November 23 1183 William Fitz Robert, 2nd Earl of Gloucester died on his birthday age 87. In 1144 William served as Governor of Wareham. In 1147, he overthrew Henry de Tracy at Castle Cary. In 1154 William made an alliance with Roger de Clare, 3rd Earl of Hertford. William was Lord of the manor of Glamorgan, as well as Caerleon, residing chiefly at Cardiff Castle. It was there that in 1158 he and his wife and son were captured by the Welsh Lord of Senghenydd, Ivor Bach (“Ivor the Little”) and carried away into the woods, where they were held as prisoners until the Earl redressed Ivor’s grievances. Earl William was present in March 1177 when the King Henry 2nd arbitrated between the Kings of Castile and Navarre, and in 1178, William witnessed Henry 2nd‘s charter to Waltham Abbey. Daughter Amy fitz William, d. 1220 Married Richard de Clare, 3rd Earl of Hertford, Amy and Richard’s descendants eventually inherited the Earldom of Gloucester.

1346 sometime this year. Black Death plague strikes Mongol Golden Horde as it besieged an Italian trading post at Kaffa in the Crimea. (About 1850 the Black Death is associated with rats and fleas, but not in the 14th century). Probably rats and fleas (ticks, lice) on the ships traveled to Constantinople and other Mediterranean ports. By 1350 the plague had spread into Scotland and north Germany. Many 14th century doctors, believing the disease was due to ‘miasma’, the pollution of the air with toxic matter from rotting material. The King of England protested the filth in London’s streets, and people were afraid of catching the illness from infected corpses. After 1850, the epidemic, most widely accepted, was associated with the Bubonic Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia Pestis, which scientists found in samples taken from French plague pits where bodies were buried. The auld alliance of France and Scotland was also already established. The last recorded outbreak in Scotland was 1648. (PLAGUE! by Gordon Johnson, Wick, Caithness, Scotland)

1363 David Bruce 2nd king of Scots, childless, and Edward 3rd (ancestor of James 2nd Stewart King of Scots) conference agree to the king of England to be sovereign of Scotland, but the agreement remained secret until after 1707 when published by Rymer’s Foedera, after the union. Anderson’s Scots History v.2/p.25-27.

1368 – sometime this year. Maol Domhnaich, Earl of Lennox granted the lands of Colquhoun, located in Dunbartonshire, to Humphry de Kilpatrick. Humphry’s son, Ingelram de Colquhoun, who lived in the reign of Alexander III, was the first person recorded as taking Colquhoun as a surname. Around 1368, Luss, on Loch Lomond, was acquired by Sir Robert Colquhoun through marriage.

The wee birdie sang
And the wild flowers spring,
And in sunshine the waters are sleeping,
But the broken heart it kens
Nae second Spring again,
Tho’ the waeful may cease frae their greeting. 3rd verse the Bonnie Banks O’Loch Lomond.

From then on the chiefship has been described as of Colquhoun and Luss. His grandson Iain Colquhoun of Luss married Margaret, the daughter of the Earl of Lennox.

Colquhoun Motto: SI JE PUIS. 
[from French: “If i can”].
Badge: hazel, or dogberry Chief: Sir Malcolm Rory Colquhoun of Luss, 9th Baronet Crest: A hart’s head couped Gules, attired Argent.

  • Colquhoun of Luss 1329 2Murray2Drummond 2Hamilton2Stewart 2Miller2Simmons 2Choate zoe

1371 sometime this year. Coldingham Priory, Berwickshire, Scotland inventory, wheat 60 acres, oats 160 acres, oxen for ploughing and wagons 40, sheep 900. Black Death plague returns.

1527 On November 23, 1527, with several kinsmen of the name of Cunningham, and six other persons, John Cunningham of Caprington, found caution to appear before the Justiciary, for intercommuning with Hugh Campbell of Loudoun, sheriff of Ayr, a declared rebel and at the horn, for the slaughter of Gilbert Earl of Cassillis.

1589 James 6th marries Anne of Denmark (she was age 14). Shortly after a proxy marriage in Copenhagen in August 1589, Anne sailed for Scotland but was forced by storms to the coast of Norway. On hearing the crossing had been abandoned, James, in what Willson calls “the one romantic episode of his life”, sailed from Leith with a three-hundred-strong retinue to fetch Anne personally. The couple were married formally at the Bishop’s Palace in Oslo Norwayon 23 November and, after stays at Elsinore and Copenhagen and a meeting with Tycho Brahe [astronomer physicist], returned to Scotland on 1 May 1590.

