II.—The Influence of Parliament
When the Great Council developed into what we understand by the word "parliament," it took its place as one of a series of competitors for the chief power in the kingdom. The king's prerogative was sufficient to cover everything that he was able to do, and an undefined law of treason[77] gave him a valuable weapon, which he did not fail to use. The most notable danger to the prerogative was the supersession of the royal power by the rise of certain noble families from time to time. The strength of these nobles lay in the number of their retainers, over whom they had absolute power. Most of them were hereditary sheriffs of their own districts, and it was rarely that either king or parliament ventured seriously to interfere with their judicial powers.
The Parliament found an additional rival in the Secret—afterwards called the Privy—Council, which formed the Executive of the realm. Little is known of the early history of this important body. Its origin has generally been ascribed to the Parliament of 1369, which, as we have seen (cf. pp. 40, 41), appointed a Committee to discuss certain matters before they came before Parliament.[78] This, however, refers to the Lords of the Articles, and when the Committee of the Articles was appointed two years later, the precedent of 1369 was avowedly followed. It is not, therefore, possible to identify this body with the king's secret council, mentioned two years later, when urgent private business, relating to the succession, was discussed "in the king's secret chamber in his secret council,"[79] as contrasted with the king's chamber of public Parliament.[80] This allusion to a secret council probably indicates not the origin, but the existence, of such a secret council of royal advisers as must have come into being centuries before. The small place held by the Parliament in the government of the country left the Executive or Secret Council a still more valuable instrument for those in power, and it is impossible that the kings of Scotland did not possess a private council before 1369. The next definite reference is in 1389; when the Duke of Rothesay was appointed regent for Robert III (cf. p. 75), his power was limited by a council, of which eighteen members were appointed by the Estates—probably an enlarged form of the Secret Council.[81] But this was only a temporary arrangement, and it is very doubtful if Mr. Hill Burton is right in treating the King's Secret Council as one of "the three great Committees of Parliament."[82] It is more natural to regard it as analogous to the English Curia Regis, and not ultimately connected with parliamentary institutions. Like the English Curia Regis, it exercised judicial powers from an early period, probably in connection with its general work of administrative order. It is not easy to distinguish between the jurisdiction of the Council, and that of the Lords Auditors, or Committee of Parliament, elected from 1369 onwards,[83] to decide legal cases, and a further complication arises from the additional Committee of the Estates, appointed by James I in 1425.[84] The jurisdiction of the Council in matters of litigation was further defined by James IV, who, in an act of 1503, provided that "there be a council chosen by the King's Highness, which shall sit continually in Edinburgh or where the king makes residence or where he pleases, and decide all manner of summons and civil matters, complaints, and causes, daily, when they shall occur, so that there shall not be so great confusion of summons to call at the session"[85] of the Lords Auditors, or Judicial Committee of the Estates. We are probably right in connecting this council, chosen by the king, with the judicial powers of the Lords of Secret Council, and it may be an imitation of the English Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas. The special powers of this body came to an end with the establishment of the Court of Session.
The constitution of the Secret Council, as an executive body, was the subject of legislation during the temporary rise of the importance of Parliament in the beginning of the reign of James IV.[86] In 1489 the King's Council was chosen in Parliament. Its numbers were increased, and an act was passed that this council should act as the advisers of the king till the next meeting of Parliament, and should be "responsable and accusable to the king and his Estates." They were appointed to deal, not only with justice, but also with all matters concerning the sovereign or the realm. A quorum consisted of six members, of whom the Chancellor must be one. But there is no second instance of a parliamentary choice of the members of the Secret Council, nor any indication of any control over them, and, as we have just seen, the members of the Secret Council sitting for judicial purpose were, on the creation of the committee in 1503, selected by the king alone. Thus matters continued till the minority of James V, when Council and Parliament alike became the object of the intrigues of the factions who were struggling for power, and the Estates were, as usual, powerless. In 1524 the Lords of the Articles chose the Lords of the Secret Council, and in 1528, when the Earl of Arran was in power, he obtained the election, in Parliament, of a Council to advise the king, and of a smaller Secret Council, from both of which the leader of the opposite party, Archbishop Beaton, was excluded. When the records of the Privy Council begin, in 1545, the council was a small body of advisers of the queen-mother and the regent, and there is no evidence that the Act of 1489 was ever really in operation. The Register shows that the council possessed very full executive powers, and it continued to carry on the real government of the country. Its numbers increased during the minority of James VI, the circumstances of which differed widely from those of any previous minority, and, in 1598, the king succeeded in reducing the number of its members to thirty-one, and in rendering it completely dependent on the Crown, while, at the same time, he made it, as far as he could, the paramount authority in the land, not only in matters pertaining to the Executive, but also in connection with justice. It was in no sense a Court of Appeal; but it not infrequently reversed judgments of the Court of Session, and sometimes dictated their course of action to the judges. Any such interference arose, however, from the plenary powers of the council as an executive body. After James's accession to the English throne, the Privy Council became the mere instrument of the king's will, and dared in no way to oppose him, while he, on his part, treated it with scant respect or courtesy. At the outbreak of the troubles in the reign of Charles I, it was prominent in opposing the king; but it was afterwards eclipsed by the Parliamentary Committees and by the Assembly. After the Restoration it became again an instrument of absolute monarchy, but from the Revolution to the Union of the Parliaments it possessed very important powers.
With this preface, we may proceed to our main issue: what was the influence exerted by the Scottish Parliament, thus constituted, governed by such rules of procedure as we have described, and surrounded by so many powerful rivals? The early laws which have come down to us as illustrating the powers of the Great Council are mainly concerned—like so many later enactments—with matters of administrative detail. The assizes of William the Lion deal largely with merchandise and the rights and obligations of merchants, and scarcely fall within our province. The work of the Great Council, up to the War of Independence, was to deal with police and judicial administration, to settle feudal claims and obligations, and to make grants to the king. We find the council consulted on marriage treaties (e.g. in 1153 and in 1295); but marriage treaties involved expenditure. The task of advising the king and of carrying on the government must have belonged to a select council of which our constitutional documents bear no trace.
In the reign of Robert the Bruce, as we find the first advance in membership we meet also the first indications of a growth of power. His parliaments took measures for the security and defence of the kingdom; they passed laws regulating the succession; they established the English principle involved in the writs of Novel Disseisin and Mort d'ancestor; they addressed the Pope on the subject of the English claims, and told him of their great deliverance at the hands of King Robert. The great parliament of 1326 made a bargain with the king. In consideration of the "many hardships he had sustained both in person and goods," during his ten years' conflict with the invaders, they granted him "the tenth penny of all their fermes and rents, as well of demesne lands and wards as of their other lands." The collection was to be made by the king's officers; and all who claimed liberties promised faithfully to pay the proper sum to the royal servants. The grant was made only for the king's life, and two conditions were attached to it. Any remission made by the king would invalidate the whole grant. The king must not impose any further taxes (except, of course, the ordinary feudal dues), nor must he take prisage or carriage, except on a journey, and, even then, not without payment. In the last parliament of the reign, the treaty of Northampton, by which England acknowledged the independence of Scotland, was discussed.
