Warriors, witches and damn rebel bitches: The Scotswomen who stood their ground

It is also difficult because these are not all inspiring or uplifting stories. Stories of persecution and injustice feature too – these are part of the story of Scotland’s foresisters and it matters that we remember that.

Some are really tough going – Euphame MacCalzean, for example, was executed as a witch in 1591 on the basis of accusations motivated both by misogyny and by the desire of her husband and his family to get their hands on her substantial property. We still have some way to go before we achieve equality in legal and other contexts in Scotland and the wider world, and in remembering Euphame, we can be alert to those ongoing fights.

So my three ‘favourites’ include a woman who refused to give up her principles and persisted in kindness even in the face of death. Another has been misrepresented on the global stage (literally!), recast as a supporting actress in her own story. And the last was quite simply audacious.

JANE HAINING

'There is not much to report from here.

Even here on the way to Heaven are

mountains, but further away than ours'

Jane Haining, writes from Auschwitz-Birkenau 1944

Jane was born in Dunscore in 1897 and grew up on her father’s farm. The family attended church in Dunscore, and Jane became a fervent evangelist. After some years working in Glasgow, she volunteered for missionary service in 1932 and travelled to Hungary where the Church of Scotland was active in running a Mission School for around 400 mainly Jewish children. Jane became Matron, and was popular among pupils and colleagues alike. One former pupil remembered her as giving, ‘all the love that she could’.

In 1939, the Second World War broke out. Jane, home on leave, was on holiday in Cornwall when she heard the news. Immediately she returned to Budapest. Hungary had traded with Italy and Germany throughout the 1930s as it sought to save its economy from recession. In 1940, under pressure from Germany, it joined the Axis powers. The Church of Scotland instructed its missionaries to return home for their own safety. Jane wrote back, ‘If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?’

Jane lived with her girls in Budapest until 1944, when Hungary sought an armistice with the United States and the United Kingdom. German forces invaded. Jewish citizens had been protected from deportation during the early war years, despite widespread discrimination against them in Hungarian society. Now the deportations began. Again Jane was asked to leave; again she refused.

In April 1944 two Gestapo men arrived at the Mission, searched Jane’s office and told her to gather her things. Still she sought to protect her pupils from any distress, telling them, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back by lunch.’ Charges against her included working among Jews, aiding prisoners of war and listening to the BBC. She admitted all charges but political activity. Attempts were made to secure her release, as letters by Bishop László Ravasz of the Reformed Church in Hungary found later showed. All attempts failed; she was transferred to Auschwitz via a holding camp on 15 May 1944. She was tattooed as prisoner 79467.

Jane’s last communication was a postcard to her friend Margit Prem on 15 July 1944, asking for food. It ended with the words, ‘There is not much to report from here. Even here on the way to Heaven are mountains, but further away than ours.’ Starved and weak, Jane died in the Auschwitz hospital block on 16 August 1944, aged forty-seven.

In 2017, an exhibition about Jane opened in the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest, followed by a permanent exhibition in Dunscore Church. She is the only Scot recorded as Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem.

GROUCH OF SCOTLAND

'MacBethad son of Findláech and Gruoch daughter of

Boite, King and Queen of Scots, granted by the

suffrage of prayers Kyrkenes to God the Omnipotent and

the Culdees of the Isle of Lochleven, within their bounds and borders.'

Grant of the land of Kyrkenes to the monks of St Serfs 12th˜century Latin translation of 11th century Gaelic original

Gruoch ingean Boite achieves the unusual feat of being a real-life queen almost no one has ever heard of, and simultaneously one of the most famous women in literature.

Gruoch was born into a royal family in a very different Scotland to the one we know today. Her family had ruled the territory called Alba since the time of her great-great-great-grandfather Kenneth MacAlpin, who would pass into legend as having united the Picts and the Scots. She married Gille Coemgáin – try saying that one after a few tequilas – who ruled Moray, the territory to the north of Alba. Gruoch bore a son, Lulach, but Gille Coemgáin was killed in 1032 when the boy was still a child. Gruoch then made a new marriage alliance with her husband’s successor – Macbeth. You’ve probably heard of him.

However, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth bears little resemblance to the real-life Gruoch. In the play she is a scheming woman who nags and cajoles her weak, ambitious husband to take the throne of Scotland through a series of dark deeds beginning with the murder of Duncan I, King of Scotland, in the dead of night. The reality was less like a plot from Luther and more in line with the politics of the Middle Ages. Duncan attacked Macbeth’s lands, Macbeth met him in battle and Duncan died in the fight.

