BOOK XII.

A.D. 1678-1679.

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—Murder of Sharpe.

Capricious as cruel in their tyranny, the council would neither allow the Presbyterians to live peaceably at home, nor permit them to seek liberty abroad, especially if they were persons of rank, whom they wished to make participators of their tyranny as they could not induce them to be willing associates in their crimes. Having learned that several noblemen and others of high station, disgusted with their proceedings, were preparing to leave the country, they issued a proclamation, January 3, forbidding any person, lord or commoner, to remove forth thereof upon any pretext whatsoever, without a special license from them, under the highest penalties; and to make assurance doubly sure, they ordered the principal among them, whom they considered as their political rivals, or who were more moderate in their principles, to attend “a committee of the privy council,” appointed to accompany the forces in the west country, to receive their orders and obey their commands.[91]

91.Numbers of the persecuted in England had left that country for America, and were founding the states of New England, New Jersey, Massachusetts, &c., which formed asylums for their brethren during these perilous times. Many of the Scots who to Holland, also sought refuge in the New World. But it would appear the Scottish prelatists being, as all turncoats are, more violent than the English persecutors, wished to retain their more conscientious countrymen at home, that they might have the pleasure of tormenting them, and enjoying the yet higher gratification of revelling on their fines. The prohibition in Scotland was intended, besides, to answer another purpose, to prevent any of the nobility proceeding to court without leave; for Lauderdale knew well the advantage of engrossing the royal ear.

Before proceeding to detail the transactions of this savage horde and their directors, I shall advert to a transaction still more disgraceful to the council, as setting at defiance all moral decency, and bursting asunder every tie that gives security to society, which can only exist well where the obligations both of the rulers and the ruled are held sacred. I mean the trial and execution of James Mitchell.

Cowards are proverbially cruel, and the renegade primate was not remarkable for courage. He seems to have been constantly haunted with the terrors of assassination. Fearing his own treacherous “law-skreened murders” might provoke some other resolute arm to retaliate, he could not be at rest while Mitchell lived, and appears to have imagined that the destruction of that poor man was necessary to secure his own safety. He therefore resolved, by making an example of him, to show that the sacred person of a priest was not to be threatened with impunity. Accordingly, Mitchell was brought from the Bass to Edinburgh in the end of last year, and received an indictment to stand trial for his attempt. On January 7, 1678, he was brought to the bar of the Justiciary, where Primrose, justice-general, sat as one of his judges, and Sir George Mackenzie acted as accuser, both of whom were perfectly acquainted with the promise of pardon which had been made. Primrose had been summoned as a witness, but was dispensed with; and, had he possessed the smallest particle of common feeling, or of common honesty, he would never have consented to sit as a judge—much less would Mackenzie, who had acted as his advocate on the former trial, have now come forward as his prosecutor; yet so it was. Primrose, however, transmitted privately to Mitchell’s advocates, a copy of the act of council in which the assurance was contained. Lauderdale had been previouslywarned of its existence by Kincardine. The pleadings, before entering upon the evidence, were long and ingenious. His advocates, Sir George Lockhart and Mr John Ellis, contended that the libel was not relevant,—as a mere attempt, when unsuccessful, could never constitute the crime of murder; that by the laws of this kingdom, by the civil law, and the common opinion of civilians, it was not a capital offence, except in cases of parricide or treason; and, besides, the act charged was assassination or murder committed for hire—a term and a crime unknown in Scottish law; nor is it charged against the prisoner that he was hired by any person to commit the deed. As to the confession, if such a thing existed, which the panel refused to acknowledge, it was extrajudicial, not being made in presence of the assize, who are judges of the whole proof, and therefore could not be admitted, unless taken together with the promise of pardon by which it was elicited. But they especially insisted upon the promise of pardon, as rendering any charge founded upon such confession totally irrevelant.

