PAPERS BY FATHER INNES.

I.

COPY OF MR. THOMAS INNES'S LETTER TO THE KING.(1)

SIR,

AFTER having waited long for a sure conveyance, I have delivered to one Dr. Hay, who goes to Italy along with some English gentlemen, a book in two volumes, lately printed at London, intitled, A Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of the Northern Parts of Britain, or Scotland. This Dr. Hay is known to Mr. Edgar, and to others your Majesty's servants, and will carefully convey this book. Your Majesty hath already had some account from my brother of the subject of it, and I beg leave to give it some more at length.

I have set down in the Preface and Introduction to this small book the general motives of my undertaking it, such as I thought proper to render public. But, besides these, I had another motive that related more immediately to the right of the crown, and to your Majesty's service, with which I could not, in the place and circumstances I was obliged to live during the impression, openly or barefacedly acquaint the public without awakening the governing powers, and manifestly hazarding the printer, the copies, and the author, to be seized upon.

HAVING spent many years in the search and examination into all I could hear of within our island of the remains of what related to the history and antiquities of Scotland, I could not, without concern, behold the fabulous and seditious accounts of the ancient state of that kingdom left by our modern writers. Boece and Buchanan continue still without

(1) [The son of King James II., commonly known by the style of the Chevalier de St. George, and by his adherents called King James III.]

being examined into and controlled, to be lookt upon as the common standard of the history of Scotland in ancient times, though they be not only contrary to all the remains we have of our more ancient writers, but that the principles they are built upon, and the practices that they authorise and commend, have been the chief source of all the rebellions that have happened in that kingdom within these last two hundred years: that is, since A.D. 1488, which is the date as well of the first successful rebellion in Scotland, to wit, that against king James III., as of the first Act against the right of monarchy which was designedly made by the authors of that rebellion to screen themselves from the punishment due to their crime by all the former and the then standing laws of the kingdom, as well as from the indignation of all the crowned heads in Europe.

Now, in order to support and justify with posterity this attempt and act, (of which no precedent was to be found in any former reign since the beginning of the Scotish monarchy, and nothing to be met with in any history of Scotland till that time that could authorize them,) there were very soon after (no doubt by the contrivance of some of the adherents of those conspirators) some historical pieces forged under the names of a Veremundus, a Spaniard, and of other such Utopian writers, containing a story of forty pretended ancient Scotish kings, with details of their lives, actions, and exits, not only never heard of till that time, but contradicted by all the remains we have of former writers: and, in this new invented history of the Scots, these kings are made accountable to their subjects; and, accordingly, of these forty kings, about a third part are arraigned, or condemned, or punished by their subjects for pretended maladministration.

It was upon these new invented stories and forged memoirs (which disappeared as soon as they had served the turn), that the history of the first forty kings of the Scots was drawn up. Copies of these were made, and, as having been taken from ancient and genuine historical monuments newly found out in a remote corner of the kingdom, they were sent to Hector Boece, a very credulous writer in the beginning of the sixteenth century; and, without farther examination upon these and such other vouchers, Boece wrote a new history of Scotland, beginning with the reigns of these forty kings lately invented.

THIS history, with the enumeration of so many ancient kings of Scots deposed by their subjects, together with the foresaid Act, made A.D. 1488,

against the monarchy of king James III., became the foundation upon which the new reformers in Scotland proceeded to depose their sovereign, queen Mary, A. D. 1567; and, to justify farther that attempt, George Buchanan, a zealous Calvinist, and the best orator of the times, was employed, first, to write a libel, intitled, De jure Regni apud Scotos, chiefly grounded upon the precedents of the deposing power contained in the story of the first forty kings: and soon after, this same Buchanan wrote himself the history of these forty kings in a more polite style, to render it more taking, though he knew it to be mere fable, and with new examples of the popular power continued down to his own time.

BOTH which pieces of Buchanan, though condemned by an Act of Parliament of king James VI. as satyres upon monarchical government, have nevertheless continued ever since to give the handle to all the rebellions of the last age in that kingdom. It was chiefly the precedents and principles contained in them, joined to the fanatical spirit of the time, that armed the subjects in Scotland against your grandfather, king Charles I. It was upon the same principles and pretended right to call the sovereign to account, that the factious party in the Scotish convention, A.D. 1689, proceeded to that height of insolence, as to declare that your royal father had forfeited the crown. And since the Revolution, these wretched libels of Buchanan are become as classic authors, put into children's hands in our Scotish schools, and are commonly looked upon by strangers abroad as the only standard of Scotish history and of the right of monarchy: which, in all appearance, contributes not a little to render foreign princes so little sensible of the crying injustice done your Majesty.

