Fletcher of Saltoun

by George W. T. Omond

When the Estates went into the question of Limitations, Rothes introduced a measure for regulating the mode of appointing Privy Councillors and other officers of the Crown, and Belhaven introduced another for triennial Parliaments. Both these measures were popular with the House. But Fletcher was not satisfied, and he again brought forward his own pet scheme. His Twelve Limitations, which the Estates had, in the session of 1703, declined to incorporate in the Act of Security, were now known as the Duodecem Tabulæ, the Twelve Tables of the Law. But Fletcher himself was in no joking humour when he moved that the Estates should solemnly adopt them as a Claim of Rights, not requiring the consent of the Sovereign.

On the 15th of August he made an elaborate speech upon the subject. He was listened to in silence, and, when he sat down, was asked to withdraw his motion. But the more he was appealed to the stiffer he became. A debate of four hours followed, in the course of which he fell foul of Stair. Stair had sneered at the tenth limitation, which provided that no pardon granted by the Crown, for any offence, should be valid without the consent of Parliament; and Fletcher thereupon exclaimed, ‘It is no wonder his Lordship is against this, for had there been such a law he would have been hanged long ago for the advice he gave King James, the murder of Glencoe, and his whole conduct since the Revolution.’ But the feeling of the House was against him. He saw this, and, muttering to himself, ‘Well, is it so? I’ll serve them a trick for it,’ he announced that he would not press the subject, but would move that the House should consider the measures which had been brought in by Rothes and Belhaven.[13]

[13] Add.mss. 28,055, fol. 277.

On the following day, when Rothes moved the second reading of his measure, Fletcher again tried to bring forward his favourite subject, which led Stair to say that the honourable member was resolved to do by his Limitations as the ape did by her young, grasp them so tight that she stifled them. Fletcher lost his temper, and called out that the noble lord had, in the days of King James, stretched the prerogative till it nearly cracked, when he penned the declaration of arbitrary power.

This was a very palpable hit, but the Chancellor rose and stopped the altercation by moving that the House should proceed to business; and on a vote being taken whether the Estates, or the Sovereign with the consent of the Estates, should appoint Privy Councillors, Judges, and other officers, it carried in favour of the Estates by twenty-three, in spite of the opposition of the Government. Nothing, however, came of these wild expedients for limiting the power of the Crown. The Estates passed Acts for triennial Parliaments, for giving to Parliament the power of appointing officers of the Crown, and for securing the presence of Scottish ambassadors at the making of all treaties, but to these enactments the royal assent was refused. The proposals for improving the trade of the country took the form of a number of measures, only a few of which received the royal assent. The general purpose of these measures was Protection to home trade and manufactures, and retaliation on England for passing the Alien Act. Of these the royal assent was given to an Act forbidding the importation of English, Irish, and foreign butter and cheese, to an Act for assisting the fisheries of Scotland, to an Act for encouraging the exportation of beef and pork, and to another declaring Scottish linen and woollen manufactures free of duty at exportation. In addition to these there was a statute, which was considered the most important of all, for appointing a Council of Trade for Scotland.

In the meantime the Government were waiting an opportunity for again bringing forward the question of the Union; and at last, on the 24th of August, Mar’s resolution on the subject was discussed. Fletcher moved, a few days later, an address to the throne, complaining of the way in which Scotland had been treated by the English Parliament, which he declared to be ‘injurious to the honour and interest of this nation.’ Though this address was not adopted, Hamilton pressed upon the House a resolution binding the Estates to resist any Union which would change the fundamental laws of the Scottish constitution. At this point the Country Party appear to have agreed to the principle of an Union; but they were resolved that the Scottish Parliament, the outward sign and instrument of an independent national existence, must not be abolished. Gradually the Act for a Treaty of Union took shape; but, when the Government were congratulating themselves on having weathered the storm, Fletcher moved to amend the Act by inserting a clause to provide that the Commissioners for Union should not meet until the ‘Alien Clause’ of the recent English Act was repealed. He and his friends, both Jacobites and members of the Old Country Party, probably believed that England would refuse to treat on such terms, and that, therefore, the Union, which he now saw was threatening the independence of Scotland, would collapse. It was likely that the Government would be defeated if Fletcher’s amendment was openly opposed, and the dexterous hand of Queensberry is seen in the way in which the difficulty was met. The Government professed to agree with the object of the amendment, but proposed that, instead of adding it to the Union Act, the House should, as soon as that Act was passed, proceed to consider whether the question of the Alien Clause should form the subject of a resolution of the Estates or of a separate Act of Parliament. Fletcher agreed to this, and his motion stands on the rolls of the Scottish Parliament in these terms: ‘Then agreed and ordered, nemine contradicente, that the Commissioners to be named by Her Majesty for the Kingdom of Scotland shall not commence the Treaty of Union until the clause in the English Act declaring the subjects of Scotland aliens be rescinded.’ The Scottish Ministers, in transmitting this resolution to London, carefully explained that they had found it necessary, if the Union was to go on, to comply with the wish of the Estates that some resentment should be expressed against England.[14]

[14] Halifax to Godolphin, 4th Sept. 1705. Add.mss. 28,055.

But before this point was reached there had been a very sharp debate regarding the appointment of the Commissioners on Union. The story is told by Lockhart, and is well known. At a late hour on the evening of Saturday the 1st of September, when most of the members had left in the belief that the House was about to rise, Hamilton suddenly addressed the Chancellor, and moved that the nomination of the Commissioners should be left to the Queen. Some members of the Opposition rushed from the House, shouting that they were betrayed; but Fletcher sprang to his feet, and made a personal attack on Hamilton for his inconsistency in making this proposal. ‘Saltoun opposed that most bitterly,’ says Sir David Hume, in his diary. But it was in vain. The vote was called for, and Hamilton’s motion was carried.[15] ‘From this day,’ says Lockhart, ‘we may date the commencement of Scotland’s ruin.’

[15] Lockhart says, ‘by a plurality of eight voices, of which His Grace The Duke of Hamilton had the honour to be one’ (Memoirs, i. 133). Sir David Hume says the majority was forty.

The session ended quietly on the 21st of September, when the Commissioner touched with the sceptre the Acts to which he had obtained leave to give the royal assent, of which the most important was the ‘Act for a Treaty with England.’