Urban Politics and the British Civil Wars: Edinburgh 1617–53 (review)

The lack of a study of Edinburgh during the civil wars has long been felt. Laura Stewart’s impressive book fills it – while at the same time stimulating ideas for further research. She analyses the complex structure of burgh government and shows how, through crises and civil wars, continuity is a surprisingly strong theme. The burgh was ruled by an oligarchy, with the existing council and magistrates each year electing their successors. In the government of the nation, government under the Covenanting regime brought huge changes, but within Edinburgh the old structures survived, though now overseen by new masters (parliament and committee of estates replacing king and privy council). Membership of the council brought power and prestige, but also heavy responsibilities. Membership of the specialist committees appointed by the council gave little prestige but was a part of the price of the privileges of burgess-ship. Refusal to serve was seen as betrayal: a man who in 1663 (outside the period covered by this book) refused to become kirk treasurer was stripped of his burgess-ship, which was only restored when he swore he would serve in ‘the meanest office’. Up to 1637 policies dictated to the council by the king were mainly concerned with enforcing religious conformity and insisting of building programmes (such as Parliament House) that would enhance Edinburgh’s role as the country’s capital. The buildings were welcome in principle but unpopular in practice through the great expense involved. Religious conformity from the outset produced cracks in burgh society, with the emergence of a small but active group of non-conformists, which probably won widespread passive sympathy in the population – and even within the burgh council. In the crisis of 1637 Edinburgh was therefore faced not just with intense pressure from the nobles, lairds and their followers who flocked to Edinburgh determined to resist the king over religion, but from their many active supporters within the burgh. Edinburgh now paid the price for being the capital, becoming the focus for national agitation. Both the king and his opponents saw possession of Edinburgh, the seat of government, as of key importance in the propaganda war. In imposing Sir John Hay, the clerk register, on the burgh as provost, Charles I sought to secure its loyalty, but the move may well have been counterproductive. Forced to choose between loyalty to a distant king and support for rebels who were threateningly on the spot, the council chose the latter. Edinburgh’s support was crucial for the Covenanters not just because it was the capital but also because it was the nation’s financial centre. It was to be the wealth of the burgh’s richest merchants that financed the arms-buying spree that was soon underway as the Covenanters sought to equip an army. The regime’s greatest debt by 1640 was the nearly £500,000 Scots (over £40,000 sterling) that it owed to William Dick of Braid (p. 249). But as the revolution staggered from triumph to disaster the decade after 1641 was catastrophic. The financial burdens of war, coupled with losses through plague, led to a huge burden of debt. English occupation in 1650 even brought about the temporary collapse of the burgh council, which failed to meet for over a year.

Stewart’s book is based on a wealth of manuscript material, especially from the notoriously underfunded Edinburgh City Archives, as well as a wide range of published sources and secondary material. The Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses (Scottish Record Society, 1928) is perhaps underutilised. Browsing in it reveals, for example, the recruitment as burgesses in the later 1640s of men from outside the burgh provided they came to live in Edinburgh – a move no doubted intended to counter the severe loss of population caused by plague that Stewart discusses. The Roll also shows that the major and at least four captains of the regiment that the burgh raised in...