Here is only the INTRODUCTION of my thesis for those of you crazy enough to read it.
Ahem...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Introduction
Scottish history is well supplied with people who played radically
altering, politically significant, or simply interesting roles in its past.
However, many of these historical figures either have not lodged in the
nation’s collective memory or have been passed over as irrelevant. Few Scots
are taught much about their national history. Whenever the subject was studied
at all, it tended to focus on a handful of notorious individuals. Discussions
with many native Scots ranging from ages 18 – 75 revealed their unanimous
agreement that, unlike students in other countries, they were not taught in
primary or secondary schools a homogeneous narrative history of their own
country (up until the Stuarts took the throne of both England and Scotland,
that is); this includes the major national events from Scotland’s past. By
contrast, the study of history in Scotland during primary and secondary
schooling focused primarily on English kings, their respective reigns, and
Great Britain and its role in global history.[1]
The academic historians who revised Scottish history over the past thirty years
are to be applauded for their attempts to uncover the truth, however, their
particular flaw is that in rewriting Scotland’s past, the academics revised the
subject to better fit with their own beliefs and ideals, without remaining
detached and objective. Of course, studying Scottish history is not an easy
enterprise. Paul Hopkins, when discussing the primary source materials of the
Jacobite era, observes: ‘The main archive for the period until 1713, deposited
in the Scots College at Paris, was almost totally destroyed in the French
Revolution’.[2] Alongside
random bad luck of this kind, where Scottish records fell victim to another
country’s era of crisis, Scots destroyed their own records, to protect
themselves or family members from accusations of sedition or other ignoble
crimes, and others were lost due to indifference, generated by a general lack
of interest in the Scottish past.
This negligence
towards Scottish history is changing, due perhaps to the return of the Scottish
Parliament in 1999 after 292 years of rule from London. This in conjunction
with genuinely focused academic research, international attention and curiosity
regarding the current question of Scottish nationalism and an on-going interest
from countries where many of those Scots ‘cleared’ during the major years of
the diaspora is gradually filling the gaps in Scottish history.
Sadly, what Daniel Szechi
refers to as the ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ industry’, an idealised, largely
imaginary Scottish history created primarily by the descendants of exiles and
emigrants, has shaped not only the present nation-within-a-nation and its
identity through disingenuous motion pictures such as Braveheart and Rob Roy (both
Hollywood-driven and emotive depictions of myths about William Wallace and
Robert Roy MacGregor, respectively).[3] These films, along with some less than
scholarly accounts of Scottish history by authors such as John Prebble, Magnus
Linklater and others (mainly journalists), have shaped much of the non-academic
opinion about the subject. Although the books bear somewhat more of a
relationship to factual history, the authors rely on poignant nuance to sway
the reader to a particular point of view.[4]
As a result of this essentially sentimental, or hagiographic, tradition of
writing, Scots history is populated with heroes and villains, such as Wallace;
Mary, Queen of Scots; Bonnie Prince Charlie; and Butcher Cumberland. In this
context, reasonably even-handed and source-based biography is a genuinely
useful way of illuminating the Scottish past. Szechi
stated in his own biographical sketch on George Lockhart of Carnwath, that only
recently has it become academically acceptable to use biography as a tool for
academic research. He says:[5]
Writing history through biography is definitely problematic ...
Historians look askance at ... popular biographies because they know from
experience that the vast majority easily slip into hagiography or denunciation
and almost all of them inflate the importance of their particular individual in
the historical process ... Yet every technique in historical writing has an
attendant train of philosophical assumptions and methodological problems. The
biographical approach ... has some obvious advantages ... the natural limit on
the scope of the study and easy accessibility for the general reader. ...
normally [with the above mentioned disadvantages] the case is altered, however,
if the subject of the biography is ... accorded a passive role ... so that
[they] become the object of study rather than the events in which that person
participated ... By treating the subject of the biography as an aspect of the
mental world [they] inhabited we can gain a real insight into why events turned out as they did,
rather than how.
