MARCH OF THE TITANS - A HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE
CHAPTER 28 : THE SCEPTERED ISLE - ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, WALES AND THE UNITED KINGDOM
Part III : SCOTLAND AND WALES
ANCIENT SCOTLAND
The region now known as Scotland was occupied by a tribe of Indo-European Celts, called the Picts, around the year 1100 BC.
This tribe quickly assimilated or destroyed the original Old European inhabitants of the north of the British island - there were few in the region in the first place - and settled down to a typical rural Celtic existence. The arrival of the Romans aroused the Pictish tribes into armed warfare, and the savageness of their resistance - echoing that of their German cousins on the continent - ensured that the Romans never penetrated into Scotland for any length of time.
The Romans finally built a wall across England, Hadrian's Wall, in 122 AD, in an attempt to keep the Picts out of southern England.
THE PICTISH RAIDS - DANES INVITED FOR PROTECTION
The withdrawal of the last Roman legions after 406 AD, opened the way for waves of Pictish raiders to swoop down on the now largely Romanized Britons in the south.
These raids grew so severe that eventually the Britons invited Danish settlers into the island to help stem the Pictish tide.
The Danes brought with them a number of other Germanic tribes, and the arrival of Angles, Saxons and others finally put an end to the Pictish raids. The lands north of the old Roman border remained however independent.
THE IRISH CELTS INVADE AND FOUND SCOTLAND
Around the end of 6th Century, a wave of Irish Celts, called the Scots, invaded the territory from across the Irish Sea.
This new wave of Celts soon dominated the entire region to the point where they became synonymous with the land to which they gave their name - Scotland. The Picts were pushed to one side, although in many regions the Picts and Scots merged into one, being of virtually identical sub-racial stock.
NORTHUMBRIA - GERMANICS INVADE CIRCA 560 AD
Soon after the arrival of the Angles and the Saxons, the southern most part of the Pictish lands was overrun by the new invaders: it became the kingdom of Northumbria.
The arrival of the Germanic tribes also saw a great revival in paganism, something which drew the attention of the Christians. By 563, Irish Christian missionaries were hard at work in Northumbria, supplemented between 655 and 664 by Scottish missionaries.
THE UNIFICATION OF SCOTLAND
The kingdom of Northumbria then took the offensive against the Picts. In 685, Pictish lands north of the Firth of Forth sea inlet were invaded by a large Northumbrian army. The invaders were however dramatically defeated, leading to a weakening of the kingdom of Northumbria from which they never recovered. As a result, even larger areas of northern England were occupied by the Picts.
VIKING RAIDS - MACALPINE DRIVES OFF NORSEMEN
Pictish rule was just becoming settled in Northumbria when the next wave of Indo-European invaders arrived - Viking raids started in earnest around the end of the 8th Century, severely disrupting all of the British Isles.
In 844, Kenneth MacAlpine, a nobleman from the region of Dalriada, and a descendant of the Pictish royal family, was declared king and united the disparate tribes of the north into the first united kingdom, officially known as the Alban. With the aid of the Northumbrians, the Albans managed to bring an end to the Viking raids - in later times the rulers of England claimed Scotland on the basis of the aid their forebears had given to the Alban.
Once the Vikings had been halted, the war between the Picts (who were rapidly becoming absorbed by the Scots, both being of identical sub-racial stock) resumed: the Northumbrians were finally defeated at the Battle of Carham in 1018, and the borders of Scotland were established under the Scottish king Duncan the First.
MACBETH - THE REAL KING
Duncan I's reign, a period of disastrous wars and internal strife, was ended in 1040 with his assassination by Macbeth, steward of Ross and Moray, who then became king of Scotland. Macbeth was actually a successful king and held the throne until 1057, when he was defeated and killed by Duncan's son Malcolm Canmore.
The story of Macbeth was later taken as the basis of a play by the great English playwright, William Shakespeare, and as a result Macbeth is possibly the best known Scottish king, although not the most important one.
WAR WITH ENGLAND
The period from 1138 to 1237 was marked by a series of border conflicts with the English over the disputed region of Northumbria. These clashes went disastrously for Scotland and finally their claims on the land were renounced - thereafter followed a period of relatively friendly relations between the two nations.
In 1286, however, the Scottish king, Alexander III, died, leaving as his only heir the infant Margaret. Thirteen distant family members claimed the crown. Finally in 1292, the English King, Edward I, invaded Scotland and placed one of them, John de Baliol, on the throne.
The English intervention sparked off bitter resentment amongst the Scots: giving in to popular demand to an end to outright English control, Baliol, in 1295, formed an alliance with France, which was then at war with England, and called on the Scots to rebel. The English however easily defeated the Scots and after the Battle of Dunbar in 1296, Baliol was deposed and all of Scotland placed under English military occupation.
