Freedom and Faith

A Question of Scottish Identity

Donald Smith

• Publisher: Saint Andrew Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780861538133
• eBook ISBN: 9780861538164
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What is our understanding of Scotland's spiritual identity? Does religion belong only to the past – or does it also lie squarely in front of us in the future? Challenging and absorbing, this book sets out to help us to unravel the fundamental spiritual dimension of Scottish identity and enables us to confront our national potential.

1 The State We Are In

From 1707 to 1997 Scotland was a stateless nation. Though it had many of the normal expressions of nationhood, including a monarchy, a separate legal system, a national Church and a distinctive system of education, there was no Scottish government. Instead Scotland had united its national parliament with that of England and Wales at Westminster in London.

Likewise, the administrative or executive side of government was united in London. In 1800 Ireland was added to this shared entity, following the failed uprising of 1798. In the late twentieth century both Scotland and Ireland – or at least the remaining six British counties of Northern Ireland – both regained a degree of self-government through the devolution of powers from the UK.

Scottish constitutionalists have maintained that the union between Scotland and England enacted in 1707 is a partnership of equal nations. This was never more than a theory, since realistically the united parliament has been dominated by English representation. Aspects of Scotland’s remaining constitutional independence, such as its religious settlement, were soon brought into question by the Westminster Parliament. Moreover, within a year of the 1707 union, nationalist resistance was taking a military form through the Jacobite movement.

In more recent times, it was made clear to Scots in 2013 that were they to vote for independence in 2014, they would be leaving, and not dissolving, the UK. This position was reinforced by the EU, whose larger member states have no wish to encourage movements for national independence within their own borders. So despite the specific legal position of Scotland as a continuing nation within the UK, realpolitik demanded that Scotland would have to apply for membership of the EU. The rest of the dissolved union would by contrast automatically continue in membership.

Why did Scotland become a stateless nation? And why, having entered into that condition, did Scotland not fully assimilate into Great Britain? The answers to these questions have major social, cultural and economic implications. Taken together they explain Scotland as it is today, and the nature of the choices that lie before its citizens.

Like all nations, Scotland is an invented concept. There is nothing inevitable or natural about it, and at various junctures the territory that is known as Scotland might have been part of England, Norway or Ireland.

The early history of what we now call Scotland was in reality a tug of war between different geographical spheres of influence. The first settlers came after the Ice Age from the European mainland, at a time when the British Isles were still physically joined to Europe. That land bridge was submerged as the sea waters rose. Later people also moved between Scotland and Ireland, and finally in the era of written history raiders turned settlers came from Scandinavia.

By the time the Romans had tried to conquer Scotland but settled instead for frontier walls, there were three related yet distinct cultural groupings. South of the Forth–Clyde line there were British Celtic or Brythonic peoples who spoke a P Celtic language akin to later Welsh. They were closely related to the kin-based culture encountered by the Romans in Britain as a whole. To the west, concentrated in Argyll, people speaking a Q Celtic language akin to later Gaelic and Irish were dominant, and in close cultural contact with Ireland. North of the Forth–Clyde line people now known as Picts were established, probably speaking a P Celtic language that has not survived. It is possible that some people of Germanic origin were already established on the east side of Scotland within these Celtic groupings, and later they were supplemented by Anglo-Saxon settlers pushing into eastern Scotland from Northumbria.

At no point in this early history was Scotland considered as a political, cultural or even geographical concept. These early societies were all kin based, with tribal chiefs merging into territorial groupings through shifting allegiances to particular sub-kings and high kings. The Picts were divided into two spheres of influence, northern and southern. The Dalriadan Celts in Argyll defined themselves as different from – yet related to – Irish Dalriada. The Brythonic Celts of southern Scotland had three tribal kingdoms. All of these groupings fought with each other, but often made alliances and intermarried. They also looked beyond their borders, connecting through trading and raiding with Britain and the Continent.

One legacy of the Roman period, perhaps little noticed at the time amid a diversity of religious practice, was the arrival of Christianity. As the Roman Empire shrank and withdrew, this new religion sowed the seeds of a different kind of political and cultural order, which was later to become decisive in the emergence of Scotland as a nation. Meantime, however, the southern Celtic kingdoms struggled to sustain a post-Roman society, while the Pictish kingdoms and Dalriada continued much as before.

