His father, George A. Mercer, was descended from an honored Southern family that could trace its ancestry back to one Hugh Mercer, who had emigrated from Scotland in 1747.

They had been going to meet the steamer which would take them to Scotland for potato picking.

The Act of Settlement provided that the throne would pass to the Electress Sophia of Hanover – a granddaughter of James VI of Scotland and I of England, niece of Charles I of Scotland and England – and her Protestant descendants who had not married a Roman Catholic ; those who were Roman Catholic, and those who married a Roman Catholic, were barred from ascending the throne " for ever ".

King's College ( University of King's College ) was an Anglican School and Dalhousie University, which was originally non-denominational, had placed itself under the control and direction of the Church of Scotland.

Henry McLeish, Labour First Minister of Scotland, failed to refund the House of Commons for income he had received from the sub-let of his constituency office in Glenrothes while still a Westminster MP.

King Robert II of Scotland ( 1316 – 1390 ) had a hunting lodge in the area.

The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England and Scotland and was administered by the War Office from London.

In 1557, the Scots Protestant lords had adopted the English Prayer Book of 1552, for reformed worship in Scotland.

However, when John Knox returned to Scotland in 1559, he continued to use the Form of Prayer he had created for the English exiles in Geneva, and in 1564, this supplanted the Book of Common Prayer under the title of the Book of Common Order.

Columba suggested that he would work as a missionary in Scotland to help convert as many people as had been killed in the battle.

However, there is a sense in which he was not leaving his native people, as the Irish Gaels had been colonizing the west coast of Scotland for the previous couple of centuries.

Two paintings ( both dated 1565 ) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder depict Dutch peasants curling — Scotland and the Low Countries had strong trading and cultural links during this period, which is also evident in the history of golf.

In his fictional historical essay " The Hyborian Age ", Howard describes how the people of Atlantis — the land where his character King Kull originated — had to move east after a great cataclysm changed the face of the world and sank their island, settling where Ireland and Scotland would eventually be located, Thus they are ( in Howard's work ) the ancestors of the Irish and Scottish ( the Celtic Gaels ) and not the Picts, the other ancestor of modern Scots who also appear in Howard's work.

They appear relatively late and only in Orkney and it is not clear why the use of cairns continued in the north when their construction had largely ceased elsewhere in Scotland.

Defoe being a Presbyterian who had suffered in England for his convictions, was accepted as an adviser to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and committees of the Parliament of Scotland.

He made use of his Scottish experience to write his Tour thro ' the whole Island of Great Britain, published in 1726, where he admitted that the increase of trade and population in Scotland which he had predicted as a consequence of the Union, was " not the case, but rather the contrary ".

The Pope had recognised Edward I of England's claim to overlordship of Scotland in 1305 and Bruce was excommunicated by the Pope for murdering John Comyn before the altar in Greyfriars Church in Dumfries in 1306.

The Declaration made a number of much-debated rhetorical points: that Scotland had always been independent, indeed for longer than England ; that Edward I of England had unjustly attacked Scotland and perpetrated atrocities ; that Robert the Bruce had delivered the Scottish nation from this peril ; and, most controversially, that the independence of Scotland was the prerogative of the Scottish people, rather than the King of Scots.

Angus () is one of the 32 local government council areas of Scotland, a registration county and a lieutenancy area.

Through the 1950s and into the 1960s the Liberals survived only because a handful of constituencies in rural Scotland and Wales clung to their Liberal traditions, whilst in two English towns, Bolton and Huddersfield, local Liberals and Conservatives agreed to each contest only one of the town's two seats.

Yet there is now little doubt that the hollow-walled broch tower was purely an invention from what is now Scotland, or that even the kinds of pottery found inside them that most resembled south British styles were local hybrid forms.

CND has a national organisation based in London, national groups in Wales, Ireland and Scotland, regional groups in Cambridgeshire, Cumbria, the East Midlands, Kent, London, Manchester, Merseyside, Mid Somerset, Norwich, South Cheshire and North Staffordshire, Southern England, South West England, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Tyne and Wear, the West Midlands and Yorkshire, and local branches.

This description " eastman " ( from Norway ) has to be seen together with the description " westman " ( From Ireland / Scotland ) which is to be found in local place-names such as " Vestmanna-havn " i. e. " Irish-mens harbour " in the Faroe Isles, and " Vestmannaeyjar " i. e. " Irish-mens islands " in Iceland.

George then decided to find work in Scotland, and he left Robert with a local woman while he went to work in Montrose.

Aberdeen in Scotland, which is constructed principally from local granite, is known as " The Granite City ".

This would give England a local Parliament like those already functioning for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

From 1830 the state began to fund buildings with grants, then from 1846 it was funding schools by direct sponsorship, and in 1872 Scotland moved to a system like that in England of state-sponsored largely free schools, run by local school boards.

