Revolution

The Revolution in Scotland has traditionally been seen as more radical than that in England. The Scottish Convention of Estates, which met on 14 March 1689 to determine the settlement of the throne following James's ‘abdication’ in England, came to be dominated by Whigs and Presbyterians, who forged a radical settlement resulting in the restructuring of the powers of the Scottish monarchy and the replacement of Episcopalianism with Presbyterianism. Yet if there was a revolution in Scotland, it has been widely accepted that the Scots were ‘reluctant revolutionaries’.² As one influential survey puts it, ‘there were no indications of any readiness on the part of the Scots by themselves to initiate a revolution, even when the permanence of the regime seemed to be assured by the birth of a son to James's queen’ in June 1688; ‘the Revolution was made in England and imported into Scotland’.³ Similarly, another scholar, summarizing conventional wisdom, has maintained that ‘discontent in Scotland remained passive’; ‘in striking contrast to the events precipitating the Great Rebellion, the Revolution of 1688–9 was solely made in England’.⁴ In recent years, historians have even begun to question the revolutionary credentials of what transpired in Scotland, urging that the Revolution should be seen in a more conservative light backward-looking and limited in scope. According to this view, the ‘participants in the Scottish Revolution of 1688’ had no gripes with the traditional monarchy in Scotland - it was the King who was the radical – and they therefore deliberately shunned ‘the formulation of new paradigms’, choosing instead to reach back ‘towards old, indeed almost antiquarian, and always conservative formulations to articulate their position’. Some would now hold that the Scots were not just reluctant revolutionaries, they were not revolutionaries at all.⁵

RELUCTANT REVOLUTIONARIES?

Were the Scots reluctant revolutionaries? It seems questionable whether they were any more reluctant than their English counterparts. Let us remind ourselves what the English did. Although there had been a marked loyalist reaction in the final years of Charles II's reign, and considerable support for the Catholic James when he came to the throne in 1685, this support quickly evaporated as soon as James began to use his prerogative to promote the interests of his co-religionists. There was opposition to James's initiatives at all levels of English society, and when the birth of the Prince of Wales held out the prospect of a never-ending succession of Catholic Stuart rulers, the English conspired to bring over William of Orange to help rescue their political and religious liberties. Many people deserted to William after he had landed at Torbay in November 1688, and as James's regime began to collapse there was considerable anti-Catholic agitation and rioting, as people made clear their rejection of men and policies under James II. It is unclear how the Scots acted any differently. As we saw in Chapter 4, James VII had managed to alienate a significant proportion of his Scottish subjects, both Episcopalians and Presbyterians, by the middle of 1688. We shall see here that many Scots actively conspired with William of Orange to overthrow James's regime and that in Scotland there was also considerable anti-Catholic rioting from crowds protesting against men and measures under James VII. If anything, the Scots were more engaged revolutionaries than their English counterparts – or rather, there was a more active commitment to a higher degree of revolutionary change among certain sections of the Scottish population than can be discerned among the English.

The low level to which support for the crown in Scotland had sunk by June 1688 is indicated by the trouble the Scottish council had in encouraging public celebrations for the birth of the Prince of Wales. There were staged demonstrations in Edinburgh and Glasgow on 13 and 14 June, though troops had to be out in force to prevent possible disorder and to ensure that bonfires were actually lit.⁶ Very few of the nobility attended the official day of thanksgiving at Edinburgh on 21 June, and when Lord Chancellor Perth acclaimed the new prince, scarcely any of the spectators seconded him ‘in his acclamations of joy’. Although many householders did light bonfires, under threat of being fined, it was said that the maidservants often refused to bring materials for the fires, protesting that ‘there was no reason for such joy’.⁷ Within a few weeks of the birth, many of the Episcopal clergy, doubting the legitimacy of the new prince, stopped praying for him in their services, and instead began ‘to insinuate in their People fears of Popery and Arbitrary Government’.⁸

Although the invitation to William of Orange came from England, a number of Scots played an active part in the Williamite conspiracy that developed in the summer and autumn of 1688. Several exiled Scots were influential in William's entourage at The Hague, and joined with William's invasion force in November. The most well-known examples are Gilbert Burnet and Robert Ferguson, though one could argue that their political preoccupations at this time centred on England rather than on their native land. Yet in addition to these there were men like Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, who had fled to Holland following his stance against the Scottish Test Act of 1681, and William Carstares, the tortured Rye House plotter and now William's chaplain. Stair and Carstares were responsible for Scottish intelligence, and sent over a number of agents both to gather news and distribute propaganda, among them William Cleland and Dr William Blackadder, veterans of both Bothwell Bridge and the Argyll rebellion. The tenth Earl of Argyll was also in Holland, and pledged William the support of his clan to fight against the family that had put both his father and grandfather to death, as were veterans of the 1685 rebellions, such as Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun and Lord Pollard, and those who had been mixed up in the Rye House intrigues, such as Sir Patrick Hume, Lord Cardross and the Earl of Melville. Due to ill health, Melville himself was unable to join William's expeditionary force; he was not fit enough to travel to England until late February 1689. Melville's son, the Earl of Leven, however, did come over with William and raised a regiment for Orange at his own expense. Indeed, the English and Scottish squadron that comprised part of William's invasion force was commanded by a Scotsman, Major-General Hugh Mackay. Nor is this list exhaustive. Within Britain, the Scottish dimension to William's campaign was managed by two men – Stair's son, Sir John Dalrymple, who sat on the Scottish council in Edinburgh, and the Earl of Drumlanrig, son of the Duke of Queensberry and son-in-law of the Earl of Rochester, in London.⁹

William was well aware from the beginning that any actions taken against James would have ramifications for all three Stuart kingdoms. His Declaration of Reasons of 30 September 1688, justifying his reasons for invading England, also blamed ‘Evill Councellours’ for prevailing with the King to declare in Scotland that he was ‘clothed with an Absolute Power’ and promised to call a parliament in Scotland to restore that kingdom's ‘Ancient Constitution’ and settle ‘Matters of Religion' so that the people might ‘live easy and happy’.¹⁰ In addition, William issued a separate Declaration… for… Scotland, penned by Ferguson and other Scottish advisers at The Hague. A hostile author, writing in 1690 after the implications of the Williamite revolution had become apparent in Scotland, maintained that the Scottish declaration was ‘purely Presbyterian’.¹¹ In fact, the authors strove to avoid blatant partisanship, and William certainly did not stand on a radical covenanting platform as Argyll had done in 1685. Thus the Scottish Declaration did not directly attack James; instead, like its English counterpart, it blamed ‘Evil Councellors’ for overturning ‘the Religion, Lawes and Liberties’ of the kingdom and setting up ‘Arbitrary Government’. It then rehearsed the ‘lamentable Effects’ of their misgovernment in Scotland in detail: the king had been declared absolute; the ‘Laws, Priviledges and Rights of the Kingdom… overturned’; popery openly encouraged and papists promoted to positions of authority; burgh elections hindered; and a declaration (namely the Indulgence of 1687) issued making ‘all Parliaments unnecessary, and taking away all defences of Religion, Liberty and Property, by an assumed and asserted Absolute Power’, to which obedience was required ‘without Reserve’. William's Declaration… for… Scotland did allude to the religious persecution of Charles II's reign, when it complained about the imposition of bonds, exactions of oaths, free-quartering of troops, and the killing times of 1684–5. Yet it did not limit its appeal to those Protestants outside the Established Church; indeed, it also recalled how Protestants who were hostile to the attempts to abolish the penal laws (that is, Episcopalians) had been removed from places of public trust under James VII. The Declaration… for… Scotland insisted that all William wanted to do was to free ‘that Kingdom from all hazard of Popery and Arbitrary Power’ and settle a parliament to redress the above-mentioned grievances, and it concluded with an appeal for consensus, expressing the hope that William's actions would be ‘accompanied with a chearfull and universall concurrence of the whole Nation’.¹²

When news of William's invasion plans became known, some groups in Scotland rallied behind the crown. On 3 October the privy council wrote to James pledging ‘their lives and fortunes’ in defence of the King, the Queen, and their new-born son, while on 3 November the archbishops and bishops sent the King a fawning letter, congratulating him on the birth of the Prince of Wales and expressing their abhorrence of the Dutch invasion, signed by all but the bishops of Argyll and Caithness.¹³ James certainly believed his northern kingdom was secure, and on 27 September he ordered the standing forces in Scotland, with the exception of the chief garrisons, to march south to Carlisle to assist in the defence of England. To compensate, the shire militias were raised and placed in a posture of defence. Some Scots enthusiastically embraced the call to come to the defence of their king and country. At a meeting on 11 October, the merchants of Glasgow unanimously agreed to a government recommendation to raise ten militia companies, while the noblemen and gentlemen of Fife offered to raise 400 foot soldiers and a troop of horse at their own expense.¹⁴ In mid-November, in response to the news of William's landing at Torbay, loyal addresses came in from the Argyllshire militia and the convention of Scottish burghs.¹⁵

In some areas, however, the loyalty of the local population was clearly in doubt. In Dumfriesshire, for example, many local landowners absented themselves from serving in the militia.¹⁶ Indeed, James's decision to move the army to England proved a grave error. There was much more support for William in Scotland than James had suspected, and leaving the kingdom's defences seriously weakened at this crucial time allowed William's supporters to mobilize on his behalf. Initially, the greatest support for William appears to have been in the Presbyterian heartland of the south-west. One Williamite agent reported back to Holland in the late summer that ‘the body of the Nobility, Gentry and Commons of the South and West parts’ were ‘zealous for the interest of the Protestant successors’, and that the nonconformist ministers were ‘much devoted’ to the Prince and Princess of Orange.¹⁷ The contemporary historian of the Society People (or Cameronians), Alexander Shields, later wrote that ‘the Generality of people’ longed ‘for the landing of the Dutch’, though he admitted that ‘many knew not wherefor they desired them’. The Society People themselves determined at a General Meeting held on 24 October that in the event of a Dutch landing in Scotland they too would rise, although they would not place themselves under the leadership of the Dutch, whom they regarded as ‘a Promiscuous Conjunction of Reformed and Lutheran malignants and sectaries’, which it was ‘against the Testimony of the Church of Scotland to joine’.¹⁸ The withdrawal of the Scottish army, however, allowed the disaffected to move to Edinburgh and make the Scottish capital the base for their activities. Here ‘the Presbyterians and discontented Party’ from all over the kingdom started meeting publicly to discuss what to do. Among them were the Earl of Glencairn and Lord Ross, former privy counsellors who had been removed by James for their opposition in the parliament of 1686; the Earl of Crawford (the son of the ex-Covenanter who had served briefly as Treasurer in the early years of the Restoration); the Earl of Dundonald, the Duke of Hamilton's son-in-law, who had been brought on to the council and subsequently ejected by James; Sir James Montgomery of Skelmorlie, a Presbyterian and radical who was to play a crucial part in the events of 1689; Lord Shaw of Greenock, whose people had been responsible for the capture of Argyll in 1685; and Sir James Murray of Philiphaugh, the alleged Rye House plotter, who undertook to intercept correspondence between the King and his Scottish council.¹⁹

In Scotland, as in England, people began deserting James as the crisis unfolded to join with William in his endeavour to rid their country of popery and arbitrary government. By early December, an anti-Perth faction had emerged within the council, centred around Atholl, Tarbat and Sir John Dalrymple. After first forcing Perth to disband the militia, on the grounds that William had declared the keeping of armed forces in times of peace to be illegal, they eventually secured Perth's resignation in the second week of December following the outbreak of violent anti-Catholic rioting in the Scottish capital (discussed below).²⁰ On 13 December, with Atholl now in effect head of the Scottish government, the council voted in favour of a free parliament, in accordance with William's Scottish declaration.²¹ They followed this on 24 December with a letter to William thanking him for his efforts on behalf of the Protestant religion and the ‘good intentiones’ he had expressed for Scotland, and asking for his assistance ‘in procureing a free parliament… in which our religion may be secured in the most comprehensive terms for including and uniteing all Protestants’ and ‘the just rights of the crown, the property and liberty of the people… established upon such solid foundations as may prevent all fears of future attempts upon our religione’.²²

Scots in England were quick to join with William as he marched from the West Country to London. In early December, a Scottish battalion under the command of General Douglas deserted to William as the Prince reached the outskirts of Maidenhead. The Earl of Drumlanrig, who was already in London, likewise joined with the Prince. By Christmas there was a large number of Scots in London waiting on the Prince, over and above those who had been part of the invasion force. Among them were Hamilton, his sons-in-law Dundonald and Lord Murray (the latter also being Atholl's son), Crawford, Drumlanrig, Ross, and Lord Yester. On 25 December Hamilton and rest of the Scots in London had a meeting with William at which they thanked him ‘for his glorious Enterprize’, offered him their service, and requested he take over the civil and military administration of Scotland.²³

The removal of the army from Scotland in late September made it increasingly difficult to police the mass of the population north of the border. As with England, there was an outbreak of anti-Catholic demonstrations in the autumn of 1688. In mid-October Luttrell heard reports of ‘some disturbance in Scotland, occasioned by the masse houses there’, and of ‘some violence’ offered to Chancellor Perth.²⁴ At Glasgow on 30 November, St Andrew's Day, the Earl of Loudoun and several university students burned effigies of the pope and the archbishops of St Andrews and Glasgow, apparently ‘without any Opposition’.²⁵ In early December, the students of Edinburgh University conducted their own pope-burning at the Edinburgh town cross, despite attempts by those in authority to prevent it. Two days later they marched on the parliament house, in the middle of the day, shouting ‘No Pope, No Papist’. They forced their way in and proceeded to conduct a mock trial of ‘his Holiness’, condemning the pope ‘to be burnt publickly at the Cross’ on 25 December next.²⁶

