reigners from investing in the Scots company. English
colonists had been forbidden to aid the Scottish adventurers. Two
hundred thousand pounds, several ships, and many lives had been lost. "It
is very like 1641," wrote an onlooker, so fierce were the passions that
raged against William. The news of the surrender of the colonists
increased the indignation. The king refused (November 1700) to gratify
the Estates by regarding the Darien colony as a legal enterprise. To do
so was to incur war with Spain and the anger of his English subjects. Yet
the colony had been legally founded in accordance with the terms of the
Act of Patent. While the Scots dwelt on this fact, William replied that
the colony being extinct, circumstances were altered. The Estates voted
that Darien _was_ a lawful colony, and (1701) in an address to the Crown
demanded compensation for the nation's financial losses. William replied
with expressions of sympathy and hopes that the two kingdoms would
consider a scheme of Union. A Bill for Union brought in through the
English Lords was rejected by the English Commons.

There was hardly an alternative between Union and War between the two
nations. War there would have been had the exiled Prince of Wales been
brought up as a Presbyterian. His father James VII. died a few months
before William III. passed away on March 7, 1702. Louis XIV.
acknowledged James, Prince of Wales, as James III. of England and Ireland
and VIII, of Scotland; and Anne, the boy's aunt, ascended the throne. As
a Stuart she was not unwelcome to the Jacobites, who hoped for various
chances, as Anne was believed to be friendly to her nephew.

In 1701 was passed an Act for preventing wrongous imprisonment and
against undue delay in trials. But Nevile Payne continued to be untried
and illegally imprisoned. Offenders, generally, could "run their
letters" and protest, if kept in durance untried for sixty days.

The Revolution of 1688-89, with William's very reluctant concessions, had
placed Scotland in entirely new relations with England. Scotland could
now no longer be "governed by the pen" from London; Parliament could no
longer be bridled and led, at English will, by the Lords of the Articles.
As the religious mainspring of Scottish political life, the domination of
the preachers had been weakened by the new settlement of the Kirk; as the
country was now set on commercial enterprises, which England everywhere
thwarted, it w