James Duke of York succeeded his brother in the three kingdoms
(February 6, 1685), at a mature period of life, being fifty-three years
of age. While reckoning as James II. in England and Ireland, he was the
seventh of the name in Scotland.
The transition from the one sovereign to the other was very much like
that from James VI. to Charles I. It was in each case from a man of
lax principle to one who carried principle to obstinacy. It was also
in each case a change from that easy good-nature which gets through
difficulties, to a certain severity of temper which does not so much
subdue difficulties as it makes them. If James could have kept his
religion out of sight, there was enough of loyalty in the nation to
have carried him to the end of a prosperous reign; he might have
even completed his brother’s designs for rendering the English crown
absolute. But he was too earnest a Catholic to give his subjects a
pretext for forgetting the fact, or to allow of their winking at his
assaults upon their liberties.
The Duke of Monmouth, who had set up some pretensions to the crown as a
legitimate son of Charles II., now resided in exile at Brussels. He had
ingratiated himself with the dissenters in England, and hoped by their
assistance to dethrone the new monarch. He formed a design, in concert
with the Earl of Argyle, for an invasion of the island. The latter
nobleman set sail in May, and, after touching at the Orkneys, descended
upon the west of Scotland, where he was joined by two thousand five
hundred of his clan. A boat’s crew whom he sent on shore at Orkney
being taken prisoners, gave information of his design, and the bishop
of that diocese immediately carried the intelligence to Edinburgh.
The militia of the kingdom was called out. The gentlemen of Argyle’s
clan were seized and brought to the capital. The earl, finding all
his prospects blighted, made a hesitating and timid advance towards
Glasgow, where he hoped, but vainly, to be joined by the persecuted
people of the west. The government forces advancing on every hand to
meet him, his troops melted away; and after pursuing a solitary flight
for a little way in disguise, he was taken prisoner at Inchinnan in
Renfrewshire, and transported to Edinburgh, where he was immediately
executed upon his former sentence (June 30, 1685).
The expedition which Monmouth conducted to the west of England was
equally unfortunate, and that nobleman being seized under similar
circumstances, was also executed. The exasperations, terrors, and
anxieties which the sovereign had endured, first from the endeavours of
the Whig party to exclude him from the throne, and latterly from these
two rebellions, revenged themselves in severities which have fixed
an indelible stigma upon his name. Under the Chief-justice Jeffries,
hundreds of Monmouth’s followers, and even some wholly innocent, were
summarily condemned and executed. It became a ‘killing time’ with the
poor Presbyterians of the west of Scotland, many of whom were seized
and shot dead in the fields. Everywhere men were reduced to silence;
but at the same time, much of their respect and affection was lost.
From the commencement of his reign, James took no pains to conceal his
religion. Encouraged by the suppressed rebellions and the stillness
which everywhere prevailed, he now thought he might safely commence a
series of measures for restoring the Catholic faith in his dominions.
As the law stood, no papist could hold any office in the state. They
were excluded, in both kingdoms, by a test oath, abjuring the errors of
popery. Early in 1686, James endeavoured to get an act passed in both
parliaments for dispensing with this oath, so that he might be enabled
to introduce men of his own religion into all places of trust, which
he judged to be the best way of proselytising the people at large. But
to his surprise, the same parliaments which had already declared his
temporal power to be nearly absolute, refused to yield to him on the
subject of religion. Neither entreaties nor threats could prevail upon
them to pass the necessary acts. In Scotland, the Duke of Queensberry,
Sir George Mackenzie, and other statesmen, who had hitherto been the
readiest to yield him obedience in all his most unpopular measures,
submitted rather to be displaced than to surrender up the religion
along with the liberties of the nation.
When he found that the parliaments would not yield to him, he dissolved
them, and, pretending that he had only asked their consent out of
courtesy, assumed to himself the right of dispensing with the test.
This was establishing a power in the crown to subvert any act of
parliament, and consequently no law could henceforth stand against the
royal pleasure. If it had been assumed upon a temporal point, it is not
probable that any resistance would have been made; for the right of
the king to do as he pleased, and the illegality of all opposition to
his will on the part of the people, were principles now very generally
conceded. But it concerned the existence of the Church of England, and
the religious prepossessions of the great majority of the people. There
was therefore an almost universal spirit of resistance.
