The Hexham Documents

The names of William Wallace and Andrew Moray appear in the 'Hexham documents', which were signed by the ‘Commanders of the army of the Kingdom of Scotland’ on the 7th of November, 1297.

Enough has been written about William Wallace to fill up an entire library, never mind the odd book. However, what is odd is that not over much has been written about his partner in resistance Andrew Moray. Whilst Wallace was wreaking havoc in southern Scotland, resisting the deprecations of the invading English, Moray was doing very much the same in the north. By the time of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, in which both men jointly commanded the victorious Scottish army, Moray had reclaimed all Scotland north of the Forth and recaptured most all of its strongholds, with the exception of Stirling Castle. Stirling Bridge was a great victory for the Scots, but it was to prove a personal tragedy for Moray, for he was wounded in the fighting.

According to Fordun in ‘The Scotichronicon’, Andrew de Moray was found after the Battle of Stirling Bridge “lying amongst the slain, grievously wounded”. He was most probably taken from the battlefield to the nearby Cambuskenneth Abbey for immediate treatment. It is also widely believed and quite probable that Moray recovered sufficiently in order to be present at Haddington on the 11th of October, 1297, for that was when and where he and Wallace ‘signed’ those famous letters, which were dispatched to the Merchants of Lübeck and Hamburg – represented today by the surviving exemplar; the so-called ‘Lübeck Letter’. Signed, in that context, is a slightly misleading word, for what passed as a signature in those days was an individual’s seal, made of wax and showing his heraldic symbol or arms. The seals of both Wallace and Moray were attached to the letters sent to Hamburg and Lübeck.

Exactly a week after sealing and sending the letters to those two Hanseatic League towns, the Scots invaded England. A month later and once again, Wallace and Moray were writing letters. There names and seals were affixed to a protection issued to the Monks of the Monastery of Hexham in Northumberland. According to the ‘Chronicle’ of Walter of Guisborough, their first letter begins with a familiar greeting; “Andreas de Moravia and Willelmus Wallensis, Commanders of the Army of the Kingdom of Scotland, in the name of the Lord John, by God’s grace illustrious King of Scotland, by consent of the Community of that Realm, giving greeting to all of that Realm to whom the present letter shall come.” And it continues with a declaration of protection for the Monks; “we have duly received into the firm peace and protection of the King and of ourselves the Prior and Monastery of Hexham” and a warning to leave the poor Friars be; “Therefore we strictly forbid anyone to presume to inflict on them, in their persons, lands, or belongings, any ill, interference, injury, or hurt, on pain of incurring full forfeiture to the King himself; or to cause the death of them, or of any one of them, on pain of loss of life and limb”. That letter was sealed on the 7th of November, 1297.

The Commanders of the Army of the Kingdom of Scotland wrote a further letter on that same day. The evidence of the seals of both men having been attached to the ‘Hexham Documents’ of the 7th of November is taken to indicate that Moray, as well as Wallace, was present in the English town on that day. It is generally believed that he had to have been physically present at the time in order for his seal to have been applied to the documents. To skeptics or truth seekers, or scoundrels seeking to denigrate the achievements of Wallace and Moray, the evidence is presented as being merely circumstantial. The doubters suggest or even claim that Moray was never present at Hexham, let alone Haddington. They make their assertions, based on contradictory evidence about the death of Moray.

Some of that evidence stems from a formal inquisition into the affairs of Andrew Moray’s uncle, Sir William Moray of Bothwell. Sir William had held extensive lands in Lanarkshire and at Lilleford in Lincolnshire, and he was known as ‘le riche’ due to his extensive personal wealth. However, he had died in poverty in England and the inquest was held in Berwick in November of 1300. In those proceedings, it was determined that Andrew Moray had been “slain at Stirling against the King”. Further evidence in support of that view is claimed from the fact that no recognised chronicle source places Moray at Hexham. Indeed, Walter of Guisborough's chronicle, which contains a detailed account of the Scottish invasion of northern England in late 1297, makes it clear that it was led by Wallace. The final piece of evidence is, in actual fact, simply a lack of evidence, namely that after Hexham (whether or not Moray was present), there is no further extant historical record of any signing and sealing activity by Moray.

Assuming that Moray was wounded, rather than killed, at Stirling Bridge; if it makes sense for him to have accompanied Wallace into England, it stands to reason that his injuries would have prevented him taking part in any fighting. That being the case, it is not surprising that Walter has nothing to say of Moray’s activities and instead exclusively focuses on Wallace, who was causing the damage and destruction. The big debate should be whether or not Moray accompanied Wallace, not whether he was still alive at that time. Moray was undoubtedly in a weakened state from his wounds and it is certain that, by mid-November, he was dead. Facts are scarce, but it is known that his body was taken north to the Cathedral in Fortrose. Let’s say that he was not killed at Stirling Bridge, but was mortally wounded and survived until around the 10th of November, 1297. Does it not make sense for Wallace to have felt entitled to include his co-Commander’s name on all official documents, whether or not he was physically present, but only as long as Moray remained alive?

