286

Battle of Bothwell Bridge

[1679-80 Clyde, and a vain attempt was made by the insurgents to gain concessions that would have stultified all the past policy of the Government. Their supplication refused, they chose to abide the issue of battle; but the increase of their numbers had turned their camp into a debating assembly, and the ministers "preached and prayed against each other." Against such an enemy Monmouth had an easy task; and, though a resolute stand was made at the Bridge, his victory was complete-about 400 being slain and 1200 taken. Bound two and two, the prisoners were led to Edinburgh, where for five months the majority of them were kept in Greyfriars' Churchyard, exposed day and night to the weather. By the end of July 400 of them had been allowed to return home on the condition of their remaining peaceable subjects; but others, 250 in number, refusing to give the necessary pledge, were shipped to Barbados never to reach their destination, as the vessel in which they sailed was wrecked off the Orkneys, and the majority of them perished.

Lauderdale had failed, as Rothes had failed, to give a satisfactory account of his stewardship; the revolt that had resulted in Bothwell Bridge had been more formidable than the Pentland Rising. Both in England and Scotland he had made many enemies, and the English Commons demanded his removal from the King's councils on the ground that he had assailed the liberties of both countries. Lauderdale had at least been a faithful servant of his master; and it was against his own will, as he knew it was against his own interests, that Charles deprived him of the commissionership and put in his place James, Duke of York, afterwards James VII. The policy of the three successive Commissioners had not made Scotland a happy and peaceable country, but it had succeeded in breaking the once mighty power of Presbyterianism. The three Acts of Indulgence (Monmouth had procured the third) had cut deep into the ranks of nonconformity, as had been wofully shown in the camp at Bothwell Bridge. Of the irreconcilable recusants of the west only a remnant was now left after fines, confiscations, slaughter, and transportation. Outlaws with a price upon their heads, this intractable remnant still bade defiance to authority, and on the mountains, moors, and mosses flocked to hear their preachers in armed conventicle. Of these preachers two hold a supreme place in the Covenanting martyr ology Donald Cargill and Richard Cameron. Under the inspiration of these two leaders, a section of the proscribed recusants formed themselves into a body, known as the "Society People," or Cameronians, with a definite set of tenets and a definite programme of action. In a Declaration, affixed to the market-Cross of Sanquhar (1680) they formally disowned Charles as their King on the ground" of his perjury and breach of Covenant to God and Kirk." The doctrine of the Declaration - that rulers might be dethroned when they failed in their duty to their subjects was no novelty in the history of the Christian Church, but it was a doctrine that involved internecine war between people and king.

1680-1] Duke of York Royal Commissioner

287

Extirpation of the dreaded sect, therefore, was the only policy left to a Government whose existence was bound up with a definite form of ecclesiastical establishment; and the hunting of conventiclers became the special work of the dragoons. Little more than a year after the Sanquhar Declaration, Cameron and Cargill had finished their course. At Airds Moss, in Ayrshire, a band of the "Wanderers" was defeated by the royal troops, Cameron being among the slain; and Cargill, captured in the following year, was executed in Edinburgh, hailing the day of his death as the most joyful of his pilgrimage on earth.

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It was not till July, 1681, that the Duke of York made his appearance in his capacity of Royal Commissioner. He had already been twice in Scotland, and had made himself acceptable to the leading loyalists, and specially to the Highland chiefs, who at a later day were to give notable proof of their attachment to the House of Stewart. It was considered a propitious step that shortly after his arrival he summoned a meeting of Parliament — the first that had assembled for nine years; but the Acts it was required to pass were a gloomy portent of what was to come. By one of these Acts- the Act of Succession it was declared that "no difference in religion . can alter or divert the right of succession and lineal descent of the Crown." As the Duke was a known Roman Catholic and the presumptive heir to the throne, the drift of this Act could not be mistaken. But it was another Act that raised the greatest alarm—even among well-disposed loyalists. This was a Test Act to be imposed on all persons holding offices of trust in Church and State. So self-contradictory were its terms that, in the general opinion he who took it implied that he was Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic at once. On this ground Sir James Dalrymple, President of the Court of Session, demitted his office rather than come under an impossible obligation — eighty of the Episcopalian clergy similarly refusing to do injury to their consciences. The Earl of Argyll agreed to take the Test "as far as it was consistent with itself"; but this conditional pledge was not found satisfactory, and he was committed for trial, which he eluded by escaping from the Castle of Edinburgh where he had been confined. To introduce Catholicism and to prepare the way for his own succession to the throne - such were the manifest ends to which James' action was tending. But, divided as Scottish Protestants might be among themselves, they were united in their dread and hatred of Rome; and various popular manifestations might have warned James of the dangerous path he was treading. The students at the University of Edinburgh burned the Pope in effigy, and those of Glasgow ostentatiously wore the blue riband of the Covenant (1680) — significant indications of the drift of public opinion.

