SCOTLAND (HISTORY). 



149 



cobites ; we allude to the massacre in Glencoe, and 

 the unfortunate result of the Darien expedition. 

 In August, 1692, in consequence of a pacification 

 with the Highlanders, a proclamation of indemnity 

 had been passed to such insurgents as would take 

 the oath to the new government on or before the 

 last day of December. The last man to submit 

 was Macdonald of Glencoe. Towards the end of 

 December, he applied to the governor of Fort- 

 William, who refused, not being a civil magistrate, 

 to administer the oaths; but dispatched him in 

 haste, with an earnest recommendation to the 

 sheriff of Argyle. From the snows and other inter- 

 ruptions which he met with on the road, the day 

 for appointed submission had elapsed, before he 

 reached Inverary, the county town. The benefit of 

 the indemnity was strictly forfeited; the sheriff 

 was moved, however, by his tears and entreaties, 

 to receive his oath of allegiance, and to certify the 

 unavoidable cause of his delay. But his oath was 

 industriously suppressed, by the advice particularly 

 of Stair the president; the certificate was erased 

 from his list presented to the privy council; and it 

 appears that an extensive combination was formed 

 for his destruction. William was persuaded that 

 Glencoe was the chief obstacle to the pacification 

 of the Highlands, and a warrant of military execu- 

 tion was procured from him against the unfortunate 

 chief and his whole tribe. Campbell of Glenlyon, 

 a captain in Argyle 's regiment, was ordered with an 

 hundred and. twenty men to repair to Glencoe on 

 the 1st of February. The soldiers were received on 

 assurance of peace and friendship, and were quartered 

 for above a fortnight among the inhabitants of the 

 sequestered vale. On the evening of the 13th, 

 orders arrived to attack the Macdonalds while asleep 

 at midnight, and not to suffer a man to escape their 

 swords. Before the break of day, a party, entering 

 as friends, shot Glencoe as he rose from his bed. 

 His wife was stript naked by the soldiers, who tore 

 the rings with their teeth from her fingers ; and she 

 expired next morning with horror and grief. Nine 

 men were bound and deliberately shot at Glenlyon's 

 quarters; his landlord was shot by his orders, and 

 a young boy, who clung to his knees for protection, 

 was stabbed to death. At another part of the vale, 

 the inhabitants were shot while sitting around their 

 fires, and women perished with their children in 

 their arms. Thirty-eight persons were thus inhu- 

 manly massacred by their guests and inmates. The 

 rest, alarmed by the report of musquetry, escaped to 

 the hills, and were only preserved from destruction, 

 by a tempest that added to the horrors of the night. 

 The carnage was succeeded by rapine and desola- 

 tion; the houses were burned to the ground, and 

 women and children stripped naked, and left to 

 perish in the snow. This horrible massacre excited 

 universal execration, and rendered the government 

 of William justly odious to the highlanders. It was 

 succeeded three years after by the expedition to 

 Darien, the unfortunate result of which nearly in- 

 volved Scotland in national bankruptcy, and raised 

 an outcry from one end of the land to the other 

 against the injustice of the English government in 

 its conduct towards the colonists. (See a full ac- 

 count of the Darien expedition in this Encyclope- 

 dia, under the article Darien.) 



The demise of William, in 1702, transferred the 

 crowns of the two nations to queen Anne. She 

 wrote to the Scottish privy councillors, authoris- 

 ing them to continue their authority; and assuring 

 them that she would support the established govern- 



ment. The same parliament which had established 

 the Revolution, continued to act on the accession 

 of Anne, though not without protestations of its 

 illegality. They passed an act for treating of an 

 union with England, which they annulled in the 

 subsequent year. The spirit of division seems to 

 have overspread the land. In 1703, the parliament 

 refused to tolerate episcopacy, and they declined to 

 concur in adopting the protestant succession for 

 the crown. They carried their ill-humour one step 

 farther. They questioned the power of the queen 

 to negative their bills. They issued a declaration 

 which intimated a purpose, in case of the demise of 

 the crown, to appoint a different sovereign from the 

 English king. Such were the movements which 

 led to the appointment of commissioners to treat of 

 a union between the sister kingdoms. The terms 

 of the union were particularly obnoxious to the 

 Scotch, and the nation, instead of regarding it as 

 an identification of the interest of both kingdoms, 

 considered it as a total surrender of their indepen- 

 dence, by their false and corrupted statesmen, into 

 the hand of their powerful rival. All ranks of 

 people, however divided in other matters, joined 

 issue against this detested treaty, which involved 

 the loss of national independence, on the one hand, 

 and on the other, imposed a vast number of duties, 

 customs, and restrictions upon a country to which 

 they were before unknown. Addresses against it 

 were presented from all quarters, and in several 

 places the populace rose in arms and formed them- 

 selves into regiments of foot and horse in order to 

 oppose the union. Even the commercial part of 

 the community, who were supposed to benefit so 

 largely by it, were dissatisfied, and with justice, at 

 the terms of the treaty. Before the union, the 

 trade of Scotland had been open to the Levant, the 

 Baltic, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and the 

 Dutch plantations ; and it seemed difficult to con- 

 ceive how the commerce of the country could be 

 advanced by laying restrictions on it to all those 

 places, especially as the compensation allowed, 

 namely, the privilege of trading to the English set- 

 tlements and the plantations in America, was very 

 trifling, as the amount of the exports to these places 

 did not then nearly equal the expense of defending 

 them. Notwithstanding, however, every opposi- 

 tion, the treaty of union was ratified by a small 

 majority of the Scotish and a large majority of the 

 English parliament; and on the 1st of May, 1707, 

 Scotland became united to England, amid the de- 

 jection and despair of the people, and under a sul- 

 len expression of discontent, which was fully justi- 

 fied not only by the terms of the treaty, but by 

 the manner in which the treaty was carried. An 

 influx of Eaglish revenue officers now overspread 

 the country, till then but slightly acquainted with 

 the oppressive laws of revenue, and their severe 

 exactions tended to keep up the resentment of the 

 nation. Nor was the Union productive, for many 

 years, of those advantages which were at first ex- 

 pected. A feeble attempt to obtain a share in the 

 colonial trade was defeated by new regulations 

 which the commercial jealousy of the English mer- 

 chants procured. No new manufactures were at- 

 tracted to Scotland; on the contrary, commerce 

 became more languid than before, and the price of 

 land and rents fell. Every national exertion was 

 discountenanced, and during nearly fifty years, 

 either the interests of the country were disregarded, 

 or it was treated like a conquered province, prone 

 to revolt. The nation, in short, appeared to be 



