title: Kösem Sultan

text: A former slave of Kösem's, Şivekar Sultan was an Armenian from the Bosphorus village of Arnavutkoy, who is said to have weighed nearly 330 pounds. According to Rycaut, Ibrahim became so infatuated with her that he was unable to deny her anything, which led to her downfall because she incurred the wrath of Kösem: "By these particulars the Queen Mother becoming jealous, one day inviting her to Dinner, caused her to be Strangled, and persuaded Ibrahim that she died suddenly of a violent Sickness, at which the poor Man was greatly afflicted.' She then informed the distraught Ibrahim that Şivekar Sultan 'had died suddenly of a powerful illness." However, other sources suggest that Şivekar Sultan was exiled to Egypt or Chios after Ibrahim's death in 1648. Her fall was a clear sign that Kösem, like others, despised Ibrahim's concubines' excessive influence over political matters. Kösem is also known to have had a strict policy for the eunuchs in the harem, which denied them any influence in the running of the state. Moreover, she quickly got rid of the female lovers of these eunuchs some of whom were manumitted while others were sent to be sold in the slave market.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Ibrahim allegedly tried to rape a concubine who spurned him and threatened to stab him if he persisted. Their struggle was overheard by Kösem, who reprimanded Ibrahim and allowed the woman to escape the harem.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Meanwhile, Ibrahim's favourites had grown envious of Kösem, encouraging her son to rebel against her. Thus, Ibrahim rejected his mother's authority and Kösem withdrew from the harem to live in a summer house outside Topkapı Palace and then in a house in an Imperial garden in Eyüp.After Kösem's departure, and in another assault on palace protocol, Ibrahim began humiliating his sisters Ayşe, Fatma, and Hanzade, as well as his niece Kaya, subordinating them to his concubines, to whom he gave their land and jewels. He also forced his sisters and niece to work as maids for his wife Hümaşah Sultan. This infuriated Kösem, who turned against Ibrahim.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Alarmed by Ibrahim's erratic behaviour, in September 1647, the Grand Vizier Salih Pasha and Şeyülislam Abdürrahim Efendi plotted to depose him. The Şeyülislam deferred to Kösem in the matter of her son's deposition, informing her that all of the statesmen were in favour and that they were prepared to swear allegiance to Ibrahim's son, Mehmed, the eldest prince. But Kösem hesitated, either out of maternal instinct or for fear of losing her own political power. Instead she begged the co-conspirators to leave her son on the throne but under the guardianship of the grand vizier.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Made aware of the attempt to topple him, Ibrahim had the Grand Vizier Salih Pasha executed. Initially, Ibrahim planned to have his mother, whom he suspected of being part of the conspiracy, exiled to the island of Rhodes, However, such as indignity was resisted by one of his hasekis and instead Kösem was exiled to the Iskender Çelebi garden in Florya. According to Naima:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: By 1647, heavy taxes, bungled wars, and a Venetian blockade of the Dardanelles that brought the Ottoman capital to the brink of starvation, caused discontent to boil over. In 1648, the Janissaries and members of the "ulama" revolted against Ibrahim who lost his temper and fled into the arms of his mother, whom he had reluctantly allowed back into the harem, begging her to protect him. The chronicler Kâtip Çelebi reports that Kösem attended a conference with leading viziers, clergy and others about the impending action. She was draped from head to toe in black silk, while a black eunuch waved a large fan beside her. The Ağa of the Janissaries addressed her:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Kösem tried to blame the viziers and clergy for leading Ibrahim astray throughout his eight-year reign and pointed out their hypocrisy in plotting to overthrow him in favour of his son:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Emphasising the need for dynastic allegiance, she went on to ask the clergy: "Wasn't every single one of you raised up through the benevolence of the Ottoman dynasty?" They replied with an imperative drawn from holy law ("sharia"): "a mentally ill person cannot lead the "ummah" (the community of Muslim believers.)" At one point the "ulama" addressed Kösem as "umm al-mu'minin", "mother of the [Muslim] believers." This honorific title, given to the wives of the Prophet Muhammad by Qur'anic revelation, allowed her to extend her maternal function as guardian beyond her son and the dynasty to the Empire as a whole. Hanifezade, an Ottoman judge, appealed to her not as a mother but as a stateswoman:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: In one last effort, Kösem said, "All this is the doing of wicked ministers. They shall be removed; and only good and wise men shall be set in their stead." "What will that avail?" replied Hanifezade, "Has not the Sultan put to death good and gallant men who served him, such as were Mustafa Pasha and Yusuf Pasha, the conqueror of Canea?" "But how," urged Kösem, "is it possible to place a child of seven years upon the throne?" Hanefizade answered: "In the opinion of our wise men of the law, a madman ought not to reign, whatever be his age; but rather let a child, that is gifted with reason, be upon the throne. If the sovereign be a rational being, though an infant, a wise Vizier may restore order to the world; but a grown-up Sultan, who is without sense, ruins all things by murder, by abomination, by corruption, and prodigality." "So be it, then," said Kösem; "I will fetch my grandson, Mehmed, and place the turban on his head." She agreed to give in after they promised not to murder Ibrahim, but merely return him to the confinement of the Kafes. By this point Kösem was anxious to be rid of her son, whose disastrous administration had undone all the restorative work done by his elder brother, writing to the Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha: "In the end he will leave neither you nor me alive. We will lose control of the government. The whole society is in ruins. Have him removed from the throne immediately."


title: Kösem Sultan

text: During the last months of Ibrahim's reign, Kösem was thrust back into the position of dynastic protector when the Ağa of the Janissaries, who were going to demand the resignation of the unpopular Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha, warned her to take great care to safeguard the princes. On 8 August 1648, Ibrahim was dethroned and imprisoned in Topkapı Palace.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: On the same day that Ibrahim was dethroned, Kösem presented her seven-year-old grandson, Mehmed, to the "divan" with the words: "Here he is!, see what you can do with him!" When some government official insisted that he be sent to be enthroned and receive the Janissaries' and sipahis' (cavalryman) oath of allegiance at the Blue Mosque, Kösem demanded that they instead come to the palace, pointing out that no sultan had ever been enthroned in a mosque before. Her purpose was undoubtedly in part to force the situation so that she could have some influence over the outcome.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Ten days after Ibrahim's dethronement, the newly appointed Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasha asked the Şeyhülislam Abdürrahim Efendi for a fatwā sanctioning Ibrahim's execution which was granted, with the message: "If there are two caliphs, kill one of them." Kösem insisted that she was the only person who could make the final decision over whether the ex-sultan should live or died, exclaiming: "They said my son Ibrahim was not suitable for the sultanate. I said 'depose him.' They said his presence is harmful, I said 'let him be removed', then I said 'let him be executed.' If anyone is under my protection, it is my son."


title: Kösem Sultan

text: How far Kösem was involved in Ibrahim's execution has always been a source of debate. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, an Austrian historian, believes that, to the extent that she was involved, it was motivated by concern for the state . Nevertheless, she was forced to give her consent to Ibrahim's execution. As officials watched from a palace window, Ibrahim was strangled on 18 August 1648. His death was the second regicide in the history of the Ottoman Empire.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: According to Ottoman customs, the mother of the deceased sultan would retire to the OId Palace and give up her office upon the accession of a new sultan. Kösem herself requested to retire from politics, but her request was denied by the political and religious leaders who removed Ibrahim, forcing her to reconsider continue her career as Mehmed's regent because she had more expertise and knowledge of the state’s running than Mehmed's own twenty-one-year-old mother, Turhan Sultan. According to Abdülaziz Efendi, then the chief justice of Rumeli and a central figure in the dynastic upheavals of the time, it was considered prudent to appoint the more experienced female as regent in contravention of tradition:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Thus Kösem was reinstated as regent by Mehmed's council and was entrusted with his training and guardianship.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Mehmed's mother, Turhan Sultan, was presented to Kösem as a gift from Kör Süleyman Pasha, the Khan of Crimea, when she was around 12 years old, so it was presumably Kösem who offered Turhan to Ibrahim as a concubine. The post of valide sultan and regent should have gone to Turhan when her son Mehmed' became sultan, but she was passed over because of her youth and inexperience. Turhan must also have resented the stipend of 2000 aspers that she received in comparison with Kösem's 3000 aspers and so she began to assert what she saw to be her rightful authority. According to Rycaut: "The two queens were exasperated highly against each other, one to maintain the authority of her son and the other her own." In 1649, Kösem promoted herself to the previously non-existent rank of "büyük" ("elder") "valide" to allow her to outrank Turhan Sultan.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Historians have recorded that Kösem would usually sit in the palace lodge with her grandson Mehmed, handing down decisions. She would also sit beside the sultan, concealed behind a curtain, if his presence was needed at the "divan". In one instance, she scolded a vizier in an abrasive tone: "Have I made you vizier to spend your time in gardens and vineyards: Devote yourself to the affairs of the empire and let me hear no more of your deportments!"


