The Battle of the Clans

The Battle of the Clans occurred on the feast of St. Michael; the 28^th of September, 1396.

There once was a fight that took place on the North Inch at Perth, which would have been more at home in ancient Rome than in medieval Scotland. Evoking images of gladiatorial contests and staged battles, the Battle of the Clans would not have been out of place in the Coliseum. The Battle of the North Inch was the kind of clash of which legends are made and in that respect, it doesn’t disappoint. Some so called facts are debatable, but after Sir Walter Scott got in on the act, its status was assured. Scott immortalised the story in his novel ‘The Fair Maid of Perth’, in which he tells of a thirty-a-side fight to the death that took place in the presence of Scotland’s then ‘Caesar’, Robert III. Nigel Tranter, in ‘A Folly of Princes’, also presents a cracking account of the Clan battle.

Of the opposing Clans, there seems to be no disputing one was Clan Chattan; represented by Mackintosh. Where versions differ is in their opponents. Many accounts state Mackay, whilst Scott refers to Kay or Quhele and sets the date as Palm Sunday. According to Sandy Stevenson on the Tour Scotland website, historian Alexander Mackintosh Shaw, in ‘Clan Battle at Perth’, points out that there was a fight that took place on a Palm Sunday, but that was in 1430. Shaw goes on to state that there is “sound historical ground for the view that the parties to the fight [on the Inch] were Clan Chattan and Clan Cameron.” Sandy states that a Mackay historian backs up Shaw, saying that there are “the most cogent reasons to think that the opponents of the Mackintoshes were the Camerons.”

A historian by the name of Robert Gunn quotes a version in which the combatants are both of Clan Chattan. He refers to an internal feud between MacPherson and Davidson (according to A. M. Shaw, the Clan Chattan federation was composed of MacKintoshes, MacPhersons, Davidsons, MacGillivrays and Macbeans). However, as the account erroneously refers to Robert II, perhaps it can’t be trusted. A Clan Cameron website is backed up by historian William G. A. Shaw of Easter Lair, who credibly and convincingly identifies the Chattan opponents as Camerons. It makes sense when you consider that these two Clans nurtured a feud lasting the best part of four hundred years.

Commenting on the feud, W. G. A. Shaw reports that, around 1340, the Camerons took the Clan Chattan lands of Torcastle by force and soon after tangled again at Drumlui. Then, in 1370 (or 1386), the Camerons of Lochiel fought Clan Mackintosh at the Battle of Invernahavon. Those representatives of Clan Chattan were given a hiding that time, primarily because Clan Mhuirich (Macphersons) left them to it on the day, after a sulk about precedence in battle order. However, the very next day, the federated Clans patched up their differences and took their revenge on the Camerons who were “put to flight.” The feud continued to fester, and in 1389 (or 1391 or 1392), it involved the son of the Wolf of Badenoch, who led a Highland host of Hielantmen, including Chattan, in the Raid of Angus, during which the Battle of Glasclune took place.

That Glasclune action brought Sir David Lindsay of Glen Esk, Overlord of Strathnairn and brother-in-law of the King, into the equation. Walter Ogilvie, the Sheriff of Angus, alongside his half-brother and several other knights and lairds, was killed in the pitched battle, interestingly, proving that Highlanders were a match for armoured chivarly. However, Lindsay arrived in time save the day, albeit he got badly wounded for his trouble. So it was that a few years later, in 1396, with the feud resurfacing, Lindsay and Thomas Dunbar, the Earl of Moray, accompanied the Earl of Carrick in an attempt at restoring order, fearing a destabilising war in “the north of Scotland beyond the mountains” as Bower has it.

As told by Stephen Boardman in ‘The Early Stewart Kings; Robert II and Robert III; 1371-1406’, Bower records that it was Lindsay and Dunbar, who “actually engineered the submission of the two clans to this form of dispute settlement.” Boardman calls the battle “a judicial conflict, presided over by the King,” which was both a royal response to complaints about the “ineffectiveness of royal justice in the north” and “designed to bring the long-running dispute between the two kindreds to an end.” Interestingly, whereas Boardman describes the brutal duel as “a public relations triumph for Robert III,” Stevenson suggests he “weakly assented” and then “lowered himself to be a spectator.”

Under the guidance of the ill-fated Carrick, Lyndsay and Dunbar organised the event, having timber and iron barriers constructed and “making lists for 60 persons fighting on the Inch at Perth” at a cost, according to the Exchequer accounts for 1396, of £14 2s & 10d. The King and his court, including his brother, the Duke of Albany, who effectively governed the Realm, took their positions in the grandstand – the gilded arbour summerhouse of the Dominican Monastery, which overlooked the Inch.

The legendary part of the story has it that one of Clan Chattan was posted missing on the day, through either sickness or fear. Sandy says that “the Mackintosh MS History affirms that one of the clansmen had fallen sick,” but Wyntoun makes no mention of one side lacking a man. The imbalance lends the story another twist. Enter Hal Gow o’ the Wynd to take the place of the absent Mackintosh. Known also as Henry Smith or the Gow-Chrom (crooked Smith), when the Camerons refused to withdraw a man, Hal is supposed to have been recruited for “half a French gold crown” and maintenance for life – if he survived. Wyntoun has no mention of this Perth blacksmith, armourer, saddler or harness-maker that “fought for his own hand,” but both of these dubious, but colourful, elements appear in Bower, no doubt embellished over time.

