he must report that he had failed in his promise to raise a regiment. But the men were already assembled; they were actually drawn up in companies; they only waited for terms which they thought they could in conscience accept. Another effort was made. A short paper was prepared for them, containing a declaration that they engaged in the service to resist Popery, Prelacy, and arbitrary power, and to recover and establish the work of reformation. Cleland rode from company to company and read this paper, and company after company agreed to enlist upon its terms.1 Such was the origin of the Cameronian regiment. Its first lieutenant-colonel was Cleland; its first chaplain was Shields. Its courage was first tried at Dunkeld, where these eight hundred Covenanted warriors rolled back the tide of Celtic invasion; and since then, undegenerate though changed, it has won trophies in every quarter of the world.2

When the Convention resolved to offer the crown to William and Mary, they published a proclamation forbidding any one to acknowledge James longer as king, and ordering prayers to be made in all the churches of the kingdom for the new sovereigns. Every minister was required to read this document from the pulpit, and to mould his devotions according to it, under pain of being deprived of his benefice. Many of the Episcopalians refused to do so. The recusants were brought before the Council, and a considerable number were ejected from their parishes. Their friends loudly complained of the harshness with which they were used. It was said that several of the clergy had not received copies of the proclaination till the morning of the Sunday on which they were required to read it, and had no time to make up their minds on so weighty a matter as the transference of their allegiance. It was argued that though the crown was at that time offered to William and Mary, they had not yet accepted of it, and that, till the transaction was complete, ministers might be excused from mentioning them in their prayers. It was told that many of the Presbyterian ministers had taken no notice of the proclamation, and yet not a hair of their head was touched. The Earl of Crawford was especially blamed for his diligence in hauling 1 Faithful Contendings Displayed, pp. 393-404.

The Cameronians now form the 26th Regiment. It was a rule that a Bible should form a part of each man's kit. Its first defection was cardplaying, on which subject a pastoral letter was addressed by the Societies to the regiment. See Faithful Contendings. 'Case of the Afflicted Clergy, &c.

unhappy recusants before the Council. The earl, on the other hand, declared that his procedure had been particularly mild and merciful, in fact, that such was his tenderness that an alarm was spread that Episcopacy was to be reintroduced; that from first to last he had deserted the diet against thirtythree ministers, although proof might have been had of their guilt, but that it was hard that men who refused to own the king's authority should continue to enjoy their benefices; and that one man, on whose account he had been blamed, not only prayed openly for King James, but that the Lord would put a hook in the nose of the usurper William.1

The country had now a king, and might have a parliament. With a view to this, William appointed the Duke of Hamilton his Royal Commissioner. Hamilton's high rank and Whig principles entitled him to the dignity, but he had the middle views and vacillating policy which seemed to be hereditary in his family, and during his viceroyalty he failed to satisfy either others or himself. He was jealous of those associated with him, was perpetually complaining of Lord Crawford and others receiving the honours which were due to him, and was suspected of not being greatly grieved when matters went badly in the parliament.2 As the kingdom had no chancellor, the Earl of Crawford was appointed to preside in the parliament when it met. He was a staunch Presbyterian, and a wellmeaning man; but his poverty and puritanism made him the butt of the keenest satire of the Prelatists. Lord Melville, a man of moderate abilities and consistent Presbyterian principles, and who had endured exile for their sake, was made Secretary of State. Lord Stair, perhaps the greatest lawyer whom Scotland has produced, was made President of the Session, and his son, Sir John Dalrymple, one of the ablest debaters of his day, was created Lord Advocate; but both father and son had been involved in the crimes of the preceding reigns; and many, who deemed themselves free from such a blemish, grudged their promotion. For every person who received an office, ten were disappointed, and believed their merits overlooked; for the country was full of politicians, every one of whom thought he had saved the State.

The Estates assembled at Edinburgh on the 5th of June.

1 See Letters from Lord Crawford to Lord Melville, dated 12th October, 24th October, and 5th November, 1689, in the Leven and Melville Papers.

2 For proofs of this, see Letters in the Leven and Melville Papers.

Though the Episcopal Church still existed, no bishops came to claim their seats. As the members who now met had been elected by their constituents merely to sit in a convention when no parliament was possible, by their first act they declared their present meeting to be a parliament. By their second act, they ratified the sovereign authority of William and Mary.1 But after this the current of legislation no longer ran smoothly. An opposition to the government had been organised, embracing some of the ablest and neediest men of the day—men who had been disappointed of place, and who, for the first time in a Scotch parliament, exhibited the now well-known tactics of the opposition benches, by giving all the annoyance they could to the party in power. By the light of the Leven and Melville Papers, we can clearly trace the manœuvres of the contending factions. The Club, for so the opposition was called, had resolved upon the total abolition of the Lords of the Articles, and upon the expulsion from power of all who had been implicated in the tyrannies of the Stewarts. William, on the other hand, was willing to modify the constitution of the Articles, but not to abolish them, and had resolved that his government should comprehend the strength of all parties, without reference to the past.

