In Thrall to the Past

This September will mark the five hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Flodden, fought in the county of Northumberland close to the Anglo-Scottish border.  In terms of the numbers engaged it is a good candidate to be the largest ever fought on English soil, though most people broadly acquainted with the battle history of this country would probably select either Towton from the Wars of the Roses or Marston Moor from the Civil Wars in preference.  The fact is, so far as the English are concerned, Flodden is a forgotten epic, no matter that it was the most complete victory ever won over Scottish invaders.

It’s better remember in Scotland as a catastrophic defeat and tragic memory.  King James IV headed the company of the dead, joined there by men from virtually every family in the land, including many of the leading nobility.  Their sacrifice is recalled in a lament known as The Flowers of the Forest.  It is also recalled in Marmion, Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem

I know many Scots will resent me for saying this, but James, often perceived as their best and most enlightened king, was a vainglorious and shallow individual, with ambitions far too big for his small country.  It was his disastrous invasion of 1513 – mounted when Henry VIII was abroad campaigning in the Low Countries – that ended all pretence that Scotland was a major independent power.  No significant purpose was served by his military adventurism.  He was aiding France, Scotland’s old ally, though the French time and again had used this partnership of unequals to serve their own cynical ends.  As it was Scotland never recovered from the disaster.  Within a few decades the country was to find that its French ally was a far greater danger to its independence than its English enemy. 

As Scotland heads blindly towards a new pretence of independence (Independence in Europe – what a joke!) it’s as  well to remember Flodden, along  with the political illusions and national vanities that preceded the disaster  At the present it is commemorated by a simple stone cross, erected in 1910, I believe, dedicated to the brave of both nations.  Now there are proposals for a new ‘ecomuseum’, England’s first, a project linking several pertinent sites across a wide area, places and features in the landscape related to the battle on both sides of the Border.  Each site will have its own visitor information and resources. 

I understand also that September pilgrimages are being planned from Durham and from Edinburgh to the battlefield.  I’ve been there myself.  The landscape itself, although a lot of it is now farmland, is largely as it was in the early sixteenth century.  Although the encounter is known as the Battle of Flodden, it was actually fought at Branxton, to the north of the hill known as Flodden Edge.  Tree covered Flodden Edge, the site of the first Scottish camp, is a mournful place.  It least it was that day I walked up, passing the Well of Sybil Grey, marking the place where Marmion, Scott’s knight, died of his wounds.  The sound of the wind lightly passing through the trees was as hauntingly sad as any lament. 

Speaking of which, The Flowers of the Forest is an ancient Scottish folk tune with battle lyrics added in the eighteenth century by Jean Elliot, another Scottish poet.  The English, we are told, “...for ance, by guile wan the day.”  No, they did not!  They ‘wan’ with inferior numbers by superior leadership, superior gunners and superior weaponry.  The Scots, atrociously led, charged in to the affray in an age old manner, lacking all discipline and co-ordination.  Bravery did not compensate for folly. It very rarely does. 

I am fond of Scotland, a country I have visited more than any other.  But if this is a country where the past is paid proper reverence it is also a country in thrall to past illusions.  Perhaps in the end the myth of Bannockburn, Scotland’s one and only great victory over England, will serve to be the most significant illusion of all.  Next year will see the seven hundredth anniversary of this seminal encounter, a high tide which the present Nationalist administration in Edinburgh hopes will float their referendum on independence all the way into a triumphant harbour.  Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, is preparing, in the style of King Robert Bruce, the victor of Bannockburn, to mount his own pale horse.  He is hoping for one battle; he might very well find another.  

Charming without Charming

I’m a hard-nosed romantic; let me get that out of the way to begin.  I love fairy tales and tradition; I love ruined castles and haunted halls; I love witches and princesses; I love elves and goblins; I love all sorts of enchantments.  I loved Brave, a brave account of a brave old world, a world caught half way between night and a dream.  It’s an animated feature made by Pixar Studios, the same people who made Toy Story, one of my favourite childhood experiences. 

I used to love animated features.  It’s a long time since I’ve seen one, though.  The last I think was Ratatouille, also by Pixar, which I saw some years ago on a flight back from Hong Kong.  I went to see Brave, set in a mythical medieval Scotland, because I’m not long back from the country, because it was recommended here and elsewhere, because there is something crystalline and whimsical about my present mood.  I’m so glad I did because I was captivated; I was charmed and I was enchanted.  I was carried along by a will-o’-the-wisp. 

It concerns one Princess Merida, feisty, fun-loving girl of wholly independent mind, her flaming red hair as shocking and untameable as her flaming red spirit.  She takes up archery, much to the disapproval of her mother, who expects Merida to do what princesses do, which is to look decorative until such time as Prince Charming puts in an inevitable appearance. 

The only problem is that Merida does not want to get married; the time is not right; she has too much life yet to live; she wants to make her own choices; she wants to discover her own fate, her own destiny.  She most certainly does not want to marry any of the three geeks supplied by the clans who arrive at her father’s castle.  But refusal means war. 

Brave derives much of its energy from the tension between Queen Elinor, voiced by Emma Thompson, and Merida, opposite polar strengths, compatibly incompatible.  In fact they are the only strong figures in a land headed by the amiable but ineffectual King Fergus (Billy Connolly).  Merida herself is given colour and substance by Kelly Macdonald, speaking in a beautiful, melodious Scottish accent. Oh, those lilting intonations; those voluptuous vowel sounds! 

Macdonald was in Trainspotting, a bleak, ugly film set in a bleak, heroin-soaked Scotland, a movie I absolutely hated based on a novel by Irvine Welsh, a talentless poseur I absolutely despise.  There is no comparison, of course there is no comparison, between the depressing hyper-realism of the first and the transporting beauty of the second, but I would far, far rather have the fairytale.  “Legends are lessons”, the Queen tells Merida, “they rhyme with truth.”  Indeed, they do; and there are some truths better than other truths. 

So, here we have Merida, the rebellious teenager, who, in an attempt to escape an artificial fate, goes of in pursuit of will-o’-the-wisp and a real fate, her fate, her destiny, whatever it may be.  Merida, Merida, burning bright, in the forests of the night.  In the forests of the night she meets a woodcarver (Julie Walters), who is a woodcarver when she is not being a witch!  Alas, she disappears far too early from the movie. 

