In the early summer of 1298 the government of England moved to York and remained there for seven years. The Scottish problem did not disappear in 1337. At the beginning of the Tudor Age, the lords spiritual was more secure than the lords temporal. The bishops and abbots who sat in the House of Lords exceeded the number of nobles. Most of the bishops had larger dioceses than in later times. The Archbishop of Canterbury had one the smallest dioceses dividing Kent with the Bishop of Rochester. The largest diocese in the province of Canterbury, south of the Trent was Lincoln (Lindsay) which extended across the Midlands, to Oxford and Berkshire. Wales was divided between the Bishops of Llandaff and St. David's in the south, and St. Asaph and Bangor in the north. North of the Trent there were three dioceses in the province of York. York included Yorkshire and Lancashire, and Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire north of the Trent. The Bishop of Durham's diocese was Durham and Northumberland, and the Bishop of Carlisle's Cumberland and Westmorland. In 1540, Henry VIII created six new bishoprics: Peterborough, Westminster, Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, and Chester with diocese carved out of the older dioceses of Ely, London, Bath and Wells, Worcester, Lincoln, Coventry and Lichfield. There were 513 monasteries and 130 nunneries in England and Wales. Wales was divided into six counties on the English model until 1974. Along the northern and southern banks of the Tyne, Tynedale and Redesdale feuds made the local areas impossible. Because part of Cumberland, Northumberland, Westmoreland and Durham's inhabitants had been kidnapped on the highway which continued until the union of the crowns.
In 1200, the March of Wales consisted, to use the old county names, of the fringes of Flintshire and Montgomeryshire, most of Radnorshire, Breconshire and Glamorgan, Monmouthshire almost in its entirety, the southern part of Carmarthenshire and virtually the whole of Pembrokeshire. At the time, the leading families of marcher lords were those of Breos, Mortimer, Fitzalan and Marshall. In Pura Wallia, the major figures of the 12th century Madog of Powys, Owain of Gwynedd and Rhys of Deheubarth had left the scene. The Act of Union of 1536 incorporated the Welsh Marches with England. This was possibly the most painful of treasons to the Welsh. The former lordships were divided into the counties of Denbighshire, Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, Breconshire, Monmouthshire, Glamorganshire, and Pembrokeshire, and their inhabitants received all the rights and privileges of English subjects. Powys had been divided between two branches of its ruling family. The northern part (eastern Meirionnydd and southern Denbighshire and Flintshire) became known as Powys Fadog; the southern part (Montgomeryshire) as Powys Wenwynwyn. Deheubarth was also on the verge of division, for the sons of the Lord Rhys were a quarrelsome brood. Gwynedd also seemed prone to division, although Llywelyn, grandson of Owain Gwynedd, was poised to re-establish the power of his grandfather. The Act of Union (1536) was an attempt to doom the Welsh language and culture to extinction. Welsh could no longer be used in any formal transaction, and was no longer allowed to be taught in schools. This Act was effective in Southern Wales, but there are still pockets of native Welsh speakers. A second Act of Union in 1543 completed the unification of the rest of Wales, administratively, legally, and politically, with England. Welsh representatives took their seats in Parliament. Customary Welsh laws which differed from those of England were abolished and the use of the Welsh language for official purposes prohibited.
On the western seaboard clans became involved with the wars of the Irish Gaels against the Tudor English, and a military caste called the buannachan developed, seasonally fighting in Ireland as mercenaries and living off their clans as minor gentry, but this was brought to an end with the Irish Plantations of James VI of Scotland and I of England. During that century law increasingly settled disputes, and the last feud leading to a battle was in Lochaber on August 4 1688. The district was eventually combined into the traditional county of Inverness-shire along with the historic district of Inverness and Badenoch. The Tudor Age ended 118 years after the Battle of Bosworth.
As the civil wars of the Three Kingdoms broke out in the early 17th century the Covenanters were supported by the territorially ambitious Argyll Campbells and House of Sutherland as well as some clans of the central Highlands opposed to the Royalist House of Huntly. The Campbells were Presbyterians, whereas the MacDonalds, among whom a Franciscan mission had settled, were Roman Catholics. While some clans remained neutral, others led by Montrose supported the Royalist cause, projecting their feudal obligations to clan chiefs onto the Royal House of Stuart, resisting the demands of the Covenanters for commitment and reacting to the ambitions of the larger clans. In the Scottish Civil War of 1644-47, the most prominent Royalist clan were Clan Donald led by Alasdair MacColla. MacColla was born in the Western Isles of Scotland in the early seventeenth century into Clan Donald. His early life encompassed both Gaelic Ireland and the Gaelic western Highlands of Scotland - as the MacDonalds had a presence in both countries.
