Language is Power A History of Scotland


Language is Power

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They call it Britain's last great wilderness, a place as beautiful as it is barren.

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The islands and mountains of Scotland seem to exist on the edge of the imagination.

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But it wasn't always like this.

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For centuries, Gaelic Scotland was at the heart of the Scottish kingdom. Then it changed.

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It became something different, something separate.

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Something other.

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In many ways, Scotland is a nation of two cultures, one Highland and one Lowland

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and one part just doesn't seem to understand the other.

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Most of us don't speak Gaelic,

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we speak English and, whether we admit it or not,

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we have to view our country through the prism of the English language.

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And when we go to the Highlands and Islands we find ourselves amongst

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a language and an entire culture that we don't understand, we just don't get.

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It's an uneasy, uncomfortable double vision, it's Scotland's guilty secret.

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And it all began with a feud between two families.

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In 15th-century Scotland, family was everything.

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This is the story of two of those families and how their fates were locked together.

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The rise of one meant the fall of the other.

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Their struggle was epic...

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..their names legendary.

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They were the Stewarts and the MacDonalds.

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There's a story of a medieval Spanish traveller who came to Edinburgh to see the sights.

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When he got home, someone asked him what was the most wonderful thing he'd seen.

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The traveller thought for a moment then answered,

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"A grand man called MacDonald with a great train of men after him, called neither Duke nor Marquis."

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His name was Alexander, Lord of the Isles,

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Ri Innse Gall, The King of the Hebrides.

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Alexander's family, the MacDonalds, had played the game well.

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They had backed Bruce and the rewards had flowed - lands, wealth and power.

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The power of 10,000 armed men.

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Power over the islands.

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Power over the sea.

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This is called a birlinn or a West Highland galley.

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She's really a descendant of a Viking long ship.

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What range, what territory could boats like these cover effectively?

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In some cases 50, maybe 60 miles a day. You could certainly go from Northern Ireland up to Cape Wrath

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in two or three days if you had the wind behind you.

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How important would you say these crafts were to the Lordship?

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Vital. Whoever controlled the roads of the sea had the power and that's what the MacDonalds had.

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If it wasn't for these, there would have been no Lordship of the Isles.

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With over 100 birlinns at his command, Alexander dominated Scotland's Atlantic seaboard.

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No wonder they called him the King of the Hebrides.

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The nerve centre of his far flung territories, Finlaggan on Islay.

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It was here Alexander summoned his chiefs to do deals, form alliances

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and, most importantly, keep the peace.

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As an archaeologist, one of the first things

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that strikes me about this place is that it isn't fortified.

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But then of course, it didn't need to be.

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By the time Alexander took over, the Lordship had already enjoyed a century of internal stability.

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And with that peace and with the patronage of the MacDonald Lords

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came a flourishing of the arts, sculpture, music and poetry.

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It's often hard to get a sense of what places like Finlaggan were like in their heyday.

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But a few archaeological finds that have been recovered from the site

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over the years give an idea of the day-to-day reality of life here.

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This is from a hunting dog's collar

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and you can tell from the careful decoration on it that the dog's owner was proud of the beast

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and wanted it to look its best and of course the Lords of the Isles were very big on hunting.

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These are gaming pieces carved from bone, the rules of the game long forgotten,

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but on this one you can see the carved outline of a stag

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with its antlers and its mouth open and its tongue sticking out.

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And finally, this last piece is a pilgrim's badge or token.

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It's made of lead and it's from Rome.

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So, somebody with connections to the Lordship of the Isles went all the way to Rome and brought back this

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as a souvenir with its image of St Peter carrying the keys of heaven.

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Alexander, Lord of the Isles, held the keys to more earthly kingdoms.

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His Atlantic realm faced in two different directions at once.

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To the south was Ireland where family and cultural ties were deep.

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To the east was Scotland.

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But the Lordship wasn't on the fringes of the Scottish kingdom, it was at its very centre.

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The Gaelic world of the Lordship was at the heart of how Scotland imagined itself.

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It was the Gaels who had first unified the kingdom, giving it its Gaelic name, Alba.

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Now Gaelic Scotland was enjoying a second golden age.

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If Finlaggan was the heart of the Lordship,

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then Iona was its soul.

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St Columba's island was one of the most important spiritual sites in Scotland.

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It was here that the bodies of the Lords of the Isles were brought for burial.

