Scotland the How? E-Book

John and Noreen Hamilton

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

How much do you know about Scottish history? We all know bits of it. This book by the authors of Scottish History: Strange but True sets out to show how these 'bits' fit together – how the characters and events of Scottish history made the country of Scotland. We do not ponder 'WHY?' we demand 'HOW?' How was Scotland founded by refugees? How did the Vikings make Scotland happen? How did King David save Scotland AND give it away? How did Robert the Bruce forget Scottish history? How did a King of Scots declare war on Scotland? How did the Jacobites win every round, yet get smashed in the final – twice? How did Scotland embrace kilts and tartan after it banned them?

Leseprobe

In memory of John Hamilton1958 – 2022

First published 2022

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© John & Noreen Hamilton, 2022

The rights of John & Noreen Hamilton to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 217 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

STARTING THOUGHTS

THE MAKING OF SCOTLAND

Before Scotland

Scotland’s Start

The King Who Saved Scotland

The Making Of The Highlands

BRUCES AND STEWARTS

Independence Lost And Found

Early Stewarts

Early James

STEWART TO STUART

John Knox – He Had Four Marys

Mary The Lassie

THE WISEST FOOL

THE STUART WARS

The War Of The Three Kingdoms

The Williamite Wars

Queen Anne And The End

The Jacobite Risings

SCOTLAND THE NOO!

FINAL THOUGHTS

STARTING THOUGHTS

Scotland is a middle-sized European country (twenty-third out of fifty for population). It is situated on the north-west periphery. Yet it has a huge presence. The Scottish brand identity is recognised across the world. It punches above its weight.

The big question is HOW? And that includes the West of Scotland use of ‘HOW’: as comedian Kevin Bridges puts it, ‘You do not ponder WHY? You demand HOW?’

HOW DID SCOTLAND GET TO BE THE WAY IT IS?

The Hows and Whys

This is what this book sets out to explain. As the Romans retreated, Britain collapsed into what became known as the Dark Ages. It was out of this period that Alba and then Scotland would emerge. The thrust of this book is to tell the story of how north Britain changed from a bunch of warring nations into a country we would recognise as Scotland today. Roughly the thousand years between ad 800 and 1800 or more precisely – AD 795 to 1822.

Scotland the How? is about taking all the disjointed bits of history and joining them up – how is one thing connected to the other?

How is Scotland a ‘Historical Nation’?

Philosopher David Hume described Scots as ‘the historical nation’. Scotland has HISTORY, lots of it. We sell it well! It is a major plank of the strategy for attracting tourists.

Visitors to Scotland will find thousands of historic sites, each plying their wares. You can visit castles and read the interpretation boards, which will describe, on different panels, how this venue was important in the ninth or twelfth or seventeenth century. If you are lucky you will get a real human guide who can answer your questions.

For natives, the ‘Scottish history’ slopped out to generations of Scottish school children was utterly woeful; mostly they had to learn, parrot-like, lists of English monarchs. Scottish characters and events cropped up randomly with no connecting thread. Yet if you stand anywhere in Scotland you can’t throw a Mars Bar in any direction without hitting some story from the past!

If you visit Edinburgh’s Old Town (no other city wears its history heart on its sleeve more flagrantly than Edinburgh) you will find the Royal Mile with a castle at one end and a palace at the other (and close by the new Scottish Parliament). Along its length you will find 100,000 yards of tartan, you will find the High Kirk of Scotland, you will find the Scottish Parliament, which was abandoned in 1707, you will find a 100,000 images of the Jacobite rebel Bonnie Prince Charlie, you will find the Mercat Cross where many honest and dishonest people had their heads violently removed from their bodies.

Down in the Grassmarket you will find a memorial to the Covenanting martyrs and, nearby, the Covenanters graveyard and a quaint story about a loyal dog.

You will find statues of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace and Charles II (who had more to do with Scotland’s story than you might think). (There are quite a few nineteenth- and twentieth-century monuments, but they are for another volume.)

