CHAP. dom, however, effectually drowned the growl of this hateful faction.* X. 1688. The commotion soon reached the neighbourhood of Castle Drummond. Perth found that he was no longer safe among his own servants and tenants. He gave himself up to an agony as bitter as that into which his merciless tyranny had often thrown better men. He wildly tried to find consolation in the rites of his new Church. He importuned his priests for comfort, prayed, confessed, and communicated: but his faith was weak; and he owned that, in spite of all his devotions, the strong terrors of death were upon him. At this time he learned that he had a chance of escaping on board of a ship which lay off Brentisland. He disguised himself as well as he could, and, after a long and difficult journey by unfrequented paths over the Ochill moun tains, which were then deep in snow, he succeeded in embarking: but, in spite of all his precautions, he had been recognised, and the alarm had been given. As soon as it was known that the cruel renegade was on the waters, and that he had gold with him, pursuers, inflamed at once by hatred and by avarice, were on his track. A skiff, commanded by an old buccaneer, overtook the flying vessel and boarded her. Perth was dragged out of the hold on deck in woman's clothes, stripped, hustled, and plundered. Bayonets were held to his breast. Begging for life with unmanly cries, he was hurried to the shore and flung into the common gaol of Kirkaldy. Thence, by order of the Council over which he had lately presided, and which was filled with men who had been partakers in his guilt, he was removed to Stirling Castle. It was on a Sunday, during the time of public worship, that he was conveyed under a guard to his place of confinement: but even rigid Puritans forgot the sanctity of the day The Sixth Collection of Papers, 1689; Wodrow, III. xii. 4. App. 150, 151.; Faithful Contendings Displayed; Burnet, i. 804. and of the work. The churches poured forth their congregations as the torturer passed by, and the noise of threats, execrations, and screams of hatred accompanied him to the gate of his prison.* Several eminent Scotsmen were in London when the Prince arrived there; and many others now hastened thither to pay their court to him. their court to him. On the seventh of January he requested them to attend him at Whitehall. The assemblage was large and respectable. The Duke of Hamilton and his eldest son, the Earl of Arran, the chiefs of a house of almost regal dignity, appeared at the head of the procession. They were accompanied by thirty Lords and about eighty gentlemen of note. William desired them to consult together, and to let him know in what way he could best promote the welfare of their country. He then withdrew, and left them to deliberate unrestrained by his presence. They repaired to the Council chamber, and put Hamilton into the chair. Though there seems to have been little difference of opinion, their debates lasted three days, a fact which is sufficiently explained by the circumstance that Sir Patrick Hume was one of the debaters. Arran ventured to recommend a negotiation with the King. But this motion was ill received by the mover's father and by the whole assembly, and did not even find a seconder. At length resolutions were carried closely resembling the resolutions which the English Lords and Commoners had presented to the Prince a few days before. He was requested to call together a Convention of the Estates of Scotland, to fix the fourteenth of March for the day of meeting, and, till that day, to take on himself the civil and military administration. To this request he acceded; and thenceforth the government of the whole island was in his hands.† *Perth to Lady Errol, Dec. 29. 1688; to Melfort, Dec. 21. 1688; Sixth Collection of Papers, 1689. † Burnet, i. 805.; Sixth Collection of Papers, 1689. CHAP. X. 1688. CHAP. X. 1688. State of parties in England. The decisive moment approached; and the agitation of the public mind rose to the height. Knots of politicians were everywhere whispering and consulting. The coffeehouses were in a ferment. The presses of the capital never rested. Of the pamphlets which appeared at that time, enough may still be collected to form several volumes; and from those pamphlets it is not difficult to gather a correct notion of the state of parties. There was a very small faction which wished to recall James without stipulations. There was also a very small faction which wished to set up a commonwealth, and to entrust the administration to a council of state under the presidency of the Prince of Orange. But these extreme opinions were generally held in abhorrence. Nineteen twentieths of the nation consisted of persons in whom love of hereditary monarchy and love of constitutional freedom were combined, though in different proportions, and who were equally opposed to the total abolition of the kingly office and to the unconditional restoration of the King. But, in the wide interval which separated the bigots who still clung to the doctrines of Filmer from the enthusiasts who still dreamed the dreams of Harrington, there was room for many shades of opinion. If we neglect minute subdivisions, we shall find that the great majority of the nation and of the Convention was divided into four bodies. Three of these bodies consisted of Tories. The Whig party formed the fourth. The amity of the Whigs and Tories had not survived the peril which had produced it. On several occasions, during the Prince's march from the West, dissension had appeared among his followers. While the event of his enterprise was doubtful, that dissension had, by his skilful management, been easily quieted. But, from the day on which he entered Saint James's palace in triumph, such management could no longer be practised. His X. 1688. victory, by relieving the nation from the strong dread of CHAP. Popish tyranny, had deprived him of half his influence. Old antipathies, which had slept when Bishops were in the Tower, when Jesuits were at the Council board, when loyal clergymen were deprived of their bread by scores, when loyal gentlemen were put out of the commission of the peace by hundreds, were again strong and active. The Royalist shuddered at the thought that he was allied with all that from his youth up he had most hated, with old parliamentary Captains who had stormed his country house, with old parliamentary Commissioners who had sequestrated his estate, with men who had plotted the Rye House butchery and headed the Western rebellion. That beloved Church, too, for whose sake he had, after a painful struggle, broken through his allegiance to the throne, was she really in safety? Or had he rescued her from one enemy only that she might be exposed to another? The Popish priests, indeed, were in exile, in hiding, or in prison. No Jesuit or Benedictine who valued his life now dared to show himself in the habit of his order. But the Presbyterian and Independent teachers went in long procession to salute the chief of the government, and were as graciously received as the true successors of the Apostles. Some schismatics avowed the hope that every fence which excluded them from ecclesiastical preferment would soon be levelled; that the Articles would be softened down; that the Liturgy would be garbled; that Christmas would cease to be a feast; that Good Friday would cease to be a fast; that canons on whom no Bishop had ever laid his hand would, without the sacred vestment of white linen, distribute, in the choirs of Cathedrals, the eucharistic bread and wine to communicants lolling on benches. The Prince, indeed, was not a fanatical Presbyterian; but he was at best a Latitudinarian. He had no scruple about communicating in the Anglican form; but he cared not in what She She had form other people communicated. His wife, it was to The body which was animated by these sentiments was large and respectable. It included about one half of the House of Lords, about one third of the House of Commons, a majority of the country gentlemen, and at least nine tenths of the clergy; but it was torn by dissensions, and beset on every side by difficulties. One section of this great party, a section which was especially strong among divines, and of which Sherlock was the chief organ, wished that a negotiation should be opened with James, and that he should be invited to return to Whitehall on such conditions as might fully secure the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. It is evident that this plan, though strenuously supported by the clergy, was altogether inconsistent with the doctrines which the clergy had been teaching during many years. It was, in truth, an attempt to make a middle way where there was no room for a middle way, to effect a compromise between two things which do not admit of compromise, resistance and nonresistance. The Tories had formerly taken their stand on the principle of nonresistance. But that ground most of them had now abandoned, and were not disposed again to occupy. The Cavaliers of England had, as a * Albeville, Nov. 1. 1688. and the answer, 1689; Burnet, i. 809. |