Anglo-Scottish Relations: the Carlyles in London

This chapter provides the background for the sojourn of Thomas and Jane Carlyle in London. Thomas travelled to London with the manuscript of Sartor Resartus, hoping to find a publisher for that strange satirical rhapsody. This work mounted a sustained rhetorical attack on ‘the condition of England’. It is not the case that the Scottish Carlyle opposed all things English as somehow inferior to the institutions and doings in his native land. He was never inclined to support Scottish separatism. He and his wife, Jane, later agreed to preferring life in London. Sartor Resartus would eventually claim the status of an iconic work. In Sartor itself, Carlyle's German philosopher Diogenes Teufelsdröckh states that he honours two kinds of men, ‘and no third’. The distinctive Carlylean voice of Sartor Resartus acted on its readers as a secular Bible, a Pilgrim's Progress for the age.

South Britons’ Reception of North Britons, 1707–1820

This chapter explores the dark reception that the Scots received in eighteenth-century England. Scots obtained no new rights of residence by the Act of Union in 1707. Sauny the Scot was the eponymous hero of a doctored version of The Taming of the Shrew that placed Shakespeare's comedy in polite London society. Sauny's function was to protect the gentility and refinement of his master Petruchio. The Man of the World is ultimately a more serious story of a vicious and unprincipled Scotsman on the make. Anglo-Scottish personal unions multiplied after the parliamentary union. Language was perhaps increasingly the prime criterion of full acceptability. Growing awareness of Scotland as a country and a culture did not necessarily decrease prejudice. There is evidence of a marked increase in the flow of Scots into England in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first of the nineteenth, as the pace of economic growth south of the border intensified and its extent broadened.

Judicial Torture, the Liberties of the Subject, and Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1660–1690

This chapter provides a picture of the uses to which judicial torture was put after 1660. It also reconsiders Hume's ‘vestige of barbarity’: the role of judicial torture in late seventeenth-century Scotland. It first explores the practice of judicial torture in its broader legal, political, and philosophical contexts before turning to consider three specific instances wherein torture was sanctioned. The first concerns the torture in 1676 of the Covenanting preacher, James Mitchell, following his alleged attempt to assassinate the head of the established church, Archbishop James Sharp of St Andrews. The second investigates the torture of William Spence and William Carstares in 1684 on suspicion of treasonable attempts to foment an Anglo-Scottish rebellion against Charles II's authority, and the final case addresses the torture in 1690 of an English political agitator, Henry Neville Payne, in connection with Anglo-Scottish Jacobite intrigues being concerted against the government of William and Mary. Moreover, it describes the role of judicial torture within a domestic Scottish context. It is noted that if judicial torture is regarded as ‘an engine of state, not of law’, primarily deployed to protect civil society, rather than to punish known crimes, then some chilling contemporary parallels emerge.

A Blessed Union? Anglo-Scottish Relations before the Covenant

This chapter provides a summary on the Anglo-Scottish relations before the Covenant. It specifically addresses the medieval inheritance of Anglo-Scottish relations. Undoubtedly, the fourteenth-century Wars of Independence hugely influenced the development of late medieval Scotland, leaving the Scots with a legacy of popular distrust of England. The new British state system with its composite monarchies was not unique, and multiple monarchies existed elsewhere in Europe. The structures put in place for the government of the new Britain had minimal or little impact on Anglo-Scottish relations, and what is surprising is how little governmental change took place. In terms of culture, the greatly improved Anglo-Scottish relations of the early seventeenth century had a modest impact. Religion was the single most damaging evidence of Scotland's distinctive traditions being compromised, and significantly it was on this issue that the Covenanters placed greatest emphasis in their subsequent negotiations with English parliamentarians in the 1640s.

O Brave New World? The Union of England and Scotland in 1603

This chapter discusses the drama and tension of the accession, and the history of the Union of the Crowns in the lifetime of James. James VI was proclaimed King of England when Elizabeth died. It was ruthlessly silent about James' Anglo-Scottish ancestry. But what James VI had inherited from his Stuart ancestors, most notably James IV and the even more effective James V, was a lofty vision of the diplomatic importance of the King of Scots and his ability to have an impact on other European countries. In 1603, the brutal fact was that the Scots and the English disliked one another intensely. The theme of Anglo-Scottish hostility is briefly outlined. The Union of 1603 did have a profound impact on his style of kingship. It was also noted that the dearth of Tudor heirs contributed to the absolute problem of finding different kings for England and Scotland. When celebrating the fourth centenary of that momentous event, the toast was certainly to King James.