The 30 combatants on each side, most barely clad in saffron coloured tunics, were armed “with bow and ax, knyff and swerd” and the battle was so bloody and furious that the spectators were seized with “an inexpressible horror.” Tranter has archers on each side firing their allotted “three arrows” before joining in hand-to-hand combat. Sir Walter Scott has the clansmen breaking off at half time for a breather, at which point, around “twenty of both sides lay on the field, dead or dying; arms and legs lopped off, heads cleft to the chin.” At the end of the carnage, Clan Chattan had eleven men (barely) standing, including, apparently, Hal o’ the Wynd. Of the Camerons, only one man remained alive. He is supposed to have fled the field and swam to safety across the silvery Tay.

As a plausible alternative, Tranter has this survivor babbling incoherently whilst being tended to by the Monks and accounts for the missing fighter by having him swim the river at the outset, at the instigation of the machiavellian Albany. Tranter’s artistic licence also has Shaw Beg MacFarquhar leading Clan Chattan, with Gilchrist MacIan in command of those he calls Cumming (Comyn). (W. G. A.) Shaw records more accurately no doubt, that the leader of Clan Chattan was Shaw MacGilchrist MacIain Mackintosh, whom he goes on to say died in 1405 and was buried in Rothiemurchus Kirk.

John Damian

John Damian, alchemist, attempted self powered flight from the ramparts of Stirling Castle on the 27th of September, 1507.

At the beginning of the 16th Century in Scotland, John Damian became the Alchemist in Chief to King James IV. Back in those medieval days, science was a mixture of the known and the unknown, with the latter being the subject of many a wild imagining. Difficult to imagine that nowadays, with all the wonderful advancements made by scientists across the world, but folks still believe in gods and fairies at the bottom of gardens. In any case, throughout Europe, as counterpoint to the apothecaries, who knew what they were doing, were the alchemists, who knew what they wanted to do. Amongst these shadier figures, you can number some famous personages, such as Nostradamus and even Leonardo da Vinci.

The alchemists were seeking a much sought after object – the Philosopher’s Stone. The subject would make a great movie, perhaps something on the lines of ‘Romancing the Stone’ or an episode from the ‘Indiana Jones’ series. The ‘Stone’ was a magical, mythical artefact, said to possess the ability to change base metals into gold. It could also, if mixed judiciously with wine, produce the ‘quinta essencia’ – the ‘quintessence’ or the ‘fifth essence’ or, in other words, the ‘Elixir of Life’. Come to think of it, maybe H. Rider Haggard wrote the book. Anyway, the main ingredients for the Philosopher’s Stone were known to be gold, silver and quicksilver and the elusive ‘Elixir’ was said to provide a cure-all for most illnesses.

James IV shared in the superstitions of the age and his romantic nature led him to encourage the study of alchemy and the occult sciences. King James patronised various alchemists, one of which was John Damian, who was referred to as “the French leich (leech)” by the poet, William Dunbar, in his ‘Remonstrance’. Dunbar, who was reckoned to be the chief poet of Scotland before Burns and was himself patronised by James IV, denounced the luxury and vice of the clergy and other charlatans, albeit a trifle hypocritically, as his own life was no great example. Maybe Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount found some inspiration from Dunbar? In addition, there are Treasury accounts from the period that show numerous payments for the ‘quinta essencia’, including wages to the persons employed and sums paid for various kinds of utensils and materials.

Also in existence is a letter from James IV to a Master James Inglis, in which is stated, “We graciously accept your kindness, by which in a letter brought to us you signify that you have beside you certain books learned in the philosophy of the true Alchemy, and that although most worthy men have sought them from you, you have nevertheless with difficulty kept them for our use, because you had heard of our enthusiasm for the art. We bring you thanks …and we have sent our familiar, Master James Merchenistoun, to you, that he may see to the transfer hither of those books which you wish us to have.”

James IV, an otherwise intelligent monarch, was clearly interested, if not excited, by the potential of alchemy and that led to his appointing John Damian to his Court. Damian was a foreigner, who came from somewhere in mainland Europe. John Read, in ‘Humour and Humanism in Chemistry’ described Damian as an “ingenious and personable foreigner” who came from “either Italy or France”. Under the patronage of James IV and at no little cost, Damian set up a laboratory in Stirling Castle, sometime around the turn of the 16th Century. It was the first such laboratory in Scotland; the first for which there is documentary evidence, in any case, but as the activities of alchemists went on in secrecy, for the most part, there were likely several more before, during and after.

Damian and his like, who were known to many Courtiers, such as Dunbar, for example, were disliked. It’s probably stretching it a bit to say Damian had made enemies at Court, but in those days, petty jealousies often gained more substance than the bare facts suggest should’ve been the case. There were vast sums of money sunk into Damian’s and the King’s pet project. According to a 2006 article by Diane Maclean, ‘The Alchemist who thought he could fly’, meticulous treasury accounts show payments for a damask gown and a tapestry bed, along with flasks, cauldrons, glass and ingredients. Those ingredients included gold, silver and quicksilver as well as several other substances, expensively imported from elsewhere in Europe. Damian also had a fondness for ‘uisge beatha’ – in other words, Scotch whisky, which figured on his regular expenses.

