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AT the death of Alexander
III. in 1286 Scotland made territorially one country; the first of
Scottish kings, Alexander ruled in fact, as well as in name, from the
Pentland Firth to the Solway. His own special achievement had been not
only to rule the mainland with a firm hand, but to add the Hebrides and
even the Isle of Man to the territory he had inherited. It had taken
well-nigh eight centuries to complete the work of consolidation to which
Alexander put the finishing touch—a work that had its origin about the
beginning of the sixth century, when in the modern Argyleshire a band of
Celts from Ireland founded the Dalriadic Kingdom. Some two centuries and
a half elapse, and one kingdom is formed to the north of the Forth , by
the union of the Picts and Scots under Kenneth Macalpine; and within two
centuries more one king nominally ruled over the whole mainland of
Scotland. It was in 1018 that this end was achieved; and the whole
intervening period between that date and the accession of Alexander III.
had been needed to make Scotland a territorial unit. It was a great work
that had been accomplished, and, with the exception of England, no other
country in Europe had attained a similar degree of territorial cohesion.
But though Scotland was territorially one, it would be an abuse of words
to speak of it as a nation. The bond of common memories, common hopes
and aspirations, which is requisite to the evolution of a national
consciousness, did not and could not yet exist. The heterogeneous
elements that composed its population had only the tradition of mutual
estrangement or hereditary hostility. Located in different regions and
speaking different tongues, what common interests could exist between
the Briton of Strathclyde, the Gael of the Highlands, and the Saxon of
Lothian ? Of all the countries in Western Europe, indeed, there were
none where greater obstacles existed to prevent the formation of a
united people than in Scotland. Diverse races, diverse tongues, a land
by its distribution of mountain, river, and sea almost destined by
nature to permanent regional division—such were some of the impediments
to be overcome before a nation in an>' real sense of the term could take
shape and consistency within its boundaries. The process, it is evident,
must needs be a protracted one, and, as in al! human evolution, what we
call accident must play a large part in it. However inherent and
powerful the tendency towards unity, events over which the incipient
nation had no control might intervene and dash the fair prospect of
national growth. The object of the present lecture is to trace the
growth of a national consciousness in the Scottish people, and to note
the main causes that forwarded or impeded it.
In the development of nations there is of necessity much that is common
to all of them. The same common instincts of human nature must
everywhere be at work, and in the case of a society like that of Western
Christendom similar agencies must have gone to the common result. Under
the regime of feudalism and the medieval church, the different countries
possessed common institutions, were informed by common ideals, and by
community of interests were borne unconsciously onward to the same goal.
Though in the evolution of national consciousness, however, there was
thus a general uniformity, there were peculiarities in the process which
constitute the essential difference between the national history of one
country and another, and like other countries Scotland had a development
specifically its own. It must be our object in the present discussion,
therefore, to note at onpe what was common to Scotland with other
countries in their respective national developments, and what was
peculiar to herself in her national growth.
Amid the disasters that fell so thick on the country after the death of
Alexander III., the most far-sighted contemporary could only have
predicted the undoing of the work that had been accomplished by that
king and the long line of his predecessors. As the history of the
previous century had shown, it was only under such strong and sagacious
rulers as David I. and the last two Alexanders that the heterogeneous
elements of the kingdom could be held together. On the death of
Alexander III. there followed the extinction of a dynasty, a disputed
succession in the most aggravated form, and a war for bare existence
against a foreign invader. In all human probability the result must be
either the absorption of the kingdom by its hereditary enemy and rival,
or its relapse into the original elements that composed it. From both of
these dangers it had in reality the narrowest escape. Alexander had
hardly been dead before civil war broke out. Robert Bruce, Lord of
Annandale, who claimed the Crown on the ground of nomination and
descent, sought to make good his claim by the sword, but it is
impossible to imagine that in the existing circumstances he could ever
have established himself as the acknowledged King of Scots. The
intervention of Edward I. had at least this immediate result—it arrested
civil war and for the time prevented national disintegration. The
grandson of the Lord of zlnnandale, the hero-king Robert I., succeeded
in making himself sole ruler of the kingdom, but it was only his own
remarkable career and the new experience the country had undergone that
had made this consummation possible. In the war of deliverance which he
carried to so glorious a conclusion, the various sections of the
Scottish people were drawn together by common interests, which in large
degree modified hereditary antagonisms, and disposed them to find a
common head. The greatness of Bruce’s achievement placed him in a
position which left no opening for a successful rival, and through
constraint or self-interest or affection the majority of the people
recognised in him the only safeguard against internecine war and a
foreign enemy.
