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abstract: The union between England and Scotland, which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain, generated heated discussion both before and after the Acts of Union took effect on May 1, 1707. Members of Parliament, the nobility, clergymen, pamphleteers, and authors from both nations participated in debates on the Union, in many kinds of writing, for many years after 1707. The voices of British women, however, have not been sufficiently considered in our scholarship, and are often conspicuously absent from our accounts of these polemical wars, which were still raging in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This dissertation seeks to fill this gap in the academic conversation by taking Scottish, English, and British nationalisms as its theoretical paradigm in approaching writing by female authors. The dissertation's chapters examine how the Anglo-Scottish Union figures in the works by five women writers (Jane Austen, Cassandra Cooke, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Brunton, and Susan Ferrier) publishing from 1780 to 1820. I argue that, in the aftermath of the Union, these women writers often expressed specifically gendered concerns— such as the maintenance of social etiquette, better education for women, making sense of national prejudices, and the erasure of regional socio-economic differences. In doing so, they ranged beyond a typically masculine focus on parliamentary politics, international military endeavors, macro economy, and national churches. English women writers' attitudes towards the Union were more positive than those entertained by Scots authors, but compared with contemporary male writers, both sides were less optimistic about the potential for building a blanket national identity for the entire Kingdom. Taken together, the chapters of the dissertation provide a more comprehensive view of how the Anglo-Scottish Union figured in the minds of Britons, male and female, a century after its establishment, when the Kingdom was going through the Napoleonic Wars and another union with Ireland. The dissertation enriches our research on women's use of literary genres and techniques when taking part in political debates. It also serves to point out the need for more extensive surveys of the nuances of individual women writers' national affiliations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2016

This is a study of a local society and its interaction with central government observed through routine administrative systems. Although Northumberland has been the focus of detailed investigation during the late middle ages, a gap in scholarship remains for much of the first half of the fifteenth century. As England’s most northerly county, work on the relationship between provincial society, peripheries of the realm and the crown is critical to this study. This research tests assumptions that Northumberland was feudal, lawless, distant and difficult for the crown to administer. The research consists of two parts: the first is an evaluation of social structure; the second explores the administrative machine. It opens with a survey of feudal tenure. Chapter two examines the wealth of resident landholders. Chapter three outlines the genealogies of landed society and their relationship to one another as a ‘county community’. Chapter four expands on family connections to incorporate the bond of spiritual kinship. Chapter five charts the scope of social networks disclosed though the management of property, personal affairs and dispute. Chapter six considers the inquisitions post mortem (IPM) process and the impact of distance. Chapter seven discusses jurors and their place in county society. Original contributions to knowledge are made in a number of areas. The theme of spiritual kinship has not been developed in any county study of this period. Additional information concerning the county return for the 1435 subsidy on land is provided, which has previously been overlooked. The location of a copy of the escheator’s oath created in response to a statute of 1429, which has not been captured in recent studies, resolves the current ambiguity concerning the statutory requirement of an indented inquisition return.

Anglo-Scottish relations have become a major topic in British political debate in recent years. In 2014, Scottish officials who supported a separate, independent Scotland finally convinced the UK government into having a Scottish independence referendum. However, a majority made the decision to support the continued union with England, and the question of Scottish independence was supposedly ‘settled for a generation’ (Cameron, 2014). Yet, now in 2022 it appears that a second independence referendum on the horizon. How has the first independence referendum result been nullified in less than a decade? This study shows how the UK’s exit from the EU (Brexit) has affected the Scottish separatist movement. It maps out how the discourse has changed, and how the EU (European Union) is now a dominant subject in separatist argumentation. In addition, the relationship between England and Scotland has changed since the introduction of the EU to the separatist independence debate. A discourse theory analysis is used to help understand how subject constructions and their positions in discourse effects calls for Scottish independence. This paper finds that the introduction of the EU is the major change to Scottish separatist discourse since 2016, and this has served to bring the independence debate back into the forefront.

This diploma thesis analyzes the genesis of the issues of the Anglo-Scottish union. In its introduction the diploma thesis shortly mentions the events from the end of English Civil War in 1651 until the death of Charles II King of England. The thesis will deal in more detail with the genesis of the Anglo-Scottish and political relations as well as historical events of England from the reign of the catholic King of England James II, his expeletion in 1688, and consequential arrival of his nephew and at the same time son-in-law William III of Orange with his wife Queen Mary II. Thereafter Queen Anne of Great Britain, who became a successor to the throne in 1702, as the second daughter of King James II, during whose reign the Union and Great Britain was established, to her death in 1714 and the arrival of the Hanoverian dynasty. The diploma thesis does not lose focus attention to causation and circumstances, which brought the English and the Scots closer together, and resulting conclusion of the Anglo-Scottish union in 1707. And last but not least it also analyzes implications of these connections for future development of Great Britain.

In and around the 870s, Britain was transformed dramatically by the campaigns and settlements of the Great Army and its allies. Some pre-existing political communities suffered less than others, and in hindsight the process helped Scotland and England achieve their later positions. By the twelfth century, the rulers of these countries had partitioned the former kingdom of Northumbria. This thesis is about what happened in the intervening period, the fate of Northumbria's political structures, and how the settlement that defined Britain for the remainder of the Middle Ages came about. Modern reconstructions of the era have tended to be limited in scope and based on unreliable post-1100 sources. The aim is to use contemporary material to overcome such limitations, and reach positive conclusions that will make more sense of the evidence and make the region easier to understand for a wider audience, particularly in regard to its shadowy polities and ecclesiastical structures. After an overview of the most important evidence, two chapters will review Northumbria's alleged dissolution, testing existing historiographic beliefs (based largely on Anglo-Norman-era evidence) about the fate of the monarchy, political community, and episcopate. The impact and nature of ‘Southenglish' hegemony on the region's political communities will be the focus of the fourth chapter, while the fifth will look at evidence for the expansion of Scottish political power. The sixth chapter will try to draw positive conclusions about the episcopate, leaving the final chapter to look in more detail at the institutions that produced the final settlement.