Much had passed which William disliked – the abolition of patronage, the persecution of Episcopalians – and Melville, in 1691, was removed by the king from the Commissionership.
The Highlands were still unsettled. In June 1691 Breadalbane, at heart a Jacobite, attempted to appease the chiefs by promises of money in settlement of various feuds, especially that of the dispossessed Macleans against the occupant of their lands, Argyll. Breadalbane was known by Hill, the commander of Fort William at Inverlochy, to be dealing between the clans and James, as well as between William and the clans. William, then campaigning in Flanders, was informed of this fact, thought it of no importance, and accepted a truce from July 1 to October 1 with Buchan, who commanded such feeble forces as still stood for James in the north. At the same time William threatened the clans, in the usual terms, with “fire and sword,” if the chiefs did not take the oaths to his Government by January 1, 1692. Money and titles under the rank of earldoms were to be offered to Macdonald of Sleat, Maclean of Dowart, Lochiel, Glengarry, and Clanranald, if they would come in. All declined the bait – if Breadalbane really fished with it. It is plain, contrary to Lord Macaulay’s statement, that Sir John Dalrymple, William’s trusted man for Scotland, at this time hoped for Breadalbane’s success in pacifying the clans. But Dalrymple, by December 1691, wrote, “I think the Clan Donell must be rooted out, and Lochiel.” He could not mean that he hoped to massacre so large a part of the population. He probably meant by “punitive expeditions” in the modern phrase – by “fire and sword,” in the style current then – to break up the recalcitrants. Meanwhile it was Dalrymple’s hope to settle ancient quarrels about the “superiorities” of Argyll over the Camerons, and the question of compensation for the lands reft by the Argyll family from the Macleans.
Before December 31, in fear of “fire and sword,” the chiefs submitted, except the greatest, Glengarry, and the least in power, MacIan or Macdonald, with his narrow realm of Glencoe, whence his men were used to plunder the cattle of their powerful neighbour, Breadalbane. Dalrymple now desired not peace, but the sword. By January 9, 1692, Dalrymple, in London, heard that Glencoe had come in (he had accidentally failed to come in by January 1), and Dalrymple was “sorry.” By January 11 Dalrymple knew that Glencoe had not taken the oath before January 1, and rejoiced in the chance to “root out that damnable sect.” In fact, in the end of December Glencoe had gone to Fort William to take the oaths before Colonel Hill, but found that he must do so before the Sheriff of the shire at remote Inveraray. Various accidents of weather delayed him; the Sheriff also was not at Inveraray when Glencoe arrived, but administered the oaths on January 6. The document was taken to Edinburgh, where Lord Stair, Dalrymple’s father, and others caused it to be deleted. Glengarry was still unsworn, but Glengarry was too strong to be “rooted out”; William ordered his commanding officer, Livingstone, “to extirpate that sect of thieves,” the Glencoe men (January 16). On the same day Dalrymple sent down orders to hem in the MacIans, and to guard all the passes, by land or water, from their glen. Of the actual method of massacre employed Dalrymple may have been ignorant; but orders “from Court” to “spare none,” and to take no prisoners, were received by Livingstone on January 23.
On February 1, Campbell of Glenlyon, with 120 men, was hospitably received by MacIan, whose son, Alexander, had married Glenlyon’s niece. On February 12, Hill sent 400 of his Inverlochy garrison to Glencoe to join hands with 400 of Argyll’s regiment, under Major Duncanson. These troops were to guard the southern passes out of Glencoe, while Hamilton was to sweep the passes from the north.
At 5 A.M. on February 13 the soldier-guests of MacIan began to slay and plunder. Men, women, and children were shot or bayoneted, 1000 head of cattle were driven away; but Hamilton arrived too late. Though the aged chief had been shot at once, his sons took to the hills, and the greater part of the population escaped with their lives, thanks to Hamilton’s dilatoriness. “All I regret is that any of the sect got away,” wrote Dalrymple on March 5, “and there is necessity to prosecute them to the utmost.” News had already reached London “that they are murdered in their beds.” The newspapers, however, were silenced, and the story was first given to Europe in April by the ‘Paris Gazette.’ The crime was unprecedented: it had no precedent, admits of no apology. Many an expedition of “fire and sword” had occurred, but never had there been a midnight massacre “under trust” of hosts by guests. King William, on March 6, went off to his glorious wars on the Continent, probably hoping to hear that the fugitive MacIans were still being “prosecuted” – if, indeed, he thought of them at all. But by October they were received into his peace.
