Part 9

There is a touch of pathos in this final scene. To us, it can appear sad only with the sadness of changefulness. But the faces of contemporaries were turned backwards. The three Estates had survived many revolutions. It was true that their history did not represent the best of the nation's life; but with that best it had ever been more or less closely associated. In recent years the Parliament had come to mean national existence. It had entered into a new sphere, and assumed new functions. A career of usefulness seemed to lie before it. In spite of its age, its end was, in this sense, premature. The conditions, too, were ignominious. The accumulated hatred of four hundred years had attached itself to the names of Darien and Glencoe. England had yielded much less than a free and independent nation had a right to ask, and Scotland could not demand more, because the men whom she trusted had failed her.

No doubt the Chancellor was right. It was "the end o' an auld sang." But, after all, the Estates had received "the wages of going on, and still to be." It did not appear so at the first. The Parliament of Great Britain broke more than one pledge solemnly made at the union. The highest boon that King James or Prince Charles could promise to Scotland was the repeal of the union. The Scottish representatives had little weight in the councils of the Empire. Even the faithful Argyll was thwarted, and his service lightly esteemed. The best blood of the country was spilt on foreign battlefields and in alien quarrels. The genius of a Keith served only to lead to victory the troops of Frederick the Great, and to guide the steps of Russia towards Constantinople. Among the exiles, there were others, less fortunate, who found no scope for their talents, and no friends in the land of the stranger. But, as time passed, the tragic element faded out of the story, and, with the rapid growth of prosperity, the influence of Scotland on the destinies of the nation became more apparent. The land of Kennedy and Elphinstone, of Lethington and Carstares, could not fail to produce wise and prudent statesmen, who might find, on a wider stage, the renown that had been denied to those who went before them. The music of the "auld sang" resounded again, although the walls that re-echoed it were those of Westminster. The Imperial Parliament meets close to the ancient Abbey, the guardian of the Stone of Fate, which the first Edward carried in triumph from Scotland, and on which, for nigh three hundred years, descendant after descendant of his enemy has sat. As the old prophecy has not been rendered void by the transference of its subject from Scone to London, so the promise that gave meaning to the last years of the Scottish Parliament has not failed of fulfilment. _Nec tamen consumebatur._

APPENDIX

REPRESENTATION IN THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT[136]

Although we know that burgesses were present at the Cambuskenneth Parliament, we possess no information as to what towns they represented. The first list of burghs in the Acts of Parliament refers to the Council held in 1357 to arrange about the ransom of King David II, and it includes the following towns:--Aberdeen, Crail, Cupar, Dumbarton, Dumfries, Dundee, Edinburgh, Haddington, Inverkeithing, Lanark, Linlithgow, Montrose, Perth, Peebles, Rutherglen, Stirling, and St. Andrews. From 1367, we have, occasionally, records of the election of burgesses to the Committee of the Articles, and these give us our only information regarding representation. (Cf. pp. 26-33.) We subjoin the first known date of the representation of any burgh at a regular meeting of the Estates in Parliament assembled. It must, of course, be understood that this list does not, in any way, pretend to completeness; the material is incomplete, and, in most cases when burghs are mentioned, up to the sixteenth century, it is only in connection with the Lords of the Articles.

FOURTEENTH CENTURY:--Aberdeen, Dundee, Montrose, Linlithgow, Perth, Edinburgh, Haddington (1367).

FIFTEENTH CENTURY:--Inverness (1439); Stirling (1449); St. Andrews, Cupar (1456); Lanark (1467); Peebles (1468); Elgin, Banff, Ayr, Irvine, Dumfries, Wigtown, Kirkcudbright, Selkirk, Jedburgh, Dunbar (1469); Forfar, Crail, Kinghorn, Inverkeithing, Dumbarton (1471); Brechin, Rutherglen, Renfrew, North Berwick (1478); Rothesay (1484); Forres (1488).

SIXTEENTH CENTURY:--Glasgow (1560); Tain, Nairn, Lauder (1567); Kintore, Pittenweem (1579); Kirkcaldy (1585); Burntisland (1586); Dingwall (1587); Cullen, Culross, E. and W. Anstruther (1593); Dysart (1594).

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY:--Inverurie, Bervie, Kilrenny, Lochmaben, Annan (1612); Sanquhar (1621); Dunfermline, New Galloway (1628); Dornoch, Arbroath, Queensferry, Whithorn (1639); Fortrose, Inverary (1660); Kirkwall (1667); Stranraer (1685); Campbeltown (1689); Wick (1690).

In addition to these, Berwick-on-Tweed was represented between 1469 and 1481, Cromarty from 1660-72, and Findhorn in 1648.

Representation of the shires does not begin till 1593; but between that date and 1617, we find nearly all the counties represented. Argyleshire, however, does not appear till 1628, Sutherland not till 1633, and Kinross not till 1681.

