returned from Ireland. In Scotland great changes had taken place. The remains of the Jacobite force in the highlands had been effectually put down. In the spring of 1690 James had sent over an officer with the commission of general-in-chief of the Jacobite forces in Scotland. General Buchan, therefore, took precedence of the drunken and incompetent Cannon; but all the troops that he could muster were not more than one thousand four hundred, and these were surprised and crushed by William's general, Sir Thomas Livingstone, who occupied Inverness. General Mackay completed the subjugation of the highlands by building a fort at Inverlochy, called after the king, Fort William, which effectually held the Camerons and Macdonalds in check. The last chance of James was over in that quarter.
At Edinburgh the battle with the disaffected clubbists came very soon to a similar end. The most prominent members, Montgomery, Ross, and Annandale, offered to yield their opposition if William would admit them to favour and office; but William disdained to purchase their adhesion, and they then in resentment flung themselves into the arms of James. The treaty was carried on through the medium of James's agent in London, one Neville Payne; and Mary, James's queen, sent over despatches, creating Montgomery for his treason earl of Ayr, and secretary of state, with a pension of ten thousand pounds to relieve his immediate necessities, for he was miserably poor, and harassed by creditors. Ross was to be made an earl, and have the command of the guards; and Annandale was to be a marquis, lord high commissioner, and governor of Edinburgh castle. But this measure, which the court of St. Germains fondly fancied was going to give them the ascendancy in the Scottish parliament, produced an exactly contrary effect. The old tory Jacobite members of the club were so much incensed at this favour shown to these renegade whigs, whilst they themselves were passed over, that the whole club went to pieces in an explosion of jealousy, and on the meeting of the nobles the new proselytes of Jacobinism, who were to have turned the scale in favour of the Stuart dynasty, were found to be utterly helpless and abandoned.
Disappointed of heading a powerful party against William's government, these miserable traitors immediately began to plot against each other. Ross and Montgomery were in haste which should reach London first to inform against his colleagues. Ross was the first to make confession to lord Melville, the lord high commissioner, and denounce Montgomery and Ferguson as the real traitors, who had seduced him, poor innocent! No sooner did Montgomery get wind of this than he hurried with equal speed to Melville with a similar confession. Melville gave them both passes to London, and they endeavoured to win their pardons from Mary by offers to denounce their accomplices, on condition that they should be not only forgiven, but employed. Annandale fled, but was arrested at Bath, and brought before the privy council, where he denounced Montgomery as the grand seducer and traitor, and showed himself equally ready to betray others. Amongst these was Payne, the agent, through whom they had accomplished their treason, who fled to Scotland, but was flung into the castle of Edinburgh, and terribly tortured by the iron boot to force fresh disclosures from him, but in vain; he was not so base as these three noisy renegades, who for their own selfish purposes were ready to oppose any government, however good, or any man who had ventured to colleague with them.
This turbulent and factious party being thus broken up, and some of the clubbists going over to the new government voluntarily as the means of safety, and others being brought over by timely offers of place or money, the settlement of the affairs of Scotland became tolerably easy. The presbyterian religion was declared the established religion of Scotland. Contrary to the will of William, a toleration act for that kingdom had been rejected. The confession of faith of the Westminster assembly was adopted; the remaining presbyterian ministers who had been rejected at the restoration, now reduced from three hundred and fifty to sixty, were restored, and the episcopalian ministers were forcibly ejected in turn, and presbyterians installed. The old synodal polity was restored, and the sixty old restored ministers, and such as they should appoint, were ordered to visit all the different parishes and see that none but godly ministers, sound in the presbyterian faith, were occupying the manses and the pulpits. This, however, did not satisfy a section of the old Cameronian school. They complained that the parliament had betrayed the solemn league and covenant, and had sworn, and had caused others to swear, to a non-covenanting monarch, and they refused to bow the knee to this Baal. Thus a non-juring party sprung up also in Scotland, and has continued to exist in a small and rigid portion of the Scottish professors to the present time. In William's opinion, however, too much had been done in the way of conformity; and on his return from Ireland he selected as lord high commissioner to Scotland lord Carmichael, a nobleman of liberal mind, and accompanied this appointment by a letter to the general assembly, declaring that he would never consent to any violent or persecuting measures, and that he expected the same from them. "We never," he nobly observed, "could be of the mind that violence was suited to the advancing of true religion; nor do we intend that our authority shall ever be a tool to the irregular passions of any party. Moderation is what religion enjoins, what neighbouring churches expect from you, and what we recommend to you." And the determination of the monarch put a strong and beneficial restraint on the spirit of the religious bigots of the north.
William had returned from Ireland with a great accession of power and éclât. He had shown that the imbecile and bigoted James could not stand for a moment before him; he had reduced Ireland to such general subjection that the remaining insurgents in the south could not long hold out. To hasten this result, and to cut off the access of fresh reinforcements from France, he now sent out an expedition which had been some time preparing under Marlborough, to reduce Cork and Kinsale, and garrison them for himself. That strange but able man Marlborough, though he was at this very moment in full correspondence with the court of St. Germains, so as to meet all chances, and even the now feeble one of James ever regaining his throne, though he was disliked and suspected by William and Mary, yet had himself proposed this expedition, anxious to grasp some of the glory of reconquering Ireland, and perhaps not inattentive to the equally attractive prospect of winning booty. Marlborough
