The Revolution more violent in Scotland than in England--Elections
for the Convention; Rabbling of the Episcopal Clergy--State of
Edinburgh--Question of an Union between England and Scotland
raised--Wish of the English Low Churchmen to preserve Episcopacy
in Scotland--Opinions of William about Church Government in
Scotland--Comparative Strength of Religious Parties in Scotland--Letter
from William to the Scotch Convention--William's Instructions to
his Agents in Scotland; the Dalrymples--Melville--James's Agents in
Scotland: Dundee; Balcarras--Meeting of the Convention--Hamilton elected
President--Committee of Elections; Edinburgh Castle summoned--Dundee
threatened by the Covenanters--Letter from James to the
Convention--Effect of James's Letter--Flight of Dundee--Tumultuous
Sitting of the Convention--A Committee appointed to frame a Plan of
Government--Resolutions proposed by the Committee--William and
Mary proclaimed; the Claim of Right; Abolition of
Episcopacy--Torture--William and Mary accept the Crown of
Scotland--Discontent of the Covenanters--Ministerial Arrangements
in Scotland--Hamilton; Crawford--The Dalrymples; Lockhart;
Montgomery--Melville; Carstairs--The Club formed: Annandale; Ross--Hume;
Fletcher of Saltoun--War breaks out in the Highlands; State of the
Highlands--Peculiar Nature of Jacobitism in the Highlands--Jealousy
of the Ascendency of the Campbells--The Stewarts and Macnaghtens--The
Macleans; the Camerons: Lochiel--The Macdonalds; Feud between the
Macdonalds and Mackintoshes; Inverness--Inverness threatened by
Macdonald of Keppoch--Dundee appears in Keppoch's Camp--Insurrection
of the Clans hostile to the Campbells--Tarbet's Advice to the
Government--Indecisive Campaign in the Highlands--Military Character of
the Highlanders--Quarrels in the Highland Army--Dundee applies to James
for Assistance; the War in the Highlands suspended--Scruples of the
Covenanters about taking Arms for King William--The Cameronian
Regiment raised--Edinburgh Castle surrenders--Session of Parliament at
Edinburgh--Ascendancy of the Club--Troubles in Athol--The War breaks out
again in the Highlands--Death of Dundee--Retreat of Mackay--Effect of
the Battle of Killiecrankie; the Scottish Parliament adjourned--The
Highland Army reinforced--Skirmish at Saint Johnston's--Disorders in the
Highland Army--Mackay's Advice disregarded by the Scotch Ministers--The
Cameronians stationed at Dunkeld--The Highlanders attack the Cameronians
and are repulsed--Dissolution of the Highland Army; Intrigues of the
Club; State of the Lowlands
THE violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree
of the maladministration which has produced them. It is therefore not
strange that the government of Scotland, having been during many years
far more oppressive and corrupt than the government of England, should
have fallen with a far heavier ruin. The movement against the last
king of the House of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland
destructive. The English complained, not of the law, but of the
violation of the law. They rose up against the first magistrate merely
in order to assert the supremacy of the law. They were for the most part
strongly attached to the Church established by law. Even in applying
that extraordinary remedy to which an extraordinary emergency compelled
them to have recourse, they deviated as little as possible from the
ordinary methods prescribed by the law. The Convention which met at
Westminster, though summoned by irregular writs, was constituted on the
exact model of a regular Parliament. No man was invited to the Upper
House whose right to sit there was not clear. The knights and burgesses
were chosen by those electors who would have been entitled to choose
the members of a House of Commons called under the great seal. The
franchises of the forty shilling freeholder, of the householder paying
scot and lot, of the burgage tenant, of the liveryman of London, of the
Master of Arts of Oxford, were respected. The sense of the constituent
bodies was taken with as little violence on the part of mobs, with as
little trickery on the part of returning officers, as at any
general election of that age. When at length the Estates met, their
deliberations were carried on with perfect freedom and in strict
accordance with ancient forms. There was indeed, after the first
flight of James, an alarming anarchy in London and in some parts of the
country. But that anarchy nowhere lasted longer than forty-eight hours.
From the day on which William reached Saint James's, not even the most
unpopular agents of the fallen government, not even the ministers of
the Roman Catholic Church, had any thing to fear from the fury of the
populace.
In Scotland the course of events was very different. There the law
itself was a grievance; and James had perhaps incurred more unpopularity
by enforcing it than by violating it. The Church established by law was
the most odious institution in the realm. The tribunals had pronounced
some sentences so flagitious, the Parliament had passed some acts so
oppressive, that, unless those sentences and those Acts were treated
as nullities, it would be impossible to bring together a Convention
commanding the public respect and expressing the public opinion. It was
hardly to be expected, for example, that the Whigs, in this day of their
power, would endure to see their hereditary leader, the son of a martyr,
the grandson of a martyr, excluded from the Parliament House in which
nine of his ancestors had sate as Earls of Argyle, and excluded by a
judgment on which the whole kingdom cried shame. Still less was it to be
expected that they would suffer the election of members for counties and
towns to be conducted according to the provisions of the existing law.
For under the existing law no elector could vote without swearing that
he renounced the Covenant, and that he acknowledged the Royal supremacy
in matters ecclesiastical, [261] Such an oath no rigid Presbyterian
could take. If such an oath had been exacted, the constituent bodies
would have been merely small knots of prelatists: the business of
devising securities against oppression would have been left to the
oppressors; and the great party which had been most active in effecting
the Revolution would, in an assembly sprung from the Revolution, have
had not a single representative, [262]
William saw that he must not think of paying to the laws of Scotland
that scrupulous respect which he had wisely and righteously paid to the
laws of England. It was absolutely necessary that he should determine
by his own authority how that Convention which was to meet at Edinburgh
should be chosen, and that he should assume the power of annulling some
judgments and some statutes. He accordingly summoned to the parliament
house several Lords who had been deprived of their honours by sentences
which the general voice loudly condemned as unjust; and he took on
himself to dispense with the Act which deprived Presbyterians of the
elective franchise.
The consequence was that the choice of almost all the shires and burghs
fell on Whig candidates. The defeated party complained loudly of foul
play, of the rudeness of the populace, and of the partiality of the
presiding magistrates; and these complaints were in many cases well
founded. It is not under such rulers as Lauderdale and Dundee that
nations learn justice and moderation, [263]
Nor was it only at the elections that the popular feeling, so long and
so severely compressed, exploded with violence. The heads and the hands
of the martyred Whigs were taken down from the gates of Edinburgh,
carried in procession by great multitudes to the cemeteries, and laid
in the earth with solemn respect, [264] It would have been well if the
public enthusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthy
form. Unhappily throughout a large part of Scotland the clergy of the
Established Church were, to use the phrase then common, rabbled.
The morning of Christmas day was fixed for the commencement of these
outrages. For nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than the
reverence paid by the prelatist to the ancient holidays of the Church.
That such reverence may be carried to an absurd extreme is true. But a
philosopher may perhaps be inclined to think the opposite extreme
not less absurd, and may ask why religion should reject the aid of
associations which exist in every nation sufficiently civilised to have
a calendar, and which are found by experience to have a powerful and
often a salutary effect. The Puritan, who was, in general, but too
ready to follow precedents and analogies drawn from the history and
jurisprudence of the Jews, might have found in the Old Testament quite
as clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour of great events as for
assassinating bishops and refusing quarter to captives. He certainly did
not learn from his master, Calvin, to hold such festivals in abhorrence;
for it was in consequence of the strenuous exertions of Calvin that
Christmas was, after an interval of some years, again observed by the
citizens of Geneva, [265] But there had arisen in Scotland Calvinists
who were to Calvin what Calvin was to Laud. To these austere fanatics
a holiday was an object of positive disgust and hatred. They long
continued in their solemn manifestoes to reckon it among the sins which
would one day bring down some fearful judgment on the land that the
Court of Session took a vacation in the last week of December, [266]
On Christmas day, therefore, the Covenanters held armed musters by
concert in many parts of the western shires. Each band marched to the
nearest manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister, which
at that season were probably better stocked than usual. The priest of
Baal was reviled and insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. His
furniture was thrown out of the windows; his wife and children turned
out of doors in the snow. He was then carried to the market place, and
exposed during some time as a malefactor. His gown was torn to shreds
over his head: if he had a prayer book in his pocket it was burned;
and he was dismissed with a charge, never, as he valued his life, to
officiate in the parish again. The work of reformation having been thus
completed, the reformers locked up the church and departed with the
keys. In justice to these men it must be owned that they had suffered
such oppression as may excuse, though it cannot justify, their violence;
and that, though they were rude even to brutality, they do not appear to
have been guilty of any intentional injury to life or limb, [267]
The disorder spread fast. In Ayrshire, Clydesdale, Nithisdale,
Annandale, every parish was visited by these turbulent zealots. About
two hundred curates--so the episcopal parish priests were called--were
expelled. The graver Covenanters, while they applauded the fervour of
their riotous brethren, were apprehensive that proceedings so irregular
might give scandal, and learned, with especial concern, that here and
there an Achan had disgraced the good cause by stooping to plunder the
Canaanites whom he ought only to have smitten. A general meeting of
ministers and elders was called for the purpose of preventing such
discreditable excesses. In this meeting it was determined that, for the
future, the ejection of the established clergy should be performed in
a more ceremonious manner. A form of notice was drawn up and served on
every curate in the Western Lowlands who had not yet been rabbled.
This notice was simply a threatening letter, commanding him to quit his
parish peaceably, on pain of being turned out by force, [268]
The Scottish Bishops, in great dismay, sent the Dean of Glasgow to
plead the cause of their persecuted Church at Westminster. The outrages
committed by the Covenanters were in the highest degree offensive
to William, who had, in the south of the island, protected even
Benedictines and Franciscans from insult and spoliation. But, though he
had, at the request of a large number of the noblemen and gentlemen of
Scotland, taken on himself provisionally the executive administration
of that kingdom, the means of maintaining order there were not at his
command. He had not a single regiment north of the Tweed, or indeed
within many miles of that river. It was vain to hope that mere words
would quiet a nation which had not, in any age, been very amenable to
control, and which was now agitated by hopes and resentments, such as
great revolutions, following great oppressions, naturally engender. A
proclamation was however put forth, directing that all people should lay
down their arms, and that, till the Convention should have settled the
government, the clergy of the Established Church should be suffered to
reside on their cures without molestation. But this proclamation, not
being supported by troops, was very little regarded. On the very day
after it was published at Glasgow, the venerable Cathedral of that city,
almost the only fine church of the middle ages which stands uninjured
in Scotland, was attacked by a crowd of Presbyterians from the meeting
houses, with whom were mingled many of their fiercer brethren from the
hills. It was a Sunday; but to rabble a congregation of prelatists
was held to be a work of necessity and mercy. The worshippers were
dispersed, beaten, and pelted with snowballs. It was indeed asserted
that some wounds were inflicted with much more formidable weapons, [269]
Edinburgh, the seat of government, was in a state of anarchy. The
Castle, which commanded the whole city, was still held for James by the
Duke of Gordon. The common people were generally Whigs. The College of
justice, a great forensic society composed of judges, advocates, writers
to the signet, and solicitors, was the stronghold of Toryism: for a
rigid test had during some years excluded Presbyterians from all the
departments of the legal profession. The lawyers, some hundreds in
number, formed themselves into a battalion of infantry, and for a time
effectually kept down the multitude. They paid, however, so much respect
to William's authority as to disband themselves when his proclamation
was published. But the example of obedience which they had set was not
imitated. Scarcely had they laid down their weapons, when Covenanters
from the west, who had done all that was to be done in the way of
pelting and hustling the curates of their own neighbourhood, came
dropping into Edinburgh, by tens and twenties, for the purpose of
protecting, or, if need should be, of overawing the Convention. Glasgow
alone sent four hundred of these men. It could hardly be doubted
that they were directed by some leader of great weight. They showed
themselves little in any public place: but it was known that every
cellar was filled with them; and it might well be apprehended that, at
the first signal, they would pour forth from their caverns, and appear
armed round the Parliament house, [270]
It might have been expected that every patriotic and enlightened
Scotchman would have earnestly desired to see the agitation appeased,
and some government established which might be able to protect property
and to enforce the law. An imperfect settlement which could be speedily
made might well appear to such a man preferable to a perfect settlement
which must be the work of time. Just at this moment, however, a party,
strong both in numbers and in abilities, raised a new and most important
question, which seemed not unlikely to prolong the interregnum till the
autumn. This party maintained that the Estates ought not immediately
to declare William and Mary King and Queen, but to propose to England a
treaty of union, and to keep the throne vacant till such a treaty should
be concluded on terms advantageous to Scotland, [271]
It may seem strange that a large portion of a people, whose patriotism,
exhibited, often in a heroic, and sometimes in a comic form, has long
been proverbial, should have been willing, nay impatient, to surrender
an independence which had been, through many ages, dearly prized and
manfully defended. The truth is that the stubborn spirit which the arms
of the Plantagenets and Tudors had been unable to subdue had begun to
yield to a very different kind of force. Customhouses and tariffs were
rapidly doing what the carnage of Falkirk and Halidon, of Flodden and of
Pinkie, had failed to do. Scotland had some experience of the effects
of an union. She had, near forty years before, been united to England
on such terms as England, flushed with conquest, chose to dictate. That
union was inseparably associated in the minds of the vanquished people
with defeat and humiliation. And yet even that union, cruelly as it had
wounded the pride of the Scots, had promoted their prosperity. Cromwell,
with wisdom and liberality rare in his age, had established the most
complete freedom of trade between the dominant and the subject country.
