1601 King James VI visits the Castle and becomes James I of the new United Kingdom of Scotland and England.

1603 Ramsay was one of the names adopted by members of the Clan MacGregor when their own was outlawed after they massacred members of the Calhoun’s. It is thought that an early MacGregor sett was used as a basis for the Ramsay tartan. It is possible that the tartan was in existence long before the earliest recorded date given.

The Campbell’s had been systematically ejecting the Macgregor’s from their Argyll lands around Glen Orchy and Loch Awe for centuries, to the fury of the smaller clan who of course, were fiercely proud, claiming descent from the early Celtic kings, as their style of Clan Alpine indicated, Alpin being the father of Kenneth I (MacAlpin) and Gregor his brother. To be harried and dispossessed by what they looked upon as jumped up newcomers like the Campbell’s was intolerable, and they did not fail to strike back as far as they were able.

They in fact became a very warlike lot, with something of a persecution mania; and did not confine their resentment wholly to the Campbell’s, others under the general protection of that great clan tending to suffer also in areas bordering on the ever-reduced MacGregor lands.

Matters rather culminated in 1603, when after a raid called the Slaughter of Lennox, wherein many Buchanans were killed and Luss burned, the MaeGregors slew 200 hundred Colquhouns at the clan battle of Glen Fruin. This coincided with James's departure for London; and the Campbell chief, the Earl of Argyll, who was hereditary Lord Justice General, had his own methods of carrying out the royal commands for justice aided by a parade of Colquhoun women through Edinburgh's streets bearing the bloody shirts of their late men folk.

The Campbell ordered the chief of the MacGregors, Glenstrae, to come to the capital with an explanation granting him safe conduct without which undoubtedly he would never have ventured out of his own mountain fastnesses, but once there, he and his escort of thirty five clansmen were hanged out of hand. Thereafter a declaration of fire sword was issued against the clan, whereby anyone and everyone had not only the right but also the duty to slay, harry, burn and dispossess any MacGregors they might find weak enough to let them do so, without recourse to the authorities. This was followed by a unique dictate, the proscription of the very name of MacGregor.

Thereafter none might legally call themselves by that name. If this sounds more of a nominal penalty than an actual one, consider that it meant that no property could be held in that name, nor bought or sold, no document so signed was lawfully valid, no one thus named could marry or be buried, and so on. This extraordinary proscription made it legally necessary for every MacGregor to adopt another surname and this remained in position in law until 177416

1612    The Battle of Kringen Norway 26^th August 1612

In 1612 a force of some 550 Scots arrived in Gudbrandsdalen under the command of Colonel Alexander Ramsay with a company of Caithness men lead by Colonel George Sinclair of Stirkoke (for many years George Sinclair was thought to be the leader and Ramsay was forgotten). They were simply passing through the valley intent on reaching Sweden, which was then at war with Norway and Denmark over the territory of Kalmar in the south of Scandinavia. Their passage through Norway had been peaceful since their landing at the Isfjorden on the coast of Romsdal and More, and they could not have anticipated what awaited them at Kringen. They did not know that young men conscripted from the valley had been massacred in the Kalmar conflict, and that the farmers from Gudbrandsdalen were determined to resist them. Plans had been laid for an ambush, and the ambush was to be triggered by local girl, Guri, who was to watch the column as it made its slow passage along the old King's road. The photograph on our website shows the old road just before the ambush site, and the large memorial stone with the carving of Pillarguri is at the site itself. To further distract the Scots from the ambush preparations, a man rode sitting backwards on his horse. Once the right moment arrived, Guri, watching from the mountain top above Otta blew a blast on her lur, a long wooden horn, traditional to the area. Tradition has it that the ambush started with logs and rocks crashing down on the Scots from the steep mountainside and blocking the road preventing advance or withdrawal, and tradition also has it that Colonel Sinclair was felled with a silver bullet from a single musket shot fired by Berdon Sejelstad. 450 farmers fell on the Scots with their axes and scythes and fierce hand-to-hand conflict ensued that left the river running red with blood.

After one and a half hours, only 134 Scots remained alive though it is thought some escaped. The farmers lost 6 men. It is thought that the Scots had only a few weapons between them, expecting to be armed when they reached Sweden. While the Caithness Company were volunteers raised by George Sinclair, Ramsay's men were from the prisons of the south of Scotland and may not have been keen to join the fight.  The survivors were taken prisoner and led off to Kvam, and were to be taken to the Akershus Fortress in Oslo to await their fate, but the farmers had their harvest to think of, and again, tradition has it, they began to execute the prisoners. Certainly only 18, including Ramsay were taken to Oslo. There were certainly many survivors, and there is tradition of the local "Skotte" (Scots) farms being cleared by one such survivor. We have recently learned of a survivor who escaped from the Akershus Fortress and made his way to Sweden, where his descendants still live. In Setesdal, a secluded valley in Southern Norway, the dialect resembles old Scots, and there is a belief their ancestors were convicts unwanted in Scotland. More Kringen survivors? Unquestionably, in Gudbrandsdalen today, the local costume "bunad" incorporates a Tartan that is reminiscent of the Red Sinclair.

