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.

Prelacy, now fenced round with all the forms of law, and supported by all the civil and military authorities, wanted only the concurrence of the people to have become the permanent, as it was the predominant, religion of Scotland; and so fickle is the multitude—so little does real principle take hold on the minds of the mob of mankind—that a little moderation in the use of their power, by the prelates, seemed only wanting to have induced the bulk of the congregations to return to their parish churches, and to have sat down quietly under the ministrations of the curates and the form of Episcopacy. A contemporary Presbyterian writer says—“Truly, at this time the curates’ auditories were reasonably throng: the body of the people, in most places of Scotland, waited upon their preachings; and if they would have been content with what they had, in the opinion of many, they might have stood longer than they did; but their pride vowed they would be more glorious and better followed thanthe Presbyterians, and because respect would not do it, force should.”[45]

45.Kirkton, p. 221.

Much and justly as the king and courtiers have been blamed for the perfidious manner in which Episcopacy was re-introduced into Scotland, and for the establishment of despotism upon the ruins of a free constitution, solemnly approved and sanctioned both by his present majesty and his “martyred” father; yet in this year, at least at the commencement, softened perhaps by the state of the nations, they showed no disposition to proceed to extremities had they not been pushed on by the prelates.

Charles, by his mean subservience to France, had plunged the country into a ruinous war with Holland—an awful pestilence had almost desolated the city of London—while an unusually severe winter had interrupted all rural labour, till March threatened to add famine to the list of plagues. These judgments, calculated to solemnize the mind, and give weight to public instruction, were improved by the non-conforming ministers to rouse the attention of their hearers to their own sins and the sins of the people among whom they dwelt; and the general open apostacy from God which had accompanied the general defection from the national religion, was too palpable to avoid being noticed in the catalogue of crimes that had drawn down divine vengeance. These national visitations were, in some degree, subservient to the preservation of the Presbyterian cause, by impressing the guilt of apostacy more deeply on the minds of the serious, and even recalling the attention of the careless, while the public calamities and disgrace occupied the attention of the king and English government, and perhaps softening their rancour for the time, rendered them less anxious about pursuing their labours of religious persecution.

Although, however, government did not actively interfere to urge on the prosecution of ministers or frequenters of conventicles, the curates and their assistants, the troopers, continued their exertions; and Sir James Turner opened another campaign in the south and west, scouring the country and besieging the churcheswith a success and renown not unworthy his former fame. But his commission this year was extended; for, dreading the desperation to which the insulted peasantry might be driven, orders were issued for disarming the south and west, under pretence that the fanatics had an intention of joining the Dutch! As these districts had been always the most zealous in the cause of the covenants, so they were likewise the best supplied with arms,[46]and were, in an especial manner, the objects of the prelates’ aversion and dread. When they had got them deprived of arms, therefore, the next step was to deprive them of leaders; and this was effected by an arbitrary order from the Commissioner, to arrest the principal gentlemen in the country who were known to be unfriendly to Episcopacy, and, without accusation or trial, to confine them prisoners in the Castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton. Among the gentlemen thus summarily proceeded with, were Major-General Robert Montgomerie, brother to the Earl of Eglinton; Sir William Cunningham of Cunninghamhead; Sir George Maxwell of Nether Pollock; Sir Hugh Campbell of Cesnock; Sir William Muir of Rowallan; Major-General Holborne; Sir George Munro; Colonel Robert Halket; Sir James Stuart, late provost of Edinburgh; Sir John Chiesly of Carswell; and Dunlop of Dunlop, &c. Yet arbitrary though these proceedings were, perhaps, upon the whole, they may be deemed providential, as, had any insurrection taken place while their leaders were at liberty and the people armed, the struggle might have been protracted—much bloodshed ensued—and the final result been far less propitious to the country and cause of religious liberty.

46.The Scottish peasantry had always been accustomed to keep arms, and when summoned to serve in the militia, each provided his own; so that, besides the indignity of being deprived of their weapons, the taking them away without compensation was an act of robbery.

A proclamation for levying the fines imposed by Middleton was immediately planned, with such modifications as evidently showed that not any disloyalty in the parties, but their sincere, tried attachment to the free constitution of their country in church and state, and their conscientious adherence to the religion in whichthey had been educated, were the delinquencies it was intended to punish. The term of payment for the first half was enlarged to such as had not already paid it, till the first of December; and the second moiety was to be remitted to all who, upon paying the first, should take the oath of allegiance and subscribe the declaration in the express words of the act of parliament—conditions which no true Presbyterian could comply with, and which therefore drew a distinctive line between those who disregarded, and those who feared, an oath; exposing the latter to all the penalties of the various enactments with the expenses of collecting them—a new and no trifling addition to the principal, and which was also intrusted to the military to exact.

