The Lord High Commissioner to the Parliament of Scotland was the monarch of Scotland's personal representative to the Parliament of Scotland. From the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603, a Lord High Commissioner was appointed from among the senior nobility to represent the Scottish monarch in parliament when he or she was absent, as was usually the case up to 1707.[1] [nb 1] The Act of Union 1707, which merged the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England to create the Parliament of Great Britain, rendered the post redundant.
The Lord High Commissioner represented Crown authority and sat on the throne within the parliamentary chamber. The Commissioner gave royal assent to all acts of parliament by touching the final copy of each act with the sceptre.[1] They were the custodian of the Crown's legislative agenda and were effectively the heads of government in Scotland during this period.[2]
- ^ a b Mann, Alastair (2018). "Officers of state and representation in the pre-modern Scottish Parliament". In Mann, Alastair (ed.). Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200 - c. 1690). Leiden: Brill. pp. 142–160.
- ^ "a personal representative of the Sovereign, Lords High Commissioner were appointed to the Scottish Parliament between the Union of the Crowns (1603) and the Act of Union (1707) and were the heads of government in Scotland". Gazetteer for Scotland, University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 1 March 2010.
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