16. History of the County.
Standing remote from the centre of the country, Aberdeenshire has not been fated to figure largely in general history. The story of its own evolution from poverty to prosperity is an interesting one, but it is only now and again that the county is involved in the main current of the history of Scotland.
If the Romans ever visited it, which is highly doubtful, they left no convincing evidence of their stay. Of positive Roman influence no indication has survived, and no conquest of the district can have taken place. The only records of the early inhabitants of the district—usually called Picts—are the Eirde houses, the lake dwellings or crannogs, the hill forts or duns, the “Druidical†circles and standing stones and the flint arrow-heads, all of which will be dealt with in a later chapter.
Christianity had reached the south of Scotland before the Romans left early in the fifth century. The first missionary who crossed the Mounth was St Ternan, whose name survives at Banchory-Ternan on the Dee, the place of his death. St Kentigern or St Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow, had a church dedicated to him at Glengairn. St Kentigern belonged to the sixth century, and was therefore a contemporary of St Columba, who christianised Aberdeenshire from Iona. In this way two great currents met in the north-east. Columba accompanied by his disciple Drostan first appeared at Aberdour on the northern coast. From Aberdour he passed on through Buchan, and having established the Monastery of Deer and left Drostanin charge, moved on to other fields of labour. His name survives in the fishing village of St Combs. He is the tutelar saint of Belhelvie, and the churches of New Machar and Daviot were dedicated to him. These facts indicate the mode in which Pictland was brought under the influence of Christianity.
The next historical item worthy of mention is the ravages of the Scandinavian Vikings. The descents on the coast of these sea-rovers were directed against the monastic communities, which had gathered some wealth. The Aberdeenshire coast, having few inlets convenient for the entry of their long boats, was to a large extent exempt from their raids, but in 1012 an expedition under Cnut, son of Swegen, the king of Denmark, landed at Cruden Bay.
Another fact of interest is the death of Macbeth, who for seventeen years had by the help of Thorfinn, the Scandinavian (whose name may be seen in the Deeside town of Torphins), usurped the kingship of Scotland. Malcolm Canmore led an army against him in 1057, and gradually driving him north, beyond the Mounth, overtook him at Lumphanan. There Macbeth was slain. A Macbeth’s stone is said to mark the place where he received his death-wound, and Macbeth’s Cairn is marked by a clump of trees in the midst of cultivated land. The farm called Cairnbethie retains the echo of his name. Kincardine O’Neil, where Malcolm awaited the result of the conflict, commands the ford of the Dee on the ancient route of travel from south to north across the Cairn-o-Mounth.
Malcolm shortly after passed through Aberdeenshire at the head of an expedition against the Celtic population which had supported Macbeth. The Norman Conquest, nine years thereafter, was the occasion of Anglo-Saxon settlements in the county. The court of Malcolm and Queen Margaret became a centre of Anglo-Saxon influence. The old Gaelic language gave way before the new Teutonic speech. The Celtic population made various attempts to recover the power that was fast slipping from their hands. Malcolm headed a second expedition to Aberdeenshire in 1078, and on that occasion granted the lands of Monymusk and Keig to the church of St Andrews. He is said to have had a hunting-seat in the forest of Mar, and the ruined castle of Kindrochit in the village of Braemar is associated with this fact.
The earliest mention of Aberdeen is in a charter of Alexander I, granting to the monks of Scone a dwelling in each of the principal towns—one of which is Aberdeen. A stream of Anglo-Saxons, Flemings and Scandinavians had been gradually flowing towards the settlement at the mouth of the Dee, where they pursued their handicrafts and established trade with other ports. William the Lion frequently visited the town and ultimately built a royal residence, which after a time was gifted to the Trinity or Red Friars for a monastery. The bishopric of Aberdeen dates from 1150.
Edward I of England in 1296 at the head of a large army paid these northern parts a visit. He entered the county by the road leading from Glenbervie to Durris, whence he proceeded to Aberdeen, exacting homage fromthe burghers during his five days’ stay. From Aberdeen he went to Kintore and Fyvie and on to Speyside, returning by the Cabrach, Kildrummy, Kincardine O’Neil and the Cairn-o-Mounth.
The next year Wallace, in his patriotic efforts to clear the country from English domination, surprised Edward’s garrison at Aberdeen, but unable to effect anything, hastily withdrew from the neighbourhood. Edward was back in Aberdeen in 1303 and paid another visit to Kildrummy Castle, then in the possession of Bruce. Then Bruce, having fled from the English court and assassinated the Red Comyn at Dumfries, was crowned at Scone and the long struggle for national independence began in earnest. In 1307 he came to Aberdeen, which was favourable to his cause. At Barra, not far from Inverurie and Old Meldrum, his forces met those of the Earl of Buchan (John Comyn) and defeated them (1308). It was not a great battle in itself, but its consequences were important. It marked the turn of the tide in the national cause. The Buchan district, in which the battle took place, had long been identified with the powerful family of the Comyns; and after his victory at Barra, Bruce devastated the district with relentless fury. This “harrying of Buchan,†as it has been called, is referred to by Barbour as an event bemoaned for more than fifty years. The family of the Comyns was crushed, and their influence, which had been liberal and considerate to the native race of Celts, came to an end. The whole of the north-east turned to Bruce’s support, and in a short time all Edward’s garrisons disappeared. This upheaval created a freshpartition of the lands of Aberdeenshire. New families such as the Hays, the Frasers, the Gordons and the Irvines, were rewarded for faithful service by grants of land. The re-settlement of the county from non-Celtic sources accentuated the Teutonic element in the county. After Bannockburn, Bruce rewarded Aberdeen itself for its support by granting to the burgesses the burgh as well as the forest of Stocket.
