BOOK XV.

A.D. 1680.

Perplexity of the moderate ministers—Murder of Mr Hall—Queensferry paper—Cargill joins Cameron—Sanquhar declaration—Council’s proclamation in reply—Reflections—Bond—Fresh plunderings by Dalziel—Skirmish at Airs-moss—Death of Cameron—of Rathillet—Cargill—Torwood excommunication—York arrives in Edinburgh—Spreul tortured—Skene, Stewart, and Potter executed—Effigy of the Pope burnt.

Never, perhaps, were men placed in more perplexing and trying circumstances than the conscientious ministers who durst not abstain from preaching the gospel as they had opportunity, but who could neither accept of the fettered indulgences offered them by their rulers, nor yet “had clearness” to disown a government which they thought it their duty to disobey. They got no credit from their persecutors for their professions of loyalty, and were shunned by their brethren who more consistently followed out the constitutional principles they had covenanted to preserve. The breach now became wider by a transaction which also added fresh fuel to the fire of persecution.

Mr Henry Hall of Haughead, in the parish of Eckford, in Teviotdale—one of the proscribed who had fled to Holland—having returned in order to strengthen the hands of Donald Cargill, at that time assiduously preaching the gospel on the banks the Forth, in Fife, and Mid-Lothian, attracted the notice of the curates of Borrowstounness and Carriden, who informed Middleton, a papist, governor of Blackness Castle, of the movements of these two distinguished “rebels.” He immediately went in pursuit,followed by his men in twos and threes to avoid suspicion. Tracking them to a house in Queensferry, he introduced himself as a friend, and requested they might take a glass of wine together, to which they agreed, when he, throwing off his mask, told them they were his prisoners, and commanded the people of the house, in the king’s name, to assist. None, however, paid any attention, except one Thomas George, a waiter, who came in while Mr Hall was struggling with the governor—Cargill having made his escape, although wounded—and striking him on the head with the butt end of his carabine, mortally wounded him; yet, though in this state, did Dalziel, whose house of Binns lies in the neighbourhood, on coming to the spot, order him to be carried to Edinburgh. As might have been expected, he died upon the road. For three days his body lay exposed in the Canongate jail, till at last its putrescence forced the wretches to allow his friends to carry it away and bury it under cloud of night.

In this gentleman’s pocket was found an unsubscribed paper, which, from the place where he was murdered, has usually been called “The Queensferry Paper.” It was merely notes, or rather a rude draught of a declaration, in which, after stating their adherence to the doctrine of the reformed churches, as contained in the covenants, and their determination to persevere in it to the end, they bound themselves to endeavour to their utmost the overthrow of the kingdom of darkness, and whatsoever is contrary to the kingdom of Christ, especially idolatry and popery, will-worship, prelacy, and erastianism; and, in order to attain this end, they renounced their allegiance; rejecting those who had rejected God, altered and destroyed the established religion, overturned the fundamental laws of the kingdom, and changed the civil government into a tyranny. Then they proposed to set up governors and a government according to the word of God, ‘able men, such as fear God; men of truth, hating covetousness;’ and no more to commit the government to one single person, or a lineal succession, that kind being liable to most inconveniences and aptest to degenerate into tyranny; at the same time, obliging themselves to defend each other in their worshipping of God, and in their natural, civil, and divine rights and liberties.

Cargill, upon his escape, fled south, and joined Mr Richard Cameron and the wanderers who followed him, and were outlawed, and declared rebels. After much deliberation, they finally agreed upon a declaration and testimony, suitable to the melancholy appearance of the times and the distressed state of the church, which Michael Cameron, accompanied by about twenty persons armed, carried to the small burgh of Sanquhar, read, and afterwards affixed to the cross, on the 22d of June 1680. This declaration, which was in substance the same as “The Queensferry Paper,” after stating that they considered “it as not among the smallest of the Lord’s mercies to this poor land, that there had always been some who had given their testimony against every course of defection, which they reckoned a token for good that he did not intend to cast them off altogether, but to leave a remnant in whom he would be glorious, if they through his grace kept themselves clean and walked in his ways, carrying on the noble work of reformation in the several steps thereof, both from popery and prelacy, and also from erastian supremacy, so much usurped by him, who,” they add, “it is true, so far as we know, is descended from the race of our kings; yet he hath so far deborded from what he ought to have been by his perjury and usurping in church matters, and tyranny in matters civil, that although we be for government and governors such as the word of God and our covenants allow, yet we for ourselves, and all that will adhere to us, the representatives of the true Presbyterian church and covenanted nation of Scotland, considering the great hazard of lying under sin any longer, do by these presents disown Charles Stuart, who hath been reigning, or rather we may say tyrannizing, on the throne of Britain, forfeited several years since by his perjury and his breach of covenant with God and his church. As also, under the banner of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Captain of our salvation, we do declare war with such a tyrant and usurper.” “As also, we disown and resent the reception of the Duke of York, a professed papist, as repugnant to our principles and vows to the most High God, and as that which is the great, though, alas! the just reproach of our church. We also protest against his succeeding to the crown, as against whatever hath been done, or any are assayingto do, in this land given to the Lord, in prejudice to our work of reformation.”