William was more troubled by the General Assembly, which refused to take oaths of allegiance to him and his wife, and actually appointed a date for an Assembly without his consent. When he gave it, it was on condition that the members should take the oaths of allegiance. They refused: it was the old deadlock, but William at the last moment withdrew from the imposition of oaths of allegiance – moved, it is said, by Mr Carstares, “Cardinal Carstares,” who had been privy to the Rye House Plot. Under Queen Anne, however, the conscientious preachers were compelled to take the oaths like mere laymen.
CHAPTER XXVIII. DARIEN
The Scottish Parliament of May-July 1695, held while William was abroad, saw the beginning of evils for Scotland. The affair of Glencoe was examined into by a Commission, headed by Tweeddale, William’s Commissioner: several Judges sat in it. Their report cleared William himself: Dalrymple, it was found, had “exceeded his instructions.” Hill was exonerated. Hamilton, who commanded the detachment that arrived too late, fled the country. William was asked to send home for trial Duncanson and other butchers who were with his army. The king was also invited to deal with Dalrymple as he thought fit. He thought fit to give Dalrymple an indemnity, and made him Viscount Stair, with a grant of money, but did not retain him in office. He did not send the subaltern butchers home for trial. Many years later, in 1745, the MacIans insisted on acting as guards of the house and family of the descendant of Campbell of Glenlyon, the guest and murderer of the chief of Glencoe.
Perhaps by way of a sop to the Scots, William allowed an Act for the Establishment of a Scottish East India Company to be passed on June 20, 1695. He afterwards protested that in this matter he had been “badly served,” probably meaning “misinformed.” The result was the Darien Expedition, a great financial disaster for Scotland, and a terrible grievance. Hitherto since the Union of the Crowns all Scottish efforts to found trading companies, as in England, had been wrecked on English jealousy: there had always been, and to this new East India Company there was, a rival, a pre-existing English company. Scottish Acts for protection of home industries were met by English retaliation in a war of tariffs. Scotland had prohibited the exportation of her raw materials, such as wool, but was cut off from English and other foreign markets for her cloths. The Scots were more successful in secret and unlegalised trading with their kinsmen in the American colonies.
The Scottish East India Company’s aim was to sell Scottish goods in many places, India for example; and it was secretly meant to found a factory and central mart on the isthmus of Panama. For these ends capital was withdrawn from the new and unsuccessful manufacturing companies. The great scheme was the idea of William Paterson (born 1658), the far-travelled and financially-speculative son of a farmer in Dumfriesshire. He was the “projector,” or one of the projectors, of the Bank of England of 1694, investing £2000. He kept the Darien part of his scheme for an East India Company in the background, and it seems that William, when he granted a patent to that company, knew nothing of this design to settle in or near the Panama isthmus, which was quite clearly within the Spanish sphere of influence. When the philosopher John Locke heard of the scheme, he wished England to steal the idea and seize a port in Darien: it thus appears that he too was unaware that to do so was to inflict an insult and injury on Spain. There is reason to suppose that the grant of the patent to the East India Company was obtained by bribing some Scottish politician or politicians unnamed, though one name is not beyond probable conjecture.
In any case Paterson admitted English capitalists, who took up half of the shares, as the Act of Patent permitted them to do. By December William was writing that he “had been ill-served by some of my Ministers.” He had no notice of the details of the Act of Patent till he had returned to England, and found English capitalists and the English Parliament in a fury. The Act committed William to interposing his authority if the ships of the company were detained by foreign powers, and gave the adventurers leave to take “reparation” by force from their assailants (this they later did when they captured in the Firth of Forth an English vessel, the Worcester).