It has also been suggested that Wallace was compelled to continue to issue documents jointly, because of the Scottish feudal elite, whose political intrigues may otherwise have been directed at regaining their power, which Wallace had ‘usurped’. The reasoning is that, once Wallace was knighted and appointed as Guardian of Scotland, some time prior to in March, 1298, he had no further need of the ‘protection’ of Moray’s name. Make up your own mind.

The Treaty of Salisbury

The Treaty of Salisbury was signed on the 6th of November, 1289.

When Alexander III, King of Scots, died in a fall from his horse at Kinghorn in March, 1286, he left no children and, therefore, no heir. However, he did have a three years old granddaughter, whose name was Margaret and who became known as the ‘Maid of Norway’. Margaret was a Norwegian Princess; the daughter of Eric II, King of Norway, and Margaret, daughter of Alexander III, King of Scots. Wee Maggie was born in 1283, most likely in early April, and it is also likely that her poor mother died at her birth, but the date of that death is uncertain. Maggie had been acknowledged as Alexander's heir in 1284 and on his death, became Margaret, Queen of Scots. By May of 1289, Maggie was still at home in Norway and there remained uncertainty and concern, at least in Norway, about her future and safety. Consequently, in May, 1289, Eric II sent a couple of his ambassadors to Edward I of England to ask him to provide a level of protection for his daughter, described as Edward’s neice.

In the meantime in Scotland, due to Queen Margaret’s continued absence, six Guardians had been appointed, in April, 1286, to rule in her name. Had she been in Scotland, a Regent would have been appointed to rule in her name until she reached her majority. In October, 1289, Edward I, in accordance with the request of Eric II, asked those Guardians to send representatives to join discussions over Margaret’s future at a “place of parley”. The text of the treaty indicates that “[the Guardians] at the request of the said King of England, sent, in the manner that they were requested, the honourable fathers the Bishop of St Andrews and the Bishop of Glasgow, and the noble men Sir Robert de Bruce, Lord of Annandale, and Sir John Comyn”. Those men arrived in Salisbury at Michaelmas on the 29th of September “…at the month of St Michael last passed” and they met with Edward I and his representatives, “…the honourable fathers” John of Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, and Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, “…and the noble men” William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and John de Warenne, Earl of Warenne. The messengers of the King of Norway, Sir Terri de Champs de Jeu, Piers Algod and Guthorn de Aseleye, were also in attendance.

The treaty, which was given at Salisbury on the 6th of November, 1289, the “Sunday in the feast of St Leonard” began thus: “Know us to have affirmed and established the thing treated and accorded not long ago at Salisbury concerning the arrangement of the standing of our dear Lady Madam Margaret Queen and Heiress of Scotland, and of her Kingdom, in the presence of the Noble Prince my Lord Edward, by the Grace of God King of England”.

The provisions of the Treaty of Salisbury ensured several things. It provided security for Margaret if she were to go to England until the ‘trouble’ within Scotland, which had given Eric II concern, had died down and it was safe for Margaret to move to Scotland and take up her position as Queen. It stated that “the aforesaid Lady, Queen and Heiress, come to the Kingdom of England or Scotland” before the 1st of November, 1290, being the “next All Saints’ Day” and “quit and free of all contract of marriage and espousal”. The treaty also stated, with additional references to Margaret being “free of all contract of marriage” that the King of England had “promised in good faith” that he would deliver her to Scotland “also quit and delivered of all contract of marriage” when it was safe so to do, namely when Scotland was “in good and secure peace”. Of course, the Scottish representatives were required to promise “in good faith for themselves and for the other people of Scotland” that they would “secure the land” and “make surety there” that Margaret “can come safely into her kingdom, and safely remain there, as the true Lady, Queen and Heiress”. It also included the proviso that the “good people of Scotland” would not marry Margaret without Edward’s “ordinance, desire and counsel, and by the assent of the King of Norway, her father”.

Despite all those references to Margaret being “quit and free of all contract of marriage and espousal” and unknown to the Scots, the sneaky Edward I had already applied to the Pope for dispensation for the marriage of his son Edward to marry Margaret. That dispensation was granted ten days after the signing of the treaty of Salisbury and before the treaty, without modification, was reaffirmed by the Scots at Birgham. That affirmation took place “on the first Tuesday after the feast of St Gregory, AD 1289” (the 14th of March, 1290) and was for “the greater surety and firmness of the things written above”, namely the terms of the Treaty of Salisbury as written.