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Alexander showered the Abbey and its community with money and gifts.

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Of course he had good reason.

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Like the best of medieval godfathers, he had a string of mistresses

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and a pile of cautionary letters from the Pope to prove it.

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All this church building was a kind of spiritual insurance policy.

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But if Alexander MacDonald feared for his soul, that was pretty much all he feared.

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He was Ri Innse Gall, a king in his own land, in a land where there was no king.

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Scotland was a kingdom with an empty throne.

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Its Royal line had faltered.

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Its young king was in the hands of its ancient enemy.

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James Stewart, King of Scots, had been captured by the English when he was only 12 years old.

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His family had fought alongside Robert the Bruce during the Wars of Independence.

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When Bruce's bloodline died out, it was the Stewarts who succeeded to the Scottish throne.

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But the sole heir to the new Stewart dynasty was now a hostage -

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a bargaining chip, leverage.

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It was the same old game, for the same old stakes.

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If the Scottish magnates wanted their king back, they would have to submit to English overlordship.

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"Forget the Bruce.

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"Give up your independence."

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But the Scots weren't going to play by English rules.

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"No, thanks," they said. "We're managing fine without a king."

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So James was left a captive with plenty of time to brood on his redundancy.

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For a time, James had been shunted from one miserable prison to another.

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But then his Royal privileges were restored and he was given free run of Henry V's court.

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You can imagine how grateful James was for this outbreak of benevolence.

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But Henry's motives weren't exactly pure.

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He had a war to finish in France and he needed a new ally to fight an old enemy.

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Because across the Channel it wasn't just the French that Henry was up against, it was the Scots.

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BAGPIPES PLAY

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The role the Scots played in the 100 Years War was something the French would never forget.

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In this summer pageant in the middle of France the crowds are celebrating

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the arrival of Scottish troops at a life or death moment in the history of their country.

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Henry V had just defeated the French at Agincourt.

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Final, decisive victory was within his grasp.

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But then the Scots waded in on behalf of their old ally.

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Now the Scots and French forces were united against the English king.

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To defeat them he would have to divide them and Henry thought he had the perfect weapon, James.

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Now Henry's plans for him became clear.

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James was King of the Scots.

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So James could tell the Scots to pack up and go home.

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Melun was the acid test.

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In 1420, Henry lay siege to the strategic town just upriver from Paris.

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The walls were defended by Scottish troops.

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James knew what was expected of him.

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He ordered the Scots to surrender.

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English and French kings expected unquestioning obedience from their subjects.

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But these soldiers were Scots.

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And in Scotland, king and kingdom didn't mean the same thing at all.

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Scotland was more than one individual.

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It was a community, a loose but resilient network of loyalties.

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"Lay down your arms," James commanded his subjects.

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And as one, the Scots kept on fighting.

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700 defenders held out against a 20,000-strong besieging force.

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These days, the underground vaults beneath the town are used to store wine.

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But in 1420, this was the scene of vicious hand-to-hand combat.

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The English dug tunnels beneath the fortifications in an attempt to undermine them.

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The defenders opened up their own tunnels so they could counterattack.

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It was in claustrophobic, suffocating darkness that the battle of Melun was fought.

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But for all their tenacity, the defenders of Melun couldn't hold out.

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When Henry finally broke into the town, he was out for revenge.

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The surviving Scots were rounded up, separated from the other prisoners

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and executed en masse as traitors to their king, James I.

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James never forgot the shame of Melun.

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He had been made to act as a puppet by a foreign king, he'd been defied by his subjects.

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His humiliation was immeasurable, off the scale.

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It was Melun, more than anything else, that shaped the kind of man

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James would become - intolerant, inflexible, impatient.

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Just two years after Melun, Henry V was dead.

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His successors couldn't see much political value in James.

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But their prisoner was still worth a king's ransom.

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In 1424, the English cashed their chips in.

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At 30 years old, James Stewart was on his way home.

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Scotland was more of a memory for James than a reality.

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He had spent over half his life in English captivity, so he had a lot of catching up to do.

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In other words, he was a king in a hurry.

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Amongst the welcoming party was Alexander MacDonald, King of the Hebrides and Lord of the Isles.

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He must have viewed the new arrival with guarded curiosity.

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Along with the other Scottish magnates, Alexander had agreed to pay a colossal ransom.

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What had they got for their money?

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A king on the make, a catwalk king.

