950 BC

At the point when King David reconquers Palestine from the Jebusites, we are given great detail
concerning David’s assembling of materials for a Jewish worship center, the First Temple, built
by David’s son Solomon around 950 B.C.E. After Solomon’s death, the Jewish state went into
decline and was conquered by several eastern nations in succession. In 586 B.C.E., King
Nebuchadnezzar, a Chaldean, destroyed the Temple of Solomon and enslaved the Jewish
population, taking many of them (including those of Davidic descent) to Babylon. However, by
515 B.C.E., the Persians under their king Cyrus had defeated the Chaldeans and permitted the
Jews to return to Judea, where they rebuilt their temple. By the fourth century B.C.E., the
Macedonian Greeks under Alexander the Great had swept through the Persian empire and
conquered Judea. Upon Alexander’s death, his empire was divided, and the Jews were
permitted a hereditary high priest, who served both as a secular and spiritual ruler. In 167 B.C.E,
Jews under three Maccabean brothers successfully revolted against the Seleucid government
that controlled Judea and founded the Hasmonean dynasty in the land of Israel. The Romans
then conquered Jerusalem and the Roman emperor declared Herod Antipas, an Arab who had
converted to Judaism, king of Judea, now a semi-independent client state of the Roman Empire.
Herod not only rebuilt the holy Temple of Jerusalem into a larger and more magnificent
structure, but also extended the state of Israel’s influence to cities as distant as Beirut,
Damascus, Antioch and Rhodes. Unfortunately, in his later years he became insane (quite likely
he was paranoid schizophrenic) and murdered many of his own family members. In 70 c.e, the
Jews of Judea again rebelled against Roman rule. The Romans brutally put down the revolt,
killing one million persons in Jerusalem and enslaving the rest. To obliterate the memory of a
Jewish state, they changed the name of the country, now reduced to the status of being a
province, to Palestine. (Chapter Eight: The Knights Templar, Freemasons and Cabala in Scotland)

800 BC

Several sources posit that persons from the Levant, North Africa, and even Italy had visited
southwestern England near Cornwall before the Common Era (Cunliffe 2001, pp. 302ff.; Finn
1937, pp. 10–11). There were rich tin mines in this region that were exploited by the early
Phoenicians (800 B.C.E.), who traded with ports from France and Northern Africa to Italy and
Greece (Cunliffe 2001, pp. 302ff.; Thompson 1994, pp. 137–87; Gordon 1971; Casson 1971).
Because the Judeans (Jews) often worked with the Phoenicians as trading partners, some could
have reached Britain as early as this time. (Chapter Six: When Did Jews Arrive in Scotland?)

1
 332 BC

According to Josephus, when Alexander [the Great] came to Jerusalem at the outset of his
Eastern conquests [winter of 332 B.C.E.], he refrained from sacking the Temple but bowed
down and adored the Tetragrammaton [the four Hebrew letters for God’s name] on the High
Priest’s golden frontlet. His astonished companion Parmenio asked why in the world he had
behaved in this unkingly way. Alexander answered: “I did not adore the High Priest himself, but
the God who has honoured him with office. The case is this: that I saw this very person in a
dream, dressed exactly as now, while I was at Dios in Macedonia. “In my dream I was debating
with myself how I might conquer Asia, and this man exhorted me not to delay. I was to pass
boldly with my army across the narrow sea, for his God would march before me and help me to
defeat the Persians. So I am now convinced that Jehovah is with me and will lead my armies to
victory.” The High Priest then further encouraged Alexander by showing him the prophecy in
the Book of Daniel which promised him the dominion of the East; and he went up to the
Temple, sacrificed to Jehovah and made a generous peace-treaty with the Jewish nation. The
prophecy referred to Alexander as the “two-horned King” and he subsequently pictured himself
on his coins with two horns. He appears in the Koran as Dhul Karnain, “the two-horned.”
(Chapter Four: Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350 - 1700 C.E.)

184 BC

In the 18th century, historians discovered evidence of a link between Celtic and Phoenician, the
Semitic language of ancient Carthage. Among the plays of the Roman author Plautus (died 184
B.C.E.) is a work called Penulus (Phoenician) in which the dramatist placed a specimen of then-
current Phoenician into the mouth of one of his characters. The similarity between the
Phoenician of Plautus and early Irish-Celtic was first proposed by Thomas Moore in his History
of Ireland and accepted by scholars such as Charles Vallancy, Lord Rosse, and Sir William
Betham (Brooks 2001). Modern language scholars have confirmed the link, which tends to
support an early settlement of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland by a Mediterranean and
Semitic-Hamitic people, the "Phoenicians." Therefore we can say that in a multitude of ways,
the Celts and Hebrews bear a remarkable relationship. Since the Celts were spread over most of
Europe, the cultural, historical, and religious implications... are immensely significant.

2
(CHAPTER NOTES)

Pre-Roman Britain

Two archeological marvels are distinctively Scottish, the brochs (stone towers) and crannogs
(lake fortresses), while all Scotland's major rivers and firths show evidence of having been
bridged with a network of highways prior to the Roman arrival.

(CHAPTER NOTES)

Curiously, most of Scotland's islands bear names that were apparently given in the Greek
language: Hebrides = Hebrew Islands; Orkneys = Islands of the Whales; Skye = Island of the
Scythians; Iona = Jonah's Island; Tiree = Island of the Phoenician Sea Goddess Tyre; Mull = Island
of Black Lead (Greek mOlubdoj). Yet no Greek-speaking inhabitants have ever been
documented, much less proposed, in Scotland's entire history.

(CHAPTER NOTES)

135

Jews from Palestine arrived in Gaul (France) as early as 135 C.E., following the unsuccessful
revolt by Bar Kokhba against Roman Emperor Hadrian. At this time, Jews were Roman citizens,
and not labeled as “Jews” per se; they could travel freely throughout the Roman Empire, which
stretched from Britain to Central Asia. (Chapter Four: Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish
Families, 1350 - 1700 C.E.)

200

3
Over time, Rome itself converted to Christianity and began sending missionaries to convert the
pagan tribes. Roman dominance began waning rapidly after 200 C.E., resulting in a patchwork of
weak city-states across Europe. The European courts of the time period from 200 c.e to the
800s were violent, corrupt and treacherous. There was no law or order that prevailed for any
distance or for any length of time. (Chapter Eight: The Knights Templar, Freemasons and Cabala
in Scotland)

Roman Period Britain

There are glimmers of Judaism as a precursor and companion to Christianity in the British Isles.
Deansley (1963) notes that the earliest Roman-era saints were named Alban, Aaron and Julius,
though they do not appear in official martyrologies (p. 6), while we have remarked previously
on the unique status of Wale's St. David. We have also seen that the earliest saint of the Irish
church, Ninyas, was perhaps so named because he came, via Gaul, from Ninevah in the Middle
East. There is some evidence of relations with Mediterranean Greeks, Jews and Syrians in the
Roman period, increasingly so in the sixth century and later.

