CROWN VOTED VACANT, AND AN ACT OF SETTLEMENT PASSED.

After the departure of lord Ross, they appointed a committee, consisting of eight lords, eight knights, and as many burgesses, to prepare the plan of a new settlement: but this resolution was not taken without a vigorous opposition from some remaining adherents of the late king, headed by the archbishop of Glasgow; all the other prelates, except he of Edinburgh, having already deserted the convention. After warm debates, the committee agreed in the following vote:—“The estates of the kingdom of Scotland find and declare, That king James VII. being a profest papist, did assume the royal power, and act as a king, without ever taking the oath required by law; and had, by the advice of evil and wicked counsellors, invaded the fundamental constitution of this kingdom, and altered it from a legal and limited monarchy to an arbitrary despotic power, and had governed the same to the subversion of the protestant religion, and violation of the laws and liberties of the nation, inverting all the ends of government; whereby he had forfaulted the right of the crown, and the throne was become vacant.” When this vote was reported, the bishop of Edinburgh argued strenuously against it, as containing a charge of which the king was innocent; and he proposed that his majesty should be invited to return to his Scottish dominions. All his arguments were defeated or overruled, and the house confirmed the vote, which was immediately enacted into a law by a great majority. The lord president declared the throne vacant, and proposed that it might be filled with William and Mary, king and queen of England. The committee was ordered to prepare an act for settling the crown upon their majesties, together with an instrument of government for securing the subjects from the grievances under which they laboured.

WILLIAM AND MARY, 1688—1701.