return to the top of the page| Year | Event |
| 1300 | William Wallace with 300
men defeated an army of 1000 English Knights, lead by the
Bishop of Durham, who were holding the Bishop of Glasgow's
Castle. The Royal Infirmary is belived to be built on the
site of the castle. The legend is that Sir William
Wallace had his men the English corpses throw the bodies
down the Ratton Well, advising them to "Stock it
well!" Ratton Well no longer exsists but
Stockwell Street does. Glasgow population estimated at 1500 |
| 1305 | Sir William Wallace's betrayal was plotted in Rutherglen by Sir John Menteith and others. Sir John Menteith captured Sir William Wallace in Robroyston on Glasgow's north-east perimeter and took him to London for execution. |
| 1306 | Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland. |
| 1314 | The defeat of King Edward II of England at Bannockburn by Robert the Bruce. |
| 1320 | The Declaration of
Arbroath was drawn up to urge the Pope to recognise
Scottish independence from England. The Pope accepted the Declaration of Arbroath. |
| 1326 | Meeting of the first Scottish Parliament. |
| 1345 | A bridge, on the site of the modern Albert Bridge, was completed by Bishop Rae of Glasgow. This was at that time the River Clyde's most westerly crossing point. |
| 1350 | A leper hospital dedicated to St Ninian was built at the Gorbals to help plague victims from the city across the river. |
| 1385 | The bishop of Glasgow, Walter Wardlaw, was made a cardinal by Pope Clement VII. |
| 1420 | William Elphinstone, a Glasgow mrechant, began curing salmon and herring and sending them to France, where they were exchanged for brandy and salt. |
| 1447 | William Turnbull was made Bishop of the See of Glasgow. |
| 1450 | James II issued a charter
to the bishop "erecting all his patrimony into a
regality" - Glasgow was now a Royal Burgh in all but
name. Glasgow Green the Earliest of Glasgow's "parks" was created after it was granted by James II to Bishop Turnbull. Glasgow's population is estimated at 2000 |
| 7th January 1450 | The Papal Bull of Nicholas V granted the charter of foundation for the University of Glasgow, at the request of James II, who acted on the advice of William Turnbull, Bishop of Glasgow. The Bull constituted a "studium generale, tam in theologia ac iure canonico et civili quam in artibus et quavis alia licita facultate", after the pattern of Bologna. |
| 1451 | The University of Glasgow - Scotland's second oldest university after St Andrew's, and fourth oldest in the UK - was established. The orginal site was at Rotten Row. |
| 1484 | Blackader was made Bishop of the See of Glasgow and later archbishop. |
| 9th January 1492 | Pope Innocent VIII elevated the see of Glasgow to an archbishopric, attaching to it the suffragan dioceses of Argyle, Dumblane, Dunkeld, and Galloway. Now Glasgow was a powerful academic and ecclesiastical centre rivalled only by St Andrew's. |
| 1502 | King Henry VII of England gave his daughter in marriage to James IV of Scotland. This gave rise to the Union of the Crowns in 1603. |
| 1512 | Under the terms of a treaty with France (the "Auld Alliance") all Scottish citizens became French and vice versa. |
| 1544 | Glasgow was plundered by the army of James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran. |
| 1560 | The Catholic Faith was abolished by act
of the Scottish Parliament. Following the Reformation,
Glasgow's last Roman Catholic archbishop, James Beaton,
fled to Paris, along with many of the cathedral's records
and treasured relics. Beaton's exile marked the move
towards greater civic power, and the emerging influence
of the city's merchants and craftsmen. The Cathedral was
ransacked, although not harmed structurally - to this day
it remains one of only two complete medieval cathedrals
in Scotland (the other is St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall,
Orkney). Glasgow seized the common lands, feued them to the inhabitants, and declared its right to elect its own magistrate. |
| 9th May 1568 | Queen Mary escaped from Loch Leven
Castle on 2 May 1568. A week later she had gathered
six thousand men willing to fight for her as she headed
for the safety of her stronghold of Dumbarton Castle,
which Lord Fleming was holding for her. Queen Mary's half-brother, Lord James Stewart, Regent of Scotland, recognised the security Dumbarton Castle would give her and moved his smaller, better-trained army to intercept. The forces confronted each other at Langside, near Queens Park , to the south-west of Glasgow. Few were killed during the forty-five minute confrontation that resulted in Mary's followers fleeing the area. The Queen fled too, first to Dundrennan, then England. |
| 1570's | There was further warfare and a siege of the city. |
| 1579 | The church feued their land in the Gorbals area to George Elphinstone, a Glasgow merchant. |
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