The Early History of the Scottish Union Question Part 4

The Articles of Union, as finally settled, stood thus. All hostile laws, and, in particular, the Border laws, were to be repealed. The name of the Borders was to be abolished. There was to be complete freedom of trade between England and Scotland; and as regarded foreign commerce both countries were to stand on the same footing. On the difficult point of naturalisation, the commissioners recommended that an Act should be pa.s.sed to declare that all subjects of both countries born since the death of Elizabeth, that is to say the "post-nati," were, by common law, ent.i.tled to the privileges of subjects in both countries. The "ante-nati," or subjects born before the death of the late queen, were to enjoy the same privileges, not at common law, but under an Act of Parliament pa.s.sed on their behalf. But the ante-nati were not to be capable of holding offices under the Crown or sitting in Parliament, except in the country of their birth. In short, the post-nati were to be fully naturalised; but the ante-nati were not to have a share in the government or the legislature.

This question of naturalisation, with the distinction drawn between the post-nati and the ante-nati, is, in our day, only one of faint antiquarian interest; but it was then a question of practical everyday importance. The law officers of the Crown had given an opinion that the post-nati of Scotland were not aliens in England, but that the ante-nati were; and this had led the Union Commissioners to suggest that both should be placed on the same footing, with the exception, which has just been mentioned, that the ante-nati should be declared incapable of holding office. At this point James raised an objection. He protested that he had no desire to give offices of State except to the natives of the country in which the office was to be exercised. He agreed to the proposal of the commissioners; but, at the same time, he insisted that the clause dealing with the question of naturalisation should be so worded as to recognise a right on the part of the sovereign to grant letters of denization. This, of course, was a palpable evasion of the proposed finding, and would leave him free to do as he pleased.

Nevertheless, the commissioners recommended that, in the Articles of Union, the prerogative of the Crown as to appointing to offices in either kingdom, and as to granting letters of denization, should be specially reserved.

The Articles of Union were signed and sealed by the commissioners on the 6th of December, and at once presented to the king. James was in high spirits. He thanked the commissioners warmly for their services, and especially for their conduct in reserving his prerogative of appointing to offices in either kingdom. "Among other pleasant speeches," says Bacon, "he showed unto them the laird of Lawreston,[58] a Scotchman, who was the tallest and greatest man that was to be seen, and said, 'Well, now we are all one, yet none of you will say, but here is one Scotchman greater than any Englishman'; which was an ambiguous speech, but it was thought he meant it of himself."

The Governments in both countries began to make arrangements for the approaching Union. A warrant was issued for destroying the Great and Privy Seals of Scotland; and new seals were made with the arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland quartered on them.[59] Agents were sent to France to investigate the privileges held by Englishmen and Scotsmen as to the French trade, and arrange for the future. An order was issued which ill.u.s.trates the position of affairs between the countries.

Scotsmen were constantly going abroad to serve in the foreign armies.

They were in the habit of pa.s.sing through England, and, on their way, they often were guilty of disorderly conduct, such as robbing on the highways, and committing other outrages, which raised a bad feeling against their country. It was therefore ordered that, in future, all Scotsmen going abroad were to embark from Scotland, instead of pa.s.sing through England.[60]

A long time, however, was to pa.s.s before the subject of the Union was discussed by the Parliaments. The English Parliament had been summoned for the 5th of November 1605, when the articles were to have been debated. But the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot threw everything else into the shade; and though the Treaty of Union was presented, nothing more was done.

At last, when the Parliament of England met in November 1606, it was understood that the session was to be chiefly devoted to the Scottish question. The Articles of Union were known; and there was a storm of opposition from the merchants of London. Objections were raised to the admission of Scotsmen as members of English trading companies. There was also a strong dislike to allowing free trade between England and Scotland. The Scots, it was said, would come and go as they pleased, and fulfil or break their bargains just as it suited them. The English traders, moreover, wished a heavy duty to be imposed on cloth entering Scotland, because Scotland had, for a long time, been favoured in the custom duties which she paid in France; and this, along with other privileges she enjoyed in that country, might enable her to monopolise the trade in cloth with France. It was soon found that the dislike to the Union extended to every cla.s.s throughout the country. There was a general fear that every district, and every calling, would be overrun with needy Scotsmen. The Articles of Union, it was said, would open to Scotsmen not only trade, but the Church, the universities, and the highest offices of State. They would fill, it was predicted, the best stalls in every cathedral in England; Latin would be taught at Oxford and Cambridge by the countrymen of Buchanan, whose scholarship not even English jealousy could venture to deny; and the tireless energy of ambitious Scottish politicians would secure the most lucrative places in the Government.