Serious unrest broke out in the Scottish capital in the second week of December. On Sunday the 9th rumours spread through Edinburgh that large numbers of Catholics had come to town with the design ‘to burn it that Night’. The university students and the local apprentices sounded the alarm by beating drums and running through the streets crying ‘No Pope, No Papist, No Popish Chancellor, No Melfort, No Father Petres’. On this occasion the magistrates prevented an anticipated attack on the Catholic chapel at Holyroodhouse by shutting the gates of the city and confining the crowds within the city walls; the youths had to content themselves with going to the town cross and proclaiming the offer of a £400 sterling reward to any who should bring in Perth or Melfort ‘dead or alive’.²⁷ Fearing for his life, Perth fled the capital the next day and headed towards the Highlands; he was seized on board a boat disguised in women's clothing as he tried to make his escape to the Continent on 20 December and, after a brief spell in the Edinburgh tollbooth, he was dispatched to Stirling Castle.²⁸ On the evening of the 10th, following the Chancellor's flight, crowds gathered again in Edinburgh – not just ‘boys’, as before, but ‘all sort of men’ armed with staves, swords and firearms – and marched straight through the gates of the city to Holyroodhouse. A Captain Wallace, who kept guard at the palace, ordered his troops to open fire, killing a dozen rioters and wounding many more; the council responded by sending the trained bands to secure Holyroodhouse from Wallace, at the cost of further bloodshed. The crowd, now allegedly some 2,000–3,000 strong, then stormed the palace, killing several soldiers in revenge. They proceeded to deface the Catholic chapel and the Abbey church, tearing down any ‘monuments to idolatry’, breaking the organ to pieces, and carrying their prizes ‘up to the Town in Processions through the Streets’, before burning everything combustible in a huge bonfire in the Abbey close. They also fell upon the house where the Jesuits lived, ransacked the lodgings of the Earl of Perth and the residences of a number of other leading Catholics, and destroyed the Catholic printing office run by Peter Bruce. The next day the youths went to the houses of all known Catholics in the city, seized their books, beads, crosses and images, a*nd solemnly burnt them in the street.²⁹

There were similar attacks on the residences of Catholics elsewhere in Scotland. Crowds besieged the Earl of Traquair's house in Peebles and the Laird Maxwell's in Dumfriesshire, seizing a variety of ‘Romish wares’ (an altar, crucifixes, eucharist cup, wafers, a box of relics, images, candles and a large number of popish books), which they then proceeded to carry several miles to the towns of Peebles and Dumfries respectively so as to burn them at the market cross.³⁰ According to Shields, the crowds restricted themselves to ‘searching for Idolatrous things’ and did not pilfer any of the other possessions of the Catholic lords or take any of the more valuable Catholic paraphernalia for themselves; their intent was solely to bring them to the public market crosses in order to destroy them ‘before many witnesses’.³¹

The anti-Catholic agitation continued through December and into the new year. On Christmas Day the students of Edinburgh University held their planned pope-burning at the town cross before thousands of spectators, among whom were a number of privy counsellors and local magistrates.³² Scotland also suffered its equivalent of the Irish scare. Shortly before Christmas, rumours spread that Irish Catholics had landed in Galloway and were ‘Putting all to Fire and Sword’. The local inhabitants began to arm themselves in self-defence and set about apprehending local Catholics. At Dumfries, for example, they seized the provost and several other papists and priests, and threw them into prison.³³ There was a particularly elaborate pope-burning procession at Aberdeen on 11 January 1689, intended to commemorate the restoration of local elections in the burgh and the return of committed Protestants to serve as magistrates and town councillors in place of those who had been imposed on the town by James VII, which was organized by the students of the university. The students had even taken the precaution of writing to the town authorities in advance about their plans, inviting them to attend and giving assurances that the demonstration would be peaceful. After a long procession through the town centre of people dressed up as Catholic clergymen, and a short play depicting the downfall of the ‘Scarlet Whore’ and the kingdom of Babylon, the students held a mock trial of the pope for his ‘High Treason against… God’ and being ‘an enemy to Religion, Monarchy and Government, and an open and avowed Murderer of Mankind’, before sentencing him to be burnt to ashes at the market cross. The evening ended with fireworks and the ringing of the bells of Trinity Church, now restored to Protestant worship after it had been given over to the Catholics in James VIPs reign.³⁴ There were further attacks on mass-houses north of the border in mid-January.³⁵

The pattern of anti-Catholic unrest described here is very similar to that which took place in England in late 1688. In both countries we see people celebrating the demise of James's pro-Catholic policies and attempting to take advantage of the collapse of royal authority to suppress what they still regarded as illegal forms of religious practice. Moreover, as with England, this crowd activity reveals a shared desire among all Protestants in Scotland to be rid of popery. Presbyterians, and especially the Society People, were certainly active in these outbreaks, as they later acknowledged.³⁶ On the other hand, the prominent role played by students from the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen suggests a significant Episcopalian presence. And although some of those who participated in the anti-Catholic agitation might have been looking forward to the eventual dethroning of James VII and a subsequent reconstruction of the ecclesiastical settlement, others saw themselves as rejecting no more than the illegal measures pursued by their Catholic king. The rioters at Edinburgh in early December, for example, condemned popery and James's popish ministers, but they did not mention the King himself; instead, in accordance with William's Declaration… for… Scotland, they asked merely for ‘A Free Parliament’.³⁷ Some groups, to be sure, firmly identified themselves with William's position. One report from Edinburgh on 15 December claimed that Protestants were ‘up in Arms in several parts of this Kingdom, Declaring for the Prince of Orange, for the Protestant Religion and a Free Parliament’.³⁸ In Glasgow, at the very end of December, the radical covenanting minister Mr Boyd, together with others of the Society People, read William's declaration and publicly proclaimed him ‘the Protestant Protector’, and ‘the whole Country’ was said to be ‘up for the Prince’. William was similarly proclaimed at Irvine and at Ayr, while on 1 January the Edinburgh magistrates had William's Declaration read and started ‘putting on bonfyrs’.³⁹ The students of Aberdeen University, by contrast, couched their ritual of 11 January in explicitly loyalist language. In their letter to the town magistrates, they stated that they wished ‘Prosperity and Safety to all the Maintainers of the True Protestant Religion’ and ‘the Preservation of His Sacred Majesty’, while in their play those who witnessed the downfall of the pope not only promised to countermine all of Rome's plots, but also shouted that they would ‘ever pray for Religion and our King’.⁴⁰

However, starting on Christmas Day 1688, and continuing through the first half of 1689, there were also a series of attacks throughout the south-western shires on conformist, Protestant clergy, as local Presbyterians sought to drive Episcopalian ministers out of their livings. These ‘rabblings’, as they have come to be known, followed a common, ritualized pattern. Typically, the crowd would carry the minister out of his house into the churchyard (or some other public place) where they would ‘expose him to the People as a Condemned Malefactor’. They would then forbid him to preach ‘any more in that place’, tear up his gown and throw the pieces over his head, burn his Common Prayer Book (which they styled ‘the Mass in English’), seize the keys to the church, lock the doors, and eject him and his family from the manse.⁴¹ At Badernock (now Baldernock) in Dunbartonshire, on Christmas Day 1688, a crowd of Presbyterians, finding that the minister had already made his escape, picked on the minister's wife and told her that ‘they would cut off her Papish nose and rip up her Prelaticall belly’. At Cathcart, in the presbytery of Glasgow, they turned the minister's wife and her small children out of the manse and kept them in a stable all night, where three of the children nearly died ‘through the Fear and Cold’. Episcopalians complained that the crowds were often quite violent. At Ballantrae, in Ayrshire, according to one account, the minister's wife, who was ‘big with Child’, was beaten to the ground and the minister himself ‘wounded… with a small Sword’ and beaten ‘severely with Cudgels’. Sometimes, however, it was crowds of Presbyterian women who attacked Episcopalian men. At Glasgow on 17 January, for example, ‘a great Multitude of People, for the most part Women, came to Church, with a design to have drag'd the Minister out of the Pulpit’. The minister, having been tipped off in advance, chose not to enter the church and tried to slip away quietly, but he was ‘fallen upon most barbarously, beaten, and had his Gown and other Cloaths torn in many pieces’ – though whether by the women who had intended to ambush him inside the church or by the menfolk of the parish lying in wait outside our account does not make clear.⁴² One of the ministers ‘rabbled’ was John Birnie of Broomhill, who in the summer of 1686 had turned down the offer of a bishopric as an inducement to support the repeal of the penal laws, and who was under such suspicion from James VIPs government by the autumn of 1688 that his manse was ‘twice severely searched’ for concealed arms by government troops under the command of a Catholic officer. When a crowd of about forty well-armed Presbyterians came to eject Birnie from his manse at Christmas, his wife told them they should be ashamed ‘to come with a design to spoil and search their house as papists had done’ out of some pretended zeal for the Protestant religion. Birnie kept his cool and welcomed the armed men in, giving them food and drink; they left peaceably, after having made Birnie promise that ‘with due convenience’ he should quit his manse and move into a gentleman's house in the parish which was then empty, which Birnie did.⁴³

Although Presbyterians of all types appear to have been involved in the rabblings, the Society People were the ‘most active’. Indeed, the Society People subsequently issued guidelines instructing their members how to proceed. At their meeting of 3 January, responding to reports that ‘Episcopall Curats’ had been robbed of their horses, arms, money and other household possessions, they framed an ‘Apology’, to be published at market crosses throughout the countryside, asserting that although they felt themselves duty bound ‘to endeavour by all approven means the extirpation of Prelacy as weell as Popery’ and that they would therefore do all they could to dispos-ses ‘the Prelatick Curats from the Churches upon which they are intruded’, they did not approve of taking any of the curates' possessions. At their next meeting, held on 23 January, they drew up a paper for parishioners to present in advance to their curate, which warned the curate to cease his ministry and vacate the church, and threatened force if he refused.⁴⁴ These guidelines appear to have been followed exactly. On 1 February 1689, for example, the Presbyterians of Livingston, in Linlithgowshire, delivered precisely such a paper to the minister's wife (again the minister was away from home) before they seized control of the church.⁴⁵

These rabblings signified a rejection of the Restoration settlement of the Church – an attack on a particular type of Protestant settlement - and not just a rejection of Catholicism. Moreover, unlike the anti-Catholic rioting, which was directed at illegal activity, the Presbyterian crowds sought to overturn a legal Church establishment and restore the one that had been disestablished at the Restoration. They were also acting in direct contravention of an act of 1685, which had made invading the houses of ministers of the Established Church a capital offence.⁴⁶ These were self-consciously revolutionary crowds, unlike anything seen in England. As the group that deprived the minister of Cumnock, Ayrshire, on Christmas Day 1688 stated: ‘this they did not as States-Men, nor as Church-Men, but by violence and in a Military way of Reformation’.⁴⁷ They were free to act, they felt, because the government had been dissolved as a result of James's flight.⁴⁸ ‘These things were acted in an Interregnum’, one Presbyterian apologist claimed, ‘When we had no Civil, nor Church-Government. When one King was removed, and another not yet set up.’⁴⁹ In short, the Presbyterian crowds seized the opportunity provided by the collapse of the government to promote their own agenda for reform. When the Laird of Bridgehouse tried to warn one group of Presbyterians ‘that their appearing in Arms and abusing the Clergy in this Hostile manner, were but insolent outrages against all the Law of the Nation’ and that they would ‘do well to remit their Illegal forwardness’, they told him ‘to stand off and forbear giving Rules to them’, adding that ‘they would not adhere to the Prince of Orange, nor the Law of the Kingdom, any further than the Solemn League and Covenant was fulfilled and prosecuted by both’.⁵⁰ The Presbyterian radical Sir James Montgomery of Skelmorlie thought it was hardly surprising that such rabblings took place, when one reflected upon the terrible persecutions these people had suffered and the fact that many of the clergy thrust out had acted the part of informers.⁵¹ In the absence of reliable evidence, the precise number of those driven out will remain unknown; contemporaries thought the figure was in the region of two or three hundred.⁵²

THE BALANCE OF FORCES IN THE WINTER OF 1688/9

It is difficult to sustain the argument, then, that the Scots remained passive in the autumn and winter of 1688/9, or that they were reluctant participants in the movement to rid the British realms of popery and arbitrary government. Some actively intrigued with William, many more declared for him after he landed in England, while others took to the streets to demonstrate their hostility to Catholicism and even to the existing Church establishment. James had alienated considerable sections of the Scottish population by late 1688, and there was widespread support among people of all classes and political and religious persuasions for William's expressed goal of securing Scotland's religion, laws and liberties. The trouble was that in Scotland there existed no consensus as to how these should be secured. Unlike England, therefore, it proved impossible to achieve a compromise settlement round which the majority of the nation could unite.

By the beginning of the new year many leading Scots had come south to England to treat with William concerning the future of their country. William assembled all the Scottish peers and gentry then in London at St James's on 7 January and asked their advice concerning what should be done ‘for securing the Protestant Religion, and Restoring [their] Laws and Liberties’. A group of thirty peers and eighty gentlemen withdrew to Whitehall and, having elected Hamilton as their president, proceeded to discuss over the next few days what direction they should take. Hamilton's son, the Earl of Arran, while acknowledging the debt the Scots owed William for their ‘Delivery from Popery’, nevertheless insisted on the need to distinguish between James's ‘Popery and his Person’. ‘I dislike the one’, he maintained, ‘but have sworn and do owe Allegeance to the other’; he therefore suggested the Scots ask William to invite James to return and call a free parliament ‘for the Securing [their] Religion and Property, according to the known laws of that Kingdom’. His motion met with no support. Instead, on 10 January, the assembly unanimously agreed to invite William to assume the running of all civil and military affairs for the time being and to call a Convention of Estates to meet at Edinburgh on 14 March to settle the government.⁵³

Trying to make sense of the pattern of political allegiances in Scotland during the period of the Revolution is no simple task. Not only can we detect a variety of contending political and religious positions, but we also see apparent shifts in political allegiance over short periods of time. Considerations of self-interest certainly played their part in shaping the reaction of the Scottish elite, as leading magnates jockeyed for position and sought to promote their personal ambitions.⁵⁴ Yet it would be wrong to take too cynical a view; conviction did play a part. Some put loyalty to an individual first, whether that individual be James, William or themselves, while others were motivated more by a desire to achieve particular religious or constitutional objectives.

