A. Ritchie, Delt. —— W. Douglas, Sr.
Execution of the Marquis of Argyle, anno 1661.
Vide page [40].
Edinr. Pubd. by Hugh Paton, Carver & Gilder to the Queen, 1841.
ANNALS
OF THE
PERSECUTION IN SCOTLAND,
FROM THE
RESTORATION TO THE REVOLUTION.
By JAMES AIKMAN, Esq.,
AUTHOR OF “THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND,” &c.
EDINBURGH: HUGH PATON, ADAM SQUARE.
M.DCCC.XLII.
EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY HUGH PATON, ADAM SQUARE.
CONTENTS.
| Introduction | P. [ix] |
BOOK I. A.D. 1604.-1660.
| Presbytery, the favourite form of religion in Scotland with the people, opposed by James VI.—At first opposed, afterwards sanctioned, by Charles I.—Solemn League and Covenant—Confession of Faith—Defeat of the Duke of Hamilton and death of Charles—State of the Church—Charles II. crowned—Divisions amongst the Presbyterians—Resolutioners—Remonstrators—Protectorate of Cromwell—State of religion during that period—Restoration—Sharpe sent to London—Religious parties in Scotland—Sharpe’s double dealing—Sudden change of manners—Rejoicings—Fears of the Remonstrators—Difference with the Resolutioners—First measures of the King—Promotes the enemies and persecutes the friends of the Covenant—Proceedings of the Committee of Estates, urged on by Sharpe—King’s letter to the Edinburgh ministers—Exultation of the Resolutioners—Persecute their brethren—Committee of Estates order Lex Rex, &c. to be burned—Proclamation against the Remonstrants—Interference with regard to elections—Proclamation for a meeting of Parliament | [1] |
BOOK II. December 1660 to 12th July 1661.
| Lord High Commissioner arrives in Edinburgh—Parliament—Its composition—Act of indemnity withheld—Lord Chancellor restored to the Presidentship—Oath of allegiance—Retrogression in reformation-work—Divine right of Kings asserted—Solemn League and Covenant repealed—Engagement approved, &c.—Declaration—Resolutioners begin to perceive their error—Middleton amuses the ministers of Edinburgh—Manner of concocting the Act rescissory and of getting it passed—Middleton’s interview with D. Dickson and part of the Edinburgh presbytery—Distress of the ministers—Dispersion of the synods—Concluding acts—Trial of Argyle—his behaviour before and at the place of execution—Trial of James Guthrie—his behaviour and execution—Captain Govan —Prosecutions of Mr Traill of Edinburgh—Mr Moncrief of Scone—Intrepid reply of his wife—Mr Robert Macwaird of Glasgow—his striking picture of the effects of the Restoration—his accusation—defence—banishment—Swinton of Swinton—Sir John Chiesly and Mr P. Gillespie’s escape—Parliament rises—Samuel Rutherford | [21] |
BOOK III. August, A.D. 1661-1662.
| Lord High Commissioner sets out for Court—his reception—Deliberations of the Council—Episcopacy resolved upon as the National Religion of Scotland—Glencairn, Rothes, and Sharpe appointed to carry the tidings to Edinburgh—King’s letter—Privy Council announce the overthrow of Presbytery—forbid the election of Presbyterian magistrates in burghs—prosecute Tweeddale—Ministers summoned to London to be episcopally ordained—their characters—their consecration—Grief of the Presbyterians—Re-introduction of Episcopacy—Restrictions on the press—Witchcraft—Synods discharged and bishops ordered to be honoured by royal patent—their consecration—Parliament restores their rank—asserts the King’s supremacy—The Covenants declared unlawful—Act of fines—defeated—Lord Lorn—Blair and other ministers deprived—King’s birth-day—Middleton’s visit to the West and South—Case of Mr Wylie—Brown of Wamphray—Livingston, &c.—Middleton removed and Lauderdale appointed | [61] |
BOOK IV. December, A.D. 1662-1664.
| State of the West and South—Bishops’ curates—their reception—Tumult at Irongray—Commission sent to Kirkcudbright and Dumfries—Field-preaching—Rothes and Lauderdale arrive in Scotland—Parliament—Warriston’s arrest and execution—Principal Wood of St Andrews and other ministers silenced and scattered—Troops ordered to enforce the Acts of Parliament—their outrages—Sir James Turner—High Commission Court—its atrocities—Privy Council—its exactions—prohibits private prayer-meetings or contributing money for the relief of the sufferers—William Guthrie of Fenwick laid aside—Donaldson of Dalgetty’s case—Death of Glencairn—Political changes | [96] |
BOOK V. January, A.D. 1665-1666.
| Partial moderation of the King—Sir James Turner’s campaign through Kirkcudbright and Galloway—Unpaid fines levied—Students’ oaths—All meetings for religious purposes forbid—Quietude of the country—Proclamation of the council—Apologetical Relation—Sir James Turner’s third campaign extended to Nithsdale—visits Mr Blackadder at Troqueer—More troops raised—Rigorous acts more rigorously enforced—Rising of the persecuted—they gather strength—their operations—Defeated at Pentland—Prelatic revenge—Testimony of the sufferers—Torture introduced—Nielson of Corsack—Hugh M’Kail—Executions in Edinburgh and the west country—William Sutherland—Executions at Ayr | [127] |
BOOK VI. January, A.D. 1667-1669.
| Dalziel sent to the South and West—his cruelty, and that of the inferior officers—Sir Mungo Murray—Sir William Bannatyne—Arrival of the Dutch fleet—Crusade abates—Forfeitures increase—Standing army proposed—Convention of estates—Cess—King’s letter—West country disarmed—Sir Robert Murray sent to Scotland—Army partially disbanded—Political changes—Bond of peace—Trials of Sir James Turner and Sir William Bannatyne—Field-preaching proscribed—Michael Bruce—John Blackadder—Attempt upon Sharpe’s life—Search for the assassin—Remarkable escape of Maxwell of Monreith—Case of Mr Robert Gray, merchant—Mrs Kelso and Mrs Duncan—Death of Mr Gillon, minister of Cavers—Field-preaching and family-worship punished—Mr Fullarton of Quivox before the Council—Mr Blackadder patrols his “diocese” untouched safely—Mr Hamilton, minister of Blantyre | [169] |
BOOK VII. July, A.D. 1669-1670.
| An indulgence proposed—partially accepted by the ministers—Mr Hutchison’s address—Proclamation against those who refused it—Archbishop of Glasgow’s remonstrance—Parliament asserts the king’s supremacy—vote the militia, and a security for orthodox ministers—Field-meeting in Fife—Difference between Presbyterians and prelatists in doctrine and teaching—Curates disturbed—Lecturing forbid—Compromising ministers—Success of the gospel—Remarkable meeting at the Hill of Beath, &c.—Rage of the Primate—Strange escape of four prisoners | [187] |
BOOK VIII. July, A.D. 1670-1674.
| Parliament—Act against conventicles—Bond—Leighton’s efforts to reform the Episcopate—Council appoint a committee—Leighton attempts an accommodation—Conference—Rigid treatment of indulged ministers—Conventicles increase—Implacability of the prelates—Lady Dysart—Ascendency of Lauderdale—Parliament—Finings—Indulgence—Dissensions of the ministers—Sufferings of the indulged—Mr Forrester and Mr Burnet abandon Prelacy—their testimony—Proceedings at the meeting of estates—Mr Blackadder’s tour in Fife—Ministers’ widows’ petition—its consequences—Sharpe’s troubles | [207] |
BOOK IX. A.D. 1674-1676.
| Divisions among the ministers respecting the church and self-defence—Armed meetings—Severities increase—Lord Cardross—Religious revivals in the North—Mr M’Gilligan—Civil oppression—Home of Polwart—Finings—Durham of Largo—Magistrates of Edinburgh—Sufferers sent to France as recruits—Proclamation to expel the families of gospel-hearers from the Burghs, and enforce the conventicle act—Instructions for the indulged—Progress of the gospel—Rage of the prelates—Mitchell tortured | [238] |
BOOK X. A.D. 1676-1677.
| Remarkable sacramental solemnities occasion harsher measures—Council new-modelled—Committee for public affairs—Kerr of Kersland—Kirkton—The expatriated pursued to Holland—Colonel Wallace | [256] |
BOOK XI. A.D. 1677.
| Meeting of the ministers in Edinburgh—Prosecutions for not attending the kirk—Lord Cardross—Conventicle at Culross—Bond—Lauderdale comes to Scotland—Pretended moderation—Alarm of the bishops—Carstairs attacks John Balfour’s house—Council’s design of raising a standing force—Resolutions of the West country gentlemen—Conventicles increase—Communion at East Nisbet—Common field-meeting—King authorizes calling in the Highland clans | [265] |
BOOK XII. A.D. 1678.
| Privy Council forbids emigration—Mitchell’s trial and execution—Highland host—Committee of the council arrive at Glasgow—Deputation from Ayr sent to the Commissioner—Bond refused—Committee proceed to Ayr—Earl of Cassilis—Law-burrows—Case of Lord Cochrane—Ravages of “the Highland Host”—their return home—Earl of Cassilis goes to court—Duke of Hamilton follows—Complaints dismissed—State of the country | [286] |
BOOK XIII. January to May, A.D. 1679.
| Public teachers and students required to take the oath of supremacy—A boy imprisoned for refusing—Husbands punished for their wives’ contumacy—landlords for their tenants’—Overture of the council—Country put under military law—Reprisals—Outrages of the commissioners of shires—Death of Sharpe—Escape of Veitch—Murder of Inchdairney | [336] |
BOOK XIV. May to December, A.D. 1679.
| Outrages of the soldiery—Dissensions among the persecuted—Commotions in the West—Rutherglen declaration—Rising of the Presbyterians—Skirmish at Drumclog—Royal troops retire to Edinburgh—Divisions among the Presbyterians—Arrival of Monmouth—Battle of Bothwell Bridge | [359] |
BOOK XV. A.D. 1680.
| Perplexity of the moderate ministers—Murder of Mr Hall—Queensferry paper—Cargill joins Cameron—Sanquhar declaration—Council’s proclamation in reply—Reflections—Bond—Fresh plunderings by Dalziel—Skirmish at Airs-moss—Death of Cameron—of Rathillet—Cargill—Torwood excommunication—York arrives in Edinburgh—Spreul tortured—Skene, Stewart, and Potter executed—Effigy of the Pope burnt | [397] |
BOOK XVI. A.D. 1681.
| Edinburgh College shut—Isobel Alison and Marion Harvy executed—Other executions—Search for covenanters—Thomas Kennoway’s exploits—Mock courts held by Cornet Graham and Grierson of Lag—Mr Spreul tried—acquitted—sent to the Bass—John Blackadder, Gabriel Semple, and Donald Cargill seized—Walter Smith, William Cuthil, and others apprehended, tried, and executed | [414] |
BOOK XVII. A.D. 1681.
| Parliament—Act for securing the Protestant religion—asserting the divine right and lineal succession of their kings—for securing the peace of the country—Lord Bargeny’s case—The Test—debate upon it—Belhaven—Argyle—objections to its imposition—Argyle takes it with an explanation—his trial—escapes from the Castle—forfeited—Fraser of Brea—fined—banished | [437] |
BOOK XVIII. A.D. 1681-1682.
| Society-men—their first general meeting—State of the country—Ure of Shargarton—Wavering of the Episcopalians—Lanark declaration—burned at Edinburgh—Harvey hanged—Mr P. Warner—York recalled to court—New government—Robert Gray executed—Dalziel sent to the west—Meeting at Priest-hill—at Tala-linn—Major White and the Laird of Meldrum—their proceedings—Hume of Hume executed—Lauderdale’s death | [452] |
BOOK XIX. A.D. 1682-1683.
| Persecution instigated by the curates in the South and West—Noble conduct of a boy—Rapacity of the military—Instructions of the council—exploits of Claverhouse, Meldrum, &c.—Retributive justice—Justiciary court—Lawrie of Blackwood—Circuit courts—Rye-house plot—Scottishmen implicated—Various instances of oppression | [465] |
BOOK XX. A.D. 1684-1685.
| Persecutions increase—“Killing Time”—Proscription and plundering—Husbands fined for their wives’ non-attendance at church—Torture—Executions—Campbell of Cessnock—Paton of Meadowhead, &c.—Females sold for slaves—Spence—Carstairs—Baillie of Jarvieswood—Circuit courts—Porterfield of Douchal—Finings—Proceedings of the society-men—Review of the state of the country during this period—Death of Charles | [481] |
BOOK XXI. A.D. 1685.
| Accession of James VII.—Proceedings of the privy council—Field murders—Northern commission—Indemnity—Outrages in the south—Two women drowned—John Brown, “the Christian Carrier”—Parliament—Argyle’s expedition—Suspected persons sent to Dunotter—Argyle defeated—taken—executed—Colonel Rumbold—Nisbet of Hardhill and other sufferers | [510] |
BOOK XXII. A.D. 1686-1688.
| Conduct of the soldiers—A riot—Recantation of Sibbald—Alexander Peden—Proceedings of the society-men—Synod of Edinburgh—Parliament—Disputes among the persecuted—Indulgence—Thanksgiving for the Queen’s pregnancy—Seizure and death of Mr Renwick—Dr Hardy’s trial and acquittal—Rescue of David Houston—Murder of George Wood—Arrival of the Prince of Orange | [533] |
INTRODUCTION.
The first annunciation of the gospel in Eden to fallen man, was accompanied with an assurance of persecution:—“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” And the same was explicitly renewed under the New Testament dispensation, where it is declared with peculiar emphasis—“Yea, all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” But, like “the primal curse, ’tis softened into mercy;” nay more, it is transformed into a blessing—“Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake: rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven.” That these promises have been made good, the history of the Church in all ages bears testimony; and there is no testimony stronger than that of the Church in Scotland, whether we consider the fiery trials she has gone through, or the noble records her martyrs have left to the truth and faithfulness of God.
Christianity appears to have been introduced at a very early period, and never to have been wholly extinguished by the idolatries of Rome, in the south-western districts, where the Lollards of Kyle arose as harbingers of the Reformation, some time towards the end of the fourteenth century. In the year 1407, James Resby, an English presbyter, and a disciple of Wickliffe, was burned for Lollardism in Scotland, especially for interspersing these most dangerous dogmas in his sermons, “that a Pope was not in fact the vicar of Christ; nor could any Pope be so, unless he was holy;” besides forty other similar or worse conclusions, and his tenets spread widely. He was followed, 1431, by Paul Craw, “deprehendit,” says Knox, “in the Universitie of Sanct Androis, and accusit of Heresie before suche as wer called Doctors of Theologie,” and sent to expiate his errors in the flames. At his execution, they put “ane ball of bras in his mouthe to the end that he sould not gif confession of his faythe to the pepill, neyther yit that thai sould understand the defence which he hade agains thair unjust accusation and condemnation.”
The political anarchy and confusion which prevailed in Scotland at this time, and in which the priests took an active share, seem to have diverted their attention for a while from prosecuting their schemes against the new obnoxious opinions; but when Luther shook the papacy, and his doctrines gaining ground on every side, had stirred up their slumbering hatred, the renovated warfare was announced by the martyrdom of Mr Patrick Hamilton and of “the Scottish John Baptist,” as Mr George Wishart has been styled. But the prelates, who had shut their eyes to the signs of the times, grievously miscalculated. The ministry of these two eminent men had produced on the already prepared population, a disposition not only to profess the truth themselves, but also to endeavour a national reformation; and their martyrdom hastened the crisis. Instead of terrifying, it enraged the people against the superstition which could require for its support the perpetration of such deadly crime.
During the nominal reign of the unfortunate Mary, but more especially after her flight into England, the cause rapidly progressed; and the Regents, however different in character, were obliged by the circumstances of the times in which they were placed, to aid in its furtherance. The absurd constitution of Scotland, that allowed a child unfit for governing himself to assume the power of governing a nation, occasioned various changes. After the accession of James VI., till previously to his marriage, he acquiesced in the presbyterial government, which, upon his return from Denmark with his queen, he declared in presence of the General Assembly to be “the purest kirk upon earth,” and promised to defend it “against all deadly”—a promise he soon forgot, and forced upon his reluctant subjects a mongrel Episcopacy. This was followed up by his son Charles, who, after some preliminary encroachments, sent down a liturgy with an order to adopt it.
July 23, 1637, was the remarkable day on which the Bishop of Edinburgh, robed in his canonicals, attempted to introduce it in the High Church; but no sooner had he opened the service-book, than an old woman, Janet Geddes by name, threw her stool at his head, which was quickly followed by a number of others, the whole congregation meanwhile crying out—“A Pope! a Pope!” and both the bishop and dean were forced out of the church, and driven home amid a shower of stones, hardly escaping with their lives. Commotions followed, till a free General Assembly met at Glasgow, November 21, 1638, where the Presbyterian form of church government was declared and acted upon as the government of the church, most agreeable to the gospel and the law of the land, which was acknowledged by the king at the treaty of Dunselaw, June 18, 1639.
When the civil war broke out, the English parliament convened an Assembly of Divines at Westminster, to which the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland sent four of their chief ministers, not less distinguished for their talents, than revered for their piety—Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherfurd, George Gillespie, and Robert Baillie, accompanied by Lord Maitland, afterwards Duke of Lauderdale, “a man of excellent parts had they been blessed and improven; but as then his reputation was entire.” The Confession of Faith, Catechisms, and Directory for Worship, which were here agreed upon, were received and sanctioned in their session 1648, and ratified by the Scottish parliament. For defending these, the persecutions narrated in the following pages were endured.
ANNALS OF THE PERSECUTION.
BOOK I.
A.D. 1604.-A.D. 1660.
Presbytery, the favourite form of religion in Scotland with the people, opposed by James VI.—At first opposed afterwards sanctioned by Charles I.—Solemn League and Covenant—Confession of Faith—Defeat of the Duke of Hamilton and death of Charles—State of the Church—Charles II. crowned—Divisions among the Presbyterians—Resolutioners—Remonstrators—Protectorate of Cromwell—State of religion during that period—Restoration—Sharpe sent to London—Religious parties in Scotland—Sharpe’s double dealing—Sudden change of manners—Rejoicings—Fears of the Remonstrators—Difference with the Resolutioners—First measures of the King—Promotes the enemies and persecutes the friends of the Covenant—Proceedings of the Committee of Estates, urged on by Sharpe—King’s letter to the Edinburgh ministers—Exultation of the Resolutioners—Persecute their brethren—Committee of Estates order Lex Rex, &c. to be burned—Proclamation against the Remonstrants—Interference with regard to elections—Proclamation for a meeting of Parliament.
Ever since the days of the Reformation, Scotland has been distinguished by the attachment of her inhabitants to simplicity in the forms of their religious worship, and a dislike to pomp or lordly power in their ministers. Presbytery, of which these are the prominent features, has in consequence always been the favoured mode of ecclesiastical polity with the people; unfortunately her monarchs, previous to the Revolution of 1688, were as decidedly averse to it; and their tyrannical attempts to substitute a hated hierarchy in its place, involved the country, for three generations, in contention and bloodshed, persecution and distress, till the struggle issued in the final expulsion of the Stuarts from the throne.
James VI., after having given the Presbyterian church the royal sanction, and paid it the highest encomiums as the “purest kirk upon earth,” and having repeatedly promised and vowed “to support it against all deadly,” spent the greater part of his life in endeavours to overturn it. He succeeded in forcing upon an unwilling people a kind of mongrel prelacy, and left to his son the hazardous task of finishing his designed uniformity in religious worship between the two kingdoms.
Charles proceeded with more violence; and, by attempting to obtrude a detested liturgy, he destroyed the fabric it had cost his father so much king-craft to rear, and led to the remarkable renewing of the National Covenant, which, early in the year 1638, was subscribed with enthusiastic fervour by all ranks throughout the land. A free General Assembly, convened at Glasgow in that year, November 21, accomplished what has usually been termed the second glorious Reformation, by restoring Presbytery to its primitive simplicity, and sweeping away all the innovations against which they had so long struggled. The proceedings of this assembly were afterwards solemnly confirmed by the estates; and Scotland for a short period enjoyed a hollow peace, while the king was contesting with his English parliament. Afraid, however, if the king overcame in the contest, that they would hold their own liberties by a very feeble tenure, they entered into a solemn league and covenant with the parliament for the mutual preservation of their religion and liberty, for promoting uniformity in worship and doctrine between the two nations, and for exterminating popery, prelacy, and schism: their weight decided the fate of the war.
When the English hierarchy had fallen, and the king’s power was reduced, an assembly of the most learned divines that perhaps ever met in Britain, was called by authority of the English parliament. Assisted by commissioners from Scotland, they drew up the admirable Confession of Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, still the standards of our national church; but they differed on the Directory for Worship, against which some of the most learned of the Independents dissented—a prelude to more serious differences.
After Charles had been beaten out of the field, and was intriguing in a variety of ways with the army and with the English parliament, a majority in the Scottish estates, headed by the Duke of Hamilton, rashly “engaged” by a secret treaty to attempt his rescue. The church opposed war with England, as Charles would give only an equivocal pledge for supporting the establishment of Presbytery in that country; and they feared his duplicity in case he regained unrestricted power; and the minority in the estates also “protested” against it. The engagers being defeated at Preston, the protesters, whose leader was the Marquis of Argyle, came into power, and Scotland separated into two parties. Shortly after the defeat of the Scots, the king was brought to trial and executed, in spite of their remonstrances, which, now that they were divided among themselves and had no army to back them, were little regarded.
At this time the church of Scotland reached her greatest pitch of splendour. “For though,” says a contemporary historian, “alwayes since the assembly at Glasgow the work of the gospel hade prospered, judicatories being reformed, godly ministers entered, and holy constitutions and rules daily brought into the church; yet now, after Duke Hamilton’s defeat, and in the interval betwixt the two kings, religion advanced the greatest step it had made for many years: now the ministrie was notably purified, the magistracy altered, and the people strangly refined. It is true, at this time hardly the fifth part of the lords of Scotland were admitted to sit in parliament; but those that did sitt were esteemed truly godly men; so were all the rest of the commissioners in parliament elected of the most pious of every corporation. Also godly men were employed in all offices, both civil and military; and about this time the General Assembly, by sending abroad visiters into the country, made almost ane entire change upon the ministry in several places of the nation, purgeing out the scandalous and insufficient, and planting in their place a sort of godly young men, whose ministry the Lord sealed with ane eminent blessing of success, as they themselves sealed it with a seal of heavy sufferings; but so they made full proof of their ministry.
“Scotland hath been even by emulous foreigners called Philadelphia; and now she seemed to be in her flower. Every minister was to be tried five times a-year, both for his personal and ministerial behaviour; every congregation was to be visited by the presbytery, that they might see how the vine flowrished and the pomegranate budded. And there was no case nor question in the meanest family in Scotland but it might become the object of the deliberation of the General Assembly; for the congregational session’s book was tried by the presbytery, the presbytery’s by the synod, and the synod’s by the General Assembly. Likeways, as the bands of the Scottish church were strong, so her beauty was bright; no error so much as named; the people were not only sound in the faith, but innocently ignorant of unsound doctrine; no scandalous person could live; no scandal could be concealed in all Scotland, so strict a correspondence there was between ministers and congregations. The General Assembly seemed to be the priest with Urim and Thumim; and there were not ane hundreth persons in all Scotland to oppose their conclusions: all submitted, all learned, all prayed; most part were really godly, or at least counterfeited themselves Jews. Than was Scotland a heap of wheat set about with lillies, uniform, or a palace of silver beautifully proportioned; and this seems to me to have been Scotland’s high noon. The only complaint of profane people was, that the government was so strict they hade not liberty enough to sin.
“But this season lasted not long.” The Presbyterians, who were averse to the ruling party in England, as sectarians in religion and republicans in politics, immediately proclaimed Charles II.; and commissioners were sent to the Hague, where he was subsisting on the bounty of his sister, to invite him upon conditions to assume the government. During the negotiations, while the terms were discussing, he authorized Montrose, already too well known for his cruelties, to attempt his unconditional restoration by force; and it was not till he heard of his failure, that he consented to take the oaths and become the covenanted king of Scotland.
His arrival, however, instead of uniting, occasioned deep and irreconcilable dissensions among the Scots—between those who distrusted, and those who affected to believe, his professions; yet as the church continued to maintain the ascendancy, they were kept within bounds till after the fatal battle of Dunbar. But when it became necessary to supply the loss occasioned by that disaster, they became apparent. The king required that all those who had hitherto been excluded as malignants, who had favoured the engagement, and were understood to be friendly to his unlimited power, should be restored to offices of trust both in the army and state: this was resisted by the strictest and most devout of the Presbyterians, who, considering them as enemies to the church, dreaded their admission into the king’s councils, while he himself was suspected. The virtues of the king, and his inimitable improvement in adversity, were deemed sufficient answer, and resolutions favourable to their claims having been obtained by surprise from the major part of the commission, a schism took place by the minority protesting against the concession.
From this date the Presbyterians separated into two parties, who distracted the country for several years by their violent contentions; those who arrogated to themselves the praise of liberality and loyalty—their superior regard for the decrees of the church and the letter of the covenant—ranging under the name of resolutioners; while those esteemed the most holy, indefatigable, and laborious ministers, who preferred the spirit to the form of their religious constitution, were numbered among the protesters. They were likewise called remonstrators, from having followed up their protest by a remonstrance. Meanwhile Charles was crowned at Scone with great solemnity, the Marquis of Argyle, who was attached to the resolutioners, putting the crown upon his head; but the divisions continued till Cromwell obtained the supreme power, who granted free toleration to all sects, and liberty to the Presbyterians in every thing, except permitting the General Assembly to meet, which some of the more pious considered no bad service.