While he governed, no prohibition, no duty, impeded the transit of
commodities from any part of the island to any other. His navigation
laws imposed no restraint on the trade of Scotland. A Scotch vessel was
at liberty to carry a Scotch cargo to Barbadoes, and to bring the sugars
of Barbadoes into the port of London, [272] The rule of the Protector
therefore had been propitious to the industry and to the physical
wellbeing of the Scottish people. Hating him and cursing him, they could
not help thriving under him, and often, during the administration of
their legitimate princes, looked back with regret to the golden days of
the usurper, [273]
The Restoration came, and changed every thing. The Scots regained
their independence, and soon began to find that independence had its
discomfort as well as its dignity. The English parliament treated them
as aliens and as rivals. A new Navigation Act put them on almost the
same footing with the Dutch. High duties, and in some cases prohibitory
duties, were imposed on the products of Scottish industry. It is not
wonderful that a nation eminently industrious, shrewd, and enterprising,
a nation which, having been long kept back by a sterile soil and
a severe climate, was just beginning to prosper in spite of these
disadvantages, and which found its progress suddenly stopped, should
think itself cruelly treated. Yet there was no help. Complaint was vain.
Retaliation was impossible. The Sovereign, even if he had the wish, had
not the power, to bear himself evenly between his large and his small
kingdom, between the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue of a
million and a half and the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue
of little more than sixty thousand pounds. He dared neither to refuse
his assent to any English law injurious to the trade of Scotland, nor to
give his assent to any Scotch law injurious to the trade of England.
The complaints of the Scotch, however, were so loud that Charles, in
1667, appointed Commissioners to arrange the terms of a commercial
treaty between the two British kingdoms. The conferences were soon
broken off; and all that passed while they continued proved that
there was only one way in which Scotland could obtain a share of the
commercial prosperity which England at that time enjoyed, [274] The
Scotch must become one people with the English. The Parliament which
had hitherto sate at Edinburgh must be incorporated with the Parliament
which sate at Westminster. The sacrifice could not but be painfully
felt by a brave and haughty people, who had, during twelve generations,
regarded the southern domination with deadly aversion, and whose hearts
still swelled at the thought of the death of Wallace and of the triumphs
of Bruce. There were doubtless many punctilious patriots who would have
strenuously opposed an union even if they could have foreseen that
the effect of an union would be to make Glasgow a greater city than
Amsterdam, and to cover the dreary Lothians with harvests and woods,
neat farmhouses and stately mansions. But there was also a large class
which was not disposed to throw away great and substantial advantages in
order to preserve mere names and ceremonies; and the influence of this
class was such that, in the year 1670, the Scotch Parliament made direct
overtures to England, [275] The King undertook the office of mediator;
and negotiators were named on both sides; but nothing was concluded.
The question, having slept during eighteen years, was suddenly revived
by the Revolution. Different classes, impelled by different motives,
concurred on this point. With merchants, eager to share in the
advantages of the West Indian Trade, were joined active and aspiring
politicians who wished to exhibit their abilities in a more conspicuous
theatre than the Scottish Parliament House, and to collect riches from
a more copious source than the Scottish treasury. The cry for union was
swelled by the voices of some artful Jacobites, who merely wished to
cause discord and delay, and who hoped to attain this end by mixing up
with the difficult question which it was the especial business of
the Convention to settle another question more difficult still. It is
probable that some who disliked the ascetic habits and rigid discipline
of the Presbyterians wished for an union as the only mode of maintaining
prelacy in the northern part of the island. In an united Parliament the
English members must greatly preponderate; and in England the bishops
were held in high honour by the great majority of the population. The
Episcopal Church of Scotland, it was plain, rested on a narrow basis,
and would fall before the first attack. The Episcopal Church of Great
Britain might have a foundation broad and solid enough to withstand all
assaults.
Whether, in 1689, it would have been possible to effect a civil union
without a religious union may well be doubted. But there can be no doubt
that a religious union would have been one of the greatest calamities
that could have befallen either kingdom. The union accomplished in 1707
has indeed been a great blessing both to England and to Scotland. But
it has been a blessing because, in constituting one State, it left two
Churches. The political interest of the contracting parties was the
same: but the ecclesiastical dispute between them was one which admitted
of no compromise. They could therefore preserve harmony only by agreeing
to differ. Had there been an amalgamation of the hierarchies, there
never would have been an amalgamation of the nations. Successive
Mitchells would have fired at successive Sharpes. Five generations of
Claverhouses would have butchered five generations of Camerons. Those
marvellous improvements which have changed the face of Scotland would
never have been effected. Plains now rich with harvests would have
remained barren moors. Waterfalls which now turn the wheels of immense
factories would have resounded in a wilderness. New Lanark would still
have been a sheepwalk, and Greenock a fishing hamlet. What little
strength Scotland could under such a system have possessed must, in an
estimate of the resources of Great Britain, have been, not added, but
deducted. So encumbered, our country never could have held, either
in peace or in war, a place in the first rank of nations. We are
unfortunately not without the means of judging of the effect which may
be produced on the moral and physical state of a people by establishing,
in the exclusive enjoyment of riches and dignity a Church loved and
reverenced only by the few, and regarded by the many with religious
and national aversion. One such Church is quite burden enough for the
energies of one empire.
But these things, which to us, who have been taught by a bitter
experience, seem clear, were by no means clear in 1689, even to very
tolerant and enlightened politicians. In truth the English Low Churchmen
were, if possible, more anxious than the English High Churchmen to
preserve Episcopacy in Scotland. It is a remarkable fact that Burnet,
who was always accused of wishing to establish the Calvinistic
discipline in the south of the island, incurred great unpopularity among
his own countrymen by his efforts to uphold prelacy in the north. He was
doubtless in error: but his error is to be attributed to a cause which
does him no discredit. His favourite object, an object unattainable
indeed, yet such as might well fascinate a large intellect and a
benevolent heart, had long been an honourable treaty between the
Anglican Church and the Nonconformists. He thought it most unfortunate
that one opportunity of concluding such a treaty should have been
lost at the time of the Restoration. It seemed to him that another
opportunity was afforded by the Revolution. He and his friends were
eagerly pushing forward Nottingham's Comprehension Bill, and were
flattering themselves with vain hopes of success. But they felt
that there could hardly be a Comprehension in one of the two British
kingdoms, unless there were also a Comprehension in the other.
Concession must be purchased by concession. If the Presbyterian
pertinaciously refused to listen to any terms of compromise where he was
strong, it would be almost impossible to obtain for him liberal terms of
compromise where he was weak. Bishops must therefore be allowed to keep
their sees in Scotland, in order that divines not ordained by Bishops
might be allowed to hold rectories and canonries in England.
Thus the cause of the Episcopalians in the north and the cause of the
Presbyterians in the south were bound up together in a manner which
might well perplex even a skilful statesman. It was happy for our
country that the momentous question which excited so many strong
passions, and which presented itself in so many different points
of view, was to be decided by such a man as William. He listened to
Episcopalians, to Latitudinarians, to Presbyterians, to the Dean of
Glasgow who pleaded for the apostolical succession, to Burnet who
represented the danger of alienating the Anglican clergy, to Carstairs
who hated prelacy with the hatred of a man whose thumbs were deeply
marked by the screws of prelatists. Surrounded by these eager advocates,
William remained calm and impartial. He was indeed eminently qualified
by his situation as well as by his personal qualities to be the umpire
in that great contention. He was the King of a prelatical kingdom. He
was the Prime Minister of a presbyterian republic. His unwillingness
to offend the Anglican Church of which he was the head, and his
unwillingness to offend the reformed Churches of the Continent which
regarded him as a champion divinely sent to protect them against the
French tyranny, balanced each other, and kept him from leaning unduly
to either side. His conscience was perfectly neutral. For it was his
deliberate opinion that no form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine
institution. He dissented equally from the school of Laud and from
the school of Cameron, from the men who held that there could not be a
Christian Church without Bishops, and from the men who held that there
could not be a Christian Church without synods. Which form of government
should be adopted was in his judgment a question of mere expediency. He
would probably have preferred a temper between the two rival systems,
a hierarchy in which the chief spiritual functionaries should have been
something more than moderators and something less than prelates. But he
was far too wise a man to think of settling such a matter according to
his own personal tastes. He determined therefore that, if there was on
both sides a disposition to compromise, he would act as mediator. But,
if it should prove that the public mind of England and the public mind
of Scotland had taken the ply strongly in opposite directions, he would
not attempt to force either nation into conformity with the opinion
of the other. He would suffer each to have its own church, and would
content himself with restraining both churches from persecuting
nonconformists, and from encroaching on the functions of the civil
magistrate.
The language which he held to those Scottish Episcopalians who
complained to him of their sufferings and implored his protection was
well weighed and well guarded, but clear and ingenuous. He wished, he
said, to preserve, if possible, the institution to which they were
so much attached, and to grant at the same time entire liberty of
conscience to that party which could not be reconciled to any deviation
from the Presbyterian model. But the Bishops must take care that they
did not, by their own rashness and obstinacy, put it out of his power to
be of any use to them. They must also distinctly understand that he was
resolved not to force on Scotland by the sword a form of ecclesiastical
government which she detested. If, therefore; it should be found that
prelacy could be maintained only by arms, he should yield to the general
sentiment, and should merely do his best to obtain for the Episcopalian
minority permission to worship God in freedom and safety, [276]
It is not likely that, even if the Scottish Bishops had, as William
recommended, done all that meekness and prudence could do to conciliate
their countrymen, episcopacy could, under any modification, have been
maintained. It was indeed asserted by writers of that generation, and
has been repeated by writers of our generation, that the Presbyterians
were not, before the Revolution, the majority of the people of Scotland,
[277] But in this assertion there is an obvious fallacy. The effective
strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads. An
established church, a dominant church, a church which has the exclusive
possession of civil honours and emoluments, will always rank among its
nominal members multitudes who have no religion at all; multitudes who,
though not destitute of religion, attend little to theological disputes,
and have no scruple about conforming to the mode of worship which
happens to be established; and multitudes who have scruples about
conforming, but whose scruples have yielded to worldly motives. On the
other hand, every member of an oppressed church is a man who has a
very decided preference for that church. A person who, in the time
of Diocletian, joined in celebrating the Christian mysteries might
reasonably be supposed to be a firm believer in Christ. But it would be
a very great mistake to imagine that one single Pontiff or Augur in the
Roman Senate was a firm believer in Jupiter. In Mary's reign, every
body who attended the secret meetings of the Protestants was a real
Protestant: but hundreds of thousands went to mass who, as appeared
before she had been dead a month, were not real Roman Catholics. If,
under the Kings of the House of Stuart, when a Presbyterian was excluded
from political power and from the learned professions, was daily annoyed
by informers, by tyrannical magistrates, by licentious dragoons, and
was in danger of being hanged if he heard a sermon in the open air,
the population of Scotland was not very unequally divided between
Episcopalians and Presbyterians, the rational inference is that more
than nineteen twentieths of those Scotchmen whose conscience was
interested in the matter were Presbyterians, and that not one Scotchman
in twenty was decidedly and on conviction an Episcopalian. Against such
odds the Bishops had but little chance; and whatever chance they had
they made haste to throw away; some of them because they sincerely
believed that their allegiance was still due to James; others probably
because they apprehended that William would not have the power, even if
he had the will, to serve them, and that nothing but a counterrevolution
in the State could avert a revolution in the Church.
