On 24 May 1617, during his sole return visit to Scotland after acceding to the throne of England, James VI and I signed letters patent under the Great Seal of Scotland to create the Scottish East India Company.Footnote 1 In addition to granting “all power and freedom to trade to all those countries which the English [East India] Company previously earlier has been privileged,” the patent granted trading rights in the Levant, Muscovy, and Spitsbergen.Footnote 2 Thus, a single company in Scotland was to hold rights to trade in regions that were divided at that time between three of the most powerful companies in England: the English East India Company, the Muscovy Company, and the Levant Company. After receiving the patent, the founder and governor of the company, Sir James Cunningham of Glengarnock, began preparations for a whaling voyage to Spitsbergen.Footnote 3 In March 1618, however, the English East India Company and Muscovy Company succeeded in persuading the king to recall the patent on the grounds that it infringed upon their privileges.Footnote 4 Consequently, Cunningham stopped preparations for the voyage and sought compensation for the expenses he had incurred to that point, which he estimated to be £6,200.Footnote 5 In what follows, I examine this arc of the Scottish East India Company's existence in its Scottish context and in the context of the 1603 union of the crowns.
Historians have found the Scottish East India Company worth mentioning in the context of Stuart statecraft and commercial policy,Footnote 6 European whaling rivalries,Footnote 7 and Scottish overseas enterprise.Footnote 8 Though mentioned fairly frequently, it often receives no more than a brief statement based on the interpretations of William Robert Scott and K. N. Chaudhuri. These interpretations view the creation of the Scottish East India Company as a move by James VI and I to give him leverage in procuring loans from the English companies whose trades would be threatened by a Scottish company with rights to trade in the same regions.Footnote 9 This interpretation has recently been challenged by Rupali Mishra, who has convincingly argued that the English East India Company could not be so easily coerced in this manner. A key fact in Mishra's argument is that the king did not receive a £20,000 loan in exchange for the revocation of the Scottish East India Company patent, as some have suggested.Footnote 10 My findings support Mishra's conclusion. The evidence points to the Scottish East India Company as being a legitimate endeavor rather than a financial ploy, which leads to a reversal of the traditional account that views it as an example of the king using his leverage to coerce concessions from English trading companies. Instead, it appears that the English East India Company and Muscovy Company possessed enough influence to gain the king's support in protecting their interests.
In explaining this process of leverage and influence between company and government, Mishra has made the fundamental point that “the foundation of trading companies by letters patent could not be separated from the power of the state and the exercise of the royal prerogative.”Footnote 11 With this being the case, it is no surprise that an “awkward alliance” formed between company and state.Footnote 12 William Pettigrew has also recognized this relationship and has called for historians to explore it in pursuit of new insights into cross-cultural and global developments in the early modern period.Footnote 13 This call has recently been heeded by Jason Cameron White, whose case study of the English embassy in the Ottoman Empire has shed light on the tensions between state and corporate authority in the seventeenth century.Footnote 14 In this article, I expand upon this research on “corporate constitutions” by moving beyond English examples and taking into account several issues inherent in the 1603 regal union. I show that a key issue was the ability of competing interest groups to influence the king to use the royal prerogative to their advantage.
Beyond the availability of capital, a major factor in the disparate development (or lack thereof) of trading companies in England and Scotland was the unique Scottish institution of the Convention of Royal Burghs, a representative assembly that pursued the interests of the merchant communities of Scotland's primary trading towns. Whereas a multitude of trading companies with their own “geographical monopolies” developed in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the royal burghs held a monopoly on all of Scotland's foreign trade. Furthermore, the Convention of Royal Burghs supported traditional low-risk trades over high-risk expansion into new areas.Footnote 15 There was thus little opportunity to form trading companies, and any attempt to do so was opposed by the convention.Footnote 16 This, in turn, meant that Scots interested in forming companies had to circumvent the convention. As the Scottish East India Company and other examples demonstrate, members of the Scottish gentry did so by using court connections and personal favor with the king. If successful in receiving a royal grant, they would be able to operate outside of the convention's authority—but in an antagonistic relationship with merchants in Scotland. They could seek merchants willing to act against the convention's wishes or, as in the case of the Scottish East India Company, they could take advantage of one of the opportunities created by the union of the crowns: access to the London business world.
Here the example of the Scottish East India Company guides us from the domestic context of Scotland to the arena of Stuart Britain. As the company held expansive trading rights to regions where English companies already held monopolies, its existence, much less its presence in England, did not go unnoticed. In response, the English East India Company and the Muscovy Company put their lobbying mechanisms into high gear. Like Cunningham, they attempted to use their court connections to gain the king's sympathy to their cause, but they were also able to employ additional strategies. Their large membership, wealth, and success allowed them to argue that their interests aligned with the “public good,” and so they were able to leverage in their lobbying efforts the role they played in crown finance and the defense of the kingdom.Footnote 17 Whereas Cunningham and other Scottish founders of overseas ventures during the reigns of James VI and I and Charles I had to rely on personal relationships and patronage networks, English trading companies could exert influence beyond those personal mechanisms. Their ability to do so, however, was complicated in cases where they were relying on English patents to oppose Scottish patents. There were no clear answers to the legal questions this unusual situation entailed. Regardless of the theoretical protection a patent granted under the Great Seal of Scotland might afford, the case of the Scottish East India Company came down to the fact that Cunningham's personal connections were not enough to overcome the “awkward alliance” between English companies and the state.
The brief existence of the Scottish East India Company and the questions it raised offer insight into how the regal union provided new business opportunities for Scots, how James VI and I approached patronage and policy in his multiple kingdoms, how commercial rivalries developed in England and Scotland, and how trading companies played a role in constitutional developments in the seventeenth century. The case reveals the opportunity for inter-kingdom cooperation created by the union of the crowns as well as the backlash that this could incur. Scots had new opportunities, but those interested in pursuing them needed to navigate a complex political and commercial landscape spanning at least two kingdoms. The process began with a challenge to the traditional mode of controlling trade in Scotland and then extended to the London business world.
