England and Scotland
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England and Scotland

1560-1707

Douglas Nobbs

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eBook - ePub

England and Scotland

1560-1707

Douglas Nobbs

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About This Book

Originally published in 1952, this book analyses the constitutional, religious, economic and social conditions of the two countries in the late sixteenth century and surveys the complicated history of the following century. The Reformation made possible a transformation of Anglo-Scottish relations. Owing to the difference of institutions, traditions, and ideals, the alternative to absolutism was in the earlier instance the Cromwellian Protectorate and in the later the movement toward national separation arrested only by the contract of the Act of Union. This book charts the history of these relations in the light of divergent national traditions and ideals.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2021
ISBN
9781000438758

CHAPTER I
A “MUTE” COMMONWEALTH

IT is clear that Sir Thomas Craig was defending the importance of Scotland at the same time that he defended the union with England. A lasting union meant an equal status, and Craig proudly championed the right of Scotland to be treated as the equal of England. Whatever the differences between the two countries, Scotland offered no less opportunity of a gracious and pleasant life than England, and in no other country were the necessities of life more readily obtainable. If its soil was less fertile and its grain below the English yield, the abundance of food supported a teeming population and fewer of its people died of starvation. When cereals were in short supply, highland cheese was available and farm workers preferred the superior strength-giving bread of peas and beans to white barley bread.
The export of the simple resources of the country supplied the country’s need of goods which it could not grow or manufacture. The herring trade with France alone more than paid for necessary imports. So easy and profitable was the fishing trade, that it needed only the introduction of the English faculty of commercial organization (“wherein we confess ourselves their inferiors”), and its willingness to adventure capital in it, to establish a fishery more lucrative than any other in the world. A new attitude to trade and industry was evident among the younger sons of the landed classes, and there was only lacking the industries and skilled workers needed to teach profitable trades “to our poor men”. In the near future, cloth manufactured in Scotland would be of as fine a quality as English cloth, and the industry was to be specially encouraged if the trade decline following the Union was to be stopped.
In terms of national plenty, which for Craig was a matter of food and clothing, Scotland was almost the equal of England. In other and less material directions, neither country was superior to the other. Although the English disclaimed Roman law and believed in the indigenous character of their own legal system, it shared with Scottish law the same fundamental principles of jurisprudence, derived from feudal law, and appealing to Roman law where any issue was obscure. In religious doctrine, likewise, despite superficial differences, there was “a solid foundation of uniformity”. The differences in the forms of public worship were immaterial since “both churches have honestly endeavoured to get back to the form of the original institution” given in the Scriptures. The form of secular government was similar. Monarchy, independent and of equal status, ruled in each country. In resources and institutions, Craig admitted no real inequality between, and therefore no obstacle to the union of, the two kingdoms.
In this account of the economic resources of Scotland, the stress is upon the comparative simplicity of organization, the predominantly agricultural interests of the country, the reliance upon the raw materials and the small, though prospectively important trading and manufacturing community. The wealth of Scotland was in the abundance of its flocks and herds, and in their products which could be exported: in the wool and hides, in the leather and rough plaids. These exports, together with salted herring, paid for the wines and finely manufactured goods which were in increasing demand among the upper classes.
The growth in this demand for imported luxury goods characterized the last half of the sixteenth century. Scottish society learnt different standards of living from its contacts with foreign countries, and became aware of a greater refinement and increasing splendour to which it was in turn compelled to aspire. From the crown downwards, the resources of all ranks of society were insufficient to maintain social contacts with their equals in other countries. There was an extreme need of money which affected the policy of the king and the nobles, and therefore the lives of all those groups in society largely dependent on them.
Foreign travellers noted much the same points, although more critical in general of the relative backwardness of agricultural methods and the quality of manufactures. Communications were difficult and transport inadequate. Many parts of the country were very isolated, the Highlands especially being treated by the Lowlands as almost beyond social improvement. The sea had already been adopted by the Scots as the readiest, if not the least dangerous, method of communication with different parts of the mainland, and of exchange with foreign countries, mainly along the north-west coastline of Europe.