You can deduce from all of that, Damian had a fairly decent lifestyle in addition to the outgoings occurred purely by virtue of his eccentric pastime. Maclean pointedly suggests he was clearly “spending copiously in his desire to find the ‘Elixir of Life’.” James IV held Damian in such high esteem that he appointed him to the position of Abbot of Tongland and that between 1502 and 1508, he was given periodic leave of absence to travel the Continent, visiting other centres of alchemy, in a bid to extend his knowledge. It may have been during one of those trips that Damian got the idea of man powered flight. It has been suggested that he was influenced by his fellow Italian (unless Damian was French), the man himself, Leonardo da Vinci.

Whatever the source of his idea, on the night of 27th of September, 1507, appropriately under a full moon, John Damian was ready to have a go at flying. He must’ve been fairly well obsessed with the notion of mechanical flight and sufficiently convinced to risk his life in experiment, but such was the nature of ‘questers’. Damian had fashioned a pair of wings, just like Icarus, and similarly taking a leap of faith, he threw himself from the battlements of Stirling Castle. The gods of alchemy must’ve been on Damian’s side as he miraculously survived – have you seen where Stirling Castle is situated?  Damian suffered a broken thigh bone, bad enough, but not fatal. In a description of the incident, Bishop Leslie wrote, “This Abbot tuik in hand to flie with wingis …and to that effect he causet mak ane pair of wingis of fedderis,” and finished off with a gleefully unkind comment about his broken leg.

Damian blamed the inclusion of hen feathers in his ‘wings’ and bemoaned the lack of the eagle plumage that he had ordered. Guess what, Damian was of the opinion that the hen feathers were attracted to the ground and not to the sky like those of the eagle. Separated by several centuries, John Read was more complimentary than the Bishop, applauding Damian for having attempted “the first serious flying experiment ever made in Scotland, if not, indeed, in the whole history of experimental flight.” Obviously, Read had never read of Icarus.

In 1508, Damian was financed for a five-year leave of absence on the Continent, but by the time he got back to Scotland, his patron was dead; killed at. the Battle of Branxton Moor. James’ death on Flodden Field put paid to Damian’s quasi-scientific experiments, for the good of the Treasury, if not for anything else.

Jessie Kesson

Jessie Kesson, author, playwright and producer, died on the 26th of September, 1994.

Jessie Kesson is arguably most famous for her first novel, the semi-autobiographical ‘The White Bird Passes’, which was made into an award-winning film in 1980. However, she is probably equally well known for ‘Another Time, Another Place’, which was made into what one review called a ‘popular film’, but was, in fact, a prize-winning film. When all is said and done Jessie Kesson is, along with Lewis Grassic Gibbon, one of Scotland’s finest and best loved authors. It should come as no surprise to learn that ‘The White Bird Passes’ made it to the list of 100 Best Scottish Books of all Time, which puts Jessie on a par with the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, John Galt and James Leslie Mitchell (Gibbon). Jessie Kesson had to do it the hard way, but her experiences inspired her writing, which was of the highest quality. According to a review by Alistair Campbell, it was Jessie Kesson’s “authenticity …earthy humour …her deep feelings for …the human condition that make [her] outstanding and important to the development of Scottish writing.

Although popular anecdotes exist about Jessie being encouraged to write following a chance meeting with Nan Shepherd on a train in 1941, according to Catriona M. Low, writing on the website dedicated to the author, Jessie Kesson was already being published, most notably in the ‘North-East Review’. Her poem ‘Fir Wud’ was written in 1940 and Jessie became a contributor to the Scots Magazine, before she was encouraged by Shepherd to enter a short story competition, which Jessie won and which led to her being invited to write for BBC Radio in Aberdeen. Throughout the 1940s and ‘50s Jessie wrote plays and programmes for the BBC radio and television as well as writing poetry and newspaper feature articles. Jessie’s writing was drawn from her hard experiences in the rural communities of north-east Scotland in the early part of the 20th Century and she had a fondness for her native dialect as evidenced when she said, “It’s the Scottish words I love. The language seems to have more strength.” Of course, she was right.

When Janie, in ‘The White Bird Passes’, declares that she doesn’t “want to work on a farm” and that she wants to write poetry, “Great poetry. As great as Shakespeare,” rather than writing the words as from her character, it is something that Jessie herself could have said; substituting ‘great poetry’ for ‘great novels’. The entry in the ‘100 Best Books’ describes Kesson’s compassionate and indomitable siding with the ‘ootlin’ (outsider) and suggests that is a recurrent theme in her writing. Isobel Murray, who wrote a biography of Jessie Kesson, called ‘Writing Her Life’, also refers to ‘ootlins’ in an interview, in which Jessie is quoted as saying, “Every work I’ve ever written contains an ‘ootlin’ – lovely Aberdeenshire word; somebody that never really fitted into the thing ...It’s always about people who don’t fit in.” Jessie has assuredly ‘fitted in’ to the pantheon of great Scottish writers, recognised also by Scotland’s Creative Writing Centre, the Moniack Mhor at Kiltarlity in Inverness-shire, where there is now a Jessie Kesson Residency Program, which has been established to raise awareness of Jessie’s writing. 

