The Evolution of the Scottish Privy Council: Contrasting the 1590s and 1690s

This paper explores the continuities and changes in conciliar government in Scotland through comparing the makeup and business of the Privy Council in the 1590s and the 1690s. These decades had many commonalities as well as considerable contrasts, the most notable of the latter being the personal presence of the monarch in the 1590s, ruling a single, independent kingdom, and the sovereigns' absence in the 1690s as they ruled a complex group of territories. There were political crises and unease in both decades, with fears of Spanish invasion in the 1590s and French invasion a century later, both of which created suspicion and even paranoia. Issues of ecclesiastical governance loomed large. In the former decade, the crown sought a settled relationship with the Reformed church a generation after the Reformation of 1560. In the latter the state sought to bolster that church in the aftermath of a revolution that had decisively rejected episcopacy due to its association with the deposed King James VII. While the economic crisis of the 1690s was substantially more severe than that of the 1590s, there was significant hardship at the end of the sixteenth century too. An exploration of how the Privy Council confronted these and other issues will help to illuminate the degree to which the Scottish state developed across a century of crisis and change.