At one extreme were the inevitable Jacobites, people who for reasons of personal loyalty or political commitment were always going to remain true to James VII: men like the Catholic Duke of Gordon, Governor of Edinburgh Castle, and the Protestant earls of Balcarres and Claverhouse (the latter recently created Viscount Dundee). When ordered by the council on 22 December to surrender Edinburgh Castle, Gordon refused, saying that as his commission came directly from the King, he could not lay it down until the King instructed him.⁵⁵ Gordon was to hold on to the Castle in the name of King James until mid-June 1689. In February 1689, after the English had settled the throne on William and Mary, Balcarres and Dundee were reported to be openly drinking to ‘King William's confusion and King James's restauration’;⁵⁶ indeed, Dundee was soon to launch a rebellion to restore James. There were also those, such as Arran, who disliked the measures pursued by James as king and welcomed the fact that William had come to deliver Scotland from popery and arbitrary government, but who hoped that a settlement might be achieved that could preserve James's Scottish crown.

Those who remained unswerving in their loyalty to James right from the start, however, were in the minority. There was a significant group of waverers, from the politically unscrupulous through to the politically flexible and politically timid. There were certainly those who were prepared to pursue the course of action that seemed most likely to promote their own political ambitions – men like Atholl and Tarbat, who had held high office under both Charles II and James VII, who deserted to William when the chance came to strike at Perth towards the end of 1688, and who flirted with Jacobitism when they did not achieve the recognition they expected under the new regime. We also have a number of less spectacular figures, political realists who could bend with the times to support the most pragmatic and therefore most workable solution.⁵⁷ Some might have started off preferring a solution that would have kept James on the throne but moved firmly into William's camp once it became obvious which way the tide was flowing. If we take the Episcopalians as a group, although some were committed Jacobites (such as Balcarres, Dundee and the bishops themselves), others were more flexible and showed themselves for a time willing to try to work with William to try to achieve a settlement that would have preserved episcopacy and left the powers of the monarch undiminished: men like the Duke of Queensberry, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh and, on a less cynical reading of their motives, Atholl and Tarbat.

Among the Williamites we can identify a variety of positions. There were the Presbyterians – men such as the earls of Crawford, Argyll and Sutherland, and Sir Patrick Hume – who sought fundamental reforms in both Church and state. There were also various types of trimmers, people who were committed to William and would remain loyal to the new regime whatever settlement was achieved, but who tried to bring about a more moderate settlement than that desired by the Presbyterians in order to make the Revolution less partisan and to win the support of the broadest possible cross-section of the population. These included men like Tweeddale, Sir James Dalrymple of Stair and his son Sir John, but also Hamilton (whose service to William and to himself came before any particular partisan agenda), and even perhaps the Earl of Melville, William's first Scottish Secretary of State (though Melville was more recognizably in the Presbyterian camp). Finally we have the radical extreme, those people who sought a revolutionary settlement in either Church and state (or both), and who began to distance themselves from the new regime when the sort of reforms they desired were not instituted. Here we would include the Cameronian Society People, and also the radical Presbyterian politicians, such as Sir James Montgomery of Skelmorlie, who out of frustration with the working out of the Revolution settlement himself turned to Jacobitism.

In between James's flight in December and the eventual meeting of the Scottish Convention in March, various interests sought to lobby William concerning their preferred settlement. The most organized group were the Presbyterians. By late December 1688, they were busy promoting an address to William, in which they rehearsed their sufferings under episcopacy during the last two reigns – the Highland Host, exorbitant fines, torture, and the summary execution of field conventiclers – and asked him to call a free parliament, procure ‘the Extirpation of Prelacie’ and the ‘Reestablishment of the Presbyterian Government of the Kirk’, and to restore those ministers evicted at the Restoration. The address appears to have been a first draft and was thus never presented in quite this form. However, it was superseded by another to much the same effect, drawn up in January at a general meeting of the Presbyterian ministers convened at Edinburgh and subsequently signed by various nobles, knights and gentlemen (including the earls of Crawford, Argyll, Sutherland and Cardross, and by Stair and Hume), and which was eventually presented to William in London on 27 February.⁵⁸ Another address calling for the abolition of episcopacy, purportedly signed by 40,000 people (‘Nobility, Gentry and Commons’), was being readied for presentation to the Scottish Convention in mid-March; this also asked that the government be settled on William of Orange and that ‘the Executive Power of the Laws’ be put in the hands of God-fearing men, although there is no record of it having been presented.⁵⁹ The Society People likewise drew up a petition to the Convention, asking it to free the Church from the ‘yoak of prelacie, popery and erastianisme by annulling the lawes that have rescinded the most just and laudable establishment of presbyterian government’. This too was never actually delivered.⁶⁰

At the other end of the spectrum were those who wanted to preserve diocesan prelacy. Many of the Scottish nobility and gentry, and the vast majority of the population north of the Tay, favoured episcopacy. The bishops themselves frantically began lobbying the English bishops in a desperate attempt to preserve their order. On 20 December, Archbishop Paterson of Glasgow wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him to forgive ‘anie yeeldings or condescensions latelie made by anie of our order to the King's most importunat desires’ which he blamed on the fact that the Scottish bishops did not enjoy the same security of tenure as their English counterparts, but could be dismissed at will by the king by virtue of the Act of Supremacy of 1669 – and insisting that William would not be able to secure the monarchy in Scotland ‘without a setled Episcopacie in it’. The Archbishop of St Andrews made similar points in a letter to Archbishop Sancroft four days later, in which he further warned that the peace of the Anglican Church depended upon the preservation of the Church in Scotland. Paterson also petitioned William to protect the Episcopalian clergy in the western division of his diocese from the forcible ejections by the rabble.⁶¹ Yet, even if the Scottish bishops were prepared to appeal to William for protection, they would not commit to a solution that would place him on the Scottish throne. Instead, they insisted that they would serve him only ‘so far as law, reason, or conscience would allow’, as the Bishop of Edinburgh, William Rose, bluntly told the Prince.⁶²

The leaders of the lay Episcopalian interest, however, were willing to be more accommodating. The key activists here were the Duke of Queensberry, Charles II's Treasurer in the 1680s who had been brought down by the Perth faction shortly after James's accession, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, the former Lord Advocate who had been removed in 1686 for his opposition to James's attempts to repeal the penal laws, and Viscount Tarbat (also a George Mackenzie). All three were in London in the early months of 1689 lobbying in defence of the bishops.⁶³ In January, the two George Mackenzies produced a Memorial for the Prince of Orange, advising William that since he had ‘come to support our Laws’, he was ‘in honour bound to support Episcopacy’, which was ‘confirmed by twenty seven Parliaments’. They also warned that ‘Episcopacy’ in Scotland was ‘necessary for support of the Monarchy’, since the Scottish Presbyterians harboured anti-monarchical principles.⁶⁴ Queensberry's protégé, Alexander Cairncross, the deprived Archbishop of Glasgow, was also in London in the early months of 1689 representing the cause of his order at William's court.⁶⁵ In the Convention, Atholl and Tarbat said they were willing to support William as king, but at the same time continued to lobby William to try to persuade him to preserve episcopacy.⁶⁶

Modern historians have emphasized that an ideological commitment to the theories of indefeasible hereditary succession, divine right and passive obedience made it extremely difficult for Scottish Episcopalians to jettison their support for James.⁶⁷ For the Episcopalian interest to be won over to William, means had to be found of justifying the overthrow of James VII which could be made to appear compatible with their professed beliefs in non-resistance, and which maintained a healthy distance from Presbyterian theories of resistance. The way forward was shown by James Canaries, the Episcopalian minister of Selkirk. Canaries had championed James's accession in 1685, but, by February 1686, had turned against the new regime and had preached a violent sermon attacking both Catholics and Protestant fanatics for their ‘disloyal Principles', for which he was suspended from his living (see pp. 58–9, 150–51) Now, in a sermon preached in Edinburgh on 30 January 1689 (the 40th anniversary of the regicide), which was later published in an extended form, Canaries articulated a theory of limited resistance one that condemned both popish and Presbyterian principles and sought to make the religious duty of subjection compatible with the secular right of people to hold their sovereign accountable if he violated the law. His ingenious argument certainly involved the formulation of what were, for Scottish Episcopalians, new paradigms, and belies the view that the Scottish Revolution was ideologically sterile.

Canaries began by affirming the Pauline doctrine of non-resistance and that people had to be subject to the supreme authority for conscience sake.⁶⁸ Yet subjects, he claimed, were ‘upon their Conscience to yield their Soveraign all those Rights and Dues which by the peculiar Constitution in which they live, He can Legally exact of them’, but no more ‘than what by the established Form of the Government he has a just Title to’. Although ‘the King be Superiour to the whole Body of the Subjects, when he Rules according to Law’, Canaries asserted, ‘when he deserts the Laws, and takes up his own Arbitrary Will in lieu of them; then the Subjects may look to themselves’. No ‘private Subject’ was allowed ‘to resist’ the government he lived under for any private act of injustice he suffered. But ‘when the Subjects Right in general is Invaded, and the Injustice reaches the Publick Interest of them all’, then ‘every particular Subject not only may’, Canaries said, but ‘ought to do whatever he can to contribute the relieving the whole Subjects Right in the Laws, from that Tyranny and Oppression it is falling, or fallen under’.⁶⁹

Canaries, nevertheless, distanced himself from the Presbyterian theory of resistance. He condemned those who used pretended zeal for God or religion to justify overthrowing princes who did not share their religious outlook: Christ did not allow such a thing, and ‘Subjects must cease to be Christians’ if they sought ‘to dethrone Princes meerly for the sake of their Religion’.⁷⁰ The Church of Rome had been responsible for propagating this rebellious doctrine, although many who called themselves Protestants had also followed this popish principle – such as those who were responsible for the regicide.⁷¹ Nevertheless, it was ‘quite another thing for Subjects to vindicate the Legal Right they have to profess their Religion’, since ‘the Religion of no Subjects that is established in this manner, can ever be invaded, without the Constitution of their Government’ being so too. It was an ingenious argument, which allowed Episcopalians the right to resist but denied it to Presbyterians.⁷²

Given the balance of forces between Presbyterians and Episcopalians in Scotland, and the apparent willingness of some Episcopalians to work with William, some came to feel it best to seek a compromise settlement in the Church. In their letter to William of 24 December, the Scottish council had expressed their hope for a comprehensive Church settlement.⁷³ William himself was not averse to maintaining episcopacy and desired a solution that would offend as few people as possible.⁷⁴ Some thought the priority should be to achieve a suitable political settlement, putting the more contentious religious issues on the back burner until a later date. It was in this context that the idea of a political union between England and Scotland, uniting the two crowns and the two parliaments in one, came to be revived. Its main advocate was Tweeddale, who had been in self-imposed semi-retirement since February 1687 rather than be associated with James's pro-Catholic policies. Tweeddale was a trimmer who hoped to establish an alliance of the centre as a way of preventing the seizure of power by either extreme, and who saw a union as the best way to guarantee military and political security and a moderate settlement in the Church.⁷⁵ Political union would also prevent the possibility of the Scots going their own way in 1689 and breaking up the union of the crowns that had existed since 1603. On 29 December, the noblemen, gentlemen and royal burghs of Haddingtonshire, at Tweeddale's instigation, drew up an address to William inviting him to consider how the kingdoms of Scotland and England might be united ‘in a more strict and inseparable union’, which would, in their opinion, prevent Scotland's enemies in the future from taking advantage of ‘our distinct and different Laws and Customs and exercise of Government… to raise Standing Armys in either Kingdome by which the other may be thretned or enforc'd to submit to Alterations in their Religion or diminution of there [sic] Liberty' or from bringing in foreign forces ‘for the subversion of the Religion and Liberty of both’.⁷⁶

The Presbyterians, however, suspected that the proposal of uniting with a country where the episcopalian interest was dominant, before the Scots had achieved a settlement in their own Church, was an underhand way of seeking to preserve episcopacy in Scotland.⁷⁷ the Haddingtonshire address did not express a preference with regard to the settlement in the Church, it was certainly the case that Episcopalians, such as Queensberry and Tarbat, found the idea of a union attractive.⁷⁸ Tarbat and Mackenzie warned William in their Memorial that if Scotland were subjected to Presbytery, it would destroy any chance of union with England, since the English were for episcopacy.⁷⁹ William himself favoured a union and claimed that many of the Scottish nobility and gentry he had met with in London looked upon ‘an Union of both Kingdoms… as one of the best Means for procuring the Happiness of these Nations, and settling a lasting Peace amongst them.’⁸⁰

THE MEETING OF THE SCOTTISH CONVENTION

Most Scots, then, by the winter of 1688/9, were looking to William of Orange in the hope that he, by calling a free parliament, might help deliver their kingdom from popery and arbitrary government. There were some, undoubtedly (as there were in England) who hoped that this could be achieved while still preserving James VII on the throne. Yet at this stage it appears that many Episcopalians could have been brought to agree to a settlement in favour of William if suitable measures were taken to address their religious concerns. There were others who saw the value of compromise, and who wanted, in particular, a moderate settlement in the Church. Some believed that the best way forward was for a political union with England. There were significant numbers in Scotland, in other words, who might have welcomed an English-style settlement, and even those who wanted simply to import the Revolution settlement made in England. In the end, however, compromise was eschewed. The balance of power within the Convention, which assembled in Edinburgh on 14 March, was to tip decidedly in favour of the Whigs and Presbyterians, who sought fundamental reforms in both Church and state. Why then, given the balance of forces that we have identified in the winter of 1688/9, did the Convention end up being such a partisan body?

