Leaving the fortunes of the Jacobite party at their lowest ebb, and
turning to the domestic politics of Scotland, after 1719, we find that if
it be happiness to have no history, Scotland had much reason to be
content. There was but a dull personal strife between the faction of
Argyll and his brother Islay (called the "Argathelians," from the
Latinised _Argathelia_, or Argyll), and the other faction known, since
the Union, as the _Squadrone volante_, or Flying Squadron, who professed
to be patriotically independent. As to Argyll, he had done all that man
might do for George I. But, as we saw, the reports of Cadogan and the
jealousy of George (who is said to have deemed Argyll too friendly with
his detested heir) caused the disgrace of the Duke in 1716, and the
_Squadrone_ held the spoils of office. But in February-April 1719 George
reversed his policy, heaped Argyll with favours, made him, as Duke of
Greenwich, a peer of England, and gave him the High Stewardship of the
Household.
At this time all the sixteen representative peers of Scotland favoured,
for various reasons of their own, a proposed Peerage Bill. The Prince of
Wales might, when he came to the throne, swamp the Lords by large new
creations in his own interest, and the Bill laid down that, henceforth,
not more than six peers, exclusive of members of the Royal Family, should
be created by any sovereign; while in place of sixteen _representative_
Scotland should have twenty-five _permanent_ peers. From his new hatred
of the Prince of Wales, Argyll favoured the Bill, as did the others of
the sixteen of the moment, because they would be among the permanencies.
The Scottish Jacobite peers (not representatives) and the Commons of both
countries opposed the Bill. The election of a Scottish representative
peer at this juncture led to negotiations between Argyll and Lockhart as
leader of the suffering Jacobites, but terms were not arrived at; the
Government secured a large Whig majority in a general election (1722),
and Walpole began his long tenure of office.
ENCLOSURE RIOTS.
In 1724 there were some popular discontents. Enclosures, as we saw, had
scarcely been known in Scotland; when they were made, men, women, and
children took pleasure in destroying them under cloud of night.
Enclosures might keep a man's cattle on his own ground, keep other men's
off it, and secure for the farmer his own manure. That good Jacobite,
Mackintosh of Borlum, who in 1715 led the Highlanders to Preston, in 1729
wrote a book recommending enclosures and plantations. But when, in 1724,
the lairds of Galloway and Dumfriesshire anticipated and acted on his
plan, which in this case involved evictions of very indolent and ruinous
farmers, the tenants rose. Multitudes of "Levellers" destroyed the loose
stone dykes and slaughtered cattle. They had already been passive
resisters of rent; the military were called in; women were in the
forefront of the brawls, which were not quieted till the middle of 1725,
when Lord Stair made an effort to introduce manufactures.
MALT RIOTS.
Other disturbances began in a resolution of the House of Commons, at the
end of 1724, _not_ to impose a Malt Tax equal to that of England (this
had been successfully resisted in 1713), but to levy an additional
sixpence on every barrel of ale, and to remove the bounties on exported
grain. At the Union Scotland had, for the time, been exempted from the
Malt Tax, specially devised to meet the expenses of the French war of
that date. Now, in 1724-1725, Scotland was up in arms to resist the
attempt "to rob a poor man of his beer." But Walpole could put force on
the Scottish Members of Parliament,--"a parcel of low people that could
not subsist," says Lockhart, "without their board wages." Walpole
threatened to withdraw the ten guineas hitherto paid weekly by Government
to those legislators. He offered to drop the sixpence on beer and put
threepence on every bushel of malt, a half of the English tax. On June
23, 1725, the tax was to be exacted. The consequence was an attack on
the military by the mob of Glasgow, who wrecked the house of their Member
in Parliament, Campbell of Shawfield. Some of the assailants were shot:
General Wade and the Lord Advocate, Forbes of Culloden, marched a force
on Glasgow, the magistrates of the town were imprisoned but released on
bail, while in Edinburgh the master brewers, ordered by the Court of
Session to raise the price of their ale, struck for a week; some were
imprisoned, others were threatened or cajoled and deserted their Union.