The Founding of the Company: Patronage and Control of Trade in Scotland
The Cunninghams of Glengarnock were a cadet branch of the Cunninghams, earls of Glencairn, based in southwestern Scotland.Footnote 18 The founder of the Scottish East India Company, James Cunningham of Glengarnock, was likely born around 1570, the son of William Cunningham of Glengarnock and either Isobel Scott or Mary Sinclair, daughter of Lord Sinclair.Footnote 19 James succeeded as laird after the death of his grandfather John Cunningham, circa 1596, and married Katherine, daughter of James Cunningham, Earl of Glencairn, in 1597.Footnote 20 There is not much evidence of his involvement in public affairs, but he was knighted around 1607.Footnote 21 His connection with the Earl of Glencairn is the first indication of the patronage network of which he was a part, and his knighthood is the first indication that he received royal favor.
While Scott attributed the idea for a Scottish East India Company to “several of the favourites of James I” and “some of the rapacious courtiers by whom he was surrounded,”Footnote 22 the only two people who can definitively be connected with the founding of the company are Cunningham and James VI and I. Though Scott overstates the case, it is true that Cunningham must have had a connection, either direct or through a patron, for him to gain the king's support for the project.Footnote 23 The few attempts to explain how he succeeded in acquiring the company's patent have, however, failed to offer an accurate account.Footnote 24 While tenuous, there is evidence to suggest that he was able to do so through favor that he held with the king and with the help of a group of prominent Scots. This evidence, which largely comes from his role as an Ulster planter, identifies a network of contacts and patronage that includes Thomas Hamilton (Lord Binning and later Earl of Melrose and Haddington), William Alexander (later Earl of Stirling), John Murray of Lochmaben (later Earl of Annandale), and the king himself.Footnote 25 These connections help us understand the path Cunningham may have taken to receive the patent. They also demonstrate the importance of court connections for those seeking royal grants and indicate that members of the Scottish gentry could foster these connections through their countrymen who followed James VI and I to London after the regal union.Footnote 26 Furthermore, it is noteworthy that Cunningham may have used these connections—connections that merchants were less likely to have—to bypass the Convention of Royal Burghs’ opposition to the creation of the Scottish East India Company. This strategy was more likely to succeed after 1603, when the king was surrounded by Scottish courtiers in London, but Scottish merchant-burgesses no longer had the same access to the king as they did when he resided in Edinburgh.Footnote 27
The most noteworthy example of Cunningham receiving royal patronage prior to receiving the Scottish East India Company's patent comes from a territorial dispute he and his uncle had with Ralph Bingley in Ulster in 1612. Though Bingley was a prominent servitor in favor with the lord deputy of Ireland, Arthur Chichester, the king intervened in the dispute on the side of Cunningham after he informed him of the situation.Footnote 28 It is noteworthy that Cunningham had access to petition the king in this manner, but even more significant is that the king intervened on his and his uncle's behalf and what the king's letter about the matter reveals about the Cunninghams’ role as planters. The king ordered Chichester to adjudicate the matter and, while doing so, to bear in mind that the Cunninghams “entered not into this action of expense by their own suit but by his [the king's] own election, as being men particularly known to him.”Footnote 29 The wording indicates that Cunningham and his uncle had been assigned to become planters by the king and that, rather than receiving lands as a reward from him, they were performing a service for him.Footnote 30 This type of service was part of the quid pro quo regime of James VI and I from which Cunningham benefited by receiving the king's support in this dispute with Bingley and from which he could have received further royal favor.Footnote 31 Though the king's vague description of Cunningham and his uncle as “men particularly known to him” does not explain the nature of the connection, it does demonstrate that there was one and therefore provides some insight into Cunningham's position vis-à-vis the king when he successfully acquired the Scottish East India Company's patent in 1617. Notable in this regard is that the patent was later described as a “benefitt and favour” granted to Cunningham, the king's “servant and a gentleman whome his Majesty favoured.”Footnote 32
Cunningham's connections with Thomas Hamilton and John Murray can be seen in a letter from the former to the latter regarding his good service in Ulster.Footnote 33 There is evidence for several connections between him and William Alexander. First, there is evidence of Alexander's helping Cunningham protect his Irish lands from creditors in the 1610s and for his working on behalf of Cunningham's widow.Footnote 34 Second, it was Alexander who penned the royal letter to Cunningham indicating that the Scottish East India Company's patent was to be granted.Footnote 35 These facts taken together suggest a connection between Cunningham and Alexander in which Alexander was solicitous of Cunningham's interests and potentially could have helped him secure the patent. Furthermore, Alexander was the first person to obtain a Scottish grant for an overseas venture after Cunningham, when, in 1621, he was granted a colonial charter for Nova Scotia.Footnote 36 Knowing Cunningham and having knowledge of the Scottish East India Company may have played a role in his decision to seek his own Scottish charter rather than join existing English projects.
The last point to be made about Cunningham's patronage network is that the three privy councilors with whom he was connected—Alexander, Hamilton, and the Earl of Glencairn—were with the king in Edinburgh on 18 May 1617, six days before the company's patent was granted.Footnote 37 They would thus have had the opportunity to speak to the king in support of Cunningham's petition, though whether they did so is not known. It is, however, known that Hamilton mentioned the company in a letter to the king in March and was present at a protest made against the creation of the company on 7 May.Footnote 38 Though Hamilton was not swayed by the protest, it is key to understanding the Scottish context in which the company was founded.
The Privy Council had been presented with Cunningham's idea for a Scottish trading company sometime before 14 March 1617 and, considering it a matter of great “consequence and noveltie in this estate,” sought to “heir the opinion of sum of oure merchandis of best experience.”Footnote 39 The merchants who learned of the idea opposed it, and on 28 March they presented their opposition to the Council of Edinburgh. In turn, the council, led by the burgh's merchants, decided to summon representatives of the other royal burghs for the express purpose of presenting their reasons for opposing the creation of the company.Footnote 40 It is unclear when this meeting took place, but on 7 May a protest against the intended company was made to the Privy Council in the name of all the royal burghs.Footnote 41 This protest, however, did not prevent the patent from being granted with the endorsement of the Privy Council seventeen days later.Footnote 42 This series of events raises many questions: Why did the merchants oppose the creation of the company? Why was the company created despite this opposition? How could a Scottish trading company proceed without the support of Scottish merchants?
