The Search for Salvation E-Book

Audrey-Beth Fitch

• Herausgeber: John Donald
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Seitenzahl: 530

Beschreibung

The Search for Salvation is an innovative and interdisciplinary study of lay faith in Scotland in the later Milddle Ages, examining both the religious ideas and practices of the people, and the ways in which these were shaped by images in literature, art, and church writings. Contrary to traditional views, which portray the late medieval Scottish church as weak and corrupt, the book argues for the vitality and flourishing of lay piety in the later fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century. It thus sheds new light on the coming of the Protestant Reformation, as well as revealing the richness of the world of medieval Scottish religious imagery. Each chapter examines one aspect of faith and the lay responses to it. The first part of the book discusses three central concepts in people's understanding of death and salvation - the Day of Judgement, Heaven and Hell, and Purgatory. The second part looks at the way in which people perceived of and related to three central figures of Christianity: God, Mary and Jesus. In examining such a wide variety of beliefs, the book goes beyond the study of religion to provide an understanding of the nature and functioning of medieval society as a whole.

Leseprobe

‘THE PEOPLE ABOVE’

‘… they had a wonderful jargon, which nobody could understand, but which had a strange effect in benumbing and stupifying all their hearers. They talked perpetually of PEOPLE ABOVE, THE GREAT FOLKS, of THE PEOPLE IN POWER; and now and then would whisper Peg herself, that, if she kept her temper, THE PEOPLE ABOVE might possibly make her a present of a hood, or a tippet, or a new petticoat at a proper time: and though she did not know who the Devil these PEOPLE ABOVE were, she was perpetually gulled with this sort of talk. Those who pretend to understand these matters say, that the PEOPLE ABOVE were such as had the naming of John Bull’s servants; and that they contrived new offices, and a variety of perquisites and veils, on purpose to allure people who were willing to sell their souls to Hell, and cheat their own father and mother.’

Adam Ferguson, The History of the Proceedings in the Case of Margaret, Commonly called Peg, only lawful Sister to John Bull, Esq. (London, 1761), pp. 89-90.

‘THE PEOPLE ABOVE’

Politics and Administrationin Mid-Eighteenth-Century Scotland

ALEXANDER MURDOCH

This edition published in 2003 by

John Donald Publishers

an imprint of Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

First published in 1980 by John Donald Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh

Copyright © Alexander Murdoch 1980

The right of Alexander Murdoch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 1 904607 34 9

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Printed and bound by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne

Preface

WHY mid-eighteenth-century Scottish politics?

I chose to attempt such a study because I could find nothing to read on the subject when I first thought of studying Scottish politics after the Act of Union. The standard histories mentioned someone called a manager, specifically the second and third Dukes of Argyll, who had supreme authority over the distribution of government places in Scotland and thereby ensured that Scottish Members of Parliament supported the government of the day. They were later succeeded by the Earl of Bute, and still later by Henry Dundas, who presided over the Tory reaction in Scotland at the time of the French Revolution. ‘After the Union of 1707,’ wrote T. C. Smout in the most widely available general history of Scotland in this period, ‘Scottish Parliamentary life as reflected in the careers of Scottish members at Westminster became for a long time so moribund as to be scarcely relevant any longer to a general history of Scottish society.’1

There were some studies available. Dr. Patrick Riley had published a good monograph, The English Ministers and Scotland, 1707-1727, but it concentrated on the adjustments made in Scottish government immediately after the Treaty of Union, and nothing like it was extant for the rest of the eighteenth century. There was a splendid essay on patronage by John Simpson (‘Who Steered the Gravy Train?’), Dr. William Ferguson’s magisterial thesis (still unpublished) on the Scottish electoral system, biographies and constituency essays by Lady Haden Guest and John Simpson in the History of Parliament volumes, and a few biographies of Henry Dundas. Administration, however, as Dr. Riley had studied it, was neglected. My first thoughts were of a study of Archibald Campbell, Earl of Ilay, later third Duke of Argyll, principal Scottish lieutenant of Sir Robert Walpole during the latter’s long period of political supremacy between 1721 and 1742; but these thoughts were abandoned when I discovered that Mr. Richard Scott was already well advanced in a research project on the Walpole years. I then decided to complement Dr. Riley’s book and Mr. Scott’s research by studying the end of the third Duke of Argyll’s career, after the rebellion of 1745, and the efforts to replace him after his death in 1761. Thus the work incorporated in this book as Chapters 2 to 5 is meant as a continuation of Riley and Scott’s work, leaving room for yet another monograph on the years of Henry Dundas’s domination of Scottish government. My work was undertaken in the conviction that this kind of detailed research was necessary to arrive at a more genuine assessment of the evolution of the Union settlement of 1707, and to arrive at an assessment of what that evolution has meant for Scotland.

The limitations of this book have to be made clear at the start. It is limited to the tiny electoral nation of Scotland, the political elite who owned the land, had made the Union, and sent their representatives to Westminster. They cannot be viewed in a vacuum, as John Simpson so rightly pointed out,2 but their lack of numbers does not reduce their significance; for they both reflected and ruled the distinctive Scottish society beneath them. The subsequent abandonment of their Scottishness did much to produce the ethereal quality of Scottish nationality in modern times. I have studied them in the belief that one must understand the apex of society as well as its grass-roots, that while most of the criticisms levelled at elitist history are quite justified, there is no virtue in mirroring its defects by attempting to exclude the elite from the study of society in the past.

Thus this book has grown while it has been written. It contains a detailed monograph on a very short period of Scottish political history; but implicit in this material is the question of how a distinctive proto-national elite served its interests when it lacked the machinery of a state. This study reaches out, however inadequately, to try to touch the political consciousness of that elite as reflected in the politicians who served its interests. In this sense it is concerned with the relationship of Scotland and England as abstract entities. A third concern, more ambitious than the first but less complex than the second, is to outline the means by which Scottish society was governed in the eighteenth century, to demonstrate the ad hoc post-Union system which political scientists today would label intermediate government.

A last point falls within the compass of a preface. I am often asked why an American should take so intense an interest in Scottish history. Part of the reason is apparent in my name, though all too many Scottish-Americans are satisfied with the tartan kitsch that is served up to impress them with their heritage; but in addition to a desire to penetrate the myths perpetuated among the descendents of those who were forced to leave, there is an ambition to contribute to the wider question of national identity in Europe. This is not to make inflated claims about the importance of this book; only an attempt to remind the reader of its wider context.

