Episcopacy was now thrown down; but Presbytery was yet to be built up. On the 22d of July the Commissioner laid before the Estates the draft of a bill for settling the government of the Church, which may be considered as containing the views of William and his government. It revived the Act 1592, generally regarded as the charter of Presbytery. It respected the rights of patrons. It ordained that all ministers in the kingdom should conform to the Presbyterian government; and that, if they did so, and took the Oath of Allegiance, they should be continued in their livings. It provided that the ministers ejected for not conforming to Episcopacy, and for refusing to take the Test, should be restored to their parishes; and those removed to make way for them provided for otherwise. It declared that the ecclesiastical courts must not meddle with civil affairs, as great scandal had thence arisen; and that, to see this carried out, a royal commissioner should have a right to sit in them all.1 This carefully guarded measure did not please the high-flown Presbyterians. Another bill, drawn up in agreement with an address presented by the Presbyterian ministers, was the same day laid on the table by Lord Cardross. The Commissioner sent them both up to London to be canvassed there.2

A few days more, and the news of Dundee's victory at the wild Pass of Killiecrankie burst upon the metropolis. It was at first reported that General Mackay was killed, and that Dundee was pursuing his victory. The parliament was paralysed. But it was remarked that, while grief clouded almost every face, some of the westland Whigs looked gladder than ever it was even said they were ready to flee to arms, and that, if they did so, they would leave his Majesty no more authority than the Doge of Venice. When intelligence of the disaster became more certain and more minute-when it was known that Dundee had fallen, and that Mackay was rallying his broken regiments-the panic began to abate. However, the parliament remained as unmanageable as ever. William refused to yield to its demands. It refused to vote him supplies. Finding it to become more and more troublesome, the Royal Commissioner adjourned it on the 2nd of August.*

3

1 A copy of this bill will be found in the Appendix to Carstare's State Papers.

2 Leven and Melville Papers-Hamilton to Melville, 23d and 25th July; also Crawford to Melville, 23d July, pp. 186-88.

3 Sir William Lockhart to Melville, 30th July 1689. Hamilton to Melville, 1st and 2nd August.

Thus the Estates broke up, and the kingdom was without a Church; Prelacy had been overthrown, but nothing had yet been substituted in its stead. By his Majesty's authority, kirksessions, presbyteries, and synods were meeting;1 by their own authority, bishops were still ordaining priests, granting warrants for marriages, rejoicing in their titles; and the deprived ministers were suing for their stipends before the commissariat courts.2 The community were in perfect uncertainty as to what was to be done, and the most contradictory reports were everywhere in circulation. It was said that some of the rabbled curates were to be forced back upon their parishes, and the westland gentry talked of putting themselves in a posture of defence. The members of the Club declared loudly that the king had failed in his promises. On the other hand, it was told how pitiless the Council was in casting clergymen out of their cures for refusing to keep a fast on Sunday-the highest festival of the Church; and how Presbyterians were rebaptizing Episcopal children. There were even rumours that a coalition had been formed between the party of Hamilton and the Club, and that its object was to drive Melville and Stair from office, and strangle Presbytery. In contemplating these things, Lord Crawford wrote to Lord Melville that he was like Hannah, of a sorrowful spirit ; and a fortnight later he declared he could find no sleep for thinking of the Church. "For though I dare not question," said he, "but that God hath begun to put His feet upon our waters, and that He will not draw in His arm which He hath bared until He make His enemies His footstool, and that He is an overmatch for them all; that He will find out carpenters to fray all those horns which push at His ark, and that in due time He will level all those mountains which stand in Zerubbabel's way; yet I have my fainting fits, and my distrustful heart doth often dictate harsh things to me." From this the President of the Scottish Parliament proceeds to plead poverty, and very pitifully he does it: "Though my own case," he continues, "were such as I were put to seek my next meal, as has been the fortune of a better man than I am, and is not very far from my present lot,

1 Leven and Melville Papers-Instructions of the King to his Council, July 1689.

2 Ibid.-Crawford to Melville, 24th December.

Ibid.-Cunningham to Lord Cardross, 9th August.

+ Ibid.-Sir John Dalrymple to Melville, 8th Feb. 1690.

yet I will serve his Majesty as affectionately as if I were loaded with rewards."1

Besides the dangers which were known, there were others which were unknown, lying like hidden rocks under the violent contrary currents of public thought. Sir James Montgomery, the leader of the Club, had entered into a plot, in which some of the greatest nobles in the kingdom were engaged, to bring back James, upon condition that he would establish Presbytery. The wildest Whigs joined hands with the wildest Jacobites to compass this utopian plan. Happily the conspiracy came to naught, and six months revealed to the world the whole mystery of their iniquity.

Thus months passed away, and the year 1690 A.D. 1690. began. King William was quite prepared to establish Presbytery, but he was most unwilling to abolish patronage.2 Moreover, he was desirous that the foundations of the new Church should be as widely laid as possible, and that it should comprehend all the ministers of the old Church who chose to conform to its discipline. But he began to see that some concession was necessary, if a Church was to be built up at all. On the 25th of April the parliament met which was to give us the Establishment which we still enjoy. Its first act was to abolish the Act 1669, which asserted the king's supremacy over all persons and in all causes. Its second act was to restore all the Presbyterian ministers who had been ejected from their livings for not complying with Prelacy. This done, the parliament paused in its full career of ecclesiastical legislation, and abolished the Lords of the Articles, who for so many centuries had managed the whole business of the Scotch Estates, and ordained that the electors of commissioners to the Estates should take the Oath of Allegiance before exercising the franchise.

