Volume III Part 22 (1/2)

This event put an end to all thoughts of civil war. The gathering which had been planned for the summer never took place. Lochiel, even if he had been willing, was not able to sustain any longer the falling cause.

He had been laid on his bed by a mishap which would alone suffice to show how little could be effected by a confederacy of the petty kings of the mountains. At a consultation of the Jacobite leaders, a gentleman from the Lowlands spoke with severity of those sycophants who had changed their religion to curry favour with King James. Glengarry was one of those people who think it dignified to suppose that every body is always insulting them. He took it into his head that some allusion to himself was meant. ”I am as good a Protestant as you.” he cried, and added a word not to be patiently borne by a man of spirit. In a moment both swords were out. Lochiel thrust himself between the combatants, and, while forcing them asunder, received a wound which was at first believed to be mortal, [760]

So effectually had the spirit of the disaffected clans been cowed that Mackay marched unresisted from Perth into Lochaber, fixed his head quarters at Inverlochy, and proceeded to execute his favourite design of erecting at that place a fortress which might overawe the mutinous Camerons and Macdonalds. In a few days the walls were raised; the ditches were sunk; the pallisades were fixed; demiculverins from a s.h.i.+p of war were ranged along the parapets, and the general departed, leaving an officer named Hill in command of a sufficient garrison. Within the defences there was no want of oatmeal, red herrings, and beef; and there was rather a superabundance of brandy. The new stronghold, which, hastily and rudely as it had been constructed, seemed doubtless to the people of the neighbourhood the most stupendous work that power and science united had ever produced, was named Fort William in honour of the King, [761]

By this time the Scottish Parliament had rea.s.sembled at Edinburgh.

William had found it no easy matter to decide what course should be taken with that capricious and unruly body. The English Commons had sometimes put him out of temper. Yet they had granted him millions, and had never asked from him such concessions as had been imperiously demanded by the Scottish legislature, which could give him little and had given him nothing. The English statesmen with whom he had to deal did not generally stand or serve to stand high in his esteem. Yet few of them were so utterly false and shameless as the leading Scottish politicians. Hamilton was, in morality and honour, rather above than below his fellows; and even Hamilton was fickle, false and greedy.

”I wish to heaven,” William was once provoked into exclaiming, ”that Scotland were a thousand miles off, and that the Duke of Hamilton were King of it. Then I should be rid of them both.”

After much deliberation William determined to send Melville down to Edinburgh as Lord High Commissioner. Melville was not a great statesman; he was not a great orator; he did not look or move like the representative of royalty; his character was not of more than standard purity; and the standard of purity among Scottish senators was not high; but he was by no means deficient in prudence or temper; and he succeeded, on the whole, better than a man of much higher qualities might have done.

During the first days of the Session, the friends of the government desponded, and the chiefs of the opposition were sanguine. Montgomery's head, though by no means a weak one, had been turned by the triumphs of the preceding year. He believed that his intrigues and his rhetoric had completely subjugated the Estates. It seemed to him impossible that, having exercised a boundless empire in the Parliament House when the Jacobites were absent, he should be defeated when they were present, and ready to support whatever he proposed. He had not indeed found it easy to prevail on them to attend: for they could not take their seats without taking the oaths. A few of them had some slight scruple of conscience about foreswearing themselves; and many, who did not know what a scruple of conscience meant, were apprehensive that they might offend the rightful King by vowing fealty to the actual King. Some Lords, however, who were supposed to be in the confidence of James, a.s.serted that, to their knowledge, he wished his friends to perjure themselves; and this a.s.sertion induced most of the Jacobites, with Balcarras at their head, to be guilty of perfidy aggravated by impiety, [762]

It soon appeared, however, that Montgomery's faction, even with this reinforcement, was no longer a majority of the legislature. For every supporter that he had gained he had lost two. He had committed an error which has more than once, in British history, been fatal to great parliamentary leaders. He had imagined that, as soon as he chose to coalesce with those to whom he had recently been opposed, all his followers would imitate his example. He soon found that it was much easier to inflame animosities than to appease them. The great body Of Whigs and Presbyterians shrank from the fellows.h.i.+p of the Jacobites.

Some waverers were purchased by the government; nor was the purchase expensive, for a sum which would hardly be missed in the English Treasury was immense in the estimation of the needy barons of the North, [763] Thus the scale was turned; and, in the Scottish Parliaments of that age, the turn of the scale was every thing; the tendency of majorities was always to increase, the tendency of minorities to diminish.

The first question on which a vote was taken related to the election for a borough. The ministers carried their point by six voices, [764] In an instant every thing was changed; the spell was broken; the Club, from being a bugbear, became a laughingstock; the timid and the venal pa.s.sed over in crowds from the weaker to the stronger side. It was in vain that the opposition attempted to revive the disputes of the preceding year.

