Sir Patrick Hume of
Polwarth, first earl of
Marchmont (1641–1724)A devout Presbyterian, under the Stuarts
Hume had suffered imprisonment and
exile. At the Revolution in Scotland in
1689 he had advocated incorporation.
Marchmont was a prominent member
of the “squadrone volante”, whose
two dozen votes in securing the Union
were crucial.Queen Anne (1665–1714)
Anne was fairly consistent in her support
for a union. She took a close interest in
the proceedings of the commissioners
from both countries who met in 1706 to
negotiate its terms.Rev William Carstares
(1649–1715)A moderate Presbyterian minister and
émigré appointed by William of Orange
as his royal chaplain, Carstares became
a key figure in William’s government.
Hostile to the Episcopalians (who were
invariably Jacobites), he worked
assiduously during 1706 to persuade
waverers within the Church of Scotland
to drop their opposition to
the Union.James, fourth
Duke of
Hamilton
(1658–1712)Leader of the country
party opposition, the
main opposition to the
court or government
party, He spoke againstUnion, but at key moments acted in
ways that benefited the court. That, in
1704, he could declare “they are not
good Brittains” who would “make a
treaty difficult” raises questions about
the sincerity of his opposition.George Lockhart of
Carnwath (1681–1731)MP for Midlothian from 1703, Lockhart
alleged in his 1714 memoirs that
Scottish politicians were bribed
to support the Union.
Furthermore, he revealed
that leading unionists were
principled pro-Revolution
Presbyterians and
supporters of the House
of Hanover, all of which
the Jacobite Lockhart
hated with a vengeance.FOR AND AGAINST
Taking sides in the union debate“The union looked to be a ‘fair
bargain’; with peace, security
of religion... and free trade”
The end of the Stuarts / The Union of 1707
BRIDGEMAN IMAGESThe Duke of Hamilton was
the leader of the country
opposition partyonly to examine afresh the well-worn
sources used by previous scholars, but also
to search out new materials: these included
little-used letters written to and from
politicians who opposed union in 1706–7
(but, significantly, not necessarily earlier),
along with the papers and private and
political diaries and notebooks of the lesser
MPs, the supporters rather than the
leaders. A key task was to create a database
of pro-Union voters, to trace their personal
and family backgrounds and to reconstruct
as comprehensively as possible the
circumstances which formed their political
beliefs. The results were surprising.Staunchly pro-union
What is striking is how many of the 227
MPs or their descendants who sat in the
Scottish Parliament in 1706 –7 had been
exiled in the Low Countries under the later
Stuarts and who either returned with
William of Orange when he landed at
Torbay in 1688 or served him in the
Scottish Convention of Estates in 1689 and
its successor Parliament. It was from this
cohort of around 107 MPs that some of the
staunchest supporters of the Union were
drawn, including: John Dalrymple, first
earl of Stair, the principal government
speaker in the union cause; Patrick Hume,
first earl of Marchmont, influential
member of the pro-union new party; and
David Melville, third earl of Leven, a
prominent economic moderniser who was
governor of the Bank of Scotland from
1697, and by 1707 commander-in-chief
of the army in Scotland. Evidence suggeststoo that the court, or government, party’s
much-maligned leaders, James Douglas,
second duke of Queensberry and John
Cambell, second duke of Arg yll, were on a
“Revolution foot”, that is supporters of the
Glorious Revolution in Scotland.
What such individuals had in common
was their Presbyterianism, in which cause
some of those concerned had endured
exile and sometimes worse, and a
determination to secure the Revolution
settlement in Scotland. It was an “entire”
or incorporating union they believed – as
early as 1689 when it was first mooted from
Scotland – that would best serve their
purpose. In this the supporters of union
were principled, consistent and persistent:
the trio of Stair, Adam Cockburn of
Ormiston and the first earl of Seafield were
appointed as commissioners to negotiate
union in 1689, 1702 and 1706.
The international context in which the
Union was forged was one in which British
forces and those of her allies were locked
into a lengthy war with Catholic France,
a formidable enemy under Louis XIV,
whose vision was of French universal
monarchy. Moderate Presbyterians feared
that a divided mainland Britain would
make Scotland vulnerable to French
aggrandisement, and militant Jacobitism.
To varying degrees too there was, among
the Scottish elite, an emergent sense of
Britishness, particularly among MPs whohad served in William’s and then Anne’s
armies in Europe: the mood was captured
by William Aikman, the Scots-born
portrait painter who was in London during
May 1707 and informed his uncle that “we
are no more Scots and English but all bold
Brittains”. The rejection of economic
considerations in the making of the Union
seems perverse. Many Scottish MPs – of all
parties – recognised how parlous
Scotland’s pre-Union financial condition
was. Many were convinced that union with
England offered the best remedy –
provided that the Scots could negotiate
access to England’s colonies, a long-held
ambition in Scotland.A fair bargain
In addition, the compensation won for the
investors in the partly patriotically driven
Company of Scotland Trading to Africa
and the Indies – who had lost fortunes after
the collapse in 1699 of the Company’s
attempt to establish a Scottish trading
colony at Darien near the isthmus of
Panama – were powerful inducements.
The sum of nearly £400,000 sterling –
called the Equivalent – has been
condemned as a national bribe. But these
economic elements of the Union were
concessions, prised from England whose
union commissioners during the failed
negotiations in 1702–3 had been unwilling
to accede to Scottish demands.