A few years before the Union of the Crowns, James, in the Basilikon Doron, that quaint little volume of “Instructions to his dearest sonne, Henry the Prince,” had alluded to the dangers which were caused by the divided state of the island. “As for the Borders,” he wrote, “because I know, if ye enjoy not this whole Isle, according to God’s right and your lineal descent, ye will never get leave to brooke this North and barrenest part thereof; no, not your own head whereon the crown should stand! I need not in that case trouble you with them; for then they will be the middest part of the Isle, and so as easily ruled as any part thereof.” Hitherto a royal marriage had been the favourite plan for removing these dangers; but after this we enter upon a series of attempts to bring about an Union of a more complete and definite character. James came to the throne of England with his mind full of the subject. The people of Scotland anticipated the removal of the Court to London with dismay. But to the king it opened up a dazzling prospect of power and splendour; and he lost no time in proposing the Union, and pressing it, in season and out of season, with a persistency which brings out, in a remarkable manner, the strong individuality of his character.
For some time before the death of Elizabeth, James had been doing his best to gain the goodwill of the English people; and as soon as he received the official announcement of his accession he directed his Privy Council to proclaim the news, not only in order that the fact that he was now King of England as well as Scotland should become known, but in the hope, as the proclamation expressed it, that there might be kindled in the hearts of all Scotsmen “ane loveing and kyndlie dispositioun towardis all his Majestie’s subjectis inhabitantis of England.”[42] Nor did he fail to impress this sentiment on the people. On the last Sunday which he spent in Scotland he went to the Church of Saint Giles, where, when the sermon was ended, he made a speech to the congregation. It was regarded as a farewell, and was received with “such a mourning and lamentation of all sorts, as cannot well be expressed.”[43]
“There is no difference,” he said, to cheer his weeping subjects, “betwixt London and Edinburgh; yea, not so much as betwixt Inverness or Aberdeen and Edinburgh, for all our marches be dry, and there are ferries between them. But my course must be betwixt both, to establish peace, and religion, and wealth betwixt the countries.”
The departure of James meant a great deal to Scotland. When the day came, and the cannon were booming from the old castle of Edinburgh, the citizens assembled in multitudes to gaze at the brilliant company of courtiers who were to accompany their king upon his journey to the south; but the spectacle was one which excited many fears and few hopes. The Union of the Crowns was making great changes. The Court was leaving. The queen remained behind with the young Princes and the Princess Elizabeth; but it was known that they were soon to follow, and that, henceforth, they would live in England. Their old Scottish home, the ancient palace of Holyrood, was being dismantled already; and soon nothing would remain in the royal apartments, but some stray pieces of furniture, and a few yards of faded tapestry. It was true that to Scotland there was still left that independence which had been so hardly won. The Parliament remained in the same position as before; but a new official was spoken of, a Royal Commissioner, who was, in future, to represent the sovereign at the meetings of the Estates. The separate Scottish Executive, too, was to be continued, in the shape of the Privy Council; but it was to be divided into two parts, the one to sit in England, and the other in Scotland; and it was evident that, in future, the real centre of influence in Scottish affairs would be London.
To some of the Scottish people the future seemed very bright. During the reign of Elizabeth, there were seldom so many as a hundred Scotsmen in London at any one time. But now politicians like the future Earl of Haddington, at that time Lord Advocate Hamilton, saw that in the wide field which lay before them, greater things could be done than within the narrow bounds of Scotland. George Heriot, who followed the king to England, doubtless knew that he could hold his own, and add to his wealth, among the merchant princes of London. Gay young men, like Lord Dalgarno in The Fortunes of Nigel, looked forward to the amusements and dissipation of London, and to the chance of filling their empty pockets by marriages with English heiresses. And among the humbler members of the royal retinue there were not a few adventurers who were glad to visit England, and share the spoil with their betters. So great, indeed, was the rush of Scotsmen to England, that soon after the accession a proclamation was issued that no Scotsman was to cross the Tweed, or sail for England, without a passport from the Privy Council.[44] But those who remained behind, and especially the tradesmen of Edinburgh, who had supplied the Court, saw no chance of gain, but rather much risk of loss, in the change which was taking place.
