This collection of essays has its origins in a seminar held under the auspices of the Folger Institute Center for the History of British Political Thought at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, in the autumn of 1990. Taking as its main focus the union of the English and Scottish crowns in 1603, the seminar had three interrelated aims: to explore the range and character of political discourse in Scotland in the period from 1560 to 1650; to analyse the forms of union, federation and empire proposed and debated in contemporary political literature; and to investigate the problems of Scottish self-definition within a British context which the union of 1603 engendered. Over a twelve-week period, a series of distinguished scholars from Britain and North America presented papers addressing these issues. The result was not only a highly successful seminar, but the production of a remarkably coherent body of work which explored areas of Scottish political thought and culture which hitherto have received too little attention from historians. By publishing these papers in a single collection it is hoped to open up a comparatively neglected area of study to a much wider audience and to make a significant contribution to the ongoing process of remapping the history of early modern British political thought.

As published here, the seminar's proceedings fall naturally into four overlapping and interrelated sections. The chapters in Part I are in a sense introductory, providing as they do a broad overview of the background to and consequences of the union of the crowns in both its European and British contexts and highlighting the practical and ideological problems associated with multiple kingship in the early modern period.