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AN OUTLINE OF THE
RELATIONS BETWEEN
ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND
(500-1707)
BY
ROBERT S. RAIT
FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
LONDON
BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C.
GLASGOW AND DUBLIN
1901
PREFATORY NOTE
I desire to take this opportunity of acknowledging valuable aid derived
from the recent works on Scottish History by Mr. Hume Brown and Mr.
Andrew Lang, from Mr. E.W. Robertson's _Scotland under her Early Kings_,
and from Mr. Oman's _Art of War_. Personal acknowledgments are due to
Professor Davidson of Aberdeen, to Mr. H. Fisher, Fellow of New College,
and to Mr. J.T.T. Brown, of Glasgow, who was good enough to aid me in
the search for references to the Highlanders in Scottish mediæval
literature, and to give me the benefit of his great knowledge of this
subject.
R.S.R.
NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD,
_April, 1901_.
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION ix
CHAP. I. RACIAL DISTRIBUTION AND FEUDAL RELATIONS,
_c._500-1066 a.d. 1
" II. SCOTLAND AND THE NORMANS, 1066-1286 11
" III. THE SCOTTISH POLICY OF EDWARD I, 1286-1296 31
" IV. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, 1297-1328 41
" V. EDWARD III AND SCOTLAND, 1328-1399 64
" VI. SCOTLAND, LANCASTER, AND YORK, 1400-1500 80
" VII. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE,
1500-1542 101
" VIII. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS, 1542-1568 116
" IX. THE UNION OF THE CROWNS, 1568-1625 141
" X. "THE TROUBLES IN SCOTLAND", 1625-1688 157
" XI. THE UNION OF THE PARLIAMENTS, 1689-1707 180
APPENDIX A. REFERENCES TO THE HIGHLANDERS IN
MEDIÆVAL LITERATURE 195
" B. THE FEUDALIZATION OF SCOTLAND 204
" C. TABLE OF THE COMPETITORS OF 1290 214
INDEX 215
INTRODUCTION
The present volume has been published with two main objects. The writer
has attempted to exhibit, in outline, the leading features of the
international history of the two countries which, in 1707, became the
United Kingdom. Relations with England form a large part, and the heroic
part, of Scottish history, relations with Scotland a very much smaller
part of English history. The result has been that in histories of
England references to Anglo-Scottish relations are occasional and
spasmodic, while students of Scottish history have occasionally
forgotten that, in regard to her southern neighbour, the attitude of
Scotland was not always on the heroic scale. Scotland appears on the
horizon of English history only during well-defined epochs, leaving no
trace of its existence in the intervals between these. It may be that
the space given to Scotland in the ordinary histories of England is
proportional to the importance of Scottish affairs, on the whole; but
the importance assigned to Anglo-Scottish relations in the fourteenth
century is quite disproportionate to the treatment of the same subject
in the fifteenth century. Readers even of Mr. Green's famous book, may
learn with surprise from Mr. Lang or Mr. Hume Brown the part played by
the Scots in the loss of the English dominions in France, or may fail to
understand the references to Scotland in the diplomatic correspondence
of the sixteenth century.[1] There seems to be, therefore, room for a
connected narrative of the attitude of the two countries towards each
other, for only thus is it possible to provide the _data_ requisite for
a fair appreciation of the policy of Edward I and Henry VIII, or of
Elizabeth and James I. Such a narrative is here presented, in outline,
and the writer has tried, as far as might be, to eliminate from his work
the element of national prejudice.
The book has also another aim. The relations between England and
Scotland have not been a purely political connexion. The peoples have,
from an early date, been, to some extent, intermingled, and this mixture
of blood renders necessary some account of the racial relationship. It
has been a favourite theme of the English historians of the nineteenth
century that the portions of Scotland where the Gaelic tongue has ceased
to be spoken are not really Scottish, but English. "The Scots who
resisted Edward", wrote Mr. Freeman, "were the English of Lothian. The
true Scots, out of hatred to the 'Saxons' nearest to them, leagued with
the 'Saxons' farther off."[2] Mr. Green, writing of the time of Edward
I, says: "The farmer of Fife or the Lowlands, and the artisan of the
towns, remained stout-hearted Northumbrian Englishmen", and he adds that
"The coast districts north of the Tay were inhabited by a population of
the same blood as that of the Lowlands".[3] The theory has been, at all
events verbally, accepted by Mr. Lang, who describes the history of
Scotland as "the record of the long resistance of the English of
Scotland to England, of the long resistance of the Celts of Scotland to
the English of Scotland".[4] Above all, the conception has been firmly
planted in the imagination by the poet of the _Lady of the Lake_.
"These fertile plains, that soften'd vale,
Were once the birthright of the Gael;
The stranger came with iron hand,
And from our fathers reft the land."
While holding in profound respect these illustrious names, the writer
ventures to ask for a modification of this verdict. That the Scottish
Lowlanders (among whom we include the inhabitants of the coast
districts from the Tay to the Moray Firth) were, in the end of the
thirteenth century, "English in speech and manners" (as Mr. Oman[5]
guardedly describes them) is beyond doubt. Were they also English in
blood? The evidence upon which the accepted theory is founded is
twofold. In the course of the sixth century the Angles made a descent
between the Humber and the Forth, and that district became part of the
English kingdom of Northumbria. Even here we have, in the evidence of
the place-names, some reasons for believing that a proportion of the
original Brythonic population may have survived. This northern portion
of the kingdom of Northumbria was affected by the Danish invasions, but
it remained an Anglian kingdom till its conquest, in the beginning of
the eleventh century, by the Celtic king, Malcolm II. There is, thus,
sufficient justification for Mr. Freeman's phrase, "the English of
Lothian", if we interpret the term "Lothian" in the strict sense; but it
remains to be explained how the inhabitants of the Scottish Lowlands,
outside Lothian, can be included among the English of Lothian who
resisted Edward I. That explanation is afforded by the events which
followed the Norman Conquest of England. It is argued that the
Englishmen who fled from the Normans united with the original English of
Lothian to produce the result indicated in the passage quoted from Mr.
