^i OF PRlAfCOgjv <^OtOGICAL St>ft^^ BX 9070 .S8 1843 Stephen V.3 Thomas. The history of the Church o. Scotland JiiLMES n. im. 7.Warwick Squaif THEjf HISTORY.,, ^^(?/ CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, FROM THE 3:ieformcitiou to tin ^3re5ent Zimt. BY THOMAS STEPHEN, NED. LIBnACLlX, iLl>'a'S COLLEOE, LONDON ; itXHOROF "THE EOOSOF THE CONSTITTTIOX ;" "THE GUIDE TO THE M0ESUI3 AKD EVEKINO 91HVIC1 or TEE CHCB.Ca OE Eh-CLA2 Salmon's Chronology, i. 203. = Ibid. i. 203-204. I 1674.] CHURCH Of SCOTLAND. 5 that his majesty accepted his resignation of the two dioceses under his charge ; but, in fact, he was forced to do this act Oi justice by the importunities of the archbishops of Canterbury and St. Andrews, " and other bishoj^s of England, who, con- sidering such precedents might extend," of the minister of the day removing one bishop, or of suppressing ten bishopricks, as has since been done, " interposed with their whole might ; nor did they leave it, till they had the archbishop of Glasgow re- stored^" Lauderdale had made the whole of the episcopal bench in both kingdoms his enemies, by the deprivation of archbishop Burnet ; for there is but one episcopate in the whole earth, ol which everj^ bishop holds a share for the benefit of the whole, and the English branch of it felt as much endangered by the precedent at Glasgow as if York or any other see had been struck at in England. Archbishop Sheldon represented to his majesty the danger which the church at large incurred by such an unparalleled stretch of power, and shewed him that the ex- ample in Scotland might be followed in England, when a hostile monarch and a flagitious minister might thus extirpate the cliuvch. This is attested by a contemporary author, who says, " while these confusions continued and vvere fomented in Scotland, the church and parliament of England became mightily incensed against the duke of Lauderdale, who, fuiding himself in danger, laid aside his ordinary haughtiness, and lowered his sails ; and in 1674, reconciled himself to arch- bishop Sharp, who was then at London ; by whose means not only archbishop Burnet was returned to his see, but the duke was readmitted to the favour of old Dr. Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury ; he giving all the signs of a sincere and hum- bled penitent, after which he never gave ground to be suspected by the clergy 2." A letter from the king, dated the 7th of Sep- tember, restored archbishop Burnet to the jurisdiction of his see, and the following act of privy council proceeding from it is dated the 29lh of the same month ; — " FousAMiCKLE as thc king's majesty, by a letter under his hand to the privy council of the date of the 7th instant, has signified that upon the dimission of Alexander, archbishop of Glasgow, 1G()9, his majesty did commend to Robert, bishop of Dunblane, the care of the diocese of Glasgow, and after- wards did nominate and present the said Robert to the archi- episcopal see of Glasgow, unto which, as his majesty is in- ' Case of the Regale, 233. Edition 1711. ■'' True and Impartial Aacount of Archbishop Sharp, p. 69. 6 HISTOKY OF THE [CHAF. XXXIV. formed, be was not formally translated ; and that now by the dimission of the said Robert, the said archbishoprick of Glas- gow is become at his majesty's gift and presentation, his majesty has thought fit, on just and important considerations, and for the good of his service in the church, to restore, and doth restore the said Alexa.ider to the possession and enjoyment of the archbishoprick of Glasgow, and all the rents, privi- leges, benefits and immunities, superiorities, casualties, and profits whatsoever, thereunto belonging, in as full and ample a manner as the same are expressed and contained in his majesty's first gift unto him under the great seal of the kingdom ; willing and declaring the said giit and disposition to be in as much force in all time coming during his life, to all intents and pur- poses as if he had never made a dimission ; and ordains this letter to be recorded in the books of privy council, and then to pass an act thereupon, that all concerned may yield ready obedience. The lords of his majesty's pi'ivy council ordain accordingly in all points ^" On his resignation bishop Leighton retired to the college of Edinburgh for a short time, and afterwards to his sister's, Mrs. Lightmaker, in Sussex, where he followed a life of con- templation and piety, for which he seems to have been more fitted than for the active duties of his sacred office 2. James Ramsay, vicar of Hamilton and dean of Glasgow, was elected bishop of Dunblane by the king's conye d'elire. He was ordained by the resolutioner party, in the presbytery of Glas- gow, to one of the Leinzies, of which there are two, the Easter and the Wester, in the county of Dumbarton, in the year 1653 ; but the remonstrators procured an order from Cromwell to pre- vent his preaching there, and the people not to attend his mi- nistry, and, moreover, they prosecuted him for scandal, and when they had tried him to the uttermost, all they could find against him was " but two vain words." Baillie speaks of him in terms of high commendation, and says, after every effort of the re- monstrators to convict him, nothing could be found against him, which not one of the resolutioners thought deserved any more than a presbyterial rebuke. This was the reign of faction ; and he was unable to take possession of his kirk, and Baillie calls his affair " a strong case ;" and in l(j55, the re- monslrator faction annulled his " most regular plantation." Baillie says he was " a very able and sufficient youth, and was Keith's Catalogue of Scottish Bishops, p. 263. — Wodiow, ii. 271-72. - Pearson's Life of Leighton. 1671.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 7 planted in Leinzie to the great satisfaction of all, except a very lew who chose an English sectary, to whom they promised the stipend." As he could neither get possession of his kirk nor receive his stipend, he was removed to Linlithgow in the year 1656, " where he was much better than where he was." At the Restoration he was appointed one of the visiters of the University of Glasgow ; and in 1662 he was appointed rector of Hamilton and dean of Glasgow. His consecrators are not mentioned ^ In Aug ust of this year, James Hamilton, bishop of Galloway, died, after a few days' sickness. " He was a man of a sprightly but ordinary stature, well seen in divinity, especially in pole- mics and the languages, with a good memory, accurate in the fathers and church history, yet to be seen by the remarks upon his books. He was very pious and charitable, strictly pure in his morals, most kind to his friends, and most affable and courteous to strangers. He was a Boanerges in the pulpit, and every way worthy of the sacred character he bore. " T find by the several letters I have, that there had been a very great intimacy betwixt that eminent prelate and martyr, Dr. Sharp, archbishop of St. Andrews, and him, but mostly with respect to their respective affairs in the church. " The bishop was very happy in a pious, fond, and virtuous wife. She knew his constitution, and did, under God, as ab- stemious as he was, keep him in a good stale of health during her life ; but for the seven years he lived after, his daughters being very young, and when come to any maturity, married from him, he took the liberty to manage his diet as he pleased, which generally was one roasted egg in the morning; a little broth, and perhaps nothing (else) about four; at night a glass of small ale to his pipe in the winter, and for the most part water in the summer. This, with his book, was most of the good bishop's food during the last seven years of his life 2." John Paterscn, son of the lord bishop of Ross, and incum- bent of theTron church of Edinburgh, and dean of that diocese, was recommended to the crown by the duke of Lauderdale, and was elected to the see of Galloway on the 2.3d of October ; but Keith again omits to mention the tiuic or place or by whom he was con.secrated. And now the church presented the unusual circumstance of a father and a son sitting bishops at the same time. ' Baillie's Letters, ii. 216, 220, 222, 278, 31.3, 456, 487.— Keith, 183. ' Account ot the Familie of Broomhill, pp. 61, 62. 8 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXIV. The church in Scotland has always had to struggle against the most untoward circumstances. The bishops had to combat the influence and effects of the Assertory act, as well as to suffer from the Indulgence and the turbulent insolence of the Cove- nanters. Even some of the conforming clergy still retained much of the leaven of the Covenant, and in pai'ticular their peculiar attachment to the strife and agitation of the general assemblies, where, from their numbers, they might easily over- power the votes and authority of the bishops; for, like the parliament, they all sat in one house. They w'ere therefore " ready enough to recommend the propriety of these promis- cuous conventions, vvliich tended so much to humour the pride of the second order at the expense of the radical privi- leges of the firsts" The bishops of Brechin and Dunblane encouraged this desire, although the former yielded his opinion to the solicitation of his friends; but the latter persisted in urging the necessity of an assembly. Among the inferior clergy, Messrs. Turner, Cant, Robertson, and Hamilton, in the diocese of Edinburgh, were the chief agitators, and they drew up a petition to Dr. Young, their own bishop, who was opposed 10 their design, requesting him to move the primate and the other bishops " to represent the sad and deplorable condition of this kirk to his most sacred majesty; and that since in all ages synods and assemblies have been judged the best eccle- siastical remedies of such evils, they would interpose that a national synod may be indicted by his majesty's authority ; and so the schisms and abounding disorders, wiiereby truth and peace are in so much danger, with all the bad effects thereof, may be removed, and some speedy solid course fallen upon for advancing the purity and power of religion and good discipline ; that so his majesty's subjects agreeing in the truth of God's most holy word, may live quietly and peaceably, in all godliness and honesty, under his government 2." Bishop Ramsay and these clergymen pleaded that there was law^ in their favour, and so there surely was; but Lauderdale considered this agitation as an evidence of disaffection to his government ; and the historian of the presbyterian sufferings seizes this opportunity with avidity to show his malice against the primate. He says accordingly, " Bishop Sharp and his party resolved to oj^press and bear down some who set up themselves for some farther advances in reformation, as they took what they pressed for to be. And the primate's carriage in this affair will be a new instanca of that antichristian spirit ' Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 477. ' Wodrow's History, ii. 301. 1675.] GIIPRCH OF SCOTLAND. 9 of persecution and pride he was possessed with in so great measures, not only towards presbyterians, whom he had de- serted, and resolved by all methods to ruin, but also to those of his own kidne}-, when they came not up to every thing that was his pleasure, as if he had been an infallible and visible head of the church and vicar of Christ, or another antichrist in Scotland'." The clergy before mentioned had spoken very freely of the primate; and Cant especially had given utter- ance to sentiments, at a meeting of presbytery, very similar to those quoted above; and when the feeling of the party who now moved for an assembly, and the experience of the disas- trous effects of former convocations, are considered, it is not surprising that the primate should be alarmed at the com- mencement of an agitation that threatened to break up the peace of the church. When the design was first broached, it had a move alarming aspect than it afterwards assumed; yet the primate thought it prudent to write to archbishop Sheldon to intercede with the king that he would refuse his assent to the meeting of a national synod at this time. The following is a copy of his letter from the doubtful authority of Wodrow's Analecta; but which had the desired effect: — " May IT PLEASE YOUR Grace, — Albeit, 1 have kej)t long silent, and my correspondence with your grace hath not been so frequent as formerly; yet, like the son of Cresus, I must cry out, when my mother the church is in hazard, and I be- lieve if I should hold my peace, the very stones would speak, for the gospel is now at stake. We are assaulted not only by foreigners, our old enemies the fanatics, who were never of us, but also, alas, my lord, there is a fire in our bed-straw, by sons of our own bowels, who, viper-like, seek to eat that which produced them. They are all crying for a national convoca- tion of the clergy, upon no other account but to shake off our yoke, and to break our bands asunder. I hope your grace will consider your own hazard, if disorders followed in England upon our distempers in Scotland ; when our neighbour's house is on fire, it is time to look to our own. Their great aim and design is against me, who, God knows, like Paul, have spent myself in the service of the church, and am yet willing to spend what remains. I believe no man can say I have run in vain. If 1 be not supported by his majesty's special favour, through your grace's recommendation, 1 shall inevitably suffer shipwreck, and lliat upon no evil or upon mine own account; ' W odrow's History, ii. 300. VOL. III. C 10 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXIV. but I see, that through my sides the church will be wounded. The only remedy is, to procure his majesty to discharge the convocation, which will calm the storm, and quench all those malicious designs which are now on foot to disturb the peace of the church. They are already come to that height, that one Mr. Cant, a presbyter, has shaken off all fear of God, and regard for his canonical oath, in calling me a great grievance to this church. My dear lord and brother, bestir yourself in this affair, and remember the words pronounced against those who are at ease, while their brother is in distress. So, recom- mending this to your care, " I am, my lord, your grace's affectionate brother, " And faithful servant, (Signed) " St. Andrews. " For his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury." The primate thought there might be danger of this agita- tion spreading, and as even the presbyterians admitted that it was the king's prerogative to convoke assemblies, it was ne- cessaiy to inform the privy council that proposals for holding a general council had been made. The council then appointed several of the members to inquire into this affair, and their report was transmitted to Lauderdale, who despatched a royal letter, which the Assertory act only could have enabled him to do. After greeting, he signified the king's displeasure against all factious and divisive ways in the church, unbecoming that or- derly subordination and dependence which is owned by the canons of the christian church and the laws of the kingdom; and from his princely zeal and care that the authority and honour of bishops in their due subordination be preserved, and all contrivances against them suppressed and punished, " We have thought fit to write to the archbishop of St. An- drews, that it is our royal pleasure, that forthwith there be a translation of the bishop of Dunblane to that of the Isles ; and that the bishop of Brechin be appointed ordinarily to preach at the College kirk of Edinburgh; that the bishop of Edinburgh remove Mr. Turner, Mr. Robertson, and Mr. Cant, from the exercise of the ministry in Edinburgh, or any place in his diocese, without license; and that Mr. Hamilton be re- moved from Leith .... at this time, especially, we judge it necessary, when their authority is not only assaulted by schis- matics, but contemned and violated by those who are solemnly engaged to pay them canonical obedience, to require yoti to employ your authority for that effect: and in particular we do positively require you to cause the bishop of Dunblane, within 1674.] CHUKCn OF SCOTLAND. 11 two weeks, to remove from residence in any place of the dio- cese of Glasgow, and forbear meddling with matters relative to the church, save in his diocese of the Isles, but as his ordi- nary the archbishop of Glasgow, or by the archbishop of St. Andrews upon occasion, as primate : that ye cause, within ten days, Mr. Turner to remove from Edinburgh to Glasgow; Mr. Robertson to the minister's manse at Auchterless, in the dio- cese of Aberdeen ; Mr. Cant to Libberton; and Mr. Hamilton to the manse of Cramond, to abide at these several places till our further pleasured" WoDROw justly observes," here, indeed, is summar justice, and the full exercise of the royal supremacy ;" it is, indeed, another confirmation of the dangerous tendency of the Asser- tory act, which, in fact, made the king, or rather, perhaps, his minister, a pope in the church, and laid it prostrate at his feet. No stronger evidence could be produced of the truth of Les- lie's remark, that erastianism ran down like a torrent from the Reformation, than the deposition and translation of those bishops that had incuiTed the displeasure of Lauderdale since the Assertory act became law. This last violent translation had never been acknowledged by the church; for bishop Ramsay continued in the catalogue of the bishops of Dun- blane till the year 1684, when he was canonically translated to lloss, and bishop Wallace, of the Isles, died in 1675, and his successor was Dr. Andrew Wood. Bishop Ramsay like- wise always signed Dunblane, and never assumed the title of bishop of the Isles: under the former signature he petitioned the council, which thought fit not to meddle with his pe- tition, but transmitted it to Lauderdale. Both the itinerant and the indulged presbyterian ministers had frequent and secret meetings for preserving a supply of their ministry : although they ridiculed an apostolic succession, yet they licensed all the young men whom they could persuade to take their admissions. Whenever any congregations gave these youths a call, they ordained them. Several attempts were made to convene a general synod, but which could not conveniently be accomplished, as any such gathering was con- trary to law ; and besides, the indulged ministers were cir- cumscribed to the boundaries of their own paiishes — a severe restriction, that was rendered necessary by their own turbulent and intermeddling disposition. Of course they loudly claimed the merit of reforming the morals of the people, which they had the unblushing assurance to affirm were debauched by the * King's Letter, cited in 'Wodrow, ii. 304. 12 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXIV. established clergy ^ They themselves were, however, the greatest demoralisers of the people ; for, besides those sins of hj'pocrisy and of the flesh, to which presbytery is heir, they taught them constantly and systematically to disobey and to act in direct opposition to the laws of the kingdom, by collect- ing them into what were called field conventicles, not only for the " supply of seniion," but for the express purpose of che- rishing sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion. I will not say that at these ordinations which they began to practise at this time, the advice of Welsh to Cameron was universally given, to " set the fire of hell to the tails'' of those who heard them, but certainly the effect followed. But as presbyterians decline ecclesiastical tradition, let us appeal to Scripture; and I protest there is not, in all the New Testament, an instance to be found of ordination by mere presbyters. The first commissions given by our Lord to the twelve and to the seventy'^ were temporary, and certainly ordination was not included in either of them; and neither of the parties were then constituted the governors of the christian church, which was not founded till after Our Lord's resurrec- tion, when He sent the eleven, as His Father had sent Him^, with plenary power, as supreme governors of the visible church. Thus invested with episcopal power, the apostles ordained the deacons; and all the elders, presbyters, or priests, of which we read in Scripture, had apostolic or episcopal ordination. And in point of fact, all the presbyterian ministers who revolted at and after the Glasgow assembly, had episcopal ordination be- fore they peijured themselves, and then absolved each other from their canonical oaths to their several bishops. The first ordination of priests or presbyters that we read of, was per- formed by two apostles, Paul and Barnabas*; both Timothy and Titus are commanded to ordain priests in every city; but which would not have been restricted to them had ordination been the work of a republic of presbyters and lay-elders. The angels or bishops of the seven Asiatic churches were charged with the maladministration of their supreme office, particu- larly in having suffered false prophets, or a sect, to arise within ihem, figuratively described as Jezebel ; but which would not have been consistent, had the government of the church been vested in presbytery. The covi'iNANTKRs chiefly relied for authority, on that text, Mhere we are informed that the hands of the presbytery were ' Wodrow, ii. 275-73. - St. Matthew, x. pasnim. — St. Like, x. 1-17. » St. John, XX. 21. '' Acts, xiv. 23. 1674.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 13 laid on the apostle Timothy'; but he was assured that the apostolic grace was given to him by the laying on of St. Paul's hands'^. The presbytery spoken of'by the apostle of the Gen- tiles was not similar to a Scottish assembly of that name; there were neither presbyters nor lay-elders in it; for although lay-elders in Scotland are by custom excluded ft-om the laying on of hands, yet upon presbyterian principles they are as well en^i//ec?todoso asthe ministers themselves, for they have the power of government conceded to them in equal parity with the ministers. But St. Chrysostora and other fathers positively assert, that the presbytery that imposed hands on Timothy were not ordinary priests, or presbyters, but bishops, and it would be an utter absurdity for inferior men to ordain and con- stitute a superior. Even upon the supposition that he was an evangelist, or extraordinary officer, how could any inferior officer confer an extraordinary commission? None but God himself, or one having authority from Him, could give an ex- traordinary office to represent Him. In short, the whole system was a total departure from the faith, and a giving heed to seducing spirits. For this cause there was a strong delusion sent upon them to believe the grand imposture of all the false doctrine which their unsent prophets preached, and to make those powerful attempts which we have seen developed to sit in the temple of God as gods, to overtop and govern the gods or powers that be ; a mark of corruption and apostacy from the faith, that is not more ap])li- cable to their parent popery than to them. No toleration would satisfy them ; nothing short of supremacrj, both tempo- ral and spiritual, would gratify their carnal ambition. One of their famous preachers, Donald Cargill, in one of his letters speaking of the king's ministers, calls them " bloody tyrants and vile apostates ;" and he says, yet " these by our divines must be acknowledged as magistrates, which very heathens, endued with the light of nature, would abominate, and would think it inconsistent with reason to admit to or continue in magistracy such peijured, bloody, dissolute, and flagitious men as to make a wolf the feeder and keeper of the flock 3." The light of revelation teaches christian men differently ; but it is hardly possible to conceive that any one not ujider delu- sion could have used the blasphemy that John Livingstone did use on his death-bed, and which is approvingly repeated by his biographer, — when he said, " Carry my comuundutionto 1 Tim. iv. U. =2 Tim. i. 6. ^ Cloud of Witnesses, i>. 6. 14 HISTOKY OF THE [cHAP. XXXIV. Jesus Christ, till I come there myself T ^ In pressing his fel- low prisoners to " see well to their ou?» regeneration," Cai'gill as- sured them that "God can perfect great works in the twinkling of an eye," which is a truism; that " he put the thief on the cross through all his desires, convictions, conversion, justifica- tion, sanctification, &c. in short time, and left nothing to be- moan, but that there did not remain time enough to glorify Him upon earth that had done all these things for him 2." And again, the same writer says, " ye will [ought to] join with none in public worship but those who have infallible signs of regeneration." But a man can no more regenerate and justify himself than he can forgive his own sins, or physically beget himself. The agitation begun by some of the established clergy, and countenanced by the lord bishop of Dunblane, for a Gene- ral Assembly, was only another scene in the drama contem- plated by his predecessor, bishop Leighton, io presbyterianise the church, and gradually to ascend to that dictatorial supre- macy over the civil government which the assemblies had ex- ercised during the dictatorship of Argyle. Neither the king nor his ministers had any desire to encourage such pranks as had formerly led to such great calamities, more especially as the bishops governed the church in all godly quietness in those dioceses where she was not afflicted with the presence of the ministers of the covenant and their followers. On the subject of General Assemblies, Mr. Skinner has the following judicious remarks : — " No doubt, in the primitive church of the first three centuries, the neighbouring bishops often met together and consulted among themselves about the common interests of religion, by virtue of the purely spiritual powers committed to them. But between the old ecclesiastical con- stitution and the times we are speaking of, there could not but be a considerable difference in point of external polity, as it will be acknowledged that the protection and encourage- ment given by the civil rulers to the church has a title to such degrees of submission from the church as she may grant, with- out materially hurting her radical powers or departing from her original foundation. Such was the situation of the church in general when established under the Roman empire while it stood, and of the particular churches in the various kingdoms which progressively broke off from it, before the papal preten- ' Scots Worthies, 297. Ed. lS2i. - Cloud of Witnesses, p. 15, 1674.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 15 sions had risen to the height of modern encroachment ; and such was the situation of the church here, when she emerged from beneath the deluge which the torrent of the covenant had brought upon her. The king claimed Ihe privilege of convocatiug a General Assembly or council of the church in his narrow kingdom of Scotland, as the christian emperors had done of calling general councils in their extensive do- minions ; a privilege which all protestant writers agree in yielding to the sovereign, as belonging, not to his Christianity, but to his crown. " What reasons the king might have had for not calling such an assembly in all his reign, needs not to be inquired into at present. It may be presumed that the bishops saw no immediate necessity for such national conventions, since they were allowed full freedom in their inferior judicatories [synods and presbyteries] , and had standing regulations, both eccle- siastical and civil, whereby to direct their government of the church. Besides, they had frequent meetings among themselves about church matters, according to the practice of the early ages, when it is certain the bishops met here and there, as was convenient, without these tumultuous conventions of presbyters, which the reformed system, espe- cially in Scotland, brought along with it. And the king him- self, with all his claims of supremacy, whether just or not, was still inclined to countenance the bishops, and to preserve to them their due superiority over the presbyters, with all such immunities and privileges belonging to their order as were con- sistent with their constitutional incorporation into the state. For there are extant sundry letters of different dates from the earl of Lauderdale, the king's great favourite, to archbishop Sharp, assuring him of the king's resolution to name no bishops to vacant sees but such as should be recommended by the two archbishops in their respective provinces, and therefore warn- ing his grace to be very diligent and cautious in his recom- mendations. How far Lauderdale, who had been once a vio- lent covenanter, and is variously spoken of by the historians of those times, was sincere in his professions of kindness to epis- copacy, may still be a matter of doubt : but so it was in fact, that for a while he did make such professions, and by these means of condescension on the king's side, and attention to duty on the part of the bishops, matters were kept tolerably quiet for some years after the restoration. But the flame of the covenant was only smothered a little, not quite extin- guished. There was still a remnant of the furious liemon- strator faction, whom no laws could restrain and no gentle- 16 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXIV ness mollify. And though the terms of communion with ei)is- copacy were made so easy (....) that Mr^ Calamy, one of the most sensible presbyterians in England, said when he read it, * What would our brethren in Scotland be at, or what would they have ? — would to God we had these offers !' yet his Scottish brethren made light of these offers, and were re- solved never to be satisfied'^.'''' The church was then miserably oppressed and persecuted, betwixt the upper millstone of erastianism in the state and the under millstone of the avowed animosity and persecution of ths presbyterians, who were established by the council. In- deed the civil government acted too much on the principle of Erastus, both with the church and with the covenanters ; as is evident from the Assertory act and its effects, and the ludul- gence and its consequences. The eraslian principle is de- structive of religion ; and it is not f^r a moment to be sup- posed that Christ would have committed the government of his kingdom to the civil governments of the world, which at that time were altogether heathen, lie constituted princes iu His own spiritual kingdom for its government, with a regular succession of princes who should be the best supporters of CoBsar's throne. During their lifetime, the divinely inspired apostles followed Christ's pattern and example in the govern- ment of the church; and, like Him, they kept the power of ordination and mission in their own hands. Whenever they added converts to the church by baptism, they ordained elders — that is, presbyters or priests — in every city. They followed the practice of their Lord and chief bishop with re- spect to themselves until He was about to take his departure from them ; and before they were called to their blessed rest in Abraham's bosom they provided for succession from them- selves in all parts of the world, by elevating some of those elders or priests whom they had ordained in every city to succeed them in their apostolic office, as Christ had at his ascension raised ihem into His Apostleship. These at first were called apostles, but after the death of those apostles who had " seen the Lord,^^ the last of whom was St. John, in great humility they reserved the title of apostle to those whom Christ himself had ordained, and took the name of bishop, which previously to that ' Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 469-70. — There is an original letter from the earl of Lauderdale, iu the Episcopal Chest at Aberdeen, dated October 1st, 16G7, addressed to his grace the archbishop of St. Andrews, from which it ap- pears that the Scottish bishops met iu synods frequently, but without the pre- sence of their clergy, to treat and deUberate about the affairs of the church. — MSS. Ep. Chest, No. A. G. 1674.