Chapter 10 (The Religions of Scotland: Did Presbyterianism Have Crypto-Jewish Origins?)

300s

The Jews there [in France] did not all come from Palestine; many of them belonged to the
diaspora, made up in part by populations converted to Judaism. (2) The Christianization of the
Roman Empire under Constantine the Great ... and the restrictions that gradually came to be
imposed on the Jews, favored their emigration, particularly to Gaul, which was slower to
become Christianized.... (3) The settlement of Jews along an axis following the valley of the
Rhône and extending from that of the Saône to its juncture with the Rhine corresponds to the
route taken by the Roman legions, which Jews followed as soldiers, tradesmen, or merchants in
search of a better life and more favorable economic conditions.

300s to 500s

4
We believe the only people who had contact with all these relevant populations within the
appropriate time period were the Germanic tribes that originated in the far north of Western
Europe and overran the Roman Empire from the fourth to sixth centuries of the Common Era.
They came from the Baltic and harried the borders of the empire in Thrace, Hungary and
Pannonia; they are called the Goths. We pick up the Caldwell-Stewart haplotype trail in
Wolhynia (Ukraine), the ancestral home of the Goths before their division into Visigoths and
Ostrogoths. Gothic legends tell of a migration from the mouth of the Vistula to the Sea of Azov
that took them through a vast swamp. In crossing a river, probably the Dnieper, some of their
people became separated from the main group and were left behind. In the words of one
historian: Old songs tell the story of the trek of the Goths from Gothiscandza to Scythia....
Modern archeology assumes a slow shift of the East Pomeranian-Masovian Wielbark culture
into the archaeological region that has been named, since the turn of the century, after the
village of Cherniakhov near Kiev. The advance of the Polish culture into the Ukrainian area thus
presents itself as a process that lasted from the end of the second until far into the third
century.... To this stage belongs also the early phase of the Cherniakhov culture in Wolhynia
[Wolfram 1988, p. 42]. The left-behinds stayed in an area that eventually became the medieval
state of the Ukraine. The largest group of Goths continued to travel over a thousand miles to
the “Greutungian heartland in southern Russia,” where “the peoples of the Cherniakhov
[Wolhynian] culture certainly had the military and logistical capability to enforce their authority
in the vast expanses of Russia” (p. 87). There, the Gothic king “ruled over all peoples of Scythia
and Germannia as if they were his own” (p. 88). From this farthest eastward point, they turned
west (now being termed Visigoths) and began to prey on the Roman provinces of Greece,
Turkey and the Balkans. Eventually, they joined the Ostrogoths, their ancestral cousins, and
descended on Italy. Still later, they established the kingdom of Toulouse in southern France
around 418 C.E. and the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo in Spain in 568–711 (Wolfram 1988,
appendix 2). There they virtually replaced the resident Romano-Celtic-Punic population, already
decimated by wars with their kindred tribes, the Suevi, Vandals, Alani and Silingi. We read from
another authority (Hodgkin 2000, pp. 15–17): It was reserved for the Goths ... to deal the first
mortal blow at the Roman state [the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410].... The Gothic nation, or
rather cluster of nations, belonged to the great Aryan family of peoples, and to the Low German
branch of that family.... The information which Jordanes [flourished about 550 C.E.] gives us as
to the earliest home and first migration of the Goths is as follows: “The island of Scanzia
[peninsula of Norway and Sweden] lies in the Northern Ocean, opposite the mouth of the
Vistula, in the shape like a cedar-leaf. In this island [peninsula], this manufactory of nations,
dwelt the Goths with other tribes....” The migration from Sweden to east Prussia [is supported
by] Pytheas of Marseilles ... who lived about the time of Alexander the Great [and who] speaks
of a people called Guttones, who lived by an estuary of the Ocean named Mentonomon, and
who apparently traded in amber (Pliny, Natural History, xxxvii.2) ... and who must therefore

5
have been settled on the south-east coast of the Baltic at least as early as 330 before Christ.
Why do we identify the Visigoths, though, as the source of the AMH Caldwell-Stewart haplotype
and not one of the numerous other Germanic tribes—for example, the Franks, Burgundians,
Saxons, Siling or Asding Vandals, Suebi, Alamanni, Juthungi, Iazyges, Carp, Taifali, Gepids, Heruli,
Alans, or even the Visigoths’ cousins, the Ostrogoths? Suspicion might fall instead on the Suebi,
who crossed the frozen Rhine in the winter of 406–7 C.E. with the Vandal and Alan hordes and
two years later were said to number 80,000 as they crossed the Pyrenees into Iberia (Cunliffe
2001, pp. 428, 449).

400s

During the fifth century, Jews in France “lacking the Talmud, adhered closely to the text of the
Bible and to certain oral traditions. There existed a religious confusion between Judaism and
Christianity, both with regard to prescriptions and to worship”

455

With the Visigoths’ second conquest of the peninsula beginning in 455 under Theoderic I and
the end of the kingdom of Toulouse in France (507), however, the Suebi “merged imperceptibly
with the indigenous population” in the northwest, “making the last significant contribution to
the gene pool of the region” (p. 449). This left the Visigoths as masters of Iberia until the arrival
of the Arabs two centuries later. A map of Germanic settlement in the fifth and sixth centuries
shows their densest concentration is a fan-shaped crescent between Toledo and Barcelona, the
exact center of the modal scores for the AMH Caldwell-Stewart haplotype and homeland of the
Sephardic Jewish population in the cities on the Ebro and in “northeast central Spain” targeted
by the Spanish Inquisition in later centuries (p. 449). The map gives the broad picture and shows
the origin and travels of the Visigoths superimposed on the distribution map of one of our
Scottish clans, Forbes.

476

Many people, for instance, conceive that the Roman Empire ended in 476 C.E., even though its

6
Eastern part, known as Byzantium, continued for another thousand years. (Chapter Eleven: Jews
in the National Consciousness of Scotland: Scott's Ivanhoe)

Somewhere between 500 AD & 1000 AD

If Scottish clan surname research and genetic haplotype history take us back to the early
centuries of the Common Era and imply common ancestors in France and Spain that were
primarily R1b, what makes us think that the Scots who paternally inherited these genes were,
by religion, Jewish? For one, certain of these lines have continued to be Jewish down to the
present, either in a cultural or religious sense. Our presumption is that the Jews carrying R1b
haplotypes converted to Judaism sometime during the past 1,000 to 1,500 years.

