Meeting of To the second condition proposed by persuading the Parliament to adopt the three Scottish Councillors he posi-them. Objection was taken by some tively refused to listen. The Protest-zealous Protestants to the mention made ant religion, he said, was false; and he of the Roman Catholic religion. There would not give any guarantee that he was no such religion. There was an would not use his power to the preju- idolatrous apostasy, which the laws dice of a false religion. The altercation punished with the halter, and to which was long, and was not brought to a it did not become Christian men to conclusion satisfactory to either party.* give flattering titles. To call such a The time fixed for the meeting of superstition Catholic was to give up the Scottish Estates drew near; the whole question which was at issue the Scotch and it was necessary that the between Rome and the reformed Estates. three Councillors should leave Churches. The offer of a free trade London to attend their Parliamentary with England was treated as an insult. duty at Edinburgh. On this occasion another affront was offered to Queensberry. In the late session he had held the office of Lord High Commissioner, and had in that capacity represented the majesty of the absent King. This Lauder of Fountainhall, one of the dignity, the greatest to which a Scottish noble could aspire, was now transferred to the renegade Murray. They On the twenty-ninth of April the Parliament met at Edinprove re- burgh. A letter from the fractory. King was read. He exhorted the Estates to give relief to his Roman Catholic subjects, and offered in return a free trade with England and an amnesty for political offences. A committee was appointed to draw up an answer. That committee, though named by Murray, and composed of Privy Councillors and courtiers, framed a reply, full indeed of dutiful and respectful expressions, yet clearly indieating a determination to refuse what the King demanded. The Estates, it was said, would go as far as their consciences would allow to meet His Majesty's wishes respecting his subjects of the Roman Catholic religion. These expressions were far from satisfying the Chancellor: yet, such as they were, he was forced to content himself with them, and even had some difficulty in transcribed. They would alone suffice to decide a question which ignorance and party spirit have done much to perplex. "Cette liberté accordée aux nonconformistes a faite une grande difficulté, et a été débattue pendant plusieurs jours. Le Roy d'Angleterre avoit fort envie que les Catholiques eussent seuls la liberté de l'exercice de leur réligion." April 19. 1686. "Our fathers," said one orator, "sold their King for southern gold; and we still lie under the reproach of that foul bargain. Let it not be said of us that we have sold our God!" Sir John Senators of the College of Justice, suggested the words, "the persons commonly called Roman Catholics." "Would you nickname His Majesty ?" exclaimed the Chancellor. The answer drawn by the committee was carried; but a large and respectable minority voted against the proposed words as too courtly.* It was remarked that the representatives of the towns were, almost to a man, against the government. Hitherto those members had been of very small account in the Parliament, and had generally been considered as the retainers of powerful noblemen. They now showed, for the first time, an independence, a resolution, and a spirit of combination which alarmed the court. The answer was so unpleasing to James that he did not suffer it to be printed in the Gazette. Soon he learned that a law, such as he wished to see passed, would not even be brought in. The Lords of Articles, whose business was to draw up the Acts on which the Estates were afterwards to deliberate, were virtually nominated by himself. Yet even the Lords of Articles proved refractory. When they met, the three Privy Councillors who had lately returned from London took the lead in opposition to the royal will. Hamilton declared plainly that he could not do *Fountainhall, May 6. 1686. what was asked. He was a faithful | warning. Several persons were dis and loyal subject; but there was a missed from the Council board. Sevelimit imposed by conscience. "Con-ral were deprived of pensions, which science! said the Chancellor: "con-formed an important part of their science is a vague word, which signifies income. Sir George Mackenzie of anything or nothing." Lockhart, who Rosehaugh was the most distinguished sate in Parliament as representative of victim. He had long held the office of the great county of Lanark, struck in. Lord Advocate, and had taken such a "If conscience," he said, "be a word part in the persecution of the Covewithout meaning, we will change it for nanters that to this day he holds, in another phrase which, I hope, means the estimation of the austere and godly something. For conscience let us put peasantry of Scotland, a place not far the fundamental laws of Scotland." removed from the unenviable eminence These words raised a fierce debate. occupied by Claverhouse. The legal General Drummond, who represented learning of Mackenzie was not proPerthshire, declared that he agreed found: but, as a scholar, a wit, and an with Hamilton and Lockhart. Most of orator, he stood high in the opinion of the Bishops present took the same his countrymen; and his renown had side.