eigns: but the king depended chiefly for
advice upon Dalrymple lord Stair, president of the college of justice,
an old crafty fanatic, who for forty years had complied in all things
with all governments. Though these were rigid pres-byterians, the king,
to humour the opposite party, admitted some individuals of the episcopal
nobility to the council-board; and this intermixture, instead of
allaying animosities, served only to sow the seeds of discord and
confusion. The Scottish convention, in their detail of grievances,
enumerated the lords of the articles; the act of parliament in the reign
of Charles II. by which the king's supremacy was raised so high that he
could prescribe any mode of religion according to his pleasure; and the
superiority of any office in the church above that of presbyters. The
king in his instructions to the lord commissioner, consented to the
regulation of the lords of the articles, though he would not allow the
institution to be abrogated; he was contented that the act relating to
the king's supremacy should be rescinded, and that the church government
should be established in such a manner as would be most agreeable to the
inclinations of the people.

PRELACY ABOLISHED IN SCOTLAND.

On the seventeenth day of June, duke Hamilton opened the Scottish
parliament, after the convention had assumed this name, in consequence
of an act passed by his majesty's direction; but the members in general
were extremely chagrined when they found the commissioners so much
restricted in the affair of the lords of the articles, which they
considered as their chief grievance. [008] _[See note D, at the end of
this Vol.]_ The king permitted that the estates should choose the lords
by their own suffrages, and that they should be at liberty to reconsider
any subject which the said lords might reject. He afterwards indulged
the three estates with the choice of eleven delegates each, for this
committee, to be elected monthly, or oftener if they should think fit:
but even these concessions proved unsatisfactory while the institution
itself remained. Their discontents were not even appeased by the passing
of an act abolishing prelacy. Indeed their resentment was inflamed by
another consideration, namely, that of the king's having given seats
in the council to some individuals attached to the hierarchy. They
manifested their sentiments on this subject by bringing in a bill
excluding from any public trust, place, or