Most historians agree that the first man appeared in Scotland as long ago
as 6,000 BC. Bone and antler fishing spears and other rudimentary
implements found along the western part of the country serve as evidence to
support this theory. The Beaker civilization [2]arrived three thousand
years later, and is notable for its henges (of which Stonehenge is one of
the most famous). The Beaker people eventually spread as far north as
Orkney.
As a result of its geography, Scotland has two different societies.
In the center of Scotland mountains stretch to the far north and across to
the west, beyond which lie many islands. To the east and to the south the
lowland hills are gentler, and much of the countryside is like England,
rich, welcoming and easy to farm. North of the “Highland Line”[3] people
stayed tied to their own family groups. South and east of this line society
was more easily influenced by the changes taking place in England.
Scotland was populated by four separate groups of people. The main
group, the Picts, lived mostly in the north and northeast. They spoke
Celtic as well as another, probably older, language completely unconnected
with any known language today, and they seem to have been the earliest
inhabitants of the land.
The non-Pictish inhabitants were mainly Scots. The Scots were Celtic
settlers who started to move into the western Highlands from Ireland in the
fourth century.
In 843 the Pictish and Scottish kingdoms were united under a Scottish
king, who could also probably claim the Picts throne through his mother, in
this way obeying both Scottish and Pictish rules of kingship.
The third inhabitants were the Britons, who inhabited the Lowlands,
and had been part of the Romano-British world. They had probably given up
their old tribal way of life by the sixth century.
Finally, there were Angels from Nothambria who had pushed northwards
into the Scottish Lowlands.
Unity between Picts, Scots and Britons was achieved for several
reasons. They shared a common Celtic culture, language and background.
Their economy mainly depended on keeping animals. These animals were owned
by the tribe as a hole, and for this reason land was also held by tribes,
not by individual people. The common economic system increased their
feeling of belonging to the same kind of society and the difference from
the agricultural Lowlands. The sense of common culture may have been
increased by marriage alliances between tribes. This idea of common
landholding remained strong until the tribes of Scotland, called
“clans”[4], collapsed in the eighteenth century.
The spread of Celtic Christianity also helped to unite the people.
The first Christian mission to Scotland had come to southwest Scotland in
about AD 400. Later, in 563, Columba, known as the “Dove of the Church”,
came from Ireland. Through his work both Highland Scots and Picts were
brought to Christianity. He even, so it is said, defeated a monster in Loch
Ness, the first mention of this famous creature. By the time of the Synod
of Whitby in 663, the Picts, Scots and Britons had all been brought closer
together by Christianity.
The Angles were very different from the Celts. They had arrived in
Britain in family groups, but they soon began to accept the authority from
people outside their own family. This was partly due to their way of life.
Although they kept some animals, they spent more time growing crops. This
meant that land was held by individual people, each man working in his own
field. Land was distributed for farming by the local lord. This system
encouraged the Angles of Scotland to develop a non-tribal system of
control, as the people of England further south were doing. This increased
their feeling of difference from the Celtic tribal Highlanders further
north.
Finally, as in Ireland and in Wales, foreign invaders increased the
speed of political change. Vikings attacked the coastal areas of Scotland,
and they settled on many of the islands, Shetland, the Orkneys, the
Hebrides, and the Isle of Man southwest of Scotland. In order to resist
them, Picts and Scots fought together against the enemy raiders and
settles. When they couldn’t push them out of the islands and coastal areas,
they had to deal with them politically. At first the Vikings, or
“Norsemen”, still served the King of Norway. But communications with Norway
were difficult. Slowly the earls of Orkney and other areas found it easier
to accept the king of Scots as their overlord, rather than the more distant
king of Norway.
However, as the Welsh had also discovered, the English were a greater
danger than the Vikings. In 934 the Scots were seriously defeated by a
Wessex army pushing northwards. The Scots decided to seek the friendship of
the English, because of the likely losses from war. England was obviously
stronger than Scotland but, luckily for the Scots, both the north of
England and Scotland were difficult to control from London. The Scots hoped
that if they were reasonably peaceful the Sassenachs[5] would leave them
along.
