CROMWELL AND SCOTLAND
1650–1651
The execution of the King destroyed the alliance which Cromwell had
established between Argyle and the Independents. Argyle would have been
glad to preserve it, but his power depended on the clergy and the middle
classes, both deeply incensed with the sectaries who had dared to kill a
Scottish king. The day after the news of the King’s death reached
Edinburgh, Charles II. was there proclaimed King, not of Scotland only,
but of Great Britain and Ireland. The Scottish envoys in England
protested against the late revolution, denouncing the establishment of
toleration or any other change in the fundamental laws of the kingdom,
and demanding that Charles II., “upon just satisfaction given to both
kingdoms,” should be placed upon his father’s throne. The Long
Parliament retorted by expelling the envoys and declaring that their
protest laid “the grounds of a new and bloody war.” Henceforth indeed
the war took a new character,—it was no longer a constitutional but a
national struggle. Scotland like Ireland was attempting to dictate to
England the form of government which it should choose, and thus the
English contest for self-government inevitably widened into a contest
for the supremacy of the British Isles.
Nothing delayed war between Scotland and England but the difficulty of
effecting an agreement between Charles and the Scots. Except on their
own terms the Presbyterians would not fight for him, and till no other
way of regaining his crown was left Charles would not accept their
terms.
The Scottish Commissioners demanded that he should not only accept the
Covenant and the Presbyterian system for Scotland, but pledge himself to
impose them on England and Ireland. As he declined to force
Presbyterianism on those two kingdoms without the consent of their
parliaments the negotiations were broken off in May, 1649, and while
Charles prepared to join Ormond in Ireland, Montrose was commissioned to
call the Scottish Royalists once more to arms.
In September, 1649, Charles landed at Jersey on his way to Ireland, but
Cromwell’s victories checked his further progress. Before the year
ended, it was evident that if he was to be restored it must be by
Scottish hands, and in February, 1650, he returned to Holland. Necessity
left him no choice. “Indeed,” wrote a Scottish agent from Jersey, “he is
brought very low; he has not bread both for himself and his servants,
and betwixt him and his brother not one English shilling.” Negotiations
began again at Breda in March, 1650. The Scots required him to take both
Covenants, to impose Presbyterianism on England and Ireland, and to
disavow both Ormond and Montrose. Charles struggled hard to modify these
conditions, and the treaty by which he agreed to them was not signed
till he was actually on his voyage. He hoped that when he came to
Scotland his presence would win concessions from the Covenanters, and a
royalist party would gather round him. But he found himself treated more
as a captive than a king. English Royalists who had accompanied him from
Holland were ordered to leave the country, Scottish Royalists were
excluded from his army and his Court, and when he reached Edinburgh he
saw, fixed over the tower of the Tolbooth, and fresh from the hangman’s
hands, the head of Montrose.
The diplomacy of the King had sacrificed his noblest champion. Instead
of holding Montrose back till the negotiations ended, he had urged him
to immediate action. “Your vigorous proceeding,” he wrote, “will be a
good means to bring them to such a moderation ... as may produce a
present union of that whole nation in our service.” When the Scottish
envoys at Breda demanded the abandonment of Montrose, Charles agreed to
order him to disband his troops with a secret promise of their
indemnity. But the countermands came too late. Knowing that Charles was
treating with the Covenanters, and that he was in danger of disavowal,
Montrose still resolved to spend his life for the King’s service. In
March, 1650, he arrived in the Orkneys with a little body of Danish and
German mercenaries. In April, with about twelve hundred men and forty
horse, he advanced through Caithness to the south of Sutherland. There,
at Carbisdale, on April 27th, Major Strachan, with two hundred and fifty
of David Leslie’s disciplined cavalry, fell upon him in his march south,
scattered his handful of horsemen, and cut to pieces his foreign
infantry. Montrose escaped from the rout, and wandered amongst the hills
till starvation obliged him to seek shelter. Macleod of Assynt gave him
up to the Scottish Government, and on May 21st he was hanged at the
market-cross in the High Street of Edinburgh.
