Geography of Scotland Stirling. The 2001 census identified Glasgow as being the largest city in Scotland, with a total population of 629,501, while the Scottish capital, Edinburgh had a population of 448,624, in the same year. Between 1991 and 2001, the populations of Edinburgh and Stirling grew by 2.9% and 6.5% respectively. Inverness experienced population growth of over 10% during the same period. At the same time, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen all witnessed population decline. Aside from the cities, the greatest intra-census population growth was experienced in the local authorities of West Lothian, East Lothian, Aberdeenshire and Perth and Kinross. The Western Isles
Scotland in the Middle Ages had been established by the end of the fifteenth century. While some historians have discerned a decline of monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, the mendicant orders of friars grew, particularly in the expanding burghs, to meet the spiritual needs of the population. New saints and cults of devotion also proliferated. Despite problems over the number and quality of clergy after the Black Death in the fourteenth century, and some evidence of heresy in this period, the church in Scotland remained relatively stable before the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Modern Scotland is half the size England and Wales in