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A king who understood that front was everything.

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Linlithgow Palace was James I's pet project.

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It was something brand-new in Scotland.

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It wasn't a fortress.

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It was a Renaissance-style Royal residence.

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It made its point through wealth, not strength.

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James had an agenda.

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He wanted to elevate the very idea of kingship.

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Linlithgow Palace declared, in 100-foot-high capital letters,

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James' ambitions as a European monarch.

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Before James I, the magnates like the Lords of the Isles

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had regarded their king as first amongst equals, and occasionally as something less than that.

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But James considered himself to have no equals.

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James I was educated and accomplished, he was Scotland's first Renaissance king.

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Amongst many other talents, he had a real gift for poetry.

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In one poem entitled The Kingis Quair, he described the moment when he first fell in love.

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James was a captive of England when he wrote these lines,

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but you wouldn't have heard this language at the court of Henry V.

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This was James's mother tongue and imagine how he must have missed it,

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the rich Scots language of his Lowland birthplace.

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Scotland in the 15th century was a blur of different languages and dialects.

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In the Lowlands, Scots - a distinctive vernacular with Anglo-Saxon roots - predominated.

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Most of the rest of the kingdom -

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at least half of Scotland's population - spoke Gaelic.

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And within Gaelic Scotland there was no more influential,

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no more determined figure than Alexander, Lord of the Isles.

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While James Stewart was palace building, Alexander MacDonald was empire building.

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Alexander's birlinns gave him control of an island archipelago.

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But his real ambitions lay on the mainland.

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Ross stretched from the rocky shores of the Atlantic to the rich farmland of the North Sea coast.

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By acquiring Ross, Alexander became one of the most powerful landowners in the kingdom.

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Ross was the jewel in Alexander's crown.

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But soon James himself began to cast envious eyes on the northern prize.

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The king was running short of cash.

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All this palace building came at a price.

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He'd already tried cooking the books.

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Money that should have been going south to pay his ransom was being spent on gold leaf and fine carving,

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but even that wasn't enough to plug the hole in his finances. He needed money, and badly.

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Alexander's territory in Ross began to look seriously tempting.

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James invited Alexander to meet him in Inverness.

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But this would be no Royal garden party.

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Alexander was camped outside the town with a large entourage including his own family.

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When he finally got the summons from the king, Alexander, his mother

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and a few select followers got dressed in their finery.

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What delights were on the menu, what treats were in store?

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As soon as they were through the gates, they were set upon and disarmed by the king's men.

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The MacDonalds didn't have a chance to resist.

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Alexander's own mother was pushed around, taunted, dishonoured.

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James watched as the MacDonalds were dragged off like common criminals.

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It seemed to inspire him.

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He entertained the court with some off the cuff verse.

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But this time, the muse was less romantic.

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It was no gentle love poem he recited.

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"Let us take the chance to conduct this company to the tower

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"For by Christ's death, these men deserve death."

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Wary tolerance had suddenly turned violent.

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James executed some of his prisoners without trial.

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But he didn't kill Alexander.

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He didn't have to.

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James had got his hands on Ross and the revenues it provided.

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After a couple of months and with a great show of mercy, he released the Lord of the Isles.

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But if he thought Alexander would be grateful,

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he was wrong.

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Alexander gathered up his men, returned to Inverness and burned it to the ground.

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Revenge was sweet, but it was short-lived.

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Alexander knew he'd allowed his anger to blind his judgement.

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A Royal army was closing in.

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Outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, Alexander calculated that he had only one option left.

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At Holyrood Palace in 1429, Alexander, Lord of the Isles, surrendered.

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Ritually stripped to his underclothes in front of James,

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he handed over his sword, his title and his lands.

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Alexander, Lord of the Isles, was then led away into captivity.

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The rules of the game had changed.

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The magnates had once carved up Scotland amongst them.

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Not any more.

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Now the king was in charge.

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Or so the king wanted to believe.

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The Lord of the Isles might be behind bars, but his family openly defied Royal authority.

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James sent an army to deal with them.

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But Alexander's men weren't about to turn tail.

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From every corner of his dispossessed territories, Alexander's supporters gathered,

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moving to meet the Royal army at Inverlochy at the head of the Great Glen.

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The Islesmen landed their birlinns a few miles down there where Fort William now is.

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They marched along the river towards where the Royal army

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was camped around Inverlochy Castle, just down there in the trees.

