Scots

The Scots of the Lowlands are the Germanic-speaking people of southern and eastern Scotland, distinct from the Gaelic Highlanders. The Angles of Northumbria and the Britons of Strathclyde were absorbed into the medieval Kingdom of Alba alongside its Pictish and Gaelic core.

Under David I's twelfth-century Davidian Revolution, Norman nobles, feudal law and chartered burghs shaped Lowland society. Northern English speech, first called Inglis and later Scottis, became the language of parliament and towns. The Wars of Independence against England, led by William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, culminated at Bannockburn in 1314.

In 1560 John Knox's Reformation made Presbyterian Calvinism the faith of Lowland Scotland. The crowns were united under James VI in 1603, and the parliamentary union of 1707 opened England's empire and markets to Scottish merchants. The eighteenth century brought the Scottish Enlightenment of Hume and Adam Smith and rapid industrial change.