A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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In the Estates (July 1704), after months passed in constitutional
chicanery, the last year's Act of Security was passed and touched with
the sceptre; and the House voted Supply for six months. But owing to a
fierce dispute on private business--namely, the raising of the question,
"Who were the persons accused in England of being engaged in the
'Scottish Plot'?"--no hint of listening to proposals for Union was
uttered. Who could propose, as Commissioners to arrange Union, men who
were involved--or in England had been accused of being involved--in the
plot? Scotland had not yet consented that whoever succeeded Anne in
England should also succeed in Scotland. They retained a means of
putting pressure on England, the threat of having a separate king; they
had made and were making military preparations (drill once a-month!), and
England took up the gauntlet. The menacing attitude of Scotland was
debated on with much heat in the English Upper House (November 29), and a
Bill passed by the Commons declared the retaliatory measures which
England was ready to adopt.

It was at once proved that England could put a much harder pinch on
Scotland than Scotland could inflict on England. Scottish drovers were
no longer to sell cattle south of the Border, Scottish ships trading with
France were to be seized, Scottish coals and linen were to be excluded,
and regiments of regular troops were to be sent to the Border if Scotland
did not accept the Hanoverian succession before Christmas 1705. If it
came to war, Scotland could expect no help from her ancient ally, France,
unless she raised the standard of King James. As he was a Catholic, the
Kirk would prohibit this measure, so it was perfectly clear to every
plain man that Scotland must accept the Union and make the best bargain
she could.

In spring 1705 the new Duke of Argyll, "Red John of the Battles," a man
of the sword and an accomplished orator, was made Commissioner, and, of
course, favoured the Union, as did Queensberry and the other officers of
State. Friction between the two countries arose in spring, when an
Edinburgh jury convicted, and the mob insisted on the execution of, an
English Captain Green, whose ship, the _Worcester_, had been seized in
the Forth by Roderick Mackenzie, Secretary of the Scottish East India
Company. Green was supposed to have captured and destroyed a ship of the
Company's, the _Speedy Return_, which never did return. It was not
proved that this ship had been Green's victim, but that he had committed
acts of piracy is certain. The hanging of Green increased the animosity
of the sister kingdoms.

When Parliament met, June 28, 1705, it was a parliament of groups.
Tweeddale and others, turned out of office in favour of Argyll's
Government, formed the Flying Squadron (_Squadrone volante_), voting in
whatever way would most annoy the Government. Argyll opened by
proposing, as did the Queen's Message, the instant discussion of the
Union (July 3). The House preferred to deliberate on anything else, and
the leader of the Jacobites or Cavaliers, Lockhart of Carnwath, a very
able sardonic man, saw that this was, for Jacobite ends, a tactical
error. The more time was expended the more chance had Queensberry to win
votes for the Union. Fletcher of Saltoun, an independent and eloquent
patriot and republican, wasted time by impossible proposals. Hamilton
brought forward, and by only two votes lost, a proposal which England
would never have dreamed of accepting. Canny Jacobites, however,
abstained from voting, and thence Lockhart dates the ruin of his country.
Supply, at all events, was granted, and on that Argyll adjourned. The
queen was to select Commissioners of both countries to negotiate the
Treaty of Union; among the Commissioners Lockhart was the only Cavalier,
and he was merely to watch the case in the Jacobite interest.

The meetings of the two sets of Commissioners began at Whitehall on April
16. It was arranged that all proposals, modifications, and results
should pass in writing, and secrecy was to be complete.

The Scots desired Union with Home Rule, with a separate Parliament. The
English would negotiate only on the lines that the Union was to be
complete, "incorporating," with one Parliament for both peoples. By
April 25, 1706, the Scots Commissioners saw that on this point they must
acquiesce; the defeat of the French at Ramilies (May 23) proved that,
even if they could have leaned on the French, France was a broken reed.
International reciprocity in trade, complete freedom of trade at home and
abroad, they did obtain.

As England, thanks to William III. with his incessant Continental wars,
had already a great National debt, of which Scotland owed nothing, and as
taxation in England was high, while Scottish taxes under the Union would
rise to the same level, and to compensate for the Darien losses, the
English granted a pecuniary "Equivalent" (May 10). They also did not
raise the Scottish taxes on windows, lights, coal, malt, and salt to the
English level, that of war-taxation. The Equivalent was to purchase the
Scottish shares in the East India Company, with interest at five per cent
up to May 1, 1707. That grievance of the shareholders was thus healed,
what public debt Scotland owed was to be paid (the Equivalent was about
400,000 pounds), and any part of the money unspent was to be given to
improve fisheries and manufactures.