But where is the overwhelming monument that ties Scottish history together? There is a stunning memorial on Princes Street, but this is dedicated to a fiction writer. We’ll come to him.

Joining the dots

There is plenty of information: Scotland the How? is all about joining the dots.

This book is a sprint through a thousand years of history. It only skims the surface. For every character and every event mentioned there is a much deeper and wider story. They are all there to be discovered.

There are thousands of books each telling a more complete story about any aspect, and more produced every year. Archive sites on the internet mean we can read books long out of print that could previously only be viewed in the best libraries. The internet itself is filled with documentaries and commentaries. It is easy to find papers and lectures by real historians. The best thing about the internet is that anyone can say what they want; the worst thing about the internet is that anyone can say what they want. Proceed with caution but proceed nonetheless!

ABOUT HISTORY

When it comes to history DONT BELIEVE A WORD!

All history is written by somebody. Each writer has a limited amount of information. Even if you were actually at an event, your impressions may be very different from the person who was standing beside you. As humans we are very good at fooling ourselves, we remember selectively and rewrite our own stories. That’s supposing we are trying to be honest.

Every writer has an agenda. What they write will inevitably be coloured by their own preconceptions and prejudices. There is also a very distinct possibility that they are deliberately trying to deceive. It is extremely common for any generation or any new regime to overwrite the past to show themselves in the best possible light. Sorting the lies and damn lies from the merely misinformed is quite a task.

And things CHANGE

For archaeologists any excavation has the potential to turn up a find that turns previous thinking on its head. For example, twenty-first-century explorations on Orkney have revealed a previously unknown temple complex of a sophistication never before imagined. Impressions of the Neolithic across Britain will need to be reviewed.

For historians a newly discovered document may reveal (once you have discounted forgery) that someone or other was guilty or was innocent. The story has to change.

And fashions CHANGE

Attitudes and opinions, particularly in regards to issues such as race and gender, which were taken as mainstream a century ago would be unthinkable today.

And historians CHANGE THEIR MINDS

If history was complete, historians would be out of a job. Each generation and each individual is bound to re-examine and re-interpret what was written before.

And people and even nations FORGET!

Scotland’s great Statement of the Nation, the Declaration of Arbroath, dismisses the heritage of most of Scotland’s own population in a sentence.

There is no TRUE version – THERE ARE ONLY STORIES

So how can we come to an understanding of the past? The answer is to read ALL the stories, or at least more than one. Sometimes an account that is patently partisan can be helpful: at least you know what the bias is to start.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

When it comes to ‘don’t believe a word’, the authors happily include these words. This book contains no original research. It is cobbled together from commonly available books and resources, though always from more than one source.

We did not set out with any particular point to prove or axe to grind but doubtless prejudices and opinions are in there. We are not trained historians. We are storytellers and our object throughout has been to tell the story as clearly and simply as we can.

L.R.N. Gray coined the maxim ‘add lightness and simplificate’. He was talking about designing aircraft but it applies to just about any design task. We have borne it in mind.

In teaching oral storytelling we always urge tellers to strip the story down to its basics. We have tried to keep the number of characters to a minimum, but nothing happens in a vacuum. For every person mentioned there is a whole cast of characters making things happen – to them we apologise.

The book is largely about kings and the occasional queen. For the period from the Dark Ages to the eighteenth century it really was a ‘game of thrones’. A king might spend a great deal of effort (and lives) trying to achieve and maintain his crown. The whole thrust of the politics of the nation revolved around him.

We love social histories that try to reconstruct the lives of men and women, but that is not this book. In the earlier centuries there is very little information about the lives of common folk. We know most about the clergy since they did most of the writing down. Being a peasant didn’t really change much unless the affairs of kings darkened your door.

ABOUT NAMING THE NAMES

Scottish history is populated by Scottish nobles; the Duke of Albany, the Earl of Mar, the Duke of Atholl, the Marquis of Moray etc, etc. It can get very confusing.

