Both the king’s letter and his speech are pregnant examples of that villanous hypocrisy which distinguished the royal brothers. The king told them—“We have ever considered our own and the interests of our subjects to be inseparable;” and then he explained how “experience having sufficiently evinced, that all invasions upon, or diminutions of, the rights and prerogatives of our crown, prove fatal and destructive to the security and property of our people—which can only thereby be protected!” and “it is one of our greatest satisfactions that we have been always careful of that our ancient kingdom, with a tenderness suitable to our great interest in it,” “for promoting which and securing the protestant religion, we have called this parliament, and impressed upon them the necessity of adopting effectual and adequate remedies for curing these violent distempers, schisms, and separation in the church, and rebellion in the state.” The Duke of York confirmed the declarations of the gracious letter. He had it in command from his majesty to assure them that he would inviolably maintain and protect the protestant religion as now established by law, and seriously recommended them to fall upon effectual courses for suppressing these seditious and rebellious conventicles, from whence proceeded all disorder and confusion, and those horrid and extravagant doctrines which are a scandal to Christianity, and tend to the subversion of all public and private interests; and he concluded by telling them, “as the inclination I had to serve and promote the interest of this kingdom hath been the chief inducement to his majesty to give me this opportunity to convince you of it; so you may be sure I shall do what becomes me to satisfy you of the truth of it: and I hope you will have that consideration and kindness as to enable me to perform his service.”
The parliament made a reply, the baseness of which I do not wonder at, but I do admire the impudence, when I recollect that it was first to be presented to a papist commissioner, and by him transmitted to a half-popish king—if he was any thing. “It is a great satisfaction to us to find your majesty so concerned for the protestant religion, not only in your gracious letter to us, but in the whole conduct of your royal government; and we shall with all Christian care and duty endeavour to confirm it, so as it may become a solid and pious support to your royal family and monarchy, and a sure fence in this disturbed and divided church against all usurpations and disorders of popery and fanaticism;” and they added, what would not be less gratifying, “we shall not fail, by positive laws, to declare our humble and hearty acknowledgments of the just rights and prerogatives of your imperial crown, in its just, native, and lineal course of descent; and to secure the just rights and liberties of your subjects, so as may justly demonstrate our unalterable resolutions never to depart from our duty to your royal family and your lawful heirs and successors, to whom we are tied by so many sacred obligations.”
Their first act was one ratifying and approving all former laws, acts, and statutes, made by our sovereign lord’s royal grandfather and father, of blessed memory, for settling and securing the liberty and freedom of the kirk of God, and the protestant religion presently professed, and all acts against popery! The very next was one asserting that the kings of the realm deriving their royal power from God Almighty alone, their lineal succession, according to the known proximity in blood, could neither be suspended nor diverted by any act or statute whatsoever; and that no difference in religious profession, nor law, nor act of parliament, made or to be made, can alter or divert the right of succession and lineal descent of the crown to the nearest and lawful heirs![[140]]
[140]. On this Laing well remarks—“When we peruse the act, and consider how soon the crown was afterwards forfeited; when we contemplate how frequently and happily the lineal succession has been since inverted—we must smile with contempt at the extreme fragility of political laws, and at the anxious precaution with which the most violent of them are framed, only to be disregarded and ultimately broken.”—Hist. vol. iv. p. 119.
Then followed an act for securing the peace of the country, by doubling the fines and increasing the penalties against all who frequented field-conventicles, or had any intercourse with those who did. This presents us with a feature recognizable in the whole conduct of the ruling party, from the Restoration to the Revolution, which has not been sufficiently held up to contempt, and that is the low avarice, the base money-getting tricks which formed the soul, and directed the agency, of the gallant and chivalrous supporters of the merry monarch, and of his successor, the gloomy monk of La Trappe. There stands not out among them one redeeming character—all were the vilest of money-scrapers, who would have raked the lowest kennels to gather a supply for their prostitutes, and who, when that failed, only did not take to the highway, because they found legal villany an easier and less hazardous way of plundering. An incident which occurred at this time, shows the tenure by which the wicked hold their power.
Lord Bargeny, a relation of the Duke of Hamilton’s, who had been imprisoned on a charge of being at Bothwell, was liberated by especial order of the king, as no proof was produced against him. He offered, in open parliament, to produce evidence that Hatton, (Lauderdale’s brother,) the Earl of Moray, and Sir John Dalrymple, had suborned witnesses to swear away his life, in order to obtain his estates among them; but the Duke of York, who wished to have the parties in his own hands, interposed and prevented all inquiry into the foul transaction:—such was his love of justice—and such was the baseness of the parliament, that they quietly acquiesced in the Commissioner’s arbitrary and unjustifiable interference.