500 - now

In the past 1,500 years, the only religious conflicts in Scotland have been between Christians.
Anti-Semitism is not to be found in either Scots history or literature. (Chapter Eleven: Jews in
the National Consciousness of Scotland: Scott's Ivanhoe)

560

Williams’s discussion of Scottish history continues through the gradual giving way of pagan
Druidic ritual to the arrival of St. Columba (560 C.E.?) and the establishment of the Celtic
Church. Several points need to be clarified here, since we will return to them in the reviews of
other historians’ work. First, the Scottish (and Irish) churches at this time were not directed by,
or even in contact with, the Catholic pontiff in Rome. They were not Roman Catholic. They may
not even have been fully Christian, but syncretistic, like many early medieval religions. That
modern observers look back after a lapse of 1,500 years and identify the early Scottish church
as “Roman Catholic” during the era following 500 C.E. is false, tendentious, and very misleading.
Indeed, except for the existence of Christian artifacts such as the Book of Kells and carved Celtic
crosses, there is little evidence to suggest a strong early Christian presence in Scotland. As we
will investigate later, the so-called Scottish saints (e.g., St. Machar of Aberdeen) are not even
proven to be Christian per se. Contemporaries describe them as unspecified “holy men” or

7
“religious teachers.” No written accounts of their teachings or religious doctrines survive. It was
only centuries later that they were labeled as Christian. (Chapter One: The Origins of Scotland)

560 - 1560

As was the case with us, most readers probably “learned” that Scotland began as a pagan
country, Druidic, worshiping nature and the sun. And then, around 560 C.E. St. Columba
(Columcille, born around 521, died 597)1 arrived from Ireland, established the first Christian
monastery at Iona and began converting the surrounding countryside to Christianity. Ostensibly,
the entire land was then won over to Roman Catholicism and remained loyal to that form of
Christianity until John Knox and other reformers led Scotland to Protestantism in the 1560s.
(Chapter Nine: The Judaic Colony at Aberdeen)

600s

Obviously, Scotland of the 600s was not an isolated outpost; it had trading ties across the
Mediterranean and the Middle East. There is strong archeological evidence for a lively Atlantic
and Mediterranean trade in Scotland between the fall of Rome and birth of the Holy Roman
Empire under Charlemagne, though historians are hard put to explain it. The annals of Iona, the
Holy Island, are full of references to contact with Gaul. The widespread distribution of
Mediterranean pottery from the fifth and sixth centuries throughout the British Isles is a puzzle.
“It is not possible, from the archaeological evidence, to estimate the intensity and duration of
this ‘trade’ with the Mediterranean,” writes an expert on the pre-history of Europe. “The
question is incapable of resolution.” The earliest group of imports appears to have come from
North Africa, the coasts of Turkey and Egypt, via Carthage, the Straits of Gibraltar and the
Portuguese ports in the Tagus and Mondego estuaries (Cunliffe, pp. 477–79).

600 - 800

We have a loose compatibility between two monotheistic faiths—Christianity and Judaism—

and persons moving back and forth between them up until the early 600s (Benbassa, p. 6). With
the establishment of the Carolingian Empire under Charlemagne in 800 C.E., the Jews of France

8
were well treated and socially mobile. Especially in their community in Narbonne, they enjoyed
self-governance and moved into the highest political and economic advisory positions. (Chapter
Four: Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350 - 1700 C.E.)

700s

The St. Andrews cemetery has several graves with Freemason symbolism. Additionally, on
display at the cathedral museum are several very early sarcophagi marked with Templar
images. Perhaps most remarkable of the artifacts at St. Andrews, however, is a large carved
stone sarcophagus dating from the late 700s depicting the Jewish king David battling lions.
(Chapter Three: Genealogies of the First Wave of Jewish Families, 1100 - 1350 C.E.)

732

From Benbassa’s account (p. 7) we learn that [t]he Muslim advance into France was checked in
732 at Poitiers by Charles Martel.... His son, Pepin the Short, founded the Carolingian dynasty in
751.... From this moment, the policy of the Carolingian sovereigns was marked by alliance with
Rome and indulgence with regard to the Jews. Pepin’s son, Charlemagne, is said to have been
assisted by Jews in his conquest of Narbonne, the former Visigothic kingdom, which housed a
large Jewish community. Because of their assistance, Pepin made their leader, Makhir (Machar),
lord of the new buffer state, and Charlemagne granted additional privileges to the French Jews,
especially those of Narbonne. The French Jews, including those of Narbonne, were largely
secularized; that is, they had little knowledge of Hebrew or Jewish religious texts. (Chapter
Four: Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350 - 1700 C.E.)

Somewhere between 750 & 900 AD

In the case of Clan Cowan, we will later suggest that R1b and R1a males adopted the
Cowan/Coen surname indicative of the Jewish priestly caste when they converted to Judaism
around 750–900 C.E. Even though these Scots were not Semitic descendants of Aaron or the
priest-kings of ancient Judea, they thought of themselves as such.

9
 Late 8th century

The “Roman de Philomène” recounts how Charlemagne, after a fabulous siege of Narbonne,
rewarded the Jews for the part they had taken in the surrender of the city; he yielded to them,
for their own use, a part of the city, and granted them the right to live under a “Jewish king,” as
the Saracens lived under a Saracen king.

It is certain that the Jews were again numerous in France under Charlemagne, their position
being regulated by law... They engaged in export trade, an instance of this being found in the
Jew whom Charlemagne employed to go to Palestine and bring back precious merchandise....
Isaac the Jew, who was sent by Charlemagne in 797 with two ambassadors to Harun al-Rashid,
was probably one of these merchants.... It was said that the Jews, far from being objects of
hatred to the emperor, were better loved and considered than the Christians. A Bishop Agobard
also claimed: The Christians celebrate the Sabbath with the Jews, desecrate Sunday, and
transgress the regular fasts. Because the Jews boast of being the race of the Patriarchs, the
Nation of the Righteous, the Children of the Prophets, the ignorant think that they are the only
people of God and that the Jewish religion is better than their own.

800

By the 800s in France, contemporaneous with the first incursions of the Normans, the Jews
constituted an indispensable part of the economy and culture. (Chapter Four: Genealogies of
the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350 - 1700 C.E.)

840

Charlemagne names one of his daughters Dhuada (= Davida, feminine form of David),17 and
one of his sons, Louis the Pious (d. 840), as we have already noticed, married Judith of Bavaria.
Poignantly, these lineages continue onward until they reach the Bouillons and Baudouins
(Baldwins) who served as the kings of Jerusalem during the Crusades.

10
 900

Importantly, Jews were settled where they would have had contact with the Normans, who
arrived in Gaul from Scandinavia around 900 C.E. Jews functioned in Gaul and elsewhere as full-
fledged Roman citizens, without religious or ethnic hindrance, and were active traders and
merchants. Further, they would not necessarily have had Semitic DNA. As we shall argue
shortly, many, perhaps most, were converts to Judaism from the French or German regions, so
they would have carried primarily R1b DNA. As Benbassa (p. 4) notes, the Jews ... dressed like
the rest of the population, bore arms, and spoke the local language; even in the synagogue.
Hebrew was not the only language used for rituals. Their ancestral names—biblical, Roman, and
Gallo-Roman—did not differentiate them from other inhabitants. (Chapter Four: Genealogies of
the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350 - 1700 C.E.)