Unnecessarily multiplying oaths is a deep species of criminality, of which the rulers of lands called Christian take little account, although nothing tends more to demoralize a people. The prelatic rulers of Scotland seemed to delight in it, and this year introduced a most pernicious practice, afterwards improved upon, of forcing students to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy before they could obtain an university degree; and thus initiated them into the habit of taking oaths, about the propriety of which some of the wisest and best men in the land were divided, and concerning which they could not be supposed to be very accurately informed.

Towards the end of this year, the privy council resumed its cruel activity; and the primate being president, the High Commission was allowed quietly to demit, while its spirit was effectually transfused into the other. December 7th, an act was issued extending the severities of all former acts against Presbyterian ministers, to those who had been settled before 1649, who had relinquished their ministry or had been deposed; and all heritors were forbid to give them any countenance in their preaching or any part of their ministerial office. But, as the general opinion of the more moderate among the politicians was, that the change in the form of religion had been too sudden, that it ought to have been more gradual, to meet the prejudices of the older ministers, whose only crimes consisted in absenting themselves from the church courts—this act was accompanied by another, establishinga new kind of presbyteries, under the name of “meetings for exercise,” which was intended to leave without excuse the adherents of the abrogated system, as men who chose to differ from the present establishment from motives of sedition, and who refusing the substance because it was enacted by the king, would fight for a shadow from mere humour. This species of mock-presbyteries was specially declared to emanate from the royal supremacy, and was to consist of such of the curates as the bishops should judge qualified, who were to convene for exercise and assist in discipline as they should direct them; but the whole power of ecclesiastical censure, except parochial rebukes, was reserved to the bishop, who alone could suspend, deprive, or excommunicate. A kind of caricature session was at the same time brought forward, which was afterwards turned into an instrument of persecution—the established ministers were empowered to make choice of proper persons to assist them in the exercise of discipline, who, if they refused to obey his summons, were to be reported to the bishop; and if they continued obstinate, given up to the secular arm to be prosecuted as the heinousness of the case might require.

The usual strain of the curates’ pulpit services consisted of a quarter or half-hour’s harangue upon those moral duties their lives set at defiance, or in abusing or distorting doctrines they did not understand. Such of the people, therefore, as had the least relish for gospel truth, and who preferred the faithful sermons and earnest manner of their late pastors, to the insipid discourses listlessly read by the present incumbents, continued to follow after the private meetings and public ministrations of the former. The council, in consequence, determined that all such seditious practices should be put down, and, in a virulent proclamation of the same date, strictly charged and commanded all public officers to disperse every meeting assembled under the pretence of the exercise of religion, of whatever number they might consist, except such as were allowed by authority, stigmatizing them as the ordinary seminaries of separation and rendezvouses of rebellion, and subjecting every person who should be present at or give the smallest countenance to them, to the highest pains inflicted by law upon seditious persons.

Enormous as the oppression and injustice which desolated the south and west of Scotland had been, the people had remained quiet. They had seen their civil and religious liberties swept away, the ministers they loved scattered, and hirelings they detested settled in their stead. They had groaned beneath the yoke of tyrannous enactments, the insolence of lordly prelacy, and the licentiousness of military exaction, and yet had abstained from any acts of rebellion. But their patient endurance only encouraged the perpetration of new mischief, and their unexampled loyalty was abused as the occasion of fresh aggression. For, notwithstanding all that has been said about the disloyalty, faction, and refractory spirit of the Scottish covenanters, they were men of thorough monarchical principles, and possessed a more than ordinary reverence and attachment for their royal family, under circumstances that would have justified resistance long before they had recourse to the last remedy. Affairs, however, had now reached that crisis in which their duty to their God and their duty to their king were placed in opposition, and as Christians no choice was left. To have deserted the assembling of themselves together for religious worship and edification, because their rulers forbade it, would have been to acknowledge a regal power over the conscience which neither Scripture nor nature allows; and as yet no disturbances had occurred at any of those meetings, which were peaceably conducted at a distance from places that could reasonably give offence—in the open air, on hills, and in woods, and sometimes under the covert of night, where the ordinances of the Lord were administered in the way of his appointment, and the word of his gospel preached in simplicity and truth. They therefore continued; and, in spite of the tyrannical edicts of their rulers, like the Israelites of old, did not only meet but multiply. John Welsh, minister of Irongray, from the first betook himself to the fields, and, with his co-presbyter Mr Gabriel Semple, laboured constantly within the bounds of his presbytery, officiating alternately in Corsack-wood and the surrounding country, frequently acting as decoys to their persecutors, one of them being actively engaged in preaching, while the curates with their beagles were in full scent after the other in an opposite direction.For upwards of a year, Mr Welsh is asserted to have “preached at least once every week in the parish of Irongray.” Afterwards he extended his labours to the sheriffdom of Ayr; and on Galston moor and various other places, held large conventicles, where he baptized many children. Gabriel Semple was not less zealous. He held large “unlawful assemblages” at Achmannock, Labrochhill, besides many others, not only in the sheriffdom of Ayr, but in Nithsdale, and within the stewartry of Kirkcudbright. Mr John Blackadder ofttimes convened great numbers of the parish of Glencairn and the neighbouring parishes, sometimes to the number of a thousand. Mr Alexander Peden—who had been expelled from New Glenluce, and was especially obnoxious for his exertions and popularity in the west—held meetings under cloud of night and in the winter season; these being now rendered imperative, as the increased diligence of the archbishop and his military satellites forbade more open assemblages. Encouraged by their example, many others ventured to the high places of the field; and their united active endeavours promised to supply, in the districts of Galloway, shire of Ayr, and stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in some degree, the want of a regular Presbyterian ministry.

