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

by George W. T. Omond

Among the members of the Estates there was a strong party in favour of delaying the settlement of the Crown until the Union had been accomplished, on the ground that terms favourable to Scotland would be more easily obtained when the affairs of England were in a critical and unsettled condition. Among those who took this view was Sir John Dalrymple, who afterwards, as first Earl of Stair, was to play a prominent part in the final settlement of the question. The fact, however, that this view was supported by some astute members of the Jacobite party, who saw in it a means of causing delay, induced a majority of the Estates to resolve that the settlement of the Crown should come first.

William had instructed Melville, and his other representatives in Scotland, that nothing was to interfere with the settlement of the Government. That was to be their first concern. If the Estates were in earnest for the Union, care was to be taken that it was not made an excuse for delay. If the Union was insisted on, then an attempt must be made to obtain from the Estates an offer of terms such as the English Parliament was likely to accept at once, without entering upon a treaty. He indicated his own view to be that the laws and customs of Scotland should be preserved intact, while questions relating to the public safety, and also the proportion of Scottish members in the united Parliament, should be referred to himself.[103]

Although William thus anticipated a discussion on the Union, he was determined that nothing should prevent or delay the immediate settlement of the Government. The resolution of the Estates was, therefore, in accordance with his wishes. But as soon as the memorable declaration that James had forfeited his right to the Crown had been adopted, along with the offer of the vacant throne to William and Mary, the Estates lost no time in taking up the question of Union; and an Act was passed appointing commissioners “to meet with such persons as shall be nominate commissioners by the Parliament of England, and to treat concerning the Union of the two kingdoms.” This Act became law on the 23rd of April, and on the following day a letter to the king was approved, in which the Estates informed his Majesty that certain of their number would wait upon him with the offer of the Crown, and would present to him a Claim of Rights, and a list of grievances for which they asked redress. At the same time they expressed the hope that the Union would be speedily accomplished, “that as both kingdoms are united in one head and sovereign, so they may become one body politic, one nation, to be represented in one Parliament.”

The Scottish Estates had proposed the Union. But at Westminster nothing could be done to further their wishes. William alluded to the question in his speech from the throne in March 1690. “I must,” he said, “recommend, also, to your consideration a Union with Scotland. I do not mean that it should now be entered upon; but they having proposed this to me, some time since, and the Parliament there having nominated commissioners for that purpose, I should be glad that commissioners might also be nominated here, to treat with them, and so see if such terms could be agreed on, as might be for the benefit of both nations, so as to be presented to you in some future session.”[104] Nothing more, however, was heard of the Union at that time. It was evident that the affairs of both kingdoms were in such a state that it was hopeless to press forward so delicate a piece of business. In England, important questions which could not be delayed awaited decision; and in Parliament party feeling was running high, not only between the Tories and the Whigs, but also between the Lords and the Commons. In Scotland, the factions which contended for the mastery would only have found in the Union another question about which to wrangle. The keen eyes of William had perceived the necessity of the Union, but the time had not yet come.

Although the project of an Union was abandoned, the statutes relating to the Church passed by the Scottish Parliament at this time, constituting what is known as the Revolution Settlement, had a most important bearing on the final accomplishment of the Union. Prelacy was abolished, and Presbytery was re-established. Most of the ministers who had been ejected at the Restoration were now dead, but sixty veterans still survived, and they were restored to their livings. The Act which asserted the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical causes was repealed. The Westminster Confession of Faith was declared to be the national creed. The Law of Patronage was reformed by an Act which gave the Protestant landowners in counties, and the town councils in burghs, power to buy the patronage of livings, for a small sum; and the right of choosing the minister was handed over to the landowners and the elders, against whose choice the congregation might appeal to the Presbytery.[105]

The statutes which introduced these reforms were accepted by an overwhelming majority of the Scottish people. In 1707 they were embodied in the Act of Union; and it is certain that if, while the terms of the great international contract were being arranged, any serious attempt had been made to alter them, the Union would never have been accomplished.

It is, indeed, hardly possible to overestimate the importance of the Church question during the Union controversy. It is certain that if the Church of the majority had not been established in Scotland at the Revolution, another civil war would have been the result. The Presbyterian clergy were Whigs, almost to a man, and their influence in the country was enormous. The views held by the extreme branch of the Church did not affect, to any great extent, the course of events in Scotland. These were the men who, under their various designations of Cameronians, or Hill men, or Society men, still clung tenaciously to the old Covenanting ideas in their most uncompromising form. They could hardly bring themselves to submit to the existing Government. The old formula of a “Covenanted King” of the Stuart dynasty was still full of meaning to them; and long afterwards, during the reign of Anne, the Jacobites tried to make use of them for the purpose of defeating the Union. They were, however, Whigs, and would never, under any circumstances, have acquiesced in the overthrow of the Presbyterian system. The great danger to the cause of the Union and the Hanoverian succession lay in the sentiments of the Episcopalians. Every Episcopal clergyman in Scotland, with scarcely an exception, was a Tory and a Jacobite. On the eve of the Revolution, when the bishops of England were opposing, with dignified firmness, the arbitrary pretensions of the king, the Scottish bishops had addressed him in terms of the most servile eulogy. They assured him that they regarded a steadfast allegiance to the throne as an essential part of their religion. They declared that the line of Stuart was the greatest glory of Scotland. They spoke of James himself as the darling of heaven, and described the amazement and horror with which they had heard the rumours of an invasion from Holland.[106] It is not wonderful that the Presbyterians, when they obtained the ascendency, should have excluded from power the authors of this address. Nor is it wonderful that, in those parts of the country where the persecutors had been at work, the peasantry should have subjected the obnoxious clergymen to every species of indignity. For more than a quarter of a century their oppressors had appealed to the law to justify their misdeeds, and it was natural that, when the hour of deliverance came, the oppressed should take the law into their own hands. Locked out of their churches and expelled from their houses, with their gowns torn from their backs, the Episcopal clergy in Scotland learned how precarious is the situation of a priesthood which is protected by the law, but has no place in the affections of the people.