In large measure it was due to the fact that committed Whigs and Presbyterians were more successful in getting returned to the Convention than Jacobites or Williamite Episcopalians. Given that James's remodelling of the royal burghs had enabled him to place his own men in control of the process for returning burgh representatives, it was clear that to meet the desire for a free parliament the members of the Convention would have to be elected on some kind of restructured franchise. At their meeting in London in January, the Scots agreed that although the shire franchise could remain the same, burgh elections should be made by a general poll of all burgesses. They also decided that only Protestants would be allowed either to vote or to stand for election, although the operation of the Test Act was to be suspended – a move that opened up the poll to the Presbyterians.⁸¹ The Presbyterians appear to have been very active at the polls, particularly the Society People, who canvassed on behalf of their favoured candidates and circulated papers urging people to choose those who would vote for the repeal of the Scottish Supremacy Act of 1669 (which had made the king the head of the Church in Scotland) and for the overthrow of episcopacy.⁸² According to Episcopalian apologists, many Episcopalians decided to boycott the elections, refusing to put themselves forward as candidates for those constituencies they had always represented, or even to participate in the poll, believing it would be a violation of the Test oath to meet to consult about the affairs of the nation without the consent of the king.⁸³ Such claims might have been disingenuous, an ex post facto rationalization of defeat. The Presbyterian political radical Montgomery of Skelmorlie, for example, claimed that Episcopalians ‘bestirr[ed] themselves more vigorously about Elections’ than anyone, riding ‘Night and Day begging Votes’ in counties and burghs, and using ‘all the indirect wayes imaginable’, including physical intimidation, to get their own men elected.⁸⁴ What is clear, however, is that the Episcopalians did not do well in the elections.

Moreover, of those Jacobites and Episcopalians who were returned to the Convention, several were either to withdraw or were driven out. Some left right at the beginning, seeing the way the tide was turning when Hamilton won the election for President of the Convention, defeating Atholl (who was the bishops' candidate) by fifteen votes. Others were displaced by the committee of elections, set up under the chairmanship of Sir John Dalrymple and dominated by Presbyterians and committed Williamites, which was blatantly partisan in determining disputed elections. By contrast, at least two peers (Argyll and Melville) and two shire representatives were allowed to take their seats even though they were under the sentence of forfaulture and therefore legally debarred.⁸⁵

James himself must also take some responsibility for undermining his own cause within the Convention. On 16 March, two days after its assembly, the Scottish Convention heard two letters, one from William, now king of England, the other from James. The Convention decided William's should be read first, since ‘it could not Dissolve the meeting, as the King's letter might doe’. It proved moderate in tone, and simply invited those assembled ‘to enter upon such Consultations as are most probable to setle you on sure and Lasting foundations’ and to act ‘with regaird to the Publick good, and to the generall Interest and Inclinations of the People’. It did not make any positive demands, beyond expressing William's belief in the usefulness of a union. The Convention agreed to allow James's letter to be read only after passing an act asserting that they were ‘a frie and lawful meeting of the Estates’, and would ‘continue undissolved’ until they had settled and secured ‘the Protestant Religione, the Government, lawes and liberties of the Kingdome’. James's letter was most uncompromising. It charged that the Convention had been summoned ‘By the Usurped Authority of the Prince of Orange’ and demanded that those assembled support his ‘Royall interest’, as loyal subjects should, threatening to ‘punish with the rigor of Our Law’ all who remained in rebellion; the Scots, the letter stated, would have to wait for the opportunity to secure their ‘Religion, laws, Propertys, libertys and rights’ until it became possible for James to summon a parliament. According to the London Gazette, James's letter ‘rather served to make the Convention more unanimous for the setling the Government’ on William.⁸⁶

Pressure out-of-doors also had an impact in determining the eventual political complexion of the Convention. The population of the capital had been swelled by the arrival of a volunteer force of some 2,000 men from the south-western shires, many of them Society People, who had come to provide a guard for the Convention at a time when Edinburgh Castle was still in the hands of the Catholic Duke of Gordon. The Convention decided to accept their services temporarily, placing them under the command of the Earl of Leven; they were eventually disbanded at the end of March following the return from England of some Scottish regiments under the command of Major-General Mackay. Their presence helped make the Scottish capital a decidely hostile environment for open Jacobites. The bishops, who had insisted on praying for King James when the Convention opened, found themselves ‘rail'd at, threatned, baffled and affronted’ by angry crowds whenever they made their way through the streets of Edinburgh, as did many of their lay supporters. A report on 18 March that Dundee was conspiring with Gordon to launch an attack on the Convention led Hamilton to order the doors of the house to be shut, warning that ‘there was danger within as well as without doors’, and to call on Leven to raise his volunteers to protect the city. Large numbers gathered with arms in the square adjoining the parliament house, and when the immediate threat from the Castle appeared to have passed and the doors of the house were finally opened, the Jacobites and Episocopalians had to face the terrifying prospect of walking out through a hostile crowd who greeted them with threats and curses, while the known Williamites and Presbyterians found they were received with cheers and acclamations. In the face of such intimidation, several Jacobites and Episcopalians decided to quit the Convention. Furthermore, many of those who had been sitting on the fence felt that the time had now come to identify themselves firmly with the Williamite camp. ⁸⁷

The roll of the Convention lists 188 who were called to sit in the assembly: 9 clergy (including the 2 archbishops), 58 nobles and 121 commissioners for the shires and burghs.⁸⁸ The elections themselves had the biggest impact on the composition of the assembly, the result of a combination of the restructured franchise and the altered political mood of the country. Of the 56 shire commissioners, only 12 had sat in the parliament of 1686, and only 13 of the 65 burgh commissioners. According to Tarbat, it was the burghs, under the new method of election, that held the key to Presbyterian success; the majority of the nobles and barons, he claimed, were ‘not for Presbitery’.⁸⁹ Displacements or withdrawals were only minor factors in determining the political complexion of the Convention. The committee of elections, in fact, heard a total of only ten cases of disputed or double returns.⁹⁰ At the end of March, the official English account of the Convention's proceedings reported that 6 bishops, 9 earls, 3 viscounts, 7 lords and 10 gentlemen had chosen to absent themselves from the Convention, making a total of 35. The withdrawals were not necessarily permanent; some of those who left were later to return, including a few of the bishops. There were others, however, who were to absent themselves on crucial days, feigning indisposition or illness.⁹¹

For these various reasons, therefore, the Convention came to be dominated by those who wanted to free ‘ther Church from Prelacie’ and ‘ther State from arbitrarie Government’. Of those who remained to work out the Revolution settlement, a minority were for offering the throne to William and Mary without any conditions attached, though they were easily voted down. Others were for following up on William's suggestion of a union with England. The two Dalrymples (Stair and his son Sir John) and Tarbat proposed the two countries should be represented by one parliament, though Scotland should retain its own municipal laws and keep the existing Church polity, which could then be modified by the present Convention or an ensuing parliament. The scheme appealed to those ‘that had a Mind to trim’, seeing the advantage of delaying the contentious issue of the Church settlement until after the crown had been settled. Darlymple and Tarbat also tried to appeal to the remaining Jacobites in the Convention, alleging that it would take months before any treaty could be concluded and that the buying of such time could only serve James VII's interests. Yet the Convention voted the proposal down. King James's friends would have nothing to do with it, realizing that a union could only work for the Prince of Orange's interests, who was already king in England. Hamilton and his supporters also opposed the idea, believing it would threaten their own ambitions for political dominance within Scotland. The Presbyterians feared that a union with a country ‘where the Church of England was the strongest party’ would be ‘of ill consequence to their Kirk’, and demanded that episcopacy be abolished first. The political reformers worried that a union would deny them the opportunity ‘of distinguishing any rights or priviledges that belonged’ to the Scots ‘as a people’. The idea of a union was not totally abandoned. Some Presbyterians were prepared to consider it later in the session, once their political and religious agenda had been achieved, and on 23 April the Convention did nominate commissioners to negotiate with the English concerning a union of the two kingdoms. By then it was too late, however, since the Revolutions in the two countries had taken significantly different paths, and the English parliament was no longer interested in pursuing the idea.⁹²

THE MAKING OF A REVOLUTIONARY SETTLEMENT

During the first two weeks of April the Scottish Convention forged a Revolution settlement that was much more radical than that adopted by the English. The first significant step was taken on 4 April, when the Convention declared the throne vacant. It was impossible to follow the English example and maintain that James, by fleeing the realm, had abdicated, since Scottish kings had not resided in their native land since James VI had inherited the English crown in 1603. As Arran had pointed out to the Scottish assembly in London on 8 January, the King's ‘present absence from us, by being in France, can no more affect our Duty, than his longer absence from us in Scotland has done all this while’.⁹³ One way forward would have been to follow the path advocated by the Whigs in England and maintain that the throne had become vacant as a result of James having broken the original contract between the king and his people. One pamphleteer argued that ‘by the Constitution of the Government’ of Scotland, ‘there was an Original Contract betwixt the King and the People, by which their Kings were obliged to Rule by Law’, and that history showed that ‘when the Kings made Invasion upon Religion, and the Law and Liberties of the Subject’, the Estates had convened ‘by their own Authority, and called their Kings in question for it’.⁹⁴

The declaration of the vacancy agreed to by the Convention did not, however, use the language of the original contract. Instead, it concluded that James, by ‘Inverting all the ends of Government’, had ‘Forefaulted the right to the Croune’. This was because James, ‘being a professt Papist’, had assumed ‘the Regall power and acted as King’ without ever taking the coronation oath as required by law, and ‘by the advyce of evill and wicked Councillors’ had ‘Invaded the fundamentall constitution of this Kingdome’, altering it from ‘a legall limited Monarchy, to ane Arbitrary despotick power’, using his power to subvert the Protestant religion and violate ‘the lawes and liberties of the Natione’. The declaration also charged James with having committed a series of acts the Convention deemed were contrary to law: he had ‘asserted ane absolute power to Cass, annul and Disable all the lawes, and particularly arraigneing the lawes establishing the Protestant Religion’; set up Jesuit schools; allowed the public celebration of the mass; converted Protestant chapels and churches into public mass-houses; disarmed Protestants and appointed Catholics to civil and military office; established a popish printing press; sent the children of Protestant nobles and gentry abroad to be brought up Catholics; bestowed pensions upon priests; bribed Protestants to change their religion by granting them offices and pensions; imposed oaths contrary to law; given gifts and grants for exacting money without the consent of parliament or the Convention of Estates; raised a standing army in time of peace, without the consent of parliament; employed officers in the army as judges, whereby many people were put to death summarily, without legal trial, jury or record; used inhuman torture without evidence and in non-capital offences; imposed exorbitant fines; imprisoned people without cause; forfaulted several persons upon stretches of old and obsolete laws, notably the Earl of Argyll; subverted the rights of the royal burghs to choose their own magistrates, so that he could control whom they returned to parliament; changed judges’ commissions from life to royal pleasure, so that he could turn them out of office when they did not comply with his wishes; and granted individuals personal protection from civil debts.⁹⁵ Some of the crimes alleged, in fact, had been committed by Charles II rather than by James VII as king.

We should not confuse the word ‘forfault’ with our modern word ‘forfeit’: the former was a technical legal term, normally applied to fiefs, and its use in the declaration of the vacancy suggests that the Scots were embracing a feudal conception of their monarchy rather than a more modern contractarian one. It does not follow, however, that the Scots were therefore adopting a conservative rather than a radical position, as one scholar has maintained.⁹⁶ There appear to have been specific reasons why the Convention opted for a forfaulture. According to Balcarres, the Convention insisted ‘that they intended not to forfeit [James] as a Traitor’, but only to declare him ‘forefeited’, since this was a sentence that would reach to James's family ‘and take off any pretensions the Prince of Wales might afterwards have’. It is revealing to note, however, that Balcarres thought this a ‘Childish distinction’.⁹⁷ Moreover, it was one that created further problems, since it would have involved the exclusion from the succession not just of the infant Prince of Wales but also of James's other children, including William's wife, Mary. The Convention therefore decided that the word ‘forfault’ in their resolution ‘should imply no other alteration in the succession to the crown, than the seclusion of King James, the pretended Prince of Wales, and the children that shall be procreated of either of their bodies’.⁹⁸

In fact, in opting for a forfaulture the Convention might have deliberately been seeking the more radical solution. Stair thought ‘the terme of forfating the King's right’ was too ‘harsh’, because it implied that ‘the Conventione had a superiority of jurisdictione’. He would have preferred the Convention to have opted for a straightforward breach of contract, declaring that since James ‘had violat his pairt of the mutuall engagements, they [the Scottish people] wer frie of ther pairt’.⁹⁹ There was a conservative construction of the term forfault that would have avoided these radical implications, but significantly this was not adopted. Thus some in the Convention, Balcarres informs us, ‘were for making use of an old obsolete Word, Forfeiting, used for a Bird's forsaking her Nest’; it was rejected, however, in favour of the proposal that the king, by committing certain acts, had ‘forfeited’ his right to the throne.¹⁰⁰ Ferguson concluded that parliament had deposed James VII ‘for his violating the original Contract’.¹⁰¹ Other contemporaries did not see the forfaulture of James VII as a conservative act, but as more in accordance with the principles of radical Presbyterians. Montgomery of Skelmorlie, for example, concluded that ‘King James was… forfaulted by our States’, where the Presbyterians were in the ascendancy, ‘upon the same grounds’ as Mary Queen of Scots in 1567 ‘was forfaulted by the Protestant States of this Kingdom (who were generally Presbyterians) for her practises and Designes against Religion and Liberty’.¹⁰² The People believed that the Convention, in proclaiming King James ‘to have forfait his right to the Crowne’, gave the same reasons for doing so as the United Societies had against the proclaiming of him king in the first place.¹⁰³

