FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE REVOLUTION
At the Restoration the advisability of continuing the Union was
discussed. In England it was maintained that the smaller country must
give up its Parliament and its separate system of laws, or that it must,
at all events, make the first advance, and say definitely on what terms
it would unite. In Scotland it was foreseen that not only would the
native Parliament and the native laws be destroyed in the event of a
union, but that also, in all probability, the Church would be
sacrificed. But the prosperity which the country was beginning to enjoy
might have reconciled many of the people to these changes.[91]
The Restoration was hailed with joy by the nobles, who hoped that they
would again have their Parliament and their Privy Council, by means of
which their families were aggrandised, and their hereditary
jurisdictions and feudal rights, which gave them so much authority over
their tenants and retainers. The clergy, smarting under the indignities
to which they had lately been subjected, and believing that Charles
would keep faith with them and establish Presbytery, welcomed the
change, and at once began to pray again for the king. Clarendon,
however, was of opinion that the majority of Scotsmen were in favour of
the continuance of the Union. He himself was in favour of leaving things
as they were. “But the king,” he says, “would not build according to
Cromwell’s models, and had many reasons to continue Scotland within its
own limits and bounds, and sole dependence upon himself, rather than
unite it to England with so many hazards and dangers as would inevitably
have accompanied it, under any government less tyrannical than that of
Cromwell.”[92]
Lauderdale, whose influence in Scottish affairs was now well-nigh
supreme, was strongly in favour of removing all traces of the
Commonwealth government. To begin with, he insisted that the fortresses
which Cromwell had built should be demolished and their garrisons
withdrawn. The time might come, he told the king, when he would be in
need of Scottish garrisons in England, and to maintain an English army
in Scotland would alienate the affections of the Scottish people. The
fortresses were, accordingly, dismantled, and the army of occupation was
disbanded. Every trace of the Union soon disappeared. The Estates met
in the Parliament House once more; and the judges took their places on
the bench of the Court of Session.
On the question of the Church, Lauderdale’s advice was not followed. His
view was that, instead of aiming at an Union, either civil or religious,
between the two countries, the object of the Government should be to
disunite them by all possible means, and, at the same time, to keep the
people of Scotland in good humour by giving them whatever form of Church
government they wanted, in order that they might be willing to serve the
king, if necessary, against the Parliament of England. Such was the
advice of Lauderdale. Charles himself, though he detested Presbytery,
was at first inclined to take it. But, in the end, the intrigues of the
Episcopal faction prevailed; and it was resolved to establish an
Episcopal Church in Scotland. The Chancellor explained to Lauderdale
that it was intended to set up only a modified form of prelacy. “My
Lord,” he sternly answered, “since you are for bishops and must have
them, bishops you shall have, and higher than ever they were in
Scotland.”
These words came true. If the statesmen of England had asked, By what
means shall we most easily irritate and exasperate the Scottish people?
how can we alienate them from England? how can we render the royal
family unpopular? how can we destroy the trade of Scotland, which is
beginning to improve? how can we throw the country, which is settling
down, back into anarchy and confusion? how can we most successfully
unite against the Church of England the whole body of the Scottish
people? how can we produce a profound distrust in all measures which are
proposed by the Council in London? by what means, in short, can we best
make the people of Scotland disloyal, poverty-stricken, and
rebellious?--if these questions had been asked, some evil councillor
might have answered them thus: Pass, he might have said, an Act of
Parliament which will destroy their commerce; abolish the Union, and
thus destroy free trade between them and the English; restore to the
owners of the soil the jurisdictions by means of which they tyrannised
over their dependants in the past, and by means of which they will be
able to tyrannise over them in the future; restore the tenure of lands
by military service, and thus you will, in a few years, people every
hamlet over a large portion of the country with restless and idle
clansmen, whose only business in life is to foment feuds between their
masters, and to seek plunder for themselves; above all things, let the
king destroy the Presbyterian Church which he swore to establish when he
took that solemn vow, on the faith of which the crown of Scotland was
placed upon his head; let the great noble whose hands performed the act
of coronation, and to whom a Dukedom and a Garter were promised, be
accused of treason for a tardy compliance with the usurper, and let the
rules of legal procedure be strained in order to procure his
condemnation; eject from their livings the clergy whom the people trust;
let enormous fines, far in excess of what the country can bear, be
inflicted on every class for the offence of nonconformity; punish with
death those who listen to the clergy preaching in the fields because you
have driven them from the churches. All this, and a great deal more, was
done. The years which followed the Restoration were the most miserable
in the history of Scotland. The great source of misery was the desperate
contest between the Episcopal and the Presbyterian Churches; but the
commercial policy of the English Parliament is what chiefly bears on the
question of the Union.