Mr. Welsh baptizing children anno 1665Vide page133Edinr. Hugh Paton, Carver & Gilder to the Queen, 1842.

The council, now entirely under the direction of the primate, on the 25th of January 1666, promulgated another thundering proclamation, in which, reiterating their falsehoods, and re-asserting “that conventicles, and unwarrantable meetings, and conventions, under pretence and colour of religion and exercise thereof, being the ordinary seminaries of separation and rebellion, are altogether unlawful,” they denounced the eminent servants of God mentioned before, who were said to convene, armed with swords and pistols, and some of them to ride in disguise up and down the country in gray clothes, together with Mr John Crookshanks, who avowedly kept by him “that book called Buchanan De Jure Regni, which he had translated out of Latin into English;” and John Osburn in Keir, who acted as officer for giving notice to the people of these unlawful meetings; and in regard they were latent and kept themselves out of the way that they might not be apprehended, and had no certain dwelling-place. They werecharged at the market-crosses of Kirkcudbright, Dumfries, and Edinburgh, and at the shore and pier of Leith, “to compear personally before the council to answer to the premises,” which was, in other words, to surrender themselves and be silenced, or sent to join their brethren in exile.

A little before this the cause of the sufferers had been advocated in “An Apologetical Relation of the Particular Sufferings of the Faithful Ministers and Professors of the Church of Scotland, since August 1660,” attributed to John Brown, late minister of Wamphrey, and one of the banished—a performance written in a style of elegance superior to many of the publications of that day, and with a force of argument that defied reply, and which was peculiarly galling to the managers, as it convicted them of the most flagrant apostacy. The facts were too recent to admit of denial, while the cause which the persecuted suffered for defending, continued the same, as when it had been pronounced by their persecutors themselves the cause of their king, their country, and their God! An exposure more complete was never perhaps exhibited to the world; and the sting was the more tormenting, because it was true. The council felt it, and answered it in a becoming manner by another proclamation, in the beginning of February, ordering it to be burned by the hands of the common hangman, “to vindicate,” as they said, “the honour of this kingdom, and to witness and declare, that such principles and tenets as are contained in the said pamphlet, are detested and abhorred by them. With certification, that whosoever should retain any copies in their possession, should be liable in the sum of two thousand pounds, Scots money, to be exacted without any favour or defalcation; and whoever should contribute to disperse it, were declared liable to the punishment due the venders of seditious libels!” And still more strongly to mark their sense of its merit, on the very day this proclamation was issued, before the book had been declared seditious, or keeping it in possession a crime, the venerable relict of James Guthrie and her daughter were brought before the council, and because they refused to give any information respecting the author, they were sentenced to banishment to Zetland, and to be confined there during pleasure. But the sentencewhich, it is likely, clerical vengeance had dictated, was, upon a petition from the gentlewomen, referred to the Commissioner, and by him remitted.

Winter gave some short respite to the Presbyterians, who as yet were suffered, without much interruption, to attend their conventicles amid the inclemencies of the weather; but, with the return of spring, Sir James Turner was dispatched to commence his third campaign. Formerly, Kirkcudbright and Galloway had been the principal seat of his operations, now they stretched over Nithsdale; nor was his circuit more extended than were his severities increased. The exactions in his former expeditions had been chiefly confined to the common people, now they were imposed upon the gentlemen of the country; and the curates, attended by files of soldiers, fined at their discretion all whom they considered inimical, and of such sums as they judged proper. The landlord was compelled to pay if his wife, children, servants, or tenantry, were not regular church-goers. The tenant was mulcted when his landlord withdrew from public worship—if the curate’s services deserved the name—nor did it avail him, although both himself and his family were as punctual as the parson. The aged and the sick, the poor, the widow, and the fatherless—all were compelled to liquidate the church-fines; and even the beggar was forced to lay down his pittance to satisfy the unhallowed demand. From mere wantonness, the ruffian soldiery would eject from their dwellings the non-compliants—driving husband from wife, and wife from husband—snatch the meat from their children to give it to their dogs—then quarter in their houses till they had wasted their substance, and finish by committing to the flames what they could not otherwise destroy. Thus many respectable families, reduced to utter indigence, were scattered over the country, not only robbed of their property, but deprived of the means of procuring subsistence. Complaints were useless or worse—they were either disregarded, or answered by additional outrage.