In England, though James himself was received with demonstrations of loyalty, his Scottish followers were regarded with mingled contempt and hatred. Scotland, it was said, was a land where the nobles were beggars, and the merchants were pedlars. The coarsest satire was poured forth against the barren and unknown territory from whence the new king had come. Indeed it is difficult for us, in the nineteenth century, to realise the scornful way in which Englishmen spoke of Scotland, though we may form some idea of the language which was used from the specimens which have been preserved of what was actually printed, circulated, and probably believed at that time. “The air,” thus runs one of those productions, “might be made wholesome, but for the stinking people that inhabit it. The ground might be made wholesome, had they wit to manure it. Their beasts be generally small, women excepted, of which sort there are no greater in the world.... As for fruits, for their grandam Eve’s sake they never planted any, and for other trees, had Christ been betrayed in this country, as doubtless he should have been, had he come as a stranger amongst them, Judas had sooner found the grace of repentance than one tree to hang himself on.... The Scriptures, they say, speak of elders and deacons, but not a word of deans and bishops. Their discourse is full of detraction, their sermons nothing but railings, and their conclusion, heresy or treason.... They christen without the cross, marry without a ring, receive the Sacrament without reverence, die without repentence, and bury without divine service.”[45]
And even among those Englishmen who knew that the popular ideas of Scotland were erroneous, there was a profound feeling of jealousy lest James should fill too many of the places about the Court with his countrymen. It was suspected that if he got his own way, almost every Scotsman in London would soon be clad in velvet and satin, and wearing a costly beaver instead of a blue bonnet; and James took great pains, for a long time after his accession, to assure the English courtiers that he had no intention of promoting Scotsmen over the heads of Englishmen. “I was ever rooted,” he wrote to Lord Cranbourne, “in that firm resolution never to have placed Scottishmen in any such room, till, first, time had begun to wear away that opinion of different nations; and, secondly, that this jealous apprehension of the Union had worn away; and, thirdly, that Scotsmen had been brought up here at the foot of Gamaliel.”
Before James had been many days in England he issued a proclamation, in which it was announced that there was to be a complete Union of the Kingdoms. “In the meane tyme,” he said, “till the said Union be established, his Majestie doth hereby repute, hold, and esteeme, and commandes all His Highnesse subjects to hold and esteeme, both the Two Realmes as presently united, and as one Realme and Kingdome, and the subjects of both as one People, Brethern, and Members of one Bodye.”[46]
The personal peculiarities of James, which amounted to eccentricities, his firm belief in the maxims of his own Basilikon Doron and his complete abhorrence of the doctrines which Buchanan, in the old days, had tried to teach him, are prominent features of the controversy concerning the Union. The tenacity with which he clung to his conception of the royal prerogative is nowhere more apparent than in his speeches and proclamations, and in everything he did for the purpose of forwarding his favourite scheme. When the Parliament of England was found to be less subservient than he had expected, he pointed to Scotland as an example. “This I must say for Scotland,” he exclaimed, “and may truly vaunt it; here I sit and govern it with my pen. I write, and it is done; and by a clerk of the council I govern Scotland now, which others could not do by the sword.” These were not altogether idle words; but it would have been wiser to refrain from boasting of a supremacy such as the proudest of the Tudors had never ventured to claim.
In the formidable contest against the national prejudices of Englishmen, on which he was about to enter, James secured a powerful ally. Bacon had been one of those who received the honour of knighthood on the day of the coronation; and he lost no time in taking the king’s side on the question of the Union, which he supported with the subtilty of a scholiast, and with the broad views of a statesman and philosopher. To the debates in Parliament, to the Council Board of the Commission on Union, to the famous discussion, in the Exchequer Chamber, on the question of the post-nati, he brought all the resources of his mind, and threw himself into the struggle with an enthusiasm which could not possibly have been feigned. He played the part, though without success, which was afterwards played by Somers in the reign of Anne; and he seems, from the very first, to have perceived with the eye of genius exactly how far it was safe to go in the direction of abolishing international distinctions.