Green. The farmers of Fife and the Lowlands, the artisans of the towns,
the dwellers in the coast districts north of Tay, became, by the end of
the thirteenth century, stout Northumbrian Englishmen. Mr. Green admits
that the south-west of Scotland was still inhabited, in 1290, by the
Picts of Galloway, and neither he nor any other exponent of the theory
offers any explanation of their subsequent disappearance. The history of
Scotland, from the fourteenth century to the Rising of 1745, contains,
according to this view, a struggle between the Celts and "the English of
Scotland", the most important incident of which is the battle of Harlaw,
in 1411, which resulted in a great victory for "the English of
Scotland". Mr. Hill Burton writes thus of Harlaw: "On the face of
ordinary history it looks like an affair of civil war. But this
expression is properly used towards those who have common interests and
sympathies, who should naturally be friends and may be friends again,
but for a time are, from incidental causes of dispute and quarrel, made
enemies. The contest ... was none of this; it was a contest between
foes, of whom their contemporaries would have said that their ever
being in harmony with each other, or having a feeling of common
interests and common nationality, was not within the range of rational
expectations.... It will be difficult to make those not familiar with
the tone of feeling in Lowland Scotland at that time believe that the
defeat of Donald of the Isles was felt as a more memorable deliverance
even than that of Bannockburn."[6]
We venture to plead for a modification of this theory, which may fairly
be called the orthodox account of the circumstances. It will at once
occur to the reader that some definite proof should be forthcoming that
the Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, outside the Lothians, were actually
subjected to this process of racial displacement. Such a displacement
had certainly not been effected before the Norman Conquest, for it was
only in 1018 that the English of Lothian were subjected to the rule of a
Celtic king, and the large amount of Scottish literature, in the Gaelic
tongue, is sufficient indication that Celtic Scotland was not confined
to the Highlands in the eleventh century. Nor have we any hint of a
racial displacement after the Norman conquest, even though it is
unquestionable that a considerable number of exiles followed Queen
Margaret to Scotland, and that William's harrying of the north of
England drove others over the border. It is easy to lay too much stress
upon the effect of the latter event. The northern counties cannot have
been very thickly populated, and if Mr. Freeman is right in his
description of "that fearful deed, half of policy, half of vengeance,
which has stamped the name of William with infamy", not very many of the
victims of his cruelty can have made good their flight, for we are told
that the bodies of the inhabitants of Yorkshire "were rotting in the
streets, in the highways, or on their own hearthstones". Stone dead left
no fellow to colonize Scotland. We find, therefore, only the results and
not the process of this racial displacement. These results were the
adoption of English manners and the English tongue, and the growth of
English names, and we wish to suggest that they may find an historical
explanation which does not involve the total disappearance of the
Scottish farmer from Fife, or of the Scottish artisan from Aberdeen.
Before proceeding to a statement of the explanation to which we desire
to direct the reader's attention, it may be useful to deal briefly with
the questions relating to the spoken language of Lowland Scotland and to
its place-names. The fact that the language of the Angles and Saxons
completely superseded, in England, the tongue of the conquered Britons,
is admitted to be a powerful argument for the view that the Anglo-Saxon
conquest of England resulted in a racial displacement. But the argument
cannot be transferred to the case of the Scottish Lowlands, where, also,
the English language has completely superseded a Celtic tongue. For, in
the first case, the victory is that of the language of a savage people,
known to be in a state of actual warfare, and it is a victory which
follows as an immediate result of conquest. In Scotland, the victory of
the English tongue (outside the Lothians) dates from a relatively
advanced period of civilization, and it is a victory won, not by
conquest or bloodshed, but by peaceful means. Even in a case of
conquest, change of speech is not conclusive evidence of change of race
(_e.g._ the adoption of a Romance tongue by the Gauls); much less is it
decisive in such an instance as the adoption of English by the
Lowlanders of Scotland. In striking contrast to the case of England, the
victory of the Anglo-Saxon speech in Scotland did not include the
adoption of English place-names. The reader will find the subject fully
discussed in the valuable work by the Reverend J.B. Johnston, entitled
_Place-Names of Scotland_. "It is impossible", says Mr. Johnston, "to
speak with strict accuracy on the point, but Celtic names in Scotland
must outnumber all the rest by nearly ten to one." Even in counties
where the Gaelic tongue is now quite obsolete (_e.g._ in Fife, in
Forfar, in the Mearns, and in parts of Aberdeenshire), the place-names
are almost entirely Celtic. The region where English place-names abound
is, of course, the Lothians; but scarcely an English place-name is
definitely known to have existed, even in the Lothians, before the
Norman Conquest, and, even in the Lothians, the English tongue never
affected the names of rivers and mountains. In many instances, the
existence of a place-name which has now assumed an English form is no
proof of English race. As the Gaelic tongue died out, Gaelic place-names
were either translated or corrupted into English forms; Englishmen,
receiving grants of land from Malcolm Canmore and his successors, called
these lands after their own names, with the addition of the suffix-ham
or-tun; the influence of English ecclesiastics introduced many new
names; and as English commerce opened up new seaports, some of these
became known by the names which Englishmen had given them.[7] On the
whole, the evidence of the place-names corroborates our view that the
changes were changes in civilization, and not in racial distribution.
We now proceed to indicate the method by which these changes were
effected, apart from any displacement of race. Our explanation finds a
parallel in the process which has changed the face of the Scottish
Highlands within the last hundred and fifty years, and which produced
very important results within the "sixty years" to which Sir Walter
Scott referred in the second title of _Waverley_.[8] There has been no
racial displacement; but the English language and English civilization
have gradually been superseding the ancient tongue and the ancient
customs of the Scottish Highlands. The difference between Skye and Fife
is that the influences which have been at work in the former for a
century and a half have been in operation in the latter for more than
eight hundred years.