Wealth and power went with the land, and in the predominantly feudal society of Scotland the nobility as the greatest holders of land wielded the greatest influence. The Scottish nobility played a decisive part in all national arises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, largely determining the balance of the other forces in the realm. Feudalism was prolonged in Scotland by the necessities of politics and the inadequacies of government. National defence and a line of monarchs of great antiquity but broken by frequent minorities had placed great responsibilities as well as opportunities in the hands of the leading nobles.
As James VI was still able to tell his English parliament in 1607, the Scots army was summoned by proclamation, and owing to the lack of royal treasure, was forced to come “to the warre like Snailes who carry their house about with them”. The pressure of war was still met by that form of decentralization and local self-help which is associated with feudalism and the feudal levy. The nobles provided the forces and the leadership necessary for the preservation of the country’s independence and for the maintenance of order against the lawless people beyond the lowlands. Their households and following were very large. By bonds of “manrent”, they gained the service of many of the gentry and peasants on neighbouring estates in return for protection by which the nobles became the recognized judges of their followers. The younger branches of a noble house usually gave support to the head of the family, even when by no means dependent on him.
Around each noble arose a specific interest which it was incumbent on him to pursue, both by supporting his followers in their troubles and by imposing on them his policy and methods of satisfying his and their needs. The conflict of these interests accounts for much of the lawlessness of Scottish society in the last half of the sixteenth century. When a noble dared a sudden raid on the king in Holyrood House, when the king’s person could be seized by a group of “patriotic” nobles, when feuds between noble houses led to serious disorders in the streets of Edinburgh, then it is not surprising that farther afield and between the nobles themselves petty warfare was common.
The power of the nobles had an official character. Many enjoyed a royal grant of barony, and some a grant of regality. By the first was conferred power of civil and military jurisdiction over an estate: to lead in war, and to be the judge. By the second, almost supreme powers over an estate were granted.
Such grants of power and jurisdiction were often necessary to ensure definite organization and administration in areas where the central government had little influence. In times of emergency, the nobles, strongly entrenched in their local connections, official powers, and estates, were called upon to vindicate the central government by using their local resources against the enemies of the crown. Special commissions conferring drastic powers were granted, and the rivalry of two groups of nobles might become a struggle between an officially authorized group against its enemy. The law was to be enforced by the resources of feudal power, and for that purpose such methods as were sanctioned by letters of fire and sword, were used with impunity. A lawless area was taught by savage reprisals the meaning of law.
The power of some noble houses, such as Argyle in the west or Huntly in the north-east, was so great as almost to escape all real regulation by the crown. When James VI, as late as 1594 decided to assert his authority over the Catholic Earl of Huntly, he had to call out the feudal army as well as accept the grants obtained by the presbyterian crusading ministers of the churches of Edinburgh. Almost as important as these great feudal powers were the hereditary rights of many noble houses to what were still important offices of state. The Earl of Axgyle was the hereditary justiciar of Scotland and as such presided over the criminal court to which his own enemies might be brought.
Commerce and industry played but a small part in Scottish economy. The towns were centres of small scale exchange and opened up some opportunities of foreign trading, but they were of little importance compared to the great rural interests of the whole country. The agricultural interests of the towns were large: in wealth and population the towns were behind the country. The cargoes of ships trading with the Continent were made up of a great number of small consignments from a large number of small holdings. The Scots staple port in the Low Countries existed primarily for the protection of Scottish merchants, who received certain trading privileges in return for which the port possessed the monopoly of trade through the Low Countries with Scotland. In the last quarter of the sixteenth century the use of the staple was restricted to the merchant burgesses of the royal burghs whose activities and occupations were narrowly regulated.
