ummon a Convention similar to that which had
been summoned in England, and on his own responsibility to set aside the
laws passed by the "Drunken Parliament" of the Restoration which
excluded Presbyterians from the Scotch Parliament. This Convention
resolved that James had forfeited the crown by misgovernment, and
offered it to William and Mary. The offer was accompanied by a Claim of
Right framed on the model of the Declaration of Rights to which the two
sovereigns had consented in England, but closing with a demand for the
abolition of Prelacy. Both crown and claim were accepted, and the
arrival of the Scotch regiments which William had brought from Holland
gave strength to the new Government.

[Sidenote: Killiecrankie.]

Its strength was to be roughly tested. On the revolt of the capital John
Graham of Claverhouse, whose cruelties in the persecution of the Western
Covenanters had been rewarded with high command in the Scotch army and
with the title of Viscount Dundee, withdrew with a few troopers from
Edinburgh to the Highlands and appealed to the clans. In the Highlands
nothing was known of English government or misgovernment: all that the
Revolution meant to a Highlander was the restoration of the House of
Argyle. To many of the clans it meant the restoration of lands which had
been granted them on the Earl's attainder; and the zeal of the
Macdonalds, the Macleans, the Camerons, who were as ready to join Dundee
in fighting the Campbells and the Government which upheld them as they
had been ready to join Montrose in the same cause forty years before,
was quickened by a reluctance to disgorge their spoil. They were soon in
arms. William's Scotch regiments under General Mackay were sent to
suppress the rising; but as they climbed the pass of Killiecrankie on
the 27th of July 1689 Dundee charged them at the head of three thousand
clansmen and swept them in headlong rout down the glen. His death in the
moment of victory broke however the only bond which held the Highlanders
together, and in a few weeks the host which had spread terror through
the Lowlands melted helplessly away. In the next summer Mackay was able
to build the strong post of Fort William in the very heart of the
disaffected country, and his offers of money and pardon brought about
the submission of the clans.

[Sidenote: Massacre of Glencoe.]

The work of peace was sullied by an act of cruel treachery the memory of
which still lingers in the minds of