What then were the influences which, between 1066 and 1300, produced in
the Scottish Lowlands some of the results that, between 1746 and 1800,
were achieved in the Scottish Highlands? That they included an infusion
of English blood we have no wish to deny. Anglo-Saxons, in considerable
numbers, penetrated northwards, and by the end of the thirteenth
century the Lowlanders were a much less pure race than, except in the
Lothians, they had been in the days of Malcolm Canmore. Our contention
is, that we have no evidence for the assertion that this Saxon admixture
amounted to a racial change, and that, ethnically, the men of Fife and
of Forfar were still Scots, not English. Such an infusion of English
blood as our argument allows will not explain the adoption of the
English tongue, or of English habits of life; we must look elsewhere for
the full explanation. The English victory was, as we shall try to show,
a victory not of blood but of civilization, and three main causes helped
to bring it about. The marriage of Malcolm Canmore introduced two new
influences into Scotland--an English Court and an English Church, and
contemporaneously with the changes consequent upon these new
institutions came the spread of English commerce, carrying with it the
English tongue along the coast, and bringing an infusion of English
blood into the towns.[9] In the reign of David I, the son of Malcolm
Canmore and St. Margaret, these purely Saxon influences were succeeded
by the Anglo-Norman tendencies of the king's favourites. Grants of
land[10] to English and Norman courtiers account for the occurrence of
English and Norman family and place-names. The men who lived in
immediate dependence upon a lord, giving him their services and
receiving his protection, owing him their homage and living under his
sole jurisdiction, took the name of the lord whose men they were.
A more important question arises with regard to the system of land
tenure, and the change from clan ownership to feudal possession. How was
the tribal system suppressed? An outline of the process by which
Scotland became a feudalized country will be found in the Appendix,
where we shall also have an opportunity of referring, for purposes of
comparison, to the methods by which clan-feeling was destroyed after the
last Jacobite insurrection. Here, it must suffice to give a brief
summary of the case there presented. It is important to bear in mind
that the tribes of 1066 were not the clans of 1746. The clan system in
the Highlands underwent considerable development between the days of
Malcolm Canmore and those of the Stuarts. Too much stress must not be
laid upon the unwillingness of the people to give up tribal ownership,
for it is clear from our early records that the rights of
joint-occupancy were confined to the immediate kin of the head of the
clan. "The limit of the immediate kindred", says Mr. E.W. Robertson,[11]
"extended to the third generation, all who were fourth in descent from a
Senior passing from amongst the joint-proprietary, and receiving,
apparently, a final allotment; which seems to have been separated
permanently from the remainder of the joint-property by certain
ceremonies usual on such occasions." To such holders of individual
property the charter offered by David I gave additional security of
tenure. We know from the documents entitled "Quoniam attachiamenta",
printed in the first volume of the _Acts of the Parliament of Scotland_,
that the tribal system included large numbers of bondmen, to whom the
change to feudalism meant little or nothing. But even when all due
allowance has been made for this, the difficulty is not completely
solved. There must have been some owners of clan property whom the
changes affected in an adverse way, and we should expect to hear of
them. We do hear of them, for the reigns of the successors of Malcolm
Canmore are largely occupied with revolts in Galloway and in Morayshire.
The most notable of these was the rebellion of MacHeth, Mormaor of
Moray, about 1134. On its suppression, David I confiscated the earldom
of Moray, and granted it, by charters, to his own favourites, and
especially to the Anglo-Normans, from Yorkshire and Northumberland, whom
he had invited to aid him in dealing with the reactionary forces of
Moray; but such grants of land in no way dispossessed the lesser
tenants, who simply held of new lords and by new titles. Fordun, who
wrote two centuries later, ascribes to David's successor, Malcolm IV, an
invasion of Moray, and says that the king scattered the inhabitants
throughout the rest of Scotland, and replaced them by "his own peaceful
people".[12] There is no further evidence in support of this statement,
and almost the whole of Malcolm's short reign was occupied with the
settlement of Galloway. We know that he followed his grandfather's
policy of making grants of land in Moray, and this is probably the germ
of truth in Fordun's statement. Moray, however, occupied rather an
exceptional position. "As the power of the sovereign extended over the
west," says Mr. E.W. Robertson, "it was his policy, not to eradicate the
old ruling families, but to retain them in their native provinces,
rendering them more or less responsible for all that portion of their
respective districts which was not placed under the immediate authority
of the royal sheriffs or baillies." As this policy was carried out even
in Galloway, Argyll, and Ross, where there were occasional rebellions,
and was successful in its results, we have no reason for believing that
it was abandoned in dealing with the rest of the Lowlands. As, from time
to time, instances occurred in which this plan was unsuccessful, and as
other causes for forfeiture arose, the lands were granted to strangers,
and by the end of the thirteenth century the Scottish nobility was
largely Anglo-Norman. The vestiges of the clan system which remained may
be part of the explanation of the place of the great Houses in Scottish
History. The unique importance of such families as the Douglasses or the
Gordons may thus be a portion of the Celtic heritage of the Lowlands.
If, then, it was not by a displacement of race, but through the subtle
influences of religion, feudalism, and commerce that the Scottish
Lowlands came to be English in speech and in civilization, if the
farmers of Fife and some, at least, of the burghers of Dundee or of
Aberdeen were really Scots who had been subjected to English influences,
we should expect to find no strong racial feeling in mediæval Scotland.
Such racial antagonism as existed would, in this case, be owing to the
large admixture of Scandinavian blood in Caithness and in the Isles,
rather than to any difference between the true Scots and "the English
of the Lowlands". Do we, then, find any racial antagonism between the
Highlands and the Lowlands? If Mr. Freeman is right in laying down the
general rule that "the true Scots, out of hatred to the 'Saxons' nearest
to them, leagued with the 'Saxons' farther off", if Mr. Hill Burton is
correct in describing the red Harlaw as a battle between foes who could
have no feeling of common nationality, there is nothing to be said in
support of the theory we have ventured to suggest. We may fairly expect
some signs of ill-will between those who maintained the Celtic
civilization and their brethren who had abandoned the ancient customs
and the ancient tongue; we may naturally look for attempts to produce a
conservative or Celtic reaction, but anything more than this will be
fatal to our case. The facts do not seem to us to bear out Mr. Freeman's
generalization. When the independence of Scotland is really at stake, we
shall find the "true Scots" on the patriotic side. Highlanders and
Islesmen fought under the banner of David I at Northallerton; they took
their place along with the men of Carrick in the Bruce's own division at
Bannockburn, and they bore their part in the stubborn ring that
encircled James IV at Flodden. At other times, indeed, we do find the
Lords of the Isles involved in treacherous intrigues with the kings of
England, but just in the same way as we see the Earls of Douglas
engaged in traitorous schemes against the Scottish kings. In both cases
alike we are dealing with the revolt of a powerful vassal against a weak
king. Such an incident is sufficiently frequent in the annals of
Scotland to render it unnecessary to call in racial considerations to
afford an explanation. One of the most notable of these intrigues
occurred in the year 1408, when Donald of the Isles, who chanced to be
engaged in a personal quarrel about the heritage which he claimed in
right of his Lowland relatives, made a treacherous agreement with Henry
IV; and the quarrel ended in the battle of Harlaw in 1411. The real
importance of Harlaw is that it ended in the defeat of a Scotsman who,
like some other Scotsmen in the South, was acting in the English
interest; any further significance that it may possess arises from the
consideration that it is the last of a series of efforts directed
against the predominance, not of the English race, but of Saxon speech
and civilization. It was just because Highlanders and Lowlanders did
represent a common nationality that the battle was fought, and the blood
spilt on the field of Harlaw was not shed in any racial struggle, but in
the cause of the real English conquest of Scotland, the conquest of
civilization and of speech.