Bearing this in mind, this thesis attempts to fill in the narrative
of one noble family at a particularly problematic time for Scotland, and was
undertaken by someone who, at the outset, had no depth of knowledge of the
nation’s history. Absence of preconceptions proved to be a valuable asset.
Although the learning curve was rather high, the study of the nation’s history
was not tainted by any personal proclivity or loyalty to any one person, place
or thing.
Szechi warns
against the biographer’s tendency to ‘inflate the importance of their
particular individual in the historical process.’ However, there is
considerable objective evidence for the importance of the Murrays, and
genuinely good reason for studying the family: the politics of late
seventeenth-century Scotland polarized opinion. Perhaps unconsciously biased by
the black-and-white tendencies of Scottish popular history, even academic
historians have concentrated on those who espoused clear-cut political
positions. The Murrays have therefore been dismissed on all hands as
fence-sitters but studying them allows us to look at how moderates manage in a
time of extremists.
The thesis does not
delve into hagiography, nor does it denounce the 1st Duke of Atholl
as a villain; the work presents him as a powerful magnate and his political
ambitions in a time of persistent change. Before launching an inexperienced
reader into the lives of the latter seventeenth/early eighteenth century
politicians, in general, and the Murrays of Atholl, in particular, background
explanation as to why this is an
important subject must be outlined.
Central to the story is the politics of religion. James VI was a
surprisingly effective King of Scotland, given that he came to the throne as an
infant, and left the country for good when he inherited the English throne in
1603, returning only once for a brief visit in 1617. As the inventor and propagandist
of ‘Great Britain’, he was strongly in favour of harmonising and unifying his
kingdom. He attempted to bring the Highlanders into line with the more
tractable Lowlanders through the medium of education, and he therefore set
forth an odd set of edicts issued in 1609, known as The Statutes of Iona. He also wanted to influence the development
of Lowland culture by bringing the Kirk into line with the Anglican tradition
in which the monarch was head of the church as well as the state.[6]
James VI strictly enforced Episcopalianism using the dictum, ‘No Bishops, No
King’.
When James VI returned in 1617, one of Sir Dudley Carleton’s many
anonymous correspondents was frank about the King’s motives: ‘his object is to
establish the English hierarchy in Scotland, which the Scots dislike.’[7]
James, in his speech to the Scottish Parliament, also revealed a conscious
programme of Anglicisation which went beyond his vision of ecclesiastical
unification. As reported to Sir Francis Bacon, ‘he studied nothing so much … as
to reduce the barbarity (I have warrant to use the King’s word) of this country
unto the sweet civility of ours; adding further that if the Scotish nation
would be as docible to learn the goodness of England as they are teachable to
limp after their ill, he might with facility prevail in his desire, for they
had learned of the English to drink healths, to wear coaches and gay clothes,
to take tobacco and to speak neither Scotish nor English.’[8]
To be a ‘royalist’ during Scotland’s reformation meant to adhere to
the Episcopalian faith so favoured by James. His religious position allowed him
to ascend the throne of England, and thus create the Union of the Crowns,
because it was wholly acceptable in England. Unfortunately, the Calvinist
theology and Presbyterian church-organization which Elizabeth I had more or
less successfully sidelined in England had taken deep roots in Scotland.
Episcopalianism, though it was genuinely popular in the north-east, was far
less so in the south of the country.
Despite all of James VI’s hopes for a complete union of ‘Great
Britannia’ with one church, one King, and one parliament, the Presbyterian
church created through the efforts of John Knox and others would strike a blow
of its own after James’ son, Charles I, ascended to the throne. In an attempt
to further regulate the Scots and bring about his father’s ambition for one
church with the King at its head, the monarch, with the aid of Archbishop Laud
(who had caused mortal offence to the Scots when he came to Scotland with James
in 1617),[9]
had ‘carefully revised, altered, and corrected’ the Kirk’s liturgy.[10]
This new prayer book was nearly identical to the Anglican liturgy; and in any
case, the idea of an unalterable liturgy of prayer was not acceptable to
Presbyterians.[11] In 1637,
something Charles I did not expect occurred. When he ‘vested the power of Kirk
sessions and presbyteries in bishops; lay elders were dismissed from the church
courts, and the whole structure of Presbyterian polity in Scotland was
overturned,’[12] the Scots rose
in wrath against him.