The declaration of the vacancy was passed by a large majority, with only twelve dissenting voices, among them Mackenzie of Rosehaugh and the seven bishops who were present for the vote.¹⁰⁴ The Convention then decided to offer the Scottish crown jointly to William and Mary, with sole regal power – as in England – vested in the king alone. Queensberry and Atholl, who had absented them-selves for the vote on the vacancy, found they could support this, telling the Convention that though ‘not fully convinced of their Right in declaring the Crown vacant’, since they had done it, they were prepared to acquiesce, and thought that ‘none deserved so well to fill it as the Prince of Orange’.¹⁰⁵

The terms on which the Scottish crown was offered to William and Mary were laid out in the Claim of Right on 11 April, which the Scots regarded as their ‘Instrument of Government’.¹⁰⁶ In structure, it was similar to the English Declaration of Rights. The first half outlined the various alleged illegal acts committed by James VII, and simply reproduced the reasons offered on 4 April for why he had forfaulted his right to the throne. The second half established guidelines for future royal behaviour by declaring certain things illegal or laying down prescriptions for what ought to be done, and was, in essence, a restatement of the first half in positive terms, with a few additional rights and prescriptions added. Like the English Declaration of Rights, the Scottish Claim of Right purported to be doing no more than ‘vindicating and asserting… antient rights and liberties’.¹⁰⁷ In its condemnation of popery and arbitrary government, however, the Claim of Right also condemned policies pursued by Charles II (to a much greater extent than its English counterpart, and this despite the fact that the document laid the blame solely on James VII) and found it necessary to declare certain things illegal which the kings in Scotland unquestionably had a legal right to do. This is not to say that the pretence to be vindicating and asserting ancient rights and liberties was disingenuous. The framers of the Claim of Right appear to have been invoking an earlier constitutional framework – the reform programme of 1640–41 carried out during the Covenanting Revolution – that had been superseded by legislation enacted since the Restoration.¹⁰⁸ But the Claim of Right was not just a rejection of the illegal measures pursued by Restoration monarchs (as was the English Declaration of Rights); it also sought, in crucial respects, to redefine the powers of the Scottish monarchy as it had been legally reconstituted after 1660.

The second half of the Claim of Right began by dealing with the problems of a Catholic king and the promotion of popery under James VII. Thus, it asserted that, ‘By the law of this Kingdome no Papist can be King or Queen of this realme, nor bear any Office what-somever therin; nor can any protestant successor exercise the regall power, until he or she swear the Coronation Oath.’ This was a dubious claim at best. It is true that an act of 1567 required all monarchs to take an oath promising to protect the true religion ‘at the tyme of their coronatioun, and ressait [receipt] of thair princely authoritie’, and this had seemingly been confirmed by an act of 1681 ratifying all laws passed since 1567 for the security of the Protestant religion. Yet the Succession Act of 1681 had explicitly stated that the heir to the throne could not be debarred from the succession on the grounds of his religion and that upon the death of the king the administration of the government immediately devolved upon the heir, thus in effect rescinding the requirement to take the coronation oath.¹⁰⁹ in 1684, In a tract published the then Lord Advocate, Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, had insisted that the Coronation Act related only to the crowning of the king, not to the succession; that a coronation was not absolutely necessary, since a king was still a king without being crowned, and there was no clause in the Coronation Act ‘debarring the Successor, or declaring the Succession Null, in case his Successor gave not this Oath’, and that the Succession Act of 1681 had, in any case, abrogated the Coronation Act.¹¹⁰ Even the Whiggish lawyer Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall had acknowledged in 1685 that under Scottish law the coronation of the king was not legally required.¹¹¹

The Claim of Right then declared that ‘all Proclamationes asserting an absolute power to Cass, annull and Disable lawes’, the erecting of Jesuit colleges, converting Protestant churches into mass-houses, and allowing mass to be said, were contrary to law. Whether they were, however, is again questionable. It is true that the mass had been declared idolatrous by two acts of 1560 and 1567, attendance at which was punishable by death at the third offence, and an act of 1592 against Jesuits, seminary priests and trafficking papists – the essence of which had been confirmed by a similar act passed in 1661 – had made the saying of mass treason.¹¹² Yet the Scottish Act of Supremacy of 1669 had established that it was an inherent right in the Scottish Crown to order ‘the Externall Government and policie of the Church’ and that Charles II and his successors could ‘setle, enact, and emit such constitutions, acts and orders, concerning the administration of the externall Government of the Church, and the persons imployed in the same, and concerning all ecclesiasticall meitings and maters’ as they thought fit. It had also rescinded and annulled all previous laws that were inconsistent with this royal supremacy.¹¹³ Under the terms of the Supremacy, as royal apologists had argued back in 1686, the Scottish king did possess the right, through his prerogative, to redefine Scotland's ecclesiastical establishment, including dispensing with or suspending penal statutes against Catholic or Protestant nonconformists and turning over Protestant churches to Catholic worship (see p. 155). Those critical of the plans for Catholic toleration in 1686 had been chary of discussing the royal prerogative, and had even been prepared to admit that the king of Scotland could not be tied to the laws (see p. 157). Furthermore, the Excise Act of 1685 had explicitly recognized the Scottish monarchy as ‘absolute’. Admittedly, this had been passed at the time of Argyll's rebellion, and was intended to affirm that the Scottish king could not legitimately be resisted by his subjects, not to establish the principle that he possessed ‘an arbitrary despotick power’ to act ‘in violation of the laws’, which is what the Claim of Right criticized James for doing. Nevertheless, the charge made in the declaration of the vacancy and repeated in the Claim of Right that James had invaded ‘the fundamental constitution of this Kingdom’, which was of ‘a legal limited monarchy’, ran contrary to the fact that an act of parliament had established that the monarchy in Scotland was not a ‘legal limited’ one.

The next three clauses proceeded to condemn as contrary to law the means whereby James VII had sought to promote popery in Scotland: by ‘allowing Popish bookes to be printed and Dispersed’; sending the children of noblemen, gentry and others abroad ‘to be bred Papists’, making donations to popish schools and colleges, bestowing pensions on Catholic priests, and persuading Protestants to convert by offering them ‘places, preferments, and pensiones’; and ‘the Disarming of protestants and Imploying papists’ in both civil and military office. All three clauses were clearly in accordance with the spirit of existing laws designed to protect and uphold the Protestant religion. Although Scotland did not have the same sort of centralized system of press regulation as did England, in November 1661 the Scottish council, in accordance with long-established Scottish laws against treason and heresy, had prohibited the printing of political and religious material without license, while in 1671 Charles II's government had granted a monopoly of Scottish printing to Andrew Anderson; the Catholic printing press established at Holyroodhouse under James VII had thus required a special dispensation from the King. And certainly, in giving offices to Catholics, James had acted in violation of the Test Act of 1681, which required all office-holders to swear an oath pledging their commitment to the Protestant religion. It was arguable, however, that as an absolute monarch in Scotland, James was ‘so far above’ the laws that he did have the power to ‘dispence with them’, as Lord Chancellor Perth had advised the King at the time.¹¹⁴

The remainder of the Claim of Right condemned various executive actions under both Charles and James that seemed to undermine the authority of parliament or pervert the course of justice, thereby seeking to make the royal government of Scotland more accountable to parliamentary control. Some of its provisions were less controversial than others. Most exposed what were clearly ambiguities in Scottish law. A few, however, declared illegal practices which had hitherto been perfectly legal. Several clauses condemned those initiatives taken to deal with the problem of political and religious dissent during the 1680s.

The clause stating that James had acted illegally by imposing oaths without the authority of parliament was most obviously an allusion to the oath in James's Scottish Indulgence of 1687, which bound subjects to maintain the king and his heirs in the exercise of their absolute power and authority; the framers might also have had in mind the Abjuration Oath of 1684, however, which the Scottish council had ordered to be tendered to anyone suspected of supporting the Cameronian Apologetick Declaration of that year calling for the overthrow of Charles II (the penalty for refusing which was death). Ferguson, in a tract published first in 1687, when condemning the Indulgence oath, had asserted that ‘the imposing an Oath upon subjects’ had always been ‘look't upon as the highest Act of legislative Authority’ and that no Scottish king had ever ‘pretended to a Right of enjoining and requiring an Oath that was not first Enacted and specified in some Law’.¹¹⁵ The Claim of Right also asserted that charging lawburrows ‘at the King's instance’ and imposing bonds ‘without the authority of Parliament’ were contrary to law – an allusion to Charles II's bond of 1674 and 1677 (which required landlords to get their tenants to take out a bond promising not to violate the laws against conventicles or face punishment for the offence themselves) and his use of lawburrows in 1678 (which were essentially sureties to keep the peace imposed upon those who refused to subscribe the bond, under penalty of a fine valued at the equivalent of two years’ rent). The legality of Charles II's bond and his particular use of lawburrows had certainly been contested in 1678, though the government itself had felt it was on firm legal ground and could cite appropriate parliamentary legislation to justify its actions.¹¹⁶

Other clauses declared ‘the putting of Garrisones in privat men's houses in tyme of peace without their Consent, or the authority of Parliament’ (a policy pursued by the Scottish council in 1675 to meet the Presbyterian challenge in the south-west) and ‘the Sending of ane army in ane hostile manner upon any pairt of the Kingdome, in a peaceable tyme’ and exacting ‘any manner of free quarters’ (an allusion to the way the Highland Host had been sent to police the Presbyterian heartlands in early 1678) to be illegal. The Scottish Militia Act of 1661 had asserted that the power to raise and command the people of Scotland in arms and to command all forts and garrisons resided in the king alone, and this was confirmed by another act of 1663; on the other hand, the 1661 Act had stated that the king's subjects should always be ‘free of the provisions and mantenance of these forts and armies’, unless approved by parliament or a Convention of Estates. And although the 1663 Act had allowed the king to send his army ‘to any parte of his dominions of Scotland, England or Ireland’, this was ‘for suppressing of any foraigne invasion, intestine trouble or insurrection or for any other service whairin his Maiesties honour Authority or greatness may be concerned’; sending in the army ‘in ane hostile manner… in a peaceable tyme’ arguably did not fit these criteria. Whether Charles II's policy of quartering troops in the Presbyterian strongholds of the south-west had been illegal, however, is another matter, since the government here was dealing with ‘intestine trouble or insurrection’.¹¹⁷

The clauses condemning ‘useing torture without evidence, or in ordinary Crymes' and forcing subjects ‘to Depone against themselves in capitall Crymes, however the punishment be restricted’, highlighted the abuses in the dealings with the Scottish Rye House plotters William Spence and William Carstares in 1684. The rules governing the use of torture were, in fact, unclear, although with regard to both Spence and Carstares the government had ignored convention when torturing the same individual more than once and where there existed no solid presumption of guilt for a capital crime. Furthermore, both Carstares and Spence had refused to swear an oath to answer all charges against them, on the grounds that it was illegal to force them to incriminate themselves (which it certainly was in capital offences), but the Scottish authorities took this to be equivalent to their implicating themselves, thus providing a sufficient presumption of guilt to justify the use of torture. The government's rationale for tendering the oath had been that they were not intending to charge Carstares and Spence with a capital crime; yet either this meant that Carstares and Spence were subsequently tortured for a non-capital crime or that they had been asked to incriminate themselves in a capital offence. The Claim of Right also declared that changing judges' commissions from ad vitam aut culpam (for life) to durante bene placito (at royal pleasure) was contrary to law, and re-established the principle laid down by an act of James VI's reign that had been violated when Charles issued a new commission for the Lords of Session in 1681.¹¹⁸

If the above clauses addressed what were ambiguities in Scottish law and condemned practices which, if not technically illegal, were at least against the spirit of the law, others condemned actions that had been sanctioned by parliamentary statute or were otherwise quite clearly legal. The clause stating that employing officers of the army as judges or putting subjects to death summarily without legal trial were contrary to law sought to confirm basic legal rights and the principle of due process, which had been violated during ‘the killing times’ of the 1680s. Yet in fact the Scottish king's right to allow any commissioned by him (including army officers) to ‘take cognizance and decision of any Cases or causes he pleases’ had been acknowledged by an act of 1681.¹¹⁹ The declaration against ‘fyneing husbands for ther wives withdrawing from the church’ flew in the face of an act of 1685 which had confirmed that it was legal to fine husbands for their wives’ withdrawing from church and ordained that this practice should be observed in all time coming.¹²⁰ The clause condemning arbitrary imprisonment (without express cause shown) and delaying putting prisoners to trial again sought to address abuses committed by the government in the 1680s in its dealings with political and religious dissidents. However, there was no habeas corpus act in Scotland, so the government had not acted contrary to law in this respect. Similarly, the Claim of Right broke new ground when it proclaimed the illegality of imposing ‘extraordinary fynes’ and exacting ‘exorbitant Baile’, because Scottish law had allowed for the imposition of heavy fines.¹²¹