A proclamation was issued on the last day of June, in reply, stating in exaggerated terms what the council chose to call the sentiments of Mr Richard Cameron and his brother, and Mr Cargill and others, their accomplices,—sacrilegiously engaging themselves by a solemn oath “to murder such as are in any trust or employment under us, declaring us an usurper, and that none should obey them who are in authority under us, but such as would obey the devil and his vicegerents.”

Although Cameron and Cargill did think, and I believe justly, that Charles and the vile turn-coat crew who composed his government were—if perjury, cruelty, tyranny, profligacy, and every species of open undisguised licentiousness embodied, constitute such beings—the representatives of the devil in human shape, yet it does not appear that they used the expressions which they in justice did apply to their persecutors, till they themselves were unconstitutionally and unjustly placed without the pale of the law, denied the rights which had been parliamentarily insured to them, and denounced as the vilest of malefactors for—preaching the gospel. Several of the excellent followers of these noble men have been at no little labour to extenuate or excuse their conduct. It ought never to have been mentioned, but in accents of praise—it needed no justification. The government had broken all faith:—and society is based in its public as well as its private associations on the bonds of mutual reciprocal obligation and the righteous performance of these relative duties. When either party violate them, they deserve punishment for their crime. That popular insurrection should be put down, is allowed; that aristocratical domination was to be equally checked, these denounced Cameronians asserted; and this was in fact the grand crime for which they were hunted like wild beasts upon the mountains.

But they were not the people to be scared from their principles by any prospect of danger. While the fields were traversed by the blood-hounds of their persecutors, the same indomitable bands united more closely together, and entered into a new bond, obliging themselves to be faithful to God and true to one another in theprosecution of their grand design, as assertors of their civil and religious rights, which they believed could only be secured by driving from the throne that “perfidious covenant-breaking race, untrue both to the most High God and the people over whom for their sins they were set.”

These mutual defiances were followed by petty exasperating individual encounters between the soldiers and the exasperated people, for the former did not confine their pillaging to the covenanters, though they were the chief objects of their vengeance; but now, when it was a finable offence to resett or harbour any of the fugitives, the soldiers roamed up and down the country in quest of the wanderers, or in quest of whatever might afford them a pretext for plunder.

Dalziel, the favourite of the council, whose education in the Muscovite service peculiarly fitted him for such employment, was anew invested with enlarged powers to disperse all conventicles, and punish, without the ceremony of sending them to Edinburgh for trial, all who were caught in the “horrible act” of preaching the word of God or hearing it preached; and the council, in a letter to Lauderdale, expressed “the hope we justly have that such just severity against some of these rebels will preserve peace to his majesty’s good subjects,” and disappoint “the vanity of bearing a testimony at Edinburgh, which cherished the foolish humours of numbers, and made the processes and punishments inflicted there less effectual than elsewhere.” All such persons who were understood to be the king’s enemies were to be attacked by the king’s forces wherever they could be found, and imprisoned till brought to justice, or killed in case of resistance.