As the new King of England could not be at Edinburgh during the sitting
of the Scottish Convention, a letter from him to the Estates was
prepared with great skill. In this document he professed warm attachment
to the Protestant religion, but gave no opinion touching those questions
about which Protestants were divided. He had observed, he said, with
great satisfaction that many of the Scottish nobility and gentry with
whom he had conferred in London were inclined to an union of the two
British kingdoms. He was sensible how much such an union would conduce
to the happiness of both; and he would do all in his power towards the
accomplishing of so good a work.
It was necessary that he should allow a large discretion to his
confidential agents at Edinburgh. The private instructions with which he
furnished those persons could not be minute, but were highly judicious.
He charged them to ascertain to the best of their power the real sense
of the Convention, and to be guided by it. They must remember that the
first object was to settle the government. To that object every
other object, even the union, must be postponed. A treaty between two
independent legislatures, distant from each other several days' journey,
must necessarily be a work of time; and the throne could not safely
remain vacant while the negotiations were pending. It was therefore
important that His Majesty's agents should be on their guard against the
arts of persons who, under pretence of promoting the union, might really
be contriving only to prolong the interregnum. If the Convention should
be bent on establishing the Presbyterian form of church government,
William desired that his friends would do all in their power to prevent
the triumphant sect from retaliating what it had suffered, [278]
The person by whose advice William appears to have been at this time
chiefly guided as to Scotch politics was a Scotchman of great abilities
and attainments, Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, the founder of a family
eminently distinguished at the bar, on the bench, in the senate,
in diplomacy, in arms, and in letters, but distinguished also by
misfortunes and misdeeds which have furnished poets and novelists with
materials for the darkest and most heartrending tales. Already Sir James
had been in mourning for more than one strange and terrible death. One
of his sons had died by poison. One of his daughters had poniarded her
bridegroom on the wedding night. One of his grandsons had in boyish
sport been slain by another. Savage libellers asserted, and some of the
superstitious vulgar believed, that calamities so portentous were the
consequences of some connection between the unhappy race and the powers
of darkness. Sir James had a wry neck; and he was reproached with this
misfortune as if it had been a crime, and was told that it marked him
out as a man doomed to the gallows. His wife, a woman of great ability,
art, and spirit, was popularly nicknamed the Witch of Endor. It was
gravely said that she had cast fearful spells on those whom she hated,
and that she had been seen in the likeness of a cat seated on the cloth
of state by the side of the Lord High Commissioner. The man, however,
over whose roof so many curses appeared to hang did not, as far as we
can now judge, fall short of that very low standard of morality which
was generally attained by politicians of his age and nation. In force of
mind and extent of knowledge he was superior to them all. In his youth
he had borne arms: he had then been a professor of philosophy: he
had then studied law, and had become, by general acknowledgment, the
greatest jurist that his country had produced. In the days of the
Protectorate, he had been a judge. After the Restoration, he had made
his peace with the royal family, had sate in the Privy Council, and
had presided with unrivalled ability in the Court of Session. He had
doubtless borne a share in many unjustifiable acts; but there were
limits which he never passed. He had a wonderful power of giving to
any proposition which it suited him to maintain a plausible aspect of
legality and even of justice; and this power he frequently abused.
But he was not, like many of those among whom he lived, impudently and
unscrupulously servile. Shame or conscience generally restrained him
from committing any bad action for which his rare ingenuity could not
frame a specious defence; and he was seldom in his place at the council
board when any thing outrageously unjust or cruel was to be done. His
moderation at length gave offence to the Court. He was deprived of his
high office, and found himself in so disagreeable a situation that he
retired to Holland. There he employed himself in correcting the great
work on jurisprudence which has preserved his memory fresh down to our
own time. In his banishment he tried to gain the favour of his fellow
exiles, who naturally regarded him with suspicion. He protested, and
perhaps with truth, that his hands were pure from the blood of the
persecuted Covenanters. He made a high profession of religion, prayed
much, and observed weekly days of fasting and humiliation. He even
consented, after much hesitation, to assist with his advice and his
credit the unfortunate enterprise of Argyle. When that enterprise had
failed, a prosecution was instituted at Edinburgh against Dalrymple;
and his estates would doubtless have been confiscated had they not
been saved by an artifice which subsequently became common among the
politicians of Scotland. His eldest son and heir apparent, John, took
the side of the government, supported the dispensing power, declared
against the Test, and accepted the place of Lord Advocate, when Sir
George Mackenzie, after holding out through ten years of foul drudgery,
at length showed signs of flagging. The services of the younger
Dalrymple were rewarded by a remission of the forfeiture which the
offences of the elder had incurred. Those services indeed were not to
be despised. For Sir John, though inferior to his father in depth and
extent of legal learning, was no common man. His knowledge was great and
various: his parts were quick; and his eloquence was singularly ready
and graceful. To sanctity he made no pretensions. Indeed Episcopalians
and Presbyterians agreed in regarding him as little better than an
atheist. During some months Sir John at Edinburgh affected to condemn
the disloyalty of his unhappy parent Sir James; and Sir James at Leyden
told his Puritan friends how deeply he lamented the wicked compliances
of his unhappy child Sir John.
The Revolution came, and brought a large increase of wealth and honours
to the House of Stair. The son promptly changed sides, and cooperated
ably and zealously with the father. Sir James established himself in
London for the purpose of giving advice to William on Scotch affairs.
Sir John's post was in the Parliament House at Edinburgh. He was not
likely to find any equal among the debaters there, and was prepared to
exert all his powers against the dynasty which he had lately served,
[279]
By the large party which was zealous for the Calvinistic church
government John Dalrymple was regarded with incurable distrust and
dislike. It was therefore necessary that another agent should be
employed to manage that party. Such an agent was George Melville,
Lord Melville, a nobleman connected by affinity with the unfortunate
Monmouth, and with that Leslie who had unsuccessfully commanded the
Scotch army against Cromwell at Dunbar. Melville had always been
accounted a Whig and a Presbyterian. Those who speak of him most
favourably have not ventured to ascribe to him eminent intellectual
endowments or exalted public spirit. But he appears from his letters
to have been by no means deficient in that homely prudence the want
of which has often been fatal to men of brighter genius and of purer
virtue. That prudence had restrained him from going very far in
opposition to the tyranny of the Stuarts: but he had listened while his
friends talked about resistance, and therefore, when the Rye House plot
was discovered, thought it expedient to retire to the Continent. In his
absence he was accused of treason, and was convicted on evidence which
would not have satisfied any impartial tribunal. He was condemned to
death: his honours and lands were declared forfeit: his arms were torn
with contumely out of the Heralds' book; and his domains swelled the
estate of the cruel and rapacious Perth. The fugitive meanwhile,
with characteristic wariness, lived quietly on the Continent, and
discountenanced the unhappy projects of his kinsman Monmouth, but
cordially approved of the enterprise of the Prince of Orange.
Illness had prevented Melville from sailing with the Dutch expedition:
but he arrived in London a few hours after the new Sovereigns had been
proclaimed there. William instantly sent him down to Edinburgh, in the
hope, as it should seem, that the Presbyterians would be disposed to
listen to moderate counsels proceeding from a man who was attached to
their cause, and who had suffered for it. Melville's second son, David,
who had inherited, through his mother, the title of Earl of Leven, and
who had acquired some military experience in the service of the Elector
of Brandenburg, had the honour of being the bearer of a letter from the
new King of England to the Scottish Convention, [280]
James had intrusted the conduct of his affairs in Scotland to John
Graham, Viscount Dundee, and Colin Lindsay, Earl of Balcarras. Dundee
had commanded a body of Scottish troops which had marched into England
to oppose the Dutch: but he had found, in the inglorious campaign which
had been fatal to the dynasty of Stuart, no opportunity of displaying
the courage and military skill which those who most detest his merciless
nature allow him to have possessed. He lay with his forces not far from
Watford, when he was informed that James had fled from Whitehall, and
that Feversham had ordered all the royal army to disband. The Scottish
regiments were thus left, without pay or provisions, in the midst of a
foreign and indeed a hostile nation. Dundee, it is said, wept with grief
and rage. Soon, however, more cheering intelligence arrived from various
quarters. William wrote a few lines to say that, if the Scots would
remain quiet, he would pledge his honour for their safety; and, some
hours later, it was known that James had returned to his capital. Dundee
repaired instantly to London, [281] There he met his friend Balcarras,
who had just arrived from Edinburgh. Balcarras, a man distinguished
by his handsome person and by his accomplishments, had, in his youth,
affected the character of a patriot, but had deserted the popular cause,
had accepted a seat in the Privy Council, had become a tool of Perth
and Melfort, and bad been one of the Commissioners who were appointed
to execute the office of Treasurer when Queensberry was disgraced for
refusing to betray the interests of the Protestant religion, [282]
Dundee and Balcarras went together to Whitehall, and had the honour of
accompanying James in his last walk, up and down the Mall. He told them
that he intended to put his affairs in Scotland under their management.
"You, my Lord Balcarras, must undertake the civil business: and you, my
Lord Dundee, shall have a commission from me to command the troops."
The two noblemen vowed that they would prove themselves deserving of his
confidence, and disclaimed all thought of making their peace with the
Prince of Orange, [283]
On the following day James left Whitehall for ever; and the Prince of
Orange arrived at Saint James's. Both Dundee and Balcarras swelled the
crowd which thronged to greet the deliverer, and were not ungraciously
received. Both were well known to him. Dundee had served under him on
the Continent; [284] and the first wife of Balcarras had been a lady of
the House of Orange, and had worn, on her wedding day, a superb pair of
emerald earrings, the gift of her cousin the Prince. [285]
The Scottish Whigs, then assembled in great numbers at Westminster,
earnestly pressed William to proscribe by name four or five men who had,
during the evil times, borne a conspicuous part in the proceedings of
the Privy Council at Edinburgh. Dundee and Balcarras were particularly
mentioned. But the Prince had determined that, as far as his power
extended, all the past should be covered with a general amnesty, and
absolutely refused to make any declaration which could drive to despair
even the most guilty of his uncle's servants.