The unplanned result of this crisis in the ecclesiastical governance
of Scotland were the civil wars which ensued after the signing of the ‘Solemn
League and Covenant’ in 1638.[13]
Charles I lost his head, and Charles II, his son and heir, after reluctantly
agreeing to sign the Covenant, was crowned by Royalist Scots at Scone in 1651
in a bid to head a large Scottish army to wrest his throne back from Cromwell’s
Parliamentarian forces.[14]
Oddly, however, under Oliver Cromwell’s Interregnum, the Scots enjoyed some of
their most peaceable years that century. When Cromwell’s power failed after his
death, it was simple for General Monck to recall the exiled King.[15]
Charles II left no surviving direct heir; his brother, the openly Catholic James
VII of Scotland and II of England, took the throne after he died in 1685, much
to the dismay of both his northern and southern kingdoms.
One final fact of primary
importance in Scotland’s history had a great impact on the fortunes of the
Murrays of Atholl. When James VII/II was overthrown by his Protestant daughter,
Mary, and his son-in-law/nephew, William III – the Statholder of the
Netherlands and Prince of Orange – in late 1688, those who defended James’s
legitimacy became known as Jacobites. William II/III ruled from 1689 to 1702,
and his principal justification for what was in fact an invasion was to
identify himself as a determined Protestant, called to England to secure the
faith against the looming threat of popery posed by James VII. William III
(William II in Scotland) co-ruled James’s eldest daughter, Mary, and when the
couple died without issue, the crown devolved to Mary’s younger sister, Anne.
This was a destructive time, at the end of which Scotland was bonded in a
permanent and legal manner with England, its ancient enemy.
The era of the Stuart kings started in 1371 with the ascension of
Robert II to the throne and ended for the Scots, on paper, in 1707, when they
were joined with England in the ‘Incorporating Union.’ Yet Scottish legendary
history put the roots of Scottish kingship much further back: James VI was told
on his visit in 1617 that, ‘two thousand and thrittie yeeres bypast vnder the
governement of a hundreth and seaven Kings, all lineallie sprung from FERGUS
the first, free and vntributarie to any forraine Prince’.[16]
For practical purposes, the Glorious Revolution and deposition of
the last true Stuart King, James VII of Scotland and II of England, was seen by
many Scots – including many Presbyterians – as ‘a shattering break with their
national history.’[17]
Despite the obvious ineptitude displayed by James, these factious Jacobites
risked their lives and fortunes for their loyalism as a sense and form of
honour. Many others joined the Jacobites for individual gain and a desire to
return to the ‘auld ways’. Yet, they too, were faithful to their monarch in the
various Jacobite uprisings: in the
initial 1689 rising many came out for James based on their personal feelings
that he was the true and lawful monarch of Scotland.
