+Source.+--_Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, from the
Dissolution of the Last Parliament of Charles II. until the
Sea-Battle off La Hogue_, vol. i., p. 218, by Sir John Dalrymple,
Bart. (London and Edinburgh: 1771.)
The convention met on the 14th of March. As the governing part of the
boroughs had been modelled by King James, the members sent up from
thence should have been favourable to his interests. But Lord Stair,
whose views were extensive, had taken care, in the paper which contained
the offer of administration to the Prince, to recommend that the
borough-elections should be made by a general poll of the burgesses; an
artifice which, while it took the blame of innovation off the Prince,
prepared the way for securing the elections to the whigs and
presbyterians. The parties at the convention first tried their strengths
in the choice of a president. The Duke of Hamilton was set up by the
new, the Marquis of Athole by the old court: a singular situation, where
both candidates were distrusted, both by those who recommended, and by
those who elected them. The former was preferred by 40 votes out of
about 150 voters: a victory which, from the nature of the human mind,
determined the wavering. A committee of elections was next named,
consisting of nine whigs and three tories. Sir John Dalrymple, who was
an able lawyer, found it easy to start objections to the returns of the
opposite party, and to remove those which were made against his own. The
committee in the house followed his opinions, because the necessity of
the times was made the excuse of partiality....
When the convention sat down, two letters were presented, one from the
present, and another from the late King of England. The convention read
both; but first passed an act, that nothing contained in the last of
them should dissolve their assembly, or stop their proceeding to the
settlement of the nation. James's letter was written in the terms of a
conqueror and a priest; threatening the convention with punishment in
this world, and damnation in the next. And, as it was counter-signed by
Lord Melfort, a papist, and a minister abhorred by the presbyterians,
the style and the signature hurt equally the interest which the letter
was intended to serve. No answer was given. William's letter, on the
contrary, was answered in strains of gratitude and respect; a
distinction which sufficiently showed what might be expected with regard
to the future resolutions of the assembly....
The revolution in England was brought about by a coalition of whigs and
tories; but, in Scotland, by the whigs almost alone. Hence, the Scottish
convention, instead of amusing themselves with school disputes about
words, which, while they discovered the fine lines of party in England,
had embarrassed the English convention, struck their blow without
ceremony, and came to a resolution, that King James had, by his evil
deeds, _forfaulted_ his right to the crown; a term which, in the
language of the law of Scotland, involved in it the exclusion of all his
posterity as well as his own. But, as this resolution would have
comprehended the other children of James, as well as the young Prince,
they agreed upon the following explanation of the word _forfaulted_.
"Agreed, that the word _forfault_, in the resolution, should imply no
other alteration in the succession to the crown than the seclusion of
King James, the pretended Prince of Wales, and the children that shall
be procreated of either of their bodies." Only five opposed these
resolutions....
The convention next made offer of the crown to William and Mary: a vote
in which the Duke of Queensberry and the Marquis of Athole concurred,
although they had refused to be present at the other. They reconciled
their conduct by saying, "That, since the throne was declared vacant by
the nation, they knew none so worthy to fill it as the Prince and
Princess of Orange"--a mixture of sentiment, intended to please both
Kings, but which, like most compliments of the kind, pleased neither.
From an excess of zeal which betrayed the cause of it, the Duke of
Hamilton demeaned himself to act the part of a clerk; reading, at the
ordinary place of proclamation, the act of convention aloud to the mean
multitude, who found even their own vanity hurt in the sacrifice which
was made to it by the first man in the nation. With more dignity the
parliament accompanied the offer of the crown with such a declaration of
rights as laid open all the invasions upon the constitution, not of the
late King alone, but of his brother, and ascertained every disputed
pretension between the crown and the subject; for, accustomed either to
trample upon their sovereigns, or to be trampled upon by them, the
Scottish nation chose to leave nothing to be adjusted afterwards by the
vibration between the executive and legislative powers, which had kept
the English constitution almost continually in a just medium between the
imperiousness of the crown and the licentiousness of the subject. The
Earl of Argyle for the peers, Sir James Montgomery for the knights, and
Sir John Dalrymple for the boroughs, were sent to London with the offer
of the crown....
The administration of the coronation-oath of Scotland was a ceremony
attended with much awe; the King holding up his right hand high, whilst
he swore, and repeated each word with slowness after the person who read
it. It contained a clause, that the King should root out heretics. At
these words, William stopt the Earl of Argyle, who was administering the
oath, and declared, he did not mean to oblige himself to become a
persecutor. The commissioners answering, that such was not the meaning
of the oath: "Then," said the King, "I take it in that sense only."
Whether this scruple was the effect of affectation or of delicacy, is
immaterial: it became a King, and it pleased the people.