Restoration, was to be Lord Advocate. The Privy Council, the Court of Session, the army, were to be filled with Whigs. A Council of Five was appointed, which all loyal subjects were to obey; and in this Council Annandale, Ross and Montgomery formed the majority. Mary of Modena informed Montgomery that five thousand pounds sterling had been remitted to his order, and that five thousand more would soon follow. It was impossible that Balcarras and those who had acted with him should not bitterly resent the manner in which they were treated. Their names were not even mentioned. All that they had done and suffered seemed to have faded from their master's mind. He had now given them fair notice that, if they should, at the hazard of their lands and lives, succeed in restoring him, all that he had to give would be given to those who had deposed him. They too, when they read his letters, knew, what he did not know when the letters were written, that he had been duped by the confident boasts and promises of the apostate Whigs. He imagined that the Club was omnipotent at Edinburgh; and, in truth, the Club had become a mere byword of contempt. The Tory Jacobites easily found pretexts for refusing to obey the Presbyterian Jacobites to whom the banished King had delegated his authority. They complained that Montgomery had not shown them all the despatches which he had received. They affected to suspect that he had tampered with the seals. He called God Almighty to witness that the suspicion was unfounded. But oaths were very naturally regarded as insufficient guarantees by men who had just been swearing allegiance to a King against whom they were conspiring. There was a violent outbreak of passion on both sides; the coalition was dissolved; the papers were flung into the fire; and, in a few days, the infamous triumvirs who had been, in the short space of a year, violent Williamites and violent Jacobites, became Williamites again, and attempted to make their peace with the government by accusing each other.[1]
Ross was the first who turned informer. After the fashion
- ↑ Balcarras; Confession of Annandale in the Leven and Melville Papers.