The merchant-burgesses opposed the creation of the Scottish East India Company on the grounds that its privileges would infringe upon theirs and, in particular, ran counter to the monopoly that the royal burghs held on Scotland's foreign trade. This monopoly was the result of a series of privileges granted by Parliament and the crown beginning in the middle of the fifteenth century.Footnote 43 The most recent confirmation of these privileges before the company was created was a 1607 act of Parliament that stipulated that only “burgeses inhabitantis of his majesties royall burrowes” could buy and sell merchandise in Scotland. It also confirmed earlier requirements that all ships make port in the royal burghs to buy and sell merchandise.Footnote 44 The act resulted in a situation in which only merchant-burgesses of the royal burghs could lawfully partake in foreign trade, and they were allowed to do so only to and from those burghs. These requirements would be circumvented by the proposed company, which would not require that members be burgesses or that foreign trade be conducted to and from the royal burghs. Additionally, the burgesses understood that the company was to hold a monopoly on trade with the East Indies and Muscovy. They were unwilling to accept an arrangement requiring them to join a proprietary company to be allowed to trade in certain regions. In their view, becoming a burgess or guild-brother in a royal burgh already conferred the right to trade overseas in line with the rules of the Convention of Royal Burghs.Footnote 45
Furthermore, the Convention of Royal Burghs broadly opposed the increased number of royal licenses being granted for commercial projects under James VI and I. Those operating under royal licenses were not subject to the rules of the royal burghs, which the convention viewed as a threat to their trades and ability to organize and control the commercial activity of Scotland. Because the body did not have the power to pass binding legislation relating to trade, but only to create rules that burgesses were expected to follow, it had to rely on Parliament and the crown for support.Footnote 46 Thus, it was competing with those seeking royal licenses for the support of the crown. As Alan MacDonald has pointed out, the fact that the royal burghs possessed a monopoly on foreign trade by act of Parliament did not give them the power to pursue legal action against those with royal licenses. Those licenses were granted “under the royal prerogative as part of the system of patronage, one reason why landlords, with their court connections, were better placed to obtain them than merchants.”Footnote 47
By 1617, the Edinburgh burgesses were becoming exasperated with the king for not consulting with them before granting patents. This discontent was part of a larger trend resulting from the burgesses’ limited access to the patronage networks that connected the elite of Scotland with courtiers and the king after his move to London in 1603.Footnote 48 As noted above, Cunningham was part of such a network and had access to the king. Furthermore, the Scottish East India Company intended to trade outside of Europe and therefore would not directly infringe upon the established trades of Scottish merchants. Thus, even though the burgesses continued to oppose the company after their protests failed to prevent it from being created, the king viewed the extension of Scottish commerce to new regions as beneficial to the kingdom; he suggested that it would result in economic benefits like those that took place in England after the establishment of long-distance trading companies in that kingdom.Footnote 49 The idea that the company's patent “rather tend[ed] to the prejudice of the saids trafficquers than to anye advantage” and therefore should “ceis and tak no farder effect” was superseded by the king's prerogative to grant licenses to those deemed worthy of his favor and for projects that he deemed good for the commonweal.Footnote 50 Cunningham had successfully leveraged his ability to access the king to circumvent the Convention of Royal Burghs on two fronts: he bypassed its opposition through his connections with courtiers and privy councilors, and he received trading privileges over which the body could not exert control.
However, there remains the question of why Cunningham, a member of the gentry with no known commercial experience, decided to pursue the creation of a trading company in the first place. One consideration must be the financial difficulties that he was experiencing by 1617. He had been forced to wadset (mortgage) most of his Scottish lands to his creditors between 1610 and 1613 and was the subject of several complaints of unpaid debts in the following years.Footnote 51 His financial situation remained precarious in 1617 as he was pursued for failing to pay what was owed from him in his role as cautioner for several unpaid debts.Footnote 52 It was also in 1617 that he mortgaged to Alexander some of his Irish lands.Footnote 53 He was never able to overcome these financial problems, as his debts continued to increase, and even the sale of most of his Irish lands failed to prevent his widow from being left destitute upon his death.Footnote 54 On the one hand, his poor financial situation would have made the undertaking of a large project like the establishment of a trading company difficult. On the other, it would have provided a strong incentive for him to pursue a potentially lucrative commercial project.
There are several possible explanations for why he chose to pursue overseas enterprise to rectify his financial situation. One comes from his kinsmen's involvement in similar ventures; according to Steve Murdoch, “the Cunningham family had a particularly strong association with the East Indies.” The most relevant of these associations was that of William Cunningham, who worked in the East Indies from 1612 to 1623 in the employ of the Dutch East India Company.Footnote 55 His brother and father, both named Thomas Cunningham, served as factors for Scottish merchants at the staple port of Veere in the Dutch province of Zeeland. These Cunninghams were close kinsmen to James Cunningham. They were descendants of the laird of Glengarnock, and the elder Thomas Cunningham had served William Cunningham, 5th Earl of Glencairn, before becoming the first of the family to settle in Veere. Their association with Glengarnock was exemplified by the younger Thomas Cunningham, who commissioned a stained-glass window depicting the coat of arms of that barony for his house in Veere.Footnote 56 Although there is no direct evidence beyond the family connection linking James Cunningham of Glengarnock with the Cunninghams in Veere, it is plausible that there was communication between them. This is particularly relevant in light of a statement by the Muscovy Company employee Thomas Edge, who referred to the Scottish East India Company as “a new Company commixt of English, Scottish and Zelanders.”Footnote 57 The Veere Cunninghams were based in Zeeland and could have used their commercial connections to find Dutch support for the company.
Further, an increasing number of Scottish nobles developed “entrepreneurial attitudes towards generating income” in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.Footnote 58 A new opportunity open to these entrepreneurial-minded nobles after 1603 was participation in English overseas ventures. A partial list of Scots who became involved in this area of economic activity includes Thomas Erskine, 1st Earl of Kellie (Northwest Passage and East Indies); Ludovick Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox (Northwest Passage, New England, and the Amazon); James Stewart, 4th Duke of Lennox (New England); William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling (Newfoundland and New England); James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle (Virginia, West Indies, Guiana, and New England); James Hamilton, 2nd Marquess of Hamilton (Bermuda, Virginia, and the Amazon); James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton (Newfoundland, New England, West Indies, and East Indies); and John Ramsay, 1st Earl of Holderness (New England).Footnote 59 While there were differences in each of these men's circumstances and motivations, something they all had in common was access to the king and the London business world.