The King had wisely authorised Melville to give up the Committee of Articles. The Estates, on the other hand, showed no disposition to pa.s.s another Act of Incapacitation, to censure the government for opening the Courts of justice, or to question the right of the Sovereign to name the judges. An extraordinary supply was voted, small, according to the notions of English financiers, but large for the means of Scotland. The sum granted was a hundred and sixty-two thousand pounds sterling, to be raised in the course of four years, [765]

The Jacobites, who found that they had forsworn themselves to no purpose, sate, bowed down by shame and writhing with vexation, while Montgomery, who had deceived himself and them, and who, in his rage, had utterly lost, not indeed his parts and his fluency, but all decorum and selfcommand, scolded like a waterman on the Thames, and was answered with equal asperity and even more than equal ability by Sir John Dalrymple, [766]

The most important acts of this Session were those which fixed the ecclesiastical const.i.tution of Scotland. By the Claim of Right it had been declared that the authority of Bishops was an insupportable grievance; and William, by accepting the Crown, had bound himself not to uphold an inst.i.tution condemned by the very instrument on which his t.i.tle to the Crown depended. But the Claim of Right had not defined the form of Church government which was to be subst.i.tuted for episcopacy; and, during the stormy Session held in the summer of 1689, the violence of the Club had made legislation impossible. During many months therefore every thing had been in confusion. One polity had been pulled down; and no other polity had been set up. In the Western Lowlands, the beneficed clergy had been so effectually rabbled, that scarcely one of them had remained at his post. In Berwicks.h.i.+re, the three Lothians and Stirlings.h.i.+re, most of the curates had been removed by the Privy Council for not obeying that vote of the Convention which had directed all ministers of parishes, on pain of deprivation, to proclaim William and Mary King and Queen of Scotland. Thus, throughout a great part of the realm, there was no public wors.h.i.+p except what was performed by Presbyterian divines, who sometimes officiated in tents, and sometimes, without any legal right, took possession of the churches. But there were large districts, especially on the north of the Tay, where the people had no strong feeling against episcopacy; and there were many priests who were not disposed to lose their manses, and stipends for the sake of King James. Hundreds of the old curates, therefore, having been neither hunted by the populace nor deposed by the Council, still performed their spiritual functions. Every minister was, during this time of transition, free to conduct the service and to administer the sacraments as he thought fit. There was no controlling authority. The legislature had taken away the jurisdiction of Bishops, and had not established the jurisdiction of Synods, [767]

To put an end to this anarchy was one of the first duties of the Parliament. Melville had, with the powerful a.s.sistance of Carstairs, obtained, in spite of the remonstrances of English Tories, authority to a.s.sent to such ecclesiastical arrangements as might satisfy the Scottish nation. One of the first laws which the Lord Commissioner touched with the sceptre repealed the Act of Supremacy. He next gave the royal a.s.sent to a law enacting that those Presbyterian divines who had been pastors of parishes in the days of the Covenant, and had, after the Restoration, been ejected for refusing to acknowledge episcopal authority, should be restored. The number of those Pastors had originally been about three hundred and fifty: but not more than sixty were still living, [768]

The Estates then proceeded to fix the national creed. The Confession of Faith drawn up by the a.s.sembly of Divines at Westminster, the Longer and Shorter Catechism, and the Directory, were considered by every good Presbyterian as the standards of orthodoxy; and it was hoped that the legislature would recognise them as such, [769] This hope, however, was in part disappointed. The Confession was read at length, amidst much yawning, and adopted without alteration. But, when it was proposed that the Catechisms and the Directory should be taken into consideration, the ill humour of the audience broke forth into murmurs. For that love of long sermons which was strong in the Scottish commonalty was not shared by the Scottish aristocracy. The Parliament had already been listening during three hours to dry theology, and was not inclined to hear any thing more about original sin and election. The Duke of Hamilton said that the Estates had already done all that was essential. They had given their sanction to a digest of the great principles of Christianity.

