Post by Waverley on Dec 28, 2008 1:26:50 GMT 1
In the century between the union of the Crowns in 1603 and the Parliaments in 1707, was Scotland a backward nation with no influence south of the border asks David Stevenson.
In April, 1976 Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, now Lord Dacre of Glanton, lent the authority of the Regius Chair of Modern History at Oxford to the remarkable statement that the Scottish political system before the Act of Union of 1707 was simply 'political banditry'. He then proceeded, in the same article in The Times , to the even more extraordinary assertion that this tradition was not yet dead, as 'we have seen it at work in the Scotch province of Ulster from 1922 till it had to be suspended there, too, in 1972'. Trevor-Roper's article was written as a contribution to the debate on Devolution, and he was trying to show that any attempt to undo the Union of 1707 would lead to disaster for the Scots, as history had proved that they were utterly incapable of governing themselves competently.
From this context one might conclude that these statements should be ignored by historians on the grounds that they were wild and ill-considered assertions made in the heat of the moment during a passionate political controversy. But in fact they are more than this, being perhaps the most extreme of many arguments and assertions made over many years by Trevor-Roper, which appear to be based on a commitment to the 1707 Union which is so strong that nothing interesting or creditable can be admitted to have come from Scotland before that date.
Trevor-Roper's most sustained exposition of this interpretation of Scottish history first appeared in 1963 in the form of an essay on 'Scotland and the Puritan Revolution'. The essay undoubtedly contains some profound insights, and it has proved influential through making sense of complex and seemingly chaotic events by elegantly-stated and superficially persuasive arguments. But these arguments rest on a caricature of the society, economy, politics and religion of seventeenth-century Scotland.
Before considering his arguments, let us look briefly at the complicated relations between England and Scotland in the mid-seventeenth century.
In 1603 James VI of Scotland had succeeded to the English throne as James I. In this Union of the Crowns the two kingdoms maintained their separate identities, being joined only by the fact that they had a sovereign in common. Accession to the English throne greatly increased James' power and prestige as King of Scotland, enabling him to speed up his work of restoring royal power there in both church and state. In the church the demands of the presbyterians for a kirk free from royal control and without a clerical hierarchy were defeated; the powers of bishops were restored, and through them the King governed the church. But royal policies and the effects of the 1603 Union led to increasing discontent in Scotland. Scots came to believe that their country was being ruled in England's interests, and that official policies were designed to make Scotland as like England as possible. Such feelings were already evident in the later years of James VI, and after his death in 1625 they grew fast under his inflexible and politically incompetent son, Charles I. This discontent culminated in open resistance to the King in 1637, and in the signing of the National Covenant in 1638. The occasion of the Covenanters' revolt was religious - opposition to innovations in worship imposed by the King - and it was religion that was used to justify resistance to the King and to give unity to those who opposed him; but constitutional and other secular grievances also contributed powerfully to the revolt.
In the 'Bishops' Wars' of 1639-40 Charles I, facing increasing opposition in England, failed in his attempts to use the resources of that kingdom to crush the Covenanters, and in 1640 they successfully invaded England. In negotiations in 1640-41 Charles was forced to accept the establishment of presbyterian church government in Scotland and severe limitations in his power in the state.
The Covenanters may have triumphed in Scotland but as England drifted into civil war in 1642 between King and Parliament, the Scots felt they had to intervene. In the early stages of the war it looked as though the King was going to win, and it was obvious that if he was successful in asserting his absolute power in England, he would then turn to destroying his opponents in Scotland. In 1643, therefore, by the Solemn League and Covenant and a military treaty, the Covenanters agreed to send an army to help the English Parliament. In return Parliament promised religious reforms in England on Scottish presbyterian lines, and other reforms designed to protect Scotland's interests.
The Scottish army which fought in England in 1644-46 played an essential part in bringing about Parliament's victory over the King. But tension grew between the allies, for it seemed to the Covenanters that Parliament had accepted their help, but then refused to carry out the promises in return for which that help had been given. Disillusionment with the English Parliament ultimately led many Covenanters to conclude that they should ally themselves with the now defeated King and, through him, impose a settlement in England which would safeguard Scottish interests. As a result of this, in 1648 the 'Engagers', an alliance of moderate Covenanters and Royalists, invaded England. But there they were promptly defeated by Cromwell, and with his approval and help the extreme presbyterian 'Kirk Party' regime seized power in Scotland and rigorously purged all Engagers from the Scottish Parliament. But when Cromwell proceeded to execute Charles I and abolish monarchy in 1649, the Kirk Party refused to accept this unilateral action by the English in matters which clearly concerned both kingdoms. The Scots therefore proclaimed Charles II King of England as well as Scotland, and sought to restore him to his English throne. This provoked English retaliation, and in 1650-51 Cromwell conquered Scotland.
In interpreting the complicated interactions of these two kingdoms, Trevor-Roper acutely concentrated on revealing the consistency that underlies the superficial confusion of events. In the 1640s the Scottish covenanters tried repeatedly to export their revolution to England, but failed because it proved unacceptable to the English. Eventually this interference in English affairs forced the English into the conquest of' Scotland, and in the 1650s the process was reversed; the English sought to export their revolution to Scotland. But they in turn found that their revolution was unacceptable to their neighbours.
Thus far Trevor-Roper's arguments are interesting and persuasive. But when he proceeds to examine the differences between the two kingdoms his arguments become highly misleading. Firstly, the Scotland depicted by Trevor-Roper is a land of truly remarkable backwardness, economically, socially and culturally. Secondly, while he emphasises the importance of Scottish intervention in England, he defines Scots influences on the English revolution far too narrowly. Repeated Scottish military intervention is rightly seen as having major effects on the course of events. And Scottish attempts to impose presbyterianism in England are seen as significant, though only because they provoke hostile reaction. Thus the ideals and aims of the Scots are seen purely in religious terms; and even these religious ideals are taken to have had no contribution to make to English ideals except through the strength with which they were rejected.
These two arguments are closely related, and both are central to Trevor- Roper's contention that the season that the revolutions of the neighbouring kingdoms proved incompatible was that the two societies were at very different stages of development. Scottish society was so backward that the ideology of its revolution could have no relevance to England; and the ideals of the English revolution were equally irrelevant to Scotland.
