Call for Papers: Conference, 26 October 2023
Full Programme: Second Workshop, 3 November 2022
Call for Papers: Second Workshop
‘The Council, the Union and the ‘Patriot’: The Scottish Privy Council, Anglo-Scottish Union, and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun’
This paper was delivered by our PI, Dr Alastair Mann, to the Chicago Scots Scottish American History Forum on 2 April 2022.
First Workshop, 28 October 2021
Our first workshop was held at the University of Stirling on 28 October 2021. Please see below for recordings of the four sessions, as well as paper abstracts.
Paper Abstracts
‘Controlling the voice of the people: The Privy Council, the public and official proclamations’/ Laura I. Doak (University of Dundee)
‘Public order’ was a main area of business for the Scottish Privy Council, and proclamations were the key administrative tool for its management. Issued in the monarch’s name ‘with advice of Privy Council’, or written independently by councillors and their clerks, proclamations directed – or qualified – parliamentary laws. Proclamations were thus often the working link between Scotland’s executive powers and representative assemblies. Proclamations also offered privy councillors an unrivalled means of public communication. Promulgated using Scotland’s network of mercat crosses, these performative decrees broadcast commands and directives across the kingdom, which made proclamations inherently propagandistic. In particular, proclamations often incorporated statements about the Scottish people’s own opinions and ideas. In this way, proclamations could be used to control Scots as individuals as well as representations of their collective, public voice. Drawing on doctoral research and initial findings as a research fellow with the Scottish Privy Council Project, this paper will consider how privy councillors used proclamations to control and represent public opinion between 1660 and 1707. How did they change as an administrative mechanism? Did they evolve as a communicative medium? And what might the Privy Council’s relationship with the public reveal about conceptions of authority and political participation in pre-Union Scotland?
‘State Formation, Criminal Prosecution, and the Scottish Privy Council during the Restoration (1660-88)’/ Allan Kennedy (University of Dundee)
Far from the conventional focus on overweening central bureaucracies, modern historiography allows historians to think about the emergence of the early modern ‘state’ in complex and creative ways. One component of this discourse is the role of criminal law and criminal prosecution, which it has been argued, particularly by English scholars, assisted state-forming processes by providing a universal interface between ruler and ruled, and by demarcating common patterns of behaviour. This paper attempts to apply these ideas to the case of early modern Scotland, whose decentralised legal system and reputation for judicial barbarity has tended to discourage research, through detailed analysis of the judicial activities of the Privy Council. Focusing on the reigns of Charles II and James VII and II, the paper assesses the Council’s theoretical competence as a criminal court, and also reconstructs its day-to-day activities in terms of the kinds of cases tried, the verities of punishment imposed, and the use of alternative mechanisms such as judicial commissions. The paper argues that the Restoration Privy Council was clearly able to utilise its judicial powers as a state-building tool, despite the general diffuseness of judicial authority in Scotland. It is suggested, therefore, that the Scottish data confirms the utility of criminal prosecution in early modern projects in state formation, underlining historians’ need to conceptualise of the process in broad, multi-faceted terms.
‘Clerical Petitions, Religious Dissension, and the Privy Council of Scotland, c.1690–1708’/Clare Loughlin (University of Stirling)
The Privy Council of Scotland played a vital role in the development and enforcement of religious policy in the early modern period. As the effective executive to Scotland’s parliament, the council was responsible for the daily implementation of legislation to uphold the authority of the established Church, and to curb religious dissension. These responsibilities were especially significant in the period after 1690. The revolution of 1688–89 had brought about the overthrow and exile of the Catholic James VII. It also overturned the Episcopalian structure of the Church of Scotland, which was re-established as Presbyterian in 1690. In the years following the revolution, ministers were concerned about the prospect of a Catholic resurgence in Scotland; this anxiety manifested itself in extensive petitioning efforts to the Privy Council, requesting the enforcement of the penal laws against Catholics. Despite the large number of surviving petitions to the council on this topic, they have not been explored in depth in existing scholarship. This paper will examine how the council responded to these petitions up to its abolition in 1708. It will explore how its actions against Catholics reflected changing approaches to tackling religious dissension after 1690, which contributed to an increasingly contentious relationship between the council and Presbyterian ministers. As such, the paper provides new insights into the dynamics between the Privy Council as a representative institution and the established Church, as well as raising broader questions about the relationship between Church and State in Scotland in this period of upheaval and change.
‘The Privy Council, the Union of 1603 and an ‘elderly nonentity’’/ Alan MacDonald (University of Dundee)
Much discussion of the ‘impact of 1603’ on Scottish government has rightly focused on the privy council, with historians noting the continuity in conciliar government. It has been observed that the council often met without the king’s presence before he left for England and so was well-equipped to carry on doing so after his departure. The credit for this smooth transition tends to be shared between King James and his officers of state: James chose them well and they were highly competent men whom he could trust. Most prominent in the literature were Alexander Seton, later earl of Dunfermline, and George Home, later earl of Dunbar. Less attention has been paid to John Graham, 3rd earl of Montrose, however. Yet, as chancellor from 1599, Montrose chaired the privy council in the king’s absence, a role which became permanent after March 1603. When he was replaced as chancellor by Seton in 1604, Montrose was appointed to the unprecedented role of the king’s ‘commissioner general’ in Scotland. By examining the privy council under Montrose, this paper seeks to gain new insights into the role of conciliar government in the transition from personal to absentee monarchy.