The rest might well be left to the Church. The weary majority eagerly a.s.sented, in spite of the muttering of some zealous Presbyterian ministers who had been admitted to hear the debate, and who could sometimes hardly restrain themselves from taking part in it, [770]

The memorable law which fixed the ecclesiastical const.i.tution of Scotland was brought in by the Earl of Sutherland. By this law the synodical polity was reestablished. The rule of the Church was entrusted to the sixty ejected ministers who had just been restored, and to such other persons, whether ministers or elders, as the Sixty should think fit to admit to a partic.i.p.ation of power. The Sixty and their nominees were authorised to visit all the parishes in the kingdom, and to turn out all ministers who were deficient in abilities, scandalous in morals, or unsound in faith. Those parishes which had, during the interregnum, been deserted by their pastors, or, in plain words, those parishes of which the pastors had been rabbled, were declared vacant, [771]

To the clause which reestablished synodical government no serious opposition appears to have been made. But three days were spent in discussing the question whether the Sovereign should have power to convoke and to dissolve ecclesiastical a.s.semblies; and the point was at last left in dangerous ambiguity. Some other clauses were long and vehemently debated. It was said that the immense power given to the Sixty was incompatible with the fundamental principle of the polity which the Estates were about to set up. That principle was that all presbyters were equal, and that there ought to be no order of ministers of religion superior to the order of presbyters. What did it matter whether the Sixty were called prelates or not, if they were to lord it with more than prelatical authority over G.o.d's heritage? To the argument that the proposed arrangement was, in the very peculiar circ.u.mstances of the Church, the most convenient that could be made, the objectors replied that such reasoning might suit the mouth of an Erastian, but that all orthodox Presbyterians held the parity of ministers to be ordained by Christ, and that, where Christ had spoken, Christians were not at liberty to consider what was convenient, [772]

With much greater warmth and much stronger reason the minority attacked the clause which sanctioned the lawless acts of the Western fanatics.

Surely, it was said, a rabbled curate might well be left to the severe scrutiny of the sixty Inquisitors. If he was deficient in parts or learning, if he was loose in life, if he was heterodox in doctrine, those stern judges would not fail to detect and to depose him. They would probably think a game at bowls, a prayer borrowed from the English Liturgy, or a sermon in which the slightest taint of Arminianism could be discovered, a sufficient reason for p.r.o.nouncing his benefice vacant.

Was it not monstrous, after const.i.tuting a tribunal from which he could scarcely hope for bare justice, to condemn him without allowing him to appear even before that tribunal, to condemn him without a trial, to condemn him without an accusation? Did ever any grave senate, since the beginning of the world, treat a man as a criminal merely because he had been robbed, pelted, hustled, dragged through snow and mire, and threatened with death if he returned to the house which was his by law?

The Duke of Hamilton, glad to have so good an Opportunity of attacking the new Lord Commissioner, spoke with great vehemence against this odious clause. We are told that no attempt was made to answer him; and, though those who tell us so were zealous Episcopalians, we may easily believe their report; for what answer was it possible to return?

Melville, on whom the chief responsibility lay, sate on the throne in profound silence through the whole of this tempestuous debate. It is probable that his conduct was determined by considerations which prudence and shame prevented him from explaining. The state of the southwestern s.h.i.+res was such that it would have been impossible to put the rabbled minister in possession of their dwellings and churches without employing a military force, without garrisoning every manse, without placing guards round every pulpit, and without handing over some ferocious enthusiasts to the Provost Marshal; and it would be no easy task for the government to keep down by the sword at once the Jacobites of the Highlands and the Covenanters of the Lowlands. The majority, having made up their minds for reasons which could not well be produced, became clamorous for the question. ”No more debate,” was the cry: ”We have heard enough: a vote! a vote!” The question was put according to the Scottish form, ”Approve or not approve the article?” Hamilton insisted that the question, should be, ”Approve or not approve the rabbling?” After much altercation, he was overruled, and the clause pa.s.sed. Only fifteen or sixteen members voted with him. He warmly and loudly exclaimed, amidst much angry interruption, that he was sorry to see a Scottish Parliament disgrace itself by such iniquity. He then left the house with several of his friends. It is impossible not to sympathize with the indignation which he expressed. Yet we ought to remember that it is the nature of injustice to generate injustice. There are wrongs which it is almost impossible to repair without committing other wrongs; and such a wrong had been done to the people of Scotland in the preceding generation. It was because the Parliament of the Restoration had legislated in insolent defiance of the sense of the nation that the Parliament of the Revolution had to abase itself before the mob.

When Hamilton and his adherents had retired, one of the preachers who had been admitted to the hall called out to the members who were near him; ”Fie! Fie! Do not lose time. Make haste, and get all over before he comes back.” This advice was taken. Four or five st.u.r.dy Prelatists staid to give a last vote against Presbytery. Four or five equally st.u.r.dy Covenanters staid to mark their dislike of what seemed to them a compromise between the Lord and Baal. But the Act was pa.s.sed by an overwhelming majority, [773]

Two supplementary Acts speedily followed. One of them, now happily repealed, required every officebearer in every University of Scotland to sign the Confession of Faith and to give in his adhesion to the new form of Church government, [774] The other settled the important and delicate question of patronage. Knox had, in the First Book of Discipline, a.s.serted the right of every Christian congregation to choose its own pastor. Melville had not, in the Second Book of Discipline, gone quite so far; but he had declared that no pastor could lawfully be forced on an unwilling congregation. Patronage had been abolished by a Covenanted Parliament in 1649, and restored by a Royalist Parliament in 1661. What ought to be done in 1690 it was no easy matter to decide. Scarcely any question seems to have caused so much anxiety to William. He had, in his private instructions, given the Lord Commissioner authority to a.s.sent to the abolition of patronage, if nothing else would satisfy the Estates.