That Scotland was backward at this time compared to England is clear. She was much poorer than her great neighbour, through limited natural resources, an inefficient agricultural system, and a relatively small share in international trade. Population was stagnant, economic growth slow. But Trevor-Roper pushes his argument about Scottish economic, and therefore social, backwardness to extraordinary extremes, asserting that the country was entirely free from the sort of economic strains that were leading to tensions and changes in other European societies. Scotland, we are told, was a land 'without merchants'; Edinburgh was 'devoid of mercantile spirit'. In fact, though Scotland's merchants were relatively few, and relatively poor, by no definition can it be said she had none. To take one outstanding example, Sir William Dick of Braid, the greatest Edinburgh merchant of his day, lent huge sums to the Covenanters to support their resistance to the King, and his son Lewis Dick subscribed far more as an 'Adventurer' for the re-conquest of Ireland in 1642 than any Englishman, merchant or otherwise. Dick of Braid was of course far from typical, but all the larger Scottish burghs had plenty of merchants engaging in international as well as local trade. Even more extraordinary is Trevor-Roper's assertion that Scotland experienced 'no inflation'. The great sixteenth-century price revolution which caused economic and social strains throughout Europe evidently halted abruptly at England's northern border, considerately leaving Scotland's fossilised economy to slumber on undisturbed. Such a suggestion is inherently improbable, and even the most superficial examination proves its inaccuracy. The fact that the pound sterling was worth four pounds Scots in 1560 and twelve pounds Scots in 1600 demonstrates that the value of the Scots currency had collapsed relative to sterling, and there is plenty of evidence of fast-rising prices within Scotland. But Trevor-Roper, it seems, felt free to discuss the Scottish economy without apparently taking into consideration any of the works published on the topic.
When Trevor-Roper turns to the social structure of seventeenth-century Scotland one can sympathise with his complaint that so far as published work was concerned the subject was 'a blank'. Into this void he modestly proposes to offer some general suggestions 'with prudent caution' as he is a 'foreigner' rashly intruding. The apology is strange, implying the existence of a convention that only the natives of a country are really qualified to write on its history; and what undermines his contribution to Scottish seventeenth-century social history is not that he is 'foreign' but that, again, he appears not to have done his homework. Moreover, the promised 'prudent caution' is thrown to the winds in favour of dogmatic assertion. Scottish society is seen, like her economy, as static. Most important of all, Scotland 'lacked altogether the new class of educated laymen on which the greatness of Tudor England had been built'; for practical purposes the educated middle classes consisted of lawyers and clergy, 'the pillars of conservatism'. In England an educated laity had kept Calvinist clerics in their place; in Scotland the laity were not strong enough to do this, and the clerics were thus able to indulge their theocratic pretensions. The revolution which the Covenanters tried to export to England was essentially this theocratic revolution of the clerics.
This argument immediately raises difficulties, for it leads to two major inconsistencies. Firstly, Trevor-Roper has been insisting that Scotland was entirely free from the sort of major strains and pressures that had been transforming English society. But now another strand of his argument has led to the assertion that in one central respect, religious reformation, Scotland had seen much more radical change than England. This difficulty is seen, and is surmounted by a daring temporary reversal of previous assumptions. In all other matters lack of radical change has held back social change in Scotland; but in religion, it is asserted, it was the very fact that change was radical that prevented tensions arising and leading to social change! Because Scottish society had 'experienced a more radical religious reformation, it no longer felt certain ancient pressures'; whereas England's partial reformation had left elements of old and new to confront each other and thus create tensions. The argument is ingenious, but in the context smacks of special pleading. Further, it does not accord with the facts. Certainly there were Calvinist clerics in Scotland who would have liked to establish the theocratic, conservative tyranny that Trevor-Roper believes to have existed; but they did not get their way. They were out-manoeuvred and crushed in the first decade of the seventeenth century by James VI with the help of the independent lay elements that Trevor-Roper seems to believe did not exist. Scots nobles and lairds tended to be as hostile to the pretensions of the clergy as English nobles and gentry. For though Scottish society was not experiencing change at the same speed as English society, similar types of change were taking place, in response to similar types of pressure - inflation, the transfer of great areas of church lands into lay hands, reformation, and the emergence of the lairds (lesser tenants-in-chief) into a more active role in national affairs, independent of the nobility. Very little work has been done to chart and evaluate these changes; but this is no excuse for asserting that no change took place at all. The Scottish nobles like their English counterparts were suffering economic problems and challenges to their role in society, both from below, and from an increasingly powerful monarchy which sought to centralise power and (by its prodigality in creating new titles) seemed to threaten the older nobility through inflation of honours. Indeed in Scotland the challenge to the old ruling classes from an absolutist monarchy, bureaucratic and centralising, was in a sense greater than in England, for by the union of the crowns power was 'centralised' to the point at which it withdrew from Scotland altogether. The sort of alienation and tension expressed in 'country' versus 'court' divisions became intensified when the court was an absentee one. Yet Trevor-Roper does not see that Scotland suffered from any strains from such developments in monarchy and government, in spite of the fact that Scotland, of course, shared with England the kings responsible for such policies in England in the early seventeenth century.
The second inconsistency that arises from Trevor-Roper's picture of a Scotland dominated by a clerical tyranny concerns the position of the nobility. If presbyterian ministers were the real masters of Scotland, clearly the nobility must have been subordinate to them. Yet to accept this would mean abandoning one of the main elements which appear in interpretations like Trevor-Roper's which stress Scotland's remarkable backwardness all-powerful nobles, acting oppressively towards those below them in society, feuding violently among themselves, and successfully defying the Crown. It is not surprising to find that such over-mighty subjects do appear in Trevor-Roper's interpretations; but their relationship with the clergy is left vague, for to discuss the matter explicitly would make it obvious that both groups could not simultaneously wield despotic power over the kingdom. Trevor-Roper does stress the great and arbitrary powers of the nobility both before and after the 1640s. Thus we are told of the 'great, incorrigible feudatories' of Scotland who made kings their 'play- things' before 1603 (which in itself is a very questionable assertion). Similarly, in dealing with the 1650s, Trevor-Roper argues that 'the despotism of the Church' in Scotland was 'hardly less formidable than the despotism of the great nobles'. Thus the nobles evidently had the edge on the clergy when it came to despotism. But what were these great feudal nobles doing in the 1640s? Nothing is said on this, for to mention them here would undermine the picture of Scotland in the 1640s as the plaything of clerics determined on theocratic revolution to which Trevor-Roper is committed. Only once is the role of the nobility hinted at, suggesting that perhaps after all it was not the clergy who were supreme. We are told that in backward, clerical-dominated Scotland 'those who wished to mobilise the people... had to use the tribunes of the people', the clergy. This was hardly uniquely Scottish. What about the role of Puritan preachers in England or Catholic priests in the 1640 revolt of the Catalans? But what is significant in this context is the suggestion that other interests, by implication lay ones, existed behind the clerics of Scotland and ‘used’ them. But these interests are never identified, and apart from this hint it is assumed that the clergy and their ambitions dominate Scotland.
The differences which led Trevor-Roper to conclude that Scotland and England were 'poles apart', that an 'immense social gulf lay between them, thus turn out not to be so extreme after all. Clearly there were major differences between the two societies, but his analysis is based on a crude caricature of Scottish society. He suggests that to Englishmen of the 1640s 'Scotland... is not an intelligible society responding to intelligible social forces'; but the same charge can be made against his own approach, and indeed his views on Scotland bear a good deal of similarity to those presented by many English propagandists in the 1640s. It is remarkable that the author of a seminal essay on 'The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century' could appear to believe that Scotland was entirely isolated from the forces and trends that shaped that crisis.