It gradually became usual for each burgh to send two members; but, in 1619, the Convention of Royal Burghs reduced the number to one, except in the case of Edinburgh. Under the Protectorate, Scotland was represented by twenty members for the shires and ten for the burghs, which, with the exception of Edinburgh, were divided into nine groups, each returning one member. Edinburgh, alone, returned two representatives. At the union of the Parliaments in 1707, Scotland received forty-five members. The burghs, except Edinburgh, were divided into fourteen groups, returning one member each, and one member was allotted to Edinburgh. It is to be remembered that only Royal Burghs had any representation in Scotland up to 1832, except in so far as burghs of barony were represented by the county members, along with the other freeholders of the country. When the town of Cromarty ceased to be a Royal Burgh, in 1672, it was excised from the parliamentary records. Of the remaining thirty members, each shire, except six, returned a member each. These six were divided into three groups, Bute and Caithness, Clackmannan and Kinross, and Nairn and Cromarty. The two shires which each group contained were given the right to return a member to alternate parliaments, _e.g._ Bute, Clackmannan, and Nairn in 1708, and Caithness, Kinross, and Cromarty in 1710.

From these facts, various interesting conclusions can be drawn. The meagre nature of the evidence prevents our making any inferences of a constitutional nature; but the rise of the small burghs on the East coast in the end of the fifteenth century, throws considerable light upon the economic history of Scotland. It is also suggestive that the burgh of Inverary was not represented till 1660, and Argyleshire not till 1628. But such matters as these belong rather to the domain of political history, and do not fall within our province.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] The later volumes of the Privy Council Register, under the editorship of Professor Masson and Mr. P. Hume Brown, deal with the period immediately before and after the Union of the Crowns, and so do not fall within our subject.

[2] On this subject, cf. Maitland, _Domesday Book and Beyond_, pp. 226-244.

[3] After the Union of the Crowns, the sources of information became very much more numerous, and the subject has been treated with much greater fulness. The work of Professor Masson, Mr. Gardiner, and Mr. Firth on the period between 1603 and 1660 has placed the constitutional history of Scotland for that period in a position quite different from that which it occupies in the centuries preceding the Union.

[4] _Opera Geographica et historica_, edition of 1707, p. 318.

[5] _Spanish Calendar_, i, 210.

[6] _History of English Law_, vol. i, pp. 222-224 (1st edn., pp. 201-203).

[7] Cf. Pitscottie's _Chronicles of Scotland_, vol. ii, p. 477. Scottish Text Soc. Edn., ed. Aeneas Mackay. Sheriff Mackay's notes are specially valuable from the legal stand-point, and his edition gives a new importance to Pitscottie's work.

[8] Cf. Hill Burton's Introduction to the Privy Council Register, vol. ii.

[9] Baron Hume, quoted in Renton's _Encyclopaedia of the Laws of England_, vol. xi, p. 402.

[10] _History of King James the Sext_, p. 88 (Bannatyne Club ed.).

[11] _Diurnal of Occurrents in Scotland_, p. 76 (Bannatyne Club).

[12] Aikman, _Buchanan_, i. 437. Buchanan is the source of the whole constitutional myth. The second founder of the legend was George Ridpath, who published, anonymously, in 1703, _An Historical Account of the Ancient Rights and Power of the Parliament of Scotland_. This brilliant and ingenious political tract is based on Buchanan, who is always the real, and frequently the avowed, authority for Ridpath's view; and by Ridpath, in turn, many more recent writers have been influenced.

[13] Innes, _Critical Essay_, i. 361-95.

[14] For a typical instance of this cf. Boece, _Lives of the Bishops of Aberdeen_ (New Spalding Club ed.), pp. 112-13.

[15] Pedro de Ayala, writing to Ferdinand and Isabella in July, 1498 (_Spanish Calendar_, i. 210), divides the revenue of James IV into six main heads--(1) Leases of Crown lands, held for three years and redeemable by a fine. (2) Customs. "The import duties are insignificant, but the exports yield a considerable sum of money, because there are three principal articles of export, that is to say, wood, hides, and fish." (3) The profits of justice. James's predecessors "farmed it to certain persons called justices.... This king does not like to farm the administration of the law, because justice is not well administered in that way." (4) The ordinary feudal incidents--reliefs, wardships, and marriage. (5) Vacant bishoprics, abbacies, &c. (6) Rent in kind, from meat and poultry, and especially from fisheries. Only one of these, namely, customs duties, could have been regulated by the Estates, and there is on record no instance of any attempt to do so. The revenue was collected on the English system, described in the _Dialogus de Scaccario_. The sheriffs and the king's stewards collected the sums due in the counties, and the bailiffs and "custumars" had charge of the amercement of the burghs and the collection of the customs. The main differences between the system in Scotland under James IV and that of England under Henry VII is that the Scottish Exchequer Court was not so fully organized as the English, and that the system of checks on the honesty of the sheriffs, &c., was much less elaborate. All the sources of revenue were, as a rule, "farmed out"; the king received a composition, and the actual collector made as much profit as he could.

[16] Gilbert Stuart, _Of the Public Law and Constitution of Scotland_, note xxviii.

[17] Hill Burton, _History of Scotland_, ii. 82.