However, a steady increase in Anglo-Saxon settlement sought to fill the gap left by the Roman withdrawal, causing a new era of conflict and rivalry from the fourth century onwards. Gradually the southern Celts succumbed to the expanding Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, while the Picts and Dalriadans fought, sometimes in alliance, to resist further expansion. This period gave birth to the legends of Arthur, a warrior chief who led mobile cavalry against the Saxons, and upheld a late Romano-Christian culture in opposition to ‘the heathen’ barbarians.

Subsequently Picts, Dalriadans and Anglians all adopted Christianity and applied its growing European prestige to bolster their own rulers. Key missionaries, including Ninian of Whithorn, Columba of Iona, and Kentigern of Strathclyde, left their mark on Scotland’s national story. But this was not part of their own immediate purpose, which was to Christianize the various kingdoms and confederacies which held regional sway.

The turning point in this story came in about 800, when Norse raids around the coasts of Scotland began in earnest. These heralded two centuries of incursion, invasion and settlement affecting all parts of the Scottish territories, not just the far north as is often believed. In consequence the two great regional powers – the Dalriadans who had come to be generally known as ‘the Scots’, and the Picts – moved closer together. They now faced a formidable common enemy and the previous shifting alliances took firmer shape in terms of military muscle and of dynastic connections.

Dalriada’s concept of kingship was strongly influenced by the Irish tradition of High Kingship. In addition this indigenous Irish model had been influenced and reinforced by the Christian idea that a king, like a Christian emperor, could be ordained and upheld by God. The prestige of these Dalriadan ideas ensured that when a joint Kingship of Picts and Scots emerged, its cultural expressions were Scots and Gaelic. This led eventually to the loss of the Pictish language, leaving us the tantalizing riches of their monumental carvings and symbol stones, without their contextual meaning.

However, this alliance of Picts, Scots and Christianity proved in time effective, and though Norse influence in Scotland became a permanent and enriching legacy, Scottish territory was not swallowed up by one of the Viking empires. On the contrary, the idea of a Scottish nation had been born.

The Kingship of Picts and Scots was well documented in the early medieval annals, but took its full place on the European stage with the marriage in 1066 of Malcolm Canmore, King of Scots, to the Saxon Princess Margaret, who was fleeing from the Norman invasion of England. This alliance inaugurated a new form of Church–state alliance in the European mould, and laid the foundations of a thriving medieval Scottish kingdom. Like most medieval kingdoms, this was less a unitary state than a collection of territories ruled by an increasingly powerful monarch backed up by a court administration. The monarch reigned through powers of patronage and justice combined with force when necessary. Conflict between regional lords and the monarch were commonplace, and Highland and island areas continued to be ruled in Gaelic style with little recognition of central royal government.

None the less, the Scottish monarchy proved remarkably stable, until the line of Malcolm and Margaret petered out following the death of Alexander III at Kinghorn in 1286. He fell off a cliff trying to reach his young, but as yet childless, wife. The heir was a little Norwegian princess and when she too died en route to Scotland, the first second crisis of Scottish independence began. Norse incursions count as the first.

The story so far concerns remote history, but the 60-year battle for independence that began at Kinghorn still resonates. It is how people remember the history that counts as much as the history, and this story of patriotic struggle runs deep. The Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014 coincides with the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314; the nearest Scotland has come so far to a national anthem is the Bannockburn-inspired ‘Flower of Scotland’ sung lustily before rugby matches. Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, and William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland, were and are national heroes.

The nub of that historical struggle lies in the relationship between England and Scotland, which is where the heart of the matter still rests. These neighbouring kingdoms had warred intermittently, and sometimes made alliances through royal marriage in the tried and tested medieval manner. But there was an underlying and nagging problem. England had continental ambitions, not least because their royal house also held territory in France. But if an English king was committed to continental wars, it was highly inconvenient if a lesser Scottish monarch could demonstrate Scotland’s independence by coming over the land border to threaten England from the rear.

By 1286 many of the Scottish nobility, including the Bruces, were of Norman descent and also had landholdings in England. Some had been on crusade with the young Prince Edward, now Edward I, and it seemed natural to turn to this related monarch to help resolve the succession crisis. What the Scots seem to have missed is that Edward Plantaganet was a formidable military and political operator. Following the successful annexation of Wales, albeit in the teeth of fierce native opposition, he was intent on reviving a long-running claim to overlordship of Scotland. Edward ruled in favour of one of the contestants, John Baliol, because he believed the Baliols would concur in the subordination of Scotland to the English crown.

