om that general, that
he would submit to accept of a capitulation. Such jealousy of his loyal
attachments was entertained by the commonwealth and protector, that a
pretence was soon after fallen upon to commit him to prison; and his
confinement was rigorously continued till the restoration. The king,
sensible of his services, had remitted to him his father's forfeiture,
and created him earl of Argyle; and when a most unjust sentence was
passed upon him by the Scottish parliament, Charles had anew remitted
it. In the subsequent part of this reign, Argyle behaved himself
dutifully; and though he seemed not disposed to go all lengths with the
court, he always appeared, even in his opposition, to be a man of mild
dispositions and peaceable deportment.

A parliament was summoned at Edinburgh this summer, and the duke was
appointed commissioner. Besides granting money to the king and voting
the indefeasible right of succession, this parliament enacted a
test, which all persons possessed of offices, civil, military, or
ecclesiastical, were bound to take. In this test the king's supremacy
was asserted, the covenant renounced, passive obedience assented to,
and all obligations disclaimed of endeavoring any alteration in civil
or ecclesiastical establishments. This was the state of the test, as
proposed by the courtiers; but the country party proposed also to
insert a clause, which could not with decency be refused, expressing
the person's adherence to the Protestant religion. The whole was of an
enormous length, considered as an oath; and what was worse, a confession
of faith was there ratified, which had been imposed a little after the
reformation, and which contained many articles altogether forgotten by
the parliament and nation. Among others, the doctrine of resistance
was inculcated; so that the test, being voted in a hurry, was found
on examination to be a medley of contradiction and absurdity. Several
persons, the most attached to the crown, scrupled to take it: the
bishops and many of the clergy remonstrated: the earl of Queensberry
refused to swear, except he might be allowed to add an explanation:
and even the privy council thought it necessary to publish, for general
satisfaction, a solution of some difficulties attending the test.

Though the courtiers could not reject the clause of adhering to the
Protestant religion, they proposed, as a necessary mark of respect, that
all princes of the blood should be exempted fr