The Lord Advocate replied, that, by act 16, parl. James VI.nudus conatus, attempting and invading, though nothing followed, is found relevant to infer the pain of death; and by the common law, an attempt is capital, where the panel has been guilty of the proximate act, and done all that it was in his power to do:—adding, most unfairly and untruly, that Mitchell belonged to a sect that hated and execrated the hierarchy, who deemed it lawful to kill persons of a prelatical character; and he could prove that Mr James himself held such opinions, which he endeavoured to defend by wrested places of Scripture, and acknowledged that the reason why he shot at the archbishop was, because he thought him a persecutor of the nefarious and execrable rebels who appeared on the Pentland Hills. As to assassination not being known in Scots law, the term might not be there, but the nation would be worse than the Tartars, if lying in wait with a design to kill clandestinely, where a person, after mature deliberation, ripens his villany and watches his opportunity, if this should not be held in greater detestation, and punished more severely than ordinary murder. As to being hired, if taking money constitute the criminalityof assassination, how much greater is it when committed to earn a higher reward. He that takes money to kill, will stab only in the dark, and where he may escape; but the sun, and the cross, and the confluence of all the world, cannot secure against the stroke of the murderer who expects heaven as his reward, and thinks that the deed deserves it. Respecting the promise of pardon, the promise of life from a judge, who has not the power to grant it, is of no avail unless the panel can prove that he expressly pactioned that his confession should not operate against him; and a confession emitted without any such regular bargain, is of no avail, even though the judge should promise life; for this would be to make a judge a king.[92]As to the confession being extrajudicial, so far from this being the case, it was taken by the authority of the privy council, the highest judicatory of the nation, uniting in itself the powers both of the Court of Session and the Court of Justiciary; and if confessions emitted before the lords of session are a sole, final, and plenary probation before the Court of Justiciary, it were absurd to suppose that a confession emitted before the Privy Council should not be deemed valid.

92.The advocate, as a proof that civilians were on his side, quoted Ægidius Bossius, who, Titulo de Examine Reorum 15 and 16, says—“Judex qui induxit reum ad confitendum sub promissione veniæ non tenetur servare promissum in foro contensioso.” The judge who induces a panel to confess, by a promise of pardon, is not bound to keep his promise in a contested trial, which seems, says Lord Fountainhall in his notes, “to be ane disingenous opinion.”

The court decided that the crime, as libelled, was relevant,i. e.sufficient, to infer the pains of law; but, at the same time, found that the defence if proven was relevant to secure the panel of his life and limb. There were no witnesses to establish the fact; his confession was the only evidence adduced; to substantiate which, Rothes was first examined, who deponed that he saw the panel sign the confession. Being asked, whether or not his lordship did offer to the panel, upon his confession, to secure his life, in these words, upon his lordship’s life, honour, and reputation? he swore that he did not at all give any assurance to the panel for his life, and that the panel never sought any such assurancefrom him, nor did he remember receiving any warrant from the council for that purpose. Upon this, Mitchell entreated the Chancellor to remember the honour of the family of Rothes, and mind that he took him by the hand, and said—“Jacobe, man, confess; and, as I am Chancellor of Scotland, ye shall be safe in liffe and limb;” to which all the answer returned by the Chancellor was, “that he hoped his reputation was not yet so low as that what the panel said, either there or elsewhere, would be credited, since he had sworn.” The panel, however, still averred the contrary.

Lord Hatton, Lauderdale, and Sharpe swore to the same effect. When Sharpe had done, Nicol Somerville, agent, brother-in-law to the panel, boldly contradicted him, and bid him remember certain times and expressions. The archbishop, who did not much relish getting his memory so refreshed, “fell in a mighty chaff and passion, exceedingly unbecoming his station and the circumstances he was then stated in, and fell a scolding before thousands of onlookers. Nicol yielded in nothing; and after the bishop had sworne, he cryed out that upon his salvation what he had affirmed was true.” “And the misfortune was, that few there but they believed Nicol better than the archbishop.”[93]Sir John Nisbet, who was Lord Advocate at the time, and one of the committee who examined Mitchell, summoned as a witness for the crown—probably to prevent him from being adduced for Mitchell—was not called, Sir George Mackenzie, it is likely, being afraid to trust him.

93.Fountainhall’s notes.

After the public prosecutor had declared his proof closed, the panel’s advocates produced the copy of the act of council, and craved that the books of council, which were lying in the next room, might be produced, or the clerks ordered to give extracts, which they had formerly refused. At this Lauderdale, who had no right to speak, “stormed mightily,” and told the court “the books of council contained the king’s secrets, and he would not permit them to be examined; he came there to depone as a witness, not to be staged for perjury”—an unguarded remark, which must have been understood by the judges as a plain confession that heknew he had sworn falsely; yet, with a mean servility, they would not assert their own dignity, nor do justice to the panel. They refused to grant warrant for producing the registers, because not applied for before, which Fountainhall observes “choaked both criminal law and equity, for it is never too late to urge any thing in favour of a panel until the assize be closed.” Sir George Lockhart defended him with admirable strength of reasoning; and the trial, which is characterized as the most solemn which had taken place in Scotland for a hundred years, lasted four days. The jury returned a verdict, finding him guilty upon his own confession; but the promise of pardon they found not proven. He was condemned to be hanged on Friday the 18th of January.

