Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/541

Rh LATER STUARTS.] SCOTLAND 517 exaction. Military commissions were issued to Claver- house and other officers in the southern and western shires empowering them to quarter their troops on recusants and administer martial law. Torture was freely resorted to by the privy council and the duke himself took pleasure in witnessing it. A parliament summoned in 1681, after passing a general Act against Popery to lull suspicion, pro- ceeded to declare the succession to be in the ordinary line of blood and unalterable on account of difference of religion by any future law. The Test Act was then carried, not without many attempts to modify it. Its ambiguous and contradictory clauses make it an admirable instrument of tyranny, a shelter for the lax and a terror to the upright conscience. It was at once enforced, and Argyll, who de- clared he took it only so far as it was consistent with itself and the Protestant religion, was tried and condemned to death for treason, but escaped from prison to Holland. Dalrymple, the president of the Court of Session, and many leading Presbyterian ministers and gentry followed his ex- ample, and found a hospitable refuge in the republic which first acknowledged toleration in religion. They there met a similar band of English exiles. The next two years were spent in plots, of which the centre was in Holland, with branches in London and Edinburgh. The failure of the Rye House Plot in 1683 led to the execution of Russell and Sidney and the arrest of Spence, a retainer of Argyll, Carstares, Baillie of Jerviswood, and Campbell of Cess- nock. Against Campbell the proof of complicity failed, and Spence and Carstares, though cruelly tortured, revealed nothing of moment. Baillie, however, was condemned and executed upon slender proof. The Cameronians, who kept alive in remote districts the spirit of rebellion, were treated with ruthless cruelty. Although doubt has been cast on the death of Brown the carrier, shot down in cold blood by Claverhouse, and the Wigtown martyrs, two poor women tied to a stake and drowned in the Bay of Luce, the account of Wodrow has, after a keen discussion, been sustained as accurate. The conduct of the Government in Scotland gained for this period the name of the " Killing Times." The short reign of James VII. is the saddest period in the history of Scotland. He succeeded in the brief space of three years in fanning the revolutionary elements in both England and Scotland into a flame which he was powerless to quench. He declined to take the Scottish coronation oath, which contained a declaration in favour of the church then established. A submissive parliament held (28th April 1685) under the duke of Queensberry as com- missioner not only overlooked this but expressed its loyalty in terms acknowledging the king's absolute supremacy. The excise was granted to the crown for ever and the land- tax to James for life. The law against conventicles was even extended to those held in houses, if five persons be- sides the family attended domestic worship ; while, if the meeting was outside the house, at the door or windows, it was to be deemed a field conventicle, punishable by death. The class of persons subject to the test was enlarged. Undeterred or provoked by these terrors of the law, Argyll made a descent upon the western Highlands and tried to raise his clansmen, but, being badly supported by the officers under him, his troops were dispersed and he himself taken prisoner, when he was brought to Edinburgh, condemned, and executed under his former sentence. Next year Perth the lord chancellor, Melfort his brother, and the earl of Moray became converts to the Popish faith. The duke of Queensberry, who did not follow their example, wa.s enabled only by the most servile submission in other points to the royal wishes to save himself and his party in the privy council from dismissal. James sent a letter to parliament offering free trade with England and an indem- nity for political offences, in return for which it was required that the Catholics should be released from the test and the 1681-1689. penal laws. But the estates refused to be bribed. Even the Lords of the Articles declined to propose a repeal of the Test Act. The burghs almost for the first time in a Scottish parliament showed their independence. The refractory parliament was at once adjourned and soon after dissolved, and James had recourse in Scotland as in England to the dispensing power. Under a pretended prerogative he issued a proclamation through the privy council, granting a full indulgence to the Romanists, and by another deprived the burghs of the right of electing magistrates. A more limited toleration was granted to Quakers and Presby- terians, by which they were allowed to worship according to their consciences in private houses. This was followed by a second and a third indulgence, which at last gave full liberty of worship to the Presbyterians and was accepted by most of their ministers ; but the laws against field con- venticles continued to be enforced. In February 1688 Renwick was executed under them at Edinburgh. A band of his followers, including women and children, were marched north and imprisoned with great cruelty in Dunnottar. Meantime the rapid series of events which led to the Revolu- Revolution in England had reached its climax in the trial tio. n. of and acquittal of the seven bishops. William of Orange, who William had long watched the progress of his father-in-law's tyranny, saw that the moment had come when almost all classes in England as well as Scotland would welcome him as a deliverer. But the Revolution was differently received in each part of the United Kingdom. In England there was practically no opposition; in Catholic Ireland it was established by force. Scotland was divided. The Catholics, chiefly in the Highlands, and the Episcopalians led by their bishops adhered to James and formed the Jacobite party, which kept up for half a century a struggle for the principle of legitimacy. The Presbyterians probably the most numerous, certainly the most powerful party, especi- ally in the Lowlands and burghs supported the new settle- ment, which for the first time gave Scotland a constitu- tional or limited monarchy. Shortly before his flight James had summoned his Scottish troops to England ; but Douglas, brother of the duke of Queensberry, their com- mander-in-chief, went over to William. Claverhouse, now Pacifica- Viscount Dundee, the second in command, who had the tion f spirit of his kinsman Montrose, after in vain urging James ? to fight for his crown, returned to Scotland, followed by some thirty horsemen. In Edinburgh the duke of Gordon still held the castle for James, while the convention parlia- ment, presided over by the duke of Hamilton, was debating on what terms the crown should be offered to William. Dundee passed through Edinburgh unmolested, and en- couraged Gordon to hold out, while he himself gathered the Highland chiefs round his standard at Lochaber. Mackay, a favourite general of William, sent to oppose him, was defeated at Killiecrankie (29th July 1689), where the spirited leadership of Dundee and the dash of the Highlanders' attack gained the day ; but success was turned into defeat by a bullet which killed Dundee almost at the moment of victory. No successor appeared to take his place and keep the chiefs of the clans together. The Cameronians, organized into a regiment under Cleland, repulsed Cannon, the commander of the Highland army, at Dunkeld, and the success of Livingston, who defeated the remnant under Cameron and Buchan at the Haughs of Cromdale on the Spey, ended the short and desultory war. The castle of Edinburgh had been surrendered a month before the battle of Killiecrankie. Three forts, at Fort William, Fort Augustus, and Inverness, sufficed to keep the Highlands from rising for the next two reigns. Meantime the convention parliament in Edinburgh had