Fife and Kinross

The ‘kingdom’ of Fife, between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth and bounded to the east by the North Sea, was separate in identity as well as geography from the rest of Scotland. Its smaller appendage, the inland shire of Kinross, was sandwiched between Fife and Perthshire. Fife was dominant, both in size and wealth, and in the assessments of the later 1650s was rated at nearly 40 times the levy imposed on Kinross. A. and O. Fife was also the more aggressive of the two when it came to politics and religion. Kinross did not send commissioners to the Scottish Parliament until 1681, and was mostly owned by the earl of Morton and Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who shared a baronial interest over the shire. By contrast, the ministers and lairds of Fife were fiercely independent. They had been among the most outspoken opponents of the Scottish Prayer Book in 1637, and a year later had embraced the Covenant with enthusiasm. In 1642 the majority in Fife refused to countenance any reconciliation with the king, in 1644-5 they resisted the marquess of Montrose, and in 1647-8 they rejected the Engagement and the duke of Hamilton’s royalist invasion of England. There were limits to Fife’s radicalism, however. In 1650-1 the leaders of the shire supported Charles Stuart (once he had taken the Covenant) and the local ministers rejected the Protesters of the south west, instead joining forces with the ministers from Edinburgh and elsewhere in a group which became known as the Resolutioners. D. Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution, 1637-44 (Edinburgh, 2003), 58, 66, 249; D. Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-revolution in Scot. 1644-51 (1977), 20, 35, 107-8, 182. In July 1651 Fife was overrun by English troops in a matter of days, after the Scottish army was routed at the battle of Inverkeithing. Thereafter, relations between the shires and the English government were mixed. In the autumn of 1651 delegations were sent desiring ‘a righteous agreement towards a happy and settled peace’ with the invaders, but these approaches commanded only limited support, and the more militant lairds and ministers did little to placate the new regime. Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, 14, 328-30. In the winter of 1651-2 negotiations with the English were opposed by the more extreme elements, and in February 1652 a provocative move by the ‘fiery Kirkists’, to send two men to discuss union not under English warrants but under the ‘old powers’ of the local committee of war, was narrowly prevented by the actions of a moderate minority. Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 27-8, 40; Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 26, 89-91. In 1654 the Fife synod led the Resolutioner opposition to Patrick Gillespie’s ‘charter’, which put the approval of clerical appointments into the hands of the rival Protester faction, and sent General George Monck* a detailed list of its objections. Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 198.

The English government’s response was to punish sedition among the extremists and encourage loyalty from the moderates. In March 1652 the Fife commissioners asked that their shire committee be re-established, but in August 1653 Liburne ordered Colonel Charles Fairfax ‘to disperse all meetings in Fife but such as have warrant from the commander-in-chief’, and even authorised meetings were to have ‘some discreet officer to be among them’. Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 91; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlv, unfol.: 6 Aug. 1653. Garrisons were maintained at Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, Cupar and St Andrews in the early 1650s, and the traditional race meetings at Cupar were banned in October 1654 and February 1656 as it was feared they might be used as a cover for insurrection. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvi, unfol.: 27 Sept. 1654, 21 Oct. 1654; xlvii, unfol.: 21 Feb. 1656. A similar ban was imposed on meetings of the Fife synod until June 1655, when assurances were received that they would not ‘meddle with civil affairs’. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 8 June 1655. At the same time as these coercive measures were imposed, the government sought to win over key figures in Fife society. From 1653 the collection of assessments in the two shires was entrusted to a local man, Thomas Glover of Glaiding, who proved sufficiently popular to be reappointed, ‘by plurality of voices’, at the shire meeting held on 5 November 1655. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, f. 12; NRS, B9/12/11, ff. 20v-21v. Another local man courted by the English was Sir Andrew Bruce of Earlshall, who was recommended as a commissioner for the administration of justice and as sheriff of Fife by Monck in November 1654. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke l, f. 84; xlvi, unfol.: 1 Nov. 1654. His son, Andrew Bruce, was recommended to Oliver Cromwell* by Monck for some employment (as a young man ‘ambitious to serve his highness’) in October 1654, and had been made commissary of the shire by 1656. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, f. 81v; xlvi, unfol.: 25 Oct. 1654; NLS, MS 9752, f. 11. Perhaps the greatest coup was the government’s success in winning over the earl of Wemyss. The earl’s property was protected from the spring of 1653, and he was exempted from assessments; in October 1654 Monck commended the earl’s loyalty in letters to Cromwell and Lambert*; and he was made sheriff of Fife in 1656. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, f. 82; xlv, unfol.: 4, 6, 9, 17 May 1653; xlvi, unfol.: 20 Oct. 1654.