On leaving court, the four “noble” witnesses proceeded to the Council-chamber and inspected the books, where they saw the indelible record of their own guilt and infamy, which still remains, and, like convicted rogues, began each to vindicate himself. After a vain attempt to fix it upon the late Lord Advocate, Nisbet, had failed, Lauderdale, who seems to have had some compunctious visitations, proposed to grant a reprieve, and refer the matter to the king. But the primate insisted that if favour were shown to this assassin, it would be exposing his person to the next murderer who should attempt it. “Then,” said Lauderdale, “let Mitchell glorify God in the Grassmarket.”[94]He was accordingly executed, pursuant to his sentence. Sharpe, whose vanity and ambition were unbounded, aping an equality with royalty, had obtained an order from court, that Mitchell’s head should be affixed on some public place of the city, as if his crime had been high treason! But it was told him what was pronounced for doom could not be altered; so he missed this gratification. Nor did the fate of Mitchell tend to avert his own. Mitchell’s misguided act was forgotten in the deeper and more deliberate revenge of the archbishop, and in the atrocious breach of public faith by the council. His dying declaration, widely circulated through the country, exhibited such a view of the treachery and almost unexampled perjury of the first ministers in thechurch and in the state, as excited universal horror and execration.[95]

94.The usual place of execution at that time.

95.The question then much agitated—“The extraordinary execution of judgement by private men”—was supported by an apophthegm borrowed from Tertullian—“Every man is a soldier enrolled to bear arms against all traitors and public enemies;” and by the authority of Dr Ames, who, in his treatise on Conscience, published 1674, says—“Sometimes it is lawful to kill, no public precognition proceeding, when the cause evidently requires it should be done, and public authority cannot be got: For in that case a private man is publickly constitute the minister of justice, as well by the permission of God as the consent of all men.” Mitchell, when questioned by the Chancellor, thus defended his attack upon Sharpe—and it is easy to conceive that such reasoning would appear irrefragable to a mind excited as his was—“I looked upon him to be the main instigator of all the oppression and bloodshed thereupon, and the continual pursuing after my own; and, my lord, it was creditably reported to us (the truth of which your lordship knows better than we) that he kept up his majesty’s letter inhibiting any more blood upon that account, until the last six were executed; and I being a soldier, not having laid down my arms, but being upon my own defence; and in prosecution of the ends of the same covenant [which he also had sworn] which was the overthrow of prelates and prelacy; and I being a declared enemy to him on that account, and he to me in like manner: as he was always to take his advantage of me, as it appeareth, so I of him, to take any opportunity offered. Moreover, we being in no terms of capitulation, but on the contrary, I, by his instigation being excluded from all grace and favour, thought it my duty to pursue him at all events.”

Upon the 24th of January, the threatened army, better known by the name of “the Highland Host,”[96]assembled at Stirling. The Earls were their colonels, who received a handsome pay; but the active officers were a set of thievish lairds; and their retainers, wild savages, unacquainted with any other law than the will of their chiefs, whose mandates they obeyed without inquiry upon every occasion—only in the division of the spoil, they sometimes helped themselves without waiting the directions of their superiors. They amounted in all, including about two thousand regulars and two thousand militia, to about ten thousand men, with four field-pieces, and with a great quantity of spades, shovels, and mattocks, as if they were marching to besiege fortified cities; their daggers were formed to fasten on the muzzles of the muskets,as a kind of rude bayonets, to attack cavalry; yet were they accompanied with other instruments that betokened any thing but going to meet a regular force—iron shackles and thumb-screws!

96.Because Highlanders formed the majority; the regulars or king’s guards were the worst; the militia, although not good, seem to have been the best, if any could be called best among them, unless it were that in the act of plundering, they were not quite so fierce as the others. “The debauched clargie thought it no shame to call thes dragoons the ruling elders of the church.” Wodrow, MS. Advocates’ Lib. xl. art. 47, quoted by Dr M’Crie. Mem. of Geo. Brysson, p. 275.

