The Early History of the Scottish Union Question Part 5

[63] Act for the utter abolition of all memory of hostility, and the dependents thereof, between England and Scotland, 4 Jac. i. cap. i.

[64] "Thair be amang us not a few of the best sorte who ar als aliene from it as ony of the lower House, and hes moir just causis to be discontented with so easie obliterating of begane wrongis." (The Privy Council to the King, 3rd March 1607, _Register_, vii. 513.)

[65] _Register of Privy Council_, vii. 498.

[66] Act anent the Unioun of Scotland and England. Act. Parl. Scot. iv.

366.

[67] _Calvin_ v. _Smith_, the case of the Post-nati, or of the Union of the Realm of Scotland with England; Trin. 6 James I. A.D. 1608, State Trials, ii. 559; The argument of Sir Francis Bacon, in the case of the Post-nati of Scotland, in the Exchequer Chamber, before the Lord Chancellor, and all the Judges of England, Nov. 1608.

[68] Thus the eleventh article of this Confession, which treats of the Ascension, contains these remarkable words: "The remembrance of quhilk day, and of the Judgement to be executed in the same, is not onelie to us ane brydle whereby our carnal l.u.s.tes are refrained, bot alswa sik inestimable comfort, that nether may the threatning of wordly Princes, nether zit the feare of temporal death and present danger, move us to renounce and forsake that blessed societie, quhilk we the members have with our head and onelie Mediator Christ Jesus, whom we confesse and avow to be the Messias promised, the onelie head of his Kirk, our just Laugiver, our onelie hie Priest, Advocate and Mediator. In quhilk honoures and offices, gif Man or Angel presume to intrude themself, we utterlie detest and abhorre them, as blasphemous to our Soveraine and supreme Governour Christ Jesus." The twenty-fifth article is ent.i.tled, "Of the Civil Magistrate"; and these two articles, when read together, contain the germ of the Scottish idea of an Established Church. This Confession was ratified by the Estates in 1567, Act. Parl. Scot.

[69] "This power ecclesiasticall flowis immediatlie frome G.o.d, and the Mediator Chryst Jesus, and is spirituall, not having ane temporall heid on eirth, bot onlie Chryst, the onlie spirituall King and Gouernour of his Kirk;" "It is ane t.i.tle falslie usurpit be Antichrist, to call himself heid of the Kirk, and aucht not to be attribut.i.t to angell or to mane, of what estait soeuir he be, saiffing to Chryst, the Heid and onelie Monarche in this Kirk;" "As the ministeris and vtheris of the ecclesiasticall estait, ar subiect to the magistrat ciuillie, swa aucht the persone of the magistrat be subiect to the Kirk spirituallie, and in ecclesiasticall gouernment. And the exercise of bayth thais jurisdictionis can not stande in ane persone ordinarlie" (Headis and Conclusionis of the Policie of the Kirk, cap. i.). This statement of principles, usually called the "Second Book of Discipline," was promulgated by the Church of Scotland in 1578.

CHAPTER III

THE UNION DURING THE COMMONWEALTH

When the battle of Worcester was fought exactly a year had pa.s.sed since the battle of Dunbar. The events of that year were not such as to reconcile Scotland to the Union which was now proposed by the Government of England. All trade between the two countries had been forbidden.

Edinburgh had been taken, the royal palace of Holyrood, turned into barracks, had been set on fire through the carelessness of the soldiers, and almost totally destroyed. The churches had been desecrated, their pulpits and seats torn down and used as firewood. The edifice which George Heriot had directed his executors to raise for the benefit of the poor of Edinburgh was seized, while still in the builder's hands, and turned into a military hospital. The castle had been surrendered into the hands of the invader. In the Parliament House, English troopers prayed and preached. The garrison of Stirling Castle had capitulated; the public records of the kingdom had been removed to the Tower of London; and the whole country south of the Forth and Clyde was subdued.

Dundee held out to the last; but just two days before the battle of Worcester the town was stormed by Monk.

