offices were conferred on others, and they, holding that they and those who continued to acknowledge them were the true Church, founded a body which, under the name of Nonjurors, continued to exist for more than a century.

3. Locke's Letters on Toleration. 1689.-The Toleration Act itself was in the main the fruit of the change which had taken place in the political circumstances of the nation since the Restoration. Men had had reason to be afraid of Roman Catholics, and were no longer afraid of Dissenters. Alongside of this political change, however, had grown up a change of opinion amongst the thinking men who had especial influence in the Whig party. In 1689 the philosopher Locke published his 'Letters on Toleration.' They were

much less heroic than Milton's Areopagitica' (see p. 546), and instead of dwelling on the bracing effects of liberty on the human spirit, maintained the view that the State had no business to interfere with religious conviction. A Church, according to Locke, was 'a voluntary society of men joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the public worshipping of God in such manner as they shall judge acceptable to Him and effectual to the salvation of their souls.' On such voluntary associations

the State had no right to impose penalties.

1689.-In

In Scot

4. Establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland. Scotland and Ireland William had to fight for his crown. land, before the Parliament met, the Episcopal clergy were 'rabbled,' that is to say, were driven from their parishes with insult and ill-usage by angry crowds. Parliament then declared James to have forfeited the crown and gave it to William and Mary. It also declared Presbyterianism to be the religion of the country. 5. Killiecrankie. 1689. To many of the nobles the establishment of a clergy which owed them no respect was distasteful, and some, of whom the most conspicuous were the Duke of Gordon and Viscount Dundee, who had till lately been known as Graham of Claverhouse (see p. 620), drew their swords for James. Gordon held out in Edinburgh Castle till June 13. Dundee, following the

1689-169

KILLIECRANKIE AND GLENCOE

653

example of Montrose (see p. 547), a Graham like himself, gathered the Highland clans around him. On July 27, he drew up his force on the flat ground at the head of the pass of Killiecrankie. William's general, Mackay, toiled up the steep hillside to attack him. His soldiers had been supplied with bayonets, a new French invention intended to make each soldier a pikeman as well as a musketeer. The invention had not yet been perfected, and the bayonets had to be fixed in the muzzles of the guns. When Mackay's men reached the top exhausted by the climb and the summer heat, they fired their shots, and then, seeing the Highlanders rushing upon them, fumbled with their bayonets. Before they could get them fixed the Highlanders, with their flashing broadswords, were upon them. Dundee had been killed by the first fire, but his men swept the lowland soldiers down the pass, leaping lightly over the rocks and slaying as they went. The Highlanders, caring more for plunder than for James, returned home to deposit their booty in safety.

6. The Pacification of the Highlands. 1691-1692. The Highlanders were poor, and in 1691 a distribution of 15,000l. amongst the chiefs of the clans brought them one by one to submission. December 31 was announced as the last day on which the oaths acknowledging William would be accepted. By that

2

1, Bayonet as made in 1686.
2, Bayonet of the time of William
and Mary.

time all had resolved to give way; but one of the number, MacIan Glencoe, the head of a small clan, one of the many into which the Macdonalds were divided, took pride in being the last to submit, and made his appearance on the 31st. Unfortunately he by mistake came to a gentleman who had no authority to accept his oath, and when he reached a person who could accept it, the

appointed day had passed. The Master of Stair,' William's chief minister in Scotland, thought this an excellent opportunity to show the Highlanders that the Government could punish as well as reward, and asked William's leave to destroy Maclan's clan, on the plea that they had, like most other Highland clans, been guilty in past time of acts of brigandage and murder. William gave his assent, writing that it would be good to extirpate that set of thieves.'

7. The Massacre of Glencoe. 1692.-The Master of Stair proceeded to execute, in a peculiarly treacherous manner, the order which he had obtained. He sent into Glencoe a party of soldiers, who gave out on their arrival that they had come as friends. They lived with the clansmen, ate at their tables, joked, and played at cards with them. On the morning of February 13, 1692, whilst it was still dark, the soldiers surrounded the huts of those very men with whom they had been making merry the evening before. They then dragged many of them out of their beds and murdered them, firing at such as fled. Not a few, indeed, succeeded in making their escape, but the mountains on either side of the glen 'were lofty and rugged, and most of those who took refuge in them died of cold and hunger amidst the rocks and the snow. When the tale was told at Edinburgh the Scottish Parliament broke out into indignation, and William had to dismiss the Master of Stair from office. It was the first time that the Lowland Scotch had shown compassion for Highlanders. Hitherto they had always treated them as a wild and savage race of plunderers for whom there was no mercy.

