Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/251

A.D. 1707.] conquest, especially amongst the English, which would hinder their friends in England from joining them, and induce them rather to join the other side. Hamilton persisted in his views, and advised Hooke, till money and troops were forthcoming, to go back to France.

From others, however, Hooke received more encouragement. He obtained a memorial to Louis XIV., signed by the lord high constable, the earl of Errol, by the lords Stormont, Panmure, Kinnaird, and Drummond, and by some men of smaller note. The leading men did not sign. They were not willing to endanger their necks without some nearer prospect of invasion. Hooke, indeed, pretended that the lords who did sign, signed as proxies for many others, such as the earls of Caithness, Eglintoun, Aberdeen, and Buchan, lord Saltoun, &c. With this memorial, such as it was, Hooke went back to St. Germains, and what the document wanted in weight he made up by verbal assurances of the impatience of all Scotland for the arrival of the king. But the truth appears to be that France expected a stronger demonstration on the part of Scotland, and Scotland on the part of France, and so the adventure hung. As nothing was heard from France by the more eager and expectant conspirators, they began to write impatient letters to Chamillart, the French minister, the duke of Gordon, in the beginning of August, declaring that the friends of the king were in consternation at not hearing anything. Secresy, he said, was necessary in great affairs, but that there might be too much secresy, and that they must know what France intended. He declared that the duke of Hamilton was now as anxious for a demonstration as the rest of them. The laird of Kersland, the head of the presbyterians of the west, wrote that all would be ruined if succour did not arrive very soon; that he had managed to keep the people hitherto in the right spirit, but that they could not be kept so long. They complained of having been so often deceived, and that he must be assured that succours were coming, or it would be too late; that the union was so much detested that it had changed the hearts of the king's worst enemies, but that if this disposition was not profited by, all would be lost, and the king's most devoted friends all ruined. On the 23rd of August, the duke of Gordon having received no satisfactory answer, the duchess wrote in a strain of high excitement—"For God's sake, what are you thinking of? Is it possible that, having ventured all to show our zeal, we have neither assistance nor answer? All is lost for want of knowing what measures ought to be taken. Several of the greatest partisans of the union acknowledge their error, and come over to us. If we are left in the uncertainty that we are in, the people will grow cold. The chieftains will fear for themselves when they find they are despised, and will make their peace not to have a halter about their necks. Give me but a positive promise, and all will go well. The chieftains will then find no difficulty in keeping everything ready against the arrival of the succours; but our hearts are sunk by this continual uncertainty. Come when you please, and to what part you please, you will be well received; but if you do not come soon, the party will be broken, and it will be too late."

The fact was that the young pretender, an ardent, ambitious youth of nineteen, and his mother, the widow of James, were eager for the invasion of Scotland; but the means lay with Louis, and he was now old, failing in health, and much broken down and confounded by his late numerous reverses. The Scotch wanted both money and men, and he had neither. The victorious Marlborough in the Netherlands, his kingdom every summer now assaulted on the side of Provence, his fleets beaten and dispersed at sea by the English, and the demands of both men and money to support his feeble grandson on the throne of Spain, with an empty exchequer and a murmuring and beggared people, found him enough and more than enough to do. True, a bold and decided war in Scotland would make a grand diversion, and draw off the English from other quarters; but it required the resources and the spirit of his earlier years to organise such a campaign, with the hazard of his armament, after an expense that he could ill afford, being met at sea and demolished. These circumstances not only weighed on Louis but on his minister Chamillart, who was timid, vacillating, and oppressed with constant exertion to keep on foot the operations already indispensable.

Lord Middleton, on the part of the young pretender, did not fail to press on Chamillart the expediency of seizing on the state of things in Scotland at this moment, to serve both his master and Louis's own affairs. He informed him that colonel Hooke had been some time anxiously waiting to be able to send the Scotch word of the promised succours. He reminded him of the expectancy which they had excited in Scotland, and the imminent danger in which the great lords had placed themselves by their ready pledges to support the king of England. He begged him to remember of what advantage the insurrection in Hungary had been; what trouble even a few peasants in the Cevennes had been able to give against all the power of France, and that neither of these people could make so proud a stand as the Scotch, with their mountain fastnesses, could against an enemy. But all his arguments were at present in vain. It was not till the following year that sufficient spirit could be aroused to send out an armament, and not till upwards of twenty of the Jacobite lords and gentlemen, including the duke of Hamilton, with all his caution, had been arrested.

The first parliament of Great Britain met on the 23rd of October, 1707. It became a question whether this should be deemed a new parliament or not. It was contended, on the one hand, that it was a new parliament because it had been let fall and had been revived by a proclamation, and that, therefore, all who had received places must be re-elected. On the other hand, it was maintained that it was not a new parliament because it had not been summoned by a new writ. Harley asserted that it was merely the old parliament, but the duke of Marlborough contended that it ought to be considered a new one, and it was so far admitted that the speakership was put to the vote, and Mr. Smith was again elected. The queen, in her speech, endeavoured to make the best of the last unfortunate summer's military operations. The retreat of the imperialist troops on the Rhine was freely admitted, but it was considered an encouraging circumstance that the command there was now in the hands of the elector of Hanover, and it was announced that measures were taken for strengthening the forces in that quarter. Little could