[Illustration:
THE SEAL OF THE “TRIERS.”
]
[Illustration:
THE DUNBAR MEDAL.
HEAD OF CROMWELL, BY THOMAS SIMON.
]
[Illustration:
MEDAL REPRESENTING CROMWELL AS LORD GENERAL OF THE ARMY.
BY THOMAS SIMON.
]
[Illustration:
OBVERSE. REVERSE.
A CROWN-PIECE OF THE PROTECTOR ISSUED IN 1658.
(_From Henfrey’s “Numismata Cromwelliana.”_)
]
About the time of Montrose’s death, Cromwell returned to England.
Parliament had voted that both Fairfax and Cromwell should command
against the Scots, the one as General, the other in his old post as
Lieutenant-General. But when Fairfax found that the Council of State
meant to invade Scotland, he laid down his commission. The best
refutation of the theory that Cromwell sought to undermine Fairfax in
order to obtain his post is the vigour with which he endeavoured to
persuade him to keep it. It was morally certain, urged Cromwell, that
the Scots meant to invade England. War was unavoidable. “Your excellency
will soon determine whether it is better to have this war in the bowels
of another country than our own.” But nothing could overcome Fairfax’s
repugnance to an offensive war. Human probabilities, he repeated, were
not sufficient ground to make war upon our brethren, the Scots. The
truth was, he had long been dissatisfied with the results of the
revolution in which events had given him so prominent a part, and seized
any plausible excuse for retirement. As he persisted, his resignation
was accepted, and on the 26th of June, 1650, Cromwell became, by Act of
Parliament, Captain-General and Commander-in-chief of all the forces of
the Commonwealth. “I have not sought these things,” he wrote to a
friend; “truly I have been called unto them by the Lord, and therefore
am not without some assurance that He will enable His poor worm and weak
servant to do His will.”
At the end of July, Cromwell entered Scotland with an army of 10,500
foot and 5500 horse. His old comrade, David Leslie, to whom the Scots
had given the command, could bring about eighteen thousand foot and
eight thousand horse to meet him, but as Leslie’s soldiers were much
inferior in quality, he stood resolutely on the defensive. Marching
along the coast and drawing supplies mainly from the English fleet,
Cromwell found the Scottish army intrenched between Leith and Calton
Hill. A month passed in marches around Edinburgh, in fruitless
skirmishes, and unsuccessful attempts to draw the Scots from their
unassailable fastnesses. Leslie took no risks, and met each move with
unfailing skill. At the end of August, victuals grew scarce in the
English camp and disease was rife. With a “poor, shattered, hungry,
discouraged army,” Cromwell fell back on Dunbar, intending to fortify
the town to be used as a magazine and basis of operations, and to await
reinforcements from Berwick. Leslie, pressing hard on his heels,
occupied Doon Hill, which overlooks Dunbar, and seized the passes
between Dunbar and Berwick. Thanks to his knowledge of the country he
had again outmanœuvred Cromwell, and the Scots boasted that they had
Cromwell in a worse pound than the King had had Essex in Cornwall.
Cromwell owned the greatness of the danger.
“We are,” he wrote, “upon an engagement very difficult. The enemy
hath blocked up our way at the pass at Copperspath, through which we
cannot get without almost a miracle. He lieth so upon the hills that
we know not how to come that way without great difficulty, and our
lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond
imagination.”
His sixteen thousand men were reduced now to eleven thousand, and some
officers proposed that the foot should be shipped on the fleet, while
the horse endeavoured to cut their way through the enemy. But their
General remained, as he expressed it, “comfortable in spirit and having
much hope in the Lord.”
Leslie’s original plan was to fall on Cromwell’s rear as he tried to
force his way along the road to Berwick, but the parliamentary committee
in his camp ordered him to descend the hill and bar Cromwell’s route.