Of those listed above, the Earl of Kellie (as Viscount of Fenton) and the Duke of Lennox became involved in the Northwest Passage Company prior to the founding of the Scottish East India Company.Footnote 60 The involvement of James Hamilton, 2nd Marquess of Hamilton, in the Bermuda Company may also have predated the founding of the company.Footnote 61 Notably, Hamilton—a prominent courtier—had a connection with Cunningham, having, like him, married one of the daughters of the Earl of Glencairn.Footnote 62 These Scots had taken advantage of their positions in London to invest in a new type of commercial venture that did not yet exist in Scotland. It is plausible that Cunningham saw this example and decided to go one step farther by creating a legally Scottish trading company.
The Organization and Activity of the Company: A Scottish Patent and the London Business World
After receiving his patent, Cunningham traveled to London to raise capital for the company and organize its first expedition. While the fact that he was opposed by the Convention of Royal Burghs does not necessarily mean he did not want or was not able to recruit merchants in Scotland, there is no evidence that he did so.Footnote 63 The only people who can be identified as possible investors were based in London, as was the only person other than Cunningham who can definitively be identified as a member of the Scottish East India Company. The definitively identifiable member was the English-born Flemish merchant Lucas Corsellis, who served as the company's treasurer.Footnote 64 He must have been a prominent member of the Dutch community in England as he was the feoffee of the English estate of Noel de Caron, the ambassador of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.Footnote 65 The involvement of Corsellis in the company, both in his own right and in relation to his connection with Caron, provides an alternative or supplementary explanation for the Dutch involvement in the project.
English East India Company court minutes indicate that the Scottish courtier Thomas Dishington, the Dutch merchant Isaac Le Maire, and two other patentees for a southwest passage to the East Indies offered to partner with the Scottish East India Company, but this offer was rejected, and these men were not members of the company.Footnote 66 The records also mention that the Scottish East India Company consulted with the English naval officer Richard Hawkins about this passage to the East Indies, but there is no direct evidence of Hawkins's involvement in the company either.Footnote 67 It is also claimed in English East India Company records that Hildebrand Pruson—a London salter, naval supplier, and member of the Eastland Company—had “joyned w[i]th S[i]r James Cunningham.”Footnote 68 However, this claim was made during an acrimonious dispute that saw many accusations made against Pruson and cannot be verified.
While it is not possible to identify definitively any members other than Cunningham and Corsellis, there certainly were more.Footnote 69 Cunningham obtained the patent and was heavily involved in the preparations for the company's voyage planned for 1618, but due to his financial situation, the capital to fund the voyage must have come from others. Indeed, a critical examination of the records relating to Cunningham's financial difficulties provides some insight into how capital may have been raised for the company. An unsigned petition written by members of the Scottish East India Company other than Cunningham explained that they had “advanced the said Sir James [Cunningham] with divers somes of mony as by their accomptes may appeare & divers of them are bound for him & arrested and sued for the same.”Footnote 70 The question of who lent money or became bound to Cunningham in 1617 and 1618 can be answered in part by petitions submitted to the House of Lords by his creditors after his death in 1623. A portion of these suggests that Cunningham was attending court in London in 1617 and 1618, and they offer a few names of possible investors in the company.
A petition submitted in 1624 claimed that a group of nine people had provided Cunningham with food, lodging, clothing, and money amounting to a total of £300.Footnote 71 A later petition by one of the nine petitioners dated these transactions to 1618 and made it clear that they took place in London, as the petitioner was the royal tailor Patrick Black.Footnote 72 The idea that Cunningham was seeking investors at court in London in 1617 and 1618 gains traction in light of another petition, that of John Sharp, an usher of the king's bedchamber. Sharp claimed that Cunningham owed him £26 for “meat drink and lodging, and money lent.”Footnote 73 That a member of the king's bedchamber was providing Cunningham with accommodation implies that he was residing in London and making court connections at the time. This timing would also explain a bill about the Scottish East India Company that was made public in the Royal Exchange in early 1618.Footnote 74 The nature of Sharp's petition makes it unlikely that it had anything to do with his investing in the company. Black, however, claimed that Cunningham “did enter into bond to yor peticoner for the payment of the some of 8 or 9 score poundes.” No further information is given about this payment, but as it took place in 1618, it was possibly related to preparations for the company's planned whaling voyage that year. Black, like many of the petitioners, expressed awareness of the company and, interestingly, asked “that he may be paid next after the Scottish East India company are satisfied.”Footnote 75 The 1626 petition of Piers Crosby and Peter Bradshaw more clearly pertained to the company. In it they explained that they “became bound at the instance of Sir James Cunningham Knight for the payment of £105 unto Sir James Cambell Knight and allso of £105 more unto Roger Bayly being for the debt of the sayd Sir James, and towardes the furnishing of his voyage to Greeneland.”Footnote 76 A similar petition named William Bronkard (Brouncker) as a creditor of Cunningham.Footnote 77
Further evidence suggests that James Cambell, an English-born Scot who became a prominent and wealthy London merchant, was an investor in the Scottish East India Company. First, his overall career included investment and involvement in many overseas ventures: the French Company, the Spanish Company, the Merchants of the Staple, the Eastland Company, and the English East India Company.Footnote 78 Second, and more significant, he was married to Rachel Corsellis, a sister of the Scottish East India Company's treasurer, Lucas Corsellis.Footnote 79 The strength of this connection is evidenced by Cambell's will, which stipulated that £2,000 be left to Lucas Corsellis's daughter Rachel and £1,000 to his son Lucas.Footnote 80 The fact that Cambell was the brother-in-law of the Scottish East India Company's treasurer suggests that the money he provided to Cunningham in 1617 or 1618 was an investment in the company.