The first reign in which the term parliament is really applicable is that of King Robert. At the very beginning of parliamentary history in Scotland, we have, then, distinct precedents for three important constitutional rights—the regulation of the succession, participation in the settlement of foreign affairs, and powers of taxation. If we could regard these as having been claimed by Parliament with consciousness of their full significance, and admitted by the Crown, we might fairly join with the older historians in urging that Scotland can be said to have anticipated the parliamentary institutions of England. The explanation lies in the circumstances of the reign. The king's title consisted in his leadership in his glorious war. The succession was uncertain; the Crown was poor; the nation was loyal. A writer on the English constitution could take these three points of which we have spoken, and trace their history through the centuries. Such a method would be futile here. These rights, and all other rights, stand or fall together. We can scarcely draw the wonted distinction between political and constitutional history. At times, we have neither, in any strict national sense; only family and personal history.
The leprosy-stricken age of King Robert was cheered by two important events—the birth of an heir, and the acknowledgment of the national independence. When he sank into the grave, he left the heritage of the nation's freedom, and the guardianship of his son, to the loyalty of the nobles. It was an opportunity for Parliament to make good its position. But, as we have already seen, the precedent of 1326 was assumed to be valid only for the raising of money, and the "Parliament" was, at first, only the old council. The political events of the beginning of the reign relate chiefly to the attempt made by England to place Edward Balliol on the Scottish throne, as a vassal-king. When that design had been, not without some difficulty, defeated, we find the Parliament, without the burgesses, conducting all the affairs of the kingdom, and acting, for almost the only time in Scottish history, as the executive. It granted lands and charters; passed ordinances regarding the Staple; arranged (with the co-operation of the burghs) the treaty of peace with England and the ransom of the king; settled the privileges of the church and of the burghs, with which the king had been tampering; made provisions for the Highlands and Islands; and decided the mode of succession. This, however, is not parliamentary government, though it is more like it than anything else in Scottish history before the revolution of 1640. The king was at the first an infant, and afterwards a prisoner, and his character was at all times weak and contemptible. The nobles were divided by feuds. Nobody was strong enough to make himself supreme. The country was governed by a committee of the nobles. Still, the reign of David II made two contributions to such constitutional theory as Scotland possessed. One of these is an emphatic reiteration of what had been done in the preceding reign. After his return from England, David, in pursuance of a private agreement with Edward III, attempted to persuade the Estates to acknowledge Prince Lionel of England as his heir. The account given of the affair by Wyntoun[87] is notable as the first report of a debate in the Parliament of Scotland:
"That ilke yere quhen that wes don,
A Parliament gart he hald at Scone.
Thare til the Statis of his land,
That in counsal ware sittand,
He movit and said, He wald that ane
Off the Kyng Edwardis sonnys were tane
To be king in to his sted
Off Scotland, eftyr that he ware dede.
Til that said all his lieges, nay;
Na thair consent wald be na way,
That ony Ynglis mannys sone
In [to] that honour suld be done,
Or succede to bere the Crown,
Off Scotland in successione,
Sine of age and off wertew there
The lauchfull airis apperand ware.
Quhen this denyit was utraly,
The King wes rycht wa and angry;
Bot his yarnyng nevyrtheles
Denyit off al his liegis wes."
The words of the original Act are quite as emphatic.
The Parliament of 1326 had declared that any personal remission of taxation by the king would render the whole grant null and void. The Parliament of 1369 went much further. It enacted that no remission granted by the king to a convicted offender should have any force, and it asserted that any writ of the king was invalid which contradicted any statute or was not in accordance with the common law of the realm. This constitutional statement marks the "highest" doctrine propounded by the Scottish Parliament till the seventeenth century. While it is necessary to guard against laying too much stress on the history of the reign of David II as illustrating the growth of strictly constitutional and parliamentary principles, it would be erring on the other side to deny that here we have a distinct assertion of principle. We have been forced to discount much of the recorded action of Parliament, on the ground that it is merely an instance of a number of nobles uniting to do what none of them was powerful enough to do alone. But the Parliament of 1369 contained burgesses (at least on the roll of its members); and the wording of its resolution is distinctly suggestive of the existence of some constitutional feeling.[88] The weakness and unpopularity of the king must be allowed due weight on the other hand; and the tone of the record suggests a jealous interference with the personal schemes of the king rather than any broader view of rights.
With the ignominious reign of David II the direct line of King Robert the Bruce came to an end. The question of the succession had already been settled by the Parliament in favour of King Robert's grandson, Robert, the High Steward of Scotland, son of Marjory Bruce and Walter the Steward. We know that Robert had been a prominent figure during the reign of his uncle, and that David II regarded him with no good will. The reign of Robert II is one of the periods of Scottish history which stand in need of more thorough investigation. We possess no account of it that is in any way satisfactory. There are wars and rumours of wars; vague traditions of conspiracies; dim hints of a constitutional conflict between the Estates and the King. No figure stands out pre-eminently from the crowd; no man of the time left any impression on succeeding generations. The one event that has given significance to the name of Robert II is the "hontynge of the Cheviot," the battle where the dead Douglas won the field. Two points demand notice from a constitutional stand-point. The family difficulties of the king led to the establishment of the succession by the Estates.[89] But the crown was entailed in accordance with the king's wish, and the fact affords no indication of the power of Parliament. In the second place the early years of the reign mark the renewal of a definite alliance with France, of the circumstances of which we know but little. The instructions to the ambassadors contain a mention of the consent of the prelati proceres et tota communitas regni to the proposal for a Franco-Scottish league; and one of the conditions of its acceptance was that the Scottish Parliament alone should decide a disputed succession without French interference—clearly a reminiscence of the pretext of which Edward I of England had availed himself. The French negotiations led to an imbroglio with England, to which undue weight has been attached. Robert had, in 1383, agreed to a truce with England. A number of his nobles, mainly to amuse a band of French knights, made a raid into the northern counties, in revenge for a recent English incursion. There is no reference to the affair in the Scots Acts. Froissart gives the most detailed account; and there seems to be no reason to attach to it any constitutional value whatsoever. Tytler, whose History is still in many ways our best authority, merely remarks that "These were not the days when Scottish barons, having resolved upon war, stood upon much ceremony, either as to the existence of a truce, or the commands of a sovereign."[90] Hill Burton, following Buchanan, regards the incident as the first of a series of instances showing that the power of peace and war was throughout Scottish history "jealously retained by the Estates."[91] We shall have occasion to refer to the other statements on which this bold generalization is grounded. Meanwhile, it is sufficient to say that three years previously, an agreement for a truce had been made at a private meeting between John of Gaunt and the Earl of Carrick, King Robert's eldest son; and we have no evidence that anyone thought of consulting the Estates at all.
During the latter half of his reign, the king was rendered quite incapable both in body and mind by some disease, the nature of which is uncertain. For a few years, therefore, there was considerable parliamentary activity. A laudable effort was made to restore order in the north, by sending Carrick to deal with the rebellious lords. We do not know how far he was successful. He was soon afterwards temporarily disabled by an accident, and his brother, the Earl of Fife, succeeded to his place. These years are marked by certain police measures, and by efforts to suppress private feuds and carry out the decisions of the law courts. It is scarcely possible to say whether Parliament gained or lost ground under Robert II. It is the transition period between the great council of the reign of David II and the rise of individual nobles which alternated with intervals of regal government from the reign of Robert III to that of James VI.
