The Boyne is often seen as the decisive battle in the revolutionary wars in Ireland. Certainly it signalled the end of James’s personal involvement in the Jacobite cause, as he fled back to France, never again to set foot in his former kingdoms. James, in contrast to William, took a conspicuously rearguard approach to command at the Boyne. There is a story that on his return to Dublin he met Lady Tyrconnel, and complained to her that his Irish troops had run away, to which the lady was said to have replied, ‘I see you have preceded them yourself, your majesty.’38 In fairness, the relative caution William had shown in not throwing more of his forces into an encircling movement (as Schomberg had recommended) prevented the Boyne from leading to the complete destruction of the Jacobite army. Consequently the war in Ireland continued for over a year. The Williamites’ first attempt to storm the stronghold of Limerick had to be abandoned at the end of August when a frontal assault led to the death and injury of over two thousand troops. Only with Marlborough’s campaign to capture Cork and Kinsale in the autumn of 1690, as part of a plan to open up a second front in Ireland, did William’s forces enjoy further successes. (Cork was taken on 29 September and Kinsale on 12 October.) The Jacobite resistance was effectively brought to an end in 1691 with defeat at the battle of Aughrim on 12 July, the surrender of Galway in the same month and the final capitulation of Limerick after a second siege on 3 October. As described by one Danish observer, the aftermath of Aughrim was even bloodier than the Boyne:
The Irish fled all over the fields … not knowing what to do or where to turn, since from all sides the inescapable violence meets them … throwing away their arms and finding no place to make a stand within a distance of seven miles. The women, children, waggoners, like madmen, filled every road with lamentation and weeping. Worse was the sight after the battle when many men and horses pierced by wounds could have neither flight nor rest. Sometimes trying to rise they fell suddenly, weighed down by the mass of their bodies, others with mutilated limbs and weighed down by pain asked for the sword as a remedy, but the conqueror would not even fulfil with sword or musket the desire of him who implored him; others spewed forth their breath mixed with blood and threats, grasping their bloodstained arms in an icy embrace, as if in readiness for some future battle and that I may say it in brief, from the bodies of all, blood … flowed over the ground, and so inundated the fields that you could hardly take a step without slipping … O horrible sight!39
In Scotland, too, the Jacobite cause was faltering. By September 1690 the lack of further French help had caused James to urge his Scottish supporters to look out for themselves:
that if they cannot any longer … stand out but are forced by the pursute … of the rebels to some kind of Outward submission or Complyance, we shall not think the worse of ym for keeping quiet, but shall [be] compassionate and not condemne yr suffering condition, being perfectly assured of their hearts at all tymes, and of their hands too, whenever the Condition of Our affairs shall require ym to appear for us. And as to those of our officers who cannot bend … to any kind of compliance & perhaps would not be received … tho they should, we desire all such to make use of … the ship … to retire to … Ireland.40
In October 1690 the Earl of Seaforth, who had taken over command of the Jacobite forces from Claverhouse, surrendered to William’s forces. By this point the ability of the Jacobites to fight a major pitched battle against the Williamite forces had diminished, but skirmishes continued in the Highlands, and in a bid to improve security Mackay established a new fort at Inverlochy, which henceforth would be known as Fort William. Finally generous peace terms were concluded with the clans at the Treaty of Achallader in June 1691. In return for a sum of £12,000 as recompense for their war expenses, along with a full indemnity from actions undertaken in war and the continued right to wear arms, the clans would agree to take the oath of allegiance to William and end their war against him. Again external pressures had led William to sue for peace. He was now preparing for campaigns in Flanders and in Savoy and needed the full cooperation of his allies for these to be effective. The opposition in Parliament was placing serious obstacles in William’s way as regards supply for the war and there was real danger in any case of financial collapse if England alone were made to bear the burden of the costs of the Continental campaign.