Professor Isobel Murray also wrote that “To say that Jessie Kesson’s life was ‘complicated’ would be an understatement” and of her early years, that Kesson’s experiences were such that would have made “even such childhoods as Charles Dickens’ look tame.” Murray states that Kesson sharply dismissed suggestions that she was a feminist writer but goes on to say that the evidence of her books “clearly shows an abiding determination to reveal the situations of women in more or less oppressed situations.” Much of that oppression stemmed from the nature of society in her day – it’s not easy to be an ‘ootlin’, but it’s easier to understand after you’ve read one of Jessie’s books.

Jessie Grant Macdonald was born an illegitimate child in an Inverness ‘puirhouse’ (workhouse) on the 29th of October, 1916. Jessie then lived in Elgin until 1924, when she was removed from her mother’s care by a Court and sent to Proctor’s Orphanage, near Skene. At school in Skene, Jessie was encouraged in her love of writing by the Dominie and she did well in her exams. In fact, she did so well that the Dominie bought her books and was set to coach her for a place at Aberdeen University. Tragically, however, the Trustees of the Orphanage, with the myopia typical of the day, decided a university education would be wasted on a girl. So it was that, in 1932, puir Jessie was seemingly condemned to a life of domestic service, into which she then had no option but to enter. Her frustration at her fate led to a nervous breakdown, which was diagnosed as neurasthenia, and she spent a year in a mental hospital, before being sent to a croft near Loch Ness to recuperate.

In a croft at Abriachan, above the western shore of Loch Ness, Jessie met Johnnie Kesson, whom she married in 1934. Johnnie’s career as a Baillie then took them to a cottar house at Westertown, near Rothienorman, and later, during the war, to the Black Isle. In 1945, Jessie did her first radio piece for the BBC as the family (she now had two children; one of each) moved from farm to farm in the vicinity of Elgin, where her mother remained, desperately ill. After her mother died in 1949, Jessie went to London to ‘seek her fortune’. In London, Jessie took a variety of jobs, including working in a hospital, a cinema, in Woolworths and as an artists’ model, where she posed nude for classes at an art college. According to www.jessiekesson.com that latter was her favourite as Jessie is recorded as having said that was, “the only time in my life I got paid for standing or sitting and simply thinking my own thoughts.”

After the BBC accepted her play ‘Forty Acres Fallow’, Jessie sent for her family and, thereafter, they lived in London, although she never forgot her roots in the north-east of Scotland. As well as a becoming a social worker, a career which spanned nearly twenty years, Jessie worked for the BBC, producing ‘Woman’s Hour’ and over 90 radio and TV plays. Jessie Grant Kesson died in London on the 26th of September, 1994.

Surrender of Ferniehirst Castle

Ferniehirst Castle surrendered to an English army on the 24th of September, 1523.

The border country between Scotland and England was once known as ‘the Debatable Lands’ and, somewhat contrary to images conjured up by ‘Border Minstrels’ and the ‘Border Ballads’ of Sir Walter Scott and John Leyden, the valleys of Tweeddale and Teviotdale held a harsh environment. For centuries, warfare was common in the ‘Ridings’ as the English and Scots took turns invading each other. On the Scottish side, the fortified ‘pele’ castles in the Cheviot Hills, protected by the ‘Free Lances’ of Borders barons, such as the Homes, Maxwells, Kerrs and Rutherfords, held the balance of power. Those peles included the likes of Roxburgh, Smailholm Tower, Cessford – and Ferniehirst, the home of the Kerrs. On the English side, opposing the Kerrs and their like, were the [in]famous northern families of the Dacres and Percys; equally rapacious.

From the point of view of the rulers of England and Scotland, the Borders were effectively a buffer zone, but the dangers from granting (assuming they had any effective control) too much autonomy to these local barons were more obvious on the Scots side, since the Border was only fifty miles from Edinburgh, but over a week away from London. Many a Scots King could vouch for that. A certain amount of order was intended to prevail following the ‘Laws of the Marches’ agreed between the two countries in 1249. As a result, the border region was divvied up into East, West and Middle Marches, on either side, with each to be administered by a Warden, however, the first Wardens weren’t appointed until 1297. The Kerrs of Ferniehirst served as Wardens of the Middle March in Scotland, with appropriate judicial and military authority.

Providing protection and meting out justice frequently got mixed up – or interfered – with the (now romanticised and legendary) practice of ‘reiving’ across the border. Raids were made on either side by what amounted to troops of light cavalry, which expertise provided a force of superb fighting men when they could be legitimately harnessed by a Scottish army. Writing in ‘The Border Reivers’, Godfrey Watson suggested that these men played a constant game of musical chairs, ‘lifting’ one another’s sheep, cows and horses. Justice was rough, with opponents being captured and summarily executed; drowning or hanging being not uncommon, albeit prisoner exchanges or ransom were also common. Neither was it uncommon for Borderers to ‘go a reiving’ against their neighbours and fellow, but there was more satisfaction to be gained from ‘lifting’ English cattle and prolonging generations old feuds. At least; according to legend.

