Before the Acts of Union 1707, the barons of the shire of Kinross elected commissioners to represent them in the unicameral Parliament of Scotland and in the Convention of the Estates.
[2] For many years the majority of Kinross-shire was owned by the Earl of Morton and the Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who already sat in Parliament as peers.
There was therefore no commissioner for the shire, except during the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland when the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross were jointly represented by one Member of Parliament at Westminster from 1654 to 1659.
This situation continued until the 1670s when Lord Morton's estate of Kinross, comprising most of the shire, was purchased by Sir William Bruce of Balcaskie.
[3] The commissioner for Kinross, John Bruce (son and later heir of Sir William) was chosen as one of the Scottish representatives to the first Parliament of Great Britain, sitting from 1707 until the general election of 1708.