Linlithgow Burghs

The five burghs which made up the ‘Linlithgow Burghs’ – Linlithgow, Stirling, Perth, Queensferry and Culross – were scattered across three shires in the centre of Scotland, where the highland region met the lowlands. The burghs varied greatly in size and wealth – from Perth, taxed at £39 19s 3d in the general assessment of June 1657, to Culross and Queensferry, which each paid less than £5 – and before the 1650s they had little in common. A. and O. The five burghs can be divided into two loose groups. Three were on or near the Firth of Forth, with Linlithgow and Queensferry to the south of the estuary, and Culross to the north, and these fitted together reasonably well, as they were all part of the customs port of Bo’ness, and Linlithgow and Culross were centres of the coal and salt industries. The ancient royal burghs of Stirling and Perth also had some importance as trading centres, but their principal role was as strongholds guarding the main routes into the highlands along the rivers which converged to form the estuaries Forth and Tay, respectively, and protecting the main land routes towards Edinburgh from the west and north. Atlas Scot. Hist. 273, 276-7.

When the Cromwellian army invaded Scotland, Stirling and Perth were obvious targets, both falling to the English forces in August 1651. Scot. and Commonwealth, ed. Firth, pp. xvi, 3-5. In later years the commander-in-chief, Colonel Robert Lilburne*, acknowledged their importance in containing the royalist rising led by the earl of Glencairn, telling Oliver Cromwell* in the summer of 1653 that he intended to reinforce both towns ‘for the better putting the forces there into a posture, in case any attempt should be made upon them’. Scot. and Commonwealth, ed. Firth, 195. When George Monck* took over the command in 1654, he used Stirling and Perth as his forward operating bases. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke l, ff. 51, 55v. In this period, work was started on a massive citadel at Perth, designed to accommodate a large garrison. Scot. and Commonwealth, ed. Firth, 199 This had been completed by October 1657, when Monck reported on its importance as part of an integrated defensive plan. Perth was to house 6 companies of foot and 100 horse, and Stirling 13 companies of foot and a regiment of horse, with outposts to ‘keep footing for us in the hills’ and sufficient strength between them ‘to keep the people in Fife in order, or to destroy their houses and cattle if they should be troublesome’. A small force was stationed at Culross, and Linlithgow had a garrison of 70 foot and 30 horse, housed in the former royal palace. Scot. and Protectorate, ed. Firth, 368-70. Queensferry, as an important embarkation point for those crossing the Firth of Forth, also had a military guard during this period. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvi, unfol.: 24 Mar. 1655. It was perhaps this strategic importance, rather than any inherent similarity, which lay behind the amalgamation of the five burghs as a single parliamentary constituency from 1654-9.

The initial stages of the Cromwellian occupation had often been traumatic. Linlithgow’s apprehensions concerning the ‘coming of the English’ in the late summer of 1651 were more than justified by the activities of the governor, Colonel Sanderson, who had the town’s tolbooth demolished and seized the burgh charters, threatening to burn them if a ransom was not paid. NRS, B48/9/2, pp. 370, 380-1. This was a passing phase, however, and the corporations soon found that cooperating with the Cromwellian regime paid dividends. The tender of union seems to have been treated as an olive branch. Perth, Linlithgow and Culross sent their assents to the tender in 1652 without delay, and Queensferry took the opportunity to ask for a confirmation of ‘their old and pristine liberties as to the choosing of magistrates and officers for the burgh’. Cromwellian Union, ed. Terry, 27, 46, 55, 62, 87. Stirling, in particular, had suffered from the resurrection of the Stuart cause in 1650-1, when the royalists severely damaged the town ‘by the pulling down of divers houses’, and its support for union may reflect a feeling of resentment against its former masters. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlv, unfol.: 22 Aug. 1654. Stirling’s assent to union in 1652 was accompanied by desires which asked for abatement of their ‘unsupportable assessments’ and, significantly, enthused about a settlement with ‘one name comprehending to the nations, viz. Great Britain’. Cromwellian Union, ed. Terry, 62-3, 78-80.