In order to give his measures an appearance of fairness and put them
on a sufficiently broad ground, he granted a toleration to all kinds
of dissenters from the Established Church. Affecting to have long been
convinced that ‘conscience ought not to be constrained nor people
forced in matters in religion;’ that all attempts of the kind were
detrimental to the social economy and the interests of government,
leading only to ‘animosities, name-factions, and sometimes to sacrilege
and treason;’ he, by proclamations in the first six months of 1687,
discharged all existing laws against dissenters in both sections of
Britain, with certain moderate reservations, making it practicable for
Presbyterians in Scotland to set up chapels for their own worship. This
was a most remarkable step for a British sovereign to take. First, it
openly assumed a right of the monarch, by his ‘absolute power’--for
such was the phrase he used--to overrule the acts of parliament. Next,
it gave ‘a degree and amount of toleration, beyond what any class of
religionists was quite prepared to sanction. Therefore it was at once
unconstitutional and over-liberal. Obvious as the royal motives were,
there was a general expression of satisfaction with the measure among
the English dissenters, while a considerable meeting of Presbyterian
clergy in Scotland sent an address of thanks, with a promise of ‘entire
loyalty in doctrine and practice’ for the future. But everywhere,
the established clergy and the great bulk of the respectable middle
classes, adherents of episcopalian protestantism, were alarmed and
alienated, judging the movement to be, as it undoubtedly was, designed
as a step towards the return of popery.
In the height of his power, James had deprived the boroughs of both
kingdoms of their charters, and granted new ones, in which he was left
the power of nominating the magistracies. He took advantage of this
liberty to put Catholics into every kind of burgal office. He also
attempted to get men of the same religion introduced into the chief
seats in the universities.
What rendered these events the more alarming to the nation was the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the king of France, in consequence
of which the Protestants of that kingdom were subjected to a cruel
persecution at the hands of their Catholic brethren. The people of
Great Britain received about fifty thousand of these innocent persons
under their protection; and as they were scattered over the whole
country, they everywhere served as living proofs of Romish intolerance
and cruelty. The British saw that if the king were not resisted in his
endeavours to introduce popery, they would soon be groaning in hopeless
subjection to a small dominant party, if not driven, like the French
Protestants, far from their homes and native seats of industry, to
wander like beggars over the earth.
The king had commanded the clergy to read in their pulpits his edict
of universal toleration. Several of the English bishops, after
ascertaining that the whole body almost to a man would support them,
presented a petition to the king, in which they respectfully excused
themselves from obeying his command. For this they were thrown into
the Tower, and brought to trial, but, to the great joy of the nation,
acquitted.
At this time (June 1688), the birth of a son to the king threw the
nation into a state of extreme anxiety for the ultimate interests of
the Protestant religion. It is to be observed that, if this prince had
not come into the world, the crown would have fallen, in the course
of time, to the king’s daughter Mary, who, for some years, had been
married to the Prince of Orange. This lady being a Protestant, and the
king being now advanced in life, the people had hitherto cherished a
prospect of seeing the Protestant faith eventually secured under her
sway. But now the Protestant line was excluded, and with it all hope
was at an end. To add to the general dissatisfaction, there was some
cause to suspect that the child was a spurious one, brought forward for
the purpose of keeping up a popish line of succession.
The concurrence of all these circumstances brought the nation to such
a uniformity of sentiment as had not been witnessed for fifty years.
While the old enemies of the dynasty remained as they had always been,
its best friends and supporters were now disaffected and thrown into
alarm. Tories as well as Whigs, church zealots as well as dissenters,
were become impressed with the idea that some extraordinary measure was
necessary to save the nation from popery, if not from slavery.
The people of all orders turned their eyes to William Prince of Orange,
who had long taken a lead in opposing the arrogant continental policy
of the French monarch, and whose court had for some years been a resort
of British malcontents. The prince himself was strongly inclined,
for reasons of general policy as well as of personal ambition, to
attempt a revolution in England. Being invited by a great number of
influential persons, of both sides in politics, including some of the
clergy, he no longer hesitated to make preparations for an invasion.
In October he set sail with an army of about sixteen thousand men, and
on the 5th of November cast anchor in Torbay, in Devonshire, while the
king’s fleet lay wind-bound at Harwich. James had surrounded himself
with a standing army; but, as generally happens in such crises, it
partook of the almost universal feeling of the people, and was not to
be depended on. Even with the assistance of a less scrupulous force
from Scotland, he could hardly venture to risk an engagement with the
prince, to whose standard a great number of the nobility had already
resorted. He therefore retired before the advancing army to London,
and was immediately deserted by all his principal counsellors, and
even by his younger daughter, the Princess Anne. Feeling no support
around him, he first despatched the queen and her infant to France, and
then prepared to follow. In the disguise of a servant, he escaped down
the river to Feversham, but being there seized by the populace as a
popish refugee, he was brought back to London. It was found, however,
that the government could not be settled on a proper footing while he
remained in the country; and he was therefore permitted once more to
depart (December 23, 1688). He left the kingdom in the belief that the
people could not do without him, and would call him back in triumph;
but, in reality, nothing could have been more agreeable to them than
his departure.