Turning to the nature and effects of Scottish intervention in England in the 1640s, Trevor-Roper rightly sees the Covenanters as seeking to expert their revolution in order to bring it security. How could they be confident of retaining the concessions they had forced from the King if he retained full power in his other, much greater kingdom, England? But, having interpreted the revolution which had taken place in Scotland in purely religious terms, Trevor-Roper can only see the religious side of the changes that the Covenanters demanded in England. They tried to impose their church: theocratic, intolerant anti-tyrannical. The attempt inevitably failed, for this church, though well suited to Scotland's backward society, was totally inappropriate to an English society dominated by lay interests. 'Except for a few clergymen, tempted by clerical power, there were no English presbyterians.' But such innate abhorrence of presbyterianism was disguised by many English parliamentarians in 1640-41 and 1643-44 in order to buy Scottish military aid by a pretence of willingness to accept such a church. Now it is certainly true that many in England opposed presbyterianism on the Scottish model, and did so because they feared that a church which claimed independence of the state would move on to demand theocratic domination over the state. But, ironically, many of these fears might have been stilled had the English looked at the Covenanters' religious practice rather than at their theories. For in Scotland the lay Covenanters had kept firm control over the church. As Professor Gordon Donaldson has written, 'all in all, the presbyterian system proved admirably adapted to be an instrument of the aristocracy and gentry'. Like their English counterparts, the lay Covenanters had no wish to free themselves from the clerical tyranny of bishops only to fall under the clerical tyranny of presbyterian ministers. In the light of Trevor-Roper's interpretations there is irony in the fact that the closest that Scotland even came to the theocracy he posits was in 1648-50 under the Kirk Party; for this regime, a minority faction of the extreme Covenanters, was helped to power by English intervention in Scotland.
But though in Scotland most lay Covenanters of any status in society (and indeed many of the clergy) successfully opposed presbyterian pretensions to dominate society and the state in practice, in theory they usually supported such pretensions in order to maintain the unity of the covenanting movement. This tacit compromise benefited the Covenanters within Scotland; but it proved a fatal obstacle to them in trying to sell their religious revolution in England. Having demanded the establishment of an autonomous church on presbyterian lines, it was impossible for them to add, reassuringly, that in practice laymen could control this church by acting as elders. Thus however much the Scots urged that presbyterianism represented a happy medium between the tyranny of episcopacy and the anarchy of independency, most Englishmen remained deeply suspicious of its theocratic implications.
Trevor-Roper has interpreted correctly one of the major reasons for the refusal of the English to accept reformation on Scottish lines (though 'Scots' presbyterianism did have a considerable number of English supporters, especially in London), but he has misinterpreted the Scottish background that gave rise to the problem. Moreover, he makes this fear of clerical tyranny the only reason for English refusal to import Scotland's revolution. But there were other reasons, and at times determination to reject Scotland's religion through this argument was little more than a rationalisation of a general determination to reject all things Scots. After their early triumphs, the Covenanters urged their revolution (religious and, as will be argued below, constitutional) on the English with an arrogance and tactlessness which inevitably provoked massive nationalistic resentment. Many Englishmen felt humiliated at having to rely on military help from their despised northern neighbours, and at having to purchase this aid by agreeing (however insincerely) to consider making changes in England suggested - or dictated - by the Scots. One of those who led in expressing such patriotic determination to resist Scottish demands was Oliver Cromwell, who won much popularity by his attitude. Trevor-Roper tends to dismiss those who question his views on Scottish history as Scottish nationalists, but he ignores the existence of English nationalism.
Trevor-Roper succeeds in presenting the Scots in England as concerned solely with religion, by quoting only the ministers among the Scots Commissioners who negotiated with the English Parliament in 1640-41 and 1644-47. The lay Commissioners sent by the state are totally ignored. So, indeed, are the ministers when they stray off purely religious topics and display wider interests. Alexander Henderson, one of the most widely respected of the Kirk's ministers, produced the 'Instructions for Defensive Arms' (1639), listing constitutional as well as religious justifications for opposing the King in arms. This work was thought relevant enough to English preoccupations on the eve of civil war to be twice printed in London. Lex Rex , a major treatise on mixed monarchy by Samuel Rutherford (Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews, 1639-47), was first published in 1644 in London, and aroused much interest. But such indications that some ministers at least could see beyond the joys of clerical tyranny are ignored by Trevor-Roper. He frequently quotes, with a sort of fascinated contempt, Robert Baillie, 'the voluble, invaluable letter writer, that incomparable Scotch dominie, so learned, so acute, so factual, so complacent, so unshakably omniscient, so infallibly wrong'. Baillie (Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, 1642-61) is used to show how the Scots, obsessed with religion and incapable of interpreting events in a society so different from their own, misunderstood what was happening in England. However, though Baillie is held to be infallibly wrong about England, Trevor-Roper treats him as infallibly right about Scotland and the clerical nature of the Scottish revolution. But when Baillie was wrong about England he was at least as much wrong because he was a minister as because he was a Scot. Many English ministers, like Baillie, saw events in bigoted religious terms, and the narrowness of his vision, it is arguable, renders his interpretations of events in Scotland almost as suspect as his views on England. In 1648, when the Engagers defied the church in Scotland, raised an army and invaded England, Baillie was forced into realisation that his belief in the clerical nature of the Scottish revolution, which he assumed had left the church able to dominate the state, had been wrong. The covenanting state had shown, in its first open clash with the church, that it could prevail, leaving Baillie as bewildered about Scotland as he had been about events in England.
What then were the non-religious ambitions of the Scots in England? Firstly, having destroyed royal power in their state as well as in their church, they wanted to do the same in England. Not until the English Parliament had been put in a position to prevent the King using English resources against Scotland would their revolution in Scotland be safe. Secondly, to the personal union of the crowns the Covenanters wished to add permanent links between the Parliaments of the two kingdoms, through joint meetings of English and Scottish Parliamentary commissioners. This loose federal structure would be used to prevent quarrels between the kingdoms (and especially to prevent the King trying to use one against the other), and to ensure that Scotland had an equal say with England in matters of joint concern foreign policy, commercial policy (free trade between the kingdoms was to be established) and the making of war and peace. In the Covenanters' eyes the Union of the Crowns had led to Scotland's interests being subordinated to England's, so they now demanded a new, truly 'equal', union.
Over union the Covenanters were thwarted by a mixture of indifference and open hostility on the part of the English. Few in England saw any real need for closer ties with the Scots; and none were ready to consider union on Scottish terms. Understandably, a union which gave about one million Scots as much to say in joint affairs as five million English seemed very 'unequal' south of the Border.
