The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62

On the twenty-fourth of February 1692, about an hour after the
Commons had voted Fuller an impostor, they were summoned to the
chamber of the Lords. The King thanked the Houses for their
loyalty and liberality, informed them that he must soon set out
for the Continent, and commanded them to adjourn themselves. He
gave his assent on that day to many bills, public and private;
but when the title of one bill, which had passed the Lower House
without a single division and the Upper House without a single
protest, had been read by the Clerk of the Crown, the Clerk of
the Parliaments declared, according to the ancient form, that the
King and the Queen would consider of the matter. Those words had
very rarely been pronounced before the accession of William. They
have been pronounced only once since his death. But by him the
power of putting a Veto on laws which had been passed by the
Estates of the Realm was used on several important occasions. His
detractors truly asserted that he rejected a greater number of
important bills than all the Kings of the House of Stuart put
together, and most absurdly inferred that the sense of the
Estates of the Realm was much less respected by him than by his
uncles and his grandfather. A judicious student of history will
have no difficulty in discovering why William repeatedly
exercised a prerogative to which his predecessors very seldom had
recourse, and which his successors have suffered to fall into
utter desuetude.

His predecessors passed laws easily because they broke laws
easily. Charles the First gave his assent to the Petition of
Right, and immediately violated every clause of that great
statute. Charles the Second gave his assent to an Act which
provided that a Parliament should be held at least once in three
years; but when he died the country had been near four years
without a Parliament. The laws which abolished the Court of High
Commission, the laws which instituted the Sacramental Test, were
passed without the smallest difficulty; but they did not prevent
James the Second from reestablishing the Court of High
Commission, and from filling the Privy Council, the public
offices, the courts of justice, and the municipal corporations
with persons who had never taken the Test. Nothing could be more
natural than that a King should not think it worth while to
withhold his assent from a statute with which he could dispense
whenever he thought fit.

The situation of William was very different. He could not, like
those who had ruled before him, pass an Act in the spring and
violate it in the summer. He had, by assenting to the Bill of
Rights, solemnly renounced the dispensing power; and he was
restrained, by prudence as well as by conscience and honour, from
breaking the compact under which he held his crown. A law might
be personally offensive to him; it might appear to him to be
pernicious to his people; but, as soon as he had passed it, it
was, in his eyes, a sacred thing. He had therefore a motive,
which preceding Kings had not, for pausing before he passed such
a law. They gave their word readily, because they had no scruple
about breaking it. He gave his word slowly, because he never
failed to keep it.

But his situation, though it differed widely from that of the
princes of the House of Stuart, was not precisely that of the
princes of the House of Brunswick. A prince of the House of
Brunswick is guided, as to the use of every royal prerogative, by
the advice of a responsible ministry; and this ministry must be
taken from the party which predominates in the two Houses, or, at
least, in the Lower House. It is hardly possible to conceive
circumstances in which a Sovereign so situated can refuse to
assent to a bill which has been approved by both branches of the
legislature. Such a refusal would necessarily imply one of two
things, that the Sovereign acted in opposition to the advice of
the ministry, or that the ministry was at issue, on a question of
vital importance, with a majority both of the Commons and of the
Lords. On either supposition the country would be in a most
critical state, in a state which, if long continued, must end in
a revolution. But in the earlier part of the reign of William
there was no ministry. The heads of the executive departments had
not been appointed exclusively from either party. Some were
zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories. The most enlightened
statesmen did not hold it to be unconstitutional that the King
should exercise his highest prerogatives on the most important
occasions without any other guidance than that of his own
judgment. His refusal, therefore, to assent to a bill which had
passed both Houses indicated, not, as a similar refusal would now
indicate, that the whole machinery of government was in a state
of fearful disorder, but merely that there was a difference of
opinion between him and the two other branches of the legislature
as to the expediency of a particular law. Such a difference of
opinion might exist, and, as we shall hereafter see, actually did
exist, at a time when he was, not merely on friendly, but on most
affectionate terms with the Estates of the Realm.

