[BOOK IX.

ception, with bonfires, bells, great guns, &c."* "It was believed," says Evelyn, "that both, especially the princess, would have showed some seeming reluctance of assuming her father's wn, and made some apology, testifying by her regret that

"She seems," says Evelyn, "to be of a good nature, and that she takes nothing to heart; whilst her husband has a thoughtful countenance, is wonderful serious and silent, and seems to treat all alike gravely, and to be very intent on affairs: Holland, Preland, and France calling for his care.

he should by his mismanagement necessitate the nation to so extraordinary a proceeding; which would have shown very handsomely to the and according to the character given of -consonant also to her husband's first del that there was no intention of d but of succouring the nation this appeared. She came in and jolly, as to a wedd

transported.

She rose early the next morning, and, in her undress, as it was reported, before her women were up, went about from room to room to see the convenience of Whitehall; lay in the same bed and apartment where the late queen lay; and, within a night or two, sat down to play at basset, as the queen her predecessor used to do. She smiled upon and talked to everybody, so that no change seemed to have taken place at court since her last going away, save that infinite crowds of people thronged to see her, and that she went to our prayers. This carriage was censured by

many."

The Scottish Convention of Estates met on the 14th of March; and, through the ingenious management of Sir James Dalrymple (afterwards Lord Stair), hardly any were returned to it except Whigs and Presbyterians. The Duke of Hamilton was appointed president: the waverers were fixed by the success of the revolution in England, and everything proceeded with rapidity and spirit.

A letter was presented from King James. A similar letter had been rejected by the English Convention without reading; but the Scots, after passing a resolution that nothing contained in the letter should dissolve their assembly, or stop their proceeding to the settlement of the Crown, gave the royal epistle a respectful reading. It was written in the terms "of a conqueror and a priest; threatening the Convention with punishment in this world and damnation in the next;" and it was countersigned by James's Secretary of State, Lord Melfort, a furious Papist, who was abhorred by the Presbyterians.† The Convention returned no answer, but hastened to reply with gratitude to a letter from King William which was presented at the same time. They issued a proclamation, calling upon all men from sixteen to sixty to be ready to take up arms for their country and their faith: they arrayed the militia of the south, levied troops, and sent arms and ammunition to their brethren settled in the north of Ireland, who were apprehending a massacre at the hands of the Irish Papists. The sheriffs were ordered to seize all persons found in arms without the authority of the Convention; and the Duke of Hamilton was invested with a dictatorial power of securing all suspected persons. The fiery Dundee did what he

Diary-The Duchess of Marlborough more than confirms what Evelyn says:-" And here I cannot forbear saying, that, whatever good qualities Queen Mary had to make her popular, it is too evideut by many instances that she wanted bowels. Of this she seemed me to give an unquestionable proof the first day she came to Whitehall. I was one of those who had the honour to wait on her her own apartment. She ran about it, looking into every closet and conveniency, and turning up the quilts upon the bed, as people do when they come into an inn, and with no other sort of concern in her appearance but such as they express; a behaviour which, though at that time I was extremely caressed by her, I thought very strange and unbecoming. For, whatever necessity there was of deposing King James, he was still her father, who had been so lately driven from that chamber and from that bed; and, if she felt no tenderness, I thought she should at least have looked grave, or even pensively sad, at so melancholy a reverse of his fortune."-An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager-Duchess of Marlborough from her first coming

to Court, &c.

+ Dalrymple.

These seasonable supplies were of vast importance to the men of Londonderry and Inniskillen, upon whom the first weight of the war in ireland fell.