Seeing that Cromwell did not continue his march, he believed he was
shipping his guns, and perhaps part of his infantry, and thought all he
had to do was to prevent the escape of the enemy. Accordingly, on
September 2nd, Leslie moved his army from the Doon hill to the gentle
slopes at its foot, intending to attack the next day. His left was
covered in flank, and to some extent in front too, by the steep ravine
of the Brock burn, which ran obliquely from the hill to the sea and
separated the positions of the two armies. His infantry were posted in
the centre, with their backs to the hillside. On the right, where the
ground was more level and open, he had massed two-thirds of his cavalry.
Leslie had twenty-two thousand men to Cromwell’s eleven thousand, and
told his soldiers they would have the English army, alive or dead, by
seven next morning.
When Cromwell examined the new position of the Scots, he saw that his
opportunity had come at last. Leslie’s left, shut in between the hill
and the ravine, was practically useless, and his centre, cramped by the
hill in its rear, had too little room to manœuvre. Both Cromwell and
Major-General Lambert agreed that if the Scottish right were beaten
their whole army would be endangered.
[Illustration:
The Battle of
DUNBAR.
B. V. Darbishire, Oxford 1899
]
That evening, in answer to Leslie’s movement, Cromwell drew up his
forces along the line of the ravine and about Broxmouth House, as if his
sole purpose was to stand on the defensive. The night was stormy and
wet, and after one or two alarms the Scots were convinced that he did
not mean to attack. Just before dawn Cromwell pushed a strong body of
horse and foot across the ravine, and under cover of a false attack on
their left massed all the troops he could against their right and their
centre. Lambert and Fleetwood, with six regiments of horse, attacked the
Scottish right, while Monck, with about three thousand or four thousand
foot, engaged their centre, supported by the fire of Cromwell’s guns
from the other side of the ravine. The Scots were taken unprepared, but
as soon as they could get into battle order numbers told. Charging, with
the slope in their favour, the Scottish lancers broke one of Lambert’s
regiments, and Monk’s division was repulsed and forced to give ground.
At this critical moment, Cromwell himself came up with the reserve,
consisting of three regiments of foot and one of horse. His own regiment
of horse fell on the flank of the Scottish cavalry, Lambert’s troopers
charged again, and after a short, sharp struggle the Scottish right wing
was broken through and through. Simultaneously Cromwell’s and Pride’s
foot regiments furiously assailed the advancing Scottish infantry, and
“at push of pike did repel the stoutest regiment the enemy had,” while
all along the line the English foot, once more advancing, drove back the
Scots. Some of Leslie’s infantry stood stubbornly, but a cavalry charge
on their exposed flank completed their discomfiture. At Cromwell’s
direction, the flank attack became more and more pronounced, till the
Scottish centre was rolled up from right to left; and, penned in the
triangle between the hill and the ravine, the Scottish infantry became a
helpless mob, unable either to fight or fly.
“Horse and foot,” says one of Cromwell’s officers, “were engaged all
over the field and the Scots all in confusion. The sun appearing
upon the sea I heard Noll say, ‘Now let God arise, and His enemies
shall be scattered,’ and following us as we slowly marched I heard
him say, ‘I profess they run,’ and then was the Scots army all in
disorder and running, both right wing and left and main battle. They
routed one another after we had done their work on their right
wing.”
Three thousand men fell in the battle, and ten thousand were taken
prisoners. While Leslie collected the shattered remnant of his army at
Stirling, Cromwell occupied Edinburgh and Leith, and all the eastern
portion of the Scottish Lowlands. Edinburgh Castle held out, and the
south-west was still in arms.
After Dunbar, as before it, Cromwell’s strongest wish was not a conquest
but an agreement which would restore peace between the two nations.
“Give the State of England,” he wrote to the Committee of Estates,
“that satisfaction and security for their peaceable and quiet living
beside you, which may in justice be demanded from those who have, as
you, taken their enemy into their bosom, whilst he was in hostility
against them.”
