Talking Scot: English Perceptions of the Scots During the Regal Union By Sarah Katerina Waurechen A thesis submitted to the Department of History in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen‟s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada April 2011 © Sarah Waurechen 2011 Abstract From 1603 until 1707, England and Scotland were joined by what scholars have described as the regal union. A dynastic accident that came into being when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne as well, it forced the two kingdoms to share a single monarch without creating a unified legal system, religious hierarchy, political structure or British culture. This dissertation re-evaluates the resultant Anglo-Scottish relationship by examining what English people actually said about the Scots and Scotland during moments when this union was strained. Specifically, it explores discourses about the Scots that circulated immediately after the regal union, and those which appeared during the Bishops‟ Wars (1638-40), the Cromwellian Union (1651-59), the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis (1679-81), and the parliamentary union of 1707 that renegotiated the terms of engagement. By doing so, it challenges widespread assumptions that an uncomplicated xenophobia dominated English approaches to the Scots, and illuminates the existence of a more nuanced Anglo-Scottish dynamic that still informs British politics today. The Scots were too similar to be Other, and too different to be wholly Same – their “familiar alterity” creating difficulties for the English. At the start of the regal union, the notion of what constituted a Scot was malleable and utilitarian, which encouraged the English to reject their partnership in the creation of a new British kingdom. During periods of outright Scottish assertiveness, however, the English were forced to remember their northern neighbours. At each of these moments, the Scots variously became beggars, locusts, radicals, worthy partners in empire, protestant deliverers and even role models, before the English were able to write them out of the equation again. Finally, in i 1707, a parliamentary union mandated that within official discourse, the Scots were to be interpreted as familiars and as equals, in an attempt to cement their position and thus solidify the Anglo-Scottish relationship. In many ways, this meant nothing more than a divergence between official and popular discourses, but it did permanently intertwine English and Scottish development, no matter how intense divisive pressures became. ii Acknowledgements In fulfillment of a very old promise, this dissertation is dedicated to E.A. Clarke... with love and squalor. This project was conceived, researched and written over almost six years and in the process I have amassed many debts. My supervisor, Professor Daniel Woolf has been a constant source of knowledge and encouragement. Many thanks are also due, however, to Dr. Jordan Penney, Dr. Marjon Ames, Dr. Jeffrey Collins, and Professor Brian Levack, who have all read and commented on the work as it progressed. Special thanks are also due to Professor John Morrill for the stimulating conversations near the outset of this project, and to Dr. R. Scott Spurlock who so willingly shared research and offered the pointed challenges I required to crystallize my thinking. Finally, I owe personal thanks to Dr. Michelle di Meo and her family, for sheltering me in London on multiple occasions, to Dr. Ian Hesketh for guidance and the kind of frank conversation without which one cannot finish such a lengthy project, and to Marisha Caswell, whose agreement to take over my class for a day has allowed me to defend this dissertation. The University of Alberta, Queen‟s University, the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada, and the Killam Foundation have all provided essential funding for the completion of this project. The SSHRC-funded Major Collaborative Research Initiative, Making Publics in Early Modern Europe (MaPs), has also been central to my evolution as a scholar and to the theoretical framework of this dissertation. Not only has MaPs provided special funding, seminars and conference experiences, the expertise and friendship of their membership has been a constant source of inspiration. While it would iii be inappropriate not to acknowledge the place of each and every person associated with MaPs, it is also imperative that I highlight the mentorship provided by Professor Lesley Cormack, Professor Robert Tittler, and Professor Brian Cowan. Equally important, the staff at the British Library, the National Archives of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, the National Archives in Kew, The Bodleian, and the University Library at Cambridge must be thanked for fetching innumerable manuscripts and answering questions of all colours. Segments of this dissertation have been presented at conferences in North America and Europe, and I must also acknowledge the role played by those experiences and the conversations which accompanied them. Most importantly though, I feel it is necessary to pause and thank the Department of History here at Queen‟s. Although I arrived late to their doorstep – as a stranger, and a transfer student from the University of Alberta – I was always made to feel welcome. There were always graduate students and professors willing to share their ideas about teaching and research, and to encourage me during that final, difficult stretch. I am honoured to have been able to call you my colleagues. Despite the guidance of all of those people, groups and institutions, flaws no doubt remain in my manuscript. Thus, I close by acknowledging that all errors are my own. iv Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... iii Chapter One: Introduction – The Problem of Familiar Alterity and the English Evasion of Britain ......................................................................................................... 1 Chapter Two: Imagined Polities, Failed Dreams, and the Beginnings of an Unacknowledged Britain ............................................................................................ 31 Chapter Three: The Bishops‟ Wars and the Elusiveness of National Borders ......... 83 Chapter Four: The Interregnum and Experimentation with an Incorporating Union ......................................................................................................................... 129 Chapter Five: Contemplating the Chimera – Discourses about Scotland during the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis ........................................................................ 181 Chapter Six: Seen but not Heard – The English Vision of Union in 1707 ............. 229 Chapter Seven: Conclusion – Persistent Evasion and the Dawning of a New Age .................................................................................................................... 280 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 291 v Chapter 1: Introduction – The Problem of Familiar Alterity and the English Evasion of Britain From 1603 until 1707, England and Scotland were linked by what scholars have called the union of the crowns, or the regal union.1 The product of Elizabeth I‟s stalwart refusal to fulfill one of her primary duties as monarch – to provide an heir of her own body – this union came into being when her cousin, King James VI of Scotland, succeeded her on the English throne and linked the two crowns in his person and dynasty. James‟s right, as the great-grandson of Margaret Tudor, was relatively straightforward and he obtained his second crown without contest. The problem, however, was that while he saw this as the birth of a new era, in which the English and the Scots would come together in brotherly love and shared religion to rebuild the kingdom of Britain and resurrect its ancient glory, his subjects in either realm preferred to view their situation simply in terms of sharing a king. Attempts to create a unified British political infrastructure through the English and Scottish parliaments failed miserably and, in the end, James had to be content with the mere removal of the hostile laws that separated the two kingdoms and the eventual cross-border naturalization of his subjects. The relationship between these two peoples thus remained ambiguous while the Stuarts ruled. England and Scotland shared a protestant faith, but their churches upheld divergent disciplinary practices; they shared a language, but strong dialects persisted; they shared a monarch, but no legislative, religious or legal institutions; and they shared an island, but there were vast disparities in the quality and quantity of land in each 1 For surveys of the regal union, see David L. Smith, A History of the Modern British Isles: The Double Crown (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); Brian Levack, The Formation of a British State: England, Scotland, and the Union, 1603-1707 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987); Keith Brown, Kingdom or Province? Scotland and the Regal Union, 1603-1715 (New York: St. Martin‟s Press, 1992). 1 kingdom, as well as the levels of trade and urban development. England was stronger, bigger, and richer, but the Scots were stubbornly protective of their sovereignty and aggressively defensive of their Kirk, and so there was an