomplished and there would be an end of an old song. But Scottish history was not destined yet to end. The character of the people, though their language and manners gradually became more like those of England, remained distinct. They retained a separate church and clergy. Independent courts and a more cosmopolitan system of law opened a liberal profession and afforded a liberal education to youthful ambition. A national system of parish schools, burgh schools, and universities, though inadequately endowed and far from reaching the ideal of Knox and Melville, gave opportunities to the lower as well as the higher classes of receiving at a small cost an education suited for practical uses and the business of everyday life. The Scot had been from the earliest times more inclined to travel, to migrate, to colonize than the Englishman, not that he had a less fervent love of home, but a soil comparatively poor made it necessary for many to seek their fortune abroad. This tendency which had led Scottish monks, soldiers, and professors to embrace foreign service, now found new openings in trade, commerce, colonial enterprise in America, the East, and the West Indies, in the southern hemisphere and the exploration of unknown parts . of the globe. Accustomed to poverty, Scottish emigrants acquired habits of frugality, industry, and perseverance, and were rewarded by success in most of their undertakings. Nor, if war be regarded as necessary to the continued existence of a nation, was it altogether absent, but the cause with which the name of Scotland became identified was the losing one. The two rebellions proved the devoted loyalty which still attached many of the Highland clans, the Catholics, and some of the Episcopalians to the descendants of the Stuarts. But that in 1715, preceded by an abortive attempt in 1708, was put down by a single battle; Sheriffmuir, if it could scarcely be claimed as a victory by Argyll, led to the speedy dispersal of the clans which had gathered round the standard of Mar. Thirty years later the romantic rising of the Highlanders under the Young Pretender found the Government unprepared. Once more for a brief space Holyrood was a royal court. The defeat of Cope at Preston pans and the rapid march of the Scottish army, slightly reinforced by Catholics from the northern and midland shires of England, to Derby, by which it cut off the duke of Newcastle’s forces from the capital, made London tremble. Divided counsels, the absence of any able leader, and the smallness of their number (not more than 5000) prevented the daring policy of attacking London, which Charles himself favoured, and a retreat was determined on. It was skilfully effected, and on 26th December the little army, which had left Edinburgh on 31st October and reached Derby on 4th December, arrived in Glasgow. It was not favourably received, the south-west of Scotland being the district least inclined to the Stuarts, and it marched on Stirling to assist Lord John Drummond and Lord Strathallan, who had commenced its siege, which General Hawley threatened to raise. His defeat at Falkirk was the last success of the Jacobites. The duke of Cumberland was sent to command the royal forces, and Charles Edward was forced by Lord George Murray and the Highland chiefs to abandon the siege of Stirling and retreat to Inverness. He was at once pursued by the duke, and his defeat at Culloden (16th April 1746) scattered his followers and compelled him to seek safety in flight to the Hebrides, from which, after five months’ wanderings, he escaped to France. The last rebellion within Great Britain was put down with severity. Many soldiers taken in arms were shot and no consideration was shown to the wounded. The chief officers and even some privates taken prisoners were tried and executed at various places in the north of England. The earls of Cromarty and Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino were reserved for the judgment of their peers in London, and having pleaded guilty were beheaded at Tower Hill. The crafty Lovat, who had avoided appearing in arms, but was really at the bottom of the rising, though he pretended to serve both sides, was the last to suffer. An Act of indemnity was passed a few weeks after his execution. But effective measures were taken to prevent any renewal of the rebellion. The estates and titles of all who had been privy to it were forfeited. An Act was passed prohibiting the use of arms and the Highland dress; and the abolition of the military tenure of ward-holding, unfortunately preserved at the union, rooted out the remnants of feudal and military power till then left in the hands of the nobles and chiefs. These changes in the law had the willing consent of the Lowland and burghal population in Scotland, to whom the lawless and freebooting habits of the Highlanders had been a cause of frequent loss and constant alarm. Somewhat later the masterly policy of Pitt enlisted the Scottish Celts in the service of the crown by forming the Highland regiments. The recollection of Glencoe and Culloden was forgotten after the common victories of the British arms in India, the Peninsula, and Waterloo. In one direction the Jacobite cause survived its defeat. Poetry seized on its romantic incidents, idealized the young prince who at least tried to win his father’s crown, satirized the foreign and German, the Whig and Covenanting, elements opposed to the Stuart restoration, and substituted loyalty for patriotism. Self-sacrifice and devotion to a cause believed right, though deserted by fortune (qualities rare amongst the mass of any nation), dignified the Jacobites like the cavaliers with some of the nobler traits of chivalry, and the Jacobite ballads have their place in literature as one of the last expiring notes of mediaeval romance. Music and tradition fortunately preserved their charm before the cold hand of history traced the sad end of Charles Edward, the pensioner of foreign courts, wasting his declining years in ignoble pleasures. It might be hard to say whether the first Hanoverians or the last Stuarts least deserved that men should fight and die for them; but the former represented order, progress, civil and religious liberty; the latter were identified with the decaying legend of the divine right of kings and the claim of the Roman Church not merely to exclusive orthodoxy but to temporal power and jurisdiction inconsistent with the independence of nations and freedom of conscience. Although a larger minority in Scotland than in England clung to the traditions of the past, an overwhelming majority of the nation, including all its progressive elements, were in favour of the new constitution and the change of dynasty.

During the remaining half of the 18th century and the commencement of the 19th a period of prosperity was enjoyed by Scotland, and the good effects of the union, intercepted by the rebellions, became visible. The Scottish nation, without losing its individuality, was stimulated by contact and friendly rivalry with its English neighbour in the arts of peace. It advanced in intellectual as well as material respects more than in any part of its previous history. It became, through commerce, manufactures, and improved agriculture, a comparatively rich instead of a poor country. Skilful engineering made the Clyde a successful competitor with the Thames and the Mersey, and Glasgow became one of the most populous cities in Great Britain. The industrial arts made rapid progress, and the fine arts began to flourish. The art of saving capital and using it as a source of credit was reduced to a system. Banks, not unknown in other countries and at an earlier date, are in their modern form a Scottish invention. Besides those which sprang up in Scotland itself, the national banks of England and France owed their origin to two Scotsmen. A safe system of life insurance represented the provident habits and business talents of the nation. Adam Smith shares with the French economists the honour of founding political economy as the science of the wealth of nations. Mental philosophy became a favourite study, and a distinctively Scottish school produced thinkers who deeply influenced the later systems of the Continent. The history not of Scotland only but of England and some portions of that of Europe were written by Scotsmen in works equal to any existing before Gibbon. The dawn of the scientific era of the 19th century was foreshadowed by Scottish men of science, the founders of modern geology, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, and the practice of medicine. In Scotland was made the first of the great line of discoveries in the practical application of science by the use of steam as a motive-power. The same period—so varied were its talents—gave birth to two Scottish poets, of world-wide fame. Burns expressed the feelings and aspirations of the people; Scott described both in verse and prose their history and the picturesque scenes in which it had been transacted. During the last half-century the material progress continued, but the intellectual was too brilliant to last. The preponderating influence of England even threatened to extinguish native Scottish genius by centralizing the political and social life of the island in the English capital. Only two changes of importance occurred. The political institutions of Scotland were reformed by a series of Acts which placed the franchise on a broader basis and made the representation of the people real. The Established Church, already weakened by secessions, was further divided by a disruption largely duo to the ignorance of political leaders as to the deep-seated aversion of the nation to any interference with the independence of the church, especially in matters of patronage. Educational reform has also in recent years raised the standard of the universities and schools without injuring their popular character. While it would be incorrect to say that Scotland has had no independent history since the union, that history must be chiefly read in the annals of its church, its law, and its literature. Its political existence has been absorbed in that of Great Britain. (Ae. M.)

PART II.—PHYSICAL FEATURES.

Scotland forms the northern portion of Great Britain and is divided from England by the rivers Sark, Liddell, and Kershope (an affluent of the Liddell), the Cheviot Hills, the river Tweed, and the liberties of Berwick. The mainland lies between 58° 40' 30" (at Dunnet Head, Caithness) and 54° 38' N. lat. (Mull of Galloway) and 1° 45' 30" (Peterhead) and 6° 14' W. long. (Ardnamurchan Point, Argyllshire). Including the islands, the extreme N. lat. is 60° 51' 30" (Outsack, Shetland) and the extreme W. long. 8° 35' 30" (St Kilda). Its greatest length from north to south, from Durness in Sutherland to Burrow Head in Wigtownshire, is 272 miles, and the greatest breadth from east to west, from Peterhead in Aberdeenshire to Applecross in Ross-shire, is 155, while the narrowest part, from Grangemouth in Stirlingshire to Bowling in Dumbartonshire, is only 30 ¼ miles wide. The total area in 1881, according to the Ordnance Survey, was 19,777,490 acres or 30,902 square miles, —the area of foreshore being 310,413 acres or 485 square miles, of water 403,846 acres or 631 square miles, and of land-surface 19,063,231 acres or 29,786 square miles. But of the water area the acreage included under lakes and rivers respectively has not been ascertained.

Geology.

In the article Geology (vol. x. ) descriptions will be found of most of the geological formations of Scotland. All that need therefore be inserted here is a succinct summary of these formations with references to the pages of that article where fuller details are given.

The oldest rocks of Scotland and of the British Islands, known as Archaean, consist chiefly of gneiss (Fundamental, Lewisian, Hebridian), which varies from a coarsely crystalline granitoid mass to fine schist. The coarse varieties are most abundant, intermingled with bands of hornblende-rock, hornblende-schist, pegmatite, eurite, mica-schist, sericite-schist, and other schistose accompaniments. In a few places limestone has been observed. No trace of any organism has ever been detected in any of these rocks. Over wide areas, particularly on the mainland, the bands of gneiss have a general north-west trend and undulate in frequent plications with variable inclination to north-east and south-west. The largest tract of Archaean rock is that which forms almost the whole of the Outer Hebrides, from Barra Head to the Butt of Lewis. Other areas more or less widely separated from each other run down the western parts of Sutherland and Ross, and are probably continued at least as far as the Island of Rum. How far Archaean rocks reappear to the east of this western belt has not yet been ascertained.

Above the Archaean gneiss lies a series of red and chocolate-coloured sandstones, conglomerates, and breccias (Cambrian or Torridon sandstone), which form a number of detached areas from Cape Wrath down the seaboard of Sutherland and Ross, across Skye, and as far as the Island of Rum (Geology, vol. x. p. 330). They rise into prominent pyramidal mountains, which, as the stratification is usually almost horizontal, present in their terraced sides a singular contrast to the neighbouring heights, composed of highly plicated crystalline schists. In the Torridon district these sandstones can be seen towering bed above bed to a height of about 4000 feet, and their thickness is still greater. They have not yet yielded any recognizable fossil; their geological age is accordingly doubtful, though from their relation to the overlying fossiliferous rocks and from their own lithological characters they have with much probability been classed with the Cambrian system of Wales. They are not met with anywhere else in Scotland than in the north-west Highlands.

Rocks belonging to the Silurian system occur in two distinct regions and in two very strongly contrasted conditions. They constitute nearly the whole of the southern uplands (Geology, vol. x. pp. 333, 337). In that belt of country they consist for the most part of greywacke, grit, shale, and other sedimentary rocks, but in the south-west of Ayrshire they include some thick lenticular bands of limestone. They have been thrown into many plications, the long axes of which run in a general north-easterly direction. It is this structure which has determined the trend of the southern uplands. The plications of the Highlands and the chief dislocations of the country have followed the same general direction, and hence the parallelism and north-easterly trend of the main topographical features. Abundant fossils in certain parts of the Silurian rocks have shown that representatives of both the Lower and Upper divisions are present. By far the larger part of the uplands belongs to the former. The Upper Silurian shales and sandstones appear only along the northern and southern margins.

In the north-west Highlands the Cambrian red sandstones are overlain unconformably by several hundred feet of white quartzite with annelid tubes, followed by fossiliferous limestones and shales (Geology, vol. x. p. 333). The abundant fossils in these strata prove them to be of Lower Silurian age. It was believed by Murchison that, as these Silurian strata dip conformably below various schists which spread eastwards into the rest of the Highlands, they demonstrate the crystalline rocks of the Highlands to be of later than Silurian age. Recently, however, the structure of Sutherland has been investigated anew with minute care and the result is to show that the schists believed to overlie the Silurian strata conformably have been really pushed over them and consist in part of the Archaean gneiss. It has been ascertained that from the mouth of Loch Erriboll on the north coast of Sutherland southwards to the Isle of Skye, a distance of more than 100 miles, a gigantic system of earth-movements has taken place, whereby the Silurian, Cambrian, and Archaean rocks have been crumpled, inverted, dislocated, and have pushed over each other. In some places the horizontal displacement of these shifted masses has been not less than 10 miles. So intense has been the shearing of the rocks that their original structure has in many places been entirely destroyed. They have acquired a new schistosity, which is in a general sense parallel with the bedding of the Silurian rocks to the west of the line of disturbance. Hence the apparent conformability of the schists overlying these rocks. The total thickness of recognizable Silurian strata is about 2000 feet. The rocks that overlie them to the east of the line of disturbance in Sutherland and Ross are fine flaggy schists, quite unlike any part of the Archaean gneiss and often strangely suggestive of altered sandstones. What are their true age and history remains still to be determined. There can be no doubt, however, that they have acquired their present schistosity since the Lower Silurian period, and hence that the present condition of the metamorphic rocks of the central Highlands does not go back to Archaean time. That portions of the Archaean series may have been pushed up in different parts of the Highlands is quite conceivable. But that much of the Highlands consists of altered sedimentary rocks like those of the Silurian uplands admits of no question. The solution of this difficult but interesting problem has the most important bearing upon the theory of metamorphism, but it can only be attained by patient and laborious mapping of the ground such as is being prosecuted by the Geological Survey.

As Scotland is the typical European region for the Old Red Sandstone a full account of this series of rocks has already been given in the article Geology (vol. x. pp. 343, 344). These rocks are grouped in two divisions, Lower and Upper, both of which appear to have been deposited in lakes. The Lower, with its abundant intercalated lavas and tuffs, extends continuously as a broad belt along the northern margin of the midland valley, reappears in detached tracts along the southern border, is found again on the south side of the uplands in Berwickshire and the Cheviot Hills, occupies a tract of Lome in Argyllshire, and on the north side of the Highlands underlies most of the low ground on both sides of the Moray Firth, stretches across Caithness and through nearly the whole of the Orkney Islands, and is prolonged into Shetland. The Upper Old Red Sandstone covers a more restricted space in most of the areas just mentioned, its chief development being on the flanks of the north-eastern part of the southern uplands, where it spreads out over the Lammermuir Hills and the valleys of Berwickshire and Roxburghshire.

The areas occupied by Carboniferous rocks are almost entirely restricted to the midland valley, but they are also to be found skirting the southern uplands from the mouth of the Tweed to that of the Nith. The subdivisions of this important system, its coal-fields and igneous rocks, have been described in the article Geology (vol. x. pp. 346, 348, 349).

