Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/503

] was to induce Charles to enter into a league against France—whose king continued, in spite of treaties, to press on his encroachments—yet was courted by the exclusionists, even by Monmouth, as well as lord Russell and the other whig leaders; and with all his habitual caution could not avoid letting it be seen that he was proud of the courtship. He even consented to accept an invitation from the city to dinner, to the great disgust of the court, which was in high dudgeon at the conduct of the sheriffs, and William soon returned. His object was to ascertain the strength of the whig party, and though the tide was rapidly running against it at that moment, he went back with the conviction that some violent change was not very for off. Though Charles promised William to join the alliance against France, and call a parliament, no sooner was the prince gone than he assured Louis that he was more than ever his friend, and received a fresh bribe of a million of livres to allow France to attack Luxemburg, one of the main keys of Holland.

James, during these mouths, had been distinguishing himself in Scotland in a manner which promised but a poor prospect to protestantism should he ever come to the throne. After the battle of Bothwell Bridge, the covenanting party seemed for a while to have sunk into the earth and disappeared; but ere long there was seen emerging again from their hiding-places, the more determined and enthusiastic section which followed Donald Cargill and Richard Cameron. These so-called Cameronians believed that Charles Stuart, by renouncing the solemn league and covenant, had renounced all right to rule over them; and Cameron, accompanied by about twenty of his adherents, affixed on the, cross of Sanquhar "a declaration and testimony of the true presbyterian, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, and persecuted party in Scotland." In this bold paper they disowned Charles Stuart, who ought, they said, to have been denuded years before of being king, ruler, or magistrate, on account of his tyranny. They declared war on him as a tyrant and usurper; they also disowned all power of James, duke of York, in Scotland, and declared that they would treat their enemies as they had hitherto treated them.

The host of Israel, as they styled themselves, consisted of six-and-twenty horse and forty foot. At Airdmoss, in Kyle, this little knot of men who spoke such loud things was surprised by three troops of dragoons, and Cameron, as bold in action as in word, rushed on this unequal number, crying, "Lord, take the ripest, spare the greenest." He fell with his brother and seven others. Rathillet, who was there, was wounded and taken prisoner, but Cargill escaped. Rathillet was tried and executed for the murder of archbishop Sharp. His hands were first cut oft" at the foot of the gallows, after hanging, his head was cut off", and fixed on a spike at Cupar, and his body was hung in chains at Magus Moor. Cargill reappeared in September, 1680, at Torwood, in Stirlingshire, and there preached; and then, after the sermon, pronounced this extraordinary excommunication:—"I, being a minister of Jesus Christ, and having authority from him, do, in his name and by his spirit, excommunicate, cast out of the true church, and deliver up to Satan, Charles II., king of Scotland, for his mocking of God, his perjury, his uncleanness of adultery and incest, his drunkenness, and his dissembling with God and man." He also excommunicated the duke of York for idolatry, Monmouth for his slaughter of the Lord's people at Bothwell Bridge, Lauderdale for blasphemy, apostacy, and adultery, and other different offences.

The government thought it time to hunt out this nest of enthusiasts, and put to death as a terror the prisoners taken at Airdmoss. Two of these were women, Isabel Alison and Marian Harvey, who went to the gallows rejoicing. The duke of York offered to pardon some of them if they would only say, "God save the king," but they refused, and congratulated each other that they should that night sup in Paradise. Cargill and four of his followers were taken in July, 1681, and hanged.

James now professed great leniency and liberality. Instead of persecuting the Cameronians, he drafted them off into a Scottish regiment which was serving abroad in Flanders, in the pay of Spain. He put a stop to many of Lauderdale's embezzlements, and turned out some of the worst of his official blood-suckers. He promised to maintain episcopacy, and to put down conventicles, and brought into parliament a new test act, which was to swear every one to the king's supremacy and to passive obedience. His leniency was then soon at an end, and the object he was driving at was too palpable to escape the slightest observation. But Fletcher of Saltoun, lord Stair, and some other bold patriots opposed the design, and carried a clause in the test act for the defence of the protestant religion, which was so worded as to make it mean presbyterianism of the confession of faith of 1560. This so little suited James that he was necessitated to add another clause, excusing the princes of the blood taking his own test. But lord Belhaven boldly declared that the great object of it was to bind a popish successor. At this avowal, the last vestige of James's assumed liberality deserted him, and he sent lord Belhaven prisoner to the castle, and ordered the attorney-general to impeach him. He removed lord Stair from his office of president of the court of session, and commenced prosecutions against both him and Fletcher of Saltoun. The earl of Argyll, however, whose father had been executed by Charles soon after his restoration, made a decided speech against the test, and James called upon him at the council board to take it. Argyll took it with certain qualifications, whereupon James appeared to be satisfied, and invited Argyll to sit beside him at the council-board, and repeatedly took the opportunity of whispering in his ear, as if he bestowed his highest confidence on him. But this was but the fawning of the tiger ere he made his spring. Two days after he sent him to the castle on a charge of treason, for limiting the test. James, however, when some of the courtiers surmised that his life and fortune must pay for his treason, exclaimed, "Life and fortune! God forbid!"

Yet on the 20th of November instructions arrived from England to accuse him of high treason, and on the 12th of December he was brought to trial. To show what was to be expected from such a trial, the marquis of Montrose, the grandson of the celebrated Montrose, whom the father of Argyll and the covenanters hanged, and who was, in consequence, the implacable enemy of the present earl and all his house, was made foreman of the jury, and delivered the sentence of guilty. The whole council were called on to indorse this sentence; even the bishops were not allowed to be exempt, according to their privilege, from being