However, William’s Secretary of State in Scotland, Sir John Dalrymple, saw in the peace terms an opportunity to eliminate some of the Highland clans. Writing to Breadalbane, he stated that the King should ‘rather to have made the Hylanders examples of his justice by extirpating them (… as much as some men’s designe, as it’s now practicable, tho’ perhaps it was not so likely when you entered in this negotiation) … he can gratify many by destroying them with as little charge. And certainly, if there do remain any obstinancy, … by their ruin, he will be rid himself of a suspicious crew.’41 Dalrymple was aided in his plan by the continued refusal of some clans to accept the generous peace terms on offer, choosing instead to wait and see if events, such as further help from France, would turn in their favour. In a further letter to Breadalbane, he noted that all
the papist chieftains stand forfaulted by act of Parliament, and it ought to be made effectuall. My Lord, you have done very generously, being a Campbell to have procured so much for McDonalds, who are the inveterate enemies of your clan; and both Glengary and Keppoch are papists, and that’s the only papist clan in the Hylands. Who knows but by God’s providence they are permitted to fall into this delusion, that they only may be extirpate, which will vindicate their Majesties justice, and reduce the Hylands without further severities to the rest?42
The opportunity Dalrymple had hoped for in exterminating the Catholic Highland clans was presented by that late subscription to the oath of allegiance by MacIain of Glencoe. MacIain entered Fort William on 31 December to take the oath, and signed a certificate confirming his submission which was sent on to Colin Campbell at Edinburgh. Meanwhile Argyll’s regiment marched to Glencoe, where ‘they were ceivilie and kyndlie intertain’d’. The clerks of the Scottish Privy Council refused to accept MacIain’s certificate as it was taken after the deadline had passed and Campbell was informed that he should not present the list in its present state before the council, so he erased the record of MacIain’s oath. On 7 January Dalrymple ordered the destruction of Lochaber, Appin and Glencoe, adding, ‘I hope the souldiers will not trouble the Government with prisoners.’ Three days later he drew up further orders for the commander Livingston to attack the rebel areas ‘by fire and sword’, burning their houses, destroying their goods and killing all the men. Final instructions sent by Dalrymple on 16 January, stated, ‘If M’Kean of Glencoe, and that tribe, can be well separated from the rest, it will be a proper vindication of the publick justice to extirpate that sept [tribe] of thieves.’43 The document was laid before William, who superscribed and subscribed it. However, the King was at this time preoccupied by his split with Marlborough, who was leading a strike of English officers and intriguing with Jacobites, and was unlikely to have given much thought to what he had signed.
The high mountain walls that surrounded the glen made escape difficult once the passes were guarded, so that it was, in the words of one historian, an ‘excellent scene for slaughter’.44 One government detachment, under the command of Glenlyon, pretended that they had come to be quartered in Glencoe, a pretext which Iain MacIain accepted and welcomed them. He nonetheless took the precaution of hiding the clans’ weapons in case the soldiers had orders to disarm them, a decision which would have disastrous consequences. Hamilton ordered Duncanson to attack Glencoe at 5 a.m. repeating that neither ‘the old fox [MacIain], nor none of his cubs’ must be allowed to escape, and added that he should take no prisoners and spare nobody under seventy.45
MacIain was shot at point-blank range in his back by soldiers and two of his servants were also murdered. At Inverrigan Glenlyon had nine men who had been bound brought out and shot one by one, then personally finished them off with his ba
yonet. However, he later attempted to stop his soldiers committing further atrocities, but to no avail. Drummond had a boy shot joking that a nit if allowed to grow would turn into a louse. Some women who managed to escape the slaughter, including MacIain’s widow, died later from exposure: a storm was raging while the massacre was taking place. Of the forty-five people killed in the massacre, it was reported that all but thirteen were women. Neither the sick nor the very young were spared. Campbell of Aird’s company discovered at Achnacone a man dying of fever and his five-year-old son, and killed them both. To cover their activities they hurled the boy’s body into the river, but his corpse was so badly mutilated that his arm came off.
Glencoe has with good reason lived on in infamy. However, most historians are agreed that William played little or no active part in the decisions which led up to the massacre. Rather, that the massacre was allowed to happen reflected the English administration’s lack of interest in, and control over, Scottish affairs at this time. Nonetheless, it is true that the King obstructed investigations into Glencoe and, when a public inquiry was finally launched into the atrocity in 1695, William chose to indemnify and reward its main architect, Dalrymple, rather than expose him to prosecution. The King displayed a similar indifference to the feelings of his non-English subjects by his failure to see that the terms of the Treaty of Limerick were upheld. According to the treaty, Catholics were to enjoy the same freedoms of worship they had received in the reign of Charles II (an admittedly vague definition of religious liberty) and were also given guarantees concerning their property rights. However, the Williamite Irish Parliament, as Protestant in its character as James’s Parliament had been Catholic, never fully ratified the treaty. Instead, it set about establishing a Protestant (and mainly Anglican) monopoly over land ownership and political power. Harsh penal laws were passed which prevented Catholics from owning arms, or even horses over a certain value, and which banished the Catholic clergy from Ireland.
The outcomes of the revolutions in Scotland and Ireland revealed the extent to which these kingdoms were only a minor concern to William. They mainly impinged on his consciousness as areas of civil unrest that could distract him militarily and financially from his grander project of defeating Louis XIV. Because of this European focus, William’s main concern was with the management of his English kingdom, the richest and most populous part of his new British territories. Similarly, James was guilty of essentially seeing Ireland and Scotland as staging posts on the road to the recovery of what he saw as the main prize, the English crown. However, it may be said in his defence that at least James had attempted to pursue policies of toleration in both Scotland and Ireland. The conflicts in Ireland and Scotland, though not as serious in terms of loss of life as those that both kingdoms had endured during the 1640s, were bloody enough, and each contained incidents of brutality and cruelty that lingered long in the public memory. In the case of Ireland, the battle of the Boyne and the siege of Londonderry remain an integral part of Ulster Protestant identity. The immediate outcome of the revolutions in the two countries was a greater degree of political independence, but within each of these kingdoms this greater freedom from English interference was exploited as a means to marginalise and persecute certain ethnic and religious groups. In neither Ireland nor Scotland could the outcome of the Revolution be said to be ‘glorious’.