The framers of the Claim of Right also had no compunction about overturning legal precedents set by the courts. The clause proclaiming the illegality of forfaultures ‘upon stretches of old and obsolete lawes’ and ‘frivolous and weak pretences’, as in the case of ‘the late Earl of Argylle’, reversed a previous legal judgment by the highest criminal court in the land. The Claim of Right further declared that the opinion of the Lords of Session in two specific cases (concerning more obscure aspects of the Scottish law of treason) were wrong, and asserted that subjects had the right to appeal to king and parliament against sentences pronounced by the Lords of Session. From here it went on to make the more general claim that it was ‘the right of the subjects to petition the King’ and to declare that ‘all Imprisonments and prosecutiones for such petitioning’ were contrary to law. This, of course, paralleled the clause in the English Declaration of Rights which referred to the arrest of the seven bishops in England for refusing to instruct their clergy to read James's second (English) Declaration of Indulgence in 1688. It is, however, inconceivable that the framers of the Claim of Right could have had this case in mind, not only because it had nothing to do with Scotland but also because the framers themselves (as we shall soon see) were no friends to episcopacy. Instead the clause seems to have alluded to an incident that happened back in 1660, when a group of Presbyterian ministers had been ‘cruelly incarcerate[d]’, as one Presbyterian apologist writing before the Revolution had put it, for daring to remind Charles II that he had previously taken the Covenant and lay under certain obligations as a result. Likewise the Scottish Presbyterians, in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, complained how they had not even been allowed to petition for relief from the harsh persecutions under which they had suffered at the hands of the Restoration regime.¹²²

The cumulative effect of the provisions of the Claim of Right was to bolster the position of parliament within the Scottish constitution at the expense of the royal prerogative. Two further clauses aimed to ensure the independence of parliament. One determined that parliamentary elections should be free, and declared illegal James's attempts to nominate town magistrates or councillors in order to ensure that the burghs returned members to parliament who were to his liking. In fact here James could claim to have been following the precedent of his grandfather, James VI; there had, however, been no quo warranto proceedings in Scotland, as there had in England, to lend the colour of law to the crown's actions.¹²³ The other clause condemned ‘the giveing gifts or grants for raiseing of money without the Consent of Parliament or Convention of Estates’. This was probably less a complaint against extra-parliamentary forms of taxation – although in England James had illegally collected customs and excise in the opening months of his reign without parliamentary sanction, in Scotland an act of 1681 had allowed for the continued collection of the excise for five years after Charles II's death¹²⁴ – but more a criticism of the Scottish system of tax farming, especially as practised under Charles II by Lauderdale, who had been notoriously partial in granting tax farms and monopolies to his friends and clients.¹²⁵

The Claim of Right also made two recommendations. One was that ‘for redress of all greivances, and for the amending, strenthneing [sic] and preserving of the lawes, Parliaments ought to be frequently called, and allowed to sit, and the freedom of speech and debate secured to the members’. There is an obvious parallel here with the English Declaration of Rights, and the demand for frequent parliaments that might be allowed to sit is one that we more readily associate with the Whig opposition to Charles II in England during the Exclusion Crisis than with anything heard in Scotland under either of the two post-Restoration monarchs. This clause was no English import, however. Instead, it harked back to the reforming legislation of the Covenanting Revolution of the mid-century, particularly the Scottish Triennial Act of June 1640 (guaranteeing that parliaments meet every three years), which had claimed that frequent parliaments had been the norm in Scotland prior to James VI's departure for England in 1603.¹²⁶ The other recommendation was that prelacy ought to be abolished, since it was ‘a great and insupportable greivance and trouble to this Nation, and contrary to the Inclinationes of the generality of the people’. Again, this looked back to the reforming legislation of 1640, which had abolished episcopacy and revived an act of 1592 in favour of Presbyterian Church government.¹²⁷ Burnet thought it ‘an absurd thing to put this in a claim of rights; for which not only they had no law, but which was contrary to many laws then in being’. The demand was included here, however, and not in a statement of grievances, where it more properly belonged, as a deliberate strategy to ensure that the new monarchs would be required to abolish the institution of episcopacy. Those who drew up the Claim of Right had concluded that prelacy was ‘the occasione of most of ther trouble and disqwiet’ and wanted to make ‘presbytery a foundation ston of the government.¹²⁸ The Claim of Right concluded by abrogating the existing oath of allegiance and all other oaths and replacing them with an oath to ‘be faithfull and bear true allegiance to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary’.

The Convention followed the Claim of Right by agreeing on 13 April to thirteen Articles of Grievances, requesting specific reforms designed to strip the Scottish monarchy of certain legally acknowledged powers that had led to perceived abuses under the Restoration monarchs. The document opened by condemning the Lords of the Articles (the steering committees that had enabled the crown to control legislative initiatives in parliament and which had been reconstituted by an act of 1663), asserting that ‘there ought to be no Committees of Parliament but such as are freely chosen by the Estates to prepare motions and overtures that are first made in the house’. The second article stated that the Supremacy Act of 1669 ‘ought to be abrogated’, because it was ‘Inconsistent with the Establishment of the Church Government now desyred’. Subsequent articles declared various other laws enacted since the Restoration to be grievances: the act of 1681 ‘Declareing a Cumulative Jurisdiction’ in the crown (which, according to one pamphleteer, had given ‘the King the greatest latitude of Arbitrary Power imaginable, and more than is practised in any place of Europe’); the act of 1663 giving the king power to impose customs on foreign trade, which was ‘prejudiciall to the trade of the Nation’ (and which, as the same pamphleteer pointed out, had enabled the kings of Scotland to ‘Supply themselves without being beholden to Their Parliaments’); and ‘most of the lawes’ enacted by the parliament of 1685, a body which had passed a series of brutal measures against Presbyterians, including the imposition of the death penalty on those who preached at house conventicles or who were merely present at field conventicles, and an Excise Bill, containing a preamble declaring the Scottish monarchy to be absolute. The Grievances further declared that ‘the levieing or keeping on foot a standing army in tyme of peace without consent of Parliament’ was a grievance – in effect a request for the repeal of the 1661 Militia Act. Various other legally accepted practices came under attack because they had been abused by the crown in the Restoration period. For example, the fifth article stated ‘that Assyses of Error’ were a grievance, a reference to the fact that under Scottish law jurors could be prosecuted for wrongly acquitting a criminal. The third article reported that ‘forefaultors in prejudice of vassalls, Creditors and aires of entaile’ were ‘a great greivance’. Forfaultures had been resorted to quite frequently by the Crown in the 1680s to deal with those accused of treason, and required the forfeiture of the rebel's estate to the king ‘in the same condition that it was Originally given out, without the burden of… Debt, or Regard to… any Deeds or Alienation made before the Crime’. In the process, a forfaulture hit not only the accused but also many others who had no share in his guilt, such as the traitor's lawful creditors and his innocent vassals. The Grievances also called for further legislation to protect the Protestant succession by asserting that ‘the marriage of a King or Queen of this Realme to a Papist’ was ‘dangerous to the protestant religion and ought to be provyded against’.¹²⁹

Finally, on 18 April the Convention devised a new coronation oath. This required William and Mary to swear to ‘maintain the true Religion of Christ Jesus, the preaching of his holy word and the due and right ministratione of the sacraments now receaved and preached within the Realme of Scotland’; abolish ‘all false religion, contrary to the same’; rule ‘according to the loveable lawes and constitutiones receaved in this realme’; and ‘roote out all hereticks and Enemies to the true worship of God that shall be convicted by the true Kirk of God’ from Scotland.¹³⁰

Scholars disagree over whether the offer of the crown to William and Mary was made conditional upon their acceptance of the Claim of Right and the Articles of Grievances. After agreeing to the Claim of Right on 11 April, the Convention decided that William and Mary should immediately be proclaimed king and queen of Scotland from the market cross in Edinburgh. The ceremony was performed with due solemnity that afternoon, and that evening there were bells, bonfires and other celebrations in the Scottish capital. Two days later the Convention ordered that William and Mary be proclaimed in all the royal burghs. Nevertheless, the Convention made it explicit, in a separate act declaring that ‘the Estates [were] to continue in the Government untill the King and Queen of England accept the throne’, that William and Mary were not to be admitted to the full exercise of the regal power until they had accepted the crown ‘according to the Instrument of Government’ and had taken the coronation oath.¹³¹ It seems clear, then, that the Convention viewed the offer of the crown as conditional at least upon the acceptance of the Claim of Right.

The Grievances were another matter. As one Williamite tract pointed out, since ‘their Majesties were… proclaimed King and Queen of Scotland before the Grievances were framed… they could be no Condition… of their Right’; they were merely humbly ‘represented to the King… to be redressed by him in Parliament’.¹³² Yet since William and Mary could not exercise the full regal power until they had taken the coronation oath, we need to look more closely at the circumstances under which they took that oath to see under what conditions they finally accepted the crown. The Scottish Estates sent three commissioners – Argyll (representing the nobility), Montgomery of Skelmorlie (for the knights) and Sir John Dalrymple (for the burghs) – to London to make the offer of the crown to William and Mary and to present William with the Claim of Right, the Articles of Grievances and a request that the Convention be turned into a parliament (so that it could enact the necessary legislation to redress the Grievances). William was formally admitted to the government of Scotland in a ceremony that took place at the Banqueting House on 11 May 1689. His chief Scottish adviser at court, the Earl of Melville, we are told, ‘strugled hard to defeat the grivances’, proposing that they should not be read until after the King had taken the coronation oath. The commissioners, however, had explicit instructions about the order to be followed. In the end, the Claim of Right, the Grievances and the request for a parliament were read before the tendering of the coronation oath. William even gave a commitment that he would ‘redress all Grievances, and prevent the like for the future by good and wholesome Laws’ before he took the oath. The only element of the proceedings to which William took exception was the clause in the coronation oath concerning rooting out heretics, saying that he did not understand himself obliged ‘to become a Persecutor’. The commissioners reassured him that the phrase was merely form, and that ‘by the Law of Scotland no man was to be persecuted for his private Opinion’.¹³³

Following his acceptance of the crown, William established his new Scottish administration. His choice of men reveals his continued desire to pursue a policy of accommodation. He made Melville, a moderate Presbyterian, his Secretary of State for Scotland, and appointed Hamilton, a man who had often emerged as the champion of political and religious freedoms under Charles and James but who had never committed himself to the Presbyterian platform, commissioner to the Scottish parliament. Hamilton's appointment was balanced, to some extent, by that of the Presbyterian Earl of Crawford as president of the parliament, and subsequently also as president of the council. But William's council also included four men – Atholl, the Earl Marischal, and the earls of Erroll and Kintore – who, according to their Presbyterian critics, had not only been ‘greivous in the late state’ but had also opposed William's interest in the Convention. The key places in the judiciary went to the Dalrymples: Stair was reinstalled as president of the Court of Session, and Sir John became Lord Advocate.¹³⁴

William promised members of the Convention that he would assist them in making laws to secure their ‘Religion, Liberties, and Properties’ and gave his commissioner detailed instructions concerning what legislation he should agree to in order to redress the Grievances.¹³⁵ The Convention was formally turned into a parliament on 5 June, through an act which established that the three estates were to consist of the noblemen, barons and burgesses, thus excluding the bishops.¹³⁶ To fulfil the demand laid down in the Claim of Right, parliament abolished prelacy on 22 July 1689.¹³⁷ However, William and his Scottish advisers did not feel themselves obliged to meet every demand of the Grievances, insisting that the King had made only a general engagement to redress things that were ‘truly grievous to the Nation’. In particular, they did not want the total abolition of the Lords of the Articles, since there was a value to the court in keeping some form of steering committee; they would have preferred to have kept a modified version, making it an elected body rather than a nominated one.¹³⁸ With regard to the Church, although William and his advisers accepted that episcopacy would have to be abolished in accordance with the Claim of Right, they hoped to avoid a rigid Presbyterian system and to accommodate as many Episcopalian clergy within the new settlement as were prepared to conform.¹³⁹ Parliament, however, remained committed to its agenda, and approved legislation abolishing the Articles and the royal supremacy and restoring those ministers turned out for not complying with prelacy or for taking the Test in 1681. It also voted in favour of an act incapacitating those who had employments under the late government. Hamilton withheld the royal assent and the session was adjourned on 2 August with none of these measures having passed into law.¹⁴⁰

In order to win parliamentary support for much-needed taxation, William found it necessary to give ground on the Grievances when the Scottish parliament reassembled in the spring of 1690. He appointed Melville as commissioner, giving him specific instructions to agree to the abolition of the Articles and the royal supremacy and the restoring of Presbyterian ministers, and to pass the legislation parliament proposed for settling the government of the Church.¹⁴¹ On 25 April 1690 parliament abolished the royal supremacy and restored Presbyterian ministers who had been deprived of their livings since 1661, and on 8 May it abolished the Lords of the Articles. On 7 June it established the Confession of Faith of 1643 as ‘the summe and substance of the doctrine of the reformed Churches’, and restored the Presbyterian system of Church government in accordance with the provisions of an act of 1592, giving the General Assembly of the Church the power to purge ministers who were ‘insufficient, negligent, scandalous and erroneous’. On 19 July parliament abolished lay patronages and replaced them with a system of election by heritors and parish elders.¹⁴²

There were certainly limitations to what the Revolution achieved in Scotland. The changes introduced were not as far-reaching as those instituted by the Covenanter revolution of the late 1630s and early 1640s, which had seen not only the overturning of episcopacy but also a radical restructuring of the powers of the monarchy in Scotland (depriving the King of the right to choose his own ministers, to call parliament, or to control the armed forces). The act re-establishing Presbyterianism was silent on the issue of the National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, and parliament made no attempt to undo the Rescissory Act of 1661 (which in turn had undone the reforming legislation in Scotland passed during the mid-century revolution) or the act against the Covenants of 1662. A grand committee of the Convention had tried to insert a proviso in the Claim of Right that the king should not be able to name judges, privy counsellors, or other officers of state without the consent of parliament, but this motion had been rejected ‘as an unreasonable Incroachment upon the Monarchy’; only three favoured the proposal, and in the end even they backed down. An attempt to revive legislation of 1641 stating that the king could only appoint officers of state with parliamentary consent also failed, as did efforts to secure freedom of speech and regular meetings of parliament.¹⁴³ Nevertheless, it is hard to agree with those who claim that the Revolution was a conservative affair and that the makers of the Revolution settlement had no gripes with the traditional monarchy in Scotland. Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, who had served as Lord Advocate under both Charles II and James VII, bemoaned in May 1689 how ‘our just, noble, and antient government’ had been ‘pull'd to peeces’.¹⁴⁴

Although the Revolution in Scotland was undoubtedly more Whiggish than its English counterpart, it was possible to interpret what had happened north of the border in various ways. As in England, there was a lively pamphlet debate over how to justify transferring allegiance to William and Mary. Most Scots who supported the Revolution held that James had un-kinged himself, because he had invaded the constitution and violated the laws and liberties of the nation. Some, as we have seen, interpreted the Convention's forfaulture of James as an act of deposition. Yet there was a general reluctance in print to embrace radical contract theory – the view that it was the Scots who had un-kinged James – or to endorse individual rights of resistance; most instead held that resistance was allowable only in cases of extreme necessity. Indeed, some writers even sought to make the Scottish Revolution compatible with the principles of passive obedience and non-resistance, either by insisting that it had been brought about by God's Providence or, more powerfully, by claiming that William had conquered Scotland in a just war and that allegiance was now due to him as de facto monarch.¹⁴⁵ The types of argument, in other words, that allowed Tory Anglicans in England to make their peace with the dynastic shift were articulated north of the border. The trouble is, they failed to have the same effect in Scotland, because Episcopalian royalists found it very difficult in practice to accept what was indeed a much more partisan settlement north of the border.

