The Last Parliament of Scotland, 1703-1707
The Hanoverian Succession
The last Parliament of Scotland sat in four sessions between 1703 and 1707; 6 May-16 September 1703, 6 July-28 August 1704, 28 June-21 September 1705 and 3 October-25 March 1707.
A major feature of British politics from 1702 to 1707 was the necessity of securing the Hanoverian Succession. The death of King William in 1702 resulted in the succession of Queen Anne to the crowns of England and Scotland. Anne's last surviving child had died in 1700 and the English Act of Settlement of 1701 had passed the English Succession over to the Protestant House of Hanover. Since it was unthinkable that Scotland and England should have separate monarchs, the securing of the Hanoverian Succession in Scotland became the primary objective in English strategic thinking towards Scotland. By 1703 the Anglo-Scottish dynastic union, the Union of the Crowns, was in crisis. The Scottish Parliament was pursuing an independent dynastic policy and an independent foreign policy.
The Scottish Act of Security of 1703-4 allowed for the Scottish Parliament to choose a different monarch to succeed to the Scottish crown from that of England, if it so wished. This meant that the Act allowed for the Scottish Parliament to initiate an independent foreign policy during an era of major European warfare, the War of the Spanish Succession. From the English political perspective, this opened up the possibility of the restoration of a Jacobite on the Scottish throne and a Franco-Scottish military rapprochement. Such an alignment could result in attacks from Scotland, France and Ireland. Hence the Scottish `problem' had to be neutralised and the Hanoverian Succession secured.
The Alien Act
The English response, the Alien Act of 1705, threatened that all Scottish Estates held in England by non-residents were to be considered as alien property in law unless the Scottish Parliament had entered into treaty negotiations by Christmas Day 1705. In addition, an embargo was to be placed on major Scottish products being imported into England. This was at a time when it is estimated that almost 50% of Scottish exports, mainly linen and black cattle, were destined for English markets.
Several ministries, under English control, were formed in Scotland from 1703 to 1705 with the aim of securing the Hanoverian Succession but all were unsuccessful. The Treaty of Union can be traced to a series of events commencing in September 1705 which culminated in April 1707. As such, the Treaty of Union can be deemed a short-term political objective.
Previous attempts to secure a closer union between England and Scotland in 1689 and 1702-3 had failed. On 20 July 1705 a draft act for a treaty with England was moved in the Scottish Parliament. From this date on the key issue centred on who would negotiate such a treaty on behalf of the Scottish Parliament. In one of the most bizarre moments ever witnessed in Scottish history, the leader of the Scottish opposition, James, 4th Duke of Hamilton, stood up in Parliament on 1 September 1705 and moved that the Scottish negotiating commissioners should be named by Queen Anne. This opportunity was immediately seized on by the Court ministry to secure a vote. The session was adjourned on 14 September and all bar one of the Scottish commissioners nominated was pro-incorporation. Only Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath, a Jacobite, was anti-incorporationist and it is from his accounts that we know details of the actual negotiations for the Treaty of Union.
The negotiations began on 16 April 1706. Apart from the Scottish commissioners being unrepresentative of the wider Scottish political nation, each set of commissioners sat in separate rooms and their only communication was in writing. The principle of an incorporating union had been accepted by 25 April and thereafter the negotiations can be interpreted as a damage limitation exercise in securing the best possible deal for Scottish interests within a wider British settlement. Proposals for a federal union, which would have involved further constitutional reform in Scotland and would have retained the Scottish Parliament, were dismissed. The only acceptable political solution for the English negotiators was an incorporating union. The treaty had been agreed on by 23rd July and then the treaty went to the consideration of the Scottish Parliament which reconvened on 3rd October 1706.
The Final Session
The final session of the Scottish Parliament met in an atmosphere of intense public debate. Daniel Defoe, the English polemicist, was despatched to Edinburgh as an English spy. A vociferous pamphlet war was well underway with the cases being argued for and against an incorporating union. Such a media war and its contents were hotly debated in Edinburgh's inns and taverns and sermons against the union were being thundered from the pulpits of the Scottish Kirk.