The number of Scottish members of the British Parliament was fixed at
forty-five. On this point the Scots felt that they were hardly used; the
number of their elected representatives of peers in the Lords was
sixteen. Scotland retained her Courts of Law; the feudal jurisdictions
which gave to Argyll and others almost princely powers were retained, and
Scottish procedure in trials continued to vary much from the English
model. Appeals from the Court of Session had previously been brought
before the Parliament of Scotland; henceforth they were to be heard by
the Judges, Scots and English, in the British House of Lords. On July
23, 1706, the treaty was completed; on October 3 the Scottish Parliament
met to debate on it, with Queensberry as Commissioner. Harley, the
English Minister, sent down the author of 'Robinson Crusoe' to watch,
spy, argue, persuade, and secretly report, and De Foe's letters contain
the history of the session.

The parties in Parliament were thus variously disposed: the Cavaliers,
including Hamilton, had been approached by Louis XIV. and King James (the
Pretender), but had not committed themselves. Queensberry always knew
every risky step taken by Hamilton, who began to take several, but in
each case received a friendly warning which he dared not disregard. At
the opposite pole, the Cameronians and other extreme Presbyterians
loathed the Union, and at last (November-December) a scheme for the
Cameronians and the clans of Angus and Perthshire to meet in arms in
Edinburgh and clear out the Parliament caused much alarm. But Hamilton,
before the arrangement came to a head, was terrorised, and the intentions
of the Cameronians, as far as their records prove, had never been
officially ratified by their leaders. {250} There was plenty of popular
rioting during the session, but Argyll rode into Edinburgh at the head of
the Horse Guards, and Leven held all the gates with drafts from the
garrison of the castle. The Commissioners of the General Assembly made
protests on various points, but were pacified after the security of the
Kirk had been guaranteed. Finally, Hamilton prepared a parliamentary
mine, which would have blown the Treaty of Union sky-high, but on the
night when he should have appeared in the House and set the match to his
petard--he had toothache! This was the third occasion on which he had
deserted the Cavaliers; the Opposition fell to pieces. The _Squadrone
volante_ and the majority of the peers supported the Bill, which was
passed. On January 16, 1707, the Treaty of Union was touched with the
sceptre, "and there is the end of an auld sang," said Seafield. In May
1707 a solemn service was held at St Paul's to commemorate the Union.

There was much friction in the first year of the Union over excisemen and
tax-collectors: smuggling began to be a recognised profession. Meanwhile,
since 1707, a Colonel Hooke had been acting in Scotland, nominally in
Jacobite, really rather in French interests. Hooke's intrigues were in
part betrayed by De Foe's agent, Ker of Kersland, an amusingly impudent
knave, and were thwarted by jealousies of Argyll and Hamilton. By
deceptive promises (for he was himself deceived into expecting the aid of
the Ulster Protestants) Hooke induced Louis XIV. to send five men-of-war,
twenty-one frigates, and only two transports, to land James in Scotland
(March 1708). The equinoctial gales and the severe illness of James, who
insisted on sailing, delayed the start; the men on the outlook for the
fleet were intoxicated, and Forbin, the French commander, observing
English ships of war coming towards the Firth of Forth, fled, refusing
James's urgent entreaties to be landed anywhere on the coast (March 24).
It was believed that had he landed only with a valet the discontented
country would have risen for their native king.

In Parliament (1710-1711) the Cavalier Scottish members, by Tory support,
secured the release from prison of a Rev. Mr Greenshields, an
Episcopalian who prayed for Queen Anne, indeed, but had used the liturgy.
The preachers were also galled by the imposition on them of an abjuration
oath, compelling them to pray for prelatical Queen Anne. Lay patronage
of livings was also restored (1712) after many vicissitudes, and this
thorn rankled in the Kirk, causing ever-widening strife for more than a
century.

The imposition of a malt tax produced so much discontent that even
Argyll, with all the Scottish members of Parliament, was eager for the
repeal of the Act of Union, and proposed it in the House of Peers, when
it was defeated by a small majority. In 1712, when about to start on a
mission to France, Hamilton was slain in a duel by Lord Mohun. According
to a statement of Lockhart's, "Cavaliers were to look for the best" from
Hamilton's mission: it is fairly clear that he was to bring over James in
disguise to England, as in Thackeray's novel, 'Esmond.' But the sword of
Mohun broke the Jacobite plans. Other hopes expired when Bolingbroke and
Harley quarrelled, and Queen Anne died (August 1, 1714). "The best cause
in Europe was lost," cried Bishop Atterbury, "for want of spirit." He
would have proclaimed James as king, but no man supported him, and the
Elector of Hanover, George I., peacefully accepted the throne.

