This is what you should know about Scotland's history

Arch-Unionist actor Laurence Fox has launched a new political party called Reclaim, already dubbed “UKIP for culture”. He has some big backers, as he says he has £5 million in the bank for it. The Daily Mail reported Reclaim’s objectives include celebrating Britain’s cultural history.

Wow, that’s a lulu. You can bet it will be all about English history treated as “British”, playing up the Union and playing down Bannockburn. It will praise the Empire’s contribution to “civilising” the world, but not mention the entire continents robbed of their assets by the empire – and yes, I include Scotland in that empire rampage.

Will Reclaim tackle Britain’s role in slavery? Will it even mention war crimes committed by Britain and its allies, such as the invention of concentration camps in the Boer War? As for the recent historical fact that England and Scotland have been set on divergent political paths for decades, I suspect Foxy Loxy will be Chicken Little on that one.

So I’ll keep going, hoping that concentrating on Scottish history will help Scots to see what a magnificent past we had – and what a brilliant future we could have as an independent nation. Last week I set out to respond to a reader’s challenge to say what the 20 or so things we need to know about Scottish history are. Judging by the response I have had, I seem to be making the correct choices so far.

I must single out one message from Northside Raymie from Clydebank, and not just because he’s so complimentary. Raymie wrote:

“I am so pleased that your articles are being published. What memories! I was very fortunate to have had the eminent historian Dr IMM MacPhail as my history teacher at Clydebank High School back in the 60s. Dr McPhail has written several books on Scottish history, including books on the Clydebank Blitz and the history of Dunbartonshire amongst others.

“The good doctor educated we students in Scotland’s ancient history, including Mons Graupius, the Dalriadans, Picts, Scotti and of course Britain’s ancient capital Dumbarton (Alcluith), and everything else from our resistance to the Romans, and the Wars of Independence, to the abuse of the Scots from the beginning of the Union. A man of great insight and intellect, one of Scotland’s forgotten historians.

“I lived abroad for several years and was quite shocked when I returned to Scotland to see that most Scots who were 10 years or more younger than myself had hardly any knowledge of pre-Union Scotland. Indeed, the history they were being taught at school was what we in the 60s would have termed modern studies, ie the Second World War and the Clydebank Blitz.

“So refreshing to read your articles. Keep the truth flowing Hamish, but it must be, as Cromwell is attributed as saying, warts and all, no fairy stories.”

As it happens, I knew Dr MacPhail late in his life. While I consider myself to be merely a writer about history, he was a properly qualified and highly professional historian and an inspiration to many people like myself.

So let’s carry on with the questions in this primer which, like Dr MacPhail’s works, will hopefully inspire you to go out and search for much more information about the history of our nation. You will soon find that for much of the period before the 13th century, there is little that is definite about Scottish history. Edward I, John Knox and Oliver Cromwell between them oversaw the destruction of many records that were mostly held by Catholic church institutions. Eminent historians have thus argued for decades about what exactly happened in mediaeval Scotland.

I HAVE made an extensive study of the chronicles of the era and the various takes on a fascinating period, and the following paragraphs are my conclusions to the questions I put to myself first. For instance, how did the 1066 Norman Conquest of England affect Scotland?

We ended last week’s first part with the death of Macbeth from wounds received in battle with his successor, Malcolm III – or Canmore. Macbeth’s son Lulach was crowned King of Scots but he, too, died in battle with Malcolm, who became king in 1058.

By this time, Scotland as we know it today was almost complete. Strathclyde and the Lothians had been taken from the Britons and Northumbrians, and while the Norsemen still occupied Shetland, Orkney, the Western Isles and some of the northern mainland, it was Macbeth that managed to assert Scottish control over most areas.

Relations with our Scandinavian neighbours were usually good after they stopped raiding Scotland. Indeed, Malcolm Canmore first married Ingiborg, a Norse princess, and they had a son, Duncan, who would later be king. Ingiborg died, however, and that left Malcolm free to marry Margaret, a princess of the Anglo-Saxon Atheling royal family who fled from England when William the Conqueror seized the English throne.

Margaret was to prove a massive civilising influence on the warlike Malcolm, transforming his court and spreading the Roman version of Christianity in place of the Celtic rites of the Culdees. She would be canonised after her death and is revered still as St Margaret of Scotland. In order to preserve his country from the Norman invaders, Malcolm did homage to William, but that did not stop him carrying on the occasional war with the Northumbrians in particular. It was on one such raid into England in 1093 that Malcolm and his son, and designated heir Edward, were both killed in an ambush at Alnwick. Queen Margaret is said to have died of grief at the news.

