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i>1- )! 6 & • ^ J 



HARVARD 
COLLEGE 
LIBRARY 



) 



SCOTLAND AND THE UNION 

A HISTORY OF SCOTLAND 
FROM 1695 TO 1747 



PUBLISHED BY 

JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW 
9abUBlucB to the SnibtMitB. 

MACMTLLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. 



Ntw Vcrk, 

Cmmhridge. 

Edit^nrgh. 
Sydtujt ' 



Tkd Mucmillan Co. 
Snm^ktHt Hamilton mmd Ca, 
MactmiUoM and Botvtx. 
Dougiat and Faults, 
Angus and Robtrtson. 

MCMV. 



SCOTLAND AND THE UNIO 



HISTORY OF SCOTLAND 
FROM 1695 TO 1747 



BY 

WILLIAM LAW MATHIESON 

At7THOB OF ' POUTICS AND BKLI6ION IN SCOTLAND FBOM I550 TO 1695 ' 



/ 



GLASGOW 

JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS 
^sblUhers to the aiubersttjg 
1905 



I'i) ^(- ^c^, 3 3 



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7^ 





.* ' 



OLAAOOW : PRIMTKD AT THX UNIVERSITY PRBS& ^^ \ 

BT ROBERT XACLEHOBI AND CO. LTD. Vl ^ «« ^ 



PREFACE. 



This work is a continuation, on a broader and more 
comprehensive plan, of one which I published three 
years ago; and the title is sufficient to indicate its 
scope as a history of Scotland during the period, 
extending from the completion of the Revolution 
Settlement to the enactments occasioned by the last 
Jacobite revolt, which may be distinguished as that of 
the origin, the accomplishment, and the consolidation of 
the Union. Such completeness as can be claimed for 
the epoch is political, and, to some extent, ecclesiastical. 
Without exceeding its bounds, it would have been 
impossible to do justice to social changes, other than 
economic, or to the rise of literature and philosophy ; 
and I have refrained the more readily from developing 
these themes as I hope to have an opportunity of 
dealing with them as illustrations of the material and 
intellectual progress which was to signalise the latter 
half of the eighteenth century. 

My principal source of information, in addition to 
printed volumes, has been the collection of pamphlets 



VI PREFACE 

in the Advocates' Library. I have derived some help 
from manuscripts in the British Museum and the 
University of Edinburgh; and, in acknowledging a 
more considerable obligation to the officials of the 
Church of Scotland, I should like to thank the Rev. 
James Christie, D.D., for aid in investigating the 
records committed to his charge. 

My most cordial thanks are due to the Assistants at 
the Signet, University, and Advocates' Libraries, on 
whose unfailing courtesy and patience I have frequently 
imposed a heavy tax. 

Edinburgh: October^ 1906. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

PAOK 

Progress of ModeratiBin from the Reformation to the Revolution, 1 

The Revolution Settlement, ...... 13 

The Revolution as an ecclesiastical epoch, 16 



CHAPTER I. 

COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 
1095-1700. 

Indnstrial activity dnring the reign of Charles II., - 18 

Commercial antagonism of Scotland and England, 20 

Fntile n^;otiataons, 1668, - - • • - 22 

THE SCOTTISH EAST INDIA COMPANY, 

1695. Tbe Company established ; William Paterson, - - - 24 
State of the EngUsh East India Trade, - - - - 26 
Opposition to the Company in EIngland ; its causes, 29 

1696. £400,000 subscribed at Edinburgh, - - - - 31 
1697- The Company baffled at Amsterdam and Hamburg, 32 

THE DARIEN SCHEME. 

India or Darien ? - 33 

paterson's intrigues ; nature of his scheme, - - - 35 

Spain certain to be hostile ; popular delusions, - - - 37 

Paterson in disgrace, ...... 40 



VIU CONTENTS 

PAOV 

1008. The first expedition to Darien ; its failure, ld09, 42 

1609. The Directors enraged, bat themselves largely to blame, 46 

The second and third expeditions, - • - • 48 

1700. The colony beset by the Spaniards, and surrenders, 51 

Fate of the survivors, ...... 52 

The attitude of England reviewed, - - - • 52 

National enthusiasm, ...... 56 



CHAPTER II. 

ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 
1700-1706. 

1700. The Darien agitation ; Plarliament in 1700, - - - 59 
Riot at Edinburgh ; the excitement begins to subside, - 61 

1701. Parliament in 1701, 63 

Projects of union ; conference of 1670, - - . ■ 65 

William's dealings on this subject with the Convention, 1689, - 66 

The Darien disaster shows the necessity of union, 68 

1702. Death of William ; his popularity in Scotland, - 70 
European affiiirs ; the Spanish succession, - - - 71 
Accession of Anne ; England offers to treat, - • - 74 
The Convention Parliament prolonged ; a secession, 75 
Treaty of Union, 1702 ; indifference of England, 76 
Anne appeals to the Episcopalians and Jacobites, 79 

1703. New Parliament, 1703 ; the Government outvoted, 81 
The Act of Security, ...... SS 

Fletcher's proposals ; the Wine Act, - - - - 85 

Supplies refused ; Parliament prorogued, - - - 88 

The policy of the new reign a failure, - - - - 88 

1704. Queensberry discredited; the '* Scots plot," 91 
Tweeddale Commissioner ; nature of the change, 93 
Parliament in 1704 ; the Oovemment again defeated, • 94 
The Act of Security receives the royal assent, - - - 95 
The New Party admitted to office, .... % 
Scottish debate in the Lords, - • - - 97 

1705. Godolphin's policy ; the Alien Act, - - - - 99 
Progress of the Whigs in England ; hostile to the New Party, 101 
Green and two other Englishmen executed for piracy, - 103 
Argyll Commissioner ; the New Party dismissed, 105 



GOKTENTS IX 

PAOS 

The sncoeMioii preferred to a traaty of anion, - 107 

Parliament in 1706 ; suooenion defeated ; treaty authoriaed, - 108 

Union proepects, ....... no 



CHAPTER III. 

THB UNION, 
1706-1707. 

THB TREATY. 

1706. Choice of ConunissionerBy 

Pxogreae and oondnsion of the treaty, 
Incorporation likely to be nnpopnlar, 
Pamphlets against the Union, and for it 
Attitude of parties, 



113 
114 
117 
118 
124 



THB TRBATY IN PARLIAMBNT, 

Preliminary proceedings ; a national fast, 125 

Riot of October 23 at Edinbargh, - - . - 127 

The first, second, and third articles carried, 120 

Addresses agaiost the Union ; their significance, 131 

Distarbances at Edinbargh and Glasgow, 133 

Jacobite schemes foiled by Hamilton, ... - 134 

1707- Amendments ; allotment of representation, 136 

The Scottish amendments accepted at Westminster, 138 

Qneensberry's triumph ; rejoicings in England, • 130 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE UNION FROM WITHIN. 

Perils of the late session, ....-- 141 

The nobles fsTourable to the Union ; their motives, 143 

The charge of bribery, ..-.-- 144 

Oeneral considerati<His in favour of the Union, < 145 

The Duke of Queensberry, . - . - - 147 

The Duke of Argyll, ,-..-• 149 

The Earl of Stair, 162 

Scottish nationality an indirect cause of the Union, 155 



CONTENTS 

PAOB 

The ScottUh Parliament ; its defects, .... 155 

Corrapt influence, ...... 157 

The Earl of Seafield, ...... 160 

The Earl of Cromarty, - - - - - . 162 

THE COUNTRY PARTY. 

The Country Party splits into Nationalists and Unionists, • 164 

Fletcher of Saltoun, his political ideas and character, - 164 

Lord Belhaven, ....... 167 

The Duke of Hamilton, ...--. 168 

The Duke of Athol and the Marquis of Annandale, 171 

The Squadrone, ..-■.•. 172 

Baillie of Jerviswood, - 173 

The Earl of Roxburgh, ...... 174 

The Scottish Parliament makes a good end, 176 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 

1706-1712. 

The Church and the Darlen scheme, - > - 178 

The Union as a violation of the Covenants, - 180 

1706. The Assembly Commission addresses Parliament to secure the 

Church, --..... 182 

The Act of Security gives rise to a second address, 183 

1707. Private representations ; a third address, 186 
The Church unfriendly, but not hostile, - 187 

TOLERA TION. 

Toleration a necessary consequence of the Union, 188 

Episcopal dissent under William and Anne, • 189 

Proposed statutory toleration, 1703 ; its failure, 191 

1709. The English Liturgy ; Greenshields imprisoned, - 195 

1711. Sacheverell, 1710 ; the Lords decide in favour of Greenshields, 197 
Growing intolerance in Scotland, .... 199 

1712. The Toleration Bill in the Commons, - - - - 200 
The abjuration oath ^ded to it by the Lords, - - 202 
Mischievous results, ...... 203 



CONTENTS XI 
PATBONAOE. 

PAOB 

Patronage before the Reformatioo, and after, 204 

The Church complains of it as a grievance, 206 

Act of 1690 abolishing patronage, 208 

Patronage restored, 1712, ..... 209 

The Toleration and Patronage Bills in relation to the Union, - 21 1 

The Union a moral, not a legal, security to the Church, 213 

Death of Garstaree, 1715 ; his character, 214 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 
1712-1740. 

DOCTRINAL UNREST. 

Heresy hitherto almost unknown ; Arminianism, 218 

Deism; execution of Aikenhead, 1697, < . . • 220 

Boorignonism ; its significance, ..... 222 

1717. Professor Simaon censured ; his tenets, .... 224 
Antinomianism ; liberality of English and Irish Presbyterians, 226 
«* The Auchterarder Creed," ..... 229 

1718. The "Marrow "controversy, 1718-22, - - - 229 

1728. Siroson convicted of Arianism, 1726-28, - - - 232 

1729. Controversy as to his sentence ; suspended, 233 

THE SECESSION. 

Cameronians and Hebronites. 235 

The abjuration oath, ...... 236 

Patronage dormant ; the jus devolutum, .... 237 

The minister called, as in 1690, by heritors and elders, - 239 

Popular pressure ; congregation claims to elect, - 240 

1732. Act of Assembly, 1732, in favour of heritors and elders, 242 
Ebenezer Erskine opposes the Act ; his Synod sermon, - 243 

1733. He and three other ministers suspended, and secede, 245 

1734. Abortive concessions, • - 247 

1740. The Seceders issue their Judicial Testimony, 1736, and are 

deposed, ....... 248 



Xll CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VII. 
THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM. 

PAGE 

Decline of zeal after the Revolution, .... 261 

Profeaaor Simaon ; undogmatio preaching, 252 

Hntcheson and Leechman, ..... 254 

Passive and militant Moderatism ; the Wisharts, 257 

Professor Campbell on enthusiasm, .... 281 

Methodism ; Whitefield and the Seoeders, - - 263 

The Cambuslang revival, 1742 ; Seceders denounce it, 266 

Moderatism invades the Evangelicals, .... 269 

Burghers and Anti-Burghers, 1747» .... 272 

Moderatism not yet identified with patronage, - 273 

An historical parallel, ...... 274 

CHAPTER Vni. 

FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 
1707-1716. 

1707. Goods brought to Scotland for sale, after May 1, in England, - 277 
The Equivalent delayed, ...... 278 

Settlement of the Excise and Customs, .... 279 

1708. Justices of the Peace ; Privy. Council abolished, 280 
French intrigues ; attempted invasion, .... 283 

1709. The English treason law introduced, .... 285 
Party relations at Westminster, and in Scotland, 287 

1710. Sacheverell ; Tories supplant Whigs, - - - - 289 

1711. Scottish grievances as to peerage and taxation, 1711-13, 290 

1713. Motion for dissolving the Union ; Argyll, 292 

1714. The succession doubtful ; George I. proclaimed, 295 
The Tories excluded from power, .... 296 

REBELLION, 1715-16. 

1715. Jacobite conspiracy ; Earl of Mar, .... 297 
Defensive preparations in England ; and in Scotland, - 300 
War declared for the Pretender, and against the Union, - 302 
Mar at Perth ; detaches Macintosh, .... 303 
The rebellion in the south of Scotland, and in England, 305 

1716. Sheriffimuir, 1715 ; the rebellion suppressed, 307 
The Union identified with Protestantism, 31 1 



CX)NTENT8 



Xlll 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE ASCENDENCY OF WALPOLB, 

1716-1742. 

1716. EpiBoopal clergy disloyal ; deprived, 

1719. Spftin sopportfl the Pretender ; Glenshiel, 

1720. Epiacopal diBsensioDs, 1720-32 ; compared with PresbyteriaD, 
1716. Argyll disgraced ; Ministerial changes, 1717, 
1719. The Peerage Bill, .... - 

1721. Walpole Premier ; Carteret and Roxburgh, 

1724. The malt tax extended to Scotland, 

1725. Riot at Glasgow ; strike of brewers at Edinburgh, 
Roxburgh dismissed ; the Squadrone in opposition, 

1796. The P6rteous Riot ; proceedings in Parliament, 

The riot attributed to ultra-Presbyterian principles, 
Walpole's opponents ; Stair and Marchmont, 

1742. War with Spain, 1739 ; Walpole resignu, 



PAOB 

313 
316 
318 
321 
323 
325 
327 
328 
330 
333 
336 
338 
340 



CHAPTER X. 

THE DNION COMPLETED, 
1742-1747. 

INDUSTRIAL PROORB88. 

Scotland and the New World ; the rise of Glasgow, 
I>i8poeal of the Equivalent ; linen manufacture ; banking, 
Creneral depression, ..... 

Agriculture, ...... 

REBELLION, 1745-46^ 

The Disarming Acts in the Highlands ; General Wade, 
Proposal to raise Highland regiments ; the Black Watch, 

1744. A Jacobite conspiracy ; abortive French descent, 

1745. Prince Charles lands in the Highlands, - 
The Jacobite campaign, 1745-46, - 

1746. Charles's difficulties at Culloden ; his defeat, 
The rising of 1745 compared with that of 1715, 
Anti-Epiacopal legislation. 
Another Disarming Act ; the Highland garb prohibited, 

1747. Hereditary jurisdictions and military tenures abolished. 
The Union completed, ..... 
Death of Duncan Forbes ; his character. 



342 
346 
348 
350 



352 
355 
356 
357 
358 
362 
365 
369 
370 
372 
375 
377 



INTRODUCTION 



Thb period which succeeded the Bevolution is remark- 
able in the history of Scotland for the decline of 
those religious and ecclesiastical intereats which had 
dominated the country for nearly a century and a 
half ; and, before entering on the subject of this work, 
it will be advisable to take such a survey of the 
current of affairs from the Reformation onwards as 
will enable us to understand how it was that ideals 
of a more practical nature were now taking possession 
of the national mind. 

The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland had long 
been thoroughly effete; and in the middle of the 
sixteenth century, when it lost the support of the 
French alliance, it was in no condition to make 
resistance to its few but implacable foes. Here and 
there, indeed, — in the lives of such men as Bishops 
Elphinstone and Reid, in the liberal tone of Arch- 
bii^op Hamilton's Catechism, and in a certain zeal 
for education — ^we find traces of intelligence and 
vigour; but these are entirely eclipsed by that carnival 
of confusion and riot in which, as illuminated by 
Lindsay's Satires, we see nobles masquerading as 
abbots, iUiterate monks officiating as parish priests, 
bishops distinguished only by their profligacy from 



2 INTRODUCTION 

secular barons, ecclesiastical superiors rack-renting 
their lands, and an utterly irreligious people bargain- 
ing with chapmen at the church door, or practising 
archery in the church yard. It was this un&natical 
age, the outcome of a sundered religious tradition, 
which gave such potency to the fanaticism of the 
Reformation ; for the really destructive element was not 
the scanty infusion of Protestantism from abroad, but 
the universal contempt for the Church which permitted 
preachers and interested nobles to do with it what 
they pleased. The ancient Church, indeed, was rather 
swept away than reformed ; and nothing occurred to 
temper the violence of the revolution till the political 
and social forces which had hitherto driven it forward 
were exerted to arrest its career. We have an in- 
stance of this in the arrangement by which the 
Catholic prelates were allowed to retain two-thirds of 
their revenues for life ; and we have another and more 
important instance in the attempt to reconcile the 
maintenance, if not the progress, of Scottish Pro- 
t-estantism with the rule of a Catholic queen. 

The result of this long struggle, beginning in a 
protest of Knox against the Court religion, and cul- 
minating in civil war, was a victory rather for the 
Reformation than for the Reformed Church. For 
several years after her return to Scotland, Queen 
Mary had been loyally supported by the Protestant 
lords ; and during these years the estrangement of the 
civil and ecclesiastical powers, which had originated 
in the refusal of the nobility to give up the abbey 
lands, became more and more acute. The destruction 
of the Queen's party in 1573 did little to appease the 
quarrel ; for the Regent Morton, though a good Pro- 
testant, was determined to assert the royal power, and 



JOHN CRAIG S 

under the leadership of Andrew Melville, the Church 
began to formulate pretensions which much weaker 
rulers than Morton might have hesitated to concede. 
In the Second Book of Discipline, presented to Parlia- 
ment in 1578, not only was the Church reorganised 
on a Presbyterian basis, though Episcopacy was then 
established by law, but the strange principle was 
asserted that the magistrate '* ought to hear and 
obey *' the voice of ministers, who, though not them- 
selves exercising the civil jurisdiction, are to teach 
him how it ought to be exercised according to the 
Word. Parliament was content rather to ignore than 
to reject this plea; but in 1584, when Melville claimed 
the privilege of the pulpit for a seditious harangue, 
it annihilated the theocratic pretensions of the Church 
in what were known amongst the clergy as the "Black 
Acts." 

This action on the part of the State was attended 
with decisive results. The moderation which states- 
men had sometimes succeeded in imposing on a 
reluctant and protesting Church was now to find 
advocates within the Church itself. It is a somewhat 
remarkable fact that, whilst the zealous, if not the 
fanatical, tradition within the Church of Scotland has 
always been ascribed to Enox, the moderate tradition 
may with equal truth be ascribed to Knox's colleague 
in the pastorate, John Craig. During the civil war 
between Mary and her son, when Knox was railing 
against the deposed sovereign and consigning her 
adherents to temporal destruction and eternal doom, 
Craig had compared the state of the Church to that 
of the Jews, "who were oppressed sometime by the 
Asi^rrians, sometime by the Egyptians," and had 
lamented that no neutral person could be found to 



4 INTRODUCTION 

mediate a peace ; and he had protested against the 
Act of Assembly which forbade prayer for the Queen. 
On the present occasion, affcer all but eleven of the 
ministers south of the Forth had incurred the sus- 
pension of their stipends by refusing to subscribe the 
** Black Acts," Craig offered to subscribe "according 
to the word of Grod " ; and he and Erskine, the lay 
superintendent of Angus, exerted themselves so success- 
fully in support of this reservation that in a few 
weeks all but a fraction of the clergy had submitted 
to the civil power. The extremists on their return — 
for Melville and his friends had taken refuge in 
England — petitioned in vain against the obnoxious 
statutes, which were strengthened rather than repealed ; 
Craig, in answer to one of these "peregrine ministers" 
who had threatened King James with the fate of 
Jeroboam, discoursed on the duty of passive obedi- 
ence; and the Assembly of 1586 elected the King's 
favourite minister as Moderator, and consented under 
certain restrictions to recognise the authority of 
bishops. 

The Spanish Armada was now casting its gigantic 
shadow across the western seas; and James, in view 
of this great peril, committed himself to a foreign 
policy which even the most contentious of the clergy 
could not fail to approve. In 1586 the English and 
Scottish sovereigns concluded a " Christian league " for 
their defence against Spain ; and, as James adhered to 
the league in spite of his mother's execution, and 
co-operated with Elizabeth during the crisis of 1588, 
the Crown was brought more and more into friendly 
relations with the Church, until in 1592 the "Black 
Acts," in so far as they recognised Episcopacy, were 
repealed, and the clergy were secured in the enjoy- 



PRESBYTERIANISM CURBED 5 

ment of their new hierarchy of Presbyterian courts. 
But the Armada proved as potent to rekindle as to 
allay strife. The Scottish Catholics, who had hitherto 
regarded James as a possible ally, were now tempted 
to seek succoor from abroad ; and James's measures 
against the Catholic conspirators, though not altogether 
wanting in vigour, were so fer from satisfying the 
clerical leaders that one of them declared from the 
pulpit that he was no more to be trusted than Charles 
IX. on the eve of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
and prayed that the Lord would compel him "by his 
sanctified plagues to turn to him ere he perish." The 
zealots, however, had to reckon with the moderate 
sentiment which had declared itself so decisively in 
1584 ; and this, to judge by the abuse they bestowed 
upon it, must have been tolerably strong. One of them 
oomplained that " a great part of the ministry were the 
merriest and carelesest men in Scotland " ; another said 
"that he never thought to have seen such a general 
defection and coldness in his days"; and a third de- 
nounced the majority of his brethren as "Pint-ale 
ministers, belly-fellows, sycophants, gentlemen ministers^ 
leaders of the people to hell," and said that many 
of them deserved to be hanged. It must thus have 
been, to a great extent, with an army of unwilling 
conscripts, stronger in numbers than in courage, that 
the Church went forth in 1596 to the best contested 
of all its battles with the civil power ; and the " no- 
popery" riot of December 17, which disgusted the 
majority of the ministers even more than it alarmed 
the King, was a blow to the High Presbyterian party 
from which it did not recover for forty years. 

In order to secure the fruits of his victory, James 
initiated a series of reforms extending from 1597 to 



6 INTRODUCnOK 

1610, the object of which was to subject the Church to 
certain clerical overseers, known first as Commissioners 
of Assembly, then as Constant Moderators, and finally 
as bishops. The causes, however, of which this pro- 
cess was the outward manifestation, are of much greater 
moment than the process itself. The duty of a Scottish 
bishop at that time, and indeed at all times previous to 
the Revolution, was to administer a Presbyterian 
system, in whose divine right to govern itself all but 
a small minority had ceased to believe ; and the point 
of real importance is not the introduction of these 
Crown officials, but the change in the temper of the 
clergy which caused them to submit more or less readily 
to Episcopal control.^ The Church was now under- 
going a spiritual transformation precisely similar to 
that which was to take place after the Revolution in 
a much more permanent form* In the early years of 
the 17th as in the early years of the 18th century 
the zealots found themselves in what they called a 
declining age— an age which had grown weary of 
ecclesiastical janglings, and in which *' gentlemen 
ministers" with a taste for refinement and decorum 
were supplanting an older school of rougher manners 
and a more turbulent spirit* A system of government 

' "The great multitude of the MiniBtry are desirous that Presbyteries 
shall stand, but directed and governed bj the Bishops." Archbishop 
Gladstanes to James VL, April 18, 1610. 

'One of the zealots thus expressed his opinion of the moderate men: 
" I had rather one sincere heart planted, that is brought out of nature 
by the work of the Spirit of Grace nor twenty or an hundred of these 
fyne counterfoots, for all their fyne learning. These men are the wracke 
of the kirk, for the graces they have are not sanctified." Another com- 
plained of a *' curious kind of preaching/' becoming daily more common, 
"wherethrough the people universaUy, for the most part, within this 
realm, under a shadow of religion, are entertained in atheism, without 
all true knowledge and feeling"— Oalderwood, y. 519, 704. 



THE KIRK ANGUOISED 7 

which worked easily and quietly and in harmony with 
the civil power naturally commended itself to such 
men ; and the leading Churchmen of this period avaUed 
themselves of their authority as bishops to repress the 
old fematical leaven, just as Principal Robertson, at a 
time when Episcopacy had ceased to be a possible 
system, was to avail himself of the rights of patrons. 
Unhappily, owing to the union of the Crowns, the 
Scottish Episcopate was subjected from its very com- 
mencement to the powerful attraction of the English 
Church ; and to this attraction, seconded by the royal 
power, it eventually succumbed. James VL acted 
foolishly enough when he caused three of the bishops 
to be consecrated in England, and still more foolishly 
when he attempted to enforce the ritualistic usages 
known as the Articles of Perth; but it was not till 
the accession of Charles I. in 1625 that any serious 
attempt was made to innoculate the hierarchy with 
sacerdotal ideas. At the outset of his reign Charles 
roused a formidable opposition by threatening to de- 
prive the nobles of the abbey lands and by forcing 
them as tithe-owners to fulfil their obligations to the 
Church ; and this last, though a much-needed reform, 
was a very bad introduction to his anti-Puritan designs. 
As James's bishops died — ^but most of them died too 
late— they were replaced by rigid prelatists, such as 
Maxwell, who thought the eldership a "sacrilegious 
intrusion upon sacred orders," and Wedderbum, who 
procured a new Ordinal on the ground that in the old 
one " the very essential words of conferring orders were 
left out." Ritualistic in practice, latitudinarian in creed, 
asserting the jus divinum of their office, and ever 
ready, in default of all other support, to prostrate it 
at the King's feet, the new bishops were in most 



8 INTRODUCTION 

respects too illiberal, and in one respect too enligh- 
tened, for the office they held; and it was with the 
concurrence of these men, and without any pretence 
of consulting the Church, that Charles endeavoured to 
introduce a new liturgy more Catholic in certain 
essential points than the Book of Common Prayer. 

The Puritan revolution to which this attempt gave 
rise was a far more popular movement than the 
Reformation, comprising as it did, not only the nobles 
and the middle class, but the mass of the people who 
had now been touched by a religious enthusiasm to 
which they were strangers in the days of BlUox and 
even of Melville. In 1638, after more than a year of 
violent agitation, Episcopacy was abolished and Presby- 
tery restored. War ensued ; and so long as the war 
lasted — a war waged to determine whether Anglican or 
native influence should prevail in Church and State — 
the solidarity of the nation was fcdly maintained. 
Dissension, however, arose as soon as it became evident 
that there would be fighting in England, and that the 
Scottish Government, though Charles had made the 
fullest, if not the most reliable, concessions, would side 
with the Parliament against the King. The bulk of 
the clergy and four of the bishops, their dislike of 
Anglican innovations coinciding with the popular 
pressure, had thrown in their lot with the revolution ; 
and these men helped in some degree to keep alive the 
moderate spirit. The first sign of resistance occurred 
in 1642 when several presbyteries refused to obey an 
order of the Commissioners of Assembly requiring them 
to publish a declaration condemnatory of a petition to 
the Privy Council against an appeal of the English 
Parliament for aid. The Solemn League and Covenant 
of the following year, which committed Scotland to a 



A SHOBT-UVBD THEOCRACY » 

participation in the war, evoked considerable discontent ; 
several ministers protested against the giving up of 
Charles after he had sought refuge in the Scottish camp ; 
and a good many more declined to concur in the con- 
demnation of the Engagement, as the treaty was called, 
by which the Scottish Parliament agreed to assist the 
King in consideration of his promise to establish 
Presbytery in England for three years. This treaty 
aroused in its acutest form the antagonism of Church 
and State which had slumbered since 1596; and, but 
for English intervention, the contest would have ended 
now as it had ended then. The forces of the Engage- 
ment, after triumphing over clerical opposition at home, 
were destroyed by Cromwell at Preston and elsewhere 
on their southward march ; and the subsequent Act 
of Classes, 1649, which, in excluding all but rigid 
Covenanters from power, placed Scotland under the 
heel of the Church, was inspired by him, and without 
his aid could never have been passed. Cromwell, how- 
ever, was not prepared to acquiesce in the Royalist 
tendencies of Scottish fanaticism after it had made 
a Covenanter of Charles II. ; and the reckless folly 
of a faction which boasted of its contempt for 
the arm of flesh enabled him at the last moment 
to snatch victory from its grasp on the field of 
Dunbar. 

Cromwells victory at Dunbar destroyed the ultra- 
Presbyterian ascendency in Scotland which had been 
established as the result of his victory at Preston. 
Within nine months the Act of Classes was first sus- 
pended by certain Public Resolutions, and then formally 
repealed; and the Remonstrants or Protesters, or, as. 
they called themselves, " the godly," were content to 
testify against this defection from the faith at a time 



10 INTRODUCTION 

when their countrymen — Covenanters and Royalists, 
Engagers and Anti-Engagers — ^were fighting shoulder to 
shoulder in that forlorn efibrt which was to be crushed 
by Cromwell at Worcester, but not before it had vindi- 
cated the latent patriotism of the Church and the unity 
and good sense of the Scottish people. The anti- 
national character of the Protesters may be inferred 
from the fact that they seceded from the General 
Assembly on the very day, or rather on the very- 
night — ^for it was an emergency meeting— on which, in 
consequence of an English victory in its neighbourhood, 
the Assembly adjourned from St Andrews to Dundee. 
Throughout the Interregnum, though the question was 
now of merely academic interest, they continued to 
fulminate against the Public Resolutions; and an 
irascible pamphleteer was constrained at last to tell 
them that in such a crisis as that through which 
Scotland had lately passed it would have been lawful, 
had it been necessary, to make common cause not only 
with backsliding Covenanters but with " idolaters, Jews, 
Turks or Heathens." At the Restoration of 1660 these 
men had become so obnoxious to the majority of the 
Church that several of them were deposed by the 
synods ''for guilt in those things which concern his 
Majesty in defence of the kingdom " ; and, if the ad- 
visers of Charles II. had known how to utilise the 
reaction against theocratic Presbyterianism which had 
now set in, especially amongst the younger ministers, it 
is possible, if not probable, that the Church might have 
been induced to acquiesce in some form of Episcopal 
rule. Charles's advisers, however, were not content to 
wait; and the consequence was that statutory re- 
^tablishment of Episcopacy, without any ecclesiastical 
sanction, which caused the leading Resolutioners, and 



u 



\ 



THE INDULGENCES 11 

almost the whole of the Protesters, to resign their 
cures. 

The ejected ministers — as many of them as survived 
in 1690 — ^were to become the nucleus of the post- 
Bevolution Church ; and it is important to trace the 
process by which the fanaticism which characterised all 
but a sixth of their number was gradually worn out. 
For seven years after the Restoration Great Britain was 
ruled by the Church and Cavalier party, led in England 
by Clarendon, and in Scotland by Middleton, and after 
his fall, by Lauderdale's rebellious underlings, Rothes 
and Archbishop Sharp; and the constant harassing of 
dissent which prevailed during this period provoked the 
Pentland Rising of 1666, in which thirty-two ministers 
are said to have taken part The scandal caused by the 
cruel suppression of this rising, and the fall of Clarendon 
in the following year, enabled Lauderdale to gratify his 
Presbyterian proclivities by inaugurating a moderate 
regime. The effort to effect a compromise entirely 
fsiiled; but a wedge was driven into the forces of dissent 
when the King, in virtue of his ecclesiastical supremacy, 
issued the Indulgences of 1669 and 1672, by which 
Presbyterian ministers, without being subject to Episco- 
pal jurisdiction, were allowed to officiate in certain 
specified cures ; for this measure not only drew off the 
more moderate ministers, including all the Resolutioners 
ejected in 1662, but, owing to the disputes it occasioned 
amongst the laity, impaired the influence of the rest. 
Lauderdale's policy, however, encouraged the extremists 
to defy the law; and about 1674 those monster field- 
meetings began to be held, the attempt to suppress 
which caused the Bothwell Rising of 1679. This rising 
was ruined by the same contentious spirit which had 
wrought such mischief after the battle of Dunbar. All 



12 INTRODUCTION 

the insurgents disapproved of the Indulgence;^ but, 
while most of them would have been content to receive 
help from Presbyterians whose view of that system did 
not coincide with their own, a minority was determined 
not only to testify against the Indulgence, but to dis- 
own its author, the King ; and this feud, prosecuted in 
the very face of the enemy, secured an easy triumph to 
the royal troops. The fanatics who had advanced this 
extravagant plea were now left to themselves ; and 
their leader, Cameron, on his return from Holland in 
1680, complained that none of the dissenting ministers, 
with one exception, could be induced to preach with 
him in the fields. The excesses and absurdities of these 
Cameronians brought grave discredit on the Presbyterian 
cause ; and the cruel Grovernment of the Duke of York, 
pressing hard on the broken ranks of dissent, not only 
turned out the indulged ministers, but forced the laity 
to attend church and to perjure themselves by taking 
what they believed to be unlawful oaths. In the reign 
of James VII. the spirit of the Presbyterians had been 
so thoroughly subdued that they emitted no public 
protest during the King's strenuous eflFort to procure 
from Parliament the repeal of the penal laws ; and in 
1687, to the great scandal of the Cameronians, they 
consented to be sharers with the Catholics in a toleration 
which the latter had enjoyed for nearly a year. 

It will thus be seen that, when James VII. was 
driven from the throne towards the end of 1688, the 
credit and the power of Presbytery had sunk to a very 
low ebb ; and, if the re-establishment of that system 
had depended on the efforts of its adherents, it could 

^ The author of Old Mortality made a great blunder, historically speak- 
ing, when he placed not only partisans of the Indulgence but indulged 
ministers in the rebel camp. 



THE REVOLUTIOK SETTLEMENT 13 

never have taken plaoe. Circamstances in this instance 
were singularly favourable to the weaker side. 
William's desire to maintain the existing Church^ 
government was defeated by the unexpected fidelity 
of the bishops to King James;/ and, though the 
number of clergymen who would have resigned their 
charges on purely ecclesiastical grounds was scarcely 
larger than in 1638, the tendency to a general com- 
pliance, which would have rendered the continuance 
of Presbytery very insecure, was also prevented, partly 
from the same, and partly from a different cause. 
In the beginning of 1689, 200 of the clergy had been^ 
expelled firom their parishes by the Camel*onian rabble; 
and, in the course of this year, their refusal to read 
the proclamation in favour of William and Mary caused 
the ejection of nearly 200 more. Even as thus reduced, "^ 
however, the Episcopal ministers were far superior 
in number to the Presbyterian ; and hence the first 
step taken by Parliament in the ecclesiastical settle- 
ment was to restore to their parishes the sixty 
survivors of the incumbents expelled in 1662, and to 
empower these men and whomsoever they might 
associate with them to govern and to purge the Church. 
Episcopalians complained that, instead of fourteen 
bishops, there were now sixty ; but the civil power in 
creating this artificial monopoly took pains to ensure 
that it should not be exercised in a tyrannical spirit. 
In the previous session Episcopacy had been abolished 
on no higher ground than because it was ''contrary 
to the inclinations of the generality of the people." 
In selecting a basis for the new system the Estates 
passed over the whole Covenanting era and went back 
to the original charter of Presbytery in 1592; and in 
ratifying the Westminster Confession they deliberately 



u nrrRODUcnoN 

ignored the principle asserted by the (General Assembly 
of 1647 as an amendment on the 31st chapter, that, 
where a Church was fully constituted, it had an 
" intrinsic power" to meet in Assemblies, with or with- 
out the magistrate's consent, as often as it pleased. 
^ Not only were the Covenants not renewed, but the 
Act of 1662 which condemned them as unlawful was 
allowed to remain in force; excommunication was 
deprived of its civil penalties ; and the oath of allegi- 
ance was adopted, in lieu of all religious tests, as the 
passport to political office. 

Liberal as this settlement undoubtedly was, it was 
better calculated to ensure the moderate temper of 
Presbyterians than to conciliate their opponents. In 
all former crises in the history of the Reformed Church 
ministers who had not declared their dissent from the 
new order were assumed to have conformed; but on 
the present occasion, when the Church was practically 
re-constituted in the hands of sixty new members, the 
conditions were reversed, and every minister who had 
not been — ^as the phrase was — received into communion, 
was understood to be outside the pale. King William, 
with his usual foresight, had anticipated the hardship 
of these terms, and had endeavoured to £Etcilitate com- 
pliance. Where Presbytery in the Act of 1690 was 
declared to be "the only government of Christ's 
Church within the kingdom," he would have had it 
called "the government of the Church in tins king- 
dom established by law " ; he suggested that the persons 
appointed to purge the Church should be approved by 
the Privy Council ; and he desired that all ministers, 
not otherwise disqualified, should be received into 
communion, who should declare their willingness to 
submit to Presbyterian government and to subscribe 



COMPREHEKSIOK FAILS 15 

the Confession, not necessarily as the expression of 
their personal belief, but ^^as the standard of the 
Protestant religion in this kingdom." William's com- '^ 
prehension scheme, however, made little progress, 
chiefly because the Episcopal clergy who had renounced 
King James, conscious both of William's sympathy 
and of their own strength, never really accommodated 
themselves to the very subordinate position which had 
been assigned to them by the Act of 1690, and on 
which, as a basis of negotiation, the Presbyterians were 
naturally disposed to insist. The intervention of Par- * 
liament in 1693 made the terms of conformity harder 
still, and in 1695 the attempt to unite the discordant 
elements was practically given up; for in that year 
an Act was passed which permitted the Episcopal 
incumbents who acknowledged William and Mary as 
lawful sovereigns, both de facto and de jure^ to retain 
their livings, on condition that they took no part in 
the government of the Church. 

This slight sketch will have served its purpose, if 
it has revealed the existence of a moderate tradition 
intersecting rather than running parallel with the 
superficial ecclesiastical divisions. It is true that 
Moderatism in all but the last few years of this period 
was associated with Episcopacy ; but the importance of 
such a connexion is more apparent than real. Presby- 
terianism as founded by Enox, and reduced to a system 
by Melville, had a strong theocratic bias, and in the 
intervals of its contest for supremacy with the State 
— ^intervals which cover a longer duration of time than 
the contest itself — the Church naturally placed itself, 
or permitted the Sovereign to place it, under the con- 
trol of bishops. Episcopacy and Presbytery, in fact, 
before the Revolution were merely different phases of 



16 INTRODUCTION 

the same system; and it was not till the failure of 
William's comprehension scheme in 1695 that each was 
established, or at all events recognised, as a separate 
polity. 

^ In the ecclesiastical life of Scotland the Revolution 
constitutes a point of new departure, much inferior 
indeed to the Reformation, but inferior to that epoch 
alone. In 1560 the whole character of the Church — 
its form of government, its authority, and its manner 
of living, the aspect of its buildings, the meaning, 
the mode, and even the language of its ritual — was 
completely transformed ; to contemptuous indifference 
succeeded intemperate zeal ; and, except that the 
Reformers recognised the validity of Catholic baptism, 
there was nothing to form a link of continuity 
between the new Church and the old. In comparison 
with such an upheaval as this, the change made in 

"" 1690 appears to be extremely slight. The General 
Assembly had indeed succeeded to the supreme juris- 
diction of the bishops; but the ordinary routine of 
discipline as administered by the kirk-sessions and 
presbyteries went on as before ; a falling temperature 
continued to fall ; and one could not have discovered 
from the manner of public worship that the development 
of the Church had entered on a new phase. We have 
seen, however, that political rather than ecclesiastical 
causes had produced a displacement of ministers far 
greater than had taken place at either of the two 
preceding crises of 1638 and 1662 ; and, if we look 
more closely into the spirit of the age, we shall find 
that the Revolution marks a definite and final re- 
adjustment in the relations of politics and religion, 
of Church and State. Ever since the reaction which 
had set in after the battle of Dunbar, religious 




A NEW EPOCH 17 

tad been declining in Scotland, and secular 
had been gaining ground; the ascendency of 
ous question, no longer undisputed, had been 
onged beyond its natural duration by the mis- 

of the Stewarts : and/now, after a hundred ^ 
thirty years of strife, the great majority of the 
were disposed to regard the question as settled, 
to devote themselves to more profitable pursuits. 



B 



CHAPTER I 

COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

It cannot excite surprise that the ecclesiastical settle- 
ment of the Revolution should have been followed, as 
we shall find it was, by a signal outburst of the 
national spirit; for the reaction of 1650, in which that 
settlement took its rise, had been caused as much by 
the unpatriotic conduct of the High Presbyterians as 
by their abuse of power, and the Public Resolutions 
which divided the Church during the Interregnum 
had been based on the sound principle that even 
theocracy, in the last resort, must give way to the 
safety of the State. The re-establishment of Epis- 
copacy at the Restoration revived the religious strife; 
but the troubles that followed absorbed less attention 
than readers of Wodrow are apt to suppose, and 
throughout the reign of Charles 11. it is remarkable 
how easily the patriotic impulse may still be traced, 
not only in the " very national " ^ character of so 
representative a man as Lauderdale, but in the efforts 
made to advance Scottish industry and trade. Such 
was the bent given by the wise measures of Cromwell 
to the nationality which he had suppressed. The 

^ Law's MefMtridUy p. 65. 



MANUFAOTURBS BNGOURAGED 19 

Parliament of 1661 had been only a week in session 
when it appointed a committee to prepare overtures 
for the promotion of trade, manufactures, and navi- 
gation ; and in the course of that year a long series 
of statutes was passed, prohibiting the exportation of 
materials used in manufacture and allowing these to 
be freely imported, naturalising foreign artisans and 
exempting them from taxation, enacting that Scots- 
men should be preferred to foreigners in the Orkney 
and Shetland fisheries, authorising the formation of 
fishing companies, and doubling the customs duties on 
all goods not imported in Scottish ships.^ In 1663 
and in 1681 many similar statutes were passed, one 
of which empowered manufacturers to compel beggars, 
vagabonds, and idle persons to serve in their works ;* 
and before the end of the reign several new industries 
had been introduced. In 1667 a sugar refinery and a 
soap work were established at Glasgow; in 1675 a 
paper manufactory was opened at Dairy, now part of 
Edinburgh; and in 1681, on the site of a former 
£Eictory at Newmills, in East Lothian, two cloth looms 
were set up, which soon increased to twenty-five. In 
the same year the manufacture of stamped and gilded 
leather, then much used as a covering for the walls 
of rooms, was started at Edinburgh, and a linen 
manufetctory, incorporated in 1673, was established at 
Leith. Tobacco-spinning is said to have been begun at 
Leith in 1672.* It is to be feared, however, that, with 
the exception of the Glasgow soap and sugar works, 
few, if any, of these industries really took root. In 
1669 was formed an association for fishing, known as 

Met Pari. Yii. 266, 269, 261, 266. ^Drid. 486. 

'Chambera'B DometHo Annalt, ii. 346, 398, 418, 427, 466; Scottish 
Sittorioal Rmnew, July, 1904. 



20 OOMICERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

the Royal Company. As this company was restricted 
to the home market, and permitted no private person 
to fish without a license or to export herrings without 
paying a tax,^ we cannot greatly wonder that it 
fftiled, and was dissolved by Parliament' in 1690; 
but, according to Fletcher of Saltoun, who calls it 
'' that first great attempt to make the nation con- 
siderable," it had been undermined by the intrigues 
of the Court* 

The patriotic ambition, to which these facts bear 
witness, was stimulated to a great extent by conflict 
with a similar ambition on the part of England. As 
early as the reign of Richard II., when the mediaeval 
economy was beginning to break up, the statesmen of 
that country had sought to foster its maritime power. 
The first Navigation Act, forbidding the export or 
import of goods in any but native vessels, was passed 
in 1381 ; but English shipping proved unequal to the 
new demands, and it was not till the days of the 
Tudors, when the era of international rivalries had 
fairly begun, that the Act was renewed, at all events, 
in a permanent form. Henry VIL, of whom Bacon 
said that he diverted the policy of the realm "from 
consideration of plenty to consideration of power," 
enforced the old rule, especially in the wine trade ; and 
in the following reign, after the maritime regulations 
had been greatly relaxed by Wolsey, they were re- 

' Ghambera's Domettic Annals^ ii. 331. 

'On the strange ground that, though no longer doing business as a 
company, it still levied the tax on herrings. — Act. Pari. ix. 224. 

* PclUical Worksy 1749, p. 59. According to another account, "a certain 
Great Man " had been bribed by the Dutch to embark in the undertaking 
for the purpose of wrecking it ^-Letter from a Member of the Parliament 
of Scotland to his friend at London^ 1696, p^ 11. 



FREE TRADE WITH ENGLAND 21 

enacted in 1540.^ James VI., on his accession to the 
English Crown, made it his first object to effect a com- 
mercial union, and a treaty, providing for free trade 
in all commodities except wool, cattle, hides, and linen 
yam, was concluded by the Commissioners of the two 
countries in 1604.* The treaty was adopted without 
amendment by the Scottish Estates on condition that 
it found acceptance in England;' but the English 
Parliament, which had abeady repealed the hostile 
laws and an Act of Richard II. which required none 
to leave the kingdom without the King's permission,* 
resented the action of James in obtaining a decision at 
common law that Scotsmen bom after the union of 
the Crowns were ipso facto naturalised, and the treaty 
was allowed to drop. Nevertheless, for more than fifty 
years, whether designedly or through connivance, it 
seems to have been observed in practice.^ 

The incorporating union eflFected by CromweU in 
1653 not only obviated the effect of a new navigation 
statute aimed against the Duteh, the most stringent 
that had yet been passed, but removed whatever legal 

1 Canninghain's Growth of JBngluh Indtutty and Commerce, i. 338, 362, 
4ie, 434, 435. 

'Brace's Report on the Union, appendix, No. xv. 

^Ad. Pari iv. 366-371. 

*Hill Burton (v. 411) sajB that "such inyidiouB restraints" were 
removed "as had in the earlier law anticipated the restrictive English 
navigation Acts of later times." This is a mistake. The law repealed 
was not the Navigation Act of 1381, but the immediately preceding 
Act of the same year. — Statutes at Large, iii. 64 

^At the conference of 1668, to be immediately mentioned, the Scot- 
tish Commissioners declared that their countrymen from the union of 
the Crowns had " enjoyed a free trade here, in England, and in all the 
dominions and plantations belonging to the kingdom of England, more 
than fifty and six years, without any considerable obstruction all that 
time." — Brace's Report, appendix, No. xxxi. 



22 CX)M]ifBRCIAL EXPANSION, 1696-1700 

objection could be taken to complete freedom of trade. 
The re-establishment of Scottish nationality at the 
Restoration put an end to this boon; and great in- 
dignation was aroused in Scotland when the English 
Parliament, adhering to the maritime policy of the 
Commonwealth, enacted that the trade with Asia, Africa, 
and America must be carried on in English ships, and 
that all the more important European products ^ must 
be conveyed either in such ships, or, subject to higher 
duties, in ships of the country to which the goods 
belonged.* Scotland retaliated next year in a very 
similar Act, oflFering, however, to relieve English ship- 
ping as soon as England relieved hers ; the two countries 
adopted hostile tariffs; and in 1668 a conference was 
held to determine the commercial dispute. 

The conference of 1668 was even more abortive than 
that of 1604, for no treaty was concluded, and no 
rule of practice evolved. The Scots asked to be admitted 
to the American, the continental, and the coasting trade 
of England; and with reference to commodities in 
which the colonies were confined to the home market, 
they engaged to import these only into England, with 
the exception of four cargoes in the year for their own 
use. The English refused to open the American and the 
coasting trade; but they offered as a fevour to allow 
the Scots for six years to import continental goods on 
the higher scale of duties, and, during the same period, 
at the ordinary rate, to bring in foreign timber for the 
re-building of London after the Fire. The Scottish 
Commissioners declared that they would make known 

^ The Act of 1661 made no such distinction, but it applied to imports 
only, not to exports. A lucid exposition of the two Acts is given in 
Craik's History of Commerce, ii. 65, 89. 

^Statutes at Large, iii 182. 



TRADE RESTRICTIONS 23 

the latter concessioti, but took no notice of the former ; 
and, when taxed with their silence, they replied curtly 
that what they wanted was a lasting, not a temporary 
trade, and that alien duties would be practically pro- 
hibitive.* On the accession of James VII. in 1685 a 
new Commission was appointed, apparently without 
result, to confer with English statesmen as to "such 
things as may unite the trade of the two kingdoms " ; * 
and in the following year, with a view to procuring the 
repeal of the anti-Catholic laws, James assured Parlia- 
ment that " we have made the opening of a free trade 
with England our particular care, and are proceeding 
in it with all imaginable application."' Nothing 
further was done; but in spite of all discouragements 
the scanty shipping of Scotland, during these years, con- 
tinued to increase. In 1656 the vessels belonging to 
the five chief sea-ports numbered 58, with a tonnage 
of 3140; in 1692 they numbered 97, with a tonnage 
of 5905.* 

It thus appears that the religious troubles engendered 
by the re-establishment of Episcopacy at the Restora- 
tion were very far from engrossing the attention of the 
Scottish people, and that the national genius, em- 
barrassed without being diverted by such disputes, was 
devoting itself with singular persistence to industry 
and trade. During the reign of James VII. , short and 
troublous as it was, several industrial statutes were 

^Brace's Reporty appendix, xxxi-xl. ^ Act, Pari. viii. 478. 

'Wodrow iv. 360. 

^ Mackintosh's Hutory of OivUisatum in Scotland^ iii. 508. Of course 
the number of vessels belonging to a port is no criterion of its trade. 
Ib 1666 Leith and Glasgow had both about twelve vessels; but the 
Customs and Excise receipts at Leith for three months were £2535, and 
at Glasgow only £458. — ^Tucker's Report on Scottish Reventtei (Banna- 
tyne Qub), pp. 28, 40, 57, 60. 



24 GOBCMEROIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

passed ; and no sooner had the religious, or rather the 
ecclesiastical, question been disposed of at the Revolu- 
tion than the rival interest asserted itself with quite 

^ unexampled power. The Act for settling the quiet 
and peace of the Church, the finality of which is ex- 
pressed in its title, became law on June 12, 1693 ; and 
two days later, in addition to five statutes for the 
erection or the encouragement of manufactures, an 
Act was passed which authorised merchants, under an 
assurance of all industrial privileges, to form companies 
for the carrying on of trade with any part of the world 
with which the Crown was at peace, and in particular 
with the East and West Indies, Africa, and the Medi- 
terranean.^ 

In the reign of Charles II. the Act of 1661 for the 
formation of fishing companies had been followed by 

^ the establishment of such a company in 1669 ; and/in 
1695 the Act "for encouraging of foreign trade" took 
shape, with far more momentous results, in the in- 
corporation of twenty -one persons, ten Scots and eleven 
more or less English, as the nucleus of " The Company 
of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies." Of the 
total capital, in shares varying from £100 to £3000 
sterling, one half was to be held, if possible, by resident 
Scotsmen, and the shares originally subscribed by Scots- 
men at home could be transferred only to such. The 
Company was empowered to trade with Asia, Africa, 
and America ; to plant colonies in places not inhabited, 
or, with consent of the natives, in places unappropriated 
by any European power ; to raise troops, make war, 
and conclude treaties. No Scotsman was to trade with 
any place in Asia or Africa, or, for 31 years, with any 
settlement of the Company in America, without its 

1 Act Pari ix. 314. 



WILUAM PATERSON 25 

license ; the commerce of the Company and all its 
members and servants were to be exempt &om taxa- 
tion for 21 years, and the Act of Navigation was 
suspended in its favour for ten, with the proviso, how- 
ever, that all its ships must bring their cargoes intact 
into Scotland.^ 

The projector and zealous advocate of this scheme 
was William Paterson, whose name in the Act heads 
the list of members resident in England ; and the Act 
itself was probably sketched, if not drafted, by him.* 
The son of a Dumfriesshire farmer, owner of his small 
estate, Paterson had left Scotland about 1672, had 
made a considerable fortune in the West Indies, where 
rumour credited him with occupations so diverse as 
those of a missionary and a buccaneer, and, having 
visited the principal European countries, was now a 
merchant in London.* He had given great attention 
to questions of commerce and finance ; but, being more 
able to originate schemes than to carry them into 
practice, he acquired little permanent credit, and the 
alternations of success and failure in his career have 
caused him to be regarded as more of an adventurer 
than he really was. His plan for the erection of a 

1 Act. Pari. ix. 377. 

* " Penman (as it is shrewdly guessed) of the Octroy," i,e. the Act — 
Defence of the Scots abdicating Darien (written by Berries, whom Dal- 
rymple mistakenly calls Hodge, a renegade servant of the Company, 
and henceforth cited as Herries's tract), p. 2. Paterson himself, at his 
examination before the House of Commons, said that he submitted a 
scheme for an East India Company in Scotland, "but that this was 
not entirely followed." — Commont^ Journals^ xi. 400. 

^ Bannister's Life of Paterson^ from which these facts are taken, is a 
mere farrago of extracts, connected by a few biographical notes, and an 
utterly confused and confusing work. For example, in the contents of 
chapter ii. we are told that Paterson became a member of the Merchant 
Taylors' Company, but there is not a word of this in what follows. 



26 OOMMBRGIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

national bank, proposed in 1691, was adopted by the 
English Parliament in 1694; but Paterson, owing to 
a difference with his colleagues, retained his seat as 
a director for only a few months; and we shall find 
that his fame as the projector of the Scottish Company 
underwent an equally sudden eclipse. A rapid review 
of the English trade with India will enable us to under- 
stand the origin of this scheme. 

For sixty years after it had been incorporated by 
Queen Elizabeth on the last day of the sixteenth 
century, the London East India Company made no 
great advance. Its efforts to obtain a footing in the 
Spice Islands were successfully resisted by the Dutch ; 
and on the continent of India, at a later time, its 
rivalry with the Dutch and the Portuguese w^as 
seriously impeded by the civil war at home. Crom- 
well's vigorous policy, however, made itself felt even 
in the far East; the charter granted by him in 1657 
was renewed by Charles II. ; and henceforward the 
progress of the company was amazingly rapid. In 
twenty-three years the annual value of the imports 
from Bengal increased from £8000 to £300,000; in 
1676 the profits sufficed to double the stock; and the 
price of a £100 share rose from £70 in 1664 to £300 
in 1681. The monopoly of Indian commerce, depend- 
ing on a royal charter, the validity of which was not 
beyond dispute, had long been encroached upon by 
private traders, whose nationality enabled them to 
profit by the Company's privileges, and for whose 
lawless and even piratical proceedings the Company 
as an English corporation was frequently called to 
account.^ The enormous gains of the trade in the 
latter years of Charles II. caused these interlopers, as 

^ Cunningham's English Industry and Commerce^ iL 269. 



THE BN6USH EAST INDIA TRADE 27 

they were termed, to become more numerous and more 
active than ever; and in 1680» when England was 
violently agitated by the Exclusion Bill, they provoked 
a mutiny at Bombay and in St. Helena by spreading a 
report that civil war had broken out in England, and 
that the Company was taking part against the King. 
Sir Josiah Child, governor and autocrat of the India 
House, had anticipated these rumours by deserting the 
Whigs; but the new politics of the Company, which 
won for it the powerful support of Charles II. and 
James II., were confounded by the success of the Re- 
volution, especially as at this period it was engaged 
in a war with the Moghul Emperor which overtaxed 
its strength, and from which in 1691 it had to extricate 
itself on singularly disgraceful terms. Meanwhile, find- 
ing that as private traders they could make little pro- 
gress in the East, the interlopers had formed themselves 
into a voluntary association which was known as the 
New Company; and, on receipt of the discreditable 
news from India, the Commons, after vainly attempt- 
ing to unite the two bodies, petitioned the King to 
dissolve tihie Old Company and to transfer its privileges 
to the New. Next year, the judges having decided 
that the charter could not be recalled without three 
years' notice, they requested that such notice should 
be given ; but Child and his associates were now 
seriously alarmed; and in 1693, after spending nearly 
£90,000 in bribes, they obtained a renewal of their 
charter for twenty-one years, subject to restrictions 
which, on a previous occasion, they had refused to 
accept. Emboldened, however, by this partial success, 
they induced the Admiralty to detain a vessel which was 
leaving the Thames, ostensibly for a Spanish port, but 
really, as they believed, for Hindustan ; and the 



28 COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

Commons not only condemned the detention as illegal, 
but passed a resolution, ''that it was the right of all 
Englishmen to trade to the East Indies or any part 
of the world, unless prohibited by Act of Parliament." 
For the next five years the trade with India was 
nominally free ; but the interlopers found that a 
resolution of the House of Commons was of little use 
to them in India ; and the Old Company succeeded 
in frustrating their efforts to obtain a charter for 
themselves.^ 

Such was the state of things which, as Paterson 
alleged,^ had suggested to him the formation of an 
international East India Company in Scotland ; and if 
the indifference of the English people could have been 
counted on with as much certainty as the favourable 
response of the interlopers, the scheme could hardly 
have failed. As soon as the Act had passed, Paterson 
and his associates in London began to solicit support. 
So great was the encouragement they received, that the 
total capital, which they had proposed to fix at 
£360,000,« was raised to £600,000 ; in November, 1695, 
the books were opened ; and in nine days the whole 
sum allotted to non-Scottish adventurers, amounting to 
£300,000, was subscribed, and £75,000, or a fourth of 
that sum was actually paid up.* On December 4, in 
recognition of this success, it was resolved that one or 
more ships should be fitted out for the East Indies from 
Scotland " with all convenient speed."* 

* Macaulay's Hutory of England^ pamm, 

^ At his examination before the House of Commons, he ^ said he was 
induced to be concerned in this matter because there was no encourage- 
ment for this trade here " — Common^ J<yumals, xi. 400. 

^Darien Papers (Banuatyne Club), p. 1. 

* Original Papers and Letters rdating to the Scots Company j p. 21. 
^ Commom^ Journals, xi. 405. 



'^ 



THE COMPANY OPPOSED IN ENGLAND 29 

The promoters, however, seem to have been conscious 
fix)m the first that the more the scheme prospered, the 
more it was likely to be opposed. Paterson's first idea 
had been that the designs of the Company "ought only to 
be discovered by their execution," and that no public step 
should be taken till after the rising of the Parliament 
which was to meet for the first time on November 22, 
" especially when a great many considerable persons are 
already alarmed." Two months later, on September 3, 
having discovered that the scheme had taken so much 
"air" that nothing but mischief was to be expected 
firom delay, he impressed upon his friends at Edinburgh 
that their object must be to get the Company established 
before Parliament met ; ^ and on the 26th the Company 
thought it necessary to caution its members to endeavour 
to meet objections " without heat or reflection," on the 
ground that rumour accused some of them of speaking 
" reproachfully and contemptibly of the power of the 
government and people of England."^ The ill temper 
which had thus been aroused at so early a stage was 
much increased when the meeting of Parliament enabled 
the English chartered companies to make formal com- 
plaints. On December 13 the Commons concurred 
with the Lords in an address to the Crown in which 
they represented that the privileges conferred on the 
Company by the late Act of the Scottish Parliament 
would be fatal to English commerce ;* and the Commons 
seized the books of the Company, cited Paterson and 
the other Directors to appear at their bar, and resolved 
— though nothjng came of the resolution — that each 
and all of them should be impeached of " high crimes 

* Darien Papers, pp. 1-3, 6. ' Commxmi JoumaU, zi. 401. 

^Lordi Jowmalay xv. 611 ; House of Lordi Manvscripts, New Series, ii. 
a-24. 



30 COMMERCIAL BXPAKSION, 1695-1700 

and misdemeanours/'^ King William replied to the 
address that he had been ill served in Scotland, bat 
that he hoped a remedy might still be found ; and in 
the following year the Marquis of Tweeddale, Lord 
High Commissioner, and Johnston, the Secretary of 
State, were both dismissed. Meanwhile, all but five 
of the London members had withdrawn, and of the 
£300,000 subscribed, only £15,000 remained.* 

Whatever reason the Scots may have had to resent 
these proceedings, their resentment can hardly have 
been embittered by surprise. The monopoly of the 
East India trade had been challenged, if not destroyed, 
by a resolution of the House of Commons ; but the 
privileges denied to the old Company had not been 
granted to the new; and the interlopers must have 
reckoned with the wrath of Parliament when they 
attempted to make a Scottish do duty for an English 
statute. Moreover, there were provisions in the Act 
which could not fail to excite alarm. The Lords, in 
their address to the Crown, laid stress on the clause 
which exempted the commerce and capital of the 
^ Company from taxation for 21 years. They said that 
the result of this would be that English capital and 
shipping would be attracted to Scotland ; that Scotland 
would supplant England as an emporium for East Indian 
commodities; and that these commodities would be 
smuggled into England on such a scale as would fatally 
injure the customs, commerce, and navigation of the 
realm. They referred also to another clause of the Act 
in which the King promised to exert his authority to 

* Common^ Joumalt^ xi. 407. 

' Darien FaperSy p. 13. The five who stood their ground were Paterson, 
James Smyth, James Campbell, Daniel Lodge and Joseph Cohen 
lyAzavedo, each with £3000. 



THE SCOTTISH SHARES SUBSCRIBED 31 

obtam reparation for any damage suffered by the 
Company, '' and that at the public charge " ; and, as 
Scotland had no navy, and no means of maintaining 
a navy, they expressed their apprehension that the 
Company, in running away with English trade, was to 
be protected by the English fleet. This, though not 
the meaning of the Act, would probably have been its 
result; for, even if Scotland had been able to defray 
the cost of such an undertaking, it is difficult to see 
how WiUiam could have made war on her behalf with- 
out involving England as well. 

As foreigners were no less entitled than English- ^ 
men to subscribe, the defeat of the Company's efforts 
in London was not necessarily fatal to its original design ; 
but, before appealing to the Continent, the Directors 
resolved to secure their position at home. In this they 
had the assistance both of Paterson and of Lord Bel- 
haven whom, though a Scottish peer, the Commons had 
attempted to impeach ; the address of the two Houses, 
without the King's answer, calculated as it was both to 
inflame the national spirit and to advertise the ad- 
vantages of the scheme, was printed and reprinted at 
Edinburgh ; Rochester, who had moved the address in 
the Lords, was burned in effigy ; and, when the books 
were opened on February' 26, 1696, public feeling had 
been fully aroused. The Company cannot have hoped 
to repeat its success in London, where £300,000 had 
been subscribed in little more than a week; but, in 
proportion to the financial resources of the country, it 
probably did better still. On the first day a sum of 
£50,400 was subscribed; and, though the books were 
not closed till the first of August, the great bulk of the 
capital, which was now to be £400,000 instead of 
£300,000, had been subscribed before the end of May. 



32 OOMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

It appears, however, that the last few thousands 
required to complete the stock were promised by 
individual members on the Company's credit^ 

In the autumn of this year several delegates, includ- 
ing Paterson, were sent over to Holland, chiefly to 
promote the extension of the Company, but also to 
procure the building of some ships. What had happened 
at London was now repeated at Amsterdam : that is 
to say, the independent traders showed a great dis- 
position to join, but in the end, owing to the action of 
the Dutch East India Company, were compelled to hold 
aloof. Hamburg, to which the delegates next applied, 
had no direct trade with India;' and here for some 
time they plied their solicitations with every prospects 
of success. The £200,000 necessary, with the Scottish 
X400,000, to complete the stock, had indeed been 
promised, when in April 1697, Sir Paul Rycaut, the 
English Resident, presented a memorial to the Senate, 
in which King William declared that the agents of the 
Company had no authority from him, and that he 
should regard any treaty made with these his subjects 
as an insult to his Crown. This declaration, though 
it did not deter the merchants from opening a subscrip- 
tion, caused them to stipulate that no money should 
be paid till the threats uttered by William had been 
recalled ; and from June of this year to December of 
the next the Council-General of the Company at home 
presented petition after petition to this eflfect.* In 
reply to the first address, which reached him on the 

* Darten Papers^ pp. xxiii., xxiv. * Herries's tract, p. 18. 

' The first addrees of the Council-Qeneral to the King was drawn up 
on Jane 28, 1697. — Original Papers and LeUen relating to the Soots 
Company^ p. 6. The letter printed on p. 480 of the Carstaree State Papers 
should thus be dated June 1687, not 1699. 



DISAPPOINTMENT AT HAMBX7RG 33 

Continent, William promised to consider the matter on 
his return, and meanwhile to give orders that his name 
should not be used at Hamburg to the Company's 
prejudice ; but Sir Paul Rycaut, when this answer was 
communicated to him, said that he had received no such 
commands ; and a year later, in October 1698, he 
"seemed to insinuate" that he had private orders to 
persist in opposition, and was frank enough to say that, 
if the English Government had not already taken the 
step complained of, they would take it now.^ Paterson 
and the other delegates had gone home after the 
presentation of the memorial, leaving one Stevenson to 
conduct these dealings with Sycaut ; and such was the 
discouragement caused by their report, that two of the 
Directors proposed that the scheme should be abandoned, 
and the Company's ships and other property sold off.* 

Whether the proceedings that followed were a new 
scheme or a new development of the old is a question 
not easy to decide. The Act constituting the Com- 
pany empowered it to direct its operations to any 
part of Asia, Africa, or America ; but up to this point 
the whole opposition to the project had been based on 
the assumption that it was intended to secure a partici- 
pation in the East Indian trade. The two Houses, 
indeed, in their address to the King, alluded to what 
would happen if the Scots should form a settlement in 
America, but this passage must have been suggested 
merely by the wide scope of the Act ; for, when they 
mention the Company by any but its formal title, they 

^ Original Papers and Letters relating to the Scots Company y pp. 4, 9, 22, 
30. Yet William had told Seafield — so at least Seafield said in his speech 
to F^liament in the preceding August — that he had given orders to 
Kycaut not to oppose the Company. — Carstares State Papers, p. 417. 

'Herries's tract, pp. 21-24. 

C 



34 COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

call it '' the Scotch East India Company," and Paterson, 
at his examination by the House of Commons, said that 
it was for the establishment of such a company that 
his services had been engaged. At the same time it is 
impossible to believe that Paterson can ever have been 
more than half-hearted in his advocacy of such a scheme. 
It was not in the East Indies, but in the West, that his 
colonial experience had been gained ; from a memorial 
drawn up by himself it appears that he had projected a 
colony on the isthmus of Darien as early as 1684 ; and 
we know that a year or two later he was attempting to 
farther this enterprise at Amsterdam, and also, it is 
said, at Hamburg and Berlin.^ In 1700, when the 
Darien project had run its disastrous course, a Scottish 
pamphleteer was audacious enough to assert that it had 
engrossed attention from the first, that the Company 
had had no design, or at all events no immediate^ 
design, of prosecuting a trade with India, and that, if 
the Lords and Commons who opposed it on this ground 
had appointed a committee to confer with the Scottish 
Parliament, they would have discovered their mistake.* 
In disproof of this statement, if disproof be needed, it 
is enough to refer to the resolution of the Directors, 
already mentioned, that one or more ships should be 
fitted out for the East Indies " with all convenient 
speed/' Nevertheless, there is evidence that the 
American project was being pushed forward at an early 
and most unlikely stage. Two pamphlets in defence 
of the Company profess to have been penned at the 

^ Letter of Robert Douglas in Bannister's Paterson^ p. 161 ; Herries, 
p. 3. 

'The qualification, as we shall see, is important 

^Inquiry into the Causes of the Miscarriage of the Scots Colony at 
Darien, p. 16. 



THE DARIEN PROJECT 35 

crisis of its fortunes in England, that is, between the 
presentation of the joint address and the examination 
of the Directors by the House of Commons. The first 
of these, dated January 1, 1696, is written, as one 
would expect, entirely from the East Indian stand- 
point;^ but the second, dated January 4, in all its 
eleven folio pages, makes not the least mention of 
India, and claims support for the Company on the 
ground " that it will infallibly settle plantations abroad, 
particularly in America." ^ If this tract was inspired by 
Paterson, as in view of the praises bestowed upon him 
by the writer, is not improbable, it places his loyalty 
to his superiors in a very questionable light.* 

On the whole, it would seem that some of his country- ^ 
men, in their anxiety to procure the co-operation of 
the English interlopers, had applied to Paterson, as a 
man known to have had a hand in the starting of the 
Bank of England and other financial schemes, to form 
an international East India Company in Scotland ; that 
Paterson, with much apparent zeal, had fallen in with 
this design, whilst labouring in private to subordinate,* 
if not to sacrifice, it to his own ; and that, when the 
interlopers drew back, he succeeded, by slow degrees, 
in carrying his point. In the summer of 1696 the 

^ Seasonable and Modest Thoitghts partly occasioned by and partly con^ 
eendng the Scots East India Company. 

^Letter from a Gendeman in the Country to his Friend at Edinburgh, 

'Robert Douglas, tp be immediately mentioned in the text, accused 
Paterson of obstructing the East • Indian design in England, and of 
trying to wreck it by procuring the appointment, as Directors, of per- 
aons interested in the English East India Company. — Bannister's 
Paterson, p. 152. 

* Paterson, like Columbus, proposed to reach India by the west ; but 
Douglas said that *'he deceives the Company in one of his principal 
ends proposed,'' inasmuch as the voyage to India from Darien would 
be longer than from the British Isles. — Ibid. p. 156. 



36 COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

Directors more than once expressed their gratitude to 
Paterson for his " maps and other papers of discovery " ; ^ 
and in a letter dated September 5, Robert Douglas, a 
Scottish merchant in London, complains that the East 
Indian trade has been rejected, and that Paterson, 
" who converses in darkness," is intriguing more busily 
than ever in favour of a settlement, apparently on the 
isthmus of Darien, which " will alter the whole method 
of trade in Europe, and eflFectually ruin both the English 
and Dutch East India Companies, because it opens a 
shorter, safer, and more convenient way of trade to the 
East Indies, by the South Sea of America, than from 
England or Holland." * A few weeks later, as we have 
seen, Paterson set out on his mission to Amsterdam 
and Hamburg ; and, this being the final effort to open 
up a direct trade with India, a more suitable agent 
might surely have been found. According to one of 
his associates, Paterson beguiled the merchants of 
Hamburg with the idea that their city was to become 
an emporium for East Indian goods, whilst he " wanted 
only their money to raise forces to overrun Mexico 
and Peru."" 

Paterson believed implicitly in the boundless possi- 
bilities of his project, and the fervour of his advocacy 
^ savoured almost of religious zeal. The isthmus of 
Darien or Panama was, in his estimation, the "door 
of the seas and the key of the universe " ; a Scottish 
colony planted on this neck of land would draw to 
itself the commerce of both the Atlantic and the Pacific ; 
wafted by the trade winds, and transferred in a single 
day's journey from sea to sea, the commodities of 

^Darien Papersy pp. 11, 19. 

^Bannister's Patersony pp. 148-168. 'Hemes, p. 18. 



SPAIN SURE TO RESIST 37 

Europe, America, and the West Indies would be ex- 
changed here for those of the East Indies, China, and 
Japan ; and " the universal force and influence of this 
attractive magnet" would "enable its proprietors to 
give laws to both oceans, and to become arbitrators of 
the commercial world, without being liable to the 
fatigues, expenses, and dangers, or contracting the 
guilt and blood of Alexander and Caesar."^ 

It must seem strange that a scheme of such pro- 
mise as this should have been rejected by so great a 
maritime Power as Holland, and yet find favour with 
the Scots ; for, however pacific the objects of the 
colony might be, it could not be established, or at all 
events maintained, by the arts of peace. Paterson 
had persuaded himself that enough of Darien remained 
unappropriated to form a considerable hiatus between 
the Spanish viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru; but he 
must have been a very simple person if he imagined 
that his countrymen would be allowed to settle in 
this territory without opposition on the part of Spain. 
The Bay of Acla,^ on which he had set his heart, was 
situated almost midway between the two ports to 
which the Spanish galleons sailed every year from 
Seville — Carthagena, the strongest fortress, and one of 
the wealthiest cities in America, being about 140 
miles to the east, and Portobello about 100 miles to 
the west; and the Scots, when they settled in the 
Bay, were so completely encompassed by Spanish 
settlements at even closer range that the pamphleteers 
who defended the colony were constrained to point 

^Letter of Paterson in Dalrjmple's Mwwvn of Oreat Britain and 
Irdand, ii. 93. 

^ Now CSaledonia Bay, almost in the same latitude as Panama, but on 
the oppoflite side of the isthmus, and a little further north. 



38 COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

in its justification to such imperia in imperio as 
Ceuta in Morocco and Orange and Avignon in France. 
A dozen leagues from the new settlement slaves under 
Spanish masters were digging for gold, and on an 
island within five miles a small Spanish garrison had 
been massacred by the Indians only two months before 
the Scots arrived.^ These Indians, indeed, owing to the 
extreme unhealthiness of their climate, were tolerably 
free ; but their chiefs, lurking in the depths of forests, 
over which, in Paterson s imagination, they exercised 
a princely sway, had assumed Spanish names, spoke 
Spanish, and their wives, after the Spanish fashion, 
are said* to have worn veils. The Scottish pamph- 
leteers argued to little purpose that the integrity of 
the Spanish dominions had been violated at various 
other points — that the English had formed a settle- 
ment in Campeachy Bay, that the French had settled 
in San Domingo and at the mouth of the Mississippi, 
that both the French and the Dutch had established 
themselves in Guiana, and the Portuguese in Brazil ; 
for in all these instances, had they been more relevant 
than they were, the Spaniards would probably have 
resisted if they could ; and in this case it was certain 
^ that they both could resist and would. A territory 
so important from its position, and so closely adjacent 
to the chief seat of their power, was not to be aban- 
doned without a struggle ; and they could not stand 
in much awe of a nation whose naval force was 
represented by four foreign-built ships, whose ordinary 

^ A JuBt and Modest Vindication of the Scots Design for the having 
established a Colony at Darien^ p. 91 ; ^ Short Vindication of Phil, Scots 
Defence of the Scots Abdicating Darien^ p. 26. "If the Spanish title ifl 
to be aUowed in any part of America, it is here." — Douglas's letter in 
Bannister's Paterson, p. 161. 

' Herries, p. 164. 



POPULAR DELUSIONS 39 

revenae was some £110,000 a year, and the disavowal 
of whose enterprise by the English Government exposed 
its colonists to be treated as little better than buccaneers.^ 
Apart, however, from the certainty of a conflict 
with Spain, the promoters of the enterprise, at all 
events those of them who had resided in England, 
ought to have recognised that Scotland at that time 
had neither the experience nor the resources necessary 
to make it a success. On this subject the strangest 
delusions prevailed. Because Scotsmen went away in 
great numbers every year to push their fortunes 
abroad, and as many as 10,000, it was said, were to 
be found in Poland alone, the country was supposed 
to be more densely peopled, in proportion to its size, 
than any other state. If a colony were founded, the 
annual overflow of population would be turned to 
good account, and the nation, "without destroying of 
them," would get rid of its " loose idle people," and 
especially of " the scum of our idle young women." 
The industries so carefully nursed by Parliament for 
more than a generation were supposed to have pro- 
vided " native commodities," chiefly woollen, " exactly 
suiting the necessities and exigencies of an American 
plantation " ; and such a plantation, if only it could 
be established, would act like a charm. " We shall 
no sooner feel the sweet of this company than we 

^ ** I heard it declared by some understanding merchants in America that 
unless we could be masters of the sea upon this coast, and keep up a 
power here superior to that of Spain, we could never expect to keep that 
place.'' — Borland's Hutory of Darien, edition 1779, p. 96. On August 12, 
1699, shortly before the third expedition sailed, the Lord Advocate wrote 
thus to Carstares : ^* Whether it succeed or not, it is like to have ill con- 
sequences ; for, if it prosper, it is but a state of war, which we cannot 
maintain with the Spaniard, but must soon be exhausted ; and if not, yet 
much is laid upon it ; and we will be ready enough to blame whom we 
should not blame." — Carstarea State Papers^ p. 490. 



2 



40 COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

will drink more wine and live higher every way."^ 
The truth, of course, was that the population of Scot- 
land was only too sparse, and that, sparse as it was, 
it could not subsist even at the current standard of 
comfort — a standard so low, that an addition of six- 
pence sterling a week to their wages would have 
enabled the peasantry to marry at eighteen or twenty 
years of age, instead of waiting till they were thirty ; 
and the vain hopes, to which Paterson s unhappy 
project had given rise, were only one of many signs 
that the aptitude of the nation for colonising was no 
further advanced than its means. 

When Paterson returned from his mission to Ham- 
burg in the spring of 1697, he found that the Com- 
pany, which had hitherto employed him more as an 
agent than as a guide, was now to dispense with his 
services and to appropriate his ideas. In order to 
defray the cost of shipbuilding and other charges, he 
had been entrusted with a sum of £20,000 or £25,000, 
which, in anticipation of a rise in the rate of 
exchange, he had paid over with more haste than 
discretion to one Smith, a broker in London. This 
affair was very injurious to his credit ; for Smith, 

^ Letter from a Gentleman in the CourUry to his friend at Ediriburgky 
pp. 6, 8 ; Some Seasonable and Modest Thoughts^ etc., p. 14. 
" As our Valour flew all Europe round, 
So now our Trade scarce both the Poles shall bound." 

Caledonia Triumphans. 

A poetess, less indubitably inspired, puts the case thus : 

" All men that has put in some stock 
to us where we are gone ; 
They may expect our Saviour's words, 
a Hundred reap for one." 

The Oolden Idand or the Darien Song, etc. By a Lady of Honour. 

2 A Letter from a Gentleman in the Country, etc., p. 10. This fact, if 
such it is, may have some ethical import. 



A STRANGE CARGO 41 

after disbursing the greater part of the money in his 
hands, decamped with the £8,300 that remained ; and, 
though the two persons appointed to enquire into 
Paterson's conduct exonerated him from blame, and 
recommended that he should be retained in the Com- 
pany's service, this recommendation took no effect.^ 
Paterson was indeed to go to Darien, but to go, or 
rather to start, as a volunteer. 

In November, 1697, two of the Company's ships, 
the Caledonia and the St Andrew^ arrived at Leith 
from Hamburg; and these were soon followed by the 
Unicom^ which had been built at Amsterdam. It 
was intended that the expedition should sail in spring; 
and the Directors had for some time been engaged in 
purchasing a miscellaneous cargo, consisting partly of 
weapons of war, partly of axes, saws and other imple- 
ments of pioneer work, and partly of those native 
commodities "exactly suiting the necessities and 
exigencies of an American plantation" which were to 
be the materials of a traffic, more or less illicit, with 
.the Spanish and English West Indies. These last 
included a certain quantity of Scottish and Hamburg 
linen, but consisted chiefly of tweeds and serges, coarse 
stockings and caps, and as many as 4000 periwigs, 
none of which articles of apparel were likely to be 
worn in the tropics, and of 1500 English Bibles — a 
commodity which would be useless to the Spaniards 
and Indians, and which the English planters, whatever 
use they made of it, might be expected to possess.^ 

^ Bannister's Paterson, pp. 160-166. 

^In reference to another and later cargo, the Council of the Colony 
wrote to the Directors : " We cannot conceive for what end so much 
thin grey paper and so many little blue bonnets were sent here, being 
entirely useless, and not worth their room in a ship." — Darien Papers^ 
p. 243. 



42 COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

In July, 1698, after long delay due to mismanagement 
and want of funds, the expedition, as a final step, was 
placed under the command of seven councillors ; and, 
as the ships in April had been provisioned for nine 
months, they sailed on July 26 with provisions for 
only six.^ 

The colonists started under sealed orders, on opening 
which at Madeira they shaped their course for Crab 
Island in the vicinity of Porto Rico. Their attempt 
to take possession of this island in name of the Com- 
pany was anticipated by the Danes; and, as few or 
none of them had any knowledge of the Central 
American coast, they were fortunate in falling in with an 
aged buccaneer, named Alison, under whose guidance 
they arrived in the Bay of Ada about November 2. 
Here they were well received by Andreas, an Indian 
chief, who aflFected the Spaniard " in the gravity of his 
carriage," and less successfully in the style of his 
attire, which consisted of " a loose, red stuflf coat," an 
old hat, and a pair of white drawers; and, Andreas 
having made them free of his dominions, they pro- 
ceeded to build a fort, which they called St Andrew, 
intending to make it the nucleus of a settlement which, 
as the capital of Caledonia, was to be New Edinburgh.' 

^ Hemes, pp. 22-27. The fleet consisted of the Caledonia and St. 
Andrew, of 60 to 70 guns each, the Unicom of 46 guns, and the two 
tenders or "pinks,'' the Dolphin and the Endeavowr, Herries was 
purser on board the Caledonia, 

^Darien Papers, pp. 64, 181 ; Herries, p. 60. New Edinburgh and 
New Caledonia were merely names, as no huts were ever built outside 
the fort. — Darien PaperSy p. 209. From the lucid description of Herries, 
illustrated by the map prefixed to these Papers, it appears that New 
Edinburgh was a piece of low-lying ground, about 30 acres in extent, 
at the end of a hilly peninsula forming the outward arm of a lagoon 
or harbour, about 2^ miles long, within the Bay of Acla. Fort St 
Andrew, with its 16 (not 50) guns, commanded the mouth of the har- 



COUNCILLORS AT VARIAKCE 43 

Notwithstanding scarcity of provisions, bad bread' 
and unwholesome water, the voyage from Scotland to 
the West Indies had been accomplished without serious 
loss, only fifteen persons, it was reported,^ having died 
out of a total, including seamen and colonists, of 1200. 
The defects in the conduct and in the equipment of 
the expedition had, however, been evident from the 
first, and they soon made themselves felt. Of the 
seven persons who constituted the council, one was 
detained at home; and during the five or six days 
spent at Madeira, Paterson, who had sailed as a volun- 
teer, was elected to the vacant post.^ In spite of 
personal jealousies, resulting in no "little hector and 
Billingsgate," the councillors were divided into two 
hostile groups, according as the experience of each 
had been gained on sea or on land ; and, though the 
election of Paterson placed the " fresh- water men " in 
a majority of one, the "Marine Councillors" wielded 
the most absolute authority during the voyage, and 
refused to relinquish it on shore. In order to put an 
end to this friction, Paterson proposed that a president 

boar; and the narrow neck of land connecting the settlement with 
the peninsula was traversed from sea to sea hy a rampart and trench. 
The following description of the country as it appeared to the settlers 
at their first landing maj weU be quoted: The "hills are clothed with 
tall trees without any underwood, so that one may gallop conveniently 
among them many miles, free from sun and rain, unless of a great 
continnance. The air makes on the tops of the trees a pleasant melan- 
choly music, so that one of the colony considering the coolness, pleasant 
murmuring of the air, and the infinite beauty of a continued natural 
arbor, called them the shades of love." — The History of Caledonia^ or 
the Scott Colony in Darien ; by a Oentleman lately arrived, p. 18. 

^Darien Papers, p. 80. According to another account, 44 persons 
died during the voyage, and 28 after landing. — Marchmont Papersy 
iil 177. 

'Herries, p. 36; M'Crie's Veitch and Brysson, p. 223. Paterson's 
biographer makes no mention of this. 



44 COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

should be appointed for a month ; but, in spite of his 
protest that such a plan would '^make a mere May 
game of the government," it was decided that the office 
of president should change hands every week.^ 

There were other causes, however, more potent for 
mischief than even the disumon of the council and the 
misconduct of the officers, who, it seems, were gener- 
ally idle and often drunk. When the colonists landed, 
they had supplies for barely three months; and the 
work of clearing, digging, and fortifying, exhausting 
enough at best, had thus to be prosecuted on very 
short commons — so short, indeed, that in order to 
procure plantains from the Indians, some of the men 
parted with their shirts.* It is true that several ship- 
loads of provisions reached the colony from Jamaica, 
the first -about December 20 ; but, in the dearth of 
money and credit, provisions could be had mainly, if 
not only, in exchange for goods; and the goods, as 
we have seen, were so ill-suited for barter that the 
supply of food obtained in this way was more welcome 
than large.* Owing to a want of sufficient nets and 
boats, there was a difficulty even in catching turtle 
and fish. In the course of the next year, 1699, the 
condition of the colony went rapidly fi:om bad to worse. 
In February both the tenders were sent out to barter 
goods for provisions; but the Dolphin was captured 
by the Spaniards, and the Endeavour^ after battling 
for a month with unfavourable winds, was driven back. 
In April it was discovered that some malcontents had 
conspired to run away with the St. Andrew ; and just 

^Darien Papers^ pp. 127, 180, 181, 187. 

' Hemes, p. 147 ; Darien Papers, p. 210. 

^It appears from both Paterson and Herries that several of the 
Jamaica sloops left the colony "without breaking bulk." 



COLLAPSE OF THE FIRST EXPEDITION 45 

at this moment two councillors insisted on following 
another of their number who had already gone home. 
In May the colonists learned that two sloops, freighted 
for Caledonia, had been detained at Port Royal, that 
the Governor of Jamaica had forbidden the islanders 
to trade with or assist them, and that the Spaniards, 
whom they had already encountered in a slight skir- 
mish, were preparing to attack them in force. During 
all these months they had looked in vain for assistance 
or even for tidings from home; pestilence and priva- 
tion were claiming nearly a dozen victims a day ; and 
the Council, composed as it now was of more capable 
men, decided at last that the enterprise must be given 
up. Paterson stoutly combated this resolution, though 
his wife had died, and he himself was prostrated with 
fever; but his entreaties and remonstrances were of 
no avail. On June 20 or 21^ the colonists, now* 
reduced to 900, set sail for whatever port they might 
be able to reach." 