But if there had been the narrowest risk of dismemberment, there had
been an equally narrow risk of absorption by England. Had Edward II.
been cast in the mould of his father, and had Edward III. not been
diverted by other schemes of conquest, Scotland must either have bled to
death or reluctantly r surrendered her independence.
As it was, she emerged from the long struggle an independent and a
united kingdom. Her material loss had been great. For a full century and
a half after the War of Independence the Scottish people cast regretful
eyes backward to the golden age of Alexander III. But if the material
sacrifice had been disastrous, the spiritual gain was an adequate
compensation. ‘ A people without an epopee,’ says Goethe, ‘ can never
become
\Like a wild flower
All over hie dear country,’
and his deeds, he goes on to say, created
‘A local soul
Of independence and itern liberty.’
Such was the impression Wordsworth gained from his tour in Scotland in
1814, and his words fitly describe the moral and spiritual gain of the
War of Independence. In a degree far beyond what she had been in the
prosperous days of Alexander III., Scotland had now become a united
people, with the common traditions and aspirations which go to form a
national consciousness.
Even yet, however, Scotland could hardly be described as a nation in the
sense in which we now understand the term. In the conditions of society,
as they then existed in every country of Christendom, there were
inherent forces at work which inevitably tended to hold apart the
constituent elements of any people and to prevent their fusion into a
uniform whole. Of these separative forces the chief were the conditions
imposed by the feudal system and by the economic conditions of trade and
commerce. Within his own domain each feudal lord was a petty king, who
for the most part regarded his neighbours as his natural rivals or
enemies. As were his own feelings, so were those of all dependent on
him. They virtually composed a self-subsistent society with little
concern in the gi eater world around them. Such law and justice as were
to be had were mainly administered by their feudal superior; and the
necessaries of life were found in the cultivation of his domains. So
long, therefore, as a country was subdivided among such isolated
societies, the close national union that can only come of
interdependence was practically unattainable.
If the dwellers in the country districts were thus held apart by the
conditions of feudal tenure, the towns were equally much worth,’ and
Scotland now possessed the materials of an epopee which in due time was
to become a national possession. First the deeds of Bruce were
commemorated in the soberly-imaginative poem of Barbour, and at a later
date Wallace was transfigured by Blind Harry with the lineaments and
proportions requisite to make a historic personage pass into the popular
imagination. Wallace, says Wordsworth, left his name isolated by the
conditions of trade and commerce. A conclusive proof of this fact is
that every town of any consequence was surrounded by a line of defence,
which it was one of the chief duties of the citizens to maintain in an
effective state of repair. These lines of defence, it is to be noted,
served a double purpose. They provided security against actual violence—
violence from rival towns, from neighbouring feudal potentates, from
foreign invaders. In the present connection, however, it is more
important to note the second object which they served. By the conditions
under which the mediaeval towns had grown up, each to a large degree was
an independent centre, living its own life, and disposed to regard every
similar community as a rival or rather as an enemy. The reason for this
attitude is simple. At one time or other the town had received certain
trading privileges from its superior—king, ecclesiastic, or feudal
lord—and on the conservation of these privileges its existence and
prosperity depended. It would be irrelevant to discuss the nature and
origin of these privileges, and it is sufficient to note for our present
purpose that the lines of defence that surrounded the towns were
indispensable for their preservation. At the different gates in the wall
or dyke every stranger could be questioned as to the motives that
brought him there. If he was suspected of any intention of infringing
the town privileges, he was either refused admittance or placed under
proper surveillance. Only on one occasion did the townsmen freely open
their arms to all and sundry. At the annual fair all barriers were
thrown down, and absolute freedom of trade prevailed so long as it
lasted. Among the forces that made for national as opposed to municipal
ends, therefore, these fairs must be assigned their due place. In
Scotland, as in other countries, every town of any consequence had the
right of holding its fair either by royal grant or immemorial
prescription. As on the occasion of its celebration merchants and
traders flocked to the town from every part of the kingdom, it was then
borne in upon its citizens that they formed part of a larger whole in
which all had a common interest. Still the normal attitude of every
citizen was that his own community was an isolated society surrounded by
dangerous rivals against whose encroachment he must ever be on his
guard. Such being the relations of every town in the kingdom to each
other, it is evident that the growth of a national consciousness in the
most enterprising portion of the inhabitants of every country must of
necessity be a slow and gradual process. Till new economic conditions
arose, in fact, collective endeavour was impossible, and a
fully-developed nation could not in the nature of things be formed. In
due time, as we shall see, these new conditions did arise, and Scotland,
like its neighbours, did not fail to prurit by them.