The following instances will give some faint idea of the nature of these visitations. John Nielson of Corsack was a proprietor to a considerable extent in the parish of Partan in Galloway—agentleman of undoubted loyalty, whose only crime was non-conformity. When Sir James Turner came into that county last year, he was instantly delated by the curate for non-attendance—aggravated, however, by his having shown hospitality to Mr Welsh—fined an hundred pounds Scots, and sent prisoner to Kirkcudbright, besides having four, six, or ten troopers quartered on him constantly, from the beginning of March to the end of May, to each of whom he paid half-a-crown per day, in addition to their board and what they might abuse. This year, for the same offence, he had six soldiers quartered upon him from March to the middle of June, when he was forced to leave his house and wander without any certain dwelling-place, while the villanous banditti demolished his household stuff, and rioted upon his provisions. When these were exhausted, they turned his lady and children out of doors, and forced his tenants to bring them sheep, lambs, oatmeal, and malt, till they also were nearly ruined, and then they drove the whole of the black cattle upon the estate to Glasgow and sold them!

Mr Blackadder being under hiding, the Bishop of Galloway ordered Turner to apprehend him. His second son, then a boy of ten years old, has left the following artless and affecting account of Sir James’ visit to the manse:—

“About this time, winter 1666, Turner and his party of soldiers from Galloway came to search for my father, who had gone to Edinburgh to seek about where he might live in safety. These rascally ruffians besett our house round about two o’clock in the morning, then gave the cry—‘Damned Whigs open the door,’ upon which we all got up, young and old, excepting my sister, with the nurse and the child at her breast. When they came in, the fire was gone out: they roared out again, ‘Light a candle immediately, and on with a fire quickly, or els we’l roast nurse, and bairn, and all, in the fire, and mak a braw bleeze.’ When the candle was lighted, they drew out their swords, and went to the stools, and chairs, and clove them down to mak the fire withall; and they made me hold the candle to them, trembling all along, and fearing every moment to be thrown quick into the fire. Then they went to search the house for my father, running their swordsdown through the beds and bedclothes; and among the rest, they came where my sister was, then a child, and as yet fast asleep, and with their swords, stabbed down through the bed where she was lying, crying, ‘Come out rebell dogs.’ They made narrow search for him in all corners of the house, ransacking presses, chests, and flesh-stands. Then they went and threw down all his books from the press upon the floor, and caused poor me hold the candle all this while, till they had examined his books; and all they thought Whiggish, as they termed it—and brave judges they were!—they put into a great horse-creel and took away, among which were a number of written sermons and printed pamphlets. Then they ordered one of their fellow-ruffians to climb up into the hen-baulks where the cocks and hens were, and as they came to one, threw about its neck, and then down on the floor we’t, and so on, till they had destroyed them all. Then they went to the meat-ambry and took out what was there; then to the meal and beef barrels, and left little or nothing there. All this I was an eyewitness to, trembling and shivering all the while, having nothing but my short shirt on me. So soon as I was relieved of my office, I begins to think, if possible, of my making my escape, rather than to be burned quick as I thought and they threatened. I goes to the door, where there was a sentry on every side standing with their swords drawn—for watches were set round to prevent escape. I approached nearer and nearer by small degrees, making as if I were playing myself. At last I gets out there, making still as if I were playing, till I came to the gate of the house; then, with all the little speed I had—looking behind me now and then to see if they were pursuing after me—I run the length of half-a-mile in the dark night, naked to the shirt. I got to a neighbouring toune, called the Brigend of Monnihyvie, when, thinking to creep into some house to save my life, I found all the doors shut and the people sleeping; upon which I went to the cross of the toune, and got up to the uppermost step of it, and there I sat me down and fell fast asleep till the morning. Between five and six a door opens and an old woman comes out, and seeing a white thing upon the cross comesnear it; and when she found it was a little boy, cries out, ‘Jesus save us, what art thou?’ ‘With that I awaked and answered, I am Mr Blackadder’s son.’ ‘O, my puir bairn, what brought thee here.’ I answeres, ‘there’s a hantle of fearful men wi’ red coats has burnt all our house, my brother, and sister, and all the family.’ ‘O, puir thing,’ says she, ‘come in and lye down in my warm bed’—which I did, and it was the sweetest bed I ever met with.”

