BOOK 1661. ment held in one thousand six hundred and fortyone, when the late king attended and ratified its acts from choice: the parliament in one thousand six hundred and forty-eight was chosen and directed by his particular instructions, to confirm the engagement. But the commissioner maintained that the former had been held in the interval between two rebellions, when the necessity of affairs, without any personal violence, had imposed a real constraint on the king; while the latter, to conciliate the fanatics, had entered into the engagement on such hypocritical terms, that the whole of its proceedings deserved to be condemned. Notwithstanding a vigorous opposition from Crawford, Cassilis, Loudon, and the old covenanters, the act was approved by a large majority, and ratified without waiting for instructions from court. The covenants, and the laws that established presbytery, were virtually repealed; and with some improper limitations on prerogative, every constitutional barrier was thus removed. But the act was more pernicious still, as a precedent destructive of all security in government, and of all confidence between the people and the king. The laws, if defective, were open, they affirmed, to amendment and review; but if one parliament, under the pretext of fear, or the necessity of public affairs, can rescind another, the first principles of government are subverted. A future legislature may annul the present, on the same pretext that the present abro. gates those former parliaments whose public treaties and indemnities, which are ever to be reputed sacred, were confirmed by the crown.8 BOOK VII. 1661. the times, These times are described by Burnet as mad and Excesses of riotous; full of extravagance, for the men engaged in public affairs were almost perpetually drunk. The most important and violent acts, that reversed the former constitution and government, are explained by the constant intoxication of ministers; and the commissioner often appeared so drunk on the throne, that the parliament was adjourned. The most licentious intemperance and excess of debauchery were termed loyalty; gravity, sedition; and the trial and attainder of delinquents, was perhaps the only subject that engrossed the serious or sober consideration of the estates. Argyle. When the king was restored, on the promise of Trial of an amnesty to his English subjects, no indemnity was promised or proposed for Scotland; and it was deemed expedient that the nation should still remain at the mercy of the crown. Argyle, encouraged by some equivocal expressions of Charles, had repaired privately to court, but the royalists who grasped at his possessions, were apprehensive of a crafty, insinuating statesman, whose former credit with the king might revive. On demanding admittance to the royal presence, he was com * Parl. 1661, ch. 15. Burnet, i. 168. Baillie, ii. 451. BOOK mitted to the Tower, and accused of a secret par VII. 1661. Feb. 13. ticipation in the murder of the late king. His trial was transferred to Scotland, where he was produced and arraigned in parliament on separate indictments of oppression and treason. The severities inflicted on the royalists during the civil wars, and the cruelties retaliated on the adherents of Montrose, were accumulated in his indictments. He was accused as the author of every national act from the commencement of the wars; as an accessory to the surrender and execution of the king; and an actor under the late usurpation, in opposiHis de- tion to those who appeared for the crown. His defence was vigorous and plausible at least, if not always just. He affirmed that the atrocities imputed to his clan were partly fictitious, partly exaggerated; committed during his absence in England, from the violence of the times; and that a cruel revenge was to be expected from his people, whose country had been twice wasted with fire, and devoted to the sword. His transactions during the war were conducted under the authority of the legislature, to whom the surrender of fence. 10 We may judge of the extravagance of the charge, and of the fanaticism of the accusers themselves, from a fact asserted in his first indictment; that a tree on which thirty-six of his enemies were hanged, was immediately blasted, and when hewn down, a miraculous and copious stream of a bloody hue, with which the earth was deeply saturated, was for several years emitted from the root. State Trials, ii. 422. VII. 1661. the king must be ascribed; but his public trans- BOOK actions were protected from inquiry, by the act of oblivion, passed in consequence of the treaty of Rippon, and by the indemnity granted by Charles in the parliament at Stirling, of which the records were lost, but the memory was still recent in the minds of men. His compliance with the late usurpation was necessary for his preservation, or excusable from the contagious example of the times. While resistance was practicable he was the last to submit; but his solitary resistance, after the nation had submitted to a conqueror, would neither have secured himself, nor restored the king. From his peculiar situation in life, more than a passive compliance was required for his preservation; and if to mitigate the oppression of his country, he was returned a member to Richard's parliament, the recognition of a power de facto, and without his assistance in possession of the government, never implied an acknowledgment of its original title; much less a treasonable opposition to the rightful heir, while excluded from the throne. "What "could I think," he exclaimed, "or how suppose, "that these unhappy compliances were criminal, "at the time when a man so learned as his majesty's advocate received the same oaths to the "commonwealth with myself?" Sir John Fletcher, lord advocate, interrupted and reviled him in the most opprobrious terms, but he calmly replied, VII. BOOK reproach; and perceiving his ruin predetermined, demanded, but was denied permission to submit 1661. implicitly to the mercy of the king." Condemned to death. During this important trial, the most solemn which the nation had ever witnessed, lord Lorn was employed to solicit favour for his father at court. He procured a royal mandate, not to prosecute any public offences previous to the indemnity granted at Stirling, nor to pronounce a sentence, till the whole trial was submitted to the king. The first part of the order was imperfectly obeyed; the last, as expressive of a mistrust in parliament, was recalled. The commissioner, anxious that Argyle should suffer as a regicide, to prevent the restitution of his family to his estate and honours, undertook the management of the debate in person, which he conducted as if forgetful of his own dignity, or the decency requisite in a public character. From the secret consultations held with Cromwell, when invited to Scotland to suppress the engagement, he concluded that the interruption of the treaty at Newport, and the execution of the late king, had been concerted with Argyle. An attainder founded on such weak and remote presumptions, was abhorred by many, and was opposed by president Gilmour, with a force of argument that compelled the reluctant parliament to exculpate Argyle from all participation in the "State Trials, ii. 418. vii. 379. Wódrow, i. 42. |