Watson’s game of ‘musical chairs’ was brought to an end by the Union of Crowns, in 1603, but back in the 16th Century, Ferniehirst still rang to the clamour of battle. The Kerrs of Ferniehirst, under Sir Andrew Kerr, fought for James IV at the Battle of Flodden, in 1513, but unlike his contemporaries, he cannot be listed amongst the fallen commemorated in Jean Eliot’s ballad, ‘The Floo’ers o’ the Forest (are a’ wede awa’)’. 

In fact, Sir Andrew, known as 'Dand', survived for a good many years as he appears to have died in 1545, at Oxnam Tower, of wounds received at the Battle of Ancrum Moor, earlier in that year.

James was vulnerable, because of his minority and the ever present struggle for power amongst the Scottish nobles at the time. That struggle was aided and abetted by Henry VIII of England. The cross border turmoil continued the Anglo-Scottish Wars, with the attack on Ferniehirst, in 1523, being bracketed by the Flodden campaign of James IV and the Solway campaign of James V, who was just seventeen months old when his father was killed. During James’ minority, Scotland was ruled by a succession of Regents. His mother, Margaret Tudor, sister to Henry VIII, ruled until she married Archibald Douglas, the 6th Earl of Angus. Then the Regency was taken up by John Stewart, the 2nd Duke of Albany, who was in fact next in line to the throne.

In 1525, the Douglas Earl took custody of James and held him a virtual prisoner for three years, exercising power on his behalf. Coincident with that, peaceful relations were restored between England and Scotland, partly because Henry VIII began to fear that the disorders he had provoked in Scotland would spill over into England and give his northern barons food for rebellious thought. Incidentally, another Kerr, he of Cessford, was killed by Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch’s men in a skirmish at Darnick, near Melrose, in 1526, whilst Scott was attempting James’ rescue. The young King finally escaped from his stepfather’s care in 1528 and assumed the reins of government, besieging Tantallon Castle and forcing the Douglases into exile.

The origins of the castellation at Ferniehirst might well date back to over 700 years ago, but there was definitely a castle of some kind at Ferniehirst in 1445. Various histories indicate that the ancestral home of the Kerrs, sometimes spelt Firnihirst, Ferniherst or Ferniehurst, was built on the remains of that earlier foundation, either in 1470, 1476 or 1490, by Sir Thomas Kerr. Ferniehirst, in its position above the Jed Water, commanded the main Middle March invasion route across the Border, but, unlike say, Stirling, it was concealed by trees and the lie of the land. Today, approaching from nearby Jedburgh, you can still see an ancient ‘hanging tree’, albeit it’s now split in half.

In his irksome campaign of 1523, the Earl of Surrey besieged Ferniehirst as a major part of his onslaught against Jedburgh. He sent Lord Dacre with 800 men and several pieces of cannon to reduce the castle, but the stout resistance of the Kerrs meant he almost bit off more than he could chew. After suffering significant losses and only made possible by the heavy ordnance at his disposal, Dacre received the surrender of Ferniehirst on the 24th of September, 1523. According to the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII (iii, pt.2, no. 3364) Ferniehirst Castle was ‘thrown down’ and in writing to Cardinal Wolsey after its sacking, Surrey paid tribute to its stout defenders. The Earl wrote, “I assure your Grace I found the Scots at this time the boldest men and the hottest that ever I saw any nation.” Surrey went on to add, “They found hardy men that went nae back for theym, though after long skirmyshing and moche difficutie, gat for the ordynance within the house, and threw down the same.”

After pulling down Ferniehirst, Surrey’s English army, with a taste for such destruction, proceeded to torch the Abbey at Jedburgh. The Castle at Ferniehirst was rebuilt, but attacked and destroyed on several occasions during the next 100 years. It was besieged by the French in 1549, then, in 1570, it was attacked and burned by the English, only to be rebuilt once more until demolished by James VI in 1593 on the grounds that the Earl of Bothwell had found succour therein.

Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, Whig politician, reformer, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, was born on the 19th of September, 1778.

Henry Peter Brougham rose from relative obscurity as a rather flamboyant, but otherwise unremarkable advocate in 19th Century Scotland, to high legal office in the ‘mother’ of all Parliaments. However, apart from being the designer of the ‘Brougham’, a four wheeled, horse drawn carriage, his main claim to fame is his advocacy for the abolition of slavery; that abominable condition afflicted on less well endowed members of the human race by those in the Empire and the Colonies who scarcely deserved the label as its most civilised. When you think of major figures involved in the abolition of slavery, you might come up with the likes of Abraham Lincoln and William Wilberforce. Wilberforce’s 1791 speech introducing the first Parliamentary Bill against the slave trade is stirring and emotional as befits the evangelist he was, but for all the success of his abolitionist efforts, he was a bit of a wimp when it came to facing down the men of rank who held power.

Contrast Lincoln’s utterances on slavery with that of Wilberforce or Brougham, who was a pallbearer at Wilberforce’s funeral. As Monroe H. Freedman wrote in a 2007 Hofstra Law Review article, Lincoln is known to have said that he had never been “in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” On the other hand, Brougham’s famous 1838 speech to the House of Lords, in a debate on negro emancipation, which you can find in Hansard for the 20th of February, 1838 (vol 40 cc1284-360), is a pearl of rhetoric in support of liberty. In that speech, Brougham said, “The time has come… The slave… is as fit for his freedom as any English peasant, aye or any Lord whom I now address. I demand his rights: I demand his liberty without stint. …I demand that your brother be no longer trampled upon as your slave!”

