BOOK XVIII.

A.D. 1681-1682.

Society-men—their first general meeting—State of the country—Ure of Shargarton—Wavering of the Episcopalians—Lanark declaration—burned at Edinburgh—Harvey hanged—Mr P. Warner—York recalled to court—New government—Robert Gray executed—Dalziel sent to the west—Meeting at Priest-hill—at Tala-linn—Major White and the Laird of Meldrum—their proceedings—Hume of Hume executed—Lauderdale’s death.

Deprived of their regular teachers by banishment or legal murder, the consistent covenanters, now proscribed wanderers, formed themselves into societies for mutual edification, by reading the scriptures, prayer, and exhortation. As might have been expected in such circumstances, some were apt to carry their principles to an extreme which, in more peaceable times, they would never have thought of; but in general their conduct evinced a soundness of judgment and sobriety of understanding which could only result from the powerful influence of religious truth upon their minds. When “the blasphemous and self-contradictory test” had been enacted, several of the most pious among them in the west, considered it their indispensable duty to give some public testimony, as far as they were capable of doing it, corresponding to the notoriety of the sin, lest they might interpretatively be looked upon as consenters or at least connivers at such a wickedness, but wished it should be done by the whole collectively as far as was possible, and therefore that delegates from each of the societies should hold “general meetings” at such times and places as might be agreed upon.

The first was kept upon the 15th of December 1681, at Logan-house, in the parish of Lesmahago, Lanarkshire, “at which time,” as Michael Shields deplores, “the condition of the country was lamentable; the cruelty and malice of the enemy was come to a great height; they were pressing conformity to their iniquitous courses; and alas! they were much complied with. Defection was growing, sin was abounding, and the love of many was waxing cold; snares and temptations were increasing, and, which was sad, people wanted faithful warning of the sin and danger of the time; for ministers were lying bye from the public preaching of the gospel, and did not, as becomes watchmen, set the trumpet to their mouth to give a certain sound! But especially the case of the scattered, reproached, persecuted, and yet contending party, was sad; reduced to very great straits of hiding, chasing, wandering, imprisonment, and killing, and to have foul reproaches and odious calumnies cast upon them, especially by some ministers and professors, they resolved that a declaration should be published at Lanark on the 12th January following.” Then, after settling the plan of a general correspondence, and arranging the regular quarterly meetings, they dispersed.

A.D. 1682 commenced with vexatious proceedings. On the 7th of January, the council wrote to the king, telling him that the day for taking the test had passed over, and that they had sent him a list of the jurisdictions become vacant by the refusal of their holders to subscribe that oath, together with the names of those they recommended to fill them, adding, with great glee—“After serious reflection upon the whole matter of the test, we may sincerely say, that it has been a most happy expedient for filling all offices with persons who are well-affected to the protestant religion and your majesty’s government.”

In November last year, the privy council granted warrant to Sir George Mackenzie, king’s advocate, to prosecute criminally forty-six persons in the shires of Linlithgow, Stirling, and Ayr for being concerned in the rebellion at Bothwell. On the 9th of January this year, twenty-two were proceeded against, but only nine forfeited, the rest having either contrived to make their escape or bargained for their freedom by making a renunciationof their estates to the lords of the treasury; but James Ure of Shargarton was singled out for particular severity, because, having left the Episcopal communion, he had joined the persecuted ministers, and had his children baptized by them. His goods were seized, his rents arrested, and himself intercommuned; so that he never slept in bed three nights for nine years, during which parties of soldiers were sent to his house above thirty times, and dragoons quartered upon him for whole weeks together—his mother, an aged gentlewoman of seventy years, was carried to Glasgow and thrust into the common jail. Her petition “for leave at least to win to the prison doors for air” could not be granted; so she died there in the crowd.

