Scotland in the early modern period
Scotland in the early modern period refers, for the purposes of this article, to Scotland between the death of James IV in 1513 and the end of the Jacobite risings in the mid-eighteenth century. It roughly corresponds to the early modern period in Europe, beginning with the Renaissance and Reformation and ending with the start of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.
After a long minority, the personal reign of James V saw the court become a centre of Renaissance patronage, but it ended in military defeat and another long minority for the infant Mary Queen of Scots. Scotland hovered between dominance by the English and French, which ended in the Treaty of Edinburgh 1560, by which both withdrew their troops, but leaving the way open for religious reform. The Scottish Reformation was strongly influenced by Calvinism leading to widespread iconoclasm and the introduction of a Presbyterian system of organisation and discipline that would have a major impact on Scottish life. In 1561 Mary returned from France, but her personal reign deteriorated into murder, scandal and civil war, forcing her to escape to England where she was later executed. Her escape left her Protestant opponents in power in the name of the infant James VI. In 1603 he inherited the thrones of England and Ireland, creating a dynastic union and moving the centre of royal patronage and power to London.
His son Charles I attempted to impose elements of the English religious settlement on his other kingdoms. Relations gradually deteriorated resulting in the Bishops' Wars, ending in defeat for Charles and helping to bring about the War of Three Kingdoms involving England and Ireland. In 1643 Scotland entered into another period of civil war with the Royalist armies supporting the king and the Scottish Covenanters entering the war entered the war in support on the English Parliamentary side. Ultimately the parliamentary forces emerged victorious. Later, they allied with Charles who was defeated and executed. Scotland ultimately accepted his son, Charles II, as their king precipitating the Anglo-Scottish War of 1650-1652 which Scotland lost to a parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell, and was occupied and incorporated into the Commonwealth. The Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 saw the return of episcopacy and an increasingly absolutist regime, resulting in religious and political upheaval and rebellions. With the accession of the openly Catholic James VII, there was increasing disquiet among Protestants. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, William of Orange and Mary, the daughter of James, were accepted as monarchs. Presbyterianism was reintroduced and limitations placed on monarchy. After severe economic dislocation in the 1690s there were moves that led to political union with England as the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The deposed main hereditary line of the Stuarts became a focus for political discontent, known as Jacobitism, leading to a series of invasions and rebellions, but with the defeat of the last in 1745, Scotland entered a period of great political stability, economic and intellectual expansion.
Although there was an improving system of roads in early modern Scotland, it remained a country divided by topography, particularly between the Highlands and Islands and the Lowlands. Most of the economic development was in the Lowlands, which saw the beginnings of industrialisation, agricultural improvement and the expansion of eastern burghs, particularly Glasgow, as trade routes to the Americas opened up. The local laird emerged as a key figure and the heads of names and clans in the Borders and Highlands declined in importance. There was a population expanding towards the end of the period and increasing urbanisation. Social tensions were evident in witch trials and the creation of a system of poor laws. Despite the aggrandisement of the crown and the increase in forms of taxation, revenues remained inadequate. The Privy Council and Parliament remained central to government, with changing compositions and importance before the Act of Union in 1707 saw their abolition. The growth of local government saw introduction of Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply, while the law saw the increasing importance of royal authority and professionalisation. The expansion of parish schools and reform of universities heralded the beginnings of an intellectual flowering in the Enlightenment. There was also a flowering of Scottish literature before the loss of the court as a centre of patronage at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The tradition of church music was fundamentally changed by the Reformation, with the loss of complex polyphonic music for a new tradition of metrical psalms singing. In architecture, royal building was strongly influenced by Renaissance styles, while the houses of the great lairds adopted a hybrid form known as Scots baronial and after the Restoration was influenced by Palladian and Baroque styles. In church architecture a distinctive plain style based on a T-plan emerged. The Reformation also had a major impact on art, with a loss of church patronage leading to a tradition of painted ceilings and walls and the beginnings of a tradition of portraiture and landscape painting.