could to dissolve the Convention by cannon-balls. He urged the Duke of Gordon, who held out in Edinburgh Castle, and who had been proclaimed a traitor under the walls of that fortress, to fire upon the city. Gordon refused, or hesitated, and then Dundee attempted to get up a counter-convention at Stirling; but he was ill seconded by his friends, the Marquess of Athol and the Lords Balcarras and Marr. Dundee was eager to be in the field; but James had instructed him to remain quiet until assistance should be sent over from Ireland, where that wretched outcast had landed on the 12th of March, two days before the opening of the Scottish Convention. Urged on, however, by his natural impetuosity, or fearing for his life, which he said was threatened by some of the Covenanters, upon whom he had practised infamous severities "a-foretime," he mounted his horse, and galloped through Edinburgh with a troop of cavalry, consisting of some fifty men, who had deserted to him from his regiment in England. It is said that a friend asked him whither he was going, and that Dundee, waving his hat, replied "Wherever the spirit of Montrose shall direct me." He had made that daring partisan his model, and his proudest boast was that the blood of Montrose ran in his veins.* In passing under the outer walls of the castle, on the road that leads to Dalkeith, he dismounted, scrambled up the precipice at a place where it is almost perpendicular, and held a conference with the Duke of Gordon, whom he vainly pressed to retire with him into the Highlands, raise his brave vassals there, and leave his command of Edinburgh Castle to his loyal and faithful lieutenant.† While the conference lasted, a crowd collected at the foot of the precipice. A rumour reached the Convention, which was then sitting, that Dundee was at the gates with an army, and that Gordon was going to bombard the town. The Duke of Hamilton, who was better informed, turned the panic to the advantage of his party. He ordered the doors of the house to be shut, and the keys to be laid on the table-exclaiming, that there was danger within as well as without doors -that traitors must be held in confinement until the danger was over-but that the friends of liberty had nothing to fear, as thousands were ready to start up in their defence at the stamp of his foot. At his order, drums beat and trumpets sounded, and swarms of west-country Covenanters, who had been brought into Edinburgh by Hamilton and Sir John Dalrymple, started from their hiding-places in garrets and cellars and showed themselves in the streets with arms in their hands. When the doors of the Convention were thrown open for the members to retire, the few Tories present were assailed with threats and curses; which had such an effect that some of the adher

The relationship, however, was very distant-Dundee being the eighth and the great Marquess the ninth in descent from the same common ancestor, Sir William Graham, who died early in the fif teenth century.

This strange conference on the edge of the rock was held at a postern gate, the marks of which are still to be seen, though the gate itself is built up.-Dalrymple.

ents of James fled at once into the country, and still more adapted themselves to circumstances and changed sides. With the field left to themselves, the Whigs were relieved from the necessity of those fine lines of policy, and those compromises between Whigism and Toryism, which had embarrassed the English Convention, and given to its proceedings an appearance of a want of decision and straightforwardness, but which, at the same time, had produced more moderation and a greater attention to the feelings or the rights of opposite parties. But there was a project which had long been entertained by some eminent Scottish statesmen, and which had been recommended by William in his letter to the Convention- a project which roused the national and religious feelings of the people, and which might have ruined everything if it had not been given up in time. This was the scheme of the union of the two kingdoms; and Lord Stair, and his son-Sir J. Dalrymple-who at a better period renewed it with success, and Lord Tarbet, recommended that the settlement of the crown and the union should go hand in hand. But the keen Presbyterians, who formed the majority of the Convention, refused to listen to the project of an incorporation with the prelatical English; and for this and other weighty reasons the plan was abandoned at once.*

On the 4th of April the Convention came to the resolution that King James had, by his evil deeds, Burnet-Dalrymple-Ralph.

forfaulted" (forfeited) his right to the crowna term which, in the law language of Scotland, implied the exclusion of all James's posterity. But as this would have comprehended William's wife and the Princess Anne, as well as the disputed male child, and as it was intended that Mary should be admitted to the throne, they agreed upon the fol lowing explanation of the legal term :-"That the word forfault, in the resolution, should imply no other alteration in the succession to the crown than the seclusion of King James, the pretended Prince of Wales, and the children that shall be procreated of either of their bodies." Only five voices spoke against the sentence of forfeiture-which, per se was more logical and correct than the abdication or the desertion put forward by the Convention of England. Upon this sentence of forfeiture they grounded the offer of the crown to William and Mary; and they accompanied the offer by a declaration of rights, which went farther than the English one, exposing all the inroads upon liberty made not only by the late king, but by his brother and predecessor, Charles II., and defining with more nicety the power of the prerogative and the rights of the nation. The Duke of Hamilton himself read the Act of the Convention at the Market Cross; and the Earl of Argyle, the son of the unfortunate nobleman who had been executed under James, Sir John Dalrymple, and Sir James Montgomery, were appointed to repair to London with the offer of the crown. Such visitors were pretty sure of a kind reception: they were admitted to

the presence of William and Mary, and Argyle read aloud the Scottish coronation oath, the king repeating each clause, and holding up his right hand whilst he swore. Persecution had not yet taught the Covenanters and Presbyterians the blessed creed of toleration; and the Convention had not revised a clause which bound the king by oath "to root out all heretics and enemies to the true worship of God"-by which was meant, the old Presbyterian form of worship, to the exclusion of all others. When Argyll came to these words, William, who did know the advantages of toleration, stopped him, and declared that he would not oblige himself to become a persecutor. The commissioners assured him that it was not so meant. "Then," said William, "I take the oath in that sense only.”*

