Conscious that I've not posted much for a couple of weeks, and won't do so for another couple as I'm off on hols.
Something I'm working up is a demolition of the idea that there is some kind of "distinctively Scottish" "doctrine of popular, not Parliamentary, sovereignty". But give me strength, it's dull. (The very topic, not my demolition of it, natch.)
But here's a wee teaser.
One of the key sources for this nonsense was one George Buchanan, early Church of Scotland cleric and tutor to James VI/I. He wrote an account claiming that Scotland had this tradition of removing unsatisfactory monarchs. Thing is, most of the cases he mentioned were entirely fictitious - deriving from the same source that led to all those portraits of non-existent monarchs in Holyrood Palace.
And a quick glance at the real historical record shows how much codswallop this claim really was.
Between 1320 and 1603, Scotland had 11 monarchs. 3 of those (James I, James III, and Mary) were removed through assassination, civil war or deposition.
In the same period, England had 18 monarchs. Of which no fewer than 7 (Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, and Jane) were removed through civil war or deposition. (Hint: "Wars of the Roses".)
So who, exactly, had the richer tradition of overthrowing monarchical power?
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14 comments:
Why are you answering questions on some obscure subject that nobody asked about or are remotely interested in?
Some people are interested in it:
http://www.commissiononscottishdevolution.org.uk/uploads/2009-02-23-kenyon-wright.pdf
"If the Commission is to be equally credible in its findings, I believe it must begin with a clear and unambiguous reaffirmation of that historic “Claim”, and therefore of the sovereignty of the people in matters of governance."
...and it's cropped up elsewhere a few times.
Pity it's total bunk, in the sense that the Scottish people are and were no more or less sovereign than those in England.
Now, why are you commenting on posts on some obscure subject that nobody asked about or are remotely interested in?
Heee!
Part 1
SM
With respect it is you that is writing codswallop and I thought you would have done a bit more research on this.
After savaging Cooper, you have now come after Buchanan. We will get back to Mr Buchanan in a minute but you are wrong that English monarchs you mention were removed for being bad people.
In 1688-89, James VII and II was given his P45. The English Parliament declared he had abdicated whilst the Scottish Parliament declared him deposed for being a tyrant. The legislatures were merely following precedent.
So what happened to those English monarchs. What was the reasoning for their removal. Well the English authorities never officially removed them or justified their removal by declaring them to be bad monarchs.
Edward II actually abdicated, he was not legally removed. He signed the thing himself and it was accepted by Parliament.
Richard II also abdicated and this was accepted by Parliament. There is a charming woodcut of Richard handing over his crown and sceptre to his nemesis Bolingbroke.
Henry VI did not abdicate, so how did they get rid of him. Well the English Parliament retrospectively (and as you say Parliament is sovereign and can do what it likes) changed the line of succession. It said that when Richard II abdicated that by the laws of the kingdom the crown should have passed to his nearest relatives, the decedents of Edward III's second son the Duke of Clarence rather than to the decendents of his third son, John of Guant, Duke of Lancaster. By happy coincidence the senior descendent of Clarence was Edward, Duke of York who became Edward IV. See, perfectly legal!
Edward V -easy, Dicky told Parliament that the marraige of Edward IV was dubious and therefore the kids were illegitimate including the King. Parliament accepted this and Dicky became king. Parliament had ruled. You cannot argue with that!
Henry VII - Could retrospectively reverse the act giving Edward IV the throne and declare the abdication of Richard II the true settlement. However, just in case he married the senior female of the Yorkists to legitimise his claim.
Jane Grey - Easy. The will that gave her the crown violated an Act of Parliament that had empowered Henry VIII to lay out his line of succession in his will. Edward VI did not pass such an act for himself and he was under age anyway to make such a will. Therefore Jane's accession was unlawful and the Act that gave Mary the crown still stood. Soverignty of Parliament wins again! She was never the legitimate monarch.
