[CHAPTER XXIII.]
A.D. 1695–1714.
BRITISH SOVEREIGNS:—William III., 1688–1703.—Anne, 1703–1714.
The Darien Scheme—Hopes of the Jacobites—Death of James II.—Death of King William—Accession of the Princess Anne—The Scottish Parliament—Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat—Meeting of Scottish Parliament—Union with England—Ferment in Scotland against it—Hooke’s Negotiation—Preparations in France to invade Scotland—Unsuccessful result of the expedition—State of Scotland—Proceedings of the Jacobites—Death of Queen Anne.
In the meantime, December 28, 1694, had died Queen Mary, to the great grief of her husband and the sincere regret of the nation generally.
We are not required to enter here into a history of the Darien scheme, which originated in 1695, and was so mismanaged as to involve in ruin thousands of families formerly in comparative opulence. It appears to have had little influence on the Highlands, for although a few natives took part in the expedition out of dissatisfaction with William’s government, the great mass of the Highlanders were too far behind the age to resort to such a roundabout means of aggrandizing a fortune.
The attitude assumed by King William and the government to the Darien expedition exasperated the Scottish nation so much that there seemed to be some danger of a counter-revolution. To the bitterness of disappointment succeeded an implacable hostility to the king, who was denounced, in pamphlets of the most violent and inflammatory tendency, as a hypocrite, and as the deceiver of those who had shed their best blood in his cause, and as the author of all the misfortunes which had befallen Scotland. One of these pamphlets was voted by the House of Commons a false, scandalous, and seditious libel, and ordered to be burned by the common executioner, and an address was voted to his majesty to issue a proclamation for apprehending the author, printer, and publisher of the obnoxious publication. The king was so chagrined at the conduct of the Scotch that he refused to see Lord Basil Hamilton, who had an address to present to his majesty from the company, praying for his interference on behalf of their servants who were kept in captivity by the Spaniards.
In direct contradiction to the House of Lords, the Scottish parliament voted that the colony of Darien was a lawful and rightful settlement which they would support; a resolution which induced the Duke of Queensberry, the commissioner, to prorogue the session. But this step only tended to increase the discontents of the nation; and, to show the king that the people would be no longer trifled with, an address to his majesty, containing a detail of national grievances, and representing the necessity of calling an immediate meeting of parliament, was drawn up and signed by a considerable number of the members; and a deputation, with Lord Ross at its head, was appointed to present the address to the king. His majesty, however, evaded the address, by informing the deputation that they would be made acquainted in Scotland with his intentions; and, as if to show his displeasure, he ordered the parliament to be adjourned by proclamation.
The Scottish nation was now fully ripe for a rebellion, but neither James nor his advisers had the capacity to avail themselves of passing events, to snatch the tottering crown from the head of the illustrious foreigner, who was destined to be the happy instrument of placing the liberties of the nation upon a more sure and permanent footing than they had hitherto been. The hopes of the Jacobites were, however, greatly raised by the jarrings between the king and his Scottish subjects, and an event occurred, about this time, which tended still farther to strengthen them. This was the death of the young Duke of Gloucester, the only surviving child of the Princess Anne, on the 29th of July, 1700, in the eleventh year of his age. As the Jacobites considered that the duke was the chief obstacle in the way of the accession of the Prince of Wales to the crown, they could not conceal their pleasure at an occurrence which seemed to pave the way for the restoration of the exiled family, and they privately despatched a trusty adherent to France to assure King James that they would settle the succession upon the Prince of Wales. Such a proposition had indeed been made by William himself at an interview he had with Louis XIV. in 1697, when a prospect opened of James being elected king of Poland on the death of John Sobieski; but this proposal was rejected by James, who told the king of France, that though he could bear with patience the usurpation of his nephew and son-in-law, he would not allow his own son to commit such an act of injustice; that by permitting his son to reign while he (James) was alive, he would, in fact, be held as having renounced his crown, and that the Prince of Wales would also be held as having resigned his own right, if he accepted the crown as successor to the Prince of Orange. As James had now given up all idea of a crown, and was wholly engrossed with the more important concerns of a future life, it is probable that he received the proposal of his friends in a very different spirit from that he evinced when made by William.
The designs of the Jacobites, however, were frustrated by the intrigues of the Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager of Hanover, grand-daughter of King James I., who had for several years contemplated the plan of getting the succession to the English crown settled upon herself and her heirs. An act was accordingly passed by the English parliament in June, 1701, at the desire of the king, whom the princess had prevailed upon to espouse her cause, declaring her to be the next in succession to the crown of England, after his majesty and the Princess Anne, in default of issue of their bodies respectively, and that after the decease of William and Anne respectively without issue, the crown and government of England should remain and continue to the Princess Sophia and the heirs of her body, being Protestants. This act, which, by one swoop, cut off the whole Catholic descendants of James I., of whom there were fifty-three alive, all nearer heirs to the crown than the princess, gave great offence to all the Catholic princes concerned in the succession.