the day following, letters to the Estates were delivered from both sovereigns, William and James; the messenger of the latter was dismissed with a pass, to the former was forwarded a letter of thanks, for preventing the destruction of their laws, religion, and fundamental constitution. The Convention expelled the bishops and abolished episcopacy. Dundee now withdrew to the hills with about fifty troopers. 2. The Convention declares the throne vacant: William and Mary proclaimed. April 11, 1689. As soon as Lord Ross had been dispatched with an answer to William's letter, the Convention appointed a committee which agreed to the following vote: "The estates of the kingdom of Scotland find and declare, that King James VII. being a profest papist, did assume the royal power, and act as king, without ever taking the oath required by law; and had, by the advice of evil and wicked counsellors, invaded the fundamental constitution of this kingdom, and altered it from a legal and limited monarchy to an arbitrary and despotic power, and had governed the same to the subversion of the Protestant religion, and violation of the laws and liberties of the nation, inverting all the ends of government; whereby he had forefaulted [forfeited] the right of the crown, and the throne was become vacant." This vote was confirmed by the Convention, and immediately enacted into a law; the president declaring the throne vacant, proposed that William and Mary should fill it. An act, prepared by the committee for settling the crown, together with the conditions of inheritance, was unanimously approved of, and proclamation of their majesties made. The Claim of Right" set forth by the Convention declared the exclusion of papists from the throne: the dispensing power illegal the infliction of capital punishment without jury illegal: the various modes of oppression practised during the last two reigns an offence against liberty and prelacy an insupportable grievance. Three commissioners were empowered to proceed to London, to invest their majesties with the government. William received them at Whitehall, and having promised to concur with the parliament in all just measures for the interests of Scotland, their majesties took the coronation oath tendered by the Earl of Argyle. The Convention of Estates, which was subsequently constituted a parliament, continued to sit during the reign. Hallam says of it: "Many excellent statutes were enacted in this parliament, besides the provisions included in the declaration of rights; twenty-six members were added to the representation of the counties, the tyrannous acts of the two last reigns were repealed, the unjust attainders were reversed, the lords of the articles were abolished. After some years, an act was obtained : 66 against wrongous imprisonment, still more effectual perhaps in some respects than that of the Habeas Corpus of England." 3. Dundee slain at Killiecrankie. July 17, 1689. Dundee when he left Edinburgh retired on Stirling and summoned a parliament; on troops being sent against him, he removed northward and gained possession of Blair Athol. About the same time, a reinforcement of five hundred men joined him from Ireland. General Mackay, an officer of great merit, was sent against the insurgents, and had reached Dundelk with the purpose of reducing the castle of Blair. To preserve it, Dundee marched with two thousand Highlanders and occupied the upper and northern extremity of the pass between Dundelk and Blair, through which defile the path ran for miles along the bank of the Garry, a furious stream, while on the other hand were precipices of woody mountains. Though so easily to be defended, Dundee's policy was to allow the royal forces to clear the pass, and then to attack them in the open valley on the north. This was done with terrible effect, Mackay's forces were nearly all destroyed or taken, and his cannon, baggage, and military stores captured. Two regiments only made a stand, and it was in bringing up the Macdonalds to charge them, that Dundee fell mortally wounded. The Highlanders dispersed, and eventually retired to their homes; by degrees the clans accepted William's offer of pardon, and laid down their arms. Gordon had already surrendered the castle of Edinburgh, and by the end of the year the whole of Scotland had submitted, with the exception of the garrison of the Bass Rock. 4. Massacre of the Macdonald's of Glencoe. Feb. 1692. The Earl of Breadalbane, head of a numerous clan of the Campbells, had been entrusted with £12,000 for the purpose of buying over the Highland chiefs, by granting them a pension on condition that so many of each clan should appear in arms for the government when required. But it came out that some of the chiefs were insincere, and a proclamation issued in August 1694, requiring all to submit to the government before the 1st of January next, or be subject to "letters of fire and sword", a practice sanctioned by the old laws of Scotland against attainted rebels. This scheme was proposed by Breadalbane, and sanctioned by Dalrymple, Master of Stair, and by King William. All the chiefs made their submission but MacIan the head of the Macdonalds, and he at the persuasion of his friends, started off at the eleventh hour to take the oath of allegiance. Arriving at Fort William on the last day of December, his oath was refused by the governor, on the ground that as a military officer he had no power to receive it. Still as the oath had been tendered, the governor gave the old chief a letter to Campbell, sheriff of Argyle, who administered the oath, though the time was past by two or three days. The sheriff sent off an express to the council, and Maclan returned to Glencoe with the assurance of safety. But both Breadalbane and the Master of Stair had determined their destruction; the latter from a desire to strike terror into the Highland clans, the former because, as it said, MacIan had charged him with a design of keeping back part of the money for his own use. A clear case is made out against the Master of Stair, by a letter of his bearing date 3rd of December, in which the secretary writes "that government was determined to destroy some of the clans, in order to terrify the others, and he hoped that by standing out and refusing to submit under the indemnity, the Macdonalds of Glencoe would fall into the net". Stair, to carry out his infamous purpose, made out on the 16th of January a long letter of instructions, of which the following order formed a part: "As for Maclan of Glencoe and that tribe, if they can be well distinguished from the rest of the Highlanders, it will be proper for the vindication of public justice, to extirpate that set of thieves." This letter was super and subscribed by William himself. The savage temper of secretary Stair further appears in his letters to the military officers who were to execute the orders. "The winter is the only