Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Commemoration, Nationality and Memory 9780748676910

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Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland Commemoration, Nationality and Memory

James J. Coleman

© James J. Coleman, 2014 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10/12pt Goudy Old Style by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 0 7486 7690 3 (hardback) ISBN  978 0 7486 7691 0 (webready PDF) The right of James J. Coleman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents

Acknowledgements iv Introduction: The Valley Cemetery 1. Nationality, Memory and Commemoration 2. Scottish Nationality in the Nineteenth Century 3. ‘Not Servile and Conquered, but Free and Independent’: Commemorating William Wallace and Robert the Bruce 4. ‘The Highest Position in the Civilised World’: Commemorating John Knox and the Second Reformation 5. ‘If They Were Rebels Then, We Are Rebels Now’: Commemorating the Covenanters and the Glorious Revolution 6. ‘By the Imprudence of His Ancestors’: Commemorating Jacobitism and Mary Queen of Scots 7. ‘Staunch Loyalty to the Flag that Stands for Union’

1 7 20 39 88 130 154 176

Bibliography 191 Index 200

Acknowledgements

This book is based upon a PhD thesis submitted to the University of Glasgow in December 2005. The writing of the thesis would not have been possible without a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board. Enormous thanks to all those fellow postgrads who let me rant about my subject and offered their wisdom and input during the writing of the original thesis: Caroline Japp (née Erskine), Ronnie Scott, Matthew Hammond, Karly Kehoe, Iain McPhail, David Stewart and Kirsty Macdonald. Also to the staff of Scottish History (and Literature) from my time at Glasgow, particularly Ted Cowan, Martin MacGregor, Dauvit Broun, Irene Maver, Douglas Gifford, Alan Riach, Alexander Broadie and Dorothy Mallon. The thesis also benefited from discussions with Alex Tyrell and J. Malcolm Allan, as well having been inspired by the work and teaching of Graeme Morton. My thanks to the staff at the University of Glasgow library, as well as to those at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, the National Library of Scotland and Old College Library, Edinburgh, and local libraries in Ayr, Hamilton, Lanark, Stirling and Dumfries (the Ewart Library). I’d particularly like to thank the University of Glasgow Library staff who gave me access to a Research Room. Writing the book while working full-time in a non-academic job was a challenge made easier by the support of many people. The staff at the Development and Alumni Office have made the ‘day job’ a pleasure while tolerating my occasional bouts of book-related frustration. My family – and my Mum and Dad in particular – have been a constant, supportive presence. I will be forever grateful to David Goldie for his encouragement, ideas and good humour, and for giving such detailed and vital feedback on an early draft. I am also deeply in debt to Colin Kidd, for his feedback on the text, and for his being an inspirational – and often daunting – example of what it is to be an academic, as well as for his belief in my abilities. I hope that I am worthy. More than any other, I am grateful to my partner, Nalini Paul, for her faith, her creativity, her limitless support, and her enduring love.

Introduction: The Valley Cemetery

On the north side of the Esplanade at Stirling Castle stands a statue to Robert the Bruce. The statue represents the King in the dignity of victory, looking towards the site of the Battle of Bannockburn, a cautious hand resting on his sheathed sword. He wears an expression described by the Stirling Journal as ‘emphatically peaceful’ yet also somewhat beleaguered, ‘betraying the anxiety undergone in the long and arduous struggle for liberty’.1 The unveiling of the statue, erected in 1877, was a decidedly civic affair. A lengthy procession marched through Stirling, replete with members of the town guilds, council, voluntary societies and other burgh worthies, as well as the two committees charged with raising the statue. Accompanying them, a representative of the Earl of Elgin carried what was purported to be Bruce’s sword. Upon arrival at the Esplanade, a prayer was offered, the statue was unveiled, and numerous speeches were made. Then, with the ceremony concluded, no fewer than three separate banquets were enjoyed across the burgh.2 It had taken seven years, and committees in both London and Stirling, to gather sufficient funds for the Stirling Bruce statue. The original intention had been to cast the statue in bronze, but insufficient cash meant that the statue had to be sculpted in stone.3 Not that this deterred the gathered VIPs from extolling the virtues of Robert Bruce, Bannockburn, and the King’s legacy regarding Scotland and Britain. In formally handing the statue over to the care of the Corporation of Stirling, General Sir James Alexander of the Stirling committee said that the figure it represented signified ‘an example of manly perseverance and courage in a noble cause’. Having accepted the statue, William Christie, Provost of Stirling, listed the manifold realms of achievement in which the Scots had excelled, before going on to say: There are no more gratifying pages in the history of Scotland than those which relate to the sacrifice which she has made for, and the contests she has waged – and successfully waged – on behalf of civil, political, and religious liberty and independence. In giving a king to England she became an integral part of Great Britain, and has increased and stimulated the influence and power of the nation, and shed additional lustre upon the British name and fame.4

The inauguration of the Robert Bruce statue on the Esplanade was wellplaced to connect with another monument to Scottish national heroism.

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Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

Weather permitting, the National Wallace Monument would have been clearly visible only a few miles to the north-east on the Abbey Craig. Over 220 feet tall, the monument was a Scotch Baronial symbol of the debt Scotland owed to Bruce’s precursor in the Wars of Independence, William Wallace. It had taken thirteen years of fundraising, large and small public meetings, internal tensions, and botched construction before the monument was finally completed in September 1869. Its inauguration contrasted with the unveiling of the Bruce statue, taking place with the minimum of fuss at a small ceremony attended by members of Stirling Town Council and the Monument’s committee of management.5 Not that it had been without its fair share of pomp and celebration. The movement to erect the National Wallace Monument was launched at a public meeting in Stirling’s Kings Park on 24 June 1856, the anniversary of Bannockburn, in front of 20,000 people, while the monument’s foundation stone was laid on the same date five years later, this time before a crowd of somewhere between 60,000 and 200,000.6 As with the unveiling of the Bruce statue, both of these occasions – and several others that took place at the monument after its completion – were replete with bold assertions of Wallace’s heroism and virtues. At one of the countless public meetings held to generate enthusiasm and funds for the monument, the Revd Dr Charles Rogers claimed that Wallace had made Scotland a nation: Thanks to Wallace we have not been irritated by feelings of national degradation; and by him too, taught the lesson that it was our privilege and our duty to battle for the right, to rally round the throne, and fight manfully for the constitution. And well, too, we may claim the privilege of saying that if we derived, as we certainly did, many national benefits from our union with England, we, too, conferred on the south reciprocal advantages; the rose of England never bloomed so fair as when entwined and enfolded by the thistle of Scotland.7

Visitors to the Esplanade can hardly miss the statue of Bruce or the Wallace Monument standing against the Ochil Hills in the distance, yet they might easily overlook the rather unusual pyramid rising from beneath the retaining wall to the south. This is the Star Pyramid, a monument to ‘the men and principles of the Reformation’, erected in 1863 by William Drummond, a local seed merchant and land surveyor.8 The Pyramid overlooks the Valley Cemetery, laid out between 1857 and 1859 as a new graveyard for Stirling, principally thanks to Drummond’s generosity. Drummond not only provided shrubs and other plants for the new cemetery, but, as well as footing the bill for laying out the paths and terracing, he also paid for several statues to be erected. These statues, all from the Edinburgh studio of the sculptor Handyside Ritchie, form a pantheon of Scottish Presbyterianism: John Knox, Andrew Melville, Alexander Henderson, James Renwick and Margaret Wilson (‘the female martyr’). In addition, the Cemetery also contains statues to two Presbyterian figures with more local connections: James Guthrie and Ebenezer Erskine.9



Introduction: The Valley Cemetery

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The Guthrie statue was the first to be erected, being unveiled on 26 November 1857 before a select crowd of council members, local ministers, and other prominent Stirling citizens, including William Drummond, who had provided the bulk of the funds for its raising.10 The inauguration heard only one speech of any duration, delivered by James Dodds, a Londonbased parliamentary solicitor and respected authority on matters of Scottish Presbyterian history. In depicting Guthrie’s contribution to Scotland, Dodds referred to him as ‘No dim and vanishing figure, lost in the far past … He was one of the harbingers and pioneers of the British constitution, and suffered martyrdom for the principles on which that constitution is founded.’11 The extent to which James Guthrie has indeed remained ‘No dim and vanishing figure’ is open to question. While most early twenty-first-century visitors to Stirling may understand something of the significance of William Wallace, Robert Bruce and John Knox, their familiarity with those other figures represented in the Valley Cemetery is more doubtful. How many visitors would know James Guthrie as a minister of Stirling executed in Edinburgh for refusing to swear loyalty to the restored monarchy of Charles II? Would they recognise Alexander Henderson, one of the authors of both the 1638 National Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant, or James Renwick, the last of the Covenanting preachers executed for resisting King James VII and II? Would many recognise the significance of the monument to Margaret Wilson, one of the so-called Wigtown Martyrs, who was drowned aged eighteen in the Solway Firth in 1685 for refusing to swear the Abjuration Oath against the Covenants? We might also ask whether the people of mid-to-late Victorian Stirling would have been familiar with these figures. Should we look upon the Valley Cemetery as the pet project of a committed and zealous local Presbyterian, little more than one man’s veneration for the luminaries of his religion? William Drummond was, after all, the eldest son of a devout Presbyterian family. His younger brother, Peter, was one of the century’s leading publishers of religious material, an enterprise that endured into the 1970s – the names of some of his company’s tracts are engraved upon the sides of the Star Pyramid. Are the statues and the Pyramid, then, simply the expression of one family’s piety and generosity and nothing more? Were these monuments to Presbyterian heroism unique in nineteenthcentury Scotland our answer might be a simple yes, yet this is far from the case. From the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, at least thirty separate commemorative monuments were raised to key figures from Scotland’s Presbyterian past, from the colossal obelisk to the Reformation scholar George Buchanan at Killearn in 1788, to the statue of Knox in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, in 1906.12 Indeed, almost all of those commemorated in the Valley Cemetery have corresponding monuments elsewhere in the country: a Gothic cross to James Renwick was raised in

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Moniaive in 1826, the Wigtown Martyrs have their own obelisk above Wigtown, ­inaugurated in 1858, whilst in 1883 a monument was raised at Gairney Bridge, near Kinross, to the ‘Secession Fathers’, including Ebenezer Erskine.13 From Deerness to Dumfries, Scotland is littered with such monuments to Presbyterian memory. The purpose of this book is to consider what these monuments meant to those who raised them, and what they signified to the wider Scottish nation at that time. The Presbyterian statues in the Valley Cemetery, the Robert Bruce statue on the Esplanade, and the National Wallace Monument all embody the nineteenth-century passion for monumental commemoration. The reasons for nineteenth-century Scots raising so many monuments to national heroes such as William Wallace and Robert Bruce may at first seem self-evident: these were great men of the past in an age that worshipped the cult of the Great Man. In the words of Thomas Carlyle, ‘Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.’14 In this view of the past, all the great paradigm shifts of history were traced back to the actions of these leaders of men – to celebrate their lives and achievements was to bathe in the light of their greatness. There is, however, much more to the commemoration of the past than simply raising a physical marker to great heroes or gathering to remember their accomplishments. There is the question of what these heroes meant to those who remembered them. Why is it, for instance, that a still-potent symbol such as William Wallace was once remembered in similar terms to someone like James Guthrie, who is all but forgotten? That is, just as there are nineteenth-century monuments to national heroes whose significance still endures – Wallace, Bruce, Burns – what of those such as John Knox and the Covenanters whose meaning has changed? Figures like Renwick, Melville and Guthrie have slipped into relative obscurity: why, then, were they so widely remembered 150 years ago? While familiarity with Wallace’s place in Scotland’s sense of its past may render unproblematic the fact that Victorian Scots raised a colossal tower in his name, their reasons for commemorating Wallace are less obvious than we might think. We might assume that the Victorian Wallace was much the same as the Wallace of the early twenty-first century, a proto-nationalist figure, embodying Scotland’s struggle for independence from England, yet this is only part of the story. That the dominant reading of Wallace’s legacy from the 1790s into the twentieth century saw him as a champion of proto-Unionism can be hard for twenty-first-century Scots to understand. In considering these questions, we are not concerned with the literal, historical truth about the figures being commemorated. That is to say, this book will not apply the benefits of early twenty-first-century historiography in an attempt to assess whether or not the Victorians got their past ‘right’. Instead,



Introduction: The Valley Cemetery

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we will look at the ways in which those figures were depicted through their commemoration and ask why they were depicted as they were. What meaning did nineteenth-century Scots see in their national heroes when commemorating their exploits? What did the great moments of the Scottish past signify for the present, and how did this fit with the image of nineteenth-­ century Scotland we have inherited in the present: romantic yearning for Bonnie Prince Charlie, tartan-framed highland landscapes, sentimental readings of ‘Rabbie’ Burns, and the lumbering progress of Scottish industry? What place did the commemoration of national heroes as seemingly diverse as Robert the Bruce and John Knox have among all this paraphernalia? To find an answer, this book will focus on the expression of Scottish ‘nationality’ in the nineteenth century. We will consider the significance of this term in more detail in Chapter 1, but, simply put, nationality indicated both the sense of belonging to a nation whilst also indicating the character and virtues of that nation. This was more than mere patriotism. Nationality was a set of national characteristics, an inherited sense of identity, yet also a virtue – any nation with a clear sense of its nationality ranked that bit higher in the league of all nations. The past and its heroes acted as an exemplar of nationality, expressed not just through the work of historians, but through collective memories. These memories represented a shared ideal of the story of the nation, fostered by acts of commemoration. We will examine this triad of nationality, memory and commemoration in Chapter 1. With these tools in hand, we will turn in Chapter 2 to consider Scottish nationality in the nineteenth century. Rather than subsuming their nationality into a dominant, Anglo-centric sense of Britishness, nineteenth-century Scots easily articulated their nationality within the context of Great Britain. Scottish nationality and British patriotic loyalty – as well as political and imperial identity – were entirely compatible. Chapter 2 also considers the foundations of Scottish nationality at that time, specifically by examining the historical vision of Sir Walter Scott and of what has been termed the Presbyterian interpretation of Scottish history. Having set our context, the following chapters examine the commemoration of key figures and events from the Scottish past and the meaning these events carried for Scottish nationality in the nineteenth century. We begin with the commemoration of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce in Chapter 3, then turn to those of John Knox and Scotland’s Reformations in Chapter 4, and those of the later Covenanting martyrs in Chapter 5. Each of these chapters looks at the raising of commemorative monuments and the marking of important anniversaries, both at a local and a national level. In addition, Chapters 3 and 4 will attempt to place collective memories of Wallace and Knox in the context of other European heroes, most notably the Swiss national hero, William Tell, and the French reformer John Calvin. Just as they were adept at fitting their national heroes into a Scoto-British context, so, too, nineteenth-century Scots projected their

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national heroes onto a wider, world stage, as paragons of ‘civil and religious liberty’. Throughout, we will consider the position of this term as a leitmotif of Scottish nationality, the thread that binds together cultural memories of Wallace, Bruce, Knox and the Covenanters, reaching its apogee with the socalled Glorious Revolution of 1688/9. Chapter 6 looks at the commemoration of Jacobitism and the ‘FortyFive’, the last of the Jacobite risings that ended in the slaughter of Culloden. For thematic reasons, we will also consider in this chapter one of the most controversial figures from 200 years before the Forty-Five, Mary Queen of Scots. This chapter will consider why the commemorations of these two powerful elements of Scottish memory occupied such a different position in the nineteenth-century from the one they now occupy. Whereas William Wallace and John Knox could be adapted to meet the demands of nineteenth-century Scottish nationality, memories of Jacobitism and Mary Stuart were kept largely separate, disconnected from the binding thread of ‘civil and religious liberty’, losers in the great game of Scotland’s past. NOTES   1 ‘The Statue of King Robert the Bruce’, Stirling Journal, 30 November 1877.  2 Stirling Observer, 29 November 1877.  3 Letter from Cruikshank, The Times, 6 December 1877; Stirling Observer, 29 November 1877; Stirling Journal, 30 November 1877.  4 Stirling Observer, 29 November 1877.   5 James Coleman, ‘Unionist-Nationalism in Stone?’, in Edward J. Cowan (ed.), The Wallace Book (John Donald, 1997), p. 165.   6 Coleman, ‘Unionist-Nationalism in Stone?’.   7 Quoted in Charles Rogers, Social Life in Scotland from Early to Recent Times, Vol. I (Grampian Club, 1884), p. 138.  8 Stirling Observer, 13 April 1863.  9 Stirling Observer, 26 August 1858, 7 April 1859. 10 Stirling Observer, 3 December 1857. 11 Ibid. 12 The Scots Magazine, 1 June 1789; ‘Knox and St Giles: The Newest Memorial’, Glasgow Herald, 17 November 1906. 13 Scottish Guardian, 8 August 1856; ‘Monument to Margaret McLauchlan and Margaret Wilson: The Wigtown Martyrs’, Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 21 August 1858; ‘Memorial to the Secession Fathers at Gairney Bridge’, United Presbyterian Magazine, 1 June 1884. 14 Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840), from The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle, Vol. 6 (Chapman & Hall, 1864), p. 185.

Chapter 1 Nationality, Memory and Commemoration

NATIONALITY At the heart of this book’s examination of the past in nineteenth-century Scotland is the concept of nationality. In its early twenty-first-century definition, nationality tends to signify ‘the status of being a citizen or subject of a particular state’.1 Nationality is a box ticked on a form, an entry on a birth certificate. One hundred and fifty years ago, however, the significance of nationality ran much deeper. Across nineteenth-century Europe, nationality signified both the collective character of the nation and the right of a nation to address itself as such. It was a potent combination of shared characteristics, identity, institutions and patriotism, more than merely what made the Scots Scottish, the French French, or the Germans German.2 Nationality was not only what made a nation a nation, it was also what made a nation great – at least in its own eyes. Nationality signified a set of shared national characteristics and an inherited sense of identity, yet it was also a virtue in and of itself, both for the individual and for the nation as a whole. This involved a form of Catch-22: without an expressed sense of nationality there could be no nation, yet there could be no nationality without a nation to embody it. The challenge was, how to prove one’s nationality? How to assert one’s right to nationhood? One solution was to appeal to the past. In the much-cited words of Ernest Renan from 1882, the nation is ‘a soul, a spiritual principle’ constituted of the past and the present: ‘To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have accomplished great things together, to wish to do so again, that is the essential condition for being a nation.’3 The vibrancy of nationality was proved by appealing to this sense of common purpose, inherited from the past, articulated in the present, and projected into the future. In order to exist, nationality had to be on some level collective, yet it also required identifiable roots. Along similar lines to Renan, John Stuart Mill defined nationality in his Considerations on Representative Government (1861) as a ‘portion of mankind … united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others’. Among the sources of this common sympathy were, Mill proposed, a common race, a common language and a ­‘community

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of religion’ as well as ‘geographical limits’.4 While these were the elements that defined nationality in the present, Mill also firmly emphasised the roots of nationality as being in the past. More than any common purpose in the present, nationality was grounded in an ‘identity of political antecedents; the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past’.5 Just as Renan emphasised ‘common glories in the past and a common will in the present’, so the key term for Mill was ‘his community of recollections’.6 Nationality was born of this relationship between a communal sense of the past and a common purpose in the present, between memory and experience. To lay claim to the possession of nationality, whether as an individual or as a nation, was to place oneself within an overarching narrative, emerging from misty if recognisable origins in the distant past, through centuries of trial and triumph, into the present, all on the understanding that the accumulated legacy of the collective past might be carried on into the future.7 This national narrative was the nation’s Sonderweg, proof that one’s nation was chosen, above all others, to embody the advantages and magnificence of historic nationality.8 In possessing and expressing this sense of the nation as a chosen people, the more coherent one’s nationality, the more one could claim distinct advantages over other nations, particularly those less capable of proving the national point. While this often signified both a sense of national ­superiority – the Scots were remarkably fond of emphasising the vibrancy of their nationality as compared to that of Ireland, for instance – it could also encourage a degree of sympathy for those nations whose nationality was oppressed. That is to say, the ideal of nationality was exportable, something that should be carried into other, less fortunate nations, assisting them in determining their own fate in the face of a foreign or internal oppressor. To this end, ­nationality had what we might call a strong missionary element. Stronger nations might seek to spread the benefits of their national ideal through an imperialist nationality – the Napoleonic model – or through aggressive unification – as in Bismarckian Germany – yet, at its most benign, missionary nationality aimed to assist oppressed nationalities in realising their potential for gaining coherent nationhood.9 For instance, philhellenist support for the Greek insurrection in the 1820s was based upon dislike for the non-Christian-ergo-alien Ottoman Turks and a deep-rooted admiration for ancient Greece, the ‘originators of all that was best in Europe’.10 Later in the century, the nationalists Giuseppe Mazzini in Italy and Lajos Kossuth in Hungary found a ready audience when they toured Great Britain in search of support for their cause in the 1860s. Many of the volunteers who left Scotland to fight in support of the Italian nationalists under Garibaldi in 1861 were motivated by ‘idealism, rather than opportunism’ – they wanted to assist the Italians in becoming national and so gaining the benefits of



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nationality that Scotland already possessed.11 At its most idealistic, nationality could also be used to foster international unity between nations. Speaking at the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1897, the leading Scottish Home Rule advocate David Macrae claimed: Nationality was one form of organised life lying between the individual and home life on the one hand and the universal brotherhood of man on the other. It united millions of people as one man, and created a new power, which, when rightly used, was capable of achieving a great work for the world.12

THE EMERGENCE OF NATIONALITY Nationality was an inspiring collective virtue, one that belonged to everyone capable of aligning themselves with its essentials. In other words, nationality belonged to and stemmed from the character of the many, not the few. In this sense, the concept has its roots in the philosophical and political works of eighteenth-century Enlightenment authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine, vigorously applied in the new republics of the United States and Revolutionary France. Simply put, the will and the truth of a nation were embodied not in privileged elites but in the masses. Progress involved political power moving into the hands of the people – or more of the people – and away from inherited privilege. Though the Constitution of the United States provided a powerful precedent, it was the French Revolution that acted as the most dramatic catalyst for this world view. In the first rush of liberty after 1789, liberals and radicals across Europe saw the possibility of accruing or seizing power from their former masters. This was to be the beginning of a new age of political freedom across Europe, yet disillusionment soon followed as the early days of the Revolution soured into Jacobin terror and the Napoleonic Empire. Widespread disgust with the violence and vulgar imperialism adopted by this new model of society saw many of its former supporters fall back on political conservatism as a more acceptable and less bloody form of progress. Gradual, cumulative improvement, growing from the achievements of the past – the Anglo-British model of constitutional government – was infinitely preferable to abrupt and violent change, divorcing the present from the benefits of history. If republican democracy inevitably led to tyranny, conservatism maintained stability. To this end, victory over Napoleon was warmly greeted across Europe by those nations that had suffered under the alarming novelty of his regime. Following the restoration of the old order at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Europe’s ruling elites ensured an assertive return to the good old days of elite privilege and autocratic rule, as newfangled constitutions were either ditched or watered down. Yet the opportunities implicit in this new conception of political participation were not to be so easily forgotten. Many Europeans, though glad to

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be free of the alien tyranny of Napoleonic France, found that the political enfranchisement they enjoyed during the days of the Empire was a forward step unwillingly sacrificed for the sake of geopolitical stability. A truly collective nationality was the birthright of all, each member of the nation – whether British, French, German, Hungarian, or otherwise – occupying and embodying one facet of the national soul. This burgeoning cult of popular nationality reached its high point in mainland Europe with the revolutions of 1848, when liberals and radicals alike arose to demand their constitutional rights. Though its success was short-lived, 1848 emphasised the assumption that nationality belonged to the masses, even if the political details were either inchoate or heavily contested. Great Britain, meanwhile, stuck firmly to a more conservative path, enfranchising the masses slowly but surely, beginning with the Reform Act of 1832 and then extending the electorate by degrees. With its emphasis on both the collective continuity of a shared past and on the redefinition of what constituted a nation in the present, there is something paradoxical in the development of nationality. Its appeal to the masses as the body of the nation stemmed from the politics of the Enlightenment, yet in also drawing on the past nationality was as much a product of Romanticism, a conservative reaction against the Enlightenment. Where the Enlightenment was rational, Romanticism was emotional; if the Enlightenment was universal and abstract, Romanticism was local and specific; where the Enlightenment focused on the philosophical and historical precedents of the classical world, Romanticism turned instead to national customs retrieved from the national past. This was rendered all the more tangible as the French Revolution turned the world on its head. If the sentimental reaction against Enlightenment logic was in itself somewhat abstracted, the response to Napoleonic hegemony was all too real, with a range of voices raised to advance their own nationality as holding all the necessary cultural capital for recovering national distinctiveness and freedom. The national character became ‘the underlying moral blueprint … that determined a nation’s personality, its way of positioning itself in the world, its way of viewing the world’.13 This argument was set out clearly in Johann Fichte’s Reden an die deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation) of 1808, in which loyalty to the nation is loyalty to the extended family of people sharing in this national spirit. Fichte argued that nations with a clear sense of their past were more deserving of nationality than those without a viable cultural memory. Revolutionary France, as a modern, pragmatic invention, had no soul.14 On the other side of the Channel, that Great Britain had not succumbed to revolutionary fervour was clearly the settled result of centuries of gradual, constitutional development. Here was the precedent that defined nationality: to prove itself, each nation must reconnect with its past, rediscover the necessary antiquity of its own traditions.



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Examples abound. As early as the mid-eighteenth century, the unearthing of the epic poetry of Ossian – forgery or not – gave Scotland its very own Homer. In Germany, the rediscovery of the Nibelungenlied presented a ready-made and adaptable national epic. In the 1830s, the publishing of the Kalevala in Finland gave the Finns their own focus for national sentiment in both historic and linguistic terms. Within this process lay also the first expression of nationality as both specific to one’s own nation, yet also a benefit that should be exported for the good of others – the rediscovery of national pasts as a defining characteristic of the present was an international phenomenon. For instance, the publication of the poems of Ossian in the 1760s provided ‘an international model for nationalist fantasies’, kickstarting the cult of romantic nationalism across Europe.15 New discoveries of lost or neglected national tales in one nation inspired similar attempts to find corresponding precedents in others. Touchstones for national character proliferated: in language, folk song, antiquarianism, art and architecture, and in the historical novel. In this respect, Sir Walter Scott stands as a dramatic and seminal example. Through scrupulous antiquarianism, Scott committed himself to the representation of the past in its own terms. Readers were time travellers, entering the past through the tardis-like covers of his novels, experiencing bygone ages as an immediate presence and so better understanding what it was to live in those ages, facing the trials of history first-hand. These were not epics of the ancients, but stories populated with recognisable types in a familiar landscape, accessible by all. As depicted by Scott, the past was not merely a tale of princes and kings: it belonged to and was replete with people of all social echelons – of the nation as a whole. In this way, Scott stimulated an obsession with understanding the past not as ‘philosophy teaching by examples’, but, to quote John Stuart Mill, as an attempt ‘to realize a true and living picture of the past time, clothed in its circumstances and peculiarities’.16 Scott was portraying the past as it might have been, not as a mirror to the present. This brought home the actuality of the national past as lived experience: no longer a compendium of abstract examples, history became a storehouse of tales, circumstances, traditions, and experiences that were both real and peculiar to specific nations. COLLECTIVE MEMORY Connecting with the past was vital to the articulation and justification of nationhood, rendering nationality simultaneously viable in the present but also traceable over time: what Chris Lorenz terms a ‘persistence through change’.17 Time, progress and the nation were inextricably linked, as the nation became the principal character in the drama of history and collective memory. In Joep Leerseen’s words, ‘The nation counts as the manifestation and carrier of grand historical destinies and spiritual principles in human

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affairs.’18 In short, there could be no nationality without historic and mnemonic roots. Writing in 1812 of the role of literature in the formation of nationality, the German scholar and poet Friedrich Schlegel saw this clearly: It appears above all important for the entire development and even the spiritual existence of a nation that it should have great national memories, which often recede into the dark periods of its first beginning … Such national-collective memories, the finest inheritance a people can have, are a blessing which nothing else can replace.19

In order to exist, a nation needed to actively share in these ‘nationalcollective memories’. In foregrounding memory, Schlegel emphasised that nations could not live on written history alone – the work of historians was but one component in a much wider and more varied collage of mnemonic influences. In recent years, the term ‘collective memory’ or ‘cultural memory’ has provided a new impetus for the study of the past, by focusing not on the relatively rarefied work of historians but on all representations of the past, whether in novels, history painting, the rituals of the state, or in commemorative activity.20 Yet an abiding concern with the role of memory – if not necessarily in its application – is nothing new. The idea of collective memory was consistently invoked throughout the nineteenth century. In a speech delivered at a meeting of the Glasgow St Andrew’s Society, on St Andrew’s night 1866, the Glasgow Councillor James Salmon emphasised that nationality stemmed from a collective sense of the ongoing national story. Following the terms mapped out by Mill and Renan, Salmon said that national belonging was ‘at once a memory of the past, a representation of the present, and a prophecy of the future’. He went on to say: We feel that the memories of our country are an immortal inheritance – not as a poetic dream or a phantasy of the past, but as a possession or a birthright, which, as it has descended to us untarnished, we wish to transmit to our children as pure and unsullied as we received it; and this is the belief, – that as these glorious memories and traditions have proved to us so will they prove to them – a guide and incentive to all that is manly, patriotic, and virtuous.21

Salmon’s is but one of countless examples of the nineteenth-century preoccupation with remembering the past as a means of supporting a sense of collective identity in the present. Indeed, collective remembering was a way of coping with the alarming rapidity of change. For the Victorians in particular, the machine of progress seemed to be dragging them away from this sense of a communal past. Rather than one’s community being a tangible, quotidian reality, the onset of modernity with its effects of migration and alienation made it ever more necessary for communities to imagine themselves.22 The contemporary perception of the transcendent certainties of shared nationality acted as a counterweight to the effects of rapid and unstoppable social, economic and technological change.23 This only served



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to emphasise that remembering the past served the needs of the present. The past was a screen on to which one could project the demands of the present. That is to say, great events from the national past – battles, moments of heroic virtue, martyrdoms – were wheeled out to receive these projections of present significance. Collective remembering involved reading these projections as evidence that the past was part of the same discourse, a historic expression of ongoing nationality. The more easily the past could be made to fit the requirements of the present, the more likely it was to be deemed meaningful. COMMEMORATION In the search for suitable subjects from the past that might accommodate the projection of the present, the ability to shape those subjects appropriately was much more important than getting the past ‘right’. In any contest between history and memory, history had to make way.24 As noted above, for the articulation of collective memories of the past, the writing of history was only one small element. Instead, commemoration provided a stable platform for the projection of the present on to the past, simultaneously shaping inherited memories of the past whilst also transmitting them into the future.25 It was the public nature of the commemorative act that gave it power as a form of remembering, and it is this that makes the examination of commemoration such fertile ground for understanding nationality. Public commemorative acts involve the articulation of a shared understanding of the meaning of the past. The celebration of anniversaries and the raising of public statuary and other commemorative monuments acted as a very public forum for the expression of nationality, by invoking the past as defining the present. More than this, however, these public commemorations required the past to be delimited, to define the border between what was deemed acceptable to contemporary nationality and what was not.26 The importance of the commemorative act lies not simply in its role as a screen on to which memory can be projected, but as a realm of memory, a metaphorical region open to habitation. That is to say, for any element of collective memory to endure, it must possess sufficient room for manoeuvre, allowing those who come after to roam across a landscape of possible meanings – the larger the realm, the greater the range of places to inhabit. Yet the idea of a realm also suggests borders, that there are limits to the range of meanings we might find when entering this world. Just as realms of memory have borderlands, lawless peripheries where meaning is less secure, they also have cores, central spaces where the most commonly shared – or permitted – meanings are found. Interpretations that stray too far from the more populous centres are liable to be treated with the appropriate level of suspicion They are, we might say, too far out. These centres do not necessarily signify specific events or persons

14

Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

i­nasmuch as they relate to the wider significance of those events – they are centres of meaning, not of historical fact. In short, these realms of memory are not physical places on the ground but mnemonic spaces, collective worlds generated by a shared sense of the past. The site of the Battle of Bannockburn, for instance, does not occupy the same space in cultural memory as does the ‘Battle of Bannockburn’ as a subjective moment in the cultural memories of modern Scotland. One can participate in a shared memory of Bannockburn, contribute to it, pass it on, change or adapt it, without having any notion of the realities of the battle or the topography of the ground upon which it was fought. Commemoration is concerned with the transmission of meaning, not the dry retelling of historical fact. As times change, so do the centres of significance within cultural memory. Within each realm there must be sufficient room to permit reinterpretation. In ensuring their endurance, malleability is of profound importance. As commemoration passes cultural memories on from one generation to the next, the process becomes victim to shifting cultural, political and social demands.27 The landscape of shared memory does not remain fixed but is itself in a constant state of becoming, of metamorphosis. This ability to adapt – more precisely, to be adapted – relates to one of the many challenges inherent in the commemorative act: the necessity to overcome the inescapable realities of the past. In attempting to construct a defining narrative of the nation, commemorative acts must somehow or other deal with moments of rupture and reconcile them with the present: old conflicts had to be overcome, tensions elided. A new narrative must be formed capable of accommodating these old divisions. Where a memory contains potentially divisive elements, reconciliation is achieved by focusing not so much on the details of the event or person as on the ideas they were seen to represent. After the American Civil War, the process of apparent reconciliation was remarkably rapid and replete with signs and symbols of a nation attempting to move beyond awkward memories of internal conflict.28 At a time when all were aware of the nation’s fragility, Americans from North and South buried the hatchet beneath layers of self-glorification, emphasising the personal qualities of the protagonists and the virtues of loyalty and duty shown by both sides, rather than remembering the causes of the war or the inevitable fact of who won and who lost.29 When not commemorating illustrious individuals, Civil War monuments tended to be highly generic representations of Union or Confederate soldiers, avoiding controversy in recording the war’s causes or significance by emphasising the fairly compatible ‘Union’ in the North, and ‘State Sovereignty’ in the South.30 As we shall see in Chapter 6, a similar tactic was adopted when remembering the Forty-Five Jacobite rising.



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FORMS OF COMMEMORATION Commemorative practice took many shapes, and any typology would involve a complex matrix of forms and methods. Broadly speaking, the past is commemorated in both passive and active ways. Passive commemoration is carried out through examples of ‘banal nationalism’ such as the naming of streets, symbols of the nation that quickly become part of the local landscape. On the other hand are those more active commemorations such as the annual celebration of a national day – Bastille Day in France, Independence Day in the United States – when commemoration more assertively inculcates a sense of belonging as well as what that belonging should mean. National days exemplify the recurring commemorative form, with the marking of a national anniversary as the most prominent: the laying of wreaths at war memorials and cenotaphs on Remembrance Sunday is a continually resonant example. What matters is that the commemorative act is assertively not an everyday occurrence but is intended as a step away from the quotidian to reflect upon and to reinvent the meaning of the past and its significance for the present. The purpose of public commemoration is to be noticed.31 Certain historical focal points are only commemorated at major anniversaries. The year 2014 is almost over-burdened with significant anniversaries that may – or may not – be deemed worthy of commemoration. Commemoration of the outbreak of the First World War commenced in mid-2013, whereas at the time of writing it is to be wondered how the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn will be marked or, for that matter, the bicentenary of the publication of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley. In addition are what we might term one-off commemorations, often involving the inauguration of a commemorative structure, whether it is a public building such as a museum, library or school, or the unveiling of a commemorative monument. Increasingly, some commemorative activities are intended to provoke discussion or are principally educative: museums hold exhibitions to mark important – or neglected – anniversaries, works of history are published, television documentaries are commissioned, public debates are held. Amid such a variety of possible types, this book is concerned with two very specific forms of public commemoration prevalent in the nineteenth century: the marking of anniversaries and the raising of commemorative monuments. Even selecting these two commonplace forms of commemoration suggests a number of comparisons. For instance, the raising of commemorative monuments is, in effect, an example of one-off commemoration, while the marking of anniversaries is, by its very nature, recurrent. Monuments, regardless of their size, location or significance, have to be paid for, whether by means of an individual’s philanthropy or the participation of the public. In the absence of a sufficiently wealthy benefactor, those seeking to raise the monument must appeal to the public in terms likely to attract donations – get the message wrong, and your monument will not be built.

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Even if successfully raised, once completed commemorative monuments have a tendency to become inarticulate. The meaning the monument’s builders may have intended for it becomes prey to the caprices of those shifting social, political and cultural contexts that surround both the monument and its subject. As Ann Rigney has written, even if the physical stability of a monument is fixed, symbolically it is highly unstable: Although statues are part of an effort to stabilise memory by locating the appreciation for certain figures in the public space, they only preserve their meaning if they are kept alive by commemorative acts in which their significance is articulated, reinforced, or redefined.32

Without recurring acts of commemoration to sustain the significance of the monument’s subject – more precisely, the idea the monument was originally intended to convey – these monuments have a habit of descending into, at best, banal nationalism. At worst, once-resonant statues of great politicians or leaders in war become nothing more than targets for the misappropriation of traffic cones. Anniversaries can be, by comparison, a good deal cheaper, more immediate and more dynamic. Unlike monuments, anniversaries achieve much of their resonance simply by repetition. None of the myriad statues to Robert Burns across Scotland is in any way as effective in communicating the poet’s significance as are the annual Burns Night celebrations with their whisky, haggis, and Immortal Memories. As we shall see, the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn was marked consistently throughout the nineteenth century in a number of contrasting ways – particularly potent for a battle that lacked any enduring commemorative marking post until the 1870s. Not all anniversaries are celebrated annually, however. The majority of the anniversary celebrations considered in this book were much rarer events, being markers of major centenaries such as the celebration of the tricentenary of the Scottish Reformation in 1860, or the sexcentenary of the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1897. While monuments may endure as a symbol that something or someone was an important element of the national story, milestone anniversary celebrations communicate their meaning very clearly and succinctly and then are gone. That is to say, commemorations that are principally ritualistic and rhetorical broadcast their significance much more efficiently than monumental commemoration, which, after its inauguration, is open to countless reinterpretations. Most often, the subjects of commemoration are either significant turning points in the nation’s story or an individual – a national hero. What makes national heroes particularly effective as focal points for commemoration is their ability to embody nationality, to represent those virtues that define the nation in its past and, by means of their commemoration, in the present. To a certain extent, this maps to Carlyle’s conception of the hero as ‘a great soul open to the Divine Significance of Life’, yet where Carlyle wrote of



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the hero as an expression of a form of natural religion, the national hero is an expression of the virtues of nationality.33 These heroes are national not only by being collectively recognised as fundamental to the formation and endurance of the nation, but also national in that they express certain fundamental characteristics of the nation, whether in their person or through their achievements. They are all that is good in nationality made flesh. As outlined above, the paradox is that those very virtues seen as inherent in the hero are, in fact, the virtues or demands of the present. As we shall see in our examination of Wallace and Bruce, the less we know about the motivations of the hero, the easier it becomes to mould them to our purposes. Wallace benefited from being a historiographical blank space, while Bruce, carrying a great deal more verifiable historic detail, was not quite so malleable. What mattered most of all, however, were the apparent virtues expressed by the hero or his achievements. Shared memories of a national hero may involve florid representations of his or her physical prowess and illustrious character, yet it is only insofar as these characteristics are linked to the hero’s virtues and achievements that they carry any meaning. Lengthy descriptions of the stature of William Wallace or the righteousness of John Knox are made in order to assert something deeper about the nation, party or denomination invoking that memory. In examining the articulation of nineteenth-century Scottish nationality through commemoration, it is necessary for us to have some limits on the commemorative subjects we consider. To that end, this analysis will look at key milestones in the national story of Scotland, running from William Wallace and the Wars of Independence, through the Reformation, to the Covenanting martyrs of the later seventeenth century, ending at the battle of Culloden in 1746. These limits apply for a number of reasons. Firstly, by extending our survey beyond 1746 we almost immediately run into one of the most significant figures in Scottish commemorative culture, Robert Burns. To do justice to the commemoration of Burns in the nineteenth century would require a book in its own right, needing to cover not only key anniversaries and the raising of monuments but also the practically limitless opportunities for commemoration in the annual Burns supper. Furthermore, just as nineteenth-century Scots were enthusiasts for the commemoration of their past victories, they were every bit as keen on commemorating the achievements of the present. As with Burns, any attempt to cover the commemoration of the great men and great victories of the nineteenth century would demand an additional volume. Additionally, the Battle of Culloden represents a useful moment of closure, not simply because of the current interpretation of the battle as a turning point in Scottish history, but also because it represents not so much the end of a significant chapter in the master narrative of Scottish nationality as the epilogue. As this book aims to prove, Scottish national memory in the nineteenth century saw its grand consummation not amid the slaughter

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Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

of Drumossie Moor, but in the Glorious Revolution of 1688/9. By ending at Culloden, we will show how the battle and the Rising that preceded it stood outside of the collective meaning of Scottish nationality. Before going on to look at these commemorative subjects, however, it is necessary to consider the nature of Scottish nationality in the nineteenth century. NOTES  1 The definition is drawn from ‘nationality, n.’, OED Online, September 2013 (Oxford University Press), http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.gla.ac.uk/view/Entry /125292?redirectedFrom=nationality (accessed 27 November 2013).   2 Anthony Smith, The Antiquity of Nations (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 16–19.  3 Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation?: conférence faite en Sorbonne le 11 mars 1882, trans. Ida Mae Snyder (Calmann Lévy, 1882), p. 26.  4 Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation?, p. 26. John Stuart Mill, Considerations of Representative Government, 1861, in J. M. Robson (ed.), Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. XIX (University of Toronto Press, 1977), p. 546.  5 Ibid.  6 Ibid.   7 Krijn Thijs, ‘The Metaphor of the Master: “Narrative Hierarchy” in National Historical Cultures of Europe’, in Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (eds), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 70–1.   8 Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 186–97.   9 Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 30–2. 10 Joep Leerssen, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam University Press, 2006), p. 132. 11 Janet Fyfe, ‘Volunteers with Garibaldi’, Scottish Historical Review, vol. 57, no. 164, part 2, October 1978, pp. 180–1. 12 Glasgow Herald, 27 June 1898. 13 Leerssen, National Thought in Europe, p. 112. 14 Leerssen, National Thought in Europe, p. 113. 15 Colin Kidd and James Coleman, ‘Mythical Scotland’, in T. Devine and J. Wormald (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 67–70. 16 Quoted in A. Dwight Culler, The Victorian Mirror of History (Yale University Press, 1986), p. 57. 17 Chris Lorenz, ‘Representations of Identity: Ethnicity, Race, Class, Gender and Religion. An Introduction to Conceptual History’, in Berger and Lorenz, The Contested Nation, p. 28. 18 Joep Leerssen, ‘Nation and Ethnicity’, in Berger and Lorenz, Contested Nation, p. 84.



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19 Quoted in Leerssen, National Thought in Europe, pp. 115–16. 20 Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed. L. D. Kritzman, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Columbia University Press, c.1996–8); Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge University Press, 1989); Ann Rigney, ‘Portable Monuments: Literature, Cultural Memory, and the Case of Jeanie Deans’, Poetics Today, vol. 25, no. 2, Summer 2004. 21 ‘Glasgow St Andrew’s Society. Annual Festival’, Glasgow Herald, 1 December 1868. 22 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edn (Verso, 1991). 23 Pierre Nora refers to the commemorative act as necessary to ‘block the work of forgetting’. Nora, Realms of Memory, pp. 17–19. See also Connerton, How Societies Remember, p. 48. 24 Rigney, ‘Jeanie Deans’, p. 381. 25 For a concise summary of the significance and development of commemorative practices see Charles Turner, ‘Nation and Commemoration’, in Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar (eds), The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (Sage, 2006). 26 Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artefacts of German Memory, 1870–1999 (University of California Press, 2000), p. 10. 27 Nora, Realms of Memory, p. 19. 28 Michael Kammen, The Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (Vintage, 1993), p. 106. 29 Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, pp. 115–18; Kirk Savage, ‘The Politics of Memory: Black Emancipation and the Civil War Monument’, in John R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 131–2. 30 Savage, ‘The Politics of Memory’, p. 131. 31 See Michael E. Geisler, ‘The Calendar Conundrum: National Days as Unstable Signifiers’, in David McCrone and Gayle McPherson (eds), National Days: Constructing and Mobilising National Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 16–17. 32 Ann Rigney, The Afterlives of Sir Walter Scott: Memory on the Move (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 161. 33 Carlyle, Heroes, p. 271.

Chapter 2 Scottish Nationality in the Nineteenth Century

REPRESENTING SCOTTISH NATIONALITY Measured in terms of the symbols of nationality common across the rest of nineteenth-century Europe, there can be no doubt that the Scots held an assertive sense of themselves as a distinct nation. Rather than giving up their nationality in favour of British-national institutions, the Scots surrounded themselves with all the signs and symbols of a culturally and historically coherent nation. The Scots had a national museum and national gallery, national monuments, a national poet, national dress and national architecture, as well as a pantheon of national heroes, past and present. Indeed, Scotland in the nineteenth century suffered not so much from a lack of focal points for its nationality than from a surfeit. In the Victorian era there existed a collective pride bordering on collective egotism, an imperial arrogance bound up with landscape, industry, education and Presbyterianism. This is not to say that all expressions of Scottish nationality were a great success. If there has been a tendency to view Scottish nationality in the nineteenth century as somewhat lacking, a correlative can be found in the National Monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, an early attempt to monumentalise Scottish national achievement. The monument was to be an enduring symbol of the vitality of Scotland’s role in defeating Napoleon, while simultaneously crowning the capital as the Athens of the North, a status reflected in the monument’s form as a classical temple, modelled on the Athenian Parthenon. The idea of raising such a colossal signifier of Scottish nationality was born from the wave of patriotic self-confidence that swept across Great Britain after victory over Napoleon, yet the post-war economic slump combined with poor organisation proved its undoing. There were some early successes: the foundation stone was laid in 1822 during the visit of George IV to Edinburgh, and the appointment of Charles Cockerell, one of Britain’s most celebrated neoclassical architects, was a clear sign of the monument’s lofty ambitions, yet the enterprise soon ran into trouble.1 Arguments over the significance of the monument, poor relations between Cockerell in London and William Playfair in Edinburgh, coupled with a marked lack of philanthropic support, stifled the construction process. The



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fragment that was built represents more of an early nineteenth-century job creation scheme than a symbol of Scoto-British greatness.2 If the incompleteness of the National Monument has been read as a sign of retarded national confidence, the same could not be said of its neo-Gothic counterpart in Princes Street Gardens. Begun in 1840 and completed six years later, the Scott Monument proved beyond doubt that given a sufficiently coherent commemorative subject and the organisational will to achieve it, Edinburgh was capable of raising a monumental sign to one of its great men. Where the National Monument had been held back by Edinburgh society’s inability to agree on what the monument should signify, there was no such problem with the monumental commemoration of Sir Walter Scott. His was to be a truly national monument, its Gothic design prefiguring the onset of Scotch Baronial architecture as an expression of Scottish nationality in the built environment. By the end of the century, Scotch Baronial tenements, civic buildings and suburban villas filled Scotland’s expanding urban spaces with characteristic flourishes of historical continuity. When a movement arose to erect a national monument to Scotland’s Great Liberator, William Wallace, it was only natural that the same style should be adopted. The National Wallace Monument on the Abbey Craig, another massive spire to another great Scot, stands as one of the most enduring examples of the nationality of Scotch Baronial, as do many of the nineteenth-century improvements made to another of Scotland’s most national symbols, Edinburgh Castle.3 The success of the Scott and Wallace Monuments was partly down to the perseverance and organisation of the large bodies of men committed to their completion, yet both monuments benefited from a clear sense of the commemorative subject. Scotland possessed a rich supply of such national heroes, not only in Scott, the national novelist, and Wallace, the founder of Scottish national independence, but particularly in Scott’s poetic ­counterpart, Robert Burns. All three of these national heroes were widely commemorated at large public events throughout the century. The raising of Edinburgh’s Scott Monument is perhaps the most monumental and enduring symbol of the author’s importance to the Victorians, yet upon its completion Glasgow was quick to remind its east-coast rival that the Second City had been the first to raise a monument to the Wizard of the North, ­completing its column in George Square in 1837. In 1871, a national festival was held to commemorate the centenary of Scott’s birth, an honour that had already been bestowed on Robert Burns in 1859, building on a deep-rooted cult of the national poet. In 1844, a Robert Burns Festival took place in Ayr, while numerous statues and memorials were raised in his memory across Scotland and further afield – over thirty memorials to Burns were raised in the United Kingdom alone between 1796 and 1909.4 Beyond the realm of public commemoration, the poetry and image of Robert Burns were an enduring symbol of Scottishness both at home and

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abroad, a potent distillation of romantic sentiment, political assertiveness and linguistic nationality, sufficiently fluid to permit celebration by radical and conservative alike.5 Burns was remembered in a context of international fraternity and the equality of men, a sentiment reasserted annually with the rise of the Burns Supper as a calendrical focal point for expressions of Scottish fellowship. In contrast, Walter Scott’s commemoration focused not so much on what he represented as what he had achieved for Scotland. Scott’s detailed and lively depiction of the past had made it come alive for Scot and non-Scot alike, whilst also settling the divisions of the past. In a nation that prided itself on its egalitarianism – expressed through the myth of the ‘lad o’ pairts’ – memories of Burns were perhaps better suited to Scotland’s self-image, more so than Scott’s equable conservatism. Yet elements of the novelist’s influence on Scottish culture were arguably more tangible than the poet’s. In the visual arts, Scotland boasted a considerable number of painters keen to depict scenes from Scotland’s past as a way of expressing their sense of nationality, many of them inspired by Scott’s example. William Allan (1782–1850) benefited from Scott’s patronage, drawing from the same well of detailed antiquarianism, and mirroring Scott’s own portrayals. His The Murder of Archbishop Sharpe on Magus Moor, 1679 (1821) was effectively an illustration for Scott’s version of events in Old Mortality, depicting the Covenanting assassins as villainous killers, fired by a destructive and insurrectionary religious fervour.6 Other painters of historic scenes were keen to provide a different perspective, portraying the Covenanters as heroes of Scottish nationality. In contrast to the violence of Allan’s Covenanter assassins, Sir George Harvey (1806–76) painted a sequence of scenes from the Covenanting past, depicting his subjects as the humble embodiment of Scottish Presbyterianism. Even his somewhat ‘confused’ painting of the Battle of Drumclog sought to emphasise the heroism of the Covenanters over the cruelty of the Royalists.7 In displaying these artworks, the Scots were keen participants in the fashion for national collections in purpose-built galleries and museums. The foundation stone of the National Gallery of Scotland on the Mound in Edinburgh was laid in August 1850 by Prince Albert, and the Gallery was completed in 1859. In a more vernacular style, the National Portrait Gallery was opened in Edinburgh in July 1889, its origins in the Scottish Society of Antiquaries. The Gallery’s development and realisation were the result of the continual efforts of the Society throughout the nineteenth century, explaining why Robert Rowand Anderson’s building on Queen Street also contained a Museum of Antiquities. The nationality of the building, completed in 1893, is emphasised by its entrance portal, flanked by statues of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, while both John Knox and Mary Queen of Scots are present among the wide range of statues arrayed across the ­building’s façade.8



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HIGHLAND COSTUMES Elaborate façades were a key feature of the age. If Burns and Scott were the standard-bearers of Scottishness, their images were inevitably draped in tartan and dropped onto a romanticised image of the landscape and culture of the Highlands. The adoption of the Highlands as somehow representing Scotland as a whole has its roots in the Ossianic cult of the eighteenth century, a perception sustained by the popularity of Scott’s epic poetry and historical novels, yet the Highlandisation of Scottish culture does not become all-pervading until well into the nineteenth century. Indeed, despite the amount of attention it has received as the epitome of false, tartanised Scottishness, the post-Jacobite wonderland of George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822, elaborately stage-managed by Sir Walter Scott, is more the prologue to full-on Balmorality than its actual onset. As the term suggests, it is with Queen Victoria’s excited yet homely adoption of the region that the Highlandisation of the Scottish nation flourishes.9 Nor was the Queen single-handedly responsible. Her advocacy for the simplicities of the Highland way of life dovetailed with increasingly efficient transport links by road and rail, combined with the inexorable rise of the tourist industry. In search of a marketable brand, tour operators and railways companies relied upon the distinctive and resonant imagery of bens, Burns, Balmoral and Bonnie Prince Charlie. In selling this image to the world, the Scots ran the risk of believing in their own publicity. The paraphernalia of Highlandism was shorthand for national distinctiveness: an enduring sign of Scottish national continuity, and an unchanging cultural landscape in a world of alarmingly rapid development.10 Yet the great irony of Highland Scotland as pristine wilderness, outside of time, was that this very experience was the product of aggressive modernity. Highlandised Scotland provided a façade behind which lurked urban deprivation, socially divisive industrialisation, and aggressive imperialism. The idealised fantasy of a wholly-Highland Scotland seems at odds with the harsh realities of chemical works, immigrant labour, and the Clearances, yet the tourist ability to step back in time and enjoy the apparent wildness of the Highland landscape was only rendered possible by technological innovation. The same innovation blighting Scotland’s Central Belt with smoking chimneys was giving travellers the capacity for escape. POWERHOUSE OF PROGRESS Such images were an attempt to project a sense of timelessness in an era of rapid and unstoppable change: social, economic, political, and cultural. Between 1801 and 1901 the population of Scotland almost trebled, with the proportion of Scots living in towns of over 5,000 people more than doubling in the same period. This expansion profoundly altered patterns of

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residence and landscape, moving from the old, predominantly rural milieu to the urban enclaves of the Central Belt. Moreover, the composition of the Scottish people changed as emigrants left for a new life in North America and the Empire, whereas others were drawn to Scotland by the opportunities of industrialisation.11 At the beginning of the nineteenth century Scotland had been a country divided by topography, yet throughout the century an ever-expanding network of road, rail, waterways and telegraph brought the Scots closer together, increasing mobility and making communication more efficient.12 The expansion of the national and regional newspaper press, in terms of coverage and frequency of publication, brought events from near and far into the Scottish household, nurturing a burgeoning sense of shared Scottish, British and Imperial experience. The world drew closer to Scotland, as Scotland went out into the world. The pattern of Scottish politics and class that had endured for most of the eighteenth century was unpicked as the old, established, conservative ruling order gradually gave way to the emergent power and influence of the liberal middle classes: of the merchants and financiers, of the statesmen and civil servants. In common with their peers across Europe, the upwardly mobile wanted a political voice that better reflected their economic weight and social influence. At the same time, the once defining institutions of Scottish identity – church, law and education – were increasingly embattled, whether through the lurching reforms brought about by increased integration with the British state, or by the challenges of urbanisation. The 1832 Reform Act ushered in a paradigm shift in the political complexion of Scotland with the ensuing dominance of liberalism and the Liberal party, a position that would endure for the remainder of the century, yet it also began a political era defined by the challenges of integration between Scotland and Britain. The simple fact that the upper echelons of the state hierarchy were now based at a distance, both in terms of topography and of tradition, meant that the Scottish political classes had to adjust constantly to the ground shifting under their feet. Perhaps the most profound challenge thrown up by integration into a greater Britain was the Disruption in the Church of Scotland in 1843. The Disruption was partly the result of middle-class resentment at the continued dominance of aristocratic patronage, combined with the challenges faced by a British state more accustomed to the hierarchies of the Church of England than the discursive democracy of the Church of Scotland. The emergence of what was in effect a denominational market place in Scottish Presbyterianism after the Disruption further enfranchised the middle classes in determining the course and nature of their worship. The Established Church, though it benefited still from state endowment, lost its monopoly over Scottish souls and had to compete for members with the Free and United Presbyterian churches. More widely, the Disruption tore open the Kirk’s established role as one of Scotland’s principal administrative institutions, a vacuum that had to be filled by the expanding state.