Rocks assignable to the Permian system occupy only a few small areas in Scotland. Extending from Cumberland under the Solway Firth, they fill up the valley of the Nith for a few miles north of Dumfries, and, reappearing again in the same valley a little farther north, run up the narrow valley of the Carron Water to the Lowther Hills. Other detached tracts of similar rocks cover a considerable space in Annandale, one of them ascending the deep defile at the head of that valley. Another isolated patch occurs among the Lead Hills; and lastly, a considerable space in the heart of the Ayrshire coal-field is occupied by Permian rocks. Throughout these separate basins the prevailing rock is a red sandstone, varied in the narrow valleys with intercalated masses of breccia (Geology, vol. x. p. 351). There can be no doubt that the valleys in which these patches of red rocks lie already existed in Permian time. They seem then to have been occupied by small lakes or inlets, not unlike fjords. Numerous amphibian tracks have been found in the red sandstone of Annandale and also near Dumfries, but no other traces of the life of the time. One of the most interesting features of the Scottish development of the Permian system is the occurrence of intercalated bands of contemporaneously erupted volcanic rocks in the Carron Water, Nithsdale, and Ayrshire. The actual vents which were the sites of the small volcanoes still remain distinct, and the erupted lavas form high ground in the middle of Ayrshire.

The Triassic system appears to be only feebly represented in Scotland. To this division of the geological record are assigned the yellow sandstones of Elgin, which have yielded remains of rep- tiles, but which at the same time cannot be satisfactorily separated from similar underlying strata which contain Upper Old Red Sandstone fishes. There occur also below the Lias on some parts of the west coast unfossiliferous red sandstones, conglomerates, and breccias which may possibly belong to the same system. These rocks attain their greatest thickness at Gruinard Bay on the west coast of Ross, where they must be several hundred feet thick. On the east side of the country, where so many fragments of the Secondary rocks occur as boulders in the glacial deposits, a large mass of strata was formerly exposed at Linksfield near Elgin containing fossils which appear to show it to belong to the Rhaetic beds at the top of the Trias. But it was not in place, and was almost certainly a mass transported by ice. Rhaetic strata no doubt exist in situ at no great distance under the North Sea.

The Jurassic system is well represented on both sides of the Highlands. Along the east coast of Sutherland good sections are exposed showing the succession of strata. Among these the Lower and Middle Lias can be identified by their fossils. The Lower Oolite is distinguished by the occurrence in it of some coal-seams, one of which, 3 1 / 2 feet in thickness, has been worked at Brora. The Middle Oolite consists mostly of sandstones with bands of shale and limestones and includes fossils which indicate the English horizons from the Kellaways Rock up to the Coral Rag. The lower part of the Kimmeridge Clay is probably represented by sandstones and conglomerates, forming the highest beds of the series in Sutherland. On the west side of the Highlands Jurassic rocks are found in many detached areas from the Shiant Isles to the southern shores of Mull. Over much of this region they owe their preservation in great measure to the mass of lavas poured over them in Tertiary time. They have been uncovered, indeed, only at a comparatively recent geological date. They comprise a consecutive series of deposits from the bottom of the Lias up to the Oxford Clay. The Lower Middle and Upper Lias consist chiefly of shales and shelly limestones, with some sandstones, well seen along the shores of Broadford Bay in Skye and in some of the adjacent islands. The Lower Oolites are made up of sandstones and shales with some limestones, and are overlaid by several hundred feet of an estuarine series of deposits consisting chiefly of thick white sandstones, below and above which lie shales and shelly limestones. These rocks form a prominent feature underneath the basalt terraces of the east side of Skye, Raasay, and Eigg. They form the highest members of the Jurassic series, representing probably some part of the Oxford clay. The next Secondary rocks (Cretaceous) succeed them unconformably.

Rocks belonging to the Cretaceous system undoubtedly at one time covered considerable areas on both sides of the Highlands, but they have been entirely stripped off the eastern side, while on the western they have been reduced to a few fragmentary patches, which have no doubt survived because of the overlying sheets of basalt that have protected them. Some greenish sandstones containing recognizable and characteristic fossils are the equivalents of the Upper Greensand of the south of England. These rocks are found on the south and west coasts of Mull and on the west coast of Argyllshire. They are covered by white sandstones and these by white chalk and marly beds, which represent the Upper Chalk of England. Enormous numbers of flints and also less abundant fragments of chalk are found in glacial deposits bordering the Moray Firth. These transported relics show that the Chalk must once have been in place at no great distance, if indeed it did not actually occupy part of Aberdeenshire and the neighbouring counties.

Above the highest Secondary rocks on the west coast come terraced plateaus of basalt, which spread out over wide areas in Skye, Eigg, Mull, and Morven, and form most of the smaller islets of the chain of the Inner Hebrides (Geology, vol. x. p. 362). These plateaus are composed of nearly horizontal sheets of basalt—columnar, amorphous, or amygdaloidal—which in Mull attain a thickness of more than 3000 feet. They are prolonged southwards into Antrim (Ireland), where similar basalts overlying Secondary strata cover a large territory. Occasional beds of tuff are intercalated among these lavas, and likewise seams of fine clay or shale which have preserved the remains of numerous land-plants. The presence of these fossils indicates that the eruptions were subaerial, and a comparison of them with those elsewhere found among older Tertiary strata shows that they probably belong to what is now called the Oligocene stage of the Tertiary series of formations, and therefore that the basalt eruptions took place in early Tertiary time. The volcanic episode to which these plateaus owe their origin was one of the most important in the geological history of Great Britain. It appears to have resembled in its main features those remarkable outpourings of basalt which have deluged so many thousand square miles of the western territories of the United States. The eruptions were connected with innumerable fissures up which the basalt rose and from numerous points on which it flowed out at the surface. These fissures with the basalt that solidified in them now form the vast assemblage of dykes which cross Scotland, the north of England, and the north of Ireland (Geology, vol. x. p. 312). That the volcanic period was a prolonged one is shown by the great denudation of the plateaus before the last eruptions took place. In the Isle of Eigg, for example, the basalts had already been deeply eroded by river-action and into the river-course a current of glassy lava (pitchstone) flowed. Denudation has continued active ever since, and now, owing to greater hardness and consequent power of resistance, the glassy lava stands up as the prominent and picturesque ridge of the Scuir, while the basalts which formerly rose high above it have been worn down into terraced declivities that slope away from it to the sea. A remarkable feature in the volcanic phenomena was the disruption of the basaltic plateaus by large bosses of gabbro and of various granitoid rocks. These intrusive masses now tower into conspicuous groups of hills,—the Coolins in Skye, the mountains of Rum and Mull, and the rugged heights of Ardnamurchan.

Under the Post-tertiary division come the records of the Ice Age, when Scotland was buried under sheets of ice which ground down, striated, and polished the harder rocks over the whole country and left behind them the widespread accumulations of clay, gravel, and sand known as glacial deposits. The nature of the evidence and the deductions drawn from it have been already stated (Geology, vol. x. pp. 365-368). The youngest geological formations are the raised beaches, river-terraces, lake-deposits, peat-mosses, and other accumulations, which are related to the present configuration of the country and contain remains of the plants and animals still living on its surface (Geology, vol. x. pp. 256, 290, 369).

Physical Features.

The physical features of Scotland may be best realized by regarding the country as composed of three distinct belts of territory, differing from each other in their geological structure and consequently presenting striking contrasts in their scenery.

1. The Highlands, for convenience of description, are here regarded as embracing all that part of the country which lies west and north of a line drawn along the Firth of Clyde, and thence diagonally in a north-easterly direction from the mouth of the river Clyde to the east coast at Stonehaven. Nearly the whole of this region is high ground, deeply trenched with valleys and penetrated by long arms of the sea. The only considerable area of lowland lies in the north-eastern counties, embracing the eastern part of Aberdeenshire and the northern parts of Banff, Elgin, and Nairn. Along both sides of the Moray Firth a strip of lower land intervenes between the foot of the hills and the sea, while farther north the county of Caithness is one wide plain, which is prolonged into the Orkney Islands. Seen from beyond its southern margin, the area of the Highlands presents a well-defined chain of hills, which rise abruptly from the plains of the Lowlands. This is best observed in Strathmore, but it is also conspicuous in the estuary of the Clyde, where the low hills on the south contrast well with the broken line of rugged mountains to the north. From any of the islands of the chain of the Inner Hebrides the Highlands along their western seafront rise as a vast rampart, indented by many winding fjords and rising up to a singularly uniform general level, which sinks here and there and allows glimpses to be had of still higher summits in the interior. The northern margin is hardly less striking when looked at from the Moray Firth, or from the plains of Caithness or Orkney.

From a commanding summit in the interior the Highlands are seen to differ from a mountain chain such as the Alps, not merely in their inferior elevation, but essentially in their configuration and structure. They are made up of a succession of more or less nearly parallel confluent ridges, which have, on the whole, a trend from north-east to south-west. These ridges are separated by longitudinal valleys, and each of them is likewise furrowed by transverse valleys. The portions of ridge thus isolated rise into what are termed mountains. But all the loftier eminences in the Highlands are only higher parts of ridges along which their geological structure is prolonged. It is singular to observe how the general average of level of the summits of the ridges is maintained. From some points of view a mountain may appear to tower above all the surrounding country, but, looked at from a sufficient distance to take in its environment, it may be found not to rise much above the general uniformity of elevation. There are no gigantic dominant masses that must obviously be due to some special terrestrial disturbance. A few apparent exceptions to this statement rise along the western seaboard of Sutherland, in Skye, and elsewhere, but an examination of their structure at once explains the reason of their prominence and confirms the rule.

The general surface of the Highlands is rugged. The rocks project in innumerable bosses and crags, which roughen the sides and crests of the ridges. The forms and colours of these roughnesses depend on the nature of the rock underneath. Where the latter is hard and jointed, weathering into large quadrangular blocks, the hills are more especially distinguished for the gnarled bossy character of their declivities, as may be seen in Ben Ledi and the chain of heights to the north-east of it formed of massive grits and mica-schists. Where, on the other hand, the rock decays into smaller debris, the hills are apt to assume smoother contours, as in the slate hills that run from the Kyles of Bute to Loch Lomond. Wherever any mass of rock occurs differing much from those around it in its power of resisting decomposition it affects the scenery, rising into a prominence where it is durable, or sinking into lower ground where it is not. This relation between relative destructibility and external configuration is traceable in every part of Scotland, and indeed may be regarded as the law that has mainly determined the present topography of the country.

The Highlands are separated into two completely disconnected and in some respects contrasted regions by the remarkable line of the Great Glen, which runs from Loch Linnhe to Inverness. In the northern portion the highest ground rises along the west coast, mounting steeply from the sea to an average height of perhaps between 2000 and 3000 feet. The watershed consequently keeps close to the Atlantic seaboard, indeed in some places it is not more than a mile and a half distant from the beach. From these heights, which catch the first downpour of the western rains, the ground falls eastwards, but with numerous heights that prolong the mountainous character, to the edge of the North Sea and the line of the Great Glen. The best conception of the difference in the general level on the two sides of the watershed may be obtained by observing the contrast between the lengths of their streams. On the western side the drainage is poured into the Atlantic Ocean after flowing only a few miles, while on the eastern side it has to run at least 30 or 40. At the head of Loch Nevis the western stream is only 3 miles long; that which starts from the eastern side has a course of some 18 to the Great Glen. Throughout the northern or north-western region a general uniformity of feature characterizes the scenery, betokening even at a distance the general monotony in the structure of the underlying schists. But the sameness is relieved along the western coast of Sutherland and Ross by singular groups of cones and stacks (to be afterwards referred to), and farther south by the terraced plateaus and abrupt conical hills of Skye, Rum, and Mull. The valleys run for the most part in a north-west and south-east direction, and this is also generally true of the sea lochs.

The south-eastern region of the Highlands, being more diversified in geological structure, presents greater contrasts of scenery. In the first place, its valleys chiefly run in a south-west and northeast direction and so also do most of the lakes and sea lochs. This feature is strikingly exhibited in the western part of Argyllshire. But there are also numerous and important transverse valleys, of which that of the Garry and Tay is the most conspicuous example. Again, the watershed in this region is arranged somewhat differently. It first strikes eastward round the head of Loch Laggan and then swings southward, pursuing a sinuous course till it emerges from the Highlands on the east side of Loch Lomond. But the streams flowing westward are still short, while those that run north-east and east have long courses and drain wide tracts of high ground. The Tay in particular pours a larger body of water into the sea than any other river in Great Britain. Moreover, the occurrence of many bosses of granite and other eruptive rocks gives rise to various interruptions in the monotonous scenery of the crystalline schists which constitute the greater part of the country. But a marked contrast may be traced between the configuration of the north-eastern district and the other parts of this region. In that area the Grampians rise into wide flat-topped heights or elevated moors often over 3000 and sometimes exceeding 4000 feet in height and bounded by steep declivities or not infrequently by precipices. Seen from an eminence on their surface, these plateaus look like fragments of an original broad tableland, which has been trenched into segments by the formation of the transverse and longitudinal valleys. Farther to the south-west in Perthshire, Inverness-shire, and Argyllshire, they give place to the ordinary hummocky crested ridges of Highland scenery, some summits on which, however, exceed 4000 feet in elevation. For the probable meaning of this transition from broad flat-topped heights to narrow crests and isolated peaks, see below (pp. 525-526).

Besides the principal tracts of low ground in the Highlands already referred to, there occur numerous long but narrow strips of flat land in the more important valleys. Each strath and glen is usually provided with a floor of detritus which, spread out between the bases of the bounding hills, has been levelled into meadow-land by the rivers, and furnishes as a rule the only arable ground in each district.

2. The southern uplands form the most southerly of the three transverse belts in Scottish topography. Extending from St Patrick's Channel to St Abb’s Head, they constitute a well-defined belt of hilly ground, but present a striking contrast to the scenery of the Highlands. The rocks which underlie them consist almost wholly of Silurian grits, greywackes, and shales, which have been greatly plicated, the general axis of the folds running parallel with that of the whole belt, or from south-west to north-east. These uplands, though much less elevated than the Highlands (their highest point is not more than 2764 feet above the sea), rise with scarcely less abruptness above the lower tracts that bound them. Their north-western margin for the most part springs boldly above the fields and moorlands of the midland valley, and its boundary for long distances continues remarkably straight. Their southern and south eastern limits are in general less prominently defined, except to the west of the Nith, where they plunge into the sea. Between the Solway Firth and the Cheviot Hills they pass under a line of high and picturesque escarpments which runs from Birrenswark in a north-east direction. In Berwickshire, however, they again tower boldly above the plain of the Merse. These uplands are distinguished above all by the smoothness of their surface. They may be regarded as a rolling tableland or moorland, traversed by innumerable valleys which with gentle verdant declivities conduct the drainage to the sea. This character is impressively seen from the heights of Tweedsmuir. Wide mossy moors, lying 2000 feet or more above the sea and sometimes level as a racecourse, spread out on all sides. Their continuity, however, is interrupted by numerous intervening valleys which separate them into detached flat-topped hills. Unlike the Highlands, these southern heights comparatively seldom present precipices of naked rock. Where the rock projects it more usually appears in low crags and knolls, from which long trails of grey or purple debris descend the slopes till they are lost among the grass. Hence, besides being smooth, the uplands are pre-eminently verdant. They form indeed excellent pasture-land, while the alluvial flats in the valleys and even some of the lower slopes of the hills are fitted for corn and green crops.

