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This paper explores an aspect of the legacy of the Declaration of Arbroath and expands upon earlier research into tensions surrounding the commemorations in 1814 of the battle of Bannockburn. It considers the evidence for connections between those radical artisans and their leaders who attempted to rouse popular insurrection in 1820, Scotland's so-called 'radical war', and Bruce's now-celebrated missive to the papacy of 6 April 1320, five centuries before. Did the armed workers moving on Carron Shore Iron Foundry on 5 April 1820, routed by troops at Bonnymuir, seek to coincide with the Declaration's anniversary? To what extent was the radicals' own declaration, the Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland, influenced by the text of 1320? If so, did this represent a continuation, a renewal or a debut for the Declaration as an inspiration for popular political participation in modern times? A survey of the holdings of early working-class subscription, circulation and public libraries in central Scotland c. 1790–c. 1830 can be made to identify both known and previously unnoticed published works which reproduced, translated and/or discussed the Declaration, as well as any radicalised readers. This reveals public awareness of Arbroath in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to have been potentially far more widespread than hitherto recognised by historians, if still marginal as a catalyst to political agitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the period after the Great Highland Famine being labelled by some historians as a period of relative prosperity for the crofting and cottar community of north-west Sutherland, poverty and occasional destitution remained the norm. This article examines the structural causes and social consequences of this recurring pattern, principally from the perspective of the owners and managers of the Sutherland estate. The views of those factors 'on the ground' revolved around the organisation of immediate assistance for the people, as well as a fear of a 'dependency' culture being the permanent result of landlord charitable aid. These views clashed with those of the estate commissioner and ducal family, who were concerned with their public image, especially in the wake of unfavourable comment on the clearances. These contrasting views were further complicated by contemporary debates about charity and Poor Law reform which, although often metropolitan in focus, had a direct impact on the Sutherland estate's response to destitution in the mid-nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scottish secondary education was radically extended in size and social reach in the first four decades of the twentieth century, bringing significant new opportunities in secondary schooling to girls, to children of the lower-middle and upper-working classes, and to Catholics. Most of the new secondary schools were based on those parish schools that had in the nineteenth century sent a few boys directly to university, and so this new secondary sector was a modernising of the mythological tradition of the lad o' pairts. The main reason it succeeded was that it sought to extend to new social groups the benefits of the version of liberal education that had come to be regarded as the foundation of professional careers. Thus the reforms also had the effect of transferring to the senior years of the secondary schools the old undergraduate curriculum that had been replaced by more specialist university courses in the late-nineteenth century. The paper offers an evidence-based critique not only of that strand of pessimism which has claimed that Scottish education was stagnant between the wars, but also of George Davie's influential view that the tradition of a broad general education was lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1738 and 1741 Scotland experienced one of the harshest harvest crises and depressions in the eighteenth-century. After at least two consecutive harvest failures (in 1739 and 1740 and perhaps also in 1738) agrarian and industrial output contracted, the price level doubled, and average incomes fell below subsistence. Due to an increase in mortality, there was also a considerable contraction in aggregate demand. Data drawn from both the micro- as well as the macro-level shows the disastrous economic impact such deficient harvests -- the depression's initial trigger -- would have upon Scotland, a pre-industrial economy dominated by agriculture. Such shocks in agrarian supply tended to work out as general adverse shocks in aggregate supply, as the economy's business cycle was to a large extent determined by movements in the harvest cycle. The implicit task of the paper also is to point out the variety of available sources for, as well as one possible strategy of, writing a quantitative macro-economic history of eighteenth-century Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dispute between the faculty of advocates and the lords of session in February 1674 which led to most advocates being debarred from practice for eighteen months. Provoked by an attempt to appeal a decision from the court of session to parliament, the dispute rendered both institutions potential rivals for judicial supremacy. In addition to providing a narrative reconstruction of events, this article argues that the significance of the advocates' secession lies not in any resultant jurisprudential clarification or innovation. Rather, it reveals that the dispute is best interpreted in terms of Restoration party politics, since the main outcome of any appeal permitted against a decision of the session would have been to ensure that parliament became a permanent constitutional fixture. Furthermore, events in the mid-1670s vividly demonstrated the destabilising potential for differences of opinion within the court of session to become a proxy for broader political concerns in parliament's absence, whilst also ensuring that the issue of appellate jurisdiction remained a contested matter in the decades preceding Anglo-Scottish union in 1707. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alasdair Mann, the noted scholar of book culture in early modern Scotland, has suggested that a significant change had occurred in Scotland's relationship with the printed word by the late seventeenth century. This study sets out to explain how the interregnum served as a 'watershed' during which a consumer demand was created for popular print and how this in turn necessitated a significant increase in the production and distribution of printed material. Beginning with the sale of the press and patent of Evan Tyler to the London Stationers' Company in 1647, the article charts the key factors that transformed Scotland's printing industry from the production of official declarations and works for foreign markets to the production of polemical texts for a Scottish audience. These developments also witnessed publication of the first serial news journal and the growth of a competitive market for up-to-date printed news. More than just an anomaly that flourished during a decade of occupation, these fundamental changes altered Scotland by introducing the large-scale consumption of chapbooks and printed ephemera, thereby initiating the nation's enduring print culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With particular emphasis upon the revolution and the early years of William's reign, this article aims to shed some light on the nature of the relationship between church and parliament, in particular its importance to the church in promoting its vision for a reformed church in Scotland. The article focuses on the strategies used by the church to achieve their objectives. Effective organisation, careful and diligent lobbying of parliament and forthright presentation of their position through preaching, enabled them to galvanise their support within parliament and secure a settlement that not only disappointed their opponents but went beyond what William and erastian inclined Presbyterians would have preferred. It is quite clear that the church significantly influenced the nature and extent of the final ecclesiastical settlement. Consequently, the revolution provided the template for relations between church and parliament until the latter's dissolution in 1707. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of different management methods in the 18th century Scottish Parliament and the rise of public and partisan politics in Scotland as a result of these methods. It is stated that the major impact was the ratification of a treaty of union with England. It helped the government to realize the importance of the interaction between public and party politics in building a stable parliament. It forced the Scottish government to acknowledge and address the grievances of the public.

In 1894, two-fifths of the men who served in the Royal Naval Reserves (RNR) were drawn from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, despite the region containing only 0.5% of the total UK population. This was not an atypical spike in recruitment, however, but represents merely one moment in a relationship that lasted for nearly a century. Highlanders and Islanders had served in the RNR since its inception in 1859, and continued to do so in large numbers right up to the outbreak of war in 1939. This article explores the association between region and military institution that developed as a result, and the economic and social reasons that lay behind this. In doing so, it challenges the tendency for Scottish historians to focus overwhelmingly on questions of national identity when examining the British military. It also suggests that the historiography of the Highlands and Islands has focused too much on questions of land and land ownership, and not enough on the wider economic and social circumstances impacting on individual and community life across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers relationships between artisans and aristocrats on estates and elsewhere in Scotland during the long nineteenth century. It argues that the Scottish aristocracy, and women in particular, were distinctly preoccupied with the craft economy through schemes to promote employment but also due to attachments to 'romanticised' local and Celtic identities. Building in part on government initiatives and aristocratic office-holding as public officials and presidents of learned societies, but also sustained through personal interest and emotional investments, the craft economy and individual entrepreneurs were supported and encouraged. Patronage of and participation in public exhibitions