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Kösem and the Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasha grew in enmity after Mehmed's accession to the throne. The grand vizier appears to have regarded himself as regent as well as "temporary ruler." According to Naima, the Grand Vizier was misled by "certain would-be doctors of religion" who quoted legal texts to the effect that the guardian of a minor sultan was entitled to exercise sovereignty prerogatives; as a result, he resented Kösem's control over the government, hoping that he, rather than the sultan's grandmother, would act as regent. He once bragged: "The soldiers of this exalted state respect only the honour of inherited nobility."


title: Kösem Sultan

text: According to the French historian Alphonse de Lamartine, in May 1649, following the defeat of the Ottomans in the Battle of Focchies, Kösem entered the "divan" on foot, in agreement with the ağas, to discuss the military disasters. She presided over the "divan" from behind a curtain whilst sitting on the sultan's throne, alongside the sultan himself. The Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasha expressed disappointment at the difficult circumstances, but in a speech, Mehmed said, "Go, you are not worthy of being grand vizier; give back the seal of the State. And you," he added, handing the seal to Kara Murat Pasha, the Ağa of the Janissaries, "take it; I will see what you can do." Then, the grand judge Abdülaziz Efendi, an ally of tMehmed Pasha, turned to the sultan and asked, "My dear, who taught you that, at your age?" This insolence made Kösem's anger boil over and she listed the former grand vizier's shortcomings, including his alleged plans to assassinate her:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: In Naima's words, Abdülaziz Efendi "drowned in the sea of mortification." Kösem gave the newly appointed Grand Vizier Murat Pasha orders to have Mehmed Pasha and his allies executed. Abdülaziz Efendi then fled.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: According to Finkel, Kösem "continued to be the ruling personality... tutoring him [Kara Murat Pasha] in the decisions handed down."


title: Kösem Sultan

text: In 1650, Constantinople's merchants rose in rebellion. The treasury was once again empty, and traders were obliged to accept faulty coins in place of good ones to pay the Janissaries. They retaliated by closing their shops and taking to the streets, demanding the dismissal of Grand Vizier Murat Pasha, the former commander of the Janissary corps, as well as the execution of Janissary commanders. A large gathering of 15,000 artisans and merchants marched to Şeyülislam Abdülaziz Efendi's residence, weeping and ripping their garments, and complaining that their protests had gone unheard, that they had been subjected to harmful impositions such as heavy monthly taxes, and that they feared debtors' prison. The Şeyülislam sympathised with their plight and intended to ask the sultan to "cancel evil innovations," but instead he was encircled and forced to accompany them to the palace. To give them credibility, they put the reluctant Şeyülislam on horseback at the front. The Hippodrome was packed with 20,000 men. They entered the Hagia Sophia compound, hoping to meet the sultan there, but were instead admitted to the palace, marching as far as the Gate of Felicity and passing on to voice their grievances. Kösem arrived in a fury, demanding, "Why did you not turn back these people, instead bringing them to the palace?" The Şeyülislam claimed, "We did not bring them, they brought us."


title: Kösem Sultan

text: The sultan then asked what was causing the uproar and advised the Şeyülislam to return the next day when the merchants would submit their grievances to him, but they responded, "We will not take a step backward until we receive what we deserve." Relying on the advice of his grandmother, the sultan then asked to meet Grand Vizier Murat Pasha. However, Murat Pasha preferred to return his seal of office rather than appear in front of him. Claiming that the room where they were meeting was claustrophobic, Kösem stepped outside and gave Melek Ahmed Pasha, the spouse of her granddaughter Kaya Sultan, the seal of office.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: On 5 August 1650, Melek Ahmed Pasha was appointed grand vizier, but his term of office was cut short a year later because of his incompetence in dealing with another uprising of the merchants. Kösem proposed that former Grand Vizier Kara Murat Pasha replace Melek Ahmed Pasha, but the elderly Siyavuş Pasha, who was favoured by Turhan Sultanwas instead appointed without her consent.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: The late 17th-century author Dervish Abdullah Efendi claimed that the Chief Black Eunuch Uzun ("Tall") Süleyman Ağa deliberately turned Kösem and her daughter-in-law, Turhan, against each other: "A black eunuch called Uzun Süleyman [said to Kösem], "My lady, the Junior Mother [Turhan] covets your wealth. You should guard yourself well, because she is determined to kill you one night. I have experienced your kindness previously, and for this reason, I have told you", and he began to cry. When [Kösem] asked, "What is the remedy for this?" he answered, "We have all agreed to depose Sultan Mehmed and enthrone [Prince] Süleyman. They are both your [grandsons]. This treachery must be stopped immediately." He then went to Turhan and told her, "Soon they are going to kill all your black eunuchs and imprison you, for I have learned that the Senior Mother's eunuchs have agreed to depose Sultan Mehmed and enthrone [Prince] Süleyman."


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Political figures who resented Kösem's alliance with the Janissaries encouraged Turhan to resist the regent's monopoly of power and patronage, and she began to plot against Kösem. Courtiers then took sides: The Janissaries stayed loyal to Kösem, while most of the harem and the palace eunuchs, the Chief Black Eunuch Süleyman Ağa and the Grand Vizier Siyavuş Pasha favoured Turhan. According to Naima, once Kösem realised this, she began to plot to dethrone Mehmed and replace him with his younger half-brother, Süleyman whose mother, Aşub Sultan, she thought a more complaisant rival; her plan to swap one child sultan for another was primarily geared towards eliminating Turhan. Naima further notes that Kösem secretly asked the palace guards to leave the gates open so that Janissaries could sneak in and kill Turhan. She also allegedly gave two bottles of poisoned sherbet to Üveys Ağa, the head "helva" (sweets) maker in the palace kitchen, to give to the child sultan and promised to promote him if he succeeded in poisoning the boy. The day before the plot was due to be carried out, however, one of Kösem's slaves, Meleki Hatun, betrayed it to Süleyman Ağa.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Wojciech Bobowski's book "Saray-ı Enderun"' (Life at the Ottoman Court) depicted the organisation and daily life of the Ottoman Court. He wrote some observations on Kösem's attempt to poison Mehmed IV in 1651:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Süleyman Ağa promptly invited the Grand Vizier Siyavuş Pasha to the palace and told him that Kösem was usually in bed at that time, being entertained by 'her Eunuchs, and Favourites, with Musick, Singing, and other unusual delights'.Süleyman Ağa and the sultan's eunuchs then attempted to force their way into Kösem's quarters after consultation with the grand vizier. According to a report from 1675, Kösem's entourage initially repulsed them:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Süleyman Ağa and his accomplices moved so silently and rapidly that most of the palace remained asleep. They also shared a sign language so that no one could hear their voices. Meanwhile, they summoned their forces to secure the palace against the Janissaries. The men went to Turhan's quarters and told her of the conspiracy to poison the child sultan, after which she begged Süleyman Ağa to protect him.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: A procession from Turhan's quarters along with Süleyman Ağa's group then marched to the throne room and placed Mehmed on the throne. The guards awakened their sleeping comrades along with forty of their officers who asked what they could do to show their loyalty. Süleyman Ağa responded:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Kösem was accused of being the instigator of the plot against the sultan, and his chief ministers urged that she be executed, preferably with the sultan's consent. The Grand Vizier Siyavuş Pasha said to the sultan: "My sultan, the will of god is that you consign your grandmother into the hands of justice, if you would have these mutinies appeased; a little mischief is better than a great one; there is no other remedy; god willing, the end shall be prosperous." The sultan then summoned a mufti, who decreed that the 'Old Queen' should be strangled "but neither cut with a sword nor bruised with blows", Kösem's death warrant was signed by the trembling hand of the child sultan.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: On the 16th day of Ramadan, the night of 2 September 1651, the Chief Black Eunuch Süleyman Ağa and his armed men, consisting of over 120 armed black and white eunuchs, descended on the palace in support of the sultan, proceeded to Kösem's quarters, which was guarded by over 300 armed Janissaries and loyal black eunuchs. Süleyman Ağa and his men managed to kill some of the guards, while the majority fled. Hearing the commotion, Kösem thought the Janissaries had arrived, so she called out, "Have they come?" "Yes, they have come", Süleyman Ağa answered, hoping to deceive her. When Kösem recognised his voice, she began stuffing her jewels into her pockets and fled along the Golden Way and through the Court of the Black Eunuchs to the Dome with Closets, probably hoping to escape from the palace through the Carriage Gate. The gate was locked, so she crept into a small cabinet, hoping that Turhan's eunuchs would pass her by and that the Janissaries would come to her rescue. Süleyman Ağa men broke into her chamber but the only person they found there was an elderly woman who served as Kösem's buffoon and who was armed with a pistol, which she pointed at them while they asked her where Kösem had gone. The woman replied, 'I am the valide sultan,' but Süleyman Ağa cried, 'It is not she' and pushed her aside.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Eventually Kösem was betrayed to a halberdier by a piece of her dress that protruded from under the cabinet door. Dragged out by one of her assailants, she told him, "O brave man, be not cruel unto me", while tossing gold coins onto the floor as a distraction. One of the men then held her down, while they seized her garments, jewellery, bracelets, garters and other valuables. Her earrings, two chestnut-sized diamonds with a ruby beneath each diamond that had been given to her by her husband Ahmed, were torn apart by an Albanian man called Bostanci Ali Ağa; their estimated worth was thought to equal Egypt's entire annual income. Rycaut also mentioned the theft of a beautiful locket engraved with the names of her late sons Murad and Ibrahim.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Kösem was then dragged by her feet to the gateway leading from the harem into the Third Court, where Süleyman Ağa ordered his men to kill her. A group of four men, all of them young and inexperienced, then strangled her with a piece of cord ripped from the curtains. While the others drew the cord, one assassin climbed on her back and squeezed her neck although he stopped when Kösem bit his thumb. In retaliation, he struck her forehead, perhaps causing her to fall unconscious. Then, assuming she was dead, they screamed out, 'She is dead, she is dead!' and went to notify the sultan and his mother. Once they were out of sight, she lifted herself up again, presumably hoping to escape through a secret passageway, but as soon as her disappearance was noticed, the assassins were called back again and she was caught.According to Rycaut, the assassins then applied the cord for the second time, although the Ottoman renegade Bobovi, relying on an informant in the harem, claimed that she was strangled with her own hair. She is said to have struggled so much that blood from her ears and nose soiled the murderer's clothes. Once she had breathed her last, her body was dragged outside and shown to the Janissaries, before being moved into a room in the corridor of the Kuşhâne Kapısı (Aviary Gate).