Alexander Murdoch.

Acknowledgements

THIS book has been so long in the making, and I have received so much help from so many people, that now that I can make my acknowledgements I hardly know where to begin, far less where to end. My work would never have been possible without the support, both moral and financial, of my grandmother and my parents. I will always be grateful to all three of them. I have also been fortunate in finding good advice. Nick Phillipson has been a constant fund of encouragement, Harry Dickinson has always been ready to give me the benefit of his acute criticism, and John Simpson has always been willing to listen to me try to articulate just exactly what I thought I was doing. Richard Scott and John Shaw, fellow workers in the same field, have helped as well, as have Professor Maurice Larkin and Professor John Brewer. Perhaps I owe most to Rick Sher, who has taken time from his own work to act as my adviser on so many matters, particularly in my first year of research.

Those kind enough to speak to me or answer written enquiries when I first undertook this project include Rosalind Mitchison, P. W. J. Riley, Mary Cosh, Eric Cregeen, William Ferguson, and Ken Logue. Miss Catherine Armet, archivist at Mount Stuart, was particularly helpful during my visit there. I am very grateful to the Marquess of Bute, the Duke of Atholl, Mrs. Dundas-Bekker, the Earl of Seafield, Lord Polwarth, Mrs. D. L. Pringle, the Hon. G. E. Maitland-Carew, the Duke of Buccleuch, the Trustees of the Bedford Estates, Mr. J. T. T. Fletcher of Saltoun, the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland, the Curators of the Signet Library, South Glamorgan Libraries (Cardiff), the Marquess of Zetland, the North Yorkshire County Record Office, the Huntington Library, the William L. Clements Library, the Trustees of the British Library, and the Keeper of the Records of Scotland for permission to use unpublished material in the preparation of this study. The staff of the National Library of Scotland make research a pleasure.

The research on which this book is based could never have been carried out as happily as it was if I had not met Mairi Stewart. I have gained much from conversations with the following friends in many ways, both academic and non-academic: Ian Maclean, Lyn Worrell, Terry Rodgers, Ronnie Turnbull, Vera Macdonald, Carol Craig, Stuart Wallace and Andy Aitken. Beverley Spear patiently prepared the typescript under rather trying conditions. I am also indebted to Mr. and Mrs. I. R. Grant. Above all else, this book has taken the form it has in response to the city of Edinburgh and the people who live there. I hope it might represent some kind of repayment for all the learning I have done here.

Edinburgh, 1980.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Tables

A Note on Proper Names, Dates and Quotations

1    The Government of Scotland, 1707-1784

Introduction

Government from London

Government in Edinburgh

Local Government

2    The Duke of Argyll and Scotland

Introduction: Court and Country

The Duke of Argyll and the ‘Forty Five

The English Ministers and the Duke of Argyll, 1754-1760

3    The Duke of Argyll and the Duke of Newcastle: four case studies in mid-eighteenth-century administration in Scotland, 1754-1760

Legal Patronage and Legal Appointments, 1754-1760

The Scottish Revenue, 1754-1760

The Linen Bounty, 1754-1756

The Commission of Annexed Estates, 1754-1760

4    The Duke of Argyll and Lord Bute, 1759-1761

5    James Stuart Mackenzie and the Government of Scotland, 1761-1765

6    English Ministers and Scotch Politicians, 1765-1784

Conclusion

Political Chronology

Appendix I. Memorandum by Lord Milton, 1762

Appendix II. List of Government Offices in Scotland, based on the Edinburgh Almanack of 1755; and the Scottish Civil List for 1761

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Tables

Table I. The Government of Scotland, 1707-1765

Table II. Government from London: Departments of State

Table III. Government in Edinburgh

Table IV. Local Government

Table V. Legal Appointments, 1754

Table VI. Legal Appointments, 1755-1756

Table VII. Legal Appointments, May 1759-March 1760

Table VIII. The Commissioners of Annexed Estates, 1755-1760, Attendance

Table IX. Legal Appointments, 1761-1765

Table X. Appointments to Sinecures, 1762-1765

A Note on Proper Names, Dates and Quotations

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY Britain was not overly concerned with consistency in spelling. I have chosen one form for each name and stuck by it, usually choosing that which is currently accepted. Thus while James Stuart Mackenzie signed his will ‘Stewart Mackenzie’ I follow the practice of the reference books and continue to refer to him as ‘Stuart Mackenzie’. The only exception to this is Archibald Campbell’s first title of Ilay. It was thus universally spelled at the time and I have found it impossible to differ.

Spelling and punctuation of quotations have been modernised except in instances where I have felt that it would change the sense of the quotation. Dates before 1754 are given in Old Style, but with 1 January as the beginning of the year. Quotations of passages in cipher are given in upper case letters (see ‘a note on ciphers’ in the section on the Saltoun papers in the bibliography). I have used Scots, Scotch and Scottish interchangeably because there are more important distinctions to make than these semantic ones.

I have persisted in using extensive notes, printed at the back of the book, safely out of the general reader’s way, because they are the means of making an historian accountable to his readers. It should also be noted that in cases where I have made a tentative point, particularly in the very detailed work incorporated in Chapters 2 to 5, the footnote lists the evidence which has led me to that tentative judgement, not evidence which proves it.

The author as indexer, it should be noted, has contented himself with an elementary subject and person index.

1

The Government of Scotland, 1707-1784

Introduction

THE Treaty of Union of 1707 remains a unique constitutional settlement in that there was no conquest and no surrender; nor was there a federation. Instead, two separate nations were to submerge themselves in a new political entity under the monarch they had formerly shared. The first and third articles of the treaty are quite specific: ‘THAT the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall … forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the name of GREAT BRITAIN: … THAT the United Kingdom of Great Britain be Represented by one and the same Parliament to be stiled the Parliament of Great Britain.’1

The reality behind the constitutional niceties, of course, was decidedly different. Apart from the revolutionary hiccup of 1637-51, Scotland had been governed from London ever since her King had gone south to take the English throne in 1603. A monarch resident in London, presiding over a large and prosperous kingdom of some importance in the European world, very soon lost what interest he might have had in his poor possession to the north. It is true that there were always Scotsmen present at court in London, and that there were royal visits in 1617, 1633, and 1641; but Scotland had become a backwater of very minor importance to her own Kings. The very infrequency of their visits tells its own tale. When Charles II was crowned King of Scotland at Scone in 1650 he was a desperate refugee from England. The residence in Scotland of the future James VII for most of the period 1678-1682 was entirely due to the sensitive political situation in England. With the monarch almost permanently absent, Scottish affairs were normally the province of the King’s Privy Council at Edinburgh, acting under sporadic instructions from their Royal Master at London.