Yet, in spite of the Covenanters' failures over religion and union, the events and ideas of the Scottish revolution did have important effects on developments in England which went far beyond the implications of their military intervention and reaction against their religion.
It is of course recognised that the Scottish revolt of 1637, at a time when there was no sign of violent opposition to Charles I in England, began that King's downfall. But often the influence of the Scots revolt on England seems to be placed in the same category as the undermining of a regime by defeat in foreign war. In fact the Bishops' Wars were much more directly relevant to the attitudes of Charles' English subjects than this. The King's English subjects were certainly encouraged by seeing him defeated in war; but perhaps even more important for them was that they saw their King had been successfully resisted by his own rebellious subjects. From the first the Covenanters appealed to the King's English opponents by claiming to be motivated by grievances similar to theirs. The cause of the Covenanters was also the cause of the English. It was, therefore, not surprising that when open opposition to the discredited King grew in England the leaders of opposition tended to follow Scottish patterns and precedents. That Charles was forced to summon the Long Parliament in 1640 because the Scots had invaded England and threatened to advance south unless the King paid their army is well known. Parliament had to be summoned to vote the necessary taxes. But it was not chance that led the Covenanters to act in way that brought about the meeting of the English Parliament, They insisted that Parliament must meet before they would negotiate a peace with the King, and they then insisted that Parliament be a party to their treaty with the King. In a very real sense it was the Scots who ended the 'Eleven Years' Tyranny' in England.
Throughout his negotiations with the Covenanters, Charles I was worried that any concessions he made to them would lead to demands for similar concessions in England. When he reluctantly agreed to the abolition of bishops in Scotland in 1639 he tried, unsuccessfully, to insist that they only be abolished as contrary to the constitutions of the Kirk, as he held that the Covenanters' further demand that they be declared 'unlawful' would lead to claims that episcopacy must be unlawful in England as well. When Charles visited Scotland in 1641 he bitterly resisted demands that he surrender control of the executive (through agreeing to parliamentary approval of the appointment of all councillors, judges and officers of state), and he was encouraged in his stand by repeated reports from his English Secretary of State that English parliamentary leaders were preparing to make similar demands if he gave way in Scotland. They were resolved to act 'according to ye Scottish precedent'. Charles did give way in Scotland, and the English demands duly followed. Other constitutional demands already made in England bad been in part copied from the Scots. The 1640 Scottish Triennial Act (stipulating that Parliament should meet at least once every three years) was followed by the 1641 English Triennial Act. In 1640 the Covenanters had removed the bishops from the Scottish Parliament by a re-definition of the traditional three estates of prelates, barons and burgesses. These estates now became nobles, shire commissioners or small barons, and burgesses. The following year Lord Saye proposed a similar way of removing bishops from the English Parliament while adhering to the tradition of three estates. Lords, bishops and commons should become King, Lords and Commons. The Bishop of Exeter at least was aware of the Scottish precedent here, for he remarked that Saye 'savoured of a Scottish covenanter'.
Robert Baillie was more accurate than usual when he reported that the King's English opponents admitted that they owed 'their religion, liberties, parliaments and all they have', under God, to the Scots. An English historian, Conrad Russell, has recently expressed this even more emphatically: ‘The name of John Hampden is better known in the history of English liberties than the names of Lord Rothes, Lord Loudoun, and Lord Balmerino, but it does not deserve to be’. Such Scottish influence in England was strongest in and before 1641, but it can also be found at work later. In 1648 'Pride's Purge' of the English Parliament cleared the way for Cromwell's rise to power. A month before, Cromwell had written in wonder of the Kirk Party’s purge of the Scottish Parliament: ‘a lesser party of a parliament hath made it lawful to declare the greater part a faction, and made a parliament null, and call a new one, and to do this by force.... Think of the example and consequences’. It is hard to believe that this disreputable Scottish 'constitutional' precedent had no influence on the English purge that followed it so promptly.
These arguments and examples are, however, perhaps unlikely to persuade Professor Trevor-Roper that the Covenanters had anything positive to offer the English. When some of the Scottish precedents for the constitutional gains of the Long Parliament were noted in a book he was reviewing in the Times Literary Supplement as recently as 1977 he dismissed this as insignificant as, firstly, Charles was insincere in the concessions he granted in both kingdoms, and, secondly, that in Scotland the concessions had been forced from the King by 'great men' making use of the clergy. No concessions granted in such circumstances can, it appears, be taken seriously as constitutional gains. Unfortunately this type of argument directly contradicts a judgement which Trevor-Roper has made earlier in the same review. In discussing the 1707 Treaty of Union he asserted that the value of a political act is not to be judged by considering the men who passed it and the means they used!
Scotland was a small, poor and in some respects backward country compared with England in the mid-seventeenth century; but nonetheless she had more to offer England than armies to be used for or against the King, and religious intolerance to be indignantly rejected. Presbyterianism was a form of Church government acceptable to many in England. Leading Scots Presbyterians and English Independents - including Cromwell - respected each other's godliness in spite of their disagreements. Political and constitutional ideas expounded by Scots Covenanters were accepted as relevant contributions to English controversies. When convenient, hatred of the Scots and their attempts to impose a settlement on England could easily be stirred up, but the appearance of such nationalistic prejudices hardly proves that the two kingdoms were totally incompatible. Indeed their relations in this period present a fascinating study of the problems of forming an acceptable union between two formerly independent states when they differ greatly in size, wealth and population. What seemed fair to the Scots, that each kingdom should have an equal say in matters of joint concern, naturally seemed most unfair to five times as many English.
Further Reading:
Professor Trevor-Roper's essay 'Scotland and the Puritan revolution' was first published in Historical Essays, 1600-1750, presented to David Ogg , edited by H.E. Bell and R.L. Ollard, A.&C. Black (London, 1963), and reprinted in Religion, the Reformation and Social Change , Macmillan (London, 1967). Recent work on the relations of the Scots with English parliamentary parties is contained in D. Underdown, Pride's Purge. Politics in the Puritan Revolution , Oxford University Press (Oxford 1971) and L. Kaplan, Politics and Religion during the English Revolution. The Scots and the Long Parliament, 1643-1645 , New York University Press (New York, 1976); M.J. Mendle, 'Politics and Political Thought, 1640-1642' in C. Russell (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War , Macmillan (London, 1973), has some interesting comments on how English events were influenced by Scottish precedents. The quotation by Conrad Russell is from The Crisis of Parliaments. English History 1509-1660 , Oxford University Press (Oxford, 1971). My own views on the Scottish revolution are to be found in The Scottish Revolution, 1637-44. The Triumph of the Covenanters , David & Charles (Newton Abbot, 1973) and Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland 1644-51 (Royal Historical Society, 1977). The wider Scottish background may be approached through G. Donaldson, Scotland. James V to James VII , Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh, 1965) and T.C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560-1830 , Collins (London, 1969).
