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VII.

BOOK while the king was persuaded that an army devoted to his service, was prepared to support his most 1679. arbitrary designs, an injured and insulted people was disposed, on the least disorder in England, to break into open rebellion as soon as the troops were removed. When the declaration of indulgence, which had been imitated in Scotland, was recalled by Charles, the Cabal dissolved in its own weakness and decay. Shaftesbury was preserved by an opportune defection, or rather by his uniform adherence to the popular party; and Lauderdale, whom the house of commons declared a grievance, sought an undisturbed retreat from the tempest in Scotland. The opposition encountered there, was the more severe as it was unexpected and justly incurred. The nobility were provoked at his arrogance, and the commons at his oppressions; but the mutinous disposition of parliament was not discovered nor even suspected till it assemNov. 12. bled. The king's letter was read and enforced by the commissioner, recommending more vigorous means of persecution, and requesting additional aids for the Dutch war. Instead of the usual responses of a submissive parliament, the duke of Hamilton, a younger son of the house of Douglas, who had married the heiress, and obtained, by the courtesy of Scotland, the titles of Hamilton, demanded that the situation of the nation should be first examined, and its grievances redressed. The grievances of the nation were re-echoed by twenty

VII

1673.

members. They arose and complained successively BOOK of the monopolies of brandy, salt, tobacco, of the administration of justice, and the adulteration of the coin; but religious persecution, the worst of grievances, was an interdicted subject of which they durst not complain. The commissioner, astonished at their opposition, endeavoured, by his overbearing menaces, to interrupt their debates. "Is this a free parliament or not?" was the indignant reply, and no expedient remained but to adjourn for a week. At the next meeting, in order to appease their indignation, the monopolies were repealed. But the relief was unsatis factory, unless the author and instruments of op pression were removed and punished; and they who considered Lauderdale's inordinate power and accumulation of offices as the greatest evil, persisted in their resolution to represent the national grievances in an address to the king. The com missioner's last resource was to adjourn the parliament for two months; and in the interval, Tweedale, Hamilton, and the leaders of opposition were invited to court. They were received and dismissed with full assurances that the grievances should be left to parliament; and hastened down amidst such heavy snows and intense or continued frosts, that a third of the sheep and cattle were starved to death. On their arrival, the parliament, which was permitted to meet, was adjourn

BOOK ed within half an hour, and then dissolved by a

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1673.

Redress of

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letter from the king.59

The disappointment excited such violent disgrievances content, that some undertook to assassinate Lauevaded by Charles. derdale and his whole party; but these desperate councils were overruled by Hamilton, who was again invited to court with his friends. They requested to be heard by their sovereign, but were required to present their complaints in writing. The most cautious complaints which it was possible to frame, would be converted into leasingmaking, especially as the archbishop of Glasgow had been lately entangled in the same snare. Their grievances were communicated to Charles by an anonymous letter, but all hopes of redress or relief were disappointed, as they durst not confide in his assurance, that no paper which they subscribed would be employed for their destruction. Their grievances proclaimed in pamphlets, renewed the demands of the English commons for the removal of Lauderdale. If not admitted by Charles to the secret of the first clandestine treaty with France, for restoring the catholic religion in England, he had entered with zeal into the second subsidiary alliance, to establish an absolute government by the introduction of French troops, with whom the army procured from the Scottish parliament

1674.

99 Scotland's Grievances. Kirkton, 88, Wodrow, i. App. 98. Crawford's Lives of Officers of State, 241. Burnet, i 108. Law's Diary, MS. Adv. Library.

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1674.

was intended to co-operate. The acts ordaining BOOK the army to march wheresoever the Scottish council should appoint, and the honour or safety of the king might require, were examined by the commons, when the evidence of the celebrated Gilbert Burnet revealed his design, if the king had continued firm, to summon the Scottish army into England to support the Cabal. But the king, who had dismissed in Clarendon the monitor of his early youth, and the friend of his adversity, considered truly that a minister devoted to the acquisition of power was also devoted to the crown. Lauderdale, confirmed in his offices, became more absolute than ever; his opponents were all displaced from the council except Hamilton; and though he condescended at times to court the presbyterians, his administration displays the most signal examples of the corrupt and wanton abuse of power.60

advocates

from town.

A private litigation between the earls of Dun- Faculty of fermline and Callender, to divest the latter of half expelled his fortune, was espoused by Lauderdale, who determined, before his departure for court, to influence the decision of the bench by his voice and presence as an extraordinary judge. The question was accelerated, and appointed to be heard by the president, in defence of a recent statute, that

61

60 Crawford's Hist. MS. ii. 125. Wodrow, i. 364-79. Sir John Dalrymple's Memoirs.

Crawford's MS. Hist. ii. 125.

BOOK

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1

no cause should be unduly or prematurely called.62
An appeal to parliament, which was then uncom-
mon, yet not without precedent, was immediately
lodged. The novelty of the attempt was resented;
and as the integrity of the court had already been
impeached, and its decisions quoted in the late
parliament as partial or unjust, it became the more
necessary, in the opinion of the judges, to repress
the insolence of the bar. The appellant's counsel
were required to swear to the advice they had
given, and Lockhart and Cunningham, the most
eminent of their profession, were expelled for their
refusal of an arbitrary oath. Fifty advocates, resent-
ing the indignity done to their order, followed them
from the bar, and at the instigation of Lauderdale,
were banished twelve miles from the capital, till
they should renounce the right of appeals to par-
liament. The necessity of appeals was universally
felt and acknowledged in secret.
But the bar was

divided like the church into conformists and non-
conformists; the former a servile train that ad-
hered to the court, the latter a large majority who
retired with Cunningham to Linlithgow, and with
Lockhart to Haddington. When the term pre-
scribed for their submission had elapsed, they were
permitted to return, after a year's exile, upon an
evasive acknowledgment that the judicial pro-
ceedings of the court were not suspended by ap-
peals, of which however they durst not disown
62 See NOTE II.

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