Scotland under the Commonwealth

Under the terms of the union, the Scots gained 30 members of parliament, but many posts were not filled, or fell to English agents of the government, and had very little say at Westminster.

Initially the government was run by eight commissioners and adopted a policy of undermining the political power of the nobility in favour of the "meaner sort".

From 1655 it was replaced by a new Council of Scotland, headed by Irish peer Lord Broghill, and began attempts to win over the traditional landholders.

The Kirk that had been established at the Reformation and had been largely united since the Declaration of the Covenant in 1638, was divided into Resolutioners and more hard line Protesters by the issue of co-operation with the crown.

After the death of Oliver Cromwell and the fall of his son Richard's regime, General Monck marched the army in Scotland south and facilitated the Restoration of Charles II in 1660.

Having supported Parliament in the First English Civil War (1642–46) under the Solemn League and Covenant, the Covenanter government in Scotland came under the control of the Engagers.

As part of a Second English Civil War, they invaded England in support of royalist risings, and were defeated by the New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Preston (1648).

With many of its leaders captured, the Engagement regime fell in the Whiggamore Raid and the radical Presbyterian Kirk Party returned to power.

After the failure of an attempted Highland rising led by James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, Charles accepted the offer of conditional support from the Covenanters, arriving in June 1650 and signing the Covenants.

Charles escaped to the continent, an English army under George Monck mopped up the remaining garrisons in Scotland and Cromwell emerged as the most important figure in the Commonwealth.

[2] Six days after the victory at Worcester, a committee of the English Rump parliament was established with the aim of drafting a bill that would declare "the right of the Commonwealth to so much of Scotland as is now under [its] force".

Under the terms of the union Scotland received thirty seats in the enlarged Westminster parliament, ten from the burghs and twenty from the shires.

[7] The council was made up of six Englishmen, Monck, Samuel Disbrowe, Charles Howard, Adrian Scrope, Thomas Cooper and Nathaniel Whetham, and two Scots, John Swinton and William Lockhart, they were later joined by Sir Edward Rhodes as a ninth member.

These notables then mustered their vassals and supporters to form a small army of about 60 horse, and a force of foot, made up of 60–80 Lowlanders and 150 Highlanders.

[12] This victory boosted morale and the rising gained some support from Lowland Scottish lords, forcing the Commonwealth government to adopt a more conciliatory attitude to these groups.

[13] Although it gained recruits, the rising began to suffer from internal divisions, particularly between the Highlanders who made up the bulk of the forces and the Lowland nobles and officers who were their commanders.

In early 1654, nine months into the revolt, Middleton, a Lowland officer and a veteran of the Battle of Worcester, arrived with a commission to command from Charles II.

Although successful in distracting the Commonwealth forces and causing disruption, it soon began to prove counter-productive, as growing unpopularity led to a drying up of recruitment.

[12] With his return to Scotland after his brief naval command against the Dutch, Monck began a campaign against the rising, making forced marches of between 12 and 20 miles a day in difficult terrain.

Instead of a blanket forfeiture among those implicated in resistance, it named 24 persons (mainly from the nobility) whose lands would be seized, and 73 other landholders who could retain their estates after paying a fine.

The administration tended to favour the Protesters, largely because the Resolutioners were more inclined to desire a restoration of the monarchy and because the General Assembly, where they predominated, claimed independence from the state.

[16] The act of holding public prayers for the success of Glencairn's insurrection led in 1653, to the largely Resolutioner members of the Assembly being marched out of Edinburgh by an armed guard.

The universities, largely seen as a training school for clergy, were relatively well funded and came under the control of the Protestors, with Patrick Gillespie being made Principal at Glasgow.

Scotland had suffered considerable economic disruption during the period of the civil wars, caused by loss of manpower to a dozen armies, free quarter (the billeting of troops on civilians without payment), plunder and heavy taxation.

[22] The free trade that was the major economic incentive of the union was not all beneficial, as Scotland now had to compete with the more highly developed English merchant fleet.

New industries included glass production at Leith and Cromwell's troops are traditionally credited with bringing north both the knitting of socks and the planting of kale.

[25] Despite these attempts to produce an iconography of union, Michael Lynch argues that the commonwealth largely lacked the symbols through which consent to a nation state could be expressed.

When this proved incapable of producing a stable government in 1659 Monck opened negotiations with Charles II and began a slow march south with his army.

In the event Scotland regained its independent system of law, its parliament and its kirk, but also the Lords of the Articles (through which the crown controlled parliamentary business) and bishops.

[27] Legislation was revoked back to 1633, by the Rescissory Act 1661, removing the Covenanter gains of the Bishops' Wars, but the discipline of kirk sessions, presbyteries and synods were renewed.