Scotland's Bloody History

By Tony Harmsworth

Ever been confused about Scotland's history – all the relationships between kings and queens, both Scottish and English? Why all the battles, massacres and disputes? Scotland's Bloody History simplifies it all.

Discover the history of Scotland from prehistoric man to the current Scottish Nationalist government. Follow the time-line from the stone-age, through the bronze age and the iron age. Find out about the Picts, the Scots, the Vikings and the English. Learn about the election of Scotland's early kings and how Shakespeare maligned one of its finest monarchs.

In simple, chronological order, this book will show you how the animosity between England and Scotland grew into outright warfare including tales of Braveheart and wars of independence.

Tony Harmsworth has taken the bloodiest events of the last three thousand years and used those to clarify the sequence of events. Don't buy this book to learn the boring stuff, this book is packed with action from page one to the final three words which might haunt you over the next decade.

Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots, the Stewarts and Jacobites. It is all there. Explore Scotland's Bloody History now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harmsworth.net
• Release date: May 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393094241

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to

King Macbeth 1005 – 1057

One of Scotland’s finest kings but consigned to the garbage tip of history by an English playwright!

Get one of Tony’s science fiction books FREE by signing up for his Reader Newsletter. Details at the end of Scotland’s Bloody History.

INTRODUCTION

A word about grammar and spelling. I write in United Kingdom English so some spelling and grammar might seem odd if you are not a British reader. Thank you. I hope you enjoy the journey.

Where do I start with Scotland’s Bloody History?

The arrival of prehistoric man in the Highlands was probably the only time there has not been conflict and bloodshed of some description during our colourful history. Even that would not have lasted long, of course. The second group to arrive would want to possess everything the first group had built.

There is also a real problem in researching our history as everyone seems to have a different take on each of the characters. If an historian writes about one of our early kings you get an entirely different slant than from an author with, say, a military background. Historians tend to take facts and build a characterisation and scenario around them, someone with a more military background will look at the overall events and analyse how they would have occurred and what strategy would have taken place in the real world. Both may be close to the mark but, if names were changed, the reader may not even be able to recognise that the two events were supposed to be the same. The life and times of our great King Macbeth is a prime example of how an English playwright destroyed the reputation of a fine Scottish monarch. A 2006 documentary on William Wallace shows how historians without sufficient knowledge of military techniques and strategies could misunderstand the famous battle of Stirling Bridge. Of course, Hollywood was even further from the mark, calling it the battle of Stirling and having the Scots win by raising their kilts and frightening the English to death. Perhaps that may have worked, but it is not what actually happened. Great cinema though.

What I have done in this book is to take the most violent and bloody interpretation of events from various sources and tried to provide a good general understanding and overview of our history. I have tried to be accurate, but new information comes to light and revised interpretation is always being made by historians and archaeologists. Readers wanting an in-depth understanding of the events I describe should use this publication only as the inspiration to read more extensively.

I should also say that all of this is written from the Scottish perspective. Although born in England, the greater proportion of my genes come from Scotland, the rest from England and a tiny fraction from Ireland, but I have now lived in Scotland for over forty years and have grown to love the country, its people and its history and so it is from that perspective that I present these stories.

My background in Scotland has been in popularising history, natural history and folklore. If something is boring, it doesn’t interest me and would not form part of my stories. If you want to know what James IV enjoyed for breakfast, look elsewhere; if you are interested in how his incompetence caused the death of all the important Scots of the time, then read on. I hope you find the following journey through time amusing, fascinating and, hopefully, sometimes chilling.

Tony Harmsworth, November 2019

MISTS OF TIME

Probably the least violent period in Scotland’s history was the arrival of Mesolithic people around eight thousand years ago. There was no one here for them to fight, otherwise it would, no doubt, have been a different story!

01crossingthechannel1

These hunter gatherers had crossed the English Channel from France during the last ice age when much of the world’s oceans was tied up in the ice sheets. Sea levels were so lowered that it would be possible to actually walk from France to England.

This does mean, of course, that some nameless individual would have been the very last person to make that walk before rising sea levels made it too dangerous and the route was lost for centuries. I wonder who he was.

These stone age people gradually made their way up from England to Scotland over the next few thousand years.

The end of the ice age in Scotland just twelve thousand years ago saw, firstly an invasion of wind-blown seeds like grasses and silver birch trees, then, soon after, they were followed by the heavier seeds carried by birds and animals - holly, rowan, blackthorn, wild cherry then hazel and oak. The heavier wind-blown seeds also spread northwards but more slowly. By six thousand BC, most of Scotland was covered in the most wonderful forest which we now talk about as the Caledonian Forest.

Sadly, only tiny remnants of this forest exist today as climate stunted new growth and what remained was all cut down, beginning in the bronze age and continuing until the industrial revolution. Where did the timber go? Mainly to make charcoal for the smelting of bronze, iron and other metals. All of those forests gone forever in the name of progress. Readers wishing to experience one of the last truly original areas of this great forest which managed to survive the plunder should visit Glen Affric in Inverness-shire.

We know very little about these early Highland people because they lived in caves and makeshift shelters. Their existence may well have been tribal and that, no doubt, will have led to the odd slit throat or smashed skull, but we have no written records of that time. What little we do know has been gleaned by archaeologists sifting through meagre evidence.

02Mesolithic

At some point, about three thousand years later, some of these Mesolithic Highlanders came up with a great idea. They planted crops. The Neolithic era had begun. 

Now, growing crops and domesticating animals, their makeshift shelters were no longer very suitable. They gathered stones, timber, turf and grass to build permanent homes.

This provided them with more security. It also gave the archaeologists a treasure trove called a garbage pit, and the neighbouring tribes with a more pressing reason to kill them and steal their growing number of possessions!

Around this time, and over the next thousand years or so, these stone age people, lived in a Highland climate which was more like the south of France. They found that they had time to lie on their backs and stare at the sky. An understanding of the physical movement of heavenly bodies developed although with not the least idea of what they actually seeing. It was religion which eventually explained the heavens, and, of course, got it completely wrong.

Staring at the moon, sun, stars and planets probably inspired an interest in what the universe was all about, and that necessitated the invention of religions and gods. Shocking violence, hatred and bloodthirsty concepts would inevitably follow, whether it be placating the gods with sacrifices, killing