While James was thus alienating many who had hitherto been faithful supporters of the throne, the struggle between the Government and the Westland Whigs proceeded with increasing exasperation on

288

The Apologetical Declaration

[1684-5 both sides. Armed conventicles were still held in various parts of the country; and, goaded to desperation, their frequenters at length virtually declared open war against authority. In their Apologetical Declaration (1684) they announced that, if attacked, they would defend themselves with weapons in their hands. in their hands. As they had thus openly proclaimed themselves outlaws, the commanders of the Government troops, the most noted of whom were Graham of Claverhouse and Sir Thomas Dalziel, received simple instructions for dealing with their prisoners. If they refused to abjure the "Apologetical Declaration " they were shot; if they abjured it, they were detained for further examination.

every

The reign of Charles II, which had begun amid such exuberant manifestations of loyalty, closed amid the gloomy forebodings of class in the country. 66 Though we change the governors," wrote a moderate loyalist, " yet we find no change in the arbitrary government." No class or order in the country had reason to be satisfied with the policy that had followed the Restoration, in the affairs of either Church or State. Presbyterians of every shade of opinion had been more stringently treated than in the reigns of James VI or Charles I. Nor had Episcopalians, though their Church had received the sanction of the State, found themselves in a position compatible with the dignity and credit of religion — their clergy in all ranks being the nominees of the Crown, and retaining their charges on the condition of absolute obedience to its mandates. For the trading and commercial classes the reign had been disastrous owing to two principal causes. Free trade with England, which had been enjoyed during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, was abolished at the Restoration, with the result that the country lost its best market for corn and cattle. Still more calamitous had been England's ten years' war with Holland, which had begun in 1664. Holland had for centuries been the main outlet for Scottish exports, and by the closing of its ports foreign trade was for the time. practically annihilated. No class had hailed the Restoration with greater fervour than the nobles; but their hopes also had been disappointed by a policy which had ignored their order as a whole and given places of authority and trust to a favoured few, who were prepared to be the facile instruments of every new fiat of the royal pleasure. When Charles II died on February 6, 1685, it was with unhappy memories of the past and grave uneasiness for the future that the nation saw James VII ascend the throne.

It was an ominous beginning of the new reign, that James on assuming the Crown did not take the Coronation oath an omission which was made the gravest charge against him at the crisis of his fate. An Indemnity, granted at his accession, hardly affected the existing situation, as every nonconformist was expressly excluded from its operation. The first year of his reign, indeed, was marked by greater severities against

1685-7] Accession of James VII.— Argyll's invasion 289

these persons than at any previous period; and among the people who were the principal sufferers it was known as the "Black Year," the "Killing Time." On April 23, 1685, James' first and only Parliament met, with William, Duke of Queensberry, as Commissioner. The chief reason why it had been summoned (so its members were informed in a royal letter) was that it might have an opportunity "of being exemplary to others"-the "others" being the English Parliament which was about to meet. "Exemplary" the Estates proved, and in a high degree. They pledged themselves to provide a national army whenever it was required, voted the excise to the Crown in perpetuity, and (most stringent of all measures of the kind) enacted that all persons proved to have attended a conventicle should be punished with death and confiscation.