This situation was altered by the revolution of 1688 in England, and the settlement of 1690 which followed in Scotland. These political developments placed definite limits on the power of the monarchy, allowing the parliaments of England and Scotland much more initiative than they had enjoyed previously. This shift in the centre of political gravity upset the balance of the accidental union of 1603 as a basis for relations between Scotland and England. William III, preoccupied with his continental wars, continued the non-policy of neglect; but after 1690 the Scottish Parliament could take initiatives which would force Scotland back into the general reckoning at Court for the first time since the 1640s. It did so when it passed the Act of Security and the Act anent Peace and War in 1703. The language of the Act of Security is most revealing; demanding, as it did, ‘in this session of Parliament there be such conditions of government settled and enacted as may secure the honour and independence of the Crown of this kingdom, the freedom, frequency, and the power of the Parliament, and the religion, liberty and trade of the nation from English or any foreign influence’.2 The force behind this shrill demand was the possibility that a rebellious Scots Parliament would alter the succession settlement to ensure that the next sovereign of England would not succeed to the Scottish throne.

Scotland demanded attention because it was experiencing economic difficulty to such an extent that its ruling class began to fear for the social stability of the country. English efforts to suppress the commercial power of the Dutch Republic had forced Scottish merchants into the difficult process of readjusting to largescale trade with England. The harvest failures of the 1690s resulted in famine every bit as intense as that suffered on the continent, causing massive social dislocation. The foundation of the Company of Scotland in 1695 was greeted by English obstruction, which prevented access to the money markets of London, Amsterdam and Hamburg. Scots bitterness knew no bounds when it became apparent that the Company’s audacious attempt to trade beyond Europe, including their scheme for a colony at Darien, would end in failure. The Scottish commonwealth teetered on the edge of bankruptcy in 1700; bereft of economic assets, and barely able to feed its inhabitants.3 Those who presided over its society felt themselves compelled to look beyond its borders for a solution.

These two problems, social and economic crisis in Scotland, and political conflict between the Scottish Parliament and the English government in London, were solved (for better or worse) by the negotiated union of 1707. By that settlement the political elite of Scotland gambled that the answers to their domestic problems lay in economic union with England; they paid for that choice by surrendering their legislative sovereignty in parliament assembled. The rights and wrongs of that choice thankfully lie outside the scope of this book; for it can safely be assumed that the subject will continue to receive more than enough attention; but the fact that the settlement of 1707 stopped at legislative unity is of central importance to the work which follows.

The Scottish judiciary was safeguarded specifically by article nineteen of the Treaty of Union, though a loophole was left for civil appeals from the Court of Session to the House of Lords. Local heritable jurisdictions, a feudal legacy, were continued ‘as Rights of Property’ by article twenty of the Treaty, thus perpetuating the vast influence of the great Scottish landowners. More important, and more positive, was the continuation of the Scottish supreme courts of Session and Justiciary (and the minor consistorial and admiralty courts) at Edinburgh to administer Scots Law, which was to remain separate and distinct from English Common Law. The Court of Session consisted of fourteen Lords of Session sitting individually in the ‘Outer House’ as ‘Lords Ordinary’, and collectively (under a fifteenth judge, the Lord President) in the ‘Inner House’ as a court of appeal. Six of their number (the Lord Justice Clerk and five Lords of Justiciary) also served in the Court of Justiciary, which sat as the supreme criminal court of the land, from which there was no appeal. The Lords of Justiciary, two by two, went out on one of three circuits twice a year, each sitting in three county towns as an intermediate court of appeal for criminal offences.

While the Scottish judiciary had been protected in the Treaty of Union, executive government was mentioned only at the end of article nineteen, which allowed the Queen and her successors to continue a Privy Council in Scotland until ‘the Parliament of Great Britain shall think fit to alter it’. The Parliament of Great Britain saw fit to abolish it in its first session. Thus the nature of executive government in Scotland was an area of the Union settlement very open to change; and it remains so, as events contemporary to the composition of this book illustrate only too well.

The constitutional settlement of 1707 made Scotland and England one state; but constitutional law could not resolve the manifest social, economic and cultural differences between the two countries. Sophisticated methodology is not required to state that fact. One can point to the flourishing national institutions of the law, the church, and the universities in eighteenth-century Scotland; one can point to Scottish local government, the Scottish electoral system, the Scottish banking system, and the metropolitan society of Edinburgh; negatively, one can point to the national animosities which came to be represented by the Jacobite pretenders, the Duke of Cumberland, Lord Bute, and John Wilkes. National distinction was not only present, it was pronounced.

Government had to reflect this situation in its administration of Scotland. Special arrangements were made for the Scots in the departments at London, where most Scottish business involving the central government was left to representatives of that country. In Scotland itself a separate administrative structure, part provincial and part colonial, began to evolve at Edinburgh; and Scottish local government continued to evolve in a unique way. By and large Scottish government has been treated as a kind of twilight zone in British historiography, consigned to oblivion, along with Scottish affairs in general. Very little is known about Scottish government after 1721. It is time to poke into the darkness and attempt to discern the bare bones of Scottish government as it evolved in the eighteenth century.

Government from London

In 1708, against the wishes of the ministry, the new Parliament of Great Britain abolished the chief executive organ of government in Scotland, the Scottish Privy Council. This action had been urged on Parliament by the dissident Whigs of the Squadrone (a group of Scottish Country Whigs), in the hope that it would break the power of those in Scotland who had previously been identified with the Court, though some Scots (such as the Earl of Marchmont) genuinely believed that a separate Privy Council did not conform to the true spirit of ‘completing the Union’.4 Thus there came to be one British Privy Council sitting in London which included the surviving Scottish officers of state: the Keeper of the Great Seal in Scotland, the Keeper of the Privy Seal in Scotland, the Lord Justice General, and the Lord Clerk Register.5 Government policy in the eighteenth century, however, was not formed in the Privy Council but in the Cabinet; real decision making was restricted to the so-called ‘Inner Cabinet’, which did not include a Scot until late in the century.6 Table I shows the King at the apex of executive government, which was the constitutional situation, but in practice neither Queen Anne nor any of the Hanoverian Kings took a sustained interest in Scotland. The only exception to this general rule was George II’s understandable distaste for Scotland after the 1745 rebellion; yet even then the hard line taken by the King and the Duke of Cumberland did not greatly influence the policy adopted by the King’s First Minister, Henry Pelham.7 The Inner Cabinet, usually dominated by one minister, determined issues of policy, which were then presented to the monarch ‘in the closet’ (i.e. in private conference) by the First Minister. This was the situation in regard to major policy decisions, but Scottish business was seldom considered of sufficient importance to merit cabinet-level discussion. As a result individual government departments had much influence in the ordinary administration of Scottish affairs.