Scotland had not suffered from the Navigation Act of 1651, which forbade
foreign ships to import goods into England, or to trade with the
colonies, or even to visit them without special leave. This statute was
passed, in the words of Blackstone, “to punish our rebellious colonies,
and to clip the wings of the Dutch.” It kept the colonial trade in the
hands of England, and increased the value of English shipping. The terms
of the Union during the Commonwealth had exempted Scotland from its
provisions. But now the Union was at an end, and Scotland was once again
a separate kingdom. The Parliament of England proceeded to pass a new
and even more stringent Navigation Act, which inflicted a deadly blow
upon the trade of Scotland.[93]
Sir George Mackenzie traces the origin of this, and other laws hostile
to Scottish commerce, to the fact that Clarendon and other English
politicians were piqued by the way in which Lauderdale prided himself on
having induced the king to withdraw the army from Scotland against their
advice. “This excessive boasting,” he says, “that he had prevailed in
this over Hyde, Middletoun, and all the English, did somewhat contribute
to renew the old discords which had formerly been entertained between
the two nations; and occasioned the making of those severe Acts, whereby
the Parliament of England debarred the Scots from freedom of trade in
their plantations, and from enjoying the benefit of natives in the
privilege of shipping.”[94]
The new law was so rigorous that no goods nor produce, of any country,
could be imported into the colonies except from England or Wales. Irish
goods could not go from Ireland, nor Scottish goods from Scotland.
Moreover, the most important products of a colony could enter England,
or another colony, only on payment of duty. English ships alone were
allowed to carry goods to and from the colonies. The sugar, the tobacco,
the cotton, in fact all the most useful produce of the colonies, could
be shipped to England only, and could not enter an English port except
in an English vessel. Nor could goods be imported into England from the
continent of Europe except in English ships, or in ships belonging to
the country which actually produced them.
This monopoly, under which the colonies could trade with England alone,
was a grievance to the colonies. They, however, had at least the
privilege of trading with England. But to the colonial trade of Scotland
the Navigation Act was ruinous.