This evidence, however, links directly only Roger Bayly and James Cambell to financing the company's planned whaling expedition, and only for £105 each. This combined sum is a long way from the £6,200 that Cunningham claimed had been spent in preparation for the expedition. Bearing in mind that unnamed members of the company were described as having advanced money to Cunningham—being “bound for him & arrested and sued for the same”—it is likely that some of the others listed in the petitions were also investors.Footnote 81 The reason that additional petitions explicitly linking investors to the company were not made may be that most investors were compensated from the £5,000 with which the Muscovy Company indemnified the company shortly after its patent was rescinded.Footnote 82 Only those who were seeking money from the additional £924 owed to Cunningham had a need to petition the House of Lords after his death.Footnote 83 Furthermore, the petition made on the company's behalf in 1624 was presumably made by such investors, though they were not named.Footnote 84
While it appears that most of the capital for the Scottish East India Company was raised in London, the lack of definitive evidence relating to the investors leaves open the possibility that many were Dutch. The involvement of Lucas Corsellis, the possible connection with the Veere Cunninghams, the fact that Isaac Le Maire attempted to partner with the company, and Thomas Edge's description of the company as “commixt of English, Scottish and Zelanders” all lend weight to this idea.Footnote 85 Dominico Bowens, who appears to have been a merchant from the Low Countries, was also employed by the company.Footnote 86 Motivation for Dutch merchants to invest in the company could have been galvanized by the decision made by the English East India Company in 1615 to no longer allow foreigners (with specific reference to the Dutch) to join the company on the same terms as Englishmen.Footnote 87 Taking these factors into consideration, the possibility of greater Dutch involvement in the Scottish East India Company than has been uncovered here cannot be dismissed.Footnote 88
Regardless of the nationality of the investors, Cunningham's turn to London for investment in the Scottish East India Company resulted from a combination of factors. There were push factors in Scotland (the opposition of the Council of Edinburgh and Convention of Royal Burghs) and pull factors in London (access to court, the availability of capital, and experience in long-distance commerce). During his time in London, Cunningham was able to recruit investors and, through the help of fellow Scots like Patrick Black and James Cambell, begin to integrate himself into the London business world. These efforts can be viewed as part of an ongoing process of Scottish integration into that world. After all, it was not only members of the royal bedchamber who followed James VI and I to London in 1603 and subsequent years. Scots from all walks of life came seeking opportunities in England.Footnote 89 Beyond courtiers, some Scottish professionals and merchants were beginning to access the opportunities in London in the later part of James's reign and into the reign of Charles I. They often did so with the help of fellow Scots who had preceded them and established themselves in the city.
A worthwhile example comes from the reign of Charles I, when a group of Scots founded the Company of Beaver-Makers in London in 1638. Led by the courtier David Cunningham of Auchenharvie, this group also included, among others, a Scottish merchant operating from London, David Muirhead, and a Scottish lawyer and historian residing in London, Robert Johnston.Footnote 90 Muirhead is also notable for being one of the first Scottish merchants to trade with mainland North America—a trade he was able to access because of his position in London and his connections with experienced London merchants like William Cloberry.Footnote 91 Similarly, Cunningham sought those experienced in whaling during his time in London, as it was that trade that the Scottish East India Company first decided to pursue.
The company's preparations for a 1618 whaling voyage are important for several reasons: they confirm that Cunningham made serious efforts to send out whaling vessels, that the Muscovy Company was reacting to a tangible threat, and that the company was operating from England. The company's patent was granted too late for it to be able to participate in the 1617 whaling season at Spitsbergen, but Cunningham quickly began preparing for a 1618 voyage.Footnote 92 A 1624 petition submitted to the House of Lords by the cooper Thomas Northen provides a glimpse into the preparations that were undertaken. In it Northen explained that he was “employed by Sir James Cunningham his company in ano 1617 to furnish and put aboord at that time in one of the said companies shipps bound for Greenland 17 tonnes and a half of caskes.”Footnote 93 In 1618, the English Privy Council reported that Cunningham “erected and established a company heere in England composed of diverse persons, as well as his Majesty's subjects of England and Scotland, as strangers, and had provided diverse shippes this yeare in this kingdome, and namely in the port of London, to fishe whale in Greenland.”Footnote 94 While the exact number or size of the ships the company was planning to send out in 1618 is not known, these accounts make it clear that more than one vessel was being prepared. This intention is also demonstrated by the fact that Spitsbergen whaling vessels carried one to six shallops (the boats used in the actual whale hunting) in the early seventeenth century and Cunningham had acquired nine shallops by the time he was ordered to desist in his preparations.Footnote 95 These were built by four shallop makers commissioned by the company. The company also commissioned one or two blacksmiths, a stiller, four coopers, and at least one rope maker, who supplied aquavitae, casks, staves, rope, lances, harpoons, and other ironworks for the voyage.Footnote 96
In addition to provisioning ships with shallops and supplies, the company had taken the important step of hiring Basque whalers.Footnote 97 The Basque had a history of whaling in the Bay of Biscay dating to the eleventh century and possessed expertise that other Europeans lacked when they began to develop their own whaling trades in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.Footnote 98 The Muscovy Company (which started consistent whaling operations in 1611), the Dutch (who started whaling at Spitsbergen in 1612), and the Danish (who had joined the whaling at Spitsbergen by 1617) all hired Basque whalers to teach them the required hunting, flensing, and blubber-boiling techniques.Footnote 99 While at least one Scot had served on a Dutch whaling vessel at Spitsbergen and there had been one Scottish whaling voyage in 1616, there would have been very little whaling expertise in Scotland at this time.Footnote 100 Hiring Basque whalers, however, would have required some knowledge of the trade and the necessary contacts. The Muscovy Company had an agent in Biscay, Nathaniel Wright, who hired the Basque whalers needed to undertake that company's whaling ventures.Footnote 101 When a Danish whaling company was formed in Copenhagen around the same time the Scottish East India Company was created, one of its first tasks was to travel to Biscay to hire whalers—a task only completed with considerable difficulty.Footnote 102 The Scottish East India Company would have needed to either send an agent to hire Basque whalers or tap into the network used by the Muscovy Company. Either could have been the case. It was noted in an account of the company's expenses that it had paid for “certaine Biskeyners all their charges” while hiring them, which could mean that it was required to pay charges for the Basque whalers to be granted permission to leave their homeland (a difficulty encountered by the Danish).Footnote 103 They could have also been hired through Muscovy Company channels in England, possibly by Muscovy Company defectors.Footnote 104 This inference is consistent with Thomas Edge's suggestion that previous Muscovy Company employees were hired by the Scottish company.Footnote 105
The fact that the Scottish East India Company had acquired ships and supplies and hired Basque whalers demonstrates that it had serious intentions to join the increasingly competitive whaling at Spitsbergen. The Muscovy Company was thus reacting to a tangible threat when it pursued the repeal of the company's patent. The further fact that the Scottish company was operating in England would have exacerbated the concerns of both the Muscovy Company and the English East India Company about competition and provided grounds for questioning the legality of the venture since both their patents granted them monopolies on their respective trades among the king's English subjects.
