The
Thistle and the Rose - British Union
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 ‘Scotland
is a beggar and whoever marries a beggar can only expect a louse
for her portion’.
The Tory leader Edward Seymour on the subject of Union with
Scotland in the English Parliament, 1700
In 1999 a Scottish Parliament was created in Edinburgh after a break
of 292 years. So why did the Scots give up their parliament in 1707?
Since 1603,
when King James VI of Scotland had become King James I of Scotland,
England and Ireland, the Scots had struggled with the problem of
Britain. In the 1640s the Covenanters had attempted to solve the
problem of having one king and two parliaments by limiting the power
of the King’s rule in Scotland through a free parliament, but
that had only ended in the conquest of Scotland by Oliver Cromwell
and the humiliation of the Scots being forced into an incorporating
Union.
After the Restoration
in 1660 Scotland’s parliament was restored under royal direction
but the instability of the political settlement, especially concerning
the Church, had led to widespread revolt by Presbyterian supporters
of the Covenant across the south of Scotland.
The 1689
Revolution
In 1688 William of Orange invaded England and drove the Scottish
Stuart dynasty into exile. For the Scots it divided the nation.
The Jacobites unsuccessfully attempted to rise in support of King
James VII, but it also created an unexpected opportunity for a new
political settlement. The Scottish Parliament declared that James
had forfeited his throne and offered it to William as long as he
agreed to what was known as the Claim of Right. This demanded
a free Scottish parliament where the King was subject to the laws
of Scotland. It also demanded the exclusion of Catholics from holding
office, and sought the establishment of a Presbyterian Kirk run
by a General Assembly - in many ways similar to what the Covenanters
had fought for in the 1640s. The new leaders of Scotland, like the
Duke of Argyll and Dalrymple of Stair, were Presbyterians who had
been in exile with William of Orange but were much more interested
in the money markets of Amsterdam and London or in military glory
than in visions of a godly Scotland. They thought they could remodel
Scotland along on the Dutch lines: a small but successful trading
country in Europe. For them money rather than religion was the new
politics for a successful Scotland, however events overtook the
optimism of the 1689 settlement and led the Scots down the agonising
road to the Union of 1707.
 Famine,
Trade and the Idea of Empire
The 1690s were grim economic times in Scotland. A succession of
failed harvests brought famine and Scotland’s European lifeline
was contracting as Holland, England and France ruthlessly competed
for trade. To make matters worse William of Orange’s Continental
wars made further disruptions in Scottish trade. The Scottish Parliament
responded by setting up the Company of Scotland to found colonies
abroad. It was an ambitious scheme to provide Scotland with its
own empire.
The Darien Venture - Scotland’s Thwarted Empire
To fund the company the Scots attempted to raise money on the London
and Amsterdam markets, however, William of Orange, under pressure
from the East India Company, banned any English investment. The
Scots reacted patriotically by raising hundreds of thousands of
pounds in capital for the Company, which eventually settled on Darien
in Panama as the ideal location for a Scottish colony.
The company
hoped to make Darien the trading link between the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans, across the narrow isthmus of Panama. Founding colonies in
the New World was a risky business at the best of times and Darien
turned out to be a disease-ridden swamp. The Scots soldiered on
but the global politics of Empires ensured its failure. The Spanish
laid claim to the area and attacked the Scots colony. William of
Orange, who needed the support of Catholic Spain in his Continental
Wars, thwarted the scheme by denying the Scots any support from
nearby English colonies or from the English Royal Navy. The financial
loss of Scottish capital was colossal and the Scots were outraged
that, as Lord Belhaven put it, Scotland’s sovereignty had been
trampled under foot by their own king.
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