Address to The Calgary Burns Club September 8th, 1998 The Background of the Union Presented by: Ronald Barclay Cantlie, Queen's Counsel, M.A., (Oxon)

In a sense the history of the Union began in 1603 when James VI succeeded to the English throne on the death of Elizabeth I. James has been given a bad press by most English historians, but in fact he was a very astute and far-sighted king. Kings in those days still ruled, and he was faced with the daunting prospect of taking over the rule of a country with which he was completely unfamiliar. He had the sense to take over en bloc all of Elizabeth's ministers, and it is interesting that they all agreed to serve. To James, the union of the crowns appeared morally as a heaven-sent first step towards the political union of all Britain, and he set about completing that task. With the backing of his ministers he began to do whatever could be done on the authority of the Crown alone. The Union flag does not date as one might think from 1707, but from 1606; it was James who combined the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew and ordered this flag to be flown by all British ships. It was James who coined the term "Great Britain" and took to calling himself King of Great Britain. He organized the bringing in the English courts of a test case known as Calvin's case to establish that all his subjects now had the same status, so that all Scots had the rights of Englishmen and vice versa. In this he was only partially successful, for the court held that this would apply only to those who were born after the union of the Crowns.

Having gone as far as he could by himself, James turned to the English Parliament, and was turned down flat. They were not interested. James had the sense to see he could not succeed and gave up, returning to calling himself King of England and Scotland. But the flag remained and so did Calvin's case.

What had Scotland gained from the union of the Crowns? Apart from the cessation of border warfare, the answer initially was nothing. But very soon things began to change. We tend to think of Elizabeth I with her famous sea captains such as Drake as the founder of the British Empire. But in fact the only two attempts of her reign to found colonies (Newfoundland and Virginia) both failed. On her death there were no English overseas possessions. It was the much derided James who began the British Empire. Settlement began in Virginia in 1607, in Bermuda in 1609, in New England in 1620, and in Barbados in 1627. And where there are settlers, there will be trade. Very soon tobacco from Virginia was imported into Aberdeen and Scottish ships were making trading voyages to Barbados. The union began to yield unexpected benefits.

In 1625, James died and was succeeded by Charles I, and in 1637 this reasonably idyllic and peaceflil scene was shattered by Charles' attempt to impose a new service book on Scotland. As long ago as 1590 there had been a general consensus in Scotland that Knox's Book of Common Order needed to be enlarged and The General Assembly approved in principle the preparation of a new book, but the impetus had fizzled out. In effect, Charles decided to revive it. But instead of trying to do this through the Assembly, he formed a committee of bishops, some Scots and some English, to prepare a new book, and then issued a decree of the Scottish Privy Council commanding that this book be printed and brought into use. He must have been nuts. In England, he was Supreme Governor of the Church, but even so it needed an Act of Parliament to change the prayer book. In Scotland, he had no official position in the Church at all. The Scots, or at least the vast majority of them, rebelled. They had little choice; to have acquiesced would have conceded complete royal authority over the Church. The result was two successive rebellions separated by an ineffectual truce, which are known as "The Bishops' Wars".

These ended in the complete military defeat of the king, which the Scots clinched by occupying North Eastern England, a curious action since England was not involved in the war. In early 1641, Charles capitulated. He summoned the Scottish Parliament to meet and came North to negotiate with it. In effect he agreed to all the rebels' demands, and also promised to hold a Parliament every three years.

In these disturbances the Earl of Argyll had emerged as the leader of the opposition to the king. We have an assessment of this earl by his father in a letter he had written to the king. It runs "I must know this young man better than you can do. You may raise him, which I doubt you will live to repent, for he is a man of craft, subtlety and falsehood, and can love no man and if ever he finds it in his power to do you a mischief, he will be sure to do it."

