openly and avowedly, for the purpose of supporting the dignity of the laws, and counteracting these secret machinations published their resolutions to the world, calling upon all their fellow subjects, to unite in defeating the intrigues of a restless and abandoned faction, which, in the paltry hope of personal aggrandizement, was about to plunge the nation into all the horrors of civil war, in order to subject it, in the issue, to the misrule of the emissaries of France and of Rome. Nor did they content themselves with holding public meetings and publishing resolutions. They also set about providing arms and ammunition, plenty of which they obtained from Holland, through the connivance of the custom-house officers, all of whom, Lockhart informs us, were "notoriously disaffected to the queen's present administration.”*

Among those who distinguished themselves in this manner, the Hanoverian club at Edinburgh deserves to be mentioned with peculiar honour. This club was formed by the earl of Buchan, his brothers, Thomas and Charles Erskines, Mr. George Drummond, Mr. Alexander Campbell, commissary of artillery, Robert Stuart, one of the regents of the college

with balances in her hand, the emblem of justice, and over the head was Justitia (Justice), and at a little distance, Suum Cuique (to every man his own). The other, had several men with their heads downwards, in a tumbling posture, and one eminent person erected above the rest, with that scripture, Ezek. xxi. 27. "I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more, until he come; whose right it is and I will give it him." After the race, the popish and Jacobite gentry, such as Francis Maxwell of Tinwall, John Maxwell his brother, Robert Johnston of Wamphrey, Robert Carruthers of Rammersscales, the master of Burleigh (who is under the sentence of death, for murder, and made his escape out of the tolbooth of Edinburgh, a little before he was to have been executed), with several others I could name, went to the cross, where, in a very solemn manner, before hundreds of witnesses, with drums beating, and colours displayed, they did upon their knees, drink their king's health. The master of Burleigh, began the health, with a God damn them that would not drink it, &c. The year before, they had another such meeting, on the like occasion, in the same place; and their plate had the king in the royal oak, with this inscription, "God will restore;" and medals were produced, with the pretender's head on the one side, with this motto, cujus est (whose right it is), and on the reverse, Britannia, or the Islands of Great Britain, with this inscription, reddite, (return). But yet the government took no notice of them." Rae's History of the Rebellion, pp. 49, 50.

• Rae's History of the Rebellion, pp. 41, 42. Lockhart Papers, vol. i. p. 465.

of Edinburgh, Mr. James Nimmo, John Martin of Ayres, &c. &c. and was of singular use in discovering, by its watchful vigilance, every motion of the Jacobites and their friends, whether at home or abroad, and by the vigour of its correspondence, keeping alive the zeal and spirit of the people in every quarter of the country, especially in the south and in the western shires, where, in particular places, the Jacobites were numerous and powerful. In consequence of the advice and information of the above gentlemen, a meeting was held at Dalmellington, in Kyle, in the month of March, where it was unanimously resolved, that the imminent danger to which the civil and religious liberties of the nation were exposed, from "the growth of popery, and the insults of papists and Jacobites upon our laws and constitution," it was become necessary, "for strengthening one another's hands," to lay down measures for their joint security.

In pursuance of these measures, particular meetings were kept in the several districts for training the people to the use of arms, that so they might be in a condition to defend themselves, their religion and liberty, by whom, or whensoever they might be attacked. Considerable sums of money were also advanced by the well disposed, with whom the ministers of the gospel generally concurred, for providing arms and ammunition for such as had not the means of providing themselves with these now necessary articles; and, as they had nothing in view but the preservation of that succession which had been established by act of parliament, and for which the ministry had hitherto made her majesty, in all her public speeches, express the highest deference, they supposed themselves to be performing nothing more than the duty of affectionate and loyal subjects. Had they been acting for the pretender, they had certainly been overlooked, if, like the highland clans, they had not been rewarded for their diligence; but the army had occupied too much of the attention of Bolingbroke and his associates of late, and excited their fears too sensibly, for them to suffer such formidable preparations in aid of it quietly to take effect. Orders were instantly sent down to seize upon their arms and ammunition, and these orders the Jacobites showed an extreme avidity to

execute. Few discoveries of either arms or ammunition, however, were made; and, though a serjeant belonging to the castle of Edinburgh, named William Scott, was discovered training some young men in a malt loft, and thrown for a few weeks into prison, he was no sooner liberated, than he was sent for by the gentlemen and ministers of Penpont, with whom he continued, assisting them in training their dependants, till the decease of the queen, after which, the government rewarded him with a pair of colours.*

