A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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When the Whigs--terrified by the defeat and expecting Dundee at Stirling
with the clans and the cavaliers of the Lowlands--heard of his fall,
their sorrow was changed into rejoicing. The cause of King James was
mortally wounded by the death of "the glory of the Grahams," who alone
could lead and keep together a Highland host. Deprived of his leadership
and distrustful of his successor, General Cannon, the clans gradually
left the Royal Standard. The Cameronian regiment, recruited from the
young men of the organised societies, had been ordered to occupy Dunkeld.
Here they were left isolated, "in the air," by Mackay or his
subordinates, and on August 21 these raw recruits, under Colonel Cleland,
who had fought at Drumclog, had to receive the attack of the Highlanders.
Cleland had fortified the Abbey church and the "castle," and his
Cameronians fired from behind walls and from loopholes with such success
that Cannon called off the clansmen, or could not bring them to a second
attack: both versions are given. Cleland fell in the fight; the clans
disbanded, and Mackay occupied the castle of Blair.

Three weeks later the Cameronians, being unpaid, mutinied; and Ross,
Annandale, and Polwarth, urging their demands for constitutional rights,
threw the Lowlands into a ferment. Crawford, whose manner of speech was
sanctimonious, was evicting from their parishes ministers who remained
true to Episcopacy, and would not pray for William and Mary. Polwarth
now went to London with an address to these Sovereigns framed by "the
Club," the party of liberty. But the other leaders of that party,
Annandale, Ross, and Montgomery of Skelmorley, all of them eager for
place and office, entered into a conspiracy of intrigue with the
Jacobites for James's restoration. In February 1690 the Club was
distracted; and to Melville, as Commissioner in the Scottish Parliament,
William gave orders that the Acts for re-establishing Presbytery and
abolishing lay patronage of livings were to be passed. Montgomery was
obliged to bid yet higher for the favour of the more extreme preachers
and devotees,--but he failed. In April the Lords of the Articles were
abolished at last, and freedom of parliamentary debate was thus secured.
The Westminster Confession was reinstated, and in May, after the last
remnants of a Jacobite force in the north had been surprised and
scattered or captured by Sir Thomas Livingstone at Cromdale Haugh (May
1), the alliance of Jacobites and of the Club broke down, and the leaders
of the Club saved themselves by playing the part of informers.

The new Act regarding the Kirk permitted the holding of Synods and
General Assemblies, to be summoned by permission of William or of the
Privy Council, with a Royal Commissioner present to restrain the
preachers from meddling, as a body, with secular politics. The Kirk was
to be organised by the "Sixty Bishops," the survivors of the ministers
ejected in 1663. The benefices of ejected Episcopalian conformists were
declared to be vacant. Lay patronage was annulled: the congregations had
the right to approve or disapprove of presentees. But the Kirk was
deprived of her old weapon, the attachment of civil penalties (that is
practical outlawry) to her sentences of excommunication (July 19, 1690).
The Covenant was silently dropped.

Thus ended, practically, the war between Kirk and State which had raged
for nearly a hundred and twenty years. The cruel torturing of Nevile
Payne, an English Jacobite taken in Scotland, showed that the new
sovereigns and Privy Council retained the passions and methods of the
old, but this was the last occasion of judicial torture for political
offences in Scotland. Payne was silent, but was illegally imprisoned
till his death.

The proceedings of the restored General Assembly were awaited with
anxiety by the Government. The extremists of the Remnant, the
"Cameronians," sent deputies to the Kirk. They were opposed to
acknowledging sovereigns who were "the head of the Prelatics" in England,
and they, not being supported by the Assembly, remained apart from the
Kirk and true to the Covenants.

Much had passed which William disliked--the abolition of patronage, the
persecution of Episcopalians--and Melville, in 1691, was removed by the
king from the Commissionership.

