1689.] BATTLE OF KILLIECRANKIE. 93 off their submission to Argyle, against another Argyle, who might again reduce them to their old condition of dependence. Dundee first surprised the town of Perth, seizing the public treasure; dispersed two troops of horse; and then entered into the Highlands, to wait the arrival of aid from Ireland. The clans gathered around him in Lochaber, all eager to fight for the cause which had the Mac Callum More for its enemy. During the month of June active operations in the Highlands were suspended. But in the meantime Edinburgh Castle was surrendered by the duke of Gordon. General Mackay had taken the command of the army in Scotland. "He was one of the best officers of the age, when he had nothing to do but to obey and execute orders; for he was both diligent, obliging, and brave; but he was not so fitted for command. His piety made him too apt to mistrust his own sense, and to be too tender, or rather fearful, in anything where there might be a needless effusion of blood."* To shed blood needlessly is the greatest opprobrium of a commander. To mistrust himself in the fear of unavoidable slaughter is to produce a more fatal effusion of blood. It is not piety which produces such mistrust. Whether Mackay, the bravest of the brave, was open to this covert reproach, does not appear in the narratives of his conduct of the battle of Killiecrankie. Dundee had learnt that the marquis of Athol, who had decided to take part with the ruling powers, had sent his son, lord Murray, into Athol to raise the clans; but that his own castle of Blair had been held against him; and that a large number of his clan had quitted the standard of the marquis. He had also learnt that Mackay was advancing to reduce Blair Castle, a post most important as the key of the Northern Highlands. Dundee had received three hundred Irish troops from Ulster, and he had collected again about three thousand Highlanders, who had been allowed to leave Lochaber for their own glens. Mackay was approaching Blair Castle, out of Perthshire. Dundee arrived there on the 27th of July. Mackay was adyancing up the pass of Killiecrankie. On one hand of the narrow defile was the river Garry, rushing below the difficult ascent. On the other side were rocks and wooded mountains. One laden horse and two or three men abreast would fill the road-way. In this defile, the passage of Mackay might have been effectually resisted. Dundee chose to wait for his enemy till he had reached the open valley at the extremity of the pass. The troops were resting, when the alarm was given that the Highlanders were at hand. From the hills a cloud of bonnets and plaids swept into the plain, and the regular soldier was face to face with the clansman ;-" Veterans practised in war's game" on one side-"Shepherds and Herdsmen" on the other.t There had been firing from each for several hours. It was seven o'clock before Dundee gave the word for action. Unplaided and unsocked the Highlanders rushed upon the red soldier. They threw away their firelocks after a volley or two; raised their war-yell, amidst the shriek of the bagpipes; and darted upon Mackay's line. A few minutes of struggle, and then a headlong flight down the pass. What the poet calls "the precept and the pedantry of cold mechanic battle" conld not stand up against the rush of enemies, as strange as the mounted Spaniard was to the Peruvian. The slaughter was terrible, as the Saxons * Burnet, vol. iv. p. 47. + Wordsworth. 94 DEATH OF DUNDEE. [1689. fled through the gorge, with the Celts hewing and slaying amidst a feeble resistance. But there were no final results of the victory of Killiecrankie. The Highlanders did not follow up their success, for they were busy with the booty of the field; and Dundee had fallen. He was leading a charge of his small band of cavalry; and was waving his arm for his men to come on, when a musket ball struck him in the part thus exposed by the opening of his cuirass. He fell from his horse, and, after a few sentences, "word spake never more." * There was terror in Edinburgh when it was known that Mackay had been defeated. There was hope when the news came that Dundee had fallen. The Highlanders went back to their mountains, laden with plunder. In London there was necessarily alarm. "But when the account of Dundee's death was known, the whole city appeared full of joy; and the king's enemies, who had secretly furnished themselves with arms, now laid aside all thoughts of using them." The over-sanguine hopes of the enter prise of Dundee amongst the followers of king James, are thus expressed in a lament for his death: "Had he lived, there was little doubt but he had soon established the king's authority in Scotland, prevented the prince of Orange going or sending an army into Ireland, and put his majesty in a fair way of regaining England itself." Certainly not; whilst the real intentions. of James towards Scotland and England continued to ooze out, as they were sure to do. Balcarres, in his account to king James of the affairs of Scotland, has this anecdote of the characteristic Stuart policy: "Next day after the fight, an officer riding by the place where my lord Dundee fell, found