In 1650, the first major group of Scots arrived in the New World. They arrived most notably in Massachusetts Bay, transported in fact by a New England-built ship called the Unity, but others were scattered around other English Colonies which were loyal, or at least in safe submission, to Cromwell’s new government. In the next couple episodes, we’re going to talk about who these people were, the Scotland they came from, and how they actually ended up in America, while laying the foundation for Scotland’s entry into our story as a continued force in American history.
Introduction
We haven’t talked much about Scotland yet, and that’s because Scotland really hasn’t been a major player in American colonization up to this point. The Duke of Stirling had certainly expressed an interest in the New World, had gotten a grant of land and named it Nova Scotia, but he never actually got a colony up and running there, and that was really the extent of it. Scotland and England were different countries, with different cultures and quite a bit of a geographic barrier at this point in time, so Scots hadn’t really participated in the English ventures we’ve been discussing. Scotland was also much poorer, much more sparsely populated, and much more religiously united than England, so there was neither the financial ability nor the acuteness of some of the forces which drove English movement to America.
Scots did lead some Colonization-type projects under James I, projects which some English people from the border areas also participated in, but those took them to Ireland. Specifically, parts of Northern Ireland which were a mere three hour boat ride from Scotland, and which had been devastated in the Irish wars we discussed in our very second episode ever, under Queen Elizabeth I – namely Ulster. And a few other places, but mainly Ulster. And not to America.
That was about to change, though. Not right away, but in addition to these and subsequent transported POWs, thousands of Scots would go to America in the future thanks to forces created or exacerbated by this war. We’re talking about a US in which 18% of the population today has some Scottish ancestry, and a Canada in which 13% does, and like so many things, it all really starts here, with the execution of King Charles I.
But, to start the discussion, we’re going to head back a few years, and up to the mountains and islands of the Western Highlands, to one of the most famous, most notorious, most violent and tragic clan rivalries in Scottish history. This was a whole different world from the English towns and countryside that would have been familiar to our colonists. Life here was harsh, almost unbelievably so. Food was scarcer, winters were colder, and shocking acts of violence were still a thing.
It was a place where clans and the kinship connections they formed were still the basis of society, and where feuds and rivalries among clans were still going strong. Massacres and revenge massacres happened. I’m not going to say they happened every day, but they did happen. Now, the good to this is that they did avoid the manipulative, bureaucratic politicking that had started to take root other places. All the ugliness of the modern age which we’ve started to see so much of in our story, well, it wasn’t quite as real out here. Most people were living on self sufficient little farms, rarely pulled into external conflicts. So that’s the flip side.
And in this place there were two clans, the Campbells and the McDonalds. These were the two biggest clans in Scotland, and they neighbored each other, and more than that, for hundreds of years, the two had been the standard bearers for opposing movements. The McDonalds represented tradition, while the Campbells stood for progress. The McDonalds wanted to be left alone, while the Campbells strove to be front and center. The McDonalds sought autonomy from Edinburgh and the Stuart Kings, while the Campbells worked to expand and solidify that very power. And when the reformation happened, the McDonalds remained largely Catholic, though diverse and divided in belief, while the Campbells became leaders of the Presbyterian cause. McDonalds were in the highlands and outer islands, while the Campbells were in the areas which bordered the lowlands. The McDonalds would oppose each other, whereas the Campbells put up an almost unshakeably united front, not quite, but almost. The McDonalds were isolated, while the Campbells were at court. Potato, potahto, sword, pen, sandwich, soup … These tensions had been building not just since the Reformation, but since Scotland had first won independence under Robert the Bruce.
The Reformation had, of course, changed things, though. Unlike England, in which it had been very much a top-down thing imposed by a series of monarchs on their people, the Scottish Reformation had been a bit more organic with Catholic monarchs and some highlanders as the last remaining holdouts against encroaching Protestantism. And unlike England, in which monarchs had diligently, and violently, forged a middle path between Catholicism and extreme Protestantism, Scotland had moved directly toward Presbyterianism against its monarchs’ wishes. There were lots and lots of external factors which helped cause this, which I’m not going to go into, but ultimately, Scotland was almost exclusively Presbyterian, with some Catholics holding onto their faith in Aberdeen and the Highlands.