On the opening of the books of the new company in London (October 1695) there had been a panic, and a fall of twenty points in the shares of the English East India Company. The English Parliament had addressed William in opposition to the Scots Company. The English subscribers of half the paid up capital were terrorised, and sold out. Later, Hamburg investments were cancelled through William’s influence. All lowland Scotland hurried to invest – in the dark – for the Darien part of the scheme was practically a secret: it was vaguely announced that there was to be a settlement somewhere, “in Africa or the Indies, or both.” Materials of trade, such as wigs, combs, Bibles, fish-hooks, and kid-gloves, were accumulated. Offices were built – later used as an asylum for pauper lunatics.
When, in July 1697, the secret of Panama came out, the English Council of Trade examined Dampier, the voyager, and (September) announced that the territory had never been Spain’s, and that England ought to anticipate Scotland by seizing Golden Island and the port on the mainland.
In July 1698 the Council of the intended Scots colony was elected, bought three ships and two tenders, and despatched 1200 settlers with two preachers, but with most inadequate provisions, and flour as bad as that paid to Assynt for the person of Montrose. On October 30, in the Gulf of Darien they found natives who spoke Spanish; they learned that the nearest gold mines were in Spanish hands, and that the chiefs were carrying Spanish insignia of office. By February 1699 the Scots and Spaniards were exchanging shots. Presently a Scottish ship, cruising in search of supplies, was seized by the Spanish at Carthagena; the men lay in irons at Seville till 1700. Spain complained to William, and the Scots seized a merchant ship. The English Governor of Jamaica forbade his people, by virtue of a letter addressed by the English Government to all the colonies, to grant supplies to the starving Scots, most of whom sailed away from the colony in June, and suffered terrible things by sea and land. Paterson returned to Scotland. A new expedition which left Leith on May 12, 1699, found at Darien some Scots in two ships, and remained on the scene, distracted by quarrels, till February 1700, when Campbell of Fonab, sent with provisions in the Speedy Return from Scotland, arrived to find the Spaniards assailing the adventurers. He cleared the Spaniards out of their fort in fifteen minutes, but the Colonial Council learned that Spain was launching a small but adequate armada against them. After an honourable resistance the garrison capitulated, and marched out with colours flying (March 30). This occurred just when Scotland was celebrating the arrival of the news of Fonab’s gallant feat of arms.
At home the country was full of discontent: William’s agent at Hamburg had prevented foreigners from investing in the Scots company. English colonists had been forbidden to aid the Scottish adventurers. Two hundred thousand pounds, several ships, and many lives had been lost. “It is very like 1641,” wrote an onlooker, so fierce were the passions that raged against William. The news of the surrender of the colonists increased the indignation. The king refused (November 1700) to gratify the Estates by regarding the Darien colony as a legal enterprise. To do so was to incur war with Spain and the anger of his English subjects. Yet the colony had been legally founded in accordance with the terms of the Act of Patent. While the Scots dwelt on this fact, William replied that the colony being extinct, circumstances were altered. The Estates voted that Darien was a lawful colony, and (1701) in an address to the Crown demanded compensation for the nation’s financial losses. William replied with expressions of sympathy and hopes that the two kingdoms would consider a scheme of Union. A Bill for Union brought in through the English Lords was rejected by the English Commons.
There was hardly an alternative between Union and War between the two nations. War there would have been had the exiled Prince of Wales been brought up as a Presbyterian. His father James VII. died a few months before William III. passed away on March 7, 1702. Louis XIV. acknowledged James, Prince of Wales, as James III. of England and Ireland and VIII, of Scotland; and Anne, the boy’s aunt, ascended the throne. As a Stuart she was not unwelcome to the Jacobites, who hoped for various chances, as Anne was believed to be friendly to her nephew.
In 1701 was passed an Act for preventing wrongous imprisonment and against undue delay in trials. But Nevile Payne continued to be untried and illegally imprisoned. Offenders, generally, could “run their letters” and protest, if kept in durance untried for sixty days.
The Revolution of 1688-89, with William’s very reluctant concessions, had placed Scotland in entirely new relations with England. Scotland could now no longer be “governed by the pen” from London; Parliament could no longer be bridled and led, at English will, by the Lords of the Articles. As the religious mainspring of Scottish political life, the domination of the preachers had been weakened by the new settlement of the Kirk; as the country was now set on commercial enterprises, which England everywhere thwarted, it was plain that the two kingdoms could not live together on the existing terms. Union there must be, or conquest, as under Cromwell; yet an English war of conquest was impossible, because it was impossible for Scotland to resist. Never would the country renew, as in the old days, the alliance of France, for a French alliance meant the acceptance by Scotland of a Catholic king.