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 17 time had been given to the elders or priests, as we sec the salu- tations in some of St. Paul's epistles — " the bishops," that is, the pi-iests " and deacons." These two kingdoms, that which is, and that which is not of this world, are like two parallel lines ; they may proceed harmoniously together, without ever interfering one with the other ; and men who are alike the subjects of both may be pmiished by the one and at the same time absolved by the other, without either annulling the other's sentence, or preventing their temporal or spiritual punishment. It is when either of the kingdoms encroaches upon the just rights of the other, as the presbyterians did during the grand rebellion, andimpedes the lawful exercise of its government, that any mischief can arise from the union of church and state ; and as by a consequential retribution, Charles's government was now compelled by their own folly, to visit on them, and in which the established church was unhappily involved. The great difference which exists betwixtthe church and the kirk was conspicuous in their endurance of that erastianism under which they both suffered ; the former submitted pa- tiently to an evil that she could not cure, whereas the latter, to use their own language, first homologated it, by accepting that from the state which they had refused from the church, and afterwards by rebelling against their benefactors, and breaking systematically those conditions on which ihestate had not only granted them an indulgence, but had broken down the hedge of the established church, and placed the presbyte- rian ministers in it in an irresponsible position. Preaching, or " supply of sermon^'' has always been considered the chief object of the presbyterian ministry ; preaching, however, is not named in the original commission granted to the apostles ', but wasafterwards commanded at the ascension'^. The commission to preach did not annul that to remit sins, but was an expla- nation of it, and an authority superadded to preach baptismal justification, or the washing away of sin original in that sa- crament to all the earth. Mere j^reaching, or declamation upon a text of scripture, is what the meanest of the j)eoplc, without any divine commission, have always undertaken, and so have brought the christian ministry into undeserved contempt ; so much so, that in Holland, where erastianism is rampant, the presbyterian ministers are deprived of their meeting-houses and power of preaching without any trial, but simply by the significant ceremony of leaving a slafl" and a pair of shoes at their doors by the magistrate. The minister recpiires to ask ' St. John, XX. 10-23. ^ gt. Matthew, xxviii. 16-20.— St. Mark,xvi. 15. VOL. III. U 18 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XXXIV. no questions ; the will and the pleasure of the magistrate thus expressed are sufficient, and to this state of infamy erastian- isra was fast verging in the disaffected districts in Scotland, The PRESBYTERIANS Were not merely tolerated, but they were established by law. Many things may be allowed to exist upon sufferance, that ought not to be legally tole- rated or established. Christ suffered the buyers and sellers in the outer court of the temple, but He gave them no license to profane the house of God. He also suffers, and has long suffering with, all the sins in the world ; but he neither tole- rates sin nor promises it impunity, whether in the high places of the earth or among the most ignorant of the people. When the sins of heresy and schism have extensively spread, and have taken deep root in " the inclinations of the people," there may be reasons of expediency for temporarily suffering such sins till the christian methods of argument and persua- sion have been tried and failed ; but there ought to be no au- thoritative license given for the propagation of these sins ; be- cause those who tolerate sin become partakers of it. The government that pays and establishes a schismatical and here- tical ministry and an idolatrous priesthood, practically says God speed to the enormous sins of tearing the body of Christ, of the teaching and propagation of errors in religion, and of the worship of false gods and mediatory saints. It is not so easy to undo that which has already been yielded to clamour and sedition, but it may well become the rulers of a moral and christian nation to consider whether or not the divine blessing will follow a regium donum to heretical and idolatrous sects, and annual grants to public seminaries for the teaching of idolatrous principles, and which, by a sort of retribution also, most extensively and authoritatively teaches sedition and hatred against the government that nourishes and tolerates them. The MISFORTUNE is, that statesmen in all ages have been more inclined to consider the church as a machine for them to use for political purposes, and subservient to their ideas of ex- pediency ; whereas it is a society made by Christ for man, and in which an apostle commands there shall be no schism. However indifferent to, and wilfully ignorant, the " religious world" now is of the sin of schism, yet Christ earnestly prayed, and the apostle of the Gentiles frequently and fer- vently wrote, against it. Perhaps tlie emphatic words of Dr. Hickes, a bright ornament of the church of England, and who had witnessed the sins of schism and strife in Scotland, may produce some good reflections in well-disposed minds : — 1671. J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 10 " I would not," says he, " be an heretic or a schismatic in the church, to have the wisdom of Solomon, the tongues of St. Paul, and the eloquence of Apollos ; no, not to be caught up into Paradise, and hear those unutterable things. I would not be the best preacher that ever was, and speak in the pul- pit by inspiration, to have that accusation lie against me which St. Paul drew up against the Corinthians — of fnvy, STRIFE, sCHiSxM." And speaking of those spiritual gifts, which, through vain-glory, broke the peace of the church of Corinth, he says, " gifts, whether real or pretended, whether natural, acquired, or inspired, are temptations to pride and apostacy, rather than security from them : witness Lucifer in heaven ; Adam in Paradise; and Solomon, who, for his exceeding wis- dom, was styled the wise. So that no comparison ought to be made betwixt the excellency of knowledge and grace, and betwixt the intellectual and saving gifts of the Spirit; or be- tween the gifts of the Spirit, that make us wise and learned, and fluent talkers, and those which make us good. It is better to be humble than to be a prophet ; it is better to be righteous than to have the faith of miracles; and it is better to be holy than to have the gift of tongues. But to be peaceable, and love union, is as great a grace as to be humble, righteous, and holy; nay, as to be pure and temperate. For it is equalled with all those, and many other prime graces of the New Tes- tament ; it is reckoned with many of them among the fruits of the Spirit; and the fruits of the Spirit are better and more desirable than the gifts of it. The gifts of it may improve the conformity of my soul after the metaphysical image of God, in knowledge and wisdom, which the apostate Spirits retain. But these are the fruits of it; as love, joy, peace- ableness, &c., which conform my soul after His moral image, and make me partaker of His moral excellencies and perfec- tions, and which alone can qualify my Spirit for His presence and acceptance ; when many inspired men, and many more enthusiasts who think themselves inspired, shall be shut out of the kingdom of God : as for other sins, so especially for disturbing the peace, and rending the unity of the church." 20 CHAPTER XXXV. THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 167r). — Increase of conventicles — coming to them in arms. — John King ar- rested.— Lord Cardross committed to the Castle. — Some gentlemen's houses garrisoned. — Letters of intercommuning — their effects. — Bishop Burnet — gives evidence against the duke of Lauderdale. — Some notices of bishop Burnet. — Lord bishop of Gallovray's letter to the primate, respecting bishops Ramsay and Burnet. — An episcopal synod. — Bishop Ramsay — his letter to the primate — his grace's answer. — A court of inquiry on bishop Ramsay — two questions put to him — his ansvpers. — An assembly inexpedient. — Two more questions put to biahop Ramsay — his answers — bishop Young implicated. — Bishop Ramsay submits. — Two of the clergymen restored. — Assault on a clergyman. — Death of the bishop of the Isles — is succeeded by bishop Wood. 1676. — Persecution of the clergy. — Opposition to Lauderdale. — The bishop of Dunblane and the other clergy restored. — Death of bishop Hony- man. — Increase of conventicles. — Communions. — A proclamation against in- tercommuners. — Remarks. — A visitation of the universities. — Kirkton's arrest and rescue. — Conventicles. — An Indulgence. — Bishop of Galloway's opinion. 1677. — Duke of Hamilton deprived of his employments. — An assembly of presbyteriau ministers. — Welsh's proceedings — his ordinations — his guards. Cameron, " a vagrant minister," takes possession of a church. — Another Indul- gence.— A schism — and negociations with Lauderdale. — Articles agreed on by the council. — A meeting of the ministers. — Clergy driven from their cures. — Preparations for rebellion — and for its suppression — by the heritors. — Mea- sures of the privy council. — A county meeting — militia and clans called out. — A committee of the council sent into the army. — A bond exacted. — Dr. Ilickes. — Deaths of bishops Guthry and Laurie. — Consecrations. — Reflections. — Wherein martyrdom consists. — Unity. — The Catholic church. — Members of the church. — No commmiion among the presbyterians. — Privileges of the nobi- lity.— Mode of worship. — Confessions of Faith. 1675. — Conventicles now became more frequent than they had ever before been. Notwithstanding, says Wodrow, " of the vigorous and unprecedented laws made in the former years again.st preaching and hearing the gospel in houses and fields, yet this year, meetings to hear presbytcrian ministers were very numerous, especially in the fields; and unless in Edin- burgh, and some other towns, there were but few sermons in 1675.] HISTOUY OF TilE CHUKCH OF SCOTLAND. 21 houses. In most places, up and down the country, there were not houses capacious enough for the number that now came to hear; though I shall not say but in some places there might be a kind of affectation to be in the fields where there was not an absolute necessity, people being easier there in the summer time; but, generally speaking, the violence of tlie soldiers, and the numbers of the hearers, forced them to the open fields. These meetings were so numerous and frequent in many places, that our statesmen could not reach them all, and found it necessary to overlook what they could not help- There were spies at some meetings, and as they found oppor- tunity, essayed to catch them at the next meeting, especially in coming or going. This obliged many to come to hear the gos- pel with arms for (heir own defence; and some scifffles ensued in several places, so that the country resembled war as much as peace: and when sudden attempts were made by soldiers and spies, it is little wonder some indiscretions fell out among tlie suffering people ^." This is a fair confession ; and it shews that the government was very unjustly blamed for the severities to which the affectation of the indul;.'ed ministers for field preach- ing compelled them to resort. The indulged ministers were under no necessity to conventicle and convocate armed men to make scuffles with the military, because they had parish churches, to which their head, the privy council, had inducted them, and where they ought to have preached; but affectation of popularity, and the principles of the Covenant, impelled them to break the law. But Wodrow insinuates that this arming of the saints, their scuffles with the troops, and their general disobedience and resistance to government, were taught by the ministers at these conventicles; for, says ho, "it was matter of wonder there was no more of this than was, if upon the one hand we reflect upon the violence and injustice of the attackers, and upon the other, that ministers preached with- out judicatories to overlook them, and might thus be in hazard to deliver their own opinion, in difficult and emergent cases, with somewhat of their oivn spirit mixed with it — at least so as people might mistake them; and no doubt there were mis- takes of this kind, and some ran lengths far beyond anything preached to them^." In the month of May, a parly of soldiers arrested John King, an outlawed minister of the covenant, and domestic chaplain to lord Cardross, who had been keeping conventicles with his lordship's connivance. He had been apprehended ' Wodro-.v's History, ii. 279. ' ll)i Scots Worthies, 323.— Wodro'.v, ii. 281, 289-01. 1G75.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 23 son preaching thereat, and any considerable persons present at the same; and likewise to secure any ministers who by sentence of council are declared fugitives And upon information of any number of men in arms, if they find they can give no good account of themselves, that they are to dis- sipate them and seize on them." Thus the government was driven to the adoption of this arbitrary measure by the turbulent and lawless ministers of the covenant, who, although they had parish churches, to which they were legally inducted, yet their characteristic principles would not permit them to preach in them, but they must go to the fields and congregate great multitudes of anned men. Tt is to them alone that this system of unconstitutional severity was owing, although Wodrow, as usual, accuses the bishops, but who were, in reality, the greatest sufferers; "for any thing I can see," he says, " it was purely owing unto the virulence of the bishops, and their party in council," that the garrisons were planted. Such constant insinuations, upon mere party prejudice and malevolent spite, runs through the whole of his History, and has given a bias to his readers' minds that operates very prejudicially against the truth. The non-indulged minis- ters were so troublesome, and at the same time so well pro- tected by their partizans, that the council found it necessary to revive an old popish, most oppressive, and cruel law, which had become obsolete, called Letters of Intercommuning, which were issued out against about a hundred persons. The object of these terrible letters was to prevent any person from har- bouring, entertaining, or conversing with those parties who were denoimced rebels, otherwise they were to be considered habit and repute guilty of their crimes, and to be prosecuted accordingly. Several were particularly mentioned who had harboured, resetted, and entertained the notorious John Welsh, " a declared and proclaimed traitor, in their houses, and elsewhere, and conducting and convoying him through several places in Fife in an hostile manner, and threatening those who should apprehend him." An intercommuned person was pro- claimed rebel and traitor at the market-crosses of certain towns, when " all and sundry our lieges and subjects are charged and commanded, that they nor none of them presume to take upon hand to reset, supply, or intercommune with any of the aforesaid persons, our rebels, for the causes foresaid, nor furnish them with mcat,drink,house,harbour, ^ictual, nor other useful thing, or comfortable to them, nor have intelligence with them by word, writ, or message, or any other manner of way, under the pain to be repute and esteemed art and part 24 HISTORV OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. with them in the crimes foresaid." Behold, then, the fruits of the presbyterian principles of lawless insubordination, by which many innocent and loyal churchmen were, from igno- rance,or compassion, or i*elationship, placed in the most painful and embarrassing position. Every means had been tried, and all had failed, and this law, from its very unchristian tyrann}-, was doomed to fail also, to reclaim the sons and daughters of the covenant, that most diabolical contrivance of the most wicked of men, the Jesuits. And to suppress the effects of their con- trivance, the government revived the old popish law against excommunicated persons, or those who had been laid under an interdict, v.ith whom no man might " buy or sell." It is necessaky to notice bishop Burnet's breach with Lauderdale ; for which the bishop himself accounts, by say- ing that his grace was jealous of Burnet's favour with the king and the duke of York. But Lauderdale appears to have had but too good grounds of jealousy, and for suspecting that Burnet had betrayed many of his secrets to his political enemies. He tells us that he attempted to undeceive the king respecting the stale of Scotland and the duke's administration ; and his intimacy with the duke of Hamilton, who led the opposition, besides some other matters, clearly indicated to the duke that he had betrayed him, and assisted in the attempt to procure a change of ministry. Burnet says that Lauderdale at this time heartily espoused the cause of the church at the court of England ; and this assertion is confirmed by archbishop Sharp. Burnet had been presented to the king, and he pretends to say he reproved his majesty for his vices ; but he made the whole conversation, with perhaps many additions, matter of gossip, which got into circulation, and at length reached the king's ears. He was forbid the court, and disgraced, and, says Salmon, " had he not fallen into the hands of the mildest prince in Europe, he would probably have met with another sort of rebuke than only his being forbid the court and commanded twenty miles from London, which order we find he had the impudence to disobey." When he found he was unable to ruin the duke with the king, he next betrayed all the duke's secrets to some mem- bers of parliament, under the pretence of ill usage, in order to procure his grace's impeachment. He informs us that the duke of Lauderdale endeavoured to render himself pojoular in Scot- land by conniving at the insolence of the presbyterians, and that thereby he provoked the church party out of measure: and yet immediately after he says that archbishop Sharp, of whom he always speaks maliciously, went up to London and openly asserted that Hamilton and the opposition were the 1075.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 25 greatest enemies to the church. It is not to be supposed that the primate would have thus spoken if he had not had good reason for it. Their reconciliation, and the restoration of arch- bishop Burnet to his see, who had always been one of the church's best defenders, is some oorroboration of the primate's assertion of the good disposition of Lauderdale towards the church ^ Bisfiop Burnet was examined by the House of Commons, and gave evidence against Lauderdale, that his grace had said " he wished the presbyterians in Scotland would rebel, that he might bring over the Irish papists to cut their throats ;" and that the duke contemplated the marching of a Scottish army into England, to suppress public spirit, and to make the king absolute. Burnet seems at one time to have possessed in some degree Lauderdale's confidence ; but he justly lost it by his ingratitude and treachery in betraying his most important secrets, and which drew down upon the duke an impeachment for high treason. Besides, Burnet had entered into a confi- dential friendship and political alliance with the earl of Kin- cardine, who was on bad terms with Lauderdale, and opposed to his government. In speaking of his evidence before the House of Commons, and of his intrigues with the duke's oppo- nents, the author of the Memoirs of the History of Scotland says — " For understanding whereof [this intrigue] it is fit to know that this Gilbert Burnet, being nephew to Warriston by his sister, had with her milk drank in that mercury which was inseparable from Warriston's family ; and being, whilst he was very young, admitted into a familiarity with Lauderdale, because of the kindness that Lauderdale had ever entertained for old Master Robert Burnet, his worthy and loyal father, the young man arrived very early at as much learning beyond his years, as he wanted the discretion and solidity that was necessary for his profession. But being encouraged by lady Margaret Kennedy into an amour, she, to revenge herself upon Lauder- dale, because he did not marry her, engaged him into a plot against Lauderdale ; in pursuance of which. Master Burnet finding that the king would not part with Lauderdale upon a naked address, suggested to some of the members of the House of Commons, that he could discover to them Lauderdale's ac- cession to the bringing in of popery; and being e.vamined, he deponed upon some expressions vented by Lauderdale, in a conversation at which the duchess of Hamilton and they two ' Salmon's Impartial Examination of Burnet's Own Times, ii. 719-20-21. VOL. III. E 26 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. were only present. But yet, the expressions being so impro- bable, and so capable of a good construction, even though they had been spoken, and the duchess of Hamilton having, in a letter under her hand, disclaimed her ever having heard such words, and Master Burnet having, in an epistle dedicatory, posterior thereto, magnified the duke of Lauderdale, as the chief pillar of the protestant religion, the odium designed against the duke of Lauderdale returned to the author, whom the best of his friends acknowledged to have betrayed friend- ship, and all indifferent men to have wronged truth ^" At this time archbishop Sharp was in London, to whom there is a copy of a letter from the bishop of Galloway, in which he corroborates the foregoing accounts of bishop Burnet, and of his prevarications, as follows, dated Edinburgh, the 6th of May, 1675 :— " May it please your grace, — The privy council being ad- iourned till the 3d of June, I hope to wait on your grace here about that time. Nothing of great importance hath been done at council at this time. The duke of Hamilton appeared much for Greig, the nonconformist minister, and was well opposed, with calmness and reason, by my lord Hatton, who never fails the king's nor the church's service ; it were well with both to have many such true friends. The duke appeared much also for the three fined provosts, whose petition is now transmitted to the king. And it is with some complaints anent the mar- quis of Douglas's troop hath been all the noise some have been able to make at this time, which is not of any great importance. Sir John Harper came to the town with the duke, whom I spoke with on the street yesterday, and told him the use bishop Ramsay had made of what passed 'twixt him and me, on his last being here. He said that bishop was to blame to use his name, as giving the rise to his going to court ; for he well knew, that before he saw him or spoke to hiKn, he was determined to make that journey ; but withal said, it might be, that ap- prehending he might be tried by your grace, with other bishops, he might the rather be induced to go and prevent it. I said, how could he dream (since he complained of not being heard or tried) to shun being tried by his ordinary and his peers ? He said he had no mind to be judged or tried by your grace, and that he might desire to be heard and tried before the coun- cil. I said the council was no church judicatory, and a true ' Memoirs, pp. 315, 316. 1675.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 27 bishop would not desire to appear so much of Erastus his mind, as to think so. He said, he would not say that the bishop did think so, and so our conversation ended. " Mr. Gilbert Burnet hath written to his brother, that it was sore against his inclination that he hath appeared against the duke, but that he was forced into it — which ill agrees with his actings, and what he hath signed, since none could force him, not being upon oath, to disclose such secrets as he pre- tends to reveal, and most look upon as forgeries and villainous contrivances of his own ; and the rather, that the duchess of Hamilton disowns what he says my lord duke said to her, anent bringing over the Irish papists. A nobleman to whom her grace told it, said to me yesterday, that she utterly disowns it as a lie, and said she never heard it ; but when Gilbert Burnet asked of her if the duke of Lauderdale had not said so to her, then she absolutely refused that ever his grace had said any such thing to her ; and when a person of honour, and malice enough against my lord duke, doth so contradict his testimony in that matter, which Gilbert Burnet says was spoke to her by that duke, is it not reason to believe all the other accusa- tions and informations to be so many villainous and infamous forgeries ? " Though we all long for your grace's presence here, and stand very much in need of it, yet we cannot but be much satisfied with your being now where you are, and see ane happy divine Providence in it, whereby you have had ane oppor- tunity to do so excellent service to the king, to the churches in both kingdoms, and to so noble and worthy a friend to both as is my lord duke of Lauderdale, and thereby so much right to yourself, even in the eyes of your enemies, who, though they malign your grace for so doing, yet cannot but in their hearts acknowledge your integrity, resolution, and generosity. I can assure your grace of all our prayers for your long and happy preservation amongst us, to be ane eminent instrument of blessing to this poor unhappy church, and of none with more heart and fervour, than the poor prayers of, may it please your grace, " Your grace's most humble and faithful " obedient servant, "Jo. Paterson.i" Therk was an episcopal synod of the province of St. An- drews held at that city, but there is no account of what was > MSS. Ep. Chest, No. B. 40. 28 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. the object for which it met ; although it is probable that it related to the recent agitation for a general assembly of the whole church, and to the compilation of canons. Bishop Ramsay seems to have been intemperately urgent for an assem- bly, and to have an authoritative name given to the present meeting, whether or not it was to be considered as national, provincial, or diocesan; to which the archbishop replied, it was to be called a " consultative" synod. Much of the spirit of the Covenant appears in bishop Ramsay's conduct at this synod, the only account of which is to be found in his own letter, in which he alleges, what is denied by the primate, and which does not appear to have been true, that the archbishop desired him to withdraw from the meeting, for he says in his letter that he " stayed till the meeting was ended." He did not attend at any of the subsequent sittings, but wrote a long letter, addressed to the primate and the other bishops, stating what it may be presumed he had said, or designed to say, in the synod. He protested for his own right and that of his suc- cessors, bishops of Dunblane, to be present at synods, and " to be authorised to bring presbyters with him, as well as any other bishops, which hath not been granted to me at this time." He says, there was a motion for canons spoken of at the session at which he was present; for it appears that those authorised in the reign of Charles I. had not survived the storms of the usurpation, and had not been ecclesiastical law since the Restoration. In his letter he states his reasons for the preparation of canons, not in a " consultative" synod, but in a general assembly, composed of the bishops and priests of both provinces. He seemed also desirous of reviving his predecessor's (Dr. Leigh ton) scheme, of a comprehension of the presbyterians, which, as it had already failed, it is not sur- prising that the synod should be decidedly opposed to any renewal of so wild and impracticable a scheme. In conclu- sion, he makes his " humble request, that his grace might interpose for taking off the sentence inflicted upon those loyal and worthy w^atchmen, the ministers of Edinburgh, lest dis- orders grow more in that city, and from thence infect other places ^" I SEE NO DATE given for the meeting of this synod; but it must have been early in this year, as the primate went to Lon- don in April, and was soon after followed by the bishop of Dunblane, who never appears to have obeyed the royal com- mand of going to the Isles. His journey had been under- ' Wodrow's History, ii. 302, 303. 1675.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 29 aken without having asked either the king or the archbishop's permission to leave the kingdom, which, in the circumstances of his case, was incorrect, as he was ordered to confine him- self to a certain locality. Under the influence of excited feel- ings and wounded pride, he addressed the following angry letter to the primate; it is couched in general teiins, and brought no specific charge. This letter, and also the arch- bishop's reply, are among the manuscript papers in the Epis- copal Chest at Aberdeen, and from which these are copied: — " London, 7th June, 1675. " May it please your Grace, — It is not unknown to your grace what obliged me to come to this place, or occasioned my stay so long in it. I have ground to believe it was you who abused his majesty's ears with that account, ^^•hich his majesty takes notice of in his letter of the 16th July, 1674; and was the ground of what his majesty was pleased to order concerning me, both in that and in the letter to the privy coun- cil of the same date. It was you who not only intimated his majesty's pleasure, contained in your own letter, very surpris- ingly to me, and in an extra-judicial and unfatherly manner, without any ghostly exhortations, but also influenced the coun- cil to intimate their order, without previously calling me to be heai'd ; and when I gave in my petition to the council, con- taining my purpose to give exact obedience to his majesty's pleasure, but only prayed them to represent my case to his sa- cred majesty, that, for the justification of my innocence (since I was not called before sentence), I might be put to the strictest trial anent these crimes informed against me, (a desire which, coming from the meanest laic, should for its justice have been kindly entertained by churchmen,) yet you know how vigo- rously you opposed it ; yea, after the council was pleased, not- withstanding your opposition, to transmit my petition to his majesty's consideration, you shortly after came here, where you have stayed since, having no small influence on them who manage public affairs. It might have been reasonably hoped that, as primate, you should have concerned yourself to help forward a favourable answer to the petition of a bishop of your own province, so just in itself, and Ijcing so transmitted ; or, though your grace had no regard to me, yet the consideration of the good of the church, in that corner where you know dis- orders are increased since my restraint, together with the dan- ger of the preparation, should have prompted your grace to do somewhat to bear witness that your zeal for the church was stronger than your private pi([uc at me. But since 1 30 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. came here, I have been amazed to find a person of your cha- racter and parts could think it worthy of himself and his pains to make and spread such reports as I am told you have done. May I be so bold as to ask your grace if indeed you believe me to be a fanatic, or upon what shadow of ground you either think or report it to others ? Have you any letters under my hand, avouching that presbyterial government, even but for its substantial, is jure divino? or that I was thinking de mutando solo, when the parliament made the first disco- veries of their inclination to restore episcopacy ? And your grace may remember, that I was sequestrate by the usurpers, from the exercise of my charge, till the king's happy restora- tion; and you know how early I discovered my persuasion towards church government, and how I acted for it in the synod of Lothian, under the eye of the greatest patrons ot presbytery; and do you think I am turned fanatic, because a bishop? I beseech your grace to consider how unjustifiable those slanders will be when put to the touch. Wherefore I desire (I shall not say the favour, but the justice of you) that you may either choose an indifferent person, who may consider your allegations, with their evidences, and my answers ; or that without more noise (considering my sufferings already are far above the merits of all you can lay to my charge) you will be pleased to interpose and wipe off" the dirt by the same hand that threw it on me, vvhereby I may be restored to his ma- jesty's favour, and my just right : by doing whereof you may cross a lust of malice, but can neither wound conscience nor honour. But, if you please neither of these, nor any thing else than my being a holocaust to your i-evenge, then let me be- seech you to allow me the same freedom in representing you, which you have taken concerning me: and I assure you, though I will have foul things to represent, I will do it in fairer man- ner than that in which you used me. My lord, if you think strange of the terms and manner of this address, I must be excused ; for I would not put what I was obliged to say in fairer or better expressions ; nor can I believe you should ex- pect I would come to trouble you myself, after you had often discovered your displeasure when I waited on you, and re- (juired me to be gone out of your own house after you had called me to it, and at length pursued me to this height and continuance of suffering, without just grounds. However, my lord, I have a just veneration for your character, and shall be loath to dishonour any that bears it, if you do not constrain me, by continuing to oppress me unjustly, and by continuing to shut up against me all avenues of redress : yet, even when 1675.