?A LOUSE FOR A PORTION?: EARLY-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ATTITUDES TOWARDS SCOTS, 1688-1725 Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this thesis is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This thesis does not include proprietary or classified information. _______________________________ Joseph Taylor McGaughy Certificate of Approval: ________________________ _____________________ Donna J. Bohanan Abigail L. Swingen, Chair Professor Assistant Professor History History ________________________ _____________________ Ralph Kingston Joe F. Pittman Assistant Professor Interim Dean History Graduate School ?A LOUSE FOR A PORTION?: EARLY-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ATTITUDES TOWARDS SCOTS, 1688-1725 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Auburn, Alabama May 10, 2008 iii ?A LOUSE FOR A PORTION?: EARLY-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ATTITUDES TOWARDS SCOTS, 1688-1725 Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this thesis at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. ________________________ Signature of Author ________________________ Date of Graduation iv VITA Joseph Taylor McGaughy, son of Jerry Lee and Marie Suzanne (Woolling) McGaughy, was born on June 9, 1980, in Birmingham, Alabama. He graduated from John Carroll Catholic High School in 1999. He attended the University of Alabama for a year, then transferred to the University of Montevallo, where he graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in May 2006. Taylor entered Auburn University?s Graduate School in August 2006. v THESIS ABSTRACT ?A LOUSE FOR A PORTION?: EARLY-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ATTITUDES TOWARDS SCOTS, 1688-1725 Joseph Taylor McGaughy Master of Arts, May 10, 2008 (B.S. University of Montevallo, 2006) 109 Typed Pages Directed by Abigail L. Swingen This thesis examines and analyzes Englishmen?s perceptions of Scots during the years between the Revolution of 1688 and the Shawfield Riots of 1725. In 1707, the Scottish Parliament convened for the last time and Scottish parliamentarians began to sit in the Westminster Parliament. The Treaty of Union of 1707 created a united British polity and economy. But many Englishmen held biased views of Scots, and these ingrained prejudices did not diminish despite the formation of a British government and market. English disdain for Scotland?s people, religion, culture and economy in the early eighteenth century had seventeenth-century antecedents, and a litany of Anglo-Scottish political crises that occurred from 1688-1725 exacerbated this contempt. The two objectives of this thesis are to demonstrate that the 1707 Union did relatively little to improve English opinions of Scots and to explain how anti-Scottish prejudices adversely affected the development of national identity in early-eighteenth-century Great Britain. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Achieving any worthwhile accomplishment requires self-discipline, willpower and personal sacrifices. However, without the steady guidance of erudite historians and the unwavering support of my loved ones, I surely would never have completed this project. I must first extend my gratitude to Dr. David Brooks of John Carroll Catholic High School. If I had not experienced Dr. Brooks?s engaging AP European History class as a junior in high school, I would never have developed an insatiable desire for understanding the past. The dedicated faculty in the University of Montevallo?s History and Political Science Departments significantly expanded my base of knowledge ? for this I am much obliged. I owe special thanks to three historians that I was fortunate enough to meet here at Auburn, as without their tutelage and commitment I would not have finished this thesis. Donna Bohanan?s reassurance and encouragement kept me confident that I could make it through this rigorous program, even on days when I felt that I was not cutting it. Daniel Szechi saved me from wallowing in minutiae, helped me lay the foundation for this project, and steered me towards writing research-based historical arguments rather than trite book reports. My thesis director Abigail Swingen is a masterful editor and critical thinker. Without her syntax suggestions, organizational pointers and ideas concerning what should be included in the thesis, my argument would have been a chaotic mess. Finally, the constant support and care of my mother, father, vii and younger brother, Patrick, have rescued me from despair on countless occasions ? I love all three of you. viii Style Manual Used: Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Theses and Dissertations, Sixth Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Computer Software Used: Microsoft Word, 2003. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Glorious Revolution and the 1690s...........................................................12 Chapter 2: Anxieties over the Succession Crisis in Scotland ............................................27 Chapter 3: Reactions to Union ...........................................................................................50 Chapter 4: Post-Union Attitudes Towards Scots ...............................................................73 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................91 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................94 1 Introduction Like all words, ?union? is laden with a certain semantic baggage. As a term, ?union? evokes the image of a blissful marriage, love between two parties, or a solid, cohesive connection. However, when used in political contexts the term can mean something quite different. When governments merge the formerly autonomous states always retain some portion of their regional identities, cultures and beliefs. Even relatively stable political unions can at times resemble unhappy alliances of bickering parties who hold negative views and seemingly instinctive preconceptions about the inhabitants of their sister states. The Union of 1707 between England and Scotland should be viewed as a fusion of disparate cultures. Raw prejudice and misunderstanding characterized the relationship between the two countries before and after the Union. Early eighteenth-century English commentary concerning Scots almost uniformly reflected disdain towards what they perceived to be an inferior state and people. Why did mutual hatred persist between England and Scotland after the parliamentary merger? Were English attitudes towards Scots affected in any way by the Union? How did ingrained prejudice jaundice Englishmen?s accounts of particular crises in Anglo-Scottish relations in the years after the Union? Despite the voluminous amount of literature extant concerning the 1707 Union, historians have by and large avoided these questions. Brian P. Levack focuses primarily on how state institutions of both kingdoms were affected by the Union. He briefly discusses anti-Scottish prejudice, emphasizing that many early eighteenth-century 2 Englishmen refused to acknowledge Scotland?s status as a sovereign kingdom. 1 P.W.J. Riley stresses the illusory cordiality of the Union negotiations, and that English parliamentarians sought Union in 1707 not because of any affinity for Scots, but to exert some measure of control over Scotland?s unruly politicians. 2 He also notes that in the decades before the Union English politicians generally exhibited indifference towards Scotland. 3 Christopher Whatley asserts that the London mob (which was customarily quite hostile to Scots) greeted the Union with boisterous cheers, but he concedes the fleeting nature of this popularity. 4 Although Riley and Whatley both acknowledge the persistence of anti-Scottish prejudices after the Union, neither has meticulously explored the nature of those biases or whether incorporation altered them in any way. No work on the Union has thoroughly investigated the consequences (or lack thereof) that the merger had on Englishmen?s perceptions of Scots. 5 This paper will examine English attitudes towards Scots during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the 1707 Union on English attitudes towards their northern neighbors. Moments of crisis in Anglo-Scottish relations resulted in flurries of written activity that allow us to get a sense of biases developing in English minds. The years between the Glorious Revolution of 1 Brian P. Levack, The Formation of the British State: England, Scotland and the Union, 1603-1707 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 26. 2 P.W.J. Riley, The Union of England and Scotland: A Study in Anglo-Scottish Politics of the Eighteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), 2. 3 Ibid., 23. 4 Christopher Whatley with Derek J. Patrick, The Scots and the Union (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 1, 8. 5 Works pertaining to the Union of 1707 have focused on why the two countries pursued Union in 1707, what immediate and long-term effects the Union had on the British economy and the evolution of the concept of Union in Britain from 1603-1715. This study of the Union?s effect on English attitudes towards Scots may seem insignificant when compared to the books that tackle these daunting historiographical issues, but is nevertheless an important inquiry as examination of those attitudes can provide us with an idea of whether a British national identity was flourishing or floundering during the early eighteenth century. 3 1688-9 and the Shawfield Riots of 1725 will be the main focus of this paper. The purpose of this chronological scope is to demonstrate that Scots largely remained objects of English contempt and ridicule both before and after the Union. Problems with Scotland plagued English politics during these years, and English writers produced copious amounts of commentary on the Scots. The Glorious Revolution empowered Scotland?s independent Parliament by enabling activities that many Englishmen could not accept. Anglo-Scottish relations progressively worsened during the 1690s, plummeting to a nadir during the five years between the end of the Darien Disaster (1698-1700) and the Worcester crisis (1705). English politicians desired a way to compel Scotland to obedience, and incorporating union represented a device to enforce conformity. Incorporation, however, did not solve England?s problems with Scotland as the Union quickly disappointed most Scots. A Franco-Scottish invasion plot was attempted the year after parliamentary Union and a full-blown Jacobite rebellion occurred in Scotland in 1715. Also, Scottish recalcitrance continued to manifest itself in the form of occasional riots. Serious civil disorder marred Scottish life during the tax revolts of 1713 and 1725. Englishmen observed this pugnacity and rebelliousness, which reinforced their own presumptions concerning Scotland. Sharing a parliament itself could not alter English perceptions of the Scot; to a large extent Scots appeared contemptible to Englishmen far beyond this time period. This paper will answer why this was the case. Three prevailing types of sources ? sermons, newspapers, and the correspondence of Englishmen visiting Scotland ? are to be used in this study. The devout English populace regularly attended services, where they heard the clergy express religious (and frequently political) messages. A significant number of these sermons became quite popular and were published. As the most widely distributed print material during the early eighteenth century, sermons provide invaluable insight into the views of a key set of 4 opinion-makers. Englishmen?s perceptions of political events were molded by these religious speeches, and clerics often served as the mouthpieces of national grievances. Newspapers also reveal English attitudes towards the Scots. Despite the sermon?s resilient popularity, the number of published newspapers increased astronomically during this period. In 1695, the Licensing Act expired, which removed legal restrictions on publishing and granted printers unprecedented freedoms. 6 As a result, the number of English publications exploded during the early eighteenth century. The slew of newspapers published in the years surrounding the Union contained a multitude of English views on the Scots. Englishmen of all political leanings offered their opinions on both the Scots and Union in this nascent print culture. Tory politicians in particular solicited the approval of an insular electorate. The xenophobic invectives printed in the pages of Charles Leslie?s The Rehearsal expressed opposition to Union and resentment towards Scots both before and after the 1707 merger with Scotland. Though Tory newsletters are vital tools in any analysis of English attitudes towards the Scots, Whig publications are equally helpful. Possibly due to their disproportionate influence in London (where much of the printing in eighteenth-century England took place), Whigs produced more pamphlets than Tories did during the years surrounding the Union. One could assume that because of their integral position in securing the Union of 1707, early eighteenth-century Whigs might exhibit warm feelings for Scots in their writings. However, Whig publications tended to express the same presumptions of cultural superiority as Tory ones. Despite wholehearted support for what they often called the ?present and happy Union,? Whig writers clearly propagated the view that Scotland should follow the English lead through Union rather than cling to its old institutions. Pamphlets such as Joseph Addison?s The Free-Holder questioned the 6 Hannah Barker, Newspapers, Politics and English Society 1695-1855 (New York: Longman, 2000), 1. 5 merits of a Scotch economy based largely on feudal concepts. Some Whigs clearly believed Scotland backwards and implored Scots to embrace Anglicized society and institutions for their own good. Finally, the correspondence of Englishmen visiting Scotland during this period provides a unique, first hand account of cultural exchanges. Naturally, such correspondence provides a gauge of these men?s perceptions of the northern kingdom. The Harley Ministry recruited Daniel Defoe to promote the Union in Scotland from 1706-7, when significant resistance from Scottish nationalists such as Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun threatened its safe passage. Though Defoe?s work was somewhat tainted by his job as a propagandist, his poems and pamphlets provide valuable insight into his preconceptions concerning Scottish life and behavior. Although this paper is primarily concerned with the decades immediately surrounding the Union of 1707, events earlier in the seventeenth century had a direct role in the formation and development of English prejudices towards the Scots. Many Englishmen did not think of Scotland as an independent country, although it did have its own monarchy and representative body throughout the seventeenth century. The 1603 Union of the Crowns united England and Scotland under the same sovereign, the Stuart King James VI and I. A completely monarchical arrangement, the Union of the Crowns provided little in the way of institutional integration. Scotland retained not only its Parliament, Kirk, and legal system, but also its own laws of succession. The distinct possibility existed that in the future, the throne of Scotland and England could be held by different individuals. 7 The regal union could be reversed, and it fused the executive offices of two countries historically antagonistic towards one another. 8 After the implementation of the Union of the Crowns the Scottish monarchs moved from 7 Levack, Formation, 5. 8 David Allan, Scotland in the Eighteenth Century: Union and Enlightenment (Harlow: Longman, 2002), 3. 6 Edinburgh to London, and the predominance of English affairs soon relegated Scottish concerns to the Stuarts? backburner. Despite attracting the attention of some influential individuals (most notably James I), the idea of union did not seem to be the pressing issue in the seventeenth century that it would become in the early eighteenth century. Marriage was the analogy invoked by James I to describe his ideal union settlement. His matrimonial take on Anglo-Scottish union was apparent when he wrote ?You (England) are to be the husband, they the wife; you the conquerors, they as conquered, though not by the sword, but by the sweet and sure bond.? 9 Coming from the mouth of a Scot (albeit one who now ruled England), this nuptial analogy revealed much about the perceived relationship between the two countries. As the bride, Scotland would be expected to follow the groom?s lead on any issues of import to the family. This interpretation of union definitely conveyed inferior status to Scotland, and it implied that Scotland had to conform and submit to the norms of an Anglocentric state. James (and the many Englishmen who shared his views) would later be disappointed in their hopes for a demure and subservient Scottish bride. James?s perception of Scotland as the lesser of the two partners also closely aligned with the prevalent English belief that Scotland existed as a feudal province that was the property of its English master. James?s desired union between the two countries never materialized. Stiff opposition to a closer relationship arose in both countries because of mutual suspicion, hostility and ethnocentrism. British imperial designs scared many Scots during James?s reign, and most Englishmen foresaw a degradation of English trade, culture and power as a byproduct of union with Scotland. Scots also represented a potential blight on domestic political stability. Indeed, Englishmen thought Scots to be regicidal and murderous even before the execution of Charles I. In 1603 the populist Scotophobe Sir Christopher Piggot 9 Quoted in Levack, Formation, 27. 7 declared that in the previous two hundred years that only two Scottish kings had died peaceably in their beds. 10 James I used his prerogative to implement his designs temporarily. But early seventeenth-century Englishmen resented James?s state integration scheme. As the center of royal clientage shifted to London, James rewarded his Scottish patrons with prominent places, among them influential positions such as servants of the bedchamber. 11 These promotions assuredly aroused resentment amongst the English, who were used to Elizabeth?s exclusively English courts. In the 1608 decision in Calvin?s Case, James?s judges decided that Scots born after the death of Elizabeth, known as post-nati, were fully naturalized English citizens, a development that made English xenophobes uneasy. James also invoked his prerogative to cease the imposition of most of the trade restrictions between the two countries. 12 During the seventeenth century no subsequent English monarch would so fervently seek closer relations with the northern country. Although he was uninterested in a political union, James?s son Charles I foolishly pursued the goal of religious conformity between England and Scotland ? a decision which would result in grave consequences for the inhabitants of both countries. Charles?s quest for uniformity and his precarious position of reigning over countries with separate parliaments would plunge the reigning Stuart dynasty into a dire predicament by the 1640s. The Great Rebellion ranks amongst the seminal events in the development of English views towards Scots. In 1637, Scottish Presbyterians violently resisted the efforts of King Charles I and William Laud to introduce the Anglican Prayer Book and church reform in Scotland. 13 The resultant Bishops? Wars forced a monetarily beleaguered 10 Ibid., 58. 11 Keith M. Brown, Kingdom or Province? Scotland and the Regal Union, 1603-1715 (New York: St. Martin?s, 1992), 8-10. 12 Levack, Formation, 8. 13 Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637-1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 43-44. 8 Charles to recall the Westminster Parliament in 1640 after an eleven year hiatus. But irreconcilable differences in constitutional and religious opinions had developed between monarch and Parliament, and civil war ensued in England. Events during the Bishops? Wars and the Great Civil War deeply colored Englishmen?s perceptions of Scots. In 1640, Englishmen living in the border shires suffered a humiliating occupation after a Scottish army captured Newcastle. 14 Fear of Scottish invasion became deeply ingrained throughout the 1640s as covenanting parliamentarians invited Scottish armies back into the country to counter Charles?s Cavalier army ? a move that elicited negative public responses. Popular anxieties harbored by Englishmen during the Civil War were conveyed in a statement made by a Suffolk preacher who aspersed the Scots as ?coming over to ravish men?s wives and to deflower virgins.? 15 The Scottish invasions and occupations of northern England had a significant psychological effect on the English ? they perceived their northern neighbors as a marauding, ruthless horde. Many Englishmen roundly blamed the Scots for initiating the Bishops? Wars. Covenanting Scottish Presbyterians also experienced resentment for the role that they played in the Civil War, which resulted in the execution of Charles I on January 30, 1649. The sins of both Scottish and English Covenanters included aiding and abetting Oliver Cromwell, who was almost uniformly viewed as a usurper, in the deposition and murder of a ruling monarch. To many Englishmen, Scots bore a large portion of responsibility for a national disaster. Charles I?s status as a Christian martyr grew exponentially throughout the seventeenth century, and those perceived to be responsible for his death bore the stigma of murder. Scots also received a large portion of the blame for the chaos and 14 Mark Stoyle, Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 3. 15 Quoted in Ibid., 75. 9 heterodoxy that followed the war; Scotland and its Kirk became synonymous with sedition, rebellion, Leveller political philosophy, and religious extremism ? the aspects of mid-seventeenth-century British political culture that most Englishmen found objectionable. Rumors of Calves? Head Clubs, which purportedly engaged in the diabolical ritual of decapitating a calf every January 30 to commemorate Charles?s execution, provided Anglicans with a bugaboo that embodied the worst of their fears concerning Dissenters. 16 The hotter sort of Protestant who inhabited the Scottish Lowlands became the radical republican ?Other.? The sister kingdoms experienced another manifestation of union during the years of the Protectorate and Commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell imposed an incorporating union upon the people of Scotland. This arrangement represented an English show of force, as the New Model Army conquered and occupied Scotland and the English government directed Scottish affairs from London. The Scots enjoyed free trade with England via the stipulations of the Cromwellian Union, and sent representatives to the Westminster Parliament. However, the Scots MPs endured blatant xenophobia upon arrival and were wholly ignored and maligned. Scots were regarded as no better than colonials or provincials at the Interregnum parliaments. 17 After the Restoration, Westminster dissolved the Cromwellian Union, and Anglican bishops, who had been removed during the 1650s in a milieu favorable to religious dissent, were reintroduced to Scotland and the Edinburgh Parliament reinstated. 18 Post-Restoration royal policy towards the Scottish church can properly be 16 John Kenyon, Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party 1689-1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 76. 17 Michael Lynch, Scotland: A New History (London: Century, 1991), 286. 18 The years of the Commonwealth and Protectorate saw not only the abolition of the Church of England, but the government sanction of Dissenting faiths such as Presbyterianism, Quakerism, and Muggletonianism. 10 described as laissez-faire, as Charles II made no attempt at liturgical harmony. 19 Charles II himself despised Scotland ? he privately stated that he would rather be hanged than return to his northern kingdom. 