The slaughter at Dundee, and the news brought home by those who had escaped from the field of Worcester, extinguished all hopes of further resistance. In the Highlands alone there remained some faint show of adherence to the cause of the Stuarts, which afterwards found an outlet in the rising under Glencairn; and the Marquis of Argyll strove, for a time, to stem the tide which was overwhelming Scotland. But, to all intents and purposes, the country was now thoroughly subdued.

Eight commissioners, among whom were young Sir Harry Vane, Lambert, and Monk, were appointed to arrange an Union. They found everything in confusion. The last meeting of the Scottish Parliament had taken place on the 6th of June. The Court of Session had not sat since February 1650. Many towns were without magistrates. The Church was torn by internal dissensions. When proclamation was made, at the market-cross of Edinburgh, that Scotland was to be united, in one Commonwealth, with England, the announcement was received in gloomy silence. But there was an under-current of feeling in favour of the Union, of which the commissioners were doubtless aware. Delegates from the counties and burghs were summoned to meet at Dalkeith, to consider the Tender of Union which the commissioners were empowered to offer on behalf of the Parliament of England; and the result was that, of thirty-one counties, twenty-eight, and of fifty-eight burghs, forty-four a.s.sented to the Union.[70] Their a.s.sent must in some degree be ascribed to motives of prudence; for it was known that those counties and burghs which failed to send delegates favourable to union would be disfranchised; but it was from Glasgow alone, which, more than any other place in Scotland, was ultimately to benefit from the Union with England, that any formal and serious objection came. By some a scheme was suggested, which Fletcher of Saltoun would have warmly supported in 1707, for declining an incorporating Union and making Scotland a republic in friendly alliance with England. But the proposers of this scheme, one of whom was the noted Covenanter, Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston, ultimately agreed to the Union.

The chief opponents of the new arrangement were the clergy. It was on the 23rd of February 1652 that the delegates a.s.sembled at Dalkeith; and on the following day Baillie writes: "All the ministers of Edinburgh prays still for the king, and preaches very freely and zealously against the way of the English; this they are very angry at, and threatens to remeed it." But the ministers were divided against each other. Some resisted the Union because they were Royalists, some because they could not tolerate the idea of uniting with a country in which the Independents and other "Sectaries" had so much power, and others because they thought that the result of the Union would be that the Church would become subordinate to the State. But their resistance was of no avail; and they could only lament the defection of so many of the laity. "Good Sir John Seaton," Baillie writes in reference to the Conference at Dalkeith, "was the first that subscribed his free and willing acceptance of the incorporation for East Louthian. The two Swintons followed for the Merse, Stobs for Tiviotdale, Dundas for West Louthian, William Thomson and Fairbairne, I think, have done the like for Edinburgh, and its like almost all burghs and shyres will, under their hand, renounce their Covenant; Glasgow and the West purposes to refuse, for which we are like deeply to suffer; but the will of the Lord be done."[71]

The result of the meeting of delegates was reported to Parliament; and the Council of State was instructed to prepare a Bill for the union of the two countries. Deputies were sent from Scotland to Westminster to adjust the details of the measure, and, in particular, to fix the number of members who were to represent Scotland in the Parliament of the United Commonwealth. A series of conferences were held between these deputies and a Committee of Parliament, at which the demands of Scotland were discussed. There was great difficulty in settling the question of representation.[72] The English proposal was that, in the united Parliament, England should be represented by four hundred members, Scotland by thirty, and Ireland by thirty. The number of commoners in the Scottish Parliament had been one hundred and twenty; and the deputies wished sixty Scottish members to have seats in the House of Commons. The English Government, however, refused to admit more than thirty. This was agreed to; and the Union Bill was about to pa.s.s, when, on the 20th of April 1653, Cromwell put an end to the Long Parliament.

