As the pretender had now taken upon him the state and title of a king, and received the usual homage, by the addresses of the people, so he assumed the regal authority, by conferring titles of honour, as knighthood, nobility, and ecclesiastical dignities on those that were zealous for him. The honour of knighthood, he conferred on provost Bannerman, who presented this last address, and he created several lords and bishops, of which last, the famous Lesley was one, though it has never been exactly ascertained to what place he was designated, and as all these honours died with his usurped authority, which was so very short-lived, it has become difficult to know on whom they were bestowed, the persons so distinguished, naturally wishing to conceal a distinction, that only subjected them to ridicule.

Being recovered of the distemper, which had detained him and his royal court at Fetteresso, James proceeded to Brechin on Monday, January the second, where he remained till Wednesday when he proceeded to Kinnaird, on Thursday to Glamis, and on Friday forenoon, he made his public entry on horseback into Dundee, with a retinue of about three hundred horsemen. The earl of Marr rode on his right, and the earl Marischal upon his left hand. At the desire of his friends, he continued about an hour on horseback in the market place, giving the people his hand to kiss, and afterwards dined at Stuart of Grantully's, where he also slept for that night. On Saturday, he proceeded to Castle Lyon, a seat of the earl of Strathmore's, where he dined, and afterward to the house of Sir David Triplin, where he lodged. He arrived at Scoon, one of the royal residences, on Sabbath, January the eighth, and on Monday the ninth, he made his public entry into Perth, where he reviewed some of the troops quartered in the town, who were drawn out for that purpose, and the same night returned to Scoon. Here he began to form a regular council, and to perform several acts of government. He issued out six proclamations; one for a general thanksgiving for his safe arrival; another ordering prayers to be publicly put up for him in all the churches; a third giving currency to all foreign coins; a fourth for summoning the meeting of the convention of estates; a fifth ordering all fencible men, from sixteen to sixty, to repair immediately to his royal standard; and a sixth fixing his coro

nation for the twenty-third of " this current January." He obstinately however, refused to attend any protestant place of worship, nor would he allow any protestant so much as to say grace at his table. His own confessor, Father Innes, constantly repeated the Pater Noster and Ave Marias for him; and he had an invincible repugnancy to comply with the usual form of the coronation oath, obliging the sovereign to maintain the established religion.* This avowed bigotry, occasioned wide divisions among his few counsellors, and cooled to a great degree, the affection of his female friends, the episcopal ladies, many of whom, had incited their husbands to take arms for him, under the idea that he had become protestant. It would also have rendered the coronation a matter of some difficulty, and no small ingenuity would have been necessary to have got over it, without giving serious offence to some of his partisans. They were soon, however, saved from anxiety on this subject, all thoughts of the coronation being, before the appointed day arrived, swallowed up in a strong feeling of the dangers with which he was surrounded, and all their cares concentrated in devising the means for carrying him safely back into that obscurity, from which it had been well for his fame he had never emerged.

On the sixteenth, he assembled a grand council of all the rebel chiefs, at the opening of which, he delivered himself in a set speech to the following effect:-"I am now on your repeated invitation, come among you; no other argument need be used, of the great confidence I place in your loyalty and fidelity to me, which I entirely rely on. I believe you are altogether convinced of my good intentions, to restore the ancient laws and liberties of this kingdom, if not, I am still ready to confirm to you, the assurance of doing all that can give you satisfaction therein. The great discouragements which presented, were not sufficient to deter me from coming to put myself at the head of my faithful subjects, who were in arms for me; and whatsoever shall ensue, I shall leave them no room for complaint, that I have not done the utmost they could expect from me. Let those who forget their duty, and are

* Rae's History of the Rebellion, p. 360.

negligent of their own good, be answerable for the worst that may happen; for me, it will be no new thing, if I am unfortunate, my whole life, even from my cradle, has shown a constant series of misfortunes, and I am prepared, if it so please God, to suffer the threats of my enemies and yours. The preparations which are making against us, will, I hope, quicken your resolution, and convince others, from whom I have assurances, that it is now no time to dispute what they have to do, if otherwise they shall by their remissness, be unmindful of their own safety, I shall take it as my greatest comfort, that I have acquitted myself of whatever can be expected from me. I recommend to you what is necessary to be done in the present conjuncture, and next to God, rely on your counsel and resolution."