title: Kösem Sultan

text: The next morning, Kösem's body was taken from Topkapı Palace to the Old Palace (Eski Sarayı) to be washed. Rycaut described the funeral of the woman he referred to as the 'Queen': "The Black Eunuchs immediately took up the Corpse, and in a reverent manner laid it stretched forth in the Royal Mosch; which about 400 of the Queens Slaves encompassing round about with howlings and lamentations, tearing the hair from their heads after their barbarous fashion, moved compassion in all the Court." She was buried without ceremony in the mausoleum of her late husband Ahmed I. Her slaves were also taken to the Old Palace and eventually married to suitable Muslims with dowry money taken from her estate. Her vast estates and tax farms in Anatolia and Rumelia and other places, her jewellery, precious stones and twenty boxes of gold coins that she had hidden in the Büyük Valide Han near the Grand Bazaar were all confiscated by the treasury.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: After Kösem's murder, the Grand Vizier Siyavuş Pasha suggested that the Black Standard be displayed above the main gate of Topkapı Palace (it was usually taken out at the start of campaigns against Christian or Shi'i powers.) To implement a levy of all able-bodied men for the public defence, the grand vizier ordered criers to pass through the streets of Constantinople shouting, "Whoever is a Muslim, let him rally around the banner of the religion. Those who do not come are rendered infidels and they are divorced from their [Muslim] wives." The morning after the murder of Kösem, a huge crowd is said to have gathered in front of the gates of Topkapı Palace, where they blamed the Janissaries for her murder and swore to avenge it. The people of Constantinople spontaneously observed three days of mourning while the city's mosques and markets were closed for three days. At the Topkapı Palace, it started a tradition of lighting candles "for her soul" every night, and this tradition continued until the palace was closed in the 19th century.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Şahin Ağa, the Ağa of the Janissaries, urged his troops to avenge Kösem's murder, saying, "We only want the Valide's expiation!" "Are you then the heir, the son, or the husband of the Valide?" a voice replied. The long silence with which this was met confirmed that the Janissaries did not agree with their commander. Şahin Agha would later be abandoned by his men, after which he and the other rebel leaders were hunted down and executed.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Contemporary Ottoman chroniclers did not welcome Kösem's murder and recorded it as an injustice committed against a woman of great accomplishments and stature, and a harbinger of greater social disorder. Evliya Çelebi, a famous Ottoman traveler, writer and admirer of Kösem, described the murder: "The mother of the world, wife of Sultan Ahmed (I); Murad (IV), and Ibrahim; the Grand Kösem Valide—was strangled by the Chief Black Eunuch Div Süleyman Agha. He did it by twisting her braids around her neck. So that gracious benefactress was martyred. When the Istanbul populace heard of this, they closed the mosques and the bazaars for three days and nights. There was a huge commotion. Several hundred people were put to death, secretly and publicly, and Istanbul was in a tumult." Dervish Abdullah Efendi recalled: "Those black infidel eunuchs martyred the Senior Mother [Kösem], Mother of the Believers"—a term usually reserved for the wives of the Prophet Muhammad—"and plundered most of her jewels." While lauding her charity, Naima also criticised Kösem for her greed and political interference. As regards the events leading up to her murder, he stated: "It was divine wisdom that the respected valide, philanthropic and regal as she was, was martyred for the sake of those unjust oppressions." Although Naima felt some regret over her death he also blamed it on the corrupt Janissary ağas and other officials who enjoyed her patronage. In other words, he implicitly supported Sultan Mehmed IV's decision to order her murder and the punishment of her political faction.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Kaya Sultan, Murad IV's daughter and Kösem's paternal granddaughter, condemned the Grand Vizier Siyavuş Pasha's apparent role in her grandmother's assassination:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: The assassination of this powerful, widely respected, and widely feared woman provoked a political crisis. The first phase involved the execution of Kösem's Janissary supporters while in the second, public outrage over the purge prompted Turhan's new administration to dismiss the Grand Vizier Abaza Pasha who had carried out the executions.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Kösem's philanthropic career is notable for the many charitable acts she undertook. According to the Turkish historian Muzaffer Ozgules, her chief concern was to avoid public censure. Every year in the Islamic month of Rajab she would leave the palace in disguise to arrange the release of imprisoned debtors and other offenders (excluding murderers) by paying their debts or compensation for their crimes. She was also known for seeking out poor orphan girls and endowing them with a "mahr", a home and furnishings; women of all religious persuasions, across both Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, bequeathed money to provide dowries for poor women, including special funds for noble girls whose families had fallen on hard times. She also visited hospitals, mosques, and schools to boost her popularity, and established soup kitchens capable of feeding nearly all of Constantinople's starving people. In Egypt, she also financed irrigation works from the Nile into Cairo.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: According to Naima, "She would free her slave women after two or three years of service, and would arrange marriages with retired officers of the court or suitable persons from outside, giving the women dowries and jewels and several purses of money according to their talents and station, and ensuring that their husbands had suitable positions. She looked after these former slaves by giving them an annual stipend, and on the religious festivals and holy days she would give them purses of money." Her pages, who were entrusted with guarding her apartment, only worked for five days a week.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: In 1640 she paid for the construction of the Çinili Mosque (Tiled Mosque), copiously decorated with the tiles that gave it its name, and the nearby school in Üsküdar. The construction of this modest complex was probably an attempt to boost the popularity of her sons at a time when the Ottoman dynasty faced extinction, with no heir apparent to inherit the throne. She also paid for fountains in Anadolukavağı, Yenikapı, Beşiktaş and Eyüp, as well as other fountains outside the capital, and converted the medrese of Özdemiroğlu Osman Pasha into a mosque with a grand fountain beside it. Additionally in 1651 she funded the construction of the Büyük Valide Han in Constantinople, which was used to provide accommodation for foreign traders, store goods and merchandise, house artisan workshops, and provide business offices (an urban legend claims that she hid most of her precious jewels in the depths of one of its towers). Following the capture of Rethymno in Crete in 1646, one of its many converted churches was renamed the Valide Sultan Mosque in Ortakapı in her honour, making her the first Ottoman noblewoman whose name was given to one of a conquered city's converted religious structures.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: As a devout Muslim, she also established a foundation to provide pilgrims on the Hajj with water, assist the poor and have the Quran read.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Kösem accumulated a massive fortune through "Iltizām" (tax farming), owning and leasing commercial buildings, and investing extensively in diverse economic activities. In his memoirs, Karaçelebizade Abdülaziz Efendi, a prominent member of the "ulama", described a meeting of the imperial council at which the subject of crown lands held by royal women was being discussed. When it was reported that Kösem held lands whose annual income was three hundred thousand kuruş, Karaçelebizade protested, "A valide with so much land is unheard of!" He also contended that those who opposed him only did so out of enmity toward him or because they were recipients of the valide sultan's largesse.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: The historian Şarih ül-Menarzade argued that Kösem's extensive charities were also misconceived since they were financed from her immense personal fortune, viewing her wealth as an abuse of the empire's fiscal management, especially at a time when the treasury was in dire straits, the peasantry impoverished, and the military unpaid. A century later, however, the historian Naima defended Kösem from such criticisms, arguing that, had her substantial fortune remained in the treasury, it might have been squandered rather than spent for the benefit of the populace.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Critics of Kösem also recorded the depredations of her "violent tax collectors", who, in an effort to increase their own take, were responsible for her huge income. Naima relayed the criticism of Şarih ül-Menarzade: "The valide sultan's stewards... collected incalculable amounts of money. The peasants of the Ottoman domains suffered much violence and disaster on account of the excessive taxes, but because of their fear of the stewards, they were unable to inform the valide sultan or anyone else of their situation." Besides the annual taxes that she collected from Lesbos, Euboea, Zile, Menemen, Gaza, Kilis and other places, she operated farms in Cyprus, Rumelia and other locations in Anatolia. The port city of Volos was also her property.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: When the Cretan War broke out in 1645, the Venetian "bailo" of Constantinople reported that the valide sultan was highly benevolent while also being extremely wealthy.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Upon her death in 1651, her chambers were looted, and it was reported that twenty boxes loaded with gold coins were discovered in the Büyük Valide Han. In 1664, the profit on Kösem's cash investments accounted for nearly two-thirds of the revenue of the endowment established for Safiye Sultan's Karamanlu mosque. In fact, her riches and business transactions were so broad that her agents also became very wealthy and enjoyed popular esteem. When recording the death of Kösem in his history, Naima commented of her steward: "The afore-mentioned Behram Kethiida enjoyed great prestige and distinction and wealth. As the manager of all the affairs of the valide sultan and the pious institutions she had established, and as an extremely trustworthy man, he acquired a great deal of wealth and property. But his children and his grandchildren did not maintain the high stature he had enjoyed, and his wealth and property were squandered." Her wealth was so vast and spread across so many different enterprises that, according to Naima, it took fifty years for the state treasury to confiscate it all.