He had a way with words, did Henry Peter Brougham, right from the beginning. His biographer, Michael Lobban, wrote of Brougham that “Although he enjoyed the scope which advocacy gave to his rhetorical skills, and used them daringly to spar with and irritate judges, his showmanship attracted no more than the occasional poor client.” Brougham had shown himself to have been an argumentative sort from as early as the age of seven, when he was sent to the High School of Edinburgh. According to G. F. A. Baer, in ‘The Champion of Popular Education’, one day, in a Latin class, Brougham was punished for his ‘impertinence’ in defending his point. Brougham maintained that he was perfectly right and the very next day, he appeared with books and, before the whole class, forced the Master, Luke Fraser, to acknowledge that he had made a mistake.

Continuing the theme, Brougham is also supposed to be the holder of the record for speaking in the House of Commons. Mr. Nicholas Bennett (M. P. for Pembroke) is on record in Hansard of the 8th of May, 1989, referring to Brougham having spoken, on the 7th of February, 1828, for six solid hours on the subject of law reform. Funnily enough, the same Hansard has no record of any contributions made by Mr. Henry Brougham in 1828. During the period when he was recorded by Hansard, in both Houses, Brougham was also actively involved in educational reform. In 1826, he helped Charles Knight establish the short lived Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and supported the Ragged Schools Union, formed in 1844 and dedicated to the free education of destitute children. However, his Parliamentary Bills on education, between 1820 and 1839, were all defeated.

Brougham also gained notable success with the written word when, back in Edinburgh, in 1802, he and some mates founded ‘The Edinburgh Review’. Brougham contributed thirty-five articles to the journal, which presented his radical political opinions and dealt with issues of social reform. The ‘Review’ was a great success, becoming one of the most influential political publications of the 19th Century. During that period, Brougham also wrote a book entitled ‘An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers’, in which he began his active campaign against the slave trade.

Brougham’s first great parliamentary speech, in 1810, was on the issue of slavery and his successful 1811 Bill, which made it a felony to trade in slaves, was far a more effective sanction than those of Wilberforce’s ‘Abolition of the Slave Trade Act’. After years of Acts and Bills and campaigning, 1838 was a watershed year in the abolition of slavery and when he branded compulsory apprenticeship as “another name for slavery” in the House of Lords on the 29th of March, Brougham couldn’t know that over a hundred years later, in 1973, Jack Gratus in ‘The Great White Lie’ would comment that, “the highest legal authority in the land [Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham] condemned fifty years of parliamentary inactivity …for the fraud it was.”

Henry Peter Brougham was born in Edinburgh, on the 19th of September, 1778. At the age of seven, wee Henry went to the Edinburgh High School and, when precisely twice that age, he became a student at the University of Edinburgh. At first, Henry studied science and mathematics, and presented a paper, ‘Experiments and Observations of the Infection, Reflection and Colours of Light’, to the Royal Society. In 1800, Brougham joined the University’s Faculty of Advocates and was soon called to the Scottish Bar. However, he soon came to believe that his radical politics were going to be a limiting factor in his career as an Advocate in Scotland, and so, in 1804, he moved to London.

Having already gained a reputation from his progressive views, Brougham joined the Whig Party to run its 1807 General Election press campaign. With that first taste of politics, Brougham was able to put aside his distaste for patronage and accepted the seat of Camelford, which was the gift of the Duke of Bedford, in 1810. He lost the seat two years later, because the Duke had to sell Camelford, and took on the centre of the slave trade by standing as a candidate in Liverpool. He lost to George Canning and was without a seat for the next four years, before getting the vacant seat of Winchelsea, a ‘pocket borough’ under the gift of the Earl of Darlington. Brougham then set about becoming the Whigs’ most effective parliamentary speaker and leading radical. He was outspoken over the Peterloo Massacre and, while still active as a lawyer, in 1812, he had practiced what he preached, in successfully defending thirty-eight handloom weavers who had been arrested while trying to form a trade union. He became Lord Chancellor in 1830.

Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, died at at Château Eleanor-Louise in Cannes, in France, on the 24th of May, 1868. He was buried in the cemetery of the town he had put on the map, having established Cannes as ‘the sanatorium of Europe’ after stumbling on what was, in 1835, little more than a picturesque fishing village. Brougham bought some land there, on which he built, and now, if you stroll along the Promenade des Anglais on the Cannes waterfront, you will come across his statue, opposite the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.

John Elder

John Elder, marine engineer and shipbuilder, died on the 17th of September, 1869.

John Elder wasn’t his father’s eldest son, but that didn’t stop him becoming the most famous. From a family tradition going back some generations, the elder Elder took that kindred expertise as wood wrights into the shipbuilding industry and to working with iron. As a shipwright, John Elder’s father was responsible for several inventions and improvements to the machinery of steam vessels. The younger Elder was undoubtedly his father’s son and followed a similar, but far more successful path, of inventing and shipbuilding. John Elder also followed his father into the employ of another father; James Robert Napier, the ‘father’ of Clydeside shipbuilding. A man who was unlikely to have been a father, the lifelong bachelor, William John Macquorn Rankine, Regius Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at Glasgow University, once described John Elder as an engineer of singular genius. That intellect enabled Elder to make loads of improvements in the field of marine engines, for which we should be grateful.

