A Short History of Scotland

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.

In Parliament (1710-1711) the Cavalier Scottish members, by Tory support, secured the release from prison of a Rev. Mr Greenshields, an Episcopalian who prayed for Queen Anne, indeed, but had used the liturgy. The preachers were also galled by the imposition on them of an abjuration oath, compelling them to pray for prelatical Queen Anne. Lay patronage of livings was also restored (1712) after many vicissitudes, and this thorn rankled in the Kirk, causing ever-widening strife for more than a century.

The imposition of a malt tax produced so much discontent that even Argyll, with all the Scottish members of Parliament, was eager for the repeal of the Act of Union, and proposed it in the House of Peers, when it was defeated by a small majority. In 1712, when about to start on a mission to France, Hamilton was slain in a duel by Lord Mohun. According to a statement of Lockhart’s, “Cavaliers were to look for the best” from Hamilton’s mission: it is fairly clear that he was to bring over James in disguise to England, as in Thackeray’s novel, ‘Esmond.’ But the sword of Mohun broke the Jacobite plans. Other hopes expired when Bolingbroke and Harley quarrelled, and Queen Anne died (August 1, 1714). “The best cause in Europe was lost,” cried Bishop Atterbury, “for want of spirit.” He would have proclaimed James as king, but no man supported him, and the Elector of Hanover, George I., peacefully accepted the throne.

CHAPTER XXX. GEORGE I

For a year the Scottish Jacobites, and Bolingbroke, who fled to France and became James’s Minister, mismanaged the affairs of that most unfortunate of princes. By February 1715 the Earl of Mar, who had been distrusted and disgraced by George I., was arranging with the clans for a rising, while aid from Charles XII. of Sweden was expected from March to August 1715. It is notable that Charles had invited Dean Swift to visit his Court, when Swift was allied with Bolingbroke and Oxford. From the author of ‘Gulliver’ Charles no doubt hoped to get a trustworthy account of their policy. The fated rising of 1715 was occasioned by the Duke of Berwick’s advice to James that he must set forth to Scotland or lose his honour. The prince therefore, acting hastily on news which, two or three days later, proved to be false, in a letter to Mar fixed August 10 for a rising. The orders were at once countermanded, when news proving their futility was received, but James’s messenger, Allan Cameron, was detained on the road, and Mar, not waiting for James’s answer to his own last despatch advising delay, left London for Scotland without a commission; on August 27 held an Assembly of the chiefs, and, still without a commission from James, raised the standard of the king on September 6. 35

The folly of Mar was consummate. He knew that Ormonde, the hope of the English Jacobites, had deserted his post and had fled to France.

Meanwhile Louis XIV. was dying; he died on August 30, and the Regent d’Orléans, at the utmost, would only connive at, not assist, James’s enterprise.

Everything was contrary, everywhere was ignorance and confusion. Lord John Drummond’s hopeful scheme for seizing Edinburgh Castle (September 8) was quieted pulveris exigui jactu, “the gentlemen were powdering their hair” – drinking at a tavern – and bungled the business. The folly of Government offered a chance: in Scotland they had but 2000 regulars at Stirling, where “Forth bridles the wild Highlandman.” Mar, who promptly occupied Perth, though he had some 12,000 broadswords, continued till the end to make Perth his headquarters. A Montrose, a Dundee, even a Prince Charles, would have “masked” Argyll at Stirling and seized Edinburgh. In October 21-November 3, Berwick, while urging James to sail, absolutely refused to accompany him. The plans of Ormonde for a descent on England were betrayed by Colonel Maclean, in French service (November 4). In disguise and narrowly escaping from murderous agents of Stair (British ambassador to France) on his road, 36 James journeyed to St Malo (November 8).

In Scotland the Macgregors made a futile attempt on Dumbarton Castle, while Glengarry and the Macleans advanced on Inveraray Castle, negotiated with Argyll’s brother, the Earl of Islay, and marched back to Strathfillan. In Northumberland Forster and Derwentwater, with some Catholic fox-hunters, in Galloway the pacific Viscount Kenmure, cruised vaguely about and joined forces. Mackintosh of Borlum, by a well-concealed movement, carried a Highland detachment of 1600 men across the Firth of Forth by boats (October 12-13), with orders to join Forster and Kenmure and arouse the Border. But on approaching Edinburgh Mackintosh found Argyll with 500 dragoons ready to welcome him; Mar took no advantage of Argyll’s absence from Stirling, and Mackintosh, when Argyll returned thither, joined Kenmure and Forster, occupied Kelso, and marched into Lancashire. The Jacobite forces were pitifully ill-supplied, they had very little ammunition (the great charge against Bolingbroke was that he sent none from France), they seem to have had no idea that powder could be made by the art of man; they were torn by jealousies, and dispirited by their observation of Mar’s incompetence.