In Parliament, and especially in the House of Commons, these complaints were echoed. Sir Christopher Piggott, one of the members for Buckinghamshire, rose one day, and, speaking with his hat on, launched into a torrent of abuse against the idea of an Union with the Scots, who, he shouted, were murderers, thieves, and rogues who had not suffered more than two of their kings to die peaceably in their beds during the last two hundred years. The Commons, either from sympathy or in surprise, received this tirade in silence. But James, when he heard of it, was indignant; and Piggott was expelled from the House and committed to the Tower.[61]

In this spirit the debates, which began in February 1607, were conducted by the opponents of the Union. The first question which came up was the question of naturalisation. The speech of the member who opened the case against the proposals of the Union Commissioners consisted of an attack on Scotland and the Scots; and his chief argument against the Union was that if a man owned two pastures, the one fertile and the other barren, he would not, if he was a wise man, pull down the hedge, and allow the lean and hungry cattle to rush in and devour the rich pasture.

Bacon led on the other side. The grand idea of an orderly and well-balanced Union of the two kingdoms had fascinated his imagination.

In moderate language, and in his most lucid manner, he answered his opponents, and expounded his own reasons for advising the Parliament of England to naturalise the Scottish nation. There were, he said, three objections to doing so. In the first place, it was thought that if the Scots were no longer aliens, they would settle in England in such numbers that the country would be over-populated. But, he answered, four years had pa.s.sed since the Union of the Crowns, which was "the greatest spring-tide for the confluence and entrance of that nation"; and during these four years the only Scotsmen who had come to live in England were those immediately connected with the Court. Again, England, he declared, was not yet fully peopled. London was overcrowded; but the rest of the country showed signs of a want of inhabitants, in the shape of swamps and waste places. The Commons themselves might bear in mind "how many of us serve here in this place for desolate and decayed boroughs." And, besides, what was the worst effect which could follow too great an increase of the population? Nothing more than some honourable war for the enlargement of our borders.

The second objection to naturalising the Scots was that the laws of England and Scotland were different, that the Articles of Union left them different, and that it was unreasonable to admit the Scots to the privileges of English citizens without making them adopt the laws of England. But, he argued, naturalisation must come first. The inhabitants of Ireland, of the Isle of Man, and of Jersey and Guernsey, had the benefits of naturalisation; but the laws of England were not yet in force among them. An union of laws might be brought about both in these places and in Scotland, but only in course of time.

The third objection was that there was so much inequality between England and Scotland that the Union would not be fair to England. This inequality, Bacon declared, consisted only in gold and silver, the external goods of fortune. "In their capacities and undertakings," he said, "they are a people ingenious, in labour industrious, in courage valiant, in body hard, active, and comely." If Scotland was, after all, to gain by the Union, then England might find that it was more blessed to give than to receive.

Having thus answered the objections to naturalisation, he next maintained that if naturalisation did not follow the Union of the Kingdoms under the same Crown, danger would be the result. History, he argued, teaches us that whenever kingdoms have been united by the link of the Crown alone, if that union has not been fortified by something more, and most of all by naturalisation, separation takes place. The Romans and the Latins were united; but the Latins were not made citizens of Rome. War was the result. Sparta was ruined by attempting to maintain a league with States whose peoples she jealously regarded as aliens. The history of Aragon and Castile, of Florence and Pisa, taught us the same lesson. And on the other hand, we find that where States have been united, and that union strengthened by the bond of naturalisation, they never separate again.

He ended his speech by saying that, in future times, England, "having Scotland united and Ireland reduced," would be one of the greatest monarchies in the world.[62]

But this appeal was unheeded by the House; and though c.o.ke brought all his great authority as a common lawyer to the same side as Bacon, the members would not be convinced. James on two occasions expostulated with them. He said he was willing, if it would help on the Union, to live one year in Scotland and another in England, or to live at York, or on the Borders. But the Commons were intractable, although the Lords were ready to agree to the Union, and to the naturalisation of the Scots.