Our argument derives considerable support from the references to the
Highlands of Scotland which we find in mediæval literature. Racial
distinctions were not always understood in the Middle Ages; but readers
of Giraldus Cambrensis are familiar with the strong racial feeling that
existed between the English and the Welsh, and between the English and
the Irish. If the Lowlanders of Scotland felt towards the Highlanders as
Mr. Hill Burton asserts that they did feel, we should expect to find
references to the difference between Celts and Saxons. But, on the
contrary, we meet with statement after statement to the effect that the
Highlanders are only Scotsmen who have maintained the ancient Scottish
language and literature, while the Lowlanders have adopted English
customs and a foreign tongue. The words "Scots" and "Scotland" are never
used to designate the Highlanders as distinct from other inhabitants of
Scotland, yet the phrase "Lingua Scotica" means, up to the end of the
fifteenth century, the Gaelic tongue.[13] In the beginning of the
sixteenth century John Major speaks of "the wild Scots and Islanders" as
using Irish, while the civilized Scots speak English; and Gavin Douglas
professed to write in Scots (_i.e._ the Lowland tongue). In the course
of the century this became the regular usage. Acts of the Scottish
Parliament, directed against Highland marauders, class them with the
border thieves. There is no hint in the Register of the Privy Council or
in the Exchequer Rolls, of any racial feeling, and the independence of
the Celtic chiefs has been considerably exaggerated. James IV and James
V both visited the Isles, and the chief town of Skye takes its name from
the visit of the latter. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, it
was safe for Hector Boece, the Principal of the newly founded university
of Aberdeen, to go in company of the Rector to make a voyage to the
Hebrides, and, in the account they have left us of their experiences, we
can discover no hint that there existed between Highlanders and
Lowlanders much the same difference as separated the English from the
Welsh. Neither in Barbour's _Bruce_ nor in Blind Harry's _Wallace_ is
there any such consciousness of difference, although Barbour lived in
Aberdeen in the days before Harlaw. John of Fordun, a fellow-townsman
and a contemporary of Barbour, was an ardent admirer of St. Margaret and
of David I, and of the Anglo-Norman institutions they introduced, while
he possessed an invincible objection to the kilt. We should therefore
expect to find in him some consciousness of the racial difference. He
writes of the Highlanders with some ill-will, describing them as a
"savage and untamed people, rude and independent, given to rapine, ...
hostile to the English language and people, and, owing to diversity of
speech, even to their own nation[14]." But it is his custom to write
thus of the opponents of the Anglo-Norman civil and ecclesiastical
institutions, and he brings all Scotland under the same condemnation
when he tells us how David "did his utmost to draw on that rough and
boorish people towards quiet and chastened manners".[15] The reference
to "their own nation" shows, too, that Fordun did not understand that
the Highlanders were a different people; and when he called them hostile
to the English, he was evidently unaware that their custom was "out of
hatred to the Saxons nearest them" to league with the English. John
Major, writing in the reign of James IV (1489-1513), mentions the
differences between Highlander and Lowlander. The wild Scots speak
Irish; the civilized Scots use English. "But", he adds, "most of us
spoke Irish a short time ago."[16] His contemporary, Hector Boece, who
made the Tour to the Hebrides, says: "Those of us who live on the
borders of England have forsaken our own tongue and learned English,
being driven thereto by wars and commerce. But the Highlanders remain
just as they were in the time of Malcolm Canmore, in whose days we began
to adopt English manners."[17] When Bishop Elphinstone applied, in 1493,
for Papal permission to found a university in Old Aberdeen, in proximity
to the barbarian Highlanders, he made no suggestion of any racial
difference between the English-speaking population of Aberdeen and their
Gaelic-speaking neighbours.[18] Late in the sixteenth century, John
Lesley, the defender of Queen Mary, who had been bishop of Ross, and
came of a northern family, wrote in a strain similar to that of Major
and Boece. "Foreign nations look on the Gaelic-speaking Scots as wild
barbarians because they maintain the customs and the language of their
ancestors; but we call them Highlanders."[19]
Even in connexion with the battle of Harlaw, we find that Scottish
historians do not use such terms in speaking of the Highland forces as
Mr. Hill Burton would lead us to expect. Of the two contemporary
authorities, one, the Book of Pluscarden, was probably written by a
Highlander, while the continuation of Fordun's _Scoti-chronicon_, in
which we have a more detailed account of the battle, was the work of
Bower, a Lowlander who shared Fordun's antipathy to Highland customs.
The _Liber Pluscardensis_ mentions the battle in a very casual manner.
