But the arrest of Shaftesbury had led to consequences which were fatal to him, and most disastrous to the Whig party generally. Amongst his papers were found, in particular, two which roused the indignation of the Tory and Catholic parties to a perfect fury. One was the form of an Association for excluding James and all Catholics from the throne, and from political power, and including a vow to pursue to the death all who should oppose this great purpose. The other contained two lists of the leading persons in every county, ranged under the heads of "worthy men," and "men worthy," the latter phrase being supposed to mean worthy to be hanged. When this was published, the "men worthy" sent up the most ardent addresses of loyalty, and readiness to support the Crown in all its views; and many of the "worthy men" even hastened to escape from the invidious distinction. The king lost no time in taking advantage of this ferment. He availed himself of the information contained in these lists, and struck out the most prominent "worthy men" in office and commission. As the Dissenters had supported Shaftesbury and his party, he let loose the myrmidons of persecution against them, and they were fined, distrained upon, and imprisoned as remorselessly as ever. He determined to punish the City for its partisanship, and by a quo warranto to inquire into its many different privileges.

At this critical moment William of Orange proposed to pay a visit to his uncles, which his loving father-in-law, James, strenuously opposed, but which the easy Charles permitted. It was soon seen that William, though his ostensible object was to induce Charles to enter into a league against France—whose king continued, in spite of treaties, to press on his encroachments,—yet was courted by the Exclusionists, even by Monmouth, as well as Lord William Russell and other Whigs. With all his habitual caution he could not avoid letting it be seen that he was proud of the courtship. He even consented to accept an invitation from the City to dinner, to the great disgust of the Court, which was in high dudgeon at the conduct of the sheriffs, and William soon returned. His object was to ascertain the strength of the Whig party, and though the tide was rapidly running against it at that moment, he went back with the conviction that some violent change was not very far off. Though Charles promised William to join the alliance against France, and call a Parliament, no sooner was the prince gone than he assured Louis that he was his friend, and received a fresh bribe of a million of livres to allow France to attack Luxembourg, one of the main keys of Holland.

James, during these months, had been distinguishing himself in Scotland in a manner which promised but a poor prospect to Protestantism should he ever come to the throne. After the battle of Bothwell Bridge, the Covenanting party seemed for awhile to have sunk into the earth and disappeared; but ere long there was seen emerging again from their hiding-places the more determined and enthusiastic section which followed Donald Cargill and Richard Cameron. These so-called Cameronians believed that Charles Stuart, by renouncing the Solemn League and Covenant, had renounced all right to rule over them; and Cameron, with some twenty of his adherents, affixed (June, 1680) on the cross of Sanquhar "a declaration and testimony of the true Presbyterian, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, and persecuted party in Scotland." In this bold paper they disowned Charles Stuart, who ought, they said, to have been denuded years before of being king, ruler, or magistrate, on account of his tyranny. They declared war on him as a tyrant and usurper; they also disowned all power of James, Duke of York, in Scotland, and declared that they would treat their enemies as they had hitherto treated them.

The host of Israel, as they styled themselves, consisted of six-and-twenty horse and forty foot. At Aird's Moss, this knot of men, who spoke such loud things, were surprised by three troops of dragoons, and Cameron, as bold in action as in word, rushed on this unequal number, crying, "Lord, take the ripest, spare the greenest." He fell with his brother and seven others (July 20, 1680). Rathillet, who was there, was wounded and taken prisoner, but Cargill escaped. Rathillet was tried and executed for the murder of Archbishop Sharp. His hands were first cut off at the foot of the gallows; after hanging, his head was cut off, and fixed on a spike at Cupar, and his body was hung in chains at Magus Moor. Cargill reappeared in September, 1680, at Torwood, in Stirlingshire, and there preached; and then, after the sermon, pronounced this extraordinary excommunication:—"I, being a minister of Jesus Christ, and having authority from Him, do, in His name and by His spirit, excommunicate, cast out of the true Church, and deliver up to Satan, Charles II., King of Scotland, for his mocking of God, his perjury, his uncleanness of adultery and incest, his drunkenness, and his dissembling with God and man." He also excommunicated the Duke of York for idolatry, Monmouth for his slaughter of the Lord's people at Bothwell Bridge, Lauderdale for blasphemy, apostasy, and adultery, and other offences.