Other laws, hostile to the industries of Scotland, were enacted. On some
Scottish goods duties were paid equal to, or above, their value. On
others a duty was charged very much greater than the duty levied on the
same articles when they came from abroad. For instance, the duty on
Scottish salt was sixteen times that imposed on foreign salt. Linen
imported from Scotland was now so heavily taxed that it hardly paid the
producer to bring it into England. In Northumberland and Cumberland
heavy customs were levied on horses which came from Scotland; and, on
the plea that a great part of the richest pasture land in England would
fall in value if the graziers of Scotland were allowed to find a free
market in England, Parliament was induced to cripple one of the most
important branches of Scottish industry by imposing a fine of two pounds
for every head of cattle which crossed the border between the 24th of
August and the 20th of December.[95] And there were many other
enactments framed for the purpose of excluding Scottish merchants, whose
operations were further embarrassed by a law under which all goods sent
from Scotland to England must pass through either Berwick or
Carlisle.[96]
The commercial freedom which had been enjoyed during the period of the
Commonwealth had quickened the commercial instincts of the Scottish
people, and had given them some idea of what their country might become
if they were permitted to extend their traffic to the colonies, those
highly-favoured regions of the earth from which so large a portion of
the wealth of England came. The recent Union had been attended by
circumstances which were humiliating; but for many of these compensation
had been found in the prosperity which the Union had brought along with
it. The sudden change which the Restoration had produced was, therefore,
bitterly resented; and the Scottish merchants persuaded the Estates to
retaliate by passing a Navigation Act for Scotland, similar to the
English Act, and by imposing heavy duties on English goods.[97] But
retaliation could not put Scotland in the same position as England; and
at length, after repeated complaints and demands, an Act was passed
under which commissioners from the two countries were to meet and confer
on the subject of a commercial treaty.[98]
In January 1668 the commissioners met. The Scotsmen demanded that
Scotland should enjoy the privilege of trading to the English colonies
which was granted, by the Act of Navigation, to the Irish and to the
Welsh, and that they should be allowed to bring in goods as freely as
the English, with no other restrictions than those laid on Ireland and
Wales. They were willing to give assurances that goods transported from
English colonies would be brought to England, except the small
quantities which were consumed in Scotland. A number of papers,
containing these and other demands, were presented by the Scottish
commissioners, and to these the English commissioners returned written
answers.
Apparently the conferences were on the point of terminating abruptly
within less than a month; for, on the 29th of January, the Scottish
commissioners refused to go further until the question of the Navigation
Act was settled, and the English refused to act until the whole of the
Scottish demands were laid before them. The Scottish commissioners gave
in, and presented a document in which their grievances were set forth.
The repeal of the Navigation Act was what they chiefly insisted on; but,
in addition to this, they complained of the whole of those Acts of
Parliament by which free trade between England and Scotland had been
abolished, and by which excessive duties had been imposed on Scottish
produce. “Thus,” they said, “your lordships have now the full scheme of
all that is demanded by us in this treaty. But because what we have
given in, relating to the Act of Navigation, was the first in time, and
is the greatest obstruction of our trade, and indeed without which our
trade cannot be carried on, we still insist upon an answer to it in the
first place, and then we shall be willing to proceed to treat on all the
rest in order.”[99]
After a long delay the English commissioners returned their answer. They
refused, in peremptory terms, to allow Scotland to trade with the
colonies. The colonies, they said, were founded by Englishmen, and
Scotsmen had no right to benefit by them. They were prepared, however,
to permit Scotsmen to go and settle as merchants in the colonies; but
they refused to allow Scottish ships to carry foreign produce into
English ports. “The kingdom of Scotland,” they said, “being wholly
independent, and not subject to the Crown of England, we cannot have
reasonable security and satisfaction that the said kingdom will keep up,
and tie itself, to the strict observation of the restrictions and
limitations set down in the Act of Navigation, with relation to this
matter.”
They offered, nevertheless, to make some concessions, on condition that
those Acts of the Scottish Parliament which imposed a tariff hostile to
English trade were repealed. If that were done, Scottish ships might
import fish into England free of duty, and also tar, hemp, flax,
raisins, and grain of any sort, on payment of the duty levied on aliens.
They might also import timber into England for six years; and the reason
for this concession was frankly stated to be that since the great fire
of London there had been a scarcity of wood for rebuilding the city.
They also offered to give Scottish ships the right, for six years only,
of exporting goods from England, on payment of the same customs as
English ships paid.
These terms were refused by the Scottish commissioners, who objected to
the limitation of six years, and declared that the Scots wished to be,
as they had been during the Union under Cromwell, in a position to
compete, on equal terms, with the merchants of England. But the English
commissioners would not yield; and the negotiations terminated without
any result.
It was now evident that, so long as the two countries remained separate,
there could be no genuine commercial prosperity in Scotland. It was,
therefore, natural that the question of Union should be again revived.