What Edward for his part underestimated was the strength of Scottish loyalty to ‘the community of the realm of Scotland’, which underpinned the Scottish version of constitutional monarchy. In addition, Edward had not fully grasped the ungraspability of Scotland’s extensive and rugged terrain. In the face of even modest resistance the kingdom became ungovernable. The consequence of these miscalculations on both sides was a long and bloody conflict that continued well beyond Bannockburn and Robert the Bruce’s death.

But the long struggle was not just military: it was also political and constitutional. Both sides resorted to Rome, the UN of the day, to present their case. Both dug into legend and tradition to concoct a mythic lineage for their national status and claims. The English side drew on a foundation legend linking England to Rome, and ultimately Troy through descent from Brutus. This, claimed the English theologians and lawyers, was the origin of Britain as a unified kingdom to which Scotland and Wales were subordinate.

The Scots, by contrast, dug into the traditions that had come from Dalriada to the Kingdom of the Scots and Picts. In this legend Scotland trumped the English claims by going back to the Old Testament. Their progenitrix was none other than a daughter of Pharaoh who had aided the escape of the children of Israel. Fleeing Egyptian wrath along with her Greek consort, Scota came to Scotland via Spain and Ireland. The Stone of Destiny on which kings were crowned at Scone came by the same route and demonstrated the ancient legitimacy of the Scottish monarchy.

These mythic claims seem incredible to modern ears, but in a society based on royal legitimacy they carried weight. In fact, neither version at the time delivered a constitutional game changer. Yet Edward I did seize the Stone of Destiny and transport it to Westminster Abbey where it rested under the coronation chair until 1950 when it was removed by a group of young nationalists. Finally in 1996 the Stone was returned to Scotland on condition that it would be made available again to Westminster for a coronation, an agreement that may soon be tested.

According to some historians, Edward did not get the real Stone which had been hidden by the Abbot of Scone. Legends breed legends echoing through the centuries but, power of legend aside, Scottish independence was retained through an extended and costly war of attrition.

When normal business was finally restored, the medieval Scottish monarchy, which had moved through marriage from Bruces to Stewarts, continued amid a fractious nobility, assassinations, marriage alliances and English fall-outs. Despite the instabilities and bloodletting, Scots still regard the Stewart monarchs with affection. This was a period when the expanding Scottish burghs nurtured new forms of town life, there was economic growth, and the royal palaces at Stirling, Holyrood, Falkland and Linlithgow were developed into the significant landmarks that they remain today. Kingship was felt to be an institution that was close to the people.

But the Stewart dynasty led to the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England in 1603, and the removal of the Court to London in the person of James VI of Scotland and I of Britain and Ireland. His claim to both crowns came through his mother Mary, the deposed Queen of Scots, who had been conveniently executed by the English. In effect Scotland’s king turned the monarchy into the Protestant British institution we know today and that remains a cornerstone of constitutional unity. Most proposals for Scottish independence, including those of the SNP, include retention of the monarchy. How did this happen? The causes are both political and religious.

The idea of joining the two monarchies through marriage was nothing new, but it was Henry VIII who set in motion the events that changed this from a generational into a near permanent solution to the conundrum of two kingdoms sharing one island. Henry’s sister Margaret was already married to James IV of Scotland in what was hailed as the twining of the thistle and the rose, but that did not prevent the two nations going to war in 1513 with disastrous consequences for Scotland at the Battle of Flodden. It was Henry’s need for an heir, combined with his outsized European ambitions, that led to the English Reformation and the introduction of religious difference as a potent force in Britain’s dynastic politics.

According to Roman Catholic legitimists, the heir to the English throne after the death of Mary Tudor was Mary Stewart,­ only child of James V of Scotland. Instead a now avowedly Protestant England placed Anne Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth on the throne. This proved a long-lasting but ultimately temporary expedient, as Elizabeth did not marry and had no offspring. This once again left Mary Stewart Queen of Scots – and for a time of France too – in pole position. To the English administration led by William Cecil, Mary’s Catholicism and her ties to France were a grievous threat.

When Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 to take up the reins of government, Scotland was in the throes of its own Protestant Reformation. Though constrained by Elizabeth’s devotion to the rights of legitimate monarchs, Cecil set about systematically and ruthlessly undermining Mary’s government. In this he was aided by the ever factious Scottish nobility, not least Mary’s own illegitimate half-brother James Stewa...

Table of contents

• Freedom and Faith
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 The State We Are In
• 2 A Scottish Question
• 3 Statehood and Religion
• 4 Statehood and Ethics
• 5 Statehood and Culture
• 6 A Moment in Time
• 7 Sin and Salvation
• 8 Freedom and Love
• 9 Faith in the Future
• Further Reading