50 Fun Facts About Scottish History

The Roman name Picti, first recorded in 297 for the tribes north of the Forth, is usually explained as meaning what?

Painted people is the usual reading of Picti, from the Latin pingere, 'to paint', probably a Roman soldiers' nickname for tattooed warriors, though a native tribal name may lie behind it.

Unlike in Shakespeare, the real Macbeth killed which king in battle in 1040 rather than murdering a sleeping guest?

Duncan I was the aggressor rather than a sleeping guest: he died in action after marching into Moray, Macbeth's own territory. Macbeth then ruled seventeen years before his death at Lumphanan in 1057.

Malcolm III, who killed Macbeth at Lumphanan in 1057, carried the Gaelic nickname Canmore, meaning literally what?

Big head is the literal sense of ceann mòr, though it was understood as 'great chief', and the Canmore dynasty it named ruled Scotland into the thirteenth century. Malcolm's queen, Margaret, was later made a saint.

Scotland's succession crisis began in 1286 when Alexander III, hurrying to join his new queen at Kinghorn, died how?

Falling from his horse on a stormy night near the shore at Kinghorn killed Alexander III as he rode to join his new queen. His only direct heir was an infant granddaughter living abroad.

A captain from which clan led the troops lodged as guests in Glencoe before the massacre of 13 February 1692?

Campbell was the name of Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, who commanded the troops billeted on the MacDonalds of Glencoe, and the breach of hospitality made the killings infamous. The chief had sworn his oath to William days late.

On 19 August 1745 the Young Pretender raised his standard at which spot on the shores of Loch Shiel?

Glenfinnan saw the Royal Standard raised to launch the last Jacobite rising, and within a month the rebels had taken Edinburgh.

Reached on 4 December 1745, which English town was the furthest south the Jacobite army got before turning back?

Derby was the high-water mark of the rising, and the Jacobite leaders retreated because the promised French landing and English reinforcements never appeared. The decision was taken at a council held in Exeter House the next day.

In 1746 Flora MacDonald smuggled Bonnie Prince Charlie from the Outer Hebrides to Skye by disguising him as what?

Her Irish maid, called Betty Burke, was the cover under which the prince crossed to Skye. Flora was imprisoned in the Tower of London for her part and later emigrated to North Carolina.

Which deputy to Hitler flew solo to Scotland on 10 May 1941, hoping to open peace talks through the Duke of Hamilton?

Rudolf Hess landed by parachute, was arrested at once and spent the rest of the war in custody before his trial at Nuremberg. The Duke of Hamilton was a pioneering aviator Hess hoped would be open to talks.

On 21 June 1919 German crews scuttled their own interned High Seas Fleet at which Royal Navy anchorage in Orkney?

Scapa Flow saw most of the interned German fleet go down in a single afternoon because Admiral von Reuter feared the British would seize the ships. British guard ships managed to beach some of the rest.

Tacitus credited which Caledonian chief with 'they make a desert and call it peace' before Mons Graupius in AD 83 or 84?

Calgacus is known only from Tacitus's Agricola, and some historians argue the chieftain was invented to voice the writer's own politics. His name is usually taken to mean 'swordsman'.

Which turf Roman frontier, begun in AD 142 between the Forth and Clyde, was abandoned within a generation?

Antonine Wall was meant to supersede Hadrian's Wall, but by the 160s the legions had pulled back south to the older line. Its emperor, Antoninus Pius, never left Italy to see it.

In 563 Columba sailed from Ireland with twelve companions and founded the monastery on which small Hebridean island?

Iona was then part of the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata, and its monks are believed to have produced the Book of Kells in the years before 800. The island remains a place of Christian pilgrimage.

Dál Riata, the Gaelic kingdom ruled from the hillfort of Dunadd, covered which modern region plus part of Antrim?

Argyll was the kingdom's Scottish heartland, settled in tradition by Gaels from Ireland around AD 500; in the ninth century it merged with the Pictish kingdom to form what became Scotland.

By a 1266 treaty, three years after the Battle of Largs, which kingdom ceded the Hebrides and Man to Scotland?

Norway's hold was ended less by Largs, an inconclusive fight on a storm-hit shore, than by King Haakon's death in Orkney that winter, after which his son sued for peace.

Which claimant, chosen as king by Edward I in the Great Cause of 1292, was mocked as Toom Tabard, or 'empty coat'?

John Balliol had the senior genealogical claim among thirteen competitors, but Edward treated him as a vassal and forced his abdication in 1296. The nickname is read as a king with no power, or as a jibe at the arms stripped from his coat.