An additional treaty was then drawn up at Birgham in Berwickshire, on the 18th of July, and ratified at Northampton, on the 28th of August, 1290. With that treaty, which provided for the marriage of Margaret to Edward of Caernarfon, the son of Edward I of England, ‘Longshanks’ plans for Scotland became clearer. The treaty guaranteed the “rights, laws and liberties of the Kingdom of Scotland” and, under the condition that Margaret would marry Edward’s son, Scotland was to remain “separate and divided from England according to its rightful boundaries, free in itself and without subjection”. Additionally, it seems the English negotiators had included enough reservations to render the ‘independence’ clauses useless. However, in any event, all talk of the six years old Queen Margaret marrying the four years old Prince Edward proved redundant as the poor wee lassie died in or en route to the Orkney Islands, in September or October, 1290.

Margaret’s death sparked off the disputed succession, which led to the first War of Scottish Independence. The question of who was then the rightful claimant to the Throne was a problem for Scotland as back in 1284, no one had looked beyond Margaret. Exce[t for the Bruces, that is. A couple of months after the death of Alexander III in 1286, they entered into the ‘Turnberry Bond’, which asserted their claim to the Throne. Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, and grandfather of Robert I, asserted that Alexander II had recognised him as next in line to the Throne of Scotland even before the birth of Alexander III. Later, in 1291, Edward I ominously summoned the Scottish nobles to meet him at Norham-on-Tweed. There, he styled himself ‘Lord Paramount of Scotland’ and challenged the claimants to the Scottish Throne to recognise him as their feudal superior.

William of Orange

William of Orange landed in southwest England on Guy Fawkes’ day, the 5th of November, 1688.

William of Orange wasn’t remotely speaking Scottish, but his arrival on the scene in England in 1688 marked the end of the long ruling lineage of the Stuart (or Stewart as they were previously known) Kings of Scotland. Well, not quite, as William ruled jointly and together with his wife, Mary, who was a Stuart, and he was succeeded by Queen Anne, who was Mary’s sister and in truth, the last of the Stuarts. However, William’s arrival was significant for the male Stuarts and for the Catholic faith in England, Scotland and Ireland. As a Protestant, William participated in several wars against the powerful Catholic king of France, Louis XIV, in coalition with other powers in Europe. Many Protestants heralded William as a champion of their faith and even to this day, some numpties make a big deal of ‘King Billy’ as he became known in Ireland. William was invited to take the triple crowns, essentially because many folks in England were running scared of a revival of Catholicism under James II and VII.

William of Orange, who became William III, King of England and William II, King of Scots, was a sovereign Prince of Orange who ruled as Stadtholder Willem III van Oranje over the Dutch Republic of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders/Zutphen, Friesland, Groningen/Ommelanden and Overijssel. The Dutch Republic, otherwise known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, was the result of an argy-bargy between Philip II of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor of the day, and one of William’s predecessors over the rule of parts of the Low Countries in the 16th Century. William I of Orange revolted against Philip II over high taxes and persecution of Protestants and that led to the so-called Eighty Years’ War and a declaration of independence, which led to the formation of the Republic in 1588. The Principality of Orange was originally also a fief of the Holy Roman Empire in its Kingdom of Burgundy in the Rhône valley in southern France, which belonged to the house of Orange-Nassau. William’s family lost that territory in 1673, when Louis XIV of France annexed it, but kept the title.

William ‘won’ the triple crowns of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1689, following the ‘Glorious Revolution’, in which his uncle and father-in-law, James II and VII, was deposed. Well, it wasn’t such a glorious revolution; more of a sordid little affair that led to the overthrow of James II and VII by William of Orange and his invading army, supported by a union of Parliamentarians. That act was prompted by the birth of a male heir to James II and VII, namely James Francis Edward Stuart, who would’ve been James III and VIII and who became known as the ‘Old Pretender’. In reality, it was the English Parliament, together with William and Mary, who were the ‘pretenders’. In effect, they pretended that young James Francis Edward wisnae entitled to his birthright and that it should pass to his Auntie Mary and her husband, the Oranjeboom. And the raison d’être for all of that was religion.