20 Neither Charles II nor his brother James II attempted to orchestrate an Anglo-Scottish union during their reigns. By the turn of the eighteenth century relations between Scotland and England had reached their nadir. Abject failures in Anglo-Scottish assimilation ? the Union of the Crowns, Charles I?s quest for ecclesiastical uniformity, and the Cromwellian Union ? all had a significant bearing on English attitudes towards Scots and the character of the incorporating Union of 1707. These failures provided English monarchs and parliaments with ideas of what initiatives might cause any union scheme to fail. Union critics thought the crisis in Anglo-Scottish relations to be a byproduct of the imperfections of seventeenth century incorporation attempts ? especially the 1603 Union of the Crowns, which left Scotland?s laws of succession intact. This possibility never manifested itself during the seventeenth century, but was dangerously close to occurring in the first years of the eighteenth century due to the crisis surrounding the Hanoverian Succession. The Scots, infuriated by a series of disasters for which they blamed the English, used their independent Parliament in 1703 to implement legislation (the Act of Security) that stated their prerogative to name a monarch of their choosing upon the death of the heirless Queen Anne. This opened up the possibility of the Hanoverian George I on the English throne and James Francis Edward Stuart on the Scottish throne (as James VIII). Had this situation arisen, war between the two countries would have been inevitable. The Stuart pretenders had used Scotland as a launching pad 19 Ibid., 290. However, a significant number of Scottish dissenting clergy were ejected as a result of the 1662 Act of Uniformity. The Act of Uniformity was part of the Clarendon Code legislation that affected the British clergy. After its implementation, clerics that did not reject the Solemn League and Covenant and accept the Anglican Book of Common Prayer were prohibited from holding ecclesiastical benefices. 20 Ibid., 282. 11 for attempted takeovers of England after 1688. The tenuous nature and reversibility of the seventeenth-century multiple monarchies would by 1707 necessitate a stronger marriage between the two countries according to a number of English and Scottish politicians. But the Scottish succession problem would never have become so pressing if Scotland?s Parliament had not acquired a large degree of autonomy after the Glorious Revolution. Likewise, had English politicians not participated in foiling Scotland?s efforts to establish a commercial empire during the 1690s, Scotland?s Parliament would not have resorted to heavy-handed tactics during the first years of the eighteenth century. Events during the last eleven years of the seventeenth century thus created the near-untenable state of Anglo-Scottish relations at the dawn of the eighteenth century. 12 Chapter 1: The Glorious Revolution and the 1690s The series of events known as the Glorious Revolution profoundly affected both Scotland and England, and did so in ways that directly led to antagonisms between the two kingdoms. These included the introduction of a new monarch, the abolition of the Scottish Lords of the Articles and a concomitant rise in autonomous action on behalf of the Scottish Parliament, an aggressive pursuit of war against Louis XIV?s France, the creation of a fiscal-military state in Britain, and a Presbyterian religious settlement in Scotland. These interconnected events reinforced English anxieties concerning Scots during the 1690s. A dramatic deterioration of Anglo-Scottish relations ensued as did a precipitous rise of both Anglophobia and Scottophobia in each country. This chapter explores how English perceptions of Scotland?s Parliament, society, religion and economy worsened after the Glorious Revolution, further alienating Englishmen from Scots. The 1690s are known for parliamentary clashes for good reason. The decade saw the growth and maturation of party politics largely due to the empowering effects that the Revolution Settlement had on the Westminster Parliament. However, the Scots experienced their own parliamentary renaissance in the 1690s, and Edinburgh parliamentarians started to exhibit an independent will contrary to their monarch?s wishes or the desires of the MPs at Westminster. Scotland?s legislative body could now pursue its own objectives largely because of the 1690 abolition of the Lords of the Articles, the small group of Scottish peers that had been appointed by the Stuart monarchs to control the Edinburgh Parliament?s legislative agenda. 21 The Lords of the Articles drafted the 21 Levack, Formation, 218. 13 legislation that the Scottish Parliament voted upon and was often packed with royal appointments. In the absence of this brake on legislative autonomy, the Scottish Parliament began to undertake some radical measures. Long oppressed by the Scottish Restoration Church establishment, the Scots Presbyterians saw in the Revolution an opportunity for legitimacy and security. On June 7, 1690, parliamentarians in Edinburgh voted to abolish the Episcopacy and reinstate Presbyterian Church government in Scotland. 22 The Edinburgh Parliament also voted to eradicate lay patronage, a move that increased the Scottish Kirk?s independence from exterior control. As 1690 progressed, Episcopalian clergy began to be removed from their Scottish parishes on a massive scale. Tim Harris has recently asserted that the zeal with which the Scottish Presbyterians victimized the Episcopalians after the Revolution actually deterred the English from reaching a more accommodating settlement with their own nonconformists. 23 Although Englishmen perceived the alterations to the Scottish Kirk with attitudes ranging from acceptance to hostility, it is safe to assume that a significant portion of rank-and-file Anglican laity despised the Scottish religious settlement. English aversion to the Presbyterian settlement in Scotland stemmed partly from the popular belief that Presbyterianism exhibited an innate incompatibility with monarchical authority, and thus order itself. 24 Scotland did appear uncontrollable to many early eighteenth-century Englishmen, and post-Revolution Scotland has been labeled ?ungovernable? by P.W.J. Riley. 25 Examination of Scotland?s political scene after 1688 reinforces Riley?s observation. After James II?s ?abdication,? the Parliaments of both 22 William Ferguson, Scotland: 1689 to Present, The Edinburgh History of Scotland, Vol. 4 (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1987), 13. 23 Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685-1720 (New York: Allen Lane, 2006), 420. 24 Levack, Formation, 120. 25 P.W.J. Riley, The Union, 6. 14 England and Scotland eventually recognized William of Orange as their legitimate monarch. William?s experiences with his northern country, however, came to be characterized by indecisiveness and failed attempts to influence the Scottish Parliament. In addition, William?s reliance on non-Scots for advice concerning Scottish affairs and his ministry?s belief that Scottish political divisions were essentially religious in nature contributed to serious ministerial mismanagement. 26 William depended upon a small coterie of advisers led by the Earl of Portland to keep him abreast of Scottish developments and craft official government policies for Scotland. 27 A fellow Dutchman and childhood confidant of William of Orange, Portland never visited Scotland and failed to understand the intricacies of Scottish politics. 28 In the absence of effective ministerial authority, local aristocrats manipulated Scottish affairs to their own ends. Ambitious Scottish magnates who sat in the Scottish House of Lords such as Queensberry, Argyll, Atholl and Hamilton clashed regularly in the Edinburgh Parliament. The aristocrats used the pretense of fervent Episcopalianism or Presbyterianism as a reason for pursuing conflicts ? in reality they were actually jockeying for political position. 29 These men were the power-brokers of the Scottish political scene and were free to pursue their own self-aggrandizement upon the demise of the Lords of the Articles. Without magnate compliance the chances of effectively implementing the Court?s business in Scotland were virtually non-existent. William?s ministry failed to grasp that intense magnate rivalry (rather than religious convictions) characterized Scotland?s political landscape throughout the 1690s. This confusion hampered any efforts at effectively governing the Scots through patronage or management. 26 P.W.J. Riley, King William and the Scottish Politicians (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979), 6. 27 Whatley, The Scots, 5. 28 Hugh Dunthorne and David Onnekink, ?Bentinck, Hans Willlem [William], First Earl of Portland,? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com. 29 Whatley, The Scots, 2. 15 By the end of his reign, William?s experiences with Scottish factionalism had convinced him that only through absorption into the Westminster Parliament could these internecine magnate squabbles be eradicated. 30 Integration into a much larger representative body in 1707 did eventually dilute the political powers of Scottish grandees. But in 1689, William?s government had more pressing issues to deal with than parliamentary Union. The Scottish Convention Parliament had disavowed James II and recognized William as their rightful king. Thinking the Scottish situation under control, the new monarch turned his attentions to prosecuting a war against the Jacobites in Ireland. Indeed, the Protestants of Dublin received their Dutch hero after his army bested the Pretender?s at the Boyne in 1690; Scotland never hosted William throughout his fourteen-year reign. 31 Scotland factored little into William?s plans, and he generally neglected his northern territory unless events absolutely necessitated otherwise. If William had recognized the depth of Scottish intransigence, perhaps he would have called for Union much earlier in his reign. In fact, an opportunity did present itself. In 1688 some members of the Scottish Parliament, led by the Marquis of Tweeddale and desiring relief from the crippling economic ramifications of the Navigation Acts, initiated a request for Union. 32 This motion passed the Edinburgh Parliament, but died on the floor at Westminster largely due to a lack of interest and the overwhelming amount of disdain for Scotland?s economy, people and religion exhibited by English MPs. 33 The parliamentarians? jaundiced attitudes about Scots led them to squelch a Union initiative. By and large, English MPs viewed Scotland as a nation of fanatical Presbyterians and wanted nothing to do with them after the Revolution. A letter from Sir Edward 30 Riley, King William, 160-2. 31 J.G. Simms, Jacobite Ireland (London: Routledge, 1969), 156. 32 Whatley, The Scots, 91. 33 Riley, King William, 53. 16 Harley in early 1689 to his son Robert (who, quite ironically, became one of the primary architects of the 1707 Union) reflected the religious sentiments that caused English MPs to repudiate the Union proposed in late 1688. ?Letters from Scotland,? wrote Sir Edward, ?mention that the rabble continue in their insolency, having lately haled the mayor of Aberdeen about the town with a rope about his neck, and forced him to hang two dogs he had, the one of which in derision he called Presbyter the other Puritan ? or Quaker, as some ? and afterwards committed the Mayor to prison.? 34 Aberdeen, significantly, has been described as a bastion of Scottish conservativism, royalism, and Episcopalianism. 35 The city?s mayor (undoubtedly an Episcopalian) jokingly referred to his pets as ?Presbyter? and ?Puritan,? or perhaps ?Quaker.? But local Presbyterians, perhaps sensing an outcome favorable to their interests in the impending church settlement, took umbrage at the mayor?s pet?s monikers. According to Harley?s second-hand account, a throng of these volatile Presbyterians physically paraded the mayor around the city, hung his poor canines, and then escorted him to jail. Harley?s emphasis on the insolence of the Scottish ?rabble? reflected his and doubtless many other English MPs? perceptions of Scotland as a society lacking proper deference to authority. To these men, Scots Presbyterians embraced the Revolution as an opportunity to slake their unconscionable thirst for rebellion and social upheaval. After the 1688 Revolution, a British war provided many Protestant Englishmen and Scots with an opportunity to identify with one another. As William consolidated his power in the British Isles, his dominions were plunged into a conflict with Catholic France known as the Nine Years? War (1688-1697) in Britain and the War of the League of Augsburg on the continent. No stranger to conflict with his arch-nemesis Louis XIV, 34 Sir Edward Harley to Robert Harley, January 29, 1689. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Reports on the Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland, Preserved at Welbeck Abbey. Vol. III. (Norwich: Norfolk Chronicle Company, 1899), 424. 35 Allan, Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 140. 17 William wasted little time in utilizing his new kingdom of Scotland against the Sun King. Many Protestant Britons, Scots included, embraced the prospect of a French war, especially since Louis now subsidized the St. Germain Court of their widely-loathed former monarch James II. Many Britons thus perceived the Nine Years? War as a means of securing their Protestant monarchy and ensuring that an arbitrary papist power would never again rule the British Isles. Two underlying reasons for Scottish support of this major conflict were the potential of individuals to distinguish themselves in service within the British army and the chance to strike a blow against Roman Catholicism. 36 The burgh merchants of Scotland, however, found the European power struggle contrary to their trading interests, and many Scots voiced reservations about involvement in the Nine Years? War. Due to the dynastic context of the war, Scottish reluctance to become involved was read by many Englishmen as a mark of endorsement for the Pretender, while in reality most Scots opposed the war because it wrecked the lucrative trade with France, their best customer. 37 The Nine Years? War also marked Britain?s initial experience with the legions of bureaucrats and tax-collectors that secured funding for what John Brewer has dubbed the fiscal-military state. He has argued convincingly that after 1688, this bureaucratic infrastructure of clerks and middlemen enabled a radical increase in the scope of British military involvement. 38 But the innovative procedures of taxation to pay for a war against their primary trading interests were precisely what many Scots resented. A succession of taxes, including a hearth tax and a poll tax in 1690 and a malt tax in 1693 incensed Scottish consumers and merchants alike. 39 To subvert the 36 Whatley, The Scots, 87-90. 37 T.C. Smout, Scottish Trade on the Eve of the Union, 1660-1707 (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd Publishers, 1963), 18. 38 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 29-33. 39 Whatley, The Scots, 158. 18 increased customs duties that they disdained, many Scots resorted to smuggling, a practice that has been coined ?the national vice of the Scots.? 40 A blatant disregard for customs laws caused some Englishmen to believe their northern brethren to be a nation of vile corsairs. For many Englishmen during the 1690s, a penchant for piracy was not the only unfortunate condition in Scotland. The northern kingdom also appeared to be mired irrevocably in abject poverty. If an Englishman bothered to turn his attentions northward during the 1690s, the wails of a malnourished, emaciated population would surely have resounded loudly in his ears. Scotland?s economy suffered a desperate subsistence crisis during the late 1690s and the first decade of the eighteenth century, beginning with the unexpected and catastrophic 1695 harvest. 41 The ensuing famine developed into one of the worst in early modern European history and reinforced the English image of the Scot as impoverished, grasping and beggarly. Temperatures were excessively frigid throughout the 1690s, and a nation already known for its inclement weather endured more precipitation than usual. These years came to be known as the ?Seven Ill Years? and harvests consistently failed to yield enough to fill Scottish bellies. 42 The Scottish economy could not deal with the paucity of food caused by the poor harvests. A mortality crisis ensued, one that historian Christopher Whatley has labeled probably the most serious to ever afflict Scotland. 43 Whatley estimates that between starvation and migration out of Scotland, Scotland?s population declined by an estimated 13% by 1700. Malnourishment-related deaths and emigration to escape the poor conditions thus reduced 40 Quoted in Smout, Scottish Trade, 38. 41 Ibid., 245-8. 42 Rosalind Mitchison, A History of Scotland (London: Metheun, 1982), 291-2. 43 Whatley, The Scots, 141-2. 19 the Scottish population from roughly 1,130,000 in 1690 to just over a million in 1700. 44 Scotland?s demographic crisis qualified as an unmitigated disaster. To exacerbate matters, Scotland underwent a fiduciary catastrophe during that difficult decade. In 1695 a large proportion of Scottish capital was invested in a financial endeavor, the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies. Its founder, a Scottish-born London financier named William Patterson, urged a significant number of Scottish investors to subsidize the Company. Costly investment in the Company of Scotland occurred before the disastrous famine of the same year, and as a result many Scots committed their precious resources to the Company at an inopportune time. 45 In the late seventeenth century, Europeans in numerous countries invested heavily in chartered joint-stock companies in hopes of securing long-term returns. Scotland had lagged behind the English, the French, and the Dutch in joint-stock endeavors, and many Scots believed that such an undertaking could revitalize their floundering economy. The Company of Scotland was an attempt to catch up with the rest of Europe and compete with the successful English East India Company. But representatives of the English East India Company possessed considerable clout with both King William and the Westminster Parliament, and these individuals wanted to put an end to the Scottish Company. By 1697, the Company of Scotland decided to invest its capital in a colonization project on the Isthmus of Panama. To a nation now flirting with potential economic implosion, this colonization scheme represented more than a mere investment. To many Scots, its success or failure would dictate whether Scotland itself would flourish or falter. But to those who invested in or were employed by the English East India Company, Scotland?s joint-stock counterpart represented a tangible threat to their livelihoods and investments. In 1696, an anonymous English observer considered ?what 44 Ibid., 143. 45 Ibid., 148. 20 Inconveniences and Mischiefs the late Scotch Act may bring to the English East and West East-India Trade,? and plainly concluded that the Company of Scotland constituted a danger to English trade and manufacture. 46 He saw the Scottish endeavor as an obstacle to the ?Trade of Sugar, which has become so large and beneficial to England.? 47 He worried that a Scottish encroachment into this lucrative market would disrupt the profitable trade balance, which currently allowed England ?not only to serve our own Consumption,? but also to export a surplus of sugar ?to Holland, Hambro, and before the War to France.? 48 To this writer, English and Scottish economic success had an inverse relationship ? one could not succeed without the other failing. A decline in the English sugar trade was not the only negative byproduct which this writer attributed to the establishment of the Company of Scotland. He also foresaw a precipitous decline in England?s manufacturing sector. ?To Refine our own raw Sugars,? England ?employs Thousands of People, who are Fed and Cloathed by our own Product.? 49 These people were in danger of losing their livelihoods if Scotland became a viable competitor in the sugar trade. If Scotland established a successful sugar trade in the West Indies, the growth of a Scottish manufacturing core to refine that product would soon follow, much to the detriment of those employed in the English sugar refineries. He despaired that ?Manufacture here has been discouraged; and will be more so by the Scotch Act and Agents, if not prevented.? 50 Failure to prevent this trade encroachment (presumably through parliamentary legislation) would result in a brain-drain within the 46 Some Considerations concerning the Prejudice which the Scotch Act Establishing a Company to Trade to the East and West-Indies, (London: 1696), 1. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 21 sum l trade. English work force, as ?the Scotch are seeking to bribe and intice away our Master- Workmen.? 51 Scotland?s quest for self-aggrandizement would thus lead her to pilfer the manufacturing expertise that England possessed. Apparent throughout the writer?s commentary was his belief that Scotland existed not as a sister state or even a part of Great Britain, but as a nation apart. He issued a stern warning to his fellow Englishmen ?to take care, if possible, that other Nations have not any Advantage of us,? and concluded that foiling the Company of Scotland would encourage sugar refining in England and increase royal revenues ?without prejudice to any but the Scotch and Foreigners.? 52 Such language reflected an English mentality rather than a British one concerning trade, and revealed that this pamphleteer cared nothing for the betterment of Scotland?s economy or society. To this author, Scotland was a foreign nation and a potential economic rival to England. Disrupting the Company of Scotland?s endeavors thus represented a means for England to prosper in the zero- game of internationa At least one English observer perceived no substantial competition from the newly-chartered Scottish company, however. In an anonymous 1695 letter entitled Some Considerations upon the late Act of the Parliament of Scotland, for Constituting an Indian Company, the author details his feelings about Scotland?s commercial endeavors. Including the disclaimer that he is ?as far as others from wishing or seeking the Prosperity of any Country that may in the least interfere with that of my own,? the author makes plain his belief in the suitability of the Scottish Parliament?s encouragement of foreign trade. 53 Indeed, the author understands how Scotland ?or any other Nation in their 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 1-2. 53 Some Considerations upon the late Act of the Parliament of Scotland, for Constituting an Indian Company: In a Letter to a Friend (London: 1695), 1. 22 condition? would seek economic improvement and hopes that their attempt would ?prove sufficient to entice and allure any considerable part of the Rich, Warm, and Fertile Indies, to the Poor, Cold, and Barren Scotland.? 54 Clearly, he perceived Scotland?s economy to be in a pitiable condition. The writer goes on to note that the Dutch, the French and the Danes have all secured inroads to West Indies trade ?vastly beyond what Scotland is, or perhaps can be capable of.? 55 Due to what he perceived as a lack of economic capability, the author saw ?no great cause of Umbrage to us from those remote, cold, and doubtful Designs of the Scots, of which even the Success can come to but little in the present Age.? 56 In his estimation, the chances of the Company?s success were limited at best. Rather than heap vitriol on an unworthy Scottish adversary, the author believes that the English should focus their ?Jealousie, Anger, and Heat? at the Dutch. 57 Despite the Grand Alliance, the military agreement between Britain and the United Provinces (and other European states) orchestrated to check Louis XIV?s territorial ambitions in Europe, this writer saw the Netherlands as an economic adversary. The author argued that anxiety over the Company of Scotland?s charter was unnecessary, as ?the most considerable nations of Europe? (which did not include Scotland) all had well-established trade in the West Indies, and would undermine the newcomer by doing ?their utmost to nip all their Designs in the bud.? 58 As Scotland possessed ?neither Force nor means to exercise Regular Acts of Soveraignty abroad,? Englishmen should waste no time worrying about crushing a potential Scottish 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 23 competitor ? the French, Dutch, and Danish could squelch any West Indies endeavor that the Scots introduced. 