After which defeat by Edward I on 22 July 1298 did William Wallace resign as Guardian of Scotland?

Falkirk broke the Scottish spear-rings with English archers, ending Wallace's spell as Guardian less than a year after his triumph at Stirling Bridge. He was captured and executed in 1305.

Robert the Bruce was excommunicated for killing his rival John Comyn in a friary church in which town in 1306?

Dumfries was where the two rivals met in the friars' chapel and came to blows, and six weeks later Bruce had himself inaugurated as king at Scone. The killing made peace with Comyn's powerful kin impossible.

Where was Robert the Bruce's heart finally buried after Sir James Douglas carried it towards the Holy Land in 1330?

Melrose Abbey received the heart after Douglas, who wore its silver casket on a chain round his neck, died fighting the Moors of Granada on the way. Bruce's body lies at Dunfermline and his embalmed organs at Dumbarton.

James I of Scotland was assassinated on 20 February 1437, in a failed coup led by his uncle, in which town?

Perth's Blackfriars became a trap: James hid in a sewer, but he had recently had its outlet blocked to stop tennis balls being lost, and men acting for the Earl of Atholl killed him there.

James II of Scotland died on 3 August 1460 while besieging English-held Roxburgh Castle, when what happened beside him?

A cannon exploded as the king, an artillery enthusiast, stood beside one of his own guns, killing him at a siege his father had attempted and failed in 1436.

James III of Scotland was killed at Sauchieburn near Stirling in June 1488, facing rebel nobles nominally led by whom?

His own son, the fifteen-year-old Duke of Rothesay, was the rebels' figurehead and succeeded as James IV. The father had already been imprisoned once by his nobles, in 1482, before being restored to power.

Henry VIII's 1540s campaign to force the infant Mary, Queen of Scots to marry his son Edward is remembered as what?

The Rough Wooing ended in failure when the Scots sent the five-year-old queen to France in 1548 to be raised at the French court instead. She was betrothed to the Dauphin the same year.

Weeks after Darnley's 1567 murder at Kirk o' Field, Mary, Queen of Scots married which nobleman widely blamed for it?

The Earl of Bothwell was acquitted of the murder at trial, but the marriage provoked the rising that cost Mary her throne. He fled, was imprisoned in Denmark and died at Dragsholm Castle in 1578.

Eleven days after escaping Lochleven Castle in May 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots lost which battle and fled to England?

Langside was where Mary's 6,000 men were beaten by the smaller force of her half-brother the Earl of Moray, regent for her infant son. She crossed into England within days and never returned.

Scotland dropped 25 March as New Year's Day in 1600, but England's later switch explains the odd start date of what?

The tax year still ends on 5 April, which is 25 March, England's old New Year, plus the eleven days Britain skipped in September 1752.

After a French fleet took St Andrews Castle in 1547, the reformer John Knox spent nineteen months doing what?

Rowing as a galley slave, chained to a bench in the French fleet, was Knox's punishment for serving as chaplain to the castle's Protestant garrison. Freed early in 1549, he went to preach in England.

James VI, who took a personal part in the 1590 North Berwick witch trials, wrote which 1597 treatise endorsing witch-hunting?

Daemonologie was written partly to answer sceptics like Reginald Scot, whose book had mocked the whole idea of witchcraft, and it was reprinted when James took the English throne in 1603.

How did market-trader Jenny Geddes reputedly protest the new prayer book in St Giles', Edinburgh, on 23 July 1637?

Throwing a stool at the head of the dean reading the service set off riots that spread across Scotland and led within a year to the National Covenant. Robert Burns later named his mare after her.

Where were the Honours of Scotland hidden from Cromwell's army in 1651, before being smuggled out to a village church?

Dunnottar Castle, a clifftop fortress near Stonehaven, held the regalia through an eight-month siege; in one telling a minister's wife carried them out, and they lay buried under Kinneff's church floor until 1660.

William Paterson, chief promoter of Scotland's 1698 Darien colony, had in 1694 co-founded which institution?

The Bank of England grew from Paterson's proposal to lend £1.2 million to the government in return for banking privileges, yet he was off its board within a year. He then moved to Edinburgh to promote the Darien plan.

Scotland's ruinous Darien venture of the 1690s gave its colony on the isthmus of Panama what name?

New Caledonia was planted on the Darién coast in November 1698, but the settlement was abandoned twice within two years, the second time under Spanish attack.

The Treaty of Union paid Scotland £398,085 and ten shillings to balance its new share of England's debt, a sum called what?

The Equivalent was meant to compensate Scotland for taking on a share of England's national debt, but much of it went to repay investors in the failed Darien company.