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The commander of the Royal troops was in the middle of a card game

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when he got the report of the enemy approach.

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He dismissed it. He said he knew very well the doings of the big-bellied carles of the Isles.

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At that moment, a body of archers hidden on this hill

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shot a hail of arrows down onto the unprepared Royal troops.

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And taking that as their cue, the main body of the Islesmen charged.

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It only took a few minutes.

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Over 900 Royal troops lay dead.

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Their injured commander fled over the mountains.

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Inverlochy was a brutal lesson in the limits of Royal power.

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James was forced to realise that it was as dangerous

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to keep Alexander behind bars as it was to have him on the loose.

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A month after Inverlochy, he set Alexander free.

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Alexander got just about everything back -

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his lands, his titles and, crucially, his prestige.

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The MacDonalds were back on top.

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The Stewarts, meanwhile, were in trouble.

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To many of the magnates, James's release of Alexander seemed like weakness.

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They scented blood.

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Simmering resentments finally boiled over into conspiracy.

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On 20th February 1437, James's enemies finally caught up with him.

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It was after midnight when they broke into the Royal lodgings.

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With the assassins outside the door, James searched for a way out.

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But there wasn't one, so he smashed a hole through the wooden floor and dropped into the sewer beneath.

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But the exit to the drain had been blocked off.

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James turned to face his pursuers.

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He tried to make a fight of it.

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But there, in the darkness and the filth, he was stabbed to death.

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Scotland held her breath.

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The killing of a king was a shocking, almost sacrilegious act.

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With the Stewart dynasty weak and exposed, the MacDonalds were unassailable.

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When Alexander, Lord of the Isles, eventually died in 1449,

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his dream of ruling an empire that stretched from coast to coast had been realised.

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He was buried not on Iona like his forefathers, but on the mainland in the rich soil of Ross.

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From beyond the grave, Alexander was not only reinforcing past claims, he was hinting at future ambitions.

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The kingdom was at a turning point.

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With James I and Alexander, Lord of the Isles, gone

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it was up to a new generation to continue their legacies.

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On the Stewart side, James II assumed his father's throne.

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A bright red birthmark earned him the nickname, James the Fiery Face.

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On the MacDonald side, it was John who now became Lord of the Isles.

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His inauguration followed a ritual that was centuries old.

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Just like the ancient kings, John stepped into a carved rock footprint,

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joining him to the land he was to rule over.

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The bards heaped extravagant praise on John MacDonald.

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But it only added to the weight of expectation on his shoulders.

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John's position was difficult, even precarious.

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Should he try to expand his territory?

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Or would it better to consolidate his already over-stretched empire?

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For the moment, he opted for the status quo.

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Meanwhile, James took decisive action.

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The new king would cement his family's fortunes, not through violence

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but at the altar.

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Here in Edinburgh in 1449, James II married Mary of Gueldres.

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She was the grandniece of the Duke of Burgundy, one of the most wealthy and powerful men on the continent.

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The Stewarts had most definitely arrived at the top table of European power.

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There was a hefty price to pay, of course.

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James and his family wanted to impress their powerful, foreign guests

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with the very best in food, wine and entertainment.

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But it was worth it.

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The marriage brought the Stewarts international prestige and political influence.

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And there were other more tangible items on the gift list.

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This is some wedding present for a teenage king.

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It is. And the wedding wasn't exactly a shotgun wedding.

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It was one of the main dynastic weddings of the period.

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And when James got this gun, Mons Meg, from the Duke of Burgundy,

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he was being given one of the most impressive pieces of technology available at that time.

0:34:040:34:10

Just how dangerous or effective was a thing like this?

0:34:100:34:14

This gun could fire 18 inch stone balls, a good sized ball,

0:34:140:34:19

that could go over a mile actually especially with a following wind.

0:34:190:34:23

And the real danger that this represented was to the castles of the period.

0:34:230:34:28

A gun like this brought against a great castle was a real threat in terms of knocking its walls down.

0:34:280:34:33

What does it say about James though, that he now possesses this?

0:34:330:34:38

Where does it put him in the league table of kings?

0:34:380:34:41

It's putting him right up there amongst go-getters, amongst the main sovereigns in Europe.

0:34:410:34:48

-So James was, in many ways, a big noise?

-Absolutely.

0:34:480:34:52

James II's showy pretensions hid a mass of insecurities.