England, on her side, if Union came, was accepting a partner with very poor material resources. As regards agriculture, for example, vast regions were untilled, or tilled only in the straths and fertile spots by the hardy clansmen, who could not raise oats enough for their own subsistence, and periodically endured famines. In “the ill years” of William, years of untoward weather, distress had been extreme. In the fertile Lowlands that old grievance, insecurity of tenure, and the raising of rents in proportion to improvements made by the tenants, had baffled agriculture. Enclosures were necessary for the protection of the crops, but even if tenants or landlords had the energy or capital to make enclosures, the neighbours destroyed them under cloud of night. The old labour-services were still extorted; the tenant’s time and strength were not his own. Land was exhausted by absence of fallows and lack of manure. The country was undrained, lochs and morasses covered what is now fertile land, and hillsides now in pasture were under the plough. The once prosperous linen trade had suffered from the war of tariffs.
The life of the burghs, political and municipal and trading, was little advanced on the mediæval model. The independent Scot steadily resisted instruction from foreign and English craftsmen in most of the mechanical arts. Laws for the encouragement of trades were passed and bore little fruit. Companies were founded and were ruined by English tariffs and English competition. The most energetic of the population went abroad, here they prospered in commerce and in military service, while an enormous class of beggars lived on the hospitality of their neighbours at home. In such conditions of inequality it was plain that, if there was to be a Union, the adjustment of proportions of taxation and of representation in Parliament would require very delicate handling, while the differences of Church Government were certain to cause jealousies and opposition.
CHAPTER XXIX. PRELIMINARIES TO THE UNION
The Scottish Parliament was not dissolved at William’s death, nor did it meet at the time when, legally, it ought to have met. Anne, in a message, expressed hopes that it would assent to Union, and promised to concur in any reasonable scheme for compensating the losers by the Darien scheme. When Parliament met, Queensberry, being Commissioner, soon found it necessary (June 30, 1702) to adjourn. New officers of State were then appointed, and there was a futile meeting between English and Scottish Commissioners chosen by the Queen to consider the Union.
Then came a General Election (1703), which gave birth to the last Scottish Parliament. The Commissioner, Queensberry, and the other officers of State, “the Court party,” were of course for Union; among them was prominent that wavering Earl of Mar who was so active in promoting the Union, and later precipitated the Jacobite rising of 1715. There were in Parliament the party of Courtiers, friends of England and Union; the party of Cavaliers, that is Jacobites; and the Country party, led by the Duke of Hamilton, who was in touch with the Jacobites, but was quite untrustworthy, and much suspected of desiring the Crown of Scotland for himself.
Queensberry cozened the Cavaliers – by promises of tolerating their Episcopalian religion – into voting a Bill recognising Anne, and then broke his promise. The Bill for tolerating worship as practised by the Episcopalians was dropped; for the Commissioner of the General Assembly of the Kirk declared that such toleration was “the establishment of iniquity by law.”
Queensberry’s one aim was to get Supply voted, for war with France had begun. But the Country and the Cavalier parties refused Supply till an Act of Security for religion, liberty, law, and trade should be passed. The majority decided that, on the death of Anne, the Estates should name as king of Scotland a Protestant representative of the House of Stewart, who should not be the successor to the English crown, save under conditions guaranteeing Scotland as a sovereign state, with frequent Parliaments, and security for Scottish navigation, colonies, trade, and religion (the Act of Security).
It was also decided that landholders and the burghs should drill and arm their tenants and dependants – if Protestant. Queensberry refused to pass this Act of Security; Supply, on the other side, was denied, and after a stormy scene Queensberry prorogued Parliament (September 16, 1703).
In the excitement, Atholl had deserted the Court party and voted with the majority. He had a great Highland following, he might throw it on the Jacobite side, and the infamous intriguer, Simon Frazer (the Lord Lovat of 1745), came over from France and betrayed to Queensberry a real or a feigned intrigue of Atholl with France and with the Ministers of James VIII., called “The Pretender.”