After promising to buy all her carvings – this is a witch with business acumen – Merida obtains a bewitched cake which, as she intends, will change her mother’s mind.  It doesn’t; it changes her into a bear!  This presents an additional family problem because Fergus had his leg torn off by a monstrous Ursa Major called Mor’du when Merida was a child. 

It’s now a race to reverse the curse, a race in which the mother discovers the daughter and the daughter the mother.  I’m not going to spoil the tale with spoilers, just in case there are any girls and boys in the audience.  Just remember that legends are lessons that do rhyme with truth, and that daughters and mothers often do come to understand one another; that there is no difficulty that cannot be surmounted by love. 

Oh, how I would have loved a Merida when I was growing up, someone I could really identity with, a princess who is not a wallflower; a princess who knows her mind and has a mind to share.  This is a visually and morally luscious experience without, I’m delighted to say, the advent of Prince Charming.  No, it’s just charming.  This is a heart-warming, poignant and funny modern fairy tale for imaginative, sentimental and funny modern girls.  Girls like me.  

Olympus to the Olympics

Summer has made an overdue appearance and of all places in Scotland!  The last few days have been jolly decent, warm and sunny.  I came up to Edinburgh chiefly for the Catherine the Great exhibition but I also arranged with some friends to walk part of the West Highland Way over the weekend.  And we did, not the whole thing, which can take several days, leaving from just north of Glasgow, but from Bridge of Orchy to Fort William and then back south by train.  It’s by far the most interesting part of the route. 

I’ve walked the Way before, in whole and in part.  When the weather is good the walking is very, very good and when it is bad it is horrid!  I once crossed Rannoch Moor in the wind and the rain, not a pleasant experience, I assure you.  But Rannoch Moor itself, when one can see and appreciate it properly, is really lovely, a wilderness but a beautiful one, the colours changing all the time as the clouds speed across the heather.  I managed to see some red deer, though quite a distance away. 

Out of Rannoch and on to the King’s House Hotel for a welcome supper and even more welcome drinks.  We stayed here overnight, as I have on several occasions in the past.  I love the place. It’s by no means luxurious but the inn, one of the oldest in Scotland, is bags full of atmosphere.  Our fellow guests were walkers and climbers, people who really know how to have a good time! 

I did have a good time, unlike poor Dorothy Wordsworth, the sister of the poet, who came this way in 1803, later recording her disapproval in her Journal;

Never did I see such a miserable, such wretched place, – long rooms with ranges of beds, no other furniture except benches, or perhaps one or two crazy chairs, the floors far dirtier than an ordinary house could be if it were never washed. With length of time the fire was kindled and after another hour of waiting, supper came, a shoulder of mutton so hard that it was impossible to chew the little flesh that might have been scraped off the bone. 

The only thing that could have made her stay any worse would have been a visit from the Wicked Witch of the West!  All I can say is that a lot has changed since Dorothy’s day.  The food was good with – thank goodness – not a trace of mutton on the varied menu. 

So, up we got reasonably early on Saturday morning for the onward trek to Kinlochleven.  The first stage took us to the eastern entrance to Glencoe, one of the most beautiful and sombre settings in the whole of the Highlands, a dark and brooding nature looking into a dark and brooding history.  We didn’t go in to the Glen itself, there wasn’t enough time.  Instead it was straight up the Devil’s Staircase, a zigzag path cutting its way up the hillside. Given that name by British soldiers, it forms part of an old military road network created by General Wade in the early eighteenth century in the aftermath of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. 

Incidentally, if you ever stay in Glencoe I would recommend the old Clachaig Inn, just as bags full of atmosphere as the King's House.  There is a sign on the door saying No Hawkers or Campbells, a nod in the direction of the infamous Massacre of February, 1692, when part of the local branch of Clan Donald was murdered in the night by soldiers from the Earl of Argyll’s Regiment of Foot.  This was actually a formation in the British Army acting under orders, but the event has traditionally been placed in the context of more ancient clan rivalries.  For all the sad history it really is a lovely spot.  I can assure you that the interdict on Campbells is not taken seriously.  I should know; my boyfriend is one! 

What a remarkable view there is from the top of the Devil’s Staircase, making the climb so worthwhile, with open vistas across mountains, valleys and hills in all directions.  Here, sitting on the heather, we had our picnic lunch.  I lunched and was lunched upon, with clouds of midges descending to feast.  How on earth do they manage when I’m not here?!  The midge, if you don’t know, is a Scottish cousin of the mosquito, all the more ferocious because they are pack hunters and a lot less diffident in their relentless attacks. 

The climb to the top of the Devil’s Staircase was enjoyable; the descent to Kinlochleven the very devil.  The path is mostly loose scree, lots of broken rock fragments, which becomes really wearing on the legs after a bit.  Kinlochleven is a pleasant village right at the head of Loch Leven, a salt water lake which cuts well in from the coast.  Here we stayed overnight in the old Mamore Hunting Lodge, with me too bushed to do much more than eat and sleep. 

The road goes ever onwards.  After breakfast we ascended above Kinlochleven, then directly along the path all the way to Fort William.  I refreshed my water bottle once above the line of habitation, pure, cold water from a stream flowing down from the hill above, the drink of the gods, water like you’ve never tasted in your life, cold and sweet, not at all like the kind of thing sold in supermarkets. 

Fort William is a charming little town with one of the best fish restaurants in Scotland but, alas, we had no time to stand and stare and eat out; it was on to the train and back to a wet Edinburgh afternoon.  And so here I am, refreshed, tired and exhilarated.  Oh, and in a much better mood than Dorothy Wordsworth. Tomorrow morning I leave for London, the place from whence I came, down from Olympus into the Olympics.  My mood is set to change for the worse!  

Holy Willie's Prayer

MacKaskill, the Law's Ass

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man ever convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, one of the worst acts of mass murder in British history, died earlier this month at his home in Tripoli.  He died a free man.  He died three years after Kenny MacAskill, the wholly ridiculous Scottish Justice Secretary, announced to the world that he was to be released on 'compassionate' grounds, having only three months to live.

It was a decision taken, I understand, on the 'best medical advice' available at the time.  This goes to prove one thing: the Libyan medical service is clearly ten times better than that of Scotland, a point made by Douglas Murray in the latest issue of magazine Prospect.  So, if you are unfortunate enough to take ill on your travels just hope that you end up in North Africa rather than North Britain!

Who could possibly forget MacAskill's mawkish and lachrymose words when he announced his intention to release Megrahi? Apparently he does not believe in God but that did nothing to stop him descending into a symphony of metaphysical hogwash;

Mr Al Megrahi now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power. It is one that no court, in any jurisdiction, in any land, could revoke or overrule. It is terminal, final and irrevocable. He is going to die. 

