The purpose of this chapter is to explore the influence of lawyers and the law on the development of Scottish political thought at the time of the union of the crowns. This subject has not received a great deal of attention from historians. One reason for this is that very few lawyers appear to have engaged in political discourse at this time, a situation which in turn may be attributed to the relatively small size of the Scottish legal profession. A second reason, closely related to the first, is that very little Scottish political thought, regardless of its authorship, appears to bear much of a juristic character. This situation stands in contrast to continental European political thought, which was profoundly influenced by the study of Roman law long before the turn of the seventeenth century. It also stands in contrast to English political thought, which reflected the growing dominance of the common-law frame of mind during the Tudor and early Stuart periods. John Pocock has suggested that in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the study of civil jurisprudence may have been a major influence on the political thought of Scotsmen. But the study of legal influences on political thinking in the early seventeenth century has only barely begun.

Despite the apparent poverty of the sources, there is enough material available upon which such an investigation can proceed. The basis of it is a substantial number of treatises that were written by Scots during the first two years following the personal union.