Elder’s greatest achievement and that which made him famous was the invention, in 1854, of the compound steam marine engine (combined high and low pressure engines). The great thing about Elder’s development was that, by recycling and using the same steam twice, it resulted in far greater fuel efficiency. A fuel saving of the order of thirty or forty percent was achieved and, through using less coal, Elder’s engine enabled longer voyages with increased cargoes. In effect, Elder’s marine engine had a phenomenal impact in opening up the shipping trade. He went on to make further improvements and refinements in fuel consumption, reductions in friction and increases in power output. Not content with that, Elder continued experimenting with the development of triple and quadruple expansion engines, which ultimately had a profound influence on marine engine design.

In terms of industrial relations and as an employer, Elder was also a bit of an innovator. He was decidedly progressive and ahead of his time in being concerned with the welfare of his workers, and became involved in schemes for their social, intellectual, and religious welfare, including contributing to a sick fund. He had contemplated the building of schools and tied houses for his workforce, but his untimely death put paid to those ideas. After Elder’s firm moved to the Fairfield Shipyard in Govan, the reputation it gained as one of the world’s leading shipbuilding and marine engineering firms, helped to put ‘Fairfields’ and the expression ‘Clyde-built’ into the public consciousness.

John Elder was born in Glasgow on the 8th of March, 1824. During his formative years, wee Johnnie was educated at Glasgow’s High School, where he studied mathematics and technical drawing. He is also supposed to have attended classes at the University of Glasgow, but in any case, he was later apprenticed to the aforementioned Robert Napier, where he learned his trade, including a spell abroad; down south in an English engine works. Back in Glasgow and at the end of a five year apprenticeship, Elder was made Head of the Drawing Office in Napier’s engineering works.

In 1852, Elder became a partner of Charles Randolph, with his expertise helping Randolph’s firm of millwrights to diversify into marine engineering. From Randolph & Elliott of Tradeston, the new partnership formed Randolph, Elder & Co., and in 1858, with the business thriving, acquired a shipbuilding yard in Govan. The first ship was built in 1861 and two years after that, the firm moved to the Fairfield Shipyard on the site of the former Fairfield farm at Govan on the Clyde, where Randolph and Elder employed up to 4,000 men. Five years after that, in 1868, when the partnership expired, Elder became sole partner and his firm went from strength to strength as the saying goes. Later, by 1886, some years after his death, Elder’s very successful legacy had grown into what was then renamed the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company; owned by Sir William Pearce.

John Elder died of liver disease on the 17th of September, 1869, after an illness lasting several months. Elder died in London, where he had gone to get the best medical advice, but that availed him not. He might have been cheered up at the time by the news of his having been unanimously elected as President of the Institute of Engineers and Ship Builders in Scotland. However, Elder died before he was able to attend his presentation. Elder’s election for session 1869-70 was a great honour as his notable predecessors included both Rankine and Napier. Rankine was re-elected for a second term to replace poor Elder. After his death, the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company was renamed John Elder & Co in his memory.

Also in his memory and to perpetuate his name and legacy, the Chair of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow is named for John Elder. His widow, Isabella, was the benefactor who endowed the professorship and she was also responsible for the creation of Elder Park in Glasgow, as a monument to her shipbuilder husband. Elder’s wife bought 37 acres of land opposite Fairfield’s shipyard and had it laid out as a public park. The park opened in 1885 to give the people of Govan a “healthful recreation by music and amusement.” A statue of John Elder stands in the park, beside one of the compound engines that underpinned Fairfield’s success. Fittingly, the park also boasts a statue of Mrs. Elder, who appears to have been quite a character in her own right.

The arrival of the ‘Hector’ in Pictou

The emigrant ship ‘Hector’ arrived in Pictou, Nova Scotia, on the 15th of September, 1773.

When you come across a town with the name of Pictou, you’d think for sure that the place was in Scotland; home of the Caledonian warrior race known to the invading Romans as the Pictii – the Painted People. But you’d be wrong – at least in part. The name Pictou might have come from the old French province of Poictou. On the other hand, it may have come from the indigenous Mikmaqs, who called the area Pictook, which apparently means ‘exploding gas’ – from the Foord seam in the Pictou Coalfield. Whatever the origins of its name, there is a real Scottish connection as the place is known as ‘the birthplace of New Scotland’. Pictou got that label, because it was a key destination for many emigrant Scots. The Canadian-Scottish Diaspora before, during and after the Highland Clearances, has been termed ‘the Great Scottish Immigration’.

The first Scottish immigrants to Canada are said to have arrived in Pictou in 1773, on board the ‘Hector’, but there had been Scots in Nova Scotia long before then, as well as English and French and Irish. In 1621, James VI & I granted a large area of the north-eastern coast of North America to the Earl of Stirling, Sir William Alexander of Menstrie. The King’s Royal Charter, written in Latin, of course, is where the name of Nova Scotia comes from. In 1629, the Earl’s son, also Sir William, set off for Port Royal “with a fleet of four vessels containing seventy men and two women.” They established their settlement at what is now called Annapolis Royal, but during its first winter, thirty of them perished due to “scurvy and other diseases.” The remainder were ‘sold down the river’ by the combination of the Treaty of Susa and French promises to pay up on Queen Henrietta’s dowry. In 1631, Charles I told the Earl of Stirling to hand Acadia back to the French and so the Earl had to remove his people and order them “to leave the bounds thereof altogether waste and unpeopled as it was when his son first landed there.”