Introduction

This book presents an overview of the first six decades of the Union of the Crowns. It also provides a picture of the uses to which judicial torture was put after 1660 and a summary of the straits in which Scotland found itself in the opening years of the eighteenth century. It then explores the problems which union posed to maritime lawyers of both nations, the dark reception that the Scots received in eighteenth-century England, and the way Enlightenment Scotland viewed the British unions. It examines the ambitions of Scottish élites in India, the frame for radical cooperation in the age of the Friends of the People and later, and the background for the sojourn of Thomas and Jane Carlyle in London. It finally outlined the Anglo-Scottish relations on the political scene in the nineteenth century. The parliamentary union did little in the short run for Anglo-Scottish relations. It is shown that Scots are indeed worried and worry a lot about Anglo-Scottish relations, but the English worried and worry about them hardly at all, except in times of exceptional crisis, as in 1638–54, 1703–7, 1745–7 and perhaps much later in the 1970s after oil had been discovered.

Eighteenth-Century Scotland and the Three Unions

This chapter is concerned with the way Enlightenment Scotland viewed the British unions. The focus of the Scottish Enlightenment was on the deeper social and economic underpinnings of political systems, not on the epiphenomenal superficialities of national status. There has been a widespread assumption that Scots law and Presbyterianism became mainstays of Scottish identity in the supposed vacuum created by the loss of Scotland's parliament. A different kind of ambivalence surrounded eighteenth-century Scottish attitudes to the law. Eighteenth-century Scottish historians made no attempt to align the Union of 1603 and the Union of 1707 in a benignly unfolding story of ever-closer British integration. Given the horrors of the Union of the Crowns, as related by the sociological historians of the Scottish Enlightenment, it becomes easier to explain why these same historians put a positive gloss on the enforced Cromwellian union of the 1650s. The Anglo-American crisis and problems in the Anglo-Irish relationship brought into sharp focus the solid loyalty of North Britons.

The Law of the Sea and the Two Unions

This chapter explores the problems which union posed to maritime lawyers of both nations. It approaches the questions from an oblique angle by asking why in one area it did become possible to speak with some plausibility of a body of British law. In particular, it tries to address why lawyers in Scotland began to accept between the Unions of 1603 and 1707 that their sea law might need to be exposed to influence from south of the border. It then considers why the handling of maritime matters excepted from the general insistence on the preservation of a separate legal system in Scotland. A theoretical difference between approving the customs of mariners and determining the requirements of international law is vital, for it displays that the move towards developing a British law of the sea cannot simply have led from recognition that many maritime disputes had to be determined in accordance with international law. To secure the coasts against invasion and to promote mutual trade, there had to be a British admiralty regulating the exercise of jurisdiction over British ships in the British seas.

Anglo-Scottish Political Relations in the Nineteenth Century, c. 1815–1914

This chapter surveys Anglo-Scottish relations on the political scene in the nineteenth century. The English and Scottish politics in the nineteenth century were fairly well meshed together—certainly compared to Ireland. The extent of this political relationship can be exemplified in three areas: policy, party system, and personnel. There was a sense of grievance among Scots that their national interests and institutions were not being fairly or properly treated by the British state. There was also an inherent contradiction in their main complaints. Education was depicted as being supplanted by English values and methods. Anglo-Scottish political relations were reasonably favorable mainly because of the particular arrangements under which Scottish government was conducted. The several elements involved here are presented. At the moment of the greatest test of British unity, the proportion of Scots enlisting in the First World War was no different from the English and Welsh figures, and much higher than the Irish.

Scottish-English Connections in British Radicalism in the 1790s

This chapter discusses the frame for radical co-operation in the age of the Friends of the People and later. The links to radicalism south of the Border have tended to be relegated to the margins of historical debate. Through the agency of Thomas Muir, links with the leading Irish radical society, the United Irishmen, were established at a relatively early stage, although the precise nature of these remains obscure. The emphasis on the Scots-Irish connection reflects the formative affect on Irish presbyterian radicals of an education provided by the Scottish universities. The influence of the English reform movement on the emergence of an organised campaign for parliamentary reform in Scotland in the 1790s has not always been fully appreciated, although it appears to have been a significant one. Correspondence and personal contacts across national boundaries were intermittent; the flow of print, in both ways, was continual. During the 1790s, union was a crucial element of radical strategy and tactics in Britain.