In the Little Parliament, Barebones' Parliament, Scotland was represented by five members, and some progress was made in the matter of the Union. It was resolved that there should be complete free trade between England and Scotland. The Government ordered all money raised in Scotland to be spent in Scotland for local purposes;[73] and that on the pa.s.sing of the Union Bill, an enactment, which had come into force three years before, under which all Scotsmen were banished from England, should be repealed.[74] But the further progress of the Union Bill came to an end when Parliament was dissolved, and the control of all affairs pa.s.sed into the hands of Cromwell as "Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland," a t.i.tle which a.s.sumed that the Union had already taken place.

In the following spring an ordinance was framed for completing the Union. It set forth that the people of Scotland, having been invited to unite with England, had, through their deputies, accepted the invitation; that Scotland was, therefore, to be now incorporated and declared one Commonwealth with England; and that, in every Parliament which was held for the Commonwealth, thirty members were to serve for Scotland. To secure the more effectual preservation of the Union, and the freedom of the country, the people of Scotland were relieved from all allegiance to the Stuarts. The t.i.tle of King of Scotland was abolished. The right of the Estates to a.s.semble in Parliament was annulled. It was ordained that, "as a badge of this Union," the arms of Scotland should form a part of the arms of the Commonwealth; and that all seals of office, and the seals of the corporations in Scotland, should henceforth bear the arms of the Commonwealth. All taxes were to be levied proportionably from the whole people of the Commonwealth.

Va.s.salage was abolished, and lands were to be held by deed or charter for rent. The whole system of hereditary jurisdictions, by which there had been transmitted from father to son, in many families of the landowners, the power of holding courts and inflicting punishments, even that of death, was swept away. An immense boon was conferred on Scotland by the establishment of complete free trade between the countries, and by the declaration that in all matters relating to commerce England and Scotland were thenceforth equal.[75]

This ordinance was proclaimed at Edinburgh on the 4th of May 1654. The town-cross, at which the ceremony took place, was surrounded by troops under the command of Monk. An immense crowd of the townsfolk a.s.sembled to witness the proceedings. The Lord Provost and the Magistrates, clad in their scarlet robes, were in attendance. Henry Whalley, Judge Advocate to the English army, read the proclamation; and at the conclusion of the ceremony, Monk and his friends were entertained at a sumptuous banquet in the Parliament House, where the Magistrates stood and served them. Later in the evening there was a display of fireworks at the town-cross.

The Union having been thus proclaimed, the Council of State at Whitehall proceeded to arrange the distribution of seats in Scotland.[76] Of the thirty seats, twenty were allotted to the counties, and ten to the burghs. The more populous counties each returned a member. The rest were divided into groups. Of the burghs, Edinburgh alone returned two members; but all the other towns were grouped into districts.

When the Protector's first Parliament met, in July 1654, twenty-one members from Scotland attended. Of these, both the members for Edinburgh, and several others, were Englishmen; and while the Union lasted, the members from Scotland were either quiet and peaceful Scotsmen, ready to support the Protector's measures, or English officials.[77]

The Council in Scotland managed the elections there. The full number of thirty members was returned to the Parliament of 1656; but many of them were Englishmen. Argyll opposed the Council, and endeavoured to secure the return of Scotsmen only, but in vain. He failed to obtain a seat himself until Richard Cromwell's Parliament of 1658, when thirteen county and eight burgh members seem to have attended. Argyll then represented Aberdeenshire in the House of Commons; but the members for Perthshire, Inverness-shire, Linlithgow, Stirlingshire, Clackmannan, Dumbartonshire, Argyllshire, Bute, and Midlothian were all Englishmen; and a majority of the burgh members came from Westminster or the Inns of Court.[78]

The executive government in Scotland, during the Union, was vested in a Council of State, to whom elaborate instructions were issued by the Protector. They were to inquire into the best means for preserving the Union; to promote the cause of religion, taking care that the clergy were regularly paid, and that all schools had able and pious teachers; to encourage learning and reform the universities; to remove from the corporations disaffected or ill-behaved magistrates, and replace them by suitable persons; to see that equal justice was administered to all men, and to promote the Union by a.s.similating the procedure in the courts of Scotland to that of the courts of England; to investigate the state of the revenue, and see that the Exchequer was not defrauded; to study economy in the public service; to encourage the fishing industry, the manufactures, and the commerce of Scotland.