8. The Siege of Londonderry. 1689. In Ireland William had to deal with something like national resistance. On March 12 James, bringing with him some French officers, landed at Kinsale. Tyrconnel had ready for him an ill-equipped and ill-disciplined Irish army. To the native Irish James was still the lawful king, whose title was unaffected by anything that an English Parliament could do. To the English and Scottish colonists he was a mere usurper, the enemy of their creed and nation. The northern Protestants, chased from their homes with outrage, took refuge in Enniskillen and Londonderry. In Londonderry the governor, Lundy, prepared to surrender, but when James arrived with his army the inhabitants took the defence into their own hands and closed the gates in his face. The besiegers strictly blockaded

1 In Scotland, the eldest sons of lords and viscounts were known by the title of Master.

1689

JAMES 11. IN IRELAND

655

the town by land and threw a boom across the river Foyle, so that no food might enter from the sea. The defenders were before long reduced to feed on horse-flesh, and they had not much of that. From the top of the cathedral they could see ships which William had sent to their relief, but the ships lay inactive for weeks. Men who had been well off were glad to feed on the flesh of dogs, and even to gnaw hides in the hope of getting nourishment out of them. At last, on July 30, three of the ships moved up the river. One of them dashed at the boom and broke it, though it was itself driven on shore by the recoil. The tide, however, rose and floated her off. The whole store of food was borne safely to the town, and Londonderry was saved. James and his Irish army marched away. On the day of his retreat an Irish force was defeated at Newtown Butler by the Protestants of Enniskillen.

9. The Irish Parliament. 1689.-On May 7, whilst James was before Londonderry, the Irish Parliament met at Dublin. The House of Commons was almost entirely composed of native Irish, and the Parliament passed an Act annulling all the English confiscations since 1641. The lands taken by force in times past were to be restored to the Irish owners or their heirs. Those English, however, who had acquired Irish confiscated lands by purchase were to be compensated, and to find money for this compensation an Act of Attainder was passed against about 2,000 of William's partisans. As most of them were out of harm's way, but little blood was likely to be shed, though a great deal of property would change owners. A considerable part of Irish land having been confiscated by the English authorities during the past forty years, this proceeding did not appear in Ireland to be as outrageous as it would have seemed in a settled country like England.

10. Schomberg sent to Ireland. 1689.-Once more England and Ireland were brought into direct antagonism. Not only did Protestant Englishmen sympathise deeply with the wrongs of their countrymen in Ireland, whilst they were unable to perceive that the Irish had suffered any wrongs at all, but they could not fail to see that if James established himself in Ireland, he would next attempt, with French help, to establish himself in England. As it had been in Elizabeth's reign so it was now. Either England must conquer Ireland, or Ireland would be used by a foreign nation to conquer England. Accordingly, in August, Schomberg-who had been a French marshal, but, being a Protestant, had resigned his high position after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (see p. 638) rather than renounce his

faith-was sent by William with an English army to Carrickfergus. The weather was bad, and the arrangements of the commissariat were worse, so that disease broke out among the soldiers, and nothing serious was done during the remainder of the year.

II. The Bill of Rights and the Dissolution of the Convention Parliament. 1689-1690.—In England, the Convention Parliament had passed a Bill of Rights, embodying the demands of the former Declaration of Rights (see p. 647). Since then it had grown intractable. The Whig majority had forgotten the services rendered by the Tories against James, and, treating them as enemies, was eager to take vengeance on them. When, therefore, a Bill of Indemnity was brought in, the Whigs excepted from it so many of the Tory leaders on the ground that they had supported the harsh acts of the last two kings, that William, who cared for neither party, suddenly prorogued Parliament and then dissolved it.

12. Settlement of the Revenue. 1690.-A new Parliament, in which the majority was Tory, met on March 20, 1690. It accepted from the king an Act of Grace,1 and then, by confining to four years their grant of nearly half the revenue of the Crown, put a check upon any attempt of a future king to make himself absolute. Subsequently the grant became annual; after which no king could free himself from the necessity of summoning Parliament to meet in every year, as he could not make himself financially independent of Parliament. The supremacy of Parliament was thus, as far as law could do it, practically secured.

13. The Conquest of Ireland. 1690-1691. On June 14, 1690, William landed at Carrickfergus. On July 1, he defeated James at the battle of the Boyne. Schomberg was killed, and James fled to Kinsale, where he embarked for France. William entered Dublin in triumph, and, marching on through the country, on August 8 laid siege to Limerick, Wet weather set in and caused disease amongst the besiegers, whilst the Irish general, Sarsfield, sweeping round them, destroyed the siege guns on their way to batter the walls. William for the time abandoned the attack and returned to England. In 1691 a Dutch general, Ginkell, was placed in command of the English army. Under him were Mackay, who had been defeated at Killiecrankie, and Ruvigny, a French Protestant refugee. Thus commanded, William's troops took Athlone on June 30, and on July 12 destroyed the Irish army at Aughrim. Limerick was 1 An Act of Grace was similar to an Act of Indemnity, except that it originated with the king, and could only be accepted or rejected, not amended by the Houses.