Scottish Battle Sites

The story of Bannockburn battle

Of the twelve claimants to the crown of Scotland, no less than six of them had been born illegitimately. Though they had been sired by such men as William the Lion and Alexander II, that they were bastards made their chances of ever ascending the throne slim indeed.
Of the legitimate claimants, John Comyn the Black, Lord of Badenoch had a claim of descent from Duncan I, the king murdered by Macbeth in the Shakespearean play of the same name. Two men, the Count of Holland and a Robert Pinkey had claims based on descent from the two younger sisters of Malcolm IV, William the Lion and David, Earl of Huntingdon. The Count of Holland, at one point claimed that David, Earl of Huntingdon had given up his rights to the throne in favour of his sister Ada, the Count's mother. Had this been true, the Count's claim would have been the strongest, but it was never proved and presently the Count gave up his claim to the throne. That left three further claimants, all descended from the daughters of David, Earl of Huntingdon. The two strongest were John Balliol, whose grandmother was Margaret, David's eldest daughter and Robert Bruce Lord of Annandale, the son of David's second daughter Isabella. That the rules of primogeniture cleary showed Balliol's claim to be the stronger mattered little to the Bruce family and the stage seemed set for a destructive civil war.

After the Bannockburn battle

When Robert I died at Cardross on the 7th of June 1329, he left a kingdom stronger than it had been for many years. Regular parliaments were being held, taxation was coming in and the booty taken from England filled the empty exchequer. There was peace with the barons (a plot had been uncovered and the traitors severely dealt with) but the service due to the king from his barons was regularised and ordered - a great improvement on the past. The heir to the throne was Bruce's own son David, then aged five years old. David was crowned along with his young queen with full honours in 1331 (the first King of Scots to be anointed). Things did not go well for the young king however. The earl of Douglas was killed in Spain in 1330 fighting the Moors while taking Bruce's heart to the Holy Land. Randolph earl of Moray died in 1332 while preparing to meet an invasion from England. So, within just a few years of Bruce's death, two of the most experienced nobles available to the new king were dead. In the south, Edward III while swearing he would keep the peace, allowed Edward Balliol (son of John I) and the 'Disinherited' to sail from the Humber. Balliol sailed round the Scottish defence and landed at Kinghorn in Fife. They marched through Fife and in August met and destroyed at Dupplin the Scottish army under the new guardian, the Earl of Mar, who was left dead on the field.

The battle of Glencoe

The majestic grandeur of its mountain landscape, its notorious history and even the dramatic localized weather system combine to create in Glen Coe one of the most atmospheric and scenically spectacular places in Scotland. Along with Bannockburn and Culloden, Glen Coe ranks among the most famous historic sites in Scotland, notable because of the infamous but incompetent massacre, in 1692, of the MacDonalds of Glen Coe, the smallest of the Clan Donald sects. Although worse atrocities involving greater slaughter have occurred during Scotland's turbulent past, the Massacre of Glen Coe has earned a unique place in the lore of the Highlands because of its treacherous and brutal manner of execution. In the 300 years since the massacre, the events of 13th February, 1692 have often been wrongly attributed to the centuries-old feud between the prosperous and ambitious Campbell clan and their poorer, war-like and cattle-rustling neighbours, the Glen Coe MacDonalds. The massacre was, in fact, a government-inspired plot to exterminate the minor but troublesome Highland clan.

The story of Culloden battle

The politics behind the Jacobite rebellions of the 18th century were as simple and as complex as the blood relationships which governed the lives of royal families all over Europe at that time. In 1688 an overwhelmingly Protestant English people grew heartily sick of their Catholic Stuart king and his pretentions to absolutism. James II, whose father had been beheaded on the orders of Oliver Cromwell and whose brother had only been restored to the throne in 1661, was deposed in favour of his sister Mary and her Dutch Protestant husband William of Orange. Unfortunately, they died childless and the throne passed to James' second sister Anne. This poor woman spent most of her life in childbirth and her tragedy was to bear seventeen children in all and see not one of them live past infancy. The next in line were the children of Sophia the Electress of Hanover and when Queen Anne died in 1714, George Elector of Hanover became George I of Great Britain. In Scotland he was known as the "wee German lairdie". All the time the exiled James and his son brooded in their palace of St.Germain in France.