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Despite her notoriety as a woman who showed no mercy or compassion for the sake of government and power, Kösem was known among Ottoman citizens for her charitable work, which succeeded in securing the image that she desired. The chronogram that appears on the gate of the Çinili Mosque's courtyard reads:


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Among her contemporaries the writer Michel Baudier depicted her as a female politician "enjoying authority" while the merchant and traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier described her as "a woman very wise and well-versed in state affairs."


title: Kösem Sultan

text: Both Alphonse de Lamartine and Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall praised her charitable works, Hammer describing her as: "A magnanimous, high minded queenly woman, of high spirit and noble heart, but with a mania for power. She, the mother of the greatest tyrant Murad IV, and the greatest wastrel, Ibrahim I, the Greek Kosem who was named Moonfigure because of beauty, through the commanding glance of four emperors—her husband, two sons, and her grandson—was revered more in history than Agrippina, Nero's mother, through her kindness, her desire for power and the tragic finish in Osman history of a female Caesar."


title: Kösem Sultan

text: In the introduction to the English translation of the novel "Histoire d'Osman premier du nom, XIXe empereur des Turcs, et de l'impératrice Aphendina Ashada" by Madame de Gomez in 1736, describing the life of Osman II, Kösem is said to have been "one of the most active in politics and enterprising women of her time, which she achieved by insidious intrigues from ambitious motives."


title: Gospel

text: Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus, culminating in his trial and death and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances. Modern scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically, but nevertheless, they provide a good idea of the public career of Jesus, and critical study can attempt to distinguish the original ideas of Jesus from those of the later authors.


title: Gospel

text: The four canonical gospels were probably written between AD 66 and 110. All four were anonymous (with the modern names added in the 2nd century), almost certainly none were by eyewitnesses, and all are the end-products of long oral and written transmission. Mark was the first to be written, using a variety of sources. The authors of Matthew and Luke both independently used Mark for their narrative of Jesus's career, supplementing it with a collection of sayings called the Q source and additional material unique to each. There is near-consensus that John had its origins as the hypothetical Signs Gospel thought to have been circulated within a Johannine community. The contradictions and discrepancies between the first three and John make it impossible to accept both traditions as equally reliable.


title: Gospel

text: Many non-canonical gospels were also written, all later than the four canonical gospels, and like them advocating the particular theological views of their various authors. Important examples include the gospels of Thomas, Peter, Judas, and Mary; infancy gospels such as that of James (the first to introduce the perpetual virginity of Mary); and gospel harmonies such as the Diatessaron.


title: Gospel

text: "Gospel" is the Old English translation of Greek , meaning "good news"; this may be seen from analysis of ( "good" + "messenger" + diminutive suffix). The Greek term was Latinized as in the Vulgate, and translated into Latin as . In Old English, it was translated as ( "good" + "news"). The Old English term was retained as in Middle English Bible translations and hence remains in use also in Modern English.


title: Gospel

text: The four canonical gospels share the same basic outline of the life of Jesus: he begins his public ministry in conjunction with that of John the Baptist, calls disciples, teaches and heals and confronts the Pharisees, dies on the cross, and is raised from the dead. Each has its own distinctive understanding of him and his divine role and scholars recognize that the differences of detail between the gospels are irreconcilable, and any attempt to harmonize them would only disrupt their distinct theological messages.


title: Gospel

text: Matthew, Mark and Luke are termed the synoptic gospels because they present very similar accounts of the life of Jesus. Mark begins with the baptism of the adult Jesus and the heavenly declaration that he is the son of God; he gathers followers and begins his ministry, and tells his disciples that he must die in Jerusalem but that he will rise; in Jerusalem he is at first acclaimed but then rejected, betrayed, and crucified, and when the women who have followed him come to his tomb they find it empty. Mark never calls Jesus "God" or claims that he existed prior to his earthly life, apparently believes that he had a normal human parentage and birth, makes no attempt to trace his ancestry back to King David or Adam; it originally ended at Mark 16:8 and had no post-resurrection appearances, although Mark 16:7, in which the young man discovered in the tomb instructs the women to tell "the disciples and Peter" that Jesus will see them again in Galilee, hints that the author knew of the tradition.


title: Gospel

text: The authors of Matthew and Luke added infancy and resurrection narratives to the story they found in Mark, although the two differ markedly. Each also makes subtle theological changes to Mark: the Markan miracle stories, for example, confirm Jesus' status as an emissary of God (which was Mark's understanding of the Messiah), but in Matthew they demonstrate his divinity, and the "young man" who appears at Jesus' tomb in Mark becomes a radiant angel in Matthew. Luke, while following Mark's plot more faithfully than Matthew, has expanded on the source, corrected Mark's grammar and syntax, and eliminated some passages entirely, notably most of chapters 6 and 7.


title: Gospel

text: John, the most overtly theological, is the first to make Christological judgements outside the context of the narrative of Jesus's life. He presents a significantly different picture of Jesus's career, omitting any mention of his ancestry, birth and childhood, his baptism, temptation and transfiguration; his chronology and arrangement of incidents is also distinctly different, clearly describing the passage of three years in Jesus's ministry in contrast to the single year of the synoptics, placing the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning rather than at the end, and the Last Supper on the day before Passover instead of being a Passover meal. The Gospel of John is the only gospel to call Jesus God, and in contrast to Mark, where Jesus hides his identity as messiah, in John he openly proclaims it.


title: Gospel

text: Like the rest of the New Testament, the four gospels were written in Greek. The Gospel of Mark probably dates from c. AD 66–70, Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90, and John AD 90–110. Despite the traditional ascriptions, all four are anonymous and most scholars agree that none were written by eyewitnesses. A few conservative scholars defend the traditional ascriptions or attributions, but for a variety of reasons the majority of scholars have abandoned this view or hold it only tenuously.


title: Gospel

text: In the immediate aftermath of Jesus' death his followers expected him to return at any moment, certainly within their own lifetimes, and in consequence there was little motivation to write anything down for future generations, but as eyewitnesses began to die, and as the missionary needs of the church grew, there was an increasing demand and need for written versions of the founder's life and teachings. The stages of this process can be summarised as follows:


title: Gospel

text: Mark is generally agreed to be the first gospel; it uses a variety of sources, including conflict stories (Mark 2:1–3:6), apocalyptic discourse (4:1–35), and collections of sayings, although not the sayings gospel known as the Gospel of Thomas and probably not the Q source used by Matthew and Luke. The authors of Matthew and Luke, acting independently, used Mark for their narrative of Jesus's career, supplementing it with the collection of sayings called the Q source and additional material unique to each called the M source (Matthew) and the L source (Luke). Mark, Matthew and Luke are called the synoptic gospels because of the close similarities between them in terms of content, arrangement, and language. The authors and editors of John may have known the synoptics, but did not use them in the way that Matthew and Luke used Mark. There is a near-consensus that this gospel had its origins as a "signs" source (or gospel) that circulated within the Johannine community (which produced John and the three epistles associated with the name) and later expanded with a Passion narrative as well as a series of discourses.


title: Gospel

text: All four also use the Jewish scriptures, by quoting or referencing passages, or by interpreting texts, or by alluding to or echoing biblical themes. Such use can be extensive: Mark's description of the Parousia (second coming) is made up almost entirely of quotations from scripture. Matthew is full of quotations and allusions, and although John uses scripture in a far less explicit manner, its influence is still pervasive. Their source was the Greek version of the scriptures, called the Septuagint; they do not seem familiar with the original Hebrew.


title: Gospel

text: The consensus among modern scholars is that the gospels are a subset of the ancient genre of "bios", or ancient biography. Ancient biographies were concerned with providing examples for readers to emulate while preserving and promoting the subject's reputation and memory; the gospels were never simply biographical, they were propaganda and "kerygma" (preaching). As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century AD, and as Luke's attempt to link the birth of Jesus to the census of Quirinius demonstrates, there is no guarantee that the gospels are historically accurate.


title: Gospel

text: The majority view among critical scholars is that the authors of Matthew and Luke have based their narratives on Mark's gospel, editing him to suit their own ends, and the contradictions and discrepancies between these three and John make it impossible to accept both traditions as equally reliable. In addition, the gospels we read today have been edited and corrupted over time, leading Origen to complain in the 3rd century that "the differences among manuscripts have become great, ... [because copyists] either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please". Most of these are insignificant, but many are significant, an example being Matthew 1:18, altered to imply the pre-existence of Jesus. For these reasons modern scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically, but nevertheless they do provide a good idea of the public career of Jesus, and critical study can attempt to distinguish the original ideas of Jesus from those of the later authors.


title: Gospel

text: Scholars usually agree that John is not without historical value: certain of its sayings are as old or older than their synoptic counterparts, its representation of the topography around Jerusalem is often superior to that of the synoptics, its testimony that Jesus was executed before, rather than on, Passover, might well be more accurate, and its presentation of Jesus in the garden and the prior meeting held by the Jewish authorities are possibly more historically plausible than their synoptic parallels. Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that the author had direct knowledge of events, or that his mentions of the Beloved Disciple as his source should be taken as a guarantee of his reliability.


title: Gospel

text: The oldest gospel text known is , a fragment of John dating from the first half of the 2nd century. The creation of a Christian canon was probably a response to the career of the heretic Marcion (c. 85–160), who established a canon of his own with just one gospel, the Gospel of Marcion, similar to the Gospel of Luke. The Muratorian canon, the earliest surviving list of books considered (by its own author at least) to form Christian scripture, included Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Irenaeus of Lyons went further, stating that there must be four gospels and only four because there were four corners of the Earth and thus the Church should have four pillars.


title: Gospel

text: The many apocryphal gospels arose from the 1st century onward, frequently under assumed names to enhance their credibility and authority, and often from within branches of Christianity that were eventually branded heretical. They can be broadly organised into the following categories:


title: Ed Sheeran discography

text: The discography of English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran consists of five studio albums, seventeen extended plays, one video album, sixty-five singles (including twenty-eight as a featured artist), eight promotional singles, one box set, and seventy-one music videos. As of October 2021, Sheeran has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists in history. According to RIAA, Sheeran is the 13th best-selling digital singles artist in the United States with certified sales of 80.5 million.


