An Uncounselled King: Charles I and the Scottish Troubles, 1637-1641.

This book is to be commended as a meticulous and painstaking work of scholarship. Its undoubted strengths lie more in the fields of narrational reconstruction than in penetrating analysis. Moreover, it is not an easy read. Nonetheless, a particularly thorough and comprehensive index does offer the general reader an escape route from plowing through its eight labored chapters. Following through the references on James, 3rd Marquis of Hamilton - the key player among Scottish counsellors at the Court of Charles I - is particularly instructive in coming to an understanding of this exercise in Anglo-Scottish history.

The central thesis of Dr. Donald's work is to demonstrate the centrality of religion in triggering the rebellion against Charles I in Scotland, to document the reactive Court politics to the Scottish rebellion and to define the English ramifications as the Scots moved from protest to a militarily imposed constitutional settlement. Accordingly, his book makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about the British significance of the emergence of the Covenanting Movement in Scotland and the resultant termination of Charles I's personal rule in England. His first two chapters deal not only with the Service Book riots which instigated the Scottish rebellion, also with its more deep-seated causes. His approach is rather traditionalist, however, in underplaying Scottish opposition to "thorough" and economic uniformity. In like manner, Scottish supplications, which culminated in the National Covenant of 28 February 1638, appealed to nationalism as well as constitutionalism and Reformation principles. No sustained effort is made to appreciate the radical potential beneath the superficially conservative language of the National Covenant. The next four chapters deal exhaustively with the Court perspective to the general assembly at Glasgow, where Charles I met with his first constitutional defiance, and the consequent Bishop's Wars of 1639-40. In the process, Dr. Donald has also to be commended for his examination of the constitutional issues raised but unresolved in the Scottish parliament of 1639. Although the central players at Court and in the negotiations with the Covenanters were the nobility, this book correctly recognizes the growing significance of the gentry and burgesses within an oligarchic revolutionary movement. Also to be welcomed is his examination - albeit cursory - of Charles I's endeavors to mobilize support from both the Spanish Habsburgs and their Dutch antagonists. His touch, however, is less sure on contemporaneous Covenanting overtures to the Dutch, the French and the Swedes. Scottish negotiations with the Dutch in particular offered the prospect of constitutional linkage which complemented Covenanting negotiations with English Parliamentarians, where the purported goal of a federal union is merely attested, never convincingly sustained. His penultimate chapter on the making and the implementation of the Treaty of London in 1641 gives a solid, informed account of the tripartite negotiations between the Crown, the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters; but such is the author's concern for narrative that the significance of this treaty is lost sight of. The Treaty of London was the first unequivocal recognition of Scotland as a sovereign state by the English Crown and the English Parliament since the fourteenth century!

The most critical issue, which is never fully addressed until the last chapter, is the extent to which Charles I was indeed uncounselled or unwilling to accept counsel. Charles treated Scottish affairs as the private concern of himself and a few trusted courtiers. There was no regular or effective channel for the Scottish Privy Council, as the central government of his ancient and native kingdom, to communicate directly with the king. The English Council dealt only with Scottish issues when they impinged on the course of events south of the Border. The central paradox of the personal rule of Charles I was that he claimed British dominion, yet he never established a British executive to provide sound and informed counsel for Ireland as well as Scotland and England. This failure, even at the height of the military crisis when the Covenanting army marched into England and demanded the summoning of what was to become known as the Long Parliament, suggests that Charles was not so much uncounselled as uncounsellable.