Featured
Sir Walter Scott takes his daughter Sophia to see the newly-rediscovered Honours of Scotland, and suffers an embarrassment.
In 1817, the Prince Regent appointed a Commission to search the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle for records of Scotland’s crown jewels, unseen since the Act of Union in 1707. Sir Walter Scott had been a prime mover in the campaign and was one of the Commissioners, but not all his fellows felt the sacredness of their quest.
When the Reformers sold off the treasures of Durham Cathedral, they sold a priceless piece of Scottish history into oblivion.
The Black Rood of Scotland was an heirloom of the Scottish royal family, captured by the English at the Battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346 and added to the treasures of Durham Abbey. After the sixteenth-century Reformers ransacked the cathedral, the cross disappeared. A generation later, the Rites of Durham recalled some of the wonderful history of the vanished relic in a breathless tale, edited here by John Davies in 1671.
A loyal Scotsman on the run from pro-English traitors disguised himself as a blacksmith’s apprentice, but soon gave himself away.
The Scottish surname Nasmyth or Naesmyth is said by scholars to derive, in all probability, from nail-smith. But Scottish engineer James Nasmyth, who appropriately enough in 1839 invented a steam hammer for making enormous iron bars, had heard a different tale, which he set down in his Autobiography.
Unlike some of his fellows in Westminster, Scottish statesman Henry Dundas made no attempt to make himself sound more ‘English’.
Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was one of Georgian Britain’s most influential Scottish statesmen, who served officially in William Pitt’s cabinet as Home Secretary, President of the Board of Control, Secretary of State for War, and First Lord of the Admiralty, but unofficially as ‘The Uncrowned King of Scotland’. Some fellow MPs from north of the Border tried to blend in with our English ways, but not Dundas.
Walter Raleigh had many grievances against James VI and I, but for peace with Scotland he was willing to forget them all.
When James VI of Scotland became also James I of England in 1603, Walter Raleigh responded by trying to put James’s cousin Arabella Stewart (1757-1625) on the throne instead. His reasoning had nothing to do with the union of Scotland and England. Now confined to the Tower for an indefinite stay, Raleigh occupied himself in writing a History of the World and declared the Union the best thing James had done.
John Balliol had to decide whether his first loyalty was to the throne of Scotland or to the man who put him there.
In 1292, John Balliol became King of Scots thanks to the baffling decision of the Scottish noblemen to let King Edward I of England decide between John and his rival for the crown, Robert de Brus, Lord of Annandale. Edward immediately let it be known that he regarded John as his vassal, and Scotland as an English fiefdom; but John Barbour felt that no Scottish King should serve two masters.
What were the Scots thinking back in 1290, when they asked King Edward I of England, of all people, to choose them a king?
In 1286, Alexander III, King of Scots, was killed in a riding accident; four years later his heiress and granddaughter Margaret died in Orkney aged just seven, leaving Scotland without a clear successor. Thirteen ‘Competitors’ staked a claim. They were whittled down to two, John Balliol and Robert de Brus, and to John Barbour’s disbelief the squabbling Scots asked Edward I of England to choose the winner.