Balcarras went repeatedly to Saint James's, had several audiences of
William, professed deep respect for his Highness, and owned that King
James had committed great errors, but would not promise to concur in
a vote of deposition. William gave no sign of displeasure, but said at
parting: "Take care, my Lord, that you keep within the law; for, if you
break it, you must expect to be left to it." [286]
Dundee seems to have been less ingenuous. He employed the mediation
of Burnet, opened a negotiation with Saint James's, declared himself
willing to acquiesce in the new order of things, obtained from William
a promise of protection, and promised in return to live peaceably. Such
credit was given to his professions that he was suffered to travel down
to Scotland under the escort of a troop of cavalry. Without such an
escort the man of blood, whose name was never mentioned but with
a shudder at the hearth of any Presbyterian family, would, at that
conjuncture, have had but a perilous journey through Berwickshire and
the Lothians, [287]
February was drawing to a close when Dundee and Balcarras reached
Edinburgh. They had some hope that they might be at the head of a
majority in the Convention. They therefore exerted themselves vigorously
to consolidate and animate their party. They assured the rigid
royalists, who had a scruple about sitting in an assembly convoked by
an usurper, that the rightful King particularly wished no friend of
hereditary monarchy to be absent. More than one waverer was kept steady
by being assured in confident terms that a speedy restoration was
inevitable. Gordon had determined to surrender the castle, and had begun
to remove his furniture: but Dundee and Balcarras prevailed on him to
hold out some time longer. They informed him that they had received from
Saint Germains full powers to adjourn the Convention to Stirling, and
that, if things went ill at Edinburgh, those powers would be used, [288]
At length the fourteenth of March, the day fixed for the meeting of the
Estates, arrived, and the Parliament House was crowded. Nine prelates
were in their places. When Argyle presented himself, a single lord
protested against the admission of a person whom a legal sentence,
passed in due form, and still unreversed, had deprived of the honours
of the peerage. But this objection was overruled by the general sense
of the assembly. When Melville appeared, no voice was raised against his
admission. The Bishop of Edinburgh officiated as chaplain, and made it
one of his petitions that God would help and restore King James, [289]
It soon appeared that the general feeling of the Convention was by no
means in harmony with this prayer. The first matter to be decided was
the choice of a President. The Duke of Hamilton was supported by
the Whigs, the Marquess of Athol by the Jacobites. Neither candidate
possessed, and neither deserved, the entire confidence of his
supporters. Hamilton had been a Privy Councillor of James, had borne a
part in many unjustifiable acts, and had offered but a very cautious and
languid opposition to the most daring attacks on the laws and religion
of Scotland. Not till the Dutch guards were at Whitehall had he ventured
to speak out. Then he had joined the victorious party, and had assured
the Whigs that he had pretended to be their enemy, only in order that he
might, without incurring suspicion, act as their friend. Athol was
still less to be trusted. His abilities were mean, his temper
false, pusillanimous, and cruel. In the late reign he had gained a
dishonourable notoriety by the barbarous actions of which he had been
guilty in Argyleshire. He had turned with the turn of fortune, and
had paid servile court to the Prince of Orange, but had been coldly
received, and had now, from mere mortification, come back to the party
which he had deserted, [290] Neither of the rival noblemen had chosen
to stake the dignities and lands of his house on the issue of the
contention between the rival Kings. The eldest son of Hamilton had
declared for James, and the eldest son of Athol for William, so that, in
any event, both coronets and both estates were safe.
But in Scotland the fashionable notions touching political morality
were lax; and the aristocratical sentiment was strong. The Whigs were
therefore willing to forget that Hamilton had lately sate in the council
of James. The Jacobites were equally willing to forget that Athol had
lately fawned on William. In political inconsistency those two great
lords were far indeed from standing by themselves; but in dignity and
power they had scarcely an equal in the assembly. Their descent was
eminently illustrious: their influence was immense: one of them could
raise the Western Lowlands: the other could bring into the field an
army of northern mountaineers. Round these chiefs therefore the hostile
factions gathered.
The votes were counted; and it appeared that Hamilton had a majority
of forty. The consequence was that about twenty of the defeated party
instantly passed over to the victors, [291] At Westminster such a
defection would have been thought strange; but it seems to have caused
little surprise at Edinburgh. It is a remarkable circumstance that the
same country should have produced in the same age the most wonderful
specimens of both extremes of human nature. No class of men mentioned in
history has ever adhered to a principle with more inflexible pertinacity
than was found among the Scotch Puritans. Fine and imprisonment, the
sheers and the branding iron, the boot, the thumbscrew, and the gallows
could not extort from the stubborn Covenanter one evasive word on which
it was possible to put a sense inconsistent with his theological system.
Even in things indifferent he would hear of no compromise; and he was
but too ready to consider all who recommended prudence and charity as
traitors to the cause of truth. On the other hand, the Scotchmen of that
generation who made a figure in the Parliament House and in the Council
Chamber were the most dishonest and unblushing timeservers that the
world has ever seen. The English marvelled alike at both classes. There
were indeed many stouthearted nonconformists in the South; but scarcely
any who in obstinacy, pugnacity, and hardihood could bear a comparison
with the men of the school of Cameron. There were many knavish
politicians in the South; but few so utterly destitute of morality, and
still fewer so utterly destitute of shame, as the men of the school of
Lauderdale. Perhaps it is natural that the most callous and impudent
vice should be found in the near neighbourhood of unreasonable and
impracticable virtue. Where enthusiasts are ready to destroy or to
be destroyed for trifles magnified into importance by a squeamish
conscience, it is not strange that the very name of conscience should
become a byword of contempt to cool and shrewd men of business.
The majority, reinforced by the crowd of deserters from the minority,
proceeded to name a Committee of Elections. Fifteen persons were chosen,
and it soon appeared that twelve of these were not disposed to examine
severely into the regularity of any proceeding of which the result had
been to send up a Whig to the Parliament House. The Duke of Hamilton
is said to have been disgusted by the gross partiality of his own
followers, and to have exerted himself, with but little success, to
restrain their violence, [292]
Before the Estates proceeded to deliberate on the business for which
they had met, they thought it necessary to provide for their own
security. They could not be perfectly at ease while the roof under which
they sate was commanded by the batteries of the Castle. A deputation
was therefore sent to inform Gordon that the Convention required him
to evacuate the fortress within twenty-four hours, and that, if he
complied, his past conduct should not be remembered against him. He
asked a night for consideration. During that night his wavering mind was
confirmed by the exhortations of Dundee and Balcarras. On the morrow he
sent an answer drawn in respectful but evasive terms. He was very far,
he declared, from meditating harm to the City of Edinburgh. Least of all
could he harbour any thought of molesting an august assembly which he
regarded with profound reverence. He would willingly give bond for his
good behaviour to the amount of twenty thousand pounds sterling. But he
was in communication with the government now established in England. He
was in hourly expectation of important despatches from that government;
and, till they arrived, he should not feel himself justified in
resigning his command. These excuses were not admitted. Heralds and
trumpeters were sent to summon the Castle in form, and to denounce the
penalties of high treason against those who should continue to occupy
that fortress in defiance of the authority of the Estates. Guards were
at the same time posted to intercept all communication between the
garrison and the city, [293]
Two days had been spent in these preludes; and it was expected that
on the third morning the great contest would begin. Meanwhile the
population of Edinburgh was in an excited state. It had been discovered
that Dundee had paid visits to the Castle; and it was believed that his
exhortations had induced the garrison to hold out. His old soldiers were
known to be gathering round him; and it might well be apprehended that
he would make some desperate attempt. He, on the other hand, had been
informed that the Western Covenanters who filled the cellars of the city
had vowed vengeance on him: and, in truth, when we consider that their
temper was singularly savage and implacable; that they had been taught
to regard the slaying of a persecutor as a duty; that no examples
furnished by Holy Writ had been more frequently held up to their
admiration than Ehud stabbing Eglon, and Samuel hewing Agag limb from
limb; that they had never heard any achievement in the history of their
own country more warmly praised by their favourite teachers than the
butchery of Cardinal Beatoun and of Archbishop Sharpe; we may well
wonder that a man who had shed the blood of the saints like water should
have been able to walk the High Street in safety during a single
day. The enemy whom Dundee had most reason to fear was a youth of
distinguished courage and abilities named William Cleland. Cleland had,
when little more than sixteen years old, borne arms in that insurrection
which had been put down at Bothwell Bridge. He had since disgusted some
virulent fanatics by his humanity and moderation. But with the great
body of Presbyterians his name stood high. For with the strict morality
and ardent zeal of a Puritan he united some accomplishments of which few
Puritans could boast. His manners were polished, and his literary and
scientific attainments respectable. He was a linguist, mathematician,
and a poet. It is true that his hymns, odes, ballads, and Hudibrastic
satires are of very little intrinsic value; but, when it is considered
that he was a mere boy when most of them were written, it must be
admitted that they show considerable vigour of mind. He was now at
Edinburgh: his influence among the West Country Whigs assembled there
was great: he hated Dundee with deadly hatred, and was believed to be
meditating some act of violence, [294]
On the fifteenth of March Dundee received information that some of the
Covenanters had bound themselves together to slay him and Sir George
Mackenzie, whose eloquence and learning, long prostituted to the service
of tyranny, had made him more odious to the Presbyterians than any
other man of the gown. Dundee applied to Hamilton for protection, and
Hamilton advised him to bring the matter under the consideration of the
Convention at the next sitting, [295]
Before that sitting, a person named Crane arrived from France, with a
letter addressed by the fugitive King to the Estates. The letter was
sealed: the bearer, strange to say, was not furnished with a copy for
the information of the heads of the Jacobite party; nor did he bring any
message, written or verbal, to either of James's agents. Balcarras and
Dundee were mortified by finding that so little confidence was reposed
in them, and were harassed by painful doubts touching the contents of
the document on which so much depended. They were willing, however, to
hope for the best. King James could not, situated as he was, be so ill
advised as to act in direct opposition to the counsel and entreaties
of his friends. His letter, when opened, must be found to contain such
gracious assurances as would animate the royalists and conciliate the
moderate Whigs. His adherents, therefore, determined that it should be
produced.
When the Convention reassembled on the morning of Saturday the sixteenth
of March, it was proposed that measures should be taken for the personal
security of the members. It was alleged that the life of Dundee had been
threatened; that two men of sinister appearance had been watching the
house where he lodged, and had been heard to say that they would use the
dog as he had used them. Mackenzie complained that he too was in danger,
and, with his usual copiousness and force of language, demanded the
protection of the Estates. But the matter was lightly treated by the
majority: and the Convention passed on to other business, [296]
It was then announced that Crane was at the door of the Parliament
House. He was admitted. The paper of which he was in charge was laid on
the table. Hamilton remarked that there was, in the hands of the Earl
of Leven, a communication from the Prince by whose authority the
Estates had been convoked. That communication seemed to be entitled to
precedence. The Convention was of the same opinion; and the well weighed
and prudent letter of William was read.
It was then moved that the letter of James should be opened. The
Whigs objected that it might possibly contain a mandate dissolving the
Convention. They therefore proposed that, before the seal was broken,
the Estates should resolve to continue sitting, notwithstanding any such
mandate. The Jacobites, who knew no more than the Whigs what was in the
letter, and were impatient to have it read, eagerly assented. A vote was
passed by which the members bound themselves to consider any order which
should command them to separate as a nullity, and to remain assembled
till they should have accomplished the work of securing the liberty and
religion of Scotland. This vote was signed by almost all the lords and
gentlemen who were present. Seven out of nine bishops subscribed it. The
names of Dundee and Balcarras, written by their own hands, may still
be seen on the original roll. Balcarras afterwards excused what, on
his principles, was, beyond all dispute, a flagrant act of treason,
by saying that he and his friends had, from zeal for their master's
interest, concurred in a declaration of rebellion against their master's
authority; that they had anticipated the most salutary effects from the
letter; and that, if they had not made some concession to the majority,
the letter would not have been opened.
In a few minutes the hopes of Balcarras were grievously disappointed.
The letter from which so much had been hoped and feared was read with
all the honours which Scottish Parliaments were in the habit of paying
to royal communications: but every word carried despair to the hearts
of the Jacobites. It was plain that adversity had taught James neither
wisdom nor mercy. All was obstinacy, cruelty, insolence. A pardon was
promised to those traitors who should return to their allegiance within
a fortnight. Against all others unsparing vengeance was denounced.