He had opened his campaign with manifestos protesting the affection of
England for the Scots, and demonstrating their error in supporting the
Stuarts. These overtures the leaders of the Independents urged him to
renew. They regarded it as a fratricidal war. The grim Ireton expressed
the fear that Cromwell had not been sufficiently forbearing and
long-suffering. Subtle St. John drew a distinction between Scots and
Irish, reminding him that although the Irish were atheists and papists
to be ruled with a rod of iron, the Scots were truly children of God,
and he must still endeavour to heap coals of fire on their heads.
Cromwell, whose heart “yearned after the godly in Scotland,” began now a
new set of expostulations, directed particularly to the ministers whose
influence had frustrated his appeals to the nation. He charged them with
pretending a reformation and laying the foundation of it in getting
worldly power for themselves; with perverting the Covenant to serve
secular ends; with claiming infallibility for their doctrine just as the
Pope did. Their claim to control the civil government he dismissed with
few words. “We look on ministers as helpers of, not lords over, God’s
people.” Then he refuted with like vigour the claim of the Kirk to
prohibit dissent in order to prevent heresy.
“Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man who
would keep all wine out of the country, lest men should be drunk. It
will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his
natural liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth
abuse it, judge.”
Finally, he rebuked them for their hypocrisy and their blindness. Was it
not hypocritical “to pretend to cry down all Malignants, and yet to
receive and set up the head of them, and to act for the kingdom of
Christ in his name?” Was it not blindness to shut their eyes to the
meaning of their late defeat? God had given judgment in their
controversy at Dunbar, and they refused to see it. “Did not you solemnly
appeal and pray? Did not we do so too? And ought not you and we to think
with fear and trembling of the hand of the great God in this mighty and
strange appearance of his?”
Either events or Cromwell’s arguments produced their effect in the
Scotch camp. There were great searchings of heart amongst devout
Presbyterians, and a schism broke out in the army. Rigid Covenanters
renounced worldly alliances and compliance with an ungodly monarch. “I
desire to serve the King faithfully,” said Colonel Ker, “but on
condition that the King himself be subject to the King of Kings.”
Colonel Strachan, after some negotiation with Cromwell, laid down his
commission. Ker, with three or four thousand Westland Whigs, refused
obedience to the Committee of Estates, and tried to wage war
independently. But attempting to surprise Lambert, at Hamilton, in
Lanarkshire, on December 1st, he was taken prisoner, his force
scattered, and the whole of the south-west fell into Cromwell’s power.
More lasting was the division amongst the clergy. One party, headed by
Gillespie and Guthry, published a Remonstrance repudiating the idea of
fighting for Charles II. till he had proved his fitness to be a
covenanted king, and condemning those who had closed their eyes to his
insincerity. The Remonstrants, as they were termed, would have no
alliance with either Malignants or Engagers. The other party, laxer in
its moral views, and moved more by national than religious feeling, was
ready to accept the compromises which the necessities of the State
demanded. When Parliament passed resolutions allowing Malignants and
Engagers to fight in the national ranks, it consented to their
employment on a simple profession of penitence. For the next ten years
the quarrels of Resolutioners and Remonstrants made up Scotland’s
ecclesiastical history.
Cromwell had foreseen the political consequences of Dunbar. “Surely,” he
predicted, “it’s probable the Kirk has done their do. I believe their
King will set up upon his own score now.” The prediction now came true.