• Dr David Stevenson is Lecturer in History at Aberdeen University.
In April, 1976 Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, now Lord Dacre of Glanton, lent the authority of the Regius Chair of Modern History at Oxford to the remarkable statement that the Scottish political system before the Act of Union of 1707 was simply 'political banditry'. He then proceeded, in the same article in The Times , to the even more extraordinary assertion that this tradition was not yet dead, as 'we have seen it at work in the Scotch province of Ulster from 1922 till it had to be suspended there, too, in 1972'. Trevor-Roper's article was written as a contribution to the debate on Devolution, and he was trying to show that any attempt to undo the Union of 1707 would lead to disaster for the Scots, as history had proved that they were utterly incapable of governing themselves competently.
From this context one might conclude that these statements should be ignored by historians on the grounds that they were wild and ill-considered assertions made in the heat of the moment during a passionate political controversy. But in fact they are more than this, being perhaps the most extreme of many arguments and assertions made over many years by Trevor-Roper, which appear to be based on a commitment to the 1707 Union which is so strong that nothing interesting or creditable can be admitted to have come from Scotland before that date.
Trevor-Roper's most sustained exposition of this interpretation of Scottish history first appeared in 1963 in the form of an essay on 'Scotland and the Puritan Revolution'. The essay undoubtedly contains some profound insights, and it has proved influential through making sense of complex and seemingly chaotic events by elegantly-stated and superficially persuasive arguments. But these arguments rest on a caricature of the society, economy, politics and religion of seventeenth-century Scotland.
Before considering his arguments, let us look briefly at the complicated relations between England and Scotland in the mid-seventeenth century.
In 1603 James VI of Scotland had succeeded to the English throne as James I. In this Union of the Crowns the two kingdoms maintained their separate identities, being joined only by the fact that they had a sovereign in common. Accession to the English throne greatly increased James' power and prestige as King of Scotland, enabling him to speed up his work of restoring royal power there in both church and state. In the church the demands of the presbyterians for a kirk free from royal control and without a clerical hierarchy were defeated; the powers of bishops were restored, and through them the King governed the church. But royal policies and the effects of the 1603 Union led to increasing discontent in Scotland. Scots came to believe that their country was being ruled in England's interests, and that official policies were designed to make Scotland as like England as possible. Such feelings were already evident in the later years of James VI, and after his death in 1625 they grew fast under his inflexible and politically incompetent son, Charles I. This discontent culminated in open resistance to the King in 1637, and in the signing of the National Covenant in 1638. The occasion of the Covenanters' revolt was religious - opposition to innovations in worship imposed by the King - and it was religion that was used to justify resistance to the King and to give unity to those who opposed him; but constitutional and other secular grievances also contributed powerfully to the revolt.
In the 'Bishops' Wars' of 1639-40 Charles I, facing increasing opposition in England, failed in his attempts to use the resources of that kingdom to crush the Covenanters, and in 1640 they successfully invaded England. In negotiations in 1640-41 Charles was forced to accept the establishment of presbyterian church government in Scotland and severe limitations in his power in the state.
The Covenanters may have triumphed in Scotland but as England drifted into civil war in 1642 between King and Parliament, the Scots felt they had to intervene. In the early stages of the war it looked as though the King was going to win, and it was obvious that if he was successful in asserting his absolute power in England, he would then turn to destroying his opponents in Scotland. In 1643, therefore, by the Solemn League and Covenant and a military treaty, the Covenanters agreed to send an army to help the English Parliament. In return Parliament promised religious reforms in England on Scottish presbyterian lines, and other reforms designed to protect Scotland's interests.
The Scottish army which fought in England in 1644-46 played an essential part in bringing about Parliament's victory over the King. But tension grew between the allies, for it seemed to the Covenanters that Parliament had accepted their help, but then refused to carry out the promises in return for which that help had been given. Disillusionment with the English Parliament ultimately led many Covenanters to conclude that they should ally themselves with the now defeated King and, through him, impose a settlement in England which would safeguard Scottish interests. As a result of this, in 1648 the 'Engagers', an alliance of moderate Covenanters and Royalists, invaded England. But there they were promptly defeated by Cromwell, and with his approval and help the extreme presbyterian 'Kirk Party' regime seized power in Scotland and rigorously purged all Engagers from the Scottish Parliament. But when Cromwell proceeded to execute Charles I and abolish monarchy in 1649, the Kirk Party refused to accept this unilateral action by the English in matters which clearly concerned both kingdoms. The Scots therefore proclaimed Charles II King of England as well as Scotland, and sought to restore him to his English throne. This provoked English retaliation, and in 1650-51 Cromwell conquered Scotland.
In interpreting the complicated interactions of these two kingdoms, Trevor-Roper acutely concentrated on revealing the consistency that underlies the superficial confusion of events. In the 1640s the Scottish covenanters tried repeatedly to export their revolution to England, but failed because it proved unacceptable to the English. Eventually this interference in English affairs forced the English into the conquest of' Scotland, and in the 1650s the process was reversed; the English sought to export their revolution to Scotland. But they in turn found that their revolution was unacceptable to their neighbours.
Thus far Trevor-Roper's arguments are interesting and persuasive. But when he proceeds to examine the differences between the two kingdoms his arguments become highly misleading. Firstly, the Scotland depicted by Trevor-Roper is a land of truly remarkable backwardness, economically, socially and culturally. Secondly, while he emphasises the importance of Scottish intervention in England, he defines Scots influences on the English revolution far too narrowly. Repeated Scottish military intervention is rightly seen as having major effects on the course of events. And Scottish attempts to impose presbyterianism in England are seen as significant, though only because they provoke hostile reaction. Thus the ideals and aims of the Scots are seen purely in religious terms; and even these religious ideals are taken to have had no contribution to make to English ideals except through the strength with which they were rejected.
These two arguments are closely related, and both are central to Trevor- Roper's contention that the season that the revolutions of the neighbouring kingdoms proved incompatible was that the two societies were at very different stages of development. Scottish society was so backward that the ideology of its revolution could have no relevance to England; and the ideals of the English revolution were equally irrelevant to Scotland.
