Chapter 7

28.The same day had already been set apart as a day of thanksgiving for his restoration!

At the cross, an arch was erected upon four pillars, on the one side of which stood the statue of an old hag, having the covenant in her hand, with this superscription—“A glorious Reformation;” on the other, the figure of a Whig, with “the remonstrance in his hand, inscribed “no association with malignants;” while the devil, in the form of an angel of light, surmounted the keystone, having a label issuing from his mouth—“Stand to the cause.” On the pillar, beneath the covenant, were painted rocks, (distaffs,)reels, and repenting-stools. The other, under the remonstrance, was adorned with brechams, (horse collars,) cogs, (wooden dishes,) and spoons. Within the arch, on the right, was drawn “a committee of estates,” with this legend—“Act for delivering up the King.” Opposite was placed “a commission of the kirk,” and, in prominent characters, “Act of the West Kirk.” In the middle of the arch hung a tablet with this litany—

From covenanters, with uplifted hands;From remonstrators, with associate bands;From such committees as governed this nation;From kirk commissions and their protestation;Good Lord deliver us.

From covenanters, with uplifted hands;

From remonstrators, with associate bands;

From such committees as governed this nation;

From kirk commissions and their protestation;

Good Lord deliver us.

Upon the back of the arch, Rebellion was depicted under the guise of Religion, in a devout attitude, with eyes turned up to heaven, holding Rutherford’s “Lex Rex” in her right hand, and in her left, “The Causes of God’s Wrath.” Around her were scattered acts of parliament, of committees of estates, General Assemblies, and commissions of the kirk, with all their protestations and declarations for the last twenty years; and above was written “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.” At drinking the king’s health, a lighted torch set the fabric in a blaze; and a number of concealed fireworks exploding, the whole was instantly reduced to ashes, whence arose two angels, bearing a tablet with the following lines:—

Great Britain’s monarch on this day was born,And to his kingdom happily restored—The queen’s arrived—the mitre now is worn—Let us rejoice this day is from the Lord.Fly hence all traitors, who did mar our peace—Fly hence schismatics, who our church did rent—Fly covenanting, remonstrating race—Let us rejoice that God this day hath sent.

Great Britain’s monarch on this day was born,

And to his kingdom happily restored—

The queen’s arrived—the mitre now is worn—

Let us rejoice this day is from the Lord.

Fly hence all traitors, who did mar our peace—

Fly hence schismatics, who our church did rent—

Fly covenanting, remonstrating race—

Let us rejoice that God this day hath sent.

The magistrates, with the Earl, then withdrew to the Palace, where a large bonfire was lighted in its noble court; and the king, queen, with other loyal toasts, were drunk; after which the festivities of the semi-sacred carnival were concluded by the magistratesand a number of the inhabitants walking in procession through the town and “saluting every person of account.”

Parliament rose on the 9th of September, and the privy council entered upon the full exercise of their tyrannical powers, which had been acknowledged and vowed to by the obsequious legislature, who thus paved the way for their own lower degradation. By an act of the 10th, the diocesan meetings which had been deferred on account of the lords, archbishops, and bishops being engaged in attending their parliamentary duty, were appointed to be held within all dioceses of the south upon the second Tuesday of October, excepting that of Galloway, which, together with Aberdeen and some in the Highlands, Islands, and the north, were to keep the third Tuesday of the same month, at which all parsons, vicars, (uncouth titles in Presbyterian ears,) and ministers were required to be present, under pain of being considered contemners of his majesty’s authority. Every step taken to thrust Episcopacy forcibly upon an unwilling people, was accompanied by some new act of injustice and oppression to their respected ministers. It was requisite that those of the capital should set an example of obedience; and therefore, unless they also would apostatize and violate their oaths and their consciences by acknowledging the present Episcopacy, and concurring in their discipline, before the 1st of October, they were to be deprived of their office and banished the city—an arbitrary punishment, for which the oppressors had not even the authority of their own iniquitous parliament.