The next act forms the foundation of our present Establishment. It ratifies the "Westminster Confession of Faith;" it revives the Act 1592; it repeals all the laws in favour of Episcopacy; it legalises the ejections of the western rabble; it declares that the government of the Church was to be vested in the ministers who were ejected for nonconformity, on and

1 Leven and Melville Papers-Lord Crawford to Lord Melville, 20th August 1689.

2 On the 29th April 1690, Sir William Lockhart wrote to the Master of Melville "The king, as to the settlement of Presbytery, seems only to stick at the patronages. He says it is the interest of the Crown, and the taking of men's property, and thinks that all their meetings, the General Assemblies, should be called the Authority." (Leven and Melville Papers.)

after the 1st January 1661, and were now restored, and those who had been or should be admitted by them; it appoints the General Assembly to meet; and empowers it to nominate visitors to purge out all insufficient, negligent, scandalous, and erroneous ministers, by due course of ecclesiastical process.' In this act the Presbyterians gained all that they could desire, as Presbytery was established, and the government of the Church was placed entirely in their hands.

By this act, the Westminster Confession became the creed of the Church, and is recorded at length in the minutes of the parliament. But the Catechisms and the "Directory of Worship" are not found by its side. A pamphleteer of the day declares, that the Confession was read amid much yawning and weariness, and by the time it was finished, the Estates grew restive, and would hear no more. It is at least certain that the Catechisms and Directory are not once mentioned, though the Presbyterian ministers were very anxious that they should. From this it would appear that, while the State has fixed the Church's faith, it has not fixed the Church's worship. The Church may adopt any form of worship she pleases without violating any act of parliament. She must ever believe as the Westminster divines believed; but she may worship in a surplice, or without a surplice, with a liturgy, or without a liturgy; in this she is free. The Covenants were utterly ignored, though there were many in the Church who would have wished them revived.

Patronage still existed, but it was also doomed. The king had instructed Lord Melville, who acted as his Commissioner in this parliament, to give up patronage if it was found necessary. Melville staved off the matter as long as he could; but the arrival of the French fleet on the English coast, and the discovery of Montgomery's conspiracy with the Jacobites, convinced him that it was necessary to propitiate the parliament and the Presbyterians by yielding even this.2 It was enacted that in all vacancies the heritors and elders should nominate a person for the approval of the congregation; and that if the See Tarbet's Acts of the Scottish Parliament.

2 Leven and Melville Papers. The king, in his instructions to Melville, 25th February 1690, says, "You are to pass an act for abolishing patronage if the parliament shall desire the same.' His Majesty, in his remarks on the Act for Settling Church Government in Scotland, transmitted to Lord Melville on the 22d May speaks differently, and as if he were determined to preserve patronage. Lord Melville, in his report to the king, explains the pressing circumstances under which he passed the act.

congregation disapproved of the nominee, they were to give in their reasons of disapproval to the Presbytery, by whom the matter was to be finally determined. In consideration of their being deprived of their right of presentation, patrons were to receive from the parish the sum of six hundred merks, and a right to all the teinds to which no other could show a title.

It was not without a grudge that William granted so much to his Presbyterian subjects. He was fearful of offending the English Church; he was anxious that as many of the Episcopal clergy should be retained in their livings as possible; he dreaded the violence of men who were still smarting under recent injuries, and who now held in their hand the whole ecclesiastical power of the country; and though he gave his consent to the abolition of patronage, he appears to have afterwards rued his having done it.

One of the great problems of the time was, who were to form the governing body of the new Church-the whole clergy of the kingdom, or only the uncompromising Presbyterians ?1 The parliament had solved this difficulty by declaring, that only those who had been ejected for nonconformity since 1661 should exercise the governing power; and of these only sixty now remained. They were allowed to associate with themselves such ministers and elders as they chose; but still it was felt to be a hazardous experiment to entrust the fate of so many in the hands of so few, and that in a period of bitter theological strife. As the day for the holding of the Assembly approached, the government felt anxious about the result. Letters were written by influential noblemen to all the in

1 "I see," wrote Sir John Dalrymple to Lord Melville, on the 24th July 1689, we shall make no advance at this time in the Church government. Some talk that they will not have Presbytery established, till the Church be purged, and it be cleared in whose hands it must be committed; so they say, there may be an act in plain parliament, that all thrust out either by their nonconformity to Episcopacy or the Test may be restored, and a committee of parliament named, eight for each state, with some ministers on both sides, to determine who of the curates are vicious and scandalous, and who are to be retained." "It appears strange," wrote Lord Crawford, "that it should be pleaded by any that the government of the Church be put equally in the hands of conform ministers and nonconform, when Prelacy abolished, the act for that effect touched, and the whole bulk of such disaffected to our civil interest, unto a degree of praying for the late king. Can it be imagined we shall have Presbytery established, or that government continued, when the management is in the hands of men of different, if not opposite, principles, but being three to one for number, would certainly in a short time cast out such as were not of a piece with them?" See Leven and Melville Papers.