Most of those who participated in the subsequent Jacobite risings
felt the same loyalty to James’s son, born in 1688 that is commonly known as
the ‘Old Pretender.’ A significant number were involved in Jacobite plots
ranging from 1708 – 1745 due to the widely despised Union with England, which
had not brought Scotland any sign of the promised wealth and advantages it had
promised. ‘The settlement [of Union in 1707], which was deeply unpopular in
Scotland, not least because of the promises of economic gain made by the
proponents of incorporation failed to materialise, was finally secured after
yet another bout of civil division, with the defeat of the Jacobite army on the
battlefield of Culloden in 1746 ...’[18]
Others joined with the Jacobites from xenophobia towards their southern
neighbours; preferring to switch English, protestant rule for French, catholic
in order to restore a solely Scottish monarch.[19]
Another way in which the developing political context affected the
Murrays in particular is, because they held both Highland and Lowland lands and
titles, they witnessed, and were somewhat involved in, the last of the days of
the old Highland clan life, which was delivered its deathblow during King
William’s administration. One need look no further than to the point of William’s
Scottish policies aimed at those who had resisted him during the Glorious
Revolution through the actions taken by of one of his secretaries of state, Sir
John Dalrymple, Master of Stair. A combination of Dalrymple’s hatred of the
Highlanders and William’s indifference to Scotland as a whole led to a shocking
result: the destruction of a small sept of the MacDonald clan at Glencoe in
February of 1692; an act that brutally signified the beginning of the end of
effective Highland resistance towards a distant London-based monarch. Certainly
Dalrymple feared and was repulsed by the ‘Scottish Highlanders’, but he also
believed them to be uncivilised, barbaric and mainly Catholic. The punishment
was a brutal, most distasteful, and vicious betrayal that not only shocked and
horrified the Highlanders, but also appalled many Lowlanders, and, more
importantly, many nobles who sat in the Scottish parliament. The factious and
underhanded dealings that went on in Edinburgh discredited some of those most
obviously involved, creating a power vacuum into which other nobles could step.
Moreover, the northern kingdom immediately realised the threat for what it was
– a regally sanctioned action against the Highland way of life and, the final
taming of those who inhabited the area.[20]
While popular history has dwelt on the fate of the Highlanders,
academic history has tended to focus on ‘the people’ rather than their leaders.
Paul Hopkins and other archivists and historians of his generation,
particularly P.W.J. Riley, are consistently critical of the nobility. Whatever
the case may be, a more balanced approach is needed in today’s world: the
actual achievements of the nobles is due for reassessment.
‘The Massacre of Glencoe has been much written about and little
studied; and the state of the sources is both a cause and consequence of this’
is the opening line of the introduction to a venerable and epic work – Paul
Hopkins’ Glencoe and the End of the
Highland War. [21] The same
can be said of the Murrays of Atholl, with some word-substitutions:
The Murrays of Atholl have been much written about and little
studied; and the state of the sources is both the cause and consequence of
this.
Through a detailed and in-depth study of the voluminous
correspondence, private journals, estate, and legal papers held in the Murray
archives at Blair Castle, one begins to truly understand this family, which has
been much written about as a provider of supporting characters and walk-on
parts in the drama of Scottish history, but little studied in itself. The
Atholl muniments are extensive, and have been frequently consulted, but have
been selectively used only for what the researcher happened to be looking for,
which has not been insight into the Murrays themselves. Furthermore, the family
itself is so unlike any other magnate family that they are impossible to
categorise.
Even Hopkins, as astute an archivist as
any in existence, who wrote one of the most thorough and detailed works on the
time period in which the Murrays’ role in Scotland was of considerable
importance, did not fully grasp their importance to their nation. He stops
short of giving reasons for why these people behaved as they did (and this
implication also follows with his characterization of all the nobles about whom
he writes). It is no longer enough for historians to state facts, name names,
and draw conclusions based on what is found. A new, diverse type of historian
is being bred in the universities and other educational communities around the
globe: historians who also study sociology and/or psychology and examine the
reasons why characters behaved as
they did. Facts shape the outcomes of events, but so do jealousies, immaturity,
and egos. In short – the personalities of the people involved in these affairs
certainly did influence most historical events barring acts of nature. Even in
those circumstances, the human mind and condition are responsible for how any
such calamity is managed, as humans seek to turn any such adversity into their
own good fortune, as they perceive it.
As for the Murrays of Atholl, it is quite possible that beside
Margaret Stephens – a librarian at the University of Aberdeen, who catalogued
the entire Atholl MSS in the early to mid-1950’s – and the 7th Duke
of Atholl the author of the first six volumes of his family history recounting
what he felt to be the most important of his antecedents words and deeds whilst
delving as far as possible into hagiography – that only Hopkins (a former
archivist in the Northamptonshire Record Office) has worked as seriously on the
Atholl papers as the author of this thesis. But his greatest work, Glencoe and the End of the Highland War only
looks at a specific time frame, ending with the death of King William in 1702.
