Scottish political parties 1573-1603
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Date
1976Author
Young, John Graeme Bennett
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Abstract
The period 1573 to 1603 offers a unique opportunity for the study
of power politics in Scotland and an assessment of the place of these
politics in the lives of those who mattered most politically, the
nobility. When the forces of the government of Scotland, under the
leadership of Regent Morton on behalf of the infant king', James, succeeded
in capturing the castle of Edinburgh from the remnant of Queen Mary's
party in Scotland, the long struggle between kingsmen and queensmen was
over. It was, indeed, more than the kingsrnen/queensmen struggle which
was thus ended, for Edinburgh Castle had been captured only with English
aid, so that the split from France and the turning towards England which
had both been occasioned by and had helped to occasion the Reformation
in Scotland, were confirmed. Despite English fears, Scotland never
fell under French influence to any great extent hereafter and the
likelihood of her so doing was diminished by the union of the crowns
in 1603.
With the drawn-out struggle of the civil war years behind them,
those who governed Scotland, essentially kingsmen, had to illustrate
whether or not they were able for the task of restoring peace to the
divided country. It also remained to be seen whether their government would be impartial or whether the; would use their position of
authority to prosecute the more effectively, quarrels, both private
and public which had their origins in the divisions of the civil war
years. This situation lands itself to an investigation of how the
nobility, in particular, had aligned themselves in the events of these
past civil war years. In assessing the impartiality of the new
government it will be necessary to investigate how far such disputes
as inevitably came into being arose from the earlier divisions and how far from actions undertaken after peace had been restored.
The starting point of this study, then, is taken to be the fall of
Edinburgh Gastlo in May 1573> which completed the process of establishing
peace which the pacification of Perth of February in the same year had
more than adequately began. This pacification had ended the immediate
allegiance to Queen Mary of many of her most powerful supporters, others
of whom drifted over to the government in the months before the fall of
the castle. The oastle indeed held only a handful of important men by
the time of its surrender. Of these men, Maitland of Lethington soon
died, perhaps by his own hand, Kirkcaldy of Grange and others were
executed while such as Lord Hume were warded. This meant that the
hard core of the Marian party formed a section of the nobility with
grievances against the government but it remained to be seen whether
the irreconcilables would be limited to this small number, who
consequently would be unable to do anything about the grievances, or
would be enlarged to include more of those who had been in the queen's
party. Clearly, then, the continuation or otherwise of the strife
and divisions of the civil war years would have a fundamental bearing
on the success and continence of the new government. The reason;for the selection of the closing date for this study
are obvious, of course, for with the union of the crowns and the
establishment of the king in London, Scotland was without a resident
monarch and court, at least on any permanent basis. Consequently
this period of thirty years provides the last possible opportunity
for a study of the actions and motives of the Scots nobility on their
soil with reference to almost purely Scottish problems and in company
with, if occasionally in opposition to, their resident monarch. The
period is thus uniquely wedged between a civil war and the ending of
the residence of the monarchy in Scotland.