The major departments of central government in eighteenth-century Britain were the Secretaries of State, who dealt with home and foreign affairs; the Treasury, busily expanding its influence and power over the course of the century while finding the financial wherewithal for Britain’s wars with France; the War Office, which ran the army; and the Admiralty, which administered Britain’s growing navy. Each of these departments should have dealt with the Scottish business that came their way as they dealt with their other domestic business, but in practice they were preoccupied with more important affairs, and Scottish matters were largely neglected.

Most Scottish affairs, particularly in peacetime, were the province of one of the Secretaries of State or the Lords of the Treasury. Day-to-day business was carried out by three or four clerks, supervised by an under-Secretary, in the Secretary’s Office; and by about a dozen clerks, supervised by two Secretaries, in the Treasury.8 Very few of them understood Scottish business. ‘I find all the inferior agents about both offices [Secretary of State and Treasury] extremely ignorant about the common course of Scotch business,’ Gilbert Elliot observed in 1761.9 Recommendations had to be given in to the clerks at the Secretaries’ office exactly as they would appear on a complete warrant, for the clerks did not know the correct form or the names of the offices.10 Appointments were misplaced and forgotten, records and correspondence were lost. The same situation existed at the Treasury. ‘If you have any of the clerks of the Treasury in pay you should desire him to call on the Duke [of Newcastle, then First Lord of the Treasury] and mind him,’ Allan Whitefoord wrote to the Earl of Loudoun in 1760, ‘if you have no such resident you must often fail when otherways you would succeed.’11

At most times from 1708 until 1725, and again briefly from 1742 until January 1746, there was a separate Scottish Secretary of State. He was officially a third ‘British’ Secretary of State with responsibility for home and foreign affairs, but in practice confined himself to the Scottish business of the Secretaries’ office.12 This meant that judicial appointments, presentations to parishes in the gift of the Crown, the disposal of Crown offices in Scotland (many of them sinecures), and the correspondence with the Crown officers in Scotland all went through his office. Yet, crucially, the officers of the revenue, the army, and navy in Scotland were all outside his jurisdiction, hence his influence over government patronage was limited. At times the Scottish Secretary exercised a great deal of influence over all Scottish affairs, as the Duke of Queensberry did from 1708 to 1710 or the Duke of Roxburghe from 1716 to 1720; at other times a Secretary could not even control the distribution of offices and pensions which came within his own department, like Roxburghe from 1720 to 1725 or the Marquess of Tweeddale in 1745.13 At such times the Secretary was no more than a minor administrator. Indeed, there were no plans to force Tweeddale out of office in 1746, when he suddenly resigned, only to reduce his influence, and in the next few years the Prince of Wales’ following intended to restore him to office in the event of a new reign, but not to give him power beyond his department.14 When there was no Scottish Secretary of State his work was done by one of the other Secretaries; from 1725-1742 and again from 1746-1754 by the Duke of Newcastle, thereafter by whoever held the Secretaryship for the Northern Department.15

Table I: The Government of Scotland, 1707-1765

The Treasury was responsible for the Scottish revenue, the salaries of Scottish officers, the administration of Crown property in Scotland, bounties for Scottish manufacturers, and the appointment of customs officers in Scotland. Over the course of the century it became increasingly important in British government from both a political and an administrative standpoint.16 Both Sir Robert Walpole and Henry Pelham, for example, used their control of the department to extend their influence and power over the entire ministry. A First Lord of the Treasury came to have some claim to lead a ministry, even when, like Newcastle or Grafton, he did not sit in the House of Commons. Quite often the Secretaries of State would defer to the First Lord’s wishes in Scottish affairs. When Edinburgh’s Member of Parliament sought to influence the appointment of a minister to a Scottish parish of which the Crown was patron, in 1756, he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle (who was First Lord of the Treasury) rather than to the responsible Secretary of State: ‘I well know my Lord Duke, that all these presentations, in the execution pass through My Lord Holdernesse’s office, but at the same time, I’m not ignorant that all these are order’d and directed by your Grace only.’17 At times the Treasury even attempted to govern Scotland directly from Whitehall, but as we shall see, the difficulties of governing Scotland at such a distance, and the press of more important business, made it impossible for such a policy to be totally successful.18

In fact, the Scots required a sub-system of lobbyists to steer their business through the small but inefficient bureaucracy at Whitehall, while the English required advice on Scottish conditions and customs. The result was the emergence of the Scottish ‘manager’ or ‘minister’; terms that represented the two aspects of his unofficial office; for while a Scottish minister represented Scottish interests within the Government, a Scottish manager was expected to keep Scottish M.P.s and Representative Peers on the government side of the division lobbies. From 1725 until 1761 Archibald Campbell, Earl of Ilay (and after 1743, third Duke of Argyll), exercised much influence over Scottish affairs without ever being made a Secretary of State. He provides the model for any abstract notion of a Scottish minister in the period before 1780. His family represented the largest and most influential aristocratic interest in Scotland in the early eighteenth century, a fact which encouraged Sir Robert Walpole to seek a political alliance with Ilay and his brother John, second Duke of Argyll, in 1725. In return for most government patronage in Scotland, they kept most of the Scots M.P.s behind Walpole. In the process Ilay ceased to be his brother’s political lieutenant and became one of Walpole’s associates, even after Argyll broke with the minister in 1737. During this period Ilay was more a manager than a minister, but Walpole fell from power in 1742, and the next year Ilay succeeded his brother as third Duke of Argyll. As the wealthiest peer of Scotland and an experienced politician, his voice in Scottish affairs could not be ignored. He submitted recommendations for offices, he advised the ministry on its election plans, and he received supplicants in Scotland during his annual summer visits to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Inveraray. He came to gain, as Lord Milton wrote, ‘the attention and confidence of his fellow subjects; and without the advantages of a minister, bestowed upon him a very high degree of ministerial power’.19

Table II: Government from London: Departments of State

The Treasury

The First Lord and four ordinary Lords of Treasury supervised the Treasury’s subordinate boards in Edinburgh. One of the Treasury clerks was responsible for Scottish appointments.