The General followed out his commission to the letter. He quartered his soldiers upon suspected families, where they lodged during pleasure, and, when leaving, carried off what sheep and cattle they pleased without paying any thing; the pasture and growing corn they eat up or trode down, without allowing the smallest compensation; and, as the whole district was liable to these ravages, the mischief they did was incalculable. While thus ravaging the country, a party, consisting of upwards of one hundred and twenty dragoons, well mounted, under the commandof Bruce of Earlshall, were sent to disperse the company of wanderers who usually attended the ministrations of Richard Cameron. They surprised an assemblage at a place called Airs-moss, in the district of Kyle, amounting to about twenty-six horse and forty foot, headed by Hackston of Rathillet, indifferently armed; who, knowing that they had no mercy to expect, determined to face the enemy, and drew up at the entry to the moss. The horse charged with intrepidity, but could not stand against the superior number of their enemies, and were quickly broken; and the foot unable to support them, they were surrounded, and the whole killed or taken. The foot retiring into the morass, could not be pursued. Cameron, who previously to the skirmish had engaged in prayer with the wanderers, used these remarkable expressions—“Lord, take the ripe, but spare the green!” He fell with his brother, back to back, gallantly defending themselves against their assailants. Hackston was severely wounded and taken prisoner.[129]

129.It is mentioned in the Scots Worthies, p. 372, that Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree gave the information to Earlshall, and got 10,000 merks as a reward, but that some time after, about two o’clock afternoon, his castle took fire, and was with the charters, plate, and all, burned down to the ground. The son said to his father while it was burning—“This is the vengeance of Cameron’s blood.” The house was never rebuilt by any of that family.

Cameron’s head and hands were cut off and carried to Edinburgh to be exposed, but with wanton barbarity they were first taken to his father, who was in prison; and he was unfeelingly asked by some heartless wretch if he knew them? The old man took them, and kissing them, replied—“I know them! I know them! they are my son’s—my own dear son’s! It is the Lord; good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but has made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.”

Rathillet next morning was brought to Lanark, where the head-quarters were, and examined before Dalziel, Lord Ross, and some others; but his answers not being deemed satisfactory, Dalziel, with his accustomed brutality, threatened to roast him, then sent him to the tolbooth and caused bind him most barbarously and cast him down on the floor, where he lay till the morning after,without any person being admitted to see him, or administer in any manner to his comfort. On the following morning (Sabbath) he was marched, with three others, two miles on foot, without shoes, and wounded as he was, to be delivered up to the escort under Earlshall, who was to take them to Edinburgh. He used them civilly by the way, and carried them round about the north side of the town to the foot of the Canongate, where they were received by the magistrates of the city,[130]who set Mr Hackston on a horse with his head bare and his face to the tail, the hangman, covered, carrying Mr Cameron’s head on an halbert before him; also another head in a sack, was carried on a lad’s back. His companions came after on foot, with their hands tied to an iron goad; and thus they were marched to the Parliament Close.

130.Mr Laing says Captain Creighton, whose memoirs were compiled and published by Swift, commanded the military at Airs-moss, Hist. vol. iv. p. 113, note. Rathillet says in his account, “The party that had broken us at first, were commanded by Earlshall, Wodrow, vol. ii. app. p. 60.

All this studied ignominy, which was to recoil with tenfold bitterness upon their own base characters, was minutely prescribed by the council before the prisoner arrived in the capital. As the manner of his execution was determined before he was tried, it still stands in the record thus:—“That his body be drawn backward on a hurdle to the cross of Edinburgh; that there be an high scaffold erected a little above the cross, where, in the first place, his right hand is to be struck off, and after some time his left hand: then he is to be hanged up, and cut down alive; his bowels to be taken out and his heart shown to the people by the hangman: then his heart and his bowels to be burnt in a fire prepared for that purpose on the scaffold; that afterwards his head be cut off, and his body divided into four quarters—his head to be fixed on the Netherbow, one of his quarters with both his hands to be affixed at St Andrews, another quarter at Glasgow, a third at Leith, a fourth at Burntisland; that none presume to be in mourning for him, or any coffin brought; that no persons be suffered to be on the scaffold with him, save the two bailies, the executioner, and his servants; that he be allowed to pray to GodAlmighty, but not to speak to the people; that Hackston and Cameron’s heads be fixed on higher poles than the rest.”

On July 30, he was brought before the justiciary, but declined their authority, because they had usurped supremacy over the church belonging alone to Jesus Christ, and had established idolatry, perjury, and other iniquity in the land; and in prosecuting their design, and in confirming themselves in their usurped right, had shed much innocent blood. The proof of his being at Airs-moss was clear; and one of the late archbishop’s servants swore “that he saw the panel on a light-coloured horse at some distance from the coach, and that he took the same horse in Mortounhouse—where Rathillet had been—and hoped to have taken himself, but he escaped.” The jury brought him in guilty, and the court sentenced him to be executed that same day with all the revolting particularity of barbaric savagism they had previously appointed. It was even increased by the unskilfulness of the hangman, who was a long while mangling the wrist of the right arm before he succeeded in separating the hand; which being done, the patient sufferer calmly requested him to strike in the joint of the left; then he was drawn up a considerable way with a pulley and suffered to fall a considerable way with a jerk. This was repeated thrice, yet was not life extinguished; for, when the heart was torn from his bosom, it fell from the hands of the executioner, and moved after it fell!

