here was not open war between the Church and the
Government, they were estranged from each other, jealous of each
other, and afraid of each other. No progress had been made towards a
reconciliation when the Estates met; and which side the Estates would
take might well be doubted.

But the proceedings of this strange Parliament, in almost every one of
its sessions, falsified all the predictions of politicians. It had once
been the most unmanageable of senates. It was now the most obsequious.
Yet the old men had again met in the old hall. There were all the most
noisy agitators of the club, with the exception of Montgomery, who was
dying of want and of a broken heart in a garret far from his native
land. There was the canting Ross and the perfidious Annandale. There
was Sir Patrick Hume, lately created a peer, and henceforth to be
called Lord Polwarth, but still as eloquent as when his interminable
declamations and dissertations ruined the expedition of Argyle. But
the whole spirit of the assembly had undergone a change. The members
listened with profound respect to the royal letter, and returned an
answer in reverential and affectionate language. An extraordinary aid
of a hundred and fourteen thousand pounds sterling was granted to the
Crown. Severe laws were enacted against the Jacobites. The legislation
on ecclesiastical matters was as Erastian as William himself could have
desired. An Act was passed requiring all ministers of the Established
Church to swear fealty to their Majesties, and directing the General
Assembly to receive into communion those Episcopalian ministers, not
yet deprived, who should declare that they conformed to the Presbyterian
doctrine and discipline. [417] Nay, the Estates carried adulation so far
as to make it their humble request to the King that he would be pleased
to confer a Scotch peerage on his favourite Portland. This was
indeed their chief petition. They did not ask for redress of a single
grievance. They contented themselves with hinting in general terms that
there were abuses which required correction, and with referring the King
for fuller information to his own Ministers, the Lord High Commissioner
and the Secretary of State. [418]

There was one subject on which it may seem strange that even the most
servile of Scottish Parliaments should have kept silence. More than a
year had elapsed since the massacre of Glencoe; and it might have
been expected that the whole assembly, peers, c