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The Presbyterian frame of mind contributed to the Scottish share in another aspect of modernity that concerned other European nations: centralisation. Scottish public discourse is replete with expressions of ­anti-centralisation, reflected in opposition to the ever-increasing role of the British state in the lives of the people.13 In managing those aspects of governance relating to day-to-day life – that is, beyond the realm of Empire, international diplomacy and war – the Scots clung jealously to the right to self-determination, a key element in the expression of unionist nationalism. Mid-nineteenth-century Scots keenly espoused, participated in and benefited from the Union, yet simultaneously kept a tight grip on the rights they still possessed. The flexible legislative framework of central government allowed sufficient space for the everyday business of governing society by the ‘enfranchised bourgeoisie’ to take place. Locality acted as a counterweight to the centre, ‘with the essential concern of the former being the fight to restrict the growth of the latter’.14 One of the main aims of the mid-century National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights was to the stop the accelerating pace of administrative centralisation, a common complaint among liberal nationalists at that time, and an issue that prevailed long after the NAVSR had petered out.15 Too much power centralised in too few hands led to tyranny – one need only look back to the era of Napoleon to see the truth in which this fear was grounded. This concern was not restricted to the political sphere. Within Scottish Presbyterianism, anti-centralisation rhetoric appeared throughout the activism of the anti-Catholic movement. What was Roman Catholicism if not the centralisation of power in the hands of the priesthood and the Papacy? To complicate matters further, there was a widespread fear that Papal ‘infiltration’ at Westminster ensured the Church of Rome had a disproportionate and deeply worrying voice in affairs of state – as more and more power was drawn to the centre, so the hand of Rome might further direct the fate of Presbyterian Scotland.16 It was, therefore, vital that the Scots – Presbyterian Scots – retained as much power locally as possible to counteract these malign, alien influences. The same was true in the broader British-national context. During the mid-century fear of invasion from Louis Napoleon’s Second Empire, enthusiasm for volunteering in the militia was an expression of British commitment to local solutions to national problems, in self-conscious contrast to the threatening possibilities of a standing army, sustained by taxation and a centralised state.17 Despite such resistance to the centralisation of power, the burdens generated by an industrial society and mushrooming population required more and more state intervention. The creation of the General Registrar for Scotland in 1855 took responsibility for recording births, deaths and marriages out of the hands of the parish, the creation of the Scottish Education Department in 1872 centralised the management of schools in Edinburgh, while the Scottish Office was formed in 1885, albeit based in London. As

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the Scots sought to hold on to governance at a local level, there was deep concern that Westminster was giving insufficient time to Scottish issues and that, when it did so, these were little understood. On the whole, loyalty to Britain remained fundamental to Scottish nationality. Only a few peripheral voices called for dissolution of the Union and these were kept largely on the margins of public discourse. Dissatisfaction with the Union expressed itself in calls for reform, not divorce. The Convention of Royal Burghs held their National Meeting in Edinburgh in January 1884, calling for the creation of a separate Department of State for Scotland. While not, strictly speaking, Home Rule, this was an unequivocal appeal for change. Frustrated at the lack of momentum on this issue, the Scottish Home Rule Association formed in 1886. The Home Rule movement in Scotland was not a form of separatism so much as a practical response to the neglect of Scottish legislation in Parliament. Ceding responsibility for Scottish issues to a Scottish legislature ensured that these issues would get the attention they deserved while focusing the Imperial Parliament on the grander affairs of Empire. Home Rule would make the Union work better, not initiate its destruction, yet in the game of Scottish national grievance, little things could mean a lot. The misuse of national terminology was a recurring example of Scottish complaint over Anglo-centric ignorance and neglect. At least twice in the nineteenth century, the voice of Scottish nationality was raised in protest at the use of ‘England’ as a synonym for ‘Great Britain’ in official documents and discourse, firstly as part of the agitation of NAVSR in the 1850s, then again in 1898 with a petition to Queen Victoria, signed by over 100,000 people.18 The Home Rule activists may have been the ones who shouted the loudest, yet there remained in Scottish nationality a clear sense of achievement and settled satisfaction. The Scots prided themselves on their respectable, Presbyterian independence, whether national or personal. The ideal Scot embodied the Victorian virtues of thrift, sobriety and self-help, playing their part in the daily formation of a society that liked to look upon itself as meritocratic and democratic. Such fundamental components of Scottish nationality were projected onto the wider canvas of culture and memory: Wallace, Knox, Burns and David Livingstone were all embodiments of this essential Scottishness.19 Furthermore, these virtues were ineradicably bound to Scotland’s historic Presbyterianism. After the Disruption in 1843, there was a range of denominations open to Presbyterian Scots seeking to find a church that best resonated with their world view, yet these denominations were still Presbyterian, united by more than divided them. In 1851, 32 per cent of those attending church in Scotland belonged to the Established Church; the same proportion were Free Church members, with a further 19 per cent United Presbyterians plus a small minority – around 1 per cent – Reformed Presbyterians. In other words, 84 per cent of all churchgoers in Scotland were Presbyterian.20 By contrast, the Episcopalian Church had a



Scottish Nationality in the Nineteenth Century

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mere 3 per cent of all Scottish church-goers, and the Roman Catholics 5 per cent. Simply put, Scotland was an overwhelmingly Presbyterian nation, and the accumulated history and culture of Presbyterianism was fundamental to its nationality. THE LEGACY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT Just as nineteenth-century Scots took immense pride in their nationality in the present, so, too, they turned to the past to discover how that nationality had been formed. In looking for a depiction of that past, the Scots were fortunate to have one of the world’s greatest authors. There can be no doubt that Sir Walter Scott’s influence looms large over the representation of the past in nineteenth-century Scotland – and further afield. His most enduring legacy was summed up by Georg Lukács in the 1930s: Scott’s greatness lies in his capacity to giving living human embodiment to historical-social types. The typically human terms in which great historical trends become tangible had never before been so superbly, straight-forwardly, and pregnantly portrayed. And above all, never before had this kind of portrayal been consciously set at the centre of the representation of reality.21

By bringing the past to life and populating it with recognisable types, Scott allowed his readers to identify or contrast themselves with the experience of the past. With this in mind, it is worth noting that when Scott was writing the demarcation between the professional historian and the professional novelist was not yet as clear as it would become.22 Scott was trusted to be as much an antiquarian as a novelist, collecting fragments of the past in order to build a picture within which one could immerse oneself through the text of a novel. Scott’s readers enjoyed his work safe in the knowledge that they were reading an accurate depiction of the past. In this respect, the author fulfilled his brief admirably. In portraying the manners of past times, Scott created his characters as, in Ann Rigney’s words, ‘exemplifications of broader social phenomena’.23 His intention was to show how the drive of history affects those caught up in its movement, an element of his novels that some reviewers preferred to his narrative – several reviewers of Old Mortality praised the depiction of old Scotch manners in the novel while criticising the contrived nature of the plot.24 This fidelity to the details of the past is what made Scott important for Scottish collective memory. The nationality of his novels was derived from his lively depiction of Scottish character and the stirring evocation of pivotal events, yet Scott went no further. Though the Scottish past was portrayed with care and affection, Scott’s Scottish characters are never virtuous, moral or brave because of their Scottishness. In Scott’s world, one’s nationality does not make one good, does not ensure that any single character will prevail during and after any given moment of crisis. Had Scott portrayed

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William Wallace, for instance, it would have been unthinkable for the author to make Wallace heroic simply because he was a paragon of Scottish nationality – this is not Scott’s approach.25 Instead, characters are rendered heroic by making those moral or ethical choices that ensure both progress and their own prosperity. Fundamental to this approach is a deep suspicion of extremism or radical fidelity to any one ideology. Whenever Scott’s heroes become aligned with a specific ideology, it is almost always through circumstances. In Old Mortality, Henry Morton throws his lot in with the Covenanters because fate has given him no other choice, while Dairsie Latimer is compelled by his alpha-male uncle, the eponymous Redgauntlet, into participating in a doomed Jacobite plot. In this way, Scott ‘moralises’ the past – he takes historical events and reconstructs them as a contest between moral forces, rather than reconstructing them as a contest between nations or national characters. As David Daiches observed, ‘Scott has no historical villains … There are no characters in Scott’s novels who are wicked because they belong a particular side in a historical conflict.’26 Anything other than the most moderate of political, racial or religious loyalties will inevitably result in exile or death: Vich Ian Vohr and Balfour of Burley, committed Jacobite and murderous Covenanter, both end up on the scaffold. The middle path is the only route to prosperity and progress – all other roads lead to ruin. Ann Rigney sums up Scott’s attitude to those who don’t follow the middle path, when describing the fates of Jeanie and Effie Deans in The Heart of Midlothian: ‘As an inventor of plot, [Scott] operates a bit like an immigration officer of the symbolic realm, allowing the virtuous to stay while deporting undesirables to foreign fields or the next world.’27 This emphasis on the subjects of history rather than the great heroes, combined with the inherent moderation of his model of historical progress, undermined Scott’s efficacy as an author of Scottish nationality. Indeed, Scott self-consciously avoided imbuing that past with any particular significance for the present.28 For many, this was not a flaw, but a major part of Scott’s achievement. During the centenary celebrations in 1871, Scott was consistently commemorated for having brought the past to life, but also for ensuring that the conflicts of the past remained there. Scott had honoured the past in all its detail and drama, yet by tying up all the loose ends and dispatching disruptive elements, he made certain that the past did not interfere with the present.29 Scott’s romanticism emphasised that Scotland before the Union was not a suitable source for examples of constitutional progress – it was not a past that carried any national meaning for the present.30 As an alumnus of the Scottish Enlightenment school of British history, which taught that all the meaningful progress had taken place in England, Scott was not in a position to inform the present by means of the past. Despite his Toryism, Scott’s understanding of the significance of the Scottish past was seen through the



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lens of a moderate Whig historiography, in which history was all about ‘regulated freedom’, the slow and steady development of sufficiently representative national institutions that ‘balanced liberty and order’.31 Scotland, with no Parliament worthy of the title until 1707, did not provide the necessary precedents. Historians of Scotland placed a great deal of emphasis on the backward feudalism of Scotland prior to the Union as having thwarted the progress of liberty.32 At the same time, the French Revolution cast a long shadow over interpretations of the past. Whereas the history of England displayed the gradual development of liberty, each new stage building on the gains of the past, Scotland’s story was one of violent and counterproductive revolutions.33 Furthermore, Scotland’s story of continual religious conflict from the Reformation to the present undermined any possibility of locating the meaningful identification of a narrative of progress. In Colin Kidd’s words, the Whig tradition identified ‘a superior tradition of liberty within a different confessional state’.34 That David Hume changed the title of his History of Britain to a History of England exemplifies this relocation of where the meaning of the past lay.35 If history was to be philosophy teaching by example, then Scotland’s past was sadly bereft, being little more than a ceaseless parade of brutish, in-fighting nobleman, accompanied by a Presbyterian clergy more concerned with arguing over the finer points of theology than with building a modern, constitutional kingdom. England’s past, in contrast, clearly displayed the necessary narrative of gradual constitutional development, new and greater freedoms being won at the passing of each milestone from the Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution. Scotland now enjoyed these freedoms because of her participation in this Anglo-British tradition of constitutional liberty after the Union of 1707. As a result, the contribution made by the likes of Knox and the Westminster Assembly was shoved to the margins of Scottish – and British – history.36 In terms of the narrative that mattered, Scotland’s past had no relevance to the present. For collective memories to sustain a sense of nationality, they require their heroes to embody the nation: Robert Burns as the personification of Scottish egalitarianism; William Wallace as the embodiment of the Scottish love of freedom, personal and national; John Knox symbolising Scottish piety and the improving benefits of education. In contrast, Scott’s ‘heroes’ represent the importance of sticking close to your allotted station in life and not getting too carried away. For instance, in Chapter 21 of Old Mortality, Scott depicts the different factions within the Covenanting ‘insurgents’. At one end is the ‘moderate party’, content to allow the King to rule as long as he exercises this right ‘with due regard to the liberties of the subject’. These moderates are contrasted against the ‘warm and extravagant fanatics’ who condemn those ministers and congregations willing to accept the indulgences of the Crown, and the ‘wilder sect’ – the Cameronians – who reject the monarch for not

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acknowledging the Solemn League and Covenant.37 It is with the moderate party that the hero, and the narrative voice, are most closely aligned. THE PRESBYTERIAN PAST If a figure as luminous as Sir Walter Scott belonged to a tradition that saw the meaning of the past outside Scotland, where then could Scots turn in search of a binding thread for Scottish nationality? Ironically, the answer lay in those very ‘warm and extravagant fanatics’, the Cameronian Covenanters. An alternative to the Anglo-Whig model of history was found in a narrative of Scottish nationality, grounded in collective memories of Scotland’s Presbyterian past, beginning with John Knox and the Reformation and concluding with the Covenanting martyrs of the later seventeenth century. Though it has a long genealogy, the Presbyterian interpretation of Scottish history was articulated most strongly in this period through the writings of churchmen from beyond the dominant historiographical mode of the eighteenth-century Moderates. Outspoken Secession figures such as Archibald Bruce (1746–1816), Antiburgher Professor of Divinity, raised the banner for ‘full-blown Whig-Presbyterian historiography’, seeing in Scotland’s Presbyterian past the very lesson of constitutional progress that the AngloWhig model located in English history. Rejecting the historical model of William Robertson and his ilk, Bruce promoted the Scottish national past as fundamental to modern Britishness, arguing that the Scots had laid the foundation of British liberties long before the English.38At the centre of this argument was a defining theme which would go on to flourish in the nineteenth century: that of ‘civil and religious liberty’. This is the leitmotif of Scottish nationality, explained in Archibald Bruce’s Reflections on the Freedom of Writing: Civil and religious liberty are but two great branches of the same expanded tree. They have ever been found most intimately allied. They have both had the same common enemies; and nearly the same pretexts and methods have been employed to undermine and destroy both.39

For Bruce, the roots of the tree of liberty were not English but Scottish and Presbyterian. After his death, the gauntlet was picked up by his colleague in the Constitutional Associate Presbytery, Thomas McCrie (1772–1835). McCrie took this model of memory and nationality and embedded it more firmly in the Scottish sense of national self through the popularity of his biographies of John Knox and Andrew Melville, casting these reformers, as well as the Covenanters, in the role of ‘genuine and enlightened friends of civil liberty’.40 These developments in the constitutional model of Presbyterian memory dovetailed with existing representations of the Covenanters, a depiction that drew on deep local, traditionary and denominational roots, with a power-



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ful counterpart in the printed word.41 Just as Wallace had Blind Harry and Knox had Thomas McCrie, tales of the Covenanters were preserved and transmitted via a canon of texts comprising sermons and famous last words of the later Covenanting period. The foundational works in the Covenanting canon were the Biographica Presbyteriana, more commonly known as the Scots Worthies, and the Cloud of Witnesses. The Scots Worthies was a collection of biographical sketches of Covenanting martyrs, compiled with scrupulous antiquarianism by John Howie of Lochgoin, whereas the Cloud was composed of the last testaments of the Covenanting martyrs along with details of their burial sites. Both texts ran to several editions, and took their place in countless Presbyterian households throughout the century, achieving the same canonical status as McCrie’s lives of Knox and Melville.42 Alongside these relics from the Covenanting era stood Robert Wodrow’s The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, first published in two volumes in 1721 and 1722. Wodrow’s aim was to counteract what he saw as the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of his Covenanting forefathers. In so doing, his History acted as a way of justifying the apparently unlawful conduct of the Covenanters during the Restoration period.43 For Wodrow, ‘extremist’ Covenanters did not represent the true meaning of the Covenanting struggle. Rather than being dangerous outlaw republicans, as Jacobite propagandists claimed, the Covenanters had stood up for the values of, in effect, civil and religious liberty.44 Wodrow’s method was to appeal, wherever possible, to primary sources, making sure to append these to his text so that the evidence might speak for itself.45 The popularity of these works and the collective memories they articulate act as a corrective to any assumption that the Whiggish historiography of the Enlightenment had sidelined the Presbyterian interpretation of Scotland’s past. Whereas this may have been the case among intellectual elites, for the majority of Lowland, Presbyterian Scots, collective memories of Presbyterian piety and heroism, sustained by the writings of Wodrow, McCrie, Howie of Lochgoin et al. defined their sense of what the Scottish past meant.46 The historiographical model forming Walter Scott’s view of the past had rejected these figures from any position of contemporary ­relevance – the Covenanters represented the disruptive and regressive elements of the Scottish character that retarded progress. In the Presbyterian reading of the Scottish past, the same mnemonic focal points were heroes of Scottish nationality, the originators and defenders of a distinctly Scottish tradition of civil and religious liberty. These memories of the Covenanting struggle countered those accusations of intolerance, bigotry and violence that had been directed at the heroes of Scottish Presbyterianism by Moderate historians. In much the same way as the broader phenomenon of nationality across Europe was capable of combining the political rationalism of the Enlightenment with romanticist historicism, Scottish Presbyterians throughout the nineteenth century cannily synthesised the constitutionalism

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of the Scottish Enlightenment with the Presbyterian narrative of civil and religious liberty. In this way, the Presbyterian interpretation of the Scottish past provided what the Whig model could not – an overarching narrative of Scottish nationality. Scottish Presbyterian memory not only found the fundamentals of Scottish nationality in the past, it could take the leitmotif of civil and religious liberty and project it backwards, beyond the Reformation to Wallace and Bruce. As we shall see, Scottish collective memories of the past found a national story in the historic achievement of increased civil and religious liberties, begun by Wallace, continued by Knox, and completed by the Covenanters. The tension between these two models of the Scottish past came to a head when Thomas McCrie provided one of the most pivotal moments in the nineteenth-century representation of the Covenanters, following the publication of Scott’s novel Old Mortality in 1816. As noted above, Scott had portrayed the Covenanters and their enemies with his characteristic moderation: the Cameronians are unreasonable fanatics, while the more moderate element endured. In McCrie’s view, Scott’s portrayal was one-sided and historically inaccurate, showing the Covenanters as narrow-minded zealots, bent on imposing their religious and political model on the entire nation.47 While Scott’s depiction is closer to the historical truth of the age, his portrayal did not fit with the collective memory of the Covenanters as heroes of civil and religious liberty and the embodiment of Scottish-Presbyterian nationality. In a series of lengthy reviews, McCrie forcefully argued the case for the Covenanters as ‘genuine and enlightened friends of civil liberty’.48 Reaction also came from Scott’s fellow writers. While James Hogg’s The Brownie of Bodsbeck contains a much more sympathetic representation of the Covenanters, the most weighty response in fiction must be John Galt’s novel Ringan Gilhaize. In this novel, Galt used the narrative of several generations of the Gilhaize family to link the struggles of Scottish Presbyterians from the Reformation to the Glorious Revolution, depicting the Covenanters as one of the binding threads of Scottish national memory.49 INDEPENDENCE AND UNION In providing a binding thread for Scottish collective memory, the Presbyterian interpretation of Scotland’s past made room for the expression of Scottish nationality in the present, something the Enlightenment model, with its emphasis on England, could not provide. However much Scots of the nineteenth century were willing partners in Union, English memory – even Anglo-British memory – was not Scottish memory. Both nations might bathe in the reflected light of their fellow Britons’ traditions, yet the Scots still required their own coherent cultural memory in order to prove their distinctiveness in the Union context.



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The Presbyterian model of Scottish history provided this. From the writings of George Buchanan in the later sixteenth century, the Scots had represented themselves as stout defenders of national freedom against foreign tyranny, at the ‘militant vanguard of international Protestantism’.50 Popular Scottish nationality was grounded in Presbyterianism and to attack Presbyterianism was to strike at the heart of Scottishness. Conversely, whereas in the novels of Sir Walter Scott one endures by steering clear of extremism, in the Presbyterian model, victory is achieved by staying true to the defining trope of nationality: civil and religious liberty. For Scott to have been a truly national writer, to have acted in any way as the basis for a protonationalist sense of Scottishness, he would have had to express some element of an overarching narrative of nationality. As a good Tory, however, Scott saw revolution as inherently a bad thing. In his model, crises are an attempt to divert history from its gradual course of ongoing reconciliation. In the Presbyterian model, revolution is occasionally necessary. Rather than overturning accumulated progress, moments of crisis in the Presbyterian model are there to put things back on the right track, to restore Scotland to itself. When faced by the domination of an alien tyranny, a great hero (or heroes) arise(s) to set things straight. Perhaps one of the oddest elements in the Presbyterian model was its commitment to union with England. From 1643, Covenanting principles demanded union with England – and Ireland – as a necessary component of ecclesiastical uniformity under Presbyterianism. Within this union, political differences were to be tolerated, to the extent that the form of union preached by Covenanting lore was very much the opposite of the Union of 1707 – instead of a political union retaining religious differences, the Union of the Solemn League and Covenant was to be a confessional union tolerating distinct political traditions. In this way, by permitting the retention of prelacy as part of its confessional compromise, the Union of 1707 represented the very thing the Covenanters sought to extirpate from Britain.51 As a result, Covenanting principle demanded objection not to the idea of union, but to the specific contract of 1707.52 In other words, though the precise nature of the Treaty of Union may not have been to the taste of the remnant Cameronians, the idea of union with England had long been part of their discourse. In this sense, the recognition of a greater Britain is a core component of Presbyterian collective memory. Despite its relatively aggressive Scottish nationality, the Presbyterian interpretation of the past was a means by which the Scots could forcefully defend their role in the narrative of Britishness. Throughout the nineteenth century, one of the principal touchstones of Scottish nationality was the Union with England. In Graeme Morton’s words, ‘Scotland is Britain: the Union of 1707 made it so.’ By joining with England’s secure and historic constitutionalism, so the idea ran, Scots enjoyed all its concomitant liberties, liberties that were to be shared more widely through political reform.53 The

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century following 1707 had required both the Scots and the English to come to terms with the new constitutional arrangement. For the Scots, Union provided a much-enlarged milieu in which to operate, and they readily grabbed the opportunities afforded by access to English markets and British politics, not necessarily to the delight of their new partners in Britishness. The radical John Wilkes was deeply fearful of these ambitious aliens with their incomprehensible language, yet such views ran counter to the assumption that the Scots were being given the opportunity to join in a greater Englishness, rather than with a new project called the United Kingdom.54 Though the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 were seen in some quarters as the vindictive Scots attempting to wrestle their way out of an unsatisfactory union, this too lacked any real political weight. When the Jacobite army descended upon the Lowlands in 1745, the moderate clergy of Edinburgh were among the most vocal in expressing their loyalty to the Hanoverian state and their disgust at the backwardness of the Highlanders.55 Given the choice between a deposed monarch steeped in Catholicism and the relatively recent Hanoverian import willing to accommodate Presbyterianism, loyalty was easily offered. More generally, whether the divisions were predicated upon religion, race or simply history, the source of the problem was clearly the troublesome Highlanders with their outdated ties of clan and kinship. The United Kingdom, based on sound mercantile and constitutional principles, would use law, technology and military strength to pacify these savages, and so hasten the spread of modernity into the wild places and people of the north.56 By 1800, Union was a settled reality within North Britain, and throughout the following century the desirability of maintaining the Union with England was one of the default positions of Scottish nationality. Indeed, to speak of the Union as ‘desirable’ is to overstate the extent to which its existence was contemplated. Adapting Michael Billig’s term, Colin Kidd argues that between 1707 and the rise of the Scottish National Party in the twentieth century, ‘banal unionism prevailed – an inarticulate acceptance of Union as part of the barely noticed but enduring backdrop of British politics’.57 Indeed, the Union had preserved Scottish nationality. By holding on to its distinct institutions of law and church while also gladly joining in with the grander context of Great Britishness, Scotland had maintained its sense of national self. Scottish nationality prior to the Union was so robust that there was little chance of it being dissipated in a union of equals. Richard Finlay quotes Andrew Bonar Law: There is no one who will deny that Scotch character or Scotch nationality is as firmly rooted as that of any other people, and that after two centuries of the closest connections with England. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever was good in nationality can continue and even increase, inspite [sic] of union with a larger country.58



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Bonar Law, proud of his Covenanting roots, here underlined the dominant belief that, rather than degrading Scottish nationality, the Union provided a wider world in which it could operate. When reform – whether electoral or legislative – was attempted, appeals were made to the Union of 1707 as being the source of Scottish political freedom, based on the acknowledged truth that Scotland had carried its historic nationality into the Union as a union of equals. For most of the nineteenth century, the Union was viewed as the inevitable, providential consequence of history, a view that had existed since the sixteenth century, long before political union occurred. This was in marked contrast to the Union with Ireland. While 1801 was the necessary political solution to an intractable problem, 1707 – despite the controversial circumstances of its birth – was the providential outcome of each nation’s distinct narrative of constitutional development.59 As we shall see, however, it is important not to overstate the importance of 1707 as one of the principal milestones in the narrative of Scottish nationality. Without doubt, the Scots enjoyed and sought the preservation of the Union as a fundamental component of their own nationality, yet the moment of origin for nineteenth-­century Scots was not the Union of 1707 so much as the Glorious Revolution of 1688/9. It was to the Revolution that the Presbyterian model of Scottish history looked for the grand achievement of Scotland’s national narrative of civil and religious liberty. If the Union was a sideshow in English history, it also lacked ‘totemic authority’ in Scottish cultural memory, at least in comparison with the Revolution. The Revolution represented the consummation of all that the patriotic Covenanters had fought for. In comparison, 1707 was merely a contract between equals, the legal seal stamped upon the achievement of Great-Britishness at the Revolution. The very strength of the Union could be used, however, as a means of criticising its deficiencies. One of the reasons the operation of the Union was seen as problematic was that it failed to live up to the idealistic image of Britain inherent in the balanced nationalities of the Revolution. If Scotland and England were equal partners in Union, many asked why this was not reflected in the parliamentary administration of Scottish affairs. Still, the Union was the context for and the framework of any appeals for change. In the mid-1850s, the leaders of NAVSR were practically neurotic in their expressions of loyalty to Great Britain and in ensuring their demands were in no way interpreted as attacks on the Union. In the words of the Lord Provost of Perth, quoted by Graeme Morton, ‘the object in view was to defend the rights given to Scotland by the Treaty of Union’.60 As the guarantor of Scottish independence, the Union provided the means to assert Scottish rights, and to undermine those rights was to act counter to the principles of the Union, to renege on the agreement made between two partner nations. Nineteenth-century Scottish nationality, both Presbyterian and u ­ nionist,

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was, then, rooted in a reading of the Scoto-British past that emphasised the hand of Providence in bringing together England and Scotland in a union of equals. For the Scots, the leitmotif of this grand narrative was civil and religious liberty, yet the origins of this recurring theme were consistently traced beyond the Scottish Reformation. Indeed, whereas Knox and the Covenanters had founded Scotland’s religious liberties, the civil and national liberty of Scotland found its moment of origin in the medieval Wars of Independence, under William Wallace and Robert Bruce.

NOTES  1 Marc Fehlmann, ‘A Building from which Derived “All That Is Good”: Observations on the Intended Reconstruction of the Parthenon on Calton Hill’, Nineteenth-Century Art World Wide, vol. 4, no. 3, 2005.   2 David Allan, ‘The Age of Pericles in the Modern Athens: Greek History, Scottish Politics, and the Fading of the Enlightenment’, The Historical Journal, vol. 44, no. 2, 2001, pp. 408–15.   3 R. Morris, ‘New Spaces for Scotland, 1800–1900’, in T. Griffiths and G. Morton (eds), A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1800 to 1900 (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), pp. 248–51.   4 Based upon data taken from the Robert Burns Memorials Worldwide Database at http://www.robertburnsmemorials.arts.gla.ac.uk/ (accessed 27 August 2013).   5 Richard Finlay, ‘Heroes, Myths and Anniversaries in Modern Scotland’, Scottish Affairs, no. 18, Winter, 1997.   6 John Morrison, Painting the Nation: Identity and Nationalism in Scottish Painting, 1800–1920 (Edinburgh University Press, 2003), pp. 112–13.  7 Morrison, Painting the Nation, pp. 136–41.  8 Duncan Thomson, A History of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (National Galleries of Scotland, 2011).   9 Finlay, ‘Queen Victoria and the Cult of Scottish Monarchy’, in E. Cowan and R. Finlay (eds), Scottish History: the Power of the Past (Edinburgh University Press, 2002). 10 Graeme Morton, ‘Identity out of Place’, in Griffiths and Morton, Everyday Life in Scotland, p. 274. 11 John F. McCaffrey, Scotland in the Nineteenth Century (Macmillan, 1998), pp. 1–16. 12 Alastair Durie, ‘Movement, Transport and Tourism’, in Griffiths and Morton, Everyday Life in Scotland, pp. 148–61. 13 See Graeme Morton, ‘Identity within the Union State’, in Devine and Wormald, Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History. 14 Graeme Morton, Unionist-Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, 1830–1860 (Tuckwell, 1999), pp. 43–4. 15 Morton, Unionist-Nationalism, pp. 148–9, 152. 16 Graeme Morton, ‘Scotland Is Britain: The Union and Unionist-Nationalism,



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1807–1907’, Journal of Scottish and Irish Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, March 2008, pp. 137–8. 17 J. P. Parry, ‘The Impact of Napoleon III on British Politics’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 11, 2001, pp. 164–5. 18 Morton, ‘Scotland Is Britain’, pp. 127–8. 19 Finlay, ‘Heroes, Myths and Anniversaries’. 20 Callum G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 (Edinburgh University Press, 1997), p. 45. 21 Quoted in David Brown, Walter Scott and the Historical Imagination (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 3. 22 Leerssen, ‘Nation and Ethnicity’, pp. 84–6. 23 Ann Rigney, Imperfect Histories: The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic Historicism (Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 25. 24 Rigney, Imperfect Histories, p. 36. 25 Compare with the Braveheart model, in which Mel Gibson and Randall Wallace’s Scots are heroic because they are Scots, while the English are portrayed as cowardly, deviant toffs. 26 Brown, Walter Scott and the Historical Imagination, p. 203. 27 Rigney, ‘Jeanie Deans’, pp. 379–80. 28 Colin Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 266. 29 Rigney, Afterlives of Sir Walter Scott, pp. 184–7. 30 Colin Kidd, ‘“Strange Death of Scottish History” Revisited: Constructions of the Past in Scotland, c. 1790–1914’, Scottish Historical Review, vol. 76, no. 201, part 1, April 1997, p. 88. 31 Keith Robbins, ‘Ethnicity, Religion, Class and Gender and the “Island Story/ies”: Great Britain and Ireland’, in Berger and Lorenz, Contested Nation, p. 235. 32 Kidd, ‘“Strange Death” Revisited’, pp. 89–90. 33 Ibid., pp. 91–3. 34 Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past, p. 193. 35 Keith Robbins, Great Britain: Identities, Institutions and the Idea of Britishness (Longman, 1998), p. 266 36 Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past, pp. 193–5. 37 Walter Scott, Old Mortality (Penguin, [1816] 1975), pp. 262–3. 38 John Brims, ‘The Covenanting Tradition and Scottish Radicalism in the 1790s’, in T. Brotherstone (ed.), Covenant, Charter and Party: Traditions of Revolt and Protest in Modern Scottish History (Aberdeen University Press, 1990), pp. 52–7. Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past, pp. 200–1. Neil Forsyth, ‘Presbyterian Historians and the Scottish Invention of British Liberty’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, vol. 34, 2004, pp. 92–3. 39 Archibald Bruce, Reflections on the Freedom of Writing, and the Impropriety of Attempting to Suppress it by Penal Laws. Occasioned by a Late Proclamation against Seditious Publications, and the Measures Consequent Upon it; Viewed Chiefly in the Aspect they Bear to Religious Liberty and Ecclesiastical Reform (n.p., 1794), p. 88, quoted in Brims, ‘Covenanting Tradition’, p. 56. Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past, p. 201.

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40 Quoted in Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past, p. 203. 41 Forsyth, ‘Presbyterian Historians’, p. 94. 42 Edward J. Cowan, ‘The Covenanting Tradition in Scottish History’, in Cowan and Finlay, Scottish History: the Power of the Past. Colin Kidd, ‘Conditional Britons: The Scots Covenanting Tradition and the Eighteenth-century British State’, English Historical Review, vol. 67, Nov. 2002, pp. 1, 160–1. 43 Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past, pp. 67–8. 44 Finlay, ‘Keeping the Covenant’, p. 124. 45 Cowan, ‘The Covenanting Tradition’, pp. 133–5. 46 Richard Finlay, ‘Keeping the Covenant: Scottish National Identity’, in T. M. Devine and J. R. Young (eds), Eighteenth-Century Scotland: New Perspectives (Tuckwell Press, 1999), pp. 128–30. 47 D. M. Murray, ‘Martyrs or Madmen? The Covenanters, Sir Walter Scott and Dr Thomas McCrie’, The Innes Review, vol. 43, no. 2, Autumn 1992, p. 174. 48 Quoted in Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past, p. 203. Murray, ‘Martyrs or Madmen?’ p. 175. 49 Douglas Mack, ‘“The Rage of Fanaticism in Former Days”: James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner and the Controversy over Old Mortality’, in Ian Campbell (ed.), Nineteenth Century Scottish Fiction: Critical Essays (Carcanet, 1979), pp. 39–40. 50 David Allan, ‘Protestantism, Presbyterianism and National Identity in EighteenthCentury Scottish History’, in T. Claydon and I. McBride (eds), Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650–c.1850 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 184–7. 51 Colin Kidd, Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500–2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 63, 75–7. 52 Kidd, ‘Conditional Britons’. 53 Morton, ‘Scotland Is Britain’, pp. 133–4. 54 Robbins, Great Britain, pp. 263–8. 55 Allan, ‘Protestantism and Presbyterianism’, pp. 192–3. 56 Peter Womack, Improvement and Romance: Constructing the Myth of the Highlands (Macmillan, 1989), pp. 4–26. 57 Kidd, Union and Unionisms, p. 27. 58 Quoted in Richard Finlay, ‘Controlling the Past: Scottish Historiography and Scottish Identity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, Scottish Affairs, no. 9, Autumn 2004, p. 136. 59 Alvin Jackson, The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland, and the Survival of the United Kingdom,1707–2007 (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 341–2. 60 Morton, ‘Scotland Is Britain’, p. 135.

Chapter 3 ‘Not Servile and Conquered, but Free and Independent’: Commemorating William Wallace and Robert the Bruce THE GREAT LIBERATOR William Wallace is one of Scotland’s most enduring national heroes. Since the 1470s and the first appearance of Blind Harry’s epic poem, The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace, Wallace has occupied a central place in the collective memory of the Scots, a position he continues to hold, thanks in part to the enormous success of the 1995 film Braveheart. One of the reasons for Wallace’s enduring appeal is the simplicity of his story. Born as a commoner, urged on by his love of liberty and need to free Scotland from the chains and slavery of an oppressive neighbour, Wallace rose through the ranks of society to become Guardian of Scotland. He went on to lead the Scots to victory over the armies of the tyrannical English king, Edward I, at Stirling Bridge. Whilst attempting to place Scotland’s hard-fought independence on a more secure footing, Wallace was defeated, betrayed, and taken to London for trial and execution. In essence, this was the hero’s journey: from relatively lowly stock to victory, martyrdom, and permanent, illustrious memory.1 The principal reason for Wallace’s endurance as a national symbol is not, however, the simplicity of his life story. It is instead the malleability of his achievements and character that make Wallace such an ideal hero. At heart, Wallace is the embodiment of personal liberty and national independence, virtues so flexible that he could be deployed for practically any purpose: Radical Wallace, Chartist Wallace, Free Trade Wallace; Unionist Wallace, Nationalist Wallace or Unionist-nationalist Wallace; Jacobite Wallace or Presbyterian Wallace. This flexibility is borne of an absence of historical fact. So little was and is known about the Great Liberator that any cause could make use of his memory without much fear of prickly historical detail bursting the mythic bubble.2 At the same time, there was sufficient hard evidence of Wallace’s existence to make him a genuine, historical reality. Wallace was no mere myth but a man whose living existence could be historiographically proven. What facts there were sustained his idealisation. For instance, Wallace being of relatively common stock, in his rise to greatness he did not suffer from the taint of noble privilege. What proof there was supported the notion that

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Wallace had overcome the machinations of a jealous aristocracy in pursuit of his lofty goals. If the site of his birth was the matter for some argument, the location of his most glorious success – Stirling Bridge – and of his ­martyrdom – London’s Smithfield – were historical certainties that could be safely memorialised. These historical truths, combined with the accommodating blankness of his motivations, made Wallace the very model of an enduring national hero, able to fit within any mnemonic frame. Consider this appropriately inspiring early twentieth-century portrayal of Wallace: For nearly seven hundred years the sons and daughters of Scotland have revered the memory of Wallace. It is not too much to say that this will continue for seventy times seven hundred years. When but a youth the love of Personal and National Liberty burned so fiercely in the breast of Wallace that he revolted against England’s tyrannous rule. At the head of his gallant band of riders he won skirmish after skirmish, and finally, at the opportune moment, quickly organised an army and routed the English at Stirling Bridge.3

Such sentiments would not seem out of place at any of the commemorative events held to remember Wallace in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Indeed, this text ticks most of the key boxes for the rhetoric of nationality: it pays tribute to the endurance of Wallace’s legacy, invokes the past yet looks to the future, and concentrates on the hero’s motives and ideals. That it is an extract from an American advertisement for Budweiser beer from 1914 only serves to underline the almost comical malleability of the Wallace myth. The advert continues: William Wallace admired a good barley-malt brew just as do the Scotchmen of today. Prohibition has ever been a detestable word to the Scotch people. They will not have it enter into their private lives, and the Scotch vote is always registered by a large majority against such sumptuary legislation.

Evidently, the collective memory of Wallace could bear the weight of any cause placed upon it – instead of the tyranny of Edward I, we have the ‘sumptuary legislation’ of prohibition. In other words, Wallace’s love of freedom can be translated into the rejection of any unwelcome rule, then projected back onto the memory that inspired it. THE PATRIOT KING While the absence of historical facts made Wallace the ideal screen for the projection of cultural memory, remembering the achievements of King Robert the Bruce was more problematic. This is mainly because Bruce lacked Wallace’s emptiness both in terms of historical detail and personal motivation. History had bequeathed too much information about Bruce to make him as usable: not only did his noble birth prevent his representation



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as self-made man of the people, but Bruce could all too easily be portrayed as a political schemer, another contrast to the commoner-cum-statesman Wallace. In the mid-nineteenth century, as Richard Finlay has argued, the facts of Bruce’s career rendered him incompatible with the Victorian self-image of meritocracy, self-help and individuality.4 In a letter to the committee inaugurating a statue of Bruce in Lochmaben, the Third Marquis of Bute (1847– 1900), Catholic convert and noted supporter of Scottish Home Rule, wrote that the character of Bruce could not be ‘named along with the immaculate and sublime patriotism of William Wallace’. Robert Bruce had been ‘a man who served us well – when it served his purposes to do so’.5 Historians, both populist and scholarly, wrangled over Bruce’s activities prior to his conversion to the ‘right’ side of the Wars of Independence and his coronation in 1306, each finding their own way to accuse or excuse his actions.6 Reasons had to be sought for why the Patriot King, his eye to the main monarchical chance, had cast his lot in with the Plantagenet monarchy, an accusation that could not be levelled at the pure – that is, blank – Wallace. In excusing Bruce’s politicking, particularly the murder of his rival, John Comyn, his apologists drew upon a common defence of national heroes whose activities appeared too radical by nineteenth-century standards: that these actions were a product of the times in which he lived. Yet even if Bruce’s less appealing side could be justified in this way, he was still lacking in comparison to the purity of Wallace. The Glaswegian solicitor and stout defender of Scottish rights William Burns (1809–76) closed his two-volume The Scottish Wars of Independence – its Antecedents and Effects with a comparison between Wallace and Bruce. In Burns’ contrasting of the two men’s ‘motives and objects’, Wallace emerges as the greater patriot. Though Bruce’s ‘conduct may be excused or palliated’ by appealing to his circumstances, ‘it cannot be lost sight of’ when judging his motives. It was beyond doubt, Burns wrote, that Bruce ‘had distinctly in view the object of establishing himself as the king of an independent nation; and so far his motives were personal, not to say selfish’.7 To Wallace, on the other hand, ‘there has never been imputed any personal or selfish motive or object. He sought for nothing on his own account, and he acted with the most obvious disinterest.’8 Knowing so little about what had made him take up the sword in the first place, it was easy to assume that Wallace acted from the most purely national motives. Bruce, his canvas blocked in by historical fact, could not have his motivations painted so freely. As a result, William Wallace was consistently held up as Scotland’s greatest national hero – though Bruce may have followed closely on Wallace’s heels, he still lagged behind. Nineteenth-century historians tended to adopt one of two opposing approaches to the Wars of Independence as a whole, mapping fairly neatly to the contrasting Anglo-Whig and Presbyterian models of the past. On the one hand, the Anglo-centric view claimed that the Wars had held Scotland

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back from participating in the superior traditions of English history. The farsighted statesmanship of Edward I would have been of immense advantage to the Scots had they given up their nationality, saving them from centuries of noble squabbling and constitutional retardation. This argument had its roots firmly planted in the Moderate Enlightenment reading of the Scottish past, arguing that there was nothing in Scotland’s history that might inform or sustain a sense of historical nationality in the present – all the useful traditions lay south of the border.9 Countering this approach was the unionistnationalist argument, which emphasised that the great legacy of Wallace and Bruce was the equal nationality of Scotland and England. Having remained an independent nation, Scotland was free to develop its own traditions of civil and religious liberty. This argument appears to stem – at least in part – from the writing of Thomas Carlyle. In Past and Present, Carlyle argued: A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder that his Scotland become one day, a part of England: but he does hinder that it become, on tyrannous unfair terms, a part of it; commands still, as with a god’s voice, from his old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just real union as of brother and brother, not a false and merely semblant one as of slave and master. If the union with England be in fact one of Scotland’s chief blessings, we thank Wallace withal that it was not the chief curse.10

Proto-nationalists such as William Burns may not have forgiven Carlyle’s misuse of ‘England’ for ‘Great Britain’, yet his contention that Wallace had ensured that the Union would be one of ‘brother and brother’ was a fundamental component of memories of the Wars of Independence. Later in the century, historians and politicians such as the Duke of Argyll and Lord Rosebery broadened this argument to claim that Scotland had brought these traditions to the Union so that they might then be used to the best advantage of all Britain. Joining with England in this new and illustrious Britain had, of course, brought about a new set of challenges, but from a nineteenth-century perspective such obstacles were worth the effort. As Richard Finlay puts it, ‘Scottish grievances and English indifferences were acknowledged, but it was a small price to pay for the success Scotland had achieved since the Union’. Union with England was Scotland’s destiny, the inevitable – providential – result of progress.11 In nineteenth-century collective memories of Wallace and Bruce, providential unionism was a defining thread. Throughout this period, both Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn were portrayed as the moment when the Scottish nation was forged for time immemorial, never to be undone. WALLACE VERSUS BRUCE In achieving true nationality for Scotland, Wallace and Bruce were partners in the historic enterprise of setting Scottish nationality on a secure footing.



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Nineteenth-century histories of the Wars of Independence might have been keen to analyse distinctions between the two heroes, yet in the rhetoric of commemoration the difference was seldom so starkly drawn. Though Wallace was undoubtedly the greater of the two, commemoration of Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn seldom observed anything more than mild criticism of Bruce. More often, and regardless of his earlier motives, Bruce was represented as having finished the work that Wallace started. For instance, at a dinner held in Rutherglen in 1814 to mark the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, toasts were offered first to Wallace as ‘the patriotic defender of his country’ and then to Bruce, ‘who, actuated by a similar principle, obtained his country’s freedom at Bannockburn’.12 Indeed, the principal elements of the legacy of Wallace and Bruce were practically identical: by uniting the Scots under a single banner, they forged the Scottish nation and delivered it from the hands of a tyrannical invader. In so doing, they ensured Scotland’s national independence would endure, and that countless benefits would flow to future generations. At the same time, both heroes embodied Scotland’s national virtues: independence of character, hard work and perseverance, a robust patriotism, and a manly bearing. Each hero had his moments of triumph, forever associated with these cardinal, national virtues. The depiction of Bruce might be shaded by history from time to time, yet thanks to Wallace’s purity, the mythic arc could still be sustained. At times, some speakers felt it necessary to prove Wallace and Bruce’s equality in achieving nationality for Scotland. At Bannockburn in 1887, as part of the celebration of Victoria’s jubilee, nearly every speech containing a reference to Bruce also included a reference to Wallace. William Donaldson, the secretary of the committee tasked with preserving the ‘Borestone’ where Bruce was supposed to have raised his standard, felt it necessary to tackle the question, ‘Which of these two patriots did most for his country?’ His answer was: ‘They were both nature’s nobles; they were both heroes of liberty; they were both dauntless and valiant in fight, and put to flight the armies of the aliens.’13 In contrast, there were many occasions when Wallace was singled out as the hero most worthy of commemoration, to the exclusion of Bruce. At the unveiling of the statue to Wallace in Aberdeen by the Marquis of Lorne in June 1888, the Marquis made only one passing reference to the achievements of Robert Bruce and Bannockburn: ‘They who bled with Wallace lived to conquer with Bruce.’14 Naturally, we might expect that a speech inaugurating a statue of Wallace would not linger on the contribution made by his more regal counterpart, yet even when Bannockburn was the centre of attention some speakers chose to focus on Wallace. In a politically-charged speech delivered at the Bannockburn Borestone in 1889, the Revd David Macrae did not mention Bruce in his own terms, but instead persistently connected him with Wallace. Indeed, Macrae positioned Wallace above Bruce in the

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pantheon of Scottish nationality: ‘Wallace was the man of the people. More than any other single man that can be named, he was the creator of Scotland’s nationality. If there had been no Wallace there would have been no Bruce.’15 This is not to claim that Bruce’s achievements forever lurked in Wallace’s shadow. A letter to the Caledonian Mercury, from May 1818, handed the laurels to Bruce alone: The cruel wars which had devastated Scotland for nearly thirty years were brought to a conclusion by one of the most brilliant exploits in history. Instead of trembling for their own political existence, Scotchmen were now enabled to turn the tide of the battle against their enemies, and to retaliate their wrongs. Their fame was spread over Europe, and for many generations they were esteemed the flower of chivalry. During his [i.e. Bruce’s] reign, the principles of civil and religious liberty began to be developed; the Commons were first summoned to Parliament, and the spirited letter of the Barons to the Pope displays the noblest sentiments of manly independence.16

Though his noble birth may have undermined any possibility of depicting Robert Bruce as a man of the people, his kingship did give him one advantage. As we heard in the extract from Provost William Christie’s speech at the unveiling of the Stirling Bruce statue, Bruce could be deployed as a direct ancestor of the present Queen. In bequeathing to Scotland the dynasty of the Stuarts, Bruce had founded a long and illustrious line of descent that led, somewhat tortuously, to the present. Following William Donaldson’s speech at the Borestone in 1887, the arch-moderate Charles Rogers – prior to scooting over to the National Wallace Monument to make another speech – directly connected Bruce with Victoria. Given that this event was intended to mark her jubilee year, we might well expect there to be consistent attempts to link the two monarchs and, sure enough, Rogers rose to the occasion. Having argued that Britain always appealed to Scotland for a new king when their own turned tyrant, Rogers closed the circle by saying: ‘In truth, it is because we are now under the Government of a representative of him who conquered at Bannockburn, that we are privileged to live under a free, liberal, and a constitutional government.’17 THE DRYBURGH WALLACE AND BRUCE’S BONES Prior to the arrival of the National Wallace Monument movement in the 1850s, attempts to raise monuments to the two heroes were almost entirely carried out by individuals or small groups with a shared interest. In this respect, it is always necessary to keep one eye on the explicit or implicit motivations of whoever was commemorating their hero of choice. That is to say, whereas the massive public appeal required to raise the National Wallace Monument demanded that its promoters find common cause when articulating what the monument would represent, anyone footing the



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bill for an entire statue could make the monument signify whatever they chose. This is particularly so when considering one of the better-known Wallace monuments from early in the century, the statue erected by David Stuart Erskine (1742–1829), the eleventh Earl of Buchan, in 1814. The reasons for the erection of this statue are closely bound to the Earl’s politics.18 As well as being an advocate for political reform at home, Buchan was an enthusiastic supporter of both the American and French revolutions, going so far as to enclose a letter he sent to George Washington in a box made using a fragment of the tree in which Wallace had hidden after his defeat at Falkirk.19 Buchan’s Whiggish commitment to national and political liberty extended to his historiography and antiquarianism: his foundation of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was intended as an ‘institutional counterweight’ to the predominant Tory historiography of William Robertson, while his attitude to Union might be inferred from his biography of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun.20 Buchan’s political views combined with his uncompromising single-mindedness in numerous political, cultural and antiquarian pursuits, rendered him unpopular with broad swathes of elite Scottish society, not least with his near neighbour, Sir Walter Scott. True to Buchan’s antiquarian commitment, the statue he commissioned, sculpted by the self-taught John Smith, was said to be based upon one of the few ‘authentic’ likenesses of Wallace.21 The inscription on the monument’s base, taken from James Thomson’s The Seasons, describes Wallace as ‘Great Patriot Hero! Ill Requited Chief!’, while the inscription on an urn placed before the monument was taken from the address delivered by Buchan at the monument’s dedication, describing Wallace as waving ‘on Ayr’s romantic shore, The beamy torch of liberty’. Immediately after the dedication ceremony, Buchan attended a meeting in the village of Ednam to commemorate James Thomson, at which he proposed a toast to Wallace: ‘To the memory of Wallace, the patriot and hero of his age and country – May every warrior like him employ his valour in the cause of liberty and his native land.’22 Buchan’s words no doubt reflect on the victory over Napoleon earlier in the year, yet more broadly they place Wallace in the transcendent battle for liberty that defined nationality as a whole. In this way, Buchan’s statue represents one of the most enduring elements of the Wallace myth: the hero as ‘Great Liberator’. We can gauge the popularity of Buchan’s monument from some of the visitor figures kept by one James Barrie, who had been given charge of the Wallace statue by Buchan shortly after its completion. Barrie recorded that in 1816 the monument received 1,800 visitors, with 1,655 the following year and 1,630 in 1818.23 It is uncertain whether this number included Sir Walter Scott, who described the statue as ‘a horrible monster’, and expressed his desire to ‘blow it up in such a style that there will not be one fragment of it left’. 24 Yet Scott’s hatred of Buchan’s Wallace did not represent a disgust

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with remembering Scotland’s national heroes, as Scott was a key member of a circle of establishment figures who played a pivotal role in early nineteenthcentury commemoration of Robert Bruce. Following their rediscovery in Dunfermline Cathedral in February 1818, the bones of Bruce were reinterred there on 5 November 1819, at a ceremony attended in large part by members of the conservative Blair-Adam club, of which Scott was a leading figure. The discovery of Bruce’s remains followed hard on the heels of Scott’s much-­publicised uncovering of the long-neglected ‘Honours of Scotland’ in Edinburgh Castle, an event also attended by members of the Blair-Adam club.25 As Michael Penman has shown, the Blair-Adam circle carefully managed the circumstances surrounding these symbols of Scotland’s past – whether in Edinburgh or Dunfermline – so as to remove any potential connection with the cause of political reform or, even worse, radical dissent.26 While those of a Whiggish disposition easily co-opted Wallace to the vanguard of international liberty as a way of proving the legitimacy of their world view, Conservatives such as Scott also understood the necessity for projecting their own more moderate nationality onto the national heroes of the past. The extent to which Scott was involved in the arrangements for the Dunfermline re-interment ceremony is not certain, but what is startling is the way in which the ceremony became a ‘carefully choreographed’ expression of unequivocally establishment principles. The principal attendees at this essentially private re-interment comprised a roll-call of Blair-Adam members and their extended circle of (mainly Tory) figures from the Edinburgh elites. The event was overseen by Sir Samuel Shepherd, an English Tory lawyer and recently-appointed Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer of Scotland, as well as by James Clerk Rattray, Baron Clerk of the Exchequer and Edinburgh sheriff-depute, and Henry Jardine, Depute King’s Remembrancer.27 The following year, Shepherd would assist Scottish judges in applying English law in the trial for treason of those involved in the 1820 Radical Rising, while Jardine had gained considerable benefit from the patronage of Henry Dundas and was one of the few present at Scott’s discovery of the Scottish Regalia.28 Though their original plan had been not to allow the masses to view the ceremony, immediately prior to the final stage of the ceremony the ‘immense crowd’ waiting outside was permitted to file through the cathedral for a look at the Patriot King’s remains.29 After the re-interment ceremony, freedom of the town was granted to the event’s principal attendees, giving Dunfermline’s Provost the opportunity to state that Bruce was ‘the glory and boast of every Scotsman, and … of every Briton – the assertor of the liberties and independence of his country’.30 In response, Samuel Shepherd proclaimed that Bruce ‘will be recollected with admiration and gratitude so long as time and human memory last’. Though approaching Robert Bruce from a political position at odds with the Whiggery of Buchan, the rhetorical content of the Dunfermline reinterment was not particularly distinct from that surrounding the Dryburgh



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Wallace. The emphasis was on Bruce as a hero of independent nationality, an ‘assertor’ of liberty. That this reading was consistently applied to both heroes with minimal adaptation is evident from some later attempts to memorialise the Patriot King, initiated by one of the men present at Bruce’s re-interment. When efforts made to raise a suitable cenotaph over the King’s remains following the ceremony at Dunfermline came to nothing, the challenge was taken up by Dr James Gregory (1753–1821), ‘His Majesty’s First Physician in Scotland’.31 A renowned Latinist, Gregory had taken a leading role in the organisation of the re-interment ceremony and went on to write extensively about Bruce’s remains.32 Soon after the re-interment, he composed a Latin inscription with the intention of having it inscribed upon a monument over the King’s grave. The text described Bruce as having ‘re-established the almost ruined and hopeless state of Scotland, long cruelly oppressed by an inveterate and most powerful enemy’, by restoring ‘the ancient liberty and glory of his country’.33 The monument was never erected, yet Dr Gregory was evidently keen that some inscription commemorative of Bruce be erected somewhere. A letter to the Stirling Journal in July 1830 contains another Latin inscription composed by him, this one intended for a monument to be erected at the Bannockburn Borestone. The proposed, and somewhat lengthy, Latin inscription proclaimed that Edward II had endeavoured ‘with all his might, utterly to destroy the Scottish nation’. Bruce was described as ‘prudent, just, mild, pious, prosperous; the restorer and ornament, the avenger, and the father of his country’.34 From the text of a further inscription, intended for the opposite face of the monument, it is evident that such a monument was deemed – certainly by the author of the inscription – as long overdue and unquestionably necessary.35 Again, what is notable about the way in which Gregory’s inscription framed Robert Bruce is how easily the text could be made to apply to Wallace. Though varying degrees of light and shade may have flitted across their motivations, both heroes were remembered for effectively the same things: for defending Scottish nationality against the alien tyranny of Edward I, and in so doing forging anew the Scottish nation. From the nineteenth-century perspective, this set in motion a national tale of civil and religious liberty – not to mention prosperity – that would define Scottish nationality for the next 600 years. MONUMENTAL FAILURES James Gregory’s unsuccessful attempt to raise a memorial to Bruce was but one of a sequence of failed monument enterprises, not least in Edinburgh and Glasgow. In the same year as Bruce’s remains were discovered at Dunfermline, an anonymous patron offered £1,000 towards the erection of a monument to Wallace on Arthur’s Seat or Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh. As a means of encouraging the project, the patron offered prize money t­otalling £50 for

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the three best poems submitted on the subject of ‘Sir William Wallace inviting Bruce to the Scottish throne’.36 Despite the poetry competition gaining considerable attention in the press, the monument proposal fell through. A second Edinburgh proposal, and one that promised more success, was made in October 1829, when a Mr Hugh Reid of London bequeathed to the Town Council of Edinburgh ‘a sum of which the principal and interest were to accumulate for twenty-five years’ from the date of death of his widow, with the intention of erecting a monument to both Wallace and Bruce in Princes Street Gardens. Reid stated that he wished the memorial to take the form of ‘an ornamental piece of water in the North Loch, with a fountain in the centre, and colossal statues, in bronze, of each of the two heroes’.37 One possible use for Reid’s bequest arose in early 1850, when the sculptor Patric Park built a model for a colossal statue of Wallace that he hoped would be adopted as Edinburgh’s national monument to the hero.38 Best known for his portrait-busts (including Dickens and Napoleon III), Park was also a keen promoter of his own monumental designs, though few of his proposals seem to have achieved fruition. The ‘Wallace Group’ was just such a speculative attempt to raise interest in a ‘national’ monument of Park’s devising, one that met with considerable approval, including, it was reported, the support of ‘several of [Scotland’s] chief nobility’.39 The model, as prepared in Park’s studio, represented Wallace as ‘the Governor as well as the Hero’, his left hand ‘wreathed in the mane’ of the Lion of Scotland, which ‘trampled on a captured and torn banner of England’. Entitled ‘Wallace Victorious, controlling the Power of Scotland’, the model was intended to show the hero as ‘firmly and easily’ restraining the Scottish people, yet prepared to set the lion loose at the first sign of approaching tyranny.40 Contrary to the withering editorials it would print on the subject of the National Wallace Monument later in the 1850s, the Scotsman looked upon Park’s design as ‘a cenotaph to Wallace as the Genius of our national independence’, suggesting that a movement should be instituted to have the fullscale sculpture erected.41 ‘Now is the time’, it went on, ‘to ascertain whether the name of Wallace has yet sufficient power among his countrymen to excite in them any desire to consecrate to his fame so noble a monument’, suggesting that the Hugh Reid bequest might be best used as the basis for a national fund. A committee was formed in July 1850, for the purposes of carrying the project forward, the model was prepared for public display, and advertisements were placed in the Edinburgh papers, announcing that Park’s ‘Wallace Group’ was now open to public view at a pavilion in Bellevue Crescent, admission one shilling. The model was not popular, however, whether in being viewed as ‘inauthentic’ by not conforming to received ideas of the representation of the hero, or as not suited to the tastes of the wider public by virtue of the figure’s nudity.42 Eventually there was not even sufficient support available for removing the model from its temporary home in Bellevue Crescent, where it remained for another two years.43



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The likelihood of Edinburgh raising a Wallace monument returned to public notice when the Town Council of Edinburgh took possession of Reid’s legacy in 1878. The following year, the bequest amounted to £1,722 7s 5d, but no further steps seem to have been taken until 1882, when a notice appeared in the Scotsman, calling upon ‘sculptors, artist and others’ to submit designs for the memorial in open competition. Seven proposals were entered for the competition – described by The Builder as ‘varying considerably in style and in merit’ – with a committee appointed to judge the submitted designs meeting in early September 1882.44 None of the designs was ‘of sufficient merit’, however, and it was resolved that the bequest funds should be allowed to accumulate further.45 Despite sporadic references to the bequest appearing in the Edinburgh newspapers for many years, nothing was to come of the bequest until well into the twentieth century.46 According to Graeme Morton, it was not until 1929 that the monies were eventually used to erect statues to the two heroes, flanking the main gate of Edinburgh Castle – a whole century after Hugh Reid had first announced his bequest, and fifty years after Edinburgh Council had taken over the account.47 Back in 1818, at the same time as Edinburgh’s anonymous benefactor was trying to stir up interest in a Wallace memorial in the capital, a Prospectus was issued by ‘a number of patriotic gentlemen’, promoting the erection of a monument to Wallace in Glasgow’s Fir Park, now the Necropolis. Ascribed to the poet William Motherwell (1797–1835), the Prospectus succinctly describes Wallace as: A Patriot who endured every privation, and despised every danger, in the cause of liberty; who withstood not only the insidious and powerful attempts of a foreign foe, but the pusillanimity of the King, and the turbulence of the Nobles; who rescued his companions from oppression, and his posterity from slavery.48

Considering they were penned in 1818, such sentiments could easily fit into the manifesto of a political radical, yet Motherwell’s politics stemmed from an attitude to the Scottish past coming from a quite different direction. For Motherwell, a true conservative, the solutions to Scotland’s ills were to be found in models from history, and not in new-fangled ideas about reforming the structure of society.49 William Motherwell had indeed dallied with radicalism earlier in his life, yet by the time he drafted the Prospectus for Glasgow’s Wallace he was undergoing a political awakening that would render him a ‘zealous Tory’ and campaigner against electoral reform, not to mention district master of the Glasgow Orange Lodges in 1833.50 Nor was Motherwell the only conservative element to play a leading role in attempting to raise the Glasgow monument. At a meeting held on 10 March 1819 to formally launch the monument appeal, the chair was taken by Henry Monteith, the Lord Provost of Glasgow. Like Motherwell, Monteith was no friend to the radicals: a few months after the launch of the Glasgow Wallace movement, following a meeting of 20,000 weavers on Glasgow Green calling

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for political reform, he issued a proclamation promising dire consequences should further meetings cause public disorder.51 Perhaps owing to the tense relationship between the monument’s promoters and the masses of the west of Scotland, the Glasgow Wallace statue meeting in March was relatively vague in its representation of the hero. One newspaper reported that ‘Resolutions, somewhat rhetorical, were read and unanimously carried; and a committee of a mixed character, though embracing all the noblemen in the west of Scotland, was named’.52 In a clear indication that monument enterprises such as this required participation from across the political spectrum – if not necessarily of class – one of these noblemen was none other than the Earl of Buchan, builder of the Dryburgh Wallace, whose speech at the meeting was greeted ‘with every token of approbation’.53 It is possible that Buchan’s presence owed more to his track record of antiquarian pursuits and well-known love of Wallace than to his politics, yet the composition of the committee charged with taking the enterprise forward was relatively broad, including the arch-Tory Earl of Eglinton, the newly appointed Duke of Hamilton and his brother, the Whig Lord Archibald Hamilton, as well as numerous local men of eminence. The extent to which any of these men took an active role in the monument enterprise is uncertain, yet considering the Glasgow meeting in March was the high point of the monument’s progress, it might be safe to assume that they were not forthcoming with either time or money. The subscription list for the Glasgow Wallace extended to some 252 names, and though further meetings did take place there is no record of their content, with a final meeting called in June 1824 being held almost certainly with the aim of winding the affair up – a total of £60 had been collected.54 The final irony of this attempt to raise a Glaswegian monument to Wallace in the 1810s is that calls were made in the 1830s for the Glasgow Wallace Monument plan to be resuscitated by none other than Glaswegian political radicals.55 Indeed, an obituary of William Motherwell in the Loyal Reformers Gazette harked back to his 1818 prospectus for the monument as being ‘Full of the most generous and patriotic sentiments that any Radical of the present day could indite [sic]’.56 That political reformers of the 1830s could see compatible sentiments in an address concerning Wallace written by a political conservative – albeit a poetic one – indicates just how malleable collective memories of Wallace and Bruce were. The same rhetoric could be used to very different ends: conservative and radical alike were able to draw upon the same template to represent the Great Liberator. THE NEED FOR MODERATION It appears from the composition of the Glasgow Wallace committee that it was necessary to have representation from men of influence across the spectrum of politics and Scottish nationality. At the same time, it was simple



