success, to ensure the execution of that blessed clause, by which it is enacted, that no freeman should be imprisoned or punished, except by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land. The provisions of the present act of Habeas Corpus, which are too well known to require enumeration here, are, I believe, the same as those of the bill introduced in 1675, and are so admirably adapted to secure the personal liberty of the subject, as to merit the praise of all historians. The censure of James the Second, conveyed in the following passage, is however, superior in value to any panegyric. In his advice to his son, he says, "It was a great misfortune to the people, as well as to the crown, the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act; since it obliges the crown to keep a greater force on foot, than it needed otherwise to preserve the government, and encourages disaffected, turbulent, and unquiet spirits, to contrive and carry on with more security to themselves, their wicked designs; it was contrived and carried on by the Earl of Shaftesbury to that intent."* The part here attributed to Lord Shaftesbury, in framing this law, instead of being disgraceful, does great credit to his sagacity, and entitles him to the gratitude of the people of England. The whigs in the council, though few in number, may have likewise assisted in obtaining the King's consent to the act. Even the act now passed however, excellent as it is, was not scrupulously observed till after the Revolution. The peculiar distinction of that great event is not, as some suppose, to have established the right of Parliament to depose the King, and alter the succession of the crown, a principle often before asserted in the course of our history, but to have brought into easy and undisturbed practice those ancient rights and liberties, which the Plantagenets had attempted in vain to subvert, which the Tudors had often been allowed to trample upon, and which the Stuarts sacrificed their throne to destroy.

* Life of James, b. ii. p. 621.

EXECUTION OF LANGHORNE. RETURN OF THE DUKE OF YORK. PROROGATION OF PARLIAMENT.

DISGRACE OF MONMOUTH AND SHAFTESBURY. MEAL-TUB PLOT. RETIREMENT OF ESSEX AND HALIFAX. THEIR CHARACTERS. PETITIONS FOR THE MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.

AND TORIES.

ABHORRING ADDRESSES.

CHARACTER OF THE PARTIES SO CALLED.

WHIGS

June 2.

In the spring of the year 1679, the insurrection which is May 29. known by the name of the rising of Bothwell Bridge, broke out in Scotland. In the first encounter with the insurgents, which happened at Loudon Hill, Captain Graham, afterwards celebrated as Viscount Dundee, was defeated. When this news was communicated to the council, Lord Russell stood up and began a speech, saying, "he was so far from wondering that this trouble happened now, that he rather wondered it did not happen long ago, since His Majesty thought fit to retain incendiaries near his person, and in his very council." Upon which the Duke of Lauderdale, seeing that he was aimed at, and recollecting the parliamentary addresses against him, asked leave to withdraw. But the King replied, with a motion of his hand, "No, no, sit down, my Lord; this is no place for addresses.” *

North, who relates this saying, does not hesitate to accuse Lord Shaftesbury and the Whigs of exciting the rebellion, which was the subject of debate. As the only authority he alleges in support of this position, is a rumour in an anonymous pamphlet, that forty copies of a speech of Lord Shaftesbury's had been sent to Scotland, it may seem unnecessary to refute so groundless a charge. But as it has been credited by the impartial Ralph, and as the affairs of Scot

*North Ex. p. 79.

land may afford a specimen of the temper of the government in general, it is by no means superfluous to enquire into the real causes of the Scotch insurrection.

At the time of the Restoration, it became a question at court, whether prelacy should be re-established in Scotland. Lauderdale, whose sufferings, abilities, and knowledge of his countrymen, gave weight to his opinion, advised, that the presbyterian form of church government should be continued, as more congenial to the religious opinions of the nation. But Clarendon and Middleton advised the restoration of prelacy, in conformity to their own prejudices and the policy of the King's father. Unhappily their counsel prevailed. Middleton, who was sent down as King's commissioner, obtained from an obsequious parliament, not only the measures which had been proposed at court, but an act annulling the four parliaments which had sate since the year 1633. The bishops too were restored, not as they had been during the reign of Charles the First, subject to the controul of a presbytery and synod, but invested with supreme and exclusive jurisdiction in ecclesiastical affairs. All ministers who refused or neglected to secure induction from a bishop were displaced. Three hundred and fifty clergymen were in this manner ejected from their livings. But the people, sincerely attached to the presbyterian worship, followed their pastors, and as they had not houses large enough to hold their congregations, conventicles were held in the open fields. The lukewarm and irregular behaviour of the new clergy tended to promote the secession of their flocks. Upon this proof of the determined spirit of the people, the severities of the government were increased. By an order of the privy council, the ejected clergy were forbidden to approach within twenty miles of their former parishes; declared seditious if they attempted to preach; and all those who presumed to give them subsistence, subjected to the same penalties. And although Middleton was soon afterwards supplanted by Lauderdale, these acts were confirmed, and others still more severe added by the parliament which he assembled. On separation or absence

