On April 4th, 1689, a Convention of the Estates of Scotland met to
consider the new situation which had been created by the course of
events in England. They had no difficulty in determining their course of
action, nor any scruples about deposing James, who was declared to have
forfeited his right to the crown. A list was drawn up of the king's
misdeeds. They included "erecting schools and societies of Jesuits,
making papists officers of state", taxation and the maintenance of a
standing army without consent of Parliament, illegal imprisonments,
fines, and forfeitures, and interference with the charters of burghs.
The crown was then offered to William and Mary, but upon certain
strictly defined conditions. All the acts of the late king which were
included in the list of his offences must be recognized as illegal: no
Roman Catholic might be King or Queen of Scotland; and the new
sovereigns must agree to the re-establishment of Presbytery as the
national religion. It was obvious that the nation was not unanimous.
"To the Lords of Convention, 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
Ere the King's crown go down there are crowns to be broke."
The
opponents of the revolution settlement consisted mainly of the old
Royalist and Episcopalian party, the representatives of those who had
followed Montrose to victory, and the supporters of the Restoration
Government. As the Great Rebellion had made Royalists of the Scottish
Episcopalians, so the Revolution could not but convert them into
Jacobites. Their leader was James Graham of Claverhouse, who retreated
from Edinburgh to the north to prepare for a campaign against the new
government. The discontent was not confined to the Episcopalian party.
Such Roman Catholics as there were in Scotland at the time were prepared
to take up arms for a Stuart king who was a devout adherent of their
religion. Moreover, the Presbyterians themselves were not united. A
party which was to grow in strength, and which now included a
considerable number of extreme Presbyterians, still longed, in spite of
their experience of Charles II, for a covenanted king, and looked with
great distrust upon William and Mary. The triumphant party of moderate
Presbyterians, who probably represented most faithfully the feeling of
the nation, acted throughout with considerable wisdom. The acceptance of
the crown converted the Convention into a Parliament, and the Estates
set themselves to obtain, in the first place, their own freedom from the
tyranny of the committee known as the "Lords of the Articles", through
which James VI and his successors had kept the Parliament in
subjection. William was unwilling to lose entirely this method of
controlling his new subjects, but he had to give way. The Parliament
rescinded the Act of Charles II asserting his majesty's supremacy "over
all persons and in all causes ecclesiastical" as "inconsistent with the
establishment of Church government now desired", but, in the military
crisis which threatened them, they proceeded no further than to bring in
an Act abolishing Prelacy and all superiority of office in the Church of
Scotland.
While William's first Parliament was debating, his
enemies were entering upon a struggle which was destined to be brief.
Edinburgh Castle held out for King James till June 14th, 1689, when its
captain, the Duke of Gordon, capitulated. Graham of Claverhouse, now
Viscount Dundee, had collected an army of Highlanders, against whom
William sent General Mackay, a Scotsman who had served in Holland.
Mackay followed Dundee through the Highlands to Elgin and on to
Inverness, and finally, after
many wanderings, the two armies met in
the pass of Killiecrankie. Dundee
and his Highlanders were victorious,
but Dundee himself was killed in
the battle, and his death proved a
fatal blow to the Jacobite cause.
After some delay Mackay was able to
attain the object for which the
battle had been fought--the possession
of Blair Athole Castle. The
military resistance soon came to an end.
The ecclesiastical settlement followed the suppression of the
rebellion. The deprivation of nonjuring clergymen had been proceeding
since the establishment of the new Government, and in 1690 an act was
passed restoring to their parishes the Presbyterian clergy who had been
ejected under Charles II. A small temporary provision was made for their
successors, who were now, in turn, expelled. On the 26th May, 1690, the
Parliament adopted the Confession of Faith, although it refused to be
committed to the Covenant. The Presbyterian form of Church government
was established; but King William succeeded in maintaining some check on
the General Assembly, and toleration was granted to such Episcopalian
dissenters as were willing to take the oath of allegiance. On the other
hand, acceptance of the Confession of Faith was made a test for
professors in the universities. The changes were carried out with little
disturbance to the peace, there was no blood spilt, and except for some
rough usage of Episcopalians in the west (known as the "rabbling of the
curates"), there was nothing in the way of outrage or insult. The credit
of the settlement belongs to William Carstares, afterwards Principal of
the University of Edinburgh, whose tact and wisdom overcame many
difficulties.
