Bothwell Bridge and Drumclog.—On May 3, 1679, Arch bishop Sharpe was murdered by a small body of fanatics. A few years earlier the murder would have been an isolated outrage, but Lauderdale's measures had created sympathy for the mur derers, and on May 29 some 8o Covenanters at Rutherglen pro claimed their defiance of the king. They collected an army which was unsuccessfully attacked by James Graham of Claverhouse (afterwards Viscount Dundee) at Drumclog on June 1, and, flushed with victory, they marched on Glasgow but failed to enter it. For three weeks they held the country round Hamilton. An organized movement would have been a serious matter for the Government, but the rebels were looked upon by the majority of the Presbyterians as extreme fanatics and only a few outlaws joined them. On June 2 2 the duke of Monmouth defeated them at Bothwell bridge. Both by instinct and from policy, Monmouth was inclined to leniency, but he was soon replaced by the duke of York, who ruled, with intervals of absence, during the years 168o-2. York had some ideas of moderation and his encourage ment of trade does him some credit, but the period of his rule was distinctively known as the Killing Time. Parliament put the penal laws passed against Roman Catholics into force against the Covenanters, and by the Test Act it imposed upon all persons in public trust an oath which emphasized the royal supremacy over the Church so strongly that 8o of the episcopal clergy gave up their livings rather than take it. After York left Scotland, things grew worse, and the torture of the thumbscrew was called in to supplement the use of another instrument of torture, the boot.
The Reign of James VIL—When the duke of York succeeded to the throne as James VII. (1685-88), the earl of Argyll, an exile under sentence of death for a "treasonable" refusal to take the Test Act, raised a rebellion in combination with Monmouth.
He landed in Argyll and crossed to the neighbourhood of Glas gow, where his small army quarrelled and dispersed ; its leader was captured and executed. The rising gave the Government little trouble, but it was the excuse for a ferocious act which appointed a death penalty for mere attendance at a conventicle. The Tory Parliament which passed this act could not, however, in its second session (1686), be persuaded to accept a measure for toleration of Roman Catholics, upon which the king had set his heart. James, therefore, resolved to employ the royal prerogative for this purpose as he was doing in England, and in 1687 he issued a Declaration of Indulgence which brought the Killing Time to an end. Fear of popery diminished the gratitude felt for this boon, and in 1687-8 the measures adopted by James to place Roman Catholics at the head of affairs raised widespread alarm. But the Revolution, like the Restoration, was distinctively an English movement, and it was not until the prince of Orange had been for more than a month on English soil, that a body of Edinburgh rioters sacked Holyrood, which had been given as a place of Roman Catholic worship and education. In various dis tricts in the south and south-west bands of ruffians "rabbled" the manses of the episcopal clergy.
A Convention of Estates, summoned by the prince of Orange, met in April 1689, and, by a majority, declared that James had forfeited the Crown. It was offered to, and accepted by, William and Mary and entailed upon their issue and then upon the Princess Anne and her issue. Stipulations similar to those of the English Bill of Rights were made, and the new sovereigns had to accept another limitation; viz., that prelacy was an insupportable griev
ance and ought to be abolished. The Crown was accepted on these conditions and the convention was converted into a parlia ment in June. But the promised abolition of episcopacy turned the Scottish episcopalians into a Jacobite Party, and, in the early summer of 1689, Edinburgh Castle was holding out timorously for King James, and Viscount Dundee was raising an army to carry out a famous threat which he had made to the convention.
The castle surrendered on June 13. On July 27 Dundee was killed in the hour of victory at Killiecrankie. With his death, the dan ger of a Jacobite restoration came to an end. Presbytery was re established in 169o, and the general assembly met that same year, for the first time since 1653.
The Massacre of Glencoe.—The reign of William was marked by two serious disputes, which embittered feeling between Scot land and England. The Highlanders were opposed to the revolu tion settlement, and the Government, apprehensive of a French invasion, tried by money payments to induce the chiefs to take the oaths to William and Mary. Dec. 31, 1691, was fixed as the last day on which the submission of the recalcitrant chiefs could be received ; those who had not qualified by that date were to be liable to the terrors of the law. Alexander MacDonald of Glencoe delayed his acceptance of the terms to the last moment, and then presented himself before a Government official who was not authorized to administer the oath. Owing to this accident, he did not take the oath until January 6. The Under-Secretary of State, Sir John Dalrymple, Master of Stair, was glad to have an oppor tunity of making an example, and, in accordance with precedent, "letters of fire and sword" were issued against the MacDonalds of Glencoe. The penalty contemplated by the law seems to have been the expulsion of the clan from its territory and a conse quent dispersion of its members, as the MacGregors had been rooted out and scattered in the reign of James VI. But the Gov ernment devised a scheme of murder committed in circumstances of revolting treachery. A small body of troops, under Campbell of Glenlyon, was sent to Glencoe, and the soldiers were for nearly a fortnight the guests of the clansmen, while Glenlyon was ar ranging to guard the passes by which his hosts might escape. Shortly after midnight on Feb. 12-13, 1692, the signal for a mas sacre was given. The military plans miscarried and a large pro portion of the MacDonalds escaped (some of them to perish from cold and exposure), but between 3o and 4o were murdered. The crime evoked an indignation which indicates the development of a sympathy for the Highlanders that had been foreign to Lowland feeling for more than a century, and the Jacobites naturally availed themselves of it for political purposes, but it was not till 1695 that the Scottish parliament demanded an enquiry and, on receiving an official report, voted that "the killing of the Glencoe men was a murder." The responsibility for the crime lay with William's Scottish ministers, but the king was guilty (in Macau lay's words) of "a great breach of duty" in shielding the Master of Stair from any punishment beyond dismissal from the Secre taryship of State which he held in 1695, and the massacre of Glencoe contributed to the rise of an anti-English feeling even in the Lowlands.