Such apparently pro-unionist declarations were soon followed by practical measures designed to curry favour with the occupiers. On three occasions between 1652 and 1654, Stirling admitted large numbers of English officers and officials as burgesses and guild brothers, including Judge George Smith*, Judge-advocate Henry Whalley*, Robert Lilburne, James Berry*, George Monck and Matthew Thomlinson*. Recs. of Stirling, 1519-1666 ed. R. Renwick (Glasgow, 1887), 205, 210, 212-3. Perth followed suit, electing the garrison’s officers as burgesses in October 1652 and also honouring Judges Moseley and Lawrence in October 1655. When Monck visited Perth in June 1654 he was made a burgess and ‘entertained ... the best way they can’; in October 1656, when a new town council was elected, the outgoing officials attended the governor and thanked him for his ‘good rule’; and in September 1657 the re-inauguration of Cromwell as protector was proclaimed ‘with great solemnity’. NRS, B6/16/5, unfol.; B6/16/6, p. 91; S. Gillanders, ‘The Scottish Burghs during the Cromwellian Occupation’ (Edinburgh Univ. PhD, 1999), 281-3. Linlithgow was more tentative. Although the burgh council welcomed Monck in April 1654, sending a delegation to Edinburgh, as was ‘thought expedient’, they did not share the rush to make Englishmen burgesses, and the ceremonial at the proclamation of the protector in the summer of 1657 was far less elaborate than the party thrown for the restoration three years later. NRS, B48/9/2, p. 647; B48/9/3, p. 31; B48/13/7, unfol.

The complexity of the relationship between the burghs and the government is also suggested by the way in which Englishmen were drawn into long-running religious disputes. A newsletter of February 1652 noted that ‘there have lately been great contests in the Presbytery of Stirling’, with the majority siding with the Resolutioners who ‘have separated themselves from the other party, and will not own James Guthrie and that party to be ministers’. Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 16. In 1654-5 the dispute flared up again, and in April 1655 Monck gave orders to Major John Clobery† to protect the controversial James Guthrie – a leading figure in the Protester faction – from the ‘violence’ of some inhabitants of the town, who objected to his refusal to allow the election of elders. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvi, unfol.: 10 Apr. 1655; Recs. of Stirling ed. Renwick, 215-7. In September of that year, the governor of Stirling, Colonel Thomas Reade*, was instructed to restore the keys of the church to Guthrie, and prevent the Resolutioners from preaching there until the dispute was settled. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 8 Sept. 1655. This ‘difference’ between Guthrie and the ‘townsmen’ continued into 1656, and the church was eventually divided into two parts in September, in an attempt to accommodate both Guthrie and his Resolutioner rival, Matthew Simpson – an Englishman who had come to Stirling ‘by a call of above 2000 hands’. NLS, MS 7032, f. 83; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 20 June 1655; xlviii, unfol.: 3 Sept. 1656; Recs. of Stirling, 224. In the midst of this dispute, orders were issued to Reade to reduce the number of services held by the Stirling garrison, who were to use the tolbooth instead for one of their Sunday gatherings. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 9 Jan. 1656. Similar problems erupted in Linlithgow. Initially the government’s approach was conciliatory – the appointment of a minister in May 1653 was tempered by instructions to the governor, Colonel Lytcott, ‘to be tender in not putting a minister upon them against their consent’ – but this could not overcome the fundamental problem, that the local congregation was pro-Protester while the burgh council favoured the Resolutioners. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlv, unfol.: 14 May 1653; Gillanders, ‘Scottish Burghs’, 241. This factional split led to a row in 1655 over the appointment of a Resolutioner minister, James Ramsay, and in March 1656 Monck brokered a compromise similar to that in Stirling, in which the church building was divided in two and the burgh council was required to sign a bond promising that the inhabitants would not cause trouble for the town garrison. NRS, B48/9/2, p. 586; Gillanders, ‘Scottish Burghs’, 242.