In 1642, the English Civil War broke out. In Charles' eyes this was a purely English war, he had settled with the Scots, and they were not involved. But Argyll had other ideas; he was after making himself the uncrowned ruler of Scotland. The early stages of the war went strongly in favour of the king, and by 1643 Parliament was on the ropes and decided to appeal to the Scots for help. The first sign to the king that something was in the wind was a letter from Argyll demanding that he. call a Parliament. Charles replied pointing out that the next Parliament would be due in 1644 and that he fully intended to call one then. Argyll responded by calling a Convention of Estates on his own authority. There can be no doubt what Argyll's purpose had been. He and his supporters would have a majority in the Parliament and thus would get control of the machinery of government in place of Charles' existing first minister, the inept Duke of Hamilton. By calling the Convention, Argyll simply did illegally what he had hoped to do legally. Only his supporters answered his summons, but they were sufficiently numerous and powerful to give him defacto control, which he rounded off by seizing and using the royal seal, so that to outside appearances his actions appeared to be the official actions of the Scottish state.

He then entered into the Solemn League and Covenant with the English Parliament, whereby the Scots undertook to send an army of 11,000 men to join in the English Civil War, and the English Parliament promised in return to make the Church of England Presbyterian. In the following year, 1644, it was the Scottish cavalry under David Leslie that tipped the balance in favour of the Parliament at Marston Moor and inflicted on Charles a crushing defeat whereby he completely lost the whole of Northern England, which settled the outcome of the war in Parliament's favour. The English royalists, the Cavalier party, never forgot nor forgave this intrusion by the Scots into both the political and religious affairs of England.

Thereafter, of course, Cromwell made himself in effect, the military dictator of England, and became himself involved in a war against Scotland. This he won and his victory was total. Cromwell is the only English ruler who actually conquered Scotland, neither Edward I nor Edward III ever succeeded in stamping out all resistance, Cromwell did, and he used this to unite the two countries and summon a Parliament for the whole of Britain. In this same period, the English overhauled their Navigation Act. This is usually attributed to Cromwell, but in fact it was done in 1651 before his personal rule began and was the work of the Rump of the Parliament. These acts dated from the Middle Ages and their purpose was to protect English shipping from competition by foreign carriers by insisting that all imports and exports must be carried either in English ships or ships of the country from which they came or to which they were going.

But now a new wrinlde was added. Several European powers now had overseas colonies, and had realized that these could provide a protected market for their own exports by prohibiting trade between them and foreign countries. I have mentioned that ever since 1603 Scotland had been permitted to trade with the English colonies; in fact at the time there seems to have been nothing to prevent other countries doing the same, but the colonies were small and not a significant market. By 1651 they had grown and were a market worth protecting, and this Act did this, but it explicitly permitted trade with Scotland to continue.

In due time Cromwell died and his regime collapsed, and Charles II returned to Britain in triumph. All laws enacted during the interregnum since the execution of Charles I were ruled to be invalid, so that Cromwell's union was dissolved, and of course the Navigation Act went too. In England, Charles speedily called a Parliament, which contained so many of his staunchest supporters that it was known as the Cavalier Parliament. A lot of the interregnum legislation was in fact needed and now had to be re-enacted and among these was the Navigation Act, but it was re-enacted with one significant difference. The permission given to the colonies to trade with Scotland was withdrawn; henceforth they must trade with England only.

I feel no doubt that this was the retribution visited by the Cavalier Party on the Scots for their intervention in the Civil War. It is the fruit of the evil seed planted by Argyll almost twenty years before. Scotland had lost the only tangible benefit of the union of the crowns. Initially the impact does not seem to have been noticed, for the Lowlands were in a highly disturbed state, with Claverhouse's dragoons harrying the Covenanters who replied by shooting Archbishop Sharpe, and ultimately by rising in rebellion.

But after The Revolution of 1688 and the death of Claverhouse at Killiecrankie, things quieted down and this handicap imposed on Scottish trade began to be felt. The result was the ill-fated Darien Expedition of 1698 to try to found a Scottish colony on the Isthmus of Panama, which ended in total disaster. After 1688 a further problem arose under William III, England became a member of a coalition of European States formed to oppose Louis XEV and war with France became almost continuous. In the international law of those days, war was looked on as being essentially a relationship between sovereigns; England did not declare war on France, William declared war on Louis and their respective subjects automatically went with them. The fact that William had two separate kingdoms made no difference to this, and his Scottish subjects went to war with him just as much as his English ones. But the war was fought to advance English interests and all territorial gains accrued to England. Worse still, Scottish seaborne trade was as much a legitimate target for the French navy as English, but the English navy recognized no responsibility for protecting Scottish ships, with the result that Scottish shipping suffered more heavily than the English.