This effusion of pusillanimous despair was put into the hands of Mr. Freebairn, and most industriously circulated by the rebels, though nothing could be less calculated for advancing their interests. It speaks throughout, the language of a mind abandoned of hope, but arraying its despondency in the garb of resignation, and, with strong professions of inviolable regard to duty, hiding from itself its own weakness and timidity. It possesses, however, what the most of their speeches wanted, some little truth; or rather, it has the negative quality of containing less positive falsehood than others that preceded it. "There is nothing," as has been observed, "of these great assurances with which the party was unhappily amused before his landing; no new hopes of succour, nor any arguments to raise and animate their zeal and courage, but such as were proper only for an assembly of monks, but too cold to be addressed to an assembly of rebels, met on so desperate an attempt." Nor is the melancholy strain of the speech at all to be wondered at, when we advert to the character and circumstances of the speaker, who was unquestionably no hero, and his prospects had, in the present instance, been woefully blasted. Louis XIV., on whom all his hopes, as well as those of his party depended, had dropped into the grave at the very moment when his good offices were most wanted, and likely to have been most effective. The great

*Campbell's Life of John, Duke of Argyle, p. 242.

grandson of Louis, an infant, had succeeded him as king. His nephew, Philip, duke of Orleans, acted as regent, under whose government there was an entire change of policy at the French court. Careful of the tranquillity of the kingdom, which the mad ambition, and the cruel bigotry of Louis had rendered so necessary for recovering her wasted population, and ruined finances, as well as from motives of a less dignified character, Orleans was disposed to enter into the closest alliance with the government of Britain, and all the address of the duke of Berwick, and Bolingbroke, could not procure from his ministers a single ship, nor a single sixpence to aid in the important enterprise. Nor could even those little succours, afforded by individual liberality, escape the vigilance of the earl of Stair, who de veloped every plan of the party as fast as it could be formed, and by his interest with Orleans and the French ministry, blasted every attempt of any consequence, that was made in that country for their assistance. The small armament that the duke of Ormond had with the utmost difficulty equipped, had, according to agreement, appeared on the western coast of England, but found no armies ready to receive him, and he was glad to seek refuge whence he had come. The rising in the north of England, had been totally extinguished, without any extraordinary effort on the part of the government, which was now ready to pour its concentrated strength upon an army, that had already suffered all the misery of a signal defeat, and was insensibly melting under a combined influence, which neither the pretender nor his friends had power to control. From all these circumstances, it cannot be thought strange, that the new made monarch was a little gloomy, or that the result of this grand council, as it was called, was a determination to abandon the enterprise as quickly as possible. They knew that they were in no condition to stand an attack from the royal army, now provided with a powerful artillery, and re-enforced by Cadogan, and six thousand Dutch auxillaries; but it was necessary to conceal this knowledge from the troops, till proper measures should be concerted for dismissing them with greater safety, than could be done at that time and place. Had they made their real circumstances known, the whole army had probably been so dispirited, as to have been in

capable of taking the necessary steps for securing an escape, or they might have been provoked, as was like to have been the case at Preston, to take summary vengeance on their leaders, who had brought them, by such gross misrepresentations and so many palpable blunders, into a situation of so much difficulty and danger. There was nothing, of course, to be seen among them, but bustle and activity, and nothing to be heard, but the dreadful note of preparation. Every where, there was planting of guns, marking out breastworks and trenches, digging up streets, and laying them with sand, to prevent the effects of bombardment, and in short, every thing to induce the belief, that they were to make to the king's troops, the most determined, and the most desperate resistance.

Still more to confirm this view of the matter, an order was issued the very day following the council, the last that James promulgated, for burning the country between him and the king's troops, and destroying every thing that could possibly be useful to an enemy. The following is a copy of the order" James R. Whereas, it is absolutely necessary for our service and the public safety, that the enemy should be as much incommoded as possible, especially upon their march towards us, if they should attempt any thing against us or our forces, and seeing this can be by no means better effected than by destroying all the corn and forage, which may serve to support them on their march, and burning the houses and villages, which may be necessary for quartering the enemy, which, nevertheless, it is our meaning shall only be done in case of absolute necessity, concerning which we have given our full instructions to James Graham, younger of Braco. These are, therefore, ordering and requiring you, how soon this order shall be put into your hands by the said James Graham, forthwith, with the garrison under your command, to burn and destroy the village of Auchterarder, and all the houses, corn, and forage, whatsoever within the said town, so as they may be rendered entirely useless to the enemy. For doing whereof, this shall be to you and all you employ in the execution hereof a sufficient warrant. Given at our court of Scoon, this seventeenth day of January, in the fifteenth year of our reign, 1715-16. By his majesty's