59 To this writer, Scottish trade was simply too impotent to compete with the other European economies on equal terms. He believed that any political conflict between England and Scotland over Scotland?s chartered company could only abet England?s commercial adversaries. On the whole, he would much rather ?our good Neighbors the Hollanders? drive the Scots out of the West Indies, as any misunderstanding between England and Scotland over ?such a Chymera? constituted a waste of energy. 60 In this writer?s estimation, the state of Scottish trade was not only deplorable, it was also irrevocable. Summarizing his analysis of world trade, the writer declared that ?our Dangers are not from Scotland, nor Scotchmen, but from other Persons and Places.? 61 The author?s assessment of Scotland?s negligible trading status appeared clairvoyant as the decade progressed and the Company of Scotland committed its investors? money to a dubious project. Unfortunately for Scottish investors, the ill-conceived colonization of the Isthmus of Panama, called the Darien scheme, failed miserably. The Scots chose a boggy, uninhabitable stretch of land to populate and pursued a project doomed to collapse from its inception. Two waves of colonization occurred in 1698 and 1700 and would ultimately claim the lives of roughly 2,000 Scots and cause the loss of some ?1.8 million. 62 Moreover, the Scots pursued this colonization project without the support of their monarch or the Westminster Parliament. William had granted the Company of Scotland a charter in 1694, but only to alleviate mounting Scottish political pressures in the wake of the Glencoe Massacre, a 1692 government-sanctioned killing of 38 Scottish Highlander 59 Ibid., 2. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 3. 62 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 182-3. 24 Non-Jurors. 63 William surely had not considered that this chartered company would pursue such a dicey and costly course of action. Worse, Darien lay within territory widely recognized as Spanish property. William could not afford to alienate the Spanish, as he needed their alliance to maintain the tenuous European peace established by the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick. 64 The Company of Scotland?s brazen colonization attempt left William in the unenviable position of explaining to the king of Spain how, contrary to his wishes, a country over which he reigned could pursue independent colonial designs. 65 Scotland?s exorbitant venture thus made William look like a fool who could not control his subjects. The King was already thoroughly disillusioned with his northern country due to the incessant magnate squabbles in the Edinburgh Parliament, and this latest affront surely did nothing to ingratiate the Scots to him. If William had little patience for his Scottish subjects because of Darien, the English Parliament showed nothing but disdain for the Scots? failed initiative. The anxiety and scorn that some Englishmen directed towards the Scottish Company at its inception did not subside after the Darien disaster. The correspondence of prominent parliamentarians reflected not only contempt for the Company of Scotland?s endeavor, but also for a late seventeenth-century Union proposal. The Scots, courting closer relations strictly because such an arrangement would exempt them from the economically crippling provisions of the Navigation Acts, proposed a Union in 1699. On March 5, 1700, Robert Harley wrote to his father Sir Edward that ?This day the sham Union Bill with Scotland was flung out without a division.? 66 The younger Harley relayed 63 For a concise description of the Glencoe Massacre, refer to Ferguson, Scotland: 1689 to the Present, 23-4 and for a more thorough one, see Paul Hopkins, Glencoe and the End of the Highland War (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986). 64 The Treaty of Ryswick ended the Nine Years? War. 65 T.C. Smout, ?The Road to Union,? in Geoffrey Holmes, ed. Britain After the Glorious Revolution (London: St. Martin?s Press, 1969), 179-82. 66 Robert Harley to Sir Edward Harley, March 5, 1700. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Reports, 616. 25 Westminster?s uniform rejection of a Union in 1700. The thought of merging with Scotland was still anathema to a majority of English MPs. Scotland had not yet pursued the independent course that it would in 1703. The exigency of Westminster exerting increased control over the Scottish Parliament to prevent a succession crisis and a Franco-Scottish pact did not yet outweigh Harley?s (and surely many other English MPs?) disdain for his Scottish counterparts. By the 1700 session, the entirety of the Edinburgh Parliament realized that the Darien experiment had amounted to an absolute catastrophe. Rather than accuse Patterson and the Scottish investors of poorly researching the project, most Scots chose to blame the King and the English Parliament. Westminster had certainly played a role in the colony?s failure, as in the late 1690s it had convinced William to sabotage Darien by dissuading foreign investors from subsidizing the venture. 67 However, if English parliamentarians felt pressured by Scottish cries of outrage, they did not show it. On June 1, 1700, the younger Harley wrote to his father ?We do not hear how affairs are like to go in Scotland? it is not of any great weight in my poor judgment. I fear ourselves more than any others.? 68 Instead of exhibiting remorse over hindering Scottish economic escapades, Harley was primarily concerned with how the catastrophe would affect England. Although the Scots had surely discredited William?s monarchical prowess to the Spaniards, Sir William Trumbull asserted in a letter to Robert Harley later the same month that he ?waited upon the King last week as he came hunting in this forest, and in spite of the Scots I never saw him merrier or in better humour.? 69 The monarch had spent the entire twelve years since his accession estranged from his Scottish subjects, and 67 Levack, Formation, 220. 68 Robert Harley to Sir Edward Harley, June 1, 1700. Historical Manuscripts Collections, Reports, 620. 69 Sir William Trumbull to Robert Harley, June 18, 1700. Ibid., 621. 26 exhibited no concern for their collective dismay over a deleterious national catastrophe. On July 6, 1700, Harley wrote to his father that ?The Scots are very tumultuous, but that will calm. After doing an extravagant thing they would have England pay their charge.? 70 He thus believed the Scots to be whining in order to receive remuneration for losses which they incurred upon themselves. His talk of reimbursement presaged the Equivalent, an arrangement to recoup Darien investment losses which was ultimately included in the Articles of the 1707 Union. Harley?s prediction that the volatile Scots would soon calm down proved inaccurate, for it did not take into account the widespread Anglophobia that the Darien crisis evoked in Scotland. Consistently denied economic relief via failed union projects and furious over what they perceived to be English complicity in the demise of their dream of empire, Scottish pamphleteers such as George Ridpath began to criticize the old Regal Union. 71 Revering the potent Scottish polity of yesteryear, Ridpath asserted that ?before the Union of the Crowns, the Parliaments of Scotland were free, frequent and had great Power.? 72 Such historical opinions boded ill for Anglo-Scottish relations, as the Scottish Parliament came to view the impending succession crisis as an opportunity to reverse the Union of the Crowns and declare their own monarch. The rancor developing between England and Scotland would reach a fevered pitch in the first few years of the eighteenth century. 70 Robert Harley to Sir Edward Harley, July 6, 1700. Ibid., 622. 71 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 182-3. 72 George Ridpath, The Reducing of Scotland by Arms and Annexing it to England as a Province, Considered, (London: 1705), 5. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 27 Chapter 2: Anxieties Over the Succession Crisis in Scotland The death of the eleven-year-old Prince William, the Duke of Gloucester in 1700 facilitated the deterioration of Anglo-Scottish relations. The only surviving child of Britain?s next monarch, Queen Anne, and her husband George of Denmark, Gloucester fell ill with what was thought to be smallpox and perished on July 30 of that year. 73 Gloucester was meant to be the Prince of Wales upon his mother?s accession to the throne. His death induced concern within the English political nation, as the Protestant Succession appeared vulnerable. Englishmen saw him as the Protestant alternative to James Francis Edward Stuart, the widely-despised ?warming pan? Catholic offspring of the exiled King, James II, and his wife Mary of Modena. With no Protestant heir available in the immediate royal family, many Britons grew anxious at the possibility of the restoration of the prince over the water. The English reacted quickly to the crisis set off by the Duke of Gloucester?s demise. The following year the Westminster Parliament passed the Act of Settlement to rectify the succession problem. This legislation named Sophia, the Electress of the tiny German principality of Hanover, as the legitimate successor upon the death of Anne. Wholeheartedly supported by the ailing William III, the heirless queen-to-be, the Westminster Parliament, and an anti-Catholic populace, the Act of Settlement ensured that the next monarch would at least be a Protestant. Because of the unilateral nature of Westminster?s succession plan, Scotland?s Parliament did not immediately comply with 73 Matthew Kilburn, ?William, Prince, Duke of Gloucester,? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com. 28 England?s proposed Hanoverian Succession. Edinburgh parliamentarians believed the legislation to have been pursued without consulting Scots, and thus represented another example of arrogant English disregard for Scottish concerns. 74 Due to this slight and the lingering belief that the English were to blame for the Darien venture?s failure, the Scottish Parliament introduced legislation directly contrary to the spirit of the 1701 English Act of Settlement. These measures announced Scotland?s resolution to determine the heir to the northern kingdom upon Anne?s death. Thus, the possibility existed of a Hanoverian monarch on the English throne and a Stuart monarch in power in Scotland, a situation which would undoubtedly lead to a bloody, bitter war between the two countries. William believed union to be the only way of avoiding such an eventuality. Anne would adopt the same pro-union stance primarily to ensure Scotland?s political quiescence. William?s ministry introduced a Union scheme in 1702 and called for the appointment of commissioners from both nations to facilitate the negotiations. Upon William?s death that same year, Anne?s new Tory Parliament expressed reluctance towards merging with Scotland. This surely disappointed the Scots, who craved union to secure relaxed trade conditions with England and relief from their recent litany of economic catastrophes. During the failed 1702 Union negotiations the English commissioners conducted themselves in a manner that conveyed their overwhelming disdain for Scots. The process was ultimately aborted by the English commissioners. A disgusted Sir Edward Seymour (one of the commissioners) postulated that Scotland was ?a beggar, and anyone who married a beggar could only expect a louse for a portion.? 75 Such a statement depicts union with Scotland as wholly unpalatable even to those 74 Ferguson, Scotland: 1689 to the Present, 36. 75 Quoted in William Ferguson, Scotland?s Relations with England: A Survey to 1707 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1977), 201. 29 assigned by the government to orchestrate the merger. To Seymour, the byproduct of such a union would surely be a degradation of English trade and a financially handicapped British state. The opinions of xenophobic Tory parliamentarians were not the only anti-Scottish views articulated England in 1702. High Church Anglicans also made it clear that the Scottish religious situation was unacceptable. The sermons of High Church clerics directly reflected prejudices against the Scots. Reverend Henry Sacheverell?s The Character of a Low Church-man is representative of English attitudes during the period and was delivered by possibly the most popular religious figure of the era. In his sermon, Sacheverell addressed those Anglicans who faithfully adhered to the orthodox doctrine of the Church. Concerning Scotland, Sacheverell argued that any true believer would ?much lament the Destruction of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, and shou?d be for Addressing Her Majesty to restore it, that He believes the Separation from the Church of England, to be a Damning Schism.? 76 This passage relays how much of the English clergy and laity felt about the restoration of Episcopacy in Scotland and the concomitant suppression of Presbytery there. Sacheverell believed the post-Revolution abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland had placed the whole Anglican Church in danger. According to Geoffrey Holmes, at least four-fifths of the clergy and a majority of the laity of the early- eighteenth-century Anglican faithful believed Sacheverell?s predictions of an impending annihilation of the Church. 77 Sacheverell viewed the continuation of improper religious practice within Scotland as unacceptable and dangerous to both countries. William?s reign had been known for Scottish disasters and he surely was unpopular with many northerners, but he did keep a Scottish Council to advise him 76 Henry Sacheverell, The Character of a Low Church Man, (London, 1710), 18, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 77 Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), 1-2. 30 concerning Scottish affairs. Queen Anne on the other hand depended heavily upon English ministers for guidance concerning Scottish issues. The result of this policy was that Scotland appeared ruled by a monarch who completely disregarded Scottish interests. 78 This perception was partly accurate, as Anne had no affection for her northern subjects whom she regarded an ?unreasonable and strange people? based on a court visit there as a girl of sixteen in 1681. 79 Also, despite William?s preference of Episcopacy because it provided a superior means of controlling the Scottish church, many Scottish Presbyterians still believed him to be the Calvinist hero of Whig lore. The new monarch?s religious faith surely gave the Scottish Kirk establishment pause, as Anne was a staunch, outspoken Anglican who despised Presbytery. Her new administration consisted mainly of insular Tories of xenophobic tendencies like the Earl of Rochester. These men sought a resurgence of Episcopalianism in Scotland and desired a Scottish church that more closely resembled England?s. 80 The death of King William propelled England into yet another war with France. The Sun King and his financial dependents at St. Germain sought to twist William?s passing to their advantage. Louis XIV moved to place his great-grandson on the vacant Spanish throne. He also recognized James Francis Edward as the sovereign of Britain upon James II?s death in 1701. An incensed England launched into the War of the Spanish Succession in 1702. England?s objectives were twofold: to defeat universal Catholic monarchy by denying the Bourbon dynasty control of the Iberian Peninsula, and to protect Britain from a Catholic claimant that Louis wanted to put on their throne. However, like the Nine Years? War, Westminster pursued the War of the Spanish Succession without the approval of Edinburgh. England again thrust Scotland into a war 78 Riley, The Union, 31. 79 Quoted in Lynch, A New History, 310. 80 Riley, The Union, 32. 31 which was inimical to its trade interests, and French privateers began to assail Scottish vessels. 81 Scotland showed no eagerness to pay taxes and subsidize a war many felt had nothing to do with Scotland. 82 The lack of Scottish consultation about the succession and the new war, the Queen?s anti-Presbyterian attitudes (not to mention her overt disdain for Scots), a new Tory ministry, and a near-neurotic belief that England was out to wreck Scotland?s economy all combined to steer the Edinburgh Parliament towards inflammatory legislation. This legislation ushered in the nadir in Anglo-Scottish relations during the years of 1703-7, and the level of mutual disgust was probably the highest since the Civil War. 83 In 1703, Scotland?s experiences (especially the Darien disaster) led the Edinburgh Parliament to implement the Act of Security, the Act Anent Peace and War, and the Wine Act. These legislative acts were reactionary by nature and were a desperate response to years of economic exclusion by the English. Darien constituted a catalyst for those acts, but the roots of Scottish economic frustration (and blaming the English for Scotland?s fiduciary shortcomings) had a much longer history. This provocative Scottish legislation elicited radical English responses, and a majority of English politicians became convinced that Union represented the only way to prevent Scottish actions that were inimical to English interests. The Act of Security, the Act Anent Peace and War, and the Wine Act caused many Englishmen to think that the Scottish parliamentarians were out of control and pursuing ends that would decimate the British Isles. Led by Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, the opposition in Edinburgh forced the Scottish Act of Security through Parliament in 81 Whatley, The Scots, 195. 82 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 180-1. 83 Ibid. 32 June 1703. 84 It stated that the Scottish Parliament would choose a suitable Protestant monarch upon the death of Queen Anne. However, the Edinburgh Parliament would not conform to England?s choice as successor unless its own position was strengthened, Scotland?s Presbyterian Kirk was secured, and free trade was established with England and the colonial plantations. 85 The Hanoverian Succession seemed in jeopardy due to a Scottish legislative initiative. Although the legislation specifically outlined that a Protestant would ascend to the Scottish throne, some Englishmen suspected a ploy to reintroduce the Catholic Stuarts in Scotland, who would inevitably use this restoration as a springboard to reclaim the English crown. 86 Anne?s English ministers compelled the Marquis of Tweeddale?s Court interest in the Scottish Parliament to allow the Act of Security to pass because the ministry wanted to barter its acceptance for much-needed supply. 87 Thus it appeared that the new ministry was accepting an increase in Scottish parliamentary sovereignty for financial reasons. Edinburgh introduced the Act Anent Peace and War in 1703 to assert its autonomy from Westminster?s foreign policy directives. This act outlined Edinburgh?s right to commit the Scottish military to conflicts that it favored rather than those chosen for it by Westminster. Scotland could now pursue its own military course and avoid wars that its Parliament thought contrary to its economic agenda. This measure threatened the current British war against France, as a significant number of Scottish troops were stationed on the continent. To drive home its opposition to English objectives, Edinburgh also passed the Wine Act in 1703, which sanctioned the importation of French wines and 84 John Robertson, ?Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun,? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxfordnb.com. 85 Riley, The Union, 57-8. 86 Allan, Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 9. 87 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 186. 33 liquors to Scotland. 88 All three pieces of legislation can be interpreted as an aggressive, antagonistic display of Scottish nationalism in response to what Scots considered to be high-handed English intrusion onto their prerogatives. 89 English observers witnessed not only a Scottish attempt to subvert England?s war against Catholic France, but also legal sanction for Scotland to trade with that hated enemy. The upshot of Edinburgh?s bold legislation was a surge of anti-Scottish sentiment in England. To Englishmen, the Act Anent War and Peace appeared indicative of aggressive Scottish nationalism and a Scottish attempt to dictate terms to the English. It also magnified English fears of Scottish parliamentary sovereignty and a Franco-Scottish alliance. Daniel Defoe, the Godolphin ministry?s propagandist for the Union, was employed specifically to dissuade Scotland from pursuing parliamentary autonomy and closer relations with France by any means necessary. He poetically emphasized the incentives that Scots would enjoy after Union, such as ?Intercourse of Trade/ To any Port or Place the Kingdom round? and exemptions from duties on salt, stamped paper, malt, and coal. 90 The generous inducements offered by Defoe in this poem reflected that the English ministry genuinely feared Scottish independence and open hostility, otherwise such appealing conditions would never have been offered. Only by appeasing Scottish grievances and thus ensuring their complicity could the Hanoverian Succession be secured, union achieved, and Anne?s Britain truly emerge as ?A Terror to the Gallick Monarchy.? 91 88 Whatley, The Scots, 199. 89 Perhaps I use the term ?nationalism? a bit anachronistically. The term is usually associated with the 19 th and 20 th centuries. In this context, however, it means early eighteenth-century Scottish regional identity and contemporary Scots? desire for some measure of autonomy from the English. 90 Defoe, The Fifteen Comforts of a Scotch-Man, (London: 1707), 4-5. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 91 Ibid., 7. 34 Anti-French sentiments such as Defoe?s frequently appeared in early eighteenth- century English writing. As Linda Colley has demonstrated, Britons supported the existing order against the major threats their nation faced from its periphery, and the succession of wars with France during the eighteenth century as well as French advocacy of universal Catholicism ensured that nation?s place as England?s most prominent enemy. 92 England committed troops to the War of the Spanish Succession to secure its Revolution Settlement and monarchy from French designs. 93 However, Scotland had an ambivalent relationship with France. During the sixteenth century, the arch-conservative Catholic Guise family of France married into the ruling Stewart dynasty of Scotland. For many Englishmen, the ?Auld Alliance? between Scotland and France still warranted consideration, and was a reason for pursuing closer relations with Scotland. Indeed, France would (in collaboration with English and Scottish Jacobites) initiate Scottish invasion attempts in 1708, 1744 and 1745 in order to direct English attentions and troops away from the continental wars they were then waging against France. French ministers thus used Scottish invasion attempts as a diversionary military tactic long after the Union of 1707. The Scottish Parliament?s early eighteenth-century legislative agenda and the potential of a Franco-Scottish alliance aroused acute political anxieties in many Englishmen. Their frayed nerves were surely not assuaged by the Worcester Crisis. In March 1705, the captain and crew of an English East India Company vessel, the Worcester, were tried by a Scottish court on charges of piracy. Captain Green and his crew stood accused of assailing a vessel owned by the Company of Scotland, the Speedy 92 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 1-9. 93 Ferguson, Scotland?s Relations, 199-200. 35 Return, which had inexplicably vanished in the East Indies in 1703. 94 Although tried on flimsy evidence, the Scottish jury found Green and his cohorts guilty. In the direct aftermath of the trial, printed affidavits of Speedy Return crewmen Israel Phipney and Peter Freeland were published in London. Their account asserted that the Worcester never accosted the Speedy Return, but that the Scottish vessel had instead been seized by Moorish corsairs. 95 Queen Anne moved for a reprieve on the guilty verdict tendered by the Edinburgh court. The Edinburgh mob demanded the deaths of the men, causing the Scottish Privy Council to allow the hanging to go forward on April 11, 1705 despite Anne?s request. 