The Government thought it time to hunt out this nest of enthusiasts, and put to death, as a terror, the prisoners taken at Aird's Moss. Two of these were women, Isabel Alison and Marian Harvey, who went to the gallows rejoicing. The Duke of York offered to pardon some of them if they would only say, "God save the king," but they refused, and congratulated each other that they should that night sup in Paradise. Cargill and four followers were hanged in July, 1681.

James now professed great leniency and liberality. Instead of persecuting the Cameronians, he drafted them off into a Scottish regiment which was serving abroad in Flanders, in the pay of Spain. He put a stop to many of Lauderdale's embezzlements, and turned out some of the worst of his official blood-suckers. He promised to maintain episcopacy, and to put down conventicles, and brought into Parliament a new Test Act, which was to swear every one to the king's supremacy, and to passive obedience. His leniency was then soon at an end, and the object he was driving at was too palpable to escape the slightest observation. But Fletcher of Saltoun, Lord Stair, and some other bold patriots, opposed the design, and carried a clause in the Test Act for the defence of the Protestant religion, which was so worded as to make it mean Presbyterianism of the Confession of Faith of 1560. This so little suited James that he was impelled to add another clause, excusing the princes of the blood from taking his own test. But Lord Belhaven boldly declared that the object of it was to bind a Popish successor. At this frank avowal, James's assumed liberality deserted him, and he sent Lord Belhaven prisoner to Edinburgh castle, and ordered the Attorney-General to impeach him. He removed Lord Stair from his office of President of the Court of Session, and commenced prosecutions against both him and Fletcher of Saltoun. The Earl of Argyll, however, whose father had been executed by Charles soon after his restoration, made a decided speech against the Test, and James called upon him at the Council board to take it. Argyll took it with certain qualifications, whereupon James appeared to be satisfied, and invited Argyll to sit beside him at the Council board, and repeatedly took the opportunity of whispering in his ear, as if he bestowed his highest confidence on him. But this was but the fawning of the tiger ere he made his spring. Two days after he sent him to the castle on a charge of treason for limiting the Test. James, however, when some of the courtiers surmised that his life and fortune must pay for his treason, exclaimed, "Life and fortune! God forbid!" Yet on the 20th of November, 1681, instructions arrived from England to accuse him of high treason, and on the 12th of December he was brought to trial. To show what was to be expected from such a trial, the Marquis of Montrose, the grandson of the celebrated Montrose, whom the father of Argyll and the Covenanters hanged, and who was, in consequence, the implacable enemy of the present earl and all his house, was made foreman of the jury, and delivered the sentence of guilty. The whole Council were called on to endorse this sentence; even the bishops were not allowed to be exempt, according to their privilege, from being concerned in a doom of blood; and the earl's own friends and adherents had not the firmness to refuse selling their names. Argyll, however, disappointed his enemies, by escaping from his cell in Edinburgh Castle in the disguise of a page to his daughter-in-law, Lady Lindsay, and made his way to England, and thence to Holland, where, like many other fugitives from England and Scotland, he took refuge with William of Orange.

James now, whilst the Parliament was terror-stricken by this example of royal vengeance, brought in a Bill making it high treason in any one to maintain the lawfulness of excluding him from the throne, either on account of his religion or for any other reason whatever. By this he showed to the Exclusionists that they must expect a civil war with Scotland if they attempted to bar his way to the throne of England. Deeming himself now secure, he gave way to his natural cruelty of temper, and indulged in tortures and barbarities which seemed almost to cast the atrocities of Lauderdale into the shade. It was his custom to have the prisoners for religion so tortured in the Privy Council, that even the old hardened courtiers who had witnessed the merciless doings of Lauderdale and Middleton, escaped from the board as soon as the iron boots were introduced. But James not only seemed to enjoy the agonies of the sentenced with a peculiar satisfaction, but he made an order that the whole of the Privy Council should remain during these more than inquisitorial horrors. He was thus employing himself, when he was summoned to England by Charles, who assured him that he should be allowed soon to return permanently, on condition that he made over part of his Parliamentary allowance to the French mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth.

ESCAPE OF ARGYLL. (See p. [272].)

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