Haddingtonshire (or East Lothian) formed a lozenge of land to the east of Edinburgh, bordered to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the shire of Edinburgh (or Midlothian) and Berwickshire. The majority of Haddingtonshire was coastal plain, rising into the Lammermuir Hills to the south, and it was bisected by the River Tyne, which flowed east-west, linking the towns of Haddington, East Linton and Dunbar. The fishing port of Dunbar was of particular strategic importance, as it guarded a narrow pass on the coast road between Edinburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed. Other settlements of note included the fishing town of North Berwick, and, to the east of the shire, the industrial region around Prestonpans, with its coal mines and salt-boiling works. Atlas Scot. Hist. 27-9, 272, 274-5. By the later seventeenth century these industrial concerns provided great prosperity for the shire, and Prestonpans soon outstripped the fishing port of Dunbar as the economic motor for the region, handling three times as many ships, and exporting coal and salt to England and the continent. T.C. Smout, ‘The Trade of East Lothian at the end of the Seventeenth Century’, Trans. E. Lothian Antiq. and Field Naturalists’ Soc. ix. 68-74. As well as its economic importance, Haddingtonshire also contained the seats of an unusually large number of aristocrats, including the earl of Tweeddale at Yester, the earl of Lothian at Newbattle and the earl of Dalhousie at Dalhousie. Atlas Scot. Hist. 225, 392-3. These nobles were interconnected, by marital and social ties, with a powerful gentry interest led by the Hepburns, Cockburns, Sinclairs and Hamiltons, who held a virtual monopoly on the representation of the shire in the Scottish Parliaments before 1651, and whose support of the covenanting cause was almost unanimous. Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 794.
The defeat of the Scottish army by Oliver Cromwell* at the battle of Dunbar on 3 September 1650 marked the beginning of the English conquest of Scotland, completed at Worcester a year later. The landed elite in Haddingtonshire greeted defeat (even when encountered on its doorstep) with apparent equanimity. When union proposals were ‘tendered’ in February 1652, Haddingtonshire gave its assent (through its deputies Sir John Sinclair of Herdmanston and Sir George Seaton of Hailles) in positive terms, even asking that ‘the people of England and Scotland may be represented in one Parliament and governed by their representatives therein as the supreme authority of the whole island’. A further assent was also sent to the English governors, signed ‘at Haddington in a full and frequent meeting of the shire’ by 59 men of influence, including Lord Elphinstone. Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 20-1, 31-3. This level of cooperation with the occupiers continued later in the decade, encouraged by the leniency shown by the Edinburgh government, which softened the impact of occupation by deliberately involving locals in the administration of the shire. In September 1653, the commander-in-chief, Colonel Robert Lilburne*, ordered that ‘such horse as shall be quartered in the shire of Haddington be done by the advice of the gentlemen of the committee of that shire’. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlv, unfol.: 7 Sept. 1653. Local officials were routinely drawn from gentry families, and in 1653-4, the collector of assessment for the shire was James Cockburn, and his activities were regulated by the ‘gentlemen of the shire’. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, ff. 12v, 21, 27. In 1655 the distribution of assessments within the shire was controlled by these men, and Lilburne’s replacement, General George Monck*, had to negotiate with them even when seeking a reduction of the tax paid by another Scottish councillor, John Swinton* of Swinton. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 11 June, 23 July 1655.
Local involvement in the administration continued in the later 1650s. The justices of the peace appointed in the new year of 1656 included the earl of Tweeddale, Lords Cranston and Kingston, and a dozen or more lairds. Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 313. Of these, those who signed official letters and orders included Lord Kingston, Sir John Johnston of Elphinstone, Robert Home of Whytlaw and Robert Hodges of Nether Gladsmire. NRS, JC26/22, ‘Bundle 3’, no. 1; JC26/22, ‘Bundle 4’, nos. 37-8; JC26/23, ‘Bundle 6’, no. 1; JC26/26, bundle ‘Tranent witches’, unfol. Monck’s order of 10 December 1657, allowing seven named Haddingtonshire magistrates passes to move around the shire with suitable horses and weapons, suggests that others were willing to take an active role on the commission. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlviii, unfol.: 10 Dec. 1657. Another prominent laird, Sir James Hay of Lingham, was sheriff in 1657-8. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, ff. 81v-82; NLS, MS 9752, f. 11. In February 1658 he was authorised to ‘convene the gentlemen of the shire ... about public business relating to the said shire’ – again suggesting a high degree of local engagement. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlviii, unfol.: 24 Feb. 1658. It is also telling that the vetting of local gentlemen seems to have been left to their peers. An undated certificate (perhaps pertaining to a forthcoming parliamentary election) saw the gentlemen and heritors of the shire declaring that Sir John Auchtermoutie of Gosford had not been on the committee of war in 1648 or 1651, and was thus eligible to participate in politics. This was signed by Lord Elibank, John Hepburn [of Wauchton], George Home [of Foord], Sir George Seaton [of Hailles], Sir John Sinclair [of Hermandston] and others. Add. 23113, f. 38.
The active participation of the Haddingtonshire élite in the Cromwellian regime is also demonstrated by the parliamentary elections of 1654, 1656 and 1659. Under the rules laid down in June 1654, the shire returned one MP, with the election taking place within the shire. CSP Dom. 1654, p. 198; A. and O. In practice, the town of Haddington was the chosen electoral venue, with a proclamation being made at every market town in the shire within ten days after the receipt of the writ. NRS, GD28/1736. In 1654 the shire returned an English merchant, Benjamin Bressie, who had very close links with the army and the administration. Bressie was not merely a carpet-bagger, however, as a few weeks before the election he had purchased the barony of Dolphinston near Prestonpans, including substantial coal and salt workings. He was to lose these landed interests on bankruptcy in 1655, but even in 1656 Bressie was included among the electors for the shire, and this may indicate his acceptance locally as an influential – if new – landowner, and therefore as a worthy representative, two years earlier. Two copies of the Haddingtonshire election indenture for 20 August 1656 survive, and these give a good indication of the nature of the electorate. Fifteen signatures were appended to the return, and apart from Bressie and another newcomer, Advocate-general Henry Whalley*, all the signatories were local landowners, including a number of Hepburns, Hays and Sinclairs, and the list was headed by Viscount Kingston. C219/45, unfol.; NRS, GD28/1736. Of the 15 named, ten had been appointed as justices of the peace, and a similar number (with considerable overlap) also served as assessment commissioners. Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 313; Acts Parl. Scot. vi. part 2, p. 840; A. and O. With this level of local involvement, it was fitting that the MP chosen in 1656 was a local nobleman, the 2nd earl of Tweeddale (John Hay), a fair-weather Protester whose good relations with the Cromwellian regime promised to work in the shire’s favour. Tweeddale was elected for the shire again in 1659. With the restoration of the Stuarts, and the calling of a Scottish Parliament in 1661, Tweeddale took his place in the Lords. In his place as representatives of Haddingtonshire were elected two local landowners: the scion of a long-established family, Sir Thomas Hamilton of Preston; and a man who, like Bressie, had become a landowner in the shire within the previous decade, Sir Peter Wedderburn of Gosford. Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 723, 794.