Yes, said God, you are all going to die, but I’ll show you Mr MacAskill – the end is not yet!  It was three years of embarrassment for Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party administration until Megrahi finally did the decent thing and shuffled off this mortal coil.  There is a legacy here that has made the Scots’ legal system look more than usually ridiculous, though the SNP has suffered no adverse electoral consequences.  

MacAskill and Salmond, after the decision was taken to release a man responsible for the deaths of no fewer than 270 people, the majority of them American, went on to lecture the world on humanity and compassion, seemingly the 'defining characteristic' of the Scottish people.  Personally I can only take cant in very small doses, though the Scots seem to swallow it in abundance, along with whisky.  

There is something else.  The release was granted on condition that al-Megrahi drop a pending appeal, though why the two should have been married, knowing nothing of Scots law, I don’t quite understand.  Is it perhaps that there was a greater danger here, that the thinness of the evidence on which Megrahi was convicted would have held up the Scottish system of justice to even greater ridicule? 

I think it will take years for all the issues here to come to light, indeed if they ever do. They may very well be submerged forever in a newly independent Scotland, secure in its self-righteous and hypocritical 'humanity.' When the news of Megrahi's death was released Salmond said that the first thing we should remember is the victims of Lockerbie. The victims here include the American families who lost their relatives, portrayed at the time when Scotland was wallowing in its unique sense of ‘humanity’ as unreflective and vengeful.  Yes, vengeful, simply because they wanted justice; they spoke for the dead when nobody else would, certainly not those hypocritical humanists MacAskill and Salmond.

I know Americans are found of Scotland; I know many Americans, including some close personal friends of mine, are of Scots-Irish ancestry, but this should not blind people to the fact that Lockerbie victims were victims twice - first of Megrahi and the Libyan security service, and second of the government of Alex Salmond.  Now he remembers the dead whereas previously he has used them for petty nationalist ends.  

Like Douglas Murray, I sincerely hope that Americans will not forget this.  If you want an insight into the conceited, self-regard of people like MacAskill and Salmond and their ‘unique values’ I would suggest that you could do no better than turn to the poetry of Robert Burns.  I'm thinking specifically of a few lines from Holy Willie's Prayer;

Lord, bless Your chosen in this place,
For here You have a chosen race!
But God confound their stubborn face
And blast their name,
Who bring Your elders to disgrace
And open shame!

Always Keep A-Hold of Nurse

Scotland is to have a referendum on independence. Though no definite date has been set it is likely to be held in 2014, three years after the ruling Scottish National Party obtained a majority of seats in a devolved parliament that, according to Labour, would kill nationalism stone dead. Well, like every other prediction emerging from the benighted Labour Party, it has proved to be complete rubbish.

Why so late, you may wonder? Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Scotland’s first minister, says that it has been delayed merely to ensure that it is ‘well-organised.’ Yes, sure, believe that it you like. It just so happens that 2014 is the seven hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, when the Scots led by King Robert Bruce defeated a larger English army, incompetently headed by Edward II.

I have little doubt it’s on a wave of national celebration, of unrestrained Braveheartism, that Salmond hopes will carry the good ship Independence, wandering fruitlessly for so many years, a little like The Flying Dutchman, at last home to port. He even proposes to extend the franchise to sixteen-year-olds, most of whom, I hazard, know next to nothing about politics and quite a lot about patriotic clichés, mythic spiders and what have you.

There is a bit of a risk here of course. The evidence suggests that the majority of Scots, that is those a tad older than sixteen, are not that keen on independence. Here he has the example of the Alternate Vote referendum like Macbeth’s dagger before him, a poll held last year which effectively killed ‘voting reform’, much beloved by the Liberal Democrats, stone dead.

So, instead of a simple yes no he wants a third option, something he calls ‘devolution max’, which would deepen the powers exercised in Scotland, really only leaving defence and foreign policy as whole kingdom responsibilities. The situation would then be akin to the Union of the Crowns, that phase in Anglo-Scottish relations between the accession of James I to the English throne in 1603 to the Act of Union of 1707, which combined both national parliaments.

The trouble for Salmond, a big fish in a little pond (his deputy is called Sturgeon!), is that any referendum would have to have the authority of the UK government or risk being declared unlawful. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, has concentrated the first minister’s thoughts here, saying he can have his race but only with the yes no horses. Expect more wrangling in the period leading up to 2014, political battles that may yet dwarf Bannockburn.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party, whose bone-headed barons long disgracefully treated Scotland as a kind of political fiefdom, is in a bit of a panic. If Scotland were cast free it would mean the end of their northern block vote, without which they are unlikely ever again to get a clear majority at Westminster. I can’t think of any better reason for Scottish independence. Oh, yes, I can: it would mean that taxes raised in England could actually be spent in England, rather than sent north in doles.

Please do not misunderstand me. I’m fond of Scotland; I have many close friends there. My parents have a cottage in the far north, a place where I’ve spent many enjoyable vacations, long and short. I could only wish that the Scots were fonder of the English, that they could lose a mindset cast so far in the past, cast, yea, even so far back as Bannockburn!

As a postscript I read that Tommy Sheridan, one time leader of the far-left Scottish Socialist Party, has been released from prison, a third of the way through his sentence for perjury. This seedy man was much given to Marxist sloganeering…and visiting Manchester sex clubs. Now the king of the swingers, sorry, make that commissar of the swingers, is free. He says he will soon be back in court, launching a fresh bid to overturn his conviction. Not only that but he will be fighting for an independent and socialist Scotland. I can just picture it – Alba as Albania, a bleak future indeed. The Scots might care to take heed of the fate of Hilaire Belloc’s Jim and always keep a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse.

Castles, Ghosts and Witches

I flew up to Edinburgh early on Friday morning for a long weekend with some dear friends who moved earlier this year to a village called Dirleton to the east of the city. It was a trip I was so looking forward to, planned some time in advance. At the beginning of the week things were not looking so good because Vulcan’s hissy fit in Iceland was sending up so much dust and ash! In the end, I’m happy to say, it was all sound and fury signifying nothing.