The western brethren being the most refractory, Middleton determined to proceed thither with a quorum of the council to enforce in person the obnoxious decrees. Accordingly, about the latter end of September, accompanied by Earls Morton, Linlithgow, Callender, and Lord Newburgh, with the king’s lifeguard,[29]the clerk of the council, and a great retinue of attendants, he set out upon his progress, preceded by macers and military music. Burghs and nobles regaled the party as they passed, evincing their affection for the hierarchy by prodigal hospitality, while their guests, conformably to the manners of the English court, displayed their loyalty by pushing it to the most disgusting and loathsome excess. In districts remarkable for the strict soberness of their manners, scenes of revelry and profane riot were exhibited by the Commissioner and his Episcopalian propaganda that astonished the decent, while it afflicted the pious, portion of the inhabitants. Their streets were disturbed by midnight inebriety; and men who had conscientious scruples about drinking healths at all, heard with sensations approaching to horror, that in some of these debauches the devil himself had had his health drunk! Ecclesiastical matters do not seem to have much disturbed the thoughtless “joyeosity” of this outrageous crew till they came to Glasgow, when Fairfoul entered a grievous complaint to Middleton, that, notwithstanding the acts of parliament and the time that had elapsed, not one of the younger ministers who had entered the church since 1649, had acknowledged him as archbishop—that he had incurred all the hatred attached to his office without obtaining any of the power; and, unless his Grace could devise some method for securing obedience, a bishop would be merely a cipher in the state. Middleton, a rough mercenary, requested the bishop’s directions. The archbishop, like a true son of a temporal priesthood, knew of no better remedy than force. He proposed that all the ministers who had entered since the year 1649, and who would not submit to receive collation and admission from the bishop before the 1st of November, should be peremptorily banished from their houses, parishes, and the bounds of their presbyteries; and he assured the Commissioner that, if this were rigorously enforced, he did not believe there were ten in the whole of his diocese who would choose to lose their stipends.

29.The king’s guard was chiefly composed of those who had, during the civil wars, been attached to the royal party, and who had expected mountains of gold at the Restoration; but, as the whole revenues of the kingdom could not have satisfied their claims and their cupidity, and “the merry monarch” and his higher satellites could spare nothing from their own licentious expenses, they, who had been unaccustomed to honest industry, had no other resource left but to enter the army.

A council was summoned, upon his Grace’s representation, to meet in the front hall of Glasgow College; but when the worthies assembled, the whole, except one or perhaps two, were in ahigh state of excitation, or, as Wodrow phrases it, flustered with drink.[30]Sir James Lockhart of Lee, the only sober member present, attempted to reason the matter. He affirmed that, so far from accomplishing its object, such an act would have a diametrically opposite effect—that the young ministers would suffer more than the loss of their stipends before they would acknowledge the bishops, and the inevitable consequences would be desolation in the country and discontent among the people. But reasoning was altogether out of the question. An act according to the archbishop’s wish was agreed to without dispute, although it was not quite so easily drawn up—“whether,” adds the honest historian, “for want of a fresh man to dictate or write, I know not.” It was, however, sufficiently severe; not only did the non-conforming ministers forfeit their current year’s stipend and incur the penalty of banishment, but their parishioners who should repair to their sermons were subjected to the same punishment as the frequenters of private conventicles. Besides this desolating act, the council passed two of a more private nature, incapacitating individuals—Mr Donald Cargill, minister of the barony parish, Glasgow, (with whom we shall frequently meet in the course of the Annals,) and Mr Thomas Wylie, minister at Kirkcudbright. This latter was a distinguished member of a distinguished presbytery, which had not one conformist in their bounds, and was among the very few that presented petitions against their illegal discontinuance, nor desisted from fulfilling their ministerial functions till compelled by force.

30.“There was never a man among them,” says Kirkton, “but he was drunk at the time, except only Lee.”Hist. Church of Scot.p. 149.

He early foresaw the approaching blackness that was about to overspread the land, and, anticipating for himself and his people a share in the general calamity, he was earnestly desirous to dispense the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper before the cloud came on. A general seriousness seems also to have pervaded the country side; for, on the Sabbath appointed for its administration, June 8, the number of communicants who offered was so great, that they could not all join in one day, and he intimated that onthe Sabbath following, he would again dispense the ordinance, when those who had not participated might come forward. On Monday after sermon, he received a letter informing him that the presbytery had been summoned to Edinburgh for holding their meetings after the council had prohibited them. But he determined to proceed in his work, leaving the consequences to Providence, and he was favoured to conclude the solemnity without farther interruption. On the Monday, however, certain news arriving that a party was to be in the town that night to apprehend him, he withdrew, and next day they searched his house narrowly for him; but the bird for this time had escaped the snare of the fowler. He continued under hiding, till, through the exertions of his wife and the friendship of Lord Kenmure, he was allowed to return to his parish on the 10th of September. Now, without any new accusation, he was included in the same sentence with Donald Cargill, and ordered to be banished beyond the Tay.