The Council consisted of nine members, of whom only two, Lockhart and Swinton, were Scotsmen. Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, third son of the Earl of Cork, was President, with a salary of two thousand pounds a year; and the great Scottish offices of State, most of which were retained, were generally filled by Englishmen. Lord Broghill appears to have been popular. "He has gained," Baillie writes, "more on the affections of the people than all the English that ever were among us."[79]

An army of English soldiers, nearly as numerous as that which occupied Ireland, was spread over Scotland. Forts were built at Leith, Glasgow, Ayr, and Inverness; and the castle of Inverlochy was repaired and filled by a garrison which overawed the Western Highlands. The strictest discipline was maintained. "I remember," Burnet says, "three regiments coming to Aberdeen. There was an order and discipline, and a face of gravity and piety among them, that amazed all people." Burnet attributes the flourishing state of Scotland during the Union to the money spent by the army; so does Fletcher of Saltoun. And it must have had a considerable effect on the financial state of the country, as the pay of the troops amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand pounds yearly, an immense sum for the Scotland of those days.

In the judicial system sweeping changes were introduced. The exercise of jurisdiction in Scotland was prohibited, except under the authority of the Parliament of England. The powers of the Court of Session, the supreme tribunal of the country, were handed over to a bench of Commissioners for the Administration of Justice to the People of Scotland. These judges were seven in number, four Englishmen and three Scotsmen. At first the Scottish Bar joined the clergy in opposing the Union, and refused to plead; but by the autumn of 1656 most of the advocates had returned to business.

The manner in which the "English judges," as the Commissioners were called, performed their duties seems to have given great satisfaction.

The Court of Session had been so tyrannical and corrupt that the fairness and purity of the new Court astonished the country. "Justice,"

we are told, "was wont to be free and open for none but great men, but now it flows equally for all." Circuit courts were held throughout the country; and, while crime was firmly punished, the extreme severity of the Scottish criminal system was avoided. Prosecutions for witchcraft were still frequent, but the English judges received the evidence with suspicion; and on one occasion no less than sixty persons, whom the superst.i.tion of their own countrymen would have condemned to the flames, were acquitted.

The merchants of Scotland were, by the terms of the Union, admitted to all the trading privileges which Englishmen enjoyed. Goods of every description pa.s.sed duty-free from England to Scotland and from Scotland to England; and there was no restriction on the foreign and colonial trade of Scotland. But these advantages were not fully appreciated; for Scottish commerce was still in its infancy. The Glasgow of to-day, with its miles of wharves and warehouses, its forest of masts, its shipbuilding yards, its crowded streets and handsome squares, had no existence. The merchants of the small town upon the Clyde traded with Ireland, in open boats, for meal, oats, and b.u.t.ter. They shipped coal, herrings, and woollen goods to France in exchange for paper and prunes.

They sent to Norway for timber, and to Barbadoes for sugar. But the river Clyde was then so shallow that their ships could not come nearer to the town than a spot fourteen miles distant, where they were unloaded, and the cargoes carried up the river on rafts or in small boats.

The English were astonished at the poverty of Scotland. The whole revenue from Customs and Excise was under fifty thousand pounds a year.[80] A monthly a.s.sessment of seventy thousand pounds was levied in the towns and counties of England, while Scotland was a.s.sessed at only six thousand pounds. The yearly expenditure in Scotland exceeded the revenue; and the balance was paid out of the English treasury.

Nevertheless the time of the Union during the Commonwealth was regarded as a time of prosperity. The trade of Glasgow began to flourish. Leith, then the chief port in Scotland, Dundee, and Aberdeen made considerable progress in wealth; and there can be little doubt that if the commercial policy of Cromwell had not been reversed at the Restoration, the merchants of Scotland would have made, during the second half of the seventeenth century, that remarkable advance towards opulence and importance which they made after the Union of 1707.

