It may be added that the pretensions of Knox and Melville and all their followers were no essential part of Presbyterial Church government, but were merely the continuation or survival of the clerical claims of apostolic authority, as enforced by such popes as Hildebrand and such martyrs as St Thomas of Canterbury.
CHAPTER XXVII. WILLIAM AND MARY.
While Claverhouse hovered in the north the Convention (declared to be a Parliament by William on June 5) took on, for the first time in Scotland since the reign of Charles I, the aspect of an English Parliament, and demanded English constitutional freedom of debate. The Secretary in Scotland was William, Earl of Melville; that hereditary waverer, the Duke of Hamilton, was Royal Commissioner; but some official supporters of William, especially Sir James and Sir John Dalrymple, were criticised and thwarted by “the club” of more extreme Liberals. They were led by the Lowland ally who had vexed Argyll, Hume of Polwarth; and by Montgomery of Skelmorley, who, disappointed in his desire of place, soon engaged in a Jacobite plot.
The club wished to hasten the grant of Parliamentary liberties which William was anxious not to give; and to take vengeance on officials such as Sir James Dalrymple, and his son, Sir John, now Lord Advocate, as he had been under James II. To these two men, foes of Claverhouse, William clung while he could. The council obtained, but did not need to use, permission to torture Jacobite prisoners, “Cavaliers” as at this time they were styled; but Chieseley of Dalry, who murdered Sir George Lockhart, President of the College of Justice, was tortured.
The advanced Liberal Acts which were passed did not receive the touch of the sceptre from Hamilton, William’s Commissioner: thus they were “vetoed,” and of no effect. The old packed committee, “The Lords of the Articles,” was denounced as a grievance; the king was to be permitted to appoint no officers of State without Parliament’s approbation. Hamilton offered compromises, for William clung to “the Articles”; but he abandoned them in the following year, and thenceforth till the Union (1707) the Scottish was “a Free Parliament.” Various measures of legislation for the Kirk-—some to emancipate it as in its palmy days, some to keep it from meddling in politics—were proposed; some measures to abolish, some to retain lay patronage of livings, were mooted. The advanced party for a while put a stop to the appointment of judges, but in August came news of the Viscount Dundee in the north which terrified parliamentary politicians.
Edinburgh Castle had been tamely yielded by the Duke of Gordon; Balcarres, the associate of Dundee, had been imprisoned; but Dundee himself, after being declared a rebel, in April raised the standard of King James. As against him the Whigs relied on Mackay, a brave officer who had been in Dutch service, and now commanded regiments of the Scots Brigade of Holland. Mackay pursued Dundee, as Baillie had pursued Montrose, through the north: at Inverness, Dundee picked up some Macdonalds under Keppoch, but Keppoch was not satisfactory, being something of a freebooter. The Viscount now rode to the centre of his hopes, to the Macdonalds of Glengarry, the Camerons of Lochiel, and the Macleans who had been robbed of their lands by the Earl of Argyll, executed in 1685. Dundee summoned them to Lochiel’s house on Loch Arkaig for May 18; he visited Atholl and Badenoch; found a few mounted men as recruits at Dundee; returned through the wilds to Lochaber, and sent round that old summons to a rising, the Fiery Cross, charred and dipped in a goat’s blood.
Much time was spent in preliminary manœuvring and sparring between Mackay, now reinforced by English regulars, and Dundee, who for a time disbanded his levies, while Mackay went to receive fresh forces and to consult the Government at Edinburgh. He decided to march to the west and bridle the clans by erecting a strong fort at Inverlochy, where Montrose routed Argyll. A stronghold at Inverlochy menaced the Macdonalds to the north, and the Camerons in Lochaber, and, southwards, the Stewarts in Appin. But to reach Inverlochy Mackay had to march up the Tay, past Blair Atholl, and so westward through very wild mountainous country. To oppose him Dundee had collected 4000 of the clansmen, and awaited ammunition and men from James, then in Ireland. By the advice of the great Lochiel, a man over seventy but miraculously athletic, Dundee decided to let the clans fight in their old way,—a rush, a volley at close quarters, and then the claymore. By June 28 Dundee had received no aid from James,—of money “we have not twenty pounds”; and he was between the Earl of Argyll (son of the martyr of 1685) and Mackay with his 4000 foot and eight troops of horse.
On July 23 Dundee seized the castle of Blair Atholl, which had been the base of Montrose in his campaigns, and was the key of the country between the Tay and Lochaber. The Atholl clans, Murrays and Stewarts, breaking away from the son of their chief, the fickle Marquis of Atholl, were led by Stewart of Ballechin, but did not swell Dundee’s force at the moment. From James Dundee now received but a battalion of half-starved Irishmen, under the futile General Cannon.
On July 27, at Blair, Dundee learned that Mackay’s force had already entered the steep and narrow pass of Killiecrankie, where the road skirted the brawling waters of the Garry. Dundee had not time to defend the pass; he marched his men from Blair, keeping the heights, while Mackay emerged from the gorge, and let his forces rest on the wide level haugh beside the Garry, under the house of Runraurie, now called Urrard, with the deep and rapid river in their rear. On this haugh the tourist sees the tall standing stone which, since 1735 at least, has been known as “Dundee’s stone.” From the haugh rises a steep acclivity, leading to the plateau where the house of Runraurie stood. Mackay feared that Dundee would occupy this plateau, and that the fire thence would break up his own men on the haugh below. He therefore seized the plateau, which was an unfortunate manœuvre. He was so superior in numbers that both of his wings extended beyond Dundee’s, who had but forty ill-horsed gentlemen by way of cavalry. After distracting Mackay by movements along the heights, as if to cut off his communications with the south, Dundee, who had resisted the prayers of the chiefs that he would be sparing of his person, gave the word to charge as the sun sank behind the western hills. Rushing down hill, under heavy fire and losing many men, the clans, when they came to the shock, swept the enemy from the plateau, drove them over the declivity, forced many to attempt crossing the Garry, where they were drowned, and followed, slaying, through the pass. Half of Hastings’ regiment, untouched by the Highland charge, and all of Leven’s men, stood their ground, and were standing there when sixteen of Dundee’s horse returned from the pursuit. Mackay, who had lost his army, stole across the Garry with this remnant and made for Stirling. He knew not that Dundee lay on the field, dying in the arms of Victory. Precisely when and in what manner Dundee was slain is unknown; there is even a fair presumption, from letters of the English Government, that he was murdered by two men sent from England on some very secret mission. When last seen by his men, Dundee was plunged in the battle smoke, sword in hand, in advance of his horse.
When the Whigs—terrified by the defeat and expecting Dundee at Stirling with the clans and the cavaliers of the Lowlands—heard of his fall, their sorrow was changed into rejoicing. The cause of King James was mortally wounded by the death of “the glory of the Grahams,” who alone could lead and keep together a Highland host. Deprived of his leadership and distrustful of his successor, General Cannon, the clans gradually left the Royal Standard. The Cameronian regiment, recruited from the young men of the organised societies, had been ordered to occupy Dunkeld. Here they were left isolated, “in the air,” by Mackay or his subordinates, and on August 21 these raw recruits, under Colonel Cleland, who had fought at Drumclog, had to receive the attack of the Highlanders. Cleland had fortified the Abbey church and the “castle,” and his Cameronians fired from behind walls and from loopholes with such success that Cannon called off the clansmen, or could not bring them to a second attack: both versions are given. Cleland fell in the fight; the clans disbanded, and Mackay occupied the castle of Blair.