Macbeth and Gruoch both had a strong claim to the crown of Scotland, and so they became king and queen together. In an era when the typical reign ended in bloodshed after no more than around five years, they ruled for 17. It is an indication of the peace and security of their reign that they were able to make the long journey to Rome on pilgrimage. Gruoch’s son Lulach eventually succeeded them.

So why are the events of the play so far from the truth? Gruoch and Macbeth’s line died out when Lulach was killed by Malcolm III, and chroniclers scrambled to celebrate Malcolm III’s line and demonise Macbeth’s. (Think of chroniclers as something akin to Nicholas Witchell in full-on royal correspondent sycophant mode.) Gradually Gruoch was forgotten, along with her claim to the throne of Scotland. Ironically one of the worst demonisers, Andrew de Wyntoun, was a monk on the self-same island to which she and Macbeth had made the grant of Kyrkenes, as quoted above.

Shakespeare read many of these accounts when he wrote Macbeth between 1603 and 1607 – over 500 years after Macbeth and Gruoch ruled Scotland. He was keen to please James VI of Scotland, newly become James I of England. James was ultimately descended from Malcolm, and he had a fervent belief in witches, and so Shakespeare wove these elements into his story.

WINIFRED MAXWELL OF NITHSDALE

'If I meet my dear lord well, and am so happy

as to be able to serve him, I shall think all my trouble well re-paid.'

Winifred Herbert’s early life was one plot after another. She was born around 1678 to William Herbert, Earl of Powis and his wife Elizabeth Somerset, two years after William had been carted off to the Tower of London, accused of taking part in a conspiracy to kill King Charles II. This ‘Popish Plot’ was a fabrication by the rather woefully named Titus Oates and Israel Tonge. You may speculate in your own time as to whether Oates and Tonge would have been more contented souls had their parents been kinder to them in the naming department.

William Herbert remained in the Tower for six long years. Elizabeth’s attempts to free him endangered her, too, particularly when she became implicated in the ‘Meal-tub Plot’, which is the last false plot you need to concern yourself with in this story but it’s too well named to leave out. The Tower of London will come up again . . .

When William was finally released in 1684 – the dates imply that Winifred was conceived on a conjugal visit – the Herberts enjoyed four short years of relative peace until the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when King James II was deposed in favour of his Protestant son-in-law William of Orange. William Herbert spirited James’s wife Queen Mary and their infant son James, Prince of Wales, out of England to safety in France. King James rewarded him with the title Marquess of Powis. The new establishment at home in England rewarded him with permanent exile and the loss of his titles and estates.

King James built a court around himself in France and the Herberts took their place as advisors and confidantes. Winifred grew up in this Jacobite world – Jacobite means supporter of James – and met her future husband, William Maxwell, 5th Earl of Nithsdale, when he came to pay his respects to the exiled king. The couple married in 1699 and Winifred became a countess, returning to live on her husband’s estates in Dumfriesshire.

In 1715 William Maxwell joined a Jacobite Rising seeking to restore James Francis Edward Stuart to the throne – that baby Winifred’s father had spirited out of England in 1688. William was captured at the Battle of Preston and, like his father-in-law before him, was imprisoned in the Tower. Convicted as a traitor, he was sentenced to death. Winifred immediately left for London, making much of the month-long journey by horse in bitter December snows. Supported by friends, she determined to make a personal appeal to King George I, but the king would not hear her. William wrote his ‘dying speech’ and a letter to his family, and prepared to meet his end.

On the eve of William’s execution, Winifred secured permission to visit him to bid farewell. She arrived with her maid and two female friends. They distributed drinking money among the guards and proceeded to enter the cell one-by-one to say their tearful farewells. At last it was Winifred’s turn. Fretting aloud about her maid wandering off, she entered the cell and was heard to converse with her husband for the last time. She latched the door behind her as she left, telling the guards that her husband was saying his prayers, but that she was convinced she would still secure the petition she needed to halt the execution.

When the guards next entered William’s cell, they found it empty. The Earl had made his escape long since, disguised in extra layers of clothing Winifred’s retinue had worn. With rouge on his cheeks, a wig on his head, a large cloak around him and his face buried in his handkerchief, ‘Mrs Mills’ had fled with Winifred’s women while Winifred carried on a two-sided conversation with herself in the cell. William was the last person ever to escape the Tower. The couple hid in London until William could be smuggled to France. Winifred made a risky return journey to Scotland to settle affairs and then made her way to join him, evading detection by government forces out looking hard for the escapee Earl. She rejoined William at the Jacobite court and they lived out their lives with the king-in-exile in Rome. William did little to indicate that he had been worth the extreme effort his wife had gone to, but Winifred became governess to King James’s son Charles – Bonnie Prince Charlie – and in this way supported her husband and their own children.