This uniformity of external aspect is doubtless traceable to the prevalence of the same kind of rocks and the same geological structure. The Silurian greywackes and shales that underlie almost the whole of these uplands weather generally into small angular débris, and at a tolerably uniform rate of disintegration. But slight differences may readily be detected even where no feature interferes in a marked way with the general monotony. The bands of massive grit and coarse greywacke, for example, break up into larger blocks and from their greater hardness are apt to project above the general surface of the other and softer rocks. Hence their line of trend, which like that of all the other strata is in a north-easterly direction, may be followed from hill to hill even at a distance by their more craggy contours. Only in the higher tracts of these uplands are any rugged features to be seen that remind one of the more savage character of Highland scenery. In the heights of Hartfell (2651 feet) and Whitecoomb (2695), whence the Clyde, Tweed, Annan, and Moffat Water descend, the high moorlands have been scarped into gloomy corries, with crags and talus-slopes, which form a series of landscapes all the more striking from the abrupt and unexpected contrast they present to everything around them. In Galloway, also, the highest portions of the uplands have acquired a ruggedness and wildness more like those of the Highlands than any other district in the south of Scotland. For this, however, there is an obvious geological reason. In that region the Silurian rocks have been invaded by large bosses of granite and have undergone a variable amount of metamorphism which has in some places altered them into hard crystalline schists. These various rocky masses, presenting great differences in their powers of resisting decay, have yielded unequally to disintegration: the harder portions project in rocky knolls, crags, and cliffs, while the softer parts have been worn down into more flowing outlines. The highest summit in the south of Scotland—Merrick (2764 feet) —consists of Silurian strata much altered by proximity to the granite, while the rest of the more prominent heights (all in Kirkcudbrightshire)—Rinns of Kells (2668 feet), Caimsmore of Carsphairn (2612), and Cairnsmore of Fleet (2331)—are formed of granite.

The watershed of the southern uplands is of much interest in relation to their geological history. It runs from the mouth of Loch Ryan in a sinuous north-easterly direction, keeping near the northern limit of the region till it reaches the basin of the Nith, where it quits the uplands altogether, descends into the lowlands of Ayrshire, and, after circling round the headwaters of the Nith, strikes south-eastwards across half the breadth of the uplands, then sweeps north and eastwards between the basins of the Clyde, Tweed, and Annan, and then through the moors that surround the sources of the Ettrick, Teviot, and Jed, into the Cheviot Hills. Here again the longest slope is on the east side, where the Tweed bears the whole drainage of that side into the sea. Although the rocks throughout the southern uplands have a persistent north-east and south-west strike, and though this trend is apparent in the bands of more rugged hills that mark the outcrop of hard grits and greywackes, nevertheless geological structure has been much less effective in determining the lines of ridge and valley than in the Highlands. On the southern side of the watershed, in Dumfriesshire and Galloway, the valleys run generally transversely from north-west to south-east. But in the eastern half of the uplands the valleys do not appear to have any relation to the geological structure of the ground underneath.

3. Between the two belts of high ground lie the broad lowlands of central Scotland, or the midland valley, bounded on the north side by the range of heights that extends from the mouth of the Clyde to Stonehaven, on the south side by the pastoral uplands that stretch from Girvan to Dunbar. The simplest conception of the general aspect and structure of this important part of the kingdom is obtained by regarding it as a long trough of younger rocks let down by parallel dislocations between the older masses of the high grounds to the south and north. The lowest of these younger rocks are the various sedimentary and volcanic members of the Old Red Sandstone. These are covered by the successive formations of the Carboniferous system. The total thickness of both these groups of rock cannot be less than 30,000 feet, and, as most of them bear evidence of having been deposited in shallow water, it is manifest that they could only have been accumulated during a prolonged period of depression. The question arises whether this depression affected only the area of the midland valley itself, or whether it extended also over the regions to the north and south. Materials do not yet exist for a delinite answer to this question; but so far as the evidence now before us goes there is ground for the inference that, while the depression had its maximum along the line of the lowlands, it also involved some portion at least of the high grounds on either side. In other words, the Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous rocks, though chiefly accumulated in the broad lowland valley, crept also over some part at least of the hills on either side, where a few outliers are left to tell of their former extension. The central Lowlands of Scotland are thus of great geological antiquity. During and since the deposition of the rocks that underlie them the tract has been the scene of repeated terrestrial disturbances. Long dislocations, running like the ridges of the Highlands and the southern uplands from south-west to north-east, have sharply defined its northern and southern margins. By other fractures and unequal movements of upheaval or depression portions of the older rocks have been brought up within the bounds of the younger, and areas of the younger have been enclosed by the older. On the whole, these terrestrial disturbances have followed the same prevalent north-easterly trend, and hence a general tendency may be observed among the main ridges and valleys to run in that direction. The chains of the Ochil, Sidlaw, Pentland, Renfrew, Campsie, and Fintry Hills, and the valleys of Strathmore, Firth of Tay, and the basin of Midlothian, may be cited as examples. But, undoubtedly, the dominant cause in the determination of the topographical prominences and depressions of the district has been the relative hardness and softness of the rocks. Almost the whole of the eminences in tho Lowlands consist of hard igneous rocks, forming not only chains of hills like those just referred to and others in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, but isolated crags and hills like those of Stirling Castle, Edinburgh Castle, and others conspicuous in the scenery of Fife and the Lothians.

Of the three chief valleys in the central Lowlands two, those of the Tay and the Forth, descend from tho Highlands, and one, that of the Clyde, from the southern uplands. Though on the whole transverse, these depressions furnish another notable example of that independence of geological structure already mentioned.

We now proceed to consider the leading physical features of the country with especial reference to their distinctive aspects and their respective modes of origin. Though an eminently hilly country, Scotland is not dominated by any leading mountain chain on which all the other topographical features are dependent. Its leading features are not the monotonous ridges of the high grounds but the valleys that have been opened through them. If these valleys were tilled up, the high grounds would once more become what they probably were at first, elevated plains or plateaus, with no strongly marked features,—no eminences rising much above nor hollows sinking much below the general surface.

Valleys.— Even apart from any knowledge of their origin, the valleys of the country are thus seen to be its fundamental topographical element, and to deserve the first consideration in any attempt to describe and explain its physical features. The longitudinal valleys, which run in the same general direction as the ridges—that is, north-east and south-west—have had their trend defined by geological structure, such as a line of dislocation (the Great Glen), or the plications of the rocks (Lochs Ericht, Tay, and Awe, and most of the sea lochs of Argyllshire). The transverse valleys run north-west or south-east and are for the most part independent of geological structure. The valley of the Garry and Tay crosses the strike of all the Highland rocks, traverses the great fault on the Highland border, and finally breaks through the chain of the Ochil Hills at Perth. The valley of the Clyde crosses the strike of the Silurian plications in the southern uplands, the boundary fault, and the ridges of tho Old Red Sandstone, and pursues its north-westerly course across the abundant and often powerful dislocations of the Carboniferous system.

That valleys are essentially due to erosion and not to dislocation . or subsidence of the earth’s surface is a fact which has now been demonstrated by so overwhelming a mass of evidence from all parts of the globe that it may be accepted as one of the axioms of geology. The plications of the earth’s crust which folded the rocks of the Highlands and southern uplands not improbably upraised above the sea a series of longitudinal ridges having a general north-easterly direction. The earliest rain that fell upon these ridges would run off them, first in transverse watercourses down each short slope and then in longitudinal depressions wherever such had been formed during the terrestrial disturbance. Once chosen, the pathways of the streams would be gradually deepened and widened into valleys. Hence the valleys are of higher antiquity than the mountains that rise from them. The mountains in fact have emerged out of the original bulk of the land in proportion as the valleys have been excavated. The denudation would continue so long as the ground stood above the level of the sea; but there have been prolonged periods of depression, when the ground, instead of being eroded, lay below the sea-level and was buried sometimes under thousands of feet of accumulated sediment, which completely filled up and obliterated the previous drainage-lines. When the land reappeared a new and independent series of valleys would at once begin to be eroded; and the subsequent degradation of these overlying sediments might reveal portions of the older topography, as in the case of the Great Glen, Lauderdale, and other ancient valleys. But the new drainage-lines have usually little or no reference to the old ones. Determined by the inequalities of surface of the overlying mantle of sedimentary material, they would be wholly independent of the geological structure of the rocks lying below that mantle. Slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the land, they might eventually reach the older rocks, but they would keep in these the lines of valley that they had followed in the overlying deposits. In process of time the whole of these deposits might be denuded from the area. The valleys would then be seen running in utter disregard of the geological structure of the rocks around them, and there might even remain no trace of the younger formations on which they began and which guided their excavation. This is probably the explanation of the striking independence of geological structure exhibited by the Tweed and the Nith.

Among the valleys of Scotland certain prevailing characteristics have been recognized in the popular names bestowed upon them.

“Straths” are broad expanses of low ground between bounding hills usually traversed by one main stream and its tributaries,— Strath Tay, Strath Spey, Strath Conon. The name, however, has also been applied to wide tracts of lowland which embrace portions of several valleys, but are defined by lines of heights on either side; the best example is afforded by Strathmore—the “great strath”— between the southern margin of the Highlands and the line of the Ochil and Sidlaw Hills. This long and wide depression, though it looks like one great valley, strictly speaking, includes portions of the valleys of the Tay, Isla, North Esk, and South Esk, all of which cross it. Elsewhere in central Scotland such a wide depression is known as a “liowe,” as in the Howe of Fife between the Ochil and Lomond Hills. A “glen” is usually a narrower and steeper - sided valley than a strath, though the names have not always been applied with discrimination. Most of the Highland valleys are true glens. The hills rise rapidly on either side, sometimes in grassy slopes, sometimes in rocky bosses and precipitous cliffs, while the bottom is occupied by a fiat platform of alluvium through which a stream meanders. Frequently the bottom of some part of the valley is occupied by a lake. In the south of Scotland the larger streams flow in wide open valleys called “dales,” as in Clydesdale, Tweeddale, Teviotdale, Liddisdale, Eskdale, Nithsdale. The strips of alluvial land bordering a river are known as “liaughs,” and where in estuaries they expand into wide plains they are termed “carses.” The carses of the Forth extend seawards as far as Borrowstounness and consist chiefly of raised beaches. The Carse of Gowrie is the strip of low ground intervening between the Firth of Tay and the line of hills that stretches from Perth to Dundee.

River-gorges are characteristic features in many of the valleys of Scotland. In the Old Red Sandstone they are particularly prominent where that formation has lain in the pathway of the streams sweeping down from the Highlands. In the basin of the Moray Firth some fine examples may be seen on the Nairn and Findhorn, while on the west side of tho Cromarty Firth some of the small streams descending from the high grounds of the east of Ross-shire have cut out defiles in the conglomerate, remarkable for their depth and narrowness. On the south side of the Highlands still more notable instances of true “canons” in the Old Red Sandstone are to be seen where the Ericht, Isla, and North Esk enter that formation. The well-known gorge in which the Falls of Clyde arc situated is the best example in the midland valley. Types of Mountain ami Hill. — While the topography of the country is essentially the result of prolonged denudation, we may reasonably infer that the oldest surfaces likely to be in any measure preserved or indicated are portions of some of the platforms of erosion which have successively been produced by the wearing away of the land down to the sea-level. Relics of these platforms seem to be recognizable both in the Highlands and among the southern uplands. Allusion has already been made to the remarkable flat-topped moorlands which in the eastern Grampians reach heights of 3000 to 4000 feet above the sea. Their most familiar example perhaps is the top of Lochnagar, where when the level of 3500 feet has been gained the traveller finds himself on a broad undulating moor, more than a mile and a half long, sloping gently southwards towards Glen Muick and terminating on the north at the edge of a range of granite precipices. The top of Ben Macdui stands upon nearly a square mile of moor exceeding 4000 feet in elevation. These mountains lie within granite areas; but not less striking examples may be found among the schists. The mountains at the head of Glen Esk and Glen Isla, for instance, sweep upward into a broad moor some 3000 feet above the sea, the more prominent parts of which have received special names,—Driesh, Mayar, Tom Buidhe, Tolmount, Cairn na Glasha. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that there is more level ground on the tops of these mountains than in areas of corresponding size in the valleys below. That these high plateaus are planes of erosion is shown by their independence of geological structure, the upturned edges of the vertical and contorted schists having been abruptly shorn off and the granite having been wasted and levelled along its exposed surface. They look like fragments of the original tableland of erosion out of which the present valley-systems of the Highlands have been carved. Among the southern uplands traces of a similar tableland of erosion are in many places to be detected. The top of Broad Law in Peeblesshire, for example, is a level moor comprising between 300 and 400 acres above the contour line of 2500 feet and lying upon the upturned edges of the greatly denuded Silurian grits and shales. An instructive example of the similar destruction of a much younger platform is to be found in the terraced plateaus of Skye, Eigg, Canna, Muck, Mull, and Morven, which are portions of what was probably originally a continuous plain of basalt. Though dating back only to older Tertiary time, this plain has been so deeply trenched by the forces of denudation that it has been reduced to mere scattered fragments. Thousands of feet of basalt have been worn away from many parts of its surface; deep and wide valleys have been carved out of it; and so enormously has it been wasted that it has been almost entirely stripped from wide tracts which it formerly covered and where only scattered outliers remain to prove that it once existed.

It is a curious fact, to which allusion has already been made, that broad flat-topped mountains are chiefly to be found in the eastern parts of the country. Traced westwards these forms gradually give place to narrow ridges and crests. No contrast, for instance, can be greater than that between the wide elevated moors of the eastern Grampians, and the crested ridges of western Inverness-shire and Argyllshire—Loch Hourn, Glen Nevis, Glencoe— or that between the broad uplands of Peeblesshire and the precipitous heights of Galloway. No satisfactory reason for these contrasts can be found in geological structure alone. Perhaps the key to them is to be sought mainly in differences of rainfall. The western mountains, exposed to the fierce dash of the Atlantic rains, sustain the heaviest and most constant precipitation. Their sides are seamed with torrents which tear down the solid rock and sweep its detritus into the glens and sea lochs. The eastern heights, on the other hand, experience a less rainfall and consequently a diminished rate of erosion. There is no reason to doubt that the present preponderance of rainfall in the west has persisted for an enormous duration of time.

Regarding the existing flat-topped heights among the eastern Grampians as representing what may have been the general character of the surface out of which the present Highlands have been carved, we can trace every step in the gradual obliteration of the tableland and in the formation of the most rugged and individualized forms of isolated mountain. In fact, in journeying westwards across the tops of the Highland mountains we pass, as it were, over successive stages in the history of the origin of Highland scenery. The oldest types of form lie on the east side and the newest on the west. From the larger fragments of the denuded tableland we advance to ridges with narrow tops, which pass by degrees into sharp rugged crests. The ridges, too, are more and more trenched until they become groups of detached hills or mountains. In the progress of this erosion full scope has been afforded for the modification of form produced by variations in geological structure. Each ridge and mountain has been cut into its shape by denudation, but its actual outlines have been determined by the nature of the rocks and the manner in which they have yielded to decay. Every distinct variety of rock has impressed its own characters upon the landscapes in which it plays a part. Hence, amid the monotonous succession of ridge beyond ridge and valley after valley, considerable diversity of detail has resulted from the varying composition and grouping of the rocks.

