Divergence and Union: Scotland and England, 1660–1707

Abstract

The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 used to be regarded as a preordained element in the building of the modern British state. The union of crowns in 1603 and the Stuarts’ exercise of government from London made the fuller incorporating union of parliaments seem the logical next step. And the flourishing of Great Britain for more than two centuries after 1707 offered the comfort of hindsight. Consequently, an old series of books recounted the history of the Union as a ‘natural consummation’ or ‘natural evolution’ which mature statesmanship had brought to pass. Several of these books coincided with demands for Scottish Home Rule, which grew up in the 1880s and rumbled on until after the Great War. Most were hostile to devolution, emphasising the good sense and mutual benefits of 1707. They also tended to be burdened with three articles of late Victorian faith: the destiny of the British Empire, the Darwinian evolution of strong nation-states, and the doctrine known as legal positivism — the idea that statehood requires a single, untrammelled source of legislative sovereignty, and that that source must lie at Westminster. The Union was thus seen as an historical and juridical necessity.¹