These are feudal lordships quite distinct in culture and practice from the Highland clans. The titles were associated with geographical areas rather than specific families, although sometimes they were maintained under the same name for generations. In the north-east, many of them hark back to ancient Pictish kingdoms. The areas of Atholl or Moray or Badenoch, or wherever, did not have fixed boundaries and grew or shrank according to local disputes. Where the line ended without an heir, the title became the gift of the king. Sometimes it was awarded to some family in the royal favour. Sometimes it was retained for one of the king’s spare sons, even, on occasion, a royal bastard.

Earldom map.

When any of these noblemen had a falling out with a royal house, which was not uncommon, they lost their title and probably their head. Again the title was in the king’s power and could come under new ownership or could be handed back to the next generation.

For example, the ‘Earl of Mar’ could be a Douglas, a Drummond, a Cochrane, an Erskine or a royal Stewart, depending on the exact date.

Sometimes titles went out of use and when reinstated they start the counting again. For instance, when the Earl of Mar turns up as a Jacobite commander in 1715 he called himself the 6th Earl but he could also be deemed the 23rd Earl.

Also, a lord could get promotion, which was not necessarily passed on. The Eighth Earl of Argyll was ALSO the 1st Marquis of Argyll. His son went back to plain Earl. The 1st Duke of Argyll was also 10th Earl.

There can be a further complication when the heir to a title holds a different title. For example, the eldest son of the Duke of Argyll is known as the Lord of Lorne (part of Argyll territory). He automatically becomes Earl (or Duke or Marquis) on his father’s death. We have read histories where the same man suddenly changes name without much explanation.

There are exceptions. The Duke of Rothesay is always a Stewart. It goes to the heir apparent, just as Prince of Wales does to the English heir. In fact, the current holder is Prince Charles Windsor (he is also Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and High Steward of Scotland). The title implied no ownership of the Isle of Bute (which did remain in the control of an endlessly colourful branch of the Stewarts).

Similarly, the Duke of Albany is always a Stewart. It was awarded to a younger son of the king. In many ways it is the most impressive title since ‘Albany’ is an anglicisation of ‘Alba’, Gaelic for Scotland. So Duke of Scotland? Despite the grandiose title, it did not come with any particular territory. Dukes of Albany were notorious for creating trouble for their fathers and brothers.

At the time of the Act of Union, when the power was in the London court, a new raft of titles were awarded, (these were often ones that had been out of use for decades) as bribes to those who supported the act. By this time these were ceremonial accolades and did not imply any land or real power.

On top of all this the families had an appalling lack of imagination when it came to Christian names. The same forename was passed from father to son again and again. If a child died in childhood his name would be recycled to a younger son.

How do you need name, rank and number?

The only way to correctly identify someone is to give the full name, rank, and number: for example, James Graham, 1st Marquis (and 5th Earl) of Montrose. This can get very clumsy. The book tries to keep things as clear as possible.

It is very helpful when there is a nickname. There may be eight Earls of Argyll (and thirteen Dukes) but there is only one ‘Squinty Archie’.

ABOUT DEATH

As well as a large number of kings, there are a large number of battles. Sometimes we need to pause and think about that.

Death was more common in the Middle Ages

The quote above is attributed to a school child. While we know that the death rate is always 100 per cent, we do know what they meant; premature or violent death was more common. Those who lived through the horrors of the twentieth-century world wars or those living in any of the twenty-first-century war zones might have a different perspective (in early 2022 there are current armed conflicts in over twenty countries).

Figures that give life expectancy in Middle Age Britain as 31 years are misleading. Death in childhood was very common. This narrative is filled with unfortunate women who were forced to continue bearing heirs despite miscarriages, stillbirths and infant deaths. All involving great dangers to their own health.

If you made it to 20 you had every chance of reaching 50. Balancing the early deaths were a few who made it to 70 (William the Lion got to 72).