Meanwhile, £100 sterling was offered to any who would bring in the said James Ure, dead or alive; but he escaped to Ireland, whence he occasionally ventured home, though he durst not remain in his own house, but was forced, both himself and his lady, to lie several weeks in the wood of Boquhan all night, when the cold was so great that the clothes would have been frozen together about them when they awoke. At daybreak he retired to a tenant’s house, and she returned home, where, about this time, she was apprehended and carried to Stirling, with a child on her breast, and detained there and in the Canongate tolbooth, Edinburgh, till she found bail for two thousand merks to appear when called; and, through the interposition of the Earl of Perth’s chamberlain, was finally dismissed.

Encouraged perhaps by the scruples of the first nobles in the land, twenty-one of the prelatical clergy refused the test, and the council, on the 12th of this month, wrote to the patrons of the parishes to present fit and qualified persons in their room; but, upon re-considering the matter, the great part of them appear to have got over their scruples, and upon application were reponed to their benefices and stipends.

While the Episcopalians were wavering, the societies were acting. About forty armed men on the set day marched to Lanark, and, after burning the test, read and affixed to the cross their declaration, which it is impossible to peruse without deep interest, when we consider that, unlike a common declaration written bythose who are themselves in safety or at ease, it was penned by men in jeopardy every hour, and proclaimed by them at the peril of their lives:[145]—

145.Indeed this ought never to be lost sight of in reading any of the productions of the persecuted, and should lead us to make every allowance for any warm expressions which they suffered to escape them, when contending not only for their own rights, but the rights of their posterity—for those privileges which we now enjoy but too lightly prize, because we seldom think of the price at which they were purchased. For some expressions in this, such as calling themselves “a meeting of the estates,” &c. they afterwards apologized in the informatory vindication.

“They acknowledged government as an ordinance of God, and governors as ordained by him, in so far as they rule and govern according to his word and the constitutive laws of the nation; but when these laws are annulled by other pretended laws—when an inexplicable prerogative in matters ecclesiastic is usurped and arbitrary power in matters civil is arrogated—when a banner of impiety is displayed—when parliaments are so prelimited as that no true son of the state or church hath liberty to sit or vote there—what shall the people do in such extremity? Shall they give up their reason as men, their consciences as Christians, and resign their liberties, fortunes, religion, and their all to the inexorable obstinacy, and incurable wilfulness and malice of those who, in spite of God or man, are resolved to make their own will the absolute and sovereign rule of their actions? Shall the end of government be lost through the weakness, wickedness, and tyranny of governors? Have not the people, in such an extremity, good ground to make use of that natural and radical power which they possess, to shake off that yoke? which, accordingly, the Lord honoured us (in a general and unprelimited meeting of the estates and shires in Scotland) to do; at which convention he was most legally and by general consent cut off by the declaration at Sanquhar. But that we may not seem to have done that, or yet to do the like, upon no grounds, we shall hint at some of the many thousands of the misdemeanours of the now cast off tyrant.” They then recapitulate the destruction of the noble constitution of the church and state by the first acts of his first parliament—the adjourning and dissolving parliaments at his pleasure—hisusurpation of supreme head over all persons civil and ecclesiastic—his exorbitant taxations, and then expending the revenues of the crown for keeping up a brothel rather than a court—and his securing the succession to one as bad if not worse than himself. In conclusion, they offered to prove that they had done nothing contrary to the ancient laws of the kingdom, and only endeavoured to restore the church and state to the constitutional base on which they were established in 1648-9.

Exasperated at such an intrepid display of principle, the council paid homage to the deed by a miserable retaliatory act, for burning, by the hands of the common hangman, the Solemn League and Covenant, the libel called Cargill’s covenant, and the Rutherglen and Sanquhar declarations, together with the last most obnoxious one at Lanark, which was done accordingly upon an high scaffold erected at the cross of Edinburgh, the magistrates attending in their robes.[146]The town of Lanark was fined six thousand merks for not preventing what they could not possibly have anticipated; and William Harvey, a weaver, was hanged for publishing what he was not even present at, but he had been present at the declaration before Bothwell; and as the one was as bad as the other, he suffered accordingly.

