Scotland and England 1286–1815 by Roger A. Mason

Author:Roger A. Mason [Mason, Roger A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Modern, 20th Century, Social History, Political Science, Political Ideologies, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Political Process, Political Parties
ISBN: 9781788854184
Google: uaNMEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2021-11-11T16:17:43+00:00

7

The Price of Friendship: The ‘Well Affected’ and English Economic Clientage in Scotland before 1603

Keith M. Brown

I

The peaceful Anglo-Scottish relations which persisted throughout the contemporaneous reigns of James VI and Elizabeth I rested on three pillars: a shared Protestant religion, the Stewart claim to the English throne, and the maintenance by England of a friendly party in Scotland. At least that is how historians have commonly explained the transformation in the relationship between the two British kingdoms during the latter half of the sixteenth century.1 Yet while the religious and dynastic aspects of this change have been seriously discussed by generations of historians, the mercenary elements have been largely unexplored. Certainly there has been plenty of comment on the role money — or the lack of it — played in Scottish politics and English diplomacy. Conyers Read, who was something of a rarity among English historians in that he, like the Elizabethans, paid serious attention to Scotland, put a good deal of emphasis on cash. He shared Secretary Walsingham’s belief that ‘Money would do anything with that nation [Scotland]’.2 This view has since been repeated by G. R. Elton who commented that ‘Elizabeth’s parsimony made it impossible to bind the Scots nobles firmly to the English interest by the only means they acknowledged — frequent bribes’.3 These two themes of English meanness and Scottish venality have in fact a long pedigree, and were widely reported at the time. But that does not make them true, and English historians in particular have tended to follow in a tradition which has its origins in the frustrations Tudor politicians underwent in dealing with the Scots. How else could one explain the behaviour of people who claimed to be friends but who so persistently refused to see the world through English eyes? Scottish greed, born of poverty, and the racial failings of an inferior nation provided an easy answer. For their part the Scots nurtured grievances fed by unrealistic estimates of English wealth, and unreasonable expectations of how they might gain access to it. What they essentially wanted was to be able to pursue independent policies, free from English meddling, and have Queen Elizabeth pay them for doing so.

But from a Scottish point of view there was no reason why Elizabeth should not be persuaded to pay up. Englishmen might see this as unprincipled, and as a source of tension within the ideologically committed ranks of Protestantism, but to Scots it was a means of underlining their freedom from English clientage, and of making a profit at the same time. Underlying this attitude was a persistent unease on both sides over the new-found friendship between the two countries, an unease which often casts a shadow over the widely held belief that the Scottish Reformation of 1560 had permanently altered Anglo-Scottish relations. Thus, G. D. Ramsay in an essay misleadingly entitled ‘The Foreign Policy of Elizabeth I’, cavalierly dismisses Scotland with the claim that by 1560, or at the latest by 1568, Elizabeth had done all she needed to do there and had ‘achieved her purpose’.

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