James II and VII had attempted to lift restrictions on Catholics taking up public offices, which act was bitterly opposed by the Protestants. And with the birth wee Jamesie, the prospect of a return to a Roman Catholic dynasty had become very likely. In addition, the Parliamentarians were worried by the King's close ties with France and Louis XIV. Some of the key leaders of the Tories then united with members of the opposition Whigs to form a Tory/Liberal coalition (how about that!) and their double dealing shenanigans led to what amounted to another civil war. James fled the country and Parliament, seeking any old excuse, saw that as the opportunity it had been waiting for and declared that James II and VII had effectively abdicated. So it then offered the Crown to his Protestant daughter Mary and her Protestant Dutch husband.

The name ‘Glorious Revolution’ was first used by John Hampden, who had been opposed to the rule of Charles II and had narrowly escaped execution in 1685. He coined the expression in late 1689, after William and Mary had taken up the Throne. The ‘[In]Glorious Revolution’ is an expression that is still used by the British Parliament. It has sometimes also been referred to as the ‘Bloodless Revolution’, which is a bit of a joke. Just ask the soldiers who died in the two significant clashes that took place in England or the protagonists in what was known as the ‘Williamite War’ in Ireland or those who fought in Scotland at the battles of Killicrankie and Dunkeld. The Revolution was also closely tied in with the events of the ‘War of the Grand Alliance’ on mainland Europe and, because of William’s invading armies in England and Ireland, it can be seen as the last successful invasion of Britain.

In a sense, the overthrow of James II and VII was the start of modern British parliamentary democracy and the constitutional monarchy as never since has the monarch held absolute power. Parliament also took the opportunity, in 1689, after William and Mary had been crowned, to approve Bill of Rights and, later on in 1701, the Act of Settlement. Those were English statutes that lawfully upheld the prominence of Parliament for the first time in English history. The removal of James II and VII ended any chance of Catholicism becoming re-established in England and ignited the Jacobite cause in Scotland. For Catholics, it was a disastrous time, both socially and politically as they were denied the right to vote and sit in the Westminster Parliament for over one hundred years. They were also denied commissions in the army and the Monarch, as remains the case, was forbidden to be Catholic or marry a Catholic, in order to ensure a Protestant succession.

The Battle of Wark Castle

The Battle of Wark Castle took place on the 4th of November, 1523.

There’s an old saying in the Borders that “Auld Wark on Tweed has been mony a man’s deid” and indeed, mony a man lost his life either attacking or defending the castle. Between 1136 and 1523, it was besieged no fewer than eleven times. Of course, it was an English garrison castle, formerly held by the Nevilles, and its position was designed to deter the incursions of marauding Scots border reivers into its northern territory. In those turbulent days of Border history, the village of Wark on Tweed on the English side of the River Tweed, seven miles south west of Norham and two miles west south west of Coldstream, was regularly a front line victim of Scottish attacks. Later, in Tudor times, during the period of the ‘Rough Wooing’, it was critical in the defence of the Borders. At that time, it was blithely described as “situate for annoyance and defence in the best place of all the frontiers.”

The motte and bailey castle of Wark, sometimes called the castle of Carham, was built beside the River Tweed upon a large rocky mound overlooking the village of Wark. It was built by Walter Espec in the time of King Henry I of England in the early 12th Century. It had an unusual, six sided keep, which was five storeys high and according to a 1517 account, “in each of which there were five great murder holes, shot with great vaults of stone except one stage which is of timber, so that great bombards can be shot from each of them”. A wall encircled the keep and curved down to link with the courtyard wall of the bailey. That linking wall was divided into two sections; intended to allow the garrison to retreat progressively from the gatehouse if it was taken during a siege. The gatehouse opened close to the Tweed and for added defence, a trench ran from the river, through the gate house and up around the keep. Although considered a minor castle compared to Norham, nevertheless, Wark played a major part in Border history.

The first several attacks upon Wark Castle were made by David I, King of Scotland, in 1126, when he captured and held the castle for a short time. Two years later, he again besieged the castle, but was not able to affect its capture. Later, in 1138, it was beset once more, again unsuccessfully in the lead up to the Battle of the Standard. By 1216, the castle had been destroyed by the Scots, but it was rebuilt, only to be burned down in 1399. That destructive act was made to ‘test English resolve’ in relation to an existing peace treaty after the ascension of Henry III. A notable incident occurred in 1419, when Sir William Halliburton, the Governor of Fast castle, took Wark with only twenty-three men using ropes and grappling hooks. The castle was then in the possession of Sir Robert Ogle and accounts differ as the fate of his garrison. Some state that Ogle and his men were put to the sword, while others claim that Halliburton negotiated the surrender of the keep. In any case, the castle was quickly recovered by the English. Halliburton’s men were surprised by some English troops who, with the aid of local knowledge, had been able to make their way into the castle via a sewer, which led from the kitchen into the Tweed. Whether or not in revenge, Halliburton and all of his men were killed and beheaded. Their bodies were thrown in the river and their heads were displayed on stakes upon the battlements as a grisly warning to other Scots raiders.