0:34:540:34:59

He was thin-skinned, prickly, paranoid.

0:35:000:35:05

The king felt trapped, hemmed in.

0:35:080:35:12

To the north and west John MacDonald dominated a huge arc of territories.

0:35:120:35:17

Meanwhile to the south, there was another potential rival,

0:35:170:35:22

the Black Douglas.

0:35:220:35:24

William, Earl of Douglas was a 15th century pin-up.

0:35:270:35:32

He was popular, he was famous and he was very, very rich.

0:35:320:35:37

His family, the Black Douglases, were the big power in the Borders.

0:35:370:35:42

When William, Earl of Douglas, and John, Lord of the Isles, agreed a friendship pact

0:35:450:35:52

it set them on a collision course with James.

0:35:520:35:54

Deals like this were routine, innocuous, they meant as much as a handshake.

0:35:590:36:04

But James didn't see it as a courtesy.

0:36:040:36:06

He chose to view it as a conspiracy.

0:36:060:36:09

The king brooded on how to deal with the two magnates.

0:36:130:36:17

He didn't brood for very long.

0:36:200:36:22

In 1452, James requested the presence of the Earl of Douglas at Stirling Castle.

0:36:260:36:31

William smelt a rat.

0:36:310:36:35

He only showed up when he got a letter guaranteeing his safety.

0:36:350:36:38

It was the dinner party from hell.

0:36:510:36:54

James was jumpy and volatile. William was edgy too.

0:36:540:36:57

The fact that both men had been drinking since lunchtime made the situation even more unpredictable.

0:36:570:37:02

Only one thing was guaranteed and that was a confrontation.

0:37:020:37:07

At some point, late in the proceedings, James demanded

0:37:110:37:14

that William give up his alliance with John, Lord of the Isles.

0:37:140:37:18

William refused. Bad move.

0:37:180:37:22

James exploded. He pulled a knife and launched himself at William.

0:37:260:37:30

Then his courtiers pitched in.

0:37:300:37:32

Legend has it that when the frenzy was over, they dumped him out of that window.

0:37:320:37:36

When the body was recovered by William's men, it was found to have 26 separate stab wounds.

0:37:360:37:42

His head had been split open with an axe.

0:37:420:37:46

It was a shocking act, as much for its violation of notions of honour as its brutality.

0:37:490:37:56

William's followers paraded a copy of the king's safe conduct pass

0:37:560:37:59

around Stirling before ransacking the town.

0:37:590:38:02

But James was more than a match for the Black Douglas.

0:38:060:38:10

Faced by the King's heavy artillery, the Douglas castles surrendered without a shot.

0:38:100:38:15

William's family fled into exile in England.

0:38:150:38:19

This was another great leap in the Stewart fortunes.

0:38:220:38:26

By seizing the lands of the Black Douglases, James had made himself very rich.

0:38:260:38:30

Big guns, wealthy relations and a single brutal act of murder

0:38:300:38:34

would bankroll the future of Scotland's Royal dynasty.

0:38:340:38:38

For James, it was a dream outcome.

0:38:390:38:42

But for John, it was a nightmare scenario.

0:38:430:38:47

What had happened to the Black Douglas could happen to him.

0:38:470:38:51

John had to find a way of keeping on the right side of the explosive and newly powerful king.

0:38:520:38:59

So when James prepared for war with England in 1460, John was amongst his most loyal lieutenants.

0:38:590:39:06

John vowed that his men would fight one league mile ahead of the main army.

0:39:100:39:15

It was a very public, very ostentatious show of loyalty to the King.

0:39:150:39:19

It was also a vow which John would never have to keep.

0:39:190:39:23

James loved guns.

0:39:230:39:25

In fact he loved them to death.

0:39:250:39:29

James was in the middle of a long, hot summer campaign when he got news that his queen, Mary, was arriving.

0:39:330:39:39

He got one of the guns ready to fire a salute.

0:39:390:39:42

But his grand gesture blew up in his face, literally.

0:39:420:39:45

The gun exploded, sending lethal shrapnel flying in all directions.

0:39:450:39:50

At 29 years old, James II was dead.

0:39:500:39:53

No-one could doubt that the Stewarts would continue.

0:40:080:40:11

The dynasty seemed unassailable, as much a part of Scotland now as its rocks and hills.

0:40:110:40:18

But the new king, James III, was just a boy.

