Note 552.8 — INDEX

Outside the Church we have a body who were not Dissenters in the English sense, for they approved of the constitution of the Church, but objected to the establishment of Episcopacy in England, and the toleration of Dissenters in Scotland. They were the men who had suffered most in the ‘killing time,’ and their only associations with the functions of government were connected with Grierson of Lagg and Bloody Mackenzie. They considered it possible that James Stewart might be turned from the error of his ways, and take the Covenant as Charles II had done. Their attitude, in fact, was precisely similar to that of their predecessors, who had crowned Charles II after fighting against Charles I. 552They declined to acknowledge the Revolution Settlement and the Union. They spoke of Queen Anne as ‘that wicked Jezabel the pretended Queen,’ and ‘the late woman.’ But even when they had little hope of the Pretender’s conversion, they protested against ‘the Prince of Hanover, who hath been bred and brought up in the Luthren religion, which is not only different from but even in many things contrar unto that purity in doctrine, reformation, and religion we in these nations had attained unto.’ (Protestation against the Union.)