The revolution was now accomplished, and the Prince of Orange was King of England and Scotland, to the consternation and disgust of those theorists who had favoured his invasion and progress in the credulous and almost insane hope that he would content himself by being the head of a British republic; and equally to the mortification of many of the Tories and high-churchmen, who, with equal credulity, had believed (or so they pretended) that William, after correcting the abuses of the government and putting down Popery, would restore his father-in-law to the throne and return quietly to Holland.

William's first measure was to announce that all Protestants found in office on the 1st of December last should continue in their places until further notice. On the 17th of February he published a list of the privy councillors, at the head of whom was Est il possible, who was considerable in nothing except in being the husband of the Princess Anne.t The number of disinterested patriots was exceedingly small: every man of any consequence that had assisted in making the revolution put in his claim for reward; and there was a general scramble for pensions and places and court distinctions. If England had been El Dorado, and William the most giving and liberal of princes, there would have been no satisfying all those claimants; and, of the dissatisfied, too many were prone to extend their dissatisfaction to the whole revolution, with the principles it established, and were soon ready to undo what they had done. Under almost any other sovereign the effect would soon have been seen in the worst of all revolutions a restoration; but William, whose vices no less than his virtues-whose strange, imperturbable,

Burnet.-Dalrymple.

See vol. iii. p. 799. This is the list:-The Prince of Denmark, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Norfolk, the Marquesses of Halifax and Winchester; the Earls of Danby, Lindsay, Devonshire, Dorset and Middlesex, Oxford, Shrewsbury, Bedford, Bath, Macclesfield, and Nottingham; the Viscounts Falconberg, Mordaunt, Newport, and Lumley; the Bishop of London; the Lords Wharton, Montagu, Delamere, and Churchill; Mr. Bentinck, Mr. Sidney, Sir Robert Howard, Sir Henry Capel, Mr. Powle, Mr. Russel, Mr. Hampden, and Mr. Boscawen. The majority were men who had ventured farthest in the revolution; and as for the archbishop and that sturdy Tory, Nottingham, they were named " sweetener to the church,' "by way of it being thought advisable to do something to conciliate that great body.-Burnet.-Ralph. VOL. IV.

cold manners, no less than his extraordinary abilities, fitted him for the crisis-conjured the worst part of the storm, and turned some of its conflicting elements to the advantage of himself and of the nation, which, perhaps, never more than at this moment depended upon the character and talent of a single individual. On the 18th of February he made his first speech from the throne to the two Houses. It was short and cogent. He told them that he was come to assure them that he should never do anything to lessen their good opinion of him; that the condition of affairs abroad, particularly in Holland, was such that, unless some speedy care was taken of them, they would run a greater hazard than the English would have them exposed to; that they themselves must be sensible that the posture of affairs at home would require their serious consideration, and that a good settlement was necessary for peace and for the support of the Protestant interest both here and abroad; and, particularly, that the state of Ireland was such as could not be remedied by any slow or weak measures. The Commons returned a solemn vote of thanks, which passed nemine contradicente; but on the next day the Lords brought in a bill to remove and prevent all questions and disputes concerning the legality of the assembling and sitting of this present parliament. This bill was read twice on the same day, and a third time on the day following, when it was sent down to the Commons. Both Whigs and Tories-the members of the cabinet as well as the members of parliament--had been struck by the very obvious necessity of legalising the Convention in some way or other; and, before the Lords' bill came down, the Commons were debating in committee upon a question put by their chairman, Mr. Hampden-" Whether a king, elected and declared by the Lords, spiritual and temporal, and Commons, assembled at Westminster, January 22, 1688-9, coming to and consulting with the said Lords and Commons, did not make as complete a parliament and legislative power and authority, to all intents and purposes, as if the said king should cause new summons to be given and new elections to be made by writ?" The Tories and Jacobites, who were anxious for a new election, answered this proposition in the negative, and insisted that the king's writs should be issued for the calling of a new parliament, which might confirm, oras they hoped-rescind or modify what had been done by the Convention actually sitting. But, in the end, a bill was passed declaring the Convention to be, to all intents and purposes, a legal parliament. On the 1st of March the new oath of allegiance was tendered. It was conceived in the simplest form: the words "rightful and lawful sovereigns being, upon mature deliberation, omitted. But, notwithstanding this modification, several lords and several members of the House of Commons withdrew without permission; and the Earls of Clarendon, Lichfield, and Exeter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and seven of the

