Payne, pursued by messengers and warrants, was so ill advised as to take refuge in Scotland. Had he remained in England he would have been safe; for, though the moral proofs of his guilt were complete, there was not such legal evidence as would have satisfied a jury that he had committed high treason; he could not be subjected to torture in order to force him to furnish evidence against himself; nor could he be long confined without being brought to trial. But the moment that he passed the border he was at the mercy of the government of which he was the deadly foe. The Claim of Right had recognised torture as, in cases like his, a legitimate mode of obtaining information; and no Habeas Corpus Act secured him against a long detention. The unhappy man was arrested, carried to Edinburgh, and brought before the Privy Council. The general notion was that he was a knave and a coward, and that the first sight of the boots and thumbscrews would bring out all the guilty secrets with which he had been entrusted. But Payne had a far braver spirit than those highborn plotters with whom it was his misfortune to have been connected. Twice he was subjected to frightful torments; but not a word inculpating himself or any other person could be wrung out of him. Some councillors left the board in horror. But the pious Crawford presided. He was not much troubled with the weakness of compassion where an Amalekite was concerned, and forced the executioner to hammer in wedge after wedge between the knees of the prisoner till the pain was as great as the human frame can sustain without dissolution. Payne was then carried to the Castle of Edinburgh, where he long remained, utterly forgotten, as he touchingly complained, by those for whose sake he had endured more than the bitterness of death. Yet no ingratitude could damp the ardour of his fanatical loyalty; and he continued, year after year, in his cell, to plan insurrections and invasions, [781]
Before Payne's arrest the Estates had been adjourned after a Session as important as any that had ever been held in Scotland. The nation generally acquiesced in the new ecclesiastical constitution. The indifferent, a large portion of every society, were glad that the anarchy was over, and conformed to the Presbyterian Church as they had conformed to the Episcopal Church. To the moderate Presbyterians the settlement which had been made was on the whole satisfactory. Most of the strict Presbyterians brought themselves to accept it under protest, as a large instalment of what was due. They missed indeed what they considered as the perfect beauty and symmetry of that Church which had, forty years before, been the glory of Scotland. But, though the second temple was not equal to the first, the chosen people might well rejoice to think that they were, after a long captivity in Babylon, suffered to rebuild, though imperfectly, the House of God on the old foundations; nor could it misbecome them to feel for the latitudinarian William a grateful affection such as the restored Jews had felt for the heathen Cyrus.
There were however two parties which regarded the settlement of 1690 with implacable detestation. Those Scotchmen who were Episcopalians on conviction and with fervour appear to have been few; but among them were some persons superior, not perhaps in natural parts, but in learning, in taste, and in the art of composition, to the theologians of the sect which had now become dominant. It might not have been safe for the ejected Curates and Professors to give vent in their own country to the anger which they felt. But the English press was open to them; and they were sure of the approbation of a large part of the English people. During several years they continued to torment their enemies and to amuse the public with a succession of ingenious and spirited pamphlets. In some of these works the hardships suffered by the rabbled priests of the western shires are set forth with a skill which irresistibly moves pity and indignation. In others, the cruelty with which the Covenanters had been treated during the reigns of the last two kings of the House of Stuart is extenuated by every artifice of sophistry. There is much joking on the bad Latin which some Presbyterian teachers had uttered while seated in academic chairs lately occupied by great scholars. Much was said about the ignorant contempt which the victorious barbarians professed for science and literature. They were accused of anathematizing the modern systems of natural philosophy as damnable heresies, of condemning geometry as a souldestroying pursuit, of discouraging even the study of those tongues in which the sacred books were written. Learning, it was said, would soon be extinct in Scotland. The Universities, under their new rulers, were languishing and must soon perish. The booksellers had been half ruined: they found that the whole profit of their business would not pay the rent of their shops, and were preparing to emigrate to some country where letters were held in esteem by those whose office was to instruct the public. Among the ministers of religion no purchaser of books was left. The Episcopalian divine was glad to sell for a morsel of bread whatever part of his library had not been torn to pieces or burned by the Christmas mobs; and the only library of a Presbyterian divine consisted of an explanation of the Apocalypse and a commentary on the Song of Songs, [782] The