107.A convention differed from a parliament in this—it was summoned for one specific purpose, and could not interfere with any thing else—in general, only to grant money. Nor does it appear that although they could authorize the levying a subsidy from the subject, that they had any right to look after its management by the crown; the delegates to a convention, also, were generally nominated by persons in power.
107.A convention differed from a parliament in this—it was summoned for one specific purpose, and could not interfere with any thing else—in general, only to grant money. Nor does it appear that although they could authorize the levying a subsidy from the subject, that they had any right to look after its management by the crown; the delegates to a convention, also, were generally nominated by persons in power.
107.A convention differed from a parliament in this—it was summoned for one specific purpose, and could not interfere with any thing else—in general, only to grant money. Nor does it appear that although they could authorize the levying a subsidy from the subject, that they had any right to look after its management by the crown; the delegates to a convention, also, were generally nominated by persons in power.
108.Referring to the popish plot which about this time agitated the English nation and parliament.
108.Referring to the popish plot which about this time agitated the English nation and parliament.
108.Referring to the popish plot which about this time agitated the English nation and parliament.
Agreeably to this communication, a proclamation was issued, convoking a convention, the bare-faced irony of which would be ludicrous, did not its wickedness of purpose excite other and rather more unpleasant sensations. In it he repeated his fulsome, because false, protestations of the great kindness he bore to his ancient kingdom; “and considering that all kings and states did carefully secure themselves and their people by providing against all such foreign invasions and intestine commotions as might make them a prey to their enemies; and that it was not a fit time that Scotland alone should remain without defence, especially when these execrable field-conventicles, so justly termed rendezvousesof rebellion, did still grow in numbers and insolence, against which all our present forces would not in reason be thought a suitable security. Therefore he called a convention of the estates of that kingdom, to meet at Edinburgh upon the 26th of June, to provide for the safety of the kingdom, by enabling him to raise more forces.”
During the absence of almost all the nobles and influential men who had gone with them to London, and from whom any formidable opposition could have arisen, Lauderdale’s friends hurried on the elections, so that when the convention met, he was possessed of an obedient and overwhelming majority. Eager to evince their loyalty, the chosen band declaring themselves the echoes of the public voice, “and considering the many frequent and renewed professions to serve his majesty with their lives and fortunes, in the maintenance of his honour and greatness; and that now there was an opportunity offered to them, to make good their professions of their zeal, duty, and affection;” “and to let the world see the unanimous affection of his ancient kingdom for the maintenance of his majesty’s royal greatness, authority, and government in church and state, as established by the laws of the kingdom, they did humbly beseech that his majesty would be graciously pleased to accept the unanimous, ready, and cheerful offer, and humble tender, of a new supply of eighteen hundred thousand pounds, Scots, to be raised and paid in five years, according to the present valuations.”[109]The act was very unpalatable to the country generally, as they viewed not only the army as the ready instrument of tyranny, but as a reward to the servile party who supported Lauderdale, and to the prelatists who alone would obtain for their poor relations and friends commissions in the army, and share among themselves the donations of the convention.
109.The monthly assessments of six thousand pounds introduced by Cromwell, were retained, and are still observed as the rate at which the land-tax is imposed. Laing, vol. iv. p. 93. The sum, therefore, here voted, was in our money £30,000 per ann. for five years, and might be in real about five times the nominal value. The number of militia to be drawn at this time, was one-fourth part of the whole, 5000 foot and 500 horse—the pay, six shillings, Scots, ilk day for the foot; eighteen shillings, Scots, for each horseman.
109.The monthly assessments of six thousand pounds introduced by Cromwell, were retained, and are still observed as the rate at which the land-tax is imposed. Laing, vol. iv. p. 93. The sum, therefore, here voted, was in our money £30,000 per ann. for five years, and might be in real about five times the nominal value. The number of militia to be drawn at this time, was one-fourth part of the whole, 5000 foot and 500 horse—the pay, six shillings, Scots, ilk day for the foot; eighteen shillings, Scots, for each horseman.
109.The monthly assessments of six thousand pounds introduced by Cromwell, were retained, and are still observed as the rate at which the land-tax is imposed. Laing, vol. iv. p. 93. The sum, therefore, here voted, was in our money £30,000 per ann. for five years, and might be in real about five times the nominal value. The number of militia to be drawn at this time, was one-fourth part of the whole, 5000 foot and 500 horse—the pay, six shillings, Scots, ilk day for the foot; eighteen shillings, Scots, for each horseman.
