History documentary charting the birth and growth of the Scottish nation.
At one time, Gaelic Scotland - the people and the language - was central to the collective identity of Scots, but as Neil Oliver reveals, Scotland's infamous Highland/Lowland divide was the result of a family struggle that divided the kingdom. This is the story of how the centralising policies of the Stewart royal family in the 15th century led to the Gaels being perceived as rebels and outsiders.
At one time, Gaelic Scotland - the people and the language - was central to the collective identity of Scots, but as Neil Oliver reveals, Scotland's infamous Highland/Lowland divide was the result of a family struggle that divided the kingdom. This is the story of how the centralising policies of the Stewart royal family in the 15th century led to the Gaels being perceived as rebels and outsiders.
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00:00They call it Britain's last great wilderness, a place as beautiful as it is barren.
00:18The islands and mountains of Scotland seem to exist on the edge of the imagination, but
00:24it wasn't always like this.
00:27For centuries, Gaelic Scotland was at the heart of the Scottish Kingdom, then it changed.
00:38It became something different.
00:41Something separate.
00:44Something other.
00:45In many ways, Scotland is a nation of two cultures.
01:15One Highland and one Lowland, and one part just doesn't seem to understand the other.
01:23Most of us don't speak Gaelic, we speak English, and whether we admit it to ourselves or not,
01:28we have to view our own country through the prism of the English language.
01:33And when we go to the Highlands and Islands, we find ourselves in amongst a language and
01:37an entire culture that we don't understand, that we just don't get.
01:42It's an uneasy, uncomfortable double vision.
01:45It's Scotland's guilty secret.
01:49And it all began with a feud between two families.
02:12In 15th century Scotland, family was everything.
02:30This is the story of two of those families, and how their fates were locked together.
02:38The rise of one meant the fall of the other.
02:43Their struggle was epic.
02:48Their names legendary.
02:51They were the Stuarts and the MacDonalds.
03:01There's a story of a medieval Spanish traveller who came to Edinburgh to see the sights.
03:06When he got home, someone asked him what was the most wonderful thing he'd seen.
03:11The traveller thought for a moment, and then answered,
03:14a grand man called MacDonald, with a great train of men after him,
03:18called neither Duke nor Marquess.
03:24His name was Alexander, Lord of the Isles.
03:28The King of the Hebrides.
03:37Alexander's family, the MacDonalds, had played the game well.
03:41They had backed Bruce, and the rewards had flowed.
03:45Lands, wealth, and power.
03:48The power of 10,000 armed men.
03:56Power over the islands.
04:00Power over the sea.
04:04This is called a Berlin, or a West Highland galley.
04:07She's really a descendant of a Viking longship.
04:12What range, what territory could boats like these cover effectively?
04:17Oh, in some cases up to 50, maybe 60 miles a day.
04:22You could go from Northern Ireland up to Cape Wrath in two or three days
04:25if you had good wind behind you.
04:27Just how important would you say these craft were to the Lordship?
04:31Vital. Whoever controlled the roads of the sea had the power,
04:34and that was what the MacDonalds had.
04:36If it wasn't for these, there wouldn't be any Lordship of the Isles.
04:46With over 100 Berlins at his command,
04:48Alexander dominated Scotland's Atlantic seaboard.
04:52No wonder they called him the King of the Hebrides.
04:59The nerve centre of his far-flung territories.
05:02Finlaggan on Islay.
05:07It was here Alexander summoned his chiefs to do deals, form alliances,
05:12and, most importantly, keep the peace.
05:21As an archaeologist, one of the first things that strikes me about this place
05:25is the fact that it isn't fortified.
05:28But then, of course, it didn't need to be.
05:30By the time Alexander took over,
05:32the Lordship had already enjoyed a century of internal stability.
05:37And with that peace, and with the patronage of the MacDonald lords,
05:40came a flourishing of the arts, sculpture, music and poetry.
06:11It's often hard to get a sense of what places like Finlaggan were like in their heyday.
06:17But a few of the archaeological finds that have been recovered from the site over the years
06:21give an idea of the day-to-day reality of life here.
06:25This is from a hunting dog's collar,
06:27and you can tell from the careful decoration on it
06:30that the dog's owner was proud of the beast and wanted it to look its best.
06:33And, of course, the Lords of the Isles were very big on hunting.
06:37These are gaming pieces carved from bone.
06:40The rules of the game long forgotten.
06:42But on this one, you can quite clearly see the carved outline of a stag
06:46with its antlers and its mouth open and its tongue sticking out.
06:50And finally, this last piece is a pilgrim's badge or token.
06:55It's made of lead and it's from Rome.
06:58So somebody with connections to the Lordship of the Isles
07:01went all the way to Rome and brought back this as a souvenir.
07:05With its image of St Peter carrying the keys of heaven.