The working relationship that developed between the burghs and the Cromwellian government can clearly be seen in the elections for the three protectorate Parliaments. In 1654 the MP elected was the influential soldier, Colonel John Okey, but there is no evidence that he was imposed on the burghs by the army. Indeed, the confusion at Linlithgow as to how to proceed suggests that there was very little stage-managing by the garrison officers or their superiors in Edinburgh. Gillanders, ‘Scottish Burghs’, 286. At first, the burgh considered sending the entire corporation to the vote, but ‘finding that it will be great expense and troublesome to go all to Stirling’ a general meeting was held to elect commissioners instead; and eventually the town council decided to keep the choice of representatives to itself. This proved premature, for when the provost and bailie went to Stirling on 2 August, ‘there was no election, in respect of Perth and Stirling absent’. After a further delay, on 31 August one of the Linlithgow bailies was chosen to meet the other burghs representatives for an election on the following day. NRS, B48/9/2, pp. 501-3. Meanwhile, at Stirling the gild brothers assembled on 31 August to ‘devolve the power of election’ to the provost, bailies and council of the burgh, and the ‘crafts’ and ‘maltmen’ agreed to do the same. The provost, bailies and council then selected the governor of the burgh, Colonel Reade, as their ‘commissioner … to convene with the commissioners to be direct[ed] from the burghs of Perth, Linlithgow, Queensferry and Culross’ at their meeting at Stirling on 1 September, to elect the MP. Recs. of Stirling, 214. If Stirling’s decision to send Reade is evidence of the degree of collaboration between the burgh authorities and the garrison officers by this time, the confusion at Linlithgow suggests that elsewhere they had been left very much to their own devices.

In August 1656 the candidate was Colonel Henry Markham, a close ally of Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) who was recommended to the burgh representatives by General Monck as ‘a very honest man and one who may do you good’; and the commissioners, willing to ‘conform to the order direct[ed] to them’, duly returned him as their MP. NRS, B48/9/2, f. 603; Recs. of Stirling, 223. The procedure followed was much more orderly than in 1654. On 16 August the inhabitants of Stirling chose one of their bailies to meet with the other commissioners, and on the same day Linlithgow agreed to send its provost, though subsequent illness meant the burgh was also represented by a bailie. Recs. of Stirling, 223; NRS, B48/9/2, p. 602. The election was held on 20 August and the indenture signed on the same day reveals that the sheriff of Stirlingshire, Sir William Bruce of Stenhouse, presided, and the election was decided by six representatives from the burghs: a bailie each from Linlithgow, Stirling, Culross and Queensferry, and the provost and a burgess from Perth. C219/45, unfol. By this time the burghs were well used to being represented at Westminster, and in the days before the election representatives from Linlithgow and Stirling attended meetings of the convention of burghs to decide what instructions would be issued to their MPs. Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 428-9. Henry Markham, in particular, proved a useful agent at Westminster, and in the spring of 1657 Linlithgow council corresponded with him concerning a petition to the protector for funds to rebuild their tolbooth. Gillanders, ‘Scottish Burghs’, 293.

In 1659 the MP elected was another Englishman, Thomas Waller of Gray’s Inn, who had been recommended to Monck by Secretary John Thurloe* as a useful ally of the protectorate. TSP vii. 572. Monck wrote to the individual burghs on 22 December, extolling Waller as ‘a person well qualified for the public service’. NRS, B59/16/6, f. 81v. On 6 January Sir William Bruce of Stenhouse again convened a meeting of six commissioners, with Linlithgow this time being represented by its provost and an attendant bailie, and the other burghs sending a provost, two bailies and a burgess between them. Recs. of Stirling, 229-30; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke li, f. 61v; NRS, B48/9/2, p. 725-6. After the election, the commissioners from Stirling and Linlithgow went to Dalkeith ‘to acquaint the general of their commissioner, and give him their commission to send him’. NRS, B48/9/2, p. 726. This was not intended as a submission, but as part of on-going negotiations, as the Linlithgow commissioners took the opportunity to raise the matter of the tolbooth. During the parliamentary session the corporation clearly expected Thomas Waller to be equally useful, sending him a petition concerning the tolbooth and also dispatching their provost to lobby him and other MPs in London. NRS, B48/9/2, p. 726; Gillanders, ‘Scottish Burghs’, 294. In 1659, as in 1654 and 1656, the choice of influential Englishmen as representatives indicates not only the burghs’ willingness to collaborate with the Cromwellian government, but also a pragmatic desire to further their own interests.