Glasgow Times Past: How the city adapted to life in the Union

Yet the parcel of rogues got their way and on May 1, 1707, Glaswegians and every other citizen of Scotland faced the reality of the new incarnation of the unitary state that became known as the United Kingdom.

The following year, Glasgow joined with Dumbarton, Renfrew and Rutherglen to elect the city’s first Member of Parliament, representing the Clyde or Glasgow Burghs as the seat was known.  Elect is probably the wrong word as the franchise was confined to a few leading figures in each burgh, and to nobody’s surprise the Provost of Glasgow, the merchant Robert Rodger, was duly appointed the first MP for Glasgow. That he was the commissioner (returning officer) for the constituency caused no protests about a conflict of interest. After all, as Roger said, he “accepted this commission at the desire of the town – without any view of serving my own ends by it.” 

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He further declared that he was “‘resolved to stand to the true interest of government as God shall give me light without regard to threats or promises.” He pocketed plenty of expenses but was no great success as an MP and disappeared from the city’s history when he did not stand again in the 1710 election.     

As with every part of Scotland in the 1690s and early 1700s, Glasgow had suffered economically as a result of agricultural setbacks and the failure of the Darien Scheme.

The population of the city hardly rose, and trade was severely reduced. 

This state of economic depression continued for some time after the Union, but it was the Union, as all sensible historians admit, that was to be the making of Glasgow, although contrary to the proponents of the Union before 1707, there was no immediate economic ‘bounce’.

To show how that slow economic improvement happened, matters of national developments must be addressed. The Scottish Privy Council was scrapped and the actual powers of Government went in to fewer hands such as those of the Lord Advocate. Scotland’s political scene was riven by factions with the emerging Whigs and Tories in constant conflict, while the Church of Scotland, which had only approved the Union because its special place as the national Kirk was maintained, soon had to fight off attempts to remove its status, most notably the Toleration Act and the Patronage Act of 1712 which outraged the Kirk as, respectively, they allowed Episcopalian worship and gave lairds the right to appoint ministers again. 

The Jacobites – mostly based in the Highland clans and the Episcopalian north east – were ready at a moment’s notice to rise up and fight for the restoration of King James VII and II, and later his son, and had the backing of France. 

Had the weather been better, the French invasion of Scotland in support of James in 1708 might well have succeeded in capturing Scotland at least. 

The Westminster Parliament ignored the Union’s laws and piled taxes upon the Scots, and those measures were deeply unpopular with the ordinary people and the mercantile classes alike.  

In 1712, Glasgow’s Town Council had ordered a census and found that the city had a population of 13,382. 

That Council was not elected by the people, but by the previous council. 

The city’s great historians Robert Renwick and Sir John Lindsay explain how that happened: “Glasgow Town Council then consisted of a provost, three bailies, 13 councillors of the merchant rank, and 13 of the trades rank. 

“There were a dean of guild, a deacon-convener, a treasurer, and a master of work, who might be chosen either from the members of council or from outside. In the latter case they became additional members of council. 

“The elections began on the first Tuesday after Michaelmas, and were continued on the following Friday and Wednesday. First the old council elected the new provost and two bailies out of the merchant rank, and one bailie out of the crafts rank ; then the new provost and bailies, with the provosts and bailies of the two previous years, and others 
brought in, if necessary, to make up the number of 12, chose 13 merchants and 12 craftsmen as councillors, and afterwards the new magistrates and councillors, along with the deacons of the fourteen crafts and an equal number of merchants, chose the dean of guild, the deacon-convener, the treasurer, the master of work, the bailie of Gorbals, the water bailie, and remaining office-bearers.”

In other words, the Council was a self-preservation society, and many would argue that it remained so until the 20th century.

It was national developments which boosted Glasgow’s economy, however, though not without a struggle. 

As Professor Sir Tom Devine noted in his excellent The Scottish Nation: A Modern History, the change in tax duties from 1713 had a greater adverse effect on Scotland than England. 

Taxation altered from a land tax to customs duties on commodities such as a beer, salt, linen and malt. 

Sir Tom Devine

The 1713 decision to impose a tax on malt was against the Act of Union and provoked a huge reaction.  

So incensed were the Scottish representatives at Westminster that they met to consider the motion that the Treaty of Union should be repealed. 

The motion was put  by the Earl of Lindlater in the House of Lords and it failed by just four votes – and they were proxy votes, too. Which leads to this thought – if they could do that in 1713, why can Scotland’s representatives in Holyrood and Westminster not try for repeal again? 

Glasgow Times Past: Town clerk lost his life after infamous tragedy

It must also be admitted that it was not just the imposition of taxes on Scotland which upset people but the very collection of those customs dues. Glasgow and the Clyde ports in general had a well-earned and thoroughly deserved reputation as havens for smugglers. 

At a time when tobacco in particular was becoming a major new import, smuggling this leafy gold was a full-time occupation for many and the city on the Clyde was noted for the sheer scale of tax evasion. 

Ending that regime was key to Glasgow’s prosperity, but meanwhile the Jacobites were rising again.