The Church affairs of Scotland were not settled in accordance with the desires of William. It was no secret that he wished to secure complete toleration for all dissenters. He was anxious to avoid all measures which could interfere with the projected Union of the Kingdoms; and it is probable that his hope was that some plan might be devised for establishing the same system of Church government throughout the whole island. When he received from the Government in Scotland the draft of the Act which it was proposed to pass for the establishment of Presbytery, he made a number of amendments which had a double purpose; to remove expressions which might raise doubts in England with regard to the Union, and to conciliate the Episcopalians in Scotland. For instance, it was stated in the draft that the Reformation in Scotland had been the work of Presbyters “without Prelacy.” This statement he deleted. In the draft, Presbytery was described as “the only government of Christ’s Church in this kingdom.” William was of opinion that a better expression would be “the government of the Church in this kingdom established by law.” The rest of his suggestions were of a similar character. Everything in the shape of an assertion that Presbytery was a better system than Episcopacy was carefully avoided, and the only reason given for establishing the former was, that it was more in accordance with the wishes of the Scottish people. At the same time he explained that it was his desire “that those who do not own and yield submission to the present Church government in Scotland shall have the like indulgence that the Presbyterians have in England.”

The Act was submitted to the Estates, and became law on the 7th of June 1690. It declared Presbytery to be “the only government of Christ’s Church within this kingdom”; it condoned the action of the peasantry in expelling the Episcopal clergy by force; and it placed the government of the Church in the hands of the sixty ministers who had been replaced in the livings from which they had been ejected at the Restoration. Yet the Government acted on tolerant principles. All Episcopal clergymen who took the oaths were left in peaceable possession of their churches, without being called on to submit to the Presbyterian Church courts; and some even of those who refused to take the oaths, and who prayed publicly for the late king and his family, continued to enjoy their livings without molestation.[107] After a few years, when it was seen that the Jacobites were quite irreconcilable, an Act was passed which provided that no one could hold a benefice without taking the oath of allegiance, signing the assurance, which was a declaration that William and Mary were the only lawful sovereigns of the realm, signing the Westminster Confession of Faith, and submitting to the Presbyterian system of Church government. Yet so lenient was the spirit of the Whigs that, instead of vigorously enforcing this law, they superseded it, to a great extent, by another and milder Act, under which taking the oaths to Government became the only qualification required from any Episcopal preacher in Scotland.

At the Revolution, and in consequence of the position in which the Episcopal clergy found themselves, it became the fixed policy of the Jacobites to call the attention of Englishmen to what was going on in the North; and during the reign of William there issued from the press a series of pamphlets, the purpose of which was to create a feeling against the Presbyterians so strong that, if a favourable opportunity should occur, the Scottish Establishment might be attacked and overthrown. The first to take the field were “two persons of quality.” Sir George Mackenzie, the late Lord Advocate, and Lord Tarbat, afterwards the first Earl of Cromartie, went to London at the crisis of the Revolution, and published a pamphlet, the purpose of which was to persuade the Prince of Orange that the principles of the Presbyterians were not only inconsistent with monarchy, but even destructive of all human society.[108] This production did not attract much notice; but a great effect was produced by a more elaborate piece of work, to which Mackenzie devoted the last months of his life. This was a vindication of the system of government pursued in Scotland during the reign of Charles the Second.[109] It was, in a measure, a vindication of his own life, for few of the rulers of Scotland had taken a more important part in the questionable transactions of that reign. When his public career was ended by the Revolution, he had retired to Oxford, where Whigs and Tories alike were amused and instructed by his conversation, in which he did not fail to present the worst features of Presbytery.[110] The Vindication, the greater part of which was probably written at Oxford, was a serious attempt to show that the Executive Government in Scotland had not been guilty of oppression and cruelty, that no one had suffered on account of his religion, that the Presbyterians were merely rebels, and that the laws which had been made against them were not only necessary, but had never been harshly administered. He did not live to publish this pamphlet himself, but after his death it was printed by Dr. Alexander Monro, who had lately been deprived of the place of Principal of the University of Edinburgh. Coming from the pen of a well-known member of the late Government, who had, for a number of years, been the first law officer of the Crown in the country about which he was writing, the Vindication had great weight in England.