The Early History of the Scottish Union Question / Bi-Centenary Edition

by George W. T. Omond

Eight commissioners, among whom were young Sir Harry Vane, Lambert, and Monk, were appointed to arrange an Union. They found everything in confusion. The last meeting of the Scottish Parliament had taken place on the 6th of June. The Court of Session had not sat since February 1650. Many towns were without magistrates. The Church was torn by internal dissensions. When proclamation was made, at the market-cross of Edinburgh, that Scotland was to be united, in one Commonwealth, with England, the announcement was received in gloomy silence. But there was an under-current of feeling in favour of the Union, of which the commissioners were doubtless aware. Delegates from the counties and burghs were summoned to meet at Dalkeith, to consider the Tender of Union which the commissioners were empowered to offer on behalf of the Parliament of England; and the result was that, of thirty-one counties, twenty-eight, and of fifty-eight burghs, forty-four assented to the Union.[70] Their assent must in some degree be ascribed to motives of prudence; for it was known that those counties and burghs which failed to send delegates favourable to union would be disfranchised; but it was from Glasgow alone, which, more than any other place in Scotland, was ultimately to benefit from the Union with England, that any formal and serious objection came. By some a scheme was suggested, which Fletcher of Saltoun would have warmly supported in 1707, for declining an incorporating Union and making Scotland a republic in friendly alliance with England. But the proposers of this scheme, one of whom was the noted Covenanter, Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston, ultimately agreed to the Union.

The chief opponents of the new arrangement were the clergy. It was on the 23rd of February 1652 that the delegates assembled at Dalkeith; and on the following day Baillie writes: “All the ministers of Edinburgh prays still for the king, and preaches very freely and zealously against the way of the English; this they are very angry at, and threatens to remeed it.” But the ministers were divided against each other. Some resisted the Union because they were Royalists, some because they could not tolerate the idea of uniting with a country in which the Independents and other “Sectaries” had so much power, and others because they thought that the result of the Union would be that the Church would become subordinate to the State. But their resistance was of no avail; and they could only lament the defection of so many of the laity. “Good Sir John Seaton,” Baillie writes in reference to the Conference at Dalkeith, “was the first that subscribed his free and willing acceptance of the incorporation for East Louthian. The two Swintons followed for the Merse, Stobs for Tiviotdale, Dundas for West Louthian, William Thomson and Fairbairne, I think, have done the like for Edinburgh, and its like almost all burghs and shyres will, under their hand, renounce their Covenant; Glasgow and the West purposes to refuse, for which we are like deeply to suffer; but the will of the Lord be done.”[71]

The result of the meeting of delegates was reported to Parliament; and the Council of State was instructed to prepare a Bill for the union of the two countries. Deputies were sent from Scotland to Westminster to adjust the details of the measure, and, in particular, to fix the number of members who were to represent Scotland in the Parliament of the United Commonwealth. A series of conferences were held between these deputies and a Committee of Parliament, at which the demands of Scotland were discussed. There was great difficulty in settling the question of representation.[72] The English proposal was that, in the united Parliament, England should be represented by four hundred members, Scotland by thirty, and Ireland by thirty. The number of commoners in the Scottish Parliament had been one hundred and twenty; and the deputies wished sixty Scottish members to have seats in the House of Commons. The English Government, however, refused to admit more than thirty. This was agreed to; and the Union Bill was about to pass, when, on the 20th of April 1653, Cromwell put an end to the Long Parliament.

In the Little Parliament, Barebones’ Parliament, Scotland was represented by five members, and some progress was made in the matter of the Union. It was resolved that there should be complete free trade between England and Scotland. The Government ordered all money raised in Scotland to be spent in Scotland for local purposes;[73] and that on the passing of the Union Bill, an enactment, which had come into force three years before, under which all Scotsmen were banished from England, should be repealed.[74] But the further progress of the Union Bill came to an end when Parliament was dissolved, and the control of all affairs passed into the hands of Cromwell as “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland,” a title which assumed that the Union had already taken place.

In the following spring an ordinance was framed for completing the Union. It set forth that the people of Scotland, having been invited to unite with England, had, through their deputies, accepted the invitation; that Scotland was, therefore, to be now incorporated and declared one Commonwealth with England; and that, in every Parliament which was held for the Commonwealth, thirty members were to serve for Scotland. To secure the more effectual preservation of the Union, and the freedom of the country, the people of Scotland were relieved from all allegiance to the Stuarts. The title of King of Scotland was abolished. The right of the Estates to assemble in Parliament was annulled. It was ordained that, “as a badge of this Union,” the arms of Scotland should form a part of the arms of the Commonwealth; and that all seals of office, and the seals of the corporations in Scotland, should henceforth bear the arms of the Commonwealth. All taxes were to be levied proportionably from the whole people of the Commonwealth. Vassalage was abolished, and lands were to be held by deed or charter for rent. The whole system of hereditary jurisdictions, by which there had been transmitted from father to son, in many families of the landowners, the power of holding courts and inflicting punishments, even that of death, was swept away. An immense boon was conferred on Scotland by the establishment of complete free trade between the countries, and by the declaration that in all matters relating to commerce England and Scotland were thenceforth equal.[75]

This ordinance was proclaimed at Edinburgh on the 4th of May 1654. The town-cross, at which the ceremony took place, was surrounded by troops under the command of Monk. An immense crowd of the townsfolk assembled to witness the proceedings. The Lord Provost and the Magistrates, clad in their scarlet robes, were in attendance. Henry Whalley, Judge Advocate to the English army, read the proclamation; and at the conclusion of the ceremony, Monk and his friends were entertained at a sumptuous banquet in the Parliament House, where the Magistrates stood and served them. Later in the evening there was a display of fireworks at the town-cross.

The Union having been thus proclaimed, the Council of State at Whitehall proceeded to arrange the distribution of seats in Scotland.[76] Of the thirty seats, twenty were allotted to the counties, and ten to the burghs. The more populous counties each returned a member. The rest were divided into groups. Of the burghs, Edinburgh alone returned two members; but all the other towns were grouped into districts.

When the Protector’s first Parliament met, in July 1654, twenty-one members from Scotland attended. Of these, both the members for Edinburgh, and several others, were Englishmen; and while the Union lasted, the members from Scotland were either quiet and peaceful Scotsmen, ready to support the Protector’s measures, or English officials.[77]

The Council in Scotland managed the elections there. The full number of thirty members was returned to the Parliament of 1656; but many of them were Englishmen. Argyll opposed the Council, and endeavoured to secure the return of Scotsmen only, but in vain. He failed to obtain a seat himself until Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1658, when thirteen county and eight burgh members seem to have attended. Argyll then represented Aberdeenshire in the House of Commons; but the members for Perthshire, Inverness-shire, Linlithgow, Stirlingshire, Clackmannan, Dumbartonshire, Argyllshire, Bute, and Midlothian were all Englishmen; and a majority of the burgh members came from Westminster or the Inns of Court.[78]