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 31 this force shall be put upon me, I will endeavour to follow such methods as are agreeable to the canons and practice of the church in such cases, so much as unavoidable circumstances will permit me. And herein I desire not to be mistaken, as if I sent this out of any trifling vanity to fret you: I do it not but out of duty to warn you. They are no trifles I have to say ; and if you contemn this warning, I will be exonered be- fore God and men to publish them. But I hope and desire you will prevent me, by taking sober resolutions ; for I declare upon my honesty, that no man knows that (much less what I have written), so that it is in your power yet to make it public or keep it quiet. Do which pleases you; but let me assure you (though you would seem not to believe it), that I am a true son of the church, a zealous lover of order, and due subor- dination in it ; and wherein you are truly for these, you shall never find me other than, may it please your grace, " Your grace's most faithful servant, " Ja. Dunblanen." " If your grace return no answer this or the next day, I will conclude you resolve to give me none," T(3 THIS angiy and vituperative letter the archbishop returned a calm and dignified answer; in which he denies the charges in the same general terms in which they were made. No fur- ther light is thrown upon the cause of their misunderstanding ; but the bishop of Dunblane seems to have been irritated by some designing enemy of the primate, and to have unjustly suspected that his grace had rendered him some ill offices. Indeed, the bishop of Dunblane's letters but too evidently show that he " laboured under the infirmities of impotent rage and exasperation of spirit." The archbishop's answer is mild and temperate, and conveys some just reproofs; and although they contradict each other on the point where bishop Ramsay says he was ordered to withdraw, it is probable, that, in his state of irritability, he may have mistaken some of the pri- mate's remarks, and had misconstrued them into a dismissal from the synod. I should be inclined to think that it was not in the primate's power to dismiss a prelate so summarily, with- out a vote of the synod. "Ax-yard, 8th June, 1675. " My Lord, — Yesterday, in the morning, while I was going from the Privy-garden to the Park, a serving-man put a letter in my hand from your lordship ; which having read, I shall in gratification of your pressing desire, send this answer. Your 82 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP XXX*V. lordship knows best what obliged you to come to this place, or occasioned your so long stay in it, having notified neither to me ; and you are mistaken if you think that I came or have stayed in reference to you or your case, or have taken pains to make or spread reports, as you are told I have done : for I de- clare I have not mentioned your name to the king nor spoke of you to any one, before I received your letter, save to those who told me you had been with them, and spoken of me, and my way, in reference to the church and to you ; and what I said was in just defence and vindication against what you had most injuriously laid at my door. Your lordship has charged me with many things of which T am innocent, and for which neither as a privy-councillor nor an archbishop am I obliged to give an account. I have not made it my business to inquire into your persuasions in former or later years, nor into the meri- torious actings or sufferings you value yourself so much upon before the king's Restoration , nor am I solicitous whom you mean, who, by letters under his hand, avoucheth that presby- tery is juris divini, or was thinking de mutando solo when the parliament was about to restore episcopacy : for better men than either you or I, have, without any criminous imputation, changed their sentiments about the form of government and public administrations which they have owned by the press and the sword. I do not think, neither have I said to any, that you are ' turned fanatic because become a bishop ;' but I think there may be a schismatical and unpeaceable bishop in the church, and have more than once admonished you to take heed of that divisive temper, and giving way to that dictating and assuming humour, by which you have been observed to scan- dalize your superiors and brethren, both before you was a bishop and since ; and I shall moreover fairly tell your lordship, that since your coming to England, I have heard that some, who think you had no small hand in that persecution, have de- clared that you contributed for promoting the fanatic interest, and have not spared to slander some of your own order, in their absence, which I believe is not unknown to you. I had little opportunity to converse with you in my whole life. I remember when I did you some good olhces, but cannot say I had the opportunity to speak with you above twice or thrice, and then overly, and several years before you were made a bishop ; and since, I have said nothing but what I said to your- self upon divers occasions, before some bishops and others of the clergy, who have testified I did not require you to be gone out of my house at St. Andrews ; and after, at Edinburgh, when you was at my lodging, you did meet with 170 uncivil usage 1675,] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 33 from me. So that when some told rac you made that your excuse for not paying ordinary civilities to me since you came hither, I said 1 was not to challenge that strangeness which was noticed by others. It was a strange allegation of your lordship, and you are the first clergyman of any degree whom I ever heard complain of my uncivil usage of any of them. And it is no less strange, that you allege my continuance to oppress you, for endeavouring to shut up against 'you all ave- nues for redress,' as you phrase it, without any evidence or proof; but that you will set me up as the object of your bluster- ing against, on a pretence to the errand, you know best, you came and stayed here for. I shall further add, that the scold- ing language and menacing warnings you are pleased to treat me with, by your letter, do not fret or discompose me, though you say they are not trifles which you have to bring against me. And as my own heart tells me, I harbour no malice, pique, or revenge, against your lordship, which you so positively charge against me ; so I believe I can justify, to all my brethren of our order, (whose judgment I stiall not decline, as to all you can accuse me of,) or to any else who shall be appointed by competent authority, that whatever I have done or said against your lordship did proceed from no other motive but from the sense of that duty I owe to the king, to the church, and to the office I bear, which in the judgment of my brethren you have violated. And although I might have expected more deference and regard from your lordship, than hitherto I have found ; yet, if that the unavoidable circumstances you write that you are under, will not pennit you to follow these methods which are consistent with the great veneration you say you have for my character, but that you must endeavour to dis- honour the person who bears it. without transgressing the canons and practices of the church, by representing those foul things you say you have against me, I hope God will arm me with patience under this injustice, and also from your own hand wipe off' that dirt that shall be thrown upon my integrity, which I will own against all the methods of expressing that bitter and causeless enmity and spite, you have not stuck to confess against me in Scotland, and since you came hither. You know I have not been a stranger in the lot of being at- tacked by the barkings of the malicious defamations and the printed libels of the adversaries to that order, for which I may say, without vanity, I have suffered and done more and longer than your lordship can pretend to, or those who malign me. And now, if you should follow that trade as you have begun, others may think, quamvis ego dignus essem hac contumelia indignus VOL. III. F 34 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XXXV. tamen tu qui faceres. And since you are pleased under your hand to give me warning that you will represent foul things against me, and which you will publish, yet do not mention the particular crimes, but leave it to my choice whether to make it public or to hold it quiet, which is upon the matter to take wath the guilt of whatever malice shall suggest or allege against me : this I confess you may declare upon your honesty is a generous offer from a true son of the church, a zealous lover of order and due subordination, to be made to one to whom you swore canonical obedience, and do now sign yourself ever to be a most faithful servant, but on the honourable terms of his lying for ever at your mercy for his reputation. I will not re- turn you the compliment, nor use that candour you have used to me, by giving me warning of all these hideous things you have to boast [threaten] me with ; but tell you I live under the protection of a just prince, and the laws, which take notice of public libellers ; and I do rejoice in the testimony of my con- science, which charges me with nothing in my administrations, for which I have cause to be ashamed before men. And when you consider the hazard of owning yourself as the author of these foul aspersions you warn me to expect, and shall return to a more sober and sedate recollection of mind, and of your duty, you shall find, through God's grace, that my carriage shall be such as becomes the duty of my station, which forbids my en- tertaining malice, pique, or revenge against any, and enjoins charity, compassion, and long-suffering towards all, especially towards those who labour under the infirmities of impotent rage and exasperation of spirit. In this sense " I am your lordship's very humble servant, " St. Andrews." " P.S. — I have obeyed the intimation by your postscript, with this caveat, that your lordship henceforth forbear troubling yourself with addresses by letters to me, for T will not further notice them with returns ^" Bishop Ramsay seems to have been irritated by the uncon- stitutional exertion of the Assertory Act ; and, from morbid sensibility, to have supposed the primate to have been the au- thor of his disgrace. This does not appear to have been the case ; but the primate's reply seems to have added to his dis- content, rather than to have allayed it. They both returned to Scotland in the course of the summer. " Archbishop Sharp having done all the service he could for the church, took leave ' MSS. Episcopal Chest at Aberdeen, A. 12. Iti75.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 35 of the king and the court ; and this was the last time he had the honour to kiss his majesty's hand : and returning to Scot- land in August 1675, he studied to bring afl'airs to unity and accommodation, and faithllilly discharged the functions of his sacred office ^" The Assertory Act had given the king such a despotic power in the church, that the bishop of Dunblane had placed himself in a very disagreeable position by going to court with- out leave during his suspension. A commission, therefore, was sent down to the two archbishops and some of the other bishops, to hold a court of inquiry, and to summon bishop Ramsay before them. It sat down on the 4th of September, and after reading his majesty's commission, the following in- terrogatories were put to the bishop : — 1 . Whether the said bishop of Dunblane did obtain leave, either of the king's majesty, or of his metropolitan, to repair to court in April last ? 2. Whether the said bishop of Dun- blane did abet or assist the motion and petition of a national synod without consent of his superior, and the bishops of this church ? On ACCOUNT of the personal dispute betwixt the metropolitan and his suffragan, it might perhaps have been as well had the primate been excluded from this commission ; but it is much to be lamented that no documents have been left behind by which we could judge more accurately of the proceedings. Bishop Ramsay withdrew, and returned written answers to the above questions. He complained of not having received a formal indictment ; but of having been proceeded against by way of inquisition. To the first question he ingenuously acknowledged that he had neither asked nor obtained permission, either from the king or the archbishop ; because he found that he had been secretly misrepresented to his majesty, and thereby a sentence procured which lay heavy upon him. Finding also that his petition to the council had been transmitted to the king, and being grieved to lie under the imputation of supposed guilt, he therefore deter- mined to appeal to his majesty in person, so as to clear himself of crimes of which he was accused, and to be exonerated from them. His reasons for not asking the primate's permission were — 1, because his grace had been for a considerable time at court ; 2, because, having been suspended from the exercise of his office, lie thought he was relieved from his canonical obligations ; but, 3, more particularly he was not without strong suspicion that he who had injured him by that secret True and Impartial Account, p. 69. 3() HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, XXXV. and groundless account wliicli had been laid before the king, was so nearly related to his meLropolitan that he could pro- mise himself little success, if he had asked his grace's permis- sion. In conclusion, he humbly apologised for his fault, and promised that if his majesty would be graciously pleased to restore him to the free exercise of his calling he would be as careful to reside at his charge, and not go abroad without permission, as any bishop in this church. He states that his majesty had admitted him to his presence, and that he had en- deavoured to clear himself. He also says that previous to his journey to court he had never been a day's journey from the place of his residence ; and yet the whole bench of bishops have been accused by the presbyterians of constantly sitting in council, and instigating that body to all the severities which the covenanters' own rebellious principles had brought upon them. To THE SECOND interrogatory he replied by denying that he had ever abetted or assisted the petition for a national synod ; but he freely confessed that he thought a national synod was necessary for settling a church which ivanted an establisJiecl rule of faith, worship, and discipline, and he saw no ground then to conceal his opinion, in which he was confirmed by ecclesiastical history. But after the act had passed " for the establishment and constitution of a national synod," he never doubted that it was lawful to say, as the act itself said, " that a national synod is necessary and fit for the honour and ser- vice of Almighty God, the good and quiet of the church, and the belter government thereof in unity and in order." Be- sides, the act declared and appointed the meeting of a na- tional synod, and who should be its constituent members. It appeared to him that his majesty's inclinations were disposed towards the convoking of a synod, for his majesty had issued his royal warrant and command to the bishops and some of the clergy to meet and prepare a liturgy, canons, &c. to be offered ior his majesty's approbation, and afterwards, by royal authority , to be presented to a national synod for its confirmation. That such was his majesty's gracious intention is confirmed by his having appointed the earl of Rothes his commissioner and representative in such a synod; and after the expiration of the time mentioned in the warrant, the duke of Lauderdale was appointed commissioner for the same synod, which was con- tinued though never held. During the continuance of both these commissions there was no national synod held ; but where the obstacle to it lay he could not infallibly say ; but of this he was sure, that it did not lie with his majesty, who had sufricienlly manifested his princely zeal to accomplish it. At 1675.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 37 the conclusion of the session of parliament in 1672, the duke of Lauderdale intimated his majesty's desire to all the bishops then assembled, that they should speedily consider of those things which were "necessary for settling this church in its intrinsics, mentioning particularly canons, catechism, and fo7'm of worship ; wherein his grace assured their lordships of his majesty's royal concurrence, as well as his own service for the establishing these, and for the enacting suchs law as their lordships had judged necessar}'." Whence, he continues, " 1 hope it will be granted, that it was no mistake that, upon these grounds, I did believe so concerning his majesty's inclinations for a national synod ; and albeit 1 shall be ibund to have mis- taken, I am sure there was nothing in that error contrary to profound loyalty and charity, and therefore shall humbly ex- pect pardon from his majesty's transcendant clemency." He then expresses his contrition for having incurred his majesty's displeasure in desiring a synod, " being under the fervours kindled by my consecration but so lately passed, and finding not so much as a catechism appointed in the church, nor a rule by which to try the faith and correct the manners of my diocese ; as also that the aforesaid act contains an express pro- hibition to all archbishops and bishops, ' to observe and keep any act, canon, order, or ordinance, but what shall be con- sidered, consulted, and agreed upon by the said synod ;' end yet myself (the most unworthy) advanced to be une of but fourteen persons who are to answer to God Almighty and his Son the Lord Jesus Christ for this poor church, \Ahieh, though it had frighted me to snatch at remedies which wiser men and more conversant in state affairs may think unseasonable, the transportation is pitiable and the cause of it commendable : yet 1 affirm, that as it was no new opinion taken uji at or nigh that time judged unseasonable, but the prosecution and con- tinuation of an old motion entertained once by the most I con- versed with, so I wonder upon what grounds the plain and obvious, and by his majesty and ])arliament (where my lords the bishops were sitting), an enacted remedy for this church's distempers should have been suggested to his sacred majesty as a contrivance. Nor hath it appeared to me how any evil de- sign against the state could have been effected, among so many loyal churchmen as that meeting must consist of, where nothing can be treated of but what liis majesty or his com- missioner (who hath also a negative) should deliver or cause to be delivered to the archbishop, the president thereof Nor is it almost supposeable that his majesty or his commissioner would propose any fanatical design against the ordpr of the 38 HISTORY OF IHE [cHAP. XXXV. church, or that the archbishops, bishops, deans, &.c would en- tertain it. Xor did I ever think that a national synod could ever be indicted but allenarly by his majesty, who only hath the authority both of calling and dissolving them, and is sole supreme judge on earlii of the fittest times when to indict them at his pleasure ; nor did I ever hear any of these per- sons who appeared in that desire, but always spoke their wishes for it with a full submission to his majesty's plea- sure i." Bishop Ramsay's desires do not appear to have been by any means unreasonable ; but he seems to have been of a rest- less innovating disposition, and his fault in this instance lay more in the manner than in the matter. It is probable that the archbishop was apprehensive that the assertory act, which had already wrought so much mischief in the church, might be made an engine for crushing her still more etlectually by means of an assembly ; and although a national synod for the purpose named above would have been very desirable, yet, with the powers existing with which the king was invested by that diabolical act, it was not expedient. The statesmen of that pe- riod seem to have considered the church more in the light of au engine of state than of a divine institution ; and the assertory act gave them a plenitude of power which almost annihilated her independence. The bishops and clergy felt this to be a dreadful evil, and among the manuscripts at Aberdeen there is the copy of a memorial which had been prepared, complaining that by that act the king was empowered to depose and re- place bishops and clergymen at his own pleasure, which they represented "as a grieyous seryjtlde." The memorial also states that the bishops and clergy were only waiting for a favourable opportunity to move and persuade the king either to repeal or to explain the said act, so that no bishop or pres- byter should be removed or turned out without a fair, open, and legal trial, by ecclesiastical judges and judicatories 2. Ox THE 6th, other two questions were put to bishop Ramsay, viz. 1. Whether tlie bishop of Dunblane heard the bishop of Edinburgh reason against the motion for a na- tional synod, in the archbishop of St. Andrews his chamber ? 2. Whether the said bishop of Dunblane knew that the mo- lion of a national synod was contrary to the judgment of his superior, the archbishop of St. Andrews his grace ? Bishop Ramsay' again complains of harsh and unbrotherly ' MSS. in tde Episcopal Chest at Aberbeen, A. 11. — Wodrow, ii. .^04-Cll. - M.SS. in the Kpisroi'al Chest at Abenlceii, B. 17. 1675.] CHURCH OF SCO! LAND. 39 usage, and that the perpetually binding canon — " against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three wit- nesses,"— had not been observed towards him. He does not deny that the bisliop of Edinburgh might, at the time men- tioned, have spoken against the meeting of a svnod ; but he repeats that his lordship had previously been amongst the most forward in that cause. Bishop Young certainly advo- cated the calling of a synod, but had seen cause to adhere to reasons advanced against it ; and he does not appear to have acted either an ingenuous or a friendly part towards the bishop of Dunblane. Bishop Ramsay says, " I do distinctlv re- member that all the winter before [the spring of 1674], he [the bishop of Edinburgh] was for a national synod in the same terms and measure that 1 was, and gave this for a reason, that the church would never be well so long as mv lord St. An- drews was upon the head of it, or at least till there were nales and limits set to his grace, whereby he might be restrained from doing in the common concerns of the church, without the common consent of the rest of the bishops. And his lordship may remember we concluded a meeting of all the bishops to be fittest and ablest both to judge of the expediency of the motion and to carry his grace's consent to it." " As TO THE second query," he continues, " I shall not deny that both my lord of Edinburgh and I were not a little jealous of his giace's aversion from that motion ; but I do not remember that his grace did ever interpose his autho- rity, or offer reasons against it, much less that ever he inti- mated any thing of his majesty's dislike to it, before Julv 1674, after which time I suffered. But I am sure I acted nothing in prosecution thereof; yea, all the time when I expressed mv opinion for that motion, I cannot be charged with doing any more than to use humble entreaties that my lord primate might go foremost in it, according to his primacy. "When his grace stood, perhaps I used such motives as I could, and renewed my humble desires ; so that all [that] was done, argued still a dependence upon his giace. Nor did I doubt but all this ac- corded well with the laws of the kingdom and the doctrine of the church, whereby I was taught that omiies episcopi sunt ejusdem potestatis intensivcB ; and that it was no breach of order or canonical obedience to desire him who is superior to him in order and extension of power, according to his place to appear for the good of that church, which the one (though in subordination) was to be accountable for unto the righteous 'udge, as well as the other ; nor could I see ground to expect 40 HISTORY OF TFIR [CHAP. XXXV. exoneration in the day of accounts, if he had not humbly, earnestly, and modestly renewed these his desires to liis supe- rior. For if it is not deterrnined to be contrary to the rules of duty and civility for a subject to seek a private favour for him- self from his lord, and after refusal to renew his desires and use the mediation of others, that he may obtain a grant ; I do not see how it can be a crime in a bishop after the same man- ner to sue to his metropolitan in a matter concerning the church." The bishop entered on along general defence, shewing a great share of morbid sensibility and wounded feelings, not connected with the questions that had been put to him ; but we gather from his complaint the mischievous effects of the assertory act in his case. " And now," he says, " having considered every particular whereupon I have been inquired, I rejoin, that not one law or canon has been objected to, or the transgression thereof alleged against me, although there has been time to search very narrowly in all my conversation these thirteen months, during which I have been restrained from the exercise of mine office, and otherwise, and now the first time called to be heard." This unpleasant affair ended in bishop Ramsay submitting to the sense of the court against the calling of a national assembly, and asking pardon ; when there was no more said about the matter. Kirkton says, he " came off upon his knees." He also says, the " four curates who had made most noise, Turner, Cant, Robertson, and Hamilton, were banished from their charges for conscience sake (as they said) for a while, but were afterwards, upon satisfaction, received, and no more harm done." But at this time only Turner and Robertson were restored to the exercise of their ministry upon their signing the following paper : — " We undersubscribing, taking to our serious consideration that his majesty hath manifested his displeasure against us for our motion and petition relating to a national synod, June 1674, do sincerely declare our grief that thereby we did oc- casion any offence to his majesty or any in authority over us ; and we do most heartily beseech that his majesty may gra- ciously pass by whatever hath offended him against us ; and that my lord primate his grace, and othei's entrusted with him, may be pleased to restore us to the exercise of our former ministry, wherein, by the Lord's grace, we shall constantly behave ourselves with all loyalty to the king's most excellent majesty, and with all dutifulness to our ecclesiastical superiors, acting in our station in a dup subordination and obedience IG75.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 41 unto them, and live in a mutual love and concord with our colleagues and brethren i. (Signed) " Arch. Turner, " Jo. Robertson." WoDROW lays claim to the thanks of the church for giving the foregoing detail with fairness and candour : — " I am al- most ready," he says, " to Hatter myself as deserving the thanks of the party for acquainting the public with them, which I have done in a very fair and candid way, and from their own mouths." He does deserve our thanks, and shall have them ; but they would have been more heartily given had his motives been better than he shews they were. He is worthy of thanks also for informing us of the continued persecution that the inferior clergy experienced at the hands of his bre- thren, in tlie districts where the ministers of the covenant had been indulged. Several individuals were examined by the council for a " riot;" that is, an assault on the person of the episcopal clergyman of New Monkland, in the diocese of Glasgow 2. This is another proof among many of the truth of BuiTiet's words, " that the persecution lies mainly on the conformists' side." " If I should recount the railings, scof- fings, and floutings, which the conformable ministers met with to their faces, even on streets and public highways, not to mention the contempt that is poured out upon them more pri- vately, I would be looked upon as a forger of extravagant sto- ries 3." This persecution was a systematic and designed thing, with the view of rendering all the parish churches va- cant, so as to have more indulged presbyterians planted, and thus gradually to get their sect altogether established, and the kiugdom presbyterianised by degrees. It is painful to record that four poor old women, who were reputed witches, were strangled and then burnt. Robert Wallace, lord bishop of the Isles, died this year. He was one of the Resolutioncr party, and appears to have been very active in opposing the o]ipressive measures of the Remonstrators, to whom principal 13aillic refers several of his correspondents for his opinion and advice, and also for his ac- tive co-operation in the attempts of the rcsolutioners to coun- teract the schemes of the remonstrator faction. One of that con- federacy, with unhallowed pen, gave that good man the follow- ' Wodrow's History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, ii. 312-310. — Kirkton's History, 348. - Wodrow, ii. 316. 3 Vindication of the Church and State, p. 290. VOL. HIT. G 42 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. ing false and malicious character : — " I need tell no man who knoweth the persons, of the brutish sensuality of Mr. Wallace, P [relate] of the Isles, who studieth more the filling of his belly than he was ever fit for the feeding of a flock S" &c. Keith leaves the date blank for the succession of this bishoprick, but which we may suppose was filled up this same year. Mr. Andrew Wood, son of Mr. David Wood, who married a sister of John Guthrie of that ilk, bishop of Moray, was consecrated to this see from the parsonage of Dunbar ; and afterwards he received a royal dispensation to retain his fonner living of Dunbar, dated the 2d of June, 1677 ^ ; sacri- lege having made the revenues of the see " naught.'''' The effects of the Assertory act and of the presbyterian Indulgence proved " a heavy blow and great discourage- ment" to the church, notwithstanding the great care and cir- cumspection of the bishops to guard against the pernicious tendency of both. They drew up a modest representation of the divisive consequences that the Indulgence had already produced, without its having answered the end that was ex- pected, and referred it to his majesty's wisdom to provide a better remedy. A declaration by the privy council was there- fore published, in which the extraordinary supremacy claimed by the crown over the church was modified, and the intrinsic power, authority, and jin*isdiction which the church enjoyed in the three first centuries, was acknowledged and allowed. 1676. — The first transactions of this year were the con- tinued and inhuman persecution of the episcopal clergy in the province of Glasgow by the presbyterian rabble. Several complaints were presented to the council by the parochial clergy, for assaults on their persons in their pulpits, and dur- ing the administration of divine .service; and also for break- ing open their houses, beating and otherwise maltreating themselves, their wives, and domestics, and robbing them of all their portable articles of furniture. Henry Knox, of Duns- core, near Dumfries, George Baptie, of Abbotsrule, near Jedburgh, both in the diocese of Glasgow, and the minister Oi Gargunnock, near Stirling, in the diocese of Edinburgh, were all invaded in their manses, plundered, and beaten ; for which the heritors of their several parishes were fined, as the perpe- trators could not be discovered^. The episcopal clergy in the presbyterian districts lived in a constant state of terror ; their J Nnphtali, p. 341. Ed. 1G80. " Kiith's Catalogue, 310. — MSS. Epis. Chest. Aberdeen, A. 39.— Baillie's Letters. ■* Wodrow, ii. 342. lG7t!.] CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 43 persons were ne\'er safe from the insults and injuries of the fanatics, who were inflamed with hatred, and a spirit of envy, emulation, and wrath, to assault them whenever an opportunity occun'ed, and they could not lay their heads on their pillows at night but under the apprehension that before morning their houses might be broken into and plundered, themselves and wives beaten and exposed to the brutal insolence of the chil- dren of the covenant, and perhaps murdered. The fruits ot this most impious covenant have been sacrilege in the highest sense, discord, uncharitableness, envy, malice, hatred, sedi- tion, heresy, schism, rebellion, and bloodshed ; and all these works of the flesh have been perpetrated under the fatal delu- sion that they were actually bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit ! All these sins were committed, as the covenanters always asserted, under the obligations of the covenant ; therefore such were their jjrinciples, and as a tree is known by its fruits, so a covenanted presbyterian's principles may be known by his works — works being the life of faith ; for men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs from thistles. The political differences betwixt the dukes of Lauderdale and Hamilton had a sensible effect in increasing the audacity of the indulged ministers and their adherents. The latter nobleman went to court, and represented the miserable circum- stances of the presbyterians, who, he said, were " cruelly handled for their non-compliance, and fined, confined, banished, and all through ill advice and unjust representa- tions made to the govei'ument." Lauderdale represented the implacable disposition of these presbyterians, whom he said it was impossible to reclaim by all the means wliich had been tried, owing not only to their own natural propensities, but to the concealed support which they received from some noble- men, who were also privy councillors. " The king heard all, but said little ;" but Lauderdale kept his ground ^ There is a letter in the episcopal chest at Aberdeen, dated the Lst of October, from the duchess of Lauderdale to archbishop Sharp, in which she informs his grace, that notwithstanding the storm which had been raised against him, her husband's interest at court was as good as ever ; and that the duke of Hamilton and the earl of Kincardine had entirely failed in their attempts to prejudice the king against Lauderdale'^. The king wrote to the privy council on the 2d of January, respecting the restoration of the bishop of Dunblane and the Edinburgh clergy, " That by a letter from the archbishop of ' Wodiow, ii. 312. 