Infectious diseases or infection of wounds from accident or combat were the commonest causes of death. Surviving the battle might not put you in the clear; many died in the hours, days or weeks afterward.

In writing this story we are confronted with battles. While battlefield casualty numbers are very unreliable, again and again there are dozens, hundreds or thousands dead.

A king or a senior noble might have his body carried off the field for a burial with due ceremony. For the common women who had no choice but to wave their men folk off to battle there was no closure. The men simply didn’t come back. They lay where they fell or were, at best, thrown into a mass grave.

Scottish folk tradition tells that if you come across a strange woman washing blood out of a shirt you will know that your love has died far away.

For many there was no word at all. The experience is captured in Karine Polwart’s song:

Whaur dae ye lie, my faither?

Whaur dae ye lie, my son?

Whaur dae ye lie, my ane true love?

When will the truth be won?

THE MAKING OF SCOTLAND

ORIGINS

How is Scotland a ‘Land of Fire and Ice’?

Parts of Scotland, Greenland and North America were formed in the southern hemisphere as part of the continent of Laurentia. Laurentia drifted north, crossing the equator before starting to break up. The North Atlantic Ocean began to form, leaving North America and the Scottish fragment on opposite shores. They still continue to move farther apart.

About 410 million years (about a tenth of the age of the Earth) Scotland crashed into England, explaining why the Southern Uplands are largely made up of rocks formed on the bottom of the ocean.

Over the period since, what is now Scotland has been ablaze. Many familiar landmarks are volcanoes; Ben Nevis, the Cuillin Ridge, both Arthur’s Seat and Edinburgh (and Stirling) Castle Rock.

More recently, over 2½ million years, glaciers and ice sheets have invaded Scotland in at least five separate ice ages – huge forces carving the rock into landscapes we recognise today.

Truly a land of fire and ice.

How did we get here?

Scotland is a very young country: a mere 10,000 years old (to pick a round number). It had numerous eras when it had entire flora and fauna that we would not recognise. The most recent ice age ‘dich’t the sklate’ – wiped the slate clean. The entire natural world had to restart. Every plant, invertebrate and animal had to blow in, fly in or crawl in. Including humans.

There is a common perception that a great magnificent Wild Wood grew up and then human beings arrived and spoiled it all. But it is quite possible that there were footsteps in the snow. Hunter-gatherers may have been making summer visits north during the thousands of years it took the forest to develop. Up until about 6,500 years ago they could have walked dry shod across what is now the North Sea.

Sometime after 6,000 years ago the Neolithic Era brought farming and all the disruption to the Wild Wood that that required.

The people arriving could come by boat from the Continent or by the ‘Western Route’ from the Mediterranean via Spain and Portugal and on up the western coast. Clear evidence that boats were involved lies in the remarkable Neolithic structures found in Orkney.

Twenty-first-century excavations have revealed a remarkable series of buildings close to the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. These represent a level of sophistication that was not expected. It is concluded that these structures have a religious purpose, suggesting that Orkney was a spiritual centre a thousand years before Stonehenge and long before the great Egyptian pyramids.

BY THE WAY: The Orkney Vole has been on Orkney for over 4,500 years. It is not found anywhere else in Britain, but is found in Belgium, suggesting that it arrived as a stowaway on boats travelling directly from the Continent to the island during the Stone Age.

It was traditionally thought that Neolithic people replaced the hunter-gatherers, but now it is thought that the early folk lived alongside the farmers and then got absorbed into the new population. It was equally thought that the Bronze Age people replaced the Stone Age and then the Iron Age people replaced them. It is now thought to be more complicated than that.

INVASIONS

The first written records of north Britain were written by the Romans.

