History of England, from the Accession of James II - (Volume 3, Chapter 12) — Chapter XII, Part 10

Rosen was recalled to Dublin; and Richard Hamilton was again left in the chief command.

He tried gentler means than those which had brought so much reproach on his predecessor.

No trick, no lie, which was thought likely to discourage the starving garrison was spared.

One day a great shout was raised by the whole Irish camp.

The defenders of Londonderry were soon informed that the army of James was rejoicing on account of the fall of Enniskillen.

They were told that they had now no chance of being relieved, and were exhorted to save their lives by capitulating.

They consented to negotiate.

But what they asked was, that they should be permitted to depart armed and in military array, by land or by water at their choice.

They demanded hostages for the exact fulfilment of these conditions, and insisted that the hostages should be sent on board of the fleet which lay in Lough Foyle.

Such terms Hamilton durst not grant: the Governors would abate nothing: the treaty was broken off; and the conflict recommenced, [250] By this time July was far advanced; and the state of the city was, hour by hour, becoming more frightful.

The number of the inhabitants had been thinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy.

Yet that fire was sharper and more constant than ever.

One of the gates was beaten in: one of the bastions was laid in ruins; but the breaches made by day were repaired by night with indefatigable activity.

Every attack was still repelled.

But the fighting men of the garrison were so much exhausted that they could scarcely keep their legs.

Several of them, in the act of striking at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness.

A very small quantity of grain remained, and was doled out by mouthfuls.

The stock of salted hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrison appeased the rage of hunger.

Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain who lay unburied round the town, were luxuries which few could afford to purchase.

The price of a whelp's paw was five shillings and sixpence.

Nine horses were still alive, and but barely alive.

They were so lean that little meat was likely to be found upon them.

It was, however, determined to slaughter them for food.

The people perished so fast that it was impossible for the survivors to perform the rites of sepulture.

There was scarcely a cellar in which some corpse was not decaying.

Such was the extremity of distress, that the rats who came to feast in those hideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured.

A small fish, caught in the river, was not to be purchased with money.

The only price for which such a treasure could be obtained was some handfuls of oatmeal.

Leprosies, such as strange and unwholesome diet engenders, made existence a constant torment.

The whole city was poisoned by the stench exhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half dead.

That there should be fits of discontent and insubordination among men enduring such misery was inevitable.

At one moment it was suspected that Walker had laid up somewhere a secret store of food, and was revelling in private, while he exhorted others to suffer resolutely for the good cause.

His house was strictly examined: his innocence was fully proved: he regained his popularity; and the garrison, with death in near prospect, thronged to the cathedral to hear him preach, drank in his earnest eloquence with delight, and went forth from the house of God with haggard faces and tottering steps, but with spirit still unsubdued.

There were, indeed, some secret plottings.

A very few obscure traitors opened communications with the enemy.

But it was necessary that all such dealings should be carefully concealed.

None dared to utter publicly any words save words of defiance and stubborn resolution.

Even in that extremity the general cry was "No surrender."

And there were not wanting voices which, in low tones, added, "First the horses and hides; and then the prisoners;

and then each other."

It was afterwards related, half in jest, yet not without a horrible mixture of earnest, that a corpulent citizen, whose bulk presented a strange contrast to the skeletons which surrounded him, thought it expedient to conceal himself from the numerous eyes which followed him with cannibal looks whenever he appeared in the streets, [251] It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison that all this time the English ships were seen far off in Lough Foyle.

Communication between the fleet and the city was almost impossible.

One diver who had attempted to pass the boom was drowned.

Another was hanged.

The language of signals was hardly intelligible.

On the thirteenth of July, however, a piece of paper sewed up in a cloth button came to Walker's hands.

It was a letter from Kirke, and contained assurances of speedy relief.

But more than a fortnight of intense misery had since elapsed; and the hearts of the most sanguine were sick with deferred hope.

By no art could the provisions which were left be made to hold out two days more, [252] Just at this time Kirke received a despatch from England, which contained positive orders that Londonderry should be relieved.

He accordingly determined to make an attempt which, as far as appears, he might have made, with at least an equally fair prospect of success, six weeks earlier, [253] Among the merchant ships which had come to Lough Foyle under his convoy was one called the Mountjoy.