pulpit oratory of the triumphant party was an inexhaustible subject of mirth. One little volume, entitled The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed, had an immense success in the South among both High Churchmen and scoffers, and is not yet quite forgotten. It was indeed a book well fitted to lie on the hall table of a Squire whose religion consisted in hating extemporaneous prayer and nasal psalmody. On a rainy day, when it was impossible to hunt or shoot, neither the card table nor the backgammon board would have been, in the intervals of the flagon and the pasty, so agreeable a resource. Nowhere else, perhaps, can be found, in so small a compass, so large a collection of ludicrous quotations and anecdotes. Some grave men, however, who bore no love to the Calvinistic doctrine or discipline, shook their heads over this lively jest book, and hinted their opinion that the writer, while holding up to derision the absurd rhetoric by which coarseminded and ignorant men tried to illustrate dark questions of theology and to excite devotional feeling among the populace, had sometimes forgotten the reverence due to sacred things. The effect which tracts of this sort produced on the public mind of England could not be fully discerned, while England and Scotland were independent of each other, but manifested itself, very soon after the union of the kingdoms, in a way which we still have reason, and which our posterity will probably long have reason to lament.
The extreme Presbyterians were as much out of humour as the extreme Prelatists, and were as little inclined as the extreme Prelatists to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. Indeed, though the Jacobite nonjuror and the Cameronian nonjuror were diametrically opposed to each other in opinion, though they regarded each other with mortal aversion, though neither of them would have had any scruple about persecuting the other, they had much in common. They were perhaps the two most remarkable specimens that the world could show of perverse absurdity. Each of them considered his darling form of ecclesiastical polity, not as a means but as an end, as the one thing needful, as the quintessence of the Christian religion. Each of them childishly fancied that he had found a theory of civil government in his Bible. Neither shrank from the frightful consequences to which his theory led. To all objections both had one answer,—Thus saith the Lord. Both agreed in boasting that the arguments which to atheistical politicians seemed unanswerable presented no difficulty to the Saint. It might be perfectly true that, by relaxing the rigour of his principles, he might save his country from slavery, anarchy, universal ruin. But his business was not to save his country, but to save his soul. He obeyed the commands of God, and left the event to God. One of the two fanatical sects held that, to the end of time, the nation would be bound to obey the heir of the Stuarts; the other held that, to the end of time, the nation would be bound by the Solemn League and Covenant; and thus both agreed in regarding the new Sovereigns as usurpers.
The Presbyterian nonjurors have scarcely been heard of out of Scotland; and perhaps it may not now be generally known, even in Scotland, how long they continued to form a distinct class. They held that their country was under a precontract to the Most High, and could never, while the world lasted, enter into any engagement inconsistent with that precontract. An Erastian, a latitudinarian, a man who knelt to receive the bread and wine from the hands of bishops, and who bore, though not very patiently, to hear anthems chaunted by choristers in white vestments, could not be King of a covenanted kingdom. William had moreover forfeited all claim to the crown by committing that sin for which, in the old time, a dynasty preternaturally appointed had been preternaturally deposed. He had connived at the escape of his father in law, that idolater, that murderer, that man of Belial, who ought to have been hewn in pieces before the Lord, like Agag. Nay, the crime of William had exceeded that of Saul. Saul had spared only one Amalekite, and had smitten the rest. What Amalekite had William smitten? The pure Church had been twenty-eight years under persecution. Her children had been imprisoned, transported, branded, shot, hanged, drowned, tortured. And yet he who called himself her deliverer had not suffered her to see her desire upon her enemies, [783] The bloody Claverhouse had been graciously received at Saint James's. The bloody Mackenzie had found a secure and luxurious retreat among the malignants of Oxford. The younger Dalrymple who had prosecuted the Saints, the elder Dalrymple who had sate in judgment on the Saints, were great and powerful. It was said by careless Gallios, that there was no choice but between William and James, and that it was wisdom to choose the less of two evils. Such was indeed the wisdom of this world. But the wisdom which was from above taught us that of two things, both of which were evil in the sight of God, we should choose neither. As soon as James was restored, it would be a duty to disown and withstand him. The present duty was to disown and withstand his son in law. Nothing must be said, nothing must be done that could be construed into a recognition of the authority of the man from Holland. The godly must pay no duties to him, must