The great event of the fifteenth century was the Battle of Harlaw, which took place in 1411 at no great distance from the site of the Battle of Barra. It was really a conflict between Celt and Saxon, and was a despairing effort on the part of the dispossessed native population to re-establish themselves in the Lowlands. The Highlanders were led by Donald of the Isles, who gathering the clansmen of the northern Hebrides, Ross and Lochaber, and sweeping through Moray and Strathbogie, arrived at the Garioch on his way to Aberdeen. The burghers placed themselves under the leadership of the Earl of Mar (Alexander Stewart, son of the Wolf of Badenoch), a soldier who had seen much service in various parts of the world. The provost of the city, Robert Davidson, led forth a body of his fellow-citizens and joined Mar’s forces at Inverurie, within three miles of the Highlanders’ camp. The two forces were unequally matched—Donald having 10,000 men and Mar only a tenth of that number, but of these many were mail-clad knights on horseback and armed with spears. It was a fiercely contested battle and lasted till the darkness of a July night. The slaughter on both sides was great, butthe tide of barbarism was driven back. The Highlanders retreated whence they came and the county of Aberdeen was saved from the imminent peril of a Celtic recrudescence. This is the only really memorable battle associated with Aberdeenshire soil. Its “red†field, on which so many prominent citizens shed their life-blood (Provost Davidson and Sir Alexander Irvine of Drum being of the number), was long remembered as a dreary and costly victory.
Another battle of much less significance was that of Corrichie, fought in Queen Mary’s reign in 1562 on the eastern slope of the Hill of Fare, not far from Banchory. It was a contest between James Stewart (the Regent Murray, and half-brother of the Queen) and the Earl of Huntly. Huntly was defeated and slain, and his son, Sir John Gordon, who was taken prisoner, was afterwards executed at Aberdeen. Queen Mary, it is said, was a spectator both of the battle and of the execution.
In the seventeenth century, at the beginning of the Covenanting “troubles,†Aberdeenshire gained a certain notoriety as being the place where the sword was first drawn. In 1639 the Covenanters mustered at Turriff under Montrose, to the number of 800. The Royalist party under the Earl of Huntly, to the number of 2000 but poorly armed, marched to the town with the intention of preventing the Covenanters from meeting, but they were already in possession, and when Huntly’s party saw how matters stood, they passed on, the two forces surveying each other at close quarters without hostile act or word. This bloodless affair is known as the firstRaid of Turriff. A few weeks later a somewhat similar encounter took place, when the Covenanters, completely surprised, fled without striking a blow. The loss on either side was trifling, still some blood was actually shed, and the Trot of Turriff, as it was called, became the first incident in a long line of mighty events.
Montrose, both when he was leading on the side of the Covenant, and later when he became a Royalist leader, paid several visits to Aberdeen, which, although supporting the Royalist cause, suffered exactions from both parties. In 1644 Montrose made a forcible entry of the town, which resulted in the death of 150 Covenanters, and in the plundering of the city. Later on, after his victory over Argyll at Inverlochy, Montrose gained a success for the Royalist cause at Alford (1645).
In 1650, after the execution of Charles I, his son Charles II landed at Speymouth, and on his way south to be crowned at Scone, visited Aberdeen, where he was received with every manifestation of loyalty and goodwill. The next year General Monk paid the town a visit, and left an English garrison, which remained till 1659. The Restoration was hailed with rejoicing: the Revolution with dislike. Yet at the Rebellion of 1715 scant enthusiasm was roused for the cause of the Pretender, who himself passed through the city on his way from Peterhead to Fetteresso. In the thirty years that passed before the second Jacobite Rebellion, public sentiment had grown more favourable to the reigning House. The ’45 therefore received little support in Aberdeenshire. A few of the old county families threw in their lot withthe Prince, but the general body of the people were averse to taking arms. The Duke of Cumberland, on his way north to meet Prince Charlie at Culloden, remained with his army six weeks in the city; when he started on his northward march through Old Meldrum, Turriff and Banff, he left a garrison of 200 men in Robert Gordon’s Hospital, lately built but not yet opened. After Culloden small pickets of troops were stationed in the Highland districts of the county, to suppress the practice of cattle-lifting. Braemar Castle and Corgarff Castle in the upper reaches of the Dee and the Don still bear evidence of their use as garrison forts. The problem of dealing with the inhabitants of the higher glens, where agriculture was useless, and where the habits of the people prompted to raiding and to rebellion, was solved by enlisting the young men in the British Army. The Black Watch (42nd) as reorganised (1758) and a regiment of Gordon Highlanders (1759) were largely recruited from West Aberdeenshire, and this happy solution closed the military history of the district.