To go back before that we are in a realm where mythology and history are difficult to separate. Much of this was held in the oral tradition, handed from generation to generation by bards of some description. Such stuff is easily lost – much of it has been. Fortunately, some of this material was picked up by early medieval Christian monks, particularly in Ireland. They had their own agenda. They cobbled together bits of ancient mythology, scant existing records and a desire to tie Irish history to the period of the Old Testament and, if possible to link it to biblical landscapes and stories. Among these volumes was the Lebor Gabala Erenn – the Book of Invasions.

Pict.

The Book of Invasions

The Book of Invasions describes SIX different arrivals that (with varying success) attempted to dominate the island. Each group then battles with its predecessors. No dates are given, but the period roughly equates to the Old Testament era.

The penultimate group were the Tuatha de Danaan. There some ideas in their story that place them in the Bronze Age. They brought with them various ‘magical’ items; a magic sword, a magic spear and a magic pot. What could be more ‘magic’ than a metal sword, and metal-tipped spear and a metal pot if you had never seen one before.

They also brought the Lia Fail – the Stone of Destiny. The mythology links to the Bible. The stone was Jacob’s pillow and the De Danaan may possibly be the Tribe of Dan, the Lost Tribe of Israel. The De Danaan then evolve into the mystical fairy folk living in a parallel universe in Ireland (and Scotland, too).

The final invasion, the successful one, was the Milesians. These have traditionally been seen as THE CELTS.

We’re all Celts, aren’t we?

The Celtic Invasions were well known and understood, until recently. The Celts – tall, blond, war-like, artistic people from ‘East of the Danube’ – headed out across Europe conquering all before them. They became the Gauls in France, the Galations in the Middle East and the Scots and Irish.

The Celts evolved along different paths, so by the time they got to Scotland there were two different groups. These could be separated by differences in the languages they left behind. These are P-Celtic, the Britons, whose linguistic legacy remains in Welsh, Cornish and Breton, and Q-Celtic, which is the root of Irish and Scottish Gaelic. The first group came across the Channel up through what is now England and occupied south and east Scotland.

The second group, the Gaelic lot (Goidelic, to use the academic term), came by the Western Route, that is by sea up the west coast of Europe, hopping from the north of Spain to the south of Ireland. There is good archaeological evidence for a strong Celtic culture in what is now Portugal and southern Spain. They would have been far enough from any original homeland to have developed a distinct language and customs.

These Celtic civilisations, divided into many warring tribes, were both well established by the time of the Romans; the Gaelic in Ireland and the west of Scotland and the Britons in the rest of the British mainland.

How does an invasion work?

Most brutally, a massive force enters a region and kills a lot of the natives and forces the survivors to flee en masse. Ethnic cleansing if you like. This is rare (you need a lot of incomers), but not unknown.

Secondly, a force enters, defeats the natives militarily and takes charge, but because most of the invaders are men they take local women as wives and form a hybrid nation. Only the men are unwanted and the invaders may have killed a good proportion of those already.

Thirdly, a force arrives and defeats the natives, then sets up new political structures that ensure the invaders are very much in control, while the locals carry on much as before (so long as they behave themselves). Two cultures exist side by side with limited interaction to begin with. This is the Roman model. Across the Roman Empire native peoples became more and more ‘Romanised’ but the Romans stayed Roman.

The Normans, far and away the best-documented invasion, came in with the Roman ideas and did treat their new territories as conquered lands. But they did marry local women and did merge culturally. In Ireland it was often said of the Normans who went to Ireland that they became ‘more Irish than the Irish’.

The Celts were generally thought of as being Option Two. A militarily powerful elite class mingling with the locals. Or so we all thought.

How have ideas changed?

In recent times, historians have decided that this is all WRONG! We’ve been wrong all these years. There were NO INVASIONS! NOBODY CAME!

Rather it is argued that there was an ‘Invasion of Ideas’! Technological know-how in pottery and metalworking; iron and gold, art styles and religious practices developed somewhere on the Continent invaded. These ideas then took over and dominated the culture of the native peoples. And language! People started voluntarily adopting a new vocabulary and syntax to the extent that they could no longer understand their neighbours.

