The Happier Marriage Partner: The Impact of the Union of the Crowns on Scotland

Abstract

The union of the crowns was a huge event. It changed the course of English and Scottish history. It raised enormous new problems about the relationship between the two kingdoms, no longer separate and independent entities but somehow, however badly defined — from then until now — brought together under one king, now ruling from London, and, a century later, one parliament, until in the late twentieth century there was another constitutional shift. Scotland's destiny now lay with England, and it has almost come to be assumed that there was a kind of historical inevitability that this should be so, particularly when both England and Scotland became Protestant countries, just as there was a historical inevitability that Scotland would be very much the junior partner. Well, perhaps. What is striking, however, is that such an approach simply does not fit Scotland in the first years of union, the reign of James VI. It would be going much too far to say that it might almost not have happened, but it is certainly arguable that the fact that it had happened had far less impact than might have been expected.