Interestingly, the English involvement in the Scottish East India Company was specifically allowed by the terms of the company's patent, which stated that the company could “recruit and engage with them from whichever nation they desire.”Footnote 106 Likewise, a later summary of the patent stated that Cunningham had authority “to appoint name and hoyst so many of his majestes loyall subjecttis within anie of his kingdoms of Scotland England or Ireland or uther strangeris quhatsumevir as they shall think are convenient number for the tred and trafiq for ye said realme of Scotland” and “to set furth schippis or veschellis out of anie poirt harbry or hevin within or belonging to any of his majestes kingdoms.”Footnote 107 That this authority was made explicit in the patent seems to indicate anticipation that the company would need to look beyond Scotland for investment and expertise. It is also feasible that the terms of the patent had the express purpose of attracting English and foreign merchants who were excluded from existing trading companies. The opposition that this attempt to attract English involvement drew from the English East India Company and Muscovy Company is discussed below.
As mentioned, the Scottish East India Company's patent granted the right to trade not only in the East Indies but also in Muscovy, Spitsbergen, and the Levant. Though the rights of the company were otherwise modeled on those granted to the English East India Company, this difference was significant. The English East India Company and all other English trading companies were defined by “geographical monopolies.”Footnote 108 Why, then, was the Scottish company granted such broad geographical privileges? As Scottish trade outside of Europe was extremely limited at this time, it could have been viewed as a way to organize the kingdom's commercial expansion in general.Footnote 109 This interpretation is consistent with the royal letter explaining why James VI and I supported the creation of the company. He stated that he did so because he had “found by experience the greate good that ariseth to this our kingdome spetially importing the advancement of Navigacon, by reason of some companyes erected for traffiquing in the East Indies Greeneland Muscovia and such like remote places, where fewe or none would adventure to travill, before theis companyes, were established.”Footnote 110 The broad geographical privileges granted to the Scottish East India Company had the potential to undercut the ambitions of other Scots interested in founding trading companies, but this risk was mitigated against by a clause in the patent stipulating that the privileges would be reassessed after three years. At that time, they were to be renewed, decreased, or ended.Footnote 111
Another unique organizational feature of the Scottish East India Company was its proprietary structure. Unlike in contemporary trading companies in England, authority in the Scottish East India Company was concentrated in the hands of an individual and was hereditary.Footnote 112 While the company appears to have operated in a way similar to a traditional commercial partnership that allowed the pooling of resources to diffuse risk and raise capital, all authority was granted to Cunningham and his heirs.Footnote 113 This type of grant subsequently came to the fore in the colonial sphere, first in the case of William Alexander's Nova Scotia charter in 1621, and then by proprietary grants to the Caribbean islands, most significantly that in 1627 to another Scot, James Hay, Earl of Carlisle. Whereas Cunningham's and Alexander's grants were made under the Great Seal of Scotland, Hay's case demonstrates that in the period following the regal union, a Scot could receive a colonial grant under the Great Seal of England.Footnote 114 Esther Mijers has argued that Alexander's Nova Scotia charter provided a model of “aristocratic proprietorship” for colonies throughout the seventeenth century;Footnote 115 perhaps Alexander had been influenced by the Scottish East India Company's patent. Additionally, the examples of the Scottish East India Company, Nova Scotia, and Hay's Caribbean venture stand out for being founded by individual Scottish gentlemen with no preestablished partnership with merchants. In contrast, most colonial and commercial ventures in England were constituted of nobles and merchants, which could go some way in explaining why the Scottish grants created “aristocratic proprietorships.”Footnote 116
The Dissolution of the Company: Influence, Jurisdiction, and Sovereignty during the Union of the Crowns
The structure of the Scottish East India Company cannot be examined further because it was not allowed to develop after March 1618, when the company was ordered to desist in its operations by the English Privy Council and the king. The order was at the insistence of the English East India Company and Muscovy Company. Cunningham was to release the Scottish East India Company's patent, and, after a subcommittee investigation, the Muscovy Company was to compensate him and his partners for the amount expended on their now-prohibited whaling voyage.Footnote 117 The Muscovy Company initially purchased the “provisions that were serviceable for their use” from the Scottish East India Company for approximately £5,000, but the report of the subcommittee began a decade-long debate over additional compensation.Footnote 118 Two related informal concessions were also made by the English East India Company and the Muscovy Company in response to the release of the Scottish company's patent: a partial merger of the two companies, intended to strengthen the English position in Spitsbergen and Muscovy, and a loan of 100,000 rubles (approximately £60,000) to be provided by the united companies to Tsar Mikhail I.Footnote 119
The payment to the Scottish East India Company and these concessions proved to be highly damaging to the Muscovy Company. The company complained that most of the provisions purchased from the Scottish East India Company were of no use and not worth the “great trouble and cost.”Footnote 120 Additionally, it attributed the failure of its 1618 whaling season in part to delays caused by its negotiations with Cunningham. The other reason the company gave for this failure was Dutch aggression, including an attack in which two Muscovy Company ships were plundered and at least one Englishman was killed.Footnote 121 The company partly attributed this attack to the Scottish East India Company as well. Thomas Edge believed that it was “to revenge the injurie (as they termed it) done them the yeere before: and for that the Scottish Patent was dissolved; wherein many Flemmings were to be interested.”Footnote 122 And though there were potential benefits to both the English East India Company and Muscovy Company to be found in the merger and the granting of a loan to the tsar, both endeavors ended poorly and contributed to the collapse of the “old” Muscovy Company.Footnote 123
Mishra has provided further details of opposition of the English East India Company and Muscovy Company to the Scottish East India Company, the sequence of events leading to the decision that its patent be released, and some of the consequences of that process.Footnote 124 Rather than repeat that account, this article focuses on the aspects that raise questions about Anglo-Scottish relations during the union of the crowns. A key date is 15 March 1618, when the English Privy Council, endorsed by the king, declared that the Scottish East India Company patent was to be released because it was “neyther in forme, nor in ye execution warrantable by lawe.”Footnote 125 This extraordinary event of an English institution declaring a patent granted under the Great Seal of Scotland to be invalid raises questions about English and Scottish jurisdiction and sovereignty in James VI and I's multiple kingdoms.