The one result was that the chief of the Squadrone, the Duke of Roxburgh,
lost his Secretaryship for Scotland, and Argyll's brother, Islay, with
the resolute Forbes of Culloden, became practically the governors of the
country. The Secretaryship, indeed, was for a time abolished, but Islay
practically wielded the power that had so long been in the hands of the
Secretary as agent of the Court.
THE HIGHLANDS.
The clans had not been disarmed after 1715, moreover 6000 muskets had
been brought in during the affair that ended at Glenshiel in 1719.
General Wade was commissioned in 1724 to examine and report on the
Highlands: Lovat had already sent in a report. He pointed out that
Lowlanders paid blackmail for protection to Highland raiders, and that
independent companies of Highlanders, paid by Government, had been
useful, but were broken up in 1717. What Lovat wanted was a company and
pay for himself. Wade represented the force of the clans as about 22,000
claymores, half Whig (the extreme north and the Campbells), half
Jacobite. The commandants of forts should have independent companies:
cavalry should be quartered between Inverness and Perth, and Quarter
Sessions should be held at Fort William and Ruthven in Badenoch. In 1725
Wade disarmed Seaforth's clan, the Mackenzies, easily, for Seaforth, then
in exile, was on bad terms with James, and wished to come home with a
pardon. Glengarry, Clanranald, Glencoe, Appin, Lochiel, Clan Vourich,
and the Gordons affected submission--but only handed over two thousand
rusty weapons of every sort. Lovat did obtain an independent company,
later withdrawn--with results. The clans were by no means disarmed, but
Wade did, from 1725 to 1736, construct his famous military roads and
bridges, interconnecting the forts.
The death of George I. (June 11, 1727) induced James to hurry to Lorraine
and communicate with Lockhart. But there was nothing to be done.
Clementina had discredited her husband, even in Scotland, much more in
England, by her hysterical complaints, and her hatred of every man
employed by James inflamed the petty jealousies and feuds among the
exiles of his Court. No man whom he could select would have been
approved of by the party.
To the bishops of the persecuted Episcopalian remnant, quarrelling over
details of ritual called "the Usages," James vainly recommended
"forbearance in love." Lockhart, disgusted with the clergy, and siding
with Clementina against her husband, believed that some of the wrangling
churchmen betrayed the channel of his communications with his king
(1727). Islay gave Lockhart a hint to disappear, and he sailed from
Scotland for Holland on April 8, 1727.
Since James dismissed Bolingbroke, every one of his Ministers was
suspected, by one faction or another of the party, as a traitor.
Atterbury denounced Mar, Lockhart denounced Hay (titular Earl of
Inverness), Clementina told feminine tales for which even the angry
Lockhart could find no evidence. James was the butt of every slanderous
tongue; but absolutely nothing against his moral character, or his
efforts to do his best, or his tolerance and lack of suspiciousness, can
be wrung from documents. {264}
By 1734 the elder of James's two sons, Prince Charles, was old enough to
show courage and to thrust himself under fire in the siege of Gaeta,
where his cousin, the Duc de Liria, was besieging the Imperialists. He
won golden opinions from the army, but was already too strong for his
tutors--Murray and Sir Thomas Sheridan. He had both Protestant and
Catholic governors; between them he learned to spell execrably in three
languages, and sat loose to Catholic doctrines. In January 1735 died his
mother, who had found refuge from her troubles in devotion. The grief of
James and of the boys was acute.
In 1736 Lovat was looking towards the rising sun of Prince Charles; was
accused by a witness of enabling John Roy Stewart, Jacobite and poet, to
break prison at Inverness, and of sending by him a message of devotion to
James, from whom he expected a dukedom. Lovat therefore lost his
sheriffship and his independent company, and tried to attach himself to
Argyll, when the affair of the Porteous Riot caused a coldness between
Argyll and the English Government (1736-1737).
THE PORTEOUS RIOT.
The affair of Porteous is so admirably well described in 'The Heart of
Mid-Lothian,' and recent research {265} has thrown so little light on the
mystery (if mystery there were), that a brief summary of the tale may
suffice.
