Scotland the Brief

Part 1: The Community of the Realm
9 Union

All this time, the might of France had been increasing, directed by Louis XIV and his ministers as the prototype of enlightened despotism in some ways the natural outcome of Hobbess ideas. But France, in its unified state, was about twice the size of Great Britain. In the latter Ireland, its Catholics crushed after the campaigns of 1688-90, was fairly quiescent, but Scotland was not. There was the risk that it would resume an independent foreign policy, fuelled by the resentments the Darien failure generated, and offer France a way in by the back door.

On the other hand, Darien left many like Paterson believing that formal parliamentary union with England offered the best way out. It wasnt as if their own Parliament offered all that much to the Scots. Its electorate was tiny, compared to that of England (where some constituencies almost had a democratic male franchise): a few score freeholders in each county, and town councils who nominated their own successors. Perhaps 4500 in all, out of nearly two million.

There were alternatives: the Kirk had its General Assembly, meeting every year for three weeks (or as long as a German provincial Diet): in charge of poor relief and education, and general social discipline. The universities were independent, and lawyers had their own governing body in the Faculty of Advocates. The towns had the Convention of Royal Burghs, which also controlled overseas economic policy as it managed the Staple at Veere. Parliament, under the Lords of the Articles, hadnt been allowed to interfere with any of these. Should it now be allowed to do so?

The people who did have a surfeit of autonomy were the nobles, who had thrived as the Stewart monarchy had declined. The Douglas Dukes of Hamilton, the Campbell Dukes of Argyll, possessed monarch-like privileges which could not be brought under the purview of London ministers. Since it was evident that Queen Anne, daughter of William and Mary, was unlikely to produce an heir, attention focused on the next-in-line, the Elector of Hanover, descended from James Is daughter Elizabeth, the Winter Queen. Unimpressive standard-issue German royals, they had only legitimacy in their favour. So the Scottish MPs and more importantly the noblemen who sat with them in the unicameral parliament, had to be brought to London, by stuffing their mouths with gold, and ensuring that the Commissioners who were to negotiate the Treaty were pliable.

But this wouldnt have been sufficient. What mattered to the non-noble elites, the burgesses and the lawyers and the Kirk, was that their positions would be guaranteed. It was obvious that they would have to be won over: by access to English colonies and naval protection, compensation for Darien losses, subsidies to the linen industry and to coastal fishing. Significantly, the economic clauses of the Treaty were passed by greater majorities than the other parts.

There was in fact little enthusiasm for the treaty on either the Scots or the English side. It was quickly betrayed as a fundamental law (as the Scots liked to think of it) when the Scottish Privy Council was abolished in 1711, followed by a Patronage Act which subjected the Kirk to the control of the local heritors or principal landowners. It was nearly revoked by the Westminster parliament after less than a decade; one of its chief Scots advocates, the Earl of Mar, became a Jacobite. What it did imply, however, were important alterations in London politics. It was a significant strengthening of the Commons, and whoever managed them, over the Lords and of Parliament over the Court, something which underlay the long rule of Sir Robert Walpole, Britains first effective Prime Minister, and his Scottish henchman Alexander Campbell, Duke of Argyll.