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The Union of Parliaments was pushed through against the popular will. Perhaps this was the greatest fraud against the Scottish people. But how would it be held together when so many were against it? The short answer is: by blood!
Economic consequences of union
One of the main selling points of union was the promise of greater future prosperity for Scotland. There were some grounds for long-term optimism:
Linen:
Gaining access to English domestic and colonial markets and enjoying the protection of British tariffs, output increased and laid the foundation for future industrialisation (see Chapter 13).
Tobacco:
The industry became hugely important and profits made in the trade were invested in building up the infrastructure of Clydeside and promoting industrial growth.
Agriculture:
Agriculture became more market orientated and a great wave of improvement began.
However, these benefits weren’t apparent to contemporaries, as the number of riots taking place at the time clearly shows. One of the more serious riots was in 1725 in Glasgow as a direct result of the introduction of the Malt Tax, which raised the price of a barrel of beer by three pence – highly unpopular! Troops fired on protestors, leaving 8 dead and another 18 wounded. Order wasn’t restored until two weeks later when General Wade arrived with foot soldiers and seven troops of dragoons.
There is very little evidence that there was much growth in the economy in the first half of the 18th century. Trade links with continental Europe and Scandinavia were disrupted. The woollen industry was undermined by English competition, as were paper-making and candle-making. Only black cattle exports seemed to grow (from 30,000 heads in 1707 to 80,000 in 1750), but the profits derived from the trade were of benefit only to a few Scots and there is no evidence that they were used to promote improvements in agriculture or the economy as a whole. In his
A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain
(1726) Daniel Defoe admitted that the increase of trade and population, which he predicted would result from union, was ‘not the case, but rather the contrary’.
The golden age of prosperity did not arrive, and economic disappointment provided the black cloth to attempts to destabilise the union.
The Jacobite Revolts
The Jacobites’ goal of replacing the Hanoverians with the Stewarts has been the subject of a lot of myth-making over the years. So, let me set the record straight: the Jacobite cause was a dynastic one. It wasn’t intended to restore the independence of Scotland (although some of its supporters may have harboured such hopes).
If you look at the Stewart past, it’s almost wholly concerned with the unification of the two countries: one king, one church and one parliament (see Chapters 10 and 11). But the rebellions – and there were a number of them – became a peg on which the people could hang their dissatisfactions with the union. If you were denied high office (as many nobles were), if you were a Catholic or an Episcopalian and you resented the dominance of the Church of Scotland, if you were suffering as a manufacturer from English competition, you could vent your grievances by supporting the Stewart cause.
Although most of the armed support for the Stewart cause came from the Scottish Highlands, this was not a Lowlands versus Highlands confrontation, or a Scotland versus England one. Support for the Jacobite cause came from all over Britain. Even in the Highlands, not all the clans were for the Stewarts – major clans like the Argylls and the Campbells supported the Hanoverian government.
The 1715 rebellion
The exiled Jacobites in France were happy that the union wasn’t popular in Scotland. In 1708, one exile, Simon Fraser of Lovat, convinced Louis XIV to launch an invasion using Scotland as a platform to attack England. The French didn’t want to overthrow Queen A
With the support of French troops, the Old Pretender, James Francis Stewart, (a man of 20 years!) was supposed to raise the standard in Fife or Lothian, but he contracted measles. The weather intervened and the French fleet was blown off course and eventually routed by Admiral Byng.
Still, the grievances began to stack up even higher:
The Equivalent
was three months late in arriving, and only a quarter of it was in coin; the rest was in English Exchequer Bills. It should have all been in coin.
The Toleration Act of 1712
allowed Scottish Episcopalian clergy to use the ‘liturgy of England’, and that really a
The Patronage Act of 1712
restored the rights of landowners to choose and appoint parish ministers.
The Scottish Privy Council
was abolished.
The Malt Tax
was applied by English members of Parliament to Scotland, provoking a boycott of Parliament by Scottish members of Parliament.
Every section of Scottish society was up in arms. The union was so unpopular with both the English and the Scots that when, in June 1713, Viscount Seafield, a man who in the past had laboured long and hard for union, moved in the House of Lords to have the union dissolved, the motion was defeated by only four votes!
