renewed, when you are our sovereign, are what your subjects here can never forget, and therefore your majesty may expect that we will think your commands sacred as your person, and that your inclination will prevent our debates; nor did ever any who represented our monarchs as their commissioners (except your royal self) meet with greater respect, or more exact observance from a parliament, than the Duke of Queensbury (whom your majesty has so wisely chosen to represent you in this, and of whose eminent loyalty and great abilities in all his former employments this nation hath seen so many proofs) shall find from

“May it please your sacred majesty, your majesty’s most humble, most faithful, and most obedient subjects and servants, “Perth, Cancell.”

Nor was this spirit of loyalty (as it was then called) of abject slavery, and unmanly subservience to the will of a despot, as it has been justly denominated by the more impartial judgment of posterity, confined to words only.  Acts were passed to ratify all the late judgments, however illegal or iniquitous, to indemnify the privy council, judges, and all officers of the crown, civil or military, for all the violences they had committed; to authorise the privy council to impose the test upon all ranks of people under such penalties as that board might think fit to impose; to extend the punishment of death which had formerly attached upon the preachers at field conventicles only, to all their auditors, and likewise to the preachers at house conventicles; to subject to the penalties of treason all persons who should give or take the covenant, or write in defence thereof, or in any other way own it to be obligatory; and lastly, in a strain of tyranny, for which there was, it is believed, no precedent, and which certainly has never been surpassed, to enact that all such persons as being cited in cases of high treason, field or house conventicles, or church irregularities, should refuse to give testimony, should be liable to the punishment due by law to the criminals against whom they refused to be witnesses.  It is true that an act was also passed for confirming all former statutes in favour of the Protestant religion as then established, in their whole strength and tenour, as if they were particularly set down and expressed in the said act; but when we recollect the notions which Queensbury at that time entertained of the king’s views, this proceeding forms no exception to the general system of servility which characterised both ministers and parliament.  All matters in relation to revenue were of course settled in the manner most agreeable to his majesty’s wishes and the recommendation of his commissioner.