The approach of such an array amazed the peaceable inhabitants of the west, nor were the military gentlemen themselves less astonished when they passed through a country represented as in a state of rebellion, but where they saw every thing perfectly loyal and tranquil. Nevertheless, the mountaineers in their march, and during the time they remained in the west, gratified the expectations of their employers to the full. Behaving with the unbridled insolence of victorious mercenaries in a conquered country, they made free with whatever they wanted without ceremony, seizing every serviceable horse for the transport of their baggage, even those at the ploughs in the midst of the tillage, extorting money and beating and wounding whoever resisted, without distinction. Nor were the few heritors who took the bond exempted. They found, when too late, that they had violated their consciences, or at least their consistency, in vain; and some of them afterwards deeply lamented their compliance, regretting that they had not rather, like the majority of their neighbours, taken quietly the spoiling of their goods.

Their head-quarters were first at Glasgow, but the tumultuous bands soon spread through Clydesdale, Renfrew, Cunninghame, Kyle, and Carrick. Previously to their arrival, the ministers had held a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. This the prelates represented as preparatory to a communion, after which there was to be a general insurrection. The report was soon discovered to be false, but it had quickened the advance of the host, and was either believed, or pretended to be believed, by Lauderdale; for, when a deputation from the nobility and gentry of Ayrshire came to Edinburgh to represent to the council the tranquillity and unimpeachable loyalty of the whole district, he would not so much as give them audience; and when some of them offered to engage for the peace of the shire, the proposal was peremptorily refused, and they were informed that no compromise could be entered into, nothing less would be accepted than that the whole of them present should instantly put their signatures to the bond, andpledge themselves for all the other heritors doing the same. The deputation could not promise for others, and they returned to witness the authorized enormous disorders they had employed every legal method in their power to prevent.

On the 28th of the month, the committee of council, armed with Justiciary power, met at Glasgow to consider their instructions and proceed to action.[97]They were directed to order the sheriffs of the different counties to convene all the heritors, and require them to subscribe a bond, obliging themselves, wives, bairns, and servants, as also their haill tenants, and cottars, with their wives, bairns, and servants, to abstain from conventicles, and not to receive, assist, or speak to any forfeited persons, intercommuned ministers, or vagrant preachers, but to use their utmost endeavours to apprehend all such, promising, if any of their families or dependents should contravene, to present them to the judge-ordinary that they might be fined or imprisoned for their delinquencies. All who took the bond were to receive a protection that their lands would not be quartered upon. They were also to cause the leaders of the horsemen of the militia troops to deliver to them the haill militia arms, and to disarm heritors and all other persons, except privy councillors and military men; but noblemen and gentlemen of quality were to be allowed to wear their swords. The arms were to be lodged in the Castle of Dumbarton.

97.The committee consisted of the Marquis of Atholl, the Earls of Marr, Murray, Glencairn, Wigton, Strathmore, Linlithgow, Airly, Caithness, Perth, and Lord Ross, all of whom were commanders in the army, except Glencairn and Wigton.

Framed as this bond was, it required no ghost to tell that it would not generally be taken; and its refusal was looked forward to by the government with joyful anticipation, as what would justify their pressing it with a rigour that would produce the grand, much longed-for consummation—a desperate resistance. But this was for the present postponed—the disarming of the people, although not complete, prevented any immediate outbreaking, while the example of the Duke of Hamilton, Lords Loudon, Cochrane, and especially the constancy of Lord Cassilis, encouragedthe great body of the gentry to continue steadfast in opposition to a bond which the council had exceeded their powers in enacting, and could not legally oblige the lieges to subscribe without the authority of parliament. Besides its illegality, these patriots considered it cruel and degrading—cruel, in forbidding them to give relief to Christian ministers, and others in distress, even though their own relatives, and to shut up their bowels of compassion from them, merely on account of difference of opinion about church government—degrading, in desiring them to act as beadles or common messengers at arms, without their own consent.