Veni, Vidi, Veni – How did the Romans ‘come, see and go away again’?

There is a popular misconception that the Romans came to Scotland, where they met the Picts and were so alarmed that they built a big wall to keep these painted savages out. In, fact the Romans were in Scotland for forty-three years before they started building Hadrian’s Wall and built a second wall, the Antonine Wall, farther north fifty years later.

Though they could never be said to have conquered Scotland, they were around for around 300 years and there are dozens of examples of Roman presence scattered across the south of the country.

By AD 400 they had cleared out. As their forces pulled back, the ‘Picts’ had got bolder, striking south of Hadrian’s Wall.

As the Romans retreated, Britain as a whole collapsed into what became known as the Dark Ages. It was out of this period that Alba and then Scotland would emerge. The thrust of this book is to tell that story.

BEFORE SCOTLAND

How did Scotland happen?

THE STORY THAT HAS BEEN TOLD FOR CENTURIES IS … in the ninth century the Scots from the Kingdom of Dal Riata went to war with the Picts under the fearsome leadership of Kenneth MacAlpin. The Scots won – ending Pictland and wiping Pictish culture from the face of the earth. Picts No More! The new kingdom became Alba and then Scotland, and Kenneth MacAlpin was the first king – the Godfather of Scotland!

This begs a few questions.

Before going any further with this it might be wise to stop and consider who exactly was living in the northern part of Britain and what were they up to in the few centuries preceding these events. It’s not simple! As W.C. Sellar put it in his classic 1066 and All That …

The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verse visa).

How did four tribes go to war?

By the end of the seventh century there were four nations in Scotland; the Picts in the north-east, The Britons in the south-west, the Scots of Dal Riata in the west and the Angles of Northumbria in the south-east.

The Britons – the Kingdom of Strathclyde

We have already met the Britons, the P-Celtic speaking people. They were occupying north Britain when the Romans arrived and they remained here when the Romans left. It is likely that they maintained some degree of communication with the other British strongholds in the west of Great Britain – the lands least Romanised; Wales the West Country and the satellite colony in Brittany.

BY THE WAY: It is somewhat ironic that, in the modern day, the folk who most likely to celebrate their ‘Britishness’ are the English. The Welsh, Cornish and most Scots have a far better historical claim.

The Britons occupied the whole of the south of Scotland. That changed at the start of the seventh century when the Angles invaded. If you wonder if the English ever successfully conquered and occupied Scotland, this is it! Around about 620–630 the Angles, specifically the Northumbrians, vanquished the native Britons and held power for several centuries.

But it was not all of north Britain. Not even all of southern north Britain. The British Kingdom of Strathclyde, remained.

Tribe map.

Kingdom of Strathclyde or Alt Clut

The Kingdom of Strathclyde was a fiercely independent and ferocious player in the history of north Britain for many centuries.

Strathclyde is a later name; for most of its history it was known as the Kingdom of Alt Clut. Alt Clut was the name of Dumbarton Rock, a spectacular natural fortress standing guard over the mouth of the River Clyde. The borders of the kingdom were variable, but included north and south shores of the Firth of Clyde, the Clyde Valley and some way south towards Galloway. Galloway was a separate Bretonic kingdom right up to the time of Robert the Bruce.

Most of the scant information we have about the kingdom comes from external sources. From Irish records we learn of a King Ceretic Guletic or (in latinised form) Coroticus. From a letter written by Saint Patrick himself we learn that the Alt Clutians were very early Christians, but also that they were not well behaved. Saint Patrick chastises them:

Soldiers whom I no longer call my fellow citizens or citizens of the Roman saints, but fellow citizens of the devils, in consequence of the evil deeds; who live in death after the hostile rite of the barbarians; associates of the Scots and Apostate Picts; desirous of glutting themselves with the blood of innocent Christians, multitudes of whom I have begotten in God and confirmed in Christ.

To be effectively ex-communicated by the saint, they must already have been Christian.