1022

Until the recent appearance of a detailed study of Anglo-Norman Jewry, few people suspected
that the Norman capital of Rouen served as a major center of Judaic culture during the High
Middle Ages (1000–1300 C.E.). Golb’s study in 1998 brought to life the extraordinary story of
how Jacob bar Jequthiel, a Jew of Rouen, defied Duke Richard, the grandfather of William the
Conqueror, traveled to Rome, secured the protection of the pope for French Jews, and in 1022,
at the invitation of Baldwin count of Flanders, migrated with 30 other Rouen Jews to Arras.
With ties to Lyon, Paris, Flanders, the Rhineland and places as far away as Cairo, Jerusalem and
Babylon, the Jews of Normandy and Flanders had their own schools, cemeteries, properties,
privileges, and even a head rabbi, an office transferred to England with the Norman conquest
(Golb 1998).

1050

The de Brusse family of Flanders and Normandy entered England in 1050 as part of the
entourage of Duke Richard I; the family remained in Britain subsequent to the conquest of
England by Richard’s son, William the Conqueror, in 1066. Robert de Bruce (d. 1094) married a
Norman woman, Agnes St. Clair, and was the son of a Norman woman, Emma of Brittany. Other

11
members of the de Brusse/Brousse family in France emigrated not only to England, but also to
what are now Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. Some members of this family
were and are practicing Jews (M. Stern 1991).

Eleventh century

At one stage many Goths converted to Judaism and the terms “Goth” and “Jew” in southern
France were used synonymously.... The wife of William the Conqueror was Matilda of Flanders
[and] was descended from Machir.

1060

Powerful Roman families selected popes who would do their bidding; often those chosen were
not only mentally incompetent, but also sexually perverted. Some died violent deaths, strangled
or stabbed by their bodyguards (Read 1999, p. 58). Priories and bishoprics were usually
controlled by powerful local families, who placed their younger sons, or illegitimate sons, into
holy offices. The income from these churches and other benefices was diverted to the noble
families controlling them, much as we learned to be the case in Scotland. (Chapter Eight: The
Knights Templar, Freemasons and Cabala in Scotland)

1060

A shocking but probably realistic sociological picture of the Crusaders is drawn by Charles
Mackay (1841, p. 360): The only religion they felt was the religion of fear.... They lived with their
hand against every man and with no law but their own passions.... War was the business and
the delight of their existence.... Fanaticism and the love of battle alike impelled them to the
war, while the kings and princes of Europe had still another motive for encouraging their zeal.
Policy opened their eyes to the great advantages which would accrue to themselves by the
absence of so many restless, intriguing, and bloodthirsty men, whose insolence it required more
than the small power of royalty to restrain within due bounds. (Chapter Eight: The Knights
Templar, Freemasons and Cabala in Scotland)

12
 1066

The Stewarts were among that set of French families that came to England with William the
Conqueror and his Norman army in 1066. Originally named FitzAlan, the family took the name
of Stewart after serving as royal stewards to the Bruce dynasty of Scotland. By marrying the
female heir of King Robert Bruce in 1315, Walter Stewart (who by this time served also as
regent) ensured that his son Robert II eventually advanced to the throne of Scotland. (Chapter
One: The Origins of Scotland)

1066

By 1066, when the Normans conquered England taking several of these French Jewish families
with them to establish the new civil administration, the Western world had embarked upon a
capitalist economy. (Chapter Four: Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350 -
1700 C.E.)

1066 - 1250

Several aristocratic families whose ancestral homes are near Aberdeen we have already
identified as being of probable Jewish ancestry. Among these are the Gordons, Frasers,
Forbeses, and Leslies. They arrived in Scotland during the first Jewish in-migration, 1066–1250
C.E. The 1400s and 1500s brought a new influx of families bearing Sephardic and French Jewish
surnames, such as Menzies/Menezes (originally from Hebrew Menachem), Davidson, Arnot
(from Aaron), and Perry (from “pear” in Spanish [Jacobs 1911]). Perhaps most blatantly, some
of the incoming families had surnames that were actually the names of letters in the Hebrew
alphabet: Gemmell (representing a camel), Hay (life) and Taw (tau, cross or saltire).

1069

13
When Malcom Canmore, the Scottish king, and his Hungarian-born consort, Margaret, were
married in 1069, the ceremony was performed by a Culdee, or Celtic, priest, named Fothad. The
Celtic church had its own priests and religious practices, which, as we discussed in chapter 1,
corresponded more closely to Judaic customs and beliefs than to the Roman rite. Culdean
priests continued to officiate in Scotland at most churches well into the 1200s (Howie 1981, pp.
4-8), at which time, we maintain, a large contingent of Crypto-Jewish aristocrats, nobles,
merchants and tradespeople dwelt in Scotland and were "alive and well."

There is evidence to show that some of the houses of worship even after 1200 were staffed by
Jewish or Crypto-Jewish personnel.

Chapter 10 (The Religions of Scotland: Did Presbyterianism Have Crypto-Jewish Origins?)

1093

Hungarian Descent of the Kings of the Scots, shows the descent to Margaret, the wife of
Malcolm Canmore (1058–1093), who became King of Scots at the time of the Norman conquest
of England. Notably, Margaret descends from several persons who would appear to be Jews:
among them Zoltan, his consort, the daughter of Maroth, Prince of Bihar, Geza, Prince of the
Magyars, whose first daughter was named Judith (= female form of Judah) and whose second
daughter married a king of Hungary named Samuel Aba (Fig. 5). The genealogy of Maud
(Matilda) de Lens shows that Malcolm and Margaret’s son, David I of Scots, also appeared to
marry a woman of Jewish descent, Maud de Lens. Her ancestors included Louis the Pious, King
of the Franks (d. 840), who was married to a Judith. The same genealogy also indicates that the
grandmother of William the Conqueror was a French woman named Judith—and further, that
Maud de Lens’ mother was also named Judith. Although it may seem odd to place so much
emphasis on the female given name Judith, keep in mind that this was the Middle Ages, a time
when the ethnic identity of given names was of critical importance. It is very unlikely that a
woman of noble birth would be named Yehudah unless she was, indeed, a Jewess, and it was
wished by her parents that she be recognized as such.

