vent 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 majest