07:13Alexander, Lord of the Isles, held the keys to more earthly kingdoms.
07:18His Atlantic realm faced in two different directions at once.
07:28To the south was Ireland,
07:30where family and cultural ties were deep.
07:34To the east was Scotland.
07:36But the Lordship wasn't on the fringes of the Scottish kingdom.
07:40It was at its very centre.
07:47The Gaelic world of the Lordship
07:49was at the heart of how Scotland imagined itself.
07:52It was the Gaels who had first unified the kingdom,
07:56giving it its Gaelic name, Alba.
07:59Now, Gaelic Scotland was enjoying a second golden age.
08:11If Finlagan was the heart of the Lordship,
08:14then Iona was its soul.
08:18St Columba's Island was one of the most important spiritual sites in Scotland.
08:29It was here that the bodies of the Lord were laid to rest.
08:33The bodies of the Lord were laid to rest
08:36on the site of St Columba's Island.
08:39It was here that the bodies of the Lord were laid to rest
08:42on the site of St Columba's Island.
08:45It was here that the bodies of the Lords of the Isles
08:48were brought for burial.
08:50Alexander showered the abbey and its community
08:53with money and gifts.
08:57Of course, he had good reason.
08:59Like the best of medieval godfathers,
09:02he had a string of mistresses
09:04and a pile of cautionary letters from the Pope to prove it.
09:10All this church building was a kind of spiritual insurance policy.
09:16But if Alexander Macdonald feared for his soul,
09:19then that was pretty much all he feared.
09:21He was Rhianish Gael, a king in his own land,
09:25in a land where there was no king.
09:31Scotland was a kingdom with an empty throne.
09:34Its royal line had faltered.
09:37Its young king was in the hands of its ancient enemy.
09:46James Stuart, King of Scots,
09:49had been captured by the English when he was only 12 years old.
09:54His family had fought alongside Robert the Bruce
09:57during the Wars of Independence.
10:01When Bruce's bloodline died out,
10:03it was the Stuarts who succeeded to the Scottish throne.
10:16But the sole heir to the new Stuart dynasty was now a hostage,
10:20a bargaining chip,
10:22leverage.
10:26It was the same old game for the same old stakes.
10:29If the Scottish magnates wanted their king back,
10:32they would have to submit to English overlordship.
10:35Forget the Bruce. Give up your independence.
10:40But the Scots weren't going to play by the English rules.
10:44No thanks, they said.
10:46We're managing fine without a king.
10:48So James was left as a captive
10:50with plenty of time to brood on his redundancy.
10:56For a time, James had been shunted
10:58from one miserable prison to another.
11:02But then his royal privileges were restored
11:05and he was given free run of Henry V's court.
11:16You can imagine how grateful James was
11:18for this outbreak of benevolence.
11:20But Henry's motives weren't exactly pure.
11:23He had a war to finish in France
11:25and he needed a new ally to fight an old enemy.
11:28Because across the Channel,
11:30it wasn't just the French that Henry was up against.
11:33It was the Scots.
11:48The role the Scots played in the Hundred Years' War
11:51was something the French would never forget.
11:54In this summer pageant in the middle of France,
11:57the crowds are celebrating the arrival of Scottish troops
12:00at a life-or-death moment in the history of their country.
12:04Henry V had just defeated the French at Agincourt.
12:07Final, decisive victory was within his grasp.
12:10And then the Scots waded in on behalf of their old ally.
12:13Now the Scots and French forces were united
12:16against the English king.
12:18To defeat them, he had first to divide them
12:20and Henry thought he had the perfect weapon, James.
12:31Now Henry's plans for him became clear.
12:36James was king of the Scots,
12:38so James could tell the Scots to pack up and go home.
12:51Melun was the acid test.
12:54In 1420, Henry lay siege to the strategic town
12:57just upriver from Paris.
13:01The walls were defended by Scottish troops.
13:06James knew what was expected of him.
13:09He ordered the Scots to surrender.
13:14English and French kings expected unquestioning obedience
13:17from their subjects.
13:19But these soldiers were Scots,
13:21and in Scotland, king and kingdom didn't mean the same thing at all.
13:25Scotland was more than one individual.
13:28It was a community,
13:30a loose but resilient network of loyalties.
13:33Lay down your arms, James commanded his subjects.
13:37And as one, the Scots kept on fighting.
13:51700 defenders held out against a 20,000-strong besieging force.
13:59These days, the underground vaults beneath the town
14:02are used to store wine.
14:04But in 1420, this was the scene of vicious hand-to-hand combat.
14:12The English dug tunnels beneath the fortifications
14:15in an attempt to undermine them.
14:17The defenders opened up their own tunnels
14:19so that they could counterattack,
14:21and so it was in claustrophobic, suffocating darkness
14:24that the Battle of Melun was fought.