In 1460, the Scots assailed and demolished Wark yet again, only for it to be repaired afterwards by the Earl of Surrey. The early part of the 16th Century then saw increased tension between Scotland and England, and famously, when the English invaded France in 1513, King James IV in turn invaded England. James IV reduced Wark Castle, amongst others, on his way to meet his fate at Branxton Moor, otherwise known as the Battle of Flodden Field. However, Wark Castle must have been repaired quickly as a 1517 account showed it to be fully equipped and operational, boasting a barrack cum stable block in it's inner courtyard, which was able to house one hundred and forty men and their horses. That made Wark an ideal location for mounting lightning cavalry raids into Scotland and during the ‘Rough Wooing’ that’s exactly what happened. It did get its comeuppance during that time though as, in 1548, it was bombarded and stormed by a combined Scottish and French army under General Andre’ de Montalbert, Sieur d’Esse’.

In 1523, the Captain of Wark led a raid across the Tweed, and provoked retaliation by killing twenty-five Scots and capturing a further sixty-one. The Duke of Albany, then heir to the Scottish throne, brought an army to Coldstream and from there, launched an attack on the castle. Contemporary records describe the castle at that time as being “a tower of great strength and height, encircled by two walls; the outer enclosed a large space, into which the inhabitants of the country used to fly with their cattle, corn, and flocks in time of war; the inner was of much smaller extent, but fortified more strongly by ditches and towers. It had a strong garrison, good store of artillery, and other things necessary for defence”. Albany bombarded the castle for two days from across the river, before sending over a chosen force, predominantly French, but under the command of Andrew Kerr of Fernihurst, in several boats to make an assault.

On the 4th of November, 1523, those two hundred assailants carried the outer enclosure at the first assault, despite fierce resistance. The besiegers were then temporarily dislodged by the garrison having set fire to the straw laid up behind the wall, but soon recovered and, with the aid of cannon, effected a breach in the inner wall. The French mounted the breach, but then sustained heavy losses under fire from the keep and were obliged to retire. So the tiny garrison of one hundred or so men had managed to drive off the attackers and set about preparing for more of the same ‘upon the morrow’. However, nature intervened and overnight, rain caused the Tweed to rise, which threatened to cut off any retreat of the attackers. In addition, the Earl of Surrey was known to be approaching to relieve the beleaguered garrison. That obliged the Duke of Albany to raise the siege and retreat into Scotland. Wark Castle had been seriously damaged, but once more survived.

Wark was eventually abandoned at the beginning of the 17th Century and all that remains to be seen is a large mound of rubble, which occupies a circular eminence overlooking present day Wark from its position a little to the west of the village. It is not known when it was dismantled and totally destroyed, but most probably it was ordered to be demolished by James VI of Scotland when he acceded to the English throne in 1606.

Sir John Leslie

Sir John Leslie, physicist, mathematician and inventor, died on the 3rd of November, 1832.

Sir (by request) John Leslie was a marvellous man who admirably annoyed the Church of Scotland, which was always a good thing, taught Mathematics and Natural Philosophy (what we now call Physics) in Edinburgh, and invented lots of ‘scopes’ and ‘meters’. He invented the aethrioscope, the hygroscope and the pyroscope in addition to the atmometer, the differential and optical thermometers, the hygrometer, the photometer and the pyrometer. Ok, ok, the hygrometer and the hygroscope are the same thing; as are the pyroscope and the pyrometer, if you haven’t guessed. Leslie was a “self-taught mathematician and physicist” but he was also a prodigious inventor, whose main contributions to Physics were to do with the properties of air, heat and moisture. He invented all those ‘scopes’ and ‘meters’ the better to allow him to explore those properties, and his discoveries enabled the development of new equipment and processes.

His aethrioscope is used to measure very accurately the variations in temperature due to the condition of the atmosphere and his pyroscope or pyrometer is a kind of optical thermometer. The differential thermometer is also used for measuring difference in temperature and the atmometer is used to measure the rate of evaporation from a moist surface. The photometer is used in measuring luminous intensity and one of his inventions, the hygrometer, a device for measuring humidity, allowed him to discover, in 1810, a process of artificial congelation. That process in turn enabled him to become the first man to create ice artificially, with the use of water, mercury and an air pump. In 1802, Leslie was also the first man to give a true explanation of capillary action. Not content with all of that, in 1793, Leslie translated from the French all nine volumes of the ‘Natural History of Birds’ of the French naturalist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.