These obstacles to the growth of national feeling—the isolating
tendencies of feudalism and of trade—were common to Scotland and all
other countries. But there were other impeding forces which in her case
were of special significance. From the nature of her climate and surface
intercommunication was attended with peculiar difficulties. The
construction and maintenance of roads implied an amount of labour and
expense far beyond what was necessary in such countries as England and
France. In no country in the Middle Ages were the roads such as to
render communication an easy matter, but in Scotland, with its
obstructing mountains, rivers, and bogs, they were practically
impassable during a great portion of the year But without rapid and
frequent intercommunication, the intercourse necessary to weld a people
into a united whole was impossible, and not till past the middle of the
eighteenth century can this obstacle be said to have been tolerably
overcome.
But besides these physical impediments there were other hindrances to
national fusion which formed a special difficulty in the case of
Scotland. Though acknowledging a common head, the various portions of
which the kingdom was composed continued to be inhabited by distinct
peoples speaking different tongues.
Between the natives of the wide district of Galloway, the Gael of the
Highlands, and the Teuton of Lothian and the Eastern coast, there could
be little community of feeling, few palpable common interests, and
except on rare occasions of general peril but little united action
towards a common end. In the case of Galloway, the wild nature of the
country and the fighting instincts of its people, perpetuated by the
rivalries of the clans who divided its territory among them, long
availed to hold it apart from the main stream of national development.
Even into the fifteenth century Galloway was governed by laws of its
own, and till the beginning of the eighteenth it clung to the Celtic
language, which it had inherited from before the days of St. Columba.
Still more estranging were the conditions of the Highland section of the
kingdom. Of wider extent and still more inaccessible from its natural
features, the region of the Highlands seemed destined by nature to
independence. In greater degree than Galloway, its inhabitants had a
tradition of hostility toward the Lowlands which only the slow growth of
time and the pervasive influences of modern civilisation have been able
to overcome. Till the opening of the fifteenth century the Lords of the
Isles regarded themselves as independent sovereigns, and made common
cause with England against their nominal head the King of Scots.
Such were some of the forces that made against the development of a
united Scottish people. Yet, as the issue was to prove, the centripetal
tendencies must have been more powerful than those that made for
decentralisation. First we have to note that in all the countries that
made up Christendom there had from the beginning been a tendency towards
the formation of distinct kingdoms, ruled by one head, and inhabited by
peoples bound by ever-strengthening ties of common interest. For special
reasons, which need not now be considered, Italy and Germany were
exceptions to the general rule, but by the close of the fifteenth
century three great kingdoms, France, Spain, and England, had been
formed on the same general lines of development. As an integral part of
Christendom, Scotland had been subjected to the same influences as these
other countries. Consciously and unconsciously, therefore, she was
pushing for the same goal. From the War of Independence onwards she had
been more or less in the current of European politics, and this was in
itself a powerful stimulus towards the national unity which alone could
give her a voice in the general affairs of Europe.