The master, Micaiah Browning, a native of Londonderry, had brought from England a large cargo of provisions.

He had, it is said, repeatedly remonstrated against the inaction of the armament.

He now eagerly volunteered to take the first risk of succouring his fellow citizens; and his offer was accepted.

Andrew Douglas, master of the Phoenix, who had on board a great quantity of meal from Scotland, was willing to share the danger and the honour.

The two merchantmen were to be escorted by the Dartmouth frigate of thirty-six guns, commanded by Captain John Leake, afterwards an admiral of great fame.

It was the thirtieth of July.

The sun had just set: the evening sermon in the cathedral was over; and the heartbroken congregation had separated, when the sentinels on the tower saw the sails of three vessels coming up the Foyle.

Soon there was a stir in the Irish camp.

The besiegers were on the alert for miles along both shores.

The ships were in extreme peril: for the river was low; and the only navigable channel Tan very near to the left bank, where the head quarters of the enemy had been fixed, and where the batteries were most numerous.

Leake performed his duty with a skill and spirit worthy of his noble profession, exposed his frigate to cover the merchantmen, and used his guns with great effect.

At length the little squadron came to the place of peril.

Then the Mountjoy took the lead, and went right at the bottom.

The huge barricade cracked and gave way: but the shock was such that the Mountjoy rebounded, and stuck in the mud.

A yell of triumph rose from the banks: the Irish rushed to their boats, and were preparing to board;

but the Dartmouth poured on them a well directed broadside, which threw them into disorder.

Just then the Phoenix dashed at the breach which the Mountjoy had made, and was in a moment within the fence.

Meantime the tide was rising fast.

The Mountjoy began to move, and soon passed safe through the broken stakes and floating spars.

But her brave master was no more.

A shot from one of the batteries had struck him; and he died by the most enviable of all deaths, in sight of the city which was his birthplace, which was his home, and which had just been saved by his courage and self-devotion from the most frightful form of destruction.

The night had closed in before the conflict at the boom began; but the flash of the guns was seen, and the noise heard, by the lean and ghastly multitude which covered the walls of the city.

When the Mountjoy grounded, and when the shout of triumph rose from the Irish on both sides of the river, the hearts of the besieged died within them.

One who endured the unutterable anguish of that moment has told that they looked fearfully livid in each other's eyes.

Even after the barricade had been passed, there was a terrible half hour of suspense.

It was ten o'clock before the ships arrived at the quay.

The whole population was there to welcome them.

A screen made of casks filled with earth was hastily thrown up to protect the landing place from the batteries on the other side of the river; and then the work of unloading began.

First were rolled on shore barrels containing six thousand bushels of meal.

Then came great cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter, sacks of Pease and biscuit, ankers of brandy.

Not many hours before, half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a pound of salted hide had been weighed out with niggardly care to every fighting man.

The ration which each now received was three pounds of flour, two pounds of beef, and a pint of Pease.

It is easy to imagine with what tears grace was said over the suppers of that evening.

There was little sleep on either side of the wall.

The bonfires shone bright along the whole circuit of the ramparts.

The Irish guns continued to roar all night; and all night the bells of the rescued city made answer to the Irish guns with a peal of joyous defiance.

Through the whole of the thirty-first of July the batteries of the enemy continued to play.

But, soon after the sun had again gone down, flames were seen arising from the camp; and, when the first of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins marked the site lately occupied by the huts of the besiegers; and the citizens saw far off the long column of pikes and standards retreating up the left bank of the Foyle towards Strabane, [254] So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the British isles.

It had lasted a hundred and five days.

The garrison had been reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about three thousand.

The loss of the besiegers cannot be precisely ascertained.

Walker estimated it at eight thousand men.

It is certain from the despatches of Avaux that the regiments which returned from the blockade had been so much thinned that many of them were not more than two hundred strong.

Of thirty-six French gunners who had superintended the cannonading, thirty-one had been killed or disabled, [255] The means both of attack and of defence had undoubtedly been such as would have moved the great warriors of the Continent to laughter; and this is the very circumstance which gives so peculiar an interest to the history of the contest.

It was a contest, not between engineers, but between nations; and the victory remained with the nation which, though inferior in number, was superior in civilisation, in capacity for selfgovernment, and in stubbornness of resolution, [256] As soon as it was known that the Irish army had retired, a deputation from the city hastened to Lough Foyle, and invited Kirk to take the command.

