In conformity with this usage, the business of framing a plan for the settling of the government was now confided to a Committee of twenty-four.

Of the twenty-four eight were peers, eight representatives of counties, and eight representatives of towns.

The majority of the Committee were Whigs; and not a single prelate had a seat.
The spirit of the Jacobites, broken by a succession of disasters, was, about this time, for a moment revived by the arrival of the Duke of Queensberry from London.

His rank was high and his influence was great: his character, by comparison with the characters of those who surrounded him, was fair.

When Popery was in the ascendent, he had been true to the cause of the Protestant Church; and, since Whiggism had been in the ascendent, he had been true to the cause of hereditary monarchy.