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50 free Scottish History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Scotland's story is a sequence of turning points: Roman legions who built a wall and then walked away from it, kings who died in riding accidents and sieges, a queen whose marriages cost her a crown, and a parliament that voted itself out of existence in 1707 only to return almost three centuries later. This quiz goes a layer beyond the famous dates. You will meet the Picts and the early Gaelic kingdoms, the Wars of Independence after the celebrated battles, the Stewart kings, the Reformation and the Covenanters, the Union and its terms, the Jacobite risings year by year, the Clearances, the Enlightenment thinkers, industrial Glasgow and the road to devolution. It suits pub-quiz regulars, teachers building a Scottish history lesson, and anyone who wants to know what actually happened between the dates everyone remembers. Every answer comes with an explanation, so you leave knowing more than you arrived with.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Roman name Picti, first recorded in 297 for the tribes north of the Forth, is usually explained as meaning what?
Painted people
Painted people is the usual reading of Picti, from the Latin pingere, 'to paint', and a writer around 404 described designs on the bodies of dying Picts. They left carved symbol stones but almost no writing.
Q 02Unlike in Shakespeare, the real Macbeth killed which king in battle in 1040 rather than murdering a sleeping guest?
Duncan I
Duncan I died in action after launching an attack into Moray, Macbeth's territory, and was a young man rather than the aged victim of the play. Macbeth then ruled seventeen years before his death at Lumphanan in 1057.
Q 03Malcolm III, who killed Macbeth at Lumphanan in 1057, carried the Gaelic nickname Canmore, meaning literally what?
Big head
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.
Q 04Scotland's succession crisis began in 1286 when Alexander III, riding to Kinghorn in the dark, died how?
Falling from his horse
Falling from his horse near the shore at Kinghorn killed Alexander III, who was hurrying to reach his new queen for her birthday the next day. His only heir was a three-year-old granddaughter living abroad.
Q 05A captain from which clan led the troops lodged as guests in Glencoe before the massacre of 13 February 1692?
Campbell
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.
Q 06On 19 August 1745 the Young Pretender raised his standard before some 700 Highlanders at which spot on Loch Shiel?
Glenfinnan
Glenfinnan saw the Royal Standard raised to launch the last Jacobite rising, witnessed by a crowd the prince's aide estimated at around 700 Highlanders. Within a month the rebels had taken Edinburgh.
Q 07Reached on 4 December 1745, which English town was the furthest south the Jacobite army got before turning back?
Derby
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.
Q 08In 1746 Flora MacDonald smuggled Bonnie Prince Charlie from the Outer Hebrides to Skye by disguising him as what?
Her Irish maid
Her Irish maid, named Betty Burke, was the cover under which the prince crossed to Skye in a party of eight on passes issued for the journey. Flora was imprisoned in the Tower of London for her part and later emigrated to North Carolina.
Q 09Which deputy to Hitler flew solo to Scotland on 10 May 1941, hoping to open peace talks through the Duke of Hamilton?
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess parachuted from his Messerschmitt Bf 110 as its fuel ran out, and was held for the rest of the war before being tried at Nuremberg. The Duke of Hamilton was a fellow aviator Hess wrongly believed opposed the war.
Q 10On 21 June 1919 German crews scuttled their own interned High Seas Fleet at which Royal Navy anchorage in Orkney?
Scapa Flow
Scapa Flow saw 52 of the 74 interned German vessels go down in a single afternoon because Admiral von Reuter feared the British would seize them under the Versailles terms. British guard ships managed to beach some of the rest.
Q 11Tacitus credited which Caledonian chief with 'they make a desert and call it peace' before Mons Graupius in AD 83 or 84?
Calgacus
Calgacus appears in a single source, Tacitus's Agricola, and some historians argue the chieftain was invented to voice the historian's own politics. His name is usually taken to mean 'swordsman'.
Q 12Which turf Roman frontier, begun in AD 142 between the Forth and Clyde, was given up eight years after completion?
Antonine Wall
Antonine Wall was meant to supersede Hadrian's Wall, but the legions pulled back south and its turf rampart has largely weathered away. Its emperor, Antoninus Pius, never set foot in Britain.
Q 13In 563 Columba sailed from Ireland with twelve companions and founded the monastery on which small Hebridean island?