When the news of the abandonment reached Scot- 
land on September 19, the Directors scouted it as a 
malicious rumour concocted by one of the English 
Secretaries of State; but on October 10 they were 
convinced of its truth. The Caledonia and the Uni- 
com had arrived at New York, the latter almost a 
wreck; of some 600 men embarked on the two ships, 
250 had died ; and amongst the gaunt and fever- 
stricken survivors every day was adding to the number 
of deaths. The Endeavour, though its crew was saved, 
had foundered at sea. The St. Andrew, pursued by 
a Spanish fleet, had taken refuge at Bluefields in 

^June 29 mentioned by the Directors {Darien Papers, p. 165) is 
certainly a mistake. 

* Darien Papers^ pp. 102, 182, 186-194. 



46 OOMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1696-1700 

Jamaica, and, with assistance from shore, had been 
brought round to Port Royal, after losing most of its 
oflScers and over 130 men.^ The refugees at New 
York were too dispirited to write ; and the Directors, 
who had heard of their arrival from the agent of an 
English firm, abused them heartily for their silence 
as well as for their "infatuated proceedings," their 
"shameful and dishonourable abandonment of Cale- 
donia " ; and, as ^^ a great condescension " to such 
betrayers of their country, sent them orders to go 
back. Meanwhile, as we shall see, a large auxiliary 
expedition had been despatched to Darien; and the 
Directors, in their letters to the second batch of 
colonists, lost no opportunity of reflecting on the first, 
whom they denounced in unmeasured terms for their 
"disagreements and factious jarrings," and as persons 
" void of both religion and morality," who " neither 
feared God or regarded man."^ 

The Directors would have done well to consider 
whether they themselves were not mainly responsible 
for the disaster which had provoked them thus to revile 
a body of men, the majority of whom, however un- 
worthy, had paid for their follies with their lives. 
They had despatched some 1200 seamen and colonists 
to America with a stock of provisions sufficient to 
maintain them after their arrival for barely three 
months, and with very little money to buy more. 
They had, indeed, provided them with a large supply 
of goods ; but these were found to be " damnified " in 

^ The climate of Panama then as now was notoriously bad ; but the 
survivors persisted in calling it ''very wholesome," and attributed the 
sickness and mortality to ''mere want." A Frenchman told Paterson 
that his countrymen in San Domingo were beginning to use the 
isthm\i8 as a health resort. — Darien Papers, pp. 148, 191. 

^Darien Papers, pp. 143-150, 163-166, 266, 270, 271. 



DELAY IN SENDING SUPPLIES 47 

the packing and " extravagantly overrated " ; they were 
contraband in the Spanish West Indies, and, under 
certain conditions, in the English ; and, as we have 
seen, they were of such a character that they were not 
likely to be smuggled. The heads of the expedition, 
having failed to touch at Orkney, had written from 
Madeira to intimate their need ; but their letters, dated 
August 29, were not answered till February 24 ; and, 
the brigantine of 140 tons despatched on that occasion 
having been wrecked in the Hebrides, no supplies were 
sent till two vessels sailed from Leith on May 12.^ In 
excuse of their remissness, the Directors pleaded the 
dearth which had prevailed in Scotland since August 
1696, and which had become serious, shortly before the 
expedition sailed, in the summer of 1698; but, if the 
colony could not be supplied from home, they ought 
to have furnished it with credit, as they afterwards 
did for this very reason, in the English plantations ; 
and in the letters which announced the arrival of the 
ships at New York the belief was expressed that, if 
this step had been taken in time, the colonists " in a 
thriving condition" might have remained where they 
were. It was not till April 18 that the Directors 
resolved to appoint a factor at New York ; and, despite 
a proclamation similar to that which had been issued 
in Jamaica, supplies were on the point of being sent 
when the Caledonia and the Unicom arrived.* 

Disastrous as had been the beginning of the attempt "^ 
to found a colony on the isthmus of Darien, its sub- 

^**The delajing of sending the ships, which went with Jamisone, six 
months abnost longer than they might have been despatched, has in 
all probability occasioned what has followed." — Marchmont Paper*, iii. 
179. See also Md. pp. 186, 187, ld8. 

^Darim Papers, pp. 121, 124, 127, 131, 146, 148, 149, 287. 



48 COMMERCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

sequent stages proved more disastrous still. The 300 
men embarked on the two ships, under Captains 
Jamieson and Stark, which sailed from Leith on May 
12, 1699, arrived at Caledonia in the beginning of 
August without the loss of a single life; and bitter 
indeed must have been their disappointment on enter- 
ing the harbour to find only an overgrown clearing in 
the forest, a dismantled fort, and the charred remains 
of a few huts. They resolved, indeed, to await the 
coming of the larger expedition, of which they had gone 
in advance; but, within a few days of their arrival, 
Jamieson's ship, the Olive Branch, on which were 
most of the provisions, was burned or blown up, 
through the carelessness of some of the crew who 
went into the hold to draw brandy with a lighted 
candle ; and, with the exception of about a dozen, 
they then withdrew in the remaining ship to Jamaica, 
where most of them died.^ 

The third expedition was rather more numerous than 
the first, consisting of about 1300 men in four ships, 
the Rising Sun, a Dutch-built ship of 60 guns, the 
Hope, and the two chartered vessels, the Duke of 
Hamilton and the Hope of Bo'ness. When this force 
sailed from Rothesay on September 24, 1699, the 
Directors had not only received the report, which they 
professed to disbelieve, that the settlement had been 
abandoned, but, lest it should prove true, had sent an 
express to detain the fleet till a councillor of the 
first expedition, who had left Caledonia in April, 
should arrive with fresh instructions. The council on 
board the Rising Sun took this to mean that they were 
to be superseded, for a Glasgow Director had com- 

^ Darten Papen^ p. 267 ; Borland's History of Darieny pp. 25, 26 ; 
Historical MSS, Commission^ 12th Report, appendix, pt yiii., p. 59. 



THE THIRD EXPEDITION ARRIVES 49 

plained of their conduct, and had threatened, " if they 
did not mend their manners/' to procure the recall of 
their commiasion ; and, the express having reached 
them at ten on a Saturday night, they sailed at nine 
the next morning, in such haste that they did not wait 
for some provisions which they had ordered, or even 
for the party which they had sent to bring them on 
board. At Montserrat in the West Indies, oflF which 
they arrived on November 9, they heard the same 
sinister rumour which had greeted them as they left 
the Clyde; and, when on the 30th they cast anchor 
m Caledonia Bay, they found its shores untenanted, 
and nothing on the water but two small sloops which 
had come with provisions from New York, and one of 
which was manned, under Captain Thomas Drummond, 
by some survivors of the first expedition who had 
brought implements to assist in re-occupying the place. * 
Two at least of the councillors, but four in all, who 
had been in such haste to leave Scotland, would now 
gladly have gone back ; and, these being men of greater 
energy than their colleagues, Captain Drummond 
received little thanks for his pains. When he went 
on board the Rising Sun^ Byres, the leading councillor, 
"in a strange consternation" told him that they had 
come to reinforce, not to found, a colony, and that, having 
supplies for barely six weeks, they must disperse them- 
selves amongst the West Indian islands. When it 
appeared that the supplies would last for six months, 
instead of for six weeks, the Council decided that only 
500 of the force should be retained, and that the remainder 
should be "disposed of" in Jamaica;^ and the men, 
believing that they were to be sold as slaves, were so 

^ Darien Papersy pp. 163, 177, 199, 231 ; Borland, pp. 28-30. 

'Oontniy winds defeated this resolution, and it was never carried out. 



60 OOMM£BCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

alanned at this proposal that nine of them deserted in 
one of the Rising Sun's boats ; and at the same time a 
plot was discovered, for which one man was hanged, 
to seize the councillors and take possession of the ships. 
The Council, under Byres s influence, rejected a proposal 
made by Drummond for an immediate attack on Porto- 
bello ; they refused to trust him when he offered them 
credit at New York ; they ill-used his men ; and finally, 
on the pretext that he had abused his position as a 
councillor of the former colony, they placed him under 
arrest. In a letter of February 3, 1700, to the Direc- 
tors, they reported that they had repaired the batteries 
and had built a number of store-houses and huts ; but 
they wrote in a very despondent mood, complaining 
that great part of the provisions were bad, that much 
of the cargo was useless, and that they had not £50 
worth of saleable goods.^ 

Meanwhile, warned by the fate of the first settle- 
ment, the Directors had not been remiss in forwarding 
supplies. On October 10, 1699, Captain Campbell of 
Fanab and a certain Archibald Stewart were despatched 
to purchase provisions for the colony, the former in the 
West Indies and the latter at New York ; in November 
the Speedy Return, with the councillor on board, for 
whom the leaders of the third expedition had refused 
to wait, sailed with provisions from the Clyde; in the 
following year a second vessel was despatched, a third 
was detained only by storm, and preparations were 
made to fit out a fourth. Captain Campbell succeeded 

^Darien Papers^ pp. 215, 218-221, 239-244; Borland, pp. 30-32. From 
a letter of Alexander Shields, one of the ministers who accompanied the 
expedition, it appears that nearly 200 men had died during the voyage 
or soon after their arrival, and that over 130 were then sick. The letter, 
dated February 2, 1700, is printed in the Edinhwrgh Christian Instmctor, 
xviii. 477-479. 



BARIEN ABANDONED 51 

in reaching Caledonia by way of Barbadoes; but none 
of the supplies sent with other agents arrived in time. 
The Spaniards, as we have seen, had long been preparing ^ 
to crush the Scottish intruders, and their very dilatory 
preparations were at last complete. On February 15, 
1700, only four days after his arrival, Campbell routed 
at Tubacanti a detachment of the enemy, of whose 
approach the Indians had sent word ; but on the 23rd 
eight Spanish warships, and on the 25th three more, 
beset the mouth of the harbour; and, some troops 
having been landed to co-operate with the main body 
advancing from Sancta Maria and Panama, the Spaniards 
attempted to seize the neck of land leading to the hilly 
and wooded peninsula, at the end of which Fort St. 
Andrew had been built.* On March 17, after almost 
incessant skirmishing, they obtained possession of the 
isthmus ; on the 24th they were within a nule, and on 
the 28th within musket shot, of the fort. By this time 
disease was making such ravages in the garrison that 
scarcely 300 men were fit for duty, and as many as 16 
sometimes died in a day ; provisions and ammunition 
were alike bad in quality and rapidly running short ; 
the only available spring, half-a-mile distant, was in 
the hands of the enemy, and the water to be had by 
digging was no better than a "brackish puddle." On^ 
March 31 the settlers capitulated on very honourable 
terms, being allowed to embark on their ships "with 
colours flying and drums beating," and with all their 
property and arms.* 

^ See the note on p. 42. 

*DaHen Papers^ pp. 176, 177, 245, 263, 290 ; Borland, pp. 57-68. The 
^peeo^ Betum reached Caledonia two days after the capitulation was 
signed, bnt without Mackay, the counciUor mentioned above, who had 
fallen overboard and been devoured bj sharks. — ^Borland, p. 73. The 
▼easel despatched in March 1700 did not arrive till the middle of June, 



52 OOMMKRCUL KZPAN8I0N, 1695-1700 

On April 12 the flotilla set sail, including, besides 
the four ships which had left Scotland in company, the 
Speedy Return^ an old sloop, and the sloop in which 
Campbell had arrived from Barbadoes. The voyage was 
horrible in the extreme, particularly on board Uie Rising 
Sun^ where sick and dying men, with nothing to sustain 
them but a little damaged oat-meal, were crowded to- 
gether ^* like so many hogs in a sty or sheep in a fold." 
Two hundred and fifty persons died on the way to Jamaica, 
and nearly a hundred more died there before the voyage 
was resumed. Tempest soon claimed its victims as well 
as disease. The Rising Sun, having been dismasted by 
a hurricane on August 14, was dashed to pieces, ten days 
later, on the harbour-bar of Charleston, and of her 
complement of 127 persons, the only survivors were 
15, including Byres, who happened to be on land. The 
other three ships belonging to the third expedition were 
all wrecked or run ashore, though without loss of life ; 
and the only vessels that reached Scotland were .the 
Speedy Return and Campbell's sloop. ^ 

Nearly 2,000 lives, and in the course of four years 
some £200,000, had been thrown away in the bands of 
" The Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the 
Indies " ; and for this disastrous failure it was natural, 
and to some extent just, that England should be held 
largely to blame. It was England that had defeated 
the original intention of the Company to open up a 

and finding the Spaniards in poga o arion, returned to Jamaica. Dalrymple 
has given a lively account of the intolerance of certain ministers who 
accompanied the third expedition ; bat the account seems to be mainly 
inferential, and M^Crie has shown that in several particulars it is at vari- 
ance with the facts. Dalrymple's whole narrative of the Darien scheme 
is indeed honeycombed with error ; but the ministers had so wretched an 
opinion of their fellow-colonists, not without reason, that they were not 
likely to treat them with much compassion or respect. 
1 Borland, pp^ 74-85. 



RESPOiraiBiiimr of kimg william 5S 

direct trade with Hindustan, and had thus induced the 
Directors to fall back on Paterson's scheme for a colony 
in the Gulf of Darien ; and, whatever reason the English 
Parliament may have had to resent the conduct of 
the interlopers in incorporating themselves under an 
authority not subject to its control, it could hardly have 
been anticipated that William, at the instigation of 
English and Dutch merchants, would exert his authority 
to prevent the Company obtaining subscriptions at 
Hamburg. In the memorial which they presented on 
this occasion the Company pointed out that, though 
by the Act of 1695 they were empowered to treat with 
any sovereign or state in amity with the British Crown, 
they had in this instance addressed themselves, not to 
the senate of Hamburg, but to individual merchants^ 
which, had they been merely a private corporation, they 
would have been quite entitled to do ; ^ and William's 
refusal to retrace his steps, even after the complaint of 
the Company had been endorsed by Parliament, was a 
manifest injustice, which the Scots as a nation had every 
reason to resent.* 

If, however, the commercial exclusiveness of England 
and Holland had driven the Scots into what proved to 
be the road to ruin, it cannot be said that their progress 
to that end was materially hastened by anything that 
the English Government subsequently did. From the 
English point of view there was something peculiarly 
exasperating in the Darien scheme. With utterly in- 
adequate resources, and at a most critical time — a time 
when the Spanish succession was trembling in the 

' Original Paperiy etc, pp. 6-8. 

'Queensberry, in a letter to Garstares, mentions the Hamburg incident 
as that " which this nation resents more than all the injuries they fancy 
they have met with." — Cantares StcUe Papers, p. 562. 



54 OOBCMXRCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

balance and when the slightest afiront or injury on the 
part of England might have driven the dying and child- 
less king into the arms of France — the Scots had 
embarked on an enterprise which could not fail to 
arouse the hostility of Spain ; and, as soon as that 
hostility had declared itself in a slight skirmish and in 
the loss of one of their smaller vessels, the colonists had 
sent home an address to the King, in which they threw 
themselves at his royal feet, implored his protection, 
and expressed their gratification in the phraseology, if 
not in the actual words, of Paterson that " the effectual 
opening the door of commerce to the trading world " 
had been reserved to be '* one of the singular glories of 
your Majesty's reign." ^ William had made it tolerably 
clear that this particular glory was one that he could 
make shift to do without ; but to assist the colonists, 
had such been his inclination, was beyond his power. 
In the Act of 1695 he had been made to say that he 
would exact reparation for any wrongs suffered by the 
Company "upon the public charge," that is, at the 
expense of the Scottish Exchequer ; but the naval force 
of Scotland, such as it was, consisted only of the 
Company's ships ; and, had it been possible for him to 
employ the English fleet, he could not have done so 
without adopting that unwarranted interpretation of 
the Act which the two Houses had endeavoured to fix 
upon it in their joint address. 

William, however, was not content to stand aloof. 
Long before the Darien appeal was presented to him in 
September 1699, and even before Spain had made any 

' OngincU FaperSy eta, p. 41. In order tx> strengthen this appeal, the 
Directors sought to show that Darien, if abandoned by the Soots, 
would be occupied hj the French. — Ibid. pp. 37-38; Darien Papers^ 
p. 126. 



ENGUSH H08TIUTT NOT FATAL 55 

fonnal complaint,^ he had issued orders to the colonial 
governors, the result of which was the proclamations, 
forbidding intercourse with the settlers, at New York 
and Boston, Jamaica and Barbadoes. These proclama- 
tions were discouraging enough; but all the corre- 
spondents of the Company in New England were agreed 
in saying, what Defoe afterwards said,* that, had the 
colony been furnished with money or credit, it could 
not have failed to obtain supplies. The proclamation 
at Barbadoes did not prevent Campbell, and the pro- 
clamations at New York and Boston did not prevent 
Stewart, from obtaining as large a quantity of provisions 
as their credit allowed ; a sloop freighted with provisions 
had met the St Andrew on her way to Jamaica ; and 
the Directors themselves, in their despatches to the 
third expedition, expressed their confidence that the 
proclamations would be impotent for harm. But, 
though little regarded by private traders, the policy of 
the English Gk>vemment was carried out by their own 
officials with a singularly heartless precision. When the 
St, Andrew reached Jamaica after its disastrous voyage, 
the Grovemor would not allow the survivors to barter 
goods for victuals, "although they should starve"; 
Admiral Benbow reftised to grant the assistance of 
some of his men to navigate the ship from Blue- 
fields, where the anchorage was unsafe, to Port Royal ; 
and the Captain, fearing that the remnant of his 
crew would "mutiny and play the devil," wrote 



^The Spanish memorial, dated May 3, 1699, is printed in TindaPs 
CofUinitation of Rapin'a History of Englaiidy xix. 5-6. 

^Hutory of the Union (1709), p. 35. William, in a pamphlet 
of 1706, is said to have made the same remark to an eminent 
Scotsman. — The Advantages of Scotland by an Incorporate Union^ 
p. 10. 



56 OOHMBRCIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

home in despair, '^ I know not in all the world ^w^hat 
todo."^ 

Scotsmen were not likely to pardon such treatment 

as this; for, however the nation may have been 

bewitched by Paterson's fantastic dream, the African 

and Indian Company could not have elicited such 

enthusiastic support if it had not appealed to that 

patriotic impulse which Cromwell had originated by 

his victory at Dunbar, which the English navigation 

laws had strongly confirmed, and which throughout 

the reigns of Charles II. and James 11. had displayed 

itself, as we have seen, in feverish endeavours to 

diminish the national poverty— if we may not say, to 

increase the national wealth. It was this sentiment, 

which, with every fresh symptom of English hostility, 

grew more and more intense, that had prompted the 

Directors to denounce the persons responsible for the 

withdrawal of the first colony as their "country's 

betrayers," and, in fitting out a vessel for the Gold 

Coast, to instruct its commander not to allow his flag 

to be insulted by the warships of any nation, and to 

regard no orders which were not signed by the King 

and counter-signed by him or by a Scottish Secretary 

of State ; and the Council-General of the Company was 

evidently inspired by the same spirit when it issued a 

proclamation making it death for any inhabitant of 

Caledonia to propose, or even to debate upon in private, 

the desertion or surrender of the settlement without a 

special permission from the Council-General itself.* 

The eagerness shown by so many persons in 1696 to 

^ Darien Papers, pp. 150, 268. Captain Colin Campbell had succeeded 
Pennycook in command of the St, Andrew, and he also soon died. — Ibid, 
p. 274. 

* Darien Papers, pp. 166, 171, 284, 



DARIEN ENTHUSIASM 57 

enter their names in the Company's books has been 
compared, not inaptly, to that with which an even 
wider public had rushed to sign the National Covenant, 
almost sixty years before ^ ; in the list of subscribers are 
to be found representatives of every class but the 
peasantry — wrights, tailors, glaziers, maltmen, as well 
as peers, lairds, merchants, lawyers, physicians and 
divines ; and the Darien project is certainly remarkable 
in this, that it was the first national movement since 
the outbreak of the Reformation in which religion had 
practicaUy no share. "The whole ministers of the 
nation '' had prayed for the success of the first expedi- 
tion ^ ; and, when the news came that a new Caledonia 
had arisen beyond the seas, there were " thanksgivings 
in the churches, bonfires, illuminations, and ;dnging of 
bells."* "You cannot believe," wrote an Edinburgh 
correspondent to Carstares in August 1699, "how great 
an edge is upon persons of all degrees and ranks here 
for that plantation." " What the matter will turn to,'^ 
wrote Lord Marchmont, several months later, "the 
Lord knows : but from the first till now, and still on so, 
there is such an earnestness and disposition towards 
that matter, without any sparing either of their 
persons or purses, that every observer must think it 
wonderful " * 

Bitter indeed, as we shall see, was the disappointment 
caused by the frustration of these glowing hopes ; but it 
was worth even such an experience as this to have 
learned that the Bang of Scotland, great and noble as 

r 
S 

^ Dalrymple, ii. 96. He says the Solemn League and Ck)Tenaut, but he 
means, or ought to mean, the National Covenant of 1638. Nobody but a. 
few clerical zealots had any enthusiasm for the Solemn League. 

• Carstares State Papers, p. 418. ' Darien Papers, p. 129. 

* Carstares State Papers, p. 488, 512. 



58 CX)MMBRGIAL EXPANSION, 1695-1700 

she knew him to be, was in the hands of her enemies, 
and that the regal union must be dissolved ** except the 
nations be more closely united and upon a better 
footing." ^ In the eflfort to enforce this alternative, for 
which in one shape or another so many generations had 
fought and suffered, to impress upon England that 
Scotland must be either independent or wedded to her 
in an equitable union, the last and crowning sacrifice 
had been made by those who had perished, far from the 
old battlefields, in the swamps of Darien, on the 
crowded and fever-haunted decks of the St. Andrew, 
or amidst the breakers of the North American coast; 
for, throughout the long night of fratricidal enmity and 
ill-will, the star of Scottish nationality had never 
gleamed with a brighter lustre than just before it faded 
fi'om view in that grey and cheerless dawn which has 
long since given place to the warmth and the sunshine 
of the perfect day. 

^ Inquiry into the Causes of the Miscarriage of the Scots Colony, p. 40. '^ A 
Prince who for Courage in War and Conduct in Peace is not to be 
matched in story." — Ibid, The ballad-writers also eulogise the King. 



CHAPTER II 

ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

Whilst Scotland was exerting herself to the utmost to 
obtain a footing in the New World, it seemed not 
improbable that the effect of the union of the Crowns 
in subordinating her Government to that of a hostile 
English nation would produce a revolution at home. 
On August 5, 1698, ten days after the first expedition 
set sail, the Estates addressed the King to remove the 
various obstructions from which the Company had 
suffered, especially at Hamburg;^ on September 1 
Parliament was prorogued; and, the Government having 
procured supplies suflBicient to maintain the troops for 
more than two years, it did not re-assemble till May 
1700, when Scotsmen were still praying and hoping for 
the success of an enterprise, which, six weeks earlier, 
had finally collapsed. Enough, however, had happened 
in the interval to inflame the national spirit. In 
August, 1699, it was known that proclamations for- 
bidding intercourse with the Scottish settlement had 
been issued at Port Royal and New York ; * and, a few 
months later, when scepticism as to the failure of the 
first expedition could no longer be entertained, the 

1 Act, Pari. z. 134. * Caratares State Papers^ p. 488. 



60 ANTBCBDENT8 OP UNION, 1700-1706 

Commission of the General Assembly recommended all 
ministers to remember the colony in their prayers ; ^ 
Lord Basil Hamilton on behalf of the Company was 
sent up with a memorial complaining of the proclama- 
tions and of the detention of Scottish prisoners at 
Seville;* and steps were taken, in support of the 
calling of Parliament, to promote a national address. 
As Lord Basil had been instructed to seek an audience 
of the King, he declined to submit the memorial when 
William, reflecting on his personal loyalty, refused to 
receive it at his hands ; * and the irritation caused by 
this incident had not subsided when the House of 
Commons ordered a pamphlet in defence of the Darien 
scheme to be burned, and the Lords presented an 
address to the Crown, in which, whilst expressing 
sympathy with the Scots in the unhappy issue of their 
expedition to Darien, they recorded their approval of 
the colonial proclamations on the ground that the 
further prosecution of the enterprise could result only 
in injury to the English plantation trade and in still 
greater disappointment to the Scots themselves.* Mean- 
while, contrary to the principle established at the 
Revolution, that subjects have the right to petition the 
King, the Privy Council had attempted to prohibit 
the national address ; * and William, when the address 
was presented to him in March 1700, returned the 

* Darien Pa/pers, p. 264. 

' These belonged to the Dolphin (see p. 44), the captain of which and 
several of the crew had been sent as prisoners to Spain. 

^Darien Papers^ p. 256. Lord Basil, sixth son of the Marquis of 
Douglas and a young man of great promise, was drowned in 1701 in an 
unsuccessful attempt to rescue his servant from a swoUen river. The 
letter referring to this in Carstaret State Papers, p. 494, is misdated.— 
Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 488, note. 

* Lord^ Journals, xvi. 511. * Marchmont Papers, iii. 194. 



NATIONAL INDIGNATION 61 

unsTmpathetic reply that Parliament had been sum- 
moned for May 15, and that, as it could not possibly 
meet sooner, the petitioners had put themselves to 
unnecessary trouble.^ 

Parliament met, not on May 15, but on May 21, and 
the Earl of Marchmont, Lord Chancellor, vainly appealed 
to the Estates to postpone the Darien question to the 
necessity of preparing for a new European war. On 
the 27th petitions in support of the Company's title to 
Caledonia were presented from five shires and three 
burghs, as well as from the Company itself; and a 
resolution was proposed that the colony was a legal and 
rightful settlement, and that Parliament would uphold 
it as such. On the 30th, after having sat for only three 
full days, Parliament was again prorogued.^ 

This unexpected prorogation added fuel to the flame. 
On June 20 the populace resolved that Edinburgh 
should illuminate itself for Campbell's success at Tuba- 
canti ; windows not illuminated were ruthlessly smashed ; 
the Tolbooth was broken open, and the prisoners 
released ; and, lest so vigorous a demonstration should 
have missed its mark, the bells of St. Giles were jingled 
to the tune of "Wilful WUlie, wilt thou be wilful still ?" 
Undeterred by the prorogation, wherever members 
could be found to receive them, petitions continued to 
pour in ; a new national address was started, more 
urgent than the last, the promoters of which bound 
themselves to drink no French wine or brandy and to 
dress only in home-made cloth; and the Opposition, 
glorying in their numbers, threatened to hold a conven- 
tion in defiance of the King. "There is no more 

^ Darien FaperSy p. 2S3. 

*Act, ParL x. 196, appendix, pp. 34-39 ; Hume of Croeerigg's Diwry^ 
pp. 1-6. 



62 ANTECEDENTS OP UNION, 1700-1706 

speaking to people now," wrote Lord Melville to Car- 
stares, '' than to a man in a fever " ; and a month later, 
when to news of the fibaal abandonment of Caledonia 
had been added a letter from the prisoners at Seville 
stating that they had been condemned to death for 
piracy on account of the English proclamations and of 
some words alleged to have been uttered to the Spanish 
ambassador by William himself, and when also a report 
was current that Rycaut, the Company's opponent at 
Hamburg, had been well received at Court, Melville 
expressed his " grief of mind to see this poor nation 
grow still madder and madder." Nevertheless, in the 
opinion of those most competent to judge, the fever had 
begun to abate. In spite of its wounded pride, the 
country was awakening to the fact that an enterprise, 
which in three strenuous eflfbrts it had failed to carry 
through, was beyond its strength ; and the national 
confidence was still further disturbed when Paterson 
frankly acquiesced in the defeat of his project, and 
when Campbell, on coming home, declared that the 
affairs of the Company had been grossly mismanaged. 
The jubilation of the Jacobites on the death of the 
Duke of Gloucester, the Princess Anne's sole surviving 
child, in July of this year alarmed that large section of 
the Opposition which was loyal to Church and State ; 
and on July 26 William addressed a letter to the Privy 
Council, in which, after expressing his regret that it had 
been impossible for him to support the settlement at 
Darien, and his readiness to do what he could to make 
amends, he announced that he had interposed — and he 
hoped, effectually — for the release of the Scottish 
prisoners in Spain. ^ 

^ ChrsUzres State Papers, pp. 631, 539, 544, 546, 554, 562, 577, 578, 583, 
584, 641 ; Act. Pari. z. appendix, p. 43. 



QUEENSBERRY EQUAL TO THE CRISIS 63 

During the autumn vacation, which they spent on their 
several estates, the King's Ministers exerted themselves 
to win over members of the Opposition ; ^ and, though 
disappointed in their hope that William might be induced 
to visit Scotland, they looked forward with some con- 
fidence to the session of Parliament, which, in view of 
the necessity of obtaining supplies, could not be long 
delayed. When the Estates met on October 29, 1700, 
the Grovemment claimed to have secured 18 or 19 more 
nobles than the Country Party ; and they reckoned the 
latter, including a large majority of the barons or 
country gentlemen, as 95, and their own following as 
1 08. In this session, as in the last, William was more 
fortunate in his Commissioner, the Duke of Queensberry , 
than the Country Party in their leader, the Duke of 
Hamilton — two of several statesmen whom at a later 
stage it will be necessary to characterise. Though quite 
aware that the question of Caledonia must eventually 
be faced, Queensberry hoped to stave it off till he had 
conciliated public opinion by passing certain measures 
for the prevention of arbitrary imprisonment, in support 
of the Church, and for the promotion of trade ; and this 
poUcy, indicated in the King's letter to Parliament, he 
successfully carried out. On November 16, indeed, 
three pamphlets against Paterson and the Darien scheme 
— the reply to one of which had been similarly treated 
by the English House of Commons — were ordered to be 
burnt ; but, with this exception, the grievances of the 
Company were left untouched till January 7, 1701, 
when, after a long, vehement, and confused debate, 

^ Od September 9, Queensberry, the King's Commissioner, in a letter to 
Oarstares requested that £1000 should be lodged in the Bank of England, 
and stated that he had already laid out £500. The Earl Marischal received 
a pension of £800.— (7ar«torM State Papert, pp. 638, 704. 



64 A19TECEDENT8 OF UNION, 1700*1706 

described by Lord Marchmont as *'the hottest, most 
contentious and disorderly that ever I saw,"^ the Grovem- 
ment was outvoted on a proposal that the business of 
the army should be referred to a committee before that 
of Darien was discussed. On the 9th the whole sitting 
was occupied with the reading of petitions — one from 
the Company, and others in its support, and also, with 
one exception, against the keeping of a standing army 
in time of peace, from many shires and burghs ; and 
next day resolutions were unanimously passed-the first 
on the motion of Lord Belhaven in " a long discourse, 
pretty enough and pathetic," which his friends persuaded 
him to print — condenming the intervention of the 
English Parliament, the action of Sir Paul Rycaut at 
Hamburg, and the colonial proclamations. On the 
other hand, two resolutions of a more contentious kind 
were allowed to drop ; on the 1 8th, the Country Party 
having re-introduced their resolution of the preceding 
May, that Caledonia was a lawful settlement and that 
Parliament would uphold it as such, the Government, 
whilst accepting the first part of this motion, procured 
the withdrawal of the second; and, "after a warm 
battle which lasted for several hours,"* they won a still 
more decisive victory when it was carried by 108 votes 
to 84 that the four resolutions which had been passed 
should be embodied in an address to the Crown, and 
not in an Act to which William must have refused his 
assent. On February 1, after supplies had been voted 
for the army, Parliament was prorogued.' " It will be 
hard enough," wrote Marchmont, " for any who had not 
been present with us to believe the heat, clamour, and 

^ Marehmont Papers^ iii. 217. 

^ Cantares State Pcapeny p. 684. 

^ Hume's Z)uiry, pp. 6*75 ; Act. PaH. z. 342-245, appendix, pp. 73-8a 



UNION NBGOTIATIONS, 1670 65 

contention which have accompanied this session from 
first to last"^ 

It was inevitable, as the result of so acute a crisis* 
in the commercial relations of England and Scotland, 
of the passions which it had excited, and of the 
hopeless dilemma in which the Crown was involved 
through the conflict of two sovereign legislatures, that 
the idea should suggest itself of a parliamentary union, 
or rather, in view of the issues raised by an earlier 
and less serious development of the same quarrel, that 
the idea should be revived. The treaty undertaken at 
the instigation of James VI, and concluded by the 
Commissioners of the two kingdoms in 1604 had been 
confined to matters of trade ; but a Parliament repre- 
senting the whole island had been called into exist- 
ence by Cromwell ; and the failure of the conference 
for the relief of Scottish commerce from the hardships 
inflicted on it by the English Navigation Act of 
1660* was followed by negotiations for union on the 
same comprehensive scale. Scotland preceded England 
by some six months in taking up a proposal which 
Charles II. had submitted to both Parliaments on the 
same day. At the conference, which was held in the 
autumn of 1670, the Scottish Commissioners proposed 
that the laws and institutions of both realms should 
be preserved for ever intact; and, when this was 
objected to as unreasonable, they offered to reconsider 
the proposal if the Scottish Parliament, as it stood, 
should be conjoined with the English. From a record 
of their proceedings in private, it appears that what 
they meant was that a certain number of Englishmen 
should be admitted to the Scottish Parliament, and 
that on occasions of great national concern the King 

^ Marchmont Papersy iii. 218. 'See p. 22. 



66 ANTBCKDENTS OP UNION, 1700-1706 

might convene both legislatures at Westminster. Had 
the conference survived these demands which brought 
it to a close, it would probably have broken down 
on the question of commerce, since the Commissioners 
were the same who, in the preceding negotiation, 
had failed to come to terms. The representatives of 
the smaller kingdom had thus little motive for curbing 
their national pride ; and Lauderdale, the president 
of the Scottish Commission, besides being a great 
believer in Scotland for the Scots, had probably no 
wish to perpetuate the Episcopal government of the 
Church — a system to which, whilst professedly sup- 
porting it, he retained an incurable dislike.^ 

Nineteen years later, the opportunity for constitu- 
tional reform aflforded by the success of the Revolution 
caused the project to be renewed. It seems that the 
Scottish nobles and gentlemen, who in January, 1689, 
invited the Prince of Orange to assume the provisional 
government, had represented to him the advantages 
of a union ; and in his letter to the Convention of 
Estates, which at the request of the same persons he 
had summoned at Edinburgh, the King of England, 
as he now was, warmly recommended the scheme as 
one which at so critical a juncture would secure the 
two realms against the enemies of both.* The private 
instructions of William to his confidential agent. Lord 
Melville, show that he was conscious of the dangers 
to which this recommendation might give rise. 
Melville was to see that the eagerness of the Estates 

^ See the aocoants of this affair in Defoe's History ^ Bruce's Report^ Sir 
George Mackenzie's Memoirs^ and the appendix to Terry's Crotnioellian 
Union. The third of these works records the proceedings of the Scottish 
Ciommissioners, and the fourth those of the EnglisL 

* Bruce, appendix, xlvL 



UNION PROPOSED IN 1689 67 

for a union, if such should prove to be their dis- 
position, was not used as a pretext to delay the 
settlement of the Crown ; and, if this could not be 
avoided, he was to make it his endeavour that a 
certain basis of accommodation likely to be accepted 
at once without a treaty — ^but this surely was a large 
assumption — should be submitted to the English 
Parliament, such as that Scotland's proportion of 
members in the united legislature should be referred 
to the King, that the judicatures, laws, and customs 
of Scotland, however modified at the union, should 
be preserved without the possibility of review,^ but 
that, in cases of treason, national safety, and abuse 
of public office, there should be an appeal to the 
House of Lords. When the matter began to be 
mooted in private, after most of the late King's 
adherents had ceased to attend the Convention, a 
considerable section of the Revolution party would 
gladly have postponed the question of the succession 
to that of the union, and they even wont so far in 
this direction as to canvass for Jacobite support ; but 
the Duke of Hamilton, leader of the Episcopalian 
Whigs, prompted doubtless by Lord Melville, was 
unfavourable to a union as likely to impair his family 
interest in Scotland ; the Presbyterians rather dreaded 
than wished for it so long as Episcopacy continued 
to be established by law ; and, as the Jacobites held 
aloof, the proposal was easily suppressed.^ Melville s 

^ This seems to be the meaning of a strangely contradictory passage : 
"That the private interest of the Scots nation bj their judicatures, laws, 
and customs, civil and eeclesiastick, as now they may be abolished, be 
preserved without appeal or review." WOliam's proposals were obviously 
inspired by the demands of the Scots in 1670. See the Instructions in 
the Leeefi and MdmUe Correipondenoe^ pp. 2, 3. 

' Balcarres's Memoirs^ pp. 32-33. 



1 



68 ANTBOBDBNTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

success was, therefore, complete; for on April 11, 
1689, WUliam and Mary were proclaimed King and 
Queen ; and on the 24th, in the letter which conveyed 
their tender of the Crown, the Estates intimated that 
they had appointed commissioners '' to treat the terms 
of one entire and perpetual union," with reservation 
to Scotland of its Church government as at the time 
of the union it should be. established. Meanwhile 
William, in somewhat apologetic terms, had suggested 
the opening of a treaty to the House of Lords ; bat 
neither the Lords nor the Commons made any 
response ; and this contemptuous treatment of their 
overture was naturally resented by the Scots, who 
reflected with some reason that, if they had not been 
in such haste to settle the succession to the Crown, 
they might have forced England not only to treat for 
a union, but, especially in matters of trade, to concede 
favourable terms. ^ 

Such feelings had not ceased to find expression when 
the hostility of England to the Darien scheme produced 
a general conviction that, whatever substitute might 
be found, the present system could not be allowed to 
go on. Has Scotland become so mean and contemptible, 
asked the Country Party, that the Acts of her Parlia- 
ment are liable to be declared illegal by anybody who 
happens to be an English Secretary of State or even 
an English colonial governor, and that the dignity 
of the sovereign as King of Scots may thus be trampled 
upon at will by those who serve him as King of Eng- 
land?* And they insisted that the more invincible 

^Letter from a Member of the Parliament of Scotland to hie friend in 
London^ p. 7 ; Defoe, p. 42. 

^ Inquirtf into the Caueee of the Mieoarriage of the Soote Colony at Darien, 
p. 41. 



WILLIAM COMBiENDS UNION 69 

were the reasons, "exotic as to Scotland," which 
induced William to refuse his support to the Com- 
pany, the more they militated against the union of 
the Crowns, since they showed that it was the system 
itself, and not the discretion of the sovereign, that 
was at fault. ^ An argument tending towards com- 
plete separation was naturally met, amongst the more 
moderate members of the Country Party as well as 
amongst officials, by discussions as to the possibility of 
a legislative union. At the end of 1699, after stating 
that he and his colleagues had received letters on the 
subject from various correspondents, Marchmont declared 
that the project "would be very taking here";* and 
in his reply to the address of the Lords, presented to 
him in the following February, William combined an 
expression of deep commiseration for the misfortunes of 
Scotland with a suggestion of the only possible cure : 
" His Majesty does apprehend that difficulties may too 
often arise with respect to the different interests of 
trade between his two kingdoms, unless some way be 
found out to unite them more nearly and completely, 
and therefore His Majesty takes this opportunity of 
putting the House of Peers in mind of what he recom- 
mended to his Parliament soon after his accession to 
the throne, that they would consider of an union 
between the two kingdoms." The Bill for appointing 
commissioners, which the Lords passed on this occasion, 
was thrown out on technical grounds by the Commons ; 
and two years later, when prostrated by the " unhappy 
accident " which was to cut short his career, the dying 
sovereign renewed his appeal in terms which showed 
how eagerly he looked forward to a consummation which 

^ Cantares State Papers^ pp. 516-517. 
^Marchmont Papeny Hi. 199. 



70 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

was to be reserved for hands weaker, but more fortunate 
than his. '^ His Majesty would esteem it a peculiar 
felicity" — so ran his message to the Commons — "if 
during his reign some happy expedient for making 
both kingdoms one might take place, and is therefore 
extremely desirous that a treaty for that purpose might 
be set on foot, and does in the most earnest manner 
recommend this affair to the consideration of the House. " ^ 
Eight days after the reading of this message, on 
•^ March 8, 1702, William died. Whether it is to be 
ascribed mainly to a detachment of mind resulting 
from his foreign birth, to his own natural disposition, 
or to the sagacious guidance of Carstares, William was 
the only Scottish sovereign since the Reformation who 
had governed the country in an entirely reasonable 
spirit; and, however little appreciated by his English 
subjects, as the champion of Protestantism who had 
overthrown the wretched government of the Stewarts, 
he enjoyed a popularity in Scotland which was little 
obscured by the shadow of Glencoe, and which even 
his enforced attitude on the Darien question did not 
seriously impair. In the irritation caused by the news 
of the first abandonment of Caledonia, it is said, indeed, 
to have ^' almost become a common talk that the King 
has no kindness for Scotland " ; but Lord Marchmont, 
who had at first been alarmed by this "chagrin humour," 
found that it subsided in a few days ; * and it is remark- 
able how unanimous Scotsmen were — Jacobites of course 
excepted' — ^in their disposition to regard William as 

^LordU JowmaJU^ xvi. 514; Commowf JatumaU, xiii. 760; Bruce, 
appendix, xlyiL 

^Marcknumt Papers, iii. 184, 186. 

' Fletcher, who was no Jacobite, and who suspected William of a design 
to make himself absolute with the aid of France, may be regarded as 
another exception ; but Fletcher was almost an avowed republican. 



HIS DEATH AND POPULARIXy 71 

actiDg under an unavoidable restraint. In 1700 it 
was estimated by a contemporary that those "honest 
countrymen in the A£dcan interest " whose devotion to 
the sovereign entitled them to be called " Williamites" 
were more numerous than obstructionists and Jacobites 
combined.^ Lord Belhaven in his fiery speech of 
January, 1701, was careful to distinguish between the 
English enemies of the Company and "our most 
excellent and gracious King, our Deliverer and Bene- 
factor " ; the Estates in their address of the same month 
" acknowledge that God raised up your Majesty in our 
low and afflicted state to be our great and seasonable 
deliverer *' ; patriotic versifiers laboriously celebrated 
the royal virtues ; and the accredited apologist of the 
Company, after exhausting himself in eulogy of the 
sovereign, "who for courage in war and conduct in 
peace is not to be matched in story," concludes that 
" to be so treated by such a Prince hath some thing 
cutting beyond expression, and proves that our disasters 
are no way to be remedied, but either by a total separa- 
tion or a closer union of the two kingdoms."* 

In order to make intelligible the prospects of union 
at this period, it will be necessary to review the course 
of international relations in Europe during the previous 
fourteen years. When William invaded England in the 
autumn of 1688, Louis XIV. had already taken the 
field against a coalition of Catholic and Protestant 
Powers which he had provoked by extending his 
frontier at the expense of Germany and Spain, by 
challenging the authority of the Pope, and by revok- 
ing the Edict of Nantes; and the revolution which 

^ Cantaru State Papers, p. 627. 

^Inquiry into Causei of Mitcarriagey etc., p. 40. See also The Cfomieal 
History of tke Marriage betwixt Fergusia and Heptarehus, p. 14. 



72 ANTBCBDBNTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

transferred the Crown of England from his ally, James 
11. , to the Prince of Orange was the chief element in 
the chain of causes which forced him, after nine years 
of warfare, to accept the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. 
Louis, indeed, retained Strasbourg which he had sur- 
prised in time of peace; but he surrendered all the 
various districts which he had annexed, or, as the 
phrase was, reunited to France ; he allowed the Dutch 
as a security against French invasion to garrison the 
frontier fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands ; he 
recognised William as sovereign of England; and he 
agreed, whilst refusing to expel him from France, not 
to assist the deposed King. Reluctant as he must have 
been to make these concessions, Louis had reasons of 
his own for wishing to be at peace ; for Charles IL , the 
childless King of Spain, was dying, and it was not 
his interest at such a juncture to be excluded from the 
deliberations of Europe. In October, 1698, when the 
Scots, regardless of such delicate negotiations, were on 
their way to found a colony in Darien, a treaty was 
concluded between France, England and Holland, 
which divided the Spanish empire between three 
claimants to the Crown, giving the Milanese to the 
Archduke Charles, the Emperor's younger son, Naples, 
Sicily, the Tuscan ports, and Guipuscoa, a valuable 
possession which would have extended the French 
seaboard along the Bay of Biscay, to the Dauphin, 
and the rest to the Electoral Prince of Bavaria ; and 
in May, 1700, after the Scots had finally abandoned 
Darien, the Electoral Prince having died, a new treaty 
was made, which to the Dauphin s share added Lorraine, 
the Duke of which was to have the Milanese, and, sub- 
ject to such large reservations, assigned the empire to 
the Archduke Charles. 



WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION 73 

These treaties for the dismemberment of the mon- 
archy were naturally resented in Spain, and they were 
little less unpopular in England, where the Tories, 
then a majority of the Commons, denounced them as 
certain to entangle the country in continental wars, 
and as unduly fevourable to France ; and Louis XIV. , 
knowing that Austria as well as Spain was opposed 
to partition, and justly doubting whether either 
England or Holland would assist him to enforce the 
treaty, was induced to accept a will by which Charles 
11. on his deathbed bequeathed the whole of his 
dominions to Philip of Anjou, the Dauphin's second 
son, on condition that he renounced his right of 
succession to the French Crown. By capturing their 
garrisons in the Low Countries and holding them in 
pledge, Louis forced the Dutch to recognise Philip as 
King of Spain, and the pressure of public opinion in 
England compelled William to do the same ; but 
English opinion became less pacific when Louis refused 
to give back the Flemish fortresses to Holland; an 
alliance to enforce this concession and to procure the 
Milanese for Austria, but providing that no hostile 
step should be taken for two months, was concluded 
in September, 1701, between England, the Emperor > 
and Holland ; and, a few days later, Louis roused a 
storm of indignation in England by recognising the 
Pretender on the death of his father, James IL, thus 
violating his engagements at Ryswick, as by recognising 
Philip's right of succession in France he had already 
violated Charles IL's will. William at once dissolved 
Parliament, and the new House of Commons which met 
in December, 1701, contained a large majority of Whigs. 
Thus at William's death in March, 1702, England was 

committed to a great war, and at such a crisis the 



74 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

policy of conciliating the Scots could not reasonably 
be denied. In addressing his last recommendation of 
union to the Commons, William had probably intended 
to disarm their jealousy of the Lords, with whose 
proceedings on the subject in 1700 they had refused 
^ to concur ; and,/ Queen Anne having reiterated the 
late King s appeal in her first speech to Parliament, 
the Commons passed a Bill for the appointment of 
Commissioners, which was accepted by the Lords 
and was acted upon by the Crown on August 25, 1702. 
Meanwhile in Scotland the Jacobites were consider- 
ably elated by the accession of Anne, a daughter of 
James VIL, and a princess whose Anglican and Tory 
sympathies were well known; and the Government, 
even at the expense of constitutional forms, were 
determined to repress what they believed to be the 
anti-Revolution tendencies of the new reign. The 
legislature then existing had been summoned by 
William as a Convention, before his accession to the 
throne, in 1689, had been recognised by him as a 
Parliament in 1690, and in the ordinary course of 
law, whatever moral right it may have had to exist so 
long, should have terminated at his death in 1702. 
A statute of 1696, when a plot had been detected in 
England to assassinate the King, had indeed enacted 
that Parliament, if in session at the demise of the 
sovereign, might continue for six months, that, if not 
in session, it should meet, or, if no Parliament then 
existed, that the last Parliament should meet, within 
twenty days, provided that it confined itself to the 
maintenance of Protestantism, the succession, and the 
public peace, and did not attempt to alter the con- 
stitution or standing laws;^ but Queensberry and his 

^Act. Pari z. 59-ea 






THE RUMP PARLIAMENT 75 

colleagues did not choose either to dissolve Parliament 
or to convene it in terms of this Act ; and, with their 
advice, to oppose which Hamilton and several other 
nobles made a fruitless journey to Court, Anne decided 
not to summon a new Parliament, but to re-assemble 
the old.^' This was probably unwise. At all events, 
however reluctant the Government may have been to 
part with a Parliament which had shown itself favour- 
able to union and was likely to grant supplies, they 
ought surely to have summoned it, if only for form's 
sake, within the prescribed time ; for in the House of 
Lords, before the death of William, the Earl of 
Nottingham had urged that England could not safely 
negotiate with a Parliament which had originated as 
a revolutionary convention^; and to the illegality of 
its origin the Parliament had now added that of 
violating the statute of 1696, and, as soon as it 
authorised a treaty of union, would violate it still more. 
When the new session opened on June 9, 1702, the 
Duke of Hamilton read a protest against it as illegal, 
and withdrew from the House, supported by more than 
eighty members who either went out with him or had 
refused to attend.^ The remaining 120 members, whom 
the seceders called the Rump, passed several measures, 
one of which empowered the Queen to name com- 
missioners for a treaty of union ; but great dissension 
arose when Queensberry let it become known that he 
proposed to introduce an Act, similar to one which 

^Lockhart Paperty i. 43. ^Burnet, iv. 558. 

*Loekhart Fapen^ i. 276; Hume's Diary, p. 76. Marchmont (iii. 
240) reckons the seceders as 57, comprising 18 nobles, 24 shire members, 
and 15 burgh members; but, as he admits that only 120 members 
remained, either he must have under-estimated the seoenion or more 
members than the nine mentioned hy Lockhart must have absented 
themselves from the House ; for the usual attendance at the Convention 
EEtrliament was over 200. 



76 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

had just passed in England, requiring office-holders to 
abjure the Pretender. The ultra- Whigs who had 
advocated the retention of the present Parliament 
declared that such a measure was necessary to secure 
the loyalty of the next, especially as the declaration 
imposed in 1693 and known as the Assurance was 
directed against a "pretended Prince of Wales" who 
now called himself James VIIL On the other hand, 
it was insisted that a Parliament of somewhat doubt- 
ful legality should not attempt to limit its successor, 
and, more strongly, that Scotland would throw away 
the best means available for coercing England into a 
union if at the outset of a great war she emphasised 
her determination not to recall the Stewarts. Queens- 
berry, having referred the matter to the Queen, was 
instructed not to introduce the Act if he thought it 
likely to divide the House ; and, after an unsuccessful 
attempt to reconcile the two parties, he was preparing 
to terminate the session when Marchmont, to his 
surprise and annoyance, persisted in bringing in the 
Act. The first reading was carried by only four votes ; 
and at the next sitting on June 30, in order to save 
the situation. Parliament was prorogued.^ 

The conference for union opened at Westminster on 
November 10. We have seen that when the Con- 
vention appointed commissioners for a similar purpose 
in 1689, it had reserved the ecclesiastical system 
which should be established in Scotland at the time 
of the union ; but on the present occasion, when the 
nomination was left to the Crown,* the Estates 

^Cantares State Papers, pp. 714-716; MarchmofU Papen^ iiL 240-251. 

'"The Country Party was much diasatisfied that the naming of the 
Comroissionera should hare been left to the Court, and thought it 
was the same as if it had been left to England." — Ridpath's P<tdiament 
of 1703, p. 332. 



UNION NB00TIATI0N8, 1702 77 

contented themselves with declaring in a letter to the 
Queen that Scottish Presbytery was founded in the 
Claim of Right, that they had fiill confidence in her 
promise to maintain it, and that they hoped she would 
choose commissioners who should have this interest at 
heart. In the negotiations that followed, however, 
religion was not touched upon at all ; and, mindful of 
the indiscretion committed by their statesmen at the 
Revolution, which, it seems, was still a matter of 
reproach,* the Scots endeavoured to make the whole 
proceedings turn on the question of trade. They^ 
consented, indeed, to accept the Act of Settlement 
recently passed in favour of the Electress Sophia, but 
not till the English Commissioners had reluctantly 
acknowledged ''the communication of trade and other 
privileges to be the necessary result of a complete 
union " ; and henceforward the conference was directed 
towards an understanding in deteU of this general 
admission. On December 16 the English Com- 
missioners consented that, except in the case of wool, 
sheep and sheepskins, there should be freedom of 
trade between the two kingdoms; a free trade to the 
plantations, reserved on this occasion, was conceded on 
January 2, 1703 ; and on January 30 it was agreed 
that neither realm should be burdened with the debts 
of the other, and that, for a certain period, to be 
determined in the English and Scottish Parliaments, 
Scotland should be allowed to enjoy the benefits of 
reciprocity of trade without being required to pay 
Excise duties on the English scale. Meanwhile, the 
Scots had proposed that the privileges of the African 
and Indian Company should be preserved intact ; and 
though, when this was objected to, they insisted 

"^ Marchmont Paj>er$, iii. 275. 



\ 

w 



78 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

merely that the Company should not be dissolved 
without compensation, the English Commissioners 
tacitly rejected the demand by proposing to consider 
at the next meeting, which was never to take place, 
the constitution of Parliament, Church affairs, and the 
laws and judicatures of Scotland. The conference 
thus terminated on February 3.^ 

Though this was the first negotiation for union 
which had originated in England, and though, as Anne 
remarked in her valedictory letter, it had been carried 
further than any previous treaty, the Scots were by 
no means satisfied with the manner in which their 
proposals had been met. The English Commissioners 
had been slow to make concessions ; and they had 
taken so little interest in the proceedings that, after 
the conference had been adjourned no fewer than eight 
times for want of an English quorum — a fact of which 
they had the grace to be "very much ashamed" — 
they had been compelled to apply for a new com- 
mission, in which the quorum was reduced from 

"^ thirteen to seven.' The apathy of England as repre- 
sented by her Commissioners must no doubt be ascribed 

' to a change in political conditions. The negotiation 
for union had originated with the large Whig majority 
returned by the constituencies, after Louis XIV. had 
recognised the Pretender, at the close of 1701 ; but 
Anne, with few exceptions, chose her Ministers, from 
the party which had successfully opposed such a step 
in 1700, and had now, without success, opposed it 

^ again ; andy before the conference opened in November, 
1702, another general election had secured to the new 
Tory Ministry a decided predominance in the Commons. 

^ Act Pari, zi., appendix, pp. 145-161 ; Defoe, appendix, pp. 112-131. 
*Act. Pari, xi., appendix, p. 156. 



A NEW MINISTRY 79 

Commissioners representing a Tory reaction in England 
were thus called upon to negotiate with the represen- 
tatives of a Scottish Parliament which they probably 
agreed with Nottingham, one of their number and 
now Secretary of State, in regarding as an illegal 
convention ; and, had the Church question been reached, 
they might have been tempted to make unreasonable 
demands. It was, indeed, reported that at a private 
meeting, just before the final adjournment, the Arch- 
bishop of York had said "that now the time was for 
restoring Episcopacy in Scotland," and the Marquis of 
Normanby, that for his part he had taken part in the 
proceedings with no other design.^ 

In Scotland as in England the political conditions 
which had given rise to the conference had been 
greatly modified before its close. The splitting up of 
the la,st session had occasioned both surprise and 
annoyance at Court, especially when the seceders and 
their friends refused to pay the taxes which the 
" Rump " had imposed ; and Anne, displeased with 
the Ministers whose infringement of the constitution 
had produced such unpleasant results, was reported in 
August, 1702, to be contemplating " changes both of 
measures and men."* In this autumn, after having 
existed for fourteen years, the Convention Parliament 
was dissolved ; at the ensuing elections great efforts 
were made to secure the Jacobite vote; and soon 
afterwards the Government was almost completely 
recast. Queensberry and Seafield, indeed, remained in 
office, the former becoming Secretary of State and 
the latter Chancellor ; but nearly all the Ministers 

^JervtavHXxi Correspondence, p. 11. 

^Jermrwood Corretpondence, pp. 4, 6 ; LuttreU's Brief Rdation of State 
AgoxTt, T. 267, 26a 



so ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

known to be inflexible Whigs — Lords Marchmont, 
Melville, Hyndford,^ and Selkirk, Cockbum of Or- 
miston, and Sir John Maxwell of Pollock — were 
dismissed; Lord Tarbat, the sole surviving statesman 
of the Restoration, was associated with Queensberry 
in the Secretaryship, and his brother, Mackenzie of 
Preston-Hall, was niade Justice-Clerk ; the Earl of 
Tullibardine, a zealous Countryman, became Privy 
Seal ; and the Earl of Leven, Melville's third son and 
a veteran soldier of the Revolution, was superseded in 
command of Edinburgh Castle by Queensberry *8 
brother, the Earl of March, who had been a colonel 
of horse under James VIL, and had not acknowledged 
King WUliam tUl 1697. 

The Jacobites had been assured by Seafield during 
the elections that, if they recognised Queen Anne and 
sided with the Government against the Country 
Party, they should be tolerated as Episcopalians . and 
be admitted to a share in the conduct of affairs ; the 
transformation of the Ministry must have strengthened 
their hopes ; and in the spring of 1703 an indemnity 
was issued for all acts of treason since the Revolution, 
and the Queen in a letter to the Privy Council, the 
political complexion of which bad also been changed, 
directed that the Episcopal clergy should " be pro- 
tected in the peaceable possession of their religion."* 

^Douglas in his Scottish Peerage has omitted to mention that Lord 
Hyndford waa daperseded as Secretary of State, and in the Dictionary of 
National Biography Mr. Henderson has thus been misled into saying that 
he retained his place. It was Lord Boyle, afterwards Earl of Glasgow, 
and not, as Lockhart says, Lord Blantyre, who was appointed Treasurer- 
Depute. A Jacobite pamphleteer describes the late Ministry as com- 
posed of bigoted Presbyterians and " Occasional Compliers," and laments 
that both sections had not been replaced by Cavaliers. StcUe of Scotland 
ii/nder the Past and Present Administrations^ pp. 8, 14. 

* Lockhart, i 53, 57, 58; TindaPs CotUinuation of Bapin, xx. 243; 
Bidpath's Parliament ofl70S, p. 13. 



PARLIAMENT OF 1703 81 

These solicitations had the desired eflFect ; and on May 
6, 1703, when the Estates rode in procession to the 
Parliament House — a procession which had not been 
seen in the streets of Edinburgh for eighteen years,^ 
and was never to be seen again — in addition to the 
few Jacobites who had always belonged to the 
Country Party, there was a large body of such 
persons, nearly all of whom, whether at home or in 
exile, had hitherto held aloof, and now for the first 
time took the oath and their seats. 

Whatever reasons he may have had for adopting 

this policy, Queensberry as the royal Commissioner 

must have been aware how dangerous it was to bring 

a third party into the field, which, should it go over 

to his opponents, would more than efface the small 

majority which had hitherto secured the predominance 

of his own. After the Queen's letter had been read 

and the usual speeches delivered, Hamilton introduced 

an Act recognising Anne's right of succession as 

declared at the Revolution, intending doubtless in 

this complimentary way to preface an attack on the 

Eump ; * but at the second reading on May 1 5 the 

Lord Advocate, Sir James Stewart, proposed the 

addition of a clause declaring it treason to dispute 

the Queen's title " or her exercise of the government 

from her actual entry to the same." With the aid 

of the Jacobites, or, as they now called themselves in 

token of their recovered loyalty, the Cavaliers, this 

was easily carried ; and at a meeting of the same 

party it was agreed that the Earl of Home, one of 

the peers who had just taken their seats, should still 

^ The Convention Parliament did not ride, and 1686, the year mentioned 
bj Clerk, is a mistake for 1686. 

> Malcolm Laing's History of Scotland (edition 1800), ii. 264. 

F 



82 ANTECEDENTS OP UNIO^, 1700-1706 

further gratify the Court by introducing an Act of 
Supply. On the 19th this Act was given in, but so 
also was an overture, presented by the Marquis of 
Tweeddale on behalf of the Country Party, that 
Parliament, before all other business, should provide 
securities for the religion and liberty of the realm at 
the Queen s death ; on the 26th the rival claims of 
Act and overture were long and vehemently discussed ; 
and on the 28th, the Cavaliers having informed him 
that they meant to vote with the Country Party for 
the postponement of their own Act,^ Queensberry gave 
way, and Tweeddale s overture was adopted without a 
division. The Ministry, disunited in itself and de- 
pendent on doubtful allies, had never been strong, 
and this confession of weakness caused a general 
revolt. In order to terminate the Jacobite alliance, 
or rather to prevent its renewal, Marchmont introduced 
and carried a confirmation of Presbyterian govern- 
ment, and Argyll an Act ratifying the Revolution and 
branding as high treason any attempt to alter the 
claim of Right ; Queensberry s friends, by concurring 
in these measures, estranged the Chancellor Seafield, 
and their Tory colleagues, Athol,^ Tarbat, and his 
brother, the Justice-Clerk; and the Cavaliers, after 
having introduced an Act allowing freedom of worship 
to all the Queen's Protestant subjects, showed their 
sympathy with the Country Party, which they had 
been brought in to oppose, by forbearing to press it, 
lest they should offend their Presbyterian allies. 

^ Letter of Stair to Godolphin in Graham's Stair AnncUs, i. 205. Lock- 
hart 8a}'s that the Cavaliers did not desert Queensberry till they found 
his friends of the Episcopal persuasion appearing against toleration 
and in favour of the ratification of Presbytery ; but neither of these 
measures was proposed till Tweeddale's overture had been adopted. 

' TuUibardine had succeeded his father as Marquis of Athol. 



THE ACT OF SECURITY 83 

The co-operation of Countrymen and Cavaliers was 
facilitated by the popularity with both parties of the 
Duke of Hamilton,^ who had organised and directed 
the Darien agitation, and who till 1698 had been an 
avowed adherent of King James. Hamilton was now 
accepted by the Opposition as their common head, 
whilst the Cavaliers in their separate capacity followed 
the Earl of Home, and the Country Party, reduced to 
a fraction of its former strength,* was led by the 
Marquis of Tweeddale, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, 
and four young noblemen of great energy and spirit, 
the Marquis of Montrose, and the Earls of Roxburgh, 
Haddington and Rothes. 

The victory won by the Opposition on May 28 was 
speedily followed up. Indeed, before Tweeddale's over- 
ture was adopted, professedly in order to give definite- 
ness to so vague a resolution, but really perhaps to 
embarrass his colleagues, the Lord Privy Seal had given 
in the nucleus of the statute which was soon to be 
familiar to both Scottish and English ears as the 
Act of Security. This Act, probably the most im- 
portant that a Scottish Parliament ever passed, was 
built up, clause by clause, in the course of debates 
which extended from June 9 to August 13. As finally 
passed by 59 votes, it provided that upon the death of 

^ Hooke Correspondence, i. 24. 

' It appears from Clerk's Memoirs, p. 47, and from a letter of Leven to 
Harley in the EcUtibiurgh Review for October 1892 that the Country Party, 
which had once numbered 95 members, now numbered only about 16. 
The number of shire and burgh members was of course fixed, so that, 
exclusive of the Jacobite peers who had hitherto absented themselves, a 
Cavalier party in Parliament could be formed only by a transfer of seats, 
which, as the Grovernroent and the Cavaliers were in alliance, had been 
effected chiefly at the expense of the Countrymen. The membership of 
this Parliament was nominally 305 ; but, if we deduct 70 peers marked 
as absent, minors, extinct, Papists or English, it was 235. 



84 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

the Queen without issue, or without a successor 
appointed by herself and the Estates, Parliament 
should after twenty days nominate a successor of the 
royal line of Scotland and of the Protestant religion, 
who should not be the successor to the Crown of 
England, unless in this or in some subsequent Parlia- 
ment of the reign such conditions of government had 
been enacted as should secure from English or from 
any foreign interference the honour and sovereignty 
of Scotland, its legislative power, its religion, liberty 
and trade; and, in particular, the same person was 
declared incapable of being King or Queen of both 
realms, unless the Parliament of England, to the 
satisfaction of this or some subsequent Scottish Parlia- 
ment, should have conceded to Scotsmen, "a free 
communication of trade, the freedom of navigation, 
and the liberty of the plantations." It was also 
enacted " for a further security " that the burghs and 
the Protestant heritors should provide fire-arms for 
the fencible Protestants within their respective bounds, 
and should drill such persons at least once in the 
month. 

The first of the two stipulations contained in this 
Act had been moved by Lord Roxburgh in a much 
more rigorous form, for the " conditions of government " 
were to be enticted in this current session of Parliament, 
and the original word used was "independency," not 
"sovereignty," of Scotland. As the clause in this 
shape might have resulted in complete separation, the 
Government, in order to postpone, and, if possible, 
prevent, its adoption, took the unusual course of 
adjourning the House for four days in the midst of the 
debate — a proceeding which occasioned " great cry and 
hubbub," and against which the Ciountry Party was 



THE ACT PASSED 85 

with difficulty dissuaded from appealing to the Crown. 
When the debate was resumed, the Government pro- 
posed to substitute what was to become the second 
stipulation for the first ; but neither the Country 
Party nor the Cavaliers would agree to this ; and at 
last by seventy votes a form of words was carried in 
which, as we have seen, the two clauses were conjoined 
in such a way that the "conditions of government," 
which had been censured as too vague, seemed to 
find practical expression in the communication of trade. 
The majority, though it contained many enlightened 
unionists, was composed largely of Cavaliers ; for some 
of the Ministerialists repented of their proposal as 
likely to offend the English Government, when they 
found that it had not supplanted the Roxburgh clause ; 
several of the Country Party feared with good reason 
that it would cause the Queen to refuse her assent to 
the Act; and many of the Whigs, such as Argyll, 
Annandale, Marchmont, and Melville, opposed it so 
strongly in the interest of the Hanoverian succession, 
that they insisted on recording their dissent. 

Fletcher of Saltoun, whose earnestness and eloquence 
imparted some dignity to these disorderly debates, had 
presented the draught of an Act providing that Scotland 
should accept as its sovereign the successor to the 
Crown of England on certain "conditions of government," 
or, as he called them in his speech, "limitations," the 
chief of which were that a new Parliament, voting by 
ballot and capable of adjourning at pleasure, should be 
elected every year ; that the King should assent to all 
laws passed by the Estates, and without their advice 
should not make war or peace, conclude treaties, or 
confer any office or pension ; that in the intervals of 
Parliament a committee of its members should exercise 






86 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

the executive power ; and that the King, if he violated 
any of these conditions, should forfeit the crown. 
Such a scheme as this, which practically annihilated 
the prerogative in order to emancipate it from English 
control, did not commend itself either to Courtiers or 
to Cavaliers; and, Fletcher^s proposals having failed 
to arrest the progress of the Act of Security, it was 
resolved, a week later, that no restrictions of this 
nature should be embodied in the Act. The Roxburgh 
clause was declared by its opponents to be an infringe- 
ment of this rule, whilst its supporters pointed out 
that it limited the choice of Parliament, not the 
authority of the King ; but, as Fletcher truly said, the 
clause was so '* general and indefinite" that it could 
be fulfilled by the passing of " two or three inconsider- 
able laws " ; and moreover, if Queen and Parliament 
should concur in appointing a successor, its provisions 
would be of no efiect. 

Soon after the Act of Security had been passed, 
one of Fletcher's limitations was adopted in the shape 
of an Act proposed by the Earl of Rothes, which 
provided that on the death of the Queen without heirs 
the sovereign of both realms should not have the power 
of making war on behalf of Scotland without consent 
of the Estates; but Marchmont raised a storm of 
indignation by proposing on the strength of certain 
constitutional restrictions to recognise the Electress 
Sophia ; and, when Fletcher again brought forward 
his limitations, now reduced from twelve to three, and 
ofiered on this basis to leave the succession to be 
determined by the House, it was resolved by a small 
majority to proceed to the regulation of trade. An 
Act was then considered, which had been brought in 
as early as May 28, to allow the importation of foreign 



ROYAL ASSENT REFUSED 87 

wines, including, of course, the wines of France. The 
Government supported this on the ground that the 
Customs duties were necessary to maintain the Civil 
List, and, being a popular measure and acceptable to 
the burghs, it was carried by 25 votes, in spite of 
strenuous opposition from the Country Party and 
many of the Cavaliers, who denounced it as dishonour- 
able to the Queen, inconsistent with the Grand Alliance, 
and prejudicial to the honour, safety, and trade of the 
realm. The Cavaliers can hardly have disapproved of 
a measure which promised to promote intercourse with 
France, but for most of them the temptation to pose 
as wounded patriots proved too strong. 

The Government had at first been confident that a 
coalition of Countrymen and Cavaliers, Presbyterians 
and Episcopalians, must eventually break up ; and, in 
order to protract the session, the House was continually 
adjourned for one, two, or three days, and was seldom 
allowed to meet till late in the afternoon. But summer 
had now given place to autumn, and, as the Opposition, 
despite the claims of harvest, was still as determined 
and as numerous as ever, Queensberry convinced him- 
self that nothing was to be gained by further delay. 
On September 10 he announced that all the Acts but 
the Act of Security would receive the royal assent, and 
appealed to the House to vote supplies for the army 
and a provision out of the Customs for the Civil List. 
He succeeded, as we have seen, in carrying the Wine 
Act ; but, wh.en the Lord Treasurer on September 1 5 
seemed likely to procure a first reading for Lord 
Home's Act of Supply by moving it as an alternative 
to the unpopular limitations, Fletcher prevented this 
by withdrawing his scheme ; and a vote was then 
demanded on the question whether subsidies should 



88 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

be coDsidered or the liberties of the nation. The session 
had been stonny enough throughout — so much so, that, 
in the words of one of Queensberry s supporters, '' we 
were often in the form of a Polish diet, with our swords 
in our hands, or at least our hands at our swords " ; ^ 
but this closing scene was the most uproarious of all. 
Montrose, Roxburgh, and Rothes made violent speeches ; 
the Commissioner was taunted with his subservience 
to the English Court; and, "a mighty ferment" having 
arisen, the House resounded with cries of ** liberty and 
no subsidy," which were raised not only by members, 
but by the crowd of onlookers which in the flickering 
candle-light had gathered at the bar. Next day 
Parliament was prorogued.* 

A year and a half had now elapsed since King 
William had passed away, and it is difficult to see 
how any course of policy could have stultified itself 
more completely than that which had been pursued in 
Scotland since his death. In order to repress what 
they believed to be a Jacobite reaction, the Scottish 
advisers of Queen Anne had prevailed upon her to 
prolong illegally the Convention Parliament ; and, 
having thus provoked the Country Party to secede 
from the House and to refuse payment of taxes, they 
had yielded to the demand for a new Parliament, and 
had thrown themselves on Jacobite support. The 
Jacobites had not been slow to respond; but the 
Government majority, nominally overwhelming, con- 

^ Clerk's Memoirs^ p. 49. 

' In prepariug the narrative of this session, the following works have 
been used : Act, Pari, xi. appendix ; Hume's Diary ; Bidpath's Proceed- 
ings of the Parliament of 170S ; Tindal's CoriJdnvjation of Rapin^ xx. 246- 
293; Graham's Stair Annals, i. 203-208; Fletcher's Political Works; 
Lockhart PaperSy i. 58-70 ; Portland Manuscripts, Hist. MSS. Commission, 
iv. 66-67. 



MISTAKEN TACTICS 89 

sisted in almost equal proportions of Whigs and 
Cavaliers ; and the remnant of the Country Party, 
courted by the former as Presbyterians and by the 
latter as nationalists, had succeeded throughout the 
session in absolutely dominating the House. Hence 
the strange phenomenon, noticed by Burnet,^ that a 
Ministry devoted to the Episcopal interest had done 
more for Presbytery and the Claim of Right than any 
Government since the Revolution, and the other pheno- 
menon, equally strange, that a Parliament, elected in 
great measure at the expense of the Country Party, 
had attempted to engrave the policy of the latter on 
the statute law. It must, however, be conceded that 
in the character of the sovereign Anne s Ministers had 
a difficulty to contend with from which those of William 
had been free. In Scotland as in England William had 
governed as well as reigned ; and it was asserted by a 
member during this session that he would have done 
justice to the- nation in the affair of Darien if the 
English Ministry, finding their own efforts ineffectual, 
had not " turned loose upon him the irresistible orders 
of his English Pariiament." « Anne, on the other hand, 
was known to be completely under the influence of 
Marlborough and Godolphin ; and the Government at 
Edinburgh was constantly compelled to justify the 
taunts of the Opposition by applying for guidance to 
the Lord Treasurer of England on purely Scottish 
affairs. English influence, in fact, now inspired and 
directed, as formerly it had circumscribed, the prero- 
gative of the Scottish Crown. 

Queensberry, in order to detach the Jacobites from 
his rival, the Duke of Hamilton, had no doubt 
suggested the policy which has just been summarised; 

^ History, v. 95. » Ridpath, p. 319. 



w 

I 

I 
I 



90 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

and the responsibility for its success or failure must 
in any case have devolved upon him. Grodolphin, 
with very great reluctance, had granted him in the 
Queen's name a discretionary power to give the royal 
assent to the Act as to peace and war, expressing his 
apprehension that hostilities between England and 
Scotland could not be averted if the Scots during such 
a war as the present should insist on trading with 
France;^ and the Wine Act, in regard to which the 
Government deliberately incurred this danger for the 
sake of bringing a few thousand pounds into the 
Exchequer, was regarded in London with the greatest 
alarm.^ In both of these measures Queensberry had 
the support of all his colleagues; but the riffc in the 
ministry occasioned by the Jacobite proclivities of 
Seafield, Athol and Tarbat, now Earl of Cromarty, the 
second of whom, as we have seen, had introduced the 
Act of Security, soon developed into an open breach; 
and, in order to discredit the mutineers, the Com- 
missioner was betrayed into an intrigue which resulted 
in his removal from power. 

A certain Simon Eraser of Beaufort, who, more than 
forty years later, was to perish on the scaffold as Lord 
Lovat, had fled to France in order to escape the con- 
sequences of a criminal assault on a la/iy who was 
Athol's sister. At the Court of St. Germains he 
represented himself as an emissary of the Highland 
chiefs, and, having propitiated the exiled Queen by 

^ Graham's Stair Annals^ i. 381. 

^ *^ The Scots Wine Act makes a great noise in this place. I have heard 
some members of Parliament declare that they look upon it as the open- 
ing a back door to the enemies of England, and as the putting in practice 
already their other Act whereby they are empowered to observe a 
neutrality in the wars of England when they please." — Portland Manu- 
scriptt^ iv. 70. See also Burnet, v. 100. 



THE 'SCOTS PLOT* 91 

becoming a Catholic, he was sent home to promote a 
rising of the clans. At Edinburgh he procured an 
interview with the Duke of Queensberry ; and, having 
informed him that HamiltOD, Cromarty and Athol were 
corresponding, as was not at all improbable, with the 
Pretender, he produced a letter from the ex-Queen, 
intended for the Duke of Gordon,* but which he himself, 
though his personal enemy and therefore most unlikely 
to be entrusted w^ith such a missive, had directed to 
Athol. Queensberry was so far influenced by these 
disclosures that, in order to obtain further information, 
he assisted Fraser with a pass and some 200 guineas to 
prosecute his intrigues in the Highlands, and after- 
wards, on the same mission, sent him over to Holland 
and France. At this stage, however, or a little later, 
Robert Ferguson, known to history as " the plotter," 
put Athol on his guard ; and Queensberry's declining 
reputation was much impaired, in so far as the plot 
was fictitious, by what the Opposition denounced as a 
"hellish contrivance" to effect their ruin, and, so 
far as it was genuine, by the simplicity with which he 
had allowed himself to further its designs.^ 

The mutinous triumvirate had followed Queensberry 
and his friends to London at the close of the parlia- 
mentary session ; and the two factions had just begun 
to intrigue against each other at Court when the 
Commissioner s dealings with Fraser were brought to 
light. The Lords appointed a committee to enquire 
into the plot; and, having resolved that a dangerous 

* Collection of Original Papers relating to the Scots Plot, p. 7. 

* Somers Tracts^ xii. 433-448 ; Macpherson's Original Papers, i. 639-665. 
A very full and lively account of the " Scots Plot " is given in Mackiunou's 
History of the Union, pp. 138-148. Colonel Hooke, it may be noted, calls 
Athol " tm des plus grands seigneurs d^Ecosse et Jacobite dedar^.^^ — Corre- 
ipondence, i. 24. 



92 ANTECEDENTS OP UNION, 1700-1706 

conspiracy existed in favour of the Pretender, and that 
this conspiracy had originated in the fact that the 
Hanoverian succession had not been recognised in Scot- 
land, they presented an address to the Queen in which 
they advocated such a settlement and promised on this 
basis to do their utmost to promote a union.^ The Tory 
majority in the Commons, disposed as they were to 
belittle the plot, professed to resent the action of the 
Lords as derogatory to the criminal jurisdiction of the 
Crown ; and in February, 1704, at Athol's request, 
Rothes, Roxburgh, and Baillie of Jerviswood — ^all 
Countrymen, but selected as being untainted with 
Jacobitism at a joint meeting of Countrymen and 
Cavaliers — were despatched to London to his support. 
The three deputies, before the Lords' Committee had 
completed its work, were admitted to an audience on 
March 8 ; and, having represented " how great an 
affliction it was to them " that some of the best subjects 
should be charged with disloyal designs, and what alami 
had been excited in Scotland by a proposal, attributed 
to the Earl of Stair, that an army should be maintained 
there on English pay, they besought the Queen to 
summon Parliament as soon as possible for the purpose 
of investigating the conspiracy, and meanwhile, in order 
that the Estates might not be biassed in their delibera- 
tions, to withdraw her confidence from all concerned in 
the plot or in traducing innocent persons therewith.* 
Anne was agreeably surprised by such moderation of 
tone on the part of these " fierce barbarians " of the 
Parliament House ;^ and, contrary to the expectation of 
Baillie who had not expected that Queensberry, with the 

^Tindal's Continttation ofRapiTiy xx. 380, 412. 

^Marchmont PaperSy iii. 263-267 ; Eraser's Earls of Cromarty, i. 219-220. 

^Cunningham's History of Great Britain, i. 364. 




TWEEDDALE SUPPLANTS QUEENSBERRY 93 

House of Lords at his back, would be so easily displaced, 
an arrangement was soon made — chiefly through the 
mediation of Johnston, who as Secretary of State in 
1695 had procured the Act in favour of the African 
and Indian Company and had never since been 
employed — by which the Country Party agreed to 
accept office in the Hanoverian interest on condition 
that Anne assented to certain limitations of her suc- 
cessor s power. Queensberry was succeeded as Com- 
missioner by the Marquis of Tweeddale ; his dependent, 
Sir James Murray of Philiphaugh, was replaced as 
Lord Register by Johnston; and his brother, the Earl 
of March, resigned Edinburgh Castle to its former 
governor, Lord Leven.^ 

This was an experiment in political tactics similar to 
that which had been attempted after the dissolution of 
the Convention Parliament in 1702 ; for, as the Cava- 
liers had then been brought in to outvote the Country 
Party, so now the Country Party was to turn the scale 
against the Cavaliers ; and, but for the alarm excited 
by the Jacobite plot, which disposed them to snatch at 
any expedient, however unpromising, to establish the 
Hanoverian succession, the English Ministers, who had 
witnessed the failure of the former experiment, might 
have been expected to discount beforehand the failure 
of this. The new administration may not have been 
more " motley " — to use a word afterwards applied to 
it — ^than the old ; but the Country Party was numeri- 
cally so weak that, to be successful, it would require to 
carry with it almost all its own members and almost 
the whole of the party which it had hitherto opposed ; 
and, considering that Tweeddale and his adherents 
were sure to be denounced as deserters for coming to 

1 Lockhart, i. 92-97. 



94 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

terms with the Court, and that Queensberry's dismissal 
was equally certain to be resented by his Mends, 
this result was not likely to be achieved. In fiwjt, 
though Queensberry himself remained in London, 
Lord March and Sir James Murray came to an 
understanding with the Cavaliers that they would 
concur in opposing a settlement of the succession, 
on condition that no serious enquiry was made into 
the plot.^ 

Parliament met on July 6, 1704, and a letter was 
read from the Queen in which she recommended, " with 
all the earnestness we are capable of, the settling of 
the succession in the Protestant line." As the Ministry 
had accepted in principle^ the " conditions of govern- 
ment *' which had been carried by the Opposition in the 
preceding session, the Cavaliers now fell back as a 
means of obstruction on the other proposal which in 
the same session had been put forward as an alternative 
by the Court. At the third sitting on July 13, 
Hamilton moved that no successor should be chosen 
till a commercial treaty had been concluded with 
England ; at the next sitting on July 17, Rothes, on 
behalf of the Ministry, proposed that Parliament should 
first consider " such conditions and regulations of 
government " as may be necessary to rectify the consti- 
tution of the kingdom and to secure its sovereignty and 
independence, and should then consider whether or not 
a treaty with England must precede the choice of a 
successor; and on the same day it was carried by the 

^ Lockhart, i. 98. 

^ Tbey proposed to revive Charles Vs concession of 1641, according to 
which political offices were to be bestowed with consent of Parliament, 
or, when Parliament was not sitting, with consent of the Privy Council. — 
Burnet, v. 171 ; Vvlpone^ or Remarks on some proceedings in Scotland 
relating both to the Union and the Protestant Succession^ p. 9. 



THE ACT OF SECURITY BECOMES LAW 95 

Opposition, as in the last session, that the two motions 
should be combined. The joint resolution was then 
put to the House and carried by a majority of 55, 
including the Lord Privy Seal and the Lord 
Justice-Clerk, Montrose and Fletcher, and over thirty 
of Queensberry 8 friends — among them his brother, 
Lord March. ^ 

Thus in four days, or at all events in four parlia- 
mentary sittings, the new scheme for settling the 
succession had completely broken down. On July 25, 
the Act of Security and an Act of Supply having both 
been read a iSrst time, it was resolved that no further 
progress should be made with either till the Crown had 
intimated its intentions with regard to the firsl. This 
was a skilful attempt to force the hand of the Queen ; 
and considering that France was threatening invasion, 
that the pay of the army was far in arrear,^ and that, in 
the present temper of the nation, to procure money 
from England might occasion a mutiny or even a 
general revolt, the Scottish Government, with the con- 
currence of Godolphin, advised the Queen to give way. 
The Act which received the royal assent on August 5 
was the same as that of 1703, except that, on the 
ground that it had been adopted in the joint resolution, 
the clause as to a commercial treaty with England was 

•^ If the division list appended to BoyeHs AnncUs, vol. iii., is to be relied 
oa, Lockhart is wrong in saying that the Marquis of Montrose and 
Qraham of €k>rthie supported the €k>vernnient, and Hume in saying that 
Boxburgh advocated Hamilton's motion. 

'On July 21, the officers represented to Parliament that the provision 
for the army had expired at Whitsunday last, and that the troops had 
since been maintained on the arrears of pay due to them at that date — 
arrears which now covered a period of fourteen months. — Act, Pari. xi. 
appendix, p. 42. The army was only about 3,000 strong, but, as the 
nucleus of a much larger force, it was *' double or treble officered." — 
Burnet, v. 175. 



96 ANTECEDENTS OP UNION, 1700-1706 

left out.^ A resolution was obviously not equal to an 
Act; and, in order to account for this omission, we 
must remember that neither party had contended for 
this section as an end in itself, the Government in the 
previous session having sought only to substitute it for 
the Roxburgh clause, which they were now pledged to 
support, and the Opposition in the present session 
having already succeeded in using it as a means to 
obstruct the Hanoverian succession. The House now 
voted supplies for six months, resolved that the action 
of the House of Lords in regard to the succession and 
the plot was an encroachment on the sovereignty and 
independence of Scotland, and, on the lines of the 
recent tVine Act, passed a statute permitting the free 
exportation of wool.* 

The Marquis of Athol, to Queensberry's very natural 
disgust,' had been rewarded with a dukedom for his 
factious conduct in the previous session ; but, as this 
honour had failed to reclaim him, he was now dismissed, 
as also was Mackenzie of Preston-Hall, the Lord Justice- 
Clerk; and several members of the New Party, as 
Tweeddale and his friends now called themselves, in 
reward for their ineflPectual services, were admitted to 
ofl&ce. Tweeddale became Chancellor, Rothes Privy 
Seal, Baillie of Jerviswood Treasurer Depute, Cromarty 
Justice-General, Belhaven a lord of the Treasury, and 
Seafield and Roxburgh Secretaries of State. 

^ Clerk (Memoirs, p. 53) attributes this to " some trick or other '' ; but 
DO complaint appears to have been made, and we shall find that Godolphin 
mentioned the omission of this clause as one of his reasons for advising 
the Queen to assent to the Act. 

