Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/207

A.D. 1704.] condemned in England as accomplices in this conspiracy, and the queen's ministers as perseveringly ignored the demand, knowing that it could only tend to excite a great flame in Scotland. It was, however, deemed a matter of prudence to dismiss Queensberry from his office.

The duke of Hamilton only the more vehemently returned to the proposal to pass to the consideration of the limitations on the crown and the treaty of trade, naming commissioners to treat with England. Nothing was to take precedence of these subjects except the granting a land-tax to pay the forces necessary for Scotland. As Hamilton and Athol were strongly suspected of leaning towards the pretender, the earl of Marchmont at once moved that they should pass an act to exclude for ever all popish successors from the throne. This produced a violent retort from Hamilton and his party. The lord chief justice then brought up a bill of supply, but to this there was a particular provision, which had been brought forward as a separate act in the preceding session, but refused signature by the queen, namely, "that if the queen should die without issue, a Scottish parliament should presently meet, and should declare the successor to the crown, who should not be the same person that was possessed of the crown of England, unless before that time there should be a settlement made in parliament of the rights and liberties of the nation, independent of the English councils." Besides this there was another clause — that the Scotch should be at liberty to arm and train soldiers for the defence of the country; and the whole was agitated with so much vehemence and heat that, though the presbyterians were perfectly agreeable to the settling the protestant succession, they were overawed, the dukes of Hamilton and Athol keeping the whole nation in a state of furious excitement.



This popish and Jacobite faction had, in fact, now carried their insolence so far as to menace the crown with setting up a separate king if their unreasonable demands were not unconditionally complied with. For it was not a fair and temperate decision and cession of the real rights of Scotland which they wanted, and which they might have had, but their aim was to embarrass the English government and compel it to submit to a position of menace of a rival sovereign at any moment that they pleased. William would have lain quiet, as he did in similar difficulties in the commencement of his reign with that country, and have left the troops unpaid, and Scotland itself to feel the inconvenience