14:29But for all their tenacity,
14:31the defenders of Melun couldn't hold out.
14:37When Henry finally broke into the town, he was out for revenge.
14:44The surviving Scots were rounded up,
14:46separated from the other prisoners,
14:48and executed en masse as traitors to their king, James I.
14:54James never forgot the shame of Melun.
14:57He'd been made to act as a puppet by a foreign king.
15:00He'd been defied by his subjects.
15:02His humiliation was immeasurable, off the scale.
15:06It was Melun, more than anything else,
15:08that shaped the kind of man James I was.
15:11He was a hero.
15:13He was a hero.
15:15He was a hero.
15:17He was a hero.
15:19He was a hero.
15:21It was Melun, more than anything else,
15:23that shaped the kind of man James would become.
15:26Intolerant, inflexible, impatient.
15:34Just two years after Melun, Henry V was dead.
15:38His successors couldn't see much political value in James,
15:42but their prisoner was still worth a king's ransom.
15:52In 1424, the English cashed their chips in.
15:57At 30 years old, James Stuart was on his way home.
16:08Scotland was more of a memory for James than a reality.
16:12He'd spent over half of his life in English captivity,
16:15so he had a lot of catching up to do.
16:17In other words, he was a king in a hurry.
16:29Amongst the welcoming party was Alexander MacDonald,
16:33king of the Hebrides and lord of the Isles.
16:38He must have viewed the new arrival with guarded curiosity.
16:43Along with the other Scottish magnates,
16:45Alexander had agreed to pay a colossal ransom.
16:49What had they got for their money?
16:53A king on the make. A catwalk king.
16:56A king who understood that front was everything.
16:59Linlithgow Palace was James I's pet project.
17:03It was something brand new in Scotland.
17:06It wasn't a fortress.
17:08It was a Renaissance-style royal residence.
17:13It made its point through wealth.
17:16It was a place where the rich and the poor could meet.
17:20It was a place where the rich and the poor could meet.
17:23It was a place where the rich and the poor could meet.
17:26It made its point through wealth, not strength.
17:33James had an agenda.
17:35He wanted to elevate the very idea of kingship.
17:40Linlithgow Palace declared in 100-foot-high capital letters
17:45James's ambitions as a European monarch.
17:56Before James I, the magnates, like the lords of the isles,
18:00had regarded their king as first among equals
18:03and occasionally as something less than that.
18:10But James considered himself to have no equals.
18:20James I was educated and accomplished.
18:23He was Scotland's first Renaissance king.
18:26Amongst many other talents, he had a real gift for poetry.
18:29And in one poem entitled The King's Quare,
18:32he described the moment when he first fell in love.
18:36And therewith, kest, I doon mine eye again,
18:39where, as I saw, walking under the tower,
18:42full, secretly new, coming here to plain,
18:45the fairest or the freshest young flower
18:47that ever I saw me thought before that hour,
18:50for which sudden a-bate and on a-stir
18:52the blood of all my body to my heart.
18:57James was a captive in England when he wrote these lines.
19:00But you wouldn't have heard this language at the court of Henry V.
19:03This was James's mother tongue.
19:05And imagine how he must have missed it,
19:07the rich Scots language of his lowland birthplace.
19:15Scotland in the 15th century
19:17was a blur of different languages and dialects.
19:21In the lowlands, Scots,
19:23a distinctive vernacular with Anglo-Saxon roots,
19:26predominated.
19:28Most of the rest of the kingdom,
19:30at least half of Scotland's population,
19:32spoke Gaelic.
19:34And within Gaelic Scotland,
19:36there was no more influential, no more determined figure
19:39than Alexander, Lord of the Isles.
19:43While James Stuart was palace building,
19:46Alexander Macdonald was empire building.
20:05Alexander's Burlands gave him control of an island archipelago.
20:09But his real ambitions lay on the mainland.
20:20Ross stretched from the rocky shores of the Atlantic
20:23to the rich farmland of the North Sea coast.
20:26By acquiring Ross,
20:28Alexander became one of the most powerful landowners in the kingdom.
20:32Ross was the jewel in Alexander's crown.
20:35But soon, James himself
20:37began to cast envious eyes on the northern prize.
20:41The king was running short of cash.
20:43All this palace building came at a price.
20:46He'd already tried cooking the books.
20:48Money that should have been going south to pay for his ransom
20:51was being spent on gold leaf and fine carving.
20:54But even that wasn't enough to plug the hole in his head.
20:57The king was running out of cash.
20:59He needed money, and badly.
21:01Alexander's territory in Ross began to look seriously tempting.
21:13James invited Alexander to meet him in Inverness.
21:22But this would be no royal garden party.
21:26Alexander was camped outside the town
21:28with a large entourage, including his own family.