Hackston was a gentleman allied to the first families in the land, of good talents, well educated, and who in early life had associated with the commissioner in the wild gaieties of the day; and perhaps the severest test his integrity was subjected to was, the commissioner personally came to him in prison, and, with many protestations of kindness, alluding to their former intimacy, urged him to compliance.[131]The mean tool of power, the advocate,who with his usual insolence endeavoured to insult him at his first examination, received a spirited retort. He asked where he was on the third day of May was a year? To whom he answered, “I am not bound to keep a memorial where I am or what I do every day.” The advocate said, “Sir, you must be a great liar to say you remember not where you was that day, it being so remarkable a day;” to which he answered, “Sir, you must be a far greater liar to say I answered such a thing;” and the Chancellor supported him.

131.Having in vain tried flattery, the Chancellor, in the council, said—“I was a vicious man.” I answered, “that while I was so, I had been acceptable to him; but now when otherwise it was not so.” In reply to another question, he said, “Ye know that youth is a folly, and in my younger days I was too much carried down with the speat of it: but that inexhaustible fountain of the goodness and grace of God, which is free and great, hath reclaimed me, and, as a firebrand, plucked me out of the claws of satan.”—Rathillet’s confession, Cloud of Witnesses.

A few days after, August 4th, several others were tried and condemned for having been with Cameron; and a general search was ordered to discover the outlawed attenders on field-preaching. It was conducted under the direction of Robert Cannon of Mardrogat, one of those miscreants who, having made a flaming profession, had become acquainted with their places of meeting, but afterwards apostatizing, now discovered the secret recesses of his former friends, and was usually consulted respecting the character of such persons as the soldiers seized, who were dismissed or detained as he directed.

Intensity of persecution had now almost extinguished field-preaching. Donald Cargill alone fearlessly preserved his station, and, in defiance of the sanguinary storm which swept over the moors and glens of his country, continued to proclaim with unfettered freedom the principles of the church of his fathers, and to assert the spiritual independence of her ministers, while almost all others had yielded to the tempest or deserted the land of their nativity. While hunted himself as a hart or a roe upon the mountains, he resolved upon the extraordinary measure of excommunicating those rulers of a covenanted land who had themselves sworn that sacred obligation, and professed themselves members of the church of Christ in Scotland.

Accordingly, in the month of September, at the Torwood, Stirlingshire, he lectured upon Ezekiel xxi. 25-27. “And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come,” &c., and preached from 1 Cor. v. 13. “Therefore, put away from among yourselves that wicked person.” He first explained the nature and ends of excommunication, affirming that he was not influencedby any private motive in this action, but constrained by conscience of duty and zeal to God, to stigmatize these his enemies that had so apostatized, rebelled against, mocked, despised, and defied the Lord, and to declare them, as they are none of his, to be none of ours. He then with great solemnity proceeded—“I being a minister of Jesus Christ, and having authority and power from him, do, in his name, and by his spirit, excommunicate, cast out of the true church, and deliver up to satan, Charles the Second, king, &c. upon these grounds:—1st, For his high mocking of God, in that after he had acknowledged his own sins, his father’s sins, his mother’s idolatry, yet had gone on more avowedly in the same than all before him. 2d, For his great perjury in breaking and burning the covenant. 3d, For his rescinding of laws for establishing the Reformation, and enacting laws contrary thereunto. 4th, For commanding of armies to destroy the Lord’s people. 5th, For his being an enemy to true protestants and helper of the papists, and hindering the execution of just laws against them. 6th, For his granting remission and pardon for murderers, which is in the power of no king to do, being expressly contrary to the law of God. 7th, For his adulteries, and dissembling with God and man.”

Next, by the same authority, and in the same name, he excommunicated James Duke of York, for his idolatry, and setting it up in Scotland, to defile the land, and encouraging others to do so; not mentioning any other sins but what he scandalously persisted in in Scotland. He pronounced a similar sentence against Lauderdale for his dreadful blasphemy, in saying to the late prelate of St Andrews, “Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool;” his apostacy from the covenant and reformation, and his persecuting thereof after he had been a professor, pleader for, and presser thereof; for his adulteries, his gaming on the Lord’s day, his ordinary cursing; and for his counselling and assisting the king in all his tyrannies, overturning and plotting against the true religion: and also included in the same censure, Rothes, Dalziel, and the Lord Advocate.