This academic dissertation relies heavily on archival sources,
primarily on the Atholl muniments currently housed (and, sadly, kept in a
rather deplorable state) at Blair Castle in Blair-Atholl, Scotland. Others
archives have also been consulted, most notably the Hamilton MSS at the
Scottish National Archives (GD406), and the Breadalbane Papers (GD112). Through
these archives a picture of the inner life of the Murray family has gradually
evolved, though not without difficulty. As Szechi states in the introduction to
his biographical work on George Lockhart of Carnwath:[22]
Early-modern sources, especially the letters and memoirs that are
the keystone of early-modern political history, are almost all individually
generated and unabashedly idiosyncratic. To use them as sources of information
about events requires a close critical involvement and interpretation on the
part of the author. If, however, the sources are treated not as clues about
events but as products of a particular view of the world, we can treat them
more holistically. Contradictions, lies and misunderstandings cease to be
methodological difficulties and become evidence using this approach.
Ultimately, all sources subtly impose their perception of events on the reader;
using them to recover the mentality from which they arose turns to that
advantage.
James Hunter, in his review of Hopkins’ Glencoe, questions the value of this
archive-based history, on the grounds, apparently, that it is boring:[23]
It may be, of course, that academic historians [such as]
... Paul Hopkins ... are simply writing the wrong sort of history. It is no
accident that [other authors]…do not spend much time among dusty documents of
the type cited so frequently in the 130 pages of [endnotes]…which Hopkins
appends to his book…did it really not occur to anyone associated with this publication
... that so discursive a book might have benefited from pruning of a sort
intended to that wider readership Paul Hopkins seems so desperate to put off?
But it is only from these minute details that the actual
course of events can be reconstructed. I have taken Hopkins as my model.
I began this project by looking at the Jacobite generation of the
Atholl family, but came to realise that in order to understand them, I would
first need to understand the life and career of their father, the 1st
Duke, and this became a thesis in itself. My work also touches on the wider
Murrays of Atholl as a family – obviously and primarily during the 1st
Duke’s lifetime from 1660 until 1724 – with summary mentions of the first
Murray Earls of Atholl. A complete history of the seventeenth and eighteenth
century Murrays would require a lifetime’s work.
The 7th Duke of Atholl, who painstakingly recounted many
of his ancestor’s deeds in his massive six volume work,[24]
The Chronicles of the Atholl and
Tullibardine Families, is to be commended for his determination. As this
was his family history, we can forgive him for shelving some of the more
unsavoury facts present in the archives. On the other hand, he oddly fails to
make mention of some significant events and letters, which are of utmost import
for a twenty-first century historian. Many of the 1st Duke’s
sincerely credible sentiments against the incorporating union of Scotland and
England are missing, leaving future scholars unaware of his deep dislike of it
and his constant hope – and work – towards seeing the alliance dismantled.
Although in the first chapter some family background is provided,
this thesis truly begins in the era of the Restoration of Charles II and his
Scottish administration under the Duke of Lauderdale – who dealt with the
prominent issue of the Covenanting Wars – culminating in the Highland Host of
1678 and the final battle at Bothwell Brig led by Charles II’s illegitimate
son, James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth.
Within a decade of Bothwell Brig another breed of wars began; as
such, one discovers interesting characters when scratching deeper into the
surface of Jacobite history. Some of them, easily recognizable to any Scottish
historian of late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries, are John Grahame of Claverhouse; Viscount Dundee; the
Earl of Mar; the Earl of Breadalbane; Simon Fraser, known as Lord Lovat; and
magnates such as Argyll; Hamilton; Seaforth; Ogilvie; Douglas; and Atholl; who
all, in some instances, were able to command very large groups of men loyal to
them via clan, political, ideological and/or monetary dispensation, and
judicious decision-making at home and in their parliamentary seats in
Edinburgh.