CHAPTER XXX. GEORGE I.

For a year the Scottish Jacobites, and Bolingbroke, who fled to France
and became James's Minister, mismanaged the affairs of that most
unfortunate of princes. By February 1715 the Earl of Mar, who had been
distrusted and disgraced by George I., was arranging with the clans for a
rising, while aid from Charles XII. of Sweden was expected from March to
August 1715. It is notable that Charles had invited Dean Swift to visit
his Court, when Swift was allied with Bolingbroke and Oxford. From the
author of 'Gulliver' Charles no doubt hoped to get a trustworthy account
of their policy. The fated rising of 1715 was occasioned by the Duke of
Berwick's advice to James that he must set forth to Scotland or lose his
honour. The prince therefore, acting hastily on news which, two or three
days later, proved to be false, in a letter to Mar fixed August 10 for a
rising. The orders were at once countermanded, when news proving their
futility was received, but James's messenger, Allan Cameron, was detained
on the road, and Mar, not waiting for James's answer to his own last
despatch advising delay, left London for Scotland without a commission;
on August 27 held an Assembly of the chiefs, and, _still without a
commission from James_, raised the standard of the king on September 6.
{254a}

The folly of Mar was consummate. He knew that Ormonde, the hope of the
English Jacobites, had deserted his post and had fled to France.

Meanwhile Louis XIV. was dying; he died on August 30, and the Regent
d'Orleans, at the utmost, would only connive at, not assist, James's
enterprise.

Everything was contrary, everywhere was ignorance and confusion. Lord
John Drummond's hopeful scheme for seizing Edinburgh Castle (September 8)
was quieted _pulveris exigui jactu_, "the gentlemen were powdering their
hair"--drinking at a tavern--and bungled the business. The folly of
Government offered a chance: in Scotland they had but 2000 regulars at
Stirling, where "Forth bridles the wild Highlandman." Mar, who promptly
occupied Perth, though he had some 12,000 broadswords, continued till the
end to make Perth his headquarters. A Montrose, a Dundee, even a Prince
Charles, would have "masked" Argyll at Stirling and seized Edinburgh. In
October 21-November 3, Berwick, while urging James to sail, absolutely
refused to accompany him. The plans of Ormonde for a descent on England
were betrayed by Colonel Maclean, in French service (November 4). In
disguise and narrowly escaping from murderous agents of Stair (British
ambassador to France) on his road, {254b} James journeyed to St Malo
(November 8).

In Scotland the Macgregors made a futile attempt on Dumbarton Castle,
while Glengarry and the Macleans advanced on Inveraray Castle, negotiated
with Argyll's brother, the Earl of Islay, and marched back to
Strathfillan. In Northumberland Forster and Derwentwater, with some
Catholic fox-hunters, in Galloway the pacific Viscount Kenmure, cruised
vaguely about and joined forces. Mackintosh of Borlum, by a
well-concealed movement, carried a Highland detachment of 1600 men across
the Firth of Forth by boats (October 12-13), with orders to join Forster
and Kenmure and arouse the Border. But on approaching Edinburgh
Mackintosh found Argyll with 500 dragoons ready to welcome him; Mar took
no advantage of Argyll's absence from Stirling, and Mackintosh, when
Argyll returned thither, joined Kenmure and Forster, occupied Kelso, and
marched into Lancashire. The Jacobite forces were pitifully
ill-supplied, they had very little ammunition (the great charge against
Bolingbroke was that he sent none from France), they seem to have had no
idea that powder could be made by the art of man; they were torn by
jealousies, and dispirited by their observation of Mar's incompetence.

We cannot pursue in detail the story of the futile campaign. On November
12 the mixed Highland, Lowland, and English command found itself cooped
up in Preston, and after a very gallant defence of the town the English
leaders surrendered to the king's mercy, after arranging an armistice
which made it impossible for Mackintosh to cut his way through the
English ranks and retreat to the north. About 1600 prisoners were taken.
Derwentwater and Kenmure were later executed. Forster and Nithsdale made
escapes; Charles Wogan, a kinsman of the chivalrous Wogan of 1650, and
Mackintosh, with six others, forced their way out of Newgate prison on
the night before their trial. Wogan was to make himself heard of again.
Mar had thrown away his Highlanders, with little ammunition and without
orders, on a perfectly aimless and hopeless enterprise.