We cannot pursue in detail the story of the futile campaign. On November 12 the mixed Highland, Lowland, and English command found itself cooped up in Preston, and after a very gallant defence of the town the English leaders surrendered to the king’s mercy, after arranging an armistice which made it impossible for Mackintosh to cut his way through the English ranks and retreat to the north. About 1600 prisoners were taken. Derwentwater and Kenmure were later executed. Forster and Nithsdale made escapes; Charles Wogan, a kinsman of the chivalrous Wogan of 1650, and Mackintosh, with six others, forced their way out of Newgate prison on the night before their trial. Wogan was to make himself heard of again. Mar had thrown away his Highlanders, with little ammunition and without orders, on a perfectly aimless and hopeless enterprise.

Meanwhile he himself, at Perth, had been doing nothing, while in the north, Simon Frazer (Lord Lovat) escaped from his French prison, raised his clan and took the castle of Inverness for King George. He thus earned a pardon for his private and public crimes, and he lived to ruin the Jacobite cause and lose his own head in 1745-46.

While the north, Ross-shire and Inverness, were daunted and thwarted by the success of Lovat, Mar led his whole force from Perth to Dunblane, apparently in search of a ford over Forth. His Frazers and many of his Gordons deserted on November 11; on November 12 Mar, at Ardoch (the site of an old Roman camp), learned that Argyll was marching through Dunblane to meet him. Next day Mar’s force occupied the crest of rising ground on the wide swell of Sheriffmuir: his left was all disorderly; horse mixed with foot; his right, with the fighting clans, was well ordered, but the nature of the ground hid the two wings of the army from each other. On the right the Macdonalds and Macleans saw Clanranald fall, and on Glengarry’s cry, “Vengeance to-day!” they charged with the claymore and swept away the regulars of Argyll as at Killiecrankie and Prestonpans. But, as the clans pursued and slew, their officers whispered that their own centre and left were broken and flying. Argyll had driven them to Allan Water; his force, returning, came within close range of the victorious right of Mar. “Oh, for one hour of Dundee!” cried Gordon of Glenbucket, but neither party advanced to the shock. Argyll retired safely to Dunblane, while Mar deserted his guns and powder-carts, and hurried to Perth. He had lost the gallant young Earl of Strathmore and the brave Clanranald; on Argyll’s side his brother Islay was wounded, and the Earl of Forfar was slain. Though it was a drawn battle, it proved that Mar could not move: his forces began to scatter; Huntly was said to have behaved ill. It was known that Dutch auxiliaries were to reinforce Argyll, and men began to try to make terms of surrender. Huntly rode off to his own country, and on December 22 (old style) James landed at Peterhead.

James had no lack of personal courage. He had charged again and again at Malplaquet with the Household cavalry of Louis XIV., and he had encountered great dangers of assassination on his way to St Malo. But constant adversity had made him despondent and resigned, while he saw facts as they really were with a sad lucidity. When he arrived in his kingdom the Whig clans of the north had daunted Seaforth’s Mackenzies, while in the south Argyll, with his Dutch and other fresh reinforcements, had driven Mar’s men out of Fife. Writing to Bolingbroke, James described the situation. Mar, with scarcely any ammunition, was facing Argyll with 11,000 men; the north was held in force by the Whig clans, Mackays, Rosses, Munroes, and Frazers; deep snow alone delayed the advance of Argyll, now stimulated by the hostile Cadogan, Marlborough’s favourite, and it was perfectly plain that all was lost.

For the head of James £100,000 was offered by Hanoverian chivalry: he was suffering from fever and ague; the Spanish gold that had at last been sent to him was lost at sea off Dundee, and it is no wonder that James, never gay, presented to his troops a disconsolate and discouraging aspect.

On January 29 his army evacuated Perth; James wept at the order to burn the villages on Argyll’s line of march, and made a futile effort to compensate the people injured. From Montrose (February 3-14) he wrote for aid to the French Regent, but next day, urged by Mar, and unknown to his army, he, with Mar, set sail for France. This evasion was doubtless caused by a circumstance unusual in warfare: there was a price of £100,000 on James’s head, moreover his force had not one day’s supply of powder. Marshal Keith (brother of the Earl Marischal who retreated to the isles) says that perhaps one day’s supply of powder might be found at Aberdeen. Nevertheless the fighting clans were eager to meet Argyll, and would have sold their lives at a high price. They scattered to their western fastnesses. The main political result, apart from executions and the passing of forfeited estates into the management of that noted economist, Sir Richard Steele, and other commissioners, was – the disgrace of Argyll. He, who with a petty force had saved Scotland, was represented by Cadogan and by his political enemies as dilatory and disaffected! The Duke lost all his posts, and in 1716 (when James had hopes from Sweden) Islay, Argyll’s brother, was negotiating with Jacobite agents. James was creating him a peer of England!

In Scotland much indignation was aroused by the sending of Scottish prisoners of war out of the kingdom for trial – namely, to Carlisle – and by other severities. The Union had never been more unpopular: the country looked on itself as conquered, and had no means of resistance, for James, now residing at Avignon, was a Catholic, and any insults and injuries from England were more tolerable than a restored nationality with a Catholic king.