' For the Parliament of 1704, see Hume's Dicuy, pp. 136-162 ; Boyer's 
Annals of Queen Anne, iii. 10-40 ; Lockhart, i. 99-107 ; Burnet, v. 172-178 ; 
Reflections on a late Speech by the Lord Haverskam, pp. 7-32. 

SBrit. Mus. MSS., 6420, fol. 16. 



GODOLPHIN ATTACKED 97 

England could not fail to be alarmed by the news*^ 
that an Act had been passed in Scotland, providing 
that the kingdom, except under conditions not likely to 
be realised, should become independent at the Queen's 
death, and meanwhile should be put into a posture of 
defence ; but, just before the Act of Security received 
the royal assent, Marlborough, unknown to his country- 
men, had won the great victory of Blenheim ; and 
EngUshmen were so much interested in the campaign 
of this sununer, and so much elated by its success, that, 
according to a contemporary writer, even some members 
of Parliament were not aware of what had taken place 
in Scotland, and, when the Act was shown to them, 
would scarcely believe it.^ The two Houses met at the 
end of October ; and on November 23, having requested 
a full attendance of peers on the ground that he had 
matters of great importance to lay before them, Lord 
Haversham reviewed the situation in Scotland in the 
course of an elaborate speech. He exposed the failure of 
the Tweeddale administration to establish the succession, 
which he attributed to its " motley " character and to a 
generally received opinion that neither the English nor 
the Scottish Ministers had set themselves in earnest to 
the task ; and he declared that no reasonable person 
could believe that they had ever really favoured the 
English succession who had either promoted or assented 
to what was practically a Bill for excluding it from 
Scotland. He referred particularly to the clause in the 
Act which placed the Protestant population under arms ; 
and, asserting that " much discontent and great poverty" 
were the causes of all troubles, he showed how dangerous 
such an enactment must be in the case of a kingdom 
whose nobility and gentry were so brave, so intelligent. 



* SamerM Tracts, xiL 505. 
G 



) 



98 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

and so discontented as those of Scotland, and whose 
common people were so numerous, so hardy, and so 
poor.^ 

Godolphin, though not mentioned by name, was of 
course the real object of this attack ; and Anne, through 
her husband, Prince George, had previously sent hmi 
an assurance of support. She had never yet attended a 
debate in the Lords ; but, when Haversham's speech, in 
so far as it related to Scotland, was taken into considera- 
tion by the House, " the Queen herself," as Roxburgh 
expressed it, " was in person to take care of the Ancient 
Kingdom," and doubtless also to restrain the wrath of 
the Opposition, both on November 29, when the debate 
opened, and again, when it was resumed, on December 6- 
The Lord Treasurer on this occasion had to meet attack 
both from the Tories who, as we shall see, had been put 
out of the Government, and from the Whigs who as yet 
had failed to get in. Nottingham and Rochester insisted 
that the Act of Security, if it had diminished the risk 
of rebellion in Scotland, had made it more formidable 
by providing for the arming of the people ; and they 
urged that the statute, like the so-called " Darien Act," 
should be read and submitted to a vote. The Whig 
majority opposed this as certain to arouse the indigna- 
tion of the Scots ; but from this side also several sharp 
speeches were made. Somers severely criticised the 
conduct of aflTairs in Scotland since the beginning of the 
reign, dealing not only with the Act of Security, but 
with the Act of Peace and War, the Wine Act, and the 
Wool Act ; and, in answer to the plea that the Govern- 
ment could not dispense with what in English parlance 
was called the Money Bill, Halifax asked what this Bill 
might be worth, and, on being told that its value was 

^ Boyer's Annah^ iii. 159-162. 



HIS DEFENCE ^^ 

-Mut £25,000, declared, with surprising irrelevance, 
that he uv-oQ^jf would have been responsible that the 
people of England suuu.! have given twice that sum in 
order to prevent such measures l3ec«>«xinff law. Bishop 
Burnet defended his countrymen by exposing the 
political hardships under which they had laboured since 
the union of the Crowns, and he reminded the peers 
that they themselves had contributed to the present 
crisis by their harsh treatment of the Scottish East 
India Company in 1695. Godolphin, in reply to his 
critics, said that the Crown had rejected the Act of 
Security in the previous session because the " communi- 
cation clause" was in it, and because there was then 
money for the troops, and had now assented to it 
because there was no money and no such clause; and 
he defended the action of the Government on the 
ground that " whatever ill look it might have at present, 
it was not without remedy."^ 

Godolphin undoubtedly advocated " a speedy union," 
and in July, 1703, he expressed his regret to Seafield 
that this project had '* so little prevalency " with the 
Estates;^ but he was a timid statesman, and, though 
his reluctance to give way to the Scottish demands may 
have been lessened by the hope of some such result, 
one can hardly subscribe to the opinion ' that he delibe- 
rately shaped his policy to this end. At the close of 
the previous session taxation was still available for the 
maintenance of the troops, but their pay even then was 
in arrear;* and he probably assented to the Act of 

^J«nnivj§od Correspondence^ pp. 12, 14-16; Boyer's AnnaU^ iii. 163; 
Burnet, v. 182, note ; Elliot's Life of Godolphirij p. 288. 

*Qraliam'8 Stair AnnaU, i. 381. 

» Elliot's Life of Godolphin, p. 287. 

^See p. 95, note. 



100 ANTECEDBNT8 OP UNION, 1700-1706 

Security from the same fears which had induced >*^— ' 
under less urgent conditions, to assent ^ *^® Wine Act 
and the Act of Peace and W*^ , and moreover, had his 
chief object bee» ^ put pressure on England, the clause 
as to tha communication of trade would hardly have 
been left out. 

The deliberations of the Lords terminated in the very 
sensible conclusion that, without expressing any opinion 
on the Scottish statute, they should endeavour to 
obviate its effects. Certain resolutions to this purpose 
were adopted on December 7 and digested into a Bill ; 
but, when the Lords found that their right to originate 
a measure which imposed money penalties was disputed 
in the Lower House, they sacrificed their own Bill to 
one in very simUar terms which had been sent up from 
the Commons ; and this measure was passed on February 
5, and received the royal assent on March 14, 1705. 
It authorised the Queen, as soon as a lumilar power 
should have been conferred upon her by the Parliament 
of Scotland, to nominate commissioners for a treaty of 
union ; and, in order to procure the concurrence of the 
Scots within a reasonable time, it provided that after 
December 25 of this year all Scotsmen not actually 
resident in England, Ireland, or the colonies, or serving 
in the army or navy, should be treated as aliens ; that 
no English horses, arms, or ammunition should be 
brought into Scotland, and that Scottish cattle, coals, 
and linen should be excluded from England.^ John- 
ston, on seeing this statute, found it "very different 
from what any of us ever heard it to be "; * and, except 
that the Commons had extended the Lords* Bill in 
such a way as to prescribe that the Scottish Commis- 
sioners, like the English, should be nominated by the 

^StcUutei at Large^ iv. 178. ^Jervitwood Corretpondencey p. 47. 



PROORESS OF THE WHIGS IN ENGLAND 101 

Queen, there was nothing in it to which any Scottish 
patriot could reasonably object. Meanwhile, the Queen 
had assented to an address of the Lords, in which they 
requested her to provide for the defence of Newcastle, 
Tynemouth, Berwick, Carlisle, and Hull ; to place some 
regular troops on the Border; and to call out the 
militia of the four northern shires.^ 

The Alien Act, in so far at least as it coincided with 
the conclusions of the peers, was in great measure the 
work of Lords Halifax and Somers ; and the growing 
power of these statesmen, out of office though they 
were, was exerted to transform the character of the 
Government in England, and ultimately in Scotland 
too. Godolphin and Marlborough had endeavoured 
to maintain, first a Tory, and then a composite, cabinet ; 
but, under the influence of a successful war which the 
Tories disliked, contrary to their own inclination and 
to that of the Queen, they were driven more and more 
into the arms of the Whigs. As early as 1703 
Hochester, who had opposed the declaration of hostili- 
ties, was forced to resign ; next year Nottingham, 
Jersey, and Seymour were dismiaaed. the first of these 
being replaced by Harley, a moderate Tory, as Secretary 
of State; and in the spring of 1705 the Duke of 
Buckingham, formerly Lord Normanby,* was deprived 
of the Privy Seal ; Sunderland, the son-in-law of Marl- 
borough and a violent Whig, was despatched as ambas- 
sador-extraordinary to Vienna; and the woolsack was 
promised to Somers' friend, Cowper— a promise which 
was fulfilled afber a general election in the same year 
had secured the predominance, though not as yet the 

* Bruce, appendix Iv., Ivi ; Tindal's Cantintiation of Bapin^ xxi. 114* 
118. 

*8€e p. 79. 



102 ANTECEDENTS OP UNION, 1700-1706 

monopoly, of the Whigs. ^ The bias of this party, which 
represented, on the whole, the nonconformist and com- 
mercial as opposed to the Church and rural interests 
of England, ran directly counter to the Darien project, 
and also to the Act of Security, which threatened to 
exclude the Hanoverian succession ; and its leaders 
looked with little favour on the present holders of 
political power in Scotland, who had promoted both 
of these schemes, and who, therefore, as Roxburgh 
expressed it, were not their " right tools." The Whigs, 
in fact, wished to reinstate the Old or Revolution Party, 
not entirely Presbyterian, which had supported William 
throughout the whole of his reign, and the leading 
representatives of which were Queensberry, who had 
indeed deserted this party in 1702, but who had atoned 
for that error by his efforts to unravel the " Scots Plot," 
his confidant, the Marquis of Annandale, and, as heredi- 
tary chief of the Presb3rterians, the young Duke of 
Argyll. In December, 1704, as the result of Whig 
attacks on the Act of Security,* it was reported at Edin- 
burgh that there was to be an entire change in the 
management of Scottish affairs ; soon afterwards Cock- 
bum of Ormiston, a rigid Presbyterian, for whom, on 
the death of Mackenzie's successor, the Whigs had 
procured the office of Justice- Clerk, was described by 
Roxburgh as " truly master of Scotland " ; on February 
20, 1705, Argyll announced to a friend that he had been 
fixed upon as Commissioner ; and on March 9 Tweed- 
dale resigned the chancellorship, for which his friends 

1 Coxe'8 Martborovgh, i. 261, 348. 

'Lord Dartmouth, in a note to Burnet's HUtory (v. 183), aajs that 
Godolphin "delivered himself entirely into their (the Whigs') manage- 
ment, provided they brought him off." The JearvUwood Correspondence 
amply confirms this. 



THE 'WORCESTER' CASE 103 

acknowledged him to be unfit, to its former occupant, 
Seafield, and Annandale replaced the latter as Secretary 
of State,^ 

At this point the movement towards union which 
had originated in the aflfair of Darien was accelerated 
by an indirect consequence of that memorable dispute. 
A Scottish vessel, bound for the East Indies, had been 
seized, at the instance of the India House, in the 
Thames ; and the Worcester^ a ship erroneously supposed 
to be one of the London Company's fleet, having soon 
afterwards put into the Forth for repairs, the Scottish 
Company demanded its detention, and, when the 
Government refused to take action, seized it for them- 
selves. Words used by some of the Worcester^ 8 crew 
gave rise to suspicion, which soon ripened into beUef, 
that they were responsible for the disappearance of the 
Speedy ReturUy a vessel which had had the rare good 
fortune to come back from Darien, whither it had gone 
in support of the third expedition,^ but which, on a 
subsequent voyage to the East Indies, had long been 
missing; and in March, 1705, Captain Green and 
fourteen of his men were tried and convicted on 
•evidence which rendered it not improbable that they 
liad been guilty of piracy and even of murder, but 
which certainly established no real connexion between 
their perpetration of these crimes and the fate of the 
Speedy Return, The issue of the trial was a subject 
of vehement interest to both the English and the 
Scottish public, the one believing that the sailors had 
been condemned because they were Englishmen, and 
the other fearing that on this ground, and because 

^Jerviswood Carrespondencey pp. 29, 30, 40, 46; '< Original Letters on 
the Union'' in Edinburgh Review, clxxvi. 510. 

' See p. 50. 



104 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

their reputed victims were Scotsmen, they would be 
allowed to go free. At the command of the Queen, 
which she had found it necessary to repeat, the Privy 
Council consented, indeed, to respite the five prisoners,, 
who were to suffer first, till April 11 ; but on the 
10th, despite another letter from the Queen, the 
nine votes necessary to sanction a further reprieve 
could not be obtained; and on the following day,, 
after the mob, excited by a rumour that mercy 
was to be shown, had made a most formidable 
demonstration — " such " wrote the Marquis of Annan - 
dale, "as never has been practised in my time 
nor in the age before in this nation,"^ the sentence 
on three of the five victims was duly carried 
out. In order to avert the execution, the English 
Government had sent down copies of a declara- 
tion emitted at Portsmouth by two seamen who had 
served under Captain Drummond on board the Speedy 
Return^ asserting that their vessel had been seized 
by the pirates of Madagascar; and it subsequently 
transpired that Drummond himself and several of his 
men had been seen alive on that island several years 
after Green and the other two had been executed 
for putting them to death. The populace, however, 
demanded no further sacrifice, and the rest of the 
prisoners were soon released. - 

The failure of the Scottish Government to save 
Green and his companions was a serious blow to its. 

^ Hist. MSS. Commission, 15th Report, appendix, Part ix. 121. 

^ State Trials, xiv. 1199-1311; Defoe, pp. 46-50; Taylor's J<mrmy to 
Edenhoroughj pp. 122-125 ; Jervitwood Correspondence, pp. 68, 74, 75. 
Defoe's chronology, it may be observed, is not very reliable. Thus he 
says (p. 87) that the English Alien Act was passed 'Hhe year before 
the Battle at Blenheim," whereas it was passed about six months later. 



ARGYLL AS COMMISSIONER 105 

credit in England ;^ and the conduct of the Ministers 
in practically effacing themselves during the crisis was 
far from raising them in public esteem. Most of them, 
indeed, concurred in the reprieve; but at the Council 
of April 10 the New Party was represented only by 
Baillie of Jerviswood who did not vote ; and Seafield 
who presided as Chancellor complained to Godolphin 
that none of the principal Ministers could be induced 
to attend either this meeting or the next.^ 

About a fortnight affcer the execution, Argyll arrived 
in Edinburgh. An ardent soldier, who had shown 
great gallantry in the war, particularly at the storming 
of Venloo, he had given proof of moral as well as of 
physical courage by writing to the Chancellor to sus- 
pend the sentence on Green ^ — a mode of communicating 
the royal pleasure which the Council declined to 
recognise ; and as Commissioner, though only in his 
25th year, he was to prove himself superior in strength, 
if not in dexterity, to statesmen much older and more 
experienced than himself. The Marquis of Annandale, 
a man of overbearing temper, whom his friends, accord- 
iug to Lockhart, employed only "as the Indians 
worship the devil, out of fear,"* had agreed with 
Argyll that the present Ministry should be at once 
removed; but Annandale took offence when he found 
that Roxburgh, his colleague in the Secretaryship, was 
to be replaced by Argyll's relative, the Earl of Loudoun ; 

^**Thi8 business of Green etc. is the devil and all. It has spoiled 
all business. . . . The Whigs make a national Jacobitish business of it, 
and it will be trump'd up at all the elections.'' — Jerviswood Correspondence^ 
pp. 70, 71. 

^Burton's Beign of Queen Anne, i. 324. 

'This occasioned "a great flame" against Argyll.— " Original Letters 
on the Union ;" Edinl/UTgh Review, clxxvi. 511. 

« Lockhart, i. 138. 



106 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

and he was still more displeased when, the Court 
having recommended delay, Argyll, without consulting 
him, sent o£f a despatch in which he declared that he 
would not and could not serve as Commissioner unless 
his advice was taken. In response to this vigorous 
protest, the Government was restored, politically and 
even personally, very much as it had stood at the 
death of King William, Loudoun becoming Secretary 
with Annandale, Queensberry Privy Seal, and his 
dependents, Murray of Philiphaugh and the Earl of 
Glasgow, Lord Register and Treasurer-Depute. Cromarty 
and Sir James Stewart retained their posts as Justice- 
General and Lord Advocate ; Seafield, as we have seen, 
had already been made Chancellor, and Cockburn 
Justice-Clerk ; and Leven in October of the preceding 
year had been re-instated as Governor of Edinburgh 
Castle. The New Party consoled themselves with the 
reflection that the Court had been averse from the 
change, and that, as Godolphin himself admitted, they 
had been turned out to propitiate the Whigs. ^ 

Before the final settlement of this question another 
^ of more importance had emerged. The Darien contro- 
versy had disposed Scotsmen to insist either on the 
independence or on the expansion of their country, 
according as they gave way to patriotic indignation or 
looked forward to the only possible cure; and these 
<X)nflicting tendencies gave rise to two practical interests, 
that of the Succession and that of the Union. The 
Old or Revolution Party had always favoured a union ; 
they had regretted the opportunity for this which had 
been lost at the Revolution ; in the Parliament of 1 703 
they had insisted, from whatever motives, on " a free 
<K)mmunication of trade " ; and in the last session 

* Add. MSS. 28085, fol. 225 ; Jervisioood Correspondenoet pp. 65, 84. 



SUCCESSION PUT BEFORE UNION 107 

Queensberry s friends had supported the resolution that 
no successor should be chosen till a treaty had been 
concluded with England. The New Party, on the 
other hand, in accordance with the Act of Security, 
proposed to establish the Hanoverian succession on such 
conditions as should free Scotland from English control ; 
and the ultra-Presbyterians, with or without such 
securities, were zealous for the Electress Sophia. Argyll 
at first had favoured the succession ; but, under the 
influence of Queensberry and Stair, he was soon won 
over to the policy of the Scottish, as distinguished from 
the English, Whigs. ^ The only dissentients were Annan- 
dale and Cockbum, though Sir James Stewart inclined 
to the same view ; but these st^atesmen were so deter- 
mined, and, having the New Party behind them, were 
so much to be feared, that two draughts of the letter 
which the Queen was to submit to Parliament were 
sent up to Court; and, as might have been expected 
from the Whig ascendency in England, the Queen, 
whilst approving both draughts, gave the preference 
to that in which the succession was put first. ^ 

In the session of Parliament which was opened 
formally on June 28, 1705, and for business on July 3, 

'The House of Lords, it will be remembered, Iiad attributed the 
** Scots Plot" to the fact that the Hauoverian succession had not been 
recognised in Scotland. A member of this House said " that the persons 
of the highest quality iu that kingdom were kept in whilst they 
appeared against the Succession and turned out when they were 
endeavouring to promote it." — Vulpone, p. 7. 

«Add.. MSS. 28086 fol. 226; Vulpone, pp. 13, 14; "A brief View of 
the late Scots Ministry" in Somers Tracts, xii. 617-622. Much of the 
first of these two pamphlets is engrossed, almost verbatim, in the 
second. A good account of the Ministerial changes will be found in 
Omond's Life of Fletcher, pp. 111-117 ; but the writer is hardly accurate 
in saying that the MSS. Memorialy cited above, "seems to be Argyll's 
account of the session written for the use of Qodolphin." It deals 
only with Argyll's relations with Annandale before Parliament met. 



108 ANTECEDENTS OF UNION, 1700-1706 

there were, as in fonner sessions, three parties — the 
Court Party, the Country Party, and the Cavaliers. 
The second of these groups was that which styled itself 
the New Party ; but, as its members held aloof, refusing 
to identify themselves either with the Cavaliers who 
had deserted them when they took office in 1704 or 
with the Court which had just dismissed them, it was 
more generally known as the " Squadrone Volante " — a 
name which in some quarters had been applied to it as 
early as 1703. ' The Opposition had resolved to bring 
forward, as the first subject of discussion, the condition 
of the coin and of trade ; and, the Ministry being 
aware of this, Annandale was to propose that Parlia- 
ment should consider such limitations and conditions 
of government as should be necessary for the next 
Protestant successor, and that a committee to deal with 
commerce should at the same time be chosen. Annan- 
dale, according 1;o Argyll, who roundly abused him 
in a letter to Godolphin, "managed the affiiir most 
abominably," for, whether through accident or design, 
he did not mention the committee "till the moment 
before the vote," when many members did not hear his 
proposal and those who did had not time to comprehend 
it ; but, though defeated on this point, the Government 
contrived to carry their demand that the subject of 
trade should be considered by way of overture, and not 
under a resolve to exclude all other business. On July 
17, after three sittings had been devoted to trade, 
Hamilton introduced the joint resolution which had 
been passed in the last session, that Parliament should 
not nominate a successor, (1) till a conmiercial treaty 
had been concluded with England, and (2) till such 
changes had been made in the constitution as should 
secure the liberty, religion, and independence of the 



j3ilfiG0TIATI0N FOR UNION AUTHORISED 109 

realm. The Ministers, favourable though most of them 
were to the first of these two demands, were bound by 
their instructions to oppose the resolution ; and, though 
all the Squadrone voted with them, except Belhaven, 
who both spoke ^ and voted on the other side, they were 
again defeated, chiefly owing to the fact that, in the 
absence of their chief, Queensberry^s friends did not 
care to vote against a resolution which they had 
supported in the previous year, and part of which they 
were disposed to support still. Queensberry, however, 
arrived a week later, and under his skilful guidance the 
project of union, which was now to be substituted for 
that of the succession, began to gain ground. On July 
31 indeed, owing to the zeal of the Squadrone for 
" limitations," the Act for a treaty was put aside, " after 
a very warm debate," by the narrow majority of three ;' 
but the first reading, then refused to that Act, was 
accorded to it on August 24 ; Hamilton on the 31st 
failed to procure the addition of a clause, that the 
proposed union should not derogate from the funda- 
mental laws, rights, and privileges of the nation ; next 
day another proposal, that no negotiations should be 
entered upon till the clause in the English Act which 
declared the Scots aliens had been repealed, was met, 
and met successfully, by the suggestion that this 
demand, instead of being inserted in the Act, should be 
voted as a resolution and presented in an address to the 
Crown ; ^ and on the following night Argyll and 

^ His speech, which is said to have had a great effect, will be found in 
Beyer's AnncUsj iv. 42-47. 

^ Annandale's letter in the 16th Beport of the Hist. MSS. Commission, 
Pt. iz. 122 must be misdated July IS, as it refers to this debate, and not 
to that of July 17 ; and Godolphin's reply must refer to a previous letter 
in which the debate of the 17th had been described. 

^Queensberry had employed the same stratagem in 1700. See p. 64. 



110 ANTECEDENTS OP UNION, 17UU-17Vt> 

Queensberry won their final triumph, when Hamilton, 
to the consternation of his friends, introduced and 
carried a motion that the Scottish Commissioners should 
be nominated by the Queen. The Duke no doubt 
hoped in this way to secure his own nomination, which, 
had the choice been left to Parliament, his opponents 
might have been able to prevent ; but his action, from 
whatever motive it proceeded, was of the greatest 
service to the Government, since it ensured the 
compliance of Scotland with the condition which had 
been laid down, however unjustifiably, in the English 
Act.^ 

This was the third negotiation which had been set on 
foot for a parliamentary union, and it certainly opened 
under more favourable auspices than either of the two 
previous attempts. The Commissioners who met in 
1670 had already failed to come to an understanding on 
the subordinate but vital question of trade ; the com- 
mercial antagonism of the two countries had not yet 
become acute ; Episcopacy, which a union would have 
perpetuated in Scotland, was obnoxious to a large class, 
and had been established by arbitrary means ; the 
British Crown was at peace; and the Scots, having 
lately recovered their nationality, were alive indeed to its 
penalties, but still more to the privileges it conferred. 
In 1702 almost all these conditions were reversed ; but 
the Scottish Parliament which authorised the treaty 
had been disowned as illegal by a large minority of its 
members, and in England the Tories had succeeded to 
jthe management of a project which they had opposed, 
and which in both countries had originated with the 

^Act. Pari, appendix, pp. 69-97 ; Beyer's Annals, iv. 31-61 ; Lockhart'd 
Memoirs, i. 115-137 ; Edinburgh Review, clxxvi. 614-517 ; Taylor's Journey, 
pp. 114-118. 



PROSPECTS OF SUCCESS HI 

Whigs. No/such difficulty was to be apprehended in 
1705,^ the Whig interest in Edinburgh as in London 
having lately become supreme ; and, at a time when the 
relations of the two kingdoms as determined by the Act 
of Security and the Alien Act had come to such a pass 
that no alternative remained but that of union or war, 
it might reasonably be hoped that the problem, which 
had hitherto proved insoluble, would at last be solved. 

^ Roxburgh in November of this year expressed his conviction that the 
only thing that could prevent a union woald be '*a new jumble" between 
the CJourt and the Tories in the English Parliament.-^flnnCnooorf Corre- 
spondence^ p. 139. 



CHAPTER III 

THE UNION, 1706-1707 

In dealing with so momentous a crisis in the history 
of Scotland as that at which we are now arrived, it 
will be advisable in the first place to trace the 
external progress of the Union as it revealed itself in 
Parliament and in the country, and then, with this 
outline before us, to look more closely into the char- 
acter of the movement as determined by the action 
of political parties and of individual statesmen. The 
attitude of the Church, belonging as it does to the 
evolution of ecclesiastical history, will be studied more 
conveniently at a subsequent stage* 

The Act empowering the Queen to appoint Com- 
missioners on behalf of Scotland for a treaty of union 
had received the royal assent on September 21, 1705 ; 
on November 27 the clause in the English Act of 
which the Estates had complained, and also the 
restrictions on trade, were unanimously repealed ; but 
the Scottish Commissioners were not nominated till 
February 27, 1706, and the English till April 10. In 
making the nomination for Scotland, the Crown and 
its advisers had to consider whether they should 
choose Commissioners of the type most likely to bring 



CHOICE OF COMMISSIONERS 113 

the tareaty to a favourable issue, or whether they 
should facilitate its progress through Parliament by 
making a more comprehensive choice. Marchmont, in 
three letters written on the same day to the Queen 
and the Dukes of Devonshire and Argyll, insisted 
with great earnestness that none but Jacobites should 
be excluded from the Commission ;^ but, though their 
most trusted adviser, Stair, appears to have concurred 
in this view,* Queensberry and Godolphin proceeded 
almost wholly on the opposite plan. Of the thirty- 
one Commissioners, a dozen of whom had served on 
the Commission of 1702, fifteen were Ministers, coun- 
Keillors or officials; and it would be difficult to 
controvert the statement of Lockhart, who, though a 
violent Jacobite, had been selected as the nephew of 
Lord Wharton, that all of them, except himself, 
'''were of the Court or Whig interest."* Argyll had 
declined to act on the ground that the services of 
Hamilton, to whom he had promised nomination, had 
not been recognised ; the Squadrone was excluded ; 
And the Country Party in the wider sense was repre- 
sented only by its former members, Dundas of 
Amiston and William Seton of Pitmedden, the latter 
of whom, as early as 1700, had advocated not merely 
A parliamentary, but even a legal and ecclesiastical 

^Marchmont PaperB^iii. 286, 293, 296. 

^Burnet, v. 281. Stair, though he strongly favoured incorporation, 
was disposed not to insist upon it at present — see his letter to Mar in 
^tair Annals^ i. 211 — ^and probably, therefore, agreed with Marchmont 

^Lockhart, i. 141 ; Clerk's MSS. quoted by Somerville, p. 234, note. 
Burnet's unaccountable statement (v. 280) that the Scottish Commis- 
sioners were " strangely chosen, the far greater number having continued 
in an opposition to the government ever since the revolution," has misled 
several modern writers. In Hooke's list {Correspondence^ ii. 61) the Earl 
of Mar and Viscount Duplin are marked as Jacobites, but they had done 

little as yet to justify the appellation. 

H 



114 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

union.^ The English Commission included Gk)dolphin, 
the Tory Secretaries of State, Hedges and Harlej^ 
and such familiar Whig names as Newcastle, Devon- 
shire, Cowper, Townshend, Wharton, Halifax, and 
Somers. 

The scope of the conference which opened at West- 
minster on April 16, 1706, was narrower in theory, if 
not in practice, than that of 1702, inasmuch as the 
Commissioners of each country were prohibited from 
treating for any alteration in ritual or government of 
the national Church. The Lord Keeper of England 
gave felicitous expression to the spirit in which alone 
such negotiations could be expected to succeed when 
he declared for himself and his colleagues that they 
were determined "to have the general and joint good 
of both kingdoms solely in our view, and not the 
separate of either, but to act as if we were already 
united in interest, and had nothing left to consider 
but what settlements and provisions are most likely 
to conduce to the common safety and happiness of 
this whole island of Great Britain." The proposals 
put forward at the beginning of the conference were 
substantially the same as in 1702, except that on 
this occasion it was the English and not the Scottish 
Comolissioners who suggested a parliamentary union ; 
^ and/on April 25 a provisional agreement was arrived 
at, according to which the two kingdoms were to be 
united in one monarchy and Parliament under the 
name of Great Britain ; the succession was to be vested 
in the Princess Sophia of Hanover and her Protestant 
heirs; and at home and in the colonies there was to 

^See his Interest of Scotland Considered, pp. 41*49. Laiug (iii. 300) 
confuses Oockburn of Ormiston with his son in saying that he belonged to 
the Squadrone. 



THE TREATY OF UNION 115 

be complete freedom of trade. Community of privi-*^ 
leges entailed of course reciprocal obligations ; and, in 
order to establish in this respect a real and not 
merely a nominal equality between the two countries, 
it was agreed that Scotland, till it had time to profit 
by the Union, should be granted some relief from 
taxation, and that neither country should be burdened 
with the debts of the other. In accordance with this 
resolution, which had been accepted in principle in 
1702, the Scots were exempted from several tem- 
porary imposts, most of which were to expire in 1710 ; 
and for seven years from the duty on home-made 
salt ; and as, with these exceptions, their Commis- 
sioners had agreed to an equality of duties, they were 
to receive at the Union, in compensation for such part 
of their revenue as should be appropriated to the 
English debt, a sum of almost £398,085 ; additional 
compensation was to be given for whatever of the 
salt duty, to be levied after seven years, should be 
applied to this purpose; and Scotland, during that 
period, was to enjoy the whole increase of the excise 
and customs duties on liquors beyond their present 
amount. The total "Equivalent," direct and indirect, 
was to be spent in paying off the public debt, in 
refunding to the African and Indian Company, which 
was to be dissolved, its capital and interest, in making 
good to individuals whatever loss they might incur 
through the reduction of the coin to the English 
standard, and in encouraging fisheries and manufactures. 
The Scottish Commissioners in 1702 had proposed that 
Scotland's share of .the English land tax, which at 4s. 
in the pound produced nearly two millions, should be 
£48,000 ; and this proposal, set aside, if not rejected, 
at the former conference, was now agreed to, on the 






116 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

basis of £12,000 for every shilling, more or less, levied 
in England. 

The other articles of the treaty, less complex than 
these financial arrangements, may be briefly sum- 

^ marised. Scotland was to be represented in the 
Parliament of the United Kingdom by 16 elective 
peers and 45 commons;^ the Scottish legal system, 
subject only to the supervision of Parliament, was to 
be preserved, and the Privy Council till Parliament 
should think fit to alter or abolish it ; the public law 
of Scotland was to be assimilated to that of England, 
but the law as to private rights was not to be altered 
except for the evident utility of Scotsmen ; coinage, 
weights and measures were to be uniform; a great 
seal, different from either the English or the Scottish, 
was to be adopted for the United Kingdom ; the arms 
of Scotland were to be quartered with those of England 
in such manner as the Queen should appoint ; and the 
crosses of St George and St. Andrew were to be 

* conjoined on the national flag. The articles, 25 in 
number, were signed on July 22. 

One of the preliminary conditions of the conference 

'The EngliBh Commissioners proposed to allow Scotland only 38 
members, whilst the Scottish Commissioners demanded 50 ; and, the nile 
that proposals should be made in writing having been relaxed in order to 
permit of an oral discussion on this point, it was agreed that the number 
should be 45. On the basis of taxation as determined by their share of 
the land tax, the Scots would have been entitled to only 13 members or 
one fortieth of the existing House of Commons, whilst on the basis of 
population, Scotland having one million of inhabitants (Defoe says two, 
but see Laing, iii. 305, note) to England's six, they ought to have had 85. 
Neither of these standards, however, was at all applicable to the English 
representative system, in which a county so poor and thinly populated as 
Cornwall had 44 members ; and considering that Scotland was to retain 
her Church and legal system, and must necessarily be interested in pre- 
serving them, 50 members or a tenth of the English representation would 
certainly have been no more than her just share. 



INCORPORATION UNPOPULAR 117 

had provided that its proceedings should be kept secret ; 
but, though the articles were not published till the 
meeting of Parliament in October, the Scottish Com- 
miasioners were at no great pains to conceal the fact 
that they had obtained from England a free communica- 
tion of trade, and the public soon convinced itself that 
the abolition of the national Parliament was to be 
the price of this boon.^ It might, indeed, have 
been supposed that even such a sacrifice, serious as 
it was, would not be deemed too great. The Con- 
vention of Estates in 1689 had not only appointed 
Commissioners to negotiate *'one entire and perpetual 
union," but had referred to King William the deter- 
mination of any difficulties that might arise in the 
progress of the treaty ; and the Commission of 1702, 
before any such suggestion had been made on the part 
of England, had proposed that both kingdoms should 
be represented in one Parliament. Within the last 
few years, however, public opinion had undergone a 
complete change.* The new policy adopted by the 
Court in 1 703 had resulted in placing it at the mercy 
of a coalition of Countrymen and Cavaliers ; the Act of 
Security and the proposal of constitutional limitations 
had done more than even the Darien disaster — 
which, after all, was an argument for communication 
of trade — to foster an anti-English spirit ; and the only 

^ Several pamphlets against incorporation were written, if not published, 
before Parliament met ; and Belhaven on September 19 was said to be 
^ like a madman roaring against the union.'' — Jervisieood Correspondence^ 
p. 159. The author of The State of the Controversy betwixt United and 
Separate Parliaments had even (p. 6) the journal of the treaty before 
him. 

'*' About five years ago, and so for twenty years before, I did not know 
one in Scotland who was not for the Union at any rate, and now I know 
not what some men are for." — Paterson's Inquiry into the Reasonableness 
and Consequences of an Union with Scotland, 1706 ; Works, i. 180. 



118 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

important treatise against an incorporating union that 
had yet appeared was published in that year.* The 
Commissioners of 1706 were so alive to the disfavour 
with which their countrymen regarded incorporation 
that, though personally convinced of its necessity, they 
attempted to evade the English demand;* and the 
reception of their labours in Scotland amply justified 
their fears. 

From the beginning to the close of the debates in 
Parliament, if not even earlier, a stream of pamphlets 
continued to issue from the press, in which the character 
and provisions of the treaty were frequently, indeed, 
defended, but more often violently assailed. Hodges, 
the most voluminous and the most intemperate of all 
the writers against the Union, set himself without scruple 
to magnify the sacrifices demanded of his country and to 
belittle its probable gains. ' Scotland, as he represented 
it, was the most ancient of existing monarchies, having 
preserved its sovereignty and independence " for above 
a third part of the world's age " ; its people, whom 
alone the Romans had failed to subdue, " remained the 
only nation of Europe unconquered to this day"; its 
political system, though liable to some abuses, was 
" one of the best constitutions of monarchical govern- 
ment " that had ever been devised ; no nation in the 
world was so uniform in religion, so free of doctrinal 
errors as the Scots ; in no country was the Gospel " so 
faithfully, painfully, diligently, purely " preached ; and 

^ Hodges' Rights and Interests of the tvx) British Monarchies, This first 
treatise — the second was not published, and the third appeared in 1706 — 
was written before the treaty of 1702 ; but the author anticipates (see p. 5 
of Preface) the principles of the Act of Security, whilst admitting (p. 52) 
that the idea of an incorporating union was then popular. 

'Lockhart, i. 163; Clerk's Memoirs^ p. 60; Carstares State Papers^ 
p. 743. 



PAMPHLETS AGAINST THE UNION 119 

no Church had " Satan's kingdom in general under such 
powerful and awful checks " as the Church of Scotland. 
If the method of incorporation were adopted, Scotland 
mast unite with England as the less considerable king- 
dom in regard to trade, wealth, number of people, and 
military power, whereas in justice it could not " other- 
wise unite than as the preferable kingdom with respect 
to antiquity, honour, and dignity of precedency." 
England had been conquered in turn by the Romans, 
the Saxons,^ the Danes, and the Normans; heresy of 
every kind abounded there ; nowhere else were suicide 
and murder so frequent ; in impiety " and all manner 
of horrid wickedness" it was worse than Sodom or 
Gomorrah ; its Church was overspread with Arminianism, 
Socinianism, popery, and lifeless worship ; its wits were 
mostly Deists ; and Scotsmen were warned that, if they 
became one people with the English for the sake of 
participating in their riches and trade, they must 
involve themselves in these "debts to the justice of 
God." Apart, however, from this awful penalty, no 
solid argument could be adduced in favour of such a 
step. Would it not be madness in Scotsmen to barter 
that "most noble monument of antiquity" their 
national independence "for some hogsheads of sugar, 
indigo, and stinking tobacco of the Plantation trade," 
especially as Hodges was able to assure them, from his 
own experience, that tobacco, far superior in " strength, 
sweetness, and goodness," might be grown at home? 
Nothing could compensate Scotland for the loss of its 
Parliament, its Government, its " shadow of a court " ; 
the price of ale would be doubled, whilst the gentry 

^The Saxons or English had of course conquered England in the 
same way as the Scots had conquered Scotland ; but an excited 
pamphleteer could not be expected to take account of this. 



120 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

would have to drink bad claret at six shillings, instead 
of having it good at two ; if Scotsmen had free access 
to the colonies, the depopulation from which the country 
had long suffered would go on apace ; the fisheries 
could be improved only with English capital, and the 
bulk of the profits would go to England ; the African 
and Indian Company was to be sold nominally for a 
considerable sum, but really for the privilege of helping 
to pay off the English debt ; Presbytery would speedily 
be overthrown ; and the 45 Commons — to quote another 
writer — would awake from their " dream of being one 
and not two" to find themselves circumvented on all 
hands by a majority of English votes, and might " dance 
round to all eternity in this trap of their own making." ^ 
In short, " scarcely anything worse or niore ruinous of 
its interests " could happen to Scotland than an incorpo- 
rating union ; and there could be no security that the 
articles, bad as they were, would be observed; for a 
compact such as this implied two nations, and now there 
was to be only one.« 

The writers against the Union were somewhat vague 
in their suggestions as to what they had to offer in its 
place ; but Hodges undertook in due time " to propose 
means which, with the blessing of God, shall make 
Scotland one of the most attractive centres of trade^ 
money, and people that is in Europe";' and a Jacobite 

* The State of the Controverty betwixt United and Separate Parliaments^ 
p. 16. 

' The Rights and Interests of the two British Monarchies : Treatise II L^ 
passim. It is pleasant to find so verbose and diffuse a writer as 
Hodges thus neatly summing up (p. 126) the English and Scottish 
arguments for Union : '* The English are so bent upon securiiig the- 
backdoor against enemies, and the Scots so bent upon opening the fore- 
door for an outlet into England." 

' '* 'lis spoke very like a quack doctor on a stage," is the comment of 
Clerk. — Letter to a Friend^ p. 38. 



PAMPHLETS IN ITS FAVOUR 121 

pamphleteer assured his excited countrymen that all 
they wanted to make them happy and prosperous waa 
"inaction and to stand by awhile and look on." On 
the basis of the Act of Security which they already 
possessed, they might ally themselves with the Dutch^ 
obtain the wines and fruits of France cheaper at Edin- 
burgh than at Paris, and through friendship with that 
country make such progress in refinement that "the 
English Court, outdone by ours in politeness, shall be 
fain to borrow our modes," * 

These flights of windy rhetoric and enormous lying- 
were not allowed to pass unchallenged. As the Union -^ 
had the support of the Government, and, to a great 
extent, of the upper classes, its claims could not fail to 
be ably advocated in the press; but the Unionist 
pamphleteers, conscious of their superiority to vulgar 
passions and prejudices, presented their case with a 
frankness of statement which, however refreshing in 
itself, was more likely to inflame than to conciliate the 
popular humour. Why, it was asked, should people 
aUow themselves to be " bantered out of their common 
sense " by chimeras of federalism* when England refused 

^ The Advantages of the Act of Security compared with these of the 
Intended Union^ p. 32. 

^ Ridpath seems to have been the only writer who suggested a definite 
scheme of federation. He proposed that things of joint interest, such as 
allegiance, peace and war, communication and mutual support of trade,. 
should be managed by deputations from the Scottish to the English 
Parliament, and when the Parliaments were not sitting, by a Council 
of Trade similar to the Committee of both Kingdoms which existed 
daring the Great Civil War ; and he proposed to retain the Scottish 
Parliament for the following purposes : (1) to make and amend the 
municipal law ; (2) to determine appeals from the Court of Session ; (3) 
to caU to account judges and officials ; and (4) to be surety to the people 
of Scotland that the articles of the Union should be observed. On great 
occasions the two legislatures were to unite. — Considerations on the Union 

of the Two Kingdoms^ pp. 41, 51. Paterson's federal scheme is offered 

only to be refuted. — Works, i. 176. 



122 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

to negotiate on such terms, and when it must be plain 
to the meanest understanding that her commercial and 
colonial monopoly would never be surrendered at so low 
a price ? The independence of Scotland was *' true in 
itself and undeniable in law," but for a hundred years 
it had been little more than a name. Nominally a 
sovereign state, Scotland from the international point 
of view was a geographical, not a political term; 
it had no fleet, and practically no army; it appeared 
in no treaty, and was represented at no foreign 
Court; the Acts of its Parliament were liable to be 
nullified, though they could not be annulled, by English 
statutes ; and the true seat of its government was not 
Edinburgh, but London. Was it so great a sacrifice 
that such a sovereignty as this, " precarious, imaginary, 
and fantastical," should be exchanged for participation 
in a solid dominion which would secure the whole 
island from invasion, enhance its reputation abroad, and 
establish unity and peace at home ? The long quarrel, 
in which so much blood had been shed, was to be 
closed in a manner entirely honourable to both parties 
by the adoption of a new title, a new seal, new 
arms, and a new national flag. The inferiority of a 
poor and undeveloped to a rich and powerful state 
must necessarily be recognised in the terms of union ; 
but was not a twelfth share in the disposal of 
£6,000,000 preferable to the sole disposal of £160,000, 
and was it not better to influence to that extent the 
destinies of Europe than not to influence them at all ? 
Scottish Presbytery would be far more secure after 
the Union than it was now, when *- the supremacy of 
Toryism in England might at any moment effect its 
ruin ;^ the population of the country, its commerce, 

^ Defoe'B Essa^ at Removing National PrejvdiceSy Pt. iii. pp. 14-15. 



ENGLISH INFLUENCE MAY BE BENEFICIAL 123 

fisheries, and manufactures would be enormously de- 
veloped ; and if in social intercourse the influence of 
the predominant partner should make itself felt, would 
that be matter of regret? Was it entirely due to 
superiority of natural resources that England was seven 
times as populous as Scotland, and sixty times as rich ; 
that Oxfordshire, not so large as Fife, produced almost 
as much in land-tax as the whole of Scotland ; and that 
a town no bigger than Newcastle had more trade, and 
paid more customs than all the Scottish burghs ? Were 
the landowners of England not more generous to their 
tenants,^ its farms more fairly rented and on longer 
leases, its dwellings neater and cleaner, its agriculture 
vastly more advanced, its laws better administered ; 
and were Englishmen as prone as Scotsmen to find 
in "trifling differences in religion" the excuse for 
** uncharitable and unreasonable divisions " ? In fact, as 
one writer* bluntly expressed it, Scotland, whether or 
not it gained by the Union, was not likely to lose, 
since it was "scarcely conceivable how any condition 
of life we can fall into can render us more miserable 
and poor than we are."' 

As the time approached for the meeting of Parlia- 
ment, the Government must have realised that so many 

^ The harehneas and rack-renting of Scottish landlords are often referred 
to by Unionist pamphleteers. See especially ScotlancPs Great Advantage 
by an Incorporating Vnion^ p. 12, and see also Taylor's Jowmey^ p. 100. 

' Clerk of Penicuik in Letter to a Friend^ p. 6. 

^ Most of the arguments just cited are taken from A Sermon preached to 
the People at the Meroat Croee of Edinburgh, the most eloquent, vigorous, 
and incisive of all the Union tracts. Mr. Mackinnon rates too highly the 
courage of the clergy and the patience of an Edinburgh mob when he 
assumes (p. 203) that this sermon from an apocryphal text was actually 
delivered. The text was a good one : — " Better is he that laboureth and 
abonndeth in all things than he that boasteth himself and wanteth 
bread." 



124 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

hostile interests were united in opposition to the treaty 
that to obtain its ratification would be anything but 
an easy task. The partisans of the Pretender were 
certain to be foremost in opposition, particularly as 
French intrigues had lately been at work to quicken 
their zeal. In August, 1705, Colonel Hooke had 
arrived at Edinburgh with letters to the Duke of 
Hamilton, the Earl of Home, and several other peers, 
in which Louis XIV. expressed his esteem for their 
persons, and his readiness to assist them in asserting 
the liberties and independence of Scotland. The 
Jacobites suspected with good reason that Louis' plan 
for emancipating their country was to raise such a 
"combustion" in it as should eflfectually check the 
progress of the English arms; and Lockhart having 
informed them, on his return from London, that their 
friends in England had decided not to rise during 
the Queen's life, they contented themselves with send- 
ing an envoy to ascertain what assistance was to 
be expected from France — a mission to which Marl- 
borough's victory of Ramillies in May of this year 
ensured an unfavourable reply.^ 

To the certainty of Jacobite, and also of Episcopal^ 
opposition, was added no little anxiety as to the attitude 
of the Church ; for, whilst such leading Presbyterians as 
Marchmont and Cockburn of Ormiston — ^the latter a 
recent convert^ — supported the treaty, it was impossible 
to know what eflfect would be produced on the clergy 
and the laity by the appeals of Unionist and anti- 
Unionist pamphleteers, the first of whom asserted that 
nothing but union could secure the Protestant interest, 
and the second that such a measure would bring 

^Lockhart Papers, i. 147-150 ; Hooke Correspondence, i. 208-212. 

* Jervisioood Correspondence, p. 156 ; Carstares State Papers, pp. 744, 748. 



PARLIAMENT MEETS 125 

Presbytery to ruin. Another factor supposed to be 
doubtful, but. which had really been determined, was 
the action of the Squadrone. We have seen that the 
leaders of this party had been excluded from the 
Commission, on which apparently they had no great 
wish to serve ; but, though reluctant to depart from the 
policy which they had hitherto advocated, that a settle- 
ment of the succession with limitations should precede a 
treaty of union, they had decided, as we learn from 
their private correspondence, that the Union was their 
'''only game." On December 15, 1705, Roxburgh, who 
had already expressed himself to this effect, wrote to 
Baillie, " The more I think of union, the more I like it." 
Baillie on the same day wrote that " wise men will be 
forced to drink the potion to prevent greater evils " ; 
and in the following April he reported that such of his 
friends as he had conversed with seemed to hold the 
same view.^ 

The Duke of Queensberry, who had piloted King 
William's Government through the storms of the Darien 
agitation, was selected in this still graver crisis to steer 
that of Queen Anne ; and the last session of the last 
Scottish Parliament opened under his auspices as Com- 
missioner on October 3, 1706. On that day the twenty- 
five articles, having been presented and read, were 
ordered to be printed, as also were the minutes of 
proceedings ; and, in order to facilitate its digestion of 
the treaty, the House then adjourned for a week.^ This 
interval was very welcome to the anti-Unionist leaders 
who hoped to turn it to account in fomenting the 

^ Jerviswood Correspondence, pp. 141, 142, 147, 152. 

^ Defoe says that '*in this janctare" Hodges' Third Treatise appeared, 
and '' was industriously spread over all the Kingdom in a few days." It 
had been written, in answer to Paterson's Enquin/, before the articles 
were disclosed. 



126 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

popular wrath ; when Parliament re-assembled, some of 
them, not remarkable for piety, began to talk of a 
national fast ; and, though they &iled to carry a pro- 
posal that members should have time to consult their 
constituents, or to postpone the consideration of the 
treaty by pleading for a further delay of only eight 
days, they were no great losers by their defeat, since 
the Government consented, in order to give ample scope 
for discussion, that the articles should be debated in 
order as they were read, but that none of them should 
be voted till all had been discussed. The treaty, which 
had been more or less known to the public for twelve 
days, was thus canvassed in detail, within Parliament 
and without, from October 15 to October 30, whilst 
nothing as yet was being done to determine its fate. 
At such a juncture the Commission of the General 
Assembly was not disposed to be silent; and its utterances, 
by calling attention to the gravity of the crisis, must 
necessarily have intensified the general excitement and 
suspense. The members of the Commission had already 
appointed the 18 th to be observed by themselves and 
whoever should join them as a day of prayer, in view of 
"the great and weighty affairs now in agitation"; on 
the 22nd they drew up a circular letter recommending 
every presbytery to appoint a day of fasting and inter- 
cession within its bounds; and the service held at 
Edinburgh on the 31st, in compliance with this request > 
was rendered doubly impressive by the presence of the 
members of the Government, including the Commissioner 
himself Grateful as they were for this action on the 
part of the Church, the anti-Unionists would have been 
still more pleased if the Commission had provoked a 
conflict in Parliament by applying for the sanction of 
the civil power, and if the national significance of the 



RIOT AT EDINBURGH 127 

fast had been emphasised by its being held throughout 
the country on one day.^ 

The populace of Edinburgh, however, was now in 
such a mood that these additional incitements could 
easily be spared. Hearty cheers were raised outside the 
Parliament House when, the voting of the articles 
having been deferred, a statement that the first article 
had not been voted was interpreted to mean that it had 
been thrown out; Queensberry was daily cursed and 
hooted in the streets, whilst Hamilton was greeted with 
tumultuous applause ; and these demonstrations culmi- 
nated, as was to be expected, in a serious riot. On 
the evening of October 23, after a long debate on the 
18th article, which provided that the law as to fiscal 
matters should be the same in Scotland as in England, 
a great crowd assembled in the Parliament Close. 
Hamilton, on entering his sedan-chair, was surrounded 
as usual by a band of youthful enthusiasts who proposed 
to * escort him in triumph, as they had done on the 
previous evening, to his rooms in Holyrood Palace ; but 
Hamilton on this occasion went up the High Street to 
visit the Duke of Athol ; and, whilst waiting for his 
re-appearance, the mob attacked the house of Sir 
Patrick Johnston, the late Provost and one of the 
Commissioners for the Union — ^an attack which was 
frustrated by a detachment of the town-guard ; and, 
their numbers having greatly increased, they put out 
the lights and roamed at pleasure through the town, 
insulting Unionist members on their way home, and 
breaking their windows. About midnight the rioters 
were joined by a number of sailors from Leith ; and, 
though troops had already been sent down from the 
Castle, the tumult was not suppressed till the town, in 

* Defoe, pp. 233-235, 285-291, 606-608 ; Hume's Diary, p. 177. 



128 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

the early morning, had been occupied by a battalion of 
Foot-Guards. Next day a proclamation was issued, 
ordering the streets to be cleared in the event of any 
future disturbance, and indenmifying the military, after 
notice had been given to that effect, for any violence 
they might find it necessary to use ; and henceforward 
elaborate precautions were taken to maintain order in 
the town. At the conclusion of each sitting the public 
were excluded from the Parliament Close ; troops were 
stationed here and at various other points, in addition 
to the usual garrisons at Holyrood and the Castle ; a 
double line of musketeers secured the passage of the 
Commissioner to the Cross ; and he drove from thence 
to the Palace with a detachment of Horse-Guards, and 
frequently also of Foot-Guards, surrounding his coach. 
These measures, intended to secure the freedom and 
independence of Parliament, were naturally denounced 
by the Opposition as an attempt to overawe its debates.^ 
Whilst such ebullitions of popular feeling were 
taking place out of doors, the desultory discussion of 
the treaty in Parliament was wearing to a close ; and 
on October 30 the 25th and last article was reached. 
At the next sitting on November 1, in order to dis- 
tinguish anti-Unionists from those who objected only 
to the terms of the treaty, Marchmont proposed that 
a vote should be taken on the first article, which pro- 
vided that the two kingdoms should be united under 
the name of Great Britain ; and this gave rise to a 
memorable debate which extended over three days. 
The Opposition urged that the further consideration of 
the treaty should be postponed till the sentiments of 
the English Parliament were known, and they also 

1 Defoe, pp. 237-240, 292, 610 ; Portland Manuscripts, iv. 340-341 ; 
Lockhart, i. 162-165. 



THE FIRST ARTICLE CARRIED 129 

renewed their former plea, enforced by the earUest of 
many addresses agamst the Union, that members should 
be allowed to consult their constituents. When, in 
spite of these arguments, it was proposed to consider 
the first article, and after that an Act for the security 
of the Church, on the understanding that, if the other 
articles were not agreed to, the approbation of the first 
should be of no effect, they supported the counter- 
proposal of Stewart of Pardovan, an ultra-Presbyterian, 
that the interests of the Church should be considered 
before any of the articles were voted ; and when this 
also failed, they completed their inconsistency as 
Jacobites and Episcopalians — for most of them were 
both — ^by opposing the first article on the ground that 
it conflicted with that revolutionary charter, the Claim 
of Sight On Saturday, November 2, in the course of 
a debate which lasted firom eleven in the forenoon till 
it was adjourned at eight at night, Seton of Pitmedden 
made an able speech in defence of the Union, and 
Belhaven attacked it in the greatest and most popular, 
if also the most turgid and over-strained, of all his 
political harangues.^ On Monday* the Opposition 
brought forward a motion asserting their willingness 
to unite with England on such terms as should pre- 
serve the Scottish monarchy and constitution; and 
before the vote was taken, they discounted their defeat 
by presenting a protest against the abolition of the 
national Parliament. In support of the Government 
the Squadrone mustered all but two of their 24 votes ; 
and as 115 members voted for incorporation, and 83 

1 '* A speech contrived to incense the common people," wrote Seafield, 
**it had no great influence in the House." 

'Defoe recalls at great length that this d&y, November 4, was the 

anniversary of King William's birth and of his arrival in Torbay. In 

point of facf. William did not arrive there till November 6. 

I 



130 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

against it, the first article would have been rejected 
by a majority of 12, had they sided with the Opposi- 
tion. 

From November 4 to November 12 the House was 
occupied with legislation for securing the government 
of the Church, against which as insufficient a good many 
Episcopalians had the audacity to protest. In order 
to avoid a schism in their own ranks on the question 
of the succession, and as speedily as possible to dis- 
credit the Union by exposing what they considered 
its fiscal inequality, the Opposition proposed to proceed 
at once to the fourth and subsequent articles which 
related to taxes and trade. Outvoted in this, they 
moved to re-assert the principle of the Act of Security, 
that the Scottish should not be the English successor, 
except on suitable conditions; and Hamilton went so 
far as to support a proposal of the Marquis of Annan- 
dale that an address should be presented to the Queen, 
asserting the willingness of the nation on such con- 
ditions to settle the succession in the Protestant line. 
On November 15 the second article, recognising the 
Princess Sophia as Anne's successor, was passed. The 
third article, providing that the United Kingdom should 
be represented in one and the same Parliament, com- 
pleted the general principle of the Union ; and this was 
carried, after a warm debate, on November 18.^ 

1 Defoe, pp. 306-364; Lockhart, i. 179-190; Hume's Diary^ p. 179; 
Marchmont Papers, iii. 303-309, 329, 427-430 ; Jerviswood CorresponcUnce, 
pp. 167-168; Seafield to Godolphin, November 3 and 7— Add. MSS. 
28055. The editor of the Marchmont Papers is mistaken when he says, 
following Burnet and Laing, that Marchmont was a leader of the 
Squadrone : the letter on which this remark is made shows clearly that 
he was not. So also Seafield : ** The new party continues to act very 
zealously in conjunction with us, as does the Earl of Cromarty and 
Marchmont " ; and Roxburgh makes the same distinction. — Jerviswood 
Correepondence, p. 138. On the other hand, Baillie in one place men- 



ADDRESSES AGAINST THE UNION 131 

These proceedings, to all appearance, were generally 
condemned. Public opinion as opposed to incorporation 
was first formally expressed on October 29, when every 
member on entering the House received a copy of 
certain instructions which had been given by the magis- 
trates and town-council of Lauder to their representative, 
Sir David Cunningham of Milncraig, requiring him to 
dissent firom all the twenty-five articles, and protesting 
that, if he supported the treaty, his vote should be 
void ; and the member for Dumfidesshire was instructed 
by 31 of his constituents to the same effect. The first 
addresses to Parliament against the Union, five in 
number, were presented on November 1 ; and from 
this date to January 10 the House was occupied almost 
every day with the reading of petitions fi:om parishes, 
burghs,^ and shires, beseeching the Estates in nearly 
identical terms not to sanction any incorporating 
union, but to "support and preserve the sovereignty 
and independency of this independent kingdom and the 
rights and privileges of Parliament, which have been 
so valiantly maintained by our heroic ancestors for the 
space of near two thousand years." That some 90 
addresses should have been presented against the Union, 
and not a single address in its favour, is said to have 
produced a very bad impression in England; but the 
phenomenon was not quite so significant as it looked. 
It is, indeed, a mistake to infer^ the artificial character 
of these addresses from the fact that they were cast 

tions Marcbmont as one of the Squadrone. — Ibid. p. 188. The truth 
seeniB to have been that Marchmont, though he usually acted with the 
Squadrone, did not identify himself with it till it had become, like 
himself. Unionist as well as £[anoverian. 

^ An address of Edinburgh citizens was suppressed by the magistrates. 
— Lockhart, i. 168. 

"Burton, viii. 148. 



132 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

in a common form, for the same objection might be 
made to the petitions presented in favour of the African 
and Indian Company during the crisis of the Darien 
agitation, which was undoubtedly genuine, in 1700; 
and Defoe practically admits that if the Unionist 
leaders had attempted to compete in this respect with 
their opponents, at all events after the latter had taken 
the field against them, they would, as they anticipated, 
have suflfered a defeat. It must, however, have been 
easy for Jacobite landowners to procure such expressions 
of opinion, many of which were very sparsely signed, 
from their vassals and dependents ; and, numerous as 
the addresses were, they might easily — considering the 
deluge of anti-Unionist pamphlets, broadsides, and 
speeches — ^have been more numerous still. Of 34 
shires, only 13 addressed ; of 66 burghs, only 17 ; of 
938 parishes, only 60; of 68 presbyteries, only 3. 
The most influential of the addresses, and the one which 
had most weight in England, was from the Convention 
of Royal Burghs ; but only 44 burghs were represented 
at the Convention, of which 24 voted in favour of 
addressing, and 20 against it ; and these last are said 
to have been more populous than both the 24 that 
favoured the address and the 22 that were absent, 
Edinburgh excepted. On the whole, it would seem 
that a very large section of the middle and lower 
classes was decidedly hostile to the Union, and that 
a more important, if a smaller, section was disposed 
to hold aloof ^ 

The anti-Unionist sentiment, whatever its real 
strength, was of a lively, not to say combustible type ; 
and it greatly exasperated the populace of Edinburgh 
to see the betrayers of their country, day after day, 

^ Defoe, passim; Boyer's Annals, v. 348-352, 424; Burnet, ▼. 290. 



RIOTS AT EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW 133 

going on stolidly with their work, whilst Hamilton 
and Fletcher declaimed against them, and Belhaven on 
his " bended knees " implored them to stop, whilst 
the table was heaped with addresses, of which Argyll 
proposed to make kites, and whilst indignant patriots, 
not content with mere opposition, insisted on recording 
their dissent. The Commissioner was daily insulted ; 
alarming letters reached him, in several of which he 
was warned of plots against his life ; and even his 
military escort did not always preserve him from 
actual assault. On November 18, when the House 
adjourned at a late hour after passing the third 
article, the mob closed in upon his coach ; stones were 
hurled at him— one of which bruised his hand— from 
windows and roofis; several of his attendants were 
wounded or beaten ; and, the horses or the postilion 
taking fright, the strange spectacle was seen of Her 
Majesty's Commissioner driving furiously to the 
Palace, surrounded by galloping horsemen and panting 
Foot-Guards, and with the multitude hallooing at his 
heels. ^ 

Two days later, the articles of union were publicly 
burned by an armed force at Dumfries ; and about the 
same time a disturbance, less remarkable for its 
violence than for its duration, was in progress at 
Glasgow. That town had long been in a state of 
chronic revolt owing to the reftisal of the council in 
its corporate capacity to petition against the Union ; 
and on November 7, after one of the ministers had 
preached an inflammatory sermon, the mob rose, 
seized some muskets from the Provost's house, and 
induced or forced the townspeople to send up an 

^Portland ManuioripUj iv. 362; LuttrelPs Brief Relation^ vL 110; 
Hume's Dvaary^ p. 184. 



134 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

anti-Unionist address. Soon afterwards, enraged by 
the arrest of one of their number, they made a fresh 
assault on the Provost, who narrowly escaped. The 
rioters were held in check for several days by a com- 
pany of citizen volunteers ; and, some 45 of them 
having marched out to a general rendezvous of the 
disaffected at Hamilton, Parliament on the following 
day, November 30, suspended the clause of the Act 
of Security which provided for the arming of the 
people. The proclamation of this Act at Glasgow 
caused a new and more serious riot, in which the 
Tolbooth was broken open, and many houses were 
ransacked for arms; but the men who had gone to 
Hamilton, having met with no support there, dis- 
banded on their return ; and on the same day, 
December 5, their leaders were arrested and carried to 
Edinburgh by a detachment of dragoons.^ 

The Government, in applying to Parliament to sus- 
pend during this session the monthly levies authorised 
by the Act of Security, had been actuated by fear of 
more formidable opposition than that of a Glasgow 
mob. Major Cunningham of Ecket, one of the council 
of seven which had misgoverned the first Darien 
settlement, had devised a scheme for uniting in 
opposition to the Union the Jacobites of the north 
and the Cameronians of the south-west; and, un- 
natural as such a conjunction was — the more so as 
Ker of Kersland, the Cameronian leader, having been 
won over by Queensberry, was at pains to prejudice 
his followers against their new allies — it is said to 
have been due only to the timidity of Hamilton, who 
at the last moment countermanded the rising, that 
the Glasgow rioters, on reaching the place of that 

1 Defoe, pp. 266-28a 



ABORTIVE JACOBITE DESIGNS 135 

name, were not welcomed by a well-armed force of 
some 7000 men. This design having failed, perhaps 
because Hamilton was aware that English troops were 
concentrating at Berwick, another was set on foot, 
according to which the subscribers of addresses, or at 
all events the anti-Unionist gentry, were to come in a 
body to Edinburgh to entreat the Commissioner to 
give up the treaty or at least to grant such a recess 
as should enable them to apply for a new Parliament 
to the Queen ; but Hamilton defeated this project 
also by insisting, in order to facilitate the opposition 
of the Tories to the Union in the English Parliament, 
that the petitioners should express their willingness 
to accept the Hanoverian succession ; and when at his 
own suggestion it had been resolved that the anti- 
Unionist members, after protesting against the 22nd 
article which determined the representation of Scotland 
in the British Parliament, should secede from the 
House, he pleaded toothache as an excuse for staying 
at home, and, this difficulty having at last been over- 
come, raised a new and fatal dispute by refusing 
to allow the protestation to be presented in his 
name.^ 

Unchecked by these abortive demonstrations, the 
work of debating and voting went steadily on. After 
the general principle of the Union had been accepted 
in the first, second, and third articles, the Opposition 
endeavoured to introduce such alterations in detail as 
might be expected to imperil, if not to prevent, its 
adoption in England ; and Defoe professes to have 
been told that they actually prepared schemes of 
objections to be urged in the English Parliament 

1 Lockhart, i. 196-214 ; PorOand ManusonptSy iv. 374, 376, 378 ; Ker of 
Kenland's Memoirsy pp. 30-39. 



136 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

against their own amendments.^ That they failed in 
this attempt was due in great measure to the firmness 
and foresight of Queensberry and his colleagues, who, 
as soon as the first article was passed, had drawn up 
a note of the alterations which would be required to 
conciliate the trading interest, and had emphatically 
warned the English Ministers that, without such con- 
cessions, nothing could be done.* In the form in 
which it was ratified by Parliament, the treaty had 
been altered in several minor, but important, respects. 
The fifth article had provided that all foreign-built 
ships should be regarded as British which were owned 
by Scotsmen when the treaty was signed; and this 
term was extended to the ratification of the treaty by 
the Scottish Parliament, that is, from July 22, 1706, 
to January 16, 1707. Two other articles, the sixth 
and eighth, were amended so as to allow Scotland a 
drawback on the exportation of oatmeal, and of beef 
and pork.' The seventh article for the extension to 
Scotland of the English excise, and the eighth,- in so 
far as it related to the salt-tax, were the most un- 
popular of all the commercial stipulations ; and in 
both of these substantial changes were made. The 
Scottish Conmiissioners at Westminster had pleaded 
hard, but in vain, that the Scottish " tippeny ale," 
for purposes of taxation, should be reckoned as equal 
only to the English small-beer ;* and an excise duty 
WM now adopted, on the suggestion of Defoe, which 

1 Defoe, p. 371. 

' Seafield to Qodolphiu, November 7 — Add. MSS. ; Marchfnoni PaperSf 
iii. 433. Halifax, in a letter to Leven of November 21, entreated the 
Scottish Gbvemment to trust England, and not to make too many 
alterations as to trade. — Leven and MehfiUe Correspondenoe, iL 209. 

'The Grovemment divided the Hoose against this, and were beaten. 

^Clerk's Letter to a Friend, etc., pp. 23-24. 



-1 



s 



SCOTTISH AMENDMENTS 137 

placed it midway between small beer and strong. 
With regard to the duty on home-made salt, which 
was to be levied after seven years, it was enacted 
that Scotland, whilst paying the original duty of a 
shilling a bushel, should be exempted from an 
additional duty of 2s. 4d., imposed in the preceding 
reign ; and importers, being liable to the full English 
duty, were permitted to warehouse their salt and to 
pay only in proportion to what Aey took out. The 
malt-tax, granted only till June, 1707, was one of 
the temporary burdens from which Scotland was to 
be free ; but, in order to give definiteness to that 
exemption, it was enacted, in extension of the 14th 
article, that no such impost should be levied during 
the war. Amendments on other articles provided 
that £2000 out of the Equivalent should be devoted 
annually for seven years to the encouragement of the 
woollen manufacture, and that the regalia and public 
and private records should continue to be kept in 
Scotland. The preamble of the Act of Ratification 
recited that a statute had been passed for the security 
of the Scottish ecclesiastical system, which wa,s to be 
'^ a fundamental and essential condition of the union " ; 
and this statute confirmed all the Acts passed in 
fevour of Presbytery at the Revolution, and provided 
that the successors of Queen Anne at their accession 
in all time coming should swear to preserve inviolably 
" the foresaid settlement of the true Protestant 
reUgion, with the government, worship, discipline, 
rights and privUeges of this Church." 

The 22nd article provided that, at the pleasure of 
the Queen, the existing Lords and Commons might 
represent England in the first Parliament of Great 
Britain ; and, in order to balance the privilege thus 



138 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

accorded to the English legislature, and at the same 
time to place the inauguration of the Union in safe 
hands, it was resolved on January 21, 1707, that the 
16 Scottish peers and 45 commoners should be elected 
in the present Parliament. It was afberwards agreed 
that 30 members should be assigned to the shires, 
that Edinburgh should have one member, and that 
the rest of the burghs should be divided into 14 dis- 
tricts, to be represented by one member each. 

The English Parliament had been in session since 
December 3 ; and on January 28, about five weeks 
after the standards and colours taken at the great 
battle of Ramillies had been deposited in Guildhall, 
the Queen announced to both Houses that the Treaty 
of Union, with some additions and alterations, had 
been ratified in Scotland. Marchmont had assured 
Lord Somers that the whole negotiation would be im- 
perilled if the treaty was not returned to the Scottish 
Parliament in the identical form in which it had passed ; 
and this warning was not thrown away. Though the 
Tories, especially in the Upper House, commented 
bitterly on such points as the peril of the Church, 
the degradation of the Scottish peerage, and the 
favour shown to Scotland in the matter of the land- 
tax and the Equivalent, the articles were debated and 
approved without amendment by the Lords in twelve 
days, and by the Commons in a week; and the Bill 
ratifying the treaty was so adroitly drawn, all the 
25 articles and the Act in favour of the Scottish Church 
being thrown into the preamble, that those who had 
intended to propose alterations could find nothing 
to object to but the enacting clause.* The remainder 
of the Bill, which received the royal assent on March 6, 

^ Burnet, ▼. 296, whose account of the statute is a little inaccurate. 



THE UNION ACCOMPLISHED 139 

consisted of an Act which had been drafted by the 
bishops in defence of the English Church, and of a 
ratification of the arrangements made by the Estates 
for the representation of Scotland.^ 

On March 19 the Commissioner presented to the 
Estates a copy of the English Act of Union, which 
was then read and recorded ; on the 25th he adjourned^ 
or in other words dissolved, the Parliament; and on 
April 2 he set out for London. Dismissing his Scottish 
retinue at Dunbar, he proceeded, almost unattended, 
to Berwick, where he was received " with great pomp 
and solemnity"; and thenceforward his journey 
resembled a royal progress, the magistrates of every 
town and the nobility and gentry of every county 
on the route coming out to do him honour. At Barnet 
he was greeted by a splendid company of Ministers 
and nobles; and having made a public entry into 
London on April 16, attended by 46 coaches and 
several hundred horsemen, he was waited upon at his 
residence the same evening by all the members of the 
Government, with the Lord Treasurer Godolphin at 
their head. The accomplishment of a measure which 
was to give a more imperishable lustre to her reign 
than, the fading laurels of Blenheim and Ramillies 
was necessarily credited to Queen Anne ; congratulatory 
addresses poured in upon her from almost every cor- 
poration and town ; and on the morning of May 1, 
the first to dawn upon a United Kingdom, she drove 
in state through the City to a thanksgiving service 
in St. Paul's Cathedral, at which the Te Dewm was 
sung to the accompaniment of the guns at the Tower 
and St. James's Park. On this day, as on that on 
which the Union Bill received the royal assent, there 

^ PaHiaTnenUxry ffistort/y v. 651-578. 



140 THE UNION, 1706-1707 

were many popular demonstrations of joy ; for amongst 
the vast majority of the nation an intense feeling 
of thankfulness prevailed that the back-entrance which 
had so long threatened its safety was at last to be 
secured, and that Great Britain, in the words of a 
great Scottish statesman who in earlier days had 
laboured for the attainment of that high ideal, was 
henceforth to be a " monarchy by itself in the ocean, | 

divided from the rest of the world/* ^ 

1 Clerk's Memoirs, pp. 67-69 ; Beyer's Annals^ vi. 223-224 ; CarsUereg 
State Papers, p. 760. Boyer gives an interesting account of liow the 
Union was celebrated at Venice. In September, 1707, the Earl of 
Manchester, British Ambassador-Extraordinary, made his state entry 
into that city, escorted by sixty senators, each in his own gondola. On 
the prow of one of the ambassador's galleys, behind an equestrian statae 
of St George in burnished steel, were two large figures, embracing and 
bearing respectively the English and the Scottish cross ; the new arms 
were prominently displayed ; and another of the galleys, on approaching 
St. Mark's Place, hoisted the Union colours and fired aU her guns. The 
Union was also celebrated on the festival of St. Anne, by the University 
and corporation of Leipzig.— ilnnoii, vi. 208-210. 



CHAPTEE IV 



THE UNION FROM WITHIN 



^ 



It ^was but natural that the parliamentaiy struggle "" 

wliiclx terminated with the ratification of the Treaty of 

XJnion on January 16, 1707, should have been waged 

with extraordinary fierceness and heat ; for the Scottish 

constitution — ^to use a contemporary phrase — was dying, 

and every one acquainted with its history must have 

anticipated that it would die hard. BaUlie of Jervis- 

wood, turning firom the " great disorder and confusion " 

occasioned by the discussion of the first article to watch 

the gathering tempest out of doors, reported that many 

of the Court party lacked courage, and that the treaty, 

at one stage or another of its progress, would probably 

be " thrown out."^ " The union," wrote Defoe to Harley, 

a week later, is "yet a dark prospect."* Sir James 

Murray of PhUiphaugh described the condition of the 

House before the voting of the second article as one of 

such "scandalous disorder" — Unionists shouting for a 

division and anti- Unionists clamouring still to be heard — 

that Hamilton, the loudest of the brawlers, was reduced 

to silence only through the failing of his voice;* and Lord 

^ Jerviswaod Correspondence^ p. 168. > Portland Mantucnpts^ iv. 349. 

' Marchmont PaperSy iii. 427. 



142 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

Cromarty, the aged statesman of the Restoration, wrote 
to Godolphin after the riot of November 18, representing 
that the troops might at any moment be overpowered 
by the mob, that the country was arming, that the 
Queen's servants, especially the Commissioner, were " in 
great danger," and urging that Parliament should be 
adjourned.^ The London Cabinet were naturally alarmed 
to find that one at least of their friends at Edinburgh 
was contemplating so fatal a step. Grodolphin told 
them that to suspend consideration of the treaty would 
be to give it up ; Harley praised their constancy and 
exhorted them to persevere ; and Marlborough, though 
evidently most reluctant to send in English troops, 
assured them, after the abortive attempt at Hamilton, 
that a regiment of Horse-Guards was marching towards 
Berwick, and that in case of need all available troops 
on the Border and in the north of Ireland would 
hasten to their aid. " I must confess," wrote Harley 
to Leven, "that your lordship and the rest of you, 
though you have had a hard game to play, yet it 
is a glorious one, and I think I can defy all histories 
you have left to show a parallel instance of so steady 
virtue."^ 

The Grovernment had reason to congratulate them- 
selves on overcoming such difficulties as these ; and it 
is not hard to distinguish some at least of the causes to 

1 MoTchmont Papers^ L 431. This must be the letter to which Burnet 
refers when he says (v. 291) that Queensberry "despaired of sucoeeding," 
and that "one about him" wrote to Gk)dolphin suggesting an adjournment. 
But Cromarty was by no means in the confidence of Queensberry : he had 
been excluded from the late Commission, though he had served on that 
of 1702, and had written slightingly of the Commissioners. — Cromarty 
Corretpond&ncef ii. 19-20. Queensberry's chief adviser was Stair, and 
Stair strongly deprecated the proposal of " some fearful friends to have 
some recess." — Portland ManuscriptSj iv. 359. 

* Cromarty Correspondence, ii. 208, 211. 



THE NOBLES FAVOURABLE TO UNION U3 

which their success was due. On looking over the -^ 
division lists, one sees at a glance that the majority in 
favour of the Union was drawn in very small proportions 
from the second and third of the Estates, and in over- 
whelming numbers from the first ; and, though the 
national spirit of the greater nobles must necessarily 
have been blunted through intercourse with the English 
Court, this result could hardly have been obtained if 
the Crown had not long been at pains to strengthen 
and enlarge its influence amongst the peers, and if the 
present Government, representing that which had been 
in ofl&ce during the whole of King William's reign, had 
not been able to utilise this advantage to the full. Of 
46 peers — to 21 against — who voted for the first article, 
at least 29 were privy councillors, pensioners, ofl&cers or 
oflScials, and 6 more, in addition to 9 of the placemen, 
or 15 in all, had been enrolled or promoted in the 
peerage since the Revolution.^ In one respect the 
Union inflicted greater hardship on the 'nobles than on 
any other class, since only 16, or a fifth or their number, 
were admitted to the Lords, and all of them in virtue of 
their rank were implicitly excluded from the Commons ; 
but the peers as a body were to have the full privilege 
of the English peerage, including that of personal pro- 
tection in cases of debt, which they had hitherto enjoyed 
only during the sitting of Parliament; and many of 
them are said to have been influenced by the hope that, 
like the Duke of Argyll, who had lately been created 

^ Douglas's Peerage^ peusim. For the peers who held commissions in 
the army, see Macpherson's Original Papers, ii. 4-8. Lord Duffiis was a 
captain in the Navy. The Earl of Galloway, though a Commissioner of 
the Treasury, opposed almost all the articles but the first. The Duke of 
Athol and the Marquis of Annandale were the only Opposition peers 
whose titles had been conferred since the Revolution, but the Earl of 
Selkirk (created 1688) had been a zealous adherent of King William. 



144 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

Earl of Greenwich, they would sooner or later obtain 
hereditary seats/ 

It has indeed been maintained that the Union was 
promoted in Parliament by inducements of a much 
more discreditable kind; and the allegation, however 
questionable in itself, has at least a basis of fact. In 
August, 1706, on the ground that debts and current 
expenses could not otherwise be met, a royal warrant 
was issued placing a loan of £20,000 sterling at the 
^ disposal of the Scottish Government ; and this sum was 

actually paid in two instalments of £10,000 each, one 
on October 27 and the other on November 26. Of the 
money thus advanced, over £12,000 was absorbed by 
the Commissioner on account of his equipage and daily 
allowance, and the rest was devoted ostensibly to the 
payment of certain arrears of salary, which had been 
promised to individuals, and which the Government, in 
order to ensure its majority in Parliament, was anxious 
to discharge. Queensberry and his firiends, however, 
knowing how such a transaction was likely to be con- 
strued, induced Godolphin to consent that the Queen's 
letter to the Lords of the Treasury announcing the loan 
should be suppressed, and that the money should be 
secured only on the personal acknowledgment of the 
Treasurer-Depute. This circumstance was naturally 
commented on as suspicious by a Committee of the 
British House of Commons appointed under Tory 
auspices in 1711 to enquire into the public accounts; 
and Lockhart, one of its members, asserts that the 
committee satisfied itself that certain persons were paid 
to whom no arrears were due, and that others, having 
given no receipts, succeeded, when the Equivalent was 
distributed, in establishing fresh claims. Lockhart's 

I Qerk's M88. HiUory, cited by Laing, ii. 907-308. 



THE CHARGE OF BRIBERY 145 

imputationy however, is discounted to some extent by 
the fact that the Duke of Athol, who is said to have 
received £1000, opposed the Union in Parliament, and 
that several persons mentioned in his list of beneficiaries 
were not members of the House. Scottish politics were 
corrupt enough, as we shall see ; but in this case, after 
all deductions are made, the sum available for direct 
bribery must have been exceedingly small; and it 
certainly would have argued an extraordinary pitch of 
virtue in the Scottish Ministers, if the Crown had 
allowed the prospects of the Union in Parliament to be 
prejudiced, when it could secure them by so innocent a 
stratagem as that of paying its debts. ^ 

But/bowever much the acceptance of the Union mav 
have been facilitated by personal, if not by inercgjjj^jj. 

considerations, it will probably become ^PP^rggggioner 
proceed that the measure could never have J^y j^^ j^^j 
if ifc had not been supported on its own^^ q£ Queens- 
group of independent politicians knov^j^^g^ ^^^ ^^ 
Party or Squadrone, and if the anti-jj^j^ds had selected 
in the country had not been pers'tte most beneficial, 
fix>m equally enlightened motives j^^ous, function which 
Church. Amongst those whose ^een called upon to 
was not mainly commercial, th^i^tle of a Presbyterian, ^ 
a sentiment almost amountmg^ ^^^^^ been suspected 
evoked by the wealth and ^^^ ^ourt ; and his repu- 
the victorious progress of he^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^, j^^^ , 
and Admiral Rooke ; some tj)^^^ ^f Marlborough, pro- 

iLockhart,L 262-272; Cobbett's ^^ J^^^^^ ^^.^ luxurious in 
Somerville's Beign of Queen Anne, p.O be avaricious of power, 

Marchmont Papers, Introdaction. Taey as he was liberal in 

character of Lord Boxburgh, Lockhart's 

could claim do arrears and was therefore d . 

must seem very absurd. That money was _. «r.«^a^«. j^ ^«f;^i„ 
• J ^ 11 • lu r • J n \j ^^ opposers do entirely 

mcidentally in the Jermewood Correepondence, p. ggo 



146 THE UNION PROM WITfflN 

like Cromarty, exulted in the prospect of British unity 
and strength ; and not the least influential were those 
who, as they had been foremost in resisting Elnglish 
malice, were slow to believe in English good-will, but 
whose zeal for the honour of their country had not 
blinded them to its real good, and who detested 
the jobbery and corruption through which the fiction 
of national independence had long been maintained. 
•^ Undoubtedly, however, the arguments in favour of 
union which had most weight with the nation at large 
were the concession of that free commerce with Eng- 
land and her colonies which had been coveted and 
demanded in vain for nearly fifty years ; the mitiga- 
tion of the burdens at the cost of which this privilege 
was &^ be obtained; and the assurance of what was, 
comparatively speaking, a large sum of money in com- 
pensation tii^r liability to the English debt. We have 
seen that only two-thirds of the burghs were represented 
at the Conventofon which resolved to petition against 
the Union, that tJie petition was carried by only four 
votes, and that the majority consisted of the smaller 
and less populous toi\-ns. The alterations of the treaty 
efiected by the Scottisii Parliament may seem to be of 
little note ; but the tra^iing interest had set its heart 
on obtaining these conci^^ssions, and the readiness of 
the Ministry to accept, u,nd in some cases even to 
anticipate them, is said to have had a great influence 
in allaying the popular discontent.^ To all who had 
claims on the Crown for pensions or salaries, or who 
depended for their livelihood on such struggling indus- 
tries as Parliament since the Restoration had so often 

*"The entering into these few amendments or explanations mightily 
quiets and eases the minds -'Jf the people, especially of the wiser sort.'' 
— Defoe to Harley, Nove*-iber 28 ; Portland Manuscripts, iv. 361. See 
also Boyer's Annals, v. ?/i. 



THE DUKE OF QUEEXSBEBRY 147 

endeavoured to promote, the Equivalent promised 
to be a great boon; and, though the African and 
Indian Company complained of the price as too 
low at which its privileges were to be purchased 
by the State, Burnet can hardly be wrong in 
assuming that many persons supported the Union 
in the hope of recovering with interest the money 
which had been invested without return for ten 
years, and which otherwise could never be re- 
paid.^ 

In making choice of a nobleman to preside over the -^ 
Union deliberations in Parliament, Queen Anne's advisers 
were naturally disposed to favour one who was the 
head of the Scottish Whigs, who had been the first 
Scotsman to declare for the Revolution, whom William 
at a most critical time had employed as Commissioner, 
and whom for his services in that capacity he had 
rewarded with the Garter ; and the Duke of Queens- 
berry amply justified the wisdom of those who on 
personal as well as on political grounds had selected 
him to discharge what was probably the most beneficial, 
and was certainly the most momentous, function which 
a Scottish statesman had ever been called upon to 
perform. Queensberry, though Uttle of a Presbyterian, ^ 
was a consistent Whig, who had never been suspected 
of corresponding with the exUed Court ; and his repu- 
tation for honour and truthfulness stood high.* Like^ 
his great contemporary, the Duke of Marlborough, pro- 
fuse in his official hospitality, lavish and luxurious in 
his habits, he was reputed to be avaricious of power, 
and as eager in amassing money as he was liberal in 

* Burnet, V. 287-301. 

^ Rep's Memoirs, p. 45. ''His Grace's greatest opposers do entirely 
trust his veracity." — Carstares State Papers, p. 688. 



148 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

spending it ; ^ and this fietalt he combined with not a 
little of Marlborough's serene impassiveness, deft leader- 
ship, and insinuating address. It was said of him in 
1700 that he had "never injured or offended any man 
in his administration " ; ^ his graceful courtesy, his ease 
and affability of manner were universally acknowledged ; 
and contemporary critics may have been deceived by 
an outward complacency and composure which were no 
more than a mask when they described him as apt to 
be influenced by those about him, as indolent and 
wanting in application. At all events, during the 
Darien crisis of 1700^ his friends reported that he 
showed such anxiety and zeal in the King's service 
as to deprive him "of his very sleep" ;* and the mag- 
nificent reception accorded to him in England was no 
more than a just tribute to the masterly manner in 
which, at no small personal risk, he had steered the 
Union through the stormy seas of parliamentary debate 
— to his unruffled serenity of temper under the grossest 
provocation and abuse, to his endeavour, wherever 
possible, to conciliate rather than to overcome, and to 
the inexhaustible patience, watchfulness, and tact with 
which he held together his heterogeneous party, out- 
manoeuvred his opponents, and anticipated their designs. 
Queensberry's success, indeed, was due in great measure 
to the fact that when the Opposition batteries were 
thundering most loudly against him, he had generally 

^Barnet, v. 100, with Lord Dartmouth's note. Cunningham, who 
himself took part in the transaction, says that Queenberry's chief reason 
for procuring the dismissal of the Squadrone Ministry was that they 
had refused to discharge at once his claim on the Treasury for £15,000, 
insisting ^t the money should be paid in the usual way by periodical 
instalments under several heads. — Hutory^ i. 415. See also Jervitwood 
Correspondencey pp. 55, 82-83. 