Thus as the 17th century closed, the Scots were simply fed up. They had neither the benefits of full union nor those of total separation, but they suffered the disadvantages of both. This situation had to be brought to an end, one way or the other. Their preferred choice was a federal union, and they pointed to the Netherlands as an example. Their problem was that the Netherlands was a republic (William of Orange was not king of the Netherlands, but only staatholder, an elective office), and the English asked whether they intended to turn Britain into a republic because a federated monarchy was impossible; a single person could not, as federal monarch, give orders to himself as a subordinate monarch. Fast-forward a century and a half and in 1867 The British North America Act sets up exactly such a federated monarchy here, and it has worked pretty well ever since. But that does not prove the English were wrong in 1707; it demonstrates the evolution of the British constitution in that century and a half.

By the middle of the 19th century it was firmly established that the monarch must act only through and with the consent of ministers who are responsible to the elected representatives of the people. Our federated monarchy works only because at the federal level these ministers must answer to Parliament, and at the Parliament level to the provincial legislature. But in 1707 this was not so; Queen Anne could choose her own ministers; if they were defeated in Parliament that meant nothing except that that bill did not go through. Her Scottish ministers never had a majority in Parliament. Furthermore, she could veto bills, and vetoed several in both Parliaments. But what this does mean is that the reason given by the English in 1707 for rejecting a federal union has ceased to be valid. A federal union of England and Scotland is now possible. So called devolution, which seems to be coming, is a bastard form of federation, because there will be no English provincial legislature to match the Scottish one, and it is unlikely the English would want one since it would so largely duplicate the federal Parliament. Whether the one-sided federation created by devolution will work remains to be seen.

This survey of the events leading up to the union crisis of Anne's reign has, I expect, brought out some points which are new to you, and you will want to know where 1 got them from. A few years ago Ijoined the Scottish History Society, each year it presents its members with one or two small books, and one which I thus received had been a condensed version of "The History of the Union" by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, who as a young man had been one of the commissioners sent by the Scottish Parliament to negotiate the treaty with the commissioners of the English Parliament. That has been one source. Another has been David Daiches "Selected Writings" of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoan, and John Buchan's "Life of Montrose." And last but by no means least I subscribe to the Scottish Historical Review and little tidbits of relevant information have popped up in its articles and reviews, most noticeably in an article on "The First Scottish Guinea Company, 1634-9." The "Guinea" is the name then given to a stretch of the West Coast of Africa. Charles I chartered two Guinea companies one English and one Scottish. This would appear to be a perfect recipe for trouble, and the author records with considerable surprise that the two companies co-operated with each other a total contrast with the English obstruction of the Darien expedition. At this point he mentions the initial admission of Scottish traders to the English colonies and their subsequent exclusion by the post-Restoration Navigation Act. There has to be a rational explanation for this abrupt about-face. The conclusion that it was the Scottish intervention in the English Civil War is my own; but no other rational explanation exists.In Scotland, the proposed union was the subject of intense public discussion and debate, both verbal and in print. In striking contrast, there was an almost complete absence of this in England, English histories make no reference to it at all. For the very same reasons that the existing situation was intolerable to the Scots, it suited the English very well, and they would have been happy to let it continue indefinitely. To jar them out of this complacency, the Scottish Parliament enacted The Act of Security whereby on Queen Anne's death, if a satisfactory settlement had not been made, the crowns of the two kingdoms would be severed and each would go its own way under different monarchs. The skill of the Scots politicians in getting this act passed, and in forcing royal assent to it is astonishing for their Parliament was almost equally split between three parties, the Court Party, which provided the government and was prepared to go along with whatever England wanted, the Country Party, which stood for a federal union, and the Jacobite Party, who hoped for a restoration of the Pretender in the confusion which they expected to follow upon Anne's death. That a Parliament so fundamentally divided was able to drive what proved to be a pretty good bargain is an astonishing refutation of the biblical text that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

There was one provision of the Treaty of Union, which requires to be noticed. This was Article 15, which dealt with a problem, which was the exact converse of one we may face. We may have to divide the public debt of one country into two. This treaty had to combine the public debts of two countries into one. In absolute terms the English debt was naturally much greater than the Scottish. The problem was that it was proportionately greater in terms of their respective public revenues. If nothing was done to offset this, the Scots would be assuming part of the English debt. It was decided that it would be offset by a single cash payment by England to Scotland, which was called the Equivalent. This was carefully calculated by the Treaty commissioners and then checked by two Scottish professors of mathematics. It came out to almost exactly £400,000. The English were a bit slow in paying this, but pay it they did.