Something, however, was accomplished. The questions of trade and of naturalisation were left unsettled; but an Act was pa.s.sed which gave effect to the first part of the Treaty of Union, by repealing a number of statutes hostile to Scotland (such as those which forbade the leasing of lands to Scotsmen, and the exporting of arms or horses to Scotland), on condition that the Scottish Parliament, when it met, was to repeal the Scottish Acts, of a similar nature, which were hostile to England.[63]

With this small concession James had to be contented; and at the beginning of July he dismissed the Parliament, but not without a farewell warning that the Union was, in the long-run, inevitable. "These two kingdoms," he said, "are so conjoined that, if we should sleep in our beds, the Union should be, though we would not. He that doth not love a Scotsman as his brother, or the Scotsman that loves not an Englishman as his brother, he is traitor to G.o.d and the king."

The Scottish Parliament met in the first week of August. The Scots were, on the whole, rather proud to think that their king had gone to rule over England. Yet the old wrongs could not easily be forgotten, and it is probable that the Estates were very nearly as much against the Union as the House of Commons was. The Privy Council had, some months before, given the king a hint of this;[64] and a trivial circ.u.mstance may be mentioned to show how jealous the Scots were of England. A pattern of the new flag which James had ordered to be prepared for the United Kingdom, had been sent from England; and great offence had been taken when it was found that the Cross of Saint Andrew was covered, and, it was said, hidden by the Cross of St. George. Scottish seamen, the king was told, could not be induced to receive the flag.[65]

There can be little doubt that most Scotsmen sympathised with the national feeling which this trifling incident disclosed. But the private opinion of a member of the Scottish Parliament was one thing, and his public conduct was another. The Estates were submissive to the royal will. The Articles of Union were agreed to; and all the laws hostile to England were repealed.[66]

Thus, so far as it lay within the power of the Scottish Parliament, the king had got what he wanted. All that remained was for the English Parliament to be equally complaisant; and the kingdoms would have been united in 1607 instead of a century later. But it was not to be. In neither country was there any genuine desire for union. The free traditions of the House of Commons enabled the members to say what they thought; and the subject, gradually dropping out of sight, was not again seriously debated during the reign of James. The antiquary may still inspect a brown and shrivelled parchment which is preserved in the Register House at Edinburgh, all that remains of the Treaty of 1607. The time had not yet come when the Parliaments of the two nations were to see that it was impossible for the resources of Scotland to be developed while she remained separate from England, and that it was equally impossible for England to attain a position of permanent security so long as Scotland remained poor and discontented, debarred, by commercial restrictions, from the advantages of trade with the colonies and with England, and with no outlet for that splendid energy of her people which, after the Union, changed the Lothians from a desert to a garden, made Edinburgh famous throughout Europe as a school of letters, and founded on the banks of the Clyde one of the great commercial cities of the world.

The question of naturalisation, which could not be left undecided, was settled by the judges in a test case in the law courts. The action related to a tenement in Sh.o.r.editch, and the point at issue was whether the plaintiff, a child born in Scotland since the Union of the Crowns, was an alien, and, therefore, not ent.i.tled to bring an action for real property in England. Bacon was the leading counsel for the plaintiff; and the most important opinion was delivered by Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. The Court, by a majority, found for the plaintiff, holding that all the post-nati, or persons born in Scotland since the Union of the Crowns, were naturalised and ent.i.tled to all the rights of Englishmen in England. The ante-nati, those born in Scotland before the accession of James, still remained in the position of aliens.[67]

The effects of the removal of the Court to London were apparent in Scotland for many years to come. The houses of the n.o.bles and the gentry were neglected. Gardens and pleasure-grounds, which had begun to appear in some places, were allowed to run to waste. The inns, poor at all times, fell into ruins. Merchants found their business at a standstill; and the shipping trade languished. What made all this peculiarly galling to the Scottish people was that England, though not occupying under the Stuarts the lofty position which she had occupied under the Tudors, was, year after year, enlarging her bounds and adding to the sources of her wealth. On the southern side of the Borders, the industries of Yorkshire were showing signs of what they were to become. The East India Company, now firmly established, was extending its operations. Far across the seas Nova Scotia was colonised by Scotsmen whom poverty had driven from their homes; and the plantations of Virginia became a rich addition to the resources of the English Crown. And besides suffering from the evils of poverty, Scotland was hara.s.sed almost from the day on which James ascended the throne of England by those ecclesiastical disputes which plunged the country into so much misery during the seventeenth century.