^ Carstares State Papers, p. 515. 

^Jbid, p. 558. See also pp. 560, 566, 652. 



THE DUKE OF ARGYLL U9 

contrived to extract all but the powder from their guns. 
He frustrated the proposed coalition of Jacobites and 
ultra-Presbyterians by engaging to thwart it, not only 
Ker of Kersland, the Cameronian leader, but even 
Cunningham of Ecket, the projector of the scheme;^ 
he knew how to work upon the hopes and fears of 
Hamilton, who was sometimes closeted with him for 
four hours at a stretch ; * and nothing can be more pro- 
bable than the statement of Lockhart that he prevented 
the protest and secession of the anti-Unionist members 
by pointing out to Hamilton, who had large estates 
in both countries, that if the measure were executed, 
the English Grovemment would lay the blame on him.* 

We have seen that the Duke of Argyll had 
represented the Queen at the preceding session ; and, 
though his duties in Holland, where he commanded 
the Scottish Brigade, may have been the ostensible 
reason why he was not re-appointed as Commissioner,* 
we may be sure that there were reasons more pertinent 
than this. Argyll, who had served as a colonel at the 
precocious age of sixteen,^ had won distinction at 
BamilUes and was to win more at Oudenarde and 

1 Clerk IfSS.j quoted hj SomerviUe, p. 219, note. This no doabt is 
why Cunningham, a professed opponent of the Union, appears in 
Lockhart's list as having received £100. Lockhart disbelieved in his 
treachery, but Clerk's testimony from personal knowledge is conclusive. 

* Portland MamucriptSy iv. 347. 

'Lockhart, i. 214. For Queensberrj's character see Defoe, p. 211, 
Lockhart, L 44, Boyer^s Annals^ v. 371-372, Clerk's MemairSy and Macky's 
Charactera. Only one of his letters during the Union deliberations in 
Parliament appears to have been published — Marchmant FaperSy iii. 438 ; 
and, so far as I have been able to ascertain, there are none in the 
British Museum. After the Union he was created Duke of Dover in 
the British peerage, and received a pension of £3000. 

* Luttrell's Brief Rdation, vi. 43 ; The Soots Brigade in Holland, ii. 6. 

* Crawford's Peerage, p. 22. 



150 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

Malplaquet,^ possessed, indeed, other qualifications for 
the post than those of a strong will and invincible 
courage. He was accused of avarice, being economical, 
if not parsimonious, in his habits,^ and his subsequent 
career in the British Parliament was extremely erratic ; 
but, as described by a politician so much opposed to 
him as Lockhart, who, however, was his personal Mend, 
though brilliant rather than solid, passionate and head- 
strong, he was ** a very well accomplished gentleman " 
whose word was his bond, incapable of servility or 
dissimulation, and of a "cheerful, lively temper."* On 
one occasion he quieted and partially converted a mob 
of anti-Unionists who had beset the Parliament House, 
and who, on his appearance at the door, had exclaimed 
that they knew him only as Earl of Greenwich ;* and 
it is not surprising that the populace of Edinburgh 
should have been^ thus/ influenced by a man whose 
graces of speech, of voice, of person, and of manner 
were to win for him in after days the unstinted 
applause of one of the most fastidious of critics. " The 
late Duke of Argyle," wrote Lord Chesterfield, " though 
the weakest reasoner, was the most pleasing speaker 
I ever heard in my life. He charmed, he warmed, 
he forcibly ravished the audience ; not by his matter 
certainly, but by his manner of delivering it. A most 
genteel figure, a graceful noble air, an harmonious voice, 
an elegancy of style and a strength of emphasis, con- 

^ In this desperate battle, in which he led the British attack, his '* coat 
is said to have been cut and shot through in many places." — Cunningham, 
ii. 261. Among the killed was the Marquis of Tullibardine who had 
succeeded him in command of the Scottish Brigade. 

2 Campbell's Life of Argyll, 1745, pp. 347-348 

3 Lockhart, i. 110. 

* Boyer's AnnaUy v. 380. 



HIS FIBRY TEMPER 151 

spired to make him the most affecting, persuasive, 
and applauded speaker I ever saw."^ 

Argj^U's fine gifts were, however, marred by defects 
of judgment and temper which may in some measure be 
ascribed to his youth,^ but which, for the most part, he 
never overcame ; and his conduct at this crisis showed 
plainly what the fate of the Union would have been, had 
its management been entrusted to him. Regardless of 
the public interest, he never disguised his antipathy to 
the Squadrone;^ he insisted that the treaty must be 
carried as it stood, protesting "both in public and private 
against all manner of alterations whatsoever"; and 
when the Government, owing to the defection of some 
of the Queen's servants, was defeated in its resistance 
to the proposal that a drawback should be allowed 
on the exportation of beef and pork, he demanded 
the dismissal of the mutineers, and urged that their 
places should be immediately filled. "My Lord," he 
wrote to Somers, " I am preaching this doctrine here 
every day, but there is too little firmness among us 
to make it relish."* In spite of the remonstrances 
of Queensberry he insisted on fighting a duel with 
the Earl of Crawford, one of his own party; and in 
Parliament, on another occasion, he engaged in a 
violent altercation with the Duke of Athol, in which 
both noblemen lost all sense of decorum, ** giving and 
returning the lie in the open assembly." ' 

^ Letters to his Son, December 6, 1749. Wodrow in 1726 wrote : *' I am 
told the Duke of Argyle is reckoned one of the best speakers in the 
House of Lords." — AnaUcta^ iiL 227. See also ii. 318. 

*See p. 106. 

' Jsrvisnoood CorrespondencSy p. 187, and passim. 

^Hardmcie State Papers^ IL 466-466. See also Ifarchmont Papers^ 
ill. 433. 

* Portland Manuscripts^ iv. 371, 380. 



152 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

If Queensberry, Argyll, and Seafield, whose character 
will shortly be discussed, were the chief official Mrtp- 
porters of the Union, there was a private qi^dber 
whose interest in the measure, and whose ab/wfiKty to 
promote it, were believed to be even greater thaf en theirs. 
Sir John Dalrymple, first Earl of Stair, was iil'^t most 
unpopular statesman of the day ; and the feeling aga>fc7*nst 
him was of older origin, and must be ascribed to caus>^s 
more widely operative, than his responsibility for the 
massacre of Glencoe, which, however, was such a blot 
on his reputation that, though he succeeded his father 
as Viscount three and a half years later, in November, 
1695, he did not propose to take his seat in Parliament 
tiU 1698, and, having been dissuaded from that attempt, 
did not actually take it till February, 1700. The 
Jacobites remembered that he had accepted office under 
James VIL, and had encouraged him in his use of 
the dispensing power, in order, as they believed, to 
bring him to ruin ; the Presbyterians, whose triumph 
he had moderated at the Revolution, complained of 
his lack of zeal ; and nationalists of all sections 
denounced him as favourable to English influence in 
Scotland, and as insensible, if not hostile, to the 
national honour. In 1701 he was taken to task for 
having said in the House that an Act of the Scottish 
Parliament " was but a decreet of the Baron Court,** 
and, though excused on his plea that the representa- 
tion in Scotland was feudal, he was "desired not to 
use such an expression again " ;^ and, after the Act 
of Security in 1703 had been adopted in defiance 
of the Crown, he was charged with having pro- 
posed that Scotland should be occupied with 
English troops, and that the Estates should not be 

1 Hume's Diary ^ pp. 51-52. 



THE EARL OF STAIR 153 

allowed to meet during the remainder of the Queen s 
reign. ^ 

If such were his real sentiments, no man was better 
fitted to give eflFect to them than Stair. In an assembly 
so embarrassed with eloquence as the last Scottish 
Parliament, he was accounted the most powerfiil, 
copious, spirited, and incisive speaker ; Defoe calls 
him " the greatest man of counsel in the kingdom of 
Scotland " ; and Lockhart, whilst vilifying him as " the 
Judas of his country," allows him to have been "a 
man of very great parts," excelling in imagination, in 
quickness of apprehension and solidity of judgment, 
good-natured, and " extremely facetious and diverting " 
in private life.* His opinion carried the greatest weight "* 
both with Queensberry at Edinburgh and at the English 
Court ; but, though on the accession of Queen Anne 
he received an earldom and a seat in the Privy Council, 
no office or pension was ever bestowed upon him ; and, 
considering the state of political morality at that time 
in Scotland, it must be reckoned an extraordinary proof 
of Lord Stair's consistency and public spirit, that, 
during the fifteen years of effacement which followed 
his enforced resignation of the Secretaryship in 1692, 
he never tampered with Jacobite intrigues and never 
stooped to factious opposition. During the late stormy 
session, defying the danger of assassination in which 
he fully believed,* and ' insisting that Parliament must 
not be adjourned, he laboured as "a volunteer" in 
the cause of the Union with an earnestness and a 
solicitude which "allowed him no time to take care 
of his health";* and to such strenuous exertions he 
succumbed within sight, or rather within reach, of the 

1 Lockhart, i. 8S. « Lockhart, i. 88-89. 

^Portland Manuscripts, iv. 369. ^Marehmant Papers, iii. 447. 



154 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

goal. On January 7, in the debate on the 22nd 
article which fixed the representation of Scotland in 
the British Parliament, he excelled and over-taxed him- 
self in what Cunningham calls " a very distinguished," 
and Defoe "an extraordinary speech." Returning home 
exhausted, he wrote a letter to Harley, informing him 
that the article had been passed, and that the whole 
treaty would probably be finished next week;^ and 
early on the following morning he was struck with 
apoplexy, and was found dead in his bed.' 

It is a remarkable testimony to the intense nation- 
alism of the Scots, that this sentiment should not 
only have sustained them in the unequal struggle 
with England for two centuries and a half, but should 
have either inspired, or in the long run absorbed, 
almost every great movement, secular or religious, 
which agitated the country from the conclusion of 
that struggle to the accomplishment of the Union in 
1707. The only exception would seem to be the 
demand for spiritual independence initiated almost 
unconsciously by Knox, and pursued as an end in 
itself by a minority of the ministers under the leader- 
ship of Andrew Melville. This demand had been 
silenced, if not extinguished, by James VI. before his 
accession to the English throne; and, in whatever 
degree it may have survived to give an impetus to 
the militant Puritanism of the seventeenth century, 
it was quickened and finally overpowered by the 
dominant spirit. When we examine the religious 
agitation which continued from the Service-Book riots 

^See this letter in Portland ManuscripUy iv. 379. It conclades, ^'I 
wish you many happy new years.'' 

^Portland ManuscripU^ iv. 380. Mr. Henderson does ample justice to 
Lord Stair in the Dictionary of National Biography, 



SCOTTISH NATIONALITY 155 

in 1637 to the Revolution, we find that it originated 
in the attempt to introduce into Scotland the Anglican 
forms of Church government and worship, that it 
languished with the endeavour of the ministers to 
improve the victory, won for them by the nation, at 
the expense of the State, and that it faded into insig- 
nificance as soon as ecclesiastical differences were found 
to obstruct the national resistance to Cromwell at Dun- 
bar, Inverkeithing, and Worcester. The real power 
of Scottish nationality, however, is seen most con- 
spicuously in the apparent paradox that a sentiment, 
which had proved its efficacy as a motive of separation, 
was to be equally efficacious as an incentive to union. 
As in the days of the Reformation an alliance with 
France intended to resist English aggression had 
developed, through French misrule, into a permanent 
reconciliation with England, so in the beginning of the 
eighteenth century the attempt to emancipate Scottish 
commerce from the restraints imposed upon it by the 
English navigation laws had caused a breach between 
the two nations, which nothing short of a legislative 
union could be expected to heal; and what Catholicism 
had done to compel agreement in the former case, 
Jacobitism did now. 

The chief obstacle, therefore, to union consisted in 
this, that the nationality of Scotland, at all events 
in its traditional form, was to be surrendered as the 
result of that very chain of causes which had developed 
it to even more than its normal strength ; and another 
obstacle, hardly less serious, may be found in the fact 
that the Scottish Parliament was to be abolished just 
when it had entered on a new era of greater freedom 
and vigour. The Parliament of Scotland, owing pro- 
bably to its feudal character, had never been an 



156 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

instrument of consitutional progress ; but, after the 
Revolution, it had shaken off the Committee of the 
Articles, which from 1467, with the exception of 
eleven years under the Covenant, 1640-1651, had 
completely engrossed its legislative power ;^ and the 
stormy debates provoked by the Darien project and 
the project of union prove it to have become no im- 
perfect representation of the national life. The new 
constitution, however, was subject to abuses, different 
in kind, but hardly less serious than those which had 
vitiated the old. Owing to a lack of all authoritative 
precedent, the methods of procedure were extremely 
irregular and confused. A measure might be intro- 
duced entire, like the Treaty of Union, and voted in 
detail, or, like the Act of Security, it might be built 
up, clause by clause, on a general resolution of a dozen 
words; as the House had no leader, and, the Grovern- 
ment no collective responsibility, a motion was fire- 
quently submitted in several alternative forms, known 
as "states of a vote," to decide between which a 
preliminary division was required ; ^ and debates con- 
ducted in this manner might often be summed up in 
the words of a contemporary diarist: "The day was 
spent in jangling, and nothing done."* 

Such defects, the fruits of immaturity, might in 
time have suggested their own cure ; but there was 
another evil, far more serious, which was almost 

^The Committee originated in 1367, but its appearance during the 
next century is intermittent. See Bait's Scottish Parliament^ pp. 31, 40, 
47, 49-60. 

> " They plead it as a privilege 6f the members to give in a state of 
a question, and demand a vote upon it; and if it did not please, any- 
other might give another state, and vote which should be the question." — 
Carstarea State PaperSy p. 691. 

'Hume's Diary , p. 194. 



CORRUPT INFLUENCE INEVITABLE 157 

certain to continue so long as a Parliament at Edin- 
burgh had to be harmonised with a Government which 
took its orders from London. It was through the 
Committee of the Articles, the election of which was 
practically in its hands, that the Crown had been 
accustomed to control the House, and the abolition 
of that Committee caused a constitutional deadlock 
precisely similar to that which was to be produced in 
Ireland in 1782 by the repeal of the law which gave 
to the English Government the initiative in legis- 
lation. In order to secure a working agreement 
between an executive and a legislature which were 
always independent and frequently antagonistic, Pitt, 
who never bribed in England, was forced to bribe 
largely in Ireland ; and Scottish statesmen, confronted 
with the same difficulty, had recourse almost in- 
evitably to the same, or a very similar, device. We 
have seen that Queensberry in the year 1700 suggested 
that £1000 for purposes of secret service should be 
placed to his credit at the Bank of England, and 
stated that he had already disposed in this way of 
£500 ; and whoever has studied the Carsta/res State 
Pa/pers must be aware, from many scattered notices, 
how widely a system, if not of direct bribery, at all 
events of corrupt influence prevailed. Lord Napier, 
on the principle that " young people of quality should 
be encouraged " asks that his son, like himself, should 
have a pension, or, at all events, the office of Master 
of the Works ; Annandale demands a marquisate, and 
is gratified meanwhile with an addition to his 
pension, which, in the opinion of Queensberry, will 
" not make the King one whit surer of him than he 
was without it " ; the Countess Marischal will answer 
for the fidelity of her husband at the considerable 



158 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

price of £300 steriing, and succeeds in extorting 
£500 ; the Mastership of Works, coveted by Lord 
Napier for his son, may be used to "take oflF" Sir 
Francis Scott ; the Eari of Mar, because his " genius 
lies that way," wants a seat on the bench, and the 
pension, which doubtless the King had intended to 
give him, will be available to "take off" an avowed 
opponent ; the Duke of Argyll, father of the Unionist, 
and a most persistent solicitor for his kinsmen, com- 
plains that several rogues have pensions, whilst his 
two brothers have none ; and he offers to send a 
schedule of places and pensions by which thirty 
members of Parliament may be detached from the 
Opposition. " In short," writes Queensberry, in 1700, 
after reviewing the condition of the political market, 
" if money could be had, I would not doubt of success 
in the King's business here." ^ 

Money that could be used to purchase votes was little 
more plentiful in 1706 than in 1700, and we have seen 
that the traffic which promoted the Union was mainly 
of the usual and less disreputable type. It should be 
noted, indeed, that an anti-Unionist pamphleteer 
hesitates to endorse the statement that over 80 
members were influenced by what they held of the 
Government or by what they expected to get ; * but 
the motives of many of the nobles who supported the 
treaty may fairly be inferred from their conduct after 
it had passed. " The great men," wrote Defoe to 
Harley in April, 1707, "are posting to London for 
places and honours, every man full of his own merit, 
and afraid of every one near him. I never saw so 
much trick, sham, pride, jealousy, and cutting of 

1 Carstares State PaperSy pp. 466, 523, 538, 564, 585, 599, 619, 704. 
^Some Qtteriei, etc.y relative to the Union, 



CX)RRUPnON IN THE LAW COURTS 159 

friends' throats as there is among the noble men."^ 
In such ignoble rivalry a great national tradition, 
confined within provincial limits, was fretting itself 
to death ; and, with such a picture before us, we can 
heartily sympathise with those whose chief argument 
for the Union was that it would put an end to this 
unhealthy competition, and leave Scotsmen at liberty 
*'to live at peace and ease, and mind their affairs 
and the improvement of their country — a much better 
employment than the politics."* 

The partiality, and even corruption, which we meet 
with occasionally in the law-courts must be ascribed 
to other causes than the independence of legislature 
and executive ; but, so long as that system continued, 
and the judges were not excluded from Parliament, 
Kttle integrity could be expected either on the bench 
or at the bar. From an Act passed in 1693 it appears 
that the judge whose turn it was to sit as Lord 
Ordinary sometimes returned to his colleagues in the 
Inner-House, and sometimes remained with them, in 
order to influence the judgment of the court ; and, 
as Cromarty, when Lord Clerk-Register, had not 
scrupled to tamper with the minutes of Parliament, 
it can excite no surprise that decisions pronounced by 
the judges were frequently altered by the clerk. In 
1693 the Solicitor-General, Sir William Lockhart, after 

* Portland MamucriptSy iv. 398. 

'Mar to Cromarty, June 25, 1706: Cromarty Correspondencej ii. 20, 
Mar himself was a mere placeman, and the sentiment he expresses was 
that of much better men. Corruption, of course, flourished in the English, 
and still more, under the auspices of Walpole and of Bute, in the British 
Parliament. But corruption did come to an end at Westminster when, 
through the growth of Cabinet government, the executive and the legis- 
lature had been brought into accord ; and such a result could hardly have 
been obtained either in Scotland or in Ireland by any other means than a 
legislative union. 



160 THB UNION FROM WITHIN 

taking 17 guineas from Lord Fraser to prosecute one 
of the witnesses against him, accepted 10 guineas 
from this witness to let him alone; and it was 
alleged in 1700 that whenever a Jacobite was to be 
accused of treason, the ** whole party" subscribed to 
buy oflf the prosecuting counsel^ 

The average Scottish politician, who looked for 
advancement to such a patron as Queensberry, usually 
made shipwreck of his fortunes when he attempted, 
as he often did, to attach himself to more parties 
than one; and nothing is more remarkable in the 
career of Lord Seafield than the invariable success 
with which he contrived, in popular parlance, to run 
with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Contem- 
poraries describe him as " not sincere," as " a man of 
all parties," as ''a blank sheet of paper which the 
Court might fill up with what they pleased " ;* and 
these appreciations are amply corroborated by the 
tenor of his public life. The second son of the Earl 
of Findlater, an impoverished nobleman, he was edu- 
cated for the bar, and at an early age combined politics 
with law. As a member of the Convention Parliament 
in 1689, he made a speech, which attracted much 
notice, in favour of King James, and he was one of 
five members who dissented from the Act by which 
that sovereign was deposed.' Having conformed to 
the Revolution, he soon acquired a large practice as 
an advocate ; became Solicitor-General on the dismissal 
of Sir William Lockhart in 1693, and, three years 
later, Secretary of State; was Commissioner to the 
General Assembly in 1700; and, having been created 

^Act. Pari. ix. 283 ; Carstares State Papers^ pp. 173, 184, 637. 
'See Macky, Cunningham, and Lockhart. 
3 Crawford's Officers of State^ p. 247. 



THE EARL OF SEAFIELD 161 

Viscount Seafield in 1698, exchanged that dignity for 
an earldom in 1701. Soon after the accession of 
Queen Anne he succeeded Marchmont as Chancellor; 
and from this point his suppleness and adaptability 
were signally displayed. He warmly seconded Queens- 
berry in his overtures to the Cavaliers ; united with 
the latter against his chief as soon as he found that 
they had a majority in Parliament ; and on the forma- 
tion of the Tweeddale or Squadrone Administration, 
having deserted the Cavaliers, as he had formerly 
deserted the Whigs, was associated with Roxburgh as 
Secretary of State. When the new Ministry became 
discredited at Court owing to its failure to establish 
the Hanoverian succession, Seafield hastened as usual 
to prostrate himself before the rising sun ; and, having 
been re-appointed Chancellor in place of Tweeddale, he 
deserted in this capacity to Queensberry and the 
English Whigs, leaving Roxburgh and Baillie to de- 
nounce him as "certainly the greatest villain in the 
world." ^ In addition to great knowledge of law and 
of parliamentary tactics, Seafield had many external 
attractions, being "very beautiful in his person, with 
a graceful behaviour, a smiling countenance, and a 
soft tongue";* and the prominence as well as fixity 
of his position amidst the flux and change of political 
administrations will not appear strange, when we con- 
sider that every party, so long as it was prosperous, 
could count on his fidelity and zeal, and that he was 
so complete a courtier as to be perfectly indifi*erent 
to popular censure and applause. In the late reign 
his antipathy to the Darien scheme had been strong 
and undisguised;* in 1705, regardless of the furious 

^ JervUwood Correspondence^ pp. 42, 81. ' Macky's Chaaucterey p. 182. 
^Marchmont Papersy lii., 184; •Carstaree 8UUe Papers^ p. 624 



\ 



162 THE UNION FROM WTTmN 

mob "armed with great sticks" which was to attack 
him in his coach as he drove home, he did his utmost 
in the Privy Council to procure a further reprieve 
for Captain Green ;^ during the Union deliberations 
in Parliament, though as Lord Chancellor he had no 
more than a casting vote, he requested as a favour 
that his name should be printed as a Unionist in all 
the division lists ;^ and every reader of Scottish history 
is familiar with his cynical exclamation on signing the 
Act which extinguished the national legislature — 
" There's an end of an old song."' 

The fact that Seafield was both employed and 
trusted by all parties is a tribute to his ability which 
may serve to distinguish him from another politician, 
equally pliable, who, though employed by all parties, 
was trusted by none. The public career of the Earl 
of Cromarty, formerly Lord Tarbat, extends from the 
days of Cromwell to the accession of George I., a 
period of over sixty years. ** Never," writes Lockhart, 
"was there a more fickle, unsteady man in the world: 
he had sworn all the contradictory oaths, complied 
with all the opposite Governments that had been on 
foot since the year 1648, and was an humble servant 
to them all, till he got what he aimed at, though often 
he did not know what that was."* According to 
Cunningham he was '' looked upon as a state mounte- 
bank";* and a Jacobite agent in 1706 knew not how 
to classify him — he had "changed so often and 
trimmed so much."® In the present reign, after sup- 

^ Jerviswood Correwpondenoe^ p. 75 ; Pari, HUty x. 285. 
'Defoe, p. 334. 

' Lockhart, i. 25S3. According to Cunningham, these words were used 
when the Scottish Privy Council was abolished in 1708. 
^Ibid, p. 74. ^Cunningham, i. 326. 

* Macpherson's Original Papers^ ii. 18. 



THE COUNTRY PARTY 165 

porting the Cavaliers against Queensberry, he had 
combined with the Tweeddale administration to estab- 
lish the Hanoverian succession; and the oflBce of 
Justice-General, bestowed upon him under that Ministry, 
he retained for five years, doubtless because, amidst 
all his inconsistencies, he was a strenuous advocate of 
the Union, and had written a pamphlet in its sup- 
port as early as 1702. He was a man of real culture^ 
liberal and enlightened in his religious views, a member 
of the Royal Society, and endowed with " an extraor- 
dinary gift of pleasing and diverting conversation, "which 
noade him '*the pleasantest companion in the world. "^ 

It was unfortunate for the permanence of the adminis- 
trative system, the nature and leading agents of which 
have now been described, that, only five years after 
the Crown had lost its control over Parliament through 
the abolition of the Committee of the Articles, a 
question should have arisen which revealed the latent 
antagonism between the executive and the legislature, 
and in regard to which the whole machinery of Minis- 
terial influence had to be employed, if not to stifle the 
latter, at all events to keep its hostility within bounds. 
The natural result of King William's attempt, at 
English dictation, to discourage the African Company 
at home and to thwart it abroad was the rise of a 
Country Party in opposition to the partisans of the 
Court; and it may be noticed in passing that in a 
pamphlet published as early as 1700 the demand is 
put forward that all placemen and pensioners should 
be declared incapable of voting in Parliament on the 
ground that "such persons are supposed to move 
according to the inclination of the King."* The object 

^Lockbart and Macky. 

' Soms thoughts oonceming the Affain of this Session in Parliament, p. 2S. 



164 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

of the Country Party was to uphold the settlement 
at Darien, and, when that enterprise had finally mis- 
carried, to provide against a similar disaster in future 
by devising such constitutional restrictions as should 
make the sovereign of Great Britain, in so far as he was 
a Scottish king, responsible to Scotland alone. The 
party, however, soon lost its original character after it 
had absorbed the large Jacobite element which had 
been brought into Parliament to oppose it in 1703 ; 
and henceforward it tended to split into two sections, 
one, and much the larger, of which aimed all but 
avowedly at separation, whilst the other, which had 
once been almost the whole, after an unsuccessful 
attempt to establish the principle of limitations at the 
cost of the Hanoverian successor, proposed to solve 
the problem of the dual monarchy by fusing the two 
kingdoms into one. 

The idea that national autonomy could be secured 
by an amendment of the constitution found its most 
enthusiastic exponent in Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, 
who, indeed, went much further in this direction than 
most of his party were disposed to go. Fletcher, whose 
political opinions were of the antique republican type, 
distrusted all kings, but especially a king who ruled 
Scotland under English supervision ; and he insisted 
that the " extreme poverty, distress, and misery *' of 
his countrymen were the result of a bad system of 
government which had " no other root but our depen- 
dence upon the court of England," and that these evils 
would speedily disappear if only the sovereign, in every 
branch of his prerogative, should be subordinated to 
the Estates.^ We have seen that Fletcher failed in 
1703 to procure the insertion of his twelve limitations 

1 Works, edition 1749, pp. 213-214. 



FLETCHER OF SALTOUN 165 

in the Act of Security, though one of them — ^the restric- 
tion of the royal power as to peace and war — ^was 
embodied in a separate Act; but in 1705, though there 
was no prospect of such a measure receiving the royal 
assent, it was resolved that the Estates, and not, as 
had been proposed, the sovereign with their advice, 
should appoint the Ministers of the Crown. Fletcher's 
revolutionary proposals, had they been adopted in their 
entirety, would have been a very doubtful boon. To 
purify, and so to render unworkable, the present 
administrative system, even if it did not lead to 
separation and war, would do nothing for the material 
progress of the country, so long as England blocked 
the way to that wider field of enterprise which was 
so urgently needed in politics, society, and commerce ; 
a policy of seclusion would indeed have aggravated the 
evils of aristocratic and ecclesiastical power; and the 
historical episode which had given currency to the idea 
that Scotland, to be prosperous, required only to be 
left to itself, had been, as was inevitable, misunder- 
stood ; for we have seen that, in so far as England was 
responsible for the Darien disaster, it was not by con- 
current interference, but by provoking the Scots to 
undertake, unaided, an enterprise which was beyond 
their strength. Fletcher was driven to strange shifts 
to combat what was both the best plea for the Union 
and the most obvious objection to his scheme; and 
Argyll was thinking of a debate in which Fletcher 
and others had " argued with all the fury in the world '* 
that the English and colonial trade would be actually 
disadvantageous to Scotland, when he wrote to Godol- 
phin : " Your lordship may judge by this matter of 
fact in what manner gentlemen take leave to proceed 
in this parliament, and how hard it would be to 



166 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

persuade a great many of the members that light 
and darkness are not the same/'^ 

The character of the laird of Saltoun had much in 
common with that of the Presbyterian divine who more 
than a century earlier had tormented James VI. with 
his theory of the two kingdoms; for, though they 
differed widely in their religious views, the dogmatic 
vehemence of Andrew Melville as an ecclesiastic was 
repeated with little diminution in Andrew Fletcher as 
a politician. Lockhart, his warm admirer, adinits that 
he was a rigid theorist, incapable of the slightest con- 
•cession, and so " extremely wedded to his own opinions" 
that he could not suffer any but his most intimate 
friends to argue against him ; * and Swift was probably 
less unjust than he was wont to be in his judgment 
of a Scotsman, when he pronounced him "a most 
arrogant and conceited pedant." His temper was harsh, 
irritable and violent, agreeing very well with what we 
know of his personal appearance : " A low, thin man, 
brown complexion, full of fire, with a stern, sour look." * 
In 1685, as the result of a trifling dispute about the 
ownership of a horse, he had no sooner landed in Eng- 
land with the Duke of Monmouth than he shot one 
of his brother officers through the head ; on one occa- 
sion during King William's reign he assaulted Sir John 
Dalrymple in the Parliament House ; * and during the 
session of 1705 his quarrelsome disposition involved 
him in several unseemly brawls. To these moral 
defects he added an intellectual deficiency which must 

^ Marchmont Papers, iii 433 ; Portland Ifaniueripts, iv. 356. Fletcher 
had used the same argument in 1703, when there was no prospect of an 
incorporating union. See his " Conversation concerning a Right Begula- 
tion of Governments." — Works, p. 287. 

* Lockhart, i. 75. 'Macky, p. 223. 

*Iiord Buchan's Esscof on Fletcher^ p. 59. 



HIS PATRIOTISM AND ISOLATION 167 

have placed him at a serious disadvantage in contending 
with such keen and expert debaters as Argyll, Rox- 
burgh, and Stair. His printed speeches, all of which 
were delivered in 1703, are remarkable, and were pro- 
bably unique, for simplicity and purity of diction, 
clearness of reasoning, and idiomatic vigour ; but. they 
were literary rather than oratorical eflforts. Sir John 
Clerk said of him that he "was not very dexterous 
in making extemporary replies " ; ^ and this was fully 
admitted by Fletcher himself, who owned, in conver- 
sation with Wodrow, that he used to write out before- 
hand whatever he proposed to say in Parliament, that 
he was " at an incredible jhtigue " in getting the words 
by heart, and that, being uncertain what matter might 
•come up for discussion, "he was obliged sometimes to 
have six or ten speeches in readiness at once." * Fletcher, 
it need hardly be said, had many better, if also some 
worse, qualities than glibness of tongue. He was a 
man of high principle and stainless honour, whose mind 
had been enriched by study and travel ; and it is due 
as much to his striking personality as to the brilliance 
of his speeches and essays that he has made a deeper 
impression on the memory of his countrymen than any 
other Scotsman of his day. Intensely, if not always 
intelligently, patriotic, superior to party interests, to 
dynastic and religious distinctions, he moved amongst 
his contemporaries as one who was with them, but not 
of them ; and in his haughty and high-spirited isolation 
he deserved the fine compliment, that he " would lose 
his life readily to serve his country, and would not 
<io a base thing to save it."* 

Lord Belhaven far outshone Fletcher as a popular 
orator; but his reputation, despite the fervour and 

^MemoirSy p. 49. ^AruUectciy ii. 46. 'Macky, p. 222. 



I 



168 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

rugged eloquence of his printed speeches, did not stand 
high. Indeed, though such a charge is hardly borne 
out by what we know of his public career, he was 
regarded as little better than a disappointed place- 
hunter. The Cavaliers were disgusted with him, rather 
unreasonably, when he accepted oflSce with the rest 
of the original Country Party in 1705 ; his colleagues 
in a declining administration suspected him of intriguing 
both with Hamilton and with the Court ; and his 
extravagant harangues against the Union, whilst they 
circulated widely out of doors, did little to restore his 
credit with the Jacobites, and were derided by more 
temperate speakers as fit only for the consumption 
of the mob. The truth perhaps was that Belhaven 
was too much of a Nationalist to please the Squadrone> 
and too much of a Hanoverian to please the Cavaliers.^ 

The character of the Duke of Hamilton, who had 
organised the Country Party and who continued to 
lead it after it had become almost wholly Ja<5obite, 
was as strange a mixture, or rather as strange a com- 
bination, as can well be conceived. He seemed to 
have inherited two contradictory dispositions which 
ruled him by turns — a large share of spirit and reso- 
lution from his father, son of the Marquis of Douglas 
and third Duke of Hamilton in right of his wife — a 
self-seeking, but a frank, boisterous, and forward man,* 
whom he resembled in his egotism and " rough air of 

^As he appeared to Macky, a most unfriendly critic, Belhaven was 
*^a rough, fat, black, noisy man, more like a butcher than a lord," 
p. 236 ; but Boyer's description is much more favourable : '* Of a good 
stature, well set, of a healthy constitution, graceful and manly presence." 
— Quoted in Douglas's Peerage (Wood), i. 206. 

* " Whether he be right or wrong, one knows always what he is ; for 
he is square and plain." — Ckurstcwee State Papers, p. 177. He had a 
"rough way" of speaking. — Analecta. 



THE DUKE OF HAMILTON 16^ 

boldness," ' and an equal share of caution and indecision 
from his maternal grandfather, the first Duke and 
Minister of Charles L, the most inexplicable member 
of a dark and mysterious house. He had abundance 
of physical courage — ^a quality common to Hamilton^ 
and Douglases alike ; and his normal attitude was one 
of reckless daring, tempered by fits of moral timidity 
which delighted his opponents and confounded the con- 
fidence of his friends. In the debate of January, 1701 ^ 
on the question whether the resolutions which had been 
passed in support of the African Company should be 
embodied in an Act of Parliament or in an address, 
to the Bang, he protested with great vehemence that 
"if he was to speak before the tribunal of Jesus 
Christ" he should declare an Act to be absolutely 
necessary ; ^ in opposing the first article of the Union 
he "outdid himself" in indignant remonstrance; and 
he was more clamorous, if less eloquent, in resisting a 
vote on the second. At the call to action, however,, 
all this fire and energy seemed to evaporate in the 
process of transition from words into deeds. Early in 
1705, when their influence was declining at Court, the 
Squadrone Ministry tried to win him over, but to no 
purpose — ** Hamilton," wrote Roxburgh, **is incompre- 
hensible ; he tampers on, but never concludes." ^ Later 
in the same year, his friends complained to Colonel 
Hooke, the emissary of the Pretender, that he had 
thwarted and delayed the formation of a Jacobite 
league. Hamilton himself granted an audience to 
Hooke — the first of three — which lasted from ten at 
night till six in the morning ; but, in order to be able 
to say that he had not seen him, he received and 

^Macky, p. 178. ^Carstares State Papers, p. 688, 

^Jerviswood Correspondence, p. 49. 



170 THE UNION FROM WITBIN 

<x)nyersed with him in complete darkness ; and, when 
daylight surprised him in the fiill torrent of voluble 
and excited speech, he continued the conversation 
behind the curtains of his bed.^ We have seen what 
changeableness and irresolution he displayed during 
the Union deliberations in Parliament — how he seemed 
to favour a rising and then gave orders to stop it; 
how he frustrated the address to the Queen by stipu- 
lating that it should contain a clause in favour of the 
Hanoverian succession ; how he pleaded toothache, and 
finally refused to lead them, when the Nationalists, 
at his own suggestion, were to secede from the House. 
We have seen also that he had nocturnal interviews with 
Queensberry as well as with Colonel Hooke; and his 
<^onduct accorded so well with that of his grandfather 
as to suggest almost inevitably that "he played the 
second part of the same tune " ; ^ for he had the same 
large estates in England, the rental of which he valued 
s,t £14,000 sterling,* the same claim to the duchy of 
Chatelherault in France, and the same pretensions to 
the Scottish crown.* 

The most energetic section of the anti-Unionist party 
<jonsisted of avowed Jacobites, such as Lockhart of 
Carnwath and the Earl of Errol; but the vigour of 
such men was entirely neutralised by the indecision of 

^Hooke's Cofretpondence^ L 373, 377, 383, 391, 392. ''II avoit parloit 
preaque toute la nuit avec grande vehemence." Elsewhere in the same 
letter we read : " II parle avec beaucoup de feu et de rapidity " : ''II 
f ut dans des transports de colere terribles." 

>. Lockhart, L 213. ' Hooke, i. 389. 

^Cunningham (i. 322) describes Hamilton as "entangled with innumer- 
■able debts and suits," and Clerk (p. 67) as " so unlucky in his private 
circumstances that he would have complied with anything on a suitable 
encouragement." It is difficult, at all events for a student of Scottish 
historj, to recognise the Hamilton of Emumd. 



ATHOL AND ANNANDALE 171 

Hamilton and the jealousy which prevailed between 
him and his rivals the Duke of Athol and the Marquis 
of Annandale. Athol was a man of most violent 
temper — so violent that, when speaking in public, he 
was said to choke himself with passion^ — who had 
quarrelled with King William s Government because 
the candidate he favoured was not made President of 
the Session, and who had never forgiven Queensberry 
for having accused him in connexion with the " Scots 
Plot." Annandale, if it be true that "those of the 
Revolution party only employed him, as the Indians 
worship the Devil, out of fear," * can hardly have been 
more amiable; and he certainly laboured under the 
imputation of being thoroughly insincere. The first 
Duke of Argyll said of him in 1697 that it was his 
nature "to breed discord"; Queensberry wrote in 1700, 
"No ties can bind him"; and Roxburgh in 1705, 
" There is nothing Annandale can do that can surprise 
me."» 

It has been mentioned that the Country Party — to 
use that term in its widest sense — broke up into 
Nationalists and Unionists ; and, having glanced at the 
first of these sub-divisions, let us now look at the 
second. The personal history of such prominent men 
as Hamilton, Belhaven, and Fletcher has so accustomed 
us to the idea of a continuous national tradition - identi- 
fied with the interests of the Darien settlement and 
^culminating in opposition to the Union that we are apt 

1 Mack7, p. 184. 

^Lockhart, L 138. See p. 105. 

^ Ca/ritares State Papers^ pp. 317, 664 ; Jervmoaod Correapwidence, p. 95. 
Both Annandale and Athol were strong Presbyterians ; and the former, 
true to4he Hanoverian principles he had professed in 1705, voted for the 
second article of the Union, " which was a surprise to the whole House.*' 
— Marchmont Papers, iii. 430. 



172 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

to forget that these cases were exceptions to the rule, 
that Darienist and Unionist were, on the whole, con- 
vertible terms, and that the Squadrone Volante, far 
from being an erratic segment of the Country Party, as 
the name implies, was so much the main body that it 
might fairly claim to be the Country Party itself. We 
have seen that the parliamentary supporters of the 
African Company were organised on a Presbyterian, 
and even on a " Williamite," basis ;^ and the epithet 
bestowed on these men, or on their representatives in 
the more complex conditions of the new reign, was 
really a compliment to their consistency in adhering to 
a position, at once Nationalist and Whig, which pre- 
cluded them from making any permanent alliance either 
with the Cavaliers or with the Court. They had, how- 
ever, conamitted themselves to the principle embodied in 
the Act of Security that a solution of the international 
problem was to be sought in independence rather than 
in union ; and the attitude which they finally adopted 
on this question did in fact involve a change of front. 
But the change was sincere. The Jerviswood Corre- 
spondence, printed in 1842 for the Bannatyne Club, 
makes it abundantly plain that they came honestly and 
even reluctantly to the conclusion that nothing but an 
entire union with England could save Scotland from 
the Pretender, improve its trade, and put an end to 
feudal dissensions, intolerable poverty, and chronic mis- 
rule. It is true that on February 28, 1706, the day 
after that on which the Scottish commission for the 
Union was issued, Montrose was made President of the 
Council,^ and it is also true that Tweeddale, Montrose 

* See p. 71. • 

^ Montrose was a somewhat unstable member of the Squadrone. See 
Jerviswood CorretpoTidence, pp. 39, 66, 97, 105. 



THE SQUADRONS 173 

and Roxburgh received payment of their arrears ; but 
the New Party had injuries to complain of, which such 
favours, unsupported by conviction, would not have 
been able to outweigh. In 1704 they had undertaken 
to promote the Hanoverian succession on condition that 
the Act of Security became law ; after they had failed 
in that attempt, chiefly owing to the intrigues of 
Queensberry, they were dismissed from power ; and 
their natural reluctance to support the policy of those 
who had supplanted them in office must have been 
fitrengthened by the knowledge that, unless they joined 
the Opposition, they would inevitably be denounced as 
political renegades who had sacrificed their principles 
and sold themselves to the Court. Marchmont, in a 
letter to Lord Somers, remarked how general had been 
the fear that the Squadrone would yield to such tempta- 
tions as these ; but " God be thanked," he added, " they 
have not done so, for which all who wish well to our 
Queen and to Britain owe them thanks, kindness and 
esteem, for they have carried themselves, and concurred, 
as became persons of honour, understanding, and lovers 
of their country, without the least appearance of resent- 
ment toward those who are now employed." * 

The disinterestedness of the Squadrone may perhaps 
be inferred from the fact that one of its most prominent 
members was George Baillie of Jerviswood, whose in- 
tegrity, piety, and sterling goodness of heart have 
been so lovingly commemorated by his daughter. Lady 
Murray of Stanhope ;* but readers of this little memoir 
would do well to bear in mind that Baillie was not 
quite so estimable a person in public, as he seems to 

' Marchmont Flapers, iii. 309. See also Burnet, ▼. 287. 

' Memoirs of Qeorge Baillie of Jerviewood and of Lady Oriedl Baillie^ by 
their daughter Lady Murray of Stanhope, 1832. 



174 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

have been in private, life. A keen and experienced poli- 
tician, who could never have been a statesman, he was 
a guide in points of practical difficulty rather than a 
source of inspiration to his friends; and whoever ha& 
looked through his confidential letters will be surprised 
to find how little superior he was to the factious spirit 
of the day. It is characteristic of him that his chief 
objection to the Union was — there being no appeal 
but to the House of Lords — that it would "render 
the Session disposers of our estates at pleasure." The 
refusal of the Privy Council to accept a letter from 
Argyll to the Chancellor as sufficient authority for 
reprieving Captain Green suggested to him that the 
New Party might "set up" on this "as the most 
popular thing that could have occurred " ; he thought 
that he and his colleagues might have remained longer 
in office, had they made themselves "more uneasy "^ 
to the Court; and, when Annandale quarrelled with 
the Old Party towards the end of 1705, he strove 
to confirm him in opposition by urging him " to 
demand Seafield s place or some other extravagant 
thing." 1 

Whilst the ornamental Tweeddale and the plodding 
Baillie divided between them the honour and the 
drudgery of leading the Squadrone, the true main- 
spring of its energies — at all events, when he chose 
to exert himself — ^was the Earl of Roxburgh. Rox- 
burgh was so good an orator that he "charmed even 
those 'gainst whom he spoke " ; he had a wide 
acquaintance with ancient and modern languages, 
and, like Fletcher, wrote fluently in Italian ; his poli- 
tical correspondence is enlivened with constant flashes 
of vivacity and wit ; Sir David Dalrymple emphasises 

^Jervisioood Corregpandencey pp. 68, 66, 140, 144. 



THB EARL OF ROXBURGH 175 

" the elegance of his manners, his fine parts, greatness 
of soul"; and Lockhart, in a burst of reluctant ad- 
miration, describes him as '^a man of good sense, 
improven by so much reading and learning, that 
perhaps he was the best accomplished young man 
of quality in Europe."^ Indolence, or disinclination 
to continuous and detailed exertion, was probably 
his chief fault. "Writing is almost as bad to me 
now," he once said, " as taking a bolus " ; but this 
defect, which is said to have grown upon him in the 
uncongenial atmosphere of the British House of 
Lords,* appears to have originated in feelings which 
do him no discredit. His spirit was too high, his 
intellect too large, to permit him to become an item, 
however important, in the party machine; and his 
nature revolted against the paltry intrigues in which 
he was forced to take part. On one occasion, when 
he had been asked to bestir himself about the disposal 
of a place in the Session, he wrote : "I am plagued 
to death with this call, and if ever I meddle in another, . 
plant whom they will, I am much mistaken'*; and 
Baillie, whose interest in such matters seems to have 
exhausted his patience, must have been somewhat 
disconcerted on reading such a frank avowal as this : 
" I don't know but it may one day be necessary both 
for Scotland and Tweeddale that Roxburgh and Baillie 
be of different parties, tho' such coups are not 
desirable." When a question of real importance was 
to be decided, Roxburgh never failed to take the lead. 
He it was — as early as November 1705 — ^who impressed 
upon his colleagues the claims of the great measure 
which they and he had hitherto opposed, telling Baillie 

^Lockhart, i. 14, 95; Macky, p. 191. 
s AnaUcta, ii. 318 ; iii. 145, 439. 



176 THE UNION FROM WITHIN 

that he "was never in so great anxiety as now, his 
thoughts having been entirely taken up these eight 
and forty hours about an Union " ; and in the following 
session, when taxed by Hamilton with inconsistency, 
he said — to quote the bald summary of his words 
which is all that we possess^ — "that formerly he 
thought the English were against the interest of 
Scotland, but now he was convinced of the contrary, 
particularly by their late proceedings in relation to 
the Union, so that none could blame him for having 
a good opinion of the English."^ 

And now, as we turn away from the subject which 
has detained us so long, we may console ourselves with 
the reflection that the Scottish Parliament made a 
good end, and that nothing in its hitherto uneventful 
history became it so well. Little better, as a rule, 
than a passive instrument in the hands of the Crown, 
and overshadowed in its hour of Covenanted freedom 
by the ascendency of the Church, it had burst forth, 
during these last six years, into most unexpected 
vigour, expending, as it were, the energy which had 
slumbered for centuries in that " one crowded hour of 
^ glorious life." The crisis of the Union could produce 
no Knox, and, fruitful as it might have been in political 
genius, it produced no Maitland and no Montrose ; but 
when we consider the personality of those who pass 
and re-pass most prominently before us in that closing 
scene — the graceful adroitness of Queensberry and Sea- 
field, the massive intellect of Stair, the magnanimity 

^ It is curious that two speeches of Seton of Pitmedden, iu favour of 
the Union, should have found their way into print, whilst the eloquence 
of Stair, Roxburgh, Seafield, and Argyll has to be taken wholly on trust. 
Against the Union, we have only two speeches of Belhaven. 

^Beyer's Annals^ v. 343; Jerviswood Correspondence, pp.44, 106, 110, 
137. 



THE NATIONAL SPIRIT UNBROKEN 177 

of Roxburgh, the chann and impetuosity of Argyll, the 
intensity of Fletcher, the fiery invective of Hamilton 
and Belhaven — ^we cannot but conclude that at no 
previous crisis in the history of the country had great 
ability been so plentiful, and the level of public talent 
so high. And happy was it for the future of Great ^ 
Britain that Scottish nationality went down, suppressed 
indeed in outward form, but defiant and unbroken to 
the last; for this spirit, persisting as it did, not only 
ensured to Scotland its just recognition in the terms 
of union, but in after years, when bitter memories had 
passed away, asserting its vitality in literature and 
arms, and promoting a solid partnership founded on 
mutual esteem, was to mingle with English traditions 
and to become the common heritage of the British race. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

The combination of political forces which resalted in 
the Union has now been explained; but we have still 
to consider how far the action of these forces waa 
modified by the agency of the Church ; and, as the 
clergy had not only great influence, negative rather 
than positive, in promoting the Union, but were to 
be affected by it sooner and more decisively than any 
other class, this topic will conduct us by a natural 
transition from the accomplishment of the Union to 
its immediate results. 

We have seen that the completion of the Revolution 
Settlement was contemporaneous with the beginning of 
the first purely secular movement which had agitated 
Scotland since the outbreak of the Reformation; and 
it is worthy of notice that the Afirican and Indian 
Company was established in the same year [1695] as 
that in which the ecclesiastical constitution was con- 
summated by the Act in favour of the Episcopal 
incumbents who had taken the oaths. The clergy were 
not slow to identify themselves with the Darien enter- 
prise, though few of them were in a position to do 
so by contributing to its fiinds. The first expedition 



v.- 



CHURCH INTEREST IN THE DARIEN SCHEME 179 

had received encouragement from almost every pulpit 
in the land; in February, 1699, when it was known 
that a colony had been formed, the Assembly recom- 
mended all ministers to pray for its success; and at 
the close of the same year, two months affcer news of 
the abandonment had been received, the Commission 
enjoined ministers to exhort the people to submission 
and repentance '^ so that, if it may be the good pleasure 
of God, he may yet countenance and bless the under- 
taking for the advancing the trade of the nation and 
for propagating the Gospel/'^ In order to compass 
the second of these ends, the Assembly had sent out 
certain ministers, known as the Presbytery of New 
Caledonia, whose business it was to convert the Indians 
by **dumb signs," or by conducting family worship in 
their wigwams, whilst the colonists were ^'stealing 
from them and teaching them to swear and drink" 
" Our meetings amongst ourselves," wrote one of these 
expatriated divines, "are in the woods; where the 
chattering of parrots, mourning of pelicans, and din of 
monkeys is more pleasant than the hellish language of 
our countrymen in their huts and tents of Kedar."* 
Great, however, as was the interest taken by the 
Church in the Darien scheme, its zeal was tempered, 
probably out of respect for King William, by the same 
prudence which was afterwards to restrain, if not quite 
to suppress, its hostility to the Union. In the autumn 
of 1699 the Duke of Hamilton attempted without 
success to procure an extraordinary meeting of the 
Commission in order to signalise the failure of the 
first expedition by instituting a national fsust. In 
January, 1700, when a General Assembly was about 
to meet, Belhaven wondered "if our Kirk, who has at 

1 Darien Papen, p. 264. * WCMa Veitch and Brysion^ p. 249. 



180 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

this time sadly abandoned the interest of our country," 
would take such a step; and probably he was not 
altogether satisfied when the Assembly, in appointing 
a '' solemn national fiEist and humiliation," mentioned 
the misfortunes of the colony as only one, and not 
even the first, of many causes, including the prevail- 
ing sickness and dearth, the destruction caused by a 
great fire in Edinburgh, and the distressed state of the 
Reformed Churches in Piedmont, the Palatinate, and 
France. In June of this year only four members of 
the Commission could be induced to support the 
national address; and, a month later, when the final 
abandonment was known, Seafield wrote to Carstares 
that the ministers were reported to "continue very 
firm in their duty to the King."^ 

Apart firom its shadowy pretensions to be ^ 
missionary enterprise, the clergy as such could have 
no reason for supporting or for opposing the Darien 
project, unless indeed some of them had anticipated 
the idea, common enough a little later, that the new 
enthusiasm for trade must be prejudicial to religious 
zeal ; but it was impossible to convince them that 
they had not a special interest in the Treaty of 
Union, although, as we have seen, that treaty as 
presented to Parliament in 1706 contained no refer- 
ence to religion or the Church ; for, adhering, as most 
of them did, to the two ecclesiastical standards — ^the 
National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League 
and Covenant of 1643 — ^which had been ignored or 
rather implicitly condemned by the Estates at the 
Revolution, they regarded the Union as inimical to 
them both. The National Covenant had disallowed 

^Cantares State Papers, pp. 500, 534, 578; Historical MSS. Com- 
mifluoii, 12th Beport, Pt. viii. 59; AcU of AnmMy, 1700, pp. 8-11. 



/ 



THE COVENANTS CITED AGAINST THE UNION 181 

the civil power of Churchmen, and the Solemn League, 
besides abjuring prelacy, had pledged its subscribers 
to labour for the reformation of the Church of Eng- 
land ; and, in view of these engagements, it was 
contended that the nation could not unite with, and 
so recognise the institutions of, a kingdom whose 
Church was Episcopal, and in whose Parliament 
twenty-six bishops had seats. To this it was replied 
that the National Covenant did not absolutely con- 
demn the civil power of Churchmen tiU it was 
re-imposed in 1639, and that in this new form it was 
never generally sworn ; that the House of Lords had 
taken the Solemn League with a reservation that it 
condemned *' not all Episcopacy, but that which is 
here described " ; that the Covenants referred only to 
the maintenance of the National Church, which the 
Union expressly confirmed ; and that Scottish Presby- 
terians would be as much at liberty to reform the 
Church of England after the Union as before, unless 
they meant to reform it by force.^ To those who 
accepted the obligation of the Covenants such argu- 
ments, if they did not reject them, must have seemed 
rather palliative than destructive ; and the only real 
hope that the Union would not encounter active 
opposition from the Church was to be found in the 
fact that its opponents were mostly Jacobites, and 
that the Government which promoted it had lately been 
remodelled on what was known as " a revolution foot." 

We have seen that the Commission appointed by 
the last Assembly was sitting during the discussion of 

^ Defoe's Easa^ at Bemoving Nationcd Pre^udice$ against the Union, Pt. 
▼i. ; Lawful Prejudices against an Incorporating Union, and several 
pamphlets in vindication of, and in reply to, this. — Tracts on the Union, 
2 vols. ; Signet Library. 



182 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

the Union in Parliament ; and it was some security 
against the miscarriage of that measure that several 
of its most prominent supporters in* the House were 
also members of the Commission. On October 11, 
1706, the day following that on which Parliament 
re-assembled after the week's recess allowed for con- 
sideration of the treaty, the Commission drew up a 
^^ humble address and petition" in which they 
besought the Estates to confirm the constitution of 
the Church as established at the Revolution, and to 
make its continuance an essential condition of the 
Union ; and having learned, three days later, that this 
overture had been graciously received, they resolved 
to hold a diet of '' serious prayer," and, on the 22nd, 
required each presbytery, as soon as possible, to 
appoint a public fistst The proposal of a fSEist had 
been brought forward in Parliament by the Nation- 
alists, who hoped that the prevailing sentiment would 
convert it into a demonstration against the Union ; 
the Commission, to whom it was referred, had 
debated whether they should appoint the fast on their 
own authority or should apply for the sanction of 
the Estates ; and the decision to take the former 
course, which was arrived at after very warm debates 
— SO warm indeed that Defoe refers to two mobs, one 
in the Conmiission and the other in the streets* — was 
probably due not so much to any fear of exciting 
the public mind as to the conviction of the High 
Presbyterians that the Church in such matters ought 
to be independent of the State. On November 4 an 
Act of Security was read a first time in Parliament, 
which embodied verbcUim all that had been suggested 
in the interest of the Church. The Commission, how- 

^ Portland ManuicripU^ iv. 339. 



AMENDMENTS DEMANDED BY THE CHURCH 183 

ever, as they afterwards aUeged,^ had intended their 
address to be an outline and not the sum of the 
legislation required ; and on tiie same day they agreed 
upon three specific demands : (1) that the sovereign 
in the coronation oath should engage to maintain the 
rights and privileges of the Church of Scotland, as 
well as those of the Church of England ; (2) that no 
oath should be imposed on ministers and members of 
the Scottish Church inconsistent with their known 
principles; and (3) that the obligation to communicate 
with the Church of England should not be demanded 
of Scotsmen as a qualification for office. Two points 
of difficulty were also mooted, but were referred to 
further discussion : (4) that the English abjuration 
oath would be derogatory to Scotland, since, in terms 
of the Act of Settlement, it excluded all but English 
Churchmen firom the succession.; and (5) that the 
presence of bishops in the British Parliament was 
inconsistent with the principles of Presbyterians and 
with the covenants of the Scottish Church and nation. 
On November 7,^ despite the protest of seven elders, 
including Lord Marchmont and Baillie of Jerviswood, 
a ''humble representation and petition" was voted, 
comprising all these five articles as well as a sixth 
which craved that after the Union there should be a 
commission for planting of kirks and valuation of 
teinds, and a court, corresponding to the Privy 
Council, which should redress ecclesiastical grievances, 
such as the growth of Popery, and sanction public 
&sts. 

^ Defoe, p. 623. 

* Defoe has November 8 ; but, though signed and recorded on that day, 
the address had been agreed to on the 7th. — AMemhly Commiiswn BecorcUy 
MSS. 



184 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

The action of the Estates in dealing with this 
petition is not altogether clear. In the Act of Security 
as passed on November 12 two of the Church's demands, 
the first and the second, were certainly conceded, and 
a clause was added, providing that professors and 
schoolmasters, before their admission to office, should 
subscribe the Confession of Faith and declare their 
adherence to the Presbyterian government and disci- 
pline, and to the worship at present in use ; yet Defoe 
and Lord Stair, in their letters to Harley, both say that 
the Act was carried without any alteration being made 
in response to the second address.^ In order to reconcile 
these facts, we must assume that the original draft of 
the Act had been amended so as to anticipate the 
articles dealing with the coronation oath and with the 
imposition of oaths in general, and that the Commis* 
sion, not being aware, or at all events not being officially 
cognisant of this, had presented these articles with the 
other four. An exemption from the sacramental test^ 
which Lord Stair had wished to incorporate in the 
treaty, was proposed in Parliament only to be thrown 
out. 

The second address of the Commission was a great 
disappointment to the Nationalists, who had hoped that,, 
far from suggesting amendments, it would prove to be 
a protest, such as had already been presented by the 
Presbyteries of HamUton and Dunblane, against the 
Union as a whole ; but their hopes of a rupture between 
Church and State began to revive when they found that,, 
though the address was rejected, the Commission did 

^Portland Mamucripti, iv. 348, 350. That the first and second 
demands were granted was acknowledged hy the Commission, and hy 
Defoe himself in his Sistory, pp. 259, 623. The ^ overture " printed oa 
p. 616 was not the original draft of the Act. 



AMENDMENTS STILL INSISTED ON 185 

not mean to let it drop. "This terrible people the 
Churchmen/' wrote Defoe on November 28, '*have not 
yet done ; they have now in debate a protestation 
against the Act of Security as insufficient. God 
Almighty open their eyes!"^ The Commission had 
indeed been urging their grievances in the Parliament 
House; and on the day on which these words were 
written they authorised the preparation of a memorial,, 
to be circulated amongst the members, which waa 
submitted and approved on December 12. This- 
paper omitted all mention of the bishops' votes, but 
reiterated the other points formerly advocated and 
still refused — the court for ecclesiastical causes, the 
commission for planting kirks, the amendment of the 
abjuration oath, and the exemption of Scotsmen from 
the sacramental test ; and to these was now added a 
new demand, namely, that all possible security should 
be provided against the re-assumption by the Crown 
ctf its supremacy over the Church. After nearly a 
month spent in fruitless endeavours to further this 
list of reforms, the Commission began to concentrate 
their efforts on the two first, in urging which^ 
with the advice and concurrence of the Lord 
Advocate, they received considerable encouragement 
firom a parliamentary committee; but, when some 
ardent spirits, disgusted with the long delay,, 
proposed to present a third address, it waa 
decided, ** after much reasoning," that it would be 
unnecessary and highly inexpedient to take such 
a course. 

This was on January 14, 1707 ; and, only two days 
later, the decision thus arrived at was unexpectedly 
reversed. The Scottish Government, believing that 

^Portland Mantucripts, iv. 360. 



186 THE CHURCH AND THB UNION, 1706-1712 

the Church could have no better guarantee than a 
legal establishment which was expressly excluded from 
the scope of the treaty,^ had reluctantly yielded to 
the pressure of public opinion, which insisted that its 
maintenance should be made a condition of the Union. 
They foresaw that such a stipulation on behalf of the 
Scottish Church would lead to a similar stipulation on 
behalf of the Church of England ; and, in order to avoid 
the dangers involved in a discussion of the ecclesiastical 
arrangements which should be made at Westminster, 
they induced Parliament to take what Marchmont 
admitted to be the "very unprecedented step"* of 
ratifying beforehand whatever provisions might be 
inserted by England for the protection of its ChurcL 
Early in the morning of the day on which the Act of 
Security was to be passed, the Commission, at an extra- 
ordinary meeting, despatched several members to 
remonstrate in private against this clause ; and an 
address was presented, a few hours later, in which its 
deletion was craved, on the ground that it gave a 
blank power for establishing the English hierarchy and 
ceremonies, and at the same time bound Scotland, 
contrary to the Covenants, to give its consent. This 
petition had no effect; and, as the members of the 
Commission now began to disperse, the want of a 
quorum prevented any but informal representations 
being made with regard to an Act of February 21, 
which empowered the Lords of Session to take cognisance 

^ There had been "a great division" amongst the Scottish Commis- 
tsioners as to whether the Church government should be expressly 
reserved to Scotland by the Treaty. The majority were of opinion 
that, in terms of their instructions, they could not " so much as name 
iV* — Carstarei State Papers^ pp. 760-752. 

^Ma/rdimont Papers^ iii. 313, 314. 



POWER AND MODEBATION OF THE CLERGY 187 

of all cases relating to the planting of kirks and valua- 
tion of teinds.* 

It is evident firom this account that the Church, if 
not an opponent of the Union, was at least a most 
unfidendly critic; and the wide area covered by the 
ecclesiastical organisation made it inevitable that here 
and there suppressed hostility should give place to 
actual war. Several presbyteries, as we have seen, 
denounced the treaty as a breach of national vows; 
one minister, whilst disclaiming any political intention, 
took advantage of a rumour that the Regalia were to 
be removed to London to preach from the text, " Hold 
fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy 
crown " ; * and the riot at Glasgow was the work of 
another, who, after telling his hearers that it was not 
enough to present addresses and to pray against the 
Union, exhorted them to be "up and be valiant for 
the city of our God." In order, however, to appreciate 
the attitude of the Church at this crisis, it is necessary 
to bear in mind not only what it did — and here it 
should be mentioned that the Commission issued a 
circular letter against tumults ' — but also what it might 
have done, had its indiscretion been equal to its power. 
Standing between a hard-pressed Government and an 
infuriated populace, and equally solicited by both, the 
Church occupied much the same position in the country 
as the Squadrone occupied in Parliament ; and, as the 
treaty would have been rejected by the Estates if the 

* The foregoing narratiye is based on the AuemUtf Commimon Records^ 
JfSS,, of which, except in the extracts given by Defoe, no use seems 
jet to have been made. 

^Portland Mamucripis, iv. 343. 

^Harley, writing to Garstares, mentioned this letter as '* eminently 
serviceable in promoting'' the Union. — Carstares State Papers^ p. 767. 



188 THE CHURCH AND THE X7NI0N, 1706-1712 

Squadrone had opposed it, so the majority in Parliament 
would certainly have been paralysed if the clergy had 
consented to encourage a popular revolt.^ " If we can 
but please the ministers in the security of the Church," 
wrote Seafield to Godolphin on November 2, 1706, 
"our greatest difficulty will be over."* The ministers, 
according to Marchmont, were, most of them, "young 
men of little experience and warm zeal " ; ' and, when 
we consider how little the Union was in harmony with 
their ecclesiastical traditions, and how strong was the 
current of popular feeling which threatened at times to 
sweep them oflF their feet,* it is no small compliment 
to their own prudence, and to the vigilance and capacity 
of their leaders, that they adhered on the whole to the 
path of neutrality — unsympathetic and even menacing 
neutrality as it was — marked out for them by the 
Commission. 

The Union had been only two years in operation 
when the clergy were called upon to make a concession 
which was so much a corollary of that measure that 
those in whose favour it was urged could demand it 
as a right. The legislature of a kingdom which com- 
prised two national Churches could not justly withhold 
from Episcopalians in Scotland the freedom, or rather 
the security, of worship which had been accorded to 
Presbyterians in England ; and a fanatical pamphleteer 
had made it one of his chief arguments against the 

^ '* The first effect of the couDtry's rising would be to chase us home."— 
Stair to Harley, November 26 ; Portland Mantucripts, iv. 360. 

* Add. MSS. 28055. ^Marchmont Papers, iiL 305. 

^^The Churchmen in particular are going mad/' wrote Defoe on 
October 29, *' the parsons are out of their wits ; and those who at first 
were brought over, and, pardon me, were some of my converts, their 
country brethren being now come in, are all gone back, and to be 
brought over by no persuasion.'' — Portland Mantucripts, iv. 343. 



EPISOOPAGY UNDER KING WILLIAM 189 

Union that a ** legal toleration " would be its inevitable 
result.^ 

In the years which followed the Revolution this 
question, under less favourable conditions, had been 
more than once raised. William had done what he 
could to protect his Episcopal adherents in Scotland ; 
and, though he failed to carry the two projects of com- 
prehension and toleration, under one or other of which 
he had hoped to include them all, the second of these 
measures was more nearly successful than the first. 
The comprehension scheme, which was plainly illegal, 
was rejected by the Assembly, and nullified by the 
Estates ; but the King's ministers, though they did not 
venture even to introduce an Act of toleration, had no 
difficulty in repealing the penal laws ; and by the middle 
of the reign the legal position of the Episcopal clergy 
had considerably improved. Those of them who occu- 
pied their pulpits at the time of the King's accession, 
and had not since been deprived or deposed, were 
protected, if they were not nonjurors, by the Act of 
1695, which permitted them to retain their livings on 
condition that they took no part in ordination or in the 
government of the Church. The remainder — and these 
were probably two-thirds of the whole — were prohibited 
by an Act of the same year firom administering the 
rites of baptism and marriage ; but, with this excep- 
tion, unless they had failed to take the oaths, in which 
case they were liable to be banished, there was no law 
to restrict, though at the same time there was none 
expressly to protect, them in the exercise of their 
pastoral office. The great majority of the ejected pre- 
latists, however, had forfeited their claim to this tacit 
toleration — which, nevertheless, most of them still 

^Lawfvl Pr^fvdioei agaimt an Ineorporating Unions p. 11. 



190 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

enjoyed ^ — hy not acknowledging the Revolution Govern- 
ment; and it was thus rather as Jacobites than as 
Episcopalians that they expected ** mighty things"* 
firom the accession of Queen Anne. 

The new reign opened less auspiciously for the 
Scottish than for the English Tories ; but the former 
had good reason to congratulate themselves when the 
Convention Parliament was dissolved, when Whigs and 
Presbyterians were turned out of the Government and 
Privy Council to make room for Cavaliers, and when 
an indemnity was issued which invited the return of 
political refugees. Encouraged by these favourable 
signs, the dissenting clergy sent up two petitions to 
the Queen, beseeching her in the one to give liberty 
to parishes in which the majority of the inhabitants 
were Episcopalians to admit them as pastors, and, in 
the other, to relieve the poverty and distress of what 
they called — and the phrase was not forgotten — " thi* 
national church." It is no discredit to the petitioners 
that they should now have demanded an indulgence, 
or, as they termed it, an "Act of Grace," similar to 
that which as granted by Charles II. to the Presby- 
terians they or their predecessors had strongly opposed ; 
but it is impossible not to question their good fstith 
when we find one of them writing privately in support 
of the second petition that it had been suggested by 

^*'We had, though not a toleration, auch a sort of connivance, that 
we kept our private religions meetings without much disturbaDce, 
except now and then, just to shew us that we were in their power.''— 
Letter of Oct. 25, 1703, quoted in Stephen's ffutory of the Chwrch of 
Scotland^ iii. 663. Stephen's work, though inaccurate and illiterate, is 
a most useful compilation, and contains many original documents. It is 
interesting to compare the childishness and feminine spite of such writers 
as Stephen, Lawson, and Ljon with the equally bigoted, but sterner 
and more masculine temper of the PiresbTterian zealots. 

>Lockhart, i. 42. 



PROPOSED TOLERATION, 1703 191 

the kindness shown by the Queen "to her fether's 
firiends/' and that "it is very well drawn, by the 
advice both of churchmen and lawyers, without any 
promise of qualifying," or, in other words, of taking 
the oaths. The Queen returned a gracious answer ; and 
she gave a still more emphatic testimony of her good- 
will by giving orders to the Privy Council that the 
dissentient divines, whether in benefices or in meeting- 
houses, should " be protected in the peaceable exercise 
of their religion," and by exhorting the members of 
the Assembly which met in March, 1703, to show such 
meekness and charity to these, their fellow-Pro- 
testants, that "they may be the more inclined to 
live peaceably and dutifully under us, and in brotherly 
love and respect toward you and the Established 
Church."^ 

It was natural in such circumstances that William's 
project of a statutory toleration should be revived ; and, 
whilst the sentiments of Anne and her overtures to the 
CSavaliers are sufficient to account for the measure which 
was introduced on June 1, 1703, the attitude of the 
^Episcopal clergy explains, to some extent, why it failed. 
These men were still so far firom attesting the loyalty 
on which they founded their petitions to the Queen, 
that few of them prayed for her — and some even prayed 
for the Pretender — in anything but ambiguous terms ; * 
and the suspicion that what they wanted was a political 
rather than a religious toleration must have been 
strengthened by the tenor of the Act, which, without 
mentioning the oaths, provided that it should be lawful 

^Bidpath'8 Proceedings of the Parliament of 1703, pp. 4-9; Stephen^ 
iii. 642 ; Acts of AetemUy, 1703. 

^Letter from a Omitleman to a Member of Parliament concerning 
TolenUionj pp. 10-11. 



192 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

for all Protestants to assemble for worship, and that 
none should presume to molest them, subject only to 
a proviso that, if any preacher inculcated seditions 
doctrine, he should be punished by the Privy CounciL 
There can, however, be little doubt that the opposition 
to this measure was inspired quite as much by intoler- 
ance as by a regard for the public peace. It was a 
common argument both in Parliament and in the press 
that there was no need to authorise, and so to encourage, 
a schism which was not illegal ; but the Church attacked 
the principle of toleration, and must thus have convinced 
the Episcopalians that nothing less than a positive 
enactment could secure their rights. In a sermon 
preached before the Queen's Commissioner, and after- 
wards published, George Meldrum maintained that none 
of the dissenters could pretend to a scruple of conscience, 
except those, if any such there were, who believed in 
the necessity of episcopal ordination, and that was an 
opinion which "should not be tolerated in any Pro- 
testant church " ; and the Commission of Assembly, 
ignoring this distinction, argued in a similar strain 
that none of their prelatical brethren regarded the 
question of Church government as fundamental, and 
that "there was never in any nation a toleration 
allowed where there was no pretence of conscience 
against joint communion." ^ According to this principle, 
Roman Catholics would have had a better claim to 
toleration than Protestant Episcopalians; and it was 
certainly an exhaustive, if not a conclusive, plea for 
persecution that the majority of the dissenters should 
be constrained because they did not think it sinful 

^ Bidpath's ProceedingSj pp. 4>9 ; Stephen, iii. 648-650. The toleration 
controyersj produced a large crop of pamphlets, but few of these are of 
any historical value. 



EPISCOPACY IN DISFAVOUR 193 

to conform, and the rest because they did. The 
Toleration Act was thus equally obnoxious to bigoted 
Presbyterians and to zealous Whigs; and we have 
seen that the Cavaliers, who had now joined 
the Country Party against the Court, allowed 
it to drop, lest it should alienate their new 
allies. 

The prelatists had followed up their addresses to the 
Queen with a series of pamphlets, in which Episcopacy 
was represented as a divine institution, to be tolerated 
in adversity but, when established, not to be separated 
from without sin ; and the hostility excited by the 
bold pretensions of dissent was quickened rather than 
appeased by its defeat. As early as January, 1703, 
an Episcopal chapel in Glasgow, where the English 
service was used, was raided by the mob ; in March, 
soon after this chapel had been finally wrecked, the 
General Assembly was preparing to assert the jus 
divinum of Presbytery when it was abruptly dissolved ; 
and the triumph of the Country Party in Parliament 
was signalised by the Acts, already mentioned, which 
confirmed Presbyterian government and made it high 
treason, by writing or speaking, to attempt any altera- 
tion in the Claim of Right. Episcopacy had waxed 
strong under the countenance of the Queen ; but the 
party which supported its claims had now quarrelled 
with the Court; and its political influence steadily 
declined as the Tory Ministry of 1703 gave place to 
the Squadrone Ministry of 1704, and that again to 
the Whig Ministry of 1705. During the Union 
deliberations in Parliament the Government could 
afford to lose no opportunity of conciliating the Church ; 
and at the end of 1706, when the crisis was at its 
height, all or most of the Episcopal chapels are said 

N 



194 THE CHUBCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

to have been closed.^ Whilst, however, the progress 
of the Union was prejudicial to the interests of the 
dissenting clergy, they must have seen, in the liberality 
of its most enlightened supporters as well as in its 
probable results, a promise that their political emanci- 
pation would not be long delayed. Seton of Pit- 
medden, in a treatise published as early as 1700, had 
proposed that a common ecclesiastical system should 
be devised by the Parliament of the united realm ; 
and had contemptuously suggested that, if any of the 
clergy refused to submit to this, they should be armed 
at the public expense to fight out the question among 
themselves.^ " The putting an end to uncharitable 
and unreasonable divisions about our trifling differences 
in religion," wrote another pamphleteer, " is one of the 
great benefits Scotland will reap by this Union " ; 
and, in answer to a passage in Belhaven's famous 
speech, the same writer declared that he should 
"heartily wish to see a plantation of as rich Jews 
as any in Amsterdam, as rich Independents, Quakers 
and Anabaptists as any in England, settled in all the 
trading towns of this kingdom." ' 

Happily for the Episcopal clergy, their demands 
were conceded before the influence of these liberal 
ideas could make itself generally felt ; and they owed 
their emancipation — if such it can be called — to the 
combined effect of the Union and of a practice which 
had recently gained ground amongst them in bringing 
them into closer relations with the English Church. 
The opposition to the Service-Book so arbitrarily 

* Stephen, iii. 654, iv. 13 ; Skinner's EcclenasHoal History, ii. 604 ; 
Somerville's Reign of Qtisen Anne, p. 468. 

* The Interest of Scotland, p. 48. 

^ A Sermon Preachedto the Peopleat the Mercat Cross, pp. 18-19. 



GREENSHIELDS USES THE ENGLISH LITURGY 195 

introduced by Charles I. in 1637 had resulted soon 
afterwards in the disuse of the older liturgy, known 
as Knox s, which it had been intended to replace ; 
and thenceforward the Church of Scotland, whether 
Episcopal or Presbyterian, has always adhered to the 
practice of extemporary prayer. After the Revolution, 
however, Dr. Monro, one of the deprived clergy, began 
to use the English service at Edinburgh ; ^ in the early 
years of Queen Anne the liberality of English Church- 
men provided a large supply of prayer-books for 
Scotland;* and in 1707, though obnoxious to many 
of the laity, the new form had made so much progress 
that the General Assembly passed an Act against it, 
and authorised the Commission to make representations 
to the Government for the purpose of putting it down. 
Presbytery thus asserted the jurisdiction as well as 
the privileges of a national Church; and in 1709 one 
of the Episcopal clergy ventured to dispute the claim. 
In February of that year James Greenshields, a 
Scotsman who had been ordained by the deprived 
Bishop of Ross, but who for fourteen years had been 
a curate in the north of Ireland, and as such, with 
questionable sincerity, had taken the abjuration oath, 
came to Edinburgh, and set up a meeting-house, in 
order, as he himself explained, to see whether his 
political qualifications would protect him in using the 
Book of Common Prayer. At that time there were 
thirteen Episcopal chapels in and around Edinburgh, 
in some at least of which the English liturgy was 
read ;* and Greenshields would probably have suflfered 

^ Grab, iiL 319. Two clergymen were maltreated at Dumfries in 1692 
for using the Prayer-Book. — Chambers' Domestic Annalsy iii. 65. 

* Skinner, iL 606 ; Somerville, p. 467. 

' Remarks an * A True State of the Ccue of the Reverend Mr, Qreenehidds^^ 
p. 13 ; Defoe, Preface, p. 21. 



196 THB CHURCH AND THB UNION, 1706-1712 

no more serious molestation than his brethren, all of 
whom were non-jurors,^ if, affcer leaving or being 
turned out of a room in the Canongate, the owner of 
which feared that his taxes would be raised, he had 
not taken "a more convenient house" — so convenient, 
indeed, that it was situated exactly opposite the 
church of St. Giles, and if he had not obtruded his 
presence on the four congregations which assembled 
in that citadel of Presbyterianism by making his 
services begin and end at the same time as theirs. 
From this house the Dean of Guild was induced to 
eject him on the plea that the flooring was not sub- 
stantial enough for a public hall ; but, though he 
retired to a less conspicuous station, he was now a 
marked man. A complaint, signed by some 200 
persons, was presented to the Commission ; the Com- 
mission, in accordance with the late Act of Assembly, 
enjoined the prosecution of all who had introduced 
'' the use of set forms " ; and Greenshields, having been 
cited before the presbytery and having denied its juris- 
diction, was suspended on September 7 for officiating 
as a minister without warrant and for violating the 
uniformity of worship established by law. Refusing 
to comply with this sentence after it had been endorsed 
by the magistrates, he was imprisoned. When he 
applied for his release to the Court of Session, the 
judges upheld the plea put forward in their defence 
by the magistrates that ordination by an '^ exauctorate " 
bishop was wholly invalid ; and a second petition in 
which he combated this principle, whilst asserting that 

^ Boae, the ^ exauctorate " Biahop of Edinburgh, would allow none of 
his clergy to pray for the Queen, much lees to take the oaths ; and this 
was no doubt the reason why he did not license Greenshield's chapel. — 
Letter of Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle, quoted by Stephen, iv. 61 ; Grub, 
iii. 363. 



THB SACHEVERELL AGITATION IN ENGLAND 197 

it was not the real ground of his imprisonment, was 
also dismissed. On December 29, 1709, he gave formal 
intimation of an appeal to the House of Lords; and 
soon afterwards a narrative of the whole case was pub- 
lished at London, in the preface to which the belief 
was expressed that it would "be startling news to 
many members of the Church of England to hear that 
a minister, episcopally ordained," had undergone four 
months' imprisonment at Edinburgh for no other offence 
than that of reading the Book of Common Prayer to 
a congregation composed, to a large extent, of English 
people.^ 

Three weeks before Greenshields gave notice of his 
appeal, the Earl of Islay, Argyll's brother, wrote to 
Carstares from London that, though the decision of the 
Court of Session had " made some noise at first," the 
general condition of affairs was too tranquil to allow of 
much interest being taken in the case, for, " whenever 
that dispute receives any extraordinary turn here, it 
will be for other designs, and when projects are moving 
at the same time."^ The truth of this prediction was 
speedily made good. A few months later, England, 
then so quiet, had wrought itself into a fever of excite- 
ment, and — when the result was known — into a fever 
of exultation, over the trial of Sacheverell for two 
sermons in which he had advocated non-resistance, 
attacked the principle of toleration, and declared the 
Church to be in serious peril — a fever which the vanity 
and self-assertion of the popular divine contrived to 
prolong for more than five months, and during which 
dissenting ministers all over the country were mobbed 

^ Adv. Libr. Pamphlete, First Series, 61, 268, 600, 1001 ; Second Series, 
233 ; Defoe, Preface, pp. 19-23 ; Fountainhairs Decmoiis^ ii. 623-524. 

' Carstares State Papers, p. 779. 



198 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

and insulted and their meeting-houses wrecked. In 
August 1710, after Sacheverell had completed a trium- 
phal progress to and from the living which had been 
bestowed upon him in Shropshire, the Queen dismissed 
Godolphin, as she had already dismissed Sunderland; 
in September the rest of the Ministers who had carried 
the Union were turned out ; and at the general election 
in November the Whigs suffered an overwhelming 
defeat. These events, whilst they delayed the con- 
sideration of Greenshields' case by the Lords, promised 
to ensure its success. Harley, indeed, the new Tory 
Premier, was anxious to procure the withdrawal of an 
appeal, the issue of which was certain to irritate either 
the English or the Scottish Church; but the Scottish 
Tories in the Commons were determined, in spite of his 
remonstrances, not to let it drop. When the case was 
called on March 1, 1711, it was argued for the magis- 
trates in bar of jurisdiction that they had merely 
enforced the sentence of a Church court, as by an Act 
of 1693 they were bound to do ; that it was really the 
sentence of the presbytery, not theirs, which was to be 
reviewed; that, before the Union, there had been no 
appeal from the Church courts to Parliament ; and that, 
if such a precedent was now to be established, the 
appeal should be carried in the first instance to the 
Provincial Synod or to the General Assembly. These 
preliminary objections were, however, overruled ; and 
on the same day judgment was given for the appellant, 
and the magistrates who had imprisoned him were found 
liable in damages as well as in costs. ^ 

1 Lockhart, i. 346-348 ; ReporU of Scottish AppeaU in the ffatm of Lords, 
i. 12-15. Greenahields' was the sixth Scottish appeal — not, as so often 
said, the first — which had come before the Lords since the Union ; bat 
the preceding cases had aU been questions of private right He had 
been seven months in prison. 



OPPOSITION TO THE LITURGY 199 

Beneficial as were to be the results of this dispute, 
its progress tended only to exasperate the temper of 
the Scottish Church. The more zealous ministers 
denounced the Book of Common Prayer as super- 
stitious and idolatrous, and one of them even professed 
to find in it something that was diabolical.^ Shortly 
after the establishment of Presbytery at the Revolution, 
the chaplain of an English regiment had been suffered 
without complaint to conduct service in one of the 
churches of Stirling ;* but the use of the liturgy, even 
amongst soldiers who belonged to the Church of England, 
had now become so " ticklish a point " that Brigadier, 
afterwards General, Wightman on writing for instructions 
to Court, was informed, apparently by the advice of 
Carstares, that this practice must not be attempted on 
Scottish soil ; and, four months later, in February 1710, 
an English oj£cer complained of it, as a piece of 
intolerance which he had never experienced "in the 
most rigid Roman Catholic countries," that his regiment 
at Edinburgh was deprived of the ministrations of its 
chaplain.^ As soon as the result of Greenshields' appeal 
to the House of Lords became known in March 1711, 
many new meeting-houses were erected at Edinburgh, 
and, according to Wodrow, "the English service was 
set up almost through all the north of Scotland " ; * 
but, as the Episcopalians were not content with this 
decision, they had an obvious reason for underrating 
the security they now enjoyed ; and in November of 
this year Lockhart published a pamphlet* at London, 

^Greenshielda' Letter, September 17, 1709, p. 3— Adv. Libr. 61. 

^IbieL December 16, 1709, p. 26— Adv. Libr. 1001. 

^Carstare$ State Pa/pern^ pp. 776, 783; Wodrow's AruUecta, i. 214. 
Wodrow erroneouBly gives the Brigadier's oame as Weir. 

* Oorreipondence^ i. 301. ^Lockhart Papen, i. 648. 



200 THE CHURCH AND THB UNION, 1706-1712 

intended to place the condition of his fellow prelatists 
in such a light as should induce the British Parliament 
to do for them what the Scottish Parliament had failed 
to do in 1703. Sir James Stewart, after being two 
years out of oflElce, had lately been re-appointed Lord 
Advocate; and Lockhart asserted that Stewart, whom 
he described as the most determined foe of monarchy 
and Episcopacy from Orkney to Land's End, was 
violating the law as laid down by the Lords, and, in 
particular, that he had ordered the Lord Provost to 
close all the meeting-houses in Edinburgh, especially 
those in which the English prayer-book was used. The 
force of this statement was greatly diminished by his 
admission that few of the ministers thus treated prayed 
nominatim for the Queen,^ and that none of them — 
to judge by his silence — had taken the oaths; but 
such an offence was by no means unpardonable in the 
eyes of English Tories ; and the object of Lockhart's 
appeal was speedUy attained. 

On January 21, 1712, leave was granted in the 
Commons to bring in a Bill for the protection of 
Scottish Episcopalians in their worship and in the 
use of the Book of Common Prayer. Proceeding on 
a recital that the meetings of such persons had 
frequently been disturbed and their ministers pro- 
secuted for reading the English service, the Bill 
repealed the Scottish statute of 1695 against irregular 
baptisms and marriages, gave full liberty to Episco- 
palians, not being Papists or disbelievers in the Trinity, 
to assemble for worship and to use the liturgy, and 

^In 1709 the only Episcopal minister in Edinburgh who prayed for 
the Queen told Calamy that the behaviour of the Established clergy 
towards him '' was very friendly and brotherly, and liable to no excep- 
tion.'' Galamy's Life, ii. 165. 



