Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/22

8 duke of that title, who hoped that the title would be extended to his son, the earl of Dalkeith.

These domestic matters being thus settled, war was declared against France on the 13th of May. The inhuman desolation of the palatinate in the preceding winter, where Louis's general, Duras, had laid waste the whole country, burned down the tombs, leaving the whole of that fertile and populous district one black and terrible desert, had roused all the powers of Europe against him. The wretched population had been compelled to flee from their homes in frost and snow—thousands of them to perish by the hands of the brutal soldiery, thousands to die of cold and hunger. Heidelberg had been once more destroyed, its beautiful castle blown up partly with gunpowder, and partly left a naked ruin; Manheim and Speir equally ravaged; the noble cathedral of the latter place ransacked, the towns of the emperors destroyed, and their skulls used as bowls by the soldiery in mockery of play. Germany, Spain, Holland, and England all prepared for vengeance, and the people and parliament of England were equally loud in denunciation of the worthless desolator.

Whilst these affairs had been progressing in England, Scotland had been equally active. The Scotch had even more profound cause of hatred to James, and more hope of effectual relief from William than the English. In England the church had managed to maintain its ascendancy, and the fierceness of persecution had been somewhat restrained. There the iron boot and thumbscrews, and the fury of tory troopers, had not perpetrated the horrors that they had done north of the Tweed. The Scotch had had the hateful yoke of episcopacy forced on them, their church completely put down, and their liberties in a variety of ways crushed by the authorised licence of James's delegated ministers.

No sooner, therefore, had James fled than the suppressed feeling of the people burst forth. At Edinburgh crowds assembled, took down the heads of the slaughtered whigs from the gates, and committed them in solemn ceremony to the earth. The episcopal clergy were set upon in many parts of Scotland, especially in the west, where the covenanters prevailed, and where they had suffered so much from the emissaries of the church. The covenanters now chased them away from their manses, ransacked them, turned their wives and children out, broke all the furniture, or set fire to it. They tore the gown from the back of the clergyman if they could catch him, destroyed all the prayer-books they could find, locked up the church, and warned ministers not to be found there again. Two hundred clergymen were thus forcibly ejected. Christmas day was selected for the commencement of this summary process, to mark their abhorrence of such superstitious festivals. As amid this violence many began to plunder, the presbyterian ministers and elders assembled, and resolved that in future every incumbent of a parish should have due notice served on him to quit his parsonage peaceably, to avoid the necessity of being driven out by force.

The bishops and dignitaries made an instant appeal to William for protection, and a proclamation was issued—for William had no military force in Scotland—ordering the people to desist from further violence towards the clergy till the parliament should determine the form of the establishment. But so little regard was paid to it, that on the same day that it was published at Glasgow, the mob rushed to the cathedral, and drove out the congregation with sticks and stones.

On the 14th of March the Scottish convention of estates met. By the able management of Sir James Dalrymple of Stair—afterwards lord Stair—and his son, Sir John Dalrymple, who was an able debater, it was so managed that chiefly whigs were returned. Sir James was a man of great legal learning and consummate talent, though of doubtful character, who had been deprived of his position as a privy councillor and chief lord of the court of session, and had gone over to Holland, and was William's main adviser as to Scottish affairs. His son, Sir John, longer continued to side with the Stuarts, and was made lord advocate, but at the revolution he appeared in the other party, and was supposed to have been for some time in effect pledged to William's cause in secret through his father. He had at once declared for William on his landing, and exerted himself zealously for his interests in Scotland.

With the Dalrymples was associated George lord Melville, who had also been for some time with William in Holland. On the other hand the celebrated Graham of Claverhouse, viscount Dundee, and Colin Lindsay, earl of Balcarras, were the chief agents of James in Scotland. These two chiefs had pretended to go over to William, or at least to acquiesce in the change of dynasty; had waited on him on his arrival at Whitehall, and were well received by him. William was strongly urged to arrest these noblemen, as too deeply implicated in the tyrannies of James and the murder of the covenanters ever to be allowed to mingle with the new order of things; but William would not listen to it, determining to give every one a fair trial of at least living peaceably. So far did they promise this, that William granted them an escort of cavalry on their return to Scotland, without which they would not have been allowed by the covenanters to reach Edinburgh alive. The name of Claverhouse was especially a horror in every Scottish home in the lowlands, where it was abhorred for his terrible cruelties towards the presbyterian population.

No sooner did they reach Edinburgh than they set to work with all possible activity to assist the interests of James in the convention and the country. The duke of Gordon, who still held the castle for James, was on the point of surrendering it when they arrived; but they exhorted him to hold out, and called upon all the royalists who were elected at the convention to take their places and defend the absent king's interests. When the estates met, the earl of Argyll, who had been proscribed by James, took his seat amid the murmurs of the Jacobites, who declared that as a person under legal attainder, he was incapable of performing any office in the state. This was however, overruled by the majority. Melville, who had been living abroad too, and had reappeared with William, presented himself, but without any opposition. The duke of Hamilton was put in nomination by the whigs for the presidency of the convention, and the duke of Athol by the Jacobites. Neither of them were men whose conduct in the late reign was entitled to respect. Hamilton had adhered to James to the last, and had acquiesced in many invasions