Leslie also published a lot of books in his own right, with the most notable being ‘An Experimental Inquiry into the Nature and Properties of Heat’ in 1804, for which he won the ‘Rumford Medal’ of the Royal Society of London. He published numerous volumes, text books and papers on Mathematics, Geometry and Trigonometry, and contributed heavily to ‘Nicholson's Philosophical Journal’. He also contributed several articles to the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ and the ‘Edinburgh Encyclopaedia’, and strangely enough, he somehow contributed to a popular work on polar travel. In 1813, he found time to publish a short account with a long title: ‘A Short Account of Experiments and Instruments depending on the relations of Air to Heat and Moisture’. Volume I of Leslie’s mathematical course went through four editions and was translated into French and German; a high honour indeed for those times.

John Leslie was born in Largo, in Fife, on the 16th of April, 1766. He learned mathematics at home from his father and elder brother and, for no more than a year, at a local school in Leven. At the age of twelve, he received a gift of mathematical books from the Minister at Largo and, in 1779, he entered the University of St Andrews where he completed an arts course. He benefitted from a scholarship, which was granted by the Principal on condition that Leslie would, not untypically, go on to join the Church. With that in mind, he went to the University of Edinburgh in 1785, to study Divinity. However, he became far more interested in mathematics and science. He attended lectures by a veritable ‘Who’s Who?’ of famous Scots, including John Playfair, Joseph Black, Alexander Monro, John Robison, and Dugald Stewart. When the Principle died, Leslie no longer felt obliged to follow the conditions of his scholarship. Instead, another famous Scot, Adam Smith, got Leslie a job as a tutor to one of his relations and, in 1788, Leslie sent his first paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. After that, Leslie spent some time as a private tutor in Virginia, before returning to Britain around 1790 and getting another tutoring job; to the Pottery Wedgwood’s in Staffordshire. It was while he was employed by Josiah Wedgwood that Leslie got involved with Buffon’s birdies. The income he got from the book of birds and the pension for life that he later got from Wedgwood, basically gave him the freedom to concentrate on becoming an academic and prolific inventor. The final hurdle was the antipathy of the Church.

After a celebrated dispute that went all the way to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which had an unnatural influence on University appointments, Leslie was elected to succeed John Playfair as Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh. Later, after Playfair’s death, he became Professor of Natural Philosophy, but the violent opposition of the narrow-minded clerics in 1805 was because Leslie, like many great thinkers and scientists, he had been accused of heresy; in his case by the Synod. Leslie, who had studied Divinity, was by that time practically an atheist and, quite apart from failing to have become a Minister, his politics were also of the wrong colour. The Church adduced that Leslie’s support of the doctrine of yet another celebrated Scot, the religiously sceptical David Hume, was tantamount to heresy. Leslie’s profanation? He had written that “causation was nothing more than an observed constant and invariable sequence of events,” thus negating established, but decidedly tenuous, theological principles.

Thomas ‘Tom’ Johnston

Thomas ‘Tom’ Johnston, journalist, County Councilor, politician, Member of Parliament, and Secretary of State for Scotland, was born on the 2nd of November, 1881.

Tom Johnston was one of the leading Scottish politicians of the twentieth century. He was a socialist and a member of the Labour Party whose political career culminated in the post of Secretary of State for Scotland. Johnston’s politics were influenced by the birth of the Labour Party and his early radical socialism came to the fore, when he helped launch the socialist paper, ‘Forward’. Later, he became associated with the ‘Red Clydesiders’, but later still, he sought to distance himself from the radical scribblings of his youth. He became the Secretary of State for Scotland during the Second World War and as a mark of the man, he was able to rise above partisan politics in that key role to which he gave outstanding service. It’s probably fair to say that he single-handedly shaped the government of Scotland from 1941, when he took office, and his influence continued to be felt long after he had departed.

Many new ideas were introduced through Johnston’s influence and his legacy remains right down to the present time. Few can hope for legacies more concrete than Tom Johnston, a man who could have claimed to have re-drawn the map of Scotland. As Secretary of State, he was the man who gave the North of Scotland its Hydro-Electric Board and the concrete dams that powered its output. That outbreak of dam building left a monument that turned around the fortunes of the Highlands, which is something for which most Scots today would be thankful. Those dams cannot fail to impress wayfarers and Munro-baggers, whether or not you appreciate the end result or simply recognise them as a monumental scar on the landscape. The Hydro-Electric Board was Johnston’s most innovative achievement. It is ‘what for?’ he is best remembered, because he made it happen, despite rural Scotland's resistance and hesitation towards the project. It’s probable that he had a more positive effect on the lives and prospects of ordinary Highlanders than anyone since Thomas Telford built his roads and bridges, one hundred and fifty years earlier.

