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Charles I and the End of Conciliar Government in Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Maurice Lee Jr.
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Extract

That complex problems like the causes of the English civil war are constantly subject to reinterpretation is an obvious truism. Twenty years ago we were all embroiled in the gentry controversy; now it is the fashion to lay more stress on the blunders and failures of the government of Charles I. Lawrence Stone's recent survey is a case in point. Though his title, The Causes of the English Revolution 1529-1642, promises a long running start, this quondam disciple of R. H. Tawney places a surprising amount of emphasis on what he calls precipitants and triggers, which, it turns out, are the blunders and failures of the government of Charles I. Among these is the mishandling of the situation in Scotland. It is well known, of course, that the attempt to impose the new service book in 1637 touched off the chain of events which led to the Long Parliament, but historians have pointed out that this was by no means the first of Charles's errors there. At the very beginning of his reign came the act of revocation, which among other things rescinded “all grants made of crown property since 1540, … all disposition of ecclesiastical property and the erections of such property into temporal lordships.” No such sweeping change came about, of course, but in the view of most scholars this act, though in some sense successful, since it achieved the purpose both of increasing clerical stipends and of providing a machinery for their continuing adjustment, made the Scottish landed classes so mistrustful and fearful for their property that Charles could never gain their confidence. The comment of Sir James Balfour is always quoted: the act “in effect was the ground stone of all the mischief that followed after.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , Winter 1980 , pp. 315 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1980

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References

1 Donaldson, Gordon, Scotland: James V—James VII (Edinburgh, 1965) p. 296.Google Scholar

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3 Trevor-Roper, Hugh R., “The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” in Aston, Trevor, ed., Crisis in Europe 1560-1660 (New York, 1965), pp. 59–95Google Scholar, and his comment in a symposium on his article, ibid., p. 116. For a withering exposure of the wrongheadedness of Trevor-Roper's views on Scottish history see Ferguson, William, Scotland's Relations with England: A Survey to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1977), pp. 77, 110, 118-19, 123.Google Scholar

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5 On this point see Stevenson, David, The Scottish Revolution 1637-44 (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 321.Google Scholar

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7 For James's reign see Lee, Maurice Jr., John Maitlandof Thirlestane (Princeton, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Government by Pen: The Scotland of James VI and I (Urbana, 1980).Google Scholar

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16 May 21, 1625, Gilbert Primrose to James Primrose, ibid., pp. 654-55.

17 Ibid., pp. 649-51.

18 May 17, 1625, G. Primrose to J. Primrose, ibid., pp. 651-53.

19 The revocation is dated July 14, 1625, ibid., pp. 81-82.

20 Ibid., pp. 132-33. A convention of estates was a less formal version of parliament, with the same categories of membership and much the same legislative powers.

21 October 28, 1625, the council to Charles, ibid., pp. 151-53.

22 For the proceedings of the estates see ibid., pp. xxv-xxxiii, 150-80. The official text of their acts is in Thomson, Thomas, ed., The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, 5 (London, 1817), pp. 166–88.Google Scholar

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24 The date is given in the parliamentary record for 1633, Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, 5:23Google Scholar. No trace of the document has been found in the privy seal register, and the keeper of the privy seal, Sir Richard Cockburn of Clerkington, seems to have been in Edinburgh in October. Whether or not a text was read in council at this time is not clear. On January 7, 1626, Mar said that he had heard the document read once there, HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Mar and Kellie, ed. Paton, Henry (London, 1904), p. 135Google Scholar (hereafter cited as M&K). The council's letter of November 17, however, says that “none as yet has seen the same,” which seems plain enough.

25 Ibid., pp. 137-38. RPCS, 2nd ser. 1:193-95.

26 M&K, pp. 132-33.

27 RPCS, 2nd ser. 1:187-88.

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32 November 13, 1625, Kellie to Mar, ibid., p. 238.

33 On this point see M&K, p. 146.

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37 September 27, 1625, the council to Charles, ibid., 2nd ser. 1:144.

38 Ibid., pp. 185-87, 191-92. December 7, 1625, Patrick Home of Polwarth to SirKer, Robert, Ancrum and Lothian Con., 2:481–82.Google Scholar

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40 The sources on which the following paragraphs are based are the notes made at the time by Mar, M&K, pp. 133-46, 153-55, and an account written thirty-five years later by Scotstarvet, dealing mostly with his controversy with Melrose over the tenure of the members of the session, printed in Scottish Historical Review 11 (1914): 164–91Google Scholar. The king's interviews with Mar in February 1626 (M&K, pp. 144-46), show how little his mind had changed; he repeatea many of the allegations his councillors had been at pains to refute. For Spottiswoode's views see his letter of November 14, 1625, to Ann an dale, in Sir Fraser, William, The Book of Caer-laverock, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1873) 2:72–73.Google Scholar

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43 Ibid., p. 140.

44 In 1612 Melrose, then lord advocate, had prevented Skene from succeeding his father as clerk register and briefly occupied the office himself.

45 M&K, p. 143.

46 Ibid., p. 142.

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48 RPCS, 2nd ser. 1:220-21, 234-36. Rogers, Charles, ed., The Earl of Stirling's Register of Royal Letters … 1615-1635, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1885), 1:13, 15–16Google Scholar. McNeill, , “The Independence of the Scottish Judiciary,” pp. 143–44.Google Scholar

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60 Ibid., pp. 248-51.

61 Ibid., pp. 337-38. Charles further jolted his councillors by absent-mindedly sending instructions to the council of war before naming it. Ibid., pp. 333-35.

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76 Ibid., p. 146.

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