The old alliance with France had promoted certain commercial privileges, upon which the Scots, even after the Reformation, set great store. Their ships also sailed for the Baltic from their east coast ports, and to them was brought the timber which the treeless Lowlands needed so much, but usually not in Scottish ships unsuited to such a bulky cargo. Indeed, many of the ships owned by Scots were built abroad.
Foreign trade was well called the “Wild Adventure”: the risks were great not only by sea but in the dealings of comparatively unprotected merchants in foreign ports. The sea had become the way to wealth for the hardy and enterprising Scots, but their individual and piecemeal activities, undertaken without political patronage, did not coalesce into any national plan of dominion by sea. The economic policy of the government until the close of the sixteenth century aimed at securing an abundance of goods for the home market and not at the encouragement of a great export trade, even though the interests of the great landholders were affected. It was only in 1597 that import duties were introduced. An attempt was made by act of parliament to maintain the stock of bullion by making it a legal obligation for merchants to bring back part of their profits in bullion despite the prohibition of foreign governments.
Such government policies, significant of a more ambitious outlook, revealed the administrative weakness which thwarted any policy of national power by economic planning. Royal officials were unable to enforce the law: one Edinburgh merchant forcibly prevented the confiscation of bullion which he intended to export. Other merchants evaded the law and government officers by using every means of deception and by resorting to unfree towns where there existed no machinery for enforcing the government’s regulations.
Prices and goods were not regulated on a national basis but by the burghs, which possessed an important economic monopoly. The royal burghs, or those with a royal charter, had gained a well-established organization before the Reformation. Each burgh exercised exclusive rights in respect of crafts, trading, and fairs and markets over a wide rural area of which it was the commercial centre. In the sixteenth century the burghs were able to prevent the rise of rural domestic, or cottage, industry and to obtain a monopoly of foreign trade in the main exported, and in all imported, goods. By 1602 whatever paid custom was regarded as belonging to the monopoly of the merchants of the royal burghs. These privileges were upheld by the crown, partly, because the monopoly of the burghs ensured the regulation of trade and facilitated the collection of customs, and, partly, because the burghs bore a special share of taxation. Beside the royal burghs, there were the lesser burghs of regality, and barony, each of which had the narrow privilege of regulating trade within its own limits.
There had long been a high degree of co-operation between the royal burghs and a close approximation in organization and methods, but in the last half of the sixteenth century the development of a common organ representing all royal burghs gave systematic expression to the earlier and looser forms of concerted action. The Convention of Royal Burghs met regularly from 1578. By an act of parliament of that year, commissioners from the royal and free burghs were authorized to meet four times a year in any burgh according to their wish and “for sic matters as concerns their estait”. This act, however, but regulated what had developed without any charter or formal act of political initiation.
The meeting of burgh representatives for consultation about common interests in trade, burgh government, and protection of members’ privileges was the result of the initiative of the burghs themselves, though endorsed and in some ways made compulsory by acts of parliament. The Convention exercised wide powers of legislation and jurisdiction. It largely regulated foreign trade, was active in promoting and protecting the interests of its members overseas, allocated to the burghs their share of taxation, and intervened actively and continuously to prevent disputes and preserve a common policy. The Conservator of the staple at Campveere in the Netherlands was its servant and he was held answerable to it although he was at the same time the king’s ambassador. It was responsible for the elections in the burghs. It was active in protecting the “common goods”, that is the property, mostly land, of the burghs, and to prevent its alienation. It was unsuccessful in its opposition to the new import duties of 1597 and failed in its earlier experiment of leasing the customs from the king in 1582.
The Convention of Royal Burghs was, therefore, the main instrument in regulating trade, in achieving a common direction of burghal policy, and in upholding the privileges of its members. It rapidly became the organ by which the policy of the trading community was formulated and given public expression. The burgess representatives in parliament acted as its representatives and their activity in parliament was determined at a meeting of the Convention held before a parliamentary session.
