It was 1707 and the members of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh feared for their lives. The members had voted for a Union with England by 110 to 69. With the touch of the Sceptre of State on the Union document by the Duke of Queensberry, Scotland had ceased to exist as an independent nation. The members were still required to sign the document, but furious crowds supporting independence forced the members to flee from Parliament House to elsewhere to complete the Union. They tried to meet surreptitiously, firstly in a nearby pub, then at a summer house near Moray House in the Canongate. As locals spied them and drummed up defiant mob support, they moved form place to place, unable to enact the final part. It was only when they feigned defeat and left, and then cunningly reassembled in a cellar opposite the Tron Kirk on the Royal Mile, that they could complete the Union.
Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, a key promoter of the Union, said that it was ‘contrary to the inclinations of at least three-fourths of the Kingdom’, and yet it went ahead, amidst rioting. The aristocratic elite, led by the Duke of Queensberry, and ably financed by the English, had pressed through with their politicians to forge the Union, without any say from the majority of the Scottish people. Fearing control by the English over State and Church, the majority were determined to try and sort out the Scottish financial mess themselves. And what a mess it was! Previous wars, unrest and financial pressures had weakened the Scottish economy so much, that in the 1690s an estimated 5-15% of the population had died from famine. To compound this problem further, leaders of the nation, driven by national pride, committed the grave mistake of raising half the nation’s money to resource the doomed Darien expedition to the Isthmus of Panama in order to set up a Scottish trading base for East Asia. Within the year most of the settlers had died of malaria; the defeated stragglers returned, dejected and ruined. Thus, when England offered a financial olive branch in return for a Union between the nations, ruled from Westminster, the minority felt constrained to force the Union through. Only 45 Scottish MPs represented the nation in London; one more than in Cornwall.
The Church of Scotland was deeply suspicious, which was not surprising after all they had been through for 130 years. Revd William Carstares sought to pilot them through the cloud of mistrust, and the leaders agreed to the Union on the basis that the Presbyterian Church would be allowed to practice its Christian democratic system without government intrusion. He also reminded them that if they did not accept the Union, they would likely find themselves under the Jacobites with another Roman Catholic king. The Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Act of 1707 was thus enshrined in law, guaranteeing ‘that the said Presbyterian Government shall be the only Government of the Church within the Kingdom of Scotland.’ The church was to learn again that the political government, this time under Queen Anne, could not be trusted. Only five years later the Presbyterians discovered that such a law could be overturned by another law, causing the Church of Scotland to lose its democratic right for a further 131 years.
‘By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words’ (2 Peter 2:3, NKJV).
Image: Union Treaty of 1707, Scottish Parliament, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.