Atholl was the enemy of Frazer, a canting, astute, and unscrupulous ruffian. Queensberry conceived that in a letter given to him by Lovat he had irrefutable evidence against Atholl as a conspirator, and he allowed Lovat to return to France, where he was promptly imprisoned as a traitor. Atholl convinced Anne of his own innocence, and Queensberry fell under ridicule and suspicion, lost his office of Commissioner, and was superseded by Tweeddale. In England the whole complex affair of Lovat’s revelations was known as “The Scottish Plot”; Hamilton was involved, or feared he might be involved, and therefore favoured the new proposals of the Courtiers and English party for placing limits on the prerogative of Anne’s successor, whoever he might be.
In the Estates (July 1704), after months passed in constitutional chicanery, the last year’s Act of Security was passed and touched with the sceptre; and the House voted Supply for six months. But owing to a fierce dispute on private business – namely, the raising of the question, “Who were the persons accused in England of being engaged in the ‘Scottish Plot’?” – no hint of listening to proposals for Union was uttered. Who could propose, as Commissioners to arrange Union, men who were involved – or in England had been accused of being involved – in the plot? Scotland had not yet consented that whoever succeeded Anne in England should also succeed in Scotland. They retained a means of putting pressure on England, the threat of having a separate king; they had made and were making military preparations (drill once a-month!), and England took up the gauntlet. The menacing attitude of Scotland was debated on with much heat in the English Upper House (November 29), and a Bill passed by the Commons declared the retaliatory measures which England was ready to adopt.
It was at once proved that England could put a much harder pinch on Scotland than Scotland could inflict on England. Scottish drovers were no longer to sell cattle south of the Border, Scottish ships trading with France were to be seized, Scottish coals and linen were to be excluded, and regiments of regular troops were to be sent to the Border if Scotland did not accept the Hanoverian succession before Christmas 1705. If it came to war, Scotland could expect no help from her ancient ally, France, unless she raised the standard of King James. As he was a Catholic, the Kirk would prohibit this measure, so it was perfectly clear to every plain man that Scotland must accept the Union and make the best bargain she could.
In spring 1705 the new Duke of Argyll, “Red John of the Battles,” a man of the sword and an accomplished orator, was made Commissioner, and, of course, favoured the Union, as did Queensberry and the other officers of State. Friction between the two countries arose in spring, when an Edinburgh jury convicted, and the mob insisted on the execution of, an English Captain Green, whose ship, the Worcester, had been seized in the Forth by Roderick Mackenzie, Secretary of the Scottish East India Company. Green was supposed to have captured and destroyed a ship of the Company’s, the Speedy Return, which never did return. It was not proved that this ship had been Green’s victim, but that he had committed acts of piracy is certain. The hanging of Green increased the animosity of the sister kingdoms.
When Parliament met, June 28, 1705, it was a parliament of groups. Tweeddale and others, turned out of office in favour of Argyll’s Government, formed the Flying Squadron (Squadrone volante), voting in whatever way would most annoy the Government. Argyll opened by proposing, as did the Queen’s Message, the instant discussion of the Union (July 3). The House preferred to deliberate on anything else, and the leader of the Jacobites or Cavaliers, Lockhart of Carnwath, a very able sardonic man, saw that this was, for Jacobite ends, a tactical error. The more time was expended the more chance had Queensberry to win votes for the Union. Fletcher of Saltoun, an independent and eloquent patriot and republican, wasted time by impossible proposals. Hamilton brought forward, and by only two votes lost, a proposal which England would never have dreamed of accepting. Canny Jacobites, however, abstained from voting, and thence Lockhart dates the ruin of his country. Supply, at all events, was granted, and on that Argyll adjourned. The queen was to select Commissioners of both countries to negotiate the Treaty of Union; among the Commissioners Lockhart was the only Cavalier, and he was merely to watch the case in the Jacobite interest.
The meetings of the two sets of Commissioners began at Whitehall on April 16. It was arranged that all proposals, modifications, and results should pass in writing, and secrecy was to be complete.