8
WILLIAM AND MARY
King William thinks all, Queen Mary talks all, Prince George drinks all, and Princess Ann eats all.
ABRAHAM DE LA PRYNE ON THE COURT OF WILLIAM III1
Most, if not all the nations in Europe in a flame; wars, rumours of wars, great preparations everywhere for blood and slaughter, many countries dreadfully involved already in war, the Lord of Hosts mustering up His armies this day, shaking of kingdoms and monarchs.2
In 1689 the English were presented with a unique phenomenon in their history, that of dual monarchy. Though executive power was officially lodged with the King, the fact that William and Mary ruled as joint monarchs was vitally important to legitimating the Revolution. Mary’s hereditary claim to the throne helped ease the consciences of Tories in giving their allegiance to the new monarchs. As we will see, the Queen’s warmth, beauty and piety also helped to counter her husband’s colder, more distant character. Moreover, though Mary practically always deferred to William’s authority, his continued personal involvement in military campaigning in Ireland and Flanders meant that she had nonetheless, under the terms of the Regency Act, to take up the reins of government for long periods of time. However, the broad political coalition that had brought William and Mary to the throne had fragmented in the wake of the Revolution and the dual monarchs now governed a country that was both politically and religiously divided. These divisions were in part created, and certainly exacerbated, by William’s continued pursuit of his central objective, the military defeat of Louis XIV’s France. In the early years of his reign, though the threat of invasion was effectively ended by the naval victory over the French at La Hogue, William’s land campaigns in Flanders did not go well. The massive cost of these wars raised taxation to levels that it had not reached since the civil wars, yet taxes alone could not pay for the King’s wars and public borrowing also escalated to new heights. To manage growing government debt, a new national bank was founded in 1694 to underwrite long-term loans to the crown. Yet, though Britain was now managing to fund land wars of an unprecedented scale, the political and social consequences of these was leading some to fear for the moral well-being of the nation. For these reformers the Revolution’s gift of religious toleration was in danger of being squandered. In their eyes, instead of fostering Protestant unity it was leading to the growth of irreligion, immorality and atheism. The weakening of the authority of church courts, had, it was felt, permitted the growth of vice, lewd behaviour and idleness. While the Bank of England had saved the crown from bankruptcy, it had also encouraged avarice, greed and self-interest. Without actions to suppress this behaviour, such as the creation of Societies for the Reformation of Manners, the nation stood in grave danger of divine punishments, punishments that could already be detected in the military losses that William suffered.
At the beginning of his reign, however, William’s situation appeared more favourable. England’s new king had a number of qualities which ought to have made him an appealing character and fostered public loyalty towards him. William more than fulfilled the martial capabilities expected of a king, for he was a warrior prince of European standing whose grit and determination had played a large part in resisting French aggression in the Dutch Republic’s crisis year of 1672. Nor was he an armchair general, for he displayed considerable personal courage, at times leading his men from the front, as at the battle of the Boyne. Aside from these military talents, the new King was politically astute, and although he was keen to defend his monarchical authority, using the royal veto to override Parliament on a number of occasions, overall his reign was characterised by cooperation with the two Houses. At least in the early years of his reign, William also attempted to include within his administration a broad spectrum of political opinion in England (a policy, however, which, as we will see, eventually proved divisive). Perhaps most important of all, William was a committed Protestant, albeit of the Dutch Calvinist variety. Although he shared with James II a principled belief in the efficacy of religious toleration, and employed both Jews and Catholics in his service, William was a practising member of the Dutch reformed church who attended daily prayers and followed rigorous regimes of moral self-examination. There could be little doubt that the Protestant faith in England was more secure with William upon the throne, though his lack of personal commitment to the Anglican form of it would cause problems.
Nevertheless, the positive military, political and religious aspects of William’s character were undercut by a number of other factors which diminished his appeal to the English public. First, despite his bravery and military prowess, William did not cut a very re
gal figure. In 1695 George Dent, a Southwark glover, was accused of saying that ‘King William is not Lawfull King, and that he is a Nasty Little Fellow’.3 William was indeed short, almost four inches shorter than his wife Mary, who stood a statuesque five foot eleven tall. His best feature, his long auburn hair, which in his youth had allowed him to dispense with fashionable periwigs, could not compensate for William’s other less appealing characteristics. He had a large, hooked nose, the sole benefit of which was that it at least made him easy to recognise in profile on coins and medallions. His teeth were blackened, his back hunched and his legs spindly. These features provided ample scope for those with axes to grind to deride the King. William’s sister-in-law, Princess Anne (following his public snubbing of her favourites, the Churchills, as a result of Marlborough’s suspected Jacobitism), nicknamed the King ‘Caliban’ and, worse, ‘the Dutch abortion’.4 William was also in poor health. A bout of smallpox in 1675 and his continual campaigning took its toll upon his lungs and he suffered from asthmatic attacks which made it impossible for him to reside at Whitehall, so that he chose instead to live in apartments at Hampton Court.
The Glorious Revolution Page 24
