deleted.  Glengarry was still unsworn, but Glengarry was too strong to be “rooted out”; William ordered his commanding officer, Livingstone, “to extirpate that sect of thieves,” the Glencoe men (January 16).  On the same day Dalrymple sent down orders to hem in the MacIans, and to guard all the passes, by land or water, from their glen.  Of the actual method of massacre employed Dalrymple may have been ignorant; but orders “from Court” to “spare none,” and to take no prisoners, were received by Livingstone on January 23.

On February 1, Campbell of Glenlyon, with 120 men, was hospitably received by MacIan, whose son, Alexander, had married Glenlyon’s niece.  On February 12, Hill sent 400 of his Inverlochy garrison to Glencoe to join hands with 400 of Argyll’s regiment, under Major Duncanson.  These troops were to guard the southern passes out of Glencoe, while Hamilton was to sweep the passes from the north.

At 5 A.M. on February 13 the soldier-guests of MacIan began to slay and plunder.  Men, women, and children were shot or bayoneted, 1000 head of cattle were driven away; but Hamilton arrived too late.  Though the aged chief had been shot at once, his sons took to the hills, and the greater part of the population escaped with their lives, thanks to Hamilton’s dilatoriness.  “All I regret is that any of the sect got away,” wrote Dalrymple on March 5, “and there is necessity to prosecute them to the utmost.”  News had already reached London “that they are murdered in their beds.”  The newspapers, however, were silenced, and the story was first given to Europe in April by the ‘Paris Gazette.’  The crime was unprecedented:  it had no precedent, admits of no apology.  Many an expedition of “fire and sword” had occurred, but never had there been a midnight massacre “under trust” of hosts by guests.  King William, on March 6, went off to his glorious wars on the Continent, probably hoping to hear that the fugitive MacIans were still being “prosecuted”—­if, indeed, he thought of them at all.  But by October they were received into his peace.

William was more troubled by the General Assembly, which refused to take oaths of allegiance to him and his wife, and actually appointed a date for an Assembly without his consent.  When he gave it, it was on condition that the members should take the oaths of allegiance.  They refused:  it was the old deadlock, but William at the last moment withdrew from the imposition of oaths of allegiance—­moved, it is said, by Mr Carstares, “Cardinal Carstares,” who had been privy to the Rye House Plot.  Under Queen Anne, however, the conscientious preachers were compelled to take the oaths like mere laymen.

CHAPTER XXVIII.  DARIEN.