21:31When he finally got the summons from the king,
21:33Alexander, his mother, and a few select followers
21:36got dressed in all their finery.
21:38What delights were on the menu.
21:40What treats were in store.
21:44As soon as they were through the gates,
21:46they were set upon and disarmed by the army.
21:49The king and his wife,
21:51As soon as they were through the gates,
21:53they were set upon and disarmed by the king's men.
21:56The MacDonalds didn't have a chance to resist.
21:59Alexander's own mother was pushed around,
22:01taunted, dishonoured.
22:07James watched as the MacDonalds were dragged off like common criminals.
22:11It seemed to inspire him.
22:13He entertained the court with some off-the-cuff verse.
22:16But this time, the muse was less romantic.
22:18It was no gentle love poem that he recited.
22:21Let us take the chance to conduct this company to the tower,
22:24for by Christ's death, these men deserve death.
22:37Weary tolerance had suddenly turned violent.
22:42James executed some of his prisoners without trial.
22:45But he didn't kill Alexander.
22:49He didn't have to.
22:54James had got his hands on Ross and the revenues it provided.
22:59After a couple of months and with a great show of mercy,
23:02he released the Lord of the Isles.
23:06But if he thought Alexander would be grateful,
23:08he was wrong.
23:12Alexander gathered up his men,
23:14returned to Inverness and burned it to the ground.
23:19Revenge was sweet, but it was short-lived.
23:27Alexander knew he'd allowed his anger to blind his judgement.
23:31A royal army was closing in.
23:33Outnumbered and outmanoeuvred,
23:35Alexander calculated that he had only one option left.
23:44At Holyrood Palace in 1429,
23:46Alexander, Lord of the Isles, surrendered.
23:55Ritually stripped to his underclothes in front of James,
23:58he handed over his sword, his title and his lands.
24:02Alexander, Lord of the Isles, was then led away into captivity.
24:08The rules of the game had changed.
24:13The magnates had once carved up Scotland amongst them.
24:17Not any more.
24:19Now the king was in charge.
24:24Or so the king wanted to believe.
24:29The Lord of the Isles might be back.
24:31Or so the king wanted to believe.
24:35The Lord of the Isles might be behind bars,
24:38but his family openly defied royal authority.
24:42James sent an army to deal with them.
24:47But Alexander's men weren't about to turn tail.
25:01The Lord of the Isles,
25:03Lord of the Isles,
25:05Lord of the Isles,
25:07Lord of the Isles,
25:09Lord of the Isles,
25:11Lord of the Isles,
25:13Lord of the Isles,
25:15Lord of the Isles,
25:17Lord of the Isles,
25:19Lord of the Isles,
25:21Lord of the Isles,
25:23Lord of the Isles,
25:25Lord of the Isles,
25:27Lord of the Isles,
25:29Order to attack.
25:35From every corner of his dispossessed territories,
25:38Alexander's supporters gathered.
25:40Moving to meet the royal army at Inverchlossen,
25:43at the head of the Great Glen.
25:54The Islesmen landed their birdlings a few miles down there,
25:58along the river towards where the Royal Army was camped
26:00around Inverlochy Castle, just down there in the trees.
26:04The commander of the Royal Troops
26:05was in the middle of a card game
26:07when he got the report of the enemy approach.
26:09He dismissed it.
26:10He said he knew very well the doings
26:12of the big-bellied carls of the Isles.
26:14And at that moment, a body of archers
26:17hidden up here on this hill shot a hail of arrows
26:20down onto the unprepared Royal Troops.
26:22And taking that as their cue,
26:23the main body of the Islesmen charged.
26:28It only took a few minutes.
26:36Over 900 Royal Troops lay dead.
26:39Their injured commander fled over the mountains.
26:53Inverlochy was a brutal lesson in the limits of royal power.
26:58James was forced to realise that it was as dangerous
27:01to keep Alexander behind bars as it was to have him on the loose.
27:11A month after Inverlochy, he set Alexander free.
27:23Alexander got just about everything back.
27:26His lands, his titles, and, crucially, his prestige.
27:32The MacDonalds were back on top.
27:40The Stuarts, meanwhile, were in trouble.
27:48To many of the magnates,
27:49James's release of Alexander seemed like weakness.
27:54They scented blood.
28:01Simmering resentment finally boiled over into conspiracy.
28:06On 20 February 1437,
28:09James's enemies finally caught up with him.
28:17It was after midnight when they broke into the royal lodgings.
28:25With the assassins outside the door,
28:27James searched for a way out.
28:29There wasn't one.
28:30So, frantically, he smashed a hole through the wooden floor
28:33and dropped into the sewer that ran beneath.
28:39But the exit to the drain had been blocked off.
28:43James turned to face his pursuers.