These proceedings have been condemned as plainly disagreeable to the rules of the church of Scotland. In ordinary timesthey might be so, but extraordinary times require extraordinary measures; and Mr Cargill was placed in a situation altogether unparalleled in the history of the church of Scotland. That he was persuaded in his own mind that he had acted with propriety, we know; for next Lord’s day, when preaching at Fallow-hill, in the parish of Livingstone, in the preface to his sermon, he thus defended his conduct:—“I know I am and will be condemned by many for excommunicating these wicked men; but condemn me who will, I know I am approved by God, and am persuaded that what I have done on earth is ratified in heaven; for if ever I knew the mind of God, and was clear in my call to any piece of my work, it was that. And I shall give you two signs that you may know I am in no delusion:—1st, If some of these men do not find that sentence binding upon them ere they go off the stage, and be obliged to confess it; and, 2dly, If they die the ordinary death of men;—then the Lord hath not spoken by me.”[132]

132.Whatever opinion may be entertained with regard to the prophetical spirit of the denunciation, yet it deserves to be remarked, that Rothes when dying, under great terror of mind, sent for two Presbyterian clergymen, Mr John Carstairs and Mr George Johnstone, to administer consolation to him in his last hours. Charles II. died under very suspicious circumstances in the arms of an harlot. Lauderdale, after being despoiled of his property, and abused in his dotage by his Duchess, departed almost in a state of idiocy, in consequence, it was alleged, of her ill treatment during his imbecility. York died a discrowned exile in a strange country. Dalziel dropped down with a glass of wine at his lips, and entered the eternal state without a moment’s warning. “Sir George Mackenzie died at London—all the passages of his body running blood.”—Walker’s Remarks, p. 10.

However much the persecutors affected to despise this procedure, they showed by their conduct that they did not deem it so ridiculous an affair. That it had touched their souls, scared as they were by unrestrained indulgence in the lowest hardening and profligate licentiousness, was evident from the rage they exhibited and the increased fierceness of their persecution.

Ancient episcopacy, as established by Constantine, has always been considered the genuine parent of the papacy. Modern episcopacy, as established by law, was always considered by the reformers of Scotland, and their descendants in the Presbyterianchurch, as the legitimate daughter of the man of sin. Nor did the deeds of this period disgrace the relationship. The Duke of York, who had professed himself a papist, and for this reason was obliged to leave England, was hailed by the Episcopalians of Scotland, where he arrived to resume the government this year. On the 29th, he came to the Abbey of Holyrood-house, and was welcomed by the Bishop of Edinburgh, with the orthodox clergy, as their great protector.

On the 2d of November, a council was held, at which the Earl of Moray produced his commission as sole secretary of state, Lauderdale, on account of his increased corpulence and mental decay, being forced unwillingly to resign a trust he had so awfully abused. The same day they returned a letter of thanks to his majesty—an admirable specimen of courtly congratulation, which might teach despots what reliance is to be placed on the profession of interested sycophants, especially when we recollect that many of those who signed it, in less than eight years conspired to hurl the object of their adulation from the throne. “The only thing,” say they, “which is forced upon the worst of your subjects—viz.the covenanters—is, that they must unavoidably confess that nothing can lessen their happiness, except their being insensible of it and unthankful for it.” Next comes their gratitude for a standing army and their own salaries:—“Your majesty by dispensing for our protection all the revenue which is raised in this your majesty’s ancient kingdom, lets us see that all you crave of us is, that we would be true to our own interest; and all that you get by us is, the care of governing us to our own satisfaction.” Then the loyal professions so easily lavished and so easily forgotten—“That profound respect and sincere kindness, sir, which we observe in your majesty’s subjects here to your royal brother, the Duke of Albany and York, assure us that we want nothing but occasion to hazard for the royal family those lives and fortunes which you have made so sweet and secure to us!”