lying there a bundle of papers and commissions, which he had about him. Those who stripped him thought them of but small concern, so they left them there lying. This officer a little after did show them to several of your friends, among which there was one paper did no small prejudice to your affairs, and would have done much more, had it not been carefully suppressed. It was a letter of the earl of Melfort's to my lord Dundee, when he sent him over your majesty's Declaration, in which was contained not only an indemnity, but a toleration for all persuasions. This the earl of Melfort believed would be shocking to Dundee, considering his hatred to fanatics; for he writes, that notwithstanding of what was promised in your declaration, indemnity and indulgence, yet he had couched things so, that you would break them when you pleased; nor would you think yourself obliged to stand to them." The letter that it is pretended he wrote to King James is a transparent forgery. Close of the first Session of the English Parliament-The Irish Parliament-Second Session of the English Parliament-The Bill of Rights-The Princess Anne-Whig and Tory Factions-Parliament dissolved-State of the Army in Ireland-Abuses in Government Departments-Opening of the New Parliament-Corruption -Jealousy in settling the Revenue-Act of Recognition-Act of Grace-William goes to Ireland-Landing and March of William-The Boyne-William slightly wounded-Battle of the Boyne-Flight of James-His Speech at Dublin-Naval defeat at Beachy Head-Energetic Conduct of the Queen. THE proceedings of the English parliament, from the period when the Commons went up to the king with an address, declaring that they would support him in a war with France, to the adjournment in August, are no doubt interesting when presented with characteristic details, but are scarcely important enough to be related with minuteness in a general history. Less important is it to trace the factious disputes in which so many angry passions and so many petty jealousies were called forth, during the three or four latter months of the Session. It is satisfactory to know that the attainders of William lord Russell, of Algernon Sidney, of Alice Lisle, and of alderman Cornish, were reversed. It is not so satisfactory to trace the revival of past animosities in the discussions upon the sentence of Titus Oates, who brought that sentence before the House of Lords by a writ of A majority of Peers affirmed the judgment; but in the Lower House a bill annulling the sentence was brought in. The majority of the Lords looked at the infamous character of Oates. In the Commons the supporters of the bill for annulling the sentence looked to the illegality of the judgment. The difference between the two Houses was compromised. Oates was released from confinement, having received a pardon; and the Commons moved an address to the Crown that he should be allowed a small pension for his support. In the case of Samuel Johnson, the Commons voted that his degradation from ecclesiastical functions was illegal, and the king was asked to bestow some preferment on him. William, more wisely, gave him a thousand pounds and a pension. During this Session an Act was passed by which any Protestant clergy 96 THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. * [1689. man of Ireland who had been forced to leave that kingdom, "for fear of the Irish rebels," should not be deprived of an Irish benefice by accepting ecclesiastical. preferment in England. Before the landing of James at Kinsale many Protestants had fled to England, in the dread of a repetition of the frightful atrocities of 1641. Many of these refugees were aided by a public subscription; and some of the clergy were appointed to lectureships and small livings. The miseries produced "by fear of the Irish rebels" were small, compared with the tyrannous proceedings of the Parliament which king James opened in Dublin on the 7th of May. Of two hundred and fifty members of the Irish House of Commons, only six were Protestants. James told the Parliament in opening the Session, that he had always been for liberty of conscience, and against invading the property of any man. The next day he issued a Proclamation in which he says that, since his arrival in his kingdom of Ireland, he had made it his chief concern to satisfy his Protestant subjects "that the defence of their religion, privileges, and properties, is equally our care with the recovery of our rights." It has been alleged, as an excuse for James in furnishing a very speedy proof of the futility of such professions, that he could not control the violent spirit of his Parliament. They passed an Act of Toleration on one day; they passed an Act of Confiscation on the next. The one Act consisted of unmeaning professions; the other transferred all the lands held by Protestants under old Acts of Settlement to their ancient proprietors before the rebellion of 1641. Another Act transferred the tithe, for the most part from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic clergy, without compensation. But the iniquity of the Act which deprived the holders of property for nearly forty years, whether acquired by grant, purchase, or