28:45He tried to make a fight of it,
28:47but there, in the darkness and the filth,
28:49he was stabbed to death.
28:55Scotland held her breath.
28:59The killing of a king was a shocking, almost sacrilegious act.
29:11With the Stuart dynasty weak and exposed,
29:13the MacDonalds were unassailable.
29:16When Alexander, Lord of the Isles,
29:18eventually died in 1448,
29:21his dream of ruling an empire that stretched from coast to coast
29:24had been realised.
29:31He was buried, not on Iona, like his forefathers,
29:34but on the mainland, in the rich soil of Ross.
29:51From beyond the grave,
29:53Alexander was not only reinforcing past claims,
29:56he was hinting at future ambitions.
30:09The kingdom was at a turning point.
30:11With James I and Alexander, Lord of the Isles, gone,
30:15it was up to a new generation to continue their legacies.
30:20On the Stuart side, James II assumed his father's throne.
30:25A bright red birthmark earned him the nickname,
30:28James the Fiery Face.
30:34On the MacDonald side, it was John who now became Lord of the Isles.
30:39His inauguration followed a ritual that was centuries old.
30:44Just like the ancient kings,
30:46John stepped into a carved rock footprint,
30:49joining him to the land he was to rule over.
30:53I've had four boys since day one,
30:56hanging in aractic through the ages,
31:00yet this young man still nieces and nephews.
31:04Are you up to this job?
31:08A night taking place at Stucktail,
31:11a group of students lay down in the encampment.
31:15One of the most classed students of all time,
31:18told he could be the King of England remained.
31:22A vijananguill, gnun si cholla,
31:25Fafruach panna, lua alonga.
31:28Masgag mea, anachw iila,
31:32Freivhne feila, treyn gach tira,
31:35Ghir aasai ma, ach drighne is riga,
31:39Foyle feira, fear mo vola.
31:52The bards heaped extravagant praise on John Macdonald,
31:58but it only added to the weight of expectation on his shoulders.
32:16John's position was difficult, even precarious.
32:19Should he try and expand his territory,
32:21or would it be better to consolidate his already overstretched empire?
32:26For the moment, he opted for the status quo.
32:35Meanwhile, James took decisive action.
32:40The new king would cement his family's fortunes,
32:43not through violence, but at the altar.
32:50Here in Edinburgh, in 1449, James II married Mary of Gelders.
32:55She was the grandniece of the Duke of Burgundy,
32:58one of the wealthiest and most powerful men on the continent.
33:02The Stuarts had most definitely arrived at the top table of European power.
33:13There was a hefty price to pay for the new king,
33:17There was a hefty price to pay, of course.
33:20James and his family wanted to impress their powerful foreign guests
33:24with the very best in food, wine and entertainment.
33:30But it was worth it.
33:37The marriage brought the Stuarts international prestige and political influence.
33:44And there were other, more tangible items on the gift list.
33:51This is some wedding present for a teenage king.
33:54It is indeed, and the wedding wasn't exactly a shotgun wedding, let's face it.
33:58It was one of the main dynastic weddings of the period.
34:01And when James got this gun, Mons Meg, from the Duke of Burgundy,
34:06he's been given one of the most impressive pieces of technology available at that time.
34:11Just how dangerous or effective was a thing like this?
34:15This gun could fire 18-inch stone balls.
34:19A good-sized ball that could go well over a mile, actually,
34:23especially with a following wind.
34:25And the real danger that this represented was to the castles of the period.
34:29A gun like this brought against a great castle was a real threat
34:33in terms of knocking its walls down.
34:35What does it say about James, though, that he now possesses this?
34:39Where does it put him in the league table of kings?
34:43It's putting him right up there amongst the go-getters,
34:46amongst the main sovereigns in Europe.
34:49So James was, in many ways, a big noise.
34:52Absolutely.
34:56James II's showy pretensions hid a mass of insecurities.
35:02He was thin-skinned, prickly, paranoid.
35:10The king felt trapped, hemmed in.
35:13To the north and west, John Macdonald dominated a huge arc of territories.
35:18Meanwhile, to the south, there was another potential rival.
35:23The Black Douglas.
35:29William, Earl of Douglas, was a 15th-century pin-up.
35:33He was popular, he was famous and he was very, very rich.
35:39His family, the Black Douglases, were the big power in the borders.
35:47When William, Earl of Douglas, and John, Lord of the Isles,
35:50agreed a friendship pact, it set them on a collision course with James.
36:00Deals like this were routine, innocuous.
36:03They meant about as much as a handshake.
36:05But James didn't see it as a courtesy.
36:07He chose to view it as a conspiracy.
36:15The king brooded on how to deal with the two magnates.
36:21He didn't brood for very long.
36:27In 1452, James requested the presence of the Earl of Douglas at Stirling Castle.
36:33William smelt a rat.
