3 September 1650
The Battle of Dunbar fought between the English New Model Army of Oliver
Cromwell and the mostly lowland Scottish force led by David Leslie.
After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, the Scots proclaimed his
son King Charles II and rejected Cromwell's appeals to unite with the
anti-royalist commonwealth government of England. In July 1650, Cromwell
invaded with 16,000 men and tried unsuccessfully to link up with an
English supply fleet at several coastal sites. Hemmed in by Scots, he
was forced to retreat with his outnumbered, ill supplied, and sick army
to port city of Dunbar. Unfortunately, the Scots army was riddled with
dissent and purged of its best soldiers by overzealous Covenanting
ministers. Goaded to attack rather than attempting to starve Cromwell
into submission, Leslie's 20,000 men were routed by Cromwell's more
disciplined and better-led army. The Scots suffered about 3,000 killed
and 10,000 taken prisoner, with many of the latter forced into labor in
England or deported to the American colonies and the West Indies.
English losses were minimal and Cromwell was established in Edinburgh by
the end of the year.
3 September 1651
The Battle of Worcester, the last of the English civil wars, fought
between an invading Scottish army commanded by King Charles II and an
English army, including militia, under Oliver Cromwell. Following the
defeat at Dunbar, the Scots rebuilt their army by enlisting many
Catholic Highlanders but found Cromwell too firmly entrenched in lowland
Scotland. Charles gambled on royalist support in England and launched a
desperate march with 12,000 men in an attempt to reach London while
Cromwell was distracted in Scotland. Lackluster support and English
pursuit forced Charles to divert his army to Worcester, a former
royalist stronghold, in the West Country near the Welsh border. About
4,000 recruits were obtained there and his now 16,000 men were
confronted by Cromwell and some 27,000 English soldiers. The latter,
especially the cavalry and including the militia, performed with their
usual skill and, as at Dunbar exactly one year before, the unfortunate
Scots were slaughtered. Some 2,000 were killed with 6,000 to
10,000 prisoners treated in similar fashion to those taken at Dunbar.
Charles himself, much like his great nephew 'Bonnie' Prince Charlie 95
years later, made a daring escape which eventually took him to safety in
France. Unlike his great nephew though, Charles II was restored to power
in 1660 following the death of Cromwell.
6 September 1876
Birth of John James Richard MacLeod, physiologist and discoverer of
Insulin, near Dunkeld, Perthshire. Educated in Medicine at both Aberdeen
and Leipzig universities, he moved successively to London, the United
States, and Toronto, Canada. He undertook significant research on
carbohydrate metabolism, and, later joined by Frederick Banting and
Charles Best, initiated a program to examine the role of the pancreas in
the body's regulation of sugar levels. The resulting discovery of
Insulin led to the awarding of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Medicine to the
three men. There was some ambiguity as to MacLeod's exact role in this
important discovery and he was subjected to some criticism. In 1928, he
returned to Aberdeen University as Professor of Physiology and died
there in 1935.
Glory
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7 September 1836
Birth of British Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, at
Glasgow, a son of draper Sir James Campbell. Henry added Bannerman to
his name in compliance with the will of a maternal uncle who left him a
large inheritance. Educated at Glasgow and Cambridge universities, he
worked in his father's business until being elected to Parliament
representing Stirling Burghs in 1868. He held junior posts in the War
Office and Admiralty in William Ewart Gladstone's first two
administrations, then was Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1884-1885, and
served twice as Secretary for War, 1886 and 1892-1895, where he was
effective in promoting army reform. He was knighted in 1895 and became
Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons in 1899 where he
opposed the Boer War. Upon the resignation of Conservative Arthur
Balfour in 1905, Sir Henry became Prime Minister and led the Liberal
Party to a landslide victory in the 1906 election. A strenuous leader
who constructed a brilliant cabinet, which included David Lloyd George
and the young Winston Churchill, much of his proposed legislation was
blocked in the House of Lords. Ill health forced his resignation in
April 1908 and he died shortly thereafter.