C

If

The first parliament of Charles II. in the heat of their loyalty had settled upon him a revenue for life of 1,200,000l., and this precedent was followed on the accession of James. William, it appears, expected to have the same kind of grant for life; but the Commons had learned a good lesson, and both Whigs and Tories opposed the vote. "We may date our misery," said Sir Edward Seymour, "from our bounty here. King Charles II. had not had that bounty from you, he had never attempted what he did." During the debate, William informed the House by message that the late king had sailed from Brest with a French armament for Ireland. The Commons then agreed to a temporary vote for 420,0002. per month, and engaged, together with the Upper House, to support his majesty with their lives and fortunes. The government and even the life of William were already threatened by conspirators: caution was necessary, and a certain stretch of the law, perhaps, justifiable; but the Commons suspended at once the Habeas Corpus Act-thus establishing a dangerous precedent; and the Lords, going still farther, "humbly advised and desired his majesty to take extraordinary care of the government in this conjuncture, by securing all disaffected persons whatsoever "-thus laying the personal liberty of the subject open to every attack of suspicion, fear, and animosity. And, in subsequent periods, timid or arbitrary ministers have not failed to follow the example in seasons of excitement. At this first suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, however, very few persons were arrested, for William was neither timid nor arbitrary. The hearth-tax, by which the sum of two shillings a-year was levied on every house in the kingdom, had always been particularly odious to the people, and it was now abolished at the recommendation of William, who received thereupon the thanks of both Houses. Proceeding with the great question of supply, the Commons bore in mind that, though a standing army had just been declared illegal, there could be no such security against it as the want of money in the crown to maintain one; and that the civil list ought to be clearly fixed and separated from the funds provided for the public defence and contingent expenditure. Upon a careful examination of accounts, they had discovered that the real value of the late king's revenue was far above its nominal amount: that James had been in the receipt, altogether, of

Coke.-Ralph.-Burnet.-Luttrell's Diary.-Evelyn.-Life of King James II.-Hallam,

ture nearly 90,000l. per annum was set down under the suspicious head of secret-service money.* They now voted 1,200,000l. for the current year, only one-half to be appropriated to the civil list, the other half to the public defence, &c.; but they soon improved upon their original scheme of a definite revenue, by taking a close and constant superintendence of the navy, army, and ordnance, having estimates regularly laid before them, and seeing, as far as was possible, that the supply granted was appropriated to the services to which it was voted. This great and fundamental principle became henceforward an invariable usage, and by means of it the House of Commons acquired that controlling position which it now maintains; and this alone will make Englishmen grateful for the Revolution of 1688.† For the current year the Commons fixed the allowance for the navy at 700,000/. instead of at 1,100,000l., as proposed by ministers; and they made only provision for six months for the army which was to defend or rather recover Ireland. They voted 600,000l. as compensation to the Dutch for the services rendered in ships and men at the Revolution. William had only demanded 700,000l., but the reduction displeased him much, and generally he complained of parsimony and a want of confidence. He had told Parliament that the Dutch had neglected their own safety to relieve England in her extremity; that by this service they had drawn the French upon them; and that now the ruin of Holland would be but a step to the ruin of England.

William had been bred a Calvinist, a circumstance which did not endear him to the Church of England; but in Holland he had witnessed the agreeable prospect of all sects and religions living peaceably together, and he was both by heart and head disposed to toleration. He proposed a repeal of the Test Act, trusting that the great dread of the Papists would be removed with the removal of a Roman Catholic king, and that the professions of good-will which had passed between the established church and the dissenters, when threatened by James, would lead to some amicable and lasting agreement. But the Lords rejected the repeal by a great majority, and took no notice of a petition from the City of London, praying that the king might be at liberty to use indiscriminately the services of all his Protestant subjects, without any imposition of the sacramental oath, which offended the consciences of so many. At the same time, the church party in the House of Lords eagerly grasped at a clause--also recommended by the tolerant king-which went to .dispense with the oaths of the bishops and established clergy to the new government. But the dissenters in the House