The First Scottish Parliament: the Middle Ages - 1707
The beginnings of the Scottish Parliament can be traced back to the middle ages, in the various bodies that provided advice and assistance (financial, military or otherwise) to the monarch. It is impossible to point with any confidence to the date or occasion of the ‘first’ Scottish Parliament. However, the term ‘colloquium’ (which was applied to parliaments in England at this time) was first recorded in 1235 in a letter of Alexander II.
Three Estates
The Parliament in Scotland at this stage was made up of the secular and clerical lords known as the ‘community of the realm’. The first record of a Parliament containing representatives of the commons (burgh commissioners) as well as lords is 1326. These three groups (nobility, senior clergy and burgh commissioners) became known as the ‘three estates’ (tres communitates), a phrase first recorded in 1357. This much-used term has become a shorthand collective name for the Parliament’s membership, even though the nature of the estates changed during the different stages of the Parliament’s existence.
Unlike the English Parliament, where the Lords and Commons met apart from each other, the Scottish Parliament remained a single chamber parliament throughout its existence. In practice, it operated through various forms of delegated body. The most important and influential of these was the committee known as the Lords of the Articles, which appears to have been in existence from the 1450s. The members of this committee, chosen from the estates, met to draft legislation, which they presented to the full Parliament.
Meetings of the Parliament
Parliaments, which were irregular events, were called at 40 days’ notice. If there was no time to call a parliament (perhaps in an emergency) then a General Convention or Council was called. For this, the king invited members of parliament - perhaps those most easily available. The estates could also form themselves into individual Conventions, deciding upon a united policy so that, when parliament met, they could provide a single, forceful voice for their estate. In 1560, at a crucial time in the Reformation, Mary Queen of Scots (then resident in France) gave permission for Parliament to meet in her absence. The work of this 'Reformation Parliament' was popularly acclaimed, but not formally ratified until seven years later.
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The Downsitting of the Scottish Parliament
courtesy of the Governor and Company
of the Bank of Scotland |
| After the abdication of Mary in 1567 and the accession of James VI, who was still a child, Scotland entered a long period of royal minority. Whoever held the title Regent effectively controlled the country. Rebellions and assassinations meant that regents changed quickly. Different factions rose to power and claimed the right to call a parliament. In one ten-month period in the early 1570s, no less than six rival parliaments were called. Parliaments met behind locked and guarded doors and enemies were chased out of town for the length of a sitting. Once James came of age he controlled the power of parliament and refused to call full parliaments. Instead, he called Conventions of the noble estate (his supporters). He also looked for ways to control Parliaments through the clerical estate. |
The crowns of England and Scotland were united in 1603, when James VI succeeded Elizabeth to the English throne as James I. James and his successors ruled both England and Scotland, but each country retained its own parliament, church, laws and coinage until 1707.
Until the end of the sixteenth century, there was no fixed meeting place for the Scottish Parliament. Parliaments met wherever the king decreed, and the king’s court travelled around Scotland. Between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, the Parliament met in places such as Edinburgh, Perth, Scone, Stirling, Cambuskenneth and Haddington. Thereafter, it generally met in Edinburgh, and in 1632 Charles I in effect ordered the Edinburgh authorities to build a dedicated hall for Parliament and the courts, on threat of moving them out of the city. Parliament House was built behind St Giles’ Cathedral and was first used for a meeting of the Parliament in 1639. It continued to be used for Parliament meetings until the union of 1707.
Parliament and the Commonwealth
View of Parliament House
© Edinburgh City Libraries.
Licensor www.scran.ac.uk
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Growing opposition to Charles I, particularly to his religious reforms, led to the signing of the National Covenant in 1638 and then to armed rebellion against the king. During the Covenanting period (1638-51), the Scottish Parliament effectively took control of the executive, taking decisions independent of - and often in direct opposition to - the king.
After the execution of Charles I in 1649, England was declared a republic, but Scotland recognised Charles II as king. Oliver Cromwell carried out a military and constitutional campaign to control Scotland.
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| Having beaten the Scottish army at the Battle of Worcester in 1651, the Commonwealth government appointed commissioners for the administration of Scotland and announced that any parliament, other than the Parliament of England, was forbidden to meet. The Scots were granted the right to send 30 MPs to the Parliament at Westminster, which was to be a collective 'Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland'. Elections in 1654, 1656 and 1659 returned members from Scotland who were generally supporters of Cromwell, indeed many of them were English civil or military officers in Scotland. This reflected the English Parliament's decree of March 1652 that the persons to be elected in Scotland to negotiate the details of the parliamentary union with the English Parliament were to be 'of known Integrity, and such as have declared their Consent to the said Union'. As the Protectorate under Richard Cromwell became unpopular towards the end of the 1650s, the Scottish representatives became a target of the growing power struggle, with unsuccessful attempts in Parliament to have them excluded. |
On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 under Charles II, the Scottish Parliament was revived and met again in 1661.
The Treaty of Union
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