However troubled they were by English captains’ violations, Scottish privy councillors continued to seek the commitment of more English naval resources to the defence of Scottish coasts. In this they proved to be not very successful. Instead, it has been suggested by Graham that Scotland was abandoned, left ‘responsible for her own naval policy’. This is an exaggeration; Scottish merchants used English convoys and Scottish sailors manned English ships. However, the demands of the levy rose while the provision of royal naval defence for Scottish trade did not, so the understanding of the Restoration years that these were two sides of one equation frayed, and so too did the Scottish view of trade being protected by a British system of naval security. A response was the first major programme of naval spending by the Scottish government since 1627 with, in 1695, Scotland's estates voting taxation specifically to support naval forces for the first time in the regal union. This development might seem very much in the spirit of aeque principaliter, each polity to its own, but Scotland's naval policy was not something that could be viewed in isolation, it fitted within the wider policy of the Stuart monarchy, just as not having a navy had a few decades earlier. Unions are not static; they are a relationship that changes and develops over time. Security circumstances changed and so how the composite monarchy would be defended had to as well.

Oppressive Levies

Before Captain Pottinger became entangled in the Navigation Acts he had written to Holyrood of his need for men. He was offered fifty but rejected eight as inexperienced landsmen. These came from the latest levy of Scottish seamen for the royal navy which sought to raise a thousand seamen. Doubling the numbers levied by Charles II's government made the promise of ‘protections onboard each of their ships to be free from pressure by any of his majesties men of warr or in any of his ports’ all the more important. Nevertheless, there has been some confusion over whether Scots could be pressed in these years. This derives from the tendency, seen throughout the age of sail, to press first and worry about legal niceties later.