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Issue 8 - Unhappy Union

History & Heritage

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Scotland Magazine Issue 8

Scotland Magazine Issue 8
May 2003

 

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Unhappy Union

JAMES IRVINE-ROBERTSON LOOKS AT THE MOTIVATIONS BEHIND THE DEEPLY UNPOPULAR ACT OF UNION

Unhappy Union (Issue 8)
Constitutionally, the British Isles today is a pig’s breakfast. Ireland is an independent nation, except for the north, which, at the time of writing, is ruled by Westminster. So is England. Wales is mostly governed from London, but some internal decisions can be made at the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff. Scotland runs itself through the parliament in Edinburgh, but certain powers are reserved for Westminster. Scots members at Westminster can vote on internal English matters. English members cannot vote on internal Scottish matters. And then there’s the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands – different again, but there are few folk who are sufficiently interested to know how or why.

So, the Treaty of Union of 1707, often seen as one of the two or three defining moment in Scotland’s history, may not have been quite so earth-moving as would first appear.

This is just as well, because the treaty uniting the parliaments of England and Scotland was the product of expediency, bribery, and self-interest at a time when hostility between the two nations was high. One commentator reckoned that under one per cent of Scots approved of their parliament’s actions.

The crowns of England and Scotland had united in 1603, but the two countries were very different. Scotland had one-sixth of the population of her southern neighbour and one-fortieth of the wealth. Half the Scots lived in the Highlands and spoke Gaelic.

The legal systems were diverging, with Scots law basing itself more on Roman-Dutch law rather than the common law and precedent of England.

The national religion in Scotland was militant Presbyterianism governed by elders. In England, it had remained Episcopalian with the monarch as its head.

The Scottish parliament had not developed the same sense of independence from the Crown adopted by its English counterpart following the Civil War in England.

After the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell had ruled Scotland with an iron fist, and tight control from London had been maintained after the restoration of the monarchy. But James VII of Scotland and II of Great Britain had fled to France in 1688, and his successor was William of Orange. The Stuarts had been monarchs in Scotland since 1371 through succession and divine right; William was king only through the consent of the Scots parliament. Power had shifted.

This new era began disastrously in Scotland. The government bungled seriously with the Massacre of Glencoe, when a clan of Macdonalds was ordered to be slaughtered when their chief failed to meet the deadline for swearing loyalty to the new regime.

Then a series of appalling harvests – ‘King William’s Years’ – meant that in some areas, up to 20 per cent of the population starved to death. Then came the Darien Scheme.

This was an attempt to found New Caledonia, a free port in territory claimed by Spain on the Isthmus of Panama, which could take advantage of trade on both of the great oceans and cut out Cape Horn.

Patriots invested half the country’s available wealth in the venture, which was a total disaster. The hostile terrain, disease and poor preparation were just the beginnings of what went wrong; the few survivors surrendered to the Spanish after being refused English help from the West Indies. England was blamed.

Then William died. His sister-in-law, Anne, succeeded, and she was without an heir.

The Scots parliament passed an act reserving for itself the rights to choose her successor and to declare war.

Furthermore, the Union of Crowns would be preserved only if Scots were given free access to trade with England and her colonies. As so often, England was in the midst of a conflict with France. If a Roman Catholic Stuart sat on the throne of a hostile Scotland, the resulting French alliance could easily spell ruin for the Protestants south of the border. England threatened a total embargo on Scots trade and to declare Scots aliens.

A union of the two nations had been discussed for a century. Neither country really wanted it, but the alternative looked like war. In 1706, a joint commission produced 25 Articles.

The security of the Scots Kirk was guaranteed; the legal systems would remain separate; £398,000 would be paid by England, matching the losses of the Darien scheme; free access would be offered to English and colonial markets, and all privileges and vested interests of the nobility and others would be respected.

Glasgow and Edinburgh rioted. The Articles were burned in Dundee. The Covenanters in the south-west mobilised. There were stirrings in the Highlands.

England moved armies close to the border, and the 147 members of the Scots parliament – the nobility, the landed county members and the town burgesses – enjoyed a few months of plot, counter plot, bribery and betrayal, from which few emerged with any credit, before the Act of Union was passed.

It took more than a generation before the economic benefits of the union began to improve the lot of the ordinary Scot, and perhaps a century before it produced the astonishing explosion of energy that created the Industrial Revolution and the greatest empire the world has ever known.

“Now there’s ane end of ane auld song” remarked the Earl of Seafield as he signed away the independent parliament of Scotland. But he was wrong.

On 12th May 1999 in the newly constituted Scottish Legislature, Winifred Ewing, who opened the debate as the oldest member, declared: “The Scottish Parliament which adjourned on 25th March in the year 1707 is hereby reconvened.”