Historians

Had I chosen to research the English Civil War there are loads of authors to consult, from the high-powered philosophic analyses of the greatest of English historians to the graphic book accounts of battles designed for young people. You might think that everything that could be said about that war has now been discovered and written up. It has also been well covered by novelists. However, however brilliant the historian there is a tendency to take an eye off the detail when it comes to referring to the Scottish dimension. One example I found was on reading Diane Purkiss's otherwise absolutely brilliant book, The English Civil War: A People's History. It's a vast and absorbing read and covers so much, from how Charles I's childhood probably affected his attitude to kingship, to accounts of the leading Parliamentarians of Cromwell's regime, the early socialist ideologies of the Diggers and Levellers, the horrors of battle wounds, the trials of musketry, the pillaging, massacring, devastation of people's homes and the countryside, the activities of spies and witchfinders - an absolute mine of information for anyone contemplating writing a fiction based in that period. However, towards the end she makes two brief comments that made me cross. One was that the Marquis of Hamilton 'delayed' his invasion of England in support of Charles I in 1648, and the other was that Charles II 'invaded' Scotland in 1650. The first point is much more complex than her statement would suggest and I won't go into it here. However, the second statement is plain wrong. Charles II came to Scotland at the invitation of its Covenanting government, who promised him support to regain his lost throne, subject to his satisfying their religious demands and abjuring the 'sins' of his forebears. He came in one ship, a frigate lent to him by his brother-in-law, the Prince of Orange, and had a small retinue of friends and courtiers, most of whom he was almost immediately required to disband at the orders of the Scots when he arrived. It's just a detail, but it's kind of telling. It suggests that whatever happened in Scotland is not important enough to be precise enough about. Or that's my impression.

Combing the library shelves, however, took me to David Stevenson, Emeritus Professor of History at St. Andrews University. I started with a book of his called King or Covenant? Voices from Civil War. It contains profiles of 13 individuals who lived through this turbulent period in Scotland and who left records of their experiences in the form of letters, journals or just brief chronicles of events. This opened up a series of portraits of people who are perhaps less well known now unless you know the period well. It includes soldiers of fortune, lawyers, politicians, ministers of the kirk, a Catholic priest and one woman, Anne, Lady Halkett, whose main claim to fame is that she helped the young James, Duke of York, escape Cromwell's clutches by disguising him as a girl. Through Stevenson's biliographical references I could now follow up these individuals and broaden my impressions of the period through their preoccupations.

Later I got hold of Stevenson's Revolution and Counter Revolution 1644-51, an invaluable account of what was happening in Scotland during those years, the second of a two volume account of the history of the Covenant. I found it so useful I was constantly renewing it at the library, but it is otherwise out of print and therefore difficult to get hold of a personal copy.

But my main point here is that even secondary historical material on this period of Scottish history is not easy to come by. At the recent Edinburgh Book Festival I attended a session about Scottish history and one of the participants, the author of a new book called The Killing Time, said that he had written it because he could not find the kind of book he wanted on the subject.