Conservative MSP David McLetchie recalled the original Claim of Right, passed by the old Scots Parliament in 1689, which declared King James VII (James II of England) had forfeited the throne "because he had sought to change what it described as the fundamental constitution of the kingdom from a legal, limited monarchy to an arbitrary, despotic power".
Quakers and Catholics sided with the king, and so did many settlers of German and Dutch origin, as well as most Scots Highlanders, who had sworn an oath of loyalty to the Hanoverian crown in defeat and were not about to go back on it.