In the history of Scotland there are few men or women who are more worthy of the description ‘Patriot’ than Andrew Fletcher. He was born in Saltoun, East Lothian, 1655. Little is known of his early years before his election to Parliament in 1678, except that his early education was entrusted to Parish Minister, Gilbert Burnet, who described him as “a Scotch gentleman of many virtues, but a most violent republican and extremely passionate”.

He soon became a marked man because of his vocal opposition to the Scottish Secretary and the Court Party’s practice of turning Parliament into a rubber stamp to endorse the despotic whims of the Monarch. He was forced to leave the country to avoid arrest and almost certain execution when it was all alleged that he had participated in the Rye House Plot, an attempt to assassinate Charles II. Initially Fletcher went to the Netherlands where many Scottish and English political refugees (including Charles II’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth) had found refuge.

Disillusioned by his fellow exiles’ half-baked dreams of revolution he went to Hungary with the Duke of Lorraine to fight their Turkish oppressors. He returned to Amsterdam and tried to prevent the ill-fated simultaneous invasion of Scotland and England by the Earl of Argyll and the Duke of Monmouth. Although he had opposed the invasion, Fletcher sailed with Monmouth and on the 11th June 1685 landed at Lyme. Fletcher was appointed joint commander of the cavalry with Lord Grey. This appointment came to an abrupt end following an incident at Bridport – shortly after landing, the alarm was raised, the country militia was being assembled, and Fletcher decided they should be attacked before they could pose any threat. As speed was of the essence Fletcher mounted a horse belonging to Heywood Dare, the Paymaster General (who would not have been taking part in this engagement), which had been left unattended. It is clear that Fletcher thought that Dare would have behaved in the matter as he would have behaved himself; he would have made no objections to this act, on the grounds that they were all out for a common cause and that the horse was to be used for the common service. But Dare was far from thinking that way – he thought that Fletcher had acted in a high-handed manner and ordered him to dismount. He called him names, and to crown his insults, threatened to cane him if he refused. Consider the situation here: a rough, bullying Englishman, swollen with a sense of self-importance, threatening to horsewhip a Scottish Colonel (and Monmouth’s chief advisor), unless he immediately dismounted consequently delaying an important military action. Fletcher’s fiery temper snapped – he whipped out his pistol and shot Dare dead. To placate Dare’s friends, Monmouth was forced to send Fletcher away, leaving sole command of the cavalry to Lord Grey, which was later to prove disastrous at the Battle of Sedgemoor.

Fletcher sailed for Bilbao, where he was soon thrown into prison and his extradition demanded by England. He escaped and made his way back to Hungary to fight the Turks, whom he described in one of his later writings as being, along with the English, “one of the common enemies of mankind”. He was tried in his absence at Edinburgh on a charge of treason, sentenced to death and his estates confiscated. King James VII declared an amnesty on the 29th April, 1686, but, unlike many other Scotsmen, Fletcher refused to take advantage of it – he did not believe that the monarch had the right to overrule the laws of the country, and only the Parliament had the authority to pardon him.

Fletcher joined William of Orange at the Hague in 1688 and, with the revolution, returned to Scotland. He was not a member of the Parliament of June 1690 which passed a special act restoring his estates to him. He became however one of the busiest members of “The Club”, consisting mainly of members of the parliamentary opposition, formed soon after William’s accession, ostensibly to diminish the power of the crown in Scotland. Fletcher, as a republican and a hater of English domination, naturally approved of this objective. When the ‘Company of Scotland’ was established to trade with the colony on the Darien Isthmus (Panama), Andrew Fletcher appeared on the original list of shareholders.

In 1698 Fletcher produced a pamphlet “A Discourse of Government Relating to Militias”, arguing that for Scotland’s purposes of defence a militia was more effective than a standing army. Fletcher also argued that the £84,000 spent on maintaining a force of regulars in Scotland might be much more usefully employed in promoting industry. Fletcher entered Parliament once more in 1703. The Scots were angry at England’s sabotage of the Darien scheme and by the unsatisfactory nature of the English proposals for a treaty of union. He proposed the Act of Security, which declared that after the death of Queen Anne, the Scottish Cabinet would be chosen, not by the monarch of Great Britain, but by the Scottish Parliament. Another of his proposals was to deprive the Sovereign of the power to declare war. When the Queen’s commissioner announced that all acts passed by the Parliament of 1703 would receive the Royal Consent except the Act of Security, Fletcher rose and moved a resolution declaring that after the decease of Her Majesty Scotland should separate her crown from that of England.

In the remaining sessions of Parliament 1704-1707, Fletcher continued to be very active in defence of Scotland’s interests. The only kind of Union that Fletcher was prepared to consider was one which embodied the principle of complete self-government, but with co-operation in such matters as defence. His only party was his country, and his only allegiance was to his country’s interests. This could not be said for most of the rest of the ‘Scottish Nobility’, many of whom went scampering down to London to looks after their own interests: some to make sure their positions and pensions, others to see if their positions and pensions were likely to come their way. Fletcher the democrat vainly proposed to the assembly that it was not a competent body to negotiate a Treaty of Union and only an assembly that had been elected solely for that purpose had any authority to take such a colossal and calamitous step in the name of the people of Scotland.

Amid this atmosphere of greed and treachery, Fletcher’s infamous temper was bound to give way, and Parliament had to intervene to prevent him from fighting duels with some of the principal traitors, the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Stair amongst others. In the end the National Party and the main clauses of the Treaty of Union which had already been passed, when Fletcher made the last contribution to Scotland’s last Parliament, when he successfully proposed a motion forbidding the eldest sons of noblemen from being elected to (mis)represent Scotland in England’s Imperial Parliament.

Fletcher was arrested and taken to London in April 1708 on suspicion of conspiring with the French to invade England but was soon discharged. Fletcher, realizing the futility of trying to represent the interests of the Scottish people in England’s parliament, retired to Saltoun where he focused his attention on the improvement of agricultural methods – the most notable being the Saltoun Barley Mill which for forty yeras was the only one in the ‘country’ (Britland). Fletcher died in London in September 1716 – his body was laid to rest in the family vault at Saltoun.