2 MSS. Epis. Chest. A. 38. 44 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, XXXV St. Andrews, he finds that the bishop of Dunblane, now translated to the Isles, presented an address to the said arch- bishop of St. Andrews and the other bishops with him, con- taining a declaration of his former carriage, and an engage- ment for his future deportment, that he shall live in all be- coming duty and faitlifulness to his metropolitan and brethren ; and that they have made their humble supplication to his majesty for extending his clemency to him, and recalling the former order for his translation to the bishoprick of the Isles. This he declares he is graciously pleased to grant, and orders the council to take all restraints off him : and likewise, upon the account of the dutiful address of Messrs. Turner, Robert- son, Cant, and Hamilton, ministers, all restraints are to be taken off them." The council took off the restraints which the assertory act had enabled them to impose on these gentle- men, and thus this unpleasant affair ended. In February, Dr. Honyman, lord bishop of Orkney, died at Kirkwall. The wound which he received from the " jsioMs" Mitchell never healed, but he suffered from t]*e effects of it till the day of his death. The levity with which presbyte- rian writers mention his wound, and the attempt to assassinate the archbishop of St. Andrews, is very disgusting, and gives reason to conclude that they only regret the want of success at that time. *' Sir James Stuart, one of the authors of Naph- tali, talks of Honyman ' as captious from his green wound, which he ^oi per accedens, because of ill company!'''''' and the party circulated a false report, according to their usual tac- tics, that he experienced great trouble on his death-bed ; but the bishop " died with great peace and composure, contrary to what has been asserted by some pamphlet writers, as can be attested by several gentlemen who were witnesses to his death. He was buried in the cathedral church of Kirkwall i." This excellent prelate was the author of the " Survey of Naphtali," a work of great merit, a small quarto, in which he exposes all the infernal principles of the sect, which were embodied in a small work called " Naphtali, or the Wrestlings of the Church of Scotland," and which was most worthily burnt by the honour-giving hands of the common hangman. The authors of this infamous book say of the deceased pre- late, " One instance of Mr. Honyman, prelate of Orkney, I cannot omit; that in the year 1661, when Mr. Sharp had dis- covered himselfjwalking in his own garden, he said to a famous person who can bear witness thereof (just as Balaam spake ' Keitli's CataloRue. 1676.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 45 truth whether he would or not), ' That Mr. Sharp was as false as Judas,' and I would gladly know to whom this casuist, who since hath embraced a bishoprick, will compare himself for falsehood, except to him who entered into Judas with a sopi." In defiance of all the efforts of government to stop or dis- perse them, conventicles increased in numbers and in the audacity of the preachers. They seized on the Magdalene chapel in Edinburgh, where they preached several times in open defiance of the privy council, and various house conven- ticles were held in difl'erent parts of the town. Wherever the indulged or itinerant ministers found a church vacant, they immediately seized the pulpit, and preached the doctrines of the Covenant. Two of them, named Rogers and Crawford, " preached pretty openly in the sheriff of Argyle's lodgings" in the city of Glasgow. Seeing they had preached so openly and with impunity, a multitude of the ministers of the Covenant determined to make a grand demonstration, both of strength and numbers, and to see how far the government would con- nive at their lawless behaviour. They began to celebi'ate their " Occasions," as they called the sacrament of the Lord's sup- l)er, at different lonely places, and sometimes in the niglit season, so as to alarm the peaceably disposed. An instance of that delusion under which they laboured is furnished by Wodrow, who, in enumerating the names of the ministers, says, " Mr. Jamieson did not again drink of the fruit of the vine till he drank it new in his Father's kingdom !" having died shortly after an " Occasion" at the house of the Haggs, within two miles of Glasgow. Again, " the Lord very much owned these communions; and these sweet sealing times are not forgot by several yet alive 2." Presumptuous sins had en- tirely got the dominion over them, and, like the Corinthians of old, they discerned not the Lord's body. Their unauthorised teachers, like king Uzziah-^, attempted to burn incense, al- though it appertained not unto them to offer the commemo- rative sacrifice unto the Lord, nor to give it in sacrament to the people ; but to those only who were called and consecrated, as was Aaron, to offer the christian sacrifice unto the Lord. These ministers had no connnission from Christ, the author and the end of the sacrament, to pronounce the authoritative blessing over the elements of bread and wine, so as to sanctify and constitute them the symbols of His body and blood ; and therefore both ministers and people were guilty of the body ' Naphtali, p. 340, 311. « Wodrow, ii. 318. ^ 2 Cluon. x.wi. 16-21. 46 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. and blood of Christ, because they discerned them not, and therefore they ate and drank unworthily. In consequence of the above-named proceedings, the coun- ciLissued g, proclamation on the 1st of March, in which they lament the decay of true religion, and the increase of profane- ness and immorality, especially at these " sweet sealing times," which had a wonderful tendency to increase the population. " And w^e having cause to apprehend that these insolent dis- orders have flowed fi'om their abusing of our royal clemency and indulgence, and from the slow, remiss, and unsteady exe- cution of our good and wholesome laws; and being desirous that all our good subjects may take notice how serious and resolute we are to assert and maintain the true religion, and the unity and established order of the church, do, with advice of our privy council, require and command all our officers and others entrusted for that effect, to put the laws and proclama- tions relating to the church to due and vigorous execution, both against papists, and all other schismatical dissenters and disturbers of the peace thereof. And further, we do particu- larly require the magistrates of the several burghs to seize upon any persons that are or hereafter shall be intercommuned, and remove out of their several towns and jurisdictions the families of such as are intercommuned or declared fugitives or rebels, and all such preachers as, with their families, do not attend the public worship, and that betwixt and the 1st day of June next : And we do require all noblemen, gentlemen, and all other subjects without burgh, and all magistrates and other persons within burgh, that they do not intercommune, under the pains due to intercommuners by law, &c." This was a terrible proclamation, and shows to what a dreadful state the ministers of the Covenant had reduced both themselves and others, who might perform any act of mercy or of charity towards any of these intercommuned persons. But in tliis the council were not acting " at the instigation of the bishops," as has been most maliciously and falsely as- serted, but by instructions received from the duke of Lauder- dale, the secretary of state at London. The bishops and clergy were themselves equally liable as all others to suffer from this merciless law, by supplying any intercommuned person with either food or shelter, which they might have done either from benevolent motives, or from ignorance or accident. Dr. Cook justifies the lawlessness of the presbyterians, which was the cause of this tyrannical law, and says, " conventicles soon multiplied, and as they who attended them were exposed to the most violent interrujition, they assembled ivith arms, that 1676.] CHDRCH OF SCOTLAND. 47 they might repel any wanton attack. They did not, however, except merely in meeting, transgress the laws of the country; they peaceably dispersed after divine worship was concluded; and had they been left without molestation, there would have been no danger that the tranquillity of the kingdom would be interrupted by any concerted scheme of rebellion ^" That is, i-f they had been suffered to overturn the church and extir- pate the hierarchy, as they afterwards did, then there would not have been any rebellion, and they would have quietly taken possession of the churches, glebes, and tithes. But in con- sequence of the government taking these severe measures to repress rebellion, the bishops and clergy have been loaded with execrations, and blamed for what they had no concern with, except, as before said, in suffering the penalties, as other benevolent persons did. They are accused of prqfaneness and immorality gratuitously; and then they are charged with the scandalous vices of the presbyterians. " Every body," says Wodrow, " almost at this time knew that the decays of religion were so far from being chargeable upon these meetings, that the gospel preached at them did very much promote religion and righteousness ; and the present profaneness could never be charged upon them with any colour of reason, but upon the evil ]:)ractices of the incumbent clergy, and the want of dis- cipline in the established church 2." It is in this way that the characters of these worthy confessors for the truth have been so blackened and maligned, and the accusation of persecutors has been branded upon them, whilst they themselves were ac- tually suffering persecution at the hands of open and avowed enemies, and of lukewarm and insincere friends. The same council granted commissions to the lord chancel- lor and others to execute the laws against conventicles, and to sit in difierent towns ; they accordingly summoned those who had been celebrating " Occasions" in the diocese of Glasgo\v^ None, however, of the ministers or preachers answered their citations, and they were therefore denounced rebels, some were intercommuned, and others absconded. Thus, says Wodrow, " this severe persecution did not hinder them from preaching and hearing the gospel. In houses they were frequently sur- prised by the soldiers, and therefore they choosed the most re- tii^ed places — woods, hills, and mosses; and had their watches set, to prevent their being surprised-^." So it appears that neither mildness, indulgence, nor severity, had any effect upon the stubborn followers of the Covenant, that " other > Hist, of the Church of Scotland, iii. 333-34. - History, ii. 320. ' Ibid. 322. 48 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XXXV. goffpel^'^ which was preached to the people, and which was de- cidedly a perversion of the gospel of Christ, teaching that to be lawful which He has forbidden, and that to be unlawful which He has commanded to be observed till time shall merge into eternity. Their minds being replete with vulgarity and envy, they circulated, through their sermons, the most impudent slanders on the bishops and clergy, a specimen of which just occurs, and shall be transcribed from Wodrow: " And this love unto and following after the gospel in the persecuted [that is, persecuting] ministers' hands, was increased from the observation of singular Judgments now and then upon the persecutors." All the usual changes and chances of this life which happened to the prelates and clergy were immediately called the judgments of heaven, whereas the ministers of the Covenant gospel seemed to have entirely overlooked our blessed Lord's gracious words, that Our Father in heaven maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, on the prelate and on the covenanter; and sendeth rain on the just and on the un- just, on the persecutor and on the persecuted ; on the slanderer and on the slandered'^. "A collection of well-attested ac- counts of those might be of good use, and instances are not wanting," [I am sure they were wanting, else we should have had them,] " yea, the relations now flying up and down of the scandalous lives and erroneous doctrine of the bishops, and most of their underlings, did not a little recommend the attend- ance upon field meetings to such who had not opportunity to hear the Indulged. Charity forbids me, without proof, to cre- dit all that was talked upon this head ; but so much of it was notour as led too many to atheism and downright contempt of all religion ; and many of the better sort much to favour the persecuted party ^." These inuendos and dark insinuations have raised up an inveterate prejudice against the established clergy, as if they had been worse than heathen, and men of the most immoral characters. These excellent men were tried in the fire of persecution, and had trial " of cruel mockings," personal assaults, and plundering their properties; yet still the voice of the slanderer has hitherto succeeded in abusing the minds of the public with such stories as have been falsely circulated against them. The council also gave a commission to the archbishop of St. Andrews, with the bishops of Edinbiu'gh and Aberdeen, lo visit the universities, and to inquire whether all the profes- sors and masters had taken the oaths of allegiance and supre- ' Galatians, i. 7-10. ^ St. Matthew, v. 45. ■■> Wodrow, ii. 322. 1676.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 49 macy. And at a subsequent council the two archbishops were requested to inform their suffragans that the privy council were desirous of reclaiming all those who had been declared fugitives, for non-appearance when summoned for their attend- ance at field conventicles, upon their giving satisfaction to the clergy of their respective parishes for their keeping the law for the time to come; upon whose certificate all legal pro- ceedings were to be quashed, and no farther inquiries made for the ]5ast. There were some exceptions to this amnesty ; but it was declared, that if this offer was not accepted, that the penalties of the law would be enforced. This act of grace was despised and rejected by the ultra-covenanters, merely be- cause the episcopal clergy were burthened with granting cer- tificates of the good behaviour of the covenanters ; and with their usual ingratitude, the very thing that was intended to save them the trouble or inconvenience of going to a distant magistrate is construed to be a " paltry trick," and therefore very few took advantage of it^ Thic COUNCIL intercommuned Mr. James Kirkton, one of the ejected ministers, and some others ; and in June, a captain Carstairs apprehended Kirkton, by inveigling him into a sus- ])icious place; but Baillie (of Jerviswood) and his friends, rescued him. Baillie was fined and imprisoned for this res- cue; and Wodrow and others made a handle of this affair against the primate, whom they accuse of having anti-dated Carstairs' warrant; the opposition members of the council also made it the basis of an attack upon the duke of Lauderdale's administration. Soon afterwards the duke of Hamilton, the earls of Kincardine and Dundonald, were struck off the list of privy councillors. Kincardine went to court to show the king that the kingdom was misgoverned ; but the king was deaf to his representations, and the enmity betwixt Kincardine and liauderdale now became irreconcileable. By a proclamation the indulged ministers were still further indulged by an ex- emption from attending the episcopal synods, and from the payment of fees to the clerk and bursar of the diocese; but even with this important concession the ministers of the Co- venant were not satisfied. Mr. Thomas Wylie, the indulged nnnister of Fenwick, near Kilmarnock, in the diocese of Glas- gow, made a representation and petition to the council against the rules prescribed by the council in 167'2 2. And it was alleged that these restrictions were the causes that obliged them to break the law, and go to the fields to preach ; but ' Wodrow, ii. 325. - Vol. ii. chap, xxxiii. p. 369-70, VOL.111. II 50 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. Burnet alleges that their real inducement was their love of popularity and notoriety. The ministers still continued to collect conventicles, and Mess John Welsh, an intercom- rauned traitor, was particularly industrious in his calling, and so well was he protected by his followers, that the government found it impossible to apprehend him. The council ordered the earl of Hume to suppress the conventicles in his neigh- bourhood; but, says Wodrow, " some ministers kept at their work, and the soldiers were very busy; yet several times they were repulsed. There was at this time a conventicle at Lillie's- Leaf-Moor, where a party of soldiers were chased by the country people unarmed," .... and this same harvest, or winter, a company of foot were obliged to retire, when attack- ing a conventicle near Dumbarton ^" The extension of the Indulgence seemed to threaten the church with a second extirpation, and, in consequence, it was strongly opposed by her spiritual governors, who saw that there was to be no end of concessions on political grounds, but that every new surrender of a privilege to the presbyterians was but a prelude to something more, and tended only to widen and continue a causeless schism. The sentiments of the whole bench may be gathered from the following " repre- sentation of the evils of ane farther indulgence," written by Dr. Patterson, lord bishop of Galloway: — " By a general Indulgence, or farther enlargement there- of, a wider and more dangerous breach and schism will be stated in this church, in allowing such persons to exercise their ministry in an independent and not accountable manner, than which no engine can be of more force to sub\ert reli- gion, and which will in a short time either wear out the pre- sent establishment of the church, or once more involve the nation in trouble and confusion, through the unwearied endea- vours of the so indulged to obtain their beloved ends of over- turning episcopacy the more effectually, aiad to level monarchy under the feet of presbytery. For, 1st. Most of the ministers already indulged are leavened with the disloyal principles of the western remonstrance, which arc no less pernicious to the crown and to monarchy itself than those of the fifth-monarchists be. 2d. All of them judge themselves most strictly obliged, under the sacred ties of their Covenant, and by necessary consequence as strictly bound to justify the late rebellion, to assert the lawfulness of popular reformation and of defensive • History, ii. 342. 1676.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 51 arms against tlic sovereign power of the king, and to endea- vour by all means the destruction of the order of bishops ; and to bring to condign punishment all the nobility, gentry, or commons, as tlie greatest malignants, who either voted for its restitution, or since have owned and countenanced it, and think they are now to be valued as good and loyal subjects, only because they did not rise and join in arms to destroy those who are zealous for the service and interest of the crown and church, as the law hath now settled them. 3d. All of them discover a singular and noted disaffection to the king's ma- jesty and his government, so that they cannot be moved to observe the anniversary 29th of May, therein to pay solemn thanks to God for his majesty's happy restoration, who, as for- merly, is still considered by them as the head and life of the malignant party, and accordingly to be treated, whenever they shall become masters of power and o])portunity. 4th. They conceive themselves bound to instruct the people, and confirm them in the belief of all their old disloyal tenets and opinions, and accordingly their hearers can witness the seditious ex- pressions and insinuations they use in their sermons and prayers, by which not only the ])resent but the following gene- ration is in hazard to be debauched and corrupted, and to receive such disloyal and mutinous propositions as may, in the issue, lead remedilessly to reacting of our late fatal hazards. 5th. Those already indulged do not at all observe the rules prescribed unto them for keeping them within due and mode- rate bounds, and do as resolutely contemn the measures pre- scribed by the king and his council, as if they were the imposi- tions of the bi.shops, looking upon the former as an equal if not greater encroachment and invasion made upon the rights of the crown and kingdom of Christ, as the latter; and this ap- pears sufficiently in their assuming the boldness to assemble in classical meetings [synods and presbyteries], wherein, if nothing be advised as to discipline, yet thereby they have op- portunity to stiffen and encourage one another in their oppo- sition to the king's authority, and to determine by suffrages not to observe the most innocent and necessary constitutions thereof, and to consult of the most conducive means for esta- blishing their idol, presbytery, for overturning episcopacy, and for enervating the king's authority and the force of the laws; therein, also, they proceed to take trials of ))ersons whom they licentiate to preach, giving them testimonies and missions for that work, and if themselves do not ordain them, they send them to Ireland to receive ordination; by which, as they as- sume to themselves an immunity and exemption from the 62 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XXXV. orders and laws of the king and council, as well as from those of the church, so they design to perpetuate the schism, and continue a succession of such tvn-bulent preachers as may cor- rupt the religion and loyalty of the nation. " For ENLAKGING the Indulgence, it may be speciously enough pretended that it would prove a very excellent expedient to preserve and secure the peace, by composing the spirits of the people to a dutiful submission to his majesty's government, and to relieve the kingdom of conventicles. But these ends are so far from being to be compassed thereby, that none with an}' reason can think they are seriously intended ; for those already indulged endeavour nothing so much as to harden the disobe- dient in their disaffection to the laws and established govern- ment, who, so by the constant strain of sedition which runs along their sermons, they cannot but dispose the people, as tinder, to be blown up into flames and commotions, by any who will assume the boldness to put arms into their hands, and conduct them : and as for their influence to secure the peace, and to rid the nation of conventicles, the serious observers of the state of the kingdom, upon a narrow inspection, will find, that since the date of the indulgence already granted, and the general connivance at the humour and ways of the disaffected, the awe of authority, and regard to acts of parliament, and proclamations of council, are much worn out ; and the per- verseness and distemper of that party hath increased to a greater height of impudence and audacious contempt of the laws, and of authority; forthey aresofar from relieving the nation of con- venticles, that as themselves are stated in a formal and direct opposition to the church, so they make it their great business to draw and contain the populace to, and in their separation from the received worship, and all manner of conventicles both in fields and houses, have never so much abounded nor in- fested the nation, as since the date of that favour granted to them ; nay, how much those indulged preachers contribute for inflaming the humour for conventicling, is enough apparent in this, that several of them have kept and preached at con- venticles themselves, as is notour [notorious] from the practice of the most leading men amongst them, both at Edinburgh and Glasgow, some whereof have been actually seized preaching in those conventicles. Again, " If the indulgence shallbe enlarged, it is to be feared that thereby a disaffected party shall be increased and strengthened within the kingdom, which will ever be ready to join with any discontented faction, and disturb its peace ; and so the king and his authority shall still be exposed to the mercy of any 1676.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 53 malcontented faction, who shall liave llie policy, by fair pre- tences and insinuations, to cajole that party (easy enough to be persuaded to any design of trouble), to side and join issue with them ; and, indeed, without hopes of assistance from it, no faction, of whatever interest or quality, will adventure to make the smallest opposition to the king, or his authority in this kingdom ; so that to extend and enlarge the Indulgence seems a proper expedient to advance a seed and nursery of trouble, without which no seditious design or attempt can ever prosper, so as to become formidable to the king or nation. Nor can it be reasonably presumed, that any favour, condescendance, or further indulgence, will ever gain that implacable party to be true and cordial friends to the king or church, since they be- lieve they owe favours and indulgences merely to Providence, and to the necessities of the prince, who, they think, cannot otherways rid himself of their trouble, and do offer sacrifice to their own turbulent temper and actings, for any kindness or favour they enjoy ; and so by just consequence, the more they are connived at or gratified, the more turbulent and humour- some will they prove ; since by their seditious temper and tur- bulent actings, they find they may fairly cut out a way for themselves to have more ample favours and indulgences heaped upon them. King James VI. by his reason, and king Charles I. by his dear-bought experience, learned that none of these fanatically disaffected could ever be won or obliged, by all the effects of princely munificence and favour ; nor hath any thing yet appeared in the temper and ways of those lately indulged by the present king, which can give his majesty solid ground to believe that they are of belter natures, or of more ingenuous principles, or of truer affection and loyalty to his sacred person, his royal family, or government ; their predecessors and them- selves are sufficient proof, that nothing can satisfy their im- portunity and encroachments, unless they can grasp and become masters of all power and interest. " Now if to preserve, encourage, and increase such trouble- some seminaries and dangerous nurseries be agreeable to the interest, peace, and security of the nation, seems no difficult determination ; nor if it be safe to encourage and increase a company of preachers in the kingdom, whose business is to bring the law into disregard, and the present government into contempt, and so justify and abet the former fatal principles, and withal to hiculcatc them on the present, and transmit them to the next generation. " It would seem beyond probability, if a more effectual course be not followed for extirpating the seditious principles. 54 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXIV. and that evil spirit of disaffoction and separation, than hath been done, it cannot be avoided, but in a short time, the gan- grene will spread, and the distemper will grow to that height, which nothing can cure but extreme remedies ; so that in the end not only shall the ends of religion be subverted, without which no society can long subsist, but the crown shall be de- prived, by this subtile artifice, of the great uisefulness and assistance of the order of bishops, whose conscience, as well as interest, oblige them to an absolute de]:)endence upon, and so to the most faithful and sincere service and support of it. "These arguments and reasons against enlarging this in- dulgence are obvious enough, such as there ap])ears no profit by, so no necessity thereof, in regard that no seeming scruple can reasonably be entertained b}' the disaffected, for their ob- stinate separation from the worship practised in this church, it being notourly the same, without variation, as it was under 'presbytery ; and it deserves remark, that most of them who now separate, did formerly join into the church, so that there seems to be no real scruple in the case, hni faction and a laid design, to advance the same ; and as there a])pears no necessity of any further indulgence, so indeed it can be of no use for serving the ends pretended, since the great and leading demagogues are of such perverse humours and principles, that they will not accept of any such indulgence from the king, being persons who declaim and write against such as have embraced their ministry by his majesty's indulgence, as deserters and betrayers of the cause and crown of Christ ; now^ that these are the persons who are the most obstinate and seditious conventiclers and disturl)ers of the peace, who were actually upon the late rebellion, and are still ready to stir up the people to anew one, is abundantly notour, and such as will ever attempt to set up not only ecclesiam in ecclesia, but also imperium in hnperio, so long as the present constitution of church and state is con- tinued, the influence, the method for enlarging, the indulgence will have for advancing of popery and other errors, deserves its due consideration ; nor needs it be added, that to such as may be ready, the king may extend farther indulgence to the disaffected ])eople, and to the nonconform ministers, contrary to the standing legal establishment of the church, may, if occa- sion offer, be found as ready to complain of uncertain, arbi- trary, and illegal proceedings, even in that matter, as well as in other things, w hich they fancy may be contrary to the stand- ing established laws of the kingdom ; and in fine, nothing .seems to })iovc so clfcctual a mean for his majesty's govern- [677.] ClIUROH OF SCOTLAND. 55 inent and the peace of the kingdom, as a steady, and even resolute and vigorous, execution of the good and wholesome laws thereof ^" To THESB JUST REMARKS ofbishopPattcrson may be added the observations of bishop Burnet, a favourer both of the covenan- ters and of their designs ; who says, " the dissenters are not to be gained by concessions."" When the government offered to give up the points of einscopal ordination and jurisdiction, yet they would not be satisfied. And when it was proposed to put them into vacant livings upon the simple condition that they should not preach against episcopacy, or adminsler the Lord's Supper to the inhabitants of another i)arish, without the permission of their own ministers, yet they would not keep these condi- tions. " None of them," says Burnet, "would engage to ob- ser\e any limitation whatever." 