The negotiations for the treaty had taken place in London. That was fine for the English commissioners, but the Scottish commissioners were put to considerable expense in residing in London during the negotiations. Naturally the Scottish Parliament undertook to reimburse them, and decided to do so, not out of current taxes, but out of the Equivalent. When Sir John Clerk's father heard of this in a letter from his son, he was horrified, and made this notation on the letter "to seek a decree of parliament for the commissioners expenses to be raised in Scotland by way of cess is just, but to be taken off the Equivalent looks very scandalous in my opinion and I should beg for my own part before I either sought or took it this way, for it will lay a foundation of aspersing the treaties forever." Never did prophet speak a truer word, and you heard the result on Burns' night in our speaker's accusation that the Scottish Parliament was bribed with English gold. This is what the story is based on.

I have said that the Scots drove a good bargain, and they did. They got, hands down, their principal objective, trade with the colonies. The Scots were betting on the British Empire, and for over two centuries it proved to be a remarkably good bet. If they had not made that bet then, we would not be here now, and this city would not be called Calgary. When Sir John MacDonald made that famous remark "A British subject I was born, a British subject I hope to die," his words carry a secondary meaning which is completely hidden from anybody who is not a Scot.

The economic benefits of the union seem to have been slow in coming, and they were. But that was the dampening effect of the Jacobite rebellion which everyone knew was hanging over them. In 1715 it came, and it was not suppressed. The Highland army was not defeated; after the draw of Sheriffmuir it just melted away, and it was not pursued because there were then no roads in the Highlands. Everyone knew there was going to be a re-match and in 1745 at last it came, and this time it was suppressed. The S.N.P. today paints Culloden as a national humiliation at the hands of the English, but that is not how it appeared in the Lowlands at the time.

In 1752, there was published in Edinburgh a pamphlet with the uninteresting title of "Proposals for Carrying On Certain Public Works in the City of Edinburgh." It ran to 7,500 words and was promoted by The Lord Provost and it sparked the development of the New Town. It began with a historical review and part of this deserves quoting. "The union of the two kingdoms, an event equally beneficial to both nations, is the great era from which we may justly date the revival of that spirit and activity which the union of the crowns had well nigh suppressed

In some parts of the country, indeed, both trade and manufactures were, from about that time, very remarkably increased; yet in Edinburgh and the neighborhood of it there was still a total stagnation. But since the year 1746, when the rebellion was suppressed, a most surprising revolution has happened in the affairs of the country... Husbandry, manufactures, general commerce, and the increase of useful people, are becoming the objects of universal attention."

A few simple statistics bear this out. In 1707, Glasgow had no ships of its own; in 1718 the first Glasgow owned ship crossed the Atlantic. By 1800, the Clyde had almost 500 vessels. Glasgow chief trade was in tobacco. Virginia tobacco was in demand all over Europe, but it had to come to Britain first and most of it went to Glasgow, whose merchants made fortunes re-exporting it until the Declaration of Independence put an end to that. The main export from Glasgow to the colonies was linen. In 1728, 2,200,000 yards of Scottish linen was stamped by the government as of good quality; by 1780, it was 13,500,000 yards. In 1707 Scotland lagged far behind England in agriculture; by 1800 Englishmen came to Scotland to learn the best methods of farming. In 1754, David Hume published the first volume of his History of England. In 1764, Edinburgh University brought out the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. By the 1770's young Englishmen were enrolling in Glasgow Univçrsity to attend the lectures of Professor Adam Smith. In 1754 The Hon. William Murray, a younger son of a destitute Scottish peer, was appointed Attorney General in the government of the Duke of Newcastle and became its leader in the House of Commons. In 1756 he was sworn in as Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Having lost his talents, the government resigned.

Ron Cantlie, Q.C. Presented to the members of the Calgary Burns Club on the evening of Tuesday 8th September, 1998