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Flower of
Scotland or God Save the King?
Ever wondered
why Scottish folk prefer to sing the words to the recently written
Flower of Scotland rather than the traditional national
anthem God Save the King? Could it have something to do with
the little known sixth verse of the national anthem …?
6. Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the King!
So who was this
Marshal Wade, and who where the ‘Rebellious Scots’ that he
was crushing?
 Marshal Wade was
in fact the British Field Marshal, George Wade. George was born in 1673,
the son of Jerome Wade of Kilavally, Westmeath in
Ireland and he
entered the British Army in 1690.
Rising quickly
through the ranks, Wade became captain in 1695. In 1702 he served in
Marlborough's army, earning particular distinction at the assault on
the citadel of Lk'ge, and in 1703 he became successively Major and
Lieutenant-Colonel in his regiment.
Wade again
distinguished himself at the Siege of Alcantara in 1706, when in a
rearguard action at Villa Nova his two battalions repulsed
twenty-two allied squadrons.
He had now risen to
the command of a brigade, and in January 1708 he was promoted
Brigadier-General in the British Army. In August 1710 following the
great battle of
Saragossa he was promoted to the rank of Major-General and given a
command at home.
The Jacobite
outbreak of 1715 saw Wade in his new role of military governor. He
twice helped foil Jacobite conspiracies, and even had the Swedish
ambassador in London arrested.
In July 1724
General Wade was sent to Scotland on a military mission for George
I. In the uncertainty following the 1689 and 1715 Jacobite Risings,
he was tasked to 'inspect the present situation of the Highlanders'
and to 'make strict inquiry into the last law for disarming the
Highlanders'.
Wade reported
back that the majority of Highland men able to bear arms were ready
to do so against the Crown. George I immediately appointed Wade
Commander-in-Chief, North Britain and he began to organise Crown
garrisons in the Highlands.
Wade's plan was to
mobilize his soldiers throughout the Highlands, quelling, disarming
and forming allegiances with the clans as he went. To do this he
needed to move his troops about quickly, and by the summer 1725 the
first military road was being constructed.
Between 1728 and
1730, Wade's men built the road from
Dunkeld to Inverness,
connecting Perth and Inverness.
In 1730 the road connecting Stirling with Inverness was constructed.
Passing from Crieff through the
Sma' Glen and Aberfeldy
and on to Loch Tummel, the road's line remains the same today. With
the road complete, Wade needed to bridge the River Tay at Aberfeldy.
Wade's bridge at Aberfeldy
Construction of
the Tay bridge began in 1733 and although it was completed in under
a year, Wade wrote 'The Bridge of Tay ...was a work of great
difficulty and also much more expensive than was calculated.' At a
cost of over £4000, the bridge became the most expensive item on
Wade's road building programme.
Promotion finally ended Wade's work in Scotland and he left the
Highlands in 1740, handing over the road-building projects to Major
William Caulfield.
In the course of this engineering
work Wade had supervised the construction of no less than 240 miles
of roads and 40 stone bridges. At the same time as the building work
had progressed, slowly and with the tact and experience of a
seasoned campaigner, he had disarmed the clans. By 1739 Wade's
Highland militia had become
the Black Watch, a regular regiment of the British Army which is
commemorated by a memorial beside Wade's fine Tay Bridge.
 It was in 1743 that Wade gained
the rank of Field Marshal and in this same year he commanded the
British contingent in Flanders. The campaign did not go
well and Wade, who was seventy years of age and in bad health,
resigned the command in March 1744.
Wade returned to England where
George II made him Commander-in-Chief to England, and it was in this
role that he had to deal with the Jacobite ‘Forty-Five’ rebellion.
After failing to anticipate Charles Edward Stuart’s invading army
arriving via Carlisle rather than Newcastle he
retired in favour of Cumberland, or as the Highlanders would
remember him ‘Butcher’ Cumberland.
Charles Edward Stuart
And so perhaps
understandably the Scots prefer to remember an earlier battle, one
remembered in the words of Flower of Scotland, written
by
Roy
Williamson of "The Corries", but that is another story …
O Flower
of Scotland,
When will we see
Your like again,
That fought and died for,
Your wee bit Hill and Glen,
And stood against him,
Proud Edward's Army,
And sent him homeward,
Tae think again.
Possibly a twist of
irony then to note that it is claimed that the first public
performance of the God Save the King national anthem is said
to have taken place in London in 1745 …
1. God
save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King!
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the King!
This text and
tune is often credited to Henry Carey, 1740, although there is some
controversy surrounding this claim.
According to one
French encyclopaedia, Quid, the music is in fact by one Jean-Baptiste
Lully. It was loosely based on a hymn sung when the French King
Louis XIV opened the educational institution at St-Cyr in 1686; his
mistress, the Marquise de Maintenon, had commissioned Lully to write
the tune to be sung by the pupils.
The French,
apparently, did not use the hymn again until 1745 at which time the
Old Pretender, claiming to be King James III of England, was
organising his rebellion from France. Madame de Maintenon is said to
have presented him with the words and music as his national or royal
anthem.
It is unclear who
wrote the English words, but it is believed that Madame de Maintenon
either wrote them herself or commissioned them. It is also believed
by some that the song was sung for the first time in Britain when
Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in
Scotland
so starting the ‘Forty-five’ rebellion.
So what’s it to be,
Flower of Scotland or God Save the King?
©
HUK
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