It’s almost two years since I was last in Edinburgh, there for the International Festival. The city is as beautiful, and as dirty, as ever. The tram works on Princes Street are still not finished, but the thoroughfare is now far less of a mess than it was in August, 2009. This whole project seems to have been something of a local farce. Not only is the route shorter than planned but the scheme is also millions over budget, another massive waste of time and money that looks to be of minimal benefit to local people. I’ve yet to find a soul who has a good word to say about it, although I suppose I should have spoken to the foreign companies who were awarded the contract.

It’s not Edinburgh I want talk about; no, it’s East Lothian, a county in a part of Scotland I had never been to before. Dirleton itself is absolutely delightful. It’s not like any Scottish village I’ve ever seen, more English in appearance and general atmosphere, with a lovely central green. Close by is the most marvellous castle, parts of which date back to the thirteenth century. I adore romantic ruins and this is one is particularly charming, set in such beautiful gardens.

The other romantic delight is the nearby Archerfield House, originally founded in the late 1600s with substantial remodelling the following century. Once the home of Herbert Asquith, Prime Minister at the outbreak of the First World War, the place went in to sad decline after the Second, a fate reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead. Happy to say it has been beautifully restored as a hotel adjacent to two splendid golf links. As guests of my friends we had a round on the Fidra on Saturday afternoon. My game, I regret to say, does not improve. Dash it all: I blame it on the wind!

On Sunday, my appetite whetted by the Dirleton fortress, we did a spot of castle bagging. I was told there was one particular monument that was bound to appeal to me, situated on top of a rocky headland. This is Tantallon Castle, once the property of the Douglas earls of Angus. Actually it’s not at all a castle as traditionally conceived, a keep surrounded by four walls. No, Tantallon itself is in the shape of a huge single wall built to make use of the defensive possibilities of the sea cliffs. In a state of ruin it’s still a formidable and majestic place. Once besieged by the king of Scotland in person, it last saw action during the seventeenth century Civil Wars. Occupied by troops loyal to the crown, it was bombarded in 1651 by Parliamentary forces under the command of General Monck, Cromwell’s artillery chief. After the surrender it was left in a state of ruin, never again reoccupied.

No, that’s not quite true. There is one inhabitant, a courtly gentleman dressed in a ruff, a style favoured in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. This is the Tantallon Ghost, last seen in a photograph taken in 2008, peering through one of the upper windows into the courtyard. Sadly he declined to show himself when I was there, no matter how much I willed it!

There are marvellous views from the grounds of Tantallon over the Firth of Forth and on to the nearby Bass Rock, the same kind of volcanic plug upon which Edinburgh Castle was built. Though this is the first time I’ve seen the Rock it’s not the first time I’ve visited it. No, I came through the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Catriona, the sequel to Kidnapped. It was here that David Balfour, the priggish and self-important hero of the story, was kidnapped and confined for a second time. I remember it principally for the Tale of Tod Laprick, a story within a story, another eerie encounter, this time with a warlock and a shape shifter, one who takes the form of a gannet, in which the island abounds.

East Lothian is rich in the traditions and tales of witchcraft, no place more so than the seaside town of North Berwick, a Scottish version of Salem. It was a place I simply had to visit. It is here in the late sixteenth century, in the green by Saint Andrew’s Church, that local witches gathered, supposedly under the guidance of Satan himself, to cast spells against James VI, returning by sea from a trip to Denmark. The magic was ineffective, for despite the conjured storms the king made it safely to port.

What is certain is that a hysterical witch-hunt followed, in which hundreds of women were arrested, many confessing under torture to meeting Satan at the nocturnal sabbat. Among the accused was Agnes Sampson, also known as the Wise Woman of Keith, a local midwife and healer, who was even interrogated by the king in person. After gruesome tortures she was finally garrotted and burned as a witch on 28 January, 1591.

I’ve written about this before in a piece I called To Kill a King: the Story of the North Berwick Witches. Superstitious James may have been, the author of a work on demonology, but the persecution of these women, healers and innocent victims, had a clear political purpose, proving that the king, as a ‘man of God’, could defy the powers of Satan and the schemes of Francis Stewart, earl of Bothwell, his principal enemy and the real devil behind various conspiracies. I said a silent prayer in memory of Agnes and all the other victims of this tragedy.

From the crimes of the past to the pleasures of the present the weekend was rounded off with a super dinner at Archerfield House. I’m grateful to all concerned for a magical time amongst castles, ghosts and witches.

Scotland the Dependent

Last week’s Super Friday, a succession of elections across the United Kingdom, has produced some intriguing results, especially in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party (SNP) is now in command, having enough seats in the devolved parliament to govern without the consent of the opposition. There are runes to be read here, signs to be interpreted, though with a message quite different from that which you may suppose.

I’ve seen some alarming headlines about the end of the three hundred year old union between England and Scotland. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, anticipating a struggle, has already said that he will defend it with every single fibre that he has. Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, now has enough votes to leap into the referendum on independence that he has long desired, previously frustrated because of his minority ministry. Oh, but there is so much more here. It would be wrong to see the increase in the SNP vote as a mandate for independence.

I look between the lines. What exactly is it that I see? I see a nation that was shamefully taken for granted by the Labour Party, a nation treated like a feudal appanage, a fiefdom by a party mired in corruption, complacency and neglect. In government Labour set up a Scottish parliament with one aim in mind, and it wasn’t greater justice for the Scottish people; no, it was to see off the SNP, who had the temerity to challenge their political monopoly.

Once the Parliament was set up it was treated from the outset as the second division, a place for placemen and political mediocrities. The Big Boys, including Gordon Brown, the man who treated Scotland with the greatest condescension of all, stayed at Westminster, where the real careers were made.

Holyrood, the district of Edinburgh where the Scottish parliament is located, was for the also rans, reflected in Labour’s colourless and second-rate leadership; the leadership of Jack McConnell, the previous first minister, about as memorable as a wet day in Woolwich, and latterly the aptly named Iain Gray, who had not even sufficient residual wit to understand that the greatest challenge he faced during the recent election campaign came from the SNP and not the Scottish Conservatives, a pathetic bunch of blue socialists, Vichy Tories, as Gerald Warner, Scotland’s greatest export, calls them.

Gerald Warner, if you don’t know his work, is a journalist and columnist. Above all he is a brilliant polemicist, one who invariably aims at the Achilles’ heel. His comments on his native Scotland are bitingly exact, his comments on a culture of dependence that will ensure that the country, no matter how hard Salmond may leap and dream, is likely always to be locked into the Union. I have in front of me We’re all doomed!, an article he wrote in the Easter edition of the Spectator, full of eye-opening facts.