This period, down to the Restoration, has ever been considered as that in the Scottish church most remarkably distinguished for the prevalence of real personal religion; and it was evident that God was preparing a people in this land for a day of hot and fiery trial. “I verily believe,” says Kirkton, “there were more souls converted to Christ in that short period of time than in any season since the Reformation, though of treeple its duration. Nor was there ever greater purity and plenty of the means of grace than was in their time. Ministers were painful, people were diligent; and if a man hade seen one of their solemn communions, where many congregations mett in great multitudes—some dozens of ministers used to preach, and the people continued as it were in a sort of trance (so serious were they in spiritual exercises) for three dayes at least—he would have thought it a solemnity unknown to the rest of the world. Besides, the ministers, after some years, began to look at the questions about which they had divided, as inconsiderable: also it was found error made no great progress, the genius of the people being neither very curious nor easily changed.”
The numbers who stood the test and suffered to the death, bear witness that the religious state of the country at the Restoration, as given by him, must be substantially true; as the numbers who apostatized make it evident that many must have dissembled. “There be in all Scotland some nine hundred paroches.”[[1]] “At the king’s return every paroch had a minister, every village had a school, every family almost had a Bible; yea, in most of the country, all the children of age could read the Scriptures, and were provided of Bibles either by the parents or their ministers. Every minister was a very full professor of the reformed religion, according to the large Confession of Faith, framed at Westminster by the divines of both nations. Every minister was obliged to preach thrice a-week, to lecture and catechise once, besides other private duties, wherein they abounded according to their proportion of faithfulness and abilities. None of them might be scandalous in their conversation or negligent in their office, so long as a presbyterie stood; and among them were many holy in conversation and eminent in gifts. The dispensation of the ministry being fallen from the noise of waters and sound of trumpets, to the melody of harpers, which is alace the last messe in the banquet. Nor did a minister satisfy himself except his ministry had the seal of a divine approbation, as might witness him to be really sent from God.”
[1]. These were divided into sixty-eight presbyteries, which were again cantoned into fourteen synods, out of all which, by a solemn legation of commissioners from every presbytery, they used to constitute a national assembly.
“Indeed, in many places the spirit seemed to be poured out with the word, both by the multitudes of sincere converts, and also by the common work of reformation upon many who never came the length of a communion; there were no fewer than sixty aged people, men and women, who went to school, that even then they might be able to read the Scriptures with their own eyes. I have lived many years in a paroch where I never heard an oath; and you might have ridde many miles before you heard any: also, you could not for a great part of the country have lodged in a family where the Lord was not worshipped by reading, singing, and public prayer. Nobody complained more of our church-government than our taverners, whose ordinary lamentation was, their trade was broke, people were become so sober.”[[2]]
[2]. Kirkton mentions that the English often offered the protesters the government of the nation, which they refused, till Cromwell, “weary with their scrupolosity, and being highly caressed by Mr (afterwards Archbishop) Sharpe, his large proffers in behalf of the resolutioners, was forced to allow them equal liberty, and so they continued in a balance till after his death.—Hist. of the Church of Scotland, pp. 48-56.—Law, in his Memorials, has a similar statement. “It is not to be forgotten, that from the year 1652 to the year 1660, there was great good done by the preaching of the gospel in the west of Scotland, more than was observed to have been for twenty or thirty years before; a great many brought into Christ Jesus by a saving work of conversion, which was occasioned through ministers preaching nothing all that tyme but the gospell, and had left off to preach up parliaments, armies, leagues, resolutions, and remonstrance, which was much in use before, from the year 1638 till that time 52, which occasioned a great number of hypocrytes in the church, who, out of hope of preferment, honour, riches, and worldly credit, tooke on the form of godliness but wanted the power of it.” P. 7.
Such was the delightful picture drawn by an eyewitness; and to render it perfect and permanent, the Presbyterians longed with desire for the restoration of their king, whose presence alone they believed would remove the only spots that in their eyes dimmed its lustre—the suspension of their General Assemblies, and the late sinful toleration. As soon as there was the least prospect of the desirable event, several ministers in Edinburgh—resolutioners—dispatched Mr James Sharpe to London, with instructions to watch over the interests of the church, particularly of their own party; and as they knew that the king had a strong antipathy against the remonstrants, who, during his stay in Scotland, had been assiduous in their upright though ungrateful endeavours for his conversion, and incurred his displeasure and that of his confidants by their uncourtly reproofs and uncompromising adherence to their principles, they were anxious to separate themselves from this the honestest portion of their brethren, and directed their agent carefully to remind his majesty of the difference between them and their more uncomplying opponents.
During the protectorate, as no persecution had been allowed on account of religious opinions, a few in Scotland seem to have adopted the tolerant maxims of the decried usurper; and although sectaries never flourished in that soil, they seem to have been sufficiently numerous to have excited the fears of the resolutioners, who, insensible to the benefits they enjoyed under the toleration of Cromwell, and eager to secure the liberties of their own kirk from the oppression of the prelatists, were equally anxious to guard against any freedom being allowed to those whom they termed fanatics.[[3]]
[3]. Mr Robert Douglas writes to Mr Sharpe, May 8, 1660:—“Your great errand will be for this kirk. I am confident the king will not wrong our liberties whereunto he himself is engaged. He needs not declare any liberty to tender consciences here, because the generality of the people and whole ministry have embraced the established religion by law with his majesty’s consent. It is known that in all the times of the prevailing of the late party in England, none here petitioned for toleration, except some inconsiderable naughty men.” And the ministers of Edinburgh, i. e. resolutioners, in a letter, May 10, to the Earl of Rothes, who was going to meet the king at Breda, use the following remarkable expressions: “He [the king] knows likewise how much the people adhere to the establishment of the church; so that there is no pretext for an indulgence to such as shall recede from it, but many inconveniences would ensue upon the granting it.” Correspondence between Messrs Douglas, Dickson, &c. with Sharpe. Wodrow’s Introd.
There was, besides, a third party, who, although previously discernible to those who understood the signs of the times, sprang up at once upon the afflicted vision of the resolutioners, when the rays of royalty again beamed above the horizon—a new race, who, having never been acquainted with the work of reformation, nor with the just proceedings of the nation, but weary of Presbyterian strictness, were ready to condemn the covenant and all the loyal and honest acting of the covenanters. These, consisting chiefly of young men of rank, were prepared for any change, and were supposed, in general, to be rather favourable to Episcopacy. A knowledge of this circumstance, and the frequent representations of the alarming fact by his correspondents, seem early to have influenced Sharpe to desert his employers and go over to the enemy.
In May, he went upon an embassage to Charles at Breda, and there was confirmed in the treachery which he completed shortly after the king’s landing in England. His villanous hypocrisy in managing the overturn of the polity he was dispatched to support, was consummate; yet now, when we know the part he played, it is not difficult to perceive, in his most specious letters, an overacting which must have betrayed him to men less confiding than his employers.[[4]] Besides preventing all access to the king, and representing the chief leaders in Scotland as favourable to prelacy, he dissuaded his friends from addressing against it, and cruelly widened the breach between them and the protesters. His ambition was stimulated by his revenge; he wished to gratify his private resentment against the most eminent of the latter—Samuel Rutherford, James Guthrie, and Lord Warriston. Yet, however much we may detest the traitor, it is matter of high gratulation that his mission failed; for, had he acted faithfully and succeeded, he would have procured for Scotland an iron yoke of political presbytery, which might indeed have preserved the beloved polity secured by acts of parliament, by prohibitions, and by every civil pain and penalty by which churchmen support their power; but he would have destroyed religious liberty, and delivered the nation over to a thraldom which would have been worse, as it would probably have been more permanent, than the prelacy that ensued—it would, it is likely, have been more moral, but it might not have been less oppressively severe.[[5]]
[4]. “I profess,” says Mr Douglas, “I did not suspect Mr Sharpe in reference to prelacy more than I did myself, nor more than the apostles did Judas before his treachery was discovered.” Wodrow’s Introd.
[5]. There is much retribution in this world, although it be not the place of final account. Here especially God punishes his own people. The wicked may prosper in their wickedness—“he sees their day is coming”—but the Lord will never suffer his children to sin with impunity. This was remarkably exemplified in the case of these good men, who were now so anxious to prevent their brethren from enjoying liberty of conscience, in order that they themselves might engross the royal favour and the chief places in the church; their own agent betrayed them; and the very means they were using to accomplish their improper and selfish aims, were turned against them, and became the instruments of their correction.
When Charles was at last restored to the wishes and prayers of his people, as if some enchanter’s wand had touched the frame of society, the whole kingdom in an instant changed, and, from a state of grave seriousness and exemplary decency, burst out into one disorderly scene of riot and revelry; and the day of thanksgiving for this happy event was celebrated in Edinburgh in a manner that had been very unusual in that capital for at least a quarter of a century. After sermon, the magistrates proceeded to the cross, on which was a table covered with sweatmeats, and the well ran with wine; there, amid the flourishing of trumpets and the beating of drums, the royal healths were drank, and three hundred dozen of glasses broken in honour of the day! On the Castle Hill, fireworks were exhibited, the principal figures in which were Cromwell and the Devil, who, after diverting the multitude with a flight and pursuit, exploded and disappeared amid shouts of applause.
The considerate part of the community viewed the unconditional recall of the king with very different sensations; but these, in that frantic hour, were few in number, and chiefly consisted of the remonstrators, whose dark forebodings were deemed the offspring of their own guilty consciences accusing them of their former disloyalty. In vain did they ask for evidence of his being changed from what he was, before they could trust their liberties into his hands without security. They had all along been jealous of Sharpe, and their suspicions had been heightened by some surmises of his transactions at London; but all their advances towards their brethren had been repulsed by the resolutioners, who put the most unbounded confidence in that traitor’s assurances of the king’s friendly countenance towards themselves, and his intended vengeance upon them. The first measures of Charles, however, put an end to the differences of the truly pious among both parties, who were soon undeceived, and sent to the furnace to be refined together.
All the high offices of Scotland were disposed of to men either of no religion, or of that very accommodating kind which is always found on the side of interest and power. Middleton, a soldier of fortune, created an Earl, was appointed commissioner to hold the next parliament; the Earls Glencairn had the chancellorship—Crawford, the treasury—Rothes, president of the council—and Lauderdale, secretary of state, and one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, (the only Scottishman admitted to this honour;) Sir Archibald Primson was clerk-register; and Sir John Fletcher, king’s advocate. Meanwhile, those who were esteemed the leaders of the covenanters, although they had ever sturdily maintained their loyalty, after the greater part of the others had yielded, were thrown into prison and threatened with prosecutions for treason. The Marquis of Argyle was seized at London, whether he had gone to congratulate the king, and sent to the tower; and orders were forwarded to Scotland, to Major-General Morgan, commander-in-chief, to secure Sir James Stewart, provost of Edinburgh; Sir Archibald Johnstoun, Lord Warriston; and Sir John Christy of Carswell. Warriston escaped for the time; but the other two were arrested in a somewhat ludicrous manner. The General having heard that Christy was in town upon private business, waited upon the Provost, and required him, in virtue of his office, to apprehend Sir John and carry him to the Castle, which his lordship having done, when he was about to take leave, with many expressions of regret, he was informed “that it behooved him to bear his friend company;” nor did he obtain a release till about ten years after.
Until the meeting of a new parliament, the administration of Scottish affairs was intrusted to the surviving members of the committee of estates, nominated by the last Scottish parliament; and as they had all concurred with the king in swearing the National and Solemn League and Covenant, it was expected that they would at least be favourable to the established religion of the land; but it very soon appeared how little confidence can be placed in the professions or even oaths of public men, when the stream runs in an opposite direction. Their first meeting, at which the chancellor presided, was held in Edinburgh, August 23, and their first act was a proper prelude to the tyranny about to be inflicted on their country.
On that day, a few of the protesters, who had in vain endeavoured to convince their brethren of the critical situation in which the Presbyterian church stood, met at Edinburgh to draw up a humble address and supplication to the king, suited to the emergency. They were in all nine ministers, of whom the chief were Mr James Guthrie of Stirling, and Messrs Traill, and John Stirling of Edinburgh, with two ruling elders. As the meeting and its object were no secrets, the chancellor and committee dispatched messengers, who seized their papers, containing a scroll of their supplication, with copies of some letters to their brethren in Glasgow, requesting a full meeting for considering the subject; and immediately after issued a warrant for imprisoning in Edinburgh Castle the whole of those who had been present at the unlawful conventicle—terms about to become of frequent use and of fearful import.
The scroll consisted of declarations of their abhorrence of the murder of his majesty’s royal father, and the actings of the late usurping power—of thankfulness for the Lord’s preservation of his own sacred person, and for his quiet restoration without the effusion of Christian blood—professions of zeal for the glory of God, the good of the church, and faithful and loyal tenders of all the duties of honour, subjection, and obedience, due from humble and loving subjects to their native and lawful sovereign; but they expressed their fears of the popish prelatical and malignant party, of their attempting the overthrow of the pure religion as established, and the re-introduction of all the corruptions which were formerly cast out;[[6]] and they reminded his majesty of his and their solemn engagements to God, of the Lord’s mercy to him and them, and their mutual obligations to faithfulness in the performance of their vows.
[6]. These excellent men, for such undoubtedly they were, who had enjoyed undisturbed liberty of conscience and freedom of religious worship under Cromwell, thus adverted to that period, and thus would have requited their protectors.—“Neither are we less apprehensive of the endeavours of the spirit of error that possesseth sectaries in these nations, which, as it did at first promote the practice of a vast toleration in things religious, and afterwards proceeded unto the framing of the mischief thereof into a law, so we doubt not but it will still be active unto the promoting and procuring the same under the specious pretence of Liberty for tender consciences. The effects whereof have, in a few years past, been so dreadful, that we cannot think of the continuing of it, but with much trembling and fear.” Then follows a text upon which the whole annals of the persecution will form a most striking and instructive commentary. “Therefore, knowing that to kings, princes, rulers, and magistrates appertains the conservation and purgation of religion, and that unity and peace be preserved in the church, and that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions or abuses in discipline and worship prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed, We, your majesty’s most humble subjects, do, with bowed knees and bended affections, humbly supplicate your majesty that you would employ your royal power unto the preservation of the reformed religion in the church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, and unto the carrying on of the work of uniformity in religion in the churches of God in the three kingdoms, in one confession of faith, form of church-government, directory for worship, and catechizing; and to the extirpation of popery, prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatever shall be found contrary to sound doctrine,” &c.
They were therefore charged with proceedings expressly derogatory to his majesty’s royal prerogative, and tending to the disturbance of the present peace of his majesty’s dominions; and next day the committee of estates prohibited, by proclamation, all unlawful and unwarrantable meetings and conventicles in any place within the kingdom of Scotland without his majesty’s special authority; and likewise all seditious petitions and remonstrances under what pretext soever which might tend to the disturbance of the peace of the kingdom, or alienating or diminishing the affections of his majesty’s subjects from their due obedience to his majesty’s lawful authority, and that under the highest pains. Sheriffs and magistrates of burghs were ordered to be careful within their respective bounds, that no such pernicious or dangerous meetings should be permitted, but that they should be prevented, hindered, and made known to the executive. These proceedings were ostensibly directed against the remonstrants alone, but were intended to answer the double purpose of overawing the elections for the ensuing parliament, and paving the way for the complete overturn of freedom in the state and presbytery in the church.
Mr Sharpe, on his arrival from London, gave a keener edge to the proceedings of the committee, and, by his duplicity, prevented the good men among the resolutioners from taking any steps, either for their own security or the relief of their oppressed brethren. In answer to an epistle from his employers to the king, entreating his favour and countenance for their church, he brought the following, addressed to Mr Robert Douglas, minister, Edinburgh, to be by him communicated to the presbytery:—
“Charles R., trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. By the letters you sent to us with this bearer, Mr James Sharpe, and by the account he gave of the state of our church there, we have received full information of your sense of our sufferings and of your constant affection and loyalty to our person and authority: And therefore we will detain him here no longer—of whose good services we are very sensible—nor will we delay to let you know by him our gracious acceptance of your address, and how well we are satisfied with your carriage and with the generality of the ministers of Scotland in this time of trial, whilst some, under specious pretences, swerved from that duty and allegiance they owed to us. And because such, who by the countenance of usurpers have disturbed the peace of that our church, may also labour to create jealousies in the minds of well-meaning people, we have thought fit by this to assure you, that, by the grace of God, we resolve to discountenance profanity and all contemners and opposers of the ordinances of the gospel. We do also resolve to protect and preserve the government of the church of Scotland as it is settled by law, without violation, and to countenance in the due exercise of their functions all such ministers who shall behave themselves dutifully and peaceably as becomes men of their calling. We will also take care that the authority and acts of the General Assembly at St Andrew’s and Dundee, 1651,[[7]] be owned and stand in force until we shall call another General Assembly, which we purpose to do as soon as our affairs will permit. And we do intend to send for Mr Robert Douglas, and some other ministers, that we may speak with them in what may further concern the affairs of that church. And as we are very well satisfied with your resolution not to meddle without your sphere, so we do expect that church judicatories in Scotland and ministers there will keep within the compass of their station, meddling only with matters ecclesiastick, and promoting our authority and interest with our subjects against all opposers: and that they will take special notice of such who, by preaching, or private conventicles, or any other way, transgress the limits of their calling by endeavouring to corrupt the people, or sow seeds of disaffection to us or our government. This you shall make known to the several presbyteries within that our kingdom. And as we do give assurance of our favour and encouragement to you, and to all honest, deserving ministers there, so we earnestly recommend it to you that you be earnest in your prayers, publick and private, to Almighty God, who is our Rock and our Deliverer, both for us and for our government, that we may have fresh and constant supplies of his grace, and the right improvement of all his mercies and deliverances to the honour of his great name, and the peace, safety, and benefit of all our kingdoms; and so we bid you heartily farewell.”
[7]. The acts of these Assemblies were almost entirely levelled against the remonstrators.
Delighted with this most gracious epistle, the Edinburgh presbytery printed and caused it to be transmitted to all the presbyteries in Scotland, praised it from their pulpits, and procured a silver box to preserve the precious original. It was not to be supposed that, under language so explicitly guaranteeing the government of the church of Scotland, as settled by law, that, by any lurking inuendo, Episcopacy could be meant, the resolutioners therefore considered the day as their own, and, with premature speed, hasted to chant their victory. They warmly thanked his majesty for his letter, which they told him in their address they had received upon a day formerly devoted by them to mourning, September 3,[[8]] which had revived their spirits, and excited them to bless the Lord who had put such a purpose in his royal heart to preserve and protect the government of the church without violation; nor was the “choice of such an able and faithful person,” as Lauderdale, “for the weighty employment of secretary less an object of gratulation!” But while we look back with pity upon the speedy dissipation of all the good men’s hopes and anticipations, it is impossible not to feel that they in some measure merited them for the facility with which they allowed themselves to become the dupes and the tools, in persecuting their own brethren, of these very men by whom they themselves were afterwards persecuted.
[8]. The anniversary of the battles of Dunbar and Worcester—an ominous coincidence as it turned out. Another was remarked at the time. “It was a sad observation, that that very day of the month being the 23d of August, on which the protesters were apprehended, was the very same day whereon 100 years before the popish religion had been abolished, and the true religion established in parliament; and some feared this might be the turning of the tide backwards.” Kirkton, p. 73.
Sharpe, whose composition the letter was, followed out his plan of dividing the ministers. He was well aware that the remonstrators were the most acute and least liable to be imposed upon of the Presbyterians; he knew also that they suspected him, and he hated them; he therefore, by an insinuation in it, pointed them out as persons who, under specious pretences, had swerved from their duty during the usurpation; and the church judicatories hastened to inflict punishment upon them for this indefinite crime—“Our synods after this,” says Kirkton, “doing little other thing than censuring and laying aside those of that way. And though the preceding harvest before the king’s return all the synods of Scotland hade agreed to bury by-past differences, yet, upon the receipt of this blessed letter, the old wounds opened; and wherever the public resolution-men were the plurality, the protesters were censured upon the burried differences. In the synod of Merse, they laid aside five ministers; in Lothian, many were laid aside both in Lithgow and Biggar presbyteries; so it was in Perth and in the north: and the truth is, had not the course of synods been interrupted by the introduction of bishops, few had keeped their places who were afterwards ejected by that infamous proclamation at Glasgow in the year 1662.”
Nor was the committee idle; Mr Patrick Gillespie, principal of Glasgow College, was brought prisoner to Edinburgh Castle, and Mr Robert Row, minister of Abercorn, and W. Wiseheart of Kinniel, were confined to their chambers in the town. Having forbid any meetings for petitioning, they proceeded to display their antipathy to those principles of freedom, for which their fathers had contended, by emitting a proclamation against Rutherford’s Lex Rex—a work which was held in high estimation by the covenanters, as it advocated the cause of liberty and the legitimate limitations on power, with an energy and clearness the enemies of freedom could not bear; and another work, supposed to be written by Mr James Guthrie, entitled “The Causes of God’s Wrath against Scotland,” which enumerated the sins of the land, princes, priests, and people, with a faithfulness that was intolerable. They declared these two books to be full of seditious and treasonable matter, animating his majesty’s good subjects to rise up in rebellion against their lawful prince and sovereign, and poisoning their hearts with many seditious and rebellious principles, prejudicial to his royal person and authority, and to the peace of the kingdom. All, therefore, possessed of copies of the obnoxious publications were required to deliver them up to the king’s solicitor within a certain time, under pain of being considered enemies to his majesty’s authority, and liable to be punished accordingly. They were both burnt at the cross—a favourite, if not a very convincing, mode of answering such like productions. With revolting meanness, they at the same time caused the inscriptions to be effaced from the tombs of Alexander Henderson in Edinburgh, and George Gillespie at Kirkaldy—men who needed not the frail remembrance of a monumental stone to make their memories live in the recollection of their country, and whose services have more lasting record than a graving-iron could bestow.
Some few days after, they made a still more explicit disclosure of their aversion to the “good old cause”—a sneering form of expression become fashionable among the courtiers—by another proclamation directed against the remonstrants and their adherents, not only forbidding meetings for consultation, which were still legal, but likewise any adverting, in their sermons or otherwise, to the state of the church, or the danger to be apprehended from the introduction of the exploded and hated prelatical offices and forms; and, as they knew the effect of popular preaching, they appear to have been most anxious at once to suppress all pulpit opposition to the course they were about to pursue.
Of the watchmen upon the Scottish Zion, the remonstrants had been the most wakeful and most jealous of encroachments upon the established covenanted constitution of the church and state, and the committee were assured, that when they apprehended danger, they would not be silent; they therefore expressly commanded that none, in sermons, preachings, declamations, or speeches, should presume to reflect on the conduct of his majesty or his progenitors, misconstrue his proceedings, or meddle in his affairs or estate, present, bygone, or in time coming, under the highest penalties; and if any who heard what could be construed into slander against the king did not reveal it, they were to be liable to the same punishment as principals. This proclamation, the anti-type of so many furious attacks upon the liberty of the lieges, was calculated to ensnare those who, being accustomed openly to speak their sentiments, were not prepared at once to renounce all mention of public affairs in common conversation or public discourses, whether ministers, elders, or private gentlemen; and numbers of each description were immediately made to feel its oppressive weight.
Had a free election been allowed, notwithstanding the loyal phrenzy of many, and the hypocritical pretensions of more, there might some troublesome members have procured admission to the estates; but those whose influence and opposition were most dreaded, being by this proclamation placed in very delicate circumstances—as evidence of unguarded expressions might easily have been procured—were happy to escape censure, and did not stand forward at the only time when they could have done so with some probability of success, in support of the constitution, freedom, and religion of their country. The committee, however, did not rest here: with the most unblushing effrontery, although conscious themselves of having to a man complied with the English, they hung out a threat of prosecution for this common and inevitable fault, which damped all who seemed inclined to assert the independence of a Scottish parliament, or the privileges they had obtained from the crown during the late struggle.[[9]]
[9]. Of the nature of these prosecutions, the reader may form some idea from the following:—“Mr James Nasmyth, minister of the gospel at Hamilton, was sisted before the committee for words alleged to have been spoken by him many years ago. About the year 1650, when Lambert was in the church, it was alleged he pressed his hearers to employ their power for God, and not in opposition to the gospel, otherwise they might expect to be brought down by the judgement of God as those who went before were!” Wodrow, vol. i. p. 12.
Besides to pinion the country gentlemen more effectually, they tendered a bond to all of whom they were suspicious, which they obliged them to sign, with a sufficient cautioner, each binding themselves—besides disowning the remonstrance—that they should not in any way or manner, directly or indirectly, plot, contrive, speak, or do any thing tending, or what might tend, to the hurt, prejudice, or derogation of his majesty’s royal person or any of that royal family—that they should not do any thing, directly or indirectly, tending, or that might tend, to the breach or disturbance of the public peace, nor connive or concur with any person whatsoever who should contrive any such thing; but, to the utmost of their power, stop and let any such plot and doing, and appear personally before the committee, sub-committee, or parliament, upon a lawful citation; and, in case of failure, the parties bound themselves to pay a high fine, besides whatever other punishment might be inflicted.
