liberality of the House admits however of an easy explanation. On
the very day on which the subject was under consideration,
alarming news arrived at Westminster, and convinced many, who
would at another time have been disposed to scrutinise severely
any account sent in by the Dutch, that our country could not yet
dispense with the services of the foreign troops.

France had declared war against the States General; and the
States General had consequently demanded from the King of England
those succours which he was bound by the treaty of Nimeguen to
furnish.42 He had ordered some battalions to march to Harwich,
that they might be in readiness to cross to the Continent. The
old soldiers of James were generally in a very bad temper; and
this order did not produce a soothing effect. The discontent was
greatest in the regiment which now ranks as first of the line.
Though borne on the English establishment, that regiment, from
the time when it first fought under the great Gustavus, had been
almost exclusively composed of Scotchmen; and Scotchmen have
never, in any region to which their adventurous and aspiring
temper has led them, failed to note and to resent every slight
offered to Scotland. Officers and men muttered that a vote of a
foreign assembly was nothing to them. If they could be absolved
from their allegiance to King James the Seventh, it must be by
the Estates at Edinburgh, and not by the Convention at
Westminster. Their ill humour increased when they heard that
Schomberg had been appointed their colonel. They ought perhaps to
have thought it an honour to be called by the name of the
greatest soldier in Europe. But, brave and skilful as he was, he
was not their countryman: and their regiment, during the fifty-
six years which had elapsed since it gained its first honourable