The personal union of Scotland and England had
created no special difficulties while both countries were under the
rule of an absolute monarch. The policy of both was alike, because it
was guided by one supreme ruler. But the accession of a constitutional
king, with a parliamentary title, at once created many problems
difficult of solution, and made a more complete union absolutely
necessary. The Union of 1707 was thus the natural consequence of the
Revolution of 1689,although, at the time of the Revolution, scrupulous
care was taken, alike by the new king and by his English Parliament, to
recognize the existence of Scotland as a separate kingdom. The Scottish
Parliament, which regarded itself as the ruler of the country, found
itself hampered and restricted by William's action. It was allowed no
voice on questions of foreign policy, and its conduct of home affairs
met with not infrequent interference, which roused the indignation of
Scottish politicians, and especially of the section which followed
Fletcher of Saltoun. Several causes combined to add to the unpopularity
which William had acquired through the occasional friction with the
Parliament. Scotland had ceased to have any interest in the war, and its
prolongation constituted a standing grievance, of which the partisans of
the Stuarts were not slow to avail themselves.
There were two
events, in particular, which roused widespread resentment
in Scotland.
These were the Massacre of Glencoe, and the failure of the
scheme for
colonizing the Isthmus of Darien. The story of Glencoe has
been often
told. The 31st December, 1691, had been appointed as the
latest day on
which the government would receive the submission of the
Highland
chiefs. MacDonald of Glencoe delayed till the last moment, and
then
proceeded to Fort-William, where a fortress had just been erected,
to
take the oath in the presence of its commander, who had no power to
receive it. From Fort-William he had to go to Inverary, to take the oath
before the sheriff of Argyll, and he did so on the 6th January, 1692.
The six days' delay placed him and his clan in the power of men who were
unlikely to show any mercy to the name of MacDonald. Acting under
instructions from King William, the nature of which has been matter of
dispute, Campbell of Glenlyon, acting with the knowledge of Breadalbane
and Sir John Dalrymple of Stair, the Secretary of State, and as their
tool, entered the pass of Glencoe on the 1st February, 1692. The
MacDonalds, trusting in the assurances which had been given by the
Government, seem to have suspected no evil from this armed visit of
their traditional enemies, the Campbells, and received them with
hospitality. While they were living peaceably, all possible retreat was
being cut off from the unfortunate MacDonalds by the closing of the
passes, and on the 13th effect was given to the dastardly scheme. It
failed, however, to achieve its full object--the extirpation of the
clan. Many escaped to the hills; but the chief himself and over thirty
others were murdered in cold blood. The news of the massacre roused a
fierce flame of indignation, not only in the Highlands, but throughout
the Lowlands as well, and the Jacobites did not fail to make use of it.
A commission was appointed to enquire into the circumstances, and it
severely censured Dalrymple, and charged Breadalbane with treason, while
many blamed, possibly unjustly, the king himself.
The other
grievance was of a different nature. About 1695, William
Paterson, the
founder of the Bank of England, suggested the formation of
a Scottish
company to trade to Africa and the Indies. It was originally
known as
the African Company, but it was destined to be popularly
remembered by
the name of its most notable failure--the Darien Company.
It received
very full powers from the Scottish Parliament, powers of
military
colonization as well as trading privileges. These powers
aroused great
jealousy and indignation in England, and the House of
Commons decided
that, as the company had its headquarters in London, the
directors were
guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours. There followed a
failure of
the English capital on which the promoters had reckoned, but
shares to
the value of L400,000 (on which L219,094 was paid up) were
subscribed
in Scotland. At first the company was a prosperous trading
concern, but
its only attempt at colonization involved it in ruin.