England, on the 24th of August preceding, had exhibited the sublime and heart-stirring spectacle of upwards of two thousand of the ablest, most upright, and most devout ministers in the land, surrendering without hesitation their livings rather than violate their consciences by conforming to the restored national church. Yet, with this instance before his eyes, of obedience to God in preference to subjection to men, the Commissioner could not understand how persons with large families would voluntarily throw themselves upon the world, and leave their homes without any certain dwelling-place, rather than submit to a change which the prelates and he had found so easy; but they feared to sin; and now that a century has rolled by, and they and their oppressors rest in the grave together, who would not say that they did not act the wisest part, who preferred a good conscience, and trusted to the faithfulness of him who has promised never to leave, never, never, to forsake his servants, rather than to place their confidence in princes, and their trust in the sons of men? Of what value are the mitres now, for which the prelates in Scotland destroyed their usefulness, and which sat so uneasily for a few troubled years upon their heads? At the time, the case was dreadfullytrying. When a man’s temporal interest comes in competition with his profession, then will appear the strength of his religious principle. Nearly four hundred ministers of the church of Scotland stood this severest of all tests. Turned from their houses in the midst of winter, and deprived of their stipends, they went out not knowing whither they went. Never did Scotland witness such a Sabbath as that on which they took leave of their parishioners; and the mourning and lamentation that filled the south and the west, was only equalled by the hatred and detestation excited against those who were the authors of so much sorrow, who, for their own ambitious and worldly schemes, ruptured ties so sacred and so dear as those that had subsisted between the Presbyterian ministers and their affectionate congregations.

It was questioned at the time, and even since, whether the Presbyterian ministers did not act improperly in all at once throwing up their charges? That they acted scripturally, is plain. They continued to exercise their calling as long as they could. When illegally forbid, they continued to preach, acting upon the apostolic precept of obeying God rather than man; but when a tyrannical power, under the form of parliamentary or council enactments, was ready to use force in ejecting them, then, as ministers of the gospel, they had no other resource left than to shake off the dust off their feet and go to another city—they bore testimony against their persecutors and retired. Following the advice of James v. 10., they took the prophets, who had spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering and of patience.

That they acted, even in a political view, in the very best manner that their circumstances admitted, is, I think, demonstrable. They showed to the people that it was not the fleece but the flock that had been the object of their care, and imprinted upon their minds a sense of the worth of the truth for which they were contending, beyond what they could have done in any other manner; and that truth was one written as with a sunbeam throughout the whole New Testament—that Christ is the king and head of his church, and that whatever form of church government does not acknowledge this, is essentially antichristian. It is not less evident,that the prelatists, as well as the papists, gave that dignity and power to another; and the solemn and universal testimony which so many godly men lifted up at once against acknowledging such unholy usurpation, has not lost its effect even unto this day—an effect it never could have had, had the ministers resisted and allowed themselves to have been thrust out one by one.

From Glasgow, Middleton and his Episcopalian reformadoes pursued their route, confirming their churches in the south, through Galloway as far as Wigton; and, upon the last day of October, returned to Holyrood-house.

On his arrival, the Commissioner was assailed by what was to him unexpected intelligence, that the whole south and west were thrown into confusion; and, enraged to find that both the archbishop and himself had so entirely miscalculated, he expressed his astonishment at the unaccountable conduct of the “madmen” with a volley of oaths and execrations—the now fashionable dialect of the court—and, on the first meeting of council, caused letters be sent off express to his lordship and the primate, requesting their presence and advice. Meanwhile, they proceeded in the usual course of endeavouring to intimidate the humbler refractory by their rigour to the more eminent. Mr Hugh M’Kail, chaplain to Sir James Stewart of Kirkfield, a youth of high promise, was forced into voluntary exile because he had defended in a sermon what he considered the scriptural mode of church government. Mr John Brown of Wamphrey, well known by his historical, controversial, and practical writings, not less respected for his piety than for his learning, having reproved some ministers for attending the Archbishop of Glasgow’s diocesan synod, styling them perjured, was banished to Holland—at that time the asylum of the persecuted; there he remained for many years, and, by his seasonable publications, strengthened the hands of the sufferers in his native land, and proved a thorn in the side of their tyrannical government.

