Download Category: Scottish History

JOHN KNOX WAS BORN AT HADDINGTON IN EAST LOTHIAN IN ABOUT 1505. His father was William Knox. He obtained a liberal education in grammar school, and at the age of sixteen he was sent to pursue his studies at the University of Glasgow, where Dr. John Major was professor of philosophy and theology. Majors, also a native of Haddington, was one of the leading intellectuals of Europe, and was previously the foremost scholastic theologian at the University of Paris. Unlike the ordinary teachers of theology, he did not lecture only on Peter Lombard’s Books of the Sentences (the leading textbook of Scholastic Theology), but introduced his students to the text of the Latin Bible.

Beza says that Knox began to study with such proficiency that it was thought he would one day become a better schoolman than his master, Majors, but after reading the works of St. Jerome and St. Augustine, he realized the errors in the conventional teaching (scholasticism was at its height, studies often focused on absurd arguments, such as, “how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?”). He left the university without obtaining a masters degree, and taught in some capacity at the University of St. Andrews. It appears that he took the orders of the Catholic priesthood in about 1530 and served with some religious establishment for the next 10 years in Haddington, functioning as a notary (this was a task of churchmen in the middle ages, our word “clerk” comes from cleric) and as a private tutor.

THANKS SALIM FOR REPLYING AND IT IS INTERESTING TO READ THAT THE VILLAGERS NEAR HADRIANS WALL can be traced as akin to Northern Syrians for there is another link between UK Celts and Syria / Scythia.

From what I understand the Saxons when invading Britain attempted to enter the area we call today the Lothians. This was the breadbasket of the Britons and from what I understand the Saxons were pushed out to Lindisfarne when the Picts, Scots and Britons united to defeat them in battle. This is supposed to be the birth of the Saltire as a national emblem and it also leads to the acceptance of Christianity by the Picts and the birth of Alba, which leads eventually to Scotland. The Saxons at this time were heathen and the Scots were the race to convert them.

The whole basis of the brigand / thief reference to “Scotti” resides in such wonderful and accurate historians as Bede who also put forward the Scots were the produce or bastards of the Irish and the Picts. The Scots women being given to Pictish men and based on the late Roman writers who refer to the Scots and the Picts as attacking and harassing their northern borders of the empire.

I believe that is a biased and untrue foundation of the Scots and earliest writings indicate that the Scots named themselves after a Queen or noblewoman. Indeed the lands were called Scota Major and Scota Minor and you would surely expect Scotti Major and Minor. The term Eriguena as indicating an Ireland stems from after the fall of Rome, (and the Germanisation of Europe in many ways), perhaps coming from Ire meaning North and all earlier references are to Scota.

The middle of the ninth century saw the Scots and Picts united under the scepter of Kenneth, the son of Alpin. The advent of this union was long deferred: it was at least consummated in A.D. 843; but even then it received no enthusiastic welcome from those to whom, as might have been foreseen, it brought great increase of power and prestige. The idea of mixing their blood to form one nation, and uniting their arms to establish one central throne, and so taking pledges for the maintenance of peace at home, and the acquisition of influence abroad, however meritorious it seems to us, does not appear to have approved itself to the two races that inhabited the one country of Caledonia. They entertained this idea only when it came to be forced upon them by the stern lessons of the battlefield—a school in which it would seem the education of infant nations must begin.

This union was preceded and prepared by a series of great battles. The question at issue in these fierce conflicts was, to which of the two nationalities, the Scots or the Picts, shall the supremacy belong, and by consequence the right to govern the kingdom? The wars waged to determine this point ended in a supreme trial of strength on the banks of the Tay near Scone.1

The engagement was a desperate one. Seven times the Picts assailed, and seven times were they driven back. Their king, Bred, fell in battle, and his armour, afterwards presented to Kenneth MacAlpin, was sent by him to hung up at Icolmkil.2

From that bloody field the Scots and Picts emerged one nation. Supremacy, which had been the object aimed at by the combatants till now, was abandoned for the more practical and wiser policy of union. Battle had swept away one of the two thrones which had hitherto borne sway in Caledonia, and the one throne left standing was that of the prince whose progenitor, Aidan, Columba had made to sit on the Lia-Fail, or Stone of Destiny, and anointed as the first really independent sovereign of the Scots.

THE opening of the fifth century brought with it changes of transcendent magnitude and importance in Europe. For ages the arms of the South had overflowed the countries of the North, but now the tide of conquest turned, the North was bearing down on the South, and that haughty Power which had subjected to her sceptre so many tribes and realms, was about to suffer in her turn the miseries of foreign invasion, and taste the bitterness of a barbarian yoke. These changes were preparatory to the erection of a kingdom which was destined to flourish when the victories of Rome had crumbled into dust.
We must here pause in order specially to note the deadlock into which the affairs of the world had come at this great turning-point of its history. Its three leading nations are seen to be unable to advance beyond the point at which they had now arrived. Hence the necessity of bringing new races upon the stage if the human march was to go forward. This extraordinary position of matters must be taken into account and distinctly apprehended if we would intelligently follow the course of succeeding events; and especially we would understand the place of the Scots in general history, and the part they were selected to fulfill in the cause of Christian civilization and constitutional liberty. It is here that we find the key of modern history.
Till this epoch the business of the world had been left in the hands of the Jew, the Greek, and the Roman. These were its three leading nations. The march of all three was towards the same goal, but they approached it on separate lines. The world’s work was too onerous to be undertaken by any one of them singly, and accordingly we see it partitioned among the three, in fit correspondence with the age in which each flourished, and the peculiar idiosyncrasy with which each had been endowed.

DR. WYLIE’S HISTORY IS PUBLISHED BY THE REFORMATION ONLINE the most timely site on the Internet www.reformation.org. All this history has been covered up!!

Note to the Reader Dr. Wylie’s book was published in 1886. It disappeared from off the face of the earth around the turn of the century. Even the copy in the Library of Congress was stolen.

We are confident that if the book had remained in circulation there would be no divided Ireland today!! A true knowledge of history is vital––-Rome has poisoned the wells of history, and multitudes have drunk of that contaminated water.

When you are sick physically, the first question the doctor asks is about your medical history, in order to affect a cure. The same is true in a spiritual sense . . . woe unto the people whose historians are their enemies!! In the Book of Revelation, chapter 12, the woman clothed with the sun – a picture of the true Church – has to flee into the wilderness to escape the wrath of the Great Red Dragon. Hibernia and Caledonia was the wilderness at that time, lying beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire. Ireland was always the true home of the Scots.

The name of the country was changed around the time of the Reformation. St. Patrick in his Confession mentions the sons of the Scotti and the daughters of the chieftains, especially one blessed Scottish princess that he baptized (una benedicta Scota). All writers up the time of the Reformation refer to the inhabitants of Hibernia as the Scottish Tribes. Brian Born (930-1014) High King of Hibernia and victor over the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf, has his name inscribed in the Book of Armagh as Imperatoris Scotorum, that is: Emperor of the Scots.

In the year 1150, a famous book was written by Christian Malone , Abbot of Clonmacnoise, entitled Chronicum Scotorum. It is a chronology of Hibernia from the Flood to the 12th century. St. Patrick is the Apostle of the Scots – on both sides of the Irish Channel. Both people fought the same enemies for centuries: Vikings, Danes, Anglo-Normans, etc., etc. Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against the true Church and we find remnants of the Gaelic Church surviving right down to the blessed Reformation.

We have retained the English spellings and endnotes appear at the end of each chapter