96 The belief that Green and his crew were not guilty of piracy incensed English public opinion. Englishmen almost uniformly believed the judicial murder of Captain Green and his crew to be the basest of crimes. Some thought the Scots initiated the proceedings to pilfer the cargo of the Worcester as recourse, because Scotland blamed the English for its recent economic woes and the failure of the Darien expedition. 97 Thus, an English outcry ensued against a Scottish kangaroo court which, in an act of murderous vengeance, sentenced and executed a group of blameless men. The fires of English enmity stoked by the Worcester crisis were apparent in a letter written by an English observer of the proceedings in Edinburgh to a friend back in London. In the anonymous Englishman?s account, after the Worcester arrived in Leith in July 1704, Captain Green displayed his valuable cargo to several prominent Scots ?not 94 Ferguson, Scotland: 1689 to Present, 45. 95 Israel Phipney, The Innocency of Captain Green, and his Crew, Vindicated, from the Murther of Captain Drummond. Published by order of the owners of the ship Worcester (London, 1705). Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 96 Riley, The Union, 133-4. 97 Ferguson, Scotland: 1689 to Present, 45. 36 dreaming he was encompas?d by such a number of hungry voracious Wolves.? 98 The author alluded to Scottish greed, as he noted that the sight of the Worcester?s treasure ?so animated their Avarice, that they resolv?d they would never lose this blessed opportunity, but divide the sweet Morcel among ?em.? 99 The letter writer followed his portrayal of the Scot as a plotter with a defamation of Scottish law and Scotland?s courts as vehicles for unjust reprisals. ?Presuming the Law of Scotland is founded on Reason,? the author considered, ?I can?t think this Action justifiable by it; for it appears to me highly unreasonable, that the Goods of one man should be ravish?d from him for the Offence of another.? 100 In the author?s viewpoint, Scottish irrationality led investors in the Company of Scotland to demand reimbursement for losses from Englishmen who had done nothing to ruin their investments. Scottish law was thus based on a lack of rational thought or logic. The author?s description of the prosecutions? witnesses also embodied early- eighteenth century assumptions of English superiority. The Scottish prosecution included the testimony of a black man named Antonio Ferdinando to bolster their case against the crew of the Worcester. The avaricious Scots, whom the English author had already depicted as a pack of wild animals, ?contented themselves with a brace of those Left- handed Animals call?d Negroes, whom Nature has distinguish?d by their dismal hue from Mankind, as a Mark of their perfidious, sordid, implacable Tempers, and perverse Inclinations.? 101 A majority of early eighteenth-century Britons viewed blacks as 98 A Letter from Scotland to a Friend in London: Containing A particular Narrative of the whole Proceedings against the Worcester and her Crew (London: 1705), 3. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 99 Ibid., 3-4. 100 Ibid., 4. 101 Ibid., 7-8. 37 objects. 102 Chattel property could not provide testimony in court against Englishmen. This Scottish disregard of an English legal principle obviously disgusted the writer. Thus, this author imagined the collaboration of two wretched races, Scots and blacks, to secure the downfall of men belonging to his own advanced, humane race. The author also perceived Edinburgh itself to be a breeding ground of mob activity. He noted the gleeful delight of the inhabitants, as ?there seem?d a Universal Joy in and about this City? upon the court?s verdict of guilt. 103 The cries of the volatile populace relayed their reasons for wanting the Worcester crew dead, as the writer heard them shout ?we?ll Darien ?em: By this they shall see we?ll do ourselves Justice.? 104 He saw the torrent of mob fury as a product of a misconception embraced by Scots ? the belief that putting Green and his crew to death was just recourse for a previous English subversion of Scotland?s economic agenda. His description of Edinburgh?s reaction to Queen Anne?s proposed pardon reinforced his depiction of that city as having a vindictive mob that would stop at nothing to achieve its bloodthirsty agenda. It also relayed that the author?s belief that royal authority had collapsed in Edinburgh during the Worcester crisis. Upon learning of the Queen?s request to the Scottish Privy Council for a suspension of the trial?s verdict, ?immediately all Shops was [sic] shut up, and the Streets fill?d with Incredible numbers of Men, Women and Children, calling for Justice upon those English Murtherers.? 105 This angry crowd would even stoop to intimidating its own officials, for when ?the Lord Chancellor Seafield?s Coach happening to pass by, they stop?d it, broke the Sashes, haul?d him out, and oblig?d him to promise Execution should 102 James Walvin, Making the Black Atlantic: Britain and the African Diaspora (London: Cassell, 2000), 24. 103 A Letter from Scotland, 22. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid., 25. 38 be speedily done before he could get from ?em.? 106 The author believed even the most cosmopolitan area of Scotland to be a hotbed of the tyranny of the crowd. Scots were seen by this man as an intrinsically volatile race, an assumption that differed very little from those of the critics of Scotland?s Kirk who inveighed against Presbyterianism for its regicidal track record and aversion to orderly governance. Upon the culmination of the trial, the author noted that ?the violent Flame among this Furious People began to abate,? although he tacked on the warning that it would not ?quite be Extinguish?d.? 107 He firmly believed that at some later date, Scottish Anglophobia would recrudesce to claim the lives of other good Englishmen. Moreover, the duplicitous Scots would cover up their murders, as ?it will be the last thing this Stubborn, Haughty, Furious Nation will do, publickly to announce this Wickedness.? 108 The grisly details of Scotland?s black deeds would never see the light of day, and future generations of Englishmen would suffer for their innate treachery and mob mentality. This author saw Scottish law as arbitrary and irrational, Scottish people as animalistic, and the people of Edinburgh as an unruly mob that could impose its will on Scottish officials appointed by Queen Anne. An implicit argument for firm English control over Scotland?s institutions and people radiated from this writer?s description of Scottish behavior during the Worcester crisis. The legal, economic and religious concessions to be granted the Scots during the Union negotiations the following year might well have secured the Union?s passage. 109 They surely did nothing to soothe the anxieties of men like this author, who clearly believed Scottish autonomy (especially heritable jurisdictions) an affront to English liberties, trade and subjects. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid., 29. 108 Ibid., 30. 109 Christopher Whatley, ?Bought and Sold for English Gold??: Explaining the Union of 1707 (Glasgow, Economic and Social History Society of Scotland, 1994), 44. 39 During the contentious first five years of the eighteenth century, Scottish pamphleteers exacerbated Anglo-Scottish relations by ardently defending Scottish sovereignty. George Ridpath called for Scottish autonomy in his 1705 pamphlet entitled The Reducing of Scotland by Arms, and Annexing it to England as a Province, Considered. A Scottish Whig Presbyterian and outspoken nationalist, Ridpath stressed the autonomy of the Scottish monarchy, Parliament, and Kirk and considered the 1603 Union of the Crowns a perpetual break on Scottish liberties and Scotland?s economy. 110 Men of Ridpath?s inclinations desired a federal union in which Scotland would be on more equal footing with England and legislation that would secure the status of the Scottish Kirk. Ridpath divided his pamphlet into three sections ? one voicing the Scots? religious complaints, one decrying England?s disregard of Scottish liberties, and one railing against English affronts to Scotland?s trade. He began his grievance by stating that a prevalent ?Subject of Publick Discourse? in 1705 was an English attempt to cow Scotland into submission through a show of military force, a scenario that he felt would have dire ramifications for both kingdoms. 111 Issuing an appeal to a mutual Protestant heritage and one hundred years under the same sovereign, Ridpath continued by stating that Britain?s true interests (implicitly who the British state would wage war against and what sovereign would follow Queen Anne) ?ought to be left to the Determination of the Estates of both Kingdoms.? 112 Like all Whigs, Ridpath clearly believed parliamentary sovereignty to be an inviolable aspect of British politics. But unlike Anglocentric Whigs, Ridpath thought that the Edinburgh Parliament had just as viable a claim to the 110 Colin Kidd, Subverting Scotland?s Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity, 1689-c.1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 34. 111 Ridpath, The Reducing of Scotland by Arms, 3. 112 Ibid. 40 monarch?s ear as Westminster. Due to the military implications for Scotland, Ridpath asserted that the British monarchy could not commit troops to a foreign conflict ?without first hearing what the Parliament of Scotland have to say.? 113 He believed that as monarch of Scotland, Anne?s duties included an obligation ?to Govern that Nation according to their own Laws.? 114 Thus, Scotland should be allowed the same legislative forum for voicing consent as England. Ridpath then observed how current events had resulted in pejorative depictions of Scots in the English press. He acknowledged his view that Captain Green and the crew of the Worcester were not unjustly railroaded to their deaths, and that the crisis itself ?can be no Ground for a publick Quarrel between the two Kingdoms.? 115 However, an argument ensued nonetheless, and Ridpath noted that some English incendiaries had published libels against the entire Scottish nation ?with a direct Tendency to expose all of that Country to the Fury of the Mob.? 116 As Daniel Defoe?s infamous depiction of Scottish rabble emphasized, even English contemporaries with a hankering for Union openly depicted Scots as a volatile, angry throng. 117 Ridpath?s commentary relayed that Scots were well aware of these prejudices. Exhibiting a very common early modern European mentality concerning wicked ministers? undue influence over righteous monarchs, Ridpath absolved the British monarchs from any culpability in seventeenth-century injustices. Rather, he castigated 113 Ibid., 4. 114 Ibid., 5. 115 Ibid., 4. 116 Ibid. Perhaps Ridpath used this passage to react to the depiction of Edinburgh as a city run by the impulses of a lawless mob by the author of A Letter from Scotland to a Friend in London: Containing A particular Narrative of the whole Proceedings against the Worcester and her Crew. 117 Defoe once said ?A Scottish rabble is the worst of its kind.? Quoted in Christopher A. Whatley, ?An Uninflammable People?? in Ian Donnachie and Christopher A. Whatley, eds., The Manufacture of Scottish History (Edinburgh: Polyglon, 1992), 51. 41 ?pernicious Councils? for misleading Stuart monarchs (especially Charles I) on Anglo- Scottish affairs. 118 Ridpath concluded that Scotland?s ?Religion has been invaded, or indager?d by English Influence? by every monarch since the 1603 regal merger. 119 The anxious author believed that the bigoted High Church interest in England had designs to re-impose Episcopacy on Scotland, just as William Laud had attempted to do in 1637. Ridpath considered the Anglocentric interest to have hijacked the Scottish prerogative in other ways. The most detrimental was the prohibition of English subscriptions to the Company of Scotland, which the Westminster House of Lords secured by declaring the Darien colony ?as prejudicial to England, and tending to disturb the peace with Spain.? 120 This constituted an act of betrayal for Ridpath, who thought the anti-Scottish pamphlets circulating in England in the late 1690s advocated measures ?so barbarous? that ?no good Christians would put in Execution ev?n against Infidels.? 121 Ridpath concluded his tract on English disregard of Scottish concerns by beseeching Queen Anne to heed the advice of her Scottish subjects. If England continued to ignore Scotland?s parliamentary sovereignty and sought a violent solution to the Edinburgh Parliament?s intractability, then England ?may run a great Risque of being reduc?d themselves.? 122 His thinly-veiled threat asserted that the outcome of the War of the Spanish Succession had not yet been determined, and ?A nation of some hundred Thousands of fighting Men has weight enough to turn the Balance.? 123 Such saber- 118 Ridpath, The Reducing of Scotland by Arms, 8. 119 Ibid., 9. 120 Ibid., 27. 121 Ibid., 28. 122 Ibid., 32. 123 Ibid. 42 rattling surely did nothing to assuage the anxieties of Englishmen; indeed, Ridpath?s musings probably galvanized English malice towards Scots. Outright hostility to Scottish sovereignty and fears about its potential consequences were evident in numerous pamphlets written by Englishmen in 1705. These reactionary English viewpoints were primarily attributable to the Edinburgh Parliament?s legislative agenda during 1703-4 and the Worcester crisis, which Englishmen saw as a Scottish legal fiasco. One such pamphlet was William Atwood?s The Scotch Patriot Unmask?d. Other historians have noted Atwood?s disparaging views of the Scots and his attempts to bait Scots by stressing not only English superiority, but also the potential of an English invasion of the northern kingdom, which he regarded a mere zone of English suzerainty. 124 The Scotch Patriot forcefully rebutted Ridpath?s The Reducing of Scotland by Arms. To Atwood, Ridpath?s opinions defied historical reality, as Scotland did not constitute a sovereign state, but England?s feudal property. The two pamphlets can be read as mudslinging between an avid proponent of the Scottish Act of Security and an individual assured of that legislation?s illegitimacy. Atwood?s response to Ridpath?s pamphlet showed no fear of Scottish military reprisal. A Whig scholar of English history and law, Atwood exhibited a fondness for delving into the charters and declarations of medieval England, usually to vilify Tory viewpoints and vindicate his own views of parliamentary sovereignty and resistance theories. 125 But on this occasion, he utilized his historical knowledge to debunk a fellow Whig ideologue?s belief that Scotland possessed a legislative prerogative equivalent to England?s. Atwood began his rebuttal by labeling Ridpath a rabble-rouser with designs 124 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 187. 125 Melinda Zook, Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in Late Stuart England (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 66. 43 ?to stir up his Countrymen to fight for a Point of Honor of his own Coining.? 126 Since the Scot had received ?no reproof from the Government? for his publication, Atwood felt compelled to disabuse his readers of an argument he considered to be bogus. 127 He alerted his English audience to the arguments of a Scot who purported that Scotland had ?suffered so much in our Religion, Liberty, and Trade by the Influence of English Councils? and that since 1603, Scotchmen had been denied ?any Property in their Souls, Bodies and Estates.? 128 Atwood stoked the flame of anti-Scottish sentiment by stressing the writings of a Scot who clearly believed England to be a menacing, intrusive meddler. Atwood proceeded to lambaste Ridpath for using ?the Sham Discovery of a Project for Reducing Scotland by Arms? to justify his publication of ?the Invectives of the warmest of the French Faction in Scotland.? 129 In Atwood?s estimation, Scottish nationalists such as Ridpath used a mythical past of Scottish independence from England to advocate treacherous collusion with England?s enemies. The London pamphleteer clearly thought Ridpath to be appealing to a likeminded insurrectionary fifth column in England. Indeed, according to Atwood, this constituted Ridpath?s actual reason for writing the pamphlet, as he and other Scottish writers had been directed by Jacobites and French papists to ?Write and Publish ?em in England, as if they were at the Head of an Army entring the Borders.? 130 Atwood equated Scottish autonomy with sedition, and denounced any advocate of such independence as a pawn of St. Germain and the Sun King. 126 William Atwood, The Scotch Patriot Unmask?d in Animadversions upon a Seditious Pamphlet, Intituled, The Reducing of Scotland by Arms, and Annexing it to England as a Province, considered, (London: 1705), 3. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid., 4. 129 Ibid., 5. 130 Ibid. 44 Atwood pulled no punches in his anti-Scottish diatribe. He clearly believed Scotland to be a bastion of illiberality, immoderate governance and self-imposed slavery. Atwood wrote of the Scots ?that while they pretend to Fight for their own Liberty, and that of all Europe, they are very niggardly in dispensing it to any other People, over whom they can have influence.? 131 Such observations reveal that Atwood saw the pursuit of Scottish liberties not only as a farce but also as a front to secure despotism in that country. He dismissed Ridpath?s grievances against England as misleading ramblings. These grievances constituted whining to Atwood, as he decried ?the Scots, whose Complaints on that Head are by far the most loud, and who seem to be in the best Capacity to bring England to a Temper in that Point.? 132 Atwood believed that Ridpath exhibited an alarming degree of sedition in his justification of Scotland?s independent course of action. Ironically, as a Whig, Atwood firmly believed in the inviolability of limited monarchy. However, England was the only locale in Britain where parliamentary sovereignty was applicable, as Scotland had been annexed as a province and should be dealt with accordingly by England. Extraordinarily, a radical republican embraced Tory rhetoric when it suited his political aims. Atwood hypocritically painted Ridpath as an enemy of Queen Anne?s prerogative, as he noted the Scot?s description of ?their monarchy as an Office, of Trust conferr?d upon the Prince in Conjunction with the Three Estates, who had a share with him in all those Things which Politicians call Jura Majestatis.? 133 Atwood wholeheartedly believed Scots like Ridpath to be acting against the council of their rightful monarch on some false pretense of Scottish parliamentary sovereignty. He was disgusted with the temerity of those Scots, 131 Ibid., 8. 132 Ibid. This perception aligns quite closely with those noted in Lynch, Scotland: A New History, 324. Early-eighteenth-century English cartoons often depicted the Scot as ?Sister Peg? or ?Sorely,? a nagging, ungrateful whiner whose grievances could never be redressed. 133 Ibid., 11. 45 who, rather than complying with the wishes of their divinely ordained monarch, ?would call in the French to uphold them in Fighting against God?s Providence, which from of old has fix?d the Dependency.? 134 To Atwood, Scotland not only had no legitimate parliamentary tradition, but also was attempting to trade its traditional dependence upon England for reliance on France. Thus, Atwood stressed the existence of an alliance forged by an arbitrary Catholic power and a subversive Presbyterian faction within Scotland ? an unholy pact between the religious tendencies that he found most distasteful. Reference to Scotland?s ?Dependency? promoted the image of a struggling, backwards nation that could not survive on its own without support from some greater power. Atwood continued to outline the foolishness of the Scots, who through the Act of Security were attempting to assert a sovereignty that was not theirs to claim. He plainly thought Scotland to be meddling in English affairs ?without a Conquest of England; they requiring no less than that the Successor to the English Throne, even in what concerns the Trade and Security of England, should be govern?d by the Counsels of Scotland.? 135 He believed that Scotland was overreaching the boundaries imposed on it by centuries of feudal servitude to an English master. Scotland had never conquered England, rather the reverse was true, and thus England?s decision on monarchical succession made Scotland?s opinion on the issue moot. Atwood defined the War of the Spanish Succession as an application of ?the Riches and Power of England, for the Benefit of Scotland, without any Return.? 136 Rather than continuing in his ingratitude, Atwood implored the Scot to ?consider what he owes to England, besides Local Allegiance.? 137 To Atwood, any shred of greatness exhibited by Scotland had been derived from association with 134 Ibid., 10. 135 Ibid., 14. 136 Ibid., 22. 137 Ibid. 46 England, and malcontents like Ridpath who appealed to ancient Scottish liberties lived in a world of self-deception and ingratitude. Atwood thus saw the legislation passed in Scotland in 1703-4 as proof of that nation?s lack of appreciation for England?s assistance throughout the years. Men who, like Atwood, desired a tougher line with the recalcitrant Scots surely rejoiced at Westminster?s introduction of the 1705 Alien Act. Conceived as a reactionary measure to the unacceptable Scottish legislation of 1703-4, the Alien Act was largely coercive in nature. It declared that if the Scots did not either announce a commission to treat for union or declare the Electress of Hanover as their successor by December 25, 1705, then all Scots residing in England would be declared illegal aliens, and a moratorium on the import of Scottish coal, cattle and linen would be enforced. 138 The Edinburgh Parliament agreed to initiate union negotiations in order to avoid the dire consequences that would result from the implementation of the Alien Act. Given his belief that Scotland was a pseudo-state dependent upon English (or French) welfare for its survival, Atwood probably wished the Edinburgh Parliament would have continued its contentious path. Then England could impose sanctions that would cripple Scottish trade and Scots living in England would be de-naturalized. The entirety of Atwood?s pamphlet exuded disdain for Scotland?s parliament, laws, trade, people, established religion, and sense of an independent history. Another 1705 pamphlet relayed similar sentiments concerning Scots. Obviously printed by an English High Churchman, An Address to the Clergy of the Church of England dangled the old Tory bogey of Presbytery (especially Scotland?s established 138 Riley, The Union, 121-2. 47 Kirk) as incompatible with just and proper rule. ?If you look into Scotland,? wrote the anonymous author, ?you find the Interest there not only supported but strengthened by more terrible laws than ever were before invented.? 139 The writer believed grave injustices to have been enacted against Scottish Episcopalians, as ?the Motion for a bare Toleration for them was immediately quashed.? 140 His writing indicated disgust for the intolerance of Episcopalians in Scotland and a revulsion towards the persecutions carried out by Scottish Presbyterians against their neighbors. The author of this address noted that the Scottish Presbyterians who had institutionalized bigotry did not stop there, as they ?were not barely content to deprive all others of the Freedom of their Religious Worship, but must have the highest Security they could think of for their own.? 141 He then elaborated on a clause of the Scottish Act of Security that ?makes it High Treason in any of the Subjects of that Kingdom to Quarrel, Impunge or Endeavor by Writing, malicious or advised Speaking, or other open Act or Deed, to alter or innovate the Claim of Right, or any article thereof.? 142 In doing so, the writer accentuated the differences he detected in Scottish and English society. While England was a progressive, tolerant land where Her Majesty?s subjects could freely express their opinions on all manner of issues, Scotland was a bigoted, repressive nation lorded over by a Presbytery that would vigorously censor any opinion contrary to its own. According to this writer, however, the Presbyterians would not be content with the domination of Scotland, and would simultaneously pursue a similar tyrannical establishment in England. The vehicle for the promotion of Presbytery in England was, in 139 An Address to the Clergy of the Church of England (London: 1705), 4-5. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 140 Ibid., 5. 141 Ibid. 142 Ibid., 5-6. 48 this writer?s opinion, the parliamentary Union of England and Scotland. He argued that as both nations debated the terms of such a Union, the Scots ?will insist most upon the Points in Religions; that they will never rest with settling their Model within their Kingdom only.? 143 The pamphleteer then reminded his audience that ?many of them still think the Nation under the Obligation of the Solemn League and Covenant,? a compact that demanded that its adherents ?not only to maintain their own Establishment, but to extirpate yours.? 144 To this observer, the Union was a vile scheme contrived by covenanting pseudo-patriots in both countries who sought to overthrow the existing order. Issuing a blanket condemnation of the Whigs, the pamphleteer explained that some Englishmen would ?readily make the Bargain with the Scots at your Cost.? 145 This high- flying polemicist clearly believed that English Dissenters comprised a domestic fifth column that would inevitably collude with Scottish Presbyterians to destroy Episcopacy in England. To the man who penned this address, a nefarious Scottish Presbyterian establishment would serve as the model for a similar ecclesiastical structure soon to be implemented in England via the Union. Scotland?s religious establishment represented the crux of the problem, for without the Scots? bad example, the entire island could be united in Episcopacy. The terminology chosen by this pamphleteer was quite dramatic; he framed the ongoing ecclesio-political conflict in the language of good versus evil. Rather than describing the conflict as one that would eventually be resolved, this fellow believed ?the Contest would not be betwixt Whig and Tory, Presbytery and Episcopacy, but betwixt Religion and Atheism, God and Belial.? 146 In this man?s viewpoint, the 143 Ibid., 6. 144 Ibid., 6-7. 145 Ibid., 7. 146 Ibid., 13. 49 d ition of Union would carry the triumph of pan-Brittanic Presbyterian devilry. Although less spectacular than his millenarian end-game scenario, the writer also believed that Union would result in substantial financial losses for country gentlemen. Sensing an impending reallocation of resources, he predicted that ?private Men?s Fortunes would be Oppress? to supply their Expences, their Families dishonour?d to gratify their Lusts.? 147 This writer believed Scots to be an impecunious yet rapacious race who would initiate a requis of England?s wealth for their own aggrandizement. But his anxieties centered primarily on religion, as he fervently wished ?we may not live to see? the Establishment Presbytery in England.? 148 Although this writer?s fears never materialized during the eighteenth century, English prejudices towards Scottish institutions, especially the Courts and the Presbyterian Kirk, persisted primarily due to the stipulations of the Union of 1707. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid., 16. 50 Chapter 3: Reactions to Union During late 1706 and early 1707 the English and Scottish Parliaments ratified the Treaty of Union. The Parliament of Scotland adjourned for the last time on April 28, 1707, and the Union was formally implemented three days later. 149 Scotland effectively abolished its own legislative autonomy, opting instead to send 45 MPs to Westminster ? an agreement that assuredly diminished Scotland?s capacity for independent political activity. 150 But all political scenarios contain some degree of compromise, and the Union of 1707 was no exception. Scotland benefited (although not immediately) from the Union as the merger created the largest free-trade area in Europe. 151 Scotland thereafter enjoyed exemption from the hated Navigation Acts and unimpeded access to England?s lucrative colonial plantation trade. Indeed, economic concessions to the Scots dominated the text of the final Treaty, as fifteen of the twenty-five Articles of Union dealt with monetary issues. 152 Among these economic Articles was the Equivalent, a compensatory fee paid to Scots for taking on part of England?s national debt and to reimburse some of the Company of Scotland investors that had lost considerable sums investing in the Darien debacle. 153 P.W.J. Riley has emphasized the role that widespread bribery and Scottish 149 Ferguson, Scotland?s Relations, 266-7. 150 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 188-9. 151 T.C. Smout, ?The Road to Union,? in Geoffrey Holmes, ed. Britain After the Glorious Revolution (London: St. Martin?s Press, 1969), 176. 152 Lynch, Scotland: A New History, 309. 51 venality played in securing the Union?s passage. 154 Regardless of whether Union constituted a ?political job? or not, it established the political and economic integration of England and Scotland, laying the foundation for the modern British state (if not the modern British nation). But to many Englishmen, the incorporating Union appeared less than complete, as Scottish institutions were not assimilated with their English counterparts. Remembering the catastrophes of Charles I?s attempts at ecclesiastical uniformity, Westminster parliamentarians wisely agreed to recognize the perpetual autonomy of the Scottish Presbyterian Kirk from the Episcopal Church of England. 155 Also, Scotland?s unique legal structure, and its system of private heritable jurisdictions that gave Scottish landholders a disproportionate amount of legal influence, remained untouched. 156 The Union thus left seminal institutions intact in Scotland ? a condition that reinforced a Scottish sense of separateness. This institutional divide would fuel English anxieties about Scots and their potential for independent action as the eighteenth century unfolded. In the direct aftermath of the Union, Englishmen from both sides of the political spectrum weighed in on its impact. What follows is a case study focusing on two individuals who wrote extensively on the Scots and the Union during the early eighteenth century. While neither man represented the typical opinions of either Whigs or Tories at this time (if such cut-and-dry viewpoints existed), both exhibited ideological tendencies that placed them within the framework of what could be considered ?Whig? or ?Tory? philosophy during the early eighteenth century. Daniel Defoe, the ?Whig? subject, spent over a year before the Union in Edinburgh promoting the idea of parliamentary 153 Allan, Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 10. 154 Riley, The Union, 254-9. 155 Allan, Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 10. 156 Ibid., 18. 52 incorporation for Queen Anne?s ministry; his first-hand experience with the Scottish people and tireless pen provide valuable, insightful observations on Scots. Charles Leslie, the ?Tory? subject, never visited Scotland, but spent years opposing parliamentary union; his publications reflected the arguments and anxieties of anti-Unionists. While in many respects both men resided on opposite ends of the political spectrum (Leslie was an ordained deacon and a religious zealot, Defoe a religious moderate who shunned the ministry for life as a tradesmen and writer), both men?s writing exuded a decidedly Anglocentric tone. Notwithstanding their political differences, some striking similarities existed in both men?s perceptions of and prejudices towards Scots. Among these likenesses was the belief that Scots were dangerous, backwards, savage, inherently rebellious and inferior in every capacity to Englishmen. In addition, both men desired English-style reforms for Scottish institutions. But the writers wanted changes in different Scottish institutions. Defoe supported Anglicization of the stagnant Scottish economy, while Leslie wanted a more Arminian Scottish Kirk. The lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695 released an eager group of publishers from the imperative of acquiring a government-sanctioned license to print. They subsequently produced extensive amounts of fresh-printed information. Many of the new publications criticized contemporary politics, as an era of political instability began after the ratification of the Triennial Act in December 1694 and the frequent parliamentary elections that followed its implementation. 157 Thus ensued the era of the classical political hack, which spawned such journalistic luminaries as Richard Steele, Charles Davenant, and the first novelist himself, Daniel Defoe. As J.A. Downie has outlined, rather than pursuing a policy of suppression and censorship, Queen Anne?s ministry, or more precisely her Secretary of State Robert Harley, harnessed the free press to establish 157 J.H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675-1725 (London: MacMillan, 1967), 44-8. Plumb dubbed this era ?The Rage of Party?. 53 the first government propaganda machine. Defoe played a pivotal role not only in the formation, maintenance and message of Harley?s political brainchild, but also in the Union scheme that Harley promoted. 158 Before 1696, most English periodicals resembled the bland, uneditorialized London Gazette, which only relayed reports of British diplomats abroad, war dispatches and the details of treaties without providing any critical analysis of foreign and domestic events. 159 Early eighteenth-century political tracts like Defoe?s represented an entirely new beast, as they provided personal interpretations of events for readers to adopt, contest or debate, and created a previously unknown milieu of political commentary. As a moderate non-conformist, Defoe consistently advocated freedom of religion and of the press. He opposed the practice of occasional conformity, whereby Dissenters could enjoy civil office without regular participation in Anglican sacraments. Nevertheless, Defoe considered the extreme measures proposed in a 1702 bill to crack down on occasional conformity as harmful, prejudiced, and needlessly harsh. This legislation mandated the revocation of Dissenters? offices and the introduction of heavy, escalating fines to those who kept their offices. Before the crippling combination of debt and prosecution for seditious libel forced him to become a government pamphleteer, Defoe penned a short pamphlet, The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England. In it, he portrayed King William as a constitutional monarch, lampooned the idea of hereditary monarchy, lauded contract theory and glorified the sovereignty of the people. 160 In the opening passage of The Original Power, Defoe lauded William as ?the People?s King,? and subsequently described William?s government as ?being devolved from, and centered 158 Downie, J.A. Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 57-79. 159 Barker, Newspapers, Politics and English Society, 105. 160 Paula R. Backschieder, ?Defoe, Daniel,? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com. 54 in the Consent of your People.? 161 While the vagaries of his career prevented any neat categorization of Defoe as a Whig, his opponents (especially the implacable Charles Leslie) remained assured that he consistently championed the causes of toleration, Low Church values and limitations on the monarchy. Due to writing a vituperative attack on High Church beliefs entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, Defoe had to go into hiding in 1702 and ultimately appealed to the government to avoid the pillory. It was on this pretense that Harley (then a member of First Lord of the Treasury Sidney Godolphin?s cabinet) approached the adroit wordsmith about working as a government propagandist. The pen-for-hire quickly agreed to Harley?s proposition (in all fairness, his choices were to cooperate or be jailed) and established himself as the government?s mouthpiece through his Review (1704-13) and many other publications. Through The Review, Defoe raised the level of debate concerning domestic politics, foreign affairs and economics. 162 As incorporating union with Scotland began to be viewed as a prerequisite to political stability in the British Isles by Anne?s ministry, Defoe?s efforts began to focus on promoting the concept of union. The issue of union provoked a minor pamphlet war. A sizeable, noisy opposition to union, spearheaded by Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, harshly criticized the idea of parliamentary incorporation and stressed Scotland?s traditional autonomy from an oppressive, arrogant and high-handed England. To counter these claims and ease the passage of the Union, Harley dispatched his propagandist extraordinaire to Edinburgh in 1706. 161 Daniel Defoe, The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England, Examined and Asserted (London: 1769), 5. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 162 Backschieder, ?Defoe, Daniel,? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com. 55 Defoe?s musings on the Scots provide perhaps the quintessential examples of English attitudes towards the Scottish people during Anne?s reign. 163 Defoe was exposed to Scots quite directly, which is more than can be said of the majority of English writers, who were quick to ridicule, deride and denigrate their northern neighbors despite often lacking any exposure to the Scottish way of life. However, an inherent weakness hinders assessment of Defoe?s commentary on Scots at face value. His employment by the government as an advocate of the Union suggests that much of his commentary should be viewed with skepticism. Defoe?s goal in Scotland was promoting the Union?s speedy passage, thus his flowery language, praise of Scottish attributes and persuasive overtures can be construed as a mere means to an end. Despite (as we shall see) his rather poorly- feigned awe and over-exaggerated bombastic acclaim of the Scots, no man who ever called the Scots a ?hardened, refractory and terrible people? can ever be presented as anything but a staunch Anglocentrist. 164 Eighteenth-century Englishmen generally felt their culture to be more advanced than any in the world. A strong sense of English cultural superiority exuded from tracts written about the world?s other peoples. However, Englishmen viewed other Western Europeans as somewhat advanced, primarily because they inhabited powerful rival countries. 165 Defoe plainly believed the Scots to be militarily formidable. In Caledonia, a poem penned during his stay in Edinburgh, Defoe ballyhooed Scotland?s prominent role 163 However, other pamphleteers also weighed in. Jonathan Swift, another Harley acolyte, declared the Scots to be ?a poor, fierce, Northern people? who were parasites to the English host that would jettison the Act of Union and endanger the Protestant Succession. Quoted in Downie, Robert Harley and the Press, 180. 164 Quoted in Whatley, The Scots, 12. 165 Those native to Africa (with the notable exception of the North African Moors) and the Americas were no military threat to England, and consequently were viewed as primitive cultures, fit only for enslavement or colonial domination. Found in Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 7-8. Britons believed Africans to be chattel property even before England began colonizing North America and shipping multitudes of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. See Walvin, Making the Black Atlantic, 24. 56 in European military history ?They taught the Swedes themselves to Fight/ And spight of Dulness arm?d the Muscovite.? 166 This militant reputation coupled with a tradition of fiercely opposing occupation meant that Scotland was no easy meat for any who aspired to conquer her. But culturally, Scots were uncouth, barbarous and savage to most Englishmen. Defoe compared them with ?the Savage Madagascar Moors/ Campeche Indians, or Circassian Boors [Crimean Tartars].? 167 While he concluded that Scots compared favorably with such cultural backwaters, ?Polite his Manners, and his Modern Dress,? the fact that Defoe would even judge the Scots against these cultures provides a clear indication of what he thought of Scottish culture. 168 To Defoe, the Scots remained savages, albeit exhibiting some Western European refinements that made them superior to the tribal denizens of Madagascar, the Americas or the Near East. Caledonia appears to be a literary appeal urging the rebirth of Scotland?s past glory and wealth. This ancient prosperity could be achieved through English revocation of economic sanctions on Scotland. But England?s abandonment of these repressive measures relied conditionally on Scotland?s acquiescence to an incorporating Union. Throughout his eloquent verse, Defoe lauded the hardiness, toughness and sanguinity of the Scottish race. He likened the Scots to elementally impervious, stalwart rocks. Defoe?s language throughout the poem strongly implied his perception of Scots as hardened but virtuous savages, a fairly common preconception during the eighteenth century. The figure of the Scottish noble savage exhibited both positive and negative traits, as he was perceived to be moral, steadfast and militarily formidable while conversely backwards, ignorant of modern ways and primitive by nature. In a subsequent verse, Defoe again 166 Daniel Defoe, Caledonia, &c. A poem in honour of Scotland, and the Scots nation. In three parts., (Edinburgh: 1707), 27. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 167 Ibid., 20. 168 Ibid. 57 exhibits his presumption of Scottish ignorance and present irrationality, as he wrote ?For Ignorance and Fear make Cowards run/ Into those Dangers they?r afraid to shun/ Discretion only makes Men safe and bold/ While Fears the Remedies withhold/ Fear holds the Gates of Reason fast.? 169 In his view, the only rational, reasonable course for Scotland was political assimilation with England. Defoe?s line of reasoning in this stanza revealed that he thought that the Scots lacked an empirical basis for holding out against Union, and must alter their position to avoid catastrophe. Later in the poem, Defoe decried the feudal social structure of Highland Scotland, chiding ?The Little Chiefs, for what they call their due/ Eat up the Farme, and eat the Farmer too/ Suck the Life-Blood, of Tennant and Estate/ And needless Poverty to both create.? 170 While a majority of contemporary and modern observers would agree with Defoe?s disparagement of feudal landholding, manorial economics continued virtually uninterrupted in Highland Scotland after the Union. Thus, even the pro-Unionist Defoe would have been uncomfortable with economic realities in Scotland after the Union. In his mind, feudalism represented the link between Scotland?s savagery and economic woes; emulation of the modern, credit-based English economy could jolt its outmoded Scottish counterpart into the new fiscal world. Defoe expounded on Scottish economic stagnancy throughout the poem. Noting the plethora of natural resources available to Scotsmen, in particular the rich bounty of the oceans surrounding Scotland, Defoe wrote ?The bounteous Ocean fraught with native Gold/ Sav?d it for thee; by its own Curse, the Cold.? 171 To Defoe, the Scots, whose resilient constitutions could withstand the bitter northern weather, could claim this maritime treasure trove and benefit from its wealth accordingly. But explicit in his verse was the sense that Scotland had refrained from 169 Ibid., 10. 170 Ibid., 23. 171 Ibid., 12. 58 harnessing the sea?s bounty. He implored the Scots ?to change the meanness of thy State/ Bids thee, when e?re thou wilt, be rich and great.? 172 He directly correlated Scotland?s impoverished lot with its inability to tap into its natural resources, and beseeched early eighteenth-century Scots to embrace maritime commerce, or else desist from decrying their current plight. He warned that ?If they reject the Bounties of the Sea/ Bid ?em Complain no more of Poverty.? 173 Not surprisingly, Defoe refrained from mentioning English legislation which stultified Scottish trade. After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the English Parliament passed the Navigation Acts, which relegated Scottish ships to the status of foreign vessels and imposed cripplingly high protective duties on Scottish imports to the English market. 174 By the early eighteenth century, many Scots felt that English measures had sapped their nation?s economic vitality and feared a closer economic relationship with England. Likewise, many Englishmen remained apprehensive of the closer economic relationship with Scotland that Union was to bring. In 1604, an Englishman wrote that ?in the company of the rich (England), the poor (Scotland) can be no losers; and to the contrary, rich men shall wax poor if they commerce with the needy.? 175 The works of early eighteenth-century English writers echoed similar sentiments towards Scotland?s economy. Defoe?s poetry strongly indicated that he perceived pre-1707 Scotland as economically backwards. Rather than noting England?s role in wrecking the Scottish economy, Defoe concluded that blame lay squarely with Scotland, noting ?What Pains has Scotland taken to be Poor.? 176 Instead of English meddling, Scottish economic 172 Ibid., 13. 173 Ibid., 15. 174 Levack, Formation, 150. 175 Quoted in Ibid., 161-2. 176 Defoe, Caledonia, 17. 59 inefficiency was to blame for Caledonia?s current woes, and Scots were foolish for not capitalizing on their natural oceanic inheritance. Defoe specifically attacked Scottish reluctance to embrace commercial success in later stanzas, twice querying ?When Caledonians, when will you be wise?? 177 Defoe argued that for Scotland to progress towards a modern economy, it must abandon its outmoded, imprudent, deeply-ingrained economic system. He implied that the post-Union British economic system must closely resemble England?s current system, rather than Scotland?s retrogressive one. Another of Defoe?s poems, The Fifteen Comforts of a Scotch-Man, left no doubt that he saw the Union as a means of securing England?s back-door from Franco-Jacobite encroachments. He plainly stated that ?our uniting is a check to France? in the second verse of the poem. 178 Thus, to Defoe, England pursued Union because of her political and military interests. There was also an economic element to this argument. To Defoe, English security hinged on a tighter relationship with Scotland, and assisting the aggrandizement of Scotland?s economy would prevent Scots from seeking aid from ?Poor louse, beggar?d France & half-starv?d Spain.? 179 Scotland could never benefit from economic emulation of what Defoe saw as the impoverished Catholic feudal powers; for Scotland to rescue itself from its feudal economy, it must adopt the English economic model. He asserted that only when ?St. Andrew and St. George joyn/ Upon the Ocean they?ll in Glory shine.? 180 Defoe saw the incorporating Union as the preliminary step in the establishment of a wider British maritime trading empire ? one that would make the powers of continental Europe shudder. He therefore promoted the tightening of England?s relations with Scotland as a means to further England?s economic and military interests. 177 Ibid., 17-18. 178 Defoe, The Fifteen Comforts, 2. 179 Ibid., 3. 180 Ibid. 60 Scotland?s woolen trade with France was damaged by the War of the Spanish Succession and there was little enthusiasm in Scotland for taxation to fund a war against a sought- after trading partner. 181 According to Defoe, parliamentary Union could be used to transform an autonomous Scottish agenda to one that conformed to English concerns and priorities. His designs for Scottish economic affairs were thus less pro-Scottish than they were pro-English and anti-French. Not only did some Englishmen think that Union could protect them from a French invasion, they also believed it to be a means of furthering Protestant interests. However, different Englishmen had varied interpretations of what constituted a reasonable church settlement. Defoe lauded a distinctly Scottish Presbyterian establishment. Indeed, he used a pamphlet defending the Scottish Presbyterian establishment to attack his High Church enemies in England. Throughout An Historical Account of the Bitter Sufferings, and Melancholly Circumstances of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, Defoe asserted that the Scottish Presbyterian Kirk had been unjustly slandered by Episcopalians in England to the point that even their natural Dissenting allies in England thought the Scottish Kirk oppressive and arbitrary. In his commentary, Defoe referred to the abolition of the Episcopacy and the subsequent expulsion of Episcopalian ministers by the Scottish Kirk after the Glorious Revolution. 