With the Presbyterians, its tendency was disastrous. Payment of cess became a new and bitter source of contention among the already too much divided sufferers. As the object for which the money was to be raised, was expressly stated to be for the suppression of conventicles; or, as the most strenuous opponents of the measure justly interpreted it, for preventing the preaching of the gospel, they at once, and without circumlocution, declared it unlawful to submit in any manner to the exaction. The impositions of tyrants, enacted for promoting their wicked designs against religion and liberty, said they, are iniquitous; therefore it is improper to pay them, especially when these designs are particularly specified and openly avouched in the acts which require them. No act can be binding if imposed upon a people by persons calling themselves their representatives, when they are not truly so, but placed in their situations by those who have broken all their engagements, betrayed their country, its religion, liberty, property, and all private interests, have enslaved the nation, and, by means of these taxations, will be enabled to perpetuate that slavery. Should it be replied, ‘that Christ paid custom, lest he should offend, and taught us to render to Cesar the things that are Cesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s;’ it is sufficient to observe, that he never taught to give any thing to Cesar in prejudice to that which is God’s; nor would it be much less than blasphemy to say, that Christ would have paid, or permitted his followers to pay, a tax professedly imposed for levying a war against himself, banishing his gospel out of the land, and supporting the scribes and pharisees and their underlings in their wicked attempts against his disciples.
Others were of opinion that, as the money would be forcibly taken from them, it was more adviseable to submit at once, rather than by resistance to give their oppressors a legal pretence for not only seizing to the amount of the tax, but perhaps double, in the name of expenses; and as the deed was neither spontaneous, nor willingly performed, the constrained action would come under the head of suffering rather than of crime.
A third party chose a middle course, and paid it with a declaratory explanation or protest. Among these was Quintin Dick,portioner in Dalmellington, described by Wodrow as an eminent Christian, and prudent, wise, and knowing, far above most of his education and station, who thus expresses himself:—“In this hour of darkness, being much perplexed how to carry without scandal and offence, I betook myself to God for protection and direction, that I might be kept from any measure of denying Christ or staving off my trouble upon any grounds but such as might be clearly warranted by the word of God. After much liberty in pouring out my heart to God, I was brought to weigh, that, as my paying of it might be by some interpreted a scandal and a sinful acquiescence in the magistrate’s sinful command; so, on the other hand, my refusing to pay it would be the greater scandal, being found to clash against a known command of God, of giving to all their due, tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom is due; and knowing that Jesus Christ for that very same end, to evite offence, did both pay tribute himself and commanded his followers to do it, I could see no way to refuse payment of that cess, unless I had clashed with that command of paying tribute unto Cesar. So, to evite the scandal of compliance on the one hand, and disobedience to the magistrate in matters of custom on the other, I came to the determination to give in my cess to the collector of the shire of Ayr where I lived, with a protestation against the magistrate’s sinful qualification of his commands, and a full adherence unto these meetings of God’s people, called conventicles, which in the act he declared his design to bear down. I had no sooner done this, but I was trysted with many sharp censures from many hands, among which this was one, that my protestation was only to evite sufferings, and could be of no weight, being ‘protestatio contraria facto.’ But being truly persuaded that it is the magistrate’s right to impose and exact cess and custom, I could have no clearness to state my sufferings in opposition unto so express a command of God. And as to the magistrate’s sinful qualification—having so openly declared and protested against it—I conceive the censure of this to evite suffering is altogether groundless; seeing the enemy has (subscribed with my hand before witnesses) a resolute adherence to that which they say this tends to overthrow; and if he mind topersecute upon the ground of owning conventicles, he has a fair and full occasion against me under my hand.”
A few defended the refusal of payment upon the ground that the convention having been a packed assemblage, consisting of persons entirely under the influence of the crown—the chief and most powerful Peers being necessarily absent, and the commissioners of the shires and burghs returned through the sinful means of corruption and bribery, by promises held out and favours bestowed, by the managers and persons in power, for the purpose of compassing their own base ends—they could not be considered as the real representatives of the people, nor legally entitled to impose burdens upon the lieges; and therefore the people were not righteously obligated to pay.
Combined with the disputes relative to paying cess, were revived with redoubled vigour the discussions anent hearing the indulged; and “it was truly grievous to us,” laments one who was himself a silent observer of what passed, “to see a young generation, endued with great zeal towards God and his interests, so far led aside in the improvement of it, as very little to know, or seldom to be taught, meekness and patience under affliction for Christ’s sake, or charity and mutual forbearance in love! And to such a length did these heats come, that some did not stick to term the famous Mr John Welsh, because he would not run so high upon public, yea personal, acknowledgments of those steps of defection, an Achan in the camp.”