William Wallace, the national hero of Scotland. This colossal bronze statue stands in the two hundred feet high Wallace Monument at Stirling, Scotland - where the great Scotsman's sword is also kept. Waging a guerrilla war against the English who had occupied Scotland, Wallace was captured and executed in 1305.
WILLIAM WALLACE - NATIONAL HERO OF SCOTLAND
In 1297, the Scottish nobleman William Wallace recruited a fresh Scottish army and led a new revolt against the English, defeating a major English army at the Battle of Stirling in that same year. The English struck back and in 1298, defeated Wallace at the Battle of Falkirk.
The Scots were forced back onto guerrilla warfare against the occupying English - in 1304 Wallace was declared an outlaw by the English occupiers. He was however betrayed by some fellow Scots in 1305 and handed over to the English, who executed him.
KING ROBERT THE BRUCE DEFEATS THE ENGLISH
Robert Bruce, a descendent of an early Scottish King, became leader of the Scottish resistance and was formally crowned Robert I, King of Scotland, in 1306. Despite relaunching the Scottish war for independence, Robert was defeated several times, and only saved from a final decisive defeat by the decision of a new English king, Edward II, to abandon the attempt to subjugate the Scots.
Bruce then began a guerrilla campaign against the pro-English section of the Scottish nobility and against the remaining English garrisons in Scotland. Between 1307 and 1314 several English reverses led to Bruce invading northern England itself.
The English king then personally led a punitive expedition into Scotland in 1314, but was routed at the Battle of Bannockburn that year, when the Scots inflicted one the worst defeats ever suffered by any English army in history. The conflict then continued at varying levels of intensity for more than a decade, ending only in 1328, when the Treaty of Northampton recognized Scottish independence.
A statue of Scotland's deliverer, King Robert the Bruce, at Stirling. This memorial of Scotland's great king stands at Stirling Castle. The figure looks towards the battlefield of Bannockburn, scene of his greatest triumph over the English. The crossed spikes at the base of the statue symbolize the spikes used to break the English heavy cavalry charge at the battle. The English believed that they had the advantage with the presence of their heavy horse cavalry. The wily Scottish had however prepared long thick wooden spikes which they kept concealed until the last minute. As the English cavalry charge was almost upon them, the Scottish suddenly raised the spikes, and bloodily broke the English attack. The Battle of Bannockburn turned out to be one of the greatest defeats ever for any English army.
200 YEARS OF STRIFE - SCOTLAND OCCUPIED BY THE ENGLISH
This was however not to be the end of the wars with England: for more than 200 years Scotland was racked by internal dissension over secession to the throne and several English invasions, leading to the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Berwick-Upon-Tweed in 1333. The English then occupied a large part of south eastern Scotland, but the outbreak of the Hundred Years War with France saw the English sufficiently distracted to allow the Scots to seize back large parts of the occupied territory, including the symbolically important city of Edinburgh.
These gains were negated by a new English invasion of 1346, which followed an alliance between the Scots and France - virtually all of southern Scotland was reoccupied by the English.
The remaining northern Scottish kingdom was racked by further internal dissent with kings and pretenders to the crown being killed or killing their opponents in an endless circle of violent factionalism.
Finally one Scottish king, James IV, managed to subdue the infighting, and, still in alliance with France, by 1460 managed to once again drive out the English from southern Scotland.
James IV overplayed his hand - in 1513, after Henry VIII invaded France, James led an army into England. The Scots and English met at Flodden Field, where James was killed and his army routed.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS - LAST CATHOLIC QUEEN
The granddaughter of James IV, Mary, had as a child been sent to France, as her mother was of French royal blood. She then married the French crown prince and reigned for a short while as queen of France. Her husband however died after less than two years on the throne.
By this time the Anglican and Protestant revolution had begin to take hold in Scotland. Mary's upbringing was strictly Catholic, and her marriage to the Catholic future king of France caused considerable anxiety amongst the increasingly Protestant Scottish nobility. This was further inflamed by the Scottish Protestant leader, John Knox.
Mary, Queen of Scots. A Catholic, she attempted to reestablish that religion by force. Raising a Catholic army, she met the Protestants in battle in 1561, but was defeated. She fled to England where she was imprisoned and later executed by Queen Elizabeth I. Her Protestant son was to the first monarch of the United Kingdom.
In 1559, following a denunciation of Protestants as heretics by Mary's French mother, Knox and his followers resorted to open rebellion. Elizabeth I of England, seized the opportunity to provide aid to the rebels and in 1560, the Catholic Church was officially abolished in Scotland and replaced with a Calvinistic Protestant version.
In 1561, Mary, now formally Queen of Scotland, returned to her native land. Raising an army, she met the Protestants in battle and was defeated, being forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son, James VI. Mary was captured, but escaped and fled to England, where she was imprisoned and later executed by Elizabeth I.
James VI was raised as a Protestant and took the throne in 1587. In 1586, he had concluded a military alliance with Elizabeth I, and heartlessly refused to intercede on behalf of his mother, who was executed the following year.