1100 - 1291

14
Prominent French, Scottish and English knights, as well as several of their princes and kings,
fought in the Crusades and established fiefdoms throughout the lands we think of as the Levant,
or Middle East, stretching from Sicily, Tripoli and Malta to Cypress, Rhodes, Antioch, Tyre and
Macedonia. Called Outremer (“Beyond the Sea”), the Norman-French-Scottish domain was
ruled by free-standing noblemen and controlled militarily by distinctive “Christian” fighting
forces that included the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, or Templars, and the Knights of the
Hospital of St. John, or Hospitalers. Although both these military orders began as Christian-
soldiered militias, they soon evolved into enormous, profit-making enterprises that owned vast
tracts of land, castles, priories, burgs, mills and manufactories, banks, and shipping lanes
throughout Europe and the Middle East (Selwood 1999). The persons who managed the vast
wealth from this trading empire were not themselves knights, but rather seneschals (retainers),
and though the individual knights themselves may have taken Christian vows of chastity or
poverty, no such requirements were placed upon the majority of those associated with the
order—its estate managers, clerical employees and administrators: [I]t should not be imagined
that armored warriors, largely illiterate, spent their odd hours decoding messages or in the
countinghouse maintaining ledgers and checking inventory or out in the barn supervising the
annual sheepshearings.... In the Order of the Temple, they were the officer class, and they had
as their principal training and occupation direct participation on the battlefield; the army of
administrators, native troops, and employees behind them outnumbered them by as much as
fifty to one [emphasis added].... The Templar clerics were the literate faction, and far more
likely to be assigned duties of a managerial or accounting nature, including the drafting of
letters in code. Other administrators, supervisors, and scribes were simply employees, and in
later years a number were Arabic-speaking. (Chapter Eight: The Knights Templar, Freemasons
and Cabala in Scotland)

Early 1100s

[The Templars’] Jerusalem excavations had ... led to other important discoveries, including
some ancient documentation which enabled them to challenge certain Roman Church doctrines
and New Testament interpretation.... Their documentary discoveries were substantial, including
numerous books from the East, many of which had been salvaged from the burned library of
Alexandria [Egypt]. There were ancient Essene works predating Jesus Christ and volumes from
Arabian and Greek philosophers, all of which were destined to be condemned by the Church.
There were also countless works concerning numerology, geometry, architecture and music,
along with manuscripts pertaining to metals and alloys. In all, the Templars returned to Europe
with the combined knowledge of thousands of years of study. Thus, by the early 1100s a

15
substantial amount of Middle Eastern knowledge, learning and mysticism had been transferred
to Scotland. It was little surprise, then, that the Knights Templar, Jews, and Muslims would have
chosen to cooperate in seeking refuge in Scotland, once they were exiled from Christian
countries.

1100s onward

Aberdeen is bordered by the North Sea and has direct shipping channels to Norway, Sweden,
France, Denmark, Russia, the Baltic Sea, Germany and Poland. From the 1100s onward—and
perhaps even before—Aberdeen was trading with all of these countries and had established
companies, even factories, in each. By 1200 C.E., it was the third wealthiest city in Scotland,
despite its northern location, relative isolation from the rest of Scotland, and having only the
eighth rank in population.

1124

Malcolm and Margaret’s son Alexander I not only carried a Greek given name previously unused
by Scotland’s nobility, but he also married Sybilla, the illegitimate daughter of England’s King
Henry I. Alexander’s brother, David I, who ruled from 1124 to 1153, married a French
noblewoman, Matilda de St. Liz (Senlis, a town in Normandy), granddaughter of William the
Conqueror. This king’s given name, David, was also previously unknown among the Scots lairds.
In fact, he was only the second King David in world history—the first, of course, being King
David of Jerusalem (ca. 1000 B.C.E.). As we shall argue, this did not come about randomly, but
resulted from the Scots royal family’s belief that they did, in fact, descend from the Jewish King
David. We will argue that the family was of Jewish patrilineal ancestry and faith, but of western
(Sephardic), rather than Semitic and Middle Eastern, genetic descent.

1124

When Bernard of Clairvaux integrated the Celtic church into the Cistercian order and Scotland
got its first Templar king, David I (1124–1153), a peculiar tradition became fixed in the royal
genealogies: the eldest son was invariably named after his grandfather. The pattern can also be

16
seen in the house of William the Conqueror, where Robert and William alternate in the lineage
of the dukes of Normandy. By alternating Malcolms and Davids, David of Scotland clearly
wanted to put the stamp of a dynasty on his house. David’s first-born, Malcolm, was murdered,
and his second son, Henry, died before he could assume the throne. Thus Henry’s son Malcolm
(known as “the Maiden”) became king at the age of eleven. That preserved the rules of
primogeniture and also ensured the succession of a prince with the right name. With the
Stewarts we see a careful preservation of this tradition, all the way down to King James I of
England, who named his heir-apparent, Henry, after his father, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley,
husband of Mary Queen of Scots (the name Frederick came from Henry’s other grandfather,
Frederick II of Denmark)

This pattern had been established before the Stewarts had come to Scotland, when they were
known as Stewards (Lat. Dapifer, Flemish Flaald) of Dol in Brittany. For centuries we can trace
the alternation of Walters and Alans, Fitz-Walters and Fitz-Alans, until King Robert II Stewart,
7th High Steward of Scotland, grandson of Robert I Bruce, founded the royal House of Stewart
with his coronation in Scone Abbey in 1371.

The practice of alternating names goes back to the ancient Jewish custom of the high-priestly
family of Zadok in Jerusalem, whose members were named alternately Onias and Simon from
332 to 165 b.c.e. This signature of spiritual sovereignty was imitated by the Hasmonaean rulers
that followed them, as well as by the heirs of Herod (37–4 b.c.e.). Later, it was used by the
Hillelites, with the names Gamaliel and Judah succeeding each other (with an occasional
occurrence of Simon and Hillel [Jacobs 1906–1911]). About this time, the practice of double
names for the same person began to be adopted, another Jewish trait revived by the Stewarts
(e.g. “James Edward Stuart”). Thus the “stewards” of an obscure fiefdom in Brittany began to
see themselves as stewards of the kingdom of heaven on earth. By virtue of their Templar
heritage, moreover, “the Scots royal line comprised not only Priest Kings but Knight Priest
Kings” (Appendix B: Naming and Jewish Priest-Kings)

1128

St. Bernard [a Cistercian monk] had been appointed Patron and Protector of the Knights
Templars at the French “Council of Troyes” in 1128. (Chapter Eight: The Knights Templar,
Freemasons and Cabala in Scotland)

17
 1130

By 1130 C.E., the Knights Templar order had begun to amass huge amounts of money as well as
large estates (Selwood 1999). They were granted holdings by the rulers of Barcelona, Provence,
Navarre and Aragon.