From the Atholl family during the late seventeenth to the
mid-eighteenth centuries, to which this work attempts to give a heretofore
unknown balance and truth, Lord George Murray has dominated the Jacobite
mindset, as he successfully walked in equilibrium between committed Jacobite
and a patriotic Scot.[25]
I is time now to enter their world; who better to start us on that path than
the 7th Duke of Atholl, who wrote his family chronicles, along with
a brief afterthought by Robert Burns. The 7th Duke’s preface to The Chronicles of the Atholl and Tullibardine
Families states:[26]
The MSS. Collections of the
Atholl Family contain a great amount of valuable information, interesting both
from a historical and a family point of view.
Having arranged these
papers in chronological order, I have now transcribed those that are either of
importance or curious, so as to avoid future wear and tear of the original
documents. To render these chronicles more complete, much information, gathered
from other authentic sources, has been added.
In the accounts of the
various civil wars, I have confined myself principally to those events in which
members of my family or their followers took part.
Having printed the result
of my researches, I trust that the following pages, the labour of several
years, may prove of some use and interest to my family and descendants, for
whom alone the work has been undertaken.
ATHOLL,
Blair Castle, 1895
Yes, it would seem to start a study of Lord John Murray, the 1st
Duke of Atholl, a powerful Highland and Lowland Lord in his day, a stanza from
one of Scotland’s own Robert Burns’ compositions would be an apt description:
Ye see yon birkie ca’d a
lord,
Wha struts and stares, an’
a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at
his word,
It will be up to the reader of this work to determine if this
particular verse is still applicable when the conclusion of his story is
reached.
[1] These discussions took place over the past five years and include
those with whom I worked at my weekend job for Aberdeen City Council Sheltered
Housing Schemes (primarily elderly Scots), with university colleagues, personal
acquaintances, and university students
According to those with who I spoke over the age of 30, the main bulk of
historical education presented to both primary and secondary standards were
brief mentions of people such as Mary, Queen of Scots, William Wallace, King
Robert the Bruce and ‘Rob Roy’ Macgregor. Spurious versions of their respective
stories have been widely spread by the film industry. Some attempts to correct
these fallacies have since been made, and indeed, Scottish students that I have
taught in tutorial classes are more aware of the major historical facts in the
collective historical identity of Scotland. In spite of this resurgence in
teaching the history of Scotland at the secondary level, for the most part
discussions with all age groups still reveal that many Scots are not
conversationally aware of the main events of their own collective nation’s
past. This leads to the obvious conclusion that Scottish history became widely
unknown to most Scots outside the bounds of the academic institutions and was
only passed on through extemporised history, including songs, poems, novels and
oral stories, after the incorporating union in 1707. In the introduction to his
book, Glencoe and the End of the Highland
War, Paul Hopkins discusses the tradition of oral histories, as flawed as
they were, but only in terms of how these oral ‘histories’ relate to an
academic work or knowledge in general.
[2] Paul Hopkins, Glencoe and the
End of the Highland War (Glasgow: Bell & Bain, Ltd., 1998), p. 5.
Hopkins further states that ‘The English, French and Irish Jacobite sources
have remained largely uncharted.’
[3] Daniel Szechi, George
Lockhart of Carnwath, 1689 – 1727: A Study in Jacobitism (East Lothian: The Tuckwell Press, 2002), p.
2
[4] Hopkins, Glencoe, p. 4.
‘Even in recent years, academic historians have very seldom challenged the
popular [non-academic] writers’ accounts of the Massacre or its background.
This is partly because William’s reign has been, until recently, a generally
neglected and puzzling area…’
[5] Szechi, Lockhart of Carnwath,
p. 1
[6] Julian Goodare, ‘The Statutes of Iona in Context’, The Scottish Historical Review 77 (No.
203) (April 1998), pp. 31-57
[7] CSP (Domestic) 1611-18, p. 424.
[8] John Nichols, The Progresses,
Processions and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, 4 Volumes
(London: J.B. Nichols, 1828), III, p. 344—5.
