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major towns of England towards this end and riots had broken out when Viscount Melbourne’s Liberal government had supported the rejection of the petition. No, the Queen was told, a Scottish trip was neither feasible nor safe. However, backed by Lord Melbourne, the Queen persisted with her wishes. After a lengthy discussion with Sir James Graham, the Home Office Secretary, Prime Minister Peel agreed that the trip could take place if the initial leg of the journey was by sea. Thus on Monday 29 August 1842 Queen Victoria embarked on the royal yacht, Royal George , at Woolwich, and her squadron, led by the 36-gun vessel Pique , set sail for Scotland.
    By 1 September the little fleet was anchored off Leith. The Queen was met at Granton Pier by Walter Francis Montague-Douglas-Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch and 7th Duke of Queensberry, joint Lord President of the Council and Privy Seal, Captain-General of the Royal Company of Archers, and Lord Lieutenant of Mid-Lothian and Roxburghshire, along with Prime Minister Peel. Her visit was to last until Thursday 15 September, with trips as far north as Taymouth Castle in Perthshire, the home of John Campbell, 2nd Marquess and 5th Earl of Breadalbane, Lord Lieutenant of Argyllshire. During this visit, the Queen recorded later in her Journal , at the Duke of Buccleuch’s home, Dalkeith House, she first enjoyed real Scottish ‘oatmeal porridge’ and ‘Finnan haddies’ – the latter being split and smoke-cured haddock, named after the village of Findon in Kincardineshire. 1
    On Prince Albert
    ‘It’s very pleasant to walk with a person who is always content.’
    John Brown
    Queen Victoria was to make two more visits to Scotland before her great love affair with the country and its people really began at Balmoral. In September 1844 she landed at Dundee for a month-long expedition to Blair Castle at Blair Atholl, hosted by George Augustus Murray, 2nd Lord Glenlyon, nephew of the mentally disturbed estate owner John Murray, 5th Duke of Atholl. While driving by the River Tummel Queen Victoria tasted ‘Athole Brose’ for the first time at the inn at Moulinearn. This was a local drink made from a mixture of honey, whisky and milk. 2
    Between 11 August and 19 September 1847 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made a tour of the west coast of Scotland aboard the royal yacht Victoria and Albert , paying a visit to Ardverikie in Inverness-shire, where the Groom of the Stole to Prince Albert, James Hamilton, 2nd Marquess and 1st Duke of Abercorn, had rented a deer forest and holiday house. During these early visits Queen Victoria was able to see something, and learn more, of the Scottish inheritance she had received from her Stewart and Hanoverian forebears. Throughout her life Queen Victoria sustained her pride in the (albeit-very-diluted) Stewart blood that ran in her veins and felt as happy in Scotland as a Jacobite as she was in England as a fluent German-speaking Hanoverian.
    At Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne Scotland was calculated by geographers to cover some 30,200 square miles, some nineteen million mostly uninhabited acres; its north–south length was nearly 280 miles, and its east–west breadth around 150 miles. It was divided into 33 counties, with 948 parishes. 3 The 1831 Scottish census showed that Victoria ruled over 1.11 million males and 1.25 million females in her northern realm. The largest number of male employees in any single industry was among shoe and bootmakers at 17,307, while domestic service was the major employment for women at 109,512. 4
    The Scotland that Queen Victoria fell in love with had developed into two distinct regions by 1837. To the north lay the Highlands, where a separate culture had grown differently from that of the Lowlands. For centuries the Highlanders had lived in close-knit, Gaelic-speaking communities, with a strong loyalty to their (mostly) Tory chiefs, linked together by their proud heritage and all sustained by their Roman Catholic