0:40:190:40:24

For some, opportunity knocked.

0:40:240:40:27

Only months after the coronation of eight-year old James,

0:40:330:40:37

an envoy arrives at John MacDonald's stronghold of Ardtornish Castle on a secret mission.

0:40:370:40:42

The messenger represents the defeated Black Douglas family

0:40:420:40:46

and he carries with him an offer from the English king, Edward IV.

0:40:460:40:51

What Edward proposes is this, he will back a rebellion in Scotland

0:40:560:41:01

and the MacDonald and the Douglas families will share the spoils.

0:41:010:41:05

John will get the north of the country, the Black Douglas will get the south. And Edward?

0:41:050:41:10

Well, Edward secures his grip on the English throne.

0:41:100:41:13

Of course there was a catch to all of this.

0:41:130:41:16

John and the Douglas have to acknowledge Edward as their overlord.

0:41:160:41:21

This was treason.

0:41:250:41:27

The MacDonalds and the Black Douglas

0:41:270:41:29

were plotting the annihilation of Scotland's Royal dynasty.

0:41:290:41:33

The old king's suspicions now appeared less like paranoia and more like prophecy.

0:41:370:41:43

So, why did John take such a huge gamble?

0:41:470:41:51

Why did he risk everything that his forefathers had achieved?

0:41:510:41:55

The simple answer was that he had no choice.

0:41:550:41:59

John was being put under pressure by his own relatives.

0:42:060:42:09

They wanted to see the continued expansion of MacDonald territory

0:42:090:42:13

and the leader of the hardline faction was his illegitimate son, Angus Og.

0:42:130:42:18

Angus Og pressed his father to sign the treaty with the English.

0:42:210:42:25

The ink wasn't even dry before Angus and his men set out to demand

0:42:250:42:30

that taxes owed to the King be paid directly to the MacDonalds.

0:42:300:42:34

But the English king had only ever wanted a diversion in the north.

0:42:430:42:47

When Edward sorted out his own internal troubles, he had no further need for his Scottish allies.

0:42:470:42:52

The game was up for John, Lord of the Isles.

0:42:550:42:58

He could now only hope that the King, James III, wouldn't discover the secret treaty.

0:42:580:43:04

Fat chance. Eventually the story leaked out

0:43:130:43:15

and everyone, the King included, knew about John's pact with the English.

0:43:150:43:20

John was cornered. In a humiliating ceremony that echoed that of Alexander all those years before,

0:43:330:43:40

he was forced to surrender.

0:43:400:43:43

John had wanted nothing more than to be like his father.

0:43:500:43:54

This was the bitter fulfilment of that wish.

0:43:540:43:57

Like his father, he had underestimated the power of the Stewarts.

0:43:570:44:00

And like his father, he had paid the price.

0:44:000:44:03

But this was more than a personal failure.

0:44:030:44:05

The repercussions would be felt much more widely,

0:44:050:44:09

rippling down the centuries and affecting Scotland to this day.

0:44:090:44:14

John kept his head.

0:44:180:44:20

He even managed to hold onto some of his lands.

0:44:200:44:24

But the humiliating submission was too much for others in his family.

0:44:240:44:29

Angus Og looked back to the glory days, a time when his family commanded respect.

0:44:420:44:47

Then, the MacDonalds had burned Inverness to the ground and routed a Royal army at Inverlochy.

0:44:500:44:57

No-one, not even kings, had been able to subdue them.

0:44:570:45:02

And now they were expected just to roll over.

0:45:020:45:06

The argument divided the family.

0:45:120:45:15

In the process, it tore Gaelic Scotland apart.

0:45:150:45:19

When Angus attempted to seize power from his father, the Highlands and Islands erupted into civil war.

0:45:190:45:25

The birlinns which had made the Lordship now gathered to destroy it.

0:45:270:45:32

Son against father, the final battlefield - a bay on the Sound of Mull.

0:45:340:45:41

That stretch of water ahead is called Bloody Bay.

0:45:500:45:54

It's where the birlinns of John and Angus Og clashed with such disastrous violence.

0:45:540:45:59

It's supposed to have been a victory for Angus' forces,

0:45:590:46:03

but the truth is that it was a defeat for the whole of the Lordship.

0:46:030:46:08

Something more than men died that day.