The narrative goes something like this. For centuries before the Union of the Crowns in 1603 the Scots mounted plundering raids into northern England by bands of reivers. It was a kind of subsidy for an impoverished nation, unable to live within its own meagre means. There are no more reivers but the subsidies still pour north, tribute from the beleaguered English taxpayers, a kind of Danegeld without the Danes.

The situation is quite intolerable. Scotland currently receives £1600 ($2000) per capita more in public expenditure than England. This invidious position is soon to be ended, as the so-called Barnett Formula, devised by a previous Labour minister, is being revised. So the SNP, riding high on a national wave, faces a budgetary shortfall of some £4.5billion, the reality of which will kick in well before the proposed referendum is put in place. Just at the present Scotland is a place bogus dreams are made on, its little life rounded with a sleep.

As I have said, Labour, which dominated Scottish politics for decades, treated the place like of fiefdom. But there is something more: it also treated it as a kind of Indian reservation, creating a culture of abject dependency with hideous levels of state expenditure, a tradition which the SNP ministry only continued, and has promised to continue still further. Amazingly, as Warner points out, by 2009 Scotland had attained global statistical significance as the third most state-dependant country in the world, after communist Cuba and war-torn Iraq. Out of four million Scottish voters just over half pay income tax. It’s even worse than that: for most of the tax payers are in public sector jobs dependent on tax.

It’s a vicious circle, a spiral from which there is no escape, certainly not in independence, unless Scotland, or Alba, to use the Gaelic name, wishes to go the same route as Albania. Perhaps there is something to be said for pyramid selling schemes after all, when there is nothing else, not even the builders of pyramids.

This is the reality of Alex Salmond’s brave New Scotland that has such people in it, people who have long lost the entrepreneurial spirit of Adam Smith, the technical ingenuity and business acumen of James Watt, have lost almost everything in the way of a free and productive bourgeoisie. Yes, dependent is the key work, not independence. New reivers will ride south, not able to live by their own devices. Can we afford them any more, can we afford Scotland? These are the questions that can no longer be avoided. For our sakes Scotland may have to have independence thrust upon it, even after the country votes no in Salmond’s referendum.

Battles long ago

Glencoe in Scotland is a dramatic location, drama in nature, drama in history. For those who do not know the place it’s a narrow valley in the West Highlands to the south of Fort William, proceeding a few miles west from Rannoch Moor to the outlet at Loch Leven. It’s bounded by mountains on both sides, high and glowering, impassible to the north; impassable as a wall.

I’ve walked there, walked by the western gate, taking the zigzag route to the crest of the hills known as the Devil’s Stairway, part of the old military road built by General Wade in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, an abortive rising against George I on behalf of the exiled House of Stuart.

The valley itself is now best known as the setting for one of the most tragic, and misunderstood, events in Scottish history - the massacre of the local branch of Clan Donald in February 1692. Although this was part of the outward ripples that followed the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when James II was replaced by William III, from beginning to end it was an entirely Scottish rather than a British affair, one that was approved by a Dutch king for reasons of strategic and political expediency.

The scheme itself was conceived by John Dalrymple, Master of Stair, the Secretary of State for Scotland, who acted in conjunction with Thomas Livingstone, the Scottish commander-in-chief. The task was then delegated to the Earl of Argyll's Regiment of Foot, a formation on the Scottish military establishment. This regiment's Campbell associations helped give the whole affair quite spurious overtones of clan rivalry, an act of deliberate obfuscation, a myth that continues to run.

Why, then, did Dalrymple conceive of this act? Simply because he wanted a quick end to the Highland war against William, and because he was looking forward to eventual political union between Scotland and England. The one obstacle on the path of both schemes was the Gaelic peoples of Scotland's 'wild west'; and that expression is not chosen by accident. If one wishes an analogy with what happened in Scotland in 1692 one could do no better than look to the United States and the policy towards the Indian tribes of the West in the nineteenth century. I imagine Dalrymple would have shared Philip Sheridan's sentiment with a slight adaptation, in that for him the 'only good Highlander he ever saw was dead.'

There was a huge and ancient cultural gap in Scotland between the English-speaking Lowlands and the Gaelic-speaking Highlands, with hostility and misunderstanding spread along the way. For many Lowlanders the Highland 'savage' was an embarrassment, an obstacle to progress and civilization. James V had pressed for the wholesale extirpation of the people of Clan Chattan, who had given him particular offence; and James VI had advanced a scheme for Lowland settlement in the Hebrides, based on the extermination of the local people, MacLeods and MacDonalds. These hostilities were compounded by the rise of Jacobitism, which divided the Lowlands of the south still further from the Highlands. In 1692 hatred, racism and the politics of cultural contempt finally acquired a practical and murderous form.

It’s a while now since I was last there but the place leaves an abiding memory, a memory of old, unhappy, far off things and battles long ago.

Rousseau’s triumph

I have a long-standing detestation of the political philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau, something I’ve alluded to on previous occasions, most recently in my piece on celebrity (The Silliness of Celebrity). I suppose I detest the thinkers of the French Enlightenment in general, but he incites a particular animus. His manifesto, his belief in human perfectibility, is the guide for all that follows, all the horror from Robespierre and the Republic of Virtue to Pol Pot and Year Zero.

Rousseau stands in sad contrast to the brilliant and prescient Edmund Burke, who in Reflections on the Revolution in France warned of the implications of the new all or nothing ideologies, warned that reform could only be pursued on a piecemeal basis in the context of existing social and political institutions if disaster was to be avoided, if state tyranny, terror and dictatorship were to be avoided.

Now I’ve read a timely reminder by Fraser Nelson in the Spectator’s Coffee House Blog (Why we must remember the lessons of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment) that there are other thinkers beyond Burke to whom conservatives are indebted. There is also another Enlightenment altogether, far more constructive in every way than the French. He is writing of the Scottish school of the eighteenth century, a brilliant period in that nation’s history, that saw the emergence of thinkers and writers like Adam Smith, David Hume (one he neglects to mention), Adam Ferguson and Francis Hutchison.

Fraser makes the crucial point that though many of those in the Continental tradition might express admiration for the people as a general concept they had, in practice, little faith in the people;

They feared that humans pursuing their self-interests would become corrupt – and that, left alone, selfish instincts would prevail. It followed that strong government was vital for a strong country. The only question was who should hold power. That so many people still believe this to be true (government virtuous, masses selfish) is testament to the allure of the French Enlightenment. It has been the basis of socialist government worldwide.