The process by which the ancient tablelands of the country have been trenched into the present system of valleys and confluent ridges is most instructively displayed among the higher mountains, where erosion proceeds at an accelerated pace. The long “screes” or talus-slopes at the foot of every crag and cliff bear witness to the continual waste of the mountain sides. The headwaters of a river cut into the slopes of the parent hill. Each valley is consequently lengthened at the expense of the mountain from which it descends. Where a number of small torrents converge in a steep mountain recess, they cut out a crescent-shaped hollow or half-cauldron, which in the Scottish Highlands is known as a “corry.” Whether the convergent action of the streams has been the sole agency concerned in the erosion of these striking concavities, or whether snow and glacier-ice may have had a share in the task, is a question that cannot at present be satisfactorily solved. No feature in Highland scenery is more characteristic than the corries, and in none can the influence of geological structure be more instructively seen. Usually the upper part of a corry is formed by a crescent of naked rock, from which long trails of débris descend to the bottom of the hollow. Every distinct variety of rock has its own type of corry, the peculiarities being marked both in the details of the upper cliffs and crags and in the amount, form, and colour of the screes. The Scottish corries have been occupied by glaciers. Hence their bottoms are generally well ice-worn or strewn over with moraine stuff. Not infrequently also a small tarn fills up the bottom, ponded back by a moraine. It is in these localities that we can best observe the last relics left by the retreat of the glaciers that once overspread the country. Among these high grounds also the gradual narrowing of ridges into sharp, narrow, knife-edged crests and the lowering of these into cols or passes can be admirably studied. Where two glens begin opposite to each other on the same ridge, their corries are gradually cut back until only a sharp crest separates them. This crest, attacked on each front and along the summit, is lowered with comparative rapidity, until in the end merely a low col or pass may separate the heads of the two glens. The various stages in this kind of demolition are best seen where the underlying rock is of granite or some similar material which possesses considerable toughness, while at the same time it is apt to be split and splintered by means of its numerous transverse joints. The granite mountains of Arran furnish excellent illustrations.

Where a rock yields with considerable uniformity in all directions to the attacks of the weather it is apt to assume conical forms in the progress of denudation. Sometimes this uniformity is attained by a general disintegration of the rock into fine débris, which rolls down the slopes in long screes. In other cases it is secured by the intersection of joints, whereby a rock, in itself hard and durable, is divided into small angular blocks, which are separated by the action of the elements and slide down the declivities. In many instances the beginning of the formation of a cone may be detected on ridges which have been deeply trenched by valleys. The smaller isolated portions, attacked on all sides, have broken up under the influence of the weather. Layer after layer has been stripped from their sides, and the flat or rounded top has been narrowed until it has now become the apex of a cone. The mountain Schiehallien (3547 feet) is a noble instance of a cone not yet freed from its parent ridge. Occasionally a ridge has been carved into a series of cones united at their bases, as in the chain of the Pentland Hills. A further stage in denudation brings us to isolated groups of cones completely separated from the rest of the rocks among which they once lay buried. Such groups may be carved out of a continuous band of rock which extends into the regions beyond. The Paps of Jura, for instance, rise out of a long belt of quartzite which stretches through the islands of Isla, Jura, and Scarba. In many cases, however, the groups point to the existence of some boss of rock of greater durability than those in the immediate neighbourhood, as in the Cuchullins and Red Hills of Skye and the group of granite cones of Ben Loyal, Sutherland. The most impressive form of solitary cone is that wherein after vast denudation a thick overlying formation has been reduced to a single outlier, such as Morven in Caithness and the two Ben Griams in Sutherland, and still more strikingly the pyramids of red sandstone on the western margin of Sutherland and Ross-shire. The horizontal stratification of some of these masses gives them a curiously architectural aspect, which is further increased by the effect of the numerous vertical joints by which the rock is cleft into buttresses and recesses along the fronts of the precipices and into pinnacles and finials along the summits. Solitary or grouped pyramids of red sandstone, rising to heights of between 3000 and 4000 feet above the sea, are mere remnants of a once continuous sheet of red sandstone that spread far and wide over the western Highlands.

Stratified rocks when they have not been much disturbed from their original approximate horizontality weather into what are called “escarpments,”—lines of cliff or steep bank marking the edge or outcrop of harder bands which lie upon softer or more easily eroded layers. Such cliffs may run for many miles across a country, rising one above another into lofty terraced hills. In Scotland the rocks have for the most part been so dislocated and disturbed as to prevent the formation of continuous escarpments, and this interesting form of rock-scenery is consequently almost entirely absent, except locally and for the most part on a comparatively small scale. The most extensive Scottish escarpments are found among the igneous rocks. Where lava has been piled up in successive nearly horizontal sheets, with occasional layers of tuff or other softer rock between them, it offers conditions peculiarly favourable for the formation of escarpments. In the wide basalt plateaus of the Inner Hebrides these conditions have been manifested on a great scale. The Carboniferous lavas of the Campsie and Fintry Hills and of the south of Dumfriesshire and Roxburghshire likewise rise in lines of bold escarpment.

Lakes.— These important features in the landscapes of Scotland present the general characters of the water-basins so profusely scattered over the northern parts of Europe and North America. They may be classified in four groups, each of which has its own peculiar scenery and a distinct mode of origin—(1) glen lakes, (2) rock-tarns, (3) moraine-tarns, (4) lakes of the plains.

(1) Glen lakes are those which occupy portions of glens. They are depressions in the valleys, not due to mere local heaping up of detritus, but true rock-basins, often of great depth. Much discussion has arisen as to their mode of origin. They have been regarded as caused by special subsidence of their areas, open fissures of the ground, general depression of the central part of each mountain district from which they radiate, and by the erosive action of glacier ice. That they are not open fissures and cannot be explained by any general subsidence of a neighbouring region is now generally admitted. That glaciers have occupied the glens where these lakes exist and have worn down the rocks along the sides and bottom cannot be doubted, but whether the ice would be capable of eroding hollows so deep as many of these lakes is a question which has been answered with equal confidence affirmatively and negatively. On the other hand, to suppose that each of these hollows has been caused by a special local subsidence would involve a complex series of subterranean disturbances, for which some better evidence than the mere existence of the basins is required. Under any circumstances it is quite certain that the lakes must be of recent geological date. Any such basins belonging to the time of the plication of the crystalline schists would have been filled up and effaced long ago. So rapid is the infilling by the torrents which sweep down detritus from the surrounding heights that the present lakes are being visibly diminished, and they cannot, therefore, be of high geological antiquity. It is worthy of remark that the glen lakes are almost wholly confined to the western half of the Highlands, where they form the largest sheets of fresh water. Hardly any lakes are to be seen east of a line drawn from Inverness to Perth. West of that line, however, they abound in both the longitudinal and the transverse valleys. The most remarkable line of them is that which fills up so much of the Great Glen. Loch Ness, the largest, is upwards of 20 miles long, about 1 1 / 2 miles broad, and not less than 774 feet deep in the deepest part. This great depression exceeds the general depth reached by the floor of the North Sea between Great Britain and the opposite shores of the Continent. Other important longitudinal lakes are Lochs Tay, Awe, Ericht, and Shiel. The most picturesque glen lakes, however, lie in transverse valleys, which being cut across the strike of the rocks present greater variety, and usually also more abruptness of outline. Lochs Lomond, Katrine, and Lubnaig in the southern Highlands, and Lochs Maree and More in the north, are conspicuous examples.

(2) Rock-tarns are small lakes lying in rock-basins on the sides of mountains or the summits of ridges, and on rocky plateaus or plains. Unlike the glen lakes, they have no necessary dependence upon lines of valley. On the contrary, they are scattered as it were broadcast over the districts in which they occur, and are by far the most abundant of all tire lakes of the country. Dispersed over all parts of the western Highlands, they are most numerous in the north-west, especially in the Outer Hebrides and in the west of Ross-shire and Sutherland. The surface of the Archaean gneiss is so thickly sprinkled with them that many tracts consist almost as much of water as of land. They almost invariably lie on strongly ice-worn platforms of rock. Their sides and the rocky islets which diversify their surface have been powerfully glaciated. They cannot be due to either fracture or subsidence, but are obviously hollows produced by erosion. They have accordingly with much probability been assigned to the gouging action of the sheets of land-ice by which the general glaciation of the country was effected. In the southern uplands, owing probably to the greater softness and uniformity of texture among the rocks, rock-tarns are comparatively infrequent, except in Galloway, where the protrusion of granite and its associated metamorphism have given rise to conditions of rock-structure more like those of the Highlands. Over the rocky hill-ranges of the central Lowlands rock-tarns occasionally make their appearance.

(3) Moraine-tarns—small sheets of water ponded back by some of the last moraines shed by the retreating glaciers—are confined to the more mountainous tracts. Among the southern uplands many beautiful examples may be seen, probably the best known and certainly one of the most picturesque being the wild lonely Loch Skene lying in a recess of Whitecoomb at the head of the Moffat Water. Others are sprinkled over the higher parts of the valleys in Galloway. None occur in the central Lowlands. In the Highlands they may be counted by hundreds, nestling in the bottoms of the corries. In the north-western counties, where theglaciers continued longest to descend to the sea-level, lakes retained by moraine-barriers may be found very little above the sea.

(4) The lakes of the plains lie in hollows of the glacial detritus which is strewn so thickly over the lower grounds. As these hollows were caused by original irregular deposition rather than by erosion, they have no intimate relation to the present drainagelines of the country. The lakes vary in size from mere pools up to wide sheets of water several square miles in area. As a rule they are shallow in proportion to their extent of surface. Though still sufficiently numerous in the Lowlands, they were once greatly more so, for, partly from natural causes and partly by artificial means, they have been made to disappear. The largest sheets of fresh water in the midland valley are of this class, as Loch Leven and the Lake of Menteith.

Coast-Line.— The eastern and western seaboards of Scotland present a singular contrast. The former is indented by a series of broad arms of the sea, but is otherwise tolerably unbroken. The land slopes gently down to the margin of the sea or to the edge of cliffs that have been cut back by the waves. The shores are for the most part low, with few islands in front of them, and cultivation comes down to the tide-line. The western side of the country, on the contrary, is from end to end intersected with long narrow sea lochs or fjords. The land shelves down rapidly into the sea and is fronted by chains and groups of islands. This contrast has sometimes been erroneously referred to greater erosion by the waves on the western than on the eastern coast. The true explanation, however, must be sought in the geological structure of the land. The west side of Scotland, as we have seen, has been more deeply eroded than the eastern. The glens are more numerous there and on the whole deeper and narrower. Many of them are prolonged under the sea; in other words, the narrow deep fjords which wind so far into the land are seaward continuations of the glens which emerge from their upper ends. The presence of the sea in these fjords is an accident. If they could be raised out of the sea they would become glens, with lakes filling up their deeper portions. That this has really been their history can hardly admit of question. They are submerged land-valleys, and as they run down the whole western coast they show that side of the country to have subsided to a considerable depth beneath its former level. The Scottish sea lochs must be viewed in connexion with those of western Ireland and of Norway. The whole of this north-western coast-line of Europe bears witness to recent submergence. The bed of the North Sea, which at no distant date in geological history was a land surface across which plants and animals migrated freely into Great Britain, sank beneath the sea-level, while the Atlantic advanced upon the western margin of the continent and filled the seaward ends of what had previously been valleys open to the sun. Not improbably the amount of subsidence was greater towards the west.

Nearly the whole coast-line of Scotland is rocky. On the east side of the country, indeed, the shores of the estuaries are generally low, but the land between the mouths of these inlets is more or less precipitous. On the west side the coast is for the most part either a steep rocky declivity or a sea-wall, though strips of lower ground are found in the bays. The sea-cliffs everywhere vary in their characters according to the nature of the rock out of which they have been carved. At Cape Wrath precipices nearly 300 feet high have been cut out of the Archaean gneiss. The varying texture of this rock, its irregular foliation and jointing, and its ramifying veins of pegmatite conspire to give it very unequal powers of resistance in different parts of its mass. Consequently it projects in irregular bastions and buttresses and retires into deep recesses and tunnels, showing everywhere a ruggedness of aspect which is eminently characteristic. In striking contrast to these precipices are those of the Cambrian red sandstone a few miles to the east. Vast vertical walls of rock shoot up from the waves to a height of 600 feet, cut by their perpendicular joints into quadrangular piers and projections, some of which even stand out alone as cathedrallike islets in front of the main cliff. The sombre colouring is relieved by lines of vegetation along the edges of the nearly flat beds which project like vast cornices and serve as nesting-places for crowds of sea-fowl. On the west side of the country the most notable cliffs south from those of Cape Wrath and the Cambrian sandstones of Sutherland are to be found among the basaltic islands, particularly in Skye, where a magnificent range of precipices rising to 1000 feet bounds the western coast-line. The highest cliffs in the country are found among the Shetland and Orkney Islands. The sea-wall of Foula, one of the Shetland group, and the western front of Hoy in Orkney rise like walls to heights of 1100 or 1200 feet above the waves that tunnel their base. Caithness is one wide moor, terminating almost everywhere in a range of sea-precipices of Old Red Sandstone. Along the eastern coast-line most of the cliffs are formed of rocks belonging to the same formation. Beginning at Stonehaven, an almost unbroken line of precipice varying up to 200 feet in height runs southwards to the mouth of the estuary of the Tay. The southern uplands plunge abruptly into the sea near St Abb’s Head in a noble range of precipices 300 to 500 feet in height, and on the western side the same high grounds ter m inate in a long broken line of sea-wall, which begins at the mouth of Loch Ryan, extends to the Mull of Galloway, and reappears again in the southern headlands of Wigtown and Kirkcudbright. One of the most picturesque features of the Scottish seacliffs is the numerous “stacks” or columns of rock which during the demolition and recession of the precipices have been isolated and left standing amidst the waves. These remnants attain their most colossal size and height on the cliffs of Old Red Sandstone. Thus the Old Man of Hoy in Orkney is a huge column of yellow sandstone between 400 and 500 feet high, forming a conspicuous landmark in the north. The coast of Caithness abounds in outstanding pillars and obelisks of flagstone.

The low shores on the west coast are not infrequently occupied by sand-dunes. Such accumulations fringe the western margin of North and South Uist, and are found in many bays from the north of Sutherland to the coast of Ayrshire. They are more abundant on the east coast, especially on the shores of Aberdeenshire, between the mouths of the two Esks, on both sides of the mouth of the Firth of Tay, and at various places in the Firth of Forth. Raised sea-beaches likewise play a part in the coast scenery of the country. These alluvial terraces form a strip of low fertile land between the edge of the sea and the rising ground of the interior, and among the western fjords sometimes supply the only arable soil in their neighbourhood, their flat green surfaces presenting a strong contrast to the brown and barren moors that rise from them. Most of the seaport towns of the country stand upon platforms of raised beach. Considerable deposits of mud, silt, and sand are accumulating in most of the estuaries. In the Tay, Forth, and Clyde, where important harbours are situated, considerable expense is involved in dredging to remove the sediment continually brought down from the land and carried backward and forward by the tides. Wide alluvial flats are there exposed at low water.