title: Ed Sheeran discography

text: Originally an indie artist selling music independently on his own label starting in 2005, Sheeran released nine EPs, steadily gaining public and critical acclaim, resulting in his signing to Atlantic Records in January 2011. Five months later, Sheeran released his first single, "The A Team", on 12 June 2011. It debuted at No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart with first-week sales of 57,607 copies. The track attained international chart success, reaching the top ten in numerous countries including Australia and New Zealand, where it peaked at No. 2 and No. 3 respectively. The release was succeeded by a second single, "You Need Me, I Don't Need You", in August 2011, which peaked at No. 4 in the United Kingdom. Sheeran released his major label debut studio album, "+", on 9 September 2011. In its first week, "+" debuted at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart, selling over 100,000 copies in its first week and was certified 7× Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry for sales of 2.1 million copies. The album spawned a further three singles, including "Lego House", which reached the top five in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. "Drunk" was released in February 2012, becoming Sheeran's fourth consecutive top ten single when it peaked at No. 9. "Small Bump" was released in May 2012, peaking at No. 25 in the UK. The final single from "+", "Give Me Love", was released on 21 November 2012 and peaked at No. 18 in the UK.


title: Ed Sheeran discography

text: In 2014, Sheeran released his second studio album, "×" (Multiply), which peaked at No. 1 in the UK, Ireland, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway. It was the fastest-selling album of 2014 in the UK, shifting 180,000 copies in its first week of release. Five singles were released from the album: "Sing", "Don't", "Thinking Out Loud", "Bloodstream" (a collaboration with Rudimental), and "Photograph". "×" was also the best-selling album of the year in the UK, with almost 1.7 million copies sold.


title: Ed Sheeran discography

text: Sheeran released two singles, "Shape of You", "Castle on the Hill", his first solo material in two years, on 6 January 2017. His third studio album, "÷", followed on 3 March 2017. It debuted at No. 1 in 14 countries, including the UK, where it sold 672,000 units in its first week to become the fastest-selling album by a male solo artist there and the third-highest opening ever (behind Adele's "25" and Oasis' "Be Here Now"). It also topped the charts in the US, Canada, and Australia. All the tracks on the album reached the top 20 of the UK Singles Chart in the week of the album's release, due mainly to heavy streaming. Sheeran also surpassed Calvin Harris' record of top 10 hits from one album. The next two singles, "Galway Girl" and "Perfect", both reached the summit in Ireland.


title: Ed Sheeran discography

text: On 6 May 2021, it was announced that Sheeran will become the new sponsor of the football shirt of Newhaven Town Football Club. The sponsor text will read "+ − = ÷ × Tour", implicitly revealing the title of his fifth studio album, "=".


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The Kingdom of Scotland (; , ) was a sovereign state in northwest Europe traditionally said to have been founded in 843. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the northern third of the island of Great Britain, sharing a land border to the south with England. It suffered many invasions by the English, but under Robert the Bruce it fought a successful War of Independence and remained an independent state throughout the late Middle Ages. Following the annexation of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles from Norway in 1266 and 1472 respectively, and the final capture of the Royal Burgh of Berwick by England in 1482, the territory of the Kingdom of Scotland corresponded to that of modern-day Scotland, bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In 1603, James VI of Scotland became King of England, joining Scotland with England in a personal union. In 1707, during the reign of Queen Anne, the two kingdoms were united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain under the terms of the Acts of Union.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The Crown was the most important element of government. The Scottish monarchy in the Middle Ages was a largely itinerant institution, before Edinburgh developed as a capital city in the second half of the 15th century. The Crown remained at the centre of political life and in the 16th century emerged as a major centre of display and artistic patronage, until it was effectively dissolved with the 1603 Union of Crowns. The Scottish Crown adopted the conventional offices of western European monarchical states of the time and developed a Privy Council and great offices of state. Parliament also emerged as a major legal institution, gaining an oversight of taxation and policy, but was never as central to the national life. In the early period, the kings of the Scots depended on the great lords—the mormaers and toísechs—but from the reign of David I, sheriffdoms were introduced, which allowed more direct control and gradually limited the power of the major lordships. In the 17th century, the creation of Justices of Peace and Commissioners of Supply helped to increase the effectiveness of local government. The continued existence of courts baron and the introduction of kirk sessions helped consolidate the power of local lairds.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Scots law developed in the Middle Ages and was reformed and codified in the 16th and 17th centuries. Under James IV the legal functions of the council were rationalised, with Court of Session meeting daily in Edinburgh. In 1532, the College of Justice was founded, leading to the training and professionalisation of lawyers. David I is the first Scottish king known to have produced his own coinage. At the 1603 Union the Pound Scots was fixed at only one-twelfth the value of the English pound. The Bank of Scotland issued pound notes from 1704. Scottish currency was abolished by the Acts of Union 1707; however to the present day, Scotland retains unique banknotes.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Geographically, Scotland is divided between the Highlands and Islands and the Lowlands. The Highlands had a relatively short growing season, which was even shorter during the Little Ice Age. Scotland's population at the start of the Black Death was about 1 million; by the end of the plague, it was only half a million. It expanded in the first half of the 16th century, reaching roughly 1.2 million by the 1690s. Significant languages in the medieval kingdom included Gaelic, Old English, Norse and French; but by the early modern era Middle Scots had begun to dominate. Christianity was introduced into Scotland from the 6th century. In the Norman period the Scottish church underwent a series of changes that led to new monastic orders and organisation. During the 16th century, Scotland underwent a Protestant Reformation that created a predominately Calvinist national kirk. There were a series of religious controversies that resulted in divisions and persecutions. The Scottish Crown developed naval forces at various points in its history, but often relied on privateers and fought a "guerre de course". Land forces centred around the large common army, but adopted European innovations from the 16th century; and many Scots took service as mercenaries and as soldiers for the English Crown.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: From the 5th century on, north Britain was divided into a series of petty kingdoms. Of these, the four most important were those of the Picts in the north-east, the Scots of Dál Riata in the west, the Britons of Strathclyde in the south-west and the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia (which united with Deira to form Northumbria in 653) in the south-east, stretching into modern northern England. In 793, ferocious Viking raids began on monasteries such as those at Iona and Lindisfarne, creating fear and confusion across the kingdoms of north Britain. Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles eventually fell to the Norsemen. These threats may have sped up a long-term process of Gaelicisation of the Pictish kingdoms, which adopted Gaelic language and customs. There was also a merger of the Gaelic and Pictish kingdoms, although historians debate whether it was a Pictish takeover of Dál Riata, or vice-versa. This culminated in the rise of Cínaed mac Ailpín (Kenneth MacAlpin) as "king of the Picts" in the 840s (traditionally dated to 843), which brought to power the House of Alpin. When he died as king of the combined kingdom in 900, one of his successors, Domnall II (Donald II), was the first man to be called "rí Alban" (King of Alba). The term Scotia would increasingly be used to describe the heartland of these kings, north of the River Forth, and eventually the entire area controlled by its kings would be referred to as Scotland. The long reign (900–942/3) of Donald's successor Causantín (Constantine II) is often regarded as the key to formation of the Kingdom of Alba/Scotland, and he was later credited with bringing Scottish Christianity into conformity with the Catholic Church.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Máel Coluim I (Malcolm I) ( 943–954) is believed to have annexed the Kingdom of Strathclyde, over which the kings of Alba had probably exercised some authority since the later 9th century. His successor, Indulf the Aggressor, was described as the King of Strathclyde before inheriting the throne of Alba; he is credited with later annexing parts of Lothian, including Edinburgh, from the Kingdom of Northumbria. The reign of David I has been characterised as a "Davidian Revolution", in which he introduced a system of feudal land tenure, established the first royal burghs in Scotland and the first recorded Scottish coinage, and continued a process of religious and legal reforms. Until the 13th century, the border with England was very fluid, with Northumbria being annexed to Scotland by David I, but lost under his grandson and successor Malcolm IV in 1157. The Treaty of York (1237) fixed the boundaries with England close to the modern border. By the reign of Alexander III, the Scots had annexed the remainder of the, Norwegian held, western seaboard after the stalemate of the Battle of Largs and the Treaty of Perth in 1266. The Isle of Man fell under English control, from Norwegian, in the 14th century, despite several attempts to seize it for Scotland. The English briefly occupied most of Scotland, under Edward I; under Edward III, the English backed Edward Balliol's, son of King John Balliol, attempt to gain his father's throne and restore the lands of the Scottish lords dispossessed by Robert I and his successors in the 14th century in the Wars of Independence (1296–1357). The king of France attempted to thwart the exercise, under the terms of what became known as the Auld Alliance, which provided for mutual aid against the English. In the 15th and early 16th centuries, under the Stewart Dynasty, despite a turbulent political history, the Crown gained greater political control at the expense of independent lords and regained most of its lost territory to around the modern borders of the country. The dowry of the Orkney and Shetland Islands, by the Norwegian crown, in 1468 was the last great land acquisition for the kingdom. In 1482 the border fortress of Berwick—the largest port in medieval Scotland—fell to the English once again; this was the last time it changed hands. The Auld Alliance with France led to the heavy defeat of a Scottish army at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513 and the death of the King James IV. A long period of political instability followed.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: In the 16th century, under James V of Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots, the Crown and court took on many of the attributes of the Renaissance and New Monarchy, despite long royal minorities, civil wars and interventions by the English and French. In the mid-16th century, the Scottish Reformation was strongly influenced by Calvinism, leading to widespread iconoclasm and the introduction of a Presbyterian system of organisation and discipline that would have a major impact on Scottish life.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: In the late 16th century, James VI emerged as a major intellectual figure with considerable authority over the kingdom. In 1603, he inherited the thrones of England and Ireland, creating a Union of the Crowns that left the three states with their separate identities and institutions. He also moved the centre of royal patronage and power to London.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: When James' son Charles I attempted to impose elements of the English religious settlement on Scotland, the result was the Bishops' Wars (1637–1640), which ended in defeat for the king and a virtually independent Presbyterian Covenanter state in Scotland. It also helped precipitate the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, during which the Scots carried out major military interventions.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: After Charles I's defeat, the Scots backed the king in the Second English Civil War; after his execution, they proclaimed his son Charles II of England king, resulting in the Third English Civil War against the emerging republican regime of Parliamentarians in England led by Oliver Cromwell. The results were a series of defeats and the short-lived incorporation of Scotland into the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland (1653–1660).


