credit, as you now see we have done, from whose prudence and your most dutiful affection to us, we have full confidence of your entire compliance and assistance in all those matters, wherein he is instructed as aforesaid.  We do, therefore, not only recommend unto you that such things be done as are necessary in this juncture for your own peace, and the support of our royal interest, of which we had so much experience when amongst you, that we cannot doubt of your full and ample expressing the same on this occasion, by which the great concern we have in you, our ancient and kindly people, may still increase, and you may transmit your loyal actions (as examples of duty) to your posterity.  In full confidence whereof we do assure you of your royal favour and protection in all your concerns, and so we bid you heartily farewell.”

This letter deserves the more attention because, as the proceedings of the Scotch parliament, according to a remarkable expression in the letter itself, were intended to be an example to others, there is the greatest reason to suppose the matter of it must have been maturely weighed and considered.  His majesty first compliments the Scotch parliament upon their peculiar loyalty and dutiful behaviour in past times, meaning, no doubt, to contrast their conduct with that of those English parliaments who had passed the Exclusion Bill, the Disbanding Act, the Habeas Corpus Act, and other measures hostile to his favourite principles of government.  He states the granting of an independent revenue, and the supporting the prerogative in its greatest lustre, if not the aggrandising of it, to be necessary for the preservation of their religion, established by law (that is, the Protestant episcopacy), as well as for the security of their properties against fanatical assassins and murderers; thus emphatically announcing a complete union of interests between the crown and the Church.  He then bestows a complete and unqualified approbation of the persecuting measures of the last reign, in which he had borne so great a share; and to those measures, and to the steadiness with which they had been persevered in, he ascribes the escape of both Church and State from the fanatics, and expresses his regret that he could not be present, to propose in person the other remedies of a similar nature, which he recommended as needful in the present conjuncture.

Now it is proper in this place to inquire into the nature of the measures thus extolled, as well for the purpose of elucidating the characters of the king and his Scottish minsters, as for that of rendering more intelligible the subsequent proceedings of the parliament, and the other events which soon after took place in that kingdom.  Some general notions may be formed of that course of proceedings which, according to his majesty’s opinion, had been so laudably and resolutely pursued during the late reign, from the circumstances alluded to in the preceding chapter, when it is understood that the sentences