An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) | Page 2

Freeman, "were the English of
Lothian. The true Scots, out of hatred to the 'Saxons' nearest to them,

leagued with the 'Saxons' farther off."[2] Mr. Green, writing of the time
of Edward I, says: "The farmer of Fife or the Lowlands, and the artisan
of the towns, remained stout-hearted Northumbrian Englishmen", and
he adds that "The coast districts north of the Tay were inhabited by a
population of the same blood as that of the Lowlands".[3] The theory
has been, at all events verbally, accepted by Mr. Lang, who describes
the history of Scotland as "the record of the long resistance of the
English of Scotland to England, of the long resistance of the Celts of
Scotland to the English of Scotland".[4] Above all, the conception has
been firmly planted in the imagination by the poet of the Lady of the
Lake.
"These fertile plains, that soften'd vale, Were once the birthright of the
Gael; The stranger came with iron hand, And from our fathers reft the
land."
While holding in profound respect these illustrious names, the writer
ventures to ask for a modification of this verdict. That the Scottish
Lowlanders (among whom we include the inhabitants of the coast
districts from the Tay to the Moray Firth) were, in the end of the
thirteenth century, "English in speech and manners" (as Mr. Oman[5]
guardedly describes them) is beyond doubt. Were they also English in
blood? The evidence upon which the accepted theory is founded is
twofold. In the course of the sixth century the Angles made a descent
between the Humber and the Forth, and that district became part of the
English kingdom of Northumbria. Even here we have, in the evidence
of the place-names, some reasons for believing that a proportion of the
original Brythonic population may have survived. This northern portion
of the kingdom of Northumbria was affected by the Danish invasions,
but it remained an Anglian kingdom till its conquest, in the beginning
of the eleventh century, by the Celtic king, Malcolm II. There is, thus,
sufficient justification for Mr. Freeman's phrase, "the English of
Lothian", if we interpret the term "Lothian" in the strict sense; but it
remains to be explained how the inhabitants of the Scottish Lowlands,
outside Lothian, can be included among the English of Lothian who
resisted Edward I. That explanation is afforded by the events which
followed the Norman Conquest of England. It is argued that the

Englishmen who fled from the Normans united with the original
English of Lothian to produce the result indicated in the passage quoted
from Mr. Green. The farmers of Fife and the Lowlands, the artisans of
the towns, the dwellers in the coast districts north of Tay, became, by
the end of the thirteenth century, stout Northumbrian Englishmen. Mr.
Green admits that the south-west of Scotland was still inhabited, in
1290, by the Picts of Galloway, and neither he nor any other exponent
of the theory offers any explanation of their subsequent disappearance.
The history of Scotland, from the fourteenth century to the Rising of
1745, contains, according to this view, a struggle between the Celts and
"the English of Scotland", the most important incident of which is the
battle of Harlaw, in 1411, which resulted in a great victory for "the
English of Scotland". Mr. Hill Burton writes thus of Harlaw: "On the
face of ordinary history it looks like an affair of civil war. But this
expression is properly used towards those who have common interests
and sympathies, who should naturally be friends and may be friends
again, but for a time are, from incidental causes of dispute and quarrel,
made enemies. The contest ... was none of this; it was a contest
between foes, of whom their contemporaries would have said that their
ever being in harmony with each other, or having a feeling of common
interests and common nationality, was not within the range of rational
expectations.... It will be difficult to make those not familiar with the
tone of feeling in Lowland Scotland at that time believe that the defeat
of Donald of the Isles was felt as a more memorable deliverance even
than that of Bannockburn."[6]
We venture to plead for a modification of this theory, which may fairly
be called the orthodox account of the circumstances. It will at once
occur to the reader that some definite proof should be forthcoming that
the Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, outside the Lothians, were actually
subjected to this process of racial displacement. Such a displacement
had certainly not been effected before the Norman Conquest, for it was
only in 1018 that the English of Lothian were subjected to the rule of a
Celtic king, and the large amount of Scottish literature, in the Gaelic
tongue, is sufficient indication that Celtic Scotland was not