of craftwork forms one strand of discussion and the role of hand-made objects in public gift-giving forms another. Tourism, which estates encouraged, sustained many areas of craft production with south-west Scotland and the highland counties providing examples. Widows who ran estates were involved in the development of artisan skills among local women, a convention that was further developed at the end of the century by the Home Industries movement, but also supported male artisans. Aristocrats, men and women, commonly engaged in craft practice as a form of escapist leisure that connected them to the land, to a sense of the past and to a small group of easily identified and sympathetic workers living on their estates. Artisans and workshop owners, particularly in rural areas, engage creatively in a patronage regime where elites held the upper hand and the impact on the craft economy of aristocratic support in its various forms was meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles I summoned his Scottish estates three times before the Scottish revolution of 1638: in 1625, 1630 and 1633. This article examines the convention of estates of 1630, held one year after Charles had suspended his English parliament. Members of the convention agreed to renew the regular parliamentary taxation (though they refused to vote it for a longer period) and proved surprisingly co-operative over Charles's controversial revocation. However, there was a major explosion of opposition on religious grounds. Two presbyterian petitions attempted to sabotage the enforcement of the five articles of Perth, the crown's flagship liturgical policy; the petitions seemed likely to attract the support of a majority of the estates but were suppressed by high-handed government action. A resolution by the estates against the five articles of Perth might have had a similar effect to the House of Commons' resolutions of 1629 that led to the suspension of the English parliament. The article examines what is known about the dissidents and argues that continuity can be identified both with previous opponents of royal policy (notably in 1621) and with subsequent support for the National Covenant after 1638. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Scottish Committee on the History of Parliament was established in 1936 as an offshoot of Col. Josiah Wedgwood's scheme for a collaborative 'history of parliament' researched and written on biographical lines. Circumstances, however, determined that the Scottish history would take a separate path. When Wedgwood's scheme was revived in 1951 an unsuccessful attempt was made to reintegrate the two projects. Discussions between the respective managing committees were conflicted and often bad-tempered, focussing on different interpretations of the nature of the united parliament created in 1707. The Scottish committee insisted that it was a new constitutional entity, while the English saw it as a continuation of the Westminster parliament with Scottish MPs added. This story of mutual incomprehension illustrates the profound differences between Scottish and English academics in the writing of parliamentary history, and also reveals a hitherto unobserved element in the development among leading Scottish jurists of a strain of 'legal nationalism' based on their interpretation of the constitutional significance of the Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article details the scam enacted by fraudster John Campbell between 1656 and 1657 in which he traveled throughout England and Scotland with forged documents and passes. He purportedly was attempting to raise funds for the ransom of his preacher father who had been kidnapped by Turkish Pirates from the parish of Tredenham in Cornwall, England. Governor of the military garrison in Perth, Scotland Colonel William Daniell arrested Campbell after Campbell failed to provide information which would support his forged documents. The trial of Campbell is detailed. Other subjects considered include issues of security in Great Britain under the leadership of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, charitable giving in the 17th century, and General George Monck, commander in chief of the Scottish Army.

In the nineteenth century nationalism and historiography were closely linked, and the absence of separatist nationalism in Scotland had consequences for academic history. This article looks at the content of university history teaching, using sources such as lecture notes, textbooks, and inaugural lectures. The nature of the Scottish curriculum made the Ordinary survey courses more significant than specialised Honours teaching. While chairs of general history were founded only in the 1890s, the teaching of constitutional history in law faculties from the 1860s transmitted an older tradition of whig constitutionalism, based partly on the idea of racial affinity between the English and Scots, which was reinforced by the influence of the English historians Stubbs and Seeley. Academic historians shared contemporary views of history as an evolutionary science, which stressed long-term development and allowed the Union to be presented in teleological terms. Their courses incorporated significant elements of Scottish history. Chairs of Scottish history were founded at Edinburgh in 1901 and Glasgow in 1913, but their