Publications and preaching against each other succeeded, and the minds of the wanderers began to be imbittered against the indulged, who they thought were sitting at ease in Zion, while they were combating upon the high places of the field. Another meeting of ministers was therefore held at Glasgow in the end of harvest, when fresh efforts were made by the aged veterans of the kirk to heal the wounds under which their common mother lay bleeding; the more distressing as inflicted by some of the most devoted of her sons. A new and practical cause of dissension arose from the circumstances of the times and the situation in which the preachers and people were placed, which struck at the root of Presbytery itself, and that was the conduct of the youngerbrethren. As the duties of presbyteries and synods had been interrupted, the most popular preachers and their followers acted entirely upon their own responsibility, invaded the parishes of the indulged, preached as they listed, without being subject to any inspection or control, and had thus widened the unhappy rent, and given great advantage to the common enemy. The meeting disapproved of the practice of promiscuous preaching, any where or every where, as opportunities presented, because, when they intruded on the parishes of the indulged, they destroyed both the usefulness of their brethren, whose charges they disturbed, and their own, by depriving both of the restricted liberty they enjoyed, and which it was their duty to improve.
Instead, they recommended that the whole of the “outted” ministers, and those who had been regularly licensed by them, should associate themselves together in classes, and that every fixed preacher should belong to some class to which he should be subject and responsible; and those who were unsettled, and so could not ordinarily attend their own class or pseudo-presbytery, should attend such other as providence did direct. They at the same time disapproved of the last meeting at Edinburgh, being considered as an authoritative meeting, and pronounced it to have been only “a committee for consideration, and to report overtures to the general meeting of correspondents, who they were to call upon occasion.” Nevertheless, they were still of opinion, that the first foundation of unity must be order, and that there is no other way of producing a humble contrite temper, warming the already too much estranged affections, and preventing the like or worse for the future, than that the brethren who were moderate and like-minded, and who, they blessed God, were yet the very far greater and better number, should meet together and consult upon fit means for so desirable an end. The west country ministers mentioned, likewise, that they were in consultation with their brethren in the east, who had been treating with them, and who were also breathing after unity and peace.
What broke up these friendly communings, does not distinctly appear; but a very untoward circumstance took place in the parish of Monkland, near Glasgow, which certainly did not tend to promotetheir object. On Sabbath, September 1st, the Rev. Mr Selkirk, afterwards minister of the gospel at Crichton, had been requested by the ministers of Glasgow to supply that parish, then vacant; but when he attempted it, he was violently opposed and kept out of the church by force, merely because he was favourable to the indulged, on purpose that one of the young preachers under the patronage of Mr Robert Hamilton, might have access to the pulpit to inveigh against them.
Were it not upon record, and recorded too by authority of the oppressors themselves, it would hardly be credited that many of the best and most inoffensive men in the country were banished and sold as slaves to the plantations, for no crime but simply because they would not regularly attend their parish churches to hear men preach, whom they believed incapable of instructing them in those duties which they saw themselves daily outraging; and choosing rather to assemble in the fields to wait upon the ministry of others whom they preferred, by whose discourses they were enlightened and edified, taught to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, and directed in those paths which lead to glory and immortality in the next. Yet nearly one hundred persons, upon such accusations, writers! farmers, merchants, men and women, were delivered over, in the month of June this year, to Edward Johnstoun, master of the Saint Michael of Scarborough, now lying at Leith, for behoof of Ralph Williamson of London, who had given security to the council to transport them to the Indies, where they were to continue in servitude for life, and there to dispose of them to the best advantage. Among these was the noted Alexander Peden, who had laboured with great success in the north of Ireland. Having lain a long time in Edinburgh jail, he petitioned the council to be permitted to return to his old station, especially as he had been served with no indictment, nor was he charged with holding either house or field-conventicles in Scotland for twelve years. The council evinced their character by their tender mercies. They answered his petition by banishing him to the plantations for life, and ordained him “to lie in prison till he be transported.” He was said to have been an instrument of much good to his fellow-passengers, and cheeredtheir spirits with the hopes of deliverance when they reached London.[110]
110.“Mr Peden was a man of prayer, of natural sagacity, of spiritual discernment, and a great observer of the ways of Providence. He could foresee what would be the result of certain measures, and what calamities foolish and wicked men would bring upon themselves and others; and when such things came to pass as he had foretold, his too credulous friends ascribed it to the gift of prophecy. At the same time, I am not so wedded to my opinion on this subject, as not to admit that men who lived in such intimate daily communion with God as Mr Peden did, may have had presentiments of things with regard to themselves and the church, of which Christians of a lesser growth can form no conception.”—M’Gavin’s note to the Scots Worthies, p. 516.