182 By the early eighteenth century, many Englishmen saw the expulsions as a vivid example of Scottish recalcitrance and aversion to order. To Defoe, high-flying Englishmen had used these events to their political advantage, and charged the Church of Scotland ?of being tyrannical, of a persecuting Spirit, and the like, serv?d the High Church Cause in England a great many ways.? 183 181 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 180-1. 182 Ferguson, Scotland?s Relations, 170-3. 183 Daniel Defoe, An Historical Account of the Bitter Sufferings, and Melancholly Circumstances of the Episcopal Church in Scotland (Edinburgh: 1707), 6-7. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 61 Instead of being persecutory, Defoe called the expulsions ?an Accident of the Revolution? and those expelled by the established Scottish Kirk were either ?Scandalous, Ignorant, and Immoral persons? or ?Unqualified.? 184 The ejected Episcopal clergy had not been treated poorly due to any refusal to recognize the Established Kirk; rather, the Kirk expelled them because ?they would not take the Oaths to the Government, nor pray for King William and Queen Mary.? 185 Defoe thus noted a direct correlation between the dissenting Scottish Episcopalian ministers who refused to swear allegiance to the government and the Non-Juring English Episcopalians. This assortment of Anglican clergy and laypersons refused to swear allegiance to William and Mary directly after the Glorious Revolution because they believed their claim to the throne could not be legally substantiated. The Non-Jurors? refusal to pledge support for the Williamite regime led Defoe (and many contemporaries) to believe the group to be composed entirely of Jacobites. Such traitorous Jacobite elements had been righteously driven out of the Scottish Church Establishment, one that Defoe praised as ?the most Moderate, the farthest from Persecution, and the most Forbearing of any Establish?d church in the World.? 186 However, one cannot help but conclude that Defoe really admired the Scottish Kirk?s intolerance for Non-Jurors rather than its acceptance of Dissent, and that he wished that the Non-Juring element were expunged from the Anglican Church. Defoe detected the presence of a dangerous, treacherous element in the English political landscape, one which he thought contrary to a proper religious settlement. He was not reluctant to use the example of the Scottish Kirk as a model for correct procedure in the Church of England, nor to refer to Scottish events as a way to damage his political enemies. Thus, post-Revolution Scotland (in Defoe?s mind) became a staging ground for 184 Ibid., 13. 185 Ibid., 17. 186 Ibid., 11. 62 pre-Union English political disputes. He showed little compunction in using the Scottish religious settlement to attack his political opponents in England. Scottish issues in and of themselves were not as important to Defoe as was their political usefulness in an English context. Englishmen that espoused political ideas radically different from Defoe?s also tended to view Scottish politics in an Anglocentric light. Perhaps Charles Leslie most accurately represented the genuine embodiment of High Church Tory Party values in late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century England. Named after the martyred Charles I, the conservative, Irish-born pamphleteer and Church of Ireland deacon valued above all deference to monarchical authority, exaltation of the established church and the eradication of the enthusiastic, Dissenting, non-hierarchical presbyteries that enjoyed an increasing number of civil liberties after the Revolution. In contrast to Defoe, Leslie identified with the Non-Jurors. His political ideals generally mirrored those of the Tories of his day, although he would become disillusioned with the party after they regained power in 1710, primarily because its leadership by then accepted the Hanoverian Succession. As a Non-Juror, Leslie viewed the 1701 Act of Settlement that legalized the Hanoverian Succession to be just as illegitimate as the 1689 accession of William and Mary to the British throne. Non-Jurors asserted that James II and his lineage were the rightful rulers of the British Isles. Due to these convictions and despite Queen Anne?s staunch orthodox Anglicanism, it can be surmised that Leslie believed (as other Non- Jurors did) her claim to the throne to be de facto rather than de jure and thus quite flimsy. Perhaps his initial support for her during the first years of her reign stemmed from the 63 hope that she would abjure the Act of Settlement and declare the Old Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart, her heir and the future James III. 187 Notwithstanding his deviation from the Tory leadership over whether or not to accept the Hanoverian Succession, Leslie advocated positions that can only be described as Tory platforms. The majority of English Tories advocated complete obedience to the Church of England and uniform practice of its rituals by all Englishmen. After the Glorious Revolution, those of Dissenting faiths were allowed to hold public office if they partook in Anglican sacraments once a year. Men like Charles Leslie believed this condition of sacramental laxity, called occasional conformity, had resulted in Covenanters and other ?false brethren? infiltrating the government. 188 Along with the High Church divine Henry Sacheverell, Leslie spearheaded the Tory outcry against the practice. Tories believed that rather than representing the true interests of landed English gentlemen, these ?false brethren? would misallocate gentlemen?s resources in order to conduct costly wars in the interest of European Presbyterianism. Leslie also championed the cause of passive non-resistance. 189 As the philosophical inversion of John Locke?s political ideology, passive non-resistance stated that loyal subjects must endure the prerogative of even a tyrannical monarch. 190 Any conception of a limited monarchy constituted an abomination to those espousing passive non-resistance. However, some London preachers, most notably Benjamin Hoadly, had warmed to Locke?s teachings and believed limitations to monarchical authority to be not only legal, but preferable to unfettered rule. Not surprisingly, Hoadly became one of Leslie?s favorite targets for abuse. 187 Robert D. Cornwall, ?Leslie, Charles,? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com. 188 Ibid. 189 Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, 23. 190 Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne (London: St. Martin?s Press, 1967), 58-9. 64 During the first decade of the eighteenth century, Leslie produced numerous tracts regarding current political, religious, economic and military issues, many of which reveal his Jacobite bias. A Stuart man through-and-through, the Non-Juror certainly yearned for anything that would cause the Hanoverian Succession to fail and assist in the restoration of the prince over the water. Leslie saw the incorporating parliamentary Union of 1707 as a Whig achievement orchestrated in part to assure the Hanoverians? acceptance in Scotland. He thus saw the Union as an obstacle to the re-establishment of proper royal authority in the British Isles. Leslie thought that the political establishment during the first decade of the eighteenth century (especially after Queen Anne?s patience with the Tories wore thin) appeared increasingly representative of the Whig values that he deplored. This meant that to Leslie, the English political nation was moving towards a disturbing, uncontrollable, unnatural parliamentary sovereignty and away from the hereditary, ordered and absolute rule that he associated with English strength and divine ordinance. Union was the manifestation of ideals that Leslie considered dangerous. The forum for a majority of Leslie?s opinions was his noted periodical, The Rehearsal, which he printed to counter the abundance of Whig and Low Church affiliated pamphlets produced in London during the first decade of the eighteenth century. He devoted much of his writing to challenging those he believed to have espoused reckless and foolhardy Whig ideals such as support for occasional conformity and increased parliamentary prerogative. In his bi-weekly publication, Leslie continually blamed seventeenth-century Covenanting Dissenters, whom he associated with the Whigs, for the abolition of Episcopacy and monarchy during the English Civil War and for the turmoil of the mid-seventeenth century. 191 Amongst Leslie?s sworn enemies were the moderate Daniel Defoe, the Low Church Clergyman and Whig hero Hoadly (who used Scripture to 191 Cornwall, ?Leslie, Charles,? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com. 65 justify the doctrine of active resistance to tyrannical monarchy), and the ardent proponent of natural rights John Tutchin, whose publication The Observator Leslie positively reviled. The format of The Rehearsal is that of a discourse between an ?Observator? (who represented deceptive and hazardous Whiggery) and a ?Country-man? (a good- hearted but gullible country gentlemen who represented traditional English values), and the occasionally interspersed comments of the ?Rehearsal? (who probably represented Leslie himself). 192 During the five years that he produced The Rehearsal (1705-1709), Leslie wrote at length about the Scots. The years of his newspaper?s publication encompass the events leading up to the Union as well as the Union itself, a time when Scottish affairs assumed a place at the forefront of English discourse and concerns. Throughout his Scottish commentaries, Leslie consistently placed political events in Scotland in their religious context (as he did such events in England). To Leslie, the eradication of Episcopacy in Scotland after the Glorious Revolution and the establishment of the Presbyterian Kirk constituted a cause c?l?bre for the disorderly Dissenting rabble there as well as the Low Church divines in England who sought a similar settlement in the south. Leslie wholeheartedly believed that the Presbyterian clergy and laypeople of the early eighteenth century in both England and Scotland sought the re-establishment of the Solemn League and Covenant of the English Civil War. In the very first issue of his The Rehearsal of January 1705, Leslie?s Whiggish Observator boldly asserted that ?WE are Join?d by our Dear Brethren of Scotland, who Reign Triumphantly over the Church, and Persecute her, without Moderation!? 193 Thus, Leslie implied that a coalition had formed between anti-clerical Dissenting elements in both England and Scotland. Despite the Low 192 Charles Leslie, Rehearsal of Observator, &c., January 6, 1705. 193 Ibid. 66 Church call for moderation, Leslie believed that the alliance would persecute the adherents of Anglicanism and propagate schisms from the rightful established church. Leslie was anxious that such a condition might come to pass in England, and strongly believed that actors in both countries were colluding to such an end. To him the self-professed ?moderates? in both Scotland and England were the basest of hypocrites who fervently desired to eradicate Anglican religion and install their own established church. Leslie and other proponents of ecclesiastical hierarchy venerated the work of Robert Filmer. In his Patriarcha, which was written around 1630 but published posthumously in 1680, Filmer outlined the deferential hierarchy that Englishmen of Leslie?s persuasion believed to be the foundation of a just, ordered society. 194 In the society preferred by High Church Tories like Leslie, the family subordinated itself to the father, subjects deferred to their sovereign monarch, and the faithful never questioned their ordained bishop. 195 Any breakdown in these deferential relationships could result in the catastrophic unraveling of society, and English and Scottish Presbyterians would then revel in the chaos of a world turned upside down ? again. Leslie obviously saw the establishment of Presbytery in Scotland as an affront to the patriarchal society that he favored. His disgust was apparent when he described the events surrounding the Scottish Presbyterian convention of 1689 and the expulsion of the clergymen: ?the Episcopal Clergy who had been so Inhumanely and Barbarously (as they speak) Rabbl?d, and Forc?d to Fly, sent? to the then Prince of Orange, to Implore his Protection from the Violent MOBB.? 196 After this request of protection, the future 194 In Patriarcha, Sir Robert Filmer argued that the power wielded by modern kings was granted to them by God and that any attempt to subvert that authority constituted an attack on God?s will. He refuted the arguments of those that claimed that popular consent was the basis of political authority in society. He also asserted that England?s parliamentary tradition rested on historically shaky ground, and that parliamentary privilege only existed at the pleasure of the English monarch. Glenn Burgess, ?Filmer, Sir Robert,? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxfordnb.com. 195 Kenyon, Revolution Principles, 62-3. 196 Charles Leslie, Rehearsal of Observator, &c., January 6, 1705. 67 monarch William exhorted the Episcopal Clergy to seek protection from ?the Convention or Meeting of Estates? which was not to meet until two to three months later. 197 Without the necessary protection of the government, the clergy became the victims of the capricious crowd and were ?Mobb?d out before that Day? while their churches were ?Declar?d VACANT.? 198 By this account of events, a villainous Dutch Calvinist usurper abused his newly-gained powers (which were technically not even his yet) as King of Scotland to order the vulnerable, loyal and deferential Episcopal Clergy to seek protection from a representative body that was not scheduled to meet for a few months. Implicit in this commentary is a sense that William knew that the Presbyterian mob would orchestrate the ouster of the defenseless clergymen, and allowed the browbeating to proceed because of his desire for a Presbyterian establishment in Scotland. Leslie?s interpretation of the banishment of the Scottish Episcopal clergy belied reality, however. Despite his Calvinism, William III favored an Episcopal church structure because of the monarchical control over religious authority that it imparted, and also because religious divergence would engender conflict between his two kingdoms. 199 Nevertheless, Leslie (and probably many other Tories) perceived the existence of an unholy pan-Britannic (and, because of William?s Dutch roots, pan-European) Calvinist alliance dedicated to the decimation of his beloved established Anglican Church. His self-justifying historical account depicted a majority of Scots coalescing into a violent mob that inhumanely and barbarously pursued the unjust persecution of an Episcopal minority. Views of the Scot as bestial and savage were not uncommon in the first decade of the eighteenth century and later. Ironically, Leslie shared these perceptions with his Low Church rival Daniel Defoe. As devout political ideologues tend to do, Leslie ignored 197 Ibid. 198 Ibid. 199 Ferguson, Scotland?s Relations, 170. 68 the fact that a mob mentality existed on both sides of the political coin; he positively delighted in the violent activities of the like-minded Tory London rabble. This riotous, dangerous crowd pulled down houses that hosted Dissenting services, beat John Tutchin to death in 1707 and in a few years would amass in a popular furor over the trial of the High Church firebrand Henry Sacheverell. 200 Leslie?s belief in the political ascendancy of a menacing Presbyterian political faction in Scotland became clearer in an issue of The Rehearsal published the following month, in February 1705. In it Leslie assured his audience through the ?Country-man? that ?we had nothing to fear from that Nation [Scotland]? but plenty to dread from ?the Wicked Faction, that has Reign?d too Long there, and Here likewise: And brought great Dishonour upon both Nations, all the World over, for that Rebellion, Betraying, Selling, and Murdering the best king ever sat on their Throne.? 201 This ?Bloody Faction Confederated as Brethren in Both the Nations? not only conspired to execute their sovereign monarch, but also presented an image of the people of Britain as needlessly rebellious to other Europeans. 202 After acquiring unapproachable power during the Interregnum, Leslie believed that this Covenant oversaw ?the Utter Destruction of the Church, the King, and the Laws; with the most Miserable Massacre of the Best Part of the Nation; and Consummate Tyranny, and Oppression of all the Rest, in such Arbitrary manner, as not to be Equal?d in the History of any other People.? 203 Leslie?s account of the aftermath of the Civil War is unambiguous in attributing responsibility for the events and turmoil of the mid-seventeenth century. 200 Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, 31-2. 201 Charles Leslie, The Rehearsal, February 3, 1705. 202 Ibid. 203 Ibid. 69 h- enth- ing all Moreover, Leslie warned his readers of a similar disaster in the early eighteenth century unless both England and Scotland took stringent counter-measures. He remained assured that this dangerous group of Covenanters, imbued with its insubordinate principles ?have Grasp?d at the Power by the same Artifices, and upon the same Pretences, which they made use of in Forty One.? 204 He drew a direct correlation between the political techniques of men like John Hampden and John Pym during the 1640s and the rhetoric of early eighteenth-century Presbyterians. To Leslie, eighteent century Whig pamphleteers strengthened the Old Cause of the Covenant by depicting orthodox Anglicans ?as Papists, Jacobites and what not.? 205 He believed the present Dissenters to be utilizing deceptive rhetoric that had originated with the mid-sevente century Covenanters. He thought that eighteenth-century Dissenters were decry monarchists (men of Leslie?s political leanings) as tools of arbitrary government and the papacy. Leslie?s ?Country-man? then describes the amassing of forty thousand armed men in the Borderlands. Of these ?two-thirds are Scots? who joined with their ?dear Brethren at Newcastle.? 206 To the polemicist, such a gathering heralded the coming of the ?Forty- One again in lively Colors,? as this group would ?think fit to Bring their Covenant again into England, as they Did before, and Declare, That they must Do it yet once Again, for All our Goods!? 207 Whether his views were alarmist or not, Leslie perceived the presence of a primarily Scottish force prepared to invade England, unite with their religious brethren there, and proceed to pilfer the property of English gentlemen. Evident throughout Leslie?s commentary is his belief that this armed group represented a fifth 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid. 206 Ibid. 207 Ibid. 70 column of Presbyterian rebels in the British Isles. Although Leslie foresaw Englishmen aiding, abetting and even joining this impending armed opposition, Scots constituted the majority of the rebellious faction. Leslie?s description of the interaction between the English and Scottish Covenanters left no doubt who he thought were the senior and junior partners. Leslie wrote that the covenanting ?Faction in Scotland have always been Made the Forlorn-hope, to Begin There, what was Design?d to be brought in Here, by the Main- Body.? 208 If the proposed Presbyterian rebellion were to fail in Scotland, ?then the Faction Here have their Part, to Screen them, and Excuse them, till they shall be Ready to Begin again.? 209 A true Anglocentrist, Leslie assumed Scots to be dim-witted patsies who followed England?s lead. To him, the real danger of this insurrectionary movement lay within its cunning English Whig brainchild that controlled the Covenanters, not the obtuse, easily-manipulated Scottish shock troops that comprised the majority of the Covenanting body. Thus, even in the enactment of despised treasonable activities, Scots looked to England for the lead. When viewed in this light, Scottish Presbyterians were simply a tool in their English brethren?s quest to establish a Commonwealth. Leslie concluded that the only way to curtail covenanting activity in Scotland was ?to Curb the Faction Here, which is the Spring, and the Director. The Root is in England, tho? it Bursts forth first generally in Scotland.? 210 Later editions of The Rehearsal showed that, to Leslie, the parliamentary Union of 1707 represented a victory for the Covenanters, and (conversely) a disaster for English monarchists and country gentlemen. He noted that attacks on the Episcopacy in England continued to emanate from the pens of Whig polemicists, while ?their Presbytery is 208 Ibid. 209 Ibid. 210 Ibid. 71 Establish?d to their Hearts content in Scotland.? 211 The nefarious head of the covenanting body continued to labor towards the eradication of the Anglican Church, while an unacceptable Union secured the establishment of Presbytery in Scotland. Thus, Union only increased the strength of his enemies within both states. Pejorative opinions of the Union?s effects were certainly not confined to Leslie, as many Tories worried that the Anglican Church would derive the taint of Presbyterianism if both countries shared a Parliament. 212 Abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland and the lack of religious toleration for Episcopalians in Scotland led Leslie to a logical conclusion: toleration of Dissent in England must be abandoned. Indeed, Leslie questioned whether religious toleration in England was merely ?the Establishing of Iniquity by a Law,? while noting that Scottish Episcopalians received harsher treatment from the established Scottish Presbytery than English Dissenters did from the established English Episcopacy. 213 His ?Country-man? decried the parliamentary merger as a ?Union in the Lord, that is, ? as may be consistent with our Sacred Covenant.? 214 Clearly, Leslie found the religious ramifications of the Union unacceptable and saw it as a political instrument for the empowerment of the covenanting interest in both nations. Despite their marked ideological differences, Daniel Defoe and Charles Leslie exhibited similar prejudices when describing Scottish events. For example, both men viewed the Union as a political means to a religious end. To Defoe, the Union was to be lauded as a strengthening of the Protestant interest; to Leslie it was an insufferable aggrandizement of a seditious domestic fifth column of Presbyterianism. Both men perceived factions in Scotland that resembled their avowed enemies in England. Thus, 211 Leslie, The Rehearsal, July 16, 1707. 212 Holmes, British Politics, 92. 213 Leslie, The Rehearsal, July 16, 1707. 214 Ibid. 72 both individuals superimposed their Whig and Tory prejudices, whether they were applicable or not, onto Scottish events. Both considered Scots on the whole to be dullards in need of English guidance, whether towards a more progressive economy or a hierarchical Episcopal Church Settlement. These perceptions fit within the structure of contemporary party platforms, as Whigs wholeheartedly embraced the new credit-based fiscal military state while Tories bemoaned the Anglican Church in Danger. Although the writers? output encapsulated the early-eighteenth century political divide in England, both men?s opinions on Scotland were decidedly Anglocentric. The two men had different views concerning the problems that needed addressing in Scotland, but one point resounded from their commentaries: grave issues existed within Scotland, and the Scots could not correct these problems on their own. Only Scottish emulation of the proper English institutions, whether Defoe?s economy or Leslie?s Anglican Church, could rectify the troubles at hand. 73 Chapter 4: Post-Union Attitudes Towards Scots Like Charles Leslie, much of the Anglican flock saw the persistence of the Presbytery in Scotland as the most odious of the Union?s concessions. As ministers often elaborated on their political positions from the pulpit, sermons from this era provide an interesting gauge of current events and the public?s reaction to them. An overwhelming majority of these are sermons of thanksgiving that spoke in laudatory terms about the Union. However, William Ferguson suggests that many Anglicans viewed the Union either disdainfully due to its protection of the Presbyterian Kirk, or, more commonly, with a ?perplexed silence? and quiet indifference. 