mortgage, was small when compared with the Act of attainder, by which two thousand six hundred persons were declared traitors, and adjudged to suffer the pains of death and forfeiture. "The severity of this Act exceeded even that of the famous proscription at Rome during the last Triumvirate." The Act of Attainder affected the real estates of absentees thus declared to be traitors. Another Act vested in the king all their goods and chattels, debts and arrears of rent. The spirit of the Parliament was universally carried out. The arms of all Protestants were seized, whatever their political opinions. The Protestant clergy, mostly preachers of divine right, were insulted and unprotected. The fellows and scholars of the university of Dublin were thrust out of their halls and chambers, and their property seized; the sole condition of their personal liberty being that no three of them should meet together, "on pain of death." This was the ready phrase of terror applicable under all circumstances. The king, with the example before him of iniquities long faded away, issued a coinage of brass money which was to pass as sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns. "Eight half-crowns of this money were not intrinsically worth two-pence." § The tradesmen of Dublin, if they refused the money, were threatened to be hanged by the Provost-Marshal. The government of king James, that was looking forward to the day when England and Scotland should come under the same merciful rule, decreed, by * 1 Gul. & Mar. c. 29. See Journal of the Very Rev. Rowland Davies, 1857. § Ibid. Harris's "Life of Willi m III." p. 231. 1689.] SECOND SESSION OF THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT. 97 proclamation in the name of the king, that no covetous person should give by exchange of the currency, intolerable rates for gold and silver, to the great disparagement of the brass and copper money, under pain of death. Such, when king William met his Parliament on the 19th of October, were the manifestations of what might be expected from the blessed rule of king James, should he be restored in England. It is recorded of William that, on the day before, he met the Council, and produced a draft of his speech, written by himself in French, when he thus expressed himself: "I know most of my predecessors were used to commit the drawing of such speeches to their ministers, who generally had their private aims and interests in view; to prevent which, I have thought fit to write it myself in French, because I am not so great a master of the English tongue: therefore, I desire you to look it over, and change what you may find amiss, that it may be translated into English." This was not complimentary to the king's ministers, nor accordant with our modern notions of ministerial responsibility. Yet it was an honest endeavour of William's common sense not to be misunderstood. He said that it was a misfortune that, at the beginning of his reign, he should have to ask such large supplies for carrying on the wars upon which he had entered with their advice. He had not engaged in these out of a vain ambition, but from the necessity of opposing those who had so visibly discovered their designs of destroying the liberties and religion of the nation. He asked that there should be no delay in determining what should be the supply for the charges of the war, because there was to be a meeting at the Hague, of all the princes and States who were engaged against France, and his own resolutions would be determined by the means at his command. This was honest language; which the Commons seconded by a vote that they would stand by the king in the reduction of Ireland and in a vigorous prosecution of the war with France. Yet there is nothing more painful to one who looks back upon the history of his country with an earnest desire to think the best of her public men, than to trace, amidst the bitter contests of factions, the slight predominance of the patriotic spirit. The second Session of the Convention Parliament is a melancholy exhibition of party intrigues for power, of rivalries that were to be made enduring by mean revenges, of desperate attempts to revive the indiscriminate hatreds of the past in a frequent disregard of the necessities of the present-hateful contests, that made William seriously purpose to throw up the government, and remove himself from a scene where he was unable to make men understand that there was a duty to their country, which ought to outweigh all selfish desires. The work for which this Session of Parliament is to be chiefly remembered in after time, was the passing of the Bill of Rights. This celebrated measure was the reduction to a Statute of the Declaration of Rights. Some impor tant provisions were introduced. It was enacted, to prevent the kingdom being governed by a Papist, that the sovereign should in Parliament, and at the Coronation, adopt by repetition and subscription, the declaration against Transubstantiation. It was also enacted that if the sovereign should marry a Papist, the subject should be absolved from allegiance. The dispensing power of the Crown-the cause of so many fierce conflicts-was absolutely |