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enough to represent Wallace or Bruce in such a way that all could rally behind their standard, secure in the knowledge that the picture being painted would be compatible with everyone’s views. Such implicit moderation was particularly necessary for large-scale commemorations, most specifically when attempts were made to raise a statue or other memorial from public subscription. For all the assertiveness of Scottish nationality in remembering its heroes, the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce is notable for how often it avoids the possibility of causing offence, never more so than when considering the effect upon Scotland’s partner in Union: England. The commemoration of Wallace and Bruce was remarkable for the intensity with which it argued for Wallace’s vitality, not just for Scottish nationality, but for the magnificence of Great Britain. In December 1854, in a letter from ‘Pro-Patria’ to the Ayrshire Advertiser, written in support of a fund to erect a monument to Wallace, we encounter a familiar sentiment: It may be considered that to the example shown by the devoted heroism of Wallace, followed by the successful resistance of Bruce, was, in great measure, owing the perseverance of the Scottish nation in that determined spirit which enabled them, during three centuries and under many difficulties, to maintain and preserve entire the independence of the nation …57

Such a definition of the legacy of Wallace and Bruce could easily be drawn upon by any element of the political spectrum, even in the early twenty-first century, when the common perception of these heroes is still largely defined by association with Scottish political nationalism. It is the ‘Carlylean’ sentiment that follows this in Pro-Patria’s letter that most clearly distinguishes the nineteenth-century representation of the legacy of Wallace and Bruce from later generations: that their victories had enabled the Scots to enjoy ‘a permanent union with their more powerful neighbour on the principles of most complete equality,– and to take their proper share in all the transactions of empire’. Here we see in no uncertain terms the affirmative, providential-unionist interpretation of the Wars of Independence: that Wallace and Bruce had ensured Scotland and England remained equal in their nationality so that, when providence decided the time was right, union was a partnership and not the submersion of the smaller nation within the greater. Appending such significance to the Wars of Independence was by no means novel in the mid-1850s. Over ten years earlier, during one of Edinburgh’s periodic attempts to raise a monument to Wallace and Bruce, a letter to the Scotsman from ‘Scotus’ argued it was thanks to the two heroes that ‘instead of a discontented and turbulent dependency, she [i.e. England] possesses, in her sister kingdom, a generous rival and coadjutor in her mighty enterprise of the amelioration of mankind’.58 In 1889, two flags gifted by the Scottish philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie were unfurled at the Borestone on the anniversary of Bannockburn. At the unveiling, Stirling’s

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Unionist Provost, Robert Yellowlees, took pains to emphasise the role the battle had played in bringing about harmonious union: Along with the flag we are to hoist the British ensign – a proof (if proof were needed) that our patriotism is not narrow and exclusive, and that we bear no feelings of bitterness or resentment against our fellow countrymen of South Britain. (Cheers.) … The ultimate result of the Battle of Bannockburn was most beneficial to both combatants, because it made possible on honourable terms the Union of 1707, which has been fraught with blessings to both nations.59

Here is the providential-unionist argument, containing the all-important, moderating reference to this memory as evidence of ‘no feelings of bitterness or resentment’. This is Wallace and Bruce as icons of ‘unionist nationalism’, their legacy permitting the possession and expression of a complementary Scottish and British nationality, and proving that Scotland’s historic independence was necessary for the coherence and magnificence of a greater Britain in the modern age. One of the high points both of Wallace and Bruce as unionist icons, and of the drive to keep their memory free of any defining political elements, was the movement to raise the National Wallace Monument on the Abbey Craig. As we have seen, previous efforts to erect large-scale monuments to Wallace and Bruce were hardly garlanded with success. In order to stand any chance of success, the National Wallace Monument movement needed to be an exercise in moderation and compromise. Indeed, the selection of the Abbey Craig for the National Wallace Monument was, to a considerable degree, a compromise solution between interested parties making their own attempts to raise a monument in Edinburgh and Glasgow.60 As neither city was willing to see its rival lay claim to a national monument to their great hero, it was necessary to – almost literally – meet half way. To complicate matters further, the committee formed to co-ordinate and carry out fundraising for the Abbey Craig monument was assailed by accusations of anti-Englishness from the very beginning. Many of the committee members had been vocal members of the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights or were well-known firebrands, advocating a form of Scottish nationality deemed too assertive for an enterprise whose only hope of success lay in its universal appeal to all shades of Scottish patriotism, whether at home or abroad.61 One of these enthusiasts was William Burns, whose two-volume history of the Wars of Independence we have already encountered, and the closest mid-nineteenth century Scotland got to a Scottish Nationalist. Despite his reputation for argumentative plainspeaking whenever he felt Scotland’s nationality was being slighted, Burns promised the monument committee that he would not intrude his protoNationalist sentiments into any of the countless meetings being held to raise subscriptions and public interest. In a letter to the Provost of Stirling, chairman of an initial meeting of the monument committee, Burns declared



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that, although many of the movement’s ‘most active promoters’ had been members of the NAVSR: We are quite alive to the necessity of avoiding any apparent connection between the association as such, and the present movement, as there are those who would make this a difficulty in their own case, and others who would make it a ground for evil speaking. We must endeavour to carry all parties with us, laying aside for the time all difference of opinion. Whig and Tory maun a’ agree in this attempt to wipe out a blot from the honour of our common country.62

That even an uncompromising proto-Nationalist like Burns should recognise the need to set aside politics for the sake of the movement’s success indicates how large-scale monumental commemoration could only thrive when separated from any expression of nationality that might be deemed too radical. During the early stages of the monument movement, over forty meetings were held across Scotland and England as well as in Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia, with the speeches delivered at these meetings being, on the whole, characterised by a highly moderated view of Wallace and his legacy.63 At the public meeting held to launch the monument enterprise on 24 June 1856, the 542nd anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, all the speeches made to the crowd of some twenty thousand people were of a largely moderate nature. Wallace was represented as being the champion of Scottish national independence and the progenitor of nationality. Sir John Melville, Lord Provost of Edinburgh (1802–60), described Wallace as ‘the successful defender of the independence and liberty of Scotland’, through whose ‘courageous enterprise in war and prudent administration in peace, the first germ of that civil and religious liberty which we now enjoy’ had been set.64 Scotland’s ‘existence as a nation’, and its ‘distinct characteristics which mark us as a people among the other nations of the world’, were owed, Melville proclaimed, to ‘the prowess of Wallace, and the indomitable spirit of resistance which he manifested’.65 A political liberal, Melville appears to have been the ideal man to ensure the event held firm to the middle course: his obituary in the Scotsman described him as ‘unwavering in opinion’, yet also ‘moderate and conciliatory in expression’.66 Moderation and conciliation were the order of the day. Speech after speech praised Wallace’s role in winning Scotland’s historic nationality and so bringing about a harmonious union with England. Lord Elgin, a peer of liberal-conservative loyalties, who had been until recently the GovernorGeneral of Canada, claimed that the honourable name Scotland bore among all other nations, and the fact that Scotland retained ‘that spirit of national union which is the lifeblood and the force of a nation’, was owed to the achievements of Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn. The unionist point was made by both Elgin and Sheriff Henry Glassford Bell, no doubt with an eye on the shadow cast by the NAVSR, both speakers stressing that, though

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Scotland could never lose its national independence, it was owing to this independence that the nation had achieved an equal partnership in the Union with England.67 Sheriff Bell went so far as to claim that ‘Any Scotchman who now entertained animosity towards England, or any Englishman who entertained animosity towards Scotland, would be set down as simply insane’.68 Those invited to speak at the meeting were drawn from across the political, ecclesiastical and social spectrum of Scotland. As well as the ‘conservative-liberal’ Lord Elgin, the moderate Melville and Sheriff Bell, a Tory of liberal sympathies, there were also present Alexander Campbell of Monzie, champion of the Free Church, who had laid the foundation stone of an abortive Edinburgh Knox Monument in 1846, and the Revd Dr Robert Gillan, described as ‘a popular public speaker on platform as well as pulpit’, who would go on to be Moderator of the Church of Scotland in 1873. The meeting also heard from a Mr Little, a Glasgow shoemaker – referred to in the press as ‘a working-man’ – who was there to second the resolution ‘that the chief supporters of Wallace in his struggle for independence being the Scottish peasantry, it is fully expected that this class will cordially unite with their fellow-countrymen in the present movement’.69 The assembly drew from and appealed to every class, religion and political interest group as a means of embodying the national character of the monument. This meeting, and those others held to promote the monument and gather public subscriptions, clearly display the movement’s self-conscious attempt to overcome the heterogeneity of the Scottish people, and to find common cause in the commemoration of its hero, whilst at the same time excluding any attempt to use the meeting or the monument as a focus for Scottish national grievances.70 The moderate reading of Wallace prevailed. THE LION AND TYPHON CONTROVERSY Despite this resolution to remain moderate, the Wallace Monument movement was plagued by accusations of incompetence, anti-Englishness, and general irrelevance. Up until his resignation from the committee following the laying of the monument’s foundation stone in June 1861, the movement suffered immense harm from the antics of its secretary, the Revd Dr Charles Rogers. Rogers, a Church of Scotland minister as well as an enthusiastic author and antiquarian, had an unfortunate habit of attempting to make financial gain from his involvement in a bewildering range of projects, whilst at the same time having an unerring knack for making enemies.71 Despite his flaws, however, Rogers remained one of the most tireless advocates for the monument, travelling to all corners of the British mainland to rally support and funds, a reliable moderate, keen to keep Wallace firmly within the bounds of acceptability. One cannot avoid the suspicion that Rogers always had one eye on what posterity would make of him. Much of what we know about the National



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Wallace Monument movement stems from Rogers’ vigorous attempts to render himself the principal player in the monument’s progress, yet his behaviour consistently cast a dark cloud over the committee’s endeavours, not least as a result of his numerous conflicts with William Burns.72 The tension between Rogers and Burns exemplified the friction generated when a commemorative enterprise with a common goal attempted to accommodate two opposed readings of the hero’s legacy. Burns had promised to rein in his more radically national sentiments, yet a symbol as potentially colossal as the National Wallace Monument distilled the motivations of moderates and radicals alike. This was never more aggressively – or publicly – apparent than during the enormous controversy generated when the time came to decide what form the monument should take. The first model adopted was an allegorical, sculptural design by J. Noël Paton, entitled ‘Lion and Typhon’.73 Paton’s sculpture was of a lion standing triumphantly upon that of Typhon, depicted as a crowned figure whose body was half-man, half-serpent, holding in its hand a broken chain, the other half of which hung loose from the lion’s neck, implying that the lion had broken free from bondage. The committee that had adopted Paton’s design was dominated by the more radically inclined of the monument movement’s members, led by William Burns, and their decision in favour of ‘Lion and Typhon’ was met with howls of incredulity and anger from both the press and the public. The conservative Stirling Journal referred to the selection of the ‘Lion and Typhon’ as ‘simply absurd’, whilst its liberal-radical counterpart, the Stirling Observer, believed that the committee members who voted for Paton’s model should be ‘utterly ashamed’. The Glasgow Examiner stated that the monument would be ‘an insult to the English, towards whom, in these days, we have no reason to be uncivil or ungracious’. The Edinburgh Evening Post referred to the design as ‘utterly opposed to the common feeling, and even to common sense’.74 Of the larger circulation newspapers, the Glasgow Herald described Paton’s design as looking like ‘a rampant tom cat glorying over a mouse’, the North British Daily Mail called it ‘ridiculous’ and ‘grotesque’, while the Scotsman – one of the most vocal opponents of the entire monument movement – hoped the controversy generated over the design might bring the whole sorry undertaking to a close.75 In the midst of the controversy, the ‘Lion and Typhon’ was to be displayed at the Royal Scottish Academy exhibition, yet it seems the model was removed prior to or during the exhibition opening, to be replaced with another monumental design by Paton, this one based upon a runic cross, with a statue of Bruce seated on its base, pointing to an inscription to Wallace’s memory.76 As if widespread censure within Scotland were not bad enough, The Times took the proposed adoption of the Lion and Typhon as an opportunity to print a facetious and disapproving editorial, in which it not only referred to Wallace as ‘the merest myth’, but went on to state:

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This was precisely the reaction that the monument’s proponents had been attempting to avoid by focusing on an inoffensive and moderately-national representation of Wallace. Paton’s design was quickly shelved and J. T. Rochead’s Scotch Baronial tower was adopted in its stead. Where Paton’s design had been too strident, Rochead’s was appropriately blank, a moderate monument for a moderate Wallace.78 It is worth pointing out that the quality of the artistry in the ‘Lion and Typhon’ was not the issue. Indeed, many of those who objected to the design also publicly acknowledged that Paton’s model was an example of great art, but this was part of the problem: one of the principal arguments for the rejection of Paton’s design was its alleged obscurity. The viewing public would find it confusing, and so the design would not effectively transmit the nature of Wallace’s achievements. The paradox, identified by William Burns at the time, was: how could a monument so difficult to understand also carry such potential for offence? In truth, what worried the design’s opponents was not its obscurity, but that by inviting comparisons between the Lion and Wallace/Scotland, and Typhon and Edward/England, the monument would be construed as anti-English, a signifier of offensive rather than moderate Scottish nationality. What was required was a design that would offend no one, that would articulate Wallace’s legacy in terms of peace and of strength, and that would dovetail neatly with the Scots’ perception of themselves as equal partners in the Union with England. Simply put, the monument that now stands on the Abbey Craig was self-consciously inoffensive, an exercise in not annoying the English. THE TRIUMPH OF MODERATION The selection of Rochead’s Scotch Baronial tower, and its successful completion in 1869, were, however, not the most complete examples of moderate Wallace from the nineteenth century. For this we must turn to 1897, when Archibald Philip Primrose, the fifth Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929), presided at the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the battle of Stirling Bridge in Stirling. Lord Rosebery, one of the architects of Gladstone’s Midlothian Campaign and former leader of the Liberal party, as well as – briefly – Prime Minister, was a committed Liberal-Imperialist, who had been instrumental in the creation of the post of Scottish Secretary back in the 1880s. Rosebery’s commitment to Scottish history, culture and politics, combined with his famously eloquent oratory, had rendered him an immensely popular public



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figure in Scotland, representing a decidedly moderate interpretation of Scottish nationality.79 Furthermore, Rosebery was wise to the usefulness of commemorative monuments: the erection of a statue to Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster was almost entirely the Earl’s work.80 For the custodians of the National Wallace Monument, Rosebery was the ideal speaker, relied upon to address a potentially sensitive subject without causing undue offence to any but the most radical nationalists or the most blinkered unionists. The Earl spoke not at the monument itself but at a banquet in the afternoon, attended by somewhere in the region of 400 gentlemen, the galleries being set apart for the ladies. There was representation from numerous Scottish towns and cities, as well as a host of MPs and the Right Hon. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, the Conservative Scottish Secretary. In his speech on Wallace, Rosebery drew a distinction between himself and the ‘two classes of his fellow-countrymen’ who would gladly give such a speech, the first being the ‘minute archaeological historian’, and the second ‘that class of passionate and indiscriminate patriots’ whose enthusiasm would carry them too high for the Earl’s taste: In their soaring they are not always doing a wise or patriotic task, because, I firmly believe this, that the stronger, the broader, and the safer our enthusiasm the better it is for that enthusiasm, and that exaggeration, even in matters of patriotism, is apt to lead to ridicule and reaction.81

This was a sentiment that would not have been out of place in the pages of Walter Scott. Too much enthusiasm might easily do one’s nationality a mischief, so in approaching the ‘perilous task’ of delivering an address on Wallace, Rosebery played resolutely safe. He depicted Wallace as the man of the people, cited the commonly-stated affirmation that Bruce reaped at Bannockburn what Wallace had sown at Stirling Bridge, and summarised Wallace as the champion ‘who asserted Scotland as an independent country, who made or remade the Scots as a nation. (Cheers.)’.82 Nor did Rosebery miss this opportunity to wheel out the providential-unionist Wallace. Stirling Bridge was not the defeat of an English army, but the dawn of our national existence – (cheers) – and the assertion of our national independence. (Cheers.) Let us all, then, Englishmen and Scotchmen together, rejoice in this anniversary, and in the memory of this hero; for he at Stirling made Scotland great, and if Scotland were not great the Empire of all the Britons would not stand where it does. (Loud and prolonged cheering.)83

Rosebery’s diplomatic representation of Wallace was received with widespread approbation. The Glasgow Herald praised the Earl’s address as a ‘great personal achievement’ in avoiding the perils associated with commemorating the battle. The Scotsman shared the Herald’s relief, declaring that Rosebery had ensured all memory of the battle was ‘redeemed from the burlesque, and

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… had imparted to it a sober dignity and a national significance not unworthy of Scottish history or enlightened patriotism’.84 The conservative Dundee Courier praised the speech as ‘necessary to the preservation of that independence and self-reliance which are the boasts of all true Scotsman’, while the equally conservative Aberdeen Journal applauded Rosebery’s speech for its moderation, stressing that the ‘admiration and enthusiasm’ created by memories of Wallace ought to be kept ‘within proper bounds’.85 Particularly significant, however, was the reaction of the English papers. The Telegraph extolled the virtues of Scottish independence and affirmed that the English nation welcomed the Scottish victories at Stirling and Bannockburn. A lengthy editorial in the conservative Standard praised the Earl’s address and affirmed that the ‘unquenchable’ spirit of martial patriotism that had moved Wallace ‘now operates to make Scotchmen devotedly attached citizens of the British Empire’.86 In contrast, the liberal Daily Chronicle was not quite so ecstatic, accusing Englishmen of getting ‘caught by the glamour of the romance’ of the Scottish past. ‘In reading their history’, the Chronicle fumed, ‘we become traitors to the English cause.’87 Most importantly of all, however, and in impressive contrast to its opinions of the 1850s, The Times was remarkably upbeat. Though it still maintained that Wallace belonged more to the world of myth than to that of strict history, its opinion of Scottish nationality had executed a volte-face: No apology, surely, is necessary for doing honour to the memory of a man whose real work and whose legendary fame have contributed to such an achievement as the making of Scotland and of the Scottish character … The conflict which Wallace began, and which was continued through generations, was the seedtime of qualities and tendencies that the Empire could ill spare. We can all heartily unite in commemorating the work that, in the slow ripening of centuries, has produced a noble harvest of intellectual force, high moral aims, and steadiness of character and purpose.88

The commemoration of William Wallace was, then, a focal point for moderate and largely depoliticised readings of the achievements of the Scottish past. In particularly, the scale of the National Wallace Monument, and its prominence as a symbol of Scottish nationality, demanded that it be kept apart from the divisional squabbles of contemporary politics, whether of party or of ideology. To this end, the significance of Wallace and his National Monument drank deeply from the well of moderate nationality that fitted so easily the cultural memory common to Wallace and to Bruce. In this way, the Wallace Monument embodies the need to guide or frame the grand story of Scottish nationality, eliding any readings deemed too radical for broad acceptance.



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WALLACE, BRUCE AND HOME RULE This is not to say that the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce was entirely free of political rhetoric. Though commemorative focal points such as the National Wallace Monument or the sexcentenary of Stirling Bridge may have projected a highly moderate view of the past, there were moments when the two heroes of the Wars of Independence were called forth to do battle for very specific causes. This was particularly so with the rise of Home Rule as a significant political issue in Scotland. The issue of the governance of the country was a matter of vigorous public debate – the appointment of a Scottish Secretary in 1885 seen as only one small step on the road to solving a much more profound problem. Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule Bill was splitting the Liberals in two, a split that cut across Liberalism’s fairly well-­established lines. Radicals joined with Whigs in voting against Gladstone’s plans for the government of Ireland, just as Conservatives and Liberal Unionists increasingly found common cause in their support of the status quo.89 Prior to the mid-1880s, overt criticism of the Union had been deemed strictly infra dig., yet Gladstone’s conversion to Home Rule had transformed the issue – whether Irish or Scottish – into one that could be publicly discussed without necessarily attracting accusations of anti-Union sentiment.90 Even political or cultural moderates engaged with the concept of Home Rule, though they harboured fears that its adoption would cause the Scots to lose influence in the Imperial parliament. For others, with full-blown Home Rule being proposed for Ireland, the establishment of the Scottish Office was seen as more of a concession than a solution – the pacific, reasonable Scots considered themselves more worthy of a degree of self-government than the belligerent Irish.91 These elements coalesced with the foundation of the Scottish Home Rule Association in Edinburgh in 1886, its aim being to promote a Scottish legislature ‘with full control over all purely Scottish questions’, and to ‘secure that the voice of Scotland shall be heard in the Imperial Parliament’.92 Many members of the SHRA made direct connection with the rhetoric of their predecessors in the NAVSR, even going so far as to make occasional explicit connections between their cause and that of the early 1850s.93 Against this backdrop, the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce started to encompass more politicised rhetoric. In essence, a new question was being asked of the achievements of Wallace, Bruce, and the other great national heroes from Scotland’s past: had their legacy been wisely invested or was it being squandered? Were the Scots fit to call themselves the heirs of such an illustrious past, or ought they to be ashamed that they no longer lived up to the high standard set by the Great Liberator and the Patriot King? Was Wallace’s work complete or was there unfinished business? In the mid-century, this proto-nationalism was represented by only a

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few, fairly marginal figures such as William Burns and John Steill, the latter described by H. J. Hanham as having been a member of the Scottish national ‘lunatic fringe’. A supporter of Young Ireland and repeal of the Union of 1800, Steill looked upon the worship of Wallace as a focus not only for anti-Englishness but also as a Scottish alternative to the worship of ‘men of “English birth and English ideas”’.94 Steill had been involved in several unsuccessful attempts to memorialise Wallace, as well as playing a key role in the early stages of the National Wallace Monument movement, yet it was not till after his death that his plan for a monument to Wallace became reality. He bequeathed almost the whole of his estate to the construction of a statue to Wallace in Aberdeen, a sum of over £3,000, in a will replete with stipulations. The monument was to be a statue representing Wallace’s encounter with some English ambassadors prior to the battle of Stirling Bridge, when Wallace had rejected the offer of a pardon. Steill insisted that his monument should not connect Wallace in any way with royalty or the aristocracy, nor were Steill’s trustees ‘to do aught that might afford a handle to any man to mix the name of Wallace up – “as, alas! that name has been but too much of late by false Scotsmen and hostile Englishmen, with unworthy acts”’.95 With Steill’s intentions in mind, we might expect the Aberdeen statue to embody his nationalism, yet the inauguration ceremony, conducted on 29 June 1888, was about as far from radical as one could imagine. Indeed, if the Provost, Magistrates and Town Council of Aberdeen had sought to raise the ire of the deceased by emphasising the Britishness of their new statue, they could not have chosen a more suitable figure than the Marquess of Lorne, former Governor General of Canada and husband of Princess Louise, Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter.96 Though a lifelong Liberal, having been MP for Argyll from 1868 to 1878, the Marquess had become ‘estranged’ from the Gladstonians, his attitude towards Home Rule apparent in his having stood as a Liberal Unionist candidate in Bradford in 1892, and again in Manchester in 1895.97 His speech at Aberdeen was the very model of moderate Scottish nationality, focusing on Wallace as statesman and the historic Scots role in the forging of a British constitutional state.98 The intentions of more radical Scottish nationality were, in this way, exploited to raise the statue yet discarded as soon as the undertaking became public. Such restraint was also exercised by the speakers themselves, even when they were sympathetic to the cause of legislative change. At the National Wallace Monument in 1887, a statue of Wallace by D. W. Stevenson was unveiled in the presence of John Patrick Crichton- Stuart, third Marquis of Bute.99 Not only was Bute a highly-respected public figure, noted antiquarian and philanthropist, Conservative peer, and convert to Roman Catholicism, he was also a prominent advocate of Home Rule.100 His sense of Scottish nationality was motivated by a perceived neglect of Scottish issues and Scottish nationality within the British state, and he shared with William



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Burns an evident dislike of the Union of 1707. Since 1886, Bute had been editor of the Scottish Review, a public forum for ideas on the Home Rule question, vigorously promoting administrative decentralisation as a means of dealing more efficiently with Scottish legislation.101 In a letter to Lord Rosebery from 1881, Bute wrote, ‘I think there are many Tories like myself who would hail a more autonomous arrangement with deep pleasure. We would prefer the rule of our own countrymen, even if it were Radical, to the existing state of things.’102 Bute was evidently deemed the ideal speaker for this event, despite his combination of political conservatism and national radicalism. His lengthy speech delivered at the monument avoided any direct mention of Home Rule, preferring to concentrate upon the historic details of Wallace’s life and the distinctiveness of Scottish nationality within the Union.103 Where Bute did court controversy, however, was in introducing racial sentiments in his definition of Scottish nationality, something notably absent from commemorative rhetoric across the century. The ‘abiding truth’ of Wallace’s legacy was, Bute argued, ‘a recognition and an expression of a fact which is scientifically, even physiologically, true, that we neither are nor can be Englishmen’, a distinction ‘made by nature’.104 Bute avoided the term ‘nationality’, yet his intention was clearly to emphasise the need for the Scots to retain their distinct national character, and to be worthy of Wallace by maintaining those Scottish principles inculcated by both history and racial inheritance. In so doing, the Marquis sounded only one mildly political note when, at the close of his speech, he stated that those who shared Wallace’s ‘race’ must ensure that ‘as we have a past and a present so we must look to have a future. If it is to be healthy development, the development must be a natural, that is a national one.’105 Lord Bute’s association of Wallace’s legacy with Scottish racial, rather than purely national, characteristics drew forth a considerable reaction from the press. The Scotsman applauded the Marquis’s emphasis on ‘the value of nationality and the sacred duty of preserving it’, yet doubted his assertion regarding the ‘physiological’ differences between the English and the Scots.106 The Glasgow Herald went further, calling into question the appropriateness of bringing up and emphasising the subject of nationality, ‘a principle which has lately been so distorted in application to the Sister Isle, that one would rather not bring it into prominence again’.107 The Herald extended its scepticism over ‘nationality’ when it diplomatically stated that ‘Considering the confusion which exists in current conceptions with regard to “nationalities” and “nations”, one may reasonably shrink from an exhaustive examination’ of Lord Bute’s propositions regarding the ‘scientific and physiological’ differences between the two nations.108 By inviting Bute as principal speaker, the custodians of the Monument would have been aware of any implied connection between the legacy of Wallace and the cause of Home Rule, yet Bute did the decent thing and

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avoided addressing the subject directly. Further evidence of the ­acceptability of Home Rule sentiment is evident in the presence at the same event of John Romans, chairman of the Scottish Home Rule Association. Yet if the National Wallace Monument was not the place openly to express support for Home Rule, the same cannot be said of the Bannockburn Borestone. On the same day that Lord Bute unveiled the statue of Wallace at the National Wallace Monument, a gathering took place at the Borestone to inaugurate some improvements to the flagstaff that had been raised there in 1870. In common with that of its counterpart on the Abbey Craig, the tone of the 1887 event was resolutely moderate. Two years later, however, at an event held to unveil two new flags on the flagstaff, the speeches were openly, indeed stridently, for Home Rule. With an estimated 10,000 people present, the 1889 gathering was described as ‘the largest gathering of recent times in connection with the celebration of the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn’.109 Two months beforehand, the MP, Gavin Brown Clark, one of the leaders of the SHRA, had moved a resolution in the Commons that ‘it is desirable that arrangements be made for giving to the people of Scotland, by their representatives in a National Parliament, the management and control of Scottish affairs’. The motion was ‘resoundingly defeated’ by two hundred votes to seventy-nine – only nineteen of the seventy-two Scottish members voted in favour.110 It is perhaps owing to this defeat that the principal speeches delivered at the 1889 Borestone gathering were so energetic in their politics. Indeed, the choice of Professor John Stuart Blackie and the Revd David Macrae as the main speakers effectively ensured that any sentiments expressed would be openly radical. Blackie, who had preceded John Romans as chairman of the SHRA, was one of Victorian Scotland’s most outspoken critics of the anglicising effects of the Union.111 A highly-respected and popular public speaker on Scottish national subjects, Blackie was certainly something of an eccentric, often deemed too outlandish to be taken entirely seriously, yet he was also a powerful defender of nationality as both natural and essential.112 His attendance at the Borestone was not the first time he had been called upon to say a few words on memories of Wallace and Bruce. Back in 1856, at the Great Public Meeting held to initiate the National Wallace Monument movement, Blackie made a speech replete with calls for the defence of Scottish nationality. For Blackie, the monument was a necessary expression of independent ‘Scotch’ nationality faced with the ‘tendency to be Anglified’.113 Much of Blackie’s speech at the 1856 meeting was conducted in response to a Times editorial on this ‘new Scotch Movement’, which described Scotland as ‘the welded portion of a greater whole’.114 In his response, Blackie depicted the Wallace Monument movement as ‘a fraction of the grand question of Scottish nationality’, the success or failure of which should be ‘received as an index of the amount of self-recognition and self-esteem in the Scottish bosom’.115



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Thirty years on from these harangues, Blackie was still preaching of the dangers of Scotland losing its nationality, and of the necessity for keeping the relevance of the past ever-present. ‘The traditions of the past’, he said at Bannockburn in 1889, ‘form the staple of all national culture.’ Warming to his theme, Blackie argued that it was for the good of the Empire that the Scots should not be ‘juggled out of their nationality’, noting the dangers of ‘officialism, of centralisation, of monopoly, of measuring things by red tape from London’.116 Going so far as to say that he was ‘not sure if the Union of 1707 was such an immense benefit to Scotland’, Blackie advocated a form of legislative devolution, proposing that Scottish business should be transacted in Edinburgh by Scottish MPs, though stopping short of a Scottish Parliament, and failing to mention the Home Rule movement by name. The speech closed with an exhortation to Scots to ‘stand upon your moral grandeur. (Cheers.) Cherish the memory of Bannockburn, of Bruce, Wallace, John Knox, and all our great Scotchmen, and you will do a lasting service to your country.’ Blackie’s speech was effectively a manifesto for a more assertive brand of Scottish nationality: defiant, aggressive, ever-watchful for the encroachment of sublimating, anglicising habits and sentiments. It was notable, also, for the relative absence of any considered summary or interpretation of Bannockburn or of Bruce: aside from dropping the King’s name into his warnings concerning the dire threat of ‘being anglified’, Blackie had the intent of being resolutely polemical and political, not commemorative. Memory was a weapon to be used in the battle against the dilution of one’s nationality. While Blackie may have been looked upon as an inspiring eccentric, the Revd David Macrae was a proto-nationalist very much on the model of William Burns. Described as ‘the chief and leader of Scottish Nationalists’, Macrae, a former United Presbyterian minister who had been ‘removed’ for his heretical views on the afterlife of sinners, was one of the most ardent proto-nationalists of the post-1880 generation.117 In 1901 he became president of the Scottish Patriotic Association, an organisation that staged an annual demonstration at the Borestone on the anniversary of Bannockburn from 1901 to 1914.118 In this way, he represents the next step in the transition of the political and cultural expression of Scottish nationality, away from moderation and providential unionism towards a more nationalistic discourse. Macrae began his address with a high-spirited celebration of Scottish national virtue, and of the inspirational qualities of the commemorative act, proclaiming that ‘Scottish manhood is invigorated by the glorious memories that bring us here to-day’. Echoing Blackie, he deployed the familiar argument that through keeping the memory of Wallace, Bruce and Bannockburn alive Scottish patriotism and the British Empire were strengthened, yet he went on to openly accuse England of insufficiently acknowledging ‘the value

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of other strong and loyal nationalities growing up side by side with herself’, attempting to ‘extinguish the smaller nationalities and force them into her own’. The response was self-evident: ‘We want, therefore, Home Rule for Scotland.’ Though acknowledging that ‘it was one of the crowning glories of our struggle for independence that at last we were able to enter the Union with England as a free and independent nation’, Macrae argued that it was for this very reason that the Scots were getting the poor end of the unionist deal. Anglicisation brought with it an undermining of Scotland’s sense of a national past: ‘If we allow our history to be falsified, we shall have our nationality undermined.’ It was necessary ‘to guard our nationality, and purify it from everything that tends to corrupt and debase. Nourish its strength and its vigour, not only for our own sakes, but for the sake of all other parts of the Empire’. Macrae’s emphasis on the necessity of guarding Scotland’s history from the dangers of falsification emphasises the importance of the past in forming and guiding nationality. While Rosebery, Bute and countless others celebrated the role of Wallace and Bruce in ensuring that Scotland stood as an equal partner in Britain’s imperial achievement, this did not mean the past could be forgotten. One of the principal means of preserving nationality was to keep hold of collective memories of these national heroes and so pass them on. WILLIAM WALLACE AND EUROPE’S NATIONAL HEROES The Scots were by no means alone in holding fast to the ‘Great Men’ of the past. While memories of Wallace and Bruce expressed fundamental truths about the Scottish national character, they were but two examples of the pan-European rage for expressing nationality through national heroes, whether drawn from the distant past or from recent national successes. No nation of any worth, possessing as it must long and coherent national memories, would lack such paragons of nationality, ready to be dragged into the spotlight and made to work for present purposes. Every nation had its own examples, but here we will focus on Germany, France, and Switzerland. The characteristics of each of these nationalities, each with its own specific demands to be made upon the past, were quite different from the Scottish sense of national self. In Germany, a unified nation was something to be sought as the glorious consummation of centuries of German nationality, yet the basis of that nationality was heavily disputed. The constantly shifting sands of French nationality – republican, monarchical, imperial – meant that the grand narrative of the French nation was forever changing, pulled in one direction or another as each new regime sought to claim legitimacy. The Swiss, like the Germans, had to overcome the challenge of their national heterogeneity. As Switzerland was composed of so many different cultural/religious groups, each with their own identity,



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how was an overarching Swiss nationality to be defined? Each nation may have had different challenges, yet all used similar methods to articulate their nationality with reference to the past, whether that nationality was a present reality or a prize to be won. Successful or not, through their commemoration, French, Swiss and German national heroes supported and aided the process of constructing a coherent sense of nationality. As outlined in Chapter 1, German intellectuals such as Fichte, Herder and Schlegel were among the leading figures in forming the nineteenthcentury sense of nationality as something that required roots in an expressible national past. Prior to Unification in 1871, when Germany was not yet a nation-state but a collective of smaller statelets, each with its own sense of identity, commemoration of a shared German past was predicated on the need to promote an ideal of German cultural, linguistic or racial integrity. Unification was, on the whole, the desired goal. A united Germany would be a stronger Germany, especially when faced with the threat of invasion from its old enemy, France, and a repeat of the humiliations of the Napoleonic empire. Inculcation of a shared sense of the significance of the German past was used as a catalyst for unification.119 After victory in the Franco-Prussian War ushered in Unification in 1871, the focus shifted away from this process of cultivating a collective nationality in the face of inherited heterogeneity, to inculcating patriotic loyalty to the new order. The intended product of these commemorative practices and any associated discourse was to unify, to inspire loyalty to a single, coherent German nation.120 Whether encouraging unity or attempting to deal with its challenges, the German-national narrative needed focal points around which nationality could cluster – common ground in a common history. Just as Wallace and Bruce provided a medieval point of origin for Scottish nationality, German nationalists drew upon the cult of Hermann (or Arminius) the Cheruscan, who had repulsed the invading Romans at the Battle of the Teutoburger Forest in the first century ad.121 In Hermann, German nationality found the malleable national icon it required, in terms both of Hermann as a hero who could represent national virtue, and of an origin myth in Hermann’s victory over the invading – that is, alien – Romans. Vitally, the story of Hermann was also historically verifiable: trusted sources could at least prove his existence and the depth of his heroism.122 Whereas Wallace had Blind Harry, Hermann first emerged in Tacitus’ Annals, which described the hero as ‘a man unbeaten in war’, a figure that sixteenth-century Germans could use as a symbol of resistance to ‘rapacious Italians’.123 Further mirroring the Wallace myth, even by the time nineteenth-century German nationality sought to use Hermann for its own ends, the historical facts remained sufficiently few to allow the backprojection of contemporary demands. Hermann was no mere myth – his existence was proven – yet his motivation was adaptable. The national story that Hermann had initiated was seen to reach its nationalist conclusion with

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German Unification, by which time the anti-Roman content of his memory joined with anti-French sentiments, fuelled by recent memory of defeat and victory. Even the change of name from the formerly dominant and Latinate ‘Arminius’ to the Germanicised ‘Hermann’ was symptomatic of the need to render Hermann as distinctively German as possible. Where the cults of Hermann and Wallace particularly correspond, however, is in the raising of colossal, commemorative monuments. As early as the 1760s, there were plans to construct some form of monument to Hermann. His effigy takes pride of place in the north-facing pediment of King Ludwig of Bavaria’s Walhalla, near Regensburg, completed in 1842. Motivated by what he perceived to be the erosion of German cultural distinctiveness – the idea for the Walhalla was conceived at the height of Napoleonic domination – Ludwig intended that the monument should be ‘sacred’ to German unity, a symbol of historic and enduring German greatness from ancient times to the present.124 In this way, the Walhalla was a self-conscious expression of grossdeutsch identity, a broad, principally linguistic definition of what constituted German nationality – so broad, indeed, that there are plaques within the Walhalla to the Anglo-Saxon Hengist and Horsa, as well as Alfred the Great. Hermann’s prominence on Ludwig’s monument is a testament to the depth of his importance to German collective memory: this was no Bavarian hero embodying solely Bavarian virtues, but a hero of German nationality. That Hermann’s historic victory had taken place a considerable distance away from this evocation of his heroism was irrelevant to the monument’s grossdeutsch projection of German nationality. In Ludwig’s Walhalla, Hermann was literally positioned at the pinnacle of a shared German past. Hermann’s most enduring monumental commemoration is, however, the Hermannsdenkmal, which stands in the Teutoburger Forest, near the town of Detmold in Westphalia, marking the site of Hermann’s victory over the Roman legions. This monument, with its Doric simplicity and statue of the hero wielding his gigantic sword, is Germany’s counterpart to the National Wallace Monument, yet the speed with which the Wallace Monument was raised is remarkably swift in comparison. Whilst it took thirteen years to raise the National Wallace Monument, it took over twice as long to raise Hermann’s monument – begun in 1841, the Hermannsdenkmal was not completed until 1875. Unlike the movement to build the Wallace Monument, whose roots are obscured by squabbles over who had the idea in the first place, the idea of erecting the Hermannsdenkmal belongs to one man: the sculptor Ernst von Bandel. Much as Ludwig of Bavaria’s Walhalla was prompted by the King’s perception of eroding German values, Bandel’s monument was motivated by the de-nationalising effects of the French occupation of his native Rhineland. However, lack of money meant he had to abandon the monument project until, inspired by Italian unification, it could be renewed in the 1860s.125 Bandel wanted his monument to Hermann to



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be, unlike the Walhalla, in the Gothic rather than the classical style, further reflecting its nationality as rooted in the traditions of the north. Thanks to Bandel’s tireless efforts, and in common with the Abbey Craig monument, the Hermannsdenkmal received the majority of its funding through public subscription, gathered from across the German-speaking world, though its completion required considerable support from the post-Unification state and monarchy.126 Overall, the monument represents the nineteenth-century collective memory of Hermann as having founded German nationality: the statue’s sword bears the inscription ‘Germany’s unity is my strength; my strength is Germany’s power’.127 The sword itself is pointed towards Rome, which, in the midst of the Kulturkampf, was a potent symbol of Germany’s path to unity in the face of the trans-nationalism of the Catholic Church.128 In this way, it is a monument of liberal nationality, signifying Germanic ‘individuality’ rather than Roman or French ‘centralisation’.129 While there is much in common between the national memories of Hermann and Wallace, a contrast emerges when we consider the form of their monuments. Though both are exercises in vernacular architecture, their messages are quite distinct. The Wallace Monument was an exercise in conciliation, intended to offend as few people as possible by claiming that the struggles of the past were over, having achieved their providential aim in bringing about the achievements of the present. That is to say, its message for the old enemy is one of peace. The Hermannsdenkmal is also a monument to conciliation within the nation-state, a symbol of the nationalised masses of the new Germany, yet in terms of its relationship to the hero’s enemies, there is defiance in its nationality. This is not a monument that offers an olive branch to the modern-day equivalent of the hero’s enemies. Instead, it is directed at those enemies – that is, the French and Catholic Rome – a warning to Germany’s enemies that the victories won for German freedom in the past will be all too easily achieved again in the present. In this way, the Hermannsdenkmal has more in common with J. Noël Paton’s rejected ‘Lion and Typhon’ than with the arrogantly bland Scotch Baronial tower completed in 1869. While German nationalists found in Hermann a potent expression of their nationality, over the border in France another enemy of the Roman legions, the Gaulish chieftain Vercingetorix, was capable of representing French nationality. From 1850 till the beginning of the First World War, Vercingetorix was transformed into a national hero, accumulating all the paraphernalia of national heroism including several statues, countless books, and many street and place names across France, all part and parcel of a wider fascination with the Gauls as the true ancestors of the French nation.130 Vercingetorix was remembered for having heroically led the last Gaulish resistance against Julius Caesar at the Battle of Alesia in 52 bc. Defeated by Caesar’s superior tactics, Vercingetorix at Alesia marked the final subjugation of Gaul by the Romans.

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In common with both Hermann and Wallace, Vercingetorix represented the providential endurance of shared nationality, yet the context for his commemoration was distinct in many ways from the unifying focus of the Scots and the Germans. Prior to the 1870s, Vercingetorix symbolised the historic separation of France’s ancestral peoples into two opposing camps: the Gauls and the Franks. We have already noted how German nationality sought to establish a collective memory based upon the continuity of past and the present, combining ancient history with the tribulations of the present to synthesise them into a collective memory of inevitable unification. Development of a narrative arc for French nationality, on the other hand, was constantly thwarted as each new regime sought to undermine its predecessor by emphasising a different reading of the past.131 The symbols of the preceding order were broken up as a matter of course with each new shift in the political complexion of the French nation. Memory was itself a contested territory on which the political and ideological conflicts of the present were fought, each competing element in the French ‘political community’ campaigning ‘for the widest possible acceptance of its own more favourable version of events’.132 Did the French soul lie with the nobility, battered and bruised but unbowed, or with the masses whose revolutionary fervour had been taken from them by Napoleon? In this dispute, the ancient Gauls were the true ancestors of the French people, as opposed to the Franks, ancestors of the nobility.133 The place of the Gauls in French memory had been assured by Napoleon I, yet it was the enthusiasm of his nephew, Napoleon III, for Vercingetorix in particular that pushed the Gaulish chieftain to the centre of French nationality. Napoleon III inherited from his uncle a concern with synthesising the position of the Gauls in French nationality with that of the conquering Romans. As well as writing a life of Caesar, Napoleon III financed extensive archaeological excavations at Alesia, funding the monument to Vercingetorix at the site, its face modelled on his own.134 In the Gallo-Roman projection of French national memory, Rome’s victory at Alesia was a point of origin, the moment when the Gaulish love of independence was synthesised with Roman civilisation to create a greater France.135 The contrast with Hermann is evident. German nationality rejected Rome entirely, celebrating its victory over the legions at the Teutoburger Forest as the moment when Germany proved the manly independence of its distinct nationality. French nationality, on the other hand, sought to reconcile the civilised order of Rome with the more aggressive instincts of its ancestors, the Gauls. For Napoleon III, this was a self-conscious attempt to rationalise France’s imperial conquests: the process of civilisation might hurt but its benefits would be enjoyed in the long term.136 After 1870, however, and defeat at the hands of a resurgent Germany, French cultural memory of the Gauls took on a form more familiar from the cults of Wallace and Hermann. Vercingetorix was transformed into a national martyr, a symbol



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of internal French unity against a common foe – in this case, Germany.137 If the Hermannsdenkmal was a symbol of German defiance of its enemies, now statues of Vercingetorix stared back across the border as an enduring symbol of the dignity of French nationality in defeat and its ability to rise again. One of these statues to the Gaulish chieftain, erected in 1872, depicts him ‘advancing hand in hand’ with that other historic symbol of French nationality, Joan of Arc.138 The Maid of Orleans occupies a pivotal position in the contested realm of French-national memory in the nineteenth century, yet, when compared with that of Wallace and Hermann, the cult of Joan of Arc is much more problematic. This is principally because she was a highly divisive figure from the French past, rather than a focal point for unity and inclusive nationality.139 Indeed, there were almost as many versions of Joan of Arc as there were facets to French civil society. Memories of the heroine tended to conform to one of three – not necessarily separate – interpretations: a popular heroine and ‘champion of the masses’; a paragon of Catholicism and monarchical loyalty; and an icon of united nationality, reconciling the Catholic and the republican.140 The last of these three readings, emerging in the late nineteenth century, was the closest Joan of Arc could get to becoming a focus for something genuinely national, yet time and again the tension between Joan as republican incarnation of the people and the clerical representation of her as a heroine of Catholicism undermined attempts to make her a symbol of unity.141 Unlike with Hermann, Wallace or Vercingetorix, there was simply too much history and interpretation surrounding Joan of Arc to render her a truly national hero. Any potential breaking points in the myth of other heroes could easily be overcome; the anti-aristocratic thread running through memories of Vercingetorix was nowhere near as divisive as the anti-Catholic deployment of Joan. On those occasions when she was held as a symbol of French nationality, however, the rhetoric is all too familiar. No less a figure than Napoleon Bonaparte declared: ‘United, the French nation has never been conquered … the illustriousness of Joan of Arc has proved that there is no miracle that cannot be accomplished by the genius of the French when the National Independence is threatened.’142 Later in the century, the historian Michelet acted as champion for the presentation of Joan as the simple peasant girl who ‘through the force of one heart’ transformed France into a nation.143 Even so, Joan of Arc could not be deployed as a founder of the French patrie acceptable to all. WILLIAM TELL The commemoration of Hermann and Vercingetorix, therefore, shares many key elements with the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce, not least their role as fathers of a distinct and historic nationality, yet a quite different national hero was consistently drawn into company with Wallace as both his contemporary and his fellow champion of national liberty: the Swiss

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national hero, William Tell. Among the many similarities between the two heroes, the simple fact that Tell and Wallace had achieved their great deeds around the same point in history made their image all the clearer to modern Scots and Swiss. For Wallace there was Stirling Bridge in 1297 followed by martyrdom in 1305, while Tell’s famous apple shot took place in 1307, a decisive stroke in Swiss resistance to Habsburg domination. Just as Wallace’s position in the grand narrative of Scottish nationality was forged in the work of Blind Harry, composed in the 1470s, Tell’s founding text was Aegidius Tschudi’s Chronicon Helvetica, from the 1520s.144 As with Hermann, enough was known about both heroes to make them sufficiently real as to embody a national struggle for independence, yet they shared the same accommodating lack of historical evidence. Indeed, the myth of Switzerland’s national origins was sufficiently flexible to permit both sides in the Civil War of 1847 to draw upon it.145 More broadly, memories of William Tell provided a tangible point of unity for a nation defined by its linguistic, political and cultural diversity. The key for nineteenth-century Swiss nationality was to emphasise unity in diversity within a democratic framework, whilst at the same time appealing to continuity with the nation’s past, both in history and memory, set against the nurturing, symbolic backdrop of Switzerland’s landscape.146 As ever, it was the nature of the hero’s legacy for the present that defined his role. Collective memories of William Tell diverge from those of Wallace in that, whereas Wallace forged Scottish nationality and liberated his nation from the tyrant’s rule in one fell swoop, the myth of Tell saw him as the liberator but not necessarily the originator of Swiss nationality. Though rooted in a sequence of events that included Tell’s famous feat of archery, the origin element of the Swiss national tale looked instead to the Oath of Rütli, sworn 19 November 1307, as the moment when Swiss nationality first became a reality.147 Tell still had a role to play, of course: the Rütli Oath was sworn only a few weeks after Tell’s assassination of the Habsburg bailiff, Gessler, the first step on the road to Swiss national liberation. Tell’s and Wallace’s roles were broadly similar, yet one of the most revealing comparisons reaches to the roots of how cultural memory operates: the question over the historical truth of their existence. As outlined in Chapter 1, cultural memory may be partly distinct from history and historiography, yet both representations of the past draw upon each other, both operate within the frame of the nation, and both act to buttress a sense of nationality. Of particular significance for the commemoration of Tell and of Wallace was the relative importance placed on how much the provable existence of each hero mattered in comparison to the national truths embodied by his legacy. What was more important: the history or the memory? In Switzerland, the tension between the historiographical verities of the nation’s origins and its more mythic components sparked considerable argument, not simply over whether Tell was indeed real, but also concerning whether or not his historical truthfulness mattered. In general, the Swiss



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people came down firmly on the side of the myth: in 1860, an effigy of the Swiss antiquarian Joseph Eutych Kopp (1793–1866) was burned on Mount Rütli for daring to suggest that the legends of Tell and of Rütli were complete fantasy.148 In an attempt to assert a historiographically-grounded version of their national origins, Swiss historians in the last quarter of the nineteenth century promoted the Charter of Swiss Confederation from 1291 as the true origin of the Swiss nation instead of the more mythic struggle of 1307. Despite this, the power of memory prevailed – this more historically valid date was either rejected by the Swiss people in favour of their own collective memory, or was synthesised with memory to create an amended version of the past. Such a synthesis is evident later in the century when, in 1891, a national festival was held to commemorate the founding of the Swiss nation. The year was the 600th anniversary of 1291, which was the historians’ preference, yet the location for the festival was the Rütli meadow, scene of the oath swearing of 1307, a place more embedded in the collective memory of Switzerland’s struggle for liberty.149 Nineteenth-century Scots, on the other hand, were forever intent on emphasising that Wallace was a historical truth and, in so doing, occasionally resorted to comparison with his Swiss-national counterpart. With both Wallace and Tell occupying similar positions in the grand pantheon of national heroism, opportunities to connect or compare the two heroes were not lost. In Scotland, whenever Wallace was represented as the embodiment of transcendent national independence, or when one of the great battles of the Wars of Independence was celebrated, mention of Tell was seldom far away. At the ‘Annual Caledonian Festival’ held in Bradford in January 1844, a Mr James Sprunt ‘expatiated at considerable length’ in toasting ‘The memory of Sir William Wallace and the ancient Scottish heroes’. In closing, Mr Sprunt placed Wallace firmly in a pantheon of great heroes of civil and religious liberty: Can it be doubted that civil and religious liberty rests at this day upon a more solid basis, and has a more health and spirit-of-progress nature in consequence of the life and heroism of Wallace, of Scotland, Tell, of Switzerland, Luther, of Germany, and Washington, of America?150

Later in the century, as part of the inauguration of the new flagstaff at the Bannockburn Borestone in 1870, Colonel John Edward Geils, Laird of Dumbuck in Dunbartonshire and a member of the Dumbarton Lodge of Oddfellows, described Bannockburn as ‘one of the greatest battles in the history of the world’, comparable only with the Battle of Marathon. He then went on to describe Wallace as one of history’s ‘most beautiful, simple, unselfish and brave’ men, before adding, ‘Perhaps William Tell was the nearest approach to him, but some said that William Tell was a myth.’151 Geils’ pointed reference to the mythic nature of Tell’s achievements reveals

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the implicit hierarchy of cultural memory when shared across ­nationalities. By appealing to evidence that proved beyond doubt the existence of one’s own hero, commemoration might also prove the superiority of one’s nationality, yet no hero – even Wallace – was safe from undermining accusations of myth. We have already heard The Times describe Wallace as ‘the merest myth’ during the Lion and Typhon controversy. After the National Wallace Monument’s completion in 1869, an editorial in the Standard said, ‘It would be a task as thankless to endeavour to turn a Scotchman from his faith in Wallace as to demonstrate to a Switzer the baselessness of the William Tell myth.’152 Reporting on an attempt to raise a monument to Alfred the Great, the London Daily News referred to both Wallace and Tell as ‘mere heroes of romance’.153 Countering such accusations, the Scots consistently asserted the foolishness of claims that Wallace was anything other than a historic certainty. At a ‘Fruit Soiree’ in Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh, in March 1860, John Stuart Blackie – indefatigable defender of Scottish nationality – addressed the accusation of Wallace as myth by arguing, ‘They might as well say that John Knox was a myth; they might as well say that the Scottish nation was a myth, existing only in the imagination of dreaming philosophers’.154 One of the most notable references to William Tell occurred at a meeting held in Dundee in 1857 to promote the National Wallace Monument, as part of a lengthy address by the Free Churchman and political theorist Patrick Edward Dove (1815–73). Dove was a man of broad interests, whether physical, religious, philosophical or political: he was an enthusiastic sportsman and crack shot, the author of several philosophical works, a keen participant in a variety of radical political movements, including the NAVSR, and, for a time, the editor of the Free Church Witness and the Commonwealth. No less than John Stuart Blackie described Dove as combining ‘the manly directness of the man of action with the fine speculation of the man of thought’.155 Certainly, his public speeches make clear that Dove’s thinking on issues of nationality was notable for its originality and consistency. In a speech to the ‘Justice to Scotland’ meeting in Glasgow in December 1853 – held as part of the agitation of the NAVSR – Dove proposed a resolution in favour of increased parliamentary representation for Scotland, extending this argument to propose a form of administrative – not legislative – devolution, using the Presbyterian form of church government as his model. ‘We need self-administration’, he claimed, ‘for only by self-administration can we ever come to be what we ought to be – a united nation.’156 A popular public speaker, Dove delivered numerous lectures to the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, with subjects including Wallace and Bruce and ‘Wild Sports by Flood and Field’, as well as the Commonwealth and the Crusades.157 Though Dove was not as regular or as polemical a participant in commemorative events as his friend Blackie, when he did make an appearance his contributions were notable for their thoughtful distinctiveness:



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At the period when William Wallace fought his great battle of Scottish independence there was no such thing in history as a national war, except in Switzerland. And it is a curious thing that Switzerland has produced two great men, and only two – the one was John Calvin, who made their religion, and the other was William Tell, who founded the independence of their country. It is a very curious fact that John Calvin was a contemporary with one of our great men, John Knox, and that William Tell in Switzerland was contemporary with William Wallace in Scotland. (Hear, hear.)158

In openly connecting Scotland’s and Switzerland’s champions of civil and religious liberty, Dove deepened the correspondence between the two national heroes. It must be noted that such connections were much more overt when it came to commemorating the shared legacy of Dove’s other subjects, Knox and Calvin. The two Reformers had been assertively part of the same cause, companions and correspondents, whereas any connection between Wallace and Tell was historically tenuous, if thematically permissible. Despite the lack of any direct link, however, what mattered most of all was this thematic connection, parallel narratives not just of national liberty, but of liberty as a transcendent ideal of humanity. That is to say, references to William Tell in the commemorative rhetoric of William Wallace emphasise that national heroes such as Wallace derived some of their power from being part of – even a superior player in – a grander scheme of international liberty. EUROPEAN NATIONALISM By placing Wallace and Tell alongside other paragons of liberty whether ancient – the Spartan king Leonidas – or modern – George Washington – the Scots placed their hero at the very pinnacle of national and international libertarian struggles. This component of the memory of Wallace and Bruce appealed across political and cultural realms: by establishing and securing Scottish independence from an English tyrant, Wallace and Bruce had done more than simply free Scotland from alien oppression – they had rendered Scottish nationality a powerful symbol of liberty throughout the world. Such a component in the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce effectively argues against any claims that Scottishness in the nineteenth century was overtly inward-looking. At the unveiling of the Bruce statue on the Esplanade at Stirling, the Provost, William Christie (who appears to have enjoyed every opportunity to wax lyrical on the greatness of Scotland’s heroes), placed Bannockburn alongside the great battles of history: Who can tell what would have been the destiny of the world had that small but patriotic army not routed the Persian host upon the plains of Marathon and thus vindicated the independence of Greece? Who can tell what would have been the

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Similar comparisons with other paragons of liberty were inscribed on the monument to Wallace at Barnweill in Ayrshire: ‘From Greece, arose Leonidas, from Scotland, Wallace, and from America, Washington – names which shall remain through all time the Watchwords and Beacons of Liberty.’160 At the Bradford ‘Caledonian Festival’ meeting cited above, James Sprunt declared: Wallace, and such as Wallace, will take their stand upon a higher pedestal than that of nationality; they will, and they ought to be, elevated to the rank of world heroes – men who, though in their own day they fought for what was called liberty of country, fought in reality the battle of universal liberty.161

In this way, we return to Buchan’s Wallace statue at Dryburgh, with the Great Liberator acting as a beacon for those nationalities that had not been as fortunate as Scotland in permanently securing their nationality. Oppressed nationalities, struggling to reassert themselves against modern tyrants, were free to look to Scotland’s great national heroes for inspiration. This is evident from the 1840s onwards, as sympathy for European nationalists became one of the defining features of the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce, regardless of the class or politics of those involved. Without Wallace or Bruce, so the argument ran, Scotland too would be involved in the same nationalist battles. Faith in the benefits of Scottish nationality, and the benefits it conferred on Britishness, gave the Scots room to sympathise with those who did not enjoy its advantages. This further emphasises the providential unionism that was at the heart of nineteenthcentury Scottish nationality. Rather than seeing a resonance between continental nationalism and Scotland’s exploitation under the Union, Scottish nationality’s secure position within Britishness permitted sympathy with those oppressed nations lacking a history of national independence. At a meeting held in Edinburgh in 1849 to express support for the oppressed nationality of Hungary, the radical MP Charles Cowan said: There was no place more likely than the capital of Scotland to respond heartily to the call made on them to sympathise with the persecuted and cruelly-treated subjects of Hungary. Their forefathers, in former days, had nobly vindicated their national existence in the face of fearful odds. He [Cowan] need only refer in proof to the names – now household words – of Bruce and Wallace who, five hundred years ago, in the face of English power and English tyranny, maintained successfully the national existence of Scotland.162

At the 1857 National Wallace Monument movement meeting in Dundee cited earlier, Patrick Edward Dove expressed how turmoil across Europe



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would have been avoided had those suffering nations enjoyed the benefits of a Wallace: If Poland had had a William Wallace – if Italy had had a William Wallace – if Hungary had had a William Wallace – we should hear nothing at all about their oppressions and of their Neapolitan dungeons, and of men being chained in stone prisons for their free thoughts – (cheers) – we should hear nothing of that, because if they had had a William Wallace they would have had an independent country, and been able to defend themselves – (cheers) – but as they had not a William Wallace, and have not an independent country, they will have their Oliver Cromwells, and their revolutions some of these days – (hear, hear) – because they had not, as Scotland had, a man who pledged his life, and his honour, and his soul, and all that he had for his patriotism and his native land. (Cheers.)163