So in 1688 the English Parliament was following this tradition.
Part 2
So we turn to Mr Buchanan. I have read a bit of Buchannan's works. I would be quite interested if you can find a contemprorary of his who wrote such constitutional tracts who could have survived with life, limb or liberty in Tudor England or Valois France on such issues.
His constitutional tract was writtne in 1579 when he was an officer of the state. It would be quite interesting if anyone else in such a position in a monarchy in Europe at that time could have written, published and distributed such a work. Approval of it by his peers perhaps?
Anyway Buchanan held as his prime benchmark the removal of James III. James III's trials and tribulations would fill a few pages and that should be left to his "Political Biography" by McDougall.
After James III death in July 1488, his supporters called for a inquiry into his deposition and death. The Scottish Parliament held an inquiry during James IV first Parliament in October 1488. The minutes make interesting reading.
Essentially during proceedings one of the late king's opponents brandished an agreement that the king had signed at Aberdeen with his opponents agreeing to behave himself. He had subsequently broken this agreement which had led to the war and his nemisis on the field of Sauchieburn.
Therefore the king could be held to account. His actions had got himself killed. He needed to go as he was threatening to subvert the independence of the kingdom along with other bad things. It was just unfortunate he had to die but of no real consequence.
http://www.rps.ac.uk/trans/1488/10/51
Parliament softened somewhat its stance on James III in this declaration to show that Scotland did not do regicide as such but said basically he had to go!
http://www.rps.ac.uk/trans/A1488/10/1
Tell me, is there a similar document in the English files for those English kings I mentioned?
So James was removed for the "common good". And Parliament was not ashamed to say it. Very different from England before "Oliver's Army".
To return to Mr Buchanan, his protege James VI of course tried counter his arguments with Baskilion Dom. However I am sure Buchanan if he came back to us today and learned of the the events of the Covenant etc (surely an exercise in popular sovereignty) would have felt vindicated about his theories.
Part 3
I find it poetic somehow. Robert the Bruce signs a contract saying that if he subverts his country's independence then he can be removed in 1320.
Then his descendent in 1488 is removed for doing so. Interesting.
And another descendent is removed in 1689 for other reasons but using I suppose the same precedent.
Of course when you are attacking this popular soverignty thing, have you also considered the quasi-elective nature of the Scottish kingship which was not done away with till the Canmore Troika (Eddie, Sandy and Davie)?
And of course the removal of the Balliols in favour of the Bruces even though the Bruces had a weaker claim to the throne and the subsequent failiure of the Bailiols to get the throne back and the Scottish Parliament's refusal to allow Edward III to become David II's heir. All issues to be discussed!
AB
Yes indeed, I'm coming after George Buchanan.
The man who was so effective in educating the young James VI in the virtues of a limited monarchy, that he tried to re-establish an absolute one the first chance he got!
I would not draw such a distinction between "abdication" and "deposition" as you seem to. All of those "voluntary" abdications seem to have been under pressure.
No-one is trying to deny that in Scotland, as in England (and indeed in most of Europe) there was a process of shifting power away from the monarchy to the next level down.
What I cannot see is this distinction between "English Parliamentary" and "Scottish popular" sovereignty. You've just quoted a lot of Acts of the Scottish Parliament at me. So does the Covenant (which I was just looking at today).
So where exactly is this "popular" vs. "Parliamentary" distinction?
What I think has happened is a fundamental confusion with the notion of "popular religious sovereignty". There is no doubt that in Scotland there there was a tradition of militant Kirk independence from crown and parliament, which is certainly different from the status of the CoE.
(Although one could argue, ironically, that the Catholic Church was similarly independent of the governments of the countries it operated in. Maybe some of the European Protestant churches were too; I don't know, at this point.)
But having said that, when you look at the founding documents of Kirk independence, they are full of reference to Parliamentary Acts as well.
So where does this idea of "popular" sovereignty come from?
