The family that took the thrones of England and Ireland in 1603 had long been known in Scotland as ‘Stewart’. It was Mary, Queen of Scots, who adopted the French form of the name, ‘Stuart’, when she became Queen of France, and south of the border it is this version that has stuck.
Kitap: A Brief History of Britain 1485-1660
Highland Lowland Ayrımının Oluşması ve İsyanlar
By the seventeenth century, however, the waning of medieval systems of military lordship across the Lowlands, as in England, began to make the Highland clans look very different indeed. When the sixteenth century produced the triumph of firearms in warfare across Europe, the Gaels of Ireland and Scotland adapted in different ways. The former, led by Hugh O’Neill, took on the new gunpowder-based military technology from the Continent, so that he could engage English soldiers with the same weapons: guns and pikes (long spears), supported by horsemen. The Highlanders, not able to afford these, adopted an opposite response which slowly came into force in the first half of the seventeenth century. This was to throw away their heavy medieval armour and swords, and equip their men as light and mobile infantry, armed with leather shields and two-edged, one-handed broadswords. With the advantage of slope in their favour, they could charge fast enough to get among musketeers before they had time to fire off more than one volley, at long range, and so cut them down. Given the right terrain, in which the Highlands abounded, and a good commander, this ‘Highland charge’ could be devastatingly effective. By the middle of the century, therefore, the attempts by James VI’s regime to suppress traditional Gaelic Scottish culture had backfired; it had evolved into something that was in military terms much more dangerous than before, and even more distinct from the Lowland Scots, let alone the rest of the British. To the ‘Irish Problem’ created under the Tudors, a ‘Highland Problem’ had now been added.
İskoç Dilinin Reform İle Ölümü
Scots had a distinguished literature, especially in poetry, which flourished into the reign of James VI. It was the Reformation that dealt it a fatal blow, because of the common Protestant bond with England, which ensured the victory of the reformed faith. This bond, and the flourishing publishing industry in London, meant that at first most Protestant books intended for Scotland were printed in the English capital, and the English language. The Bible adopted by the Scottish national Kirk was that of the Calvinists of Geneva, but in its English version. After 1600, most Scots had begun to publish in English, and Scots was crippled as a literary language.
Elizabeth Devrinde Diğer British Dillerinin Çöküşü
The triumphs of Elizabethan culture were born of a sense of vulnerability and inferiority, which they countered brilliantly. The new status and achievements of English as a literary language came at a price for the other British tongues. Cornish had held its own in the far west of Cornwall all through the Middle Ages, but now went into terminal decline.
İngiltere’nin Amerika’yı Keşfi ve Geç Kolonileşme Nedenleri
Soon after Christopher Columbus guided Spanish power into what proved to be a New World, Henry VII commissioned another eager Italian explorer, John Cabot, to investigate the far side of the Atlantic opposite England. The result was the permanent European discovery of the North American continent – which had been briefly encountered before by the Vikings – and it was duly claimed for England; but nothing was then done about the claim for two generations. The land that Cabot found had no easy and obvious riches, and the Spanish were generally England’s best friends and allies. Traders had several opportunities for new markets in Europe, and the ruling class had a traditional hunting-ground for loot, ransoms and glory on its doorstep, in France. What changed everything, of course, was the transformation of Spain into a determined and dangerous enemy after 1570, which turned the freebooting classes of England on to its territory, and especially its American colonies, using ships for their raids instead of the traditional cavalry and infantry bands. At the same time, the old claim to North America was remembered, as that continent offered bases from which to attack the rich Spanish territory in the centre and south of the New World, and a means of checking and challenging Spanish power in the Americas by planting English colonies.
Hamile Kalmaların Arttığı İlginç Dönem
Sexuality itself was generally at a low level in a society characterized by chronic malnutrition, infestation with vermin, exhausting daily labour, an almost complete lack of privacy and of commercial erotica, and a general ignorance of contraception. Parish registers indicate that the boom in conceptions occurred from late May to July when the grass got high and the ditches dry.
İskoçya’da Eğitim Devrimi
Scots did much better in education. From the start of the official Reformation, the Kirk had wanted a school in every parish, for all children over five, supported by the local property-owners. This was slow in coming: a national system was not established until 1616, and it was not made compulsory for forty more years, but it eventually turned the Scots into one of the best-educated nations in Europe.
O’Neill’in İsyanı ve Kaçışı
The greatest native chief there was now Hugh O’Neill, a very able and intelligent politician, educated in English ways, using the English title of Earl of Tyrone, keeping an army trained and armed on the English model, and very willing to keep his region loyal to the queen if he were only placed officially in charge of it. For their own part, neither the English government nor its Irish deputy wanted trouble with him; but once again they were unable to control their New English men on the spot, who harassed and slighted O’Neill until he rose in revolt in 1594. The resulting war engulfed most of the island, as other Old Irish threw in their lot with him and he proclaimed a Catholic crusade and made a partnership with Spain. The decisive battle was fought at Kinsale in 1601, when only superior military skill enabled the reigning English governor to defeat the allied Hispano-Irish army. O’Neill made peace two years later, on terms that left his lands and political power in Ulster intact: the government had spent about £2 million and shed huge quantities of blood in order to get back to its original position. In fact there had been a decisive change. O’Neill had lost his army, which made him still more vulnerable to the renewed bullying and threats of the encroaching New English. In 1607 he became convinced that they had persuaded the new monarch, James I, to arrest him, and fled to Europe with the other leading native chiefs of Ulster, an event known in Irish historical tradition as ‘the Flight of the Earls’. His intention was to return with another Spanish army, but Spain was now at peace with England and he died in exile.
İskoçya’da Protestan Devrimi
The transformation of England into a Protestant state, and the distraction of the French, gave the Scottish Protestants their opportunity to launch an attack on the Catholic Church and government. By the end of 1559 the country had crumbled into open conflict, in which the Catholic party, aided by the French soldiers still occupying the land, soon gained the upper hand. The Protestants were rescued in 1560 by Elizabeth of England, who sent a large army and navy to their aid. This, together with atrocities committed by the French, convinced many waverers that the Reformation was the better and more viable cause. At this critical moment, the dynastic dice rolled again, and Mary of Guise died of dropsy. Leaderless, her party surrendered and the French sailed home, after which the English army promptly withdrew, leaving a Protestant government in control of the land. All the damage that the 1540s had done to Anglo-Scottish relations had now been repaired, as the new Scottish regime looked on the English Crown as its greatest benefactor and ally.
Yüzyıl İskoçya’nın Paradoksu
By the early sixteenth century Scotland represented a paradox, at least in the eyes of outsiders. It had no external enemies save the English, who mostly left it alone, which meant that it had no need for sustained warfare. As a result, taxes were light, Parliaments harmonious, the government stayed out of debt and justice was simple and efficient.