Five years later, at the laying of the Monument’s foundation stone, James Dodds declared that had it not been for Wallace’s victory, and the resultant establishment of Scottish liberties, the Scots ‘would have been engaged in the same awful and terrible contest in which Poland, Italy and Hungary are engaged at this time’. We have already encountered Dodds in the Introduction, an immensely popular authority on the Covenanters and their place in the historic Scottish narrative of civil and religious liberty – his Lays of the Covenanters, published in 1861, went through several editions. Appointed as Secretary to its London Committee, Dodds was highly favoured by the promoters of the National Wallace Monument as an orator suited to the necessary moderation of the monument movement, speaking not only at Ayr, but at meetings held in Falkirk, Glasgow, Dunfermline, Dumfries and ‘other important towns’.164 Dodds stood firmly in the centre-ground of Scottish nationality, praising Scotland’s national heroes for their providential role in forging a union of equals, yet also for delivering Scotland from the need for nationalist struggle. His public speeches are replete with this sentiment. At the banquet held following the foundation-stone ceremony of the National Wallace Monument in 1861, Dodds was given the task of toasting ‘Scottish Nationality’. Wallace, Dodds proclaimed, ‘belonged to the privileged few who found or save nations, and whom posterity venerate with unmingled and undivided homage’, and was ‘the highest and purest symbol of Scottish nationality’. Dodds closed his toast by stating: Our nationality is but another guarantee for the peace and security of the whole Empire. Our love of freedom and independence is now a strength not a weakness to England … If the foot of the foe shall never be planted on the grey rocks of our Abbey Craig, neither, so long as we have breath to draw, or blood to shed, shall it ever be planted on the white cliffs of Dover.165

Such opinions regarding the Scots’ love of freedom and independence lay at the heart of the inter-nationality of memories of Wallace. Dodds’

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nationality was assertive, but seldom radical, consistently articulating the sympathy of mid-Victorian society for the aims of continental ­nationalists, particularly Hungarian, Polish and Italian. As well as being a friend of Thomas Carlyle and of Leigh Hunt, Dodds also befriended Lajos Kossuth during the Hungarian’s exile in London, and wrote a glowing profile of him in one of a series of sketches of ‘eminent characters’ for the Scotsman newspaper. Shortly after the meeting to launch the National Wallace Monument movement in June 1856, Kossuth himself gave a lecture on the Austrian Concordat in Stirling. The evening’s speeches were replete with comparisons between Kossuth and Wallace, and contrasts between the freedom from oppression won at Stirling Bridge and the ongoing struggle in Hungary, not least those made by Kossuth himself: May that liberty dwell with you to the consummation of time, is my prayer, and may the monument you are about to raise to the noblest of your national heroes – (cheers) – may that monument … be a monitor of lasting inspiration to Scotland. (Loud and prolonged cheering.) … Two things at least I can claim to have in common with your William Wallace – that of having struggled for national ­independence – (cheers) – and that of being unfortunate.166

Those attempting to raise funds for the National Wallace Monument movement were not afraid to closely align the monument movement with European nationalism. This was particularly so between the laying of the foundation stone in 1861 and the monument’s completion in 1869, when the movement’s principal promoters tended towards a more radical reading of Scottish nationality. During this period, the two leading lights of the monument movement were William Burns, who had taken on the role of Secretary after the resignation of Charles Rogers, and John McAdam, now the Convener. McAdam was a committed political reformer and an ‘enthusiastic propagandist’ for the nationalist movements in Poland, Hungary and Italy, described by T. C. Smout as having possessed ‘a radical thirst for liberty, a republicanism, an anti-clericalism and even a nationalism that the ruling powers in Britain might well feel happy was directed to affairs outside of Scotland’.167 McAdam wrote to Kossuth, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Louis Blanc, Karl Blind and Giuseppe Mazzini in 1868, asking them to send him ‘a few lines’ on the subject of Wallace and the monument that might then be framed and placed on display, with the expectation that ‘thousands would travel far to see the handwriting of men so admired and loved’.168 The frame itself was to be made from fragments of the ‘Wallace Oak of Elderslie’. This would clearly position the words of modern nationalists within the frame of Scotland’s historic national hero, combining past and present, memory and modernity, in one relic of the ‘testimony borne by a free people’ in aid of the liberty of nations.169 All these grand men of European nationalism appear to have been happy to oblige. Karl Blind referred to the name of Wallace as ‘a symbol of



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virtue and of noble devotion’, placing him alongside William Tell, while Mazzini described him as ‘one amongst the high prophets of nationality to us all’. Writing from Caprera, Garibaldi said Wallace ‘sheds as bright a glory upon his valorous nation as ever was shed upon their country by the greatest men of Greece and Rome’.170 Though all of McAdam’s correspondents enthusiastically subscribed to the Wallace myth of the nineteenth-century European nationalists, Garibaldi was most frequently positioned as a modern counterpart to Scotland’s Great Liberator. From his humble beginnings, through exile, to his daring and highly successful exploits on the battlefield in the name of Italian unification, Garibaldi was every inch the romantic hero of nationality. Though there was considerable enthusiasm across Great Britain for Garibaldi’s campaign, support was proportionately greater in Scotland than elsewhere. Glasgow and Edinburgh combined were responsible for more than a quarter of the funds raised in Britain to support the Italian nationalist cause, Glasgow factory workers worked without pay to make munitions, and over 500 volunteers sailed to Italy to participate in the struggle.171 One of the motivations for so many men to leave their homes and fight in Italy was undoubtedly to give Italians the benefit of a nationality such as Scotland possessed, and in Garibaldi they saw a modern Wallace who could stand up to the oppressor.172A lecture tour planned for Garibaldi’s visit to Britain in 1863 had to be called off, but not before 200,000 tickets were sold.173 Nor was admiration for Garibaldi as the new Wallace restricted to working men. At Aberdeen in 1888, the Marquis of Lorne argued that Garibaldi: Also began with mere handfuls of men the task of the liberation of his land … Both of these men were patriots who carved themselves a place by their good swords, so that they were able to gather around them the bolder spirits of their day, and eventually command success.174

In a lengthy address, delivered to a packed house in Dundee in September 1862 following Garibaldi’s defeat at the Battle of Aspromonte, the Revd George Gilfillan (1813–78) painted a markedly high-flown portrait of the Italian Nationalist hero.175 In an emotional and dramatic speech of considerable length, Gilfillan, a United Presbyterian minister and a popular and prolific writer on both theological subjects and poetry, described Garibaldi as: The Washington Wallace of his country, because I thought he combined the cool firmness, the ‘silent magnanimity,’ the incapacity of knowing when to be beat, the power of deriving new strength from difficulty, victory from defeat, and light from obscuration, which distinguished the one, with the impetuous valour, the hardy endurance, the omnipotent power over his soldiers, the personal strength, the fertile stratagem, the ardent love of country, the sublime simplicity, and the blended force and gentleness of character, which distinguished the other.176

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Comparisons between Wallace and heroes of European nationalism did not necessarily default to the more dramatic form of nationalist endeavour embodied by Garibaldi. For example, the Earl of Rosebery emphasised his own moderate Scottish nationality when he proclaimed that the Great Man ‘is the same though you find it under different names and different forms in different ages. It is the same whether you call it Caesar or Luther or Washington or Mirabeau or Cavour.’177 These last two names are particularly significant: the Comte de Mirabeau was a moderate French revolutionary who had pressed for a form of constitutional monarchy, while the Conte di Cavour was the Piedmontese political fixer of Italian unification, the moderate, diplomatic counterpart to the romantic militarism of Garibaldi. Evidently, Rosebery preferred to place Wallace in a pantheon of statesmen and politicians not unlike himself, avoiding excessive enthusiasm. Such a comparison did not escape comment from the press, with the Glasgow Herald questioning the comparison between Wallace and Cavour: ‘some will contend that among Italian patriots Garibaldi recalls Wallace more readily than Cavour.’178 THE TROUBLE WITH IRELAND European nationalism offered the opportunity for all aspects of Scottish society to use the commemoration of Wallace as a means to express their sympathy with oppressed nationalities. However, not all suffering nationalities were suitable subjects for inspiration. Within the context of commemorative rhetoric, Irish nationality did not call forth the same level of sympathy as the nationalities of Hungary, Poland or Italy. Indeed, looking across the Irish Sea, nineteenth-century Scots found the most dangerous example of what Scotland might have been had it not been for Wallace and Bruce. Ireland was consistently held up as the most destructive example of a nationality undermined by the lack of a great national hero to focus and maintain its sense of national self. By ensuring Scotland’s national equality with England, Wallace and Bruce had rendered 1707 a partnership; without a Wallace or Bruce, 1800 saw the greater nation overcoming the lesser, with harmful results. The principal distinction between the representation of Ireland and that of other suppressed nationalities in this context was not so much that the Irish suffered under the yoke of English tyranny, but that they were instead a thorn in the side of the Empire, a troublesome element. In his address at the Bradford Caledonian Festival, James Sprunt summarised the argument succinctly: If Scotland had not Wallace that country might at this day have been the counterpart of Ireland – linked to England only by the claim that links the conquered country to its conqueror, brooding over the wrongs of seven centuries.179



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Some thirty years later, at the inauguration of Stirling’s statue of Robert Bruce, Charles Rogers claimed: To the English invader Ireland succumbed, and in her wrecked nationality was extinguished the flame of her ancient culture. In Ireland the spirit of discontent slumbers still, ready at the call of the demagogue to burst into anarchy even in the senate house.180

From an equally conservative position, at the banquet held in Stirling following the laying of the foundation stone of the National Wallace Monument in 1861, Sheriff Archibald Alison was given the task of toasting the immortal memory of Wallace. Keen that his speech should not pander to the ‘intensely national and highly excited’ audience, Alison made sure to moderate his language, and focused the majority of his address on a celebration of Scotland’s imperial partnership with England.181 Though avoiding the term ‘nationality’, Sheriff Alison proclaimed that ‘if the sword of Wallace and Bruce had not saved [Scotland] from subjugation – she would have been to England what Poland is to Russia, what Hungary is to Austria, what Ireland, till within these few years, has been to England’.182 Alison made no mention as to whether the status of Poland, Hungary, or Ireland was a bad thing for their more powerful neighbours, nor did he express sympathy for the oppressed, leaving his listeners to draw their own conclusions. This sort of mediation was relatively uncommon. More often than not, Ireland was unambiguously the irritant, and only occasionally the suffering victim. At the other end of the political, cultural and ecclesiastical spectrum from Sheriff Alison, the Revd David Macrae took a more sympathetic approach at Bannockburn in 1889. Having made his claim that ‘nationality is to a nation what personality is to a man’, Macrae went on to refer to England’s ‘great blunder’ in respect of Ireland: What did she attempt to do there? To extinguish Irish patriotism, and crush out the Irish national spirit. What did she succeed in doing? She has only succeeded in turning a noble people that might have been our friends into our enemies, and turning Ireland, which might have been a buttress to our Empire, into its weakness and its peril.183

In his more radically national reading of the Irish situation, Macrae followed the familiar narrative of Wallace saving Scotland from English domination, yet firmly argued that this was England’s preferred modus operandi. Whether in the thirteenth or the nineteenth century, it was necessary to fight to retain one’s nationality when threatened by ‘centralisation’ and ‘anglification’.184 MacRae represents a surge in the much more radicalised version of Scottish cultural memory, one we will return to in a later chapter, yet even in the closing years of the nineteenth century the moderate view of Wallace

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and Bruce still prevailed. The Scottish – and British – press was much more likely to vocally approve of the statements of a liberal-imperialist like Rosebery than those of an ardent home-ruler like David Macrae. On the whole, Scottish nationality held close to the idea of an ongoing narrative of providential unionism, with William Wallace at its starting point. Wallace had initiated the process of forging the Scottish nation in the fires of Stirling Bridge that Bruce would complete at Bannockburn. Both heroes were remembered in similar, often interchangeable terms. Wallace’s accommodating historical emptiness, combined with his position as man of the people, may have edged him out in front as the Scottish paragon of national independence alongside his Swiss counterpart, William Tell, yet more often than not the terms in which Wallace and Bruce were commemorated were effectively the same. The dominant reading of the Wars of Independence sought to ensure that a highly moderated and inoffensive memory of the conflict dominated, a viewpoint symbolised by the National Wallace Monument. Even so, Wallace was recognised by European nationalists as a symbol of independent nationality, just as the Scots gave thanks that he had spared their nation from becoming embroiled in the ordeals of oppressed nationality. Possession of this clear and sustained sense of their own nationality permitted the Scots to have sympathy for the Italians, the Hungarians and the Poles. For those engaged in commemorating these medieval heroes, Wallace had ensured that Scotland’s imperial partnership with England made it one of Europe’s foremost historic nationalities. NOTES 1 For a survey of the uses and abuses of William Wallace see Edward J. Cowan (ed.), The Wallace Book (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) and Graeme Morton, ‘The Most Efficacious Patriot: The Heritage of William Wallace in Nineteenthcentury Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review, vol. 77, no. 204, October 1998. 2 Morton, ‘Efficacious Patriot’. Fiona Watson, ‘Sir William Wallace: What We Do – and Don’t – Know’, in Cowan, The Wallace Book, pp. 26–7. 3 The Pittsburg Press, 18 August 1914. 4 Finlay, ‘Heroes, Myths and Anniversaires’, p. 116. 5 ‘The Bruce Statue at Lochmaben’, Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser, 17 September 1879. 6 Michael Penman, ‘Robert Bruce’s Bones: Reputations, Politics and Identities in Nineteenth-Century Scotland’, International Review of Scottish Studies, no. 34, 2009, pp. 31–7. 7 William Burns, The Scottish War of Independence: Its Antecedents and Effects, vol. 2 (Reeves & Turner, 1875), p. 519. 8 Ibid. 9 Finlay, ‘Controlling the Past’, pp. 131–2. 10 Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (Chapman & Hall, 1870), p. 16.



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11 Finlay, ‘Controlling the Past’, pp. 133–5. 12 Glasgow Chronicle, 28 June 1814. 13 ‘Demonstration at the Borestone’, Stirling Journal and Advertiser, 1 July 1887. 14 ‘The Marquis of Lorne in Aberdeen’, Glasgow Herald, 30 June 1888. 15 The Borestone and Field of Bannockburn (n.p., 1889), p. 27. 16 ‘To the Editor of the Caledonian Mercury’, Caledonian Mercury, 4 May 1818. 17 ‘Demonstration at the Borestone’, Stirling Journal and Advertiser, 1 July 1887. 18 R. G. Cant, ‘David Steuart Erskine, 11 Earl of Buchan: Founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland’, in A. S. Bell (ed.), The Scottish Antiquarian Tradition: Essays to Mark the Bicentenary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and its Museum, 1780–1980 (John Donald, 1981), pp. 8, 20–1. Morton, ‘Efficacious Patriot’, p. 242. 19 L. P. Esienhart, ‘Walter Minto and the Earl of Buchan’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 94, no. 3, 1950. 20 Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past, pp. 239–40. 21 Charles Rogers, Monuments and Monumental Inscriptions in Scotland, vol. I (Grampian Club, 1871), p. 234. For a survey of portraits of Wallace contemporaneous with the National Wallace Monument movement, see David Laing, ‘A Few Remarks on the Portraits of Sir William Wallace’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 2, 1854–1857, p. 310. 22 ‘Thomsons’s Birthday’, Caledonian Mercury, 29 September 1814. See also Linas Eriksonas, National Heroes and National Identities: Scotland, Norway and Lithuania (PIE-Peter Lang, 2004), p. 139. 23 David Erskine, Annals and antiquities of Dryburgh and other places on the Tweed (n.p., 1828), p. 170. 24 Quoted in, Morton, ‘Efficacious Patriot’, p. 231. 25 Penman, ‘Bruce’s Bones’, pp. 21–2. 26 Ibid., pp. 22–33. 27 P Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline, vol. I (1841), pp. 140–1. ‘King Robert Bruce: Re-internment of the Body of King Robert Bruce, Dunfermline, Nov. 5’, The Times, 12 November 1819. Penman, ‘Bones’, p. 33. 28 W. P. Courtney, ‘Shepherd, Sir Samuel (1760–1840)’, rev. Robert Shiels, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/25338 (accessed 7 February 2013). 29 Penman, ‘Bruce’s Bones’, pp. 33–4. 30 The Times, 12 November 1819. 31 Penman, ‘Bruce’s Bones’, p. 38. 32 Paul Lawrence, ‘Gregory, James (1753–1821)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/11466 (accessed 7 February 2013). 33 Chalmers, Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline, p. 146. 34 Letter from ‘Medicus’, Stirling Journal, 15 July 1830. 35 Ibid. 36 Charles Rogers, Book of Wallace (Grampian Club, 1889), pp. 254–5. Colin Kidd,

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‘The English Cult of Wallace and the Blending of Nineteenth-Century Britain’, in Cowan, Wallace Book, p. 144. 37 Rogers, Book of Wallace, p. 257. ‘Proposed Memorial to Wallace and Bruce in Edinburgh’, Scotsman, 12 February 1879. 38 ‘Wallace – A Colossal Group by Patric Park’, Scotsman, 30 March 1850. 39 ‘Mr Patric Park’s Colossal Statue of Wallace’, Scotsman, 17 July 1850. 40 Scotsman, 30 March 1850; Revised Report of the Speeches Delivered at The Second Grand Soiree of the Glasgow Athenaeum, Held in the City Hall, on Tuesday, 28th January, 1851 (n.p., 1851), p. 29. 41 Ibid. 42 Yule, P., Traditions &c. Respecting Sir William Wallace, by a Former Subscriber for a Wallace Monument (n.p., 1856), p. 16. Morton, ‘Efficacious Patriot’, p. 232; see also, J. M. Gray, ‘Park, Patric (1811–1855)’, rev. Diane King, ODNB. 43 Scotsman, 2 June 1852. 44 ‘The Wallace and Bruce Memorial, Edinburgh’, The Builder, vol. 43, 16 September 1882, p. 382. 45 ‘The Wallace and Bruce Statues, Edinburgh’, The Builder, vol. 43, 2 December 1882, p. 733. 46 Letter from John Wilson, Scotsman, 29 June 1907. Letter from A. S., Scotsman, 14 May 1912. ‘A.S.’s’ letter states that the fund had reached £4,144, 2s. 47 Morton, Unionist-Nationalism, pp. 183–4. 48 Album Scoticarum Rerum (Mitchell Library, #B151243). 49 Mary Ellen Brown, William Motherwell’s Cultural Politics (University Press of Kentucky), pp. 36–7. 50 Hamish Whyte, ‘Motherwell, William (1797–1835)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/1941 9 (accessed 28 January 2013). 51 Irene Maver, Glasgow (Edinburgh University Press, 2000), pp. 64–5. 52 Greenock Advertiser, 12 March 1819. 53 Glasgow Herald, 12 March 1819. 54 Glasgow Herald, 25 March 1853. Charles Rogers, Monuments and Monumental Inscriptions in Scotland, vol. I (Grampian Club, 1871), p. 472. See also ‘Some Notices of the Monument Proposed to be Erected to Wallace in Glasgow in 1818’, Glasgow Herald, 25 March 1853. 55 Gordon Pentland, Radicalism, Reform and National Identity in Scotland, 1820– 1833 (Boydell Press, 2008), p. 138. 56 Brown, William Motherwell’s Cultural Politics, p. 34. 57 Pro-Patria, ‘Monument to Sir William Wallace’, Ayrshire Advertiser, 14 December 1854. 58 ‘Proposed Monument to Wallace and Bruce’, Scotsman, 18 December 1844. 59 Borestone and the Field of Bannockburn, p. 8; ‘At Bannockburn’, North British Daily Mail, 27 June 1889. The larger of the flags bore a lion rampant and measured 26ft by 18ft. It was, purportedly, the largest flag in the world at that time. For a brief biography of Yellowlees see W. Drysdale, Old Faces, Old Places, and Old Stories of Stirling (n.p., 1898).



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60 The argument over who should take credit for initiating the National Wallace Monument movement, and for the selection of the Abbey Craig, is a book in itself. See Charles Rogers to Colin Rae-Brown, reprinted in Scotsman, 8 August, 1892. Rogers, Autobiography, pp. 128–9. ‘Rogers vs Dick’, Scotsman, 21 July 1863. Rogers, Book of Wallace, pp. 259–60; ‘The National Wallace Monument’, Scotsman, 2 August 1892. 61 Coleman, ‘Unionist-Nationalism in Stone?’, pp. 160–2. 62 ‘Monument to Sir William Wallace on the Abbey Craig: Preliminary Meeting’, Stirling Journal, 16 May 1856. 63 Rogers, Book of Wallace; pp. 273. 64 Scotsman, 25 June 1856. 65 Ibid. 66 ‘Death of Sir John Melville’, Scotsman, 7 May 1860. Anon., The Lord Provosts of Edinburgh (n.p., 1932), p. 124. 67 Morton, Unionist-Nationalism, p. 180. 68 Scotsman, 25 June 1856. 69 Ibid. 70 For examples of other meetings in support of the National Wallace Monument, see ‘The Wallace Monument’, Ayr Observer and Galloway Chronicle, 7 October 1856. ‘National Monument to Wallace’, North British Daily Mail, 24 April 1857. Minute Book of the Glasgow Wallace Committee, Burns Papers (Mitchell Library #B115061). 71 Henry Paton, ‘Rogers, Charles (1825–1890)’, rev. J. H. Burns, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/23968 (accessed 10 February 2013). J. Malcolm Allan, ‘Who Was Charles Rogers?’, Forth Valley Naturalist and Historian, vol. 13, 1990. 72 Coleman, ‘Unionist-Nationalism in Stone?’ pp. 161–2. 73 ‘The Designs for the Wallace Monument: Decision of the Committee’, Scotsman, 3 February 1859, 11 February 1859. 74 ‘National Wallace Monument: Opinions of the Press Respecting Mr Noël Paton’s Design’, Stirling Observer, 24 February 1859. 75 Glasgow Herald, 14 February 1859. North British Daily Mail, 4 March 1859. 76 ‘Royal Scottish Academy Exhibition’, Scotsman, 17 February 1859. 77 ‘The Wallace Monument’, The Times, 14 February 1859. 78 Coleman, ‘Unionist-Nationalism in Stone?’, pp. 163–4. 79 ‘Primrose, Archibald Philip, Fifth Earl of Rosebery, 1847–1929’, DNB. Richard Finlay, A Partnership for Good? Scottish Politics and the Union Since 1880 (John Donald, 1997), p. 50. 80 Blair Worden, Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (Allen Lane, 2001), pp. 309–14. 81 Scotsman, 14 September 1897. The Glasgow Herald’s transcription of the speech quotes Rosebery as saying ‘realism’ rather than ‘reaction’. Glasgow Herald, 14 September 1897. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid.

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84 Scotsman, 14 September 1897. 85 Quoted in ‘Press Opinions on Rosebery’s Speech at the 600th Anniversary of Stirling Bridge’, Stirling Journal, 17 September 1897. 86 The Standard, 14 September 1897. 87 Quoted in ‘To-day’s Press Opinions on Lord Rosebery’s Speech’, Glasgow Evening Citizen, 14 September 1897. 88 The Times, 14 September 1897. 89 Michael Fry, Patronage and Principle: a Political History of Modern Scotland (Aberdeen University Press, 1987), pp. 106–7, 114. I. G. C. Hutchison, A Political History of Scotland, 1832–1914: Parties, Elections and Issues (John Donald, 1986), pp. 162–5. 90 H. G. Hanham, Scottish Nationalism (Faber, 1969), p. 119. Fry, Patronage and Principle, p. 208. 91 Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, pp. 60–1. Finlay, Partnership for Good, p. 44. 92 Quoted in Finlay, Partnership for Good, p. 45. Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, pp. 119–20. 93 Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, pp. 82–3. Finlay, Partnership for Good, pp. 42–3. 94 H. G. Hanham, ‘Mid-Century Scottish Nationalism: Romantic and Radical’, in R. Robson (ed.), Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain: Essays in honour of George Kitson Clark (Bell, 1967), pp. 172–3. For examples of Steill’s ‘nationalism’, see John Steill, Scotland for the Scotch; or reasons for Irish repeal; by a Scot of the old school (n.p., 1848). 95 Rogers, Book of Wallace, vol. II, p. 258. Aberdeen Journal, 30 June 1888. 96 P. B. Waite, ‘Campbell, John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland, Marquess of Lorne and Ninth Duke of Argyll (1845–1914)’, ODNB. 97 Ibid. 98 ‘The Marquis of Lorne in Aberdeen, The Wallace Statue’, Aberdeen Journal, 30 June 1888. 99 North British Daily Mail, 25 June 1887. Glasgow Herald, 25 June 1887. 100 K. D. Reynolds, ‘Stuart, John Patrick Crichton – Third Marquess of Bute (1847–1900)’, in H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, ed. Lawrence Goldman, October 2006, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26722 (accessed 28 November 2013). 101 Kendle, Ireland and the Federal Solution, p. 62. 102 Marquess of Bute to the Earl of Rosebery, 3 November 1881, quoted in Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, p. 84. 103 North British Daily Mail, 25 June 1887. Glasgow Herald, 25 June 1887. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Scotsman, 27 June 1887. 107 Glasgow Herald, 27 June 1887. 108 Ibid. 109 The Borestone and the Field of Bannockburn, with Speeches by Professor Blackie and Rev. David Macrae, 3rd edn (n.p., 1889).



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110 Kendle, Ireland and the Federal Solution, p. 66. 111 Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, pp. 40, 119. 112 ‘Nationality in Culture and Education’, Glasgow Herald, 12 February 1887. 113 The Times, 4 December 1856. 114 The Times, 1 November 1856. 115 ‘National Wallace Monument’, Scotsman, 29 November 1856. 116 Borestone and the Field of Bannockburn, pp. 7–8. 117 Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, pp. 126–8. See also ‘Death of Rev. David Macrae’, Glasgow Herald, 16 May 1907. 118 Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, pp. 127. 119 G. L. Mosse, The Nationalisation of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich (H. Fertig, 1975). 120 Patricia Mazon, ‘Germania Triumphant: the Neiderwald National Monument and the Liberal Moment in Imperial Germany, German History, vol. 18, no. 2, 2000. 121 For an outline of development of the Hermann myth see H. W. Benario, ‘Arminius into Hermann: History into Legend’, Greece and Rome, vol. 51, no. 1, April 2004. Koshar, From Monuments to Traces, pp. 36–7. 122 Koshar, From Monuments to Traces, pp. 19, 37. Leerssen, National Thought in Europe, pp. 42–4. 123 Benario, ‘Arminius’, p. 85. 124 Leerssen, National Thought in Europe, p. 119. 125 Mosse, Nationalisation of the Masses, pp. 58–60. 126 Ibid., pp. 60–1. Koshar, Monuments to Traces, p. 36. If the records of visitor numbers are anything to go by, both monuments were equally popular: the Hermannsdenkmal received 20,500 visitors in 1895, and 41,000 in 1909; the National Wallace Monument saw an average of 29,000 visitors per annum between 1897 and 1901, falling to 22,111 in 1904–5. K. Belgum, ‘Displaying the Nation: A View of Nineteenth-Century Monuments through a Popular Magazine’, Central European History, vol. 26, no. 4, 1993, p. 458. Morton, ‘Efficacious Patriot’, pp. 246–7. 127 Stefan Berger, ‘Germany: Ethnic Nationalism par excellence?’, in T. Baycroft and M. Hewitson (eds), What Is a Nation? Europe 1789–1914 (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 50. 128 Berger, ‘Germany’, p. 50. 129 Koshar, From Monuments to Traces, p. 37. 130 Michael Dietler, ‘“Our Ancestors the Gauls”: Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe’, American Anthropologist, vol. 96, no. 3, 1994, pp. 590–1. 131 Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (Yale University Press, 1994), p. 113. 132 William Cohen, ‘Symbols of Power: Statues in Nineteenth-century Provincial France’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 31, no. 3, 1989, pp. 492–4. Gildea, Past in French History, p. 341. 133 K. Pomian, ‘Franks and Gauls’, in Nora, Realms of Memory, p. 55. Dietler, ‘Celtic Identity’, p. 587.

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134 Dietler, ‘Celtic Identity’, pp. 588–9. 135 Ibid., pp. 589–90. 136 Michael Dietler, ‘A Tale of Three Sites: The Monumentalisation of Celtic Oppida and the Politics of Collective Memory and Identity’, World Archaeology, vol. 30, no. 1, 1998, p. 76. 137 Dietler, ‘A Tale of Three Sites’ p. 77. 138 Dietler, ‘Celtic Identity’, p. 590. 139 Maurice Agulhon, ‘Politics, Images, and Symbols in Post-Revolutionary France’, in Sean Willentz (ed.), Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics since the Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), pp. 186–7. 140 Gildea, The Past in French History, pp. 154–7. Michel Winock, ‘Joan of Arc’, in Nora, Realms of Memory, p. 449. 141 Cohen, ‘Symbols of Power’, p. 506. Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism (Penguin, 1981), pp. 252–6. 142 Quoted in Warner, Joan of Arc, p. 253. 143 Winock, ‘Joan of Arc’, p. 455. Gildea, The Past in French History, p. 155. 144 Oliver Zimmer, ‘Competing Memories of the Nation: Liberal Historians and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Past 1870–1900’, Past and Present, no. 168, 2000, pp. 203–4. 145 Zimmer, ‘Competing Memories’, p. 209. 146 Oliver Zimmer, ‘Switzerland’, in Baycroft and Hewitson, What Is a Nation?, pp. 105–7. Regina Bendix, ‘National Sentiment in the Enactment and Discourse of Swiss Political Ritual’, American Ethnologist, vol. 19, no. 4, 1992, p. 783. 147 Zimmer, ‘Competing Memories’, p. 203. 148 Alan Dundes, ‘The 1991 Archer Taylor Memorial Lecture: The Apple-Shot: Interpreting the Legend of William Tell’, Western Folklore, vol. 50, no. 4, 1991, p. 330. Zimmer, ‘Competing Memories’, pp. 210–11. 149 Zimmer, ‘Competing Memories’, pp. 220–2. 150 ‘Annual Caledonian Festival’, The Bradford Observer, and Halifax, Huddersfield, and Keighley Reporter, 18 January 1844. 151 ‘Inauguration of the Flagstaff at the Field of Bannockburn’, North British Daily Mail, 27 June 1870. 152 The Standard, 14 September 1869. 153 London Daily News, 19 March 1898. 154 Caledonian Mercury, 1 March 1860. 155 Anon., ‘Dove, Patrick Edward (1815–1873)’, rev. J. Cunliffe: ODNB; ‘The Late Patrick Edward Dove’, Scotsman, 1 May 1873. 156 ‘“Justice to Scotland” – Meeting in Glasgow’, Scotsman, 17 December 1853. 157 Scotsman, 1 May 1873. Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, p. 81. 158 ‘National Wallace Monument Meeting’, Dundee Courier, 7 January 1857. 159 Stirling Observer, 29 November 1877. 160 The Wallace Monument, Barnweill, Ayrshire (n.p., 1859), p. 8. 161 Bradford Observer,18 January 1844. 162 ‘Sympathy with the Hungarians’, Caledonian Mercury, 9 August 1849. 163 Dundee Courier, 7 January 1857.



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164 James Dodds, Lays of the Covenanters, with a memoir of the Author by the Rev James Dodds, Dunbar (Edmonston and Douglas, 1880), pp. 92–3. 165 Quoted in Dodds, Lays of the Covenanters, p. 105. 166 ‘Arrival of Kossuth, and the Meeting in John St Church’, Mitchell Library Burns Papers, #B115063. 167 Janet Fyfe (ed.), Autobiography of John McAdam, 1806–1883 (Scottish History Society, 1980), pp. iv–x, xviii–xxi. T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People: 1830–1950 (Collins, 1986), pp. 244–5. 168 Fyfe, John McAdam, p. 174. 169 Ibid., p. 175. Smout, Century, pp. 244–5. 170 ‘The National Wallace Monument’, Glasgow Herald, 1887. 171 Fyfe, ‘Scottish Volunteers with Garibaldi’, pp. 168, 179. 172 Ibid., pp. 180–1. 173 Smout, Century, p. 245. 174 Glasgow Herald, 30 June 1888. 175 Raymond N. MacKenzie, ‘Gilfillan, George (1813–1878)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/10725 (accessed 3 March 2013). 176 ‘The Rev George Gilfillan on Garibaldi’, Dundee Courier and Argus, 8 September 1862. 177 Ibid. 178 Glasgow Herald, 14 September 1897. 179 The Bradford Observer, and Halifax, Huddersfield, and Keighley Reporter, 18 January 1844. 180 ‘Inauguration of the Bruce Monument’, Stirling Observer, 29 November 1877. 181 Archibald Alison, Some Account of My Life and Writings: an Autobiography, vol. II (Blackwood, 1883), p. 317. 182 Scotsman, 25 June 1861. 183 Borestone and the Field of Bannockburn 1889, p. 27. 184 Ibid., p. 25.

Chapter 4 ‘The Highest Position in the Civilised World’: Commemorating John Knox and the Second Reformation JOHN KNOX: NATIONAL HERO The providential-unionist interpretation of the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce might seem unusual in the early twenty-first century, yet few would argue that these patriot heroes are unworthy of a prominent place in the nation’s collective memory. Seen from the perspective of modern Scottish nationalism, the unionist element of the Victorian Wallace is selfevidently ‘wrong’, yet even the most ardent nationalist would agree that nineteenth-century Scots were quite correct to call upon Wallace as one of the founders of Scottish nationality. Wallace, Bruce, Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn still matter; their significance has endured. John Knox is different. Whereas Wallace remains a selfless patriot, sacrificing all for his country’s freedom, more often than not we see John Knox as almost single-handedly ruining Scotland. Sombre, humourless and narrowminded, Knox turned the nation away from a flowering renaissance culture in favour of a doom-mongering Calvinism, obsessed with dull sobriety, petty morality and pious money-grubbing. In the Prologue to his 2001 account of the Reformer’s life titled John Knox: Democrat, Roderick Graham suggests that the modern Scottish view of Knox is of a ‘ranting, vain, dogmatic misogynist’.1 This is by no means a recent reading of the Great Reformer. In his biography of Knox from 1929, Edwin Muir assessed the influence of Knox on Scotland, citing one element of the Reformer’s legacy, the Kirk Session, as having introduced ‘a sordid and general tyranny’. While Knox’s Calvinism ‘stiffened the independent political spirit of the people’, Muir claimed it also ‘imposed a spiritual and moral tyranny’.2 That Muir should emphasise forms of tyranny as a feature of Knox’s legacy emphasises how rapidly memories of the Great Reformer could change. Compare Muir’s depiction of a Calvinist tyrant with the picture painted by the former Scottish Secretary and prominent Established Churchman, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, at the unveiling of the statue to Knox in St Giles’ Cathedral some twenty-five years earlier: He stood out manfully for pure religion, for personal liberty, and for a high standard of general education. In other words, he was not only a great ecclesiastic, but



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as had gone hand in hand with that title in the case of other ecclesiastics, he was also a great statesman.3

In the same way that the twenty-first-century view of Wallace as a de facto advocate of Scottish political independence would have been jarring for the majority of nineteenth-century Scots, representing the ‘Great Reformer’ as anything other than a paragon of civil and religious liberty would have been profoundly shocking. Simply put, Knox occupied a position alongside Wallace and Robert Burns as one of Scotland’s greatest national heroes, every bit as crucial to Scottish nationality as the Great Liberator and the Ploughman Poet. Wherever the Scots went, so Knox was carried along. A meeting of the ‘Burns Anniversary Association’ in the Mozart Hall on Broadway, New York, in 1858 affirmed that Robert Burns and John Knox were the only ‘great kings’ Scotland had ever had.4 On St Andrew’s Day 1888, the Chairman of the Annual Meeting of the Queensland Caledonian Society discoursed on the great names of Scottish history. St Andrew, Wallace, Knox, Burns, the Covenanters, Adam Smith and several others all represented ‘the white-heat expression of principles, which one would think have thereby been burnt into the very nature of the people’.5 In the collective memory of the Scottish nation, Wallace and Knox had stepped forward at the crucial moment to ensure the nation remained true to its destiny as a beacon of civil and religious liberty. Wallace had achieved national and civil liberty at Stirling Bridge. In turn, Knox won religious liberty at the Reformation in 1560, wresting the power of Church and Bible from the priesthood of Rome and handing it to the Scottish people. At the same time, by establishing a school in every parish Knox established a new age in the education of the Scottish people – or their young males at the very least. As with memories of Wallace, the precise historical truth mattered less than the perception. Nor was Knox the only focal point for Presbyterian memory. In the same way as the Reformation of 1560 was elevated as a milestone in the national story, so the so-called Second Reformation of the mid-seventeenth century was widely remembered. The freedoms won by Knox and his fellow Reformers in the 1560s were seen as having gained new life and definition at both the Glasgow General Assembly of 1638 and the Westminster Assembly of the 1640s. Held in the wake of the signing of the National Covenant, the Glasgow Assembly represented the moment when the Scottish Presbyterian nation faced down the tyrannical interference of Charles I with his attempts to impose episcopacy on the Scottish church. In turn, the Westminster Assembly was remembered as a key moment in the codification of Scottish Presbyterianism. The publication of the Westminster Confession set the template of Scottish Presbyterianism for at least the next 200 years. Seeing the achievements and the struggles of the Second Reformation reflected in their own religious trials, nineteenth-century Scots commemorated both

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the Glasgow and Westminster Assemblies with considerable enthusiasm. Indeed, for some, the Second Reformation was the moment when Scottish Presbyterianism was closest to achieving its historic goal of transforming the whole of Britain into a Presbyterian, covenanted nation. A CENTURY OF PRESBYTERIAN COMMEMORATION The commemoration of John Knox and the Second Reformation was distinct from the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce in at least two crucial respects: in its level of national organisation and in its sustained use as a weapon against perceived threats to the nationality and Presbyterianism of Scotland. Wallace and Bruce were rarely commemorated on a truly national basis. While the National Wallace Monument movement was fairly successful in drawing together all classes and corners of Scottish nationality, at no point was there any centrally co-ordinated attempt to mark a significant anniversary for Wallace or Bruce across Scotland. If national commemoration did occur, each locality was responsible for initiating and ­co-ordinating its own events. In contrast, the commemoration of Knox and the Second Reformation benefited from the presence and demands of national organisations intent on ensuring that these memories were sustained – the Presbyterian churches of Scotland. Whether managed by the Established Church, the Free Church, the United Presbyterians, or one of the other dissenting denominations, the commemoration of Knox and the Second Reformation was used by the Scottish churches to express their position at the heart of Scottish nationality. To this end, the nineteenth century saw four major commemorations take place. In 1838, the 200th anniversary of the Glasgow Assembly was marked in both Edinburgh and Glasgow. Five years later – hot on the heels of the Disruption in the Established Church – the bicentenary of the Westminster Assembly of 1643 was celebrated at a large convocation of dissenting Presbyterians in Edinburgh. In 1860, the tricentenary of the Scottish Reformation commenced with denominational commemorations in May, followed by an international ‘Convocation’ in Edinburgh in August, closing with commemorative sermons preached across Scotland in December. This pattern was all but repeated in November 1872, to mark the tercentenary of the death of John Knox, particularly in the preaching of commemorative sermons in churches, town halls and lecture rooms. Nor was Knox short of monumental commemoration. The century is book-ended by the raising of statues to the Great Reformer, with Glasgow erecting its statue in the Merchant’s Park in the 1810s, and Edinburgh raising two statues around the turn of the century, at the Free Church College in 1896 and in St Giles’ Cathedral ten years later. Threaded between all of these events were other – unsuccessful –attempts to memorialise Knox in stone or bronze.



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Providence brought along major anniversaries with remarkably effective timing, with each of the anniversary dates listed above providing an opportunity for Scottish Presbyterians to directly connect the past with the present. Each anniversary was used to prove that the trials undergone by Knox and the Covenanting divines of the Second Reformation were essentially identical to those challenges faced by their ecclesiastical descendants in the nineteenth century. For instance, the tensions between the Moderate and Evangelical parties that defined the ‘Ten Years’ Conflict’ in the Church of Scotland were never more acutely expressed than at the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the 1638 Glasgow General Assembly.6 Rumblings of discontent against patronage had been growing steadily throughout the early nineteenth century, accompanied by other issues fundamental to the Evangelical cause such as church missions, protest against the emancipation of Roman Catholics, defence of the Sabbath, and the rejection of voluntaryism.7 Despite the Evangelicals’ increasingly strident demands for change, however, the state was not prepared to foot the bill for the Godly Commonwealth, a conclusion warmly greeted by the voluntaryist Secession denominations.8 When the Court of Session decided against the right of parishes to veto ‘intruded’ ministers in May of 1838, the General Assembly printed a ‘Declaration of Spiritual Independence’, asserting the Church’s freedom from state interference and appealing to the Westminster Confession and the precedent of the Covenanting Martyrs.9 In the midst of this conflict came the bicentenary of the 1638 General Assembly. Two main events were held in December 1838: a demonstration of Evangelical churchmen in Edinburgh and a more broad-based gathering in Glasgow. Described by the Scotsman as having been ‘not merely crowded, but literally crammed’ with people eager to participate, the Edinburgh meeting saw representatives from across the sweep of Evangelicalism.10 Men from the more moderate Whig-Evangelical party, such as the advocate Alexander Dunlop, sat alongside members of the so-called ‘Wild Party’, the rising stars of Evangelicalism, clamouring for more profound and rapid change: men like William Cunningham (1805–61), a ‘belligerent bullying stalwart of Presbyterian orthodoxy’, who would become the Free Church’s leading theologian, Thomas Guthrie (1803–73), advocate of social reform and one of Scotland’s most popular preachers, James Begg (1808–83), whose combination of ‘social radicalism and ecclesiastical conservatism’ would render him one of the most strident voices in the Free Church, and Robert Smith Candlish (1806–73), another uncompromising Calvinist, and the man who would go on to succeed Thomas Chalmers as the leader of the Free Church.11 From the beginning, the Edinburgh commemoration deployed the language of Scottish national memory – its stated aim was to ‘commemorate the restoration of civil and religious liberty, and of Presbyterian Church government, as secured by the Glasgow Assembly of 1638’. This was little more than a pretext, an excuse to legitimise the Evangelical manifesto by

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drawing on evident parallels from Presbyterian memory: ‘the position at present occupied by the Church of Scotland in relation to the civil power, which strikingly coincides in some respects with that in which she stood exactly this time two hundred years ago’.12 In contrast, the commemoration in Glasgow was markedly more civic and more conciliatory. The day commenced with a procession composed of civic and religious dignitaries walking from Hutchesons’ Hospital, through the streets of the city to the Cathedral, ‘in presence of a great assemblage of the inhabitants’. At the Cathedral, a sermon was preached by the Revd Dr William Muir, minister of St Stephen’s, Edinburgh, the then Moderator of the General Assembly.13 In the afternoon, 500 of the participants from the morning procession sat down for dinner in the Trades’ Hall, with representatives not just from the Established Church but also from the Reformed Presbyterians and the Original Secession. 14 Five years later, the 200th anniversary of the Westminster Assembly and the Westminster Confession occurred with equally convenient timing. Tensions had deepened since 1838, bringing the conflict between Evangelicals and Moderates to crisis point.15 Increasingly dissatisfied with the state’s neglect of funding and legislation for its ambitious programmes, the Kirk’s Evangelical party was forced to choose between ‘the commands of the Church and those of the Law’.16 If spiritual independence was of greater importance than being ‘the church by law established’, then independence had to prevail. Last-ditch attempts at compromise failed and, with the publishing of the Evangelical ‘Claim of Right’ in 1842, the course towards Disruption was set. On 18 May 1843, 450 ministers of the Church of Scotland left their charges, along with around half the lay membership. Just as the anniversary of the 1638 Glasgow Assembly gave the Evangelicals a means of proving themselves the true exponents of Scottish religion, the bicentenary of the Westminster Assembly provided another perfectly-timed opportunity to connect past victories with present challenges.17 However, rather than using the anniversary as an opportunity to promote the newlyformed Free Church as a shining model of Scottish Presbyterianism, the 1843 anniversary celebrations were mounted as a display of unity among Scotland’s seceding churches.18 The inter-denominational nature of the commemoration, held in the Canonmills Hall, Edinburgh over 12 and 13 July 1843, was evident throughout. Sessions were chaired by, and saw contributions from, not only members of the Free Church, but also those of the Relief Church, the United Secession, Original Secession, and the Reformed Presbyterians – a veritable panoply of Scottish dissenting Presbyterianism. Though the commemorations of 1838 and 1843 witnessed significant public events of national significance, in comparison with the commemorations of 1860 and 1872 these were decidedly local. The 1860 commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation stands out as one of the most wide-ranging commemorative events held in Scotland in the



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nineteenth century. In May, denominational commemorations took place at the General Assemblies of the Free and Established Churches and at the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church. In August, an international Convocation of Protestants was held in Edinburgh under the auspices of the anti-Catholic Scottish Reformation Society, concluding with the ceremonial laying of the foundation stone of a new Protestant Institute. Later in the year, 20 December was set aside by the principal denominations for a national commemoration to be observed in churches across the nation. In observance of the December commemoration, many local magistrates and town provosts ordered that shops and businesses should close early so that the people of every church could attend afternoon services or public meetings. In Ayr and Kilmarnock, for instance, places of business were closed at one o’clock; in Falkirk, the order was to close by five p.m.; at Airdrie all banks and public offices were closed for the entire day, though in Coatbridge, which had a significant Catholic population, ‘none of the places of business were closed’.19 In Aberdeen, the tricentenary of the Reformation was ‘pretty well observed’, with the Roman Catholics in the city holding their own counter demonstration, whilst in Perth most of the shops were closed, though ‘the public works were in operation as usual’.20 This level of co-ordination and civic participation reoccurred in 1872 to mark the tercentenary of Knox’s death, with sermons preached across Scotland and in parts of England from ministers of all denominations.21 Glasgow saw a considerable number of sermons and lectures delivered, with the majority preached by ministers of either the Free or United Presbyterian churches. A similar pattern occurred in Edinburgh and Paisley, while lectures were also given at the Scottish National Presbyterian Church in London, as well as at venues in Liverpool and Berwick.22 Regardless of the rhetorical content of either the 1860 or the 1872 commemoration, the very fact that Scotland’s Presbyterian churches had sufficient influence to cause places of business to close early emphasises their power in imposing their commemoration upon the Scottish people. Though the National Wallace Monument had done the same in Stirling and surrounding areas in 1856 and 1861, not even the commemoration of William Wallace had the kind of backing enjoyed by John Knox. With remarkable efficiency, the national scope of the combined Presbyterian denominations ensured that these major anniversaries were observed across the country. That said, the Great Reformer was less successful in achieving monumental remembrance. Wallace had his National Monument on the Abbey Craig, yet several attempts to raise some form of national monument to Knox foundered in their early stages. Soon after the Disruption, the Free Church expressed its intention to build a vast memorial to Knox on the High Street in Edinburgh, linked to the so-called ‘John Knox’s House’. Despite its enthusiasm for inter-denominational commemoration, the Free Church was equally intent on claiming its place as the true church of Knox and the Reformation. In the eyes of Free Church members, walking out of the General Assembly in

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May 1843 had not seen the Evangelicals divert from the Church’s true path so much as move to the moral and ecclesiastical high ground.23 In so doing, the Free Church positioned itself as the church most closely aligned with the mainstream of Scottish Presbyterian history and memory. As Neil Forsyth has written, the Free Church ‘always had a powerful historical bias’, evinced by the creation of a publications department within a year of the Disruption, and the inclusion of Scottish historical studies in its school curriculum, much of it drawing on the precedent set by Thomas McCrie the elder.24 The 1846 monument enterprise killed two birds with one memorial stone: not only would new church buildings house the Free Church congregations of Edinburgh, but the colossal tower and the restoration of John Knox’s House would become a highly visible symbol of the Free Church’s position as the true church of the Great Reformer. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of such Free Church luminaries as James Begg and Robert Candlish, and several public meetings, the enterprise failed and the monument was never erected.25 There followed separate efforts to raise an Edinburgh Knox in the 1860s and again in the 1870s after the success of the Scottish Reformation tricentenary and the Knox tercentenary, yet both initiatives generated considerably more heat than light, even with the 1872 movement enjoying the support of that indefatigable promoter of all things monumental, Charles Rogers. Still, Knox has his statues in both Edinburgh and Glasgow. Indeed, the Glaswegian Knox monument, erected on a site very close to where William Motherwell’s Wallace monument would have been, stands as one of the nineteenth century’s earliest public monuments to any national hero from the Scottish past. As noted above, though it took almost another hundred years to raise them, Edinburgh got not one but two statues to Knox. Whereas the Glasgow Knox monument was erected when the trials of the Ten Years’ Conflict lay in the future, the two Edinburgh monuments were inaugurated in a different atmosphere altogether. From the 1860s, the hardline Calvinism that had led to the formation of the Free Church increasingly gave way to a more moderate position regarding the churches’ role in Scottish society. Influential Established Church figures such as John Tulloch (1823–86) and Robert Lee (1804–68) challenged the Westminster Confession as the definitive statement of Scots Presbyterianism, while the incompatibility between the doctrine of election and the aims of active Evangelicalism saw the former eased and the latter fired with new energy.26 The conservative dogmatism of ministers such as James Begg began to lose ground, softening attitudes to ecclesiastical difference, bringing rival denominations closer together and rendering the prospect of unity ever more likely.27 In 1900, the Free Church and the United Presbyterians overcame their differences to form the United Free Church.28



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THE LEGACY OF JOHN KNOX Despite the divisions within Scottish Presbyterianism, the character of Presbyterian collective memory remained fairly consistent across the nineteenth century, its essential characteristics fitting neatly with those collective memories articulated in the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce. Just as the Wars of Independence had stemmed the tide of an alien tyranny, so, too, Knox and the Second Reformation had fought the battle to ensure Scotland remained free and national. Furthermore, the commemoration of Knox projected itself in a British context as much as a Scottish one. Like Wallace and Bruce, in delivering the Scots from Papal tyranny, Knox had ensured Scotland was able to make its equal and crucial contribution to the magnificence of Great Britain and its empire. Following the leitmotif of civil and religious liberty, whereas Wallace’s victory had ensured Scotland’s civil liberty, Knox’s triumph had set the seal on Scottish religious liberty. The place of Knox and the Reformation in Scottish national memory is apparent early in the century at the raising of the Glasgow statue. The movement to erect the Glasgow monument began at a time when the Evangelical party was beginning to promote the parish as an ideal locus for the moral and practical management of education, poor-relief and moral discipline.29 This solution involved the development of home missions and an ambitious church-building programme that would better arm the Church for entrenching the parish model in Scotland’s growing towns and cities.30 Against this backdrop, the Knox monument was part of Glasgow’s response to the ungodly intensity of urbanisation, a towering focal point for Presbyterian memory in the distressed city. One of the Kirk’s most assertive Evangelicals was at the forefront of efforts to raise it: the Revd Dr Stevenson MacGill (1765–1840), Professor of Theology at the University of Glasgow, a Tory and committed anti-Pluralist, as well as Thomas Chalmers’ predecessor at the city’s Tron parish.31 Stevenson’s intentions for the monument were inscribed on its base: ‘To testify Gratitude for inestimable Services, in the Cause of Religion, Education, and Civil Liberty.’32 Held before a crowd of more than 10,000 people, the monument’s inauguration unambiguously positioned Knox and the Reformation as having brought both Scotland and Britain to their current position of constitutional and national greatness. In his opening prayer at the foundation-stone ceremony, the Barony Parish minister, John Burns (1744–1839), thanked God for ‘the happy Constitution of Civil Government’, whilst in a speech at a banquet held to mark the occasion, Stevenson MacGill referred to constitutional monarchy as: One of the great safeguards of liberty, protecting us most effectually from the dominion of foreign foes, while it guards us from the disorders of the ambitious, the excesses of the violent, and the oppressions of the powerful.33

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This emphasis upon the constitutional benefits of Knox’s legacy was not the only element of his commemoration that resonated with collective memories of Wallace and Bruce. Commemorative practices consistently depicted Knox as a self-made man of the people who had risen to great heights by holding fast to the virtues of Scottish nationality. Stevenson MacGill claimed that Knox ‘possessed a rank of a higher order – that which arises from worth and talents, and benefits rendered to his country. By his personal excellence he had risen to influence among men of every order.’34 In this way, Knox embodied the qualities most suited to the mindset of nineteenthcentury Scoto-Britishness: hard work, perseverance, self-reliance. Just as Wallace was synonymous with the collective victory of Stirling Bridge, so Knox was the mnemonic face of the Scottish Reformation. At the Glasgow foundation-stone ceremony, James Ewing of Strathleven (1775– 1853) – who would go on to be both the MP for Glasgow and Lord Provost from 1832 to 1833 – claimed that the Scottish Reformation had ‘unlocked the boundless stores of science and philosophy’. Scotland, he claimed, was indebted to the Reformation not only for its education system, but also for its commercial prosperity. Comparing Scotland before and after the Reformation, he said: In place of convents, we now behold manufactories; in place of dissolute and ignorant monks, we behold virtuous and enlightened clergy; in place of idle mendicants, dependant on monasteries, we behold industrious artisans, who would scorn subsistence but from their own labour.35

By delivering Scotland out of the anarchy and despotism of Rome, the Reformation permitted it to take its own path and to achieve its independent potential. At a meeting held in Edinburgh’s Music Hall to promote the Free Church Knox Monument in 1846, William Cunningham argued that Scotland’s distinctiveness as a nation stemmed directly from the principles of the Reformation and of Knox: ‘It is these principles, and the influences they have brought into operation, more than any other causes, that have made Scotland what she now is.’36 One of the more stirring passages in a Proposal written by the Revd Alexander Duff to promote the Free Church’s Edinburgh Knox monument paints a dramatic picture of Scotland prior to the Reformation: To look at Scotland in those early days of anarchy and bloody strife, seems like casting the eyes, now, over the sterile wilds of Tartary, with its savage Khans and boisterous marauding populace – Tartary, with its barbarous ignorance and fanatical superstition – Tartary, with its never ending brawls and broils and treacheries and massacres.37

As a former missionary, Duff may well have had first-hand experience of a ‘boisterous and marauding populace’. With such a daunting illustration of pre-Reformation pandemonium before the reader, Duff’s Proposal went on



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to describe the changes wrought by the Reformation as ‘like passing from the scowling tempests and bleak barrenness of an arctic winter to the calm serenity and glowing luxuriance of a tropical summer’.38 This is but one of countless examples from across the century, raising the banner for the Reformation as a transformative event that had delivered Scotland from the darkness of Papal tyranny to the sunlit uplands of enlightened Presbyterianism. That the Scotland it created just so happened to fit neatly with conceptions of nineteenth-century virtue reinforced its historic necessity. It was not only Scotland that had been delivered from ‘barbarous ignorance and fanatical superstition’. Shared memories of Knox and the Reformation were consistently represented as having awoken ‘the long dormant energies of England’, leading directly to the Revolution of 1688, which had ‘at once placed Great Britain in the van of civilised nations’.39 This line of reasoning fitted neatly with the corresponding memory of Wallace as the creator of a national liberty that both defined Scottish nationality yet also made a vital contribution to British constitutional history. Furthermore, if the Reformation had delivered true nationality to Scotland, and this nationality was one of the grand characteristics of Imperial Britishness, it logically followed that the Reformation was also the nursemaid of civilisation across the globe. As Duff decreed in his Proposal for the Edinburgh Knox monument, the Reformation had ‘led to the peopling of the new world with the pilgrim fathers, who there laid the foundations of a new and mighty empire’.40 The missionary nationality of Scottish Presbyterianism was a light first kindled by Knox at the Reformation and now carried out into the world. Just as Scots supported the nationalist struggles of Italians, Hungarians and Poles, so, too, Evangelicals were – literally, in the case of Alexander Duff – missionaries for Scottish Presbyterianism, their fervour rooted in collective memories of Knox. The connection between John Knox and both Wallace and Bruce was more than merely implicit in the rhetoric of Scottish nationality. Across the century, the Wars of Independence and the Reformation were self-­ consciously connected, with Knox often emerging as the greater of Scotland’s national heroes. Only a few years before his death in 1876, Alexander Duff returned to the commemorative fray to make a contribution to the tercentenary of Knox’s death, placing the Great Reformer alongside Scotland’s other national heroes: In Knox was found the grandest embodiment of the resolute iron will, the intensity of concentrated intellect, the resistless avalanche of energy, and other peculiarities of the Scottish national character, [not seen] since the days of Wallace wight and Bruce of Bannockburn.41

In connecting Knox with Wallace and Bruce, Duff avoided placing the Reformer above his predecessors in the struggle for liberty, yet there were plenty of others keen to do so. In an address to the United Presbyterian

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Synod in May 1860, entitled ‘The Scottish Reformation’, the Revd Henry Renton placed Knox head and shoulders above Scotland’s other great heroes. Wallace, Bruce, James Watt and Adam Smith were ‘names whose united lustre yet pales before his, who has left his impression upon the mental and moral character, the religious and social regeneration of a whole people’.42 Though Knox was positioned firmly at the core of Scottish nationality, this was seldom developed into a sustained definition of what made Scottish nationality so high and mighty. That is to say, little of the commemorative rhetoric considered here involved the identification of an overarching historical model of Scottish nationality. Simply mentioning Knox and Wallace as having fought for similar ends was about as far as it could go. From time to time, however, we encounter the articulation of a Sonderweg of providential nationality formally linking Wallace to Knox. Just as he had lent his considerable oratorical and analytical powers to the National Wallace Monument movement in the 1850s, so Patrick Edward Dove took his place in the 1860 national commemoration of the Reformation, articulating a teleological model for collective memories of Scoto-British constitutionalism. In a lecture delivered to the Glasgow Protestant Laymen’s Association, Dove asserted that the principles of the Reformation ‘were destined to give birth to a new form of civil constitution’, principles that were not sectarian, but national: The principles of national unity had descended from Wallace and Bruce. There was, first, the principle of national independence – the Crown of Scotland not subject to any other Crown; 2nd, the principle of the Reformation, the Bible above the Church, and above all human authority; 3rd, the principle of the Covenanters, conscience above the King; and 4th, the principle of the Revolution – the King must reign according to the law.43

This is the political philosophy of Scottish nationality, marking the key milestones in the path from the great deeds of the past to a glorious present defined by civil and religious liberty. Each of these stages, Dove argued, could not have occurred had it not been for the preceding one: ‘Except for the triumphant struggle of independence, there could have been no question of a Scottish Reformation.’ Conforming to what we might expect of a leading Free Churchman and champion of the virtues of nationality, Dove declared that, though much had been achieved, there was still unfinished business. Indeed, it was the duty of all those who had inherited the legacy of Wallace and Bruce to engage in missionary nationality. As Dove said, the ‘positive side of civil and religious liberty was yet to be enjoyed; what was required now, was for these principles to be taken abroad, to inoculate the earth in many spots with a safeguard against the person of despotism’.44 Once again there is a clear resonance with the missionary nationality of