In

While the Estates were sitting, an attempt was made to effect a revolution. In concert with the Duke of Monmouth, the Earl of Argyll, who had fled to Holland in the previous reign, had approached the west coast at the head of an armament, in the expectation of being joined by his own clansmen and the disaffected people of the west. this expectation he was disappointed; and delay and mismanagement on the part of the leaders of the expedition doomed it to failure. Captured at Inchinnan in Renfrewshire, Argyll was conveyed to Edinburgh, where he met the same fate as his father, the Covenanting Marquis. Connected with Argyll's enterprise is one of the black pages in the national history. As a precautionary measure it was deemed necessary to bestow in a safe place all who were in ward for religious. offences. But secure prisons were not numerous in Scotland. About 200 men and women, therefore, were committed to the vaults of Dunnottar Castle in Kincardineshire, and there confined for two months amid conditions which made their lives a prolonged torture. The danger past, the survivors were offered the alternative of recantation or the Plantations: the majority chose the Plantations.

The proceedings in connexion with the second session of the Parliament, which met at the end of April, 1687, left the country in no doubt as to James' ultimate intentions. As Queensberry, the Commissioner of the previous year, had refused to become a Roman Catholic, the office had been conferred on Viscount Melfort who had been more compliant. This in itself was a significant circumstance, but it was a letter from James to the Parliament that raised the gravest alarm. In this letter the Parliament was recommended to repeal the penal laws against his "innocent subjects, those of the Roman Catholic religion." The Estates replied that they would take his recommendation into their "serious and dutiful consideration" and "go as great lengths therein," as their consciences would allow, but expressed their assurance that "His Majesty will be careful to secure the Protestant religion established by law." After this rebuff James resolved to have done with Parliaments, and he turned to the Privy Council as the convenient instrument for enforcing

C. M. H. V.

19

290 Letters of Indulgence.

Execution of Renwick [1688

his desires. He had in mere courtesy, the Council was informed, requested the Parliament to abolish the penal laws against Roman Catholics; but this request had been wholly unnecessary. The Council was, therefore, commanded to rescind the laws in question, to permit the Catholics the free practice of their religion, and to set apart the Chapel Royal of Holyrood for their special use. Even in the Council, however, there was opposition, and James found it necessary to remove eleven Protestants and to put in their places Catholics, among whom were the Earl of Traquair and the Duke of Gordon.

These were sufficiently clear indications of the object James had in view, and there were other circumstances equally fitted to warn the nation that its religion was in danger. The Lord Chancellor, James, Earl of Perth, and the two Secretaries of State, Viscount Melfort, and Alexander, Earl of Moray, had all become Catholics. A Catholic press was set up in Holyrood under the management of the pamphleteer Sir Roger l'Estrange, and Catholic worship was celebrated in the Chapel. It was not only the Presbyterians who were alarmed at James' policy; their fears were equally shared by the Episcopalians. The Episcopal clergy of the diocese of Aberdeen, the most intensely Episcopalian part of the kingdom, represented to their Bishop the iniquity of abolishing the penal laws against Roman Catholics; and the Bishop of Dunkeld and the Archbishop of Glasgow were deprived because of their opposition to James' action. James could not shut his eyes to the storm he was evoking, and to avert it he took the same step as he had found necessary in England. He published three successive Letters of Indulgence, in the last of which he offered freedom of worship to all nonconformists, Protestant and Roman Catholic alike, provided they taught nothing "to alienate the hearts" of his subjects. By the main body of the Presbyterians this last Letter was accepted, and many of them who had fled to Holland now returned to their own country. To the followers of Cameron, however, the Indulgence brought no respite; only a Covenanted king could satisfy their ideal of a State and Church which had the sanction of Heaven. But their deliverance from the dragoons at least was fast approaching, though they were to yield one more victim to the political necessities of the Restoration. In February, 1688, the year that was to prove fatal to the Stewarts, James Renwick, who had succeeded Richard Cameron as the leader of the devoted remnant, was executed in Edinburgh. In his last words from the scaffold he uttered the warning and prophecy that Scotland "must be rid of Scotland before the delivery came "words which were to be literally fulfilled in the transformation which she was to undergo in the impending revolution.

The birth of a Prince of Wales (June 30, 1688), which involved a Catholic succession and the eventual dominion of Rome, raised the same forebodings in Scotland as in England. England was now turning to William of Orange as a deliverer, and in William Scotland also saw her