The storms provided an excuse to persecute Witches! James 6th ‘s visit to Denmark in 1589, where witch-hunts were already common, may have encouraged an interest in the study of witchcraft and the storms he encountered on his voyage came to be seen as the result of magic. After his return to Scotland, James attended the North Berwick witch trials, the first major persecution of witches in Scotland under the 1563 Act and the first known to involve the diabolic pact. Wikipedia.

llustration of witches being tortured before James VI, from his Daemonologie (1597). Wikipedia. The first of a half dozen witch hunts and trials which continue off and on for a century and a half.

1644 first publication of Areopagitica by John Milton.

1705 Thomas Birch born. (23 November 1705 – 9 January 1766) was an English historian. Bookseller Andrew Millar 6th (clans Stewart, Lockhart, Hunter).

The life of Henry, prince of Wales Eldest Son of King James I. Compiled Chiefly from his own Papers and other Manuscripts never before published, etc. London Printed for A. Millar in the Strand. MDCCLX

1844 Astronomer Royal for Scotland was the title of the director of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh until 1995. 1834–1844 Thomas Henderson. Died. Thomas James Alan Henderson (28 December 1798 – 23 November 1844) was a Scottish astronomer noted for being the first person to measure the distance to Alpha Centauri, the major component of the nearest stellar system to Earth.

Location of Alpha Centauri in Centaurus.

At the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa Henderson made a considerable number of stellar observations between April 1832 and May 1833. The bright southern star Alpha Centauri had a large proper motion, and Henderson concluded that it might be a close star. Alpha Centauri was just slightly less than one parsec away, 3.25 light years, within 25% of the distance.

Henderson clan. Crest: A cubit arm Proper the hand holding an estoile Or surmounted by a crescent Azure. Motto: SOLA VIRTUS NOBILITAT. [“Virtue alone ennobles”]. Badge: cotton grass Chief: Alistair Donald Henderson of Fordell

The Parsec is a unit of astronomical length based on the distance from Earth at which stellar parallax is one second of arc and equal to 3.258 light-years, 3.086 × 1013 kilometers, or 1.918 × 1013 miles. The name parsec is “an abbreviated form of ‘a distance corresponding to a parallax of one second’.” It was coined in 1913 at the suggestion of British astronomer Herbert Hall Turner. A parsec is the distance from the Sun to an astronomical object which has a parallax angle of one arcsecond.

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga begins – Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant reinforce troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee and counter-attack Confederate troops. Grant’s mother Hannah Simpson Grant (1798–1883) was of Scottish ancestry.

Grant from West Point to Appomattox, an 1885 engraving by Thure de Thulstrup. Clockwise from lower left: Graduation from West Point (1843); In the tower at Chapultepec (1847); Drilling his Volunteers (1861); The Battle of Fort Donelson (1862); The Battle of Shiloh (1862); The Siege of Vicksburg (1863); The Battle of Chattanooga (1863); Appointment as Lieutenant General by Abraham Lincoln (1864); The Surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House (1865)

1899 The Battle of Belmont and Graspan. The Boer War. North West of Cape Colony in South Africa. 1st and 2nd Battalions, Coldstream Guards.
1st Battalion, Scots Guards. Highland regiments in Natal devised aprons to conceal coloured kilts and sporrans.

1918 – Heber J. Grant succeeds Joseph F. Smith as the 7th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Heber is a descendant of Malcolm III Ceanmor Kiing of Scots. 2 Matilda Atheling 2 Maud 2 Henry 2nd King England 2 john Lackland King 2 Joan 2 Mangred Llywelyn 2 Maud de Clifford 2 Eleanor giffard 2 John le Strange to Matilda 2 Griffith Warren 2 John Warren to Margaret Warren 2 Anne Mainwaring 2 Anne Charlton 2 Elizabeth Grosvenor 2 Edward Bulkeley 2 Frances 2 Olive Welby 2 Olive Farwell 2 Mary Spaulding 2 David Morgan 2 Isaac 2 Mary 2 Joshua Grant 2 Jedediah Morgan Grant 2 Heber J. Grant.

Heber J. Grant dedicated three new temples, developed the Welfare Program, and helped Latter-day Saints cope with the tragedy of World War II. (clan Grant)

2015 Donald Trump: (clan MacLeod, Tong, Lewis and Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland) The GQ Interview

Donald Trump is coming to get you.

GQ’s Men of the Year.

 

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