Commons 1690-1715

The burgh district of Dumfries, like the shire itself, witnessed bitter rivalry between the Marquess of Annandale and the Duke of Queensberry. Annandale held sway over his namesake burgh of Annan and also, despite occasional stirrings of resentment, over Lochmaben. Sanquhar was completely under Queensberry’s influence. Competition for control of this five-burgh district therefore centred on the county town of Dumfries and the principal burgh of the neighbouring Stewartry, Kirkcudbright. Neither of these could be fully controlled, judging themselves ‘free and independent’.

The Duke of Argyll’s influence over the two Highland burghs of Inveraray and Campbeltown, together with the electoral passivity of magnate interests in the remaining burghs, placed this district effectively under the Duke’s control. Although no contests are known in this period, each of the returns was noted as ‘by plurality’ (rather than as ‘unanimous’), which may indicate token resistance to Argathelian dominance.

This district comprised five small coastal towns in Fife, two of which were under the control of a single family. Anstruther Easter and Wester had respectively returned, to the last Scottish parliament, the only son and younger brother of Lord Anstruther of the court of session. Both Sir John and Sir Robert Anstruther, 1st Bt.*, had acted equivocally over the Union, being content, however, to abstain on key divisions.

In size and wealth Aberdeen was effectively the capital of its region and immune from direct patronal influence. In a five-burgh district, however, no single burgh could dictate terms, and an Aberdonian monopoly of representation was only achieved with difficulty. Indeed, the most noticeable feature of elections, according to one observer in 1708, was that alignments were ‘so changeable that nothing can be depended upon until the event’. A constant feature, nevertheless, was the rivalry between Aberdeen and Montrose.

Electoral influence in Wigtownshire was divided among the Agnews of Lochnaw, the Dalrymples of Stair, and the Stewarts, Earls of Galloway, with the lesser freeholders providing a volatile fourth element in an already unstable situation. At a by-election to the Scottish parliament in October 1700, the county even proved vulnerable to a challenge from the Duke of Hamilton’s brother, Lord Basil Hamilton, who built a strong Country platform out of local disaffection with the Galloway-Stair interest and the national campaign for redress of grievances over the Darien episode.

Sutherland had always been afflicted with a shortage of freeholders, so much so that the act of 1633 which granted the county the right to send commissioners to the Scottish parliament specifically extended the franchise beyond the ‘free barons’ to ‘other inhabitants’.

That the Stirlingshire freeholders neither subsided into obedience to a single magnate nor found themselves swamped by ‘fictitious voters’ was owing to a combination of circumstances: the presence of several substantial lairds with independent influence; the persistence of party spirit; and, most important, the balance of aristocratic power between the Earl of Linlithgow and the Duke of Montrose, ‘cousins’ who, had they acted together, would have been able to ‘carry what man we please’, as Montrose himself put it, but who were kept apart by political jealousy.

The influence of the Murrays of Philiphaugh, hereditary sheriffs of Selkirkshire, was so powerful that in terms of electoral politics the county was quite moribund. Sir James Murray had been deprived of office in 1680 for being ‘remiss in punishing conventicles’, but at the Revolution was raised to the session bench as Lord Philiphaugh and reinstated as sheriff. The two commissioners returned by him to the Scottish parliament in 1702 were his brother John Murray* of Bowhill and future son-in-law John Pringle of Haining.

The story of electoral politics in Roxburghshire after the Union was a continuation of conflicts originating in the last Scottish parliament, where the county’s four seats had been equally divided at the 1702 election between Archibald Douglas* of Cavers and Sir Gilbert Eliott, 1st Bt., of Minto, supporters of the Court, and (Sir) William Bennet (2nd Bt.*) and Sir William Kerr, 3rd Bt.*, who had not only been endorsed as Country party candidates by some of the local gentry, but also enjoyed support from the Earl (later Duke) of Roxburghe.

The impression conveyed to the English Whig ministry in 1708-10 by one of the competing factions in Ross-shire that the recent political upheavals in the county were a local manifestation of the great national conflict of parties, contained some elements of the truth but underplayed the most important, namely that the two sides were defined by family allegiance.