That Scotland was backward at this time compared to England is clear. She was much poorer than her great neighbour, through limited natural resources, an inefficient agricultural system, and a relatively small share in international trade. Population was stagnant, economic growth slow. But Trevor-Roper pushes his argument about Scottish economic, and therefore social, backwardness to extraordinary extremes, asserting that the country was entirely free from the sort of economic strains that were leading to tensions and changes in other European societies. Scotland, we are told, was a land 'without merchants'; Edinburgh was 'devoid of mercantile spirit'. In fact, though Scotland's merchants were relatively few, and relatively poor, by no definition can it be said she had none. To take one outstanding example, Sir William Dick of Braid, the greatest Edinburgh merchant of his day, lent huge sums to the Covenanters to support their resistance to the King, and his son Lewis Dick subscribed far more as an 'Adventurer' for the re-conquest of Ireland in 1642 than any Englishman, merchant or otherwise. Dick of Braid was of course far from typical, but all the larger Scottish burghs had plenty of merchants engaging in international as well as local trade. Even more extraordinary is Trevor-Roper's assertion that Scotland experienced 'no inflation'. The great sixteenth-century price revolution which caused economic and social strains throughout Europe evidently halted abruptly at England's northern border, considerately leaving Scotland's fossilised economy to slumber on undisturbed. Such a suggestion is inherently improbable, and even the most superficial examination proves its inaccuracy. The fact that the pound sterling was worth four pounds Scots in 1560 and twelve pounds Scots in 1600 demonstrates that the value of the Scots currency had collapsed relative to sterling, and there is plenty of evidence of fast-rising prices within Scotland. But Trevor-Roper, it seems, felt free to discuss the Scottish economy without apparently taking into consideration any of the works published on the topic.
When Trevor-Roper turns to the social structure of seventeenth-century Scotland one can sympathise with his complaint that so far as published work was concerned the subject was 'a blank'. Into this void he modestly proposes to offer some general suggestions 'with prudent caution' as he is a 'foreigner' rashly intruding. The apology is strange, implying the existence of a convention that only the natives of a country are really qualified to write on its history; and what undermines his contribution to Scottish seventeenth-century social history is not that he is 'foreign' but that, again, he appears not to have done his homework. Moreover, the promised 'prudent caution' is thrown to the winds in favour of dogmatic assertion. Scottish society is seen, like her economy, as static. Most important of all, Scotland 'lacked altogether the new class of educated laymen on which the greatness of Tudor England had been built'; for practical purposes the educated middle classes consisted of lawyers and clergy, 'the pillars of conservatism'. In England an educated laity had kept Calvinist clerics in their place; in Scotland the laity were not strong enough to do this, and the clerics were thus able to indulge their theocratic pretensions. The revolution which the Covenanters tried to export to England was essentially this theocratic revolution of the clerics.
This argument immediately raises difficulties, for it leads to two major inconsistencies. Firstly, Trevor-Roper has been insisting that Scotland was entirely free from the sort of major strains and pressures that had been transforming English society. But now another strand of his argument has led to the assertion that in one central respect, religious reformation, Scotland had seen much more radical change than England. This difficulty is seen, and is surmounted by a daring temporary reversal of previous assumptions. In all other matters lack of radical change has held back social change in Scotland; but in religion, it is asserted, it was the very fact that change was radical that prevented tensions arising and leading to social change! Because Scottish society had 'experienced a more radical religious reformation, it no longer felt certain ancient pressures'; whereas England's partial reformation had left elements of old and new to confront each other and thus create tensions. The argument is ingenious, but in the context smacks of special pleading. Further, it does not accord with the facts. Certainly there were Calvinist clerics in Scotland who would have liked to establish the theocratic, conservative tyranny that Trevor-Roper believes to have existed; but they did not get their way. They were out-manoeuvred and crushed in the first decade of the seventeenth century by James VI with the help of the independent lay elements that Trevor-Roper seems to believe did not exist. Scots nobles and lairds tended to be as hostile to the pretensions of the clergy as English nobles and gentry. For though Scottish society was not experiencing change at the same speed as English society, similar types of change were taking place, in response to similar types of pressure - inflation, the transfer of great areas of church lands into lay hands, reformation, and the emergence of the lairds (lesser tenants-in-chief) into a more active role in national affairs, independent of the nobility. Very little work has been done to chart and evaluate these changes; but this is no excuse for asserting that no change took place at all. The Scottish nobles like their English counterparts were suffering economic problems and challenges to their role in society, both from below, and from an increasingly powerful monarchy which sought to centralise power and (by its prodigality in creating new titles) seemed to threaten the older nobility through inflation of honours. Indeed in Scotland the challenge to the old ruling classes from an absolutist monarchy, bureaucratic and centralising, was in a sense greater than in England, for by the union of the crowns power was 'centralised' to the point at which it withdrew from Scotland altogether. The sort of alienation and tension expressed in 'country' versus 'court' divisions became intensified when the court was an absentee one. Yet Trevor-Roper does not see that Scotland suffered from any strains from such developments in monarchy and government, in spite of the fact that Scotland, of course, shared with England the kings responsible for such policies in England in the early seventeenth century.
The second inconsistency that arises from Trevor-Roper's picture of a Scotland dominated by a clerical tyranny concerns the position of the nobility. If presbyterian ministers were the real masters of Scotland, clearly the nobility must have been subordinate to them. Yet to accept this would mean abandoning one of the main elements which appear in interpretations like Trevor-Roper's which stress Scotland's remarkable backwardness all-powerful nobles, acting oppressively towards those below them in society, feuding violently among themselves, and successfully defying the Crown. It is not surprising to find that such over-mighty subjects do appear in Trevor-Roper's interpretations; but their relationship with the clergy is left vague, for to discuss the matter explicitly would make it obvious that both groups could not simultaneously wield despotic power over the kingdom. Trevor-Roper does stress the great and arbitrary powers of the nobility both before and after the 1640s. Thus we are told of the 'great, incorrigible feudatories' of Scotland who made kings their 'play- things' before 1603 (which in itself is a very questionable assertion). Similarly, in dealing with the 1650s, Trevor-Roper argues that 'the despotism of the Church' in Scotland was 'hardly less formidable than the despotism of the great nobles'. Thus the nobles evidently had the edge on the clergy when it came to despotism. But what were these great feudal nobles doing in the 1640s? Nothing is said on this, for to mention them here would undermine the picture of Scotland in the 1640s as the plaything of clerics determined on theocratic revolution to which Trevor-Roper is committed. Only once is the role of the nobility hinted at, suggesting that perhaps after all it was not the clergy who were supreme. We are told that in backward, clerical-dominated Scotland 'those who wished to mobilise the people... had to use the tribunes of the people', the clergy. This was hardly uniquely Scottish. What about the role of Puritan preachers in England or Catholic priests in the 1640 revolt of the Catalans? But what is significant in this context is the suggestion that other interests, by implication lay ones, existed behind the clerics of Scotland and ‘used’ them. But these interests are never identified, and apart from this hint it is assumed that the clergy and their ambitions dominate Scotland.
The differences which led Trevor-Roper to conclude that Scotland and England were 'poles apart', that an 'immense social gulf lay between them, thus turn out not to be so extreme after all. Clearly there were major differences between the two societies, but his analysis is based on a crude caricature of Scottish society. He suggests that to Englishmen of the 1640s 'Scotland... is not an intelligible society responding to intelligible social forces'; but the same charge can be made against his own approach, and indeed his views on Scotland bear a good deal of similarity to those presented by many English propagandists in the 1640s. It is remarkable that the author of a seminal essay on 'The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century' could appear to believe that Scotland was entirely isolated from the forces and trends that shaped that crisis.