No-one was holding referenda in pre-1707 Scotland.
The kirk was very a la carte when it came to relations with Parliament and crown. It was pleased when the crown and parliament backed them but they did not, then they repudiated acts of parliament as being contradictory to the running of the church and indeed the country at times. The Covenant invokes some acts of parliament whilst dismissing others. In other words the kirk contended there were "higher laws" than others.
This fundamentally undermines the idea of "parliamentary sovereignty" as it has declared itself above parliament on certain issues. In contrast in the CoE a priest could not break wind without the permission of Westminster and Whitehall.
Interestingly when kirk repudiated (abjured) a number of acts of Parliament in 1638 and a friendly Parliament did not feel the need to rescind the repudiated acts. In other words parliament accepted the kirk's right to abolish acts of parliament and of the privy council.
Buchanan's education of James VI in many ways backfired. Even as a schoolboy he made it clear he would not allow what happened to James III, James V and Mary to happen again and would enforce the power of the crown. However James knew he could only push it so far, even after 1603. His son pushed it and reeped the consequences.
"Popular" defines from the will of the people rather than from the will of parliament.
Lets take America shall we. America has always maintained that it governed through popular sovereignty, not through Congressianol soveriegnty, Presidential absolutism etc. Yet of course the people who drew up this notion of popular sovereignty were white, male, land owners and in many cases slave owners.
As the US declaration of independnce goes:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,"
So the US was founded on popular sovereignty, yet many of the "people" were the wrong colour, did not own land or more importantly were the wrong gender.
This concept is repeated in the preamble of the constitution. Who exactly are the people?
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
What I am pushing at is that just as the notion of popular soveriegnty in Scotland (or at least the checking of legislative sovereignty) over the years has evolved from Buchanan (and events before him) and the Covenant to the present day.
Just as the definition of the "people" has evolved in the US. Strangely to the best of my knowledge however there has never been a nationwide referendum in US history - if you hold that as a test of popular sovereignty.
Seems strange that in January that a man who swore to uphold a constitution drawn up partly by slave owners would have been such "founding fathers" as a good house negro and not one of the "people".
Does that make the constitution any less valid.
To throw another thing into the pot, of course the Scottish Parliament was not sovereign. For a start it competed with the General Council/Convention of Estates as a law-making body and of course there was also a powerful Privy Council. That is before the General Assembly (effectively for much of the period since the Reformation) not only controlling matters Spiritual but also temporal in such areas as education (from the parish school to the universities it inherited from the Catholic Church).
Hello Smee.
I look forward to your scholarly demolition of the concept of the sovereignty of the people. You just need to prove the Declaration of Arbroath was a load of rubbish and didn't happen, or indeed the Claim of Right (oft repeated).
Mebbes you can write it when you're winging your way down south for some new shoes ? I'm a regular visitor to London myself, if I see a strange footed man wondering about with a ''Mccormick - v - Lord Advocate was actually about pillar boxes'' t-shirt I'll buy you a pint ;-)
Send in the clowns
Observer
"You just need to prove the Declaration of Arbroath was a load of rubbish and didn't happen, or indeed the Claim of Right (oft repeated)."
No, I just need to prove that the authors of the DoA probably used the word "people" to mean "people like us".
And since I've read the Claim of Right, I'm well aware that it wibbles on about the rights of crown and church and makes lots of references to Acts of Parliament.
Can't recall any mentions of "popular sovereignty", though.
And the McCormick case was about numbers on pillar boxes.
Look it up.
Are you a historian sm753?
Your grasp of Latin seems better remembered than mine, though to be fair to me I F****ing hated learning it.
Just don't say you are a lawyer;¬)
CTL
A historian of science, in a way.
Never had any formal Latin; I came across the "quis custodiet" quote in, of all places, Heinlein (I think).
It's in either "Starship Troopers" or one of the "Future History" short stories, IIRC.
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