It was fought between Donald of the Isles and the Earl of Mar; there was
great slaughter: and it so happened that the town of Cupar chanced to be
burned in the same year.[20] Bower assigns a greater importance to the
affair;[21] he tells us that Donald wished to spoil Aberdeen and then to
add to his own possessions all Scotland up to the Tay. It is as if he
were writing of the ambition of the House of Douglas. But there is no
hint of racial antipathy; the abuse applied to Donald and his followers
would suit equally well for the Borderers who shouted the Douglas
battle-cry. John Major tells us that it was a civil war fought for the
spoil of the famous city of Aberdeen, and he cannot say who won--only
the Islanders lost more men than the civilized Scots. For him, its chief
interest lay in the ferocity of the contest; rarely, even in struggles
with a foreign foe, had the fighting been so keen.[22] The fierceness
with which Harlaw was fought impressed the country so much that, some
sixty years later, when Major was a boy, he and his playmates at the
Grammar School of Haddington used to amuse themselves by mock fights in
which they re-enacted the red Harlaw.
From Major we turn with interest to the Principal of the University and
King's College, Hector Boece, who wrote his _History of Scotland_, at
Aberdeen, about a century after the battle of Harlaw, and who shows no
trace of the strong feeling described by Mr. Hill Burton. He narrates
the origin of the quarrel with much sympathy for the Lord of the Isles,
and regrets that he was not satisfied with recovering his own heritage
of Ross, but was tempted by the pillage of Aberdeen, and he speaks of
the Lowland army as "the Scots on the other side".[23] His narrative in
the _History_ is devoid of any racial feeling whatsoever, and in his
_Lives of the Bishops of Aberdeen_ he omits any mention of Harlaw at
all. We have laid stress upon the evidence of Boece because in Aberdeen,
if anywhere, the memory of the "Celtic peril" at Harlaw should have
survived. Similarly, George Buchanan speaks of Harlaw as a raid for
purposes of plunder, made by the islanders upon the mainland.[24] These
illustrations may serve to show how Scottish historians really did look
upon the battle of Harlaw, and how little do they share Mr. Burton's
horror of the Celts.
When we turn to descriptions of Scotland we find no further proof of the
correctness of the orthodox theory. When Giraldus Cambrensis wrote, in
the twelfth century, he remarked that the Scots of his time have an
affinity of race with the Irish,[25] and the English historians of the
War of Independence speak of the Scots as they do of the Welsh or the
Irish, and they know only one type of Scotsman. We have already seen the
opinion of John Major, the sixteenth-century Scottish historian and
theologian, who had lived much in France, and could write of his native
country from an _ab extra_ stand-point, that the Highlanders speak Irish
and are less respectable than the other Scots; and his opinion was
shared by two foreign observers, Pedro de Ayala and Polydore Vergil. The
former remarks on the difference of speech, and the latter says that the
more civilized Scots have adopted the English tongue. In like manner
English writers about the time of the Union of the Crowns write of the
Highlanders as Scotsmen who retain their ancient language. Camden,
indeed, speaks of the Lowlands as being Anglo-Saxon in origin, but he
restricts his remark to the district which had formed part of the
kingdom of Northumbria.[26]
We should, of course, expect to find that the gradually widening breach
in manners and language between Highlanders and Lowlanders produced some
dislike for the Highland robbers and their Irish tongue, and we do
occasionally, though rarely, meet some indication of this. There are not
many references to the Highlanders in Scottish literature earlier than
the sixteenth century. "Blind Harry" (Book VI, ll. 132-140) represents
an English soldier as using, in addressing Wallace, first a mixture of
French and Lowland Scots, and then a mixture of Lowland Scots and
Gaelic:
"Dewgar, gud day, bone Senzhour, and gud morn!
* * * * *
Sen ye ar Scottis, zeit salust sall ye be;
Gud deyn, dawch Lard, bach lowch, banzoch a de".
In "The Book of the Howlat", written in the latter half of the fifteenth
century, by a certain Richard Holland, who was an adherent of the House
of Douglas, there is a similar imitation of Scottish Gaelic, with the
same phrase "Banachadee" (the blessing of God). This seemingly innocent
phrase seems to have some ironical signification, for we find in the
_Auchinleck Chronicle_ (anno 1452) that it was used by some Highlanders
as a term of abuse towards the Bishop of Argyll. Another example occurs
in a coarse "Answer to ane Helandmanis Invective", by Alexander
Montgomerie, the court poet of James VI. The Lowland literature of the
sixteenth century contains a considerable amount of abuse of the
Highland tongue. William Dunbar (1460-1520), in his "Flyting" (an
exercise in Invective), reproaches his antagonist, Walter Kennedy, with
his Highland origin. Kennedy was a native of Galloway, while Dunbar
belonged to the Lothians, where we should expect the strongest
appreciation of the differences between Lowlander and Highlander.
Dunbar, moreover, had studied (or, at least, resided) at Oxford, and was
one of the first Scotsmen to succumb to the attractions of "town". The
most suggestive point in the "Flyting" is that a native of the Lothians
could still regard a Galwegian as a "beggar Irish bard". For Walter
Kennedy spoke and wrote in Lowland Scots; he was, possibly, a graduate
of the University of Glasgow, and he could boast of Stuart blood.
Ayrshire was as really English as was Aberdeenshire; and, if Dunbar is
in earnest, it is a strong confirmation of our theory that he, being
"of the Lothians himself", spoke of Kennedy in this way. It would,
however, be unwise to lay too much stress on what was really a
conventional exercise of a particular style of poetry, now obsolete.
Kennedy, in his reply, retorts that he alone is true Scots, and that
Dunbar, as a native of Lothian, is but an English thief:
"In Ingland, owle, suld be thyne habitacione,
Homage to Edward Langschankis maid thy kyn".
In an Epitaph on Donald Owre, a son of the Lord of the Isles, who raised
a rebellion against James IV in 1503, Dunbar had a great opportunity for
an outburst against the Highlanders, of which, however, he did not take
advantage, but confined himself to a denunciation of treachery in
general. In the "Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins", there is a well-known
allusion to the bag-pipes:
"Than cryd Mahoun[27] for a Healand padyane;
Syne ran a feynd to feche Makfadyane[28]
Far northwart in a nuke.[29]
Be he the correnoch had done schout
Erschemen so gadderit him about
In Hell grit rowme they tuke.
Thae tarmegantis with tag and tatter
Full lowde in Ersche begowth to clatter,
And rowp lyk revin and ruke.
The Devill sa devit was with thair yell
That in the depest pot of Hell
He smorit thame with smoke."