Thomas Johnston was born in Kirkintilloch on the 2nd of November, 1881, and he was educated at the Lenzie Academy before going on to Glasgow University, where he studied History and Economics. His politics were formed by Fabian pamphlets and at University, he was a contemporary of Manny Shinwell, ‘Red Clydesider’ James Maxton, and Osborne Henry Mavor, the playwright and surgeon who become known as James Bridie. In 1906, Johnston founded ‘Forward’, a socialist journal that he continued to edit for twenty-seven years. It included his own firebrand journalism in the form of the serialisation of ‘Our Scots Noble Families’. That was an angry denunciation of Scotland's landed gentry and it sold 120,000 copies. Interestingly, when Johnston served on a number of Government Quangos in the late 1940s and ‘50s, he made it his business to buy up all of the remaining copies, so that the aristocrats on those Quangos wouldn’t be able to read the book.

His politics and journalism brought him into contact with many other militant socialists in Glasgow, to whom he first came to notice when he organised the campaign for Keir Hardie, the first leader of the Labour Party, to be made Rector of Glasgow University. He was elected to the Kirkintilloch Council and his approach to politics was immediately apparent when, as a member of the Education Committee, he was given responsibility for evening classes. He made them a sensational success by introducing dancing classes to the programme. He also set himself up as the champion of municipal housing, and became involved in the introduction and development of many other council services.
Johnston left the Council in November, 1922, when he was elected to the House of Commons as the Labour Member of Parliament for Stirling and Clackmannan West. Johnston's electoral history mirrored the rollercoaster ride of the Labour Party between the Wars as he won and lost the Dundee and Stirlingshire constituencies, before being appointed Under-Secretary of State for Scotland when Ramsay MacDonald became Prime Minister for the second time, following the 1929 General Election. In that junior ministerial, Scottish Office role, Johnston was responsible for the decision to evacuate St. Kilda in 1930.

The election of the Labour Government in 1929 coincided with an economic depression and Ramsay MacDonald was faced with the problem of growing unemployment. The majority of his Cabinet, including Johnston, voted against the measures suggested by Sir George May and MacDonald decided to resign. However, he was persuaded to form a Coalition Government and Johnston, a strong opponent of MacDonald's Coalition, lost his Stirling and Clackmannan seat in the 1931 General Election. Johnston returned to the House of Commons in November, 1935, before going on to serve as Secretary of State for Scotland in Winston Churchill's Wartime Government from February 1941 until May 1945.

Johnston was given a fairly free hand in Scotland and countered the influence of the Scottish Nationalists by devolving some of the UK's powers to a Scottish Council of State and a Scottish Council of Industry. He formed the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board in 1943, at a time when only a tiny proportion of people living in the Highlands has mains electricity; less than one per cent outside the main towns. Its role was to harness the vast potential for hydro-electric power, partly for the benefit of the Highlanders, partly to provide power for industry and, with admirable foresight, in order to help safeguard the UK’s long term energy supplies. Johnston became Chairman of the Hydro Board in 1945 and oversaw the development of the schemes that became known as ‘power frae the Glens’. By the time he retired in 1959, around ninety per cent of Highland residents had a mains electricity supply and the area's industrial base had been transformed.

Thomas Johnston died at his home in Milngavie on the 5th of September, 1965.

Lady Naomi Mitchison

Lady Naomi Mitchison, CBE, nurse, writer, freelance journalist, novelist, politician, county councillor, keen botanist, gardener, practical farmer, amateur archaeologist, and notable feminist activist, was born in Edinburgh on the 1st of November, 1897.

Naomi Mitchison, who lived to the grand old age of one hundred and one, was a prolific and popular author who wrote over ninety books in a life and career that spanned the 20th Century. She was, above all, a writer of fiction who wrote many types of novels in an extraordinarily wide range of styles and genres. Her books may not have been always fashionable, but somehow, they keep coming back for more. She wrote historical novels covering Arthurian legend, Scottish history, and social history, and variously set in Celtic, Hellenic or Byzantine times, such as ‘The Bull Calves’ in 1945. She wrote collections of fairy tales, and science fiction or fantasy novels, such as ‘Graeme and the Dragon’ in 1954. Neil Ascherton, in his Guardian obituary, called her ‘the Virginia Woolf of science fiction’, because she was able to transcend the technical stuff of the likes of Asimov and others in a hitherto male dominated genre. She wrote documentary novels set in Scotland or Africa, such as ‘Swan's Road’, also in 1954. And in addition, she wrote a whole range of plays, short stories, poetry, essays, children’s fiction, travel books, history, autobiography, several volumes of memoirs, book reviews, and articles; political and otherwise. She also wrote innumerable articles and reviews for the old ‘Time and Tide’ magazine and the ‘New Statesman’. She was also good at bullying editors or baiting them in their den, having discovered that was often the best way to get an article published.