Among the unifying influences that went to create distinct nations, that
exercised by the Church can hardly be exaggerated. In the case of
Scotland the teaching of the Church was almost the sole common influence
to which its people were subjected. Trade and commerce, in the Middle
Ages, as we have seen, were separative as well as unifying agencies ;
but such powers as the Church exerted were wholly in the direction of
cohesion. From the teaching of its religion, by the ministry of its
officials, the Gael was taught that he was of the same flesh as the
Saxon, that he was placed in the world for the same purpose, and that
the same final destiny was the lot of both. By the organisation of the
Church, which bound in a common whole the length and breadth of the
kingdom, the idea of unity was brought home to every subject with a
force and persuasiveness which no other agency could exert to the same
degree. The parish church, with its ministrants, was at once the symbol
of unity, and the most effective factor in enforcing it.
In England national unity had been greatly furthered by the development
of its representative assembly; to the Parliament of Scotland, on the
other hand, a similar degree of influence cannot be attributed. At no
time were the Scottish people greatly exercised regarding the privileges
of their representative assembly; and it was only on occasions when
their own interests were specially involved that the sovereign and
nobles manifested any lively desire to improve its constitution. During
the fifteenth century, when its constituent parts were fully developed,
the Scottish Parliament had but little prestige and little real
importance ; and for two excellent reasons. Through the weakness of the
Crown it became the mere tool of successive factions; and through the
weakness of the executive its laws were made only to be set at nought.
To the Scottish Parliament, therefore, we can assign but a subsidiary
part in the moulding of the Scottish nation.
After the Church as a power tending to unity is probably to be reckoned
the administration of law and justice. When it was brought home to the
Highlander that he must seek justice from the Sheriffs’ Courts at
Dingwall and Tarbert, and to the Lowlander that he must seek it in
Edinburgh, Perth, and Aberdeen, he realised that he was part of a great
mechanism, with the working of w'hich he must find himself in harmony.
It was the misfortune of Scotland, however, that the royal judicatories
were permanently enfeebled by a weak executive; and thus was lost that
confidence in a central source of justice which makes so large a
composite in what we call a national consciousness.
Great public events, involving the welfare of a whole people, must also
play a chief part in national development. For a century and a half
after the War of Independence, however, there was hardly an outstanding
event that exercised a powerful influence in invigorating national
sentiment. No great movement absorbed the mind of the people; and no
public calamity or triumph set their hearts beating in unison with
common fear or exultation. In the protracted struggle between the Crown
and the nobility, which is the dominant characteristic of the period,
there was little to stimulate patriotism or to bind in closer union the
different sections of the kingdom. To the people in general it was
indifferent which faction gained a temporary ascendency, though the
debasement of the coinage by James III. appears to have evoked a popular
feeling which strengthened the successive rebellions against his
authority. There was, indeed, one permanent feeling in the breasts of
the Scottish people which must be reckoned among the most effectual
influences in fusing them into a nation. Since the War of Independence
England had never lost sight of its aim of re-attaching the country
which had once been in its grasp. Its own troubles had prevented the
repetition of the concentrated attempts of Edward I.; but persistently,
though intermittently, almost every English king had shown that he only
wanted the opportunity to repeat Edward’s work. Hatred and fear of an
inveterate and formidable enemy, therefore, were feelings shared by the
great mass of the Scottish people, and which were bound to strengthen
the sentiment of a common nationality. The animating motive of Blind
Harry’s poem, produced at the close of the fifteenth century, is sheer
detestation of England—a motive which finds expression even in Acts of
Parliament and other documents of the period.