While no islands except mere solitary rocks like May Island, the Bass Rock, and Inchkeith diversify the eastern seaboard, the western side of Scotland presents a vast number, varying in size from such extensive tracts as Skye down to the smallest sea-stack or skerry. Looked at in the broadest way, these numerous islands may be regarded as belonging to two groups or series,—the Outer and the Inner Hebrides. The Outer Hebrides, extending from Barra Head to the Butt of Lewis, consist of a continuous chain of islands composed (with the exception of a small tract in the east of Lewis) entirely of Archaean rocks. Most of the ground is low, rocky, and plentifully dotted over with lakes; but it rises into mountainous heights in Harris, some of the summits attaining elevations of 2600 feet. The general trend of this long belt of islands is north-north-east. The Inner Hebrides form a much less definite group. They may be regarded as beginning with the Shiant Isles in the Minch and stretching to the southern headlands of Isla, the most important members being Skye, Mull, Isla, Jura, Rum, Eigg, Coll, Tiree, and Colonsay. The irregularity of this fringe of islands has no doubt been in chief measure brought about by its remarkable diversity of geological structure. Archaean gneiss, Cambrian sandstone, Silurian quartzite, limestone, and schist, Jurassic sandstone and limestone, Cretaceous sandstone, and Tertiary basalts, gabbros, and granitic rocks all enter into the composition of the islands.

Within the limits of this article it is only possible to allude to some of the more important influences of the topography on the history of the inhabitants. How powerfully the configuration of the country affects the climate is shown in the remarkable difference between the rainfall of the mountainous west and of the lowland east. This difference has necessarily affected the character and employments of the people, leading to the development of agriculture on the one side and the raising of sheep and cattle on the other. The fertile low grounds on the east have offered facilities for the invasions of Romans, Norsemen, and English, while the mountainous fastnesses of the interior and the west have served as secure retreats for the older Celtic population. While, therefore, Teutonic people have spread over the one area, the earlier race has to this day maintained its ground in the other. Not only the external configuration but the internal geological structure of the country has profoundly influenced the progress of the inhabitants. In the Highlands no mineral wealth has been discovered to stimulate the industry of the natives or to attract the labour and capital of strangers. These tracts remain still as of old sparsely inhabited and given over to the breeding of stock and the pursuit of game. In the Lowlands, on the other hand, rich stores of coal, iron, lime, and other minerals have been found. The coal-fields have gradually drawn to them an ever-increasing share of the population. Villages and towns have there sprung recently into existence and have rapidly increased in size. Manufactures have been developed and commerce has advanced with accelerated pace. Other influences have of course contributed largely to the development of the country, but among them all the chief place must undoubtedly be assigned to that fortunate geological structure which, amid the revolutions of the past, has preserved in the centre of Scotland those fields of coal and ironstone which are the foundations of the national industry. (A. GE. )

Climate.— In considering the climate of Scotland the first place must be assigned to the temperature of the various districts during the months of the year, it being this which gives the chief characteristics of climate and not the mean temperature of the whole year. Thus, while the annual temperatures of the west and east coasts are nearly equal, the summer and winter temperatures are very different. At Portree (on east coast of Skye) the mean temperatures of January and July are 39° and 56°·8, whereas at Perth they are 37°·5 and 59°·0. The prominent feature of the isothermals of the winter months is their north and south direction, thus pointing not to the sun but to the warm waters of the Atlantic as the more powerful influence in determining the Scottish climate at this season through the agency of the prevailing westerly winds. The Atlantic is in truth a vast repository of heat, in which the higher temperature of summer and that of more southern latitudes are treasured up against the rigours of winter; and in exceptionally cold seasons the ocean protects all places in its more immediate neighbourhood against the severe frosts which occur in inland situations. While this influence of the ocean is felt at all seasons, it is most strikingly seen in winter; and it is more decided in proportion as the locality is surrounded by the warm waters of the Atlantic. At Edinburgh the temperature is 27°·0 and at Lerwick 32°·5 higher than would otherwise be the case; in other words, but for the ameliorating influence of the Atlantic the temperature of Edinburgh in midwinter would only be 12°·5 and of Lerwick 7°·5, or such winters as characterize the climates of Greenland and Iceland. The influence of the North Sea is similarly apparent, but in a less degree. Along the whole of the eastern coast, from the Pentland Firth southwards, temperature is higher than what is found a little inland to the west. The lowest temperature yet observed in the British Isles was -16°·0, which occurred near Kelso in December 1879. In summer, everywhere, latitude for latitude, temperature is lower in the west than in the east and inland situations. In winter the inland climates are the coldest, but in summer the warmest. The course of the isothermal lines at this season is very instructive. Thus the line of 59° passes from the Solway directly northwards to the north of Perthshire and thence curves round eastwards to near Stonehaven. From Teviotdale to the Grampians temperature falls only one degree; but for the same distance farther northwards it falls three degrees. The isothermal of 56° marks off the districts where the finer cereals are most successfully raised. This distribution of the temperature shows that the influence of the Atlantic in moderating the heat of summer is very great and is felt a long way into the interior of the country. On the other hand, the high lands of western districts by robbing the westerly winds of their moisture, and thus clearing the skies of eastern districts, exercise an equally striking effect in the opposite direction,—in raising the temperature.

There is nearly twice as much wind from the south-west as from the north-east, but the proportions vary greatly in different months. The south-west prevails most from July to October, and again from December to February; accordingly in these months the rainfall is heaviest. These are the summer and winter portions of the year, and an important result of the prevalence of these winds, with their accompanying rains, which are coincident with the annual extremes of temperature, is to imprint a more strictly insular character on the Scottish climate, by moderating the heat of summer and the cold of winter. The north-east winds acquire their greatest frequency from March to June and in November, which are accordingly the driest portions of the year.

The mountainous regions of Scotland are mostly massed in the west and lie generally north and south, or approximately perpendicular to the rain-bringing winds from the Atlantic. Hence the westerly winds are turned out of their horizontal course, and, being thrust up into the higher regions of the atmosphere, their temperature is lowered, when the vapour is condensed into cloud and deposits in rain the water they can no longer hold in suspension. Thus the climates of the west are essentially wet. On the other hand, the climates of the east are dry, because the surface is lower and more level; and the breezes borne thither from the west, being robbed of most of their superabundant moisture in crossing the western hills, are therefore drier and precipitate a greatly diminished rainfall. It thus happens that the driest climates in the east are those which have to south-westwards the broadest extent of mountainous ground, and that the wettest eastern climates are those which are least protected by high lands on the west. The breakdown of the watershed between the Firths of Clyde and Forth exposes southern Perthshire, the counties of Clackmannan and Kinross, and nearly the whole of Fife to the clouds and rains of the west, and their climates are consequently wetter than those of any other of the eastern slopes of the country. The driest climates of the east, on the other hand, are in Tweeddale about Kelso and Jedburgh, the low grounds of East Lothian, and those on the Moray Firth from Elgin round to Dornoch. In these districts the annual rainfall for the twenty-four years ending 1883 was about 26 inches, whereas over extensive breadths in the west it exceeds 100 inches, in Glencroe being nearly 130 inches and on the top of Ben Nevis 150 inches. (A. B.)

PART III.—STATISTICS.

Population; Vital and Social Statistics.— At the end of the 15th century it is supposed that the population of Scotland did not exceed 500,000,—Edinburgh having about 20,000 inhabitants, followed by Perth with about 9000, and Aberdeen, Dundee, and St Andrews each with about 4000. By the time of the Union in 1707 it is supposed to have reached 1,000,000, while according to the returns furnished by the clergy to Dr Webster in 1755 it was 1,265,380. At the time of the first Government census in 1801 it had reached 1,608,420. The increase through all the succeeding decades has been continuous, though fluctuating in amount, and in 1881 it had reached 3,735,573 (males 1,799,475, females 1,936,098),—an increase within the eighty years of 132 per cent. During the same period the population of England and Wales had increased 192 per cent., while the population of Ireland, owing to a rapid decrease since 1841, does not now differ greatly from what it was at the beginning of the century. The following table (I.) gives the areas of the various counties and of the whole of Scotland, the population in 1871 and 1881, the number of persons to the square mile of land-surface in the latter year, and the increase or decrease per cent. between 1871 and 1881 :— [table]

Table II. (see below) affords a comparison of the numbers of the population in 1861, 1871, and 1881 as grouped in towns, villages, and rural districts. The returns do not afford a means of comparison between earlier years than those given. A striking fact deserving of mention is that in every county in Scotland the population increased between 1801 and 1841, the increase being more than [table]

10 per cent. in each county, with the exception of Argyll, Perth, and Sutherland. The census returns for these years do not supply materials for an accurate estimate as to the increase of the purely rural or agricultural population, but it must have been considerable. Between 1841 and 1881 the following counties declined in population:—Argyll, Inverness, Kinross, Perth, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, and Wigtown,—all chiefly agricultural, and five of them in the Highlands, where much of the land was held by crofters. Only one county, Kinross, has a smaller population in 1881 than in 1801. Between 1851 and 1881 the island population, chiefly crofters, decreased by 4866, and the rural population between 1861 and 1881 by 125,583. In the following Highland counties the diminution in rural population between 1861 and 1881 was as follows :—Argyll from 60,109 to 46,081, Caithness from 28,279 to 24,309, Inverness from 74,439 to 67,355, Perth from 69,480 to 57,016, Ross and Cromarty from 59,147 to 49,882, and Sutherland from 21,560 to 18,696. In the total population of Scotland the rate of increase was considerably less between 1841 and 1881 than during the first forty years of the century,—42·5 to 62·9 per cent. The rates per cent. of increase in the several decades from 1801 have been as follows :—12·27, 15·82, 13·04, 10·82, 10·25, 6,9·72, and 11·18. The high rate of increase between 1871 and 1881 was due to an exceptional briskness of trade, and unless it has been maintained (which is not probable) the estimate of the registrar-general, which makes the population in 1885 number 3,907,736, must be regarded as much too sanguine. Table III. (see below) gives the population of the eight largest towns of Scotland at decennial periods since 1801. It is a curious fact that each of these towns has maintained its place in the “eight,” although several towns now tread closely on the heels of Perth, whose rate of progress with that of Paisley has lagged greatly behind that of the other six.

While in England and Wales the number of persons to the square mile in 1881 was 452 and in Ireland 159, in Scotland the number was only 125. The small density of Scotland is due chiefly to the large proportion of mountainous land. In the north-western counties the density was only 23 to the square mile, in the northern 34, in the west midland 68, in the southern 68, while in the northeastern it was 115, in the east midland 149, in the south-eastern 299, and in the south-western—Renfrew, Ayr, and Lanark—614. Table IV. (see p. 529) shows by the excess of births over deaths the increase that should have taken place between 1861 and 1871, and between 1871 and 1881 (but for the balance of emigration over immigration), compared with the actual increase, the grouping being into towns with over 25,000 inhabitants, towns between 10,000 and 25,000, towns under 10,000 and above 2000, and rural districts. It is impossible to make a comparison between 1861 and 1881 inasmuch as the proportion of large and small towns and rural districts has varied. It must also be explained that in comparing 1861 and 1871 the census of 1861 is taken as the authority for the grouping and in comparing 1871 and 1881 the census of 1871. This table shows in both decades an actual increase in the large and in the principal towns greater than that resulting from excess of births over deaths. It is the result not only of migration from the small towns and rural districts but of the immigration of English, Irish, and foreigners, and the return of natives of Scotland from abroad. By a comparison with Table II. it will be observed that the increase in the rural districts between the decades in Table IV. occurs only in the villages, and a closer examination of Table IV. further shows that any seeming increase is really delusive, and arises from the fact that there is no provision for the increase in [table]

the number of small towns. Thus according to the grouping of 1871 the rural population of 1871 was nearly 28,000 less than the rural population of 1861 according to the grouping of 1861. It is from the villages and small towns that the large towns are principally recruited, the purely rural population preferring as a rule to emigrate.

Table V. shows the nationalities of the people of Scotland in 1871 and 1881, with the nationalities in 1881 in those burghs which had a population of 10,000 and upwards:— [table]

This table indicates not merely an actual but a proportional increase in non-natives, there being an actual increase but a proportional decrease of natives of Ireland, and both an actual and a proportional increase of natives of England. Over the whole of Scotland the proportion of non-natives is a little over 9 per cent., while in the burghs it is nearly 13 per cent. The number of persons of Scottish birth in Ireland in 1881 was 22,328, and in England it was 253,528,— a total in the two countries of 275,856. On the other hand, the natives of the two countries in Scotland in 1881 were together 308,762, so that there is a smaller migration from Scotland to these countries than from these countries to Scotland.

The following table (VI.) shows the emigration of persons of Scottish origin from the United Kingdom at various periods since 1853 :— [table]

Comparing 1856-60 with 1881-85 it will be seen that the number of emigrants has more than doubled,—an increase of course proportionately much greater than the population. There are no statistics as to the number of immigrants into Scotland; and the significance of Table VI. is further lessened by the fact that it includes persons who may have been for some time resident in England or Ireland, or who may have been born there of Scottish parentage, and also supplies no information regarding emigration to the Continent. Only the principal ports, moreover, are included in the return.

The male population in 1881 was 1,799,475, an increase since 1871 of 12·2 per cent.; the female population 1,936,098, an increase of only 10·2 per cent. Since 1811, when there were 118·5 females to every 100 males, the proportion has been continuously diminishing, and in 1881 it was 107·6, but still greater than prevails either in England, which was 105·5, or in Ireland, which was 104·3. The proportion differs greatly in different counties, being as high as 134·71 in Shetland, chiefly on account of the number of males at sea. In Scotland the proportion of female births is smaller than that of male births: in 1885 it was 100 to 105; and males preponderate in the population up till the age of twenty-five, clearly showing that the excess of females is due to male emigration or the greater mortality of male occupations. The percentage of illegitimate to the total number of births in 1855 was 7·8, and reached its maximum in 1865, when it was 10·2, while in 1885 it was 8·46. It is much higher in the lowland rural districts than in the Highland rural districts, and lowest in the large towns. The percentages of births, deaths, and marriages to population in the annual reports of the registrar-general are in a great degree misleading, inasmuch as the estimated population generally differs greatly from the actual. They place it, however, beyond doubt that the greatest birth, marriage, and mortality rates are in the town districts, that the smallest birth and marriage rates are in the insular districts, after which come the mainland rural districts, and that the mortality is not so high in the insular rural as in the mainland rural districts. Table VII. (see below) gives the percentage of single, married, and widowed to the total of each sex in Scotland, England and Wales, and Ireland respectively in 1881.

