allow the several persons concerned the benefit of the indemnity within
the space limited; besides, that some persons having put the Highlanders
in a bad temper, he was confident to persuade them to submit, if a
further time were allowed. Sir Thomas presented this letter to the
Council on the 5th of January, 1692, but they refused to give any
answer, and ordered him to transmit the same to Court."

The reply of William of Orange was a letter, countersigned by Dalrymple,
in which, upon the recital that "several of the chieftains and many of
their clans had not taken the benefit of our gracious indemnity," he
gave orders for a general massacre. "To that end, we have given Sir
Thomas Livingston orders to employ our troops (which we have already
conveniently posted) to cut off these obstinate rebels _by all manner of
hostility_; and we do require you to give him your assistance and
concurrence in all other things that may conduce to that service; and
because these rebels, to avoid our forces, may draw themselves, _their
families_, goods, or cattle, to lurk or be concealed among their
neighbours: therefore, we require and authorise you to emit a
proclamation to be published at the market-crosses of these or the
adjacent shires where the rebels reside, discharging upon the highest
penalties the law allows, any reset, correspondence, or intercommuning
with these rebels." This monstrous mandate, which was in fact the
death-warrant of many thousand innocent people, no distinction being
made of age or sex, would, in all human probability, have been put into
execution, but for the remonstrance of one high-minded nobleman. Lord
Carmarthen, afterwards Duke of Leeds, accidentally became aware of the
proposed massacre, and personally remonstrated with the monarch against
a measure which he denounced as at once cruel and impolitic. After much
discussion, William, influenced rather by an apprehension that so
savage and sweeping an act might prove fatal to his new authority, than