Charles had suffered great humiliations since he came to Scotland. He
had submitted to all conditions and sworn many kinds of oaths. He had
been obliged to declare his sorrow for his father’s hostility to the
work of reformation and his mother’s love of idolatry. He had seen the
Scottish ranks purged of Royalists, and had been forbidden to approach
the army that was fighting in his name. At last, events had brought the
Parliament round to his policy. From the date of his coronation at Scone
on January 1, 1651, Charles was King of Scotland in fact as well as
name. Partly driven by necessity, because the ecclesiastical divisions
had deprived him of his strongest supporters, partly lured by hope,
because Charles offered to marry his daughter, Argyle fell in with the
King’s policy. But each stage in its development diminished his
influence. First he had to share his power with Hamilton and his
partisans, and then the repeal of the Act of Classes put an end to it
altogether by allowing even Montrose’s adherents to hold office.
Thus within a year from his landing in Scotland Charles had succeeded in
combining both Royalists and Presbyterians in support of his cause. His
hopes were never higher. It seemed possible to effect a similar
combination between the Presbyterians and Royalists in England. In
March, 1651, the English Government detected a plot for a rising in
Lancashire which was to be helped by troops from Scotland, and isolated
insurrections which broke out in Norfolk (December, 1650) and in
Cardiganshire (June, 1651) proved the reality of these conspiracies. If
a Scottish army entered England, the general royalist rising of 1648
might be repeated, and perhaps with a different issue.
The campaign of 1651 began late. During the winter, Blackness and
Tantallon castles were captured, and in February there was an advance on
Stirling which the tempestuous weather frustrated. In the spring,
Cromwell’s illness delayed operations. The hardships of Irish
campaigning had impaired his health. “I grow an old man, and feel the
infirmities of age marvellously stealing upon me,” he wrote to his wife
on the day after Dunbar; but he never spared himself, and in February,
1651, he fell ill of an intermittent fever brought on by exposure. Three
successive relapses brought him to the verge of the grave, and more than
once his life was despaired of. Parliament in alarm sent him two of the
best physicians of the day, and advised him to remove to England for
change of air. In June he was sufficiently recovered to take the field,
and found Leslie’s army posted on the hills south of Stirling. “We
cannot come to fight him except he please, or we go upon too manifest
hazards,” wrote Cromwell, “he having very strongly laid himself, and
having a very great advantage there.”
Unable to attack or to lure Leslie from his position, Cromwell resolved
to turn it. The English fleet commanded the sea, and it was easy to
throw Lambert and four thousand men across the Forth into Fife. Leslie
sent Sir John Brown against him with a like force, but Lambert
annihilated Brown’s force at Inverkeithing on July 20th. Cromwell poured
more troops across the water till he had fourteen thousand men in Fife,
and then taking their command himself he marched on Perth, which fell
after a siege of twenty-four hours (August 2nd).
The capture of Perth cut off Leslie from his supplies, and severed his
communications with the north of Scotland. But the way to England was
left open, and confident that English Royalists would flock to his
banner Charles and his whole army marched for the border. Cromwell had
foreseen the movement, and was well aware that it might alarm the
English Government. But he justified his strategy with sober confidence.
“We have done,” he said, “to the best of our judgment, knowing that
if some issue were not put to this business it would occasion
another winter’s war, to the ruin of your soldiery, for whom the
Scots are too hard in respect of enduring the winter difficulties of
this country, and to the endless expense of the treasury of England
in prosecuting this war. It may be supposed we might have kept the
enemy from this by interposing between him and England; which truly
I believe we might, but how to remove him out of this place without
doing what we have done, unless we had a commanding army on both
sides the river of Forth, is not clear to us; or how to answer the
inconveniences afore-mentioned we understand not.”
He bade them be of good courage and collect what forces they could to
check the march of the Scots.
“Indeed we have this comfortable experience from the Lord, that the
enemy is heart-smitten by God, and whenever the Lord shall bring us
up to them, we believe the Lord will make the desperateness of this
counsel of theirs to appear, and the folly of it also. When England
was much more unsteady than now, and when a much more considerable
army of theirs unfoiled invaded you, and we had but a weak force to
make resistance, at Preston, upon deliberate advice, we chose rather
to put ourselves between their army and Scotland; and how God
succeeded that is not well to be forgotten.”
