By another, they suspended the _habeas-corpus_ act till October, with relation to persons apprehended by the government on suspicion of treasonable practices.

The pretender and his adherents were proclaimed traitors and rebels; and a bill was passed, discharging the clans of Scotland from all vassalage to those chiefs who should take up arms against her majesty.
Transports were hired to bring over ten British battalions from Ostend; a large fleet being equipped with incredible diligence, sailed from Deal towards Dunkirk, under the conduct of sir John Leake, sir George Byng, and lord Dursley.

The French imagined that Leake had sailed to Lisbon, and that Britain was unprovided of ships of war; so that they were amazed and confounded when this fleet appeared off Mardyke: a stop was immediately put to the embarkation of their troops; frequent expresses were despatched to Paris; the count de Fourbin represented to the French king the little probability of succeeding in this enterprise, and the danger that would attend the attempt; but he received positive orders to embark the forces, and set sail with the first favourable wind.
The British fleet being forced from their station by severe weather on the fourteenth day of March, the French squadron sailed on the seventeenth from the road of Dunkirk; but the wind shifting, it anchored in Newport-pits till the nineteenth in the evening, when they set sail again with a fair breeze, steering their course to Scotland.

Sir George Byng having received advice of their departure, from an Ostend vessel sent out for that purpose by major-general Cadogan, gave chase to the enemy, after having detached a squadron, under admiral Baker, to convoy the troops that were embarked at Ostend for England.

On the tenth day of March the queen went to the house of peers, where, in a speech to both houses, she told them that the French fleet had sailed; that sir George Byng was in pursuit of them; and that ten battalions of her troops were expected every day in England.