Meanwhile he himself, at Perth, had been doing nothing, while in the
north, Simon Frazer (Lord Lovat) escaped from his French prison, raised
his clan and took the castle of Inverness for King George. He thus
earned a pardon for his private and public crimes, and he lived to ruin
the Jacobite cause and lose his own head in 1745-46.

While the north, Ross-shire and Inverness, were daunted and thwarted by
the success of Lovat, Mar led his whole force from Perth to Dunblane,
apparently in search of a ford over Forth. His Frazers and many of his
Gordons deserted on November 11; on November 12 Mar, at Ardoch (the site
of an old Roman camp), learned that Argyll was marching through Dunblane
to meet him. Next day Mar's force occupied the crest of rising ground on
the wide swell of Sheriffmuir: his left was all disorderly; horse mixed
with foot; his right, with the fighting clans, was well ordered, but the
nature of the ground hid the two wings of the army from each other. On
the right the Macdonalds and Macleans saw Clanranald fall, and on
Glengarry's cry, "Vengeance to-day!" they charged with the claymore and
swept away the regulars of Argyll as at Killiecrankie and Prestonpans.
But, as the clans pursued and slew, their officers whispered that their
own centre and left were broken and flying. Argyll had driven them to
Allan Water; his force, returning, came within close range of the
victorious right of Mar. "Oh, for one hour of Dundee!" cried Gordon of
Glenbucket, but neither party advanced to the shock. Argyll retired
safely to Dunblane, while Mar deserted his guns and powder-carts, and
hurried to Perth. He had lost the gallant young Earl of Strathmore and
the brave Clanranald; on Argyll's side his brother Islay was wounded, and
the Earl of Forfar was slain. Though it was a drawn battle, it proved
that Mar could not move: his forces began to scatter; Huntly was said to
have behaved ill. It was known that Dutch auxiliaries were to reinforce
Argyll, and men began to try to make terms of surrender. Huntly rode off
to his own country, and on December 22 (old style) James landed at
Peterhead.

James had no lack of personal courage. He had charged again and again at
Malplaquet with the Household cavalry of Louis XIV., and he had
encountered great dangers of assassination on his way to St Malo. But
constant adversity had made him despondent and resigned, while he saw
facts as they really were with a sad lucidity. When he arrived in his
kingdom the Whig clans of the north had daunted Seaforth's Mackenzies,
while in the south Argyll, with his Dutch and other fresh reinforcements,
had driven Mar's men out of Fife. Writing to Bolingbroke, James
described the situation. Mar, with scarcely any ammunition, was facing
Argyll with 11,000 men; the north was held in force by the Whig clans,
Mackays, Rosses, Munroes, and Frazers; deep snow alone delayed the
advance of Argyll, now stimulated by the hostile Cadogan, Marlborough's
favourite, and it was perfectly plain that all was lost.

For the head of James 100,000 pounds was offered by Hanoverian chivalry:
he was suffering from fever and ague; the Spanish gold that had at last
been sent to him was lost at sea off Dundee, and it is no wonder that
James, never gay, presented to his troops a disconsolate and discouraging
aspect.

On January 29 his army evacuated Perth; James wept at the order to burn
the villages on Argyll's line of march, and made a futile effort to
compensate the people injured. From Montrose (February 3-14) he wrote
for aid to the French Regent, but next day, urged by Mar, and unknown to
his army, he, with Mar, set sail for France. This evasion was doubtless
caused by a circumstance unusual in warfare: there was a price of 100,000
pounds on James's head, moreover his force had not one day's supply of
powder. Marshal Keith (brother of the Earl Marischal who retreated to
the isles) says that perhaps one day's supply of powder might be found at
Aberdeen. Nevertheless the fighting clans were eager to meet Argyll, and
would have sold their lives at a high price. They scattered to their
western fastnesses. The main political result, apart from executions and
the passing of forfeited estates into the management of that noted
economist, Sir Richard Steele, and other commissioners, was--the disgrace
of Argyll. He, who with a petty force had saved Scotland, was
represented by Cadogan and by his political enemies as dilatory and
disaffected! The Duke lost all his posts, and in 1716 (when James had
hopes from Sweden) Islay, Argyll's brother, was negotiating with Jacobite
agents. James was creating him a peer of England!