Many of her short stories have become classics and it is generally agreed that her finest novel, and perhaps the best historical novel of the 20th Century, is ‘The Corn King and the Spring Queen’, which appeared in 1931. The immeasurably readable and moving story, with its theme of defeat, loss and terror, is based on Scythia and the kingdom of Sparta. Its message is one of warning and encouragement for all reformist movements. The Spartans failed in their attempt to introduce the ‘New Age’ and there remains the implication – or a prophecy – that time after time, others will also fail – unless they change their ways. She was a busy bee for sure and crammed a lot into her life, apart from her writing, which was always stamped by her feminist, socially relevant, and socialist perspective. There is always a social commentary in her fairytales and fantasy titles in particular, which is intended to provoke the reader. Somewhere within every title, be it a historical or science fiction tale, you can find her radical ideas. Over and above everything, the purpose of both her writing and her political activities was to try to “make the world a better place”. The theme of ‘New Times’ runs though Mitchison's books, based on some form of ‘Christian Socialism’. She was not a dogmatic socialist, but rather focused on allegory involving themes of ‘discipleship’, ‘brotherhood’ and ‘triumph through sacrifice’ by way of illustration or commentary.

True to her lifelong Fabian socialist principles, her approach was always gradual and reformist, rather than revolutionary. Mitchison was also a Scottish Nationalist and an active campaigner for feminist issues and social reform. As stated in her memoirs, her lack of knowledge about birth control led to her advocacy on the then taboo subjects of contraception and abortion. She was a pioneer of the North Kensington family planning clinic; the first such in the United Kingdom and wasn’t afraid to tackle the subjects in her writing. Her 1935 novel, ‘We Have Been Warned’, tackled abortion and birth control head on. It was censored. Interestingly, Mitchison was a Life Fellow of the ‘Eugenics Education Society’, which was founded in 1908, became the ‘[British] Eugenics Society’ in 1926 and, since 1989, has been known as the ‘Galton Institute’. Because of the connotations surrounding the association of eugenics with Nazi Germany, that mantle seems to sit a little strange on a peace loving, feminist, socialist, anti-Nazi campaigner. However, the institute’s aims appear to be laudable as it aims ‘to promote the public understanding of human heredity and to facilitate informed debate about the ethical issues raised by advances in reproductive technology’. At this point in time, at the beginning 21st Century, developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies have raised many new questions and concerns about the meaning of eugenics – genetic engineering by any other name – and its ethical and moral status.

Naomi Margaret Haldane was born in Edinburgh on the 1st of November, 1897. Much of her young life was spent at Oxford, where she taught herself Latin and Greek, and went to Dragon School. She studied science at St Anne's College at Oxford University where later, she became an Honorary Fellow. However, in 1915, she left to become a Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD) nurse during the First World War. Later, Mitchison stood as a Labour candidate for the Scottish Universities in 1935 and sat on the Argyll County Council as a Labour representative from 1945 to 1966. And for ten years, from 1966-76, she was a member of the Highlands and Islands Development Council. Mitchison was also a peace campaigner who was totally opposed to nuclear weaponry and feared that science would destroy, rather than enrich, mankind. In the 1930s, she campaigned in the United States, because she was worried about sharecroppers. She went to Vienna in 1934, when the Nazis reared their ugly heads and she smuggled letters to Switzerland in her knickers. She was a fervent supporter of the Spanish Popular Front during the Civil War and wrote passionately in 1937, “There is no question for any decent, kindly man or women, …We have to be against Franco and Fascism and for the people of Spain, and the future of gentleness and brotherhood, which ordinary men and women want.” And in 1952, she went to Moscow as a member of the ‘Authors' World Peace Appeal’. Her frank memoirs and her ’39-’45 wartime diary are actually important historical and social documents.

Her life was full of surprises. She once starred in a movie called ‘The Road to Hell’, playing a desperate housewife in a production of the short lived ‘Socialist Film Council’. And extraordinarily in 1963, because she was stranded while travelling – and due to her keen interest in African affairs – she was made ‘Tribal Adviser’ and ‘Mmarona’ (‘Mother’) to the Bakgatla of Botswana. Lady Naomi Mitchison died at her home at Carradale in Kintyre on the 11th of January, 1999.