0:46:080:46:10

The idea of a strong Gaelic world, a coherent entity

0:46:100:46:15

that could deal on equal terms with the rest of Scotland, died too.

0:46:150:46:19

It was a seismic moment.

0:46:370:46:39

The hairline crack between the Highlands and the Lowlands suddenly blew wide open.

0:46:390:46:44

At one time, Gaelic Scotland, the place, the people and the language,

0:46:460:46:52

had seemed central to the collective identity of Scots.

0:46:520:46:56

But now it began to be seen as threatening, as different,

0:46:560:47:01

as "other".

0:47:010:47:03

Scotland was changing,

0:47:070:47:09

and changing fast.

0:47:090:47:11

Only one thing seemed constant -

0:47:150:47:17

the Stewarts.

0:47:170:47:19

Just a few years after the implosion of the MacDonalds, another James sat upon the Scottish throne.

0:47:210:47:28

Extravagant, charming and able to inspire affection as well as respect,

0:47:280:47:33

James IV was everything that his forefathers weren't.

0:47:330:47:38

But he did have one Stewart trait...

0:47:380:47:40

..a burning desire to make a mark.

0:47:420:47:45

Falkland Palace was James IV's country retreat,

0:47:460:47:51

an escape from the everyday pressures of court.

0:47:510:47:55

Everywhere you look,

0:47:550:47:57

there are thistles.

0:47:570:47:59

This was the new Stewart emblem, an image that James adapted and reproduced endlessly.

0:48:010:48:09

It was a brilliant logo, so simple, so memorable that the thistle became

0:48:090:48:13

the definitive symbol, not just of the Stewarts, but of Scotland too.

0:48:130:48:18

James wanted to create a new Scottish identity.

0:48:290:48:34

But that identity was a very specific, even limiting one.

0:48:340:48:39

James IV was the last Scottish King to speak Gaelic.

0:48:430:48:48

But Gaelic wasn't the King's native tongue. Scots was.

0:48:480:48:53

And under the patronage of James, Scots was on the up.

0:48:540:48:59

This is one of the first prints

0:49:090:49:13

printed and produced in Scotland in 1507, 1508 and it's written in the language of the Lowland Scots.

0:49:130:49:19

Who's the author that's printed here?

0:49:190:49:22

The Flyting Of Dunbar And Kennedie is actually by two poets.

0:49:220:49:24

-And this is by Dunbar.

-What is a flyting?

0:49:240:49:27

A flyting is a genre where one poet challenges another poet to a duel

0:49:270:49:31

by being as abusive as possible.

0:49:310:49:33

Can you read me an example of Dunbar having a pop at his adversary?

0:49:330:49:40

He's not exactly calling him a smashing chap, is he?

0:50:040:50:07

Uh, not really, no, no.

0:50:070:50:09

I can already pick out from what you're saying that one of the key things that this Lowland poet

0:50:090:50:16

is accusing the other of, is of using the Irish tongue, the Gaelic tongue. What's that all about?

0:50:160:50:24

I think that Dunbar is tapping into the stereotypes that would exist at the time.

0:50:240:50:28

As part of James IV's political agenda, cultural agenda, social agenda

0:50:280:50:34

you're looking at him pushing Lowland Scots as the language of the people in Scotland

0:50:340:50:40

and use that as an official language

0:50:400:50:43

and export that to the further out regions, and therefore Gaelic is clearly under pressure.

0:50:430:50:48

-So language is power?

-Yes.

0:50:480:50:50

Under James IV, earthy, everyday Scots

0:50:580:51:03

became the language of literature and law and therefore of power.

0:51:030:51:07

Gaelic, meanwhile, had become politically tainted.

0:51:070:51:10

It might well have been the language of half of all Scots but, as far as Lowlanders were concerned,

0:51:100:51:16

it was the tongue of traitors and outlaws.

0:51:160:51:19

Without the glue of the Lordship to hold it together,

0:51:240:51:27

the Highlands and Islands had become a kind of Wild West.

0:51:270:51:33

Everyone was out to grab what they could.

0:51:330:51:35

In the bloodletting, old scores were settled.

0:51:350:51:39

Angus Og, the upstart son who had tried to seize the Lordship, met a brutal end,

0:51:390:51:45

strangled to death by one of his own servants.

0:51:450:51:49

This was Linn nan Creach, The Raiding Time.

0:51:560:52:00

To the outside world it seemed that every stereotype of the lawlessness of the Gaels had been confirmed.