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: After the 1660 restoration of the monarchy, Scotland regained its separate status and institutions, while the centre of political power remained in London. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689, in which James VII was deposed by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange in England, Scotland accepted them under the Claim of Right Act 1689, but the deposed main hereditary line of the Stuarts became a focus for political discontent known as Jacobitism, leading to a series of invasions and rebellions mainly focused on the Scottish Highlands.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: After severe economic dislocation in the 1690s, there were moves that led to political union with England as the Kingdom of Great Britain, which came into force on 1 May 1707. The English and Scottish parliaments were replaced by a combined Parliament of Great Britain, but it sat in Westminster and largely continued English traditions without interruption. Forty-five Scots were added to the 513 members of the House of Commons and 16 Scots to the 190 members of the House of Lords. It was also a full economic union, replacing the Scottish systems of currency, taxation and laws regulating trade.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The unified kingdom of Alba retained some of the ritual aspects of Pictish and Scottish kingship. These can be seen in the elaborate ritual coronation at the Stone of Scone at Scone Abbey.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: While the Scottish monarchy in the Middle Ages was a largely itinerant institution, Scone remained one of its most important locations, with royal castles at Stirling and Perth becoming significant in the later Middle Ages before Edinburgh developed as a capital city in the second half of the 15th century.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The Crown remained the most important element of government, despite the many royal minorities. In the late Middle Ages, it saw much of the aggrandisement associated with the New Monarchs elsewhere in Europe. Theories of constitutional monarchy and resistance were articulated by Scots, particularly George Buchanan, in the 16th century, but James VI of Scotland advanced the theory of the divine right of kings, and these debates were restated in subsequent reigns and crises. The court remained at the centre of political life, and in the 16th century emerged as a major centre of display and artistic patronage, until it was effectively dissolved with the Union of the Crowns in 1603.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The Scottish Crown adopted the conventional offices of western European courts, including High Steward, Chamberlain, Lord High Constable, Earl Marischal and Lord Chancellor. The King's Council emerged as a full-time body in the 15th century, increasingly dominated by laymen and critical to the administration of justice. The Privy Council, which developed in the mid-16th century, and the great offices of state, including the chancellor, secretary and treasurer, remained central to the administration of the government, even after the departure of the Stuart monarchs to rule in England from 1603. However, it was often sidelined and was abolished after the Acts of Union 1707, with rule direct from London.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The Parliament of Scotland also emerged as a major legal institution, gaining an oversight of taxation and policy. By the end of the Middle Ages it was sitting almost every year, partly because of the frequent royal minorities and regencies of the period, which may have prevented it from being sidelined by the monarchy. In the early modern era, Parliament was also vital to the running of the country, providing laws and taxation, but it had fluctuating fortunes and was never as central to the national life as its counterpart in England.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: In the early period, the kings of the Scots depended on the great lords of the mormaers (later earls) and toísechs (later thanes), but from the reign of David I, sheriffdoms were introduced, which allowed more direct control and gradually limited the power of the major lordships. In the 17th century, the creation of justices of the peace and the Commissioner of Supply helped to increase the effectiveness of local government. The continued existence of courts baron and introduction of kirk sessions helped consolidate the power of local lairds.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Scots law developed into a distinctive system in the Middle Ages and was reformed and codified in the 16th and 17th centuries. Knowledge of the nature of Scots law before the 11th century is largely speculative, but it was probably a mixture of legal traditions representing the different cultures inhabiting the land at the time, including Celtic, Britonnic, Irish and Anglo-Saxon customs. The legal tract, the "Leges inter Brettos et Scottos", set out a system of compensation for injury and death based on ranks and the solidarity of kin groups. There were popular courts or "comhdhails", indicated by dozens of place names in eastern Scotland. In Scandinavian-held areas, Udal law formed the basis of the legal system and it is known that the Hebrides were taxed using the Ounceland measure. Althings were open-air governmental assemblies that met in the presence of the "Jarl" and the meetings were open to virtually all "free men". At these sessions decisions were made, laws passed and complaints adjudicated.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The introduction of feudalism in the reign of David I of Scotland would have a profound impact on the development of Scottish law, establishing feudal land tenure over many parts of the south and east that eventually spread northward. Sheriffs, originally appointed by the King as royal administrators and tax collectors, developed legal functions. Feudal lords also held courts to adjudicate disputes between their tenants.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: By the 14th century, some of these feudal courts had developed into "petty kingdoms" where the King's courts did not have authority except for cases of treason. Burghs also had their local laws dealing mostly with commercial and trade matters and may have become similar in function to sheriff's courts. Ecclesiastical courts had exclusive jurisdiction over matters such as marriage, contracts made on oath, inheritance and legitimacy. "Judices" were often royal officials who supervised baronial, abbatial and other lower-ranking "courts". However, the main official of law in the post-Davidian Kingdom of the Scots was the Justiciar who held courts and reported to the king personally. Normally, there were two Justiciarships, organised by linguistic boundaries: the Justiciar of Scotia and the Justiciar of Lothian, but sometimes Galloway also had its own Justiciar. Scottish common law, the "jus commune", began to take shape at the end of the period, assimilating Gaelic and Britonnic law with practices from Anglo-Norman England and the Continent.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: During the period of English control over Scotland there is some evidence that King Edward I of England, called "Hammer of the Scots", attempted to abolish Scottish laws contrary to English law as he had done in Wales.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Under Robert I in 1318, a parliament at Scone enacted a code of law that drew upon older practices. It codified procedures for criminal trials and protections for vassals from ejection from the land. From the 14th century, there are surviving examples of early Scottish legal literature, such as the "Regiam Majestatem" (on procedure at the royal courts) and the "Quoniam Attachiamenta" (on procedure at the barons court), which drew on both common and Roman law.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Customary laws, such as the Law of Clan MacDuff, came under attack from the Stewart Dynasty which consequently extended the reach of Scots common law. From the reign of King James I a legal profession began to develop and the administration of criminal and civil justice was centralised. The growing activity of the parliament and the centralisation of administration in Scotland called for the better dissemination of Acts of the parliament to the courts and other enforcers of the law. In the late 15th century, unsuccessful attempts were made to form commissions of experts to codify, update or define Scots law. The general practice during this period, as evidenced from records of cases, seems to have been to defer to specific Scottish laws on a matter when available and to fill in any gaps with provisions from the common law embodied in Civil and Canon law, which had the advantage of being written.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Under James IV the legal functions of the council were rationalised, with a royal Court of Session meeting daily in Edinburgh to deal with civil cases. In 1514, the office of justice-general was created for the Earl of Argyll (and held by his family until 1628). In 1532, the Royal College of Justice was founded, leading to the training and professionalisation of an emerging group of career lawyers. The Court of Session placed increasing emphasis on its independence from influence, including from the king, and superior jurisdiction over local justice. Its judges were increasingly able to control entry to their own ranks. In 1672, the High Court of Justiciary was founded from the College of Justice as a supreme court of appeal.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: David I is the first Scottish king known to have produced his own coinage. There were soon mints at Edinburgh, Berwick and Roxburgh. Early Scottish coins were similar to English ones, but with the king's head in profile instead of full face. The number of coins struck was small and English coins probably remained more significant in this period. The first gold coin was a noble (6s. 8d.) of David II. Under James I pennies and halfpennies of billon (an alloy of silver with a base metal) were introduced, and copper farthings appeared under James III. In James V's reign the bawbee ( d) and half-bawbee were issued, and in Mary, Queen of Scot's reign a twopence piece, the hardhead, was issued to help "the common people buy bread, drink, flesh, and fish". The billon coinage was discontinued after 1603, but twopence pieces in copper continued to be issued until the Act of Union in 1707.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Early Scottish coins were virtually identical in silver content to English ones, but from about 1300 the silver content began to depreciate more rapidly than English. Between then and 1605 they lost value at an average of 12 per cent every ten years, three times the then English rate. The Scottish penny became a base metal coin in about 1484 and virtual disappeared as a separate coin from about 1513. In 1423, the English government banned the circulation of Scottish coins. At the union of the crowns in 1603, the Scottish pound was fixed at only one-twelfth that of the English pound. The Parliament of Scotland of 1695 enacted proposals to set up the Bank of Scotland. The bank issued pound notes from 1704, which had the face value of £12 Scots. Scottish currency was abolished at the Act of Union, the Scottish coin in circulation was drawn in to be re-minted according to the English standard.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: At its borders in 1707, the Kingdom of Scotland was half the size of England and Wales in area, but with its many inlets, islands and inland lochs, it had roughly the same amount of coastline at . Scotland has over 790 offshore islands, most of which are to be found in four main groups: Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides, subdivided into the Inner Hebrides and Outer Hebrides. Only a fifth of Scotland is less than 60 metres above sea level. The defining factor in the geography of Scotland is the distinction between the Highlands and Islands in the north and west and the Lowlands in the south and east. The highlands are further divided into the Northwest Highlands and the Grampian Mountains by the fault line of the Great Glen. The Lowlands are divided into the fertile belt of the Central Lowlands and the higher terrain of the Southern Uplands, which included the Cheviot Hills, over which the border with England ran. The Central Lowland belt averages about in width and, because it contains most of the good quality agricultural land and has easier communications, could support most of the urbanisation and elements of conventional government. However, the Southern Uplands, and particularly the Highlands were economically less productive and much more difficult to govern.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Its east Atlantic position means that Scotland has very heavy rainfall: today about 700 mm per year in the east and over 1000 mm in the west. This encouraged the spread of blanket bogs, the acidity of which, combined with high level of wind and salt spray, made most of the islands treeless. The existence of hills, mountains, quicksands and marshes made internal communication and conquest extremely difficult and may have contributed to the fragmented nature of political power. The Uplands and Highlands had a relatively short growing season, in the extreme case of the upper Grampians an ice free season of four months or less and for much of the Highlands and Uplands of seven months or less. The early modern era also saw the impact of the Little Ice Age, with 1564 seeing thirty-three days of continual frost, where rivers and lochs froze, leading to a series of subsistence crises until the 1690s.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: From the formation of the Kingdom of Alba in the 10th century until before the Black Death arrived in 1349, estimates based on the amount of farmable land suggest that population may have grown from half a million to a million. Although there is no reliable documentation on the impact of the plague, there are many anecdotal references to abandoned land in the following decades. If the pattern followed that in England, then the population may have fallen to as low as half a million by the end of the 15th century.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Compared with the situation after the redistribution of population in the later Highland Clearances and the Industrial Revolution, these numbers would have been relatively evenly spread over the kingdom, with roughly half living north of the River Tay. Perhaps ten per cent of the population lived in one of many burghs that grew up in the later medieval period, mainly in the east and south. They would have had a mean population of about 2000, but many would have been much smaller than 1000 and the largest, Edinburgh, probably had a population of over 10,000 by the end of the Medieval era.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Price inflation, which generally reflects growing demand for food, suggests that the population probably expanded in the first half of the 16th century, levelling off after the famine of 1595, as prices were relatively stable in the early 17th century. Calculations based on hearth tax returns for 1691 indicate a population of 1,234,575, but this figure may have been seriously effected by the subsequent famines of the late 1690s. By 1750, with its suburbs, Edinburgh reached 57,000. The only other towns above 10,000 by the same time were Glasgow with 32,000, Aberdeen with around 16,000 and Dundee with 12,000.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Historical sources, as well as place name evidence, indicate the ways in which the Pictish language in the north and Cumbric languages in the south were overlaid and replaced by Gaelic, Old English and later Norse in the Early Middle Ages. By the High Middle Ages, the majority of people within Scotland spoke the Gaelic language, then simply called "Scottish", or in Latin, "lingua Scotica". In the Northern Isles the Norse language brought by Scandinavian occupiers and settlers evolved into the local Norn, which lingered until the end of the 18th century, and Norse may also have survived as a spoken language until the 16th century in the Outer Hebrides. French, Flemish and particularly English became the main languages of Scottish burghs, most of which were located in the south and east, an area to which Anglian settlers had already brought a form of Old English. In the later part of the 12th century, the writer Adam of Dryburgh described lowland Lothian as "the Land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots". At least from the accession of David I, Gaelic ceased to be the main language of the royal court and was probably replaced by French, as evidenced by reports from contemporary chronicles, literature and translations of administrative documents into the French language.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: In the Late Middle Ages, Early Scots, then called English, became the dominant spoken language of the kingdom, aside from in the Highlands and Islands and Galloway. It was derived largely from Old English, with the addition of elements from Gaelic and French. Although resembling the language spoken in northern England, it became a distinct dialect from the late 14th century onwards. It began to be adopted by the ruling elite as they gradually abandoned French. By the 15th century, it was the language of government, with acts of parliament, council records and treasurer's accounts almost all using it from the reign of James I onwards. As a result, Gaelic, once dominant north of the Tay, began a steady decline. Lowland writers began to treat Gaelic as a second-class, rustic and even amusing language, helping to frame attitudes towards the Highlands and to create a cultural gulf with the Lowlands.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: From the mid-16th century, written Scots was increasingly influenced by the developing Standard English of Southern England due to developments in royal and political interactions with England. With the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England, most writing in Scotland came to be done in the English fashion. Unlike many of his predecessors, James VI generally despised Gaelic culture. Having extolled the virtues of Scots "poesie", after his accession to the English throne, he increasingly favoured the language of southern England. In 1611, the Kirk adopted the 1611 Authorized King James Version of the Bible. In 1617, interpreters were declared no longer necessary in the port of London because as Scots and Englishmen were now "not so far different bot ane understandeth ane uther". Jenny Wormald describes James as creating a "three-tier system, with Gaelic at the bottom and English at the top".


