nally soever his own frailties, prejudices, absurdities, and violences, contributed to his misfortunes, it ought to be acknowledged that the measure would never have overflown in so astonishing a manner if it had not been for those fatal occurrents, treacherous councillors, ungrateful servants, &c.; all of whom, instead of warning him of the rocks that lay before him, according to the obligations which lay upon them, either sordidly connived at the ruinous course he held, or wickedly flattered the phrensy that impelled him, for the sake of their share in the wreck 1." It is to be well noted, that all his popish counsellors and advisers fled, and hid their diminished heads, the moment that his real power vanished from him; and none of them, in the hour of need, assisted him either with their counsel or their sword. They well knew the grievous sins they had committed against both the religion and the liberty of the empire, and naturally enough dreaded the vengeance of an injured and indignant people.

1710.—IN OBEDIENCE to William's appointment, the General Assembly met at Edinburgh on March the 6th. The earl of Marchmont, the lord chancellor, was the commissioner, and the ministers chose the notorious David Williamson, minister of the West Kirk, moderator. The king again assured them of his protection, and recommended calmness and unanimity in their proceedings, and to eschew disputes. The commissioner communicated to the Assembly the intelligence of William's declining health, and the probability of his death; and he urged them to despatch all the most necessary business, lest that event might occur before their dissolution. In this gloomy state of their affairs very little business was done beyond the appointment of a new commission for planting the stubborn episcopalian north, and the general commission of the kirk. After sitting five sessions, the earl of Marchmont dissolved the Assembly on the 11th of March, and appointed the next to meet on the 10th of March, next year.

WILLIAM had been long in a declining state of health, but was still able to transact business and to take exercise. On the 21st of February, as he was riding out from Kensington to hunt, near Hampton Court, his horse stumbled upon level ground, as he was putting him to a gallop, and, being very feeble, the king fell off and broke his right clavicle. He was carried to Hampton Court, where his collar bone was set, and he returned to Kensington in the evening. Two days afterwards, he sent a message to the Commons, pressing upon

1 Life of James II.-Burnet's Own Times, and the Editor's Notes VOL. III.

4 M

their consideration the necessity of a firm and entire union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland. In the Peers, the earl of Nottingham moved that an address should be made to the king to dissolve the Scottish parliament, and to call a new one, since it was only a prolonged convention, and the legality of its consent to an union might be questioned. This motion put an end to the projected union; for the state of public opinion in Scotland was such that the king durst not have ventured on dissolving his convention-parliament, and of calling a free and constitutional one. On the 4th of March an act passed both Houses, " for the further security of his majesty's person and the succession of the crown in the protestant line, and extinguishing the hopes of the pretended prince of Wales and all other pretenders, and their open and secret abettors;" and in this act was embodied the ABJURATION OATH, which was enjoined to be taken by all men on entering to any office under government. This oath was afterwards extended to Scotland:" I do solemnly and sincerely declare, that the person pretended to be the prince of Wales during the life of the late king James, and since his decease pretending to be, and taking upon himself the stile and title of, king of England, by the name of James the Third, or of Scotland, by the name of James the Eighth, or the stile and title of king of Great Britain, hath not any right or title whatsoever to the crown of this realm, or to any other the dominions thereunto belonging and I do renounce, refuse, and abjure any allegiance or obedience to him, &c."

ON THE 4th of March the king took several turns in the gallery at Kensington, and, being tired, sat down on a sofa and fell asleep; on waking he had a shivering fit, which was followed by diarrhoea. He observed in French, to the earl of Albemarle, "I approach my end;" and he received the sacrament from archbishop Tennison, who, with bishop Burnet, remained with him to the last. He was too weak to sign the above-named act and oath of abjuration, but a stamp had been prepared, by which he affixed his name to it, in the presence of the great officers of state. And thus, in the article of death, he left a legacy of dispute and contention, and an oath, says Mr. Skinner," of such a dubious contexture, and so hard to be digested in all its parts, that even the presbyterians boggled at it." On the other hand, bishop Kennett says, "Above all, and without which all others had been void, was his wise and effectual care for the protestant succession, provided for by two several acts of his last year; and one of them his blessed dying legacy of admirable, and we hope per