The project was first suggested by a Scottish peer, whose advice in
other matters, if it had been taken, would have saved the Privy Council
of Scotland from much of the blood-guiltiness which it incurred during
these years. John, second Earl of Tweeddale, had been sworn of the
Council at the Restoration, but had frequently raised his voice on
behalf of the persecuted Presbyterians; and he had often endeavoured to
discover some means by which peace could be restored to Scotland. His
proposal now was that the Scottish Parliament should be called together,
and invited to consider what steps should be taken to unite the
kingdoms. To this Charles readily agreed, for he thought that if the two
Parliaments were merged in one, the Lords and Commons who represented
Scotland would, as a rule, support the measures of the Court. The Duke
of Buckingham and the Lord Keeper Bridgeman were also in favour of this
proposal.[100]
It was, indeed, the interest of all whose fortunes were bound up with
the fortunes of the Royal Family that Scotland should be conciliated.
The recent conferences had shown how strong the feeling of Scotland was
on the subject of trade; and no candid-minded Englishman could deny that
the grievances complained of by the commissioners from beyond the Tweed
were real grievances. It was true that the more powerful nation was
master of the field, and could, by obstinately opposing the demands of
her weaker neighbour, debar her from the trade in which she was so
anxious to obtain a share. But the lessons of the great Civil War had
not been altogether forgotten at the Court; and, in the secret conclave
of the king’s advisers, there always had been, ever since the
Restoration, an uneasy feeling that a day might come when the Crown
would find itself opposed by the Parliament. At such a crisis much would
depend on what was done by Scotland. It was, therefore, of importance to
persuade the people of Scotland that, so far as the king’s influence
went, everything had been done to remove the commercial disabilities of
which they so justly complained.
Lauderdale, who at the Restoration had supported the policy of
separation, was now eager on the side of Union. No Parliament had met in
Scotland since 1663. It would be necessary to summon the Estates
together if the Union was to be discussed; and Lauderdale coveted the
office of Lord High Commissioner. A Parliament was, therefore, summoned.
It met at Edinburgh in October 1669. Lauderdale was Commissioner. A
letter from the king was read, in which the Union was recommended to the
favourable consideration of the Estates; and his Majesty’s servants
proposed that an answer should at once be returned, announcing that the
Parliament of Scotland was in favour of the Union. Some opposition was
offered by Sir George Gordon of Haddo, then member for Aberdeenshire,
and afterwards first Earl of Aberdeen, and by Sir George Mackenzie of
Rosehaugh, who a few years later became Lord Advocate; but, in the end,
a letter was despatched in which the Estates approved of the Union, and
left it to the king to name commissioners to treat upon the subject.
The Parliament of England took the same view; and in September 1670, the
commissioners met in London.[101]
Five questions were submitted to them: the preserving entire to both
kingdoms of their laws, civil and ecclesiastical; the uniting of the two
kingdoms into one monarchy; the reducing of both parliaments to one; the
regulation of trade; and the best means of preserving the conditions of
the Union.
The subject of trade, the most important of all, was never reached; for,
before very long, the treaty broke down on the question of the
representation of Scotland in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The
Scottish commissioners proposed that all the members of the Scottish
Estates should be members of the Parliament. To this the English
commissioners could not agree; and the proceedings came to an abrupt
conclusion.
During these negotiations the Scotsmen had not been on very good terms
with each other. Lauderdale and Tweeddale quarrelled; and Sir George
Mackenzie says that the Lord Chancellor, at dinner one day, abused two
of the commissioners, Sir Archibald Primrose, father of the first Earl
of Rosebery, and Sir John Nisbet, then Lord Advocate, for walking on
foot when they had a handsome allowance for expenses, and called them
“damned lawyers.” They were heard to express their resentment at this;
whereupon Lauderdale, who bore them a grudge as supporters of Tweeddale,
told them he would accuse them to the king of trying to frustrate the
Union by causing bad feeling among the commissioners. “And thus,” says
Mackenzie, “in place of uniting the nations, these wise commissioners
disunited themselves, and returned to Scotland as men from a rout.”