THE BATTLE OVER THE REVOLUTION: JACOBITES, PRESBYTERIANS AND EPISCOPALIANS

The Scottish Revolution settlement, then, introduced sweeping changes in Church and state. Inevitably, it did not go uncontested. The new regime faced a significant Jacobite challenge, which was not to be successfully contained until the spring of 1690. The Duke of Gordon, holed up in Edinburgh Castle and isolated from potential supporters, never posed any real threat and finally surrendered on 13 June 1689.¹⁴⁶ A more serious challenge came from a rebellion launched by Viscount Dundee, who withdrew to the Highlands and declared for King James.¹⁴⁷ In June, James VII issued a proclamation declaring all those assembled in the Scottish parliament rebels and commanding his subjects to join with Dundee, granting warrants to seize the estates, goods and persons of those who resisted and to secure the revenues and excise for their subsistence.¹⁴⁸ James was initially hoping to join with the Jacobite forces in Scotland himself with an army from Ireland, although developments in Ireland were to prevent him from doing this.

The Jacobites believed that ‘three partes of four’ in Scotland wished for the restoration of their King ‘and would heartely concur in it if there were a body of men to cover their riseing’, and that the ‘King's friends’ in Lancashire, Yorkshire and the northern parts of England would join with them.¹⁴⁹ Yet Dundee came nowhere near obtaining the level of support necessary for success. Indeed, it is noticeable that very few of the leaders of the Episcopalian interest in Scotland were prepared to join his enterprise. Powerful magnates in the north, such as Atholl and Tarbat (who were upset because they had failed to receive the recognition they expected under the new regime), were prevailed upon to give Dundee no resistance as he tried to enlist recruits, though their own commitment to his cause is questionable. Tarbat, in fact, managed to obtain an exoneration for the part he had played in the previous administration, and although for a brief period he maintained links with the Jacobites, he quickly and successfully transformed himself into a Revolution Tory. Atholl retired to Bath, allegedly for his health. Mackenzie of Rosehaugh fled to York, fearing that his known ‘bigotrie for the royall familie and monarchie’ would prompt the new regime to seek retribution against him. Balcarres was kept under close imprisonment in his house, though he swore he had never had anything to do with Dundee since leaving Edinburgh, and he likewise pleaded to be allowed to go to England for his health. Mar died suddenly at his home in Alloa in May.¹⁵⁰ Although several clans from the Highlands joined with Dundee, he managed to gather an army only about 2,000 strong.¹⁵¹ Meanwhile, loyalists began to mobilize in defence of the Revolution. In the south the Society People raised a volunteer regiment and declared themselves ready to act for the preservation of the Protestant religion and ‘the work of reformation in Scotland, in opposition to popery, prelacy, and arbitrary power’.¹⁵² Various nobles and landowners from the Selkirk area, near the English border, petitioned to be allowed ‘to put themselves in a postur of defence’ so that they could suppress any insurrections at home and oppose any invasion by Catholics from the north of England; the council authorized them to put together a regiment of horse and foot of such men who were willing to enlist themselves. Likewise, the Earl of Monteith received permission to keep his vassals and tenants in arms to protect against the threat posed by persons disaffected to the present government.¹⁵³

The government sent an army under Major-General Mackay to put down the rebellion. Dundee, an experienced military commander of some skill, did win a notable victory over Mackay's forces at Killiecrankie on 27 July 1689; however, Dundee himself fell at the battle, and without his leadership there was never any hope that the small, ill-trained and ill-equipped Jacobite army he had raised could prevail in the long run against Mackay's superior forces. On 21 August the Society People regiment inflicted a telling defeat on the rebel forces at Dunkeld, and although the rebellion dragged on, it was finally put down at Cromdale on 1 May 1690.¹⁵⁴

It was not just the hard-line Episcopalians and the Highland clans who looked for a Jacobite restoration in 1689–90. A group of radical Presbyterians, known as ‘the Club’, disappointed at the slow pace of reform and at the frustration of their own political ambitions, began to engage in Jacobite intrigue. They were led by Montgomery of Skelmorlie, one of the commissioners who had been sent to London with the offer of the crown to William and Mary. Described by Burnet as ‘a gentleman of good parts, but of a most unbridled heat and a restless ambition’,¹⁵⁵ he was undoubtedly a man of genuine political convictions, but he was angry at having been passed over for the job of Secretary of State for Scotland in favour of Melville. He was joined by the Earl of Annandale and Lord Ross, who were likewise resentful for not being given employments under the new regime, the Episcopalian leaders Atholl and Queensberry, and the radical Whig plotter Robert Ferguson.¹⁵⁶ In October 1689 they addressed William, complaining that ‘in this Revolution… the People did only observe a change of Masters, but no ease of Burden, or redress of Laws’.¹⁵⁷ They conspired with known Jacobites, trying to persuade them to take the oath of allegiance and assume their seats in parliament, so that between them they could put pressure on the new regime. Their tactic was to frustrate the voting of supply and thereby cripple the government financially. A trade depression brought about by the political upheavals had meant that customs and excise had fallen to almost nothing, and Mackay's army was already being forced to live upon free quarter because the administration could not afford to pay it, producing complaints ‘from evrie corner’ of the country. Denied adequate funds, the Club predicted, the government's unpopularity would increase to the point where the kingdom would declare against it, and then they would be able to ‘bring home King James in a Parliamentary way’. The conspiracy failed, partly because the Club could not persuade enough of the ‘King's friends’ to re-enter parliament and partly because the need for funds compelled the government to concede to all the demands set forth in the Grievances in the spring and summer of 1690. Most of the radicals deserted Montgomery once the government had agreed to their political agenda.¹⁵⁸ Montgomery fled to London, but continued to engage in Jacobite intrigue, and in late 1691 tried to encourage a rising of Presbyterian extremists in the Scottish south-west. In 1692 he published a pamphlet accusing William of committing all the crimes that James had been accused of and worse, and arguing that if ‘we placed the Prince upon the throne’ in order ‘to preserve our Liberties from the insults of King James’, we had ‘either mistaken the Disease or the Cure’. Montgomery was to end his days at the exiled Jacobite court at St Germain in 1694.¹⁵⁹

If the political and military challenge of Jacobitism was successfully suppressed, the battle for the hearts and minds of the Scottish people proved much more difficult to win. Latent disaffection to the new regime was always going to be much greater in Scotland than in England because of the partisan nature of the Scottish Revolution. There were simply too many who had lost out and who could only regret the changes wrought in 1689–90. The greatest problem was with the way the religious settlement came to be worked out in Scotland. Both toleration and comprehension were rejected, and most of the Episcopalian clergy ended up being driven out of their parishes. The result was that there was no easing of tensions between Presbyterians and Episcopalians, but instead an intensification of the religious divide.

The campaign against the Episcopalian clergy was conducted in a series of stages. The first ejections, as we have seen, had been brought about as a result of the ‘rabblings’ that had started on Christmas Day 1688. On 13 April 1689 the Convention determined that those who were at that time ‘in possessione and exercise of their ministrie’ and ‘behaveing themselves… under the present government’ should be immune from ‘any injury’, thus in effect sanctioning the 200–300 deprivations carried out by the rabble. Final confirmation was provided by an act of 7 June 1690, declaring that the rabbled ministers had deserted their livings which had thereby become vacant. Also on 13 April 1689 the Convention decreed that those clergy who were in place should, under pain of deprivation, stop praying for King James and instead offer their prayers for William and Mary and read a proclamation from their pulpit declaring William and Mary king and queen.¹⁶⁰ This was backed up by a council order of 6 August inviting members of congregations to denounce those ministers who did not pray for their new sovereigns. By November 1689 the number of Episcopalian clergy who had been deprived for noncompliance had reached 182.¹⁶¹

Some of the deprived Episcopalian ministers undoubtedly harboured Jacobite sympathies. William McKechnie, minister at Bonhill, near Dumbarton, affirmed that ‘seing he hade sworne alledgance to King James’ he could not ‘give obedience to King William's authoritie’. John Lumsdean, minister at Lauder in Berwickshire, not only declined to pray for William and Mary but instead prayed every day that God would give King James ‘the necks of his enemies and the hearts of his subjects’. Similarly, James Aird, minister of Torryburn near Dunfermline, refused to read the declaration proclaiming William and Mary king and queen and expressly prayed for King James, saying that he hoped ‘the Lord would put a hooke in the nose of that usurper [William], and send him back the way he came, and restore the other to his right’.¹⁶² Some clergy were reported as rejoicing at the Jacobite victory at Killiecrankie: William Murray, minister at Crieff in Perthshire, for example, had his congregation sing the words for Psalm 118, v. 24, ‘This is the day God made, in it we'll joy triumphantly’.¹⁶³ Alexander Lindsay, minister at Cortachy in Angus, was accused of preaching treasonable and seditious doctrines in his sermons. On one occasion he allegedly said that ‘he would never forgive nor forgett’ what ‘evill the Presbyterian partie hade done in killing their king [i.e., Charles I] and murdering their high preists, and that they could never be the builders of the church that ware the distroyers of it and layers of it wast’. On another he taught that ‘the government hade made great wastes and great devastationes in the kingdome makeing new lawes and repelling just ones formerly made’, bemoaning the fact that whereas it was once ‘accompted religione… to preach up obedience to the supreme magistrat’, now ‘on the contirar actually rebellione was accompted religione and to depose and dethron kings is accompted a dutie’. Lindsay was also accused, it should be said, of being an habitual drunkard, who used to ‘sitt up on Saturday nights with baggpypes, drinking and playing till day light’.¹⁶⁴ He was not alone among accused Jacobites of being suspected of moral depravity. Robert Young, minister at Kippen in Stirlingshire, along with not praying for William and Mary was accused of drunkeness, profaning the sabbath, ‘useing the airt of magick with his Bible and a key’, appropriating the money in the parish poor box for his own use, and threatening violence against anyone who stinted him over the payment of tithes. John Edmonstone, minister at nearby Gargunnock, was cited by his parishioners for praying that God would restore King James, and also for ‘being a persone most insufficient for the ministrie’, imposed upon them without the consent of anyone in the parish. By all accounts Edmonstone was a most unsavoury individual, another habitual drunkard who was known to urinate and excrete in his breeches; no wonder only a tiny handful of people would bother to go to hear him in church.¹⁶⁵

A significant number of those Episcopalian clergy who found themselves under attack, however, were Williamites, who would have been happy to acknowledge the legitimacy of the new regime.¹⁶⁶ Some protested that the only reason why they had failed to read the Convention's proclamation requiring them to pray for William and Mary on the day appointed was because they did not receive it in time; others claimed that they did not receive it at all or else that they were forcibly prevented from reading the proclamation, even though they expressed their willingness to pray for William and Mary and submit to the government. Several were able to prove that they had indeed read the proclamation, and as a result were reprieved by the council, suggesting a certain amount of malicious prosecution.¹⁶⁷ James Canaries at Selkirk was accused by some of his parishioners of having prayed for William and Mary but without calling them king and queen, and for continuing to pray for the late King James. The council found the charges against Canaries not proven, and allowed him to continue his ministry. However, it appears that a Presbyterian faction at Selkirk wanted to remove Canaries and install their own man. They thus tried to prevent Canaries taking possession of the manse the parish was building for the resident incumbent, by seizing the keys to deny him access and breaking the windows and doing other damage to the property to ensure that it was uninhabitable.¹⁶⁸