holders shared the general unionist orientation. By 1914, therefore, university history courses embodied a distinctive Scoto-British historiography, which was a significant factor in the formation of British identity among the Scottish middle classes; there were many European parallels to this state-oriented form of national history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South Sea bubble of 1720 has traditionally been seen as a London-centric event, with its impact on the British peripheries of Ireland and Scotland being largely ignored. This article examines the Scottish context of the bubble, looking at Scottish investment in London, the reactions of Scots to the rise and fall of the Company, and its impact on Scottish projects and schemes. Drawing on a range of manuscript and printed sources, and through the exploration of individual case studies, this article demonstrates that the Scottish experience of the financial revolution extended beyond the collapse of the Darien project and the Act of Union. The findings presented here suggest a need to revisit both the historiography of the bubble and the financial history of post-Union Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Scotland's engagement with the imperial project through the medium of its commemoration of the second South African War. It focuses on both the process of commemoration and its outputs. These included a rich and varied range of military and civic memorials, some traditionally monumental, others with a more functional intent, including educational and welfare projects. The collective memory of the war which they articulated drew overwhelmingly on Scots' perceptions of themselves as a 'marital race'. However, the discussion also highlights the plurality of memory and the multi-layering of the commemorative experience. Thus memorials both honoured the fallen and proclaimed the justice of their cause, but the balance of their messages would shift over time, while remaining open to differing interpretations by a range of constituencies, such as grieving families, regimental comrades and civic leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Articles of Union approved by the parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707 provided for the preservation of the private law of Scotland and for the determination of disputes arising north of the border in Scottish courts. At the same time, however, the Articles not only allowed for the amendment of the law by legislation enacted at Westminster but also left open the possibility of appeals being made to the British parliament against decisions delivered in Scottish courts. The Articles did not allow explicitly for appeals, but nor did they prohibit them, and dissatisfied litigants, by exercising the privilege asserted in the Claim of Right to protest for remeid of law against decisions of the lords of council and session, enabled the upper house of the new parliament to substitute its decisions for those delivered by the supreme civil court in Scotland. This much has long been understood by historians of Scots law, as has the significant impact the opinions expressed by English judges in the House of Lords came to have on the development of the modern law. Yet what has never been properly understood is the nature of the protestations for remeid of law from which appeals to the British parliament emerged. Detailed study of these protestations in the years before and immediately following the union reveals that they were conceived of in several different ways and that their nature was never clearly defined. Nevertheless, it also tends to confirm that there is some basis for the common suspicion that appeals were not intended to be made to the House of Lords in the way that they have been. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the factors responsible for the deterioration of Scotland's relationship with England in the 18th century and its impact on the economic condition of the former. It is stated that Scotland had always reaped rich dividends in business during its association with England. The passing of the Act of Security in 1703 by the Scottish Parliament and the nomination of a Protestant successor to Queen Anne of Great Britain, deteriorated the relationship between Scotland and England.

The article focuses on the Scottish Union of 1707, with reference to the War of Spanish Succession during the years 1701-1714. It is stated that the War of Spanish Succession, which is considered to be one of the greatest European conflicts, played an important role in the implementation of the Union, determining its timing, manner and consequences. It is mentioned that the Union between Scotland and England aided in Great Britain's war against France between 1688 and 1815, and its emergence as a major world power.

The article focuses on the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 and the relationship between the British Union and British empire. A customs bill was passed in December 1707 to extend East India Co.'s monopoly in Scotland. It is stated that sometimes the Union was biased, but the empire is believed to have been sincerely British in its manpower, trade and ideologies. The Anglo-Scottish settlement, despite giving a uniformly British empire, gave an unrestricted access to only half an empire to the Scots.

