Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/248

234 The Scots exclaimed aloud that they had been betrayed by their parUameut, which had been basely bribed by Englaud, and now they were to be treated with every injustice and trodden under foot with the most haughty contempt. Religious differences arising out of the terms of the union added fuel to the general flame, and the Jacobites seized on this temper of the public mind to forward their own views. The very presbyterians, incensed at the treatment of Scotland, were ready to listen to the representations of the emissaries and adherents of the old Stuart dynasty, and to recur to the hope that in that line they might yet find the means of recovering their independence of the proud English.



There had been for some time in Scotland a very zealous emissary of the court of St. Germains, one colonel Hooke, a brother, as supposed, of Nathaniel Hooke, author of a well-known Roman History, and also the compiler or reviser of the duchess of Marlborough's account of her life, for which labour she is said to have paid him five thousand pounds. Colonel Hooke transmitted to Chamillart, the minister of Louis XIV., flaming accounts of this state of things in Scotland, and represented that never was there so auspicious an opportunity of introducing the king of England (the pretender) again to his ancient throne of Scotland — a circumstance than which nothing could be more advantageous to France. A civil war created in Great Britain must completely prevent the English from longer impeding the affairs of Louis on the continent. All the power of England would be needed at home; and on the king of England succeeding in establishing himself on the throne of the united kingdom, France would be for ever relieved from the harassing antagonism of England — the only real obstacle to the amplest completion of all France's plans for continental dominion.