From Glasgow the committee proceeded to Ayr; and among their first proceedings, they ordered the Earl of Cassilis to demolish all the meeting-houses in Carrick. The Earl represented the probability of opposition, and having been disarmed, requested that a party of soldiers, or at least some of the neighbouring gentlemen, might be ordered to protect him; even this reasonable request could not be granted; and while he hesitated, a friendly councillor hinted that there was but an hair’s-breadth between him and imprisonment. Such, however, was the esteem in which this young nobleman was held, that the people themselves demolished the offensive places of worship, rather than that he should be troubled about them.[98]But the council, not willing that he should get so quietly rid of the job, ordered him to bring back the doors and all the timber of these meeting-houses, andburn it on the spot where they had stood. his lordship complied with this useless but tyrannically-teasing order.

98.The meeting-houses were not in common very costly fabricks. Like the temple at Jerusalem, no mason’s iron was heard in their building, being generally framed of rough unhewn stones, covered with turf; and the people were thankful when the government did not interfere with their cheap church-extension scheme. Stately cathedrals they asked not, they cheerfully left them to the Romanists and the renegade prelatical conformists, their brethren. Consecrated walls were words unknown in their vocabulary, all they asked was shelter from the weather and very humble accomodation for their wearied limbs. Nor did they always ask even these; for their ministers, following the example of Him whose servants they professed to be, oftener had the mountain for their pulpit and the heavens for their sounding-board, than the crimson-covered desk with velvet cushion and gilded canopy; while they themselves were satisfied, if they could hear the gospel faithfully preached, although on the mountain side, or in “divot theikit beilds.”

Notwithstanding the stubborn opposition it met with, the council appeared determined to urge the bond, and issued a fresh proclamation, February 11, forbidding any person to be received as a tenant or servant without a certificate from the landlord or master they last left, or from the minister of the parish, that they had lived orderly and attended the parish church, and had not heard any of the vagrant preachers, who without license impiously assumed the holy orders of the church. To this was annexed a new bond of similar import with the former, and as an encouragement, all the members of council signed it, and appointed the lords of session to do the same when they met. Every inducement proved ineffectual; and the reports of the commissioners appointed to see their orders carried into execution, were by no means satisfactory to the council. The arms were only partially delivered up, and the bond would not at all go down; and what was the most vexatious part of the business, it was decidedly rejected by some eminent lawyers in the capital, and several of the chief nobility in Fife, Stirlingshire, and Teviotdale. The report from Lanark, too, was provoking beyond measure; of two thousand nine hundred heritors, only nineteen of the smallest complied.

Perceiving at length that the opposition was too extensive, and based upon principles which could not be sneered at as fanatical, Lauderdale is said at one of their meetings to have bared his arm in fury, and sworn by Jehovah that he would force them to take the bond. But it was to be tendered in another shape, under the guise of a legal quibble—probably the new Lord Advocate might have had the merit of suggesting it; for certainly the scheme was more like the device of a pettifogging attorney than the counsel of a sound statesman. When a deadly feud had arisen between two neighbours, as the ancient Scots were an ardent irascible race, it generally terminated fatally, and not infrequently involved the whole relations in a species of domestic warfare, which lasted for generations till one party was worn out or gave in. To prevent these consequences, it had been enacted in the reign ofJames II. and confirmed in the 7th parliament of James VI., that an individual who feared bodily harm from another, by an application upon oath to a magistrate, might obtain a “writ of law-burrows” to oblige the person of whose violence he was apprehensive, to give security that he should keep the peace, nor “skaith or damage” the applicant. This legal pledge, a wise and necessary precaution to insure personal safety in turbulent times, such as the frequent minorities of the Jameses had produced, the council contrived to convert into a more oppressive obligation than even the bond itself. Assuming an absurd legal fiction, that his majesty and his government were put in bodily fear by the persons who refused to take the bond, they issued writs of law-burrows, not only against individuals, but against a county.

By additional instructions, the committee were directed to pursue all heritors who had not taken the bond for all conventicles kept on their lands since the 24th of March 1674—the fine to be exacted for each conventicle being fifty pounds. They were also to summon them and their tenants, &c. to answer for building, or being present at the building, of any preaching-house—the fine imposed to be arbitrary. No nobleman or gentleman who refused the bond was to be allowed to wear his sword, and whoever delayed beyond six days to appear at the council-bar, after they were summoned, were to be amerced in two years’ valued rent, and were likewise liable for the delinquencies of their tenants and servants.