When, fifty years later, the Union was finally accomplished, one of the most difficult questions which the statesmen of the two countries had to discuss was the question of the Church. But the ordinance of April 1654 contains no reference to that question. The Council for Scotland was instructed, in general terms, to promote the cause of religion, and to see that the clergy were paid regularly; but no formal settlement was attempted. Though the stipends of the Scottish clergy were small, their social position was far higher than that of the English clergy. They a.s.sociated, on terms of equality, with the first families of the laity, and so great was their influence that, if they had been united among themselves, they might have held their own against the Independents who came to Scotland with Cromwell. But they were powerless, because they were divided, split up into two parties, and engaged in a dispute which was conducted with a warmth unusual even in the quarrels of Churchmen.

This dispute had its origin in the Engagement for the relief of Charles the First. The Scottish Parliament of 1649 had pa.s.sed an Act which declared all those who approved of the Engagement incapable of holding any public office.[81] This statute, known as the Act of Cla.s.ses, had incapacitated a number of persons from serving in the army. After the battle of Dunbar, the General a.s.sembly pa.s.sed resolutions in favour of readmitting to the public service, particularly in military employments, those who had been proscribed; and Parliament, taking the same view as the majority of the clergy, repealed the Act of Cla.s.ses. Against this the defeated minority of the clergy protested. Two parties were formed, the one known as Resolutioners, and the other as Protesters; and the contest pa.s.sed from the ranks of the clergy to the ranks of the people.

Which party had the larger following among the people it is difficult to say; but, apparently, while the Resolutioners formed a majority of the clergy, the Protesters were more popular, especially in the south-western counties, afterwards the stronghold of the Covenanters during the period which followed the Restoration.

The Church of Scotland was rent in twain, and there were two factions in almost every parish. The induction of a minister was seldom accomplished without opposition; and on many occasions disgraceful scenes took place in the churches, riots, stone-throwing, and even bloodshed. The differences between the parties extended from the original cause of quarrel to questions of rites and ceremonies, always a fruitful source of bad feeling. The country was flooded with controversial pamphlets, in which the disputants attacked each other in the most acrimonious terms.

One of the Protesters, indeed, a young divine named Binning, published a book on _Christian Love_, in the hope, apparently, of preparing the way for a reconciliation, but his advances were rejected with scorn.

Some members of the Council of State proposed that means should be taken to re-unite these factions; but Vane advised a very different course.

Let them fight it out, he said, in the inferior courts of their Church.

By this means their attention will be diverted from secular matters, with which they are too fond of interfering, and confined to their own private squabbles. At the same time, if we forbid the General a.s.sembly to meet, they will be powerless for either good or evil. This policy was carried into effect. The a.s.sembly met at Edinburgh, and the members were about to proceed to business, when an officer entered, and asked by what authority they had met. Was it by the authority of the Parliament of England, or of the commander of the English forces, or of the English judges in Scotland? The ministers answered that the a.s.sembly was an ecclesiastical court, deriving its authority from G.o.d and established by the law of the land. The officer said that he had orders to dissolve the meeting, and ordered those present to follow him, or he would drag them by force out of the room.

Uttering protests against this violence, the members rose and followed him. A guard of soldiers surrounded them, and led them along the streets, "all the people gazing and mourning, as at the saddest spectacle they had ever seen." Presently a halt was called. The names of the ministers were taken down; and they were told that all future meetings were forbidden. On the following morning, by sound of trumpet, they were commanded to leave the town, on pain of instant imprisonment if they disobeyed.[82]

