While Claverhouse hovered in the north the Convention (declared to be a
Parliament by William on June 5) took on, for the first time in Scotland
since the reign of Charles I, the aspect of an English Parliament, and
demanded English constitutional freedom of debate. The Secretary in
Scotland was William, Earl of Melville; that hereditary waverer, the Duke
of Hamilton, was Royal Commissioner; but some official supporters of
William, especially Sir James and Sir John Dalrymple, were criticised and
thwarted by "the club" of more extreme Liberals. They were led by the
Lowland ally who had vexed Argyll, Hume of Polwarth; and by Montgomery of
Skelmorley, who, disappointed in his desire of place, soon engaged in a
Jacobite plot.
The club wished to hasten the grant of Parliamentary liberties which
William was anxious not to give; and to take vengeance on officials such
as Sir James Dalrymple, and his son, Sir John, now Lord Advocate, as he
had been under James II. To these two men, foes of Claverhouse, William
clung while he could. The council obtained, but did not need to use,
permission to torture Jacobite prisoners, "Cavaliers" as at this time
they were styled; but Chieseley of Dalry, who murdered Sir George
Lockhart, President of the College of Justice, was tortured.
The advanced Liberal Acts which were passed did not receive the touch of
the sceptre from Hamilton, William's Commissioner: thus they were
"vetoed," and of no effect. The old packed committee, "The Lords of the
Articles," was denounced as a grievance; the king was to be permitted to
appoint no officers of State without Parliament's approbation. Hamilton
offered compromises, for William clung to "the Articles"; but he
abandoned them in the following year, and thenceforth till the Union
(1707) the Scottish was "a Free Parliament." Various measures of
legislation for the Kirk---some to emancipate it as in its palmy days,
some to keep it from meddling in politics--were proposed; some measures
to abolish, some to retain lay patronage of livings, were mooted. The
advanced party for a while put a stop to the appointment of judges, but
in August came news of the Viscount Dundee in the north which terrified
parliamentary politicians.
Edinburgh Castle had been tamely yielded by the Duke of Gordon;
Balcarres, the associate of Dundee, had been imprisoned; but Dundee
himself, after being declared a rebel, in April raised the standard of
King James. As against him the Whigs relied on Mackay, a brave officer
who had been in Dutch service, and now commanded regiments of the Scots
Brigade of Holland. Mackay pursued Dundee, as Baillie had pursued
Montrose, through the north: at Inverness, Dundee picked up some
Macdonalds under Keppoch, but Keppoch was not satisfactory, being
something of a freebooter. The Viscount now rode to the centre of his
hopes, to the Macdonalds of Glengarry, the Camerons of Lochiel, and the
Macleans who had been robbed of their lands by the Earl of Argyll,
executed in 1685. Dundee summoned them to Lochiel's house on Loch Arkaig
for May 18; he visited Atholl and Badenoch; found a few mounted men as
recruits at Dundee; returned through the wilds to Lochaber, and sent
round that old summons to a rising, the Fiery Cross, charred and dipped
in a goat's blood.
Much time was spent in preliminary manoeuvring and sparring between
Mackay, now reinforced by English regulars, and Dundee, who for a time
disbanded his levies, while Mackay went to receive fresh forces and to
consult the Government at Edinburgh. He decided to march to the west and
bridle the clans by erecting a strong fort at Inverlochy, where Montrose
routed Argyll. A stronghold at Inverlochy menaced the Macdonalds to the
north, and the Camerons in Lochaber, and, southwards, the Stewarts in
Appin. But to reach Inverlochy Mackay had to march up the Tay, past
Blair Atholl, and so westward through very wild mountainous country. To
oppose him Dundee had collected 4000 of the clansmen, and awaited
ammunition and men from James, then in Ireland. By the advice of the
great Lochiel, a man over seventy but miraculously athletic, Dundee
decided to let the clans fight in their old way,--a rush, a volley at
close quarters, and then the claymore. By June 28 Dundee had received no
aid from James,--of money "we have not twenty pounds"; and he was between
the Earl of Argyll (son of the martyr of 1685) and Mackay with his 4000
foot and eight troops of horse.
On July 23 Dundee seized the castle of Blair Atholl, which had been the
base of Montrose in his campaigns, and was the key of the country between
the Tay and Lochaber. The Atholl clans, Murrays and Stewarts, breaking
away from the son of their chief, the fickle Marquis of Atholl, were led
by Stewart of Ballechin, but did not swell Dundee's force at the moment.
From James Dundee now received but a battalion of half-starved Irishmen,
under the futile General Cannon.
