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In the early modern period, ordinary subjects began to find a role in national politics through the phenomenon of public opinion: by drawing on entrenched ideological differences, oppositional leaders were able to recruit popular support to pressure the government with claimed representations of a national interest. This is particularly well demonstrated in the case of the Anglo-Scottish union crisis of 1699-1707, in which Country party leaders encouraged remarkable levels of participation by non-elite Scots. Though dominant accounts of this crisis portray Scottish opinion as impotent in the...

The common perception of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 as a "political job," stitched up by a corrupt Scottish elite behind closed doors, is robustly challenged in this study, which shows how public debate and the mobilisation of popular opinion shaped the union crisis from beginning to end. It considers how the Country party sought to influence political outcomes by aggressively encouraging the public expression of oppositional opinion in pamphlets, petitions and crowds, from the Darien crisis of 1699-1701 to the parliamentary debates on incorporation in 1706-7. It also examines the...

In early modern Scotland, religious and constitutional tensions created by Protestant reform and regal union stimulated the expression and regulation of opinion at large. Karin Bowie explores the rising prominence and changing dynamics of Scottish opinion politics in this tumultuous period. Assessing protestations, petitions, oaths, and oral and written modes of public communication, she addresses major debates on the fitness of the Habermasian model of the public sphere. This study provides a historicised understanding of early modern public opinion, investigating how the crown and its...