After this the whole family was dispersed. “We all behoved,” continues the narrator, “to scatter; one neighbour laird in the parish taking one child, and another. I was sent to a place about a mile off, called the Peel-toune, who afterwards, likewise, were quite ruined and all taken from them—the poor mither begging but one lamb for meat to the bairns, but could not get it. The meat they were not able to eat they destroyed, threw down the butter-kirns, and hashed down the cheese with their swords among the horses’ feet.”

Besides all other exactions, the parliamentary fines which had hung so long suspended over the heads of the gentry, were ordered to be levied with the utmost rigour from all who would not take the oath of supremacy and subscribe the declaration; but to those who would, the one-half was remitted, as had been proposed the preceding year. This fine, like the rest, was collected by troopers, whose charges, like those of modern lawyers, were always as much and frequently more than the original debt. The only consolation the sufferers had, was, that their plunder did not go to enrich those who were the authors of the robbery. Neither Middleton’s party, who imposed, nor Lauderdale’s, who uplifted, the mulct, were allowed to pocket a farthing of the proceeds, which were ultimately applied to support that worst and most dangerous instrument of tyranny—a standing body of household troops.

Sharpe, who assuredly was the cause of much of his country’s calamity, and who was often execrated as almost the origin of the whole, has usually got the credit of this arrangement. It is well known that, although an imperious, he was by no means a fearless,character, and it is therefore not unlikely he may have been the author of these precautionary measures which the country viewed with so much detestation. At any rate, about the time that he was in London, the affair was matured, and two regiments of foot and six troops of horse were ordered to be raised, of which Thomas Dalziel of Binns—a rude soldier who had once owned the covenant, and afterwards improved his manners in the Russian service—was appointed Lieutenant-General, with William Drummond, Lord Madderty’s brother, who had gone through the same course of education as Major-General. The troops of horse were disposed of among the nobility. This army was to be maintained from the fines, of whose application the General was to give an account; but from the manner in which they were collected, and the character of the gatherers, the public was little benefited by this revenue, and the maintenance of the troops fell eventually upon the common exchequer.

Reinforced by these mercenaries, the council more strictly enjoined, by a fresh proclamation, (October 11,) submission to the acts of parliament against separation and resistance to ecclesiastical authority, requiring masters to oblige their servants, landlords their tenants, and magistrates the inhabitants of the several burghs, to attend diligently at the parish churches and partake regularly of the ordinances; and no one was to be retained as a servant, kept as a tenant, or suffered to dwell as a citizen, after the parish priest intimated his disobedience. Mandates so wantonly oppressive, which, without any rational object, were calculated to create crime by leading either to a violation of the consciences of the lieges or the laws of the land, seem to carry on their face an incitement to insurrection; and when the manner in which they were put in execution, among a sturdy peasantry, is remembered, it is truly astonishing that they did not excite a spirit of insubordination, general and deadly, and in truth produce those very outrages of which the calumniated Presbyterians were falsely accused. Many were driven from their homes and utterly ruined, who, merely from political motives, or from a desire to see something like decency in their clergymen, or from anaversion to have ministers forced upon them whom they did not like, had opposed the curates and subjected themselves to the fines; others, men of respectable rank in life who themselves had conformed, saw their estates ruined and their families dispersed, because some one, over whom they could have no possible control, would not attend the wretched sermonizing of a worthless parson, or take the sacrament from his polluted hands; besides those who, from a love to the truth and a sincere reverence for their tenets, deemed it a point of duty to withdraw from the ministration of men who neither understood nor preached the first principles of the gospel. Yet, notwithstanding all these terrible encroachments upon their liberty and property, notwithstanding these authorized violations of all that was dear or sacred to them as men or as Christians, they had suffered, they had complained, but they had not rebelled, when an incidental circumstance led to an insurrection, in perfect conformity with the spirit, and even authorized by the letter, of the ancient Scottish constitution before it was destroyed at the Restoration, which hardly deserves the name of rebellion.