The Highlands were still unsettled. In June 1691 Breadalbane, at heart a
Jacobite, attempted to appease the chiefs by promises of money in
settlement of various feuds, especially that of the dispossessed Macleans
against the occupant of their lands, Argyll. Breadalbane was known by
Hill, the commander of Fort William at Inverlochy, to be dealing between
the clans and James, as well as between William and the clans. William,
then campaigning in Flanders, was informed of this fact, thought it of no
importance, and accepted a truce from July 1 to October 1 with Buchan,
who commanded such feeble forces as still stood for James in the north.
At the same time William threatened the clans, in the usual terms, with
"fire and sword," if the chiefs did not take the oaths to his Government
by January 1, 1692. Money and titles under the rank of earldoms were to
be offered to Macdonald of Sleat, Maclean of Dowart, Lochiel, Glengarry,
and Clanranald, if they would come in. All declined the bait--if
Breadalbane really fished with it. It is plain, contrary to Lord
Macaulay's statement, that Sir John Dalrymple, William's trusted man for
Scotland, at this time hoped for Breadalbane's success in pacifying the
clans. But Dalrymple, by December 1691, wrote, "I think the Clan Donell
must be rooted out, and Lochiel." He could not mean that he hoped to
massacre so large a part of the population. He probably meant by
"punitive expeditions" in the modern phrase--by "fire and sword," in the
style current then--to break up the recalcitrants. Meanwhile it was
Dalrymple's hope to settle ancient quarrels about the "superiorities" of
Argyll over the Camerons, and the question of compensation for the lands
reft by the Argyll family from the Macleans.

Before December 31, in fear of "fire and sword," the chiefs submitted,
except the greatest, Glengarry, and the least in power, MacIan or
Macdonald, with his narrow realm of Glencoe, whence his men were used to
plunder the cattle of their powerful neighbour, Breadalbane. Dalrymple
now desired not peace, but the sword. By January 9, 1692, Dalrymple, in
London, heard that Glencoe had come in (he had accidentally failed to
come in by January 1), and Dalrymple was "sorry." By January 11
Dalrymple knew that Glencoe had not taken the oath before January 1, and
rejoiced in the chance to "root out that damnable sect." In fact, in the
end of December Glencoe had gone to Fort William to take the oaths before
Colonel Hill, but found that he must do so before the Sheriff of the
shire at remote Inveraray. Various accidents of weather delayed him; the
Sheriff also was not at Inveraray when Glencoe arrived, but administered
the oaths on January 6. The document was taken to Edinburgh, where Lord
Stair, Dalrymple's father, and others caused it to be deleted. Glengarry
was still unsworn, but Glengarry was too strong to be "rooted out";
William ordered his commanding officer, Livingstone, "to extirpate that
sect of thieves," the Glencoe men (January 16). On the same day
Dalrymple sent down orders to hem in the MacIans, and to guard all the
passes, by land or water, from their glen. Of the actual _method_ of
massacre employed Dalrymple may have been ignorant; but orders "from
Court" to "spare none," and to take no prisoners, were received by
Livingstone on January 23.

On February 1, Campbell of Glenlyon, with 120 men, was hospitably
received by MacIan, whose son, Alexander, had married Glenlyon's niece.
On February 12, Hill sent 400 of his Inverlochy garrison to Glencoe to
join hands with 400 of Argyll's regiment, under Major Duncanson. These
troops were to guard the southern passes out of Glencoe, while Hamilton
was to sweep the passes from the north.

At 5 A.M. on February 13 the soldier-guests of MacIan began to slay and
plunder. Men, women, and children were shot or bayoneted, 1000 head of
cattle were driven away; but Hamilton arrived too late. Though the aged
chief had been shot at once, his sons took to the hills, and the greater
part of the population escaped with their lives, thanks to Hamilton's
dilatoriness. "All I regret is that any of the sect got away," wrote
Dalrymple on March 5, "and there is necessity to prosecute them to the
utmost." News had already reached London "that they are murdered in
their beds." The newspapers, however, were silenced, and the story was
first given to Europe in April by the 'Paris Gazette.' The crime was
unprecedented: it had no precedent, admits of no apology. Many an
expedition of "fire and sword" had occurred, but never had there been a
midnight massacre "under trust" of hosts by guests. King William, on
March 6, went off to his glorious wars on the Continent, probably hoping
to hear that the fugitive MacIans were still being "prosecuted"--if,
indeed, he thought of them at all. But by October they were received
into his peace.

William was more troubled by the General Assembly, which refused to take
oaths of allegiance to him and his wife, and actually appointed a date
for an Assembly without his consent. When he gave it, it was on
condition that the members should take the oaths of allegiance. They
refused: it was the old deadlock, but William at the last moment withdrew
from the imposition of oaths of allegiance--moved, it is said, by Mr
Carstares, "Cardinal Carstares," who had been privy to the Rye House
Plot. Under Queen Anne, however, the conscientious preachers were
compelled to take the oaths like mere laymen.