1663.

from the parish church, landholders forfeited a fourth part of their rents; tenants and citizens a fourth part of their substance, the freedom of their corporations, and the privilege of trade; and were subjected, besides, to whatever corporal punishment the privy council might choose to inflict. The severity of these laws was exceeded by the rigour of their execution. An ecclesiastical commission went round the country, bound by no form of law, and filling the gaols with those who refused to take the oath of supremacy. In the western counties, a military persecution was introduced, and the recusants were ruined by fines arbitrarily imposed, and the unmeasured exactions of the soldiery. After three years' continuance of extreme oppression, the people were driven into an insurrection, but their force was easily beaten and dispersed on the Pentland hills. Frequent executions, often preceded by torture, took place on that occasion, both in Edinburgh and the country, till an order arrived from court to stop the effusion of blood; and even then the two archbishops, Sharp and Burnet, withheld the order till they had taken away the life of a young preacher named Maccail, whom they barbarously tortured. He expired in the midst of his agony, exclaiming, with sublime enthusiasm, “Farewell, thou sun and moon! the world, and all its delights, farewell! Welcome God, my Father! welcome Christ, my Redeemer! welcome glory and eternal life! welcome death!"

1666.

These judicial murders were equalled, if not surpassed, by the military executions in the west, where General Dalziel put to death a son for refusing to discover his father, and a woman for being accessary to the escape of her husband. After this, the King relaxed the severity of his government, and Scotland seems to have enjoyed some repose. In 1669, indeed, the Parliament, always subservient, gave the King a more express power to regulate the church than he had hitherto possessed. This is supposed to have been an artful step of Lauderdale, to pave the way for Popery. In the following year, the storm of persecution rose again with fresh violence. The act against conventicles was renewed, and the preachers were subjected to confis

cation and death. The penalties on attending conventicles, were made a source of revenue. A youth from school, and a gentleman whose wife had attended a field-meeting, compounded for fifteen hundred pounds sterling. Ten gentlemen, in the shire of Renfrew, were ordered to pay thirty thousand pounds; and many instances are related of similar extortion. But it would be endless to detail the various oppressions and abuses which Lauderdale introduced during his administration in Scotland. Letters of intercommuning (a kind of excommunication) were revived, and thousands of persons were ordered to be left without" meat, drink, house, harbour, or victuals." This active persecution, as might be expected, served only to exasperate. Field conventicles continued to be held, but those who attended them, sallying from hiding-places in the mountains, and furnished with arms for their defence, acquired the habits and ferocity of barbarians. Sharp, finding himself generally hated, and wishing to strike terror into his enemies, brought on the trial of one Mitchel, who, upon a promise of pardon, had, four years before, confessed an attempt to murder him. He 1678. was now brought out of prison, and four lords of the privy council, Sharp, Lauderdale, Rothes, and Hatton, did not hesitate to perjure themselves, to procure his condemnation. A copy of the very act of council which promised him his life was produced, but Lauderdale would not suffer the original to be sought for, saying, that four lords of council came not there to be accused of perjury.

Jan.

A

It was not long after this, that Sharp, who had pressed the execution of this man, even against the wish of Lauderdale, was barbarously murdered by some fanatics, employed in watching for one Carmichael, a man noted for his cruelty in the execution of his office of commissioner to exterminate conventicles. This savage action, charged by the privy council on the whole body of fanatics, exasperated the minds of the royalists. The field conventicles were ordained to be treasonable, and troops were sent against them, to suppress religion by the sword. The insurrection which followed need scarcely be wondered at. And there is every reason to believe, from the joint testimony of Wodrow and Barillon,