This, in short, is the basis of statism, the inversion whereby people are acted on rather than acting, managed rather than managing. Now consider the Scots. Not only was their approach empirical and practical but their philosophy was quite different from the pessimistic and all-encompassing French model. People if left alone, they held, were essentially virtuous and would, with the right tools, work out what was best for themselves and their families. Thus progress and change would be cautious and incremental, evolutionary and not revolutionary. The solution to a particular set of social problems lay, in other words, with the people, not with an elite purporting to represent the people.

The paradox is, as Fraser says, that though the positive Anglo-Scottish tradition (Anglo because he adds John Locke to the mix) is better in every way than the French, it’s their model we have ended up with. This country does best, as Margaret Thatcher demonstrated, when it follows the dictums of Adam Smith, offering practical solutions rather than grand abstractions. What he neglects to say, though, is that we have lost our way, lost sight of sober Anglo-Scottish principles, because we are now part of a Continental Empire, part of a European Union, driven by the idea that the people are not to be trusted, that only a benign and remote elite can address problems with centralised and statist solutions. The principle that drives the bureaucrats in the European Commission is not ‘we, the people’ but ‘they, the people.’ It’s Rousseau’s final triumph.

King of the swingers

If I mention the word ‘orgy’ what comes to mind? Writhing bodies, perhaps, acres of unprepossessing flesh performing the absurd dance of desire? Not for me, because orgy immediately suggests fruit - grapes, vines and laurel wreaths. Clearly this arises from modern depictions of Roman frolics, where sex, such as it is, comes served with grapes!

Still, there is a residue of exoticism, fruit and all. This was a pastime for the decadent Romans, to be found in the hedonistic courts of Caligula and Elagabalus. But my illusions have been shattered. For the orgy has been brought to us in a modern form by socialists and Marxists, as joyless and as unerotic as is possible to conceive, accompanied not by grapes but by haggis!

I don’t suppose too many people down here have heard of Tommy Sheridan, the one-time leader and Member of the Scottish Parliament for a group called the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), a movement that wanted to turn Alba (the Gaelic word for Scotland) into Albania. Anyone who advocates the virtues of some form of proportional representation for Westminster elections could do no better than have a look at Scotland, where it allowed the aforementioned SSP to send six members to the devolved parliament in the election of 2003. It might have sent more but for one thing: Sheridan emerged, according to some, wearing the tawdry tartan toga of a modern Caesar. Some, unkind observers, of course, might very well say he’s far less the people’s tribune more the king of the swingers.

Oh, there is a story here, a story that’s come to me from contacts in Scotland. Sheridan and his wife are currently on trial in Glasgow on a charge of perjury, arising from a successful case he pursued several years ago against News International, publishers of the News of the World, the yellowiest of the yellow British press, who alleged in a series of articles that he liked a spot of extramarital sex in swingers clubs in Sheffield and Manchester. Then every one of his fellow MSPs testified against him; now every one of his former party colleagues is testifying against him. It seems to be a kind of pantomime trial, with Sheridan conducting his own defence, along the lines of “You are lying”. “Oh, no, I’m not”. Oh, yes, you are!” and so on.

I don’t want to dwell on the shabby detail of the Haggis Caesar’s alleged exploits. Let me just say that sex has never looked less appealing. One female witness described the venue for a nine-body gathering (a spare on hand?) as ‘mingin’, a good Scottish word which seems to mean smelly, grotty and in questionable taste all at the same time! Yuck, is the one world that leaps to my mind.

The SSP is no more, well, that is to say it is no longer represented in the benighted Scottish Parliament. The trial proceeds and the outcome is awaited. Perhaps Sheridan will make something of a political comeback. If so, it might be a reasonable political strategy to add bread and circuses to the party programme or, to give it a Scottish flavour, haggis and swinging. What a distraction that would be from a bleak economic outlook.

Pantomime History

I love history and I love movies, my twin passions, if you like. I’ve seen some truly excellent films that deal with historical subjects, using a high degree of verisimilitude. For example, I think that Michael Caton-Jones' movie Rob Roy is a reasonable depiction of political and social conditions in early eighteenth century Scotland. There is only one small point I would take issue with, where Rob is shown riding a horse wearing a kilt. Now anybody who knows anything about riding, about the male anatomy and about how kilts were worn, will understand why the Scots gentry invented trews, the narrow trousers worn as an alternative to the kilt!

But it’s really another movie dealing with a Scottish historical subject I have in mind, Mel Gibson’s much-lauded Braveheart, which purports to tell the story of William Wallace, the great William Tell-like hero of the medieval Scottish Wars of Independence. Andrew Carson, a fellow blogger and friend, made some fairly damning criticisms of this movie in a discussion on BlogCatalogue, criticisms which I fully agree with. I’m glad he did because he’s also a Scot and I was under the impression that all Scots loved this depiction of their national epic, an impression I gathered in visiting the country over the years. But now he’s broken the ice, so to speak, an Englishwoman can, at her peril, enter the waters!

I know it’s only a movie, it’s only entertainment. Right, now I’ve got that out of the way I can say what I really think, and what I think is that the history is dramatic and exciting enough without this awful pastiche. The English soldiers, draped in some comic opera armour, are just pantomime villains. Yes, I know, I was bound to say that. But what I don’t understand is why the Scots, most Scots, allowed themselves to be seduced by this caricature. It’s almost like black people seeing their own history through the medium of the nigger minstrel shows of old.

The inaccuracies are too numerous to mention. The whole movie was clearly aimed at confirming the preconceptions of a chiefly American audience; and when the Americans think of Scotland what they think of is Highlands, tartans and clans, what I call the Brigadoon image. But the men who fought with Wallace, and then Robert Bruce, were mostly drawn from the Lowlands of the south and the east. They were not clansmen at all and they most assuredly did not wear tartan. Indeed some of the staunchest enemies of Bruce in particular were Highlanders.

Perhaps the most ludicrous suggestion was that Wallace had a sexual relationship with Isabella, princess of Wales; that he was the father of her child. It doesn’t really matter that he was dead before she came to England. What does matter, what Scots should be aware of, is that this would make Wallace the father of Edward III. In other words, one of Scotland’s greatest heroes is suggested as the father of one of its greatest enemies!