The change of Carrick's name from "John," hateful by reason of its association with Balliol, to that of the hero of Bannockburn, could not avail to alter the weak disposition and character of the new monarch. The first years of the reign were free from conflict with the troublesome neighbour in the south; but they were years of internal feud, almost of anarchy. The career of the Wolf of Badenoch is typical of the time. Possibly the mysterious combat at Perth, where Hal o' the Wynd carved for himself a path to fame, is connected with some attempt to introduce order. Parliament met during these years only to sanction charters and other formal documents. But the meeting of the Estates in 1398 is a distinct epoch in the story. Burton[92] tells us that "At length the cry of the nation reached and was re-echoed by the Estates in Parliament"; that, although "in this assembly were those who had been the most flagrant and powerful transgressors, yet the Parliament collectively emphatically denounced the evils of the day and sought to find a remedy for them"; and that "no one who could have checked the mischief was spared." If we could accept this view of the situation, it would be an interesting exception to the common belief that an individual may have a conscience, but a body of councillors has none. But Burton's characterization of this parliament is, pace tanti viri, a psychological impossibility. He founds his interpretation upon the often quoted Act which attributed to the king all responsibility for the misgovernment of the realm, and called upon him, if he desired to exculpate himself, to show that the blame lay with his officers. The Duke of Rothesay was appointed regent, and he was instructed to consult a council of "wise and leal men." We are not informed under what auspices the parliament met. But it is certain that the king was not responsible for his actions, and that the anarchy was largely due to the rivalry of the Duke of Rothesay, the king's eldest son, and the Duke of Albany, a brother of King Robert, who, as Earl of Fife, had held the title of "Governor" in the end of the "preceding" reign. They and they alone could have "checked the mischief." The probability is that the meeting of Parliament was really an incident in their struggle for power; that Rothesay was powerful enough to secure the regency; and that Albany succeeded in circumscribing his power by a council and by a decision that Parliament was to be summoned once a year. But it is not necessary to allow even this importance to the appointment of a yearly parliament. The Act says that the king shall hold a parliament "swa that his subjects be servit of the law." It was to meet merely to overtake its judicial work—the decisions in feudal quarrels and on complaints of robbery and oppression. Our explanation of the motif of the meeting of the Estates of 1398 receives some confirmation from subsequent events—the misgovernment of Rothesay, his imprisonment by the Duke of Albany, his mysterious death, and the peaceful succession of Albany to the governorship without, so far as the records go, any appointment by the Estates whatsoever.[93] The view we have taken seems the most probable when we consider the circumstances, the composition of Parliament, and the whole tone of the reign. It is, however, not incompatible with an acknowledgment that there possibly existed in 1398 a neutral party which was able to wield a certain influence in the fierce division of parties. It is noteworthy that a resolution was passed that the names of Rothesay's councillors who agreed to an act of government should be recorded, so that he and they alike might be responsible to the Estates. It would be rash to speak dogmatically in the present condition of our knowledge. There is a strong temptation to accept this as a constitutional movement; but it must be remembered that it is at least equally probable that we have here a device by which Albany aimed at ridding himself on the first opportunity of his reckless and dissipated nephew and of that nephew's favourite counsellors.[94] The great pitfall of Scottish historians has been to read later or foreign ideas into the scanty records of the national history.
If they are right who argue that under David II and the two Roberts we have a discernible impulse towards parliamentary government, we certainly lose all trace of it after the death of the Duke of Rothesay. The Duke of Albany kept complete control of the country till his death in 1419, when he was succeeded by his son, without any trace of parliamentary sanction. The government of the first Albany was firm, but he ruled as absolute master. A parliament had met in 1402, before Rothesay's death, and had passed some useful acts for the maintenance of internal order, probably under Albany's guidance. The most important of these refer to justice, and illustrate the difficulty of dealing with hereditary sheriffs. While the country was divided between Rothesay and Albany, Parliament still had a place. After Rothesay's death it practically disappears till a great council was summoned in 1423 to discuss the propositions for the king's return, which involved the question of a ransom.
Under the personal rule of James I we have the best instance in Scottish history of government in accordance with what would now be called the theory of the Scottish constitution. But it was not "constitutional government" in our modern derived sense of the word. The Parliament was not intended to be the ruling body. King James was a masterful man, and he aimed at using the Parliament as the best means of creating a powerful monarchy, not at giving it a power to rival his own. His experience immediately on his return does not strengthen our belief in the "Parliamentarianism" of the preceding century. He found it impossible to persuade the smaller barons to attend, even by deputy, and he had to threaten with the penalties of treason his great lords who declined to be present. The burgesses alone seem to have regarded with sympathy his meditated reorganization of the kingdom. The acts of his reign provided for the defence of the country on the analogy of the English Assize of Arms. They dealt with labour disputes; they instituted the system of licensed beggars to which we are indebted for Edie Ochiltree, and forbade anyone to beg between the ages of fourteen and seventy. The numerous Parliaments that met between 1424 and 1437 are full of police regulations, some of them petty enough, but all bearing the impress of the master-mind of the king. He vindicated his orthodoxy by enactments against Lollardry, while he emulated the English kings in their prohibitions of papal interference.[95] But, above all, the reign is memorable for the king's attempt to enforce justice.[96] His great difficulty lay in the independence of the sheriffs, who continued to impede all improvements for three centuries after his death. The history of Scotland is full of complaints on this subject. "The greatest hindrance to the execution of our lawes in this countrie," wrote a later king, "are these heritable Shiredomes and Regalities, which being in the hands of the great men, do wracke the whole countrie."[97] It was more easy to ordain frequent sessions of "the Chancellor and discreet persons," to forbid riding to the court "with multitudes of folkis na with armys," and to threaten the punishment of negligent sheriffs, than to carry out these schemes. The only guarantee for their receiving any obedience lay in the personal strength of the king. With the tragedy at Perth, which rendered the Christmas of 1437 for ever memorable, the great plans of the first James lost all chance of fruition. Parliament had done good work during his reign. It had conferred a legality on his ordinances which rendered them less the creatures of the royal will and weakened the protests of the nobles against the king's tyranny.[98] But we cannot reasonably credit the Estates with any initiative. The acts are the king's acts. Even the judges—the lords of session—were no longer elected by Parliament; they were chosen by the king.
From the murder of King James I to the commencement of the personal rule of his son, Parliament rarely met, and there is no evidence of any activity. The minority was occupied with the miserable rivalry of Crichton and Livingston, and with schemes for preventing the undue growth of the power of the house of Douglas. It is an illustration of how far Scotland was from possessing a parliamentary theory, that Douglas was credited with an intention of setting up a Parliament of his own. His aim seems to have been to create for himself a sort of kingdom with some vague feudal dependence on the King of Scotland. Beyond some administrative acts of 1449, there is no parliamentary progress to record till after the second and final defeat of the great House in 1454. The Douglas influence was so strong in 1449 that they passed an act which rendered it lawful to seize by force, with the consent of the three Estates, the person of the young king, who was growing restive under the Douglas domination.[99] When James of the Fiery Face at last succeeded in throwing off the yoke, he set himself to carry out the work that his father had left unfinished. His legislation covers some pages on the statute book. But it is mainly a repetition of the work of James I, and many of the acts are really decisions in private cases. Pitscottie[100] describes to us the suitors that thronged when Parliament met—"widows, bairns, and infants, seeking redress for their husbands, kindred, and friends that were cruelly slain by wicked bloody murderers." The reign is not devoid of some progress in justice and police regulations. But it exemplifies the tendency of the Scots Parliament to exercise the functions merely of a court of justice. Under good influence, like that of James II and Bishop Kennedy, it decided causes in favour of the poor and the oppressed, and made general regulations to meet all such cases in the future. Under the influence of some ambitious nobleman, it passed partisan measures which rendered legal his treatment of his opponents. King James VI[101] did not speak purely out of prejudice against the power of parliaments when, years before the fateful journey that brought him into contact with the English Commons, he wrote:
As a Parliament is honourablest and highest judgement in the land—if it be well used—so is it the injustest judgement seat that may be being abused to men's particulars; irrevocable decreets against particular parties being given therein, under colour of generall lawes, and oft-times the Estates not knowing themselves whom they hurt.