Although the Convention was the recognized and largely autonomous organization of the urban interest, even influencing parliament, always maintaining with much success the monopolies and privileges of merchant and craft guilds, neither it nor its members could impose a policy on the government and parliament when wider interests were affected. The import duties of 1597 have already been mentioned. Parliament also set aside a “pretendit act” of the Convention against the export of wool. James VI enforced his prerogative in relation to the burghs by frequent interference, as in his treatment of Edinburgh in 1582. When the town protested against the royal pressure to have certain councillors elected, the king named the provost as well, and gained his ends. After the great riot in 1596, the king’s threat to remove his capital forced Edinburgh to accept terms which ensured greater influence to the king in its government.
In the closing years of the century a determined, though not a well-organized, enterprise was undertaken for the improvement of cloth-making. Its failure showed that Scotland was as yet unready for the development of handicraft industry on any large scale. There was no scope for a large industrial class. The balance of rural and urban interests had changed little in two hundred years. Scottish economy was much as it had been in the fourteenth century. It is this relatively static condition of its domestic life which is exceptional—it remained predominantly feudal in its interests and in the organization of its society. As yet the middle class was too small in numbers and importance to influence national life to any great degree.
These social elements and economic interests gave rise to the forces to which the parliament responded. It was essentially the passive instrument of the dominating group and until 1640 its passive role reflected the widespread apathy of the country towards parliament. The political struggle was fought out bitterly indeed, but not in parliament: it was a struggle of minority interests largely beyond any decisive control by the majority or by public opinion.
The people were too divided and too little organized to be able to exercise any continuous influence or to express any clear and final judgment. Not only was parliament acquiescent in its manipulation by outside pressure, but also the people had little interest in its proceedings and no urgent desire to reform it because there was little hope of it becoming the agency to voice, represent, and determine a national and popular policy, even by way of opposition.
This attitude to parliament arose in part from its composition and in part from its functions and organization. It was a feudal assembly of the tenants-in-chief of the crown, representing the landowners and the royal burghs, regarded as corporate tenants-in-chief. It was a non-popular and by no means representative body until the last decades of the sixteenth century. The nobles were summoned personally to attend. The freeholders under the rank of these Lords of Parliament had ceased to attend during the first half of the sixteenth century but in 1560, the critical year of the Reformation, the religious dispute revived the interest of the freeholders in parliament and their claim to attend was admitted on this occasion for political reasons under the deliberately indefinite formula that the estates included all “that are in use to be present”. They were admitted to swell the majority, otherwise their claim would have been resisted.
As it was their numbers aroused fears of their power in parliament, even if these fears were somewhat allayed by their own desire to attend only on those occasions when their own interests were affected. The principles to which they appealed in justification of their attendance were of wider significance than merely legal and antiquarian argument. It was argued that the freeholders were the most numerous class and bore the greatest share of the national burden. No statute could bind any who were excluded from participating in its formulation. Other place than parliament in which the freeholders could serve the realm there was none.
It was only in 1587 that the desperate condition of the crown’s finances led to a final settlement by which the freeholders of each shire were to elect representatives annually, whether parliament was summoned or not. Although the body of shire electors was small and exclusive, many neglected to vote. In the same way, full attendance of shire representatives at parliamentary sessions was rare.
These characteristics applied to the royal burghs also. The burghs were mainly controlled by a narrow and close commercial oligarchy anxious to retain its privileges. The representatives in parliament were elected usually by the burgh councils, and representatives in the sixteenth century had still to be trafficking merchants and indwellers. As yet there was little pressure by outsiders to represent the burghs; and the burghs themselves rarely sent individually or collectively their full representation to parliament. This may be the consequence of the powers of their own Convention, meeting independently of parliament, maintaining a separate interest and an exclusive attitude, and removing the compulsion to work with other groups to achieve a national policy. The burgh representatives played but a minor part in parliament.
Before the Reformation, the higher clergy had sat in parliament, and after 1560 the question of the clerical estate, with a right to parliamentary representation, became an issue of the greatest importance, both by raising matters of principle and by affecting the devious course of politics. Until the seventeenth century, the...

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