146.It was remarked at the time, that the bailie who superintended the execution of this public affront to the Covenants, had his large house burned down not long after. “But,” as Wodrow well observes, “it becomes all to be very sparing in putting commentaries upon particular providences.” Vol. ii. p. 228.

Mr Patrick Warner, although not persecuted to the death, suffered a vexatious harassment, sufficiently severe. In 1669 he had been ordained at London as a missionary to India—and perhaps it may not be unworthy of remark in passing, that the persecuted churches in Britain, like the persecuted churches in Judea, were eminently honoured in being the most successful labourers in the missionary field. After a number of hindrances were removed, he was proceeding on his voyage, when he was captured by the Dutch fleet, being in an English vessel, but at length succeeded in arriving at his destination. He laboured about three years at Madras, till forced by ill health to return to his native land about 1677, where he preached as opportunities offered, inhouses and fields, till Bothwell, when he fled to Holland, whence he returned, 1681, to be married to a daughter of the Rev. William Guthrie. The very day after his marriage he was apprehended—such was the malignant cruelty of the ruling renegadoes; and although no tangible charge could be brought against him, he was kept in confinement till June this year, and only released upon banishing himself the country, under a penalty of five thousand merks in case of his return—losing his books and paying jail fees to the extent of one hundred pounds sterling. He went to Newcastle, and was allowed to remain there quietly for some time, being only required to take the oath of allegiance, which he did with his own explanations, and afterwards went to Holland, where he remained till the Revolution, when he returned to Scotland.[147]

147.One day, when the council had finished their work, and were just rising, the clerk asked the chancellor, My lord, what will you do with Mr Warner? You have ordered him to oblige himself not to preach during the ten days allowed him for ordering his affairs; but if you knew him as well as I do, you would as well order him to go to the Grassmarket and be hanged, for he will do the one as soon as the other. What shall we do with him then, Hugh? My lord, if you would take my advice, instead of taking him obliged not to preach, I would take his engagement to preach thrice a-day while he stays in the kingdom, and so you will burst him and be quit of his din. The matter was laughed over, and the clerk allowed to draw his liberation without that clog. Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 254.

About this time the patriotic struggle in England had terminated unfavourably, and Charles found himself at liberty to recall his brother to court, on which occasion the Scottish bishops wrote a letter to his Grace of Canterbury, to be by him communicated to the king and their English brethren, expressing their sense of how much “their poor church and order did owe to the princely care and goodness of his royal highness, which, next to the watchful providence of God, had been their chief protection against the most unreasonable schism which, by rending, threatened the subversion of their church and religion”—“so that all men,” say they, “take notice that he looks on the enemies of the church as adversaries to the monarchy itself.” “The peace and tranquillity of the kingdom is the effect of his prudent and steady conduct of affairs, and the humours of our fanatics are much restrainedfrom dangerous eruptions, upon the apprehensions of his vigilance and justice.”

Early in May, he returned to these his warm admirers, finally to arrange the government in the hands of their and his friends.[148]Queensberry, created a Marquis, he appointed treasurer; Gordon of Haddow, afterwards raised to the peerage as Earl of Aberdeen, chancellor; and Perth, who shortly after went over to popery, justice-general—an office of fearful importance during that bloody period. In about a week after, he took leave of the council, recommending to them at parting to pay particular attention to the support of the orthodox clergy and the suppression of the rebellious by sending more military missionaries to be quartered among them. In reply, they gave him as cordial assurances of thankfulness and obedience as he could have desired, and proceeded to carry his instructions into effect.

148.On his passage the vessel was wrecked, and about one hundred and fifty perished, among whom were, the Earl of Roxburgh, the Laird of Hopeton, Sir Joseph Douglas, and Mr Hyde, his own brother-in-law. He escaped himself with a few favourites; but it was said at the time that more might have been rescued, had he been less careful about his priests and his dogs.

