“in the greatest crimes it is thought wisest to pardon the multitude and punish the ringleaders.” It is no exaggeration to say that, of the governors of Scotland under the Restoration, Claverhouse was the ablest, the most honourable, the least rapacious and even the most clement. But “Bluidy Claverhouse” will continue to enjoy his traditional reputation in popular tracts and popular histories.
Charles II. had died on the 2nd of February 1685, and there were in Scotland some who wept for him. The year of his death was, par excellence, “The Killing Time,” thanks to Renwick and his associates and the Rye House plotters. Now, too, came the attempts of Monmouth and of Argyll, who, owing to divided counsels in his camp, and want of support either from his clan or from the southern malcontents, failed in his invasion of Scotland, was taken, and was executed, suffering like his father with great courage and dignity. Many recusants were penned up, starved and cruelly treated, even tortured when they attempted escape, in the vaults of Dunottar Castle.
In 1686 James claimed and used the dispensing power as to penal laws against Catholics, in face of the opposition of two of the Revolution of 1688. Scottish bishops (who were ejected from their sees) and of parliament. Mackenzie, for his opposition, lost office. The privy council was opened to Catholics, but on the landing of William III. the populace, in 1688, wrecked the chapel of Holyrood and began to “rabble” conformist ministers, or “curates.” Of the guard that defended Holyrood “the gentlemen and the rabble, when they saw all danger over, killed some and put the rest in prison, where many of them died of their wounds and hunger,” a parallel to the Dunottar cruelties not usually mentioned by historians (“Balcarres Memoirs”). A Convention of Estates, without a royal commissioner, met at Edinburgh on the 14th of March 1689, and it is curious that Williamites and Jacobites were not unequally represented. For president, Hamilton, who had been in opposition from 1673 to 1682, was preferred to Atholl by a small majority, but it soon appeared that William's friends were in the ascendant.
Claverhouse, now Viscount Dundee, despairing of his party, and under apprehension of an attack in arms, rode northward Killiecrankie. with a handful of horse, and began to play the part of Montrose, while the Convention offered the crown to William and Mary, adding the claim of right to dethrone a king who had infringed the laws. In May, William, in London, took the coronation oath, but firmly refused to accept, except in some sense of his own not easily understood, the clause, “to be careful to root out all heretics.” The castle of Edinburgh was surrendered by Gordon, and Balcarres was put in that prison where, according to legend, he was visited by the Wraith of Dundee, on the night of the battle of Killiecrankie. While Dundee was raising the clans and outmanœuvring Mackay, a party in parliament was agitating for constitutional reforms, and especially for freedom from the Lords of the Articles. William opposed, and party war was furious, when news came of Dundee's complete victory at Killiecrankie. The terror of the Whigs turned to joy when they heard that Dundee himself had fallen in the arms of victory. Two murderers had been sent by the earl of Nottingham to “seize,” that is to despatch, Dundee. They left London for Mackay's camp on the 19th of July. On the 27th of July Dundee was shot, and on the 21st of October Nottingham wrote that his emissaries “had done very good service to the King” (State Papers, “Domestic,” July 17th, 18th, 19th, October 21st, 1689). Henceforth, for lack of a commander of Dundee's genius, there was no real danger from the clans, and absolutely no chance of a rising of the lowland Jacobites in their support. At Dunkeld the newly raised Cameronian regiment successfully repulsed the highlanders, ill led by General Cannon as they were. They were never again dangerous at this period, were scattered by Livingstone in a surprise at Cromdale haughs, and government began to attempt to buy from chiefs the peace of the clans.
Meanwhile complex intrigues occurred, and were betrayed, between “the Club” (the advanced constitutionalists) and the Jacobites. In 1690 an act restored the kirk to the legal position of 1592, under sixty of the surviving ministers deprived in 1661. An act abolished civil penalties upon sentences of excommunication, and thus broke the terrible weapon which the preachers had wielded so long. Nothing was said about the eternally binding Covenant, which continued to be the fetish of the Cameronians and of later seceders. The General Assemblies, henceforth, under the influence of the diplomatic Carstairs (who had been cruelly tortured in 1684, to extract information about the Rye House Plot), did little to thwart government, though many “placed ministers” were, at heart, attached to the ancient claims of Knox and Melville. Laws as to patronage, an inflammatory question, were made, abolished and remade, causing, from about 1730 onwards, passions which exploded in the great Disruption of 1842. The dealings with the clans culminated in the massacre Massacre of Glencoe of the MacIans of Glencoe (13th February 1692). Through military inefficiency the hill passes were not stopped, and the murders of a peaceful and hospitable population were relatively few. That Dalrymple arranged for actual extermination of the males of the clan is certain, but there is no proof that he knew of the modus operandi, the betrayal of hospitality, “murder under trust.” It is conceivable that William signed the orders under the impression that a “punitive expedition” of the ordinary sort was alone intended, but remonstrance from the Estates brought no punishment on any man except the dismissal, later, of Dalrymple (Viscount Stair) from office.
In 1693-1694 the kirk was much irritated by William's demands for oaths of allegiance to himself, without the consent of the ecclesiastical courts. William gave way, but similar Hanoverian demands later caused great searching of heart and divisions among the preachers. The Episcopal party among the ministers was excluded from a share in church government and tended to dwindle; the bishops had no territorial sees; and gradually Episcopalians came to be Jacobites, professing a strange loyalty to James, who had treated them so unjustly, and later to his son, “James VIII., ” the Chevalier de St George (b. June 10, 1688).
Since the Cromwellian occupation the interest of Scottish men had slowly shifted from religion to commerce; but a tariff Darien Scheme. war between England and Scotland had checked manufacturing and other enterprises. One William Paterson, instrumental in founding the Bank of England, conceived the plan of a Scottish East India Company, which, in 1695, obtained a patent by act of parliament. William complained, later, that he had no notice of the terms of that patent till after it was passed (he was fighting under Namur at the time), and the act not unnaturally aroused the jealousy of the rival English companies. It committed William to conditions which might readily produce a great naval war with Spain, for Paterson's real design was to establish an entrepôt in Panama, at Darien, within the undeniable sphere of Spanish influence. The Scots invested very largely, for them, but their expeditions were ill-found and worse managed; the Spaniards seized one of their vessels with its crew; the colonists deserted the colony; a fresh expedition was expelled by Spain, and William refused to take up the Scottish quarrel (1695-1700). The losses and the apparent injustice caused a frenzy of excitement in Scotland, and William could only express his regret and his desire for an incorporating Union of the two kingdoms. He died on the 7th of March, when the project of Union was to be debated by the English parliament. Under William, Scotland was a constitutional country; the absolute despotism enjoyed by Charles II. ceased to be; a free debating parliament existed, and torture was inflicted only by decree of king and parliament. It was abolished two years after the Union of 1707.
Anne, from the beginning of her reign, advocated union, which, with the question of the succession, was the subject of The Union. constant and furious debates in the Scots parliament, till, on the 4th of March 1707, the act received the royal assent. Scotland was to have forty-five members and sixteen elected peers at Westminster; the holders of Darien stock were compensated; as a balance to equality of taxation a
