The concurrence of all these circumstances brought the nation to such a uniformity of sentiment as had not been witnessed for fifty years. While the old enemies of the dynasty remained as they had always been, its best friends and supporters were now disaffected and thrown into alarm. Tories as well as Whigs, church zealots as well as dissenters, were become impressed with the idea that some extraordinary measure was necessary to save the nation from popery, if not from slavery.
The people of all orders turned their eyes to William Prince of Orange, who had long taken a lead in opposing the arrogant continental policy of the French monarch, and whose court had for some years been a resort of British malcontents. The prince himself was strongly inclined, for reasons of general policy as well as of personal ambition, to attempt a revolution in England. Being invited by a great number of influential persons, of both sides in politics, including some of the clergy, he no longer hesitated to make preparations for an invasion. In October he set sail with an army of about sixteen thousand men, and on the 5th of November cast anchor in Torbay, in Devonshire, while the king’s fleet lay wind-bound at Harwich. James had surrounded himself with a standing army; but, as generally happens in such crises, it partook of the almost universal feeling of the people, and was not to be depended on. Even with the assistance of a less scrupulous force from Scotland, he could hardly venture to risk an engagement with the prince, to whose standard a great number of the nobility had already resorted. He therefore retired before the advancing army to London, and was immediately deserted by all his principal counsellors, and even by his younger daughter, the Princess Anne. Feeling no support around him, he first despatched the queen and her infant to France, and then prepared to follow. In the disguise of a servant, he escaped down the river to Feversham, but being there seized by the populace as a popish refugee, he was brought back to London. It was found, however, that the government could not be settled on a proper footing while he remained in the country; and he was therefore permitted once more to depart (December 23, 1688). He left the kingdom in the belief that the people could not do without him, and would call him back in triumph; but, in reality, nothing could have been more agreeable to them than his departure.
In Scotland, the Privy Council and Established Church were left by the departure of the king an isolated power in the midst of a people generally indisposed to give them support. There was an irrepressible popular eagerness to break out against such popish establishments as the king had set up—to attack and extrude the more obnoxious of the clergy, and to take some vengeance upon the more noted instruments of the late arbitrary power, as the Chancellor Perth and Graham of Claverhouse, whom James had lately created Viscount Dundee. The populace did lose no time in rising against the popishly furnished chapel-royal at Holyrood and a Catholic printing-office which had been placed in its neighbourhood; and after a struggle with the armed guards, both places were pillaged and ruined. The Chancellor Perth, who had incurred peculiar odium from turning papist, was seized in the act of flight and thrown into a vile prison. In the west country, the populace rabbled out two hundred of the parochial clergy, not treating them over-gently, yet after all, using less roughness than might perhaps have been expected. In the other parts of Scotland, where prelacy had won some favour or been quietly endured, no particular movement took place.
In January 1689, about a hundred Scottish noblemen and gentlemen assembled at Whitehall, and, having previously ascertained the disposition of their countrymen, resolved to follow the example of England, by offering the supreme management of their affairs to the Prince of Orange. A Convention was consequently appointed by the prince to meet at Edinburgh on the 14th of March. This assembly, which was elected by the people at large, excluding only the Catholics, experienced at first some embarrassment from the adherents of King James. The Duke of Gordon still held the castle in that interest, and was able, if he pleased, to bombard the Parliament House with his cannon. The Viscount Dundee was also in Edinburgh with a number of his dragoons, and every day attended the assembly. On the other hand, an immense number of the westland Whigs, or Cameronians—as they were called from one of their ministers—had flocked to the city, where they were concealed in garrets and cellars. Dundee, when he saw that there was a majority of the Convention hostile to his old master, concerted with the Earl of Mar and Marquis of Athole a plan for holding a counter-Convention at Stirling, after the manner of the royalist parliament held at Oxford by Charles I. In the expectation that his friends would have been ready to accompany him, he brought out his troop of dragoons to the street; but finding their minds somewhat changed, he was obliged to take his departure by himself, as the parading of armed men so near the Parliament House would have subjected him to a charge of treason. He therefore rode out of the city with only a small squadron, and clambering up the Castle-rock, held a conference with the Duke of Gordon at a postern, where it was resolved upon between them that he should go to raise the Highland clans for King James, while his Grace should continue to hold out the Castle.
The liberal members of the Convention took advantage of this movement to summon the people to arms for their protection, and they were instantly surrounded by hundreds of armed Cameronians, who completely overawed the adherents of the late government. The Convention then declared King James to have forfeited the crown, by his attempts to overcome the religion and liberties of his subjects. The sovereignty of Scotland was settled, like that of England, upon the next Protestant heirs, the Prince and Princess of Orange, who were accordingly proclaimed at Edinburgh on the 11th of April.
It is not necessary here to detail the efforts made by King James to recover possession of Ireland—ending in his overthrow at the Boyne—or the gallant stand made for him in the spring of 1689 by the Duke of Gordon in Edinburgh Castle, and by Lord Dundee in the Highlands of Perthshire. By the death of the latter at the battle of Killiecrankie (July 27), all formidable opposition to the new settlement came to an end. It is understood that, if circumstances would have permitted, King William would have rather continued to maintain the Episcopal Church in Scotland than establish any other. Finding, however, that the bishops remained faithful to King James, he was compelled to take the Presbyterians under his protection. The Convention, changed by the royal mandate into a Parliament, proceeded in July to abolish prelacy in the Church, and to establish the moderate Presbyterianism which still exists. All the clergy formerly in possession of churches were permitted to retain them, if they felt disposed to accede to the new system, and take the oaths to government. The Solemn League and Covenant, though still supported by a party, was overlooked. The clergy were deprived of the power of inflicting a civil punishment by means of excommunication. General Assemblies and other Church courts were restored, with independent powers in ecclesiastical matters, and, the act of supremacy being abolished, Christ was understood to reign as formerly over the church. The clergy, however, tacitly admitted the king to be their patron and nursing father; and while the moderator of the assemblies convened and dissolved them in the name of Christ, the king’s commissioner, or representative, was also allowed to do the same in the name of the sovereign. Thus at length, by one of those compromises which sometimes follow the exhaustion of passion, a sort of middle way was found, in which the religious prepossessions of the great bulk of the people could rest in peace, while still the reasonable powers of the state were not dangerously interfered with. So did the great troubles of the seventeenth century come to an end, and allow the genius of the nation at length to give a due share of its energies to that material prosperity which had so long been repressed. The course of Scotland since, under its moderate church and zealous dissenting communions, its useful parish schools, and mild government; the advance of the country in population, in the culture of its soil, in every branch of honourable industry, and in the paths of science and literature; these might well form the subjects of another work equal in extent to the present.
1685. Feb. 26.
The curious book, entitled ‘Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, by Mr George Sinclair, late professor of philosophy at the college of Glasgow,’ was endowed by the Lords of the Privy Council with a copyright of eleven years; all persons whatsoever being prohibited ‘from printing, reprinting, or importing into this kingdom, any copies of the said book,’ during that space of time. This little volume, which was often reprinted during the eighteenth century, and so lately as 1814, contains, in the language of its own title-page, a ‘Choice Collection of Modern Relations, proving evidently against the Atheists of this present age, that there are Devils, Spirits, Witches, and Apparitions, from authentic records and attestations of witnesses of undoubted veracity.’
1685.