VIII. 1681. Argyle's escape. sent. BOOK be pronounced and the execution suspended; but every circumstance seemed to announce that his death was resolved. The military were ordered to town, and his guards were doubled: apartments were provided for his reception in the public gaol, to which peers were usually removed from the castle before execution; and the dark and ambiguous expressions of the duke and his creatures, implied that his execution was necessary, and that it would be easier to satisfy the king when the deed was done, than to procure his previous conWhether these insinuations were employed to intimidate Argyle, he escaped that evening in the train of his daughter-in-law, the lady Sophia Lindsay, disguised as her page. Sentence of attainder was immediately pronounced. His honours, estate, and life, were forfeited in his absence; his arms were reversed and torn; his posterity was incapacitated; and a large reward offered for his head. Notwithstanding a general alarm, and a vigilant pursuit, he was conducted to London, by Veitch a clergyman, through unfrequented roads; and Charles, who possessed not the common justice to pardon and restore him, had the generosity not to enquire after the place of his retreat41. Effects of his sentence on the public. Never was a sentence productive of more execration and horror; never, perhaps, was a sen tence more flagitiously obtained, than the attain 41 Argyle's Case, 121. Burnet. Wodrow, ii. 213. Fount Dec. i. 167. VIII. 1681, der of Argyle. Even the episcopal party, whom BOOK James had attached to his person and interest, were indignant at the shameless prostitution of justice, and the depravity of the prime nobility, who had descended to the basest offices, in order to accom plish the ruin of an ancient house. But the prese byterians were struck with consternation and despair. The most obnoxious of such as had opposed the test, and among these the earl of Loudon, Dalrymple the late president, Stewart an advocate, Fletcher of Salton, retired to the continent. The duke of Hamilton, and the proprietors of twenty sheriffships, or extensive regalities, rather than receive a test so pernicious to Argyle, suffered their hereditary jurisdictions to lapse and revert to the crown 42. From the horror and antipathy which the sentence inspired, the presbyte rians became ever afterwards irreconcileable to James. He allowed them, they said, to continue protestants, but if they once ventured to assert their faith, not the most uniform nor meritorious services could atone for a single act of opposition or of zeal 43. Their fears were communicated to those who had urged his exclusion with such violence in England, and whom the dissolution of the last parliament of Charles had left unprotected; and Argyle's case, which was printed in London, produced a deep impression on the public mind. From the coincidence of the two events, 43 Wodrow, ii. 225. 43 Fount. Mem. MS. VIII. 1681. BOOK his attainder, at the duke's instigation, was com pared with the acquittal of Shaftesbury, against whom it appeared that the king himself had con descended to solicit evidence, if not to practise the arts of subornation 44. There was nothing similar to the corruption of the peers and jurors of Argyle; except the venal evidence which was allotted in England to the vilest of mankind.. But the exclusionists anticipated their own destruction, from the attempt to ruin the two protestant earls; and if such were the first fruits of the duke's ad ministration in Scotland, what was to be expected from his tyrannical disposition when he should ascend the throne? What, but the most sanguinary reign of proscription and terror? the fear of which was productive of extensive conspiracies, in which the patriots of each kingdom were involved. Duke shipwrecked. Lauderdale, who had outlived his influence, and by a timid vote for the condemnation of Stafford, had incurred the duke's resentment, sunk under the weight of vexation and age 45. After the fall of the exclusionists, the duke was recalled to court; but he lost his ship when returning to Scotland, for the purpose of placing the administration there in the hands of his confidential friends. He was preserved in his barge, to which Churchill, Legg, 44 Ralph, i. 639–40. 45 His brother succeeded to the title of Earl; but the rapacious duchess had impoverished and despoiled the family of its principal estates. See Fount. Mem, Dec. i. 208. 223. 1682. and the earls of Middleton and Perth, were admit- BOOK ted: others were saved by boats from the attending yacht, but the vessel sunk with several persons of distinction on board. It was maliciously said, that the duke appeared chiefly solicitous for his priests and dogs; but if more lives might have been preserved in his barge, the testimony of the drowning seamen acquits him of the first part of this inhuman charge. As if insensible to the horrors of their own situation, they gave a loud shout while sinking themselves, when they observed him safely received into the yacht. On his arrival in Scotland, Queensberry was appointed treasurer, and created a marquis; Perth, justice general, an important office in the present reign; Gordon of Haddow, chancellor, with the title of earl of Aberdeen; and to these men the administration of the kingdom was entrusted by James, with instructions sufficient to authorise the most unrelenting rigour. After a short stay, he returned with the most ample and absurd testimonies from the bishops, of his affection for the church 46. ministra As a change of administration was productive Severe adof no change in the measures of a despotical go- tion. vernment, the unhappy country procured no relief. Every new ministry created for the purpose of pursuing the same measures, endeavoured to exceed the violence of its predecessors, and to en. 46 Burnet. Macpherson's Orig. Pap. i. 135. Kennet. Fount. Mem, VIII. 1682. BOOK rich and recommend itself, by oppression, to the court. The most ruinous penalties were ordered to be levied without mitigation; and the people, sensible that unless they conformed they were utterly ruined, returned in a body, but with marked aversion or contempt, to the churches, where, in some places, a sermon had been discontinued for many years. The persecution of conventicles became far more severe, and the administration of justice more corrupt than ever: the execution of fanatics became daily more frequent: even the military were invested with justiciary powers; and the ingenious cruelty of the justiciary court was exhausted in the invention of new laws and of new crimes. As if the insurrection at Bothwell Hume's were not yet avenged, Hume, an inconsiderable execution. landlord, and as such excepted from the indemnity, was convicted without evidence of having acceded to the rebellion, because his defence was repugnant to the indictment, or in other words, because it was contrary to the crimes of which he was accused. But his father had sat. as a juryman on the trial of Haddow, the chancellor's grandfather; and as if a retribution were due to the duke's religion, the anniversary of Stafford's death was selected for his execution47. Another trial, of which the consequences were more exten, sive and memorable, created an alarm through the legal sen. whole kingdom. Laurie or Wier of Blackwood 47 Fount. Mem. Wodrow, ii. 268. Burnet, ii, 340. trial and Black. wood's il tence. |