Today, online petitioning makes it easy for citizens to express political opinions. Organised campaigns aim to influence policy with thousands of signatures and a well-timed press release. But this apparently ubiquitous practice was not always so accessible. Scotland’s first large-scale petitioning campaigns appeared in the 17th century, and when the authorities realised the potential power of participatory petitioning, they sought to shut down these assertive new practices. A closer look at these events provides a reminder that modern petitioning practices were hard-won.