page_title: Isle of Bute
section_title: Under Scottish rule
hierarchical_section_title: Isle of Bute / History / Under Scottish rule
caption_attribution_description: English: [East Bay, Rothsay (i.e. Rothesay), Scotland] [between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900]. 1 photomechanical print&#160;: photochrom, color. Notes: Title from the Detroit Publishing Co., catalogue J--foreign section. Detroit, Mich.&#160;: Detroit Photographic Company, 1905. Print no. "13143". Forms part of: Views of landscape and architecture in Scotland in the Photochrom print collection. Subjects: Scotland--Rothesay. Format: Photochrom prints--Color--1890-1900. Rights Info: No known restrictions on reproduction. Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print Part Of: Views of landscape and architecture in Scotland (DLC) 2001703567 More information about the Photochrom Print Collection is available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.pgz Persistent URL: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.07669 Call Number: LOT 13407, no. 158 [item]
context_page_description: The Isle of Bute, known as Bute, is an island in the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, United Kingdom. It is divided into highland and lowland areas by the Highland Boundary Fault.
  Formerly a constituent island of the larger County of Bute, it is now part of the council area of Argyll and Bute. Bute's resident population was 6,498 in 2011, a decline of just over 10% from the figure of 7,228 recorded in 2001 against a background of Scottish island populations as a whole growing by 4% to 103,702 for the same period.
context_section_description: In 1549, Dean Monro wrote of "Buitt" that it was:
  very fertyle ground, namelie for aitts, with twa strenthes; the ane is the round castle of Buitt, callit Rosay of the auld, and Borrowstone about it callit Buitt. Before the town and castle is ane bay of sea, quhilk is a gude heavin for ships to ly upon ankers. That uther castle is callit the castle of Kames, quhilk Kames in Erishe is alsmeikle as to say in English the bay Castle. In this ile ther is twa paroche kirks, that ane southe callit the kirk of Bride, the uther northe in the Borrowstone of Buitt, with twa chappells, ane of them above the towne of Buitt, the uther under the forsaid castle of Kames.
  Under Scottish Rule, Bute and Arran were governed as a unit, the shrievalty aligning with the comital jurisdiction. The latter merged into the crown, as a result of the Alexander Stewart's great-grandson, Robert, inheriting the throne via his mother. A corresponding title, Duke of Rothesay was created by Robert's son for the heir apparent, without landlordship of the land. Robert had already granted the sheriffdom to his bastard son, heritably; consequently, in the early 18th century, the latter's senior descendant acquired the (non-comital) title Earl of Bute.
  During the seventeenth century there were cases of witchcraft: in 1630 an unknown number of women confessed to the crime and were confined in the dungeon at Rothesay Castle, left without food or water and died from starvation. Other instances are recorded but the most fervent activity occurred during the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–62 when at least four Bute witches were executed; one woman who was convicted at that time escaped but the sentence was enacted when she returned to the island in 1673.
  When the comital powers were abolished by the Heritable Jurisdictions Act, and counties formally created, on shrieval boundaries, by the 1889 Local Government Act, Bute and Arran became the County of Bute. Later reforms merged Bute, without Arran, into the wider region of Argyll and Bute.
caption: Rothesay at the end of the 19th century
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