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The 1654 union with Scotland
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2004
sees the 350th anniversary of the union of Scotland with and under
England. It was the first time that Scotland and England had been fully
united as a single polity under a single constitution. The experiment
lasted barely five years, for while the political union survived the
remainder of the Protectorate, it effectively collapsed in 1659-60 and
was reversed at the Restoration. The road to full political union had
been opened by the Scots’ continuing support for the royalist cause
after the execution of Charles I, causing the English republican regimes
of the early 1650s to deploy England’s military might against them. The
defeat of Scottish-royalist armies and the conquest and occupation of
Scotland itself by English forces made possible a political and
constitutional union which was assumed in the new written constitution
of December 1653 – proclaimed to be a constitution for ‘the Commonwealth
of England, Scotland and Ireland’ – but which was fleshed out and given
substance by various measures issued by the Protector and his Council
during 1654. In particular, several conciliar ordinances of spring and
summer 1654 made clear the form and nature of the union, provided a
statutory basis for the new secular and ecclesiastical administration of
Scotland and began the process of remoulding Scotland to bring it closer
to English ways and forms.