36:35He only showed up when he got a letter guaranteeing his safety.
36:52It was the dinner party from hell.
36:55James was jumpy and volatile.
36:57William was edgy too.
36:59And the fact that both men had been drinking since lunchtime
37:02made the situation even more unpredictable.
37:04Only one thing was guaranteed, and that was a confrontation.
37:13At some point, late in the proceedings,
37:15James demanded that William give up his alliance with John, Lord of the Isles.
37:20William refused.
37:22Bad move.
37:27James exploded.
37:29He pulled the knife and launched himself at William.
37:31Then his courtiers pitched in.
37:33Legend has it that when the frenzy was over, they dumped him out of that window.
37:38When the body was recovered by William's men,
37:40it was found to have 26 separate stab wounds.
37:44His head had been split open with an axe.
37:51It was a shocking act,
37:53as much for its violation of notions of honour as its brutality.
37:57William's followers paraded a copy of the king's safe conduct pass around Stirling
38:02before ransacking the town.
38:08But James was more than a match for the Black Douglas.
38:11Faced by the king's heavy artillery,
38:13the Douglas castles surrendered without a shot.
38:16William's family fled into exile in England.
38:21This was another great leap in the Stuart fortunes.
38:25By seizing the lands of the Black Douglases,
38:27James made himself very rich.
38:29Big guns, wealthy relations and a single brutal act of murder
38:34would bankroll the future of Scotland's royal dynasty.
38:39For James, it was a dream outcome.
38:43But for John, it was a nightmare scenario.
38:46What had happened to the Black Douglas
38:48what had happened to the Black Douglas
38:50could happen to him.
38:54John had to find a way of keeping on the right side
38:57of the explosive and newly powerful king.
39:01So when James prepared for war with England in 1460,
39:05John was amongst his most loyal lieutenants.
39:12John vowed that his men would fight one league mile ahead of the main army.
39:16It was a very public, very ostentatious show of loyalty to the king.
39:20It was also a vow that John would never have to keep.
39:24James loved guns.
39:26In fact, he loved them to death.
39:34James was in the middle of a long, hot summer campaign
39:37when he got the news that his queen, Mary, was arriving.
39:40He got one of the guns ready to fire a salute
39:43but his grand gesture blew up in his face, literally.
39:47The gun exploded, sending lethal shrapnel flying in all directions.
39:51At 29 years old, James II was dead.
39:56No-one could doubt that the Stuarts would continue.
40:00The dynasty seemed unassailable,
40:03as much a part of Scotland now as its rocks and hills.
40:09But the new king, James III, was just a boy.
40:15James III was a young man,
40:17but he was a man of his word.
40:21But the new king, James III, was just a boy.
40:25For some, opportunity knocked.
40:35Only months after the coronation of eight-year-old James,
40:38an envoy arrives at John Macdonald's stronghold of Artornish Castle
40:42on a secret mission.
40:44The messenger represents the defeated black Douglas family
40:48and he carries with him an offer from the English king, Edward IV.
40:58What Edward proposes is this.
41:01He will back a rebellion in Scotland
41:03and the Macdonald and Douglas families will share the spoils.
41:06John will get the north of the country
41:08and the black Douglas will get the south.
41:10And Edward, well, Edward secures his grip on the English throne.
41:15But, of course, there was a catch to all of this.
41:18John and the Douglas have to acknowledge Edward as their overlord.
41:27This was treason.
41:29The Macdonalds and the black Douglas
41:31were plotting the annihilation of Scotland's royal dynasty.
41:39The old king's suspicions now appeared less like paranoia
41:42and more like prophecy.
41:46So why did John take such a huge gamble?
41:50Why did he risk everything that his forefathers had achieved?
41:54The simple answer was that he had no choice.
42:05John was being put under pressure by his own relatives.
42:08They wanted to see the continued expansion of the Macdonald territory.
42:12And the leader of the hardline faction was his illegitimate son, Angus Og.
42:20Angus Og pressed his father to sign the treaty with the English.
42:24The ink wasn't even dry before Angus and his men set out to demand
42:28that taxes owed to the king be paid directly to the Macdonalds.
42:34But the English king had only ever wanted a diversion in the north.
42:38When Edward sorted out his own internal troubles,
42:40he had no further need for his Scottish allies.
42:46The game was up for John, lord of the isles.
42:49He could now only hope that the king, James III,
42:52would be able to win the war.
42:55The game was up for John, lord of the isles.
42:58He could now only hope that the king, James III,
43:01wouldn't discover the secret treaty.
43:13Fat chance. Eventually the story leaked out
43:16and everyone, the king included, knew about John's pact with the English.
43:25John was cornered.
43:27In a humiliating ceremony that echoed that of Alexander all those years before,
43:32he was forced to surrender.