Turning to the nature and effects of Scottish intervention in England in the 1640s, Trevor-Roper rightly sees the Covenanters as seeking to expert their revolution in order to bring it security. How could they be confident of retaining the concessions they had forced from the King if he retained full power in his other, much greater kingdom, England? But, having interpreted the revolution which had taken place in Scotland in purely religious terms, Trevor-Roper can only see the religious side of the changes that the Covenanters demanded in England. They tried to impose their church: theocratic, intolerant anti-tyrannical. The attempt inevitably failed, for this church, though well suited to Scotland's backward society, was totally inappropriate to an English society dominated by lay interests. 'Except for a few clergymen, tempted by clerical power, there were no English presbyterians.' But such innate abhorrence of presbyterianism was disguised by many English parliamentarians in 1640-41 and 1643-44 in order to buy Scottish military aid by a pretence of willingness to accept such a church. Now it is certainly true that many in England opposed presbyterianism on the Scottish model, and did so because they feared that a church which claimed independence of the state would move on to demand theocratic domination over the state. But, ironically, many of these fears might have been stilled had the English looked at the Covenanters' religious practice rather than at their theories. For in Scotland the lay Covenanters had kept firm control over the church. As Professor Gordon Donaldson has written, 'all in all, the presbyterian system proved admirably adapted to be an instrument of the aristocracy and gentry'. Like their English counterparts, the lay Covenanters had no wish to free themselves from the clerical tyranny of bishops only to fall under the clerical tyranny of presbyterian ministers. In the light of Trevor-Roper's interpretations there is irony in the fact that the closest that Scotland even came to the theocracy he posits was in 1648-50 under the Kirk Party; for this regime, a minority faction of the extreme Covenanters, was helped to power by English intervention in Scotland.
But though in Scotland most lay Covenanters of any status in society (and indeed many of the clergy) successfully opposed presbyterian pretensions to dominate society and the state in practice, in theory they usually supported such pretensions in order to maintain the unity of the covenanting movement. This tacit compromise benefited the Covenanters within Scotland; but it proved a fatal obstacle to them in trying to sell their religious revolution in England. Having demanded the establishment of an autonomous church on presbyterian lines, it was impossible for them to add, reassuringly, that in practice laymen could control this church by acting as elders. Thus however much the Scots urged that presbyterianism represented a happy medium between the tyranny of episcopacy and the anarchy of independency, most Englishmen remained deeply suspicious of its theocratic implications.
Trevor-Roper has interpreted correctly one of the major reasons for the refusal of the English to accept reformation on Scottish lines (though 'Scots' presbyterianism did have a considerable number of English supporters, especially in London), but he has misinterpreted the Scottish background that gave rise to the problem. Moreover, he makes this fear of clerical tyranny the only reason for English refusal to import Scotland's revolution. But there were other reasons, and at times determination to reject Scotland's religion through this argument was little more than a rationalisation of a general determination to reject all things Scots. After their early triumphs, the Covenanters urged their revolution (religious and, as will be argued below, constitutional) on the English with an arrogance and tactlessness which inevitably provoked massive nationalistic resentment. Many Englishmen felt humiliated at having to rely on military help from their despised northern neighbours, and at having to purchase this aid by agreeing (however insincerely) to consider making changes in England suggested - or dictated - by the Scots. One of those who led in expressing such patriotic determination to resist Scottish demands was Oliver Cromwell, who won much popularity by his attitude. Trevor-Roper tends to dismiss those who question his views on Scottish history as Scottish nationalists, but he ignores the existence of English nationalism.
Trevor-Roper succeeds in presenting the Scots in England as concerned solely with religion, by quoting only the ministers among the Scots Commissioners who negotiated with the English Parliament in 1640-41 and 1644-47. The lay Commissioners sent by the state are totally ignored. So, indeed, are the ministers when they stray off purely religious topics and display wider interests. Alexander Henderson, one of the most widely respected of the Kirk's ministers, produced the 'Instructions for Defensive Arms' (1639), listing constitutional as well as religious justifications for opposing the King in arms. This work was thought relevant enough to English preoccupations on the eve of civil war to be twice printed in London. Lex Rex , a major treatise on mixed monarchy by Samuel Rutherford (Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews, 1639-47), was first published in 1644 in London, and aroused much interest. But such indications that some ministers at least could see beyond the joys of clerical tyranny are ignored by Trevor-Roper. He frequently quotes, with a sort of fascinated contempt, Robert Baillie, 'the voluble, invaluable letter writer, that incomparable Scotch dominie, so learned, so acute, so factual, so complacent, so unshakably omniscient, so infallibly wrong'. Baillie (Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, 1642-61) is used to show how the Scots, obsessed with religion and incapable of interpreting events in a society so different from their own, misunderstood what was happening in England. However, though Baillie is held to be infallibly wrong about England, Trevor-Roper treats him as infallibly right about Scotland and the clerical nature of the Scottish revolution. But when Baillie was wrong about England he was at least as much wrong because he was a minister as because he was a Scot. Many English ministers, like Baillie, saw events in bigoted religious terms, and the narrowness of his vision, it is arguable, renders his interpretations of events in Scotland almost as suspect as his views on England. In 1648, when the Engagers defied the church in Scotland, raised an army and invaded England, Baillie was forced into realisation that his belief in the clerical nature of the Scottish revolution, which he assumed had left the church able to dominate the state, had been wrong. The covenanting state had shown, in its first open clash with the church, that it could prevail, leaving Baillie as bewildered about Scotland as he had been about events in England.
What then were the non-religious ambitions of the Scots in England? Firstly, having destroyed royal power in their state as well as in their church, they wanted to do the same in England. Not until the English Parliament had been put in a position to prevent the King using English resources against Scotland would their revolution in Scotland be safe. Secondly, to the personal union of the crowns the Covenanters wished to add permanent links between the Parliaments of the two kingdoms, through joint meetings of English and Scottish Parliamentary commissioners. This loose federal structure would be used to prevent quarrels between the kingdoms (and especially to prevent the King trying to use one against the other), and to ensure that Scotland had an equal say with England in matters of joint concern foreign policy, commercial policy (free trade between the kingdoms was to be established) and the making of war and peace. In the Covenanters' eyes the Union of the Crowns had led to Scotland's interests being subordinated to England's, so they now demanded a new, truly 'equal', union.
Over union the Covenanters were thwarted by a mixture of indifference and open hostility on the part of the English. Few in England saw any real need for closer ties with the Scots; and none were ready to consider union on Scottish terms. Understandably, a union which gave about one million Scots as much to say in joint affairs as five million English seemed very 'unequal' south of the Border.
Yet, in spite of the Covenanters' failures over religion and union, the events and ideas of the Scottish revolution did have important effects on developments in England which went far beyond the implications of their military intervention and reaction against their religion.