Who was Scotland’s greatest king? The death of Margaret unleashed a violent period surrounding the throne. Malcolm’s brother Donald, known to history as Donald Bain, returned from exile to put himself on the throne, only to be ejected from it by his nephew Duncan who had the aid of an army from England. His reign lasted just six months before Duncan was killed in a coup which restored Donald to the kingship.

In turn, three sons of Malcolm and Margaret then became king – Edgar, Alexander, and the man I consider to be Scotland’s greatest king, David I.

He spent several years at the court of Henry I in England and there he was greatly influenced by Norman culture. When he became King of Scots in 1124, he immediately set about transforming the country, bringing in feudalism, burghs, courts and inviting nobility from Flanders and France to settle here with gifts of land.

He also gained large tracts of land and income from his arranged marriage to Matilda of Huntingdon for which he did homage to Henry – note, not for his kingdom of Scotland.

FOR most of his reign he had to contend with uprisings by supporters of rivals to the throne, but he managed to beat them all. He still was able to increase the very size of Scotland, taking in areas such as Carlisle, where he built a castle – he would die there in 1153 – and minted Scotland’s first coinage using Cumbrian silver.

He also directly intervened in English affairs as he led an army to uphold the claims of Empress Matilda against King Stephen, and later, though he lost the Battle of the Standard in 1138, he retained control of much of what is now northern England.

He also endowed and built numerous churches and abbeys – Glasgow Cathedral was consecrated during his reign. He reorganised the bishoprics of Scotland to greatly augment the power of the church, which is why some people still think of him as St David, even though he was never canonised.

What was our relationship with England before the Wars of Independence? Far more important was the resolution of internal strife within Scotland. Norse-Gaelic lord Somerled had proclaimed himself king of the isles and threatened the mainland, before he was defeated and killed by the army of King Malcolm IV at the Battle of Renfrew in 1164.

Malcolm’s successor William I, known later as William the Lion, then embarked on a long reign which saw him captured by the English at the Battle of Alnwick, when he supported the sons of Henry II in their revolt against their father.

Big mistake, as Henry II won and forced William to sign the humiliating Treaty of Falaise, which ceded control of the church in Scotland to the English. He was also forced to pay a huge ransom to gain his freedom and he also acknowledged the overlordship of Henry II and his successors Richard the Lionheart and John.

Yet William somehow managed to pacify Scotland and continued the transformational work of his grandfather David I, as well as making the first informal alliance with France.

William’s son King Alexander II maintained good relations with England after the reign of John, marrying King Henry III’s sister Joan and concluding several treaties with the English king. The most important of these was the Treaty of York in 1237, which set the border more or less as it is today.

Alexander III also married an English princess, Margaret, and also won the Battle of Largs to see off the Norwegian king Haakon IV. He concluded the Treaty of Perth in 1266 with Haakon’s successor Magnus VI, which brought the Western Isles and the Isle of Man under Scottish sovereignty.

In a tragedy that was to shape Scotland forever, Alexander died in a fall from his horse at Kinghorn in Fife where his second wife Yolande de Dreux was staying.

All three of his children pre-deceased him, which left his granddaughter Margaret, the daughter of Prince Erik of Norway and thus known as the Maid of Norway, as his heir. She died at the age of seven while making the sea crossing from Norway, leaving Scotland with no designated heir to the throne in 1290.

The struggle to gain the throne thus began among the Scottish aristocracy, and would lead to the Wars of Independence. Before we tackle that subject, it is important to note that while this was mainly internal strife within Scotland, there was a huge English presence taking a baleful view of things.

Who was Longshanks? Edward I really was a huge presence as he was very tall for the time, and he was a massive influence on the history of England. Having first joined them in their revolt against his father Henry III, Edward defeated the English barons and duly went on the Ninth Crusade to the Holy Land.

He was crowned king in 1274 and at first proved a wise administrator, pacifying and uniting England, reforming English law and improving the government of the country.

The people of Wales rebelled against their English occupiers and in 1283, Edward carried out the full conquest of England’s western neighbour and settled the country with English lords in impregnable castles. As we shall see, Scotland should have taken note of what happened to our Celtic cousins.