Linlithgow Shires

The Linlithgow shires were grouped on the eastern shores of the Firth of Forth, with Linlithgowshire to the south, Stirlingshire to the north and Clackmannanshire sandwiched between the two. The economy of the region prospered in the early seventeenth century, thanks to its coal and salt industries and its position at the intersection of trade routes, between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and, through the port of Bo’ness, to other parts of Britain and the continent. The shires also had strategic importance, forming a boundary between the highlands and lowlands, and the town and castle at Stirling controlling the most important route northwards into the lawless glens of Perthshire and Inverness-shire. Atlas Scot. Hist. 27. The three shires had a degree of political coherence, seen in the Scottish Parliaments of the 1640s, when men such as Sir Thomas Hope of Kerse and Sir Charles Erskine of Alva variously represented Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire, while Sir John and Sir Archibald Stirling of Garden served for Linlithgowshire as well as Stirlingshire. Other major families include the Drummonds of Riccarton, the Dundases of Dundas and Duddington, the Buchannans of that ilk, the Shaws of Sauchie and the Bruces of Clackmannan and Stenhouse, all of whom were involved in the administration of the region under the Covenanters, and represented the individual shires in the Scottish Parliaments. Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 791, 796-7, 800.

The Cromwellian invasion of 1651 saw English troops replace Scots in the garrisons of Stirling and Linlithgow, and some damage to crops and property, but few other changes in the three shires. The deputies chosen to negotiate a formal union with England were drawn from the ranks of the traditional local elite: Sir George and Sir Mungo Stirling for Stirlingshire; Walter Dundas, younger laird of Dundas and George Dundas of Duddingston for Linlithgow; William Graham and Robert Younger for Clackmannanshire. Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 27, 33-4, 80-1, 87. The government seems to have been eager to conciliate the gentry of the shires. Requests for a reduction of the military burden on Stirlingshire, and abatement of assessment payments, made by the deputies in March 1652, were favourably received, and the parliamentary commissioners ordered that the soldiers quartered locally ‘offer no violence or injury’ to the inhabitants. Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 81-4. During the next few years, military and civilian rule became closely integrated, and Scots were encouraged to be involved at all levels of local administration. By the summer of 1653, the assessment collectors of the shires were all local landowners, and their work was regulated by the gentry themselves in Linlithgowshire, and by the governor of Stirling, Colonel Thomas Reade*, in Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, f. 12v. In November 1653 Colonel Thomas Fitch* was instructed to meet the gentlemen and heritors of Linlithgowshire ‘to try what they will do in order to the peace of the security of the county’ – in recognition that the incursions of the earl of Glencairn’s men were as unwelcome to the local landowners as to the English garrisons. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlv, unfol.: 26 Nov. 1653.

During the protectorate, cooperation between the government and the local communities increased further. In February 1654, the heritors of Stirlingshire petitioned the commander-in-chief, Robert Lilburne*, for redress against those gentlemen ‘lately chosen for the regulating of the cess’. In response, Lilburne ordered Colonel Reade to meet other officers, the sheriff and ‘two or three of the honestest and most indifferent gentlemen of that country’ to adjudicate, and in the meantime the collector for the shire was instructed to ‘suspend his receipt of the sess by any other rule than what was formerly amongst them’ – meaning the regulation of the assessments by Colonel Reade himself. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlv, unfol.: 18 Feb. 1654. The later 1650s also saw the local lairds playing an increasingly autonomous role in the three shires. The justices of the peace and assessments commissioners chosen in 1656-7 included English officers, but again the majority of officials were drawn from the traditional families: Drummonds and Dundases, Bruces, Erskines and Meldrums. Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 311, 314; A. and O. Five lairds undertook the bulk of the work of the commission of the peace in Linlithgowshire, including Sir Robert Drummond of Midhope, George Dundas of Duddington and Walter Dundas younger of that ilk. NRS, JC26/20, Bundle 7, unfol.; JC26/22, Bundle 4, nos. 34, 36; JC26/24, Bundle 3, nos. 1-3, 5-6. In Clackmannan, Harry Bruce of Clackmannan and Robert Bruce of Kennel were also active. NRS, JC26//24, Bundle 7, no. 2; JC26/26, Bundle ‘witchcraft trials’, unfol. Other areas of administration were by this time entirely in local hands. The sheriff of Stirlingshire and Clackmannan in 1656 was Sir William Bruce of Stenhouse, with Claud Hamilton as commissary; in Linlithgowshire, William Dundas the younger of that ilk was sheriff, and John Justice served as commissary. Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 316-7. Although the levels of participation in local government were high, a strain of passive resistance to Cromwellian rule can also be detected, especially in Stirlingshire. In November 1657, for instance, Monck instructed Colonel Reade to detail troops to assist in the collection of the assessment in Stirlingshire, ‘understanding that there are but few Scotchmen that are commissioners of the shire that do act in the raising of the sess’. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlviii, unfol.: 2 Nov. 1657.

Linthlithgowshire, Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire were united to form a single constituency, returning one MP to Westminster, under the ordinance of June 1654. CSP Dom. 1654, p. 198; A. and O. Although the place of election – the garrison town of Stirling – was presumably chosen to give the government a degree of control over the electoral process, the only surviving election indenture (dated 20 August 1656) reveals no sign of outside interference. All six named electors – Sir Robert Drummond of Midhope, the elder and younger Drummond lairds of Riccarton, John Sharp of Johnston, James Dundas of Morton and Jas Colvill of Wrae – were Scots, and the presiding sheriff was a Stirlingshire landowner, Sir William Bruce of Stenhouse. C219/45, unfol. The tiny number of electors – compared, for example, with neighbouring Edinburgh Shire – suggests that most of the eligible lairds were staying away; and it is suspicious that five of the six were from Linlithgowshire, raising the possibility that the Stirlingshire lairds in particular were reluctant to participate, just as their assessment commissioners refused to work with the authorities a year later. Young, Parliaments of Scot. i. 205-6, 218; ii. 632; A. and O. The results from the three elections indicate that those who turned up were prepared to support the government, as a reliable Englishman was chosen on each occasion. In 1654 the electors returned Thomas Reade, the governor of Stirling; in 1656 Godfrey Rodes, brother of the Scottish councillor, Sir Edward Rodes*; and in 1659 another senior soldier, Colonel Adrian Scrope.

Scrope’s election went smoothly, but only after the Edinburgh government had intervened to prevent the radical Protester, Sir Archibald Johnston* of Wariston, from standing. As Wariston recorded in his diary entries for 30 and 31 December 1658, ‘I dealt with Ingliston to be for Stirlingshire. I heard my lord keeper [Samuel Disbrowe*] took ill other folks’ recommendations of me as if they had plotted to have no Englishmen’. Wariston Diary, iii. 105. Objections to Wariston probably stemmed from his political and religious radicalism, rather than his ethnicity; and his reliance on the Stirlingshire Protester, Sir Alexander Inglis of Ingliston, supports the argument that this was a factional move. Consultations ed. Stephens, ii. 5. The problems encountered in the 1659 election reinforce the impression that the Stirlingshire lairds were discontented with Cromwellian rule, and the case of the Linthgow shires seems to fit into the more general pattern of growing Protester opposition to the government, as seen in Perthshire and Ayr and Renfrew shires. P. Little, ‘Scottish Representation in the Protectorate Parliaments: the Case of the Shires’, PH xxxi. 329-30.