Warfare In Medieval Scotland
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Warfare In Medieval Scotland
Warfare in Medieval Scotland includes all military activity in the modern borders of Scotland, or by forces originating in the region, between the departure of the Romans in the fifth century and the adoption of the innovations of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. In this period conflict developed from minor raids to major conflicts, incorporating many of the innovations of continental warfare. In the Early Middle Ages war on land was characterised by the use of small war-bands of household troops often engaging in raids and low level warfare. The arrival of the Vikings brought a new scale of naval warfare, with rapid movement based around the Viking longship. The birlinn, which developed from the longship, became a major factor in warfare in the Highlands and Islands. By the High Middle Ages, the kings of Scotland could command forces of tens of thousands of men for short periods as part of the "common army", mainly of poorly armoured spearmen and bowmen. After t ...
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Battle Of Bannockburn
The Battle of Bannockburn ( gd, Blàr Allt nam Bànag or ) fought on June 23–24, 1314, was a victory of the army of King of Scots Robert the Bruce over the army of King Edward II of England in the First War of Scottish Independence. It was a major turning point in the war, which only officially ended 14 years later with the ''de jure'' restoration of Scottish independence under the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton; for this reason, Bannockburn is considered a landmark moment in Scottish history. King Edward II invaded Scotland after Bruce demanded in 1313 that all supporters, still loyal to ousted Scottish king John Balliol, acknowledge Bruce as their king or lose their lands. Stirling Castle, a Scots royal fortress occupied by the English, was under siege by the Scottish army. King Edward assembled a formidable force of soldiers to relieve it – the largest army ever to invade Scotland. The English summoned 25,000 infantry soldiers and 2,000 horses from England, Ireland a ...
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Slighting
Slighting is the deliberate damage of high-status buildings to reduce their value as military, administrative or social structures. This destruction of property sometimes extended to the contents of buildings and the surrounding landscape. It is a phenomenon with complex motivations and was often used as a tool of control. Slighting spanned cultures and periods, with especially well-known examples from the English Civil War in the 17th century. Meaning and use Slighting is the act of deliberately damaging a high-status building, especially a castle or fortification, which could include its contents and the surrounding area. The first recorded use of the word 'slighting' to mean a form of destruction was in 1613. Castles are complex structures combining military, social, and administrative uses, and the decision to slight them took these various roles into account. The purpose of slighting was to reduce the value of the building, whether military, social, or administrative. Des ...
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Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature, Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, by Anglo-Norman language, Anglo-Norman (a langues d'oïl, relative of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian languages, Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic peoples, Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Sa ...
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Brythonic Languages
The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; cy, ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; kw, yethow brythonek/predennek; br, yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic. The name ''Brythonic'' was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word , meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael. The Brittonic languages derive from the Common Brittonic language, spoken throughout Great Britain during the Iron Age and Roman period. In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in Brittany and Britonia. During the next few centuries the language began to split into several dialects, eventually evolving into Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Cumbric, and probably Pictish. Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while a revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish ...
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Pictish Stone At Aberlemno Church Yard - Battle Scene Detail
Pictish is the extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and the contemporary records in the area controlled by the kingdoms of the Picts, dating to the early medieval period. Such evidence, however, points strongly to the language being an Insular Celtic language related to the Brittonic language spoken prior to Anglo-Saxon settlement in what is now southern Scotland, England, and Wales. The prevailing view in the second half of the 20th century was that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language isolate, predating a Gaelic colonisation of Scotland or that a non-Indo-European Pictish and Brittonic Pictish language coexisted. Pictish was replaced by – or subsumed into – Gaelic in the latter centuries of the Pictish period. During the reign of Domnal ...
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James IV Of Scotland
James IV (17 March 1473 – 9 September 1513) was King of Scotland from 11 June 1488 until his death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. He inherited the throne at the age of fifteen on the death of his father, James III, at the Battle of Sauchieburn, following a rebellion in which the younger James was the figurehead of the rebels. James IV is generally regarded as the most successful of the Stewart monarchs. He was responsible for a major expansion of the Scottish royal navy, which included the founding of two royal dockyards and the acquisition or construction of 38 ships, including the ''Michael'', the largest warship of its time.T. Christopher Smout, ''Scotland and the Sea'' (Edinburgh: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992), , p. 45. James was a patron of the arts and took an active interest in the law, literature and science, even personally experimenting in dentistry and bloodletting. With his patronage the printing press came to Scotland, and the Royal College of Surgeons of Ed ...