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Wallace – the nationality formed and inspired by Scotland’s great heroes is one that must be exported for the good of other nations to ‘safeguard against the person of despotism’. For evangelical liberals like Dove, it was not enough simply to celebrate the magnificence of Scottish nationality. Its benefits had to be carried beyond Scotland as an inspiration for oppressed nationalities everywhere, a weapon to help them overcome their own, contemporary tyrants. THE CULDEES AND THE NATIONALITY OF PRESBYTERIANISM In setting out his model of Scottish nationality, Patrick Dove traced the origins of Scottish nationality to Wallace and Bruce. More commonly, however, Scottish nationality found its starting point much further back in time. Looking back to a time before Martin Luther, John Calvin, Knox and Melville – even before Wallace – the Culdees of the fifth century acted as a proto-Presbyterian paradigm for those generations that followed.45 Rather than Knox setting Scotland on a new road at the Reformation, he had instead restored Scottish religion back to its true self, to a form of Scottish nationality that had existed since the earliest times. Appeals to the protoPresbyterianism of the Culdees constituted a binding thread in Scottish cultural memory at this time, never more so than at the Scottish Reformation Society’s celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Reformation, held in Edinburgh in the summer of 1860. Throughout this event, several speakers addressed the overarching theme of combating Catholicism and drew upon the evident truth of Presbyterianism as a seminal component of Scottish nationality, turning to the Culdees for proof. Indeed, the very first paper to be read at the tricentenary – by the Revd W. L. Alexander, an Edinburgh Congregationalist – took the Culdees as its subject. Alexander argued that as Protestantism was, in essence, a protest against Popery, the Culdees had undoubtedly been Protestant, by virtue of their resistance to the imposition of centralised, Roman forms of worship. This idea was further developed in a later paper, from the Revd Duncan McCallum, entitled ‘The Church of Scotland as old as the Church of Rome’, in which McCallum claimed that Columba had founded the Presbyterian system in Scotland.46 In making these claims, Alexander and McCallum were taking their part in a long-standing tradition. At the 1838 Edinburgh commemoration, Thomas McCrie, Jnr (1797–1875), son of the biographer of Knox and the Original Secession Professor of Theology, contended that the Reformation had seen Scotland revert ‘to the primitive simplicity of her discipline and government’.47 McCrie returned to the subject some years later, at the laying of the foundation stone of the abortive Edinburgh Knox monument in 1846, sketching the historical background to the Scottish Reformation:

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The Church was governed without the prelacy or ceremonies of the Church of Rome, by her primitive pastors the Culdees, men distinguished from those whom they governed only by the superior sanctity of their lives and simplicity of their manners, chosen by the suffrage of the people, and holding no jurisdiction over each other.48

The achievements of the Reformation represented the return to a native tradition, the rejection of an alien religious tyranny that had suppressed Scotland’s true character as a Presbyterian nation. To be able to take the defining features of that nationality and to illustrate their existence in the mists of recorded time was to prove beyond doubt that Scottishness had always been and always would be Presbyterian. In effect, the story of Presbyterianism was the story of Scotland. Some Presbyterians even went so far as to claim that William Wallace had been ‘at heart a Culdee, not a Papist’.49 THE SUPERIORITY OF SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIANISM The ancient origin of Scottish Presbyterianism was also used to compare Scotland’s Reformation favourably with the Reformation elsewhere. The Scots were not merely the chosen people by virtue of their illustrious past of civil and religious liberty – their Christianity was the most perfect model anywhere on earth. Preaching at the Wellington Street United Presbyterian Church in Glasgow as part of the national commemoration of the 1872 Knox tercentenary, a Revd Dr Black said: Neither in Germany nor in England had the work of the Reformation been as thoroughly done as in Scotland; and this explained how there were not purer forms of worship, sterner adherence to principle and truth, and more earnest contendings against error and threatened infringement of religious liberty, than in our country. The drippings of Popery had remained in the Lutheran and English Church, and were yielding their bitter fruits in Rationalism and Ritualism.50

The Scottish Reformation was seen as superior to all the other major Reformations, the Scots having achieved root-and-branch reform of their church, with no lingering traces of Popery to poison its purity. The reason for this purity was the position of the Bible at the core of all religious practice, not supplemented by any dangerous ritual that might divert Christians from the Word of God. In his speech at the Glasgow Knox monument foundation-stone ceremony, Stevenson MacGill claimed that the changes brought about by the Reformation in Scotland were ‘more thorough, scriptural, and perfect than in most other nations’. McGill would not have been doing his job properly if he had not asserted that the Scottish Reformation ‘introduced a system superior to that of most other nations; fitted in a higher degree to promote the interests of practical religion, and the general welfare of men’.51



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Of all the nations targeted for unfavourable comparison, England and Ireland received most attention. At the 1846 Knox monument foundationstone ceremony, William Cunningham argued that England had suffered for want of a man ‘possessing the sincerity, the vigour, the energy and the courage of Knox’. The result was that ‘the Church of England, in its true and proper character, has never at any one period been an important general instrument of Christ for affecting beneficially the mass of the population’. Needless to say, this also explained the English Church’s ‘semi-Popish elements’.52 For Robert Candlish, the Reformation in England had been carried out on ‘the principle of the very least being done that Christ could possibly be supposed to regard as sufficient’, whereas Scotland had enjoyed ‘a Reformation on the plan of an entire remodelling, according to Christ’s will’.53 This reductive view of English Protestantism was still going strong at the tercentenary of Knox’s death in 1872, motivated by the ongoing battles within Anglicanism between High Church Anglo-Catholics and the more traditional Low Church elements, intent on clinging to the simplicity of Protestant worship. At a meeting held in Edinburgh’s Protestant Institute, the Revd William Graham of the Established Church bemoaned, ‘Would to God that John Knox had been permitted to put his stamp as permanently upon the English Reformation as he had been permitted to put his stamp upon the Scottish Reformation.’ In proposing a resolution to Knox at the same meeting, the Revd W. Scott-Moncrieff made a similar appeal: And had his influence been as complete in England as it had been in Scotland, we should not see the present miserable contest going on between those who loved the Reformation and those who, in an enlightened and educated country, wished to go back to Popish darkness.54

If the Reformation in England was found wanting in comparison with Scotland, an even more distressing prospect faced Scottish Presbyterians when they turned to consider Ireland. The lack of a coherent nationality in Ireland made it an effective target for those seeking to glorify the achievements of Wallace and Bruce in forging Scottish nationality and, in the same way, Ireland’s troublesome Catholicism acted as a focal point for collective memories of Knox. England, at the very least, had followed a form of Protestantism. Ulster excepted, Ireland had clung to the robes of Catholicism, contributing to its position as a thorn in the side of a greater Britishness. At the 1846 Edinburgh foundation-stone ceremony, the Free Church’s William Cunningham said of Ireland that ‘the great majority of her population are still sunk in Popish ignorance and darkness’.55 Such disdain was applied equally to Irish Catholicism and Episcopalianism. One only needed to look at the positive effect of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland to see the manifest benefits of applying the lessons of Knox. In comparison to the ‘Ecclesiastical Establishment of Ireland’, the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, cultivated from the Scottish root, was both ‘the instrument

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of ­conferring important benefits on Ireland [and] honoured to succeed in making Ulster a striking contrast, in every respect, temporal and spiritual, to other parts of that unhappy land’.56 ANTI-CATHOLICISM The identification of Ireland as a nation benighted by Catholicism stands as a defining characteristic in the commemoration of milestones from Scottish Presbyterian memory. In this there is another marked contrast with the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce – the extent to which the commemoration of Knox and both the First and Second Reformations was used to express concern over threats to Scottish Presbyterianism and nationality. As we saw in the previous chapter, the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce demanded a remarkable degree of moderation and conciliation. It was vital when remembering the Wars of Independence to continually emphasise these acts as an expression of secure and providential unionism. On those occasions when Wallace was used to criticise the workings of the Union, there was almost always a concomitant expression of grateful and contented Britishness. The commemoration of Wallace was an opportunity to articulate and celebrate Scottish nationality, not to defend it. In contrast, the commemoration of Scotland’s Presbyterian past was a weapon in the struggle against perceived threats to Scottish nationality and the national religion.57 Of these threats, by far the most heinous was resurgent Roman Catholicism. While the tide of other ecclesiastical complaints ebbed and flowed, a recurring refrain was that the Scottish ideal of civil and religious liberty was under threat from the aggressive expansion of ‘Popery’. Following the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850, anti-Catholic movements sprang up across Great Britain, their roots in the Evangelical parties of both Scotland and England, unearthing Catholic threats wherever they might look.58 On both sides of the border, the perversion of English Protestantism through the Tractarian and Oxford Movements was viewed as Popery, ‘subverting the Church from within’, while, as we have seen, the problems of Ireland were the self-evident result of being too long in thrall to the church of Rome.59 Similarly, in the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce, Ireland was Scotland’s dark mirror image, a potent warning of what might have been had the Scots lacked a great national hero to ensure the retention of their nationality. In the commemoration of Knox and the Reformation, however, Ireland was not so much an example of what might have been as it was a carrier of the Romish disease. From the Presbyterian perspective, the state of Ireland reflected the social and political arguments of anti-Catholicism – Popery retarded economic and social progress, subverted personal morality, and was the antithesis of liberty.60 In 1838, while the Edinburgh commemoration was haranguing the enemies of spiritual independence, Glasgow’s commemoration of the 1638



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General Assembly was more concerned with the enduring struggle of the Church of Scotland against Papal insurgency.61 Speaking in support of the toast ‘May the Enlightened opposition to Popery of the Assembly of 1638 distinguish the Protestantism of the present eventful times’, Dr Nathaniel Paterson of St Andrews Parish, Glasgow, argued that it was not Episcopacy that had been banished from Scotland in 1638 but Popery: ‘It was Popery, which sought a readier disguise amidst the drapery and formularies of that Church [i.e. Episcopalianism], than it could find in the naked simplicity of the Presbyterian form.’62 Paterson stressed that, though they had gathered to commemorate the work of God, it was still vital ‘to infuse … into the minds of our children’ the principles of the Covenanters, ‘and at least to tell the apostates of a degenerate age, that fawning on Rome and cursing our Zion, they are a disgrace to their noble sires’.63 Clearly, it was necessary to remind the Scots not to be taken in by the glamour of Romish ritualism and so squander the illustrious legacy of Knox and the Glasgow Assembly. This was yet another profound and eagerlygrasped parallel between the struggles of the Second Reformation and the nineteenth century: the threats faced in the present were effectively the same as those faced in the past. At the 1843 commemoration of the Westminster Assembly in Edinburgh, William Hetherington of the Free Church claimed that ‘Popery was everywhere reviving’, combined with ‘the old Laudian Prelacy under a new name’, as well as ‘infidelity spreading its dark venom through the neglected and oppressed masses of the population’.64 These arguments broadened out from the mid-nineteenth century, with a growing fashion for placing nationality at the centre of Presbyterian memory. Where Scottish nationality was strong, the argument ran, so Popery could be better resisted, for not only was Popery un-Scottish, it was anti-national. The Reformation had ensured the coherence of the Scottish nation, while Popery ground national distinctions to dust. At the United Presbyterian Synod’s commemoration of the Reformation in 1860, Dr Neil McMichael claimed that whereas Presbyterianism ‘sanctified’ nationality, Popery attempted to destroy it in order that ‘upon the ruins of national freedom she might set her throne’.65 If Reformation was synonymous with civil and religious liberty, then Popery was equated with oppression and ignorance. Addressing the same Synod on the subject of ‘Our Present Duties in Relation to the Cause of the Reformation’, William Lindsay contended that ‘all the great interests of society, liberty, commerce, literature, arts and sciences have flourished’ in those nations where Reformation principles prevailed. In a sense, both the blessing and the curse of the Reformation had been the very liberty it had brought into being, freedoms which entailed toleration for all religions, whether enlightened Presbyterianism or tyrannical Popery: It is the glory of Britain, and of all countries where British blood predominates, that shackles upon conscience are abhorred. But this very freedom only renders it

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the more imperative that error should be openly and vigorously assailed by argument, and particularly Popish errors, because they endanger the existence of this very freedom.66

Simply commemorating the Reformation was, however, not enough to construct sufficient defences against the corruption of Rome – something more enduring was required. For instance, in an address on the educational legacy of the Reformation, delivered in support of the 1846 Knox monument in Edinburgh, James Begg warned of the consequences should the responsibility for education be left in the hands of a ‘magistracy’ constantly threatened by prelacy or Popery. A constant presence at events commemorating Scotland’s Presbyterian past, Begg delivered sermons and speeches characterised by pragmatic calls for the maintenance of Presbyterian civilisation within Scotland, whether through education, missionary work, or even a form of Home Rule.67 As well as being a leading figure in the anti-Catholic Scottish Reformation Society, he largely controlled its journal, The Bulwark.68 Gathering only to remember the past was insufficient – practical steps had to be taken to ensure Scotland retained its historic Presbyterianism. The Free Church might erect its tower to Knox on the High Street in Edinburgh, yet, more vitally: They should have that simple school, and that simple scriptural Church, which had been, under God, the powerful instrumentality which had raised their country from barbarism, to the highest position in the civilised world.69

It was to this end that the Scottish Reformation Society planned the August 1860 Edinburgh Convocation as precursor to the foundation of a monument to the Reformation that would provide ‘training for students in the distinctive principles of Popery and Protestantism’ – the Protestant Institute.70 This was to be a material sign of Scotland’s debt to the Reformation, not an empty monument but a school for the inculcation of Reformation principles and for the training of foot-soldiers in the war against Popery.71 ‘Rome would pardon them for all their previous meetings’, James Begg said prior to the laying of the Institute’s foundation stone, ‘if they should break up [the Convocation] without doing something practical which might promote the extension of Protestant truth in the land.’72 In his sermon preached at the Institute’s foundation-stone ceremony, William Symington of the Reformed Presbyterian Church called the Protestant Institute ‘the grand practical improvement’ of the commemoration of the Reformation. At the same event, Thomas McCrie junior said he looked upon the Institute as doing much greater service to Scotland, ‘in her highest and holiest interests, than any mere monument of stone, however richly adorned or magnificently constructed’.



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DENOMINATIONAL UNITY Of all possible defences against Papal aggression, by far the most necessary was unity among Presbyterian denominations. United, Scottish Presbyterianism would stand; divided, it would fall. At Edinburgh’s commemoration of the Westminster Assembly, held mere months after the Disruption had effectively cut the Established Church in half, ministers of the new Free Church were calling for unity as a counter to the horrors of crypto-Romanism. Indeed, the watchword of the 1843 commemoration was ‘co-operation not incorporation’, focusing on the shared foundation of the Westminster Confession and other ecclesiastical standards derived from that period.73 The commemoration opened with a sermon from William Symington using a text intended to encourage greater understanding and co-operation: ‘A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.’74 During the ‘Conversation’ on the second day, the Revd Peter Macindoe, Reformed Presbyterian minister at Kilmarnock, referred to the union of all the churches of ‘the three kingdoms’ as the ‘great object’ of the Westminster Assembly. Union in the nineteenth century would be ‘the delightful consummation which we are encouraged to expect, and which the present meetings seem well calculated to hasten’.75 In delivering the commemoration’s closing address on the subject of ‘The Importance of Adhering to Sound Scriptural Standards, and Aiming at Union on That Basis’, Robert Candlish said that the ideal way to commemorate the Westminster Assembly was to follow in its footsteps: By practically taking up the work which they began and left unfinished. For we have served ourselves heirs, as it were, to the memorable men who met on that occasion; and it happens remarkably and ominously enough, that in the course of God’s providence, and in the cycle of events, we are brought back again, as it were, to the very same position of affairs in which they conducted their deliberations.76

It is partly owing to the clear and present danger of Romish insurgency that so much of the commemoration of Knox and the Second Reformation was concerned not with emphasising the differences between Presbyterian denominations but with encouraging unity. Though there were real and often insurmountable differences between Scotland’s Presbyterian denominations, these had to be set aside in the face of the might of the Romish enemy. From its beginnings, Glasgow’s monument to Knox was intended to appeal to all denominations and parties ‘who revered the great principles of the Reformation’.77 Representatives from across the ecclesiastical landscape of 1820s Scotland participated in the monument movement or its inauguration, including members of the United Secession, the Relief Church and the Reformed Presbyterians. In 1838, the judge and diarist Henry Cockburn – no fan of the Evangelical ‘wild party’ – lamented in his Journal that ­commemoration of the

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1638 Glasgow General Assembly might have provided an opportunity for a display of Presbyterian amity. Instead, Cockburn complained, it was ‘made a scene for the display of everything in which they differ’.78 Where Cockburn erred was in painting both the Edinburgh commemoration and its Glaswegian counterpart with the same brush. Whereas the commemoration in Edinburgh was an expression of the Evangelical manifesto, with a clearly defined set of politically-charged resolutions, the Glasgow commemoration made open calls for greater Presbyterian amity in defence against Popery.79 Among over twenty toasts made at the banquet after the commemoration sermon, the Revd Dr Paterson gave ‘May the enlightened opposition to the Popery of the Assembly of 1638 distinguish the Protestantism of the Present Eventful Times’, while Thomas Chalmers proposed a toast on ‘Union with Seceders adhering to the Constitution and Standards of the Church of Scotland’.80 In short, the Glasgow commemoration of 1638 was precisely the display of Presbyterian unity that Cockburn felt was lacking. It would take several decades for any form of union to occur. Though the Reformed Presbyterians joined the Free Church in 1876, this was a relatively minor event in comparison to what might have been. It was not until the mid-1890s that union between the Free Church and the United Presbyterians began to appear more likely, as they drew ever closer in their views on all matters from voluntaryism to the relaxation of Calvinist orthodoxy. Practical negotiations began in early 1894, leading ultimately to the formation of the United Free Church on 31 October 1900.81 The commemoration of John Knox had a role to play in the halting process of union between the two denominations. In 1896, as union negotiations loomed on the horizon, a statue to Knox was raised at the New College in Edinburgh. With its outstretched hand pointing towards the not-too-distant time when these churches would join together, the Knox statue was intended as a symbol of the common source of all Scotland’s Protestant churches. At the unveiling, William Miller, then Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly and one of that church’s most influential missionaries, said: This was a public, a national statue, and its being entrusted to one particular portion of the Scottish Church was the most signal testimony that could be given that after all, in spite of their divisions, their troubles, their difficulties, and their contentions, all the branches of the Church were one.82

Though prominently positioned in the quadrangle of the Free Church College, the statue was not intended as a claim to ownership of Knox’s legacy, with Miller pronouncing that ‘any one of the Churches of the Reformation that had sprung from John Knox was regarded by all the others as worthy of the inheritance of his name’. The inscription on the pedestal was clearly intended to be all-encompassing, and is admirably concise: ‘Erected by Scotsmen who are mindful of the benefits conferred by John Knox on their native land’.83



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Though begun under somewhat different circumstances from its Free Church counterpart, the statue in St Giles’ Cathedral was similarly inaugurated as a symbol of unity. The roll-call of members for the committee tasked with raising the St Giles’ statue included the former Scottish Secretary, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, as well as the Rt Hon. Charles Scott Dickson, the Lord Advocate, and Principals Rainy and Story.84 The statue was unveiled by Lord Balfour in November 1906, before not only the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Town Councillors of Edinburgh, but also the Earl of Stair, Lord Salvesen, ministers from both the Established and the United Free churches, and ‘a very large congregation’.85 As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Balfour of Burleigh provided the customary portrayal of Knox as a great Scotsman, who had forged the nation’s civil and religious liberties, and laid the foundations of Scotland’s education system. Balfour was a Conservative and an establishment figure – with an Anglican wife – who had opposed dis-establishment agitation in the 1880s, yet was also intent on Presbyterian reunion. His role at St Giles’ is indicative of the ongoing position of the collective memory of Knox as a focal point for reconciliation.86 Balfour claimed that there was still work to be done if the Scots were to fulfil Knox’s vision of Scotland, yet – as with Miller’s address at New College in 1896 – the crux of the matter was not to educate the populace in the evils of Popery, but to effect a closer relationship between the churches in Scotland. Should the ‘better feeling’ between the two principal denominations ever ‘be brought to its consummation’, it was likely that such an event would take place under the watchful eye of the new memorial. St Giles’ was a much more evocatively ‘national’ site than the relatively denominational precincts of the New College. With a statue to the Great Reformer erected on such an ecumenical site, the rhetoric of union could not fail to carry more weight. THE VIEW FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT The role played by Balfour in the inauguration of the St Giles’ Knox indicates that the Established Church was not averse to participating in the public commemoration of Knox and the Reformation. After 1843, the controlling hand in most of the commemorative events belonged to either the Free Church or the United Presbyterians, yet throughout the century members of the Established Church were full and enthusiastic participants. During the national commemoration of the Reformation in 1860, significant public statements were made by two leaders of the Established Church, Norman MacLeod and John Tulloch. Norman Macleod was of both the establishment and the Establishment. Appointed chaplain to Queen Victoria in 1857, he went on to be Moderator of the Established Church in 1869 as well as, from 1860, editor of the popular religious monthly Good Words.87 In her journal, Queen Victoria described MacLeod as ‘warm, genial and hearty … His own faith was so

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strong, his heart so large, that all – high and low, weak and strong, the erring and the good – could alike find sympathy, help and consolation from him.’88 The Scotsman’s obituary of MacLeod held that ‘His strength lay not in research or speculation or combat, but in touching the hearts of the people’.89 As both preacher and public figure he was nationally recognised, yet he remained in close touch with the people of Scotland as an enthusiastic advocate of ‘practical help’ for the poor rather than the ‘exhortation’ of dogmatic divines. Poverty bred tumult, MacLeod believed, and it was the duty of the national Church not to abandon the underclass.90 In testament to his popularity, almost 3,000 people walked in his funeral procession from Glasgow to Campsie.91 In relation to the perceived aggression of the Roman Catholic Church, Macleod changed his position from organising a petition against extension of the Maynooth Grant in the mid-1840s, to one of greater understanding in the 1860s. This is readily apparent in the idiosyncratic address he made in Glasgow’s City Hall, as part of a series of lectures organised by the Glasgow Protestant Laymen’s Association, a body similar in many respects to the Scottish Reformation Society. In a hall described as ‘perfectly crammed’ with an audience of a ‘highly respectable character’, MacLeod spoke on ‘The Unity of Protestantism’.92 He began by returning his thanks to the Church of Rome. The Catholic Church had, Macleod said, provided the world with many benefits, be they ‘learned Universities’ or ‘many an august cathedral and beautiful parish church’, as well as the ‘undisturbed pursuits of literature, and science, and of philosophy’.93 None of these, however, represented the greatest debt owed to Roman Catholics. ‘Let us not forget’, MacLeod said, ‘that to Roman Catholics themselves we owe the Reformation.’94 The fact that ‘the best of her priesthood and of her people’ had agitated for and achieved reformation was proof, argued MacLeod, of the terrible state the Church had got itself into: ‘The very fact of the Reformation by such men, and at such a time, seems to me to vindicate its absolute necessity.’ Unlike his counterparts in the secession churches, MacLeod was not too concerned by any threat of Romish tyranny. A significant proportion of his address was taken up with the confident assertion that Protestantism, far from being threatened, ‘shall never perish from the world’. In order to ensure that Protestantism would never perish, ‘we demand only what the nations of the earth must soon obtain – civil and religious liberty, education and an open Bible. To secure the downfall of Popery we ask no more!’95 As both a theological liberal and an establishmentarian conservative, Principal John Tulloch made much the same point at the General Assembly of the Established Church, held in May 1860. At this Assembly, a report was read from the committee appointed to make arrangements for the Reformation tricentenary, in which it was stated that 20 December ought to be observed as ‘a day of solemn thanksgiving to God and grateful commemoration of the benefits of the Reformation’.96 The resolutions pro-



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posed by Tulloch in support of the report’s findings placed the Established Church as having a particular claim to the Reformation. Though the report acknowledged that it was ‘highly becoming that the Tri-centenary of the Reformation should be celebrated by the members of the various Protestant Churches of this land, met together in unity’, Tulloch emphasised the ‘duty specially incumbent on this Church to commemorate the blessed era of the Reformation’. The Established Church was ‘that Church which was founded upon the Reformation – that Church which they all believed remained the embodiment of the glorious principles for which the Reformation contended’.97 Nevertheless, the Assembly acknowledged that ‘there should be a spirit of union in the celebration’ of the tricentenary, though the implication appears to have been that other churches should be ‘disposed to join along with the Church of Scotland’, rather than vice versa.98 ACCUSATIONS OF INTOLERANCE Even as the unveiling of the Knox statue in St Giles’ reflected the potential resolution of those issues that had dominated Scottish Protestantism for over 100 years, some challenges remained. These difficulties were not related to the wider context of intra-Presbyterian tension nor to the slings and arrows of the church/state axis, but emanated from memories of Knox himself. Though he occupied a prominent place in the heartland of Scottish nationality alongside Wallace, memories of Knox were haunted by recurrent accusations of intolerance and fanaticism. In contrast to the malleable Wallace, Knox suffered from being portrayed as an unpleasant extremist, unwilling to compromise and prey to violence of language, as well as ­condoning – or not repudiating – the destruction caused in the wake of his sermons. As with Robert Bruce’s political scheming, there were awkward and undeniable truths about Knox’s actions that had to be excused. Whether in the 1820s or the 1890s, those engaged in the commemoration of Knox consistently felt the need to explain or justify his flaws. This was done by stressing that the past should not be judged by present standards, and that any flaws in Knox’s otherwise heroic character were a product of the age and not of the man. That is, if Knox was ever extreme, it was because the times in which he lived had made him so. At the inauguration of the Glasgow Knox monument in the 1820s, Stevenson MacGill made certain to contextualise Knox’s behaviour by asking the question ‘Who will say that extraordinary times and circumstances did not require and justify extraordinary means?’.99 MacGill went on to say: I am sensible that expressions and sentiments have occasionally been uttered by great and good men, in times of violence and oppression, which ought to be received with modification, and considered in connection with the circumstances to which they were applied.100

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In other words, Knox’s intemperance was justified by the harshness of the times in which he operated – desperate times called for desperate measures, and Knox had to do what had to be done. This need to counter accusations of extremism persisted throughout the century, even into the celebration of Knox’s tercentenary in 1872. In a sermon delivered at Kinning Park Free Church in Glasgow, the Revd A. B. Birkmyre, admitted that Knox had been ‘rough … in speech and manner’. These, Birkmyre argued, were precisely the qualities required at such a crucial moment: ‘the time was not a time for smoothness – it was a time for stern resistance, prompt decisions and downright honesty. Knox was stern and prompt and honest, and by being so saved his country.’101 In the same year, in a lecture on Knox given at the Scottish National Church in London, Dr John Cumming – a major proponent of Established Presbyterianism in England and leading figure in the Reformation Society, the English equivalent of the Scottish Reformation Society – felt it necessary to defend Knox from ‘charges of iconoclasm’, and other ‘unfavourable criticisms’. He described Knox as ‘uncompromising but never uncharitable, enthusiastic in his attachment to truth, but never a fanatic’.102 It should be noted that such a portrayal of Knox was present in the eighteenth century also: no less a historian than William Robertson wrote that those aspects of Knox’s character which made him ‘less amiable, fitted him to be the instrument of Providence for advancing the Reformation among a fierce people’.103 There is, in this, yet another irony. As we have seen, when celebrating the laudable virtues of Scotland’s national heroes, commemorative acts directly linked those virtues with the present. That is to say, the bravery and piety that had made Scotland great in the thirteenth or sixteenth century made Scotland great in the nineteenth. These characteristics of nationality endured across time, unchanging and distinct. When it was necessary to focus on potential faults, however, these were put down to the spirit of the age: a hero’s flaws were contingent upon the specific conditions of the time. In other words, while virtues were transcendent, flaws were conditional. UNCONSTITUTIONAL REBELLION Rather than waste time excusing the faults of Knox or the Covenanters, one could simply focus on their illustrious legacy. Defence of the Covenanting divines of the mid-seventeenth century consistently adopted this approach. Knox was in the enviable position of having reformed the Scottish church out of the clutches of tyrannical Popery, but in resisting a lawful British king, the earlier Covenanters were in a much more precarious position. For Evangelical Presbyterians, however, Samuel Rutherford and his fellow representatives at the Westminster Assembly had legitimised Evangelical resistance to a distant government that did not fully recognise the nature and demands of the Scottish church. In his sermon as part of the Glaswegian



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commemoration of the 1638 Glasgow Assembly, the Revd William Muir dwelt not on matters of spiritual independence but celebrated instead the achievements of the Established Church and the fundamental principles of established Presbyterianism. Though an Evangelical, Muir rejected the militancy of the ‘wild men’ Evangelicals while still recognising the need for reform within the Church.104 Even so, Muir justified the commemoration of men whose ‘zeal might occasionally glow out with something of an over-vehement heat’, by stressing the importance of the ‘sentiments corresponding to their designs’, as well as ‘the grand results of their exertions and sufferings’.105 As part of this justification, and to counter ‘our witty poets and infidel historians’, Muir argued against the accusation that ‘the patriarchs of 1638’ had been rebels, reminding his listeners that the Assembly had ‘humbly and earnestly implored the countenance and sanction of their lawful prince’, before holding their Assembly. Nor had these early Covenanters been intolerant bigots: quoting Alexander Henderson, Muir argued that his forebears had tolerated any religion they perceived to have maintained ‘the pure doctrines of Protestantism’.106 In terms of the designs and results of 1638, Muir portrayed the Reformers as being ‘at once religious and patriotic’, claiming that ‘They first aimed at rescuing the church of Christ from popish corruptions’, before purifying it ‘from worldly bias and elements, and [fixing] it at last secure against the movements of equally despotism and anarchy’.107 The need to defend the seventeenth-century Covenanting divines was not unwarranted. Following the 1838 anniversary of the Glasgow Assembly, some prominent Scottish Episcopalians launched a series of vocal attacks on the commemorations, making damning connections between 1638 and 1838, and representing the Glasgow Assembly as an unconstitutional rebellion against civil power and the rule of law. In a pamphlet written under the pseudonym of ‘An Observer’, John Alexander, an Advocate and later Episcopalian minister at St Paul’s Chapel in Edinburgh, referred to the 1638 Assembly as ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘a national tragedy which ended in the overthrow of all the constituted authorities in the country’.108 In a letter to the Tory MP Sir George Sinclair, who had chaired the Edinburgh commemorations in 1838, the Revd John Marshall, of St Peter’s Episcopal Chapel, Kirkcaldy, argued that the 1638 Assembly had been held ‘in utter contempt both of legal authority and of ecclesiastical rule’. It was, he fumed, ‘the immediate precursor of that Great Rebellion which deluged Scotland, England and Ireland with blood’.109 Not without justification, both writers asserted that those men dubbed heroes by the Edinburgh commemoration had attempted to ‘put down the liberty of the press’. In this way, the Presbyterian divines of both 1638 and 1838 were sworn enemies of liberty of conscience.110 ‘And this’, wrote John Alexander, ‘is what the Presbyterians of the present day call the Restoration of Civil and Religious Liberty.’111

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The inevitable consequence of any revival of the principles avowed in 1638 Assembly was that the persecuting and excommunicating spirit which descended from Knox and Melville, – which burned so brilliantly in 1638 and after the Revolution, – would again rage as fearfully as ever, were it not repressed by the civil law and unsupported by public opinion.112

For these Episcopalian critics, ‘constituted authority’ mattered more than theological or spiritual truth, the law of the land above the law of the church. Such a reaction is redolent of the wider conservative disgust felt at the violent modernity of the French Revolution. That is to say, any attempt at abrupt change predicated upon ideology rather than tradition would inevitably lead to violence and a tyranny of its own, whether Covenanting or Jacobin. Naturally enough, the defenders of Covenanting memory were never going to meekly accept such slings and arrows. One of the most sustained defences of apparent Covenanting extremism came from William Maxwell Hetherington at the 1843 commemoration of the Westminster Assembly. In an address entitled ‘The Real Character and Bearing of the Westminster Assembly, and Refutation of Calumnies’, Hetherington attempted to counter the accusation of rebelliousness and of ‘intolerance and bigotry’.113 On the first point, he argued that the Westminster Assembly had been called by a Parliament of England, stressing that its purpose had been to stand ‘against a lawless attempt to invade and destroy the imperscriptable and God-given rights of the nation, both civil and religious’. ‘Let any man who applauds the British Constitution’, he continued, ‘weigh well its import before he ventures to accuse a Parliament, which, by resisting regal despotism, laid the foundation of that noble fabric.’114 Hetherington then refuted the accusation of intolerance and bigotry by emphasising the Presbyterians’ role in promoting Protestant union. Any taint of bigotry would surely vanish when placed ‘beside the vast and glorious idea of Christian union on Scripture principles’. There was, however, a familiar element of concession in this defence: Let it be remembered that they lived in what may be termed an intolerant age; and let us avoid the intolerance of censuring harshly the conduct of men who were placed in circumstances so trying, and in many respects so different from this in which it has been our happiness hitherto to live.115

COMMEMORATIVE RITUALISM Opposition to the commemoration of Scotland’s Presbyterian past came not just from Episcopalians objecting to the unlawful nature of the Covenanters and, by extension, those formally remembering them. One form of attack largely absent from the remembrance of secular heroes came from within



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the Presbyterian community itself, focusing not on the behaviour or legality of the subjects but on the very act of commemoration. Some Presbyterians contended that the most conspicuous characteristic of the commemorative act was its similarity to the observance of religious ritual, and it involved no great stretch of the imagination to see the commemoration of a national hero as the worship of a secular saint. Whether the subject was Wallace or Knox, countless commemorative events involved a procession, songs sung in praise of the subject or the nation, and the carrying of relics, all intended to inspire emulation in the ritual participant and attendees.116 Was not the commemoration of the past simply another example of Popish ritual creeping into Scottish religious practices under a friendly guise? The author of a letter written to the Scotsman on the subject of the 1860 national commemoration of the Reformation certainly thought so, drawing on no less a source than the Revd Thomas McCrie, biographer of Knox and Melville and defender of Covenanting memory. Citing McCrie’s objection to various Presbyterian denominations marking the death of Princess Charlotte in 1817, ‘Edinensis’ concluded that, had McCrie been alive to witness the 1860 commemoration, he would have refused to take part, recognising that the organisers had ‘deserted their principles’.117 In 1880, following an impassioned sermon from James Begg preached as part of the national commemoration of the Covenanting struggle that year, another letter appeared in the Scotsman, this time from a correspondent calling himself ‘Original Seceder’. The letter drew direct comparison between commemorative practice and the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church: Pilgrimages, worshipping at the martyrs’ tombs, observance of ‘days and months’, and the gathering of relics for exhibition in churches … so far from being an exhibition of the principles of the Covenanters, the commemoration too plainly savours of that anti-Christian system which they covenanted against.118

Perhaps most stinging of all, Scottish Catholics had also spotted the similarity. In early 1861, a ‘Roman Catholic soiree’ was held in the Music Hall in Edinburgh in response to the national commemoration of the Reformation the preceding December, presided over by Bishop James Gillis. Among enthusiastic defences of the Papacy and the Catholic Church, a Mr R. Campbell of Skellington delivered an address on the Scottish Reformation, in which he reminded the Protestants of Scotland that their own ‘theological books’ accused such commemorations of being ‘vanities, superstitions, and inventions of the devil’.119 He had a point: was Covenanting commemoration not wholly undermined by this fatal irony? Those commemorating the Presbyterian past were certainly not ignorant of such associations. Recognition of the potential for dangerous ritualism or de facto sanctification is scattered throughout the deployment of Scottish Presbyterian memory. As those belonging to the denomination with the closest links to the Covenanting past, members

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of the Reformed Presbyterian Church were particularly intent on ensuring that invocations of Covenanting memory were distanced from ritualistic parallels. One of their most authoritative and outward-looking ministers was William Symington. Described as ‘perhaps the best-known of his denomination’ in the nineteenth century, Symington was a popular preacher, writer and advocate of social reform.120 Symington clearly recognised the efficacy of public commemoration as a means of connecting the present with the past, and of inspiring his fellow Scots to follow in the footsteps of their Covenanting forefathers. In an address delivered at the Reformed Presbyterians’ denominational commemoration of the 1643 Westminster Assembly, Symington argued that the commemorative act was not ‘lending countenance to the pernicious principle that “the church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies”’. It was, instead, ‘acting under the authority of the divine command: “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask thy father and he will show thee, thy elders and they will tell thee.”’121 To avoid the Papal taint of hagiography, Symington argued that the divines of 1643 had acted as exemplars of God’s will. Appeals to the testimony of the past – to Covenanting memory – communicated these lessons. At Paisley in 1834, Symington’s brother, Andrew, another leading light in the Reformed Presbyterians, preaching a sermon to raise funds for a monument to Covenanting martyrs, made it clear that there was no attempt to raise his subjects to sainthood: We presume not to canonize the worthy dead. We assemble not to consecrate their dust nor to perform Masonic ceremonies at the laying of the foundation stone of their tomb. No, we simply tell the story of their martyrdom, in connection with the noble cause in which they fell … Let our children and our strangers go to the spot and pour out tears at the grave of martyred fathers, and return to inquire into their country’s history – to cherish the recollection of their country’s troubles and deliverances – to hallow the memory of their country’s martyrs …122

Commemoration was not sanctification, but instead represented Knox and the Covenanters as loyal servants of the will of God. Stressing these principles avoided any association with Popish ritual or the accidental canonisation of the subject. The intention was not to sanctify the heroes of Presbyterian memory but rather to encourage the retention of those qualities with which they had imbued Scotland. Time and again, these national heroes were represented as instruments of God, underlining that He was the focus of these commemorations, with the individual subjects acting as exemplars of His will. In a commemorative sermon preached in 1838, the Revd Abercrombie L. Gordon stressed the centrality of God’s purpose when looking to the lessons of the past. Commemoration, he argued, was not to be carried out ‘for mere historical reflections with a view to mere political improvement’, but instead its purpose was ‘to trace the progress and mark



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the consummation of God’s merciful purpose in the Redeemer, as displayed in the history of His Church’.123 INTERNATIONAL HEROES OF THE REFORMATION Just as Wallace and Bruce jostled for position with other European national heroes, so John Knox was part of a pantheon of European Protestant heroes. Indeed, the commemoration of Knox effectively marks Scotland’s contribution to the wider realm of Protestant commemorative practice throughout the nineteenth century. These commemorations shared many of the same features, not least their organisation by a co-ordinating body with a unified purpose. Furthermore, in the same way as objections were raised to commemorative practice in Scotland, some European Protestants rejected the remembrance of their founding fathers. For instance, the Dutch Reformed Church refused to participate in the 1863 commemoration of the death of John Calvin.124 Heroes such as Wallace and Tell shared certain characteristics as fathers of the nation, yet, although their stories were easily compared and contrasted, there could be no suggestion that these heroes had any direct links. Wallace and Tell may have been roughly contemporaneous, yet even the most ardent nineteenth-century nationalist would have scrupled to contend that these heroes had seen themselves as part of a pan-European movement to assert national independence against alien tyranny. The heroes of the Reformation, on the other hand, were assertively and self-consciously part of the same movement. Even if their theology or confessional ideology may have differed, these Reformers saw themselves as participating in the same struggle – indeed, many of them were friends and associates. Furthermore, unlike that of the mytho-historical figures of the Middle Ages, the collective memory of the Reformers rested upon a vast library of writings and correspondence. Whereas the true motivation of William Wallace was lost to history – if not to memory – the motivations of the great reformers survived in remarkable detail. Despite their differences, these reformers were self-identifying Protestants, active participants working towards the shared goal of promoting Reformed religion and hacking away at the corruptions of the Church of Rome. In other words, historical detail could be made to work in their favour, cementing the missionary statements of Scottish Presbyterianism by appealing to its shared European roots. LUTHER AND CALVIN IN SCOTLAND By far the two greatest heroes of the Reformation were the German reformer Martin Luther, and the Franco-Genevan reformer John Calvin. If Knox was identified by the Scots as a national hero, Calvin and Luther were avowedly international heroes, their achievements commemorated across Europe

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wherever Reformed religion had a public voice. Between 1817 and 1909, four major international commemorations took place. The 31st of October 1817 saw the commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the posting of Luther’s ninety-five theses, a date that would go on to become an annual Reformation Day, not just in Germany but in the Netherlands and Hungary also. In May 1864, an international commemoration was held to mark the tercentenary of the death of John Calvin, organised by a committee of the Evangelical Alliance based in Geneva – the Alliance being a truly international movement formed to encourage Protestant unity in the face of ‘the encroachments of Popery and Puseyism’.125 A similar approach was taken in September 1883, when the 400th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther was remembered at an international convocation in Wittenberg. Then, in 1909, Calvin’s birth was commemorated by another major international event, again held in Geneva. Each one of these events involved addresses being dispatched to the Assemblies and Synods of Reformed churches across Europe, requesting that they mark the date and, in the case of the 1864 Calvin tercentenary, organise a contribution for the erection of a ‘Calvin Memorial Hall’ in Geneva. Whether in the depiction of their virtues, their flaws, or any of their achievements worthy of commemoration, there was a distinct pattern in the commemoration of Luther and Calvin across Europe, no different in Scotland from that in Germany, France, the Low Countries or Switzerland. Simply put, Luther was the big-hearted man of action, while Calvin was the dry and intolerant logician. Whether in works of history or acts of commemoration, the personalities of the two Reformers were explicitly or implicitly contrasted, with Calvin often portrayed negatively in comparison with Luther. For instance, nineteenth-century school textbooks in the United States consistently emphasised the stereotype of Calvin as an intolerant persecutor, rendering him unusable in didactic appeals to the American notion of religious freedom. Luther, on the other hand, with his more genial character, his energy, and his position as the first of the great reformers, was depicted much more favourably, easily fitting the mosaic of American virtue.126 In nineteenth-century Scotland, this characterisation of Martin Luther as a reforming force of nature is evident in the sermons preached across Edinburgh to mark the anniversary of his birth in 1883. Throughout, when depicting Luther’s personal nature, Scots divines placed their emphasis decidedly on the strength and dimensions of his character and his God-given heroism. For Norman MacLeod of the Established Church, Luther was to be remembered for ‘his force, his fire, and his grandeur of soul’.127 Luther was also a truly massive presence, physically and spiritually. In a lecture delivered in the Buccleuch Evangelical Union Church, the Revd Dr W. Adamson depicted Luther as ‘an epoch personage, and in certain aspects as mighty an intellectual and spiritual giant as ever trod the earth’. R. B. Drummond, in St



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Mark’s Unitarian Church, argued that the only valid reason for commemorating Luther was ‘because he was a great, brave, heroic man’. On other occasions, the German Reformer’s character was secondary in comparison to those paradigm shifts brought about by his heroic endeavour in the cause of Reformation: the centrality of the Bible in man’s relationship with God, justification through faith rather than works, and the universal priesthood of all believers. At the same time, and as we might expect, the Scots reserved particular attention for the fundamental characteristic of liberty of conscience, the freedom to worship free from external influence. There is no doubting the strength of opinion regarding John Calvin’s role in the Reformation. Calvin’s essence was, in the words of the Established Church leader, John Tulloch, his role as the Reformation’s ‘genius of order’.128 The rhetoric of his commemoration consistently portrayed Calvin as being the great thinker of the Reformation, the organising and analytical mind that drew together the disparate strands of Reformed thought into coherent doctrine. In his address on the character of Calvin at the Edinburgh commemoration of his tercentenary in 1864, William Lindsay, Professor of Exegetical Theology to the United Presbyterian Church and ‘a sound if unedifying preacher’, claimed that Calvin had ‘far outstripped all the reformers in the ability of grasping a large subject, and setting it forth in its full and true proportions’.129 At the same event, the Revd William Thomson, United Presbyterian Minister at Broughton Place in Edinburgh, described Calvin as ‘the great thinker, the theologian, the literary man of that grand movement which inspired with a new life more than half of Europe’.130 This God-given intellectual gift had its dark side in collective memories of Calvin, however, manifested in a perceived lack of humanity, and dour coldness, particularly when compared to the good-humoured bon vivant Martin Luther. A common stick used to beat Calvin with was that, unlike the nature-loving Luther, inspired by the birds outside his window, Calvin appeared neither to notice nor be moved by the sublime landscapes of Switzerland. In an address at the celebration of Calvin’s tercentenary in London, the younger Thomas McCrie bemoaned the fact that Calvin was seen as ‘cold-hearted, cruel, and morose … the fiercest of fanatics, the gloomiest and most odious of bigots’.131 This dryness was not necessarily a disadvantage. Indeed, Calvin’s hard-headed codification of the Reformed religion was seen as a necessary complement to the passionate exhortations of Luther. The two reformers were – to use an expression of decidedly nonChristian origin – the yin and yang of the Reformation. In his Edinburgh Philosophical Institute lectures on the leaders of the Reformation delivered in 1859, John Tulloch defined two types of Reformer: ‘men of movement and of action, and men of organisation and of policy’.132 Luther was the greatest of the first type, Calvin of the second, yet both were necessary to ensure Reformed religion was sustainable. Luther had carried the Reformation struggle forward with his fiery temperament and heroic

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momentum, while Calvin was the guide, the map-maker: ‘someone, not indeed to beat back and check [the Reformation], but to rein it in, to impress upon it a definite constitution, and to bring it under discipline’.133 Despite the fact that Calvin was undoubtedly a more important figure for Scottish Presbyterians than Luther, if coverage in the press is any indication, the Luther commemoration in 1883 was far more extensively celebrated in Scotland than its Calvinist counterpart in 1864. Considerably fewer sermons were preached in commemoration of Calvin’s tercentenary than in commemoration of Luther’s, even though both years saw an appeal from the churches’ Assemblies and Synods for their ministers to mark the date. The Christian Witness described the celebration of the 1864 tercentenary in Britain as ‘neither great nor general’, though ‘the celebration has not been an entire failure’.134 Certainly, the Calvin commemoration of 1864 hardly slipped by as a mere commemorative whimper – the organisers of those commemorations that did take place promoted them as a great success. In London, the tercentenary was marked with an event in the Freemasons’ Hall, which included the address by Thomas McCrie noted earlier. Of the Scottish commemoration, Evangelical Christendom – the periodical of the Evangelical Alliance in Great Britain – reported, ‘The Established Church celebrated the occasion in solitary state; the unestablished bodies of Presbyterians met in pleasant harmony.’135 This gathering of the ‘unestablished’ churches appears to have been the only commemoration of any significance held in Scotland in 1864. The Christian Witness described the meeting, which took place in the New Assembly Hall, Edinburgh on 27 May as ‘incomparably the most important’ of the commemorations. Two of the speakers came from the United Presbyterian Church, one from the Free, and the fourth, William Goold, was a Reformed Presbyterian.136 Despite the significance of both Calvin and Luther’s role being recognised in Scotland, no opportunity was lost to emphasise that the Reformation would have taken place in Scotland with or without the two men. As we have seen, a theme in the commemoration of John Knox was that Presbyterianism had been the most natural and national form for the Church in Scotland, beginning with the Culdees, losing its way under the influence of Rome, only to re-emerge in the sixteenth century. This assertion of the deep, Scottish roots of Presbyterianism helped raise the Scottish Reformation to the same level as those of mainland Europe in the estimation of Scottish Presbyterians. In his address at the Edinburgh Calvin commemoration in May 1864, the Revd Andrew Thomson drew upon the familiar argument that Presbyterianism was already ‘native to the soil’ of Scotland, prior even to Knox. Though inspired by the achievements of Luther and Calvin, the Scottish Reformation was seen as a return to the native ecclesiastical forms of Scotland. As ever, on any occasion when one could prove the historic roots of one’s national virtues or triumphs, the more easily could one thereby assert their superiority. In this sense, Calvin’s role had been to



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inspire Knox, but not as master to disciple; rather, the two men had been ‘kindred in their deepest convictions, kindred in their noblest aims, kindred in their sufferings’.137 John Tulloch expressed the same sentiment in his 1859 lectures, calling Knox and Calvin ‘disciples in the same school, with the same severe type of character’.138 The connection between the two reformers could even be used to counteract those persistent accusations of their lack of emotional sympathy or enjoyment of nature. In his 1864 address, the Revd Thomson painted a charming portrait of Knox and Calvin ‘arranging a holiday excursion … ascending the wooded slopes of Jura, and then crossing the noble lake, and losing themselves in the vineyards on the smiling hills of Vaud’.139 Thomson went on to claim that, in many ways, Knox could be seen as having taken the Reformation further than Calvin, in asserting the rights of a congregation to choose their own minister, as well as ‘more sharply defining’ the sanctity of the Sabbath.140 LUTHER AND CALVIN IN EUROPE Beyond Scotland, the role of the two Reformers was adapted to meet the demands of different nationalities, while international appeals were also made for participation or subscription to commemorative endeavours – specifically the Calvin appeal of 1864. Whereas the National Wallace Monument movement sought support from overseas on the basis of shared Scottish nationality – or national identification – its appeal in terms of Wallace’s legacy as being of benefit beyond Scotland or Britain was fairly limited. Endorsement from European nationalists such as Lajos Kossuth or Giuseppe Garibaldi was principally a means of marketing the monument movement to as broad a constituency as possible, drawing on nationality as the secular equivalent of Reformed religion. This was not the case for those calls made to remember Calvin and Luther. The commemoration of the great reformers was self-consciously international – the pantheon of Protestant heroism was not contrived through collective memories of proto-national virtue but by historiographical actuality. In particular, the internationalism of Calvin’s influence was one of the key features of his memory. Even more so than Luther’s, Calvin’s reach and influence were bound neither to his nationality nor to his connection with Geneva. In truth, it was Calvin’s lack of national ownership that permitted his wider acceptance as a hero for all Protestant nations, rendering it simpler to fit his achievement into other Protestant-national narratives. This was in contrast to the case with both Knox and Martin Luther. In Scotland, Knox’s nationality was an essential component of his position as a focus for Scottish national memory. Similarly, a key feature of the commemoration of Luther in Germany was his place as both a great German and a great reformer. Throughout the nineteenth century, German liberal

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nationality was largely coterminous with Protestantism – one could not be achieved without the other – and the historiography and commemoration of Martin Luther were bound to the realisation of this ambition. Just as the Scots depicted Presbyterianism as both the natural and the national form of Christianity stemming from the Culdees, for German nationalists Protestantism equated directly to German nationality and unity. Following the narrative proposed by such hugely influential historians as Ranke, Germany national unity had been at the forefront of the Reformation project in the early sixteenth century, but had been undone by the Roman Church. Had Protestantism triumphed across the whole of Germany in the 1520s, national unity would have been achieved over 300 years before unification under Bismarck.141 We have already noted how anti-Catholic sentiment was at the heart of post-Unification nationalism, embodied in the statue of Hermann with his sword pointing defiantly towards Rome. The same sentiment loomed large in the commemoration of Martin Luther. Following the Kulturkampf of the 1870s, the German commemoration of Luther in 1883 was, in Thomas Brady’s resonant phrase, a ‘belated birthday party for the new Germany’.142 Luther was seen as the quintessential German, the heroic founder of national liberty, progress and achievement, whether cultural, religious or political, a true father of the nation.143 Whereas Luther’s national heroism was made possible by his unambiguous German nationality, Calvin was insufficiently national to act as a hero for any one national community. Earlier in the century, Calvin had occupied a relatively high position in German collective memory of the Reformation, with the unification of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Germany in 1817 timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Thesemanschlag. On this occasion, Calvin was granted equal weight to Luther, yet as German nationalism grew increasingly assertive over the course of the century so Calvin became a more awkward fit. Indeed, German Protestants effectively relegated Calvin to the second if not the third rank of reformers.144 None of Germany’s principal church institutions encouraged the commemoration of Calvin’s death in 1864, and the Luther monument at Worms, erected in 1868, renders Calvin’s contribution to Reformation ‘almost invisible’.145 By the beginning of the twentieth century, Calvin was beginning to find his way back to prominence within the German Reformed churches, with the church authorities this time encouraging participation in the 1909 commemorations in Geneva, yet Calvin continued to play second fiddle to his more national counterpart, Luther.146 In contrast, French Protestants were keen to claim Calvin for their own, yet in a similar vein to the divisive figure of Joan of Arc, Calvin suffered from the heterogeneity of French nationality, deployed by different ideologies, never occupying a shared place in the nation’s memory. There were some attempts to ‘nationalise’ Calvin. During the Parisian contribution to the 1864 Calvin tercentenary, the Revd Dr de Felice, Professor of Sacred Eloquence



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in the Protestant Theological College at Montauban, was reported as having brought out ‘with remarkable tact the correspondence between Calvin and our [i.e. French] national genius’. ‘Time was’, de Felice declared, ‘when France seemed ready to be led by him. Had France been Protestant, what a glorious nation! – what a different history!’147 In a more secular milieu, French nationalists attempted to claim Calvin, but despite the Reformer’s French origins, he was deemed on the whole too ‘foreign’ to act as a focal point for French nationality. Elsewhere in Europe, Hungarian nationalists adopted Calvin as a representative of the nationality of the Hungarian Reformed Church, emphasising the alien hierarchy of the Church of Rome and the Habsburg monarchy.148 It may be an exaggeration to argue that collective memories of Calvin directly inspired Hungarian nationalists in 1848, yet Reformed Hungarians certainly played a key role in the revolution. During the ‘War of Independence’, the nationalists made Debrecen – which they referred to as the Calvinist Rome – their capital.149 Despite this, when national unity required it the commemoration of Calvin could encompass the broadest of churches, with even Catholics participating in the Hungarian commemoration of the Calvin tercentenary in 1864.150 Unusually, less appears to be known about the role Calvin played in collective memories of Swiss nationality in the nineteenth century. Certainly, the role of Calvin’s teachings played a part in the politics of Reformed religion in Switzerland at this time – indeed, the history of the National Church in Switzerland contains some similarities with that of Scotland. Following the revolution of 1848, the new Swiss constitution removed the National Church from its position as the pre-eminent, national religion, leading to some members of the Réveil party – a religious revival that called for ‘a renewal of piety, orthodoxy, and ecclesiastical reform’ – forming their own church the following year.151 Prior to the late 1840s, the dominant view within the National Church held that it was unnecessary to keep to the letter of Calvin’s doctrines. The Reformer was seen as a product of his time, and as times change so too should the role of his teachings, leading to a greater focus on Calvin’s place as an organiser of the church and national education.152 In contrast, the Réveil clung to the doctrine of Calvin as a ‘normative standard’ for the times. The relative lack of enthusiasm for Calvin as a national rather than a denominational hero in Switzerland is perhaps explained both by the appeal of William Tell for Swiss nationality and the attractions of Reformers such as Knox in Scotland and Luther in Germany. Swiss nationality was defined by the heterogeneity of the nation, neither avowedly Protestant nor Catholic, but focused on points of unity in a way that French nationality, for instance, seemed incapable of. Just as the Scots drew upon the legacy of Wallace regardless of their politics, religion, or attitude to the Union, so a mythic hero such as William Tell had no specifically religious element to render him divisive. Calvin, on the other hand, was so defiantly Protestant that his efficacy

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as a hero for the Swiss nation – both Catholic and Protestant – was seriously undermined. His legacy for the present was not one that could be shared by a sufficient majority to render him an entirely national hero. Calvin’s motivation and his flaws could not be reconciled with the more moderate, inclusive reading of Swiss nationality necessary for national unity. At the same time, Calvin was insufficiently Swiss to occupy a place in the narrative of national origins. Being French, his character and achievements could not be held up as emblematic of Swiss nationality, certainly not in the same way as Luther was ennobled as the embodiment of heroic German nationality, or Knox as the personification of the essential Scottish national character. That said, some commentators appear to have lamented the loss of connection between Calvin’s adopted Genevan home and the legacy of the Reformer. The publisher David Dunant – brother of Jean-Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross – saw Geneva as falling away from its Protestant identity. This lapse was not owing to the rapidly increasing number of Catholics in the city, so much as to the loss of connection with the city’s Calvinist identity. Dunant’s solution was to return to Calvin and ‘the admirable union of religion and liberty’.153 Beyond the realm of ecclesiastical politics, however, it is more difficult to gauge the extent to which Calvin achieved the position of semi-secular national hero. The 1864 tercentenary celebrations held in Geneva were certainly one of the largest collective commemorations of Calvin in the nineteenth century, yet they do not appear to have been particularly national in character. One account describes how objections were raised within the city to the commemoration happening in the first place. Indeed, when the dedication of the site of the Reformation Hall was carried out, a wooden fence, eight feet high, had to be erected, so as to remove the dedication ceremony from public view and protect the participants from objectors.154 Even so, the Reformation Hall was deemed the only form of built commemoration appropriate to the memory of Calvin – anything purely monumental would have gone against the wishes of the Reformer himself. Travelling to Geneva in 1854, Charles Williams, editor of The Missionary Gazette, remarked on the absence of any tomb or monument to Calvin. Five years later, John Tulloch did discover a mark of commemoration when visiting the city: ‘a plain stone with the letters “JC” upon it’. Tulloch found the simplicity of the stone ‘no unfitting memorial of the man – stirring by its very nakedness associations all the more sublime’.155 When, at the 1864 tercentenary, the gathering to initiate the Reformation Hall took place, the principal speaker – the Revd Pastor Demole – was keen to emphasise that this monument to Calvin would be neither a purely commemorative structure nor a denominational church building. In keeping with the Evangelical Alliance’s focus on unity between the churches, the Hall was not to be a ‘fishing ground. Here the members of all the churches will meet with those who belong to no church at all, and the net of the Gospel will be cast’.156



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Attitudes had clearly changed by 1909, however, as one of the aims of the 1909 commemoration was ‘the erection of a monument commemorating Calvin’s work and influence’.157 Just as they had in 1863, Dutch Protestants – certainly the neo-Calvinists – were unwilling to participate in the 1909 commemoration, as it seemed a step away from what the Reformer represented. The 1909 commemoration was too secular, too divorced from the marrow of Calvin’s doctrine. The avowed aim of the celebrations being to raise a purely commemorative monument only served to emphasise how far the Genevans had fallen. That the completed Reformation Wall was such a declaratory statement of Calvinist memory – its central four figures are Calvin, Beza, Farel and Knox; Luther does not appear – was not enough of a balm to the Dutch. This is not to say that the Dutch Protestants rejected the significance of the Reformation – it occupied a pivotal place in their national memory – yet the demands placed upon those memories shifted in the sands of national and ecclesiastical politics. In common with Reformation commemoration in Scotland, the Dutch celebration of the 300th anniversary of the posting of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1817 emphasised the shared origins of all Protestant denominations. With the Kingdom of the Netherlands having been established only two years earlier, the need was for national and denominational unity, with the commemorative celebrations even going so far as to extend an olive branch to Roman Catholics.158 As the century wore on, an increasing sense of the Papal threat following the re-establishment of the Dutch Catholic hierarchy in 1853, combined with the atomisation of Dutch Protestantism, transformed the Reformation from a point of national unity into a memory to be argued over. Unlike in Scotland, where commemorative rhetoric tended to emphasise the shared origins of Scottish Presbyterianism, or in Germany, where Luther was a national hero, Dutch Protestants increasingly used memories of the Reformation to map out their own territory, widening the polarity between opposed denominations. The Reformation was no longer used as a national event, but became more self-consciously religious in its significance, expressing and validating the differences between Protestant sub-groups.159 In commemorating the achievements of Knox and the seventeenth-­century Covenanting divines, the Scots were participating not just in the fashion for deploying their past in aid of present purposes, but in a pan-European concern with remembering the Reformation as a key turning point in the civil and religious story of nations. Knox’s legacy was more than simply Presbyterianism in Scotland, but a form of Protestantism more complete and more ‘scriptural’ than any other. In possessing such a paragon of religious perfection, the Scots were bound by their faith to project this element of their nationality into as wide a milieu as possible, whether or not anyone was listening. What collective Protestant or Presbyterian identity there was saw the Scots participate at home and abroad in the commemoration of the other

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great reformers, placing Knox within this pantheon of reforming heroism as an equal of both Luther and Calvin. Just as Wallace was twinned with Tell, in the eyes of Scottish Presbyterians the position of Knox as a reformer of world standing carried Scottish Presbyterianism to a similar height. NOTES 1 Roderick Graham, John Knox: Democrat (Robert Hale, 2001), p. 12. 2 Edwin Muir, John Knox: Portrait of a Calvinist (Cape, 1929), pp. 306–7. 3 ‘John Knox in St Giles: Unveiling of Memorial’, Glasgow Herald, 22 November 1906. 4 Graeme Morton, ‘Identity within the Union State, 1800–1900’ in Devine and Wormald, Modern Scottish History, p. 376. 5 ‘Saint Andrew’s Day: Caledonian Society Meeting’, The Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, 1 December 1888. 6 Andrew L. Drummond and James Bulloch, The Scottish Church, 1688–1843: the Age of the Moderates (Saint Andrew Press, 1973), pp. 236, 232. Brown, Thomas Chalmers, pp. 287–9, 296–301. 7 Drummond and Bulloch, Scottish Church, pp. 226–35. 8 Ibid., pp. 231–4. 9 Ibid., pp. 226, 235–6. R. M. W. Cowan, The Newspaper in Scotland: A Study of Its First Expansion (George Outram, 1946), p. 230. 10 ‘Commemoration of the Assembly 1638’, Scotsman, 22 December 1838. 11 Brown, Thomas Chalmers, pp. 259, 303. Stewart J. Brown, ‘The Ten Years’ Conflict and the Disruption of 1843’, in S. J. Brown and M. Fry (eds), Scotland in the Age of the Disruption (Edinburgh University Press, 1993), p. 13. Drummond and Bulloch, Scottish Church, p. 240. The description of William Cunningham is from Stewart J. Brown, ‘Dean Stanley and the Controversy over His History of the Scottish church, 1872’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, vol. 31, 2001, p. 162. 12 Report of the Great Public Meeting held in the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, on Thursday evening, Dec 20, 1838: to commemorate the restoration of civil and religious liberty, and of Presbyterian Church government, as secured by the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 (n.p., 1839), p. 2. 13 ‘Commemoration of the General Assembly of 1638’, Glasgow Herald, 21 December 1838. 14 Ibid. 15 Drummond and Bulloch, Scottish Church, p. 239. Stewart J. Brown, ‘The end of the Established Church Ideal in Scotland, 1780–1859’, in James Kirk (ed.), The Scottish Churches and the Union Parliament, 1707–1999 (Scottish Church History Society, 2001), pp. 98–9. 16 Drummond and Bulloch, Scottish Church, p. 239. 17 Brown, ‘End of the Established Church Ideal’, p. 101. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland, pp. 26–7. 18 Bicentenary of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, held at Edinburgh, July



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12th and 13th, 1843. Containing a full and authentic report of the Addresses and Conversations, with an introductory sermon by Rev. Dr. Symington (n.p., 1843), pp. 15–16. 19 ‘Tricentenary of the Reformation’, Glasgow Herald, 22 December 1860. ‘The Tri-centenary of the Reformation: Edinburgh’, Scotsman, 21 December 1860. For Airdrie/Coatbridge see, J. Devine, ‘A Lanarkshire Perspective on Bigotry in Scottish Society’, in T. Devine (ed.), Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland (Mainstream, 2000), pp. 99–102. 20 Glasgow Herald, 22 December 1860. 21 ‘Tercentenary of the Death of John Knox’, Scotsman, 25 November 1872. 22 Ibid. 23 Andrew L. Drummond and James Bulloch, The Church in Victorian Scotland, 1843–1874 (Saint Andrew Press, 1975), pp. 11–15. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland, p. 26. 24 Forsyth, ‘Presbyterian Historians’, pp. 99–100. 25 ‘Monument to John Knox’, Scotsman, 20 May 1846. 26 Drummond and Bulloch, Church in Victorian Scotland, pp. 302–4. 27 Fry, Patronage and Principle, p. 64. 28 Drummond and Bulloch, Church in Victorian Scotland, pp. 333–40. 29 Brown, ‘The Ten Years’ Conflict, p. 5n, p. 5. Drummond and Bulloch, Scottish Church, pp. 180–92. Brown, Thomas Chalmers, pp. 71, 212–20. 30 Brown, Thomas Chalmers, pp. 212–13. 31 Ibid., pp. 91, 124–5. 32 Account of Ceremonial &c. at Laying of the Foundation Stone of Knox’s Monument on the Merchants’ Park (n.p., 1825), p. 11. 33 Knox’s Monument in the Merchant’s Park, pp. 9, 14. 34 Ibid., p. 17. 35 Ibid. 36 Report of Speeches delivered at a Meeting Held in the Music Hall, Edinburgh, on Monday, May 18th, 1846, being the day on which the foundation-stone of John Knox’s Monument was laid (n.p., 1846), p. 20. 37 Alexander Duff, Proposal for the Erection of a Monument to John Knox, on the spot where he resided in Edinburgh – to consist of a massive tower, with churches annexed (n.p., 1846), p. 2. 38 Proposal for the Erection of a Monument to John Knox, p. 2. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Scotsman, 25 November 1872. 42 ‘Proceedings of the United Presbyterian Synod: Tricentenary of the Reformation’, United Presbyterian Magazine, June 1860, p. 268. 43 Glasgow Herald, 19 December 1860. 44 Ibid. 45 Edinburgh John Knox’s Monument, 1846, p. 4. Duff, Proposal for the Erection of a Monument to John Knox, p. 2. Colin Kidd, ‘The canon of patriotic landmarks in Scottish history’, Scotlands, 1994, pp. 4–5.