He came accompanied by a long train of officers, and was received in state by the two Governors, who delivered up to him the authority which, under the pressure of necessity, they had assumed.

He remained only a few days; but he had time to show enough of the incurable vices of his character to disgust a population distinguished by austere morals and ardent public spirit.

There was, however, no outbreak.

The city was in the highest good humour.

Such quantities of provisions had been landed from the fleet, that there was in every house a plenty never before known.

A few days earlier a man had been glad to obtain for twenty pence a mouthful of carrion scraped from the bones of a starved horse.

A pound of good beef was now sold for three halfpence.

Meanwhile all hands were busied in removing corpses which had been thinly covered with earth, in filling up the holes which the shells had ploughed in the ground, and in repairing the battered roofs of the houses.

The recollection of past dangers and privations, and the consciousness of having deserved well of the English nation and of all Protestant Churches, swelled the hearts of the townspeople with honest pride.

That pride grew stronger when they received from William a letter acknowledging, in the most affectionate language, the debt which he owed to the brave and trusty citizens of his good city.

The whole population crowded to the Diamond to hear the royal epistle read.

At the close all the guns on the ramparts sent forth a voice of joy: all the ships in the river made answer: barrels of ale were broken up; and the health of their Majesties was drunk with shouts and volleys of musketry.

Five generations have since passed away; and still the wall of Londonderry is to the Protestants of Ulster what the trophy of Marathon was to the Athenians.

A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which bore during many weeks the heaviest fire of the enemy, is seen far up and far down the Foyle.

On the summit is the statue of Walker, such as when, in the last and most terrible emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting courage of his brethren.

In one hand he grasps a Bible.

The other, pointing down the river, seems to direct the eyes of his famished audience to the English topmasts in the distant bay.

Such a monument was well deserved: yet it was scarcely needed: for in truth the whole city is to this day a monument of the great deliverance.

The wall is carefully preserved; nor would any plea of health or convenience be held by the inhabitants sufficient to justify the demolition of that sacred enclosure which, in the evil time, gave shelter to their race and their religion, [257] The summit of the ramparts forms a pleasant walk.

The bastions have been turned into little gardens.

Here and there, among the shrubs and flowers, may be seen the old culverins which scattered bricks, cased with lead, among the Irish ranks.

One antique gun, the gift of the Fishmongers of London, was distinguished, during the hundred and five memorable days, by the loudness of its report, and still bears the name of Roaring Meg.

The cathedral is filled with relics and trophies.

In the vestibule is a huge shell, one of many hundreds of shells which were thrown into the city.

Over the altar are still seen the French flagstaves, taken by the garrison in a desperate sally.

The white ensigns of the House of Bourbon have long been dust: but their place has been supplied by new banners, the work of the fairest hands of Ulster.

The anniversary of the day on which the gates were closed, and the anniversary of the day on which the siege was raised, have been down to our own time celebrated by salutes, processions, banquets, and sermons: Lundy has been executed in effigy; and the sword, said by tradition to be that of Maumont, has, on great occasions, been carried in triumph.

There is still a Walker Club and a Murray Club.

The humble tombs of the Protestant captains have been carefully sought out, repaired, and embellished.

It is impossible not to respect the sentiment which indicates itself by these tokens.

It is a sentiment which belongs to the higher and purer part of human nature, and which adds not a little to the strength of states.

A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve any thing worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.

Yet it is impossible for the moralist or the statesman to look with unmixed complacency on the solemnities with which Londonderry commemorates her deliverance, and on the honours which she pays to those who saved her.

Unhappily the animosities of her brave champions have descended with their glory.

The faults which are ordinarily found in dominant castes and dominant sects have not seldom shown themselves without disguise at her festivities; and even with the expressions of pious gratitude which have resounded from her pulpits have too often been mingled words of wrath and defiance.

The Irish army which had retreated to Strabane remained there but a very short time.

The spirit of the troops had been depressed by their recent failure, and was soon completely cowed by the news of a great disaster in another quarter.

Three weeks before this time the Duke of Berwick had gained an advantage over a detachment of the Enniskilleners, and had, by their own confession, killed or taken more than fifty of them.