The Scots desired Union with Home Rule, with a separate Parliament. The English would negotiate only on the lines that the Union was to be complete, “incorporating,” with one Parliament for both peoples. By April 25, 1706, the Scots Commissioners saw that on this point they must acquiesce; the defeat of the French at Ramilies (May 23) proved that, even if they could have leaned on the French, France was a broken reed. International reciprocity in trade, complete freedom of trade at home and abroad, they did obtain.
As England, thanks to William III. with his incessant Continental wars, had already a great National debt, of which Scotland owed nothing, and as taxation in England was high, while Scottish taxes under the Union would rise to the same level, and to compensate for the Darien losses, the English granted a pecuniary “Equivalent” (May 10). They also did not raise the Scottish taxes on windows, lights, coal, malt, and salt to the English level, that of war-taxation. The Equivalent was to purchase the Scottish shares in the East India Company, with interest at five per cent up to May 1, 1707. That grievance of the shareholders was thus healed, what public debt Scotland owed was to be paid (the Equivalent was about £400,000), and any part of the money unspent was to be given to improve fisheries and manufactures.
The number of Scottish members of the British Parliament was fixed at forty-five. On this point the Scots felt that they were hardly used; the number of their elected representatives of peers in the Lords was sixteen. Scotland retained her Courts of Law; the feudal jurisdictions which gave to Argyll and others almost princely powers were retained, and Scottish procedure in trials continued to vary much from the English model. Appeals from the Court of Session had previously been brought before the Parliament of Scotland; henceforth they were to be heard by the Judges, Scots and English, in the British House of Lords. On July 23, 1706, the treaty was completed; on October 3 the Scottish Parliament met to debate on it, with Queensberry as Commissioner. Harley, the English Minister, sent down the author of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ to watch, spy, argue, persuade, and secretly report, and De Foe’s letters contain the history of the session.
The parties in Parliament were thus variously disposed: the Cavaliers, including Hamilton, had been approached by Louis XIV. and King James (the Pretender), but had not committed themselves. Queensberry always knew every risky step taken by Hamilton, who began to take several, but in each case received a friendly warning which he dared not disregard. At the opposite pole, the Cameronians and other extreme Presbyterians loathed the Union, and at last (November-December) a scheme for the Cameronians and the clans of Angus and Perthshire to meet in arms in Edinburgh and clear out the Parliament caused much alarm. But Hamilton, before the arrangement came to a head, was terrorised, and the intentions of the Cameronians, as far as their records prove, had never been officially ratified by their leaders. 34 There was plenty of popular rioting during the session, but Argyll rode into Edinburgh at the head of the Horse Guards, and Leven held all the gates with drafts from the garrison of the castle. The Commissioners of the General Assembly made protests on various points, but were pacified after the security of the Kirk had been guaranteed. Finally, Hamilton prepared a parliamentary mine, which would have blown the Treaty of Union sky-high, but on the night when he should have appeared in the House and set the match to his petard – he had toothache! This was the third occasion on which he had deserted the Cavaliers; the Opposition fell to pieces. The Squadrone volante and the majority of the peers supported the Bill, which was passed. On January 16, 1707, the Treaty of Union was touched with the sceptre, “and there is the end of an auld sang,” said Seafield. In May 1707 a solemn service was held at St Paul’s to commemorate the Union.
There was much friction in the first year of the Union over excisemen and tax-collectors: smuggling began to be a recognised profession. Meanwhile, since 1707, a Colonel Hooke had been acting in Scotland, nominally in Jacobite, really rather in French interests. Hooke’s intrigues were in part betrayed by De Foe’s agent, Ker of Kersland, an amusingly impudent knave, and were thwarted by jealousies of Argyll and Hamilton. By deceptive promises (for he was himself deceived into expecting the aid of the Ulster Protestants) Hooke induced Louis XIV. to send five men-of-war, twenty-one frigates, and only two transports, to land James in Scotland (March 1708). The equinoctial gales and the severe illness of James, who insisted on sailing, delayed the start; the men on the outlook for the fleet were intoxicated, and Forbin, the French commander, observing English ships of war coming towards the Firth of Forth, fled, refusing James’s urgent entreaties to be landed anywhere on the coast (March 24). It was believed that had he landed only with a valet the discontented country would have risen for their native king.