The Kingdom of the Picts was the state that eventually became known as ‘Alba’ or ‘Scotland’. By the 12th century, the kings of Alba had added to their territories the English-speaking land in the south-east and attained overlordship of Gaelic-speaking Galloway and Norse-speaking Caithness; by the end of the 13th century, the kingdom had assumed approximately its modern borders.

Feudalism, government reorganisation and the first legally recognised towns (called burghs) began in the 12th century. Influenced by Anglo-French knights, the culture and language of the low-lying and coastal parts of the kingdom’s original territory in the east became English-speaking, while the rest of the country retained the Gaelic language, apart from the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland, which remained under Norse rule until 1468.

The Scottish state entered a largely successful and stable period between the 12th and 14th centuries, there was relative peace with England, and trade and educational links were well developed with the Continent.

The death of Alexander III in 1286 broke the centuries-old succession line of Scotland’s kings. Edward I of England was asked to arbitrate between claimants for the Scottish crown, and John Balliol was pronounced king in 1292. Edward steadily undermined his authority. In 1294, Balliol and other Scottish lords refused Edward’s demands to serve in his army against the French; Scotland and France sealed a treaty in 1295, known as the Auld Alliance. War ensued and King John was deposed by Edward who took personal control of Scotland. Andrew Moray and William Wallace initially emerged as the principal leaders of the resistance to English rule in what became known as the Wars of Scottish Independence (1296–1328).

In the early 14th century Robert the Bruce battled to restore Scottish independence, gradually winning Scotland back from the Norman English invaders, with victory at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. However, war with England continued for several decades after the death of Bruce.

The Stuarts ruled Scotland for the remainder of the Middle Ages. The country they ruled experienced greater prosperity from the end of the 14th century through the Scottish Renaissance to the Reformation. This was despite continual warfare with England, and the increasing division between Highlands and Lowlands,.

In 1502, James IV of Scotland signed the Treaty of Perpetual Peace with Henry VII of England, and married Henry’s daughter. A decade later, James made the fateful decision to invade England in support of France under the terms of the Auld Alliance. He was the last British monarch to die in battle, at the Battle of Flodden.

In 1560, John Knox realised his goal of seeing Scotland become a Protestant nation and the Scottish parliament revoke papal authority in Scotland. Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic and former queen of France, was forced to abdicate in 1567.

In 1603, James VI, King of Scots inherited the thrones of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Ireland, and became King James I of England and Ireland, leaving Edinburgh for London. With the exception of a short period under the Protectorate, Scotland remained a separate state, but there was considerable conflict between the crown and the Covenanters over the form of church government. In the 1690s, Scotland experienced famine, which reduced the population of parts of the country by at least 20%.

On 22 July 1706, the Treaty of Union was agreed between representatives of the Scots Parliament and the Parliament of England and the following year twin Acts of Union were passed to create the united Kingdom of Great Britain. Scotland remained independent in many ways. Following the union, the country maintained its own separate legal system of Scots Law, its own education system and its own state church. As a result, Scottish family history records tend to be very different to those found elsewhere in the British Isles.

The civil registration of Scottish births, marriages and deaths, for example, started in 1855, 18 years after England – but the records hold much more information than their English and Welsh counterparts, such as the names of both parents (including maiden name) in each. The land system of feudalism in England and Wales, with ‘vassals’ holding land of their ‘superiors’, was abolished in medieval times, but governed virtually every land transfer in Scotland until its abolition in 2004. And where the state church in England, Wales and Ireland was the Anglican Church, administered by bishops and archbishops etc, the Scottish ‘Kirk’ had no bishops at all for most of its existence, with congregations instead democratically electing their own ministers. Scotland was one of the main powerhouses of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, but prior to the invention of steam power was largely rural. People worked on their own plots of land as well as that of their laird, or put themselves out for hire for set periods at the Scottish term days of Whitsun and Martinmas. To the north of the Highland line, the Gaelic-speaking clans lived in small separate territories under the protection of a clan chief. Those in the more urbanised population lived in the main trading burghs of the Scots-speaking central belt and eastern coast, working as craftsmen and merchants, and with constant contact with their English neighbours. The inhabitants of the Lowlands and the Highlands regarded each as other as foreigners and with much suspicion.

Several major developments changed the country by the end of the 17th century and early 18th. The union was not popular with the common folk of the country, who saw it as a means for the Scottish nobility to advance themselves at the people’s expense.

With strong support from the peoples of the Highlands, there were several Jacobite rebellions in the first half of the 18th century to try to restore the power of the Stuarts. With their failure the clan system breathed its last, with the resultant pacification of the Highlands. Many of the chiefs then adopted the idea of trying to make money from their lands rather than protect the clans to which they were supposed to give a lead. Thousands of people were forced from their homes into exile during what became known as the ‘clearances’, and in their wake came more profitable sheep.

In the southern half of the country a different story would unfold. Vast open estates were enclosed into more efficient farms, and many former agricultural labourers flocked to the big cities to seek work. As the Industrial Revolution took a hold, coal and iron ore was mined in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Fife, while textiles mills were established in Glasgow, Perth and Dundee. Navvies carved out an infrastructure of canals and then built the railways and, on the Clyde, John Brown’s shipyard workers built a fleet for the rapidly growing British Empire, first from wood and then of iron.

As the country grew, the church’s structure of parishes found it hard to cope with the expansion of the major cities. There were regular disagreements about the role of the state and the role of landowners in the affairs of the Kirk. During the 18th and 19th centuries various wings split from the establishment, the most important being in 1843 when a third of the Kirk’s ministers walked away to form the Free Church of Scotland. The role of the Kirk itself declined in everyday life, and the various roles it once had were gradually transferred to the state, such as education, discipline and the administration of poor relief. {