History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China Book

Jeff of Weber Antiquarian Books, gave his mother this 286 page book about 2010. though it had a damaged spine and faded cover, it dealt with the Scotland from which came Natalie's father's forebears. Natalie's copy was published 1885 in Boston, abridged and published by Edwin Ginn in the 'Home and School Library,' with twenty six chapters, this being Natalie's copy of a 1903 printing.

"In May 1827, Scott had the idea of writing a History of Scotland addressed to his six-year-old grandchild John Hugh Lockhart whom he called by the nickname of 'Hugh Littlejohn'. The project was partly inspired by the success of John Wilson Croker's 'Stories Selected from the History of England' (1822).
Sir Walter Scott felt that Croker underestimated the intelligence of his juvenile audience. Children, Scott believed, disliked books 'written down' to their level, preferring a challenge to their understanding and curiosity. He hoped to cater, moreover, for both a juvenile and a popular audience and thus to find a way 'between what a child can comprehend and what shall not yet be absolutely uninteresting to the grown reader'."

I judge this book to be a very good concise military and political (who gets in charge and who follows in control) history from 1033 to 1540, naturally written from the honest view and bias of intelligent Scots. It is a pleasure to read, moves apace, very smoothly, clear in its chronological progression, and sufficient in its treatment of historically prominent figures such as Macbeth in 1033, David the First in 1093, Sir William Wallace in 1296, and King Robert the Bruce from 1305 to 1330. The Bruce with 30,000 men totally defeated at Bannockburn an English army of over 100,000, and drove the English survivors well back south of the Scottish border.
Scott's history for the next 200 years turns then to more dismal fighting, siege of Lochleven Castle, tournaments, return and death of King David II in 1370, Robert II, James II, James III, a King's murder, Battle of Flodden in 1513, death of James IV, and ends with James V who sired the daughter who became Mary Queen of Scots and then james died at age thirty one in 1540. James is generally regarded as the most successful of the Stewart monarchs of Scotland, but his reign ended in a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Flodden. He was the last monarch from Great Britain to be killed in battle. King James IV of Scotland’s death "meant a minor noble ascended the throne (an unfortunately familiar tale in Scottish history) causing a new era of political instability for the Scottish nation."

James IV's marriage in 1503 to Margaret Tudor linked the royal houses of Scotland and England. It led to the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when Elizabeth I died without heirs and James IV's great-grandson James VI succeeded to the English throne as James I.

For a person like I, the few pages given to these and other rulers interregnum were quite enough to understand the European scene of French, German, Danish and Norwegian conniving and military forces, and internally to Scotland the turmoil and frequent battles which gave Scotland such harsh times and often cruel conditions back in those centuries when the peasants did their utmost to survive in a harsh land.