‘Protecting the Post: The Privy Council and the Postal System (1689-91)’/ Gillian Macdonald (Central Michigan University)
Early modern Europe erupted with news and information after the professionalization of the post. The expansion of communication worked to radically improve the availability of information. As communication expanded, governments and officials alike struggled to control information, especially during wartime. Recent scholarship has shown that trading information was one of the more commonplace activities in the seventeenth century, however, controlling information was another matter entirely. During the Scottish Revolution (1688-90), communication and controlling information made for easier strategic decision-making. Whether intercepted by Jacobites or not, the administration took interruptions in their communication network seriously. “Extraordinary” sessions of the privy council were called specifically to deal with thefts of mail and intercepted communications. This paper will argue that control of the postal service was vital in maintaining a cohesive strategy across the three kingdoms. While some of the most important information and letters remain hidden from the historical record, the pains the Scottish administration took during the Revolution to control the post is not. Exploring these issues is challenging, however, there are examples that reveal the importance of the postal system to the new regime including the investigation of William Mein, postmaster general; several attempted thefts; and intercepted Jacobite communications.
‘Precedents, Committees and Conflict: The Scottish Privy Council and the organisation of the Highland War, 1689-1691’/ Graeme S. Millen (University of Kent)
On 5th November 1688, Prince William of Orange landed at Torbay at the head of a Dutch Army. This invasion would result in the collapse of King James VII and II’s regimes in all three of his kingdoms. The subsequent interregnum and constitutional turmoil would lead to a Scottish Convention of Estates deciding to de-throne James in favour of his Dutch son-in-law by March 1689. This resulted in the outbreak of a new civil war as James’ militant supporters, led by Viscount Dundee, rapidly gathered an army from Highland Clans loyal to the exiled King.
The outbreak of war caught the nascent Williamite Government in Scotland by surprise and at risk as they had no standing army. The Highland War (1689-1691) would last three years but it would see a sizeable, albeit brief, increase in the Scottish Government’s army. This paper will examine the Scottish Privy Council’s role in the organisation of the war against the first Scottish Jacobite Army. This paper will examine the Privy Council’s role as a nexus through which the war was organised. It will illustrate that the Council heavily relied upon precedents from previous administrations to rapidly assemble and maintain forces to combat the Jacobites.
‘’Lord Whigridden’ and the ‘Board’: representations of the Scottish Privy Council and its members, c. 1660-1708’/ Robbie Tree (University of Stirling)
Taking its title from Archibald Pitcairne’s caustic satire on the Earl of Crawford and his descriptions of the executive in The Assembly (1692), this paper engages with how Privy Councillors, commentators, and novelists have represented the Scottish Privy Council. The council has been described in multifarious ways, both positive and negative. Members of the privy council tended to take seriously their roles in everyday government, whilst playwrights, polemicists, and later novelists have depicted the ‘board’ largely as an obtruding arm of the state. This clear dichotomy in representations of the council has often also been conspicuous in historiographical analyses of the Scottish executive prior to its demise in 1708. By using an eclectic range of primary sources depicting the council during the period from the Restoration to its abolition, this paper aims to demonstrate that tropes have been developed and advanced about the role of the council as intrusive, judicially unscrupulous, and often staffed by corrupt caricatures. Depictions of the corporate body or ‘board’ of ‘managers’ hold far more credence to its role in early modern society, highlighting modern parallels. Yet, this has hitherto received little attention. The aim here is to broach this gap in knowledge, by demonstrating how people understood, fictionalised, and talked about the privy council.
‘The people’s council? Popular engagement with the Scottish Privy Council, 1692-1708’/Susanne Weston (University of Dundee)
The complexity and prominence of the Scottish Privy Council are revealed through the magnitude and multifarious nature of the business laid before the councillors – a significant proportion of which involved the commonality. Recent research has demonstrated the relationship between the Privy Council and the people in a judicial context, while further studies have examined how ordinary people increasingly participated in politics, for example, the effectiveness of petitioning as a means of civic participation in both a Scottish and European context. However, the council was also a conduit for disseminating information between the King and his subjects and an essential means by which the ordinary person could access high levels of government. This paper will give a brief introduction of my thesis, the core of which will be an investigation into the exchanges between the Privy Council and the populace, men and women who would often be disengaged from civil society and, for the most part, would ordinarily be invisible in the records. These interactions not only illustrate a degree of agency asserted by ordinary people but, furthermore, demonstrate the multi-faceted role of the Privy Council as arbitrators and peacemakers, as moderators of moral and civic values, and as both protectors and exploiters of the commonality. This paper will also discuss how a close analysis of these exchanges in the broader context of local governance will construct a narrative of the interconnectedness between the privy council, the individual and local institutions.
‘The Scottish Privy Council, the Covenanters and Military Intervention in Ireland, 1642-43’/ John R. Young, (University of Strathclyde)
This paper will examine the important role played by the Scottish Privy Council in the context of the institutional reaction in Scotland to the 1641 Irish Rebellion and to the preparations that were undertaken for Covenanting military intervention in Ireland in 1642 (when a Covenanting army of c.11,000 troops was sent to Ireland). Important material included in the Privy Council records includes the diplomatic process in the decision to intervene, supplications from returning victims of warfare, the creation of a humanitarian aid system to help returning victims of the Irish rebellion, and military preparations for sending an army to Ireland, including military contracts and commissions for the provision of shoes, bread etc. RPCS, second series, vol.VII (1638-1643) is the relevant volume for this paper. The coverage to 1643 allows for analysis of the process whereby the 1643 Convention of Estates was called and the 1643 Treaty of Military Assistance and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant were concluded. In terms of institutional liaison with the Scottish Parliament, coverage and discussion extends back to the 1641 parliamentary session, especially October and November 1641, the appointment and membership of Privy Councillors, and the role of specialised parliamentary interval committees. Wider overall themes explored include the Scotland-Ulster relationship, return migration, maritime security, war widows and victims of warfare, and Covenanting military history in the War(s) of/for the Three Kingdoms.