For a justification of proceedings so unwarrantable, we must look to the sequel; it was not because the parties accused were inimical either to kingly government or to the person or right of Charles, but because the plan was already formed for sweeping from the face of the country, had it been possible, whatever was lovely or of good report—whatever in the institutions of the state or the polity of the church was calculated to present any obstruction to the tide of obscene licentiousness and faithless despotism that was now fast flowing upon them. Their stretches of power against the liberties of the country, do not, however, seem to have occasioned any remonstrance; and the synod of Lothian was amused with a proclamation for calling a General Assembly, which Mr William Sharpe had submitted for their amendment; but the last acts of the committee, levying a cess, excited some remark as to the legality of the tax or their power to exact it.
On the 1st of November, a proclamation announced the meeting of parliament; and the same day another, that the king had committed to them the consideration and judging of the conduct of all his subjects during the late troubles, from whom alone he would receive any applications, and promising, after his honour and ancient royal prerogative were vindicated, he would grant a free, full pardon and indemnity—a promise which, although conveyed in very specious language, and accompanied by an assurance that there was nothing his royal bosom was more desirous of than that his people should be blessed with abundance of happiness, peace, and plenty, was received with suspicion, and, like almost all the other acts of grace, afforded little relief to the unfortunate, while it secured the persons and plunder of those who had pillaged and oppressed them.
BOOK II.
DECEMBER 1660 to 12th JULY 1661.
Lord High Commissioner arrives in Edinburgh—Parliament—Its composition—Act of indemnity withheld—Lord Chancellor restored to the Presidentship—Oath of allegiance—Retrogression in reformation-work—Divine right of Kings asserted—Solemn League and Covenant repealed—Engagement approved, &c.—Declaration—Resolutioners begin to perceive their error—Middleton amuses the ministers of Edinburgh—Manner of concocting the Act rescissory and of getting it passed—Middleton’s interview with D. Dickson and part of the Edinburgh presbytery—Distress of the ministers—Dispersion of the synods—Concluding acts—Trial of Argyle—His behaviour before and at the place of execution—Trial of James Guthrie—His behaviour and execution—Captain Govan—Prosecutions of Mr Traill of Edinburgh—Mr Moncrief of Scone—Intrepid reply of his wife—Mr Robert Macwaird of Glasgow—His striking picture of the effects of the Restoration—His accusation—Defence—Banishment—Swinton of Swinton—Sir John Christy and Mr P. Gillespie’s escape—Parliament rises—Samuel Rutherford.
The Earl of Middleton, Lord High Commissioner, arrived at the ancient Palace of Holyrood on the last day of December 1660. He entered upon his office with great pomp; and, being allowed a princely salary for the support of his establishment, he vied with royalty itself in the profusion of his expenditure. Every preparation had been made for his reception: he was met and conducted to his residence by a large concourse of the nobility and the magistrates of the capital; and the venerable cathedral of St Giles had been elegantly fitted up with a throne for his Grace and lofts for the parliament.
That parliament which met on the first day of the new year, was one entirely suited for promoting the schemes of the Scottish rulers. The old nobles, who had been active in the cause of the covenant, had almost all died out, their estates had been wasted, and of the new race too many, neglected in their education, were now dependant in their circumstances. When the king arrived, they had flocked to London to put in their claims upon his justice or generosity for their sufferings in the royal cause, and had been received with specious condescension, and sent home with empty pockets and magnificent expectations. But they had learned at court to laugh at sobriety, to ridicule religion, and to consider even common decency a mark of disloyalty, while they looked to a rich harvest of fines and confiscations from the estates of the remonstrators, as a reward for their sacrificing their principles and profession at the shrine of prerogative. The commissioners for counties and burghs were chosen entirely from among those who were considered devoted to the court and averse to the strict Presbyterians. In some cases, when persons of an opposite description had been returned, the ruling party interfered and procured others to be substituted; and to prevent such as were distinguished for their attachment to the cause of religious freedom from offering themselves as candidates, they got them accused of complying with the usurpers, and summoned as criminals.[[10]]
[10]. Were it not that mankind have a strange propensity to reward with injury favours they feel too great to repay, and to heap injustice upon their benefactors in order to conceal their ingratitude, we would be astonished at the conduct of Charles; but having often, in private life, seen that to raise a wretch from penury, was to incur his hatred, if we did not, at the same time, rise in proportion. We confess that the ingratitude of princes to those who have succoured them in distress, ceases to excite those strong feelings of reprobation, which we have often heard men in humbler life, who were themselves guilty of grosser injustice, express against crimes, whose highest aggravation was, that they were committed by persons of rank.
From a parliament so constituted, the most servile compliance might have been anticipated; but, to ensure their submission, an act of indemnity had been withheld from Scotland; and, while every one dreaded his individual safety, the whole assisted in destroying that public liberty which might have afforded a better chance for security than the will of a prince or the favour of a parasite. The regalia, always carried before the commissioner at the opening of a session, were borne—the crown by the Earl of Crawford, the sceptre by Sutherland, and the sword by Mar. The Duke of Hamilton and the Marquis of Montrose rode immediately behind. Mr Robert Douglas, who had preached the coronation sermon before Charles when he was inaugurated at Scone, delivered upon this occasion a faithful and appropriate discourse from 2 Chron. xix. 6.—“Take heed what you do; for you judge not for man but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment.”
The Earl of Middleton’s commission was then presented, and, as had been previously agreed upon, an act was brought forward to restore to the Lord Chancellor the Presidentship of parliament. This act, which struck at the root of the whole reformation in Scotland, deserves particular notice. By several acts of the estates, passed during the troublous times, particularly one of the last, held in 1651, at which the king himself had presided, it was enacted, that, before entering upon business, every member should swear and subscribe the covenant, without which the constitution of parliament would become null and void. To have set aside these statutes openly and at once, was thought too flagrant; but it had also been enacted during the late struggle, that the President of the parliament should be elected by parliament, instead of the Chancellor nominated by the king; and it was therefore proposed to abolish this privilege, as trenching upon the royal prerogative. In this act, however, brought forward for that purpose, was inserted an oath of allegiance, which went to annul all preceding oaths, and covertly to revive the abhorred supremacy of the king. It was insidiously worded, in order that those who wished to have an excuse for compliance might take it without appearing undisguisedly to violate their former engagements, yet sufficiently plain to justify a refusal by men who were not altogether prepared to surrender their principles to their interest.
By it the sovereign was acknowledged only supreme governor in the kingdom over all persons and in all causes; and it was declared that no foreign prince, power, or state, nor person, civil nor ecclesiastic, had any jurisdiction, power, or superiority over the same; “and therefore,” it was added, “I utterly renounce and forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, and authorities, and shall, at my utmost power, defend, assist, and maintain his majesty’s jurisdiction aforesaid against all deadly, and never decline his majesty’s power and jurisdiction.” The consistent and stricter part of the Presbyterians were not imposed upon. They considered, and correctly as it afterwards appeared, that this was a complete acknowledgment of the king’s ecclesiastical supremacy, and conferred upon him the power to alter or innovate at his pleasure upon the religion of the country. In parliament, however, almost the whole took the oath without remark, except the Earls of Cassils and Melville of the nobles, and the Laird of Kilburnie of the commissioners, who would not subscribe it unless allowed to limit the king’s supremacy to civil matters—an explanation which Middleton was disposed to admit of verbally, but, knowing the extent to which allegiance was to be required, he refused to permit this explanation to be recorded.
Having thus dispensed with the obligation of the covenant as a parliament-oath, and reinstated his majesty in his ecclesiastical power, they proceeded to restore to him a less questionable part of the prerogative—the nomination of the officers of state, privy councillors, and Lords of Session, the right of convoking and dissolving parliament, of commanding the militia, and of making peace and war. These powers, which are now deemed necessary for the support of the crown in regular ordinary times, had been assumed by the estates of Scotland (1649) on account of their abuse by the English ministers and favourites, at a period when our country, from being the poorest of the two united kingdoms, and the most distant from the immediate presence of the king, was peculiarly liable to be oppressed by those who obtained possession of the royal ear:—and the whole of the succeeding melancholy period, evince but too clearly how well founded was the jealousy entertained of the power intrusted to a monarch who was a non-resident. But what then particularly disgusted the friends of freedom, was, to observe in their re-enactment, the express unqualified avowal of the slavish tenets of the divine rights of kings, and their accountability to God alone, the assertion of which had occasioned all the troubles of the land, had brought Charles I. to the block, and which was eventually to forfeit for the Stuarts the throne of their fathers.
Sudden and astonishing as had been the revolution that had taken place in the public feelings and morals, and outrageously violent as the shoutings of newfangled loyalty had been against the treasons and insults of the remonstrators, still the covenants were esteemed sacred bonds by an imposing number of the worthiest part of the community, whom it might not have been adviseable to shock too abruptly. These revered engagements were therefore first attacked obliquely in an act which purported merely to assert a constitutional truth respecting “his majesty’s royal prerogative in making of leagues and the convention of the subjects,” which, after narrating some enactments forbidding councils, conventions, or assemblies, for determining matters of state, civil or ecclesiastic, without his majesty’s command or license, declared that any explanation or glosse that, during these troubles, had been put upon these acts—“as, ‘that they are not to be extended against any leagues, councils, conventions, assemblies, or meetings, made, holden, or kept by the subjects for preservation of the king’s majesty, the religion, laws, or liberties of the kingdom, or for the public good either of kirk or kingdom,’ are false and disloyal.” No opposition having been made to this act, a more decisive followed, annulling the “pretended” convention of estates kept in 1643, which had entered into the Solemn League and Covenant, but which, not having been convoked by the king, although afterwards approved, afforded at least some pretext for disallowing it. Next came an act “concerning the League and Covenant, declaring that there was no obligation on the kingdom by covenant to endeavour, by arms, a reformation of religion in the kingdom of England; or to meddle in any seditious way in any thing concerning the religion and government of the churches of England and Ireland.” With this, perhaps, there was little quarrel. The attempts to obtain uniformity in religion, and to procure a hollow profession of the form, where the reality was notoriously wanting, was a political sin, for which the covenanters had suffered severely already, and the repetition of which it might be laudable to prevent; yet, as the Solemn League and Covenant had been formally, fully, and repeatedly sanctioned by all the members of the state in subsequent parliaments, and was by many good men considered irreversible, it might have been more decorous to have allowed it to remain a dead letter, especially as it had been renounced by the English, and could not in such circumstances be acted upon by the Scots. Considerable reluctance was expressed respecting this measure; and, to silence opposition, the commissioner informed the House that he had no orders from his royal master to encroach upon the National Covenant or upon the consciences of the people; but as to leagues with other nations, he conceived they could not now subsist with the laws of the king. One honest man, however, had the courage publicly to avow that he could do nothing against his lawful oath and covenant; and numbers who could not approve of the act, silently withdrew. To make the annulling of the covenant more palatable, the managers sweetened the draught by an act against papists, priests, and jesuits, whose numbers they asserted more abounded of late, and insinuated as if the covenants had been the cause of the increase!
Preparatory to the bloody tragedy with which they were to conclude, an act was passed approving of the engagement, and vilifying in the most bitter terms all who opposed that expedition, ruinous equally to the king and to the country; and another, condemning the transactions respecting the delivering up of Charles I. at Newcastle, and declaring the approval of them by the parliament, 1647, to have been the deed of a few factious, disloyal persons, and not the deed of the nation. All the acts which had been voted were embodied into a declaration, entitled an acknowledgment of his majesty’s prerogative, which, together with the oath of allegiance, every person holding a place of public trust was required to subscribe, and all other persons who should be required by his majesty’s privy council, or any having authority from them, should be required to take and swear; and whoever should refuse or delay to take them, were not only to be rendered incapable of any office of public trust, but be looked upon as persons disaffected to his majesty’s authority and government.
Hitherto, a majority of the Presbyterian ministers—the remonstrators excepted—had remained silent, while those who, after Mr Douglas, were employed to preach before parliament, shamefully flattered the proceedings of the day, by declaiming against seditious bands and the irregularity of the times, and inculcating the courtly doctrine of gratitude for their gracious deliverance from tyranny and usurpation, and for the miraculous restoration of the king—the duty of unlimited confidence on the best of princes; and some went so far as to recommend Episcopacy as that form of church-government that suited best with monarchy; but when the plans of the managers began to be developed, even the resolutioners were painfully constrained to suspect that they had been duped, and that their brethren who wished at first to make an explicit declaration of their fears, and to supplicate against encroachment, acted the wiser and more reputable part. When too late, they saw the folly of admitting to power men of bad principles, and trusting either to their professions of repentance or the smallness of their number. The ministers of Edinburgh now attempted to stem the torrent; they had frequent interviews with the Earl of Middleton, who, during the progress of the measures, treated them with respect and fair promises. They entreated that, in the oath of allegiance, the supremacy of the king might be restricted to his right as supreme governor in civil affairs, and in ecclesiastical, as defined in the Confession of Faith, ch. 23: that it might be declared by parliament that they did not intend to make void the oath of God: and that an act might be passed ratifying anew the Confession of Faith and Directory of Worship. His Grace politely promised to transmit their desires to the king, and requested that they would draw out an act of ratification, such as they would consider satisfactory, and he would attend to it, which they accordingly did.
But, while he was amusing them in this manner, a measure was in progress—the wildest and most extravagant ever tried in any legislative body—for which, however, the Scottish parliament, by a peculiarity in its constitution, afforded every facility. That peculiarity consisted in having a committee, called the Lords of the Articles, composed of from eight to twelve persons of each estate, who prepared all the bills brought before the House; so that when they were presented the members had little else to do but to vote. This committee, at all times under the influence of the crown, was, in the present instance, completely devoted to the king’s pleasure, and ready to approve and propose whatever he desired. Every thing had been so arranged by them, that the parliament was only required to meet in the afternoon of two days in the week,[[11]] where the important acts already noticed, together with others of a civil nature, of scarcely less consequence, had passed precipitately almost without discussion. Even this method, however, seemed too slow for accomplishing the total overthrow of the work of reformation, and an idea was now revived, which had been originally suggested in a meeting at London by Sir George M’Kenzie of Tarbet, for disannulling at one sweep the whole of the parliaments whose proceedings were disagreeable to the present rulers, or presented any obstacle to the establishment of unlimited despotism.
[11]. Before this, it had been the custom for parliament to meet at nine o’clock, A.M. and sometimes earlier, while their committees met about seven to prepare the business.
Middleton had brought to Scotland, not only the high monarchical principles, but the shameless manners of the English court, rendered still more disgraceful by the regardless habits of a rough mercenary. Short as were the sessions of parliament, and late in the day as they met, he and his companions occasionally reeled to the House in such a state, that an immediate adjournment became necessary. Their sederunts at the Palace were more protracted; and the most important affairs were settled on these occasions, when all difficulties were got rid of, with a facility far beyond the reach of forenoon-disputants, engaging each other in a dry debate. At some such carousal, a jocular remark of Primrose’s is said to have decided the commissioner; and the draught of a bill, rescinding all the parliaments which had met since 1640 as illegal and rebellious, was framed and attempted to be hurried through parliament with the same rapidity as the rest. An unexpected opposition delayed its passage. As “that incomparable king,” Charles I., had freely presided at one, and the king himself at two others, some of the best affected to the court did not approve of an act, which they said went to throw a slur upon the memory of the blessed martyr, and was highly disrespectful to his present majesty. What staggered, however, even that assemblage, base and servile as it was, was the danger of destroying all the legal foundations of security for private property. If parliaments, regularly constituted in the royal presence, could be thus easily set aside, another parliament following the precedent might make this void, and render the tenures of their rights and possessions as unstable as they would be under the firman of an eastern sultan. To satisfy these, it was expressly provided, that all acts, rights, and securities passed in any of the pretended meetings, or by virtue thereof, in favour of any particular persons for their civil and private interests, should stand good and valid unto them, excepting only such as should be questioned before the act of indemnity; and notwithstanding the efforts of the Earl of Loudon, and a few others, a majority agreed to undo all that had been done in favour of religion and liberty for the preceding twenty years, and to wreath around their necks the yoke that had galled their fathers for other twenty before.
Some indistinct rumours of the recissory act having reached the ministers of Edinburgh, the presbytery assembled to draw up a supplication, praying that their church-government might be preserved to them amid this general wreck, and that some new civil sanction might be granted in place of the statutes about to be repealed; and three of the most complaisant were deputed to the commissioner, to show it before presenting to parliament. His Grace prevailed upon them to delay doing any thing in the business, and they, who appear to have been very willing to oblige, acceded, and the bill passed, like all the rest, without any representation by the ministers against it. Next day, when they learned it had been voted by a large majority, a deputation of a different stamp, with Mr David Dickson at their head, waited upon Middleton to remonstrate; but he had attained his object, and they found him in a very different mood. He received their paper in a very discourteous manner, and told them they were mistaken if they thought to terrify him with their papers—he was no coward. Dickson pointedly replied—“He knew well his Grace was no coward, ever since the Bridge of Dee”—a sarcasm the Earl seemed to feel, as he had there distinguished himself, fighting in the cause of the covenant against the king’s army. Nor did his chagrin abate when he was reminded of the vows he had made to serve the Lord and his interest, in 1645, when under serious impressions in the prospect of death; but turning round pettishly, asked, “What do you talk to me for about a fit of the colic?” and entirely refused to have any thing to do with their supplication.
An evasive deceitful act followed, allowing presbyteries and synods to meet, but promising to make it his majesty’s care to settle the government of the church in such a frame as should be most agreeable to the word of God, most suitable to monarchical government, and most complying with the public peace and quiet of the kingdom. It did not tend to allay the fears of the ministers, who wrote an urgent letter to Lauderdale, reminding him of their sufferings for the king, of the steadiness of their loyalty, and their opposition to the heats of some during the times of distraction; and entreating him, by his zeal for his majesty’s service, and his love for his mother church, to interpose with his majesty to prevent any prejudice to her established government, and procure the calling of a General Assembly as the king had promised. Public fasts were now kept in various parishes throughout the country, and the synods met to prepare supplications for some confirmatory act to set the people at rest with regard to their religion. No attention was paid by the secretary to their application, and visiters were sent to the different synods to prevent their taking any disagreeable steps, or dissolve them if they proved refractory. Accordingly, the synod of Dumfries was dissolved by Queensberry and Hartfield, who were both exceedingly drunk at the time, and appear to have dispersed the ministers with very little ceremony, and without any resistance. Fife was equally quietly dismissed by the Earl of Rothes, who entered while they were in the midst of their business; and, ordering them to dismiss in the king’s name, they obeyed:[[12]] in their respective presbyteries, they afterwards approved of a petition, and declared their adherence to the principles of the church of Scotland. Glasgow and Ayr being the most obnoxious, was discharged by proclamation, after they had drawn up a supplication, which was delayed being presented through the manœuvres of a few among themselves who afterwards became prelatic dignitaries. The synod of Lothian split, and, at the desire of the Earl of Callendar, suspended five of their most pious members, and removed two from their charges before they were themselves forcibly turned off. The northern judicatures were little disturbed, their majorities generally “falling in with the times.”
[12]. Lamont, in his usual naive manner, thus narrates the transaction:—“1661, Apryll 2. The Provincial Assembly of Fyfe sat at St Andrew’s, where Mr David Forrest, minister of Kilconquhar, was moderator. After they had sitten a day, and condescended upon a peaper to be sent to his majestie, wishing he might be as good as his word, etc. [This, in reference, he had sent doune to the presbetry of Edinboroughe, Sept. 3, 1660.] As also speaking of another peaper to be intimat in the severall parish churches, to put peopell in mynde of ther oath to God in covenant, in caise that episcopacy sould againe he established in this land: as also speaking against something done by the present parliament, in cancelling the league and covenant with England, etc. The nixt day, in the afternoon, they were raised by the Earle of Rothes and the Laird of Ardrosse, two members of parliament, (young Balfour Beton being present with them for the tyme,) and desyred them, under the paine of treason, presently to repaire to their several charges, which they accordingly did. In the meane whille, the moderator offered to speake; and Rothes answered, Sir, wither doe ye speake as a private man, or as the mouth of this meeting? If you speake as the mouth of this meeting, you speake high treason and rebellion. After that, Mr David Forrest followed Rothes to his chamber, and spoke to him; and amonge other things, speaking of the covenant, he said, that few or none of ther meeting bot had ministered the covenant to hundreds, bot for himsef he had tendered it to thousands; and if he sould be silent at this time, and speake nothing of it, bot betray the peopell, he said he wist not what he deserved—hanging were too little for him. Rothes professed to this judicatory that it was sore against his will that he came to that employment. However, many of the ministrie blames Mr James Sharpe, minister of Craill, for the present chaplaine to his majesties commissioner, Earle of Middleton, for ther scattering; for he wrat over to some of them some dayes before, that a storme was like to breake; and the said Mr David Forrest said of him that he was the greatest knave that ever was in the kirke of Scotlande.”
The remaining acts of this parliament, respecting ecclesiastical affairs, and which became instruments of cruelty and grounds of persecution, were, the seventeenth, enjoining the 29th of May—the anniversary of the Restoration, also the king’s birth-day—to be set apart as a day holy unto the Lord for ever, to be part employed in public prayers, thanksgiving, preaching, and praises to God for so transcendent mercies, and the remaining part spent in lawful diversions suited to so solemn an occasion; and the thirty-sixth, restoring “the unreasonable and unchristian burden of patrons and presentations” upon the church.
Having virtually subverted Presbytery, restored every abolished abuse, and obtained in the preambles of several of their acts repeated expressions of the parliament’s detestation and abhorrence of all that was done in the “rebellious and distracted times,” it was requisite that those who had been the most strenuous assertors of the civil and religious rights of their country, and who had been the chief instruments of the late Reformation, should be punished for their temerity. Accordingly, the most noble the Marquis of Argyle, who stood first on the list, was, on the 13th of February, brought to trial. He had been sent down from London by sea, along with Swinton of that ilk, in the latter end of 1660, and had encountered that storm in which the records of Scotland were lost;[[13]] since when he had lain in the Castle; but the first hurry being over, his case was proceeded in—the commissioner anticipating a reward for his services from the confiscation of his estates.
[13]. These had been seized and sent to London by the English during the civil war, and, upon the Restoration, were ordered to be returned to Scotland; but, as it was supposed the original Covenant which Charles had signed was among them, they were detained on purpose to search for it, in order to destroy it, till late in the season, when the weather became tempestuous, and the vessel that carried them was lost.
His activity in the cause of religion, and the great power he had long enjoyed, had created him many enemies, and gave rise to many calumnies, which made even his friends dread the investigation. But the most painful endeavours could establish nothing against him, except his compelled submission to the English, after every county in Scotland had acknowledged their superiority. His indictment consisted of fourteen distinct charges, narrating almost all the public acts of the nation in which he had had any share, since his first joining the covenanters, till the final protectorate of Richard Cromwell, and attributing to him as treasonable acts, his concurrence with the different parliaments, or his obedience to their orders, and his submission to the usurper’s government, and sitting and voting in his parliament, together with having positively advised Cromwell and Ireton, in a conference in 1648, to take away the late king’s life, without which they could not be safe, or at least knew and concealed the horrid design. The last charge, which the Marquis strenuously denied, was not insisted on; nor does there appear to have been any foundation for it.
In his reply, he enumerated all the favours he had received from the former and the reigning sovereign, and desired the parliament to consider how unlikely it was that he should have entertained any design to the hurt or dishonour of either. He could say with Paul in another case, the things alleged against him could not be proven; but this he would confess, that, in the way allowed by solemn oaths and covenants, he served his God, his king, and country: he besought those who were capable of understanding, when those things for which he was challenged were acted, to recollect what was the conduct of the whole kingdom at the time, and how both themselves and others were led on in these actions without any rebellious inclination; and entreated those who were then young to be charitable to their predecessors, and to censure sparingly these actions, with all the circumstances of which they were unacquainted; for often the smallest circumstance altered entirely the nature of an action. In all popular and universal insurrections communis error facit jus: et consuetudo peccandi minuit crimen et pænam. As to what he had done before the year 1651, he pled his majesty’s indemnity granted in the parliament at Perth; and for what he had done since, under the usurpers, they were but common compliances, wherein all the kingdom did share equally, and for doing which many had express allowance from his majesty, who declared he thought it prudence, and not rebellion, for honest men to preserve themselves from ruin, and thereby reserve themselves till God should show some probable way for his return. Besides, among all those who complied passively, none was less favoured by the usurpers than himself—what he did was but self-defence, and, being the effect of force, could not amount to a crime.
When he had finished, his advocates, Messrs Sinclair, Cunningham, and M’Kenzie, afterwards Sir George, protested, that, seeing they stood there by order of parliament, whatever should escape them in pleading for the life, honour, and estate of their client, might not thereafter be brought against them as treasonable—a common form and usually sustained; but on this occasion the parliament would not admit the protestation, lest they might allow themselves upon that pretext the liberty of speaking things prejudicial to his majesty’s government, and therefore desired them to speak at their peril. His advocates being strangers to his cause, as the ones he wished were afraid to appear, he requested a short delay to prepare his defence fully; but this being referred to the Lords of the Articles, they cruelly denied his reasonable request; upon which he gave in a supplication and submission, throwing himself entirely upon the king’s mercy, and entreating the intercession of the parliament on his behalf. This, also, they refused to listen to.
