Accordingly, the Scottish army began its march early in October, in two divisions. The first, consisting of the foot, at the head of which was General Douglas, brother of the Duke of Queensberry, who had the chief command of the army, took the road to Chester; and the second, consisting of the horse, under the direction of Graham of Claverhouse, as major-general, marched by York. These detachments, on their arrival at London, joined the English army under the command of the Earl of Feversham, about the end of October.
To supply the absence of the regular troops, and to prevent the disaffected from making the capital the focus of insurrection, a large body of militia, under the command of Sir George Munro, was quartered in Edinburgh and the suburbs; but no sooner had the army passed the borders, than crowds from all parts of the kingdom congregated, as if by mutual consent, in the metropolis, where they held private meetings, which were attended by the Earls of Glencairn, Crawford, Dundonald, and others. The objects of these meetings were made known to the council by spies, who were employed to attend them; and although they were clearly treasonable, the council had not the courage to arrest a single individual. Among other things, the leaders of these meetings resolved to intercept all correspondence between the king and the council, a task which Sir James Montgomery undertook to see accomplished, and which he did so effectually that very few despatches reached their destination.[542]
For several weeks the Privy Council, owing to this interruption, was kept in a state of painful uncertainty as to the state of the king’s affairs in England; but at last an express arrived from the Earl of Melfort, announcing the important intelligence that the Prince of Orange had landed in England with a considerable force, and that his majesty had gone to meet him at the head of his army.
The landing of the prince, which was effected without opposition on the 5th of November 1688, at Torbay in Devonshire, excited the greatest alarm in the mind of the king, who had entertained hopes that a well appointed fleet of thirty-seven men-of-war, and seventeen fire-ships which had been stationed off the Gun-fleet under the Earl of Dartmouth, an old and experienced commander, would have intercepted the prince in his voyage. Unfortunately, however, for the king, the cruisers which the admiral had sent out to watch the approach of the enemy had been driven back by the violence of the wind, and when the fleet of the prince passed the Downs towards its destined place of disembarkation, the royal fleet was riding at anchor abreast of the Long-sand, several miles to leeward, with the yards and topmasts struck; and as twenty-four hours elapsed before it could be got ready to commence the pursuit, the commander, on the representation of his officers, desisted from the attempt.
As soon as the king had recovered from the panic into which the news of the prince’s arrival had thrown him, he ordered twenty battalions of infantry and thirty squadrons of cavalry to march towards Salisbury and Marlborough, leaving six squadrons and six battalions behind to preserve tranquillity in the capital.[543] The prince, who had been led to expect that he would be received with open arms by all classes on his arrival, met at first with a very cold reception, and he felt so disappointed that he even threatened to re-embark his army. Had James therefore adopted the advice given him by the King of France, to push forward his troops immediately in person and attack the invader before the spirit of disaffection should spread, he might, perhaps, by one stroke, have for ever annihilated the hopes of his son-in-law and preserved his crown; but James thought and acted differently, and he soon had cause to repent bitterly of the course he pursued. Owing to the open defection of some of his officers and the secret machinations of others, the king soon found, that with the exception perhaps of the Scottish regiments, he could no longer rely upon the fidelity of his army. On the 20th of November he arrived at Salisbury, and reviewed a division of the army stationed there; and intended to inspect the following day, another division which lay at Warminster; but being informed that General Kirk, its commander, Lord Churchill and others, had entered into a conspiracy to seize him and carry him a prisoner to the enemy’s camp, he summoned a council of war, at which these officers were present, and without making them aware that he was in the knowledge of such a plot, proposed a retreat beyond the Thames. This proposition met with keen opposition from Churchill, but was supported by the Earl of Feversham, his brother the Count de Roye, and the Earl of Dumbarton, who commanded one of the Scottish foot regiments. The proposal having been adopted, Churchill and some other officers went over to the prince during the night.[544]
The army accordingly retired behind the Thames, and the king, without leaving any particular instructions to his officers, proceeded to London, to attend a council of peers which he had summoned to meet him at Whitehall. The departure of the king was a subject of deep regret to his real friends in the army, and particularly to the Earl of Dumbarton, and Lord Dundee, who had offered to engage the enemy with the Scots troops alone. This offer his majesty thought proper to decline, and in a conference which Dundee and the Earl of Balcarras afterwards had with him in London, when he had made up his mind to retire to France, he gave them to understand that he meant to intrust the latter with the administration of his civil affairs in Scotland, and to appoint the former the generalissimo of his forces.