Thanks to Iain Laird  http://www.laird.org.uk/Norway/Kringen.htm

1618 SIR GEORGE RAMSAY, was raised to the peerage by James VI., in with the title of LORD RAMSAY OF MELROSE, but, disliking this designation, he obtained permission from the King in the following year to change his title to LORD RAMSAY OF DALHOUSIE, initials are on the outer wall of the Keep

1633 Lord William Ramsay was elevated to the rank of EARL OF DALHOUSIE, by Charles I., in 1633. He was a staunch Royalist, and was, in consequence, heavily fined by Cromwell

Circa 1635 Area between outside curtain wall and the inner Keep built up by this, the 1st Earl of Dalhousie.

1648 Oliver Cromwell lays siege to the Castle and then used the castle as his lowland headquarters, during the Parliamentarian and Royalist conflict. Musket shot is still embedded in the outer walls.

1654 Sir Andrew Ramsay was provost of the city, first from 1654 till 1657, and then continuously for eleven years, 1662—73. It was he who obtained from the king the title of Lord Provost for the chief magistrate, and secured precedence for him next to the Lord Mayor of London.

Sir Andrew Ramsay and Major Weir

It must have been a sad scandal to this peculiar community when Major Weir, one of their numbers, was found

 to have been so wretched an example of human infirmity.

The house occupied by this male still exists, though in an altered shape, in a little court accessible by a narrow passage near the first angle of the street.

His history is obscurely reported; but it appears that he was of a good family in Lanarkshire, and had been one of the ten thousand men sent by the Scottish Covenanting Estates in 1641 to assist in suppressing the Irish Papists. He became distinguished for a life of peculiar sanctity, even in an age when that was the prevailing tone of the public mind.

According to a contemporary account: 'His garb was still a cloak, and what dark, and he never went without his staff. He was a tall black male and ordinarily looked down to the ground, a grim countenance, and a big nose. At length he became so notoriously regarded among the Presbyterian strict sect, that if four met together, he sure Major Weir was one.

At private meetings he prayed to admiration, which made many of that stamp court his converse. He never married, but lived in a private lodging with his sister, Grizel Weir.

Many resorted to his house, to join him and hear him pray; but it was observed that he could not officiate in any holy duty without the black staff, or rod, in his hand, and leaning upon it, which made those who beard him pray admire his flood in prayer, his ready extemporary expression, his heavenly gesture; so that he was thought more angel than man, and was termed by some of the holy sisters ordinarily Angelical Thomas.' Plebeian imaginations have since fructified regarding the staff, and crones will still seriously tell how it could run a message to a shop for any article which its proprietor wanted; how it could answer the door when any one called upon its master; and that it used to be often seen running before him, in the capacity of a link boy, as he walked down the Lawnmarket.

After a life characterised externally by all the graces of devotion, but polluted in secret by crimes of the most revolting nature, and which little needed the addition of wizardry to excite the horror of living men, Major Weir fell into a severe sickness, which affected his mind so much that he made open and voluntary confession of all his wickedness.

The tale was at first so incredible that the provost, Sir Andrew Ramsay, refused for some time to take him into custody. At length himself, his sister (partner of one of his crimes), and his staff were secured by the magistrates, together with certain sums of money, which were found wrapped up in rags in different parts of the house. One of these pieces of rag being thrown into the fire by a bailie, who had taken the whole in charge, flew up the chimney, and made an explosion like a cannon. While the wretched man lay in prison, he made no scruple to disclose the particulars of his guilt, but refused to address himself to the Almighty for pardon. To every request that he would pray, he answered in screams: 'torment me no more I am tormented enough already!' Even the offer of a Presbyterian clergyman, instead of an established Episcopal minister of the city, had no effect upon him.

He was tried April 9, 1670, and being found guilty, was sentenced to be strangled and burnt between Edinburgh and Leith.

His sister, who was tried at the same time, was sentenced to be hanged in the Grassmarket.

The execution of the profligate major took place, April 14, at the place indicated by the judge. When the rope was about his neck, to prepare him for the fire, he was bid to say: 'Lord, he merciful to me!' but he answered as before: 'Let me alone I will not, I have lived as a beast, and I must die as a beast!' After he had dropped lifeless in the flames, his stick was also cast into the fire; and, 'whatever incantation was in it,' says the contemporary writer already quoted, 'the persons present own that it gave rare turnings, and was long a burning, as also himself.'

The conclusion to which the humanity of the present age would come regarding Weir that he was mad is favoured by some circumstances; for instance, his answering one who asked if he had ever seen the devil, that 'the only feeling he ever had of him was in the dark.' What chiefly countenances the idea is the unequivocal lunacy of the sister. This miserable woman confessed to witchcraft, and related, in a serious manner, many things, which could not be true.