On the death of Elizabeth, in March 1603, James VI inherited the crown of England as James I. Despite sharing a monarch, the two kingdoms remained separate administrative units. This arrangement was abolished by Oliver Cromwell during the period of the English revolution, but was restored when the monarchy was restored in 1660.
SCOTLAND IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
In 1707, the Scottish Parliament voted itself out of existence, and Scotland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Some Highland Scots refused to acknowledge the union, and rebellions broke out in 1708, 1715, 1745 and 1746, all of which were suppressed.
THE SCOTTISH CONTRIBUTION - DISPROPORTIONATELY HIGH
During all this time the Scots remained almost completely racially homogeneous: they produced a disproportionately large number of the greatest men of the British scientific, cultural and intellectual revolution which put Great Britain on the road to world dominance: men such as the economist Adam Smith; the philosopher David Hume and the writers James Boswell and Robert Burns; and the author Sir Walter Scott to name a few. Scotland's textile, steel, and shipbuilding industries contributed largely to Britain's dominance during the days of the Empire, and Scottish soldiers played significant roles in almost every military campaign of the Empire.
WALES
ANCIENT WALES
The Old European Mediterranean peoples were the first inhabitants of the region of Wales, and traces of their descendants can still be seen amongst the White Welsh people of the present day.
The Indo-European Celtic invasions of Britain, during the first millennium BC, saw the Old Europeans absorbed into the new wave of Nordics, and by the time of the Romans, the two sub-racial types had virtually completely assimilated each other and were speaking the Celtic Gaelic tongue, calling themselves the Cymry.
RESISTANCE TO THE ROMANS
Many Celts fled from the Roman occupation of southern England, entering the Welsh mountains which the Romans never succeeded in subduing. Wales was then divided up into several tribal areas, including Gwynedd, Gwent, Dyved and Powys.
After the Angles and Saxons came to dominate England, one of the new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercia, built a earthwork rampart along virtually the entire length of the Welsh border to isolate the Welsh from the rest of England. Parts of this rampart, called Offa's dyke (after the Mercian King who had it built) can still be seen today.
Offa's Dike, still standing, remains silent testimony to the power and resources of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon invaders of England. Built by the Saxon King of Mercia, Offa (759-796 AD), as a defense against the Welsh, the dike was a fortified ditch which ran virtually the length of that kingdom's border with Wales - a feat of construction which rivaled the Roman Hadrian's Wall.
SUBJUGATION BY ENGLAND
In 1064, an English army under Harold Godwinson overran Wales - this English sovereignty was reinforced by William the Conqueror. The Welsh continued however to launch occasional raids on the English - this forced the latter to establish a number of castles manned by Norman lords and their vassals, along the Welsh border, called the lords of the marches.
Of all the castles built by the English in their attempts to subdue the Welsh, Conway in North Wales was the most vital. Situated in the center of the Welsh guerrilla territory, its garrisons were on constant alert. Two English kings, Edward I and Richard II, were nearly captured there by the hardy Welshmen. Today the castle is empty, symbolic of the Welsh inclusion into Britain.
An armed Welsh rebellion in 1136, saw the English under Henry I defeated, but a renewed English invasion soon thereafter once again subdued the western reaches of Britain. Continued unrest and rebellion continued under the leadership of the Prince of North Wales, Llewellyn ap Gruffydd. This led directly to the 1276 invasion of Wales by the English king Edward I.
Llewellyn rebelled again in 1282 before his death by natural causes - his brother David ap Gruffydd carried on the struggle, but was captured in 1283 and beheaded.
In 1284, Edward I completed the conquest of Wales and, by the terms of the Statute of Rhuddlan, it became an English principality.
The first Prince of Wales - the independence of Wales came to an end when Edward 1 led an army into that land. Summoning the representatives of the subdued people, the king promised them a prince who was a Welshman by birth and who could speak no other language. Then he showed his infant son Edward, who had been born at Carnarvon. From then on, all heirs to the British throne have held the title of the Prince of Wales.
LAST REBELLION - ORIGIN OF THE "PRINCE OF WALES"
In 1301, Edward I played a master stroke - his eldest son, who had been born in Wales, was given the title of Prince of Wales, thereby satisfying to a great degree Welsh aspirations for recognition. Only one further rebellion was to take place - in 1402, under the leadership of Owen Glendower, large numbers of Welsh tried once again to attain independence. Despite several English campaigns in Wales, the revolt was not suppressed until the death of Glendower in 1416.
In 1536, Wales was formally absorbed into a union with England. The Welsh were however not keen to convert to the Puritanism of Oliver Cromwell, who had to send armed expeditions to keep the Welsh in line.
Nonetheless the Welsh remained loyal subjects, and have produced a number of famous British leaders, including the famous Liberal Party leader, David Lloyd George.
Click Here for
or back to
or back to
or
All material (c) copyright Ostara Publications, 1999.
Re-use for commercial purposes strictly forbidden.