After which, his lordship gave in a bill, desiring to be remitted for trial before the justice court, as the intricacy of his case would require learned judges. Nor was it to be supposed that every gentleman or burgess could understand points of law; neither were they his peers; and a nobleman should be judged by his peers. His prosecutors, bent upon his ruin, construed this application into a declining the jurisdiction of parliament, and required him to own it, or inform them who had written the petition. The Marquis, perceiving that every possible advantage would be taken against him, was extremely perplexed; but his advisers avowed the paper, and, after a warm debate, the petition was rejected, but the advocates were excused. He then requested to be allowed the benefit of exculpatory proof, and to bring forward witnesses, who could either attest his innocence or give such explanations as would alleviate his guilt; even this, the last privilege of the lowest criminal, he could not obtain, and was commanded immediately to proceed to his defence—likewise an unusual and oppressive mode of procedure, as it had been customary to discuss first the relevancy of the indictment; that is, whether the facts charged actually constituted the crimes alleged, and thus to give the accused a chance of escape from a cumulative treason, or from any legal informality that might occur.
All the Marquis’s reasonable requests and objections being thus disposed of, his defences, with the Lord Advocate’s replies, duplies, and triplies—papers of enormous length—were fully read before parliament, as tiresome, tedious, and unfair a mode of conducting a trial before a court, consisting of some hundred individuals, as could possibly have been contrived. When ended, a debate ensued, and the Lord Advocate restricted his charge to the acts committed after 1651, a letter having been procured from the king forbidding any person to be prosecuted for any deed antecedent to the indemnity of that year. This letter, which was understood to have been procured by Lauderdale and Lorn—who had staid at London to attend to his father’s interest—somewhat disconcerted the managers, who were now persuaded that the secretary had espoused Argyle’s cause; and therefore, to counteract this influence, dispatched Glencairn and Rothes to court, with a letter from parliament approving of the whole proceedings, accompanied by Mr James Sharpe, to inform his majesty respecting the state of the church.
Glencairn actively stirred up the vindictive feelings of the treacherous Monk and the bigoted Hyde, while Rothes reminded Lauderdale of the former treatment he had received from the Marquis, how dangerous a competitor he might yet be if he escaped, and hinted at the imprudence of committing himself too far with a declining faction. Their arguments prevailed; and, from the date of their arrival, repeated expresses were sent down to Scotland, urging forward the trial.
The relevancy having been sustained, proof was led with regard to his compliance with the usurpers; but the evidence was by no means satisfactory, especially to judges almost all of whom had been ten times more deeply implicated than he, and the issue was doubtful; when, after the debate and examination were closed, and parliament was proceeding to consider the whole matter, an express from London knocked violently at the door. Upon being admitted, he presented a packet to the commissioner, which was believed to be a pardon or some warrant in favour of the Marquis, especially as the bearer was a Campbell, but, upon its being opened, it was found to contain a great many letters addressed by Argyle to Monk when commanding in Scotland, which he had perfidiously reserved, to produce, if absolutely necessary, for the conviction of his former friend; and, on being informed by the commissioner’s agents of the “scantiness of probation,” had transmitted them by post to supply the deficiency. There was now no room for hesitation; the parliament were perfectly satisfied that the rebel English General had received the reluctant submission and forced co-operation of the last royalist nobleman in Scotland who yielded to the fortune of the victorious republicans, and therefore Argyle was guilty of a treason which Monk had obliged him to commit! The proof of his compliance was complete; and next day he was condemned and forfeited. The manner of his execution was put to the vote, “hang or behead,” when it was carried that he should be beheaded, and his head placed on the same spike, on the top of the tolbooth, whence Montrose’s had been but lately removed.
During the whole of his protracted trial, which lasted from the 13th of February till the 25th of May, his behaviour was meek and composed, although attacked with the most virulent abuse by the reptiles who crouched before him in the hour of his prosperity. When in his own defence he asked, how could I suppose that I was acting criminally, when the learned gentleman, his majesty’s advocate, took the same oaths to the Commonwealth with myself? Sir John Fletcher replied to a question he could not answer, by calling him an impudent villain. The Marquis mildly said, he had learned in his affliction to endure reproach. After his case appeared desperate, his friends planned an escape, partly by force, and partly by stratagem, and a number of resolute gentlemen had engaged in it; but, after he had consented, and had even put on a female dress, in which he was to be carried out of the Castle, he changed his mind, threw aside his disguise, and declared he was determined not to disown the cause he had so long appeared for, but was resolved to suffer to the utmost.
When brought to receive sentence, there were but few, and these the most determined time-serving sycophants, in the House, shame or compassion preventing a number who had decided his fate from hearing it announced; yet even they could not help moralizing on the mutability of human glory, though, when he requested a delay of only ten days that the king might be acquainted with the result of his trial, they refused that short interval, and prevented his last chance of mercy!
He heard his sentence with equanimity. The Earl of Crawford, who pronounced it in absence of the Chancellor, told him he must receive it kneeling, and he immediately knelt, saying, “That I will with all humility.” When rising, he remarked, “I had the honour to put the crown upon the king’s head, may God bestow on him a crown of glory. Now he hastens me to a better crown than his own.”[[14]] Then addressing the commissioner and parliament, “you have the indemnity of an earthly king,” said he, “among your hands, and have denied me a share in that; but you cannot hinder me from the indemnity of the King of kings; and shortly you must be before his tribunal. I pray he may not mete out such measure to you as you have done to me, when you are called to account for all your actings, and this among the rest.”
[14]. Kirkton, p. 103, et seq.
After sentence, he was conducted to the common jail, where his lady was waiting for him. “They have given me,” said he as he entered, “till Monday, my dear, to be with you; let us improve it.” As she embraced him, she sobbed out—“The Lord will require it! The Lord will require it!” and wept bitterly. Nor could the officer who attended him, nor any who were present, avoid shedding tears at the scene. The Marquis, too, was at first considerably affected, but becoming composed, “Forbear!” said he affectionately to the Marchioness, “forbear! truly I pity them—they know not what they are doing. They may shut me in where they please, they cannot shut out God from me; for my part, I am as content to be here as in the Castle. I was as content in the Castle as in the Tower of London; and as content there as when at liberty; and I hope to be as content on the scaffold as in any of them all.” He then added, “he remembered a text that had been cited to him by an honest minister—‘When Ziglag was taken and burnt, the people spake of stoning David; but he encouraged himself in the Lord.’”
The solemn interval he spent in exercises befitting a dying Christian; and though rather of a timid disposition, yet during the short space that now separated him from eternity, and with the immediate prospect of a violent death, his mind was elevated above his natural temper, and he desired those about him to observe “that the Lord had heard his prayers, and removed all fear from him.” To some ministers permitted to attend him, he said, “that they would shortly envy him who had got before,” adding, “mind I tell it you; my skill fails me if you who are ministers will not either suffer much or sin much; for though you go along with these men in part, if you do it not in all things, you are but where you were, and so must suffer; and if you go not at all with them you can but suffer.” Mr Robert Douglas and Mr George Hutchison preached in the tolbooth, at his desire, on the Lord’s day; and at night his lady, at his particular request, took leave. Mr David Dickson spent the last night with him that he spent on earth, which passed delightfully in prayer, praise, and spiritual conversation, except a few hours he enjoyed of calm and tranquil repose. On Monday, he rose early, and was much occupied in settling his worldly affairs; but, while signing some conveyances, his spiritual joy was such, that he exclaimed with rapture before the company, “I thought to have concealed the Lord’s goodness, but it will not do. I am now ordering my affairs, and God is sealing my charter to a better inheritance, saying, ‘Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven thee.’” He wrote a letter to the king, expressing his satisfaction that nothing had been proved against him but his being forced to submit to the unlawful power of usurping rebels—the epidemic and fault of the time—praying his majesty’s princely goodness and favour to his wife and family after his decease, and requesting that his just debts might be allowed to be paid out of his estate. He dined with a number of friends at twelve o’clock; after which he retired a little, and returned from his private devotions in a holy rapture. A sense of the forgiveness of his sins made the tears of joy run from his eyes; and, turning to Mr Hutchison, “I think,” said he, “His kindness overcomes me, but God is good to me; he lets not out too much of it here, for he knows I could not bear it;” and, thinking the time was expired, added, “Get me my cloak—let us go;” but being told that the clock had been put back, he answered they were far in the wrong, and kneeled down and prayed. As he ended, notice was sent that the bailies waited him, upon which he called for a glass of wine, and asked a blessing. Then he declared his readiness—“Now let us go, and God go with us.” When leaving the room, he said to those who remained, “I could die like a Roman, but choose rather to die as a Christian. Come away, gentlemen; he that goes first goes cleanliest.” Calling Mr Guthrie as he went down, he embraced him and took farewell. Mr Guthrie’s parting benediction was—“My lord, God hath been with you, he is with you, and He will be with you; and such is my respect for your lordship, that, if I were not under the sentence of death myself, I could cheerfully die for your lordship.”
The Marquis was accompanied to the place of execution by several noblemen and gentlemen in mourning. He walked steadily down the street, and, with the greatest serenity, mounted the scaffold, which was filled with his friends, of whom he had given in a list, and whose names were contained in a warrant subscribed by the commissioner. After Mr Hutchison had prayed, his lordship addressed the spectators. He did not attempt any explanation of his conduct. “I came not here,” were his humble expressions, “to justify myself but the Lord, who is holy in all his ways and righteous in all his works; holy and blessed is his name. Neither came I to condemn others. I know many will expect that I should speak against the hardness of the sentence pronounced against me, but I will say nothing of it. I bless the Lord, I pardon all men, as I desire to be pardoned of the Lord myself: let the will of the Lord be done.” He then, as in the presence of God, disclaimed having entered upon the work of reformation from any motive of self-interest or personal dissatisfaction with the government. He had ever been cordial in his desires to bring the king home, and in his endeavours for him when he was at home; nor had he ever corresponded with his enemies during the time he was in the country. “I confess,” he continued, “many look on my condition as a suffering condition; but I bless God, He who hath gone before, hath trode the wine-press of the Father’s wrath, by whose sufferings I hope my sufferings shall not be eternal. I shall not speak much to those things for which I am condemned, lest I seem to condemn others. I wish the Lord to pardon them. I say no more.”
Then changing the subject, he continued—“There are some, and those not openly profane, who, if their private interest go well, they care not whether religion or the church of God sink or swim. But, whatever they think, God hath laid engagements on Scotland. We are tyed by covenants to religion and reformation, and it passeth the power of all magistrates under heaven to absolve a man from the oath of God. It is the duty of every Christian to be loyal; but God must have his as well as Cæsar. Religion must not be secondary. They are the best subjects who are the best Christians. These times are like to prove very sinning times or very suffering times; and let Christians make their choice; and truely he that would choose the better part would choose to suffer. Others that will choose to sin will not escape suffering. Yet I cannot say of mine own condition, but that the Lord in his providence hath mind of mercy to me even in this world; for if I had been more favourably dealt with, I fear I might have been overcome with temptations, as many others are, and many more I fear will be; yea, blessed be his name, I am kept from present evil and evil to come! I have no more to say but to beg the Lord, since I go away, he would bless them who stay behind.”[[15]]
[15]. Sir George M’Kenzie, an unquestionable evidence, says—“At his death he showed much stayedness, as appeared by all his gestures, but especially by his speaking to the people, without any commotion, and with his ordinary gestures.” History, p. 47.
Having again spent some time in devotion, he distributed some last tokens of remembrance to the friends who were with him. To the Earl of Caithness, his son-in-law, he gave his watch, saying, with a smile, it was fit for men to pay their debts; and having promised him that watch, he now performed it. After his doublet was off, and immediately before he laid his head upon the block, he addressed those near him—“Gentlemen, I desire you and all that hear me, again to take notice and remember, that, now when I am entering into eternity and to appear before my Judge, and as I desire salvation and expect eternal happiness from him, I am free from any accession, by knowledge, contriving, counsel, or any other ways, to his late majesty’s death; and I pray the Lord to preserve our present king his majesty, and to pour his best blessings upon his person and government; and the Lord give him good and faithful councillors.” Mr Hutchison, his attendant minister, on bidding him finally adieu, used a Scottish phrase, peculiarly emphatic—“My lord, now hold your grip sicker.” The appropriate force of the expression was felt by the sufferer. “You know, Mr Hutchison, what I said to you in the chamber, I am not afraid to be surprised with fear;” and the Laird of Skelmorlie, who took him by the hand at this awful moment, felt that no tremour in his veins belied the assertion. He then knelt, offered up his last prayer, and upon dropping his hands, the appointed signal, the axe of the maiden fell, and his spirit fled to his God and Saviour. His body was carried to Dunoon, and buried in Kilmun church.
Argyle has ever, by the unanimous verdict of his Presbyterian countrymen, been considered a martyr, not for the form, but for the reality of their religion. The form, perhaps, he might have consented to modify—the essence he never durst think of forsaking. There was a consistency in his adherence to his principles that claims our admiration, especially as he sealed his testimony by his blood. He may have given, as many of the excellent men of his day did, an undue importance to points of inferior moment, but the fundamental truths of the gospel were his hope, as, in so far as we can trust the testimony of his friends, its precepts had been the rule of his life. It is refreshing to know that his persecutors did not share his spoil. Through the intercession of Lauderdale, Lorn procured from the king all his father’s estates and titles, except that of Marquis.
Mr James Guthrie, minister at Stirling, remarkable for his piety, zeal, and consistency in the cause of reformation-principles, followed his friend to trial and judgment.[[16]] He was peculiarly obnoxious to Middleton, having pronounced sentence of excommunication upon him, and was considered the chief of the remonstrators, who had uniformly resisted communion with the malignants; but he was no less distinguished for his intrepid opposition to the government of Cromwell, whom he had boldly stigmatized as an usurper, at the time when all those who now made such flaming professions of loyalty had crouched before him. Revered and popular among the lower ranks, he was not less respected among the worthy of the higher; for, although constrained by terror to condemn, no political victim was ever sacrificed with more reluctance by the subordinate ranks of the priesthood of mammon, than was James Guthrie; and even the Moloch at whose shrine he was immolated, expressed his regret, and bore testimony to his worth—“Had I known,” said the callous-hearted Charles, when he heard of Mr Gillespie being suffered to live, “that they would have spared Gillespie, I would have saved Guthrie!”—a noble testimony, but happily too late to deprive that holy man of the honour his Lord had provided for him with them who were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. He was arraigned before a court, of which the director and the president were his personal enemies, and of which a majority had already prejudged his case. His pursuers were men who had yielded to the blast that he had braved, who had deserted their prince in the hour of his extremity, had flattered the very powers that he had withstood, yet now came forward with a flagrant effrontery to charge him with favouring an usurpation to which they had done homage, but which he had suffered for withstanding.
[16]. “He was the son of the Laird of Guthrie, and so a gentleman. When he was regent in St Andrew’s, he was very episcopal, and was with difficulty persuaded to take the covenant. There goes a story, that, when he first yielded to join with the covenanters in Mr Samuel Rutherford’s chamber, as he came out at his door, he mett the executioner in the way, which troubled him; and the next visit he made thither, he mett him in the same manner again, which made him apprehend he might be a sufferer for the covenant, as indeed he was.” Kirkton’s Hist. p. 109.
On the 20th of February, he received his indictment, the general charges of which were—his accession to the remonstrance—his writing and publishing that abominable pamphlet, “The Causes of God’s Wrath”[[17]]—his contriving, and writing, and subscribing “The humble Supplication of 23d August last”—but, chiefly, his declining, in the year 1650, his majesty’s power in matters purely ecclesiastical, which branch of the royal prerogative the present managers were determined to assert, as they traced, and justly, the chief, if not the whole, of the misery the nation had endured under the king’s father and grandfather, to the opposition made by the ministry to this anti-scriptural jurisdiction, or, in the language of Sir George M’Kenzie, “because this principle had not only vexed King James, but was the occasion of much rebellion.” The indictment, framed upon certain obsolete or repealed acts in favour of popery, prelacy, or the kingly power, passed before the last full establishment of Presbytery, charged him with convoking the lieges without warrant or authority to the disturbance of the state and church. After it had been read, he addressed the Lord Chancellor—
[17]. “The Causes of God’s Wrath,” printed after the fatal defeat at Worcester, which ruined the hopes of the Presbyterians and their covenanted king, contained a faithful and pungent enumeration of the sins of all ranks, public and personal, in which the misconduct of the royal family and of the nobles—their defections from duty and the oaths of the covenant in public, and the immorality and ungodliness of their conduct in private—were treated with great plainness and particularity, accompanied with strong exhortations to repentance as the only way to avert the judgments of an offended God. Nor were the sins of the ministry or the people slightly passed over; it was an earnest, deep call upon the nation to consider their ways at a time of great public suffering, when the land had been scourged by the presence of two armies, of which their own had not been the least oppressive, and when a threatened famine and an actual scarcity was afflicting them. Its truth was its treason—it had the honour of being burned.
“He was glad,” he said, for he pled his own cause, “that the law of God was named first as being indeed the only supreme law, to which all other laws ought to be subordinate; and there being an act of the first parliament of James VI., by which all clauses of laws or acts of parliament repugnant to the word of God were repealed, he hoped their lordships would give most respect to this, that he might be judged by the law of God especially, and by other laws in subordination thereto. As to the acts of parliament upon which he was arraigned, he asserted the legal maxim, that where any difference between acts occurs, the last is that only which is to be considered obligatory; and he farther affirmed, what almost all his judges had previously, repeatedly, and upon oath allowed, that it must also be granted that laws and acts of parliament were to be understood and expounded by those solemn public vows and covenants contracted with God by his majesty and subjects, which were not only declared by the laws of the land to have the strength of acts of parliament, but, both by the law of God and common law and light of all the nations in the world, are more binding and indispensable than any municipal law and statute whatever.”
The general charge of abetting Cromwell, he defied all the world to prove if he had justice allowed him; nor was it attempted. His approval of the remonstrance he did not deny, but this he only did in a legal manner, as a member of a legal assembly. His participation in the authorship of “The Causes of God’s Wrath,” he avowed and defended. But in this he said he acted merely and singly from a constraining power of conscience to be found faithful as a minister of the gospel, in the discovering of sin and guiltiness, that it being acknowledged and repented of, wrath might be taken away from the house of the king and from these kingdoms. “Your lordship knows,” continued he, “what charge is laid upon ministers of the gospel, to give faithful warning to all sorts of persons, and how they expose their own souls to the hazard of eternal damnation, and the guilt of the blood of those with whom they have to do, if they do not this. And you do also know, that the prophets and apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ himself did faithfully warn all men, though it was their lot, because of the same, to be reckoned traitors and seditious persons. My lord, I wish it seriously to be pondered, that nothing is asserted in these “Causes” as matter of sin and duty, but what hath been the common received doctrine of the church of Scotland, the truth of which is confirmed from the word of God; and as to matters of fact, as far as regards the royal family, they are no other than are mentioned in the solemn public causes of humiliation condescended upon and kept by the whole church jointly, and his majesty and family, with the commission of the General Assembly and committee of estates, before his coronation at Perth.”
He also avowed the “Supplication” at Edinburgh, which he vindicated as containing nothing more than a humble petition concerning those things to which his majesty and all his subjects were engaged by the solemn irreversible oath of the covenant, with a serious representation of the dangers threatening religion, and the duties of that sacred obligation, and did only put his majesty in remembrance of holding fast the oaths of the covenant. The meeting was presbyterial, and therefore legal; and was, besides, a quiet, orderly convocation, without tumult, and requiring no particular warrant.
Respecting his declining the king’s authority in things sacred, he unhesitatingly acknowledged that he did decline the civil magistrate as a competent judge of ministers’ doctrine in the first instance.[[18]] His authority in all things civil, he said he did with all his heart allow; but such declinations were agreeable to the word of God, which clearly holds forth that Christ hath a visible kingdom, which he exercises in or over his visible members by his spiritual officers, which is wholly distinct from the civil power and government of the world—to the Confession of Faith and doctrine of the church of Scotland, which acknowledge no head over the church of Christ but himself, nor any judgment or power in or over his church, but that which he hath committed to the spiritual office-bearers thereof under him, and had been the ordinary practice of that kirk since the time of the reformation from Popery; and were also agreeable to, and founded on, the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant, by which the king’s majesty himself, and all the subjects of that kingdom, were bound to maintain the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of that church, with solemn vows and public oaths of God. “Upon these grounds, therefore,” said he, “it is that I gave in and do assert that declination for vindicating the cause, dignity, and royal prerogative of Jesus Christ, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, but with all due respect to his majesty, his greatness, and authority.” Then, after discussing the several acts of parliament that had been quoted, he thus concluded an able and argumentative speech:—
[18]. The error of these good men was, in allowing the civil magistrate the right of judging of a minister’s doctrine in any case whatever, so long as he kept within the proper bounds of his pastoral duty, and inculcated only religious tenets, and did not meddle with seditious or treasonable matters.
“That I did never purpose or intend to speak or act any thing disloyal, seditious, or treasonable against his majesty’s person, authority, or government, God is my witness; and that what I have written, spoken, or acted, in any of those things wherewith I am charged, hath been merely and singly from a principle of conscience; that, according to the weak measure of light given me of God, I might do my duty in my station and calling as a minister of the gospel. But because the plea of conscience alone, although it may extenuate, cannot wholly excuse, I do assert that I have founded my speeches, writings, and actings, in these matters, on the word of God, and on the doctrine, Confession of Faith, and laws of this church and kingdom—upon the National Covenant of Scotland, and the Solemn League and Covenant between these three kingdoms. If these foundations fall, I must fall with them; but if these sustain and stand in judgment, as I hope they will, I cannot acknowledge myself, neither I hope will his majesty’s commissioner and the honourable court of parliament judge me, guilty either of sedition or treason.”
This trial lasted from the 20th of February till the 15th of April; and the most strenuous efforts were made to induce Mr Guthrie to submit and plead for mercy. He was even offered a bishopric; but he deemed the object for which he contended too important to be yielded up for any consideration of temporal aggrandizement. When the protracted proceedings were drawing to a close, on the 11th of April, after his defences, which were very elaborate, had been read, he finished his pleading by a pointed and solemn appeal, which was heard with the most profound attention, and induced a number to withdraw, declaring, in the language of Scripture, “They would have nothing to do with the blood of that righteous man.”
Addressing the Chancellor, “My lord,” said the intrepid minister in conclusion, “I shall, in the last place, humbly beg—having brought such pregnant and clear evidence from the word of God, so much divine reason and human law, and so much of the common practice of the kirk and kingdom in my own defence; and being already cast out of my ministry, driven from my dwelling, and deprived of my maintenance, myself and my family thrown upon the charity of others; and having now suffered eight months’ imprisonment—that your lordships would put no farther burden upon me. But, in the words of the prophet, ‘Behold! I am in your hands, do to me what seemeth good to you.’ I know for certain that the Lord hath commanded me to speak all these things, and that if you put me to death you shall bring innocent blood upon yourself and upon the inhabitants of this city. My lord! my conscience I cannot submit; but this old crazy body and mortal flesh I do submit to do with whatever you will, whether by death, by banishment, or imprisonment, or any thing else, only I beseech you ponder well what profit there is in my blood; it is not extinguishing me or many others that will extinguish the covenant and the work of reformation since 1638. No! my bondage, banishment, or blood, will contribute more for their extension than my life or liberty could, were I to live many years. I wish to my Lord Commissioner, his Grace, and to all your lordships, the spirit of judgment, wisdom, and understanding, and the fear of the Lord, that you may judge righteous judgment, in which God may have glory, the king honour and happiness, and yourselves peace in the great day of accounts.” But all was of no avail; his life was determined on as an example to the ministers, and he was found guilty, upon his own confession, of the charges brought against him. Sentence was delayed till the 28th of May, when the doom of a traitor was pronounced by the Earl of Crawford, in absence of the Chancellor. As he arose from his knees—for he had been ordered to kneel—“My lords,” said he, “may never this sentence more affect you than it does me; and let never my blood be required of the king’s family!” He had assisted in managing his defence with an eloquence, acuteness, and legal knowledge, that drew forth the admiration of the professional gentlemen who were his advocates.
When his case was decided, and he was removed to wait till his sentence was written out, while he remained amid the soldiers, and officers, and servants of the court, he afterwards declared he never felt more of the sensible presence of God, of the sweet intimations of peace, and the real manifestations of divine love and favour, than when surrounded with all their bustle and confusion. From that time till he went to the scaffold, he remained in a serene, tranquil frame of mind. On the day of his execution, June 1, several of his friends dined with him, when not only his cheerfulness, but even his pleasantry, did not forsake him. After dinner, he jocularly called for a little cheese, of which he was very fond, but had been forbid by his physicians to eat on account of a gravelish complaint, saying, “I hope I am now beyond reach of the gravel.”
He delivered his last speech from the ladder with the same composed earnestness with which he was wont to deliver his sermons. “He thanked God that he suffered willingly, having had it in his power to have made his escape, or by compliance to have obtained favour, but he durst not redeem his life with the loss of his integrity.” “I bless God,” he proceeded, “that I die not as a fool, not that I have any thing wherein to glory in myself. But I do believe that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, whereof I am chief; through faith in his righteousness and blood, I have obtained mercy, and through him and him alone have I the blessed hope of a blessed conquest over sin and Satan, death and hell, and that I shall attain unto the resurrection of the just, and be made partaker of eternal life. I know in whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him unto that day. I have preached salvation through his name; and as I have preached, so do I believe, and do recommend the riches of his free grace and faith in his name unto you all, as the only way whereby ye can be saved.”