The number of blind persons in Scotland in 1881 was 3158 (males 1556, females 1602), the proportion to the total population being 1 in 1182 (males 1156, females 1208); the proportion in 1871 was 1 in 1112. The deaf and dumb in 1881 numbered 2142 (males 1149, females 993), the proportion to the total population being 1 in every 1744 as against 1 in every 1610 in 1871. The number of lunatics was returned as 8406 (males 3939, females 4467) or 1 in every 444 of the total population, the proportion in 1871 being 1 in every 494. In addition to this there were 5991 imbeciles (males 2896, females 3095), or 1 to every 623 of the population, the proportion in 1871 being 1 in every 727.

Table VIII. gives a classification of the population according to occupations in 1871 and 1881 :— [table]

It should be explained that the apparent diminution in the proportion of the unproductive class may be accounted for by the fact that in 1871 paupers were returned in this class, whereas in 1881 they were returned under the occupation at which they used to work. The increase in the proportion of the professional and commercial classes is at least a slight indication of higher average prosperity, but this is more conclusively established by the fact that the number of paupers has for many years been steadily on the decline, the proportion being now (1886) only 2·4 of the population. The average cost of maintenance is, however, on the increase, owing entirely to the increased cost of the maintenance of the lunatic poor.

Crime, like pauperism, is also steadily declining, as is shown by Table IX. [table] [table] [table]

Communication.— In the 12th century an Act was passed providing that the highways between market-towns should be at least 20 feet broad. Over the principal rivers at this early period there were bridges near the most populous places, as over the Dee near Aberdeen, the Esk at Brechin, the Tay at Perth, and the Forth near Stirling. Until the 16th century, however, traffic between distant places was carried on chiefly by pack-horses. The first stage-coach in Scotland was that which ran between Edinburgh and Leith in 1610. In 1658 there was a fortnightly stage-coach between Edinburgh and London, but afterwards it would appear to have been discontinued for many years. Separate Acts enjoining the justices of the peace, and afterwards along with them the commissioners of supply, to take measures for the maintenance of roads were passed in 1617, 1669, 1676, and 1686. These provisions had reference chiefly to what afterwards came to be known as “statute labour roads,” intended primarily to supply a means of communication within the several parishes. They were kept in repair by the tenants and cotters, and, when their labour was not sufficient, by the landlords, who were required to “stent” (assess) themselves, customs also being sometimes levied at bridges, ferries, and causeways. By separate local Acts the “statute labour” was in many cases converted into a payment called “conversion money,” and the General Roads Act of 1845 made the alteration universal. By the Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act of 1878 the old organization for the management of these roads was entirely superseded in 1883. The Highlands had good (military) roads earlier than the rest of the country. The project, begun in 1725, took ten years to complete, and the roads were afterwards kept in repair by an annual parliamentary giant. In the Lowlands the main lines of roads have been constructed under the Turnpike Acts, the earliest of which was obtained in 1750. Originally they were maintained by tolls exacted from those who used them; but this method was—after several counties had obtained separate Acts for its abolition—superseded throughout Scotland in 1883 by the general Act of 1878, providing for the maintenance of all classes of roads by assessment levied by the county road trustees.

Scotland possesses two canals constructed primarily to abridge the sea passage round the coast,—the Caledonian and the Crinan. The Caledonian Canal, extending from south-west to north-east, a distance of 60 miles along the line of lochs from Loch Linnhe on the west coast to the Moray Firth on the east coast, was begun in 1803, opened while yet unfinished in 1822, and completed in 1847, the total cost being about £1,300,000. Constructed originally to afford a quicker passage for ships to the east coast of Scotland and the coasts of Europe, it has, owing to the increased size of vessels, ceased to fulfil this purpose, its chief service having been in opening up a picturesque route for tourists, assisting local trade, and affording a passage for fishing boats between the east and west coasts. The Crinan Canal, stretching across the Mull of Cantyre from Loch Gilp to Jura Sound, a distance of 9 miles, and admitting the passage of vessels of 200 tons burden, was opened in 1801 at a cost of over £100,000. The principal boat canals arc the Forth and Clyde or Great Canal, begun in 1798, between Grangemouth on the Forth and Bowling on the Clyde, a distance of 30 1 / 4 miles, with a branch to Port Dundas, making the total distance 33 3/4 miles; the Union Canal between Edinburgh and the Forth and Clyde Canal at Port Dundas, near Glasgow, completed in 1822; and the Monkland Canal, completed in 1791, connecting Glasgow with the Monkland mineral district and communicating with a lateral branch of the Forth and Clyde Canal at Port Dundas. Several other canals in Scotland have been superseded by railway routes.

The first railway in Scotland for which an Act of Parliament was obtained was that between Kilmarnock and Troon (9 3/4 miles), opened in 1812, and of course worked by horses. A similar railway, of which the chief source of profit was the passenger traffic, was opened between Edinburgh and Dalkeith in 1831, branches being afterwards extended to Leith and Musselburgh. By 1840 the length of the railway lines in Scotland for which Bills were passed was 191 1 / 4 miles, the capital being £3,122,133. The chief railway companies in Scotland are the Caledonian, formed in 1845, total capital in 1884-85 £37,999,933; the North British, of the same date, total capital £32,821,526; the Glasgow and South-Western, formed by amalgamation in 1850, total capital £13,230,849; the Highland, formed by amalgamation in 1865, total capital £4,445,316; and the Great North of Scotland, 1846, total capital £4,869,983. The management of the small branch lines belonging to local companies is generally undertaken by the larger companies. By 1849 there were 795 miles of railway in Scotland. The following table (X.) shows the progress since 1857 (see also Railway, vol. XX. pp. 226-230) :— [table]

Agriculture.— Table XI. shows the divisions of land as regards ownership according to the return (the latest) of 1873 :— [table]

Scotland, as compared with either England or Ireland, is emphatically a country of large proprietors. Taking the population of 1871 as the basis of comparison, a little over 39 per cent. of the population of Scotland have a share in the ownership of the soil, the proportion in England and Wales being about 5 per cent., while in Ireland it is only about 1·7. On an average each owner in England possesses 33 acres, in Scotland 143, and in Ireland 293. While in Ireland, however, only a little over one-half of the number of proprietors possess less than 1 acre, and in England about five-sevenths, this class in Scotland amounted to about five-sixths of the whole. They possessed only 1 per cent. of the total area, the remaining 99·9 being possessed by 19,131 persons, while 171 persons held 58·3, and 68 persons 42·1. Whereas in England 1 and in Ireland only 3 proprietors held upwards of 100,000 acres each, in Scotland there were 24 persons who each held more than this amount, and together they possessed 26·1 per cent. of the total area. The excessive size of the properties of Scotland may bo partly accounted for by the fact that a large proportion of the land is so mountainous and unproductive as to be unsuitable for division into small properties; but two other causes have also powerfully co-operated with this, viz., the wide territorial authority exercised by some of the lowland nobles, as the Scotts and Douglases, and such powerful Highland nobles as the Argylls and Breadalbanes, and the stricter law of entail introduced by the Act of 1685 (see Entail, vol. viii. p. 452). The largest estates are thus in the hands of the old hereditary families. The almost absolute power anciently wielded by the landlords, who within their own territories were lords of regality, tended to hinder independent agricultural enterprise, and it was not till after the abolition of hereditary jurisdictions in 1746 that agriculture in Scotland made any real progress.

The following table (XII. ) gives a classification of the holdings of Scotland in 1875 and 1880 :— [table]

It will be observed that nearly one-half of the total area of the holdings is occupied by those possessing from 100 to 300 acres each. The holdings over 300 acres are generally sheep farms, and it is to the enterprise of the medium class of holders that the agricultural progress of Scotland is chiefly due. A society of improvers in the knowledge of agriculture was founded in 1723, but ceased to exist after the Rebellion of 1745; and the introduction of new and improved methods, where not the result of private enterprise, has been chiefly associated with the efforts of the Highland Society, instituted in 1783, and latterly known as the Highland and Agricultural Society. A great stimulus was also afforded in the beginning of the 19th century by the high prices obtained during the Continental wars, and, although periods of occasional severe depression have occurred since then, not only has the science of agriculture continued rapidly to advance but the position of the large farmer has until within recent years been one of increasing prosperity. The system of nineteen years’ lease had proved, as regards both agricultural progress and the interests of the farmer, a much superior arrangement to the system of yearly tenancy so largely prevailing in England; but it was conjoined with customs and modified by conditions which during the period of agricultural distress prevailing since 1872 have caused the relations between landlord and tenant to become severely strained. The more prominent grievances of the farmer were the difficulty of obtaining sufficient compensation for improvements, the inconveniences resulting from the law of hypothec (see Hypothec, vol. xii. p. 598), and the hardships suffered from the existence of the game laws. Hypothec was abolished in 1879, except as regards the Act of Sederunt; a ground game Act was passed in 1880; and, succeeding the report of the duke of Richmond’s commission in 1882, the Agricultural Holdings Act was passed in 1883, containing provisions for securing to the tenant control in the disposition of his lease, and also compensation for improvements; but already it is evident that these reforms have failed to meet the difficulties created by the altered conditions of things, due to the increasing scarcity of land and the importation of foreign produce.

While the relations between the landlord and the large farmer cannot be regarded as satisfactory, the difficulties of the crofters— small holders now chiefly to be found in the western Highlands and the islands to the north and west of Scotland—have reached a more acute stage. The crofter system prevailing in Orkney and Shetland—described in the article on those islands—has a totally different origin from that prevailing in the Highlands. On account of the ancient relations between the Highlander and his chief, the inheritance is claimed by the Highland crofters of an inalienable right to security of tenure; but when the old feudal system of the Highlands was suddenly abolished after the Rebellion of 1745 no legal steps were taken for the recognition of this right, and from the beginning of the 19th century wholesale clearances of tenants were carried out in many districts even by the heirs of the old Highland chiefs. In the words of the report of the crofters commission of 1884 :—“The crofter of the present time has through past evictions been confined within narrow limits, sometimes on inferior land and exhausted soil. He is subject to arbitrary augmentations of money rent, he is without security of tenure, and has only recently received the concession of compensation for improvements.” The crofters in Scotland are now estimated to number 40,000 families or 200,000 persons, and many of them support themselves partly by fishing. In the struggle for existence they have had to contend against the tendency towards the creation of large farms, the demand for sporting estates, the desire of landlords to escape the burden of poor rates, and the fact that they have absolutely no choice as regards the conditions imposed on them by the landlord. In March 1883 a commission was appointed to inquire into the condition of the cotters and crofters in the Highlands and islands of Scotland; this commission gave in its report in 1884, and an Act based on their recommendations was passed in 1886.

Notwithstanding the unsatisfactory condition of agricultural affairs in Scotland at present, there is no country in the world where farming is prosecuted with more skill and enterprise. On account of the great variety of soil and climate the methods in operation differ greatly in different districts, and for special details the reader is referred to the articles on the several counties. The following table (XI1I. ) shows the cultivated area and the areas under each kind of crop in different years, with the proportion of the acreage under each kind of crop, &c., to every 1000 acres of cultivated land for 1885 in Scotland, England, and Ireland :— [table]

The earliest year included in this table (1867) is the date at which the agricultural statistics began to be collected and published by the Board of Trade. The work previous to this had been undertaken by the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, but their returns were necessarily less complete and accurate. The return for 1857, for example, gives the arable acreage (“acreage under a rotation of crops”) as 3,776,572; but this is clearly too much, as it exceeds that of 1885, and since 1867 there has been a gradual increase. Only a little over one-fourth of the area of Scotland is cultivated, while in England only one-fourth is left uncultivated. It must, however, be taken into consideration that in the agricultural returns “permanent pasture” does not include the mountainous districts which form such a large portion of the surface of Scotland, where heaths and natural grasses occupy the soil and yield a scanty herbage for sheep and cattle. In the return “permanent pasture” is represented as occupying an area little more than a third as large as that occupied by arable land, while in England the two areas are pretty nearly equal, but as a matter of fact pasturage plays a much more important part in the economy of the Scottish than of the English farmer. It will be observed that as regards the main divisions of arable land the total areas under both corn crops and green crops have been slightly decreasing, while there has been a considerable increase in the area under rotation grasses. The following table (XIV.) shows the yield of the principal crops in

1857, 1884, and 1885, with the average yield per acre in the last two years :— [table]

This table being founded on estimates can, of course, only be regarded as approximately correct. The average yield of both wheat and barley is higher than that of England, while the average yield of both oats and potatoes is lower, which may be accounted for by the fact that the first two crops occupy the best soils of Scotland, while the last two occupy every variety of soil in the country. Wheat is grown chiefly in the sea-coast districts and the fertile river-valleys. The area under wheat has declined more than a half since 1867, the combined causes of this being wet seasons and increased foreign competition. Barley, for which the distilleries keep up a steady demand, and oats, the staple crop of the country, have rather increased in area since 1867. The area under potatoes— a very uncertain crop—has rather declined within recent years, and that under turnips has considerably declined, partly owing to the increased use of artificial stuffs in cattle-feeding. The following table (XV.) shows the number of live stock in different years, with the average number to every 1000 acres of cultivated land in 1885 in Scotland and England :— [table]

Horses (including ponies)— Used solely for agricultural purposes

138,564

1 34,307

136,689

41,963

141,332

52,6S1

141,522

46,770

29

10

30

13

Cattle—

Cows and heifers in milk or in calf

380,509

249,541

392,336

392,252

267,920

467,165

3S7,195

258,967

453,124

419,210

260,505

496,289

87

54

102

74

43

72

Other cattle—two years old and above..

,, under two years

Total cattle

189

407 ' 269

Sheep-

One year old and above.... Under one vear old

4,582,885

2,355,142

4,735,008

2,426,114

4,651,116

2,420,972

4,560,430

2,396,762

941

495

6,987,977

153,959

This table does not indicate any constant decrease or increase in any of the classes of live stock. It will be observed that the average number of cattle to the acreage of cultivated land in Scotland is about a third more than in England, and of sheep more than double as many; but the number of pigs in England is more than double as many to the acreage of cultivated land as it is in Scotland, and the number of horses is greater. The special breeds of horses in Scotland are the Shetland ponies, the Highland ponies, and the Clydesdale draught horses, the latter originally bred in the Clydesdale district from crossing with Flemish stallions imported about the beginning of the 18th century. The breeds of cattle include the Ayrshire, which, since they are chiefly noted for their yield of milk, and are specially adapted for dairy farms (which prevail especially in the south-west of Scotland), have in a great measure supplanted the Galloway in their native district, except where these are kept for feeding purposes; the polled Angus or Aberdeen, fair milkers, but chiefly valuable for their beef-making qualities, and on this account, as well as their hardihood, in especial favour in the north-east of Scotland, where the art of cattle-feeding has reached its greatest perfection; and the west Highland breed, noted for their long horns, their shagginess, the decided character of their various colours—black, red, dun, cream, and brindle— and their power of thriving on wild and heathy pasture. The special breeds of sheep are the fine-woolled breed, peculiar to Shetland; the blackfaced, native to the Highland districts; and the Cheviots, native to the range of hills of that name, and now the favourite breed in the south of Scotland, although border Leicesters and other English breeds, as well as a variety of crosses, are kept for winter feeding on the lowland farms.

