History of Shetland - UK Era

UK Era

The trade with the North German towns lasted until the 1707 Act of Union prohibited the German merchants from trading with Shetland. Shetland then went into an economic depression as the Scottish and local traders were not as skilled in trading with salted fish. However, some local merchant-lairds took up where the German merchants had left off, and fitted out their own ships to export fish from Shetland to the Continent. For the independent farmers of Shetland this had negative consequences, as they now had to fish for these merchant-lairds. With the passing of the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 the Liberal prime minister William Ewart Gladstone emancipated crofters from the rule of the landlords. The Act enabled those who had effectively been landowners' serfs to become owner-occupiers of their own small farms.

During the 200 years after the pawning the islands were passed back and forth fourteen times between the Crown and courtiers as a means of extracting income. Laws were changed, weights and measures altered and the language suppressed, a process historians now call "feudalization" as a means by which Shetland supposedly became incorporated into Scotland, particularly during the 17th century. The term is a nonsense because a feudal charter requires ownership by the Crown - ownership it has never had and has never openly claimed to have had. As late as the 20th century the courts declared that no land in Shetland was under feudal tenure.

The Crown might have thought that by prescription (the passage of time) it gave them ownership necessary to give out feudal charters, grants, or licenses. It certainly behaved that way. Nevertheless, this was proved wrong by the Treaty of Breda (1667). Its direct concern was the redistribution of colonial lands throughout the world after the second Anglo-Dutch war. It was signed by ‘the plenipotentiaries of Europe’ - delegations having full government power.

The Danish delegation tried to have a clause inserted to have the islands returned without delay. Because the overall treaty was too important to Charles II he eventually conceded that the original marriage document still stood, that his and previous monarchs’ actions in granting out the islands under feudal charters were illegal.

In 1669 Charles passed his 1669 Act for annexation of Orkney and Shetland to the Crown, restoring the situation much as it had been in 1469. He abolished the office of Sheriff and ‘erected Shetland into a Stewartry’, having ‘a direct dependence upon His Majesty and his officers’ (what today we would today call a Crown Dependency). Charles II also provided that, in the event of a ‘general dissolution of his majesty’s properties’ by which he clearly meant the Act of Union, Shetland was not to be included. Shetland could not be incorporated into the realm of Scotland or the proposed new union with England. The terms of the marriage document also meant that any Acts of Parliament before or after the pawning could have had no relevance to Shetland.

With the consent of Parliament, Charles was taking the exclusive rights to the islands back to the Crown for all time coming. Furthermore, he was specifically excluding Shetland from the coming Act of Union, even going so far as to say that the Act of Union itself would be null and void if Shetland were to be included.

The Crown seems on this matter to have a very poor memory, in February 1707, as part of the preparations for union with England, Queen Anne made a final transfer of Shetland to the Earl of Morton in the form of a feudal charter. According to the official line, Shetland emerges from the Act of Union as a county of Scotland, but how? There was no legislation to change it from the Stewardship set up by Charles II. Shetland did not belong to the Crown, was not part of the realm and was outside the scope of Parliamentary legislation. Despite the Union, the Stewardship survived – there still being a Steward in Shetland at least until 1822. Shetland could not possibly be both a Stewardship outside the realm and a county of Scotland within the realm at the same time. It seems Queen Anne simply swept the inconveniences under the carpet.

Several attempts were made during the 17th and 18th centuries to redeem the islands, without success. Following a legal dispute with William, Earl of Morton, who held the estates of Orkney and Shetland, Charles II ratified the pawning document by a Scottish Act of Parliament on 27 December 1669 which officially made the islands a Crown dependency and exempt from any "dissolution of His Majesty’s lands". In 1742 a further Act of Parliament returned the estates to a later Earl of Morton, although the original Act of Parliament specifically ruled that any future act regarding the islands status would be "considered null, void and of no effect".

Nonetheless, Shetland's connection with Norway has proven to be enduring. When Norway became independent again in 1906 the Shetland authorities sent a letter to King Haakon VII in which they stated: "Today no 'foreign' flag is more familiar or more welcome in our voes and havens than that of Norway, and Shetlanders continue to look upon Norway as their mother-land, and recall with pride and affection the time when their forefathers were under the rule of the Kings of Norway."