On July 27, at Blair, Dundee learned that Mackay's force had already
entered the steep and narrow pass of Killiecrankie, where the road
skirted the brawling waters of the Garry. Dundee had not time to defend
the pass; he marched his men from Blair, keeping the heights, while
Mackay emerged from the gorge, and let his forces rest on the wide level
haugh beside the Garry, under the house of Runraurie, now called Urrard,
with the deep and rapid river in their rear. On this haugh the tourist
sees the tall standing stone which, since 1735 at least, has been known
as "Dundee's stone." From the haugh rises a steep acclivity, leading to
the plateau where the house of Runraurie stood. Mackay feared that
Dundee would occupy this plateau, and that the fire thence would break up
his own men on the haugh below. He therefore seized the plateau, which
was an unfortunate manoeuvre. He was so superior in numbers that both of
his wings extended beyond Dundee's, who had but forty ill-horsed
gentlemen by way of cavalry. After distracting Mackay by movements along
the heights, as if to cut off his communications with the south, Dundee,
who had resisted the prayers of the chiefs that he would be sparing of
his person, gave the word to charge as the sun sank behind the western
hills. Rushing down hill, under heavy fire and losing many men, the
clans, when they came to the shock, swept the enemy from the plateau,
drove them over the declivity, forced many to attempt crossing the Garry,
where they were drowned, and followed, slaying, through the pass. Half
of Hastings' regiment, untouched by the Highland charge, and all of
Leven's men, stood their ground, and were standing there when sixteen of
Dundee's horse returned from the pursuit. Mackay, who had lost his army,
stole across the Garry with this remnant and made for Stirling. He knew
not that Dundee lay on the field, dying in the arms of Victory. Precisely
when and in what manner Dundee was slain is unknown; there is even a fair
presumption, from letters of the English Government, that he was murdered
by two men sent from England on some very secret mission. When last seen
by his men, Dundee was plunged in the battle smoke, sword in hand, in
advance of his horse.
When the Whigs--terrified by the defeat and expecting Dundee at Stirling
with the clans and the cavaliers of the Lowlands--heard of his fall,
their sorrow was changed into rejoicing. The cause of King James was
mortally wounded by the death of "the glory of the Grahams," who alone
could lead and keep together a Highland host. Deprived of his leadership
and distrustful of his successor, General Cannon, the clans gradually
left the Royal Standard. The Cameronian regiment, recruited from the
young men of the organised societies, had been ordered to occupy Dunkeld.
Here they were left isolated, "in the air," by Mackay or his
subordinates, and on August 21 these raw recruits, under Colonel Cleland,
who had fought at Drumclog, had to receive the attack of the Highlanders.
Cleland had fortified the Abbey church and the "castle," and his
Cameronians fired from behind walls and from loopholes with such success
that Cannon called off the clansmen, or could not bring them to a second
attack: both versions are given. Cleland fell in the fight; the clans
disbanded, and Mackay occupied the castle of Blair.
Three weeks later the Cameronians, being unpaid, mutinied; and Ross,
Annandale, and Polwarth, urging their demands for constitutional rights,
threw the Lowlands into a ferment. Crawford, whose manner of speech was
sanctimonious, was evicting from their parishes ministers who remained
true to Episcopacy, and would not pray for William and Mary. Polwarth
now went to London with an address to these Sovereigns framed by "the
Club," the party of liberty. But the other leaders of that party,
Annandale, Ross, and Montgomery of Skelmorley, all of them eager for
place and office, entered into a conspiracy of intrigue with the
Jacobites for James's restoration. In February 1690 the Club was
distracted; and to Melville, as Commissioner in the Scottish Parliament,
William gave orders that the Acts for re-establishing Presbytery and
abolishing lay patronage of livings were to be passed. Montgomery was
obliged to bid yet higher for the favour of the more extreme preachers
and devotees,--but he failed. In April the Lords of the Articles were
abolished at last, and freedom of parliamentary debate was thus secured.
The Westminster Confession was reinstated, and in May, after the last
remnants of a Jacobite force in the north had been surprised and
scattered or captured by Sir Thomas Livingstone at Cromdale Haugh (May
1), the alliance of Jacobites and of the Club broke down, and the leaders
of the Club saved themselves by playing the part of informers.
The new Act regarding the Kirk permitted the holding of Synods and
General Assemblies, to be summoned by permission of William or of the
Privy Council, with a Royal Commissioner present to restrain the
preachers from meddling, as a body, with secular politics. The Kirk was
to be organised by the "Sixty Bishops," the survivors of the ministers
ejected in 1663. The benefices of ejected Episcopalian conformists were
declared to be vacant. Lay patronage was annulled: the congregations had
the right to approve or disapprove of presentees. But the Kirk was
deprived of her old weapon, the attachment of civil penalties (that is
practical outlawry) to her sentences of excommunication (July 19, 1690).
The Covenant was silently dropped.
Thus ended, practically, the war between Kirk and State which had raged
for nearly a hundred and twenty years. The cruel torturing of Nevile
Payne, an English Jacobite taken in Scotland, showed that the new
sovereigns and Privy Council retained the passions and methods of the
old, but this was the last occasion of judicial torture for political
offences in Scotland. Payne was silent, but was illegally imprisoned
till his death.
The proceedings of the restored General Assembly were awaited with
anxiety by the Government. The extremists of the Remnant, the
"Cameronians," sent deputies to the Kirk. They were opposed to
acknowledging sovereigns who were "the head of the Prelatics" in England,
and they, not being supported by the Assembly, remained apart from the
Kirk and true to the Covenants.