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The Pictish and Scottish kingdoms that would form the basis of the Kingdom of Alba were largely converted by Irish-Scots missions associated with figures such as St Columba, from the 5th to the 7th centuries. These missions tended to found monastic institutions and collegiate churches that served large areas. Partly as a result of these factors, some scholars have identified a distinctive form of Celtic Christianity, in which abbots were more significant than bishops, attitudes to clerical celibacy were more relaxed and there were some significant differences in practice with Roman Christianity, particularly the form of tonsure and the method of calculating Easter. Most of these issues had been resolved by the mid-7th century. After the reconversion of Scandinavian Scotland from the 10th century, Christianity under papal authority was the dominant religion of the kingdom.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: In the Norman period, the Scottish church underwent a series of reforms and transformations. With royal and lay patronage, a clearer parochial structure based around local churches was developed. Large numbers of new foundations, which followed continental forms of reformed monasticism, began to predominate and the Scottish church established its independence from England, developed a clearer diocesan structure, becoming a "special daughter of the see of Rome", but lacking leadership in the form of Archbishops. In the late Middle Ages, the problems of schism in the Catholic Church allowed the Scottish Crown to gain greater influence over senior appointments and two archbishoprics had been established by the end of the 15th century. While some historians have discerned a decline of monasticism in the late Middle Ages, the mendicant orders of friars grew, particularly in the expanding burghs, to meet the spiritual needs of the population. New saints and cults of devotion also proliferated. Despite problems over the number and quality of clergy after the Black Death in the 14th century, and some evidence of heresy in this period, the Church in Scotland remained relatively stable before the 16th century.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: During the 16th century, Scotland underwent a Protestant Reformation that created a predominately Calvinist national kirk, which was strongly Presbyterian in outlook, severely reducing the powers of bishops, although not abolishing them. The teachings of first Martin Luther and then John Calvin began to influence Scotland, particularly through Scottish scholars who had visited continental and English universities. Particularly important was the work of the Lutheran Scot Patrick Hamilton. His execution with other Protestant preachers in 1528, and of the Zwingli-influenced George Wishart in 1546, who was burnt at the stake in St Andrews, did nothing to stem the growth of these ideas. Wishart's supporters seized St Andrews Castle, which they held for a year before they were defeated with the help of French forces. The survivors, including chaplain John Knox, were condemned to be galley slaves, helping to create resentment of the French and martyrs for the Protestant cause. Limited toleration and the influence of exiled Scots and Protestants in other countries, led to the expansion of Protestantism, with a group of lairds declaring themselves Lords of the Congregation in 1557. By 1560, a relatively small group of Protestants were in a position to impose reform on the Scottish church. A confession of faith, rejecting papal jurisdiction and the mass, was adopted by Parliament in 1560. The Calvinism of the reformers led by Knox resulted in a settlement that adopted a Presbyterian system and rejected most of the elaborate trappings of the Medieval church. This gave considerable power within the new Kirk to local lairds, who often had control over the appointment of the clergy, and resulting in widespread, but generally orderly, iconoclasm. At this point the majority of the population was probably still Catholic in persuasion and the Kirk would find it difficult to penetrate the Highlands and Islands, but began a gradual process of conversion and consolidation that, compared with reformations elsewhere, was conducted with relatively little persecution.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: In 1635, Charles I authorised a book of canons that made him head of the Church, ordained an unpopular ritual and enforced the use of a new liturgy. When the liturgy emerged in 1637 it was seen as an English-style Prayer Book, resulting in anger and widespread rioting. Representatives of various sections of Scottish society drew up the National Covenant on 28 February 1638, objecting to the King's liturgical innovations. The king's supporters were unable to suppress the rebellion and the king refused to compromise. In December of the same year, matters were taken even further, when at a meeting of the General Assembly in Glasgow the Scottish bishops were formally expelled from the Church, which was then established on a full Presbyterian basis. Victory in the resulting Bishops' Wars secured the Presbyterian Kirk and precipitated the outbreak of the civil wars of the 1640s. Disagreements over collaboration with Royalism created a major conflict between Protesters and Resolutioners, which became a long term divide in the Kirk.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, legislation was revoked back to 1633, removing the Covenanter gains of the Bishops' Wars, but the discipline of kirk sessions, presbyteries and synods were renewed. The reintroduction of episcopacy was a source of particular trouble in the south-west of the country, an area with strong Presbyterian sympathies. Abandoning the official church, many of the people here began to attend illegal field assemblies led by excluded ministers, known as conventicles. In the early 1680s, a more intense phase of persecution began, in what was later to be known in Protestant historiography as "the Killing Time". After the Glorious Revolution, Presbyterianism was restored and the bishops, who had generally supported James VII, abolished. However, William, who was more tolerant than the kirk tended to be, passed acts restoring the Episcopalian clergy excluded after the Revolution. The result was a Kirk divided between factions, with significant minorities, particularly in the west and north, of Episcopalians and Catholics.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The establishment of Christianity brought Latin to Scotland as a scholarly and written language. Monasteries served as repositories of knowledge and education, often running schools and providing a small educated elite, who were essential to create and read documents in a largely illiterate society. In the High Middle Ages, new sources of education arose, with song and grammar schools. These were usually attached to cathedrals or a collegiate church and were most common in the developing burghs. By the end of the Middle Ages grammar schools could be found in all the main burghs and some small towns. There were also petty schools, more common in rural areas and providing an elementary education. Some monasteries, like the Cistercian abbey at Kinloss, opened their doors to a wider range of students. The number and size of these schools seems to have expanded rapidly from the 1380s. They were almost exclusively aimed at boys, but by the end of the 15th century, Edinburgh also had schools for girls, sometimes described as "sewing schools", and probably taught by lay women or nuns. There was also the development of private tuition in the families of lords and wealthy burghers. The growing emphasis on education cumulated with the passing of the Education Act 1496, which decreed that all sons of barons and freeholders of substance should attend grammar schools to learn "perfyct Latyne". All this resulted in an increase in literacy, but which was largely concentrated among a male and wealthy elite, with perhaps 60 per cent of the nobility being literate by the end of the period.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Until the 15th century, those who wished to attend university had to travel to England or the continent, and just over a 1,000 have been identified as doing so between the 12th century and 1410. Among these the most important intellectual figure was John Duns Scotus, who studied at Oxford, Cambridge and Paris and probably died at Cologne in 1308, becoming a major influence on late medieval religious thought. The Wars of Independence largely closed English universities to Scots, and consequently continental universities became more significant. This situation was transformed by the founding of the University of St Andrews in 1413, the University of Glasgow in 1451 and the University of Aberdeen in 1495. Initially these institutions were designed for the training of clerics, but they were increasingly used by laymen who would begin to challenge the clerical monopoly of administrative posts in the government and law. Those wanting to study for second degrees still needed to go abroad. The continued movement to other universities produced a school of Scottish nominalists at Paris in the early 16th century, of which John Mair was probably the most important figure. By 1497, the humanist and historian Hector Boece, born in Dundee, returned from Paris to become the first principal at the new university of Aberdeen. These international contacts helped integrate Scotland into a wider European scholarly world and would be one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of humanism were brought into Scottish intellectual life.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The humanist concern with widening education was shared by the Protestant reformers, with a desire for a godly people replacing the aim of having educated citizens. In 1560, the "First Book of Discipline" set out a plan for a school in every parish, but this proved financially impossible. In the burghs the old schools were maintained, with the song schools and a number of new foundations becoming reformed grammar schools or ordinary parish schools. Schools were supported by a combination of kirk funds, contributions from local heritors or burgh councils and parents that could pay. They were inspected by kirk sessions, who checked for the quality of teaching and doctrinal purity. There were also large number of unregulated "adventure schools", which sometimes fulfilled a local needs and sometimes took pupils away from the official schools. Outside of the established burgh schools, masters often combined their position with other employment, particularly minor posts within the kirk, such as clerk. At their best, the curriculum included catechism, Latin, French, Classical literature and sports.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: In 1616, an act in Privy council commanded every parish to establish a school "where convenient means may be had", and when the Parliament of Scotland ratified this with the Education Act of 1633, a tax on local landowners was introduced to provide the necessary endowment. A loophole which allowed evasion of this tax was closed in the Education Act of 1646, which established a solid institutional foundation for schools on Covenanter principles. Although the Restoration brought a reversion to the 1633 position, in 1696 new legislation restored the provisions of 1646. An act of the Scottish parliament in 1696 underlined the aim of having a school in every parish. In rural communities these obliged local landowners (heritors) to provide a schoolhouse and pay a schoolmaster, while ministers and local presbyteries oversaw the quality of the education. In many Scottish towns, burgh schools were operated by local councils. By the late 17th century, there was a largely complete network of parish schools in the Lowlands, but in the Highlands basic education was still lacking in many areas.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: The widespread belief in the limited intellectual and moral capacity of women, vied with a desire, intensified after the Reformation, for women to take personal moral responsibility, particularly as wives and mothers. In Protestantism this necessitated an ability to learn and understand the catechism and even to be able to independently read the Bible, but most commentators, even those that tended to encourage the education of girls, thought they should not receive the same academic education as boys. In the lower ranks of society, they benefited from the expansion of the parish schools system that took place after the Reformation, but were usually outnumbered by boys, often taught separately, for a shorter time and to a lower level. They were frequently taught reading, sewing and knitting, but not writing. Female illiteracy rates based on signatures among female servants were around 90 percent, from the late 17th to the early 18th centuries and perhaps 85 percent for women of all ranks by 1750, compared with 35 per cent for men. Among the nobility there were many educated and cultured women, of which Mary, Queen of Scots is the most obvious example.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: After the Reformation, Scotland's universities underwent a series of reforms associated with Andrew Melville, who returned from Geneva to become principal of the University of Glasgow in 1574. He placed an emphasis on simplified logic and elevated languages and sciences to the same status as philosophy, allowing accepted ideas in all areas to be challenged. He introduced new specialist teaching staff, replacing the system of "regenting", where one tutor took the students through the entire arts curriculum. Metaphysics were abandoned and Greek became compulsory in the first year followed by Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew, launching a new fashion for ancient and biblical languages. Glasgow had probably been declining as a university before his arrival, but students now began to arrive in large numbers. He assisted in the reconstruction of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and in order to do for St Andrews what he had done for Glasgow, he was appointed Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews, in 1580. The University of Edinburgh developed out of public lectures were established in the town 1440s on law, Greek, Latin and philosophy, under the patronage of Mary of Guise. These evolved into the "Tounis College", which would become the University of Edinburgh in 1582. The results were a revitalisation of all Scottish universities, which were now producing a quality of education the equal of that offered anywhere in Europe. Under the Commonwealth, the universities saw an improvement in their funding, as they were given income from deaneries, defunct bishoprics and the excise, allowing the completion of buildings including the college in the High Street in Glasgow. They were still largely seen as a training school for clergy, and came under the control of the hard line Protestors. After the Restoration there was a purge of the universities, but much of the intellectual advances of the preceding period was preserved. The universities recovered from the upheavals of the mid-century with a lecture-based curriculum that was able to embrace economics and science, offering a high quality liberal education to the sons of the nobility and gentry.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: There are mentions in Medieval records of fleets commanded by Scottish kings including William the Lion and Alexander II. The latter took personal command of a large naval force which sailed from the Firth of Clyde and anchored off the island of Kerrera in 1249, intended to transport his army in a campaign against the Kingdom of the Isles, but he died before the campaign could begin. Records indicate that Alexander had several large oared ships built at Ayr, but he avoided a sea battle. Defeat on land at the Battle of Largs and winter storms forced the Norwegian fleet to return home, leaving the Scottish crown as the major power in the region and leading to the ceding of the Western Isles to Alexander in 1266.


