Society, War, and Allegiance in the Three Kingdoms, 1637–42

Looking back on the England he had known in the 1630s, the statesman and historian Sir Edward Hyde observed a familiar English trait: ‘the truth is, there was … little curiosity either in the Court or the country to know any thing of Scotland, or what was done there … nor had that kingdom a place or mention in one page of any gazette, so little the world heard or thought of that people’.1 Since 1603, when the Scottish king, James Stuart, had succeeded Elizabeth Tudor, England and Ireland had been joined with Scotland through the person of the monarch (and little else). James’s son Charles had inherited this ‘union of crowns’ in 1625, and though he had been born in Scotland, and even spoke with a Scottish accent, the English thought of him first and foremost as king of England. If he chose to rule other kingdoms ‘in his spare time’ it was no concern of theirs. Little wonder then that when rebellions in Scotland and Ireland precipitated civil war in their own country, the English were generally at a loss as to how this calamity had come about.