hold no offices under him, must receive no wages from him, must sign no instruments in which he was styled King. Anne succeeded William; and Anne was designated, by those who called themselves the remnant of the true Church, as the pretended Queen, the wicked woman, the Jezebel. George the First succeeded Anne; and George the First was the pretended King, the German Beast, [784] George the Second succeeded George the First; George the Second too was a pretended King, and was accused of having outdone the wickedness of his wicked predecessors by passing a law in defiance of that divine law which ordains that no witch shall be suffered to live, [785] George the Third succeeded George the Second; and still these men continued, with unabated stedfastness, though in language less ferocious than before, to disclaim all allegiance to an uncovenanted Sovereign, [786] So late as the year 1806, they were still bearing their public testimony against the sin of owning his government by paying taxes, by taking out excise licenses, by joining the volunteers, or by labouring on public works, [787] The number of these zealots went on diminishing till at length they were so thinly scattered over Scotland that they were nowhere numerous enough to have a meeting house, and were known by the name of the Nonhearers. They, however, still assembled and prayed in private dwellings, and still persisted in considering themselves as the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people, which, amidst the common degeneracy, alone preserved the faith of a better age. It is by no means improbable that this superstition, the most irrational and the most unsocial into which Protestant Christianity has ever been corrupted by human prejudices and passions, may still linger in a few obscure farmhouses.
The King was but half satisfied with the manner in which the ecclesiastical polity of Scotland had been settled. He thought that the Episcopalians had been hardly used; and he apprehended that they might be still more hardly used when the new system was fully organized. He had been very desirous that the Act which established the Presbyterian Church should be accompanied by an Act allowing persons who were not members of that Church to hold their own religious assemblies freely; and he had particularly directed Melville to look to this, [788] But some popular preachers harangued so vehemently at Edinburgh against liberty of conscience, which they called the mystery of iniquity, that Melville did not venture to obey his master's instructions. A draught of a Toleration Act was offered to the Parliament by a private member, but was coldly received and suffered to drop, [789]
William, however, was fully determined to prevent the dominant sect from indulging in the luxury of persecution; and he took an early opportunity of announcing his determination. The first General Assembly of the newly established Church met soon after his return from Ireland. It was necessary that he should appoint a Commissioner and send a letter. Some zealous Presbyterians hoped that Crawford would be the Commissioner; and the ministers of Edinburgh drew up a paper in which they very intelligibly hinted that this was their wish. William, however, selected Lord Carmichael, a nobleman distinguished by good sense, humanity and moderation, [790] The royal letter to the Assembly was eminently wise in substance and impressive in language. "We expect," the King wrote, "that your management shall be such that we may have no reason to repent of what we have done. We never 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." The Sixty and their associates would probably have been glad to reply in language resembling that which, as some of them could well remember, had been held by the clergy to Charles the Second during his residence in Scotland. But they had just been informed that there was in England a strong feeling in favour of the rabbled curates, and that it would, at such a conjuncture, be madness in the body which represented the Presbyterian Church to quarrel with the King, [791] The Assembly therefore returned a grateful and respectful answer to the royal letter, and assured His Majesty that they had suffered too much from oppression ever to be oppressors, [792]
Meanwhile the troops all over the Continent were going into winter quarters. The campaign had everywhere been indecisive. The victory gained by Luxemburg at Fleurus had produced no important effect. On the Upper Rhine great armies had eyed each other, month after month, without exchanging a blow. In Catalonia a few small forts had been taken. In the cast of Europe the Turks had been successful on some points, the Christians on other points; and the termination of the contest seemed to be as remote as ever. The coalition had in the course of the year lost one valuable member and gained another. The Duke of Lorraine, the ablest captain in the Imperial service, was no more. He had died, as he had lived, an exile and a wanderer, and had bequeathed to his children nothing but his name and his rights. It was popularly said that the confederacy could better have spared thirty thousand soldiers than such a general. But scarcely had the allied Courts gone into mourning for him when they were consoled by learning that another prince, superior to him in power, and not inferior to him in capacity or courage, had joined the league against France.