This policy of reconciliation was not entirely successful, however. Colonel James Hay was another local man promoted by the government, and he was elected by the shire as their MP in August 1654 precisely because he was ‘intimate with the English’; but Hay proved less than reliable, and was later twice arrested as a royalist plotter. Diary of John Lamont ed. G.R. Kintoch (Edinburgh, 1830), 77. Although some local gentlemen were won over as the decade progressed, as a general rule the inhabitants of Fife and Kinross merely switched from active opposition to passive resistance, even after the president of the Scottish council, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) had eased tensions between the government and the Resolutioner ministers after October 1655. Similar efforts were made in the secular field. Restrictions were lifted on the committee of Fife, and its meetings became more regular, and more influential, in the mid-1650s. There were, for example, three meetings to decide assessment rates, winter quarters and other matters, between August and November 1655. NRS, B9/12/11, ff. 13v, 15v, 20v. Other local bodies were created, notably the assessment commissions appointed from December 1655 and the justices of the peace appointed from 1656, but the burden of this work seems to have fallen on a small group of lairds. In the commission of the peace, Sir John Preston of Ardry and David Wemyss of Belfarg seem to have done much of the work, assisted by Colonel Fairfax. Acts Parl. Scot. vi, pt. 2, p. 839; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 839; NRS, JC26/19, ‘bundle 3’, unfol.; JC26/23, bundle labelled ‘bestiality’, unfol.; JC26/24, ‘bundle 5’, no. 27. It was scarcely reassuring that, in September 1658, Monck was forced to issue orders to the local commanders to assist the collectors of excise in the shire, ‘being informed that the justices of peace are very averse in affording their concurrence’. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlix, f. 7.

The elections for Fife and Kinross in the later 1650s also experienced resistance from among the lairds. The surviving election indenture of 13 August 1656 reveals something of the prevailing mood. The presiding officer was the sheriff of Fife, the earl of Wemyss, and the MP elected was his cousin, Sir John Wemyss of Bogie – both were prominent Fife landowners. C219/45, unfol. But of the 25 named electors, very few were men of local standing. Only one (Sir John Aytoun of that ilk) had sat for the shire in the Scottish Parliaments before 1651; three (Sir Henry Wadlaw of Pitreavie, William Orrock of Balvan and Robert Ged of Baldrig) had signed the October 1651 submission to the English, and only six had been appointed as magistrates or assessment commissioners, including Sir John Preston of Ardry. In all, only eight of the 25 had represented Fife or Kinross on earlier commissions. The remainder were minor lairds, or government officials such as Thomas Glover of Glaiding. Even those who had cooperated with the local administration apparently did not attend: Sir Andrew Bruce of Earlshall being the most notable example. Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 793; Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, 330; Acts Parl. Scot. vi. pt. 2, p. 839; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 312. The reasons for this lack-lustre performance are not entirely clear, although the involvement of the earl of Wemyss, the return of the laird of Bogie, and the fact that Bogie’s brother-in-law, Aytoun, headed the list of electors, suggest that the contest was carefully managed by a small clique. A passing comment by an observer of the Perthshire election, that he was relieved it had not ‘run the same course as Fife did’, suggests opposition to the Wemyss interest was overt and organised, with the militant Resolutioners being the most likely suspects. Any unpleasantness in 1656 may explain the curious choice of MP in 1659: Sir Alexander Gibson of Durie might have been young and inexperienced, but he was also uncontroversial. Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 331-2; P. Little, ‘Scottish Representation in the Protectorate Parliaments: the Case of the Shires’, PH xxxi. 328-9.

At the end of the 1650s Fife became more active in its opposition to the government. In November 1659 the shire was one of the few to be divided on the question whether to side with Monck as he prepared to intervene in England; in 1660-1 the Fife synod openly opposed Charles II’s reintroduction of episcopacy; and later in the decade Fife became yoked with its former rivals in the south west as the main area of covenanter agitation, and suffered persecution as a result. Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 255, 273. In parliamentary terms, the seats for the shire in the Scottish Parliaments of the 1660s continued to be allocated to those willing to collaborate, including such well-known figures from the previous decade as Andrew Bruce of Earlshall, Sir Alexander Gibson of Durie, Sir Henry Wardlaw of Pitreavie and Sir John Wemyss of Bogie. Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 793.