88 THE REVOLUTION IN SCOTLAND. [1689. Covenant, was superseded by William's authority; and Lords were summoned who had been deprived of their seats in the recent times of tyrannical rule. Meanwhile, in the interval of two months before the Convention was to assemble, furious passions were well nigh leading to a state of public confusion. Edinburgh Castle was held for king James by the duke of Gordon. The Whigs of Edinburgh and of the West were secretly arming. But each party was looking to the Convention as the test of their political strength, and each prepared for a contest which should decide the future fortunes of Scotland. Nobles of each party were in London. The consistent opposers of the popish James flocked round the prince of Orange at Whitehall. The most ardent supporters of the Stuart king were not driven from the new court. The earl of Dundee, says Burnet, "had employed me to carry messages from him to the king, to know what security he might expect if he should go and live in Scotland without owning the government. The king said, if he would live peaceably, and at home, he would protect him; to this he answered, that, unless he were forced to it, he would live quietly."* William was pressed to proscribe the Claverhouse who had borne so hateful a part in the days of persecution; but he refused to make any exception to the general amnesty, by which he hoped to make Scotland in some degree a land of peace. Viscount Dundee arrived at Edinburgh at the end of February, in company with the earl of Balcarres. These noblemen were the confidential agents of James in Scotland; and from the day of their arrival the enemies of the Revolution had a rallying-point. The episcopal hierarchy were again full of hope that he they had called "the darling of Heaven," might be preserved and delivered by the mercy of God, by giving him the hearts of his subjects and the necks of his enemies.† Balcarres is an authority for some curious incidents of this crisis. He and Dundee went to the duke of Gordon to urge him to hold the castle of Edinburgh. They met "all the duke's furniture coming out;" but they made him promise to keep the fortress "until he saw what the Convention would do." On the 14th of March the Convention met. The bishop of Edinburgh prayed for the safety and restoration of king James, without opposition. The heir of the attainted Argyle took his seat, with only one protest. The conquerors and the conquered stood face to face. But the real strength was soon discovered. The duke of Hamilton had a majority of forty as President. Each party had put up a man that could not thoroughly be trusted. The marquis of Athol was as loose a politician as his opponent. But they were the heads of powerful clans, and their rank and influence made them leaders of politicians who had as little honesty as themselves. It was alleged against the duke of Hamilton that he, and other western lords and gentlemen, " had brought publicly into town several companies of foot, and quartered them in the city; besides great numbers that they kept hid in cellars, and in houses below the ground, which never appeared until some days after the Convention had begun."§ Dundee complained to Hamilton *Vol. iv. p. 39. + Address to James, November 3, 1688. Account of the Affairs of Scotland relating to the Revolution in 1688, as sent to the late King James II., when in France," 1714. § Ibid. 1689.1 THE REVOLUTION IN SCOTLAND. 89 that information had come to his knowledge that he was to be assassinated. The allegation came before the Convention on the 13th of March; and they took no concern in the matter. More important communications were to be laid before them. There was a letter to be read from king William in England; and a messenger had arrived with a letter from king James in France. The communication from king William had the precedence, by a decision of the majority. It was a mild and sensible document, exhorting to the laying aside of animosities and factions, and suggesting a Union of the two nations, "living in the same island, having the same language, and the same common interest of religion and liberty." The letter of James was counter-signed by the earl of Melfort, a man execrated by all parties. It breathed no spirit of peace. "He," the king, "would pardon all such as should return to their duty before the last day of that month inclusive; and he would punish with the rigour of his laws all such as should stand out in rebellion against him or his authority." When the seal of that letter was broken, the cause of James was felt to be lost. It was determined by Balcarres, Dundee, and a few other Tories, to leave the Convention, and gather together at Stirling. Sunday intervened. They were to start on the next day. Difficulties arose; and then Dundee, in his impatience, resolved to set out alone. "Then," says Balcarres," he went strait away with about fifty horse. As he was riding near the castle of Edinburgh, the duke of Gordon made a sign to speak with him at the West side of the Castle, where, though it be extremely steep, yet he told the duke all that was resolved upon, and begged that he would hold out the castle till the king's friends might get him released, which he positively promised to do." Dalrymple says, that when Dundee galloped through the city, "being asked by one of his friends who stopped him, where he was going,' he waved his hat, and is reported to have answered, 'wherever the spirit of Montrose shall direct me.' "The Gordon demands of him which way he goes- The duke of Hamilton caused the doors of the Convention