CHAPTER XXVIII. DARIEN.

The Scottish Parliament of May-July 1695, held while William was abroad,
saw the beginning of evils for Scotland. The affair of Glencoe was
examined into by a Commission, headed by Tweeddale, William's
Commissioner: several Judges sat in it. Their report cleared William
himself: Dalrymple, it was found, had "exceeded his instructions." Hill
was exonerated. Hamilton, who commanded the detachment that arrived too
late, fled the country. William was asked to send home for trial
Duncanson and other butchers who were with his army. The king was also
invited to deal with Dalrymple as he thought fit. He thought fit to give
Dalrymple an indemnity, and made him Viscount Stair, with a grant of
money, but did not retain him in office. He did not send the subaltern
butchers home for trial. Many years later, in 1745, the MacIans insisted
on acting as guards of the house and family of the descendant of Campbell
of Glenlyon, the guest and murderer of the chief of Glencoe.

Perhaps by way of a sop to the Scots, William allowed an Act for the
Establishment of a Scottish East India Company to be passed on June 20,
1695. He afterwards protested that in this matter he had been "badly
served," probably meaning "misinformed." The result was the Darien
Expedition, a great financial disaster for Scotland, and a terrible
grievance. Hitherto since the Union of the Crowns all Scottish efforts
to found trading companies, as in England, had been wrecked on English
jealousy: there had always been, and to this new East India Company there
was, a rival, a pre-existing English company. Scottish Acts for
protection of home industries were met by English retaliation in a war of
tariffs. Scotland had prohibited the exportation of her raw materials,
such as wool, but was cut off from English and other foreign markets for
her cloths. The Scots were more successful in secret and unlegalised
trading with their kinsmen in the American colonies.

The Scottish East India Company's aim was to sell Scottish goods in many
places, India for example; and it was secretly meant to found a factory
and central mart on the isthmus of Panama. For these ends capital was
withdrawn from the new and unsuccessful manufacturing companies. The
great scheme was the idea of William Paterson (born 1658), the
far-travelled and financially-speculative son of a farmer in
Dumfriesshire. He was the "projector," or one of the projectors, of the
Bank of England of 1694, investing 2000 pounds. He kept the Darien part
of his scheme for an East India Company in the background, and it seems
that William, when he granted a patent to that company, knew nothing of
this design to settle in or near the Panama isthmus, which was quite
clearly within the Spanish sphere of influence. When the philosopher
John Locke heard of the scheme, he wished England to steal the idea and
seize a port in Darien: it thus appears that he too was unaware that to
do so was to inflict an insult and injury on Spain. There is reason to
suppose that the grant of the patent to the East India Company was
obtained by bribing some Scottish politician or politicians unnamed,
though one name is not beyond probable conjecture.

In any case Paterson admitted English capitalists, who took up half of
the shares, as the Act of Patent permitted them to do. By December
William was writing that he "had been ill-served by some of my
Ministers." He had no notice of the details of the Act of Patent till he
had returned to England, and found English capitalists and the English
Parliament in a fury. The Act committed William to interposing his
authority if the ships of the company were detained by foreign powers,
and gave the adventurers leave to take "reparation" by force from their
assailants (this they later did when they captured in the Firth of Forth
an English vessel, the _Worcester_).

On the opening of the books of the new company in London (October 1695)
there had been a panic, and a fall of twenty points in the shares of the
English East India Company. The English Parliament had addressed William
in opposition to the Scots Company. The English subscribers of half the
paid up capital were terrorised, and sold out. Later, Hamburg
investments were cancelled through William's influence. All lowland
Scotland hurried to invest--in the dark--for the Darien part of the
scheme was practically a secret: it was vaguely announced that there was
to be a settlement somewhere, "in Africa or the Indies, or both."
Materials of trade, such as wigs, combs, Bibles, fish-hooks, and
kid-gloves, were accumulated. Offices were built--later used as an
asylum for pauper lunatics.

When, in July 1697, the secret of Panama came out, the English Council of
Trade examined Dampier, the voyager, and (September) announced that the
territory had never been Spain's, and that England ought to anticipate
Scotland by seizing Golden Island and the port on the mainland.