Similar allusions will be found in the writings of Montgomerie; but such
caricatures of Gaelic and the bagpipes afford but a slender basis for a
theory of racial antagonism.
After the Union of the Crowns, the Lowlands of Scotland came to be more
and more closely bound to England, while the Highlands remained
unaffected by these changes. The Scottish nobility began to find its
true place at the English Court; the Scottish adventurer was
irresistibly drawn to London; the Scottish Presbyterian found the
English Puritan his brother in the Lord; and the Scottish Episcopalian
joined forces with the English Cavalier. The history of the seventeenth
century prepared the way for the acceptance of the Celtic theory in the
beginning of the eighteenth, and when philologists asserted that the
Scottish Highlanders were a different race from the Scottish Lowlanders,
the suggestion was eagerly adopted. The views of the philologists were
confirmed by the experiences of the 'Forty-five, and they received a
literary form in the _Lady of the Lake_ and in _Waverley_. In the
nineteenth century the theory received further development owing to the
fact that it was generally in line with the arguments of the defenders
of the Edwardian policy in Scotland; and it cannot be denied that it
holds the field to-day, in spite of Mr. Robertson's attack on it in
Appendix R of his _Scotland under her Early Kings_.
The writer of the present volume ventures to hope that he has, at all
events, done something to make out a case for re-consideration of the
subject. The political facts on which rests the argument just stated
will be found in the text, and an Appendix contains the more important
references to the Highlanders in mediæval Scottish literature, and
offers a brief account of the feudalization of Scotland. Our argument
amounts only to a modification, and not to a complete reversal of the
current theory. No historical problems are more difficult than those
which refer to racial distribution, and it is impossible to speak
dogmatically on such a subject. That the English blood of the Lothians,
and the English exiles after the Norman Conquest, did modify the race
over whom Malcolm Canmore ruled, we do not seek to deny. But that it was
a modification and not a displacement, a victory of civilization and
not of race, we beg to suggest. The English influences were none the
less strong for this, and, in the end, they have everywhere prevailed.
But the Scotsman may like to think that mediæval Scotland was not
divided by an abrupt racial line, and that the political unity and
independence which it obtained at so great a cost did correspond to a
natural and a national unity which no people can, of itself, create.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Spanish and Venetian Calendars of State Papers. Cf.
especially the reference to the succour afforded by Scotland to France
in Spanish Calendar, i. 210.]
[Footnote 2: _Historical Essays_, First Series, p. 71.]
[Footnote 3: _History of the English People_, Book III, c. iv.]
[Footnote 4: _History of Scotland_, vol. i, p. 2. But, as Mr. Lang
expressly repudiates any theory of displacement north of the Forth, and
does not regard Harlaw in the light of a great racial contest, his
position is not really incompatible with that of the present work.]
[Footnote 5: _History of England_, p. 158. Mr. Oman is almost alone in
not calling them English in blood.]
[Footnote 6: _History of Scotland_, vol. ii, pp. 393-394.]
[Footnote 7: Instances of the first tendency are Edderton, near Tain,
_i.e._ _eadar duin_ ("between the hillocks"), and Falkirk, _i.e._
_Eaglais_ ("speckled church"), while examples of the second tendency are
too numerous to require mention. Examples of ecclesiastical names are
Laurencekirk and Kirkcudbright, and the growth of commerce receives the
witness of such names as Turnberry, on the coast of Ayr, dating from the
thirteenth century, and Burghead on the Moray Firth.]
[Footnote 8: Cf. _Waverley_, c. xliii, and the concluding chapter of
_Tales of a Grandfather_.]
[Footnote 9: William of Newburgh states this in a probably exaggerated
form when he says:--"Regni Scottici oppida et burgi ab Anglis habitari
noscuntur" (Lib. II, c. 34). The population of the towns in the Lothians
was, of course, English.]
[Footnote 10: For the real significance of such grants of land, cf.
Maitland, _Domesday Book and Beyond_, Essay II.]
[Footnote 11: _Scotland under her Early Kings_, vol. i, p. 239.]
[Footnote 12: Annalia, iv.]
[Footnote 13: There is a possible exception in Barbour's _Bruce_ (Bk.
XVIII, 1. 443)--"Then gat he all the Erischry that war intill his
company, of Argyle and the Ilis alswa". It has been generally understood
that the "Erischry" here are the Scottish Highlanders; but it is certain
that Barbour frequently uses the word to mean Irishmen, and it is
perhaps more probable that he does so here also than that he should use
the word in this sense only once, and with no parallel instance for more
than a century.]
[Footnote 14: Chronicle, Book II, c. ix. Cf. App. A.]
[Footnote 15: Ibid, Book V, c. x. Cf. App. A.]
[Footnote 16: _History of Greater Britain_, Bk. I, cc. vii, viii, ix.
Cf. App. A.]
[Footnote 17: _Scotorum Regni Descriptio_, prefixed to his "History".
Cf. App. A.]
[Footnote 18: _Fasti Aberdonenses_, p. 3.]
[Footnote 19: _De Gestis Scotorum_, Lib. I. Cf. App. A. It is
interesting to note, as showing how the breach between Highlander and
Lowlander widened towards the close of the sixteenth century, that
Father James Dalrymple, who translated Lesley's History, at Ratisbon,
about the beginning of the seventeenth century, wrote: "Bot the rest of
the Scottis, quhome _we_ halde as outlawis and wylde peple". Dalrymple
was probably a native of Ayrshire.]
[Footnote 20: _Liber Pluscardensis_, X, c. xxii. Cf. App. A.]
[Footnote 21: _Scoti-chronicon_, XV, c. xxi. Cf. App. A.]
[Footnote 22: _Greater Britain_, VI, c. x. Cf. App. A. The keenness of
the fighting is no proof of racial bitterness. Cf. the clan fight on the
Inches at Perth, a few years before Harlaw.]
[Footnote 23: _Scotorum Historiæ_, Lib. XVI. Cf. App. A.]
[Footnote 24: _Rerum Scotorum Historia_, Lib. X. Cf. App. A.]
[Footnote 25: _Top. Hib._, Dis. III, cap. xi.]
[Footnote 26: _Britannia_, section _Scoti_.]