110.“Mr Peden was a man of prayer, of natural sagacity, of spiritual discernment, and a great observer of the ways of Providence. He could foresee what would be the result of certain measures, and what calamities foolish and wicked men would bring upon themselves and others; and when such things came to pass as he had foretold, his too credulous friends ascribed it to the gift of prophecy. At the same time, I am not so wedded to my opinion on this subject, as not to admit that men who lived in such intimate daily communion with God as Mr Peden did, may have had presentiments of things with regard to themselves and the church, of which Christians of a lesser growth can form no conception.”—M’Gavin’s note to the Scots Worthies, p. 516.
110.“Mr Peden was a man of prayer, of natural sagacity, of spiritual discernment, and a great observer of the ways of Providence. He could foresee what would be the result of certain measures, and what calamities foolish and wicked men would bring upon themselves and others; and when such things came to pass as he had foretold, his too credulous friends ascribed it to the gift of prophecy. At the same time, I am not so wedded to my opinion on this subject, as not to admit that men who lived in such intimate daily communion with God as Mr Peden did, may have had presentiments of things with regard to themselves and the church, of which Christians of a lesser growth can form no conception.”—M’Gavin’s note to the Scots Worthies, p. 516.
They were detained at sea five days longer than had been calculated upon; and when they arrived, Mr Williamson who should have received them was absent. Johnstoun, who had the charge of their maintenance when there, not knowing how he was to be reimbursed, and not being able to find any body to take them off his hands, nor seeing any prospect of the agent, set them ashore, and left them to shift for themselves. The English, who sympathized much with them when they learned the cause of their sufferings, afforded them every assistance; and the greater part of them returned safely home after an absence of nine months—several of them to suffer new hardships from their relentless persecutors.
Neither rank nor age were any protection against the cruelty of these men, who, careless about the mischief they inflicted, imposed upon the young oaths which they could not be supposed to understand, and ordered them to subscribe bonds they could never fulfil. The son of Lord Semple, at this time a student in Glasgow College, had a young man for his private tutor, of uncommon abilities and excellent character, to whom he was much attached. Him the council summoned to appear before them; but he, aware of the consequences, did not comply, and his pupil withdrew with him. They were both served with a charge of law-burrows. The young lord’s mother, however, who was a papist, interfered on his behalf, and represented that her son, through the neglect of those to whom he was recommended, or the corruption of the place, had been seduced and poisoned withbad principles; she therefore craved that they would recommend such persons as would watch over his loyalty and estate during his minority, and they appointed the Bishop of Argyle to provide a governor to that lord. Mr Wylie went abroad and remained at some of the foreign universities with several other pupils.
Alexander Anderson, a youth not sixteen years of age, was treated more harshly, because he would make no compliances. He was sent to the plantations. Yet he left a testimony behind him, which deserves to be remembered, dated Canongate tolbooth, December 10th, this year. In it he remarked—“That he is the youngest prisoner in Scotland; and that the Lord had opened his eyes and revealed his Son in his heart since he came under the cross; that though he had much difficulty to part with his friends and relatives, yet he had now found, that fellowship with Christ did much more than balance the want of the company of dearest relations; that though he was so very young as that he could not be admitted a witness among men, yet he hopes Christ hath taken him to be a witness to his cause. He adheres to the work of reformation from popery and prelacy to the National and Solemn League and Covenants; and witnesses against the pulling down of the government of Christ’s house, and setting up lordly prelacy, and joining with them; and adduces a good many places of Scripture which he conceives strike against this practice. He makes an apology that he who is but a child should leave any thing of this nature behind him; but says he was constrained to it, to testify that God perfects strength out of the mouth of babes. He regrets the indulgence as what upon both sides had been matter of stumbling and offence among good people; and declares his fears that a black, dreadful day is coming upon Scotland: that it is good to seek the Lord and draw near to him. He leaves his commendation to the cross of Christ, and blesses the Lord for carrying him through temptations, and enabling him, one of the lambs of his flock, to stand before great men and judges; and closes with good wishes to all the friends of Christ.”