They were in hopes of obtaining some assistance from Kirke, to whom they had sent a deputation; and they still persisted in rejecting all terms offered by the enemy.

It was therefore determined at Dublin that an attack should be made upon them from several quarters at once.

Macarthy, who had been rewarded for his services in Munster with the title of Viscount Mountcashel, marched towards Lough Erne from the east with three regiments of foot, two regiments of dragoons, and some troops of cavalry.

A considerable force, which lay encamped near the mouth of the river Drowes, was at the same time to advance from the west.

The Duke of Berwick was to come from the north, with such horse and dragoons as could be spared from the army which was besieging Londonderry.

The Enniskilleners were not fully apprised of the whole plan which had been laid for their destruction; but they knew that Macarthy was on the road with a force exceeding any which they could bring into the field.

Their anxiety was in some degree relieved by the return of the deputation which they had sent to Kirke.

Kirke could spare no soldiers; but he had sent some arms, some ammunition, and some experienced officers, of whom the chief were Colonel Wolseley and Lieutenant Colonel Berry.

These officers had come by sea round the coast of Donegal, and had run up the Line.

On Sunday, the twenty-ninth of July, it was known that their boat was approaching the island of Enniskillen.

The whole population, male and female, came to the shore to greet them.

It was with difficulty, that they made their way to the Castle through the crowds which hung on them, blessing God that dear old England had not quite forgotten the Englishmen who upheld her cause against great odds in the heart of Ireland.

Wolseley seems to have been in every respect well qualified for his post.

He was a stanch Protestant, had distinguished himself among the Yorkshiremen who rose up for the Prince of Orange and a free Parliament, and had, if he is not belied, proved his zeal for liberty and pure religion, by causing the Mayor of Scarborough, who had made a speech in favour of King James, to be brought into the market place and well tossed there in a blanket, [258] This vehement hatred of Popery was, in the estimation of the men of Enniskillen, the first of all qualifications for command: and Wolseley had other and more important qualifications.

Though himself regularly bred to war, he seems to have had a peculiar aptitude for the management of irregular troops.

He had scarcely taken on himself the chief command when he received notice that Mountcashel had laid siege to the Castle of Crum.

Crum was the frontier garrison of the Protestants of Fermanagh.

The ruins of the old fortifications are now among the attractions of a beautiful pleasureground, situated on a woody promontory which overlooks Lough Erne.

Wolseley determined to raise the siege.

He sent Berry forward with such troops as could be instantly put in motion, and promised to follow speedily with a larger force.

Berry, after marching some miles, encountered thirteen companies of Macarthy's dragoons commanded by Anthony, the most brilliant and accomplished of all who bore the name of Hamilton, but much less successful as a soldier than as a courtier, a lover, and a writer.

Hamilton's dragoons ran at the first fire: he was severely wounded; and his second in command was shot dead.

Macarthy soon came up to support Hamilton; and at the same time Wolseley came up to support Berry.

The hostile armies were now in presence of each other.

Macarthy had above five thousand men and several pieces of artillery.

The Enniskilleners were under three thousand; and they had marched in such haste that they had brought only one day's provisions.

It was therefore absolutely necessary for them either to fight instantly or to retreat.

Wolseley determined to consult the men; and this determination, which, in ordinary circumstances, would have been most unworthy of a general, was fully justified by the peculiar composition and temper of the little army, an army made up of gentlemen and yeomen fighting, not for pay, but for their lands, their wives, their children, and their God.

The ranks were drawn up under arms; and the question was put, "Advance or Retreat?"

The answer was an universal shout of "Advance."

Wolseley gave out the word, "No Popery."

It was received with loud applause.

He instantly made his dispositions for an attack.

As he approached, the enemy, to his great surprise, began to retire.

The Enniskilleners were eager to pursue with all speed: but their commander, suspecting a snare, restrained their ardour, and positively forbade them to break their ranks.

Thus one army retreated and the other followed, in good order, through the little town of Newton Butler.

About a mile from that town the Irish faced about, and made a stand.

Their position was well chosen.

They were drawn up on a hill at the foot of which lay a deep bog.

A

narrow paved causeway which ran across the bog was the only road by which the cavalry of the Enniskilleners could advance; for on the right and left were pools, turf pits, and quagmires, which afforded no footing to horses.