The area under orchards as returned on 4th June 1885 was 1892 acres and under nursery grounds 1654. Orchards, chiefly for apples, are most numerous in the Carse of Gowrie and the neighbourhood of Perth, and along the banks of the Clyde above Hamilton. The area under woods in 1812 was 907,695 acres, of which 501,469 acres were natural woods and 406,226 planted; by 1872 it had declined to 734,490, but by 1881 (i.e ., by the latest return) it had increased to 829,476, the principal increase having been in Aberdeen, Perth, and Inverness, the counties where the growth of woods is largest. The Board of Trade returns do not distinguish between planted and natural woods, but it is well known that large cuttings have been made in the indigenous forests of the Highlands, while at the same time considerable attention has been paid within the present century to the growth of plantations in the Lowlands, partly as a covert for game; the science of forestry has made great advances within recent years owing to the encouragement and guidance of the Scottish Arboricultural Society, established in 1854, and of the Highland and Agricultural Society. The modern plantations are formed chiefly of Scotch fir with a sprinkling of larch. On the botany of Scotland H. C. Watson’s Topographical Botany (1883) may be consulted.

According to the report of the crofters commission, the area under deer forests in Scotland is 1,975,209 acres, or about one-tenth of the whole area of the country. The species of deer peculiar to the Scottish Highlands is the red deer; the fallow deer is not uncommon in the Lowlands, especially in the hilly south-western districts. The grouse moors of Scotland occupy a much more extensive area, and are also much more widely distributed, while they supply sport to a much greater number of persons. Ptarmigan and blackcock are abundant in many districts; and pheasants and partridges, as well as hares, are carefully preserved on many estates in the cultivated districts. Rabbits are common throughout the whole country. Foxhunting is a fashionable sport in most of the Lowland counties; but otter-hunting has almost died out. The bear, wolf, and beaver, at one time common in Scotland, have become extinct. The last wolf, it is said, was killed by Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel in 1680. The wild cat is still to be found in the Highlands, and the polecat, ermine, and pine marten exist in considerable numbers. The golden eagle and the white-tailed eagle tenant the wilder mountainous districts, but other larger birds of prey, as the osprey and the kite, are becoming scarce. In all there are more than 300 species of birds in Scotland, including a great variety of water-fowl in the sea and inland lochs.

Fisheries.— Details regarding the Scottish fisheries will be found under Fisheries (vol. ix. pp. 257-262). The former Board of White Herring Fishery was abolished in 1882 and the Fishery Board of Scotland established, which has devoted more systematic attention to the collection of statistics and the general encouragement of the industry. In 1856 the herring and deep-sea fisheries engaged only about 30,000 persons in Scotland, but in 1884 they employed directly or indirectly 103,804 persons, while the total estimated produce in 1884 was valued at £3,351,848,—the value of cured fish being £2,279,614 (herrings, £2,121,346; cod, ling, and hake dried, £149,407; ditto pickled, £8861); of white fish sold fresh, £716,295 (haddocks, £300,712; herrings, £150,720; cod, ling, and hake, £97,443; torsk and saithe, £10,481; whitings, £32,808; sprats, £5232; mackerel, £5286; turbot, £9368; holibut, £17,624; flounders, £47,723; skate, £14,171; soles and other flat fish, £24,727); of shell-fish, £80,939; and of salmon, £275,000.

Mining Industries.— The chief sources of the mineral wealth of Scotland are coal and iron, which are generally found in convenient juxtaposition. The principal coal-fields are described under Coal (vol. vi. p. 52 sq. ). The privilege of digging coal in the lands of Pittencrieff was conferred by charter on the abbot and convent of Dunfermline in 1291, and at a very early period the monks of Newbattle Abbey dug coal from surface-pits on the banks of the Esk. Aeneas Sylvius (afterwards Pope Pius II.), who visited Scotland in the 15th century, refers to the fact that the poor people received at the church doors a species of stone which they burned in place of wood; but, although the value of coal for smith’s and artificer’s work was early recognized, it was not generally employed for domestic purposes till about the close of the 16th century. In 1606 an Act was passed binding colliers to perpetual service at the works at which they were engaged, and their full emancipation did not take place till 1799. An Act was passed in 1843 forbidding the employment of children of tender years and of women in underground mines. According to the census of 1851, the number of persons engaged in connexion with coal-mining was 36,973 males and 358 females (the latter employed above ground), and in 1881 the numbers were 53,340 and 401. According to the mineral statistics of 1885 there were 69,425 persons employed in the coal-mines of Scotland,—45,082 in the western and 24,343 in the eastern district. The output within twenty years has been more than doubled. In 1854 it was 7,488,000 tons, by 1866 it had increased to 12,034,638, and in 1884 it was 21,186,688.

The rise of the iron industry in Scotland dates from the establishment in 1760 of the Carron ironworks near Falkirk. The number of persons employed in iron-mining in 1851 was 7648, and in iron manufacture 13,296; and by 1881 the numbers had increased respectively to 10,473 and 38,309. The total output of iron ore and ironstone in Scotland in 1884 was 1,885,376 tons, valued at £854,416, less than the estimated amount in 1858, which was 2,312,000 tons, valued at £750,000. There has been no increase in the manufacture of pig-iron since about 1866. The imports of iron ore were 356,380 tons in 1883, valued at £359,918, and in 1884 406,007 tons, valued at £356,451. The production of pig-iron increased with great rapidity after the introduction of railways. In 1796 the quantity produced was 18,640 tons, and in 1830 only 37,500; in 1840 it had risen to 241,000, in 1845 to 475,000, in 1865 to 1,164,000; but in 1884 it was only 988,000, the industry being confined to Ayrshire, Fifeshire, and Lanarkshire. The iron-mills and forges in operation are confined to the last county, there being in 1884 22 works, 334 puddling furnaces, and 82 rolling mills. In 1884 there were 63 open-hearth steelworks in operation, of which 46 were in Glasgow, 10 in Holytown, 4 in Motherwell, and 3 in Wishaw, the quantity made in 1884 being 208,650 tons.

Since about the years 1850-55 shale-mining has become an important industry, especially in Linlithgowshire and Midlothian, the total quantity raised in Scotland in 1884 being 1,469,649 tons, valued at £370,024. Lead ore is worked at Abington in Lanarkshire and Wanlockhead in Dumfriesshire; the dressed lead ore obtained amounts to 4327 tons, valued at £34,997, and yielding 3219 tons of lead and 20,011 ounces of silver. The amount of fireclay dug in 1884 was 463,294 tons, valued at £56,237. Stone quarrying, especially of granite, sandstone, flagstone, slate, and limestone, is extensively carried on, but the returns of the several amounts raised annually are incomplete. The number of persons engaged in quarries in 1881 was 13,742, and the value of the materials raised in 1884 was estimated at £1,030,650. The principal granite works occur in Aberdeenshire and Kirkcudbrightshire, while freestone quarries are common throughout the greater part of the Lowland district, although whinstone also is frequently used for building purposes. Large quantities of paving stones are exported from Caithness and Forfarshire, and there are very extensive slate-quarries at Ballachulish and other places in Argyllshire.

Manufactures.— Although a company of woollen weavers was incorporated by the town council of Edinburgh in 1475, the cloth worn by the wealthier classes down to the beginning of the 17th century was of English or French manufacture, the lower classes wearing “coarse cloth made at home,” in the fashion still prevailing in the remoter districts of the Highlands. In 1601 seven Flemings were brought to Edinburgh by commissioners from the burghs to instruct the people in the manufacture of serges and broadcloth, and eight years later a company of Flemings was established in the Canongate (Edinburgh) for the manufacture of cloth under the special protection of the king; but, notwithstanding also the establishment in 1681 of an English company for the manufacture of woollen fabrics near Haddington, the industry for more than fifty years after this made very tardy progress in the country. In fact its importance dates from the introduction and improvement of machinery in the 19th century. The most important branch of the trade, that of tweeds, first began to attract attention shortly after 1830; though still having its principal seat in the district from which it takes its name, including Galashiels, Hawick, Innerleithen, and Selkirk, it extends to a large number of towns throughout Scotland, especially to Aberdeen, Elgin, Inverness, Stirling, Bannockburn, and Paisley. The chief seat of the hosiery trade is Hawick. Carpet manufacture has had its principal seat in Kilmarnock since 1817, but is also carried on in Aberdeen, Ayr, Bannockburn, Glasgow, Paisley, and other towns. Tartans are largely manufactured in Tillicoultry, Bannockburn, and Kilmarnock, and shawls and plaids are largely manufactured in several towns. In 1850 there were in Scotland 188 woollen and worsted factories, with 233,533 spindles and 247 power-looms, employing 10,210 persons. Twenty-eight years later (1878) the total number of factories was 246, in which there were 559,021 spinning spindles, 62,013 doubling spindles, and 6284 power-looms, the number of persons employed being 22,667, of whom 10,083 were males and 12,584 females.

The manufacture of cloth from flax is of very ancient date in Scotland, and towards the close of the 16th century Scottish linen cloths were largely exported to foreign countries, besides having an extensive sale in England. Regulations in regard to the manufacture were passed in 1641 and 1661. In a petition presented to the privy council in 1684, complaining of the severe treatment of Scotsmen selling linen in England, it was stated that 12,000 persons were engaged in the manufacture. Through the intercession of the secretary of state with the king these restrictions were removed. To further encourage the trade it was enacted in 1686 that the bodies of all persons, with the exception of poor tenants and cotters, should be buried in plain linen only, spun and made within the kingdom. The Act was repeated in 1693 and 1695, and in the former year another Act was passed prohibiting the export of lint and permitting its import free of duty. At the time of the Union the annual amount of linen cloth manufactured in Scotland is supposed to have been about 1,500,000 yards. The Union gave a considerable impetus to the manufacture, as did also the establishment of the Board of Manufactures in 1727, which applied an annual sum of £2650 to its encouragement, and in 1729 established a colony of French Protestants in Edinburgh, on the site of the present Picardy Place, to teach the spinning and weaving of cambric. From 1st November 1727 to 1st November 1728 the amount of linen cloth stamped in Scotland was 2,183,978 yards, valued at £103,312, but by the year ending 1st November 1771 it had increased to 13,672,548 yards, valued at £632,389, during the year ending 1st November 1798 to 21,297,059, valued at £850,405, and by the year ending 1st November 1822, when the regulations as to the inspection and stamping of linen ceased, to 36,268,530 yards, valued at £1,396,296. The counties in which the manufacture is now most largely carried on are Forfar, Perth, Fife, Kinross, and Clackmannan, but Aberdeen, Renfrew, Lanark, Edinburgh, and Ayr are also in a considerable degree associated with it. Dundee is the principal seat of the coarser fabrics, Dunfermline of the table and other finer linens, while Paisley is widely known for its sewing threads. The allied industry of jute is the staple industry of Dundee. The number of persons employed in the flax-factories of Scotland in 1837 was 15,462. The following table (XVI.) gives particulars of these factories for the years 1856, 1867, and 1878 :— [table]

Principally owing to foreign competition, the linen manufacture has within recent years been in a very languid condition.

The first cotton-mill in Scotland was built at Rothesay by an English Company in 1778. It was soon afterwards acquired by David Dale, who was the agent in Scotland for Arkwright, and had the invaluable aid of his counsel and advice. Dale also established cotton-factories in 1785 at New Lanark, afterwards so closely associated with the socialistic schemes of his son-in-law, Robert Owen, and thus laid the foundation of the industry in the two counties, Lanark and Renfrew, which are now its principal seats in Scotland. Nine-tenths of the cotton-factories of Scotland are now concentrated in Glasgow, Paisley, and the neighbouring towns, but the industry extends into other districts of the west of Scotland and is also represented in the counties of Aberdeen, Perth, and Stirling. The following table (XVII. ) gives particulars for 1850, 1861, 1875, and 1885 [table]

For further particulars regarding the manufacture in Scotland, see Cotton, vol. vi. pp. 501-503.

Silk is manufactured in Paisley and Glasgow, but the industry is of minor importance, employing only about 600 persons. Floorcloth is manufactured at Kirkcaldy, where also the first linoleum factory in Scotland was established in 1877.

Next to textile fabrics, the most important manufacture in Scotland is that of whisky, in which it has Ireland for its only competitor. Distillation was introduced into Scotland from England, but by 1771 large quantities of spirits were sent to England from Scotland. The legal manufacture of whisky was greatly checked in the 19th century by occasional excessive advances in the rates of duty, but after the reduction to 2s. 4 3/4 d. per gallon in 1823 the number of licensed distillers rapidly increased, while illegal distillation became much less common. The following table (XVIII.) shows the number of gallons made in various years since 1824 :— [table]

Ale was a common beverage in Scotland as early as the 12th century, there being one or more brew-houses attached to every religious house and barony. So important was the use of the beverage even in the beginning of the 18th century that a threatened imposition of a tax on malt in 1725 led to serious riots in Glasgow and a proposal to repeal the Union. Though ale has been superseded by whisky as the national beverage, Scotland still possesses several large breweries, and Edinburgh ales vie in repute with those of Burton-on-Trent. The number of barrels charged with duty in Scotland in 1885 was 1,237,323, the number in England being 24,519,173.

The first sugar-refinery in Scotland was erected in 1765 in Greenock, where the industry made rapid progress and has still its principal seat, although it is extensively carried on in Leith and in a lesser degree in Glasgow and Dundee. Glass-making, introduced in 1610 by Sir John Hay at Wemyss in Fife, is now of considerable importance, Edinburgh being celebrated for the finer branches of the manufacture. A paper-mill was erected in 1675 at Dairy Mills on the Water of Leith, in which French workmen were employed to give instruction, with the result, as was reported by the owners, that “grey and blue paper was produced much finer than ever was done before in the kingdom.” The most important seat of the industry is now Valleyfield near Penicuik, where it was introduced in 1709. Edinburgh has since the time of the Ballantynes enjoyed a widely-extended fame for the excellence and beauty of its printing. The other manufactures prevailing in different parts of Scotland, such as those of leather, soap, earthenware and hardware, carriages, and the various implements and utensils in general use, do not call for special characterization.

Commerce and Shipping.— That Scotland had a considerable trade with foreign countries at a very early period may be inferred from the importation of rich dresses by Malcolm III. and the enjoyment of Oriental luxuries by Alexander I. David I. receives the special praise of Fordun for enriching “the ports of his kingdom with foreign merchandise.” In the 13th century the Scots had acquired a considerable celebrity in shipbuilding; and a powerful French baron had a ship specially built at Inverness in 1249 to convey him and his vassals to the Holy Land. The principal shipowners at this period were the clergy, who embarked the wealth of their religious houses in commercial enterprises. Definite statements regarding the number and tonnage of shipping are, however, lacking till the 18th century. From two reports printed by the Scottish Burgh Record Society in 1881, it appears that the number of vessels belonging to the principal ports—Leith, Dundee, Glasgow, Kirkcaldy, and Montrose—in 1656 was 58, the tonnage being 3140, and that by 1692 they had increased to 97 of 5905 tons. These figures only represent a portion of the total shipping of the kingdom. At the time of the Union in 1707 the number of vessels was 215 of 14,485 tons. The following table (XIX.) gives the numbers for various years from 1850 :— [table]

Table XX. shows the progress of the coasting and foreign trade since 1855:— [table]

Table XXI. shows the great expansion of the foreign and colonial trade since 1755:— [table]

The value of the imports into Scotland is only about a tenth of that of England, but this does not represent the proper proportion of foreign imports used or consumed in Scotland, as large quantities find their way to Scotland from England by rail,—nearly all the tea, for example, consumed in Great Britain being imported into London, while various other ports have almost a monopoly of certain other imports. Reckoning by the combined value of their imports and exports, the principal ports of Scotland are Glasgow, Leith, Greenock, Dundee, Grangemouth, and Aberdeen, in the order named, but for particulars regarding the trade of these and other ports reference must be made to the articles on the several towns.