“And,” continued he, “as I bless the Lord I die not as a fool, so also that I die not for evil-doing. God is my record, that in these things for which sentence of death is passed against me, I have a good conscience. My heart is conscious of no disloyalty. The matters for which I am condemned, are matters belonging to my calling and function as a minister of the gospel; such as discovering and reproving of sin, the pressing and holding fast of the oath of God in the covenant, and preserving and carrying on the work of reformation according thereto, and denying to acknowledge the civil magistrate as the proper, competent, immediate judge in causes ecclesiastical.” He then warned his hearers that the wrath of God was hanging over the land for that deluge of profanity that was overflowing it; for their perjury and breach of covenant—“Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this! shall he break the covenant and prosper? shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with God, which frameth mischief by a law?” for their ingratitude; for their dreadful idolatry and sacrificing to the creature—a corruptible man, in whom many had placed almost all their salvation and all their desire; for a generation of carnal, time-serving ministers, men who minded earthly things, enemies to the cross of Christ, who pushed with the side and shoulder, who strengthen the hands of evil-doers, and make themselves transgressors by studying to build again what they did formerly warrantably destroy.
Next, he earnestly exhorted the profane, the lukewarm, and the indifferent, to repentance, and the godly to confidence and zeal, expressing his belief that God would neither desert his people nor cause in Scotland. “There is yet,” exclaimed he, “a holy seed, a precious remnant, whom God will preserve and bring forth; but how long or dark our night may be, I do not know; the Lord shorten it for the sake of his chosen. In the mean while, be patient, steadfast, and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Beware of snares, decline not the cross, and account the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasure of the world. Let my death grieve none of you. I forgive all men the guilt of it, and I desire you to do so also. Pray for them that persecute you; bless them that curse you; bless, I say, and curse not!” After bearing testimony to the faith of the gospel, the doctrine and discipline of the church of Scotland, the protestation, and against the course of backsliding then afoot in the land,
He ended in this strain of triumphant exultation, well becoming a martyr for the truth—“Jesus Christ is my light and my life, my righteousness, my strength, and my salvation, and all my desire. Him! O him! do I with the strength of all my soul commend unto you; blessed are they that are not offended in him. Bless him, O my soul! from henceforth even for ever. Rejoice, rejoice all ye that love him; be patient and rejoice in tribulation. Blessed are you, and blessed shall you be for ever and ever. Everlasting righteousness and eternal salvation is yours; all is yours; and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s!” His last words were—“Remember me, O Lord, with the favour thou bearest to thy people. O visit me with thy salvation, that I may see the good of thy chosen; that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation; that I may glory with thine inheritance. Now let thy servant depart in peace, since my eyes have seen thy salvation!”
An obscure individual, named William, sometimes Captain, Govan, was executed along with Mr Guthrie. He met death with the same joyful confidence, resting on the same sure foundation. For what specific charges he suffered, is uncertain. In his speech which he left, he says it was for laying down his arms at Hamilton, as all the company did. Sir George M’Kenzie alleges it was for joining in the English army in 1651. “But so inconsiderable a person,” he adds, “had not died if he had not been suspected to have been upon the scaffold when King Charles the First was murdered, though he purged himself of this when he died; and his guilt was, that he brought to Scotland the first news of it, and seem’d to be well satisfied with it.” His chief crime, however, appears to have been that he was a pious, consistent, and zealous Presbyterian. Mr Guthrie was turned off first; and his behaviour must have tended greatly to strengthen his fellow-sufferer, who, in his last speech, after exhorting the licentious and the lukewarm to repent, remarked—“As for myself, it pleased the Lord, in the fourteenth year of my age, to manifest his love to me; and now it is about twenty-four years since, all which time I professed the truth which I suffer for and bear testimony to at this day, and am not afraid of the cross upon that account. It is sweet! it is sweet! otherwise how durst I look on the corpse of him who hangs there with courage, and smile upon that gibbet as the gate of heaven?” When he had ended, he took a ring from off his finger, and gave to a friend, desiring him to take it to his wife and tell her—he died in humble confidence, and found the cross of Christ sweet. Christ, he added, had done all for him; and it was by him alone he was justified. Being desired to look up to that Christ, he replied—“He looketh down and smileth upon me;” and mounting the ladder—“Dear friends,” said he to those around him, “pledge this cup of suffering before you sin, as I have now done; for sin and suffering have been presented to me, and I have chosen the suffering part.” When the rope was put about his neck, he observed—“Middleton and I went out to the field together upon the same errand; now I am promoted to a cord and he to be Lord High Commissioner; yet for a thousand worlds would I not change situations with him! Praise and glory be to Christ for ever!”
Besides those who suffered unto death at this time, many others were prosecuted and punished, by removal from their office, imprisonment, or exile. Among these, the most conspicuous were, Mr Robert Traill, minister of the Greyfriar’s church, Edinburgh. He had been in the Castle while it held out against Cromwell, had encouraged the governor and garrison to be faithful to their trust, and had received a severe wound during the siege; yet he was now charged with disloyalty and a participation in all the obnoxious transactions for which Mr Guthrie laid down his life. His indictment had been drawn up, as all the libels of that time were, with great acrimony and peculiar virulence of expression, to exaggerate the crime of disloyalty, which formed the prominent feature of the accusation. In replying, Mr Traill averred he durst appeal to the Lord Advocate’s own conscience, whether he believed him to be such an one as he had represented him, and complained of bitter and injurious words, but abstained from any angry retort. “I have not,” was his meek answer, “so learned Christ; yea, I have learned of him not to render evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing; and therefore I do from my heart pray for the honourable drawer up of the libel, as I would do for myself, that the Lord would bless him with his best blessings, and would give him to find mercy in the day of the Lord Jesus!” When the remonstrance was presented, he was confined in the garrison; but, with respect to the other charges, his replies were similar to Mr Guthrie’s, although not perhaps quite so strongly expressed assertions of the legality, propriety, and the imperative necessity of ministers being faithful in the discharge of their duty. He had been seven months confined before being brought to trial; and to that he alludes in the following solemn conclusion of his defence:—
“Now, my lord, I must in all humility beg leave to entreat your lordship that you would seriously consider what you do with poor ministers, who have been so long kept, not only from their liberty of preaching the gospel, but of hearing it—that so many congregations are laid desolate for so long a time, and many poor souls have put up their regrets on their deathbed for their being deprived of a word of comfort from their ministers in the hour of their greatest need! The Lord give you wisdom in all things, and pour out upon you the spirit of your high and weighty employment, of understanding and the fear of the Lord, that your government may be blessed for this land and kirk—that you may live long and happily—that your memory may be sweet and fragrant when you are gone—that you may leave your name for a blessing to the Lord’s people—and that your houses and families may stand long and flourish to the years of many generations! Above all, that you have solid peace and heart-joy in the hour of the breaking of your heart-strings, when pale death shall sit on your eyelids—when man must go to his long home and the mourners go about the streets: for what man is he that liveth and shall not see death? or who can deliver himself from the power of the grave? Even those to whom he saith, ye are gods, must die as men; for it is appointed to all men once to die, and after death the judgment, and after judgment an endless eternity! Let me therefore exhort your lordship, in the words of a great king, a great warrior, and a holy prophet—Be wise, be taught, ye rulers of the earth; serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice before him with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but for a little. Then blessed will all those, and those only, be who put their trust in him. Now the Lord give you, in this your day, to consider the things that belong to your eternal peace, and to remember your latter end, that it may be well with you world without end!”
An address such as this, from a prisoner at the bar to his judges, who had his life and death in their hands, could not fail but to have been productive of a powerful effect upon the minds of such as were not altogether hardened against every impression, and presents the sufferer for truth and a good conscience upon a commanding elevation, unattainable in any other cause, fearless of personal safety, and anxious only that, while he be found faithful in the service of his master, his persecutors may enjoy the same privilege. How forcibly does it recall the Apostle’s address to Agrippa—“I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.” Mr Traill was remitted to prison, where he lay for some time, and was afterwards banished to Holland. While uncertain of his fate, he thus wrote to another minister from his prison—“Your imprisoned and confined brethren are kindly dealt with by our kind Lord, for we have large allowance from him could we take it. We know it fares the better with us. You and such as you, mind us at the throne. We are waiting from day to day not knowing what man will do with us. We are expecting banishment at the best; but our sentence must proceed from the Lord, and whatsoever it be, it shall be good as from him, and whithersoever he send us, he shall be with us; for the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof!”
A remarkable trait in all these proceedings is, that the men now persecuted for alleged disloyalty were the men who, when the throne was prostrate, and when these their persecutors had in general deserted the cause as desperate, rallied round the standard of royalty, refused to bow to the invaders, and had suffered for their attachment to the legitimate prince! and it seemed as if the measure of ingratitude meted out to them, was to be in proportion to the steadfastness with which they had adhered to the fortunes of that family in their lowest depression.
Mr Alexander Moncrief, minister of the gospel at Sconie, in Fife, had particularly distinguished himself by his loyalty during the usurpation and domination of the English—and had subjected himself to imprisonment by boldly praying for the king; and so far had he been from joining with the sectaries, that he presented a petition to Monk against their toleration; but he had approved of the remonstrance, and had assisted in drawing up “The Causes of God’s Wrath;” and he was therefore a proper object for persecution. Highly esteemed in the country where he lived, the greatest interest was made to procure his life; and two ladies of the first rank presented a handsome service of plate to the Lord Advocate’s wife—a practice, it seems, not uncommon in these times!—to procure his interference; but the plate was returned, and they were told that nothing could be done to save him. The Earl of Atholl, likewise, and several members of parliament, were anxious to protect him, but were informed that he could expect no mercy, unless he would consent to change his principles. When this was told to his wife, her reply showed her to have been a woman of a similar spirit. “Ye know that I am happy in a good husband, to whom I have ever borne a great affection, and have had many children; but I know him to be so steadfast to his principles, where conscience is concerned, that nobody need speak to him upon that head; and, for my part, before I would contribute any thing that would break his peace with his master, I would rather choose to receive his head at the cross!” Yet the numerous applications in his favour from persons of influence—without his knowledge—procured a mitigation of his punishment; and, after a tedious confinement, he was only rendered incapable of all civil or ecclesiastical employment, deprived of his living, and forbid to enter his parish.
Mr Robert Macwaird, minister, Glasgow, who had likewise maintained his loyalty to his king in the face of his enemies, was included in the noble band of sufferers; but the accusation against him differed somewhat from the others. When he perceived the general and awful course of defection from the very profession of religion, and the design to overturn the whole covenanted work of reformation, he commenced a series of sermons, in his week-day exercise, from that striking text, Amos iii. 2. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” In these, he first addressed himself to his hearers, and pressed upon their consciences their personal sins—for these worthies, who stood in the front of the battle while contending earnestly for the national religion, never failed to inculcate the inutility and danger of a public profession without personal holiness—from personal, he ascended to general and national sins; and, adverting to the open profligacy and backsliding which pervaded a nation once so high in profession, and so favoured in privilege, he pathetically asked, “Alas! may not God expostulate with us, and say, ye are backslidden with a perpetual backsliding, and what iniquity have you found in him? We are backslidden in zeal and love. The glory of a begun reformation in manners is eclipsed, and an inundation of profanity come in. Many who once loved to walk abroad in the garment of godliness, now persecute it. The faithful servants of Christ are become enemies, because they tell the truth. The upright seekers of God are the marks of the great men’s malice.” And, interjecting this most remarkable prayer—“May it never be said of faithful ministers and Christians in Scotland, ‘We have a law, and by this law they must die’”—he continued, “Backsliding is got up to the very head and corrupts the fountains; and wickedness goeth forth already from some of the prophets through the whole land! Are these the pastors and rulers that bound themselves so solemnly and acknowledged their former breaches? How hath the faithful city turned an harlot?”
These expressions, and many others of a like import, excited the enmity of those whom they convicted, and to whom the exhortations to repent and to return were addressed in vain; and some of the apostate tribe transmitted to the managers information against the preacher, as having been guilty of treason. The following passage was that upon which the charge chiefly rested. After entreating his audience to mourn, consider, repent, and return—to wrestle, pray, and pour out their souls before the Lord, he encouraged them, by remarking, that “God would look upon these duties as their Dissent from what was done prejudicial to his work and interest, and mark them among the mourners in Zion.” Then came the treason! “As for my own part, as a poor member of the church of Scotland, and an unworthy minister in it, I do this day call upon you who are the people of God to witness, that I humbly offer my dissent to all acts which are or shall be passed against the covenants or work of reformation in Scotland. And, secondly, protest, that I am desirous to be free of the guilt thereof, and pray that God may put it upon record in heaven.” For this discourse he was arrested; and, on the Thursday following Mr Guthrie’s execution, was brought before the parliament.
Expecting nothing else than to follow that great man to heaven from the scaffold, he was equally courageous and unhesitating in his behaviour; and, when called upon to reply, June 6th, thus honestly avowed his sentiments:—“My lord, I cannot, I dare not, dissemble, that, having spoken nothing but what I hope will be the truth of God when brought to the touchstone, and such a truth as, without being guilty of lese-majesty against God, I could not conceal while I spoke to the text, I conceive myself obliged to own and adhere to it. So far from committing treason in this, I am persuaded that it was the highest part of loyalty towards my prince, the greatest note of respect I could put upon my superiors, the most real and unquestionable evidence of a true and tender affection to my countrymen and the congregation over whom the Holy Ghost made me, though most unworthy, an overseer, to give seasonable warning of the heavy judgment which the sin of Scotland’s backsliding will bring on, that so we may be instructed at length to search and try our ways and turn to the Lord, lest his soul be separated from us; for wo unto us if our glory depart! No man will or ought to doubt whether it be a minister’s duty to preach this doctrine in season and out of season, which yet is never unseasonable, and to avow that the backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways; and if any man draw back, his soul shall have no pleasure in him. And if so, what evil have I done, or whose enemy am I become for telling the truth?
“But in order to remove any thing that may seem to give offence in my practice, I humbly desire it may be considered that a ministerial protestation against, or a dissent from, any act or acts which a minister knows and is convinced to be contrary to the word of God, is not a legal impugnation of that or these acts, much less of the authority enacting them, which it doth rather presuppose than deny; it is just a solemn and serious attested declaration, witness, or testimony, against the evil and iniquity of these things, which, by the word of God, is a warrantable practice, as is clear from Samuel, where the prophet was directed by the Lord himself to obey the voice of the people, howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them; also Jeremiah xi. 7. There is no act of parliament declaring that it shall be treason for a minister to protest, in the Scripture sense, against such acts as are contrary to the covenant and the work of reformation; nay more, there were acts by which the covenants and vows made to God for reformation in this church, according to his will revealed in his word, received civil confirmation; and I, as his unworthy servant, was authorized to protest that these rights be not invaded—that these vows be not broken!
“Nor may I conceal, that, when I reflect upon and remember what I have said and sworn to God in the day when, with an uplifted hand to the most high, I bound my soul with the bond of the covenant, and engaged solemnly, as I should answer to the great God, the searcher of hearts, in that day when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, never to break these bonds, nor cast away these cords from me, nor to suffer myself, either directly or indirectly, by terror or persuasion, to be withdrawn from owning them—when I recollect that, had they been even things indifferent, I durst not have shaken them off when I had sworn to God, and consider that, instead of this, they were duties of indispensable obligation antecedently to all oaths, and remain unalterably binding independently of them—and when I considered my duty as a minister, to give warning, to declare, testify, and bear witness against the sin of violating these covenants, in order to avoid the wrath that shall follow, and that under no less a threatening than banishment from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power—I had no choice.
“Now I humbly beseech I may not be looked upon as a disloyal person, either as to my principles or practice; and so clear am I that there was neither iniquity in my heart, nor wickedness in my hands, against his majesty, that I only wish the informer’s conduct, be he who he may, in the place where I live, were compared with mine, and the issue of my trial depended on this—whether he or I had shown most loyalty during the prevalence and usurpation of the enemy; but I suspect he has rather a little more prudence than to agree to such a test. But as for me, my lord, while I wait the coming forth of my sentence from his presence, whose eyes behold the things that are equal, I declare, that however I cannot submit my conscience to men, yet I humbly, as becometh, submit my person.”
This case appears to have been ably managed; and the parliament delayed proceeding to any immediate decision. In the interval, he presented a supplication withdrawing the words “protest and dissent,” as too legal and forensic, substituting the words “declaring and bearing witness.” The reasons which he assigned for so doing are satisfactory, and show that the witnesses of this period did not stand with obstinacy upon any irrational punctilio, or foolishly rush upon suffering for the sake of unmeaning distinctions or of favourite phrases. “I am brought,” are his expressions, “to offer this alteration, not so much, if my heart deceive me not, for the fear of prejudice to my person—though being but a weak man, I am easily reached by such discomposing passions—as from an earnest desire to remove out of the way any, the least, or remotest, occasion of stumbling, that there may be the more ready and easy access, without prejudice of words, to ponder and give judgment of the matter; and that, likewise, if the Lord shall think fit to call me forth to suffer hard things on this account, it may not be said that it was for wilful and peremptory stickling to such expressions; whereas, I might, by using others, without prejudice to the matter, and no less significant, have escaped the danger; and lest I should seem to insinuate that a minister of the gospel could not have sufficiently exonered his conscience without such formal and legal terms.” But it was necessary to get rid of men whose abilities were dreaded by their apostate brethren, and whose consistent piety would have been a standing reproach to the new prelates. He was therefore, before parliament rose, sentenced to banishment, though, by an uncommon stretch of moderation, he was allowed to remain six months in Scotland—one of them in Glasgow to arrange his affairs—and empowered to receive his next year’s stipend.
What rendered these rigorous proceedings towards the ablest, the most pious, and most conscientious loyalists, more flagrantly unjust, was, the lenity shown to others who had been deeply implicated in active compliances with the usurpers, not only after their power became irresistible, but even while Charles was in the country and at the head of an army. The Laird of Swinton had been suspected, in the year 1650, of corresponding with Cromwell, and being summoned to answer before the parliament at Perth, was forfeited for failing to appear, on which he joined the English, and was appointed a judge; but having now turned a quaker, he was pardoned, and went to the north, where he succeeded in making a few proselytes. Sir John Chiesly, also, who had acted cordially with the English, and been forfeited by the same parliament, was passed over; but his safety was attributed to the influence of money; for rapacity and venality characterized almost every member of government, and every court of justice, from the Restoration to the Revolution.
The escape of Mr Patrick Gillespie was more surprising, as he was personally disagreeable to the king, who had repeatedly refused to listen to any solicitations on his behalf. Gillespie was a minister in Glasgow, and afterwards principal of the College. He had been the most conspicuous of the remonstrators—had approved of “The Causes of God’s Wrath,” and had been appointed principal by the English commissioners, or sequestrators as they were called[[19]]—had been a great favourite with Cromwell—had preached before him—prayed for him as chief magistrate—and had received from him several valuable gifts—all which were now brought forward as charges against him. But he had many friends in the House, and was induced to profess civil guilt and throw himself upon the king’s mercy. His concessions, it is alleged, were strained beyond what he intended, and represented as of great importance at the time, as he had been eminent among his brethren; and it was supposed his example would have a mighty influence in inducing the more scrupulous to give way. They were, however, grievous to the Presbyterians and not satisfactory to his majesty; but they procured a mitigation of his punishment, which was commuted to deprivation of his office, and confinement to Ormiston and six miles round.
[19]. At the time when the English ruled, the church of Scotland was divided and subdivided into a variety of sections. The remonstrators themselves divided; some of them, among whom were, Messrs P. Gillespie, Samuel Rutherford, James Durham, William Guthrie of Fenwick, Robert Traill, and other eminently pious men, complied with the ruling powers on the Christian principle of obedience to the powers that be, and the absolute necessity of the case; but they were still more obnoxious to the resolutioners, because they so far agreed with the sectaries, in only considering as members of the church persons who gave proof of practical godliness, and opposed the principle of promiscuous communion and general membership. Against this schism, Principal Baillie was very violent. “This formed schism,” says he, in a letter to Mr W. Spang, “is very bitter to us, but remediless, except on intolerable conditions, which our wise orthodox divines will advise us to accept:—We must embrace, without contradiction, and let grow, the principles of the remonstrants, which all reformed divines, and all states in the world, abhor. We must permit a few heady men to waste our church with our consent or connivance. We must let them frame our people to the sectarian model—a few more forward ones among themselves, by privy meetings, to be the godly party; and the congregation, the rest, to be the rascally malignant multitude; so that the body of our people are to be cast out of all churches; and the few who are countenanced, are fitted, as sundry of them already have done, to embrace the errors of the time for their destruction.” Letters, vol. ii. p. 375. The other section of the remonstrants refused to acknowledge in any manner the power of the usurper, lamented the toleration of sectaries, and maintained, with the resolutioners, the legitimate principles of a national church—that all who attended were to be considered members of that church, unless excommunicated for openly immoral conduct or disobedience to the order and discipline of the church. At the head of this section were, Mr James Guthrie, Warriston, and many others, who bore testimony by their blood to the sincerity of their profession. It is worthy of remark, that the first class were chiefly the older, the second the younger, race of the Presbyterians.
On the 12th of July, the parliament rose; and, on the last day of that month, their public acts were proclaimed, with the usual formalities, from the cross of Edinburgh—a ceremony that employed the heralds and other functionaries from ten o’clock in the forenoon till six at night.
About the same time, Samuel Rutherford was relieved by death.
BOOK III.
AUGUST, A.D. 1661-1662.
Lord High Commissioner sets out for Court—His reception—Deliberations of the Council—Episcopacy resolved upon as the National Religion of Scotland—Glencairn, Rothes, and Sharpe appointed to carry the tidings to Edinburgh—King’s letter—Privy Council announce the overthrow of Presbytery—Forbid the election of Presbyterian Magistrates in Burghs—Prosecute Tweeddale—Ministers summoned to London to be episcopally ordained—Their characters—Their consecration—Grief of the Presbyterians—Re-introduction of Episcopacy—Restrictions on the press—Witchcraft—Synods discharged and Bishops ordered to be honoured by royal patent—Their consecration—Parliament restores their rank—Asserts the King’s supremacy—The Covenants declared unlawful—Act of fines—Defeated—Lord Lorn—Blair and other ministers deprived—King’s birth-day—Middleton’s visit to the West and South—Case of Mr Wylie—Brown of Wamphrey—Livingston, &c.—Middleton removed and Lauderdale appointed.
Leaving the government in the hands of the privy council,[[20]] Middleton, after parliament adjourned, set out for court, where he was received by the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Ormond, and all the cavalier party, with the greatest congratulations for having quenched the fanatic zeal of Scotland, and carried his majesty’s prerogative beyond what any preceding monarch, when present, had ever claimed.
[20]. The chief members of which were—The Earl of Glencairn, chancellor; Crawford, treasurer; Rothes, president; Lauderdale, secretary. Members—Dukes of Lennox and Hamilton; Marquis of Montrose; Earls of Errol, Marischal, Mar, Atholl, Morton, Cassils, Linlithgow, Perth, Dunfermline, Wigton, Callender, Dundee, &c. &c. Wodrow, p. 87.
At a council held upon his arrival, Charles, who utterly detested Presbytery, expressed himself highly gratified at the report of what he had done; but his councillors were divided. Lauderdale and some others, who knew perfectly that the established religion was deeply rooted in the affections of Scottishmen, were unwilling to hazard a change; and even some who wished an Episcopacy were yet averse to its being too rashly introduced.[[21]] Middleton, however, who had been previously tutored, immediately addressed the king—“May it please your sacred majesty: You may perceive by the account I have now given of your affairs in Scotland, that there is no present government as yet established in that church. Presbytery is, after a long usurpation, now at last rescinded—the covenant, whereby men thought they were obliged to it, is now declared to have been unlawful—and the acts of parliament, whereby it was fenced, are now removed; so that it is arbitrary to your majesty to choose what government you will fix there; for to your majesty this is by the last act of supremacy declared to belong. But if your majesty do not interpose, then Episcopacy, which was unjustly invaded at once with your royal power, will return to its former vigour.”
[21]. When the lords went first up to welcome the king, the question was debated what form of government should be established in the Scottish church. “Middleton and Glencairn were resolute for bishops, pronouncing they would both compose the church and manadge it to the king’s mind; Lauderdale opposed it stiffely, affirming the king should thereby lose the affectiones of the people of Scotland, and that the bishops should be so far from enlargeing the king’s power, that they would prove a burdine too heavy for him to bear; and therein he proved als true a prophet, as he was a faithful friend to the king. Within some few days, Glencairn came to visit Lauderdale, and told him he was only for a sober sort of bishops, such as they were in the primitive times, not lordly prelats. Lauderdale answered him with ane oath, that since they hade chosen bishops, they should have them higher than any that ever were in Scotland, and that he should find.” Kirkton, p. 134.
Glencairn followed, and affirmed that the insolence of the Presbyterian ministers had so disgusted all loyal subjects, that six for one longed for the Episcopalian government, which had ever inculcated obedience and supported the royal interest; whereas, Calvinism and Presbytery had never been introduced into any country without blood and rebellion, and instanced, with the most preposterous absurdity, the struggles for freedom at the Reformation—in France, during the civil war—in Holland, when they revolted from Spain—and now twice in Scotland; once by the Regent Murray, when Queen Mary was banished, and lastly in 1637. Rothes added, although he had not seen the rise of the innovations, yet he had witnessed the ruin of the engagement and the treatment of the king by that persuasion. Lauderdale contended that the proposition was of too great importance to be slightly determined, and required much thought and much information; for, upon their resolution, depended the quiet of the Scots—a people very unmanageable in matters of religion—and advised that either a General Assembly should be called, the provincial synods consulted, which, as composed of ministers and laymen, would acquaint his majesty with the inclinations of his subjects—or, he might call the ablest divines on both sides, and learn their sentiments, if neither of the other proposals were approved of. Middleton replied that all these methods would only tend to continue Presbytery; for it was probable the power of the ministers, which had been so irresistible of late, would preponderate in all. They would easily procure ruling elders of their own cast to be chosen, and both would be unwilling to resign the power they possessed; at all events, the leading men whom the inferior clergy must follow, durst not quarrel the resolutions of their rabbis, who would adhere to the oaths they had taken, and stoutly defend their own supremacy; besides, to call General Assemblies or synods, were to restore them, and thus to infringe the act rescissory.