Scotland remained a difficult country to rule even from its capital,
Edinburgh. Anyone looking at a map of Scotland can see that control of the
Highlands and islands was a great problem. Travel was often impossible in
winter, and slow and difficult in summer. It was easy for a clan chief or
noble to throw off the rule of the king.
II. “…we will never consent to subject ourselves to the dominion of the
English.”
England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were once known as the British
Isles. Nowadays this term is normally used only in Geography. In fact, the
people of these isles have seldom been politically or culturally united.
English kings started wars to unite the British Isles from the 12th
century. These wars were wars of conquest and only the Welsh war was a
success.
At that time England was ruled by several ambitious kings, who wanted
to conquer more countries for themselves and to add more titles to their
names. They had, as a rule, absolutely no interest in the people of the
countries that they wished to conquer. It did not concern them that these
wars brought misery to the people in whose land they fought. The result was
generally to create a strong, national, patriotic feeling in the invaded
country, and a great hatred of the invader.
I don’t have much space here to speak about the history of Scotland in
details that is why I’d like to mention one historical episode which shows
the Scottish attitude towards freedom and independence. (For the chronology
of the events in the history of Scotland see Appendices,
page 24).
Although Scottish kings had sometimes accepted the English king as
their “overlord”, they were much stronger than the many Welsh kings had
been. Scotland owes its clan system partly to an Englishwoman, Margaret,
the Saxon Queen of Malcolm III. After their marriage in 1069, she
introduced new fashions and new ideas to the Scottish court – and among the
new ideas was the feudal system of land tenure. Until that time, most of
the country had been divided into seven semi-independent tribal provinces.
Under the feudal system, all land belonged to the king, who distributed it
among his followers in exchange for allegiance and service. But a Highland
chieftain could easily ignore a far-off Lowland king and, as time went by,
the clan chiefs became minor kings themselves. They made alliances with
other clans, had the power of life and death over their followers.
By the 11th century there was only one king of Scots, and he ruled
over all the south and east of Scotland. In Ireland and Wales Norman
knights were strong enough to fight local chiefs on their own. But only the
English king with a large army could hope to defeat the Scots. Most English
kings did not even try, but Edward I was different.
The Scottish kings were closely connected with England. Since Saxon
times marriages had frequently taken place between the Scottish and English
royal families. At the same time the Scottish kings wanted to establish
strong government and so they offered land to Norman knights from England
in return for their loyalty.
In 1290 a crises took place over the succession to the Scottish
throne. On a stormy night in 1286 King Alexander of Scotland was riding
home along a path by the sea in the dark. His horse took a false step, and
the king was thrown from the top of a cliff.
Disputes arose at once among all those who had any claim at all to the
Scottish throne. Finally two of the claimants, John de Balliol and Robert
Bruce, were left. Scottish nobles wanted to avoid civil war and invited
Edward I to settle the matter. Edward had already shown interest in joining
Scotland to his kingdom. He wanted his son to marry Margaret, the heir to
the Scottish throne, but she had died in a shipwreck. Now he had another
chance. He told both men that they must do homage to him, and so accept his
overlordship, before he would help settle the question. He then invaded
Scotland and put one of them, John de Balliol, on the Scottish throne.
De Balliol’s four years as a king were not a success. First Edward
made him provide money and troops for the English army and the Scottish
nobles rebelled. They felt that Edward was ruining their country.
Then Edward invaded Scotland again, and captured all the main Scottish
castles. During this invasion he stole the sacred Stone of Destiny from
Scone Abbey. The legend said that all Scottish kings must sit on it. Edward
believed that without the Stone, any Scottish coronation would be
meaningless, and that his own possession of the Stone would persuade the
Scots to accept him as king. However, neither he nor his successors became
kings of Scots, and the Scottish kings managed perfectly well without the