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46 Wylie, Ter-centenary, pp. 20–1, 210. ‘Tri-Centenary of the Reformation in Scotland’, Glasgow Herald, 16 August 1860. 47 Wylie, Ter-centenary, pp. 30–1. 48 Edinburgh John Knox’s Monument, 1846, p. 5. 49 Glasgow Herald, 19 December 1860. 50 North British Daily Mail, 25 November 1872. 51 Knox’s Monument in the Merchant’s Park, p. 13. 52 Edinburgh John Knox’s Monument, 1846, pp. 12, 25. 53 R. S. Candlish, John Knox, His Time, and His Work: a Discourse, delivered in the Assembly Hall of the Free Church of Scotland on 18th May, 1846 (John Johnstone, 1846), p. 22. 54 Scotsman, 26 November 1872. 55 Edinburgh John Knox’s Monument, p. 25. 56 Ibid., p. 26. 57 Stewart J. Brown, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland (Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 211. 58 John Wolffe, The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain, 1829–1860 (Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 108. For an excellent summary of the effects of the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, see Stewart J. Brown, Providence and Empire: Religion, Politics, and Society in the United Kingdom, 1815–1914 (Pearson, 2008), pp. 180–7. 59 Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, pp.109–10; 116–21. 60 Ibid., pp. 121–31. 61 Drummond and Bulloch, Scottish Church, p. 214. 62 ‘Great General Assembly of 1638’, Glasgow Herald, 24 December 1838. 63 Ibid. 64 Bicentenary of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, p. 47. 65 United Presbyterian Magazine, June 1860, p. 261. 66 Ibid., p. 277. 67 T. Smith, Memoirs of James Begg, DD, vol. II (J. Gemmell, 1888), pp. 148–50. See also Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, pp. 74–6. 68 Ibid. 69 Monument to John Knox (n.p., 1846), p. 4. 70 Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Free Church, 1859, p. 158. 71 ‘Report of the Committee on Popery, 1860’, Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Free Church, 1860, Appendix XIII. 72 Wylie, Ter-centenary, 1860, p. 319. 73 Bicentenary of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, p. 89. 74 Ibid., p. 1. 75 Ibid., p. 121. 76 Ibid., p. 124. 77 Knox’s Monument in the Merchant’s Park (Glasgow, 1825), p. 7. 78 Henry Cockburn, Journal of Henry Cockburn, being a continuation of the Memorials of His Time, 1831–1854, vol. I (Edmonston and Douglas, 1874), p. 214. K. Miller, ‘Cockburn, Henry, Lord Cockburn (1779–1854)’, ODNB.



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79 ‘Commemoration of the General Assembly of 1638’, Glasgow Herald, 21 December 1838. 80 Ibid. 81 Machin, ‘Voluntaryism and Reunion’, pp. 227–9. Drummond and Bulloch, Church in Late Victorian Scotland, pp. 118–25. 82 ‘Unveiling of John Knox Statue in Edinburgh’, Scotsman, 23 May 1896. 83 ‘The Statue to John Knox’, Scotsman, 22 May 1896. 84 Ibid. 85 ‘John Knox in St Giles: Unveiling of Memorial’, Glasgow Herald, 22 November 1906. 86 D. W. Bebbington, ‘Balfour of Burleigh, Lord (1849–1921)’, Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology, p. 53. Drummond and Bulloch, Church in Late Victorian Scotland, p. 114–16. Fry, Patronage and Principle, pp. 95, 113. 87 ‘Macleod, Norman, D.D. (1812–1872)’, Dictionary of National Biography. G. Wareing, ‘MacLeod, Norman’, Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology. 88 Quoted in John MacLehose (ed.), Memoirs and Portraits of One Hundred Glasgow Men who have died during the last thirty years, vol. II (James MacLehose, 1886), p. 210. 89 ‘Death of the Rev Dr Norman MacLeod’, Scotsman, 17 June 1872. 90 Drummond and Bulloch, Church in Victorian Scotland, pp. 109, 312. 91 Quoted in Drummond and Bulloch, Church in Victorian Scotland, p. 31. MacLehose, One Hundred Glasgow Men, p. 211. 92 ‘Tricentenary of the Reformation: Celebration in Glasgow’, Glasgow Herald, 21 December 1860. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 The General Assemblies: Church of Scotland’, Supplement to the Scotsman, 23 May 1860. 97 Ibid. 98 ‘Established Church Assembly: Tuesday, May 22nd’, Glasgow Herald, 23 May 1860. 99 Laying of the Foundation Stone of Knox’s Monument, p. 14; original emphasis. 100 Ibid. 101 North British Daily Mail, 25 November 1872. 102 ‘Tercentenary of the Death of Knox: Dr Cumming on John Knox’, Glasgow Herald, 25 November 1872. Wolffe, Protestant Crusade, p. 149. 103 Quoted in Michael Fry, ‘The Whig Interpretation of Scottish History’, in I. Donnachie and C. Whatley (eds), The Manufacture of Scottish History (Polygon, 1992), p. 77. 104 Brown, Thomas Chalmers, p. 326. 105 Glasgow Assembly, p. 21. 106 William Muir, The Whole Service as conducted in the High Church of Glasgow on Thursday, 20th December, 1838, at the commemoration of the General Assembly of 1638 (n.p., 1838), p. 22.

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107 Ibid., p. 18. 108 [J. Alexander], Review of Certain Recent Proceedings of the Kirk; and of a report of the Speeches Delivered in the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, on Thursday Evening, 20th December, 1838, in Commemoration of the Glasgow Assembly of 1638, by an Observer (n.p., 1839). 109 J. Marshall, Letter to Sir George Sinclair, Bart., M.P., in reference to certain speeches delivered in the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, on Thursday evening, December 20, 1838, in commemoration of the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 (n.p., 1839), p. 34. 110 Alexander, Review, p. 11; Marshall, Letter, p. 39. 111 Alexander, Review, p. 11. 112 Ibid., p. 12. 113 Edinburgh 1843, p. 39. 114 Ibid., pp. 47–8. 115 Ibid. 116 See e.g. ‘Inauguration of the Bruce Monument’, Stirling Observer, 29 November 1877. 117 ‘The Reformation Holiday’, Scotsman, 19 December 1860. 118 Scotsman, 21 June 1880. ‘The Covenanting Commemoration’, letter from ‘Original Seceder’, Scotsman, 24 June 1880. 119 ‘Roman Catholic Soiree’, Scotsman, 3 January 1861. 120 William J. Couper, The Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland: Its Congregations, Ministers and Students (United Free Church of Scotland, 1925), p. 100. 121 Bicentenary of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, 1843, p. 1. 122 A. Symington, The Blood of the Faithful Martyrs Precious in the Sight of Christ: a Discourse Delivered in the Church of Paisley, on the 24th October, 1834 (Paisley, 1834), p. 47. 123 A. L. Gordon, A sermon occasioned by the second centenary of the second Reformation: wherein with a brief statement of the proceedings the principles of the General Assembly in 1638 are applied to the position of the Church of Scotland in 1838 (Aberdeen, 1839), p. 8; also pp. 9, 22–3. 124 Hermann Paul and Johan de Niet, ‘Issus de Calvin: Collective Memories of John Calvin in Dutch Neo-Calvinism’, in Johan de Niet, Herman Paul and Bart Wallet (eds), Sober, Strict, and Scriptural: Collective Memories of John Calvin (Brill, 2009), pp. 68–9. 125 Brown, Providence and Empire, p. 128. 126 Thomas J. Davis, ‘Images of Intolerance: John Calvin in Nineteenth-century History Textbooks’, Church History, vol. 65, no. 2, 1996, pp. 236–47. 127 ‘The Luther Commemoration’, Scotsman, 12 November 1883. 128 John Tulloch, Leaders of the Reformation: Luther, Calvin, Latimer, Knox (n.p., 1859), pp. 91, 156. 129 Calvin: His Character; His Theology; His Influence, p. 8. 130 Ibid., p. 42. 131 ‘The Great Reformation: John Calvin’s Tercentenary’, The Christian witness and Church Members’ Magazine , vol. 31, 1864, p. 317. 132 Tulloch, Leaders of the Reformation, p. 91.



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133 Ibid., p. 156. 134 ‘The Great Reformation: John Calvin’s Tercentenary’, The Christian Witness and Church Members’ Magazine, vol. 31, 1864. 135 Evangelical Christendom, 1 July 1864. ‘Religious Intelligence – The Calvin Tercentenary’, Caledonian Mercury, 26 April 1864. 136 Calvin: His Character; His Theology; His Influence on Knox and Scotland; and Misrepresentations of Him; Being Papers Read at the Tercentenary Commemoration of His Death, Held in the New Assembly Hall (n.p., 1864), p. iii. 137 Ibid., p. 36. 138 Tulloch, Leaders of the Reformation, p. 284. 139 Calvin: His Character; His Theology; His Influence, p. 37. 140 Ibid., p. 41. 141 Thomas A. Brady, ‘The Protestant Reformation in German History’, German Historical Institute Washington, DC Occasional Paper No. 22, pp. 14–15. 142 Brady, ‘The Protestant Reformation in German History’, p. 17. 143 Stan M. Landry, ‘That All May Be One? Church Unity and the German National Idea, 1866–1883, Church History, vol. 80, issue 2, 2011, pp. 291–3. 144 Stefan Laube, ‘Calvin in Germany: a Marginalised Memory’, in de Niet, Paul and Wallet, Sober, Strict, and Scriptural, pp. 128–9. 145 Laube, ‘Marginalised Memory’, pp. 132, 135. 146 Ibid., pp. 153–4. 147 ‘The Calvin Commemoration in Paris’, Evangelical Christendom, 1 July 1864, p. 329. 148 Botond Gaál, ‘“Calvin’s Truth” and “Hungarian Religion”: Remembering a Reformer’ in de Niet, Paul and Wallet, Sober, Strict, and Scriptural, pp. 99–100. 149 Ibid., pp. 102–5. 150 Ibid., p. 108. 151 John B. Roney, ‘Introduction’, in John B. Roney and Martin I. Klauber (eds), The Identity of Geneva: The Christian Commonwealth, 1564–1864 (Greenwood Press, 1998), p. 13. 152 John B. Roney, ‘Notre Bienheureuse Reformation: The Meaning of the Reformation in Nineteenth-Century Geneva’, in Roney and Klauber, Identity of Geneva, pp. 175–6. 153 Quoted in G. Mützenberg, ‘Loss of Genevan Identity and Counter-Reformation in the Nineteenth Century’, in Roney and Klauber, Identity of Geneva, pp. 186–7. 154 Evangelical Christendom, 1 July 1864. 155 James Rigney, ‘Shadow on the Alps: John Calvin and English Travellers in Geneva’, in de Niet, Paul and Wallet, Sober, Strict, and Scriptural, pp. 318, 320. 156 Evangelical Christendom, 1 July 1864. 157 Appeal for an International Monument in Geneva to Commemorate the Work of John Calvin, 1509–1909 (New York, 1909), p. 3. 158 Herman Paul and Bart Wallet, ‘A Sun that Lost its Shine: The Reformation in Dutch Protestant Memory Culture, 1817–1917’, Church History and Religious Culture, vol. 88, no. 1, 2008, pp. 41–4. 159 Ibid., pp. 47–54.

Chapter 5 ‘If They Were Rebels Then, We Are Rebels Now’: Commemorating the Covenanters and the Glorious Revolution THE COVENANTING MARTYRS The commemoration of William Wallace, Robert Bruce and John Knox depicted these national heroes as the embodiment of Scottish nationality. For nineteenth-century Scots, this nationality was an enduring truth, the expression of a collective sense of Scotland’s past, defined by the leitmotif of civil and religious liberty. The nature of Scottish nationality was forcefully reiterated in the seventeenth century, as Charles I attempted to subvert the Scots’ hard-won liberty. The Glasgow and Westminster Assemblies were the response, Scottish Presbyterians uniting against the tyrant to defend their faith and their nation. Memories of this Presbyterian national heroism fed into a nineteenth-century sense of independent Scottish nationhood and a heroism that ensured a union of equals with England, a union that protected – and did not undermine – Scottish nationality. This chapter considers the commemoration of the later stage of the Covenanting era, between the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 through to the Glorious Revolution in 1688/9. In particular, we will focus on the Covenanter martyrs of the so-called ‘Killing Times’ of the 1680s. Following the imposition of episcopacy at the Restoration, over a quarter of Scottish Presbyterian ministers refused to conform, choosing instead to preach at illegal ‘conventicles’, concentrated mainly in the south-west of Scotland. In response, Charles II set out to suppress this rebellious activity and, as the level of persecution increased, it was a short step to armed revolt. The Covenanters’ victory at Drumclog and their subsequent defeat at Bothwell Bridge in 1679 ushered in a sustained period of intense persecution, including transportation or summary executions for the most unfortunate. Undaunted, these hard-line Presbyterians continued to gather illegally, becoming increasingly militant and militarised. The publication of the Cameronian Sanquhar Declaration in 1680, disavowing allegiance to the King, ushered in harsher responses from the state – anyone unwilling to swear the Abjuration Oath could be executed on the spot.1 What distinguishes this later Covenanting period from the other milestones of Scottish nationality considered in the preceding chapters is the range of commemorative subjects available to draw from. Covenanting lore



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provided a rich variety of heroic examples, each with its own lively story to be told. They might be chief protagonists such as the preachers Richard Cameron or James Renwick, leading the struggle against the ungodly policies of the Stuarts with sword and open Bible. Such men were the activists of the Covenant, exhorting their followers to stay true to the cause in prayer and battle, whether at Rullion Green, Drumclog, Bothwell Bridge or Airds Moss. Alternatively, many of the martyrs were humble commoners, innocents cruelly slain for their fidelity to the Covenant in the face of persecution. The best-known examples are John Brown of Priesthill and the Wigtown Martyrs, Margaret MacLaughlan and Margaret Wilson. Their stories were replete with the necessary hallmarks of Covenanting martyrology: piety in the face of death, the ruthlessness of their executioners, the tragedy of martyrdom. The story of the Wigtown Martyrs emphasised the youth and feminine innocence of the young Margaret Wilson, while that of Brown of Priesthill expressed the humble loyalty of a commoner to his faith. Brown’s door, in the relatively remote Priesthill where he lived, was described as ‘ever open to the benighted stranger, and often a happy asylum to the persecuted saint’.2 On the 1 May 1685, Brown was at home when Graham of Claverhouse and his dragoons arrived and forced him to take the Abjuration Oath. As Brown refused, Claverhouse ordered his men to open fire. Brown knelt to pray and, faced with this simple piety, the troops refused to shoot. Claverhouse, enraged, took a pistol and shot Brown. These are but the bare bones of a story much debated and elaborated over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Being as much memory as history, there was a great deal to argue about in these tales of Covenanting heroism, yet the essentials provided the required core of piety, tragedy, and inspiration. Another contrast between the commemoration of the Covenanter martyrs and those heroes of Scottish nationality examined so far is the extent to which the Covenanters had to be rehabilitated. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, William Wallace, Robert Bruce and John Knox were commemorated by conservatives, moderates and radicals alike. Though some of Knox’s more ‘enthusiastic’ behaviour may have required a degree of justification, his place at the heart of Scottish nationality was always secure. In the early part of the century, by contrast, the Covenanters were deemed too extremist for the moderate mainstream of Scottish Presbyterian memory, lurking instead on the secessionist fringes. The nineteenth century saw the Covenanting martyrs come in from the cold. Particularly after the Disruption in 1843, collective memories of the martyrs transformed them from dogmatic followers of fundamentalist Presbyterianism into national heroes of civil and religious liberty. By the end of the century, the Covenanters fitted easily in beside Wallace, Knox and Robert Burns as paragons of Scottish national virtue.

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THE REFORMED PRESBYTERIANS From the early 1800s through to the twentieth century, hardly a year went by without an obelisk being raised to yet another worthy martyr.3 These monuments remain, scattered across the fields and moors of Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and other parts of Scotland as a testament not only to the martyrs in whose name they were erected but also to the indefatigable work of those who sought to keep the memory of their heroes alive. Raising or preserving monuments to the fallen was an integral part of Covenanting culture. The monumental commemoration of the martyrs effectively commenced when their bodies were not long in the ground, specifically under the auspices of the Cameronian ‘Praying Societies’. The Societies were comprised of those elements of the Scottish church that held fast to the spirit of the Sanquhar Declaration after the Revolution Settlement of 1690, rejecting the un-Covenanted Hanoverian state, and remaining separate from the established Church of Scotland.4 In 1743, the Societies formed into the first presbytery of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, remaining on the margins of Scottish Presbyterianism in the Covenanting heartland of the south-west. The Reformed Presbyterians rejected the post-1707 British state as having failed to accept the strict demands of Covenanting dogma, and so proscribed any action that might imply approval of the state, including enlisting in the armed forces, legal actions and, after 1832, voting in elections, not to mention their inevitable opposition to Erastianism in all its forms.5 Such a position was all very well when the state had little or no role in the day-to-day life of its members, but as the function of the state expanded, so it became more difficult to stick to the letter of Reformed Presbyterian law. Many members of the Church, unable or unwilling to resist the benefits offered by participation in civil society, the apparatus of the state, or the political process, chose to embrace the more tolerant practices of the Secession churches.6 Despite a steady decline in membership, it was largely the hard work of Reformed Presbyterians that raised the majority of Covenanter monuments across southern Scotland in the first third of the nineteenth century.7 In terms of monumental commemoration, the Reformed Presbyterians set the template in the eighteenth century: the character of ‘Old Mortality’ in the Walter Scott novel of the same name is one such Cameronian, an itinerant stonemason who treks around the grave sites of the martyrs, maintaining their inscriptions. Such humble testimony lay at the heart of collective memories of the Covenanting struggle, yet these eighteenth-century Covenanters were not averse to monumental commemoration on a grander scale. One of Scotland’s most significant Covenanter memorials is the ornate commemorative slab in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh, which bears an inscription written by Hugh Clark, a member of the Reformed Presbyterian church and one of the original editors of the Cloud of Witnesses.8



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Throughout the rest of the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth, the Reformed Presbyterians developed their commitment to maintaining the Covenanter graves by erecting new commemorative monuments and maintaining existing stones. Two of the earliest examples of this type of Covenanting commemoration are the monuments to John Brown of Priesthill, erected in 1825, and the monument to James Renwick, erected in 1828. The Renwick monument was the brainchild of the Revd Gavin Rowatt, Reformed Presbyterian minister of Whithorn, who had managed to collect the £100 necessary to erect the monument from ‘Christians of all denominations’.9 The monument at Priesthill, on the other hand, was erected ‘at the instance of a Society instituted in Renfrewshire and Ayrshire’, with the distinctly Cameronian intent of renewing and maintaining Covenanter graves.10 NATIONALISING THE COVENANTERS The Reformed Presbyterians were not the only standard-bearers for Covenanting memory in this period. Throughout the eighteenth century, a variety of Secession churches appeared, merged, and broke apart again, many drawing deep from the well of Covenanting discourse. We have already encountered two leading Secession ministers – Archibald Bruce and Thomas McCrie – helping to set the foundations for Scottish-Presbyterian national memory. Unlike the Cameronians with their rejection of the unCovenanted, post-Revolution state, the Secession was – on the whole – loyal to the Hanoverian regime. It was by combining their Covenanting inheritance with recognition of and loyalty to the state that both Bruce and McCrie were able to synthesise the constitutional history of the Enlightenment with the Covenanting trope of resistance to tyranny, expressed through ‘civil and religious liberty’. Even though the combined numbers of Reformed Presbyterians and Secession denominations were relatively small, their voices carried far within the intellectual world of Covenanting memory. However, it was with the rise of Evangelicalism within the Established Church, and the formation of the Free Church in 1843, that the Covenanters were more widely adopted as a fundamental element of Scottish nationality. As noted in the previous chapter, following the Disruption, the Free Church rapidly sought to legitimise its status as the true church of Scotland by energetically embracing the Presbyterian past as its own. Just as they had planted their flag on the memory of Knox and the Reformation by instituting and participating in large-scale commemorations, so Free Churchmen saw the potential in the later Covenanters as representing heroic piety and the defence of spiritual independence in the face of a state operating beyond the bounds of its jurisdiction. Indeed, as Neil Forsyth has observed, it is to the Free Church that we can effectively trace the shift in the Presbyterian historical model away from its roots in strict Covenanting tradition to a discourse better adapted

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to widespread Scottish nationality. In effect, the Free Church elided strict adherence to the seventeenth-century Covenants in favour of a focus on the Covenanters’ role as generic heroes of constitutional history and religious independence.11 Furthermore, whereas the commemoration of 1643 might have required the careful sidestepping of the finer points of the Westminster Confession, remembering the devotion and virtue of the Covenanting martyrs kept the commemorative focus firmly on individuals. Here were stories whose truths were self-evident: not every Scot could be a Samuel Rutherford or James Guthrie, yet everyone who kept alive the memory of the Covenanters had it in them to be a Brown of Priesthill or a Margaret Wilson. Out of fidelity to the truth of their Presbyterianism, the Covenanters had left the comfort of the Kirk. To this end, every member of the Free Church could directly connect themselves with the martyrs of the Covenant, abandoning their churches to worship God in the – relatively benign – wilderness of village halls and civic lecture rooms. The Reformed Presbyterians welcomed the wider recognition of their Covenanting ancestors as true heroes of Scottish nationality, yet they looked less favourably on this shift away from precise adherence to the fundamentals of Covenanting doctrine. Even as their numbers gradually dwindled, the Reformed Presbyterians continued to assert their position as the true Covenanting remnant. When a movement was begun to erect a monument to the Wigtown Martyrs in Wigtown itself, the Scottish Presbyterian, journal of the Reformed Presbyterians, concluded that the selection of their own William Symington as the principal speaker proved that ‘however much some may claim to be the successors of the Martyrs’, at least the public leaders of Wigtownshire believed this honour still belonged to the Reformed Presbyterians.12 In the sermon he preached in aid of the monument, Symington stuck closely to the Cameronian script. His text touched on all the fundamentals of Evangelical Calvinist Presbyterianism, stating that the Covenanters stood for salvation through grace, the authority of scripture, the independence of the Church from civil control, and the duty of ‘the civil community to regulate its affairs by the law of Christ, and to subordinate them to the glory of the Lord and the interests of his church’.13 Symington’s final point was quite definitive: For the right of resistance to such civil rulers as usurp the prerogatives of the Redeemer, tyrannise over his church, oppress the people, and lend the weight of their influence to the subversion of constitutional equity, liberty, and law.14

For Symington, ‘the right of resistance to civil rulers’ was but one component of the martyr’s legacy, defined more by those specifically religious elements than by any generic adaptation to the cause of civil and religious liberty. More widely, however, it was this emphasis on resistance to tyranny



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that rendered the Covenanters such usable symbols of Scottish nationality. Just like Wallace and Knox, the Covenanters had made their stand against the tyrant, defending their dearly-won freedoms through bravery and selfsacrifice. Strict Covenanting doctrine was watered down, diluting or removing those elements that no longer fitted with the spirit of the times to leave behind a malleable core of independent nationality. As a result, Covenanting memory could increasingly belong to anyone who recognised the social, cultural or religious capital to be gained by connecting themselves with these heroes of civil and religious liberty. Increasingly, the raising of Covenanter monuments took on a civic aspect, as different localities within Scotland invoked Covenanting memory as a means of celebrating their own contribution to Scotland’s nationality. One of the century’s most markedly civic ceremonies took place in the town of Sanquhar in 1860, to commemorate the signing of the Sanquhar Declaration. The day involved a procession from the town square composed of numerous town worthies, the local volunteer corps and three brass bands. A flag carried at the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge was flown and the procession passed through two triumphal arches ‘composed of evergreens and the beautiful wild flowers of Scotland’. Upon arriving at the first arch, the procession heard the Revd Mr Crawford of the Free Church read out a copy of the first Sanquhar Declaration, before it moved on to the ruins of Sanquhar Castle, where it was addressed by John Stuart Blackie.15 A similar change in focus is apparent at the inauguration of the Wigtown Martyrs’ memorial on 17 August 1858, when the foundation stone was laid before a gathering of between 3,000 and 4,000 people. A procession, led by the Provost, Council and Magistrates, walked to the site of the monument from the town square, where a psalm was read by the Revd James Fleming, United Presbyterian minister at Whithorn.16 The foundation stone having been laid by the Provost, a relatively small number of the day’s attendees squeezed into the United Presbyterian church to hear a speech from James Dodds.17 Dodds was on a return visit, having delivered a course of lectures on the Covenanters in Wigtown the previous year. By the time of this lecture series, the original monument movement launched by William Symington in 1848 had run out steam, yet Dodds’ lectures breathed new life into the attempt, leading to its successful conclusion in 1858. Dodds’ address after the foundation-stone ceremony reflected the shift in ownership of the Covenanting tradition, away from the strict Covenanting concerns of Symington and the Reformed Presbyterians towards one much more self-consciously integrated with the binding narrative of civil and religious liberty. For Dodds, the Covenanters’ greatest achievement was their instrumentality in ‘working out constitutional order ecclesiastically, but also constitutional order politically’.18 Whereas, under the authority of Reformed Presbyterian speakers, civil liberty merely complemented religious freedom, Dodds was keen to attribute equal weight to both.19 He

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painted a detailed picture of the martyrdom of Margaret McLauchlan and Margaret Wilson, claiming that had it not been for martyrs such as these, ‘we might in Scotland at this day have been in a condition no better than those who have to submit to the tyranny of the King of Naples’. Despite the more national tone adopted by James Dodds, not everyone attending the Wigtown monument’s inauguration was contented: the Reformed Presbyterians still had a point to prove. At a dinner held after the inauguration ceremony, the Revd Mr Thomas Easton of the Reformed Presbyterian Church thanked Dodds for paying tribute to the Reformed Presbyterians in his address. Easton went on to complain, however, that, as his denomination ‘had as close an affinity to the Martyrs as any other in Scotland’, it was something of an oversight that no one connected with that church had been asked to take part in the day’s proceedings.20 Though the Secretary of the monument committee responded by saying that one of their most active members was a Reformed Presbyterian, Easton’s complaint lingers as an indication of Covenanting memory slipping through the Reformed Presbyterians’ fingers. Even so, some Reformed Presbyterians were content to frame Covenanting memory in more national terms. In August 1859, the Revd J. W. MacMeeken, Reformed Presbyterian minister at Lesmahagow, preached a sermon at Airds Moss, the site of the battle where the founder of the Cameronians, Richard Cameron, had met his end. MacMeeken articulated the common theme of the Covenanters as having knowingly fought for the rights of their nation. ‘They had at heart and maintained the cause of their country’, he said: They had the best interests of their fatherland at heart. They were patriots in the highest and best sense of the term. The stand which they made, whilst in defence of the cause and kingdom of the Saviour, was in defence of the liberties and rights of themselves and their countrymen.21

In representing the Covenanters in this way, MacMeeken drew parallels between their struggle and that of Luther and Knox, but also those of ‘Tell of Switzerland and Wallace of Scotland’. The lesson MacMeeken preached was that true love of one’s country lay in making a stand when any aspect of nationality was threatened, whether civil or religious. It was the sacred duty of all those who claimed Scottish nationality to act as representatives of the Covenanting legacy. THE 1880 NATIONAL COMMEMORATION The Covenanting martyrs’ shift from the Cameronian periphery of Scottish nationality to the heartland of collective memory is evident in events that took place in the summer of 1880. While the nineteenth century is littered with the erection of monuments and the preaching of sermons to Covenanting memory, by far the most national event held to commemorate



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the Covenanters had more in common with the Reformation commemoration of 1860 and the Knox commemoration of 1872. In June 1880, an interdenominational committee issued a circular proposing that the bicentenary of the ‘famous declaration at Sanquhar’ was the most appropriate opportunity for a national commemoration of the ‘Covenanting Struggle’.22 Under the committee’s direction, numerous commemorations took place during this period, most at or near a site sacred to Covenanting memory. By the autumn, the committee reported, over 100 ‘special meetings’ had been held, ‘many of them in the open air’, and ‘14,000 statements, 10,000 tracts, and 12,000 pamphlets had been specially prepared and circulated’.23 On 20 June, the principal date set aside for commemoration, services were held across central Scotland, with both James Begg of the Free Church and James Kerr of the Reformed Presbyterians preaching at Greyfriars – Begg to a much larger congregation. In Glasgow, sermons were delivered on Glasgow Green by the Revd Mr Gault of the Free Church, and at both Cathedral Square and the Barony Church by the Revd Robert Wallace of the Reformed Presbyterians. Thomas Easton preached at both Bothwell and Hamilton to filled churches, and the Revd Thomas Hobart, Original Secession minister at Carluke, delivered a sermon in Lanark Churchyard to a crowd estimated at somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 people.24 In July, sermons were preached at Solfields in Irvine by ministers from a variety of denominations, and at Torwood Castle near Larbert, followed by a public meeting held in the Temperance Institute in Greenock, addressed by James Kerr.25 Further services were held at Rullion Green, Ayr, Alness in Ross-shire, and at North Berwick, this last in remembrance of those imprisoned on the Bass Rock.26 While the 1880 Covenanting Commemoration was evidently national in scale, the numbers turning out at many of these events somewhat undermines its intended nationality, as many were poorly attended, or, as some reports state, attended only by local parishioners. The Revd Hobart managed to attract somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 people to his sermon in Lanark, yet the two Glasgow events managed only a few hundred. The crowd at North Berwick was described as ‘not large’, while the congregation at Torwood Castle was said to be ‘limited’.27 Even though the congregation at Rullion Green numbered over 1,000, this compared unfavourably with attendance at other services held there in other years. For instance, in 1827, the Revd Mr William Anderson, Reformed Presbyterian minister at Loanhead, had preached to ‘not less than 3,000 or 4,000 persons’. In 1881, the year after the national commemoration, a sermon was preached on the same site to a congregation estimated at 3,000.28 The example of Rullion Green suggests that such relatively poor attendance at the 1880 commemorations is not necessarily indicative of a wider lack of public interest in Covenanting commemoration. Events held to commemorate the martyrs were quite capable of drawing a healthy congregation, even if some distance from a town or village, and much depended

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upon who was doing the preaching. In July 1891, the Revd Jacob Primmer of the Established Church preached to over 3,000 people at the Cameronian monument at Airds Moss. In July 1857, a sermon preached by the Revd Peter Carmichael of the Reformed Presbyterians in aid of a monument to the martyrs George Allan and Margaret Gracie drew an enormous crowd, even though ‘no conveyance can be taken to it nearer than two or three miles; and there is no village or church nearer the spot than eleven or twelve miles’.29 One of the most significant elements of the 1880 commemoration is that it took place at all. The Sanquhar Declaration had once been the very epitome of Covenanting extremism, yet by 1880, memories of the Cameronians and their Declaration had been sufficiently adapted to the demands of nineteenthcentury nationality to make it possible for most of the Scottish churches to come together in a national commemoration. What had once been a resonant symbol of Presbyterian schism, not to mention rejection of an un-Covenanted monarch, could now be remembered as a banner of Scottish civil and religious liberty. The Covenanters had become truly national symbols, available to all. The ‘nationalisation’ of the Covenanters was shot through the national commemoration in 1880, following the same pattern as the commemorative rhetoric of Wallace and Knox in asserting that the current glory of Scotland and Britain was a direct result of the Covenanters sticking close to their religion and nationality. The Covenanters were seen as a beacon of liberty, like Wallace, representing resistance to tyranny and the triumph of principle and piety. Furthermore, the cause of the Covenanters was – and always had been – the spirit of Scottish Presbyterianism. In the sermons he delivered during the 1880 commemoration, the Revd Dr Thomas Easton – the same minister who had bemoaned the absence of any Reformed Presbyterians in the co-ordination of the Wigtown Martyrs’ monument – claimed that Scottish Protestantism had been ‘Covenanting from the very dawn of the Reformation’.30 In countering the argument that the Covenanters were ‘fanatics, traitors, rebels’, Easton said: It was by their means that our country, small and insignificant and poor among the nations, was raised to a rank equal with the foremost; not, it might be, in material wealth and greatness, but what was far better, in intelligence, worth, and piety.31

Indeed, Easton went so far as to claim that it was ‘to the Covenanters Scotland owed and Europe owed it that religious liberty had now an actual as well as constitutional existence’. If the magnificent legacy of Wallace and Knox was not enough to secure national liberty for all, the Covenanters had set the seal upon it. COVENANTER POLITICS The flexibility of the Covenanters’ principles ensured that they could be just as easily called upon for political ends as for religious concerns. For



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instance, in Ireland, the Covenanting legacy provided a valuable weapon in Ulster Presbyterian opposition to Home Rule, culminating in the 1912 Ulster Covenant, a document modelled on the Solemn League and Covenant, signed by over 450,000 men and women.32 Back in Scotland, the banner of the Covenant was raised – sometimes literally – to represent radical politics. Memories of the Battle of Drumclog appear to have been particularly resonant with the aims and public expression of those seeking extension of the franchise and increased rights. In 1814, 10,000 ‘democratic people’ marched from the Lanarkshire town of Strathaven to the field of Drumclog and then on to the site of what they believed to be one of ‘Wallace’s first victories’ at nearby Loudon Hill.33 In August 1832, a celebration of the Reform Bill was held at Drumclog, connecting the ‘advantages that would naturally flow from such an extension of the elective franchise’, with the spot where the nation’s ‘Covenanting forefathers made such a vigorous and effective stand’.34 In 1838, a detachment of Chartists attended the massive demonstration on Glasgow Green, carrying a Covenanting banner that had been borne at the battle.35 Indeed, just as it had done with William Wallace, Chartism enthusiastically embraced the Covenanters as kindred spirits and a necessary historical precedent to legitimise their activities. Despite a commitment to ‘change by peaceful persuasion’, the Chartist press was replete with stories of the Covenanting martyrs and their battles.36 An article in the Chartist Circular, entitled ‘A Legend of the Covenanters’, closed with the warning: May [the Covenanters’] deeds and their examples not be lost upon their descendants! They have likewise a battle to fight, though not with the sword. Socially, as well as politically, society must be remodelled in accordance with the dictates of stern morality … As we look upon our forefathers, so will our descendants look upon us.37

In terms of the political application of Covenanting memory, however, one man in particular stands out as the most strident propagandist: John Stuart Blackie. Blackie was neither a Free or Secession Churchman nor an author of any particularly sustained works on the subject. His limitless enthusiasm for the Covenanting legacy was widely expressed in lecture halls, battle-fields and at open-air gatherings, as well as in the letters column of the Scotsman. At the commemoration held at Sanquhar in 1860 to remember the ‘publication’ of the Cameronian Declaration, he delivered a rousing speech that placed the Covenanters within the grand narrative of Scottish civil and religious liberty. There had been, he said, Only two great battle-fields in the history of Scotland – the field of Bannockburn and the hills of Dumfriesshire and Galloway and Lanarkshire. On the one were established our political, on the other our ecclesiastical liberties.38

Having countered Scott’s ‘caricature’ in Old Mortality by quoting Burns and Carlyle, Blackie invoked the Covenanters as ‘prophets of all that we now

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enjoy; the pioneers of constitutional government, the men who were the first to move in planting that tree of liberty of which we now possess the fruits’.39 In 1881, Blackie delivered a lecture on the Covenanters to the Edinburgh Literary Institute, forcefully arguing for the proper recognition of Scotland’s contribution to Great British constitutional history, and pointing to Ireland as a sign of what Scotland might have been without its long tradition of civil and religious liberty: The Scotch had a conscience of their own and a religion of their own; and if they had not acted as they did, those of the present day would not have been where they were… and if the Irish had had the good fortune to have had a Bannockburn, a John Knox, and a noble army of Covenanters, they would not have seen Ireland in the condition in which it was now.

If the Scots had ‘a religion of their own’ it was achieved in resistance to ‘an infamous conspiracy to crush all manhood and liberty in the country by turning Scotchmen in Englishmen’.40 Here was Blackie striding across familiar territory, defending Scotland not from Popish plots as such, but from the aggressive expansion of Anglo-centrism. For Blackie, this process was begun by the Stuart monarchy ‘with the priest at their right hand’, a sustained attempt to destroy Scottish nationality by the sword and ‘un-scriptural’ Episcopacy. Indeed, by 1892, when Blackie delivered a rousing speech at the inauguration of a monument to the Covenanting preacher Alexander Peden, he had relegated even Bannockburn to the second rank: ‘It was quite certain that Drumclog, with Peden and all his friends, did more important service to Scotland than did even Bannockburn.’41 DEFENDING THE MARTYRS The Covenanters’ passage from the relative fringes of Scottish national consciousness to the centre ground did not go unimpeded. As discussed in the last chapter, the commemorations conducted in 1838 and 1843 attracted criticism from those seeking more moderate solutions to the challenges of Victorian Presbyterianism. In the same way, some nineteenth-century Scots attempted to undermine the place being taken by the Covenanting martyrs in Scottish nationality. Even so, we should be cautious where we point the finger. Despite the heat generated by the Old Mortality controversy, the representation of the Covenanters in Sir Walter Scott’s novel stemmed principally from his desire to present history as the triumph of conservatism over radicalism – whatever the nationality, religion or politics of his characters. In a later novel, The Heart of Midlothian, Scott gave a much more sympathetic portrayal of hard-line Covenanting in depicting the tribulations of the devoted Cameronian, Davie Deans, when faced by a changing Scotland. In seeking an avowed enemy of Covenanting memory we must instead consider Mark Napier (1798–1879), Sherriff Depute of Dumfriesshire and



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the author of works on the Marquis of Montrose and John Graham of Claverhouse. In common with the Episcopalian critics of the 1838 commemoration of the Glasgow Assembly, Napier looked upon the Covenanters as rebels against constitutional government. In his Memoirs and Letters Illustrative of the Life and Times of John Graham of Claverhouse, Napier described John Brown of Priesthill as a Covenanting ‘ringleader and desperate character’, who had ‘harboured in his outlaw cave as many young recruits as he could seduce into the same path of criminal outrage against established law and the Throne’.42 Such a representation was far from that of the humble yet noble man of the soil, meekly submitting to Claverhouse’s pistol and God’s will. Equally, Napier undertook an aggressive deconstruction of what he saw as the myth of the Wigtown Martyrs. In a pamphlet war reminiscent of the Old Mortality controversy, Napier forensically – if somewhat hysterically – dissected each element of the Wigtown myth, consistently accusing the Covenanters of being fanatics and calling the cult of the martyrs a ‘cancerous growth’ upon Scottish history.43 Whether attacking the Wigtown martyrs or defending Graham of Claverhouse, Napier used contemporary sources, including legal records, to expose the fraudulent roots of Covenanting memory by asserting their fundamental lack of historical truth. In the case of Claverhouse, the authority of strict historical source material had, so Napier claimed, ‘cut the whole ground from the feet of his [Claverhouse’s] fanatical calumniators’.44 These accusations of rebelliousness were not passed over by those intent on keeping collective memories of the Covenanters alive. It is surely no coincidence that in the same year as Napier published his memoir of Claverhouse, the Revd John MacMeeken argued against such calumnies during a sermon commemorating the Battle of Airds Moss. The Covenanters, MacMeeken contended, could not be rebels when acting in self-defence against ‘the bloody-minded wretch who would lawlessly invade our homes, to murder our households and desolate our hearths’.45 The following year, at the commemoration held in Sanquhar to remember the publication of the Sanquhar Declaration, the United Presbyterian minister and author of Traditions of the Covenanters, the Revd Dr Robert Simpson, said: If they were rebels then, we are rebels now, for the whole nation under the present constitution is in the attitude of rebellion, because we live under a government which in the year of what is called the famous revolution of 1688 adopted something like the principles of the Covenanters in matters political.46

In contrast to Patrick Edward Dove in 1860, who had separated the significance of the Covenanters from that of the Glorious Revolution, Simpson depicted the principles of the Covenanters and of the Revolution as being one and the same. While Dove can be credited with a more nuanced routemap for the track of civil and religious liberty, Simpson’s version was by far the most common across the commemoration of the Covenanters – that the

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martyrs had stood for the same principles as the Glorious Revolution, years before the Revolution took place. In so doing, Covenanting memory could represent its subjects as the victors rather than the vanquished. Though individual Covenanters may have suffered and died, their principles emerged victorious. In 1835, the Revd Carslaw of Airdrie preached a sermon to a reported crowd of 12,000 people at the site of the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in which he contended: ‘If the Martyrs were defeated they fell in the combat; and if they were conquered, they bequeathed and transmitted to their descendants the fruits of victory.’47 Rather than the Covenanters, it was Charles II and James VII who were the outlaws, acting against the defining character of Scoto-British nationality by subverting the national constitutional and ecclesiastical order. In standing up to such tyrants, the Covenanters planted the seeds of a new age when the civil and religious liberties they fought for would finally be realised. Any implicit rebelliousness in the Covenanters could be swept aside by appealing to the grander aims of their acts of resistance and to the conditions that prompted these actions. It was even possible to apply this lesson to some of the most bloody activities committed in the name of the Covenant. Perhaps the most profound example was the murder of Archbishop James Sharp on Magus Muir near St Andrews in May 1679, by, among others, David Hackston of Rathillet and John Balfour of Burley, both of whom would go on to play a key role in the Battle of Drumclog. Having originally set out to ‘chastise severely’ one William Carmichael, an Edinburgh magistrate who was reported to have been cruelly enforcing the laws against conventicles, Hackston and Balfour’s party encountered Sharp’s carriage quite by accident. Following a protracted struggle, they stabbed Sharp to death. The ruthless slaying of a relatively defenceless old man – Sharp was 61 – might have left an indelible stain on Covenanting memory, yet even such desperate murder could be defended. As part of a lecture on ‘Academical Learning in Scotland’ delivered to classics students at the University of Edinburgh in November 1856, John Stuart Blackie was not shy in depicting the murder of Archbishop Sharp as a literal blow struck for the preservation of Scottish nationality. Blackie forcefully exhorted the students to stand by their nationality in the face undermining threats from England: [The students] had as good stuff in them as they who fought at Bannockburn and Drumclog, who taught the English in somewhat and violent sort, he must admit, but very sufficiently at Magus Muir, that they had no right to interfere with the free development of their nationality.48

Several years later, Blackie returned to the subject in a controversial lecture on the Covenanters, delivered at the Literary Institute of Edinburgh. In attempting to explain the necessity of a Drumclog or Magus Muir, Blackie drew a comparison with the contemporary practice of the shooting of



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landlords in Ireland. The Glasgow Herald records Blackie as being met with applause when declining to defend assassination, ‘or any Irishman who shot a landlord or a factor from behind a hedge’. He did add, however, that the Irish landlords were ‘reaping what they have sowed’, going on to argue that ‘governing Ireland by confiscation and absenteeism’ had prompted the same reaction as the duplicity and ruthlessness of Archbishop Sharp some two hundred years earlier.49 In short: ‘It served him right.’50 Blackie’s contention that Sharp had got what was coming to him was simply a more radical deployment of a commonly-held view: that the wrongs committed by Sharp against the Covenanters – and, as a result, against Scotland – justified the brutality of his death. This resonates with similar sentiments deployed in support of Robert Bruce and John Knox: that both men had been driven to extreme acts by extreme circumstances. Balfour of Burley and his fellow assassins were as much victims of the age as Sharp was of their swords. An editorial on Blackie’s Edinburgh lecture in the Scotsman willingly concurred that the Archbishop’s murderers ‘had some excuse for their desperation, seeing that they were the victims of persecution, and had no other means of redress’.51 The Dundee Courier, on the other hand, saw Sharp’s murder as a stain on the otherwise spotless heroism of the Covenanting martyrs, an unworthy subject for remembrance, especially when compared favourably with the killing of landlords in Ireland.52 Still, the Courier was in something of a minority – overall, the activities of Hackston and Balfour were excused as a product of their times and very singular circumstances. In 1888, at a stridently anti-Catholic meeting in Edinburgh to commemorate the Armada and the Glorious Revolution, the Revd Charles H. McCrie of the Free Church related the story of the murder of Archbishop Sharp. McCrie charged ‘a share of the blame on the Government of Charles, which had driven the people to lose sight of the distinction between constitutional and unconstitutional methods’. James Dodds, in his Fifty Years Struggle of the Scottish Covenanters, excused the murderers by arguing that the sudden appearance of Sharp’s carriage was viewed as the work of providence by the Covenanters and the murder itself an act of almost spontaneous ‘Divine judgement’. Dodds further emphasised that the murder had not been part of a wider policy of assassination by the Covenanters: ‘the act was neither instigated, nor even approved of, by the Presbyterian body – most of them censured and condemned it’.53 A sketch of the event, printed in the Dundee Courier and Argus in August 1870 leavened the brutality of the Archbishop’s murder somewhat by focusing on the piety of his assassins who, having committed the deed, ‘retired to a cottage near the spot, where they devoted some hours to prayer’.54 Indeed, the article placed equal emphasis on the execution of five Covenanters at the same spot in 1679 following their capture after Bothwell Bridge, clearly denoting where the writer’s sympathies lay. Overall, the tone is one of excusing the Covenanters’ their folly by

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emphasising the far greater evil of Sharp. In common with other flaws in other national heroes, where the act appears to run contrary to what is deemed acceptable to the present day, other considerations must be taken into account. That is to say, as with Bruce and Knox, when collective memories recall the Covenanters acting in a way that accords with the virtues they are intended to represent, these actions are invoked as examples of nationality at work. Where their actions run counter to what the present might expect of them, the context of their actions is used to let them off the hook. ‘A MORAL RIGHT TO REIGN’ The precise nature of Covenanting virtue was, of course, up for ­interpretation – the lessons one might learn from the commemoration of the martyrs were many and varied. As we have seen, some of the more strict Reformed Presbyterians attempted to keep the memory of the Covenanters thirled to the strictly defined cause of their own Covenanting inheritance. Others saw Covenanting memory as informing a broader, more secularised discourse of Scottish nationality, embedded in the leitmotif of civil and religious liberty. In distancing the Covenanters from the specifics of their own founding texts, it was easier to transform the present into something more compatible with the past. Presbyterian conservatives used Covenanting memory to highlight the threat of falling away from the standards of the 1680s, yet others used the same memories to prove that everything the Covenanters fought for had been achieved. The constitutional discourse in Covenanting memory reached something of a high point in 1887 in the Ayrshire village of Muirkirk. On 18 June, 3,000 people gathered in the village cemetery for the inauguration of a monument to a host of Covenanting martyrs who had met their end in that parish and the surrounding area. There was the now customary procession to the monument site, with a band playing, and rousing speeches from the monument’s donor – a local laird – as well as a variety of Presbyterian ministers, all emphasising the importance of remembering the Covenanter martyrs and of bringing the different Presbyterian denominations into closer union.55 What is most notable about the event is not the civic ostentation, nor even the presence of a minister of the Established Church, but that the monument was erected as part of Muirkirk’s celebration of the jubilee of Queen Victoria. In his address, the Revd John Wallace, the local Established Church minister, emphasised the contrast between the 1680s and the 1880s: We cannot but feel the great and the happy change that has taken place in the relation between sovereign and people since those trying times when the House of Stuart sat upon the Throne … [Victoria] has not only a constitutional, but a moral right to reign.56



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Here we see Victoria as the Presbyterian Queen of Scotland. In contrast to her Stuart ancestors, Victoria combined the glory of Scoto-British monarchy, derived from Bruce and Bannockburn, with the civil and religious liberty finally achieved by the Covenanters. Resistance to the monarch was not the default position of Covenanting memory, especially when the current queen could be reconciled to the essentials of the Scottish national narrative. Muirkirk represents just how far the Covenanters had moved into the mainstream of Scottish nationality. Potent memories of men and women whose principal act was to resist the commands of the monarchy were now at the heart of a small Ayrshire village’s celebration of the crown’s enduring majesty. One could find no better example of the conversion of the Covenanters from fanatics to national heroes, binding diverse elements of the national self into a coherent whole. THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION Such an emphasis on Victoria’s constitutional and moral right to reign reflects the position the Covenanters had taken in achieving British constitutional freedom. As we have seen, the Covenanters were depicted as forerunners of the Glorious Revolution, standing up for the rights of freeborn Presbyterians against the tyranny of a monarch in thrall to the evils of Roman Catholicism. In Patrick Edward Dove’s model of Scoto-British constitutionalism, the fourth of his ‘principles of national unity’ was ‘the principle of the Revolution – the King must reign according to the law’.57 Similarly, James Dodds’ Fifty Years Struggle of the Scottish Covenanters opens by placing the Covenanting struggle firmly within the providential evolution of ‘Constitutional Government’.58 One irony in the conception of 1688 as the grand consummation of the Covenanting struggle is that the conditions of the Revolution were not welcomed by significant numbers of Covenanters, in particular the Cameronian Praying Societies. They demanded – indeed, they fought tooth and nail to bring about – a fully Covenanted state, subscribing not only to the Westminster Confession but to the 1680 Sanquhar Declaration.59 This is yet another example of how the strict demands of the Covenanters were elided in favour of the demands of nineteenth-century nationality. Though feted as paragons of Scottish Presbyterian virtue, many Covenanters would have struggled to recognise themselves in their nineteenth-century guise as heroes of that constitutional government ushered in by the Glorious Revolution. Divorcing the commemorative subject from the strict principles of its historic age was not uncommon when seeking to use potentially powerful precedents from the national past for present purposes. Indeed, it is important to emphasise that the Covenanters were not alone in achieving significant rehabilitation over the course of the century. For instance, there are parallels between the rehabilitation of the Covenanters in Scotland and the

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corresponding change in English memories of Oliver Cromwell. In common with the Covenanters, at the beginning of the nineteenth century Cromwell appealed largely to political radicals for whom the shadow of violent revolution was less of an issue than it was for Anglo-British nationality as a whole. At the same time, mirroring the Scots’ emphasis on the humble origins of Wallace and the Covenanting martyrs, Cromwell and the Roundheads fitted into the Victorian self-image of achievement through hard work and merit.60 As Blair Worden has written, the Roundhead cause was seen as ‘a “popular” cause, devoted to “popular rights” and “popular privilege”, to political emancipation beyond Westminster and the ruling class’.61 Unlike that of the Covenanters, however, Cromwell’s adoption by the more moderate centre of Anglo-British nationality did not occur till much later in the century, a change most clearly reflected in his monumental commemoration. When selecting appropriate statues for placing in St Stephen’s Hall in Westminster between 1848 and 1853, Cromwell was sidelined in favour of two moderate Royalists and two moderate Roundheads, evenly balanced and calculated to cause minimal offence.62 Even the Earl of Rosebery’s statue to Cromwell placed outside the House of Commons at the end of the century was an exercise in tasteful moderation: the figure of Cromwell stands in repose, the base laconically recording only his name and the years of his birth and death. Nowhere is there any indication of Cromwell’s position in Anglo-British history, nor of the office he held.63 Still, it is the simple, silent fact of the statue’s existence that says the most – from a position beyond the pale of English national memory, Cromwell now stood within the very heart of English constitutionalism. Similarly, the Glorious Revolution shifted in its importance for British collective memory throughout the century. As Edmund Rogers argues, historians increasingly elided the importance of the Revolution, causing the sun to set on its historic memory, as the star of the Civil Wars and Oliver Cromwell rose.64 Try as they might, however, sometimes the view of historians runs counter to that of collective memories. Within this wider context, the Revolution retained immense importance for a variety of political and religious groups, each using the event to grind its own axe. In particular, the apparently bloodless nature of the Revolution was paramount in distinguishing it from other such turning points in British history – though the experience in Scotland was far from non-violent. To take one example, in the midst of the Home Rule controversy, the Revolution acted as a ‘powerful symbol of Protestant unity and identity’. Always keen to deprecate the possibility of abrupt change, anti-Home Rulers thought Gladstone’s plans were opposed to the spirit and nature of the Revolution – Home Rule would bring about a ‘violent revolution’ as distinct from the – very British – pacific revolution of 1688.65 The relative calm of the Glorious Revolution was a recurring trope, involving both implicit and explicit comparisons with the more deadly



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revolutions of Europe.66 Certainly, there was no ambivalence in memories of the Revolution at its centenary in 1788–9. The centenary celebrations were an enormous national event, commemorated by conservatives and reformers alike, principally as a means of – to use Lois Schwoerer’s term – ‘off-setting’ recent foreign and domestic difficulties.67 A hundred years on, however, commemoration of the bicentenary appears to have been considerably more muted and decidedly less national, with little of the pomp and circumstance that had characterised the centenary celebrations in the 1780s. Despite the more modest scale of the commemoration in 1888, the occasion was still marked. For instance, at the commemoration of William’s landing at Brixham, held on 5 November, ‘a cleric’ thanked God for the nation’s deliverance from Catholic bondage, and a fund was started to raise money for a statue to William of Orange. The statue was unveiled a year later in the presence of the King of the Netherlands.68 What is most notable about the nineteenth-century commemoration of 1688 is the extent to which it was dominated by the familiar cry of strident anti-Catholicism. In England, Scotland and Ulster, the Anti-Catholic movement saw the anniversary as an opportunity to celebrate the victory of Protestantism over the Papacy. At the 1888 Free Church General Assembly, a motion was made by the Revd Dr Thomas Smith, Professor of Evangelistic Theology at New College, to encourage Free Church ministers to mark the combined anniversaries of the Revolution of 1688 and the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada by ‘stirring themselves and their people to a hearty horror of the Papacy’.69 For loyalist clergy in Ulster, the terrifying prospect of Irish Home Rule was every bit as critical an opportunity for Papistical oppression as the approach of the Spanish Armada or ongoing Stuart tyranny. 1888 gave Ulster Protestants the chance not only to reaffirm their Britishness, but to assert that it was the spilling of their blood that had won civil and religious liberty for the rest of Britain.70 At the same time, Anti-Catholics looked on in horror as the British state made – relatively minor – diplomatic overtures to the Vatican.71 A meeting held in Fife on 29 July, attended by between 6,000 and 7,000 people, heard the Revd Jacob Primmer of Dunfermline and the Revd Robert Thomson of Ladywell – both ardent anti-Ritualists – rail against the evils of Popery.72 The meeting passed a resolution demanding of ‘our Queen and rulers that they shall not enter into diplomatic relations with the Pope of Rome, and that they shall cease to subsidise and encourage that wicked and cruel system’.73 Some more moderate voices were heard amid the din of anti-Catholic paranoia. The most significant of these comes from the General Assembly of the Established Church in May 1888, during the delivery of a report by the ‘Committee on the Bi-Centenary of the Revolution of 1688’, chaired by its Convener, the Revd George Hutchison. In his report, Hutchison defined the Revolution not as Protestant deliverance from Catholic tyranny, but instead as a victory for religious toleration. The result of the Covenanters’ labours

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was that all Christians were now free to worship as they chose – whether Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Catholic. As a good moderate, Hutchison made sure to point out that there had been fanaticism on both sides: ‘It was not kings and bishops only who interfered with the rights of conscience: General Assemblies, Solemn Leagues and Covenants, Separatists and Protectors, were sometimes in their turn as intolerant.’74 Despite this moderate position, however, it is important to recognise that Hutchison still depicted the Revolution as the moment when all the persecuted Covenanters had died for was made real. Moderate members of the Established Church had less riding on their denominational association with Covenanting memory, yet by the late 1880s their General Assembly was accepting of the view that claimed the Glorious Revolution as, in effect, the successful outcome of the Covenanting struggle. The Established Church committee’s report was redrafted into a Pastoral Letter, requesting ministers to preach on the subject of the Revolution within the moderate and inclusive terms defined by Hutchison. In response, the Revd Gavin Lang of Inverness welcomed the opportunity to commemorate the Revolution. Though Lang took issue with Hutchison’s interpretation of the event as being principally religious, his main concern was that the commemoration would be used to drag up old divisions.75 While he acknowledged what he saw as the presumption and arrogance of Episcopacy in Scotland, he accused the proposed commemoration’s ‘exultation over the downfall’ of Episcopacy as ‘wanting in magnanimity and good taste’.76 This point was made even more forcefully by the Revd James Cooper, preaching in Aberdeen’s East Parish Church in November. In contrast to the numerous ministers of the Free and United Presbyterian churches encountered in the commemoration of the Covenanters, Cooper stands out as an Established Churchman of remarkably moderate colouring. A firm supporter of Establishment, and heavily influenced by the Oxford Movement, Cooper was the controversial proponent of union between the Church of Scotland and the Anglican Church, who had himself adopted various ‘High Church doctrines and practices’ in his own preaching.77 Cooper began his sermon by quoting from Norman MacLeod: ‘I will be no Old Mortality, cutting into fresh sharpness the records of decaying animosities.’78 The address that followed was almost radical in its moderatism, forcefully arguing that any commemoration should not become ‘an occasion for intensifying divisions which date from fifty years before the Revolution’. Cooper was prepared to admit that the Revolution had ‘helped to establish that for which we bless His name to-day – our civil and religious liberty’, agreeing that the Revolution brought about deliverance from arbitrary power under James VII; yet his principal concern was that Scotland was under threat from a revival of the Solemn League and Covenant. This he described as follows:



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A dreadful compact … Its establishment meant the destruction of all that was learned and liberal in the Church; it led ere long to the murder of the King, and the setting up of a tyranny under the most oppressive, both politically and socially, in the whole annals of the British people.79

Nor did Cooper beat about the bush in arguing against George Hutchison’s contention that the Covenanters had been instrumental in fighting for religious toleration. Though he was prepared to acknowledge the Covenanters’ ‘deep religious faith and their fidelity to their religious convictions, which put to shame their persecutors’, he went on to argue, ‘it is ridiculous to represent them as suffering in their own intention for the cause of religious liberty. They abhorred nothing so much as toleration of anybody but themselves.’80 Though Cooper’s is a voice from within the Established Church, his words echo Episcopalian objections to the commemorations of 1838 as being the celebration of extremist Presbyterians who would willingly crush all other forms of Christian worship just as cruelly as Claverhouse and his dragoons dealt with humble adherents of the Covenants. The irony in the relative rarity of Cooper’s argument resides in the fact that he was arguably more true to the historical truth of the Covenanters than those champions of constitutional Covenanting, James Dodds, Patrick Dove and John Stuart Blackie. The remnant Cameronians had indeed rejected the Union of 1707 as having failed to bring about confessional uniformity on the Covenanting model – an unsettling historical fact largely absent from their commemoration as heroes of British constitutionalism. Editorial comment on the various commemorations of 1688 that had taken place throughout the year not only reflected the moderate concern with digging up hatchets that should have long remained buried, but also considered the relative lack of interest displayed in what was yet another anniversary. The Glasgow Herald agreed that the Revolution represented ‘deliverance from an intolerable tyranny’, yet pointed out the ‘indifference’ with which the bicentenary was being regarded.81 In editorials in both May and November, the Herald countered the fulminations of the Anti-Catholics, by claiming that ‘the constitutional changes inaugurated by the Whig Revolution of 1688 have surely swallowed up and blotted out much of its religious meaning?’.82 In its editorial on an anti-Catholic commemoration of the defeat of the Armada and the Revolution held in Edinburgh in May, the Scotsman also argued against commemorating both events as purely Protestant victories, emphasising that the Revolution had been ‘a political movement, carried out by politicians for political ends’.83 Echoing George Hutchison’s address to the General Assembly, the Scotsman saw the Revolution not simply as the victory of Presbyterianism or Protestantism, but as having brought about religious toleration. In this way the Scotsman argued – with admirable novelty – that the doctrine of the Revolution ‘reached its full

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f­ruition in 1829 in the Emancipation Act’. In other words, the Revolution had led directly to the emancipation of Catholics, and the capacity for them to hold political office – the very thing both the Covenanters and much of the Revolution commemoration had railed against. ‘Holding these views’, the editorial argued, ‘ought they not to celebrate its bi-centenary in sackcloth and ashes?’84 Such opinions serve to underline the way in which the Covenanters had shifted from being principally subjects of religious memory to a position more compatible with national memories of civil and religious liberty. If 1688/9 was to be remembered as principally a political victory – certainly more so than a Protestant or Presbyterian one – then the Covenanting element of that victory had to be secularised in turn. Overall, the significance of the Glorious Revolution lay in its position as the consummation of centuries of Scottish nationality. Despite the constant theme of Britishness that runs through the invocation of national memory in Scotland at this time, it is 1688/9 – and not 1707 – that represented the true destination of providential unionism. If Scoto-British nationality was formed from the civil liberties won by Wallace and Bruce, and the religious liberty won by Knox, then 1688 was the final destination of this national Sonderweg. At each stage in Scotland’s national tale, Scottish nationality had retained its integrity in the face of alien attempts to undermine it. Building on the sacrifices made by the Covenanters throughout the seventeenth century, nineteenth-century Scottish collective memory saw the defeat of the Stuarts as representing the victory of civil and religious liberty, the final victory in a war that had been ongoing since the time of Wallace.