As a preliminary, one Robert Gray, an Englishman from Northumberland, who had been apprehended about ten months before, and kept close prisoner, was brought to trial, accused of having written a letter to John Anderson, prisoner in Dumfries, “wherein he did declare our present sovereign, the best and most merciful of kings, to be a tyrant;” “and calling the test theblacktest, and destructive of all the work of reformation.” He acknowledged the letter, which seems to have been intercepted, but had been guilty of no overt act whatever, nor indeed was he accused; and for these expressions he was found guilty of treason, and hanged on the next day following his trial. “As for me,” said he, addressing the crowd from the ladder, “I am brought out of another nation to own that covenant which ye have broken. Glory, glory, glory, be to his name, that ever he gave me a life to lay down for him!” “As for you who are the remnant of the Lord’s people, keep your ground, and beware of turning aside to one hand or another, and I will assure you the Lord will prepare a Zoar for you.Cleave to truth and to one another, and as sure as God lives, ye shall yet see glorious days in Scotland! for I die in the faith of it, that he is on his way returning to the land! But wo! wo! will be to those who are enemies and strangers to him!”

Following up the recommendation of the Duke of York, the council directed Dalziel to march to the shire of Lanark to confer with the Duke of Hamilton and other commissioners of the shire about securing the peace in time coming—to inquire for a list of such rebels, either heritors or tenants, as had not submitted, that the obstinate might be brought to justice; and to consult upon some plan for seizing any of the wanderers or their vagrant preachers who might be skulking upon the confines of the shires next to Galloway and Ayr; also to take care that ways be fallen upon for making persons, both innocent and guilty, keep their parish churches; likewise to consider of a great abuse lately committed by some who illegally obtained restitution of the goods of such as have been fined for rebellion, or threaten those who buy them, and to make strict inquiry by every means to know if any of the rebels’ estates, or rents, or moveables be possessed by their wives, children, or friends, on their behoof. Afterwards he was to proceed to the town of Ayr to meet the Earl of Dumfries and the commissioners of that shire, and proceed in a similar manner assisted by the Laird of Claverhouse. Urquhart of Meldrum was to visit Roxburgh, Berwick, Selkirk, and East Lothian. Upon receiving the report of their delegates that some of the rebels were willing to submit, the council out of “pity and compassion” authorized them to grant “these miscreants” a safe conduct for one month to come in with their petitions for pardon, but without any promise that their prayer would be granted. It does not appear that more than six accepted the proffered boon.

Meanwhile the society-men—who carefully marked the signs of the times in a general meeting at Priest-hill, in the parish of Muirkirk, held on the 15th March—after being properly constituted, chose a committee of sixteen, with a preses, to watch over the conduct of the members, in order to regulate their intercourse together to prevent improper persons obtaining admission amongthem, and also to see that none made any sinful compliances with the rulers in church or state. They then nominated Alexander Gordon of Earlston and John Nisbet of Hardhill to proceed to the Continent, to represent their sufferings and explain their principles to the reformed churches there,[149]“in order to their sympathizing with them and holding up their case unto the Lord, as members of the same body, under Jesus their head, and to seek the rolling away of reproaches industriously heaped upon them;” but some dissension arising about this appointment, Earlston proceeded to the Netherlands alone. It was also ordered that the delegates there present should desire every man of his respective society to provide himself fit weapons, in case they should be required for self-defence. At their next quarterly meeting, 15th June, held at Tala-linn, Tweedsmuir, their dissensions increased. James Russell, designated “a man of a hot and fiery spirit,” introducing a number of captious questions, such as, whether any of the society were free of paying customs at ports or bridges? which the greater part never had any scruples about, as being necessary for keeping the roads and bridges in repair, but which he endeavoured to confound with the cess levied for the express purpose of putting down the gospel; nor would he or the party who joined with him listen to any terms of forbearance, but insisted that both taxes were equally sinful, and that the payers should be separated from their meetings; nor although the enemy was at the gates, would they cease bitterly to strive with their friends within the camp.

149.The societies every quarter of a year gathered a collection of money, sometimes more, sometimes less, and sent with their commissioner to the general meeting, when it was conscientiously distributed—a part of it for public uses, wherein the whole was concerned, if any such thing called for the same; or to prisoners, of whom always there were not a few; or to indigent persons as their need required.—Faithful Contendings, p. 24.