[Footnote 27: Mahoun = Mahomet, _i.e._ the Devil.]
[Footnote 28: The Editor of the Scottish Text Society's edition of
Dunbar points out that "Macfadyane" is a reference to the traitor of the
War of Independence:
"This Makfadzane till Inglismen was suorn;
Eduard gaiff him bath Argill and Lorn".
Blind Harry, VII, ll. 627-8.
]
[Footnote 29: "Far northward in a nuke" is a reference to the cave in
which Macfadyane was killed by Duncan of Lorne (Bk. VIII, ll. 866-8).]
CHAPTER I
RACIAL DISTRIBUTION AND FEUDAL RELATIONS
_c._ 500-1066 A.D.
Since the beginning of the eighteenth century, it has been customary to
speak of the Scottish Highlanders as "Celts". The name is singularly
inappropriate. The word "Celt" was used by Cæsar to describe the peoples
of Middle Gaul, and it thence became almost synonymous with "Gallic".
The ancient inhabitants of Gaul were far from being closely akin to the
ancient inhabitants of Scotland, although they belong to the same
general family. The latter were Picts and Goidels; the former, Brythons
or Britons, of the same race as those who settled in England and were
driven by the Saxon conquerors into Wales, as their kinsmen were driven
into Brittany by successive conquests of Gaul. In the south of Scotland,
Goidels and Brythons must at one period have met; but the result of the
meeting was to drive the Goidels into the Highlands, where the Goidelic
or Gaelic form of speech still remains different from the Welsh of the
descendants of the Britons. Thus the only reason for calling the
Scottish Highlanders "Celts" is that Cæsar used that name to describe a
race cognate with another race from which the Highlanders ought to be
carefully distinguished. In none of our ancient records is the term
"Celt" ever employed to describe the Highlanders of Scotland. They never
called themselves Celtic; their neighbours never gave them such a name;
nor would the term have possessed any significance, as applied to them,
before the eighteenth century. In 1703, a French historian and Biblical
antiquary, Paul Yves Pezron, wrote a book about the people of Brittany,
entitled _Antiquité de la Nation et de la Langue des Celtes autrement
appellez Gaulois_. It was translated into English almost immediately,
and philologists soon discovered that the language of Cæsar's Celts was
related to the Gaelic of the Scottish Highlanders. On this ground
progressed the extension of the name, and the Highlanders became
identified with, instead of being distinguished from, the Celts of Gaul.
The word Celt was used to describe both the whole family (including
Brythons and Goidels), and also the special branch of the family to
which Cæsar applied the term. It is as if the word "Teutonic" had been
used to describe the whole Aryan Family, and had been specially employed
in speaking of the Romance peoples. The word "Celtic" has, however,
become a technical term as opposed to "Saxon" or "English", and it is
impossible to avoid its use.
Besides the Goidels, or so-called Celts, and the Brythonic Celts or
Britons, we find traces in Scotland of an earlier race who are known as
"Picts", a few fragments of whose language survive. About the identity
of these Picts another controversy has been waged. Some look upon the
Pictish tongue as closely allied to Scottish Gaelic; others regard it as
Brythonic rather than Goidelic; and Dr. Rhys surmises that it is really
an older form of speech, neither Goidelic nor Brythonic, and probably
not allied to either, although, in the form in which its fragments have
come down to us, it has been deeply affected by Brythonic forms. Be all
this as it may, it is important for us to remember that, at the dawn of
history, modern Scotland was populated entirely by people now known as
"Celts", of whom the Brythonic portion were the later to appear, driving
the Goidels into the more mountainous districts. The Picts, whatever
their origin, had become practically amalgamated with the "Celts", and
the Roman historians do not distinguish between different kinds of
northern barbarians.
In the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth, a new
settlement of Goidels was made. These were the Scots, who founded the
kingdom of Dalriada, corresponding roughly to the Modern Argyllshire.
Some fifty years later (_c._ 547) came the Angles under Ida, and
established a dominion along the coast from Tweed to Forth, covering the
modern counties of Roxburgh, Berwick, Haddington, and Midlothian. Its
outlying fort was the castle of Edinburgh, the name of which, in the
form in which we have it, has certainly been influenced by association
with the Northumbrian king, Edwin.[30] This district remained a portion
of the kingdom of Northumbria till the tenth century, and it is of this
district alone that the word "English" can fairly be used. Even here,
however, there must have been a considerable infusion of Celtic blood,
and such Celtic place-names as "Dunbar" still remain even in the
counties where English place-names predominate. A distinguished Celtic
scholar tells us: "In all our ancient literature, the inhabitants of
ancient Lothian are known as Saix-Brit, _i.e._ Saxo-Britons, because
they were a Cymric people, governed by the Saxons of Northumbria".[31] A
further non-Celtic influence was that of the Norse invaders, who
attacked the country from the ninth to the eighteenth century, and
profoundly modified the racial character of the population on the south
and west coasts, in the islands, and along the east coast as far south
as the Moray Firth.
Such, then, was the racial distribution of Scotland. Picts, Goidelic
Celts, Brythonic Celts, Scots, and Anglo-Saxons were in possession of
the country. In the year 844, Kenneth MacAlpine, King of the Scots of
Dalriada, united under his rule the ancient kingdoms of the Picts and
Scots, including the whole of Scotland from the Pentland Firth to the
Forth. In 908, a brother of the King of Scots became King of the Britons
of Strathclyde, while Lothian, with the rest of Northumbria, passed
under the overlordship of the House of Wessex. We have now arrived at
the commencement of the long dispute about the "overlordship". We shall
attempt to state the main outlines as clearly as possible.
