latter entertained no
scruple of paying court even by the sacrifice of both. But no courtier,
even the most prostitute, could go further than the parliament itself
towards a resignation of their liberties. In a vote, which they called
an offer of duty, after adopting the fabulous history of a hundred and
eleven Scottish monarchs, they acknowledged, that all these princes,
by the primary and fundamental law of the state, had been vested with
a solid and absolute authority. They declared their abhorrence of all
principles and positions derogatory to the king's sacred, supreme,
sovereign, absolute power, of which none, they said, whether single
persons or collective bodies, can participate, but in dependence on
him, and by commission from him. They promised, that the whole nation,
between sixteen and sixty, shall be in readiness for his majesty's
service, where and as oft as it shall be his royal pleasure to require
them. And they annexed the whole excise, both of inland and foreign
commodities, forever to the crown.

All the other acts of this assembly savored of the same spirit. They
declared it treason for any person to refuse the test, if tendered
by the council. To defend the obligation of the covenant, subjected a
person to the same penalty. To be present at any conventicle, was made
punishable with death and confiscation of movables. Even such as refused
to give testimony, either in cases of treason or nonconformity, were
declared equally punishable as if guilty of those very crimes; an
excellent prelude to all the rigors of an inquisition. It must be
confessed, that nothing could equal the abject servility of the
Scottish nation during this period but the arbitrary severity of the
administration.

It was in vain that Argyle summoned a people so lost to all sense of
liberty, so degraded by repeated indignities, to rise in vindication
of their violated laws and privileges. Even those who declared for him,
were, for the greater part, his own vassals; men who, if possible, were
still more sunk in slavery than the rest of the nation. He arrived,
after a prosperous voyage, in Argyleshire, attended by some fugitives
from Holland; among the rest, by Sir Patrick Hume, a man of mild
dispositions, who had been driven to this extremity by a continued train
of oppression. The privy council was beforehand apprised of Argyle's
intentions. The whole militia of the kingdom, to the number of
twenty-two thousand men, were already i