The circumstances under which he used his Veto for the first time
have never yet been correctly stated. A well meant but unskilful
attempt had been made to complete a reform which the Bill of
Rights had left imperfect. That great law had deprived the Crown
of the power of arbitrarily removing the judges, but had not made
them entirely independent. They were remunerated partly by fees
and partly by salaries. Over the fees the King had no control;
but the salaries he had full power to reduce or to withhold. That
William had ever abused this power was not pretended; but it was
undoubtedly a power which no prince ought to possess; and this
was the sense of both Houses. A bill was therefore brought in by
which a salary of a thousand a year was strictly secured to each
of the twelve judges. Thus far all was well. But unfortunately
the salaries were made a charge on the hereditary revenue. No
such proposition would now be entertained by the House of
Commons, without the royal consent previously signified by a
Privy Councillor. But this wholesome rule had not then been
established; and William could defend the proprietary rights of
the Crown only by putting his negative on the bill. At the time
there was, as far as can now be ascertained, no outcry. Even the
Jacobite libellers were almost silent. It was not till the
provisions of the bill had been forgotten, and till nothing but
its title was remembered, that William was accused of having been
influenced by a wish to keep the judges in a state of
dependence.201

The Houses broke up; and the King prepared to set out for the
Continent. Before his departure he made some changes in his
household and in several departments of the government; changes,
however, which did not indicate a very decided preference for
either of the great political parties. Rochester was sworn of the
Council. It is probable that he had earned this mark of royal
favour by taking the Queen's side in the unhappy dispute between
her and her sister. Pembroke took charge of the Privy Seal, and
was succeeded at the Board of Admiralty by Charles Lord
Cornwallis, a moderate Tory; Lowther accepted a seat at the same
board, and was succeeded at the Treasury by Sir Edward Seymour.
Many Tory country gentlemen, who had looked on Seymour as their
leader in the war against placemen and Dutchmen, were moved to
indignation by learning that he had become a courtier. They
remembered that he had voted for a Regency, that he had taken the
oaths with no good grace, that he had spoken with little respect
of the Sovereign whom he was now ready to serve for the sake of
emoluments hardly worthy of the acceptance of a man of his wealth
and parliamentary interest. It was strange that the haughtiest of
human beings should be the meanest, that one who seethed to
reverence nothing on earth but himself should abase himself for
the sake of quarter day. About such reflections he troubled
himself very little. He found, however, that there was one
disagreeable circumstance connected with his new office. At the
Board of Treasury he must sit below the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The First Lord, Godolphin, was a peer of the realm;
and his right to precedence, according to the rules of the
heralds, could not be questioned. But every body knew who was the
first of English commoners. What was Richard Hampden that he
should take the place of a Seymour, of the head of the Seymours?
With much difficulty, the dispute was compromised. Many
concessions were made to Sir Edward's punctilious pride. He was
sworn of the Council. He was appointed one of the Cabinet. The
King took him by the hand and presented him to the Queen. "I
bring you," said William, "a gentleman who will in my absence be
a valuable friend." In this way Sir Edward was so much soothed
and flattered that he ceased to insist on his right to thrust
himself between the First Lord and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.

In the same Commission of Treasury in which the name of Seymour
appeared, appeared also the name of a much younger politician,
who had during the late session raised himself to high
distinction in the House of Commons, Charles Montague. This
appointment gave great satisfaction to the Whigs, in whose esteem
Montague now stood higher than their veteran chiefs Sacheverell
and Littleton, and was indeed second to Somers alone.

Sidney delivered up the seals which he had held during more than
a year, and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Some months
clasped before the place which he had quitted was filled up; and
during this interval the whole business which had ordinarily been
divided between two Secretaries of State was transacted by
Nottingham.202

While these arrangements were in progress, events had taken place
in a distant part of the island which were not, till after the
lapse of many months, known in the best informed circles of
London, but which gradually obtained a fearful notoriety, and
which, after the lapse of more than a hundred and sixty years,
are never mentioned without horror.