* Statistical Accounts of Scotland ( 1791 – 1845 ) online, detailed local descriptions

An example of a local Hogmanay custom is the fireball swinging that takes place in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire in north-east Scotland.

Since local government reorganisation, the unit in England, Northern Ireland and Wales is known as a district, and in Scotland as a council area.

This system is used in the Upper House in India, Australia ( Senate, Tasmanian and Australian Capital Territory Houses of Assembly and the Legislative Councils in New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria ), Ireland, Northern Ireland ( assembly, local government and European elections, but not national ), Malta, local government elections in Scotland and selected ( optional ) local governments in New Zealand.

Ivanhoe ( 1819 ) set in twelfth-century England, marked a move away from Scott's focus on the local history of Scotland.

Roy Grönneberg, who founded the local chapter of the Scottish National Party in 1966, designed the flag of Shetland in cooperation with Bill Adams to mark the 500 year anniversary of the transfer of the islands from Norway to Scotland.

Particularly hardest hit by economic problems were the north of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales ; unemployment reached 70 % in some areas at the start of the 1930s ( with more than 3 million out of work nationally ) and many families depended entirely on payments from local government known as the dole.

* The single transferable vote system is used in Northern Ireland to elect the Northern Ireland Assembly, local councils, and Members of the European Parliament, and in Scotland to elect local councils.

The system of shires which was later to form the basis of local administration throughout England ( and eventually, Ireland, Wales and Scotland as well ) originated in Wessex, and had been established by the mid-eighth century.

Tostig appears to have received little local support, and further raids into Lincolnshire and near the River Humber met with no more success, so Tostig retreated to Scotland, where he remained for a time.

** Margaret Thatcher's new local government tax, the Poll tax, is introduced in Scotland.

In Scotland county-sized local government was replaced by larger regions, which lasted until 1996.

Modern local government in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and a large part of England is based on the concept of smaller unitary authorities ( a system similar to that which the Redcliffe – Maud Report proposed for most of Britain in the 1960s ).

The Trust was funded by a gift of $ 10 million ( a then unprecedented sum: at the time, total government assistance to all four Scottish universities was about £ 50, 000 a year ) and its aim was to improve and extend the opportunities for scientific research in the Scottish universities and to enable the deserving and qualified youth of Scotland to attend a university.

The " Dear Green Place " and " City of God " required government troops to put down the rioters tearing up copies of the Treaty, as at almost every mercat cross in Scotland.

Following the return of the Labour Party to government in 1997, Dewar became the Secretary of State for Scotland and campaigned for a ' Yes-Yes ' vote in the successful referendum on Scottish devolution.

The City Chambers in Glasgow, Scotland has functioned as the headquarters of Glasgow City Council since 1996, and of preceding forms of municipal government in the city since 1889, located on the eastern side of the city's George Square.

Category: Listed government buildings in Scotland

While the 1997 Labour government devolved power to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it refused to created a devolved Assembly or parliament for England, planning instead to introduce eight regional assemblies around England to devolve power to the regions.

When Francis himself died, Mary, now nineteen, elected to return to Scotland to take up the government in a hostile environment.

At the outset he was successful, taking Edinburgh and then defeating the only government army in Scotland at the Battle of Prestonpans.

It was quieted when the government stepped in passing the Crofters ' Holdings ( Scotland ) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless.

During his reign the Church of England was re-established, and episcopal church government was restored in Scotland.

Since the late Middle Ages the Kingdoms of England and Scotland had been evolving towards a quasi-oligarchical or collegiate form of government in which the monarch was held to rule with the consensus of the land-owning upper classes.

Before the 19th century, the first use of the word " police " recorded in government documents in the United Kingdom was the appointment of Commissioners of Police for Scotland in 1714 and the creation of the Marine Police in 1798 ( set up to protect merchandise at the Port of London ).

On June 30, 1800, the authorities of Glasgow, Scotland successfully petitioned the government to pass the Glasgow Police Act establishing the City of Glasgow Police.

Scotland ensured Presbyterian " church government " in the Acts of Union in 1707 which created the kingdom of Great Britain.

Most Reformed churches who trace their history back to Scotland are either Presbyterian or Congregationalist in government.

The Earl of Richmond, Edward's nephew, was to head up the subordinate government of Scotland.

The progress to Northern / Roses government would thenceforth pass across the border into Scotland, in 1603, due not only to the civil warring, but also because the Tudors ' own dynasty was fragile and insecure, trying to reconcile the mortal enemies who had weakened England to the point of having to bow to new pressures, rather than dictate diplomacy on English terms.

In practice, several government departments and Ministers have responsibilities that cover England alone, with devolved bodies having responsibility for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, ( for example-the Department of Health ), or responsibilities that mainly focus on England ( such as the Department for Education ).

** Following the execution of King Charles I, the Commonwealth of England, a republican form of government, replaces the monarchy as the form of government of England and later of Scotland and Ireland.