The Scottish Privy Council from Revolution to Union, 1689 to 1708

Presents ground-breaking new perspectives on the history of Scotland between 1689 and 1708 rooted in the newly-published records of the Scottish Privy Council during these years

• Explores the nature and activities of the Scottish Privy Council between 1689 and 1708
• Provides compelling new perspectives on Scottish affairs between the ‘glorious’ revolution and the union
• Demonstrates the value of the Privy Council records for deepening historical understanding of Scotland in the 1690s and early eighteenth century
  

Before 1708, the Privy Council was the Scottish government. Its records are the nearest we have to cabinet papers and they cover almost every conceivable aspect of the nation’s history. Historians of early modern Scotland frequently refer to those records but not always comprehensively. This is the first book to examine the council itself. Its primary focus is the period from the 1689 revolution to the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707. This was an extraordinary age in Scottish and British history which is imperfectly understood because the council’s role remains largely obscure.

The book provides a thematic overview of a wide selection of the council’s activities in this period, covering high politics, Jacobitism and prisoners of war, religious policy and persecution of religious minorities, interaction between the council and the other institutions of the nation, approaches to the economy and the environment, efforts to maintain social order and to respond to the petitions and concerns of all levels of society.