Mr John Livingston, more honoured of God as the means of converting sinners to Christ than almost any minister of the church of Scotland since the Reformation, then minister at Ancrum, because he would not promise to observe the 29th of May as anholyday, nor take the oath of allegiance without any explanation, was subjected to a like punishment, as were Messrs Robert Traill of Edinburgh, Neave of Newmills, and Gardner of Saddle. Mr Livingston, in the true spirit of a Christian patriot, after sentence was pronounced, thus replied—“Well! although it be not permitted me to breathe my native air, yet into whatsoever part of the world I may go, I shall not cease to pray for a blessing to these lands, to his majesty, the government, and the inferior magistrates thereof; but especially for the land of my nativity!” In the same excellent spirit, having been denied the privilege of paying a farewell visit to his wife, children, and people, he addressed a pastoral letter to the flock of Jesus Christ in Ancrum. Their sins and his own, he told them, had drawn down this severe stroke; and, while it was their part to search out and mourn for them, “it is not needful,” he adds, “to look much to instruments, I have from my heart forgiven them all, and would wish you to do the like, and pray for them that it be not laid to their charge. For my part, I bless his name I have great peace in the matter of my sufferings. I need not repeat, you know my testimony of the things in controversy:—Jesus Christ is a king, and only hath power to appoint the officers and government of his house. It is a fearful thing to violate the oath of God, and fall into the hands of the living God. It could not well be expected,” he proceeds to remark, and the remark is applicable in all similar cases when religion has been in repute among a people—“there having been so fair and so general a profession throughout the land, but that the Lord would put men to it; and it is like it shall come to every man’s door, that, when every one according to their inclination, may have acted their part—and he seems to stand by—He may come at last and act his part, and vindicate his glory and truth. I have often showed you that it is the greatest difficulty under heaven to believe that there is a God and a life after this; and have often told you that, for my part, I could never make it a chief part of my work to insist upon the particular debates of the time, as being assured that if a man drink in the knowledge and the main foundations of the Christian religion, and have the work of God’s spirit in his heart to make him walk withGod, and make conscience of his ways, such an one shall not readily mistake Christ’s quarrel, to join either with a profane atheist party or a fanatic party. There may be diversity of judgment, and sometimes sharp debates among them that are going to heaven; but, certainly, a spirit guides the seed of the woman, and another spirit the seed of the serpent.”

Several of lesser note were treated with not much less harshness, being ordered to confinement in distant places of the country, without the means of subsistence, and debarred from preaching in the rugged and barren districts to which they were banished.

Such, however, was the outcry the wide desolation of the church had occasioned, that the council were convinced they had acted with unwise precipitation, and endeavoured in some measure to retrace their steps. The author of the mischief, Fairfoul, though repeatedly called upon, does not appear to have assisted their deliberations, which were protracted, till the month of December, when a proclamation was issued, extending the time allowed ministers for procuring presentations and collocation to the 1st of February, but ordering those who neglected to do so to remove from their parishes and presbyteries; and such of them as belonged to the dioceses of St Andrews and Edinburgh, to go into banishment beyond the Tay. The older ministers, who had not been touched by the Glasgow act, and had hitherto remained exercising their parochial duties among their people, because they had not attended the diocesan meetings, were confined to their parishes. The people who left the hirelings intruded upon them, travelling sometimes twenty miles to hear the gospel, were now ordered to attend their parish churches, under a penalty of twenty shillings for every day’s absence; and because in those places where the ministers, in view of separation from their flocks, had celebrated the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to multitudes assembled from the surrounding districts—and much of the divine presence had appeared among them—these were stigmatized as unlicentiate confluences of the people; and the discourses delivered under such circumstances, with more than ordinary fervour, and accompanied with more than ordinary power, abused as the extravagant sermons of some ministers of unquiet and factiousspirits—special engines to debauch people from their duty, and lead them to disobedience, schism, and rebellion: therefore every incumbent was prohibited from employing more than one or two of his neighbours at a communion without a license from the bishop, or admitting the people of any other parish to participate of the sacrament without a certificate from his curate.

