ABSTRACT

It has been said of England that, although it might be clear why the monarch called a parliament, ‘the hopes and aspirations of those sending MPs to Westminster are much more difficult to ascertain’, because parliamentary concerns comprised ‘a minute proportion … of local pre-occupations’. 1 The same is true for Scotland, where burgh council minutes contain a wealth of evidence relating to local concerns but frustratingly little about interactions with the centre in general or parliament in particular. Much of what burgesses did in parliament related to their whole estate, yet they were also charged to maintain ‘the liberties priviledges and immunities of our … burght’ and ‘our reasones and alledgeances to propone, actis, instrumentis and documentis neidfull … to crave’. 2 A commissioner was expected to uphold and advance his burgh’s interests, while ensuring that others did not secure privileges which infringed those of his own burgh. The council paid his travelling and living expenses, binding him to the corporation which he represented, and affirming the fact that he was, primarily, their delegate. These men rarely carried legislative proposals in their saddlebags but when they did they had a creditable success rate. In the sphere of parliamentary politics, the burghs rarely played a collective part, except indirectly and reactively in imposing religious and political tests on commissioners. For those commissioners, voting on issues which did not relate directly to their estate’s collective agenda was explicitly left to their conscience. Councils would direct commissioners on matters of local or mercantile interest, but their instructions seldom crossed the line into political affairs. Yet parliament was not primarily a political assembly. Most of its business might not excite the scholar of high politics but examining it provides a fuller picture of what parliament was really like and what many of those who participated in it thought it was for.