Paterson wished
his fellow-countrymen to found a colony in the Isthmus
of Panama, and
to attract thither the whole trade of North and South
America. The
ports of the colony were to be open to ships of all
nations. In the end
of 1698 twelve hundred Scots landed on the shore of
the Gulf of Darien,
without organization and without the restraint of
responsibility to any
government. They soon had difficulties with their
Spanish neighbours,
and the English colonists at New York, Barbadoes,
and Jamaica were
warned to render them no assistance. Disease and famine
completed the
tale of misery, and the first colonists deserted their
posts. Their
successors, who arrived to find empty huts, surrounded by
lonely
Scottish graves, were soon in worse plight, and they were driven
out by
a band of Spaniards. The unfortunate company lingered on for some
time,
but merely as traders. The Scots blamed the king's ill-will for
their
failure, and he became more than ever unpopular in Scotland. The
moral
of the whole story was that only through the corporate union of
the two
countries could trade jealousies and the danger of rival schemes
of
colonization be avoided.
In the reign of Charles II the Scots, who
felt keenly the loss of the
freedom of trade which they had enjoyed
under Cromwell, had themselves
broached the question of union, and
William had brought it forward at
the beginning of his reign. It was,
however, reserved for his successor
to see it carried. In March, 1702,
the king died. The death of "William
II", as his title ran in the
kingdom of Scotland, was received with a
feeling amounting almost to
satisfaction. The first English Parliament
of Queen Anne agreed to the
appointment of commissioners to discuss
terms of union, and the Estates
of Scotland chose representatives to
meet them. But the English refused
to give freedom of trade, and so the
negotiations broke down. In reply,
the Scottish Parliament removed the
restrictions on the import of wines
from France, with which country
England was now at war. In the summer
of 1703 the Scots passed an Act of
Security, which invested the
Parliament with the power of the crown in
case of the queen's dying
without heirs, and entrusted to it the choice
of a Protestant sovereign
"from the royal line". It refused to such king
or queen, if also
sovereign of England, the power of declaring war or
making peace
without the consent of Parliament, and it enacted that the
union of the
crowns should determine after the queen's death unless
Scotland was
admitted to equal trade and navigation privileges with
England.
Further, the act provided for the compulsory training of every
Scotsman
to bear arms, in order that the country might, if necessary,
defend its
independence by the sword. The queen's consent to the Act of
Security
was refused, and the bitterness of the national feeling was
accentuated
by the suspicion of a Jacobite plot. Parliament had been
adjourned on
16th September, 1703. When it met in 1704 it again passed
the Act of
Security, and an important section began to argue that the
royal assent
was merely a usual form, and not an indispensable
authentication of an
act. For some time, it seemed as if the two
countries were on the brink
of war. But, as the union of the crowns had
been rendered possible by
the self-restraint of a nation who could
accept their hereditary enemy
as their hereditary sovereign, so now
Queen Anne's advisers resolved,
with patient wisdom, to secure, at all
hazards, the union of the
kingdoms.
It was not an easy task, even in England, for there could
be no union without complete freedom of trade, and many Englishmen were
most unwilling to yield on this point. In Scotland the difficulties to
be overcome were much greater. The whole nation, irrespective of
politics and religion, felt bitterly the indignity of surrendering the
independent existence for which Scotland had fought for four hundred
years. It could not but be difficult to reconcile an ancient and
high-spirited people to incorporation with a larger and more powerful
neighbour, and the whole population mourned the approaching loss of
their Parliament and their autonomy. Almost every section had special
reasons for opposing the measure. For the Jacobites an Act of Union
meant that Scotland was irretrievably committed to the Hanoverian
succession, and whatever force the Jacobites might be able to raise
after the queen's death must take action in the shape of a rebellion
against the _de facto_ government. It deprived them of all hope of
seizing the reins of power, and of using the machinery of government in
Scotland for the good of their cause--a _coup d'etat_ of which the Act
of Security gave considerable chance. On this very account the
triumphant Presbyterians were anxious to carry the union scheme, and the
correspondence of the Electress Sophia proves that the negotiations for
union were looked upon at Hanover as solely an important factor in the
succession controversy. But the recently re-established Presbyterian
Church of Scotland regarded with great anxiety a union with an
Episcopalian country, and hesitated to place their dearly won freedom at
the mercy of a Parliament the large majority of whom were Episcopalians.