[9] One of the Guard happened to die, and the future archbishop Laud
not only conducted the funeral wearing a surplice, but desired the assembly to
recommend with him the soul of their deceased brother – prayer for the dead,
anathema to Presbyterians. Nichols, Progresses,
Processions and Magnificent Festivities, III, p. 344, a letter from John
Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton.
[10] Annals of Edinburgh, ‘Riot in St. Giles’s Church, 1637,’ in A Book of Scotland, ed. G.F. Maine (Glasgow: Collins, 1950), p. 31
[11] ibid
[12] ibid
[13] David Scott, Politics and War
in the Three Kingdoms, 1637 – 1649 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004), p. 15. Scott says, ‘The immediate cause of the wars in the
three Stuart kingdoms was the crown’s attempt to foist a new prayer book upon
the Scots. The book was the work of Charles, [the Archbishop of Canterbury,
William] Laud, and a select group of Scottish Bishops.’
[14] John, 7th Duke of Atholl, K.T., Chronicles of the
Atholl and Tullibardine Families, 7 Volumes (Edinburgh: Ballantyne Press,
1908) I, p. 142. The 7th Duke says, ‘At the coronation of Charles
II, at Scone the Earls of Atholl and Tullibardine were both appointed colonels
of foot regiments.’ The History of the
Monarchy, Charles II, http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/Scottish%20Monarchs(400ad-1603)/TheStewarts/CharlesII.aspx;
accessed on 31 January 2012
[15] ibid
[16] The Muses’ Welcome to the
High and Mightie Prince James (Edinburgh: Andrew Hart, 1617), p. 137.
The continued political of this
medieval legendary history into the early modern era has been observed by a
number of recent historians, notably
Arthur Williamson, Scottish National
Consciousness in the Age of James VI (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979), and
Colin Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past:
Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
[17] Smout, A History of the
Scottish People, p. 195; Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed, Britain 1603-1714 (London: Penguin Books,
Ltd., 1996), p. 268. Kishlansky states that ‘[James] believed that
Presbyterianism could be eradicated from his northern kingdom, and one of the
first acts of his reign in 1685 made religious dissent a capital crime in
Scotland.’ There can be no doubt that those who followed the teachings of the
Reformed Kirk and who held fast to the Solemn League and Covenant would never
support James as king. This situation will be discussed in greater detail in
the thesis.
[18] Andrew Murray Scott, Bonnie Dundee: John Grahame of Claverhouse
(Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd., 1989) p. 161; Elizabeth Foyster &
Christopher A. Whatley, ‘Recovering the Everyday in Early Modern Scotland’, in A
History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600 – 1800, ed. Elizabeth Foyster
& Christopher A. Whatley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010),
p.15.
[19] Neil Davidson, Discovering
the Scottish Revolution, 1692 – 1746 (London: Pluto Press, 2003), pp. 77,
180 – 181. On page 77 Davidson says, ‘...those who were excluded (the
Episcopalian Clergy) or endangered (the Jacobite clans) by the Revolution
Settlement [of 1689], were willing to contemplate an alliance with France to
secure their goal of a second Stuart Restoration.’
[20] The History of the Monarchy,
William and Mary http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/Scottish%20Monarchs(400ad-1603)/TheStewarts/WilliamIIandIIIandMaryII.aspx;
accessed 30 January 2012
[21] Hopkins, Glencoe, p. 1
[22] Szechi, Lockhart of Carnwath,
p. 2
[23] James Hunter, ‘Review: Glencoe and the End of the Highland War’ in Scottish Affairs, No. 27 (Spring, 1999)
[24] A seventh volume was added by the Blair Castle archivist, Jane
Anderson, in 1995. It should also be noted from this point forward that all
references to The Chronicles of the
Atholl and Tullibardine Families are to be considered primary research
material. Where anything is able to be noted directly from the Atholl MSS, it
is used accordingly, but some of the letters are now either too difficult to
read due to deterioration or too fragile to open.
[25] Patria as used here is
synonymous with ‘pride in one’s native country’
[26] Atholl, Chronicles I, Preface to the Series of Books
[27] Robert Burns, From ‘A Man’s A
Man’, (1795)