I really don’t want to belabour the point and it is possible to enjoy the movie at the simple level of cartoon-style entertainment; all good on one side, all bad on the other. I’m blessed, or cursed, you chose which, with a kind of sensitivity to historical subjects that makes such uncomplicated enjoyment all but impossible. Still, I’ve been fairly mild here, pulling my punches where I can pull punches. You don’t really want to know what I think about To Kill a King, set in the English Civil War!

The Earl and the Dog

I've written quite a bit about cats recently so it's time for a tale about a dog! It's story that takes us into British history, to the later part of the reign of Charles II. This was a time when the great political question of the day, at some points the only political question, was that of the royal succession. Charles had no legitimate children so the heir presumptive was James, duke of York, his brother.

The fact that James was also a practicing Catholic had caused the King no little trouble. The late 1670s had seen serious attempts to have James excluded from the throne on the grounds of his religion, viewed as a danger to the political liberties of England. Charles had played his hand well throughout the Exclusion Crisis, out-manoeuvring the enemies of James, known as the Whigs, at every turn. His victory in England was complete when he dismissed the Oxford Parliament in 1681, the last of his reign.

But there were the other kingdoms to consider. Catholic Ireland would present no problem. That left Scotland, a country strong in its Protestant sympathies. It also happened to be strong in Royalist sympathies also and had remained generally quiet throughout the Exclusion Crisis. Still, better to make sure; better to weld all senior public figures to the legitimate succession.

It began simply enough in 1681 with the introduction of a Test Act, intended to bind all public figures in support of royal authority and the legitimate succession. But the legislation was so contradictory and so badly drafted that there were some who had serious reservations about taking the oath it contained. The most senior of these was Archibald Campbell, the ninth earl of Argyll and leader of one of the most important Protestant clans in the western Highlands.

Argyll was a man who had to tread carefully. He had many enemies and his father, the first and only Marquis of Argyll, had been executed for his part in opposing the Royalists in the Civil War. Argyll took the Test oath, but with the caveat that only insofar as it was consistent with itself and the Protestant religion. It was the moment his enemies had been waiting for. He was arrested and imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. Fearing for his life, he managed to escape, eventually taking refuge on the Continent, not returning to Scotland until 1685, and then only to lead an unsuccessful rebellion against James, who had since become king.

Now this is where our dog comes in. The boys of Herriot’s Hospital, now George Herriot’s School, saw the potential for some low amusement in this high political drama. They decided that the school watchdog was in a position of public trust and should therefore be made to take the Test. When the matter was put to it the beast maintained a stony silence. This was taken as a flat refusal. But the dog’s defence council- yes, it was all properly conducted in accordance with Scots process! - clearly knew his way around the law, arguing that silence might be taken as much as assent as refusal.

The Test was then smeared in butter, described as Argyll's explanation, and put for a second time. No sooner was the butter licked off than the dog spat out the Test. In a mood of outrage the court sentenced him to be "hanged like a dog." Sir John Lauder, in recording this incident says that sentence was actually carried out. It was not; for the beast, like Argyll, managed to escape, although his office, all of his assets, both heritable and movable, and all of his feudal privileges were declared forfeit. Not content with that the boys issued a wanted notice offering £500, the same reward for the recapture of Argyll, for the apprehension of "ane cutt lugged, brounish Mastiff Tyke, called Watch, short leged and of low stature." So far as I'm aware Watch was never found!

Castles in the Air

I love castles; I love the stimulus they give to my imagination. I should say that it is ruined castles that I prefer, places that inspire my somewhat gothic romantic vision, the same vision as that inspired the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich! If there is a castle anywhere in the vicinity of where I am staying I will visit, the more remote the better, the lonelier the better, the darker its history the better.

Castles were once functional buildings, symbols, sometimes, of forms of oppression and colonial rule, like the great Edwardian fortresses of North Wales. But for me they are just wonderful residues of a past that has gone forever. All flesh may be grass but all castles are stone; stones that carry memory, that carry the ghosts of time.

A fellow blogger has caused me to reflect in particular on some of the castles that I have discovered in my travels to Scotland, from the far south to the distant north. Some of these places are not widely known outside Scotland, perhaps even inside Scotland. There is the wonderful Smailholm Tower, much loved by Sir Walter Scott, a southern tower house that recalls the days of the Border Reivers. There is the great costal fortress of Tantallon, once the home of the Red Douglas earls of Angus, besieged there by the King of Scotland himself in the late fifteenth century.

Also in East Lothian is the splendid castle of Dirleton, situated in a pretty village that seems more redolent of the shires of southern England than Scotland. But my favourite in the south is Caerlaverock Castle, found on the opposite side of the country, in the south-west not far from the English border

There is something so wonderful about this triangulated structure, a perfect example of the military architecture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, functional and beautiful at one and the same time, its overall charm added to by a moat that actually contains water! In 1300 it was besieged by Edward I in person, the occasion for a rather fanciful French poem. There are some interesting seventeenth century alterations, when the owner, the second earl of Nithsdale, attempted to create a modern interior within the Medieval walls. But it all came to nothing with the onset of the Civil Wars.

In the north I have several favourites. Castle Stalker on the coast of Argyll is impossibly romantic, as indeed is Kilchurn Castle on the northern shores of Loch Awe. Largely a fifteenth century structure, it was originally the home of the Campbells of Bredalbane. Owing to its strategic position it was later used by government forces during the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745.

Going further east, by way of Urquhart Castle, another Loch-side stronghold, I turn towards Aberdeenshire, to the shield-shaped Kildrummy Castle, a great Medieval structure, once the fortress home of the earls of Mar. From there it’s on to the coast south of Stonehaven to the ruins of Dunnottar Castle, perhaps the most evocative of all, a place whose towers glower like those of Tantallon further south directly on to the North Sea. Standing on a natural defensive promontory, there have been strongholds here for centuries before the stone structure finally appeared. Rebuilt many times, it was finally placed in the care of the Keith family, the Earl Marshals of Scotland, forfeited for their part in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. In modern times it featured as a ghostly Elsinore in the Mel Gibson movie version of Hamlet.

My thoughts by night are often filled
With visions false as fair:
For in the past alone I build
My castles in the air.

I dwell not now on what may be:
Night shadows o'er the scene:
But still my fancy wanders free
Through that which might have been.

The Stones of Edinburgh

Edinburgh is a beautiful, romantic city. Along with Bath and York it’s among the three most attractive in the United Kingdom in my estimation. It’s the city of Miss Jean Brodie, who in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie strolls with her girls, the crème de la crème, through the city’s historic Greyfriars Churchyard, the place where the National Covenant was signed in 1638, a document that was to engulf the whole of the British Isles in a great political tsunami.