The foundation of the whole controversy lies in a statement, "in the
honest English of the Winchester Chronicle", that, in 924, "was Eadward
king chosen to father and to lord of the Scots king and of the Scots,
and of Regnold king, and of all the Northumbrians", and also of the
Strathclyde, Brythons or Welsh. Mr. E.W. Robertson has argued that no
real weight can be given to this statement, for (1) "Regnold king" had
died in 921; (2) in 924, Edward the Elder was striving to suppress the
Danes south of the Humber, and had no claims to overlordship of any kind
over the Northumbrian Danes and English; and (3) the place assigned,
Bakewell, in Derbyshire, is improbable, and the recorded building of a
fort there is irrelevant. The reassertion of this homage, under
Aethelstan, in 926, which occurs in one MS. of the Chronicle, is open to
the objection that it describes the King of Scots as giving up idolatry,
more than three hundred and fifty years after the conversion of the
country; but as the entry under the year 924 is probably in a
contemporary hand, considerable weight must be attached to the double
statement. In the reign of Edmund the Magnificent, an event occurred
which has given fresh occasion for dispute. A famous passage in the
"Chronicle" (945 A.D.) tells how Edmund and Malcolm I of
Scotland conquered Cumbria, which the English king gave to Malcolm on
condition that Malcolm should be his "midwyrtha" or fellow-worker by sea
and land. Mr. Freeman interpreted this as a feudal grant, reading the
sense of "fealty" into "midwyrtha", and regarded the district described
as "Cumbria" as including the whole of Strathclyde. It is somewhat
difficult to justify this position, especially as we have no reason for
supposing that Edmund did invade Strathclyde, and since, in point of
fact, Strathclyde remained hostile to the kingdom of Scotland long after
this date. In 946 the statement of the Chronicle is reasserted in
connection with the accession of Eadred, and in somewhat stronger
words:--"the Scots gave him oaths, that they would all that he would".
Such are the main facts relating to the first two divisions of the
threefold claim to overlordship, and their value will probably continue
to be estimated in accordance with the personal feelings of the reader.
It is scarcely possible to claim that they are in any way decisive. Nor
can any further light be gained from the story of what Mr. Lang has
happily termed the apocryphal eight which the King of Scots stroked on
the Dee in the reign of Edgar. In connection with this "Great
Commendation" of 973, the Chronicle mentions only six kings as rowing
Edgar at Chester, and it wisely names no names. The number eight, and
the mention of Kenneth, King of Scots, as one of the oarsmen, have been
transferred to Mr. Freeman's pages from those of the twelfth-century
chronicler, Florence of Worcester.
We pass now to the third section of the supremacy argument. The district
to which we have referred as Lothian was, unquestionably, largely
inhabited by men of English race, and it formed part of the Northumbrian
kingdom. Within the first quarter of the eleventh century it had passed
under the dominion of the Celtic kings of Scotland. When and how this
happened is a mystery. The tract _De Northynbrorum Comitibus_ which used
to be attributed to Simeon of Durham, asserts that it was ceded by Edgar
to Kenneth and that Kenneth did homage, and this story, elaborated by
John of Wallingford, has been frequently given as the historical
explanation. But Simeon of Durham in his "History"[32] asserts that
Malcolm II, about 1016, wrested Lothian from the Earl of Northumbria,
and there is internal evidence that the story of Edgar and Kenneth has
been constructed out of the known facts of Malcolm's reign. It is, at
all events, certain that the Scottish kings in no sense governed Lothian
till after the battle of Carham in 1018, when Malcolm and the
Strathclyde monarch Owen, defeated the Earl of Northumbria and added
Lothian to his dominions. This conquest was confirmed by Canute in 1031,
and, in connection with the confirmation, the Chronicle again speaks of
a doubtful homage which the Scots king "not long held", and, again, the
Chronicle, or one version of it, adds an impossible statement--this time
about Macbeth, who had not yet appeared on the stage of history. The
year 1018 is also marked by the succession of Malcolm's grandson,
Duncan, to the throne of his kinsman, Owen of Strathclyde, and on
Malcolm's death in 1034 the whole of Scotland was nominally united under
Duncan I.[33] The consolidation of the kingdom was as yet in the future,
but from the end of the reign of Malcolm II there was but one Kingdom of
Scotland. From this united kingdom we must exclude the islands, which
were largely inhabited by Norsemen. Both the Hebrides and the islands of
Orkney and Shetland were outside the realm of Scotland.
The names of Macbeth and "the gentle Duncan" suggest the great drama
which the genius of Shakespeare constructed from the magic tale of
Hector Boece; but our path does not lie by the moor near Forres, nor
past Birnam Wood or Dunsinane. Nor does the historian of the relations
between England and Scotland have anything to tell about the English
expedition to restore Malcolm. All such tales emanate from Florence of
Worcester, and we know only that Siward of Northumbria made a fruitless
invasion of Scotland, and that Macbeth reigned for three years
afterwards.
We have now traced, in outline, the connections between the northern and
the southern portions of this island up to the date of the Norman
Conquest of England. We have found in Scotland a population composed of
Pict, Scot, Goidel, Brython, Dane, and Angle, and we have seen how the
country came to be, in some sense, united under a single monarch. It is
not possible to speak dogmatically of either of the two great problems
of the period--the racial distribution of the country, and the Edwardian
claims to overlordship. But it is clear that no portion of Scotland was,
in 1066, in any sense English, except the Lothians, of which Angles and
Danes had taken possession. From the Lothians, the English influences
must have spread slightly into Strathclyde; but the fact that the Celtic
Kings of Scotland were strong enough to annex and rule the Lothians as
part of a Celtic kingdom implies a limit to English colonization. As to
the feudal supremacy, it may be fairly said that there is no portion of
the English claim that cannot be reasonably doubted, and whatever force
it retains must be of the nature of a cumulative argument. It must, of
course, be recollected that Anglo-Norman chroniclers of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, like English historians of a later date, regarded
themselves as holding a brief for the English claim, while, on the other
hand, Scottish writers would be the last to assert, in their own case, a
complete absence of bias.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 30: Johnston: _Place-Names of Scotland_, p. 102.]
[Footnote 31: Rev. Duncan MacGregor in _Scottish Church Society
Conferences_. Second Series, Vol. II, p. 23.]
[Footnote 32: _Hist. Dun._ Rolls Series, i. 218.]
[Footnote 33: Duncan was the grandson of Malcolm, and, by Pictish
custom, should not have succeeded. The "rightful" heir, an un-named
cousin of Malcolm, was murdered, and his sister, Gruoch, who married the
Mormaor of Moray, left a son, Lulach, who thus represented a rival line,
whose claims may be connected with some of the Highland risings against
the descendants of Duncan.]