Which nobleman, nicknamed Bobbing John for his shifting loyalties, launched the 1715 Jacobite rising and fought indecisively at Sheriffmuir?

The Earl of Mar started the rising without any commission from the exiled James, who arrived late and went back to France in February 1716. Another Jacobite force surrendered at Preston the day after Sheriffmuir.

With France now Britain's ally, the 1719 Jacobite rising that ended at Glen Shiel was backed by marines from which country?

Spain was then at war with Britain and planned a far larger landing in England, but storms wrecked the main fleet and only a small force of marines reached Scotland, coming ashore at Stornoway.

Where in East Lothian did the Jacobites rout Sir John Cope's army in under half an hour on 21 September 1745?

Prestonpans was decided by a Highland charge that broke Cope's inexperienced recruits, and the victory turned the rising into a serious threat to the government. Much of the regular army was away in Flanders at the time.

The first phase of the Highland Clearances, from about 1750, replaced mixed cattle-and-crop husbandry with what?

Large sheep farms needed far fewer hands than the old townships, so tenants were moved to coastal smallholdings and expected to live by fishing or gathering kelp.

Which Highland small tenants gained security of tenure under an 1886 act that followed the Napier Commission of 1883?

Crofters won fixed tenure after rent strikes and clashes such as Skye's Battle of the Braes pushed the government into an inquiry. The act also created the first Crofters Commission to settle disputes.

Which 'Father of Modern Geology' presented his Theory of the Earth to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785?

James Hutton argued from rock formations like Siccar Point that the Earth was shaped over immense spans of time, but his dense prose found few readers until John Playfair's plainer account appeared after his death.

Which Scottish chemist identified 'fixed air', now called carbon dioxide, and introduced the idea of latent heat?

Joseph Black isolated the gas from magnesia alba, showing that air was not a single substance, then taught at Glasgow for ten years before moving to Edinburgh in 1766.

As an instrument maker at Glasgow University, James Watt devised which improvement to the Newcomen steam engine?

The separate condenser stopped the cylinder being cooled on every stroke, radically cutting the coal a Newcomen engine burned. Watt struggled to commercialise it until his 1775 partnership with Matthew Boulton.

Which colonial commodity made the fortunes of the eighteenth-century Glasgow merchants known as its 'Lords'?

Tobacco grown by enslaved labour in the American colonies poured into Glasgow after the 1707 Union opened them to Scots ships, and Merchant City streets such as Ingram Street and Glassford Street still carry the merchants' names.

Which Clydeside mill village, opened by David Dale in 1786 and later run by Robert Owen, is a World Heritage Site?

New Lanark used Richard Arkwright's water-powered spinning machinery and became Owen's showcase for decent housing and schooling, with infant classes replacing child labour. It became a World Heritage Site in 2001.

Cunard's Queen Mary, launched in 1934, was built as 'Hull Number 534' at John Brown's shipyard in which Scottish town?

Clydebank's yard fell silent when the Depression halted work on the half-built hull, which was finished only after a government loan to Cunard. She is now a hotel and museum at Long Beach, California.

Which charge replaced domestic rates in Scotland from 1989, a full year before it reached England and Wales?

The poll tax, officially the Community Charge, reached Scotland a year early, and mass non-payment campaigns began there before the tax sparked riots in London and was scrapped in 1993.

Scotland's 1979 devolution referendum won 51.6% of votes cast yet failed, because an amendment demanded what?

40% of the electorate had to vote yes under a rule added by Labour MP George Cunningham, and only 32.9% did. Within weeks the Labour government lost a confidence vote by a single vote.

The devolution referendum of 11 September 1997 put a second question to Scots: should the new Parliament have what?

Tax-varying powers also won a clear majority, yet the right to move income tax by up to 3p in the pound, nicknamed the tartan tax, was never once used.

Who was Scotland's first First Minister after devolution, serving until his sudden death in October 2000?

Donald Dewar was called the 'Father of the Nation', having steered the Scotland Act through Westminster as Secretary of State for Scotland from 1997. He had represented Glasgow constituencies as an MP since 1978.

Where in Edinburgh was the National Covenant against the king's religious reforms first signed on 28 February 1638?

Greyfriars Kirk hosted the first signatures, and copies were then carried across Scotland for thousands more to add their names. The signatories became known as Covenanters.

Which factor to the Countess of Sutherland was tried for culpable homicide over evictions and acquitted in April 1816?

Patrick Sellar walked free from the Inverness court, but the Sutherland evictions he directed, among the most notorious of the Clearances, kept him the focus of anger long after the trial.