Persecution of Catholics absolutely happened in Scotland, as did the seizure of Church lands and destruction of Catholic places of worship, and just like in England, it lessened toward the end of King James’s reign and during Charles I’s. But, there was a point of time even there in which Catholics had had to band together to protect themselves from being massacred. And as part of all of this, the Catholic McDonalds found their prestige waning even further, while that of the Campbells continued to rise. Even when the 7th Earl of Argyll became Catholic, he navigated the transition in a way that preserved his Clan’s holdings. Where just a few decades before, they’d been easily the biggest, most powerful clan, with the Campbells a clear second, that was now reversed. McDonalds were excluded from politics, and Campbells filled that vacuum. McDonalds rebelled, and after their defeat, the Campbells were given that land. McDonald land was confiscated due to their unwillingness to conform to the Scottish Kirk, and yet again, it was the Campbells who profited.
The rise of the Stuarts in England, though, also put Scottish Presbyterians on the defensive. This was because of the dedication of Kings James and Charles to impose Anglican-style liturgy on a population who viewed any hint of ritual, or hierarchy, or even a simple “Happy Easter” as being too Catholic. As the quote goes, “No bishop, no king.” True to character, King James had been excellent at negotiating everything, and encouraging Scottish leaders to admit that, at the very least, the Anglican way of doing things wasn’t contradictory to their reformed faith. But, he’d died before he had a chance to actually implement the reforms they’d agreed to, and to get a very unwilling populace on board with them. So, the job fell to his son, the meek, the mild, straightforward and inexperienced Charles.
Back to the Campbells and McDonalds, though, there’s another Jacobean era project which saw the two clans take different sides – Ireland. MacDonald presence there went back to the 14th Century, as the Catholic Lords of Antrim. Campbell presence there was inextricably linked with the new, Protestant Ulster Plantation. In fact, more Campbells migrated to the area than members of any other clan.
The Ulster Plantation, which I mentioned before, deserves a bit more discussion. Partially, that’s because it does factor into the conflict we’re discussing right now, but more to the point of this podcast, it’s because any time you hear someone referring to the Scots Irish or being Scots Irish, it means they trace their roots back to the Ulster and similar plantations. And yes, like I said, plantations, as in colonies.
It had started, like I said, with this Elizabethan era war. The Irish rebelled, and over the course of almost a decade, the consequences for that rebellion included either dispossession of lands or absolute destruction. I’m not going to go too deeply into this, but if you want some great background on Irish history, I’d highly suggest you check out the most excellent History of Maryland podcast. Around this point, some of England’s most puritan subjects started heading to the Southwest of Ireland, the region of Munster, to settle and push Ireland protestant.
But, the last place to hold out in the fight against England was a region called Ulster, and it wasn’t subdued until about the time that James took the English throne. Ulster is extremely close to, and historically connected with, Scotland. There are six counties there, the Northeasternmost one being Antrim. After the wars, Ulster was devastated, and I mean devastated. It was a ruin with huge numbers of people, especially leaders, dead or in exile, and just a very beaten down place with beaten down people who were barely surviving, much less thinking of picking up arms again…yet.
The fact that Ulster was suppressed around the time that King James took the English throne, enabled Ulster colonization to be a primarily Scottish venture, mostly people living on either side of the Scottish/English border. These people could get better land and better, longer rents there than they could in Scotland, and they could also spread their Protestant faith. King James encouraged this because it would help prevent Ulster from re-emerging as a center of resistance to English rule.
By the 1630s, though, the devastation of the Elizabethan era Wars had started to subside, and a new normal had emerged with the Irish very much living as second class citizens, especially in Ulster. The loss of land to English and Scottish Protestants now happened in a less violent, more bureaucratic way, and power was shifting ever more away from the local Catholic lords, under the direction of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.
So as we head into the 1630s, we have a Scotland dominated by Presbyterianism. We’ve got a handful of people who have been encouraged by King James to embrace, at least weakly, an Episcopalian Church model, along with a larger handful of Catholics who are absolutely devoted to their faith. Just a few miles away, literally within view on a sunny day, and just a three hour jaunt by boat even then, we’ve got an Ireland in which local Catholics have been conquered and colonized by Puritans from England and Scotland.