Clans identify with geographical areas originally controlled by the Chiefs, usually with an ancestral castle, or manor and clan gatherings form a regular part of the social scene. From 1638 to 1651 the Covenanters, led by Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, had been the dominant party in Scotland, directing her policy both at home and abroad. Their power, however, which had been seriously weakened by Cromwell's victory at Dunbar in September 1650, was practically destroyed after the Battle of Worcester and the English occupation of Scotland. Under Cromwell's Commonwealth, Scotland was annexed by England and the General Assembly of the Kirk lost all civil power.
Confederate Ireland refers to a brief period of Irish self-government between the Rebellion of 1641 and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in 1649. During this time, two-thirds of Ireland was governed by the Irish Catholic Confederation, also known as the 'Confederation of Kilkenny' (based in the city of Kilkenny). The remaining Protestant enclaves in Ulster, Munster and Leinster were held by armies loyal to the royalists, parliamentarians or Scottish Covenanters. The Confederation was essentially an independent state and was a coalition of all shades of Irish Catholic society, both Gaelic and Old English. The Confederates ruled Ireland as a de facto sovereign state until 1649, outwardly remainingly loyal to Charles I. They were loosley allied with the English Royalists, but were divided over whether to send military help to them in the English Civil War. Ultimately, they never sent troops to England, but did send an expedition to help the Scottish Royalists, sparking the Scottish Civil War. The Scottish army remained in Ireland until the end of the civil wars, but was confined to its garrison around Carrickfergus after its defeat at the Battle of Benburb in 1646.
With the Restoration of Charles II, Episcopalianism became widespread among clans, which suited the hierarchical clan structure and encouraged obedience to Royal authority, some others were converted by Catholic missions. In 1682 James Duke of York, Charles' brother, instituted the Commission for Pacifying the Highlands which worked in co-operation with the clan chiefs in maintaining order as well as redressing Campbell acquisitiveness, and when he became King James VII he retained popularity with many Highlanders. All these factors contributed to continuing support for the Stuarts when James was deposed by William of Orange in the "Glorious Revolution". The support among many clans, their remoteness from authority and the ready mobilisation of the clan hosts made the Highlands the starting point for the Jacobite Risings. In Scottish Jacobite ideology the Highlander symbolised patriotic purity as against the corruption of the Union, and as early as 1689 some Lowlanders wore "Highland habit" in the Jacobite army.
The Scottish Lowlands (an Galldachd in Gaelic), although not officially a geographical area of the country, in normal usage is generally meant to include those parts of Scotland not referred to as the Highlands (or Gàidhealtachd), that is, everywhere due south and east of a line (the Highland Boundary Fault) between Stonehaven and Helensburgh (on the Firth of Clyde).
The Lowland Clearances in Scotland were one of the results of the British Agricultural Revolution, which changed the traditional system of agriculture which had existed in Lowland Scotland for hundreds of years. Hundreds of thousands of cottars and tenant farmers from the southern counties of Scotland were forcibly moved from the farms and small holdings they had occupied. As a result, between 1760 and 1830, many tens of thousands of Lowland Scots emigrated, taking advantage of the many new opportunities offered in Canada and the United States after 1776 to own and farm their own land. Although the causes were different, the lowland Agricultural Revolution is being seen as the forerunner of the Highland Clearances, which started around the same time but continued to the 1870s.
Some parts of the Lowlands, such as the Southern Uplands are not physically "low", and some sections of the Highlands, such as Islay are low-lying. It therefore includes the traditional Scottish counties of
Traditional Scottish counties which include both Highland and Lowland sections include Dunbartonshire, Stirlingshire, Perthshire, Angus, Kincardineshire, Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Moray. Although Caithness, is sometimes classified under Highlands and Islands, it is also often considered "Lowland" and are differentiated from the Gàidhealtachd when, for example, discussing Lowland Scots (although sections of Caithness spoke Gaelic into the 20th century). Orkney and Shetland are sometimes called "lowland", mainly because of their current language, but have a separate identity derived from the Norse to the point of some islanders not considering themselves Scottish.
Scotland is divided into three distinct areas: the Highlands, the Central plain (Central Belt), and the Southern Uplands. The Lowlands cover roughly the latter two. Strictly speaking, the northeast plain (the areas around Aberdeen and Elgin) is also low-land, both geographically and culturally, but in some contexts may be grouped together with the Highlands. The southernmost counties of Scotland, nearest the border with England, are also known as the Borders. They are sometimes considered separately to the rest of the Lowlands. The term Scottish Lowlands is generally used mostly with reference to the Lowland Scots, Scottish history and the Scottish clan system, as well as in family history and genealogy.