22 ANGLO-SCOTTISH RELATIONS Anglo-Scottish Relations

Professor Christopher Smout FBA , Historiographer Royal in Scotland, reflects on the relations between England and Scotland following the Union of the Crowns.

N 24 March 1603, Queen Elizabeth of Professor Rosemary Ashton’s account of expected to happen and fervently hoped for England died, naming James VI of Thomas and Jane Carlyle in nineteenth- by the Stewarts in the last four decades of the OScotland as her successor. Thus began century London, to some as wide as Professor sixteenth century, yet nearly derailed with the Union of the Crowns of the two Keith Brown’s and Professor John Morrill’s the deposition of Mary Queen of Scots in kingdoms, developing just over one hundred overview of the first six decades of the Union 1567 and the subsequent Civil War, and in years later into the Union of Parliaments, and of the Crowns and Ian Hutchison’s survey of particular with her execution in 1587 when enduring to the present day, in altered, Anglo-Scottish politics in the nineteenth the Scottish nobility pleaded with James VI to devolutionary form, as the cornerstone of the century. This is rather one person’s gleanings invade England to avenge his mother’s death. British state. The fourth centenary of so and reflections from this extremely lively and Then there was the small matter of Henry momentous an event seemed a good time to fruitful symposium and the preceding VIII’s will which declared that no foreigner take another look at Anglo-Scottish relations lecture. should inherit the throne of England, and in the long run, and the British Academy and which had to be set aside on Elizabeth’s the Royal Society of Edinburgh came together death. Once the new king had arrived in to organise a triple commemoration. The first England, he was regarded with deep part was a lecture given in the Academy’s suspicion as much on account of his policy of rooms in London on 24 March 2003 by Dr European peace as for any matter of domestic Jenny Wormald of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, or ecclesiastical policy. Certainly his English describing the drama and tension of the subjects were not keen on any new British accession and the history of the Union of the state or any more than the very minimum Crowns in the lifetime of James. Then, on sharing of their valuable privileges with the 17–18 September, this was followed by a poverty-stricken Scots. James and the Union symposium on the broad theme of ‘Anglo- survived partly because he lived so long after Scottish Relations 1603–1914’ and, on 6–7 inheriting the throne, so that his ways November, by a further symposium in the became familiar, and his courtiers and Royal Society of Edinburgh’s premises in ministers had time to put down their own Scotland carrying the same theme forward to network of vested interest. He also survived the present day and attempting, also, to peer because the old Tudors, so raddled with into the future. The first two occasions were disease, left no plausible alternative inheritors the sole province of historians, albeit around which disaffected Englishmen could inclusive of historians of law and literature as rally. Once set up for a quarter of a century, well as of politics, economics, ideas and mere survival ensured that the Union of the culture. The third was a wider Crowns had a good chance of continuing interdisciplinary occasion, with political thereafter. scientists, historians and sociologists all Fast forward, however, to the first centenary involved, and with its eye much on of 1603, and there was almost universal belief contemporary affairs. I have edited a volume in both kingdoms that the existing Union of that brings together the papers from the first the Crowns had become a disaster. The two occasions, while Professor Bill Miller FBA, Painted wooden figure of James VI and I, crowned and enthroned, wearing his coronation robes of 1604 English held the view that the Scottish of Glasgow University, has edited a volume © The Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland. parliament was an ungovernable mess of from the third. Here I want to reflect on the faction and party that could not be trusted in first two meetings, on the Union up to 1914. The first point (well made by the early the long run even with the security of the What are we to make of the first three speakers) is that the Union of the Crowns, north. The Scots believed that it had ruined centuries of Anglo-Scottish union? It is though long anticipated in both countries, their chance to maintain any sustainable impossible to try to summarise eleven very was neither inevitable in its making nor in its economic growth, a view for which, in different papers, that ranged from some so short-term success. Anticipated as a Professor Chris Whatley’s opinion, there was particular as Dr Clare Jackson’s exploration of possibility since the marriage of Margaret much to be said. Parliamentary Union judicial torture in Restoration Scotland and Tudor and James IV in 1503, it was widely (leaving intact a Scottish Presbyterian Church ANGLO-SCOTTISH RELATIONS 23

