by John Prebble
Hill sent the original of this recommendation to King William, and fair copies to some of the Lords in Council in Edinburgh. Within two or three weeks he got some reply, some reason to hope, and he sailed at once for Glasgow, posting from there to Edinburgh. Now he waited impatiently in his lodgings, husbanding what little money he had left, and writing more letters in which he mixed dogmatic assertion with shrewd good sense. He knew more about the state of affairs in the Highlands than might have been expected in an old man so long absent from them, but the clans had not changed in thirty years. When he sent the burgesses' Certificate to the King he had enclosed with it a letter containing his ‘apprehensions concerning some preliminaries to the settlement of the insurrection in the Highlands’. He repeated these doubts now in a letter to the Earl of Leven. He did not believe that the political issues of the moment, a preference for this king or that, were of significant importance to many chiefs. Some were disaffected ‘by having their judgements imposed on by others more subtle than themselves; some for interest, because they get not what they desire; and others out of a vindictive temper, all preferring self and private before public interest’.
He was worried by a fear that French ships, hovering off the Irish coast, would any day bring five thousand men with arms and supplies to the Highlands, encouraging the clans to gather again as they had done at Dalcomera the year before. It was, he thought, foolish to hope that the Highlanders would tamely accept the King's offer of grace and indemnity. They would have to be forced or bribed. And if force were to be used, then the Council must look to the readiness of General Mackay's army. This was suffering from the customary meanness of all governments. ‘I find that these forces are much in arrears [of pay], which puts them out of heart; but I hope the Parliament now sitting will supply that want; but the time is short, the time for action is drawing near.’
The days passed to the end of March, and although John Hill's advice was politely acknowledged, and occasional audiences with great men kept his hopes warm, no one as yet authorized the commission he wanted. It was well known in Edinburgh why he was there, and it was assumed that his services had already been accepted. An English journalist who sent twice-weekly News Letters to London, to be published from the Rose and Crown in St Paul's Churchyard, reported that ‘it is now a thing certain determined, that Col. Hill has received a commission from His Majesty to be Governor of Inverlochy in Lochaber, which puts us in hopes that the rebellious Highlanders in those parts will soon be reduced to civility and obedience’. And then again, four days later, ‘Colonel Hill is come to Town from Ireland, and is to have the command of the garrison at Dunstaffnage until Lochaber is reduced’.
By mid-April John Hill was assured by the two men from whom he expected most, and to whom he had first addressed himself, that when matters could be put in order he would get what he desired.
They were at this moment two of the most influential men in Scotland, having the ear and confidence of the King. The first was the Earl of Melville, Secretary of State for Scotland, a sadly ugly little man in his middle fifties. By some miracle of balance, his small body supported a large head made greater by the enormous wig that was then in fashion, from the dark curls of which his white chin jutted like the share of a plough. Though King William preferred the company of pretty young men, and was inclined to load them with honours in indirect proportion to their talents, he could recognize merit and ability behind less favoured faces. Melville's strength was his uncompromising zeal for the Reformed Church. John Macky, a Government spy who published entertaining sketches of the great men of his time, said that Melville had ‘neither learning, wit, nor common conversation, but a steadiness of principle and a firm boldness for a Presbyterian Government’. It was these cold virtues that persuaded William to trust him with the affairs of Scotland at a moment of dangerous uncertainty.
Melville's resistance to the Stuart kings and to Episcopacy had been the sap of his public and spiritual life, and he had suffered for it. The Scots Parliament of James II had driven him from the country, declaring that he ‘ought to be punished as a horrid traitor, rebel and murderer, with forfeiture of life, lands and goods’. In exile he became the friend and adviser of the Prince of Orange, and the Revolution brought him an earldom, the return of his forfeited estates, and the Secretaryship. His son, the Earl of Leven, became the Governor of Edinburgh Castle and Colonel of a splendid foot regiment. Another son controlled the Revenue. Between them, the Melvilles ruled Scotland in the first few months of the reign of William and Mary.
