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