Before 1708, the Privy Council was the Scottish government. Its records are the nearest we have to cabinet papers and they cover almost every conceivable aspect of the nation's history. Historians of early modern Scotland frequently refer to those records but not always comprehensively. This is the first book to examine the council itself. Its primary focus is the period from the 1689 revolution to the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707. This was an extraordinary age in Scottish and British history which is imperfectly understood because the council's role remains largely obscure.

The book provides a thematic overview of a wide selection of the council's activities in this period, covering high politics, Jacobitism and prisoners of war, religious policy and persecution of religious minorities, interaction between the council and the other institutions of the nation, approaches to the economy and the environment, efforts to maintain social order and to respond to the petitions and concerns of all levels of society.