ABSTRACT

The basic problem was that the Crown and its servants could not serve two masters unless the interests of these agreed. In an era of protectionist economic thinking, and with foreign policy at the mercy of such theories, it was impossible that they should agree. If they did not, then the stronger and richer country, the

one more valuable to her king, would determine things. This situation had been causing trouble since the 1650s: in the world of narrowing economic opportunities at the end of the century it caused a crisis. The series of wars that started in 1689 sent up all forms of taxation, and transformed minor customs dues into a protective wall. Scottish trade and Scottish commodities were not important enough to any country for any ruler, least of all her own king, to see that special concessions were made. Scotland entered the biggest trade slump, the worst economic crisis, she had ever known, and nothing was done because, as the irascible Fletcher of Saltoun said, she was ‘a farm managed by servants and not under the eye of the master’. Because of her bondage to English foreign policy, she had had to let slip her overseas connections. Her major branches of trade were now with England. Even the maintenance of her existing low level of economic activity depended on the English deciding that this was in their interests.