"We're bought and sold for English gold."
"Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation", Scots Musical Museum, 1792.
The Union wasn't bought. It was arranged, and nobody asked the Scots.
The receipts
The source list for this chapter, as the publisher maintains it. Archive links are given wherever a cited page could move or die.
- The Company of Scotland and the Darien scheme, 1695 to 1700; the subscription of about four hundred thousand pounds; the estimate of roughly a fifth of Scotland's liquid wealth; the East India Company's obstruction and the withdrawal of English, Dutch and Hamburg capital; the refusal of relief by English colonial governors: Douglas Watt, The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations (Luath, 2007). (T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation and Independence or Union, still to be consulted: see verification note 8.)
- The Alien Act 1705 (4 & 5 Anne c. 16); its embargo on cattle, linen and coal and the alien provisions; the Hanoverian succession condition; repeal on Scotland's agreement to appoint commissioners.
- The commissioners of 1706: thirty-one for each kingdom, appointed by the Crown; George Lockhart of Carnwath as the sole opponent of incorporation; the English instruction to accept only incorporation; Scottish support for a federal union: Christopher Whatley, The Scots and the Union: Then and Now (Edinburgh University Press, 2014).
- Convention of Royal Burghs, address to the Parliament, 29 October 1706 (quoted from a secondary source; see verification notes). The riots at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dumfries; troop movements; Daniel Defoe's role.
- The addresses and petitions against the Union: Karin Bowie (ed.), Addresses against Incorporating Union 1706 to 1707, Scottish History Society, 6th series, vol. 13 (2018).
- The Equivalent: £398,085 10s, from the long title of the Equivalent Act 1713; the 58.6 per cent allocation to Company of Scotland shareholders and creditors, per Douglas Watt; the Arising Equivalent provisions; Articles of Union, Article XV.
- The £20,000 distributed by David Boyle, first Earl of Glasgow, the majority to the Duke of Queensberry; the 1711 parliamentary inquiry; Argyll's English dukedom; the UK Parliament official history's description of honours, appointments, pensions and arrears used to secure votes. https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org
- The malt tax and the 1713 Lords motion to dissolve the Union, lost by about four votes; the Glasgow malt tax riots of 1725: see verification notes.
- The Equivalent Company and its transformation into the Royal Bank of Scotland, 1727; the 2008 RBS rescue (approximately £45 billion).
- "Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation": words first printed in the Scots Musical Museum, vol. 4, 1792 (Burns made no claim to them); tune "A Parcel of Rogues in the Nation" older, in print by 1747 (James Oswald); attribution to Burns first recorded by William Stenhouse, 1853, as "an unclaimed production of Burns". See verification note 16.
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