Immediately after this, a number of gentlemen in Ayrshire were summoned before the committee, upon a charge of law-burrows; but while they made the strongest professions of loyalty, they steadily resisted putting their hands to a deed which they deemed illegal, irreconcilable with their profession as Presbyterians, and impracticable with respect to all their retainers and dependents. One of them, unfortunately his name is not preserved, who had indignantly refused, on being told by the president that, if he continued obstinate, the Highlanders, who had been quartered upon a neighbouring gentleman’s property till he had complied, would be transferred to his till he became convinced of the propriety of obedience, replied, “he had no answer to that argument;but before he would comply with the law-burrows, he would rather go to prison.”

Lord Cochrane was next before them. He had been served with an indictment, charging him with encouraging field and house conventicles, and conversing with intercommuned ministers; in a word, he or his wife, or some of his family or tenants, had rebelled against the king by attending upon the preaching of the gospel, impiously proclaimed by men who owned no bishop, and who wore no surplice; and was called to answer to the charge within twenty-four hours. His lordship objected to the shortness of the time allowed to answer, and contended that, as his indictment contained a capital charge, it was necessary the “diet” or meeting should be prolonged, that he might have time to consult with his advocates; and, when called to answer upon oath, declined to do so, “no man being bound by any law to give his oath, where the punishment may be in any way—corporis afflictiva, quia nemo est dominus membrorum suorum”—destructive to the body, because nobody is lord of his own body. The committee told him their diets were peremptory,i. e.their meetings were fixed for certain times, and therefore the accused were bound to answer upon the instant; but, at the same time, passed an interlocutor, restricting the libel to an arbitrary punishment,i. e.declaring that whatever his lordship might depone should never infer a capital infliction.

His lordship next pleaded that, by an act of council so late as the 5th of October last year, all libels against conventicles were restricted to a month backwards, consequently he was free. He was asked if he had brought an extract of the act? He replied he had not, but it was well enough known, and referred to their lordships themselves and the public prosecutor. They all declared they knew nothing about it. He then begged that the clerk might be questioned; but they would not allow their clerk to give evidence in that matter; and he was again called upon to swear, otherwise he would be held as confessed. Seeing at last that nothing else, no not even their own acts, would avail, he made oath “that he was free of all conventicles, as were all his servants, to the best of his knowledge.” Some new queries werenow put to him by the Lord Advocate. He refused to answer to any matters not alleged against him in his indictment, and appealed to their lordships. They gave it in his favour! finding “that he was not obliged to depone to any thing not contained in his indictment;” and the court adjourned.

When they met in the afternoon of the same day—21st February 1678—Lord Cathcart, Sir John Cochrane, with some others, among whom was the Laird of Kilbirnie, refused the bond upon the same grounds—the act of council, October the 5th. The lords again denied their knowledge of such an act; but when Kilbirnie, prepared for this, offered to produce a copy, they would not receive it, saying, if there was such an act it was superseded by posterior acts. He then offered to protest against their proceeding without allowing him to produce it. This the Earl of Caithness opposed, by representing the danger he incurred in so doing; but when he persisted, his lordship suddenly adjourned the sederunt, and thus prevented him from getting it formally entered on the record.

While the committee were denying the provisions of their own acts which had the least semblance of moderation, “the Highland Host” were ravaging the devoted west without mercy.[99]Free quarters were every where exacted by the militia and king’s forces, although they received regular pay. But the Highlanders,not content with free quarters, would march in large bands to gentlemens’ and heritors’ houses, as well as their tenants, and take up their lodgings, and force the proprietors to furnish them with whatever they chose to demand, or they would take whatever struck their fancy; and, when some of their own officers interposed, would present their daggers to their breasts, and dare them to touch their plunder. They infested the high-roads in a most ferocious manner, not only robbing the passengers of their money or baggage, but even stripping them of their clothes, and sending them to travel naked for miles ere they could reach home. From the country-folks’ and cottars’ houses, they carried off pots, pans, wearing-apparel, bedclothes, or whatever was portable; and, notwithstanding the government had taken care to order provisions, both officers and men carried off or wantonly killed the cattle, under pretence that they wanted food, unless they were bribed by money; yet that did not always avail, the plunderers often both pocketing the coin and driving the cattle. In some places they proceeded the horrible length of scorching the people before large fires, in order to extort a confession, if they suspected they had any hidden valuables; and to these rapacious, needy hordes, the lowest necessary utensils of civilized life were precious.