In July 1698 the Council of the intended Scots colony was elected, bought
three ships and two tenders, and despatched 1200 settlers with two
preachers, but with most inadequate provisions, and flour as bad as that
paid to Assynt for the person of Montrose. On October 30, in the Gulf of
Darien they found natives who spoke Spanish; they learned that the
nearest gold mines were in Spanish hands, and that the chiefs were
carrying Spanish insignia of office. By February 1699 the Scots and
Spaniards were exchanging shots. Presently a Scottish ship, cruising in
search of supplies, was seized by the Spanish at Carthagena; the men lay
in irons at Seville till 1700. Spain complained to William, and the
Scots seized a merchant ship. The English Governor of Jamaica forbade
his people, by virtue of a letter addressed by the English Government to
all the colonies, to grant supplies to the starving Scots, most of whom
sailed away from the colony in June, and suffered terrible things by sea
and land. Paterson returned to Scotland. A new expedition which left
Leith on May 12, 1699, found at Darien some Scots in two ships, and
remained on the scene, distracted by quarrels, till February 1700, when
Campbell of Fonab, sent with provisions in the _Speedy Return_ from
Scotland, arrived to find the Spaniards assailing the adventurers. He
cleared the Spaniards out of their fort in fifteen minutes, but the
Colonial Council learned that Spain was launching a small but adequate
armada against them. After an honourable resistance the garrison
capitulated, and marched out with colours flying (March 30). This
occurred just when Scotland was celebrating the arrival of the news of
Fonab's gallant feat of arms.

At home the country was full of discontent: William's agent at Hamburg
had prevented foreigners from investing in the Scots company. English
colonists had been forbidden to aid the Scottish adventurers. Two
hundred thousand pounds, several ships, and many lives had been lost. "It
is very like 1641," wrote an onlooker, so fierce were the passions that
raged against William. The news of the surrender of the colonists
increased the indignation. The king refused (November 1700) to gratify
the Estates by regarding the Darien colony as a legal enterprise. To do
so was to incur war with Spain and the anger of his English subjects. Yet
the colony had been legally founded in accordance with the terms of the
Act of Patent. While the Scots dwelt on this fact, William replied that
the colony being extinct, circumstances were altered. The Estates voted
that Darien _was_ a lawful colony, and (1701) in an address to the Crown
demanded compensation for the nation's financial losses. William replied
with expressions of sympathy and hopes that the two kingdoms would
consider a scheme of Union. A Bill for Union brought in through the
English Lords was rejected by the English Commons.

There was hardly an alternative between Union and War between the two
nations. War there would have been had the exiled Prince of Wales been
brought up as a Presbyterian. His father James VII. died a few months
before William III. passed away on March 7, 1702. Louis XIV.
acknowledged James, Prince of Wales, as James III. of England and Ireland
and VIII, of Scotland; and Anne, the boy's aunt, ascended the throne. As
a Stuart she was not unwelcome to the Jacobites, who hoped for various
chances, as Anne was believed to be friendly to her nephew.

In 1701 was passed an Act for preventing wrongous imprisonment and
against undue delay in trials. But Nevile Payne continued to be untried
and illegally imprisoned. Offenders, generally, could "run their
letters" and protest, if kept in durance untried for sixty days.

The Revolution of 1688-89, with William's very reluctant concessions, had
placed Scotland in entirely new relations with England. Scotland could
now no longer be "governed by the pen" from London; Parliament could no
longer be bridled and led, at English will, by the Lords of the Articles.
As the religious mainspring of Scottish political life, the domination of
the preachers had been weakened by the new settlement of the Kirk; as the
country was now set on commercial enterprises, which England everywhere
thwarted, it was plain that the two kingdoms could not live together on
the existing terms. Union there must be, or conquest, as under Cromwell;
yet an English war of conquest was impossible, because it was impossible
for Scotland to resist. Never would the country renew, as in the old
days, the alliance of France, for a French alliance meant the acceptance
by Scotland of a Catholic king.

England, on her side, if Union came, was accepting a partner with very
poor material resources. As regards agriculture, for example, vast
regions were untilled, or tilled only in the straths and fertile spots by
the hardy clansmen, who could not raise oats enough for their own
subsistence, and periodically endured famines. In "the ill years" of
William, years of untoward weather, distress had been extreme. In the
fertile Lowlands that old grievance, insecurity of tenure, and the
raising of rents in proportion to improvements made by the tenants, had
baffled agriculture. Enclosures were necessary for the protection of the
crops, but even if tenants or landlords had the energy or capital to make
enclosures, the neighbours destroyed them under cloud of night. The old
labour-services were still extorted; the tenant's time and strength were
not his own. Land was exhausted by absence of fallows and lack of
manure. The country was undrained, lochs and morasses covered what is
now fertile land, and hillsides now in pasture were under the plough. The
once prosperous linen trade had suffered from the war of tariffs.

