As to the Scottish women, “the meaner sort go barefoot and bareheaded, with two black elf-locks on either side their faces; some of them have scarce any clothes at all, some part of their bed-clothes pinned about their shoulders, and their children have nothing else on them but a little blanket. Those women that can purchase plaids need not bestow much upon other clothes, these cover-sluts being sufficient. Those of the best sort, that are very well habited in their modish silks, yet must wear a plaid over all for the credit of their country.”
The English language could scarcely furnish language violent enough for the purpose of describing the Scots: “The people are proud, arrogant, vain-glorious boasters, bloody, barbarous, and inhuman butchers. Cozenage and theft are in perfection among them, and they are perfect English-haters. They show their pride in exalting themselves and depressing their neighbours. When the palace at Edinburgh is finished they expect his Majesty will leave his rotten house at Whitehall, and live splendidly among his own countrymen, the Scots, for they say that Englishmen are much beholden to them that we have their king amongst us.”[102]
If, in 1670, an Union had been accomplished by the terms of which the people of Scotland had obtained everything which they desired with regard to trade, it would have been an immense blessing to the country. But knowing what we know of the councillors who surrounded the throne, and of the character of the last two princes of the house of Stuart, we may be perfectly certain that an attempt would have been made to unite the Churches. In England, the Scottish Church question was completely misunderstood; nay more, to most Englishmen it was unintelligible. It was known that there were troubles in the North; and it was vaguely supposed that the Government had to cope with false doctrine, heresy, and schism, evils for delivery from which every good Anglican was accustomed to pray. But few imagined that month after month, and year after year, the majority of the Scottish nation was being treated in a manner which the majority of the English nation would not have tolerated for a single week. Even those Englishmen who had the best means of knowing the truth had been totally deceived as to the number and determination of the Presbyterians. At the Restoration, Sharp had told the Government that if Episcopacy was established not more than twenty ministers would refuse to conform. As a matter of fact, more than three hundred gave up their livings. The parish churches were deserted in many places by the people, and meetings were held in private houses. Not only was this declared to be illegal, but mere nonconformity was made a crime; and the madness of the Scottish Privy Council may be seen from the fact that any landowner who failed to attend his parish church was fined a fourth of his rents for the year in which he was convicted; while for the same offence tenants and burgesses were fined a fourth of their personal estates. Forbidden by a law resembling the English Five Mile Act to live within twenty miles of their parishes, within six miles of a cathedral town, or within three miles of a burgh, the ejected ministers took to preaching in the fields. This was punished as sedition; and the law was administered in so cruel and relentless a fashion that, if the whole truth had been known in England, there can be little doubt that indignant remonstrances would have been addressed to the Government; especially when, in 1670, the Scottish Parliament passed an Act by which any person who, without a licence from a bishop or the Privy Council, preached or prayed at a field meeting, was to be put to death,—a savage law which was savagely executed. To the people of England, however, very little of all this was known.
Tweeddale possibly saw, in the abolition of the Scottish Parliament, and in those reforms of the Privy Council which might be expected to follow an incorporating Union, some prospect that a wiser and more moderate system of government might be introduced. But the whole course of Scottish history during the reigns of Charles the Second and James the Second shows that nothing less than that sweeping removal of every trace of Prelacy which took place at the Revolution could have restored peace and order to the country. It is, therefore, well that the Union did not take place at a time when the statesmen in both countries, by whom the terms of Union would have been arranged, were pertinaciously bent on establishing a system of Church government which, loved and honoured though it was in England, was hated and despised in Scotland.
CHAPTER V
THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT
After the failure of the treaty of 1670, eighteen years, eventful in the history of both kingdoms, passed; and at the Revolution the question of the Union was again discussed.
In the letter which William addressed to the Scottish Estates in March 1689, he said that he was glad to find that many peers and gentlemen of Scotland, whom he had consulted in London, were “so much inclined to a union of both kingdoms, that they did look upon it as one of the best means for procuring the happiness of these nations, and settling of a lasting peace among them.” He himself was of the same opinion, and was resolved to do everything in his power to bring it about.