142

MASTER OF STAIR DISMISSED-BREADALBANE.

[1695. serve him at some future time-the "outward compliance" which James had himself recommended. Breadalbane contrived that the inquiry should stand over from time to time, till the Session of Parliament came to an end. He had pleaded his pardon from the Crown; but the offences charged were subsequent to that pardon. Burnet says, "he pretended he had secret orders from the king, to say anything that would give him credit with them; which the king owned so far, that he ordered a new pardon to be passed for him."* It is impossible to fathom the depths of the intrigues of the Scottish statesmen and great lords at this period. Burnet in his narrative of the Glencoe massacre, says of Breadalbane: "that he might gratify his own revenge, and render the king odious to all the Highlanders, he proposed that orders should be sent for a military execution on those of Glencoe." We believe in no such refinement of Breadalbane's cunning. He and Argyle were glad to sweep out the MacDonalds, who annoyed them. Dalrymple would have exterminated the whole Celtic population of Jacobites, Papists, and thieves-for the greater part were such in his mind as his predecessors in power had often hunted them down as wild beasts. Not three months before Dalrymple put the Order of January 16th before William to sign, he wrote to Breadalbane that no prince but William would have not been tempted to hearken to the earnest desires of all those he trusts in his government, "to have made the Highlanders examples of his justice, by extirpating them." William acceded to the one exception to his general clemency, urged upon him by Dalrymple, Argyle, and Breadalbane; for it was a measure justified to his mind by the "laws of war." It is one of the most lamentable evils of these laws, that in some cases a violation of the rights of humanity ceases to be regarded as a crime; and that in all cases implicit obedience to orders is the paramount duty of a soldier, however revolting to his moral sense.

Sir Walter Scott, recalling his early recollections, says, that "on the 5th of November, 1788, when a full century had elapsed after the Revolution, some friends to constitutional liberty proposed that the return of the day should be solemnized by an agreement to erect a monument to the memory of king William, and the services which he had rendered to the British Kingdoms." How was the proposal defeated? By an anonymous letter in one of the Edinburgh newspapers, "ironically applauding the undertaking, and proposing as two subjects of the entablature for the projected column, the massacre of Glencoe, and the distresses of the Scottish colonists at Darien." We have related the one story, with a scrupulous regard to facts. We shall have to tell the other distressing narrative, with the same scrupulosity. Sir Walter Scott impresses upon his grandson this lesson: "You may observe from this how cautious a monarch should be of committing wrong or injustice, however strongly recommended by what may seem political necessity."§ The great novelist left his juvenile readers, and his confiding adult readers, to the full belief that king William was the principal person to be accused as the author of both calamities. There probably is not a more striking instance of the blindness of a morbid

* "Own Time," vol. iv. p. 274. Burton, Appendix, vol. i.

+ Ibid. p. 153.

§ "Tales of a Grandfather," chap. lix.

1695.]

MISCONCEPTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE MASSACRE.

143

nationality, than in this mode of attributing "wrong or injustice" to a sovereign who, in the one case, was wholly under the guidance of his Scotch ministers, acting in the spirit of all Scotch Statesmen towards the Highland clans; and in the other case was wholly under the control of the English parliament, uttering the voice of the English nation in the commercial jealousies of the age. We have reached a period when all the false nationalities and party sympathies embodied in romance, and in histories more fictitious than fiction, have very nearly done their work; when we may look at kings and statesmen through that achromatic glass which shows them under no false colouring in their public characters. We may therefore doubt, with a Scottish historian who belongs to this more advanced age, whether, in a period when the Highland chief was acting after his kind in the indulgence of a fierce revenge-when the Scottish statesman was acting as Scottish statesmen had done for ages before him-it was likely that a "far-seeing and deeply judging prince" should desert his nature and habits so much as "to countenance, suggest, and urge on, the slaughter of those poor Highlanders."* The anonymous libeller who would have inscribed "Glencoe" on the entablature of a column to William, if he had read the evidence, would have known perfectly well that this slaughter was devised by Scottish statesmen of the Lowlands, and carried through by Scottish captains of the Highlands. He would have known that the treachery of this military execution was the device, in the old crafty and ferocious spirit of clan hostility, of the native soldiers to whom the slaughter was entrusted. He probably knew that Glencoe was not the last of the Highland massacres, sanctioned by no intervention of king William, but by the old "letters of fire and sword" granted by the Privy Council of Scotland. These letters were not granted for any political object; but in the ancient spirit of revenge by which a favoured clan was authorized to destroy another less favoured. Six years after the Glencoe massacre, the laird of McIntosh obtained letters of fire and sword against MacDonald of Keppoch. McIntosh and his followers, with the assistance of the governor of Fort William, are authorized to hunt and take; if necessary to put to death; and if they retire to strongholds to "raise fire and use all force and warlike engines." This process, then a legal one, was not sent out against the king's rebels-for the pacification of the Jacobite clans had been accomplished-but to obtain restitution of lands alleged to be unjustly held by a clan that did not care for being "put to the horn.” † It were well if those who repeat glibly "how cautious a monarch should be," &c., would lead their readers to some real knowledge of the condition and manners of the Highlanders of those days, and of the mode in which the authorities of Scotland had for generations been accustomed to treat them. They would perhaps then be inclined to assign to its proper cause a hatred of the political and religious principles of the king of the Revolution-the imputation that to his "hard-heartedness' is to be ascribed "the massacre of Glencoe; an enormity which has left a stain on William's memory that neither time, nor the services that he was providentially the instrument of rendering to these kingdoms, can ever efface."‡ + Ibid. vol. i. p. 177, note.

