1706.]

DEMONSTRATION OF THE CAMERONIANS.

325

de Santillane," or "The History of the Life of Mr. Jonathan Wild, the Great," if the author were not a distinguished personage known by "his several transactions and negotiations in Scotland, England, the courts of Vienna, Hanover, and other foreign parts," as the title-page of his book duly sets forth.* John Ker describes the three great parties of Scotland, the Presbyterian, the Cameronian, and the Episcopal. The Presbyterian were divided into the complying and the non-juring; the non-jurors taking exception to the oath which referred to the English statute under which the sovereign was required to be of the communion of the Church of England. He paints the Cameronians, as cleaving to the form of Church government established in 1648; despising the Indulgence of Charles II., the Toleration of James II., and the Revolution establishment; they continue to preach in the fields, still retaining the doctrine of resistance and self-defence, however peaceable. The Episcopal party, he says, "are generally in the Pretender's interest, and are near one-half of the nation," among whom are to be reckoned the most part of the Highland Clans. John Ker was considered as one of great influence amongst the Cameronians. But, as he himself professes, he was strenuously opposed to the schemes of the Jacobites, who were endeavouring to engage the Presbyterians and Cameronians on their side, to prevent the Union. "I soon perceived," says the man of influence, "abundance of private transactions in favour of the Pretender; for it was impossible for the Jacobites to carry them on without my knowledge, considering the great interest I had with the Cameronians." The duke of Queensberry sent for Mr. Ker, for the government had advices that the Cameronians and Jacobites were to meet in arms on the river Nith, near Sanquhar, to put an end to the Parliament, and that the French king would send over troops, " to improve the opportunity." The laird of Kersland said he was always an enemy to Popery and the Pretender; but then was he able to dissuade the Cameronians from their purpose? He could not resist the duke's "rhetorical arguments;" and so an ingenious device occurred to the loyal man: "If I purposed to do any effectual service, I must enter into all their measures, and then probably they would honour me with the chief command, and by being at their head in rebellion against the queen and government I should expose myself to their displeasure; and therefore it would be proper I should have a Privy-seal, authorising me to act as I found convenient."+ So John Ker wends his thoughtful way from Edinburgh to Killoch Side, near Sanquhar, where the Cameronian leaders were assembled; and they admitted him forthwith into their general meeting. He gives his harangue to this meeting. Matters are now brought to a crisis. All that is dear to us, as Protestants, is likely to be rendered precarious by the proposed Union. Are we to oppose this Union or not? "If you agree in the affirmative, then what sort of opposition this shall be; for it is very evident that the Parliament resolves to ram it down our throats." Prevail upon them, said Queensberry, to decline their desperate resolutions. The eloquence of Ker produced a determination to do something more decided. "I pretended-and would to God I had dealt more sincerely-to join with them in all their measures, and offered to fortify their resolutions

"The Memoirs of John Ker, of Kersland, in North Britain, Esqre." 2 vols. 3d edit. 1737. Memoirs, p. 31.

326

THE ACT OF UNION PASSED IN SCOTLAND.

[1707 with some arguments of my own.” Then they resolved to burn the Articles publicly at the Market-cross of Dumfries, and to publish their declaration that all who supported the Union were enemies and traitors to their country. On the 20th of November the burning was "very solemnly performed, by a considerable party of horse and foot under arms, with sound of trumpet and beat of drum." The worthy orator of Killoch Side quieted the apprehensions of the government that horse and foot and beat of drum meant insurrection: "I despatched an express to the duke of Queensberry, and told him, though I had given way to such a solemn execution of the Union Articles, that he might be easy notwithstanding, for it was necessary to keep up to the decorum they expected, in order to prevent their prosecution of such measures as must infallibly disappoint him. And farther, I told him, it might be found expedient to burn the houses of some that had been most instrumental in carrying on the Union; but nevertheless, I doubted not to order matters so, as that nothing was to be feared from the Cameronians upon this conduct, which looked very like earnest. I am convinced the whole body of the Cameronians were resolved, my unworthy self only excepted."