An important element of this discussion is whether it was legal for the king's English subjects to join the Scottish East India Company and whether it was legal for the company to operate in England. John Chamberlain broached the topic in January 1618, when he wrote that “yt seemed to me most strange that not only Scots, but English or any other stranger may be admitted into this societie, and yet yt must be called and accounted the Scottish Companie, with a number of other large privileges, which do directly infringe former graunts, and crosse the whole course of our trafficke.”Footnote 126 As has been shown, there was indeed English involvement in the Scottish East India Company, and Thomas Edge's description of the company as “commixt of English, Scottish and Zelanders” had merit.Footnote 127 The English East India Company had grounds for protest based on its renewed patent of 1609, which forbade Englishmen who were not members of the company to trade in the East Indies.Footnote 128 Likewise, in 1613, the privileges of the Muscovy Company had been confirmed and the company had been granted exclusive rights to the Spitsbergen whale fishery.Footnote 129
The English East India Company saw its English trading monopoly in the East Indies contested (or infringed upon) by Edward Michelborne in 1604 and Richard Penkevell in 1607; likewise, the Muscovy Company contended with English competitors (or interlopers) in Spitsbergen in the 1610s.Footnote 130 Furthermore, both English companies were in the midst of increasingly intense and violent competition with the Dutch. Rising tensions between the English East India Company and Dutch East India Company resulted in open conflict between the two in 1616.Footnote 131 Meanwhile, the Muscovy Company was in conflict with the Dutch Noordsche Compagnie over whaling at Spitsbergen.Footnote 132 It was in this context of competition and rivalry that the Scottish East India Company was created, and thus it elicited strong reactions from the English East India Company and Muscovy Company, both particularly sensitive to threats to their trades at this time.Footnote 133 As were their disputes with English rivals, the disputes of the English East India Company and Muscovy Company with the Scottish East India Company were adjudicated by the English Privy Council. The council did not possess the power to reprimand a company created under the Great Seal of Scotland, but by gaining its support, the English companies were able to gain the king's support.
In their remonstrances to the council, the English companies framed their opposition to the Scottish company in terms of their monopoly rights and the importance to the kingdom of their trades, which, they claimed, would be completely overthrown if the company was allowed to infringe upon their privileges.Footnote 134 The 1609 English East India Company patent, for example, included a declaration from the king that the East Indies “shall not be visited, frequented or haunted, by any of the Subjects of Us” who were not members of or licensed by the English East India Company.Footnote 135 If this statement were to be taken literally, “Subjects of Us” would include the king's Scottish subjects. However, with the patent being granted under the Great Seal of England, it would have been understood to be applicable only to the king's English subjects. Nonetheless, this idea was complicated by the union of the crowns. For example, Cunningham had been endenizened in England in 1610, when he was granted his lands in Ulster.Footnote 136 Could he therefore be accounted an English subject obligated to follow the regulations articulated in the English East India Company patent? What about the royal tailor Patrick Black, permanently residing in London yet neither naturalized nor endenizened in England at the time?Footnote 137 Furthermore, what about Scots born after the regal union, who, according to the ruling in Calvin's Case, were to be considered subjects in England?Footnote 138 In what ways would their involvement in overseas enterprise be affected by English monopolies?
The details of the debates that took place about the Scottish East India Company in early 1618 are unknown, and therefore it is not possible to know whether these types of questions were considered. However, it is known that questions relating to English versus Scottish jurisdiction came up after the company's patent was ordered to be released and in subsequent Scottish ventures. One of the most explicit articulations of the issue came from English merchants circa 1633. These merchants argued that they had the right to trade in Canada regardless of William Alexander's charter that granted him privileges in Nova Scotia and the St. Lawrence River Valley, because that “Grant is under the great seale of Scotland, and so wee conceive that cannot debarre us that are English.” They went on to say that Alexander “will not suffer us to plant there for support of our trade unlesse wee take a comission, from the Scottish patent, w[hi]ch wee conceive would bee dishonourable to the English and wee are informed that their patent is of no validity here in England.”Footnote 139
A related concern about the Scottish East India Company was expressed by the Muscovy Company when it suggested to the House of Lords circa 1618 that Cunningham had “done the state some wrong by putting in execution in England a patent granted under the broade Seale of Scotland.”Footnote 140 The English Privy Council dealt with a similar situation in 1627, when the Scottish entrepreneur Nathaniel Udwart licensed Englishmen in Yarmouth to whale in Spitsbergen under the auspices of his Scottish patent. After the Muscovy Company protested, the council ruled that because the Yarmouth men were English, they were not allowed to be involved in that trade without the permission of the company. While it “thought not fitt to enter into question touching the validitie of the said patent,” it “dislyked the course taken under colour of a patent procured under the greate seale of Scotland to use Englishe subjects, English shipps, and all other provisions here.”Footnote 141 The English Privy Council had no authority over the Scottish patent, but it did have authority over the Englishmen who were ignoring the Muscovy Company's monopoly. This was the same in the case of the Scottish East India Company in 1618, but in that instance the king had become involved and took the additional step of using his prerogative to order the release of the patent.
All legal and jurisdictional questions were not, however, put to rest by the king's order, as is evidenced by the English companies’ concerns that Cunningham would continue to make use of his patent.Footnote 142 The reason for these concerns was that “Sir James Cunningham hathe given out that a Duplicate of his Pattent being inrolled in Scotland though he make a Release of his Pattent here is as good as the Pattent itself, And the companies councell tells them, that his Release of that Pattent here [in England] is not good in Lawe.”Footnote 143 Cunningham had in fact delivered “his patent unto his Majesty's hands”Footnote 144 at Whitehall, but exactly what this action meant in legal terms was not clear. It appears that he believed he could continue to operate his company. The English East India Company and Muscovy Company seemingly agreed, as they concluded that Cunningham's release of his patent in England was not legally binding because it had been granted in Scotland.Footnote 145 Indeed, the solicitor-general, Thomas Coventry (later Baron Coventry), had informed the English East India Company that Cunningham could “make noe sufficient release by the lawe of England to disannull a grant made in Scotland.”Footnote 146 There is no evidence that James VI and I ever sent orders to the Scottish Privy Council or Chancery about the annulment of the Scottish East India Company's patent, and, although he did assure the English companies that the patent would not harm them, it appeared possible that the company could continue to exist through 1619.Footnote 147 In that year the king reached an agreement with the Dutch not to establish any new East India companies and specifically mentioned he would ratify the agreement as king of England “in order to do no injury to his Scottish subjects.”Footnote 148 The wording suggests that he was still thinking of the Scottish East India Company and the possibility of separate East India companies in England and Scotland. Also in 1619, English East India Company agents reported that Cunningham “reste[d] in hope to have his pattent … stand good and effectuall notw[i]thstanding all that hath bene hetherto done to disannul it.”Footnote 149 This report, however, is the last available evidence relating to discussions about the Scottish East India Company continuing to operate.