The Secretary of State

There was a third, Scottish, Secretary in the following years: 1708-11, 1713-14, 1714-15, 1716-1725, 1742-46. From 1725-42, and again from 1746-54, Scottish business was in the care of the Duke of Newcastle, who was Secretary of State for the Southern Department from 1724-48, and Secretary of State for the Northern Department from 1748-54. Thereafter Scottish affairs were the responsibility of the Northern Secretary until 1782, when they were transferred to the new Home Department.

The Secretary of War

The Commander in Chief of the Forces in Scotland corresponded with the Secretary of War as well as the responsible Secretary of State. All military commissions passed through the Secretary of War’s office, including those for Scotsmen and the Scottish regiments.

The Board of Admiralty

The responsibilities of the Lords of Admiralty over naval affairs were equivalent to those of the Secretary of War.

Most English ministers found it convenient to delegate Scottish patronage to a Scots politician resident in London, and to seek his advice on Scottish elections; but Argyll was unique in achieving a position of real power, using his independent political base in Scotland as a means of exerting influence over government policy. The problem thus revolves around the representative and managerial aspects of the minister’s place. In some ways the situation was similar to that of a modern Secretary of State for Scotland. Tom Johnston achieved a remarkable amount of independence as Secretary of State during the Second World War, and William Ross became an accomplished defender of Scottish interests within the Labour government of the 1960s, while on the other hand Scottish Secretaries of the late 1940s and the 1950s tended to be mere administrators of policy handed down to them.20 Argyll, like Tom Johnston, was extremely successful in making government work in the interest of Scotland. Something similar could be claimed on behalf of Henry Dundas at the end of the eighteenth century. The nature of the constituency has changed but the constitutional tension has remained.

The eighteenth-century Scottish minister carried a certain amount of authority in Parliament, where Argyll in particular served as a spokesman on Scottish legislation and Scots appeals to the House of Lords.21 After Argyll’s death in 1761 the Duke of Newcastle urged the Earl of Bute to give at least one of Argyll’s old offices to the third Earl of Marchmont, reporting to the Earl of Hardwicke that: ‘I insisted on his use in the House of Lords, both on extraordinary days, and for carrying on common business, which was a very necessary thing.’22 Marchmont eventually did become Keeper of the Great Seal in Scotland, and in fact did spend quite a bit of time in the Lords on Scottish business. The formidable figure of Lord Mansfield, however, prevented Marchmont from ever achieving anything like Argyll’s [Ilay’s] influence in the House when he was Walpole’s minister. As both an exiled Scot and an eminent judge, Mansfield was credited with an authoritative knowledge of Scots law by the rest of the Lords, who as a whole respected his opinions over Marchmont’s.23 It was Mansfield who was responsible for overturning the Court of Session’s rulings against fictitious votes,24 and it was Mansfield who gave Boswell, in 1772, ‘a disagreeable feeling of his supreme power over the property of Scotland’.25

The Lord Advocate spoke for the government in the House of Commons, however, even when James Stuart Mackenzie had been set up as Scottish minister by the Earl of Bute in the early 1760’s. The Advocate was usually the author of Scottish legislation, responsible for introducing it, and at times also served as a kind of government whip for Scottish M.P.s.26 Thus when the Scottish M.P.s held a meeting on the militia issue in 1762, a measure which the ‘Old Corps’ whigs in the ministry opposed, the attendance of Lord Advocate Miller distressed the Duke of Newcastle because it indicated ministerial support for the measure.27 G. W. T. Omond’s thesis that the Lord Advocate was always Scottish minister was partly the result of a misunderstanding of the office’s status in the eighteenth century, and partly the result of reading the mid-nineteenth-century standing of the Advocate back into the previous century.28 By acting as a parliamentary spokesman the Advocate did possess ministerial authority over Scottish legislation, and when he acted as a whip for Scottish M.P.s he acquired a certain ‘managerial’ role as well. But both of these roles were confined to the House of Commons before 1782. The representation of Scottish interests within the executive bureaucracy, and the management of the Scottish electoral system for the government, were functions which before 1765 were carried out by persons other than the Lord Advocate. The men who fulfilled these functions longer than all their predecessors and successors put together were the third Duke of Argyll and his sub-minister, Lord Milton.

The role of the Lord Advocate has never been confused with that of the Scottish manager when historians have considered Scottish electoral politics, particularly in reference to the activities of the second Duke of Queensberry, Ilay/Argyll, and Henry Dundas. The nature of a Scottish manager’s activities, however, has not been understood as clearly. The work of Dr. W. Ferguson and Dr. R. M. Sunter29 has shown us that his electoral work really consisted of balancing the claims of several local factions in such a way that one of two objects was attained. The more active managers (like Queensberry or Ilay) wished to maximise ministerial influence, while others (like Ilay in his later years as Duke of Argyll) merely wished to buttress or at least recognise the dominant interest in a locality. This meant controlling the distribution of government patronage. The Scottish minister advised the British Secretaries of State on the disposal of crown offices in Scotland and advised the Treasury on the disposal of appointments in the Scottish customs establishments; though some families, such as the Campbells in the early part of the century, or the Earls of Marchmont and the Dundas’s of Arniston in mid-century, succeeded in obtaining direct access to the ministers.30

As there were very few people in the London offices who knew anything about Scotland or Scottish offices, an appointment had to be carefully shepherded through the bureaucracy by an interested party or it would be laid aside and lost. This task of calling at the offices at least once a week to check on the clerks and speak with the minister took up most of Ilay’s time, even when he had become Duke of Argyll, and James Stuart Mackenzie operated in much the same manner. It was a thankless task. ‘Alas!’ Andrew Fletcher wrote to his father in 1754, ‘many of our countrymen imagine that it only costs their friends a word to provide for them by which means the most substantial favours are undervalued …’31 Nor was it always easy to coordinate Scottish business. ‘Your Lordship has no conception what it is to settle business of this kind, betwixt a Secretary of State, and a first Lord of the Treasury, whose hours, situations, and engagements, are so different and remote …,’ Gilbert Elliot complained to Lord Milton in 1761.32 Later great Scottish politicians like the Duke of Queensberry, the Earl of Loudoun, and Sir Lawrence Dundas, would call round the government offices on behalf of their own friends,33 but no Scottish politician had anything like Argyll’s or Mackenzie’s authority until the rise of Henry Dundas.