and Scottish civil law) was imposed at speak of the strength of one British It became clear from the symposium that the England’s bidding on a divided Scotland and movement for liberty. Similarly it became Scots worried and worry a lot about Anglo- did little immediately to improve Anglo- natural for Thomas Carlyle to refer to Robert Scottish relations. The English worried and Scottish relations. The security problem was Burns ‘not only as a true British poet but as worry hardly at all about them, except at not settled until after Culloden. Economic one of the most considerable British men of times of quite exceptional stress, such as dividends for Scotland from Union only the eighteenth century’. Britain was now to under Charles I and Queen Anne (and appeared about the same time. ‘Sawney’, the many Scots on many occasions the name of perhaps when oil was discovered in the North itchy, lousy, sneaky Scot, as Professor Paul the theatre where Englishmen and Scots Sea). This is reasonable, as the Scots, Langford showed, remained a stock figure for acted out, independently or together, their outnumbered in the Union 5:1 in 1603 and English cartoonists until the 1790s. In roles on life’s stage. At this point the Scottish 10:1 by 1914, had most to worry about, most Scotland, as Professor Colin Kidd people internalised the notion of Britain, as to gain and most to lose by the way the demonstrated, the Union of the Crowns was perhaps the English never did. For the relationship works. Union survived not blamed by Enlightenment intellectuals for English (as for most foreigners), the usual because of any acts of brilliant statesmanship having given rise to an overmighty Scottish name for their state and for the theatre of along the way, but because it was the best nobility unrestrained by royal presence and their lives was still England. The residual modus vivendi available between two unequal tyrannising their dependents – a fault not irritations that the Scots had concerning their partners. It became eventually a cultural and considered cured in 1707, which left much neighbours in the nineteenth century usually political norm that by 1914 it seemed private Scottish privilege intact, but in 1747, revolved (just as in the revolutionary decades eccentric even to question. Today one cannot with the abolition of the heritable of the seventeenth century) round England be so sure, but that was the business of the jurisdictions, bringing English and Scottish not being British enough – that is to say, not following meeting. systems of local law closer together. recognising that English laws and customs The speakers at the meeting on 17–18 were not the appropriate norms for the whole But gradually there emerged a change of September were: island of Great Britain. Yet there were now mood in the eighteenth century, some of it Professor Keith Brown FRSE, St Andrews actually quite clear limits to this English prefigured and long incubated by necessity, as University sense of hegemony over the island. In the Dr John Ford showed in his study of the law nineteenth century, England and Scotland Professor John Morrill FBA, Cambridge of the sea, some of it created by immediate University did not merge. As Ian Hutchison wisely put it, opportunity, as Professor Tom Devine showed they meshed. No one supposed that the Dr Clare Jackson, Cambridge University in his study of the Scottish landed classes in extraordinary couple who lived in Cheyne Professor Chris Whatley FRSE, Dundee an imperial state. It was a mood of Walk, Chelsea, were or should pretend to be University accommodation, where the Scots realised English: Thomas Carlyle exercised a huge Dr John Ford, Cambridge University how a genuinely conjoined Britain solved influence on English thought, but he and Professor Paul Langford FBA, Oxford University certain of their long-term structural Jane were ostentatiously Scots. No one Professor Colin Kidd FRSE, Glasgow University difficulties in operating successfully at home seriously supposed, even as the Presbyterian and abroad, and the English realised that it Dr Bob Harris, Dundee University Church in Victorian Scotland was wrenching was, after all, better to have Scots doing their Professor Rosemary Ashton FBA, University itself apart, that the right solution to the thing from inside their tent than from College, London tormented ecclesiastical politics of Scotland without. England had wealth and force. Professor Tom Devine FBA, FRSE, Aberdeen was to embrace an Anglican Episcopalianism Scotland had an educated elite ambitious for University that would celebrate Christmas and be success in commerce and arms. Not for and Dr Iain Hutchison, Stirling University relaxed about the Sabbath. No one nothing came the first and most enduring considered it wise at Westminster, once the popular usages of the prefix ‘British’: the Scottish MPs had decided that the British Empire and the British Army. Being The papers from these meetings are being peculiarities of Scottish parliamentary affairs generally Protestant and anti-French no published in two volumes of Proceedings of the demanded a specialised unit of government, doubt helped, as Linda Colley has insisted, British Academy : Volume 127, Anglo-Scottish to oppose the creation of a Scottish Office. If but shared elite ambition was in itself a Relations, from 1603 to 1900 , edited by T.C. the previous three centuries had taught the sufficient cement. Smout; and Volume 128, Anglo-Scottish English anything, it was that if the Scots Relations, from 1900 to Devolution and Beyond , The consequence was a new atmosphere wished to be peculiar they were certainly best edited by William L. Miller. where it gradually became natural – for left to be so, and it was this flexibility that example as Dr Bob Harris emphasised, for the made the Union not only workable but Scottish radicals of the period 1790–1820 – to unshakable, even in the century of the rise of maintain close links with London and to European and Irish nationalism.