The government were anxious to bring up ecclesiastical affairs, that the time of the parliament might be occupied with legislating upon these. The Club resolved that ecclesiastical affairs should not be touched till their grievances were redressed.2 It came to a vote, and church-government was delayed, and the abolition of the Articles was taken up, upon which there ensued a violent debate. About a fortnight later the Commissioner proposed, that seeing they were not likely to agree in regard to the committees to be substituted for the Articles, they should settle the government of the Church in open parliament. Lord Belhaven spoke in favour of this; Lord Polwarth opposed it, declaring that there was no doing. 1 Tarbet's Acts of the Scottish Parliament.

2 On the 26th of June 1689 Sir John Dalrymple writes to Lord Melville -"The party thinks the king will certainly in this session establish the church-government, and if it were done, other things that are not of so much moment may be left unfinished; therefore they are prevailed with to stave off that which would anticipate many idle and humorous questions. But I am sure the generality of ministers would not be of that opinion; so to-morrow we are like to have a warm diet." On the 27th of June, Hamilton wrote to Melville-"I told them I desired them to consider of the settling of the Church, of purpose to give them business until his Majesty's pleasure came. (Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 88, 89.)

business in open parliament, and that committees must first be established.1 The Church's polity was again put off.

Besides these impediments thrown in the way of the Church's settlement by the contentions of political parties, there were great difficulties in the subject itself, and a great variety of opinions regarding it. The Viscount Tarbet, in a memorial relating to Church affairs laid before the government, remarked that church-government had been made the pretence for the troubles of Scotland for a hundred years; that Episcopacy was odious to one part of the nation, Presbytery to the other; that the Episcopalians were the more numerous and powerful, the Presbyterians the more zealous and hot; that the parliament contained a majority of Presbyterians by the new mode of election pursued in burghs, but that the majority of the nobility and barons were for Episcopacy; that if any one party got the power of settling the Church's polity, the other party would kick against it, and probably overturn it. He therefore proposed, as a compromise, that the ejected ministers should be replaced, where the heritors of the most land in the parish desired it; that all the ministers holding benefices should be allowed to retain them, upon condition of their recognising the government; that vacant churches should be planted by the people where there was no patron, and by the patron where there was one; and that presbyteries and synods under the presidency of perpetual moderators, salaried out of the bishops' teinds, should be entrusted with the government of all ecclesiastical affairs.2

That the parliament should regulate the affairs of the Church was plain Erastianism. This happy thought occurred to the Episcopal clergy of the Diocese of Aberdeen, and therefore they laid before the Estates an address, begging that a General Assembly should be called to determine the Church's polity. The Royal Commissioner was thought to favour this plan; but the Earl of Crawford and the staunch Presbyterians cried out against it: The Conformist clergy would outvote the Nonconformists by six to one, and a species of Episcopacy would again be established; the parliament must give a polity to the Church. It was the same turn which affairs had taken at the time of the Reformation, when some of the

3

1 Letter, Lockhart to Melville, 11th July 1689. (Leven and Melville Papers.)

2 Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 125-27.

Ibid. p. 137.

bishops protested that the changes to be effected in ecclesiastical affairs ought of right to be entrusted to a convocation of the clergy. Politicians had no calling within the courts of the temple.

In truth, one of the greatest difficulties to be solved was, who were to be the ministers and who were to be the rulers of the Revolution Church. Some were anxious that the Presbytery of 1592 should at once be established; but others argued that the Church must be purged before its courts were constituted; for, if not, the Episcopalians who still retained their parishes would in every case have a sweeping majority. Crawford wrote again and again to Lord Melville, earnestly urging this important consideration. Patronage, too, it was argued, must be abolished, or Episcopal patrons would thrust Episcopal incumbents into their parishes.

Thus difficulty rose above difficulty. The Duke of Hamilton was in favour of some scheme which would comprehend the Episcopalians; the Club, which commanded the majority of the House, promised the people that they would lend their help to the establishment of Presbytery, in its purest form, when their own ends were served.1 The one party reminded the Estates of the violence of Presbytery in its day of power, and insisted that it should be restricted; the other party spoke of the persecutions of the Prelatists, and asked that they should be plucked up root and branch. The president, in his own peculiar way, wrote to the secretary:-" I hope the Lord in His own time will dissipate these fogs that blind some of us, and enable us to erect a second temple, the glory of which shall outshine that which was first in our purest times." 2

At length, about the middle of July, an act was passed abolishing Episcopacy, as a great grievance to the nation, and declaring that their Majesties, with consent of the Estates, would establish such a church-government as should be agreeable to the inclinations of the people. At the same time an act was voted repealing the Act 1669, regarding the royal supremacy. The first of these was touched by the sceptre, and became law; but the second, together with an act afterwards passed to restore all the Presbyterian ministers ejected in 1662, were not touched; and so they remained, in the meantime, dead letters in the statute-book.3

2 Ibid. p. 137.

1 Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 90, 91. 3 See Tarbet's Collection of Acts. Also Melville Papers-Hamilton to Melville, 18th July; also Crawford to Melville, 23d July and 1st August.