Further deprivations followed the meeting of the General Assembly of the Church in October 1690. William hoped that Episcopalian ministers who took the oath of allegiance and read the proclamation of William and Mary as king and queen would be allowed to continue in post.¹⁶⁹The core of the Assembly, however, was made up of some sixty so-called antediluvian ministers who had been deprived since 1661, together with fifty-six ministers they had ordained (there were an additional forty-seven elders), and they proved intransigent. Not only the Church but also the universities were purged of all those who would not take the oath of allegiance, subscribe to the Westminster Confession, accept the new Church government, or who were otherwise thought unfit to exercise the ministry. Although the crown made various efforts between 1692 and 1695 to achieve a more comprehensive settlement, these largely came to nothing. A mere 116 former Episcopalian ministers conformed to the new Church. In the period from 1688 to 1716, a total of 664 ministers out of 926 parishes were ejected, the majority of those ejections occurring in the first couple of years following James's flight in December 1688.¹⁷⁰

Some deprived clergymen managed to hold on to their livings with the support of their parishioners or local landlords, particularly in the north-east. When the newly appointed Presbyterian minister of Glenorchy in Argyllshire arrived to take over from the ousted Episcopalian David Lindsay, none of his parishioners would talk to him. When the new man tried to give his first service, he found his entry to the church blocked, and twelve armed men escorted him back out of the parish and made him swear on the Bible that he would never return. He kept his oath, and Lindsay survived as minister for Glenorchy until his death thirty years later.¹⁷¹ William Smyth, Episcopalian minister of Moneydie in Perthshire, despite being deprived in 1693, continued to hold services in his parish or nearby until 1709.¹⁷² Some 113 former Episcopalians were still in the parishes as late as 1710. It was not until 1720 that the Presbyterian Church finally gained possession of all the churches.¹⁷³

The deep tensions that existed between Presbyterians and Episcopalians were reflected in a bitter press campaign of mutual recrimination fought out in the aftermath of the Revolution. Episcopalians protested that they were suffering persecution on a scale similar to that being experienced by the Huguenots in France.¹⁷⁴ One author complained how those very persons who, in the previous reign, had ‘Addressed for Liberty of Conscience… do now Usurp, Tyrannize over others, and deprive them not only of their freedom in Religious concernments, but of their Possessions’, merely for adhering to that holy doctrine that had been established by the laws of the kingdom; in all this, they had ‘come near to, if not outdone the merciless fury of French Dragooning’.¹⁷⁵ The Anglo-Irish Protestant Nonjuror Charles Leslie alleged that ‘these new modell'd Presbyters, invested with Episcopal Power, in Opposition to Episcopacy, did exercise it with a Tyranny and Lordliness the Bishops had never shewn’.¹⁷⁶ Long accounts were produced detailing the sufferings of the Episcopalian clergy and the alleged atrocities committed against them and their supporters by the Presbyterian rabble.¹⁷⁷ One man, whose only sin was to have married a relation of a bishop, was allegedly ‘set upon in his House’ and ‘dragg'd out into the Ditches, his Books burnt or spoiled, and his poor Wife (at that time in Child-bed) miserably abused’. One Episcopalian minister allegedly had his face daubed with excrement, another even lost his life to an angry crowd. Presbyterian apologists, of course, were quick to deny such reports, alleging that these ‘hear-say Violences used to their Clergy’ were nothing but ‘Hellish Prelaticial Lyes’.¹⁷⁸

Episcopalian apologists challenged the assertion made in the Claim of Right that prelacy had been ‘a great and insupportable greivance’ and ‘contrary to the Inclinations of the generality of the people’. In the first place, they maintained, it was clear that ‘the Church Party, both for number and quality was predominant in the Nation’. The greatest part of the nobility and gentry favoured episcopacy, as did most of the people, especially towards the north, while the Presbyterians drew their support mainly from ‘the meaner and vulgar sort, and those only in the Western parts of the Kingdom’. As another writer put it, if by ‘people’ the authors of the Claim of Right meant ‘the Commonalty, the rude, illiterate Vulgus, the third Man through the whole Kingdom is not Presbyterian’; if they meant ‘Persons of better Quality and Education’, whose sense, this author thought, ‘ought in all reason, to go for the sense of the Nation’, then not one-thirteenth were Presbyterian.¹⁷⁹ They denied that the Episcopalians had been persecutors under Charles II. The penal laws enacted against dissenters after the restitution of episcopacy had been necessary because the Presbyterians advocated resistance and engaged in rebellion against the state. As Tarbat and Mackenzie put it, ‘The Severity of our Laws never appeared against Dissenters for having different Opinions from the established Church’; nor was it possible to ‘instance any one that suffered either Ecclesiastick or Civil Censure, only upon that account, but for High Treason against the State’.¹⁸⁰ It was not true, another pamphleteer proclaimed, ‘that the Presbyterians have suffered any thing for Conscience sake, these twenty seven years by-past’: the state had simply made laws for curbing people of ‘seditious and ungovernable tempers’ and to prevent them ‘from breaking out daily into open Rebellion’.¹⁸¹ In order to substantiate such allegations, in 1692 Alexander Monro produced an abridgement of Alexander Shields’ The Hind Let Loose, a tract of 1687 detailing both the sufferings and the activities of the radical Presbyterians, and invited his readers to judge for themselves ‘whether the Severity of Laws against such Enthusiasts, be not the most Christian compassion towards the State, rather than Cruelty, Tyranny, or Oppression’.¹⁸²

The Episcopalians also denied that they had played any role in the promotion of popery in Scotland. Indeed, they reminded people how they had resisted court designs to establish toleration for Roman Catholics under James VII: ‘the Penal Statutes were still kept on foot by that Episcopal Parliament… and some of the Bishops too were active in the matter’.¹⁸³ Instead, it was the Presbyterians, they claimed, who were guilty of promoting popish principles. Tarbat and Mackenzie wished the Presbyterians would ‘renounce that absolute Supremacy or Papacy which the Kirk hath always claimed over Kings, and Civil Powers’, and suggested that ‘the Papacy of the Scots Presbytery’ was inconsistent ‘with any Form of Government, except that of Popery, which arrogantly presumes (as they also do) to punish and persecute all Governors in the State at their pleasure, and manage all secular Interests’.¹⁸⁴ William Strachan thought that the Presbyterians were like the Papists in carrying the jurisdiction of the Church to such a height ‘as to encroach upon the Rights of the secular Magistrates, and to subject the State to the Church, not only in Spirituals, but likewise in Temporals’.¹⁸⁵

Episcopalian apologists also sought to refute allegations that their clergy had ever been negligent or lived an immoral lifestyle. In answer to one Presbyterian pamphleteer, who had alleged that under James VII the Dean of Hamilton had been accused not only of sodomy, but also ‘of buggering a Mare’ and ‘lying with several men's Wives’, Strachan pointed out that the dean was never accused of buggery or adultery at all; the charge was of sodomy alone and even that was never proven.¹⁸⁶ Instead, charges of immorality were turned back against their opponents. Gilbert Crockatt and John Munro compiled numerous stories of alleged scandalous behaviour by Presbyterians – most of them, no doubt, no more true than similar accusations levelled against the Episcopalians – in a tract first published in 1692, and which was popular enough to be published in a new edition, with additions, the following year. To prove that Presbyterian ministers promoted impiety, Crockatt and Munro cited the example of one Mr Selkirk who, when preaching at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, assured his congregation that God saw no sin in his chosen ones: ‘be you guilty of Murder, Adultery, Bestiality, or any other gross sin, if you be of the Election of Grace, there is no fear of you, for God sees no sin in his Chosen Covenanted People’. Crockatt and Munro also asserted that the Presbyterians' conventicles ‘produced very many Bastards’, because they believed that ‘Where Sin abounds, the Grace of God superabounds’ and that ‘To the Pure all things are pure’. To illustrate Presbyterian hypocrisy, he recounted the alleged story of a married Presbyterian woman from near Edinburgh, who although having suffered several fines for not going to church, ‘scrupl'd not to commit Adultery with one of the Earl of Marr's Regiment’, and then proceeded to bemoan the fact that none of the soldiers was ‘Godly', being that they were ‘great Covenant-breakers’.¹⁸⁷ These were matters in which Crockatt had a certain amount of expertise; according to the Earl of Crawford, Crockatt had some years previously been forced to give up his position as a regent of St Andrews ‘upon misfortun of one or more fornications’.¹⁸⁸

What, then, was the significance of these anti-Presbyterian diatribes, beyond letting off steam and heaping vitriol upon those who had now taken over the Church establishment and were thus in a position to seek revenge against their former Episcopalian persecutors? The earlier Episcopalian apologias, certainly, were produced with the intent of trying to influence the outcome of the eventual settlement in the Church in Scotland. Tarbat and Mackenzie's Memorial, as we have seen, was written before William of Orange was offered even the English crown, and was designed to convince the Prince not to sacrifice the bishops. Those tracts that appeared immediately following the abolition of prelacy might have been intended to try to forestall the establishment of a fully fledged Presbyterian system or to persuade those in power to lend more protection to the suffering Episcopalian clergy. However, it seems that much of this literature was aimed primarily at an English, not a Scottish audience.¹⁸⁹ Within Scotland itself, such propaganda merely served to harden the lines of division, not to mitigate a religiously polarized situation, and might therefore be deemed counterproductive. The main goal, however, was to discredit the Scottish Presbyterians and the Scottish Revolution settlement in the eyes of William and the key policy makers in England. Such propaganda also served to warn the English of a similar threat to their establishment south of the border and that they would be well-advised to try to prevent the official establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland. Writing in 1690, Thomas Morer observed ‘what bitter Reflections’ the Scottish Presbyterians were ‘daily casting upon [the] Church of England’, condemning her clergy ‘for deserting the Principles of Passive Obedience and Non-resistance’ they used ‘to glory so much in’, and boasting ‘that King William loves Episcopacy as ill in England, as in Scotland, and would be content to have it away… if he could get it done’.¹⁹⁰ In a tract published that same year, before the final establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland, John Sage adopted a three-kingdoms perspective, and pondered whether ‘considering that their Solemn League and Covenant obliges them to root out Episcopacy in England and Ireland… the Settling Presbytery in Scotland be reconcilable to the Securing Episcopacy in England?’¹⁹¹ Montgomery of Skelmorlie suggested that the bishops and their clergy were well aware that their credit had sunk so low in Scotland ‘by their monstrous unheard of Cruelties and persecutions that it was not possible to prevent their being rooted out by a justly incensed people… unless they were able to form a support to themselves in England’. They thus began ‘to vilify the Presbyterians’, in the hope of making William and the people of England the Presbyterians' enemies.¹⁹² Indeed, the wranglings that occurred in Scotland partly explain why plans for religious comprehension failed in England, ‘the rigour’ used against the Episcopalians north of the border being a major reason why the English Convocation proved unwilling to compromise with their own nonconformists.¹⁹³ As Strachan pointed out in 1694, the ‘cruel Treatment which their Brethren in Scotland received from that Dissentient Party’ justly alarmed ‘the English Clergy to expect the same usage from the Presbyterians’ in their own country, and given how much influence the Presbyterians had in the English parliament of 1689, ‘it was no ways safe’ for the Convocation to ‘consent to the Dissolving of the present Act of Uniformity’.¹⁹⁴

The Presbyterians were quick to respond to this Episcopalian attack, the way being led by the Presbyterian divine Gilbert Rule, himself a sufferer under Restoration episcopacy, who produced two lengthy tracts in vindication of the new Scottish Church establishment. On the numbers issue, Rule simply asserted that Scottish Presbytery was agreeable to the general inclinations of the people, and that he wished the matter could be put to a poll amongst the more sober and religious sort in order to prove it. His qualifications were such, however, as to make it apparent that the Presbyterians them-selves were aware that there were large sections of the Scottish population they did not carry with them. ‘We do not grudge them [the Episcopalians]’, Rule continued, ‘a multitude of debauched Persons, who hate Presbytery, as the Curb of their Lusts’, and also ‘a sort of Men, who had their dependence on the Court, or on the Prelates’, as well as ‘the Popishly affected, who were but Protestants in Masquerade’. Rule was even prepared to concede that ‘there may be found both among the Ministers and People some sober and religious Persons, who are consciously for Prelacy’, and that the numbers of these had greatly increased since 1662 because of people having been brought up under episcopacy. Nevertheless, he believed this last group was still a small minority when compared to those who supported Presbyterianism.¹⁹⁵ Rule also refuted the charge that the Presbyterians were guilty of persecution. The Episcopalians were not ‘Persecuted for Worshipping God, as we were by them’, he insisted; ‘What Possessions have any been deprived of, unless for Crimes against the State?’¹⁹⁶ Indeed, this was the official line. As Crawford, the president of the council, put it in January 1690, ‘no Episcopal man, since the late happie revolution’ had suffered ‘upon the account of his opinion in Church matters’ but only ‘for their disowning the civil authority, and setting up for a cross interest’.¹⁹⁷ The Presbyterians had suffered much more in the past than the Episcopalians alleged they were suffering now, one pamphleteer protested, for among other things the Presbyterians were subjected to ‘Rapes, Rapine, Murder, Hanging, Drowning, Beheading, Famine, torturing with Boots, Thumikins, etc.’¹⁹⁸ As for the argument that Presbyterianism and monarchy were incompatible, this was simply untrue, Rule insisted: the only reason why the Presbyterians had rebelled on two occasions under Charles II was because they had been driven into rebellion by ‘the severity of these Laws, and the Barbarity used in executing them’.¹⁹⁹

The nature of the dialogue reveals the extent to which the Revolution in Scotland centred around issues that were intrinsically Scottish in the making. Both sides might have sought to appeal to the English to win their support, but what was being addressed was what had gone on in Scotland in the three decades since the Restoration. The dialogue also confirms how polarized this political and religious culture had become, and what little prospect there seemed at this stage of easing existing tensions. Both sides accepted that there had been a ‘Revolution in Church Matters’,²⁰⁰ with the Presbyterians positively welcoming the changes, and the Episcopalians regretting them. Inevitably, this was to push the Episcopalians more and more firmly into the Jacobite camp.

9

The Glorious Revolution in Scotland