In the Scottish Privy Council there were several persons who were inimical to the king, and who only waited for a favourable opportunity of offering their allegiance and services to the Prince of Orange. These were the Marquis of Athole, the Viscount Tarbet, and Sir John Dalrymple, the Lord-president of the Court of Session. The two latter, in conjunction with Balcarras, had been appointed by the council to proceed to England, to obtain personally from the king the necessary instructions how to act on the landing of the prince; but on some slight pretext they declined the journey, and Balcarras, a nobleman of undoubted loyalty, was obliged to go alone, and had the meeting with his majesty to which allusion has been made. These counsellors were duly apprised of the advance of the prince, the defection of some of the king’s officers, and of his return to London; but as the result of the struggle seemed still to be dubious, they abstained from openly declaring themselves. In order, however, to get rid of the chancellor, the Earl of Perth, and get the government into their own hands, as preliminary to their designs, Viscount Tarbet proposed that, with the exception of four companies of foot and two troops of horse to collect the revenue, the remainder of the troops should be disbanded, as he considered it quite unnecessary to keep up such a force in time of peace, the Prince of Orange having stated in a declaration which he had issued, that that was one of the grievances complained of by the nation. The chancellor, not foreseeing the consequences, assented to the proposal, and he had the mortification, after the order for dismissal had been given, to receive an intimation from the Marquis of Athole and his party, who waited personally upon him at his lodgings, that as they considered it dangerous to act with him and other Catholic counsellors who were incapacitated by law, they meant to take the government into their own hands in behalf of the king, and they demanded that he and his party should retire from the administration of affairs. The Duke of Gordon and the other Catholic members of the council, on hearing of this proceeding, assembled in the chancellor’s house to consult with him as to the nature of the answer which should be given to this extraordinary demand. As they saw resistance hopeless, they advised the chancellor to submit, and, probably to avoid personal danger, he retired immediately to the country.
The Marquis of Athole called a meeting of the council, and proposed an address of congratulation to the Prince of Orange, strongly expressive of gratitude to him for his generous undertaking to relieve them from popery and arbitrary power, and offering a tender of their services; but this address was warmly opposed by the two archbishops, Sir John Dalrymple, Sir George Mackenzie and others, and was finally negatived. They even opposed the voting of any address under existing circumstances, but the marquis and his party succeeded in carrying a short address, drawn up in general terms. Lord Glammis was sent up with it, but it was so different from what the Prince expected, that it met with a very cold reception.
The fate of the unfortunate monarch had by this time been decided. Before his return to London a great defection had taken place among the officers of the army, and he had at last the mortification to see himself deserted by his son-in-law, Prince George of Denmark, and by his daughter the Princess Anne, the wife of the Prince. “God help me! my very children have forsaken me;” such was the exclamation uttered by the unhappy monarch, his countenance suffused with tears, when he received the afflicting intelligence of the flight of Anne from Whitehall. When the king saw he could no longer resist the torrent of popular indignation, and that an imperious necessity required that he should leave the kingdom, his first solicitude was to provide for the safety of the queen and his son, whom he managed to get safely conveyed to France.
The resolution of the king to quit the kingdom was hastened after a fruitless attempt at negotiation with the Prince of Orange, by the appearance of an infamous proclamation against Catholics, issued under the signature of the prince, and which, though afterwards disowned by him, was, at the time, believed to be genuine. Having, therefore, made up his mind to follow the queen without delay, the king wrote a letter to the Earl of Feversham, the commander of the forces, intimating his intention, and after thanking him and the army for their loyalty, he informed them that he did not wish them any longer to run the risk of resisting “a foreign army and a poisoned nation.” Shortly after midnight, having disguised himself as a country gentleman, he left the palace, and descending by the back stairs, entered into a hackney coach, which conveyed him to the horse-ferry, whence he crossed the river, into which the king threw the great seal. Having arrived at Emley ferry near Feversham by ten o’clock, he embarked on board the custom-house hoy, but before she could be got ready for sea the king was apprehended, and placed under a strong guard.