Mr Allan of Barscob, and three other of these unfortunate fugitives who had been forced by want from their places of retreat among the mountains or mosses of Galloway, had ventured, November 13th, to the Clachan of Dalry to procure some provisions. Upon the high road, a little from that place, they accidentally met some soldiers driving a few neighbours before them, to compel them to thresh out a poor man’s corn for the payment of his church fines. They naturally sympathized with the sufferers, but passed on. While seated, however, at breakfast in the village, they were informed that the soldiers had seized the old man in his house—stripped him naked—and were threatening to place him on a redhot gridiron because he could not produce the money. Leaving their meal unfinished, immediately they repaired to the spot; and finding the poor man bound, desired the soldiers to let him alone. The soldiers in return demanded how they dared to challenge them, and drew their swords. A scuffle ensued, in which one of the others discharged a pistol and woundeda corporal with some pieces of a tobacco pipe—the only ball they had among them when the military surrendered themselves prisoners, and the man was liberated.[47]

47.Sir James Turner says, that the corporal affirmed he was shot, “because he refus’d to sign the covenant.” The corporal himself, in a petition to the privy council, says, “ten pieces of tobacco pipes were, by the surgeon’s care, taken out of his bodie.”Turner’s Memoirs, p. 148.Kirkton’s Hist.note, p. 230.—Sir James in his account of the transactions which took place after his seizure, and till the battle of Pentland Hills, is frequently inaccurate, as might be expected, both from his situation, which prevented distinct information except about what he saw, and his prejudices and interest which led him to pervert even that. Some instances will be given afterwards in which he is palpably, if not designedly, at fault.

Thus fairly engaged, to retreat was as dangerous as to proceed. They knew they would be denounced as rebels and subjected to dreadful reprisals. A party of their friends at Balmaclellan, when they heard of the affair, knowing they too would be involved, seized and disarmed sixteen soldiers who were quartered there, one, who made resistance, being killed; and the whole country taking the alarm, their numbers soon swelled to about fifty horse tolerably mounted, and, perhaps, double that number of foot, miserably armed with pitchforks, scythes, cudgels, and a few pikes, and swords. Turner’s forces were scattered over the country, they therefore, without allowing them time to collect, marched direct to Dumfries, where, on the morning of the 15th, they surprised him, who having only heard some indistinct account of the scuffle, was preparing to go and chastise the culprits. The horse went straight up to head-quarters—the foot remaining without the town; and when Sir James appeared at the window, Nielson of Corsack told him, if he would quietly surrender he should receive no harm, with which he complied; and that gentleman preserved him from personal injury, which some of the party seemed anxious to inflict.[48]

48.“While they were speaking, the Commander comes up, and seizing Turner presented a pistol or carabine to have shot him, but Corsack interfered, saying,” “you shall as soon kill me for I have given him quarters.”Crichton’s Life of Blackadder, p. 139.

The person who assumed the command was one Andrew Gray, said to be an Edinburgh merchant whom no body knew, but whose authority all obeyed without inquiry, so totally were they unpreparedfor any regular rising, and as little was he qualified for the situation into which he had thrust himself. They seized the General’s papers and trunks, but found little money; himself they brought away in his night-gown and slippers, and placing him upon a little pony carried him to the cross, where, with much formality, they drank the king’s health to evince their loyalty—a ceremony which some of their friends thought they might as well have omitted, and for which they received neither credit nor thanks. They then carried him back to his lodgings, and ordered him to make ready and go with them. That night they rested at Glencairn. Here they were alarmed by a report of the approach of the Earl of Annandale and Lord Drumlanrig, and set off hurriedly, carrying their prisoner with them under a strong guard. Next night they reached Carsphairn where they remained; and here their redoubtable Captain Gray left them, not without violent suspicions of having carried a considerable sum of money along with him: yet more probably he retired from fear or a sense of his own utter incapacity,[49]but the numbers increased, and a kind of committee consisting of Maclellan of Barscob, Nielson of Corsack, and Mr Alexander Robertson, a preacher, succeeded to the command.

49.This was on the Friday. On the Monday following he was found by Colonel Wallace near Machline in a situation very unlike that of a person possessed of much money. “About that house I saw two men, one whereof I perceived was Andrew Gray. He was in so uncouth a posture, with such a beggar-like habit, and looking with such an abashed countenance, I was astonished and could not speak for a long time. Always he forbids me to be afraid. He tells me the Lord had favoured them with good success in that attempt upon Dumfries; and that, howbeit, after the business was done, many came and owned it that never appeared before, when it was but to be hazarded upon: yet all or most of these gentlemen and countrymen had left it and gone to their houses, as if there had been no more ado: whereupon he had left them to look to his own safety, being in a very insecure condition then, having been the chief actor in the business.”Wallace’s Narrative of the Rising at Pentland, p. 391.