Ever on the alert, the curates were more united in their exertions to hinder or to punish all meetings of the wanderers; nor did they hesitate about the means they employed. The curate of Tweedsmuir immediately transmitted to the council an exaggerated account of this convention, and they, July 8th, issued aproclamation, stating that “some traitors, runagates, and fugitives, having convocate towards the number of eighty, (although the real number was not above twenty,) and with forbidden weapons, and in an unlawful manner, near Tala-linn; and that the people in that county had been so defective in the duties of loyal subjects or good countrymen, as to neglect giving timeous notice either to the council or the sheriff of the shire;—they therefore commanded whoever heard of such meetings to give information to the chancellor, the secret council, or the nearest commander of the forces, repairing thither at the rate of at least three Scottish, about six English, miles an hour, under pain of being themselves held equally guilty with the offenders and liable to the same punishment. All magistrates, upon receiving such information, were required to raise the country and pursue the miscreants from shire to shire until they be apprehended or expelled forth of this realm; and in case any hurt or skaith fall out in the pursuit or apprehending those so unlawfully convocate, the actors thereof are to be free and unpunished in any manner of way; but whosoever should fail, magistrates or others, in the forementioned duties, were to be held as disaffected to the government, and to undergo the punishment of the law due to the crimes of the foresaid traitors and fugitives!”

As the meetings of the persecuted were necessarily secret assemblies, whose times and places were known only to themselves and their friends, the magistrates, who had other duties to attend to, could not possibly detect and disperse every little band when met for devotional purposes, and could not therefore vie with or satisfy the prelatical sleugh-hounds, who were more keen in the scent and less frequently at fault. They were accused of being remiss, and the council, August 9th, gave roving commissions to their stanch military beagles, Major White and the Laird of Meldrum, along with instructions to confer with the magistrates, and to call before them and fine all suspected persons, only, while in cases of blood they had a previous remission, in cases of money they were to render a strict account to their masters. Both were men of the most brutal manners, of which White gave a disgusting specimen with regard to James Robertson, a respectable merchant,who, according to the times, travelled the country with a pack. Having rather imprudently gone to visit a friend confined in Kilmarnock jail, he was himself stripped of his goods and detained a prisoner in the guard-house about ten days; during that time, being brought before the major, and refusing to give his oathsuper inquirendis, his judge pulled him by the nose, and wrung it till the blood gushed out, and sent him to prison. While there, he and a fellow-prisoner sang praises to God, and their keeper, the captain of the guard, heard them; but, unlike the jailer at Philippi, he rushed in, tore the Bible out of his hand, and swore he would burn it if they again offered thus to be engaged. A few weeks after, he was being carried to Edinburgh; and at Linlithgow, because he refused to drink the king’s health, the soldiers tied him literally neck and heel, and left him all night in that posture. On the morrow he was taken to the capital, with his feet bound under the horse’s belly, where, after the usual mock trial, he was sent to suffer on the 15th December, and, as if to complete the baseness of their cruelty, when he complained of not being suffered to speak to the people on the scaffold, the town-major, Johnstoun, who superintended the execution, beat him with his cane at the foot of the ladder.[150]

150.Wodrow remarks—“This abominable rudeness to a dying man, and the patience and cheerfulness of this good man in suffering all this, I know was the occasion of a deep conviction to some who were present of the evil of persecution and prelacy; and there are severals yet alive who can date their first serious impressions of religion from their seeing some of the persecuted party suffer, as they themselves have informed me.”—Vol. ii. p. 266.

John Findlay, the prisoner visited by his dear comrade James Robertson when he was taken, came from the same neighbourhood. On his examination before the committee, he also refused to say—God save the king, although he said he loved the king as well as any person, confessed he was at Drumclog, but without arms; and being asked if he conversed with Mr Cargill within these two years, refused to answer otherwise than that a man is neither by the law of God nor man bound to have a hand in shedding his own blood.