9 September 1513
The Battle of Flodden, a devastating defeat for Scotland, fought in
northern England between the invading army of King James IV and English
defenders under the Earl of Surrey. Despite a treaty of friendship and
the fact that his wife was the sister of the English King Henry VIII,
James renewed the 'Auld Alliance' in support of France when yet another
Anglo-French war broke out. The Scots assembled one of the largest and
best equipped armies they had hitherto put in the field, numbering at
least 20,000 men, and invaded England where they used their artillery to
reduce strongholds such as Norham and Ford castles. The Scottish army
then positioned itself on high ground west of the River Till near
Branxton on Flodden Hill as the English army under the Earl of Surrey
approached. The latter force was numerically inferior but better led and
was able to outflank the Scots while subjecting them to more accurate
artillery fire that the Scots were unable to return. James abandoned his
position for a full-scale attack, which became bogged down in the mud
and subject to superior infantry fighting tactics where the shorter
English bill prevailed over the longer Scottish pike. James IV and the
flower of Scottish manhood, numbering somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000
(the English figure) and including at least ten earls, were slaughtered.
Fortunately for Scotland, English losses were severe as well, perhaps
2,000 men, and they were unable to exploit their victory.
11 September 1297
The Battle of the Stirling Bridge, a great Scottish victory against
English invaders, fought near the Abbey Craig on the River Forth.
Following the defeats at Berwick and Dunbar in 1296, which resulted in
the deposition of King John Balliol and the imposition of English rule
by King Edward I (Longshanks), rebellion broke out across
Scotland. Enthusiastic volunteers, led in the northeast by Andrew Murray
(de Moray) and the southwest by William Wallace, achieved numerous
successes. The combined armies, probably numbering just a
few thousand men, gathered on the far side of the Forth. An English Army
of about 300 horse and 10,000 infantry, commanded jointly by the Earl of
Surrey and Hugh de Cressingham, Edward's Governor and Treasurer of
Scotland respectively, approached and crossed the wooden Stirling
Bridge. The Scots waited until about half were across then fell upon
these and slaughtered them. Cressingham was among the dead while Surrey
fled back to England. Scottish losses were few though Murray was fatally
wounded. Wallace, who would become a legendary patriot of Scottish
nationhood, went on to recapture Berwick and raid into English
Northumberland. Shortly thereafter, he was knighted and made Guardian of
Scotland. He would soon face a reckoning with the enraged Edward
Longshanks, who had returned from fighting in France, at the Battle of
Falkirk in July 1298.
11 September 1997
On the seven hundredth anniversary of the victory of William Wallace
over the English at Stirling Bridge, Scots voting in a national
referendum approved the devolution of power from London and the
re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament defunct since 1707. The
restored body would have 129 elected seats and meet by the year 2000
with powers in regard to local government, health, welfare, education,
and taxation but with the British Parliament at Westminster retaining
power in foreign affairs, defense and monetary policy. The Scottish
Nationalist Party (SNP) viewed this event as a crucial step on the way
to independence while both the Labour and Liberal parties believed that
self-government for Scotland would be an added inducement to maintain
the union with England and Wales. The Conservative Party, the most
vehement opponent of devolution, was a non-factor, having lost all its
seats in the British elections of May 1997 which put Scottish born Tony
Blair's Labour party in power and made the referendum possible.
14 September 1742
Birth of American Patriot leader, James Wilson, in Fifeshire. He
attended St. Andrew's University but emigrated to Philadelphia in 1765
where he studied law, later setting up practice in Reading. He wrote a
pamphlet in 1774 in which he charged the British government with
corruption, was elected a representative from Pennsylvania to the Second
Continental Congress in 1775, and was a signer for said state of the
Declaration of Independence in 1776. In Congress, he promoted a sound
national fiscal policy that was in contrast to his personal finances
which involved reckless speculation. He was a Pennsylvania delegate to
the Constitutional Convention of 1787 where advocated the direct
election of both Congress and the President as well as the establishment
of the Electoral College. He was influential in securing the
ratification of the Constitution in Pennsylvania and served as an
Associate Justice on the first Supreme Court. In failing health, he fled
imprisonment for debt in 1797 and died at Edenton, North Carolina on 21
August 1798.