* spread even to the coffeehouses of LonIt was plain that, even in the Com-don and to the cloisters of Oxford. mittee of Articles, James could not command a majority. He was mortified and irritated by the tidings. He held warm and menacing language, and punished some of his mutinous servants, in the hope that the rest would take * Van Citters, May 11. 1686. Van Citters informed the States that he had his intellipart of his narrative. It is an amusing specimen of the pyebald dialect in which the Dutch diplomatists of that age corresponded. "Des konigs missive, boven en behalven den Hoog Commissaris aensprake, aen het parlement afgesonden, gelyck dat altoos gebruyckelyck is, waerby Syne Majesteyt nu in genere versocht hieft de mitigatie der rigoureuse ofte sanglante wetten van het Ryck jegens het Pausdom, in het Generale Comitée des Articles (soo men het daer naemt) na ordre gestelt en gelesen synde, in 't voteren, den Hertog van Hamilton onder anderen klaer uyt seyde dat hy daertoe niet soude verstaen, dat hy anders genegen was den konig in allen voorval getrouw te dienen volgens het dictamen syner conscientie: 't gene reden gaf aen de Lord Cancelier de Grave Perts te seggen dat het woort conscientie niets en beduyde, en alleen een individuum vagum was, waerop der Chevalier Locquard dan verder gingh; wil man niet verstaen de betyckenis van het woordt conscientie, soo sal ik in fortioribus seggen dat wy meynen volgens de fondamentale gence from a sure hand. I will transcribe wetten van het ryck.' There is, in the Hind Let Loose, a curious passage to which I should have given no credit, but for this despatch of Van Citters. "They cannot endure so much as to hear of acquaint with the Council's humour in this point told a gentleman that was going before them, I beseech you, whatever you do, speak nothing of conscience before the Lords, for they cannot abide to hear that word.' the name of conscience. One that was well The remains of his forensic speeches prove him to have been a man of parts, but are somewhat disfigured by what he doubtless considered as Ciceronian graces, interjections which show more art than passion, and elaborate amplifications, in which epithet rises above epithet in wearisome climax. He had now, for the first time, been found scrupulous. He was, therefore, in spite of all his claims on the gratitude of the government, deprived of his office. He retired into the country, and soon after went up to London for the purpose of clearing himself, but was refused admission to the royal presence.* While the King was thus trying to terrify the Lords of Articles into submission, the popular voice encou raged them to persist. The utmost exertions of the Chancellor could not prevent the national sentiment from expressing itself through the pulpit and the press. One tract, written with such boldness and acrimony that no printer dared to put it in type, was widely circulated in manuscript. The papers which appeared on the other side of the question had much less effect, though they were disseminated at the public charge, and though the Scottish defenders of the government were assisted by an English auxiliary of great note, Lestrange, who had been * Fountainhall, May 17. 1686. sent down to Edinburgh, and lodged in Holyrood House.* At length, after three weeks of debate, the Lords of Articles came to a decision. They proposed merely that Roman Catholics should be permitted to worship God in private houses without incurring any penalty; and it soon appeared that, far as this measure was from coming up to the King's demands and expectations, the Estates either would not pass it at all, or would pass it with great restrictions and modifications. gcvern Scotland. If James had not been proof to all warning, these events would Arbitrary have sufficed to warn him. A system of few months before this time, ment in the most obsequious of English Parliaments had refused to submit to his pleasure. But the most obsequious of English Parliaments might be regarded as an independent and even as a mutinous assembly when compared with any Parliament that had ever sate in Scotland; and the servile spirit of Scottish Parliaments was always to be found in the highest perfection, exWhile the contest lasted the anxiety tracted and condensed, among the in London was intense. Every report, Lords of Articles. Yet even the Lords every line, from Edinburgh was eagerly of Articles had been refractory. It devoured. One day the story ran that was plain that all those classes, all Hamilton had given way, and that the those institutions, which, up to this government would carry every point. year, had been considered as the Then came intelligence that the oppo-strongest supports of monarchical power, sition had rallied and was more obsti- must, if the King