And now, we need to head down to Edinburgh for a few minutes to discuss some severely important things that were going on there. Unlike the Highlands, lowland Scotland would have at least been recognizable to a 17th Century Englishman. Poorer? Yes. Rougher? Yes. More Presbyterian? Most assuredly. But fundamentally, it was at least understandable. King James had died, Charles had taken the throne, and much like in England, problems quickly rose to the surface. James had negotiated concessions, but didn’t live long enough to actually enforce his new policies. Now it was up to Charles to do that, and more. A couple blunders, some convenient misunderstandings and being just a bit too openly devoted to Arminianism meant that Scotland was soon almost united in opposition to its new Sovereign.
When, in 1633, King Charles met with the Scottish Parliament to get James’s Five Articles ratified, he took his demands several steps beyond what his father had negotiated for, and insisted that Scotland’s ministers wear the Surplice, and that they use an Anglican-inspired style of worship which had been designed by James, but which James had strategically held off in implementing. And then, he added a couple more demands. A new prayer book, inspired by the English one, and a new Book of Canons.
On the political front, he also wanted to modify Scotland’s feudal system, in which local officials, judges, etc. were appointed by landowners instead of the king. The problem is, that also helped turn those very landowners, meaning Scotland’s most powerful people, against him. And, just as the icing on the cake, Scotland had been hit hard by a series of bad harvests, so everyone was already on edge and definitely resented the king’s taxes.
On his side … well, there weren’t many people. The bishops were kind of weak. With relatively few exceptions, the people who had adopted Episcopalianism weren’t passionately extolling its virtues. Scots tended to be either passionately Catholic or, more commonly, passionately Presbyterian, but there wasn’t much room for the sort of middling compromise that had come to define England’s system. The very monarch-centric structure of nobles had been devastated by Henry VIII at the battles of Flodden Field and Solway Moss, so that wasn’t a source of support he could count on either. Scots definitely held the king to be divinely appointed, but their loyalty to their denomination tended to trump those feelings.
So, all in all, Charles didn’t have the best set of cards to work with in Scotland, and he didn’t play them particularly well. And, for the next few years, he worked to create the standards to be used at Scottish Church services, while his opponents also organized.
On July 23, 1637, Charles’s new style of worship was used for the first time in Scotland. It went about as well as you’d expect. At St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, a woman named Jenny Geddes famously threw her chair at the minister’s head while he started to preach, shouting, “The Devil cause you colic, false thief! Dare you say the Mass in my ear?!” Then, more women threw their chairs. And men. And pretty soon, there was a full scale riot. Meanwhile, Glasgow was rioting too, and other cities followed suit. Within a few days, a group of people including Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll, unveiled a document called the Covenant, which people could sign, agreeing to stand together and do what it took to defend the Presbyterian Kirk. It was a meticulously reserved document, emphasizing its’ signatories’ loyalty to the king, and it started a movement known as the Covenanters, which Scots rushed to join.
Argyll had taken over leadership of the Campbells after his father’s conversion to Catholicism caused one of the very few schisms or scandals to impact that clan, and that’s actually a funny story. His father had gone at the King’s behest to help put down a Catholic uprising near Aberdeen, and he’d agreed, been defeated and somewhere along the line converted to Catholicism. He was married, actually, to a Cornwallis who would have been related to our Maryland Colonist. He transferred his property to his son, sailed to the Netherlands and from there announced that he was now a Catholic. He was promptly declared a traitor, and even when allowed to return to Scotland, he headed to London where he lived at Charles’s Court for the rest of his life. So, navigating that situation had given his son some political chops, and now he emerged as the leader of the Covenanters.
On the other side, Charles appointed James Hamilton, Duke of Hamilton, to be his chief representative in Scotland. Hamilton was a Presbyterian, but had spent much of his life in England, and his father had helped draft the Five Articles. He quickly lost complete control of Scotland, though, so quickly, in fact, that rumors started circulating that Hamilton wasn’t just inept, but actively helping encourage the riots.
From here, the story sounds all too familiar. The Covenanters dominated politics, overwhelming and outmaneuvering not only the royalists, but the moderates who could have shifted the outcome to a less volatile one. It was these moderates who had enabled King James’s successes, but the Covenanters now had control and they didn’t let go. They rolled back everything Charles or James had done, and then they pretty much put themselves in permanent control of Scotland and left it to the king to challenge it. They called their own Parliament, established their own standing councils and put in place procedures which they could control. Then, they declared anything that went against their religious traditions to be against the Will of God, in a direct attempt to strengthen the position of Puritans in England.
