County

Lanarkshire, a large county in the central lowlands, consisted of a mountainous region to the south, and a more prosperous lowland area, including the valley of the River Clyde, to the north. Atlas Scot. Hist. 226-8, 273-6. The proximity of the city of Glasgow no doubt strengthened the economy of Lanarkshire, which was one of the most heavily taxed of the Scottish shires in the 1650s, paying rates which were almost the same as those imposed on Edinburgh Shire. A. and O. ii. 1143-4, 1240-1, 1360-1. Historically, Lanarkshire was Hamilton country.

Roxburghshire was at the centre of the Scottish border with England, lying between Dumfriesshire to the south west and Berwickshire to the north east. The shire was relatively prosperous, being assessed at £307 in the general assessment of 1657, and its agricultural wealth encouraged the cross-border raiding, theft and lawlessness which characterised its history before the union of the crowns in 1603. A.

The shires of Peebles and Selkirk lay immediately to the south of Edinburgh Shire, separated from the English border only by Roxburghshire and Dumfriesshire. Atlas Scot. Hist. 27. The two shires were similar in size and prosperity, being taxed at almost the same rate in the assessments of the later 1650s. A.

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.

The constituency known as Wigtownshire, which comprised the shire of Wigtown and the stewartry of Kircudbright, formed the far south-west tip of Scotland. The area had enjoyed a degree of political unity since the twelfth century as the lordship of Galloway, which was held first by the descendents of the first lord, Fergus, and then by the Black Douglases.

Banffshire formed a narrow wedge of land, stretching from the burgh of Banff on the southern shore of the Moray Firth to the Grampian Mountains in the south west. The shire was smaller and less prosperous than its southern neighbour, Aberdeenshire: in the general assessment of 1657 the former was rated at £95 17s. and the latter at £339 16s. 7d. A. and O. ii. 1239. Banffshire had long been dominated by a handful of families: the Ogilvies, Abercrombys, Gordons and Urquharts.

The yoking together of Dunbartonshire, Argyllshire and Bute into a single constituency ignored their great historical and cultural differences. Dunbartonshire formed a crescent-shape, from the banks of Loch Lomond in the north to a lowland belt bounded to the south by the River Clyde, which included the burgh and royal castle of Dumbarton. The whole shire had formed part of the lordship of Lennox in the middle ages. J. Irving, The Book of Dunbartonshire (Edinburgh, 3 vols. 1879), i.

Aberdeenshire covered a large area of north east Scotland, stretching from the North Sea coast in the east to the highlands of Invernessshire and Perthshire in the west. To the north, the shire was separated from Banffshire by the River Deveron, and to the south its border with Forfar and Kincardine shires mostly followed the River Dee. The shire was bisected by the River Don, which flowed eastwards from Braemar – an area dominated by the Erskines, earls of Mar, to the sea at Aberdeen. Atlas Scot.

The shires of Elgin (or Moray) and Nairn were situated on the southern coast of the Moray Firth, to the east of Invernessshire and the west of Banffshire. Nairnshire was the smaller of the two, and was assessed at less than a third of the value of Elginshire in 1657. A. and O. Apart from size, the two shires were very similar. Both consisted of a wide coastal plain, rising to mountains in the south, and they were crossed by rivers running from the high ground into the Firth, including the River Nairn, the River Findhorn and the River Lossie.

The three shires of Sutherland, Ross and Cromarty formed a large part of northern Scotland, from the burgh of Cromarty on the Moray Firth to the east to Gairloch on the west coast, and north, through a region of high mountains and deep glens, to the exposed cliffs of Cape Wrath. The shire of Ross also included the Hebridean island of Lewis, to the north west.