This mundane aspect of even the most successful Scottish minister’s life contrasted strongly with the viceregal status with which he was credited in Scotland. The Scots, it seems, wanted a Viceroy: Dr. Riley writes of Walpole being ‘the prisoner of Scottish expectations’ when he designated Ilay as his Scottish lieutenant in 1725.34 How else can one explain the accounts of Argyll’s power given in the memoirs of Alexander Carlyle, John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, and Thomas Somerville?35 Yet there were constant attempts to go over the head of the Scottish minister and deal with the Treasury and the Secretaries directly, particularly by Scottish Members of Parliament. Thus Alexander Hume Campbell, M.P. for Berwickshire, and his brother, the third Earl of Marchmont, would negotiate directly with Henry Pelham or the Duke of Newcastle if they desired a favour;36 or Gilbert Elliot would personally call on the Treasury, as well as James Stuart Mackenzie, in an attempt to secure a Commissioner of Excise’s place for a Roxburghshire friend.37 The success of these efforts depended on the English ministers themselves. If they were on good terms with the Scottish minister, or if they needed the support of Argyll’s personal parliamentary following, they would discourage such activity; if they resented the position of the Scottish minister, as Newcastle did in 1755 or Grenville did in 1765, they would disregard the Scottish minister’s recommendation in favour of another applicant.

While the Scottish minister was generally credited with an overall responsibility for Scottish affairs, in practice this responsibility had to be exercised almost entirely by personal influence. Even more than other ministers, because his position was unofficial, it was that much less secure. For example, groups in Scotland like the Convention of Royal Burghs or the Commissioners for the Annexed Estates made additional provision for their relations with the government. The Convention would dispatch personal representatives to London to lobby for matters which it viewed as important to the interest of the country, such as an extension of the daily post to Scotland or the renewal of the bounty for the export of coarse linen cloth. Their representatives would contact the Scottish minister and other Scottish politicians in London, but they would also establish direct communication with English ministers and English politicians of influence. The Convention, the Annexed Estates Commission and other Edinburgh boards all employed London agents to oversee their affairs at the Treasury.38

There were two perceptions of the Scottish minister. In London, many Scottish M.P.s and other great Scottish aristocrats resented his authority and constantly attempted to undermine his credit with the ministry for much the same reasons that the members of the Squadrone party had urged the abolition of the Scottish Privy Council in 1708, arguing that it ran against the spirit of the Union to set up one Scot above the rest and invest him with special powers, or as Duncan Forbes put it in 1725: ‘if any one Scotsman has absolute power, we are in the same slavery as ever …’39 This sentiment found much sympathy in English ministers such as the Duke of Newcastle and the Earl of Hardwicke, who thought it dangerous to devolve power in any meaningful sense to a Scottish politician; hence the Earl of Breadalbane’s report to a friend in 1765 that the Marquess of Rockingham had told him

that it was the opinion of the King’s servants and of many Scotch noblemen and commoners that there ought to be no ministry for Scotland, but that all the business of the United Kingdom should go thro’ the same channel. He [Rockingham] added that the opinion of the great officers of Scotland would naturally be asked on many occasions, but that a particular minister for that department was not intended.40

On the other hand the landed gentry, the ministers of the kirk, and the merchants of Scotland seemed to desire their own representative in London; it was not just eighteenth-century manners which led at least some commentators to refer to Argyll as the ‘father’ of his country when he died in 1761.41 They wanted order, they wanted to know where to apply for patronage for their younger sons, and above all, they wanted efficient government. Thus John Mackenzie of Delvine, an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet, called for a renewal of the Argathelian system in 1770:

Best depend on it, more mutinies will now arise in this quarter, unless some man of esteem, possessed of property beyond the Tweed, be it the Duke of Argyle, Ld Frederick [Campbell], Lord Marchmont or whom the premier for the time pleases, be pitched on to hear & soften many idle murmurs for which any man’s shoulders are overloaded who has much more interesting matters hanging on them — … Scotland for anything I know does best under an aristocracy — that, under Ilay was long & pretty regular — the best tradesmen generally know best how to chuse their tools.42

The advent of Henry Dundas as a British politician of note was welcomed by many Scots, not for party-political reasons, but because Dundas’s prominence insured that Scottish problems and issues received the attention of the government. As the fifth Duke of Argyll commented in 1787, in connection with some business of the Highland Society:

The affairs of Scotland have at this period a little better chance of being attended to, than ever was the case before, or perhaps will be again, from the peculiar influence of one of our countrymen [Henry Dundas] with the minister.43

The same difficulty exists today, despite the vast expansion of the political nation, in relation to the role of the Secretary of State in Scottish government, for the more power is devolved to a modern Secretary from Whitehall, the more he would resemble his eighteenth-century predecessors, the Scottish ministers.44

Government in Edinburgh

Government in Edinburgh during the eighteenth century remains something of an enigma to historians. Its nature is difficult to discern because abolition of the Scottish Privy Council in 1708 removed its natural focus; yet Edinburgh was patently a centre of government. The major courts of Session, Justiciary and Exchequer and the minor Commissary and Admiralty courts provided employment for a native legal elite. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland met annually in Edinburgh, as did the Convention of Royal Burghs, providing national forums for the church and the merchant oligarchy of the burghs; and the Scottish Board of Customs, Board of Excise, Post Office, Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Fisheries and Manufactures, and Commissioners for the Annexed Estates all dealt with various economic and administrative problems, as did the Barons of Exchequer in their administrative capacity. Socially, the city remained the focal point of national life for a Scottish elite. In addition, just as there were official and unofficial aspects to Scottish government in London which overlapped and sometimes competed with each other, so those who maintained close communications with people of influence in London acquired a very real, yet unofficial, status in Edinburgh.

The figure of an unofficial minister resident in Edinburgh has sometimes been called a sous ministre, a term used by Robert Chambers in several of his works published in the nineteenth century.45 The term is actually another rendering of the more pedestrian appellation of sub-minister, first used by John Home in his History of the Rebellion in the Year 1745.46 Both terms refer to someone in Edinburgh who acted as a delegate for and channel of communication with the Scottish minister in London.