It is of course recognised that the Scottish revolt of 1637, at a time when there was no sign of violent opposition to Charles I in England, began that King's downfall. But often the influence of the Scots revolt on England seems to be placed in the same category as the undermining of a regime by defeat in foreign war. In fact the Bishops' Wars were much more directly relevant to the attitudes of Charles' English subjects than this. The King's English subjects were certainly encouraged by seeing him defeated in war; but perhaps even more important for them was that they saw their King had been successfully resisted by his own rebellious subjects. From the first the Covenanters appealed to the King's English opponents by claiming to be motivated by grievances similar to theirs. The cause of the Covenanters was also the cause of the English. It was, therefore, not surprising that when open opposition to the discredited King grew in England the leaders of opposition tended to follow Scottish patterns and precedents. That Charles was forced to summon the Long Parliament in 1640 because the Scots had invaded England and threatened to advance south unless the King paid their army is well known. Parliament had to be summoned to vote the necessary taxes. But it was not chance that led the Covenanters to act in way that brought about the meeting of the English Parliament, They insisted that Parliament must meet before they would negotiate a peace with the King, and they then insisted that Parliament be a party to their treaty with the King. In a very real sense it was the Scots who ended the 'Eleven Years' Tyranny' in England.
Throughout his negotiations with the Covenanters, Charles I was worried that any concessions he made to them would lead to demands for similar concessions in England. When he reluctantly agreed to the abolition of bishops in Scotland in 1639 he tried, unsuccessfully, to insist that they only be abolished as contrary to the constitutions of the Kirk, as he held that the Covenanters' further demand that they be declared 'unlawful' would lead to claims that episcopacy must be unlawful in England as well. When Charles visited Scotland in 1641 he bitterly resisted demands that he surrender control of the executive (through agreeing to parliamentary approval of the appointment of all councillors, judges and officers of state), and he was encouraged in his stand by repeated reports from his English Secretary of State that English parliamentary leaders were preparing to make similar demands if he gave way in Scotland. They were resolved to act 'according to ye Scottish precedent'. Charles did give way in Scotland, and the English demands duly followed. Other constitutional demands already made in England bad been in part copied from the Scots. The 1640 Scottish Triennial Act (stipulating that Parliament should meet at least once every three years) was followed by the 1641 English Triennial Act. In 1640 the Covenanters had removed the bishops from the Scottish Parliament by a re-definition of the traditional three estates of prelates, barons and burgesses. These estates now became nobles, shire commissioners or small barons, and burgesses. The following year Lord Saye proposed a similar way of removing bishops from the English Parliament while adhering to the tradition of three estates. Lords, bishops and commons should become King, Lords and Commons. The Bishop of Exeter at least was aware of the Scottish precedent here, for he remarked that Saye 'savoured of a Scottish covenanter'.
Robert Baillie was more accurate than usual when he reported that the King's English opponents admitted that they owed 'their religion, liberties, parliaments and all they have', under God, to the Scots. An English historian, Conrad Russell, has recently expressed this even more emphatically: ‘The name of John Hampden is better known in the history of English liberties than the names of Lord Rothes, Lord Loudoun, and Lord Balmerino, but it does not deserve to be’. Such Scottish influence in England was strongest in and before 1641, but it can also be found at work later. In 1648 'Pride's Purge' of the English Parliament cleared the way for Cromwell's rise to power. A month before, Cromwell had written in wonder of the Kirk Party’s purge of the Scottish Parliament: ‘a lesser party of a parliament hath made it lawful to declare the greater part a faction, and made a parliament null, and call a new one, and to do this by force.... Think of the example and consequences’. It is hard to believe that this disreputable Scottish 'constitutional' precedent had no influence on the English purge that followed it so promptly.
These arguments and examples are, however, perhaps unlikely to persuade Professor Trevor-Roper that the Covenanters had anything positive to offer the English. When some of the Scottish precedents for the constitutional gains of the Long Parliament were noted in a book he was reviewing in the Times Literary Supplement as recently as 1977 he dismissed this as insignificant as, firstly, Charles was insincere in the concessions he granted in both kingdoms, and, secondly, that in Scotland the concessions had been forced from the King by 'great men' making use of the clergy. No concessions granted in such circumstances can, it appears, be taken seriously as constitutional gains. Unfortunately this type of argument directly contradicts a judgement which Trevor-Roper has made earlier in the same review. In discussing the 1707 Treaty of Union he asserted that the value of a political act is not to be judged by considering the men who passed it and the means they used!
Scotland was a small, poor and in some respects backward country compared with England in the mid-seventeenth century; but nonetheless she had more to offer England than armies to be used for or against the King, and religious intolerance to be indignantly rejected. Presbyterianism was a form of Church government acceptable to many in England. Leading Scots Presbyterians and English Independents - including Cromwell - respected each other's godliness in spite of their disagreements. Political and constitutional ideas expounded by Scots Covenanters were accepted as relevant contributions to English controversies. When convenient, hatred of the Scots and their attempts to impose a settlement on England could easily be stirred up, but the appearance of such nationalistic prejudices hardly proves that the two kingdoms were totally incompatible. Indeed their relations in this period present a fascinating study of the problems of forming an acceptable union between two formerly independent states when they differ greatly in size, wealth and population. What seemed fair to the Scots, that each kingdom should have an equal say in matters of joint concern, naturally seemed most unfair to five times as many English.
Further Reading:
Professor Trevor-Roper's essay 'Scotland and the Puritan revolution' was first published in Historical Essays, 1600-1750, presented to David Ogg , edited by H.E. Bell and R.L. Ollard, A.&C. Black (London, 1963), and reprinted in Religion, the Reformation and Social Change , Macmillan (London, 1967). Recent work on the relations of the Scots with English parliamentary parties is contained in D. Underdown, Pride's Purge. Politics in the Puritan Revolution , Oxford University Press (Oxford 1971) and L. Kaplan, Politics and Religion during the English Revolution. The Scots and the Long Parliament, 1643-1645 , New York University Press (New York, 1976); M.J. Mendle, 'Politics and Political Thought, 1640-1642' in C. Russell (ed.), The Origins of the English Civil War , Macmillan (London, 1973), has some interesting comments on how English events were influenced by Scottish precedents. The quotation by Conrad Russell is from The Crisis of Parliaments. English History 1509-1660 , Oxford University Press (Oxford, 1971). My own views on the Scottish revolution are to be found in The Scottish Revolution, 1637-44. The Triumph of the Covenanters , David & Charles (Newton Abbot, 1973) and Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland 1644-51 (Royal Historical Society, 1977). The wider Scottish background may be approached through G. Donaldson, Scotland. James V to James VII , Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh, 1965) and T.C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560-1830 , Collins (London, 1969).
• Dr David Stevenson is Lecturer in History at Aberdeen University.