The Earl of Crawford, whose treasurer’s rod was a desirable object for Middleton, had declined mingling in the debate, which the Chancellor of England observing, requested his majesty that he might be desired to give his opinion, in order that he might either disclaim Presbytery or displease the king, and thus put his principles or his place in jeopardy; for it appeared to be a settled rule among the courtiers of Charles, that whatever Scottishmen were allowed to interfere in the public affairs of their native country, should sacrifice either their conscience or their interest.
Crawford perceived the Chancellor’s aim, and vehemently urged that provincial synods might be consulted, assuring his majesty, the king, that six for one in Scotland were in favours of Presbytery. “The offences of the reformers,” he warmly contended, “were not to be charged upon the Reformation: the best innovations were ever attended with much irregularity, and therefore it was better to continue that government which had now past all these hazards—at first unavoidable—than risk another, which, at its outset, must be unhappy in the same inconveniences. Nor did the act rescissory cut off Presbytery, for it was secured by acts of General Assemblies, which had been countenanced by his majesty’s father’s commissioners, and were yet unrepealed.”
The Duke of Hamilton supported him, and affirmed that the reason why the act rescissory had so easily passed, was, because his majesty had promised to continue Presbytery in his letter addressed to the ministers of Edinburgh. Clarendon closed the debate, by observing, that Crawford had owned all that ever was done in Scotland in their rebellion; “and God preserve me,” said he, “from living in a country where religion is independent of the state, and clergy may subsist by their own acts; for there all churchmen may be kings.” The king then told them that he perceived a majority were for Episcopacy, and therefore he resolved to settle it without any farther delay.
Immediately after, Glencairn and Rothes were dispatched to Edinburgh, accompanied by Mr Sharpe, to convey his majesty’s determination to the council. Were it not that, in humble life, we see men equally base and shameless where their own self-interest is concerned, we might wonder at the unblushing effrontery of the royal communication; yet the pitiful evasion and vile duplicity in which it was couched, render the king’s letter at once an object of detestation and contempt. That the reader may compare it with his former to the ministers of Edinburgh, I give it at full length:—
“Charles R. Right trusty and well-beloved cousins and councillors, We greet you well. Whereas, in the month of August 1660, We did, by our letters to the presbytery of Edinburgh, declare our purpose to maintain the government of the church of Scotland as settled by law; and our parliament having since that time not only rescinded all the acts since the troubles began, but also declared all these pretended parliaments null and void, and left to us the settling and securing of church government: Therefore, in compliance with that act rescissory, according to our late proclamation, dated at Whitehall the 10th of June, and in contemplation of the inconveniences from the church government, as it hath been exercised these twenty-three years past—of the unsuitableness thereof to our monarchical state—of the sadly experienced confusions which have been caused during the late troubles, by the violences done to our royal prerogative, and to the government, civil and ecclesiastical, settled by unquestionable authority, We, from respect to the glory of God and the good and interest of the Protestant religion; from our pious care and princely zeal for the order, unity, peace, and stability of that church, and its better harmony with the government of the churches of England and Ireland, have, after mature deliberation, declared to those of our council here our firm resolution to interpose our royal authority for restoring of that church to its right government by bishops, as it was before the late troubles, during the reigns of our royal father and grandfather, of blessed memory, and as it now stands settled by law. Of this our royal pleasure concerning church government you are to take notice, and to make intimation thereof in such a way and manner as you shall judge most expedient and effectual. And we require you, and every one of you, and do expect, according to the trust and confidence we have in your affections and duty to our service, that you will be careful to use your best endeavours for curing the distempers contracted during those late evil times—for uniting our good subjects among themselves, and bringing them all to a cheerful acquiescing and obedience to our sovereign authority, which we will employ, by the help of God, for the maintaining and defending the true reformed religion, increase of piety, and the settlement and security of that church in her rights and liberties, according to law and ancient custom. And, in order thereto, our will is, that you forthwith take such course with the rents belonging to the several bishopricks and deaneries that they may be restored and made useful to the church, and that according to justice and the standing law. And, moreover, you are to inhibit the assembling of ministers in their several synodical meetings through the kingdoms until our further pleasure, and to keep a watchful eye over all who, upon any pretext whatever, shall, by discoursing, preaching, reviling, or any irregular or unlawful way, endeavour to alienate the affections of our people, or dispose them to an ill opinion of us and our government to the disturbance of the peace of the kingdom. So, expecting your cheerful obedience and a speedy account of your proceedings herein, We bid you heartily farewell. Given at our court, at Whitehall, August 14, 1661, and of our reign the thirteenth year, by his majesty’s command.” (Signed) “Lauderdale.”
The privy council received with all due humility this intimation of the royal pleasure; and, on the 6th of September, an act was drawn up and published, announcing to the people of Scotland the overthrow of their beloved Presbytery, under whose shade they had reposed with so much tranquility during the few last years of the much abused and unreasonably hated protectorate, and the re-establishment of that system against which their fathers had ever contended. A proclamation overturning the freedom of elections, accompanied the act for overturning the constitution of the church—so naturally and nearly are civil and ecclesiastical tyranny connected. The royal burghs were commanded, under the highest penalties, to elect none for their magistrates who were fanatically—an epithet which it now became fashionable to apply to the conscientious Presbyterians—inclined; and such and so sudden had been the change wrought by the transfer of power, that this illegal dictation was universally obeyed. Nor did their conduct towards one of their own number evince a greater regard for their own privileges or the rights of parliament, than their ready servility had done for the religion and liberty of their country. Tweeddale and Kincardine had pressed the council to request the king that he would consult provincial synods, who would declare the sense of the country; and, at all events, relieve his majesty from obloquy whatever might be the ultimate decision. This proposition, however, would have shown too much deference to men whom it was intended to bring to unconditional subjection, and was refused accordingly; but Charles was informed of Tweeddale’s hesitation, and an order was procured for his imprisonment, not indeed ostensibly for his opinion delivered in council, but for what was or ought to have been still more sacred, for his judgment and voice in parliament, because he had spoken in vindication of Mr James Guthrie, and had not voted him guilty of death! It was to no purpose that he pled the freedom allowed in parliament, where he was a councillor upon oath and expressly indemnified by law for what was spoken there; and the danger which every member would thus incur who voted any person accused of treason innocent, if a majority should happen to find him guilty. He was sent prisoner to the Castle, and was only, upon his submission and petition, permitted to confine himself to Yester and three miles round, finding caution to the amount of one hundred thousand merks to answer when called for! Eight months after, when it was thought his discipline had taught him obedience, he was, through the mediation of the council, relieved; and, when his relation Lauderdale came into power, he joined his government.
Although his majesty could establish Episcopacy by proclamation, the peculiar holiness which was supposed necessarily to belong to the office of a bishop, it was beyond his power to confer. This essential attribute of a prelate, which had passed, as was believed, untainted from the apostles, through all the corruption, vileness, and abomination of the church of Rome, had, by hands crimsoned in the blood of the saints, and defiled with all the pollutions of their brethren, been communicated to the dignitaries of the English hierarchy, upon whom it still rested in all its imaginary purity and vigour. But the feeble portion of the sacred virus that had reached Scotland upon a former occasion, when James VI. procured the innoculation of his hierarchate, was now confined to one aged and almost superannuated subject, Mr Thomas Sydeserf, formerly bishop of Galloway; and he had been excommunicated by a General Assembly. It was therefore resolved that a select number of the Scottish ministers should be consecrated by priests who had never been polluted by any unhallowed contact with Presbyterians; and Messrs Sharpe, Fairfoul, and Hamilton were summoned to London to receive the holy unction.
James Sharpe, designed for the primacy, was already the object of detestation to every one who had the smallest regard for the Presbyterian profession, or for consistency of principle. Andrew Fairfoul, promoted to the archbishoprick of Glasgow, possessed considerable learning, better skilled, however, in physic than in theology—a pleasant, facetious companion, but never esteemed a serious divine. He had taken the covenant and was first minister in Leith, then in Dunse. Mr James Hamilton, brother to Lord Belhaven, created bishop of Galloway, was also a covenanter, and minister of Cambusnethan. His abilities were not above mediocrity, and his cunning was more remarkable than his piety. They were, however, joined at London by Mr Robert Leighton, a man of a very different description, whose meek and gentle spirit, unfitted for the stormy region of political polemics, delighted more in communion with God than in contending with his fellows, and who, counting himself a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth, was only anxious to diffuse the gospel of the kingdom, and shed around him the charities of life. He was educated during the reign of pseudo-episcopacy, and never was a thorough Presbyterian. His character and views may be estimated from a circumstance which occurred during that period of his life when he was minister of Newbattle. Some of his zealous co-presbyters urging on him the duty of “preaching to the times,” (by no means an unnecessary one, however, in its proper place,) he mildly replied—“When so many of my brethren are preaching to the times, they may spare one poor minister to preach for eternity.” He had retired to London to enjoy the privacy he loved, and was unwillingly dragged forward to assist in carrying Episcopacy to Scotland.[[22]]
[22]. There is just one point in Leighton’s character that appears unaccountable, that is, after he had solemnly sworn the covenants, and enforced them upon others, how he could ever turn an Episcopalian.
A commission, under the great seal of England, was directed to the bishops of London and Worcester, and some other suffragans of the diocese of Canterbury, to officiate upon this important occasion; but an unexpected difficulty occurred by Dr Sheldon proposing to set aside the Presbyterian ordination altogether and commence de novo. Sharpe quoted the case of Bishop Spottiswood, whose Presbyterian ordination had been sustained when he was consecrated, and for a while resisted the proposal; but the other was peremptory, and would not hear of the validity of any other than prelatic imposition of hands; and Sharpe, who had now gone too far to recede for a trifle, submitted to enter his new profession by the lowest step, that he might attain the wretched object of his ambition—to him a woful eminence. In the month of December, they were with great pomp, and before a splendid assemblage of nobility at Westminster, passed and raised through the various degrees of the craft, from preaching-deacons to mitred bishops, in one day, which was concluded by a magnificent entertainment given by the new-made prelates to their English brethren and a select party of Scottish and English nobles.
Convinced at length of their error, the honest Presbyterians, of all parties, lamented that their intestine divisions should have been allowed to divert them from attempting the security of their religion, and that they should have indulged in bitterness of spirit against each other about matters of comparatively lesser moment, while the common enemy was making such rapid, though covert, advances against their establishment. Uncertain how long they might enjoy that liberty, they now throughout Scotland directed the attention of their hearers to the principles of their church, and the points in dispute between them and the Episcopalians[[23]]—they held congregational fasts in every corner of the land to lament over the misimprovement of their privileges and deprecate the impending wrath of God—and they continued their parochial duties among a mourning people who, with a general sadness, anticipated the lamentable change. Their synods had been forbid; but they met with little interruption in their presbyterial duties till the bishops were installed, when they were informed that their power of ordination had ceased. This intimation was first made by the council to the presbytery of Peebles, when, in the month of December, they were proceeding to induct Mr John Hay to the kirk of Manner; and from thenceforth all presentations to benefices were ordered to be directed to the archbishops or bishops within whose diocese the vacant church might lie.
[23]. The points in dispute between the Presbyterians and Episcopalians were of much more vital importance than modern Presbyterians seem to be aware of. They comprehended doctrinal points—the form of church government, the ceremonies, the festivals, and the forcible intrusion of the whole system upon the nation, in virtue of the king’s spiritual supremacy. The very essence of Christianity was at stake. The grand fundamental doctrine which Luther asserted at the Reformation, was, justification by faith, in opposition to justification by works; and a more clear statement of this essential article of Christian belief will nowhere be found than in his exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians—to this all was subsidiary. He found that attacking the rites, ceremonies, and fooleries of Rome was wasting shot against pitiful outworks, the fall of which was of no importance, while the main rampart and the citadel frowned defiance. It was the same with all the reformers; and it was now a revival of the old question. The Episcopalians were in general Arminians, and the Presbyterians contended for “the faith” once delivered to the fathers; and this faith was the doctrinal creed embodied in the covenants. This should always be kept in view. The other points were not of little moment; but this was the foundation.
The re-introduction of Episcopacy into Scotland was accompanied by a restoration of all the most severe restrictions upon the liberty of the press and a revival of the absurd and flagitious proceedings against poor, old, and friendless creatures, ignorantly or maliciously accused of witchcraft. The council, upon an information that George Swinton and James Glen, booksellers in Edinburgh, had printed and sold the speeches of the Marquis of Argyle and Mr James Guthrie, with other seditious and scandalous publications, such as the “Covenanter’s Plea,” ordered the Lord Advocate and Lord Provost of Edinburgh, to seize upon such books and papers, and prohibit them and the rest of the printers from printing any other books or pamphlets without a warrant from the king, parliament, or council; and, “for preventing false intelligence,” they granted liberty to a creature of their own, Robert Mein, keeper of the letter-office, Edinburgh, to print the Diurnal, then the only newspaper in the kingdom. Commissions for the trial of witches were at the same time issued to gentlemen in almost every shire, and great numbers of unfortunate creatures, chiefly poor decrepit old women, were tortured and murdered upon the most contradictory, ridiculous, and incredible absurdities, which were alleged against them; or upon the incoherent ravings which, after being kept for nights without sleep, and tormented without intermission in the height of a delirium, they uttered as their confessions. And yet such convictions stand upon record as being in consequence of “clear probation” or voluntary confessions! But it is deserving of especial notice, that these trials took place chiefly in the north and the east—the districts least infected with “fanaticism.”[[24]]
[24]. The Dunbar witches were famous in East, as the Borrowstounness witches were in West, Lothian. It is, however, among the melancholy and unaccountable problems in the history of the human mind, that persons of excellent understanding were implicated in these and similar horrid transactions. In England, even Judge Hale condemned two. Had the witches, or wizards, been tried for operating upon the fears and the superstitions of their country folk, as the Africans in the West Indies and on their own coasts operate on the fears and superstitions of each other by the obi, bitter water, and other really noxious practices, their persecution might have been proper, and their punishment just; but, dancing reels with Satan, and flying through the air upon broomsticks, were accusations so truly ridiculous, that, how they came to be ever gravely listened to, is passing strange. Dr Hutchinson says, “the word witch, in old English, according to Dr More, signifies a wise woman; in the vulgar Latin, it is venefica, a poisoner.” Hist. Essay on Witchcraft, p. 183.
This eventful year was closed by a letter from the king, December 28, ordering the council to discharge by proclamation all ecclesiastical meetings in synods, presbyteries, and sessions, until authorized by the archbishops or bishops upon their entering upon the government of their respective sees; and requiring that all due deference and respect should be given by the lieges to these dignitaries, or, to use the words of the king, “that they have all countenance, assistance, and encouragement from the nobility, gentry, and burghs, in the discharge of their office and service to Us in the church; and that severe and exemplary notice be taken of all and every one who shall presume to reflect or express any disrespect to their persons or the authority with which they are intrusted”—an ominous and unholy introduction to a Christian ministry, which sufficiently marked the nature of the proposed establishment; bore witness to the known dislike of the people towards such a priesthood, and the strong probability that pastors created by royal patent, and sanctified by prelatic palmistry, would be received with any thing but respect or affection by the flock over whom they were to have the oversight.
The new year, 1662, was ushered in by a proclamation, January 9, from the privy council, announcing, in terms of the king’s letter, the final extinction of Presbytery. Formerly, such a decree would have encountered at any rate a formidable show of opposition from the denounced ecclesiastical judicatories; nor would they have separated without at least bearing testimony against this unwarrantable invasion of their legal right. But the blind confidence that the Presbyterians had so unaccountably reposed in the king, produced a species of fatuity; nor would they believe till they experienced the truth of the prognostications of the more discerning, who saw from the first the ill-dissembled hatred Charles bore to Presbyterianism as well as to piety. They were like men amazed at the greatness of the calamity; and although some few of them attempted to draw up petitions to the council, no united effort was made to vindicate the oppressed church.
An obsequious crowd of nobility, clergy, and gentry, awaited the arrival of the new bishops, and obeyed to the letter the orders of the king. From Cockburnspath to the capital, their numbers increased; and, as the procession rolled on, it assumed more the splendour of some earthly potentate marching to take possession of a newly-acquired conquest, than that of spiritual guides entering upon the humble duties of a gospel ministry. They were greeted on their approach to Edinburgh with martial music, and received at the gates by the magistrates in their robes,[[25]] and spent several successive days in sumptuous entertainments. The primate, vieing with the chief nobility in the elegance of his equipage as well as the magnificence of his banquets, displayed upon the occasion a handsome London-built chariot, and was attended by lackeys in purple liveries. Shortly afterwards, in great pomp, he took possession of his see;[[26]] then, returning to Edinburgh on the 7th of May, consecrated other six bishops in the Abbey of Holyrood-house.
[25]. Lamont gives the following account of Sharpe’s visit on this occasion:—“As for Mr Sharpe, he came to Fiffe, Apryl 15th, and dyned that day at Abetsaa, Sr. Andrew Ramsays, formerly provest of Edenboroughe, his house, and that night came to Lesly, being attended by divers both of the nobilitie and gentrie. The nixt day being Weddensday, the 16th Apr., he went to St Androws from Lesly, attended from the Earle of Rothes his house, with about 60 horse; bot by the way divers persons and corporations (being wretten for in particular by the said Earle of Rothes a day or two before) mett him, some at ane place and some at ane other, viz. some from Fawkland, Achtermowghtie, Cuper, Craill, and about 120 horsemen from St Androws and elsewhere; so that once they were estimat to be about 7 or 8 hundred horse. The nobilitie ther were, Earle of Rothes, Earle of Kelley, Earle of Leven, and the Lord Newarke; of gentrie, Ardrosse, Lundy, Rires, Dury, Skaddowory, Doctor Martin of Strandry, and divers others. All the way the said Archbishope rode thus, viz. betwixt two nobelmen, namely, Rothes on his right, and Kelley on his left hand. No ministers were present ther safe Mr William Barclay, formerly deposed out of Fawkland, and Mr William Comry, minister of St Leonards Colledge, that came foorth with the Bishope his sone out of St Androws to meit his father. (He dwells in the Abbey in Mr George Weyms house, that formerly belonged to B. Spotswoode, Archb. of St Androws.) That night ther supped with the said Bishope, the Earles of Rothes, Kelley, Newarke; Ardrosse, Lundy, Strandry, and divers others; and divers of this dined with him the nixt day. As for Rothes and Ardrosse, they lodged with him all night. On the Sabbath after, he preached in the towne church in the forenoone, and a velvet cushion in the pulpitt before him. His text, 1 Cor. ii. 2. ‘For I determined to knowe nothing amonge you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.’ His sermon did not run mutch on the words, bot in a discourse of vindicating himselfe and of pressing of episcopacie and the utilitie of it; shewing, since it was wanting, that ther hath beine nothing bot trowbels and disturbancies both in church and state. Apryl 30, 1662, he tooke journey for Edenboroughe, being accompanied with about 50 horse, most of them of the citie of St Androws; and, in his way, he gave the Ladys at Lundy a visit at Lundy: he cam with only 5 or 6 horse, and himselfe staid a short whille, toke a drink (bot did not dine), and was gone againe.” Diary, p. 183-4.
[26]. Leighton alone declined all public show. When he understood the manner in which it was proposed to receive them, he left the cavalcade at Morpeth, and came privately to Edinburgh. Afterwards, he told Dr Burnet, “he believed they were weary of him, for he was very weary of them.”
This ceremony, which had been deferred till the arrival of the Commissioner, was conducted in the grandest and most imposing style. His Grace, with all the nobles and gentlemen who had come to town to attend parliament, together with the magistrates of the city, were present; and none were admitted but by tickets. The two archbishops who officiated were in their full canonicals—black satin gowns, white surplices, lawn sleeves, copes, and all the long desecrated garments, known to the Presbyterians of that day by the contemptuous epithet of their forefathers—“Rags of Rome.” The others wore black satin gowns. The passage leading from the pews, where the bishops elect sat, to the altar, and the space before the altar, were covered with rich carpets. Mr James Gordon, one of the northern ministers, preached the consecration sermon from 1 Cor. iv. 1. “Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God;” in which, pointing out the errors of the former, he exhorted the new prelates to beware of encroaching on the nobles, nor exceed the bounds of their sacred function. They were then led from their places by the archbishop of Glasgow, and by him presented to the primate who presided, and set them apart according to the ritual of the church of England, and to whom they vowed clerical obedience during all the days of their lives. The bishops this day consecrated were—Dunkeld, George Halyburton, late minister of Perth; Ross, George Patterson, minister of Aberdeen; Moray, Murdoch Mackenzie, minister of Elgin; Brechin, David Strachan, minister of Fettercairn; Argyle, David Fletcher, minister of Melrose; The Isles, Robert Wallace, minister of Barnwell, Ayrshire;[[27]] none of whom were men either of distinguished talents or exemplary piety, and all had appeared zealots in the cause of the covenant. Common report attributed to them a private dissoluteness of character which might be exaggerated; but for their apostacy from a cause which they had urged with more than ordinary heat, no apology was ever attempted. Conviction could not be alleged, and as self-interest appeared the only ostensible reason, they sunk in the estimation of the people in proportion to the respect in which they had been previously held; while they returned the contempt with which they were deservedly treated by hatred and persecution—a consequent usual with renegades, who ever remorselessly pursue to degradation and death the steadfast members of the religion they have betrayed, whose unshaken integrity is a standing reproof of their temporizing baseness.
[27]. George Wiseheart, chaplain to Montrose, and author of the elegant Latin romance which goes under the name of his memoirs, was consecrated bishop of Edinburgh at St Andrews, on the 3d of June, and Mr David Mitchell, minister of Edinburgh, bishop of Aberdeen. Sydeserf had Orkney.
Next day, May 9, the parliament met; and their first act was to restore the bishops to the exercise of their episcopal function, precedence in the church, power of ordination, inflicting of censures, and all other acts of church discipline; and this their office they were to exercise only with “the advice and assistance of such of the clergy as they should find to be of known loyalty and prudence.” Without entering into any of the puzzling questions respecting the divine right of any form of church government, they at once founded their Prelacy upon a principle most repugnant to Presbytery—the spiritual supremacy of the king—“Forasmuch as the ordering and disposal of the external government and policy of the church doth properly belong unto his majesty as an inherent right of the crown, by virtue of his royal prerogative and supremacy in causes ecclesiastical.” In the preamble were narrated as the causes of its re-establishment, the disorders and exorbitancies that had been in the church, the encroachments upon the prerogative and rights of the crown, the usurpations upon the authority of parliaments, and the prejudice inflicted on the liberty of the subject ever since the invasion made upon the bishops and episcopal order—a form of church government pronounced most agreeable to the word of God, most convenient and effectual for the preservation of truth, regularity, and unity, most suitable to monarchy, and the peace and quiet of the state: “Therefore his majesty and his estates did redintegrate the state of bishops to their ancient places and undoubted privileges in parliament and all their other accustomed dignities.” Nor was it among the least strange enactments of this extraordinary act, that whatever his majesty, with the archbishops and bishops, should determine respecting the external order of the church, were “previously” declared valid and effectual.
Immediately upon this act being passed, a deputation of six members, two noblemen, two barons, and two burgesses, was sent to the prelates, who were waiting in the primate’s lodgings to invite them to take their seats. They were accordingly conducted in state to the House—the two archbishops first, walking between two noblemen, the Earls of Kellie and Wemyss, and the bishops following, attended by the barons, gentlemen, and the magistrates in their robes. When they entered, a congratulatory speech was made them from the throne, the act restoring them was read, and the parliament adjourned on purpose that the spiritual lords might have the pleasure of dining with his Grace, the Commissioner, who, to do them the greater honour, walked on foot with them in procession to the Palace. They were preceded by six macers with their maces, next three gentlemen-ushers, then the purse-bearer uncovered. The Commissioner and Chancellor followed, with two noblemen on their right and the two archbishops on their left. A select party of noblemen and members of parliament, with the bishops, made up the goodly company, who, “at four of the clock, sat down to ane sumptuous entertainment, and remained at table till eight.”
The bishops, as now thrust upon the Scottish church, differed widely from those intruded by James VI. They pled no scriptural authority, but an act of parliament, as the source of their power, and acknowledged, in its fullest sense, a temporal prince as the supreme head of the church. The old bishops were only a set of constant moderators in the synods and presbyteries, possessing merely a sort of negative voice, and were nominally at least responsible to the General Assembly; but the whole form of Presbytery was now swept away, and the prelates were amenable to no church courts; nor could any assembly of ministers meet, but under their sanction, or by their permission.