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: Part of the reason for Robert I's success in the Wars of Independence was his ability to call on naval forces from the Islands. As a result of the expulsion of the Flemings from England in 1303, he gained the support of a major naval power in the North Sea. The development of naval power allowed Robert to successfully defeat English attempts to capture him in the Highlands and Islands and to blockade major English controlled fortresses at Perth and Stirling, the last forcing Edward II to attempt the relief that resulted in English defeat at Bannockburn in 1314. Scottish naval forces allowed invasions of the Isle of Man in 1313 and 1317 and Ireland in 1315. They were also crucial in the blockade of Berwick, which led to its fall in 1318. After the establishment of Scottish independence, Robert I turned his attention to building up a Scottish naval capacity. This was largely focused on the west coast, with the Exchequer Rolls of 1326 recording the feudal duties of his vassals in that region to aid him with their vessels and crews. Towards the end of his reign he supervised the building of at least one royal man-of-war near his palace at Cardross on the River Clyde. In the late 14th century, naval warfare with England was conducted largely by hired Scots, Flemish and French merchantmen and privateers. James I took a greater interest in naval power. After his return to Scotland in 1424, he established a shipbuilding yard at Leith, a house for marine stores, and a workshop. King's ships were built and equipped there to be used for trade as well as war, one of which accompanied him on his expedition to the Islands in 1429. The office of Lord High Admiral was probably founded in this period. In his struggles with his nobles in 1488 James III received assistance from his two warships the "Flower" and the "King's Carvel" also known as the "Yellow Carvel".


title: Kingdom of Scotland

text: There were various attempts to create royal naval forces in the 15th century. James IV put the enterprise on a new footing, founding a harbour at Newhaven and a dockyard at the Pools of Airth. He acquired a total of 38 ships including the "Great Michael", at that time, the largest ship in Europe. Scottish ships had some success against privateers, accompanied the king on his expeditions in the islands and intervened in conflicts in Scandinavia and the Baltic, but were sold after the Flodden campaign and after 1516 Scottish naval efforts would rely on privateering captains and hired merchantmen. James V did not share his father's interest in developing a navy and shipbuilding fell behind that of the Low Countries. Despite truces between England and Scotland there were periodic outbreaks of a "guerre de course". James V built a new harbour at Burntisland in 1542. The chief use of naval power in his reign was a series of expeditions to the Isles and France. After the Union of Crowns in 1603 conflict between Scotland and England ended, but Scotland found itself involved in England's foreign policy, opening up Scottish shipping to attack. In 1626, a squadron of three ships was bought and equipped. There were also several marque fleets of privateers. In 1627, the Royal Scots Navy and accompanying contingents of burgh privateers participated in the major expedition to Biscay. The Scots also returned to the West Indies and in 1629 took part in the capture of Quebec.