NOTES  1 The standard work on the Covenanters remains Ian B. Cowan, The Scottish Covenanters, 1660–1688 (Gollancz, 1976). For a concise summary of the period, see Stewart J. Brown, ‘Religion and Society to c.1900’, in Devine and Wormald, Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History, pp. 83–4.   2 ‘The Graves of the Martyrs’, Scottish Presbyterian, August 1841, p. 112.   3 For details on the locations and subjects of the majority of Covenanter memorials, see Thorbjorn Campbell, Standing Witnesses: A Guide to the Scottish Covenanters and their Memorials, with a Historical Introduction (Saltire Society, 1996).  4 Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland, pp. 28–9.  5 Ibid.   6 Callum Brown estimates that, in 1851, the Reformed Presbyterians amounted to only 1% of Scottish churchgoers, although the figure for Glasgow was 2%. Their membership was largely concentrated in the south and west. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland, p. 45.



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  7 Matthew Hutchison, The Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland: Its Origin and History 1680–1876: with an appendix (J. Menzies & Co., 1893), pp. 132–3.   8 John H. Thomson, The Martyr Graves of Scotland: Being the Travels of a Country Minister in His Own Country (Johnstone Hunter, 1875), pp. 111–17. The current monument dates from 1771 and is a grander reproduction of an earlier original.   9 Robert Wodrow, The history of the sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution; with an original memoir of the author, extracts from his correspondence, a preliminary dissertation, and notes by Robert Burns, vol. III (Blackie, Fullarton, 1828–30), fn, p. 454. 10 ‘The Graves of the Martyrs’, Scottish Presbyterian, August 1841, p. 112. 11 Forsyth, ‘Presbyterian Historians’, pp. 101–2. 12 ‘Monument to the Martyrs at Wigtown’, Scottish Presbyterian, October 1848, p. 702. ‘Monument to Margaret M’Lauchlan [sic] and Margaret Wilson, The Wigtown Martyrs’, Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 21 August 1858. 13 ‘Sermon VIII: The Souls Under the Altar: Or the Opening of the Fifth Seal (Delivered at Wigtown, September 24,1848; in aid of a fund for erecting a monument in honour of the martyrs whose ashes repose in the churchyard of that parish.)’, in William Symington, Discourses on Public Occasions (n.p., 1851), pp. 228–9. 14 Ibid. 15 ‘The Sanquhar Declaration: Great Public Demonstration at Sanquhar’, Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 23 June 1860. 16 ‘Monument to Margaret M’Lauchlan [sic] and Margaret Wilson, The Wigtown Martyrs’, Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 21 August 1858. 17 ‘The rain continuing to fall heavily, it was intimated that Mr Dodds would deliver his address in the U.P. Church – immediately there was a run “helter-skelter” for the church, and soon after it was opened it was filled to the door – but a small portion of the crowd being able to get in.’ Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 21 August 1858. 18 Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 21 August 1858. 19 J. Gibson, Inscriptions on the Tombstones and Monuments Erected in Memory of the Covenanters with Historical Introduction and Notes (Dunn & Wright, 1875), p. 286. 20 Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 21 August 1858. 21 J. W. MacMeeken, The Martyr’s Sepulchre: A Sermon in Commemoration of the Scottish Martyrs; Preached at Airdsmoss, Parish of Auchinleck, on Sabbath, 7th August 1859 (Nisbet, 1859), p. 13. 22 ‘Commemoration of the Covenanting Struggle’, Scotsman, 12 June 1880. 23 ‘Covenanting Commemoration’, Scotsman, 18 September 1880. ‘Covenanting Commemoration’, North British Daily Mail, 18 September 1880. 24 Scotsman, 21 June 1880. Glasgow Herald, 21 June 1880. ‘Covenanters’ Commemoration’, Hamilton Advertiser, 22 June 1880. Begg’s biographer states that Begg ‘regarded this as one of the most memorable days of his life’. Thomas Smith, Memoirs of James Begg, D.D., minister of Newington Free Church, Edinburgh, vol. II (J. Gemmell, 1885), p. 534. 25 Scotsman, 19 July 1880.

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26 ‘Commemoration of Covenanting Struggle’, Scotsman, 22 July 1880. ‘Covenanting Commemoration at Rullion Green’ and ‘Ayr – Covenanting Meeting’, Scotsman, 26 July 1880. ‘Dingwall – the Covenanters’, Scotsman, 6 August 1880. ‘Covenanting Commemoration at North Berwick’, Scotsman, 13 September 1880. 27 Scotsman, 19 July 1880. Scotsman 13 September, 1880. 28 ‘The Covenanters’, The Times, 18 August 1827, Scotsman, 23 August 1881. 29 ‘Drumclog’, Glasgow Evening Citizen, 2 June 1879. Ayrshire Advertiser, 30 June 1891. ‘Martyrs’ Graves’, Ayrshire Advertiser, 23 July 1857. 30 Scotsman, 21 June 1880. Hamilton Advertiser, 22 June 1880. 31 Ibid. 32 Andrew Holmes, ‘Covenanter Politics: Evangelicalism, Political Liberalism and Ulster Presbyterians, 1798–1914’, English Historical Review, vol. 75, no. 513, pp. 29–31. G. Walker, ‘Empire, Religion and Nationality in Scotland and Ulster Before the First World War’, in Ian S. Wood (ed.), Scotland and Ulster (Mercat Press 1994), pp. 110–11. 33 Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, pp. 236–7. 34 ‘Strathaven, Aug 10’, Scotsman, 18 August 1832. 35 D. C. Smith, Passive Obedience and Prophetic Protest: Social Criticism in the Scottish Church, 1830–1945 (Peter Lang, 1987), pp. 164–5. 36 W. H. Fraser, Chartism in Scotland (Merlin Press, 2010), pp. 212–13. 37 The Chartist Circular, Issue 12, 14 December 1839. 38 ‘The Sanquhar Declaration. Great Public Demonstration at Sanquhar’, Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 23 June 1860. 39 Ibid. 40 ‘Peden Memorial at Old Cumnock. Speech by Professor Blackie’, Ayrshire Advertiser and West Country and Galloway Journal, 23 June 1892. 41 Ibid. 42 Mark Napier, Memorials and letters illustrative of the life and times of John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, vol. I (Thomas G. Stevenson, 1859), pp. 140, 143. 43 Quoted in Cowan, ‘Covenanting Tradition in Scottish History’, p. 136. 44 Mark Napier, Graham of Claverhouse, vol. II, p. xv. 45 MacMeeken, Martyr’s Sepulchre, p. 19. 46 Dumfries and Galloway Saturday Standard, 23 June 1860. 47 The Scottish Presbyterian, November 1835. 48 ‘Professor Blackie on Academical Learning in Scotland’, Caledonian Mercury, 6 November 1856. 49 ‘Professor Blackie on Ireland’, Glasgow Herald, 13 January 1881. 50 Ibid. 51 Scotsman, 14 January 1881. 52 Dundee Courier and Argus, 15 January 1881. 53 James Dodds, The Fifty Years’ Struggle of the Covenanters, 1638 to 1688 (Houlston, 1868), pp. 229–30. 54 Dundee Courier and Argus, 15 August 1870. 55 ‘Muirkirk Martyrs Monument’, The Ayr Advertiser, 23 June 1887. 56 Ibid.



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57 Glasgow Herald, 19 December 1860. 58 Dodds, Fifty Years Struggle, pp. 1–8. 59 Kidd, ‘Conditional Britons’, pp. 1, 162. 60 Worden, Roundhead Reputations, pp. 246–9. 61 Ibid., p. 249. 62 Ibid., p. 299. 63 Ibid., pp. 309–11. 64 E. Rogers, ‘1688 and 1888: Victorian Society and the Bicentenary of the Glorious Revolution’, Journal of British Studies, no. 50, 2011, p. 893. 65 Ibid, p. 894. 66 Ibid., p. 898. 67 L. G. Schwoerer, ‘Celebrating the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1989’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 1990, pp. 11. 68 Ibid., pp. 9–10. 69 ‘The Commemoration of 1588 and 1688’, Proceedings and Debates of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, held at Inverness, May, 1888 (Edinburgh, 1888), p. 219. 70 Rogers, ‘1688 and 1888’, pp. 899–900. 71 Ibid., pp. 906–7. 72 J. R. Fleming, A History of the Church in Scotland, 1875–1929 (T. & T. Clark, 1933), pp. 199–200. For an example of Primmer and Thomson’s denunciations of ritualism in the Established Church, see ‘The Primmer-Thomson Campaign’, Dundee Courier and Argus, 4 August 1890. 73 ‘Protestant Demonstration of the Hill of Beath’, Glasgow Herald, 31 July 1888. 74 ‘Report of the Committee on Bi-Centenary of the Revolution of 1688’, The Scottish Church (Assembly Number), vol. I, 1888, p. 223. 75 ‘Some Thoughts About the Recent Commemoration of the Revolution of 1688’, The Scottish Church, vol. II, no. 14, February 1889, p. 17. 76 Ibid., p. 18. 77 P. Hillis, ‘Religion’, in W. H. Fraser and C. H. Lee (eds), Aberdeen, 1800–2000: A New History (Tuckwell, 2000), pp. 360–1. 78 ‘Bicentenary of the Revolution of 1688’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 5 November 1888. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. 81 Glasgow Herald, 1 November 1888. 82 Ibid., 5 May 1888. 83 Scotsman, 7 June 1888. 84 Ibid.

Chapter 6 ‘By the Imprudence of His Ancestors’: Commemorating Jacobitism and Mary Queen of Scots

THE STUARTS AS VILLAINS The Scottish national past was the story of the struggle for civil and religious liberty, reaching its glorious outcome at the Revolution of 1688. With their prologue in the proto-Presbyterian Culdees, collective memories of Scottish nationality ran from Wallace and Bruce, through Knox, to the Covenanters. At each stage in this memory, the heroes of Scotland’s past had overcome the threat posed by their antithesis, whether Edward I or Edward II, the Roman Catholic church, or the later Stuart kings. Both explicitly and implicitly, the narrative of civil and religious liberty framed the commemoration of the Scottish past in the nineteenth century, generating a collective sense of what it meant to be Scottish, explaining or justifying present attitudes and national mores. In a sense, the Glorious Revolution marked the end of Presbyterian history, the closure of a centuries-long struggle to achieve full and coherent Scottish nationality with a free nation and a secure Presbyterian church. It was for this reason that union was made possible. The Scots had proved their point, won their battle, and could give up their statehood, confident that Scottish nationality could never be undone. This proposes the question about what happened after the Union. That is, the milestones in the path of Scottish nationality that loom largest after 1707 are undoubtedly the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, with the ‘FortyFive’ carrying particular weight as a signifier of Scottish historic identity. Victorian Scottishness in particular is still widely viewed as having been defined by sentimental Jacobitism: songs of yearning for the lost cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie, packaged in tartan against inspiring images of the Highland landscape. Whilst it is undeniable that nineteenth-century Scots enthusiastically embraced the trappings of romantic Highland culture, the representation of Scottish nationality described in the preceding chapters clearly provided little space for Jacobite enthusiasm. Memories of Wallace, Knox and the Covenanters saw the aims and achievements of these heroes as relevant to the nationality of the present, yet the cause of Jacobitism was not viewed in the same way.1 As we have seen, the later Stuarts were the villains of Covenanting memory. At the same time, another domineering symbol of Scottish history appears absent from this conception of what does and



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does not signify in the Scottish past: Mary Queen of Scots. If Knox was the sixteenth-century Presbyterian superhero, then what of the erstwhile target of so much of his righteous thunder? If both Mary and her descendants were the villains of Scottish historic nationality, how did their commemoration relate to the demands of the present? MEMORY AND ROMANCE In considering the position of memories of Mary Queen of Scots and the Forty-Five in nineteenth-century Scottish nationality, it is vital to make a distinction between the relatively romantic celebration of these moments from the past and their more pragmatic use as a component in any overarching model of Scottish nationality. To take the example of the Forty-Five, if the later Stuarts were the enemy of Scottish-Presbyterian memory, was there even a place for them in the commemorative rhetoric of nineteenth-century Scottish collective memory? Certainly, there was sufficient precedent for transforming potential villains into heroes. Wallace could easily have been a divisive and anti-British figure, more akin to his twenty-first-century position as a proto-Scottish Nationalist, while the Covenanters may have been viewed as dying for nothing more than their own stubborn pedantry, yet this was far from the case. Wallace was a Great Briton, the hero of providential unionism, while, as heroes of the constitution, the Covenanters ultimately completed what Wallace had begun. At Muirkirk in 1887 it was easy enough to fit the square peg of Victoria-worship into the round hole of Covenanting memory. Embodied in Victoria as the Covenanter Queen, the monarchy could safely represent Scottish nationality while dovetailing with the cardinal national virtues inherited from the Presbyterian past. If the cult of Queen Victoria could be reconciled with collective memories of the Covenanters, then surely anything was possible. Yet Victoria’s illustrious position did not necessarily reflect back on all monarchy, certainly not the later Stuart kings, regardless of the intentions of Sir Walter Scott in 1822, or Victoria’s own romantic attachment to her ‘unhappy’ forebears. As was outlined in Chapter 2, the King’s Jaunt of 1822 does not necessarily signify the acceptance of Jacobitism as an essential component of Scottish nationality in the same way that, for instance, the Covenanters might have been accepted. Instead, it emphasises the Victorian romanticised attachment to Highland regalia as a means of easily symbolising Scottish distinctiveness, a precursor of the more complete adoption of the cult of the Highlands during the reign of Victoria.2 It must be reiterated: tartanry was a veneer, a simple shorthand for Scottish nationality – not the thing itself. In grappling with the great tartan monster, it is also important to emphasise that we are not concerned here with the way in which nineteenth-century Scottishness was swathed in the plaid and plonked in front of a backdrop

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of graphically-depicted Highland scenery. Instead, our concern is with the ways in which events and individuals from the past were connected with the present by means of their commemoration – the meaning of the past, not its uniform. The adoption and deployment of nineteenth-century collective memory was committed to the usable past, to memories that had continued relevance, placed within or in contrast to the defining leitmotif of civil and religious liberty. When faced with an element of the Scottish past not sufficiently usable for it to bear the weight of contemporary significance, we must ask why that was so. Just as we have looked at the nineteenth-century meaning of William Wallace, of John Knox, and of the Covenanters, so, too, we must focus on the meaning of Jacobitism and Mary Queen of Scots for the nineteenth century. SENTIMENTAL JACOBITISM There is no doubt that commemorative events in this period were regularly garlanded with the thistle and tartan drapery. At the anniversary of Bannockburn in 1814, a procession of around five hundred people, ‘with the Scottish thistle as a cockade, and a great number dressed in tartan’, marched to the Borestone, in which ‘the cross of St Andrew’ was placed.3 The wooden pavilion erected for the VIPs in attendance at the National Wallace Monument foundation-stone ceremony in 1861 was resplendent with a tartan banner.4 Yet the appearance of tartan in assembly halls and monumental inaugurations remains purely decorative – it does not necessarily signify a place for the Jacobite cause in collective memory. Sentimental readings of Jacobitism were certainly a component part of the cult of Highlandised Scotland, yet even while the image of Bonnie Prince Charlie set hearts a-­flutter, the cause for which he fought carried very little contemporary relevance. If collective memories of Jacobitism illustrated anything, it was the loyalty and bravery of the Highlanders who had fought and died for their Prince in the Forty-Five rising – the cause itself had little contemporary resonance. Sentimental Jacobitism was an attempt to keep alive the displays of Jacobite loyalty whilst eschewing its more overt political element. This process involved an implicit acknowledgement that the cause was lost, and all that remained were relics to be fetishised, and a nostalgic attachment to the feudal certainties of a bygone age.5 For instance, just as the threat of Jacobite insurrection was fading in the 1760s, Robert Burns helped to make the cause acceptable by separating it from its political and social implications, presenting the rebellion as, instead, ‘a context for emotions and aspirations’.6 Building on this foundation, the first quarter of the nineteenth century saw the high water mark of sentimental Jacobinism, not only as a result of the burgeoning romanticisation of the Highland region and its inhabitants, but also because the Jacobite cause no longer contained any potent political threat.7 In other words, viewed from an appropriate distance, whether physi-



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cal or chronological, both Highlanders and Jacobites were made safe. At the same time, success on the battlefields of the Empire won for the Highland regiments an aura of bravery and martial potency, transforming the Highland soldier from a savage heathen into the idealised, loyal vanguard of British expansionism. This transformation was further reinforced by the arrival of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley in 1814, yet as ever with Scott, we should be cautious about making assumptions concerning his depiction of the Scottish past. Scott’s representation of Jacobitism is far from sentimental. In particular, his portrayal of Prince Charles Edward in Waverley as a noble leader, using all his diplomacy and tact to keep his enterprise from foundering, stands in marked contrast to the bitter, stubborn cynic depicted in Redgauntlet. Despite this relatively even-handed treatment of the Jacobites as an army of conflicting loyalties, it was the romance of his work that endured. GLENFINNAN The romance of the lost Jacobite cause, entwined with the tragedy of Culloden, has helped ensure the survival of the Forty-Five as a realm of Scottish memory. This process has been sustained by the ease with which locales of Jacobite memory fit so neatly into the marketable landscapes of Scottish heritage and tourism.8 Aside from a handful of commemorative cairns, many of which were erected in the twentieth century, there are only two large-scale monuments associated with Jacobitism: the tower at Glenfinnan from 1815, and the cairn at Culloden, completed in 1881. Whether owing to their dramatic location or to the position of Jacobitism in more recent collective memory – and the tourist trail – these monuments have achieved significantly more resonance than, for instance, the numerically superior Covenanter memorials of Ayrshire and Lanarkshire. The irony is that the immense depth of significance these monuments of the Forty-Five have accreted is at odds with the collective memory they were intended to transmit. This shift is apparent when considering the raising of the monument at Glenfinnan. The monument was erected in 1815 by Alexander Macdonald of Glenaladale (1787–1815), and has been described as ‘the grand gesture of a flamboyant character who lived a prodigal life of unfettered consumption’.9 Indeed, Glenaladale provides a startling contrast to the sober, respectable worthies behind the commemorative endeavours of nineteenth-century Scotland. He lived a life of conspicuous consumption far beyond his means, fathering at least one illegitimate child, before dying at the age of twentyeight, owing over £32,000 to more than eighty creditors. As Neil Cameron suggests, the Glenfinnan monument was an attempt by this ‘foppish member of Edinburgh society’ to improve his reputation by means of the conspicuous erection of a picturesque tower, amid the growing fashion for

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r­ omanticised Highlandism.10 The tower as originally built by Glenaladale was quite different from its later incarnation, having a small ‘shooting box’ attached on its west side. The intention was that the tower and shooting box be used for hunting, though even at this early stage the tower bore a marble plaque indicating the reasons for its existence. After Glenaladale’s death, the monument fell into a state of some disrepair before being renovated in the early 1830s. At that time, the shooting box was removed, an octagonal perimeter wall constructed, and a statue by John Greenshields placed upon the top, transforming the tower from a relatively private folly into a more public commemorative monument. Three cast-iron panels were added to the perimeter wall, translating the text from the marble panel on the original monument into Latin and Gaelic. 11 From its outset, the intention behind the monument was not to commemorate either the Prince or the Forty-Five but to remember Glenaladale’s ancestors who had fought for the Jacobite cause. The original inscription described the Forty-Five as the Prince’s ‘daring and romantic attempt to recover a throne lost by the imprudence of his ancestors’. The inscription also makes clear the monument was erected to remember ‘the generous zeal and inviolable fidelity’ of Glenaladale’s ancestors who ‘fought and bled in that arduous and unfortunate enterprise’.12 The pivotal term here is the word ‘unfortunate’. On the one hand, this may be intended to signify that the Forty-Five was simply unlucky, perhaps even doomed, leaving room for the viewer to decide whether or not the monument was celebrating the cause, rather than merely those who fought and died in its name. Alternatively, ‘unfortunate’ may be an attempt to depict the cause as regrettable, something that should never have taken place. A further ambiguity lies in the statue that crowns the monument, added in the 1830s. Local tradition has it that the statue is intended to represent ‘all the men who fought and died for the Highlands and their Prince’, and there is other evidence to suggest that Greenshields’ intention was to present the idealised image of a clan chief.13 Ranged against this, however, is the prevailing assumption that the statue represents Charles Edward Stuart.14 The New Statistical Account for the parish, written in 1838, refers to the statue as being ‘of the Prince’. When visiting Glenfinnan in September 1873, Queen Victoria described the column as ‘a very ugly monument to Prince Charles Edward’.15 In 1893, a news item in the Glasgow Herald on the scheme to construct the railway to Mallaig described the statue as depicting the Prince gazing up the glen in anticipation of the arrival of the Clan Cameron.16 Understanding whether the true intention behind the statue was to represent either the Prince or a generic Highland soldier or clan chief effectively determines the meaning of the monument from the 1830s, yet the original intention of the Glenfinnan Tower was to commemorate Macdonald of Glenaladale’s ancestors, not to celebrate Bonnie Prince Charlie. Foregrounding the ‘generous zeal and inviolable fidelity’ of the



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Highlanders who fought in the name of the Prince, rather than the cause itself, suggests that the monument was intended to honour Highland bravery in an ‘unfortunate’ cause, and not the aims of that cause. CULLODEN While the site of the Glenfinnan monument benefited from the grandeur of its setting, the same could not be said of the site of the battle of Culloden. Prior to the nineteenth century, Culloden appears to have been largely absent from the itinerary of Jacobite spaces. Neither Boswell nor Johnson mentions it in their accounts of their tour of the Highlands from the 1770s, for instance, while the traveller Beriah Botfield, writing in the 1830s, described the moor as ‘a grim and shelterless waste’.17 A map enclosed with a guidebook to Scotland from 1834 located a number of Jacobite battlefields, but did not mark the site of the battle, though it did show Culloden House and the nearby Clava Cairns.18 From such ignoble beginnings, the story of Culloden in the nineteenth century emerges as one of gradual though by no means steady development from featureless moor to historical site of memory. Certainly, there was no respect for the site as being sacred to Highland identity or Scottish national memory: a road was cut across the moor – and through the clan graves – in 1835.19 Despite some early moves being made to erect a suitable memorial on the battlefield in the 1830s, it was not until the centenary of the battle that any concerted effort was made to preserve the site or commemorate the battle in an enduring form. The centenary itself was marked with a degree of gaiety and carnival remarkably at odds with the sombre reflectiveness we now associate with Culloden.20 The Inverness Courier estimated that at least 3,000 people travelled to the moor from the surrounding country on the day of the anniversary, where many listened to tales of the battle told by descendants of those who had fallen.21 In the afternoon, ‘a party of gentlemen’ – including John Hall Maxwell (1812–66), newly-appointed secretary of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland – met in the Caledonian Hotel in Inverness to formally commemorate the battle with appropriate toasts. Those present agreed that the abandoned project of raising a memorial cairn on the battlefield should be resuscitated, committing a modest sum of £30 there and then. Within a few days of the centenary commemorations, the sculptor Patrick Park approached the committee through the pages of the Inverness Courier, offering to sculpt a statue of a Highlander, twelve feet high, representing ‘the virtues of his country’.22 As noted in Chapter 3, Park had the habit of advertising his services whenever the prospect of a monumental commission might be on the cards: as well as his statue of Wallace for Edinburgh in 1850, Park was commissioned to provide sculptures for the Scott Monument, though these were never delivered.23 Despite Park being the son-in-law of the

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proprietor of the Inverness Courier, his design was never accepted, and it was not until 1848 that a cairn designed by the Elgin architect Thomas Mackenzie was chosen.24 For a memorial cairn, Mackenzie’s memorial was somewhat flamboyant. The proposed design included ‘flights of rustic steps’ winding up the sides of the monument with plaques or tablets scattered across the cairn to commemorate the clans. At this early stage, however, the designs were simply too ambitious for the funds available. In May 1849, a notice appeared in several newspapers appealing for subscriptions to the monument, stating that £80 had already been raised but that this was by no means sufficient. Even so, by September there was enough confidence in the memorial cairn to organise the laying of its foundation stone. On Wednesday 19 September 1849, some two and a half thousand people gathered on the moor to witness an unremarkable Masonic ceremony, yet any confidence was misplaced. By February 1850, the monument fund was still £100 short of the sum required to raise the cairn, not including the cost of any further adornment. In 1858, Edward Power, an ‘enthusiastic Jacobite’, attempted to renew the monument effort, going so far as to donate a plaque for the cairn, but this was to be the high point of progress for the next two decades.25 The landowner at the time, Arthur Forbes of Culloden, appears to have had ambitions to complete the monument, but an insufficiency of funds, and Forbes’ apparent preference for making practical use of the land by planting trees deferred progress to the extent that, in 1872, what remained of the foundations were described as being within a clearing in the wood.26 It was not until 1881 that Arthur Forbes’ brother, Duncan, erected a massive memorial cairn on the battlefield, using Edward Power’s dedication provided earlier in the century, before then going on to mark out the locations of the clan graves.27 If there was any ceremonial associated with the raising of the cairn, it is not recorded. Indeed, it would appear from the character of Duncan Forbes that he was both a private man and a sentimental Jacobite, who preferred to build the memorial with minimal fuss.28 Even with these improvements, the site remained relatively neglected. No formal action was taken to preserve the battlefield as a national monument until the National Trust took over in the late 1930s. It should be noted also that the monument at Glenfinnan was suffering a similar fate by the end of the century: in September 1895, the Aberdeen Weekly Journal reported that the monument was in ‘a very dilapidated condition’.29 FLORA MACDONALD In marked contrast to Culloden, another focal point for memories of the Forty-Five was remarkably successful in achieving monumental commemoration. Flora Macdonald, the ‘Highland heroine’ who had helped Charles Edward Stuart elude the Hanoverians after Culloden, was memorialised in –



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at least – two separate monuments during the nineteenth century.30 The lack of any enduring memorial to Flora Macdonald, specifically at her gravesite, was viewed by some as a national scandal. At Culloden, a cairn was required not only as an enduring monument to the dead, but also as a signpost to its correct location for those visiting the battlefield.31 The memorial to Flora Macdonald would serve the same purpose. A short appeal in The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1868 noted that, while the Prince had ‘a costly marble monument’ in St Peter’s, Rome, Flora Macdonald’s heroism had gone unmarked. Raising such a memorial on the site of Macdonald’s grave at Kilmuir on Skye would inspire both resident and emigrant: ‘While speeding over the blue Atlantic the emigrant from Skye would gaze on that column, and the sight of it would awaken memories soul-stirring to the Gael.’32 Later that year, a formal appeal was made in Inverness for funds to raise a suitable memorial over the ‘neglected’ grave. In comparison to the Culloden cairn effort, this appeal went without a hitch: sufficient funds were in place by September 1870 to permit a design to be chosen.33 In December 1871, a Celtic cross – described as an ‘Iona Cross’ by the Inverness Courier – was placed on the site, standing over twenty-eight feet in height, claimed to be the tallest cross of its type in Scotland at that time.34 Scotland’s other monument to the Highland Heroine is a bronze statue in the grounds of Inverness Castle, erected in 1899, the result of a bequest from Captain Henderson Macdonald, an officer in one of the Highland Regiments, who died in 1895. Macdonald was such an ‘intense admirer of the Skye heroine’ that he appended his mother’s maiden name of Macdonald to his family name of Henderson, in addition to leaving £1,000 in his will to raise the monument.35 In April 1896, Inverness Town Council met to decide on the most appropriate form for the city’s Flora Macdonald statue, with the overwhelming majority selecting ‘Aire Faire’ or ‘On the Watch’, a statue by the local sculptor Andrew Davidson. Davidson’s design depicted Macdonald watching out for the Prince’s pursuers, accompanied by a collie, ‘which sympathises with her concerned attitude’.36 The intention of the statue was to imply the presence of the Prince, rather than openly including him as part of the sculptural group. In contrast, another of the models submitted for consideration by ‘an Edinburgh artist’ was of Flora Macdonald ‘protecting the Prince’, with the motto ‘Ready, aye ready’.37 This design failed to make it to the final five, however, and Davidson’s statue was voted most appropriate, with the completed statue unveiled in July 1899 by Henderson Macdonald’s daughter, Mrs Fraser, in a ceremony attended by the inevitable array of local luminaries.38 THE MEANING OF THE FORTY-FIVE The absence of the Prince from Inverness’s Flora Macdonald statue reflects the ambiguity over the figure atop the Glenfinnan Monument. In effect,

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f­oregrounding the Prince would have made an inappropriate connection between the heroism of either Glenaladale’s ancestors or Flora Macdonald and that of Charles Edward as a symbol of the Jacobite cause. To leave the Prince out meant that these monuments could, instead, more easily signify heroism as a Highland rather than a Jacobite virtue. That is to say, remembering the Forty-Five was rendered possible as long as one adhered to certain terms of acceptability. The key was not to commemorate the cause, but instead to represent the bravery and loyalty of the simple, peasant Highlanders who had fought and died for their Prince. Furthermore, it was necessary to observe that the Jacobite cause was the wrong one. This was the real tragedy of Culloden: that so many valiant Highlanders had given their lives for the wrong side, exacerbated by the violence of Cumberland’s reprisals after the defeat. The Inverness Courier’s report of the Culloden centenary neatly represents this mid-nineteenth-­century attitude to the battle. Right may have prevailed, yet the ­circumstances of that victory cast a long shadow over the present: Few visit Culloden who are not, for the moment, Jacobites in feeling and sentiment. The chivalry and romance are all on the side of the Highland army. Poetry and history have alike emblazoned their deeds; while the better cause of the reigning Sovereign, divested of magnanimity, and sullied by the atrocities of the Duke of Cumberland, appears only in dark and repulsive colours.39

Though ‘sullied’ by the slaughter ordered by Cumberland, the Hanoverian side still represented ‘the better cause’, its darkness emphasising the bright romance of Jacobitism. Yet the resonance of the cause is all ‘feeling and sentiment’, devoid of any practical meaning. If Culloden bore any relevance to the present day, it was in the bravery of the Highlanders who had followed their Prince and given their lives out of loyalty. The inscription accompanying Andrew Davidson’s design for the Inverness Flora Macdonald statue, carved on the pedestal of the completed monument in English and Gaelic, carries a similar message. Adapted from Samuel Johnson, the text further reflects the terms in which Highland heroism in the Jacobite cause was remembered: ‘The preserver of Prince Charles Edward Stuart will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour.’ In his speech prior to the unveiling of the statue, Inverness’s Provost Macbean emphasised the personal qualities of the players in the Jacobite drama. He described the Stuarts as ‘a line of Kings and Princes who, whatever their faults as rulers, were in their persons most loveable men’, while Flora Macdonald was ‘an inspiration to duty and humanity in the dark hours of misfortune and an incentive to courage and fidelity’.40 The Provost described how ‘the poor illiterate Celtic peasantry’ refused to betray the Prince, even when the government offered a reward of £30,000, while their heroine’s ‘faith never faltered, her courage never failed’. After unveiling the



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statue, Mrs Fraser, in a ‘graceful little speech’, reiterated the Provost’s celebration of Macdonald’s ‘fidelity to her Prince’. The carefully-poised rhetoric of these commemorations indicates the only acceptable way of remembering the Forty-Five. As the Jacobite cause was insufficiently compatible with the core meaning of Scotland’s historic nationality, this left only the resonant memory of Highland fidelity as its sole legacy. In focusing on the bravery of the Highlanders rather than the cause of the Prince, it was necessary to show that the clans had fought for what they thought was right – even though time and memory had proven they were mistaken. This discourse has literally become part of the monument erected on Culloden moor. During its foundation-stone ceremony, a glass bottle was placed into the foundations containing a parchment which framed the terms of the monument as commemorating ‘the memory of brave Highlanders who fell at Culloden … fighting gallantly for a cause which they conscientiously believed to be a just one’.41 Such a statement would have been entirely surplus to requirements when commemorating those who had fought with Wallace or any of the Covenanting Martyrs. That their cause was ‘just’ was self-evident from the present state of Scottish nationality – no contextual justification was needed to remember them. For the Highlanders, on the other hand, excuses were required: that they ‘conscientiously believed’ their cause to be correct, even though it had been lost owing to the ‘imprudence’ of Charles Edward Stuart’s ancestors. This interpretation of Highland self-sacrifice was not confined merely to commemorations – it was deployed more widely as a means of reconciling a sentimental or artistic attachment to expressions of Jacobitism with the implicit rejection of all that the cause represented. For James Boswell, one lesson to be learned from Prince Charles Edward’s wanderings was the ‘fervour of loyalty’ displayed by the Highlanders: They are feelings which have ever actuated the inhabitants of the Highlands and the Hebrides. The plant of loyalty is there in full vigour, and the Brunswick graft now flourishes like a native shoot.42

For Boswell, loyalty is an inherent Highland trait – what Peter Womack calls ‘a predisposition to fidelity’ – and the thing that transforms the once unruly Highland clans into Great Britons.43 In his Sketches of the Highlanders from 1822, David Stewart of Garth argued that the leaders of the Forty-Five were ‘actuated by pure, although mistaken motives of loyalty and principle’.44 Highlanders will always follow their leader. It may be in the wrong cause, but their loyalty is never in doubt. Much Jacobite sentimentality was transmitted through the tremendous popularity of songs about the Forty-Five and the dashing young Prince’s flight through the heather after Culloden, yet even here the subject was qualified. In the indefatigable nationality of John Stuart Blackie we see a clear indication that even the most profound appreciation of Jacobite song

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did not directly equate to sympathy for the cause. While Blackie described the songs of the Forty-Five as being the highest expression of the art – ‘No national songs ever were so pervasive, so dramatic, so pathetic at once and so ­humorous’ – he had nothing but contempt for the Stuart monarchy after James VI/I: ‘such Kings as Scotland had sent to England, only to betray her trust and to trample on her independence’.45 Regarding the FortyFive, Blackie was quite clear, arguing that ‘no military expedition was ever more false in principle, more ill-advised in policy, and more ruinous in its results’.46 The contradiction involved in celebrating Jacobite song while deploring the cause was readily apparent to him: Certain in this case it is, that the good of the inspiring principle [i.e. Highland loyalty] remains to all ages, while the evil of the accidental misapplication is forgotten or condoned; and thus the breeze of loyalty, which blows with such exuberant freshness in the Jacobite ballads, will continue to fan the best sentiment of public life in the British breast long after the blindness that caused them or the blood that followed them shall have been forgotten.47

Again, the Forty-Five should be remembered for the bravery and loyalty of the Highlanders who fought for the Prince – being open to the drama of their stories and songs did not make one a de facto Jacobite. The rhetoric of these commemorations of Highland rather than Jacobite heroism emphasises the distinction between the sentimental Jacobitism of song, novel and stage, and the deeper meaning of the Forty-Five in Scottish cultural memory. Sentimental attachment to the lost cause of the Prince was quite distinct from any deep-rooted collective memory seen as having formed both the individual and his or her society. It was the fact that the Jacobite cause was securely consigned to the realm of romance that rendered it attractive. Whilst it would be pompous to claim that the commemoration of Wallace and Bruce, Knox and the Covenanters was entirely free from such sentiment, these national heroes were intrinsic to the nineteenthcentury Scottish sense of self, whether in the political, religious or social realm. They were part of what it meant to be a Scot. The same might be said for Scottish identity’s Highland trappings, yet it is harder to make a similar claim for memories of the Jacobite cause. Even the most sentimental gasps of Jacobite nostalgia recognised that the cause was the wrong one: the anonymous author of the Jacobite Minstrelsy, published in 1829, readily admitted that Jacobitism ‘warred against common sense and the natural liberty of mankind’.48 At the same time, sentimental Jacobitism was in no way at variance with loyalty to the present Queen, representing as she did the glorious synthesis of both Stuart and Hanoverian. Just as those commemorating the Covenanters at Muirkirk in 1887 could bind Victoria to the Covenanting martyrs through the legacy of constitutional monarchy, it was perfectly acceptable for Victoria to be presented with a silver model of the Glenfinnan monument as a diamond jubilee gift.49



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MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS The narrative of Scottish nationality in the nineteenth century had no place for the Jacobite cause except as the ideology of villains. It was not only the Highland soldiers marching into Edinburgh in 1745 that were seen as emerging from Scotland’s past – the cause of the Prince was an anachronism too, the last gasp of an ideology that had been defeated at the Glorious Revolution but did not yet know it. The only scraps that could be gathered from memories of the Forty-Five were celebration of the heroism and loyalty of those Highlanders who had died fighting for the wrong side. The recurring theme of anti-Catholicism in the commemoration of those national heroes more central to the great Scottish plot supplies another reason for this liminality: Jacobitism was deeply associated with the imperialist ambitions of the Roman Catholic Church. The Prince represented not only the anachronism of the divine right of kings and the legacy of seventeenth-century oppression, but also the ever-present threat of the Papacy undermining Scottish Presbyterian nationality. For a hero such as William Wallace, it was simple enough to either ignore his Catholicism or to cast him as a Culdee, yet Catholic figures from Scotland’s post-Reformation past were different. None more so than Mary Queen of Scots, who was unfortunate enough to arrive in Scotland as a cross-carrying Catholic, just as the Reformation was beginning to bloom. In terms of their international reach and depth of cultural significance, none of the figures considered in this book achieved anything like the popularity of Mary Queen of Scots. Mary was a cultural icon, not least in Friedrich Schiller’s play of 1800, Scott’s novel The Abbott (1829) and Donizetti’s opera from 1834, yet even while she still lived her reputation was Janus-faced. To use Jayne Lewis’s resonant terms, for Protestants, Mary was a ‘bloodthirsty harlot’ while Catholics saw her as a martyr for the faith; to the Scots she was a ‘Frenchified interloper’ while the French saw her as a symbol of monarchical unity between Britain and France; for many men she was a ‘Jezebel’ while for women she could be ‘a composite of the biblical Marys who participated in Christ’s passion’.50 All of these tensions ran through the Queen of Scots’ depiction in the nineteenth century, whether in art, the novel or historiography. For the popular historian Agnes Strickland, Mary was ‘the embodiment of purity and candour’, the very type of a Victorian ‘angel in the house’, while to J. A. Froude – champion of John Knox – she was ‘a being earthly, sensual, and devilish almost beyond the proportion of nature’.51 These binaries meant that, in common with other realms of Scottish memory, Mary was constantly open to reinterpretation in the light of the present.52 On the date of her tercentenary in February 1887, the Aberdeen Journal wrote: ‘Now, as during her lifetime, Mary Stuart is still the personification of a creed and of a party, and consequently her actions are judged with all

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the partiality or all the animosity which religion and politics inspire.’53 Yet, as Jayne Lewis has argued, the outcome of these clashes was as often one of sympathy or pity, rather than loyalty or objection. Just as one might approve of the heroism of the Jacobite Highlanders whilst acknowledging they had fought on the wrong side, one might disapprove of Mary but at the same time feel sorry for her.54 Lewis cites none other than Thomas McCrie, who wrote that the Queen ‘continues to this day to exercise such sway over the hearts of men that even grave and serious authors […] cannot read the tears which she shed without feeling an inclination to weep along with her’.55 If McCrie’s contention holds true for Scottish nationality more widely, then memories of Mary Stuart fit neatly into the same frame as those of Bonnie Prince Charlie. As with the sentimental longing for the adventures of the Prince, this yearning for Mary did not imbue her sufferings with any national significance. Though nineteenth-century collective memory excused John Knox his harangues at the young Queen by appealing to the spirit of the age, there was never any doubt that Knox was at the vanguard of Scottish nationality, that his life and achievements meant something in terms of the grand sweep of Scotland’s past. Mary, in contrast, whilst undoubtedly part of the story, had no legacy to serve the needs of the present. One might argue over whether she was a martyr or a harlot, but it would have taken a considerable leap of mnemonic faith to claim that her memory contributed to the defining characteristics of Scottish nationality in the nineteenth century. In other words, though the Victorian fascination for Mary was defined by a powerful need to connect with her as a mytho-historical reality, this process did not involve the creation of a lasting legacy for the present – except, perhaps, as a tragic representation of the losing side in the Reformation. Mary was, in a sense, the anti-Wallace: too complex, too known, too much the victim of recurrent attempts to connect with her to be sufficiently malleable to the demands of a national heroine. Lacking the peasant simplicity of Flora Macdonald, Mary could not be moulded into a representation of something definitively Scottish. The problem was not so much what defined the Queen of Scots as what she was not: not of humble origins, not sufficiently empty of fact and motivation, not Presbyterian. If this is indeed the case, then how was Mary to be remembered within the milieu of commemoration? If the commemorative act is intent on projecting the demands of the present onto these half-determined images from the past, what significance could memories of the Queen of Scots bear? THE LANGSIDE MONUMENT The greatest obstacle to adequately answering this question is the absence of commemorative activity around the Queen of Scots in the nineteenth century. That is, Mary was not commemorated in the same way or to the same extent as Wallace, Bruce, Knox, or the Covenanters. Certainly, her



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image was everywhere – we have already noted that her statue adorns the exterior of the National Portrait Gallery alongside Knox and other great names of the Scottish past – yet there is little to consider in terms of monumental commemoration. Indeed, the most significant monument commemorating any event associated with Mary Stuart is a relatively obscure pillar on the south side of Glasgow, raised to commemorate the Battle of Langside. The task of erecting this monument was begun in late 1883, with a letter to the Glasgow Herald from Alexander Malcolm Scott, an enthusiast for the history of Mary Queen of Scots.56 Scott’s motivation for raising the ­monument was similar to those for building a cairn on Culloden Moor: that the site of the battle was currently unknown and some marker was required to direct visitors. At the same time, Scott argued, the rapid expansion of the city of Glasgow threatened to eradicate the site entirely. Something had to be done before it was lost for ever. Scott’s letter met with considerable approval, with several further letters appearing in the Herald’s columns encouraging the monument enterprise. This correspondence shows the variety of ways in which the battle was remembered, yet also delineates the limits placed on its commemoration. One correspondent, ‘WEC’, declared the battle to have been the second most important battle in the history of Scotland after Bannockburn ‘in terms of its influence on subsequent events’, though he or she leaves the reader to work out why. Another correspondent, ‘YZ’, declared that the monument would have considerable ‘educational value’.57 Not everyone was happy, however. A letter from ‘A Scotswoman’ deplored the raising of the monument as glorying in the defeat of the ‘beautiful but unfortunate’ Mary: ‘Is this movement a reaction against the devoted, loving, and successful efforts of painters, poets, and historians to vindicate her character, defend her actions, and make atonement for all her wrongs?’58 The following day, a letter appeared in support of this objection, denigrating the monument on the understanding that it was intended to commemorate the Regent Murray: ‘The admirers of that wretched character, whose whole life was a tissue of hypocrisy and fraud, should read authentic history about him, and not the interested eulogies of Buchanan, Melville, and McCrie.’59 Alexander Scott responded to these objections by emphasising that his intention was not to take sides. ‘The monument would simply be a memorial of the battle’, Scott stated, its principal purpose being to counteract ‘the most erroneous notions’ about the precise location of the battle field’, as part of the wider necessity ‘carefully to conserve all our historical places; it is a duty we owe to posterity’.60 The need to distance the monument from any political or religious association became one of the defining themes in the effort to have it raised. At a meeting held in March 1884 to determine whether the monument enterprise should go ahead, the Chairman, J. Wyllie Guild, another enthusiastic collector of Marian relics and texts, was applauded when making precisely this point. Guild reassured his a­ udience by saying

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that he ‘would have no part in it if it were in any way to be addressed in a spirit of partisanship. He would treat the Battle of Langside as a purely historical event, apart altogether from politics or religion.’61 He emphasised the point further at the laying of the monument’s foundation stone in May 1887, reminding those present that the monument was in no way ‘partisan’, nor was it intended to imply any judgement on the reign of the Queen.62 Those statements objecting to the monument, and those made in response as a means of justifying it, serve to remind us that there was significant potential for controversy in memories of Mary Queen of Scots. Competing memories of Mary Stuart could reflect on contemporary concerns over Scottish nationality, whether in terms of religion or gender. For instance, at the same time as the Langside monument movement was nearing its successful completion, William Smith (1819–92), the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Edinburgh, was beginning the process of nominating Mary Queen of Scots for canonisation, inspired by the recent canonisation of some English Catholic martyrs. In doing so, Smith appealed to Mary as a Catholic martyr, a representation of the Queen that, in effect, lifted her from the troublesome context of Scottish nationality into the higher realm of historic Catholicism.63 As an editorial in the Aberdeen Journal argued, had the Queen been viewed within the realm of national history – Scottish, English or British – the outcome would have been a foregone conclusion. It was to avoid any entanglement with such contemporary religious politics that, true to the moderate vision of Scottish nationality, the Langside monument’s advocates made sure to stress their freedom from any informing perspective, and by August 1888 the monument was complete. Designed by Alexander Skirving, the completed monument was intended to portray an old Scottish market cross and cost a little over £1,000. The circumstances of its inauguration are in themselves illustrative of the nature of the commemoration of Mary Queen of Scots, having been part of the annual congress of the British Archaeological Society.64 The addresses delivered at the inauguration stuck close to the script developed throughout the monument movement, including its balanced depiction of the Queen herself. The chairman, Glasgow Lord Provost, Sir James King, drew a sympathetic yet mixed portrait: ‘anyone who knew the circumstances of the times must be ready, if to some extent to blame the Queen, to excuse in many instances, and to sympathise very deeply with her misfortunes’. Such an emphasis clearly demarcates the commemoration of an event so bound to the memory of Mary Queen of Scots from the commemoration of other focal points of Scottish national memory. This separation of the monument from any political motivation was, of course, not unusual when trying to raise commemorative memorials. To align one’s monument too closely with one particular party or denomination was to court failure and disapprobation from the press and the



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public. That the Langside memorial committee were particularly united on this point does, however, tell us something about the place of the Queen of Scots in Scottish cultural memory. In the commemoration of Mary’s opponent, John Knox, one cannot move for strident political, religious or national arguments, whether in the name of ecclesiastical unity, against the spread of Roman Catholicism, or the broader celebration of Scottish nationality. Causing offence is, quite simply, irrelevant. Indeed, the commemoration of Knox was defined by the need to make political points, to ensure the legacy of the Great Reformer was not squandered. Such a position in remembering Knox did not, however, entail adopting a contrary position when commemorating an event associated with Mary. That is, the Langside memorial committee avoided depicting Mary as either a heroine of Catholic-Scottish nationality or a villain desperately trying to hold back providence. Contemporary sympathy or pity for the Queen of Scots clearly influenced the way in which she was to be deployed for the purposes of remembering in the public sphere, yet one dealt with the contested memories of Mary by avoiding them and so, instead, the Battle of Langside was to be viewed as objectively as possible. This was not to claim that the battle was unimportant, but its significance was more in the nature of a milestone in the progress of the nation, than a pivotal event still resonating into the present. Langside was an example rather than an exemplar. The framing of the battle was neatly summarised by Glasgow’s Sheriff Clark, at the first meeting of the formal monument committee on 28 March 1884: The battle of Langside has, indeed, no political or religious significance in the present day – it has no connection with modern parties – but it will be ever memorable as marking an important era in the history of our country when the ancient order of things began to fade away, and when that tide, which has culminated in modern civilisation and modern ideas, began to set in. Up till this time the old feudalism and the ancient chivalry, with all the stirring associations of romance, and all their memories of a crusading past in which Scotland had been so glorious, continued to hold sway; thenceforth, trade, commercial enterprise, all those aspirations after constitutional freedom and orderly government which make nations great were to develop with increasing force … It was, in short, a battle in which, in many a sense, the old world fought against the new, and in which the new by its victory gave token of its unquestionable superiority.65

Elements of this statement would not be out of place in the commemoration of Wallace or Knox, as Clark positions the Battle of Langside in a narrative of progress, yet makes sure to declare that the battle has no ‘political or contemporary relevance in the present day’. Adopting this position meant that the battle could be commemorated more easily – how could the monument cause offence when the battle it signposted had no specific relevance to the present, other than within the objective frame of archaeology?