1677. — The animosity betwixt the dukes of Lauderdale and Hamilton continued unmitigated; and it is not improbable that from factious motives the latter nobleman had given the covenanters secret encouragement to proceed in their lawless course, but it is certain that he defended them in the privy council. On the 6lh of January, therefore, the council received a letter from the king, ordering them to make void his grace's commission in the militia, and in general to strip him of all his public employments. The conventicle ministers, who had brought themselves under the lash of the law, and had been obliged to abscond to Ireland and the north of England, returned and com- menced their old work ; there, it seems, they had been " a sweet savour unto Christ in many of their adherents . . . who had scarce had the gospel preached to them before." Li the early part of the year there was a numerous meeting of these sa- voury ministers in Edinburgh, and Ralph Rogers was chosen moderator. This was called only a meeting for consultation; but it may be presumed from the " warm papers from Holland, full of heat against this meeting, as a pretended general assem- bly," that if it had been recognised, it would have had the autliority of a general assembly ; but the heat of their Dutch brethren made them contented with the more modest title of a consultation. They resolved that the sentence inflicted in the year 1661 by the brethren for the resolutions ought to be taken off". They likewise advised their brethren in the country to invite their uuindulged brethren to preach for them, and ' MSS. Ep. Chest, R. 8, dated February 10, 1C7C. 56 HISTORV OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. that the indulged ministers should " preach up and down, and not confine themselves only to their own pulpits ;" both of which recommendations were precisely contrary to law, and to the conditions of their indulgence. They also had long de- bates " about the question of indefinite ordination," whether or not in the present state of their affairs " ministers might be ordained without a call and invitation from, or the present prospect of a settlement in, a particular congregation." The majority were for the negative ; but as those who were for the affirmative were so considerable, no determination of the ques- tion was made. These debates and resolutions give this meet- ing the semblance of, and an attempt at the jurisdiction of a general assembly^. Mr. Ward and some others lifted up their testimony against this meeting as an erastian assembly ; first, because several of the indulged ministers were present in it ; and, secondly, because Blackadder's motion that some days of fast- ing and humiliation should first be set apart, was treated with contempt. Another symptom of the assumption of jurisdic- tion was their summoning Welwood, Cameron, and others, to answer for preaching separation from the indulged ministers ; but who declined their authority, as being an unlawfully con- stituted and unqualified judicatory^. Welsh, and other itinerant ministers of the covenant, went after this assembly into the disaffected districts, and held con- venticles in different places of the diocese of Glasgow ; but the severity of the laws against these reverend "vagrants" was so great that they were never put in execution. A considerable reward was offered for the apprehension of the traitor Welsh, and in consequence he and Arnott rode through the country with as many as a hundred men well mounted and armed for their protection. These men, with several other itinerants, held a conventicle at Eckford, in Tiviotdale, and afterwards at the head of the water of Girvan, in the parish of Maybole, both in the diocese of Glasgow; where they " did celebrate the sacra- ment of the supper in the fields ; and there were many thou- sands of people present, and very much success attended the word preached there. The people were encouraged to follow the gospel when they saw their own numbers ; and, indeed, they regarded the present laws no further than the nature and reasons of them discovered their equity and righteousness^." Many of the ministers engaged at these two conventicles, but especially Welsh and Arnott, were attainted traitors, and had Wodrow's History, ii. 346. - Crookshank's History, i. 400-401. •* Wodrow's History, ii. 347. 1677.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 67 been actively engaged in the rebellion dissipated at Rullion- green. At the conventicle at Girvan, in the mountainous parts of Ayrshire, Welsh, addressing the multitude, said, " that he was confident that God would yet assert the cause of Pentland Hills," [that is, of rebellion], "in spite of the curates and their masters the prelates ; and in spite of the prelates and their master the king ; and in spite of the king and his master the devil!''' This is a specimen of the spirit by which these men were actuated, and by which they inflamed their hearers with hatred of the church and of their civil rulers. A spirit, alas ! evidently proceeding from the devil, who certainly pre- sided at these meetings. On these occasions the preachers administered the Solemn League and Covenant to the people — made them swear never to hear a curate, that is, an epis- copal clergyman, preach — and after the popish manner gave them the sacrament, to bind this illegal oath on their souls. These ministers of the covenant also held classical meet- ings, where they ordained other apostles of the covenant ; and likewise received the confessions and alleged repentance of those whom they had persuaded to acknowledge the heinous sin of worshipping in their parish churches. They established lay-elders authoritatively in various places ; and even had the assurance to induct their own fanatical preachers into churches, whether they were vacant or occupied ; and which they did upon the principle not yet exploded, that patronage is but a relic of popery. Welsh and Arnott rode thi'ough the country with guards, amounting to fifty, and sometimes as many as a hundred men, well armed and mounted, and attacked the houses of the episcopal clergy, and abused their persons and families. Welsh publicly declared that it was as lawful to kill the episcopal clergy as it was for the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. These violent and repeated outrages so alarmed and distressed the established clergy, that some of the more timorous, apprehensive for their own and their families' lives, resigned their charges. The barbarities exercised by the covenanting ministers and their followers in the west of Scot land, were the cause of the severities to which, in self-defence the government was driven ; and which obliged the privy council to execute the laws against the conventicles. They issued proclamations for the capture of Welsh and Arnott, and some other seditious preachers; but the sheriffs in the seditious districts refused to act. In suppressing these field meetings they were not only preserving the king's peace, but acting in conformity with an act of a presbyterian General Assembly. It was the act of Assembly, 16-17, and no presbyterian will VOL. III. I 58 HISTORY OF THR [CHAP XXXV. deny the authority of that assembly, intituled, " Act against such as ivithdraw themselves from the public worship in their own congregation'^ r It expressly prohibits all the members of their kirk from leaving their ovrn congregations, except in urgent cases, made known to, and approved by, the presbytery. But separation and schism had now become epidemical, and many went to these field meetings merely out of curiosity and the over-persuasion of neighbours. The sober part of the com- munity, however, became disgusted with the mixture of sedi- tion and blasphemy which they heard from the "vagrant" preachers, and returned quietly to their parish churches. About this time, Richard Cameron, whose mission from his ordainer was to '■^ set the fire of hell to men's tails,'"' preached at the Occasion above mentioned, and with a Mr. Robert Hamil- ton, and some rabid probationers, began to preach the ne- cessity of separating from the indulged ministers, whom they stigmatised as erastians, council-curates, and dumb-dogs that could not bark. At this occasion '* he used much more free- dom in testifying against the sinfulness of the indulgence, for which he was also called before another meeting of the in- dulged at Dinugh, in Galloway ; a little after that he vk'as again called before one of their presbyteries at Sundewal in Dunscore, in Nithsdale, and this was the third time they had designed to take his license from him. ... At this meeting they pre- \ ailed with him to give his promise, that for some short time he should forbear such an explicit vv'ay of preaching against the indulgence, and separation from them who were indulged ; which promise lay heavy on him'^." Experience taught the council that even the making breaches in " the walls of Jericho," in order to introduce the small end of the presbyterian wedge, was not sufficient to sa- tisfy the ambition of the saints, unless they obtained also supre- macy. The council, therefore, made an act to prohibit all the ministers of the covenant that had refused to enter into their parochial charges in the year 1672, from now taking possession of any churches ; and they declared that no more indulgences would be granted for the time to come, but that wherever churches became vacant by death or removal, they should be filled by episcopal clergymen. This worthy return to the right path was persevered in, and priests of the reformed catholic church were afterwards inducted into vacant livings. But as these indulged ministers had " homologated" erastianism in their induction, so they now were doomed to feel the effects ' Vide iOite, ii. chap. x.x. p. 187. ' Scots Worthies, pp. 332-33. 1G77.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 59 of it ; for the council thrust them out of their livings in as sum- mary a manner as they had placed them in them. A number of the indulged ministers were cited before the council for not keeping the conditions of their indulgence ; and James Greig not appearing, the council " declared his indulgence forfeited, and he was discharged [prohibited] to preach any more at Car- stairs^." The council also ordered new copies of the instruc- tions issued in 1672 to be given to the indulged ministers, who had universally broken all the rules imposed on them ; with certification that if they break these regulations, they shall be immediately turned out, and fiulher censured. Mess John Welsh took upon him to induct a Mr. Gilchrist into the church and parish of Carsphairn, in Galloway, on the death of the incumbent ; whereupon Gilchrist took possession of the church, manse, and glebe. Indignant at such insolence, the council ordered Gilchrist to be arrested and brought to Edinburgh ; and this proper exertion of authority is placed among the sufferings of the presbyterians ! "^ The duke of Lauderdale came down in the month of June, accompanied by his duchess, who had views of uniting her daughters by a former husband to members of the families of Argyle and Moray. As the former peer was known to fa- vour the presbyterians, Lauderdale found it prudent to relax the laws against conventicles for a time, and to bring down a further indulgence from the king. He likewise consented to their negociating with the moderate presbyterians ; but the demands of that body were found to be so insolent, that he was compelled to desert the treaty. At the same time the fanatics were led, by the arts of designing men, to expect great favours from Lauderdale ; but finding their hopes disappointed, they resolved to take by force tliat which they could not obtain by favour^. The great leaders among the covenanters, Robert Hamilton and Richard Cameron, with some others, as before mentioned, entered into a combination to se))arate from the in- dulged ministers ; and they created a schism,which existed with great virulence before the Revolution. At that eventful period, however, it was temporarily soldered up, to serve political purposes, but it broke out again three years after that, and has not been healed to this day. When the indulged ministers in the western counties heard of the duke's arrival, they deter- mined to present an address to his grace in favour of their party, and some ministers attempted to ascertain whether or not his » Wodiow's History, ii. 348. = Ibid. ii. 348. •'' Memoirs of the History of Scotland, pp. 321, 322. 60 UISTOKY OF THE [cHAP. XXXV. grace would receive their address. He declared that " he had once burnt his fingers that gate else, but resolved he would do so no more," and shewed them that the laws would be put with all rigour in execution against recusants ^ They com- missioned, however, oneMathew Crawford to go to Edinburgh and consult with John Carstairs, with whose concurrence, and that of some ministers in Edinburgh, he employed Anthony MuiTay, who was related to the duchess of Lauderdale, to wait on the duke, and to solicit him to remove the letters of intercom- muning, and to release the state prisoners in the Bass. They also solicited peimission to " meet together, under his grace's connivance, for drawing a supplication to the king's majesty." The duke assured him of his readiness to do himself any ser- vice, " but he would grant no favour to that party, being (as he was pleased to say) unworthy of any." From this answer the ministers concluded that the duke was not in reality so friendly to their cause as they had been led to suppose. How- ever, the duke began to speak openly of granting a third Indulgence, and signified his design to several presbyterian ministers, through the medium of Lord Melville ; but when the two archbishops represented the impolicy of this step to his grace, he is reported to have said, " that he intended no liberty to the presbyterians at all ; but it was convenient to keep them in hopes till he got forces raised to suppress them, and keep them in order 2." But for the truth of this assertion we have no better authority than that upon which Wodrow always relies — " / am informed." " The fanatics," says the author of the Memoirs, "knowing that they might expect the connivance at least of the party in opposition to Lauderdale [Hamilton and others], and the party having blown up their expectations b}^ assuring them that the parliament of England was by many late elections become moi-e fanatical, they hounded out all their preachers to keep field conventicles, in such numbers, and so well armed, and to threaten so all the orthodox clergy, and to usurp their pulpits, that the council was much troubled at the clouds which they saw so fast gathering ; and Lauderdale was the more en- venomed, that all these disorders were charged upon t'he late offers made by him of an indemnity and indulgence, and the news that were industriously spread, both at London and Edinburgh, of great sums of money promised to the duchess by the fanatics. Notwithstanding all which, sir George Mac- ' Law's Memorials, cited by editor of Wodrow, ii. p. 349. * Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 349. — Cruiksbanks, vol. i. p. 408. 1677.] CHURCH OF SCl'TLAND. 61 kenzie, being lately admitted to be his majesty's advocate, did prevail with the council to prevent, by the ensuing articles, all the fanatics' just exceptions against the forms formerly used against them. " It is thought fit and necessary for his majesty's service, that the laws against such disorderly persons be exactly but regularly put in execution in manner after mentioned : — " 1. That his majesty's advocate be special as to time and place, in libelling [indicting] against conventiclcrs and others pursued ; but so as he may libel any day within four weeks, or any place within such a parish, or near to the said parish, for else conventicles may be kept upon confines of parishes, merely to disappoint his way of libelling. " 2. When any person is convened upon a libel, that in that case he be only examined upon his own guilt and accession, seeing nothing can be referred to a defender's oath, but what concerneth himself during the defence of a process. " 3. That if any person who is cited be ready to depone, or to pay his fine, he be not troubled with taking of bonds, or other engagements ; seeing the constant punishment of such as do transgress will supply the necessity of the bonds, and the law itself is the strongest bond that can be exacted of any mani." Besides the assembly which has been already mentioned, there had been meetings of Covenant ministers upon the 20th of May, 1676, of which a Mr. Andrew Fon*ester was the clerk. This man was arrested this year, and brought before the coun- cil, on whom they found the minutes of this meeting, which was designed to be a commission of the Hrk. The following is the account of this affair, which is recorded in the council books: — " Mr. Andrew Forrester, when taken, had some papers upon him, by which it appears, that upon the 20th of May, 1676, there convened, within the town of Edinburgh, between fifty and sixty outed ministers, who did constitute themselves in form of a commission of the kirk, and voted their moderator, and appointed a committee of their number to bring in over- tures; who, accordingly, did meet at night, and drew up a petition, and overtures of a most seditious nature, to be offered to their meeting; in which they condescend upon, and settle ways of, keeping correspondence in their several societies and synods established by them, and for entering upon trials, and sending out young men to the ministry in their several so- cieties and bounds, and for one synod's corresponding with ' Memoirs of the History of Scotland, pp. 322, 323. 02 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, XXXV. another, and for providing against any offer from the state in order to church affairs, without advertisement given unto, or concert of, the several societies, and for correspondence with gentlemen and judicious elders. Whilk overtures being on the said 25th of May presented to the great meeting, were by them voted and approven ; which paper containing the said petition and overtures, with another paper bearing the leeting and voting of the moderator, and what votes every minister had, and the minutes of what passed at those meetings, being found on the said Mr. Forrester, and he confessing he was present, and the said minutes were his writing, but declining to answer in what house they met and who was present, though he owned he was clerk, and other circumstances, he was or- dered to be kept close prisoner in Edinburgh ^" The disorders in the presbyterian districts of the dioceses of Glasgow and Galloway still continued, and the sheriffs had refused to arrest Welsh, Arnott, and other preachers of the Covenant and sedition, as they were so well guarded by their armed disciples, and the proclamations of the council were thus rendered ineffectual. The fanatics carried their insolence to such a height against the episcopal clergy, that many of them were obliged to abandon their churches and homes, into which Welsh and Arnott immediately inducted some of their fiery probationers. The council also had authentic informa- tion from the earl of Dundonald, " a most cautious privy councillor, and from the president of the session, who always favoured them," and from other sources also, that the presby- terians were making preparations for a general rebellion of that body. The duke of Lauderdale therefore thought it his duty to inform the king of the whole scheme, and to lay a state of affairs before his majesty, and to request him to order his troops in Ireland to move towards the opposite maritime fron- tier of Scotland, to be in readiness to be transported if required. He also informed his majesty that the earls of Athole and Marr, and others, had offered to bring out their highlanders to repress the turbulence of the rebels before their plans were ripe for execution. It would have been easy, by the junction of two or three conventicles, to have collected an army of ten thousand men, according to the materials of which armies were then composed, and against whom the king could only oppose his own standing forces, which did not exceed fifteen hundred men, as the militia could not be entirely relied on, and many of the heritors were attached to Lauderdale's poli- Citcd by Wodiow, ii. 355, 356, 1677.J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 63 tical opponents. In reply to which the king ordered three thousand men, under the command of the viscount Granard, to move to the north of Ireland, and to be in readiness to cross the channel on a summons from the Scottish privy council. Besides, he commanded a number of the loyal highland clans to be raised, and led into the south-western counties, and to take free quarters from such as refused to secure the public peace. The presbyterians were not a little sui-prised and alarmed at these movements, as they had been led to suppose that Lauderdale's interest was entirely gone at courts After this demonstration to show the fanatics their dan- ger, the council still endeavoured to suppress them v^■ithout the aid of the military. Letters, therefore, were directed to the heritors in the disaffected counties, to enquire whether they would undertake to reduce the disorderly on their estates with their own power, backed by the king's authority. At that time the proprietors of the soil had a patriarchal power and authority over their tenants and vassals, and could easily have complied with the request of the privy council. Indeed, without their connivance, not one of these meetings could have taken place; and none did take place where the owners of the soil were well affected. In consequence of the mistaken po- licy in 16"62, of banishing the ministers who deserted their charges to Morayshire, they had infected many in that county with their fanatical sentiments; but the earl of Moray, by his feudal authority, completely preserved the peace there, and did not allow a single conventicle to meet in the county. The same powers were vested in the gentry in the west, and in ad- dition they would have had the assistance of government to strengthen their hands ; but there were great men who secretly encouraged them to wink at the disorders on their lands. In this alarming state of the country, the council wrote to the earls of Dundonald and Glencaim, and the lord Ross, stating, that " there having been received frequent information of extraordinary insolencies having been committed, not only against the present orthodox clei'gy by usui*piug their pulpits, threatening and abusing their persons, and setting up of con- venticle houses and keeping of scandalous and seditious con- venticles in the fields, the great seminaries of rebellion, but likewise of the great prejudice that is like to arise to his ma- jesty's authority and government and to the peace of the king- dom in general. We did therefore think it necessary, in a fre- quent [full] meeting of council this day, to require your lord- ' Memoirs of the History of Scotland, 329-332. — Ravillac Redivivus. 64 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV, ships to send particular expresses, with sure bearers, to call together the commissioners of the excise and militia and justices of the peace, to meet at Irvine on the 2d of Novem- ber, and to represent to them how highly, in his majesty's name, we resent the aforesaid outrages and affronts .... that they may deliberate upon and take such effectual course for quieting their counties in obedience to his majesty's laws (which are the true and only rule of loyalty and faithfulness) as may prevent the necessary and severe courses that must be taken for securing the peace of those parts : in which, if they fail .... we are fully resolved to repress by force and his majesty's authority all such rebellious and factious courses, without respect to the disadvantage of the heritors, whom his majesty will then look upon as in^olved in such a degree of guilt as may allow the greatest degree of severity as may be used against that country ^" WoDROw fully admits that the persons and pulpits of the clergy had been invaded ; and although, says he, " in prayer and sermons both, all loyalty was expressed by presbyterians, yet / shall not defend any excesses run to some time after this." The meeting took place at Irvine on the day appointed ; and after suitable expressions of loyalty, the meeting unani- mously resolved, 1st, " That they found it not within the com- pass of their power to suppress conventicles ; — Sdly, That it is their humble opinion, from former experience, that a tolera- tion of presbyterians is the only proper expedient to settle and preserve the peace, and cause the aforesaid meetings to cease ; — 3dly, That it is their humble motion, that the extent thereof oe no less than what his majesty had graciously vouchsafed to his kingdoms of England and Ireland." The council considered this answer unreasonable, because the western counties had enjoyed more liberty than any other part of the kingdom, by having the laws dispensed with in their favour, and had presbyterian ministers settled in their parishes, and so enjoyed more than a toleration ; and there- fore the field conventicles were unnecessary while there were settled presbyterian ministers to resort to. But it is to be feared that more was meant than always met the eye or the ear at these conventicles ; for materials were there preparing which burst out at Both well-bridge, and were consummated in the Revolution. The council now thought the time had ar- rived when it became necessary to resort to force ; but they desired rather to reduce the west by native forces than to call 1 Wodrow, ii. 2,12-'i'S. 1677.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 65 in the assistance of the Iris)). To the king's standing forces, which consisted only of about fifteen hundred men, they added the militia of the loyal county of Angus ; and the noblemen on the Highland borders were ordered to call out their vassals, and rendezvous at Stirling ; and the whole of these were united under the command of the earl of Linlithgow, who marched into the western counties. According to the uncha- ritable system of misrepresentation pursued by Wodrow and Kirkton, this act of the government is charged as an atrocious crime against the church — as " « contrivance worthy of bishops." It was now charged upon the bishops, or rather on the primate, by the same author who, a short time before, gave the whole merit of this " contrivance" to Lauderdale. Their malice against the episcopal order makes the historians of that period fall into the most obvious inconsistencies and con- tradictions : in short, they recorded the most audacious false- hoods, and the mere suspicions of their own diseased imagi- nations, for the sole purpose of maligning and misrepresenting the prelates of that day, and these fabrications have been un- happily followed without reflection by others. That the intentions of government might be earned into effect in a legal manner, a committee of the privy council was sent along with the army, consisting of eleven of the mem- bers, who were invested with sufficient power, civil and crimi- nal, to punish all sorts of offenders. They maintained a regular correspondence with the privy council, from whom they received instructions from time to time ; and they com- menced with disarming all suspected persons. They also pulled down all the meeting-houses that had been built for the disaffected ministers. Wodrow gratuitously asserts that the primate was overjoyed at this turn in affairs ; but shows no other authority than his own malicious surmises. He fur- tlier asserts that " there was no provocation given by the pres- bylerians, nor any occasion for this terrible instance of the prelate's fury, in the unprecedented oppression, save the preaching and the hearing of the gospel, to which they wanted not altogether encouragement from some who went in heartily in this inroad upon them, and which they reckoned their civil as well as religious rights" In this short sentence we have ample evidence that the covenanters were instigated to their unlawful conduct by some of the great men of the day ; and that these fanatics met in conventicles which were » Wodrow vol. ii. p. 378. VOL. III. K 66> HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. illegal and " the rendezvous of rebellion," for the purpose of provoking their rulers by a turbulence which no government could tolerate. A COMPLETE set of instructions were prepared and signed by the whole privy council, except the archbishops, for the committee which directed the military^ . It is somewhat sur- prising that Wodrow admits that the two archbishops did not^ though privy counsellors, sign these instructions. And yet, with that inconsistency which his malice frequently betrays, he accuses them of having contrived and advised the whole mystery and plot of the " Highland host." However, we have here an unwilling evidence, that the archbishops and the bishops had no concern in this military movement, which tlie seditious conduct of the covenanters alone rendered abso- lutely necessary. The committee were empowered to exact a bond from the heritors, wherein, as masters of families, they were to become bound for themselves, wives, children, and ser- vants, and as landlords for their tenants and cottagers, that they should not go to conventicles, nor receive nor supply conven- ticle ministers, but live orderly, in obedience to the law. So that if their wives or any of their children or servants trans- gressed, they became bound to suffer the legal penalties for them. In case their tenants or cottagers transgressed, they were bound to present them to justice, or to turn them off their lands or tenements, or else to suffer the penalties which they incurred. Lest the force of this bond might be eluded, the privy council declared, that every landowner that should receive the tenants or servants of any other proprietor into his lands or service, without a certificate from the latter or the minister of his parish, that they had conformed to the law in this particular, should be subject to such fines as the council should think fit to inflict, and repair the damage that shall ac- crue to the proprietor or master whose tenants or servants they received. All the lords of the council, the judges, ad- vocates, and all connected with the law, signed this bond ; and the landed gentry everywhere signed it readily, except in the five disaffected shires. " Such was the state of affairs in Scotland from the Resto- ' ration," says an anonymous author, " that never any nation nor people had a more merciful and mild king, who loved nothing more than the ease and happiness of all mankind, but more particularly of his own subjects. But on the contrary, let us look over all history, yea, romance and fable too, there ' Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 387. 1677.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 67 is not to be found such a mutinous and factious race, and ad- dicted to such tumultuary and seditious practices against all society and government, as some of the subjects were during that reign. All the acts of grace, favour, and indulgence, had no effect on them, or could make them capable of the protec- tion of laws, such poisonable principles and practices were rooted in them. Now and then, law took place against some of the most notorious offenders among them, but \\hcre one suffered a hundred were winked at. But this, instead of curbing and restraining, heightened and increased the malice and rage of the rest, particularly from 1675 to 1679, insomuch that the furiosos of the party laid aside all respect for the laws of God and nature, and of those of the land, so that murdering of common soldiers, barbarous invasions upon the persons and families of the ministers of God, and affronting every thing that was in the least subservient to authority, were familiar to them, and became their common practice. It was only want of opportunity and power that preserved the sacred persons of the bishops, nay, and of the king himself too, (whom they had excommunicated, and designated the devil's vicegerent,) fi'om being assassinated by their bloody hands. Of all these fathers of the church, their prejudice and rage was mainly levelled against archbishop Sharp. They knew him to be an Atlas for his ordei", and no less useful in the state. They thought, if they could once destroy him, they should shake the very fabric and unity of the government itself. These fears and threatenings little troubled that great and good man and the rest of his order, while they were conscious to themselves they were acting nothing without their sphere ; and if these threatenings had any effect upon them, it was to strengthen and confirm them in the practice of their christian virtues and habits, which prepared them for all events ^" Dr. Hickes, who was chaplain to the duke of Lauderdale, and afterwards dean of Worcester, accompanied him into Scotland, and who had an opportunity of judging for himself, speaking of this preparation for reducing the rebels to obedi- ence to the laws, says, " All this haih been done under the wise conduct of the duke of Lauderdale, to whose presence among us, next under God, this poor church and religion are redeemable, that they have been preserved from confusion and blood. And I question not but his vigorous endeavours to suppress this schism (the like whereof, in all respects, was never yet heard of in any age or nation), have by this time ' True and Impartial Account, pp. 70, 71. 68 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. effectually confuted all the lying reports that were sent into England by our men of schism and faction, with a design to render him odious in our neighbour country, and discredit his administration here ^" Dr. Guthry, lord bishop of Dunkeld, died in the begin- ning of this year. On the 7th of May, William Lindsay, rec- tor of Perth, and sou of James Lindsay, esq. of Dovehill, was consecrated to the see of Dunkeld. On the 14th February, Murdoch Mackenzie was translated from the see of Moray to that of Orkney, which had been vacant nearly a year since the death of Dr. Honyman. James Aitken, rector of Winfrith, in Dorsetshire, in the bishoprick of Winchester, was pre- sented to the see of Moray. After his escape from the angry fangs of the kirk and the rebel government, in the year 1650 2, he lived in great obscurity in Holland till the year 1653, when he returned with his family to Edinburgh, and resided there till the Restoration, without having been discovered. He ac- companied his friend, bishop Sydserf, to London, to congratu- late his majesty ; when the bishop of Winchester presented him to the vacant living of Winfrith, where he served till he was promoted to the bishoprick of Moray. Robert Lawrie, bishop of Brechin, also died this year : he retained the deanery of Edinburgh, and a preachership at the church of the Holy Trinity in that city, because the property of the see of Bre- chin had been altogether transferred to the family of Argyle during the titular episcopacy of the " boy bishop," Camp- bell, in 1566, "who alienated most part of the lands and tythes of the bishoprick to his chief and patron, the earl of Argyle, retaining for his successors scarce so much as would be a moderate competency for a minister^ The following year, George Haliburton, the incumbent of Cupar, in Angus, was consecrated to the see of Brechin. There is a letter ex- tant from the duke of Lauderdale to archbishop Sharp, dated the 2d of June this year, respecting the disputed right of pre- sentation to a church in Aberdeenshire, and informing his grace that he had procured a royal dispensation for the lord bishop of the Isles to retain his former living of Dunbar, on account of the poverty of that see^. Tt is a common subject of platform claptrap and declama- tion to lament over the sufferings of the Covenanters of this period, as martyrs for the gospel, and to eulogise them as hav- ing laid the foundation of British liberty and freedom. There ' Fana'ical Moderation, &c. 42, 43. '. Videan^c, ii. ch xxiv. p. 316. 