Up to this time the ministry had kept in its midst, at the head of the affairs of Scotland, an abettor of tyranny who had already more than once caused grave embarrassment to the government of the king. Lord Lauderdale, supported in Scotland by Archbishop Sharp, had transgressed the limits of Presbyterian patience. In spite of his ordinances, and of the atrocious penalties by which he punished offences against them, conventicles multiplied on all hands. Once already the Archbishop had been threatened by assassins who failed in their purpose. He pursued them with pitiless vengeance, exacting from all the landed gentry of the west an engagement not to tolerate on their estates the forbidden religious assemblies, or to be present at them themselves. On the refusal of these gentlemen, they were required "to deliver up their arms and to keep no horse of greater value than £4 sterling." To this edict, as to the former one, they refused obedience; at the news of this step the Duke of Lauderdale fell into such a fit of rage that in full council he turned his sleeves up to his elbows and swore by Jehovah "that he would know how to put them in irons again." Halifax obtained the king's consent to examine for himself the complaints broached against his minister. "Kings," says Burnet, "naturally love to hear their prerogative magnified; yet on this occasion the king had nothing to say in defence of the administration. But when May, the Master of the Privy Purse, asked him, in his familiar way, what he thought now of his Lauderdale, he answered, as May himself told me, that he had objected to many things that he had done against them, but there was nothing objected that was against his service." Strange infatuation of a sovereign so long a prey to the vicissitudes of fortune, but who had not yet learnt that his interests were inseparable from those of his people.
The Duke of Monmouth had been charged with the affairs of Scotland. He arrived there in the midst of a recrudescence of religious ardor. The Presbyterians felt that Lauderdale was beaten. They repaired in crowds into the conventicles. Some wretches carried their rage further. Archbishop Sharp was passing in his carriage through the environs of St. Andrew's; his servants were in advance, or following at some distance; he was alone with his daughter when the carriage encountered a group of armed fanatics. "Behold the day of the Lord," cried the Covenanters; "the Eternal has delivered our enemy into our hands." The archbishop was not deceived. "God have pity upon me!" he exclaimed to his daughter; "I am lost." The horsemen followed the carriage; the horses and the postilion were wounded; the murderers presented themselves at the door of the vehicle. "Come forth, Judas!" they cried. The old man and his daughter knelt to implore for mercy. The hatred of their persecutors was too violent for them to allow their prey to escape; the archbishop fell pierced by daggers. "Take away your priest," said the assassins to the terrified servants; and they retired into a cottage to return thanks to God. The forbidden assemblies had become so numerous that they were able to repulse the regiments sent to disperse them. The Covenanters had taken possession of Glasgow, when the Duke of Monmouth marched against them, on the 22d of June, 1679, at Bothwell Bridge on the Clyde.
Portrait Of Monmouth.
The insurgents were completely defeated, and the massacre would have been great if the duke had not imposed a limit to the vengeance of Graham of Claverhouse, already famous, who had once been conquered by the fanatics. When Monmouth returned to England, the king remarked to him that if he himself had been engaged in the affair, he should not have concerned himself so much about the prisoners. "I do not kill in cold blood," replied the duke; "that is the work of a butcher." The moderation which the young duke exhibited in victory may have been politic as well as charitable and humane. Some fumes of greatness had begun to mount to his head: he imagined that he foresaw a future hitherto unhoped for. Moved by personal hostility towards the Prince of Orange, the cause of which has never been made known, Lord Shaftesbury, who pursued with ardor his campaign in favor of the Bill of Exclusion, extended his animosity to the Protestant children of the Duke of York. A rumor began to spread that the birth of Monmouth was legitimate, and that the king had secretly espoused his mother, Lucy Walters. Long unknown, under the name of James Croft, because he had been confided in his infancy to the care of Lord Croft, Monmouth had recently married the daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch, the greatest heiress in Scotland; he bore his name joined to the title of the Duke of Monmouth, which the king had given him. Handsome, brave, thoughtless, he had inspired in Charles II. an attachment of which the adroit Shaftesbury reckoned upon availing himself in the rivalry which he sought to establish between the young man and the Duke of York. When James was recalled from Brussels by his brother, he required that Monmouth should be stripped of his appointment and sent back to the Continent.
Meanwhile the new Parliament had met (October, 1680); it was more ardently Protestant and patriotic than its predecessors. The Exclusion Bill was passed by a great majority; for a moment there was reason to believe that it would be adopted by the House of Lords. Godolphin advised the king to yield to public feeling; the Duchess of Portsmouth, the French favorite of Charles, implored him not to rush upon his ruin. He hesitated for some days, endeavoring to conclude a bargain with the Legislature. But mutual distrust was deep-seated and carefully nourished by very different influences. The royal honor and a remnant of natural affection mingled with the anger of a sovereign upon whom his people sought to impose an unjust law. Charles II. adopted his course, and engaged in a contest against the Exclusion Bill, being present himself at the sittings of the House of Lords. The debate was long and violent; more than once hands grasped the hilts of swords: the eloquence of Halifax prevailed over the alliance of Shaftesbury, Essex, and the treacherous Sunderland; the Bill was rejected by a very large majority.