to be locked. The drums were beat in the streets. The Western Whigs came forth from their hiding-places. "There was never so miserable a parcel seen," says Balcarres. Nevertheless, the notion of a rival Convention at Stirling was at an end; and Dundee went his own course, to redeem, by his death in the hour of victory, some of the odium which, in spite of the romance of history, must always attach to the realities of his cruel and fanatical life. For he, a hater of fanatics, was amongst the worst who have borne that name,—one of "those exploded fanatics of slavery, who formerly maintained what no creature now maintains, that the Crown is held by divine, hereditary, and indefeasible right;"t-one who, in the maintenance of this creed, divested himself of the ordinary attributes of humanity, to be as callous as an inquisitor, and as remorseless as a buccaneer. Disappointed in their scheme, the only thing, says Balcarres to James, that could be thought of by all your Burke, "French Revolution." * Scott. "The Doom of Devorgoil." 90 THE REVOLUTION IN SCOTLAND. [1689. friends, "was to engage the duke of Gordon to fire upon the town, which certainly would have broke up the Convention." The duke was wiser. "He absolutely refused to do anything but defend himself until he had your majesty's order." The Convention now went fearlessly to work in the settlement of the kingdom. After long debates the House came to a resolution, which was embodied into an Act. "The Estates of the kingdom of Scotland find and declare, that king James VII. being a professed Papist, did assume the royal power, and acted as a King, without ever taking the oath required by law, and had, by the advice of evil and wicked counsellors, invaded the fundamental constitution of this kingdom, and altered it from a legal and limited monarchy to an arbitrary and despotic power; and had governed the same to the subversion of the Protestant religion, and violation of the laws and liberties of the nation, inverting all the ends of government; whereby he had forefaulted the crown, and the throne was become vacant." An Act was also passed for settling the crown of Scotland upon William and Mary. On the day that the king and queen were crowned in England, they were proclaimed king and queen in Scotland. Commissioners were appointed from the Convention to proceed to London, to invest their majesties with the government. They -the earl of Argyle, sir James Montgomery, and sir John Dalrymple—were introduced at the Banqueting House on the 17th of May. Argyle tendered the Coronation Oath, which concluded with this clause, "that they would be careful to root out all heretics and enemies to the true worship of God." Upon this William declared that "he did not mean by these words, that he was under any obligation to be a persecutor." The Commissioners replied, that "neither the meaning of the oath, nor the law of Scotland did import it." "I take the oath in that sense," said William. In the Claim of Rights which the Convention had prepared it was set forth, "that Prelacy, and superiority of an office in the Church above Presbyters, is and has been a great and insupportable burthen to this nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the Reformation, they having reformed Popery by Presbytery, and therefore ought to be abolished." When Dundee, with his fifty horsemen, who had deserted from the regiment in England which he once commanded, had left the castle of Edinburgh far behind him, he scarcely then paused to think whither the spirit of Montrose would direct him. He retired to his country house in Forfar. He would probably have remained there unmolested by the new government; and he, as well as Balcarres, might have thought it most politic to continue quiet for a while. An agent of James arrived from Ireland, with letters recommending that nothing should be done till further orders; and Melfort, by the same messenger, wrote to Balcarres and Dundee. The letters fell into the hands of the dominant party in the Convention. Balcarres was arrested. Dundee had put the Tay between himself and his unfriends, “ and having a good party of his own regiment constantly with him, they found it not so safe to apprehend him." Balcarres was brought before the Convention, and the letters of Melfort to him were read. In one, says Balcarres, "Others were for making use of an obsolete word, forefaulting, used for a bird's forsaking her nest."-Balcarres. 1689.] THE HIGHLANDERS. 91 "he expressed himself much after this manner: That he wished some had been cut off that he and I spoke about, and then things had never come to the pass they were at; but when we get the power again, such should be hewers of wood, and drawers of water." Balcarres adds, addressing the king, that although he had never made any such proposition as that at which Melfort hinted, "nothing could have been more to the prejudice of your affairs, nor for my ruin, than this, which did show that nothing but cruelty would be used, if ever your majesty returned." When the order was given to arrest Dundee, he quitted his house with a few retainers; and was soon at the head of a body of Highlanders. In the most picturesque history in our language there are no passages more picturesque than those in which the eloquent writer describes the Highlanders of this period. He has produced his likeness of the Gael "by the help of two portraits, of which one is a coarse caricature, and the other a masterpiece of flattery." The caricature was produced out of the prejudices which existed up to the middle of the last