'A Louse For A Portion': Early-Eighteenth-Century English Attitudes Towards Scots, 1688-1725

Abstract

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.