The most obvious features of this district were its wide geographical spread and the diversity of electoral influences. Competition for control centred upon the bitter clan rivalry between the Rosses (with their allies the Munros) and the Mackenzies. This struggle dominated local politics in the Ross-shire towns of Tain and Dingwall. The Rosses, led by the 12th Lord Ross of Halkhead, were in the ascendant at Tain, the head burgh of the shire.
Comprising five towns spread across four counties in the Forth valley, Stirling Burghs was not amenable to control by any single interest. As the century progressed this district developed an unenviable reputation for venality, but paucity of evidence makes it impossible to establish how far corruption influenced elections in this period. Undoubtedly, some inducements were given.
The openness of the Perth Burghs was indicated by the presence of four candidates in the field during the prelude to the 1708 election. Previously there had been spirited competition in some of the individual burghs for the choice of commissioners to the Scottish parliament. This was a product of the Court-Country rivalry which featured prominently in the 1702 election. Moreover, each town could lay claim to significance in its own right. Forfar and Cupar were the head burghs of their respective shires. St.
Each of the towns in this district was the head burgh of its respective shire, and the openness of elections reflected the absence of any overriding magnate interest. Linlithgow was influenced by the 4th Duke of Hamilton and his mother, who as 3rd Duchess suo jure also possessed the hereditary sheriffdom of Lanarkshire. It was generally believed within the family that, since the Union at least, the elder Duchess did ‘not care to meddle in elections’. Her endorsement was nevertheless thought highly desirable.
The intense rivalries which are evident in neighbouring county elections rendered electoral politics in this burgh district inherently unstable, culminating in the success of a complete outsider in 1713. Inverness, the senior burgh in terms of rotation, was the most prosperous of the towns. As one patronizing English traveller remarked, not only did it possess ‘two very good streets’, but the inhabitants were ‘more polite than in most towns in Scotland . . . here are coffee-houses and taverns, as in England’.
The burghs in this district were spread across three counties, but Haddington, Dunbar and North Berwick, all lying within Haddingtonshire, predominated. Those of Jedburgh and Lauder (respectively in Roxburghshire and Berwickshire) only offered weak threats to the hegemony of the Dalrymples in this period. The influence of this family with the Court party outweighed the rumblings of discontent which had been evident in the anti-Union petitions of Dunbar and Lauder.
Glasgow, the most important burgh in this district, benefited immensely from the Union, steadily increasing in wealth through its access to imperial markets. Such advantages, however, were not immediately apparent. Vociferous anti-Unionism preceded the treaty of 1707, and for the remainder of the war Glasgow merchants were more prone to lament shipping losses than to proclaim the economic rewards of Union.
Although the shires of Elgin, Aberdeen and Banff were noted for widespread sympathy towards the causes espoused by the cavalier wing of the Scottish Country party, the five burghs which comprised this post-Union district had only returned one Country oppositionist to the last Scottish parliament, namely William Sutherland for Elgin. Although Sutherland was a future Jacobite rebel, even he had voted both ways on the Union, against the first article but in favour of ratification.
The Scottish capital escaped the fate that befell other Scottish burghs at the Union, of being placed within an electoral district, but nevertheless suffered a reduction in its representation. Previously Edinburgh had returned two members to the Scottish parliament, by tradition a merchant and a tradesman. In the Union parliament the commissioner for the merchants was a Court supporter, Sir Patrick Johnston, who thrice served as provost, whereas the trades were represented by an anti-Unionist, Robert Inglis.
These Fifeshire coastal towns, although impressive from a distance, on closer inspection struck contemporaries as ‘much decayed’. Dysart was celebrated for its buildings, but had ‘hardly a glass window or any furniture in any of the houses’. Only Kirkcaldy escaped the general reproach that there was ‘nothing but poverty in palaces’, being ‘a town of better air’ with ‘several ships and a good trade’.