•^ 



THE TOLERATION BILL 201 

required all magistrates to protect them, provided that 
their pastors had been episcopally ordained and had 
taken the same oaths as were incumbent on ministers 
of the Established Church. There was also a clause 
which exempted all who were not Presbyterians from 
the jurisdiction of the Church ; but this was altered 
in consequence of an interview between certain Tory 
members, including Lockhart, and three ministers, 
including Carstares, whom the toleration project had 
surprised whilst on a mission to Court. Carstares 
objected that, as prelacy had no coercive power, such 
an exemption would be prejudicial to morals ; and 
Lockhart, professing to fear that '^ all the scandalous 
fellows in the country " might pass themselves off as 
Episcopalians, adroitly met this objection by proposing 
to prohibit magistrates from enforcing any ecclesiastical 
summons or sentence, thus reducing the rival com- 
munion, in point of authority, to the same level as 
his own.^ On February 5 this amendment was adopted, 
and also another which required every minister of the 
Church and every pastor of an Episcopal congregation 
to pray in express words for the Queen and the Princess 
Sophia. The Bill was read a third time and passed 
on February 7 by 152 votes to 17.* 

^ Lockhart, L 379-380. Had Carstares, as Lockhart says, agreed to this 
alteration and promised in return not to propose the abjuration oath, he 
could not have ventured as he did to attack the amended clause on the 
ground that it allowed the Church " no more power than a philosopher." 
See The Ccue of the Church of Scotland with relation to a Bill for a Tolera- 
tion to Episcopal Dieeenters, p. 16. Lockhart is also wrong in saying that 
this was the only amendment proposed in the Commons. 

*Commoru^ JoumaUj xviL 33, 54, 69, 72. Boyer (x. 34d) says that 13 
Scottish members voted in the majority of 162 and 14 in the minority of 
17. It is very odd that only 27 Scottish members should have taken 
part in the division ; and, as 162 is wrong, the other figures are not 
reliable. 



202 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

Meanwhile Carstares and his colleagues were " run- 
ning amongst the members " and submitting to be 
racked in "hackney coaches"^ in order, if possible, to 
arrest the progress of the Bill. A petition which they 
presented to the Commons had not been received; 
but the House of Lords consented to hear counsel 
on their behalf; and, though Halifax and Bishop 
Burnet vainly urged the rejection of the measure as 
a violation of the Union, some attempt was made in 
committee to meet their views. It was now provided 
that Episcopalians must not make use of parish 
churches, that their marriages must be proclaimed 
in church as well as in chapel, and that their pastors 
must have received ordination from a Protestant bishop ; 
and these amendments, which strengthened rather than 
enlarged the provisions of the Bill, were accompanied 
by another of similar, but of far more serious, import. 
The clerical deputies had suggested that the ministers, 
who were to be tolerated, should be required to abjure 
the Pretender; and the Lords, adhering to the clause 
which prescribed a common obligation for the Elstab- 
lished and the non-Established clergy, resolved that 
the abjuration oath, which, after the Union, had been 
imposed on all officers, civil and military, in Scotland,* 
should be taken alike by ministers of the Church and 
by Episcopal pastors. The Commons agreed to these 
amendments, and the Bill received the royal assent 
on March 3, 17 12.^ 

^ " Our joints have been almost pulled sundry with driving in hackney 
coaches through all comers amongst our great men for some weeks." So 
wrote Blackwell, Carstares' colleague, some weeks later. — Spalding 
MisoMany, i. 220. 

^StcUtOes at Large^ iv. 290. 

*Statutsi ai Large, iv. 613; Beyer's AnnaU, z. 362-363; Spalding 
liucdlany, i. 197-211. A summary of the Bill in its original form will be 



THE ABJURATION OATH 203 

The opponents of toleration had overreached them- 
selves in attempting to make more stringent its political 
conditions. Had the restrictive clause been enacted 
as it was passed by the Commons, there is no reason 
to suppose that the dissenting ministers, who had 
hitherto refused to take the oaths of allegiance and 
assurance, would now have submitted to these tests ; 
and the bishops, on learning that such a qualification 
would be insisted on, had attempted to dissuade their 
fiietids at Westminster from introducing the Bill.^ 
Even in this form, the measure would have caused 
some disturbance in the Church ; for, willing as the 
Presbyterian clergy were to pray for the Queen and 
the Hanoverian succession, it outraged their ideas of 
spiritual independence that they should be required 
to do so, on pain of deprivation, by the civil power. 
When, however, the Whig majority in the Lords had 
adopted the suggestion of Carstares and his colleagues 
that those who benefited by the Act should be required 
to abjure the Pretender, and when they had conceded 
to the Tories — what they could not well refuse — ^that 
the Established clergy should be required to do the 
same, not only was a new and insuperable obstacle 
put in the way of toleration, but a pledge of conformity 
was exacted which threatened to throw vacant many 
more pulpits than the Test Act of 1681, and which 
on that account the Tories had advocated, in the hope 
that their meeting-houses would escape an obligation 
which could not be enforced within the Church. We 
have seen how earnestly the Commission of Assembly 
during the Union deliberations in Parliament had 

found in Adv. Libr. Pamphlets, Second Series, 233. The Lord^ JowtmU 
afford little information. 

^ WodroVa Corregpondencty I 196, 303. 



204 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

pleaded for an amendment of the abjuration oath 
which bound its subscribers to defend the succession 
as determined by an Act, one of whose provisions it 
was that the sovereign should be a member of the 
Church of England. The Lords attempted to remove 
this difficulty by a verbal alteration ; ^ but the amend- 
ment was rejected by the Commons; and we shall 
see in another place what searchings of heart were 
to be occasioned in Scotland by the phraseology of 
this unfortunate oath. 

In his sermon to Parliament in 1703 George Meldrum 
had said that the Church had covert as well as open 
enemies, and that the former would probably attempt 
first to restore patronage, and then to establish tolera- 
tion ; and, except that the order of the two schemes 
was reversed, this prediction was to prove true. Before, 
however, we deal with the subject of patronage as it 
came before Parliament in 1712, it will be well to 
indicate what had been the previous history of this 
question in Scotland. 

The original patron of a benefice is supposed to have 
been its founder ; and, though a right of presentation 
was afterwards assumed by neighbouring landowners, 
and ultimately, where no individual could establish a 
title, was claimed by the Papacy or, as its successor, 
by the Crown, the extent to which such a right was 
operative had been gradually curtailed. Before the 
Reformation, patronage had been extinguished in the 
case of all parochial churches — and these were nearly 
three-fourths of the whole — which had been gifted or 

^ The alteration consisted in substituting '* the succession .... which 
is and stands settled " by a certain Act for ** the succession aa it is and 
stands settled." Which was supposed to be merely indicative, '^but it 
was suggested that the particle cu related to all the conditions in that 
Act." — Burnet, vL 107 ; Ana^ecta, ii. 194. 



HISTORY OP PATRONAGE 206 

"appropriated" to cathedral chapters, bishoprics or 
abbeys, because such livings, owing to the permanent 
character of the corporation or oflSce, could never 
become vacant; and even in the case of parsonages, 
that is, of livings which remained patronate and were 
not served by stipendiaries or vicars, the patronage 
was frequently in ecclesiastical hands. When the 
Keformed Church was established seven years after 
the national recognition of Protestantism in 1560, 
the rights of lay patrons were expressly confirmed ; 
and these rights received a great extension when the 
Lords of Erection, in whose favour the monastic estates 
had been "erected" into temporal lordships, ignoring 
the fsrCt that the churches annexed to these estates 
were merely stipendiary cures, converted them into 
parsonages, and, whilst retaining all but a fraction 
of the tithes, which ought in that case to have been 
restored, assumed the rights of patrons.^ The Act of 
1592 establishing Presbyterian government re-affirmed 
the principle of lay patronage, and seems to have 
included under that head the patronage of ecclesiastics 
which had fallen to the Crown, and which in many 
cases the Crown had gifted to individuals ; and the 
rights claimed by the Lords of Erection, whatever 
sanction they may have derived from this statute, were 
fully recognised when Charles I.'s reorganisation of the 
tithe system was adbpted by Parliament in 1633.^ 

The practice thus upheld by the civil power did not 
commend itself to the Church. The First Book of 

^The General Aasembly of 1588 made represeDtations on this subject to 
King James VI., and meanwhile charged ^ all commissioners and presby- 
teries that they on no wise give collation or admission to any person 
presented by the said new patrons." — Galderwood's History of tha Eirh^ 
iv. 686. 

'Danlop's Parochial Law, pp. 188-196 ; Act, Pari. v. 39. 



206 THB CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

Discipline, which was mainly the work of Ejiox, 
declared that "it appertaineth to the people and 
to every several congregation to elect their minister," 
and this idea seemed likely to gain ground; for 
we have seen that patronage had in great measure 
died out; and, just as the principle of spiritual 
independence, which was foreign to Knox's teaching, 
took its rise in the fact that for seven years 
the Reformed Church had no legal connexion with 
the State, so the repudiation of patronage must have 
seemed natural to a body of ministers who through- 
out that period had no statutory provision, and whose 
" appointment was in general not to a benefice but to 
the spiritual oflGlce of pastor alone. " ^ On the other hand, 
the Crown and the nobles showed little disposition to 
restore the patrimony of the Church ; and the fear 
that parochial livings and prelacies would alike be 
secularised induced the Reformed Communion to find 
room in its economy for patrons, as in 1572 it found 
room for bishops. Thus in 1560, the very year in 
which the First Book of Discipline was compiled, we 
find a minister admitted to the cure of a parish who 
had been presented by Sir John Borthwick; in 1565, 
in support of its complaint that a living in Carrick 
had been given to a layman, the General Assembly 
disavowed any intention of defrauding patrons, whether 
the Crown or individuals, of their just rights, and 
insisted merely that ''as the presentation unto the 
benefice appertains to the patron, so the collation by 
law and reason belongs to the Church " ; and Knox 
himself, subject to the same condition, endorsed 
both patronage and prelacy in a letter which 
he wrote to the Assembly shortly before his 

1 Dunlop, p. 1S6. 



HISTORY OF PATRONAGE 207 

death. ^ In 1581 it had become apparent that 
neither of these expedients was any real pro- 
tection to the Church; but by that time the 
principle of popular election had been modified by 
the growing importance of ecclesiastical courts ; and 
hence the Second Book of Discipline, in which Andrew 
Melville had the chief hand, whilst expressly repudiat- 
ing patronage as well as prelacy, and craving its abolition 
as an abuse which had "flowed fix)m the Pope and 
corruption of the canon law," provided that the minister 
should be chosen by the eldership, which meant the 
presbytery, with consent of the congregation. This 
part of the Book, in common with its theocratic pre- 
tensions, was pointedly ignored by the statute of 1592, 
which enacted " that Presbyteries be bound and astricted 
to receive and admit whatsomever qualified minister 
presented by his Majesty and laic patrons." More than 
half a century later, patronage was abolished by the 
anti-national and unrepresentative Parliament of 1649 ; 
and the General Assembly, with the sanction of the 
Estates, then assigned the right of choice to the kirk- 
session, whilst requiring the presbytery on intimation 
of dissent, not grounded on ''causeless prejudice," by 
the major part of the congregation, to order a fresh 
election.* The Act of 1649, with other Acts of the 
same period, was rescinded at the Restoration ; and 
patronage, thus revived, continued in force till the 
year 1690. 

When the Act of 1592 in fiavour of Presbytery was 
revived in that year, its provisions in regard to 
patronage were expressly reserved ; and Lord Melville, 

^ Oalderwood, ii. 46, 298 ; Petrie's Compendiaus Hittory of the Catholio 
Churchy it 342, 344 ; Bannatyne's MemoriaU^ p. 261. 

' Dnnlop, pp. 199,281. 



208 THE CHUROH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

the royal Commissioner^ having availed himself of 
a discretionary power, which William had reluctantly 
given him, to assent to the abolition of that system, 
a supplementary statute was passed which abolished 
patronage and enacted that, when a parish became 
vacant, the Protestant heritors and elders, if it was 
situated in the country, and the magistrates and elders, 
if it was situated in a town, should " name and pro- 
pose" a minister to the whole congregation, which, 
if dissatisfied, might appeal to the presbytery, whose 
decision was to be final. The heritors and elders were 
required, not permitted, to pay within four months 
a sum of 600 merks (£33 6s. 8d. sterling) for each 
patronage, which its possessor was bound to accept. 
As further compensation to the patron, the Act of 
1649 was revived in so far as it gave him the unappro- 
priated tithes of his parish ; and in 1693 all parsonages 
were reduced to the level of stipendiary cures, so that 
the patron in these cases became entitled to the whole 
tithes, subject to deduction of stipend.^ 

This was obviously a much less radical measure 
than that of 1649. Sir James Stewart, who as Lord 
Advocate was responsible for the Act, told Wodrow, 
many years later, that it was intended wholly to do 
away with the right of presentation; that, to avoid 
any misconception on this point, the words " name and 
propose " were used purposely in place of " present " ; 
and that the provisions as to purchase and sale were 
inserted in consequence of a proposal in Parliament 
that means should be taken to prevent the restoration 
of patronage. Stewart, however was forced to admit 
that " ministers and most part of persons " were under 

1 Dunlop, p. 645 ; Connell on TMes, i. 317, 318 ; Report of Sdect Com^ 
mittee on Patronage^ 1834, p. 17. 



THE PATRONAGE BILL 209 

the impression that the function of the patron had 
merely been transferred to the heritors and elders ;^ 
and. as an expedient for the extinction of patronage, 
the Act proved so ineflfectual that during the 22 years 
in which it was in force only four parishes turned it 
to account* This has been explained on the ground 
that the heritors had little interest in purchasing the 
confirmation of a right which they already enjoyed, 
and that the patron, hoping to be re-instated, was 
unwilling to sell ;* and such an explanation implies 
that the temper of the Church on this question was 
very much cooler than many writers of a later day 
are willing to admit. Had there been any strong 
feeling against it, at all events amongst the laity, 
patronage would certainly have found a place amongst 
the Articles of Grievances which were presented to 
WiQiam in 1689 ; and it is very remarkable that so 
little use should have been made of the means pro- 
vided by Parliament for preventing that revival of 
the practice which had been apprehended as a probable 
contingency since the accession of Queen Anne. 

The Church of Scotland had, however, some reason 
to be surprised when a Bill for the restoration of 
patronage was brought into the Commons on March 13, 
1712. The probability of such a measure being intro- 
duced had alarmed the clergy during the Greenshields 
agitation of 1709, and had been discussed in the 
Assembly only in the previous year ; but Harley, now 
Earl of Oxford, had completely reassured the Church 
on the latter occasion by a letter to Carstares in which 

^ AnaUcta, i. 275. 

' In one of the foar cases the person to whom the 600 merks had been 
paid was afterwards proved at law not to be the true patron. 

^ PcUronage Report^ p. 17. 

O 



210 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

he said that the design had indeed been mooted by 
two rash persons, but that ^* it never was in the least 
countenanced or entertained."^ Lord Oxford, who had 
privately opposed the toleration, made a fruitless 
attempt to fulfil these assurances by intriguing against 
the Patronage Bill;* and the opposition of Carstares 
and his colleagues to the second of these measures 
was no more successful, though less unfortunate in its 
results, than their opposition to the first. The statute 
which came into force on May 1, 1712, restored to 
all patrons who had not renounced it their right of 
presentation, and at the same time allowed them to 
retain the advantages which had been given to them 
in return for their loss. If the patron did not present 
within six months, his right was to pass to the 
presbytery ; patrons who had not already taken the 
abjuration oath were to take it on signing a presenta- 
tion ; and those of them who were known or suspected 
to be Papists were debarred from presenting till they 
had renounced the Roman Catholic faith. On the same 
day as that on which patronage had been abolished 
by the Scottish Parliament, July 19, 1690, an Act 
had been passed doing away with the ** yule vacance " 
or Christmas vacation in the law courts ; and this Act 
was now repealed.^ 

* WodroVs Correspondence, i. 77, 84, 225, 228 ; Carstares State Papers, 
p. 82. 

» Lockhart, i. 386. 

^Statutes at Large, iv. 522-623; Spalding MiseeUany, i 214-220; 
Carstares State Papers, pp. 796-800. The Patronage Bill passed the 
Commons by 173 votes to 76.— Journals, xvii 174. WTiere the Bill 
empowered the patron '^ to present a qualified minister," Wodrow {Corres- 
pondence, i. 277) says that Argyll induced the Lords to substitute 
"Presbyterian" for "qualified"; but those modem writers who re- 
present the Bill as altered in this sense have failed to notice that 
"qualified" is still retained. Argyll's amendment, which was certainly 



TOLERATION NOT A BREACH OF THE UNION 211 

Three Bills, all more or less oflfensive to the Scottish 
Church, had now become law — the Toleration, the 
Patronage, and the Christmas Vacation Bill The last 
of these, a purely vexatious measure, was rescinded on 
the accession of George I. ; but the other two retained 
their places on the statute book, and only in the case 
of the first was any concession made to the popular 
feeling which regarded them both as violations of the 
Union. The Union was indeed based on an Act of 
Security which provided that the worship, discipline 
and government of the Church of Scotland as estab- 
lished at the Revolution should continue for ever 
without alteration ; but the Church and the nation 
had long ceased to be synonymous terms ; and, as the 
clergy at that very time were complaining that the 
English service was coming into use and that thousands 
of prayer-books had been imported from England,^ we 
may be sure that far more explicit language would 
have been used if the intention had been, not merely 
to secure Presbytery from being subverted by English 
votes, but, as Defoe would have us believe, to persecute 
dissent. Nevertheless, it was on this most illiberal 
plea that the magistrates of Edinburgh defended their 
treatment of Greenshields before the House of Lords ; 
and the Church in its printed Case against the 
Toleration Bill, not content with making this the first 

redandant, must, therefore, have been rejected by the CoDimons. Pro- 
feaaor Blackwell of Aberdeen, the last of the clerical deputies to leaye 
London, thus joyfully hails the conclusion of his task : *' If once I had 
gotten the last accounts from the Assembly, if there be a coachman in 
England that is a good whipman for stage journey, I intend to have him ; 
for then I shall be free of the easy stones of London, and shall bring down 
the bones and relicts of ane old friend to see if the Fairyhill air and the 
tutory of the little wife in the Green will give any reviving." — Spalding 
MuceUany, L 220. 

^ Auembly Commission Records^ MSS. — November 11, 1706. 



212 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

of its arguments, attempted to develop it by asserting 
that the conduct and ritual of dissenters ought to be 
subject to some ecclesiastical authority, and that, in 
terms of the Union, no such voluntary jurisdiction 
could be suffered to exist. We have seen, however, 
that the Toleration Bill prescribed a political test, and 
the nature of that test certainly exposed it to be 
denounced as contrary to the clause in the Act of 
Security which provided that no oath, test, or sub- 
scription should be exacted in Scotland inconsistent 
with the principles of the Established Church. It was, 
indeed, most admirably shown by a Presbyterian 
pamphleteer that the abjuration oath could refer only 
to the general purport of the Act of Settlement as 
securing the Hanoverian succession, and not to any 
of its specific provisions, such as that which required 
the sovereign to be a member of the Church of England, 
since two of these provisions had already been repealed;^ 
but the argument, unanswerable as it was, failed to 
take account of the fact that it was just such a mis- 
apprehension as this which had given rise to the 
protective clause in the Act of Security; and it was, 
therefore, a just concession to a natural but mistaken 
scruple when in 1715 the oath was re-enacted in a 
form which ought to have put its innocence beyond 
rational doubt. 

The revival of patronage encountered much less ] 

opposition than the toleration scheme; and the plea 
that it violated the Union, though much better founded, 
was not so strongly pressed. It has, indeed, been 
maintained that the Act of Security ignored the 
question of patronage because it confirmed only the 

1 Collection of Papers agaiiut ths Scots ToUrcUion and Patronage : 
Preface. 



THE UNION NOT UNALTERABLE 213 

Act establishing Presbytery and the other Acts relating 
thereto in prosecution of the Claim of Right ; ^ but 
this objection is more captious than solid, inasmuch 
as patronage, though not mentioned in the Claim, was 
expressly reserved for future consideration by the Act 
in favour of Presbytery, so that its subsequent abolition 
must be regarded virtually, if not technically, as the 
completion of that Act ; nor is it evident that the 
reference to the Claim was meant to be exclusive, and 
not merely descriptive. Yet, though the restoration of 
patronage may have infiringed the contract of partner- 
ship between the two nations, to put the matter in 
this shape is to reveal a way of looking at the Union 
which has no justification in law. It is certain that 
the framers of the Act of Security endeavoured to 
reconcile the results of political incorporation with an 
absolute legal guarantee for the permanence of the 
Scottish Church as established at the Revolution, but 
it is equally certain that in so doing they attempted 
an impossible task. Nothing, indeed; can be more 
convincing than the argument of Hodges that the 
notion of two kingdoms being incorporated and yet 
retaining certain mutual obligations is a contradiction 
in terms, since it implies that what has become one is 
still two ; * and we are confronted with only another 
aspect of the same contradiction when we consider that 
our ancestors called into being a sovereign Parlia- 
ment and then attempted by a mere injunction to 
restrain its power. The joint legislature created by the 
Union was as completely unfettered as the two several 

^ Lee's Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland^ ii. 383. 

^ Bights and Interests of the two British Monarchies : Treatise iii. The 
numbering of the pages in this Treatise is very confused, but the 
I argument referred to forms the **Tweutieth and Seventh Interfering 

Interest/' 



214 THB CHUBGH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

legislatures which it had displaced ; and, so long as 
parliamentary sovereignty continues to be the dominant 
characteristic of our constitution, what the English and 
Scottish Parliaments in 1707 declared to be unchange- 
able the British Parliament will always be entitled to 
change.^ 

The revival of patronage may be said to have com- 
pleted by an unwelcome amendment the re-organisation 
of the Scottish Church ; and three and a half years 
later, on December 28, 1715, the clergyman, who had 
been William's chief adviser in that settlement, passed 
away. Ecclesiastical talent in Scotland has seldom 
been at a lower ebb than during the twenty years 
which succeeded the Revolution ; but the absence of 
serious rivalry, which would have magnified a more 
doubtful reputation, can only have been detrimental 
to that of Carstares. It has been said of him that, in 
addition to being both a scholar and a man of aflFairs, 
he combined the faith and zeal of a martyr with the 
shrewdness and suppleness of a consummate politician ;^ 
and, as he had displayed the first of these gifts when 

^"If indeed the Act of Union had left alive the ParliamentB of 
England and of Scotland, though for one puq)06e only, namely, to 
modify, when necessary, the Act of Union, and had conferred upon the 
Parliament of Great Britain authority to pass any law whatever which 
•did not infringe upon or repeal the Act of Union, then the Act of Union 
would have been a fundamental law, unchangeable legally by the British 
Parliament; but in this case the Parliament of Great Britain would 
have been, not a sovereign, but a subordinate, legislature, and the 
ultimate sovereign body, in the technical sense of that term, would have 
been the two Parliaments of England and of Scotland respectively." — 
Dicey's Law of the ConstitiUionj third edition, p. 65, note. Within recent 
jears, a far more unequivocal breach of the Union than the restoration 
of patronage has been effected by the Act which exempts all but theo- 
logical professors in the Universities from the obligation to subscribe 
the Confession of Faith. — Innes's Law of Creeds in Scotlandy p. 122. 

2 Macaulay's History of England^ chap. xiii. 



WILLIAM GARSTARBS 215 

tortured as a Whig conspirator in 1683, so his conduct, 
from the day when he landed with the Prince of Orange 
to his death, affords continuous evidence of the second. 
Throughout the reign of William he wielded an influence 
which gained for him the nickname of the Cardinal, 
and which his enemies did not much exaggerate when 
they described it as universal and " uncontrolled " ; ^ 
and this influence was so far from being that of a mere 
favourite that, after the death of his patron. Queen 
Anne retained him as one of the royal chaplains, the 
great nobles who had courted his favour ^ now solicited 
his advice, and the Church thrice elected him to the 
Moderator's chair. Nothing but the greatest self- 
repression and tact could have enabled him to maintain 
such a position at the cost of exciting so little ill-will ; 
and it is due to his possession of these qualities, as 
well as to the necessity imposed upon him as a 
Presbyterian minister of sacrificing the semblance to 
the reality of power, that his figure, large as it is in 
the eyes of posterity, is yet so shadowy and indistinct 
Historically, indeed, during the most important part of 
his career, Carstares is little more than an abstraction, 
an oracle hidden from view in the innermost recesses 
of the Court, the extent of whose power we can only 
conjecture from our consciousness that there was an 
influence at work — a subtle and elusive influence 
— ^making for conciliation and restraint ; and this 

^ 77ie State of Scotland under the Fast and Present Admintetrtttum^ 
1703, p. 15. 

^ Qaeensberry as Lord High Commissioner writes thus to Carstares 
on Jane 20, 1700 : " Yoa need not make my wife and me any compli- 
ments for our civility ; you have deserved better things of us both than 
we have yet in our power to pay you. When we shall have done you 
any service, we shall not decline your thanks ; till then, assure yourself 
that nothing but an opportunity is wanting to shew our just sense of 
your kindness." — Carstares State Papers^ p. 537. 



216 THE CHURCH AND THE UNION, 1706-1712 

impression is strengthened by the fact that, whilst 
hundreds of political letters are addressed to him, we 
possess hardly any of his replies. 

Not over scrupulous in his methods, Carstares was 
marvellously cautious, patient and unambitious in his 
aims. As chaplain to King William, he was the moving 
spirit of a very corrupt administration; he employed 
spies ; he gave and withheld pensions ; and Queensberry 
could tell him without misgiving that he had spent 
£500 in bribing members of Parliament, and that still 
larger demands must be made on " his Majesty's cash."^ 
In his attitude towards the Union, of which he was 
accounted a sure friend, he took the prudent course of 
humouring the hostility of the Church in the hope of 
securing such an influence as should keep it within 
bounds. His friends in London were relieved to find 
that he was one of the ministers — ^there were only 
three — who voted against the second address ;* but he 
was so far from supporting the elders who protested 
against it, that he helped to prepare the memorial 
which embodied all but one of its demands; and he 
even concurred in the third address against the blank 
ratification in favour of the English Church." M'Cormick, 
his biographer and grand-nephew, tells us that he tried 
to dissuade the magistrates of Edinburgh from con- 
testing the appeal of Greenshields to the House of 
Lords ; but he advised Queen Anne to prohibit the 
use of the liturgy by English regiments in Scotland; 
he opposed the Toleration Bill on religious as well as 
on political grounds ; and he even objected to it that 
its provisions against blasphemy were not so strict as 
those of the statute under which Aikenhead had been 

^ State Papersy pp. 638, 639. ^IbicL p. 754. 

^ Assembly Commisnon Records, MSS.— Dec. 11, Jan. 16, 1706-7. 



HIS POLICY «UITS THE TIMES 217 

hanged.^ Little can be liaid foi: such a policy except 
that it succeeded where more heroic measures would 
almost certainly have failed. In Scotland, little less 
than in England, where Burke described it as "a 
revolution not made but prevented," the movement of 
1688 was essentially conservative, its object being, not 
to recast old institutions, but to adapt them to new 
conditions. In Carstares who preferred to guide rather 
than to thwart, and who in yielding to the current of 
jx>pular feeling seldom failed to deflect its course, such 
a movement found its natural leader; and under his 
skilful guidance, responding to the breath of a new 
epoch, the Church of Scotland had glided far from its 
moorings before it had become apparent to any but 
a few anxious spirits that the old landmarks were 
fading from view.^ 

* The Scots Toleratvm Argued, p. 39. 

'MOormick has preserved several incidents illustrating Carstares* 
liberality and kindness of heart. Two Episcopal clergymen whom he 
had privately supported followed him in tears to the grave. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

The history of the Church of Scotland from the middle 
of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth 
century may be described as that of the decline of 
fanaticism under a succession of powerful forces operat- 
ing from without. Such a force were the victories 
of Cromwell which overthrew the ascendency of the 
zealots ; such — if we look to their ultimate effect — ^were 
the persecutions of Charles II.; such was the con- 
structive statesmanship of WiUiam ; such was the 
Darien agitation ; such was the Union ; and such, as 
in some measure we have already seen, were the new 
conditions which the Union introduced. In so far as 
its effect can be traced in the speculative as well as 
in the practical sphere, this course of discipline tended 
rather to a loosening than to a disturbance of belief; 
but in the quiet years which succeeded the Revolution 
the Church was alarmed from time to time by incur- 
sions of the sceptical spirit ; and one of these occurred 
at a very early stage, and was attended by deplorable 
results. 

Hitherto, with some slight and transient exceptions, 
Scotland had maintained a monotonous uniformity of 



OETHODOXY IK DAMGBR 219 

doctrinal tjpe. In the reign of Charles I. some of 
the Laudian divines had imitated their master in 
tempering sacerdotalism with considerable liberality of 
creed. Bishop Maxwell who denounced the lay elder- 
ship as a " sacrilegious intrusion upon sacred Orders " ' 
refused to believe in the damnation of virtuous p^ans ; 
Bishop Wedderbum was an avowed Arminian ; and 
a minister deposed by the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 
repudiated predestination as "a damnable doctrine," 
and declared that the differences which divided the 
various Christian bodies were "but a mouthful of 
moonshine." These vagaries, however, passed away 
with the hierarchy which had given them birth ; and 
Scottish orthodoxy, after shivering on the edge of the 
" boundless toleration " which threatened to engulf it 
in the days of Cromwell, slumbered on in peace till 
it was startled for a moment by the benign tolerance of 
Leighton, whose indifference to the prevailing ecclesi- 
astical disputes, which he once called " a drunken 
scuffle in the dark," caused it to be suspected that 
he was equally liberal in matters of faith. 

The heresy which reared its head after the Revolu- 
tion was of a less impalpable kind. During the brief 
primacy (1691-1694) of Archbishop Tillotson, whose 
latitudinarianism, colder and more practical than that 
of Hales and Chillingworth, was to dominate English 
theology for the next sixty years, a controversy had 
arisen in the Church of England rather as to the nature 
and operation than as to the existence of the Trinity ; 
and this controversy widened and developed into 
question of the rival claims of natural and revealf 
religion, when John Toland, a young Irishman, wl 
on his way to Leyden and Oxford had studied i 
> See p. 7. 



220 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

Glasgow and graduated at Edinburgh, published in 
1696 his Christianity not Mysterious. The panic 
caused by this treatise, which was presented by the 
grand jury of Middlesex and burned at Dublin by 
the Irish House of Commons,^ must be ascribed to the 
fact that it focussed a mass of rationalist opinion, the 
spread of which had for some time been exciting alarm. 
In 1695 the Scottish Parliament had ratified an Act 
passed in 1649, and re-enacted at the Restoration, 
making blasphemy a capital oflFence : in January, 1696, 
the General Assembly had issued a warning against 
what it gravely called "the atheistical opinions of 
the Deists " ; and, some months later, a youth named 
Thomas Aikenhead was apprehended at Edinburgh 
for denying and reviling Christianity, and, proving 
obstinate, was brought to trial. The Act against 
blasphemy, hitherto almost a dead letter,* was now 
enforced ; and under this statute Aikenhead was not 
only convicted and sentenced, but on January 8, 
1697, was actually hanged. 

That such an execution should have taken place at 
Edinburgh at a time when the clergy, though shorn 
of their political power, were still absolute rulers in 
matters of faith, is a fact sufficient of itself to stain 
indelibly the reputation of the Scottish Church ; but 
the details of the tragedy reveal such a tale of cruelty 
and injustice as can be paralleled only in the blood- 
stained records of witch-persecution — if even in these. 
The victim, an upright and hard-working student, was 
only twenty ; he was denied the benefit of counsel ; all 

^ Hunt's Religiotu thought in England, ii. 243-244. 

^ The only prosecution hitherto attempted under the Act appears to 
have been that of a man who had forsaken Christianity for Judaism, and 
who in 1681, as he did not appear for trial, was outlawed. — State Trials, 
xiii. 939. 



EXECUTION OF AIKENHEAD 221 

the four witnesses against him were minors, except 
one ; and that witness, his senior by a single year, 
whose statement that he had heard him curse Christ 
and declare him an impostor, was the only evidence 
in support of the capital charge, had not only given 
him the books which subverted his faith, but, when 
he was in prison awaiting trial, had published some 
doggerel lines in. which he exhorted "God's deputies" 
to '* atone with blood the aflfronts of Heaven's offended 
throne." Aikenhead had tried to avert the proceedings 
against him by a denial, or at all events a palliation, 
of guilt ; after his conviction, though he had made a 
full confession and professed his penitence, he pleaded 
in vain, not for pardon, but for a short reprieve ; and 
two Lords of Session, Anstruther and Fountainhall, 
who approached the Privy Council on his behalf, were 
told that nothing could be done unless the ministers 
should intercede, which, according to Lord Anstruther, 
the ministers were so far from doing that they " spoke 
and preached for cutting him off." At the last moment, 
indeed, two of their number petitioned for mercy, 
but the Council, influenced no doubt by the attitude 
of their brethren, refused to interfere. In order to 
complete the disgrace of the Church, it requires only to 
be said that the General Assembly was sitting at the 
time ; that, two days before the execution, in answering 
the Kings letter, it petitioned for the vigorous enforce- 
ment of the laws against impiety and profanity "as 
that which will highly tend to the exalting of the glory 
of God " ; and that, six days after the execution, it 
ratified the Act of the preceding Assembly against 
the Deists.^ 

^ State Trials^ xiii. 918-939; Chambers' Doine$tic Annals, iii. 160-166; 
Gordon's Tkomoi Aikenhead: A Historical Review in relation to Mr, 



222 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

The prosecation of Aikenhead suggests what has 
been said of the way in which Pitt combated the germs 
of the French Revolution in England, that it "was 
like using a sledge-hammer to crush a wasp " ; and 
the ministers who had applauded the destruction of 
infidelity as represented by a penitent stripling were 
not likely to show much forbearance when some of 
their own number attempted to loosen the shackles of 
an iron-bound creed. At the opening of the eighteenth 
century the ecclesiastical authorities were alarmed to 
find that the writings of Antoinette Bourignon were 
being disseminated, especially amongst the Episcopahans 
of Aberdeen. In 1701 Dr. George Garden, an ejected 
prelatist, was deposed — ^a sentence to which he paid no 
regard — for having published a book in her defence, 
which the Assembly pronounced to be "a mass of 
dangerous, impious, blasphemous, and damnable 
errors " ; and an Act was passed recommending synods 
and presbyteries to use all diligence in suppressing such 
errors, and to consider whether any of them could be 
brought within the statute which, four years ago, had 
been so ruthlessly enforced. In 1706 James Allan, 
Presbyterian minister of Rothes, was deposed for failing 
to clear himself of this taint; and in 1709 and 1710 
two additional Acts were passed for the suppression of 
Bourignonism which was said to be very prevalent in 
several synods.^ 

The writings of this French mystic may not have 

MdcatUay and the * Witness'; Acts of Assembly, 1697, pp. 7, 27. It ift 
significant that in the year 1856 Gordon, a Unitarian minister, oould not 
get an Edinbargh publisher to issue his tract. 

^Acts of Assembly, 1701, pp. 16, 17; 1709, p. 20; 1710, pp. 10-11; 
Grub, vol. iii. ; Christian Instructor, xxx. 397-401. Bourignonism is one 
of the heresies which ministers of the Church of Scotland have still to 
disown at their ordination. 



BOUMGNONISM 22S 

been very profitable in so far as they tended to foster 
seclusion, to depreciate learning, and to resolve religion 
into a species of spiritual debauch ; but in Scotland, 
where dogmatic teaching was of an unusually hideous 
type, they served a useful purpose, and must be 
regarded as having revived the protest of the Laudian 
or " Canterburian " divines against the horrors of the 
Calvinistic faith. That such was their tendency is 
evident from what we know of the proceedings against 
the two ministers. The Assembly in condemning 
Garden's book found that it denied ^Hhe permission 
of sin and the infliction of damnation and vengeance " ; 
that it both denied and aspersed the decrees of election 
and reprobation ; and that it ascribed to man '' some 
infinite faculty whereby he may unite himself to God." 
Allan, the minister of Rothes, was deposed for refusing 
to acknowledge the Westminster Confession as the state- 
ment of his personal belief, and for omitting to mention 
it at the administration of baptism. The points at 
which he chiefly stumbled were the doctrines laid down 
as to reprobation and the fate of the heathen. In his 
published Letter he said he failed to see how it could 
contribute to one's salvation to believe that "the 
greatest part of mankind " is fore-ordained to ever- 
lasting death; he declared that men might show a 
Christian spirit who had never heard of Christ; and 
he quoted with approval the excellent words of Baxter : 
" Those overdoing divines who pretend to be certain 
that all the world are damned that are not Christians 
do add to God's Word and are great agents for Satan, 
to tempt men to infidelity and to atheism itself."^ 

M Letter to the Moderator of the next Qeneral Assembly against the 
Impoeing of the Westminster Confession as Terms of Ministerial Com- 
munwn, pp. 24, 32>34. 



224 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

The asceticism and seclusion of its votaries/ and the 
fact that most of them were Episcopalians, had probably, 
however, more to do with the condemnation of Bourig- 
nonism than its laxity of belief; for, in so far as it 
illustrated the Baconian maxim that it is "better to 
have no opinion at all of God than such an opinion 
as is unworthy of Him," it merely anticipated the 
influx of that liberal theology which was rising to 
predominance in England amongst the Presbyterians 
no less than within the Church. In the Assembly of 
1714 Webster, one of the ministers of Edinburgh,* 
brought a charge of heresy against John Simson, 
Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, who, he said, had 
been teaching Arminianism to his students for some 
six years. Two inferior courts had refused to receive 
the complaint; and the Assembly, instead of taking 
up the charge, as its author expected, or at all events 
of ordering the Presbytery of Glasgow to take it up, 
directed Webster in his private capacity to prosecute 
or "libel" the Professor before that court. This 
Webster did; and the process, after drifting through 
two Assemblies, was determined by the Assembly of 
1717, which, finding that Simson had broached some 
opinions of a useless and contentious kind, and that, 
in order to meet the objections of adversaries, he had 
adopted hypotheses too favourable to nature and reason, 
admonished him to abstain in future from such causes 
of offence. 

i"One of my brethren told me th&t I was sospected to be a 
Bourignoniat becauae (as he said) I did not take my diet as formerly, 
but went out to the hills all the day." — Allan's Letter, cited above, 
p. 14. The writer admits that his seclusion was the first cause of 
offence. 

s " Over-orthodox and as great a bigot as any in the coantry."— 
Calamy's Idfe, ii. 161. 



THE FIRST SIMSON CASE 225 

The charges proved against Simson were suflSciently 
serious to draw attention to the mildness of this rebuke. 
He had, indeed, taken considerable liberties with what 
he called "that excellent sum of the doctrine of the 
Gospel," the Westminster Confession of Faith. Accord- 
ing to this document, Adam as the federal representative 
of the human race had determined its fate once and 
for all by violating that unfortunate covenant which 
he and the Deity had contracted with regard to the 
forbidden fruit. A vicarious sacrifice had indeed been 
offered ; but the power to avail themselves of this 
expiation was to be communicated to only a few of 
the minority to whom it had been made known ; and 
these were to be saved to show that God was merciful, 
as the rest were to be damned to show that He was 
just^ Simson, conceiving that God could never have 
prejudiced humanity by treating on its behalf with so 
weak a vessel, rejected this idea of Adam as a " federal 
head " ; and, as he dissented from the Calvinists in 
their fundamental assumption, it is not surprising that 
he arrived at less unpleasant results. He held that 
there was no natural inability in man to seek saving 
grace ; that the heathen had a glimmering of gospel 
truth, and would be lost only if they rejected this 
" obscure discovery and offer " ; that the soul was 
created pure and became corrupt only when united to 
the body inherited from Adam ; that, as all who died 
in infancy would probably be saved, the elect might 
be expected to outnumber the damned ; that a desire 

^The ruthless logic of Calvinism is no doubt the secret of its intel- 
lectual growth. Men who could face such conclusions were likely, once 
their faith had been shaken, to be fearless enough in pursuit of truth ; 
but their faith was not easy to shake, for Calvinism, though in a sense 
the most rational of theological systems, is yet the most intolerant of 

reason. 

P 



226 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

to promote our own happiness should be our chief 
motive in serving God ; and that punishment must 
be eternal, not as a tribute to God's offended majesty, 
but because no lighter penalty — ^since even this was 
not enough — could deter from sin.^ 

Such doctrine was very unpalatable to those who 
had persuaded themselves that in vilifying the creature 
they exalted the Creator ; and the decision in Simson s 
case was the more significant because it occurred 
at a time when these people were attempting to 
propagate, or at all events to vindicate, their views. 
A contest was thus inevitable ; and a glance at the 
state of religious affairs in England and Ireland will 
enable us to account for the form in which it 
arose. 

Soon after the Revolution, a dispute was occasioned 
amongst the English Dissenters by the republication 
of the sermons of Dr. Crisp, an Antinomian divine 
who had died in 1642. The work was recommended by 
twelve nonconformist ministers, some of whom were not 
Antinomians ; and the question it raised was whether a 
man believed instinctively because he was justified, 
or whether he was justified on condition that he 
believed. Those who took the latter view, the chief 
of whom were Baxter and Williams, were called 
Neonomians, owing to their insistence on faith as a 
new law, distinct from the law of works ; and they 
very naturally denounced their opponents, the most 
prominent of whom was Trail, as disciples of Crisp. The 
controversy was not quite so trivial as it looked ; for 

^ Libel and Answers — Adv. Libr. Pamphlets, Second Series, 246 ; 
Gib's Display of the Secession Testimony^ i. 99-107. There seems to have 
been a humbler heretic in Edinburgh in 1713 of the name of Yool. — 
Wodrow Correspondence^ i. 493. 



LATITUDINARIANISM IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND 227 

the Neonoinians, who allowed some scope to reason, 
were on the road to rationalism — a road which was 
closed to those who regarded faith as a supernatural 
gift. Neonomianism was strongly favoured by the 
Presbyterians, and within a few years led to their 
separation from the Independents, whom they had 
joined in 1691. About 1717, the year in which Simson 
was censured, Arianism, which proved to be the fore- 
runner of Unitarianism, took root amongst the Presby- 
terians, especially at Exeter, as it had already taken 
root in the Church ; and the great majority of their 
ministers, whilst repudiating Arianism, gave a proof of 
their liberality by refusing to subscribe the doctrinal 
standards, apparently on the principle of Chillingworth 
that nothing but the actual words of Scripture should 
be made a test of belief. The Presbyterians of Ulster 
appear to have taken no part in the Antinomian dis- 
pute, and as late as 1716 they had proposed the 
Westminster Confession as a basis of toleration; but 
they were soon permeated, though less completely than 
their English brethren, by the latitudinarian spirit. 
In 1705 an association was formed, known as the 
Belfast Society, which became so influential that in 
seven years it gave five Moderators to the Synod, 
and the members of which insisted that conduct was 
more important than dogma, that honest doubt or 
error could never be a crime, and that candidates 
for the ministry should not be reqtiired to declare 
their assent to any human standard of belief. In 1721 
the Synod passed a resolution asserting the supreme 
deity of Christ; and, though the ministers who 
belonged to the Society repelled the imputation of 
Arianism, their refusal t/O sign either this resolu- 
tion or the Confession of Faith occasioned a keen 



228 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

controversy, and resulted, five years later, in an 
open breach.^ 

We have seen that the genial influence of this 
intellectual spring had extended to the Scottish as 
well as to the English and Irish shores, and that 
the Scottish Church, so long ice-bound in orthodoxy, 
was beginning to shake itself free. As the writings 
of Baxter, Williams and Trail, the last of whom had 
suffered as a Covenanter before the Revolution,* were 
widely read in Scotland, the Antinomian controversy 
could not fia,il to be waged there ; and the first shots 
— so to speak — ^had been exchanged several years before 
Simson was accused. In a treatise published as early 
as 1706 Hog of Camock had upheld the involuntary 
nature of faith; and in 1710, a manuscript catechism 
in which Hamilton of Airth, another minister, incul- 
cated the same view having been shown to some of 
its members, the General Assembly passed an Act, 
forbidding any expression of opinion contrary to the 
Confession and providing that no minister should 
print or disperse any catechism without the permission 
of his presbytery, which, before sanctioning such a 
work, was to consult the Commission. Hamilton, 
however, published his catechism in 1714; and the 
controversy, eclipsed for a time by the Simson case, 
broke forth anew just as that lengthy process was 
brought to a close. On the very day on which the 
Assembly administered its mild rebuke to Simson it 

1 Hunt's Rdigioua Thought in England, L 249-253 ; iL 313 ; iii 226-231 ; 
Lecky's History of England, iii. 20-22 ; Oalamj's Life, iL 402-418 ; Chris- 
tian Instructor, xxz. 641 ; Beid's Pre^terian Church in Irdand, iii. 206, 
234-236, 239, 269, 325. 

' He had fled to Holland in 1667 after the Fentland Bising, and, ten 
years later, had been imprisoned for three months in the Bass. — Trail's 
Works (Free Church Beprints), pp. vii. viiL 



■^^»"^i^^r^r^»^'T»^ 



'THE AUGHTERARDER CREED* 229 

condemned " as unsound and most detestable " a pro- 
position, assent to which had been required of a candi- 
date for license by the Presbytery of Auchterarder : " I 
believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that 
we must forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ." 
This statement, which became notorious even in London 
as " the Auchterarder creed," though not intended to 
be Antinomian, might easily be interpreted in that 
sense ; but the real question was not what form of 
doctrine prevailed at Auchterarder, but whether presby- 
teries were to be allowed to determine the controversy 
now in progress by shutting the door of the ministry 
on all who did not take the Evangelical side. The 
Assembly showed its consciousness of this by forbidding 
presbyteries to require subscription to any formulas not 
authorised by the Church ; and the minority, having 
failed in their intended proscription, were reduced to 
propagate their theology by less arbitrary means. ^ 

We have seen that the controversy about faith and 
morals had arisen in England from the republication 
of Crisp's Antinomian sermons, and it was now to be 
intensified in Scotland by the republication of a some- 
what similar book. Fisher's Marrow of Modem 
Divinity^ the work of an English Independent, had 
appeared in 1646. It had gone through nine or ten 
editions without provoking any serious dispute ; but 
one writer had, it seems, attacked it soon after its 
publication as favourable to the Antinomianism which 
it professed to oppose f and its advocates admitted that 
it contained several dubious or extravagant expressions, 
such as that a believer has no cause to lament or crave 

^ Christian Instructor, xxx. 542 ; Boston's Memoirs (1776)) p. 330 ; 
Wodrow, ii. 267-270 ; Acts of Assembly, 1717. 
^HadoVs Antinomianism of the Marrow Detected, p. 6. 



230 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

pardon for his faults, and that God will " not love you 
ever a whit the less, though you commit never so many 
and so great sins."* When the first, and much the 
larger, part of this work* was published in 1718 with 
a preface by Hog, to whom and others it had been 
recommended by Boston, Principal Hadow of St. 
Andrews severely criticised it in a sermon to the 
Synod of Fife; and in the Assembly of 1719 it was 
complained of as unsound and remitted for judgment 
to the Commission. A committee of this body 
examined the "Marrowmen," as Hog and his friends 
were caUed, whilst a sub-committee was considering 
their book; and, the Commission having made an 
unfavourable report, the Assembly of 1720 condemned 
the Ma/rrow as heretical in five several points, and 
required all ministers, not only to abstain from 
recommending it, but to warn their people against its 
use. The Marrowmen, in defence of what they called 
**a bundle of sweet and pleasant -Gospel truths," drew 
up a representation ;* but the Assembly of 1722 cen- 
sured them for contumacy, re-afltoned the former 
decision, and refused to receive a protest in which 
they declared their inability to comply with the Act.* 
This affair had little direct influence on the growth 
of liberal opinions, for it was primarily a contest between 
the zealous and the more cautious Evangelicals, in 

^ Hadow's ArUiTumUaniam of the Marrow Detected^ p. 16. 

' Had the work been published in fall, it would have been seen that 
the second part pnifessed to vindicate the moral law. 

' It is given in full hy Struthers, History of Scotland, i. 498. 

* A minute and exhaustive account of the Marrow controversy is given 
l)y M'Crie in the Christian Instnictor for 1831 and 1832. Boston, who 
** received the rebuke and admonition as an ornament," notices that the 
meeting of the Assembly at three iu the afternoon '* for that black 
work" was delayed by a severe thunderstorm. **I well remember with 



THE 'MARROW* CONTROVERSY 231 

which the Moderates appeared only as allies of the 
latter. Principal Hadow, the most determined oppon- 
ent of Simson, not only took the lead in writing and 
preaching against the Ma/rrow^ but is said to have 
drafted the Act by which it was condemned ;^ and his 
party seem to have interpreted their Calvinism in a 
severer and more literal sense than that of Hog. One 
of the charges against the Marrow was that it favoured 
the tenet of universal redemption ; and Ebenezer 
Erskine, who drew up the representation in defence 
of the book, was wont, without discarding the doctrine 
of election, to minimise it in practice, and to call upon 
his hearers to set it aside as a "matter with which 
they had no more concern than with what men are 
doing in Mexico and Peru."^ Little credit is due to 
either side for its management of the dispute. The 
attempt of the majority to suppress the Marrow was 
so far from successful that a new and complete edition 
was published by Boston in 1727, and it was too much 
akin to the contention of their opponents in the case 
of " the Auchterarder creed " that none but Evangelicals 
should be licensed to preach. On the other hand, men 
who had applauded such an assertion of power by a 
single presbytery might have been expected to show 
more respect to the authority of the Church. 

Whilst, however, the Marrow was both censured! 
and defended on strictly evangelical grounds, the fact 
that they were at liberty to denounce it as Antinomian 

what serenity of mind and comfort of heart I heard the thunder of that 
day, the moet terrible thunderclap being just about three o'clock. It made 
impression on many as Heaven's testimony a^inst their deed they were 
then about to do; though in this it is not for me to determine/' 
Jfenunrs, pp. 379-380. This portent was obviously susceptible of a very 
different interpretation. 

^Wodrow, ii. 532, note. 'MacEwen's Enkines^ p. 38. 



232 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

must have been a great relief to many ministers who 
had lost all enthusiasm, if they ever had any, for the 
doctrine of free grace ; and the growing influence of 
this party became apparent, a few years later, when 
the Glasgow heresiarch was again brought to trial. At 
the meeting of the General Assembly in 1726 it was 
found that several presbyteries had instructed their 
representatives to propose that an inquiry should be 
made into the truth of certain rumours affecting the 
soundness of Professor Simson's teaching with regard to 
the Trinity ; and a committee was appointed to concur 
with the Presbytery of Glasgow in testing these 
rumours, and in ascertaining how far the Professor had 
compUed with the injunctions laid upon him in 1717. 
Simson denied the errors attributed to him, and, after 
exasperating his accusers by leading them through 
trackless labyrinths of metaphysical subtlety and 
evasion, he submitted what was considered a perfectly 
orthodox profession of faith ; but it was proved to the 
satisfaction of two exhausted Assemblies that he had 
inculcated Arianism or Semi-Arianism, that **too too 
epidemick disease of our neighbours,"^ the apprehension 
of which had given rise to a suggestion in 1720 that 
the Assembly should assert the supreme Godhead of 
Christ.* In other words, he had so far departed from 
the orthodox conception of the Trinity as to teach that 
the three Persons were not numerically one, that the 
Son was not necessarily existent,* and that the term 

^ The Method of proceeding by Queries vindicated^ p. 4. 

"Wodrow, iii. 236, note. 

' " He owns in conversation that he does not think the Son's Independ- 
ency, his Self -Existence, and Self -Origination, consistent with his being 
begotten.'' — Wodrow, iii. 236. Stmson's maxim, RcUio est principium et 
fuTidainentum theologiae, was calculated to make considerable havoc of 
the Athanasian creed. 



THE SECOND SIMSON CASE 235 

supreme deity might be used in a sense which appUed 
only to the Father, and not to the Son. Doctrine very 
similar to this — at all events as interpreted by Clarke,, 
who, like Simson, refused to call himself an Arian— 
was allowed to pass muster in the Church of England ; 
and it would seem to be a much more serious infraction 
of ecclesiastical law that the Professor had persisted in 
inculcating all the tenets for which he was censured 
in 1717, and that, in defending them, he had constantlj 
referred to his writings against Webster. 

The Assembly of 1727, as a provisional measure, 
suspended Simson ; but the next Assembly was so 
much divided as to what the final sentence should be 
that it remitted the whole process to presbyteries, and 
left it to be determined by their representatives in 
the Aissembly of 1729. The controversy was thus 
referred to a popular vote, and its echoes resounded 
in the press. On the one hand, it was declared, not 
only that Simson's errors were the most serious that 
had been broached in Scotland since the Reformation — 
which they might very easily have been — ^but that they^ 
were " gross and damnable " ; that he had so degraded 
and restricted the divinity of Christ as to make Him 
practicaDy " no God at all " ; that he had afflicted 
" the godly " with great " heaviness of heart " ; and 
that, though his penitence might save him from excom- 
munication — ^which, however, some had advocated — he 
ought certainly to be deposed. Ministers who favoured 
Simson were told that they would be deserted by their 
flocks ; and " illiterate pious Christians " were alarmed 
by absurd and malicious tales, such as that the Professor 
maintained that women had no souls, or that jealousy 
of " King Jesus " would secure for him the protection 
of the Crown. In several presbyteries the lay members 



234 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

drew up a petition to their clerical brethren, exhorting 
them to declare for deposition ; for " the truly godly " 
— to quote one of their own number — claimed "to 
know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven even 
though they be but babes when compared with many 
of the wise and prudent from whom they are hid."^ 
On the other hand, Simson had many able friends, 
such as Principals Wishart and Chalmers and Professor 
Hamilton, who had defended him in the late Assemblies, 
asserting that all that been proved against him were 
some unguarded expressions which had probably been 
misunderstood, and who had gained great applause 
from the English Non-Subscribers by condemning as 
inquisitorial the putting to him of a series of queries 
as to his private belief.^ Wishart, in a vigorous 
pamphlet, exposed the fanatical character of the agita- 
tion, maintained the Professor's innocence, and insisted 
that his suspension should be " taken off." When the 
Assembly met in 1729, it was found that only four 
presbyteries advocated this course, that 20 were for 
suspension, and 28 for deposition; and, as a compro- 
mise between the two degrees of censure, which 
threatened to cause a schism, it was resolved merely 
to suspend the Professor, but at the same time to 
issue a recommendation that he should not be further 
employed as a theological teacher.* 

^An Alarm to the Church of Scotland . . . against Error, pp. 3, 4, 7, 
9, 18, 19 ; A Short and Impartial State of the Case (WishartX pp. 37, 
39, 42. 

"Wodrow, iii. 275. 

3 The Case of Mr. John Simeon^ with supplement and other papers — an 
enormous pamphlet. Wodrow's copious but pointless report of the 
Assembly debates is well summarised by Cunningham. Few sentences 
issued by an ecclesiastical court have been the subject of more anxious 
deliberation than that passed on Simson ; yet Burton (viii. 399-400) says, 
^* There seems to have been no ultimate decision for or against him." 



CAMERONIANS AND HEBRONITES 235 

The doctrinal disputes, whose history we have now 
traced, were to result in a secession from the Church ; 
but other causes* of a similar tendency had long been 
at work; and, as the subject of Episcopal noncon- 
formity has been dealt with in the preceding chapter, 
it will be convenient at this stage to review the 
progress of Presbyterian dissent. 

This movement takes us back in unbroken sequence 
to the suspension of the Act of Classes after the battle 
of Dunbar^; for, though the Protesters as a body 
concurred in the re-establishment of Presbytery after 
the Revolution, the little group known as Cameronians 
disowned William as an uncovenanted king and 
refused to acknowledge the new Government either 
in Church or State. The three persons whom they 
recognised as ministers were, indeed, received into 
communion by the Assembly of 1690; but in 1706 
they were joined by Macmillan of Balmaghie, a minister 
whose sympathy with their tenets had caused him 
to be deposed, and soon afterwards by a preacher 
named Macneil. In alliance with the Cameronians, 
there was another body of avowed dissenters, headed 
by John Hepburn,* who agreed with them in every- 
thing but their repudiation of the civil power; and, 
whilst the first of these sects was testifying against 
the defections of the time, and especially against what 
Macmillan and Macneil, in a private remonstrance 
of their own, called "the infidel terms of the late 
God-provoking, religion-destroying, and land-ruining 

*Seep. 9. 

'Hepburn's parish in Kirkcudbright bore the scriptural appellation 
of Urr, and his followers were known as " Hebrouites '' — a corruption 
of his own name. He and Macmillan were wont to exchange pulpits. — 
AcU of Asiemblyy 1704, p. 20. A full account of both will be found in 
Struthers, i. 56-90. 



236 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

Union," ^ many ministers and laymen were bewailing 
the decline of theocratic pretensions, the doctrinal 
laxity of the Church, and its Laodicaean tone. 

We have seen that in 1722 and in 1729, on the 
occasion of the Marrow controversy and of the second 
Simson case, these people were not far from revolt; 
but there was an earlier and more legitimate grievance 
which had distressed them still more. Scottish Presby- 
terians naturally thought it hard that they should be 
required to promote, as they believed, the exclusion 
of all but English Churchmen from the British throne, 
and that this obligation should be imposed upon them 
contrary to the Union, and as part of a legal toleration 
for Episcopalians to which they were violently opposed ; 
and the grievance was not wholly removed when the 
abjuration oath in 1715, and more completely in 1719,* 
was altered in such a way as to exclude the oblique 
reference to the English Church ; for the stricter 
Presbyterians believed that they could not swear 
allegiance without "homologating" such iniquitous 
institutions as the Union, toleration and patronage. 
About a third of the ministry refused to take the 
oath;* and, though the Government, much to their 
surprise, left them entirely undisturbed, and the 
Assembly exhorted both sides to mutual forbearance, 
the dissension in some districts amounted to an open 
schism. In the south and south-west, where the oath 
was extremely unpopular, some of the Nonjurant 
ministers not only refused to sit with the majority 

^ Struthers, i. 71, note. 

'In 1715 the cu was turned into which (see p. 204, note), and the inten- 
tion was disclaimed of imposing any obligation iuimical to the Scottish 
Church. In the oath as re-imposed in 1719 there was no reference at 
all to the Act of Settlement. — Statutes at Large, v. 32, 34, 238. 

^ Spalding Miscellany, i. 247 ; Boston, p. 282. 



PATRONAGE DORMANT 237 

in presbyteries and synods, but even invaded their 
parishes and administered baptism and marriage to 
their mutinous flocks ; ^ the conmiunions of the " clear 
brethren," as Wodrow calls those who had no scruple, 
were sparsely attended, whilst those of the " unclear *' 
were LJi to by great crowds; one minister de- 
barred from the sacrament all who had taken the oath, 
and others publicly denounced them, asserting that 
they had buried both the Reformation and the Cove- 
nant, and dethroned Christ in favour of Queen 
Anne.* 

Whilst the wound inflicted on the Church by the 
abjuration oath was being kept open by the contro- 
versies which raged round the Marrow and Professor 
Simson, a new source of dissension was gradually 
developing, which was to prove the most serious of 
all. We have seen that the rights of patrons had 
been restored to them by an Act of the British Parlia- 
ment in 1712; but that Act, the fruit of Jacobite 
intrigues, was extremely unpopular, and its effects 
were little felt for thirty or even for forty years." 
By the third section of the Act, if the patron did not 
present a qualified minister within six months, the right 
of presentation " for that time " was to devolve on the 
presbytery ; and, as 550 out of 950 livings were in 

^Aeti ofAsaerMy^ 1714, p. 11. 

* Wodrow, i. 340, 351. 

'If one maj judge from a glance through some dozen presbyteries 
in the I'atH Ecdesiae ScoticamUy presentations were very rare before 
1735, and did not come into general use till the middle of the century 
except in East Lothian, where most of the parishes — for example all 
but two in the Presbytery of Haddington — seem to have been peaceably 
filled up under the Act of 1712 as soon as they became vacant The 
latitudinarian influence of Leighton and Burnet, of Scougal and Charteris, 
seems to have lingered long in that district. 



J 



238 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

the gift of the Crown,^ and as the royal patronage 
was controlled at first by Harley, the friend of 
Carstares, and, after the accession of George I., by 
the Whigs, it is not surprising that in the great 
majority of cases the jus devolutum was allowed to 
come into force, and that the area of its operation was 
soon considerably enlarged. The few patrons who 
sought to exercise their rights sometimes attempted 
to delay a settlement, either because they were Episco- 
palians and unfriendly to the Church, or because they 
wanted to retain the stipend ; and, in order to prevent 
a practice which some of them had adopted of present- 
ing ministers who had not taken the oaths ^ or who held 
better livings, it was enacted in 1719 that the expiry 
of the six months allowed to the patron should not 
be checked if he presented a minister not legally 
qualified, or who was the pastor of another parish, or 
who was not willing to accept.^ It is said that for 
several years after the passing of this Act no minister 
dared to outrage public opinion by making use of a 
presentation ; and it was even proposed in the Assembly 
— without regard to the conflict with the civil power 
which such a course must have entailed — ^that none 
should be licensed or ordained who were prepared to 
comply with the unpopular law.* 

The practical unanimity which prevailed in opposition 
to patronage was not marred for sonae time by any 

^Hutcheson's Considerations on Patronage, 1735, p. 24. Patronages 
belonging to bishoprics had been annexed to the Crown in 1712, and 
the Crown also held the patronages forfeited after the Rebellion of 1715. 

' These, of course, would not be qualified in terms of the Acts of 169S 
and 1712 ; but we have seen that one at least of the oaths was not enforced. 

^Statutes at Large, v. 239. 

^Willison's Testimony, p. 48; Petition to Assembly in Struthers, i. 
603, note. 



HERITORS AND ELDERS IN PLACE OF PATRON 239 

serious dispute as to what should be put in its place. 
We have seen that, when patronage was suspended 
during the Interregnum and during the 22 years which 
succeeded the Revolution, the minister was chosen 
throughout the first period by the elders, and through- 
out the second by the elders and heritors or by the 
elders and magistrates; and it is remarkable that the 
latter system, though the less democratic, was accepted 
without demur during the reigns of William and Anne, 
and was even defended in pamphlets and petitions as 
settling " the call of ministers upon the foot of a free 
apostolical election."^ The same rule continued to be 
observed with little variation for some dozen years 
after patronage had been nominally restored. Overtures 
during this period were transmitted by the Assembly to 
presbyteries with regard to the method to be adopted 
in filling vacant parishes, and these, whilst betraying 
a growing disposition to consult the wishes of the 
people, conformed in the main to what had been the 
practice before 1712. About the year 1725, however, 
when the overtures had been discontinued without 
leading to any definite result, a new principle began 
to be avowed;* for the Covenanting tradition was 

^Papers against the Scots Toleration and Patronage, 1712, p. 61. It 
seems never to have occurred to writers against patronage either in 170^ 
or in 1712 that the Act of 1690 might be represented as inconsistent with 
the " divine right of the popular election of pastors." The Act is said to 
have been very liberally interpreted — Willison, p. 72 ; but, if so, it is 
difficult to account for the general impression (see above, p. 209) that the 
right of presentation had merely been transferred from the patrons to 
the heritors and elders. 

•Moncreiflf Wellwood's Life of Dr. John Ershine, pp. 435, 440. This 
writer sayB that overtures were transmitted from 1712 to 1723 ; but an 
overture printed at the end of the Acts of Assembly, 1719, seems to imply 
that no such proposal had been made since 1711. According to this 
overture, the elders were to try the inclinations of the beads of families ; 



240 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

strengthening its hold on the lower classes of the laity 
in proportion as the younger and more liberal ministers 
showed a tendency to shake it oflF; and the people, in 
order to arrest what they called the defections of the 
Church, were determined to assert their power. The 
zeal of their parishioners had long, indeed, been a source 
of embarrassment even to pastors of the old and 
approved type. Wodrow in 1712 complained that 
there was little respect for the ministerial office, that 
there was "a general suspicion and jealousy of 
ministers"; and he blamed some of his brethren for 
having "taught the people to bear rule over them." 
Boston tells us in his Memoirs that, as he did not 
separate from the compliant majority, he gained little 
credit with his people for refusing to take the abjuration 
oath; and another recusant minister, who insisted on 
attending a Jurant communion, was threatened with 
violence, and was in danger of being stoned.^ Yielding 
the more readily to such pressure as they found 
themselves losing ground in the Church courts, the 
Evangelicals claimed an influence for the people in 
the election of their pastors which they had not 
enjoyed under the two previous suspensions of patron- 
age, and which, if conceded as their due in the First 
Book of Discipline, had been withdrawn in the Second. 
From 1690 to 1712 the right of the Christian people to 
choose their own pastor had meant that the pastor 
should be proposed for their acceptance by the heritors 
and elders ; but a party now objected to the intrusion 
of persons who had no ecclesiastical status, and was 

but the presbytery was not to proceed to a settlement unless a majority 
of heritors (without mention of elders) concurred. See also Mod^rt^ 
Eratiianitm Unveiled^ 1732, appendix, pp. 43-45. 

' Wodrow, i. 260, 351 ; Boston, p. 282. 



POPULAR CLAIMS RESISTED 241 

rapidly advancing to the position that the congregation 
should both call and elect. Both of these points were 
fully discussed in 1725 when the Assembly reviewed the 
action of the Synod of Aberdeen in setting aside a 
call to St. Machar s Cathedral from the magistrates and 
elders in favour of one from the elders alone. It was 
referred to the Commission to " moderate " a new call ; 
and the Commission, though their decision was riot 
reversed, were censured by the next Assembly for 
having settled Chalmers, the magistrates' candidate, 
without due regard to the wishes of the people. They 
had appointed some of their number to act with such 
members of the presbytery as were willing to concur; 
and we have here probably the first instance of a 
"riding committee,'* that is, of a committee whose 
function it was to ordain the choice of the heritors, or, 
as in this case, of the magistrates, by overriding the 
opposition of the local courts.^ 

Whatever may have been the spiritual discernment of 
heritors, they were decidedly more favourable than the 
peasantry to liberal ideas ; and, as Moderatism was now 
dominant at the Universities, except perhaps under 
Principal Hadow at St. Andrews, every year was marked 
by a growing reluctance to admit the popular claims. 
The Assembly of 1730 had to deal with twelve cases of 
alleged intrusion, all of which seem to have been upheld; 
and the attempt of a few members to protest against 
one of these — that of Hutton in Berwickshire — gave 
rise to an Act that henceforth no reasons of dissent 
should be entered on the record. Next year a fresh 

^Wodrow, iii. 197-199, 249-256. Wodrow refers to the Commission's 
'* joining correspondents with the Presbytery in settling of Mr. Chalmers." 
This was in 1726 — three years earlier than the first instance mentioned 
by Moncreiff Wellwood and adopted by M'Kerrow. 

Q 



242 THE CHURCH AKD DISSENT, 1712-1740 

attempt was made to establish a definite role for the 
election of pastors, and an overture on this subject was 
transmitted to presbyteries, with an intimation that, if 
they did not make known their opinions, the next 
Assembly should be at liberty, if it pleased, to convert 
it into a standing Act.^ Though the rule thus suggested 
was practically that of 1690, it was open to attack as 
less democratic than that which had been imposed by 
the civU power; for the heritors and elders, whose 
function it had been to name and propose a minister, 
were now to elect and call him, and that too '* in a 
conjunct meeting." which in moat parishes would cona- 
prise a majority of heritors, especially as these, if absent 
or non-resident, might vote by proxy ; and the con- 
gregation was to be consulted '^ after the finishing of the 
election," and not, as in 1690, whilst it was still in 
progress.* At the meeting of Assembly in 1732 it was 
found that 31 presbyteries condemned the overture ; 
that 6 approved of it as it stood ; that 12 approved of 
it, subject to amendment ; and that 18 had made no 
return. These last, on the assumption — which some 
denied — that the approval of presbyteries was essential, 
were reckoned as favourable, since, though warned of 
the consequences that would ensue if they made no 
return, they had not intimated their dissent; and, though 
two petitions were presented against this and other 
grievances— one by 39 ministers and 3 elders,* and the 
other by some 1700 laymen — ^it was carried first that 
the overture should not be re- transmitted, and then, "by 
a very great plurality," that it should be approved.* 

^ Acts o/Assembljf, 1731, p. 7. 

* Willison's Testimon^y p. 70 ; PcOronage Report^ p. 89. 

3 In Strutiiers, i. 599, note. Six other ministers afterwards signed the 
petition. 

* Gib's DUplay of the Secession Testimony, p. 2 ; Assembly Rsffister^ MSS. 



BBENBZER ERSKINE 243 

The most prominent of those who spoke and voted 
against this Act was Ebenezer Erskine, who* for 27 
years had been minister of Portmoak in Kinross-shire, 
and who was now minister at Stirling. Erskine had 
long been the most popular orator of the ultra-Evan- 
gelical school ; his communions at Portmoak were some- 
times attended by 2,000 people; and his audiences 
every Sunday were so large that, when the weather 
permitted, he preached in the open air. He had 
refused and denounced in all its forms the abjuration 
oath; as early as 1715 he had asserted the divine 
right of every congregation to choose its own pastor ; 
in 1721 he had drawn up the representation in defence 
of the Marrow ; and he had been particularly zealous 
against Simson, whose first accuser, Webster, was his 
father-in-law, asserting with reckless vehemence that 
** Satan hath a party within this Church," and exhorting 
his hearers to stand up " against those who would hew 
down the Tree of Life."^ In the Assembly of 1732 he 
charged his brethren who supported the overture with 
showing respect to heritors at the expense of the poor, 
rich in faith, whom God had chosen, " to the man with 
the gold ring and the gay clothing beyond the man 
with the vile raiment and poor attire";^ on returning 
to his parish, he declared from the pulpit that "pro- • 
fessed Presbyterians," who countenanced intrusion, were 
attempting '' to jostle Christ out of his government" ;* 
and in October, on opening the Synod of Perth and 
Stirling, he preached a pungent sermon* from the text, 
"The stone which the builders rejected, the same is 

1 MacE wen's Erskines^ pp. 40, 53, 54, 60-61. 
^Fraaer's Life o/Menezer Erskine, p. 359. 
' Moncreiff WeUwood'a Life of Dr. John Erslkine, p. 444. 
* Oib'8 Display, i. 381-403. 



244 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

made the head-stone of the corner." The sting of this 
discourse lay not so much in its practical application, 
that Christ was "rejected in his poor members, and 
the rich of this world put in their room," as in the 
insulting parallel which the preacher sought to establish 
between the majority of his brethren and the Scribes 
and Pharisees, who, though zealots for the moral law, 
were strangers to grace, who thought that "a smack 
of the learning then in vogue " was all that was needed 
to fit a man for the ministry, who courted the great 
and treated the people as ** an unhallowed mob," who 
denied the "supreme deity "^ of Christ, and who, in 
their "carnal wisdom," put him to death. 

Denunciation of Pharisees has seldom been uttered 
in a more obviously pharisaical spirit ; and the Synod, 
though much opposed to patronage and intrusion,* 
resolved, after considering the sermon, that several 
of its expressions were deserving of blame. Erskine, 
supported by a dozen ministers who protested against 
this decision, appealed to the next Assembly; and, 
having gone away without waiting to be rebuked, he 
was cited to appear at the next meeting in April 1733. 
His supporters were now reduced to seven, and these 
were careful to distinguish between the substance and 
the manner of his discourse ; but, though several com- 
mittees were appointed "one after another" to confer 
with him, he declined to withdraw "the least part" 
of what he called "the utterance given me by the 
Lord at Perth " ; and, when the Moderator was about 
to admonish him, he intimated that he adhered to 
his appeal. He now published his sermon, defended 

^As the Pharisees denied a great deal more than this, the words 
quoted were obviously a reflection on Professor Simson. 

^ See proof of this in Cunningham, ii. 431, note. 



ERSKINE AND THREE OTHERS SECEDE 245 

it from the pulpit, and conducted himself, according 
to his opponents, as "an itinerant trumpeter of schism/' 
At the Assembly of 1733 the sentence of the Synod 
was confirmed, and Erskine and three ministers — 
Wilson, MoncreiflF and Fisher — who still adhered to 
him were admonished at the bar. This rebuke they 
repelled in a written protest which they declined to 
withdraw ; and the Commission was then instructed 
to suspend them — if still impenitent — in August, and 
in November to proceed, if necessary, to a higher 
censure. In August, accordingly, having appeared 
only to read long papers in their defence, they were 
suspended; and in November, on their admission 
that they had entirely disregarded this sentence, as 
indeed they had declared that they would, a motion 
was carried in the Commission by the Moderator's 
casting vote that the higher censure authorised by 
the Assembly should be imposed. A last effort was 
made to reclaim the mutineers in the shape of a pro- 
posal that they should withdraw their protest against 
the decision of the Assembly in the event of the next 
Assembly being willing to affirm that it was not 
intended thereby to restrict ministerial freedom, and 
that meanwhile they should reserve full liberty to 
denounce the decision as much as they pleased. On 
their rejection of this overture, which had been urged 
upon them in a conference of four hours, they were 
" loosed " from their parishes and declared to be no 
longer ministers of the Church. When the sentence 
was intimated to them, they read and presented a 
document in which they declared that they were 
obliged to make a secession from "the prevailing party" 
in the Church, but that, notwithstanding, their pastoral 
relations remained valid, and that it should still be 



246 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

lawful for them " to exercise the keys of doctrine, dis- 
cipline and government"^ 

The majority in this case professed to take their 
stand on the principle that no order could be main- 
tained in the Church if ministers would not submit 
to be rebuked by the supreme court for a matter of 
so Uttle vital importance as mere impropriety of 
speecL It has been suggested that the Assembly 
might have overlooked Erskine's protest against the 
censure passed upon him, as in 1722 it had overlooked 
a similar protest against the condenmation of the 
Marrow \^ but this was a judicial process in which 
the parties were represented by counsel ; and the 
argument seems at least to be a strong one that the 
complainant had no right to appeal to the Assembly 
unless he meant to accept its decision. Nor can it be 
said that Erskine was prosecuted for impugning an un- 
popular Act ; for the sentence which the Assembly con- 
firmed referred only to " several indecent expressions," 
and he was not asked to give a promise of silence, but 
merely to acquiesce in the judgment of his superiors 
that on a particular occasion he had violated decorum. 

If, however, the policy of the Moderates was to put 
a check on that reckless license of invective which 
had been claimed and exercised by all Presbyterian 
extremists since the days of Ejqox, their subsequent 
procedure was fatal to its success. Early in 1734, 
having formed themselves into what they called an 
Associate Presbytery, the four ministers issued a 
declaration of the causes which had induced them 

^ A Narrative and State of the Proceedingiy etc., and a Review of ibis 
tract, 1734 ; Testimony of the Aeaociate S$f7u>d, 1779, pp. 19-33 ; M^errow, 
i. 5S-91. 

'Comungham, ii 43S. 



EFFORTS TO RECLAIM THEM 247 

to secede ; ^ and their opponents, anxious to retain 
the minority whose Evangelical sympathies had not 
as yet developed into schism, made haste to retrace 
their steps. The Assembly of 1734 repealed not 
only the new scheme for appointing to vacant 
parishes, but also the Act of 1730 against the 
recording of reasons of dissent, and declared, in 
terms of the proposal made to Erskine and his 
friends, that the decision in their case was not 
intended to put any restraint on ministerial free- 
dom. It empowered the Synod of Perth and 
Stirling to deal as it pleased with the seceding 
brethren, whilst at the same time forbidding that 
court to take into consideration the legality of the 
process ; it sustained several appeals against intrusion ; 
And it prohibited the Commission from instituting 
" riding committees." ^ The Synod at once restored 
the four ministers, and the Presbytery of Stirling 
even elected Erskine as its Moderator. Erskine, how- 
ever, intimated his intention to tarry for a while in 
the wilderness, into which, as he conceived, the 
Established Church had, for the most part, driven 
the Church of Christ;* and a lengthy manifesto 
was soon issued, in which, after complaining that 
the sentence against them had not been rescinded 
or declared illegal, the Seceders put forward several 
extravagant demands, on the concession of which alone 
they would consent to return.* 

' Afterwards known as the First or Extra-Jadicial Testimony, in order 
to distinguish it from the much larger document which they published 
when they were about to exercise ^mi^tcux^ functions. 

^Act9 ofAmmUy, 1734, pp. 9, 19, 21. 

' Eraser's Life and Bicvry of Ebenezer Erskine, p. 399. 

^ TeiUnwMf of the Associate Synod, pp. 231-266. The sixth and last 
•demand was that the Church should appoint a public fast for its *' course of 
iMick-sliding," in other words, for all that had given o£fence to the Seceders. 



248 THE CHURCH AND DISSENT, 1712-1740 

The Evangelical measures passed by the Assembly 
of 1734 were carried still further in 1736, when two 
Acts were passed, one declaring it to be a principle 
of the Church that none should be ordained to a 
parish contrary to the will of the congregation, and 
the other requiring ministers in their sermons to 
conform to what was popularly called "the right 
Gospel strain " ; but the Seceders insisted that the 
Assembly betrayed the hoUowness of these reforms 
by countenancing intrusions at Denny and Traquair, 
and by acquitting a heretical and frankly Moderate 
Professor ;^ and at the end of this year, 1736, as an 
intimation that they were now prepared to exercise 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction — for hitherto the Associate 
Presbytery had been little more than an association 
for prayer — they issued their Judicial Testimony, in 
which they defined their position by reviewing at 
great length the defections of the Church since the 
fall of Ultra-Presbyterianism in 1651.* This step, as 
the announcement of a permanent secession, gave great 
oflfence to the loyal Evangelicals, dissatisfied as they 
already were with the Seceders for rejecting the con- 
cessions they had procured for them in 1734 and 
1736. The views of this party found a vigorous 
exponent in Currie of Kinglassie, who had been the 
intimate firiend of Ebenezer Erskine, and who, with 
six other ministers, had protested against the sentence 
of the Commission ; and in 1738, when proceedings 
had been instituted against the Seceders, now eight 
in number, including Ebenezer *s brother, Ralph, on 

^ Professor CampbeU. See chapter vii. 

'The repeal of the laws against witchcraft, which came into force on 
June 24 of this year, was mentioned as one of many " public evils."— 
Statutes at Large, vi. 206 ; Gib*s Display, i. 144. 



THE SEGEDERS DEPOSED 24^ 

the ground that they were setting up a new Church,. 
Currie attacked them in the press as guilty of reckless 
and unjustifiable schism. In 1739 it was resolved to 
proceed with a libel which the Commission had 
issued; but the Assembly, after hearing itself 
denounced and disowned as a corrupt body, from 
which the faithful were exhorted to come forth, had 
sufficient control of its temper to suspend judgment 
for another year. In 1740 the Seceders were finally 
deposed.^ 

^Morren's Annals of the General AuemMy^ pp. 1-10, 16-18. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

It has been mentioned that the Seceders in their 
Judicial Testimony traced back the declension of the 
Church, as the Cameronians had always traced it, to 
the repeal of the Act of Classes in 1651 ; and, without 
attempting to follow them in their backsliding chronicle, 
we may profitably supplement what has already been 
said on this subject by looking more closely into the 
rise and character of the latitudinarian spirit. Some 
writers would have us believe that this spirit was 
introduced with the Episcopal conformists at the 
Revolution ; ^ but such a theory has no foundation in 
fact. The clergy who conformed were neither numerous, 
nor, with one or two exceptions,* of any particular 
note ; and when, at a much later time, the Evangelicals 

^ Hetberington in his ultra-Presbyterian Hutory of the Church of 
Scotland harps continually on this idea. Cunningham, a most judicidbs 
and interesting writer, summarily rejects it. 

^The chief exceptions were Laurence Charteris, the friend of Burnet 
and Leighton ; George Meldrum, who was twice Moderator of the 
Assembly ; and Colin Campbell, the devoted pastor for almost sixty 
years of a remote Highland parish, whose modesty alone prevented him 
from winning world-wide recognition as a mathematician and astronomer, 
and of whom Sir Isaac Newton wrote : "I see that were he amongst 
us, he would make children of us all." — Scot's Fasti^ v. 62-65. 



WANING INTOLERANCE 261 

\)egan to take alarm, it was the young ministers they 
denounced, not the old. Nevertheless the dissenters 
were not wrong in beginning their story of defection 
with the battle of Dunbar ; for, though the Church 
of the Revolution had little or no personal connexion 
with that of the Restoration, we have seen that the 
moderate spirit shown by the restored Presbytery 
was the result of its sufferings and fanatical ex- 
cesses during the two preceding reigns. The advice 
of King William 8 Commissioner to the Parliament of 
1690, "Let your moderation be known unto all men," 
and his own message to the Assembly of that year, 
inculcating "a calm and peaceable procedure" were 
thus congenial to the temper of the time ; and the 
reluctance to revive extreme pretensions, due in the 
first place to mere exhaustion, was soon strengthened 
by the commercial and political agitation excited by 
the Darien Scheme and the Union. Wodrow in 1709 
feared that the plague then raging in the Baltic ports 
might visit Scotland as a punishment for "the sin 
of our too great fondness upon trade, to the neglecting 
of our more valuable interests " ; ^ and the broad- 
minded Calamy who visited Scotland in that year 
noted as remarkably that at a meeting of members 
of Assembly containing representatives of the various 
synods, "not one in all the company was for the 
Jure Divino of the Presbyterian form of Church 
government, though they freely submitted to it." * 

Moderatism, however, in anything but a negative 
sense could hardly as yet be said to exist ; for, whilst 
the rigour and extravagance of the Covenanting tradi- 
tion had fallen into disrepute, there was no serious 

^ Wodrow Corrupondevbce, i. 67. See also p. 49. 
^Calamy'sZt/tf, ii. 153. 



252 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

attempt to formulate worthier and more liberal ideas. 
In 1707 a minister was suspended by the Synod of 
Aberdeen for teaching that virtue was more natural 
to the human mind than vice,^ and at Edinburgh, six 
years later, an ** unhappy youth," apparently an English 
Neonomian, published an essay which Wodrow pro- 
nounced to be a " sink of errors " ; * but the true 
pioneer of constructive liberalism was undoubtedly 
Professor Simson, who was appointed to the Chair of 
Divinity at Glasgow in l708, and who, according to 
his opponents, lost no time in disseminating his 
Arminian views. Glasgow at this period being the 
chief source of theological instruction both for Ulster 
and the west of Scotland, the eflFect of Simson's teach- 
ing soon became apparent in the growth of the Belfast 
Society, whose founder, Abernethy, was his intimate 
friend,* and in the tendency of young Scottish ministers 
to adopt an ethical and undogmatic style of preaching 
— a tendency in which they were encouraged by the 
failure of the first process against Simson, and by the 
condemnation of what its advocates asserted to be 
the " Gospel truths " contained in the Marrow. In 
1726, on the motion of Willison, who complained "that 
a scandal was like to arise from legal preaching of 
morality and sermons where nothing of Christ was," 
an Act was drafted against the new mode;* but this 
attempt, though revived four years later,*^ made no 
progress till the Assembly of 1734, in its eagerness 
to check the Secession, transmitted an overture to 
presbyteries, which, with their approval, was enacted 
in 1736, recommending ministers to insist on the 

* Fastiy vL 625. « Corresp(mdence^ L 493-494. 
^ Reid's Prethyterian Church in Irdomd, iii. 237. 

* Wodrow Correspondence^ iii. 247, 267. * Analecta^ iv. 126. 



