The National Library of Scotland has significant holdings of sources for Scottish military history, but most are the work of the gentry or aristocracy. Diaries kept by ordinary soldiers are extremely rare, especially at the time of the Jacobite Risings, and opportunities to acquire such items are few and far between. The Library seeks when possible to add to its holdings of such material and so we were delighted to be able to acquire, through the generosity of the Friends of the National Libraries, George Steill’s diary and memorandum book.
The diary opens in 1690 when George Steill or Steil of Trows marched from his home near Lesmahagow to Edinburgh and then north to Dundee, Aberdeen, Nairn, Elgin, Dingwall and Inverness, where the troops were mustered. Following the Glorious Revolution, several new regiments were raised in Scotland to defend the new regime and Steill was a foot soldier in William II and III’s army. For several years his diary records a series of marches criss-crossing Scotland until, in April 1697, he was shipped from Leith to Holland.
In the summer of 1697, Steill was one among the vast number of soldiers deployed in Flanders as the enormous field armies of the Grand Alliance faced that of France in the final days of the Nine Years’ War.
The diary records another period of military activity in 1705 as a Lieutenant. In 1715 Steill was sent for by ‘expresse letter’ from the Earl of Selkirk to be Lieutenant to the Lesmahagow Company of Militia. After the entries for 1715, the diary continued to be used for notes in a variety of hands up to at least 1769.
Personal accounts of military life in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Scotland are few and far between and, of those that do survive, most are written by officers. This account of the humdrum every day of an ordinary foot soldier in unstable times is extremely unusual.