In Scotland, the Privy Council and Established Church were left by
the departure of the king an isolated power in the midst of a people
generally indisposed to give them support. There was an irrepressible
popular eagerness to break out against such popish establishments as
the king had set up--to attack and extrude the more obnoxious of the
clergy, and to take some vengeance upon the more noted instruments
of the late arbitrary power, as the Chancellor Perth and Graham of
Claverhouse, whom James had lately created Viscount Dundee. The
populace did lose no time in rising against the popishly furnished
chapel-royal at Holyrood and a Catholic printing-office which had
been placed in its neighbourhood; and after a struggle with the armed
guards, both places were pillaged and ruined. The Chancellor Perth,
who had incurred peculiar odium from turning papist, was seized in
the act of flight and thrown into a vile prison. In the west country,
the populace rabbled out two hundred of the parochial clergy, not
treating them over-gently, yet after all, using less roughness than
might perhaps have been expected. In the other parts of Scotland, where
prelacy had won some favour or been quietly endured, no particular
movement took place.
In January 1689, about a hundred Scottish noblemen and gentlemen
assembled at Whitehall, and, having previously ascertained the
disposition of their countrymen, resolved to follow the example of
England, by offering the supreme management of their affairs to the
Prince of Orange. A Convention was consequently appointed by the
prince to meet at Edinburgh on the 14th of March. This assembly, which
was elected by the people at large, excluding only the Catholics,
experienced at first some embarrassment from the adherents of King
James. The Duke of Gordon still held the castle in that interest, and
was able, if he pleased, to bombard the Parliament House with his
cannon. The Viscount Dundee was also in Edinburgh with a number of
his dragoons, and every day attended the assembly. On the other hand,
an immense number of the westland Whigs, or Cameronians--as they were
called from one of their ministers--had flocked to the city, where
they were concealed in garrets and cellars. Dundee, when he saw that
there was a majority of the Convention hostile to his old master,
concerted with the Earl of Mar and Marquis of Athole a plan for holding
a counter-Convention at Stirling, after the manner of the royalist
parliament held at Oxford by Charles I. In the expectation that his
friends would have been ready to accompany him, he brought out his
troop of dragoons to the street; but finding their minds somewhat
changed, he was obliged to take his departure by himself, as the
parading of armed men so near the Parliament House would have subjected
him to a charge of treason. He therefore rode out of the city with only
a small squadron, and clambering up the Castle-rock, held a conference
with the Duke of Gordon at a postern, where it was resolved upon
between them that he should go to raise the Highland clans for King
James, while his Grace should continue to hold out the Castle.
The liberal members of the Convention took advantage of this movement
to summon the people to arms for their protection, and they were
instantly surrounded by hundreds of armed Cameronians, who completely
overawed the adherents of the late government. The Convention then
declared King James to have forfeited the crown, by his attempts to
overcome the religion and liberties of his subjects. The sovereignty of
Scotland was settled, like that of England, upon the next Protestant
heirs, the Prince and Princess of Orange, who were accordingly
proclaimed at Edinburgh on the 11th of April.
It is not necessary here to detail the efforts made by King James to
recover possession of Ireland--ending in his overthrow at the Boyne--or
the gallant stand made for him in the spring of 1689 by the Duke of
Gordon in Edinburgh Castle, and by Lord Dundee in the Highlands of
Perthshire. By the death of the latter at the battle of Killiecrankie
(July 27), all formidable opposition to the new settlement came to an
end. It is understood that, if circumstances would have permitted,
King William would have rather continued to maintain the Episcopal
Church in Scotland than establish any other. Finding, however, that
the bishops remained faithful to King James, he was compelled to take
the Presbyterians under his protection. The Convention, changed by
the royal mandate into a Parliament, proceeded in July to abolish
prelacy in the Church, and to establish the moderate Presbyterianism
which still exists. All the clergy formerly in possession of churches
were permitted to retain them, if they felt disposed to accede to the
new system, and take the oaths to government. The Solemn League and
Covenant, though still supported by a party, was overlooked. The clergy
were deprived of the power of inflicting a civil punishment by means
of excommunication. General Assemblies and other Church courts were
restored, with independent powers in ecclesiastical matters, and, the
act of supremacy being abolished, Christ was understood to reign as
formerly over the church. The clergy, however, tacitly admitted the
king to be their patron and nursing father; and while the moderator
of the assemblies convened and dissolved them in the name of Christ,
the king’s commissioner, or representative, was also allowed to do
the same in the name of the sovereign. Thus at length, by one of
those compromises which sometimes follow the exhaustion of passion, a
sort of middle way was found, in which the religious prepossessions
of the great bulk of the people could rest in peace, while still the
reasonable powers of the state were not dangerously interfered with.
So did the great troubles of the seventeenth century come to an end,
and allow the genius of the nation at length to give a due share of its
energies to that material prosperity which had so long been repressed.
The course of Scotland since, under its moderate church and zealous
dissenting communions, its useful parish schools, and mild government;
the advance of the country in population, in the culture of its soil,
in every branch of honourable industry, and in the paths of science and
literature; these might well form the subjects of another work equal in
extent to the present.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1685.