The brief existence of the Scottish East India Company raised the question of how a conflict between a company holding its privileges from the Scottish crown and a company holding its privileges from the English crown could be adjudicated. In theory, the fact that a “perfect” union between the two kingdoms was rejected in 1607 meant that each kingdom retained its distinct sovereignty and therefore the existence of companies in each kingdom with overlapping monopolies was not a legal issue.Footnote 150 This theory, however, was seriously complicated by the fact that the kingdoms shared a monarch who, first, had the power to grant and rescind such privileges in each kingdom, and second, could be petitioned and lobbied by interest groups from each kingdom. The first point brings to light that, in matters of the royal prerogative, there was no inviolable sovereignty in Scotland (or England) separate from the monarch. This was the view of the Stuarts and many contemporaries: that sovereignty was intrinsically tied to the person of the monarch.Footnote 151 A problem, however, arose from the second point, when the king was lobbied by powerful interests in another of his kingdoms.
In the case of the Scottish East India Company, lobbying resulted in an act of king-in-council ordering Cunningham to release his patent, but it was the king with the support of his English Privy Council ruling on a patent endorsed by his Scottish Privy Council and granted under the Great Seal of Scotland. While this distinction may not have been an issue in the king's conception of sovereignty, it was questioned by others. Even though Cunningham, the English East India Company, and the Muscovy Company recognized that their patents depended on royal authority, they all concluded that the release of the Scottish East India Company's patent to the king in England was not binding. That view, unlike the king's conception, saw the king's sovereignty as bound to the institutions of law and government in his kingdoms.Footnote 152 Thus, although it was the king's prerogative to order the release of the patent, it had to be ordered through the proper legal channels in Scotland because it had been granted under the Great Seal of Scotland.
Regardless of legal theory, the English East India Company and Muscovy Company had wielded enough influence to persuade the king to recall the Scottish East India Company patent less than a year after it was granted, and the official activity of the company stopped at that point. Their case was strengthened by the fact the company's patent, despite being granted under the Great Seal of Scotland and therefore subject to Scottish rather than English law, conflicted with the patents of the English companies. The confusion that arose from the release of the patent and whether doing so in England was legally binding is a demonstration of the confusion that could be caused by distinct legal systems and commercial policies existing in two kingdoms ruled by a single monarch. Following Andrew Nicholls's argument, one can see that the Stuart monarchs can be identified as a cause of this problem by using their prerogative to grant overlapping trading privileges in England and Scotland, but also that the royal prerogative could be the only solution to these problems. Without a newly formed “British” institution such as the Anglo-Scottish border commission created in 1605, commercial issues that crossed jurisdictional lines between England and Scotland could only be decided by the shared monarch.Footnote 153
Conclusion
The Scottish East India Company was the first long-distance trading or colonizing company created under the Great Seal of Scotland. On one hand, it is difficult to view it as a national project because it was opposed by the Convention of Royal Burghs, and there is little evidence of Scottish investment. On the other, its legal status and the support it received from the Scottish Privy Council demonstrate that it did have national significance. The opposition from the convention also speaks to its national significance. The Scottish East India Company challenged the traditional mode of controlling trade in Scotland and, though it was not the first to do so, it was the first to bring the issue of extra-European trade to the fore. This challenge was made possible by Cunningham's connections, which allowed him access to the king at a time when the royal burghs were struggling to maintain some semblance of the connection they formerly had with the king when he resided in Edinburgh. This and other types of challenges to the Convention of Royal Burghs’ control of trade would be repeated throughout the seventeenth century, and the royal burghs officially lost their monopoly on Scotland's foreign trade in 1672. That outcome has been attributed to a “clash of interests” between the royal burghs and the gentryFootnote 154—a clash that was exemplified by the Scottish East India Company in 1617.
Moving beyond Scotland, one can see that the union of the crowns created a unique situation that rendered competition between interests operating under the Scottish crown and those operating under the English crown different from competition with the Dutch, French, Spanish, and other European states. Scots interested in becoming involved in overseas ventures could attempt to join existing projects in England, found new projects under the Great Seal of England, or found new projects under the Great Seal of Scotland. The first two avenues were not feasible prior to the union of the crowns, and the likelihood of the third was increased by the union. These options demonstrate that there were new opportunities for Scots to become involved in overseas ventures. They also demonstrate that there were new opportunities for cooperation between interest groups in England and Scotland, as is evident in the example of the Scottish East India Company, as Cunningham looked to London for investors and expertise. At the same time, there was a unique dynamic for rivalry as there already existed companies in England that held monopoly rights to the same regions as did the Scottish company.
Cunningham was able to leverage his connections to bypass the Convention of Royal Burghs in Scotland and was able to penetrate the London business world in search of investors and employees. These successes, however, were not enough to ensure the survival of the company. His efforts enabled him to circumvent the convention, but he did not possess the wherewithal to overcome the opposition of the English East India Company and Muscovy Company. The episode demonstrates the key role played by the monarch when English and Scottish patents came into conflict. The granting and withdrawing of such patents fell under the royal prerogative, and therefore those seeking or defending those patents were inherently in need of royal support. The requirement created a system of competing patronage networks that crossed borders in which different interest groups vied for royal patronage and those with the most influence with the king received support at the expense of others.
Regardless of the national or non-national lines on which these groups formed, questions of English versus Scottish jurisdiction and sovereignty were inherent in cases where patents under the great seals of the different kingdoms came into conflict. How could these conflicts be adjudicated when the English and Scottish legal systems remained separate? Unlike issues limited to one kingdom, the privy councils of England and Scotland lacked the power to make binding decisions in these cases, as they had no authority in the other kingdom. Therefore, it was necessary for the king—as holder of the royal prerogative in both kingdoms—to become directly involved.
In this light, the founding and dissolution of the Scottish East India Company can be viewed as part of a multitiered power struggle over the control of trade and the means by which that control was acquired and maintained in and between the Stuart kingdoms. Due to changes created by the regal union, Sir James Cunningham of Glengarnock was able to found the Scottish East India Company and challenge the institutions controlling trade in both Scotland and England.