In Scotland much indignation was aroused by the sending of Scottish
prisoners of war out of the kingdom for trial--namely, to Carlisle--and
by other severities. The Union had never been more unpopular: the
country looked on itself as conquered, and had no means of resistance,
for James, now residing at Avignon, was a Catholic, and any insults and
injuries from England were more tolerable than a restored nationality
with a Catholic king.

Into the Jacobite hopes and intrigues, the eternal web which from 1689 to
1763 was ever being woven and broken, it is impossible here to enter,
though, in the now published Stuart Papers, the details are well known.
James was driven from Avignon to Italy, to Spain, finally to live a
pensioner at Rome. The luckless attempt of the Earl Marischal, Keith,
his brother, and Lord George Murray, brother of the Duke of Atholl, to
invade Scotland on the west with a small Spanish force, was crushed on
June 10, 1719, in the pass of Glenshiel.

Two or three months later, James, returning from Spain, married the fair
and hapless Princess Clementina Sobieska, whom Charles Wogan, in an
enterprise truly romantic, had rescued from prison at Innspruck and
conveyed across the Alps. From this wedding, made wretched by the
disappointment of the bride with her melancholy lord,--always busied with
political secrets from which she was excluded,--was born, on December 31,
1720, Charles Edward Stuart: from his infancy the hope of the Jacobite
party; from his cradle surrounded by the intrigues, the jealousies, the
adulations of an exiled Court, and the quarrels of Protestants and
Catholics, Irish, Scottish, and English. Thus, among changes of tutors
and ministers, as the discovery or suspicion of treachery, the bigotry of
Clementina, and the pressure of other necessities might permit, was that
child reared whose name, at least, has received the crown of Scottish
affection and innumerable tributes of Scottish song.

CHAPTER XXXI. THE ARGATHELIANS AND THE SQUADRONE.

Leaving the fortunes of the Jacobite party at their lowest ebb, and
turning to the domestic politics of Scotland, after 1719, we find that if
it be happiness to have no history, Scotland had much reason to be
content. There was but a dull personal strife between the faction of
Argyll and his brother Islay (called the "Argathelians," from the
Latinised _Argathelia_, or Argyll), and the other faction known, since
the Union, as the _Squadrone volante_, or Flying Squadron, who professed
to be patriotically independent. As to Argyll, he had done all that man
might do for George I. But, as we saw, the reports of Cadogan and the
jealousy of George (who is said to have deemed Argyll too friendly with
his detested heir) caused the disgrace of the Duke in 1716, and the
_Squadrone_ held the spoils of office. But in February-April 1719 George
reversed his policy, heaped Argyll with favours, made him, as Duke of
Greenwich, a peer of England, and gave him the High Stewardship of the
Household.

At this time all the sixteen representative peers of Scotland favoured,
for various reasons of their own, a proposed Peerage Bill. The Prince of
Wales might, when he came to the throne, swamp the Lords by large new
creations in his own interest, and the Bill laid down that, henceforth,
not more than six peers, exclusive of members of the Royal Family, should
be created by any sovereign; while in place of sixteen _representative_
Scotland should have twenty-five _permanent_ peers. From his new hatred
of the Prince of Wales, Argyll favoured the Bill, as did the others of
the sixteen of the moment, because they would be among the permanencies.
The Scottish Jacobite peers (not representatives) and the Commons of both
countries opposed the Bill. The election of a Scottish representative
peer at this juncture led to negotiations between Argyll and Lockhart as
leader of the suffering Jacobites, but terms were not arrived at; the
Government secured a large Whig majority in a general election (1722),
and Walpole began his long tenure of office.

ENCLOSURE RIOTS.

In 1724 there were some popular discontents. Enclosures, as we saw, had
scarcely been known in Scotland; when they were made, men, women, and
children took pleasure in destroying them under cloud of night.
Enclosures might keep a man's cattle on his own ground, keep other men's
off it, and secure for the farmer his own manure. That good Jacobite,
Mackintosh of Borlum, who in 1715 led the Highlanders to Preston, in 1729
wrote a book recommending enclosures and plantations. But when, in 1724,
the lairds of Galloway and Dumfriesshire anticipated and acted on his
plan, which in this case involved evictions of very indolent and ruinous
farmers, the tenants rose. Multitudes of "Levellers" destroyed the loose
stone dykes and slaughtered cattle. They had already been passive
resisters of rent; the military were called in; women were in the
forefront of the brawls, which were not quieted till the middle of 1725,
when Lord Stair made an effort to introduce manufactures.

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