DOCTRINAL RETICENCE 253 

necessity of supernatural revelation, to " make Gospel 
subjects their main theme," and "to let their hearers 
know that they must first be grafted into Christ as 
their root before their firuit can be savoury unto God." * 
Some of Simson's disciples were so far from being 
daunted by the result of his second process that they 
asserted that the Assembly in condemning his inter- 
pretation of the Trinity had established " a new article 
of faith " ; ^ and it is very significant that the strongest 
argument for suspending the Professor is said to have 
been the fear that, if he were deposed, a person no 
more orthodox might obtain his place.^ In view of the 
temper shown by the other Universities, this appre- 
hension was not without warrant. Principal Chalmers 
of Aberdeen, and Hamilton, Professor of Divinity at 
Edinburgh, had strongly supported Simson; and the 
latter, having "the wisdom to keep himself in the 
clouds," was remarkable for his silence on many 
doctrinal points. Campbell, who in 1731 began to 
teach theology at St. Andrews, was soon to be prose- 
cuted for heresy on account of three treatises, one of 
which he had already published; and the University 
of Edinburgh had just conferred the degree of Doctor 
of Divinity on seven dissenting ministers in England, 
all but one of whom were non -subscribers.* 

The suspension of Simson did not avert, and hardly 
^ven postponed, the danger which its supporters had 
had in view. His chair remained all but formally 
■vacant, except in so far as its duties were discharged 

1 Acta of Assembly, 1736, p. 14 ; Willison, p. 84. 

*An Alarm to the Church of Scotland, p. 14. 

^ Wodrow Correspondence, iii. 433, 437. 

*Ilnd, pp. 395, 453,^457 ; Analecta, iv. 139 ; Life of Leechman, prefixed 
to his Sermons, i. 4. 



254 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

by the Principal,^ till his death in 1740, when it was 
filled for three years by Potter, an aged and undis- 
tinguished divine; but in 1729, the very year in which he 
had been set aside, an appointment was made to the 
Chair of Moral Philosophy, which ensured the carrying 
out of his teaching with much greater freedom than 
would have been possible on theological lines. Francis 
Hutcheson, the son of an Irish dissenting minister, i& 
generally regarded as the founder of the Scottish or 
commonsense school of metaphysics ; and, whatever 
may be thought of the complacent optimism which 
characterised that school, the assertion of such a 
principle at this period was singularly opportune. 
Simson had tried to soften and explain away the 
doctrine of the fall, asserting that it conveyed a 
moral, not a legal, taint, that the light of nature was 
still of some spiritual use, that the rational creature 
was so constituted "as chiefly to seek its own good 
and happiness " ; and Hutcheson, without alluding to 
this dogma, effectually dissolved it by developing 
Shaftesbury's idea of a moral sense which "approves 
and recommends such dispositions as tend most to the 
public good." Though an excellent classical scholar, 
he was the first Professor in Glasgow to give up the 
practice of lecturing in Latin ; and the effect of his 
eloquent discourses, delivered without notes as he 
walked to and fro, was enhanced by an enthusiasm 
for both Christian and pagan virtue which one of his 
students described in after-years as "irresistible.- 
His philosophy resolved itself into an attempt to 
prove the existence of a "most benign Universal 
Parent " by a wide induction of particulars in the 

^ Univertiiiy of Ohugow^ Old and New, p. 26. 
' Carlyle's Autobiography^ p. 70. 



PROFESSOR LEEOHBCAN 255 

mental and moral as well as in the external sphere ; 
and those who listened to him from day to day found 
themselves transported into a world incomparably more 
beautifril and exhilarating, if no more substantial, than 
that which had so long disturbed the dreams of bigotry 
and superstition.! 

Hutcheson was anxious to procure the chair of 
divinity for William Leechman, a pupil of his own 
and of Professor Hamilton at Edinburgh, whose 
appointment, he hoped, would " put a new face on 
theology in Scotland ; " ^ and, though unsuccessful on 
the death of Simson, he succeeded in his design when 
another vacancy occurred in 1743. More a moralist 
than a theologian, shrinking from dogmatism and 
strife, and adding to his master's sense of terrestrial 
beneficence a vivid anticipation of celestial bliss,. 
Leechman was well qualified to be Hutcheson s inter- 
preter to the Church ; but he was elected only by 
the Lord Rector's casting vote ; and his opponents 
attempted to arrest his promotion by prosecuting him 
for three published sermons on prayer, which were 
objected to on the ground that they made no refer- 
ence to the merits and intercession of Christ, but 
which would seem to be more remarkable from the 
fact that they represent prayer as powerless to in- 
fluence the Deity, and as efficacious only through its 
elevating eflfect.* Leechman's defence was that he had 

^ Leechman's Life of ffutchesofiy prefixed to his Moral Philowphy ;. 
Leslie Stephen's Engluh Thought in the Eighteenth Centi^ry, ii. 56-62 ; 
M*Ccksh's Scottish Philosophy, pp. 49-86. 

' Letter printed bj M^Cosh, p. 465. 

^ Leechman's Sermons, L 193. " The addressing of our virtuous wishes, 
and desires to the Deity, since the address has no influence on him, is onlj 
a kind of rhetorical figure in order to render these wishes more ardent and 
passionate. This is Mr. Leechman's doctrine." — Letter of David Hume- 



-266 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

used only such arguments for prayer as were cal- 
culated to meet the objections of a certain infidel 
tract ; and the charges against him were dismissed on 
his own appeal to the Synod, and on that of his 
accusers to the Assembly of 1744.^ In another of 
his printed discourses, addressed to his brother 
ministers as Moderator of Synod, he had exhorted 
them to cultivate a clear and impartial judgment with 
regard to religion, so that they might be qualified to 
estimate aright the relative importance of its various 
doctrines ; and his lectures, which, like Hutcheson, he 
delivered in English, were characterised by the same 
liberal spirit. In dealing with the branch of his sub- 
ject known as polemical divinity, he reviewed the 
origin and significance of the various controversies 
which had agitated the Church, and the arguments 
advanced on either side, without expressing any 
opinion of his own ; he counselled his students not 
to decide hastily points on which good and wise men 
had diflFered, to retain long the character of enquirers, 
and to keep their minds open to new light and 
evidence from every quarter ; and, whilst not for- 
getting the arguments from prophecy and miracle in 
favour of Christianity, he laid unwonted stress on the 
life and teaching of Jesus.^ 

to Mure of Osildwell in Caldwell Papers, i. 52. The fine spirit of these 
discourses may be inferred from the following passage (i. 182) : " Maj we 
not then indulge ourselves in the charitable hope, wherever there was 
any found, even in the heathen world, groaning under a sense of his deep 
ignorance and depravity, and earnestly panting after light and purity, 
that €k>d never did deny his grace to such a person, but enlightened him 
with as much knowledge as was necessary for purifying his heart and 
guiding him forward in the paths of goodness." 

^ M orren's Annals of the Assembly, i. 46-61. 

^ Leechman's Sermons, with Life prefixed, i. 2S, 31-38, 109. Ramsay's 
•Scotland and Scotsmen, i. 279-285. 



WILLIAM WISHART THB ELDER 257 

The process we have been considering, which may 
be described as the progress of the Scottish mind 
from passive to militant Moderatism, is nowhere more 
clearly revealed than in the lives of the two William 
Wisharts, father and son, both of whom, at an 
interval of eight years, held the office of Principal of 
the University of Edinburgh. The elder Wishart had 
studied theology at Utrecht, had been imprisoned on 
a political charge by the Government of Charles 11. , 
had been ordained before the Revolution, had been 
Moderator of the Commission which represented the 
Church at the time of the Union, his conduct in 
which capacity is warmly praised by Defoe ; and in 
his character, as well as in the incidents of his 
career, he bore a strong resemblance to Carstares— 
that is to say, whilst professedly an old-fashioned 
Presbyterian, conservative and orthodox, he was 
always ready to make concessions in the interest of 
peace. The tolerance of his funeral sermon on George 
Meldrum, a minister who had conformed to Epis- 
copacy at the Restoration, is said to have given 
oflFence ;^ and in his addresses to the Assembly, of 
which he was five times Moderator, he never failed 
to insist on peace and unity, and on " that temper 
and calmness of spirit that becomes the gospel."* 
The younger Wishart, inheriting from his father so 
kindly and charitable a disposition, was evidently a 
fit subject for the creative liberalism of the age ; and 
in him, as well as in his brother George,' that in- 
fluence produced its earliest, and some of its finest, 
fruit. 

^ Analectay iv. 61. * Assembly Registers^ MSS. 

3 For this divine, see Bamsay's Scotland and ScoUmeny i. 247-250, and 
Moiren's Annals, ii. 316-319. 

R 



258 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

William Wishart was licensed by the Presbytery of 
Edinburgh in 1717, and in 1724 was ordained to the 
Tron Church, Glasgow. He is said to have been called 
by the magistrate and town council, contrary to the 
wishes of the people, and ''illiterate pious Christians" 
— to use his own expression — ^must have found his 
preaching as unpleasant as it was new. He insisted 
that we are concerned with mysteries only in so far 
as we can understand them, and that, within these 
limits, they can do us neither much harm nor much 
good. On one occasion, when inculcating sobriety of 
mind, he said that we ought not to think ourselves 
less or worse than others, but should cultivate, even 
in our thoughts, a strict regard for truth ; he con- 
troverted the statement of a brother minister that a 
mere intellectual assent to Christianity is no better 
than the faith of devils; and he was in the habit 
of using a prayer which he had borrowed from the 
English non-subscribers — " Lord rebuke and bear down 
a spirit of imposition and persecution, not only in 
Papists, but in Christians of whatever denomination" 
Whilst Wishart was supposed to take Tillotson as his 
model, he was assisted at communions by men who 
were believed to be less familiar with the writings 
of that latitudinarian prelate than with Addison's 
Spectator \ and the sallies of these youthful spirits 
gave " occasion to new melancholy cries in point of 
doctrine." Wallace of Moflfat, a future Moderator, 
expatiated " in the new haranguing method " on such 
subjects as the innocence of opinion and the necessity 
of examining what claimed to be divine truth ; and 
Telfer of Hawick, who was afterwards to startle a 
General Assembly by preaching to it on the intoler- 
ance and austerity of the Covenanting times, delivered 



WILLIAM WISHART THE YOUNGER 259 

two sermons of a more baleful lustre than had yet 
been emitted even by such " bright youths " and 
** vivid sparks." He said that the chief end of 
religion was to promote duties of righteousness 
between man and man, the Deity being willing to 
dispense with those we owed to Himself; that mans 
reason was not corrupt, and that those who said it 
was were the readiest to impose their authority and 
sentiments on others ; that no man should tie himself 
dow^n to systems and creeds ; and that a fuller know- 
ledge of God might be gained from the works of 
creation than from the Bible itself.^ 

As Wishart's liberalism found expression in action 
as well as in speech, he provided his parishioners with 
unfailing material for gossip. "Not many weeks now 
passes," wrote Wodrow in 1725, "but new things in 
Mr. Wishart s conduct are breaking out which make 
an unhappy noise."* He identified himself with a 
philosophical, if not sceptical, club among the Glasgow 
students which called itself in his honour the Sopho- 
cardian ; ' he cultivated an intimacy with certain Eng- 
lish officers and their Episcopalian chaplain ; he offended 
the University authorities by trying to find a livelihood 
for an English dissenting minister as a teacher of 
mathematics, and he continued his exertions after the 
minister, who was rigidly orthodox, had attempted to 
refute him from his own pulpit. In 1730 he left 
Glasgow to become minister of the Scottish congrega- 
tion in London, and here, too, he shocked the sentiments 

1 Analecta, iiL 163, 167, 239, 247, 254, 274. Our knowledge of these 
sermons, it shoald be observed, is derived wholly from Wodrow, the 
detached passages quoted by whom at second-hand are no very reliable 
guide. 

' AnalectOj iii. 248. 

3 From Buchanan's name for George Wishart (Wise-Heart). 



260 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

of his people, going occasionally to the theatre, and 
associating with the most liberal of non-subscribing 
divines.^ Wishart naturally befriended Professor Sim- 
son, not that he cared for his Trinitarian theories — 
for such speculations were foreign to his nature — ^but 
that he "could not consent to prosecute those who 
differed from him " ; * and we have seen that he 
published a pamphlet' in which he urged that 
Simson's suspension should be withdrawn. After read- 
ing this eloquent and vigorous tract, one is not 
surprised to find that a petition, intended for the 
Crown, was submitted to him in order that he might 
"take away Scotticisms and smooth the style";* 
but the noblest memorial both of his generous 
spirit and of his literary power is his sermon on 
" Charity the End of the Commandment," * published 
in 1731. Seldom, indeed, has the plea been more 
persuasively urged that " to over- value things of lesser 
importance in religion in comparison with greater " is 
to mistake the means for the end ; and it is charac- 
teristic of the preacher that, though "as far as any 
man from a disposition to judge rashly even of those 
who reject the words of our Saviour Himself," he is 
at a loss to conceive how any difficulties to be met 
with in the Scripture records can suffice to discredit 
a revelation which has charity for the sum of its 
demands. "I cannot now stand," he concludes, **to 
make a particular application of this rule ; but I speak 
as to wise men ; judge ye what I say ; and sure I am 
that a wise and practical improvement of it would lead 
us to the true way to peace in the Christian Church." 

^Analecta, iii. 17S, 183, 255, 261 ; iv. 78, 194, 227. 

' AnalecUt^ iii. 354. ' A Short and Impartial State of the CoMe^ etc. 

*• AfMdeetOy iii. 248. > Adv. Libr. Pamphlets, 679. 



y 



PROFESSOR CAMPBELL 261 

In 1736 Wishart was elected Principal of the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. He did not enter on the duties 
of his office till late in the following year, and his 
appointment to a parochial charge in conjunction with 
the Principalship was delayed by a prosecution, in 
which he was taxed with controverting the dogma of 
original sin, with inculcating that the civil power 
had no right to punish heresy, that freedom of inquiry 
should not be hampered by doctrinal forms, that 
children should not be required to learn catechisms by 
rote, and with showing excessive charity to heathens 
who reject the Gospel, and to lapsed Christians. 
Wishart contrived to satisfy the Assembly of 1738 that 
his teaching on these points was consistent with the 
Cionfession ; ^ and it may be noted here that, two years 
earlier, Professor Campbell of St. Andrews had accom- 
plished a similar, and no less formidable feat. 

Campbell had been a pupil of Professor Simson, and, 
though less subtle than that noted heresiarch, he was 
equally obstinate and loquacious in defending his 
views. ^ He had published, or rather re-published — 
for one of his friends had obtained a living in England 
by appropriating the first edition ' — an Inquiry into the 
Original of Moral Virtue, in which he maintained 
against Hutcheson that self-love was the mainspring 
of all rational beings, including the Deity Himself; 
and he had also issued two works in defence of 
Christianity — ^a Latin oration intended to show that 
the existence of God could not be known by our 
natural powers, and a Discourse proving that the 

^Morren's Annals, i. 310-311; Testimony of Associate Synod, p. 109; 
Willison, p. 96. 

'See the charges and ''explications," a pamphlet of over 250 pages> 
published bj the Assembly Commission, 1735. 

»M*Coeh, p. 90. 



262 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

Apostles were no Enthusiasts} In the preface to this 
last work he conceded to Tindal, the well-known Deist,* 
that the laws of nature were a sufficient guide to 
happiness, but insisted that we could neither know 
nor adhere to these laws without the aid of revelation ; 
and in the work itself he sought to disabuse some of 
his contemporaries of "an idle fancy they have taken 
up concerning the Apostles as if they were only a 
company of poor deluded creatures." The Apostles, 
indeed, according to Campbell, were so far from being 
enthusiasts that, from his death to his resurrection, 
they looked upon Christ as "a downright cheat and 
impostor," and did not realise His divinity tUl the 
day of Pentecost; and he is never tired of exposing 
the folly of those who " screw up themselves " to that 
extravagant passion from which he thinks that the 
Apostles were free — who, when they have some par- 
ticular business on hand, "go to God with it and lay 
the matter before the Lord, as they are used to speak," 
and who "wrestle themselves into those heats and 
emotions which they take for an answer to prayer." 
"On the crazy imagination of men of their temper 
we are all painted as miscreants, infidels, reprobates, 
and I know not what." The Assembly of 1736, despite 
its Act against non-Evangelical preaching, took no 
notice of these sallies, and professed to be satisfied 
when Campbell resolved his principle of self-love into 
" our delight in the honour and glory of God " ; but 

^ The word enthutiavm in those days meant " a misconceit of inspira- 
tion," and the good sense it now bears is due to the "reaction from 
the prevailing tone of eighteenth-century feeling." — Abbey and Overton's 
English Church, i. 530, 531. 

^Author of ChrUtianity as Old as the Creation^ a work to which 
Wallace also replied in the preface to a printed sermon. — ^Adv. Libr. 
Pamphlets, 679. 



METHODISM IN ENGLAND 263 

the Professor's opponents in the press did not observe 
the same restraint. Hog of Carnock, in an anonymous 
letter — one of those, doubtless, which "breathe the 
fervour of his devotion " ^ — denounced the treatise on 
enthusiasm as an "infernal project," and, having en- 
deavoured to "detect the murdering tendency of this 
hellish engine," consoled himself with the reflection that 
**the whole blest company of the Lord's children have 
as to religion heartily renounced the government of 
reason in its present state."* 

Campbell was confident that what little enthusiasm 
still survived firom the "distracted times" of the 
Covenant would speedily disappear; but, whilst he 
was at work on his vindication of the Apostles, a 
little society was meeting at Oxford, which was to give 
a mighty impetus to popular religion both in America 
and in the British Isles. The Oxford Methodists were, 
indeed, more remarkable for mysticism and asceticism of 
a High Church complexion than for any Evangelical 
bias; but Whitefield in 1735, and John and Charles^ 
l^esley about three years later, underwent personal 
-experiences which caused them to lay enormous stress 
on conversion as a new birth ; and this doctrine, at 
A time of frigid decorum, they preached with such 
vehemence, and with so startling an effect upon their 
hearers, that by the end of 1738 they had been 
excluded from almost every parish church. In the 
following year Whitefield, whose talent for oratory was 
^s great as that of John Wesley for organisation, began 
the practice of field preaching ; and, though the two 

^ Wodrow Corrapondencej editor^s note, i. 25. 

^CampbeU's Ducourse^ and tracts relating to it, in Adv. Libr. Pamphlets, 
Second Scries, 76; Acts of Assembly , 1736, pp. 17-20; Testimony of 
Associate Synod, pp. 118-133. 



264 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

leaders were divided for a time owing tx) the adoption 
by the former of predestinarian views, the movement 
continued to propagate itself with imabated vigour. 

The religious outlook of men who crossed and re- 
crossed the Atlantic in prosecuting their missionary 
enterprise was necessarily wide ; and, soon after the 
Church of England had closed its pulpits to the 
Methodist leaders, the fact attracted their attention 
that there were ministers in Scotland whose opposition 
to Moderatism had resulted in their reluctant with- 
drawal from the national Church. In April 1739 
Ralph Erskine received a letter from Whitefield, to 
which, after making inquiries as to the character of his 
correspondent, he sent a suitable reply ; and about the 
same period we find this minister and John Wesley 
exchanging notes as to their several experiences in 
preaching. Erskine seemed surprised to learn that 
many of Wesley's hearers " were cut to the heart by 
the sword of the spirit," and that some even struggled 
*' as in the agonies of death " ; but he mentioned as not 
very unusual in a Seceding congregation that the 
minister " can scarcely be heard for the weeping noise 
that surrounds him." During his visit to America 
from the autumn of 1739 to January 1741, Whitefield 
corresponded frequently with both the Erskines, in 
whose favour, after his Calvinism had estranged him 
from Wesley, and his denunciation of TiUotson, whom 
he described as knowing no more of Christianity than 
Mohammed, had disgusted the educated public, he 
made such progress that they not only prayed for him 
with the greatest fervour, but attempted to initiate him 
into the mysteries of Scottish dissent, and finally, in 
view of his intention to visit Scotland, proposed that he 
should join the Secession — a proposal which Whitefield 



WHITEFIELD AND THE SEGEDERS 265 

naturally thought "a little too hard/' On July 30, 
1741, he landed at Leith on his way to visit Ralph 
Erskine at Dunfermline; and, having discovered on 
passing through Edinburgh that there were Evangelicals 
within as well as without the Church, he arrived in a 
still less complaisant mood than his correspondents had 
been led to expect. Whitefield at this period was only 
27 years of age, whilst the brothers Erskine were 61 and 
56; and they may have overrated the pliability to 
be expected from his youth when he told them that he 
** should be glad to sit at their feet and be taught the 
way of God more perfectly." At all events, when he 
and the Associate Presbytery met at Dunfermline, it 
soon appeared that the diflferences between them had 
not been removed. The Seceders took him back to 
the Solemn League and Covenant, about which he 
knew and cared little ; he thought .Church government 
indifferent, they thought Presbytery divine ; they 
wanted him to confine his ministrations to " the Lord's 
people " — his business, he told them, was rather with 
the devil's ; and the conference was followed by a 
violent sermon against the hierarchy and ritual of the 
English Church. " The consequence of all this," wrote 
Whitefield, "was an open breach. I retired, I wept, 
I prayed ; and after preaching in the fields, sat down 
and dined with them, and then took a final leave. "^ 

Whitefield was now free to traverse Scotland in his 
capacity of " an occasional itinerant preacher." During 
a sojourn of thirteen weeks he preached in about thirty 
towns and villages, including Edinburgh, Dundee, 
Perth, Stirling, Glasgow, Paisley and Aberdeen, the 
lart four of which made him an honorary burgess ; 
and both he and the ministers who assisted him were 

^ Fraser's Life and Diary of Ralph Erskine^ pp. 287-336. 



266 THE GROWTH OF M0DERATI8M 

delighted with the success of his mission.^ His 
influence had, however, a much wider range than his 
personal presence, and the phenomena by which he 
is chiefly remembered in Scotland would certainly 
have taken place, had his voice there never been 
heard. 

M'CuUoch, the minister of Cambuslang, was an 
ardent supporter of the great preacher, who, however, 
though invited to do so, was unable on this occasion 
to visit his parish. For several months before and 
after Whitefield's visit, he preached to his people on 
the subject of regeneration, and on Sunday evenings 
was wont to illustrate his discourse by reading to them 
narratives of conversions — especially of those effected 
by Whitefield in America — which he also printed weekly 
in the form of halfpenny tracts. For a long time 
nothing unusual occurred; but in January 1742 two 
artisans whom Whitefield had converted in Glasgow 
got up a petition, which was readily granted, for a 
week-day lecture ; and soon afterwards an excitement 
arose which speedily developed into a panic, accom- 
panied by all those physical manifestations which had 
attended the preaching of Wesley, and afterwards of 
Whitefield also, in America and England. Most of 
those who were "awakened" by the terrors of the 
law gave vent to their agitation in cries and tears, 
and a considerable proportion, estimated at one in five, 
underwent the severest bodily as well as mental dis- 
tress. They declared "that they saw the mouth of 
hell open to receive them, and that they heard the 
shrieks of the danmed " ; they trembled, beat their 
breasts, fainted, went into convulsions, and bled pro- 
fusely at the nose. M*Culloch s care for the wounded 

1 Gillies's Memoirs of Whitefield, pp. 66-86. 



THE CAMBUSLANG REVIVAL 267 

was happily no less than his readiness to smite. At the 
close of each assault, he carried his victims to the 
manse, where he sometimes attended to them most of 
the night ; and on the following morning, with napkins 
round their heads and sobbing piteously, they were 
placed before his tent — for it had long been his custom 
to preach in the open air. The report of such scenes 
brought so many people to Cambuslang that service 
was held daily for seven or eight months. The epi- 
demic soon spread to neighbouring parishes, especially 
to that of Kilsyth, whose pastor, Robe, had also been 
preaching on regeneration, and was at great pains to 
infect his people ; and, in common with all Methodist 
revivals, it raged with peculiar virulence amongst the 
young. We read of children forsaking their sports to 
hold devotions in a bam ; of healthy schoolboys from 
eight to thirteen asking their master to let them " sing 
psalms and pray " ; of M*Culloch holding ghostly con- 
verse with a girl " going six," and with another " going 
seven." During his second visit to Scotland in 1742, 
Whitefield was frequently at Cambuslang, and the 
excitement then burnt itself out in a final blaze. On 
the afternoon and evening of his arrival he preached 
thrice, and was followed by M'CuUoch, the service being 
protracted till nearly two in the morning, and many of 
the people continuing their devotions all night in the 
fields. "You could scarce walk a yard," he wrote, 
" without treading on some." The sacrament was dis- 
pensed on July 11, and again, with even greater 
enthusiasm, on August 15, when four ministers 
preached on the fast-day, four on Saturday, five on 
Monday, and on Sunday M'CuUoch could not "well 
tell how many." The services on Sunday lasted from 
half-past eight in the morning till sunset, and, in 



268 THE GROWTH OF MODBRATISM 

the experienced judgment of Whitefield, they were 
attended by 30,000 people.^ 

The ** Cambuslang work" was fiercely denounced by 
the Seceders, who, it might have been supposed, had 
precluded themselves from viewing it in any but a 
favourable light. For two years their leaders had 
corresponded with Whitefield, had prayed for him — to 
quote his own words — "in the most public, explicit, 
I could almost say, extravagant terms," and had referred 
with commendation, or at all events without censure, 
to the effects — ^violent as these were — of his preaching 
in America. They had invited him to Scotland ; and, 
though they failed to make him a Seceder, or even a 
Presbyterian, they were so far from rejecting his 
ministry as that of a prelatical curate that they wished 
to confine it to themselves. Nevertheless, in their 
wrath at the signs of vitality which the great preacher 
and his friends had evoked in a corrupt and back- 
sliding Church, all these considerations were thrown 
to the winds. On July 15, 1742, four days after the 
first communion at Cambuslang, they instituted a 
public fast for the Satanic agency there manifested in 
"bitter outcryings, faintings, severe bodily pains, con- 
vulsions, voices, visions, and revelations," and for "the 
fond reception " accorded to a priest of the Church of 
England, who had sworn the oath of supremacy and 
abjured the Solemn League. In the same year Gib, 
their minister at Edinburgh, published a Warning 
against Whitefield, which was written in so extrava- 
gant a strain that an opponent could venture to twit 
him with being subject to those " bodily agitations " 

1 Statistical Account of Scotlandy 1793, v. 267-274 ; Robe's Narratives of 
the Extraordinary Work, etc., passim; Willison, pp. 109-112; Gillies's 
Memoirs of Whitefield^ pp. 92-103. 



THE COVENANT CRITiaSED 269 

which he so strongly condemned. "The horror of 
this scene," he writes, in allusion to Whitefield radiating 
false doctrine and diabolical influence, "strikes me 
almost quite dumb. I must halt and give way to 
some awful ideas that cannot find vent in language. 
. . . My spirit is like to freeze with horror, impotent 
of speech."^ 

It may seem paradoxical that the religious satur- 
nalia at Cambuslang, which "new light" ministers 
resolved into a mere question of nerves, should have 
promoted the growth of Moderatism ; and yet, in con- 
junction with other causes, they certainly had that efiect. 
Until Erskine and his friends seceded from the Church, 
the Evangelicals had reposed an implicit, if very un- 
critical, faith in the Covenanting tradition ; but, when 
a new sect arose which made the Covenant its watch- 
word, the prominence given to that document caused 
many of them to recognise that things had been done 
under its sanction which they could not approve.* 
durrie, in his writings against the Seceders, protested 
that the exaggerated deference paid to the legislation 
^f the Assembly from 1638 to 1650 should not preclude 
him from exposing its faults. He told his Seceding 
brethren that an Act of 1648 which required all persons 

^ Qaoted in Currie's Perjwry and Qreat Iniquity of the Seceding 
Brethren's New Covenant Discovered, pp. 44, 45. See also Tyerman's 
Life of Whitefield, i. 511, ii. 10. The manifesto summarised by this 
4&uthor on p. 11 of his second volume, though he seems to attribute 
it to the Seceders, proceeded, of course, from the Cameronians. White- 
field in their eyes was '* a limb of Antichrist, a boar and a wild beast 
from the anti-Christian field of England, come to waste and devour 
the poor erring people of Scotland.'' 

* John Glass, the founder of a sect which was to attract to its ranks 
so great a natural philosopher as Faraday, had already repudiated both 
the Covenant and the idea of a State Church. He was deposed in 1730, 
and partially restored in 1739. 



270 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

to sign the Solemn League and Covenant at their 
first communion was a bad Act and one to be testified 
against; and he asked these professed opponents of 
arbitrary power how they could justify the fourth 
article of the League which bound its subscribers to 
inform against all who acted contrary to the Covenant, 
that they might be subjected to whatever punishment 
the public tribunals should be pleased to inflict; or 
how they could complain of being persecuted for im- 
pugning an Act of Assembly, 1732, and yet extol 
the Assembly of 1638 which decreed that whoever 
spoke or wrote against any of its Acts — and some of 
these had not yet been passed — should incur the 
censures of the Church.^ The Cambuslang controversy 
did much to widen this breach. Whitefield's friends 
taxed the Seceders, after sufficient provocation, with 
caring and conversing about nothing but "ministers, 
church judicatories and some other disputable things^ 
far from the vitals of religion,''^ and were in turn 
accused of being indifierent to such matters and of 
gratifying religious emotion at the expense of ecclesi- 
astical forms. Nor, indeed, was this an unfounded 
charge in so far as intercourse with a man who avowed 
that he would preach in any pulpit that was open to 
him, even the Pope's, could not fail to imbue the 
Evangelicals with a more liberal spirit. How^ whole- 
some was the discipline to which they were subjected 

* Carrie's Vindioation of the Real Reformation Principles of the Chwreh 
of Scotland, 1740, pp. 239, 269, 289, 291. It seems to have been thought 
sufficient to say in reply to an earlier version of this charge : '* The 
judicatories of the Church can do nothing against the truth ; but when 
their acts and proceedings are for the maintenance and support of truth, 
they may justly appoint ecclesiastical censures to be inflicted upon 
malignant opposers." — Letter from a Member of the Aseodate Preahytery^ 
1738, p. 50. One can only say with Pilate, What is truth ? 

'Bobe's Narrativee^ p. 45. 



PROGRESS OF THE SECESSION 271 

is evident from the fact that some indignantly repelled 
it, and that others submitted to it with much searching 
of heart. Bisset, a minister of Aberdeen, after White- 
field had preached in his church at the invitation of 
his colleague, not only prayed publicly that God would 
forgive the dishonour that had been put upon him, 
but issued a pamphlet in which he denounced the 
"strolling impostor," and declared that he had done 
more to promote Episcopacy in Scotland than all the 
means that had been adopted, from the Reformation 
onwards, to that end. Willison of Dundee, a noted 
Evangelical, warmly supported Whitefield and assisted 
at Cambuslang, but he did so with grave misgivings. 
Whitefield wrote to him in 1741, *'I wish you would 
not trouble yourself or me by writing about the 
corruptions of the Church of England " ; and again 
in 1742, "Your letter gave me some concern. . . . 
You seem not satisfied unless I declare myself a 
Presbyterian."^ 

Whilst the Evangelicals were thus learning modera- 
tion from Whitefield, the progress of the Secession 
provided them with a useful lesson in the dis- 
advantages of headlong zeal. At the end of 1742 the 
number of Seceding ministers had increased from four 

« 

to twenty, and, two years later, when five more 
pastors had been enrolled, the Associate Presbytery 
gave place to three bodies, meeting at Dunfermline, 
Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and forming in conjunction 
the Associate Synod. The last Act of the undivided 
Presbytery had been to make the taking of the 
Covenants a term, or rather the term, both of 
ministerial and of Christian communion ; and, though 
this qualification was not insisted on as a test of 

iTyerman'8 Lift of WhiUfidd, i. 514, 622, ii. 16, 21. 



272 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

Church membership, it was enough to exclude a 
Seceder from the sacrament if he had presumed to 
worship in a parish church.^ Such a pitch of in- 
tolerance had not been attained in Scotland since the 
Protesters in the reign of Charles 11. had pronounced 
it a sin to hear an indulged minister ; and the 
"much entangled scrupulosity" — to quote Bishop 
Burnet — ^which had ruined the Bothwell Rising in 
1679 proved equally potent to create dissension now. 
At its first meeting in March 1745, the Synod 
had to deal with a question which Moncreiflf, one of 
the four original Seceders, had already raised, whether 
the oath required of burgesses in several Scottish 
towns was consistent with the Secession testimony, 
and, in particular, with the Covenants which had 
just been renewed. The clause in this oath to which 
exception was taken was obviously anti-Papal in 
design, but, as it bound the subscriber to uphold 
**the true religion presently professed within this 
realm," the more fanatical Seceders declared that they 
could not take it without homologating the cor- 
ruptions of the Estabhshed Church. In 1746 the 
Synod resolved that the oath was contrary to the 
Covenants, and consequently that no Seceder could 
swear it without sin. Several ministers and elders, 
including Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, intimated their 
dissent from this decision ; and in 1747 they and 
some others carried, or rather passed, a resolution — 
for they numbered only 20 in a house of 53 mem- 
bers, and the rest for various reasons declined to 
vote — that the Act as to the burgess oath should not 
be made a term of communion till it had been con- 
firmed by presbyteries and kirk-sessions. 23 of the 

1 Willison, p. 103. 



MODBRATISM NOT IDENTIFIED WITH PATRONAGE 273 

non-voters immediately seceded, met in council, and 
resolved, in view of their steadfastness in the faith, 
that " the lawful authority and power " of the Synod 
had devolved upon them. Two distinct bodies were 
thus formed, and continued in separation till 1820 — 
the Greneral Associate and the Associate, or, as they 
were popularly termed, the Anti-Burgher and the 
Burgher Synod, the former in 1747 comprising 19 
ministers, and the latter 12. The Anti-Burghers 
immediately took proceedings against the Erskines 
and their friends ; and, having successively libelled, 
suspended and deposed them, they finally excom- 
municated them, and delivered them to Satan.^ 

It was fortunate for the due appreciation of this 
spectacle of zealot excommunicating zealot, and dissent 
dissenting from dissent, that, whilst the Secession had 
drained the Evangelicals of their hottest, if not of their 
best, blood, there was as yet no hard and fast line 
between that party and the more liberal school. 
Moderatism had its own reasons for welcoming the 
general attempt which patrons were now making to 
enforce their rights ; but its leaders, who had sub- 
ordinated the patron to the heritors, were not 
disposed to give up their scheme ; and it thus 
happened that the men who were most obnoxious 
to the Evangelicals on doctrinal grounds were 
frequently their stoutest allies against patronage, 
and even in favour of popular rights. Hutcheson 
in 1735 had published a vigorous tract, in which 
he exhorted the* gentlemen of Scotland not to sur- 
render their power of promoting a pious and 
cultured clergy to a Minister of State and seven or 
eight lords ; and Wallace, during the four years in 

1 GiVs Display, ii. 17-100 ; M'Kerrow, i. 271-310. 

S 



274 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM • 

which he dispensed the royal patronage after the 
fall of Walpole in 1742, was careful to consult the 
wishes of the heritors, and at the same time to 
impress upon them that they must endeavour to 
conciliate the elders and people. Few men made 
a firmer stand against intrusion than Principal 
Wishart, and in most cases he had the support of 
his brother George. In 1751, with Currie and some 
twenty other ministers, he dissented from a decision 
of the Assembly in the Torphichen case that the 
Presbytery of Linlithgow should be censured for 
refusing to ordain a very unpopular presentee ; and 
he must, therefore, have concurred in the rejection 
of a motion that the presbytery should be suspended 
— a motion which was seconded by William Robertson 
in his first speech, and in supporting which he 
enunciated those principles which he himself was to 
impress upon Moderatism when it had passed the 
probationary stage, with which alone we are here 
concerned, and had entered on ite vigorous prime.^ 

It is too often assumed that the religious movement 
which has now been reviewed was something quite 
unprecedented in the annals of Scottish Presbytery, 
if not also in those of the Scottish Church. Such an 
idea can be entertained only by those who read into 
the seventeenth century a distinction between Presby- 
tery and Episcopacy which existed only for a few years 
before it was recognised by the Toleration Act of 1712, 
and who fail to realise that the Presbyterian organisa- 
tion, however much it might be repressed, was never at 
any time supplanted, by bishops. During the reigns of 
James VI. and Charles I. a movement had taken place, 
identical in all essential respects with that which has 

1 Morren'8 AnnaUy i. 27, 209-212, 903, 318. 



' moderahsm in the preceding century 275 

just been traced. Presbytery was then exhausted by 
the effort it had made under the leadership of Andrew 
Melville to dominate the civil power, just as at the 
Revolution it was exhausted by another such effort, 
which had seemed to triumph in the Act of Classes, 
but which, in a series of reverses from the battle of 
Dunbar to that of Bothwell Bridge, had been utterly 
crushed ; and the peril of the Spanish Armada had 
produced that very concordat between Church and 
State which, as revised by William and Carstares, was 
now in force. Melville in 1596 had, indeed, rallied 
his forces for a fresh assault ; but the failure of that 
attempt only precipitated a reaction against fanaticism 
such as, in the years following the Revolution, pro- 
gressed by slower, but far surer, steps. In the seven- 
teenth century the ultra-Presbyterians had contended 
Against the secular influence of State-appointed bishops, 
and in the eighteenth century they opposed a similar 
influence as represented in each parish by the heritors 
or the patron. In both cases arguments of mere 
expediency were silenced rather than answered by 
assertions of divine right ; and the details as well as 
the issues of the contest were in great measure the 
same. The Commission of Assembly, whose "riding 
committees " excited such wrath, had been denounced 
by Melville and his friends as " the King's led horse," 
as "the wrack of the Kirk," as a wedge taken out 
of the ministry to effect its ruin; and in 1597 the 
Commission had suspended a minister for abusing the 
privilege of the pulpit, as in 1733 it suspended Ebenezer 
Erskine. Then as now, though not to the same extent, 
complaints were heard that " profane ministers," men of 
unsanctified gifts, were desecrating the pastoral office, 
that a new style of preaching was coming into vogue — a 



276 THE GROWTH OF MODERATISM 

style so cold and undogmatic that it kept the people 
"in atheism without all true knowledge and feeling"; 
the ratification of the Perth Articles was signalised 
by a thunderstorm^ no less portentous than that which 
was to greet the condemnation of the Marrow; and 
there was even a revival at Stewarton — " the Stewarton 
sickness" — to counterbalance that of Cambuslang. 
Currie and Willison, in their attitude towards the 
Seceders, had .been anticipated by one who rebuked 
the malcontents of his day for their " words of fleshly 
contention rather rankling the wound nor healing the 
sore of our diseased Church " ; and the liberal theology 
of Simson, Leechman, and Wishart finds its prototype 
in that of the men who declared that Heaven was 
as open to Catholics as to Protestants, that inter- 
Christian differences were " but a mouthful of moon- 
shine," and that no regard for orthodoxy could induce 
them to "danm eternally the soul of one Cicero or 
one Socrates."* One may surely learn from such a 
parallel as this how truly national, how happily con- 
servative of its past, was the Church whose fortunes we 
have traced during the half-century which followed the 
Eevolution, since, in assimilating the institutions of 
Scottish Puritanism, it had assimilated also the spirit 
to which the genius of Presbytery had hitherto been 
opposed. 

^ Oedderwood's Hutoryy vii. 505. 

'Those who wish to estimate the justice of this parallel may be 
interested in oomparing the present diapter with Chapter X., entitled 
^' The Beign of the Moderates,'' in the first volume of my previous work, 
PoUHci and Rdigion in Scotland^ 1550-1695. The points mentioned in 
the text will be found on pp. 274, 275, 293, 294, 312, 328, 330, 331, 340, 

aeo. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

Ik the three preceding chapters an account has been 
given of ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland from the eve 
of the Union to the middle of the eighteenth century; 
and it will now be necessary to resume the thread of 
political events where we leffc it at the dissolution of 
the last Scottish Parliament in March 1707. 

The sacrifices involved in the Union could not fail, 
for a considerable time, to be more apparent than its 
rewards; but the first difficulty arose from an antici- 
pation of that fi-eedom of trade which was certainly 
its greatest boon. The treaty had been ratified in 
Scotland, where alone it was in serious danger, more 
than three months before the date at which it was 
to come into force ; and, as the Scottish tariff was 
very much lower than the English, advantage was 
taken of this interval to make unusual importa- 
tions of foreign goods, chiefly French wines and 
brandy, for the purpose of introducing them free into 
England after the first of May, whilst at the same time 
tobacco was shipped in large quantities from England to 
Scotland both with this object and in order, meanwhile, 
to obtain the drawback granted on re-exportation. 



278 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

At the instance of the London meichants, who com- 
plained of unfair competition, the Commons passed 
a Bill to prohibit this traffic in so far as it savoured 
of fraud, that is, except in the case of cargoes which 
should be proved— a tedious and expensive process- 
to be owned wholly by resident Scotsmen. The Lords 
refused to accept the Bill on the ground that an 
English Parliament as such had no power to explam 
or determine the articles of union ; but. Great Britain 
being then at war with France, there was a more 
serious objection to the legality of the trade; and 
when about midsummer a Scottish fleet of some forty 
sail arrived in the Thames, the Custom-house authorities 
seized both ships and goods. After considerable delcLy, 
the vessels were allowed to unload under a provisional 
suspension of dues; and in November, on an address 
of the British House of Commons, the Crown very 
willingly relinquished its claim. ^ 

The difficulties encountered by this speculation, 
successful and highly profitable as it proved, were 
perverted by anti-Unionist sentiment into a charge of 
ill-faith; and the popular indignation was still at its 
height when suspicions were curoused that another of 
England's promises was not to be fulfilled. No date 
had been fixed for payment of the £398,085 allotted 
to Scotland in consideration of its liability to the Eng- 
lish debt and known as the Equivalent, except that 
the money was to be voted, as it had been, by the 
English Parliament, and was to be '' due and payable 
from the time of the Union " ; but a delay in trans- 
mitting this sum, which was doubtless unwise, per- 
mitted agitators to assert that such remissness, if not 

» Defoe, pp. 667-673, 089-692 ; Burnet, v. 298-299, 369 ; PcarL Eist, vi. 
379 ; Boyer's AnnaU, vi. 261. 



nSCAL ifNNOVATIOKS 279 

dishonesty, made the treaty void ; and when at last, 
on August 5, the money was brought to Edinburgh 
in twelve waggons escorted by dragoons, a large crowd 
gave unmannerly expression to its belief that the 
country, if not duped, had at least been sold. New 
complaints were raised when it was found that only 
one fourth of the sum had been brought in gold, and 
the rest in Exchequer bills; but, as the latter were 
promptly cashed in London and nobody was compelled 
to take them in lieu c. coin, the discontent on this 
head did not last lon^.^ 

The Equivalent luelped to diflFuse a more friendly 
feeling towards ^ne Union in so far as it was spent 
in paying off. arrears of salary and in 'refunding the 
African stock; but many years elapsed before any of 
it was applied to the encouragement of fisheries and 
manufactures, and meanwhile the country at large had 
to reckon with heavy and unfamiliar taxes as the price 
of a commercial freedom, the benefit of which, however 
certain, was more or less remote. The sixth article 
had provideci that fiscal uniformity should be secured 
by the exter sion of the English system to Scotland ; 
and, having attempted to prepare the way for this 
change by drafting officials from the south, the 
Government appointed two mixed Commissions of 
English and Scots for the management respectively 
of the Customs and Excise. Each of these boards 
had its own difficulties to contend with, apart from 
the conflict with nationality which was common to 
both. In the Excise, Scottish had to be adjusted 
to English measures, and new methods of collection, 
such as " the art of gauging," had to be introduced ; 

1 Defoe, pp. 686-692 ; Fraser'a MetvOUi and Leslies, ii. 213 ; Portland 
JUanuscriptSy iv. 413, 431. 



I 
I 



\ 

280 FRICTION AND CIVIL* ^ WAR, 1707-I7I6 

and these reforms proved so jc^n arduous that the attempt 
to enforce them was suspencfafied by proclamation, and 
the Ciommission did not entc^ ^r on its duties till June 9 
In regard to Customs dutithies, the question was not 
so much how they were to i^ ^ be levied as whether they 
were to be paid. Both thieife Customs and the Excise 
had hitherto been farmr/l jd by individuals who in 
the interest of their groaJiv? receipts, had found it 
advantageous to make abatdB>< ment of very moderate 
dues; and, if smuggling had ijibeen resorted to under 
such a system, one can readily brieve that it flourished 
now, when the duties on wine anc^l brandy had been 
raised to five or eight times their \original amount 
and when, moreover, they were exacted lift full. During 
this summer of 1707 several thousand cas!|^ of brandy 
were believed to have been run ashore fiom a fleet 
of Dutch luggers, and some of them, which the oflScers 
had seized, were forcibly retaken. The Customs Com- 
mission, however, grappled vigorously with tkis evil; and 
smuggling, if more profitable than before the Union 
was rendered much more hazardous by the employ- 
ment of swift cruisers, and* of mounted surveyors to 
patrol the coast.^ 

These fiscal innovations were accompanied by certain 
changes in the administration of the law. James VI. 
with a view to putting down the practice of deadly 
feuds, had attempted to establish Justices of the Peace 
and his efforts had been seconded by Parliament in 

^ Defoe, pp. 575-578, 582-585. Headers of Defoe may be puzzled to 
know what has become of the Customs tables mentioned on p. 578. Qq 
p. 604 we are told that they were omitted as merely nominal, the Scottish, 
tacksman making what reductions he pleased. Burnet's statement (v. 
334) that *Hhe whole trade of Scotland was stopped for almost two 
months" is probably an erroneous inference from tlie fact that the new 
system was not, or could not be, established at once. Trade was not 
likely to stop for want of being taxed. 



THE PRIVY COUNCIL ABOLISHED 281 

the reigns of Charles I. &nd Charles 11. ; but, except 
for three years under Cromwell, the new magistracy 
had been little better than a name;^ and, as the 
heritable jurisdictions did not extend to the burghs^ 
where alone they could have been of much use to the 
revenue, a proclamation^ was issued in August 1707^ 
reviving the office of Justice of the Peace as confirmed 
by statute in 1661, and conferring upon it not only 
the powers granted in that commission, but all that 
belonged to it under the English Acts, especially in 
so far as these related to the Customs and Excise. 

This proclamation, however, was legally dependent 
on a reUc of the old constitution which was soon to 
be swept away. The 19th article of the Union had 
provided that a Privy Council might be continued in 
Scotland until the Parliament of Great Britain should 
think fit to alter or abolish it; and that Parliament, 
which met on October 23, had existed for less than 
two months when a proposal to adopt the second of 
these alternatives was brought forward under the title 
of "A Bill for rendering the Union of the Two King- 
doms more entire and complete." The project had 
indeed been mooted before Parliament met; for 
Cunningham, the historian, informs us that in this 
summer he had formed in its favour ^' a combination of 
some of the chief of the Scots,"* who, undoubtedly, 
were the leaders of the Squadrone. We have seen 
that these men, the true representatives of a party 
which had been formed to resist English domination, 
had concurred in the Union, as they came reluctantly 
to see that the legislative independence of Scotland 
was neutralised by the subordination of its executive 

^ Forbes'd Justices of the Peace in Scotland^ 1707, Preface. 
'Defoe, p, 692. 'Cunningham, ii. 71 • 



282 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

to the English Crown ;^ and they now favoored the 
abolition of the Council because they believed that it 
was through this court, which controlled the parlia- 
mentary elections by issuing the writs and supervising 
the returns, that Queensberry and the old official class 
hoped still to retain their power. When the Bill was 
brought into the Commons, it was keenly opposed by 
€k>dolphin and most of the Ministers on the ground 
that a separate administration in Scotland was necessary 
to overawe the Jacobites and to repress anti-Unionist 
feeling; but, as the measure was acceptable to the 
Whigs, and for obvious reasons to the Tories, it was 
easily carried. The Whigs had, indeed, an hereditary 
quarrel with courts which Lord Somers described as 
" mixed of state and justice " ; and they argued with 
great force that, if the Scottish Council had abased 
its authority under the Stewarts, when there was a 
national Parliament to keep it in check, it was much 
more likely to do so now, when Scotland, for refdress 
of its grievances, could rely on only a fraction of the 
legislative power. In the Upper House the Bill was 
supported by the Dukes ^ of Montrose and Roxbui^h— 
both members of the Council, and the former its President 
— as in the Commons it had been supported by Baillie. 
An amendment was moved that the abolition of the 
Council should be postponed for five months, from May 1 
to October 1, 1708, on the plea that the Commission of 
the Peace for discharging its judicial functions could 
not sooner take efiect.' This proposal, not unreasonable 
in itself and supported by so good a Whig as Lord 
Cowper, was rejected as an attempt to influence the 

lOn this point see Burnet, v. 362, note. * Created April, 1707. 

'In point of fact, the CommiBsion was not issued tilfl iff 13, 1708, 
and did not come into force till August. — Defoe, pp. ^§64, dsk / 



A FRENCH DESCENT 283 

general election which was to take place next summer ; 
but the Bill passed the Lords by only five votes, and 
26 peers protested against it on the ground that the 
date had not been altered, and that the heritable juris- 
dictions were encroached upon by the powers assigned 
to the Justices of the Peace.^ 

The last days of the Scottish Privy Council were 
to be spent in curbing those Jacobite intrigues, with 
which, according to its advocates, it was peculiarly 
fitted to cope. In the spring of 1707, after the com- 
pletion of the Union, Colonel Hooke, the French 
emissary, had again visited Scotland. He found the 
Jacobites ready enough to take arms ; but the zeal of 
the majority under the Duke of Athol was tempered 
by the caution of a few who adhered to Hamilton;^ 
and, as this dissension was reproduced at the exiled 
Court, where Hamilton was favoured by the Earl of 
Middleton and Athol by the Duke of Perth,' it is 
probable that the warlike offers conveyed by Hooke 
had less effect in stimulating a French descent than 
what he reported of the general repugnance to the 
Union and of the incapacity of its friends to resist an 
attack. Through Ker of Kersland, Queensberry's agent, 
the Government as early as June had full information 
of the plot ; but they treated it with an indifference — 
even after the EngUsh public had become alarmed— 
which in some quarters was attributed to disloyalty, 

^Cunningham, ii. 71, 135-141; Burnet, v. 304, 369-362; Eardtncke 
Staie Paperi, ii. 473-478; Somers Tracts, xii 623-630; Pari. Hiit. 
▼i. 614, 668. 

'Thej did weU to be cautions; for Hooke made it his business 
" earnestly to engage the Scots as far as I could, and at the same time 
engage the King to nothing.'' — Secr^ History of Colond Hookas Negotia- 
tionsy p. 15. 

^Lockhart, i. 228. 



284 PRICnON AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

but which is said to have been due to the faxA that 
Marlborough and his friends wished the Pretender to 
hind as the likeliest means of counteracting the general 
desire for peace.^ At all events, in February 1708, 
when Queen Anne announced to the Privy Council that 
the French were collecting ships at Dunkirk for an 
invasion of Scotland, nothing whatever had been done 
to put that country in a state of defence. Parliament 
in the preceding December had indeed voted an increase 
of the regular forces to 6000 men ; but, three months 
later, there were only 1500; and Leven, the com- 
mander-in-chief, wrote on March 13 that his handful 
of troops were '* almost naked," and that he had not 
" one farthing of money. ** In Stirling Castle there was 
only one barrel of powder, and none at all in Dum- 
barton ; and the Castle of Edinburgh was no more 
secure than in the previous summer, when the Jacobites 
had talked of seizing the Equivalent in the belief that 
there were only 35 men fit for duty.* 

For such neglect, however, which was nearly as bad 
in England, the vigour and promptitude of the 
Admiralty made ample amends. No opposition was 
expected at Dunkirk, as the only British warships 
then in the Channel had been told ofi^ to protect a 
merchant convoy ; but with " incredible diligence " a 
new and more powerful fleet was fully equipped ; and 
the French were so discouraged by the appearance 
of this squadron, which was much superior to their 
own, that they began to disembark their troops. 
On receipt of fresh orders from Paris, they contrived 
to get to sea with the Pretender on board ; but 
Admiral Byng, who had been driven off the coast by 

^ CuDDingham, ii. 152. 

« Pari. HUL vi. 767-773 ; Ker'a Memoirs, pp. 46, 60, 64. 



THE TREASON BILL 285 

storm, followed them within about twelve hours ; 
and, though they reached the Forth, they were over- 
taken on March 13 off the May Island, and succeeded 
with difficulty in making good their escape.^ 

Though the Union sustained no direct harm from 
this French expedition, it was injuriously affected 
by some of its results. Twenty-two persons,* in- 
cluding Belhaven and Fletcher, had been arrested on 
suspicion; and the national sentiment was wounded 
Afresh when, on receipt of orders which were counter- 
manded too late,* they were brought up to be 
examined in London. Partly for lack of evidence, 
and partly because Hamilton, one of their number, had 
made terms with the Whigs, they were all released, 
except three, who, having actually appeared in arms, 
were sent back to Edinburgh for trial. When pro- 
ceedings opened on November 10, 1708, the judges 
repelled all the objections that were raised to the 
relevancy of the charge ; but they involved them- 
selves in a controversy with the Lord Advocate, which 
was continued in print, by disallowing some of the 
chief witnesses for the prosecution on the ground 
that the prisoners had not been furnished with their 
names; and this dispute, resulting in a verdict of 
not proven, was regarded at Westminster as exposing 
a system, or want of system, which was a danger 
to the State. It had hitherto been supposed that 
the treason law of Scotland was more severe than 
that of England ; but in March 1709, a Bill was 
brought into the Commons, and, having been dropped 

' Bapin and Tindal, zxii 411-426 ; Defoe, pp. 3-6 ; Hookas NegotiaUon»y 
pp. 138-162. 

'Balph'8 Use and Abuse of PcuiiamentSy i. 156. 

'Fraser's MdvUlesand LeduSy iL 226. 



286 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

there in committee, was resumed in the Lords, for 
repealing the Scottish law on the assumption, which 
proved to be well founded,^ that it was the less 
rigorous, if also the more arbitrary, of the two. 
This Bill "for improving the Union" was advocated 
on much the same grounds as had been alleged for 
the abolition of the Council, but, unlike that measure, 
it was opposed by all the Scottish representatives, 
including the Squadrone. The Scots succeeded only 
in carrying two amendments, which, moreover, were 
not to take effect till the death of the Pretender, 
and were afterwards postponed to the death of his 
sons— one that the names of the witnesses and jury 
should be submitted to the accused ten days before 
his trial, and the other that no estate in land should 
be forfeited for treason. A protest against the Bill as 
an encroachment on the judicial independence of Scot- 
land was signed by all but three of the sixteen peers, 
as well as by Bishop Burnet, and by Queensberry 
and Argyll under their English titles of Dover and 
Greenwich.' 

These measures for improving the Union were not 
conceived in a wholly disinterested spirit ; and, in 
order to understand their origin, it will be necessary 
to consider how far the balance of parties at West- 
minster had been affected by the advent of the 
Scots. We have seen that the interest of Marl- 
borough and Oodolphin in a vigorous prosecution of 
the war had brought them more and more into 
alliance with the Whigs ; and they took a ftirther 

> Lung's History, ii 347. 

'Barnet, ▼. 401-409 ; Canningham, iL 159, 211-214 ; State Trials, xiv. 
1396-1418 ; Pari. Hist vi. 798. Lord Marchmont approved of the Bill — 
Jfarohmont Papers, iii. 354 



RESIGNATION OF HARLE7 287 

step in this direction at the close of 1706, when 
Sunderland, one of the Whig Junto,^ became Harley's 
colleague as Secretary of State. They knew that this 
policy, however favourable to the Union, which she 
had much at heart, was most obnoxious to Anne ; 
but they were slow to realise that the difl&culty 
they experienced in preventing the promotion of 
Tories in the Church was due to the influence of 
Harley, who, with the aid of Mrs. Masham, the rival 
of the Duchess of Marlborough, had undermined their 
ascendency at Court ; and, this intrigue having at last 
become notorious, they offended the Queen without 
conciliating the Whigs, since they would neither give 
way to Harley nor insist on his dismissal. When 
the first British Parliament met, after the failure of 
an attempt on Toulon, in October 1707, the Whigs 
united with the Tories in attacking the Admiralty, 
the head of which, under Prince George, was Marl- 
borough's brother, and with the Tories and Squadrone 
in demanding the abolition of the Scottish Council ; 
and the two statesmen then perceived that they 
must either commit themselves wholly to one of the 
two parties or incur the hostility of both. In 
February 1708, by absenting themselves from the 
Cabinet, they forced the Queen to accept the resigna- 
tion of Harley, whose position had been weakened 
by the discovery that a clerk in his office was selling 
State secrets to France. Harley was succeeded by 
Boyle, a zealous Whig; and the few Tories, such as 
St. John, afterwards Viscount Bolingbroke, who still 
remamed in the Ministry, were aU dismissed. Anne's 
political antipathies, however, were not yet overcome ; 
and, when the Whigs found that their utmost 

^ Comprising, in addition to Sunderland, Halifax, Wbarton and Somen. 



288 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

exertions were insufficient to procure a seat in the 
Cabinet, even without office, for Lord Somers, they 
attempted, in view of the approaching elections, to 
obtain such an influence in Parliament as should 
enable them to coerce the Government, if not to* 
drive it from power. For the success of this intrigue, 
which Sunderland, despite his official position, had the 
audacity to direct,^ they looked chiefly to Scotland; 
and, having drawn closer their relations with the 
Squadrone, and won over Hamilton and the Jacobite 
prisoners by procuring their release, they hoped to 
capture the entire Scottish representation in "two 
plumb lists." Against such opponents, however, 
Godolphin could count on the fall authority of the 
Crown; the Presbyterians recoiled from the Jacobites; 
and, after a very keen contest, the coalition succeeded 
in returning only five of the sixteen peers, and only 
eleven of the Commons. Just before Parliament 
met on November 16, 1708, the Whigs carried the 
promotion of Somers by threatening to attack both 
Admiral Churchill and his nominal chief, Prince 
George, who was then on his deathbed ; and, their 
allies having proved of little use, they did not scruple, 
as we have seen, to desert them by supporting the 
Treason Bm.^ 

The keenness with which this election, the first to 
a British Parliament,* had been contested in Scotland 

^ The Secretary of State was certainly audacious who could write thus 
to Boxburgh : *' I would not have you bullied by the Court Fluty, for 
the Queen herself cannot support that faction long.** — Ths Other Side of 
the Queitum, p. 380. 

'Coxe's Mariboroughy paaeim; Balph's Other Side of the Quutum, 
pp. 376-382. 

' The first British Parliament, it wUl be remembered, was the existing 
English Parliament, with the addition of certain peers and commons 
elected by the Scottish Estates. 



DISPUTED ELECTIONS 289 

was made manifest by the number of disputed claims 
which the two Houses were called upon to decide. The 
Commons disqualified two, if not four, members ^ on the 
ground that by the usage of the Scottish Parliament, 
which in terms of the Union was to be extended to the 
Parliament of Great Britain, no constituency could be 
represented by the eldest son of a peer ; and this was 
regarded as a severe blow to the peerage, the great 
majority of which had supported the Union, and not 
less to the Crown, which through its influence with 
the nobles had hoped to gain support in the Commons. 
The questions submitted to the Lords were much more 
numerous; and here it was decided — in addition to 
many points of procedure* — that a British peerage, 
such as that of the Duke of Queensberry, disqualified its 
holder for voting at the election of Scottish peers. 

Reference has elsewhere been made' to the change 
of Ministry which followed the impeachment of 
Sacheverell for two very violent sermons delivered 
in August and November 1709. The ebullition of 
Toryism excited by this trial occurred at a time which 
made it peculiarly gratifying to the Queen ; for the 
Whigs had followed up the advancement of Somers 
by extorting from her the Admiralty and the Lord 
Lieutenancy of Ireland ; the conduct of the Duchess of 
Marlborough had quite exhausted her patience; and 
the Duke had alarmed her by asking for the office of 
Captain-General for life. On March 17, 1710, after a 
trial which had engrossed public attention for three 

^Lockhart (ii. 2dS) sajs that Lords Haddo, Johoston, Strathnaver 
and the Master of Bothes were disqualified ; but Cobbetf s Parliamefitary 
History (vi. 758) mentions only the first two. 

*For these see Bobertson's Scottish Peerage Proceedings, pp. 33-36. 

3 See p. 198. 



290 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

weeks, the Lords found Sacheverell guilty by 69 votes 
to 52 ; but his condemnation was regarded as virtu- 
ally an acquittal when no heavier censure was imposed 
upon him than that he should be suspended from 
preaching for three years, and that his sermons should 
be burnt. Meanwhile Harley had been exerting himself 
to divide the Whigs; and, having induced them to 
abandon Sunderland, who was replaced by Lord Dart- 
mouth, a violent Tory, he ventured in August to 
procure the dismissal of Godolphin and to form a 
new administration, with himself at its head. 

Sacheverell in his charges against the late Ministers 
had not failed to reproach them for negotiating the 
Union ; and, if the unpopularity of that measure in 
Scotland had only increased under the conduct of those 
whose credit was involved in making it a success, it was 
not likely to diminish now, when the party opposed to 
the Union had come into power. ^ " Such is the temper 
of the people at this juncture," wrote Wodrow in Sep- 
tember 1709, "that they cannot hear that Act spoken of 
by ministers, even by way of narration";* and we have 
seen how great was the exasperation of the Presby- 
terians when they found that the compact with 
England, sinful as it was, could not protect them from 
such evils as the Toleration and Patronage Acts. These 
measures, though dreaded from the first, were not intro- 
duced till 1712 ; but by that time several things had 
occurred to aggravate the national discontent. The 
Scottish representatives complained that the commercial 
interests of their country were disregarded by Parlia- 
ment, particularly in the imposition of an export duty 

^ Harley, as a member of the former administration, had, of course, 
promoted the Union. 

' Corretpandenoef i. 41. 



SCOTTISH GRIEVANCES 291 

on British linen ; and they failed to carry a Bill — 
which, however, in an amended form, was afterwards 
passed — for the making of roads in the Highlands in 
order to enable Scotland to compete in articles of naval 
construction with America and the Baltic States, The 
Duke of Hamilton, one of the sixteen nobles chosen 
at the election of 1710, had been created a British 
peer; but the Lords, though they had submitted 
to the elevation of the late Duke of Queens- 
berry, probably because he was a Whig, not only 
refused to admit Hamilton as Duke of Brandon, but 
resolved by a majority of five that no Scottish peer 
could sit as a peer of Great Britain,^ their motive no 
doubt being that, as the Scottish nobles were mostly 
at the disposal of the Crown, they dreaded an exercise 
of the royal prerogative more gradual, but no less 
effective, than that which took place a week or two 
later when twelve peers, all Tories, were created in 
order to secure a majority in favour of the peace. 
Queen Anne vainly represented the injustice of this 
decision ; and the Scottish lords were so dissatisfied 
that for several days they absented themselves fi:'om 
the House. Marlborough had been superseded when 
the new peers were created in January 1712 ; and, 
with the progress of the negotiations at Utrecht, a 
fresh difficulty arose. We have seen that the 14th 
article of the Union as amended by the Estates pro- 
vided that Scotland should be exempted from the malt 
tax during the continuance of the war; but in May 
1713, though the last of the series of treaties — that 
between Great Britain and Spain — had not yet been 
concluded, a Bill passed the Commons, subjecting 

^ This decision was reversed, in the case of another Duke of Hamilton, 
in 1782. — Somerrille's QTieen Anne, p. 469, note. 



292 FRICTION AND CTVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

Scotland to the fall English malt duty of 6d. a bushel ; 
and the measure was resented as grossly unjust, since 
Scottish malt, being greatly inferior to English, fetched 
only a third of the price. Lockhart remarks that 
" this was the first instance since the Union of a 
national disposition against Scotland*';^ and, though 
the passage of the Bill by no means merited such a 
description, its terms were sufficiently grievous to pro- 
duce a somewhat alarming result. At a meeting of the 
Scottish representatives in both Houses it was unani- 
mously resolved that a proposal to dissolve the Union 
should be introduced in the Lords.* On June 1 the 
Earl of Findlater, formerly Earl of Seafield, moved for 
leave to bring in a Bill for this purpose. The motion 
was supported by the Whigs, and opposed as inex- 
pedient and unconstitutional by the Tories ; and, the 
peers present being equally divided — 54 on each side — 
it was rejected by 17 proxies to 13.* 

The Union had thus been saved by its enemies, 
and all but upset, or at least unsettled, by its friends ; 
and this would doubtless be a very remarkable occur- 
rence, were it not evident that the whole afiair was 
little better than a solemn farce. It was not con- 
viction, but a regard for their respective interests, 
which had induced the two parties on this occasion 

' Lockhart, i. 416. He explains his words tx) mean that " almost every 
man voted against the Scots " ; but this is a monstrous exaggeration ; for 
a motion that the Scots should pay only half the English duty was lost 
'* by one single vote only," and the Bill, in its final form, passed by 139 
votes to 104. — Pari. Hist, vi 1215. Lockhart was not a scrupulous 
person. He promoted the Toleration and Patronage Acts, and then 
published pamphlets against them to inflame the Presbyteriana — i. 41 S. 

'Baillie showed some reluctance. — Lockhart, i. 413, 431. None of the 
leading Squadrone peers were members of this Ptoliament. 

3 Lockhart, i. 326, 332, 341-344, 414-436; Pari HisL vL 1046, 1047, 
1066, 1214-1220. 



MOTION TO REPEAL THE UNION 293 

to change sides. As the Union was extremely un- 
popular in Scotland, and as a general election was to 
take place within a few weeks, the Scottish Whigs, 
irritated as they were by the Malt Bill, did not 
venture to oppose the motion for repeal when it was 
urged upon them by Lockhart. Their English friends 
professed their readiness to dissolve the Union, pro- 
vided that other means, equally efficacious, could be 
devised for securing the Protestant succession ; but 
their chief object was to embarrass the Ministry, which 
was bound to resist the motion, however welcome to 
the Tories, at a time when its attention was engrossed 
by the declining health of the Queen. Lockhart 
remarks that some of the Scottish Whigs, though they 
aflFected to approve of it, were evidently ** thunder- 
struck '' at his proposal ; and the Earl of Findlater 
quite exposed the character of the task imposed upon 
him in the Lords— he showed such uneasiness, and 
"made so many apologies for what he was to do/' 
" It was very comical," wrote an English politician to 
Swift, " to see the Tories who voted with lord treasurer 
against the dissolution of the Union under all the 
perplexities in the world lest they should be victorious ; 
and the Scotch who voted for a bill of dissolution 
under agonies lest they themselves should carry the 
point." ^ 

Amongst the most zealous supporters of the motion 
were Argyll and his brother Lord Islay ; and, in view 

1 Swift's Works (Scott's edition), zvi. 71 ; Lockhart, i. 425, 436 ; Burnet, 
▼i. 160. There can be little doubt that Swift's correspondent was right 
in thinking that both parties voted contrary to their convictions ; but 
it seems to have been supposed in Scotland that the Tories voted against 
the motion from their belief that, if the Scottish Parliament was re- 
stored, it would establish the Hanoverian succession. See Clerk's 
MemoirSj p. 88; MmMnvn of Oreat Britain^ 1715, p. 273; and Bae's 
Hutory of the late RebeUioti, 1718, p. 34. 



294 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

of his recent conduct, Argyll's inconsistency could ex- 
cite no surprise. Cunningham, his friend and former 
tutor, remarks that a regard for his hereditary rights 
of jurisdiction caused him to oppose both the abolition 
of the Council, which he had engaged to promote, and 
the Treason Bill.^ In March 1710, when, after voting 
for the condemnation of Sacheverell, he concurred with 
the Opposition in suspending him for only three years, 
Marlborough wrote, "I cannot have a worse opinion 
of anybody than I have of the Duke of Argyll " ; ' and 
extreme jealousy of Marlborough, whose services he 
depreciated in Parliament, was no doubt his reason for 
deserting the Whigs. The Queen rewarded him with 
the Garter and the command in Spain ; but the 
Ministry, intent on peace, gave him so little support 
that he had to raise money on his own credit to pay 
his troops ; and, though appointed on his return in 
1712 to the Scottish command, he attached himself 
to the Opposition, and was dismissed in 1714.' 

The Scottish Whigs, unlike the English, had honest 
as well as factious motives for attacking the Union ; 
and it should in fairness be remembered that party 
strife at this period was quite abnormally keen. The 
Protestant succession was favoured by a section of the 
Tories, and, having the great advantage of legal recog- 
nition, was constantly acknowledged by both Parlia- 
ment and the Queen; but, in spite of his protestations 
to the contrary, it was not impossible that Prince 
James, known to his friends as the Chevalier de St. 
George and to his enemies as the Pretender* might 

> Cunningham, ii. 138, 213. 'Coxe's Marlboroughy iii. 26. 

'DoagWs Peerage, i. 108*109, and Sir James Balfour Paul's The Scots 
Peerage. 

^Argyll in the Union debate of 1713 said that his name was ^^as 
uncertain as his parents."— Par2. Eut, vi. 1219. James was bom a 



"^ 



THE SUCCESSION DOUBTFUL 296 

renounce the creed which was almost the sole obstacle 
to his success; and the attitude of the Ministry was 
so ambiguous that it could not fail to excite alarm. 
Argyll in this session accused them of distributing 
£4000 yearly amongst the Highland chiefe — ^they 
were also conniving at the importation of arms^ — 
and of remodelling the forces in the Jacobite interest, 
a scheme which was indeed being zealously prosecuted 
by the Duke of Ormond, who had succeeded Marl- 
borough as commander-in-chief. Early in 1714 Anne 
had a serious illness; and as Harley, now Earl of 
Oxford, was quite irresolute, Bolingbroke, whom the 
Jacobites regarded as their leader, assumed more and 
more the direction of affairs. In February the out- 
look had became so uncertain that an adherent of the 
Stewarts predicted that the Crown would go to which- 
ever of the two claimants arrived first in London after 
the Queen's death ; * and in April a motion that the 
Hanoverian succession was in danger under the present 
Crovemment was supported by a Tory revolt in both 
Houses, and in the Lords, where it was defeated by 
only twelve votes, by all but three of the bishops. 
On July 27, after a violent altercation, Bolingbroke 
succeeded in procuring the dismissal of Oxford ; but 
on the 29th the Queen became critically ill ; and 
Bolingbroke's attempt to form a wholly Jacobite 

few months before his father's deposition ; and Mr. Leckj points out 
{History of England, 8vo edition, i. 14) that the popular belief that he 
was supposititious had much to do with the success of the Revolution. 

1 Pari. Hist vi. 1336, 1339 ; Lockhart, L 377. The Government main- 
tained that they were merely continuing William IIL's policy of 
pensioning the chiefs. 

* Macpherson's Original Papers, iL 657. The critical prospects of the 
succession at this period are admirably set forth by Mr. Lecky. — 
i. 164-207. 



296 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

administration was suddenly arrested by the Dukes 
of Shrewsbury, Somerset and Argyll — ^a Hanoverian 
triumvirate, whose defection in 1710 had contributed 
to the fall of the Whigs. Argyll and Somerset appeared 
unbidden at the Council, and Shrewsbury, Lord Cham- 
berlain and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was then 
appointed Treasurer. Anne died on August 1; and 
on the same day the Elector of Hanover was pro- 
claimed King as Greorge L 

It is possible that the change of dynasty might have 
been eflfected without bloodshed if an effort had been 
made to obtain for it national recognition; for the 
Tory majority in the Commons, not content with 
voting a dutiful address, proposed, though the design 
was dropped, to give the new sovereign a much larger 
provision for his Civil List than had been granted to 
Queen Anne ; but a foreign prince, unacquainted with 
even the language of his subjects,^ could hardly have 
succeeded in so delicate a task as that of maintaining 
a composite Ministry ; and George I. never showed the 
least disposition to make such an attempt. On the 
day on which he set out from Hanover, which was not 
till August 31, Bolingbroke was contemptuously dis- 
missed; on September 19, the day after his arrival 
at Greenwich, he barely admitted Oxford to kiss his 
hand, whilst Ormond, who was hastening to offer his 
congratulations, was denied an audience; and, under 
Lord Townshend as Premier, an administration was 
formed, which, with the doubtful exception of Notting- 
ham, consisted whoUy of Whigs. The populace, which 

^In a weU-known manifesto the rebels of 1715 referred to King 
Gkorge as a foreign prince, who, " notwithstanding of his expectations 
of the crown for fifteen years, is still unacquainted with our manuera, 
customs, and language." He might surely have taken the trouble to 
acquire a little English. 



AN INSURRECTION PLANNED 297 

had shouted for " High Church and Sacheverell," soon 
showed its resentment of the fact, deplored on his 
dismissal by Bolingbroke : " The grief of my soul is 
this, I see plainly that the Tory party is gone." "The 
coronation on October 20, and the general election,, 
very favourable to the Whigs, which took place at the 
beginning of 1715, were both attended by serious riots; 
and these were renewed on May 28 and 29 and on 
June 10, the birthday of George L, the anniversary 
of the Restoration, and the birthday of the Chevalier.^ 
In March, after the Commons in their reply to the 
King's speech had announced their intention to bring 
the late Ministers "to condign punishment," Boling- 
broke fled to France ; and in August Ormond followed 
him, leaving Oxford, who had resolved to stand his 
trial, a prisoner in the Tower.^ 

Bolingbroke remained for some time professedly 
loyal ; but, on hearing that he was to be attainted for 
treason, he openly joined the Pretender, who made him 
his Secretary of State, and endeavoured to organise a 
Jacobite conspiracy embracing both England and Scot- 
land, and dependent on the support of France. The 
precipitate flight of Ormond, who had engaged to seize 
the western^ seaports, was very prejudicial to this plot, 
but a more serious blow was the death of Louis XIV., 
which took place on September 1.^ Though compelled 
by the Treaty of Utrecht to renounce the cause of 
James and to expel him from France, Louis had con- 
certed certain measures on his behalf, which, in the 
opinion of Bolingbroke, would soon have led to a 

^ Kae's Hittory of the Rebellion^ pcusim. 

>Lord Mahon's History of England, 1836, i. 143, 150-153, 177, 180, 188; 
Coxe's Marlborough, iiL 377-378. 

'Old Style, August 21. 



298 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

renewal of the war; but his successor was a sickly 
child of five ; and the Duke of Orleans, who acted as 
Kegent, being the next heir affcer Philip of Spain, had 
the* same interest as George I. in maintaining a treaty 
which excluded equally the Stewarts from England 
and the Spanish Bourbons from France. Orleans at 
once dismantled some ships, of which the British 
€rovemment had complained, at Havre ;^ and Boling- 
broke, believing that nothing could or would be done 
in England without French help, endeavoured to post- 
pone the Scottish enterprise, the management of which 
had been entrusted to the Earl of Mar. His agent, 
however, on reaching London, found that Mar had 
already started to raise the Highlands, in obedience 
to secret orders from the Chevalier.* 

The Scottish Jacobites could hardly be congratulated 
on their leader, for Mar, though a very adroit politician, 
had no more military experience than was consistent 
with his having commanded a regiment for King 
William in time of peace." Succeeding in 1689 to 

' Unwillinglj, however, according to the Dake of Berwick; for 
'Orleans feared that the Whig Ministers of Qeorge L, particularly as 
they had refused his offer of an alliance, might repudiate a treaty which 
they had so strongly denounced. — Collection des Mhnoires rdatifs d 
VHistoire de France^ Izvi 245. From the same motive he continaed 
to connive at the shipping of arms for Scotland. 

*The very explicit statement of Berwick {Mimoiret^ p. 246) to this 
•effect is incoDsiBtent with James's letter to Bolingbroke of September 23, 
printed by Lord Mahon, vol. i., appendix, p. xxiii ; but this letter wu 
probably intended to deceive. Huutly, before the battle of Sheriff- 
muir, taxed Mar with having received Bolingbroke's letter. — ^The Master 
•of Sinclair's Mevnoirs (Abbotsford Club), p. 213. 

8 Mar may have been intended merely to prepare the way for the 
Duke of Berwick, James's natural brother ; but Berwick, being a Field- 
Marshal of France, refused to accept the command in Scotland without 
the Begent's consent. — MSfMnre$y p. 263 ; Stuart Papers (Hist MSS. 
OommissionX i* 451. In 1719 he even led an army against Spain at a 
time when it was supporting his brother. 



THE EARL OF MAR 299 

estates which were heavily encumbered owing to the 
loyalty of his grandfather and great-grandfather in 
the Civil War, he had attached himself to Queensberry, 
whose friends he headed in their opposition to the 
Squadrone Ministry of 1704. In 1705 he introduced 
the Act for a treaty of union with England,^ and, as 
Secretary of State in succession to Annandale, was so 
very zealous in promoting that measure that the private 
meetings of the Scottish Commissioners in London were 
usually held at his house.^ On the fall of the Whigs 
in 1710 he joined the Tories, and in 1713 became 
third Secretary of State, an oflBce which he was to 
have retained in Bolingbroke's intended Ministry. In 
the same year he seconded Lord Findlater's motion 
against the Union, but probably saved his credit with 
the Government by acquiescing in a proposal of Lord 
Halifax that the debate should be adjourned.* On 
the death of Queen Anne he concurred with his 
colleagues in paying court to the new sovereign, and 
even outdid them by writing to George an extremely 
loyal letter, and by procuring another to himself in 
a similar strain from some of the Highland chiefs.* 
He was one of the first Ministers to be dismissed ; 
and on August 2, 1715, just before the flight of his 
fellow conspirator, Ormond, he embarked in disguise 
on a collier, with Generals Hamilton and Gordon, to 
begin the rising in Scotland. On the previous day, 
it is said, he had attended the King's levee.* 

iLockhart, i. 126. ^Qerk's Memairg, p. 87. 

^FarL Hiit, vi. 1219. 

* Original Letters relating to the Rebellion^ p. 6. 

*Mar was somewhat deformed, being hunchbacked, and is described 
by Lockhart (i. 114) as ^'a very bad though very frequent speaker in 
Parliament." 



300 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

On July 20, in giving his assent to what is known 
as the Riot Act, George had announced to both 
Houses that the country was threatened with in- 
vasion ; and the prompt measures now taken were 
a striking contrast to the lethargic attitude of an 
earlier Whig Ministry when a similar danger was 
apprehended in 1708. The Habeas Corpus Act and 
its Scottish equivalent were immediately suspended ; 
the fleet was mobilised ; new regiments were raised 
and suspected officers cashiered ; a force of 6000 men, 
provided for by treaty in defence of the Protestant 
succession, was demanded from Holland ; a reward of 
£100,000 was offered for the capture of the Pretender, 
alive or dead ; and an Act was passed to encourage 
loyalty in Scotland, requiring suspected persons to 
appear, when summoned, at Edinburgh, granting to 
loyal vassals of superiors who should be attaint-ed for 
treason the freehold of their estates, to the loyal 
tenants of such superiors a two years' exemption from 
rent, and, to a loyal superior, the estate of his 
rebellious vassal.^ 

The first year of the new reign had been marked 
by much less disturbance in Scotland than in Eng- 
land, though the populace of Glasgow raided an Epis- 
copal meeting-house, and an order of the magistrates 
forbidding the celebration of the King's birthday might 
easily have provoked a riot in Dundee. At the general 
election the Government secured a majority of the peers 
and all but five of the commons ; and the Jacobites, 
who had hoped to avert such a result by parading 
their hostility to the Union, found that they had greatly 
mistaken the temper of their countrymen when they 
supposed that the general dissatisfaction with that 

^The Act is well explained by Hill Burton, viiL 265. 



LOYAL ENTHUSIASM 301 

measure would prove a more potent force than anti- 
popery zeal.^ The General Assembly, whilst drawing 
up a memorial against toleration and patronage, not only 
voted a most loyal address, but deposed two ministers 
who had not observed the thanksgiving day for the 
King's accession. In July, when news of the threatened 
invasion reached Edinburgh, a new municipal force 
was hastily levied, and two associations were formed 
— one oflFering service, and the other both service 
and money — the members of which homologated the 
Union, as Wodrow would have said, by pledging 
themselves to assist each other in defence " of our 
holy religion, civil liberties, and most excellent con- 
stitution in Church and State." This proceeding was 
too suggestive of the Covenant to meet with accept- 
ance at Court, particularly as a circular letter of a 
highly religious strain was sent in its favour to many 
parishes, and was read from the pulpit ; ^ but some 
400 of the Edinburgh citizens, who had given this 
proof of their loyalty, were allowed to form them- 
selves into a corps known as "The Associate Volun- 
teers." Throughout the south and south-west, where 
Jacobite landowners were known to have been collect- 
ing horses and weapons, the same enthusiasm prevailed. 
Almost all the principal towns from Glasgow to Kirk- 
cudbright, and from Kirkcudbright to Kelso, raised 
companies ; parishes were mustered by the minister, 
who in many cases actually took arms ; and through- 
out this district a spirit was evoked which had hardly been 
known there since the days of the Whiggamore Raid.* 

^Wodrow refers to the Jacobite conspiracy as "this wicked plot of 
hell — Rome against the Reformation." — Correspondence^ iL 154. 

^A ComplecU History of ths Late Rebellion^ 1716, p. 7. 

3 Rae's History^ pp. 174-186 ; Wodrow's Correspondence^ ii. 70. 



302 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

The collier, on which Mar embarked at London on 
August 2, took him to Newcastle, whence in another 
vessel he made his way to Elie in Fife. On the 20th 
he arrived at his castle of Kildrummie in Braemar ; and 
here within a week he was joined by a great company 
of nobles and gentlemen whom he had invited, ostensibly 
to a deer-hunt, from all parts of the country, even from 
the furthest south. As these were all Jacobites and 
were told that there was to be a rising in England^ 
that the Pretender was assured of assistance from France, 
and was coming in person to put himself at their head» 
they were easily induced to take arms ; and the standard 
of the exiled dynasty was raised at Kirkmichael on 
September 6. Soon afterwards, though somewhat dis- 
couraged by the death of Louis XIV., the insurgents 
published a manifesto^ asserting the right of their 
sovereign James VIIL, in which they paid a most un- 
deserved compliment to the consistency of the Whigs 
by blaming them, not only for having effected the 
Union, which Mar had discovered to be a grand 
mistake, but for having frustrated the recent attempt 
to procure its repeal. The Act for encouraging loyalty 
was now found to have quite an opposite effect ; for, of 
62 persons who were summoned to Edinburgh, only two 
appeared, and almost all the rest, not wishing to be 
imprisoned on suspicion, joined Mar.^ 

^Printed in Chambers' History of the Rebdltons in 1689 and 1715 
(Constable's Miscellaoj), p. 191. 

' Sinclair's MemoirSy p. 36 ; Annals of King Oeorge^ ii. 35 ; Bae, pp. 187> 
191, 211. The fear of imprisonment was at least the reason assigned for 
his rebellion by Etob Roy. — Sinclair, p. 201, note. Mar's chief supporters 
were the Marquis of Huntly and the Marquis of Tullibardine, eldest sons 
of the Dukes of Gordon and Athol ; the Earl Marischal ; the Earls of 
Errol, Nithsdale, Winton, Traquair, Southesk, Strathmore, Camwath and 
Seaforth ; Viscount Kenmure ; and Lords Dufiiis and Drummond. Lord 
Dnffus, a very gallant naval officer, had supported the Union in 1707. 



/ 



THE OPPOSING FORCES 303 

The rebellion made a very promising start. An 
attempt of some of the citizens to surprise Edinburgh 
Castle was detected just in time to prevent its success ; 
but Mar on September 18, anticipating a movement of 
some Fife levies under the Earl of Rothes, sent a party 
of horse to occupy Perth. Ten days later, when he 
himself entered the town, his forces amounted to 5,000 
men. Pushing his power southward, he soon controlled 
the whole of the east coast from the Moray Firth to the 
Firth of Forth; and, though disappointed in the supplies 
shipped for their use at Havre, the rebels about this 
time succeeded in landing three consignments of arms 
from France, and, at Burntisland on October 2, in 
seizing a vessel freighted with a similar cargo for the 
Earl of Sutherland, a veteran of William's wars, who 
in his own northern territory was raising men for King 
George.^ 

Meanwhile, about the middle of September, the 
Duke of Argyll had arrived in Scotland to take com- 
mand of the royal troops, which, under his predecessor. 
General Wightman, had entrenched themselves at 
Stirling in the same position as David Leslie's army 
in 1650 after the battle of Dunbar, and with the same 
object, except that an attack was expected from the 
north, not from the south. As the forces at Argyll's 
disposal were only 1,850, and by the end of October, 
when Mar was credited with some 16,000, were still 
only 3,250 — for the Government was too busy in the 
south-west of England to send troops, and the few 
that did come were sent from Ireland — it ii difficult 
not to agree with the Duke of Berwick that if the 
insurgent General had advanced on Stirling as soon 
as he had mustered the bulk of his force, no serious 

> CompUcU Hittory, pp. 22-24, 37-39 ; AnnaU, ii. 41-47. 