1150 - 1200

Provence, land of philosophy, was also a land of mysticism. It is there that the Sefer-ha-Bahir
(Book of Brightness), the first document of theosophic kabbalism, was compiled on the basis of
oriental sources between 1150 and 1200.... Abrah ben Isaac, president of the rabbinical court of
Narbonne (d. 1180), and especially Isaac the Blind (1160?–1235)—grandson of Abraham ben
Isaac ... developed a contemplative mysticism. Born in Provence and along the coast of
Languedoc, the kabbalah was rapidly transplanted to Catalonia, which maintained close political
and cultural ties with these regions. (Chapter Eight: The Knights Templar, Freemasons and
Cabala in Scotland)

1160

The Frasers first appear in Scotland around 1160 when Simon Fraser made a gift of a church at
Keith in East Lothian to the monks at Kelso Abbey. The Frasers moved into Tweeddale in the
12th and 13th centuries and from there into the counties of Stirling, Angus, Inverness and
Aberdeen. About five generations later, Sir Simon Fraser was captured fighting for Robert the
Bruce and executed with great cruelty by Edward I in 1306....

1170

By 1170, however, the Muslims under Salah-ed-deen (Integrity of Religion, Saladin) with 40,000
soldiers had retaken the Holy Land. Pope Alexander in 1171 issued a bull granting the Templars

18
exemption from prosecution in any religious or civil court of law in return for their support in
winning back Jerusalem. The order was now not only fantastically wealthy, but free of any
external control over its activities. The only law members were bound by was that of the
Master Templar. By this time also, a large part of the Templar force was composed of horsemen
called Turcopoles, of Turkish, Syrian and Palestinian descent. These were mercenaries who
followed a Middle Eastern lifestyle; they were not Christian, but Moslem or Jewish. Further, the
Templars themselves had started to become morally corrupt. When one of their members,
Walter du Mesnil, murdered a Muslim aristocrat who had converted to Christianity, he fled for
refuge to a Templar priory and the order refused to give him over to the civil authorities.
(Chapter Eight: The Knights Templar, Freemasons and Cabala in Scotland)

1190

The city of York was long associated in the minds of Jew and non–Jew with the pogrom that
took place there in the year 1190, the precise timeframe of Scott’s Ivanhoe; in the words of
Joseph Jacobs, a pivotal year that brought “the first proof that the Jews of England had of any
popular ill-will against them” (Chapter Eleven: Jews in the National Consciousness of Scotland:
Scott's Ivanhoe)

1200 - 1750

Aberdeen and the World: 1200–1750 We believe that it was this Judaic community that
provided Aberdeen its large role as an international center of trade from the 1200s onward.
Keith (1974, p. 46–47) writes: As commerce went in those days, Aberdeen plied a busy trade in
the fifteenth century with both the Netherlands and the Baltic ports, Danzig and Poland
particularly. The Danzig business developed sharply after 1500 [when additional Sephardim
would have arrived there from Iberia], and during the next 200 years the number of Scotsmen
trading in Poland was so large as to become proverbial. Several observers put them at 40,000....
After 1500 there were Aberdonians of the name of Skene with cloth mills and sugar refineries in
Poland.... The older and steadier commerce was with the Low Countries. Bruges, Middleburg,
and Campvere were in turn the Scottish staple there—the clearing-house for all Scottish
imports.... There were about half a dozen great Aberdonian shipping families—the Cullens,
Blindseles, Rattrays, Fiddeses and Pratts. Greatest of all the town’s merchants were Andrew
Cullen and Andrew Buk. Cullen was Provost in 1506 and 1535.... Even Bishop Elphinstone
engaged in the overseas trade, though as a priest he must have procured a special licence to do

19
so (!). When he was building King’s College he sent abroad wool, salmon, trout, and money,
receiving in exchange carts, wheelbarrows, and gunpowder—to quarry and transport the
freestone from Elgin which he was using in Old Aberdeen. (Chapter Nine: The Judaic Colony at
Aberdeen)

1250

By 1250, the Templars had become a largely secret and closed society. Their initiation rites
were hidden from view, as were their operations and internal rules (Read 1999). The majority of
persons associated with the order were now estate managers, laborers and international
traders and bankers. Even criminals were permitted to join, if they brought some skill or
resource of value. In addition, the order had become the primary banking enterprise in the
European world. Kings and nobles borrowed money from the Temple treasury; the order also
offered financial investments, as well as annuities and pensions... The 250,000 European-
descended inhabitants of the Holy Land purchased exports from both Europe and Asia. In turn,
they sold slaves, sugar, dyes and spices to European and Asian markets. By 1250, there were an
estimated 7,000 fully initiated Templars, with a corresponding number of associates and
dependents that was seven or eight times as large... Remarkably, also by 1250, the Templars
had altered their religious creed. Though established initially as Christian soldiers, they now
read from the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible, or Torah, and had formed a new identity
binding themselves to the ancient Israelites. (Chapter Eight: The Knights Templar, Freemasons
and Cabala in Scotland)

1290

Edward I came to the British throne in 1271 C.E.; he issued in 1290 writs for the expulsion of all
Jews who would not convert to Christianity (Tovey 1967). Likely at this time yet another set of
English Crypto-Jews was created. Ludovici (1938, p. 16) writes: Sixteen thousand Jews are
supposed to have left England—i.e., all those who preferred exile to apostasy.... Edward I not
only allowed them to take their movable property with them and “all pledges that had not been
redeemed,” but he also ordered all sheriffs to see that no harm should overtake them. (Chapter
Six: When Did Jews Arrive in Scotland?)

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 1290

Presumably the Crypto-Jews who remained in England after the Expulsion in 1290 presented
themselves as practicing Christians, which at that time would have meant Roman Catholicism,
the prevailing religion in England. (Chapter Six: When Did Jews Arrive in Scotland?)

1291

The annual income of the order in Europe has been roughly estimated at six millions sterling!
According to Matthew Paris, the Templars possessed nine thousand manors or lordships in
Christendom, besides a large revenue and immense riches arising from the constant charitable
bequests and donations of sums of money from pious persons.... The principal benefactors to
the Templars amongst the nobility were William Marshall,6 Earl of Pembroke, and his sons
William and Gilbert; Robert, Lord de Ross;7 the Earl of Hereford; William, Earl of Devon; the
King of Scotland; William, Archbishop of York; Philip Harcourt, dean of Lincoln; the Earl of
Cornwall; Philip, Bishop of Bayeux; Simon de Senlis, Earl of Northampton; Leticia and William,
Count and Countess of Ferrara; Margaret, Countess of Warwick;8 Simon de Montfort, Earl of
Leicester; Robert de Harecourt, Lord of Rosewarden; William de Vernon, Earl of Devon, etc. As
the reader gathers from this lengthy enumeration of holdings and privileges, the Knights
Templar were an enormous, extraordinarily rich and very powerful organization. In essence,
they were the first multinational corporation—one over which no court or tribunal had
jurisdiction. The seal of the brotherhood featured “a man’s head, decorated with a long beard,
and surmounted by a small cap, and around it are the letters Testis V. Magi” (Addington 1892,
p. 106). At this time, Templar masters in England included persons named William de La More
and Amadeus de Morestello. Clearly, Muslims, as well as Jews, were in England. (Chapter Eight:
The Knights Templar, Freemasons and Cabala in Scotland)

Early 1300s

By the early 1300s, the Bruce family in Scotland had produced Robert I (the Bruce), King of
Scotland, who reigned from 1306 to 1329.