With the opening of the sixteenth century begins a new phase in the
development of the European countries. The new departure was due to the
widened scope of thought and action in almost every sphere of human
experience. In speculation the scholastic philosophy ceased to be a
living interest for the most active minds; before the century was long
begun Luther shook Christendom to its foundations; trade and commerce
passed under new laws and regulations, becoming national instead of
merely municipal concerns; and the very limits of the earth were
extended by the discovery of another hemisphere. Under the influence of
such facts and ideas individuals and peoples were quickened to a degree
of self-consciousness which had been impossible under the comparative
routine of the Middle Age. In different measures and by different
manifestations we see the vivifying forces at work in England, Spain,
and France—now consolidated kingdoms under the direction of virtually
absolute rulers. Isolated as she was by nature and circumstances,
Scotland could not share to the same extent as these countries in the
general movement that was ushering in the new time. Later in the
century, indeed, she had an experience of her own to pass through which
supplied the spiritual momentum requisite to reveal a people to itself
and give a direction to its destinies. Yet under James IV., at the
opening of the century, Scotland made a notable stride forward in
national development.
It was a fortunate dispensation that gave her a king like James at this
special period. Though somewhat lacking in the sense of royal
responsibility, he possessed many qualities that fitted him to govern a
people when novelties were in the air. Intelligent, curious, and
enterprising, he was peculiarly open to new ideas, and even unduly eager
to see them put in practice. The work he accomplished in consolidating
his kingdom gives him a notable place among our princes. Beyond any of
his predecessors, James succeeded in making the Highlands and Islands an
integral part of his dominion. He definitively broke the power of the
Lords of the Isles, thus ridding the Crown of a power that had been
virtually a formidable rival, and he reduced the Highlands generally to
a state of peace and order which they had never previously known. It has
just been said that one of the chief forces that tend to create a nation
is the sense of a supreme fountain of justice over which the prince is
the presiding divinity, and among our kings few did m re to deepen this
sense throughout every class of his subjects. He was indefatigable in
his attendance on the justice-eyres, by which justice was administered
at regular intervals throughout every quarter of the kingdom. Above all
he gave a local place and habitation to the Supreme Court of
Justice—known as the ‘Daily Council’—by virtually making Edinburgh its
permanent abode. And in passing, the significance of this step deserves
to be specially noted. Till the close of the fifteenth century Scotland
could hardly be said to have possessed a capital. Before that period
parliaments and conventions had met indifferently in the chief towns of
the kingdom as the exigencies of the moment had dictated. The kings,
also, had no fixed place of abode, and took up their residence wherever
state business or their own pleasure called them. Henceforward, however,
Edinburgh became the settled home of the sovereign; except on rare
occasions Parliament now met there; and there, as we have seen, James
fixed the head-quarters of law. The significance of this concentration
was that Scotland now possessed an acknowledged centre from which could
radiate all the inappreciable influences that bind a people to a common
goal and destiny. What the possession of an undisputed capital implied
for the growth of national feeling is abundantly proved in the history
of every country. We are now carefully warned against the use of
physical illustrations in reference to history, but it seems an innocent
analogy to compare the function of the capital in the body politic to
the function of the heart in the animal body.
In still another sphere of his activity James did an important work in
consolidating his kingdom, though, as the future was to show, it was a
work attended by unhappy as well as benign results. In the three
contemporary kingdoms—England, France, and Spain—there was an equally
marked endeavour on the part of their rulers to make themselves absolute
princes. Henry VIII., Francis I., and Charles V., all in greater or less
degree succeeded in achieving this object. The policy of James IV. shows
that he consciously aimed at the same result, and the history of his
reign proves that he in a great degree attained it. From the time that
he reached his majority he appears to have set himself to dispense with
Parliaments, and to govern through the Privy Council, which, though it
dates from David II., first took definite shape in James s own reign.
But, as the members of this Council were his own nominees, he thus made
himself virtually the uncontrolled master of his kingdom. The immediate
outcome of this policy was in the true interests of the country. The
great national evil of the preceding century had been the over-riding of
the Crown by the nobles, with the result that effective administration
and a consecutive public policy had been equally rendered impossible. In
these conditions the tendency towards national unity had been inevitably
checked and retarded. When James found himself in a position to govern
through a docile Privy Council, this evil came to a temporary end. From
the time that he reached manhood, the nobles ceased to play a leading
part in the affairs of the kingdom; and he is himself the one dominating
figure to his reign’s disastrous close. But though the immediate
consequences of his policy were beneficent, it was fraught with sinister
results for the future. It was the example of James IV. that inspired
James VI. and Charles I. in imposing their will on their subjects
through a Council which simply existed to register their behests.
