Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/370

Rh and Middleton's recall of this remission by private warrant was a proximate cause of the latter's fall.

The direct struggle between Lauderdale and the Middleton faction now began. Middleton's friends first passed an act imposing upon all persons in the public employment an oath abjuring both the national covenant and the solemn league and covenant. This they hoped would turn out Lauderdale, who had been a prominent upholder of both. It did actually turn out the conscientious Lord Crawford from the treasurership; but Lauderdale at once declared his readiness to take a cartload of oaths (ib. p. 65), and to turn Turk to keep his place (Lauderdale Papers). Middleton then attached to the Indemnity Act a clause by which twelve persons, to be selected by ballot, should be excepted from public service, and by unsparing corruption Middleton succeeded in placing Lauderdale, Sir Robert Moray [q. v.], and Crawford among the twelve. The blundering trickery of the plot, the attempt to secure secrecy and its failure, and Lauderdale's exposure of the conspiracy to the king at the critical moment, may be read in Burnet (i. 269–72), and in the ‘Lauderdale Papers’ (i. 105, 117). Lauderdale's enemies next sought to ruin him by asserting that they had proofs of his double dealing regarding the surrender of Charles I to the English; but this also proved only a scare, as the papers were not originals (ib. pp. 127, 128). Lauderdale now struck his blow. He called for a full investigation, and on 7 Sept. 1663 exposed Middleton's action in so masterly an harangue before the Scottish privy council that by the end of May the commissioner was forced to resign. Rothes succeeded him as Lauderdale's tool, and Lauderdale himself went to Scotland in May 1663 to take vengeance on the conspirators, leaving Moray as his deputy in London.

Henceforward all Scottish business was conducted by Charles, Lauderdale, and Moray, the English ministers being excluded. Lauderdale's chief business in Scotland was to make the crown absolute both in state and church. The lords of the articles were replaced upon the footing of 1633, which made the crown practically supreme over parliament. Strong acts were passed against the covenanters, which secured his reputation as a friend of the church, while his National Synod Act placed her in complete subservience to the crown. In October he returned to Whitehall, with greatly augmented credit, leaving Scotland under Rothes and James Sharp. The result of their misgovernment was the premature covenanting rising of 1666, and a design on the part of his own friends Rothes, Sharp, Hamilton, Dalyel, and Archbishop Burnet of Glasgow to consolidate a party resting on the support of the troops, and strong enough to throw off Lauderdale's domination. Lauderdale displayed the greatest skill in breaking up this new cabal. By January 1667 Rothes had returned to his old allegiance, and Sharp was disgraced. Lauderdale was, too, greatly strengthened by the wane of Clarendon's influence and of that of the strong church party. In June 1667 he sent Moray to report on the state of the country, and by the end of the year had forced Rothes to resign the commissionership and the treasury, which was placed in commission of Lauderdale's friends. He then carried out the disbanding of the troops, replacing them by a militia of twenty-two thousand men, secured Sharp's service against his former confederates, applied a policy of toleration to the covenanters, and effected the disgrace of Archbishop Burnet of Glasgow, who opposed it. In October 1669 he went again as high commissioner, with instruction to deal with the union, the militia, forfeitures, and conciliation. With a high hand he carried, in a carefully packed parliament, an act allowing Charles to use the militia when and where he pleased, and the Act of Supremacy, which still further enslaved the church. An immediate result of the last act was the resignation of Burnet. So drastic were these measures that he could justly say, ‘The king is now master here in all causes and over all persons.’ The negotiations for the union—a measure to which he was very hostile—proved abortive, and were postponed, 13 Nov. 1669 (ib. ii. 159). His last act before returning to the court at the end of the year was the annexation to the crown of the Orkneys and Shetlands, which had been formerly granted to the predecessors of the Earl of Morton, who was thus persecuted because he was a son-in-law of Middleton (, p. 175). On his reappearance in Scotland in July 1670 acts were passed empowering commissioners for the union to confer with the English, suppressing conventicles, quartering the militia upon the disaffected, raising troops of horse, foot, and dragoons, and giving toleration to submissive ministers (Lauderdale Papers, ii. 184–7). In the same year Lauderdale, along with other protestant ministers, was duped by the king in the matter of the sham treaty of Dover.

In 1671 Lauderdale's first wife died at Paris. She was Anne, second daughter of Alexander Home, first earl of Home [q. v.], by the daughter of Edward Sutton, baron Dudley. By her Lauderdale had a daughter, who was married at Highgate before the