Widespread discontent was the backdrop to what some historians have seen as the most important challenge to the union of 1707. Most sections of Scottish society were in some ways hacked off with the union. When Queen A
The rebellion begins
In August 1715, under the pretext of a deer hunt, a plan for armed rebellion was hatched at the castle of the earl of Mar in Braemar in Aberdeenshire. On 6 September, the standard of James III and VIII was raised at Mar’s castle. Let battle commence!
The plan was simple: march on Edinburgh, take the city and hook up with the Jacobites in the Borders and those in northern England, preparing the way for James to land in the southeast of England and head a victorious march to London to reclaim the crown. But as the national bard, Robert Burns, wrote: ‘The best laid schemes o’mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley [go wrong]’.
The 1715 rebellion was a disaster from start to finish. The leader, the earl of Mar (popularly known as ‘Bobbing John’ because he shifted sides so often), was formerly an advocate of union and a Hanoverian, but he became a Jacobite when he lost office after the 1715 election. He was also an indecisive general. He sat in Perth, which he had captured in September 1715, waiting for further reinforcements, seemingly unaware that there were Jacobite risings in the Scottish Borders and in Northumberland. Failure to act decisively had dire consequences.
The death of the French king, Louis XIV, five days before the rebellion also meant that the Jacobites were denied the support of a major rival to Britain. Louis’s successor, Philippe Duc d’Orleans, was more interested in negotiating a peace settlement with George I than encouraging a Jacobite rebellion.
The Battle of Sheriffmuir
The decisive battle of the rebellion took place at Sheriffmuir, near Dunblane, on 13 November 1715. The outcome was unclear in military terms, but politically it was a disaster for the Jacobites. With an advantage of four men to one, Mar’s army was unable to defeat the government’s troops. The momentum was lost, and Mar’s opponent, the duke of Argyll, was left in control of the key road to the south.
Meanwhile, in the south, the Jacobites, under the leadership of Viscount Kenmure and William MacIntosh of Borlum, were defeated by government troops at Preston the day after Sheriffmuir. When James VIII eventually landed at Peterhead on 22 December of that year, the game was up and he returned to exile in France in February 1716, along with Mar, and never saw Scotland again. The French promptly requested that the Jacobite court leave, and Italy became the next haven for the Stewarts.
Retribution
The British state took revenge on the main participants in the rebellion. Viscount Kenmure was executed, and the peerages of Mar, Seaforth, Nithsdale, Panmure and Southesk were forfeited. Thomas Foster, who had raised the rebellion in the north of England, was executed too. No jury in Scotland would have convicted them, so other Scottish Jacobites were tried at Carlisle for treason and many were sentenced to death. An Act of Grace and Pardon was passed in 1717, which freed those Jacobites still in prison.
In the Highlands, a Disarming Act was passed in 1716, ba
The 1719 rebellion: They’re at it again!
You may have thought that the debacle of 1715 would’ve put an end to Jacobite scheming and plotting, but not a bit. In 1719, another rebellion was instigated, this time with the help of Catholic Spain.
The plan was two-pronged. An invasion fleet of 29 ships carrying 5,000 Spanish troops, with arms for 30,000 more, left Cadiz in March 1719, intending to land in southwest England, where Jacobite sympathies were still strong. Another, much smaller invasion force carrying 307 Spanish infantrymen and George Keith, 10th Earl of Marischal, landed on the Isle of Lewis, where they joined up with 25 or so Jacobites under the marquis of Tullibardine. This was a diversion, though – the main event was to be in England.
However, the main Spanish fleet was decimated by a violent storm off Coru
The main Jacobite leaders escaped. Keith fled to Prussia, where, in spite of a pardon, he lived the rest of his life and worked as the Prussian ambassador to France and later Spain. The 274 Spanish prisoners taken in battle were returned to Spain in October 1719.
Pacification of the Highlands
The British state had to ensure that these troublesome uprisings were extinguished for good. The first part of the strategy of pacification was to tame the martial spirit of the Highlanders. In 1725, a second Disarming Act was passed forbidding all Highlanders to carry arms and ordering them to hand in those arms that they owned to the authorities.