The letters of Sir John Dalrymple from the court at London during the remainder of the year, shew that he grudged these terms to the Highland Jacobites, and would have been happy to find that a refusal of them justified harsher measures. It never occurred to him that there was anything but obstinacy, or a hope of immediate assistance from France to enable them to set up King James again, in their hesitation to swear that they sincerely in their hearts accepted King William and Queen Mary as the sovereigns of the land equally by right and in fact. He really _hoped_ that at least the popish clan of the Macdonalds of Glencoe would hold out beyond the proper day, so as to enable the government to make an example of them. It was all the better that the time of grace expired in the depth of winter, for ‘that,’ said he (letter to Colonel Hamilton, December 3, 1691), ‘is the proper season to maul them, in the cold long nights.’ On the 9th of January, under misinformation about their having submitted, he says: ‘I am sorry that Keppoch and M‘Ian of Glencoe[78] are safe.’ It was the sigh of a savage at the escape of a long-watched foe. Still he understood Glengarry, Clanranald, and Glenmoriston to be holding out, and he gave orders for the troops proceeding against them, granting them at the utmost the terms of prisoners of war. In the midst of a letter on the subject, dated the 11th January,[79] he says: ‘Just now my Lord Argyle tells me that Glencoe hath not taken the oaths; at which _I rejoice_—it’s a great work of charity to be exact in _rooting out that damnable sect_, the worst in all the Highlands.’ Delighted with the intelligence—‘it is very good news here,’ he elsewhere says—he obtained that very day a letter from the king anent the Highland rebels, commanding the troops to cut them off ‘_by all manner of hostility_,’ and for this end to proclaim high penalties to all who should give them assistance or protection. Particular instructions subscribed by the king followed on the 16th, permitting terms to be offered to Glengarry, whose house was strong enough to give trouble, but adding: ‘_If M‘Ian of Glencoe and that tribe can be well separated from the rest, it will be a proper vindication of the public justice to extirpate that sect of thieves._’ On the same day, Dalrymple himself wrote to Colonel [Sidenote: 1692.] Hill, governor of Inverlochy, ‘I shall entreat you that, for a just vengeance and public example, the thieving tribe of Glencoe be _rooted out to purpose_. The Earls of Argyle and Breadalbane have promised they shall have no retreat in their bounds.’ He felt, however, that it must be ‘quietly done;’ otherwise they would make shift both for their cattle and themselves. There can be no doubt what he meant; merely to _harry_ the people, would make them worse thieves than before—they must be, he elsewhere says, ‘_rooted out and cut off_.’