However popular an Union might have been among the Scottish merchants,
it would have been most unpopular in England. The English merchants, who
had exulted in the failure of the Commission on Trade, were up in arms
against the idea of giving to Scotland the privileges which she would
have secured by the Union; and the majority of Englishmen still hated
and despised the very name of Scotland. This hatred and contempt of the
neighbour country, an inheritance from the long years of international
warfare, found vent in abusive descriptions of Scotland and the Scottish
people, which were circulated all over the island, causing laughter in
England and rousing bitter indignation beyond the Tweed. “The country,”
says one writer, “is full of lakes and loughs, and they are well stocked
with islands; so that a map thereof looks like a pillory coat
bespattered all over with dirt and rotten eggs, some pieces of the
shells floating here and there representing the islands.” The towns of
Scotland were briefly described as poor and populous, especially
Edinburgh, which resembled its inhabitants in “being high and dirty.” It
was compared to a double comb, an article which Scotsmen did not often
use, having one great street, with a number of alleys branching from it,
which might be mistaken for common sewers.
As to the Scottish women, “the meaner sort go barefoot and bareheaded,
with two black elf-locks on either side their faces; some of them have
scarce any clothes at all, some part of their bed-clothes pinned about
their shoulders, and their children have nothing else on them but a
little blanket. Those women that can purchase plaids need not bestow
much upon other clothes, these cover-sluts being sufficient. Those of
the best sort, that are very well habited in their modish silks, yet
must wear a plaid over all for the credit of their country.”
The English language could scarcely furnish language violent enough for
the purpose of describing the Scots: “The people are proud, arrogant,
vain-glorious boasters, bloody, barbarous, and inhuman butchers.
Cozenage and theft are in perfection among them, and they are perfect
English-haters. They show their pride in exalting themselves and
depressing their neighbours. When the palace at Edinburgh is finished
they expect his Majesty will leave his rotten house at Whitehall, and
live splendidly among his own countrymen, the Scots, for they say that
Englishmen are much beholden to them that we have their king amongst
us.”[102]
If, in 1670, an Union had been accomplished by the terms of which the
people of Scotland had obtained everything which they desired with
regard to trade, it would have been an immense blessing to the country.
But knowing what we know of the councillors who surrounded the throne,
and of the character of the last two princes of the house of Stuart, we
may be perfectly certain that an attempt would have been made to unite
the Churches. In England, the Scottish Church question was completely
misunderstood; nay more, to most Englishmen it was unintelligible. It
was known that there were troubles in the North; and it was vaguely
supposed that the Government had to cope with false doctrine, heresy,
and schism, evils for delivery from which every good Anglican was
accustomed to pray. But few imagined that month after month, and year
after year, the majority of the Scottish nation was being treated in a
manner which the majority of the English nation would not have tolerated
for a single week. Even those Englishmen who had the best means of
knowing the truth had been totally deceived as to the number and
determination of the Presbyterians. At the Restoration, Sharp had told
the Government that if Episcopacy was established not more than twenty
ministers would refuse to conform. As a matter of fact, more than three
hundred gave up their livings. The parish churches were deserted in many
places by the people, and meetings were held in private houses. Not only
was this declared to be illegal, but mere nonconformity was made a
crime; and the madness of the Scottish Privy Council may be seen from
the fact that any landowner who failed to attend his parish church was
fined a fourth of his rents for the year in which he was convicted;
while for the same offence tenants and burgesses were fined a fourth of
their personal estates. Forbidden by a law resembling the English Five
Mile Act to live within twenty miles of their parishes, within six miles
of a cathedral town, or within three miles of a burgh, the ejected
ministers took to preaching in the fields. This was punished as
sedition; and the law was administered in so cruel and relentless a
fashion that, if the whole truth had been known in England, there can be
little doubt that indignant remonstrances would have been addressed to
the Government; especially when, in 1670, the Scottish Parliament passed
an Act by which any person who, without a licence from a bishop or the
Privy Council, preached or prayed at a field meeting, was to be put to
death,--a savage law which was savagely executed. To the people of
England, however, very little of all this was known.