William Cochrane, belonging also to the parish of Evandale,who was apprehended about the same time, when examined before the council as to whether he thought it lawful for subjects to rise in arms against the king? and whether he considered the king to be a lawful king? answered—“These are kittle questions, and I will say nothing about them, being a prisoner;” and when desired to say—God save the king—remained silent. He was sent to the justiciary, and thence with the other two to the Grassmarket. The soldiers, however, were produced against him and Findlay, who swore that they took their arms from them, and left them bound in the fields. In a testimony that he left, he assigns the following reasons for his refusal:—“Now the main article of my indictment upon which I have received my sentence of death from man, was, that I would not say—God save the king, which, as they now stated him an idol in the mediator’s room, I could not do without being guilty of saying—Amen, to all that he hath done against the church and people of God; and [against the] true subjects of this kingdom, and the ancient and fundamental laws thereof, and doing contrary to that in the second Epistle of John, ver. 10. ‘If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, nor bid him God speed; for he that biddeth him God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds.’ And also ye know that taking the name of God in our mouth is a part of worship, and so a worshipping of their idol; for before our faces they said that he was supreme over all persons and over all causes, which is putting him in God’s room.”

The year closed with scenes of plunder and blood. Fourteen gentlemen and ministers were (December 11th) declared rebels, outlawed, and their estates forfeited; and Lady Douglas of Cavers was fined £500 sterling, because she would not swear that she had not been at a conventicle for three years preceding. Alexander Hume of Hume, a small heritor in the Merse, was sacrificed under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. He was indicted and tried for rebellion in November, when the proof entirely failed; but instead of being set free, he was kept in prison till December, when he was on the 20th brought a second time to the bar, charged with holding converse with those who besieged the house of Sir Henry M’Dowall at Mackerston. The onlyevidence in support of the charge was, that he, attended by his servant, had called at Sir Henry’s on his return from hearing a sermon, and offered to buy a bay horse! Yet did the jury bring him in guilty of “commanding a party of the rebels’ horse in besieging the castle of Hawick,” and “he was hanged at Edinburgh,” adds Fountainhall, “in the Christmas week, because the Viscount Stafford was execute in London in the same week 1680.”—“He died more composedly than others of his kidney did.”[151]Among his last words were—“It doth minister no small peace and joy to me this day that the Lord hath set his love upon me, one of Adam’s unworthy posterity, and has given me the best experience of his grace working in my heart, whereby he hath inclined me to look towards himself, and make choice of him for my soul’s everlasting portion. It is the Lord Jesus, and he alone, who is my rock and the strength and stay of my soul.” When the rope was about his neck, and immediately before his being turned over, he concluded his life by singing the last verse of the seventeenth Psalm.

151.The most atrocious part of this villanous transaction was—a pardon had actually been procured by Mr Hume’s friends at London, and arrived at Edinburgh some days before the execution, but was kept up by the Earl of Perth. “And on the day of his execution, his spouse, Isobel Hume, came in the most moving manner to the Lady Perth, begging she would interpose for her husband’s life, urging she had five small children. The Lady’s answer was so inhumane, that I shall not put it in writing.”—Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 268.

In the midst of these troubles, the apostate Duke of Lauderdale went to his place[152]—a man who sacrificed his conscience and character to serve a sovereign who left him in his old age.

152.“August 25, 1682. Died the great minister of state, the Duke of Lauderdale, at the wells in England, near London. Before this time he was paraletic, and was disenabled from council and advice giving. The king’s council in Scotland advised the king to call in all his pensions he had given to any person, hereby to reach him, and to dispose of them of new, which was done; thus Lauderdale’s pension of £4000 sterling was taken from him, which he complains of to the king, and entreats his majesty to consider him, that his old and faithful servant might not die in poverty, yet was not granted. He disheartens at this, and being advised by some of the chief physicians in England to go to the wells (some of them going with him), after some days’ drinking, he swells; then being advised to take water with salt, it purges him, and so purged him as that he died of it.”—Law’s Memorials, p. 234.

Back to Index Next