sacres will, in a short space, run a great length. I desire
you may disperse this news abroad, if it be not in town
before your receipt of this ; for that country, and the North
of England, without speedy relief, is jn great danger of
depopulation. And the Duke of Gordon h$th in his possession
the Castle of Edinburgh, whereby he can at pleasure
level that city with the ground. At twelve of the clock yesternight
our Governor, LieutXollonel Billingsley, dispatched
an Express to the Lords Danby and Lumley for drawing their
forces to this town. I received yours to-day, which being
Sabbath-day, I beg your pardon for brevity.
? I was told they see the fires and burnings of those Rebels
at Edinburgh ; this is the beginning of the discovery of the
Popish intrigue. God defend England from the French, and
his Highness the Prince of Orange from the bloody Popish
attempts I
?London : Published by J- Wells, St. Paul?s Alley, St.
Paul?s Churchyard, ~688.?
Tidings of William?s landing filled the Scottish
Presbyterians with the wildest joy, and the magis-
THUMBIKIN.
( F m the Musewnr ofthe Society of Antiguarirs of Scutland.)
trates of Edinburgh, who but two years before
had been extravagant in their protestations to
James VII., were among the first to welcome the
invader; and the city filled fast with bands of
jubilant revolutionists, rendering it unsafe for all of
cavalier tenets to be within the walls. On the 11th
of April, 1688, William and Mxry were proclaimed
at the cross king and queen of Scotland, after an
illegally constituted Convention of the Estates,
which was attended by only thirty representatives,
declared that King James had forfeited all title to
the crown, thus making a vacancy. A great and
sudden change now came over the realm. ? Men,?
says Dr. Chambers, ?who had been lately in
danger of their lives for consciencl sake, or
starving in foreign lands, were now at the head
of affairs! The Earl of Melville, Secretary of
State ; Crawford, President of Parliament ; Argyle,
restored to title and lands, and a Privy Councillor;
Dalrymple of Stair, Hume of Marchmont,
Stewart of Goodtrees, and many other exiles,
came back from Holland, to resume prominent
positions in the public service at home; while
the instruments of the late unhappy Government
were either captives under suspicion, or living
terror-struck at their country houses. Common
people, who had been skulking in mosses from
Claverhouse?s dragoons, were now marshalled into
Y regiment, and planted as a watch on the Perth
md Forfar gentry. There were new figures in the
Privy Council, and none of them ecclesiastical.
There was a wholly new set of senators on the
bench of the Court of Session. It looked like a
sudden shift of scenes in a pantomime rather than
a series of ordinary occurrences.? For three days
and nights Edinburgh was a wild scene of pillage
and rapine. The palace was assailed, the chapel
royal sacked ; and the Duke of Gordon, on finding
that the rabble, drunk and maddened by wine and
spirits found in the cellars of cavalier families who
had fled, were .wantonly firing on his sentinels,
drew up the drawbridge, to cut off all communication
with the city; but finding that his soldiers
were divided in their religious and political
opinions, and that a revolt was impending, he
called a council of officers to frustrate the attempt ;
and the Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel John Winram,
of Liberton and the Inch House, Colonel of
the Scots Foot Guards in 1683, undertook to
watch the men, forty-four of whom it was deemed
necessary to strip of their uniforms and expel from
the fortress. In their place came thirty Highlanders,
onqthe 11th of November, and 300n after
forty-five more, under Gordon of Midstrath.
By the Privy Council the Duke was requested,
as a Roman Catholic, to surrender his command
to the next senior Protestant officer; but he declined,
saying, ?I am bound only to obey King
James VII.?
A few of the Life Guards and Greys, who had
quitted the Scottish army on its revolt, now reached
Edinburgh under the gallant Viscount Dundee,
and their presence served to support the spirits of
the Royalists, but the friends of the Revolution
brought in several companies of infantry, who were
concealed in the suburbs, and 6,000 Cameronians
marched in from the west, under standards inscribed,
?O For Reformation according to the Word
of God,? below an open Bible. These men
nobly rejected all remuneration, saying, with one
voice, ?We have come to serve our country.?
Their presence led to other conspiracies in the
garrisan, and the Duke of Gordon had rather a
harassing time of it.
The friends of William of Orange having formed
a plan for? the assassination of Dundee and Sir
George Mackenzie of Rosehahgh, compelled them
