Parliament And Politics In Scotland 1567 1707

"[Volume 2] describes its role in the reign of James VI and throughout the century between the unions of the crowns in 1603 and of the parliaments in 1707, a period of royal absenteeism, religious upheaval, revolutions, civil wars, and economic catastrophe."--Publisher description.

This is the third volume in The History of the Scottish Parliament. In volumes 1 and 2 the contributors addressed discrete episodes in political history from the early thirteenth century through to 1707, demonstrating the richness of the sources for such historical writing and the importance of parliament to that history. In Volume 3 the contributors have built on that foundation and taken advantage of the Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to discuss a comprehensive range of key themes in the development of parliament. The editors, Keith M. Brown and Alan R. MacDonald, have assembled a team of established and younger scholars who each discuss a theme that ranges over the entire six centuries of the parliament's existence. These include broad, interpretive chapters on each of the key political constituencies represented in parliament. Thus Roland Tanner and Gillian MacIntosh write on parliament and the crown, Roland Tanner and Kirsty McAlister discuss parliament and the church, Keith Brown addresses parliament and the nobility and Alan MacDonald examines parliament and the burghs. Cross-cutting themes are also analysed. The political culture of parliament is the subject of a chapter by Julian Goodare, while parliament and the law, political ideas and social control are dealt with in turn by Mark Godfrey, James Burns and Alastair Mann. Finally, parliament's own procedures are also discussed by Alastair Mann. The History of the Scottish Parliament: Parliament in Context offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of the workings and significance of this important institution to the history of late medieval and early modern Scotland.

This collection brings together a series of papers that in May 2007 were presented at a Royal Society of Edinburgh conference organised to mark the 300th anniversary of the Union of 1707. One of the guiding objectives of the RSE event was to showcase the work of younger historians, and to present new work that would provide fresh insights on this defining moment in Scotland's (and the United Kingdom's) history. The seven chapters range widely, in content and coverage, from a detailed study of how the Church of Scotland viewed union and how concerns about the Kirk influenced the voting behaviour in the Scottish Parliament, through to the often overlooked broader European context in which the British parliamentary union - only one form of new state formation in the early modern period - was forged. The global War of the Spanish Succession, it is cogently argued, influenced both the timing and shape of the British union. Also examined are elite thinking and public opinion on fundamental questions such as Scottish nationhood and the place and powers of monarchs, as well as burning issues of the time such as the Company of Scotland, and trade. Other topics include an investigation of the particular intellectual characteristics of the Scots, a product of the pre-Union educational system, which it is argued enabled professionals and entrepreneurs in Scotland to meet the challenges posed by the 1707 settlement. As one of the contributors argues, union offered the Scots only partial openings within the empire.

Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200 - c. 1690) offers a wide consideration of the nature of representation in the political assemblies of pre-modern European, evaluating their creation, evolution, membership and ideological context.

The aim of the book is to explore the long-standing and multi-faceted relationship between Scotland and the societies and cultures of the European continent, in various epochs and from a large diversity of view points and problematics. The book collects most of the contributions from the IVth annual conference of the Société Française d’Etudes Ecossaises, held in Toulon in October 2005. This international conference gathered fifty European academics, working in a wide range of research fields, from social history to art history, from language to literature, from politics to civilisation and cultural studies. The interdisciplinary ambition and cross-cultural perspective of the conference are reflected in the volume. The book is divided into four main sections: links with Europe, visions of Europe, voices in Europe, and current political issues within the European Union. It illustrates the richness and complexity of the dialogue between Scotland and the continent over the centuries, and underlines the open, fluid and dynamic character of the Scottish identity.

On 14 May 1660, Charles II, restored to the throne of his father, was proclaimed king of Great Britain and Ireland at the market-cross of Edinburgh, bringing to an end over twenty years of internal upheaval. At the subsequent meeting of the Scottish parliament in January 1661, the ascendant royalist administration sought to abolish all constitutional innovations introduced during the revolutionary period in an attempt to secure the royal prerogative and prevent a repeat of rebellion from below. This book traces the background to the restoration of the monarchy in Scotland, explains why the Scottish political elite were so willing to relinquish power back to the king and assesses the impact of the restrictive Restoration constitutional settlement on subsequent parliamentary sessions in the reign of Charles II. It provides for the first time a detailed account of Charles II's Scottish parliament - who attended and why, what they did and parliament's role under an increasingly authoritarian crown. Tracing the path from the widespread popular royalism that marked the beginning of Charles II's reign to the increasing violence and resistance which the attempted reassertion of the royal prerogative provoked, each session of parliament is set within the political and historical context of the time in which it sat, to provide a fresh perspective on a previously neglected area of Scottish history.

This work examines Edinburgh's contribution to the outbreak of the British civil wars and its importance in the establishment of the revolutionary Covenanting regime. Early modern urban culture, multiple monarchy and post-Reformation religious radicalism are key themes of the book.

Existing studies of early modern Scotland tend to focus on the crown, the nobility and the church. Yet, from the sixteenth century, a unique national representative assembly of the towns, the Convention of Burghs, provides an insight into the activities of another key group in society. Meeting at least once a year, the Convention consisted of representatives from every parliamentary burgh, and was responsible for apportioning taxation, settling disputes between members, regulating weights and measures, negotiating with the crown on issues of concern to the merchant community. The Convention's role in relation to parliament was particularly significant, for it regulated urban representation, admitted new burghs to parliament, and co-ordinated and oversaw the conduct of the burgess estate in parliament. In this, the first full-length study of the burghs and parliament in Scotland, the influence of this institution is fully analysed over a one hundred year period. Drawing extensively on local and national sources, this book sheds new light upon the way in which parliament acted as a point of contact, a place where legislative business was done, relationships formed and status affirmed. The interactions between centre and localities, and between urban and rural elites are prominent themes, as is Edinburgh's position as the leading burgh and the host of parliament. The study builds upon existing scholarship to place Scotland within the wider British and European context and argues that the Scottish parliament was a distinctive and effective institution which was responsive to the needs of the burghs both collectively and individually.