Tweeddale possibly saw, in the abolition of the Scottish Parliament, and
in those reforms of the Privy Council which might be expected to follow
an incorporating Union, some prospect that a wiser and more moderate
system of government might be introduced. But the whole course of
Scottish history during the reigns of Charles the Second and James the
Second shows that nothing less than that sweeping removal of every trace
of Prelacy which took place at the Revolution could have restored peace
and order to the country. It is, therefore, well that the Union did not
take place at a time when the statesmen in both countries, by whom the
terms of Union would have been arranged, were pertinaciously bent on
establishing a system of Church government which, loved and honoured
though it was in England, was hated and despised in Scotland.
FOOTNOTES:
[91] A Discourse upon the Union of England and Scotland, addressed to
King Charles II., March 19th, in the year 1664.
[92] Account of his own Life, part ii. p. 50.
[93] Act for the encouraging and increasing of Shipping and Navigation,
12 Car. II. cap. 18.
[94] _Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland_, p. 25.
[95] 15 Car. II. cap. 7.
[96] 14 Car. II. cap. 11.
[97] Scots Acts, 1661, cap. 44; 1663, cap. 13.
[98] 19 and 20 Car. II. cap. 5, Act for settling Freedom and Intercourse
of Trade between England and Scotland.
[99] _The grievances of Scotland in relation to their trade with
England, sent up to the Council_, 3 Feb. 1668. See also a paper given in
by the Scots Commissioners for adjusting the differences of trade
between the two kingdoms, Jan. 21, 1667 (1668), printed in Defoe, App.
No. xiii., and in the “Report on the events and circumstances which
produced the union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland” (App. No.
xxxi.). This report, which was prepared for the private use of the
Government, at the request of the Duke of Portland, in 1799, when the
Union with Ireland was being discussed, contains most of the papers
which passed between the Commissioners on Trade in 1668. The _Calendar
of State Papers, Domestic_, 1667-1668, published in 1893, throws some
light on these transactions. It appears that the coal merchants of
Newcastle and the North of England had a grievance in the inequality of
the export duties levied on coal in the two countries. English coal paid
eight shillings, and Scottish coal only twenty pence. The result was
said to be that the customs from coal had fallen in that part of the
country, from £20,000 a year to £4000, and that English merchants were
suffering from the importation into Scotland, in exchange for coal, of
foreign goods which the Scots used to obtain from England. (Memorial of
24th Feb. 1668. _Calendar_, p. 247.)
[100] Burnet, i. 513. Lord Dartmouth, in a note on this passage, states
that William the Third told Lord Jersey that it was a standing maxim in
the Stuart family, “Whatever advances they pretended to make towards
it,” never to allow a union. Their reason, he said, was that it could
not take place without admitting Scotsmen to both Houses of Parliament,
who must depend for a living on the Crown. He further asserts that King
William said he hoped it would never take place during his reign, for
“he had not the good fortune to know what would satisfy a Scotsman.”
[101] Defoe, p. 21; Mackenzie’s _Memoirs_, p. 197.
[102] “_A modern account of Scotland, being an exact description of the
country, and a true character of the people and their manners. Written
from thence by an English gentleman._” Printed in the year 1670
(_Harleian Miscellany_, vi. 135). “_Scotland characterized: In a letter
written to a young gentleman, to dissuade him from an intended journey
thither_” (_Harleian Miscellany_, vii. 377). “_The False Brother, or A
New Map of Scotland, drawn by an English Pencil, London, 1651._”