99.Garrisons were ordered to be “planted, 100 foot and 20 horse, in the house of Blairquhan, Carrick; 50 foot and 10 horse in Barskimming, and the same in Cessnock. The commissioners of the shire to provide 126 beds, 24 pots, as many pans, 240 spoons, 60 timber dishes, as many timber cups, and 40 timber stoups; to be distribute to the said garrisons conform to the number of men; also to provide coal and candle for the garrisons respective.” Act of the committee of council, Ayr, March 4th, 1678. By an act of the 9th, the commissioners were ordered to furnish the garrisons with necessary provisions, such as meat and drink, and to say at what prices they would agree to do so; but having failed, the committee took the business into their own hands, and ordered the prices to be as follow:—Hay, per stone, 2s. Scots; straw, per threave, 4s.; oats, per boll, 50s. in Carrick—55s. in Kyle; meal, per boll, 5 merks; malt, per boll, £5; cheese, per stone, £1, 10s.; pork, per stone, £1, 16s.; French grey salt, per peck, 10s.—Scots ditto, 5s.; butter, per stone, £2, 8s.; each dozen of eggs, 1s. 4d.; milk, per pint, 1s.; each hen, 4s.; each mutton bulk, £2. These prices, reduced to our currency, at 1s. Scots—1d. sterling; £1 Scots—1s. 8d. sterling,—will show the scarcity of cash in these days, and its relative value to the present prices.

In other villages, the meanest soldiers exacted sixpence sterling a-day, and the guards a shilling or merk Scots; their captains and superior officers, half-crowns and crowns at their discretion, or as they thought the poor people could procure it, threatening to burn their houses about their ears if they did not produce sufficient to answer their demands; besides money, the industrious, sober, religious peasantry were constrained to furnish brandy and tobacco; and, what was scarcely less painful, were obliged to witness their filthy brutal excesses. Then, again, some of the ruffians would levy contributions in order, as they pretended, to secure the payers from plunder; yet, after they had filched them of their money, at their departure rifled them of all they could find the means of transporting. Their insolences to the females, our historians have drawn a veil over, as too abominable to admit of description.

An instance or two of their wanton waste are narrated, fromwhich the extent of the damage occasioned by their visitations, may, in some measure, be guessed at, especially as the perpetrators were not the most savage of the crew, but men from whom better things might have been expected. The Angus-shire troop of gentlemen heritors, or yeomanry cavalry, as they would now be called, commanded by the Laird of Dun, was quartered upon the lands of Cunningham of Cunninghamhead, then a boy at school, who, even by the strictest interpretation of the strictest acts of this detestable period, could not be held liable to such an infliction. Pretending that the country houses, upon which they were billetted, were not sufficiently comfortable for persons of their situation, these genteel troopers obliged the tenants to pay to each five pounds sterling for “dry quarters;” but, after they had received the money, they either remained themselves, or sent three or more footmen of the wildest Highlanders to supply their place. A cornet in this troop, Dunbar of Grange, nephew to the commander, perceiving that the entrance to the old tower of Cunninghamhead was strongly secured by an iron grating before a massy wainscoat door—most likely expecting to find some treasure secreted within—called for the keys that he might open and examine the interior. The keeper being absent, he was told that there was nothing of any consequence in the place, for the second story was used as a granary, and the rest of the building was unoccupied. At this, in great wrath, after abusing the people, he set fire to the door, and blew up the grating with gunpowder. Having forced his way in to the foot of a staircase, after ascending, he found himself opposed by a second stout door upon the girnel, also grated; but full of the hope of plunder, he was not thus to be disappointed, and removed this obstruction in the same summary manner. Sure of the prize, he rushed in with his attendants, all equally eager with himself for a share of the spoil, but they saw nothing except oatmeal, as they had been told, which, in their rage at finding themselves “begunkit,” they either “fyled” with their boots and shoes, all clay from the open field, or scattered about and destroyed, under pretence of searching for arms. The loss to the minor, as the greater part of the rents then were paid in produce, has not been mentioned in money; but as the deedhappened in the month of February, the pecuniary value, although then high, might not be equal to the detriment its destruction must have occasioned.

William Dickie, a merchant in Kilmarnock, had nine Highlanders quartered upon him six weeks, during which he was obliged to furnish them with meat and drink, and, not having sufficient accommodation for them in his own house, was forced to pay for “dry quarters,”i. e.good beds, in some other, as were numbers besides. When they went off, they carried away with them several sacks full of household stuff, and goods, and a hose full of silver money; and, before leaving, broke two of the honest man’s ribs—stabbed his wife in the side, who was big with child at the time, and otherwise so terrified her, that she died in consequence.