century; the flattery has been created by poetry and romance in our own time. "While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigour, no account of them was given by any observer, qualified to judge of them fairly." + We venture to think that there is one account, not indeed very full or very striking, which contains many traits which appear to be the result of observation, and which are not distorted by any violent prejudice. Alexander Cunningham, who left a manuscript history of Great Britain from the Revolution to the accession of George I., written in Latin,‡ was a native of Scotland, who is supposed to have been in Holland in 1688, and is held by his biographer to have been chosen by Archibald, earl of Argyle, to be travelling tutor to his son, lord Lorne. His position would naturally give him an interest in the state of the Highlands, and would probably enable him to describe the people from personal observation. "The Scotch Highlanders," he says, " a race of warriors who fight by instinct, are a different people from the Lowlanders, of different manners, and a different language." This may appear a trite observation to set out with; but it was the case then, as it was much more recently with many, that "by most Englishmen, Scotchman and Highlander were regarded as synonymous words."§ Cunningham goes on to say, "Though of a very ready wit, they are utterly unacquainted with arts and discipline; for which reason they are less addicted to husbandry than to arms, in which they are exercised by daily quarrels with one another." || The hostilities of clans was the great moving principle in every Highland adoption of a public quarrel, as we have seen in the career of Montrose and of Argyle. It was the principle upon which Dundee relied when he hurried to the clans who were in arms for a private quarrel at Inverness. But the cause of king James had a hold upon their affections, beyond their desire to encounter the hostile chiefs who were the supporters of king William. They knew nothing of the political and religious grounds of difference. The causes of the great Revolution of England were to them unknown and uncared for. It was enough that "their minds, roused * Macaulay's History, vol. iii. c. xiii. Ibid. p. 304. § Macaulay, vol. iii. p. 312. 92 THE HIGHLANDERS.-DUNDEE. [1689. by the remembrance of former times, were easily drawn over by the viscount of Dundee, who was of the family of Montrose, to the interest of king James. They firmly believe that the ancient kings of Scotland were descended from them, and wore the very same dress which they now wear; and therefore they were easily persuaded that king James was of their own blood, and, by a kind of divine right, entitled to the crown.' Their hardihood, under exposure to cold and wet; their habitual exercise; their predatory excursions, are noticed by this historian. "Being in general poorly provided for, they are apt to covet other men's goods; nor are they taught by any laws to distinguish with great accuracy their own property from that of other people. They are not ashamed of the gallows; nay, they pay a religious respect to a fortunate plunderer."+ Scott says that a foray was so far from being held disgraceful, that a young chief was expected to show his talents for command, by heading a plundering expedition. To their chief "the common people adhere with the utmost fidelity, by whose right hand they are wont to swear."§ Dundee knew the qualities of the race that he was going to lead against the regular troops of the new government. Their peculiar character and organisation were favourable for a dashing enterprise. They were perhaps most to be feared in the hour of success. "In battle, the point to which they bend their utmost efforts, and which they are most anxious to carry, is their enemy's baggage. If that once falls into their hands, disregarding all discipline and oaths, and leaving their colours, home they run." || The clan which Dundee joined at Inverness had for its chief, MacDonald of Keppoch. This pugnacious warrior had recently won a battle against MacIntosh of Moy; and he was now about to harry the Saxon shopkeepers of Inverness for having taken part against his clan. In Inverness there was "sneezing," and sugar, and aqua-vita. He had recently been opposed to the soldiers of king James, who, under the direction of the Privy Council, had gone forth with letters of fire and sword to waste and kill in the country of MacDonald of Keppoch. When Dundee arrived, the chief thought less of the injuries which he had sustained from the government of king James than of the glorious opportunity of plunder in a fight against the government of king William. A goat was slain, a fire was kindled, the points of a small wooden cross were seared in the flame, and then the sparks were extinguished in the blood of the goat. "Their religion is partly taken from the Druids, partly from Papists, and partly from Protestants," says Cunningham. In the ceremony of preparing the Fiery Cross, we may readily trace the Pagan as well as the Popish element. MacDonald of Keppoch sent the Fiery Cross through his district. It was the signal for arming and assembling at a given place of rendezvous. It was handed on by one swift messenger after another through the country of Keppoch's allies and friends. The name of the Graham was sufficient to arm all those who hated the Campbell. The deeds of Montrose were the favourite themes of the bards; and now another Graham was come to lead the clans near Inverary, who had thrown * Cunningham, p. 122. Ibid. p. 121. |