Macarthy placed his cannon in such a manner as to sweep this causeway.

Wolseley ordered his infantry to the attack.

They struggled through the bog, made their way to firm ground, and rushed on the guns.

There was then a short and desperate fight.

The Irish cannoneers stood gallantly to their pieces till they were cut down to a man.

The Enniskillen horse, no longer in danger of being mowed down by the fire of the artillery, came fast up the causeway.

The Irish dragoons who had run away in the morning were smitten with another panic, and, without striking a blow, galloped from the field.

The horse followed the example.

Such was the terror of the fugitives that many of them spurred hard till their beasts fell down, and then continued to fly on foot, throwing away carbines, swords, and even coats as incumbrances.

The infantry, seeing themselves deserted, flung down their pikes and muskets and ran for their lives.

The conquerors now gave loose to that ferocity which has seldom failed to disgrace the civil wars of Ireland.

The butchery was terrible.

Near fifteen hundred of the vanquished were put to the sword.

About five hundred more, in ignorance of the country, took a road which led to Lough Erne.

The lake was before them: the enemy behind: they plunged into the waters and perished there.

Macarthy, abandoned by his troops, rushed into the midst of the pursuers and very nearly found the death which he sought.

He was wounded in several places: he was struck to the ground; and in another moment his brains would have been knocked out with the butt end of a musket, when he was recognised and saved.

The colonists lost only twenty men killed and fifty wounded.

They took four hundred prisoners, seven pieces of cannon, fourteen barrels of powder, all the drums and all the colours of the vanquished enemy, [259] The battle of Newton Butler was won on the same afternoon on which the boom thrown over the Foyle was broken.

At Strabane the news met the Celtic army which was retreating from Londonderry.

All was terror and confusion: the tents were struck: the military stores were flung by waggon loads into the waters of the Mourne; and the dismayed Irish, leaving many sick and wounded to the mercy of the victorious Protestants, fled to Omagh, and thence to Charlemont.

Sarsfield, who commanded at Sligo, found it necessary to abandon that town, which was instantly occupied by a detachment of Kirke's troops, [260] Dublin was in consternation.

James dropped words which indicated an intention of flying to the Continent.

Evil tidings indeed came fast upon him.

Almost at the same time at which he learned that one of his armies had raised the siege of Londonderry, and that another had been routed at Newton Butler, he received intelligence scarcely less disheartening from Scotland.

It is now necessary to trace the progress of those events to which Scotland owes her political and her religious liberty, her prosperity and her civilisation.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Revolution more violent in Scotland than in England--Elections for the Convention; Rabbling of the Episcopal Clergy--State of Edinburgh--Question of an Union between England and Scotland raised--Wish of the English Low Churchmen to preserve Episcopacy in Scotland--Opinions of William about Church Government in Scotland--Comparative Strength of Religious Parties in Scotland--Letter from William to the Scotch Convention--William's Instructions to his Agents in Scotland; the Dalrymples--Melville--James's Agents in Scotland: Dundee; Balcarras--Meeting of the Convention--Hamilton elected President--Committee of Elections; Edinburgh Castle summoned--Dundee threatened by the Covenanters--Letter from James to the Convention--Effect of James's Letter--Flight of Dundee--Tumultuous Sitting of the Convention--A Committee appointed to frame a Plan of Government--Resolutions proposed by the Committee--William and Mary proclaimed; the Claim of Right; Abolition of Episcopacy--Torture--William and Mary accept the Crown of Scotland--Discontent of the Covenanters--Ministerial Arrangements in Scotland--Hamilton; Crawford--The Dalrymples; Lockhart;

Montgomery--Melville; Carstairs--The Club formed: Annandale; Ross--Hume;