16 September Every
Year
Feast Day of St. Ninian, early fifth century apostle to the southern
Picts and first named Christian in Scottish history (mentioned in the
Venerable Bede's celebrated eight century ecclesiastical history). Born
a Briton about 360 AD and a Roman trained bishop, he founded a church
apparently dedicated to St. Martin of Tours at Whithorn in Galloway.
This became an influential mission station in the spread of Christianity
in southern and eastern Scotland. Though predating the sixth century
Irish church influence of St. Columba at the sacred isle of Iona,
Whithorn became a center for Irish monks and was in continually
inhabited until Viking times. The association of St. Ninian's name
throughout Scotland is believed to reflect a widespread cult rather than
his personal exploration and mission work at these varied sites.
20 September 1842
Birth of chemist and physicist Sir James Dewar at Kincardine on Forth in
Fifeshire. Both a student and lecturer at Edinburgh University, he moved
to England where he was a professor at both Cambridge and the Royal
Institute. He was a remarkable 'experimentalist,' working with
spectroscopy, organic chemistry, electricity, and the measurement of
high temperatures. He had notable achievements in the field of
cryogenics, performing the liquification of gases such as oxygen and
hydrogen at low temperatures and inventing the thermos flask, known as
the 'Dewar flask which he oddly neglected to patent. Working with
Frederick Abel, they discovered and patented Cordite, a smokeless
gunpowder which did much to advance military science. He also
collaborated with John Ambrose Fleming, who later invented the vacuum
tube. A difficult colleague, indifferent teacher, and brilliant public
speaker, Sir James Dewar was knighted in 1904 and died, still
experimenting, at age 80 on 27 March 1923.
23 September 1880
Birth of nutritionist and Nobel laureate John Boyd Orr at Kilmaurs near
Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. Educated at Glasgow University and appalled by
conditions in the Glasgow slums, he pioneered the study of human
nutrition with correlations between health, diet, and poverty. He served
Britain as a frontline doctor in the First World War where he developed
a disease reducing diet for soldiers. In peacetime, he established the
Rowett Institute at Buckshorn, near Aberdeen, to study nutrition,
published numerous influential studies, and was knighted in 1935. During
the Second World War, he was an advisor to the British Ministry of Food
where he worked to prevent shortages in both the military and civilian
sectors and argued for the removal of food from normal political and
trade considerations. After the war, he served as the first
Director-General, 1945-1948, of the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization as well as brief terms in the British House of Commons and
as both rector and chancellor of Glasgow University. In 1948, he
accepted a peerage as First Lord Brechin and later became only the
second Scot to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to ensure
peace by applying science to the removal of hunger and poverty. He died
near Edzell in Brechin, Angus, on 25 June 1971.
