190

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XIX.

11.93.

Majesties, and directing the General Assembly to receive into-communion those Episcopalian ministers, not yet deprived,xvho should declare that they conformed to the Presbyteriandoctrine and discipline.* Nay, the Estates carried adulationso far as to make it their humble request to the King that hewould be pleased to confer a Scotch peerage on his favouritePortland. This was indeed their chief petition. They did notask for redress of a single grievance. They contented them-selves with hinting in general terms that there were abuseswhich required correction, and with referring the King forfuller information to his own Ministers, the Lord High Com-missioner and the Secretary of State.**

There was one subject on which it may seem strange thateven the most servile of Scottish Parliaments should have keptsilence. More than a year had elapsed since the massacre ofGlencoe; and it might have been expected that the whole as-sembly, peers, commissioners of shires, commissioners ofburghs, w’ould with one X'oice have demanded a strict investi-gation into that great crime. It is certain, howex r er, that nomotion for investigation was made. The state of the Gaelicelans w T as indeed taken into consideration. A law was passedfor the more effectual suppressing of depredations and outragesbeyond the Highland line; and in that law was inserted aspecial proviso reserving to Mac Callum More his hereditaryjurisdiction. But it does not appear, either from the publicrecords of the proceedings of the Estates, or from those privateletters in which Johnstone regularly gave Carstairs an accountof what had passed, that any speaker made any allusion to thefate of Mac Ian and his kinsmen.*** The only explanation

* Act. Pari. Scot., June 12. 1693.

** Act. Pari. Scot., June 15. 1693.

*** The editor of the Carstairs Papers was evidently very desirous, fromwhatever motive, to [disguise this most certain and obvious truth. Ho has