BOOK XI. 1704. Its effects in England. were not unfrequently relaxed by a secret connivance with the court party; but whatever was ambiguous or irresolute in his conduct, may be more truly ascribed to some selfish motive of interest or of revenge. Rather than communicate to Queensberry and Seafield a personal share in the treaty with England, he refused to concur with their friends in appointing commissioners; and the opportunity to secure the nomination of his own party before the parliament adjourned, was irretrievably lost 25. When apprized of the act of security, the English were alarmed and roused from their profound indifference towards the Scots. It was considered rather as an act of exclusion, for the separation of the kingdoms; and as every fencible man was ordained to be armed and disciplined, by the landlord or magistrate, the most lively apprehensions were excited in England. A separate succession was the least danger to be apprehended. The Scots were poor and discontented; and to their opulent neighbours, if suffered to arm, they would become the more formidable from their poverty and their discontent. The most extravagant re'ports were propagated, of vast quantities of ammunition and arms procured from the continent; and as these appeared irreconcileable with 25 Lockhart, 127. Had he and Athol consented to admit Queensberry and Seafield, they might have secured twentytwo on of the twenty-four commissioners. 1701. their poverty, the assistance of foreign powers BOOK was the more firmly believed. The alarm was industriously increased by the tories, for the removal of Godolphin; while factious writers, to exasperate the two nations, revived the obsolete and exploded doctrine of the supremacy of England over the Scottish crown, and proposed the reduction of the kingdom by force of arms. The wiser part of the English had little apprehension that the Scots would persist in their act of security, or that they could subsist, after the intercourse of a century, as an independent kingdom, under a separate monarchy, unconnected with England. But the danger of a disputed succession was obvious, if the crown should remain unsettled till the queen's death. When recalled by his adherents, if their violence should prevail in Scotland, the pretender would enter England with foreign auxiliaries, and renew the destructive alliance and incursions of the French and Scots. The transactions of the civil wars were not yet forgotten; and the Scots, from their vicinity to the coal counties, might obtain in a few days the command of the capital. But the wiser part of their nation deprecated an event which would revive the scenes of the grand rebellion, and unless the pretender were seated in both kingdoms, would expose their country to a second conquest, at a time when the arms of England were every where victorious, and even far more formidable XI. 1704. BOOK than when directed by Cromwell. Moderate men of each nation were desirous of a permanent re-medy for these evils; and the purpose of the act of security, from the alarm which it excited, was already partly accomplished, inasmuch as it inclined the English to assent to the demands of the Scots 26. 1705. An inquiry was first introduced in the house of Acts against the Scots. peers, to discover by whose advice the act of secu rity had obtained the queen's assent. As the absence of morals, in a refined and dissolute age, is supplied by a fastidious affectation of sentimental delicacy; so at a time when the influence of the English cabinet was never more conspicuous, nor more predominant in Scotland, the inquiry was plausibly opposed, as an irregular interference, which might provoke the jealous indignation of the Scots. More moderate, yet compulsive, measures were recommended. The queen was empowered to appoint commissioners for an union of the kingdoms; but the Scots were declared aliens, if their parliament should neither accede to a treaty nor adopt the Hanoverian succession within a year. The importation of their cattle. and linen was conditionally prohibited. Cruisers were appointed to intercept their trade, and to prevent the exportation of their wool to France. An address was presented to the queen, to repair 26 Burnet, v. 230. Sir J. Clerk's Observations on the State of Scotland, MS. XI. 1705. and garrison the fortifications of Berwick, Carlisle, BOOK Newcastle, and Hull. Regular forces were quartered on the borders; and as if the Scots were already in arms, the six northern counties were exhorted to prepare for defence 7. Conciliatory were thus intermixed with compulsive measures; but there was reason to apprehend that these would rather serve to exasperate than to intimi date or to reconcile the Scotch to an union. of Green. In the mean while an incident occurred, by Execution which national animosities were mutually inflamed. An English interloper, returning round the north of Scotland from the East Indies, was seized at the instance of the Darien company, as a reprisal for a ship which the East India company had confiscated in the Thames. From some unguarded expressions of the seamen, suspicions arose that they had captured another vessel sent by the Darien company to the East Indies, and had murdered the captain and his whole crew. They obtained a legal but not an impartial trial. Their captain and thirteen seamen were condemned to death for piracy and murder, on the evidence of a single black, corroborated however by some presumptive circumstances; but there was no proof that it was the company's ship which they took, or its crew whom they massacred. On the day of execution, the populace, apprehensive of being de27 Boyer. Burnet. XI. 1705. BOOK frauded of their revenge, surrounded and threat ened to force the prison, insulted the privy-council, pursued and endangered the chancellor's life; nor were they pacified till the sentence was inflicted upon Green the captain, and on two of his crew. The rest, after a long imprisonment, were dismissed because the evidence was considered as de Change of administra tion. fective. But the rage and insults of the populace were productive of the keenest resentment in England; the sentence and execution of Green were ascribed to national animosities; and the 'antipathy, mutually kindled, admonished government that an accommodation between the two kingdoms should no longer be deferred 28. The feeble administration of Tweedale was therefore dissolved, and Queensberry was restored with his friends to office. As his conduct in the late plot was still exposed to inquiry, the duke of Argyle, a young, ambitious soldier of the most promising expectations, was appointed commissioner to parliament, with instructions to establish the same protestant succession as in England; or, if that should be found impracticable, at least to procure an act for a treaty of union. A treaty with England was a popular and indefinite measure which it was difficult openly to oppose; and if some were desirous to introduce the succession indirectly, by a previous union, others expected 28 Green's Trial. Arnot's Criminal Trials. Sir J. Clerk's Hist. MS. |