Such was the position of things in England when William 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 politicians came very soon to a similar end. The most prominent of them, 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 dispatches, 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 ascendency in the Scottish Parliament, produced an exactly contrary effect. The old Tory Jacobites were so much incensed at this favour shown to these renegade Whigs, whilst they themselves were passed over, that the whole plot 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.

This turbulent and factious party being thus broken up, and some of them 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 sprang up also in Scotland. 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 zealots of the North.

EDINBURGH CASTLE IN 1725. (From a Print of the Period.)

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William had returned from Ireland with a great accession of power and éclat. 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 remote one of James ever regaining the throne, though he was disliked and suspected by William and Mary, yet himself proposed this expedition, anxious to grasp some of the glory of re-conquering Ireland, and perhaps not inattentive to the equally attractive prospect of winning booty. Marlborough was already lying at Portsmouth with his squadron when William reached London; and sailing thence on the 18th, he landed at Cork on the 21st of September, with five thousand men. The Duke of Würtemberg there joined him with his four thousand Danes, together making a strong force, but which was in danger of becoming paralysed by the German duke insisting on taking the chief command on account of his superior rank. Marlborough was not a man willingly to resign any position likely to do him honour; but he consented to share the command, taking it on alternate days. With him he had also the Duke of Grafton, one of Charles II.'s illegitimate sons, who had fallen under suspicion of leaning to his uncle James, but, to prove his loyalty to William, came out as a volunteer. Cork was vigorously attacked, and in forty-eight hours it capitulated. The garrison, between four and five thousand men, surrendered as prisoners, and Marlborough promised to use his endeavours to obtain the favour of William for both them and the citizens. He forbade his troops to plunder, but was obliged to use force to repel the hordes of wild people who rushed in and began ransacking the Catholics. The Duke of Grafton fell in the attack.

Without losing a day, Marlborough sent forward his cavalry to Kinsale to demand its surrender, and followed with his infantry. The Irish set fire to the town, and retired into two forts, the Old Fort and the New Fort. The English, however, managed to put out the fire, and Marlborough arriving, invested the forts, and took the Old Fort by storm, killing nearly five hundred men, who refused to surrender. The garrison of the New Fort, after seeing Marlborough prepared to storm that too, yielded on condition that they might go to Limerick. They were twelve hundred strong. In this fort was found abundance of provisions, a thousand barrels of wheat, and eighty pipes of claret.

Having executed this mission, and secured the two forts for the king, Marlborough re-embarked, and reached London again in little more than a month from the day that he sailed from Portsmouth. William, astonished at the rapidity of this success, declared that there was no officer living who had seen so little service, who was so qualified for a general as Marlborough. The English people went still further, and declared their countryman had achieved more in a single month than the king's Dutch favourites in two campaigns.

On the 2nd of October William opened the new session of Parliament. He was received with the warmest demonstrations of attachment. He had shown himself strong, and James had shown himself weak. The country had been alarmed by the menace of invasion, and all parties were disposed to rally round the monarch who gave them every promise of security and pre-eminence. In his speech he paid the highest tribute to the bravery of the army, and declared that, had his affairs allowed him to have begun the campaign earlier, he should have been able to clear the whole country of the enemy. In order to do that in the ensuing campaign, and to put a check on the too conspicuous designs of the French, it would be essential to grant liberal supplies. He reminded them of the dishonour which had befallen the English flag, and of the necessity of promptness in Parliament to enable him to wipe away the stain, and to secure the reputation of England by crushing the efforts of the king of France.