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Sept. 17, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
05:44
Heroes of History： The Scottish Kings of England
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I'd like to explain to you how it is that a Scottish king became the King of England and inaugurated the concept of a political union between Scotland and England.
It's a long story, so I'll keep it brief, and I'll be glossing over many fine details as I do so, so please bear that in mind.
Scoti is a late Latin term for the Gaelic-speaking tribes who inhabited the north of Ireland in the 4th century AD.
After the Roman withdrawal from Britain and the subsequent Anglo-Saxon migrations, these Gaelic tribes conquered or culturally assimilated the western seaboard of the northern half of the island of Britain to create the Christian kingdom of Dalriata in the 6th century AD.
This territory was previously inhabited by a people known as the Picts, who were divided into four small kingdoms across the highland and lowland areas of northern Britain, and the new Irish rulers of Dalriata came to be known as the Scotty or Scots.
The fortunes of Dalriata rose until defeated by Anglo-Saxon king Ethelfrith of Bernicia and Dalriata remained a client kingdom of the Picts or Anglo-Saxons, depending on which century you were in.
Dalriata ended during the Viking invasions when, through a long and complicated and frankly uncertain process that I will not do justice to here, the kingdom of Alba was formed during the late 9th and early 10th centuries.
Alba had a Pictish Gael population and ruling class, and by the early 10th century bordered the Kingdom of England, formed during the reign of Æthelstan the Glorious, who adopted the title King of All Britain after receiving the submission of the Norse and the Scots after defeating them at the Battle of Brunanbruer.
The Kingdom of Scotland emerged in a recognisable form after this and Pictish culture was subsumed by Gaelic-Irish culture.
This was probably helped in large part by Christianity.
The conquest of England by William the Conqueror in the 11th century dramatically changed the political landscape of Britain and Malcolm III of Scotland paid homage to William, which would give legitimacy to the future claims of the English crown to the overlordship of Scotland.
The next 500 years saw the borders of England and Scotland shift back and forth in various wars between the kingdoms.
Sometimes England would invade Scotland and sometimes Scotland would invade England.
The English kings usually came out on top, probably due to the superior resources of England.
The aristocracy of both kingdoms became deeply entwined with each other.
This cumulated in the Union of the Crowns, where King James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, became King James I of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1603.
He publicly stated how he wished to unite England and Scotland into a single state and styled himself as the King of Great Britain.
England and Scotland were both sovereign states held in personal union by virtue of being ruled by the same king, with each kingdom having its own parliament, judiciary, laws and cultural legacy.
His son, Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland, was deposed in the English Civil War, part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.
Two years after the death of Cromwell in 1660, Charles II of the Scottish line known as the House of Stuart was returned to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland in the Restoration.
William of Orange assumed the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in the Glorious Revolution, after the overthrow of Catholic King James II of the Stuart line in 1688.
The Scottish Darien Company attempted to break into the transatlantic trading market by founding a Scottish colony called Caledonia on the Isthmus of Panama in 1698.
The colony failed for a number of reasons and ended with the Spanish besieging it in 1700.
Caledonia had been a national project for Scotland and a fifth of Scotland's wealth had been poured into it from all classes of society.
The failure of the Darien scheme left Scotland near bankrupt, but worse than that, locked out of international trading markets, which lessened resistance towards the long-standing talk of political union with England, which had begun with Scottish King James VI.
In 1705, under the authority of Queen Anne of England, Scotland and Ireland, negotiations for the union of England and Scotland began in each respective parliament.
One of, if not the driving motivation for this, from the Scottish perspective, was to ensure that Scottish merchants had access to the prosperity of the successful English colonies and trade networks across the globe.
The negotiations ended in 1706 with the Scottish receiving a guarantee of access to these colonial markets.
The primary motivation for this from the English perspective was to ensure the stability of Britain by ensuring the Scottish monarch was also the English monarch, and as it had been for almost a hundred years, as England was looking out at the wider world and her nascent trading empire and did not desire trouble at home.
In 1707 the Acts of Union were ratified.
The Act of Union with Scotland was ratified by the English Parliament and the Act of Union with England was ratified by the Scottish Parliament.
This allowed Queen Anne of England, Scotland and Ireland to become Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland.
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