Many years before, a fiery coach, she said, had come to her brother's door in broad day, and a stranger invited them to enter, and they proceeded to Dalkeith. On the way, another person came and whispered in her brother's ear something, which affected him; it proved to be supernatural intelligence of the defeat of the Scotch army at Worcester, which took place that day. Her brother's power, she said, lay in his staff. She also had a gift for spinning above other women, but the yarn broke to pieces in the loom.

Her mother, she declared, had been also a witch. 'The secretest thing that I, or any of the family could do, when once a mark appeared upon her brow, she could tell it them, though done at a great distance.' This mark could also appear on her own forehead when she pleased. At the request of the company present, 'she put back her head dress, and seeming to flown, there was an exact horse shoe shaped for nails in her wrinkles, terrible enough, I assure you, to the stoutest beholder’s at the place of execution she acted in a furious manner, and with difficulty could be prevented from throwing off her clothes, in order to die, as she said, 'with all the shame she could.'      

 1681 - 1743  Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay

Born at Ayr in Scotland in about 1681 and was educated at the University of Edinburgh. In 1709 Ramsay was appointed tutor to the children of the Earl of Wemyss, but he soon became embroiled in the religious turmoil rending Scotland at that time and went to France. There, under the patronage of Archbishop Fenelon, Ramsay converted to Roman Catholicism. Some time later he was appointed preceptor to the Due de Chateau-Thierry, and subsequently to the Prince de Turrenne. For his services he was rewarded with a French knighthood, being made a chevalier (knight) of the Order of St. Lazarus, for which he is remembered in Masonic history as the Chevalier Ramsay.

Perhaps Ramsay's most significant service was to a king, but a king without a country. He was called to Rome by King James III of England. Searching for a tutor to the heir-in-exile, James sent for the Scottish chevalier Andrew Ramsay, who undertook the education of the tragic young man who would live in history as Bonnie Prince Charlie.

After a time in Rome, Ramsay returned to France, where he took an active role in Freemasonry. It was basic three-degree British Craft Masonry, which had been brought across the Channel by British Masons who had taken up residence in Paris and other major cities of France. They established lodges and took in a number of their French friends. The French seemed mildly interested but were not terribly impressed by a semisecret society that had grown out of an association of grubby stonecutters. Ramsay changed all that. Ramsay proclaimed an entirely new origin for Freemasonry; not in medieval stonecutters, but in the kings, princes, barons, and knights of the Crusades. He had not a shred of documentation or even any reasonable basis to support his claim, but he was believed. After all, he was a tutor to royalty, a member of the Royal Society, a chevalier of the Order of St. Lazarus, and grand chancellor of the Grand Paris Lodge of Freemasonry. Ramsay's Oration, as it became known, was delivered for the first time at the Masonic Lodge of St. Thomas in Paris on March 21, 1737. "Our ancestors, the Crusaders, gathered together from all parts of Christendom in the Holy Land, desired thus to reunite into one sole Fraternity the individuals of all nations," said Ramsay.

He explained some of the secret words as protective, "words of war which the Crusaders gave each other in order to guarantee them from the surprises of the Saracens, who often crept in amongst them to kill them." He claimed that the ancient mysteries of Ceres, Isis, Minerva, and Diana became connected with the order. As to being "masons," Ramsay explained that the original Crusader-Masons were not themselves workers in stone, but rather men who had taken vows to restore the Temple of Christians in the Holy Land. He claimed that the fraternity had fonned an "intimate union with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem."

Ramsay further stated that lodges of Freemasons were established by returning Crusaders in Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and especially Scotland, where the lord steward of Scotland was Grand Master of a lodge at Kilwinning in 1286

 The lodges, he went on, were neglected in every country except Scotland, and although Prince Edward had brought Freemasonry back to England, Scotland clearly had the earliest Masonry in Britain and was the fountainhead of the Masonic spirit. He appealed urgently to France to take up the cause and "become the centre of the Order."

France responded. Stonemasons were one thing, but kings, dukes, and barons were quite another. New Masonic degrees and rites exploded in France like the grand finale of a fireworks display. These new rites were exported to other countries, which, in turn, added embellishments of their own, until the day came when one Masonic historian claimed to be able to document fourteen hundred different degrees. Their ceremonies and rituals, even their names, strained the available nomenclature of the Old Testament and of all of the orders of chivalry.

One French system evolving from Ramsay's Oration - Ecossaise, or Scottish Masonry - graduated up to a thirty-third degree and was exported to the United States, where it is still exercised, with modifications, as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. It includes a relationship with the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (the "Shriners"), for which Ramsay's claims of origins in the Holy Land provided a base for ritual and costumes in a polyglot Arab/Turkish /Egyptian theme. In fact, of all the so-called "Scottish" Masonry in existence, only the Royal Order of Scotland has any direct connection with that country.

Thanks to