een divided between two
Secretaries of State was transacted by Nottingham. [202]

While these arrangements were in progress, events had taken place in a
distant part of the island which were not, till after the lapse of
many months, known in the best informed circles of London, but which
gradually obtained a fearful notoriety, and which, after the lapse of
more than a hundred and sixty years, are never mentioned without horror.

Soon after the Estates of Scotland had separated in the autumn of 1690,
a change was made in the administration of that kingdom. William was
not satisfied with the way in which he had been represented in the
Parliament House. He thought that the rabbled curates had been hardly
treated. He had very reluctantly suffered the law which abolished
patronage to be touched with his sceptre. But what especially displeased
him was that the Acts which established a new ecclesiastical polity had
not been accompanied by an Act granting liberty of conscience to those
who were attached to the old ecclesiastical polity. He had directed his
Commissioner Melville to obtain for the Episcopalians of Scotland an
indulgence similar to that which Dissenters enjoyed in England. [203]
But the Presbyterian preachers were loud and vehement against lenity
to Amalekites. Melville, with useful talents, and perhaps with fair
intentions, had neither large views nor an intrepid spirit. He shrank
from uttering a word so hateful to the theological demagogues of his
country as Toleration. By obsequiously humouring their prejudices he
quelled the clamour which was rising at Edinburgh; but the effect of his
timid caution was that a far more formidable clamour soon rose in
the south of the island against the bigotry of the schismatics who
domineered in the north, and against the pusillanimity of the government
which had not dared to withstand that bigotry. On this subject the High
Churchman and the Low Churchman were of one mind, or rather the Low
Churchman was the more angry of the two. A man like South, who had
during many years been predicting that, if ever the Puritans ceased to
be oppressed, they would become oppressors, was at heart not ill pleased
to see his prophecy fulfilled. But in a man like Burnet, the great
object of whose life had been to mitigate the animosity which the
ministers of the Anglican Church felt towards the Presbyterians, the
intolerant conduct of the Presbyterians could awaken no feeling but
indignation,