Burton, vol. i. p. 173.

"Annals of England," vol. iii. p. 120.

141

THE CHARACTER OF WILLIAM UNJUSTLY ASSAILED.

66

[1695.

In narrating the circumstances which retarded the Union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland-a measure of which William observed, "I have done all I can in that affair, but I do not see a temper in either nation that looks like it"-Defoe says, "The affair of Glencoe was another step to national breaches." To us, looking calmly upon this affair at the interval of a hundred and sixty-six years, it would appear the most extravagant of national delusions to set up this as a ground of national animosity." From the beginning to the end it was a Scottish affair. Not an English statesman was concerned in advising the proceeding. The character of the monarch who signed the order, as king of Scotland, is far more truly exemplified in one sentence of the Proclamation of Indemnity, which ought to have been the rule of conduct for those who urged on the massacre- to interpret this indemnity in the most favourable and ample manner."

66

Marlborough dismissed from office-Parliamentary Debates-Independence of the Judges--The king leaves for Holland-Threatened invasion-Declaration of James-Battle of La Hogue -Siege of Namur-Grandval's plot to assassinate William-Battle of Steinkirk-Parliament-Crime and public distress-Commencement of the National Debt-The Licensing Act expires-Place Bill-Bill for Triennial Parliaments-The King's Veto-Murder of Mountfort-Trial of Lord Mohun.

"THE king was pleased, without assigning any reason, to remove my lord Such is the brief notice of an Marlborough from his employments." important event by the wife of the great peer. Much fuller is her account of the circumstances which caused a serious disagreement between queen Mary and her sister, the princess Anne. The queen, three weeks after the dismissal of the earl, wrote to her sister that "it is very unfit lady Marlborough should stay with you, since that gives her husband so just a pretence Mary said, "I need not repeat the cause he of being where he ought not." has given the king to do what he has done, nor his unwillingness at all times

146

PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES.

[1692. to come to such extremities, though people do deserve it." Anne refused to be separated from her beloved Mrs. Freeman; and Mrs. Freeman being commanded to leave the palace, Mrs. Morley left with her. Anne chose her abode at Sion House; and the nation was scandalised at a quarrel between the occupier of the throne and the sister who might one day be called to occupy it. It is easy to imagine that no circumstance in the lives of William and Mary produced more misery than this rupture. The dismissal of Marlborough occurred on the 10th of January, at the very time when, in the view of some candid persons, William was occupied in planning the slaughter of an obscure Highland clan. It was a period to the king of great political anxiety. Lady Marlborough says she could never learn "what cause the king had for his displeasure." The popular feeling regarded the earl's dismissal as a just punishment "for his excessive taking of bribes, covetousness, and extortion on all occasions from his inferior officers."* In another passage, Evelyn attributes Marlborough's disgrace to his "having used words against the king." What Marlborough had really done has been revealed in a letter of James. The Lieutenant-General of William, who also held the domestic office of his Gentleman of the Bedchamber, had concerted with the Jacobites to effect the recall of James by the subtlest of plots. He was organising a party to propose and carry in parliament a motion that all the foreigners in the employ of the Crown, civil or military, should be sent out of the kingdom. The object was to produce a rupture between the king and the parliament. Then, says the letter of James, "my lord Churchill would declare with the army for the parliament; and, the fleet doing the same, they would have recalled me." James adds that some of his own imprudent friends, dreading that the scheme of Churchill had for its ultimate object to make the princess Anne queen, discovered it to Bentinck, and thus "turned aside the blow."+

The Parliament was adjourned on the 20th of February, having met on the 2nd of the previous October. It was a Session of great debate; but more remarkable for the discussion of important measures, than for their final enactment. The rival claims of the Old East India Company and of the New, were the subject of earnest argument, not unmingled with party feelings. But nothing was finally decided; and a bill for the regulation of the India trade was suffered to drop. A most important measure for regulating trials in cases of high treason was passed by the Commons; but becoming the subject of a great controversy between the two houses, as to the right of peers to be tried by the whole body of the Upper House, as well during a recess as during the sitting of Parliament, that valuable bill also fell through. A few years later the jealousy of the Commons was removed. Another measure of great public advantage was defeated by the king's Veto. It was the first time in which William had exercised this power. The Judges had been made independent of the Crown as to their term of office. They were appointed by William and Mary "Quamdiu se bene gesserint:" they could not be arbitrarily removed. But their salaries had not been fixed,

* Evelyn, "Diary," January 24.

This letter, in French, is given by Macaulay, who mentions that a translation was pubSished by Macpherson "eighty years ago.' History, vol. iv. p. 166. See ante, p. 38.