I was saddened to discover that Greyfriars, a hugely evocative place, along with five other historic cemeteries in the city have been allowed to deteriorate so badly that they have now been put on World Monuments Fund’s latest watch list of the world’s hundred most endangered sites. The others are St. Cuthbert’s, Cannongate and the Old and New Calton burial grounds. Not only are the monuments crumbling but the grounds have also become the preferred haunts of drug addicts and drunks, deterring all but the most determined visitors.

It’s so sad, because these graveyards contain some of the greatest figures of the Scottish Enlightenment; people like Adam Smith, the economist, who is to be found in Cannongate close to the bottom of the Royal Mile, and David Hume, the philosopher, who has a superb mausoleum designed by Robert Adam in the Old Calton Burial Ground. Thomas de Quincy, author of Confessions of an English Opium Eater, is also buried in Edinburgh, in the churchyard of Saint Cuthbert’s at the junction of Princes Street and Lothian Road.

The city guardians used to keep a far better watch over these places. In the wake of the Burke and Hare scandal of the late 1820s, in which two Irish immigrants dug up recently interred corpses to sell on to the medical faculty at the city’s university, round look-out towers were added to the walls of Saint Cuthbert’s. Now body-snatchers and miscreants of all kinds have a free range after dark, here and in the other graveyards.

The council claims to have no money to look after these wonderful places properly. But when I was in Edinburgh last summer for the International Festival the main thoroughfare was being pulled apart for a massively expensive tram project that nobody I spoke to seemed to want. What a sad reflection not just on Edinburgh but the whole of Scotland, on a politically devolved Scotland, that it cannot look after some of its most enduring assets. Perhaps it’s time that De Quincy was repatriated.

Castle in the Mist

I had a really smashing long weekend in Scotland, taking some good friends to a place my family have in Easter Ross in the far north, a place surrounded by the most wonderful rugged country, a place where as often as not one is likely to be greeted in the morning by a wonderful many-pointed stag staring over the garden wall. I've been many times before, especially when I was growing up, though it's a while since I have been back. Not much has changed, though; this is a part of the country where things remain remarkably the same, remote from the pressures of modern life.

The people in my party had never been so far north before, so I had the role of guide and Sherpa thrust upon me. We managed to pack quite a lot in over the few days, anything from watching dolphins dance in the Moray Firth to a spot of hill walking. We even went as far as Fort William, dining in the wonderful Crannog Seafood Restaurant there, overlooking Loch Linnhe. But by far the best part of the weekend was some early morning sailing down Loch Ness.

It's a wonderful place, with the surrounding hills falling into the dark peaty waters of the long narrow lake, one of the deepest in the British Isles, deeper even than all the Great Lakes of North America, one laid upon the other! The whole setting is just impossibly romantic, so dominated by nature, by the power of nature.

I can just imagine what Casper David Friedrich, that magician of nature painting, would have made of the scene, looking down on the waters from the hills above. That’s what I was looking for, beauty and romance, not monsters! By far the best bit was sailing past the ruins of Urquhart Castle, poised in the edge of the waters, a place that seems to represent the enduring pointlessness of all human endeavour.

Les Rois Maudits

I cannot think of a dynasty more deserving of the honour of being known as Les Rois Maudits, the Accursed Kings, than the Scottish Stuarts. Now, I'm probably exaggerating slightly- and I certainly do not want to hurt Scottish feelings -but the family was notorious for its bad luck and ill-fortune, leaving Scotland with one troublesome minority after another.

Even James IV, in some ways the brightest star in the Stuart heavens, was to lead his country into arguably the most unnecessary war in its history, where no Scottish interest was threatened and none served; the occasion for the most devastating defeat. In the end even the French, most consistent in the support of the exiled Stuarts after the Glorious Revolution had enough of them. Louis XVI described them as an 'unlucky family' and refused to extend them any further political support.


Yes, they were a burden to Scotland both before and after the the Union of the Crowns in 1603. James VI, probably the last of the Stuarts who really understood his native land, left for London in that year, promising to come back at regular intervals. He returned just once. Scotland could be safely 'governed by pen', as he put it, which meant that he could impose unpopular religious policies, like the Five Articles of Perth, without any real degree of consensus; a policy that was to be a serious source of future trouble.


Though Charles I, James's son and successor, was born in Scotland, and spent the first few years of his life there, he understood almost nothing about the country. Indeed, he troubled himself so little about his northern kingdom that his Scottish coronation only came in 1633, some eight years after that in England. His arrogance towards the Scots became particularly pronounced in his religious policy. Heeding no advice, he insisted on certain Anglican-style 'reforms' in the Scottish Church which lead in the Covenanter Movement to a national revolution, a crisis that proceeded through the Bishops' Wars to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.


Under Charles II the Scots fared even worse. He came to Scotland in 1650 with the clear intention of using the country to recover the English throne. In the end he led another disastrous and ill-advised invasion of England, like that of James IV, which crashed to defeat at the Battle of Worcester. Charles managed to escape but Scotland was, for the first time in its history, thoroughly and completely conquered, prior to absorption into the English Protectorate.


Though nominal independence was recovered on Charles' Restoration in 1660 he showed very little gratitude for the Scots' former sacrifices. Once again a policy of religious coercion was introduced, the cause years of trouble and oppression in the Lowlands, punctuated by sudden bursts of violence, like that at Rullion Green in 1666 and Bothwell Bridge in 1679. The repression continued through the so-called Killing Time.


Though the Stuarts had never shown any great sympathy for the Highland clans, their support for the exiled James VII and the whole Jacobite cause was, in the end, to contribute directly towards the destruction of their whole way of life. For the later Stuarts Scotland was nothing more than the backdoor into England; never more so than for Charles Edward Stuart, James' grandson, who was the cause of the 1745 rebellion, a military and political adventure of the worst kind, which ended at Culloden in 1746. Charles got away, but the consequences for the Highlands were considerably worse than that which followed his grand-uncle's gamble in 1651. The romance later associated with 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' has always seemed to me to be astonishingly misplaced; as if a comforting fiction is felt to be somehow better than a rather sordid reality.


To the above I would add one further 'burden': the reign of William of Orange, partially Stuart and married to a Stuart. His was the time of the Glencoe Massacre, the Darien Disaster; a time of famine; a time of deep national self-doubt. One could, indeed, wish for a better set of princes!