43:42John had wanted nothing more than to be the king of Scotland.
43:46He had wanted nothing more than to be the king of Scotland.
43:49He had wanted nothing more than to be the king of Scotland.
43:52John had wanted nothing more than to be like his father.
43:56This was the bitter fulfilment of that wish.
43:59Like his father, he had underestimated the power of the Stuarts
44:02and like his father, he had paid the price.
44:05But this was more than a personal failure.
44:07The repercussions would be felt much more widely,
44:11rippling down through the centuries and affecting Scotland to this day.
44:16John kept his head.
44:18He even managed to hold on to some of his lands.
44:22But the humiliating submission was too much for others in his family.
44:39Angus Ogg looked back on his life.
44:43Angus Ogg looked back to the glory days,
44:46a time when his family commanded respect.
44:52Then the MacDonalds had burned Inverness to the ground
44:55and routed a royal army at Inverlochy.
44:58No one, not even kings, had been able to subdue them.
45:03And now they were expected just to roll over.
45:13The argument divided the family.
45:15In the process, it tore Gaelic Scotland apart.
45:19When Angus attempted to seize power from his father,
45:22the Highlands and Islands erupted into civil war.
45:27The Burlands, which had made the lordship, now gathered to destroy it.
45:35Son against father, the final battlefield,
45:39a bay on the Sound of Mull.
45:52That stretch of water ahead is called Bloody Bay.
45:55It's where the Burlands of John and Angus Ogg clashed with such disastrous violence.
46:00It's supposed to have been a victory for Angus' forces,
46:04but the truth of the matter is that it was a defeat for the whole of the lordship.
46:08Something more than men died that day.
46:11The idea of a strong Gaelic world,
46:14a coherent entity that could deal on equal terms with the rest of Scotland, died too.
46:35It was a seismic moment.
46:38The hairline crack between the Highlands and the Lowlands suddenly blew wide open.
46:45At one time, Gaelic Scotland, the place, the people and the language,
46:50had seemed central to the collective identity of Scots.
46:55But now, it began to be seen as threatening, as different,
47:00as other.
47:05Scotland was changing, and changing fast.
47:12Only one thing seemed constant.
47:15The Stuarts.
47:19Just a few years after the implosion of the MacDonalds,
47:22another James sat upon the Scottish throne.
47:25Extravagant, charming, and able to inspire affection as well as respect,
47:29James IV was everything that his forefathers weren't.
47:35But he did have one Stuart trait.
47:39A burning desire to make a mark.
47:44Falkland Palace was James IV's country retreat.
47:48An escape from the everyday life of a man,
47:51James IV's country retreat.
47:53An escape from the everyday pressures of court.
47:57Everywhere you look, there are thistles.
48:03This was the new Stuart emblem.
48:06It was an image that James adapted and reproduced endlessly.
48:10It was a brilliant logo, so simple, so memorable,
48:14that the thistle became the definitive symbol not just of the Stuarts,
48:18but of Scotland too.
48:22James wanted to create a new Scottish identity.
48:27But that identity was a very specific, even limiting one.
48:36James IV was the last Scottish king to speak Gaelic.
48:41But Gaelic wasn't his first language.
48:44It wasn't his second.
48:46It wasn't his third.
48:48James was the last king to speak Gaelic.
48:52But Gaelic wasn't the king's native tongue.
48:55Scots was.
48:59And under the patronage of James, Scots was on the up.
49:13This is one of the first prints printed and produced in Scotland
49:16and the fascinating thing about it really
49:18is that it's written in the language of the Lowland Scots.
49:21Who is the author that's printed here?
49:24The flighting of Dunbar and Kennedy is actually by two poets
49:27and this is by Dunbar.
49:29What is a flighting?
49:31A flighting is a genre in which one poet challenges the other poet to a duel
49:34by being as abusive as possible.
49:36Can you read me an example of Dunbar having a pop at his adversary?
49:42Ersh briber berd, vile beggar with thy brats.
49:45Cowart bitten crod and Kennedy, coward of kind.
49:48Evil ferret and dryad as dentsmen on the rats.
49:51Leek as the gladshead on thy ghoul snout dined.
49:54Mismade monster, ilk moon out of thy mind.
49:57Thine wounds ribald, thy rhyming, thou but roys.
50:00Thy treacher tongue hast tain a healing stride.
50:03A lowland ers would make a better noise.
50:06He's not exactly calling him a smashing chap there is he?
50:08Not really, no, no.
50:11I can already pick out from what you're saying that one of the key things
50:15that this lowland poet is accusing the other of
50:19is of using the Irish tongue, the Gaelic tongue.
50:24What's that about?
50:26I think Dunbar is tapping into the stereotypes that would exist at the time.