Charles entered England by Carlisle, and marched through Lancashire and
along the Welsh border, hoping to gather recruits from those districts
during his progress. Cromwell, leaving Monk to secure Scotland, sent his
cavalry under Lambert and Harrison to pursue the King, and followed
himself through Yorkshire with the infantry. As he went, he was joined
by the forces of the counties through which he passed, and all over
England the new county militia rushed to arms. For, however much they
might detest the Republic, Englishmen hesitated to assist a Scottish
invader.
In Lancashire, distrust of Malignants prevented the Presbyterians from
taking up arms, though the Earl of Derby raised a little army amongst
the Cavaliers. On the 22nd of August, Charles reached Worcester with
less than sixteen thousand men, worn out by marching, and halted to rest
and collect his adherents. A few devoted gentlemen made their way to his
standard, but the people remained apathetic, and three days later
Derby’s levies were routed at Wigan by Colonel Lilburn. By this time the
net was closing round the King. Cromwell, joining Lambert and Harrison,
had established himself at Evesham, and blocked the road to London with
thirty thousand men. His superior numbers enabled him to divide his
forces, and to attack Worcester from both sides. Lambert and Fleetwood,
with eleven thousand men, crossed to the west bank of the Severn, and
prevented the retreat of the Royalists into Wales, whilst Cromwell, with
the bulk of the army, remained on the east bank and pushed close up to
the city. On September 3rd, the anniversary of Dunbar, Fleetwood’s force
advanced upon Worcester from the south-west. Between it and Worcester
lay the river Teame, a tributary of the Severn, held by a royalist
division, which had broken the bridges. Cromwell threw a bridge of boats
across the Severn, just above the mouth of the Teame, and fell on the
flank of the Scots with four of his best regiments. “The Lord General
did lead the van in person, and was the first man that set foot on the
enemy’s ground.” Under cover of Cromwell’s attack, Fleetwood threw a
similar bridge across the Teame, and his infantry poured across to
co-operate with Cromwell. Outnumbered, but fighting stubbornly, the
Scots gave way. “We beat the enemy from hedge to hedge,” wrote Cromwell,
“till we beat him into Worcester.”
Charles, who watched the battle from the tower of the cathedral, seeing
that the great part of Cromwell’s army was engaged on the western bank,
sallied forth with every man he could muster to crush the force left on
the eastern side. For three hours the struggle lasted. At first the
Scots gained ground, but Cromwell, recrossing the river, put himself at
the head of his men, and drove the enemy back in confusion into the
city. His soldiers entered at their heels, and storming their “Fort
Royal” turned its guns on the streets. “My Lord General did exceedingly
hazard himself, riding up and down in the midst of the fire; riding
himself in person to the enemy’s foot to offer them quarter, whereto
they returned no answer but shot.” In the end, what was left of the foot
laid down their arms, while the horse fled through the north gate, and
took the road to Scotland. But not a single regiment or troop reached
their home. The militia, which beset the bridges and highways, gathered
up prisoners in hundreds, and the country people hunted down stragglers
with merciless ferocity. Half the nobility of Scotland were amongst the
prisoners.
[Illustration:
The Battle of
WORCESTER.
B. V. Darbishire, Oxford 1899
]
Amongst the few who escaped was the young King. The Parliament
threatened all who sheltered Charles with the penalties of high treason,
and promised one thousand pounds to any person who gave him up. Troopers
scoured the roads to find him, and officials at all the ports were
warned to watch for “a tall man above two yards high, with hair a deep
brown near to black.” But, though Englishmen would not fight for
Charles, they would not betray him, and of the scores he trusted not one
proved false. Sometimes hiding in an oak tree, sometimes in a “priest’s
hole,” disguised now as a countryman in an old worn leathern doublet and
green breeches, and now as a serving-man in grey homespun, Charles
wandered through the south-west searching for a ship. At last he found
one at Brighton, and landed safe in France on October 22nd.