Such were the important results of James’s rule in knitting his kingdom
to a closer unity. Yet of all the actions and events of his reign, it
was perhaps its closing disaster that most effectually served the happy
end. Such a calamity as that of Flodden has a power to evoke a
consentaneous national feeling which no other experience can produce. It
is the misfortunes of the household that bind its members in the closest
bonds of interest and affection, and, as all history shows, it is the
sense of common calamity that gives to a nation one heart and soul and
mind. On the field of Flodden, as we have been so often told, there was
hardly a family of name that did not lose father, brother, or son. From
the remotest Hebrides, from Highlands and Lowlands, the ill-starred host
had come, on an errand from which human foresight and ‘ metaphysical aid
’ seemed alike to dissuade the infatuated king, yet was it precisely
this sense of inevitable doom, combined with overwhelming disaster, that
gave the memory of Flodden an undying place in the heart and imagination
of the Scottish people.
The sobriquets by which James V. was known among his subjects—‘The
Gaberlunzie King,’ the *Red Tod,’ the ‘King of the Commons’—show that he
held a permanent place in their affections, but his public policy cannot
be said to have forwarded the work of consolidating the nation. His
reign saw the beginnings of a new chapter in the national history. A
fateful question was now presented to the country', the decision of
which must determine the direction of its future development. The
question was—what were to be its future relations to England and France
respectively? For more than two centuries England had been regarded as a
natural enemy, against whose insatiable cupidity Scotland must ever be
on its guard. As an ally against their common enemy she had cultivated
France, and the last fruit of the alliance had been the disaster of
Flodden. In the people at large that disaster had only intensified the
hereditary hatred of its instrument, but thinking men had already begun
to be of opinion that the time had come when a new policy would be in
the best interests of the country. John Major, the historian, and later
Sir David Lyndsay, the poet, both ‘kindly Scots,’ if ever there were
such, publicly argued that England and not France was Scotland’s natural
ally. Henry VIII.’s breach with Rome, however, at first seemed to put
reconciliation further off than ever, though, in the gyration of events,
it was to be the main cause of drawing the two countries together. James
V. had never any hesitation as to which of the two paths he should
follow. His first marriage with Magdalen of France and his second with
Mary of Lorraine committed not only himself but his successor Mary to
the hereditary policy of antagonism to England and alliance with France.
In this policy James had the sympathies of his people behind him, and
the character and conduct of Henry VIII. deepened the estrangement
between the two peoples. What we have to note in connection with our
present purpose, however, is that James had not inherited his father’s
gifts of conciliating or repressing a turbulent nobility. The
disgraceful affair of Solway Moss is the final commentary on his conduct
of affairs both at home and abroad. At the call of James IV. noble and
commoner had followed him across the English border; despite entreaties
and threats his son could not collect a force to attend him on a similar
adventure. In the opposition of the nobles, there were doubtless very
mixed motives, but the motive which they themselves put forward had its
ground in fact and reason; in their king’s eagerness to carry fire and
sword into England he was serving France better than his own kingdom.
At the death of James V. it might seem that Scotland was less a united
nation than it had been at the death of his father. In point of fact she
had but entered on one of those momentous crises in which a nation comes
to a full consciousness of itself, and with fully opened eyes chooses
the path which its instincts impel it to follow. The reign of Mary had
not well begun when her people had to face another dilemma besides that
of the French or English alliance. The choice between two policies was
complicated by the choice between two religions. With the details of the
revolution in policy and religion we are not here concerned. The
question before us is, in what manner and degree the double revolution
influenced the development of the people that carried it through.