One of the first tastes they had of the sweetness of the new administration, was in the care the Duke showed to prevent the public mind from being contaminated by seditious publications. Thecommittee for public affairs were desired to consider what books imported from Holland should be condemned by authority; and the clerks of council were ordered to search the shop of John Calderwood, stationer, and secure such prohibited books as should be found therein. Accordingly, he having confessed that he had “Naphtali; Jus Regni apud Scotos,” in English; “Jus Populi Vindicatum;” “The Reformed Bishop;” and “Calderwood’s Church History,” he was committed to prison and his shop shut; and all stationers were ordered in future to show their invoices to one of the officers of state or the Bishop of Edinburgh, for their approbation, under pain of forfeiting the books, and being fined if they should fail. A ship belonging to Borrowstounness, which had been seized on suspicion of having some of the dangerous works on board, though none were got, was not released till the owners found surety to the council for their good behaviour in time to come.

Whenever any unprincipled set of men, who have obtained and abused power, become conscious that they are hated, and deserve to be hurled from their eminence, they commonly pretend to discover some plot for overturning their government. Accordingly, a plot against the Duke’s life was fabricated; and John Spreul, apothecary in Glasgow, and Robert Hamilton, were accused of being accessary to it. The council ordered them to be examined by torture, and appointed a committee to conduct the examination, among whom it is painful to observe the name of the Earl of Argyle. Of Hamilton’s examination I have seen no account, but Spreul was put to the question; and the Duke of York chose to be a spectator, viewing it “with the calmness of a person looking upon a curious experiment,” or perhaps more truly, as has been observed, “with all the infernal gratification of a popish inquisitor.”

This excellent man, early initiated in suffering, was the son of a merchant in Paisley, who had been ruined and forced to abscond (1667) merely for hearing the gospel preached in the open air. When he was seized, he was examined by Dalziel, who according to custom, threatened to roast him alive if he would not discover his father’s retreat; but finding he could make nothing of theboy, he was let go upon a short confinement. Ten years after, just when he had settled in life, he was intercommuned merely for non-conformity, and forced to travel as a merchant through Holland, France, and Ireland, occasionally and by stealth visiting his wife who had retained the shop; but after Bothwell, although he was not there, he was again denounced, his shop seized, and wife and children turned to the door. He then came back to Scotland to carry them with him to Holland, but was apprehended in bed by the notorious Major Johnstoun at Edinburgh, his goods seized, and himself sent to prison.

His examination shows the spirit of the times; and a short quotation will exhibit better than any remarks, the nature of popish unconstitutional interference in the management of a protestant country. “Were you at the killing of the archbishop? I was in Ireland at that time. Was it a murder? I know not but by hearsay that he is dead, and cannot judge other men’s actions upon hearsay. I am no judge; but in my discretive judgment I would not have done it, and cannot approve it.” He was again urged:—“But do you not think it was a murder?” His answer exhibits the principles of the majority of the sufferers. “Excuse me from going any farther, I scruple to condemn what I cannot approve; there may be a righteous judgment of God when there is a sinful hand of man; and I may admire and adore the one, when I tremble at the other.” As he was personally engaged in none of the risings, he was asked whether resisting Claverhouse at Drumclog was rebellion? He answered, “I think not; for I own the freedom of preaching the gospel, and I hear what they did was only in self-defence.” “Was the rising at Bothwell rebellion?” “I will not call it rebellion; I think it was a providential necessity put on them for their own safety after Drumclog.” Twice was he put to the torture; and at the second time, the old ruffian Dalziel said the hangman did not strike strongly enough. The fellow replied, that he had struck with all his strength, and offered the General the maul to try it himself.

Our common nature recoils from such scenes. The votaries of a false religion delight in the torment of those they deem heretics; and had we no other proof of relationship, this would besufficient to establish the identity of the then Scottish Episcopalian church and the church of Rome, the same cruelty being used by both towards those who differed from the state religion. The intrepid victim was carried back to prison, but denied either the assistance of a surgeon, or the attendance of his wife!

The Duke of York showed the reality of his religion by being voluntarily present during the double infliction. No information was obtained by the tyrant. The sufferer knew nothing about any plot to blow up his Grace, nor did he know where Mr Cargill was to be found.

Mr James Skene, brother to the Laird of Skene was the next. This gentleman’s case deserves peculiar notice. He was guilty of no treason. His only accusation was his having heard Mr Cargill preach. He had been a youth of irregular habits, and had associated, as from his birth and rank he had a right to do, with the first people of the country; but while wandering among the mountains, he unwittingly came where this minister of the gospel was tending his small flock in the wilderness, and was himself caught in the gospel net. Henceforth, instead of indulging in every youthful folly, he became sober and exemplary in his conduct—sins of no common magnitude in the estimation of the rulers of the day; and immediately he came under the cognizance of the government; and being apprehended, was brought to trial for treason.