But powerful families provoke the opposition of powerful cabals. Melville had a pathological fear of his rivals, and he whined about them to William. ‘I know I may be probably misrepresented to Your Majesty by my enemies, or rather by yours, for I know none I have but whom I have procured by my endeavours to serve you.’ He believed that the barons of Scotland were for ever plotting against him, in their own drawing-rooms, in the dark chambers of Holyroodhouse, or the ante-rooms of Parliament House. And it is true that while most of them agreed that he was ‘a good and sober man’, this did not prevent them from coveting his position and his influence. There was the dark-faced and lusty Marquis of Annandale, the fair-skinned Earl of Breadalbane who, said Macky, was as ‘cunning as a fox, wise as a serpent, slippery as an eel’. The tenth Earl of Argyll, whose father and grandfather had died on the scaffold, was determined at all expense to keep his own head and trunk in one piece. There were the Dalrymples, father and son, the Viscount and Master of Stair, skilled lawyers, witty, wise and ambitious. They too had suffered from Stuart persecution, but the more they assured Melville of their friendship, the less he trusted them. There was the commoner William Carstares, ‘The cunningest, subtle dissembler in the world,’ said Macky, ‘with an air of sincerity, but a dangerous enemy because always hid.’ He hated the Jacobites, and distrusted men of title. Six years before, under torture, he had given evidence that sent an innocent man to the gallows in the Grass-market, and much of his nature might be explained by this. He was the King's chaplain and unofficial adviser on Scottish affairs, and Scots visitors to the Court complained that they could not get an audience with William without first securing the approval of ‘Cardinald Carstares’.
Beyond his fear of such men and others, Melville was also troubled by the activities of Jacobite sympathizers known as ‘The Killiecrankies’ or ‘The Club’. They met in Edinburgh coffee-houses to talk and plot treason, and at one time or another most great men in Scotland flirted with them.
Melville had one friend, or at least a man whom he felt he could trust, the amiable George MacKenzie, Viscount Tarbat, who was also John Hill's second hope for preferment. Between Melville and Tarbat there existed a peculiar alliance that seemed to be contradicted by their characters and their histories. Now aged sixty, Tarbat was still a handsome man, tall and aristocratic, ‘A gentleman of very polite learning and good parts,’ said Macky, ‘a great deal of wit, and is the pleasantest companion in the world.’ He had been one of the first members of the Royal Society, wrote pamphlets on literature, science and philosophy, and delighted in argument. He was lazy, fashionably foppish, and pretended to take politics lightly, but at heart he was a cynical trimmer. A serious misjudgement during the reign of Charles II nearly lost him his head, but he talked himself out of disaster, went into enforced retirement, and then charmed his way back into the Stuarts' favour. He became James II's chief minister in Scotland, where he was cordially detested and commonly believed to have falsified Parliamentary records. At the Revolution he was dismissed from office. He had the wit to see that the Stuarts were gone for ever, and he had no desire to become a shabby hanger-on in their Court at Saint-Germain. Since exile was not to his taste, he urbanely welcomed William and Mary, exercised his charm on Melville, and waited.
He did not wait long. Four months after the landing at Torbay, Melville obtained for him the King's exoneration. ‘We do further secure him,’ William wrote to Melville, ‘from all danger in his person
or estate, notwithstanding any actings, writings, councils, speeches, or any crimes committed by him.’ But there was no suggestion of a post in the Government. This Tarbat had to earn, and the manner in which he might earn it brought him and Melville closer together in their strange alliance.
