nwick was not
taken and hanged till 1688. The preachers were anxious for peace and
quiet, and were bitterly hostile to Renwick. The Covenant was a dead
letter as far as power to do mischief was concerned. It was not
persecution of the Kirk, but demand for toleration of Catholics and a
manifest desire to restore the Church, that in two years lost James his
kingdoms.

On April 29, 1686, James's message to the Scots Parliament asked
toleration for "our innocent subjects" the Catholics. He had substituted
Perth's brother, now entitled Earl of Melfort, for Queensberry; Perth was
now Chancellor; both men had adopted their king's religion, and the
infamous Melfort can hardly be supposed to have done so honestly. Their
families lost all in the event except their faith. With the request for
toleration James sent promises of free trade with England, and he asked
for no supplies. Perth had introduced Catholic vestments and furnishings
in Holyrood chapel, which provoked a No Popery riot. Parliament would
not permit toleration; James removed many of the Council and filled their
places with Catholics. Sir George Mackenzie's conscience "dirled"; he
refused to vote for toleration and he lost the Lord Advocateship, being
superseded by Sir James Dalrymple, an old Covenanting opponent of
Claverhouse in Galloway.

In August James, by prerogative, did what the Estates would not do, and
he deprived the Archbishop of Glasgow and the Bishop of Dunkeld of their
Sees: though a Catholic, he was the king-pope of a Protestant church! In
a decree of July 1687 he extended toleration to the Kirk, and a meeting
of preachers at Edinburgh expressed "a deep sense of your Majesty's
gracious and surprising favour." The Kirk was indeed broken, and, when
the Revolution came, was at last ready for a compromise from which the
Covenants were omitted. On February 17, 1688, Mr Renwick was hanged at
Edinburgh: he had been prosecuted by Dalrymple. On the same day
Mackenzie superseded Dalrymple as Lord Advocate.

After the birth of the White Rose Prince of Wales (June 10, 1688),
Scotland, like England, apprehended that a Catholic king would be
followed by a Catholic son. The various contradictory lies about the
child's birth flourished, all the more because James ventured to select
the magistrates of the royal burghs. It became certain that the Prince
of Orange would invade, and Melfort madly withdrew the regular troops,
with Claverhouse (now Viscou