Scotichronicon, Volume 5: Books IX and X

by Walter Bower, Simon Watt Taylor

Writing on a small island in the Firth of Forth in the 1440s, Walter Bower set out to tell the whole story of the Scottish nation in a single huge book, the Scotichronicon--'a history book for Scots'. It begins with the mythical voyage of Scota, the Pharaoh's daughter, from Egypt with the Stone of Destiny. The land that her sons discovered in the Western Ocean was named after Scotland. It goes on to describe the turbulent events that followed, among them the wars of the Scots and the Picts (begun by a quarrel over a dog); the poisoning of King Fergus by his wife; Macbeth's usurpation and uneasy reign; the good deeds of Margaret, queen and saint; Bruce's murder of the Red Comyn; the founding of Scotland's first university at St Andrews; the 'Burnt Candlemas'; and the endless troubles between Scotland and England.

Weaving in and out of the events of Bower's factual history, like a wonderful pageant, are other subjects that fascinated harrowing visions of hell and purgatory, extraordinary miracles; the exploits of knights and beggars, merchants and monks; the ravages of flood and fire; the terrors of the plague; and the answers to such puzzling questions as what makes a good king, and why Englishmen have tails.

569 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1990

About the author

Abbot Walter Bower (or Bowmaker; c. 1385 – 1449) was a Scottish canon regular of Inchcolm Abbey in the Firth of Forth, who is noted as a chronicler of his era. He was born about 1385 at Haddington, East Lothian, in the Kingdom of Scotland.

Bower was trained at the University of St. Andrews and became the abbot of the Augustinian community on Inchcolm in 1417. He also acted as one of the commissioners for the collection of the ransom of King James I of Scotland in 1423 and 1424. Later, in 1433, he took part in a diplomatic mission to Paris to discuss the possibility of marriage of the king's daughter to the Dauphin of France. He played an important part at the Council of Perth of 1432 in the defence of Scottish rights.

During Bower's closing years he was engaged on his work, the Scotichronicon, on which his reputation now chiefly rests. This work, undertaken in 1440 by desire of a neighbour, Sir David Stewart of Rosyth Castle, was a continuation of the Chronica Gentis Scotorum of John of Fordun. The completed work, in its original form, consisted of sixteen books, of which the first five and a portion of the sixth (to 1163) are Fordun's - or mainly his, for Bower added to them at places. In the later books, down to the reign of Robert I (1371), he was aided by Fordun's Gesta Annalia, but from that point to the close the work is original and of contemporary importance, especially for James I, with whose death it ends. The task was finished in 1447.