Having subverted the religion of the country, the next and most natural step was to eradicate, if possible, the principles of civil liberty. The sycophantish estates, therefore, proceeded to declare rebellious and treasonable those positions for which their fathers had contended unto blood, and which their children asserted at the point of the sword:—That it is lawful in subjects, upon pretence of reformation, or any other pretence whatsoever, to enter into leagues or covenants, or to take up arms against the king: or that it is lawful for subjects, pretending his majesty’s authority, to take up arms against his person or those commissionated by him, or to suspend him from the exercise of his royal government, or to put limitations on their due obedience and allegiance. As, notwithstanding the acts of the former session, the Presbyterians did not conceive themselves loosened from what they considered the oaths of God—ratified by the highest ecclesiastical and civil authorities of the land—the National Covenant, and the Solemn League and Covenant, these were now declared unlawful oaths; the subjects were relieved from their obligations; the acts of Assembly respecting them, which had received the sanction both of the parliament and of the king, but had hitherto escaped notice, were annulled; and all ratifications, by whatsoever authority, cassed and made void. At the same time, it was enacted, that if any person should, by writing, printing, praying, preaching, or remonstrating, express any thing calculated to create or cherish dislike in the people towards the king’s supremacy in causes ecclesiastic, or of the government of the church by archbishops and bishops, as now settled, they were to be declared incapable of enjoying any place or employment, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, and liable to such farther pains as the law directs; that is, liable to the pains of that detestable statute against leasing-making, of whose extent a notable specimen was speedily given in the case of Argyle. This was followed by an act obliging all persons in public trust to subscribe a declaration in which the whole of the transactions, since the commencement of the troubles, were affirmed to have been illegal and seditious, and the covenants unlawful oaths, unwarrantably imposed against the fundamental laws and liberties of the kingdom, and not obligatory either on themselves or others.
By another retrospective act, repeating the restoration of patronage, it was ordained that all the ministers who had entered to parishes since the year 1649, had no right to their stipends; and their charges were pronounced vacant, until they should procure presentations anew from the lawful patrons and collocation from the bishop of the diocese which he was enjoined to give to the present incumbents, upon application, before the 20th of September following, failing which, the presentation was to fall to the bishop jure devoluto; and, to conclude the series of enactments intended to establish Episcopacy upon a firm and immovable foundation, amid the ruins of Presbytery, all professors and teachers in universities and colleges were required to take the oath of allegiance on pain of deprivation—all ministers were ordered to attend the diocesan synods and pay all clerical obedience to their superiors under the like penalty—and all meetings in private houses, for religious exercises, which might tend to alienate this people from their lawful pastors, were strictly forbidden. Nor were any persons to be permitted to preach in public or private, to teach any school, or act as tutor in the family of any person of quality, without the license of the ordinary of the diocese.
Ecclesiastical matters being thus arranged, and the session apparently drawing to a termination, Lauderdale so strongly pressed a bill of indemnity, that Middleton could no longer get it avoided; but he introduced, as an accompaniment, the act of fines, which in numerous instances rendered it nugatory.
Last year a complaint had been made to parliament of the losses sustained by the Earl of Queensberry from the forces under Colonels Strachan and Kerr in 1650, estimated at two thousand pounds sterling, when a committee, consisting of the Earl of Eglinton, Lord Cochrane, the Sheriff-depute of Nithsdale, and some others, was appointed to meet at Cumnock, to inquire who had served in that army, and to proportion the same upon such of the guilty as were able to pay, which was accordingly done; and a number of gentlemen who were opposed to the measures of the present government, were assessed to make good the damage alleged to have been suffered by his lordship. This easy but arbitrary method of rewarding his supporters, and punishing or silencing his opponents, having excited no murmurs among the pusillanimous legislators, the plan was now followed out by the Commissioner, and a secret committee appointed to inquire who had been the most eminent compliers under the usurpers, in order that their estates might be taxed to raise a sum sufficient to compensate the king’s friends for what they had suffered as malignants during the time of the late troubles. Their report included nearly nine hundred noblemen, gentlemen, and tenants; and the money to be produced from their fines amounted to about eighty-five thousand pounds sterling—an enormous sum at that time, to be arbitrarily and vexatiously levied by political adversaries without any check, there being neither accusation nor trial, nor any crime alleged, of which those who now assumed the name of the king’s friends, had not, in general, been far more guilty than they.
The act of fines, iniquitous and unjust in principle, was rendered still more so by the manner in which the list was made up. It included the names of many who were dead, absent from the country, or infants at the breast at the time! They were represented as favouring the usurpers. Others were inserted from private revenge; and several were named who were living upon the parish. But the chief weight of the imposition was intended to fall upon such as had been distinguished for eminent piety and a consistent Christian walk in their different stations, who were deemed singular in a time of general profession, when religion was the fashion, but who were destined to show the power of the gospel in a day of general apostacy, when religion was persecuted and a profession ridiculed.
Lauderdale, who saw that the produce of these fines was intended to strengthen the Commissioner’s party, strenuously, though ineffectually, endeavoured to thwart the measure; and Middleton, justly supposing that such conduct would cool the king’s affection for his secretary, dispatched Tarbet to London to complete his ruin. The ostensible purpose of his mission was to submit the act of indemnity to the king, and to obtain his sanction to a clause for excepting twelve persons, to be named by the parliament, from the benefit of the act, as incapable of holding any place of public trust. Lauderdale knew that he was aimed at, and exerted his every art and influence to prevent the exception as unjust, but the Duke of York and the English Chancellor, who were jealous of his influence, supported the clause; and the king gave his consent to the proposed exception.
An incident which he could not have foreseen—so capricious is the fate of royal favourites—prevented his fall, and gave him the ascendancy his enemies were seeking to destroy. Middleton, who wished to procure for himself Argyle’s estates, when disappointed by their gift to his son, harassed the young Earl by every means in his power, and procured that they should be burdened with an immense debt, which so irritated his lordship, that he expressed himself very freely in a confidential letter to Lord Duffus, saying, “he hoped that he would procure the friendship of Clarendon,” and, in reference to the proceedings in parliament, used these words—“then the king will see their tricks.” This letter being intercepted at the post-office, a capital charge of lying between the king and parliament was founded upon it, and a letter written to the king, requesting that Argyle might be sent down prisoner to stand trial. At Lauderdale’s earnest entreaty, he was sent down not a prisoner, and with express instructions that no sentence should be executed till his majesty saw and approved it. Lorn, when brought to trial, convinced that any defence before such a tribunal would be vain, made none, but threw himself on the royal mercy, declaring the innocence of his intentions, and noticing gently the provocation he had received. He was pronounced guilty of death by parliament, but the king shortly after remitted his punishment.
During these discussions, Tarbet had been gradually undermining Lauderdale’s influence, and, by his insinuating manners, had so far gained on Charles, that the fall of the favourite seemed on very distant or doubtful event, when the indiscretion of Middleton or his friends blighted all their flattering prospects. Afraid openly to attack the present ministers, an act was brought into parliament for incapacitating twelve persons by ballot, and lists were so formed that Lauderdale and Crawford were included in the number; and so anxious was Middleton to insure their dismissal, that, as soon as the act passed, he ratified it without ever communicating it to the king. Lauderdale, who had been apprised of the whole proceedings by the vigilant gratitude of Argyle before the official intelligence reached court, seized the opportunity of representing the affront offered to his majesty in such glaring colours, that, when the act arrived, he refused it his sanction, with a sarcastic remark, that the proceedings of his Scottish ministers were like those of madmen, or of men that were perpetually drunk.
Knowing the aversion of the Presbyterian ministers to the proposed changes, the privy council, before the bishops returned from court, endeavoured to overawe them and prevent opposition. They began with Mr Robert Blair, an eminent and aged minister, that it was necessary to remove from his charge at St Andrews to make room for Sharpe, to whom he was particularly obnoxious on account of his having the preceding year, by order of the presbytery, faithfully reproved him for his deceitful dealings at court and his proudly grasping after the archbishoprick. Although at an advanced age and in delicate health, the venerable saint was summoned before the council at Edinburgh, and examined as to his steadfastness in the principles he had professed through a long and honourable life: when it was found that he held fast his integrity, he was first sequestered from his parish, and confined successively to Musselburgh, Kirkaldy, and Couston; and then, in his last sickness, forced to send in his presentation to the council, to prevent his being dragged to Edinburgh while labouring under a mortal disease.
Upon the bishops’ arrival, it was deemed necessary to make an example of some of the most steadfast and distinguished Presbyterians in the west, as that part of the country had ever been remarkable for attachment to their profession. The Chancellor was, in consequence, directed to require the attendance of such ministers as he thought fit; and, by the suggestion of the prelates, wrote to Messrs John Carstair, Glasgow; James Nasmyth, Hamilton; Matthew Mowat and James Rowat, Kilmarnock; Alexander Blair, Galston; James Veitch, Mauchline; William Adair and William Fullarton, at St Quivox, as if he had merely wished the assistance of their advice. Upon their arrival, however, in Edinburgh, they were charged with holding disloyal principles, and particularly with some expressions they had used in their sermons. From the charge of disloyalty, they easily vindicated themselves, and desired that the particular passages in the offensive sermons might be pointed out; but these the Chancellor was unable to produce, and they were dismissed from their first interview, with a hint that the easiest way to get rid of further trouble, would be to comply with the king’s pleasure and acknowledge his bishops. When they would not consent to this, they were detained in town till the parliament met. No valid charges, however, being found against them, they were carried before the Lords of the Articles, and commanded, as a test of their loyalty, to subscribe the oath of allegiance.
As they were the first Presbyterian ministers to whom this oath had been tendered, they required a few days to consider—for they deemed it an object of high importance that they should be fully satisfied in their own minds as to their line of duty—lest, on the one hand, they should wound their consciences by the sin of denying the supreme kingship of Christ in his church, or incur the charge of disloyalty by refusing obedience to him whom they considered their rightful sovereign. They therefore set apart some time for solemn prayer to ask of the Lord light and direction. Then, after serious deliberation, they gave in their explication of the oath—which contained a brief but distinct statement of the principles upon which they and all the succeeding consistent Presbyterians refused to subscribe—what continued afterwards always to be pressed upon them under the false and insidious name of the oath of allegiance, while in fact and verity it was an explicit oath of supremacy. “They heartily and cheerfully acknowledged his majesty as the only lawful supreme governor under God within the kingdom, and that his sovereignty reached all persons and all causes, as well ecclesiastic as civil, having them both for its object; albeit it be in its own nature only civil, and extrinsic as to causes ecclesiastical; and, therefore, they utterly renounced all foreign jurisdictions, powers, and authorities, and promised with their utmost power to defend, assist, and maintain his majesty’s jurisdiction aforesaid.” For this explanation six of the ministers—Messrs Adair and Fullarton having through favour been passed over—were committed close prisoners to the public jail, where they were confined for several weeks; and the paper being laid before parliament, it was put to the vote—“whether process them criminally or banish them?”—when it was carried to banish them. Upon a representation to the commissioner by Mr Robert Dougal, that the sentiments of the explication were sound and orthodox, and such as would be approved by the whole reformed churches abroad, the sentence of banishment was changed into deprivation. But their churches were declared vacant, and they were ordained to remove their families and leave the possession of their manses and glebes at Martinmas next, their stipends for the current year were seized, and themselves forbid to reside within the presbyteries where their churches lie, or within the cities of Glasgow or Edinburgh.
Conscientious ministers were not only entrapped by these tyrannical yet pitiful devices, but likewise harassed by the rigorous enforcement of the act for celebrating the king’s birth-day as an “holyday.” A proclamation was issued ordering its observance by the ministers, under pain of deprivation; and numbers were deprived of their year’s stipend for non-observance.[[28]] But such had been the retrograde progress from the sobriety of their former profession, that within little more than one short year, the return of this holyday had become throughout the land the signal of universal riot and drunken uproar, particularly in these towns that had the misfortune to be burghs. On this occasion, Linlithgow signalized itself, not only by its outrageous loyalty, but by its shameless and profane contempt for the bonds their fathers had held so sacred, and they themselves had solemnly sworn to observe. After the farce of church-going which occupied the forenoon, bonfires were kindled in every corner of the streets in the afternoon. The magistrates, accompanied by the Earl of Linlithgow, assembled in the open area before the council-house, around a table covered with comfits, the beautiful gothic fountain all the while spouting from its many mouths French and Spanish wines, when the curate opened the evening service by singing a psalm and repeating what was either a long blessing or a short prayer. The company then tasted the confections and scattered the rest among the crowd. An irreverent pageant closed this part of the performance.
[28]. The same day had already been set apart as a day of thanksgiving for his restoration!
At the cross, an arch was erected upon four pillars, on the one side of which stood the statue of an old hag, having the covenant in her hand, with this superscription—“A glorious Reformation;” on the other, the figure of a Whig, with “the remonstrance in his hand, inscribed “no association with malignants;” while the devil, in the form of an angel of light, surmounted the keystone, having a label issuing from his mouth—“Stand to the cause.” On the pillar, beneath the covenant, were painted rocks, (distaffs,) reels, and repenting-stools. The other, under the remonstrance, was adorned with brechams, (horse collars,) cogs, (wooden dishes,) and spoons. Within the arch, on the right, was drawn “a committee of estates,” with this legend—“Act for delivering up the King.” Opposite was placed “a commission of the kirk,” and, in prominent characters, “Act of the West Kirk.” In the middle of the arch hung a tablet with this litany—
From covenanters, with uplifted hands;
From remonstrators, with associate bands;
From such committees as governed this nation;
From kirk commissions and their protestation;
Good Lord deliver us.
Upon the back of the arch, Rebellion was depicted under the guise of Religion, in a devout attitude, with eyes turned up to heaven, holding Rutherford’s “Lex Rex” in her right hand, and in her left, “The Causes of God’s Wrath.” Around her were scattered acts of parliament, of committees of estates, General Assemblies, and commissions of the kirk, with all their protestations and declarations for the last twenty years; and above was written “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.” At drinking the king’s health, a lighted torch set the fabric in a blaze; and a number of concealed fireworks exploding, the whole was instantly reduced to ashes, whence arose two angels, bearing a tablet with the following lines:—
Great Britain’s monarch on this day was born,
And to his kingdom happily restored—
The queen’s arrived—the mitre now is worn—
Let us rejoice this day is from the Lord.
Fly hence all traitors, who did mar our peace—
Fly hence schismatics, who our church did rent—
Fly covenanting, remonstrating race—
Let us rejoice that God this day hath sent.
The magistrates, with the Earl, then withdrew to the Palace, where a large bonfire was lighted in its noble court; and the king, queen, with other loyal toasts, were drunk; after which the festivities of the semi-sacred carnival were concluded by the magistrates and a number of the inhabitants walking in procession through the town and “saluting every person of account.”
Parliament rose on the 9th of September, and the privy council entered upon the full exercise of their tyrannical powers, which had been acknowledged and vowed to by the obsequious legislature, who thus paved the way for their own lower degradation. By an act of the 10th, the diocesan meetings which had been deferred on account of the lords, archbishops, and bishops being engaged in attending their parliamentary duty, were appointed to be held within all dioceses of the south upon the second Tuesday of October, excepting that of Galloway, which, together with Aberdeen and some in the Highlands, Islands, and the north, were to keep the third Tuesday of the same month, at which all parsons, vicars, (uncouth titles in Presbyterian ears,) and ministers were required to be present, under pain of being considered contemners of his majesty’s authority. Every step taken to thrust Episcopacy forcibly upon an unwilling people, was accompanied by some new act of injustice and oppression to their respected ministers. It was requisite that those of the capital should set an example of obedience; and therefore, unless they also would apostatize and violate their oaths and their consciences by acknowledging the present Episcopacy, and concurring in their discipline, before the 1st of October, they were to be deprived of their office and banished the city—an arbitrary punishment, for which the oppressors had not even the authority of their own iniquitous parliament.
The western brethren being the most refractory, Middleton determined to proceed thither with a quorum of the council to enforce in person the obnoxious decrees. Accordingly, about the latter end of September, accompanied by Earls Morton, Linlithgow, Callender, and Lord Newburgh, with the king’s lifeguard,[[29]] the clerk of the council, and a great retinue of attendants, he set out upon his progress, preceded by macers and military music. Burghs and nobles regaled the party as they passed, evincing their affection for the hierarchy by prodigal hospitality, while their guests, conformably to the manners of the English court, displayed their loyalty by pushing it to the most disgusting and loathsome excess. In districts remarkable for the strict soberness of their manners, scenes of revelry and profane riot were exhibited by the Commissioner and his Episcopalian propaganda that astonished the decent, while it afflicted the pious, portion of the inhabitants. Their streets were disturbed by midnight inebriety; and men who had conscientious scruples about drinking healths at all, heard with sensations approaching to horror, that in some of these debauches the devil himself had had his health drunk! Ecclesiastical matters do not seem to have much disturbed the thoughtless “joyeosity” of this outrageous crew till they came to Glasgow, when Fairfoul entered a grievous complaint to Middleton, that, notwithstanding the acts of parliament and the time that had elapsed, not one of the younger ministers who had entered the church since 1649, had acknowledged him as archbishop—that he had incurred all the hatred attached to his office without obtaining any of the power; and, unless his Grace could devise some method for securing obedience, a bishop would be merely a cipher in the state. Middleton, a rough mercenary, requested the bishop’s directions. The archbishop, like a true son of a temporal priesthood, knew of no better remedy than force. He proposed that all the ministers who had entered since the year 1649, and who would not submit to receive collation and admission from the bishop before the 1st of November, should be peremptorily banished from their houses, parishes, and the bounds of their presbyteries; and he assured the Commissioner that, if this were rigorously enforced, he did not believe there were ten in the whole of his diocese who would choose to lose their stipends.
[29]. The king’s guard was chiefly composed of those who had, during the civil wars, been attached to the royal party, and who had expected mountains of gold at the Restoration; but, as the whole revenues of the kingdom could not have satisfied their claims and their cupidity, and “the merry monarch” and his higher satellites could spare nothing from their own licentious expenses, they, who had been unaccustomed to honest industry, had no other resource left but to enter the army.
A council was summoned, upon his Grace’s representation, to meet in the front hall of Glasgow College; but when the worthies assembled, the whole, except one or perhaps two, were in a high state of excitation, or, as Wodrow phrases it, flustered with drink.[[30]] Sir James Lockhart of Lee, the only sober member present, attempted to reason the matter. He affirmed that, so far from accomplishing its object, such an act would have a diametrically opposite effect—that the young ministers would suffer more than the loss of their stipends before they would acknowledge the bishops, and the inevitable consequences would be desolation in the country and discontent among the people. But reasoning was altogether out of the question. An act according to the archbishop’s wish was agreed to without dispute, although it was not quite so easily drawn up—“whether,” adds the honest historian, “for want of a fresh man to dictate or write, I know not.” It was, however, sufficiently severe; not only did the non-conforming ministers forfeit their current year’s stipend and incur the penalty of banishment, but their parishioners who should repair to their sermons were subjected to the same punishment as the frequenters of private conventicles. Besides this desolating act, the council passed two of a more private nature, incapacitating individuals—Mr Donald Cargill, minister of the barony parish, Glasgow, (with whom we shall frequently meet in the course of the Annals,) and Mr Thomas Wylie, minister at Kirkcudbright. This latter was a distinguished member of a distinguished presbytery, which had not one conformist in their bounds, and was among the very few that presented petitions against their illegal discontinuance, nor desisted from fulfilling their ministerial functions till compelled by force.
[30]. “There was never a man among them,” says Kirkton, “but he was drunk at the time, except only Lee.” Hist. Church of Scot. p. 149.
He early foresaw the approaching blackness that was about to overspread the land, and, anticipating for himself and his people a share in the general calamity, he was earnestly desirous to dispense the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper before the cloud came on. A general seriousness seems also to have pervaded the country side; for, on the Sabbath appointed for its administration, June 8, the number of communicants who offered was so great, that they could not all join in one day, and he intimated that on the Sabbath following, he would again dispense the ordinance, when those who had not participated might come forward. On Monday after sermon, he received a letter informing him that the presbytery had been summoned to Edinburgh for holding their meetings after the council had prohibited them. But he determined to proceed in his work, leaving the consequences to Providence, and he was favoured to conclude the solemnity without farther interruption. On the Monday, however, certain news arriving that a party was to be in the town that night to apprehend him, he withdrew, and next day they searched his house narrowly for him; but the bird for this time had escaped the snare of the fowler. He continued under hiding, till, through the exertions of his wife and the friendship of Lord Kenmure, he was allowed to return to his parish on the 10th of September. Now, without any new accusation, he was included in the same sentence with Donald Cargill, and ordered to be banished beyond the Tay.
England, on the 24th of August preceding, had exhibited the sublime and heart-stirring spectacle of upwards of two thousand of the ablest, most upright, and most devout ministers in the land, surrendering without hesitation their livings rather than violate their consciences by conforming to the restored national church. Yet, with this instance before his eyes, of obedience to God in preference to subjection to men, the Commissioner could not understand how persons with large families would voluntarily throw themselves upon the world, and leave their homes without any certain dwelling-place, rather than submit to a change which the prelates and he had found so easy; but they feared to sin; and now that a century has rolled by, and they and their oppressors rest in the grave together, who would not say that they did not act the wisest part, who preferred a good conscience, and trusted to the faithfulness of him who has promised never to leave, never, never, to forsake his servants, rather than to place their confidence in princes, and their trust in the sons of men? Of what value are the mitres now, for which the prelates in Scotland destroyed their usefulness, and which sat so uneasily for a few troubled years upon their heads? At the time, the case was dreadfully trying. When a man’s temporal interest comes in competition with his profession, then will appear the strength of his religious principle. Nearly four hundred ministers of the church of Scotland stood this severest of all tests. Turned from their houses in the midst of winter, and deprived of their stipends, they went out not knowing whither they went. Never did Scotland witness such a Sabbath as that on which they took leave of their parishioners; and the mourning and lamentation that filled the south and the west, was only equalled by the hatred and detestation excited against those who were the authors of so much sorrow, who, for their own ambitious and worldly schemes, ruptured ties so sacred and so dear as those that had subsisted between the Presbyterian ministers and their affectionate congregations.
It was questioned at the time, and even since, whether the Presbyterian ministers did not act improperly in all at once throwing up their charges? That they acted scripturally, is plain. They continued to exercise their calling as long as they could. When illegally forbid, they continued to preach, acting upon the apostolic precept of obeying God rather than man; but when a tyrannical power, under the form of parliamentary or council enactments, was ready to use force in ejecting them, then, as ministers of the gospel, they had no other resource left than to shake off the dust off their feet and go to another city—they bore testimony against their persecutors and retired. Following the advice of James v. 10., they took the prophets, who had spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering and of patience.
That they acted, even in a political view, in the very best manner that their circumstances admitted, is, I think, demonstrable. They showed to the people that it was not the fleece but the flock that had been the object of their care, and imprinted upon their minds a sense of the worth of the truth for which they were contending, beyond what they could have done in any other manner; and that truth was one written as with a sunbeam throughout the whole New Testament—that Christ is the king and head of his church, and that whatever form of church government does not acknowledge this, is essentially antichristian. It is not less evident, that the prelatists, as well as the papists, gave that dignity and power to another; and the solemn and universal testimony which so many godly men lifted up at once against acknowledging such unholy usurpation, has not lost its effect even unto this day—an effect it never could have had, had the ministers resisted and allowed themselves to have been thrust out one by one.
From Glasgow, Middleton and his Episcopalian reformadoes pursued their route, confirming their churches in the south, through Galloway as far as Wigton; and, upon the last day of October, returned to Holyrood-house.
On his arrival, the Commissioner was assailed by what was to him unexpected intelligence, that the whole south and west were thrown into confusion; and, enraged to find that both the archbishop and himself had so entirely miscalculated, he expressed his astonishment at the unaccountable conduct of the “madmen” with a volley of oaths and execrations—the now fashionable dialect of the court—and, on the first meeting of council, caused letters be sent off express to his lordship and the primate, requesting their presence and advice. Meanwhile, they proceeded in the usual course of endeavouring to intimidate the humbler refractory by their rigour to the more eminent. Mr Hugh M’Kail, chaplain to Sir James Stewart of Kirkfield, a youth of high promise, was forced into voluntary exile because he had defended in a sermon what he considered the scriptural mode of church government. Mr John Brown of Wamphrey, well known by his historical, controversial, and practical writings, not less respected for his piety than for his learning, having reproved some ministers for attending the Archbishop of Glasgow’s diocesan synod, styling them perjured, was banished to Holland—at that time the asylum of the persecuted; there he remained for many years, and, by his seasonable publications, strengthened the hands of the sufferers in his native land, and proved a thorn in the side of their tyrannical government.
Mr John Livingston, more honoured of God as the means of converting sinners to Christ than almost any minister of the church of Scotland since the Reformation, then minister at Ancrum, because he would not promise to observe the 29th of May as an holyday, nor take the oath of allegiance without any explanation, was subjected to a like punishment, as were Messrs Robert Traill of Edinburgh, Neave of Newmills, and Gardner of Saddle. Mr Livingston, in the true spirit of a Christian patriot, after sentence was pronounced, thus replied—“Well! although it be not permitted me to breathe my native air, yet into whatsoever part of the world I may go, I shall not cease to pray for a blessing to these lands, to his majesty, the government, and the inferior magistrates thereof; but especially for the land of my nativity!” In the same excellent spirit, having been denied the privilege of paying a farewell visit to his wife, children, and people, he addressed a pastoral letter to the flock of Jesus Christ in Ancrum. Their sins and his own, he told them, had drawn down this severe stroke; and, while it was their part to search out and mourn for them, “it is not needful,” he adds, “to look much to instruments, I have from my heart forgiven them all, and would wish you to do the like, and pray for them that it be not laid to their charge. For my part, I bless his name I have great peace in the matter of my sufferings. I need not repeat, you know my testimony of the things in controversy:—Jesus Christ is a king, and only hath power to appoint the officers and government of his house. It is a fearful thing to violate the oath of God, and fall into the hands of the living God. It could not well be expected,” he proceeds to remark, and the remark is applicable in all similar cases when religion has been in repute among a people—“there having been so fair and so general a profession throughout the land, but that the Lord would put men to it; and it is like it shall come to every man’s door, that, when every one according to their inclination, may have acted their part—and he seems to stand by—He may come at last and act his part, and vindicate his glory and truth. I have often showed you that it is the greatest difficulty under heaven to believe that there is a God and a life after this; and have often told you that, for my part, I could never make it a chief part of my work to insist upon the particular debates of the time, as being assured that if a man drink in the knowledge and the main foundations of the Christian religion, and have the work of God’s spirit in his heart to make him walk with God, and make conscience of his ways, such an one shall not readily mistake Christ’s quarrel, to join either with a profane atheist party or a fanatic party. There may be diversity of judgment, and sometimes sharp debates among them that are going to heaven; but, certainly, a spirit guides the seed of the woman, and another spirit the seed of the serpent.”