Some days before the scuffle at Dalry, Rothes had taken his departure for London, and the chief cares of the government devolved upon the primate, as president of the council—thus called upon to discharge an important political duty at a very delicate conjuncture. One of the bailies of Dumfries who had witnessedthe seizure of Turner, immediately proceeded to Edinburgh with information of the rising; and the members of council, who never calculated upon resistance, were surprised and alarmed beyond measure. Next day, they sent off an express to the king with the unpleasant intelligence, who, passing the Commissioner upon the road, furnished his majesty with very unexpected news to salute him with on his arrival. They ordered General Dalziel to march on the following day with as many men as he could muster to the west country, to establish his head-quarters at Glasgow, and thence to proceed to wherever his presence might be most urgently required—the various noblemen of those most interested in these districts, were, at the same time, required to use their every exertion to preserve the peace, and to receive and assist his majesty’s forces—the guards of the town of Edinburgh were doubled, and the names of all strangers ordered to be registered. These measures, the most obvious and requisite, met of course the king’s approval, but a proposal to enforce the subscription of the declaration respecting the covenant upon the heritors of the southern and western shires, was postponed by his desire as unnecessarily exasperating an evil of which they did not yet know the extent. More effectually to protect the capital, the companies of the train-bands were ordered to be filled up by citizens who would willingly take the oath of allegiance, and further promise to maintain his majesty’s authority with their lives and fortunes; such as would not, to be disarmed and their persons secured.

The noblemen of Fife, with their followers, were summoned, and an act of council was passed to put the country in a posture of defence, and all the lieges were ordered to assist the General with all their power. The ferries across the Forth were at the same time stopped, and even those who passed at Stirling Bridge were to be subjected to a rigid examination. A proclamation also was issued commanding the rebels to lay down their arms, but it was remarked that it contained no offer of pardon; and to desire them to surrender without security, was something like an invitation to confess and be hanged. Some of the nobility felt the degradation of being under an ecclesiastic, and murmured—“Have we none at such a juncture to give orders but a priest?”But they were too wofully spiritless than do more, and they only clanked, sulkily, the fetters themselves had forged.

Intelligence also had been sent by the insurgents to Edinburgh with equal expedition, and a few who were well-wishers to the cause met to consider what was their duty in the present juncture, when, at an adjourned meeting held in Mr Alexander Robertson, a preacher’s lodgings,[50]they resolved after deliberation and prayer, that it was their duty to assist their poor brethren so cruelly oppressed. One only dissented, Mr Ferguson of Kaitloch, who was not convinced of the propriety of rising at that time. The rest were eager to engage immediately, and as soon as the meeting broke up, Colonel Wallace and Mr Robertson set out for the west to see what could be effected there. Mr Welsh went direct to the countrymen whom he found at Dalmellington; thence he proceeded to gather his friends in the south, while they, buoyed up with the expectation of being quickly and numerously joined, marched forward to Ayrshire, and on the 21st had their general rendezvous at the Bridge of Doon. Wallace’s first disappointment was at Libberton, where, instead of forty stout horsemen, he only met eight; and on his journey by Linton, Dunsire, Mauchline, and Evondale, he found the country, in general, had been taken so completely unawares, that he arrived at the main body with a very slender accession of strength—the ministers remaining quietly in their houses, while the leading Whig gentlemen went to wait upon the General. He had by the way received notice from Cunninghame, that a reinforcement from thence might be procured if they had only a party to encourage and protect them till they got formed; and Captain John Arnott, accordingly, had been sent with forty horse to bring them up, and directed to join next day at Ochiltree.

50.Kirkton, p. 234. This was a different person from the Alexander Robertson formerly mentioned, though they have been sometimes confounded, owing to the sirnames being spelled indifferently Robison or Robertson, both their first names being Alexander, and both being preachers.

Having received information of General Dalziel’s arrival at Glasgow, they hastened to Ochiltree, where all their parties were ordered to meet, and where Mr Semple preached while they werecollecting.[51]Afterwards they marshalled their army, named their officers,[52]and placed their guards. Sir John Cochrane was with Dalziel, and his lady received the leaders who were quartered at the mansion-house very coolly, although she expressed herself not unfriendly to the cause. Here they were joined by Mr John Guthrie, minister of Tarbolton, with some of his parishioners, and Robert Chalmers, a brother of the Laird of Gadgirth’s, who brought a report that the Duke of Hamilton was approaching with his troops, and that they had dispatched John Ross with a small party to ascertain the fact. A council of war was then called, at which it was resolved that they should march eastward, as it was impossible to stay where they were, and there was noprobability of farther help from the south or south-west districts, and Captain Arnott would bring with him whoever were well-inclined in Cunninghame and Renfrew. Besides, they had an earnest invitation from Blackwood to come to Clydesdale, where he promised to meet them with one hundred men.