21
 1300

The Gordons first distinguished themselves in south central Scotland during the 1300s; the
family then moved to Aberdeen on the northeast coast of Scotland (Smout 1969). Here they
entered several guilds normally occupied by persons of Jewish ancestry, e.g., gold and silver
smithing, banking, international trading, tin working and leather tanning (McDonnell 1998). The
Gordons seem to have originated in France, where the name was probably Jardine, meaning
“garden” or “gardener,” which was perhaps later conflated with the name Jordan. (Chapter
Three: Genealogies of the First Wave of Jewish Families, 1100 - 1350 C.E.)

1300

This noble Scots family first appeared in Britain around 1300 and settled on the Scottish border
(Brown 1998). One standard reference book observes that the “Douglases were one of
Scotland’s most powerful families [and] it is therefore remarkable that their origins remain
obscure” (Way and Squire 1998, p. 384). We have seen in chapter 2 that the Douglases have
many branches, but all seem to agree in being originally Gothic, with the majority of DNA
matches turning up in the Iberian peninsula. The name Douglas means “dark stranger” in Gaelic
and may have originated from the Mediterranean complexions of the family’s founders (M.
Brown 1998). The Black Douglases (so named for their dark coloring) were the dominant force
on the borders between England and Scotland from 1300 to 1455 (M. Brown 1998). Family
portraits attest to their ancestral Mediterranean physiognomy.

1306

Bruce was very likely a Templar, through his marriage to a St. Clair. Freemason symbols are
present on some stones at Dunfermline Abbey churchyard. The Templars were largely
transmuted into the Freemason order after 1306. The Royal Bruce coat of arms depicts a
central lion rampant (lion of Judah), a widely recognized symbol of the Judaic royal line of
David. The arms of Robert I’s brother, Edward, not only shows a lion rampant, but also places an
Islamic crescent over the lion’s heart, suggesting perhaps Muslim or Arab ancestry in addition to
Jewish. (Chapter Three: Genealogies of the First Wave of Jewish Families, 1100 - 1350 C.E.)

22
 1306

In 1306, for a variety of political, religious and economic reasons, the Jews were expelled from
France. (And not coincidentally, we see families such as the “Black” Douglases arriving in
Scotland.) This expulsion followed close on the heels of Edward I’s banishment of Jews from
England and Gascony in 1290, and there were smaller banishings of Jews from cities in Germany
and Italy. (Chapter Four: Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350 - 1700 C.E.)

1307

In October 1307 C.E., King Philip of France, who had expelled the kingdom’s Jews the year
before in order to confiscate their possessions, turned his attention to the French Templars. In
collaboration with the Pope, he ordered all French Templars arrested, tried for heresy, and
executed; he then promptly appropriated their immense wealth and holdings in France. Some
of the members of the French Temple became aware of Philip’s plan and escaped with a large
portion of their treasure. (Chapter Eight: The Knights Templar, Freemasons and Cabala in
Scotland)

Mid to Late 1300s

The Campbell surname seems to have originated in the mid–to late 1300s (Smout 1969). We
believe that the first members of this family arrived in Scotland as a result of anti–Jewish
pogroms in France and Spain in the middle of the fourteenth century (Benbassa 1999).

1371

The royal house of Bruce came to an end in 1371, when Robert’s son David (age 47) died after a
sudden illness in Edinburgh Castle without a male heir. Robert the Bruce’s daughter, Marjorie,
however, had married Walter, the 6th High Stewart of Scotland (ca. 1292–1326). She died giving

23
birth to a son, Robert II, who served as regent during David’s frequent absences and was
crowned in Scone Abbey on March 26, 1371, initiating the Royal Stewart dynasty. Stewart
describes his installation procedure, which was that of a priest-king, modeled after those of
Israel. Firstly, the King-to-be was passed through a ritual of purification to become an ordained
people’s priest. He would then appear at the Church Abbey of Scone, dressed in white as a
symbol of integrity.... With his hand upon the Stone [of Destiny], the King would swear his Oath
of Fealty as the people’s champion. He was duly anointed, and then sat upon the separate and
much larger Coronation Stone.... In the early days the crown was no more than a circlet of gold,
and its symbolic concept was to catch the eye of God ... [A]t that stage would the religious
ceremony begin, led by the Bishop and the seven priests. There were readings from Old
Testament scriptures, along with prayers... [pp. 75–76]. Also according to Stewart, it is
frequently presumed that Robert de Brus was a Norman, but this is not true. The de Brus had
held lands in Normandy, but Robert carried the azure Flemish lion of Louvain when he came to
Britain.

1376

George Douglas, 1st Earl of Angus, and born ca. 1376, is credited with being the found of the
“Red Douglas” branch of the Douglas family. He married on 24 May 1387 Lady Mary Stewart
(daughter of King Robert III of Scotland).

1400

Jews coming to Scotland from Iberia during the 1400s and 1500s (and later) carried with them
an ample store of what sociologists term “cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1993). They had valuable
knowledge and skills that were incalculable assets to the countries where they settled, notably
medical, metallurgical, mining, sailing, leatherworking, glassmaking and mercantile expertise.
Unlike their Christian cohorts, European and Middle Eastern Jews of even modest means in the
early modern period also possessed literacy and “numeracy,” the two requirements for running
a business. (Chapter Seven: To Scotland's Stirling, Ayr, and Glasgow)

Early 1500s

24
Bagpipes—the musical instruments most associated in the popular imagination with Celts and
Scotland—first gained popularity in Scotland at the outset of the 1500s. This was an age when
Celtic culture was in eclipse, but it was a time that saw the mass expulsion of Jews and Moors
from Spain due to the Spanish Inquisition. Significantly, the bagpipe originated in ancient
Mesopotamia and Greece and was popular in Spain and southern France before it entered or
re-entered Ireland and Scotland. It is a Middle Eastern and Central Asian musical instrument,
not one indigenous to the British Isles.

1500

The entire territory over which the Caldwells purportedly roamed was the same as the land
awarded after the fall of Rome to the Visigoths4 in 419 C.E. It became the Regnum Tolosanum
and later the Kingdom of Toulouse (Gibbon II, p. 214). At its center, Toulon is an important
naval port on the Côte d’Azur between Marseilles and St. Tropez with the Monts de Maures
(Moorish Mountains) looming behind it on the French Riviera. Until the Spanish secured
Lombardy and the Duchy of Milan, this area belonged, variously, to Provence, Languedoc,
Anjou, and the German Empire. At different times, it also was part of Savoy, Lorraine, Aquitaine,
and the Papal State of Avignon. Significantly, an edict of expulsion against the Jews of Provence
was first issued in 1500. Jews in the Kingdom of Naples (which included the duchy of Milan)
were partially exiled in 1510. Wealthy Jews in Spanish-ruled Italy were expelled again in 1541.
Beginning in 1555, Jews in Italy were ghettoized, a situation that was to last until Napoleon’s
invasion in 1796. The expulsions of 1515, 1550, and 1575, were to the interior of Italy. In 1572,
the Duke of Savoy attempted to give Jews special permission to settle in Nice, but renounced
the plan under pressure from Spain and the Pope. Phillip II of Spain ordered the expulsion of
Jews from the Duchy of Milan again in 1597, and many took refuge in Protestant Switzerland
(Barnavi 1992). From these bare facts it is obvious that Jews living in Toulouse had to keep
moving to stay ahead of the changing jurisdictions and policies. (Chapter Four: Genealogies of
the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350 - 1700 C.E.)