25 September 1643
The English Parliament and Westminster Assembly ratify the Solemn League
and Covenant, guaranteeing the integrity of the Presbyterian Kirk
(Church) in Scotland. This was an inducement for the Scottish army
to intervene in the English Civil War in support of Parliament against
King Charles I by making it seem possible that the Presbyterian Church
would be established in England as the national church. On 2 July
1644, at the Battle of Marston Moor, the Scottish contingent under
Alexander Leslie made a significant contribution to the decisive victory
of the parliamentary army commanded by Oliver Cromwell and Thomas
Fairfax. The Scottish cavalry and infantry, led by David Leslie
and William Baillie respectively, were especially effective in what was
otherwise an ill-managed battle. Afterwards, the Scots believed that the
English refused to give them due credit so they withdrew to Newcastle in
the north to await further events
29 September
1864
The birth of engineer, civil servant, and
poet, Charles Murray, at Alford in Aberdeenshire. He studied civil
engineering and apprenticed in Aberdeen, beginning 1881, then served as
a civil engineer and partner at a gold mining company in South Africa
from 1888. He later served as a gold mine manager, Deputy Inspector of
Mines for Transvaal, and various public works offices in Pretoria. He
saw military service in both the Boer War and the First World War. He
achieved fame as a poet, primarily writing about homesickness for his
native land in the Scots dialect. In 1893, he privately printed twelve
copies of his first collection of poems, A Handful of Heather,
but soon decided these were embarrassing and destroyed the books and all
but thirteen of the forty poems the collection included. Despite this
disappointment, he continued to write poetry and his next volume,
Hamewith, included the thirteen poems he salvaged from A Handful
of Heather in addition to twenty one new ones. The setting for all
his poems was his childhood home of Alford with simple Scottish farmers
who speak in broad Scots. He later admitted that he wrote in Scots to
please his father and, although he wrote about the rural culture of his
childhood, he was no sentimentalist. His work was generally praised for
its lively tone and skillful use of language. Later works include A
Sough o'War (1917), In the Country Places (1920), and
Hamewith and Other Poems: Collected Editions (1927). In addition to
writing poetry, he was also known for translating the works of Horace
into Scots. He married Edith Rogers in 1895 and they had three children.
He returned to Scotland in 1922 and died 12 April 1941 in Banchory,
Kincardineshire. His ashes were buried in the Alford churchyard. His
honors include an L.L.D. from Aberdeen University, the Companion of the
Order of St. Michael and St. George, and the naming of a park in his
honor in his native Alford.
30 September 1906
Birth of educator and author John Innes Mackintosh Stewart at Edinburgh.
He had a distinguished teaching career that took him successively to the
universities of Leeds in Yorkshire, Adelaide in Australia, Queen's in
Belfast, and ultimately Oxford. He became a noted writer of both fiction
and literary scholarship, producing many books, articles, and short
stories. He won critical acclaim for both his erudition and
sophistication and was often compared to literary great Henry James. He
wrote biographies of James and several other luminaries, including
Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy, which were incorporated into Volume 12
of the Oxford History of English Literature. His collections of short
stories, such as Cucumber Sandwiches, were popular though he is perhaps
most famous for his mystery novels, many of which portray life and
persons at Oxford, written under the name Michael Innes. He also wrote
the autobiographical Myself and Michael Innes. He died on 12 November
1994 in Surrey, England.
By William John Shepherd
Note On Sources: Some dates are
based upon concise chronologies published by Ronald McDonald Douglas in
his Scottish Lore And Folklore (1982) and John Wilson McCoy in
the pages of The Highlander magazine in 1997. Additional dates
and information have been gleaned from my varied readings in Scottish
history. These sources include but are not limited to the following:
Brown, P. Hume. A Short History Of Scotland (1908, 1961);
Donaldson, Gordon and Morpeth, Robert. A Dictionary of Scottish
History (1996); Fisher, Andrew. A Traveller's History Of Scotland
(1990); Gordon, Ian Fellowes. Famous Scots. London:
Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers, 1988; Granger, John D. Cromwell Against
The Scots: The Last Anglo-Scottish War, 1650-1652 (1997); Keay, John
and Julia (eds.). Collins Encyclopedia Of Scotland (1994); Mackie,
J.D. A History Of Scotland (1964, 1991); MacLean, Sir Fitzroy. A
Concise History Of Scotland (1970, 1988); Prebble, John. The Lion
In The North (1971, 1973); Sadler, John. Scottish Battles
(1998); Smout, T.C. A History Of The Scottish People, 1560-1830
(1969, 1998); Traquair, Peter. Freedom's Sword: Scotland's Wars Of
Independence (1998); Warner, Philip. Famous Scottish Battles
(1975, 1996).
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