304 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

resistance could have been made.^ It should, however, 
be remembered that Cromwell in 1650 had not 
ventured to assault the Scottish lines at Stirling, held 
though they were by the ragged and starving remnant 
of a defeated army ; and, as Cromwell had sent a 
force into Fife to outflank Leslie, so Mar now attempted 
a more complicated movement, according to which the 
west Highland clans, under General Gordon, were to 
take Inveraray and descend upon Argyll from the north- 
west, whilst another force, combining probably with 
rebels who had declared themselves in Nithsdale, was 
to advance against him from the south-east.* Early 
in October Brigadier Macintosh was detached with 2,500 
men to attempt a crossing at the mouth of the Firth; 
and, despite the vigilance of several war-ships, he 
contrived to carry over in open boats at least three- 
fifths of his corps/ On October 14, after collecting 
his force at Haddington, he transgressed or exceeded 
his instructions by marching on Edinburgh ; but find- 
ing, when he had arrived within a mile of the city, 
that the citizens were arming and that Argyll in person 
had come to their help, he turned off towards Leith, 
and there fortified himself in the Citadel, a disused 
fort. Argyll did not venture an assault;* but the 
garrison, knowing that he would soon return with 
artillery, marched off eastward under cover of darkness 
to the friendly stronghold of Seton Castle. Mar now 
assisted his subordinate, whose dash on Edinburgh he 

^M^oires, p. 247. Compare Sir Walter Scott's Introduction to 
Sinclair's Memoimy p. xvi, and AnnaU^ ii. 53. 
« Sioclair, pp. 148, 187. 

3 The greater part of six Highland regiments. Their leader, aooording 
to the Master of Sinclair^ (p. 255), had nothing to recommend him bat 
**" ignorant presumption and ane affected Inverness English accent" 

* Clerk's Memoirs, pp. 89-90. 



\ 
\ 



THE ANGLO-SOOmSH RISING 306 

characterised as " an unlucky mistake " by threatening 
Stirling and so recalling Argyll, On the 19th, on 
receipt of fresh orders and an invitation from Nor- 
thumberland, Macintosh marched south, and, three 
days later, joined the Scottish and English insurgents, 
now united, at Kelso. ^ 

Jacobitism in this quarter had made considerable 
noise, but it proved to be extremely weak. Viscount 
Kenmure and the Earls of Nithsdale and Camwath, 
when they returned to their estates from the so-called 
deer-hunt in Braemar, could induce very few of their 
tenantry to take the field ; ^ an attempt to surprise 
Dumfries was foiled by the vigilance of the towns- 
people ; and, when they had joined their Northumber- 
land friends under Forster and the Earl of Derwentwater, 
who had just failed in a similar design on Newcastle, 
the combined force amounted only to about 600 horse. 
These people, less accustomed to bear arms for King 
James than to drink his health and very susceptible 
to false alarms,^ had been roving about without any very 
definite idea as to what they meant to do; and the 
arrival of the Highland contingent, instead of helping 
them to a decision, occasioned a keen dispute. Macin- 
tosh and the Earl of Winton wished to march westward 
by Dumfries and Glasgow, in order either to join 
the clans under General Gordon or to co-operate with 
Mar in an attack on Stirling ; and, when this advice was 
rejected, they proposed to close at once with General 
Carpenter, an officer of great experience, who was then 
at Wooler with a much inferior force. The English, 

* Rae, p. 268-268. « Ibid, p. 267. 

' On one occasion a countiyman calling Help, which happened unfortu- 
nately to be the name of his dog, caused such alarm amongst the Scottish 
insurgents that " some of them cut up their boots for haste to get them 

on."— Rae, p. 254. 

U 



306 FMCnON AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

however, would hear of nothing but an advance into 
Lancashire, where they counted on being well received. 
After three aimless inarches to Jedburgh, Hawick and 
Langholm, Macintosh, having been won over, induced 
most of his men — about 400 deserted — ^to fall in with 
this scheme ; and on October 31 the insurgents, about 
1,700 strong, entered England by the same fatal road 
which on two previous occasions, in 1648 and in 1651, 
had been traversed by the standards of the house of 
Stewart. On November 7, after a wet but rapid march, 
they reached Lancaster, where recruits began to come 
in, and on the 9th the cavalry entered Preston. Here 
many Catholics joined them, and here for three days 
the weather-worn officers gave themselves up to love- 
making and feasting— the Preston ladies, happily for 
the Government, being as fascinating as they were 
disloyal — ignorant or regardless of the fact that General 
Wills was collecting troops at Manchester, and that 
General Carpenter was hurrying across from Durham. 
Foster, who had a commission from Mar to command 
in England, proved utterly incapable,^ and it was 
probably under the direction of Macintosh that barri- 
cades were erected in the centre of the town. Wills's 
attack on the 12th was beaten off with considerable 
loss ; but on the morning of the 14th, finding them- 
selves surrounded by the united forces of Wills and 
Carpenter, the insurgents surrendered and laid down 
their arms.> 

^ He had a habit of retiring to bed on critical occasions — ^for example^ 
when he heard of Willa^s advance — ^which would have been advantageous 
to his troops, had he not been equally prone to countermand the orders 
given during his repose. He seems to have been the only man in both 
armies who went to bed after the first day's fighting at Preston. 

*P^ften, pp. 1-93 ; Rae, pp. 246-280, 316-322 ; Lanccuthire MemmaUof 
1715, pamm. The capitulation is often dated the 13th, but it was not 
completed till seven o'clock on the following morning. 



MAB ADVANC8S ON 8TIRLIKQ 307 

The insurrection, thus crushed in the north of 
England, had in the south-west been strangled at its 
birth. Ormond, on reaching Paris, had attempted to 
resume the intrigues which had been interrupted by 
his flight ; but, owing to the treachery of Colonel 
Maclean, his chief confidant, the Grovemment had no 
difficulty in anticipating his designs. A suspected 
garrison was removed fix>m Plymouth, or at all 
events reinforced ; troops were marched to Bath 
and Bristol, as well as to Oxford ; and Sir William 
Wyndham and the Earl of Lansdown, the two 
principal conspirators, were both secured. These 
precautions proved so effectual that Ormond, on 
appearing off the western coast, did not venture to 
disembark. ^ 

For several weeks after Macintosh had left him on 
October 8, Mar continued, in Berwick's uncomplimen- 
tary phrase, to amuse himself at PertL Ostensibly 
he was waiting for reinforcements ; but, afber Huntly 
and Seaforth had both come in, each with about 2,000 
men, he could no longer plead this excuse for delay ; 
and, having ordered the western clans, which had made 
no impression on Inveraray, to join him on his march, 
he set forth on November 10. Argyll was informed 
by his spies that the enemy intended, whilst making 
three feigned assaults on his position at Stirling, to 
ford the river near Aberfoyle ; and, not choosing to 
hazard an engagement on ground so unfavourable for 
cavalry as the upper reaches of the Forth, he sur- 
prised, or at all events disconcerted Mar, whose infor- 
mation was extremely defective, by going forward to 
meet him on the uplands above Dunblane, known as 

^ M4mairu de Berwick, p. 262 ; ComplecU HUtory, p. 31 ; Stuart Papers 
(Hist. MS8. Commiaaion), i. 462, 467. 




308 FRICTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

Shenffinuir.^ The battle, which took place on Nove 
ber 13, the very day on which the insurgents at Pr 
ton were contemplating surrender, was of such a ki%TiB,iro7 
that both sides were able to claim it as a succei 
Argyll, leading the right wing of his army agaui^%ll 
what he believed to be the main body of the re 
but which was really only their left— their right 
concealed by a rise in the ground— charged in pe 
with the Gentlemen Volunteers and several squadroi 
of heavy dragoons, including the Scots GreyB. 
Highlanders, after firing two volleys with great s 
ness and precision, were routed by an attack on the 
left flank ; but the insurgent cavalry, which, by a fetall^^^b 
mistake, had been posted wholly on the right flank, •V''ti 
poorly mounted as they were, proved almost a match for ifi \ 
the dragoons ; for, though forced back by the superior i: -"^ 
weight of the horses opposed to them, they resisted Y- 
so stoutly and rallied so often that three hours were ^ | 
occupied in pursuing them as £a.r as the Allan, a , 
distance of barely two miles. At four o'clock, just as 
they were being driven across thiJB stream, Argyll was 
informed that nothing could be seen of his left wing, 
which, indeed, was far enough away. Mar himself, 
with a large force of Highlanders, attacking this divi- 
sion whilst it was altering its formation in order to 
avoid being outflanked, had cut to pieces three la- 
ments of infantry, and so confused the supporting 
horse-^which, however, contrived to carry off a 

^ His army (3,600) consisted wholly of Begulars, with the exception of a 
choice squadron of 60 volunteers, commanded by the Earl of Rothes, and 
including the Dukes of Bozburgh and Douglas, and the Earls of Hadding- 
ton, Lauderdale and Loudon. The rebels numbered 9,000, large detach- 
ments having been made to oppose Lord Sutherland in the north, and to 
hold down the hostile county of Fife. 

> Marshal Keith's Memoirs (Spalding ClubX p. 20 ; Sinclair, pp. 229-890. 



/ 
/ 

PRESBTTBRY BAH^NVBENESS 309 

/ 

i 

^ to restore the kingdom l^liam had withdrawn them to 
fe pendent state." " We hof re that all was lost. Argyll, 
fispsBijust rights and those d drew up his cavalry with a 
'L Scotland once more settf General Wightman, which 
y** Parliament, on their ancj and Mar now made the most 
^i^^ had thus professedly a W ^J ^^* attacking the royal 
' ao!^ Stewarts and to dissoll ^^^ position were far inferior 
''to !"^ might perhaps have hf said,^ to the mistake of an 
^offif^' objects, had it not bfre> who in the uncertain light 
\^. ^ rested primarily on a/niore numerous than they really 

y^ basis. The Union ^ 

*1f^ but the Squadrone, ATacobite cause involved in the 
party, had always b/empt to cross the Forth and 
as the clergy conifestm was aggravated by another 
^( they could not butW '<^lniost at the same time. On 
{qI first been mootyL %^^ Inverness, which Brigadier 
\!^ nobody was les^L ^ ^ ^^^e marching to Perth, was 
^ . in whose intei^ ^ \ 4^ by Lord Lovat ; and this 
^ imposed. oA. %> ^^ Huntly and Seaforth to return 
iQj to present/ ^^ protect their territories from the 
io^ ministers/ ^> but also detached the Clan Fraser 
^\ to fflor^^rred Lovat to a rival claimant as its chief. • 
Q^ opp^i^^'ay affcer the battle of SheriflEmuir General 
Ca, Imogan entered the Thames with the promised 

n y^th's MemairB^ pp. 20-21. 

mil 
^itemporary accounts of the battle are given in Bae, P&tten, Sinclair, 

the Compleat Huiory^ and the Anndls, The official despatches 

)Oth armies will also be found in the Annalt and in Fatten. Oamp- 

ives a good account in his Life of Argyll. General Wightman, in 

ding his despatch, writes : " I must do the enemy that justice to 

I never saw regular troops more exactly drawn up in line of battle, 

that in a moment ; and their officers behaved with all the gallantry 

inable." The loss of the Boyalists was 290 killed, 187 wounded, and 

risoners — Chambers, pp. 266, 329 ; that of the rebels may have been 

teoo. 

^^ae, p. 334. 

\ 




t. 




) 



310 FRICTION AW) C^L WAR, 1707-1716 

auxiliaries fipom Holland ; ach took place on Novei 
no great energy in dealing ^ the insurgents at P« 
of Cadogan as his lieutenanti^der, was of such a kiiii^no 
hasten his preparations for o> claim it as a succea 
the 6,000 Dutch troops, in ig of his army agaii«^%l' 
regiments and artillery, to in^in body of the rebei^^relK 
royal forces were, however, dev left — ^their right beim^^?^^ 
time at Stirling by a winter ipd — charged in pers(«P^««^ad 
not been known for thirty year^nd several squadron*'™ to 
approached Perth on January |e Scots Greys. Thi^^i'i 
country people had been emplows with great steadi*iP^«^ 
snow, they found that Mar on tw an attack on 
evacuated the town.* The ChJj^, which, by a fetal ;8£y^| 
insurgents, having landed at Petia the right flank,* i^-l- 
22 ; but, as all expectation of foreigjalmost a match for H *^ ^^ 
be abandoned, since he had brought V by the superior 
none, his presence did little or nothiife they resisted ^^-^^ 
cause. On February 4 he and Man|e hours were 
France; and the relics of his little arrStiie Allan, a 
the Royalists, soon either dispersed amongick, just ss 
escaped abroad.' S^gJ^^ ^^ i\ 

The Chevalier, on his arrival, had issued aNfrwingi 
similar to that published by his friends on fafci^s 
arms, in which he announced that he had'coi^o 
relieve our subjects of Scotland from the hardjshi. 
groan under on account of the late unhappy Unic^ 

1 Coxe'8 Marlborough, iii. 3d2. ^AnnaU, ii. 166, 222^^^ 

^Only two persons are said to have been executed in Scotf^ 
account of the Bebellion. A considerable number were brougl. 
the Border to be tried at Carlisle, a proceeding which was resent^" 
a violation of the Union, but none of them were put to death, 
the rebels taken in England, mostly at Preston, 57, including 
Derwentwater and Kenmure, were executed, 63 died in prison, 
738 were banished to the plantations. — A Faithful Register of 
Late Rebellionj 1718, pp. 398-403. Foster and Macintosh, Lords Win 
and Nithsdale escaped from prison. 



4 



J- 



PRESBYTERY RALUB8 TO THE UNION 311 

to restore the kingdom to its ancient, free, and inde- 
pendent state." " We hope," he continued, " to see our 
SSI just rights and those of the Church and people of 
Scotland once more settled, in a free independent Scots 

^ Parliament, on their ancient foundation.^ The rebellion 
^ had thus professedly a twofold purpose — to restore the 
'*^ Stewarts and to dissolve the Union ; and more stress 
^** might perhaps have been laid on the second of these 
^' objects, had it not been evident that the enterprise 
^ rested primarily on a dynastic, and not on a national, 
^ basis. The Union was, indeed, profoundly unpopular ; 
^^ ^ but the Squadrone, which was the original Nationalist 
^^^ party, had always been strongly Hanoverian ; and, much 
'-^ as the clergy complained of toleration and patronage, 
I they could not but remember that these grievances had 
1^^ first been mooted in a Scottish Parliament, and that 
/ nobody was less likely to remove them than the prince 
f^ in whose interest and by whose adherents they had been 
Y imposed. On the accession of George L, it was intended 
„ to present an address against the Union, and the 
^ ministers of Dunfermline are said to have been the first 
r\ to sign ; * but we have seen how vigorous was the 
^ opposition aroused in the Church as soon as it became 

\ known that an effort was to be made to restore the old 
e. dynasty, as well as the old constitution. When the 
'm militia and volunteers went out of Edinburgh to attack 
^^} Macintosh at Leith, some of the clergy were to be seen 

g marching " in rank and file, like common soldiers, with 
jjt^ firelocks and bayoAets " ; the royal troops, whilst 
th. pursuing the rebels in the north, are said to have 

' ho 

^Patten, pp. 175, 176, and in other works. 

. ^Wodrow's Corresp<mde7ic€y i. 634. In December 1714 a paper was 

J. posted up at Edinburgh inviting the inhabitants to concur in forcing 

the Lord Provost to sign the address. — Original Papers Relating to 

i the Rebellion^ p. 9. 



312 PRICnON AND CIVIL WAR, 1707-1716 

" looked upon Presbyterian ministers as the almost only 
friends they had";^ Jurants and Nonjurants proved 
equally loyal ; and even Hepburn and his associates,^ 
though they declared that they had not ^^ freedom in 
their consciences to fight in defence of the constitution 
of Church and State as established since the sinful 
Union," did at least come to Dumfries, when it was 
threatened by the southern insurgents, and remain on 
guard outside the town.* The Union had thus survived 
the first attempt to overthrow it by force of arms, not 
because the nation had become less insensible to its 
benefits, but because its maintenance was involved in 
that of the Protestant succession ; and, however dubious 
a benefit the political influence of Scottish Presbytery 
may hitherto have proved — for too often in resisting 
civil despotism it had attempted only to erect a more 
intolerable tyranny of its own — there can be no question 
as to the services it rendered at this crisis, when, by 
counteracting the spirit of nationality, it preserved to 
future generations the inestimable advantages of a 
United Kingdom. 

^WodroVs Correspondence^ iL 121. >See p. 235. 

SRae, pp. 267, 262, 276. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE ASCENDENCY OF WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

As the national episcopate of Scotland had disappeared 
with the deposition of James VIL, and as the chief 
obstacle to its restoration was the Union with England, 
which his son, the Chevalier, proposed to undo. Episco- 
palians had as much reason to support the rising of 
1715 as Presbyterians to resist it ; and the suppression 
of the revolt was naturally followed by an inquiry 
how far prelatical ministers had conformed during its 
progress to the two statutes which recognised and 
regulated their position — the Act of 1695 in favour of 
Episcopal incumbents who had taken the oaths, and 
the Toleration Act of 1712. In May 1716, 28 
preachers were called to account at Edinburgh for 
officiating in Episcopal meeting-houses without having 
exhibited theiij letters of ordination to the Justices of 
the Peace, and without praying for King George. 
Most of them were fined ; but, the letters in question 
having been produced and registered, the magistrates 
conceived themselves unable to comply with an order 
of the Prince Regent — George being then in Hanover 
— that the meeting-houses should be closed.^ In the 

^ Arnot's Criminal Trials, pp. 343-346. 



314 THE ASCENDENCY OP WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

northern districts Episcopacy had supported, as well 
as sympathised with, the rebellion ; and its treason, at 
all events in the case of those who had incurred special 
obligations in return for exceptional privileges, was not 
likely to be condoned. Almost the whole country from 
the Moray Firth to the Firth of Forth had been occupied 
by the insurgents for nearly five months ; over 200 
parish ministers had been sequestered from their frmc- 
tions or forced to fly ; ^ and their pulpits had been 
filled by the former occupants of meeting-houses, who 
prayed for the Pretender, read the manifestoes of his 
Generals, and observed fasts for the success of his 
arms. There were, however, especially in the county 
of Aberdeen, a number of incumbents so favourable 
to the exiled dynasty that there was no occasion to 
displace them ; and these, with one or two exceptions, 
were ministers ordained before the Revolution, who 
had retained their livings by taking the oath of 
a^llegiance and the assurance in accordance with the 
Act of 1695. The Aberdeenshire incumbents, by sub- 
scribing the abjuration oath as imposed in 1712, had 
also bound themselves to defend the succession to the 
Crown against Prince James; and some, if not all, 
of them had probably concurred in the strange conduct 
of the clergy of what was called the Diocese of Aber- 
deen, who in 1713 had presented an address^ to Queen 
Anne, in which they prayed that her "royal diadem 
may fall upon the head of a Protestant successor," 
and in 1716 had presented an equally loyal address 
to the Catholic Pretender. 

The Church com-ts endeavoured to get rid of the 

* WodroVa Correq)07uiencey ii. 166. 

> Skinner's AnnaU of Scottish EpUoopaey fnm 1788 to 1816, pp. 298-300, 
note. 



EPISCOPAL INCUMBENTS DEPBIVBB 315 

Jacobite incumbents by sending them a form of resig- 
nation, which in their own interest they were advised 
to sign ; but, this suggestion not being complied with, 
they were deposed by their respective presbyteries or 
by a committee of the Synod, apparently on the ground 
that, though the offences they were charged with were 
political, the scandal resulting from their perjury was 
within the jurisdiction of the Church. Refusing to 
submit to sentences so unwelcome to their parishioners 
that in some cases they had to be executed by military 
force, the incumbents raised an action in the Court 
of Session to have them declared void ; but the Crown 
lawyers prevented this by prosecuting them for sedi- 
tion; and towards the end of 1717 they were fined 
by the Lords of Justiciary, and required to give up 
their churches, manses, and glebes. Meanwhile, on 
similar charges of disloyalty, most of the meeting-houses 
had been closed, and steps had been taken to purge 
the University of Aberdeen. After the Act of Indem- 
nity, however, which was passed in August of this 
year, the Episcopal Nonjurors recovered much of their 
former freedom; and no further restriction was put 
upon them till in 1719 an Act was passed, which, 
whilst removing the chief objections of Presby- 
terians to the abjuration oath, provided that no 
Episcopal minister, on pain of six months' imprison- 
ment, should officiate to more than nine persons beyond 
those of his own household, unless he had taken the 
oath and prayed expressly for King George.^ 

' Appeal of the Epucopal Clergy in Scotland to the Lorde in Parliament^ 
1718, pp. 21-23, 101— Adv. Libr. Fbmphlete, 633 ; Stephen's History of 
the Church of Scotland^ iv. 118-132, 136-147, 1(K)-153. The Appeal, jast 
cited, is merely a pamphlet composed in that form. The total number of 
clergymen deprived or silenced in the Synod of Aberdeen is said to have 
been about 36. — Wodrow's Correspondence, ii. 210. It appears from 



316 THE ASCENDENCY OP WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

This statute, never very strictly enforced, was 
probably due in some measure to the fear of another 
Jacobite revolt. In 1716, Charles XII. of Sweden 
having an old quarrel with King George as Elector 
of Hanover, his confidant Count Gorz had set on foot 
a conspiracy, which was supported by Russia and 
Spain, for the restoration of the Stewarts; and this 
scheme, though interrupted for a time by the arrest 
of the Swedish Minister in London, was speedily 
revived. Spain at this period was recovering from a 
century of decay under the. vigorous administration of 
Alberoni, an Italian of humble birth, soon to be a 
Cardinal, whose ambition it was to cut short Austrian 
domination in Italy by winning back for his adopted 
country the provinces of which it had been deprived 
at the Peace of Utrecht ; and, as Great Britain and 
France had just allied themselves with Holland to 
maintain the provisions of this treaty, he had a 
sufficient motive for intriguing against both. In 1717 
the Spaniards made themselves masters of Sardinia, 
and in 1718 of Sicily; but this success, oflfending 
both Austria and Great Britain, resulted only in con- 
verting the Triple into the Quadruple Alliance, and 
in the destruction by Admiral Byng of a Spanish 
fleet ; and Alberoni, undeterred by the death of Charles 
XIL, threw himself unreservedly into those Jacobite 
schemes, which had been projected by Gorz, but which 
were now to be prosecuted as his own. Whilst inciting 
French malcontents to kidnap the Regent Orleans, he 
welcomed the Pretender to Spain; and in the spring 

Scot's Fasti that 18 parish ministers were deposed in this Synod, and 4 in 
the adjoining Synod of Moray. In other Synods very few depoeitioDB 
are recorded. The last Episcopal minister to hold a parochial core in 
Scotland was Fisher of Aberfoyle in the Presbytery of Dunblane, who 
died in 1732. 



JACOBITE DEFEAT AT GLENSHIEL 317 

of 1719 a force of 5,000 men, mostly Irish, was em- 
barked at Cadiz for England under the Duke of 
Ormond. The expedition was dissipated by a violent 
storm in the Bay of Biscay ; but two frigates, which 
had sailed from another port, and a small vessel con- 
veying some Scottish refugees from France, made their 
way in safety to the island of Lewis. On reaching 
the mainland with their detachment of 300 Spanish 
soldiers. Lords Tullibardine, Marischal, and Seaforth 
were joined by some 1,600 Highlanders; and on June 
10, after two months of inactivity, they were attacked 
and defeated by General Wightman in Glenshiel. The 
Spaniards surrendered, and the Scottish leaders made 
their escape.^ In December Alberoni was dismissed, 
and early in the following year, disappointed in her 
Italian enterprise, Spain made peace. 

The country was not again to be threatened with 
invasion for twenty-five years ; and during that period 
the disloyalty of Scottish Episcopalians exposed them 
more to internal dissension than to any interference by 
the civil power. The interests of the Pretender were 
managed by a number of politicians known as his 
Trustees, whose policy it was to confirm the Jacobites 
in their allegiance by organising on a political basis 
the communion to which they almost all belonged. 
With this object they had begun to form a College or 
committee of bishops entrusted with no more definite 
functions than that of perpetuating their own order 
and of co-operating with them in the government of 

> Keith's Memoirs, pp. 45-52 ; Rapin and Tindal, xxviL 253-256. The 
Duke of Ormond's letters relating to this afihir will be found in The 
Jcuxhite Attempt of 1719, a volume edited for the Scottish History 
-Society by Mr. W. E. Dickson. The meeting-houses in Edinburgh 
were shut up for six months. — Lawson's Scottiak EpUoopal Churchy 
p. 520. 



318 THE ASCENDENCY OF WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

the Church ; for they had resolved not to revive 
diocesan Episcopacy till the authority of the Crown in 
the person of its rightful possessor should be avail- 
able to appoint and to control the occupants of the 
various sees. They were also opposed to a desire 
manifested in some quarters to introduce certain cere- 
monies or usages which had been discarded in England 
at the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and the revival 
of which formed the chief distinction between the 
Scottish or Laudian, and the English, Liturgy, such as 
the mixing of water with the communion wine, partly 
because the usages were generally unpopular* and 
might enable unfriendly critics to say that Episcopacy 
was approximating to the religion of its King, partly 
because the English Nonjurors had already spUt on 
this point, and partly because those who insisted on 
such things were the readiest to resent the political 
subordination of the Church and to assert its intrinsic 
power. During the lifetime of Rose, a judicious 
Churchman as well as a staunch Jacobite and the last 
of the pre-Revolution prelates, who as Bishop of Edin- 
burgh was entitled to exercise metropolitan jurisdiction 
in the vacancy of the primatial see, these sources of 
dissension were kept well in check. At his death in 
1720 there were six "bishops at large" — ^Falconer, 
Campbell,^ and Gadderar, who favoured the usages, and 
FuUarton, Millar, and Irvine, who more or less opposed 
them. The Trustees, the most active of whom was 
Lockhart, succeeded in procuring the election as Rose's 
successor of FuUarton, who, however, was to be merely 

^ In some congregations even the Liturgy had not yet been introdnced. 
—Skinner, ii. 626. • 

' Liawson, in a note on p. 236 of his History of the Soottith Epitcopd 
Churchy makes the strange mistake of attributing to this divine the works. 
of Professor Campbell. — See iuproy p. 261. 



EFISGOPAL DISSENSIONS 319 

Primus or president of the College, not primate ; but 
the privilege conceded to one district was soon claimed 
by others ; and the clergy of Angus and Meams, and 
of Aberdeen, showed their approbation of the usages 
by electing respectively as their bishops Falconer and 
Campbell, the second of whom gave place to Gadderar. 
In order to avert the collapse of their College scheme, 
the Trustees, within the next two years, introduced a 
species of royal patronage which had been dormant 
since the Revolution by procuring from the Pretender 
recommendations in favour of six clergymen to be 
^'bishops at large," all of whom, after considerable 
opposition, were consecrated between 1722 and 1726. 
The dispute as to the usages, of which, as of diocesan 
Episcopacy, Gadderar was the chief advocate, was 
settled in 1724 by an agreement which allowed the 
use either of the Scottish or of the English Prayer- 
Book ;^ but the struggle between the two kinds of 
polity went on for several years and produced a strange 
rivalry in episcopal creation — the College party adding 
to their number as fast as their opponents, on appli- 
cation from the various districts, added to theirs. The 
High Churchmen, decided Jacobites as they were, 
thought it unfair that their exiled sovereign, parti- 
cularly as he happened to be a Catholic, should have 
as much power over the Church as if he were actually 
on the throne ; and they looked with great disfavour 
on the College scheme because it fstcilitated the pro- 
motion of political partisans, and enabled the Pretender 
and his Trustees to maintain their ascendency by 
creating as many bishops as they pleased. Eventually 
in 1732, weakened by the absence of Lockhart, who 

^Certain oaages not indaded in the Scottish Liturgy had also been 
advocated, and these were now forbidden. 



320 THE ASCENBENGT OF WALPOLB, 1716-1742 

had gone abroad to avoid arrest, the College scheme 
was formally given up.^ 

We have seen that the Church of Scotland at this 
period was suflFering from dissensions very similar to 
these. The subordinate question incident to Presby- 
tery was one of doctrine, not of worship; but the 
main point at issue in both eases was the claim of a 
spiritual corporation to emancipate itself from secular 
interference, whether embodied in lay patrons or in 
political Trustees ; and it is noticeable that Lockhart 
opposed the calling of bishops by the clergy of each 
diocese on the plea that it would occasion the same 
disorders as were caused by the popular election of 
Presbyterian pastors.* Gadderar had, however, a less 
formidable task than Erskine ; for, whilst the former 
had to contend only with the shadow of Erastian 
supremacy represented by an exiled Court, the latter 
was fighting, under the obsolete standards of fanaticism, 
against the spirit of the age; and thus, whUst the 
ultra-Episcopalians were successful in dominating their 
communion, the ultra-Presbyterians succeeded only in 
effacing themselves from theirs. The two Churches 
had, in fact, approximated to the position in which 
each was placed. Episcopacy, disestablished, dissatis- 
fied, and disloyal, was reverting to the illiberal pre- 
tensions which, as asserted by an officious minority, 
had caused its downfall in the days of Charles I.,* 

^ Lockhart Papers, vol. iL, Histories of Stephen, Skinner, and Grub, 
pamm ; Lawson, pp. 517-545. 

> Lockhart, ii. 126. 

3 One of Gradderar's friends objected to an injunction of the bishops 
against the usages that it was " directed to the Episcopal Church of Soot- 
laud, as if there were or could be another church in it, which is not 
episcopal."— Stephen, iv. 1S6. In the eyes of such extremists, the Estab- 
lished clergy had too little of the ecclesiastical character to preach, much less 
to administer the sacraments — they were merely " Presbyterian Uaxksn? 



ARGYLL DISGRACED 321 

whilst Presbytery, conforming to the moderate tra- 
dition, once identified with bishops, which had been 
imposed upon it at the Revolution, was daily vindicat- 
ing its claim to be the National Church. 

Though the attempt to expand a Jacobite into a 
Nationalist movement had entirely failed, the un- 
popularity of the new constitution was not at all 
diminished by the poUcy pursued at London during 
and after the revolt. The loyal population of the 
Lowlands, threatened by a powerful enemy, had been 
left almost denuded of troops, whilst the Government 
was providing against serious, but less imminent, 
dangers nearer home ; and the removal of 89 prisoners 
across the Border to be tried at Carlisle was resented 
not only as a violation of the Union, but as a reflec- 
tion on their loyalty which the people of Edinburgh 
had done nothing to deserve.^ At the accession of 
George I. the conduct of Scottish affikirs had been 
entrusted more to the Squadrone^ than to the Revolu- 
tion Whigs ; and, these parties not being on the best 
of terms, there was as much satisfaction as annoyance 
when Argyll, who headed the latter, instead of being 
rewarded for his services in suppressing the rebellion, 
was deprived in June 1716 of the Scottish command. 
Argyll blamed the Ministry for neglecting so long his 
demand for troops as much as they blamed him for 
remissness in prosecuting the campaign ; but he was 
removed at the same time from his post of Groom of 
the Stole to the Prince of Wales ; and the chief reason 
for this double affront was that George suspected him 

^Gampbeire Argyll^ pp. 268-273 ; Stephen, iv. 131-133. 

'The Duke of Montroee m 1714 succeeded Mar as Secretary of State, 

but in 1716, when he was made keeper of the Great Seal, gave place to 

Boxburgh. Bothes was Vice- Admiral of Scotland, and from 1716 to 1721 

Commissioner to the General Assembly. 

X 



322 THE ASCENDENCY OP WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

of encouraging the insubordination of his son, whom, 
on leaving for his continental dominions, he most 
reluctantly consented to make Guardian of the Realm. ^ 
Lord Stanhope accompanied the King to Hanover, 
and was followed by Sunderland, whilst Townshend 
and his brother-in-law, Walpole, remained at home — 
a disruption of the Ministry which was rendered more 
dangerous by the royal feud The Prince in his in- 
dependent position not only set himself to eclipse in 
popularity the absent sovereign, which was not at all 
difficult, but renewed his intimacy with Argyll ; and 
Townshend, having gained his confidence by estrange- 
ing him from the fascinating Duke, was traduced by 
Sunderland to the King as intriguing against him with 
the Prince.* These dissensions resulted, in 1717, in 
the dismissal of Townshend and Walpole, and in the 
re-organisation of the Ministry under Stanhope, with 
Sunderland as one of the Secretaries of State; and, 
as Argyll and Sunderland were personal enemies, the 
former co-operated heartily with the Opposition till in 
1719, having commended himself to the King by 
quarrelling with his son, he was made Lord Steward 
of the Household and Duke of Greenwich. During 
this period he took the strange course for a military 
officer of speaking and voting against the Mutiny 
Bill, on which occasion Stanhope, who had preceded 
him as British General in Spain, congratulated him- 
self that ^' he was not like some persons thatr changed 
their opinions according as they were in or out of 
place " ; and he opposed with more reason the Bill for 

* Coze's WcUpote^ i 79. There is nothing to justify Burton's singular 
reference (viii. 345) to this affair : " Its immediate cause is not, and may 
perhaps never be, known." 

"Coxe's WalpoUj i. 93, 94. 



THE PEERAGE BILL 323 

putting the sale of forfeited estates in the hands of 
trustees, as an encroachment on the jurisdiction of the 
House of Lords, and, so far as Scotland was con- 
cerned, on that of the Court of Session.^ 

A more important measure was introduced in 1719, 
and would probably have been supported by Argyll, 
even if he had not by that time been reconciled to 
the Court, since it aflForded him an opportunity of 
repaying his desertion by the Prince of Wales. It 
was expected that the Prince on succeeding to the 
Crown would discard the present Ministry in fevour 
of that section of the Whigs which had suflfered for 
its supposed adherence to his interests, and perhaps 
also of the Tories ; and, in order to prevent him up- 
setting the balance of parties in the Upper House, as 
Queen Anne had done in 1713, and at the same time 
to strengthen the security provided by the Act of 
Settlement against the promotion of Hanoverian 
favourites, certain resolutions were adopted by the 
Lords in anticipation of a Bill which, though dropped 
in March of this year, was passed during the next 
session on November 30, providing that the sovereign, 
with exception of his own family, should not create 
more than six peers beyond the existing number; 
that new peerages, limited to heirs male, might be 
created in room of the old ; and that the 16 repre- 
sentative peers of Scotland should give place to 25, 
chosen by the Crown and sitting thereafter by heredi- 
tary right In attacking the general principle of this 
measure, the Opposition insisted that it would convert 
the nobility into a close corporation, if not into a 

^PaH. HiiL, TiL 538, 550, 553. The trustees, by a later statute called 
Commissioners, involved themselves in disputes with the Court of Session, 
of which an account will be found in Barton, viii. 348-352. 



324 THE ASCENDENCY OF WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

caste, and that by creating 25 new peerages^ and 
permitting the creation of 6 more, it would enable 
the present Ministry to perpetuate their power; and 
the modem student of the constitution cannot £ail to 
see that it would have prevented the Crown in cases 
of conflict, such as that of 1832, from bringing, or 
threatening to bring, the Upper House into accord 
with the Lower. The clauses relating to Scotland, 
though supported by all the sixteen peers, were 
obviously the most vulnerable, and detailed criticism 
was directed chiefly to these. To deprive the Scottish 
nobles of a right of representation secured to them 
by the Treaty of Union was denounced as grossly 
unjust; and it was pointed out that all but 25 of 
them would be in a worse position than any other 
subjects, since they could neither enter, nor be repre- 
sented in, Parliament. On the other hand, it was 
said that the elective status of the representative 
peers was not only prejudicial to their own dignity 
and to that of the House, but exposed them so much 
to Ministerial influence that they were no better than 
' * a dead Court weight " ; and this argument was not 
without historical warrant. We have seen that the 
Union had been carried in Scotland only because it 
commended itself to a group of politicians who resented 
the corrupt system by which a party was maintained, 
chiefly amongst the peers, in the English interest ; and 
we may reasonably suppose that a statesman so honest 
and disinterested as the Duke of Eoxburgh, despite 
his official position and his expectation of a hereditary 
seat, would not have supported the Bill, if he had 
not perceived that the same influence which had 
neutralised the independence of Scotland was now 
nullifying its share of . legislative power. In the 



CARTERET AND ROXBURGH 325 

Commons the Bill was ably opposed by Walpole and 
Steele, and was rejected by 269 votes to 177.^ 

This defeat, counteracted abroad by the frustration 
of Alberoni's designs, was so far from weakening the 
Grovemment that both Townshend and Walpole con- 
sented to join it in 1720 ; but before the end of that 
year its credit had been completely destroyed by the 
financial disaster which followed the attempt of the 
South Sea Company to buy up the National Debt. 
Stanhope died during the crisis, and Sunderland two 
years later; and, on the resignation of the latter in 

1721, Walpole became head of a Ministry, which was 
to remain in office till 1742. The late schism, how- 
ever, still existed as an element of strife; for Lord 
Carteret, an adherent of Sunderland, was made Secre- 
tary of State, and, on the death of Marlborough in 

1722, Lord Cadogan, who had been his principal 
staff officer, as Sunderland had been his son-in-law, 
succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief In Scottish 
affairs this division of interest followed the cleavage 
between the Squadrone and the Revolution Whigs, 
headed respectively by Roxburgh and Argyll. As 
Argyll detested the Marlborough connexion and had 
suffered as much as Walpole from the intrigues of 
Sunderland, it was natural that he should identify 
himself with the new Premier; and it was equally 
natural that Roxburgh, the Secretary for Scotland, 
should incline to Carteret, particularly as the charac- 
teristics of that brilliant and high-spirited statesman 
— his profound learning, his linguistic attainments, his 
impatience of detail, and his contempt for the arts 
of parliamentary management — ^were so much akin 

Coxe'8 WalpoU, i. 116-126 ; ii. 170-178 ; Pcvrl Hist., vii. 689-693, 
006-624 ; OEimpbelPs Argyll, pp. 283-301 ; Lockhart, ii. 56-68. 



326 THE ASCENDENCY OF WALFOLB, 1716-1742 

to his own. Carteret, whilst travelling on the Con- 
tinent and during a prolonged embassy to the Northern 
Powers, had gained a great insight into Hanoverian 
politics; and, as he was the only member of the 
Cabinet who could converse in Grerman, he soon 
acquired an influence over the King inconsistent with 
that supremacy, essential to the modem Prime Minister, 
on which Walpole was the first to insist. In 1724, 
as the result of a contest for ascendency at the French 
Court between his agent and that of Lord Townshend, 
the other Secretary of State, Carteret was removed 
to the less important post of Lord-Lieutenant of 
Ireland. He was believed to have fomented the up- 
roar occasioned in that country by alleged corruption 
in the granting of a patent to renew the copper coin- 
age; and a suspicion of sympathy with more serious 
disturbances in Scotland afforded a pretext for the 
dismissal of Roxburgh in the foUowing year. 

It has been mentioned that the malt-tax, &om which 
Scotland was to be firee during the continuance of the 
war, had been imposed by Parliament at the peace of 
1713 ; but, the opposition to this measure having 
resulted in a motion to repeal the Union, it had never 
been enforced. The favour shown to the Scots had long 
been complained of in England ; and, contrary to the 
wishes of Walpole, the Commons resolved at the end of 
1724 that Scotland, in view of its exemption from the 
malt-tax, should pay an additional sixpence of duty on 
every barrel of ale, and should be deprived of the bounty 
granted in both countries on the exportation of grain. 
This scheme was entirely opposed to the sixth article 
of the Union, which established fiscal uniformity 
throughout the United Kingdom ; and, many petitions 
having been presented against it, the Grovemment, in 



THE MALT TAX 327 

concurrence with the Scottish members, fell back on a 
proposal which had been lost by a single vote in 1713, 
and resolved to impose 3d,, or half of the English duty, 
on malt. The heritors of Midlothian, in a letter to their 
representative in Parliament, had declared that they 
would rather pay the whole malt-duty than acquiesce 
in a violation of the Union by accepting the alternative 
stipulations as to ale and grain ; but a spirit much less 
rational had now been evoked; and Jacobite agitators 
had some excuse for saying that the loyal subject 
was to pay for the shortcomings of the disloyal, since, 
if the proceeds of the reduced tax fell short of 
£20,000 sterling, there was to be an additional charge 
on malsters to make up that amount.^ 

Glasgow was the only town in Scotland in which the 
Union had yet been justified by its fruits ; and the new 
impost was resented in this quarter as an obstacle to 
expansion of trade. Encouraged by a baseless report 
that the royal burghs had unanimously resolved to 
refuse payment, the populace of Glasgow made no 
secret of their intention to resist the tax, and, if it were 
enforced, to demolish the new mansion of their member, 
Campbell of Shawfield, whom they blamed for restric- 
tions on their trade in tobacco as well as in malt ; and 
on June 23, 1725, when the Excise officers attempted 
to enter the malt-houses in order to make a valuation 
of the stock, they were threatened with violence, and 
found that stones, to be used as missiles, had been piled 
up at the doors. On the evening of the 24th, whilst 
the uproar still continued, two companies of foot arrived 
from Edinburgh under Captain Bushell ; and, the mob 
having locked the guard-house, where they were to be 
lodged, and carried off the keys. Provost Miller, instead 

^Lockhart, ii. 134-140, 161 ; Coze's WalpoU^ i. 230-231. 



328 THE ASCENDENCY OF WALPOLE, 1716*1742 

of allowing Bushell to force an entrance, advised him to 
billet his men throughout the town. This detachment 
was believed to have been summoned by the obnoxious, 
but happily absent, member; and, as soon as it had 
dispersed, the rabble attacked his house, of which they 
speedily sacked or destroyed everything but the walk 
Bushell sent a sergeant to suggest that he should beat 
to arms, but his services were declined on the plea that 
his men were too few, and that before they could 
assemble they might all be murdered in their beds. 
Next day the Provost ventured to break open the 
guard-house and even to arrest some straggling rioters 
who had parted with their sobriety in the Shawfield 
cellars ; but this belated vigour resulted only in a drum 
being beaten to re-assemble the mob ; and the soldiers, 
after replying with blank charge to showers of brick- 
bats and stones, were at last ordered to use lead. More 
incensed than dismayed, the rioters burst into the 
Tolbooth, rang the alarm-bell, and began to provide 
themselves with arms. The Provost then advised that 
the troops should be withdrawn : and, after skirmishing 
with their assailants for about six miles, they were 
suflFered to retreat to Dumbarton Castle. In all, nine 
civilians were reported to have been killed, and seven- 
teen severely wounded — most of them so severely that 
they died.^ 

Whatever retribution may have been exacted on the 
25th, it was remarkable that the havoc of the previous 

* CuUoden Papers, pp. 79-93 ; Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland, 
I 293-297 ; Clelland's Annals of Glasgow, i. 25-27 ; Lockhart, il 16M63; 
Wodrow's Analecta, iii. 210-213, and Correspondence, ill 216-217. Burton's 
narrative in his Life of Duncan Forbes contains several errors, some of 
which reappear in his History. In both works he represents Campbell 
of Shawfield as being in the town, apparently confounding him with 
Campbell of Bljthswood. 



STRIKE OF EDINBURGH BREWERS 32^ 

night should have been wrought without any opposition 
fix)m a force sent expressly to maintain order ; and the 
Provost, by whose directions Captain Bushell had been 
instructed to act, was much blamed for neither putting 
the soldiers in possession of the guard-house nor lodging 
them together in some other place, for not reading the 
Riot Act,^ and for refusing military assistance when 
oflTered.* Within about ten days Duncan Forbes, who 
had just been appointed Lord Advocate, accompanied 
by General Wade and a large body of troops, arrived in 
Glasgow; and as the magistrates, most of whom had 
gone out of town before or during the riot, had added 
to their offences by not replying to his demand for 
information and by inquiring into the conduct rather 
of the soldiers than of the mob, he apprehended them 
and carried them as prisoners to Edinburgh. Here, on 
application to the Lords of Justiciary, they were at once 
released on bail ; and this rebuff to administrative zeal 
gave rise to an industrial combination which proved 
much more diflGicult to put down than the Glasgow riot. 
The Edinburgh brewers, acting in concert with delegates 
from other towns, now avowed their intention not to 
pay the tax, and, if sued at law, to suspend the opera- 
tions of their trade. The Court of Session attempted 
to purchase their compliance by allowing them to raise 
the price of ale ; and, this edict having no effect, they 
issued another, requiring them to give security that 
they would carry on their business as usual for the next 
three months. The brewers remonstrated, but their 
petition was ordered to be burned by the hangman; 

^ This very inaccurate expression had already come into use ; but it 
was more usual, at all events in Scotland, to speak of reading the 
proclamation, which of course is what is really done. 

^CvUoden Papers^ pp. 86-88. 



330 THE A80ENDSNCT OF WALPOLB, 1716-1742 

and, having closed their premises as soon as the Excise 
Commissioners had cited them before the Justices of 
the Peace, they were found liable to double duties, and 
four of their ringleaders were imprisoned. The 
strike lasted for a week, which seems to have 
been thought a long time, comprised 57 out of 
65 brewers, and threatened to deprive not only the 
public of their drink, but the bakers of their 
yeast ;^ and only the persistent intimidation of Lord 
Islay, Argyll's brother, induced the malcontents to 
give way.* 

Dundas of Amiston, the ex-Lord Advocate and a 
member of the Squadrone, had closely identified him- 
self both with the Glasgow magistrates and with the 
Edinburgh brewers ; and a suspicion that the Duke of 
Roxburgh was secretly counteracting a measure, which, 
in common with his party, he no doubt regarded as 
an injustice to Scotland, caused him to be removed 
from the Secretaryship on August 25. He continued 
to be one of the Council of Regency during the King's 
absence in Hanover; and George, who had made him 
a Knight of the Garter and had insisted on his retain- 
ing office when Carteret was dismissed, now parted 
from him with extreme regret At the ensuing election 
of 1727 he disappeared from Parliament, and it was a 
fitting termination to so honourable a career that he 
was offered and declined the continuance of his 

1" Bread can certainly be made without yeast,'* wrote Lord lalay 
'*I know how to do it myself, and as my friend Peter Campbell has 
turned brewer, Pll turn baker, if nothing else will convince 
them." 

' A most minute account of this affair will be found in *the corre- 
spondence forming the second volume of Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole. 
Lockhart's narrative is well summarised by Struthers, History oj 
Scotland, i. 533-535. 



CORRUPT ELECTION OP PEERS 331 

pension.^ The Secretaryship remained vacant till 1731; 
and during these and several subsequent years, in 
which Scottish history is occupied chiefly with those 
ecclesiastical disputes which were to culminate in a 
secession from the Church, the country was governed 
nominally by the Duke of Newcastle, one (jf the two 
English Secretaries of State, but really, under the 
superintendence of Walpole himself, by Islay, Lord 
Privy Seal, and the Lord Advocate Forbes. Walpole 
had refused to gratify Argyll and his brother by dis- 
carding entirely their political rivals; but in 1733 
he completed the discomfiture of the Squadrone by 
turning out the Duke of Montrose and the Earls of 
Marchmont and Stair, whom Carteret had enlisted in 
opposition to the Excise scheme ; and, though it was 
probably rather the wrath of ejected officials than 
any unusual guilt on the part of the Government which 
led to a charge of bribery and intimidation at the 
election of nobles in the following year, the facts 
alleged and scarcely denied were sufficient to justify 
all that had been urged, from the Scottish point of 
view, in favour of the Peerage Bill. The presence of 
troops at a mile's distance was said to make the pro- 
ceedings void ; but the troops were no doubt intended 
much less to influence the election than to prevent 
it being disturbed by the mob ; and probably all 
previous elections might have been invalidated on the 
other grounds alleged by the dissatisfied peers — 
that the Government had submitted a complete 
list of candidates, and that promises of offices, of 

1 Lockhart, ii. 156-167 ; Analecta, iiL 439. Boxburgh, with the Duke of 
Montroee and several English peers who were members of the Boyal 
Society, was a pall bearer at the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in 1727. 
He died in 1741. 



332 THE ASCBKDENCY OP WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

pensions, and even of money, had been given in its 
support.* 

In 1736, the year in which the Seceders finally 
severed their connexion with the Church by issuing 
what they called their Judicial Testimony, a riot took 
place which has been so fully and so graphically 
described by Scott in his Heart of Midlothian that 
it may be permissible, without entering into details, 
to pass to its political and ecclesiastical results. On 
April 14 a man named Wilson was to be executed 
at Edinburgh in whose favour a strong feeling had 
been aroused, partly because he was convicted of an 
offence so venial, if not laudable, in popular estimatioD 
as that of forcibly recovering from a custom-house 
officer the value of his own confiscated goods, but 
chiefly because, having frustrated through his selfish- 
ness an attempt which he and a comrade had made 
to break out of prison, he had voluntarily sacrificed 
himself in order to allow the latter to escape. Contrary 
to a very general apprehension, there was no attempt 
at rescue; but, after the sentence had been carried 
out, the mob began to stone the City Guard ; and 
Porteous, who commanded the soldiers, ordered them 
to fijre, or, according to his own account, was unable 
to prevent them, the consequence being that seventeen 
persons were wounded, six of them mortally. The 
Government had anticipated the prosecution of Captain 
Bushell in 1725 by granting him a pardon.* Porteous 
was brought to trial; but, as he was condemned to 
death on a special verdict which acknowledged that 
some of his men had been bruised by ^^ stones of a 

'This affiiir gave rise to a great debate in the Lords, which is veiy 
fuUj reported in the PaHiameniary ffistofy, ix. 720-795. 

*Lockhart, ii. 241. 



THE PORTEOUS RIOT 333 

considerable bigness," and as a very influential petition 
was presented in his favour, he was respited for six 
weeks. The reprieve was intimated at Edinburgh on 
September 3 ; and on the night of the 7th, the day 
before that appointed by the judges for his execution, 
the mob rose, broke into the Tolbooth by burning 
down the door, carried oflF their victim, and hanged 
him on a dyer's pole.^ 

The populace had a special grievance against Forteous 
inasmuch as he had fired upon them after they had 
allowed the law to take its course ; but what created 
both astonishment and alarm in London was that his 
murder was perpetrated in a manner more suggestive 
of conspiracy than of riot; that it was attended by 
no drunkenness, plunder or disorder; that its authors 
went about their business in the most methodical way 
— disarming the Guard, securing the gates and the 
alarm-bell ;^ that they dispersed as soon as their 
purpose was achieved; and, in particular, that all 
attempts to discover them proved wholly vain.' This 
last circumstance seemed to incriminate the city as 
a whole; and on April 19 a Bill was brought into 
the Lords disqualifying the Lord Provost for municipal 
office and imprisoning him for a year, dissolving the 
City Guard, and demolishing the Nether Bow Port, 
the seizure of which by the rioters had secured them 
against the troops quartered in the Canongate. A 
motion was made, but not pressed to a division, that 

^In addition to the authorities usuallj cited for this affair, may be 
mentioned the very fair account given by Campbell in his Life of ArgylL 

s '< I never was witness to, or ever heard of any military disposition 
better laid down, or more resolutely executed, than their murderous plan 
was." — General Wade's speech, ParL Ht8t.y x. 291. 

3 See on this point the Solicitor-General's Memorial in The Heart of 
Midlothian, Two men were tried, but were both acquitted. 



334 THE ASCENDENCY OF WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

the sentence against Porteous should be quashed ; and 
a more important debate arose in regard to three 
Lords of Session who had been summoned to attend. 
It was argued that these judges ought to be examined 
on the woolsack if they were to give a judicial opinion, 
or at the table if they were to be called as witnesses, 
sinpe in consequence of the Union the Lords had to 
administer Scottish as well as English law ; but the 
argument was rejected on the plea that no one could 
come within the bar who had not a seat in the House 
or who was not summoned, like the judges of England, 
by the King s writ. The Bill passed by a large 
majority despite the strenuous opposition of Argyll, 
based on the 21st article of the Union, which stipu- 
lated that the rights and privileges of the royal burghs 
in Scotland should be preserved entire ; but a much 
less favourable reception was accorded to it in the 
Commons, where the Lord Advocate and several other 
speakers declared that to receive such a measure from 
the Upper House would be to encourage that body 
in making attacks on corporations which might result 
in one of their own members being deprived of his 
seat. This protest proved so far ineffectual that the 
Bill was given both a first and a second reading ; but 
on the latter occasion so forcible a speech was made 
against it by Lindsay, the member for Edinburgh, 
that the Commons desired a conference with the Lords, 
and, having received from them several papers, resolved 
to examine witnesses for themselves. From the 
evidence submitted, it appeared that, though the Lord 
Provost had disregarded several warnings that a plot 
was being hatched against Porteous, he had doue 
nothing worthy of imprisonment; and, the other 
clauses having been rejected on such grounds as that 



FORTEOUS ACT TO BE READ IN CHURCH 335 

the gate was indispensable for collecting the city dues, 
that the Guards had quelled former tumults,^ and 
would still be necessary, if only to extinguish fires, 
the Bill, as amended in Committee, enacted only that 
the Provost should be deposed and disqualified, and that 
Edinburgh should be fined for the Porteous, as Glasgow 
had been fined for the Shawfield, mob.* The motion 
to report the Bill, even in this form, was carried only 
by the Chairman's casting vote, and, but for the 
absence of the Solicitor-General and another Scottish 
member, who were engaged as counsel in the Lords, 
it would have been lost.* 

In addition to the penalty thus imposed on Edin- 
burgh, an Act was directed against the perpetrators 
of the crime, which provided that fugitives who did 
not surrender, and all who concealed them, should be 
punished with death. This Act, for the space of one 
year, was to be read before sermon in every parish 
church on the morning of the first Sunday of each 
month ; and any minister who should neglect to read 
it was to be declared incapable, for the first ofience, 
of sitting and voting in Church courts, and, for the 
second, of holding any benefice in Scotland. Though 
the clergy had long been accustomed to read secular 
notices from the pulpit, such as proclamations against 
profaneness and immoraUty, and appeals for aid for 
repairing bridges and harbours, the duty now imposed 
upon them was keenly resented in some quarters as 

^ Lord Advocate Forbes, in his speech against the Bill, related as an 
eje-witness how the Gnard in 1705 had saved Seafield from the mob 
when he attempted to procure a reprieve for Captain Qreen. See p. 162. 

'Glasgow had been fined £5,000 for the benefit of Campbell, whose 
house had been wrecked : Edinburgh got off with £2,000, which was to 
be given to Porteous's widow. 

^Parl. Bist^j x. 187-319 ; Statutes at Large, vi. 288. 



336 THE ASCENDENCY OF WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

unsuited to " ambassadors of the gospel of peace," as 
a desecration of the Sabbath, as an Erastian interference 
with worship and the constitution of Church courts, 
and even, since the enacting clause mentioned the 
Lords Spiritual, as an acknowledgment of bishops. In 
order to avoid the sin of compliance, some singular 
proposals were made, such as that there should be 
no service, or at all events, no sermon, on the morning 
of the prescribed days; and one divine is said to 
have consulted the prejudices of his people by telling 
them that, though he was obliged to read, they were 
not obliged to hear.^ Many ministers refused to 
comply, and many of the lower orders were impelled 
by their scruples to join the Secession; but the 
penalties were never enforced ; and it is probable that 
the object of the Act was rather to expose than to 
coerce those ultra-Presbyterian pastors who had set 
an example of lawlessness to their flocks by defying 
not only the statutes relating to patronage and the 
abjuration oath, but even the edicts of their own 
Church. The Duke of Argyll had expressed his opinion 
in Parliament that the riotous spirit, to which Porteous 
had fallen a victim, proceeded "from a few fanatical 
preachers, lately started up," who had corrupted the 
multitude " by making sedition and rebellion a 
principle of their religion " ; and Lindsay, in his very 
able speech, reflected still more severely on "those 
wild, hot-headed, violent high-church clergy" who, 
when defeated in their opposition to any rule of 
ecclesiastical polity, had too often inculcated the 

1 WUlison's Testimony, pp. d3-96 ; M'Eerrow'B Seaeasion Church, 1 141- 
142 ; and Adv. Libr. Pamphlets, 3rd eeries, 862, where the two Acts just 
mentioned, the enacting clauses of which are merely summarised in 
Statutes at Large, will be found in full. 



ZEALOTS DEFEND THE RIOT 337 

dangerous doctrine " that such a law is iniquity estab- 
lished by law."^ Both of these speakers, when they 
thus expressed themselves, had probably in view a 
very remarkable letter written by Lord Islay to 
Walpole from Edinburgh a few weeks after the riot, 
in which he said that "the high-flyers of our Scotch 
church here make this infamous murder a point of 
conscience " ; that one of the assassins had gone red- 
handed to conmiunion at a country church and there 
boasted of what he had done ; that all of the humbler 
classes who pretended " to a superior sanctity " spoke 
of the crime " as the hand of God doing justice " ; 
and that none of "the high party" amongst the 
ministers with whom he had conversed would condemn 
the conduct of the mob. " Indeed," he wrote, " I 
could hardly have given credit to the public reports 
of the temper of these saints if I had not myself been 
witness to it."^ As if to corroborate the truth of 
these statements, a pamphlet appeared in 1737, inter- 
larded with scriptural allusions, in which the murder 
of Porteous was described as " a noble act," the work 
of " divine providence," and Parliament, in attempting 
to avenge the deed, as "at war with heaven."' 

The great Minister, who had so long secured the 
peace and prosperity of Great Britain, was now to 
encounter an agitation incomparably wider and deeper 
than that which he had aroused by his punishment of 
the Porteous Kiot; and in November of this year, 
though he still retained the full confidence of George 
II., the death of Queen Caroline deprived him of his 

1 Pcui. Hut.y X. 243, 262, 253. ^ Coxe's WalpoUy iii. 367. 

^ Memorial for the People of Scotland^ or wme brief antmadvernofu on the 
infamoue Acty etc.^ Dublin, 1737. — Adv. libr. P^mphleto, 3rd series, 862. 
Such a tract could not, of course, be published in Scotland. 

Y 



338 THE ASCENDENCY OF WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

best and surest friend. Unusual ability and tact and 
a dexterous use of the Crown patronage had enabled 
Walpole to establish his ascendency on a solid basis 
of parliamentary votes; but his jealousy of rivals, 
his suspicion of political, and his contempt for literary, 
talent had arrayed against him almost all that was 
most brilliant in the public life of both England and 
Scotland; and two years later, when he was beset 
on all hands by ^ nobles, orators, wits and poets, a 
Scottish peer was to describe him as ''so imbayed, 
it is not possible he can get out."^ Amongst the choice 
spirits presided over by Carteret and Chesterfield who 
clustered round the Prince of Wales at Leicester 
House, and most of whom, in so &r as they belonged 
to the peerage, were members of the Rumpsteak or 
Liberty Club, were not only such Squadrone leaders 
as Roxburgh,* Montrose, and Carteret's son-in-law, 
Tweeddale, but two peers whose fathers had headed 
the Revolution Whigs — ^the Duke of Queensberry, who 
had been forbidden the Court for befriending the poet 
Gay, and the Earl of Stair, distinguished alike as a 
Greneral, a courtier and a diplomatist, who had partici- 
pated in almost all the victories of Marlborough, and 
who, as ambassador at Paris fix>m 1715 to 1720, 
had discharged the duties of his office on a scale of 
unwonted magnificence and with consunmiate skill 
Another and most influential member of this group 
was the Earl of Marchmont, a devoted friend of the 
old Duchess of Marlborough and the accomplished 

^Marchmont Papers, ii. 113. 

'The Duke of Roxburgh took little interest in public affiiirs after the 
dispute about the election of peers in 1734, and came only occasioDallj to 
London ; but his son, the Marquis of Beaumont and a British peer w 
Earl Ker, was a member of the Liberty Club. 



THE QUARREL WITH SPAIN 339 

fSftther of a still more accomplished son — a son who 
had entered Parliament almost at the same time as 
Pitt, then a comet of horse, who outshone even that 
competitor in eloquence and popular esteem, and who 
lived in the closest intimacy with Chesterfield, Boling- 
broke, and Pope. Walpole, on depriving Pitt of his 
commission, is reported to have said, " We must 
muzzle this terrible comet " ; but he acknowledged that 
Lord Polwarth and Sir John Barnard, a city magnate, 
were his most formidable opponents in the House, 
and remarked of the former "that there were few 
things he more ardently wished for than to see that 
young man at the head of his family " — ^a desire which 
was fulfilled in 1740, when Polwarth succeeded his 
father as Earl of Marchmont, and was thus excluded 
from the Commons without gaining admission to the 
Lords.^ 

The Scottish members of the Opposition, whilst co- 
operating in the general attack on Walpole, had a special 
feud with Lord Islay, his lieutenant in Scotland, of 
whose intrigues at the election of peers in 1734 they 
had so loudly complained ; and the Squadrone in making 
war on corruption could claim that they were adhering 
to an honourable tradition, since, in order to put down 
such a system, they had concurred in the Union, and 
had supported both the abolition of the Privy Council 
and the Peerage Bill. This grievance, however, and all 
others were now swallowed up in the general indignation 
excited by the policy of the Government towards Spain. 
The trade with the Spanish colonies, in so fisir as it 
consisted of the importation of negroes, had been opened 
to Great Britain at the Peace of Utrecht, but so partially 
in other respects that she had obtained only the right 

^ Douglaa's Peerage, and Marckmont Papers, vol. ii., paesim. 



340 THE ASCBNBENCT OP WALPOLE, 1716-1742 

of freighting one ship in a year. Out of these and some 
earlier concessions a vast illicit traffic had sprang up ; 
bat Spain had made no consistent effort to check this 
abuse till by a secret treaty in 1733 she obtained the 
support of France ; and she then adopted such drastic 
measures that public feeling in England was excited 
almost to fury by the return of British sailors who had 
been cruelly maltreated in prosecution of a right of 
search exercised not only in territorial waters, where 
doubtless it was legal, but on the high seas. Walpole 
had recourse to diplomacy, and a Convention between 
the two Crowns was announced at the opening of the 
session in February, 1739 ; but this agreement caused 
general dissatisfaction, when it appeared that the right 
of search was not mentioned, and that the compensation 
obtained for damages was qualified by the admission of 
counter-claims on the part of Spain. Argyll went over 
to the Opposition, and in both Houses the Ministerial 
majority was largely reduced. In October, yielding to 
the bellicose spirit of which he entirely disapproved, 
Walpole declared war. In clinging so tenaciously to 
peace he had been actuated by a conviction, which 
proved to be well-founded, that it was peace alone 
which kept the Jacobites inactive, and that in any 
contest with Great Britain the Spanish Bourbons would 
sooner or later be seconded by the French. The war, 
indeed, had scarcely begun when the friends of the 
Pretender both in England and Scotland concerted a 
conspiracy which received even more encouragement 
at Paris than at Madrid ; and the attitude of France 
became so unfriendly that a rupture can hardly have 
been more than precipitated by the European complica- 
tions which resulted from the accession of Maria Theresa 
to the throne of Austria. At the general election which 



WALPOLE RESIGNS 341 

took place in 1741 the eflForts of his brother, Islay, to 
obtain a majority for the Government in Scotland 
were triumphantly combated by Argyll, who had been 
deprived of all his posts; and in February, 1742, 
finding that his majority had almost disappeared, 
Walpole resigned. 



CHAPTER X 

THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

The war in which the British, or at all events the 
English, people embarked with such enthusiasm in 
1739 was to prove more decisive at home than abroad; 
and, before entering on the civil strife which was to 
result in a completion of the Union, it will be well 
to consider how far the economic advantages claimed 
for that measure had yet been realised. The material 
development of a nation so backward as the Scots was 
necessarily, however, a very slow process, and little 
more than its beginnings are comprised within the 
compass of this work. 

The admission of Scotland to commercial partnership 
with England at the Union of 1707 may be said to have 
completed that diversion of trade routes which had 
begun, more than two hundred years earlier, when the 
discoveries of Columbus and of Vasco da Guma sub- 
stituted the Atlantic for the Mediterranean as the 
highway of conmierce. The western nations of Europe 
had each in turn responded to the wave of maritime 
enthusiasm which, sweeping northward from the Tagus, 
was to awaken its last echoes on the banks of the Clyde. 
Portugal, and then Spain, had leapt into greatness and 



AMERICAN SMUGGLING 343 

fallen back into decay ; Holland, vigorous but over- 
matched, had failed to keep the lead ; and now France 
had lost the palm of naval ascendency which was to be 
awarded, not to England, but to Great Britain, at the 
Peace of Utrecht. 

No argument had been so effectual in promoting the 
Union as that of liberty to trade with the English 
colonies ; and, however disgraceful it may have been 
in Scotsmen to barter their national independence for 
*' some hogsheads of sugar, indigo and stinking tobacco," 
they did at least obtain their desire. The bribe was 
doubtless the more irresistible as its value had already 
been proved. Soon after the Darien adventurers had 
excited such alarm in London by proposing, since they 
were excluded from the English settlements in America, 
to form a settlement of their own, a commission was 
appointed to inquire how far the mother country had 
succeeded in preserving its trading privileges ; and the 
fact soon disclosed itself that "the Scots have a long* 
time tasted the sweetness of the trade to our Planta- 
tions." A very considerable illicit traffic had, indeed, 
sprung up — ^illicit because it brought certain com- 
modities enumerated in the Navigation Act to Scottish 
and not to English ports. It was natural that such 
evasions of an unpopular monopoly should be most 
common in the colonies vested in Proprietors and not 
directly subject to the Crown ; and Pennsylvania, lying 
between New York and the tobacco plantations of 
Maryland, and with a Scotsman as its Secretary, afforded 
great facilities for smuggling and threatened to " become 
a staple of Scotch and Holland goods." Tobacco in- 
tended for Scotland was brought overland to the 
Delaware; Scottish goods were introduced by pedlars 
who came out as passengers in English vessels; and 



344 THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

forged documents were readily accepted purporting that 
commodities had been shipped in England or were to be 
landed there. From 1690tol695 nine tobacco traders 
sailed from the Delaware directly to Scotland ; and the 
agent in that country of the English Conmussioners 
of Customs reported that from April 13, 1695, to 
December 29, 1696, twenty-eight vessels, mostly con- 
nected with the Clyde, were trading to and from the 
tobacco plantations.^ 

Whatever effect may have been produced by the 
greater stringency adopted in view of these disclosures, 
the Glasgow merchants were of course freed from all 
restrictions on their commerce when it was legalised 
at the Union. For a considerable period they chartered 
vessels from Whitehaven ; but in 1718 the voyage was 
made for the first time by a Clyde-built ship; and 
during the next few years the trade was prosecuted 
with a success which foreshadowed in some measure 
the great dimensions it was to assume before the out- 
break of the American Revolution. The fatal riot 
which convulsed this city in 1725, due primarily to 
the malt-tax, was stimulated by a suspicion that the 
Government, under cover of precautions against smug- 
gling, was conspiring with the English tobacco ports to 
strangle its American traffic. The new regulations, 
whether justifiable or not, diminished the volume of 
trade; but ten years later, at the close of a period 
of depression, Glasgow had still 27 vessels trading to 

^Eotue of LorcU^ ManuicripU, New Seriea, ii. 416» 424, 441, 442, 446, 
449, 464, 489. The trade laws soon feU almost whoUy into abey- 
ance. When the conscientious G^rge Grenville in 1764 attempted 
to enforce them, the revenue from American Customs was only 
£2,000 a year, whilst the cost of collection was over £7,000; and 
Grenville, as we all know, ^*lost America because he read the 
American despatches.'' 



PROGRESS IN THE WEST 346 

Virginia, Boston and the West Indies;^ and by the 
middle of the century it had so far outstripped its 
rivals, Whitehaven, Liverpool and Bristol, that London 
was the only city which imported a greater quantity 
of tobacco than was brought to the Clyde. From 1707 
to 1710 the people of Greenock had put themselves to 
great expense in constructing a circular harbour inter- 
sected by a middle pier ; and in 1719, just a year later 
than Glasgow, they made their first venture to America 
in one of their own ships. To meet the demand for 
manufactures in the colonies, various industries sprang 
up. The making of linen was introduced into Glasgow 
in 1725, that of thread in 1731 ; in 1738 an iron-work, 
and in 1740 "a prodigious large" tannery, was estab- • 
lished. The thread industry of Paidey dates from 
1722, and within about twenty years it is said to have 
employed 93 mills.' The western districts had long 
been proverbial for the extravagance of their Pres- 
byterianism and the intolerance of their creed ; but a 
new spirit now appeared ; and Wodrow may not have 
been mistaken in attributing the growing liberalism of 
his neighbours to what he considered their « too great 
fondness upon trade." SinMon, the father of Modera- 
tism, Wishart, Hutcheson and Leechman, the most 
distinguished of its early exponents, were all connected 

^ Knoz'a View of the British Empire, 1785, p. xxxt. ; Gibson's History 
of Glasgow, p. 209. From a table of tobacco-duties appended to the 
Cochrane CforrespoTidence, the years 1732-35 would seem to have 
been exceptionally good ; but the table shows violent fluctuations ; 
and we may suspect that the value of the imports varied no 
more than the success of the custom-house officials in exacting their 
dues. 

> Gibson's History of Glasgow, pp. 206-209, 236, 242, 243, 247 ; M'Ure's- 
View of the City of Glasgow, 1736, pp. 284, 322 ; Chalmer's Caledonia, iii» 
806-607; Buckle's History of Civilisatum, 1891, iil 174; Statistical 
Accowit, vii. 88. 



346 THE UNION OOMPLBTSD, 1742-1747 

with Glasgow ; and this city may thus be said to have 
anticipated the creative influence, material and in- 
tellectual, which in the latter half of the century was 
to be felt throughout the land. 

In consideration of its liability to the English national 
debt, a sum of money, to be applied to certain specified 
purposes, had been secured to Scotland by the Treaty 
of Union— definite in so £sir as it was covered by the 
immediate payment of £398,085, indefinite in so fsir as 
it comprised the proceeds of certain duties; and, in 
virtue of an amendment introduced by the Scottish 
Parliament, a sum of £2,000 was to be devoted to 
industrial interests, and, for the first seven years, was 
to be used in stimulating the manufacture of coarse 
wool. By a statute of the twelfth and last year of 
Queen Anne the Commissioners appointed to dispose 
of the Equivalent received an acquittance for a sum of 
£381,509, which they had spent in compensating in- 
dividuals for losses involved in the alteration of the 
coinage, in replacing the capital of the Afirican and 
Indian Company, and in payment of their own expenses; 
and they were enjoined to employ the balance of about 
£16,000 in the manner prescribed by the Act of Union. 
In 1718 another statute directed them to retain in their 
hands the £14,000 (£2,000 for seven years) appropriated 
to the wool industry, and enacted, in view of the diffi- 
culties they had encountered in distinguishing between 
debts incurred before the Union and debts incurred for 
the service of the United Eangdom, that the obligations 
of England should be discharged in fiiU by the setting 
aside of two annual funds, one of £10,000, and the 
other, for the encouragement of fisheries and manu- 
factures, of £2,000. These industries were also to 
benefit from the malt tax extended to Scotland in 



THE LINEN MANUFACTURE 347 

1725 in SO far as its produce at 3d. a bushel exceeded 
£20,000 ; but no attempt was made to utilise the 
various funds tUl in 1727, at the instance of the Con- 
vention of Boyal Burghs, an Act was passed authorising 
the appointment for this purpose of twenty-one Com- 
missioners or Trustees. The Convention also procured 
in the same session a very elaborate Act for the 
regulation of linen-making,^ and in this department, 
to which their attention was specially directed, the 
Trustees achieved their greatest success. Linen was 
the Scottish as wool was the English staple; and 
Lindsay, the member for Edinburgh, who had made 
so good a speech against the penalty imposed upon 
the city in consequence of the Porteous Riot, warmly 
advocated the extension of its manufacture on the 
principle, afterwards developed by Adam Smith, that 
each nation should devote itself to that branch of 
industry in which it has the greatest relative advantage.* 
In 1727 the manufacture of linen was carried on in\ 
25 counties. Its principal seat then, as it is now, was 
Forfarshire, but Lanarkshire though fourth on the list 
in point of quantity, was credited with "the finest 
spinning." The Trustees oflfered prizes and premiums, 
established spinning schools, and invited to Edinburgh 
a company of French cambric weavers, the site of whose 
settlement is stiU commemorated in Picardy Place ; and 
their efforts were so successful that the vsJue of the 
linen manufactured in Scotland, which in 1728 was 

^Statutes at Largey v. 223, 629, 638. 

^ The Interest of Scotland Comtderedy 1733, pp. ii-iv. Lindaaj was an 
upholsterer in Edinburgh, and Lord Provost. He is said to have been 
heir-male of the noble house of Lindsay of the Byres, and his wife was 
a daughter of the 16th Earl of Crawford. — Chambers's Domestic AnnaU^ 
iii. 547. 



348 THE UNION OOMPLETED, 1742-1747 

£103,312, rose in ten years to £185,000, and in 
twenty years to £294,000.^ 

An indirect result of the attempts thus made to 
stimulate Scottish industry was a development of the 
banking business which the Bank of Scotland, incor- 
porated in 1695, the same year as the African and 
Indian Company, had hitherto monopolised. The Act 
of 1718, which prescribed the manner in which the 
Equivalent was to be discharged, provided that the 
proprietors of the public debt of Scotland, amounting 
to £248,550, and consisting of arrears of salwy, should 
be incorporated into a Ciompany whose income was 
to be the annual fund of £10,000 payable by Govern- 
ment as interest on this sum. In 1727 such of the 
proprietors as pleased to transfer their stock were 
formed into a new Company, known as the Royal 
Bank of Scotland ; and soon after its incorporation 
in 1746 the British Linen Company, formed, as the 
name impUes, to trade in linen, confined itself to 
assisting manufacturers with loans of money, and thus 
became all but nominally a bank' 

The fftcts just mentioned are probably the most 
hopeful that can be adduced in regard to the economic 
condition of Scotland during the first forty years of 
the Union. The industrial outlook was still dark, and 
the light, visible in some quarters, had not yet diffused 
itself across the sky. On the eastern seaboard there 
was nothing at all analogous to the commercial energy 
which contact with America had aroused on the banks 
of the Clyde. Edinburgh still lamented the loss of 
business consequent on the removal of its "shadow 

^ Bremner's Industrie of SooiUmd^ pp. 217, 220, 224 ; LindsaT's Interest 
of Scotland^ p. 153. 

> Kerr's Hiitory of Banking in SooUandy pp. 35-37, 58-59. 



GENERAL DEPRESSION 349 

of a court " ; the overland traflSc with England, sup- 
planting the cambrics and East India goods formerly 
imported from Holland, had proved so prejudicial to 
the Fife seaports that in 1733 an English traveller, 
who was certainly no pessimist, described them as 
^*heaps of decay" ;^ the shipping of Leith, 1,702 tons in 
1692, had increased only to 2,285 tons in 1744 — an 
amount which was much more than doubled within the 
next eight years;* the population of Dundee, 12,000 
in 1755, decreased during the period 1680-1746 from 
6,580 to 5,302 ; * Aberdeen had attempted, but failed, 
to obtain a share of the plantation trade ;^ and the 
fishing industry suffered from the salt duties and 
still more from the superior attractions of smuggling. 
This practice, which prevailed almost all round the 
coast, except at Aberdeen and Glasgow, was a most 
serious evil. It discouraged the fair trader and 
diverted trafl&c from the ports, especially in Fife ; it 
injured the brewer and distiller by introducing great 
quantities of contraband brandy and tea ; it diminished 
the revenue; and in almost every case, despite its 
speculative gains, it added to the general discontent 
by bringing ruin on the smuggler himself.* Lindsay i 
in 1735 described the linen industry as "the only 
way now left to us to prevent our utter 
ruin";® and, nearly forty years after Scotland had 
united itself with England, a patriotic pamphleteer 

^ A Journey through Scotland^ 1733, p. 81 : Lindsay, p. 99. 

2 Campbell's Historif of Leith, 1827, p. 254. 

3 Thomson's HUtory of Dundee^ p. 262. 

^ Knox's British Empire, p. v. 

^ Some Coneiderations on the Present State of Scotland, 1744, attributed 
to Duncan Forbes. 

* Reasons for Encouraging the Linen Manufactturey p. 52. 



350 THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

suggested remedies for '4ts declining and sinking 
condition." ^ 

In the rural districts there was little promise of 
the agricultural revolution which in England, though 
very far from complete, had made considerable progress 
in the preceding century. The land was still culti- 
vated on the primitive "run-rig" system, every field 
being divided into so many " rigs " or ridges, which 
were tilled by different tenants, and, being serpentine 
in form, were apt to retain the water. The farm 
was divided into " infield " and " outfield," the former 
of which was constantly cropped either with oats or 
barley, and the greater part of the latter, being used 
for grazing, was always allowed to lie waste. Except 
round country seats and farm-yards, there were no 
enclosures — no dykes, fences or hedges, and the cattle 
suffered both from want of clean pasture and from 
the constant herding necessary to preserve the corn.^ 
As long leases were unknown and as the ridges were 
usually re-allotted every year, the farmer could have 
no interest in improving his land ; and, though progress 
was undoubtedly being made under the guidance of 
enterprising landowners during the latter years of this 
period, no great advance had been attained before its 
close.' 

1 The Fre»eHt State of Scotland Coneidered, 1745. 

^Ad English writer of 16S7 says: ''The hedges being weU planted 
with trees affords shelter and shadow for the cattle both in summer and 
winter, which else would destroy more with their feet than they eat with 
their mouth, and might lose more of their fat and flesh in one hot day 
than they gain in three cool days." — Cunningham's EngUth Induetfy and 
CofMnerce, \L 182. 

' I have taken most of these facts from Mr. Graham's instructive and 
most entertaining book, The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth 
Century^ edition 1901. Mr. Graham regards (p. 183) the rent of land as 
''almost stationary " from 1640 to 1740 ; but this is probably an ezagger- 



AGRICULTURE 361 

It is said that the financial disaster of 1720, known 
as the South Sea Bubble, gave the first impulse to 
agricultural improvement in Scotland, since landowners 
who had been enticed into Change Alley sought to 
'^ raise that out of the land which they had lost in 
the sea " ; ^ and it was certainly about this period 
that the earliest attempts were made to improve the 
system of tillage. In 1723 an Agricultural Society 
was formed, and soon afterwards quite a number of 
treatises on husbandry were published — two of them 
by Brigadier Macintosh. Fallowing, the practice of 
ploughing without cropping the land, was introduced 
by the Earl of Haddington, a member of the Squadrone, 
and as early as 1724 was common throughout East 
Lothian on all the strong soils to which it is best 
adapted. About ten years later, Cockburn of Ormiston, 
another East Lothian proprietor, attempted to cultivate 
turnips, the culture of which was then being practised 
with great success by Lord Townshend on his Norfolk 
estate ; and both Cockburn and Lord Haddington made 
experiments in the growing of artificial grasses.^ 
These, however, could not thrive till the ground had 
been more thoroughly cleaned ; and the cultivation 
of turnips, which was to prove more effectual for this 
purpose than fallowing, and was also to improve greatly 

ation if not a mistake. The pamphleteer cited in the next note alludes to 
a rise in rent after 1720 ; and Brown in hia HUtory of Olasgow (ii. 167) 
mentions that the rents of the estates forfeited in 1715 had doubled in 
1745. In a letter from the Boyal Burghs appended to Forbes's CvMid&ra- 
tions it is stated that " the disposition to cultivate and improve waste and 
muiri^ grounds, which diffused itself amongst the gentry all over the 
country, was one of the most promising circumstances that attended the 
Union." 

^A Short Inquiry into the Cause of the Oenera/ Non-Itnprovemetit of 
Land in Scotland, 1731, p. 6. 

'Somerville's View of Agriculture in East Lothian, pp. 92, 140, 152-153. 



362 THE UNION COMPLBTED, 1742-1747 

the breed of cattle, made little or no progress till 
it was re-introduced from Norfolk after 1760. In 
1724 the landowners of Gralloway provoked a popular 
rising by evicting a number of their tenants in order 
to " park " their lands for the rearing of Irish cattle ; ^ 
and enclosures for the mere purpose of protecting the 
fields, though wannly advocated by all the writers 
on husbandry, and adopted at this time by Cockbum, 
met with much opposition and advanced at a very 
slow rate. In his own county forty years elapsed 
before Cockbum 's example was generally followed; 
nine-tenths of all the fences in Ayrshire were formed 
after 1766 ; in 1780 the process had not even begun 
in Renfrew; and in 1800 only a third of Fife was 
completely enclosed.* 

Various measures had been adopted to prevent the 
recurrence of such a danger as had resulted fix)m the 
condition of the Highlands in 1715, and, with the out-' 
break of war in 1739, their value was likely to be 
tried. The first of these was an Act which imposed 
fines on all Highlanders who after the first of Novem- 
ber, 1716, should be found to use or possess arms, and 
which contained the important, but wholly ineflFective, 
provision, directed against " one of the greatest means 
of raising and carrying on the late unhappy rebellion," 
that the military services exacted by superiors from 
their vassals should be converted into a pecuniary 
charge. This statute was better calculated to weaken 
the friends of the Government than its enemies, par- 
ticularly as persons who had remained loyal, and 

^ Adv. Libr. Pamphlets, 8 ; Analectay iii. 157-159. 

^ VietDB of Agriculture in the counties mentioned. Enclosing began 
earlier in England, bat its progress was almost equally slow. — Cunning- 
ham, ii. 371. 



DISARMING THE HIQHLANDS 353 

apparently these only, were to receive the full value 
of their arms. General Wade, after traversing the 
Highlands in the summer of 1724, reported that the 
fines had not been levied and could not have been paid, 
that the authorities had been deceived by the delivery 
of broken and useless weapons, which in many cases 
had been imported from Holland; and on his recom- 
mendation a much more stringent Act was passed in 
1725, empowering the Lords Lieutenants to call, and 
if necessary to search for, arms, and providing that all 
who retained or secreted weapons, when required to 
given them up, should be forced to serve as regular 
soldiers. Wade, in describing the results of this Act 
as executed by himself, reported that 2,685 arms had 
been surrendered, and that men who had formerly 
appeared at church and market with muskets and 
swords had now "only a staff in their hands." ^ He 
admitted, however, that the southern clans had not 
proved so compliant as the northern, that the arms 
collected were " a mixture of good and bad," and that, 
from the effects of exposure and carriage, the whole 
consignment was "little more worth than the value 
of the iron." These statements agree very well 
with a letter of Lockhart to the Chevalier, in 
which it is said that the Highland chiefs "were 
determined to submit in so far as to pretend 
a great readiness to comply and give up part of 
their arms, but withall to keep and secure the 
best."* 

^ So, too, Duncan Forbes : " A great stick is become as fashionable 
an instrament in a Highlander's hand as a broad-sword or pistol by 
his side used formerly to be.** — MSS. quoted in Burton's Lives of Lavat 
and Forbes, p. 329. 

' Statutes at Large, v. 90, 641 ; Burt's Letters, ii. 276, 2S4, 908-310 ; 
Lockhart Papers, ii. 189. 

Z 



354 THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

Whatever may have been Wade's success in enforcing 
the Disarming Act, it was certainly much inferior to 
his achievements as a military engineer. In order to 
secure the great valley intersecting the Highlands from 
the west coast, where it was guarded by Fort- William, 
to the Moray Firth, and now traversed by the Cale- 
donian Canal, he built Fort George and Fort Augustus 
at the extremities of Loch Ness, connecting them by 
an armed galley which he placed on the loch; and 
this barrier formed part of a line of communication 
extending not only to Fort William, but to Perth and 
Stirling, and comprising forty bridges, the longest of 
which spanned the Tay, and 250 miles of good road.^ 
The carrying out of these extensive works, which 
occupied eleven years, had a social as well as a political 
object ; and, with a view to putting down the disorder 
and cattle-lifting which still prevailed in the Highlands, 
Wade proposed to revive a species of police, known 
from the colour of its tartan as the Black Watch, 
which had been formed in the reign of William, but 
which, owing to suspicions of its fidelity, had been 
dissolved after the rising of 1715.* The nucleus of 
this force was raised in 1725, and, four or five years 
later, it was formed into six independent companies 
led by Highland officers, but subject to martial law 
and to the General commanding in the north. The 
coveted privilege of wearing arms attracted a superior 
class of recruits — so superior, indeed, that "it was no 
uncommon thing to see private soldiers riding to the 
exercising ground, followed by servants carrying their 
firelocks and uniforms ";• and the corps became so 

1 Burt'8 Letters, i. 39 ; ii. 184-185, 212, 219, 282. 

«7Wtf., ii. 260-263, 281. 