Much had passed which William disliked--the abolition of patronage, the
persecution of Episcopalians--and Melville, in 1691, was removed by the
king from the Commissionership.
The Highlands were still unsettled. In June 1691 Breadalbane, at heart a
Jacobite, attempted to appease the chiefs by promises of money in
settlement of various feuds, especially that of the dispossessed Macleans
against the occupant of their lands, Argyll. Breadalbane was known by
Hill, the commander of Fort William at Inverlochy, to be dealing between
the clans and James, as well as between William and the clans. William,
then campaigning in Flanders, was informed of this fact, thought it of no
importance, and accepted a truce from July 1 to October 1 with Buchan,
who commanded such feeble forces as still stood for James in the north.
At the same time William threatened the clans, in the usual terms, with
"fire and sword," if the chiefs did not take the oaths to his Government
by January 1, 1692. Money and titles under the rank of earldoms were to
be offered to Macdonald of Sleat, Maclean of Dowart, Lochiel, Glengarry,
and Clanranald, if they would come in. All declined the bait--if
Breadalbane really fished with it. It is plain, contrary to Lord
Macaulay's statement, that Sir John Dalrymple, William's trusted man for
Scotland, at this time hoped for Breadalbane's success in pacifying the
clans. But Dalrymple, by December 1691, wrote, "I think the Clan Donell
must be rooted out, and Lochiel." He could not mean that he hoped to
massacre so large a part of the population. He probably meant by
"punitive expeditions" in the modern phrase--by "fire and sword," in the
style current then--to break up the recalcitrants. Meanwhile it was
Dalrymple's hope to settle ancient quarrels about the "superiorities" of
Argyll over the Camerons, and the question of compensation for the lands
reft by the Argyll family from the Macleans.
Before December 31, in fear of "fire and sword," the chiefs submitted,
except the greatest, Glengarry, and the least in power, MacIan or
Macdonald, with his narrow realm of Glencoe, whence his men were used to
plunder the cattle of their powerful neighbour, Breadalbane. Dalrymple
now desired not peace, but the sword. By January 9, 1692, Dalrymple, in
London, heard that Glencoe had come in (he had accidentally failed to
come in by January 1), and Dalrymple was "sorry." By January 11
Dalrymple knew that Glencoe had not taken the oath before January 1, and
rejoiced in the chance to "root out that damnable sect." In fact, in the
end of December Glencoe had gone to Fort William to take the oaths before
Colonel Hill, but found that he must do so before the Sheriff of the
shire at remote Inveraray. Various accidents of weather delayed him; the
Sheriff also was not at Inveraray when Glencoe arrived, but administered
the oaths on January 6. The document was taken to Edinburgh, where Lord
Stair, Dalrymple's father, and others caused it to be deleted. Glengarry
was still unsworn, but Glengarry was too strong to be "rooted out";
William ordered his commanding officer, Livingstone, "to extirpate that
sect of thieves," the Glencoe men (January 16). On the same day
Dalrymple sent down orders to hem in the MacIans, and to guard all the
passes, by land or water, from their glen. Of the actual _method_ of
massacre employed Dalrymple may have been ignorant; but orders "from
Court" to "spare none," and to take no prisoners, were received by
Livingstone on January 23.
On February 1, Campbell of Glenlyon, with 120 men, was hospitably
received by MacIan, whose son, Alexander, had married Glenlyon's niece.
On February 12, Hill sent 400 of his Inverlochy garrison to Glencoe to
join hands with 400 of Argyll's regiment, under Major Duncanson. These
troops were to guard the southern passes out of Glencoe, while Hamilton
was to sweep the passes from the north.
At 5 A.M. on February 13 the soldier-guests of MacIan began to slay and
plunder. Men, women, and children were shot or bayoneted, 1000 head of
cattle were driven away; but Hamilton arrived too late. Though the aged
chief had been shot at once, his sons took to the hills, and the greater
part of the population escaped with their lives, thanks to Hamilton's
dilatoriness. "All I regret is that any of the sect got away," wrote
Dalrymple on March 5, "and there is necessity to prosecute them to the
utmost." News had already reached London "that they are murdered in
their beds." The newspapers, however, were silenced, and the story was
first given to Europe in April by the 'Paris Gazette.' The crime was
unprecedented: it had no precedent, admits of no apology. Many an
expedition of "fire and sword" had occurred, but never had there been a
midnight massacre "under trust" of hosts by guests. King William, on
March 6, went off to his glorious wars on the Continent, probably hoping
to hear that the fugitive MacIans were still being "prosecuted"--if,
indeed, he thought of them at all. But by October they were received
into his peace.
William was more troubled by the General Assembly, which refused to take
oaths of allegiance to him and his wife, and actually appointed a date
for an Assembly without his consent. When he gave it, it was on
condition that the members should take the oaths of allegiance. They
refused: it was the old deadlock, but William at the last moment withdrew
from the imposition of oaths of allegiance--moved, it is said, by Mr
Carstares, "Cardinal Carstares," who had been privy to the Rye House
Plot. Under Queen Anne, however, the conscientious preachers were
compelled to take the oaths like mere laymen.