The credit of the wise legislation which marked the last six years of the life of James II belongs to the king and the Bishop Kennedy of St. Andrews. Parliament was merely a good tool in wise hands. There is no proof that it ever really decided—or even had a voice in deciding—anything of importance. In March, 1457-58, all the leading acts of the reign were confirmed, and the Estates petitioned the sovereign "with all humilitie ... to be inclynit with silk diligence to the execucione of these statutis, acts and decretis above writtyn that God may be emplesit of him," and congratulated him on the peace of the realm. Two years later, in prosecuting a war[102] with "our enemy of England," James, "more curious than became him or the majesty of a king," was watching the firing of a cannon, before Roxburgh Castle, when it exploded, and Scotland was again plunged into the troubles of a minority.
The death of the king made at first but little difference to the conduct of affairs. Bishop Kennedy continued to rule till his death, in 1465. No sooner did the statesman and patriot disappear from the scene than a coalition headed by Lord Boyd seized the young monarch, and carried him in triumph from Linlithgow to Edinburgh. A parliament was at once summoned to sanction their proceedings. The king was made to declare that he had gone willingly, and the Estates created Boyd James's governor, and somewhat illogically granted him a full pardon. Under the sway of the Boyds, Parliament met every year; but it was merely a tool in the hands of Lord Boyd, who combined in his own person the offices of governor of the royal family, justiciar, and lord chamberlain. In 1469 the Boyds fell. A strong rival party had formed an opposition of which we find traces all through the brief term of power enjoyed by Boyd. It is significant that this opposition is found everywhere except in Parliament, which unanimously agreed to measures against the malcontents. The parliamentary tactics of the Boyds were used against themselves. A meeting of the Estates was at once called by the king, now under the influence of Lord Hamilton, and the whole of the late ruling faction were condemned to the penalties of treason, on the ground of the king's seizure, for which the same body had, three years before, solemnly pardoned them. Their vast possessions were confiscated. The Hamiltons, who had gained the confidence of the young queen, continued to rule. So far the political history of the reign is clear, and the position of Parliament falls at once into line with it. But we dare not attempt to unravel the tale of intrigue which convulsed the country during the next twenty years. The reign of James III is an unsolved problem. But the constitutional feeling may be illustrated by a representative incident. The Parliament of 1482 was completely under the control of the Duke of Albany. The Estates passed acts which gave to him control of the property of the Crown, and power over the life and liberty of the lieges. One year later it rescinded all these acts and proscribed the duke. They may be right who have found great constitutional activity in the mysterious records of the reign. It may be that amid all the disorder and confusion the burgesses and some neutral prelates were able to exercise some influence. It is certain that there was as usual no lack of attention to judicial and police requirements. But until some intelligible and consistent account of the reign has been offered, the sceptic may be pardoned for refusing to believe that out of these unruly struggles of selfish and grasping lords came calm constitutional progress.[103]
The rebellion in which James III lost his life was, as usual, discussed in Parliament: that is to say, the first Parliament of the new reign declared that it was not a rebellion at all, and that, whatever it was, the new monarch and his advisers were not responsible for it. At first, James IV was in the hands of the nobles who had persuaded him to enter the field against his father. His second Parliament is memorable for a claim raised by the Lords of the Articles "that Compts and Rekyning be takin of all the king's officiaris, his thesaurars and comptrollers, auld and new of our soverane lord's tyme that now is and that auditors be chosen and named by the avise and autorite of this Parliament." This is not the tone in which we have been accustomed to hear the Parliament speak. It is coincident with the appointment in Parliament of "our Sovereign Lord's Secret Council," and with a resolution that the king has "humilit his highness," so far as to promise to act by its advice. The council was composed solely of prelates and great lords representing mainly the party in power, although including the patriotic bishop of Aberdeen,[104] who had been a faithful servant of James III. We have here a distinct constitutional advance. The king owed his power, not to a small clique such as had been frequently formed in the late reign, but to a large confederation of the greater nobles, who took the opportunity of legally defining the position of the sovereign. But within a few years we find James ruling alone. He was an able man and he ruled well. The Parliament met frequently and did what the king wished. We find in its records references to embassies to Spain, France, and England, and to the king's marriage. But we know, from the foreign correspondence of England and Spain, that the policy of Scotland depended upon the king, and on him alone. Parliament regulated in certain cases the incidence of taxation: at all events it passed acts for this purpose. Contemporaries did not imagine that the Estates alone had powers of taxation. John Major,[105] writing a few years after the strong hand of James IV had been removed, made this remark:
As to the levying of taxes, I will limit my opinion to this expression: that in no wise should the power be granted to kings save in cases of clear necessity. Further it belongs not to the king nor to his privy council to declare the emergence of any sudden necessity but only to the three estates.... I am aware that Aristotle in his second book of the Politics says wisely that laws are not to be changed; yet, in the judgment of the wise, they may be modified in accordance with the demands of equity.
Major remarks on the difficulty of collecting taxes in Scotland and on the folly of the kings in alienating confiscated estates, "since there is no regular taxation of the people." His remedy is, as we have seen, the regulation of taxation by Parliament. He was a scholar and a traveller, and it matters not how he came to think as he did; but it is clear that he advocated a change.
Nor did James regard the Estates as possessing "powers of peace and war." Pedro de Ayala[106] tells us of a conversation which he held with the king which gives us the royal views: "He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just and unjust quarrels, exactly as he likes, and that therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself the first in danger." Boece, in his biography of Elphinstone,[107] tells us of councils which preceded Flodden: but they are meetings of the king's private advisers. It is instructive to note that one parliament was held with reference to the English war. About a fortnight before the battle, what is termed "Parliament" was held at Twiselhaugh. It was composed of "all his lords being there for the time in his host," and it secured that the heirs of all who were slain should be exempted by the king from certain feudal dues. The exemption can only have been the king's own act. It is an additional testimony to the purpose for which the Scots Parliament normally existed—to ratify what somebody else had done. If there are vestiges of constitutional claims at the opening of the reign, there are none at the end of it. But though the Parliament had not been free, neither had it been idle. It was a time of unusual prosperity and of great expansion of trade. The pages of the statute-books are full of useful acts, especially for the encouragement of shipping, in which the king was greatly interested.
While the "lilt of dule and woe" which followed the disaster at Flodden was still filling the land, the country was again plunged into the misery of feudal quarrels. The ambition of the lords, and the caprices of the queen-mother—a true sister of Henry VIII—fill up the minority of the king. Parliament met only to ratify appointments which it had no power to question, and to deal with official business. It is possible that the Estates chose the Duke of Albany as regent. But it is almost certain that the impulse must have come from some of the leading nobles or prelates; and when we recollect that the "Estates" meant the Lords of the Articles, it is scarcely necessary to discuss the matter as presenting even the remotest possibility of a parliamentary choice. James V was nominally declared of full age in 1524. But he was then only thirteen years of age, and the "erection of the king" was merely a pretext for the transference of the power from Albany to Queen Margaret, the Parliament of course approving, when it was told to do so. Until the king became personally responsible for the government, there was little done in Parliament. If we except a slight activity in 1526 (mainly relating to such incidental matters as the capture of ships and the furnishing of the royal residences), there is scarcely anything to record till we reach the year 1535. Parliament met; but its business was purely of an official nature. All that we know of the Parliament of May, 1527, for example, is that it issued two continuations of summons, one "reduction" of a process of forfeiture, eleven ratifications of charters, and received four protestations. A single official, appointed for the purpose, could have done all the work.