Bede in his ‘Ecclesiastical History’ dated the arrival of St Columba in Britain and the foundation of the monastery of Iona to 565, two years after the 563 date derived from sources associated with Iona. This article analyses the different possibilities for how Bede obtained his date, arguing that he used a Pictish source, and places the claim in the ‘Ecclesiastical History’ that Iona was given to Columba by the Picts in the context of other evidence that Pictish over-kings in the decades before 730 were beginning to attempt to dominate Dál Riata. It also proposes that notes added to the Series longior Pictish king-list at Abernethy in the mid-ninth century display a strong Gaelic influence ultimately derived from a similar chronological source to that used by Bede. As a result Bede's calculation and the king-list notes provide evidence for Pictish scholarship and its cultural connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the political radicalism which developed in Perth, in the 1790s, had its roots predominantly in earlier opposition to local social and political conditions. It highlights the continuity of support for reform across three decades, and it explores why a political opposition emerged in Perth and how it manifested itself. Perth radicals drew on what they had learnt by their involvement in the campaigns against Catholic relief and in support of burgh reform, demonstrating significant involvement in both issues. It also argues that the pre-1790 reform movement encompassed a broad class base emphasising the fact that reform agitation did not suddenly erupt with the French Revolution. It considers the connections between developments in Scotland and England, highlighting important differences which affected the reform movement after 1795, it provides evidence supporting the contention that the authorities’ concerns about stability were justified, and adds to the growing body of work which challenges the view that Scottish society in the 1790s was overwhelmingly stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of Britain's main manifestation of inter-war fascism, Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists [BUF], continues to be a hotly contested field of study. A new biography of Mosley, work on gender and the BUF, and the incorporation of new models of generic fascism have made important contributions to the historiography of the BUF. However, until recently, almost no historical consideration of the BUF's career in Scotland had been attempted. But work by Tony Milligan and Henry Maitles has opened up the topic of fascism in Scotland between the wars. This article seeks to build on these contributions, and examines two groups of factors that led to the failure of fascism in Scotland. The inability of the BUF to find political space in Scotland, allied to internal organisational weaknesses, compounded by the indifference of the English fascist movement to the BUF in Scotland created flaws that characterised the Scottish BUF from the outset. These weaknesses were exacerbated by the failure of the BUF to understand the Scottish dimensions of politics, such as the cross-cutting appeal of Scottish nationalism, and religious tensions. Finally, anti-fascist opposition proved to be especially problematic for the Scottish BUF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of the island named Hinba, referred to in Adomnán's Life of Columba, has exercised scholarly attention intermittently for hundreds of years. Successfully identifying Hinba would have the potential to enhance our understanding of the geography, politics and culture of western Scotland in the early medieval period. This article analyses Adomnán's references to Hinba and assesses the toponymic, material culture and written evidence pertaining to the islands of western Scotland, to propose Canna as the most likely location. A review of the stone sculpture and archaeological remains on Canna supports the proposition. An inquiry into the probable geographical feature referred to by Adomnán as Muirbolc Már includes a summary of the known instances of the placename element muirbolc in Scotland and Northern Ireland and proposes that it may not, as generally thought, indicate an enclosed bay. The significance of Eigg, where one of Columba's disciples was marooned en route to Hinba, is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stronghold of Iudeu, which Bede called urbs Giudi, appears to have been a royal centre held by the seventh-century kings of the Bernician English, and sufficiently prominent to lend its name to the Firth of Forth in the British and Gaelic languages. The name appears not to have survived in any modern place -name, leaving us reliant on Bede's vague description of the site in Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, as well as a few other scraps of circumstantial evidence, in seeking to locate it. The situation naturally encouraged debate among scholars until, in 1959, identification with Stirling was proposed. This article reviews both that hypothesis and the primary evidence relating to Iudeu, and argues that the Stirling identification is far from satisfactory. Two new alternatives – and a third one, discarded in 1947 – are put forward as sites most in keeping with the crucial evidence provided by Bede, but no firm decision between them seems possible in our present state of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the letter from the Union Parliament of 1665-5 on the Scottish Affairs at Westminster. The Westminster parliament, a new union of England and Scotland has been formalized by the protectoral ordinance last April. With the earl of Glencairn's royalist rebellion, only 22 MPs were returned for the 30 seats allocated to Scotland while the rest were Englishmen. In addition, in the House of Commons, Scottish affairs were side-lined by more compelling English concerns.

Discusses the service of Catholic Irishmen in Scotland's Crown forces in 1914 and 1915. Ideological background to enlistment and imperial identity; Attitudes of the wider Irish community towards the British empire; Factors contributing to the failure of John Redmond's compact to reconcile Irish nationalism with the Empire.

Focuses on the division among the members of the Conservative Party over the repeal of a Corn Law in Scotland from 1846 to 1857. Factors triggering the political alignments during the period; Departure of some of the leading Peelites from the ministry of Viscount Henry John Temple Palmerston; Support of the Duke of Hamilton to the repeal of the law.