But this authority was most unwillingly given; and the King hoped that it would not be used. ”It is,” he said, ”the taking of men's property.”

Melville succeeded in effecting a compromise. Patronage was abolished; but it was enacted that every patron should receive six hundred marks Scots, equivalent to about thirty-five pounds sterling, as a compensation for his rights. The sum seems ludicrously small. Yet, when the nature of the property and the poverty of the country are considered, it may be doubted whether a patron would have made much more by going into the market. The largest sum that any member ventured to propose was nine hundred marks, little more than fifty pounds sterling.

The right of proposing a minister was given to a parochial council consisting of the Protestant landowners and the elders. The congregation might object to the person proposed; and the Presbytery was to judge of the objections. This arrangement did not give to the people all the power to which even the Second Book of Discipline had declared that they were ent.i.tled. But the odious name of patronage was taken away; it was probably thought that the elders and landowners of a parish would seldom persist in nominating a person to whom the majority of the congregation had strong objections; and indeed it does not appear that, while the Act of 1690 continued in force, the peace of the Church was ever broken by disputes such as produced the schisms of 1732, of 1756, and of 1843, [775]

Montgomery had done all in his power to prevent the Estates from settling the ecclesiastical polity of the realm. He had incited the zealous Covenanters to demand what he knew that the government would never grant. He had protested against all Erastianism, against all compromise. Dutch Presbyterianism, he said, would not do for Scotland.

She must have again the system of 1649. That system was deduced from the Word of G.o.d: it was the most powerful check that had ever been devised on the tyranny of wicked kings; and it ought to be restored without addition or diminution. His Jacobite allies could not conceal their disgust and mortification at hearing him hold such language, and were by no means satisfied with the explanations which he gave them in private.

While they were wrangling with him on this subject, a messenger arrived at Edinburgh with important despatches from James and from Mary of Modena. These despatches had been written in the confident expectation that the large promises of Montgomery would be fulfilled, and that the Scottish Estates would, under his dexterous management, declare for the rightful Sovereign against the Usurper. James was so grateful for the unexpected support of his old enemies, that he entirely forgot the services and disregarded the feelings of his old friends. The three chiefs of the Club, rebels and Puritans as they were, had become his favourites. Annandale was to be a Marquess, Governor of Edinburgh Castle, and Lord High Commissioner. Montgomery was to be Earl of Ayr and Secretary of State. Ross was to be an Earl and to command the guards. An unprincipled lawyer named James Stewart, who had been deeply concerned in Argyle's insurrection, who had changed sides and supported the dispensing power, who had then changed sides a second time and concurred in the Revolution, and who had now changed sides a third time and was scheming to bring about a Restoration, was to be Lord Advocate. The Privy Council, the Court of Session, the army, were to be filled with Whigs. A Council of Five was appointed, which all loyal subjects were to obey; and in this Council Annandale, Ross and Montgomery formed the majority. Mary of Modena informed Montgomery that five thousand pounds sterling had been remitted to his order, and that five thousand more would soon follow. It was impossible that Balcarras and those who had acted with him should not bitterly resent the manner in which they were treated. Their names were not even mentioned. All that they had done and suffered seemed to have faded from their master's mind. He had now given them fair notice that, if they should, at the hazard of their lands and lives, succeed in restoring him, all that he had to give would be given to those who had deposed him. They too, when they read his letters, knew, what he did not know when the letters were written, that he had been duped by the confident boasts and promises of the apostate Whigs.

He imagined that the Club was omnipotent at Edinburgh; and, in truth, the Club had become a mere byword of contempt. The Tory Jacobites easily found pretexts for refusing to obey the Presbyterian Jacobites to whom the banished King had delegated his authority. They complained that Montgomery had not shown them all the despatches which he had received.

They affected to suspect that he had tampered with the seals. He called G.o.d Almighty to witness that the suspicion was unfounded. But oaths were very naturally regarded as insufficient guarantees by men who had just been swearing allegiance to a King against whom they were conspiring.

There was a violent outbreak of pa.s.sion on both sides; the coalition was dissolved; the papers were flung into the fire; and, in a few days, the infamous triumvirs who had been, in the short s.p.a.ce of a year, violent Williamites and violent Jacobites, became Williamites again, and attempted to make their peace with the government by accusing each other, [776]