ABSTRACT
This article examines the nature of political representation in the Scottish Parliament until the Act of Union with England in 1707 when the Scottish Parliament was formally dissolved. The Scottish Parliament was a single chamber (unicameral) institution that consisted of different estates. These estates consisted of the noble estate, the estate of barons or shire commissioners and the estate of burgesses. At different times the clerical estate was also in existence, but there was no clerical estate between 1640 and 1651 and it was finally abolished in 1690. This paper therefore examines the nature of this representation, with details on numbers, constituencies, the relationship between the estates and movement between the estates, for example, when someone was promoted into the nobility and could therefore sit as a member of the noble estate. Given the central theme of the ancient regime, this chapter also examines the nature of Scottish political representation in the British Parliament after the 1707 Act of Union in terms of numbers, constituencies, dominant figures and factions. It concludes by examining the nature and impact of the 1832 Reform Act, which was a great landmark in British constitutional history and parliamentary legislation, in terms of how it dealt with Scottish political representation. In this way, the chapter aligns itself to the era of the ancient regime in continental Europe.