season in which the Highlanders cannot elude us, or carry their wives, children, and cattle to the mountains. ... This is the proper season to maul them, in the long dark nights..... They must be all slaughtered, and the manner of their execution must be sure, secret, and effectual." Captain Campbell and his party of men entered Glencoe professing friendly intentions, and after partaking of the hospitality of the Macdonalds for a fortnight, proceeded to execute his mission on his unsuspecting hosts. Thirty-eight were butchered, the remainder escaped in consequence of an early warning being given, though several of the fugitives perished in a snow-storm which then raged. This deed of blood excited general horror, not only in Scotland but throughout Europe. It is a blot on the fame of William which can never be removed, though it may be extenuated to a certain extent. Thus, Sir Walter Scott says, "The sheriff of Argyle's letter had never been produced before the council: and the certificate of MacIan's having taken the oath was blotted out, and in Scottish phrase, deleted from the books of the Privy Council. It seems probable therefore that the fact of that chief's submission was altogether concealed from the king, and that he was held out in the light of a desperate and incorrigible leader of banditti." No inquiry was made into this abominable deed till 1695, when the demands of the Scotch nation obtained a royal commission, which found the Master of Stair to have been the deviser of the slaughter. Stair was deprived of his office, and obliged to retire into private life. Hallam remarks, "this massacre would never have been perpetrated, if Lord Breadalbane and the Master of Stair, two of the worst men in Scotland, had not used the foulest arts to effect it. It is an apparently great reproach to the government of William, that they escaped with impunity; but political necessity bears down justice and honor". SECTION III. AFFAIRS OF IRELAND. many 1. James lands at Kinsale, March 14, 1689. Tyrconnel, who commanded in Ireland at the time of the Revolution, had temporised with William to give James time to bring over reinforcements from France, and had in the meanwhile gathered more than forty thousand papists in arms. To serve the cause of the fugitive monarch, Louis ordered an expedition to be fitted out at Brest, consisting of twenty-one ships of war besides transports. James embarked, attended by the Duke of Berwick and many exiled peers and gentlemen, together with about two thousand five hundred British subjects, and French officers. The French king had liberally supplied him with arms, money, and camp equipage. A landing was effected at Kinsale without difficulty; indeed the whole country was in favor of James, with the exception of the Protestants of the North, who had declared for the new government. His entry into Dublin was of the most enthusiastic character, and graced with a popular procession carrying the host. The council was weeded of protestants, and their places filled with the exiles that followed the fortunes of the king. Five proclamations issued-to recall all the subjects of Ireland on pain of outlawry, and requiring all persons to join him against the Prince of Orange: to thank the Catholics for their fidelity to invite his subjects to supply for payment his army with provisions: to raise the value of the current coin: and to call a parliament to meet at Dublin. : 2. James holds a Parliament at Dublin, May 7, 1689. Less than a score protestants sat in both houses, the papists had therefore everything as they desired. This parliament repealed the Act of Settlement; vested the estates of absentees in King James; asserted the legislative independence of Ireland; passed a bill of attainder against all who abetted the Prince of Orange (the number attainted by name was about three thousand); voted £20,000 a month to the king, and £20,000 a year to Tyrconnel, to be paid out of the estates forfeited by the protestants; and passed an act for liberty of conscience. The latter act was a nullity, for the papists took possession of all schools and colleges, and protestant churches; indeed the protestants were forbidden under pain of death to assemble in their churches or elsewhere. James in want of money, issued a new brass coinage, which by proclamation was ordered to pass for a hundred times its value. 3. The Siege of Londonderry, April-July, 1689. The king, instead of proceeding to England or Scotland, as he had at one time proposed, resolved first to complete the conquest of Ireland by the reduction of the Ulster protestants. On the first alarm, the protestants of Derry shut their gates and resolved to defend themselves. This determination was forwarded to the English government, with a request for immediate assistance. Arms and ammunition were forwarded in April, and when James was advancing upon the city, two regiments arrived in Lough Foyle. Lundy, the governor, now held a council of war, the commanders of the two regiments being present: it was agreed that the place was not tenable, and therefore the regiments should not land; that the officers in garrison should retire, and negotiations be opened with James for a capitulation. When this was known to the inhabitants and soldiers, they threatened vengeance against those who had proposed to betray them; and as the king was within four miles of the city, George Walker, a Presbyterian minister, and Major Baker, were appointed joint governors. desperate game was now to be played. The defences were weak, mounting only about twenty guns, and these badly mounted, and provisions were scanty; without the city, was the enraged Jamies with a large army. But the spirit of the defenders was equal to the occasion. Macaulay says "The whole world could not have furnished seven thousand men better qualified to meet a terrible emergency with clear judgment, dauntless valor, and stubborn patience. They were all zealous Protestants, and the Protestantism of the majority was tinged with Puritanism". The investment was made on the 20th of April, and the besiegers repulsed with considerable loss. A distemper soon added to the sufferings of the besieged, already terribly severe by reason of famine. A The king himself withdrew to Dublin to open his parliament, leaving the conduct of the siege to the savage general Rosen, who wasted and burnt the country within ten miles of Derry, and drove about four thousand men, women, and children, naked and famishing, beneath the walls of a town, where the inhabitants were reduced to eat horse-flesh, dogs, and garbage. At length general Kirke, notorious in connexion with Monmouth's rebellion, but now in the service of William, forced the boom, and under a hot fire succeeded in succouring the garrison with troops and provisions. Kirke had been lying in the bay six weeks, and was much censured for not having attempted the relief of the town |