Q 21James II of Scotland died on 3 August 1460 while besieging English-held Roxburgh Castle, when what happened beside him?
A cannon exploded
A cannon exploded as the king stood beside one of his bombards, killing him at a siege his own father had attempted and failed in 1436. He had seized the moment while England was distracted by the Wars of the Roses.
Q 22James III of Scotland was killed at Sauchieburn near Stirling in June 1488, facing rebel nobles nominally led by whom?
His own son
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.
Q 23Henry VIII's 1540s campaign to force the infant Mary, Queen of Scots to marry his son Edward is remembered as what?
Iona
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.
Q 14Dál Riata, the Gaelic kingdom ruled from the hillfort of Dunadd, covered which modern region plus part of Antrim?
Argyll
Argyll takes its name from Airer Goídel, 'coast of the Gaels', and its four kindreds were based in Kintyre, Islay, Lorn and Cowal. The kingdom straddled the sea to north-east Ireland.
Q 15By a 1266 treaty, three years after the Battle of Largs, which kingdom ceded the Hebrides and Man to Scotland?
Norway
Norway had formally held the islands since 1098, and Largs itself was so inconclusive that both sides claimed it. Scotland paid 4,000 marks plus a 100-mark annuity and confirmed Norwegian rule over Orkney and Shetland.
Q 16Which claimant, chosen as king by Edward I in the Great Cause of 1292, was mocked as Toom Tabard, or 'empty coat'?
John Balliol
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 captured a king who seemed to have no power inside the robes.
Q 17After which defeat by Edward I on 22 July 1298 did William Wallace resign as Guardian of Scotland?
Falkirk
Falkirk broke the Scottish spear-rings with English archers, ending Wallace's year as Guardian after his triumph the previous September. He spent the next years seeking help abroad before his capture in 1305.
Q 18Robert the Bruce was excommunicated for killing his rival John Comyn in a friary church in which town in 1306?
Dumfries
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.
Q 19Where was Robert the Bruce's heart finally buried after Sir James Douglas carried it towards the Holy Land in 1330?
Melrose Abbey
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.
Q 20James I of Scotland was assassinated on 20 February 1437, in a failed coup led by his uncle, in which town?
Perth
Perth was a favoured royal residence where James had founded a Carthusian priory, and the plot was led by Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl. The king's assertive rule had alienated much of the nobility.
The Rough Wooing
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.
Q 24Weeks after Darnley's 1567 murder at Kirk o' Field, Mary, Queen of Scots married which nobleman widely blamed for it?
The Earl of Bothwell
The Earl of Bothwell had carried kegs of gunpowder to Darnley's lodging himself, and the marriage provoked the rising that cost Mary her throne. He fled, was imprisoned in Denmark and died at Dragsholm Castle in 1578.
Q 25Eleven days after escaping Lochleven Castle in May 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots lost which battle and fled to England?
Langside
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.
Q 26When Scotland moved New Year's Day to 1 January in 1600, some 150 years before England, which date did it abandon?
25 March
25 March, the feast of the Annunciation, remained England's legal New Year until 1752, which is why the UK tax year still ends on 5 April. Scotland's switch put it in step with France, which had changed in 1564.
Q 27After a French fleet took St Andrews Castle in June 1547, the reformer John Knox spent nineteen months doing what?
Rowing as a galley slave
Rowing as a galley slave, chained to a bench under an officer with a whip, was Knox's punishment for serving as chaplain to the Protestant garrison. He later wintered on the Loire before his release in 1549.
Q 28James VI, who sat in on the 1590 North Berwick witch trials, wrote which 1597 treatise endorsing witch-hunting?
Daemonologie
Daemonologie frames witchcraft as 'treason against God' and was written partly to rebut sceptics like Reginald Scot, whose Discoverie of Witchcraft mocked the whole idea. It is believed to be a main source for Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Q 29How did market-trader Jenny Geddes reputedly protest the new prayer book in St Giles', Edinburgh, on 23 July 1637?
Throwing a stool
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.
Q 30Where were the Honours of Scotland hidden from Cromwell's army in 1651, before two women smuggled them out in sacks?
Dunnottar Castle
Dunnottar Castle, a clifftop fortress in Kincardineshire, held the regalia until a minister's wife carried them off over three visits in 1652 and buried them under her kirk floor at Kinneff. They were recovered after the Restoration.