In the spring of 1736 two noted smugglers, Wilson and Robertson, were
condemned to death. They had, while in prison, managed to widen the
space between the window-bars of their cell, and would have escaped; but
Wilson, a very stoutly built man, went first and stuck in the aperture,
so that Robertson had no chance. The pair determined to attack their
guards in church, where, as usual, they were to be paraded and preached
at on the Sunday preceding their execution. Robertson leaped up and
fled, with the full sympathy of a large and interested congregation,
while Wilson grasped a guard with each hand and a third with his teeth.
Thus Robertson got clean away--to Holland, it was said,--while Wilson was
to be hanged on April 14. The acting lieutenant of the Town Guard--an
unpopular body, mainly Highlanders--was John Porteous, famous as a
golfer, but, by the account of his enemies, notorious as a brutal and
callous ruffian. The crowd in the Grassmarket was great, but there was
no attempt at a rescue. The mob, however, threw large stones at the
Guard, who fired, killing or wounding, as usual, harmless spectators. The
case for Porteous, as reported in 'The State Trials,' was that the attack
was dangerous; that the plan was to cut down and resuscitate Wilson; that
Porteous did not order, but tried to prevent, the firing; and that
neither at first nor in a later skirmish at the West Bow did he fire
himself. There was much "cross swearing" at the trial of Porteous (July
20); the jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to be hanged on
September 8. A petition from him to Queen Caroline (George II. was
abroad) drew attention to palpable discrepancies in the hostile evidence.
Both parties in Parliament backed his application, and on August 28 a
delay of justice for six weeks was granted.
Indignation was intense. An intended attack on the Tolbooth, where
Porteous lay, had been matter of rumour three days earlier: the prisoner
should have been placed in the Castle. At 10 P.M. on the night of
September 7 the magistrates heard that boys were beating a drum, and
ordered the Town Guard under arms; but the mob, who had already secured
the town's gates, disarmed the veterans. Mr Lindsay, lately Provost,
escaped by the Potter Row gate (near the old fatal Kirk-o'-Field), and
warned General Moyle in the Castle. But Moyle could not introduce
soldiers without a warrant. Before a warrant could arrive the mob had
burned down the door of the Tolbooth, captured Porteous--who was hiding
up the chimney,--carried him to the Grassmarket, and hanged him to a
dyer's pole. The only apparent sign that persons of rank above that of
the mob were concerned, was the leaving of a guinea in a shop whence they
took the necessary rope. The magistrates had been guilty of gross
negligence. The mob was merely a resolute mob; but Islay, in London,
suspected that the political foes of the Government were engaged, or that
the Cameronians, who had been renewing the Covenants, were concerned.
Islay hurried to Edinburgh, where no evidence could be extracted. "The
High Flyers of our Scottish Church," he wrote, "have made this infamous
murder a point of conscience. . . . All the lower rank of the people who
have distinguished themselves by the pretensions of superior sanctity
speak of this murder as the hand of God doing justice." They went by the
precedent of the murder of Archbishop Sharp, it appears. In the Lords
(February 1737) a Bill was passed for disabling the Provost--one
Wilson--for public employment, destroying the Town Charter, abolishing
the Town Guard, and throwing down the gate of the Nether Bow. Argyll
opposed the Bill; in the Commons all Scottish members were against it;
Walpole gave way. Wilson was dismissed, and a fine of 2000 pounds was
levied and presented to the widow of Porteous. An Act commanding
preachers to read monthly for a year, in church, a proclamation bidding
their hearers aid the cause of justice against the murderers, was an
insult to the Kirk, from an Assembly containing bishops. It is said that
at least half of the ministers disobeyed with impunity. It was
impossible, of course, to evict half of the preachers in the country.
Argyll now went into opposition against Walpole, and, at least, listened
to Keith--later the great Field-Marshal of Frederick the Great, and
brother of the exiled Earl Marischal.
In 1737 the Jacobites began to stir again: a committee of five Chiefs and
Lords was formed to manage their affairs. John Murray of Broughton went
to Rome, and lost his heart to Prince Charles--now a tall handsome lad of
seventeen, with large brown eyes, and, when he pleased, a very attractive
manner. To Murray, more than to any other man, was due the Rising of
1745.
Meanwhile, in secular affairs, Scotland showed nothing more remarkable
than the increasing dislike, strengthened by Argyll, of Walpole's
Government.