The Justiciary Court was this year engaged in equally cruel, though, could we divest them of their horrors, we should say moreludicrous transactions. “Eight or ten witches,” Lord Fountainhall tells us, “were panelled, all of them, except one or two, poor miserable-like women. Some of them were brought out of Sir Robert Hepburn of Keith’s lands; others out of Ormiston, Crichton, and Pencaitland parishes. The first of them were delated by those two who were burnt in Salt-Preston in May 1678, and they divulged and named the rest, as also put forth seven in the Lonehead of Leswade; and, if they had been permitted, were ready to fyle by their delation sundry gentlewomen and others of fashion; but the justices discharged them, thinking it either the product of malice or melancholy, or the devil’s deception, in representing such persons as present at their field-meetings who were not there. Yet this was cried out on as a prelimiting them from discovering those enemies of mankind. However, they were permitted to name Mr Gideon Penman, who had been minister at Crichton, but deprived for sundry acts of immoralitie. Two or three of the witches constantly affirmed that he was present at their meetings with the devil; and that when the devil called for him, he asked, where is Mr Gideon, my chaplain? and that, ordinarily, Mr Gideon was in the rear of all their dances, and beat up those that were slow. He denied all, and was liberate upon caution”—certainly the only way of disposing of this case in consistency with common sense.
Yet were these poor unfortunates allowed to proceed with their confessions, which were regularly registered against them. “They declared the first thing the devil caused them do, was to renounce their baptism; and by laying their hand on the top of their head, and the other on the sole of their foot, to renounce all betwixt the two to his service. But one being with child at the time, in her resignation, excepted the child, at which the devil was very angry. That he frequently kissed them, but his body was cold, and his breath was like a damp air. That he cruelly beat them when they had done the evil he had enjoined them—for he was a most wicked and barbarous master. That sometimes he adventured to give them the communion, or holy sacrament; the bread like wafers—the drink, sometimes blood, and at other times black moss-water; and preached most blasphemously. Thatsometimes he transformed them into bees, ravens, and crows; and they flew to such and such remote places. Their confessions,” his lordship gravely adds, “made many intelligent, sober persons stumble much, what faith was to be adhibite to them.” How any intelligent person could hesitate a moment upon the subject, is strange; and it is humiliating and lamentable to add, that by grave, intelligent judges “nine of these women, upon their own confession (and so seemed very rational and penitent) were sentenced to be strangled and then burnt,” instead of being sent to some safe place of confinement to be dealt gently with; and five of them were accordingly immolated between Leith and Edinburgh, and other four burnt at Painston-moor, within their own parish where they had lived.
A case came before the privy council, not long after, which it is difficult to reconcile with the above, the proceedings were so diametrically opposite. Cathrine Liddel brought a complaint against Rutherford, baron-bailie, to Morrison of Prestongrange and David Cowan in Tranent, for having seized her, an innocent woman, defamed her as a witch, and detained her under restraint as a prisoner, also that Cowan had pricked her with long pins, in sundry places of her body, and bled and tortured her most cruelly. The bailie pled that she had been denounced by other witches, laboured under a mala fama, and therefore had been apprehended; and that she and her son-in-law had consented to her being “searched” for the vindication of her innocency. With regard to the pricker, he had learned his trade from Kincaid, a famed pricker; he never exercised his calling without the authority of a magistrate; his trade was not condemned by any law, and all divines and lawyers, who have written on witchcraft, acknowledge that there are such marks, and therefore there may be an art for discerning them. But the Chancellor remembered that he had formerly imprisoned the famous Kincaid in Kinross, as a notorious cheat. The lords of the privy council therefore first declared the woman innocent, and restored her to her good name and fame, and ordered it to be publicly intimated the next Sunday in her parish church; then reproved Rutherford for his rashness, and forbade him in future to proceed in such a manner, declaring that the use of torture bypricking or otherwise was illegal; and, as a mark of their displeasure, ordered the pricker to prison.
Considerable changes had taken place among the higher authorities in Scotland this year. Since the appointment of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh to be king’s advocate, Sir George Mackenzie of Tarbet was appointed justice-general; Sir Thomas Wallace of Craigie, lord justice-clerk; the Bishop of Galloway was added to the committee for public affairs; Richard Maitland of Gogar, Sir George Gordon of Haddo, and Drummond of Lundin, admitted councillors; and the Marquis of Montrose made captain of the horse guards.