Fletcher of Saltoun

by George W. T. Omond

The feeling of the Estates may be gathered from the fact that they refused to approve of the conduct of the Commons, but agreed to censure the House of Lords. Nothing done by the English Parliament was right.

Just before the end of the session Fletcher brought in a measure for the purpose of adding eleven county members to the Parliament, and one more, in future, for every new peer who might be created. Hamilton, at the same time, introduced an ‘Act about free voting in Parliament,’ the object of which was to exclude from the House officers in the army, collectors of customs, and some other persons in the pay of the Crown.

On the 24th of August, Fletcher moved the second reading of his measure; and, as soon as he sat down, Hamilton moved the second reading of his. On this Fletcher said, ‘The member who has just spoken contradicts himself,’ and explained that Hamilton had been in favour of the measure for adding to the county members, which he was now hindering.

Hamilton at once complained of the way in which he had been spoken of, and offered to go to the bar, ‘If I have said anything amiss.’

‘Such reckoning,’ cried Fletcher, ‘is for another place.’

Hamilton retorted that he did not refuse to give that satisfaction either. ‘The Chancellor,’ says Sir David Hume, ‘took notice of both their expressions, and moved, that first Salton should crave my Lord Commissioner and the House pardon, if without design he had said anything that gave offence; which, after a long struggle he was prevailed with to do, if Duke Hamilton would do the like, and which both did, and promised, on their word of honour, there should be no more word of what had passed.’

Four days after this incident the session ended. The Act of Security was now law. Fletcher and his friends were triumphant, and more hostile to England than ever; while the people of England were not only indignant, but alarmed by the news that the Scots were buying arms, and meeting for drill in every parish, under the provisions of the Act of Security.

The prospect was very dark; but there were some rays of light, the resignations of Nottingham and Seymour, the most violent members of the Tory party, making it possible that the claims of Scotland to equal treatment with England might be acknowledged. But England was not in a mood to be trifled with. A week after the royal assent had been given to the Act of Security, the battle of Blenheim was fought. Marlborough was now at the summit of his power; and the alliance between him and Godolphin alone saved the latter from falling before the storm of indignation which greeted him for advising the Queen to allow the Act to become law. The Government had been successful both in England and abroad; and the Opposition fixed upon the one vulnerable point—their Scottish policy. The Act of Security was printed and circulated throughout the country. The nations, it was pointed out, were now separated by law; and for this Godolphin was responsible. Wharton boasted that he had the Lord Treasurer’s head in a halter, and swore that he would draw it tight. It was believed that large quantities of arms were arriving in Scotland from the Continent, and that the people were being drilled for the purpose of fighting against England. Godolphin himself, a man of few words and great experience, did not share in the general panic. ‘People,’ he told Queensberry afterwards at another crisis, ‘who mean to fight, do not talk so much about it.’ His invariable answer to all the abuse which was hurled at his head was that there would have been more danger in refusing the royal assent than in giving it; and he added that the danger was ‘not without a remedy.’

There can be little doubt that this remedy was the Union. But there were not many Englishmen who had the long experience or the calmness of Godolphin. The Scots, it was said, never wanted the will, and now they have the power, to attack us. France will find the money. They themselves will find the men, and their long-suppressed hatred against England will burst forth. Scotland must either be reduced by force of arms, or the militia must be embodied, and Parliament must petition the Queen to see that those gentlemen who allowed the Act of Security to pass may have the honour of defending the borders. By their policy they have undone the Union, such as it is, which has existed since the death of Elizabeth, and have separated the countries. On them, therefore, the danger should fall. Much that was very foolish and very false was said and written; but even to the coolest heads in England the peril seemed great, not on account of any immediate danger from the army in Scotland, but on account of the state of the Succession question. The situation was that England was now shut up to these alternatives:—either, on the death of Anne, she must make war on Scotland, conquer the country, and hold it by force of arms, without any attempt at constitutional government; or she must allow a separate King to sit on the Scottish throne; or she must consent to an Union, and at last submit to give Scotland an equal share in English trade. Godolphin saw this. So did Somers and Halifax. Everything depended on the course taken by the English Parliament.

The English Parliament met on the 25th of October 1704; and what followed is in marked contrast to the irregular proceedings of the Scottish Estates. The strife of parties was as keen in London as in Edinburgh. The factions were as violent; but the proceedings at Westminster were regular and orderly. Speed there was; but everything was done with that punctilious attention to forms which makes the resolutions of the English Parliament, by whatever angry passions the members may be influenced, so doubly weighty, not only because they are the decisions of the representatives of a great and powerful nation, but because they are framed, revised, and adopted in such an orderly method, that to read the journals of the Lords and Commons (a vast mine of constitutional law, which is too much neglected) gives the student of our history an impressive idea of strength and durability.