WILLIAM AND MAltX.

17

those who were to decide his fate. By a dark intrigue, of whichthe history is but imperfectly known, but which was, in all pro-bability, directed by the Master of Stair, the evidence of MacIan’s tardy submission was suppressed. The certificate whichthe Sheriff of Argyleshire had transmitted to the Council, atEdinburgh, was never laid before the board, but was privatelysubmitted to some persons high in office, and particularly toLord President Stair, the father of the Secretary. These per-sons pronounced the certificate irregular, and, indeed, abso-lutely null; and it w r as cancelled.

Meanwhile the Master of Stair was forming, in concert withBreadalbane andArgyle, a plan for the destruction of the peopleof Glencoe. It was necessary to take the King’s pleasure, not,indeed, as to the details of what was to be done, but as to thequestion w'hether Mac Ian and his people should or should notbe treated as rebels out of the pale of the ordinary law. TheMaster of Stair found no difficulty in the royal closet. Williamhad, in all probability, never heard the Glencoe men mentionedexcept as banditti. He knew that they had not come in by theprescribed day. That they had come in after that day he didnot know. If he paid any attention to the matter, he musthave thought that so fair an opportunity of putting an endto the (devastations and depredations from which a quiet andindustrious population had suffered so much ought not tobe lost.

An order was laid before him for signature. He signed it,but, if Burnet may be trusted, did not read it. Whoeverhas seen anything of public business knows that princes andministers daily sign, and indeed must sign, documents whichthey have not read: and of all documents a document relatingto a small tribe of mountaineers, living in a wilderness not setdown in any map, was least likely to interest a Sovereign whosemind was full of schemes on winch the fate of Europe mightMacaulay, History. VII. 2

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JCB2.