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The Battle Of Flodden
The Battle of Flodden, Flodden Field, or occasionally Branxton, (Brainston Moor) was a battle fought on 9 September 1513 during the War of the League of Cambrai between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, resulting in an English victory. The battle was fought near Branxton in the county of Northumberland in northern England, between an invading Scots army under King James IV and an English army commanded by the Earl of Surrey. In terms of troop numbers, it was the largest battle fought between the two kingdoms."The Seventy Greatest Battles of All Time". Published by Thames & Hudson Ltd. 2005. Edited by Jeremy Black. Pages 95 to 97.. After besieging and capturing several English border castles, James encamped his invading army on a commanding hilltop position at Flodden and awaited the English force which had been sent against him, declining a challenge to fight in an open field. Surrey's army therefore carried out a circuitous march to position themselves in the ...
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Livery And Maintenance
In post-classical history, an affinity was a collective name for the group (retinue) of (usually) men whom a lord gathered around himself in his service; it has been described by one modern historian as "the servants, retainers, and other followers of a lord", and as "part of the normal fabric of society". It is considered a fundamental aspect of bastard feudalism, and acted as a means of tying magnates to the lower nobility, just as feudalism had done in a different way. One form of the relationship was known as livery and maintenance. The lord provided livery badges to be worn by the retainer and "maintenance" or his support in their disputes, which often constituted obstruction of judicial processes. Origins One of the earliest identifiable feudal affinities was that of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, who by 1190 had gathered a force around him consisting of men without necessarily any strong tenurial connection to him. Rather than receiving land, these men received ...
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Indentures
An indenture is a legal contract that reflects or covers a debt or purchase obligation. It specifically refers to two types of practices: in historical usage, an indentured servant status, and in modern usage, it is an instrument used for commercial debt or real estate transaction. Historical usage An indenture is a legal contract between two parties, particularly for indentured labour or a term of apprenticeship but also for certain land transactions. The term comes from the medieval English "indenture of retainer"—a legal contract written in duplicate on the same sheet, with the copies separated by cutting along a jagged (toothed, hence the term "indenture") line so that the teeth of the two parts could later be refitted to confirm authenticity (chirograph). Each party to the deed would then retain a part. When the agreement was made before a court of law a ''tripartite'' indenture was made, with the third piece kept at the court. The term is used for any kind of deed exec ...
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Manrent
Manrent refers to a Scottish contract of the mid-15th century to the early 17th century, usually military in nature and involving Scottish clans. The bond of manrent was commonly an instrument in which a weaker man or clan pledged to serve, in return for protection, a stronger lord or clan—in effect becoming a vassal that renders service to a superior, often made in the form of a covenant. Manrents were a ''Promise by one person to serve another, uchthat he shall be friend to all his friends, and foe to all his foes''. Some bonds of manrent, described as ''bonds of friendship'', took place between men or clans of equal power, worded in the form of treaties of offensive and defensive alliance. These contracting parties bound themselves to assist each other. Manrents always acknowledged and prioritized the signatory's duty of allegiance to the King, in terms such as: "…always excepting duty to our lord the king". In the same manner, when men who were not chiefs of clans, b ...
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Archery
Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In modern times, it is mainly a competitive sport and recreational activity. A person who practices archery is typically called an archer, bowman, or toxophilite. History Origins and ancient archery The oldest known evidence of the bow and arrow comes from South African sites such as Sibudu Cave, where the remains of bone and stone arrowheads have been found dating approximately 72,000 to 60,000 years ago.Backwell L, d'Errico F, Wadley L.(2008). Middle Stone Age bone tools from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science, 35:1566–1580. Backwell L, Bradfield J, Carlson KJ, Jashashvili T, Wadley L, d'Errico F.(2018). The antiquity of bow-and-arrow technology: evidence from Middle Stone Age layers ...
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Men-at-arms
A man-at-arms was a soldier of the High Medieval to Renaissance periods who was typically well-versed in the use of arms and served as a fully-armoured heavy cavalryman. A man-at-arms could be a knight, or other nobleman, a member of a knight's or nobleman's retinue, or a mercenary in a company serving under a captain. Such men could serve for pay or through a feudal obligation. The terms ''knight'' and ''man-at-arms'' are often used interchangeably, but while all knights equipped for war were men-at-arms, not all men-at-arms were knights. Terminology Though in English the term man-at-arms is a fairly straightforward rendering of the French ''homme d'armes'', in the Middle Ages, there were numerous terms for this type of soldier, referring to the type of arms he would be expected to provide: In France, he might be known as a ''lance'' or ''glaive'', while in Germany, ''Spieß'', ''Helm'' or ''Gleve'', and in various places, a ''bascinet''. In Italy, the term '' barbuta'' ...
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