James V is known in history as the "Commons' King." We are therefore prepared to find during the five years of his personal government a considerable amount of social legislation of the ordinary type, dealing often with trivial details, which show that the burgesses were in co-operation with the king. But of parliamentary interference there is not a trace. The hostilities with the "auld enemy," a mischance in which broke the king's heart, seem not to have been referred to the Estates in any way. The reign of James V was contemporaneous with the English Reformation, and before the king died the new doctrines had gained considerable strength in Scotland. But James himself, after his alliance with the House of Guise, had become more rigidly orthodox, and his last Parliament passed acts enjoining obedience to the Pope, the worship of the Virgin Mary, and prohibiting any convention to discuss Scripture. The royal influence was supreme.
The stories of the minorities of James II, James III, and James V read almost like repetitions of each other. The names and dates vary; the essential facts are the same. The minority of Queen Mary is widely different. The difficulties no longer arise from petty squabbles and contemptible personal intrigues. There is a deeper significance in every movement. It is a conflict, not of men, but of principles. On the one hand was the ancient French alliance, associated with the ancient faith. On the other hand stood the possibility of new relations with England and the acceptance of the Reformed doctrines. At first the revolutionary party held the power. The Scottish nobles had observed the English king's dealings with the lands of the Church. In Scotland there was no masterful Tudor to enrich himself. We find accordingly the acceptance of the marriage proposals of Henry VIII, and, significantly enough, among the domestic legislation of the time is an act making it lawful "to haif the haly write, baith the new testament and the auld in the vulgar toung in Englis or Scottis of ane gude and trew translation."[108] The "English wooing," which passed into a proverb in Scotland, did not merely put an end to the suggestion of a marriage between Queen Mary and Edward VI; it altered the situation in Scotland, and deprived the reforming section of their hopes of success, by forcing the nation into a French alliance. In 1545, Parliament, always obedient, inveighed against "heretiks and thair dampnable opinionis incontrar the fayth and lawis of halykirk." But it was not till the regency was transferred from the Earl of Arran (now Duke of Chatelhérault) to the queen-dowager (in 1554) that the success of the conservative section in the realm was complete. "Thus," wrote Knox, in reference to the event, "did light and darkness stryve within the realm of Scotland; the darkness ever befoir the world suppressing the light." The reservation, "befoir the world," is significant. Knox knew that every year since the death of James V had added converts, ever increasing in number, to the new faith. But all the time Parliament became more and more rigidly orthodox.
The struggle between the two parties found an issue in open warfare. The Protestants formed themselves into "the Congregation of the Lord." But they did not look upon Parliament[109] as the proper field for their contest with "the Synagogue of Satan." The insurgents and their English allies gained no success on the field; but the death of Mary of Guise and the absence of her daughter in France procured for them the results of victory. Scotland was definitely in the hands of the Protestant nobles.
Parliament met in 1560, and abolished the Roman Catholic faith within the realm. But, as we know from Knox's History, Parliament merely ratified what was otherwise settled. Behind it were the nobles and the Protestant clergy. The ministers petitioned the Estates to establish the Protestant faith. They were told[110] "to draw in playne and severall heidis, the summe of that Doctrine, quhilk they wald menteyne, and wald desyre that present Parliament to establische, as hailsome, trew, and onlie necessarie to be beleivit and resaivit." Within four days Knox and his colleagues presented the very comprehensive Confession of Faith which continued for nearly a century to be one of the Standards of the Church. It
was redd, everie article by itself ... and the vottis of everie man war requyred accordinglie. Of the Temporall Estate onlie voted in the contrair, the Earl of Atholl, the Lordis Somervaill and Borthwik; and yit for thair disassenting thei produced ne better reassone, but "We will beleve as oure fatheris beleved."
Acts were passed against the mass, and against papal supremacy.[111] But the whole of the desire of the ministers was not accorded. The First Book of Discipline did not receive parliamentary sanction, because it contradicted the views of the nobles as to the disposal of Church property.
While, then, the Parliament of 1560 was in some sense the creature of the Assembly, and though its resolutions were conditioned by the wishes of the nobility, it occupies a very important position in Scottish constitutional history. We do not lay much stress on its opposition to the sovereigns. That, in itself, was neither novel nor remarkable in any way. It was obedient to the powers of the day. But it is the first Parliament where the burgesses and the smaller barons attended and voted in accordance with their own feeling. They were Protestants and they were in complete agreement with those who were guiding the meeting of Estates. It is also the first Parliament which had the consciousness of power. They and their leaders were making a great national change. The people were beginning to learn what possibilities they possessed. The Parliament of 1560 was the first step towards a constitutional theory for Scotland.
This meeting of the Estates has still another aspect. It was significant that an assembly of ecclesiastics drew up the acts by which the Parliament became famous, for we have here the first appearance in constitutional history of a greater than the Parliament. Into the General Assembly of the Church there soon drifted those principles and aspirations that might have given life to the Estates. We shall have occasion to notice the part taken by the Assembly in the coming struggles; but it may be well here to indicate its claims. These claims were not formulated in 1560. They were of gradual growth. We find them implicit in the writings of Knox; but they were first definitely advanced by a man of no less intellect than the rugged reformer—Andrew Melville, the antagonist of James VI. Melville, in his frequent interviews with the king, "talkit all his mynd in his awin manner, roundly, soundly, fully, freely, and fervently." But he never stated his view in more explicit terms than on the memorable day when, after calling King James "God's sillie vassal," he addressed him thus:
And thairfor, Sir, as divers tymes befor, sa now again, I mon tell yow, thair is twa Kings and twa Kingdomes in Scotland. Thair is Chryst Jesus the King, and his Kingdom the Kirk, whase subject King James the Saxt is: and of whase Kingdom nocht a King, nor a lord, nor a heid, bot a member.[112]
Knox, in his interviews with James's mother, had taken lower ground. But Melville was not using idle words. There was no power in the land that could cope with the Church. From 1567 the Assembly met some days before the opening of Parliament, and prepared Church business, which was generally the principal item on the parliamentary list of agenda.[113] As early as 1565 it sent Queen Mary an overture against "the papisticall and blasphemous masse ... not only in the subjects, but also in the Queen's Majestie's awin person," and Mary's reply was couched in sufficiently humble terms.[114] Two years later it issued instructions to the Parliament about the ratification of the Acts of 1560, the question of the Darnley murder, and the treatment of the young prince.[115] It claimed the old ecclesiastical jurisdiction in all questions of morality, religion, education, and marriage.[116] It imprisoned offenders, and it informed magistrates how they were to act and threatened them with the censure of the Kirk. Its sentence of the Greater Excommunication involved the cessation of human intercourse[117] and the forfeiture of legal rights. The presbyterian system of Church government, with its careful distribution of authority, was able to make such a sentence a terrible reality. Not only the General Assembly, but the Synod or the Presbytery or the Kirk Session, was a court of justice. The records which have been published show with what vigour their power was used. Men of position and influence quailed before those stern judges. The old Church had often been powerful, under a strong bishop. But the secular forces gained strength while a see was vacant, and sometimes secured the appointment of a lay figure. A Presbytery never died: its members might change, but it continued its work, calmly and relentlessly, "grinding exceeding small."