Being a young convert, and animated with all the warmth of a new zeal, he unfortunately, by his unguarded answers, gave currency to the reports so assiduously circulated against the wanderers, of their pleading for or extenuating the practice of private assassination, and a contempt for all constituted authority, or indeed any authority but their own. He thus detailed it in a letter to his brother:—“Rothes asked, did I own the king’s authority? I said, in so far as it was against the covenant and interest of Christ, I disowned it. He asked me if I thought it was not a sinful murder the killing of the arch-prelate? I said I thought it was their duty to kill him when God gave them opportunity, for he had been the author of much bloodshed. They asked me why I carried arms? I told them it was for self-defence, and thedefence of the gospel. They asked me why I poisoned my ball? I told them I wished none of them to recover whom I shot. They asked, would I kill the soldiers, being the king’s? I said it was my duty if I could, when they persecuted God’s people. They asked if I would kill any ofthem? I said they were all stated enemies of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the declaration at Sanquhar, I counted themmyenemies. They asked if I would think it my duty to kill the king? I said he had stated himself an enemy to God’s interest, and there was war declared against him. I said the covenant made with God was the glory of Scotland, though they had unthankfully counted it their shame; and in direct terms, I said to the Chancellor, I have a parchment at home wherein your father’s name is, and you are bound by that as well as I. A little after, the Chancellor said, why did I not call him lord? I told him, were he for Christ’s interest I would honour him. Then he said he cared not for my honour; but he would have me to know he was Chancellor. I said I knew that. He said I was not a Scots man, but a Scots beast.” The above is a specimen of the treatment that even prisoners of rank experienced at the hands of the privy council. The process before the justiciary was more brief. His declaration was the only evidence brought against him; and he having acknowledged it, he was sent to the scaffold to atone for his sentiments.

The Students of Edin.rburning the Pope in effigy, Anno. 1680Vide page473Edinr. Hugh Paton. Carver & Gilder to the Queen 1842.

Along with Skene were executed Archibald Stewart, who belonged to Borrowstounness, and John Potter, a farmer in the parish of Uphall. The former had been a follower of Cameron, and present at the skirmish at Airs-moss, though not apprehended till some time after, when, being examined by torture, he acknowledged the fact, as a necessary piece of self-defence when following the gospel preached in the fields—the only crime of which he could be accused; but he denied that either he or any of those with whom he associated had ever declared that they would have killed the king or any of the council, which he affirmed was “an untruth and forged calumny, to reproach the way of God, more like themselves and their own principles, who have killed so many of the people of God both on the fields and upon scaffolds.”The latter also had been equally guilty of attending the reproached preachings of Cameron and Cargill; and he exhorted his fellow-christians not to be troubled because of their death, but to “keep the word of his patience, and he would keep them in the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the face of the earth.” “O dear friends and followers of Christ, hold on your way; weary not; faint not; and you shall receive the crown of life. It is they that overcome by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony, that shall stand, being clothed in white robes before the throne; for these are they that have come out of great tribulation. Remember there is a book of remembrance written; and the names are written in it that speak often one to another. O! my friends, let it be your study to keep up private fellowship meetings, wherein so much of the power and life of religion is to be found.” They do not appear to have been attended by any minister. They sung the second Psalm and read the third chapter of Malachi; but when Stewart began to pray, and alluded to the bloody Charles Stuart, immediately the drums were beat.

These acts of severity, however, by no means produced the effects intended; and, as the youth of a country often announce prematurely the feelings of the maturer part of a community, the students at Edinburgh College, on Christmas-day, celebrated the highest festival of the Romish church by burning the Pope in effigy, arrayed in his pontifical paraphernalia—his triple crown, keys, and scarlet robes—after having paraded him through the streets in procession, and formally excommunicated him. Those at the College of Glasgow in a less tumultuous, but more lasting and impressive manner, testified their sentiments by reviving the blue riband—the badge of the covenant. When called before the archbishop for their offence, the young Marquis of Annandale showed his contempt for his authority by only styling him Sir, and, when reproved by his tutor for not respecting his superior, replied, “I know the king has been pleased to make him a spiritual lord; but I know likewise the piper’s son of Arbroath and my father’s son are not to be compared.”

Back to Index Next