The one governing fact is that for the first time in their history the
Scottish people had to determine a question which demanded the
forthputting of their whole heart and mind. But here it is well to
remember that when we speak of a nation we do not mean the number of
heads that make up the population. The nation of any country is that
section of the population which, by’ its capacity of thought and
feeling, by the strength of its convictions and the strenuousness of its
action, determines the main current of the general life and presents the
characteristics which specifically distinguish one nation from another.
Understood in this sense, the Scottish nation during the reign of Mary
consisted of a few thousands, mainly to be found in the chief towns of
the kingdom. On this elect few it devolved to-choose the course which
the whole people were to follow and to develop those national traits hy
which the Scottish character is known to the world. Rut of this chosen
number it was not to be expected that all would see eye to eye on the
momentous questions that were submitted to them. Some by natural
instinct favoured the old order, and wished to abide in the ways of
their fathers. To such it seemed the wisest and safest policy to hold by
the ancient religion and the traditional alliance, and not to venture on
courses which might lead no man knew whither. Wherever the new faith had
appeared, these persons argued— in France, in Germany, in England—civil
discord and revolution had been the invariable result. On the other
hand, the greater number of the select body of the people came to be of
a different mind. To them the teaching of the new religion appeared to
be a revelation from Heaven which no individual or nation could reject
without forfeiture both in this world and the next. But if the new faith
were to be adopted, it was with Protestant England and not with Catholic
France that the destinies of Scotland must be linked. It was in the
collision of thought and feeling between these two classes of persons
that a Scottish nation in the strict sense of the term became a real
entity, conscious of itself and with a destiny to fulfil. In the imbro
lio of the Reformation struggle we are apt to lose sight of this fact.
In the maze of statecraft and diplomacy we see only the failure and
success of one and another stroke of policy, and we are bewildered into
imagining that these were the determining factors in the final issue. In
point of fact, statesmen and diplomatists were but the conscious or
unconscious instruments of the new forces that were working in society,
and which were impelling the various peoples along the paths which
long-inherited instincts marked out for them. The French people, says
Michelet, would not have the Reformation; Scotland, on the other hand,
wished to have it; and the different choice of the two peoples is only
to be explained by their respective idiosyncrasies which had been
evolved in the long process of time.
The essential significance of the Scottish Reformation, therefore, is
that for the first time in our history we find a great question
submitted to a public opinion sufficiently developed to understand and
realise its importance. The result, as has been said, was a collision of
thought and feeling which evoked into clear day the latent instincts and
propensions which had been evolved in the past history of the people.
Character in the individual is formed in the conflict of warring
impulses, and so it is with nations. Whenever a nation attains to
selfconsciousness, the same phenomena invariably appear. If the nation
is truly alive, there will be division on fundamental questions; when
such division ceases, it implies that the nation has ceased to exist,
either through its own paralysis or the tyranny of external
circumstance.
The course of Scottish history subsequent to the Reformation is the
sufficient illustration of the foregoing remarks. During the century and
a half which elapsed from the Reformation to the Revolution, Scotland
was engaged in seeking a political equilibrium which had been disturbed
by the overthrow of the ancient religion. The successive sovereigns of
Scotland and the most strenuous section of their subjects held
incompatible views regarding the relations of Church and State, and as
each of the parties believed their opinions to be the absolute will of
God, compromise was impossible so long as this state of things endured.
But the very existence of such a permanent crisis is the proof that in
Scotland there now existed a nation in the strictest sense of the term.
In the period prior to the Reformation we have no parallel to the
situation that had been created by that event. Down to the middle of the
sixteenth century wc find occasional popular discontent and chronic
disputes between the Crown and the feudal lords, but we find no great
national question evoking a public opinion divided alike by reason and
passion; in other words, previous to the change of religion, Scotland
cannot be regarded as a nation in the true sense of the term. If we fix
our eyes on the most remarkable event in Scottish history during the
seventeenth century, we realise what in its fullest sense is implied in
the distinction. In the portentous uprising which produced the National
Covenant we find all the manifestations which characterise a national
act— unity of action determined by reason and passion towards a • fully
apprehended goal.
P. Hume Brown
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