The most obvious example of such a minister was Andrew Fletcher, Lord Milton of the Scottish Court of Session, who served as the third Duke of Argyll’s trusted lieutenant from 1725 to 1761. Milton was a remarkable man, with a natural talent for political compromise and the detailed everyday drudgery of administrative matters which gave him considerable success in business, administration, and electioneering. Argyll secured his appointment to the bench in 1724, and later promotion to Lord Justice Clerk in 1734. His finest moment came after the 1745 rebellion, when his natural humanity, fortified by a sound political instinct, led him to advocate mercy for the defeated Jacobites, thereby bringing down on himself the enmity of the Duke of Cumberland and the army. He was rewarded for his services to the government during the rebellion, when he was virtually in command of civil administration in Scotland, by being made Keeper of the Signet in 1746, a sinecure which had always previously been attached to the office of the Secretaries of State.47 In 1748 he received the Signet for life, at the same time resigning his office of Lord Justice Clerk, though remaining on the bench as an ordinary Lord of Session.

Milton continued with his primary occupation of managing the Argathelian interest (Argyll interest) in Scotland after his resignation as Justice Clerk, especially in the administrative world of Edinburgh, where he exercised considerable influence on the Board of Trustees and the Commission of Annexed Estates. He was also very prominent in the evolution of Scottish banking, contributing much to the policy and prosperity of the Royal Bank, as well as playing a leading role in the foundation of the British Linen Company in 1746, where he continued to exercise much influence almost to his death. ‘Let it be remembered to his honour,’ John Ramsay of Ochtertyre observed, ‘that he never took a hammer to break an egg — that is, he never had recourse to harsh or violent measures when it was not absolutely necessary.’48

Like Argyll, Milton’s singularity raises questions about the nature of Chambers’ term of sous ministre. Yet while Milton was unique in the amount of power and authority he wielded, there can be no doubt that up until 1765, certainly, there was always someone like a sub-minister in Edinburgh.49 Some did not act for the Scottish minister, such as Baron John Scrope of the Court of Exchequer, an Englishman, who definitely acted in a ministerial capacity for the Treasury from 1708 until his departure, in January 1724, to become Walpole’s closest assistant at the Treasury itself, where he continued to take an interest in Scottish administration.50 It was no coincidence that Milton emerged as a prominent figure in Edinburgh after Scrape’s departure. At other times the Earl of Mar, the Duke of Montrose, the Duke of Roxburghe, and the Marquess of Tweeddale kept political-cum-administrative agents in Edinburgh during their tenures as Secretaries of State.51 Much later, after the third Duke of Argyll had died, William Mure (like Scrope a baron of the Court of Exchequer) became the acknowledged representative of the Bute interest in Edinburgh, particularly while James Stuart Mackenzie acted as Scottish minister between 1761 and 1765.

After 1765 the functions of the sub-minister began to accrue to the Lord Advocate. The improved postal service (daily posts between London and Edinburgh began in 1763) and the genial qualities of the approachable Henry Dundas made it possible to make a direct approach to the Scottish minister for patronage. Improved transportation and communication made it possible for the Lord Advocate to attend to his duties in Parliament and serve as a sub-minister for the government during that part of the year when he was resident in Edinburgh. If Scottish affairs required particular attention, as they did at the time of the French Revolution, the Advocate would remain in Edinburgh to direct the government’s activities rather than attend Parliament. The Lord Justice Clerk and Barons of Exchequer, willing to act in an executive capacity earlier in the century, came to feel that such activity compromised their judicial status. By 1804 Lord Advocate Charles Hope could claim, in a speech to the House of Commons, that the duties of all the old Scottish officers of State had ‘devolved’ on the Lord Advocate: ‘To him all inferior officers look for advice and decision; and with the greatest propriety, it may be said that he possesses the whole of the executive government of Scotland under his particular care.’52 Thus the administrative activity of Scrope, Milton and Mure became the province of the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General, acting under the authority, if seldom the supervision, of the Home Secretary.

What did a sub-minister do? His principal function was to serve as a point of contact in Edinburgh for those who wished something of government; whether it be patronage or government action.53 It is important to remember that there were two aspects to the post: a political one which entailed the coordination of various local interests and the wishes of the ministry in London, and an administrative one which consisted in forwarding information to the Scottish minister in London, and sometimes the English ministers themselves. Officially, the government’s correspondents were supposed to act as its eyes and ears in Scotland, but in practice any sort of remotely controversial intelligence had to go through private channels.54 Only Milton efficiently operated as a political agent, for by the end of his active life he had built up a national network of correspondents. Thus only he operated as a truly representative minister, serving as a channel of communication for Scottish opinion, particularly in the fifteen years which followed the 1745 rebellion. The other sub-ministers were largely administrators serving the managerial needs of government in London.

How did a sub-minister, in particular Milton, exert his influence? He built up a system of followers in the administrative world of Edinburgh, among the minor officers of the Courts and the boards. The College of Justice (the Courts of Session and Justiciary), for example, harboured an enormous number of offices.55 The Court of Exchequer was the same, attended as it was by officers such as the Auditor, King’s Remembrancer, Treasurer’s Remembrancer, and Clerk of the Pipe, many of which were sinecures executed by deputies.56 Places in the Post Office, Board of Customs, Commission for the Annexed Estates, and all the others were awarded on the same basis. Milton’s followers included William Jackson (Secretary for the Scottish Post Office), William Alston (Legal Agent for the Commission for the Annexed Estates as well as Deputy Auditor of Exchequer), Richard Gardiner (Deputy Comptroller General of Customs), and David Flint (Secretary of the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Fisheries and Manufactures). There were others as well.57 The administrative world of Edinburgh did not lack that very essence of political patronage, jobs.