Several of lesser note were treated with not much less harshness, being ordered to confinement in distant places of the country, without the means of subsistence, and debarred from preaching in the rugged and barren districts to which they were banished.
Such, however, was the outcry the wide desolation of the church had occasioned, that the council were convinced they had acted with unwise precipitation, and endeavoured in some measure to retrace their steps. The author of the mischief, Fairfoul, though repeatedly called upon, does not appear to have assisted their deliberations, which were protracted, till the month of December, when a proclamation was issued, extending the time allowed ministers for procuring presentations and collocation to the 1st of February, but ordering those who neglected to do so to remove from their parishes and presbyteries; and such of them as belonged to the dioceses of St Andrews and Edinburgh, to go into banishment beyond the Tay. The older ministers, who had not been touched by the Glasgow act, and had hitherto remained exercising their parochial duties among their people, because they had not attended the diocesan meetings, were confined to their parishes. The people who left the hirelings intruded upon them, travelling sometimes twenty miles to hear the gospel, were now ordered to attend their parish churches, under a penalty of twenty shillings for every day’s absence; and because in those places where the ministers, in view of separation from their flocks, had celebrated the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to multitudes assembled from the surrounding districts—and much of the divine presence had appeared among them—these were stigmatized as unlicentiate confluences of the people; and the discourses delivered under such circumstances, with more than ordinary fervour, and accompanied with more than ordinary power, abused as the extravagant sermons of some ministers of unquiet and factious spirits—special engines to debauch people from their duty, and lead them to disobedience, schism, and rebellion: therefore every incumbent was prohibited from employing more than one or two of his neighbours at a communion without a license from the bishop, or admitting the people of any other parish to participate of the sacrament without a certificate from his curate.
This was the last of Middleton’s acts in Scotland. His rival, Lauderdale, had so well employed the access he had to the king to undermine his influence, that he was called to court to answer charges of having encroached upon the royal prerogative by the balloting act, and defrauded the royal treasury by appropriating the fines. While the affair was under discussion, Lauderdale procured an order to delay levying the fines due the first term and dismiss the collector. Middleton, who saw that this was a deadly blow at his interest in Scotland, countermanded the royal letter upon alleged verbal authority, which Charles either never gave, or found it convenient to disown; and this completed his ruin. His rashness and inconsideration were too palpable to be denied; but, by the interest of his friends, Clarendon and the Bishop of London, his fall was softened, and he was sent into a kind of honourable banishment as governor of Tangiers. There he continued to indulge his habits of intemperance, and, falling down a stair in a fit of intoxication, broke his right arm so severely, that the bone protruded through the flesh, and, penetrating his side, a mortification ensued, which terminated his life.
Middleton, who never appears to have had any serious religion, was the friend of Lord Clarendon—a statesman bigoted to Episcopacy, rather on account of its political than its spiritual advantages—and employed by him for rearing in Scotland, upon the ruins of Presbytery, which he detested, an establishment more in accordance with those high notions of the prerogative which, notwithstanding the melancholy example of the first Charles, were adopted and cherished by the court of his son. Well calculated for carrying through the most despotic measures by force, he must be acquitted of the mean duplicity of Charles’s letter to the ministers of Edinburgh, the obloquy of which rests upon the crafty politics of Sharpe. When first shown it, he considered it as opposed to Episcopacy, and expressed his regret; but when told that, upon rescinding all the laws in favour of Presbytery, then Episcopacy remained the church government settled by law, he observed, “that might be done; but for his part he was not fond of making his majesty’s first appearance in Scotland to be in the character of a cheat.” Once, however, fairly embarked, he never hesitated, and concurred with the bishops in their every project, however treacherous or oppressive. He first overturned the Presbyterian church government, which had been settled under as solemn sanctions, and as strong legal guarantees, as can ever possibly be devised to secure any religious establishment, and then sent to the scaffold, from motives of avarice and revenge, the noblest ornaments of that religion, whose only crime was, adhering to a profession he himself had, with uplifted hand, sworn to support.
In council, he unwarrantably extended the tyrannical acts of his servile parliament, and wantonly laid waste hundreds of peaceable and flourishing congregations. With a cunning worthy the priesthood of Rome, he invited numbers of unsuspecting ministers from distant parts of the country to Edinburgh, as if to consult them on the affairs of the church, then ensnared them by insidious questions, and punished their unsuspecting simplicity with deprivation, imprisonment, and exile. Without any shadow of law, and without the form of a trial, he turned ministers from their congregations—prohibited them from preaching, praying, or expounding the Scriptures, and sent them to the most distant corners of the land, or forced them to seek an asylum in foreign countries—then intruded on the desolated parishes worthless and incapable hirelings—and concluded his career by commanding the people to attend upon their ministrations under a severe and oppressive penalty. His own expatriation to the barren coast of Africa was looked upon by the sufferers as a righteous retribution, and his melancholy end as an evident mark of divine displeasure; nor could the coincidence between his own rash imprecation and the manner of his death fail to strike the most careless. Like many other political hypocrites, with a zeal as furious as false, he had sworn and subscribed the covenants when it was the fashion of the time to do so; and, on retiring from the place where he had taken these vows upon him, he said to some of those who were with him, “that that was the pleasantest day he had ever seen; and if ever he should do any thing against that blessed work, he had been engaging in,” holding up his right arm, “he wished that it might be his death!” The enormous fines he imposed, he never was empowered to exact; and, in return for impoverishing his country, he died an exile and a beggar.
Lauderdale having succeeded in removing his formidable antagonist, from thenceforth for a number of years almost solely directed Scottish affairs. The Presbyterians, who believed that he was secretly attached to their cause, anticipated better days under his protection; but ambition was his master-passion, and to it he was prepared to sacrifice all his early attachments and principles. While religion appeared the only road to power in the state, he had been foremost in the ranks of the covenanters; and, by the warmth of his professions, and the consistency of his conduct, had gained the confidence of those who were sincerely devoted to the cause; but when the path of preferment on Charles’s restoration struck off in an opposite direction, he deserted to the prelates, and evinced the sincerity of his change by at once forsaking his sobriety of manners, and apostatizing from his form of religion; and, as he understood well the principles he betrayed, and at one time certainly had strong convictions of their truth, his opposition was proportionably inveterate, and he became outrageously furious at whatever tended to remind him of his former “fanaticism.”
BOOK IV.
DECEMBER, A.D. 1662-1664.
State of the West and South—Bishops—Curates—Their reception—Tumult at Irongray—Commission sent to Kirkcudbright and Dumfries—Field-preaching—Rothes and Lauderdale arrive in Scotland—Parliament—Warriston’s arrest and execution—Principal Wood of St Andrews and other ministers silenced and scattered—Troops ordered to enforce the Acts of Parliament—Their outrages—Sir James Turner—High Commission Court—Its atrocities—Privy Council—Its exactions—Prohibits private prayer-meetings or contributing money for the relief of the sufferers—William Guthrie of Fenwick laid aside—Donaldson of Dalgetty’s case—Death of Glencairn—Political changes.
While these struggles were going forward at court, the affairs of Scotland were in a state of the most woful confusion. Almost the whole parishes in the west and south had been deprived of their ministers; and as their own churches remained vacant, the people in crowds flocked to those where the few old Presbyterian ministers were yet allowed to officiate. These assemblies having been denounced by the council’s proclamation, attracted the attention of the soldiers; and numerous parties patrolled the country to disturb the meetings and levy the fines to which offenders were liable.
When the vacant charges came to be filled, (1663,) new sources of disturbance arose. No preparation had been made for such an exigence as bad now arisen. The regular candidates for the ministry were too few; and of these but a small proportion were willing to pursue their studies under the direction of the bishops, or accept of Episcopal ordination. The north was therefore ransacked, and a great number of ignorant, uneducated young men, not more deficient in talents and acquirements than in decent common moral conduct,[[31]] were hastily brought forward to supply the places of the ejected ministers, who in general were both pious, learned, and of respectable abilities; many of them eminently so, and all laborious in the discharge of their duties, exemplary in their lives, and dear to their people. These presentees, who were contemptuously styled by the people “bishops’ curates,” when intruded upon them without any regard to their wishes or choice, were received in many places with the most determined opposition; in some, they were compelled to retire; and, in others, obliged to enter by the windows, the doors being built up; and thus literally to display the scriptural characteristic of spiritual thieves and robbers. The Presbyterian ministers had uniformly classed prelacy and popery together; and, at the settlement of the new clergy, the prelates justified the charge by employing the military to enforce their ecclesiastical appointments, and ordaining their parsons at the point of the sword. The patrons, in most cases, had allowed their rights to devolve upon the bishops; and thus the whole undivided obloquy rested on their consecrated heads, which was not lessened when some of the careless or profane heritors, to ingratiate themselves with the rulers, feasted the clergy at their settlements, and, aping the loyalty of their superiors, conducted their entertainments with an equally jovial disregard of decency and temperance.
[31]. Bishop Burnet, himself an Episcopalian, thus characterizes them:—“They were the worst preachers I ever heard. They were ignorant to a reproach; and many of them were openly vicious. They were a disgrace to their order and the sacred function, and were indeed the dregs and refuse of the northern parts. Those of them who were above contempt or scandal, were men of such violent tempers, that they were as much hated as the others were despised.”
But there was also an opposition of a more solemn and impressive nature offered by the serious part of the people in different parishes, who received the intruders when they came among them with tears, and entreated them earnestly to be gone, nor ruin the poor congregations and their own souls. Neither of these methods, however, had any effect; the thoughtless wretches entered upon that awful charge—the care of souls—as if they had been taking forcible possession of an heritable estate to which they had a legal right.[[32]]
[32]. The following appears to have been the clerical mode of infeftment:—At the admission of Mr John Ramsay to the parish of Sconie, in Fife, “Mr Jossia Meldrum, minister of Kingorne, after sermon ended, he tooke his promise to be faithfull in his charge of that flock: and ther was delivered to him the bibell, the keys of the church doore, and the bell-tou.” Lamont’s Diary, p. 192.
As the south had been favoured with remarkably faithful pastors, the strongest resistance appeared there. Irongray was the first settlement where open “tumultuating” took place. The curate not being able to obtain peaceable admission, returned with a party of soldiers to force an entrance, when a band of women, led on by a Margaret Smith, attacked the guard with stones, and triumphantly beat them off the field. Margaret, the fair heroine, was brought to Edinburgh, and sentenced to slavery in Barbadoes; but she “told her tale so innocently,” that the managers, not yet steeled to compassion, permitted her to return home. The parish was not, however, allowed to escape with impunity. Upon hearing of this disturbance, and a similar one at Kirkcudbright, the privy council, as if the country had been in an actual state of rebellion, appointed the Earls of Linlithgow, Galloway, and Annandale, with Lord Drumlanrig and Sir John Wauchope of Niddry, to proceed on a commission of inquiry to that district, attended by an hundred horse and two hundred foot of the king’s guard, with power to suppress all meetings or insurrections of the people, if any should happen.
At Kirkcudbright, the commission held several diets, and examined a number of witnesses. Of about thirty-two women whom they apprehended, five were sent to Edinburgh; and Bessie Laurie, with thirteen others, were bound over to keep the peace. Lord Kirkcudbright—who had declared if the minister came there he should come over his body, and that he would lose his fortune before he should be preacher there; but at the same time admitted, that, if the minister had come in by his presentation, he could have raised as many men as would have prevented a tumult—was transmitted under a guard to Edinburgh. James Carson of Fenwick, the late provost, although not in power, and John Ewart, who had refused to accept the office, because they had declined interfering upon the occasion, were also sent prisoners to the capital, where they were kept in confinement several months;[[33]] besides, in addition, being severely fined. The five women were sentenced to stand at the cross of Kirkcudbright two hours on two market days, with labels on their foreheads denoting their crimes, and thereafter to find bail to keep the peace. New magistrates were appointed for the burgh, who, on accepting the nomination, signed a bond in their own name and that of the haill inhabitants of the place, binding and obliging them, and ilk one of them, during their public trust, and all the inhabitants, to behave themselves loyally, and in all things conform to his majesty’s laws, made and to be made, both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs! and besides, to protect the Lord Bishop of Galloway, the minister of the burgh, and any other ministers that were or should be established by authority.
[33]. The following singular order was issued by the council on this occasion; and it deserves to be noted, that it was issued the very first meeting after the archbishops had taken their seats as members:—“June 23d. The lords of council being informed that ministers and other persons visit the prisoners for the riot at Kirkcudbright, now in the tolbooth of Edinburgh, and not only exhort but pray for the said persons to persist in their wicked practices, affirming that they are suffering for righteousness’ sake, and assure them that God will give them an outgate—recommend it to the keeper to notice who visits them, and what their discourse and carnage is when with them.” Wodrow, vol. i. p. 188.
At Dumfries, the commission also examined witnesses, but the mighty insurrection dwindled into a “great convocation and tumult of women;” yet the whole party, horse and foot, were quartered upon the parish, and a bonus levied for remunerating the clerks. The whole heritors were likewise compelled to sign a bond of passive obedience to laws known and unknown, in terms similar to that of the magistrates of Kirkcudbright.[[34]]
[34]. The council ordered to be advanced for this expedition, the sum of £500 to the soldiers as part of their pay, £120 to the Earl of Linlithgow, and £50 to the Laird of Niddry for their expenses; so that probably these petty squabbles would cost the two parishes not much under one thousand pounds sterling, equivalent to nearly five in later times.
Instead of reconciling the people, or terrifying them back to the churches, these severities exasperated them; nor was it to be expected that they would willingly attend the ministrations of men, whose preaching they despised, and who were thus ushered in. Outrageous expressions of dislike were not, however, approved of by the godly and judicious Presbyterians, they mourned in private over the desolation of the church, and sought, by attending the family exercises of the younger ministers who were “outted,”[[35]] but sojourned among them, to receive that instruction, and enjoy that social worship, of which they were so tyrannically deprived! Sometimes the numbers who assembled to enjoy this privilege were so great, that a house could not contain them, and the minister was constrained to officiate without doors; till at length they increased so much that they were under the necessity of betaking themselves to the open fields; and, like him whose servants they were, beneath the wide canopy of heaven, preached the gospel of the kingdom to multitudes upon the mountain’s side. Mr John Welsh and Mr Gabriel Semple began the practice of field-preaching, which quickly increased, and, to the great alarm of the bishops, had pervaded almost every quarter of the country, when the political arrangements being completed, Rothes arrived as commissioner to open the parliament.
[35]. “Outted,” turned out of their churches.
Lauderdale accompanied the Earl to Scotland, professedly to inquire into the origin of that conspiracy against his majesty’s royal prerogative—the balloting act;—in reality to secure his own ascendancy in Scotland, and, by pushing to the utmost the advantage he had gained over the Middleton faction, to prevent any attempt being made against him from that quarter for the future. The Chancellor made some feeble show of opposition, but the universal spirit of submission to the will of the crown which pervaded the higher classes, and their selfish eagerness to obtain a share in the spoils of their unhappy country, not only blighted every appearance of patriotism, but precluded every plan of association among the aristocracy themselves for maintaining their own rank and station independent of the minions of the court. The Presbyterians who rejoiced in Middleton’s fall, soon found that they had gained very little by the change. At the first diet of council, (June 15, 1663,) the two archbishops were admitted, with Mr Charles Maitland, Lord Hatton, Lauderdale’s brother; but Crawford having refused the declaration, was deprived of the treasurership, and Rothes, the commissioner, that same day was appointed to succeed him in the office.
On the 18th, parliament met, and, by an alteration in the method of appointing the Lords of the Articles—allowing the spiritual lords first to name eight temporal lords, then the temporal lords to choose eight spiritual; and these sixteen, or such of them as were present, to elect the representatives of the barons and burghs—they virtually gave up the privilege of nominating this important committee, to the servants of the crown, and surrendered the last check they had upon the prerogative. The tyranny of the council was next legalized, and a practice introduced which continued till the Revolution:—the most oppressive acts of the former sessions, together with the acts of council, enlarging and explaining their vindictive clauses, were approved of by a retrospective declaratory enactment; and every mode of persecution which had been adopted upon trial since last session, was incorporated into the statute law of the kingdom. Thus an act against separation and disobedience of ecclesiastical authority—introduced early in the session—besides recapitulating all the penalties to which the non-conforming ministers had been previously subjected, ordained those who still dared to preach in contempt of law, or did not attend the diocesan meetings, to be punished as seditious persons, and despisers of the royal authority. Absence from church on Sundays—a finable offence—was now denounced as sedition; and whoever wilfully should withdraw from the ministrations of the parish priest, however incapable he might be, were, if noblemen, gentlemen, or heritors, to lose the fourth part of their yearly income—if yeomen, tenants, or farmers, such proportion of their moveables, after payment of their rents, as the council should think fit, not exceeding a fourth part—but if a burgess, his freedom, along with the fourth of his moveables, and, in addition, the council was authorized to inflict such corporeal punishment as they should see proper. The declaration was ordered by another act to be taken by all who exercised any public trust; and persons chosen to be councillors or magistrates of burghs, if they declined to subscribe, were declared for ever incapable of holding any office, or exercising any occupation, trade, or merchandise. To complete the organization of the hierarchy, an act was passed for the establishment and constitution of a National Synod, bearing the same resemblance to the estates of Scotland that the Houses of Convocation did to the English parliament: both emanated from his majesty’s supremacy, and consisted of the bishops and their satellites, only the Scottish assembly was to meet in one place, and was even more servilely abject than their elder Episcopalian sister, and could not be constituted without the presence of the king or his commissioner. The balloting act was, after long investigation, rescinded with every mark of detestation, the parliament declaring they had never consented to any such thing! and, that it might not appear in judgment against them, was ordered to be erased from their minutes. Sensible that the measures now pursued in Scotland must necessarily lead to insurrection, and that a military force would be requisite to carry them into effect, Lauderdale procured from this servile crew the offer of an army of twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse, to be raised for his majesty’s service when required, under the ridiculous pretence of preserving Christendom against the Turks!! This number never was demanded; and it was alleged that the secretary had carried the measure to ingratiate himself with the king, and to show him what assistance he might derive from Scotland in any attempt to destroy the liberties of England. From the beginning, the Scots had been harassed by the king’s guard, but from this date the troopers were more unsparingly employed to enforce clerical obedience, while the act hung in terrorem over the hands of the dissatisfied Presbyterians, and afterwards became the foundation of the militia.
Arrest of Lord Warriston anno 1662.
Vide page [103]
Edinr. Hugh Paton, Carver & Gilder to the Queen, 1842
Middleton’s first session set in blood; Rothes closed under as deep a stain. Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston, had been forfeited and condemned by parliament when Argyle and Guthrie were arraigned, but escaping to the Continent, had remained concealed in Holland and Germany, chiefly at Hamburgh, till most unadvisedly, in the latter end of 1662, he ventured to France. Notice of this having been carried to London, the king, who bore him a personal hatred for his free admonitions when in Scotland,[[36]] sent over secretly a confidential spy, known by the name of “Crooked Murray,” to trace him out and bring him to Britain. By watching Lady Warriston, Murray soon discovered her lord’s retreat at Rouen in Normandy, and had him seized while engaged in the act of secret prayer. He then applied to the magistrates, and, showing them the king’s commission, desired that they would allow him to carry his victim a prisoner to England. The magistrates, uncertain how to act, committed Warriston to close custody, and sent to the French king for instructions. When the question was debated in council, the greater part were for respecting the rights of hospitality, and not giving up his lordship till some better reasons were shown than had yet been given; but Louis, who was extremely desirous to oblige Charles, and sympathized cordially in his antipathies against the Protestant religion and liberty, ordered him to be delivered to the messenger, who carried him to London and lodged him in the tower in the month of January 1663. While the parliament was sitting in June, he was sent to Scotland with a letter from the king, ordering him “to be proceeded against according to law and justice,” and landed at Leith on the 8th, whence, next day, he was brought bareheaded to the tolbooth of Edinburgh. Neither his wife, children, nor any other friend, were permitted to see him, except in presence of the keeper or guard, and that only for an hour, or at farthest two at a time, betwixt eight o’clock in the morning and eight at night. Here he was detained till July 8th, when, no more trial being deemed necessary, he was brought before parliament to receive judgment. His appearance on this occasion was humiliating to the pride of human genius, debilitated through excessive blood-letting and the deleterious drugs that had been administered to him by his physicians,[[37]] the faculties of his soul partook of the imbecility of his body, and, on the spot where his eloquence had in former days commanded breathless attention, he could scarcely now utter one coherent sentence. The prelates basely derided his mental aberrations, but many of the other members compassionated the intellectual ruin of one who had shone among the foremost in the brightest days of Scotland’s parliamentary annals. When the question was put, whether the time of his execution should be then fixed or delayed? a majority seemed inclined to spare his life, which Lauderdale observing, rose, and, contrary to all usage or propriety, in a furious speech, insisted upon the sentence being carried into immediate effect; the submissive legislators acquiesced, and he was doomed to be hanged at the cross of Edinburgh on the 22d of the same month, and his head fixed upon the Nether Bow Port, beside Mr Guthrie’s.
[36]. “The real cause of his (Warriston’s) death, was not his activity in public business, but our king’s personal hatred, because when the king was in Scotland he thought it his duty to admonish him because of his very wicked, debauched life, not only in whoredom and adultery, but he violently forced a young gentle-woman of quality. This the king could never forgive, and told the Earle of Bristol so much when he was speaking for Warriston.” Kirkton’s Hist. of the Church of Scot. p. 173.
[37]. “Through excessive blood-letting and other detestable means used by his wicked physician, Doctor Bates, who they say was hired either to poison or distract him, and partly through melancholy, he had in a manner wholly lost his memory.” Kirkton’s Hist. p. 170. Mr C. K. Sharpe, the editor, thinks his mental imbecility was occasioned in some measure by fear, and quotes a passage from one of Lord Middleton’s letters to Primrose. “He pretends to have lost his memory,” &c. “He is the most timorous person ever I did see in my life,” &c. Note. But it was not to be expected that Middleton would allude in the most distant manner to any thing that could be supposed to countenance in the least the then general belief.
Mr James Kirkton, author of the “History of the Church of Scotland,” who visited him, says—“I spake with him in prison, and though he was sometimes under great heaviness, yet he told me he could never doubt his own salvation, he had so often seen God’s face in the house of prayer.” As he approached his end, he grew more composed; and, on the night previous to his execution, having been favoured with a few hours’ profound and refreshing sleep, he awoke in the full possession of his vigorous powers, his memory returned, and he experienced in an extraordinary degree the strong consolations of the gospel, expressing his assurance of being clothed with a white robe, and having a new song of praise put into his lips, even salvation to our God, which sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb!
Before noon, he dined with great cheerfulness, hoping to sup in heaven, and drink of the blood of the vine fresh and new in his father’s kingdom. After spending some time in secret prayer, he left the prison about two o’clock, attended by his friends in mourning, full of holy confidence and courage, but perfectly composed and serene. As he proceeded to the cross, where a high gibbet was erected, he repeatedly requested the prayers of the people; and there being some disturbance on the street when he ascended the scaffold, he said with great composure—“I entreat you, quiet yourselves a little, till this dying man deliver his last words among you,” and requested them not to be offended that he used a paper to refresh his memory, being so much wasted by long sickness and the malice of physicians. He then read audibly, first from the one side and then from the other, a short speech that he had hurriedly written—what he had composed at length and intended for his testimony having been taken from him. It commenced with a general confession of his sins and shortcomings in prosecuting the best pieces of work and service to the Lord and to his generation, and that through temptation he had been carried to so great a length, in compliance with the late usurpers, after having so seriously and frequently made professions of aversion to their way; “for all which,” he added, “as I seek God’s mercy in Christ Jesus, so I desire that the Lord’s people may, from my example, be the more stirred up to watch and pray that they enter not into temptation.”
He then bare record to the glory of God’s free grace and of his reconciled mercy through Christ Jesus—left “an honest testimony to the whole covenanted work of reformation”—and expressed his lively expectation of God’s gracious and wonderful renewing and reviving all his former great interests in these nations, particularly Scotland—yea, dear Scotland! He recommended his poor afflicted wife and children to the choicest blessings of God and the prayers and favours of his servants—prayed for repentance and forgiveness to his enemies—for the king, and blessings upon him and his posterity, that they might be surrounded with good and faithful councillors, and follow holy and wise councils to the glory of God and the welfare of the people. He concluded by committing himself, soul and body, his relations, friends, the sympathizing and suffering witnesses of the Lord, to his choice mercies and service in earth and heaven, in time and through eternity:—“All which suits, with all others which he hath at any time by his spirit moved and assisted me to make, and put up according to his will, I leave before the throne, and upon the Father’s merciful bowels, the Son’s mediating merits, and the Holy Spirit’s compassionating groans, for now and for ever!”