Sutherland had always been afflicted with a shortage of freeholders, so much so that the act of 1633 which granted the county the right to send commissioners to the Scottish parliament specifically extended the franchise beyond the ‘free barons’ to ‘other inhabitants’.
That the Stirlingshire freeholders neither subsided into obedience to a single magnate nor found themselves swamped by ‘fictitious voters’ was owing to a combination of circumstances: the presence of several substantial lairds with independent influence; the persistence of party spirit; and, most important, the balance of aristocratic power between the Earl of Linlithgow and the Duke of Montrose, ‘cousins’ who, had they acted together, would have been able to ‘carry what man we please’, as Montrose himself put it, but who were kept apart by political jealousy.
The influence of the Murrays of Philiphaugh, hereditary sheriffs of Selkirkshire, was so powerful that in terms of electoral politics the county was quite moribund. Sir James Murray had been deprived of office in 1680 for being ‘remiss in punishing conventicles’, but at the Revolution was raised to the session bench as Lord Philiphaugh and reinstated as sheriff. The two commissioners returned by him to the Scottish parliament in 1702 were his brother John Murray* of Bowhill and future son-in-law John Pringle of Haining.
The story of electoral politics in Roxburghshire after the Union was a continuation of conflicts originating in the last Scottish parliament, where the county’s four seats had been equally divided at the 1702 election between Archibald Douglas* of Cavers and Sir Gilbert Eliott, 1st Bt., of Minto, supporters of the Court, and (Sir) William Bennet (2nd Bt.*) and Sir William Kerr, 3rd Bt.*, who had not only been endorsed as Country party candidates by some of the local gentry, but also enjoyed support from the Earl (later Duke) of Roxburghe.
The impression conveyed to the English Whig ministry in 1708-10 by one of the competing factions in Ross-shire that the recent political upheavals in the county were a local manifestation of the great national conflict of parties, contained some elements of the truth but underplayed the most important, namely that the two sides were defined by family allegiance.
Neither the hereditary sheriff the Earl of Eglintoun (who was also hereditary bailie of the regality of Paisley), nor the other principal magnates who were thought to exercise influence in the county, the dukes of Hamilton and Montrose, played much of a role in elections in Renfrewshire after the Union. Instead, the electoral court in this period was the province of the lesser barons.
In 1686 the hereditary sheriffdom of Peeblesshire had been sold by the Earl of Tweeddale, together with Neidpath Castle and its estates, to the 1st Duke of Queensberry, and in 1693 Queensberry transferred these lands and the sheriffdom to his second son, William, created Earl of March. In the 1702 election to the Scottish parliament, the county returned two loyal followers of the 2nd Duke of Queensberry: Alexander Horsburgh of that ilk and William Morison of Prestongrange.
Despite a small electorate and an overweening magnate interest, electoral politics were far from moribund in Orkney and Shetland during this period. The earls of Morton, whose grant of crown lands in the islands had been revoked under Charles II, only regained control in 1707. The original dispensation of 1643 was a reward to William Douglas, Earl of Morton (d. 1648) for his financial support of the Royalist cause.
Three families had traditionally predominated in Nairnshire: Brodie of Brodie, Campbell of Calder (Cawdor) and Rose of Kilravock. A fourth, Forbes of Culloden in neighbouring Inverness-shire, having purchased a large estate in Nairn, had the potential to develop into a major force, but was hampered to some extent by the unpopularity engendered by the statutory exemption from excise duty enjoyed by the laird of Culloden in respect of his distillery at Ferintosh.
The lesser nobility and wealthier resident lairds held centre-stage in Linlithgowshire elections, despite the constant, formidable presence of the Duke of Hamilton in the wings, and an occasional passing interest shown by other magnates.