Several generations on we have King Rhydderch Hael, a contemporary of Scots king Aedan Mac Gabrainn and Saint Columba. He is celebrated in Welsh chronicles for bringing an army to Wales to back Welsh lords against King Rhun Hir of Gwynedd.

These chronicles also record him at war with the Northumbrians and detail one of the many conflicts between Dal Riata and Strathclyde, ‘When Aeden the Wily came to the court of Rhydderch the Generous of Alt Clut; he left neither food nor drink nor beast alive.’

Aidan is ‘the Wily’ and Rhyderrech is ‘the Generous’. It’s not hard to see whose side they were on, demonstrating that some sort of kinship between the Welsh and the north Britons existed as late as the sixth century.

When we get to AD 800 Alt Clut stands as one of the four major power blocs in north Britain.

The Anglish – the Kingdom of Northumbria

How are we not next to Sexland?

Traditional history has taught that during the sixth century there was a major invasion of Great Britain from tribes from modern-day Denmark and Germany; the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. But now? Maybe not!

The Anglo-Saxon invasion is another one that is under review. Opinions vary from total ethnic cleansing and population replacement to no invasion at all, just a change of fashions. One would think that this is a matter that DNA research could clear up, but unfortunately not. Two reports from the same university came up with precisely opposite conclusions.

Scotland was not directly involved in this first wave of invasion (or not invasion). The three tribes established their identity in separate territories; the Angles mostly in the east, the Saxons mostly in the south and the Jutes in Kent. They then set about warring with each other.

The territories are reflected in regional names still in use. The West Saxons were abbreviated to Wessex, East Saxons to Essex, South Saxons to Sussex. The Anglians were in East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria.

Alfred the Great has been long regarded as the Godfather of England – he was a West Saxon. He dreamt of a United Kingdom of Anglo Saxons (which wouldn’t happen till after his death). There is a story that he supported the name Angle-land in order to convince his neighbours that he was proposing a merger, not a takeover. Had he promoted his own ethnic nomenclature we would have SEXLAND as our southern neighbour instead of England.

Northumberland Wha Hae!

As far as Scotland is concerned, Northumbria is the big player. The first Anglian king recorded in the area was as early as 574. The Anglians occupied two distinct territories, Bernicia (modern Northumberland, Tyne and Wear and Durham) and Deira (modern Yorkshire). These were based on pre-existing Bretonic boundaries. The two battled it out, on and off, for decades, but out of the union came the Kingdom of Northumbria.

Expansion northward was on the agenda early with the Battle of Degastan against the Dal Riatans in AD 603. But it was King Edwin (from Deira), in power from around 616 to 633, who was most significant. While he was at constant war with his southern neighbours, the Mercians, he managed to expand Northumbrian territory north, as far as the Forth. His hold was not so secure as his successor; Oswald had to re-invade a few years after Edwin’s death.

Oswald and his brother Osrui, being Bernician royalty, had fled as children when Edwin took control. They were given sanctuary by the Scots and grew up in Dal Riata. When they returned home, Osrui brought Irish/Celtic-style Christianity to the pagan Northumbrians. He imported Bishop Aidan (later Saint Aidan) from Ireland to establish the monastic settlement on Lindisfarne. Mind you, he later presided over the Synod of Whitby in 664, which rejected Celtic Christian practices and embraced the Roman Catholic

Dores boar.

From the mid-seventh century the area that is now the Scottish Borders and the Lothians was under the control of the Northumbrians. It would remain so for three centuries. They were to spend those 300 years butting heads with their neighbours the Picts, the Strathclyde Britons and the Dal Riatan Scots. Among many, many battles, the Battle of Dun Nectain in 685 against the Picts halted their expansion northwards.

In later centuries several Scottish kings would spend a lot of effort trying to absorb Northumbria into Scotland, but in ad 800 the Northumbrians held most of southern Scotland.

The Picts – the Kingdom of the Picts