The life of the burghs, political and municipal and trading, was little
advanced on the mediaeval model. The independent Scot steadily resisted
instruction from foreign and English craftsmen in most of the mechanical
arts. Laws for the encouragement of trades were passed and bore little
fruit. Companies were founded and were ruined by English tariffs and
English competition. The most energetic of the population went abroad,
here they prospered in commerce and in military service, while an
enormous class of beggars lived on the hospitality of their neighbours at
home. In such conditions of inequality it was plain that, if there was
to be a Union, the adjustment of proportions of taxation and of
representation in Parliament would require very delicate handling, while
the differences of Church Government were certain to cause jealousies and
opposition.

CHAPTER XXIX. PRELIMINARIES TO THE UNION.

The Scottish Parliament was not dissolved at William's death, nor did it
meet at the time when, legally, it ought to have met. Anne, in a
message, expressed hopes that it would assent to Union, and promised to
concur in any reasonable scheme for compensating the losers by the Darien
scheme. When Parliament met, Queensberry, being Commissioner, soon found
it necessary (June 30, 1702) to adjourn. New officers of State were then
appointed, and there was a futile meeting between English and Scottish
Commissioners chosen by the Queen to consider the Union.

Then came a General Election (1703), which gave birth to the last
Scottish Parliament. The Commissioner, Queensberry, and the other
officers of State, "the Court party," were of course for Union; among
them was prominent that wavering Earl of Mar who was so active in
promoting the Union, and later precipitated the Jacobite rising of 1715.
There were in Parliament the party of Courtiers, friends of England and
Union; the party of Cavaliers, that is Jacobites; and the Country party,
led by the Duke of Hamilton, who was in touch with the Jacobites, but was
quite untrustworthy, and much suspected of desiring the Crown of Scotland
for himself.

Queensberry cozened the Cavaliers--by promises of tolerating their
Episcopalian religion--into voting a Bill recognising Anne, and then
broke his promise. The Bill for tolerating worship as practised by the
Episcopalians was dropped; for the Commissioner of the General Assembly
of the Kirk declared that such toleration was "the establishment of
iniquity by law."

Queensberry's one aim was to get Supply voted, for war with France had
begun. But the Country and the Cavalier parties refused Supply till an
Act of Security for religion, liberty, law, and trade should be passed.
The majority decided that, on the death of Anne, the Estates should name
as king of Scotland a Protestant representative of the House of Stewart,
who should not be the successor to the English crown, save under
conditions guaranteeing Scotland as a sovereign state, with frequent
Parliaments, and security for Scottish navigation, colonies, trade, and
religion (the Act of Security).

It was also decided that landholders and the burghs should drill and arm
their tenants and dependants--if Protestant. Queensberry refused to pass
this Act of Security; Supply, on the other side, was denied, and after a
stormy scene Queensberry prorogued Parliament (September 16, 1703).

In the excitement, Atholl had deserted the Court party and voted with the
majority. He had a great Highland following, he might throw it on the
Jacobite side, and the infamous intriguer, Simon Frazer (the Lord Lovat
of 1745), came over from France and betrayed to Queensberry a real or a
feigned intrigue of Atholl with France and with the Ministers of James
VIII., called "The Pretender."

Atholl was the enemy of Frazer, a canting, astute, and unscrupulous
ruffian. Queensberry conceived that in a letter given to him by Lovat he
had irrefutable evidence against Atholl as a conspirator, and he allowed
Lovat to return to France, where he was promptly imprisoned as a traitor.
Atholl convinced Anne of his own innocence, and Queensberry fell under
ridicule and suspicion, lost his office of Commissioner, and was
superseded by Tweeddale. In England the whole complex affair of Lovat's
revelations was known as "The Scottish Plot"; Hamilton was involved, or
feared he might be involved, and therefore favoured the new proposals of
the Courtiers and English party for placing limits on the prerogative of
Anne's successor, whoever he might be.

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