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HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CIIAP.XIII.1689 .Meetingof theConven-tion.

powers to adjourn the Convention to Stirling, and that, if things• went ill at Edinburgh, those powers would be used. *

At length the fourteenth of March, the day fixed for themeeting of the Estates, arrived, and the Parliament Housewas crowded. Nine prelates were in their places. When Argylepresented himself, a single lord protested against the admissionof a person whom a legal sentence, passed in due form, andstill unreversed, had deprived of the honours of the peerage.But this objection was overruled by the general sense of theassembly. When Melville appeared, no voice was raised againsthis admission. The Bishop of Edinburgh officiated as chaplain,and made it one of his petitions that God would help and restoreKing James. ** It soon appeared 'that the general feeling of theConvention was by no means in harmony with this prayer. Thefirst matter to be decided was the choice of a President. TheDuke of Hamilton was supported by the Whigs, the Marquessof Athol by the Jacobites. Neither candidate possessed, andneither deserved, the entire confidence of his supporters.Hamilton had been a Privy Councillor of James, had bornea part in many unjustifiable acts, and had offered but a verycautious and languid opposition to the most daring attacks onthe laws and religion of Scotland. Not till the Dutch guardswere at Whitehall had he ventured to speak out. Then he hadjoined the victorious party, and had assured the Whigs thathe had pretended to be their enemy, only in order that he might,without incurring suspicion, act as their friend. Athol wasstill less to be trusted. His abilities were mean, his temperfalse, pusillanimous, and cruel. In the late reign he had gaineda dishonourable notoriety by the barbarous actions of whichhe had been guilty in Argyleshire. He had turned with the* Balcarras’s Memoirs.

** Act. Pari. Scot., Mar. 34. 1689; History of the late Revolution inScotland, 1690; An Account of the Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland,fol. Lond. 1689.