About Scotland

Scotland in the 17th Century

Charles I
1625–1649

Although he grew up in England, Charles (born in 1600) had a Scots tutor and always took a keen interest in the country. Unfortunately, he had little talent for kingship, alienating people on both sides of the border with his insistence that monarchs were appointed by God and had a divine right to rule. High taxes, and especially royal attempts to impose Anglican forms of worship, led to conflicts known as the Bishops' Wars (1639-1640). These in turn helped to spark the great English Revolution. When the Civil War broke out in 1641, many Scots supported Parliament against the king in return for a promise that Presbyterianism would be established in both realms. This promise was not kept, and after Charles’s execution, England’s Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, defeated Scottish uprisings on behalf of the royal heir, Charles II. Cromwell also temporarily imposed a single government on England and Scotland.

After the Royalist defeat, Charles was offered an honourable peace but tried to start the war again. Exasperated, the Parliamentarians put him on trial for waging war on his own people. He was found guilty by a fixed vote and publicly beheaded in 1649. His execution horrified the Scots, who wished him no personal harm and were outraged that the English had killed a Scottish king without even permission.

Charles II
1651–1685

England was a republic for eleven years after the execution of Charles I. In Scotland, however, his son Charles II (born in 1630) was crowned with great pomp in 1651. A few months later, Charles led a Scots invasion of England, only to be defeated by Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentary army at Worcester. He fled to France and never saw Scotland again.

Restored to England in 1660, Charles resolved never to go on his travels again. The Civil Ear of his childhood left him deeply insecure, determined to make up for lost time by enjoying himself to the full. He had scores of mistresses and fathered numerous illegitimate children. Hew as much loved by the English as a “Merry Monarch” but he never cared much for Scotland, leaving it to his representatives to run the country on his behalf.

James VII/II
1685–1689

Born in 1633, James succeeded his brother at the age of fifty-two. Although he had made two earlier trips to Scotland, he never visited the country as king and was the first monarch in almost 400 years not to be crowned there. He was also a Roman Catholic convert — a recipe for disaster in a fiercely Protestant country, which detested any kind of popery.

At first the Scots gave him their loyal support. But James went too far when he allowed Catholic officers to join the English army and asked the Scottish Parliament to repeal Scotland’s anti-Catholic legislation. The English invited James’s daughter, Mary, and her Protestant husband, William of Orange, to rule in his place. Scotland’s Parliament debated whether to follow suit. From exile in France, James sent the Scots such a tactless ultimatum that they sides with William and Mary. James died in 1701.

William II/III
1689–1702

A grandson of Charles I, William of Orange (born in 1650) was a staunch Dutch Protestant married to James VII/II’s daughter Mary. She refused to accept the crown unless her husband was joint monarch with her. The Scots agreed, provided the couple ruled constitutionally under the law, and not by divine right. James invaded Catholic Ireland to try and win back his throne, but was decisively beaten by William at the Boyne in 1690. William never once visited Scotland, preferring to administer the country through his Dutch favourites in London. He was perhaps unfairly blamed for the massacre at Glencoe, when the Campbells murdered the MacDonalds in a breach of Highland hospitality that has never been forgotten. When William died, after his horse slipped on a molehill, Jacobites everywhere raised their glasses to “the little gentleman in black velvet”.

Mary II
1689–1694

Overshadowed first by her father, then by her dour and humourless husband, Mary (born in 1662) grew up meek and mild, only too happy to leave politics to the men. She wept for days when James told her, aged fifteen, that she was to marry the hunchbacked William. But she later became reconciled to the marriage, although William never treated her as well as he should have done.

Mary greatly resented being forced to accept the throne in place of the father she loved, and in fact never saw again. A devout Protestant, she too no interest in government and knew little of Scotland. Without even any children of her own, she depended on her unfaithful husband for everything. Mary’s was not a particularly happy life, but she was a decent woman and she was genuinely mourned when she died at the age of thirty-two.

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• Photos of many of the places mentioned in the text can be found in the Photo-tour.