At this point, there wasn’t much Charles could do apart from stopping them by force, but Hamilton pushed for compromise and negotiation. He went along with Hamilton’s ideas for a while, and backed down on everything, but to no avail. His Bishops were virtually silent, and his Catholic supporters were immensely frustrated by his stalling and, in their perception, allowing what should be a manageable problem to spiral out of control.
War came and went, and came again and went again. The King’s supporters were intimidated until they either agreed to Covenanter demands or fled to England. The Covenanters won, but continued building their army and attacking the remaining pockets of royalist support in Scotland – anyone who refused to actively subscribe to the Covenant. Catholics were persecuted worse than ever. If they refused to attend an established Church, 40-60 soldiers turned up at their house, drove away their cattle, took their furniture, confiscated their land, banished and imprisoned them, more often than not in the middle of winter. Rumors spread that Protestant midwives would kill Catholic babies and even mothers. There were public floggings, Catholics couldn’t be employed, and if they were, had to be fired immediately. Episcopalians were treated similarly, but without the same level of intensity. The citizens of Aberdeen were forced to sign the Covenant en masse, and Argyll went through the lands of clans opposed to the Covenant … largely Campbell rivals … and burned their strongholds.
This was by no means exclusive to the MacDonalds, but it very notably did include them. Most notably, Argyll took the majority of one Catholic MacDonald family prisoner, with the exception of one young son, named Alasdair MacColla, who escaped to Ireland and lived with his relatives in Antrim.
The king could do nothing about it, and the Covenanters continued to push and whittle until he was no more than a figurehead. They called their own parliaments, required anyone to subscribe to the Covenant before participating in them, and even imposed their own taxes to fund a standing army. For his part, Charles distributed honors among his enemies, making Campbell the Marquess of Argyll, and Leslie the Earl of Leven. After his defeat in two wars, he had little choice, and he now had bigger problems to worry about in England. The one thing he wouldn’t, and couldn’t, back down on was agreeing that anything apart from Puritanism was against the will of God. But, they wouldn’t stop until he did.
Watching all of this play out, though, was a Covenanter commander named James Graham, now Marquess of Montrose. Montrose is one of the most romanticized figures in Scottish history, and with reason. He was from one of the noblest Scottish families, a 30 year old Presbyterian, soldier and poet who had studied, among other places, at the French Military Academy at Algiers. He’d fought for the Covenanters in both wars, but about a year before, he’d decided that Argyll and his supporters, as well as Hamilton, were not to be trusted. At best, Argyll was way too radical, and at worst, he was planning to gut the king’s power so that he could become the de-facto leader of Scotland. So during the Second Bishops War, Montrose had backed off and been notably, even suspiciously, more lenient than the rest of the Covenanter army. He was so suspiciously lenient, in fact, that at one point, Argyll brought an army to occupy a castle that Montrose was already occupying.
In 1640, Montrose and his little group of supporters met and formed the Cumbernauld Band, agreeing to defend the Covenant against Argyll and his supporters. One interesting note in the document was the accusation that religion was often used by rebellious subjects as a pretext for resisting a sovereign, when in fact it was the ends of ambitious men which were being serviced. Montrose was devoutly Presbyterian, but he supported both King and Covenant, and now that the king had backed off on his changes, he saw no reason to continue to advance the cause of Argyll’s power. This was a secret agreement that didn’t come to much, except that when it was discovered, Montrose was pushed farther and farther to the side of Covenanter politics.
But it was a sign of the state of Scottish politics. Argyll was almost impossible to challenge, Hamilton was almost impossibly weak, and though there were some people who questioned all of this, they couldn’t really do much about it. So, when an unrelated man came forward making claims about Argyll’s push for personal power, and things he had said which substantiated those claims, that man was arrested and kept in jail until he changed his story. Just a few weeks later, Montrose and his allies were arrested and imprisoned and intimidated because they had corresponded with the king. Dedicated Royalists shared Montrose’s suspicions, too, and one even challenged Hamilton to a duel for betraying the King’s side. Hamilton had been secretly meeting with Argyll, and an engagement between his daughter and Argyll’s heir had just been announced. And, a group of Covenanters even plotted to abduct and kill Argyll, Hamilton and another member of Argyll’s group named Lanark, and when it failed the still-imprisoned Montrose and King Charles were both implicated in the plot.
Again, nothing came of that, but this was the political environment in Scotland as the outbreak of war in England approached.