Not only was no sorrow expressed for past offences: but the letter
was itself a new offence: for it was written and countersigned by the
apostate Melfort, who was, by the statutes of the realm, incapable of
holding the office of Secretary, and who was not less abhorred by the
Protestant Tories than by the Whigs. The hall was in a tumult. The
enemies of James were loud and vehement. His friends, angry with him,
and ashamed of him, saw that it was vain to think of continuing the
struggle in the Convention. Every vote which had been doubtful when his
letter was unsealed was now irrecoverably lost. The sitting closed in
great agitation, [297]
It was Saturday afternoon. There was to be no other meeting till Monday
morning. The Jacobite leaders held a consultation, and came to the
conclusion that it was necessary to take a decided step. Dundee and
Balcarras must use the powers with which they had been intrusted. The
minority must forthwith leave Edinburgh and assemble at Stirling. Athol
assented, and undertook to bring a great body of his clansmen from the
Highlands to protect the deliberations of the Royalist Convention. Every
thing was arranged for the secession; but, in a few hours, the tardiness
of one man and the haste of another ruined the whole plan.
The Monday came. The Jacobite lords and gentlemen were actually taking
horse for Stirling, when Athol asked for a delay of twenty-four hours.
He had no personal reason to be in haste. By staying he ran no risk
of being assassinated. By going he incurred the risks inseparable from
civil war. The members of his party, unwilling to separate from him,
consented to the postponement which he requested, and repaired once more
to the Parliament House. Dundee alone refused to stay a moment longer.
His life was in danger. The Convention had refused to protect him. He
would not remain to be a mark for the pistols and daggers of murderers.
Balcarras expostulated to no purpose. "By departing alone," he said,
"you will give the alarm and break up the whole scheme." But Dundee was
obstinate. Brave as he undoubtedly was, he seems, like many other brave
men, to have been less proof against the danger of assassination
than against any other form of danger. He knew what the hatred of the
Covenanters was: he knew how well he had earned their hatred; and he was
haunted by that consciousness of inexpiable guilt, and by that dread of
a terrible retribution, which the ancient polytheists personified
under the awful name of the Furies. His old troopers, the Satans and
Beelzebubs who had shared his crimes, and who now shared his perils,
were ready to be the companions of his flight.
Meanwhile the Convention had assembled. Mackenzie was on his legs, and
was pathetically lamenting the hard condition of the Estates, at once
commanded by the guns of a fortress and menaced by a fanatical rabble,
when he was interrupted by some sentinels who came running from the
posts near the Castle. They had seen Dundee at the head of fifty horse
on the Stirling road. That road ran close under the huge rock on which
the citadel is built. Gordon had appeared on the ramparts, and had made
a sign that he had something to say. Dundee had climbed high enough to
hear and to be heard, and was then actually conferring with the Duke.
Up to that moment the hatred with which the Presbyterian members of
the assembly regarded the merciless persecutor of their brethren in
the faith had been restrained by the decorous forms of parliamentary
deliberation. But now the explosion was terrible. Hamilton himself,
who, by the acknowledgment of his opponents, had hitherto performed the
duties of President with gravity and impartiality, was the loudest and
fiercest man in the hall. "It is high time," he cried, "that we [should
find] the enemies of our religion and of our civil freedom are mustering
all around us; and we may well suspect that they have accomplices even
here. Lock the doors. Lay the keys on the table. Let nobody go out but
those lords and gentlemen whom we shall appoint to call the citizens to
arms. There are some good men from the West in Edinburgh, men for whom I
can answer." The assembly raised a general cry of assent. Several
members of the majority boasted that they too had brought with them
trusty retainers who would turn out at a moment's notice against
Claverhouse and his dragoons. All that Hamilton proposed was instantly
done. The Jacobites, silent and unresisting, became prisoners. Leven
went forth and ordered the drums to beat. The Covenanters of Lanarkshire
and Ayrshire promptly obeyed the signal. The force thus assembled had
indeed no very military appearance, but was amply sufficient to overawe
the adherents of the House of Stuart. From Dundee nothing was to be
hoped or feared. He had already scrambled down the Castle hill, rejoined
his troopers, and galloped westward. Hamilton now ordered the doors to
be opened. The suspected members were at liberty to depart. Humbled and
brokenspirited, yet glad that they had come off so well, they stole
forth through the crowd of stern fanatics which filled the High Street.
All thought of secession was at an end, [298]
On the following day it was resolved that the kingdom should be put into
a posture of defence. The preamble of this resolution contained a severe
reflection on the perfidy of the traitor who, within a few hours after
he had, by an engagement subscribed with his own hand, bound himself not
to quit his post in the Convention, had set the example of desertion,
and given the signal of civil war. All Protestants, from sixteen to
sixty, were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to assemble in arms
at the first summons; and, that none might pretend ignorance, it was
directed that the edict should be proclaimed at all the market crosses
throughout the realm, [299]
The Estates then proceeded to send a letter of thanks to William. To
this letter were attached the signatures of many noblemen and gentlemen
who were in the interest of the banished King. The Bishops however
unanimously refused to subscribe their names.
It had long been the custom of the Parliaments of Scotland to entrust
the preparation of Acts to a select number of members who were
designated as the Lords of the Articles. In conformity with this usage,
the business of framing a plan for the settling of the government was
now confided to a Committee of twenty-four. Of the twenty-four eight
were peers, eight representatives of counties, and eight representatives
of towns. The majority of the Committee were Whigs; and not a single
prelate had a seat.
The spirit of the Jacobites, broken by a succession of disasters, was,
about this time, for a moment revived by the arrival of the Duke of
Queensberry from London. His rank was high and his influence was great:
his character, by comparison with the characters of those who surrounded
him, was fair. When Popery was in the ascendent, he had been true to
the cause of the Protestant Church; and, since Whiggism had been in the
ascendent, he had been true to the cause of hereditary monarchy. Some
thought that, if he had been earlier in his place, he might have been
able to render important service to the House of Stuart, [300] Even now
the stimulants which he applied to his torpid and feeble party produced
some faint symptoms of returning animation. Means were found of
communicating with Gordon; and he was earnestly solicited to fire on the
city. The Jacobites hoped that, as soon as the cannon balls had beaten
down a few chimneys, the Estates would adjourn to Glasgow. Time would
thus be gained; and the royalists might be able to execute their old
project of meeting in a separate convention. Gordon however positively
refused to take on himself so grave a responsibility on no better
warrant than the request of a small cabal, [301]
By this time the Estates had a guard on which they could rely more
firmly than on the undisciplined and turbulent Covenanters of the West.
A squadron of English men of war from the Thames had arrived in the
Frith of Forth. On board were the three Scottish regiments which had
accompanied William from Holland. He had, with great judgment, selected
them to protect the assembly which was to settle the government of
their country; and, that no cause of jealousy might be given to a people
exquisitely sensitive on points of national honour, he had purged the
ranks of all Dutch soldiers, and had thus reduced the number of men to
about eleven hundred. This little force was commanded by Andrew Mackay,
a Highlander of noble descent, who had served long on the Continent, and
who was distinguished by courage of the truest temper, and by a piety
such as is seldom found in soldiers of fortune. The Convention passed a
resolution appointing Mackay general of their forces. When the question
was put on this resolution, the Archbishop of Glasgow, unwilling
doubtless to be a party to such an usurpation of powers which belonged
to the King alone, begged that the prelates might be excused from
voting. Divines, he said, had nothing to do with military arrangements.
"The Fathers of the Church," answered a member very keenly, "have been
lately favoured with a new light. I have myself seen military
orders signed by the Most Reverend person who has suddenly become so
scrupulous. There was indeed one difference: those orders were for
dragooning Protestants, and the resolution before us is meant to protect
us from Papists." [302]
The arrival of Mackay's troops, and the determination of Gordon to
remain inactive, quelled the spirit of the Jacobites. They had indeed
one chance left. They might possibly, by joining with those Whigs who
were bent on an union with England, have postponed during a considerable
time the settlement of the government. A negotiation was actually opened
with this view, but was speedily broken off. For it soon appeared that
the party which was for James was really hostile to the union, and that
the party which was for the union was really hostile to James. As these
two parties had no object in common, the only effect of a coalition
between them must have been that one of them would have become the tool
of the other. The question of the union therefore was not raised, [303]
Some Jacobites retired to their country seats: others, though they
remained at Edinburgh, ceased to show themselves in the Parliament
House: many passed over to the winning side; and, when at length
the resolutions prepared by the Twenty Four were submitted to the
Convention, it appeared that the party which on the first day of the
session had rallied round Athol had dwindled away to nothing.
The resolutions had been framed, as far as possible, in conformity
with the example recently set at Westminster. In one important point,
however, it was absolutely necessary that the copy should deviate from
the original. The Estates of England had brought two charges against
James, his misgovernment and his flight, and had, by using the soft
word "Abdication," evaded, with some sacrifice of verbal precision,
the question whether subjects may lawfully depose a bad prince. That
question the Estates of Scotland could not evade. They could not pretend
that James had deserted his post. For he had never, since he came to
the throne, resided in Scotland. During many years that kingdom had been
ruled by sovereigns who dwelt in another land. The whole machinery of
the administration had been constructed on the supposition that the
King would be absent, and was therefore not necessarily deranged by that
flight which had, in the south of the island, dissolved all government,
and suspended the ordinary course of justice. It was only by letter that
the King could, when he was at Whitehall, communicate with the Council
and the Parliament at Edinburgh; and by letter he could communicate with
them when he was at Saint Germains or at Dublin. The Twenty Four were
therefore forced to propose to the Estates a resolution distinctly
declaring that James the Seventh had by his misconduct forfeited the
crown. Many writers have inferred from the language of this resolution
that sound political principles had made a greater progress in Scotland
than in England. But the whole history of the two countries from the
Restoration to the Union proves this inference to be erroneous. The
Scottish Estates used plain language, simply because it was impossible
for them, situated as they were, to use evasive language.
The person who bore the chief part in framing the resolution, and in
defending it, was Sir John Dalrymple, who had recently held the high
office of Lord Advocate, and had been an accomplice in some of the
misdeeds which he now arraigned with great force of reasoning and
eloquence. He was strenuously supported by Sir James Montgomery, member
for Ayrshire, a man of considerable abilities, but of loose principles,
turbulent temper, insatiable cupidity, and implacable malevolence. The
Archbishop of Glasgow and Sir George Mackenzie spoke on the other side:
but the only effect of their oratory was to deprive their party of the
advantage of being able to allege that the Estates were under duress,
and that liberty of speech had been denied to the defenders of
hereditary monarchy.
When the question was put, Athol, Queensberry, and some of their
friends withdrew. Only five members voted against the resolution which
pronounced that James had forfeited his right to the allegiance of his
subjects. When it was moved that the Crown of Scotland should be
settled as the Crown of England had been settled, Athol and Queensberry
reappeared in the hall. They had doubted, they said, whether they could
justifiably declare the throne vacant. But, since it had been declared
vacant, they felt no doubt that William and Mary were the persons who
ought to fill it.
The Convention then went forth in procession to the High Street. Several
great nobles, attended by the Lord Provost of the capital and by the
heralds, ascended the octagon tower from which rose the city cross
surmounted by the unicorn of Scotland, [304] Hamilton read the vote of
the Convention; and a King at Arms proclaimed the new Sovereigns with
sound of trumpet. On the same day the Estates issued an order that the
parochial clergy should, on pain of deprivation, publish from their
pulpits the proclamation which had just been read at the city cross, and
should pray for King William and Queen Mary.