215 These thanksgiving sermons were primarily delivered and subsequently published in London, where Low Church Anglicanism and Dissenting churches were more common than in the rest of England. Thus, these thanksgiving sermons may be construed as the tools of an extremely vocal minority that obscured the majority?s hostility or apathy towards the Union. Throughout the first decade of the eighteenth century, High Church divines such as Henry Sacheverell and Francis Atterbury argued that the Anglican Church was in danger from occasional conformity and lax adherence to Anglican doctrine. Such ideas garnered massive popular support from Tory mobs in both the metropolis and the countryside. These high-flyers saw acceptance of Dissent as a besetting peril, and were certainly no friend to a Union that left Presbyterian hierarchy intact in the north. What can the sermons of Low Churchmen, who roundly supported the Union and its program of Presbyterian toleration, tell us about contemporary views of Scots? A thanksgiving sermon given by Joseph Stennet, a London Baptist preacher, is particularly 215 Ferguson, Scotland?s Relations, 205, 238. 74 revealing. Throughout his sermon, Stennet speaks of the advantages of Union in the context of Protestant unity and opposition to a papist ?Other,? declaring ?how inconsistent it is with the Peace and Welfare of this Island to be divided into different Kingdoms. Such a Division must needs have weakened the Protestant interest both at Home and Abroad.? 216 Spoken of in these terms, the Union appears to have been a marriage of convenience rather than a wedding of two affectionate parties. Cold, hard geopolitical reality necessitated that England adopt this lesser partner whose acceptance provided strength against the Bourbon monarchy while ostensibly shutting the back door for a French invasion of Britain. 217 Thus the Low Churchman?s affinity for Union did not equate to a love of Scots, but affection for pan-European Protestant aggrandizement. Other thanksgiving sermons showed that Low Churchmen saw the Union as necessary for British Protestant solidarity rather than the result of a genuine fondness for their Scottish counterparts. Thomas Freke, a Londoner and a Dissenting minister, touted the Union of Scotland and England in militaristic terms, as the arrangement ?hereby rend?red an impregnable Fortress against the Assaults of the Enemy.? 218 In this case, the enemy (France) could be prevented from assailing Britain through the adoption of a defensive pact. To Freke, the forging of this Union would secure England?s foreign and domestic policy agenda by forcing ?Bourbon, with its Popish Pretender? to ?vail its Head, and confess, Thou art more worthy than I.? 219 Both Freke and Stennet wholeheartedly believed in the necessity of combating the Catholic ?Other? and safeguarding Britain from the incursion of Popery. Low Church Whigs regarded Union as 216 Joseph Stennet, A Sermon preach?d on the first of May, 1707 (London: 1707). Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 217 Those who shared Stennet?s views would be disappointed the following year. 218 Thomas Freke, Union, the Strength of a People. Considered in a Sermon, Preach?d in Bartholomew- Close, On May the First, 1707. (London: 1707), 11. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 219 Ibid., 15. 75 a buffer against Catholicism, and their zeal for incorporation can be read as a manifestation for their prejudice against the Roman faith. Scots were useful to these men only for what they could add to the struggle against universal Catholicism. But to the adherents of High Church orthodoxy, the stipulations of the Union of 1707 were supremely disappointing. The treaty?s terms included the Act of Security for the Kirk, which placated the Scottish Presbyterians by creating two established churches within the new British state, one English, and one Scottish. 220 This political compromise only slightly moderated English attitudes towards the Scots. Threatening, deviant heterodoxy remained associated with Scotland and the Scottish Church in English minds. Many Englishmen perceived Presbyterianism to be radical, the absence of sacraments an abomination, and a lack of bishops disorderly. For them, the conservative terms of the Treaty of Union left Scotland devoid of true religion. This is not to say that Englishmen did not differentiate between Scottish Episcopalians and Scottish Presbyterians. The writer of an anonymous 1712 pamphlet noted that ?the Episcopal People of Scotland have ever been Loyal, and were never Disturbers of Princes nor Governments.? 221 However, religious life in Scotland remained dominated by the Presbytery, and the same writer goes on to note that ?the Presbyterians began very early with Rebellion, not only in Practice, but also had Rebellious Antimonarchical Principles incorporated into their Constitution from the Beginning.? 222 These lines imply that the Kirk?s rebellious tendencies had contributed to the deposition and murder of a beloved monarch in the past and that the Kirk remained ideologically wedded to such disruptive practices. The Union of 1707 did nothing to allay these religious fears and prejudices. 220 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 190. 221 The True Difference Betwixt the Principles and Practices of the Kirk and Church of Scotland Exemplified in Several Instances. (London, 1712), 1. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 222 Ibid. 76 The High-Church divine Henry Sacheverell published his sermon The Communication of Sin in 1709. 223 This sermon reflected Sacheverell?s utter contempt for all Presbyterians, who to him constituted one of many Dissenting enemies of the established church that deserved a written lashing. 224 James I?s adage ?no bishops, no king? resounded throughout the doctor?s writings, which decried schismatic rabble- rousers for planning to sabotage the existing order. These Dissenters were charged with creating ?a Society of Vice? which Low Church coddlers were allowing to exist, thus contributing ?to the Advancement of Evil by a Permissive Silence.? 225 Sacheverell would certainly have nothing but contempt for a country that consisted primarily of Dissenters, and would have considered a political marriage to such an entity the equivalent of inviting a domestic fifth column into the polity. Without an ecclesiastical hierarchy to enforce religious conformity throughout Scotland (and England for that matter), disorder, sedition, and eventually, regicide, would continue to plague the British Isles. This High Churchman?s view of Scotland and its Kirk can be expressed in a basic syllogism: if Scots were Presbyterians, and Presbyterians were dangerous republicans who stoked the flames of sedition and anti-monarchism, then Scots were treacherous egalitarians with no respect for hierarchy who had destroyed the status quo in the past and would do so again. However Englishmen of different religious convictions viewed the Union, the merger was greeted with overt acrimony by the majority of the Scottish nation. 226 The Union of 1707 had been promoted as a bulwark against Catholicism by Dissenters like 223 This was less than a year before Doctor Sacheverell?s infamous March 1710 trial for seditious libel, which was initiated due to his characterization of several members of Queen Anne?s ministry as ?false brethren.? 224 Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, 17. 225 Henry Sacheverell, The Communication of Sin: A Sermon Preach?d at the Assizes held at Derby, August 15 th , 1709 (London: 1709), 4, 6. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 226 Ferguson, Scotland?s Relations with England, 254. 77 Stennet and Freke. However, the Union led to an attempted invasion bankrolled by Europe?s most formidable Catholic power and predicated upon Scotland?s bitter resentment towards incorporation. In 1708, St. Germain, Louis XIV, and English and Scottish Jacobites collectively planned an invasion that sought to harness Scottish aversion to the Union. British Jacobites desired to circumvent the impending Hanoverian Succession by placing James Francis Edward Stuart on the throne. France had fared poorly in the War of the Spanish Succession and thought an invasion of Scotland could clear the continent of British forces, as the Duke of Marlborough would be forced to withdraw from mainland Europe to protect his own backdoor. 227 Though the invasion plot was an utter failure and both the British and French governments attempted to conceal that it even happened, the attempt elicited an angry response from some Englishmen who railed against the latest manifestation of the Auld Alliance. 228 In a sermon preached on August 19, 1708, a minister named Dr. Colton remarked upon the failed invasion attempt. Although Colton blamed the invasion attempt on the ?French Faction that hated England for its emerging out of Popery,? he also thought the incursion provided ?Opportunity to all the disaffected to display their Malice.? 229 In Colton?s view, this ?French Faction? knew ?what Heats and Animosities? existed between the English and the Scottish, and had exploited that ill will to secure the cooperation of the Scots, who ?look?d upon themselves as disoblig?d by us.? 230 Colton believed the Scots were being manipulated by the French, and thus implied that the Scots 227 John S. Gibson, Playing the Scottish Card: The Franco-Jacobite Invasion of 1708 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988), 5. 228 Ibid., 132-147. 229 Dr. Colton, Nahash?s Defeat, and Jabesh-Gilead?s Rescue (London: 1708), 4-5. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 230 Ibid., 5. 78 were dupes, but would not absolve them of their ?sneaking sinful Compliance.? 231 He then accused the Scots of treachery and a lack of patriotism, asking ?Where was their Love to their Country?? 232 He believed divine intervention to have saved both England and Scotland from being ravaged by an invading papist army backed by a multitude of disaffected Scots who thought ?that we were a People prepar?d for the Yoke.? 233 Colton relayed that the deliverance of Britain from abject servitude to a Popish master only occurred thanks to God and his chosen people (the English). Like many pre-Union English writers, Colton feared that Scottish collaboration with France would inevitably lead to the degradation of reformed religion and English liberties. Although the ?08 represented the last gasp of the Auld Alliance, English concerns about Franco-Scottish treachery persisted well into the eighteenth century. 234 Colton was not the only post-Union Englishman who believed that his country had delivered Scotland from slavery. Joseph Addison, Whig pamphleteer extraordinaire and staunch supporter of the Union of 1707, asserted that Scotland had been saved from feudal slavery in his 1716 publication, The Free-Holder. Thanks largely to the national merger, Scots could now enjoy the rights and privileges associated with property ownership, as ?the Race of Freeholders spread[ing] to the remotest Corners of the Island.? 235 Addison continued, ?how can we sufficiently extol the Goodness of His present Majesty, who is not willing to have a single Slave in his Dominions!? 236 Using 231 Ibid., 8. 232 Ibid. 233 Ibid., 12. 234 Gibson, Playing the Scottish Card, 147. 235 Joseph Addison, The Free-Holder, or Political Essays (London, 1716), 4. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 236 Ibid. 79 classical republican rhetoric, Addison lauded the salvation of the Scots from the tyrannical feudal system imposed by Highland landlords. Although Addison?s productions were rhetorical, the assumptions behind his conclusions were telling. In his view, Scotland was under the yoke of tyrannical hereditary fief-holders until constitutional union with England saved its inhabitants? liberty and property. Such attitudes depicted the Union as a stroke of good fortune for the Scots, and the paternalistic rescue of an inferior political backwater by an English savior. Social disquiet plagued Scotland during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. To one anonymous observer, a confluence of unfortunate factors contributed to the series of Scottish disorders that disrupted the British peace during the early eighteenth century. Despite the prevalence of unrest within the Scottish Lowlands during 1707, 1713, 1715 and 1725, this observer believed that the Highlands of Scotland were responsible for all of the disorder. In his Memorial Concerning the State of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, the writer laid out his case for the Highlands? culpability for many of Scotland?s problems. First, this hotbed of insurrection was geographically remote from the civilized portions of Britain, so ?nor can their Ministers be so frequently with them, as is necessary for their suitable Education and Instruction.? 237 This author believed the Highlanders to be ignorant savages who were amenable to the Pretender?s overtures primarily because ?the Reformation from Popery had never effectually reached? into the Highlands, and as a result, there remained ?Vestiges of the Old Heathenish Customs and Superstitions among them.? 238 As his fellow countryman Atwood had done some twenty years earlier, this author also bemoaned the arbitrary nature of Scottish law, which stemmed from the heritable jurisdictions that were sanctioned under the auspices of 237 Memorial Concerning The State of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (London, 1725), 1. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 238 Ibid. 80 eft Scottish jurisprudence. Coupled with the Highlanders penchant for popery, these jurisdictions relegated them to ?a slavish and unlimited subjection? and ensured their acquiescent attitude towards militant uprisings, as they would follow ?their Chieftains and Landlords in whatever they propose to them, without asking Questions.? 239 Thus Highlanders rather than Lowlanders bore liability for the ?Robberies and Depredations committed by them upon His Majesty?s dutiful and loyal Subjects in the Neighboring Lower Countries.? 240 This surely represented a flawed view of reality, as Lowlanders were often amongst the first to organize when they felt slighted by the English. But the writer?s perception still hinged on the basic assumption that Scotland was a wild, lawless country full of ignorance, baseness and feudal bondage. Scots did not see the Union in the same light as Anglocentric elitists like Addison or the anonymous writer. By and large, both the Scottish political nation and the Scottish people exhibited a sharp aversion to the arrangement. 241 The ?08 represented only the first in a series of Scottish anti-Union outbursts including the 1713 Malt Tax crisis, the ?15 Jacobite rebellion, and the 1725 Shawfield Riots. These incessant disturbances l English observers wondering whether the insurrectionary tendencies of their northern brethren could ever be sufficiently curbed. A violently hostile reaction in Scotland to a proposed duty on malt in 1713 did nothing to convince these Englishmen that the Scots would ever exhibit the quiescence that was needed to establish a truly unified British state. 239 Ibid. 240 Ibid. 241 Ferguson, Scotland?s Relations, 254. 81 The 1713 riots were predicated upon the widely divergent perceptions of what was established by the terms of the Articles of Union. To mollify Scottish aversion towards the merger and to secure the passage of the Union, the English commissioners had included an Article which temporarily exempted the Scots from short-term excises, including the Stamp Tax, the Window Tax, and the Malt Tax. 242 English parliamentarians who dominated proceedings at Westminster felt the acute need to bolster government revenues in a time of international conflict, and thus pushed for the implementation of a Scottish Malt Tax in early 1713. Despite the temporary nature of the tax reprieve, many Scots believed that the Union had secured their permanent absolution from ever paying duties on malt; thus Westminster?s May 1713 passage of the malt bill was viewed as a breach of the Union. 243 To make matters even more contentious, in 1712 that same Parliament had passed the Scottish Toleration Act, which legitimized Episcopalian Dissent in Scotland. This move surely eased the minds of all British Episcopalians, especially the English who had spent the five years since the Union criticizing the intolerance of the Scottish Kirk. But, like the Malt Tax, it made Scots feel as if Parliament, attuned solely to English interests, was selectively violating the terms of the nascent Union as it saw fit. Disaffection with the Union rose to a fevered pitch in Scotland and masses of furious Scots pulled down tax collectors? homes in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Scottish nationalist MPs like George Lockhart moved for the dissolution of the incorporating Union. 244 Only the government?s inability to collect the malt duty kept the riots from escalating to an uncontrollable scale. 245 242 Riley, The Union, 186. 243 Whatley, The Scots, 339. 244 Daniel Szechi, George Lockhart of Carnwath, 1681-1731: A Study in Jacobitism (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002), 103-4. 245 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 194. 82 No writer produced a volume of work on Scottish affairs during the Union era comparable to that of Daniel Defoe. Accordingly, the prolific government pamphleteer chimed in concerning the 1713 Malt Tax Crisis in a work entitled Union and No Union. Defoe prefaced his argument in this pamphlet by placing the state of Anglo-Scottish relations in 1713 in their context. ?There is Union little enough among us,? he wrote, and continued by declaring that ?a Firmer Union of Policy with Less Union of Affection, has hardly been known in the whole world.? 246 Defoe recognized that the tempestuous match was going poorly, as Englishmen seemed indifferent towards Scottish interests, while Scots believed that the safeguards for their institutional autonomy established by the Treaty of Union were being disregarded. Though not espousing a divorce between the loveless newlyweds, Defoe felt the need to take sides in the conflict. Although he sympathized with the Scots? grievances over the Malt Tax, he sided with the English rather than the Scottish. In support of his pro-English judgment, Defoe cited the Article of Union concerning taxation. The Article delineated the British Parliament as the final arbiter in all matters of taxation, which would be imposed only when Westminster ?shall find of Necessity at that Time for the Preservation and Good of the Whole.? 247 To Defoe, although Westminster might be callously disregarding Scotland?s wishes, much like the ?Unkindnesses and Misunderstandings that may thus pass on either side between the Marryed Couple,? Scotland simply could not legally call for ?a Breach of the Marriage Contract.? 248 Defoe thus thought Scotland should endure this slight as a proper demure bride would, while he clearly saw England as the unquestioned male decision-maker in this relationship. 246 Daniel Defoe, Union and No Union. Being an Enquiry Into the Grievances of the Scots (London: 1713), 4. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 247 Ibid., 11. 248 Ibid., 13. 83 Defoe also noted the overt anger that spread quickly through the Scots he observed in London in 1713. These Scots bemoaned that ?Scotland is Ruined, that the Tax is an Intollerable Burthen, that they are not Treated in it with Justice and in an Equality.? 249 Defoe clearly saw these malcontents as incurable complainers, which was not an uncommon English perception of Scots both before and after the Union. ?Forgetting decency,? these Scottish whiners talked openly of ?the Union being broken, the Contract void, and that they will go to the Queen, and laying their Reasons before Her Majesty, humbly desire her to declare the Union dissolved.? 250 Defoe was genuinely remorseful over the plight of the destitute Scots (quite possibly reflecting some guilt over touting the Union as an economic cure-all to Scotland?s problems six years earlier), but he justified the British Parliament?s right to tax Scotland. Scots who disputed Westminster?s right to tax stood on shaky legal ground, as the Scottish MPs who signed the Treaty of Union ?agreed and consented that this tax should, at this time too, be laid upon them.? 251 Defoe also denied the presence of anti-Scottish prejudice within the British Parliament, of which he surely heard numerous complaints in 1713. He excoriated those who invoked such arguments to fuel the disorderly sentiments north of the Tweed as ?threatening to the Constitution and the publick peace.? 252 Although conforming to new taxation would surely irk many Scots, Defoe implored them to refrain from violent responses, stop complaining about the government that their political leaders had recently decided to assimilate into, and manfully shoulder their burden of malt taxation ? a duty that their English counterparts had already paid for years. 249 Ibid., 14. 250 Ibid., 15. 251 Ibid., 18. 252 Ibid., 24. 84 Despite the pleas of observers like Defoe, Scots continued to feel oppressed by the English, even after the Malt Tax was ignored de facto within Scotland. Far from being unanimously accepted, the accession of George I in 1714 resulted in anti- Hanoverian rioting throughout Britain. This violence was merely the forerunner of a series of insurrections the following year aimed at toppling the nascent dynasty. A synthesis of Jacobite intrigues, Scottish anti-Union sentiment, agitation between Episcopalians and Presbyterians and disgust with the Tory purge initiated after the Hanoverian Succession erupted in the late summer of 1715 into a full-blown Jacobite rebellion in Scotland. The numbers involved in the ?15 Jacobite insurrections have led one historian to label them as ?the most widespread political disturbances of any comparable period in English history.? 253 The catalyst for this rebellious conflagration came directly from a Scottish peer, John Erskine, the Earl of Mar. Furious over being slighted by the new monarch George I, who despised Tories and knew of the Earl?s Jacobite relations, Mar raised the Old Pretender?s standard at Braemar in September. 254 Thus ensued the most serious challenge that post-Revolution Britain ever received from the Catholic Pretenders. Daniel Szechi has defined the Scottish-led attempt to overthrow the Hanoverian order as not only stimulated by Stuart dynastic machinations, but also as a manifestation of Scottish proto-nationalism. 255 Thus the ?15 can be read as a protest (albeit a vicious one) against Scotland?s recent inclusion in a greater state that disrespected Scottish preferences, autonomy and aspirations. Antipathy towards the Union and its perceived corollary, tyrannical English taxation, ran high enough in 253 Paul Kleb?r Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 194. 254 Brown, Kingdom or Province, 195. 255 Daniel Szechi, 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 6. 85 ary Scotland for the rebels stationed at Kelso to chant ?No Union! No malt, no salt tax!? during James Francis Edward Stuart?s address there. 256 If the ?15 constituted a resounding Scottish protest against the British (English) state, English reactions to the rebellion were no less emphatically anti-Scottish. Englishmen believed that Scotland had been in a chronic state of semi-rebellion since the anti-Union mobs had taken to the streets of Edinburgh in 1707; indeed many saw the unrest as an extension of Scottish unruliness since time immemorial. The nameless author of a 1716 pamphlet entitled An Essay Towards Real Moderation certainly thought Scots innately recalcitrant. The writer claimed to have discovered the ?Cause of those Evils we now labor under,? and promptly named Scotland as the culprit, as he believed Britain ?to be threaten?d with the most imminent Danger from that Quarter.? 257 The author?s rationale for blaming the Scots speaks volumes. In addition to exhibiting a ?Natural Inquietude and Inclination to rebel,? the writer felt that the Scots? ?Pride and Ambition? drove them to revolt against their southerly neighbors. 