There were several things in Charles's favor. To begin with, the disarmament of the clans, which had been insisted {209} upon after "the Fifteen," had been carried out in such a fashion as was now to prove most serviceable to the Young Pretender; for the only clans that had been really disarmed were the Mackays, Campbells, and Sutherlands, who were loyal enough to the House of Hanover, and gave up their weapons very readily to prove their loyalty. But the other clans--the clans that ever cherished the lingering hope of a Stuart restoration--were not in reality disarmed at all. They made a great show of surrendering to General Wade weapons that were utterly worthless as weapons of war, honey-combed, crippled old guns and swords and axes; but the good guns and swords and axes, the serviceable weapons, these were all carefully stowed away in fitting places of concealment, ready for the hour when they might be wanted again. That hour had now come. So that, thanks to the Disarming Act of 1716, the Government found its chief allies in the north of Scotland practically defenceless and unarmed, while the clans that kept pouring in to rally around the standard of the young invader were as well armed as any of those who had fought so stoutly at Sheriffmuir. Yet another advantage on the adventurer's side was due to the tardiness with which news travelled in those times. Charles had been for many days in the Highlands, preparing the way for the rising, before rumors of anything like an accredited kind came to the Court of St. James. The Highlands and islands of Scotland were then so far removed from the great world of government that it had taken something like half a year on one occasion before the dwellers in the stormy Shetlands had learned that their sovereign, King William the Third, was dead and buried; and in the years that had elapsed since William of Orange passed away the means of communication between London and the far north were little if at all better. Charles had actually raised his standard and rallied clan after clan around him before the Government in London could seriously believe that a Stuart in arms was in the island. There were other and minor elements of success, too, to be noted in the great game that the Stuart prince {210} was playing. The Ministry was unpopular: the head of that Ministry was the imbecile Duke of Newcastle, perhaps the most contemptible statesman who has ever made high office ridiculous. The King was away in Hanover. England was in the toils of a foreign war, and her prestige had lately suffered heavily from the sudden defeat at Fontenoy. There were very few troops in England to employ against an invasion, and the Scottish commander-in-chief, Sir John Cope, whose name lives in unenviable fame in the burden of many a Jacobite ballad, was as incapable a well-meaning general as ever was called upon to face a great unexpected emergency. It must be admitted that all these were excellent points in