‘If They Were Rebels Then, We Are Rebels Now’: Commemorating the Covenanters and the Glorious Revolution

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.

Scottish Nationality in the Nineteenth Century

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.

‘The Highest Position in the Civilised World’: Commemorating John Knox and the Second Reformation

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 self-evidently ‘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.

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

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.

‘Not Servile and Conquered, but Free and Independent’: Commemorating William Wallace and Robert the Bruce

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.

‘Staunch Loyalty to the Flag that Stands for Union’

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.

Nationality, Memory and Commemoration

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’. 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. 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.

Introduction: The Valley Cemetery

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.’ 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.