But the act which above all others holds up the memory of this servile set to everlasting shame, is the test—the plain history of which is worth a thousand arguments to prove the folly as well as the iniquity of all attempts to secure religion by civil penalties, or to enact religious tests for political purposes. In order to induce members to pass the act of succession, they had been promised that every requisite measure should be adopted for securing the protestant religion. Accordingly, an act anent religion and the test was brought in, August 31, by which the following oath was ordered to be taken by all persons in offices and places of public trust, members of parliament, and all electors of members of parliament, and all ministers or preachers of the gospel, teachers in the universities, chaplains in families, pedagogues to children, and all officers and soldiers, betwixt and the 1st of January next:—“I, ——, solemnly swear, in presence of the eternal God, whom I invocate as judge of my sincere intention in this my oath, That I own and sincerely profess the true protestant religion contained in the Confession of Faith, recorded in the first parliament of King James VI., and that I believe the same to be founded on and agreeable to the written word of God; and I promise and swear that I shall adhere thereunto during all the days of my life-time, and shall endeavour to educate my children therein, and shall never consent to any change or alteration contrary thereunto, and that I disown and renounce all such principles, doctrines, or practices, whether popish or fanatical, which is contrary unto, and inconsistent with, the said protestant religion and Confession of Faith: and for testification of my obedience to my most gracious sovereign Charles II., I do affirm and swear by this my solemn oath, that the king’s majesty is the only supreme governor of this realm, over all persons, and in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil; and that no foreign prince, person, pope, prelate, state, or potentate, hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminency, or authority, ecclesiastical or civil, within this realm; and therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiorities, and authorities; and do promise that from henceforth I shall bear faith, and true faith, and true allegiance to the king’s majesty, his heirs and lawful successors; and to my power shall assist and defend all rights, jurisdictions, prerogatives, privileges, pre-eminences, and authorities belonging to the king’s majesty, his heirs and lawful successors: and I further affirm and swear by this my solemn oath, that I judge it unlawful for subjects upon pretence of reformation, or any pretence whatsomever to enter into covenants or leagues, or to convocate, convene, or assemble, in any councils, conventicles, or assemblies, to treat, consult, or determine in any matter of state, civil or ecclesiastic, without his majesty’s special command, or express license, had thereunto, or to take up arms against the king or those commissionate by him; and that I shall never so rise in arms or enter into such covenants or assemblies; and that there lies no obligation upon me from the National Covenant or the Solemn League and Covenants (so commonly called), or any other manner of way whatsomever, to endeavour any change or alteration in the government, either in church or state, as it is now established by the laws of this kingdom: and I promise and swear that I shall with my utmost power, defend, assist, and maintain his majesty’s jurisdiction foresaid against all deadly; and I shall never decline his majesty’s power and jurisdiction, as I shall answer to God. And, finally, I affirm and swear that this my solemn oath is given in the plain, genuine sense and meaning of the words, without any equivocation, mental reservation, or any manner of evasion whatsomever, and that I shall not accept or use any dispensation from any creature whatsomever. So help me God.”
This sacred TEST, which I have given at length, because of its characteristic singularity, even in that age of oaths—carries on its front such palpable self-contradiction, that it appears to have been intentionally framed, as the justiciary categories of that day confessedly were, to create crime. The Confession of Faith here sworn to, was that drawn up by John Knox, and asserts Christ to be the sole “head of the church, in which [whose] honours and offices, if men or angels presume to intrude themselves, we utterly detest and abhor them.” In the test, the king is acknowledged as “the only supreme in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil.” In the Confession, there is enumerated in the list of good works, “the duty of repressing tyranny and defending the oppressed.” In the test, it is declared “unlawful, upon any pretence, to take up arms against the king or any commissionate by him.”
In opening the debate, Lord Belhaven remarked, that “he saw a very good act for securing our religion from one another among ourselves, but he did not see an act brought to secure our religion against a popish or fanatical successor to the crown.” He was instantly sent to the Castle, and the Lord Advocate declared there was matter for an accusation of treason against him; nor was he released until some days after, upon making an ample apology. Argyle thought it unnecessary, as there were too many oaths already; and he strenuously opposed the concluding clause, excepting the king’s lawful sons and brothers. “It is our happiness,” he said, “that the king and people are of one religion by law; and he hoped the parliament would do nothing to loosen what was fast, or open a door for the royal family being of a different religion from the nation, and therefore he wished, if any exception were made, it might be made particularly for his Royal Highness.” The Commissioner hastily rising, said, he would allow of no exemption for himself. “Then,” replied Argyle, “if this exception pass, it will do more prejudice to the protestant religion than all the rest of the acts will do good.” It did pass, after a day’s debate, by a majority of seven.[[141]] Having sat seven weeks, the parliament adjourned without doing much credit to the Commissioner’s character, “on which some wise men observed, ‘the Duke of York might have courage and obstinacy enough, like his father; but had neither great conduct nor a deep reach in affairs, and was but a silly man.’”[[142]]
[141]. The majorities seem to have consisted chiefly of “the royal burrows, who,” says Fountainhall, “were by the court gulled with the hopes of getting their privileges restored against burghs of regalities and baronies (which were taken away by the act of parliament 1672); and in hopes of it, with Issachar, they couched under the burden, and yielded to every demand of the Duke of York; but when they brought in their bill to the Articles, they were so far from getting redress, or the regalities and baronies declared liable to bear a part of the burden with them, that the Articles were like to take away more from them; so the burrows were glad to put up their pipes, and hold them as they were, beside the skaith they had got, by limiting them to elect none but one of their own town.” Decis. vol. i. p. 155.