Nor was the power of the Church confined to criminal jurisdiction. Two instances will serve to show the extent of its influence. In 1594, King James asked the presbytery of Edinburgh to "procure the leveing of six hundreth footmen, and four hundreth horsemen" to suppress a rebellion; and the presbytery complied with his request.[118] At the meeting of the General Assembly in March, 1596, King James was present. "He urged a contribution of the whole realme, not to be lifted presentlie, but when need sould require," and, to gain the sympathetic consideration of the Assembly, he promised that "his chamber doors sould be made patent to the meanest minister of Scotland, there sould not be anie meane gentleman in Scotland more subject to the good order and discipline of the Kirk than he would be."[119] It would be easy to multiply examples.
It was no case of ecclesiastical tyranny. The leaders of the Church might well apply to themselves the promise, "a willing people in the day of thy power." Modern democrats have denounced the Assembly as the oppressors of a priest-ridden populace. But the Assembly had made possible the existence of a public opinion in Scotland, and the public opinion of Scotland was with the Assembly. It is true that the documents to which assent was required appear to us crowded with metaphysical subtleties, to some of which no man who valued his freedom of thought could subscribe; but it must be remembered that these cast-iron theories registered the results to which that generation had attained. Moreover, it was in the Church courts, first of all, that Scotsmen learned the value and the power of debate. The Church did for Scotland what the Parliament accomplished for England. The Assembly was not a meeting of ecclesiastics alone. The strength of the Church lay in the presence of lay members in her courts,[120] to which there came earls, lords, and barons, and commissioners from provinces and universities. Each member, be he lord or peasant, the minister of St. Giles, or a Glasgow baillie, had equal right to speak, and no man's vote counted for more than that of his neighbour. The history of Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution is the history of the General Assembly. The motto which it shared with other reformed churches is the story of the seventeenth century. Nec tamen consumebatur. Yet the flames burned fiercely enough.
From what we have said of the Assembly, the inference as to the Parliament is clear. It follows that its history between the year of Queen Mary's return and the day when Andrew Melville addressed King James in the words we have quoted is one rather of retrogression than of progress; nor did it, at any subsequent period, overawe the General Assembly. Further than this point we cannot go in any detail. The history of Scotland between 1567 and 1707 is so intricate, and has been so thoroughly expounded, that only a brief concluding sketch is necessary in a thesis of the present nature, however essential to a constitutional history of Scotland. In 1560 it was, to some extent, a free parliament, as Knox said, and it could claim to represent popular opinion. During the reign of Mary, as we have already seen, it relapsed into its old position of ratifying the acts of the privy council. Nor was the Parliament which met in December, 1567, while the hapless queen was spending at Lochleven her first year of captivity, in much better case. The country was divided between "king's men" and "queen's men." The Estates did what Murray and Morton wished to be done. There is one provision which, though in conformity with Murray's views, does not bear the impress of his hand. It reminds us that the author of the First Blaste against the Monstrous Regiment of Women was present as an assessor in the Parliament when we read: "Als it is thocht expedient that in na tymes cuming ony wemen sal be admittit to the publict autoritie of the realme or functioun in publict government within the same." It was not a deliberate attempt to alter the succession: it was merely an additional illustration of bad feeling towards the captive queen.[121] Until the "Black Acts" there is little in the proceedings of the Parliament which calls for remark. The meetings were largely occupied with the usual sentences of forfeiture. Sometimes the queen's party held rival parliaments, and on such occasions everybody in Scotland of any importance was declared a traitor by one side or the other. A considerable amount of valuable work was done. Murray, whatever his personal character, was a statesman, and he left the impression of "a still strong man" upon those who survived him. His policy and that of his successors was guided by their dependence upon Elizabeth and by their associations with the Assembly. Parliament was largely occupied with the settlement of the Church, but it found time to regulate matters of police and trade. The influence of the Assembly continued to be paramount till 1584, when, for the first time, King James was able to assert his personality. The "Black Acts" of that year included a declaration of the king's royal power over all subjects, the supremity of Parliament, the illegality of conventions or assemblies not sanctioned by the king, and the subjection of ministers of the Church to the civil courts. No weight whatever can be given to the phrase "supremity of Parliament." It meant only that the king knew that he could use the Parliament as he liked, while the Assembly was as yet beyond his control. We do not intend to enter into the complicated story of the conflict between the king and the Church. But from 1584 the Parliament was generally at the disposal of the king. Still more is this the case after the year 1603. The Parliament became the mere shadow of the royal power. It declared in 1606—the year after the defiance of the king by the Aberdeen assembly—"our soverane monarche, absolute prince, Judge, and governor over all persones, Estaittis, and causis, baith spirituall and temporall, within his said realme." Only twelve years had elapsed since Andrew Melville's speech. The union with England meant that the king had power to coerce Scotland. The same obsequious Parliament outraged the national sentiment by the first establishment of episcopacy, although the assembly was still so strong that the bishops protested that there was no design to alter the discipline of the Kirk, "and submitted themselves in all time comeing to the judgement of the General Assemblie." Parliament was governed by the Lords of the Articles, and they were the creatures of the king. James did not exaggerate when he said:[122] "Here I sit and governe it [Scotland] with my pen, I write and it is done, and by a Clearke of the Councell I governe Scotland now, which others could not do by the sword." The satirist who accompanied King James on his visit to Scotland in 1617 gave vent to a merited sneer at the three Estates. "Their parliaments," he wrote, "hold but three days; their statutes are but three lines."[123] The anonymous apologist who replied made no effort to meet the accusation. It might have been King James himself that wrote: "For the brevitie of your parliaments ye are beholden to your wisdom, for the brevitie of your statutes to your justice."[124]