John Ker, of Kersland, is the type of many an intriguing spy, who, in dangerous times, has encouraged the agitation which he was employed to watch. It was fortunate that the Cameronians were not driven to carry their zeal beyond the Market-cross at Dumfries. Vast things were expected from the junction of the true League and Covenant men with the Jacobites, Papists and Episcopalians. They were to march to Hamilton, seven thousand in number. The duke of Athol was to lead his Highlanders through the famous pass where Dundee scattered six thousand veterans. The duke of Hamilton was to head this motley army. The duke was wiser. He sent orders to the Highlanders and Cameronians to disperse and return home. The duke was unstable in his modes of opposition to the Union. All parties began to look with suspicion upon his alternations of a hot and cold policy, and upon the blandishments of his mother towards the Presbyterians. "It was suggested," says Burnet, "that she and her son had particular views, as hoping that if Scotland should continue a separated kingdom, the crown might come into their family, they being the next in blood after king James's posterity." *

Despite the Jacobites and the Cameronians, the timid Presbyterians and the semi-Papist Episcopalians, the Act of the Scottish Estates for the Union was finally passed on the 16th of January, by a hundred and ten votes against sixty-nine. "And there's an end o' an auld sang," said the Chancellor. It was an insult, cries the chivalrous Sir Walter Scott; "for which he deserved to be destroyed on the spot by his indignant countrymen." + Belhaven complained that the Union would compel the peers of Scotland to "lay aside their walking-swords when in company with the English peers, lest their self-defence should be called murder." We have outgrown the use of walking-swords, even for the self-defence which the Scottish peer thought a privilege of his order; certainly so for such homicide as the Scottish poet thought a fitting propitiation to the shades of the hundred and fourteen kings whose line began when Cheops was unborn.

"Own Time," vol. v. p. 277.

+ Note in Burton, p. 482

1707.J

THE ACT OF UNION PASSED IN SCOTLAND.

327

Before the Scottish Parliament separated, they regulated the election of the Representative Peers, and the proportion of county and borough members of the Commons. They had to arrange the division of the Equivalent money, of which the Darien or African Company had a large share. The last meeting of the Scottish Estates was on the 26th of March, 1707.

The Order of the Thistle, which had been revived by queen Anne in 1703, was not filled up by elections till some few years had elapsed. James II. had contemplated the restitution of the Order, but no patent for this object had passed the Great Seal. There was now in the possession of the Crown the means of bestowing a great distinction, essentially national; for in the Statutes of 1703 the number of knights was limited to twelve peers of Scotland, the sovereign being the head. This number somewhat profanely kept in view the precedent of our Saviour and the twelve apostles. George I. broke through the principle of exclusive nationality by bestowing the honour upon a few English peers. George IV. overturned the scriptural character by raising the number of knights to sixteen.

Collar of the Order of the Thistle.

The Parliament of England had met in December, during the anxious discussion in Scotland of the Articles of the Treaty of Union. At the end of January the queen sent to the House of Peers, and announced that the Treaty for an Union had been ratified by Act of Parliament in Scotland, with some alterations and additions. The Articles were then presented. In the Lords, a Bill was brought in for the Security of the Church of England as by law established; the movers having, of course, a slight apprehension that the sovereign's oath to preserve the Church of Scotland might be liable to misconstruction unless thus qualified. The debates in the English Parliament on the principle of the Union were animated, but were not violent. The ministry were anxious to pass the Bill for the Union, without making any alteration in the Articles as adopted by the Scottish Parliament. They succeeded in preventing a debate on each clause by inserting the Articles in

328

ACT OF UNION PASSED IN ENGLAND.

[1707.

the preamble of the Bill, with the two Acts for the Security of the Churches of each country. By this device the measure was to be accepted or rejected as a whole. It was passed without difficulty, and on the 6th of March the queen gave the royal assent in these words: -" My Lords and Gentlemen: It is with the greatest satisfaction that I have given my assent to a Bill for uniting England and Scotland into one kingdom. I consider this Union as a matter of the greatest importance to the wealth, strength, and safety of the whole island; and, at the same time, as a work of so much difficulty and nicety in its own nature, that till now all attempts which have been made towards it in the course of above a hundred years have proved ineffectual; and, therefore, I make no doubt but it will be remembered and spoke of hereafter, to the honour of those who have been instrumental in bringing it to such a happy conclusion. I desire and expect from all my subjects, of both nations, that from henceforth they act with all possible respect and kindness to one another, that so it may appear to all the world they have hearts disposed to become one people. This will be a great pleasure to me, and will make us all quickly sensible of the good effects of this Union. And I cannot but look upon it as a peculiar happiness, that in my reign so full provision is made for the peace and quiet of my people, and for the security of our religion, by so firm an establishment of the Protestant Succession throughout Great Britain."