* Stewart's Sketches of the Highlander»y i. 226. 



THE BLACK WATCH 365 

popular that none were accepted but men of full stature 
and fine physique. In 1738, on the eve of war with 
Spain, Duncan Forbes proposed to utilise the warlike 
spirit of the Highlanders by raising four or five regi- 
ments to be ofl&cered and manned, the colonel excepted, 
from the disaffected clans. Walpole cordially approved 
of this advice, the adoption of which at a later time 
was to enhance the fame of Chatham. His colleagues, 
however, objected that the taking of such a step would 
enable the Opposition to say that he was enlisting an 
alien force to overthrow the constitution ;^ and he 
contented himself with making the experiment on a 
smaller and less pretentious scale. In 1740 the six 
Highland companies were raised to ten, and embodied 
as a line regiment which was known as the 43rd, after- 
wards the 42nd, but which retained in its own country 
the appellation of the Black Watch. On being called 
up to London in 1743, a large number of the men 
deserted and attempted to return to Scotland, from an 
objection to foreign service or because they believed 
that they were to be transported as Jacobites to the 
plantations ; but the stigma of this incident was com- 
pletely effaced when at Fontenoy the regiment received 
its baptism of fire. On that disastrous but not in- 
glorious field the conduct of "the Highland furies," 
as they were called in a French account of the battle, 
won the emphatic commendation of the British General ; 
and the task of covering the retreat was assigned to 
them ** as the only regiment that could be kept to 
their duty." The Earl of Crawford, their first Colonel, 
commanded in this rearguard action ; and, as his old 
corps filed past him, he " pulled off his hat and return- 
ing them thanks said that they had acquired as much 

1 Home's HUtory of the Rebellion, pp. 21-23. 



356 THE UHION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

honour in covering so great a retreat as if they had 
gained the battle."^ 

When the battle of Fontenoy was fought and lost 
in May, 1745, the Jacobite conspiracy, dreaded by 
Walpole, had ahready burst Early in 1 740 one Drum- 
mond of Bochaldy was despatched to the ContLDeot 
by several Scottish Jacobites, who had pledged them- 
selves to take arms, provided that assistance was 
obtained from France. Drummond went first to the 
Pretender at Rome, and then, with a recommendation 
from that prince and a memorial from his constituent^ 
to Cardinal Fleury, the nonagenarian minister of Louis 
XV., who received him cordially, but resolved, before 
committing himself, to make sure of the Jacobites in 
England as well as in Scotland ; and a secret corre- 
spondence was set on foot between London and Paris, 
which, however, had led to no very definite result 
when Fleury died in January, 1743.* Cardinal Tencin, 
the chief of three aspirants to his place, was a partisan 
of the Stewarts ; and their cause was now favoured 
by a deepening of the quarrel in which Great Britain 
and France, though nominally at peace, had long been 
engaged as auxiliaries, the one of Austria, the other 
of Spain and Prussia. In June the British and Hano- 
verians defeated the French at Dettingen, and soon 
afterwards an alliance of Great Britain, Austria, and 
Sardinia was followed by a new and closer alliance 
of France and Spain. In the course of this year the 
French Government sent Drummond to Rome to solicit 
the presence of the Pretenders elder son; and, when 
Prince Charles Edward arrived at Paris in January, 
1744, preparations had almost been completed for 

1 Stewart's Sketches of the Eighlaiideny i. 223-261. 
* State Trials, xviii. 651-663 ; Lord Mahon, iii. 43-4a 



PRINCB CHARLES EDWARD ARRIVES 357 

despatching him from Dunkirk to England with a 
force, under Marshal Saxe, of 15,000 men. The 
French fleet, more by accident than design, suc- 
ceeded in so drawing off the British warships that 
the coast of Kent was exposed to attack ; but the 
transports, with Prince Charles and the Marshal 
on board, had no sooner put to sea than they 
were dissipated, and many of them wrecked, by a 
violent storm. 

Disappointed rather than discouraged by the failure 
of his expedition, Charles proposed to throw himself 
on the loyalty of the Highlanders ; and this scheme, 
though discountenanced both by the French Grovern- 
ment and by his friends in Scotland, he prepared to 
execute in the following summer. He purchased a 
small supply of arms, and was assisted by two Irish 
merchants naturalised in France, one of whom obtained 
a man-of-war, the Elizabeth, ostensibly for his own 
use, and the other equipped a privateer or frigate 
named the Doutelle. On board the latter of these 
vessels, and escorted by the former, Charles set sail 
from the Loire on June 22 (O.S.), 1745. Off the 
Cornish coast the Elizabeth, which carried most of 
the arms and ammunition, was engaged by a British 
ship, and, in the course of a desperate encounter,^ 
inflicted and received such damage that both vessels 
had to return to port. The Doutelle, however, con- 
tinued her voyage ; and on July 25 the Prince landed 
safely in Moidart. As he brought with him only 
seven persons, and had lost almost all his military 

^"By far the moet desperate of anj that had happened during 

the course of the war." — Eapin and Tindal, 2nd edition, zxi 166. 

The first edition of this work, in 28 vols., preTiously dted, stops 
at 1727. 



368 THE UNION OOMFLETED, 1742-1747 

stores, he found it no easy matter to raise the 
clans ; but on August 19, having collected a few 
hundred men, he set up his father's standard at 
Olenfinnan.^ 

The campaign in which the military spirit of the 
Highlands spent its last effort as an independent power 
is so simple as well as so familiar in outline, and pro- 
duced so small a disturbance of political conditions, 
that its history may be very briefly summarised 
Throughout the summer of 1745 a rumour had been 
current in the north, and since the beginning of July 
had been known to the Edinburgh officials, that the 
Pretenders elder son was to come over from France; 
and on August 20, knowing that the Prince had landed 
in the Highlands and that a revolt had broken out in 
that region, which, like the affair of Glenshiel in 1719, 
would probably be more difficult to discover than to 
suppress, Sir John Cope, the Scottish Commander-in- 
Chief, advanced from Stirling "to find out the un- 
happy gentlemen who are in arms."* It soon appeared 
that the gentlemen in question were no less eager to 
find out Cope ; and on the 27th, when he found him- 
self at Dalwhinnie with only 1400 troops, mostly new 
and untried, and a superior force of Highlanders hold- 
ing a pass in his front, the General decided, in accord- 
ance with the unanimous opinion of a council of war, 
to strike north-west to Inverness, where he hoped to 
be reinforced by some of the loyal clans, and, advanc- 
ing thence to Aberdeen, to transport his troops south- 
ward by sea. At Inverness he was joined by only 
200 Munros under a brother of their chief. Sir Robert 
Munro of Fowlis, late Lieutenant-Colonel of the Black 

^ Ths Lyon in Mourning (Scot Hist Soc.), L 201-207, 281*292. 
^Cidloden Paperif p. 214. 



HE INVADES ENGLAND 359 

Watch, ^ and, when he disembarked his force at Dun- 
bar on September 18, he learned that the rebels, 
finding their progress unopposed, had crossed the Forth 
above Stirling and were now in possession of Edin- 
burgh — ^the Castle excepted — which had been yielded 
to them without resistance. The two armies met on 
the 21st at Prestonpans ; and in five minutes the 
Highlanders, charging sword in hand, completely 
routed the regular troops, killing about 400 of them 
and taking 1,200 prisoners. Charles remained more 
than a month at Edinburgh, reviving the faded glories 
of Holyrood Palace and paralysing the adherents of 
the de facto sovereign by captivating their female re- 
lations ;* and on October 31, when he had received 
reinforcements which brought up his force to the very 
modest total of 5,500 men, he set out for England. 
Macshal Wade was lying at Newcastle with some 
12,000 veteran troops; but the rebels advanced to the 
Border in three divisions, proceeding respectively by 

^ At Fontenoy, when his regimeut, after the Highland fashion, fell to 
the ground on receiving a volley, Sir Bobert " himself alone, with the 
ooloars behind him, stood upright receiving the whole fire of the enemy ; 
and this because (as he said), though he could easily lie down, his great 
bulk would not suffer him to rise so quickly." In recognition of his 
gallantry he was promoted to be Colonel of the 37th Regiment, and, dis- 
daining to fly with his men at Falkirk, was cut down, as also was his 
brother in attempting to defend him. " He was buried the following 
day vrith all the homage due to so honourable a man and so gallant a 
soldier ; all the rebel officers and crowds of the men attending his funeral" 
—Stewart's Sketches, i. 254, 255. 

* Charles had, it seems, much more fascination for Scottish ladies than 
they for him, yet ** the less he courted them, the faster they followed 
him." — Dennistoun's Memoirs of Strange and Lnmisden, i. 82-83. Duncan 
Forbes said that the most mischievous effect produced in the north by the 
Bucceas of the rebels at Edinburgh and Prestonpans was that "all the fine 
ladies, if you will except one or two, became passionately fond of the 
young adventurer and used all their arts and industry for him in the 
most intemperate manner.'' — OuUoden Papers^ p. 250. 



360 THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

Kelso, Hawick, and Moffat, which, under the direction 
of Lord George Murray, an oflS^cer who had served in 
both the previous risings and also in the Sardinian 
army, were so skilfully combined that on November 
9 they met on a moor near Carlisle within the space 
of two hours ;^ and, this threefold movement having 
greatly perplexed Wade, who, moreover, was ham- 
pered by the necessity of defending the coal-fields * and 
by the badness both of weather and roads, Carlisle was 
captured before he had advanced as far as Hexham tx) 
its relief On November 21 Charles continued his 
march, and on December 6 an extraordinary panic was 
excited in London when it became known that the 
Highlanders had eluded the Duke of Cumberland by 
the same stratagem which they had practised against 
Wade, and had reached Derby. 

London, it soon appeared, was disquieted for nought 
The insurgent host had evaded two armies, each far 
more numerous than itself; but that of Cumberland 
was close at hand, and a third had been assembled in 
the vicinity of London. About a thousand of Charles's 
followers had deserted on the way to Carlisle ; the 
English Jacobites, on the expectation of whose support 
the whole expedition had been planned, were so fer 
from making good this deficiency that their total levies 
amounted at most to 300, raised chiefly at Man- 
chester ; and there was no likelihood, or at all events 
no certainty, of a French invasion in the south. These 
considerations, suflScient of themselves to necessitate a 

^ Johnstone's Memoim^ p. 42 ; Raj's ComplecU Hittory of the BMliofiy 
1760, p. 62. Lord George Murray (Jacobite Memoirs^ p. 47) mentions only 
two columns, and Mr. Blaikie conjectures that the body which passed 
through Hawick " comprised impedimenta and foUowers." — Itinerary of 
Prince Charles (Scot. Hist. Soc.), p. 24, note. 

>Bapin and Tindal, second edition, zx. 194. 



HIS SUCCESS AT FALKIRK 361 

retreat, became irresistible when, in answer to a demand, 
which had been sent from Carlisle, for reinforcements, 
a despatch was received, from which it appeared that 
Lord John Drummond had landed with some French 
troops and the promise of many more, that he waa 
precluded by his instructions from crossing the Bor- 
der, but that — including natives — he had a force avail-^ 
able for service in Scotland of some 3,000 men.^ 
Charles still insisted on going on ; but a council of war 
unanimously refused to sanction this course ; and before 
daybreak on December 6 — " Black Friday " in London 
— the army had begun to retrace its steps. The 
retreat was conducted with no less skill, and much 
more quickly, than the advance ; and, after routing^ 
some of Cumberland's horse who came up with them 
near Penrith, the rebels on the 20th reached the 
Scottish bank of the Esk. 

Charles entered Glasgow on the 26th, and remained 
there for a week. At Stirling he was joined by Lord 
John Drummond's auxiliaries, which now numbered 
4,000; and, having left 1,200 men to besiege the Castle,, 
he advanced with about 8,000 to meet a slightly 
superior force of Cumberland and Wade s troops under 
Lieutenant-General Hawley. The rebels were un- 
questionably victorious in the confused battle, not 
unlike that of Sheriffmuir, which was fought at Falkirk 
on January 17, 1746, in the twilight of a wet and 
stormy afternoon ; but the Royalists, with the loss of 
seven guns and almost all their stores and baggage, 
were suffered to make good their retreat ; and so many 
of the Highlanders went home after the engagement 
that the chiefs insisted ' on a withdrawal to the north 

1 Fraaer's EarU of CromarUe^ ii. 382, 386 ; Johnston, pp. 51-63. 
'See their address in Home, p. 352. 



362 THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

in order to preserve and recruit the army for a spring 
campaign. On February 1 the insurgents re-crossed the 
Forth, and, after reaching Crieff, advanced in three 
divisions to Inverness, which they captured without 
difficulty on the 18th. By the beginning of April, 
though forced to abandon the siege of Fort William, 
they had taken Fort Augustus, and many less important 
posts; but on February 25 the Duke of Cumberland, 
who had superseded Hawley, arrived at Aberdeen ; and 
henceforth they were subjected to a more and more 
rigorous blockade, since the Duke had not only severed 
their communication with the Lowlands, but, through 
the activity of his cruisers and his own occupation of 
the east coast, was able to intercept all supplies of 
money and arms from France. 

The rebels were in a pitiable condition when Cumber- 
land on April 8 advanced against them from Aberdeen. 
With the advent of spring, many of the men had returned 
to their farms ; for the last month they had been paid 
only in oat-meal ; and the capture of a sloop, which was 
bringing £12,000, as well as a large supply of arms and 
ammunition, made it impossible for the officers to fulfil 
a promise they had given that the arrears should be 
discharged in full. Early on the 15th, as soon as it 
was known at Inverness that Cumberland on the 
previous night had reached Nairn, the Highland army 
was drawn up on Drunmiossie Moor near CuUoden House, 
the residence of Duncan Forbes, who had taken refuge 
in Skye. When noon had passed without any sign of 
the enemy's approach, Lord George Murray sent two 
officers to examine what he believed to be a much 
stronger position on the opposite bank of the River 
Nairn ; and, having received a favourable report, he 
proposed that the army should take its stand there, 



HIS DIFFICULTIES AT CULLODEN 363 

and, if it was not attacked, should withdraw still 
further, so as to detach the Duke from his victualling 
ships and involve him in operations so unfavourable 
to regular troops as a hill campaign. To this proposal, 
approved by most of the officers, it was objected that a 
retreat would discourage the clans, that it would en- 
danger the town in which were the baggage and 
ammunition, and that the dearth of provisions made 
it necessary to fight at once. " This last," wrote Lord 
George in 1749, "was indeed a great article which had 
been unaccountably neglected ; " ^ for, though both 
officers and men had received that morning but a 
single biscuit,^ there is said to have been at Inverness 
a considerable quantity of salt-beef, which had been 
found in the Castle, and a fortnight s supply of meal. 
When it appeared that Charles was determined to give 
battle " in so plain a field," and without waiting for the 
reinforcements which were known to be coming up. 
Lord George proposed, as a preferable though perilous 
alternative, to make a night attack on the enemy's 
camp ; and the Prince at once said that this suggestion 
had anticipated his own." Before evening great numbers 
of the men had gone ofi* in quest of food, protesting to 
their officers that they would rather be shot as deserters 
than starve; and the insurgents met with such diffi- 
culties in their march that a retreat was resolved upon, 
after some dissension, when at two in the morning they 

^Home, p. 362. 

' The biflcuit or " bannock " was doubtless unpalatable enough, but it 
was surely ii little unreasonable in Chambers (iL 72) to judge of it hy its 
taste and appearance eighty-one years later. 

' Siua/rt Paper$y quoted by Lord Mahon, iiL 449, note. The Royalists 
were expected to be in some festive disorder, as the 15th was the Duke's 
birthday ; but observance of the day had, it seems, been forbidden. — 
Henderson's Hutory of (he RebeUiony fourth edition, p. 113, note. 



364 THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

were more than three miles from Nairn. To the evils 
of hunger were now added those of disappointment and 
fatigue; and, unless Lord George was mistaken in 
thinking that the commissariat deficiencies might '' even 
then " have been made good, it argues something like 
infatuation in Charles, anxious as he must have been to 
defend Inverness, that he still clung to the moor, when, 
by withdrawing to a defensible position not a mile 
distant, he might in all probability have secured at least 
a day's respite to his exhausted troops.* 

The Highlanders, though called to arms within three 
hours after their return to CuUoden, showed no reluct- 
ance to fight ; but many men were missing ; * and the 
enemy (8,000 to 5,000) was as superior in numbers as 
in physical condition. The right and centre, after 
suffering much from the Duke's artillery, broke through 
two regiments, but were shattered by "a most terrible 
fire " within pistol shot from his second line ; and the 
rout in this quarter is said to have been complete before 
the left could receive the order to charge. Within 
twenty-five minutes the positions of the insurgent army 
were occupied only by the dead and wounded ; * and the 
Royalists pressed home their advantage with a cruelty 

1 Home, pp. 361-967 ; Jacobite Memoirs^ pp. 120-124 ; Lockkart Papergj 
ii. 623-530, 535; Maxwell of Eirkconners Narrative (Maitland Club), 
pp. 141-148 ; Johnfiton, pp. 129-141. 

'"Notwithstanding the pains taken by the officers to assemble the 
men, there were several hundreds absent from the battle, though within 
a mile of it; some were quite exhausted and not able to crawl, and others 
asleep in coverts that had not been beat up.** Maxwell of Eirkconnel, 
p. 148. Strange estimated the defaulters at about a thousand. — Dennis- 
toun's Strange and Lumxeden, i. 65. 

^Lockkart Papers, ii. 531 ; Maxwell of Eirkconnel, p. 153 ; Dennistoun, 
i 65. " Lord George behaved himself with great gallantry, lost his horse, 
hia periwig and bonnet, was amongst the last that left the field, had 
several cuts with broadswords in his coat, and was covered with blood 
and dirt^ — The Lytm in Mauiming, L 87. 



DECUNE OP JACOBinSM 365 

which was to be characteristic of their methods in 
suppressing the revolt. Prince Charles, with a price 
of £30,000 on his head, was hunted from cover to 
cover for five months, and it was not till September 20 
that he succeeded in embarking for France.^ 

In vigour and audacity of execution this rising is a 
complete contrast to that which had been headed, thirty 
years earlier, by the Earl of Mar. The insurgents of 
1715 were unfortunate in their leader, in the absence 
of their prince, and in the fact that Great Britain and 
France were then at peace ; but it was greatly in their 
favour that the sovereign whom they were attempting 
to depose had been only a year on the throne ; and we 
shall find that the new dynasty and the constitution 
with which it was identified had, in the course of a 
generation, gained greatly in strength. The Highlands, 
once the principal, had now become almost the sole, 
recruiting ground for the house of Stewart; and it 
shows how materially Jacobitism had declined in all 
its strongholds north of the Tay that the 3,200 cavalry 
which had taken part in the earlier insurrection were 
represented only by 460,^ and that Mar, dilatory and 
incompetent, had been able to muster a far larger army 
than was ever commanded by the royal and victorious 
Charles. A regiment drawn from the clans had recently 
mitigated, if not averted, a disaster to the British arms ; 
and the great services rendered by the Black Watch at 

^ In his Itinerary of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Mr. Blaikie givea 
an admirable record of the whole campaign, compiled and copiously 
annotated from contemporary sources. Jacobite literature is so vast 
and scattered that such a guide as this is particularly welcome. Sir 
VITalter Scott's narrative in The Tales of a Orandfatker is still of 
great value. 

'Compare Annals of Oeorge /., ii. 87 with Mr. Blaikie's Itinerary^ 
p. 93. 



366 THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

Fontenoy, ** which were heard all over Britain," resulted, 
shortly before Prince Charles took the field, in the 
raising of another Highland corps, 1,250 strong, com- 
manded by the Earl of Loudoun, most of the officers 
and men belonging to which remained loyal.^ The 
Duke of Gordon, whose father as Marquis of Huntly 
had supported the elder Chevalier with 2,500 horse and 
foot, was a stout Hanoverian, and counteracted with 
such success his Jacobite brother. Lord Lewis, that the 
latter was able to raise only a fraction of his vassak* 
Lord Fortrose, the eldest son of Mar s most powerful 
adherent, the Earl of Seaforth, was a member of the 
Commons and in arms for the Crown ; and almost 
the whole population of Skye was kept out of the 
rebellion through the influence of Duncan Forbes with 
the two insular potentates, Macleod of Macleod and 
Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat. 

That one of the national institutions most obnoxious 
to Jacobitism was believed by its opponents to have 
cansolidated its power may be inferred from a com- 
parison of the manifestoes published by the insurgents 
in 1715 and in 1745. The Pretender at both of these 
crises declared against the Union, and his son, when 
at Edinburgh, proposed to recognise the temporary 
independence of the kingdom by summoning a Scottish 
Parliament ; but, whilst thus denouncing in somewhat 
apologetic terms the political settlement which excluded 
him firom the throne, he betrayed his consciousness of 

^ Loudoun's Highlanders were assembled at Inverness and Perth, and 
the two divisions did not unite till the rebellion had been suppressed. 
One of three companies which had just been added to the Black Watch 
was captured at Frestonpans, but not one of the officers or men ooold be 
induced to take service with Prince Charles. — Stewart's Sketchei^ i. 265, 
ii. 4, 7. 

* Spalding Club Mitcdlany, i. 410. 



ITS OVERTURES TO THE CHURCH 367 

the fact that Scottish Presbyterianism had done much 
to ruin his former undertaking, and was likely to be 
no less hostile and much more powerful now. In 1715 
he had expressed a desire ''to see our just rights and 
those of the Church and people of Scotland'* — ^by which 
he may have meant the Episcopal Church — '* once 
more settled, in a free, independent Scots Parliament, 
on their ancient foundation''; but in 1745 Charles as 
Prince Regent declared in his name that it was his 
intention " not to impose upon any a religion which 
they dislike, but to secure them all in the enjoyment 
of those which are respectively at present established 
among them, either in Scotland, England or Ireland; 
and if it shall be deemed proper that any further 
security be given to the established church or clergy, 
we hereby promise in his name that he shall pass any 
law that his Parliament shall judge necessary for that 
purpose."^ If the Pretender expected that such a 
declaration would conciliate the opponents of that 
Episcopal communion which had long acknowledged 
him as its secular head, he must soon have realised 
his mistake. Throughout the rebellion the Established 
clergy acquitted themselves in a manner which amply 
warranted a letter addressed by the Duke of Cumber- 
land to the General Assembly of 1746, in which he 
thanked them for their " very steady and laudable 
conduct," and declared that he had "always found 
them ready and forward to act in their several stations 
in all such affairs as they could be useful in, though 
often to their own great hazard." The ministers of 
Edinburgh were prominent in certain belated prepara- 
tions which were made to defend the city, and some 

^ History of the Rebellion extracted from the Scots Magctgine, p. 367. 
See also Prince Charles's first manifesto, p. 365. 



368 THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

of them actually took arms. The Seceders proved 
equally zealous, and Ebenezer Erskine not only exerted 
himself to form a volunteer force at Stirling, but is 
said to have acted as one of its captains.^ The same 
spirit was manifested where Presbyterianism and com- 
merce were alike conspicuous on the banks of the 
Clyde. Glasgow raised a corps whose steadiness at 
Falkirk put several line regiments to shame ;^ and, 
despite his father's promise to remove " the insupport- 
able burden of the malt-tax," Charles appeared four 
times in its streets without eliciting a single huzza. 
The ladies refused to attend a ball given by his officers; 
and, though " he dressed more elegantly than in any 
other place," few of them had the curiosity to look out 
of window as he passed, and those who did so — whether 
proficient in loyalty or deficient in taste — "declared 
him not handsome."" In all this there was little or 
no contrast between 1715 and 1745; but it certainly 
was a serious disadvantage to Charles that the last 
Episcopal parish minister had been thirteen years in 
his grave, and that the Church which had long been 
dominant in the southern Lowlands was now taking 
root in the north. Lord Lewis Gordon found that the 
influence of the Established clergy was almost as fatal 
to his recruiting operations in Aberdeenshire as that 
of his brother, the Duke ; and one of his friends, who 
had engaged **nine servant lads" to take the white 
cockade, feared that " the diabolical lies of their Presby- 
terian preacher" had wrought so sudden a change 

^ M'Kerrow'8 Secesgion Churchy i 263. 

'*' Though our army was unfortunate at the affiur of Falkirk, yet 
if the Glasgow regiment had not been there, it might have been mach 
more unfortunate, and the victory of the rebels more complete.''— Pitt's 
speech, 1749 ; FarL ffut, xiv. 506-7. 

'Cockrcme Cforrespondenoe (Maitland QubX pp* 63, 110, 118. 



AKn-BPISCOPAL LEGISLATION 369 

in their disposition that not one of them would 
enlistb* 

The Episcopal clergy had now, it seems, dwindled 
to about 130;' and, though their Jacobitism had been 
less ostentatious than in 1715, when they extruded 
parish ministers and congratulated the Pretender in a 
formal address, it was enough to vitiate the whole 
communion in the eyes of the English public that its 
pastors were, to a man, non-jurors, and that its bishops 
had long been, and were supposed still to be, appointed 
on a warrant from the exiled Prince." Cumberland 
during hie operations in the north destroyed many of 
the meeting-houses, and in June, 1746, all such places 
of worship in Edinburgh were ordered to be closed. 
In this summer an Act was passed requiring the im- 
prisonment, and, for a second offence, the transportation, 
of all Episcopal pastors who after September 1 should 
officiate to five or more persons or, if the service was 
held in a dwelling, to such numbers exclusive of the 
family, without having taken the oaths and registered 
their letters of orders, and without praying for the 
King. Only five or six persons qualified in terms of 
this law, two of whom afterwards withdrew ; and the 
rest of the clergy, giving up their public services, con- 
tented themselves with ministering to fractional por- 
tions of their flocks. The Act also provided that after 

^ Spalding Club MUcdlany, i. 403, 410, 422 ; Kay's ComplecU Hutory^ 
p. 175. 

'Grub, iy. 32, note. 

' Bamsay (Scotlcmd and Scotsmen^ ii 489) mentions as ** not incurious 
that a great majority of the insurgents were nomioaUy Presbyterians.'' 
Their character as such must certainly have been nominal if Stewart 
(Appendix, p. L) is right in saying that in the early part of the 18th 
century Highland ministers were directed to preach and exhort in 
English. At Kirkhill, in the Presbytery of Inverness, a presentee was 
rejected because he did not know Gaelic, but this was in 1778. — FaUiy v. 264. 

2a 



370 THE UNION OOMPLETSD, 1742-1747 

September 1 no letters of orders should be admitted 
to be registered other than those granted by a bishop 
of the Church of England or of Ireland ; and, in order 
to determine a question which had been raised, whether 
Scottish ordination was valid if registered before this 
date, it was enacted in 1748 that after September 29 
of that year all but English and Irish orders, no matter 
when they had been registered, should be void. This 
was certainly a most severe law, since, whatever pro- 
vision might be made for the extension of the English 
or Irish hierarchy, it practically proscribed what was 
known to its own members as the Episcopal Church 
of Scotland. The clause in question was opposed hj 
all the prelates in the Upper House ; but, after being 
struck out in committee, it was re-inserted at the 
report stage by five votes, chiefly on the ground, which, 
whether relevant or not, was unfortunately too true, 
that none but avowed Jacobites could be ordained by 
a Scottish bishop.^ 

The Duke of Cumberland followed up his victory at 
CuUoden by a summer campaign of burning, slaying 
and plundering amongst the disaffected clans; and 
before the series of trials had terminated, in the course 
of which some eighty of the prisoners, including Lords 
Balmerino, Kilmarnock and Lovat, were sacrificed to 
the offended majesty of the law, Parliament was 
engaged, not only in persecuting Scottish Episco- 
palians, but in the less invidious task of devising 
certain protective and remedial measures. The first 
of these was a Disarming * Act, far more rigorously 
enforced than that of 1725, but not quite so severe 
in point of form, since the penalty of enlistment was 
not to be enacted in the case of offenders — ^a very 

1 Statutes at Large^ vi. 701, vii. 126 ; Gnib> iv. 33-41 : Stephen, iv, 325. 



PROHIBITION OF THE mOHLAND DRESS 371 

limited class — ^who could afford to pay a fine of £15. 
When the earlier measure was under consideration, 
an amendment had been moved, but rejected, to pro- 
scribe the Highland dress ;^ and it was now forbidden 
under a penalty, for the first offence, of six months* 
imprisonment, and, for the second, of transportation, 
to wear any part of that garb, whether plaid, kilt, 
trews, or shoulder-belt, or even to use tartan for coats. 
This clause was to come into force a year after the 
disarming provisions, on August 1, 1747 ; but, owing 
doubtless to the hardship involved in depriving a whole 
population of the only garments they possessed or were 
accustomed to make for themselves, the restriction was 
subsequently postponed in the case of all but land- 
owners and their sons, first to August 1, 1748, and 
then to August 1, 1749.* 

It has been mentioned that the first Disarming Act, 
that of 1716, contained a provision that the personal 
services due to superiors should be commuted for 
money ; but, as such services were now exacted only 
in the Highlands where clanship was more potent than 
law, few vassals had claimed the benefit of this clause,^ 

^ An Enquiry into the CavM$ of the late RebdUon and the proper methods 
for preventing the like misfortune for thefiUure^ 1746, p. 26w 

^ Statutes at Large, vi. 706, vii. 80, 127. The unfortunate Highlander 
was required to swear, under the sanction of a most exhaustive curse 
on himself and his family, that he neither had nor should have any arms, 
and that he should never wear his accustomed dress. — Brown's History o 
the Highlands, iii. 414. Some ingenious Celts evaded the law by stitching 
up the kilt in the middle or by carrying breeches slung over their 
shoulders. — Stewart's Sketches, i. 113. On the policy of the Disarming 
Acts, see the Enquiry cited in the preceding note — a really admirable 
essay, showing acuteness and wide knowledge, and written in a most 
humane and enlightened spirit. 

'It was acted upon by Duncan Forbes in 1737 in renewing certain 
leases for the Duke of Argyll in the Western Isles. — ^Argyll's Scotland As 
It Was and As It Is, ii. 35. 



372 THE UNION OOMPLETBD, 1742-1747 

enforced though it was by a decree of the Court of 
Session; and it required another rebellion, followed 
by prosecutions for treason in which the plea of con- 
straint was frequently tendered, and sometimes accepted, 
on behalf of the accused/ to bring home to Parliament 
— ^under some misapprehension, it is true — ^the necessity 
of sweeping away the whole system by which coercive 
powers could be exercised by individuals to the detri- 
ment of the public peace. This was accomplished by 
two statutes, the first of which transferred to the 
Grown the jurisdictions incident to feudalism which 
in England had been reduced to insignificance by the 
Great Charter of 1215, and the second put an end to 
the holding of land in ward, or, in other words, on 
condition of military service, which, under the designa- 
tion of knight service, had been abolished in England 
by a resolution of the Long Parliament in 1645, and 
by statute at the Restoration. In return for a pecuniary 
equivalent, to be fixed by the Court of Session,* the 
office of sheriff was taken away from all who held 
it in hereditary right, and its judicial functions, the 
exercise of which had been delegated, more or less, to 
a sheriff-depute, were assigned to the latter, who in 
future was to be appointed by the Crown, and was to 
receive a fixed salary, instead of making what he could 
out of fines and fees. With some slight exceptions, 
and the same claim to compensation, the jurisdiction 

^ A Oiiptain Forbes was acquitted on the grotind " that he was forced 
from his family and frequently, while at Carlisle, attempted to escape 
oyer the walls in women's clothes, but was prevented by the goard." 
— History of the Hebellion from the SooU Magaane, p. 341. There were 
other cases of this kind. 

'A volume in the Signet Library contains all the claims for com- 
pensation, leo in number, and amounting to £008,127. Only 76 daims 
were sustained, and the sum awarded was £163,237.— ilcte of Sedenmt^ 
1663-1790, p. 417. 



THE HBRITABLE JURISDICTIONS BILL 373 

« 

of lords of regality and of barons was also annulled. 
In regard to the military tenures, ward-holding, where 
the lands were held directly of the Crown, was con- 
verted into what was called blench-holding, that is, 
into freehold qualified only by the rendering of a 
trifling service or the payment of a nominal sum ; and, 
where the lands were held of a subject superior, the 
casualties and services incident to ward-holding were 
commuted for payment of a feu-duty in money or 
kind.i 

Had these measures been dependent for their justifi- 
cation on the crisis through which the country had 
just passed, they might never have become law. In 
the rising of 1715, which was comparatively wide- 
spread, the influence of feudalism had in a good many 
instances been exerted against the Crown; but the 
rebellion of 1745 drew almost its whole strength from 
the Highland chiefs, very few of whom had any right 
of jurisdiction,* and whose power, had they generally 
possessed such a right, could hardly have been greater 
than it was. At least three of the Scottish nobles 
opposed the Heritable Jurisdictions Bill, though none 
of them were included amongst the ten peers who 
recorded their dissent ; and, in so far as the measure 
was inspired by the late revolt, the argument was 
unanswerable that it could have no effect — ^at all events, 

^ StahiUa at Larger vii. 61, 77 ; Green's Encydopo/sdia of SooU LaWy 
xi. 305 ; Wood's Lectures on Conveyancing^ pp. 122-124. 

>If we except the Dukes of Argyll, Gordon and Athol, only three 
heads of clans, Macintosh, Menzies and Grant, applied for compensation, 
and only in the third case was the claim sustained. The Regality of 
Grant had been erected as late as 1695, and Sir Ludovic was able to 
prore that it had been in continuous use. Jacobite chiefs could not, 
of course, appear as suitors ; but it was assumed in the parliamentary 
debates that the chiefs in general had no right of jurisdiction. 



374 THE UNION COMPLETED, 1742-1747 

no direct effect— on " the blind obedience which the 
Highlanders pay to their chiefs." The spirit of clan- 
ship, dependent on sentiment and tradition and un- 
known or rather obnoxious to the law, could be 
dissipated only by the growth of those industrial habits 
which had long since extinguished it on the Border; 
and Duncan Forbes, in whose opinion disarming was 
*'the most important medicine," attached very Uttle 
significance to anything he had '^ heard spoken of 
relating to the ward-holdings and jurisdictions."* But 
the proposal to abolish feudalism as a system of govern- 
ment, though it may have originated in a misreading 
of the rebellion, was advocated on quite different 
grounds ; and the attitude of its supporters was happily 
illustrated by a speaker in the Conunons, who quoted 
the commendation bestowed by Lord Bacon on the 
laws of Henry VII. as " deep and not vulgar, not 
made upon the spur of particular occasion for the 
present, but out of providence .for the future."* Patri- 
archal sentiment and baronial charters might be dia- 
metrically opposed;' but both involved the intrusion 
of an intermediate authority between the subject and 
the Crown ; and, so long as Lowland landowners were 
entitled to command, and to dispense justice to, their 

^OuUoden Papers^ p. 288. 

*PaH, Hiit.^ xiy. 48. This, however, is not the spirit of English 
legislation. 

'The distinction is admirably developed in his Scotland As It Was 
'ond As It Is by the late Duke of Argyll, who shows (i. 229) that the 
.Scottish Parliament called upon landowners ^'to resist to the utmost 
the unlawful powers of chiefs over their tenants.** The Duke, however, 
is mistaken in thinkmg (ii 53) that the Heritable Jurisdictions Bill 
was draughted by the Court of Session. The Court declined " to prepare 
the draught of the Bill expected," and merely suggested certain reforms, 
which, though adopted in some respects, were deemed " inadequate to 
the mischief." — Pari. HxsUy ziv. 6, 18. 



THE BILL AN EXTENSION OF THE UNION 375 

vassals, it could not seem unnatural that the chief 
should exercise the same power over his clan. In fact, 
the diffusion of an atmosphere more favourable to 
social progress and fraught with much less danger to 
the State was the most signal benefit to be expected 
from the abolition of privileges, which, however, in 
themselves were burdensome enough. Many of the 
privileges in question had been so long obsolete that 
only a minority of those who applied for compensation 
succeeded in establishing their claims ; but the sheriffs, 
and in most cases the lords of regality, though they 
seldom ventured to inflict capital punishment, had still 
an extensive jurisdiction, both civil and criminal ; and 
it was impossible to defend a system under which an 
important judicial oflSce was exercised by a man who 
held it in hereditary right, who had many inducements 
not to be impartial, and who had no more knowledge 
of law than his " illiterate deputes."^ 

The relics of feudalism could not, however, be swept 
away without a modification, or rather a development, 
of the treaty concluded between the two kingdoms in 
1707 ; and for this reason the Court of Session had 
declined to comply with an order of the House of 
Lords directing them to prepare a Bill for remedying 
the inconveniences arising from the heritable juris- 
dictions and for facilitating the regular administration 
of justice, and, whilst not denying the competence of 
Parliament to effect a more drastic change, had con- 
tented themselves with suggesting certain improve- 
ments on the existing system. We have seen that the 

^ Ramsay's Scotland and ScoUmeriy iL 600. The last hereditary sheriff 
of Galloway used to silence the disputation of lawyers in his court by 
calling them " schoondrels ! blethering loons!" — ^Agnew's hereditary 
Sherife of Oallow^^ ii. 263. 



376 THE UNION OOMPLBTED, 1742-1747 

framers of the Union had endeavoured, however vainly, 
to put some of its provisions beyond the possibility of 
repeal ; but in this case no such attempt had been 
made. The 20th article provided that heritable offices 
and superiorities^ should be reserved to their owners 
as rights of property " in the same manner as they 
are now enjoyed by the laws of Scotland." The 
heritable jurisdictions could, therefore, be no more 
exempt firom the authority of the British Parliament 
than they had been fix)m that of the Scottish Estates ; 
and, in view of their twofold character, a plea for their 
abolition might be drawn from either of the two heads 
comprised in the 1 8th article which laid down that the 
laws of public policy should be made the same through 
the United Kingdom, but that the laws of private 
right should not be altered except for the evident 
utility of the Scottish people. The argument from 
expediency, and the sanction it derived both firom 
the nature of a sovereign legislature and from the 
terms of the Union, were admirably expounded by 
Lord Chancellor Hardwicke in the powerful, temper- 
ate, and luminous speech with which he introduced 
the Heritable Jurisdictions Bill in the House of Lords. 
He pointed out that, as the necessity of controlling 
the judicial powers permitted to the great landowners 
had given rise to the exorbitant power of the Scottish 
Privy Council, so the abolition of that court, than 
which "there never was a wiser measure," must be a 
very partial benefit if the abuses were allowed to con- 
tinue which it had sought to restrain ; and he showed 

^Defoe's only objection to this article {History of the Uwion^ p. 468) wa* 
that the word superiorities, entailing ''rights of vassalage," had been 
" brought in,** and he regarded the whole article as legally immutable. 
To judge, however, from the silence on this subject of the Parliamentary 
History, the Ward-Holding Bill encountered little opposition. 



DUNCAN FORBBS 377 

a spirit of true statesmanship, worthy of a great occa* 
sion, when he refused to base the advocacy of his 
measure on the rebellion, which had merely drawn 
attention to an ancient evil, or on the general dis- 
affection of Scotland, which he indignantly denied ; 
when he insisted that the sovereign must forfeit the 
attachment of his subjects who entrusts the protection 
of their lives and property to any hands but his own ; 
and when he exhorted his hearers " to fix the allegi- 
ance of the people where alone it ought to rest . . . 
and to diffuse the benefits of this limited monarchy^ 
the foundation of our common freedom, over the whole 
United Kingdom."^ 

This was the last Act to take its place on the 
statute book as one of a series ^' for rendering the 
Union more complete " ; and this work may appro- 
priately be concluded with some reflections suggested 
by the fact that the year which witnessed the com- 
pletion of the Union witnessed also the death of the 
Scottish statesman to whom, more than to any of his 
contemporaries, the consolidation of that great mea- 
sure may justly be ascribed. Duncan Forbes died on 
December 10, 1747, and in him the new constitution 
lost its most zealous, disinterested and enlightened 
friend. The younger brother of John Forbes of Cul- 
loden, whom in 1734 he succeeded in the estate, he 
had inherited a position which well fitted him to heal 
what was in great measure a racial feud, for his 
family, Lowland and conmiercial in origin and Presby- 
terian in religion, had migrated in the person of his 
great-grandfather to the vicinity of Inverness. Cul- 
loden was thus an outpost of Whiggism in the heart 

■ 

^ Pari, ffist, ziy. 1-22. Lord Hardwicke's speech is here reproduced 
from a copy printed for the use of his friends. 



378 THB UinON OOMPLBTBD, 1742-1747 

of a disaffected region ; and the profuse hospitality of 
the two brothers, ''reputed the hardest drinkers in 
the north," ^ gave them no small advantage in assail- 
ing the prejudices of Jacobite chiefs. Forbes, how- 
ever, had qualifications for this task much more 
important than those of birth and residence and con- 
vivial habits; for he was as fearless as he was generous, 
he loved the persons of his political opponents as 
much as he detested their principles, and no man ever 
acted more consistently on the Shakespearian maxim : 
" strive mightUy. but eat and drink affriends." We 
have seen how as Lord Advocate — and, it may be 
added, with a higher office in view — ^he both spoke 
and voted against the penalty imposed on Edinburgh 
in consequence of the Porteous Riot ; and many years 
earlier he had shown that in a righteous cause he 
cared as Uttle for the fury of the mob as for the 
frown of his official superiors, when at the age of 
twenty he " put himself in deep mourning " to attend 
the Worcester prisoners to the scaffold, and "carried 
the head of Captain Green to the grave."* During 
the rising of 1715 he held his brother's house against 

^Bamsay's Scotland and Scotsmen^ L 44. The elder brother was 
familiarly known as '* Bamper John.** " There Uvea in our neighboar- 
bood at a house (or Castle) called CuUoden a gentleman whose hospitality 
is almost without bounds. . . . Few go away sober at any time ; and for 
the greatest part of his guests, in the conclusion they cannot go at all."— 
Burt's Lettersy i. 135. " Bumper John " was very active against the rebels 
in 1715, and, owing to the failure of the Government to recoup his 
expenses, is said to have lost about £3,000. Duncan Forbes drank moch 
less in his later years, but the limits of sobriety in his case were always 
very wide. He was a keen golfer, and of his achievements in this respect 
we are told that he was a long driver, and that *' when nigh the hole he 
tipped with so much caution and circumspection that even a lesson might 
be learned from him in his innocent amusements." — Memoin ofths Bighi 
Manourable Duncan Forbw^ p. 00. 

^Parl HisL, x. 285. 



HIS PACIFIC POLICY 379 

the rebels, and co-operated with Lovat in the capture 
of Inverness ; but on the suppression of the revolt he 
addressed a remarkable and almost threatening letter^ 
to Walpole in favour of clemency, the authorship of 
ivhich he took no great pains to conceal ; he had him- 
self excused from acting against the prisoners in his 
capacity of Advocate-Depute ; and, unwilling, as he 
said, to see his countrymen "perish for want of 
necessary defence or sustenance," he promoted a sub- 
scription on behalf of those who were to be tried at 
Carlisle. * 

To assuage the bitter memories of civil war, and by 
prudence and foresight to prevent its renewal, wa^ now 
his great aim. He introduced, and, in view of its 
probable eflfect on the next generation, warmly advocated 
the Disarming Act of 1725 ; but Lockhart's statement 
that the Bill contained a clause, which was afterwards 
struck out, prohibiting the Highland dress is obviously 
a mistake, as Forbes in a letter of 1746, when such a 
measure was before Parliament, expressed his opinion 
that it would be most unjust to impose the restriction 
on all Highlanders, and that to confine it to the dis- 
loyal would confirm them in their attachment to the 
Pretender.' He was indefatigable at this period in 
extending his personal and political influence amongst 
the chiefs, and so successful that he was nicknamed 
** King Duncan " ; and the havoc and bloodshed of 

^ CuUoden Fapen, p. 61. 

' Burton's Lovat and Forbes^ pp. 289, 290. The generosity of Forbes in 
these and other instances was not tempered with discretion. When at 
Inverness after the battle of Culloden in 1746, he gave great offence to 
the Dnke of Cumberland by his intimacy with Lady Macintosh, who had 
raised her husband's dan for the Pretender.— Ramsay's Scotland and 
JSoottmeny L 54, note. 

> OModm Papen^ p. 289. 



S80 THE UNION OOMPLETBD, 1742-1747 

1745-6 might very probably have been averted, if his 
proposal to raise Highland regiments, which answered 
so well in the case of the Black Watch, had been carried 
out on his own bold and comprehensive plan. No 
individual did more, no individual did nearly so much, 
to frustrate the designs of Prince Charles. Though in 
his sixtieth year and in failing health, he sacrificed the 
ease and dignity of his position at Jldinburgh as Lord 
President of the Court of Session to face the hardships 
and dangers of a winter campaign. He faUed ultimately 
to restrain Lovat; but, in the opinion of the rebels 
themselves, he practically ruined their enterprise by 
keeping out of it some 2,000 men ; he exhausted both 
hia resources and his credits-spending a sum equal to 
three years' rent of his estate and borrowing £1,500 
more — in order to complete the levies for Lord 
Loudoun's regiment;^ and this force ''was of vast 
service to the established government"* by cutting 
off its enemies from their recruiting ground north of 
Inverness. When peace was restored, the zealous 
diplomatist and soldier relapsed once more into what 
Cumberland is said to have described as ''that old 
woman that talked to me about humanity ^ ; and his 
attitude towards the vanquished was so unwelcome, or 
was so misrepresented, at Court that he obtained 
neither reward for his services nor compensation for 
his loss. It is a scandalous reflection on the Grovem- 
ment of George II. that its most distinguished servant 
in Scotland had to beg the forgiveness of his son 
for having .squandered his fortune in the public cause^ 
that he " who never hitherto was dunned " had now to 
meet importunate creditors, and that it could be said 

^See p. 366. 

'Maxwell of Kirkoonnel, p. 92. 



HIS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE VIRTUES 381 

of him that he "died of heart-break."^ One is glad 
to know that the legacy of debt was accepted in the 
unselfish spirit in which it had been incurred, and that 
the next laird of CuUoden, an officer who had fought 
with distinction at Dettingen and Fontenoy, strove by 
years of self-denial to remove the burden from his son, 
hoping to see "him at least free and happy."* 

Great, however, as were the political services rendered 
by Forbes, they are very far from exhausting his merit. 
Throughout his professional career he set a noble 
example of devotion to duty and unimpeachable 
honour; as head of the Court of Session he en- 
deavoured, with extraordinary success, to accelerate 
the despatch of business, to purify the tone of the 
bench, and to give weight to its decisions; he took 
a warm interest in Scottish industries, and was one- 
of several persons who assisted the burghs in procuring 
the establishment of the present Board of Manufac- 
tures;^ himself a Hebrew scholar and an author of 
some repute, he befriended men of letters and supported 
for several years the poet Thomson;* as a landlord he 
was beloved by his tenants; and no tribute to his 
memory can be more just than that which describes 
him as displaying " one of those characters which are 
sometimes to be found in what Hume calls * the comers 
of history,' but which deserve to be blazoned at large 
on its broadest page." » 

* The Lyon in Mowndng^ ii. 362, iii. 76. 

'Burton's LowU and Forbes^ pp. 384-386. 

'Sir John Clerk's Memoin, p. 132, note. 

*8ooU Magcutney Iziv. 540. 

'Lord Cockbom in the Hdtnburgh ReH&w^ xzvi 108. 



INDEX. 



Aberdeen, 222, 314, 319, 349, 362. 

Abemethy, Rev. John, 252. 

Abjaration oath, 183, 186, 195, 202- 
204, 236, 243. 

Agricaltnre, 350-352. 

Aucenhead, Thomas, 220, 221. 

Alberoni, Oardinal, 316, 317. 

Alien Act, 100. 

AliBon, bnocaneer, 42. 

Allan, Rev. Jas., 222-224. 

Andreas, Indian chief, 42. 

Annandale, Marquis of, 85, 104-108, 
130, 143, 157, 171. 

Anne, Qneen, 74, 78-82, 89, 92, 98, 
101, 104, 110, 139, 190, 191, 198, 
209, 284, 287, 289, 294-296. 

Anstmther, Lord, ^1. 

Antioomians, 226, 229. 

Argyll, let Duke of, 82, 85; 2nd 
Duke: Commissioner, 1705, 102; 
courage, 105; insists on New 
Ministry, 106 ; favours Union, 107 ; 
declines nomination, 113; flouts 
addresses, 133; character, 149-151 ; 
criticism of Fletcher, 165 ; opposes 
Treason Act, 286; erratic career, 
294; checkmates Bolingbroke, 296 ; 
commands in Scotland, 1715, 303 ; 
at Sherifimuir, 306 ; dilatory, 310; 
dismissed, 321 ; Lord Stewara, 322 ; 
factious, 322; supports Peerage 
Bill, 323 ; supports Walnole, 325 ; 
opposes Porteous Bill, 334; attri- 
butes riot to fanaticism, 336 ; deserts 
Walpole, 340 ; dismissed, 341. 

Arianism, 227, 232. 

Athol. See Tullibardine. 
*' Auchterarder creed," 229. 

Bacon, Lord, 20, 224, 374. 

BaiUie of Jerviswood, 125, 141, 173, 

183, 282. 
Bankinff, 348. 
Barnard, Sir John, 339. 



Baxter, Rev. Richard, 223, 226. 
Belfast Society, 227, 262.f 
Belhaven, Lord, 31, 64, 71, 06, 109, 

117, 129, 133, 167, 179, 285. 
Benbow, Admiral, 55. 
Berwick, Duke of, 298, 303, 907. 
Bisset, Rev. John, 271. 
Black Watch, 364, 366. 
Blackwell, Prof., 202, 211. 
Blenheim, battle of, 97. 
Bolingbroke, Viscount, 287, 295-299. 
Boston, Rev. Thomas, 230, 231, 24a 
Bonrignonism, 222-224. 
Boyle, Henry, 287. 
Boyle, Lord, 80; Earl of Glasgow, 106. 
Burghers and Anti-Burshers, 273. 
Burnet, Bishop, 99, 113, 142, 147. 

202, 272, 280, 286. 
Bushell, Oapt., 327-329. 
Byng, Admiral, 284, 316. 
^res, Darlen councillor, 49. 

Cadogan, General, 309, 310, 325. 
Galamy, Rev. Edmund, 200, 261. 
Caroeronians, 12, 134, 235, 250, 269i 
Campbell, Bishop, 318, 319. 
Campbell, Rev. O^lin, 250. 
Campbell, Jas., 30. 
Campbell, Prof., 261-263. 
Campbell of Fanab, 50, 62. 
Campbell of Shawfield, 327, 328, 366. 
Cambuslanff revival, 266-271. 
Camwath, Earl of, 302, 306. 
Caroline, Queen, 337. 
Carpenter, General, 305, 306. 
CarsUres, Rev. Wm., 70, 201-203» 

209, 214-217, 257. 
Carteret, Lord, 325, 338. 
Chalmers, Principal, 234, 241, 263. 
Charles I., 7, 94, 195, 205, 281. 
Charles IL, 812, 65, 190, 281. 
Charles II. of Spain, 72. 
Charles XII. of Sweden, 316. 
Charles, Archduke, 72. 



382 



INDBX 



38S 



Charles Edward, Prince» 366-368. 

Gharterifl, Rev. Laurence, 237, 260. 

Chesterfield, Earl of, 160, 338. 

ChiUingworth, Rev. Wm., 219, 227. 

Charch of Scotland : before Revolu- 
tion, 1-12, 219, 274-276; Revolution 
Settlement, 12-16 ; secured by 
Union, 130; decline of fitnatioism, 
218, 261 ; attitude towards Darien 
scheme, 67, 60, 179 ; towards Union, 
126, 182-188 ; opposed to toleration, 
192, 202, 212; and to patronage, 
206, 210 ; resents abjuration oath, 
• 203, 236; procures execution of 
Aikenhead, 221 ; Bourignonism, 
222, 223; Simeon case, 224-226, 
232-234; ultra-Calvinism, 229-231; 
crowth of dissent, 236 ; patronage 
dormant, 237 ; dispute as to election 
of pastors, 240; Secession, 246-249; 
growth of Moderatism, 250-274; 
national character, 276; loyal in 
1716, 311 ; and in 1746, 367. 

Churchill, Admiral, 287, 288. 

Clarendon, Earl of, 11. 

Clarke, Rev. Samuel, 233. 

Cockbumof Ormiston, 102, 106, 114, 
124. 

"College Bishops," 317-320. 

Company, African and Indian: formed, 
24 ; opposed in England, 29 ; on 
the Continent, 32 ; foilure, 46, 61 ; 

Setitions for redress, 32, 60, 61 ; 
issolved, 116. 
Cope, Sir John, 368. 
Country Pikrty, 63, 71, 83, 163, and 

pcuann, 
CovenanU, The, 8, 14, 181, 183, 269, 

271. 
Cowper, Earl, 101, 114, 282. 
Craig, Rev. John, 3. 
Crawford, 19th Earl of, 161; 20th 

Earl, 366. 
Crisp, Rev. Tobias, 226. 
Cromarty. See Tarbat. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 9, 65, 281. 
CuUoden, battle of, 362. 
Cumberland, Duke of, 362-364, 369, 

370. 
Cunningham, Alex., 164, 170, 281, 

294. 
Cunningham, Sir David, 131. 
Cunninsham of Ecket, 134, 149. 
Currie, Rev. John, 248, 269, 274, 276. 

Dalrymple, Sir David, 174. 
Darien scheme, 33-68. 
Dartmouth, Earl of, 102, 290. 
D'Asavedo, Joseph C, 30. 
Defoe, Daniel, 65, 136, 136, 164, 168, 
184, 211, 280, 376. 



Derwentwater, Earl of, 306, 310. 
Devonshire, Duke of, 113, 114. 
Douglas, Robt., 36, 36. 
Douglas, Duke of, 308. 
Drummond, Capt., 104. 
Drummond, Capt. Thomas, 49, 60. 
Drummond of Bochaldy, 366. 
Drummond, Lord John, 361. 
Duffns, Lord, 143, 302. 
Dundas of Amiston, 113, 330. 
Dundee, 10, 300, 349. 
Duplin, Viscount, 113. 

Edinburgh: riots at, 61, 127, 133, 
333 ; toyal in 1716, 301 ; strike of 
brewers at, 329; trade, 348; Prince 
Charles at, 369. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 4. 

Elphinstone, Bishop, 1. 

England: attitude towards Darien 
scheme, 28-31, 62-66, 60 ; towards 
Act of Security, 97-101 ; progress 
of Whigs, 101, 287; Union re- 
joicings, 139; Tory reaction, 197, 
289 ; Church of, 139, 186, 219, 233; 
Dissenters, 226 ; Methodism, 263. 

Episcopalians: ejected, 13; attempt 
to comprehend, 14; permitted, if 
jurors, to retain their livings, 16; 
under William, 189; favoured by 
Anne, 80, 191 ; proposed toleration, 
1703, 82, 191 ; mobbed, 193, 300 ; 
English Liturgy introduced, 196^ 
Oreenshields' case, 196-198; opposi- 
tion to Liturgy, 199; Toleration 
Act, 1712,200; implicated in risiuflr 
of 1716, 314 ; deposed, 316 ; Act of 
1719 against, 316; dissensions 
among, 318; blamed for rising of 
1745, 369 ; Acts of 1746 and 174& 
against, 369, 370. 

Equivalent, The, 116, 137, 147, 346. 

Errol, Earl of, 170. 

Erskine, Rev. Ebeneser, 243-249, 264» 
266, 272, 368. 

Erskine, Rev. Ralph, 248, 264, 272. 

Erskine of Dun, 4. 

Falconer, Bishop, 318. 

Falkirk, battle of, 369, 361, 368. 

Federation, scheme of, 121. 

Ferguson, Robt., 91. 

Fisher, Rev. Jas., 246. 

Fletcher of Saltoun, 20, 70, 83, 86-87» 

95, 133, 164- 167, 286. 
Fleury, Cardinal, 366. 
Fontenoy, battle of, 366. 
Forbes of CuUoden, 329, 331, 334^ 

336, 366, 377-381. 
Forster, Thomas, 306, 306, 310. 
Fortrose, Lord, 366. 



384 



INDEZ 



Foaotainba]!, Lord, 221. 
PnlkrUm, Bishop, 318. 

Oadderar, Bishop, 318. 

Galloway, Earl of, 143. 

Garden, Rev. Geo., 222, 228. 

Oeorge I., 238, 296-301, 303, 300, 311, 
313, 316, 316, 321, 322, 326, 330. 

George II., 337,380. 

George, Prince, 08, 287, 288. 

Gib, Rev. Adam, 268. 

Glasgow : rioU at, 133, 300, 327 ; pro- 
gress of, 19, 23, 343-346 ; loyal, 368. 

Glass, Rev. John, 269. 

Glenshiel, battle of, 317. 

Oloncester, Duke of, 62. 

Godolphin, Earl of: Lord Treasurer 
of England, 89; authorises Peace 
and War Act, 90; accepts Act of 
Security, 96 ; supported by Queen, 
96 ; defence and motives, 99 ; 
draws closer to Whigs, 101 ; con- 
gratulates Queensberry, 139; op- 
poses abolition of Council, 282 ; gets 
rid of Harley, 287 ; dismissed, 290. 

Gordon, 1st Duke of, 91 ; 3rd Duke, 
366. 

Gordon, General, 299, 304, 306. 

Gordon, Lord Lewis, 366, 368. 

Gdrs, Count, 316. 

Graham of Gorihie, 96. 

Grant, Sir Ludovic, 373. 

Green, Capt, 103. 

Greenock, 346. 

Oreenshields, Rev. Jas., 106-199. 

Haddington, Earl of, 83, 308, 361. 

Haddo, Lord, 289. 

Hadow, Principal, 230, 231, 241. 

Hales, Rev. JobD, 219. 

Halifax, Marquis of, 98, 114, 136, 202. ' 

Hamilton, Rev. Alex., 228. 

Hamilton, Lord Basil, 60. 

Hamilton, 3rd Duke of, 67, 168 ; 4th 
Duke: leader of Country Party, 
63; secedes from Convention Par- 
liament, 76; proposes recognition 
of Anne, 81 ; unites Countrymen 
and Cavaliers, 83; Jacobite in- 
trigues, 91, 124; prevedts settle- 
ment of succession, 94, 108; fails 
to obstruct Union, 109; proposes 
royal nomination of Commissioners, 
110; excluded from Commission, 
113 ; popular hero, 127 ; frustrates 
opposition, 134 ; vehement, 141 ; 
character, 168-170; jealousof rivals, 
171 ; fails to procure fast for Darien 
disaster, 179; allies himself with 
Whijgs, 286 ; not allowed to sit as 
British peer, 291. 



Hamilton, Prof., 234, 258, 266. 

Hardwicke, Lord, 376, 377. 

Harley, Robt., 101, 142, 154, 187, 
198, 210, 238, 287. 290, 296. 

Hawley, General, 361, 362. . 

Hedges, Sir Chas., 114. 

Henry VIL, 20, 374. 

Hepburn, Rev. John, 236, 312. 

Highlands: disarmed, 363,370; roads 
made, 291, 364 ; regiments raised, 
366, 366; dress prohibited, 871, 
379; Jaoobitiani declines, 865; 
power of chiefs, 373-376. 

Hodges, pamphleteer, 118, 126, 218. 

Hog, Rev. Jas., 228, 230, 263. 

Home, Earl of, 81, 83, 87, 124. 

Hooke, Colonel, 124, 169, 283. 

Hundy, Marquis of, 307, 309. 

Hutcheson, Prof., 264, 273. 

Hyndf Old, Lord, 80. 

India, English trade with, 26. 
Indulgences, 11. 
Inverness, 309, 368, 302-364. 
Ireland, 227, 252. 
Irvine, Bishop, 318. 
IsUy, Earl o^ 197, 293, 330, 331, 337» 
339, 34L 

Jacobites: clergy deprived, IS; 
jubilant, 62, 74; few in Country 
Party, 71 ; Anne's advances to, 79- 
80 ; enter Psrliament as Cavaliers, 
81 ; join Opposition, 82; the *8ooU 
Plot,' 91 ; allied with Queensberry, 
94; Hooke's mission, 1706, 124; 
factious, 129 ; try to prevent tlnion, 
134 ; their leaders, 170 ; attempted 
invasion, 1708, 283 ; Whigs aUied 
with, 286, 288 ; Bolingbroke's in- 
trigues, 296 ; rising of 1716, 302- 
312; cler^deprived,316; Alberoni'a 
schemes,^16 ; rising of 1719, 317 ; 
dissensions, 319; attempted inva- 
sion, 1744, 357; rising of 1745, 
367-366 ; causes of its faUnre, 366- 
368; repressive measures, 870- 
376. 

James VL, 4-7, 21, 164. 

James VIL, 12,23. 

James, Prince, 76, 78, 124, 146, 204, 
297, 300, 302, 805, 310, 819, 366- 
367. 

Jersey, Earl of, 101. 

Johnston, James, 30, 93, 100. 

Johnston, Lord, 289. 

Johnston, Sir Patrick, 127. 

Jurisdictions, Hereditary, 281, 288, 
372377. 

Kenmure, Viscount, 802, 806, 810. 



INDEX 



385 



Ker of Keralftnd, 134, 149, 283. 
Knox, JohD, 3, 154, 105, 206, 246. 

Lansdown, Earl of, 307. 
Laaderdale, Duke of, 11, 18, 66 ; Earl 

of, 308. 
Leechman, Prof., 255, 276. 
Leighton, Archb., 219, 237. 
Leith, 19, 23, 127, 304, 349. 
Leven, Earl of, 80, 106, 142. 
Lindsay, Sir David, 1. 
Lindsay, Patrick, 334, 336, 347, 349. 
Lockhart of Camwath, 82, 113, 170, 

199-201, 292, 318, 319, 353. 
Lodffe, Daniel, 30. 
Loudonn, 3rd Earl of, 105, 106, 308 ; 

4th Earl, 366, 380. 
Lonis XIV., 71-73, 78, 124, 297, 302. 
Louis XV., 298, 356. 
Lovat, Lord, 90, 91, 309, 380. 

M*CaUoch, Rev. Wm., 266. 
MacDonald of Sleat, 366. 
Macintosh, Brigadier, 304-807, 310, 

351. 
Mackenzie of Preston-Hall, 80, 96, 

102. 
Maclean, Colonel, 307. 
Macleod of Macleod, 366. 
Maomillan, Rev. John, 235. 
Macneil, Rev. ., 235. 
Malplaqnet, battle of, 150. 
Malt tax, 137, 291, 326, 346. 
Manafaotnres, 19, 24, 39, 346 ; linen, 

347. 
Mar, Eari of, 113, 158, 159, 298, 299, 

302-304, 307-310. 
March, Earl of, 80, 94, 95. 
Marchmont, Ist Earl of, 61, 69, 70, 

76, 80, 82, 85, 86, 113, 124, 128, 

130, 138, 173, 183, 286 ; 2nd Earl, 

331, 338 ; 3rd Eari, 389. 
Maria Theresa, 340. 
Marischal, 9th Earl, 157 ; Countess, 

157 ; lOth Eari, 302, 317. 
Marlborough, Duke of, 97, 101, 142, 

147,289,291 ; Duchess, 287, 289, 325. 
Marrow of Modem DimnUy, 229-231, 

246. 
Maiy, Queen, 2, 3. 
Masham, Mrs. , 287. 
Maxwell, Bishop, 7, 219. 
Maxwell of Pollock, 80. 
Meldrum, Rev. Geo., 192, 204, 250, 

267. 
Melville, Andrew, 3, 154, 275. 
Melville, Earl of, 62, 66, 207. 
Middleton, 1st Earl of, 11 ; 2nd Earl, 

283. 
MUlar, Bishop, 318. 
MiUer, Provost, 327-329. 



Moncreifi^ Rev. Alex., 245, 272. 
Monmouth, Duke of, 166. 
Monro, Rev. Alex., 195. 
Montrose, Marquis of, 83, 88, 95, 172; 

Duke, 282, 331, 338. 
Morton, Regent, 2. 
Munro of Fowlis, 358, 359. 
Murray, Lord George, 360, 362-364. 
Murray of Philiphaugh, 93, 106, 141. 

Napier, Lord, 157. 
Navigation Acts, 20-22. 
Neonomians, 226. 
Newcastle, Duke of, 331. 
Nithsdale, Earl of, 302, 305, 310. 
Normanby, Marquis of, 79, 101. 
Nottingham, Eari of, 75, 98, 101. 

Orleans, Duke of, 298, 316. 
Ormond, Duke of, 295-297, 307, 317. 
Oxford. See Harley. 

Paisley, 345. 

Parliament, The Scottish : defects of, 

156. 
Paterson, William, 25, 28, 29, 32-38, 

40, 43, 45, 62, 121, 125. 
Patronage, 204-213, 237-239, 273. 
Peerage, 116, 138, 289, 291, 333; 

Peerage Bill, 323. 
Perth, Duke of, 283. 
Philip V. of Spain, 73, 298. 
Pitt, William, the elder, 339, 355, 

368 ; the younger, 157, 222. 
Plantation trade, 60, 343. 
Pope, Alex., 339. 
Porteous Riot, 332-337. 
Potter, Rev. Michael, 254. 
Preston, battle of, 306. 
Preetonpans, battle of, 359. 
Pretender. See James, Prince. 
Privy Council abolished, 281. 
Protesters, 9, 272. 

Queensberry, 2nd Duke of t Commis- 
sioner, 1700, 63 ; prolongs Conven- 
tion Parliament, 75 ; prorogues it, 
76 ; Secretary of State, 79 ; Com- 
missioner, 1703, 81 ; yields to 
Country Party, 82 ; rejects Act of 
Security, 87 ; policy, 88 ; blamed 
for Wine Act, 90 ; intrigues with 
Lovat, 91 ; dismissed, 93 ; his 
friends oppose the Court, 94, 95; 
favoured by English Whigs, 102; 
Privy Seal, 106; in Parliament, 
1705, 109; choice of Union Com- 
missioners, 113; Commissioner to 
Union Parliament, 125; military 
escort, \2S; mobbed and threat- 
ened, 133, 142; counteracts Jaoob- 



2B 



386 



INDEX 



ites, 134,170; insiBto on oonceasioiu 
to Scots, 136 ; completes Union, 
139; reception in England, 139; 
character, 147-149; corrupt in- 
fluence, 157 ; oppoees abolition of 
Council, 282; protests against 
Treason Act, 286; British peer, 
289, 291 ; 3rd Duke, 338. 

Reid, Bishop, 1. 

Resolutions, Public, 9. 

Richard II., 21. 

Robe, Rev. Jas., 267. 

Robertson, Principal, 7, 274. 

Rochester, Earl of, 31, 98, 101. 

Rooke, Admiral, 145. 

Rose, Bishop, 196, 318. 

Rothes, Duke of, 11 ; Earl of, 83, 86, 
88, 92, 94, 96, 303, 308, 321; 
Master of, 289. 

Roxburgh, Earl of: Countryman, 83; 
his clause in Act of Security, 84 ; 
violent speech, 88 ; mission to 
Court, 92; one of Sauadrone 
Ministry, 96; dismissed, 106; 
favours Union, 125; character, 
145, 174-176; Duke, 282 ; snpporte 
abolition of Council, 282; serves 
under Argyll, 308; Secretary for 
Scotland, 321 ; supports Peerage 
Bill, 324; allied with Carteret, 
325; dismissed, 330; subsequent 
career, 331, 338. 

Rycaut, Sir Paul, 32, 62, 64. 

Saoheverell, Rev. Henry, 197, 289, 
294. 

Saxe, Marshal, 357. 

Scott, Sir Francis, 158. 

Seafield, Earl of: Chancellor, 79; courts 
Jacobites, 80; deserts Queeusberry, 
82, 90; Secretary of State, 96; 
Chancellor, 103 ; complains of col- 
leagues, 106 ; career and character, 
160-162; Earl of Findlater, 292; 
moves repeal of Union, 292, 293. 

Seaforth, Earl of, 302, 307, 309, 317, 
366. 

Seoeders: origin, 245; their ''Judi- 
cial Testimony," 248 ; attacked by 
Currie, 248, 269; reUtions with 
Whitefield, 264; denounce Cambus- 
lang revival, 268; split into 
Burghers and Anti-Burghers, 273. 

Security, Act of, 83, 95; for the 
Church, 182. 

Selkirk, Earl of, 80, 143. 

Seton of Pitmedden, 1 13, 129, 176, 194. 

Seymour, Sir Edward, 101. 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 254. 

Sharp, Archbishop, 11. 



Shawfield mob, 327, 328. 

Sheriffinuir, battle of, 308. 

Shrewsbury, Duke of, 296. 

Simson, Prof., 224, 232-234, 243, 244, 
252-254, 261, 276. 

Smith, Adam, 347. 

Smuggling: in Scotland, 280, 349; in 
America, 343. 

Smyth, James, 30. 

Somers, Lord, 98, 101, 114, 138, 151, 
282, 287-289. 

Somerset, Duke of, 296. 

Sophia, Electress, 114, 130. 

Squadrone Volante: take office, 93, 
96; discredited by execution of 
Green, 104; origin of name, 108; 
in Parliament, 1705, 109; ex- 
cluded from Union Commission, 
113; favour Union, 125; vote for 
first article, 129; their support 
indispensable, 145 ; consistency and 
patriotism, 172 ; support aboIitioD 
of Privy Council, 281 ; oppose 
Treason Act, 286; ooorted by 
English Whigs, 288 ; favoured by 
George I. , 321 ; turned out of 
office, 330, 331. 

Stair, Ist Earl of, 107, 113, 152-154, 
166, 184 ; 2nd Earl, 331, 338. 

Stanhope, Earl, 322, 325. 

Steele, Sir Richard, 325. 

Stewart, Archibald, 50. 

Stewart, Sir James, 81, 106, 107, 200, 
208. 

Stewart of Pardovan, 129. 

Strathnaver, Lord, 289. 

SunderUnd, Earl of, 101, 287, 288, 
322, 325. 

SutherUnd, Earl of, 303, 308. 

Tarbat, Viscount, 80, 82; Earl of 
Cromarty, 90, 96, 142, 159, 162. 

Telfer, Rev. Chas., 258. 

Tencin, Cardinal, 356. 

Tillotson, Archb., 219, 258, 264. 

Tindal, Matthew, 262. 

Toland, John, 219. 

Toleration Act, 82, 191, 200. 

Townshend, Viscount, 296, 322, 325, 
351. 

Trail, Rev. Robt., 226. 

Traquair, Earl of, 302. 

Treason Act, 286. 

Tullibardine, Earl of, 80; Maiqnis of 
Athol, 82, 90, 95 ; Duke, 96, 127, 
171 ; his eldest son. Marquis of 
TulUbardine, 150; his second son, 
Marauis, 302, 317. 

Tweeddale, 1st Marquis of, 30; 2Dd 
Marquis, 82, 83, 93, 96, 102, 174 ; 
4th Marquis, 338. 



INDEX 



387 



Union with England : oommercial 
negotiationB, 21, 22; reaUsed by 
Cromwell, 2L, 65; conference of 
1670, 65; pronosed in 1689, 66; 
promoted by Darien disaster, 58, 
66, 68 ; William commends, 69 ; 
Commission appointed, 74, 75; 
conference of 1702, 76 ; England 
proposes, 100 ; promoted by execu- 
tion of Green, 103; relation to 
snoceesion, 106; Queen to choose 
Scottish Commissioners, 110; their 
character, 113; Treaty of Union, 
114-116; incorporation unpopular, 
117 ; pamphlets for and against, 
118-123; attitude of parties, 124; 
the Treaty in Parliament, 125-138 ; 
riots, 127, 133; addresses against, 
131 ; opposition projects, 135 ; 
amendments, 136 ; England con- 
curs, 139 ; gravity of the crisis, 
141 ; causes of success, 143 ; the 
old constitution unworkable, 157 ; 
attitude of Church, 180-188 ; tolera- 
tion and patronage as Tiolations of, 
211-213; not unalterable, 213 ; de- 
nounced by Cameronians, 235-236 ; 
speculative purchases, 277 ; fiscal 
innovations, 279 ; unpopular, 283, 
290; extension of, 281, 286, 376; 
motion to repeal, 292; Pretender 
declares against, 302, 310, 366; 
identified with Protestantism, 312 ; 
economic results, 342-352. 
Usages, The,'' 318. 



« 



Venice : Union celebrated at, 140. 
Wade, Marshal, 353, 354, 359-361. 



Wallace, Rev. Robt., 258, 273. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 322, 325, 326, 
331, 337-341, 355. 

■Ward-Holding Act, 372, 376. 

Webster, Rev. Jas., 224, 243. 

Wedderbum, Bishop, 7, 219. 

Wesley, Rev. John, 263, 264. 

Wesley, Rev. Chas., 263. 

Wharton, Lord, 113, 114. 

Whitefield, Rev. Geo., 263-271. 

Wightman, General, 199, 309, 317. 

William, King: favours Episcopacy, 
13, 189; comprehension scheme, 
14 ; censures Company Act, 30 ; 
opposes Company at mimburg, 32, 
53; colonists appeal to, 54; pro- 
clamations against colony, 55; 
popular, 58, 70 ; addresses to, 59, 
60, 64; conciliatory letter, 62; 
commends union, 66-70; death, 70; 
Spanish policy, 71-73; compared 
with Anne, 89. 

Williams, Rev. Daniel, 226. 

Willison, Rev. John, 271, 276. 

Wills, General, 306. 

Wilson, Rev. Gabriel, 245. 

Wilson, smuggler, 332. 

Wine Act, 87, 90. 

Winton, Earl of, 302, 305, 310. 

Wiahart, Rev. Geo., 257, 274. 

Wishart, Principal, the elder, 257. 

Wishart, Principal, the younger, 234, 
258-261,274. 

Witchcraft, 248. 

Wodrow, Rev. Robt., 18, 199, 208, 
237, 240, 251, 290, 301, 345. - 

Wolsey, Cardinal, 20. 

Wool Act, 96. 

Wyndham, Sir William, 307. 



OLAsaow : pbintbd at thb UNiTntaiTy' piuks bt robbbt kaclbhosb akd co. ltd. 



1 

BY THE Same author 

2 Volumes. Demy %vo. 832 fp. Price 2ls. net 



POLITICS AND RELIGION 

IN SCOTLAND, 1550-1695 

A STUDY IN SCOTTISH HISTOEY 
FEOM THE EEFOKMATION 
TO THE EEVOLUTION 



By WILLIAM LAW MATHIESON 



CONTENTS 

Iktrodugtion. — The French Alliance. Condition of the Church. 

OHAFTBt. 

I.— The Eve of the Reformation, 1560-1559. 

n.— The War of Reformation, 1559-1560. The Reformation Parliament. 
nL — John Knox. 

IV.— Maitland and Mary Stewart, 1561-1567. 
v.— Civil War, 15681573. 
VI.— The New Religion. 
Vn.— Church and State, 1560-1586. 

Vni.— Church and SUte, 1586-1603. The Crisis of 1596. The 
Ecclesiastical Settlement. 
IX.— Bishops and Presbyters, 1572-1625. 
X. — ^The Reign of the Moderates. 
XI.— The National Covenant, 1625-1638. 
XII.— Presbytery Restored, 1638. The Glasgow Assembly. 
Xm.— The Covenant in Arms, 1639-1641. The First Bishops' War. 

The Political Revolution. The Second Bishops' War. 
XIV.— The Solemn League and Covenant, 1641-1643. 
XV.— aiie Royalist Reaction, 1644-1648. The Engagement. 
XVL— The Theocratic Experiment, 1648-1651. Collapse of the 
Whiggamoree. 
XVIL— The Reign of the Zealots. 

XVnL— The Restoration, 1651-1663. Settlement of the Church. 
XIX.— The Pentland Rising, 1663-1667. Clerical and Military Misrule. 
XX.— The Leighton Group, 1667-1674. Robert Leighton. The Policy 
of Conciliation. Dissolution of the Leighton Group. 



CX)NTENTS— CoiKtnttai. 

OBAPm. 

XXI.— The Bothwell Riaing, 16741680. RebeUion, 1679. 
XXn.— Fanaticiam and Repreasion, 1680-1685. The Cameroniana. The 

Test. Peraecation. 
XXin.--The Revolution, 1685-1688. 

XXIV.>-The Revolution Settlement, 1688-1695. Settlement of the Chmx^. 
William's Comprehension Scheme. 
Gonclusion. 
Index. 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS 

''It is a bold departure from the traditional rendering of the nation's 
history. But a change was needed. Scotland has not hitherto had its 
Qax^ner."— SATURDAY REVIEW. 

''Mr. Mathieson in this very able work has made a notable addition to 
Scottish hiBtorical studies. He shows himself to be a complete master of his 
subject^ and his presentation of the facts is fresh and vigorous. His choeen 
ground is the battlefield of the sects, with none of which he identifies himself; 
but while he writes with singular independence of judgment and objectivity, 
he is far from being wanting in national sympathy and patriotism. Indeed, 
his aim is to discover and trace beneath the conflict of clerical parties, 
between themselves and with the State, an underlying moderate tradition — 
a tradition of patriotism, humanity, and culture ; and in pursuit of this quest 
at least Mr. Mathieson displays a decided bias in opposition to intolerance, 
bigotry, or persecution wherever found. Such a treatment of the subject is 
refreshingly rare; and though many of the author's strongly expressed 
judgments may be contested, it may safely be predicted that his thoughtful 
and suggestive book, which is never dull, will be read widely and with 
profit. "—A THEN A BUM, 

"Mr. Mathieson has not only availed himself of the mass of original 
authorities which are now accessible to the historian, but he has accomplished 
the not less important task of examining and collating the results of the 
labours of former historical students. He has also happOy surmounted the 
great danger of the modem historian — that of succumbing under the amount 
of detail presented for examination, and of writing a chronicle rather than a 
hiatory . "SPEA KER, 

" Although we demur to not a few of the statements in these volumes, we 
have nothing but praise for the ability, industry, and learning of the writer. 
A work such as this, which combines historical insight with a first-hand 
knowledge of facts and an excellent literary style, is assured of a permanent 
place in the literature of the Scottish Reformation.** — GUARDIAN, 

"Mr. Mathieson is a philosophic historian of real ability. The calmness 
and force of his analysis, his clear intuition of the connections between a cause 
and its most remote effects are surprising. He can pause to philosophise 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS— Con/wwd. 

while the ohftnictarii he u stodying ure being carried ftw&y hy pBuion or 
f&naticism into the perpetration of crimes nr excesses which throw ordinary 
people into nnrensoDiDg eicitemenl. Where partieanahip is almoaC universal, 
Mr. Mathieson is so perfectly well balanced tbat you could hardly tell to what 
party he beloDgs."— Father Pollen in THE MONTH. 

"Covenuiter and cavalier have alike found uumeTona sympathiaera in 
Scottish historians, but the moderates of the seventeenth century have waited 
till DOV for their historian. . . We gladly recognise the many merits of 
Mr. Mathieson'a book — ite wide knowledge, its breadth of view, and its calm- 
ness in the treatment of so vexed a period."— R. S. Rait in the ENQLISH 
HISTORICAL RBVIEW. 

" Mr. Mathieson'a brilliant work IB not a history of Scotland, but rather an 
interpretation of Scottish history during the eventful period with which he 
deals. . . One takes in general from this really valuable book an impression 
of reflective diaerimination and sound judpnent. The poise and aecurity at 
which, by such processes, the author has arrived have permitted bim to give 
free play to a gracefol and brilliant atylo, and to a certain demurely trenchant 
wit His portraits are remarkable." —.^J/£'if/Ci4JV HISTORICAL 
REVIEW. 

"On lira avec un vif int^rSt, car I'antear, tr^ au conrant du detail des 
^v^ementa. Bait lea dominer ; il en moutre I'enchainemeDt, leur action 
r^iproque et lee cons^qnences gdniirales pour la formation politique et 
intellectnalle du pii.ja."—BBVUB HISTOBIQUB. 

" From first to last there is not a dull page. With an immenae moss of 
detail, with endless controverBleB long since buried, Mr. Mathieaon, whilst 
omitting nothing of the slightest bearing on bia auhjact, has not allowed his 
narrative to be overwhelmed. Absolutely lucid, and yet at the aame time 
minutely detailed, Mr. Mathieson shows such a firm grasp of his facts that 
the reader need never pause as the narrative runs^amoothly along. . . With 
gr«at breadth of view, mastery of facta. Incidity of style, Mr. Mathieson 
combines remarkable apUtnde for telling phraseology."— If £',S3'df/jra7'£A 
RBVIBW. 

" Mr. Mathieaon's hook poaaeases the great merit of being impartial without 
being dull. He brings out the salient features of the important and intereat- 
ing period between the Reformation and the Revolution with great clearness, 
and establishes as a matt«r of history what with many of us was only afl 
opinion— namely, that the intenaa natiooalism of Scotland is tbe key to almos 
all the great changes, both Civil and EJccleaiaatical, which occurred in tha 
country during tbe Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. , . Mr. Mathiesoi 
shines in the delineation of character. His portraits of John Knox ani 
Maitland of Lethington are masterly, and his contrast between the two mei 
shonld be studied in detail"— STANDARD. 

" Mr. Mathieaon's literary workmanabip deaervea tbe heartiest conunenda 
t.im."—PALL ^ALL GAZETTE. 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS— CofKiwiied. 



€t 



We are glad to be able to welcome Mr. Mathieson as a new writer who 
shows in no stinted measure qualities which must assure him recognition 
amongst the very limited number of serious historians whose work commands 
more than passing attention. . His expositions of character are at once 

just and picturesque. Maitland of Lethington and John Knox, Hamilton and 
Argyll, Montrose and Claverhouse, Melville and Spottiswoode, Moray and 
Morton — all these are drawn with graphic power ; sometimes in an elaborate 
and analytic picture, sometimes by a few salient features — but always with 
the dominant aim of sweeping aside the fancy portraits of devotees and the 
exaggerations of caricaturists, and giving a balanced estimate in which virtues 
and defects are fairly weighed."— T'/AZ&X 

" Mr. Mathieson makes his first appearance as a Scottish historian and in 
this singularly able work he steps at once into the front rank. . . Mr. 
Mathieson has produced a work which shows exceptional lucidity of treatment, 
exactness and mastery of detail, and a detachment of mind which sometimes 
amounts almost to a ftiult,**— SCOTSMAN. 

" We are not sure that this very readable and remarkable book will be 
warmly welcomed by the average Scottish public, but we have no hemtation 
in saying that it is precisely the kind of book they ought to read. . . To 
the average Scotsman John Knox and the Covenanters are as much national 
heroes as Wallace and Bruce and Bums, and he is apt to resent any attempt 
at sceptical examination of their largely legendary renown. It is just such a 
criticism that the author of this work has undertaken, and there is no denying 
that the result is a very severe searching and iconoclastic, though not design- 
edly unfair or hostile, treatment of the theme."— 6^2/^^9(70 fT HERALD. 

" Mr. Mathieson has come with a fresh eye to the consideration of problems 
that have hitherto been used as Shibboleths ; and he is fearless in his exposure 
of traditional wtotb.**^DUNDBE ADVERTISER. 

"The history of the rapid change that followed the introduction of the 
Reformation into Scotland is admirably told in the late Mr. Gardiner's 
History of Englarid. And the same story with perhaps greater deamess and 
more recent information is as admirably described by Mr. Mathieson." — 

LIVERPOOL POST. 

''Mr. Mathieson's book should be read by every student of a period of 
history which must always be absorbing. Rarely indeed has a historian 
marshalled his facU so eAmirahly. "-^NEWCASTLE CHRONICLE. 

« An excellent and weighty contribution to Scottish history." — 

MANCHESTER GUARDIAN. 



GLASGOW: JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS, 

PCBUSHEBS TO THE UNmSESITY. 



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THE BORROWER WILL BE CHARGED 
ANOVEHDi/E ffi£ iFTHiS BOOKiS-NOf^ 
RETURNED TO THE LIBRARY ON OR 
BEFORE THE LAST DATE STAMPED 
BELOW. NON-RECEIPT OF OVERDUE 
NOTICES DOES NOT EXEMPT THE 
BORROWER FROM OVERDUE FEES. 



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