Still the interregnum was not at an end. Though the new Sovereigns had
been proclaimed, they had not yet been put into possession of the royal
authority by a formal tender and a formal acceptance. At Edinburgh,
as at Westminster, it was thought necessary that the instrument which
settled the government should clearly define and solemnly assert those
privileges of the people which the Stuarts had illegally infringed. A
Claim of Right was therefore drawn up by the Twenty Four, and adopted by
the Convention. To this Claim, which purported to be merely declaratory
of the law as it stood, was added a supplementary paper containing a
list of grievances which could be remedied only by new laws. One most
important article which we should naturally expect to find at the head
of such a list, the Convention, with great practical prudence, but in
defiance of notorious facts and of unanswerable arguments, placed in the
Claim of Right. Nobody could deny that prelacy was established by Act
of Parliament. The power exercised by the Bishops might be pernicious,
unscriptural, antichristian but illegal it certainly was not; and to
pronounce it illegal was to outrage common sense. The Whig leaders
however were much more desirous to get rid of episcopacy than to
prove themselves consummate publicists and logicians. If they made the
abolition of episcopacy an article of the contract by which William was
to hold the crown, they attained their end, though doubtless in a manner
open to much criticism. If, on the other hand, they contented themselves
with resolving that episcopacy was a noxious institution which at some
future time the legislature would do well to abolish, they might find
that their resolution, though unobjectionable in form, was barren of
consequences. They knew that William by no means sympathized with their
dislike of Bishops, and that, even had he been much more zealous for
the Calvinistic model than he was, the relation in which he stood to the
Anglican Church would make it difficult and dangerous for him to declare
himself hostile to a fundamental part of the constitution of that
Church. If he should become King of Scotland without being fettered by
any pledge on this subject, it might well be apprehended that he would
hesitate about passing an Act which would be regarded with abhorrence
by a large body of his subjects in the south of the island. It was
therefore most desirable that the question should be settled while the
throne was still vacant. In this opinion many politicians concurred, who
had no dislike to rochets and mitres, but who wished that William might
have a quiet and prosperous reign. The Scottish people,--so these men
reasoned,--hated episcopacy. The English loved it. To leave William
any voice in the matter was to put him under the necessity of deeply
wounding the strongest feelings of one of the nations which he governed.
It was therefore plainly for his own interest that the question, which
he could not settle in any manner without incurring a fearful amount of
obloquy, should be settled for him by others who were exposed to no
such danger. He was not yet Sovereign of Scotland. While the interregnum
lasted, the supreme power belonged to the Estates; and for what the
Estates might do the prelatists of his southern kingdom could not hold
him responsible. The elder Dalrymple wrote strongly from London to this
effect, and there can be little doubt that he expressed the sentiments
of his master. William would have sincerely rejoiced if the Scots could
have been reconciled to a modified episcopacy. But, since that could not
be, it was manifestly desirable that they should themselves, while
there was yet no King over them, pronounce the irrevocable doom of the
institution which they abhorred, [305]
The Convention, therefore, with little debate as it should seem,
inserted in the Claim of Right a clause declaring that prelacy was an
insupportable burden to the kingdom, that it had been long odious to the
body of the people, and that it ought to be abolished.
Nothing in the proceedings at Edinburgh astonishes an Englishman more
than the manner in which the Estates dealt with the practice of torture.
In England torture had always been illegal. In the most servile times
the judges had unanimously pronounced it so. Those rulers who had
occasionally resorted to it had, as far as was possible, used it in
secret, had never pretended that they had acted in conformity with
either statute law or common law, and had excused themselves by saying
that the extraordinary peril to which the state was exposed had
forced them to take on themselves the responsibility of employing
extraordinarily means of defence. It had therefore never been thought
necessary by any English Parliament to pass any Act or resolution
touching this matter. The torture was not mentioned in the Petition
of Right, or in any of the statutes framed by the Long Parliament.
No member of the Convention of 1689 dreamed of proposing that the
instrument which called the Prince and Princess of Orange to the throne
should contain a declaration against the using of racks and thumbscrews
for the purpose of forcing prisoners to accuse themselves. Such a
declaration would have been justly regarded as weakening rather than
strengthening a rule which, as far back as the days of the Plantagenets,
had been proudly declared by the most illustrious sages of Westminster
Hall to be a distinguishing feature of the English jurisprudence, [306]
In the Scottish Claim of Right, the use of torture, without evidence,
or in ordinary cases, was declared to be contrary to law. The use of
torture, therefore, where there was strong evidence, and where the crime
was extraordinary, was, by the plainest implication, declared to be
according to law; nor did the Estates mention the use of torture among
the grievances which required a legislative remedy. In truth, they could
not condemn the use of torture without condemning themselves. It had
chanced that, while they were employed in settling the government, the
eloquent and learned Lord President Lockhart had been foully murdered in
a public street through which he was returning from church on a Sunday.
The murderer was seized, and proved to be a wretch who, having treated
his wife barbarously and turned her out of doors, had been compelled by
a decree of the Court of Session to provide for her. A savage hatred of
the judges by whom she had been protected had taken possession of his
mind, and had goaded him to a horrible crime and a horrible fate. It
was natural that an assassination attended by so many circumstances
of aggravation should move the indignation of the members of the
Convention. Yet they should have considered the gravity of the
conjuncture and the importance of their own mission. They unfortunately,
in the heat of passion, directed the magistrates of Edinburgh to strike
the prisoner in the boots, and named a Committee to superintend the
operation. But for this unhappy event, it is probable that the law of
Scotland concerning torture would have been immediately assimilated to
the law of England, [307]
Having settled the Claim of Right, the Convention proceeded to revise
the Coronation oath. When this had been done, three members were
appointed to carry the Instrument of Government to London. Argyle,
though not, in strictness of law, a Peer, was chosen to represent the
Peers: Sir James Montgomery represented the Commissioners of Shires, and
Sir John Dalrymple the Commissioners of Towns.
The Estates then adjourned for a few weeks, having first passed a vote
which empowered Hamilton to take such measures as might be necessary for
the preservation of the public peace till the end of the interregnum.
The ceremony of the inauguration was distinguished from ordinary
pageants by some highly interesting circumstances. On the eleventh of
May the three Commissioners came to the Council Chamber at Whitehall,
and thence, attended by almost all the Scotchmen of note who were then
in London, proceeded to the Banqueting House. There William and Mary
appeared seated under a canopy. A splendid circle of English nobles, and
statesmen stood round the throne: but the sword of state as committed to
a Scotch lord; and the oath of office was administered after the Scotch
fashion. Argyle recited the words slowly. The royal pair, holding up
their hands towards heaven, repeated after him till they came to the
last clause. There William paused. That clause contained a promise that
he would root out all heretics and all enemies of the true worship of
God; and it was notorious that, in the opinion of many Scotchmen,
not only all Roman Catholics, but all Protestant Episcopalians, all
Independents, Baptists and Quakers, all Lutherans, nay all British
Presbyterians who did not hold themselves bound by the Solemn League and
Covenant, were enemies of the true worship of God, [308] The King had
apprised the Commissioners that he could not take this part of the oath
without a distinct and public explanation; and they had been authorised
by the Convention to give such an explanation as would satisfy him.
"I will not," he now said, "lay myself under any obligation to be
a persecutor." "Neither the words of this oath," said one of the
Commissioners, "nor the laws of Scotland, lay any such obligation on
your Majesty." "In that sense, then, I swear," said William; "and I
desire you all, my lords and gentlemen, to witness that I do so." Even
his detractors have generally admitted that on this great occasion he
acted with uprightness, dignity, and wisdom, [309]
As King of Scotland, he soon found himself embarrassed at every step by
all the difficulties which had embarrassed him as King of England, and
by other difficulties which in England were happily unknown. In the
north of the island, no class was more dissatisfied with the Revolution
than the class which owed most to the Revolution. The manner in which
the Convention had decided the question of ecclesiastical polity had
not been more offensive to the Bishops themselves than to those fiery
Covenanters who had long, in defiance of sword and carbine, boot and
gibbet, worshipped their Maker after their own fashion in caverns and on
mountain tops. Was there ever, these zealots exclaimed, such a halting
between two opinions, such a compromise between the Lord and Baal? The
Estates ought to have said that episcopacy was an abomination in
God's sight, and that, in obedience to his word, and from fear of
his righteous judgment, they were determined to deal with this great
national sin and scandal after the fashion of those saintly rulers who
of old cut down the groves and demolished the altars of Chemosh and
Astarte. Unhappily, Scotland was ruled, not by pious Josiahs, but by
careless Gallios. The antichristian hierarchy was to be abolished, not
because it was an insult to heaven, but because it was felt as a burden
on earth; not because it was hateful to the great Head of the Church,
but because it was hateful to the people. Was public opinion, then, the
test of right and wrong in religion? Was not the order which Christ had
established in his own house to be held equally sacred in all countries
and through all ages? And was there no reason for following that order
in Scotland except a reason which might be urged with equal force for
maintaining Prelacy in England, Popery in Spain, and Mahometanism in
Turkey? Why, too, was nothing said of those Covenants which the nation
had so generally subscribed and so generally violated? Why was it not
distinctly affirmed that the promises set down in those rolls were still
binding, and would to the end of time be binding, on the kingdom? Were
these truths to be suppressed from regard for the feelings and interests
of a prince who was all things to all men, an ally of the idolatrous
Spaniard and of the Lutheran bane, a presbyterian at the Hague and a
prelatist at Whiteball? He, like Jelin in ancient times, had doubtless
so far done well that he had been the scourge of the idolatrous House of
Ahab. But he, like Jelin, had not taken heed to walk in the divine
law with his whole heart, but had tolerated and practised impieties
differing only in degree from those of which he had declared himself the
enemy. It would have better become godly senators to remonstrate with
him on the sin which he was committing by conforming to the Anglican
ritual, and by maintaining the Anglican Church government, than to
flatter him by using a phraseology which seemed to indicate that they
were as deeply tainted with Erastianism as himself. Many of those who
held this language refused to do any act which could be construed into a
recognition of the new Sovereigns, and would rather have been fired upon
by files of musketeers or tied to stakes within low water mark than have
uttered a prayer that God would bless William and Mary.
Yet the King had less to fear from the pertinacious adherence of these
men to their absurd principles, than from the ambition and avarice of
another set of men who had no principles at all. It was necessary
that he should immediately name ministers to conduct the government of
Scotland: and, name whom he might, he could not fail to disappoint
and irritate a multitude of expectants. Scotland was one of the least
wealthy countries in Europe: yet no country in Europe contained a
greater number of clever and selfish politicians. The places in the
gift of the Crown were not enough to satisfy one twentieth part of the
placehunters, every one of whom thought that his own services had
been preeminent, and that, whoever might be passed by, he ought to
be remembered. William did his best to satisfy these innumerable and
insatiable claimants by putting many offices into commission. There were
however a few great posts which it was impossible to divide. Hamilton
was declared Lord High Commissioner, in the hope that immense pecuniary
allowances, a residence in Holyrood Palace, and a pomp and dignity
little less than regal, would content him. The Earl of Crawford was
appointed President of the Parliament; and it was supposed that this
appointment would conciliate the rigid Presbyterians, for Crawford was
what they called a professor. His letters and speeches are, to use his
own phraseology, exceeding savoury. Alone, or almost alone, among the
prominent politicians of that time, he retained the style which had
been fashionable in the preceding generation. He had a text of the
Old Testament ready for every occasion. He filled his despatches with
allusions to Ishmael and Hagar, Hannah and Eli, Elijah, Nehemiah,
and Zerubbabel, and adorned his oratory with quotations from Ezra and
Haggai. It is a circumstance strikingly characteristic of the man, and
of the school in which he had been trained, that, in all the mass of his
writing which has come down to us, there is not a single word indicating
that he had ever in his life heard of the New Testament. Even in our own
time some persons of a peculiar taste have been so much delighted by the
rich unction of his eloquence, that they have confidently pronounced
him a saint. To those whose habit it is to judge of a man rather by his
actions than by his words, Crawford will appear to have been a selfish,
cruel politician, who was not at all the dupe of his own cant, and whose
zeal against episcopal government was not a little whetted by his desire
to obtain a grant of episcopal domains. In excuse for his greediness, it
ought to be said that he was the poorest noble of a poor nobility, and
that before the Revolution he was sometimes at a loss for a meal and a
suit of clothes, [310]
The ablest of Scottish politicians and debaters, Sir John Dalrymple, was
appointed Lord Advocate. His father, Sir James, the greatest of Scottish
jurists, was placed at the head of the Court of Session. Sir William
Lockhart, a man whose letters prove him to have possessed considerable
ability, became Solicitor General.