In 1660, the French trader, Nicolas Denys, christened the harbour ‘La reviere de Pictou’ after he had been given sole exploratory rights to the Gulf of St. Lawrence territory from Canso to the Gaspe, including Cape Breton Island and the islands. A century or so later, in 1767, the year after the Philadelphia Company of Pennsylvania was awarded 200,000 acres via the ‘Philadelphia Grant’, six families of English settlers arrived to establish the first British settlement in what is now Pictou County. In 1770, the adjacent ‘McNutt’ or ‘Irish Grant’ was abandoned, but by January of that year, there were 120 ‘souls’ living in Pictou and ready to greet the arrival of the ‘first’ Scots. Amongst those is said to have been surveyor, John Patterson, who is credited with being the founder of Pictou, but funnily enough, there was a John Patterson amongst the folks who sailed from Scotland.

The ‘Hector Scots’ were enticed to Pictou by the Rev. John Witherspoon, born in East Lothian and famous as one of the Scottish signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence, after having emigrated in 1768. Witherspoon, with John Pagan, a merchant from Greenock, and some others from Pennsylvania, bought land rights in Pictou and hired a guy called John Ross, from Loch Broom, to act as their agent. Ross offered free passage, a year’s worth of free provisions and a farm to attract settlers. Ten people boarded at Greenock, and 179 at Loch Broom; the total comprising 23 families and 25 single men. One of the latter was an unnamed piper, who went aboard the ‘Hector’ at the last minute. According to Donald MacKay, in his ‘Scotland Farewell: The People of the Hector’, the settlers were poor and “illiterate crofters and artisans from Northern [Scotland], who only spoke Gaelic.” However, one passenger was the school teacher, William McKenzie, who spoke both Gaelic and English. There are other reports that the would-be settlers included “farmers, artisans, gentlemen’s sons, and herders.”

The ‘Hector’ was a full-rigged (three-masted), 85 foot, 200 ton Dutch Fluyt, which had already seen 20 years’ service as a cargo vessel. Owned by Pagan and captained by John Spears, it had also already been used to carry a batch of Scots emigrants to Boston in 1770. However, its departure from Loch Broom, on or about the 8th of July, 1773, signalled its maiden voyage to Canada. An ex-cargo ship wasn’t the best means of crossing the Atlantic, even for folks from the West of Scotland who were used to boats and the sea. Instead of the anticipated six weeks, the voyage took eleven weeks, during which the ancient, rotting boat was battered by storms, with one gale, off Newfoundland, causing a 14-day delay. The passengers, too, were beaten down by the conditions. Over a third of those huddled in the wet and stinking hold aboard the Hector were below the age of eight. Tragically, smallpox and dysentery claimed the lives of 18 infants and children, although there is a story that those who survived included a baby born on the voyage.

The Hector landed at Brown’s Point, west of present-day Pictou, on the 15th of September, 1773, with the poor, surviving emigrants from Scotland struggling ashore to the skirl of the bagpipes. They may have been greeted by John Patterson, but that was all they got; a hearty welcome. They didn’t get the promised year’s supply of provisions and there weren’t any homes or even shelters built. Nor was there land cleared and waiting and, on the cusp of autumn, it was well past the time for planting crops. In fact, the lands allocated to the immigrants were three miles off in what was still forest. Keen on fishing, just as they’d been able to do back in Loch Broom, the settlers refused those lands and, when supplies did arrive, Witherspoon’s men refused in turn to hand them over. Deceived and cruelly dealt with, the Scots might well have said, “We’ll nae stand fer that!” and seized the meager stores.

As a descendent of the ‘Hector Scots’, Alexander MacKenzie, wrote years later, in 1883, “Most of them sat down in the forest and wept bitterly; hardly any provisions were possessed by the few who were before them, and what there was among them was soon devoured.” Of the 180 people that arrived in Pictou onboard the ‘Hector’, only 78 were to be counted at Pictou the following year. In a history of Nova Scotia by Peter Landry, a Professor Bailyn is referenced having estimated that, in 1774, there were a total of sixteen families at Pictou. By November of 1775, there were 53 families. Some of the Loch Broom arrivals had moved on to more settled parts of the province, but an intrepid bunch toughed it out and, from the uncultivated wilderness, carved out their new existence, clearing the forest and planting crops.

In the hundred years following the arrival of the ‘Hector’ more than 120 ships brought nearly 20,000 settlers from Scotland to Pictou. By 1879, more than ninety-three percent of the region’s rural property owners were of Scottish extraction. Today, it is estimated that there are more than 140,000 descendants of the ‘Hector Scots’ living in Canada and the United States. An exact replica of the ‘Hector’ is now moored in Pictou Harbour. It was rebuilt to the exact specification of the original vessel and launched on Saturday, the 16th of September, 2000.