The Winter Sea

He paused to take a drink from his own glass which, like his father’s, held neat whisky. Then he went on with the story.

‘The aristocracy in England starts to think of getting rid of James and putting someone on the throne who’ll be a Protestant, as they are, and against the French. And they have the perfect candidate in front of them, for James’s eldest daughter, Mary, has a Protestant husband who’s been waging war against the French for years, and who has had his eye upon the English throne since long before that—William, Prince of Orange. It doesn’t matter that he’s Dutch because he’s Mary’s husband, so if she’s made queen, he’ll only need an act of Parliament to rule as king beside her.

‘But just as the aristocrats are making all their plans, King James’s second wife gives birth to a son. Now the English have a problem, because male heirs trump females. So they put around a rumor that the newborn prince is not a prince at all, but just a common child that James had smuggled into his queen’s chamber in a warming pan, to give himself an heir. It’s not the most convincing story, but to those who want a reason to rise up against James, it’s enough.

‘What follows isn’t quite a war—it’s more a game of chess, with knights and nobles changing sides—and within six months James, his queen, and their wee heir have fled to France. It’s not the first time James has done this, mind— when he was just a lad and his own father, Charles I, was in the middle of a Civil War, James was taken by his mother into France for safety. And although his father was beheaded and the Stewarts had to live awhile in exile, in the end the English asked them to come back and take the throne. So James remembers this, and trusts the same will happen now if he just keeps his head down, waits things out. And so he takes his queen and prince to live at Saint-Germain, where he spent his own exile as a lad, and by the spring of 1689 his daughter Mary and her husband William have the English throne, and Scotland, having held a vote, declares for William, too.

‘So now,’ he said, ‘our country’s split in factions—those who, mostly Presbyterian, can stomach having Mary for a queen because she’s Scottish and a Protestant besides, and those who think she’s got no right to rule, not with her father living and a brother who’s ahead of her in line. This second group, the ones who want to put King James back on the throne, are called the Jacobites,’ he said, ‘from “Jacobus”, the Latin name for “James”.’

Stuart raised his hand. ‘Am I allowed another drink?’

‘Aye.’ Graham smiled, and took another swig of whisky while his brother briefly left the room, returning with a full glass and a question for their father.

‘Should the oven still be on?’

‘Ach, na.’ And rising, Jimmy left the room with urgency.

As Stuart took his seat again, he said to me, ‘He’s never met a roast he hasn’t burned past recognition.’

Graham shared the joke and shrugged. ‘We eat them, all the same.’

‘I’m only warning her,’ said Stuart. ‘Anyhow, where were we? I was asking, I believe, about the Union, and so far you haven’t mentioned it.’ To me, as an aside, ‘These academics always ramble on.’

‘So, with King William on the throne,’ said Graham, patiently recapping, ‘we’ve got Scotland in a muddle, and enjoying one long chain of rotten luck. Towards the last years of the century, the harvests are so poor that people starve to death in droves, while English laws and tariffs choke out Scottish trade and navigation. And when a Scottish company scrapes up enough investment for a colony at Darien, in Panama, to take a bit of trade away from England’s East India Company, the English slam it hard by cutting off supplies and aid that might have helped the colonists survive. When Darien fails, the investors lose everything. Scotland is not only broke, but in debt, and we have nothing left to sell,’ he said, ‘except our independence.

‘William’s a widower now, but still fighting with France. He doesn’t want to die and leave the French king any cards to play with, and so long as Scotland is a separate country, there will always be the threat that King James Stewart or his son, young James, might, with the backing of the French, return and cause the English trouble. It makes sense, in William’s mind, that since the thrones of England and of Scotland had been joined some hundred years before, that now the parliaments should join as well, and make one single country of Great Britain.’

‘Ah,’ said Stuart, beginning to comprehend.

‘And when William dies, he passes on this policy of Union to Queen Anne, his wife’s sister and the second daughter of the old King James. Anne’s a little nicer than her sister. She at least admits in private that young James is her half-brother, and it’s widely hoped that, since she has no living children of her own, she’ll name him as her heir. But her advisors have their own agenda, and they quickly see to it she chooses as her heir another relative, from the German House of Hanover.

‘The Scottish parliament replies it won’t accept the Hanoverian succession unless Scotland has the freedom to opt out of foreign policies that go against our interests, like the war Queen Anne’s still waging with the Spanish and the French.’

‘And I’m guessing,’ Stuart ventured, ‘that the English didn’t go for that.’

‘They hit us,’ Graham said, ‘with the Alien Act, which said in effect that unless we Scots came to the table to talk about a Union, every Scot who lived in England would be treated as an alien, and all estates in England owned by Scots would be repatriated, and our exports banned.’