The conduct of affairs in Scotland remained, at first, unchanged by the death of James VI. The few parliaments of the reign are occupied with taxation, ratification, and other formal business. James had been statesman enough to fear the influence of Laud in Scotland.[125] Charles allowed a meddling ecclesiastic to stretch too far the allegiance of his people to their ancient House. The Parliament of 1628-30 is of no importance in the history of Scotland. It was poorly attended, and its deliberations were a foregone conclusion. The Parliament of 1639 was crowded, and it began its work with a protest against the method of electing the Lords of the Articles. The protest was feeble enough to be the first faint symptom of a revolution; but the revolution had already taken place. The people were led as before, not by the Parliament, but by the Assembly. The Glasgow Assembly of 1638, which continued to meet in spite of its "dissolution" by the king's commissioner, was the means by which a fatal blow was given to the first régime of episcopacy and absolute monarchy. It rendered possible the revolutionary Parliament of 1640. We have already noticed the more important of its proceedings. It continued to look for support to the Assembly. It grounded its resolution against the presence of prelates in Parliament on the Act of Assembly abolishing episcopacy. In 1641 it beseeched the assembly to sit in Edinburgh instead of in St. Andrews, sending "some of everie estait to represent" its sense of "the great necessitie at this tyme of the concurring advyse of both the Assemblie and Parliament," and promising "to sett down ane solid course for the beiring of the chairges of the Commissioners to your yeirlie Generall Assemblies."[126] From 1641 to 1650 Scotland was ruled by the Scottish Parliament, in conjunction with the Assembly. The Estates undertook the management of the war, carried out the negotiations with the English Parliament, and with the king, and were at the same time able to give due attention to the minutest local details. Like the Reformation Parliament of 1560, the Covenant Parliament of 1640 marks a distinct stage in Scottish constitutional history. After we make all allowance for the revolutionary nature of the time, and for its dependence on the Assembly, it remains true that it grew to occupy a position different from that of any of its predecessors. It had learned much from England. Not for the first time, but more emphatically than ever before, do we find the Estates adopting the language of the English parliamentary opposition. On the other hand, the Scottish Parliament was in some ways in advance of its English sister. When Charles I paid his second visit to Scotland, in 1641, he found himself a puppet in the hands of his erstwhile obedient Estates. As we have seen, the Lords of the Articles became open committees of Parliament, and they were jealously watched by their colleagues. Parliament claimed the appointment of the privy council, and all the officers of state.[127] The reader will note with surprise the large amount of space occupied by the proceedings of Parliament during these years. Much is merely the record of judicial acts, and much was done by Parliament that we should regard as pertaining to the executive. For our present purpose it is unnecessary to descend to particulars. Our main contention is that the supersession of the royal power was rendered the more easy and the less significant because of the official character of the normal parliamentary procedure. The Estates, having the power to defy the king, could point to their own history as good warrant for their use of it. The sovereign had never dared to prorogue them against their will, they argued. Charles knew that they spoke the truth, and he could but accept the position. If the record of the Estates was one long submission, it did not contain a defeat, and it was capable of two interpretations. So, after the death of the king, the men who had just executed Huntly sent to offer terms to Charles II. It is significant that there were four representatives of the Estates, and three of the Assembly. The power was still conjoint, although Parliament during these years of struggle had learned to act. When the young king came to Scotland he found himself little more than a prisoner in the hands of the grim, staunch fearless men who surrounded him. He was forced to sign the most humiliating confessions of the sins of his family, and he abjured "Prelacy and all errors, schism, and profaneness." Cromwell's victory changed the aspect of affairs,[128] and ended, for the time, the history of the Parliament of Scotland. The short-lived "union" did not take effect till 1654, but from the date of the battle of Dunbar both Assembly and Estates had to acknowledge their master. In 1653 the General Assembly was reduced to plead "that we were ane Ecclesticall synod, ane spirituall court of Jesus Christ, which medled not with anything civile."[129] But the Assembly ceased to meet: and the Government of Scotland was neither ecclesiastical nor civil, but martial. The Parliament agreed to the union: once again because it was ordered so to do.
The story of the Cromwellian parliaments is no part of our subject. Scottish counties and burghs were represented, and an elaborate scheme was prepared to adjust the proper proportions—a scheme which afterwards was the model for further developments.[130] Two acts were passed by the united Parliament which affected the current of Scottish history—the establishment of free trade with England and the abolition of feudality.
The Commonwealth passed away, and Scotland had once more its Covenanted King. The irony of fate used the Committee of Estates, the body which Charles I had known as an enemy, to deliver the country to an absolute monarchy. The Committee of Estates was followed, when the king's commissioner arrived, by the meeting of the Restoration Parliament. The main difficulty was the religious one. Parliament was reduced to the position it had occupied before 1638. In 1661 it passed an act which rescinded all its own statutes since 1640. It humbly confessed the king's right to choose all officers of state, and members of the privy council; it acknowledged his right to call and prorogue Parliament; it re-established the tyranny of the Lords of the Articles. It recalled bishops to Parliament, and proscribed the national religion. Even when the English Parliament had recovered from its emotional loyalty, and begun to resume its old attitude to the king, the Scottish Estates remained absolutely at his disposal. When, later still, the succession was disputed in England, an act was passed in Scotland to declare that it could not be altered "without involving the subjects in perjury and rebellion." When Charles II died, Parliament addressed James VII in terms ludicrously obsequious. "The death of that our excellent monarch is lamented by us to all the degrees of grief that are consistent with our great joy for the succession of your sacred majesty." Between 1660 and 1689 the Scottish Parliament was once more the merest instrument for official sanction. A contemporary has left us his impressions of the time. He tells us that the methods of the Lords of the Articles were not quite so secret as they used to be.
Of late times matters have been at full length and freely debated in Parliament. They sit all in one House, and every one answers distinctly to his name and gives his vote, which is in these terms, I approve or not; only those who are not satisfied one way or another, say Non liquet, which is a great ease to those who are conscientious, and a common refuge to the cunning Politicians; the major vote carries it. No dissents or protests are allowed in public acts, but are accounted treasonable.[131]
The arm of the Government was all-powerful, and they had not even to guard against opposition. A caricature of the General Assembly was maintained to give a further ecclesiastical ratification to the king's acts, "But," adds our informant,
as the calling of this synod is wholly in the Crown, so there is little need of it, since the King's Supremacy is so large, that He needs not there concurrence, to adde their Authority to anything that He shall think fit to doe about Church affairs.
It may be at first matter of surprise that Scotland should so completely have succumbed. All that the popular party could do was to suffer. Only on rare occasions could they take the field. Suffering or fighting, they never yielded. But the dearth of constitutional life is not inexplicable. Had the Restoration occurred ten years earlier, it would have been otherwise. The Commonwealth had blotted out the recollection of the years which preceded it, and prepared the way for the years that followed it. Bishop Burnet's remark, that the root of the trouble lay in the king's "entering in without condition," was true, at all events, for the historian's own country. Moreover, we must not forget the condition of the country. The long-continued struggle had brought desolation where before the union of the crowns we can trace prosperity. In Glasgow, in 1692, "near fyve hundredth houses [were] standing waste." The harbour of Ayr was ruinous. The High Street of Dumfries contained scarcely a habitable house.[132] Trade and commerce had declined. The short interval of freedom of trade had but served to intensify the pressure of the Navigation Act. Scotsmen boasted of their "conquest" of England in 1603. England had but given their kings the power to oppress them.