For Scotland, Cromwell’s victory marked the end of independence. The
absence of Leslie’s army left no force in Scotland capable of giving
battle to Monk’s six thousand veterans, and there was no fortress in
Scotland which could resist his artillery. Monk captured Stirling on
August 14th, and the seizure of the Committee of Estates at Alyth on
August 28th deprived the national defence of its head, and destroyed the
last relic of a national government. Dundee was stormed and sacked on
September 1st. Montrose, Aberdeen, Inverness, and other towns fell
without a blow. In February, 1652, the Orkneys were occupied, and in
May, Dunottar Castle, the last fortress to hold out, surrendered.
Argyle, who had refused to follow Charles into England, endeavoured to
maintain an independent position in the West Highlands, but in August he
too was forced to give in his adhesion to the English Government, and
the subjugation of Scotland was completed. An English garrison of twelve
thousand or fourteen thousand men, and strong fortresses built at Leith,
Ayr, Inverness, and Inverlochy, kept henceforth the conquered country in
submission. In spite of the general discontent no effort to throw off
the English yoke had any chance of success. In 1653, the war with
Holland emboldened the Highlanders to take arms again, and a rising
began which was headed first by the Earl of Glencairn, afterwards by
General Middleton. The insurgents made forays into the Lowlands, but
were never strong enough to do much more, and their own disputes ruined
their cause. Monk returned to his command in Scotland in May, 1654,
wasted the Highland glens with fire and sword, defeated Middleton’s
forces, and by the end of the year put an end to the insurrection.
The policy of the Long Parliament and of the Protector toward Scotland
resembled in its aim their policy toward Ireland. In each case the
object was to make the conquered country into an integral part of a
British empire. But the measures adopted to attain this object differed
considerably in the two countries. In Scotland there was no general
confiscation of the lands of the vanquished, and no far-reaching
alteration in the framework of society. The Scottish Royalists were
treated much as the English Cavaliers had been. The Long Parliament
confiscated the estates of those who had invaded England in 1648 and
1651, but the Protector adopted a more moderate policy, imposing the
penalty of forfeiture only on twenty-four leaders, and fining minor
offenders. A few English officers were given grants of the forfeited
lands, but most of their revenue was devoted to public purposes. Hence
the Scottish confiscations, although they ruined many of the nobility
and gentry, left the bulk of the nation untouched.
In Scotland there was no proscription of the national religion, but the
national Church lost a portion of its independence, and was deprived of
all power to check or control the civil government. In 1653, the General
Assembly—“the glory and strength of our Church upon earth,” as a
Presbyterian minister termed it—was forcibly dissolved, but local synods
and presbyteries were allowed to meet. The English Government deprived
the Church courts of their coercive jurisdiction over non-members, and
protected the formation of Independent congregations. It appointed
commissioners to visit the universities, punished ministers who preached
against it, and decided disputes about appointments to vacant livings.
But it interfered little in the internal affairs of the Church, and held
the balance tolerably even between Remonstrants and Resolutioners.
Though deprived of its political power and much of its independence, the
Scottish Church was not unprosperous. “These bitter waters,” says Robert
Blair, “were sweetened by the Lord’s remarkably blessing the labours of
His faithful servants. A great door and an effectual was opened to
many.”
As in Ireland so in Scotland the separate national Parliament ended, and
was replaced by representation in the Parliament of Great Britain. The
incorporating union, which James I. had unskilfully attempted, the Long
Parliament decreed, and the Protector realised. In 1652, commissioners
sent by the Long Parliament extorted a reluctant consent to the
principle of the union, but the details were still unsettled when
Cromwell became Protector. By the “Instrument of Government,” Scotland
was assigned thirty members in the British Parliament, and the
Protector’s ordinances completed the work. English statesmen regarded
the union as a generous concession. It was intended by the Parliament,
says Ludlow,
“to convince even their enemies, that their principal design was to
procure the happiness and prosperity of all that were under their
government,” and “was cheerfully accepted by the most judicious
amongst the Scots, who well understood how great a concession it was
in the Parliament of England to permit a people they had conquered
to have a part in the legislative power.”