51.Wallace’s Narrative, p. 395. “Sir James Turner has a merrie fact, which he says occurred here. I was lodged that night at the principall alehouse of the toune, where I was indifferentlie well used, and visited by some of their officers and ministers. Most of their foot were lodged about the church and churchyard, and order given to ring bells next morning for a sermon to be preached by Mr Welsh. Maxwell of Monreth and Major Mackulloch invited me to heare that phanatic sermon, for soe they merrilie call’d it. They said that preaching might prove ane effectuall meane to turn me, which they heartilie wished. I answered them that I was under guards, and that if they intended to heare that sermon, it was probable I might heare it likewise; for it was not like my guards would goe to church and leave me alone at my lodgings. Bot to what they spoke of my conversion, I said it wold be hard to turne a Turner. Bot because I found them in a merry humour, I said if I did not come to heare Mr Welsh preach, then they might fine me in fourtie shillings Scots, which was duoble the soume of what I had exacted from the phanatickes. Bot there was no sermon that day, which, undoubtedly, I would have heard, if there had been anie.” Pp. 163-4. Afterwards, he has this passage—“This I shall say they were not to learn to plunder, and that I have not seene lesse of divine worship any where, than I saw in that armie of theirs; for thogh at their rendezvouses and halts they had opportunitie enough everie day for it, yet did I never heare any of ther ministers (and as themselves told me there was not so few as two-and-threttie of them, whereof onlie five or sixe convers’d with me) either pray, preach, or sing psalms; neither could I learn that it was ever practised publicklie, except once by Mr Robbison at Corsfairne, ane other time by Mr Welsh at Damellington, and now the third time by Mr Semple at Lanrick, where the lawful pastor was forced to resigne his pulpit to him.” P. 169.

52.The officers whose names have been preserved, were—Colonel Wallace, who left a written narrative of the rising at Pentland, and of whom some farther notice will be given; Major Joseph Learmont; Captains Andrew Arnott, John Paton, John Maclellan of Barscob, John Maxwell, younger of Monreith, and Robert Maclellan of Balmagachan; Cornet of Horse, Robert Gordon of Knockbreck; uncertain, Major John M’Culloch of Barholme; Mr George Crookshanks had a command.

Next day they broke up for Cumnock, but were met on the road with the disagreeable intelligence that Ross and his party had been taken prisoners by the Duke, and that the enemy’s whole force was at Kilmarnock; in consequence, they continued their route during a violent storm of rain and wind to Muirkirk. The night fell dark, and the road was detestable; yet the men marched forward with spirit, and even their enemy, Sir James Turner, gave them this credit—“I doe confesse, I never saw lustier fellows than these foot were, or better marchers; for though I was appointed to stay in the rear, and notwithstanding these inconveniences, I saw few or none of them straggle.” When they arrived late at their quarters, wet as if they had been drenched in water, the poor foot were forced to lie all night in the cold church, without victuals and with but little fire. Here Mr Andrew M’Cormack, a pious Irish minister, known by the name of the “Good-man,” came to the Colonel and informed him it was the opinion of Mr Robertson and Mr Lockhart—that, as there was no appearance of any help either from Clydesdale or any other quarter, the business should be followed no farther, but the people dismissed as quietly as possible to their homes, to shift each for himself the best way he could, until the Lord gave some better opportunity. With this advice, which was not at all to the Colonel’s liking, he could not of himself comply, but proposed to consult the other leaders who might join before or when they reached Douglas. Thither they arrived on Saturday night, November 24, without any of their expected reinforcements, excepting forty recruits brought by Captain Arnott.

Having quartered the troops, and, on account of an alarm, doubled their guards, a council of war was held, when, after earnest prayer to God, the question was proposed, whether they should disperse or continue in arms? On the one side was stated the strength of the enemy and the small number of their company,the total want of spirit discovered by the country and the tempestuous season of the year, which rendered it unfit for action. On the other, it was replied—that the coming forth to own the people of Galloway was clearly of the Lord, and in that they had done nothing but followed his call—that numbers had not only urged them, but had solemnly promised also to come forth, and if these should now desert the cause, between them and their master let it be. As for themselves, they believed the Lord could work by few or by many. If he designed the present appearance should prosper, he would send men if necessary; or who could tell but he might honour them to accomplish his end? At all events, the cause they were assured was his; nor would they forsake it, but follow on whatever might be the consequence. Death was all they could endure; and, though they were only to bear their testimony to the truth, that was well worth dying for. It was next proposed, whether they should renew the covenants? On this there was no dispute. They regretted they could not go about that work with the deliberate preparation they deemed necessary for entering into such solemn engagements; but, as the urgency of the case admitted of no delay, and they all understood the nature of the transaction, they determined to prepare for the worst by again dedicating themselves to the Lord in the national bonds, whose obligation they believed to be perpetual, and the renunciation of which they considered as one of the deepest sins of the land. The disposal of their prisoner, as they had no safe place in which to confine him, was then considered. About this they were not so unanimous. Some were for putting him to death as a notorious murderer and bitter instrument of persecution, but others urged that he was a soldier of fortune, acting under a commission, also that he had been promised protection by one of themselves; and it appearing from his papers, though his conduct had been severe, yet that he had not even acted up to his instructions, it was carried to spare him.[53]

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