For many of the most important improvements in the construction of ships, especially steam vessels, Great Britain is indebted to the enterprise and skill of the Clyde shipbuilders. From the time of the construction by Mr Robert Napier of the steamers for the Cunard line, formed in 1840, the shipbuilders on the Clyde have enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for the construction of large ocean steamers, both as regards mechanical appliances and the beauty and convenience of the internal arrangements. Shipbuilding is also carried on to a considerable extent at Dundee, Leith, and Aberdeen, and to a certain degree at most of the ports of the king dom, but within recent years the industry has been in a very fluctuating condition, the tonnage of the vessels constructed annually varying between 1880 and 1885 from a little over 100,000 to nearly 300,000.

National Wealth.— The immense increase in the wealth of Scotland within the last 200 years is sufficiently proved by the fact that, while in 1674 the valued rent was only £3,656,408 Scots or £304,700 sterling, the gross annual value of the land according to the estimate in the return of 1873 was £18,698,804, or more than sixty times as much, and about fifteen times as great as the proportional increase of population. This increase is of course partly due to agricultural improvements and partly to the discovery and development of the mineral wealth in coal and iron, but it may also be accounted for by the smaller representative value of money, and by the fictitious increase in rents in towns, which does not represent an increase in absolute value. The annual value of real property assessed for income-tax under schedule A in 1843 was £9,481,000; the average value for the three years ending 5th April 1883 was £16,995,718, and for the year ending 5th April 1884 the value was £17,066,705. For the year ending 5th April 1857 the amount of property and income charged with duty was £22,563,238; and during the following twenty-five years it was more than doubled, the average amount for the three years ending 5th April 1883 being £48,069,765, and for the year ending 5th April 1884 £49,600,348. This is less than a tenth of that for the United Kingdom. The total amount of money lying in deposit in savings banks in 1884 was £7,709,471,—about a seventh part of the whole amount deposited in the savings banks of the United Kingdom. Notice of the rise and progress of banking in Scotland will be found under Banking (vol. iii. pp. 332-336). The total paid-up capital of the Scottish banks at the dates of balance in 1885 was £9,052,000 and their total liabilities £107,882,595.

Education.— Notices of the existence of schools in the principal towns occur as early as the 13th century. They were under the supervision of the chancellor of each diocese and were chiefly devoted to studies preparatory for the church. Previous to the Reformation schools for general education were attached to many religious houses. In the First Book of Discipline, 1560, a comprehensive scheme of general education was propounded, but neither this proposal nor an Act passed in 1616 by the privy council for the establishment of a school in every parish was carried into effect; and the system of parochial schools which prevailed till the passing of the Education Act of 1872 really dates from the Act of William and Mary in 1696 providing for the maintenance of a school in every parish at the cost of the heritors. The various religious secessions in Scotland led to the founding of a large number of denominational and subscription schools, and at the Disruption in 1843 the Free Church made provision for the supply of secular education as well as religious instruction to its adherents. The Education Act of 1872 abolished the old management of the parish schools, and provided for the creation of districts under the management of school boards elected for three years by the ratepayers, male and female. These boards have the power to levy rates for the maintenance and erection of schools for primary instruction, elect the teachers, and enforce the clause in regard to compulsory attendance. The maintenance of schools is also aided by a Government grant, and the salary of the teacher is paid partly by school fees and partly by a grant dependent upon the result of the examination of the scholars by the Government inspector, the school board having the power, however, to make their own terms with the teacher. Denominational schools are permitted to receive a Government grant. The following table (XXII.) shows the proportion of persons in the receipt of education in Scotland in 1861, 1871, and 1881 :— [table]

Particulars in regard to schools under school board management are given in the following table (XXIII.) :— [table]

All the training colleges for teachers in board schools are connected with religious denominations—three with the Established Church, three with the Free Church, and one with the Episcopal Church.

As early as the 14th century some of the burghs had grammarschools partly under the control of the magistrates. In 1496 an

Act was passed enjoining the attendance at the schools of the eldest sons of barons and freeholders until “they be founded in perfect Latin, and thereafter to remain at the schools of arts and law” (where ecclesiastics were trained). The grammar or burgh schools enjoyed a monopoly of teaching certain branches, and private schools were frequently prohibited as interfering with their rights. Grammar-schools were chiefly devoted to instruction in Latin, and the course usually extended to five years. According to the report of the education commissioners, the number of burgh schools in 1867 was twenty-six. By the Act of 1872 their management was transferred to the school board, but they were excluded from participation in the school fund, and no provision was made for their inspection. The Act of 1878 authorized certain grunts of money, and contained certain provisions for inspection, which, however, have been practically inoperative. The Educational Endowments Act of 1882 provides for a more comprehensive scheme for the pro m otion of secondary education, and also for a scheme of systematic inspection. These educational endowments—the result of private bequest—yield an annual income of £175,000, and, on account of the changed conditions of society, the primary objects of the donors were in a great degree frustrated by the manner in which they were being administered. Some of the best secondary schools in Scotland are under the management of trustees. For the four universities of Scotland (St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh) see the articles on these cities, also Universities. University College in Dundee and Anderson’s College in Glasgow have similar courses of instruction to the universities, but possess no power to grant degrees and receive no Government aid. A notice of the various medical schools and scientific colleges will be found in the articles on the towns in which they are situated.

Religion.— For an historical account of the more important religious denominations of Scotland the reader is referred to the articles Scotland, Church of, Free Church of Scotland, United Presbyterian Church, and Presbyterianism. The bulk of the population is Presbyterian, and the following table (XXIV.) gives particulars reported in 1885 regarding the Church of Scotland and other churches originated by secessions from it at various times,—the “contributions” indicating the amounts raised by the churches for all purposes, and of course excluding the endowments of the Established Church :— [table]

The Roman Catholic Church has 327 “churches, chapels, and stations,”—the estimated population connected with it being over 340,000. The Episcopal Church in Scotland has about 250 churches with 80,000 members (of all ages) and nearly 30,000 communicants. The churches in connexion with the Congregational Union number 101, 73 of which report a membership of 10,869, the money raised for all purposes in 1884-85 being £23,027. The Baptist Union has 88 churches with 9688 members; and the Wesleyan Methodists have 26 “circuits” with 4653. There are a few other religious denominations, such as the Primitive Methodists, the Catholic Apostolic Church, and the Glassites, but the membership of each is comparatively small.

Government, Law, and Local Administration.— By the Act of Union in 1707 Scotland ceased to have a separate parliament and its government was assimilated to that of England. In the parliament of Great Britain its representation was fixed at sixteen peers (the same number as at present) elected by the peers of Scotland at each new parliament, in the House of Lords, and at forty-five members in the House of Commons,—the counties returning thirty and the burghs fifteen. The power of the sovereign to create new Scottish peerages lapsed at the Union, and their number has already diminished by nearly one-half. By the Reform Act of 1832 the number of Scottish representatives in the Commons was raised to fifty-three, the counties under a slightly altered arrangement returning thirty members as before, and the burghs, reinforced by the erection of various towns into parliamentary burghs, twenty-three; the second Reform Act (1868) increased the number to sixty, the universities obtaining representation by two members, while three additional members were assigned to the counties and two to the burghs; by the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885 an addition of six members was made to the representation of the counties and six to that of the burghs, the total representation being raised to seventy-two. The management of Scottish business in parliament has since 1885 been under the charge of the secretary for Scotland.

At the Union Scotland retained its old system of law and legal administration, a system modelled on that of France; but since the Union the laws of England and Scotland have been on many points assimilated, the criminal law of the two countries being now practically identical, although the methods of procedure are in many respects different. The Court of Session, as the supreme court in civil causes is called, dates from 1532, and was formed on the model of the parlement of Paris; it is held at Edinburgh, the capital. Since the Union it has undergone certain modifications. It consists of thirteen judges, acting in an Inner and an Outer House. The Inner House has two divisions, with four judges each, the first being presided over by the lord president of the whole court, and the second by the lord justice clerk. In the Outer House five judges, called lords ordinary, sit in separate courts. Appeals may be made from the lords ordinary to either of the divisions of the Inner House, and, if the occasion demands, the opinion of all the judges of the Court of Session may be called for; but whether this be done or not the decision is regarded as a decision of the Court of Session. Appeals may be made from the Court of Session to the House of Lords. The lord justice general (lord president), the lord justice clerk, and five other judges form the High Court of Justiciary, instituted in 1672, for criminal cases, which sits at Edinburgh for the trial of cases from the three Lothians and of cases referred from the circuit courts. The latter meet for the south at Jedburgh, Dumfries, and Ayr; for the west at Glasgow, Inveraray, and Stirling; and for the north at Perth, Aberdeen, Dundee, and Inverness. The law agents who undertake cases to be decided before the supreme courts are either solicitors before the supreme courts or writers to the signet, the latter of whom possess certain special privileges. The lawyer authorized to plead before the supreme courts is termed an advocate. The principal law officer of the crown is the lord advocate, who is assisted by the solicitor-general and by advocates-depute. The lord advocate has since 1885 ceased to have the charge of Scottish business in the House of Commons. See Advocate, vol. i. 178. The subordinate legal courts and officials are described under the next heading.

The largest administrative area is that of the county, but for purposes of registration Scotland is partitioned into eight divisions, to each of which an examiner for inspection of registers is appointed by the registrar-general; and for the carrying out of the provisions of the Lunacy Acts it is divided into twenty-two districts. Registration counties date from the Act of 1854 providing that for purposes of registration the areas of the counties may be altered. For the purposes of the General Police Act of 1862 part of the area of one county may also be brought into the area of another. Certain counties have been united for parliamentary or other purposes, and certain others have been divided for parliamentary purposes, while others again for certain administrative purposes retain their old subdivisions, Lanark for assessment purposes being still divided into wards. The civil counties were originally synonymous either with sheriffdoms or stewartries. Stewartries ceased with the abolition of hereditary jurisdictions in 1748, but Kirkcudbright still retains the designation. The office of sheriff, which formerly implied a much less limited authority than at present, was in existence in the reign of David I., when the greater part of the kingdom was divided into twenty-five sheriffdoms. In the latter part of the 13th century they numbered thirty-four. The counties now number thirty-three, of which Ross and Cromarty constitute one, while Edinburgh is a “county of a city.” The highest county dignitary is the lordlieutenant, the office being instituted in 1782. He is nominated by the crown, holds office for life, except in cases of misconduct, represents the crown in military matters, recommends for commissions of the peace, holds the position of high sheriff, and is a member of the police committee. Practically, however, the office is little more than honorary, and the real administration of county affairs is in the hands of commissioners of supply, who were originally appointed to apportion and collect the national revenue, but who now regulate the land-tax, control the county police, raise the militia, and levy rates to meet the county expenditure. In 1878 an Act was passed for the creation of road trustees, who have the power to levy rates for the maintenance throughout the county of roads and bridges (see p. 530 above). The practical administration of the law in the county is under the control of the sheriff. See Sheriff. A large proportion of his duties are, however, delegated to the sheriff-substitute. At one time the functions of the sheriff-principal were confined to one county, but by an Act passed in 1855 it was arranged that as sheriffdoms fell vacant certain counties should be grouped into districts, each under the control of one sheriff-principal, and in 1870 this arrangement was further modified and extended. The sheriff-clerk, appointed by the crown, has, under the Ballot Act of 1872, the charge of ballot papers in connection with the parliamentary elections, and is custos rotulorum. The public prosecutor for counties is the procurator-fiscal, who takes the initiative in regard to suspected cases of sudden death, although in this respect the law of Scotland is less strict than that of England. Justices of the peace, who are unpaid and require no special qualification, but who, as they are recommended by the lord-lieutenant, are generally persons of position in the county, exercise a certain subordinate jurisdiction. Their office expires on the demise of the crown. In every commission of the peace certain public officials are included. The justices of the peace hold quarter sessions, take affidavits and declarations (such as declarations of marriage), sign warrants, try petty criminal cases (such especially as poaching and assault), and regulate public-house licences. Under Borough (vol. iv. pp. 63-64) will be found an account of the history and constitution of the three classes of ancient burghs in Scotland,—royal burghs, burghs of regality, and burghs of barony. Police burghs, which may include any of the other classes of burghs, are formed of those places which have adopted the General Police and Improvement Acts (13 and 14 Vict. c. 33 and 25 and 26 Vict. c. 101). They are governed by police commissioners, who have power to regulate all sanitary matters. They may include more than one of the other burghs and may extend into another county. Under the Improvement Act (25 and 26 Vict. c. 101) most of the burghs with over 7000 inhabitants maintain their own police. The parliamentary burghs do not now include all the royal burghs and include various other towns in addition to them. The number of royal burghs is seventy, and, as was to be expected, while some since their formation have enormously increased in population and wealth, others have so declined or made so little progress that they now rank only as villages. In 1881 there were ten royal burghs which had less than 1000 inhabitants each and four which had less than 500 each, Earlsferry (Fife) having only 286. Under the Public Health Act of 1867, amended in 1879, the erection of urban and rural sanitary districts was provided for. The corporation of the burghs is formed of the provost (or lord provost), bailies, and councillors. Bailie courts are held in the burghs for the trial of minor offences. The civil parish or parish quoad omnia, originally the ecclesiastical parish or area subject to one cure of souls, is a division of the county for registration of births, deaths, and marriages and for poor law administration. The boundaries are determined by the boundaries of the estates which appear to lie in the parish, but may be altered by consent of proprietors holding the major value of the property in it. For all sanitary purposes the areas of burghs are removed from those of the parishes, and certain civil parishes may be classed as burghal, landward, and mixed. Under Graham’s Act (7 and 8 Vict. c. 44) a parish quoad sacra may be erected on the application of persons who have built and endowed a church. For administrative purposes the oldest parish organization is that of the heritors or landowners, who are required to provide and maintain a church, churchyard, manse, and church glebe, and, before the passing of the Education Act in 1872, had to maintain the parochial school. In 1579 the power was granted them of assessment for poor relief, but in 1600 the kirk-session was united with them for these purposes. This organization still exists in those parishes, now very few in number, which have not adopted the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1845; this Act provides for the constitution of a parochial board composed of nominees of the kirk-session and a proportion of persons elected by the ratepayers. Under the Education Act of 1872 the county is divided into school-board districts, whose area corresponds with the civil, or the quoad sacra, or landward, or burghal parish (see p. 534 above).