In reality, both ecclesiastical and national feeling were arrayed
against it. “As for the embodying of Scotland with England,” said Robert
Blair, “it will be as when the poor bird is embodied in the hawk that
has eaten it up.” With few exceptions all classes regarded the
incorporating union with hostility and aversion.
The Protector hoped to reconcile Scotland to the union by the material
benefits which accompanied it. Absolute freedom of trade between the two
countries, proportionate taxation, and a better system of justice were
promised. Nor were these empty words. Tenures implying vassalage and
servitude and heritable jurisdictions were abolished. Popular
courts-baron were set up, English justices of the peace introduced, the
fees of the law courts diminished, and new judges appointed who
administered the laws without fear or favour. Even Scots admitted the
improvement in the administration of justice. “There was good justice
done,” says Burnet. “To speak truth,” adds Nichol, “the English were
more indulgent and merciful to the Scots, than the Scots to their own
countrymen and neighbours, and their justice exceeded the Scots’ in many
things.”
The civil administration of Scotland was in the hands, at first, of
parliamentary commissioners, and, after 1655, of a Scottish Council of
Nine appointed by the Protector, which included two Scots. Under their
vigorous rule, such order was maintained as Scotland had never known
before. The Highlands were tamed by the English garrisons, and the
mosstroopers of the border hunted down and punished. A man, boasted one
of the English officials, might ride all through Scotland with a hundred
pounds in his pocket, and nothing but a switch in his hand.
The class which benefited most by these reforms was the middle class.
“The towns,” wrote Monk to Cromwell, “are generally the most faithful to
us of any people in this nation.” In 1658, Cromwell, describing to his
Parliament the condition of Scotland, exulted over the improvement which
English rule had produced.
“The meaner sort,” he said, “live as well and are likely to come
into as thriving a condition under your government, as when they
were under their own great lords, who made them work for their
living no better than the peasants of France. I am loath to speak
anything which may reflect upon that nation; but the middle sort of
people do grow up into such a substance as makes their lives
comfortable, if not better than before.”
Burnet, in his description of the Cromwellian régime in Scotland, goes
so far as to say, “we always reckon those eight years of usurpation a
time of great peace and prosperity.” But this is an evident
exaggeration. The devastation and loss caused by the long wars had
produced widespread poverty. “I do think,” admitted the Protector, “the
Scots nation have been under as great a suffering, in point of
livelihood and subsistence outwardly, as any people I have yet named to
you. I do think truly they are a very ruined nation.” The weak point of
English rule was the heavy taxation which the necessity of maintaining
so large an army in Scotland caused. Baillie’s letters are full of
complaints of the burden of taxation. “A great army in a multitude of
garrisons bides above our heads, and deep poverty keeps all estates
exceedingly under; the taxes of all sorts are so great, the trade so
little, that it is a marvel if extreme scarcity of money end not soon in
some mischief.” The English Government had originally imposed a land tax
of ten thousand pounds per month on Scotland, but this was levied with
such difficulty that it was finally reduced to six thousand pounds. And
in the year of Cromwell’s death, England had to remit to Scotland a
contribution of over £140,000 towards the expenses of the military
government which held Scotland in obedience.
Scots in general regarded the benefits which English rule conferred as
too dearly purchased at the cost of heavy taxes and national
independence. In Ireland, for weal or woe, the Cromwellian conquest left
an ineffaceable mark on the national history. In Scotland, on the other
hand, all that Cromwell had done, or tried to do,—union, law-reform, and
freedom of trade,—vanished when the Restoration came. But the aims of
his policy were so just that subsequent statesmen were compelled to
follow where he led. The union and free trade came in 1707, and the
abolition of hereditary jurisdictions in 1746.
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