A free Parliament met again in 1689. The absence of any strict constitutional feeling led, as so often before, to the assumption of a much more advanced position than that of the English Parliament. Nothing is more characteristic of the slowly broadening growth of English parliamentary claims than the delicate adjustment of conflicting theories by the Convention. In Scotland no such nice adjustment was possible. The proceedings are marked rather by a rude logic. The Estates enumerated the misdeeds of the unfortunate monarch in language distinguished from that of the Claim of Rights only by its strength.[133] The details are not important for our purpose. There is no appeal to precedent, nor any nicety of phrasing. James, having been guilty of this catalogue of crimes, had "forfaulted the right to the Crown, and the throne is become vacant." The underlying theory is sufficiently clear, but it was based on the logic of events. It was probably an effect of the English connections that the Estates went further than usual, and laid down two general principles. All the acts that they had enumerated were illegal. No papist might be king or queen of Scotland. With these conditions, and one other limitation, they proceeded to offer the crown to William and Mary and to entail it, in default of their heirs, upon the Princess Anne. That other clause expressed a claim which, for the people of Scotland, included civil liberties, and had been throughout the troubles synonymous with freedom. The Estates declared that "Prelacy is a great and insupportable grievance to the nation." A "Covenanted King" it was impossible to hope for, nor is there evidence that they desired to repeat the experiment. But the new sovereigns must understand the situation. When the acceptance of William and Mary converted, without any further change, the Convention into a Parliament, the Estates set themselves to solving the religious problem. They rescinded the act of Charles II asserting "his majestie's supremacy over all persons and in all causes ecclesiastical" as "inconsistent with the establishment of Church government now desired." They restored the presbyterian clergy to their churches and manses. They approved the Westminster Confession of Faith—the sole product of those efforts towards a covenanted uniformity which had led the Church into somewhat devious paths—and they established Church government "by Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Provincial Synods, and General Assemblies." The more rigid presbyterians were disappointed. It was not so emphatic a settlement as they desired. Independent as the Establishment was, it seemed Erastian to men whose only associations with the functions of government had been connected with Grierson of Lagg and Bloody Mackenzie. King William insisted upon the extension of a toleration to Episcopalian Dissenters in Scotland which, as the Church more than once complained, was lacking in the treatment of Presbyterian Dissenters in England. The Revolution Settlement, therefore, was not accepted by the whole of the popular party, and the Jacobites were reinforced by ousted episcopalians on the one hand, and presbyterian malcontents on the other. But the compromise of 1690 satisfied the majority of the nation. The credit of the arrangement belongs neither to the Parliament nor to the king, but to the wise statesman who presided over the University of Edinburgh. The English Revolution of 1689 was in its origin religious, but it early assumed the aspect of a purely civil movement. The Revolution in Scotland suggests to-day only the Church Settlement, and the course it took was decided by William Carstares.
The Parliament of 1690 proceeded to assert its own freedom of action. Henceforward till the Treaty of Union took effect, we have parliamentary independence in Scotland,[134] as far as purely internal affairs were concerned. After William's death we find still wider claims. The events of William's reign had not been such as to draw the nations nearer each other, or to reconcile the Parliament to the limitation of its sphere of influence to internal administration. King William had been responsible for the Massacre of Glencoe; he had forced Scotland to expend large sums upon a war in which, after the battle of Killiecrankie, she took no interest. The Parliament of England had urged the king to an interference with the Darien Scheme, which could not be regarded in Scotland as other than a betrayal. The Scottish Estates had not responded to the Act of Settlement in 1700, and when Queen Anne succeeded, the attitude of the two countries was becoming increasingly threatening. England regarded any advance of Scottish prosperity as a success gained at her own cost. Scotland feared that the country was to be permanently under foreign influence. The rapid growth of a constitutional feeling since 1690 aided the circumstances of the time in the production of parliamentary parties, a unique event in Scottish history. The meeting of Estates in 1703 contained Williamites, Patriots, and Cavaliers.[135] The first of these supported the government of King William and his successor as, at all events, the least of the many possible evils. The Cavaliers clamoured for the return of the exiled House. The Patriot or "Country" party, headed by Hamilton, Tweeddale, and Fletcher of Saltoun, argued that, if foreign domination were to continue, it made but little difference whether it emanated from St. Germains or from the Court of St. James's. A combination of Cavaliers and Patriots passed the Act of Security. This famous act named no successor to Queen Anne. It 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 peace and war, without consent of Parliament. It enacted, further, that the union of the crowns should determine, unless Scotland was admitted to equal trade and navigation privileges with England. Nor was there lacking the intention to make good the threat. The same act provided for the compulsory training of every Scotsman to bear arms. The Scottish Parliament debated each clause with vigour. The Estates recognized that now, if scarcely ever before, momentous issues hung upon their decision, and the walls of the Parliament House re-echoed with the unwonted excitement of party cries. The royal commissioner declined to give the queen's assent. The Parliament refused to grant supplies, and the meeting broke up amid confused shouts of "Liberty before Subsidy." The bitterness of the struggle was accentuated by a silly dispute about the Jacobite Plot, and the temper of the two nations was strained to the utmost.
The union of the crowns had been rendered possible only by the self-restraint which permitted the people of England to accept a Scotsman as the king. A similar spirit of self-restraint now actuated Queen Anne's advisers. The queen assented to the Act of Security, and the Scots began to train for a war that was not to be fought by the sword. The English ministers proposed a union of the kingdoms. Fortunately, they recognized that Scotland was in earnest, and expressed their willingness to yield somewhat on the main point—freedom of trade. Into the long and dreary negotiations which preceded the union we need not enter. Amid jealousy, faction, and evils still more sordid, the treaty of union was concluded. The agreement secured to Scotland the maintenance of her law, and the continued existence of her universities, and it guaranteed that there would be no interference with the Church as by law established. On the other hand, the kingdom surrendered her national existence, and was forced to be content with a miserably inadequate representation in the English Parliament. It is little wonder that the people in general, and especially the populace of Edinburgh, regarded the treaty with horror and looked upon its supporters as traitors. Amid riot and uproar, and with howls of execration sounding in their ears, the Estates of Scotland met for the last time on 25th March, 1707, under the presidency of the lord chancellor, the Earl of Seafield. Among some of the senators themselves there was an uneasy feeling that they had sold their country for trade privileges which the givers would strain every nerve to render worthless. Others were more callous. "There's the end o' an auld sang," laughed the Chancellor, as the Honours of Scotland were carried out of the Parliament House for the last time.
There is a touch of pathos in this final scene. To us, it can appear sad only with the sadness of changefulness. But the faces of contemporaries were turned backwards. The three Estates had survived many revolutions. It was true that their history did not represent the best of the nation's life; but with that best it had ever been more or less closely associated. In recent years the Parliament had come to mean national existence. It had entered into a new sphere, and assumed new functions. A career of usefulness seemed to lie before it. In spite of its age, its end was, in this sense, premature. The conditions, too, were ignominious. The accumulated hatred of four hundred years had attached itself to the names of Darien and Glencoe. England had yielded much less than a free and independent nation had a right to ask, and Scotland could not demand more, because the men whom she trusted had failed her.
No doubt the Chancellor was right. It was "the end o' an auld sang." But, after all, the Estates had received "the wages of going on, and still to be." It did not appear so at the first. The Parliament of Great Britain broke more than one pledge solemnly made at the union. The highest boon that King James or Prince Charles could promise to Scotland was the repeal of the union. The Scottish representatives had little weight in the councils of the Empire. Even the faithful Argyll was thwarted, and his service lightly esteemed. The best blood of the country was spilt on foreign battlefields and in alien quarrels. The genius of a Keith served only to lead to victory the troops of Frederick the Great, and to guide the steps of Russia towards Constantinople. Among the exiles, there were others, less fortunate, who found no scope for their talents, and no friends in the land of the stranger. But, as time passed, the tragic element faded out of the story, and, with the rapid growth of prosperity, the influence of Scotland on the destinies of the nation became more apparent. The land of Kennedy and Elphinstone, of Lethington and Carstares, could not fail to produce wise and prudent statesmen, who might find, on a wider stage, the renown that had been denied to those who went before them. The music of the "auld sang" resounded again, although the walls that re-echoed it were those of Westminster. The Imperial Parliament meets close to the ancient Abbey, the guardian of the Stone of Fate, which the first Edward carried in triumph from Scotland, and on which, for nigh three hundred years, descendant after descendant of his enemy has sat. As the old prophecy has not been rendered void by the transference of its subject from Scone to London, so the promise that gave meaning to the last years of the Scottish Parliament has not failed of fulfilment. Nec tamen consumebatur.