Orkney and Shetland

County

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Number of voters:

7 in 1759

Elections

DateCandidate
2 Mar. 1715JAMES MOODIE
24 Apr. 1722GEORGE DOUGLAS
 James Moodie
10 Sept. 1727GEORGE DOUGLAS
7 May 1730ROBERT DOUGLAS vice George Douglas, called to the Upper House
23 May 1734ROBERT DOUGLAS
11 June 1741ROBERT DOUGLAS
19 Feb. 1747JAMES HALYBURTON vice Douglas, deceased
27 July 1747JAMES HALYBURTON

Main Article

In the seventeenth century the islands of Orkney and Shetland were granted by the Crown to the earls of Morton, subject to a right of redemption, which was abolished by a private Act of Parliament in 1742. All the Members returned were related to the earls of Morton, the hereditary stewards. The only contest occurred in 1722, when the 11th Earl’s grandson, James Moodie, who had been returned unopposed in 1715, was defeated by the 13th Earl’s brother, George Douglas, petitioning unsuccessfully on the ground that the deputy steward had admitted a number of Douglas’s friends, who were not entitled to vote.1 When the grant was made absolute in 1742, the local lairds launched a campaign against the Morton ‘tyranny’, unsuccessfully challenging it in the courts.2

Author: J. M. Simpson

Notes

  • 1. CJ, xx. 44.
  • 2. J. Mackenzie, General Grievances and Oppressions of Orkney and Shetland.