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THE PETERBOROUGH EXHIBITION At the same time as the Langside monument committee were endeavouring to raise their avowedly non-partisan memorial, a quite different form of Marian remembrance was taking place in England. The exhibition of relics relating to Mary Queen of Scots, held in Peterborough in the summer of 1887, was intended to mark the tercentenary of Mary’s execution and, in so doing, it shines further light on the terms in which Mary was to be remembered, not least in the parallels between this commemoration and that of the Battle of Langside. For instance, just as the Langside memorial was unveiled during a meeting of the British Archaeological Society, the Peterborough exhibition was originated by the Peterborough National History, Scientific, and Archaeological Society. Similarly, as the initial proposal for the Langside monument was met with objections that assumed it was motivated by loyalty to one particular party, there appears to have been some dissatisfaction with commemorating the tercentenary in its early stages. An editorial in the Worcester Journal in December 1886 observed not only that the anniversary would provide an opportunity for the airing of grievances that ought to be consigned to the past, but that the idea of commemorating the tercentenary had, on the whole, met with a considerable lack of enthusiasm, both in Northamptonshire and in ‘the hearts or the imagination of the Scottish people’.66 These concerns may have stemmed from an initial proposal suggesting that the tercentenary be marked by means of a procession from Fotheringay, the site of the execution, to Peterborough Cathedral, where the corpse of Mary was laid to rest before her son, James VI, had the body transferred to Westminster Abbey.67 The proponents of the tercentenary were clearly aware of the risks they ran: a notice in the Manchester Guardian was sure to make the vital proviso that the procession was being proposed ‘not as a matter of partisan vindication of her conduct, but of general concern for her unhappy fate’. Whether owing to a lack of interest, or for reasons of cultural or religious sensitivity, by the spring of 1887 the procession had metamorphosed into an exhibition of historical relics, planned to take place in Peterborough in July 1888.68 The exhibition proposal quickly gained the patronage of Queen Victoria herself, who continued to take a keen interest, going so far as to donate a lock of the Queen of Scots’ hair from her own private collection.69 A call made for exhibits to be donated proved remarkably successful, and the exhibition opened in the precincts of Peterborough Cathedral on 19 July with over 200 pieces on display. Amid the bewildering – not to mention macabre – variety of relics on display, there were eighty portraits and two veils: one supposedly worn as Mary witnessed the murder of Rizzio, the other during her execution.70 The exhibition was such a success that whilst it was still in place calls were made for some more permanent memorial to be raised at Peterborough. To that end, subscriptions were solicited by some



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of the exhibition’s organisers, appealing for donations between one and ten shillings, particularly from anyone bearing the name Mary or a derivative thereof.71 The success of the Peterborough exhibition also prompted moves by some prominent Scottish Catholics, most notably the Duchess of Argyle and Mary Maxwell-Scott, Sir Walter Scott’s granddaughter, to have the relics displayed in Edinburgh. A committee was formed to that end, but the project drew to a swift close when it was discovered that arrangements had already been made for the Peterborough relics to go on display as part of the forthcoming Glasgow International Exhibition in 1888. The Glasgow Exhibition was, however, not to be limited merely to the relics of Mary Queen of Scots. From early on, the intention was to include historical objects relating to her Stuart descendants, as well the counterbalancing inclusion of artefacts relating to the Covenanters.72 On display in a facsimile of the old Glasgow ‘Bishop’s Palace’, the exhibit would form ‘a continuous history of the political, ecclesiastical, and social development of the Scottish people’, divided into three main groups: ‘the times of Mary Queen of Scots, of the Covenanters, and Jacobite agitations’.73 By the time the exhibition was finally opened to the public, however, such a range of exhibits had been donated that the remit was widened to span almost all of Scotland’s past, with no particular emphasis on any one era or theme.74 The relative absence of commemorative activity in the name of Mary Queen of Scots serves to emphasise that she belonged to a different world of cultural memory. We can gauge the contemporary relevance of a figure or moment from the national past in terms of its legacy: what did the subject of the commemorative act mean for present-day Scotland? Even the most cursory investigation of the rhetoric of commemoration in the nineteenth century reveals a shared definition of the legacy of Wallace, Knox and the Covenanters. If the relevance of the commemorative act is defined by its purpose for the present, then those attempts to commemorate Mary Stuart shown above are even more self-reflexive than the commemoration of the Forty-Five. That is, the purpose of Marian commemoration was to ensure that the Queen and the stirring events associated with her story were not forgotten, but also to avoid imbuing that story with any contemporary significance. Again, in contrast to the commemoration of Presbyterian memory, it had no political outcome other than as a signpost. The Langside commemoration was self-consciously apolitical, its promoters never missing an opportunity to state that the memorial was not there to commemorate any particular person or conflict, but only to mark the site of the battle so that it might not be forgotten amid the urgent pace of urban development. Any accusation to the contrary was immediately countered with assurances of the monument’s lack of party bias. While Victorian Scots may have been just as much in love with Mary as preceding generations, they were sensible enough of the meaning of their past not to attempt to bind

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the Queen of Scots to it. Furthermore, the centrality of relics to the cultural memory of Mary, and the involvement of archaeological societies in remembering her, further underlines that this was not commemoration so much as archaeology, digging up and preserving remains, a combination of romantic sentiment and science rather than politics and cultural memory. Mary was not remembered through the raising of commemorative statuary so much as through association with specific locations, what we might now call heritage rather than nationality. In much the same way as the Peterborough exhibition was a collection of artefacts connected with the Queen, so, too, the places of memory associated with Mary are largely relics of her life and passing: her tomb in Westminster Abbey, the ‘Mary Queen of Scots House’ in Jedburgh, Loch Leven Castle where she formally abdicated and supposedly gave birth to stillborn twins.75 There can be no doubt that Mary Queen of Scots has loomed large in Scottish cultural memory since the moment she arrived at Leith in 1561. This was never more so than in the nineteenth century, yet Mary’s experience was not made part of any narrative of Scottish nationality that might bequeath benefits to the present. Like the cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie, Mary Stuart could not be woven in with the binding thread of civil and religious liberty. Where her story did connect, it was as a sign of something that necessarily had to be lost, rather than gained – the falling away of the old, Catholic order in favour of the brave new world of Presbyterian civil and religious liberty. For the Queen to be remembered in the public sphere, any divisive elements in her memory had to be set aside in favour of an objectivity that effectively undermined any possibility of her retaining significance for the present. At the same time, and in common with the figure of Charles Edward Stuart, the person of the Queen had to be separated from the ideology she represented. In this there is another contrast with the commemoration of William Wallace and John Knox. The cause in which Wallace and Knox had fought fitted the demands of the nineteenth century to the extent that they could be remembered as the mnemonic expression of that cause. That is to say, Knox and Wallace embodied civil and religious liberty and providential unionism. It was possible to project the needs of the present onto their memory without too much interference from complicating historical detail. In Knox’s case, whenever he was seen to have acted in a way that ran contrary to his position as a hero of Scottish Presbyterian nationality, these flaws were excused by appealing to the extremity under which he lived and to the magnificence of his overall achievement. In the case of Mary and Charles Edward Stuart, while their stories cast a spell over the nineteenth century, to tell that story it was necessary to separate them from the ideology they represented or to emphasise that their cause was ‘unfortunate’ – in whatever definition of the term worked best. For nineteenth-century Scottish collective memory to make full use of any figure from the past, it was necessary to take their flaws into account. These flaws could only be forgiven or excused



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if that figure’s motivation and legacy were sufficiently compatible with the demands of the present. The problem with Mary Queen of Scots was that her motivations were too closely bound up with her Roman Catholicism, the antithesis of what defined Scottish nationality in the nineteenth century. At the same time, memories of Mary lacked any particular legacy to bequeath to the present other than the moral lesson of her own tragic story. Much the same problem overlay memories of Bonnie Prince Charlie – his motivation was an anachronism, his legacy a romance. NOTES   1 Finlay, ‘Heroes, Myths and Anniversaries’, p. 119.  2 Finlay, ‘Queen Victoria and the Cult of Scottish Monarchy’, in Cowan and Finlay, Scottish History: Power of the Past.  3 ‘Bannockburn’, Edinburgh Evening Courant, 23 June 1814. This article was reprinted in the Glasgow Chronicle, 25 June 1814, the Dumfries and Galloway Courier, 28 June 1814, and the Glasgow Courier, 28 June 1814.  4 North British Daily Mail, 25 June 1861.  5 Gold and Gold define sentimental Jacobitism as ‘a movement that sought to revive the values and practices notionally associated with the political cause of Jacobitism long after the demise of any credible Stuart Pretender’. John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold, ‘The Graves of the Gallant Highlanders: Memory, Interpretation and Narratives of Culloden’, History and Memory, vol. 19, no. 1, 2007, pp. 14–15.   6 Leah Leneman, ‘A New Role for a Lost Cause’, in Leah Leneman (ed.), Perspectives in Scottish Social History: Essays in Honour of Rosalind Mitchison (Aberdeen University Press, 1988), p. 113.   7 Ibid., p. 114.  8 There is a convincing argument to be made that one of the reasons the Covenanters have been all but lost as a component in early twenty-first-century Scottish nationality is that their memory is connected with a much less marketable setting.   9 Neil Cameron, ‘A Romantic Folly to Romantic Folly: the Glenfinnan Monument reassessed’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, no. 129, 1999, p. 888. 10 Ibid., p. 891. 11 The Latin translation was by James Gregory, who the reader will recall took a leading role in the re-internment of the bones of Robert Bruce at Dunfermline. 12 Quoted in Cameron, ‘Romantic Folly’, p. 893. 13 Jean Munro and Iain Cameron Taylor, Glenfinnan and the ‘45: Where the Rising Was Launched (National Trust for Scotland, 1971), p. 24. Cameron, ‘Romantic Folly’, p. 896. 14 Cameron, ‘Romantic Folly’, p. 897. 15 [Victoria, Queen of Great Britain], More Leaves From the Journal of a Life in the Highlands: from 1862–1882 (Elder & Co, 1884), p. 127.

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16 ‘The Mallaig Railway’, Glasgow Herald, 8 April 1893. 17 Quoted in Gold and Gold, ‘Graves of the Gallant Highlanders’, p. 22. 18 John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold, ‘Representing Culloden: Social Memory, Battlefield Heritage, and Landscapes of Regret’, in Stephen P. Hanna and Vincent J. Del Casino (eds), Mapping Tourism (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 118. 19 Gold and Gold, ‘Representing Culloden’, p. 119. 20 Inverness Courier; McArthur, 1994. 21 ‘Centenary of Culloden (from the Inverness Courier)’, Glasgow Herald, 27 April 1846. 22 ‘Centenary of Culloden’, Aberdeen Journal, 29 April1846. 23 Wallace – A Colossal Group by Patric Park’, Scotsman, 30 March 1850. 24 Jill Harden and Elspeth Masson, ‘Drumossie Moor: Memorialisation, Development and Restoration in an Evolving Historic Landscape’, in T. Pollard (ed.), Culloden: The History and Archaeology of the Last Clan Battle (Pen and Sword Military, 2009), p. 206. 25 McArthur, ‘Culloden: A Pre-emptive Strike’, pp. 97–126. 26 Harden and Masson, ‘Drumossie Moor’, p. 208. 27 Gold and Gold, ‘The Graves of the Gallant Highlanders’, p. 23. 28 Harden and Masson, ‘Drumossie Moor’, pp. 210–11. 29 Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 4 September 1895. 30 A cairn was raised at Milton on South Uist by the Clan Donald Society to mark Flora Macdonald’s birthplace, but I have been unable to determine when this cairn was raised. 31 Gold and Gold, ‘Representing Culloden’, pp. 120–6. 32 Royal Cornwall Gazette, 13 August 1868. 33 Glasgow Herald, 3 September 1870. 34 ‘Monument to Flora Macdonald’, The Star, 2 December 1871. (reprinted from Inverness Courier). 35 ‘The Flora Macdonald Memorial’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 15 April 1896. 36 ‘The Flora Macdonald Monument, Inverness’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 8 April 1896. 37 Dundee Courier and Argus, 16 December 1895. 38 ‘The Flora Macdonald Monument, Inverness’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 8 April 1896. 39 Glasgow Herald, 27 April 1846. 40 ‘The Flora Macdonald Monument at Inverness’, Scotsman, 27 July 1899. 41 ‘Culloden Monument’, Aberdeen Journal, 26 September 1849. 42 Quoted in Womack, Improvement and Romance, p. 52. 43 Womack, Improvement and Romance, p. 53. 44 Quoted in Leneman, ‘New Role for a Lost Cause’, p. 117. 45 John Stuart Blackie, Scottish Song: Its Wealth, Wisdom and Social Significance (W. Blackwood, 1889), pp. 187–9. 46 Ibid., p. 190. 47 Ibid., p. 192.



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48 Quoted in Leneman, ‘New Role for a Lost Cause’ , p. 118. 49 Glasgow Herald, 11 May 1897. 50 Jayne Lewis, ‘The Reputations of Mary Queen of Scots’, Études Écossaises, vol. 10, 1995, p. 42. 51 Aberdeen Journal, 12 February 1887. Lewis, ‘Reputations’, p. 47. 52 Jayne Elizabeth Lewis, Mary Queen of Scots: Romance and Nation (Routledge, 1998), p. 174 et seq. 53 ‘Tercentenary of Mary Queen of Scots’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 12 February 1887. 54 Lewis, ‘Reputations’, p. 48. 55 Lewis, Romance and Nation, p. 205. 56 Glasgow Herald, 27 December 1883. 57 Ibid., 27 December 1883, 7 January 1884. 58 Ibid., 9 January 1884. 59 Ibid., 10 January 1884. 60 Ibid., 15 January 1884. 61 Ibid., 8 March 1884. 62 Ibid., 14 May 1887. 63 Aberdeen Journal, 19 February 1887. The Standard, 20 August 1887. 64 Glasgow Herald 28 August 1888. 65 Ibid., 28 March 1884. 66 The Worcester Journal, 3 December 1886. 67 Manchester Guardian, 2 December 1886. Scotsman, 11 November 1886. 68 The Graphic, 30 April 1887. 69 The Morning Post, 27 May 1887. Hampshire Advertiser, 8 July 1887. 70 For a detailed list of items on display, see Liverpool Mercury, 20 July 1887. For illustrations of some of the exhibits, see The Graphic, 20 August 1887. 71 Leeds Mercury, 30 July 1887. 72 Glasgow Herald, 16 January 1888. 73 Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 20 April 1888. 74 ‘Glasgow International Exhibition’, Glasgow Herald, 25 May 1888. 75 Jayne Lewis, ‘Reputations’, p. 44.

Chapter 7 ‘Staunch Loyalty to the Flag that Stands for Union’

THE STRANGE CASE OF THEODORE NAPIER If the legacy of Mary Queen of Scots was incapable of finding a home within the definition of Scottish nationality, there were some readings of the past that could accommodate her. As noted in the previous chapter, many Scottish Catholics viewed Mary as a Catholic martyr, someone who stood up for the religion of Rome and its Scottish antecedents in the midst of reforming turmoil. Though growing, the Catholic experience was still on the fringes of Scottish nationality, still finding its place in expressing its identity, yet this was not the only national frame within which the Queen could be placed. We encounter a somewhat unusual deployment of Mary in the exploits of the proto-nationalist and ardent neo-Jacobite Theodore Napier when visiting Fotheringay Castle – another focal point for Marian memory – in February 1908. The Times reported: On Saturday – the 321st anniversary of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots – Mr Theodore Napier journeyed to Fotheringay to place on the castle mound a wreath in memory of the Queen. It was in the form of a large Scottish Stuart crown of everlastings, with the legend in red letters ‘Maria DG Reg Scotorum’, and on a white silk sash attached to it was stated ‘Dedicated to the Immortal Memory of Mary, “Queen of Scots”, Dowager Queen of France, de jure hereditarii Queen of England and Ireland, who, on this spot was beheaded by order of her Royal cousin, Elizabeth on February 8, 1586–87.’ A long quotation from George Mackenzie’s ‘Highland Day Dreams’ was also printed upon it, and it was inscribed ‘From Royalists in Scotland, February 8, 1908’. Mr Napier said he was one of the last of the Jacobites, and he could trust no one to bring the wreath but himself, which explained the fact that there was no wreath two years ago, as he was in Tasmania.1

Clearly, not everyone preferred to remove any stridently national – or even proto-nationalist – interpretation from the commemoration of Mary or of the Jacobite cause. Indeed, the plaque donated by Edward Power in 1858 that ended up being placed on Duncan Forbes’s cairn at Culloden provides an alternative to the appropriation of the battlefield in order to denote Highland heroism alone:



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THE BATTLE OF CULLODEN was fought on this moor 16 April 1746 THE GRAVES OF THE GALLANT HIGHLANDERS who fought for SCOTLAND AND PRINCE CHARLIE are marked by the names of their clans.

Interpreted literally, Power’s text contrasts with the de-nationalised reading of Culloden. Rather than being framed as an example of Highland fidelity and martial valour, tragically fought in the wrong cause, here the causes of the Prince and of Scotland are connected – to fight for Charlie was to fight for Scotland. That this panel was retained and used for the Culloden cairn must denote that the sentiment it expresses was, at the very least, not anathema to Duncan Forbes of Culloden in the 1880s. Even so, representation of Culloden as a Scottish national defeat, and of Jacobitism as an example of Scottish patriotism exercised in a Scottish cause, is relatively uncommon during this period. The principal definition of Jacobite memory within the context of Scottish national memory stayed close to the safe ground of clan bravery and loyalty as reflecting an inherently Highland virtue, now deployed for the benefit of a unified and peaceful nation. Over half a century after the centenary of Culloden, its anniversary was still being framed in terms of commemorating the valour and fidelity of the Highland soldiers. The Aberdeen Weekly Journal described the motive for marking the 151st anniversary in 1897 as ‘not a disloyal one’, but instead it was ‘a true and sincere token of honour to the brave men who then so freely surrendered their lives in a lost cause’.2 While the Journal may have stuck close to the Scottish national script, the anniversary celebrations it was reporting on were anything but a straightforward expression of loyalty to Victoria and commemoration of valorous Highlanders dying on the wrong side of history. The 16th of April 1898 saw the Culloden cairn decorated with four memorial wreaths in front of a fairly modest crowd of seventy people. One of the wreaths was from the Clan Menzies, ‘in memory of 200 Menzieses at the Battle of Culloden’, yet the undoubted star of the show was the aforementioned Australian Jacobite-nationalist, Theodore Napier.3 The son of a Scottish cabinet-maker, Napier was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1845, then sent to Edinburgh to be educated at the High School and the University.4 His education completed, Napier returned to Australia where his own particular brand of assertive Scottish nationality began to express itself through enthusiastic participation in every Scottish-related venture that would have him. Fuelled by nationalist – not merely national – ardour, Napier returned to Scotland in 1893 and remained for the next twenty years, becoming a prominent activist for Home Rule and a regular fixture at commemorative events, whether invited or simply turning up in

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hope or expectation of a platform for his strident proto-nationalism. One such occurred shortly after his arrival in 1893, when he was invited by the Bannockburn Borestone Committee to unfurl the Scottish Standard at Bannockburn, in company with Mr Wallace Bruce, the US Consul in Edinburgh. Both William Wallace and Bannockburn loomed large in Napier’s brand of nationality. Along with his highland dress, he brought with him a strenuous commitment to making the 24th of June Scotland’s very own Independence Day. For instance, when laying the foundation stone of a school in Marykirk in 1898, Napier asked the trustees of the school to give the children a holiday every year on the anniversary of the battle.5 He travelled the country in a practically single-handed attempt to ensure the memory of Wallace was suitably garlanded with the veneration it deserved. In August 1896, Napier placed a wreath around the ‘Wee Wallace’ statue in Stirling, going on to approach the town council of Aberdeen the following year for permission to do the same on its statue of the Great Liberator. The council agreed, and Napier appears to have made this something of an annual pilgrimage, returning in 1899 with the same intention.6 Following in the footsteps of William Burns’ obsession with the use of ‘England’ as an antiScottish synonym for ‘Great Britain’, Napier was also a leading figure in the Scottish national petition to the Queen against ‘the misuse of the national names’.7 What truly separated Theodore Napier from his contemporaries, however, was his particular brand of neo-Jacobite nationality, the result of his having been nurtured amid an ex-patriot community at a considerable distance from the mother country.8 For instance, we might look upon his adoption of Highland dress – worn every day and for every purpose – as a symbol of a Highlandised, sentimental Scottishness. While this certainly reflects some element of his nationality, Napier’s outfit was not the modern dress of the tartanised nineteenth century, but was intended to reflect Highland dress as worn in the seventeenth century: his ‘protest against the national dress being “snuffed out” by the cosmopolitan tailor garb of Europe’.9 In other words, Napier’s outfit was not a gesture of sentimental romanticism but a self-conscious attempt to attain authenticity in the face of modern, synthetic Highland costume. Furthermore, and in marked contrast to other protonationalists of the later nineteenth and early twentieth century, Napier was a committed and outspoken Jacobite, one who easily combined a love of Wallace and Bruce with a deep commitment to the Jacobite cause that was stridently political. In other words, for Napier, the Jacobite cause sat firmly within his own version of the master narrative of Scottish nationality. In a pamphlet Napier published in 1898, entitled The Royal House of Stuart: A Plea for its Restoration, he articulated his call for the restoration of the Stuarts as the truest expression of distinct Scottish nationality.10 This commitment to the restoration of the Stuarts informed his commemorative prac-



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tices to the extent that, whilst in Scotland, he organised several anniversary commemorations at Culloden with a strong Jacobitical theme. For the 1898 commemoration, he brought with him a floral wreath from the Legitimist Jacobite League, bearing the words ‘In memory of the heroes of Culloden, April, 16, 1746. April, 16, 1898. “What they fought for, we will work for.”’ In his speech, Napier, clad in his usual antique garb, echoed this sentiment, making sure to point out that the Highlanders had fought ‘for him whom they believed, and whom those present that day believed, to be their rightful sovereign’.11 He went on to reiterate the message of the cairn’s memorial plaque: that the Highlanders had fought the battle ‘for Scotland and Prince Charlie’.12 The change that Napier represents is apparent in his addition of ‘and whom those present that day believed’ to the context for Highland heroism at Culloden. Napier was adapting Jacobite memory for Scottish nationalist purposes, transforming what had once been an unfortunate act committed for all the wrong reasons into a national tragedy. However, the relatively poor attendance at this event tends to emphasise its marginality: one could commemorate Culloden, but not in such avowedly Jacobite terms. Commenting on the gathering, the Aberdeen Weekly Journal – a newspaper with conservative tendencies – referred to these neo-Jacobites as ‘a body of harmless but foolish triflers’ before going on to reiterate the view that the Stuarts ‘by their own persistent folly, forfeited their kingly inheritance’.13 Undaunted, Napier and his Jacobite colleagues were back again the following year with more than double the number of attendees. Once more the Legitimist League sent a wreath, in the shape of a Scottish claymore, seven feet in length. The neo-Jacobitical tone of Napier’s speech this time was remarkably radical. Though he admitted that ‘no one had excelled Queen Victoria as a ruler’, he went on to propose: If the cause the Highlanders had fought for in 1745 was a good one then the cause must be a good one now. He might be told that it was sentiment that made him commemorate that event, and he admitted that to be true; but sentiment ruled the world.14

Napier’s approach was predicated as much on what Scotland had lost as on what it possessed. To that end, Jacobite memory could act as a vessel for an alternative reading of Scottishness, synthesising the libertarian myth of Wallace with a subsequent loss of national freedom at Culloden. Bringing Culloden into the grand narrative of Scottish nationality, in effect, changed the ending. The Revolution of 1688 was no longer the glorious consummation of centuries of struggle for civil and religious liberty, leading to more and greater achievements in a partnership of equals with England. Instead, the Revolution became the first step on the road away from the legacy of the past, passing through the injustices of 1707 to Culloden and the consequent undermining of Scottish nationality. In his 1898 pamphlet on the restoration of the Stuarts, Napier argued that ‘had the Revolution of 1688 never taken

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place, the present Incorporating Union … would never have occurred’.15 Such a statement fits neatly into the narrative of civil and religious liberty, yet for Napier it is an open criticism of both the Revolution and the Union. Napier is voicing an opinion that was anathema to all but a marginal handful of those commemorating the Scottish past in the mid-nineteenth century: that the Union was not so much in need of reforming as it was of dissolution. BETRAYING WALLACE, BETRAYING SCOTLAND? In his relative omnipresence across Scotland in the 1890s and 1900s, Theodore Napier was undoubtedly a popular public speaker, yet airing his neo-Jacobitism ensured he remained somewhat marginalised.16 The foundations of Napier’s nationality were too obviously the stuff of romance when compared to the more hard-headed vision of Scottish nationality traced from Wallace through Knox to the Covenanters. Despite his marginality, however, Napier is an important figure. He is one of the more flamboyant representatives of a sea change in the significance of the commemorative act, away from the dominance of moderate Scottish nationality towards a more politicised use of national memory. Furthermore, he represents the emergence of a new way of modelling the Scottish past, one that emphasised not the achievement and retention of a coherent, historic nationality, but its loss. We have already witnessed John Stuart Blackie and David Macrae speaking at Bannockburn in 1889. As the century drew to a close, both Theodore Napier and Macrae were increasingly associated with the adoption of the Scottish past for political purposes. In 1898, for instance, an editorial in the Glasgow Herald about that year’s Bannockburn anniversary bemoaned this new obsession with politicising the past: Thanks to the persistence of a few, there has of late years arisen a movement for the propagation of a sentiment which threatens to disgust educated and sensible people with Scottish patriotism altogether … But why will the professional patriots persist in involving the celebration of the great names of Scottish history in ridicule, and at the same time identifying the patriotism that feeds upon that history with one of the most ridiculous political movements in the history of the whole world?17

Blackie, Macrae and Napier were singled out along with Charles Waddie of the SHRA as being the most heinous culprits, their public statements making ‘the judicious grieve, and cause the very name of patriotism to stink in the nostrils of sane Scotchman’. The Scotsman commented on the ‘dismal failure’ of that year’s Bannockburn gathering, laying much of the blame at the feet of the speakers, Napier and Macrae, while the Belfast Newsletter referred to the speakers as ‘of a sorry order – strong in sentiment, but weak in power’.18 If one gauges the success or failure of the 1898 demonstration in terms of



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attendance, then the Scotsman’s description would appear to be borne out. The most generous estimate of the numbers gathered at the Borestone in 1898 was in the region of seventy persons.19 This stands in marked contrast to the 1893 gathering with Mr Wallace Bruce as the main speaker, where there were 3,000 people, this, in turn, overshadowed by the 1897 commemoration with a crowd of somewhere between 9,000 and 10,000.20 The principal address on this last occasion was delivered by Mr James McKillop, Unionist MP for Stirling.21 Though torrential rain earlier in the day at the 1898 event no doubt had an effect on numbers, it is also worth noting that a sermon preached in commemoration of the Battle of Bothwell Bridge the following Sunday drew a crowd of between 5,000 and 6,000.22 Still, this more radicalised reading of Wallace and of Bannockburn was not to be silenced. For most of the century, the monumental commemoration of Wallace had required those involved to project as moderate a veneer as possible so as to minimise the possibility of deterring supporters. In considering in more detail the movement begun in 1898 to raise a monument to mark the site of Wallace’s betrayal at Robroyston, it is evident that this undertaking was co-ordinated and promoted from the outset by some of the more ardent proto-nationalists, including David Macrae as the chairman and Theodore Napier as secretary.23 Carried out under the auspices of the ‘Scottish Anniversary and Historical Society’, the monument movement was well under way by the middle of June 1898, with some funds already collected. Macrae then wrote to the Herald advertising the monument movement, and quoting Mazzini and Garibaldi in its support.24 Immediately there was protest. On 21 June, Charles Waddie, who was at this time Honorary Secretary of the SHRA, replied to Macrae in the Herald, calling into question the whole idea, not just of commemorating Wallace’s betrayal, but of raising any memorial. Referring to the betrayal as ‘the disgrace of Scotland’, Waddie argued that it would be better for modern Scots to ‘emulate the virtues of their ancestors’ by achieving Home Rule for Scotland: ‘All that was gained for us by the battles of Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn was lost by the betrayal of 1707.’25 Without such a practical connection with the heroes of the past, any memorials were ‘finger posts of shame’. Macrae and Napier were quick to respond, their letters appearing on the very same day they were addressing that ‘dismal’ crowd at the Borestone. Macrae defended the memorial as deeply patriotic, the betrayal of Wallace clearly illustrating his ‘sublime heroism and devotion’ to Scotland: ‘The thought of the Scottish hero at Robroyston as well as before the English king, is a thought to kindle Scotland’s patriotism.’26 Theodore Napier, as we might expect, went further. In common with Macrae, Napier argued that it was Wallace’s betrayal that had spurred the Scots on to victory, ‘under his royal successor, the Bruce’. Yet, whereas Macrae had been content to note that he was in sympathy with some of Waddie’s sentiments, Napier gamely waded into the anti-Union waters, arguing that such monuments would act

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to arouse Scotland and Scotsmen to free themselves from their present degraded position of serfdom to England … A statue to Wallace is an object lesson to the rising generation of Scotsmen to follow his noble example by seeking to deliver their nation from its political bondage.

Here, then, was a fundamental disagreement within the ranks of the Home Rulers over the efficacy of raising a commemorative monument to Scotland’s most national of national heroes. Was Wallace’s betrayal the nation’s shame, or yet another staging post in the grand narrative of Scottish nationality? As if this was not enough, open hostility seems to have broken out within the ranks of those attempting to get the monument raised. A public demonstration was held on 6 August at the proposed monument site in front of 1,000 people, chaired by William Jacks, a former Liberal Unionist MP, with Napier present but not Macrae. Despite the Home Rule credentials of the monument’s main proponents, the adoption of Jacks was a clear attempt to widen the appeal of the monument beyond simply proto-nationalists. Indeed, Jacks began his address by praising the speech delivered by Lord Rosebery at the previous year’s Stirling Bridge sexcentenary, a speech that – as we have seen – represented the very pinnacle of moderate Scottish nationality.27 Jacks certainly had his strident points to make: he attacked the Scottish nobility and even sounded a note of anti-Semitism – something rare in nineteenth-century commemorative rhetoric – yet he stuck closely to the argument that to remember Wallace’s betrayal at Robroyston was to celebrate the moment when Wallace’s patriotism inspired the Scots to defeat the English at Bannockburn. Jacks was followed by the Revd J. F. Miller of Millerston, a keen antiquarian of Wallace and Bruce, who reiterated the necessity for remembering Robroyston, referring to Wallace’s betrayal as ‘the fountainhead of the stream’ which led to Bannockburn.28 During his speech, Miller expressed the Carlylean view that Wallace had prevented the union with England from taking place as an unequal union, prompting an interruption from Theodore Napier: If the Union with England was our chief blessing – (Mr Napier – ‘Is it?’) – we had to thank Wallace that it was not our chief curse. Mr Napier – It is. Rev. Mr Miller – It is not our chief curse. Mr Napier – Well, it’s a curse.29

Napier’s sentiment was picked up on by Mr W. Craibe Angus, a Glasgow art dealer, who, having proclaimed that Wallace, Knox, Burns, ‘Scotch whisky’ and ‘Scotch theology’ had made Scotland, gave a sustained argument for Home Rule. When Theodore Napier’s turn to speak finally arrived, he too urged those present to ‘draw the constitutional sword, and to do what they could to regain what was lost’.



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Editorials in the Glasgow Herald and the Aberdeen Weekly Journal were quick to pour scorn on the fulminations of Napier and Craibe Angus. The Herald lamented that the memory of Wallace should be so ill-served by men like Napier connecting it with the ‘sheer political farcicality’ of the Home Rule cause, stating that the commemoration of the hero was better left to the likes of Lord Rosebery.30 The Journal, meanwhile, wondered ‘where men like Mr Napier and Mr Angus gain their knowledge of Scotland and Scottish affairs’.31 Adopting the ironical tone so common when depicting the antics of Scottish nationalists, the Journal editorial proposed that Napier’s ‘constitutional sword’ would not be sufficient: ‘Why didst thou not sound the slogan, and call upon the multitude to draw the trusty blade – the claymore and the dirk – and to march against the hated Sassenach?’ As they had done with the National Wallace Monument movement, the majority of the press had no objections to the commemoration of Wallace, nor even to the commemoration of his betrayal, so much as they looked down upon the objectives of some of those promoting the monument. That there were evident divisions not just within the monument scheme itself, but among those speaking at a demonstration in its favour, only served to deepen their scorn. These divisions persisted, despite the relative success of the monument’s fundraising, with the committee displaying the need to put some distance between their aims and that of Napier and his neo-Jacobite associates. The following May a letter appeared in the Glasgow Herald from the monument’s treasurer, J. Forbes Ferguson, declaring that the movement was in no way connected with the Legitimist Jacobite League, and praising the Glorious Revolution as ‘one of the most beneficent, if the not the most beneficent, event which has happened in the history of our country’.32 Still, Napier was present and correct when a second demonstration was held at the monument site that year. The same distinction occurred between harangues in favour of Home Rule from Napier and more equable calls focusing on the necessity of raising the monument from David Macrae.33 The controversies of the National Wallace Monument movement have already clearly shown the tensions that arose when attempts were made to reconcile different readings of the Scottish past within one commemorative scheme, yet the Robroyston Wallace memorial indicates how much the terms of such a quarrel had changed by the century’s close. The argument was still between moderates and proto-nationalists, yet by this time the argument for constitutional change, not to mention aggressive anti-Union statements, was more openly expressed. The completed monument was unveiled by Miss Emmeline M’Kerlie, ‘a lineal descendant of Wallace’s faithful companion’, on 4 August 1900, in front of a crowd of around a thousand people, with short speeches from David Macrae, the Liberal MP Charles MacKinnon Douglas, and Dr A. F. Murison, Professor of Roman Law at University College London.34 Macrae’s address referred to Wallace as ‘Scotland’s noblest patriot’, with

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a name ‘written in imperishable characters on the hearts of the Scottish people’. The memorial, he contended, would stand as a reminder that Wallace had not died in vain, but that his betrayal ‘only roused Scotland in a fiercer determination to be free’. Additionally, the monument was intended to ‘help to foster the patriotic spirit amongst all who lived in the district and others who came to view it’. In his speech, Charles MacKinnon Douglas firmly placed Wallace within the Carlylean, unionist-nationalist frame, by stating, ‘One of his greatest services was that he enabled Scotland to maintain her liberty, so that ultimately she was able to enter into free and equal co-operation, on terms of mutual respect and goodwill, with her neighbour of England.’35 Perhaps one reason for the moderation of the unveiling was the absence of Theodore Napier, citing his disdain for the Scottish Home Rule Association’s support for ‘the present diabolical attempt to crush the national freedom and independence of the Boer Republics’.36 At the same time, it would appear that Napier’s particular brand of nationality was pushing him ever further to the limits of acceptability within protonationalist circles.37 BANNOCKBURN, JUNE 1914 The need to present a moderate and inoffensive view of Wallace and of Bannockburn still prevailed at large-scale commemorative events. In advertising the 1893 Borestone demonstration that marked Theodore Napier’s debut at Bannockburn, the Glasgow Herald noted that the meeting was to be ‘entirely of a national and patriotic character, and there are to be no references to party questions or current politics’. Such statements were necessary to offset lingering memories of the 1889 anniversary featuring Blackie and Macrae.38 This is reflected in a letter to the Herald from ‘Borestone’, printed on 22 June, reminding readers of the ‘mistake’ committed when permitting John Stuart Blackie and David Macrae to speak at the last large gathering, and to warn against turning the forthcoming celebration into a ‘mischievous farce’.39 Such warnings appear to have been heeded by those organising the now-annual commemoration of Bannockburn: at the Borestone gathering in 1897, by far the best-attended of the decade, the principal speaker was James McKillop, Unionist MP for Stirling.40 McKillop’s speech on the occasion was a classic case of the model of civil and religious liberty as the defining motif in Scotland’s past, drawing together Wallace and Bruce with the Covenanters. Theodore Napier was present at the same event, but his speech met with little success.41 The significance of Wallace, Bruce and Bannockburn remained resolutely moderate. Just as it had done at the sexcentenary of Stirling Bridge with Rosebery’s triumphant address, so too the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn was defined by familiar appeals to Scotland’s independence within a union of equals. The 1914 commemorations were by far the



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most national commemoration that the Wars of Independence had yet seen, with events held across Scotland, from Melrose in the Borders to Huntly in Aberdeenshire. The village of Ceres in Fife undertook to erect its own monument to the memory of local men who fought in the battle.42 In Glasgow, flags were flown across the city, a memorial service was held in the Cathedral, and a prize of 400 guineas offered for the best painting depicting a scene from Scottish history.43 The principal focus of the sexcentenary of Bannockburn was, however, the massive event held at Stirling. This saw a crowd of over 20,000 people gather in the King’s Park to watch the formation of a procession of a mere 2,000 people who would march to the Borestone. The procession itself appears to have encompassed all corners of the Scottish nation. Representatives from twenty-three Scottish councils as well as numerous voluntary and ‘patriotic’ societies took part, accompanied by ‘an array of decorated motor cars’.44 Throughout the day, the rhetorical tone was resolutely moderate, summed up by the verse that accompanied a wreath placed on the Borestone from the ‘Dover and East Kent Scottish Society’: Culled in the land of ancient faes The faes we freedom wrung fae, Wi’ loving hands they’ll lat thee whaur Our ‘guid conceit’ a’ sprang fae, Noo ancient faes are brothers a’ In liverty we boast it Auld Scotland’s prood she won that fecht, An’ England gled she lost it.45

This was the message of the Bannockburn sexcentenary: the familiar refrain of providential unionism, with the Wars of Independence standing as the moment when the Scots taught the English a lesson in Britishness. This was also the discourse of the Bannockburn anniversary beyond Stirling, replete with expressions of devotion to Union and Empire. An editorial in the Aberdeen Journal stated: No Englishman would feel aggrieved by the proposed celebration; the signal service rendered by Scotsmen to the Empire is a signal proof that ardent devotion to Scotland and a sincere pride in her heroic struggle for freedom are perfectly compatible with staunch loyalty to the flag that stands for Union.46

At a ‘Scottish Gathering’ in London to commemorate the battle, the Earl of Cassillis, vice-president of the St Andrew’s Society of Edinburgh, made a familiar observation in comparing Scotland with Ireland: Some English people told them it did not matter about Bannockburn, or the Scottish wars of independence, and maintained that the sooner Scotland had been united to England, the better it would have been for them. If they looked at

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Ireland to-day, he said, they would see what it would have meant if Scotland had been defeated. By the defeat of England they were able not only to give a Scottish King to England, but to enter into the union on terms of equality.47

The moderate intent behind the national commemoration is evident from early on in its formation. At the beginning of the year, the Stirling Borestone committee had set its sights on Lord Rosebery as the key speaker for the main commemoration, inspired by his speech at the Stirling Bridge anniversary some years previously. It appears that ill health prevented the Earl from taking part, yet Rosebery was able to publish a message to the schoolchildren of Scotland in the Educational News.48 In his message, Rosebery exhorted his readers to take inspiration from the battle, while reassuring them that English memories of the battle were ‘as free from bitterness as the thought of struggles in the nursery or the playground’.49 The seal was set on the committee’s Imperial ambitions for the commemoration when, the main event completed, gold medals commemorating the battle were sent to Rosebery and to George V, the King receiving his as a ‘loyal and dutiful message’.50 It must be noted that the 1914 Bannockburn celebrations were not without a political element or the expression of grievance. For instance, at an open-air meeting of the ‘Young Scots Society’ held in Stirling on the evening of the Borestone procession, the principal theme was the necessity of Home Rule for Scotland. At a school meeting in the Aberdeenshire town of Auchnagatt, the headmaster, a Mr R. D. Robertson, celebrated the battle, and Bruce and Wallace, but ‘ridiculed the idea that the Union had done incalculable good for Scotland’. ‘The Scots and Scotland’, he claimed, ‘would have succeeded whatever happened.’51 Nor was the idea of commemorating the battle itself free from objections. At a meeting of the Glasgow Corporation in February, a Labour member expressed his disapproval, and ‘suggested they should be horrified at commemorating bloodshed’.52 Though this lone voice was not heeded, there was undoubtedly something prophetic in his objection. Within a few years of the Bannockburn anniversary, the meaning of public commemorations, and of commemorative monuments in particular, would change dramatically. A paradigm shift was on the way, signalled by a report that appeared on the same page as the Dundee Courier’s account of the Stirling commemoration, concerning the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo.53 The unprecedented slaughter of the Great War ushered in changed attitudes to the monumental commemoration of war, yet collective memories of Bannockburn and Bruce still had a role to play, certainly in the early stages of the conflict.54 In August 1914, the People’s Journal printed a cartoon of Bruce, Britannia and Kitchener’s pamphlet appealing for the first 100,000 volunteers above the caption ‘Shades of Bruce – the Spirit Still Lives’.55 At the outbreak of war, the spirit of Bruce could still be called upon, safe in the knowledge that memories of Bannockburn were secure within the



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limits of moderate nationality. Though there had been attempts to intrude a proto-nationalist reading of the Scottish past on to the popular mind, these discourses lurked on the margins in comparison to the highly populated core of providential unionism. That this collective memory of the Wars of Independence endured so long into the twentieth century is testament to its ongoing resonance in the nationality of nineteenth-century Scotland. In a nation that continued to pride itself on the contribution it made to the grand imperial project that was Great Britain, the past was rendered fit for the purposes of supporting that pride and patriotism. Just as the promoters of the National Wallace Monument movement had linked their commemorative endeavours to the support of European nationalists, acting as missionaries for the benefits of nationality, so, too, Scots recruited to fight in the Great War were carrying with them memories of Wallace, Bruce, Bannockburn and Stirling Bridge for the benefit of other nations. CONCLUSION For nineteenth-century Scots, the past provided powerful inspiration for the present. In common with other European nations, the Scots collectively remembered their past as a means of asserting their historic independence and nationality. The binding thread of this memory was the concept of civil and religious liberty, won for Scotland from the grip of tyrants. Over the centuries, a series of national heroes had faced his or her own despot intent on undermining Scottish nationality and British liberty. For William Wallace and Robert Bruce it was the Plantagenet monarchy, for Knox and his fellow Reformers it was the Roman Catholic Church, and for the Covenanting Martyrs it was the later Stuart kings. The twenty-first-century assumption that the heroes of the Wars of Independence were de facto Nationalists was not one shared by the majority of Scots in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Collective memories of Scotland’s past certainly emphasised that Wallace and Bruce had bequeathed to the Scots a strong and independent nationality, uniting the Scottish nation against a foreign foe who sought to take away their liberty. Yet as this analysis of commemorations has made clear, the purpose of that independence was to ensure that Scotland remained in a position to assume the role of equal, partner nation in the enterprise of Great Britain and the British Empire. This was more than mere political Unionism – this was providential unionism, the defining idea that Scotland and England had been destined to join together when the time was right and all the necessary lessons had been learned. Prior to the Glorious Revolution, Wallace, Bruce, John Knox and the Covenanters had each played their role in forging and maintaining Scottish nationality, defined by the leitmotif of civil and religious liberty. In so doing, they had not only ensured that Scotland remained free and independent, but also that the Scots had consistently made their

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own contribution to the defining ideals of historic Britishness prior to the advent of the United Kingdom. These ideals regarding Scotland and Britain have been evident throughout this analysis of the projection of nationality through collective memory. Looking at the rhetoric of commemoration gives us access to a perception of the past accumulated over time, drawn from previous generations yet informed by contemporary needs. Memory was fluid, adaptable, and relevant to the demands of Scottish politics, culture and society. The collective memory of the Scottish past that emerges from commemorative rhetoric is forceful, articulate and – perhaps most surprisingly of all – coherent. That this nationality was predicated upon a binding Presbyterianism is yet another aspect of nineteenth-century Scottishness that can be quite jarring to twentyfirst-century Scots. Memories of John Knox and the Covenanting Martyrs were just as fundamental to Scottish nationality as the legacy of Wallace and Bruce. Whereas the heroes of the Wars of Independence were seen as having granted Scotland its civil independence, Knox and the Covenanters had ensured Scotland was returned to a native tradition of religious liberty, founded in the proto-Presbyterian Culdees. The heroes of Scottish Presbyterian memory embodied the Scottish national virtues of religious piety and resistance to tyranny, whether in the past or the present. Within this context – and contrary to the received view of Victorian sentimental Jacobitism – Bonnie Prince Charlie and his co-conspirators were villains of the worst kind. Rather than the Jacobites marching out as the last gasp of true Scottishness, their risings of the early-to-mid-eighteenth century represented the death throes of the old tyranny. The great tragedy of Culloden was not that so many brave Highlanders had died fighting for Scotland, but that they had died fighting for an anachronism. In the same way, while Mary Queen of Scots carried potent lessons on morality and monarchy, her legacy for Scotland was not one that could carry much practical weight, certainly not when compared to those embodiments of nationality, William Wallace and John Knox. NOTES  1 The Times, 10 February 1908.   2 ‘The Anniversary of Culloden’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 20 April 1897.  3 Ibid.  4 Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, p. 85. Graeme Morton, ‘Returning Nationalists, Returning Scotland: James Grant and Theodore Napier’, in M. Varricchio (ed.), Back to Caledonia: Scottish Homecomings from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (John Donald, 2012), p. 116.  5 Dundee Courier and Argus, 11 July 1898.  6 Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 21 August 1897.



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  7 Morton, ‘Returning Nationalists’, p. 118.   8 Ibid., p. 116.  9 Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 21 August 1897. 10 Murray Pittock, ‘The Jacobite Cult’, in Cowan and Finlay, Power of the Past, p. 202. 11 ‘The Anniversary of Culloden’, Dundee Courier and Argus, 18 April 1898. 12 One of the wreaths laid on this occasion was from the ‘Scottish Anniversary and Historical Society’, an organisation that had once had the Revd Jacob Primmer – ardent anti-Ritualist and anti-Catholic – as its vice-president. Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 20 April 1898. 13 Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 20 April 1898. 14 ‘Anniversary of the Battle of Culloden: Jacobites at the Battlefield’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 17 April 1899 15 Quoted in Pittock, ‘The Jacobite Cult’, p. 202. 16 Morton, ‘Returning Nationalists’, p. 119. 17 Glasgow Herald, 27 June 1898. 18 Scotsman, 27 June 1898. 19 Ibid. 20 The 1912 ‘Bannockburn Day’ celebration at the Borestone, organised by the Scottish Patriotic Association, was attended by 15,000 people. 21 Scotsman, 28 June 1897. 22 Glasgow Herald, 27 June 1898. 23 Scotsman, 6 August 1900. Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, p. 85. 24 Glasgow Herald, 16 June 1898. 25 ‘Letters to the Editor. Memorial for the Spot Where Wallace Was Betrayed’, Glasgow Herald, 21 June 1898. 26 Glasgow Herald, 24 June 1898. 27 ‘The Wallace Memorial. Demonstration at Robroyston’, Glasgow Herald, 8 August 1898. 28 ‘Where Wallace Was Betrayed. Demonstration at Robroyston’, Falkirk Herald, 10 August 1898. 29 Ibid. 30 Glasgow Herald, 8 August 1898. 31 Aberdeen Journal, 9 August 1898. 32 Glasgow Herald, 31 May 1899. 33 Ibid., 7 August 1899. 34 Ibid., 6 August 1900. The Scotsman reported an estimated attendance of only 600. Scotsman, 6 August 1900. 35 Scotsman, 6 August 1900. 36 Glasgow Herald, 9 June 1900 and 10 August 1900. 37 Charles Waddie wrote in 1904 that Napier’s ‘eccentricities’ had done immense harm to the cause of Home Rule. Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, p. 121. 38 Glasgow Herald, 30 May 1893. Morton, ‘Returning Nationalists’, p. 118. 39 ‘Patriotism and Politics’, Glasgow Herald, 22 June 1893. 40 Glasgow Herald, 28 June 1897.

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41 Scotsman, 28 June 1897. 42 ‘Bannockburn Sex-Centenary Memorial at Ceres’, Evening Telegraph, 7 April 1914. 43 Evening Telegraph, 22 and 25 June 1914. 44 ‘Bannockburn Won for Scotland Its National Life, Says Sir George Douglas’, Dundee Courier, 29 June 1914. 45 Scotsman, 25 June 1914. 46 ‘Bannockburn and Harlaw’, The Aberdeen Daily Journal, 9 May 1914. 47 ‘Anniversary of Bannockburn: Scottish Gathering in London’, Scotsman, 22 June 1914. 48 ‘Bannockburn Day’, Aberdeen Evening Express, 19February 1914. 49 ‘The Bannockburn Celebration: Lord Rosebery’s Message to the Children of Scotland’, Scotsman, 29 June 1914. 50 Dundee Courier, 18 June 1914. 51 Aberdeen Journal, 25 June 1914. 52 Aberdeen Evening Express, 20 February 1914. 53 Dundee Courier, 29 June 1914. 54 Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Berg, 1998). 55 David Goldie, ‘Robert Burns and the First World War’, International Journal of Scottish Literature, no. 6, 2010.

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Index

Act of Union (1707), 29, 33–5, 52, 63, 132, 149, 150, 179, 181 Adamson, W., 116 Alexander, James, 1 Alexander, John, 111–12 Alexander, William, 99 Alison, Sheriff Archibald, 79 Allan, William, 22 American Civil War, 14 Anderson, William, 137 Angus, William Craibe, 182, 183 Anti-Catholicism, 25, 69, 93, 102–4, 120, 143, 147, 149, 165 Arminius see Hermann Auchnagatt, 186 Australia, 53, 89, 177 Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, 57, 88, 107 Balfour of Burley, John, 28, 142–3 Bandel, Ernst von, 66–7 Bannockburn, 1, 2, 9, 14, 43, 47, 51–2, 53, 58, 62–4, 73–4, 79, 139, 140, 142, 145, 156, 167, 178–9, 180–1, 184–7; see also Robert Bruce Begg, James, 91, 94, 104, 113, 137 Birkmyre, A. B., 110 Blackie, John Stuart, 62–3, 72, 135, 139–40, 142–3, 163–4, 184 Bonar Law, Andrew, 34–5 Boswell, James, 159, 163 Botfield, Beriah, 159 Bothwell Bridge, 130, 131, 135, 142, 143, 181 British Archaeological Society, 168, 170 Brown, John, of Priesthill, 131, 133, 134 Bruce, Archibald, 30, 133 Bruce, Robert, 1, 4, 40–4, 46–7, 51, 57, 63, 73, 74–5, 78–9, 97–8, 143, 145, 181, 184, 186–7; see also Bannockburn

Bruce, Wallace, 178, 181 Buchan, David Stuart Erskine, 11th Earl of, 45, 50 Buchanan, George, 3, 33 Budweiser, 40 Burns, John, 95 Burns, Robert, 5, 16, 17, 21–3, 26, 89, 131, 156, 182 Burns, William, 41, 52–3, 55–6, 63, 76, 178 Bute, John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, Marquis of, 41, 60–2, 64 Calvin, John, 73, 115–16, 117–23 Cameron, Richard, 131, 136 Cameronians, 29, 30, 32, 33, 130, 132, 133, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140, 145, 149; see also Reformed Presbyterian Church Campbell, Alexander, 54 Canada, 53, 60 Candlish, Robert, 91, 94, 101, 105 Carlyle, Thomas, 4, 16–17, 42, 51, 76, 182 Carmichael, Peter, 138 Carnegie, Andrew, 51 Cassillis, Earl of, 185 Ceres, 185 Chalmers, Thomas, 91, 95, 106 Charles I, King of England and Scotland, 89, 130 Charles II, King of England and Scotland, 3, 130, 142, 143 Chartism, 39, 139 Christie, William, 1, 44, 73 Church of Scotland, Established, 24, 26, 90, 93, 94, 105, 107–9, 111, 118, 133, 147–9 Clark, Gavin Brown, 62 Clark, Hugh, 132



Index

Claverhouse, John Graham, Viscount Dundee, 131, 141, 149 Cockburn, Henry, 105–6 Cockerell, Charles, 20 Cooper, James, 148–9 Covenanting Struggle (1880) Commemoration of, 113, 136–8 Cowan, Charles, 74 Cromwell, Oliver, 57, 146 Culdees, 99–100, 118, 120, 188 Culloden, 17–18, 159–60, 176–7, 179; see also Forty-Five, Jacobitism Cumming, John, 110 Cunningham, William, 91, 96–7, 101 Davidson, Andrew, 161, 162 Disruption, Church of Scotland, 24, 26, 90, 92, 93, 105, 131, 133; see also Church of Scotland, Free Church of Scotland Dodds, James, 3, 75–6, 135–6, 143, 145, 149 Donaldson, William, 43, 44 Douglas, Charles MacKinnon, 183, 184 Dove, Patrick Edward, 72–3, 74–5, 98–9, 141, 145 Dover and East Kent Scottish Society, 185 Drumclog, 22, 130, 131, 135, 139, 140, 142 Drummond, R. B., 116–17 Drummond, William, 2, 3 Duff, Alexander, 96–7 Dunant, David, 122 Dunfermline, 46–7 Dunlop, Alexander, 91 Dutch Reformed Church, 115, 123 Easton, Thomas, 136, 137, 138 Elgin, 1, 53 Erskine, Ebenezer, 2, 4 Evangelical Alliance, 116, 118, 122 Ewing, James, of Strathleven, 96 Fichte, Johann, 10 First World War, 15, 186–7 Forbes, Arthur, 160 Forbes, Duncan, 160, 176 Forty-Five, The, Jacobite Rising, 154, 158, 161–4; see also Jacobitism France, 9, 10, 15, 65, 67–9, 116, 121–2, 165

201

Free Church, 26, 90, 91–2, 93–4, 104, 106, 133–4, 147 French Revolution, 9, 10, 29, 112 Froude, James Anthony, 165 Galt, John, 32 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 8, 76–7, 78, 119, 181 Geils, John Edward, 71 Geneva, 116, 119, 122, 123 Germany, 8, 10, 11, 64, 65–7, 68, 100, 116, 119–20 George IV, 20, 23, 155 George V, 186 Gilfillan, George, 77–8 Gillan, Robert, 54 Gladstone, William, 56, 59, 146 Glasgow General Assembly (1838), bicentenary, 89, 90, 91–2, 103, 106, 111–12 Glasgow International Exhibition, 171 Glorious Revolution, 29, 32, 35, 97, 98, 112, 132, 141–2, 143, 145–50, 154, 165, 179–80, 183 Goold, William, 118 Gordon, Abercrombie, 114–15 Graham, William, 101 Greenshields, John, 158 Gregory, James, 47 Guild, J. Wyllie, 167–8 Guthrie, James, 2, 3, 4, 134 Guthrie, Thomas, 91 Harvey, George, 22 Henderson, Alexander, 2, 3, 111 Hermann the Cheruskan, 65–7, 68–9, 120 Hetherington, William Maxwell, 103, 112 Hobart, Thomas, 137 Howie, John, of Lochgoin, 31 Hume, David, 29 Hungary, 8, 74–5, 76, 79, 116, 121 Hutchison, George, 147–8, 149 Ireland, 8, 33, 35, 59, 78–9, 101–2, 111, 139–40, 143, 147, 185–6 Jacks, William, 182 Jacobite Minstrelsy, 164 Jacobitism, 28, 31, 34, 154, 155, 156–7, 158

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James VII, King of Scots, James II of England, 3 Jardine, Henry, 46 Joan of Arc, 69, 120, Johnson, Samuel, 159, 162 Kerr, James, 137 King, James, 168 Knox, John, 3, 17, 22, 26, 29, 30, 54, 63, 72–3, 88–90, 93–4, 95–6, 97–8, 100, 103, 106, 107, 109–10 Kopp, Joseph Eutych, 71 Kossuth, Lajos, 8, 76, 119 Lang, Gavin, 148 Langside, Monument to Battle of, 166–9, 171 Lee, Robert, 94 Lindsay, William, 103–4, 117 Lochmaben, 41 Lorne, John George Campbell, Marquess of, 43, 60, 77 Luther, Martin, 71, 78, 115–17, 118, 119–22, 123, 136 McAdam, John, 76–7 MacBean, William, 162 McCallum, Duncan, 99 McCrie, Charles, 143 McCrie, Thomas, elder, 30–1, 32, 94, 113, 133, 166, 167 McCrie, Thomas, junior, 99, 104, 117, 118 MacDonald, Alexander, of Glenaladale, 157–8 MacDonald, Captain Henderson, 161 MacDonald, Flora, 160–1, 162, 166 MacGill, Stevenson, 95, 96, 100, 109 MacIndoe, Peter, 105 Mackenzie, Thomas, 160 McKerlie, Emmeline, 183 McKillop, James, 181, 184 MacLeod, Norman, 107–8, 116, 148 MacMeeken, John W., 136, 141 McMichael, Neil, 103 Macrae, David, 9, 43–4, 63–4, 79–80, 180, 181–2, 183–4 Marshall, John, 111 Mary Queen of Scots, 165–9, 171–3 Maxwell-Scott, Mary, 171

Mazzini, Giuseppe, 8, 76–7, 181 Melville, Andrew, 2, 30, 99, 112, 167 Melville, Sir John, Provost of Edinburgh, 53, 54 Mill, John Stuart, 7–8, 11, 12 Miller, J. F., 182 Miller, William, 106, 107 Monteith, Henry, 49–50 Motherwell, William, 49, 50 Muir, Edwin, 88 Muir, William, 92, 111 Muirkirk, 144–5, 164 Napier, Mark, 140–1 Napier, Theodore, 176, 177, 178–80, 181, 182–3, 184 Napoleon I, Bonaparte, 8, 9, 10, 20, 25, 45, 65, 66, 68, 69 Napoleon III, Louis, 25, 48, 68 National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, 25, 26, 35, 52–3, 59, 72 National Covenant, 3, 89 National Gallery of Scotland, 22 National Monument, Edinburgh, 20–1 Ossian, 11 Park, Patric, 48, 159 Paterson, Nathaniel, 103, 106 Paton, J. Noël, 55 Peden, Alexander, 140 Peterborough, Exhibition of Marian Relics, 170–1 Playfair, William, 20 Power, Edward, 160, 176 Primmer, Jacob, 138, 147 Queensland Caledonian Society, 89 Rattray, James Clerk, 46 Reformation, Tri-centenary of Scottish (1860), 90, 92–3, 98, 99–100, 103, 104, 107, 108–9, 113 Reformed Presbyterian Church, 26, 92, 104, 105, 106, 114, 118, 132–3, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 144 Reid, Hugh, 48 Renan, Ernest, 7–8, 12 Renton, Henry, 98



Index

Renwick, James, 2, 3, 4, 131, 133 Réveil, 121 Ritchie, Handyside, 2 Robertson, R. D., 186 Robertson, William, 30, 45, 110 Rochead, John, 56 Rogers, Charles, 2, 44, 54–5, 76, 79, 94 Roman Catholic Church, 67, 69, 93, 102, 108, 113, 121–2, 123, 148, 154, 165, 168, 172; see also AntiCatholicism Romans, John, 62 Rosebery, Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of, 42, 56–8, 61, 78, 80, 146, 182, 183, 186 Rowatt, Gavin, 133 Rutherford, Samuel, 110, 134 St Andrew’s Society, Edinburgh, 185 St Andrew’s Society, Glasgow, 12 Salmon, James, 12 Sanquhar Declaration, 130, 132, 135, 137–8, 139, 141, 145 Schlegel, Friedrich, 12 Scott, Alexander Malcolm, 167 Scott, Sir Walter, 11, 21, 22, 23, 27–30, 31, 32, 33, 45–6, 57, 132, 140, 155, 157 Scott Monument, Edinburgh, 21 Scott-Moncrieff, William, 101 Scottish Home Rule, 26, 41, 59–64, 104, 177, 180–4, 186 Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 22 Scottish Patriotic Association, 63 Scottish Reformation Society, 93, 99, 104, 108, 110 Scottish Society of Antiquaries, 22, 45 Sharp, James, Archbishop, 22, 142–4 Shepherd, Samuel, 46 Simpson, Robert, 141 Skirving, Alexander, 168 Smith, Thomas, 147 Smith, William, Archbishop of Edinburgh, 168 Solemn League and Covenant, 3, 30, 33, 139, 148 Sprunt, James, 71, 74, 78 Steill, John, 60 Stevenson, D. W., 60 Stewart, David, of Garth, 163

203

Stirling, 1–3, 44, 52, 73, 76, 79, 178, 181, 184, 185–6 Stirling Bridge, Battle of, 39, 40, 43, 53, 56, 56–8, 60, 70, 76, 89, 181, 184, 186; see also William Wallace Strickland, Agnes, 165 Stuart, Charles Edward, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, 23, 156–7, 158–9, 161–2, 165, 166, 173, 177, 188; see also Jacobitism Switzerland, 64–5, 69–71, 74, 121–2, 123; see also Geneva Symington, Andrew, 114 Symington, William, 104, 105, 114, 134, 135 Tell, William, 69–73, 77, 115, 121, 136; see also Switzerland Thomson, Andrew, 118, 119 Thomson, James, 45 Thomson, William, 117 Tulloch, John, 94, 108–9, 117–18, 119, 122 United Presbyterian Church, 24, 26, 63, 90, 93, 94, 106, 107, 135 United States of America, 14, 24, 40, 45, 89, 116 Valley Cemetery, Stirling, 2–3 Vercingetorix, 67–9 Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, 23, 26, 44, 107–8, 144–5, 155, 158, 164, 170, 177, 179 Waddie, Charles, 180, 181 Walhalla, Regensburg, 66 Wallace, John, 144 Wallace, Robert, 137 Wallace, William, 4, 17, 26, 39–40, 41–4, 45–6, 49–50, 51, 57, 65–7, 70–1, 73, 74–5, 78–9, 89, 94, 95, 97–8, 135, 155, 165, 172, 178, 181–4, 187 Wallace, National Monument, 2, 21, 22, 48, 52–6, 57, 58, 60, 62, 66, 72, 75, 76, 79, 119, 156, 183 Washington, George, 45, 71, 73, 74, 77, 78 Westminster Assembly, Bi-centenary (1843), 89, 90, 92, 103, 105, 112, 114, 134, 145

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Wigtown Martyrs, 3, 131, 134, 135–6, 141 Wilkes, John, 34 Williams, Charles, 122

Wilson, Margaret, 2, 3, 131, 134, 136 Wodrow, Robert, 31 Yellowlees, Robert, 52