Back In The Day: The shameful dying days of Scotland's independence before the Act of Union

No wonder, for the details of how the Act of Union came into being despite the opposition of perhaps 80 to 90 per cent of Scots are truly shameful.

Those who say it was a monarchic fix, who claim the Scottish Parliament was bribed, who argue that Scotland was not treated like an equal partner, and that the Act of Union was a grubby political deal between men of little moral fibre – the evidence is there to prove all those assertions.

Even those in favour of the Union would have to concede that the Act was passed against the wishes of the majority of Scots, and probably a substantial minority of English people, too. It is often said that England’s need for national security and the guarantee of a Protestant succession to the throne were its chief inspirations in seeking the Union, but many in England viewed Scotland as wholly backward and did not see the need for a political union with a poor country they felt would be a drag on English resources, a view that is still extant today in some English quarters.

The first item to note is that the Scottish Parliament was wholly unrepresentative of the nation as a whole. The Estates of Parliament, to give it its proper name, had until 1690 consisted of the three estates, namely senior clerics, nobles and burgh commissioners.

King William and Queen Mary’s supporters in Scotland reorganised the Parliament so that by 1706, there were 154 commissioners (MPs) from 99 constituencies. The franchise, such as it was, was very limited, and only a tiny fraction of the population had a vote, with land ownership the main qualification for being allowed to vote or represent a constituency.

The Scottish Parliament, in other words, was full of vested interests, and records show that after the 1702 election, the Parliament consisted of 67 nobles, 80 shires members, 67 constituent burgh members and the remainder were officers of state appointed by the Queen.

It is wrong to say, however, that the Parliament was just a lap dog for the Queen and her aristocratic supporters in the Government.

It was both a court – the highest in the land – and the setter of tax rates, the body which decided Scotland’s foreign policy and which was very much involved in the affairs of the national religion and the Kirk.

Party politics as we know it was in its infancy in the early 1700s, but there were four defined groups in the Parliament – the Court Party, so called because it formed the administration; the Country Party, which was effectively the main opposition, the Jacobites, who called themselves Cavaliers; and the Squadrone Volante, a group of Presbyterian nobles whose real name was the New Party.

When the fateful last Parliament first met in 1703, the agitation for and against Union with England made for a very fractious gathering. That was still the case in 1706 with a clear split emerging between the two sides for and against the Union – and the “for” side held all the aces. Last week we saw how previous attempts at a Union had failed for a variety of reasons, but it is vital to know that the prime instigator for the successful 1707 Union was Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch. If any of her 17 pregnancies by her husband, Prince George of Denmark, had led to an adult heir then her fears over her succession would not have existed.

As it was, only one child survived beyond infancy, and Prince William, Duke of Gloucester died at the age of 11 in 1700, the same year that Anne had her final child, a stillborn son.

Such was Anne’s concern over the need for a Protestant to succeed her that from her accession to the throne in 1702, she concluded the only way to stop Scotland from choosing a different king or queen was to have a full union – in short order, a shared parliament under the same monarch.

As we saw last week, by early 1706, the Scots were placed in a massively negative position by the Alien Act that would effectively make them foreign nationals in England despite sharing the same monarch, as well as slashing trade with English markets on which so many Scots depended.

Some in the Parliament were so offended that they seriously discussed another union, this time with the Dutch Republic. The Scottish Parliament’s only way to combat the Alien Act was to agree to talk about Union, and many of the Country Party took the view that when it came to actual union, there would be no way that the Scottish and English Parliaments would both agree to it – a big mistake.

Eventually, 62 “commissioners” were appointed, 31 from each country, to negotiate a Treaty that would eventually become the Act of Union.

That appointment process saw the first serious piece of treachery. Scotland’s most senior peer, the Duke of Hamilton, was supposedly the leading light of the Country Party and an anti-Unionist. But he was also an ardent royalist and on September 1, 1706, at a late sitting of the Parliament, he proposed that Queen Anne appoint all the negotiating commissioners. The proposal passed by just four votes, and Anne duly appointed Scottish commissioners who were all pro-Union.

We now know, thanks to diligent work by historians, that the commissioners from both sides held secret informal meetings, with no minutes taken and no report back to either Parliament for fear of inflaming already high emotions.

In April 1706, the commissioners met officially in London, and were presented with the proposal approved and possibly even written by Queen Anne: “The two kingdoms of England and Scotland be forever united into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain; that the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same parliament; and that the succession to the monarchy of Great Britain be vested in the House of Hanover.”

