John Michie begins this part of his journey at the ancient seat of coronation at Scone Palace, and investigates the political and religious conflicts that were affecting the whole of Britain at the time.

At the spectacular Inverlochy Castle just outside Fort William, Michie meets local historian Roddy Mainland and learns about the charismatic Marquis of Montrose. One of the first men to sign the Act of Covenant, in defiance of the monarchy’s meddling with the Scottish Church, he switched sides and led the royalist army to its victory at the second Battle of Inverlochy in 1645, when over a thousand of his enemy were slaughtered.

The journey then goes north to the Great Glen, the physical boundary between the highlands and lowlands and the route where the world’s first cowboys, the cattle drovers, took their herds south to market. Returning to Fort William, Michie reveals the complex wrangling that went on with the monarchy of Britain in the second half of the 17th century, when the Stewart line was deposed in the Civil Wars that raged on both sides of the border.

We hear how Oliver Cromwell and his army occupied parts of the highlands and how the people rose up against him and the south, leading to the beginnings of the Jacobite movement.

Michie ends in the spectacular location of Glencoe, most famous for the Massacre of the MacDonalds in 1689. He meets local National Trust for Scotland guide, Abi Wylde, who clears up some of the myths surrounding this event, which continued to rouse the highlanders’ opposition to the southern monarchy.