His colleague, Johnstone, was chief manager for the Crown at
Edinburgh, and was charged to correspond regularly with Carstairs, who
never quitted William. [415]

It might naturally have been expected that the session would be
turbulent. The Parliament was that very Parliament which had in 1689
passed, by overwhelming majorities, all the most violent resolutions
which Montgomery and his club could frame, which had refused supplies,
which had proscribed the ministers of the Crown, which had closed the
Courts of justice, which had seemed bent on turning Scotland into an
oligarchical republic. In 1690 the Estates had been in a better temper.
Yet, even in 1690, they had, when the ecclesiastical polity of the realm
was under consideration, paid little deference to what was well known to
be the royal wish. They had abolished patronage; they had sanctioned the
rabbling of the episcopal clergy; they had refused to pass a Toleration
Act. It seemed likely that they would still be found unmanageable when
questions touching religion came before them; and such questions it
was unfortunately necessary to bring forward. William had, during the
recess, attempted to persuade the General Assembly of the Church to
receive into communion such of the old curates as should subscribe the
Confession of Faith and should submit to the government of Synods. But
the attempt had failed; and the Assembly had consequently been dissolved
by the Lord Commissioner. Unhappily, the Act which established the
Presbyterian polity had not defined the extent of the power which was
to be exercised by the Sovereign over the Spiritual Courts. No sooner
therefore had the dissolution been announced than the Moderator
requested permission to speak. He was told that he was now merely
a private person. As a private person he requested a hearing, and
protested, in the name of his brethren, against the royal mandate.
The right, he said, of the office bearers of the Church to meet and
deliberate touching her interests was derived from her Divine Head,
and was not dependent on the pleasure of the temporal magistrate.
His brethren stood up, and by an approving murmur signified their
concurrence in what their President had said. Before they retired they
fixed a day for their next meeting. [416] It was indeed a very distant
day; and when it came neither minister nor elder attended; for even the
boldest members shrank from a complete rupture with the civil
power. But, though t