This was indeed their chief petition.

They did not ask for redress of a single grievance.

They contented themselves with hinting in general terms that there were abuses which required correction, and with referring the King for fuller information to his own Ministers, the Lord High Commissioner and the Secretary of State.

[418] There was one subject on which it may seem strange that even the most servile of Scottish Parliaments should have kept silence.

More than a year had elapsed since the massacre of Glencoe; and it might have been expected that the whole assembly, peers, commissioners of shires, commissioners of burghs, would with one voice have demanded a strict investigation into that great crime.