persisted in his innate than ever. At the most critical sane policy, be reckoned as parts of the moment, orders were sent to the post-strength of the opposition. All these office that the bags from Scotland signs, however, were lost upon him. should be transmitted to Whitehall. During a whole week, not a single private letter from beyond the Tweed was delivered in London. In our age, such an interruption of communication would throw the whole island into confusion but there was then so little trade and correspondence between England and Scotland that the inconvenience was probably much smaller than has been often occasioned in our own time by a short delay in the arrival of the Indian mail. While the ordinary channels of information were thus closed, the crowd in the galleries of Whitehall observed with attention the countehances of the King and his ministers. It was noticed, with great satisfaction, that, after every express from the North, the enemies of the Protestant religion looked more and more gloomy. adjourned. At length, to the general joy, it was announced that the struggle was over, that the government had been unable to carry its measures, and that the Lord High Commissioner had ad-pointed. Queensberry was stripped of journed the Parliament.† They are To every expostulation he had one answer: he would never give way; for concession had ruined his father; and his unconquerable firmness was loudly applauded by the French embassy and by the Jesuitical cabal. There was a He now proclaimed that he had been only too gracious when he had condescended to ask the assent of the Scottish Estates to his wishes. His prerogative would enable him, not only to protect those whom he favoured, but to punish those who had crossed him. He was confident that, in Scotland, his dispensing power would not be questioned by any court of law. Scottish Act of Supremacy which gave to the sovereign such a control over the Church as might have satisfied Henry the Eighth. Accordingly Papists were admitted in crowds to offices and honours. The Bishop of Dunkeld, who, as a Lord of Parliament, had opposed the government, was arbitrarily ejected from his see, and a successor was ap all his employments, and was ordered to remain at Edinburgh till the accounts of the Treasury during his administration had been examined and approved.* * Fountainhall, June 21. 1686. which he might have reconciled them, employed all his power to inflame their animosity, and at length forced them to close in a grapple for life and death. State of As the representatives of the towns had | ashes, beneath which the lava is still been found the most unmanageable glowing. The seventeenth century part of the Parliament, it was deter- has, in that unhappy country, left to mined to make a revolution in every the nineteenth a fatal heritage of maligburgh throughout the kingdom. A nant passions. No amnesty for the similar change had recently been mutual wrongs inflicted by the Saxon effected in England by judicial sen- defenders of Londonderry, and by the tences: but in Scotland a simple man- Celtic defenders of Limerick, has ever date of the prince was thought sufficient. been granted from the heart by either All elections of magistrates and of town race. To this day a more than Spartan councils were prohibited; and the King haughtiness alloys the many noble assumed to himself the right of filling qualities which characterise the children up the chief municipal offices.* In a of the victors, while a Helot feeling, formal letter to the Privy Council he compounded of awe and hatred, is but announced his intention to fit up a too often discernible in the children of Roman Catholic chapel in his palace of the vanquished. Neither of the hostile Holyrood; and he gave orders that the castes can justly be absorbed from Judges should be directed to treat all blame; but the chief blame is due to the laws against Papists as null, on that short-sighted and headstrong pain of his high displeasure. He how-prince who, placed in a situation in ever comforted the Protestant Episcopalians by assuring them that, though he was determined to protect the Roman Catholic Church against them, he was equally determined to protect The grievances under which the them against any encroachment on the members of his Church labourpart of the fanatics. To this communi- ed in Ireland differed widely the law on cation Perth proposed an answer from those which he was at- ject of couched in the most servile terms. tempting to remove in England religion. The Council now contained many and Scotland. The Irish Statute Book, Papists the Protestant members who afterwards polluted by intolerance as still had seats had been cowed by the barbarous as that of the dark ages, King's obstinacy and severity; and then contained scarcely a single enactonly a few faint murmurs were heard. ment, and not a single stringent enactHamilton threw out against the dis-ment, imposing any penalty on Papists pensing power some hints which he made haste to explain away. Lockhart said that he would lose his head rather than sign such a letter as the Chancellor had drawn, but took care to say this in a whisper which was heard only by friends. Perth's words were adopted with inconsiderable modifications; and the royal commands were obeyed; but a sullen discontent spread through that minority of the Scottish nation by the aid of which the government had hitherto held the majority down.