This was the last of Middleton’s acts in Scotland. His rival, Lauderdale, had so well employed the access he had to the king to undermine his influence, that he was called to court to answer charges of having encroached upon the royal prerogative by the balloting act, and defrauded the royal treasury by appropriating the fines. While the affair was under discussion, Lauderdale procured an order to delay levying the fines due the first term and dismiss the collector. Middleton, who saw that this was a deadly blow at his interest in Scotland, countermanded the royal letter upon alleged verbal authority, which Charles either never gave, or found it convenient to disown; and this completed his ruin. His rashness and inconsideration were too palpable to be denied; but, by the interest of his friends, Clarendon and the Bishop of London, his fall was softened, and he was sent into a kind of honourable banishment as governor of Tangiers. There he continued to indulge his habits of intemperance, and, falling down a stair in a fit of intoxication, broke his right arm so severely, that the bone protruded through the flesh, and, penetrating his side, a mortification ensued, which terminated his life.

Middleton, who never appears to have had any serious religion, was the friend of Lord Clarendon—a statesman bigoted to Episcopacy, rather on account of its political than its spiritual advantages—and employed by him for rearing in Scotland, upon the ruins of Presbytery, which he detested, an establishment more in accordance with those high notions of the prerogative which, notwithstanding the melancholy example of the first Charles, were adopted and cherished by the court of his son. Well calculated for carrying through the most despotic measures by force, he must be acquitted of the mean duplicity of Charles’s letter to the ministers of Edinburgh, the obloquy of which rests upon the crafty politics of Sharpe. When first shown it, he considered itas opposed to Episcopacy, and expressed his regret; but when told that, upon rescinding all the laws in favour of Presbytery, then Episcopacy remained the church government settled by law, he observed, “that might be done; but for his part he was not fond of making his majesty’s first appearance in Scotland to be in the character of a cheat.” Once, however, fairly embarked, he never hesitated, and concurred with the bishops in their every project, however treacherous or oppressive. He first overturned the Presbyterian church government, which had been settled under as solemn sanctions, and as strong legal guarantees, as can ever possibly be devised to secure any religious establishment, and then sent to the scaffold, from motives of avarice and revenge, the noblest ornaments of that religion, whose only crime was, adhering to a profession he himself had, with uplifted hand, sworn to support.

In council, he unwarrantably extended the tyrannical acts of his servile parliament, and wantonly laid waste hundreds of peaceable and flourishing congregations. With a cunning worthy the priesthood of Rome, he invited numbers of unsuspecting ministers from distant parts of the country to Edinburgh, as if to consult them on the affairs of the church, then ensnared them by insidious questions, and punished their unsuspecting simplicity with deprivation, imprisonment, and exile. Without any shadow of law, and without the form of a trial, he turned ministers from their congregations—prohibited them from preaching, praying, or expounding the Scriptures, and sent them to the most distant corners of the land, or forced them to seek an asylum in foreign countries—then intruded on the desolated parishes worthless and incapable hirelings—and concluded his career by commanding the people to attend upon their ministrations under a severe and oppressive penalty. His own expatriation to the barren coast of Africa was looked upon by the sufferers as a righteous retribution, and his melancholy end as an evident mark of divine displeasure; nor could the coincidence between his own rash imprecation and the manner of his death fail to strike the most careless. Like many other political hypocrites, with a zeal as furious as false, he had sworn and subscribed the covenants when it was the fashion ofthe time to do so; and, on retiring from the place where he had taken these vows upon him, he said to some of those who were with him, “that that was the pleasantest day he had ever seen; and if ever he should do any thing against that blessed work, he had been engaging in,” holding up his right arm, “he wished that it might be his death!” The enormous fines he imposed, he never was empowered to exact; and, in return for impoverishing his country, he died an exile and a beggar.

Lauderdale having succeeded in removing his formidable antagonist, from thenceforth for a number of years almost solely directed Scottish affairs. The Presbyterians, who believed that he was secretly attached to their cause, anticipated better days under his protection; but ambition was his master-passion, and to it he was prepared to sacrifice all his early attachments and principles. While religion appeared the only road to power in the state, he had been foremost in the ranks of the covenanters; and, by the warmth of his professions, and the consistency of his conduct, had gained the confidence of those who were sincerely devoted to the cause; but when the path of preferment on Charles’s restoration struck off in an opposite direction, he deserted to the prelates, and evinced the sincerity of his change by at once forsaking his sobriety of manners, and apostatizing from his form of religion; and, as he understood well the principles he betrayed, and at one time certainly had strong convictions of their truth, his opposition was proportionably inveterate, and he became outrageously furious at whatever tended to remind him of his former “fanaticism.”

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