Montrose, United Kingdom

In the two subsequent centuries there are no precise dates in its history. During the 1140s it was an important trading town. The trading revenues received from Montrose as well as Forfar and Dundee were acquired by Malcolm IV and contributed to Restenneth Priory. In 1178 William the Lion built a castle nearby in which he would occasionally reside. The ruins have acquired the name Red Castle. The last record of a charter there was in 1198. A convent dedicated to the Virgin Mary is said to have been founded in 1230 by Alan Durward but the precise location is unknown. In 1244 the town succumbed to fire.

In July 1296 during the Wars of Independence, Edward I of England visited the town with 30,000 of his men and stayed at Munros castle for three nights. Some accounts state that it was there that he humiliated the Scottish king, John de Balliol, by publicly stripping him of his royal insignia and status; other accounts claim that this occurred in Brechin. Twelve burgesses of the town swore allegiance to Edward I to protect themselves and the community of the town. The following year the castle, which was manned by an English garrison, was destroyed by William Wallace who is said to have slain all soldiers in sight. The site of the castle, known as Castlestead, is at the southern end of the High Street. David II visited it towards the end of his reign in 1371. The Dukedom of Montrose was created in 1488.

During the 15th century, the inhabitants of the town found themselves increasingly under heel of the Lairds of Dun who ransacked and took possession of property and cattle. The lairds are said to have arrived in the middle of one night on horseback heavily armed. The burghesses of the town immediately sent out an appeal to the Duke of Montrose for protection but the messenger was purportedly murdered before the appeal arrived. It was then that James IV of Scotland intervened and settled the matter.

From its early inception as a port Montrose had traded in skins, hides and cured salmon, and in the 17th century Montrose also began to export wheat and barley in regular trading transactions with the Hanseatic League. The town imported flax and timber from the Baltic; salt, fruit and wine from France and Portugal. The wealth this brought to the town is demonstrated in the surviving houses built by landowning and merchant families, as well as local street names of "America Street", "California Street", "Baltic Street" and "India Street" evidencing its trading heritage.

The site of the castle, now known as Castlestead, was the birthplace of the famous James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose. Graham signed the National Covenant against Charles I's reorganisation of the Kirk in Scotland, fighting in the ensuing Bishops' Wars, but later switched to the king's side, only to be captured and executed in Edinburgh in 1650.

Between 1677 and the summer of 1678, Dronner, a Dutch engineer, began to build a dyke across the Montrose Basin, designed to drain and reclaim the northern half of the basin. However the dyke was destroyed in a storm soon afterwards. One of the most vocal objectors to the scheme was the elderly Meggie Cowie, who was said to have made blasphemous comments to those who were involved. She was tried for witchcraft, found guilty, and burnt at the stake on 14 January 1679.

The final chapter of the ill-fated 1715 Jacobite rebellion was also played out in Montrose. Towards the end of the uprising (which had lasted nearly six months, from September 1715 to February 1716) James Francis Edward Stuart (the Old Pretender; formerly James, Prince of Wales) arrived in Montrose, where he spent his last night in Scotland, on 4 February 1716. He sailed from Montrose to exile in France. The town was held for his son, Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie; the Young Pretender), 30 years later and in February 1746 the largest naval battle of the war was fought in Montrose Harbour.

During the 18th century the town was a major smuggling centre. It profited from the slave trade, but only for a brief time. The wealth accrued by trade was substantial. Wealthy merchants in the 18th and 19th centuries dominated the town and built their houses gable to gable. Hence Montrosians have inherited the sobriquet, "gable-enders". A statistical account taken between 1791 and 1799 estimates the population in the 1750s as 4,248; in 1776 as 4,465; in 1784 as 4,866 and in 1790 as 5,194. Contemporaries expected that many would emigrate at the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War, but those who did leave were few.

Samuel Johnson made a tour of the town on his visit to Scotland in the 1770s. He said of it: