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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2011
Divisions in the Scottish political community that were evident by the end of the reign of James VI have been posited as roots of the Scottish revolution of 1638 and the wars of the three kingdoms. This article argues that the disengagement of central government from the political nation at large was a key factor in this development. By demonstrating the frequency of conventions of the estates, it highlights the intensity of consultation in James's Scottish government before 1603. A sudden decline in their frequency thereafter was symptomatic of a wider failure of government to adapt to the absence of the king in the context of a composite monarchy. While correspondence between the king and the privy council was copious, communication between the council and the political elites of Scotland withered. Without conventions of the estates as a vital point of contact in which new policies could be tested and negotiated, parliaments became more disagreeable. The crown's reliance on unprecedented levels of management and increased central direction alienated a significant proportion of the political elite, driving them into the oppositional stance which endured through the reign of Charles I.
I should like to thank Julian Goodare, Pauline Croft, and the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. I am also grateful to those who attended the conferences and seminars at which developing versions of this article were presented.
1 Goodare, J., ‘The Scottish parliament of 1621’, Historical Journal, 38, (1995), pp. 29–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Goodare, ‘Scottish politics in the reign of James VI’, in J. Goodare and M. Lynch, eds., The reign of James VI (East Linton, 2000), pp. 32–54, at pp. 50–4.
2 The Five Articles of Perth had been passed by a general assembly at Perth in 1618. They permitted private baptism and private communion, commanded observance of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Day, Pentecost, and Ascension, enjoined kneeling to receive communion, and introduced confirmation by bishops. None of these had been practised in Scotland since the Reformation and kneeling at communion in particular was widely resisted.
3 For an overview of the topic, see Elliot, J. H., ‘A Europe of composite monarchies’, Past and Present, 137, (1992), pp. 48–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also M. Greengrass, ed., Conquest and coalescence: the shaping of the state in early modern Europe (London, 1991).
4 G. R. Elton, ‘Tudor government: the points of contact’, in Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart politics and government (4 vols., Cambridge, 1983), iii, pp. 3–57.
5 R. K. Hannay, ‘General council and convention of estates’, in R. K. Hannay, The college of justice (Edinburgh, 1990); Rait, R. S., The parliaments of Scotland (Glasgow, 1924), pp. 138–60Google Scholar; G. Donaldson, Scotland: James V–James VII (Edinburgh, 1971), p. 287.
6 There have been four attempts to produce lists of conventions, all of which include them along with parliaments: T. Thomson and C. Innes, eds., Acts of the parliaments of Scotland (12 vols., Edinburgh, 1814–75), where each vol. begins with a chronological list; J. Goodare, ‘Parliament and society in Scotland, 1560–1603’ (Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh, 1989), appendix A, which differentiates between ‘conventions’ and ‘conventions of the estates’ at pp. 478–9; M. Young, ed., The parliaments of Scotland: burgh and shire commissioners (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1992), ii, appendix 1, which designates them all ‘conventions of the estates’; K. M. Brown et al., eds., The records of the parliaments of Scotland to 1707 (RPS), (St Andrews, 2007–9), calls all non-parliamentary meetings ‘conventions’.
7 K. M. Brown, Kingdom or province? Scotland and the regal union, 1603–1715 (London, 1992), p. 16; J. Goodare, The government of Scotland, 1560–1625 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 47–9; Goodare, J., ‘The Scottish parliament and its early modern “rivals”’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 24, (2004), pp. 147–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 149–52.
8 Goodare, ‘Rivals’, p. 151; Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 49, which describes them as ‘a kind of annual general meeting, or even sometimes a policy and resources committee, for the feudal ruling class’.
9 See J. H. Burton et al., eds., The register of the privy council of Scotland (RPC), first series (14 vols., Edinburgh, 1877–98).
10 National Archives of Scotland (NAS), ‘The buike of the actis and statutes concludit in the generall conventiounis of his majestie and estaites’, PA8/1.
11 RPS, A1601/9/1.
12 R. Renwick, ed., Extracts from the records of the royal burgh of Stirling, ad 1516–1666 (Glasgow, 1887), p. 84; J. D. Marwick et al., eds., Extracts from the records of the burgh of Edinburgh (9 vols., Edinburgh, 1927–67), iv, pp. 90–1; W. Fraser, ed., Memoirs of the Maxwells of Pollok (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1863), ii, p. 5.
13 One meeting in 1601 was described as a ‘conventioun of the nobilitie and estatis’ (Aberdeen and Stirling); the ‘king's convention’ (Ayr); a ‘conventioun of the estaittis’ (Burntisland); a ‘conventioun of his majestie and nobilitie’ (Glasgow); a ‘conventioun’ (Perth); Dundee's clerk even recorded it as a ‘Conventione of borrowis’: Aberdeen City Archives (ACA), CR1/40, p. 131; Ayrshire Archives Centre (AAC), B6/11/3, fo. 405r; NAS, B9/10/1, fo. 122r; Dundee City Archives, treasurer's accounts, vol. 1, account for 1600–1; Glasgow City Archives, C1/1/5, fo. 156v; Perth and Kinross Council Archives, B59/16/1, fo. 10r; Stirling Council Archives, B66/20/1, 31 Aug. 1601.
14 ACA, CR1/32, pp. 185, 489.
15 For example, three surviving burgh council records record receipt of a summons to a meeting in May 1587, described merely as a ‘convention’ in Goodare, ‘Parliament and society’, appendix A: ACA, CR1/32, 185; NAS, B30/13/2, fo. 41r; AAC, B6/11/1/2, fo. 425r).
16 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/68, fo. 74r.
17 See, for example, NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/68, fos. 115v–116v, recording the dispatch of the precepts of summons for the parliament of May/June 1592. I am grateful to Amy Blakeway for suggesting the treasurer's accounts as a potentially useful source.
18 Hannay, ‘General council and convention of estates’, pp. 236, 238–44. Hannay noticed this correlation but did not use it to identify conventions systematically.
19 See, for example, NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/74, fos. 60r–61r, recording the precepts of summons for the parliament of Nov., 1600.
20 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/64, fo. 82v. Others in this region were not summoned, including Lord Ochiltree, the archbishop of Glasgow, the commendators of Crossraguel and Kilwinning, and the burghs of Lanark, Rutherglen and Dumbarton. Surviving burgh records provide evidence for only two burghs (Ayr and Edinburgh) electing commissioners to this convention: AAC, B6/11/2, fo. 289v; Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/7, fo. 200r.
21 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/67, fos. 106v–107r, E21/68, fos. 119v–120r. The numbers summoned would have been augmented by privy councillors and others already at court: 54 attended a convention in Dec. 1599 but only 42 had been summoned: see RPS, 1599/12/1; NAS, E21/73, fos. 92v–93r. Also, letters of summons to the council of Edinburgh were rarely recorded because there was no need to pay a messenger to go such a short distance.
22 Goodare, ‘Rivals’, pp. 149–51, discusses the powers of conventions in relation to parliament and argues that less formal conventions ‘rarely if ever passed even temporary legislation, nor did they tax’.
23 RPS, A1588/4/1, A1594/1/17/1–6; J. Bain et al., eds., Calendar of the state papers relating to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scots (CSP Scot.), 1547–1603 (13 vols., London, 1898–1969), x, pp. 148–50; for a general discussion of taxation, see Goodare, J., ‘Parliamentary taxation in Scotland, 1560–1603’, Scottish Historical Review (SHR), 68 (1989), pp. 23–52Google Scholar.
24 Goodare, ‘Parliament and society’, appendix A, p. 493, lists as a ‘convention of estates’ (rather than a ‘convention’) the meeting that was too thinly attended to vote a tax in 1589. There is no record of how many attended.
25 K. M. Brown, Bloodfeud in Scotland, 1573–1625: violence, justice and politics in early modern society (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 19, 159–60; Brown, Kingdom or province?, p. 16; Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 47–9.
26 One meeting, in 1593, is described by Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 48, as being designated ‘formally’ as a ‘conventioun of the nobilitie’, citing a letter of the English ambassador and the records of the general assembly cited. In the former (CSP Scot., xi, p. 80), it is referred to twice as a ‘convention of the estates’ and only in the latter is it referred to as a ‘conventioun of the nobilitie’ (T. Thomson, ed., Booke of the universall Kirk: acts and proceedings of the general assemblies of the kirk of Scotland (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1839–45), iii, p. 796).
27 Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 48. One meeting which might legitimately be called a convention of the nobility was held at Falkland in Aug. 1596, when the king, his nobility, and council considered a plea for rehabilitation from the earl of Huntly, recently returned from exile for intriguing with Philip II of Spain (see RPS, A1596/9/3).
28 Fife Council Archive, Kirkcaldy Burgh Court Book, 1/06/02, fo. 116v.
29 CSP Scot., xiii, part 1, pp. 353–4.
30 J. Wormald, ‘The happier marriage partner: the impact of the union of the crowns on Scotland’, in G. Burgess, R. Wymer, and J. Lawrence, eds., The accession of James I: historical and cultural consequences (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 69–87, emphasizes parliamentary continuity but makes no mention of conventions of the estates.
31 D. L. Smith, A history of the modern British Isles 1603–1707: the double crown (Oxford, 1998), appendix 8.
32 ACA, CR1/29, pp. 460–1.
33 A. R. MacDonald, ‘The parliament of 1592: a crisis averted?’, in K. M. Brown and A. J. Mann, eds., The history of the Scottish parliament, ii:Parliament and politics in Scotland, 1567–1707 (Edinburgh, 2005), pp. 57–81, at p. 61.
34 RPS, A1609/1/1–13, 1609/4/15–19, 60.
35 RPS, 1617/3; ACA, CR1/48, p. 42, recording the election of Aberdeen's commissioner and noting that the reason for the convention is to raise money for the king's impending visit; NAS, Haddington council minutes, B30/13/4, fo. 12v, the report of their returning commissioner mentioning only the tax.
36 RPS, 1621/1; Goodare, ‘The Scottish parliament of 1621’, pp. 30–1. It seems likely that this move was at least partially motivated by discontent at the general drift of crown policy.
37 A. R. MacDonald, The Jacobean Kirk, 1567–1625: sovereignty, polity and liturgy (Ashgate, 1998), chs. 5–7.
38 Groundwater, A., ‘From Whitehall to Jedburgh: patronage networks and the government of the Scottish Borders, 1603 to 1625’, Historical Journal, 58, (2010), pp. 871–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to the author for allowing me sight of this article prior to publication. Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 49.
39 P. Croft, King James (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 69–70.
40 Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 49; Goodare, ‘The Scottish parliament of 1621’, pp. 39–47.
41 J. D. Marwick and T. Hunter, eds., Records of the convention of the royal burghs of Scotland (RCRBS) (7 vols., Edinburgh, 1866–1918), ii, p. 190.
42 Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 110; see Elliot, ‘A Europe of composite monarchies’, p. 56, noting that the Catalans and Aragonese complained to Charles V of his absence in terms of being ‘deprived of the light of the sun’, combining flattery and grievance.
43 RCRBS, ii, pp. 379–80, 406, iii, p. 49.
44 L. E. Kastner, ed., The poetical works of William Drummond of Hawthornden, with ‘A Cypresse Grove’ (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1913), ii, pp. 142–53.
45 L. Stewart, ‘“Brothers in treuth”: propaganda, public opinion and the Perth Articles debate in Scotland’, in R. Houlbrooke, ed., James VI and I: ideas, authority, and government (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 151–68, at p. 167.
46 Elliot, ‘A Europe of composite monarchies’, p. 54.
47 N. Rhodes, J. Richards, and J. Marshall, eds., King James VI and I: selected writings (Aldershot, 2003), p. 319.
48 J. Wormald, ‘The reign of James VI’, in B. Harris and A. R. MacDonald, eds., Scotland: the making and unmaking of the nation, c. 1100–1707, ii:Early modern Scotland, c. 1500–1707 (Dundee, 2007), pp. 18–35, at p. 30; J. Goodare and M. Lynch, ‘James VI: universal king?’, in Goodare and Lynch, eds., The reign of James VI, pp. 1–31, at pp. 21–2.
49 Lee, M., ‘James VI's government of Scotland after 1603’, SHR, 55, (1976), pp. 41–53Google Scholar; M. Lee, Government by pen: Scotland under James VI and I (Urbana, IL, 1980); Goodare, Government of Scotland, ch. 4, esp. pp. 106–12.
50 Goodare, J., ‘The debts of James VI of Scotland’, Economic History Review, 62, (2009), pp. 926–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/76; for the relationship between Edinburgh and the court in general, see A. L. Juhala, ‘The household and court of James VI of Scotland, 1567–1603’ (Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh, 2000).
52 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/70, 72, 76.
53 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/77, 80–1.
54 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/74–6.
55 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/82, fo. 62v, E21/83, fo. 44v.
56 MacDonald, The Jacobean Kirk, pp. 155–7.
57 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/83, fos. 60v–80v and E21/84, fos. 34v–46v. For inflation, see A. J. S. Gibson and T. C. Smout, Prices, food and wages in Scotland, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 1995), esp. the tables at pp. 50–65, 175–8, showing modest inflation in staple commodities between c.1590 and c.1620, with significant annual fluctuations, and pp. 202–3, 217–24, showing significant inflation in the prices of meat, tallow, and eggs. Tables at pp. 305–19 also indicate that wages rose along with prices.
58 Lee, Government by pen, p. 155; McNeill, W. A. and McNeill, P. G. B., ‘The Scottish progress of James VI, 1617’, SHR, 75, (1996), pp. 38–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
59 For detailed discussion of proclamations see D. McCannell, ‘Cultures of proclamation: the decline and fall of the anglophone news process, 1460–1642 (Ph.D., Aberdeen, 2009), esp. pp. 167–76.
60 On either side of union, adjacent years were examined, one in which a parliament met (increasing the number of letters) and the other in which there was no parliament (1600/1, 1612/13).
61 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/73–6.
62 NAS, treasurer's accounts, E21/80–1.
63 Taylor, W., ‘The king's mails, 1603–1625’, SHR, 42, (1963), pp. 143–7Google Scholar. His version of ‘government by pen’ was ‘government by remote control’.
64 Lee, Government by pen; Lee, James ‘VI's government of Scotland after 1603’; see also Goodare, Government of Scotland, ch. 6, esp. pp. 138–48.
65 Groundwater, ‘From Whitehall to Jedburgh’. Much of the discussion that follows is based on this article.
66 Ibid.; Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 49.
67 This expression was first used by Hannay in ‘General council and convention of estates’, pp. 236, 241 and was echoed in Goodare, ‘Rivals’, p. 151.
68 RPC, x, p. 506; Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 106–7.
69 Lee, Government by pen, pp. 32–3; RPS, 1604/4/21.
70 Thomas Hamilton, ‘Memoriall anent the progress and conclusion of the parliament haldin at Edinburgh in October 1612’, in J. Dennistoun and A. MacDonald, eds., Miscellany of the Maitland Club, iii (Edinburgh, 1843), pp. 112–18, at p. 116. It is not clear why there was such resistance, since the justices were the very people who already wielded local judicial authority (nobles, lairds, and urban magistrates). Perhaps they feared the enhanced central direction of the new system. For details of how it operated, see Goodare, Government of Scotland, pp. 203–7.
71 History of the Kirk of Scotland by Mr David Calderwood, ed. T. Thomson (8 vols., Edinburgh, 1842–9), vii, pp. 165–6, 171–3; Hamilton, ‘Memoriall’, pp. 116–17; MacDonald, The Jacobean Kirk, p. 149.
72 Hamilton, ‘Memoriall’, pp. 116–17.
73 Goodare, ‘Parliamentary taxation’, pp. 50–2, showing that, between 1585 and 1603, four taxes were passed by conventions, two by parliament. After 1603, three were passed by parliament and only one by a convention: RPS, 1605/6/48, 1612/10/19, A1617/3/2, 1621/6/14.
74 Calderwood, History, vii, pp. 250–6.
75 R. Brown et al., Calendar of state papers … in the archives and collections of Venice (38 vols., London, 1864–1940), xiv, pp. 549–50.
76 Goodare, ‘The Scottish parliament of 1621’, pp. 32–5; MacDonald, , The Jacobean Kirk, pp. 162–4Google Scholar.
77 Goodare, ‘The Scottish parliament of 1621’, pp. 33–5.
78 J. Wormald, ‘The headaches of monarchy: kingship and the Kirk in the early seventeenth century’, in J. Goodare and A. A. MacDonald, eds., Sixteenth-century Scotland: essays in honour of Michael Lynch (Leiden, 2008), pp. 365–93, at pp. 379–80.
79 Calderwood, History, vii, pp. 488–505.
80 For overviews of recent historiography of the transition, see Croft, King James, chs. 2–3; Smith, The double crown, pp. 6–12, 29–45. For a detailed study of the first three years of James's English reign, see D. Newton, The making of the Jacobean regime: James VI and I and the government of England, 1603–1605 (London, 2005); see also G. R. Elton, ‘The state: government and politics under Elizabeth and James’, in Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart politics and government, iv, pp. 3–36, which tellingly virtually ignores the union.
81 Smith, The double crown, p. 32.
82 Ibid., p. 15, for an English historian's perspective on how personal Scottish monarchy was at the turn of the seventeenth century in comparison to England. Earlier Scottish historiography gave Smith the impression (pp. 45, 46–50) that James maintained a consensual approach until the last few years of the reign.
83 For a general discussion of multiple monarchies, see Elliot, ‘A Europe of composite monarchies’.
84 Ibid., p. 55.
85 Croft, King James, p. 70.
86 G. H. MacIntosh, The Scottish parliament under Charles II (Edinburgh, 2007).
87 Croft, King James, p. 136.
88 Lee, Government by pen, p. 32; Goodare, Government of Scotland, p. 49.
89 MacDonald, The Jacobean Kirk, pp. 159–64; D. Laing, ed., Original letters relating to the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1851), ii, pp. 511–15.
90 Wormald, ‘The happier marriage partner’, pp. 70–1.
91 Goodare, J., ‘The admission of lairds to the Scottish parliament’, English Historical Review, 116, (2001), pp. 1103–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
92 Groundwater, ‘From Whitehall to Jedburgh’.
93 D. Stevenson, The Scottish revolution, 1637–1644 (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 324.
94 R. Bonney, The European dynastic states, 1494–1660 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 265–7; M. Roberts, The early Vasas: a history of Sweden, 1523–1611 (Cambridge, 1968), chs. 5 and 6.
95 MacDonald, A. R., ‘James VI and I and British ecclesiastical convergence’, Historical Journal, 48, (2005), pp. 885–903CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 900.
96 Elliot, ‘A Europe of composite monarchies’, p. 61.
97 J. H. Elliot, ‘The Spanish monarchy and the kingdom of Portugal, 1580–1640’, in Greengrass, ed., Conquest and coalescence, pp. 48–67.