The official equivalent of the sub-minister was the Secretary of State’s Scottish correspondent. Initially after the Union this function was carried out by the Lord Advocate, most efficiently by the elder Robert Dundas of Arniston under the Duke of Roxburghe and by Duncan Forbes under the Duke of Newcastle. Before 1745 the Lord Justice Clerk (the head of the Scottish Court of Justiciary) took a share of the correspondence when the Lord Advocate was absent from Edinburgh; after 1745, with the Lord Advocate preoccupied with prosecutions of Jacobites and preparation of extensive government legislation, the Lord Justice Clerk became the Secretary’s principal Scottish correspondent.58 Not surprisingly, it was Lord Milton’s tenure as Lord Justice Clerk from 1734 until 1748 which witnessed the transfer of responsibilities. His important role in directing Scottish civil government during the 1745/46 rebellion demonstrated the Justice Clerk’s superiority as government correspondent because of his constant residence in Scotland and his travel outside Edinburgh to the circuit courts of the Court of Justiciary. Milton’s successor Lord Tinwald took responsibility for Scottish security, Justices of the Peace, supervision of the election of Representative Peers, and advised the government on crown presentations in the church.59 Lord Justice Clerk Glenlee continued to correspond with the Secretary of State in the 1770s and 1780s, though in comparison with the decade after 1745 the volume of correspondence was negligible.60 Similarly, the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in Scotland corresponded at length with the responsible Secretary of State in the years following both rebellions, but by the 1760s such correspondence took place on little more than the level of courtesy, similar to the Secretary’s correspondence with the King’s Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.61 Official Scottish correspondence remained at a token level until the troubles which followed the revolution in France, when the Lord Advocate became the government’s principal correspondent.62

The administrative boards which met in Edinburgh consisted of those which drew their authority from the Treasury and those whose status was less precise, particularly the Board of Trustees, who drew their powers directly from the King. As such, it is they and not the Edinburgh correspondents who were the administrative ancestors of today’s Scottish Office. Nevertheless, their efficiency in the eighteenth century was open to considerable doubt, for the boards, as the Earl of Marchmont complained, produced ‘a negligence in the greatest number and let things fall by degrees into one or two hands covered under a set of respectable but unactive names …’63

The Scottish Court of Exchequer was pre-eminent among the Edinburgh boards in that it acted, in addition to its judicial capacity, as a kind of subordinate Treasury for Scotland. It administered the Scottish revenue, both income from taxes and Crown property, and paid the Scottish Civil List and other sums directed by the Treasury, such as the annual £10,000 to the Equivalent Company and £2000 to the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Fisheries and Manufactures.64 Thus it was the Board of Exchequer, in the first instance, who undertook the administration of estates forfeited to the Crown after the 1715 and 1745 rebellions, and it was they who supervised the Scottish receivers of the various taxes, with the power to call any of them to account if they so desired.

There were five barons, with one of their number, the ‘Chief Baron’, presiding over his brethren, three of whom were Scots and the fourth English. Throughout most of the eighteenth century the Chief Baron was English as well, as the Treasury felt that this would maintain the court’s efficiency;65 yet the court was still usually under a cloud of disrepute at the Treasury, which was acutely aware of the large number of Scottish salaries and payments drawn on a very small revenue. Ironically, much of the trouble can be attributed to the inefficiency which resulted from the appointment of a series of bad English Chief Barons and Barons, as those English lawyers most keen to get on with a career in exchequer law naturally wanted to remain at the centre of their legal world at Westminster. The two chief barons who served from 1728 to 1756 were particularly bad, neither attending the court in its winter sessions,66 and the court’s reputation only began to recover with the appointment of Chief Baron Robert Ord, a Northumbrian who chose to live at Edinburgh (close by Dean Village) rather than attend the court irregularly.

The Scottish receivers67 were as ripe for the politics of patronage as the customs. Most of the principal Receiver-Generals and Collectors of the various taxes treated their offices as sinecures and employed deputies, in the same manner as the non-judicial officers of the Court of Exchequer itself. Like the Paymaster General in England, these officers were free to lend the funds in their care for their own profit until the barons directed them to release the money or remit it to London.68 The stamp and window tax establishments in particular provided extensive patronage, as there were fifteen or sixteen sub-distributors of stamps in Scotland as well as employees in the stamp offices at Edinburgh, while the two Surveyors-General of the window tax supervised twenty district surveyors.69

Table III: Government in Edinburgh

Subordinate to the Treasury

Boards:

Barons of Exchequer

Commissioners of Customs and Salt Duties

(1707-1721, post-1742)

Commissioners of Excise

Commissioners of Forfeited and Annexed Estates

(1716-1721, 1755-1782)

Other Officers (all accountable to the Barons of Exchequer):

Deputy Postmaster General (responsible to the Postmasters General in London who in turn were responsible to the Treasury)

Collector of the Stamp Duty (responsible to the Commissioners of the Stamp Duty in London who in turn were responsible to the Treasury)

Paymaster General Scotland

Cashier of Customs and Salt

Cashier of Excise

Collector of the Land Tax

Surveyors General of the Window Tax (post-1755)

Collector of the Tax on Salaries and Perquisites (post-1758)

Outwith Treasury Control

Commission of Police (1714-1782)

Board of Trustees (post-1727)

Correspondents of the Secretary of State

Lord Justice Clerk

Lord Advocate

Commander in Chief of the Forces in Scotland

Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly

Keepers of the Crown Seals in Scotland

deputy Keeper of the Great Seal

deputy Keeper of the Privy Seal

deputy Keeper of the Signet Seal

The Barons of Exchequer, however, did not have authority over all the subordinate institutions of Treasury activity in Scotland, most importantly in the case of the customs and excise establishments. Day-to-day administration and most communication with the Treasury was undertaken by two boards of commissioners set up in Edinburgh after the Union; one for the customs and salt duties, and one for the excise duties. These boards and their officers were expected to raise substantial amounts of money from their English-style revenue systems, yet, particularly in the case of the customs, they were most open to political interference. Political needs triumphed over financial interests for the entire century.

The Board of Excise for Scotland was lucky in that, unlike the Board of Customs, it was able to appoint its subordinate officers without Treasury interference, which meant that those with political influence at the Treasury could not intervene in Excise appointments.70 This is not to say that politics did not figure in the actions and appointments of the Scottish Board of Excise. The Treasury did appoint the officers of the central office at Edinburgh, which could be used for political purposes or as sinecures. The third Duke of Argyll’s bastard son, William Williams, for example, held his place of Auditor of the Excise as a sinecure; and the Comptroller General of the Scottish Excise in the mid-eighteenth century was also a sinecurist, appointed by the interest of John Scrope.71 Nor was it unknown for ministers to seek to influence the commissioners’ choice of subordinates by making a recommendation to the board from London, ‘which has been very often the Practice of late with those who have Interest,’ claimed one Excise officer in 1761.72