Now, in this Essay I have endeavoured to go to the root of these antimonarchical principles, to discover the forgery of the vouchers upon which they are built, and to find out the date of them. This subject is particularly handled from page 214 till page 395, besides what is said in other places, and what I may have farther occasion to add, if I live to continue on the other part of the Essay.

Your Majesty will easily perceive that it was no easy matter in these times to publish in London a piece of this nature, which strikes at the root of the Revolution principles in Scotland; and that I behooved to give the air of a bare historical fact, and treat as it were by the by, joined in with a great variety of other critical discussions, and bring it in as a necessary part of my subject, under the pretence of enquiring into the true

era of the Scotish monarchy. But it is, I hope, no less effectually done, and the dark contrivance of the forgery and source of the anti-monarchical principles in Scotland no less fully laid open, than if I had openly declared my design.

BESIDES the duty of all good subjects to concur in their respective stations to vindicate the honour and support the rights of the crown, and the many particular obligations we in this house lie under to your royal father of blessed memory, and to your Majesty for your constant protection, we cannot better answer the intentions of the two founders of this college than by giving, as occasion offers, all the proofs we are able of our steady adherence to the crown, and by educating all those that Providence places under our care in the same principles.

THE first of our founders, David Murray, bishop of Murray, above four hundred years ago, was pursued by sea and land by the usurper of these days, Edward I., king of England, bore with perseverance to be deprived of his bishopric, banished his country, and even to be excommunicated by the Pope, for no other cause than his unalterable adherence to his lawful sovereign, king Robert the Bruce. And our second founder, James Bethune, archbishop of Glasgow, bore, with no less constancy, the forfeiture of his dignity, the confiscation of all that belonged to him, and a perpetual exile, for his firm attachment to his oppressed sovereign, queen Mary.

IT was in imitation of these eminent patterns of loyalty, that I have spared no pains, and ran some risks, to go to the bottom of the dark contrivances of factious men against the sovereignty of our kings, and to demonstrate their original forgery; and that my brother has spared no expense to have it done.

If this performance, such as it is, proves as much to your Majesty's satisfaction as I have ground to hope it will to the advantage of monarchy, I have my aim in giving this proof of the most profound and most dutiful veneration, with which, I am,

SIR,

Your Majesty's most humble, most obedient,

Paris, 17th October, 1729.

and most faithful subject and servant.

II.

THREE ARTICLES COPIED OUT OF THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER'S(1) LETTERS TO MR. DANIEL WILLIAMS, RELATING TO MR. INNES'S CRITICAL ESSAY.

Montpelier, February 26th, 1730.

MR. INNES, of the Scotch College, a good and learned man, has published a book about the antiquities of his country, written with great knowledge and judgment, and effectually disproving the fabulous relations embraced by his countrymen. Bishop Stillingfleet and bishop Lloyd began this attempt; but he has set the point aimed at in a much clearer and fuller light than either of them, and has, at the same time, given an excellent account of the rise of the deposing doctrine amongst them, and of the times when, and the reasons why, it came into fashion, and of the manifest forgeries introduced into their history in order to countenance it; so that he has certainly, by these means, done the royal cause a signal service. I doubt not but he has sent a book to the king, of which I suppose you may have the use, and will be pleased with the perusal of it, notwithstanding the repetitions and digressions with which it is clogged, and the dryness of the subject itself.

Paris, May 22, 1730.

You are in a mistake if you think that I saw a line of Mr. Innes's book before it was published. I think myself obliged to do him justice on that head; and for that reason, if I had no other, must have undeceived you by the first opportunity.

February, 25th, 1732.

MR. WADDELL has come to Paris, but I have not yet seen him. When I do, I shall frankly, though civilly, tell him my mind about his paper of objections, (2) which I have considered, as I have Mr. Innes's book, with

(1) [Dr. Francis Atterbury.]

(2) [These objections were afterwards published under the title of, Remarks on Mr. Innes's Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of the Northern Parts of Britain or Scot