† When the historian of this troubled reign turns to Ireland, his task becomes peculiarly difficult and delicate. His steps, to borrow the fine image used on a similar occasion by a Roman poet, are on the thin crust of Ireland. *Fountainhall, Sept. 16. 1686. † Ibid. Sept. 16.; Wodrow, III. x. 3. the sub as such. On our side of Saint George's *The provisions of the Irish Act of Supremacy, 2 Eliz. chap. 1., are substantially the same with those of the English Act of Supremacy, 1 Eliz. chap. 1.: but the English act was soon found to be defective; and the defect was supplied by a more stringent act, of races. Aborigi Bantry. therefore did not exclude from employ- | dred thousand colonists, proud of their ment any person whom the government Saxon blood and of their Protestant wished to promote. The sacramental faith.* test and the declaration against tran- The great preponderance of numbers substantiation were unknown; nor was on one side was more than comeither House of Parliament closed by pensated by a great superiority nal pea law against any religious sect. of intelligence, vigour, and orIt might seem, therefore, that the ganisation on the other. The English Hostility Irish Roman Catholic was in a settlers seem to have been, in knowsituation which his English and ledge, energy, and perseverance, rather Scottish brethren in the faith might above than below the average level of well envy. In fact, however, his con- the population of the mother country. dition was more pitiable and irritating The aboriginal peasantry, on the conthan theirs. For, though not persecuted trary, were in an almost savage state. as a Roman Catholic, he was oppressed They never worked till they felt the as an Irishman. In his country the sting of hunger. They were content same line of demarcation which sepa- with accommodation inferior to that rated religions separated races; and he which, in happier countries, was prowas of the conquered, the subjugated, vided for domestic cattle. Already the the degraded race. On the same soil potato, a root which can be cultivated dwelt two populations, locally inter- with scarcely any art, industry, or mixed, morally and politically sundered. capital, and which cannot be long The difference of religion was by no stored, had become the food of the means the only difference, or even the common people. From a people so chief difference, which existed between fed diligence and forethought were not them. They sprang from different to be expected. Even within a few stocks. They spoke different languages. miles of Dublin, the traveller, on a They had different national characters soil the richest and most verdant in as strongly opposed as any two national the world, saw with disgust the misercharacters in Europe. They were in able burrows out of which squalid and widely different stages of civilisation. half naked barbarians stared wildly at Between two such populations there him as he passed.‡ could be little sympathy; and centuries of calamities and wrongs had generated in no a strong antipathy. The relation in which the minority stood to the majority resembled the relation in which the followers of William the Conqueror stood to the Saxon churls, or the relation in which the followers of Cortes stood to the Indians of Mexico. Aborigi The aboriginal aristocracy retained common measure the pride of birth, but had lost nal aristothe influence which is derived cracy. from wealth and power. Their lands had been divided by Cromwell among his followers. A portion, indeed, of the vast territory which he had confiscated had, after the restoration of the House of Stuart, been given back to the ancient proprietors. But much the greater part was still held by English emigrants under the guarantee of an Act of Parliament. This act had been The appellation of Irish was then given exclusively to the Celts and to those families which, though not of Celtic origin, had in the course of ages degenerated into Celtic manners. These people, probably about a mil-in force a quarter of a century; and lion in number, had, with few exceptions, adhered to the Church of Rome. Among them resided about two hun 5 Eliz. chap. 1. No such supplementary law was made in Ireland. That the construction mentioned in the text was put on the Irish Act of Supremacy, we are told by Archbishop King: State of Ireland, chap. ii. sec. 9. He calls this construction Jesuitical: but I cannot see it in that light. under it mortgages, settlements, sales, and leases without number had been made. The old Irish gentry were scattered over the whole world. Descendants of Milesian chieftains swarmed *Political Anatomy of Ireland. Ibid., 1672; Irish Hudibras, 1689; John Dunton's Account of Ireland, 1699. Clarendon to Rochester, May 4. 1686. |