The Terror of the Seas?
The Terror of the Seas?

Author: Steve Murdoch

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 9004185682

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This book places early modern Scottish maritime warfare in its European context. Its formidably broad range of sources sheds light on many previously little known, or unknown, aspects of naval history. It also provides many valuable new perspectives on the importance of the sea to the Scots, and of the Scots to the naval history of Great Britain.

The Northern Earldoms
The Northern Earldoms

Author: Barbara E. Crawford

Publisher: Birlinn

Published: 2013-08-08

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 0857906186

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The medieval earldoms of Orkney and Caithness were positioned between two worlds, the Norwegian and the Scottish. They were a maritime lordship divided, or united, by the turbulent waters of the Pentland Firth. This unlikely combination of island and mainland territory survived as a single lordship for 600 years, against the odds. Growing out of the Viking maelstrom of the early Middle Ages, it became an established and wealthy principality which dominated northern waters, with a renowned dynasty of earls. Despite their peripheral location these earls were fully in touch with the kingdoms of Norway and Scotland and increasingly subject to the rulers of these kingdoms. How they maintained their independence and how they survived the clash of loyalties are themes explored in this book from the early Viking age to the late medieval era when the powerful feudal Sinclair earls ruled the islands and regained possession of Caithness. This is a story of the time when the Northern Isles of Scotland were part of a different national entity which explains the background to the non-Gaelic culture of this locality, when links across the North Sea were as important as links with the kingdom of Scotland to the south.

A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship Among the Scots
A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship Among the Scots

Author: Roger A. Mason

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 135196254X

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George Buchanan (1506-82) was one of the most distinguished humanists of the Northern European Renaissance. Hailed by his contemporaries as the greatest Latin poet of his age, he is chiefly remembered today as a radical political theorist whose Dialogus, first published in Edinburgh in 1579, justified the deposition of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1567 on the basis of a theory of popular sovereignty, which vested in the people the right to resist, depose and kill tyrannical monarchs. Immensely influential in radical circles both in Britain and on the Continent, it made a notable contribution to the debates over the nature and location of sovereignty which would finally bear fruit in the writings of John Locke. This critical edition and translation of the Dialogus makes available for the first time a modern scholarly version of one of the key texts in the history of early modern British political thought.

The Birsay Bay Project
The Birsay Bay Project

Author: Christopher D. Morris

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2021-06-23

Total Pages: 1229

ISBN-13: 1789256089

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The Brough of Birsay was the power-center of the Viking earldom of Orkney and is one of Historic Environment Scotland’s key monuments and visitor attractions on the islands. This publication is the culmination of 60 years of investigations that took place on the site between 1954 and 2014. This new volume incorporates comprehensive accounts of work undertaken by Dr Ralegh Radford and Mr Stewart Cruden between 1954 and 1964, excavations by the Viking and Early Settlement Research Project under the direction of the author on site between 1974 and 1981, a rescue excavation in 1993, a geophysical survey in 2007 and archival research up to 2014. Specialist artefactual and palaeobiological studies of metallurgical material, ogham inscriptions and a gilt-bronze mount of Insular origin are included, together with re-analysis of the radiocarbon dates from all sites in Birsay Bay, and a re-assessment of the architecture and dating of the church and related buildings on the Brough itself. The final two chapters put the Brough, as both a Pictish power-center and the hub of the Viking earldom, in the overall context of Birsay Bay and Viking and late Norse Orkney, and the wider world between the Pictish and late Norse/Medieval periods. As well as being the author’s third and final volume reporting on work for the Birsay Bay Project, this volume completes a trilogy of studies of the Brough itself, alongside Mrs Cecil Curle’s and Prof John Hunter’s earlier monographs.

Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years' War, 1618–1648
Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years' War, 1618–1648

Author: Alexia Grosjean

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-10-06

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1317318161

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Field Marshal Alexander Leslie was the highest ranking commander from the British Isles to serve in the Thirty Years’ War. Though Leslie’s life provides the thread that runs through this work, the authors use his story to explore the impacts of the Thirty Years’ War, the British Civil Wars and the age of Military Revolution.

The Early Life of James VI
The Early Life of James VI

Author: Steven J. Reid

Publisher: Birlinn Ltd

Published: 2023-03-09

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1788855310

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James VI and I was arguably the most successful ruler of the Stewart Dynasty in Scotland, and the first king of a united Great Britain. His ableness as a monarch, it has been argued, stemmed largely from his Scottish upbringing. This book is the first in-depth scholarly study of those formative years. It tries to understand exactly when in James' 'long apprenticeship' he seized political power and retraces the incremental steps he took along the way. It also poses new answers to key questions about this process. What relationship did he have with his mother Mary Queen of Scots? Why did he favour his kinsman Esmé Stuart, ultimately Duke of Lennox, to such an extent that it endangered his own throne? And was there a discernible pattern of intent to the alliances he made with the various factions at court between 1578 and 1585? This book also analyses James' early reign as an important case study of the impact of the Reformation on the monarchy of early modern Europe, and examines the cultural activity at James' early court.

Witches of the North
Witches of the North

Author: Liv Helene Willumsen

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2013-06-13

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 9004252924

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Witches of the North. Scotland and Finnmark is a comparative study of witchcraft persecution in Scotland and Finnmark, Norway. A wide range of quantitative and qualitative analyses based mainly on legal documents shed light on the witch-hunts in the two regions during the seventeenth century. Statistical analyses give information about tendencies in the source material in total. The qualitative chapters contain close-readings of trial documents, wherein the various voices heard during a trial are analysed: the voice of the scribe, the voice of the law, the voice of the accused person and the voices of the witnesses. The analyses combined provide a broad view of the historical phenomenon in question as well as in-depth studies of individual witchcraft cases.