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niSIOEY OJF ENGEAKD.

CHAP.

XIII.

HISS.

Estates met, their deliberations were carried on with perfectfreedom and in strict accordance with ancient forms. Therewas indeed, after the first flight of James, an alarming anarchyin London and in some parts of the country. But that anarchynowhere lasted longer than forty eight hours. From the dayon which William reached Saint James’s, not even the mostunpopular agents of the fallen government, not even theministers of the Roman Catholic Church, had any thing to fearfrom the fury of the populace.

In Scotland the course of events was very different. Therethe law itself was a grievance; and James had perhaps incurredmore unpopularity by enforcing it than by violating it. TheChurch established by law was the most odious institution inthe realm. The tribunals had pronounced some sentences soflagitious, the Parliament had passed some Acts so oppressive,that, unless those sentences and those Acts were treated asnullities, it would be impossible to bring together a Conventioncommanding the public respect and expressing the publicopinion. It was hardly to be expected, for example, that theWhigs, in this day of their power, would endure to see theirhereditary leader, the son of a martyr, the grandson of amartyr, excluded from the Parliament House in which nine ofhis ancestors had sate as Earls of Argyle, and excluded by ajudgment on which the whole kingdom cried shame. Still lesswas it to be expected that they would suffer the election of mem-bers for counties and towns to be conducted according to theprovisions of the existing law. For under the existing law noelector could vote without swearing that he- renounced theCovenant, and that he acknowledged the Royal supremacy inmatters ecclesiastical.* Such an oath no rigid Presbyteriancould take. If such an oath had been exacted, the constituentbodies would have been merely small knots of prelatists: the* Act. Pari. Scot., Aug. 81. 1081.