Fletcher of Saltoun--War breaks out in the Highlands; State of the Highlands--Peculiar Nature of Jacobitism in the Highlands--Jealousy of the Ascendency of the Campbells--The Stewarts and Macnaghtens--The Macleans; the Camerons: Lochiel--The Macdonalds; Feud between the Macdonalds and Mackintoshes; Inverness--Inverness threatened by Macdonald of Keppoch--Dundee appears in Keppoch's Camp--Insurrection of the Clans hostile to the Campbells--Tarbet's Advice to the Government--Indecisive Campaign in the Highlands--Military Character of the Highlanders--Quarrels in the Highland Army--Dundee applies to James for Assistance; the War in the Highlands suspended--Scruples of the Covenanters about taking Arms for King William--The Cameronian Regiment raised--Edinburgh Castle surrenders--Session of Parliament at Edinburgh--Ascendancy of the Club--Troubles in Athol--The War breaks out again in the Highlands--Death of Dundee--Retreat of Mackay--Effect of the Battle of Killiecrankie; the Scottish Parliament adjourned--The Highland Army reinforced--Skirmish at Saint Johnston's--Disorders in the Highland Army--Mackay's Advice disregarded by the Scotch Ministers--The Cameronians stationed at Dunkeld--The Highlanders attack the Cameronians and are repulsed--Dissolution of the Highland Army; Intrigues of the Club; State of the Lowlands THE violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree of the maladministration which has produced them.

It is therefore not strange that the government of Scotland, having been during many years far more oppressive and corrupt than the government of England, should have fallen with a far heavier ruin.

The movement against the last king of the House of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland destructive.

The English complained, not of the law, but of the violation of the law.

They rose up against the first magistrate merely in order to assert the supremacy of the law.

They were for the most part strongly attached to the Church established by law.

Even in applying that extraordinary remedy to which an extraordinary emergency compelled them to have recourse, they deviated as little as possible from the ordinary methods prescribed by the law.

The Convention which met at Westminster, though summoned by irregular writs, was constituted on the exact model of a regular Parliament.

No man was invited to the Upper House whose right to sit there was not clear.

The knights and burgesses were chosen by those electors who would have been entitled to choose the members of a House of Commons called under the great seal.

The franchises of the forty shilling freeholder, of the householder paying scot and lot, of the burgage tenant, of the liveryman of London, of the Master of Arts of Oxford, were respected.

The sense of the constituent bodies was taken with as little violence on the part of mobs, with as little trickery on the part of returning officers, as at any general election of that age.

When at length the Estates met, their deliberations were carried on with perfect freedom and in strict accordance with ancient forms.

There was indeed, after the first flight of James, an alarming anarchy in London and in some parts of the country.

But that anarchy nowhere lasted longer than forty-eight hours.

From the day on which William reached Saint James's, not even the most unpopular agents of the fallen government, not even the ministers of the Roman Catholic Church, had any thing to fear from the fury of the populace.

In Scotland the course of events was very different.

There the law itself was a grievance; and James had perhaps incurred more unpopularity by enforcing it than by violating it.

The Church established by law was the most odious institution in the realm.

The tribunals had pronounced some sentences so flagitious, the Parliament had passed some acts so oppressive, that, unless those sentences and those Acts were treated as nullities, it would be impossible to bring together a Convention commanding the public respect and expressing the public opinion.

It was hardly to be expected, for example, that the Whigs, in this day of their power, would endure to see their hereditary leader, the son of a martyr, the grandson of a martyr, excluded from the Parliament House in which nine of his ancestors had sate as Earls of Argyle, and excluded by a judgment on which the whole kingdom cried shame.

Still less was it to be expected that they would suffer the election of members for counties and towns to be conducted according to the provisions of the existing law.

For under the existing law no elector could vote without swearing that he renounced the Covenant, and that he acknowledged the Royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, [261] Such an oath no rigid Presbyterian could take.

If such an oath had been exacted, the constituent bodies would have been merely small knots of prelatists: the business of devising securities against oppression would have been left to the oppressors; and the great party which had been most active in effecting the Revolution would, in an assembly sprung from the Revolution, have had not a single representative, [262] William saw that he must not think of paying to the laws of Scotland that scrupulous respect which he had wisely and righteously paid to the laws of England.

It was absolutely necessary that he should determine by his own authority how that Convention which was to meet at Edinburgh should be chosen, and that he should assume the power of annulling some judgments and some statutes.

He accordingly summoned to the parliament house several Lords who had been deprived of their honours by sentences which the general voice loudly condemned as unjust; and he took on himself to dispense with the Act which deprived Presbyterians of the elective franchise.

The consequence was that the choice of almost all the shires and burghs fell on Whig candidates.

The defeated party complained loudly of foul play, of the rudeness of the populace, and of the partiality of the presiding magistrates; and these complaints were in many cases well founded.