258 For this author, the Scottish race was not only full of itself, but also biologically predisposed towards insurrection fervor. The anonymous writer clearly thought that insurgence coursed within the veins of the entirety of the Scottish race. His post-Union musings about the Scots? rebellious nature accurately mirror those espoused by William Atwood in 1705. Upon a close analysis of the ?Temper, Views, and Circumstances? of the Scots in 1716, this author concluded that rebellion ?cannot be look?d upon as Strange or Surprizing.? 259 Scottish insurrection represented not an anomaly, but the norm given Scotland?s history and the Scots? inherent rebelliousness. 256 Ibid., 15. 257 An Essay Towards Real Moderation (London: 1716), 3. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 258 Ibid. 259 An Essay Towards Real Moderation, 5. 86 An unabashed Anglocentric elitist, the author then asserted that the Scots defied England?s will ?against the Genius and Judgment of the Kingdom.? 260 If a logical course of action was being supported within the British Isles, then it was England and not Scotland that touted it, and Scots would be wise to heed the advice of their more lucid superiors. His opinions on the irrationality of Scots strongly resembled those of the author of the letter detailing the Worcester crisis, who accused the Scots of defying the rule of law in their bloodthirsty, unreasonable pursuit of vengeance. To the author of An Essay Towards Real Moderation, the Scots? senseless pursuit of insurrection was not only the byproduct of hereditary rebelliousness, but also of their excessive arrogance. This conceit led the Scots ?to presume even to conquer the Power of England.? 261 Scotland?s pursuit of the inevitably suicidal foolishness of attacking a power that they could not hope to topple was attributable to ?their natural Vanity.? 262 To this writer, the English nation had wedded itself to an incurable, delusional loose cannon. He advised Englishmen to divorce this wayward bride, as her ?Disorders and Riots? would predictably continue ?to the Great Dishonour of his Majesty, and the Disgrace of the English Nation.? 263 These warnings concerning the persistence of Scottish popular violence proved prescient. In 1725, the contentious Malt Tax issue again aroused the ire of the general public north of the Tweed. After Robert Walpole?s ministry re-imposed the Malt Tax in June of 1725, a Glaswegian mob reacted by assailing and razing the home of Daniel Campbell of Shawfield, Glasgow?s Whig borough MP; the infamous riots thus bear his 260 Ibid., 4. 261 Ibid., 5. 262 Ibid. 263 Ibid., 14. 87 name. 264 As in 1713, disaffected Scots believed that this new duty constituted a violation of the Treaty of Union?s terms. Although Glasgow witnessed the only large-scale rioting in 1725, inhabitants of the other burghs of Scotland also saw the tariff as a grave injustice, and their vocal protests looked to be the beginnings of a larger Scottish resistance movement. 265 Scottish officials such as Lord Advocate Robert Dundas sat on their hands, identifying with the rioters? grievances. 266 Fearing that the Glaswegian rioting would soon degenerate into another Jacobite rebellion, the government ordered General George Wade, the Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, to the scene, and he swiftly reestablished the peace. 267 In the minds of many Englishmen, however, the damage had been done, as Scots again displayed the tendency for disorder that had seemingly dominated their actions throughout history. An account of the Shawfield Riots sent in a letter from a native Glaswegian to his Londoner friend imparted the strength of anti-Scottish sentiment aroused by those disorders, albeit in a roundabout fashion. In a correspondence dated July 30, 1725, the author assured his reader that no ?true account of that unlucky affair? had ever been heard in London, primarily because ?Almost all Letters from this City have been open?d at the Post-Office at Edinburgh? and then systematically destroyed. 268 This observer clearly believed that a censorship mechanism was already ensconced in his native country, a belief which aligned quite neatly with many contemporary Englishmen?s views of Scotland as a land devoid of civil liberties. Upon the re-imposition of the Malt Tax in 264 Allan, Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 27-8. 265 Mitchison, A History of Scotland, 326. 266 Allan, Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 28. 267 Lynch, Scotland: A New History, 332, and Allan, Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 28. 268 A Letter From A Gentleman at Glasgow To His Friend in London. Containing; An Impartial History of the late Tumults at Glasgow, on the Commencement of the Malt Tax (London: July 30, 1725), 3-4. Eigheenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 88 late June, claimed the author, ?an inconsiderable Number of disorderly Persons appear?d in the Streets arm?d with Clubs and Staffs.? 269 This negligible rabble consisted primarily of ?Women and Boys, and these the very Scum of the whole City.? 270 The government feared that the Shawfield Riots represented the genesis of a much larger rebellion. It is not a stretch to assume that this author?s claims did not coincide with the prevalent opinion on the riots in London. London newspapers must have been selling an entirely different story (one of a general uprising supported by the majority of Scots) for this Scot to have felt the need to clarify the situation in Glasgow. He assured his reader that the mob that tore down Campbell?s abode ?were such a Rascally Scum, that some honest People, that shuffled themselves in among them in order to discover them, that they might be punished, scarce knew of them.? 271 The writer clearly wanted his London audience to know that honest Glaswegians did not condone the disorder ? indeed they had tried to prevent it. The author attributed the ?frightful Accounts? of a huge mob of Scots perpetrating the riots to the cities? officials. 272 Thanks to the skittishness of an army officer named Bushell, who opened fire on the crowd ?only because some Boys, forsooth, threw a few Stones at him and the Soldiers under his command,? nineteen of King George?s Scottish subjects met their demise. 273 Thus, the authorities in Scotland orchestrated a blatant misrepresentation of what had happened to conceal Bushell?s conduct, and the large crowd that pulled down Campbell?s house was reacting to the officer opening fire rather than the Malt Tax. 269 Ibid., 4. 270 Ibid., 5. 271 Ibid., 10. 272 Ibid., 19. 273 Ibid., 16. 89 Thanks to the cover-up, English newspapers represented the Scots ?as the worst sort of Rebels.? 274 English writers asserted that the Glaswegians rioted in response to a legitimate Malt Tax imposed by their lawful British government, but according to the ?Gentleman at Glasgow? the rioters retaliated against a hotheaded officer who recklessly murdered some of their fellow townspeople. He asserted that those in control of Grub Street threatened the ?Printers? if they should print it, and the Hawkers and Booksellers if they should publish it.? 275 Clearly, this observer thought that the entire London print culture opposed a sympathetic depiction of Scots, openly querying ?Is not this a glaring Instance of some People?s Partiality?? 276 This letter demonstrated that, at least in the writer?s estimation, the inaccurate depiction of all Scots as barbarous and given to insurgency sold well to an English audience. English preconceptions about Scots resulted in snap judgments about Scotland when any crisis (such as the Shawfield Riots) arose in Anglo-Scottish relations. Examination of Post-Union English commentary concerning Scots reveals that English perceptions of their northern brethren changed little after 1707. Indeed, the Scot had long resided as an unpleasant stereotype within many English minds. Englishmen observed the failed 1708 invasion attempt, the ?15, the 1713 Malt Tax Riots, and the 1725 Shawfield Riots as evidence of a continuing historical tradition of Scottish insurrection. Their rebellious tendencies also appeared identical to those exhibited by Scots during the 1640s, the 1690s, and the years directly preceding the Union. Post-Union Englishmen thus believed insubordination and recalcitrance to be character traits inherent to Scots ? just as they had before the 1707 Union. Similarly, Englishmen worried that Scotland 274 Ibid., 19. 275 Ibid. ?It? refers to the account of the events that held Bushell?s trigger-finger responsible for the disorder in Glasgow. 276 Ibid. 90 would treacherously collude with France ? a fear that surfaced during the sixteenth century and had not yet subsided in the eighteenth century. English attitudes towards the Scottish Courts and Kirk (reflected in the writings of Addison and Sacheverell) also remained unchanged by the Union. To most Englishmen, heritable jurisdictions were archaic feudal constructs and the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland operated contrary to proper ecclesiastical deference. To an English society that had long held Scotland in contempt, these institutions continued to serve as a focal point for anti-Scottish sentiments. 91 Conclusion As this study demonstrates, Englishmen did not embrace Scots due to the incorporating Union of 1707. As the eighteenth century progressed, Anglo-Scottish crises such as the Porteous Riots, the ?45, and the Bute ministry of the early 1760s each prompted a resurgence of anti-Scottish hostility. During the ?45, false accounts of horrible atrocities committed by the Pretender?s Scottish rebels elicited terror and revulsion in the English populace. 277 Even the moderate and affable Prime Minister Henry Pelham dehumanized the Scottish rebels, and contemporary English writers portrayed them as their early eighteenth-century predecessors had ? as a verminous rabble that plagued the British Isles. 278 Thus, the overwhelmingly negative English stereotype of the Scot remained unaltered despite sharing a legislative body for nearly forty years and an executive for over 140 years. Linda Colley asserts that British national identity was forged after the Union of 1707 primarily ?in response to contact and conflict with the Other.? 279 She identifies this ?Other? as France, Britain?s foremost military rival during the long eighteenth century (1688-1815). According to Colley, this contempt for the French ?Other? stemmed from Britons? belief that France represented tyrannical governance, a militant aggressor, and above all, the champion of worldwide Catholicism. 280 The presence of high levels of anti- Catholic and anti-French sentiments in eighteenth-century Britain is indisputable. But the 277 W.A. Speck, The Butcher: The Duke of Cumberland and the Suppression of the ?45 (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1981), 89. 278 Ibid., 96, 186. 279 Colley, Britons, 8. 280 Ibid., 1-9. 92 existence of Protestant heterodoxy within the British Isles had engendered a different yet equally disconcerting ?Other? in the minds of many English people ? a Presbyterian republican, often a Scot. Englishmen wholeheartedly believed Scotland to be a nation replete with Presbyterians, although Episcopacy remained strong in Scotland throughout the eighteenth century. As the prejudices examined in this study reveal, many Englishmen associated the characteristics of Presbyterianism that they found most distasteful with their Scottish neighbors. A uniquely Scottish ?Other? thus existed in Englishmen?s minds during the early eighteenth century. This mental construct worked as an agent of division rather than unity in the British Isles. While the Union itself represented both a state and nation-building effort, only the former achieved any immediate success. Nationhood implies not a common government, but a common identity shared by the inhabitants of that nation. The English hostility towards Scots that persisted unaltered after the Union proves that a British national identity was underdeveloped in the early eighteenth-century. Moreover, as English reactions to post-Union catastrophes in Anglo-Scottish relations convey, the Union itself could not eliminate the pejorative image of the Scot that had developed in English minds. To many Englishmen, the Scot remained the unwanted junior partner, the unruly bride, always a rung lower within the British hierarchy and never dutifully accepting their subordinate role. Eighteenth-century Englishmen continued to deride and ridicule Scots, to suspect them of treachery against the British state, and to resent the Scottish institutional autonomy that survived the Union. Furthermore, Englishmen saw English political objectives as the only worthy goals for the new British polity. This mentality directly mirrored the English mindset during the Nine Years? War, when Englishmen expected Scotland to contribute men and money to a conflict detrimental to Scottish trade. The unequal political representation at Westminster, a direct result of the 1707 Union, muted viable Scottish dissent in the government and thus allowed for even further 93 disregard for Scottish interests. Eighteenth-century Englishmen largely continued to view Scots in adversarial terms, just as they had during the seventeenth century. In such a milieu, it is no wonder that a truly British national identity did not flourish. State building rarely works as a salve for regional antipathies, and the Union of 1707 was no exception. Englishmen, regardless of ideological affiliation and support or opposition to the Union perceived their culture and institutions as superior to Scotland?s. Gaelic, which persisted in Scotland, remained an indecipherable, animalistic series of ticks and whirs to the culturally arrogant English. High Church Anglicans would not tolerate Dissenters, whom they regarded as rebellious proponents of regicide, and Scotland?s church would continue to be characterized for them by its Presbyterianism. Likewise, the heritable jurisdictions retained by Scotland through the terms of the Treaty of Union were perceived as a rival power structure in England. The term ?British? could not be properly applied to the product of the Union, as one could not speak of the British church, law, literature or language. 281 Scotland?s independent church and courts, secured by the Union, probably aroused more resentment and disdain from the English than before because they were thereafter legally established and respected by England?s governing body (for assuredly dubious reasons). Any English warming towards Scots as a byproduct of the Union is illusory. Feelings towards the Scots stayed frigid at best and downright hostile at worst. Scottophobia remained ensconced in the minds of Englishmen, and would color how they perceived events involving the Scots for many years following 1707. 281 Ferguson, Scotland?s Relations with England, 236-7. 94 Bibliography Primary Sources Published Primary Material A Letter from a Gentleman at Glasgow to his Friend in London. Containing, an Impartial History of the Late Tumults at Glasgow, on the Commencement of the Malt Tax. London: 1725. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. A Letter from Scotland to a Friend in London: Containing A particular Narrative of the whole Proceedings against the Worcester and her Crew. London: 1705. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. An Address to the Clergy of the Church of England. London: 1705. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. An Essay Towards Real Moderation. London: 1716. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Memorial Concerning the State of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. London: 1725. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Observations Made in England, on the Trial of Captain Green, and the Speech at his Death. Edinburgh: 1705. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Some Considerations concerning the Prejudice which the Scotch Act Establishing a Company to Trade to the East and West Indies. London: 1696. Some Considerations upon the late Act of the Parliament of Scotland, for Constituting an Indian Company: In a Letter to a Friend. London: 1695. The True Difference Betwixt the Principles and Practices of the Kirk and Church of Scotland Exemplified in Several Instances. London: 1712. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Addison, Joseph. The Free-Holder, or Political Essays. London: 1716. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 95 Atwood, William. The Scotch Patriot Unmask?d, in Animadversions Upon a Seditious Pamphlet, Intituled, The Reducing of Scotland by Arms, Annexing it to England as a Province, Considered. London: 1705. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Colton, Dr. Nahash?s Defeat, and Jabesh-Gilead?s Rescue. London: 1708. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Defoe, Daniel. Caledonia, & c. A Poem in Honor of Scotland, and the Scots Nation. In Three Parts. Edinburgh: 1706. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. ________. The Fifteen Comforts of a Scotch-man. Written by Daniel D?Foe in Scotland. London, 1707. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. ________. The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England, Examined and Asserted. London: 1769. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. ________. An Historical Account of the Bitter Sufferings, and Melancholly Circumstances of the Episcopal Church in Scotland. Edinburgh: 1707. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. ________. Union and No Union. Being an Enquiry Into the Grievances of the Scots. London: 1713. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Freke, Thomas. Union, the Strength of a People. Considered in a Sermon, Preach?d in Bartholomew-Close, on May the First, 1707. London: 1707. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Historical Manuscripts Commission. Reports on the Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland, Preserved at Welbeck Abbey. Vol. V. Norwich: Norfolk Chronicle Company, 1899. Leslie, Charles. The Rehearsal. London: Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1704-1709. ________. Rehearsal of Observator, &c. London: January 6, 1704. Phipney, Israel. The Innocency of Captain Green, and his Crew, Vindicated, from the Murther of Captain Drummond. Published by Order of the Owners of the Ship Worcester. London: 1705. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 96 Ridpath, George. The Reducing of Scotland by Arms, And Annexing it to England as a Province, Considered. London: 1705. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Sacheverell, Henry. The Character of a Low Church Man. The Third Edition. London: 1702. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. ________. The Communication of Sin: A Sermon Preach?d at the Assizes held at Derby, August 15 th , 1709. London: 1709. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. Stennett, Joseph. A Sermon Preach?d on the First of May, 1707.London: 1707. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group. 97 Secondary Sources Books and Articles Allan, David. Scotland in the Eighteenth Century: Union and Enlightenment. Harlow: Longman, 2002. Backschieder, Paula R. ?Defoe, Daniel.? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com. Barker, Hannah. Newspapers, Politics and English Society 1695-1855. New York: Longman, 2000. Black, Jeremy. Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century. London: Duckworth, 1986. Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. Brown, Keith M. Kingdom or Province? Scotland and the Regal Union, 1603-1715. New York: St. Martin?s, 1992. Burgess, Glenn. ?Filmer, Sir Robert.? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxfordnb.com. Cannon, John. Aristocratic Century: The Peerage of Eighteenth Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1832. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Cornwall, Robert D. ?Leslie, Charles.? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com. Downie, James. Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Dunthorne, Hugh, and David Onnekink. ?Bentinck, Hans Willlem [William], First Earl of Portland.? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com. Ferguson, William. Scotland, 1689 to the Present. The Edinburgh History of Scotland. Vol. 4. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1987. 98 ________. Scotland?s Relations with England: A Survey to 1707. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1977. Gibson, John. Playing the Scottish Card: The Franco-Jacobite Invasion of 1708. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988. Harris, Tim. Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685-1720. New York: Allen Lane, 2006. Holmes, Geoffrey. British Politics in the Age of Anne. London: St. Martin?s Press, 1967. ________. The Trial of Dr. Sacheverell. London: Eyre Methuen, 1973. Hopkins, Paul. Glencoe and the End of the Highland War. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986. Kenyon, John. Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party 1689-1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Kidd, Colin. Subverting Scotland?s Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity 1689-1832. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ________. ?North Britishness and the Nature of Eighteenth Century British Patriotisms.? The Historical Journal. Vol. 39. No. 2, June, 1996. Kilburn, Matthew. ?William, Prince, Duke of Gloucester.? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com. Levack, B.P. The Formation of the British State: England, Scotland, and the Union. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Lynch, Michael. Scotland: A New History. London: Century, 1991. Matar, Nabil. Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Mitchison, Rosalind. A History of Scotland. London: Metheun, 1982. Monod, Paul. Jacobitism and the English People 1688-1788. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Murdoch, Alexander. The People Above: Politics and Administration in mid-Eighteenth Century Scotland. Edinburgh: J. Donald Publishers, 1980. 99 Plumb, J.H. The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675-1725. London: Macmillan, 1967. Riley, P.W.J. King William and the Scottish Politicians. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979. ________. The Union of England and Scotland: A Study in Anglo-Scottish Politics of the Eighteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978. Robertson, John. ?Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun.? Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxfordnb.com. Russell, Conrad. The Fall of the British Monarchies: 1637-1642. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Sankey, Margaret. Jacobite Prisoners of the 1715 Rebellion: Preventing and Punishing Insurrection in Early Hanoverian Britain. Burlington: Ashgate, 2005. Shaw, J. S. The Management of Scottish Society, 1707-1764: Powers, Nobles, Lawyers, Edinburgh Agents and English Influences. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1983. Smout, T.C. Scottish Trade on the Eve of Union: 1660-1707. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1963. ________. ?The Road to Union.? in Geoffrey Holmes, ed. Britain After the Glorious Revolution. London: St. Martin?s Press, 1969. Speck, W.A. The Butcher: The Duke of Cumberland and the Suppression of the ?45. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1981. Stoyle, Mark. Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Sunter, Ronald M. Patronage and Politics in Scotland. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986. Szechi, Daniel. 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. ________. George Lockhart of Carnwath 1681-1731: A Study in Jacobitism. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002. ________. Jacobitism and Tory Politics. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984. Walvin, James. Making the Black Atlantic: Britain and the African Diaspora. New York: Cassell, 2000. 100 Whatley, Christopher A., ?An Uninflammable People?? in Ian Donnachie and Christopher A. Whatley, eds. The Manufacture of Scottish History. Edinburgh: Polygon, 1992. ________. ?Bought and Sold for English Gold??: Explaining the Union of 1707. Glasgow: Economic and Social History Society of Scotland, 1994. ________. The Scots and the Union. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. Zook, Melinda. Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in Late Stuart England. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.