In this summary fashion the supreme court of the Church of Scotland was dissolved; and while the Union lasted the English army was supreme in Church affairs. The clergy were forbidden to pray for the king, and ordered to pray for the Protector. This order was at once obeyed by the Protesters; but the Resolutioners did not submit until they were informed that their stipends would be withdrawn, when they came to the conclusion that as the king could not protect them nor pay them they need no longer pray for him. Excommunication lost its terrors when the secular arm could no longer be invoked to give civil effect to the sentence of a Church court. The stool of repentance, which stood in every church, and on which sinners had to sit and listen to a public rebuke, was derided by the rough troopers, who either broke it to pieces, or sat on it themselves, to show their contempt for a kind of discipline which was akin to penance in the Church of Rome. The English soldiers did not admire either the Church or the religious character of the Scots. "A Kirk whose religion is formality, and whose government is tyranny, a generation of very hypocrites and vipers whom no oaths or covenants can bind, no courtesies or civilities oblige," was their verdict.[83] Magnificent and fruitful of results as the Covenanting movement was, there can be no doubt that side by side with the genuine religious devotion of some there was to be found the deep hypocrisy of others. Cromwell saw this at once, and complained that where he had expected to find "a conscientious people," he had found one "given to the most impudent lying and frequent swearing, as is incredible to be believed."[84]

The persecuting principles of the Scottish clergy, too, alienated the Independent ministers who accompanied the army. Even so good a man as Samuel Rutherford argued against toleration with almost as much bigotry as Edwards had displayed in the Gangraena; and Baillie lamented that "the hand of power is not heavy on any for matters of religion."[85]

Principles such as these were, of course, hateful to the Independents, with whom liberty of conscience was an article of faith; and the fact that such principles were held by the Scottish clergy was one of the chief reasons why, during the Commonwealth, the Scottish Church was powerless.

Among the duties intrusted to the Council of State for Scotland were the encouragement of learning and the reform of the universities.

Commissioners visited the universities, and changes were made.

Resolutioners were turned out, and Protesters put in their places.

Leighton, afterwards Bishop of Dunblane, became Princ.i.p.al of Edinburgh University. At Glasgow, Patrick Gillespie was appointed against the remonstrances of Baillie and his party; but even Baillie afterwards admitted that the appointment was a wise one. "The matters of our college," he writes, "this year were peaceable; our gallant building going on vigorously; above twenty-six thousand pounds are already spent upon it; Mr. Patrick Gillespie, with a very great care, industrie, and dexterity, managing it as good as alone." A grant of two hundred pounds a year was made to the Universities both of Edinburgh and of Glasgow; and before his death the Protector had taken the first steps towards founding a College of Physicians for Scotland.

In 1659 it was resolved to put the Union, the terms of which rested only on the ordinance promulgated by Oliver Cromwell five years before, on a more const.i.tutional footing; and for that purpose two Bills "for perfecting the Union between England and Scotland" were brought into Parliament.[86] But neither of these Bills became an Act of Parliament; and at the Restoration, the Union came to an end.

As to the general effect of this Union on the state of Scotland we have conflicting accounts; but the weight of evidence goes to show that it was a time, not only of quiet, which has never been denied, but also of prosperity. Baillie tells a dismal tale. The peers were in exile or reduced to poverty; the people were burdened by heavy taxation, and suffering from want of money and want of trade. But Baillie was a Resolutioner; and the Protesters were favoured by the Government.

Therefore, for Baillie, the times were out of joint, and he exclaims, "What shall we do for a testimony against the English?" Yet he is forced to admit that food was cheap and plentiful; and he gives an account of the state of Glasgow, where he lived, from which it appears that the town was highly prosperous. The magistrates were rapidly paying off the public debt, and spending money on public works.[87]

To the historian Kirkton, who was on the other side, everything seemed bright. It was a period of "deep tranquillity." Every parish had a minister; every village had a school; almost every family had a Bible.

The voice of singing and of prayer was heard in every house. From the taverns alone came the sound of lamentation; for the happiness and sobriety of the people were such that the trade in strong drink was ruined.[88]

Burnet agrees with Kirkton. "We always reckon," he says, "those eight years of usurpation a time of great peace and prosperity." Defoe took special pains to make himself acquainted with the affairs of Scotland, and the information which he received was to the same effect. "Scotland flourished, justice had its uninterrupted course, trade increased, money plentifully flowed in."[89] Cromwell himself, in 1658, gave a favourable account of the state of things, on which Carlyle's comment is, "Scotland is prospering; has fair play and ready-money;--prospering though sulky."[90]