It is not under such rulers as Lauderdale and Dundee that nations learn justice and moderation, [263] Nor was it only at the elections that the popular feeling, so long and so severely compressed, exploded with violence.

The heads and the hands of the martyred Whigs were taken down from the gates of Edinburgh, carried in procession by great multitudes to the cemeteries, and laid in the earth with solemn respect, [264] It would have been well if the public enthusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthy form.

Unhappily throughout a large part of Scotland the clergy of the Established Church were, to use the phrase then common, rabbled.

The morning of Christmas day was fixed for the commencement of these outrages.

For nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than the reverence paid by the prelatist to the ancient holidays of the Church.

That such reverence may be carried to an absurd extreme is true.

But a philosopher may perhaps be inclined to think the opposite extreme not less absurd, and may ask why religion should reject the aid of associations which exist in every nation sufficiently civilised to have a calendar, and which are found by experience to have a powerful and often a salutary effect.

The Puritan, who was, in general, but too ready to follow precedents and analogies drawn from the history and jurisprudence of the Jews, might have found in the Old Testament quite as clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour of great events as for assassinating bishops and refusing quarter to captives.

He certainly did not learn from his master, Calvin, to hold such festivals in abhorrence;

for it was in consequence of the strenuous exertions of Calvin that Christmas was, after an interval of some years, again observed by the citizens of Geneva, [265] But there had arisen in Scotland Calvinists who were to Calvin what Calvin was to Laud.

To these austere fanatics a holiday was an object of positive disgust and hatred.

They long continued in their solemn manifestoes to reckon it among the sins which would one day bring down some fearful judgment on the land that the Court of Session took a vacation in the last week of December, [266] On Christmas day, therefore, the Covenanters held armed musters by concert in many parts of the western shires.

Each band marched to the nearest manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister, which at that season were probably better stocked than usual.

The priest of Baal was reviled and insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked.

His furniture was thrown out of the windows; his wife and children turned out of doors in the snow.

He was then carried to the market place, and exposed during some time as a malefactor.

His gown was torn to shreds over his head: if he had a prayer book in his pocket it was burned;

and he was dismissed with a charge, never, as he valued his life, to officiate in the parish again.

The work of reformation having been thus completed, the reformers locked up the church and departed with the keys.

In justice to these men it must be owned that they had suffered such oppression as may excuse, though it cannot justify, their violence;

and that, though they were rude even to brutality, they do not appear to have been guilty of any intentional injury to life or limb, [267] The disorder spread fast.

In Ayrshire, Clydesdale, Nithisdale, Annandale, every parish was visited by these turbulent zealots.

About two hundred curates--so the episcopal parish priests were called--were expelled.

The graver Covenanters, while they applauded the fervour of their riotous brethren, were apprehensive that proceedings so irregular might give scandal, and learned, with especial concern, that here and there an Achan had disgraced the good cause by stooping to plunder the Canaanites whom he ought only to have smitten.

A general meeting of ministers and elders was called for the purpose of preventing such discreditable excesses.

In this meeting it was determined that, for the future, the ejection of the established clergy should be performed in a more ceremonious manner.

A form of notice was drawn up and served on every curate in the Western Lowlands who had not yet been rabbled.

This notice was simply a threatening letter, commanding him to quit his parish peaceably, on pain of being turned out by force, [268] The Scottish Bishops, in great dismay, sent the Dean of Glasgow to plead the cause of their persecuted Church at Westminster.

The outrages committed by the Covenanters were in the highest degree offensive to William, who had, in the south of the island, protected even Benedictines and Franciscans from insult and spoliation.

But, though he had, at the request of a large number of the noblemen and gentlemen of Scotland, taken on himself provisionally the executive administration of that kingdom, the means of maintaining order there were not at his command.

He had not a single regiment north of the Tweed, or indeed within many miles of that river.

It was vain to hope that mere words would quiet a nation which had not, in any age, been very amenable to control, and which was now agitated by hopes and resentments, such as great revolutions, following great oppressions, naturally engender.

A

proclamation was however put forth, directing that all people should lay down their arms, and that, till the Convention should have settled the government, the clergy of the Established Church should be suffered to reside on their cures without molestation.

But this proclamation, not being supported by troops, was very little regarded.