This was Victor Amadeus Duke of Savoy. He was a young man; but he was already versed in those arts for which the statesmen of Italy had, ever since the thirteenth century, been celebrated, those arts by which Castruccio Castracani and Francis Sforza rose to greatness, and which Machiavel reduced to a system. No sovereign in modern Europe has, with so small a principality, exercised so great an influence during so long a period. He had for a time submitted, with a show of cheerfulness, but with secret reluctance and resentment, to the French ascendency. When the war broke out, he professed neutrality, but entered into private negotiations with the House of Austria. He would probably have continued to dissemble till he found some opportunity of striking an unexpected blow, had not his crafty schemes been disconcerted by the decision and vigour of Lewis. A French army commanded by Catinat, an officer of great skill and valour, marched into Piedmont. The Duke was informed that his conduct had excited suspicions which he could remove only by admitting foreign garrisons into Turin and Vercelli. He found that he must be either the slave or the open enemy of his powerful and imperious neighbour. His choice was soon made; and a war began which, during seven years, found employment for some of the best generals and best troops of Lewis. An Envoy Extraordinary from Savoy went to the Hague, proceeded thence to London, presented his credentials in the Banqueting House, and addressed to William a speech which was speedily translated into many languages and read in every part of Europe. The orator congratulated the King on the success of that great enterprise which had restored England to her ancient place among the nations, and had broken the chains of Europe. "That my master," he said, "can now at length venture to express feelings which have been long concealed in the recesses of his heart, is part of the debt which he owes to Your Majesty. You have inspired him with the hope of freedom after so many years of bondage." [793]
It had been determined that, during the approaching winter a Congress of all the powers hostile to France should be held at the Hague. William was impatient to proceed thither. But it was necessary that he should first hold a Session of Parliament. Early in October the Houses reassembled at Westminster. The members had generally come up in good humour. Those Tories whom it was possible to conciliate had been conciliated by the Act of Grace, and by the large share which they had obtained of the favours of the Crown. Those Whigs who were capable of learning had learned much from the lesson which William had given them, and had ceased to expect that he would descend from the rank of a King to that of a party leader. Both Whigs and Tories had, with few exceptions, been alarmed by the prospect of a French invasion and cheered by the news of the victory of the Boyne. The Sovereign who had shed his blood for their nation and their religion stood at this moment higher in public estimation than at any time since his accession. His speech from the throne called forth the loud acclamations of Lords and Commons, [794] Thanks were unanimously voted by both Houses to the King for his achievements in Ireland, and to the Queen for the prudence with which she had, during his absence, governed England, [795] Thus commenced a Session distinguished among the Sessions of that reign by harmony and tranquillity. No report of the debates has been preserved, unless a long forgotten lampoon, in which some of the speeches made on the first day are burlesqued in doggrel rhymes, may be called a report, [796] The time of the Commons appears to have been chiefly occupied in discussing questions arising out of the elections of the preceding spring. The supplies necessary for the war, though large, were granted with alacrity. The number of regular troops for the next year was fixed at seventy thousand, of whom twelve thousand were to be horse or dragoons. The charge of this army, the greatest that England had ever maintained, amounted to about two million three hundred thousand pounds; the charge of the navy to about eighteen hundred thousand pounds. The charge of the ordnance was included in these sums, and was roughly estimated at one eighth of the naval and one fifth of the military expenditure, [797] The whole of the extraordinary aid granted to the King exceeded four millions.