Reduced to its simplest form, William's attitude to Scotland was a determination that it should not become a recruiting ground for the Jacobites, and a second front for Louis XIV. At Stadholder, Captain-General and Admiral-General of the Netherlands, he had spent his life defending the Dutch against the French, and this was still the main purpose of his life, in which England, Scotland and Ireland could best serve him by supplying men and arms. Despite his Stuart mother and Stuart wife, he was Dutch in spirit and feeling, and the acquisition of three kingdoms meant less to him than the preservation of the United Netherlands. He had no wish to visit Scotland, and would not go there to be crowned. He had little real interest in the problems which the Revolution brought to the Scots Parliament: the proper administration of justice, the establishment of Presbyterianism by law, and the growing demand for union with the Parliament of England. He scarcely understood the deep division between the Gael and the English-speakers of the Lowlands. If he thought anything at all of the Highlanders, beyond those Europeanized members of his Scots Brigade, it was that they were troublesome savages. In this view he cannot be blamed, since it was shared by most of his Scots ministers.
Melville knew that his success as Secretary for Scotland depended on the speedy pacification of the Highlands. When he asked William for Tarbat's exoneration he suggested that the Mackenzie (who had undoubtedly put the idea into Melvill's mind) should be sent to the Highlands with sufficient funds to bribe the chiefs into submission. ‘Since you think my Lord Tarbat can be serviceable in quieting the north,’ agreed William, ‘I hope you will encourage his going hither. A distribution of money among the Highlanders being thought the likeliest way to satisfy them, I have given orders for five or six thousand pounds to be sent for that purpose.’ Before Tarbat was able to ask the chiefs whether their good behaviour could be bought that cheaply they gathered at Dalcomera, fought at Killiecrankie, and were driven out of the burning streets of Dunkeld. And so the year passed into winter without any settlement being made, and with the certain risk of the clans rising again in the spring.
By March there were many voices, but no unanimous agreement, and William, concerned now with far more serious trouble in Ireland, would make no decision. Sir John Dalrymple, the Master of Stair, had already put into words what many were thinking, that if the sword must be used against the clans it would have been better employed in winter when the weather could have been the harsh ally of Law and Order. Far to the north by Inverness Duncan Forbes of Culloden, the son of Hill's old friend, drew up a Memorandum in favour of coercion by threat. He told the King that nine strong garrisons should be built in the Highlands. for garrisons ‘are proper for magazines in time of war, and will save the trouble of baggage horses, and are most proper for curbing thefts and depredations in time of Peace’. The strongest fort, he said, should once more be at Inverlochy, and he could think of no better man to command it than John Hill, with his own regiment of twelve hundred men. This was obviously a loyal response to the old man's appeal for assistance.
Tarbat also urged the King to make use of Hill by sending him to treat with the chiefs. ‘I put it as an absolute condition [that he] be sent. He would do more for your service and to the enemy's detriment than all your forces have done in twelve months.’ It was Tarbat's (and therefore Melville's) opinion now that any money to be used in the Highlands should not be given in cash payments to the chiefs, but used to buy up the feudal superiorities of the great nobles, and thus ‘free the Highlanders from their worst financial and legal embarrassments’.
Joining in the clamour of voices and the prodigal expenditure of ink there came the Earl of Breadalbane, whom few men trusted but all credited with a unique knowledge of Highland robbers and murderers, being descended from a long line of them himself. He had no original proposal. He blandly took Tarbat's, with this difference – he should treat with the chiefs, he should distribute the money among them. He had a plausible tongue, and he persuaded the King (who was now wondering if £5,000 were not too much) to give him a commission ‘to meet, treat and correspond with any of the Highlanders in order to reduce them to submission and obedience’. But if few men in the Lowlands could be found to trust the Earl of Breadalbane there were even fewer in the Highlands, and for the moment his commission was no more than paper in his pocket. He had not, in any case, been sent the money, and felt no obligation to move until he was.
It may have occurred to John Hill, waiting anxiously in his Edinburgh lodgings, that affairs had been conducted with more wisdom and determination in his youth. Then the Protectorate had swept away the archaic rights of feudal landowners by one decree like the clean stroke of a sword. There had been no foolish talk of disarming the clans, and less of oaths of allegiance. The men responsible for bringing order and peace to the hills had been honest captains of horse and foot, serving God and the Commonwealth, not their own pockets. But if he could once more be sent to Lochaber, to talk with men like Lochiel, God's work might yet be done. The chiefs would not have forgotten him, nor lost their trust in him.