In just 10 days, sitting in separate rooms in Whitehall, the commissioners hammered out the basis of the treaty and it took just another three weeks to deliver the full treaty. In effect, the Act of Union was negotiated in just over a month.

Its 25 articles were mainly concerned with financial and economic matters, and there was very little disagreement about such issues as the uniting of the two parliaments, the design of the Union flag and the standardisation of weights, measures and coinage.

The Hanoverian succession was confirmed in Article Two, Scots law was preserved, as was the Scottish education system and its universities, while the Royal Burghs maintained their ancient rights.

The preservation of private rights, and of heritable offices and jurisdictions caused some discussion and there was outright disagreement at first over the number of Scottish peers and MPs to sit in Westminster – 16 and 45 were the eventual numbers – but the biggest cause of friction was taxation. The Scottish side eventually won a series of exemptions on taxable items such as paper, windows, coal, salt and malt.

The speed of action and the proposed scale of the union took everyone in Scotland by surprise. The Church of Scotland was most concerned that the Act did not guarantee that English-style bishops would not be imposed on it, and the Presbyterians became the most vocal critics.

Local councils across Scotland joined the outcry and it can only be stated that there was a nationwide reaction against the proposed Union, with protesters taking to the streets of Edinburgh, Glasgow and most major towns. The demonstrations were suppressed by the local authorities, sometimes with violence, and the use of what was effectively internment to take out the leaders.

We know what the reaction was on the streets because a writer called Daniel Foe, above – he added De to his second name to make himself sound grander – was sent as a spy from London to gauge reaction in Scotland.

Now we all know history is written by the victors, so much of Daniel Defoe’s History of the Union is biased. Yet there were several telling episodes that he recorded and which have been confirmed from other sources, including one Scottish chronicler of the time who reported that Defoe was “a Spy amongst us, but not known to be such, otherways the Mob of Edinburgh had pulled him to pieces”.

Defoe, who would later write Robinson Crusoe, was very fearful of the Edinburgh Mob, that loose association of troublemakers who could rise up in an instant and achieve their ends through sheer weight of numbers and an inclination to violence and intimidation.

At one point in October 1706, Defoe witnessed the Edinburgh Mob attacking the house of Sir Patrick Johnston, one of the Scottish commissioners.

He wrote: “His Lady, in the utmost despair with this fright, comes to the window, with two candles in her hand, that she might be known; and cryed (sic) out, for GOD’s Sake, to call the Guards. . . one Captain Richardson, who commanded, taking about thirty men with him, march’d bravely up to them and, making his way with great resolution thro’ the croud, they flying, but throwing stones, and hallowing at him, and his men, he seized the foot of the staircase; and then boldly went up, clear’d the stair, and took six of the rabble in the very act; and so delivered the gentleman and his family.”

Defoe, as the master of faction, then placed himself at the centre of events: “I heard a great noise and looking out saw a terrible multitude come up the High Street with a drum at the head of them shouting and swearing and crying out ‘all Scotland would stand together, No Union, No Union, English dogs,’ and the like.”

Troops were summoned as Parliament met to discuss the treaty, while petitions sprang up all over Scotland against the Union.

In the Scottish Parliament, opposition to the Union was less violent but no less passionate.

It transpired that the English Parliament was prepared to pay a sum of money to its Scottish counterpart. That sum of almost £400,000, or around £30 million nowadays,was called the Equivalent and was ostensibly to compensate Scotland for taking on a share of the English national debt.

Scotland had no national debt but many people in the country were deep in personal debt due to the Darien scheme disaster, and many of those voting in Parliament were compensated for their losses.

Now at last, in late 1706, parliamentarians had to make their stances clear. John Campbell, second Duke of Argyll, led the Court Party in favour of the Union, with the Duke of Queensberry as the Queen’s Commissioner in charge of proceedings. Their main work was accomplished behind the scenes as peers and other members of the Scottish Parliament were bribed with promises of offices the new set-up and sometimes just plain cash. They were to prove brilliantly effective at buying up what Robert Burns so memorably called a Parcel of Rogues. The Duke of Hamilton came out against the Union, asking: “Shall we in half an hour yield what our forefathers maintained with their lives and fortunes for many years?”

Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun railed against it, as did Lord Belhaven, but the fix was in. In one day, the opposition of the Kirk was ended by an Act rushed through Parliament guaranteeing the “Security of the Church of Scotland”.

Yet when it came to the vote on the first Article, the majority was just 32 with a vote of 115 to 83. All the remaining Articles were voted through by larger majorities.

Next week we will tell of the final failed protest and the immediate aftermath of the Act of Union.