These were the apostles of Episcopacy! and their employers have even found apologists in our own day; but if they who, by preaching, and prayer, and suffering, attempted to diffuse the knowledge of the gospel in their country, were or are called fanatics, by what epithet shall honest indignation designate the miscreants who could endeavour by such means to obtrude an illiterate, ignorant, dissolute, and shameless priesthood, upon an unoffending, and comparatively uncorrupted, part of the population? It is, however, pleasant to notice that, among the Highland leaders, there were several exceptions. The Marquis of Atholl, and the Earl of Perth, are particularly mentioned as having pled the cause of justice and humanity at the council-board of the committee, though, unhappily, their pleadings were overborne by numbers—and their men comported themselves no better than their comrades.

The whole may be summed up in the words of a contemporary writer, an eyewitness, quoted by Wodrow:—“It is evidently apparent that the proceedings of these few months by-past, are a formed contrivance (if God in mercy prevent not) to subvert all religion, and to ruine and depopulate the country—they are open and evident oppression, public violence, and robbery, and invasion of the person and goods of a free and loyal people—a violation of the ancient rights and privileges of the lieges—and a treacherousraising of hatred and discord ’twixt the king and his subjects—and consequently, manifest treason against the commonwealth and the king’s majesty. In a word, when considered in its full extent, and in all its heinous circumstances, it is a complication of the most atrocious crimes that almost ever could have been conceived or perpetrated.” The losses sustained by the county of Ayr alone, were estimated, in an account intended to be laid before the king if he would have received it, at one hundred and thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and ninety-nine pounds, six shillings, Scots—or eleven thousand, four hundred and fifty pounds sterling; and this being only what could be ascertained and proved, was not supposed to be one-half of the real amount of damage inflicted.

While the Highlanders were plundering openly, the committee were equally busy in their vocation—fining or imprisoning all who came before them, whether upon charges of attending conventicles, or not signing the bond. On the 22d February, the Earl of Cassilis appeared, and resolutely refusing to subscribe what he considered as illegal in itself, and impossible for him to perform, was ordered to answer next day to an indictment accusing him of high crimes and misdemeanours, in frequenting conventicles, or allowing them upon his grounds. His lordship did accordingly appear, and denied upon oath, the truth of the averments in the libel, only, if there had been any conventicles upon his ground, or if his tenants had been at them, he knew nothing but by hearsay, he himself having never seen any such meetings, nor any of his tenants present at them. Immediately upon his refusal to subscribe, although he had cleared himself by oath of all the crimes laid to his charge, the lords appointed a messenger to charge him with letters of law-burrows, to pledge himself in the books of the privy council, that his wife, children, men, tenants, cottars, and servants, should not be present at conventicles, or any other disorderly meetings, under a penalty of double his valued yearly rent; and, in case of failure, he was to be denounced a rebel within six days. Hereupon he wrote to their lordships entreating a week’s delay, but they refused to grant him even this small favour, on which he immediately repaired to Edinburgh to offer the council every satisfaction that could be legallyrequired. But upon his coming thither, a proclamation was issued, commanding all noblemen, heritors, and others of the west country, to depart from the capital, and repair to their own houses within three days, before which time, however, his lordship was actually denounced at the market-cross of Ayr, and a caption issued for apprehending him. In these circumstances to have remained in Scotland without some security, would have been the height of folly, he therefore repaired to London, and having obtained the interset of Monmouth, laid a statement of his case before the king.

Universal as the suffering was in the west, yet so impressed were the people with a belief that the council wished some excuse for their conduct, or some pretext for further severities, that, with a patience unparalleled in history, they quietly endured their accumulated grievances, without giving their oppressors the handle so eagerly desired, and left them only the wretched plea of a rhetorical flourish, by which they designated their quiet assemblies,[100]to palliate or justify their atrocious aggressions on the constitution of the country, and the common rights of mankind. Whether the privy council felt this, or whether actuated by the dread of some more serious movement among the nobility, as the Earl of Loudon, the Lords Montgomery, Cathcart, and Bargeny, had also become refractory, it is unnecessary to inquire; but, in the latter end of February, the Highland host were ordered home, and the whole, except a few, returned to their native hills laden with the spoils of their more excellent neighbours.

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