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England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were once known as the British
Isles. Nowadays this term is normally used only in Geography. In fact, the people of these isles have seldom been politically or culturally united.
English kings started wars to unite the British Isles from the 12th century. These wars were wars of conquest and only the Welsh war was a success.

At that time England was ruled by several ambitious kings, who wanted to conquer more countries for themselves and to add more titles to their names. They had, as a rule, absolutely no interest in the people of the countries that they wished to conquer. It did not concern them that these wars brought misery to the people in whose land they fought. The result was generally to create a strong, national, patriotic feeling in the invaded country, and a great hatred of the invader.

I don’t have much space here to speak about the history of Scotland in details that is why I’d like to mention one historical episode which shows the Scottish attitude towards freedom and independence. (For the chronology of the events in the history of Scotland see Appendices, page 24).

Although Scottish kings had sometimes accepted the English king as their “overlord”, they were much stronger than the many Welsh kings had been. Scotland owes its clan system partly to an Englishwoman, Margaret, the Saxon Queen of Malcolm III. After their marriage in 1069, she introduced new fashions and new ideas to the Scottish court – and among the new ideas was the feudal system of land tenure. Until that time, most of the country had been divided into seven semi-independent tribal provinces.
Under the feudal system, all land belonged to the king, who distributed it among his followers in exchange for allegiance and service. But a Highland chieftain could easily ignore a far-off Lowland king and, as time went by, the clan chiefs became minor kings themselves. They made alliances with other clans, had the power of life and death over their followers.

By the 11th century there was only one king of Scots, and he ruled over all the south and east of Scotland. In Ireland and Wales Norman knights were strong enough to fight local chiefs on their own. But only the
English king with a large army could hope to defeat the Scots. Most English kings did not even try, but Edward I was different.

The Scottish kings were closely connected with England. Since Saxon times marriages had frequently taken place between the Scottish and English royal families. At the same time the Scottish kings wanted to establish strong government and so they offered land to Norman knights from England in return for their loyalty.

In 1290 a crises took place over the succession to the Scottish throne. On a stormy night in 1286 King Alexander of Scotland was riding home along a path by the sea in the dark. His horse took a false step, and the king was thrown from the top of a cliff.

Disputes arose at once among all those who had any claim at all to the
Scottish throne. Finally two of the claimants, John de Balliol and Robert
Bruce, were left. Scottish nobles wanted to avoid civil war and invited
Edward I to settle the matter. Edward had already shown interest in joining
Scotland to his kingdom. He wanted his son to marry Margaret, the heir to the Scottish throne, but she had died in a shipwreck. Now he had another chance. He told both men that they must do homage to him, and so accept his overlordship, before he would help settle the question. He then invaded
Scotland and put one of them, John de Balliol, on the Scottish throne.

De Balliol’s four years as a king were not a success. First Edward made him provide money and troops for the English army and the Scottish nobles rebelled. They felt that Edward was ruining their country.

Then Edward invaded Scotland again, and captured all the main Scottish castles. During this invasion he stole the sacred Stone of Destiny from
Scone Abbey. The legend said that all Scottish kings must sit on it. Edward believed that without the Stone, any Scottish coronation would be meaningless, and that his own possession of the Stone would persuade the
Scots to accept him as king. However, neither he nor his successors became kings of Scots, and the Scottish kings managed perfectly well without the stone.

All this led to the creation a popular resistance movement. At first it was led by William Wallace, a Norman-Scottish knight. But after one victory against English army, Wallace’s “people’s army” was itself destroyed by Edward in 1297.

It seemed that Edward had won after all. Wallace was captured and executed. His head was put on a pole on London Bridge. Edward tried to make
Scotland a part of England as he had already done with Wales. Some Scottish nobles accepted him, but the people refused to be ruled by the English king. Scottish nationalism was born on the day Wallace died.

A new leader took up the struggle. This was Robert Bruce, who had competed with John de Balliol for the throne. He was able to raise an army and defeat the English army in Scotland. Edward the I gathered another great army and marched against Robert Bruce, but he died on the way north in 1327. On Edward’s grave were written the words “Edward, the Hammer of the Scots”. He had intended to hammer them into the ground and destroy them, but in fact he had hammered them into a nation.

After Edward’s death Bruce had enough time to defeat his Scottish enemies, and make himself accepted as king of the Scots. He then began to win back the castles still held by the English. When the son of his old enemy Edward II invaded Scotland in 1314 Bruce destroyed his army at
Bannockburn, near Stirling. Six years later, in 1320, the Scots clergy meeting in Arbroath wrote to the Pope in Rome to tell him that they would never accept English authority: “for as long as even one hundred of us remain alive, we will never consent to subject ourselves to the dominion of the English.”

In the long, bitter struggle for independence, Scotland never capitulated, and when at last it became part of the United Kingdom in 1707 it was by treaty, even if many Scots regarded the Act of Union[6] as a piece of treachery. It is still a land apart, with a very separate culture.
Scotland retained its separate legal and ecclesiastical systems, and until well into the 20th century its separate system of free education was the most advanced and generous in Britain. Nowadays, it has its own Parliament.

III. Scotland’s beautiful capital.

1. Introduction

Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. This distinction is partly an accident of Nature, for the city is built upon jumble of hills and valleys; however, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the natural geography was enhanced by the works of a succession of distinguished Georgian and Victorian architects.

Evidence that Stone Ages settlers lived in Edinburgh has been found on
Calton Hill[7], Arthur’s Seat[8] and Castlehill, and the town’s early history centres around Castlehill. Some historians believe that this volcanic hill was a tribal stronghold as early as 600 BC.

One tribe who definitely made their mark were a group of Nothumbrians, whose 7th-century king Edwin[9], is thought to have given his name to the castle and town. “Burgh” is a Scottish word for borough (a small town).

2. Edinburgh’s Castle

The Royal Castle of Edinburgh is the most powerful symbol of Scotland.
For centuries, this mighty fortress has dominated its surroundings with a majesty, which has deeply impressed many generations.

The volcanic castle rock in Edinburgh was born over 340 million years ago following a violent eruption deep in the earth’s crust. Its story as a place of human habitation stretches back a mere 3,000 years, to the late
Bronze Age. It was evidently a thriving hill-top settlement when Roman soldiers marched by in the first century AD.

The place had become an important royal fortress by the time of Queen
Margaret’s[10] death there in November 1093. Throughout the Middle Ages
Edinburgh Castle ranked as one of the major castles of the kingdom and its story is very much the story of Scotland. But within the building of the
Palace of Holyroodhouse in the early 16th century, the castle was used less and less as a royal residence, though it remained symbolically the heart of the kingdom.

Edinburgh Castle is the home of the Scottish Crown Jewels, the oldest
Royal Regalia in Britain. The Honours of Scotland – the Crown, Sword and
Sceptre – were shaped in Italy and Scotland during the reigns of King James
IV and king James V and were first used together as coronation regalia in
1543.

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