Sir James Montgomery had flattered himself that he should be the chief
minister. He had distinguished himself highly in the Convention. He
had been one of the Commissioners who had tendered the Crown and
administered the oath to the new Sovereigns. In parliamentary ability
and eloquence he had no superior among his countrymen, except the new
Lord Advocate. The Secretaryship was, not indeed in dignity, but in real
power, the highest office in the Scottish government; and this office
was the reward to which Montgomery thought himself entitled. But the
Episcopalians and the moderate Presbyterians dreaded him as a man
of extreme opinions and of bitter spirit. He had been a chief of
the Covenanters: he had been prosecuted at one time for holding
conventicles, and at another time for harbouring rebels: he had been
fined: he had been imprisoned: he had been almost driven to take refuge
from his enemies beyond the Atlantic in the infant settlement of New
Jersey. It was apprehended that, if he were now armed with the whole
power of the Crown, he would exact a terrible retribution for what he
had suffered, [311] William therefore preferred Melville, who, though
not a man of eminent talents, was regarded by the Presbyterians as a
thoroughgoing friend, and yet not regarded by the Episcopalians as an
implacable enemy. Melville fixed his residence at the English Court,
and became the regular organ of communication between Kensington and the
authorities at Edinburgh.
William had, however, one Scottish adviser who deserved and possessed
more influence than any of the ostensible ministers. This was Carstairs,
one of the most remarkable men of that age. He united great scholastic
attainments with great aptitude for civil business, and the firm faith
and ardent zeal of a martyr with the shrewdness and suppleness of a
consummate politician. In courage and fidelity he resembled Burnet; but
he had, what Burnet wanted, judgment, selfcommand, and a singular power
of keeping secrets. There was no post to which he might not have aspired
if he had been a layman, or a priest of the Church of England. But a
Presbyterian clergyman could not hope to attain any high dignity either
in the north or in the south of the island. Carstairs was forced to
content himself with the substance of power, and to leave the semblance
to others. He was named Chaplain to their Majesties for Scotland, but
wherever the King was, in England, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, there
was this most trusty and most prudent of courtiers. He obtained from
the royal bounty a modest competence; and he desired no more. But it
was well known that he could be as useful a friend and as formidable an
enemy as any member of the cabinet; and he was designated at the
public offices and in the antechambers of the palace by the significant
nickname of the Cardinal, [312]
To Montgomery was offered the place of Lord Justice Clerk. But that
place, though high and honourable, he thought below his merits and his
capacity; and he returned from London to Scotland with a heart ulcerated
by hatred of his ungrateful master and of his successful rivals. At
Edinburgh a knot of Whigs, as severely disappointed as himself by the
new arrangements, readily submitted to the guidance of so bold and
able a leader. Under his direction these men, among whom the Earl of
Annandale and Lord Ross were the most conspicuous, formed themselves
into a society called the Club, appointed a clerk, and met daily at a
tavern to concert plans of opposition. Round this nucleus soon gathered
a great body of greedy and angry politicians, [313] With these dishonest
malecontents, whose object was merely to annoy the government and to get
places, were leagued other malecontents, who, in the course of a long
resistance to tyranny, had become so perverse and irritable that
they were unable to live contentedly even under the mildest and most
constitutional government. Such a man was Sir Patrick Hume. He had
returned from exile, as litigious, as impracticable; as morbidly jealous
of all superior authority, and as fond of haranguing, as he had been
four years before, and was as much bent on making a merely nominal
sovereign of William as he had formerly been bent on making a merely
nominal general of Argyle, [314] A man far superior morally and
intellectually to Hume, Fletcher of Saltoun, belonged to the same party.
Though not a member of the Convention, he was a most active member of
the Club, [315] He hated monarchy: he hated democracy: his favourite
project was to make Scotland an oligarchical republic. The King, if
there must be a King, was to be a mere pageant. The lowest class of the
people were to be bondsmen. The whole power, legislative and executive,
was to be in the hands of the Parliament. In other words, the country
was to be absolutely governed by a hereditary aristocracy, the most
needy, the most haughty, and the most quarrelsome in Europe. Under such
a polity there could have been neither freedom nor tranquillity. Trade,
industry, science, would have languished; and Scotland would have been
a smaller Poland, with a puppet sovereign, a turbulent diet, and an
enslaved people. With unsuccessful candidates for office, and with
honest but wrongheaded republicans, were mingled politicians whose
course was determined merely by fear. Many sycophants, who were
conscious that they had, in the evil time, done what deserved
punishment, were desirous to make their peace with the powerful and
vindictive Club, and were glad to be permitted to atone for their
servility to James by their opposition to William. [316] The great body
of Jacobites meanwhile stood aloof, saw with delight the enemies of the
House of Stuart divided against one another, and indulged the hope that
the confusion would end in the restoration of the banished king, [317]
While Montgomery was labouring to form out of various materials a party
which might, when the Convention should reassemble, be powerful enough
to dictate to the throne, an enemy still more formidable than Montgomery
had set up the standard of civil war in a region about which the
politicians of Westminster, and indeed most of the politicians of
Edinburgh, knew no more than about Abyssinia or Japan.
It is not easy for a modern Englishman, who can pass in a day from his
club in St. James's Street to his shooting box among the Grampians, and
who finds in his shooting box all the comforts and luxuries of his
club, to believe that, in the time of his greatgrandfathers, St. James's
Street had as little connection with the Grampians as with the Andes.
Yet so it was. In the south of our island scarcely any thing was known
about the Celtic part of Scotland; and what was known excited no feeling
but contempt and loathing. The crags and the glens, the woods and the
waters, were indeed the same that now swarm every autumn with admiring
gazers and stretchers. The Trosachs wound as now between gigantic walls
of rock tapestried with broom and wild roses: Foyers came headlong down
through the birchwood with the same leap and the same roar with which
he still rushes to Loch Ness; and, in defiance of the sun of June, the
snowy scalp of Ben Cruachan rose, as it still rises, over the willowy
islets of Loch Awe. Yet none of these sights had power, till a recent
period, to attract a single poet or painter from more opulent and more
tranquil regions. Indeed, law and police, trade and industry, have done
far more than people of romantic dispositions will readily admit,
to develope in our minds a sense of the wilder beauties of nature.
A traveller must be freed from all apprehension of being murdered or
starved before he can be charmed by the bold outlines and rich tints
of the hills. He is not likely to be thrown into ecstasies by the
abruptness of a precipice from which he is in imminent danger of falling
two thousand feet perpendicular; by the boiling waves of a torrent which
suddenly whirls away his baggage and forces him to run for his life; by
the gloomy grandeur of a pass where he finds a corpse which marauders
have just stripped and mangled; or by the screams of those eagles whose
next meal may probably be on his own eyes. About the year 1730, Captain
Burt, one of the first Englishmen who caught a glimpse of the spots
which now allure tourists from every part of the civilised world, wrote
an account of his wanderings. He was evidently a man of a quick, an
observant, and a cultivated mind, and would doubtless, had he lived in
our age, have looked with mingled awe and delight on the mountains of
Invernessshire. But, writing with the feeling which was universal in
his own age, he pronounced those mountains monstrous excrescences. Their
deformity, he said, was such that the most sterile plains seemed lovely
by comparison. Fine weather, he complained, only made bad worse; for,
the clearer the day, the more disagreeably did those misshapen masses
of gloomy brown and dirty purple affect the eye. What a contrast, he
exclaimed, between these horrible prospects and the beauties of Richmond
Hill! [318] Some persons may think that Burt was a man of vulgar and
prosaical mind: but they will scarcely venture to pass a similar
judgment on Oliver Goldsmith. Goldsmith was one of the very few Saxons
who, more than a century ago, ventured to explore the Highlands. He
was disgusted by the hideous wilderness, and declared that he greatly
preferred the charming country round Leyden, the vast expanse of verdant
meadow, and the villas with their statues and grottoes, trim flower
beds, and rectilinear avenues. Yet it is difficult to believe that
the author of the Traveller and of the Deserted Village was naturally
inferior in taste and sensibility to the thousands of clerks and
milliners who are now thrown into raptures by the sight of Loch Katrine
and Loch Lomond, [319] His feelings may easily be explained. It was not
till roads had been cut out of the rocks, till bridges had been flung
over the courses of the rivulets, till inns had succeeded to dens of
robbers, till there was as little danger of being slain or plundered
in the wildest defile of Badenoch or Lochaber as in Cornhill, that
strangers could be enchanted by the blue dimples of the lakes and by
the rainbows which overhung the waterfalls, and could derive a solemn
pleasure even from the clouds and tempests which lowered on the mountain
tops.
The change in the feeling with which the Lowlanders regarded the
highland scenery was closely connected with a change not less remarkable
in the feeling with which they regarded the Highland race. It is not
strange that the Wild Scotch, as they were sometimes called, should,
in the seventeenth century, have been considered by the Saxons as mere
savages. But it is surely strange that, considered as savages, they
should not have been objects of interest and curiosity. The English were
then abundantly inquisitive about the manners of rude nations separated
from our island by great continents and oceans. Numerous books were
printed describing the laws, the superstitions, the cabins, the repasts,
the dresses, the marriages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots,
Mohawks and Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full of
allusions to the usages of the black men of Africa and of the red men
of America. The only barbarian about whom there was no wish to have any
information was the Highlander. Five or six years after the Revolution,
an indefatigable angler published an account of Scotland. He boasted
that, in the course of his rambles from lake to lake, and from brook to
brook, he had left scarcely a nook of the kingdom unexplored. But, when
we examine his narrative, we find that he had never ventured beyond
the extreme skirts of the Celtic region. He tells us that even from the
people who lived close to the passes he could learn little or nothing
about the Gaelic population. Few Englishmen, he says, had ever seen
Inverary. All beyond Inverary was chaos, [320] In the reign of George
the First, a work was published which professed to give a most exact
account of Scotland; and in this work, consisting of more than three
hundred pages, two contemptuous paragraphs were thought sufficient for
the Highlands and the Highlanders, [321] We may well doubt whether, in
1689, one in twenty of the well read gentlemen who assembled at Will's
coffeehouse knew that, within the four seas, and at the distance of less
than five hundred miles from London, were many miniature courts, in
each of which a petty prince, attended by guards, by armour bearers, by
musicians, by a hereditary orator, by a hereditary poet laureate, kept
a rude state, dispensed a rude justice, waged wars, and concluded
treaties. While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigour, no
account of them was given by any observer, qualified to judge of them
fairly. Had such an observer studied the character of the Highlanders,
he would doubtless have found in it closely intermingled the good and
the bad qualities of an uncivilised nation. He would have found that the
people had no love for their country or for their king; that they had
no attachment to any commonwealth larger than the clan, or to any
magistrate superior to the chief. He would have found that life was
governed by a code of morality and honour widely different from that
which is established in peaceful and prosperous societies. He would have
learned that a stab in the back, or a shot from behind a fragment of
rock, were approved modes of taking satisfaction for insults. He would
have heard men relate boastfully how they or their fathers had wreaked
on hereditary enemies in a neighbouring valley such vengeance as would
have made old soldiers of the Thirty Years' War shudder. He would have
found that robbery was held to be a calling, not merely innocent, but
honourable. He would have seen, wherever he turned, that dislike of
steady industry, and that disposition to throw on the weaker sex the
heaviest part of manual labour, which are characteristic of savages. He
would have been struck by the spectacle of athletic men basking in
the sun, angling for salmon, or taking aim at grouse, while their aged
mothers, their pregnant wives, their tender daughters, were reaping the
scanty harvest of oats. Nor did the women repine at their hard lot. In
their view it was quite fit that a man, especially if he assumed the
aristocratic title of Duinhe Wassel and adorned his bonnet with the
eagle's feather, should take his ease, except when he was fighting,
hunting, or marauding. To mention the name of such a man in connection
with commerce or with any mechanical art was an insult. Agriculture was
indeed less despised. Yet a highborn warrior was much more becomingly
employed in plundering the land of others than in tilling his own. The
religion of the greater part of the Highlands was a rude mixture of
Popery and Paganism. The symbol of redemption was associated with
heathen sacrifices and incantations. Baptized men poured libations of
ale to one Daemon, and set out drink offerings of milk for another.