One other man in Scotland had no patience with the delay. Hugh Mackay of Scourie, still smarting under the defeat at Killiecrankie, agreed with Forbes of Culloden that the way to settle matters was to invade the Highlands in force, establish strong garrisons and let the clans see the strength of the King's power. The sooner this were done the better, and he could return to honest soldiering in Flanders. Though he was Highland, from the west coast of Sutherland, long years abroad with the mercenaries of the Scots Brigade and a Dutch wife had left him with little affection for his fellow-countrymen at home. In his opinion they lacked zeal in religion and honesty in public life, ‘none minding sincerely and self-deniedly the common good’. An uncomplicated man, he saw no paradox in his own military career when considered in the light of this judgement. He had received his British commission as a Major-General from James II, as a reward for his part in crushing the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. Three years later he brought his Scots back to England with William of Orange, and helped to drive James from the throne in the name of the same Protestant cause for which Monmouth's men had died.
He steadfastly believed that rebellion could only be crushed by trailing a pike against it. For this reason the factions surrounding Tarbat, or Dalrymple, or Breadalbane regarded him as an enemy. That spring in Edinburgh Tarbat sought Mackay out, ostensibly to discuss their differences, and of the oddly matched pair it was probably the urbane Mackenzie who bent his back the farthest. He argued that the disaffection of the clans came less from their love for James or their distaste for William than from their own self-interest. This point Mackay would not have argued, but he cannot have thought it a good reason for buying their submission. Tarbat's purpose in the meeting may have been to secure the General's approval of the appointment of John Hill to Inverlochy, should a garrison be set there. And in return he may have advised William to ask Mackay what measures he proposed for subduing the clans, for this is what the King shortly did.
Send an army, Mackay told him. Build forts, the strongest at Inverlochy. Supply them by sea with stores and provisions. Patrol the Isles and western waters with men-of-war. He got no acknowledgement from the King, and according to his Memoirs he thought of retiring in disgust. But, in the firm belief that God must have chosen him for some good work, despite his manifest unfittedness, he changed his mind and waited.
The King seemed to be agreeing with all factions, and deciding in favour of none. Breadalbane had a qualified commission to treat with the clans, and so did Tarbat. Cautious approval was given to minor military moves, like the assault by the Argyll Campbells upon the Macleans, and finally John Hill was given something to do. It was not before time. ‘By staying to preserve Belf
ast and the country round about it,’ Tarbat told the King, ‘he so exhausted his small stock that he has not enough to sustain him, suitable to his character, unless you order it.’ To those who he thought would serve him well, Tarbat was generously loyal. Hill was given a small detachment of men and ordered to proceed by Atholl to Inverness. He came again to Culloden House, embraced Duncan Forbes and his brother John, and was happy.
Convinced that an army must be sent, Mackay began to plague the Privy Council with demands for money. He wanted at least £4,000, he said, to buy arms, provisions and materials to build a fort. When he got no satisfactory reply, his anger exploded upon the Earl of Portland, whom William had made the virtual governor of Scotland. Portland was a Dutchman, and one of his qualifications for this post was the fact that as a handsome page of honour he had shared William's bed when the Stadholder was sick with smallpox, it being a belief of the age that an increase in animal heat eased the suffering of the victim. William never forgot this heroic service, nor should he have done, for the page nearly died of the contagion. Portland's incredible wealth, his gardens and his collection of birds and furniture interested him more than politics, and Mackay got little encouragement from him. ‘This government,’ the General told him in bitter valediction, ‘is capable of making Job lose patience with its delays and haverings.’
It was not the Government, it was the King. He was assembling an army to defeat the forces which James had gathered in Ireland, and the affairs of Scotland seemed of small importance at this moment. And then, suddenly, the Jacobites themselves called his hand.