The trying crisis had now, however, arrived with the ministry. The session of parliament had been purposely shortened, in order to allow them to pay undivided attention to the vast project they were pursuing. The daily decaying strength of the queen, too, admonished them to quicken their progress if they meant to be benefited by her assistance. Their principal leaders were Oxford and Bolingbroke, the former, a man of popular manners, and of considerable talents for business, but vacillating in his views, feeble in forming combinations, and tardy in drawing conclusions; too ambitious to be at rest, and too timid to run the risk of new and untried measures; the latter, a scholar and a wit; celebrated for a fine person, a courtly bearing, a free vein of poetry, and beautifully classic speeches; but to judgment, a mere pretender, vain, superficial, sophistical, and silly. A freethinker in religion, and a libertine in morals, he yet, by his zeal for the church, which seemed to know no bounds, and had been particularly displayed in forwarding the schism bill, had attached to him all the Jacobites and the high tories, and his vanity, or his ambition, led him to think he could accomplish singly, what had certainly been too hard for him and his colleague, though in counsel and in effort they had been perfectly united.

Oxford had attained his present elevation through the influence of Mrs. Masham, a needy relation of the dutchess of Marlborough, whom she introduced into the queen's service as her tiring woman, and he had carried along with him Bolingbroke, then only Mr. Henry St. John, as an useful auxiliary,

Rae's History of the Rebellion, pp. 41, 43.

whom he hoped to serve himself by, and, at the same time, keep in a state of humble dependance. But Mr. St. John had a far higher opinion of his own abilities, than to act in a subordinate capacity any longer than necessity required it, and the weakness of his master, which, though he had no great degree of penetration, he knew enough of the world readily to discover, the nature of the business he was employed to transact, and the good graces of the then medium of political power, Mrs. Masham, which, partly by flattery, and partly by more solid services, he very soon obtained, gave full scope to his ambition, gratified his vanity, and made him little solicitous to conceal those ideas of gigantic superiority that had now taken possession of his whole soul. This, in the nature of things, could not fail to be peculiarly galling to Oxford, who, no doubt, fancied that he was entitled to a far different return, and, if it had been possible for him to have accomplished it, would gladly have reduced his ungrateful dependant, and now rival peer, to plain Mr. St. John, leaving him to find office and influence in the best manner he could. But this was now impossible. St. John had been his principal agent in all the dirty work which the demon of party had led him to undertake. He had negotiated for him-in a very bungling style it is trueby the assistance of Matthew Prior, a man, like himself, of loose morals, but a poet and a wit, those treaties, which at once compromised the interests and the honour of the nation; he was acquainted with all the intrigues carried on with the French king, and his puppet, the pretender, and for Oxford now to have shaken him off, would have been to throw him into the arms of the dreaded whigs, to have encountered an immediate impeachment, and perhaps, to have paid for his imprudence with his head.

But Oxford, though he was, from motives of interest, prevented from breaking with his colleague, had not failed to take prudential measures for his own safety, and, probably for fear of the worst, had, from the outset of his career, been averse from driving the whigs to extremity. To the schism bill he was most certainly averse; and, to the purging of the army, as it was called, he showed great reluctance. He had, indeed, all along, incurred no small degree of reproach from the

Jacobites, for allowing so many places of trust, to be filled by men avowedly friendly to the protestant succession. Nay, he had again and again gone the length of proffering his best services, and expressing his devout veneration and respect to the illustrious house of Hanover, all which, though in the issue, highly advantageous to the interests of liberty and the aggrandizement of that noble family, did not, in the slightest degree, answer the end he had in view-the preservation of his own power. The artful duplicity of his character he had indulged so long, and exercised so successively upon all parties, that to all he was become alike contemptible. At the court of Hanover, his expressions of veneration and respect were considered as artfully offered to conceal his views, and divert their attention from that quarter where his real services were more effective. The whigs were too sharpsighted to be duped by any thing he could say, and too inveterate to be joined with him in any thing he might do. His associates, sick of his procrastinating policy, and terrified every day on account of the increasing illness of the queen, were resolved, at all events, to act without him, if they could not prevail on her majesty to dismiss him. Her majesty's affection was now, indeed, his only dependance, and that he possessed it at one time, in a very high degree, cannot be doubted; but, even in this quarter, every thing was now against him. The queen was in the dotage of a mortal disease; she was beset by lady Masham, whose affections Oxford had alienated, by his opposition to the grant of a pension, and other emoluments, which that lady was anxious to obtain; and, in return, she lost no opportunity of representing him, as "the most worthless and the most ungrateful of men.' "# Her majesty was also wrought upon by Bolingbroke, with all the arts of courtly cunning which he could command. This crafty and disingenuous politician, artfully affected to develope the intrigues of Oxford with the court of Hanover, and even accused him of caballing with the duke of Marlborough, who appears to have been an object of peculiar terror to her majesty. Habit, however, and the remains of affectionate partiality for the minister

* Vide Swift's Letters. Letter from Lady Masham to Swift, 29th July,