On the very day after it was published at Glasgow, the venerable Cathedral of that city, almost the only fine church of the middle ages which stands uninjured in Scotland, was attacked by a crowd of Presbyterians from the meeting houses, with whom were mingled many of their fiercer brethren from the hills.

It was a Sunday; but to rabble a congregation of prelatists was held to be a work of necessity and mercy.

The worshippers were dispersed, beaten, and pelted with snowballs.

It was indeed asserted that some wounds were inflicted with much more formidable weapons, [269] Edinburgh, the seat of government, was in a state of anarchy.

The Castle, which commanded the whole city, was still held for James by the Duke of Gordon.

The common people were generally Whigs.

The College of justice, a great forensic society composed of judges, advocates, writers to the signet, and solicitors, was the stronghold of Toryism: for a rigid test had during some years excluded Presbyterians from all the departments of the legal profession.

The lawyers, some hundreds in number, formed themselves into a battalion of infantry, and for a time effectually kept down the multitude.

They paid, however, so much respect to William's authority as to disband themselves when his proclamation was published.

But the example of obedience which they had set was not imitated.

Scarcely had they laid down their weapons, when Covenanters from the west, who had done all that was to be done in the way of pelting and hustling the curates of their own neighbourhood, came dropping into Edinburgh, by tens and twenties, for the purpose of protecting, or, if need should be, of overawing the Convention.

Glasgow alone sent four hundred of these men.

It could hardly be doubted that they were directed by some leader of great weight.

They showed themselves little in any public place: but it was known that every cellar was filled with them; and it might well be apprehended that, at the first signal, they would pour forth from their caverns, and appear armed round the Parliament house, [270] It might have been expected that every patriotic and enlightened Scotchman would have earnestly desired to see the agitation appeased, and some government established which might be able to protect property and to enforce the law.

An imperfect settlement which could be speedily made might well appear to such a man preferable to a perfect settlement which must be the work of time.

Just at this moment, however, a party, strong both in numbers and in abilities, raised a new and most important question, which seemed not unlikely to prolong the interregnum till the autumn.

This party maintained that the Estates ought not immediately to declare William and Mary King and Queen, but to propose to England a treaty of union, and to keep the throne vacant till such a treaty should be concluded on terms advantageous to Scotland, [271] It may seem strange that a large portion of a people, whose patriotism, exhibited, often in a heroic, and sometimes in a comic form, has long been proverbial, should have been willing, nay impatient, to surrender an independence which had been, through many ages, dearly prized and manfully defended.

The truth is that the stubborn spirit which the arms of the Plantagenets and Tudors had been unable to subdue had begun to yield to a very different kind of force.

Customhouses and tariffs were rapidly doing what the carnage of Falkirk and Halidon, of Flodden and of Pinkie, had failed to do.

Scotland had some experience of the effects of an union.

She had, near forty years before, been united to England on such terms as England, flushed with conquest, chose to dictate.

That union was inseparably associated in the minds of the vanquished people with defeat and humiliation.

And yet even that union, cruelly as it had wounded the pride of the Scots, had promoted their prosperity.

Cromwell, with wisdom and liberality rare in his age, had established the most complete freedom of trade between the dominant and the subject country.

While he governed, no prohibition, no duty, impeded the transit of commodities from any part of the island to any other.

His navigation laws imposed no restraint on the trade of Scotland.

A Scotch vessel was at liberty to carry a Scotch cargo to Barbadoes, and to bring the sugars of Barbadoes into the port of London, [272] The rule of the Protector therefore had been propitious to the industry and to the physical wellbeing of the Scottish people.

Hating him and cursing him, they could not help thriving under him, and often, during the administration of their legitimate princes, looked back with regret to the golden days of the usurper, [273] The Restoration came, and changed every thing.

The Scots regained their independence, and soon began to find that independence had its discomfort as well as its dignity.

The English parliament treated them as aliens and as rivals.

A new Navigation Act put them on almost the same footing with the Dutch.

High duties, and in some cases prohibitory duties, were imposed on the products of Scottish industry.

It is not wonderful that a nation eminently industrious, shrewd, and enterprising, a nation which, having been long kept back by a sterile soil and a severe climate, was just beginning to prosper in spite of these disadvantages, and which found its progress suddenly stopped, should think itself cruelly treated.

Yet there was no help.