petual, service to this church and nation, and indeed to the protestant interest and balance of all Europe." He died about eight o'clock on Sunday morning, the 8th of March. The immediate cause of his death was a mortification of the upper lobe on the left side of the lungs, and part of the pleura next to it. Immediately after death, lords Lexington and Scarborough directed a black ribbon to be untied from his left arm, by which there was tied next to his skin a gold ring, with some hair of the late queen Mary, which he had worn in this manner since her death. In their report, the physicians say, "It is very rare to find a body with so little blood as was seen in this; there being more found in his lungs than in all the parts put together." And bishop Burnet says, "there was scarce any blood in his body." He died in his fifty-second year, having reigned thirteen years and a few days1.

6

SMOLLETT sums up his character in few words :-" William was a fatalist in religion, indefatigable in war, enterprising in politics, dead to all the warm and generous emotions of the heart, a cold relation, an indifferent husband, a disagreeable man, an ungracious prince, and an imperious sovereign2. He was bred a Calvinist; but on his marriage he had a chapel fitted up for the princess Mary, where divine service was performed after the rites of the church of England. The writer of the history of his reign says, that, whilst prince of Orange, he went either to the Dutch, French, or English churches indifferently! and whilst king of England, though he publicly professed the established religion, yet he still retained a great tenderness for the dissenters, and was ever averse to persecute people upon account of their belief. His piety and devotion were sincere, but unaffected. The only thing that looked like superstition in him was the avoiding to begin a journey or any great enterprise on a Monday 3" liam does not appear to have been a persecutor; his mind seems to have been intent on military affairs and ambitious projects; but he suffered those in authority under him, and the rabble in his name, to persecute the Church of Scotland in a more severe, cruel, and wanton manner, than perhaps was ever practised since the last pagan persecution of the church. Being a fatalist, he probably thought the rabbling of the

Wil

1 Burnet's Own Times, iv. 560, 561.-Kennett's History of England, iii. 836, 837.-Salmon's Chronological Historian, i. 311.-History of King William III. vol. iii. 509-515.-Skinner's Eccl. History, ii. 598.

2 Continuation of Hume's History, ix. 443.

3 History of the Reign of William III. vol. iii. 517.

clergy of Scotland had been one of those things "predestinated and foreordained," and so "particularly and unchangeably designed," that it could not be "either increased or diminished" by his interference. Hetherington says, that by the presbyterian establishment "his memory will ever be much and justly revered, as having been under Providence the instrument by which she was delivered from prelatic tyranny and persecution. But it cannot be concealed, and ought not to be forgotten, that his systematic treatment of the presbyterian church was both unwise, ungrateful, and injurious. If he did not succeed in bringing her under the erastian yoke, it was not for want of inclination to have done so1" THE PRINCESS ANNE, only surviving child of James II. and VII., by the lady Anne Hyde, eldest daughter of Edward, ear! of Clarendon, was proclaimed at Whitehall on the 8th of March, with the usual solemnity. A council assembling the same day, her majesty made a speech, in which she declared how sensible she was of the unspeakable loss the nation had sustained by the death of the late king, and the burthen it brought upon herself; which nothing could encourage her to undergo but her great concern for the preservation of the religion, laws, and liberties of her native country: and that no pains should be wanting on her part to defend and support them, and to maintain the protestant succession 2." The same day she caused a letter to be written to her privy council in Scotland, in which she said-" And on this occasion, at our first accession to the throne, we give them, and all our good people, full assurance of our firm resolution during the whole course of our reign, to protect them in their religion, laws, and liberties, and in the established government of the church3."

LOCKHART says, queen Anne was proclaimed, "to the great satisfaction of all those who were well-wishers to their country, and especially to the cavaliers, who expected mighty things from her; but, on the other hand, the presbyterians looked on themselves as undone; despair appeared in their countenances, which were more upon the melancholic and dejected air than usual, and most of their discourses from the pulpits were exhortations to stand by, support, and be ready to suffer for Christ's cause (the epithet they gave their own). They knew the queen was a strenuous assertor of the doctrine of the church of England. They were conscious how little respect the great men of their faction had paid her during the late

1 Hetherington's History, 189.

2 Salmon's Chron. Hist. i. 315. 3 Boyer's History of Queen Anne, folio, p. 10. 1735.