Seers wrapped themselves up in bulls' hides, and awaited, in that
vesture, the inspiration which was to reveal the future. Even among
those minstrels and genealogists whose hereditary vocation was to
preserve the memory of past events, an enquirer would have found very
few who could read. In truth, he might easily have journeyed from sea to
sea without discovering a page of Gaelic printed or written. The price
which he would have had to pay for his knowledge of the country would
have been heavy. He would have had to endure hardships as great as if
he had sojourned among the Esquimaux or the Samoyeds. Here and
there, indeed, at the castle of some great lord who had a seat in the
Parliament and Privy Council, and who was accustomed to pass a large
part of his life in the cities of the South, might have been found wigs
and embroidered coats, plate and fine linen, lace and jewels, French
dishes and French wines. But, in general, the traveller would have
been forced to content himself with very different quarters. In many
dwellings the furniture, the food, the clothing, nay the very hair
and skin of his hosts, would have put his philosophy to the proof. His
lodging would sometimes have been in a but of which every nook would
have swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with
peat smoke, and foul with a hundred noisome exhalations. At supper grain
fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied by a
cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company with which he
would have feasted would have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, and
others would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would have
been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that
couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the
reek of turf, and half mad with the itch, [322]
This is not an attractive picture. And yet an enlightened and
dispassionate observer would have found in the character and manners of
this rude people something which might well excite admiration and a good
hope. Their courage was what great exploits achieved in all the
four quarters of the globe have since proved it to be. Their intense
attachment to their own tribe and to their own patriarch, though
politically a great evil, partook of the nature of virtue. The sentiment
was misdirected and ill regulated; but still it was heroic. There must
be some elevation of soul in a man who loves the society of which he is
a member and the leader whom he follows with a love stronger than the
love of life. It was true that the Highlander had few scruples about
shedding the blood of an enemy: but it was not less true that he had
high notions of the duty of observing faith to allies and hospitality
to guests. It was true that his predatory habits were most pernicious to
the commonwealth. Yet those erred greatly who imagined that he bore any
resemblance to villains who, in rich and well governed communities, live
by stealing. When he drove before him the herds of Lowland farmers up
the pass which led to his native glen, he no more considered himself as
a thief than the Raleighs and Drakes considered themselves as thieves
when they divided the cargoes of Spanish galleons. He was a warrior
seizing lawful prize of war, of war never once intermitted during
the thirty-five generations which had passed away since the Teutonic
invaders had driven the children of the soil to the mountains. That, if
he was caught robbing on such principles, he should, for the protection
of peaceful industry, be punished with the utmost rigour of the law
was perfectly just. But it was not just to class him morally with the
pickpockets who infested Drury Lane Theatre, or the highwaymen who
stopped coaches on Blackheath. His inordinate pride of birth and his
contempt for labour and trade were indeed great weaknesses, and had done
far more than the inclemency of the air and the sterility of the soil
to keep his country poor and rude. Yet even here there was some
compensation. It must in fairness be acknowledged that the patrician
virtues were not less widely diffused among the population of the
Highlands than the patrician vices. As there was no other part of the
island where men, sordidly clothed, lodged, and fed, indulged themselves
to such a degree in the idle sauntering habits of an aristocracy, so
there was no other part of the island where such men had in such a
degree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace and dignity of
manner, selfrespect, and that noble sensibility which makes dishonour
more terrible than death. A gentleman of this sort, whose clothes were
begrimed with the accumulated filth of years, and whose hovel smelt
worse than an English hogstye, would often do the honours of that hovel
with a lofty courtesy worthy of the splendid circle of Versailles.
Though he had as little booklearning as the most stupid ploughboys
of England, it would have been a great error to put him in the same
intellectual rank with such ploughboys. It is indeed only by reading
that men can become profoundly acquainted with any science. But the arts
of poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute perfection, and
may exercise a mighty influence on the public mind, in an age in which
books are wholly or almost wholly unknown. The first great painter
of life and manners has described, with a vivacity which makes it
impossible to doubt that he was copying from nature, the effect produced
by eloquence and song on audiences ignorant of the alphabet. It is
probable that, in the Highland councils, men who would not have been
qualified for the duty of parish clerks sometimes argued questions of
peace and war, of tribute and homage, with ability worthy of Halifax and
Caermarthen, and that, at the Highland banquets, minstrels who did
not know their letters sometimes poured forth rhapsodies in which a
discerning critic might have found passages which would have reminded
him of the tenderness of Otway or of the vigour of Dryden.
There was therefore even then evidence sufficient to justify the belief
that no natural inferiority had kept the Celt far behind the Saxon.
It might safely have been predicted that, if ever an efficient police
should make it impossible for the Highlander to avenge his wrongs by
violence and to supply his wants by rapine, if ever his faculties should
be developed by the civilising influence of the Protestant religion and
of the English language, if ever he should transfer to his country and
to her lawful magistrates the affection and respect with which he had
been taught to regard his own petty community and his own petty prince,
the kingdom would obtain an immense accession of strength for all the
purposes both of peace and of war.
Such would doubtless have been the decision of a well informed and
impartial judge. But no such judge was then to be found. The Saxons
who dwelt far from the Gaelic provinces could not be well informed. The
Saxons who dwelt near those provinces could not be impartial. National
enmities have always been fiercest among borderers; and the enmity
between the Highland borderer and the Lowland borderer along the
whole frontier was the growth of ages, and was kept fresh by constant
injuries. One day many square miles of pasture land were swept bare by
armed plunderers from the hills. Another day a score of plaids dangled
in a row on the gallows of Crieff or Stirling. Fairs were indeed held on
the debatable land for the necessary interchange of commodities. But
to those fairs both parties came prepared for battle; and the day often
ended in bloodshed. Thus the Highlander was an object of hatred to his
Saxon neighbours; and from his Saxon neighbours those Saxons who dwelt
far from him learned the very little that they cared to know about his
habits. When the English condescended to think of him at all,--and it
was seldom that they did so,--they considered him as a filthy abject
savage, a slave, a Papist, a cutthroat, and a thief, [323]
This contemptuous loathing lasted till the year 1745, and was then for a
moment succeeded by intense fear and rage. England, thoroughly alarmed,
put forth her whole strength. The Highlands were subjugated rapidly,
completely, and for ever. During a short time the English nation, still
heated by the recent conflict, breathed nothing but vengeance. The
slaughter on the field of battle and on the scaffold was not sufficient
to slake the public thirst for blood. The sight of the tartan inflamed
the populace of London with hatred, which showed itself by unmanly
outrages to defenceless captives. A political and social revolution
took place through the whole Celtic region. The power of the chiefs was
destroyed: the people were disarmed: the use of the old national garb
was interdicted: the old predatory habits were effectually broken; and
scarcely had this change been accomplished when a strange reflux of
public feeling began. Pity succeeded to aversion. The nation execrated
the cruelties which had been committed on the Highlanders, and forgot
that for those cruelties it was itself answerable. Those very Londoners,
who, while the memory of the march to Derby was still fresh, had
thronged to hoot and pelt the rebel prisoners, now fastened on the
prince who had put down the rebellion the nickname of Butcher. Those
barbarous institutions and usages, which, while they were in full force,
no Saxon had thought worthy of serious examination, or had mentioned
except with contempt, had no sooner ceased to exist than they became
objects of curiosity, of interest, even of admiration. Scarcely had the
chiefs been turned into mere landlords, when it became the fashion to
draw invidious comparisons between the rapacity of the landlord and the
indulgence of the chief. Men seemed to have forgotten that the ancient
Gaelic polity had been found to be incompatible with the authority of
law, had obstructed the progress of civilisation, had more than once
brought on the empire the curse of civil war. As they had formerly
seen only the odious side of that polity, they could now see only the
pleasing side. The old tie, they said, had been parental: the new tie
was purely commercial. What could be more lamentable than that the head
of a tribe should eject, for a paltry arrear of rent, tenants who were
his own flesh and blood, tenants whose forefathers had often with their
bodies covered his forefathers on the field of battle? As long as there
were Gaelic marauders, they had been regarded by the Saxon population
as hateful vermin who ought to be exterminated without mercy. As soon as
the extermination had been accomplished, as soon as cattle were as safe
in the Perthshire passes as in Smithfield market, the freebooter was
exalted into a hero of romance. As long as the Gaelic dress was worn,
the Saxons had pronounced it hideous, ridiculous, nay, grossly indecent.
Soon after it had been prohibited, they discovered that it was the most
graceful drapery in Europe. The Gaelic monuments, the Gaelic usages, the
Gaelic superstitions, the Gaelic verses, disdainfully neglected during
many ages, began to attract the attention of the learned from the moment
at which the peculiarities of the Gaelic race began to disappear. So
strong was this impulse that, where the Highlands were concerned, men of
sense gave ready credence to stories without evidence, and men of taste
gave rapturous applause to compositions without merit. Epic poems, which
any skilful and dispassionate critic would at a glance have perceived
to be almost entirely modern, and which, if they had been published as
modern, would have instantly found their proper place in company with
Blackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were pronounced to be fifteen
hundred years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers of
a very different order from the impostor who fabricated these forgeries
saw how striking an effect might be produced by skilful pictures of the
old Highland life. Whatever was repulsive was softened down: whatever
was graceful and noble was brought prominently forward. Some of these
works were executed with such admirable art that, like the historical
plays of Shakspeare, they superseded history. The visions of the poet
were realities to his readers. The places which he described became
holy ground, and were visited by thousands of pilgrims. Soon the
vulgar imagination was so completely occupied by plaids, targets, and
claymores, that, by most Englishmen, Scotchman and Highlander were
regarded as synonymous words. Few people seemed to be aware that, at no
remote period, a Macdonald or a Macgregor in his tartan was to a citizen
of Edinburgh or Glasgow what an Indian hunter in his war paint is to
an inhabitant of Philadelphia or Boston. Artists and actors represented
Bruce and Douglas in striped petticoats. They might as well have
represented Washington brandishing a tomahawk, and girt with a string of
scalps. At length this fashion reached a point beyond which it was not
easy to proceed. The last British King who held a court in Holyrood
thought that he could not give a more striking proof of his respect for
the usages which had prevailed in Scotland before the Union, than by
disguising himself in what, before the Union, was considered by nine
Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a thief.
Thus it has chanced that the old Gaelic institutions and manners have
never been exhibited in the simple light of truth. Up to the middle of
the last century, they were seen through one false medium: they have
since been seen through another. Once they loomed dimly through an
obscuring and distorting haze of prejudice; and no sooner had that
fog dispersed than they appeared bright with all the richest tints of
poetry. The time when a perfectly fair picture could have been painted
has now passed away. The original has long disappeared: no authentic
effigy exists; and all that is possible is to produce an imperfect
likeness by the help of two portraits, of which one is a coarse
caricature and the other a masterpiece of flattery.