Political history
Sixteenth century
James V
The death of James IV at the Battle of Flodden in 1513 meant a long period of regency in the name of his infant son James V. He was declared an adult in 1524, but the next year Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, the young king's stepfather, took custody of James and held him as a virtual prisoner for three years, exercising power on his behalf. He finally managed to escape from the custody of the regents in 1528 and began to take revenge on a number of them and their families. He continued his father's policy of subduing the rebellious Highlands, Western and Northern isles and the troublesome borders. He took punitive measures against the Clan Douglas in the north, summarily executed John Armstrong of Liddesdale and carried out royal progresses to underline his authority. He also continued the French Auld alliance that had been in place since the fourteenth century, marrying first the French princess Madeleine of Valois and then after her death Marie of Guise. He increased crown revenues by heavily taxing the church, taking £72,000 in four years, and embarked on a major programme of building at royal palaces. He avoided pursuing the major structural and theological changes to the church undertaken by his contemporary Henry VIII in England. He used the Church as a source of offices for his many illegitimate children and his favourites, particularly David Beaton, who became Archbishop of Saint Andrews and a Cardinal. James V's domestic and foreign policy successes were overshadowed by another disastrous campaign against England that led to an overwhelming defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss. James died a short time later, a demise blamed by contemporaries on "a broken heart". The day before his death, he was brought news of the birth of an heir: a daughter, who would become Mary, Queen of Scots."Rough Wooing"
At the beginning of the infant Mary's reign, the Scottish political nation was divided between a pro-French faction, led by Cardinal Beaton and by the Queen's mother, Mary of Guise; and a pro-English faction, headed by James Hamilton, Earl of Arran. Failure of the pro-English to deliver a marriage between the infant Mary and Edward, the son of Henry VIII of England, that had been agreed under the Treaty of Greenwich, led within two years to an English invasion to enforce the match, later known as the "rough wooing". This took the form of border skirmishing and several English campaigns into Scotland. In 1547, after the death of Henry VIII, forces under the English regent Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset were victorious at the Battle of Pinkie, followed up by the occupation of the strategic lowland fortress of Haddington and recruitment of "Assured Scots". Arran and Mary of Guise responded by the Treaty of Haddington. and sent the five-year-old Mary to France, as the intended bride of the dauphin Francis, heir to the French throne. Mary of Guise stayed in Scotland to look after the interests of young Mary – and of France – although Arran acted as regent until 1554.The arrival of French troops helped stiffen resistance to the English, who abandoned Haddington in September 1549 and, after the fall of Protector Somerset in England, withdrew from Scotland completely. From 1554, Marie of Guise took over the regency, maintaining a difficult position, partly by giving limited toleration to Protestant dissent and attempting to diffuse resentment over the continued presence of French troops. When the Protestant Elizabeth I came to the throne of England in 1558, the English party and the Protestants found their positions aligned and asked for English military support to expel the French. The arrival of the English fleet commanded by William Wynter and English troops led to the besieging of the French forces in Leith, which fell in July 1560. By this point Mary of Guise had died and French and English troops both withdrew under the Treaty of Edinburgh, leaving the young queen in France, but pro-English and Protestant parties in the ascendant.
Protestant Reformation
During the sixteenth century, Scotland underwent a Protestant Reformation that created a predominately Calvinist national kirk, which was strongly Presbyterian in outlook, severely reducing the powers of bishops, although not abolishing them. In the earlier part of the century, the teachings of first Martin Luther and then John Calvin began to influence Scotland, particularly through Scottish scholars who had visited continental and English universities and who had often trained in the Catholic priesthood. English influence was also more direct, supplying books and distributing Bibles and Protestant literature in the Lowlands when they invaded in 1547. Particularly important was the work of the Lutheran Scot Patrick Hamilton. His execution with other Protestant preachers in 1528, and of the Zwingli-influenced George Wishart in 1546, who was burnt at the stake in St. Andrews on the orders of Cardinal Beaton, did nothing to stem the growth of these ideas. Wishart's supporters, who included a number of Fife lairds, assassinated Beaton soon after and seized St Andrews Castle, which they held for a year before they were defeated with the help of French forces. The survivors, including chaplain John Knox, being condemned to be galley slaves, helping to create resentment of the French and martyrs for the Protestant cause.Limited toleration and the influence of exiled Scots and Protestants in other countries, led to the expansion of Protestantism, with a group of lairds declaring themselves Lords of the Congregation in 1557 and representing their interests politically. The collapse of the French alliance and English intervention in 1560 meant that a relatively small, but highly influential, group of Protestants were in a position to impose reform on the Scottish church. A confession of faith, rejecting papal jurisdiction and the mass, was adopted by Parliament in 1560, while the young Mary, Queen of Scots, was still in France. Knox, having escaped the galleys and spent time in Geneva, where he had become a follower of Calvin, emerged as the most significant figure. The Calvinism of the reformers led by Knox resulted in a settlement that adopted a Presbyterian system and rejected most of the elaborate trappings of the medieval church. This gave considerable power within the new kirk to local lairds, who often had control over the appointment of the clergy, and resulting in widespread, but generally orderly, iconoclasm. At this point the majority of the population was probably still Catholic in persuasion and the kirk would find it difficult to penetrate the Highlands and Islands, but began a gradual process of conversion and consolidation that, compared with reformations elsewhere, was conducted with relatively little persecution.