Alba Historical

 WALLACE Late in August 1299, he left Scotland on a diplomatic mission to Philip IV of France who, for political reasons, briefly imprisoned him, but who supplied a safe-conduct for our beloved William le Walois of Scotland, knight' on his onward journey to consult the Pope in Rome.  The goal-not surprisingly, given Wallace's views – was the restoration of King John.  Back in Scotland some two years later, his movements are uncertain but it is difficult to disbelieve that he was a spent force.  There is some indication that, after Falkirk, Edward had offered his enemy the opportunity to  enter into peace, but Wallace rejected him. A compromise was not in his vocabulary. He was specifically excluded from the inevitability of Edward's kingship, and from then on was even more of a marked man. There were several attempts to capture him, all of which he eluded, but he was eventually taken by Sir John Menteith on August 3, 1305, traditionally at Robroyston on the outs...

 Wallace In the desperate days before John Balliol's abject submission to Edward I, the King had been deposed by that same community who had transferred his administrative powers to a council of Guardians,  while permitting him the dignity of his kingly title. Wallace continued to hope for the reinstatement of John as the rightful King of Scots, to that end, he attempted to maintain pressure attacks on the north of England, and he helped engineer the appointment of the pro-independence William Lamberton to the bishopric of St Andrews. Herein lay the seeds of Wallace's downfall, for, in a society obsessed with strict hierarchies, a man of his comparatively humble background had no business leading armies and directing government policy. Similar obsessions paralysed most of the Scottish aristocracy who, by right, ought to have been fulfilling these functions. There is an old story that when he assembled his army at Falkirk in July, 1298, Wallace told his men: 'I hae brocht ye...

  William Wallace's reputation was almost entirely the creation of his enemies. The few scraps of contemporary Scottish evidence must be supplemented with the elaborations of later chroniclers and historians who may have had access to materials that no longer exist. Investigators also have to contend with the fantastical imaginings' of Blind Harry's epic poem The Wallace, composed around 1478. It is somewhat difficult, if fascinating, to recover the history of Wallace the Man from this tangle of legend, propaganda, and elusive fact. But it is equally important to understand the myth of the greatest and most inspirational of Scottish heroes. The recently rediscovered cast of Wallace's seal in Glasgow's Mitchell Library indicates that he was the son (probably a younger one) of Ayrshire  landowner Alan Wallace, and so was born at Ellerslie near Kilmarnock, rather than the traditionally-favoured Elderslie, Renfrewshire. Nothing is known of him before 1296 when he may be...

 Edward & Toom Tabard He used his legal status as the superior lord to claim the revenues collected from vacant estates and various offices. Having been acknowledged by all the would be kings, he was able to back date access to all royal money to the death of Alexander III. When Balliol acquired the Scottish throne, he found the kingdom owed Edward six years' worth of revenues and there was a large personal debt from his own estate. Indeed, most Scottish revenues were finding their way south, giving John very little room to manoeuvre. Edward continued to force the issue, summoning John to fight with him and ordering him to appear at Westminster to justify his court's decisions. By 1295 the situation had become intolerable for Balliol. For almost 130 years, Scots had had no serious conflict with England, but their next move would lead to decades of bitter, bloody fighting. They signed a treaty with France, which was in effect the birth of the Auld Alliance and the start of t...

 King Alexander III's Death  When Alexander Ill was found dead on the sands at Kinghorn, Scotland was plunged into a dynastic crisis that threatened its very future as an independent nation-for Alexander's only direct heir was his three-year-old granddaughter, Margaret of Norway Scotland had never had a queen in her own right, and there were many, most particularly Robert Bruce of Annandale, grandfather of King Robert I, who was determined that it shouldn't have one He was ready to start a civil war over his own right to the throne. Robert Bruce of Annandale's mother was Isabel, second daughter of David, earl of Huntingdon, brother of Kings Malcolm IV and William I. John Balliol was descended from Margaret, the eldest daughter, but, being her grandson, was one generation further down the line than Bruce. Though the rules of primogeniture clearly favoured Balliol, he faced another problem-his mother, Margaret's daughter, was still alive, and therefore the claim reste...

Battle of Largs   It was Ketil Flatnose who 'preferred to go west across the sea to Scotland' because, he said, he thought it would be 'good living there'. Soon a host of semi-independent Viking rulers were roistering round the Scottish coast and, at the height of their power in the 10th century, a large area of the north and all the Western Isles, Caithness, Sutherland, and most of Ross belonged to the Norwegians. Scotland won back the mainland and Alexander I King of Scots, at the time of his death in 1249, was engaged in military operations in the Western Isles. His son, Alexander III, tried to buy back these islands from Norway and, when the attempt failed, a raid was made on Skye in 1262. There were also rumours that Alexander III was planning to win back all the Hebrides. When Haakon IV, the Norwegian king, heard of this, he swore revenge. He was at Widewall Bay in Orkney, presumably awaiting late arrivals, when a 'great darkness came over the sun, in such a w...

 King of the Isles Somerled, King of the Isles, was feared and revered in equal measure in the 12th century, during which time he stood like a giant over Scotland's entire north-western seaboard. For many, his name has retained an almost mythical quality, while others have sought to portray him as an unruly rogue. In fact, he campaigned to defend the Scots kingship and government from what many saw as destructive foreign influences acting on kings David I and Malcolm IV. Somerled's kingship was in the heart of the ancient and distinctively Scottish Viking-Gael land, and he had Gaelic and Norse origins. His name in Gaelic, Somhairlidh, comes from the Norse sumarlidi meaning 'summer raider' or Viking, and his family was firmly among the ruling Celto-Norse chieftains of the Western Isles in the 11th and 12th centuries. Little is known about his early life, but by the 1130s Somerled had emerged as an important political figure. His royal titles were Ri Innse Gall, 'King...

 A place of pilgrimage Glasgow Cathedral has evolved since the 12th century as the magnificent housing for the shrine of one of Scotland's native patron saints, Kentigern. This is the best preserved large Medieval church in Scotland, specifically designed to enable the veneration of the relics. Nowhere else is it possible for the modern visitor to so easily replicate providing best the experience of the Medieval pilgrim. Glasgow shares an important feature in common with the reliquary churches of two other important native saints, at Whithorn and Iona, in possessing an under church or crypt – providing best-preserved a highly atmospheric, semi-subterranean setting for the climax of the pilgrimage. It is believed that Kentigern served as bishop for early Christian communities in Strathclyde, and had also been active as far south as Cumbria. Certainly, the devotees to his later Medieval cult came from these areas. There is a tradition that Kentigern had developed a church or monaster...

 The early Thinkers (The Scots College ( Latin : Collegium Scoticum; French : Collège des Écossais) was a college of the University of Paris , France , founded by an Act of the Parliament of Paris on 8 July 1333.) Scotland's relations with Europe were transformed in the 15th century, when three universities were founded here. St Andrews had the earliest, around 1411, followed by Glasgow 40 years later, and then by one in Aberdeen in 1495. This last one was set up after a plea to Pope Alexander, a member of the notorious Borgia family, but that is another story! The new seat of learning in Aberdeen was called St Mary's first of all, and later named King's College, in honour of James IV. Such matters apart, the important thing is that, within a very short period, Scots were teaching Scots in Scotland at the highest level available anywhere. And even before those universities, there were the great abbeys, where men of high intellectual calibre were to be found. For example, ...