The king had been compelled, by the force of public opinion in England, to abandon the Union. But with the object to which he devoted the rest of his life even those Englishmen who doubted the wisdom of his policy were inclined to sympathise. The Scottish Reformation, unlike that of England, had been the work of the aristocracy, in opposition to the Crown. It had, at the same time, been a deeply religious movement; and these two forces, working together, had developed, as the distinguishing features of the Reformed Church of Scotland, a denial of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, and the a.s.sertion of the spiritual independence of the Church. Sir James Mackintosh has said that the peculiar theories of Berkeley were a touch-stone of metaphysical sagacity, meaning, apparently, by this phrase, that those who were without it could not understand the meaning or the tendency of those theories. In like manner, spiritual independence is the touch-stone of a capacity for understanding the history of the Scottish Church. The words "spiritual independence" expressed for Scotsmen what was, on the one hand, a part of their const.i.tutional law, set forth in the statutes of the realm, and on the other hand, an article of faith, received by the people as an essential part of their religion, involving the principle of loyalty to the great founder of the Christian faith, as the only head of the Church. They believed--and for this belief thousands laid down their lives--that there were two authorities, the one civil and the other spiritual. Both were based upon a divine sanction; and each was to be obeyed within its own sphere. The civil magistrate was to bear rule and to be obeyed in civil affairs; but if he attempted to interfere with the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, he was to be resisted to the death. This principle of spiritual independence, which, neither at the Union of the Crowns, nor at the Union of the Kingdoms, nor during that memorable crisis which, in the middle of the nineteenth century, rent asunder the Church of Scotland, Englishmen were able to understand, was taught in the first Confession of Faith drawn up by the Scottish Reformers, and laid before the Estates in 1560.[68] After some years, when the long controversy between the king and the Church had begun, the two jurisdictions, civil and ecclesiastical, were still more carefully defined.[69]

Principles such as these were intolerable to James. By the law of England the king was head of the Church; and it was, therefore, his policy to introduce an uniformity of ecclesiastical government over the whole island. For more than twenty years before the Union of the Crowns he had been engaged in fighting the Scottish clergy. Sometimes he won, and sometimes he was defeated. The great point at issue was whether the Scottish Church was to be Presbyterian or Episcopal; for he had found that if the Presbyterian system was allowed to exist, the royal supremacy would never be acknowledged in Scotland. Accordingly he came to the throne of England with a firm resolution that he would use his new position so as to secure the establishment of Episcopacy in the north; and, though he artfully concealed it, we may be sure that one of his chief reasons for proposing the Union was that he believed it would be followed by the accomplishment of this object. Henceforth the policy of extending the Anglican system to Scotland became the hereditary policy of the Stuarts. Three years after the Union of the Crowns, the boldest leaders of the clergy having been driven into exile, the Scottish Parliament acknowledged the royal supremacy over all persons and all causes. It was not long before Episcopacy was established; and James had the gratification of seeing a few of his new bishops humbly consenting to receive consecration from the hands of English prelates, and returning to Scotland to confer upon their brethren the virtues of the apostolical succession. But the system which was thus set up had no hold upon the people. It would be impossible to point out in the catalogue of Scottish bishops the names of a dozen men who were either popular, or famous for learning, or eminent on account of their public services. The history of Christendom contains no story so humiliating as the story of Prelacy in Scotland during the seventeenth century.

The real meaning of the struggle between the Scottish people and the English Government which followed the Union of the Crowns cannot be understood unless we remember that, for most of those who suffered, the question at issue was a question of conscience. It is easy to find upon the surface of these events the materials from which to construct an explanation of a different kind. Envy at the sight of so much power in the hands of the priesthood, and the love, so strong in the Scottish character, of freedom from control, might influence some. But no one who looks below the surface, or reads the history of that period with an impartial mind, can fail to perceive that what brought the people of Scotland into a position of such stern antagonism to the English system of Church government, and, still more, what kept them there, was the fact that to accept Episcopacy was to give up spiritual independence, to admit the royal supremacy, and to abandon the principle of a divine head of the Church. It was for that principle that men and women died during the period between the Restoration and the Revolution, and not merely in defence of one form of Church government against another. And in the meantime, during the first half of the seventeenth century, it was the obstinate and persistent tyranny of James, and the infatuation of Charles the First and his advisers, which roused that memorable outburst of national resentment which scattered their policy to the winds. An uniformity in Church government and in ritual was the end aimed at by Charles and Laud. That end was, indeed, so far accomplished; but not by them. Having resolved to extend the Anglican system permanently to Scotland, they lived just long enough to see the Scottish system on the point of being extended to England, and the two kingdoms suddenly bound together by that solemn league which, conceived, though it may have been, in a spirit of intolerance, was nevertheless, for more than two generations, the watchword of the Whigs of Scotland, who afterwards, through the years of darkness and tempest, held high the blue banner of the Covenants, the rallying-point of Scottish freedom.

