The faultlines of Scottish politics go back a long way: historians are still arguing about the Union of Parliaments back in 1707 when the Scottish Parliament voted itself out of existence.
For some it was a pragmatic decision; for others it was a grave error. These controversies were argued over afresh at “1707: What Really Happened?” at Scotland’s History Festival last month.
Playwrights Tim Barrow and Jen McGregor read from Barrow’s play “Union” set in 1707. The scene dramatised the clash over the Treaty of Union between Lord Queensberry, who was a main proponent of the measure and steered it through Parliament, and Lord Hamilton, who led the opposition to it. Here is an excerpt from the scene, set in the “magnificent chamber of the Scottish Parliament”.
The panel were asked to talk about some of the key figures of the period. Journalist and historian Michael Fry said that the Nationalist peer Lord Belhaven represented the new kind of landlord unlike the aristocrats of the old, feudal Scotland. He was interested in commerce and in new inventions and wrote a book about agriculture and reformed farming methods.
Belhaven delivered a speech in Parliament after the Treaty vote that was published as a pamphlet and became famous. Fry talked about the exaggerated oratory and rhetorical flourishes of this speech in which Belhaven talked about “Mother Caledonia”, at one point pausing and saying he could not go on because of his emotions. He made Parliament wait, Fry said, “until he had finished peeling an onion.”
Professor Christopher Whatley replied that he had read a letter from Belhaven dated 1704 in which he voiced support for the agreement suggested at that time between England and Scotland over the succession when Queen Anne died. Subsequently, after the failure of the Darien Scheme and his own personal ambitions being thwarted, he changed sides.
False lessons of history
Whatley said he felt it was wrong for contemporary interpreters to see the debates of 1707 as Nationalists against Unionists and to compare them to the politics of the present day: the context was very different.
That era was one of enormous religious ferment and it was hard for us to understand now that there was a real fear of Roman Catholicism in Scotland at the time. Many Scottish Protestants were worried that if the Jacobites succeeded in restoring the Catholic Stuart family, they would face religious persecution. They saw Union with England as a way of protecting the Protestant faith.
Whatley said that for him the key figures of the period were the men of the New Party, aka the Squadrone Volante. These were politicians like George Baillie of Jerviswood and Sir Patrick Hume, First Earl of Marchmont. They were not aligned with either the Court or County parties of the time but in the end they gave their support to the Treaty. Their support was based on their assessment of the many hardships facing Scotland in days of “doom and gloom” and they had “agonised” over their support for the Union.
McGregor, whose play about the transgender witch finder Christian Caddell was read at the history festival, shed some light on the religious turmoil that had led to the large number of witch trials and executions in Scotland in the century leading up to Union.
She said that there was fear of both Roman Catholicism and of Anglicanism which many regarded as similar. The 17th century was an era of decade after decade of bad weather and bad harvests. Witches were a convenient scapegoat to blame for the catastrophic harvest failures and famines.
Professor Murray Pittock said the Treaty had been drawn up on an uneven playing field. The commissioners who represented Scotland in the negotiations were appointed by Queen Anne and were biased in favour of England. The Treaty offered to Scotland was one that favoured England.
An English heart
For him Queen Anne was the key figure when considering the Treaty of Union. The Queen was unique among the Stuart monarchs in having what she called on her deathbed “an entirely English heart”.
Pittock referred to background threats such as the English “Alien Act’ of 1705 which threatened to ban the main Scottish exports to England and treat Scots as aliens if they did not accept the Hanoverian succession. After 1707 the Union was incredibly unpopular in Scotland. This was demonstrated by the fact that, while the Jacobite rising of 1689 had low levels of support, in 1715, just a few years after the Treaty, one in six of Scotland’s men of fighting age were prepared to risk their lives to join the uprising.
Barrow said that writing a play about the events of 1707, “Union”, and staging it during the referendum year had drawn on an enormous interest in understanding more about the era and about the dramatic figures who populated it, such as Daniel Defoe who was working as a spy for the English.
From the Chair this author asked if it was possible that Jacobites like Hamilton thought that Union might be a step towards claiming the thrones of both countries for the Stuarts, arguing that later, in 1745, Charles Stuart could have held Scotland but wanted England too. Pittock disagreed, saying that a Scotland held by the Stuarts would have been invaded by a British army, possibly supplemented by German mercenaries and the only option was to go to London as fast as possible.
Audience questions included:
How representative was the Parliament?
It was not representative in the modern sense. Fry explained that by 1707 the three estates were different from those mentioned in the title of Sir David Lindsay’s eponymous play . In those days, the the Catholic Church formed the third estate, and the Bishops sat in Parliament. They, of course, disappeared with the Reformation of 1560. Soon afterwards the country gentlemen, who had largely supported the Reformation, took their place as the county members.
Would it have made any difference to the vote if there had still been Bishops in Parliament?
Pittock said it would not have made much difference to the vote. Episcopal Bishops would have supported the Union.
Was a Treaty of Union with any country other than England considered, such as Scandinavian ones?
Unions with Holland and with France were mooted at various times, Pittock said. (These are recounted in Allan Macinnes book below.)
Was greed a factor in the Union?
Whatley said that the sums of money which were paid to various pro-Union politicians were relatively small. Pittock said that in the 18th century, the wheels of politics were usually oiled with money. He said there was less money flowing into Scotland than pro-Union propaganda had anticipated. He rejected a suggestion that the fact there was less money coming in was a factor in the 1715 uprising.
How important was the failure of the Darien Scheme?
Whatley said it was extremely important. The failure of this attempt at creating a colony had cost a quarter of the available money in Scotland. Its failure had also led to a sense of gloom generally and a feeling that Scotland had limited options.
Afterword:
After the event, Whatley commented in an email: “ I’d have liked to have made more of the fact that the articles of the Treaty were amended following protests from within and outside Parliament, and that in fact two acts were passed in 1706/7. The one we didn’t mention was that which secured the Church of Scotland post-Union, a measure that satisfied many Presbyterians who up till that point had been anti-incorporation. Whilst I can’t argue with the numbers Murray Pittock produced for the Jacobite army in 1715 it might have been worth pointing out that many people turned out for the Hanoverians and in defence of the Union too, not least church ministers and their followers who feared that a Jacobite victory would have opened the way for the return of a Catholic monarch and maybe the re-introduction of Roman Catholicism itself. And the removal of certain hard-won (at the Revolution) civil liberties.”
Further Reading:
The Myth of the Jacobite Clans: The Jacobite Army in 1745 (2009 ed), Murray Pittock
Scottish Presbyterians and the Act of Union, 1707 (Edinburgh UP, 2007). Jeffrey Stephen
The Scots and the Union: Then and Now, by Christopher Whatley, 2014 edition.
The Union, England, Scotland and the Treaty of 1707, Michael Fry
A Union for Empire (Cambridge, 2007). Allan Macinnes
Image: By Scottish Parliament [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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