He ended his speech by saying that, in future times, England, “having Scotland united and Ireland reduced,” would be one of the greatest monarchies in the world.[62]
But this appeal was unheeded by the House; and though Coke brought all his great authority as a common lawyer to the same side as Bacon, the members would not be convinced. James on two occasions expostulated with them. He said he was willing, if it would help on the Union, to live one year in Scotland and another in England, or to live at York, or on the Borders. But the Commons were intractable, although the Lords were ready to agree to the Union, and to the naturalisation of the Scots.
Something, however, was accomplished. The questions of trade and of naturalisation were left unsettled; but an Act was passed which gave effect to the first part of the Treaty of Union, by repealing a number of statutes hostile to Scotland (such as those which forbade the leasing of lands to Scotsmen, and the exporting of arms or horses to Scotland), on condition that the Scottish Parliament, when it met, was to repeal the Scottish Acts, of a similar nature, which were hostile to England.[63]
With this small concession James had to be contented; and at the beginning of July he dismissed the Parliament, but not without a farewell warning that the Union was, in the long-run, inevitable. “These two kingdoms,” he said, “are so conjoined that, if we should sleep in our beds, the Union should be, though we would not. He that doth not love a Scotsman as his brother, or the Scotsman that loves not an Englishman as his brother, he is traitor to God and the king.”
The Scottish Parliament met in the first week of August. The Scots were, on the whole, rather proud to think that their king had gone to rule over England. Yet the old wrongs could not easily be forgotten, and it is probable that the Estates were very nearly as much against the Union as the House of Commons was. The Privy Council had, some months before, given the king a hint of this;[64] and a trivial circumstance may be mentioned to show how jealous the Scots were of England. A pattern of the new flag which James had ordered to be prepared for the United Kingdom, had been sent from England; and great offence had been taken when it was found that the Cross of Saint Andrew was covered, and, it was said, hidden by the Cross of St. George. Scottish seamen, the king was told, could not be induced to receive the flag.[65]
There can be little doubt that most Scotsmen sympathised with the national feeling which this trifling incident disclosed. But the private opinion of a member of the Scottish Parliament was one thing, and his public conduct was another. The Estates were submissive to the royal will. The Articles of Union were agreed to; and all the laws hostile to England were repealed.[66]
Thus, so far as it lay within the power of the Scottish Parliament, the king had got what he wanted. All that remained was for the English Parliament to be equally complaisant; and the kingdoms would have been united in 1607 instead of a century later. But it was not to be. In neither country was there any genuine desire for union. The free traditions of the House of Commons enabled the members to say what they thought; and the subject, gradually dropping out of sight, was not again seriously debated during the reign of James. The antiquary may still inspect a brown and shrivelled parchment which is preserved in the Register House at Edinburgh, all that remains of the Treaty of 1607. The time had not yet come when the Parliaments of the two nations were to see that it was impossible for the resources of Scotland to be developed while she remained separate from England, and that it was equally impossible for England to attain a position of permanent security so long as Scotland remained poor and discontented, debarred, by commercial restrictions, from the advantages of trade with the colonies and with England, and with no outlet for that splendid energy of her people which, after the Union, changed the Lothians from a desert to a garden, made Edinburgh famous throughout Europe as a school of letters, and founded on the banks of the Clyde one of the great commercial cities of the world.
The question of naturalisation, which could not be left undecided, was settled by the judges in a test case in the law courts. The action related to a tenement in Shoreditch, and the point at issue was whether the plaintiff, a child born in Scotland since the Union of the Crowns, was an alien, and, therefore, not entitled to bring an action for real property in England. Bacon was the leading counsel for the plaintiff; and the most important opinion was delivered by Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. The Court, by a majority, found for the plaintiff, holding that all the post-nati, or persons born in Scotland since the Union of the Crowns, were naturalised and entitled to all the rights of Englishmen in England. The ante-nati, those born in Scotland before the accession of James, still remained in the position of aliens.[67]
The effects of the removal of the Court to London were apparent in Scotland for many years to come. The houses of the nobles and the gentry were neglected. Gardens and pleasure-grounds, which had begun to appear in some places, were allowed to run to waste. The inns, poor at all times, fell into ruins. Merchants found their business at a standstill; and the shipping trade languished. What made all this peculiarly galling to the Scottish people was that England, though not occupying under the Stuarts the lofty position which she had occupied under the Tudors, was, year after year, enlarging her bounds and adding to the sources of her wealth. On the southern side of the Borders, the industries of Yorkshire were showing signs of what they were to become. The East India Company, now firmly established, was extending its operations. Far across the seas Nova Scotia was colonised by Scotsmen whom poverty had driven from their homes; and the plantations of Virginia became a rich addition to the resources of the English Crown. And besides suffering from the evils of poverty, Scotland was harassed almost from the day on which James ascended the throne of England by those ecclesiastical disputes which plunged the country into so much misery during the seventeenth century.