During a few years the Presbyterian Church was established, and the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland were administered in accordance with the long-cherished aspirations of the native clergy. But the alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Parliament and Church did not long survive the execution of Charles. Their ideas had always been different. "The English were for a civil league, we for a religious covenant," Baillie had written six years before. The Scottish Parliament protested against the execution. The Scottish Church was willing to receive Charles the Second, if he would declare himself a Presbyterian and sign the Covenants. "If his Majesty," Baillie writes, "may be moved to join with us in this one point, he will have all Scotland ready to sacrifice their lives for his service." Charles consented. He subscribed the Covenants, and bound himself, by an oath, to maintain the Presbyterian Church. But the royal cause was hopeless. Cromwell's victory at Dunbar was a crushing blow; and the battle of Worcester left Scotland at the mercy of the English army.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] _Register of the Privy Council of Scotland_, vi. 553.

[43] Spotswood, 476.

[44] _Register of the Privy Council of Scotland_, vi. 602.

[45] Satire against Scotland, 1617; _Abbotsford Miscellany_, i. 297.

[46] _Fdera_, xvi. 506.

[47] A brief discourse of the Happy Union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, dedicated in private to His Majesty, 1603; Certain Articles or Considerations touching the Union, collected and dispersed for His Majesty's better service.

[48] A Preparation towards the Union of the Laws of England and Scotland.

[49] _Register of the Privy Council of Scotland_, vi. 596.

[50] Act. Parl. Scot. iv. 263, 11th July 1604.

[51] Act. Parl. Scot. iv. 264.

[52] Act in favour of the liberties of the Kirk, 11th July 1604, Act.

Parl. Scot. iv. 264. Balmerino, in sending to Cecil an account of the proceedings of the Estates regarding the Union, expresses the hope that the Scottish people will prove equally tractable (_Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1603-1610, p. 132).

[53] _Fdera_, xvi. 600.

[54] Proclamatio pro Unione Regnorum Angliae et Scotiae, 20th October 1604 (_Fdera_, xvi. 603).

[55] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1603-1610, p. 103.

[56] "Amongst these commissioners there grew a question, whether there could be made an Union of the Kingdoms by raising a new Kingdome of Great Britaine, before there was an Union of the Lawes. Which question, by the King's commandment, was referred to all the Judges of England in Trinity Terme, Anno 2 Jac., who unanimously resolved (I being then Attorney General and present), that Anglia had lawes, and Scotia had lawes, but this new erected Kingdome of Britannia should have no law.

And, therefore, where all the judiciall proceedings in England are secundum legem et consuetudinem Angliae, it could not be altered secundum legem et consuetudinem Britanniae, untill there was an Union of the lawes of both Kingdomes; which could not be done but by Authority of Parliament in either Kingdome" (c.o.ke's _Inst.i.tutes_, part iv. cap. 75).

On one point connected with the legal system of Scotland, James displayed greater foresight than even the Whigs of 1707. "The greatest hinderance," he says in the _Basilikon Doron_, "to the execution of our lawes in this countrie, are these heritable Sheifdomes and Regalities, which being in the hands of the great men, doe wracke the whole countrey." And then he recommends his son to look forward to a time when he might be able to abolish them, and introduce the English system; "Prea.s.sing with time, to draw it to the lawdable custome of England; which ye may the easilier doe, being King of both, as I hope in G.o.d ye shall." The Heritable Jurisdictions, a curse to Scotland, were not abolished until after the second Jacobite Rebellion.

[57] Introduction to the Treasury Edition of the _Register of the Privy Council of Scotland_, edited by Professor Ma.s.son, vol. vii. p. x.x.xii.

[58] Sir Alexander Straton of Lauriston.

[59] _Register of the Privy Council of Scotland_, vii. 54, 464.

[60] _Ibid._ 130.

[61] Commons Journals, 13th February 1607.

[62] A speech used by Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, in the Honourable House of Commons, Quinto Jacobi, concerning the Article of the General Naturalization of the Scottish Nation.