Mid-1500s

By the mid–1500s, Kings [University] was teaching not only Greek and Latin, but also Hebrew,
Syriac and Chaldean.... The inclusion of Hebrew, as well as the Mid-Eastern languages of Syriac

25
and Chaldean, suggests a preoccupation with scientific rather than theological texts, since Syriac
and Chaldean (non–Biblical languages) were the threads by which a large part of the corpus of
Aristotle’s works, as well as unique Platonic and Neo-Platonic treatises, were preserved,
entering Western thought and learning through the stream of “Averroeism,” a materialistic
philosophy created by Jews and Moors in northern Spain.

Early 1600s

In the first half of the fifteenth century, a new family appears upon the scene. The Chalmerses
[from de Camera, Cameron, Chambers, meaning "chamberlain"] were still at the height of their
influence when the first member of this house, which was to rule the destinies of Aberdeen for
200 years, made his appearance in the provost's seat. This was Gilbert Menzies, surmised to
have been a son of Sir Robert Menzies of Wemyss. Gilbert came from Perthshire to Aberdeen
about 1408... No more brilliant autocratic family than the Menzies ever resided in Aberdeen.
They held their heads high before royalty; they lived side by side with the most opulent of the
nobility.

Chapter 9 (The Judaic Colony at Aberdeen)

1600s

Despite being Presbyterian by the 1600s, Clan Cowan members were, we argue,
Kohanim/Cohens of Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

1649

In 1649 C.E., under Oliver Cromwell (whom, incidentally, Dutch Jews believed to have Jewish
ancestry from the tribe of Judah), the Jews gained quasi-official entry to England, though they
were still not enabled to hold office, own land or become citizens. It is very likely the
continuation of these restrictions on Jewish social and economic mobility that encouraged the
resident Crypto-Jews dating from 1290 forward to remain hidden. For why should they

26
suddenly spring forth at that time and lose their lands, titles, and political and clerical offices?
Perhaps they also felt that they could better assist their newly-arrived co-religionists by
remaining as they were and had been for centuries—secret Jews, public Christians. (Chapter Six:
When Did Jews Arrive in Scotland?)

Late 1600s

At the end of the fifteenth century there may have been up to 300,000 conversos in Spain and
Portugal. They constituted the educated urban bourgeoisie of Spain, and the richer families
frequently intermarried with the Spanish aristocracy and even transmitted their bloodlines to
the royal family itself.

(CHAPTER NOTES)

1700s

To understand Crypto-Jews in England and Scotland, we must look at the so-called Marranos of
Spain and Portugal. The origin and meaning of the term is disputed, and its use is only sporadic
before about 1380, but it appears to have gained great currency in the mid–fourteenth century
anti–Jewish riots in Toledo and Cordova that immediately preceded the Spanish Inquisition. Its
heyday was the sixteenth century, when Marranos became “Judaizers” outside Spain and
Portugal, hounded by the Inquisition through all Europe and the Americas. “The wealthy
Maranos, who engaged extensively in commerce, industries, and agriculture, intermarried with
families of the old nobility; impoverished counts and marquises unhesitatingly wedded wealthy
Jewesses; and it also happened that counts or nobles of the blood royal became infatuated with
handsome Jewish girls. Beginning with the second generation, the Neo-Christians usually
intermarried with women of their own sect. They became very influential through their wealth
and intelligence, and were called to important positions at the palace, in government circles,
and in the Cortes; they practised medicine and law and taught at the universities; while their
children frequently achieved high ecclesiastical honors” (Jacobs and Meyerling in Jewish
Encyclopaedia 1906–1911 s.v. Mutatis mutandis). The same description holds for the secret
Jewish privileged class in Britain.

27
 1751

It is known that people descended from the ancient Biblical Hebrews settled in all these
places—in Spain from Roman times (and thence to South America after 1492), in Bulgaria and
Sicily during Hellenic and Byzantine times, in Switzerland during the High Middle Ages and early
modern period, and in Gothland, joining, respectively, the Iberian, Bulgarian, Greek, Swiss and
Gothic indigenous populations. Lausanne, for instance, in addition to being a haven for
Protestant reformers, was a favorite refuge for French, Italian and Iberian Jews. The history of
the early settlement of Jews among the Scandinavian peoples is little investigated, but a
substantial early Jewish population is suggested by the fact that in 1751 a group of Norwegians
arrived in London and petitioned the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Synagogue of Bevis-Marks
to admit a large number of their countrymen who wanted to return to the open practice of
Judaism (Endelman 1979, p. 283).

1790

In 1790 nearly every eight-year-old in Cleish, Kinross-shire, could read, and read well. By one
estimate male literacy stood at around 55 percent, compared with only 53 percent in England.
It would not be until the 1880s that the English would finally catch up with their northern
neighbors. Scotland became Europe’s first modern literate society. (Chapter Eleven: Jews in the
National Consciousness of Scotland: Scott's Ivanhoe)

1800-ish?

As is the case with our other families, Scottish-originating Leslies exhibited Judaic naming
practices in the American colonies, and members of the Scottish-based family group openly
practiced Judaism in Charleston, S.C. and Savannah, Ga., where males were also leading figures
in the Freemasons’ temples (Stern 1991). Charleston was the port of entry for what was called
Scottish Rite Masonry, and Savannah’s chapter was established as Solomon’s Lodge #1.
(Chapter Three: Genealogies of the First Wave of Jewish Families, 1100 - 1350 C.E.)

28
 1841

Virtually all goldsmiths from the Middle Ages onward were either Jews or Moors. Indeed, the
surname Goldsmith or Goldschmidt almost always belonged to a person of Jewish ancestry. In
Victorian England, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid was the first Jew to receive a hereditary title in 1841; he
was made a baronet. (Chapter Seven: To Scotland's Stirling, Ayr, and Glasgow)

1914

The House of Saxe-Coburg that occupied the British throne was converted into the House of
Windsor in short order at the beginning of hostilities between Great Britain and the German
Empire in 1914. (Chapter Eleven: Jews in the National Consciousness of Scotland: Scott's
Ivanhoe)

29