0:52:000:52:06

As if overwhelmed by the torrent of violence that he had unleashed,

0:52:080:52:13

John MacDonald retreated into penance and prayer.

0:52:130:52:17

In name at least, he was still King of the Hebrides, still Lord of the Isles.

0:52:170:52:22

But in the new Scotland, there could only be one king and only one lord.

0:52:220:52:28

In 1493, James took the title for himself.

0:52:390:52:43

The Stewarts, not the MacDonalds, were the Lords of the Isles now.

0:52:450:52:49

It was their word, their law, their rule.

0:52:490:52:54

James put together an expedition and sailed north to impose his authority.

0:52:540:53:00

The last time a Scottish king had ventured into the labyrinth of the Hebrides, he'd been on the run.

0:53:030:53:08

But unlike Robert the Bruce nearly 200 years previously,

0:53:080:53:11

James had come not as a fugitive but as a feudal overlord.

0:53:110:53:16

The time of the MacDonalds had passed.

0:53:170:53:20

The time of the Stewarts had come.

0:53:230:53:25

They were rich,

0:53:270:53:29

they were powerful,

0:53:290:53:31

they were in charge.

0:53:310:53:32

The Stewarts now looked to secure their future.

0:53:340:53:38

In 1503, James IV married Margaret Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII of England.

0:53:390:53:46

It was another spectacular marriage for the Stewarts,

0:53:520:53:56

but with an important difference. This time,

0:53:560:53:59

it wasn't just the Stewarts using a Royal match as a passport to power and respectability,

0:53:590:54:05

it was the English Tudors.

0:54:050:54:07

The Tudor dynasty was still a fragile one.

0:54:070:54:10

They'd just emerged from the Wars of the Roses and they were clinging onto power by their fingertips.

0:54:100:54:15

Marriage into the long-established Stewart family

0:54:150:54:18

would bring much needed legitimacy in the eyes of European monarchy.

0:54:180:54:22

It was an extraordinary reversal of fortune.

0:54:240:54:27

Once they'd been hostages and political prisoners,

0:54:270:54:32

now the Stewart dynasty were major power brokers, able to make the reputations of their Royal rivals.

0:54:320:54:39

And with the birth of a baby boy in 1507,

0:54:410:54:45

the Stewarts were only a heartbeat away from the throne of their ancient enemy,

0:54:450:54:50

the English.

0:54:500:54:52

The world had turned, the centre had shifted.

0:55:020:55:06

While the Stewart court blossomed, the court of the Lords of the Isles, Finlaggan, burned.

0:55:060:55:12

The Highland Boundary fault line cuts like a sword stroke through the heart of Scotland.

0:56:000:56:05

From coast-to-coast, it divides the country into two distinct parts,

0:56:050:56:10

the Highlands and the Lowlands.

0:56:100:56:13

It's a neat division,

0:56:130:56:16

perhaps too neat.

0:56:160:56:17

It's easy for us to think that the differences between Gaelic identity and Scots are somehow set in stone.

0:56:210:56:27

But this sense of separation is only a few centuries old.

0:56:300:56:35

It's history, not geography that divides us.

0:56:350:56:39

Scotland's split personality is the result of a family struggle that pulled the kingdom apart.

0:56:410:56:47

From being fully-paid up members of the Scottish project, Gaels began to be thought of as rebels...

0:56:500:56:57

outsiders.

0:56:570:56:58

Scotland couldn't continue to be diverse, it had to be a single, political entity.

0:57:000:57:06

And maybe a single cultural entity too.

0:57:080:57:10

It was the Stewarts who drove this new vision of a Scottish kingdom.

0:57:120:57:17

In their eyes, Scotland was secure in its independence and established on the European stage.

0:57:170:57:22

But this was only the start of what they had set out to achieve.

0:57:220:57:26

In the years to come, their ambitions would truly take flight.

0:57:260:57:31

We want your opinions on Scotland's history. Visit the website and tell us what you think.

0:57:580:58:03

Go to...

0:58:030:58:05

The Open University has also produced a booklet about Scottish history

0:58:070:58:12

and an audiowalk, linked to tonight's programme.

0:58:120:58:15

If you want to know how you can claim your free copy or download the walk, visit the website

0:58:150:58:20

or call...

0:58:200:58:23

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0:58:430:58:45

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0:58:450:58:47

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