The more extreme Presbyterians, and especially the Cameronians of the
west, were bitterly opposed to the project. They protested against
becoming subject to a Parliament in whose deliberations the English
bishops had an important voice, and against accepting a king who had
been educated as a Lutheran, and they clamoured for covenanted
uniformity and a covenanted monarch. By a curious irony of fate, the
Scottish Episcopalians were forced by their Jacobite leanings to act
with the extreme Presbyterians, and to oppose the scheme of amalgamation
with an Episcopalian country. The legal interest was strongly against a
proposal that might reduce the importance of Scots law and of Scottish
lawyers, while the populace of Edinburgh were furious at the suggestion
of a union, whose result must be to remove at once one of the glories of
their city and a valuable source of income. There was still another body
of opponents. The reign of William had been remarkable for the rise of
political parties. The two main factions were known as Williamites and
Cavaliers, and in addition to these there had grown up a Patriot or
Country party. It was brought into existence by the enthusiasm of
Fletcher of Saltoun, and it was based upon an antiquarian revival which
may be compared with the mediaeval attempts to revive the Republic of
Rome. The aim of the patriots was to maintain the independence of
Scotland, and they attempted to show that the Scottish crown had never
been under feudal obligations to England, and that the Scottish
Parliament had always possessed sovereign rights, and could govern
independently of the will of the monarch. They were neither Jacobites
nor Hanoverians; but they held that if the foreign domination, of which
they had complained under William, were to continue, it mattered little
whether it emanated from St. Germains or from the Court of St. James's,
and they had combined with the Jacobites to pass the Act of Security.
Such was the complicated situation with which the English Government
had to deal. Their first step was to advise Queen Anne to assent to the
Actof Security, and so to conserve the dignity and _amour propre_ of
the Scottish Parliament. Commissioners were then appointed to negotiate
fora union. No attempt was made to conciliate the Jacobites, for no
attempt could have met with any kind of success. Nor did the
commissioners make any effort to satisfy the more extreme
Presbyterians, who sullenly
refused to acknowledge the union when it
became an accomplished fact,
and who remained to hamper the Government
when the Jacobite troubles
commenced. An assurance that there would be
no interference with the Church of Scotland as by law established, and
a guarantee that the universities would be maintained in their _status
quo_, satisfied the moderate Presbyterians, and removed their scruples.
Unlike James VI and Cromwell, the advisers of Queen Anne declared their
intention of preserving the independent Scots law and the independent
Scottish courts of justice, and these guarantees weakened the arguments
of the Patriot party. But above all the English proposals won the
support of the ever-increasing commercial interest in Scotland by
conceding freedom of trade in a complete form. They agreed that "all
parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain be under the same
regulations, prohibitions,
and restrictions, and liable to equal
impositions and duties for export
and import". The adjustment of
financial obligations was admitted to
involve some injustice to
Scotland, and an "equivalent" was allowed, to
compensate for the
responsibility now accruing to Scotland in connection
with the English
National Debt. It remained to adjust the representation
of Scotland in
the united Parliament. It was at first proposed to allow
only
thirty-eight members, but the number was finally raised to
forty-five.
Thirty of these represented the shires. Each shire was to
elect one
representative, except the three groups of Bute and Caithness,
Clackmannan and Kinross, and Nairn and Cromarty. In each group the
election was made alternately by the two counties. Thus Bute,
Clackmannan, and Nairn each sent a member in 1708, and Caithness,
Kinross, and Cromarty in 1710. The device is sufficiently unusual to
deserve mention. The burghs were divided into fifteen groups, each of
which was given one member. In this form, after considerable difficulty,
the act was carried both in Scotland and in England. It was a union much
less extensive than that which had been planned by James VI or that
which had been in actual force under Cromwell. The existence of a
separate Church, governed differently from the English Establishment,
and the maintenance of a separate legal code and a separate judicature
have helped to preserve some of the national characteristics of the
Scots. Not for many years did the union become popular in Scotland, and
not for many years did the two nations become really united. It might,
in fact, be said that the force of steam has accomplished what law has
failed to do, and that the real incorporation of Scotland with England
dates from the introduction of railways.
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