50:30As part of James IV's political agenda, cultural agenda, social agenda
50:35you're looking at him pushing lowland Scots
50:39as a language of the people in Scotland
50:41and use that as an official language
50:44and export that to the further out regions
50:46and therefore Gaelic is clearly under pressure.
50:48So language is power?
50:50I think so, yeah.
51:00Under James IV,
51:02earthy everyday Scots became the language of literature and law
51:07and therefore of power.
51:09Gaelic, meanwhile, had become politically tainted.
51:12It might well have been the language of at least half of all Scots
51:15but as far as lowlanders were concerned
51:18it was the tongue of traitors and outlaws.
51:26Without the glue of the lordship to hold it together
51:29the highlands and islands had become a kind of wild west.
51:35Everyone was out to grab what they could.
51:37In the bloodletting, old scores were settled.
51:41Angus Og, the upstart son who had tried to seize the lordship
51:45met a brutal end.
51:47Strangled to death by one of his own servants.
51:51This was Launan Crech, the raiding time.
51:54To the outside world it seemed that every stereotype
51:57of the lawlessness of the Gaels had been confirmed.
52:03As if overwhelmed by the torrent of violence that he had unleashed
52:07John Macdonald retreated into penance and prayer.
52:11In name at least, he was a man of his word.
52:15In 1493, James took the title of King of the Highlands
52:19and was the only king to be crowned with the title of King.
52:23The first King of the Highlands was St James who was the son of Dumbledore
52:28and the only king to be crowned with the title of King.
52:32Lord of the Highlands.
52:34King of the Highlands too.
52:37The same name as the King of the Highlands.
52:41In 1493, James took the title for himself.
52:46The Stuarts, not the MacDonalds, were the lords of the Isles now.
52:51It was their word, their law, their rule.
52:56James put together an expedition and sailed north to impose his authority.
53:05The last time a Scottish king had ventured into the labyrinth of the Hebrides,
53:08he'd been on the run.
53:10But unlike Robert the Bruce nearly 200 years previously,
53:13James had come not as a fugitive, but as a feudal overlord.
53:19The time of the MacDonalds had passed.
53:24The time of the Stuarts had come.
53:29They were rich, they were powerful, they were in charge.
53:35The Stuarts now looked to secure their future.
53:41In 1503, James IV married Margaret Tudor,
53:45the daughter of Henry VII of England.
53:53It was another spectacular marriage for the Stuarts,
53:57but with an important difference.
54:01This time, it wasn't just the Stuarts using a royal match
54:04as the passport to power and respectability.
54:07It was the English Tudors.
54:09The Tudor dynasty was still a fragile one.
54:11They'd just emerged from the Wars of the Roses
54:14and they were clinging on to power by their fingertips.
54:17Marriage into the long-established Stuart family
54:20would bring much-needed legitimacy in the eyes of European monarchy.
54:26It was an extraordinary reversal of fortune.
54:29Once, they had been hostages and political prisoners.
54:32Now, the Stuart dynasty had become major power brokers,
54:36able to make the reputations of their royal rivals.
54:42And with the birth of a baby boy in 1507,
54:45the Stuarts were only a heartbeat away
54:48from the throne of their ancient enemy,
54:51the English.
54:54The world had turned. The centre had shifted.
54:57And while the Stuart court blossomed,
54:59the court of the Lords of the Isles, Finlagan, burned.
55:23THE STUART DYNASTY
55:30There is no end to the struggle.
55:33There is no end to the struggle.
55:36The struggle for power is in the heart
55:39of every man and woman.
55:43A woman is a woman.
55:46A woman is a woman.
55:50A woman is a woman.
55:53A woman is a woman.
56:02The Highland Boundary fault line cuts like a sword stroke
56:05through the heart of Scotland.
56:07From coast to coast,
56:09it divides the country into two distinct parts,
56:12the Highlands and the Lowlands.
56:15It's a neat division.
56:17Perhaps too neat.
56:22It's easy for us to think that the differences
56:25between Gaelic identity and Scots
56:27are somehow set in stone.
56:32But this sense of separation is only a few centuries old.
56:37It's history, not geography, that divides us.
56:43Scotland's split personality
56:45is the result of a family struggle
56:47that pulled the kingdom apart.
56:52From being fully paid up members of the Scottish project,
56:55Gaels began to be thought of as rebels.
56:58Outsiders.
57:02Scotland couldn't continue to be diverse.
57:05It had to be a single political entity.
57:09And maybe a single cultural entity too.
57:13It was the Stuarts who drove this new vision of a Scottish kingdom.
57:17In their eyes, Scotland was secure in its independence
57:21and established on the European stage.
57:23But this was only the start of what they'd set out to achieve.
57:27In the years to come, their ambitions would truly take flight.
58:13The Story of Scotland
58:17The Story of Scotland
58:21The Story of Scotland
58:25The Story of Scotland