Soon after the Estates of Scotland had separated in the autumn of
1690, a change was made in the administration of that kingdom.
William was not satisfied with the way in which he had been
represented in the Parliament House. He thought that the rabbled
curates had been hardly treated. He had very reluctantly suffered
the law which abolished patronage to be touched with his sceptre.
But what especially displeased him was that the Acts which
established a new ecclesiastical polity had not been accompanied
by an Act granting liberty of conscience to those who were
attached to the old ecclesiastical polity. He had directed his
Commissioner Melville to obtain for the Episcopalians of Scotland
an indulgence similar to that which Dissenters enjoyed in
England.203 But the Presbyterian preachers were loud and vehement
against lenity to Amalekites. Melville, with useful talents, and
perhaps with fair intentions, had neither large views nor an
intrepid spirit. He shrank from uttering a word so hateful to the
theological demagogues of his country as Toleration. By
obsequiously humouring their prejudices he quelled the clamour
which was rising at Edinburgh; but the effect of his timid
caution was that a far more formidable clamour soon rose in the
south of the island against the bigotry of the schismatics who
domineered in the north, and against the pusillanimity of the
government which had not dared to withstand that bigotry. On this
subject the High Churchman and the Low Churchman were of one
mind, or rather the Low Churchman was the more angry of the two.
A man like South, who had during many years been predicting that,
if ever the Puritans ceased to be oppressed, they would become
oppressors, was at heart not ill pleased to see his prophecy
fulfilled. But in a man like Burnet, the great object of whose
life had been to mitigate the animosity which the ministers of
the Anglican Church felt towards the Presbyterians, the
intolerant conduct of the Presbyterians could awaken no feeling
but indignation, shame and grief. There was, therefore, at the
English Court nobody to speak a good word for Melville. It was
impossible that in such circumstances he should remain at the
head of the Scottish administration. He was, however, gently let
down from his high position. He continued during more than a year
to be Secretary of State; but another Secretary was appointed,
who was to reside near the King, and to have the chief direction
of affairs. The new Prime Minister for Scotland was the able,
eloquent and accomplished Sir John Dalrymple. His father, the
Lord President of the Court of Session, had lately been raised to
the peerage by the title of Viscount Stair; and Sir John
Dalrymple was consequently, according to the ancient usage of
Scotland, designated as the Master of Stair. In a few months
Melville resigned his secretaryship, and accepted an office of
some dignity and emolument, but of no political importance.204

The Lowlands of Scotland were, during the year which followed the
parliamentary session of 1690, as quiet as they had ever been
within the memory of man; but the state of the Highlands caused
much anxiety to the government. The civil war in that wild
region, after it had ceased to flame, had continued during some
time to smoulder. At length, early in the year 1691, the rebel
chiefs informed the Court of Saint Germains that, pressed as they
were on every side, they could hold out no longer without succour
from France. James had sent them a small quantity of meal, brandy
and tobacco, and had frankly told them that he could do nothing
more. Money was so scarce among them that six hundred pounds
sterling would have been a most acceptable addition to their
funds, but even such a sum he was unable to spare. He could scarcely,
in such circumstances, expect them to defend his cause against a
government which had a regular army and a large revenue. He
therefore informed them that he should not take it ill of them if
they made their peace with the new dynasty, provided always that
they were prepared to rise in insurrection as soon as he should
call on them to do so.205

Meanwhile it had been determined at Kensington, in spite of the
opposition of the Master of Stair, to try the plan which Tarbet
had recommended two years before, and which, if it had been tried
when he recommended it, would probably have prevented much
bloodshed and confusion. It was resolved that twelve or fifteen
thousand pounds should be laid out in quieting the Highlands.
This was a mass of treasure which to an inhabitant of Appin or
Lochaber seemed almost fabulous, and which indeed bore a greater
proportion to the income of Keppoch or Glengarry than fifteen
hundred thousand pounds bore to the income of Lord Bedford or
Lord Devonshire. The sum was ample; but the King was not
fortunate in the choice of an agent.206

John Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch of the
great House of Campbell, ranked high among the petty princes of
the mountains. He could bring seventeen hundred claymores into
the field; and, ten years before the Revolution, he had actually
marched into the Lowlands with this great force for the purpose
of supporting the prelatical tyranny.207 In those days he had
affected zeal for monarchy and episcopacy; but in truth he cared
for no government and no religion. He seems to have united two
different sets of vices, the growth of two different regions, and
of two different stages in the progress of society. In his castle
among the hills he had learned the barbarian pride and ferocity
of a Highland chief. In the Council Chamber at Edinburgh he had
contracted the deep taint of treachery and corruption. After the
Revolution he had, like too many of his fellow nobles, joined and
betrayed every party in turn, had sworn fealty to William and
Mary, and had plotted against them. To trace all the turns and
doublings of his course, during the year 1689 and the earlier
part of 1690, would be wearisome.208 That course became somewhat
less tortuous when the battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit
of the Jacobites. It now seemed probable that the Earl would be a
loyal subject of their Majesties, till some great disaster should
befall them. Nobody who knew him could trust him; but few
Scottish statesmen could then be trusted; and yet Scottish
statesmen must be employed. His position and connections marked
him out as a man who might, if he would, do much towards the work
of quieting the Highlands; and his interest seemed to be a
guarantee for his zeal. He had, as he declared with every
appearance of truth, strong personal reasons for wishing to see
tranquillity restored. His domains were so situated that, while
the civil war lasted, his vassals could not tend their herds or
sow their oats in peace. His lands were daily ravaged; his cattle
were daily driven away; one of his houses had been burned down.
It was probable, therefore, that he would do his best to put an
end to hostilities.209

He was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Jacobite
chiefs, and was entrusted with the money which was to be
distributed among them. He invited them to a conference at his
residence in Glenorchy. They came; but the treaty went on very
slowly. Every head of a tribe asked for a larger share of the
English gold than was to be obtained. Breadalbane was suspected
of intending to cheat both the clans and the King. The dispute
between the rebels and the government was complicated with
another dispute still more embarrassing. The Camerons and
Macdonalds were really at war, not with William, but with Mac
Callum More; and no arrangement to which Mac Callum More was not
a party could really produce tranquillity. A grave question
therefore arose, whether the money entrusted to Breadalbane
should be paid directly to the discontented chiefs, or should be
employed to satisfy the claims which Argyle had upon them. The
shrewdness of Lochiel and the arrogant pretensions of Glengarry
contributed to protract the discussions. But no Celtic potentate
was so impracticable as Macdonald of Glencoe, known among the
mountains by the hereditary appellation of Mac Ian.210

Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the
southern shore of Lochleven, an arm of the sea which deeply
indents the western coast of Scotland, and separates Argyleshire
from Invernesshire. Near his house were two or three small
hamlets inhabited by his tribe. The whole population which he
governed was not supposed to exceed two hundred souls. In the
neighbourhood of the little cluster of villages was some
copsewood and some pasture land; but a little further up the
defile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen.
In the Gaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and
in truth that pass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the
Scottish passes, the very Valley of the Shadow of Death. Mists
and storms brood over it through the greater part of the finest
summer; and even on those rare days when the sun is bright, and
when there is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the
landscape is sad and awful. The path lies along a stream which
issues from the most sullen and gloomy of mountain pools. Huge
precipices of naked stone frown on both sides. Even in July the
streaks of snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the
summits. All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin mark the
headlong paths of the torrents. Mile after mile the traveller
looks in vain for the smoke of one but, for one human form
wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a
shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the only
sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from
some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation,
which has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with Harvests
or gay with apple blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate.
All the science and industry of a peaceful age can extract
nothing valuable from that wilderness; but, in an age of violence
and rapine, the wilderness itself was valued on account of the
shelter which it afforded to the plunderer and his plunder.
Nothing could be more natural than that the clan to which this
rugged desert belonged should have been noted for predatory
habits. For, among the Highlanders generally, to rob was thought
at least as honourable an employment as to cultivate the soil;
and, of all the Highlanders, The Macdonalds of Glencoe had the
least productive soil, and the most convenient and secure den of
robbers. Successive governments had tried to punish this wild
race; but no large force had ever been employed for that purpose;
and a small force was easily resisted or eluded by men familiar
with every recess and every outlet of the natural fortress in
which they had been born and bred. The people of Glencoe would
probably have been less troublesome neighbours if they had lived
among their own kindred. But they were an outpost of the Clan
Donald, separated from every other branch of their own family,
and almost surrounded by the domains of the hostile race of
Diarmid.211 They were impelled by hereditary enmity, as well as
by want, to live at the expense of the tribe of Campbell.
Breadalbane's property had suffered greatly from their
depredations; and he was not of a temper to forgive such
injuries. When, therefore, the Chief of Glencoe made his
appearance at the congress in Glenorchy, he was ungraciously
received. The Earl, who ordinarily bore himself with the solemn
dignity of a Castilian grandee, forgot, in his resentment, his
wonted gravity, forgot his public character, forgot the laws of
hospitality, and, with angry reproaches and menaces, demanded
reparation for the herds which had been driven from his lands by
Mac Ian's followers. Mac Ian was seriously apprehensive of some
personal outrage, and was glad to get safe back to his own
glen.212 His pride had been wounded; and the promptings of
interest concurred with those of pride. As the head of a people
who lived by pillage, he had strong reasons for wishing that the
country might continue to be in a perturbed state. He had little
chance of receiving one guinea of the money which was to be
distributed among the malecontents. For his share of that money
would scarcely meet Breadalbane's demands for compensation; and
there could be little doubt that, whoever might be unpaid,
Breadalbane would take care to pay himself. Mac Ian therefore did
his best to dissuade his allies from accepting terms from which
he could himself expect no benefit; and his influence was not
small. His own vassals, indeed, were few in number; but he came
of the best blood of the Highlands; he had kept up a close
connection with his more powerful kinsmen; nor did they like him
the less because he was a robber; for he never robbed them; and
that robbery, merely as robbery, was a wicked and disgraceful
act, had never entered into the mind of any Celtic chief. Mac Ian
was therefore held in high esteem by the confederates. His age
was venerable; his aspect was majestic; and he possessed in large
measure those intellectual qualities which, in rude societies,
give men an ascendency over their fellows. Breadalbane found
himself, at every step of the negotiation, thwarted by the arts
of his old enemy, and abhorred the name of Glencoe more and more
every day.213

But the government did not trust solely to Breadalbane's
diplomatic skill. The authorities at Edinburgh put forth a
proclamation exhorting the clans to submit to King William and
Queen Mary, and offering pardon to every rebel who, on or before
the thirty-first of December 1691, should swear to live peaceably
under the government of their Majesties. It was announced that
those who should hold out after that day would be treated as
enemies and traitors.214 Warlike preparations were made, which
showed that the threat was meant in earnest. The Highlanders were
alarmed, and, though the pecuniary terms had not been
satisfactorily settled, thought it prudent to give the pledge
which was demanded of them. No chief, indeed, was willing to set
the example of submission. Glengarry blustered, and pretended to
fortify his house.215 "I will not," said Lochiel, "break the ice.
That is a point of honour with me. But my tacksmen and people may
use their freedom."216 His tacksmen and people understood him,
and repaired by hundreds to the Sheriff to take the oaths. The
Macdonalds of Sleat, Clanronald, Keppoch, and even Glengarry,
imitated the Camerons; and the chiefs, after trying to outstay
each other as long as they durst, imitated their vassals.

The thirty-first of December arrived; and still the Macdonalds of
Glencoe had not come in. The punctilious pride of Mac Ian was
doubtless gratified by the thought that he had continued to defy
the government after the boastful Glengarry, the ferocious
Keppoch, the magnanimous Lochiel had yielded: but he bought his
gratification dear.