3 MSS. Episcopal Chest, Aberdeen, No. A. 39.— Keith's Catalogue, 310, 16S. 1677.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 6P cannot, however, be a greater mistake. The conduct of these men was mutinous and seditious in the extreme ; and from their intractable obstinacy they were the real cause of all the arbitrary laws, and of tlieir severe administration. By com- pelling the government to enact and enforce such severe laws, but especially the letters of intercommuning, the covenanters not only subjected themselves to restrictions upon their civil and religious liberties, but they exposed those who were both by principle and practice obedient to the laws, to the same re- strictions. From their peaceable and benevolent habits, the episcopalians were much more liable to incur, through igno- rance, the penalties attached to the relief of the necessities of intercommuned fanatics, than their own friends were, who knew their haunts and their persons, and so could avoid both. The harsh and arbitrary proceedings of Lauderdale and the privy council did not proceed from cruelty, or from any design to persecute the covenanters; for they shewed an extraordinary desire to satisfy them by granting them a toleration which, in fact, amounted to an establishment. Yet, with every liberty which no other government ever conceded to any dissenters, the covenanters were not satified ; nay, they would not peace- ably enjoy even the freedom that was thrust upon them. They would not confine themselves to preaching in the parish churches to which they were inducted and exempted from episcopal control, but they collected mobs of men and women to retired places at a distance from their cures, and to which the men went fully armed, or, to use the native expression, in effeir of war. This was a breach of the king's peace, and also of express acts of parliament ; and it was in violation of the ministers' solemn engagements to the privy council at the time when they received their indulgences. Had the presbyterians lived, as in duty they were bound to have done, in obedience to the laws, none of these severe statutes would have been enacted, and they might have enjoyed their own gospel without let or molestation from either the civil or the ecclesiastical rulers of the kingdom, whom they called the priests of Baal^. But they would neither live peaceably themselves nor allow their fellow subjects of the established church to live in peace ; but harassed them, particularly the clergy, Wodrow and bishop Burnet being witnesses, by every species of annoyance, robbery, and personal maltreatment, which the former of these authors delicately calls riots, and the latter says that in no other christian country could it have ' Cloud of Witnesses, 277. 70 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. been paralleled. The covenanters were never called in ques- tion for their religion, in which they were indulged and esta- blished ; but the punishments by fine and imprisonment with which they were visited were wholly and entirely for their political sins of sedition and obstinate breaches of acts of par- liament. There could not be any conduct more opposite to the principles of Christianity than that of these dissenters. One of the designs of the christian law is to maintain and defend the civil authority ; and our Lord expressly taught us to " ren- der unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's ;" a precept which He illustrated by his own example. The first christians were most eminent for their submission and subjection to a heathen government and to heathen laws. Magistracy and civil government are the great supports and instruments of external peace and security, and in nothing did the primitive christians more triumph than in their exemplary obedience to their governors. They honoured their persons, revered their power, which they recog- nized as the ordinance of God ; they paid tribute and obeyed the laws, where they were not evidently in opposition to the divine law ; and when they were contrary to the Decalogue, they submitted with christian resignation to the most cruel penalties for conscience sake, without murmuring, and most certainly without resisting with the sword ; for they were armed with the shield of faith. Now this was suffering for Christ, which was the true martyrdom : for without the shield of faith and the inextinguishable principle of charity, there cannot be martyrdom. But it was faction, not faith — hatred and malignity, not charity — that pervaded the covenanters ; therefore their sufferings were not martyrdom, but the just punishment of their sedition. The CHIEF design and object of the Solemn League and Covenant was not only to break the unity of Christ's church, but to extirpate it from the face of the earth ; and the West- minster Confession solemnly declares that there is " no ordi- nary possibility of salvation" out of the pale of presbytery, independency, and the other sects that composed the West- minster Assembly ^. The true visible church of Christ is but ONE, and it is an article of the creed common to the christian church, " /o believe one holy catholic atid apostolic church"^ ." The true visible church of Christ can be but one, because Christ is but one, and one head can have but one body — one husband can have but one spouse ; and there can be but one ' Chap. XXV. Sect. 2. ' Nicene Creed. 1677.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 71 building erected on one chief Corner Stone. There is but one Mediator, and but one christian covenant ; but one body of laws given to all christians, and but one government ; all chris- tians, therefore, were intended to make but one society, house- hold, corporation, or kingdom, which is altogether quickened by one Divine Spirit. There is but one general vocation in one holy baptism ; and because there is but one baptism, he that is baptized in any particular church, however humble or ob- scure, provided she adheres to the " one catholic and aposto- lic church," has a title to all the })rivileges of the one church catholic, — viz. calling, election, adoption, regeneration, justifi- cation, and sanctification ; all of which are graces bestowed in baptism. It is not, however, necessary that all christians should be under one visible head, nor " that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one and utterly alike ;" there is not the least intimation of such a thing in any part of Scripture, nor in any part of the history of the primitive church. Unity of faith alone is not sufficient to unite all christians into one society, as was evident both at the time we are treating of and at the present day ; for although all the denominations in the kingdom agree with the church in certain fundamental articles of faith, yet they make separate societies and opposite com- munions. One hope also may consist with schism and sepa- ration from the church catholic ; and therefore unity of hope is not sufficient to constitute the one catholic church, for here- tics and schismatics may entertain the same hope as catholic christians, although they have not the same security. With- out charity, we can neither be christians nor united in one christian society ; but even an unity of charity is not sufficient to unite christians into one body, for even heathens and the publicans and sinners love one another. It may be concluded, then, that it is neither the possession of the same faith, nor of the same hope, nor of an universal charity, that can, either separately or jointly, constitute one visible catholic church ; but one communion. " Nothing less than one external visible communion can unite all christians in one external visible body. To profess the same faith, or to entertain the same hope, or to love one another, is not enough ; we must confirm one another's faith, we must encourage one another's hope, we must provoke one another's love, by com- municating one with another in the same religious offices ; but every man in his proper station — ecclesiastics in their respec- tive orders and subordination, and private christians in their own rank. This and nothing less, and nothing other, can 7-2 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXV. unite all clnistians into one body, in one catholic society'^.'''' This is susceptible of proof from the description of the constitu- tion of the church immediately after the day of Pentecost ; at which time, we are informed, the first christians continued sledfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in break- ing of [the] bread and in [the] prayers." This description of the church communion of the first christian believers as it subsisted in the purest time of the church under the imme- diate guidance of our Lord's apostles, who had been recently inspired by the miraculous descent of the Holy Spirit, is the model for the imitation of all christians who have been "added to the church" catholic by holy baptism, from that time till the end of the world. The first mark in this apostolic church was their con- tinuance in the faith once delivered to the saints, and which was preserved in their public liturgy or form of prayer, which they all used " with one accoi'dy Their stedfast continuance in the apostles' doctrine was their living in the unity of the faith, on the profession of which they had been received into the kingdom of God, and made his adopted sons and daughters by the sacrament of baptism. The second mark was their equal stedfastness in the apostles' " fellowship ;" that is, in one communion with the apostles. They did not separate from the apostles' fellowship, and set up opposite communions. They did not make parties, saying I am of Peter, and I am of John ; nor a few of them bind themselves and their posterity under a solemn covenant or oath to " extirpate'^ and destroy, " root and branch," those faithful men who adhered to the apostolic fellowship. On the contrary, they were all of " one heart and of one mind," and " continued daily with one accord in the temple," and casting away all covetous desires, they deprived themselves of all luxuries and many comforts to relieve the distresses of their poorer brethren, and by this self-denial they manifested their lo\e to God. The third mark of the church at Jerusalem, which is the mother of all churches, was their stedfast continuance in " the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers." This is a metaphorical expression for the administra- tion of the Lord's Supper, and which was given by the hands of the apostles at the time under review. The first christian church, which consisted of three thousand souls, were alto- gether with one accord in one place ; but from the numbers ' Sage's Letters on the Reasonableness of a Toleration inquired into, purely on Church Principles, 55. 1677.] CHURCH 01<' SCOTLAND. 73 that were daily added to the church, other " upper rooms" were appointed for assembling together, but still there was but 07ie communion or fellowship. The definite article the, which, although it has not been translated in our version, yet is prefixed to all the three marks above named, and which decidedly denotes that the bread must signify the eucharist, and not a common meal, and the prayers, meant a certain form of prayer that the disciples had been taught, and had committed to memory, which they shewed by lilting up their voice with one accord, which means that they united with the apostle in his prayers, and which they could not have done had they been extempore. Here, then, we have the everlasting example of unity in doctrine — unity in government, which was apostolic, and obedience to it — unity of communion — and unity in a set form of prayer. Ir COULD NOT be expected that there would be a cordial intercommunion betwixt the presbyterians and the episco- palians, so long as the murderous oath of the covenant remained branded as if with a hot iron upon the souls and consciences of tlie former. But there did not subsist one communion even among the different parties of the presbyterians themselves; and, in point of fact, they did not communicate one with another. Richard Cameron, who received a commission from his or- dainers " to set the fire of hell" to the tails of his hearers, spurned the acceptors of the indulgence, and with abundance of " keen hatred and round abuse" of his brethren, was " ex- press and clear in declaring the sinfulness of the indulgence, and of joining with the acceptors thereof i." The sect called after this man's name, Cameronians, do not hold communion with the established kirk, or any of the seceders from it, at the present day. The unindulged or itinerant preachers held no communion with the indulged, but bestowed the most oppro- brious epithets upon them — as council-curates, erastians, and dumb-dogs that could not bark, and they concluded " that the divine grace was departed from them." From this evidence of bishop Burnet for his friends, we can understand what they meant by " divine grace ;" namely, a spirit of calumny and detraction, which exerted itself principally in exciting the peo- ple against their governors, and in fomenting sedition and rebel- lion as a fundamental principle. The only ])oint on which all the different parties of presbyterians agreed and were united, was the persecution of the episcopal clergy, and the firm determi- nation to murder the primate and extirj)ate the whole body of ' Cloud of W)tnesse6, p. 333. VOL. III. L 74 HISTOKY OF THE , [cHAP. XXXV. the bishops. Such a spirit of delusion was sent upon them, that they mistook the suggestions of the devil and the marks of the flesh for divine grace ; in short, they seem to have been given over to a reprobate mind, professing that they knew God, but in works denying Him, being abominable and disobedient. They were given over to a corrupt mind, and laboured under the delusion that they were serving God upon principle, whilst they were doing those things which were not convenient ^ In fact, Burnet himself, in his " Four Conferences," enumerates as many kinds of violence which these saints practised upon the ei^iscoi^al clergy, as the most notorious robbers could have been guilty of, and that simply for their submission to the jurisdiction of their respective bishops. In this age we are apt to compare the laws and customs of the present time wuth those of the period under review ; and so are disposed to think that the measures adopted were more harsh than in reality they were. The patriarchal privileges of the nobility and chiefs gave them legally the power of life and death over their feudal vassals, and therefore the execu- tion of the laws frequently was devolved on them, instead of on the judicial officers of the crown, as in the better ordered system of the present day. It was quite consistent with their privileges and extensive powers for the crown to make the chiefs accountable for the conduct of their vassals, and which, armed as they were with such extensive jurisdiction, they could very easily accomplish. To exact such terms from land- lords now would be absurd, simply because they could not comply with them ; but then it was quite different, for every tenant was absolutely at his landlord's disposal, bound to serve him in peace and to follow him in war. The constant hostility of the presbyterians, and their per- tinacious denouncing of the liturgy and all the catholic rites and usages of the church, was so great, that the governors of the church feared the people too much to venture on so bold but necessary a step as either to adopt the liturgy compiled by archbishop Spottiswood and the other bishops of his day, or to introduce that of the church of England— ^earm^ the people. Yet many of the clergy compiled prayers for their own individual assistance in the public worship and for the administration of the sacraments. But in other respects they conducted the public worship in the same extemporary manner as the presbyterians did, and therefore the distinction betwixt the chiu'ch and the seels was neither marked nor visible. ' Rom. i. 28 ; Ephcs. v. 4 ; 2 Tim. iii. 8 ; Titus, i. 10. 1677.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 75 Particularly, the administration of the Lord's Supper was the same in both, viz. a long table placed, for the time being, along the centre aisle of the church, and at other times used for any secular purpose. There was no altar on which to offer to God the commemorative sacrifice of our Lord's death, and the ob- lations of the people ; nor table of the Lord on which to feed the people in sacrament with the body and blood of our blessed Redeemer. There was no " form of sound words" to teach the young of tlie flock by catechising, as we are assured by bishop Ramsay in his controversy with the primate ; but every indi- vidual clergyman taught the youth of his congregation as he best could by a compilation of his own. The catechism formed on the Westminster Confession of Faith was univer- sally rejected by the church, on account both of the ultra Cal- vinism of its doctrines, and its never having received the au- thority of either the church or the state. It is to be feared, that so much yielding to the opposition of the presbyterians to all catholic or even decent usages, must have incurred divine displeasure ; it shewed a deficiency of zeal, and of moral courage, in the cause of truth, on the part of the governors of the church. There were no articles or con- fession of faith authorised other than the inconsistent, imper- fect, and not altogether catholic formulary, drawn hastily up by Knox, and as there was no liturgy, so there was no formulary in which to embody the Apostles' Cheed, which is the con- fession of the faith of the whole church, from east to west, and from north to south. The Westminster Confession was exclusively the property of the presbyterians, and it ever has been repudiated by the church ; of this ultra Calvinistic document, an acute and ad- mirable satirist says — " If the Confession of Faith be true, none of our ministers are inspired in their prayers ; for there, all mankind are divided into two classes, the elect and the repro- bate. Yet it is evident, beyond all possibility of dispute, that the elect pray as if it were possible that they may be damned, and the reprobates, as if it were possible they may be saved ; and yet it is impossible that the Holy Spirit inspires either of them with these prayers, unless we be so impious as to imagine that He directs them to pray upon false j)rinciples, and inspires them to pray for or against what lie knows can never hap]ien ; and though some of you urge this argument of inspiration against your adversaries, yet our church [the prcsbyterian establishment], has, in fact, very fairly disclaimed it, by pub- lishing, and authorising a Directory for public prayer, unless we would suppose them so presumptuous as to direct the Holy 76 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. XXXV. Spirit how to pray. In truth, our presbyteriao inspiration is as mysterious and as useless a gift as the popish infallibility. The popish church has an infallibility lodged somewhere, but she knows not where to find it in time of need ; we presby terians have an ins])iration among us, but we know not to which of all the sects it belongs. The infallible church is filled with dis- putes which her infallibility cannot determine, and the inspired church has nonsense, contradiction, and whimsical opinions, vented in her public prayers, which her inspiration does not prevent. Tlie infallible church has the most unreasonable and absurd creed of any church upon earth ; and the inspired church has, and will have (while she adheres to her present plan) a very defective, unreasonable, and dangerous kind of public worship : — so fully and justly does the providence of heaven confute the vain pretensions of presumptuous men^" * Letter from a Blacksmith to the Ministers and Elders of the Church of Scotland. London, 175'J. New York, reprinted, 1764. 77 CHAPTER XXXVI. THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 1678. — Highlanders rendezvous at Stirling. — Bond. — Committee of the council attend the army. — Letter from Dr. Hickes to Dr. Patrick. — Rumour of the assassination of the archbishops. — Mitchel's trial — Burnet's account — pro- ceedings — interlocutor — confession — examinations — archbishop Sharp's evi- dence— the lord advocate's speech — the verdict — sentence — Burnet's remarks — observations — his speech, and execution. — Military movements. — An Occa- sion at Glasgow. — Application to the council — rejected. — Proceedings of the committee of council. — Law-borrows. — Act of council. — Highland Host — withdrawn. — Sufferings of the episcopal clergy. — Report of the presbytery of Ayr to the archbishop of Glasgow. — Memorial of the clergy to the king. — Duke of Hamilton goes to court. — King's letter. — Conventicles in Perthshire. — Letter of the lord bishop of Galloway. 1678. — In consequence of a proclamation on the 26th of December, 1677, several noblemen connected with the high- lands collected their vassals, to the number of eight thousand men, and rendezvoused at Stirling, where they were joined by two thousand lowland militia, and the whole were placed under the command of the earl of Linlithgow. The nobility and gen- try in the presbyterian districts heard of this real preparation for the suppression of the rebellion with alarm, and they con- certed to go to court and intercede with his majesty to prevent the nearer approach of this army. This design coming to the ears of the council, they issued a proclamation on the 3d of January, prohibiting all noblemen, some of whom were here- ditary sheriffs of the counties, and others, except traders on their lawful calling, from leaving the kingdom without license : " The lords, &c. taking to their consideration, that upon the great disorders lately committed in some western and other shires, they did write to them in his majesty's name to take such course therein as might secure the peace in these places, with certification to them, if they failed therein, they would employ his majesty's authority for doing thereof; which, after having received no satisfactory answer, and they having declared that they were not able to su/jpress the disorders, nor free the conn- 78 HISTORY OF TflE [CHAP. XXXVI. try thereof, his majesty did command and waiTant his privy comicil to arm sucli of his militia and such others as should offer to serve him, for redressing the said disorders : . , . and therefore lest any person should withdraw from the said seiTice by going out of the kingdom, the said lords do hereby require and command all noblemen, &c. .... not to remove forth thereof upon any pretext whatsoever, as they shall be answer- able at their highest peril, &c." As IT WAS strongly suspected that the duke of Hamilton secretly encouraged the rebels, the council ordered him lo attend the committee of the privy council that were to sit at Glasgow, and to receive and obey the orders, that ihey might give him, as hereditary sheriff' principal of Lanarkshire ; but his grace excused himself under the plea of ill health. The bond before mentioned was signed by all the noblemen and heritors in the county of Fife — " faithfully bind and oblige us, that we, our wives, bairns [children], and servants respectively, shall no ways be present at any conventicle or disorderly meeting in time coming, but shall live orderly in obedience to the law, under the pains and penalties contained in the act of parliament thereanent. As also, we bind and oblige us, that our haill tenants and cottars respective, their wives, bairns, and servants, shall likewise abstain and refrain from the said conventicles, and other illegal meetings not authorised by law; and further,that we shall not resett, supply, or commune with Ibr- feited persons, in tercommuned ministers, or vagrant preachers; but do our utmost to apprehend their persons." The council appointed a committee of iheir own number to attend on the araiy, or, as it was called, " the Highland Host." Their commission nan'ated the principal rebellions and sedi- tions, with sundry other " pranks" of the Covenanters, espe- cially of their taking advantage of the king's being engaged in a foreign war, to rebel in the year 1666. That, notwithstand- ing all the favours and indemnities that had been granted them, they flocked together in field conventicles with armed men, usuiped the pulpits of the regular clergy, and threatened their persons; built meeting-houses, resetted and followed declared rebels and intercommuned persons. The same extent of jjower was granted to the committee that w as held in full by the whole council at head-quarters. Their instructions were, to disarm all suspected persons; and — 4, vigorously to prosecute all such as have been present at field conventicles, and have convocated peo])le thereto, since the 1st of January, 1677. — 5. To prose- cute such as have withdrawn from public ordinances, or that arc guilty of irregular baplisuis or marriages. — 7. To take 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 79 bonds from the heritors, &c. for the good behaviour of tlieir households and tenants. — 9. To compel the heritors, &c, to give bonds for the security of the persons and property of the episcopal clergy ; to make the heritors give bond not to permit conventicles to be held on their lands i. These instructions were " subscribed ut sederunt, except the two archbishops." They were further instructed not to quarter the troops, or in any way to harass the loyal and peaceable, or those who willingly subscribed tlie bonds for the king's peace. The following letter from Dr. Hickes is interesting, as opening up some of the secret springs of the movements at this time. It is addressed to the Rev. Dr. Patrick, who was after- wards bishop of Chichester, dated Edinburgh, Dec. 8, 1677 : — " Sir, — The enclosed is an account of the present state of affairs in this kingdom, and of that effectual course my lord duke hath taken to reduce these insolent fanatics. It is sent to my lord bishop of Rochester from my lord bishop of Galloway, who is a great support to this church, and a very faithful friend and councillor to my lord. I have formerly told you how the fanatics have been underhand encouraged to this height of in- solence by some malcontent lords, and therefore, to particu- larize the general information of the enclosed, I have sent you the names of the most considerable and mischievous of them in their several divisions, where the fanatics of late have made so much stir. In the country of Fife, the earl of Rothes (the present chancellor) and the earl of Kincardine are chief, where- of the former hath been the most false, and the latter the most ungrateful men to my lord that ever were born. In Clydesdale, the duke of Hamilton is sheriff of the shire. In Carrick, the earl of Cassillis is sheriff of the shire. In Teviotdale, the earl of Roxburgh; and in Tweeddale, his father-in-law, the earl of Tweeddale, is sheriff. In the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, which containeth the east part of Galloway, the earl of Queensberry and the earl of Galloway; and in Stirlingshire and about Linlithgow, the earl of Callander and major-general Drummond. " These are the chief of the party, and although all of them be not fanatics professed, yet those that are not, forgetting their duly to their prince and the established government of the church, take this wicked course of fomenting the fanatic faction (if it could be, to rebel), because (forsooth) they have not the chief administration of affairs. They are now, most ' Wo'.iow's History, ii. 378-387. 80 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVI. of them, with their adherents, in the town, and daily chib to- gether to raise lies and disperse Ihem about both kingdoms; and all the ways imaginable to debauch the military and gen- try (though God be thanked, with little success) from their duty lo his majesty, and to make them have an ill opinion of my lord, " From this account you may see what good reason my lord duke had not to undertake the reduction of the forementioned countries till he had procured the English and Irish forces to be in readiness, in case there should be occasion ; for had he sent the small forces we have here among them before, they would have been encouraged to rise by their foresaid patriots, whereof some wish the ruin of the church, and all of them the ruin of my lord duke. And notwithstanding the preparations that my lord hath made against them, yet the mad rabble think themselves secure, having received private information from their patriots, that they will undertake their protection till spring, which, whether they can do or no, must be proved by the event. My lord duke, you may assure all the world, will not let slip this opportunity of doing God and the church, the king and his country, all that service which a most loyal subject, faithful minister, and zealous churchman, can be imagined to do. And yet the lords of the party had so far insinuated themselves into the clergy, as to make some of them suspect his sincerity to the church: this I found everywhere in the late tours I made about the country ; and I think 1 was more capa- ble than any other single man to cure their jealousies, where- with some bishops were but too much possessed, till I con- jured them to believe, that if my lord were not true to the chinch, I would not tarry with him three days. " My LORD hath taken care to hinder the French officers from levying reciaxits in this kingdom, which I hope will be acceptable news in England to all but those who would have him reputed of the French faction, because it is so odious a character in our country. You cannot well imagine what daily pains and trouble he undergoes here, what knotty businesses lie has to go tln-ough, and yet how cheerful, serene, and undis- turbed he is, as if he had neither enemies, nor anything to do. *- ' * * * **-*•* (Signed) '' Geo. Higkes^" In the midst of these preparations for the suppression of ' Ellis's Collection of Original Letters illustrative of English History, vol. iv. 40-44. — Dr. Hickes was dean of Worcester, and deprived at the Revolution ; and lie was also a bishop .imong the non-jurors. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 8t the rebellious conventicles in the diocese of Glasgow, the fa- natical Covenanters made open threats of their intention to murder the two archbishops. " About this time," sa3;s Dr. Hickes, " it was rumoured about town and country, that the Whigs (for so we call the fanatics) designed to take off the two archbishops, and some other bishops, by assassination ; and likewise vehement suspicions and presumptions were formed, that they had the like design on other eminent persons who were most concerned, and resolved to see them reduced to order and obedience. And therefore the council thought it expe- dient to prevent such barbarous attempts, and secure the lives of his majesty's faithful ministers, to bring Mr. Mitchel to public justice, that the remonstrator presbyterians of our country might see what these Clements and Ravaillacs might expect'." " Those irreligious and heterodox books, called ' Naph- tali' and 'Jus Populi,' had made the killing of all dissenters from presbytery seem not only lawful, but even duty, amongst many of that profession; and in a postscript to 'Jus Populi' it was told, that the sending of the archbishop of St. Andreivs' head to the king, would be the best present that could be made to Jesus Christ ! Animated by which principles, one master James Mitchel, a profligate fellow, who, for scandal and ill- nature, had been thrown out of the laird of Dundass's house, where he served as chaplain, did, in July, 1668, watch to kill that archbishop 2." Among other alarming circumstances, the archbishop received an anonymous letter, threatening him with a ball from a surer hand, and with a better aim, than Mitchel's. Besides this, new discoveries were made, that the fanatics had formed a design to assassinate his grace upon the first favourable opportunity. It was therefore deter- mined to bring Mitchel to trial, who had actually made the at- tempt, and had caused the death of the lord bishop of Ork- ney. Sir George Mackenzie, his majesty's advocate, was therefore ordered to proceed against him under an indictment founded upon the IVth act of the 16th parliament of James VI. which made the invading the persons of privy councillors, dea h. His trial lasted four days, and was conducted with great deliberation, and lord Fountainhall, a judge, says, " it was one of the most solemn criminal trials that had been in Scotland Fanatical Moderation, or Unparalleled Villainy displayed. London, 1711, p. 3. • Memoirs of the History of Scotland, .326. VOL. IIL M 82 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, XXXVI. these three hundred years'." Sir George Lockhart was ap- pointed his counsel, and who made a long and powerful speech in his favour. He was indicted for the attempted assassination of the archbishop of St. Andrews, who was at the same time a privy councillor, which was a great aggravation of the crime. He was put to the bar on the 7th of January; and Burnet, in that exquisite spirit of lying and malice which runs through his whole book, says, " but the judge, as he hated Sharp, as he went up to the bench, passing by the prisoner, said to him, Confess nothing, unless you are sure of your limbs as well as your life''. Upon this hint, he, apprehending the danger, re- fused to confess." This is a most malignant and false asper- sion on the character of the judge before whom he was tried, and who was no other than his friend Primrose, then justice- general; and whose character he still farther blackens, by saying, " he was a man of most exquisite malice, and was too much pleased with the thoughts that the greatest enemies he had were to appear before him, and to perjure themselves in his court ; yet he fancied orders had been given to raze the act that the council had made ... he took a copy of it, and sent it to Mitchel's counsel. . . . Primrose said [to Burnet], his conscience led him to give duke Lauderdale this warning of the matter, but that he was not sorry to see him thus reject it: and upon it he said within himself, ' I have you now'^.""' It is hardly possible that Primrose would have related the matter to Burnet in the way at least that the latter represents it, because it casts such a foul blot upon that judge's charac- ter; for he was one of those who examined Mitchel when his confession was made, and of course knew all the circum- stances. But Burnet's egotism and malice led him a step far- ther, and he says, " Primrose did most inhumanly triumph in this matter, and said it was the greatest glory of his life, that the four greatest enemies he had should come and con- sign the damnation of their souls in his hands*." Mitchel pleaded not guilty, and peremptorily denied that hs had ever made any confession at all. Notwithstanding, both he himself and the party who espouse his principles and his crimes cling with the utmost tenacity to the conditional promise of sparing his life, which had been made without authority. In his opening speech, sir George Mackenzie said; — " The said Mr. James owns himself to be of a profes- ' Fountainhall's MS., cited by K. Sharp, Esq. in note to Kirkton's History, p. 387. 2 Own Times, ii. 129. ' Ibid, 130. •• Ibid. 134. i 167B.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 83 sion who liates and execrates that hierarchy; and of which sect the unhallowed pen of Naphtali declares it laivful to kill those of that character. 2. It is notour [notorious], and offered to be }7roved, that Mr. James himself defended that it was lawful to kill such, and endeavoured, by wrested places of Scripture, to defend himself, and to gain proselytes thereby; and if need were, as there is none, it is specifically and dis- tinctly offered to be proven, that he acknowledged that the reason why he shot at the archbishop was because he thought him a persecutor of the nefarious and execrable rebels, who appeared on the Pentland hills: and also, like as his confes- sion was made in the presence of his majesty's privy council and the king's commissioner, in whom all the judicatories of the kingdom do imminently reside, and who might have sent the panel [prisoner] to the scaffold without an assize." The principal proof adduced against him was his own con- fession in the year 1674 to the chancellor Rothes, and a com- mittee of the privy council. The debates as to points of law continued so long that the court pronounced an interlocutor, and adjourned till the following day ^ On the 10th, when the court again met, and the jury had been sworn, the lord advo- cate produced Mitchel's confession, as follows : — " Edinburgh, 10th February, 1674. In presence of the lord chancellor, lord register, lord advocate, and treasurer depute, Mr. James ' " Edinburgh, 9th day o^ January, foresaid, the Interlocutor following was pronounced : — The lords commissioners of justiciary having considered the dittay and debate relating thereto, find that article of the dittay founded upon the 4 Act, 14 Par. Ja. VI., bearing the pannel's invading by shooting, and firing a pistol at his grace the archbishop of St. Andrews, a privy councillor, for doing his majesty's service, relevantly libelled, his majesty's advocate provinsf the pre- sumption in his reply, viz. that the said pannel said he did make the said attempt and invasion, because of the archbishop his persecuting those that were in the rebellion at Pentland, or some words to that purpose, relevant to infer the pain contained in the foresaid act of parliament, and remits the same to the knowledge of an assize. And likewise finds that part of the dittay anent the invading of bishops and ministers, relevant to infer an arbitrary punishment, and remits the same to the knowledge of an assize. And sicklike that article of the dittay anent the wounding, invading, and mutilating of the bishop of Orkney, relevant to infer an arbitrary punishment, and remits the same to the knowledge of an assize. And also, having considered that part of the debates anent the pannel's confes- sion, made and emitted before a committee, appointed by authority of council to receive it ; and thereafter adhered to and renewed in presence of his majesty's high commissioner, and lords of privy council, convened in council, finds it ia judicial, and cannot be retracted ; and also having considered the debate and de- fence against the said confession, viz. that the same was emitted upon promise or assurance of impunity of life and limb, finds the same relevant to secure the pannel as to life and limb, referring to the commissioners of justiciary to inflict such arbitray punishment as they shall think fit, in case the defence shall be proven, and remits the same to the knowledge of an assize. 84 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVI. Mitchel, preacher, being called, did freely confess he was the person who shot at the archbishop of St. Andrews when the bishop [of Orkney] was hurt thereby, in the year 1668, and de- pones upon oath that no living creature did persuade him to it, or was upon the knowledge of it. " Sic Subscr. J. Mitchel. •' R.0THES. H. Primrose. "Jo. Nesbit. Ch. Maitland." In the examination of the witnesses, Patrick Vanse, the gaolor, deposed that the prisoner confessed to him " that he shot a pistol at the archbishop of St. Andrews." John Vanse, son of the former deponent, " inquired at him how he or any man could be accessory to so impious an act as to kill a man in cold blood, who had not wronged him : he said it was not in cold blood, for the blood of the saints was reeking at the cross of Edinburgh." The lord bishop of Galloway deponed that " he saw a pistol taken from the prisoner, out of which there were three balls taken . . . that hearing he had made a confession, his lordship went to the prison to speak to him about it," who acknowledged to the deponent that he had made con- fession of that attempt against the archbishop before the chan- cellor and some others of the council, and that he had hopes of life, and desired the deponent to intercede for him. The earl of Rothes, lord high chancellor, " deponed that he was present and saw the panuel subscribe that paper ; and deponed that he heard him make the confession contained therein, and that he thereafter heard him ratify the same at the council- bar, in presence of the king's commissioner and lords of privy council sitting in council, and that his lordship subscribed the said confession. Depones that his lordship and treasurer depute were appointed by the privy council to examine the said Mr. James, and being interrogated, if, after they had re- moved the pannel to the council-chamber, whether or not his lordship did offer to the pannel, upon his confession, to secure his life, in these words — ' upon his lordship's life, honour, and reputation ;' de])ones that he did not at all give any assurance to the pannel for his life, and tliat the paimel never sought any such assurance from him, and his lordship does not remember that there was any warrant given by the council to his lord- ship for that effect, and if there be any expressions in any paper which may seem to infer any thing to the contrary, his lordship conceives it has been inserted upon some mistake." Charles Maitland, of ilalton, deponed that he heard the prisoner make the confession vrrbally, and afterwards sign the 1678. J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 86 written confession, at which time there was nothing said of any assurance of life : he afterwards heard him acknowledge to the privy council that the confession now produced in court was his hand-writing, to which he adhered, at which time the prisoner neither solicited any assurance of life, nor was any such assm*ance made to him. The duke of Lauderdale having been sworn, deponed that INIitchel acknowledged the written confession, and adhered to it ; and that " his grace heard no assurance given to him, and that his grace did not give him any assurance, and could not do it, having no particular warrant from his majesty for that eflect." " James, Archbishop of St. Andrews, being sworn, depones that that day the pannel did fire the pistol at his grace, he had a view of him passing from the coach and crossing the street, which made such impression upon his grace that upon the first sight he saw of him after he was taken he knew him to be the person that shot the shot. Depones that his grace saw him at the council-bar, in presence of his majesty's commissioner and the council, acknowledge his confession made before the com- mittee, and heard him adhere thereto and renew the same, and that there was no assurance of life given him, nor sought by him there. Depones that his grace himself did never give him any assurance, nor give warrant to any others to do it, only he promised, at his first taking, that if he would freely confess the fault and express his repentance for the same, at that time, without farther troubling judicatories therein, his grace would Kse his best endeavours for favour to him, or else leave him to justice, but that he neither gave him any assurance nor gave warrant to any to give it. It is a false and malicious calumny, and that his grace made no promise to Nichol Somerville, other than that it was best to make a free confession, and this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. •' Sic subscr. St. Andrews. H. Primrose, J. P.D.^" The prisoner's counsel produced the copy of the act of council which had been given to him by Primrose, the presid- ing judge, and craved that the register of council itself might be produced ; but the duke of Lauderdale refused this re- f^uest, on account of its containing secrets of state. And the lord advocate pleaded, that after the solemn oaths of the lord commissioner and the other councillors, that the council as such had not given any assurance of life, it was Ijoth unneccs- • The deposition of each of the Tvitncsses was subscribed in the same manner. 86 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVI. sary and indecorous to produce the books of council : " and if the act founded on it [this conditional asssurance and con- fession] cannot be divided, so that a mere narrative must prove, and the statutory words should not prove, especially seeing there is nothing more notour and ordinary than for the council not to consider a narrative, if the statutory words be right ; and as the pannel pretends that his confession cannot be di- vided from the assurance given, but that it must be taken with the quality ; so, much less must this act be divided, and the pretended act is long posterior to the pannel's confession, and even posterior to a former diet in the justice court appointed for the pannel's trial for the said crimes ; and farther, no such assurance could have been granted, seeing none but Ms majesty can grant remissions.'''' The act of council, however, was read in court, but the court refused to allow the prisoner's counsel to speak on it. It does not appear that any other exculpatory evidence was pi'oduced ; but the prisoner staked his last hope upon the private assurance of life thathad been given him. The privy council would have recommended him to mercy, al- though this promise was an unauthorised act of the lord Rothes, had not the prisoner acted in the manner we have detailed, and withdrawn his confession, and even denied that any such confession had ever been made. Lord Fountainhall states that " Sir George Lockhart and Mr. John Ellis, advocates for the pannel, produced an act of secret council, bearing that they revoked the assurance of life given him, because of his disin- genuity ^" in withdrawing his confession. The trial here closed, and the judges ordained the jury to be enclosed, and to return their verdict on the following day at two o'clock ; and which was as follows : — "Edinburgh, the said 10th January, 1678. The assize gives in their verdict conform to their written deliverance, whereof the tenor follows. As to the first part of the libel founded upon the 4th Act, 16 par. Ja. VI., the chancellor and whole assize with one voice, find it proven, conform to the lord's interlocutor. As to the invading of bishops and ministers, and wounding the bishop of Orkney, sicklike, proven with one voice. As to the third part of the lord's interlocutor, concerning his confession, first before a committee, and thereafter before his majesty's high commissioner and council, the whole assize with one voice find it proven conform to the lords' interlocutor. As to the fourth and last part of the interlocutor, concerning ' MS. Decisions, in Notes to Kiikton's History, p. 386. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 87 the exculpation, the whole assize, with one voice, find it no ways proven ; and farther concerning exculpation, when the pannel was pressing it strongly upon my lord chancellor, the whole assize heard his confession and acknowledgment of the fact. Sic subscr. John Hay, Chancellor." " After opening and reading of whilk verdict, the lords or justiciary, by the mouth of Adam Auld, Dempster of Court, decerned and adjudged the said Mr. James M-itchel to be taken to the Grass-mai'ket of Edinburgh, upon Friday, the 18th day of January instant, betwixt two and four of the clock in the afternoon, and there to be hanged on a gibbet till he be dead, and all his moveable goods and gear to be escheat and in- brought to his majesty's use, which was pronounced fur doom 1." The deep malice of bishop Burnet appears strongly marked in his account of this trial, against both the primate and his old patron, the duke of Lauderdale, whom he now hated as much as he had formerly flattered and served. He says, speak- ing of Mitchel's trial, " But now Sharp would have his life : so duke Lauderdale gave way to it 2." Both of these asser- tions are false and base; and he farther records what he calls " an impious jest" of Lauderdale, but which was only a play upon Mitchel's own words, who, when asked what induced him to make so wicked an attempt upon the person of the archbishop, replied that he did it ^'for the olory of the Lord.'''' For this reason, afterwards, when it was resolved to hang him, the duke said, " Well, then, let Mitchell glorify God in the Grass-market^." One of Burnet's critics says, " And after all, it appears from our author [Burnet], that there could be no absolute promise made him of life, because the council had no such power ; and had the books been produced, and it had appeared the council had promised they would intercede for his life (which is all they could contain) this would not have saved Mitchel, or have shewn they were perjured. And it appears further from our author that Mitchel retracted his confession in a court of justice, and therefore the council re- tracted their promise of interceding for him : neither would Mitchel make any discovery of his accomplices in the re- ' MSS. Nanative of the Trial, in the Writers to the Signet's Library, Edin- burgh, the whole of whicii I was liberally permitted to copy, and which is given at full lepgth in the Author's Life and Times of Aixhbishop Sharp, pp. 535-543. « Own Times, ii. 129. ' Historical and Critical Remarks on Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Times, by Bevil Higgons, gent, 1727, p. 20G. 88 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVI. bellion, and those promises were made upon condition of his making a fall discovery. Yet Mitchel had never been executed, but for the repeated threats the government and ministers ot state met with from his confederates every day, of being assas- sinated themselves ; and the execution was so far from being at the instance of his grace the archbishop of St. Andrews, that he moved in council to have him reprieved^.'" The editor of Bur- net's History says, in a note, " In a letter, however, lately published, Dr. Hickes says, that Mitchel was not at first prose- cuted, because the archbishop would not pursue him in causa sanguinis, adding that the king's advocate, Nesbit, would not, being a fanatic'^." This infamous assassin is a fair specimen of the princi- ples of his sect, where there is opportunity and personal cou- rage to carry them out ; and accordingly he is placed amongst the most worthy of the Scots Worthies, that is, in the calendar of presbyterian saints. Through his sides the most atrocious charges have been made against archbishop Sharp, of perjury and thirst of blood ; yet not a word of reprobation has ever been uttered by the party against Mitchel himself, and other fana- tics, who were constantly watching for an opportunity to mur- der the primate. They even seem to think he was very ill used in not having been allowed to accomplish his villainy. The wailings of Wodrow, his editor, and some others, over the "martyrdom," as they call the just execution of Mitchel, shews but too plainly that they would have rejoiced had his attempt to murder the primate been successful. They all in- sist that the council ought to liave kept the private and vuiau- thorised conditional promise made by Rothes, although the assassin had absolutely withdrawn the condition, and persisted in denying his confession. The act of council records the promise thus made, but did not confirm it ; but undoubtedly they would have carried it into effect had not Mitchel per- sisted in the course he did. The act of council narrates that he altogether refused to answer and adhere to his confession, " notwithstanding he was told by the lord commissioners of justiciary and his majesty's advocate [Nesbit, who was himself a presbyterian], that if he would adhere to his said confes- sion he should have the benefit of the said assurance, and if otherwise he should lose the same. Therefore the lord commissioners, &c. do declare that they are free" from the private promise made by Rothes. Mitchel's friends, who had ' Salmon's Examination of Bi.«liop Burnet's History, ii. 761-62. - Vol. ii. p. 134, note. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 89 advised him to this denial, even admitting Burnet's accusation against Primrose to be true, which is hardly credible, must, without doubt, be considered the only cause of his execution,by advising him to deny a confession written and signed by him- self, and which does not contain one word of any promise of remission. Not one presbyterian author has recorded the fact that the archbishop interceded, though without success, with the council to recommend to his majesty to grant him his life. He also assured the wretched man himself, when taken, that he freely forgave him, and promised to intercede for him if he would confess his crime, and which promise he performed after the trial. So much the contrary, that the latest presbyterian au- thority attempts to continue the prejudiceagainst the primate, by recording the following falsehood, founded on Burnet : — " Lauderdale would have spared him, but Sharp strenuously in- sisted upon his death, as the only way of securing his own per- son against similar attempts. Lauderdale yielded with a pro- fane jest ; and Sharp's cowardly and revengeful heart was gratified by this act of judicial murder ^" It was deposed on oath that Mitchel said to several per- sons whilst he was in prison, " shame fall the miss ; he should make the fire the hotter the next timer and " let me but shoot at him again, and I will be content to be hanged if I miss." Although he strenuously denied, up to the last moment of his existence, that he had ever made any confession at all, yet he never ceased to accuse the privy council, and the pri- mate, of breach of promise, after he had entirely forfeited any pretensions to its fulfilment. The promise, however, was not made by the council, but by lord Rothes, as one of the com- mittee, of which the very judge who tried the assassin was a member. There could, therefore, be no perjury in the other members of the council, who were not parties to the transac- tion, and swore truly enough that no such promise was made by the council. Rothes only, may be said to have equivo- cated, and it was in bad taste for Primrose to preside at the trial. But whilst we are left to decide betwixt the pertina- cious assertion of a convicted traitor and assassin, and the solemn oaths of so many illustrious members of his majesty's privy council, our ideas of the sacred character of an oath would lead us to condemn Rothes's equivocation, or trifling with such a solemn appeal to God for the truth of a matter of fact, of which he could neither be ignorant nor forgetful. Sir George Mackenzie, who was the prosecutor, says, ' Hetherington's History, p. 148. VOL. III. N VO HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XXXVI. " As to Mitchel's case, whereas it is said that he was executed after he confessed the crime upon promise of life, it is ac- knowledged by all that Mitchel, having upon the High-street of Edinburgh fired a pistol at the archbishop, with a design to murder him, he wounded the bishop of Orkney with a shot, of ivhich he never recovered; and being thereafter appre- hended, confessed the crime : but continuing still to glory in it, and very famous witnesses having deponed that he was upon a new plot to kill the same archbiship, he was brought to trial, and his defences were, that the earl of Rothes, to whom he confessed it, had promised to secure his life ; and that the privy council had afterwards promised the same. For proving this the earl of Rothes and others, who were upon the com- mittee of the council, and all the other members of council whom he desired to be cited, were fully examined upon all his interrogatories ; and the registers of council were pro- duced ; but nothing of a promise was made to appear by ei- ther : and is it to be imagined by any man of common sense that they all perjured themselves, or that the registers of the council were vitiated to take the life of such an execrable vil- lain as this fellow was, who died glorying in his crimes, and recommending to others the sweetness of such assassina- tions»?" The trial and execution of this true son of the covenant have occasioned the greatest possible amount of presbyterian sympathy, and they attempt to conceal his crime under the cloud of dust which they have raised against his majesty's minis- ters, and particularly against the primate. Dr. Burns, who has edited Wodrow's History, expresses his horror at a mass of depravity Avhich he says is not to be found in the history of any other European country, but he altogether overlooks the depravity of this " Scots worthy," who was a type of the whole community, and he shews his union of sentiments with him by calling him " poor man," — " poor Mitchel ^1" This is, in fact, to say God speed to his murderous purpose, and it is a plain vindication of that article of the covenant which binds its fol- lowers to extirpate the episcopal order. But he altogether over- looks " the mass of depravity " displayed by this assassin ; and many such masses are to be found in the history of his commu- nion during the grand rebellion, as can only be paralleled in atrocity by the events of the French revolution. The dean of Edinburgh, Mr. Annand, and some other * Sir G. Mackenzie's Works, vol. ii. p. 343. ^ Note to Wodrow's History, ii. 470. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 91 clergymeu, ou of compassion lor his spiritual delusion, at- tempted to gain access to him, and to bring him to a more christian state of mind ; but he rejected their offers, and re- proached them with being the murderers of souls, for which they had to answer. From his obstinate fanaticism, it was deemed prudent to prohibit him from addressing the people assembled to witness his execution ; and this having been inti- mated to him, he prepared several copies of a speech which he intended to have made. In this paper he says, — " The shooting that shot intended against the bishop of St. Andrews, whereby the bishop of Orkney was hurt, to which I answered my lord chancellor in private, viz. that 1 looked upon him to be the main instigator of all the oppression and bloodshed of my brethren that followed thereupon, and the continual pursuing after my own : and, my lord chancellor, as it was credibly reported to us (the truth of which your lord- ship knows better than w'e), that he kept up his majesty's let- ter, inhibiting any more blood to be shed upon that account, until the last ten were executed." Had the chancellor assented to the allegation as a known truth, that the archbishop had really kept up the letter, there cannot be the least doubt but that Mitchel w^ould have been very careful to proclaim it, and Wodrow no less careful to hand it down to posterity. But it is somewhat remarkable that he suppresses the chancellor's answer to this plain appeal ; and as he only records the accusation, it is therefore fair to conclude that the chancellor contradicted this most atrocious slander. " And I, being a soldier," he continues, " not having laid down arms, but being still upon my own defence, nor having any other quarrel nor aim at any man, but according to my own apprehension of him ; and that as I hope, in sincerity, without fixing either myself or any one upon the Covenant it- self, and as it may be understood by many thousands of the faithful, besides the prosecution of the ends of the same cove- nant, which was and is, in that part, the overthrow oj" prelates and prelacy ; and I being a declared enemy of him on that account, and he to me in like manner, so I never found my- self obliged, either by the law of God or nature, to set a son- try at his door for his safety : but as he was always ready to take the advantage of me, as it now appeareth, so I of him, when opportunity offered. Moreover, we being in no terms of capitulation, but on the contrary, I by his instigation being excluded from all grace and favour, thought it 7)ii/ duty io pur- sue him upon all occasions Yea, those presumptuously murthering prelates otight to be killed by the avenger of Sf2 HISTORY OF THB [CHAP. XXXVI. blood" [to wit, every private christian] "when he uaeeteth them, by the express law of God, seeing the thing is mani- festly true, Numb. XXV. 21; and not have liberty to flee to such cities of refuge, as the vain pretext of lawful authority ; but they should be taken even from the horns of such altars, and be put to death.'' — " The king himself, and all the estates of the land, and every individual therein, both were and are obliged, by the oath of God upon them, to have, by force of arms, extirpated peyjured prelates, and prelacy ; and in doing thereof, to have defended one another with their lives and for- tunes, the covenants being engaged unto them, upon these terms, viz. the extirpation and overthrow of prelates and prelacy'^''' In the interval between his sentence and the scaffold, he always spoke of his execution as a martyrdom, and gloried in that of which he ought to have been ashamed and deeply penitent. His fellow covenanters exhorted him to die with courage in the good cause of murder and rebellion, and to seal the covenant with his blood ; and they sent threatening letters to the primate to assure him that notwithstanding Mitchel's execution, another should complete his design. The cove- nanters formed the horrible purpose of revenging Mitchel's execution, not only on the primate, but on the whole bench of bishops ; which, to be sure, was consistent with the obligations of the covenant. His attempt to murder the primate was the subject of rude jests among the covenanters, and one of the suc- cessors of their principles of the present day defends the con- duct of this murderer, and says, " In the case of Mitchel, there was absolutely no proof whatever, except that founded on his supposed confession ; and the leading men of the na- tion must peijure themselves in order to bring in the poor man guilty." Although the confession of his guilt is called supposi- titious, yet the conditional promise of life is considered mostpo- tential,and it is clung to with the utmost tenacity. In short,they attempt to conceal the atrocious guilt of the principles of the covenant, of which this wretched convict was a true and faith- ful type, in the outpourings of their venom upon the primate and the lords of council for their alleged perjury. Dr. Hickes says five hundred dollars were contributed to Mitchel, betwixt the period of his condemnation and his exe- cution, by several persons, in order to fulfil that promise, " yet never saw I the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." And he adds, " within this week, several ladie ' Fanatical Moderation, pp. 14—20 1678.] CHURCH of Scotland. 93 of great quality kept a private fast and a conventicle in this town [Edinburgh], to seek God to bring to nought the coun- cils of men against his people ; and before they parted, all subscribed a paper, wherein they covenanted, to the utmost of their power, to engage their lords to assist and protect God's people against the devices (as they call all expedients) that are taken to reduce them to order and obedience Last night we received information that Sunday was se'nnight, or some day last week, Welsh told a vast congregation of his wes- tern disciples, that they should certainly be hanged when the forces came among them ; and that therefore it was better to resist and fighi the Lord's battles with their swords in their hands, and that thereupon they resolved to rebel ; and in order thereto, to rendezvous this day in the stewartry of Galloway ^" Mitchel died in the odour of spiritual pride, presumption, and fanaticism, with a lie in his right hand, justifying and glory- ing in his intended murder of the primate. Some fanatical women had formed the design of rescuing him between the prison and the gallows ; in consequence, the guards were doubled. His body was interred with great pomp by his fanatical friends and admirers^. The HIGHLANDERS, w'ilh the regular forces, had now ren- dezvoused at Stirling. The Irish army were cantoned in Bel- fast and the neighbourhood, and a division of English troops was quartered in Northumberland ; a military movement which, while it shewed great foresight and genius in Lauder- dale, convinced the insurgent presbyterians of the utter hope- lessness of their proposed " fighting of the Lord's battles with their swords in their hands." Here was an overwhelm- ing force ready to meet from three points, against which the fighting church could not make any head ; and although Mess John Welsh exercised his spiritual thunders upon the people, yet the prudence of their leaders and their own fears pre- vented their drawing to a head. It had been determined, however, by the ministers of the covenant, to celebrate an " Occasion" at Glasgow, and preparations had been made for that purpose ; but the duke ordered the regular forces to ' Ellis's Original Letters, iv. 45-47. * Fanatical Moderation ; or Unparalleled Villainy Displayed. — Memoirs of the History of Scotland. — Wodrow's History, with Burns' notes. — MS. Narrative of Mitchel's Trial, in the Writers to the Signet's Library of Edinburgh. — Sir George Mackenzie's Works. — Guthrie's General History, vol. x. — Scots Wor- thies ; Life of Mitchel. — Naphtaii ; or the Wrestlings of the Church of Scot- land for the Kingdom of Christ. — Burnet's Own Times. — Salmon's Examination of Burnet. — Letters from Dr. Hickes to Dr. Patrick, in Elbs's Original Letters illustrative of English History, vol. iv. M HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, XXXVI. march as rapidly as possible to Glasgow, leaving the clans at Stirling, which they entered on Sunday forenoon, the 13th January. This sudden moveinent prevented the Occasion, and there was in consequence no extraordinary concourse of people with the " sword of the Lord in their hands." The Highlanders followed after the regular troops, and the whole were marched into the disaffected districts. Although those noblemen and county gentlemen who had met at Ayr, as formerly noticed, had represented to government their inabi- lity to prevent the meeting of conventicles, yet at the same time they were secretly abetting Welsh, and instigating the people with the promise of their protection, to have recourse to arms, for the double purpose of driving Lauderdale from the ministry and of establishing presbytery. When they saw such formidable preparations made for their suppression, and the impossibility of resisting such a well-planned combina- tion, they became alarmed, and sent nine of their number as a deputation to Edinburgh, in order to cajole and deceive the duke. They represented " the peaceableness of their coun- try, and that albeit the people were indeed addicted to conven- ticles, and thought they had principle and solid reason for so being, yet this was only in those parishes which were denied the benefit of the indulgence ; and that not only in their shire [of Ayr] but likewise in the better part of the kingdom, the same mild course which his majesty had taken with his other kingdoms would certainly prove the most infallible means to put a period to these alleged disorders, which even yet they were not without hope to obtain from the benign disposition of their prince and their lordships' intercession ; that, finally, as they were not conscious to themselves of a disloyal thought, so they could not discern the least tendency in the people to disorder or rebellion ; and therefore humbly they deprecate thai severe procedure of sending among them so inhuman and barbarous a crevv^" But THE duke knew the principles of the party too well to put any confidence in their assertions; for, like the Jesuits, they were not very scrupulous about the means, provided they attained their ends. And it was their maxim, laid down by Naphtali, " that not only no obedience, but no allegiance, is to be given to any created power on earth, but with this re- striction, in defence of religion and liberty, according to the Covenant;''^ and what that religion means he explains in ano- ther place, M'here he says, " the extirpation of prelacy is the • Wodrow's History, ii. 397-8. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 96 main covenanted duty, in the endeavour whereof all the zeal of the faithful should be concentred." They made two as- sertions in this short representation which were not true; for the indulged ministers itinerated, and held conventicles in places at considerable distances from their own parishes, as well as the " vagrant" ministers did; and the disloyalty of the heritors was conspicuous in refusing to keep the peace on their own properties, and in instigating the ignorant fanatics and their turbulent ministers to rebel, and resist the king's authority by an appeal to arms. The duke would not admit the deputation to an audience, nor hearken to the mediation of others, that the highlanders might be withdrawn, and none but the regular forces be employed on this service. If he had complied with their request, he must have transported the Irish, and marched the English troops into the kingdom; as, from the multitudes of the covenanters, and the dispersion and the trifling num- bers of the king's troops, the rebels would have easily over- powered them. They now proposed to engage for the peace of the whole county, provided the duke would agree to their proposal, which shows that the will only had been before wanting ; but had they engaged to do so in the first instance, which they now confess that they were perfectly well able to accomplish, they might have prevented the infliction of the Highland host. The only terms the duke would now grant them, were, that they should sign the bond formerly mentioned, and come under an obligation to oblige the other heritors of the county to do the same. Upon this not unreasonable con- dition his grace consented to withdraw the highlanders; but to this they declined to consent, and therefore the duke had no other alternative than to place that whole district under martial law ; but this was regulated, however, by a committee of the council, furnished with plenary powers. The judicious arrangements made by the duke of Lauder- dale prevented that rising of the western Whigs which had been contemplated, and strongly urged by their preachers ; but the heritors now set themselves obstinately to refuse the bond that was demanded of them. In order to procure the re- moval of the highlanders, they voluntarily offered to do that which they formerly refused to do, under the pretence that they were unable to perform it ; but they refused to take that bond, and the highlanders were therefore marched into the disaffected districts, and cantoned throughout them, parties being quartered on the lands of those who refused it. Many, however, now took it, and of co\usc they were relieved from the quartering of soldiers. The committee assembled the sheriffs. 96 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVI. whose office was hereditary, and gave them instructions to disarm the disaffected noblemen and heritors in their several counties, and to pull down the meeting-houses that the itine- rant ministers had erected. On the 11th of February the council issued a proclamation to enforce the signing of the bond, in which it is declared — " Forasmuch as we have, for the preservation of the protestant religion as it is now esta- blished by the laws, taken care that all unlawful meetings upon pretence of religion may be restrained, by which many of the commons of that our ancient kingdom have been for seve- ral years withdrawn from their parish churches, and been thereby deprived of the appointed means for their establish- ment in the true fearof God,and the duty they owe to us and to our government, and have been seduced to keep seditious field conventicles in a tumultuous way, and other disorderly meet- ings, where they may and do actually hear declared traitors, intercommuned and vagrant preachers, and any who, without license or authority, do impiously assume the holy orders of the church, and make it their business to diffuse among the unwary and credulous multitude, seditious and false doctrines and pernicious principles, which are destructive to all order and constitution of societies, by which those who frequent those meetings are observed to be con'upted and poisoned with an open and obstinate contempt of all authority, civil or eccle- siastic, and to be led into most irregular practices, which are inconsistent with all order and government, and are not to be allowed in any protestant or christian church." Then it pro- ceeds to enforce the subscription of a bond similar to that which was given by the county of Fife already mentioned. This bond was generally refused, and therefore the privy council were driven to the necessity of securing the public peace by demanding what was termed in law Law-borrows^ which were similar to the process of one man binding another over to keep the peace towards him. An act of council was ac- cordingly made on the 14th of February, which commenced with the truism, " that the greatest part of the disorders of this na- tion are occasioned by a seditious and schismatic humour in some western and other shires, which upon all occasions in- flames them into great irregularities, and remembering how, albeit it might have been expected after his majesty's happy restoration, that the fresh remembrance of these insolencies which we suffered under a tyrannic usurpation (drawn upon us by the same seditious principles which begin now to revive in those places), would have inclined all his majesty's good subjects to live with great satisfaction quietly under his happy 1678.] CHURCH of Scotland. 97 government, and to believe that the laws made by his majesty and their own representatives were both the true healing re- medies of these by- gone distempers and the safest means for preventing the like for the future; yet many in those shires did, by a most remarkable principle of disloyalty, rise in rebel- lion against their native prince in anno 1UG6, when he was engaged in a foreign war; and though after beating of their forces his majesty had extended his indemnity even to these rebels, and had so far gratified those shires as to grant them an indulgence, yet they continued still to disturb the peace, and to spread their infection over the neighbouring shires, by as- sembling themselves in field conventicles, these rendezvouses of rebellion, resetting, maintaining, and hearing intcrcom- muned preachers and declared traitors, who infused in them openly and boldly rebellious and treacherous principles, by invading the persons, usurping the pulpits of the orthodox clergy, threatening, affronting, and injuring both them and such as adhered to them, and by disobeying and deforcing with armed men in a hostile manner, and even wounding and kill- ing such as offered, in his majesty's name, to put his laws in execution ; and to let the world see that they were fixedly re- solved to adhere to these principles in spite of authority, and that they had settled themselves in a permanent form of go- veiTiment (as they imagined), they did hold sessions, presby- teries, and assemblies, established correspondences, and for perpetuating the schism ordained and granted missions to preachers, built meeting places, and taxed his majesty's sub- jects for their maintenance : and that they might cut off their proselytes from all dependence upon their native prince, against whose person and government they railed upon all occasions, they at last arrived at so great a height of rebellion as to per- suade the people that it was unlawful to take the oath of alle- giance And all the courses which have been tried proving ineffectual, his majesty hath just reason to suspect the designs of such as have or shall refuse or delay to take the said bond, as tending to overthrow his majesty's authority, to subvert the established order of the church, and to disquiet the peace of his majesty's good subjects : and since every pri- vate subject may force such from whom they fear any harm to secure them by law-borrows, and that it hath been the uncon- troverted and legal practice of his majesty's privy council to oblige such, whose pcaceableness they justly suspected, to se- cure the peace for themselves, their wives, bairns, men, tenants, and servants, which are the very words of all such bonds, and that under such penalties as they find suitable to their con- voL. HI. o 98 HISTORY OF THE ' [CHAP. XXXVI. tempt, guilt, or occasion upon which such sureties are sought, and suitable to the qualities of such from whom caution is craved : therefore the lords, &c. considering that his majesty hath declared his just suspicion of those who refuse or delay to take the said bond in the terms aforesaid: and the said lords being, from the whole series aforesaid, justly suspicious of the practices and principles of such as refuse the same, do ordain, that all such persons as refuse the said bond shall be obliged to enact themselves in the books of secret council, that they, their wives, bairns, men, tenants, and servants, shall keep his majesty's peace, and particularly that they shall not go to field conventicles, nor harbour nor commune with rebels, or persons intercommuned ; and that they shall keep the per- sons, families, and goods of their regular ministers harmless, and that under the double of every man's yearly rent (if he have any), and of such other penalties as shall be thought con- venient by the lords of his majesty's privy council or their committee, if they have no valued rent, ordaining letters to be direct for charging all such persons as refuse to take the said bond, to enact themselves in the books of privy council to the effect foresaid, and that within six days after the charge, under the pain of rebellion, and putting to the horn ; with certifi- cation to them, that if they fail, the said space being come and by-past, that they shall be denounced rebels, and put to the horn, for their contempt and disobedience." It Can hardly be imagined to what a lamentable state the prin- ciples of the Covenant had reduced society in the south-western division of the kingdom. Those who had such a patriarchal power as could have put down all the conventicles, and con- fined the disaffected preachers to their own localities, secretly instigated the ministers of the Covenant in their lawless and disorderly conduct. This method of embarrassing the govern- ment, by pretending inability to stem the popular movements, made the Covenanters more bold and impudent than they would otherwise have been. These very men, who now secretly abetted the Covenanters, were those who had formerly taken the same course with the fanatics in 1667,when they themselves were privy councillors ^ And Wodrow himself asserts, that " there is no question the heritors could have''' put down those conventicles, " if they had had freedom to do it, and had not been convinced other methods would be more for the king's interest 2." It was not therefore the tyranny, or oppression, ' True NaiTative of the Proceedings of the Council in the Year 1678. - History, ii. 410. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 99 or persecution of the king and his ministers, that brought on these hardships on the disaffected counties; but the intrigues of the heritors, and the rebellious principles of the Covenant and its ministers. And one of their most esteemed authors says, " to engage in bonds to live peaceably, is to engage in bonds of iniquity: they are covenants of peace with God's enemies, whom we should count our enemies, and hate them because they hate Him. It is more suitable to answer, as Jehu did to Joram, ' What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel, and her witchcrafts, are so many ?' than to en- gage to be at peace with those who are carrying on Babylon's interest — the mother of harlots and witchcrafts ^" But amidst all the turbulence and fanaticism of the presbyterians, the epis- copal clergy were exposed to the most horrible persecution, and which they bore with uncomplaining and exemplary patience. The presbyterians " hearing that his majesty was like to be in- volved in a new foreign war, they again assembled in mighty numbers in October and November, 1677, and did violerdly invade the pulpits and persons of the orthodox clergy, and so threaten all with sudden and great revolutions, and resisted so frequently and insolently such as came to them in his majesty's name, killing some and wounding many, that the privy council thought it necessary to write to the sheriifs of those shires to require an account of their diligence in repressing such disor- ders'^." The highlanders that occupied the disaffected coun- ties paid as little reverence to friends as to foes, and the episcopal clergy with their parishioners suffered from their rude and un- civilized conduct in an equal degree with the presbyterians, on whom they were sent as a punishment. The lawless con- duct of the clans had a contrary effect to that which was de- sired; tliey irritated and still farther inflamed the minds of the disaffected, and therefore the committee which was then sitting at Ayr received an order from the privy council, about the 24th of February, to make the clans evacuate the diocese of Glas- gow, and return to their own country. Five hundred of the highlanders remained after their countrymen's retreat; but they were dismissed at the end of April. The sufferings of the episcopal clergy had, however, reached a point when it became necessary to represent their unprotected state to the government. Wodrow and Buniet, ever ready to bring a railing accusation against the bishops and clergy, accused them of having been the prompters and ' Hind Let Loose, p. 516. " True Narrative, &c., cited by Wodrow, ii. pp. 413-146. 100 HISTORY OF TUE [CHAP. XXXVI. instigators of the council to bring the late military anay into the disaffected districts ; and now they allege that it was owing to a written representation from the clergy, that the regular forces and the militia were not removed when the highlanders evacuated their county. "VVodrow has it from " a person of very good intelligence," that this business of the " garrisons had its rise from a letter from the regular clergy in the west to the archbishop of Glasgow, wherein they signify that they may come away from their charges as soon as the host comes eastward, if garrisons be not settled ^" He acknowledges, however, that he had never seen this letter among the public records; but it may be easily gleaned from this brief sentence how precariously the clergy held their lives and property. Their state was very similar to the popish system of parson-shooting in Ireland of the present day. Had they been left unprotected by the military, the pulpits would have been speedily emptied, to make room for more indulged ministers. The archbishop of Glasgow wrote to the different presbyteries in his diocese, desiring them to furnish him with reports of the state of affairs in their several districts; and the following is the return made to his grace by the presbytery of Ayr: — " May it please your grace, — If we had received youv grace's answer to our last letter, [probably this is the letter to which Wodrow refers, but which has not been preserved,] we possibly could have given your grace a better information of affairs than now we can; but, my lord, we thought it our duty to transmit to your grace our humble opinion of several occur- rences. 1st. The great and leading men in this county are all gone into Edinburgh, and expect to be sheltered there; therefore it is fit they be severely dealt with, sought after, and forced to obedience; otherwise the commonalty, who abso- lutely depend upon them, will never be brought to conformity. — 2d. The indulged ministers must be stinted of their liberty, and some new tie laid upon them, or be absolutely removed; for let the people say what they will, most of these disorders How from them. —3d. That the leading men of this county, now at Edinburgh, be not protected by the council, but taken and sent hither; for the committee think their credit highly concerned in it: if, after they have been at the pains of pro- secuting them this length, the council do protect them, it will be a great discouragement to them in their procedure for the future. — Itli. The garrisons appointed here are but three, and ' Woilrow's Ilistoi'y, ii. 412. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 101 are too weakly manned, and they are too far from the heart of the shire, and it will be fit two hmidred men be left in garrison at Ayr. This is the humble opinion of your grace's most humble and obedient sons in the Lord." This Report shews the distressed state of the clergy, and the apprehensions they felt of greater calamities falling upon them, from the state of exasperation which the late excesses of the highlanders had excited in the minds of the presby- terians. About this time his grace the archbishop of Glasgow went up to London to show the king the real state of afiairs in his province ; and he carried up an address from his diocesan synod to be presented to his majesty. The clergy in this ad- dress speak of a memorial to be presented along with the fol- lowing address; but I have notbeen able to discover it,andWod- row has not inserted it in his History. This is to be regretted, as from it the best and most authentic account of the suffer- ings of the episcopal clergy might have been exjDccted, as well as of the conduct of the indulged and itinerant ministers of the covenant and their followers. Even that mendacious author, who was in heart, though not in habit, a presbyterian, says that even their abettors " confessed there were many conven- ticles held among them in a most scandalous manner these con venticling people were become very giddy and/wnows ; and some hot and hair-brained young preachers had the chief following among them, who infused ivild principles in them, which were disowned by the chief men of the party ^" "May it please your sacred majesty, — The danger this church is exposed unto in the present circumstances, which are such as threaten the dissolution thereof, hath necessitated us, in the discharge of our duty, to desire the lord archbishop of Glasgow humbly to address your royal presence, and to ofl'er unto your princely consideration how inconsistent the violent and irregular courses of those who rent the church {and perse- cute us, for no other reason but that of our absolute and entire dependence on your majesty's authority), and with the rights and interests of your majesty's crown and government, as well as with the safety of your people, and the reverence unto reli- gion ; for no other end, but that your majesty's authority may be vindicated and rescued from the persecution of the open disturbers of the church and their abettors, who, for their own ends, endeavour to constrain the people, and to debauch them equally from their loyalty as their religion, as your majesty Own Times ii. 135. 102 HISTORV OF THE [CHAP. XXXVI. will more fully perceive, by a memorial to be offered to your majesty at your conveniency, herewith sent ^" To AVOID entering into the bond or to sign the law-boirows, the duke of Hamilton, with some of the nobility and gentry, disobeyed the proclamation against leaving the kingdom, and went to London, to represent the other side of the picture, thinking this a favourable opportunity to drive the duke of Lauderdale from his majesty's councils. The king refused to see them, because they had left the kingdom in contempt of the prohibition ; but he admitted the earls of Athol and Perth, that had seceded from Lauderdale, who represented to the king that the prohibition to their leaving Scotland was one of their chief grievances. Such proclamations, they said, were an- ciently both legal and political when the king resided in the kingdom ; but now that he altogether resided in another realm, it must be held illegal and oppressive to debar his hereditary counsellors from access to him either to offer advice or to tender complaints. The duke of Hamilton and his friends were heard before the cabinet council, and the duke of Lauderdale was powerfully defended by the duke of York, and the earl of Danby, one of his majesty's most faithful ministers, ; but the opposition lords took nothing by their journey, and the matter fell to the ground ^. On the 6th of March the council sent a despatch to the king containing an account of all the proceedings in the dis- affected districts. And to counteract the representation of the Hamilton party, the council sent up the earl of Moray, whom Dr. Hickes pronounces " a good churchman," and the lord Collington, to give that information orally which could not be so easily conveyed by letter. The former nobleman had been constantly present in the western committee, and the latter in all the meetings and committees of the council in the capital, and were therefore competent to give full information. On the 26th of March, the king wrote to his privy council ap- proving of all their proceedings in the late attempted rebellion, and thanking them " very heartily for their careful prosecu- tion" and suppression of field conventicles, " which we, as well as our laws, think the rendezvouses of rebellion, and the re- fusing [of the heritors] to suppress them did justly oblige you to look upon these shires as in a state of rebellion. . . . We approve, likewise, of that Bond presented to our subjects, in which, after serious perusal, we see no cause of discontent to any who resolve to live peaceably, and for subscribing whereof ' Wodrow's History, ii. 412. - Burncl's Own Times, ii. 139-41. 1678.] CHURCH Oif SCOTLAND. 103 we are veiy well satisfied with our judicatories ; and since all our judges, and learned lawyers of that kingdom, have sub- scribed the same, we must; and our people should see, that such as call it illegal, do so merely from the principles of fac- tion and humour. . . . And for encouragement of all such as serve us, we declare that this our approbation shall have the force of an ample and absolute indemnity and letter of thanks, to all any ways concerned in that expedition, either in coun- cil, committee, or execution, we having very good reason to consider the same as our special and necessary service." After some correspondence betwixt (he earl of Cassillis and the privy council, which was submitted to the king, he directed his council to relieve the western nobility and gentry of the law- borrows, and they were accordingly withdrawn in the month of May, and were never again inflicted on the subjects. " In all these transactions," says Hume, "and in most others which passed during the present reign, we still find the moderating hand of the king interposed to protect the Scots from the op- pressions which their own countrymen, employed in the minis- try, were desirous of exercising over them ^" The marquis of Athol and the earl of Perth, from having been churchmen and regular supporters of Lauderdale's go- vernment, now turned open patrons of the conventicles, and which had must likely been occasioned by their joining the ranks of the opposition, and from their disappointment at not being able to overturn the duke's government. They had also entered into those secret cabals which were common in the presbyterian districts, and under their auspices conventicles began to appear in the county of Perth, as we learn from the following letter from the lord bishop of Galloway to the lord register : — " My Lord, — Since my return from the north, T am sur- prised to hear of the great and insolent field conventicles in Perthshire, it being as much influenced by the marquis of Athol's example, as directed by his authority. There is, be- sides many others, a constant field conventicle now settled in the confines of some parishes in Methven, Gask, Tippermuir, and another, where it is marvelled, that many observe several shoals of highlanders in their trews, and many bare-legged, flocking thither to propagate the mischief of the ' good old Cause.' It is to good men no small discouragement, that a shire under the influence and conduct of the marquis of Athol » History of England, vii. UO. Edit. USO. 104 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP XXXVI. and the earl of Perth, \vho say they are true sons of the church, should (being formerly orderly and obedient to the laws) be- come so turbulent and schismatical ; especially since the mar- quis is sheriff-principal, and that one altogether devoted to his lordship is sheriff-depute of that shire, in whose hands is placed the power to punish and suppress these disorders. I write this, being informed of the state of the shire by a most serious, godly, and knowing minister, that my lord M. may know it, and the rather that it comes from such a minister as is a great honour to his noble family. Many questions are hereupon proposed, which I am not able to answer, (as I gladly would), which insinuate all the blame of these disorders and disturbances to be upon the marquis and the earl aforesaid, but especially upon the former, such as — 1st. How comes this change on a sudden, that the most orderly and obedient shire should become so irregular and turbulent ? 2. Whence is it that the marquis of Athol and earl of Perth, so long as they kept friendship with the duke of Lauderdale, and consequently clave to their duty to the king, that shire, under their power and influence, continued in order and obedience; and now since they parted from his grace, that it has fallen into these disor- ders, W'hich are so deslructive to monarchy as well as to reli- gion and the church ? 3. Whether there be not a deeper design in corrupting Perthshire than many are aware of, that shire being the key to open the door to all manner of mutinies and disorders into the northern parts of Scotland, which is yet almost untainted, yea, and unacquainted with these ill humours and disorders that infect and threaten the peace of the king- dom ? 4. Whether this discontented party have not so far pre- vailed upon the marquis of Athol and the earl of Perth, as to engage their lordships to give way to these outbreakings and insolencies, to suffer the other half of the kingdom (which is yet entire) almost to be embroiled and debauched ? thereby their lordships may in the issue be as much endangered as the king and kingdom. 5. Whether all those pretences can in any tolerable sense be reconciled to the principles of these noble persons, who profess not only a kindness to our poor desolate church, to repair the ruins thereof, but a zeal for the famous and \\q\\ composed church of England ; or if these professions be not industriously made, the more effectually, under trust, to ruin the interest of the protestant religion in both churches. For my part I am not able to answer these shrewd questions, when jtut to it. My good lord, I freely allow your lordshij) to show my lord marquis this letter, and show him 1 have so much zeal for the king's service, the interest of religion and the 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 105 church, and so much honour for his lordship, that I could not conceal this from him, nor from your lordship, who, I know, wishes both his person and family both honour and happiness, he keeping his duty to his prince, and his prince's faithful ministers : yea, the rather I do it now, that by the same honest minister I learn, that the fanatic people openly say in that shire, that they expect connivance from the marquis of Alhol and the earl of Perth ; and that Mr. Henry Murray, when charged with neglect in not punishing these disorders, invi- diously blamed the privy council, who, I am sure, never denied assistance and encouragement to sheriff-principal or deputes for suppressing of these mad disorders. I beg pardon for this long letter, which my zeal for the church hath drawn from me, to which I add nothing, but that I am, my lord, yours, &c., "John Gallovidiensis." VOL. III. 106 CHAPTER XXXVII. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 167S.— Law-borrows suspended.— Council's letter to the king. — Conventicling recommences — sConventicle near the Bass — one at Cathcart. — Convicts al- lowed to escape. — Learmont's execution. — Convention of estates. — More forces re-embodied.— A cess. — Conventicle at May bole. — Conventicles in Perthshire — at Methven. — Mrs. Smythe's letter to her husband. — A schism among the presbyterians. — Kingsland. —A meeting of ministers. — Assaults on the in- dulged ministers. — A day of fasting. — Remarks. — Creed of Trent. — Confes- sion of Westminster — whence the pope derives his supremacy — and whence the presbyterians derive theirs. — Obligations of the covenant. — Bishop Burnet. — Duke of Lauderdale. — The Highland host. 1678. — Sir John Cunningham and sir George Lockliart went up to London, to assist the opposition lords who were already there, and the king was persuaded to write to the Scottish privy council on the 19th of April, stating that his majesty " had considered some representations made by some of his subjects anent the late methods with the west country, with the answers made thereunto, and replies, which so forti- fied the representations, that he resolved to hear and consider things fully ;" and in the meantime he commanded the coun- cil to suspend the bond and law-borrows till his majesty's further pleasure ; and also directed all the forces except the guards to be disbanded. Thus, by the misrepresentation of the opposition, all the benefit that had accrued from the late vigorous measures was overturned at once ; and the covenan- ters being left without any efficient military check, imme- diately renewed their turbulence, and the field conventicles became as common and numerous as before. The council now became alarmed fur the peace of the kingdom, and des- patched sir George Mackenzie, the lord advocate, to London, with a letter to the earl of Moray and lord Collington, to ex- cite them to greater diligence in counterworking the insidious advice of Hamilton and his party. They said: " You know how much all were inclined to give the council ready obedi- ence till these noblemen interested themselves in this fanatical quarrel ; how ready all were to concur in assisting his majesty 1678. J HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 107 both with their own tenants and with the militia ; and,vvhich is very remarkable, how ready the gentry and heritors in every shire were to rise,betwixt sixty and sixteen ; which, in showing how all ways were taken and owned for assisting the royal au- thority, did strike a just terror in all those who were refractory. Whereas now the number and humorousness of those who are gone up, has done all they could to shake loose all the foundations of authority here, to such a height as will soon grow above correction if it be not speedily, vigorously, and openly adverted to by his majesty." The underhand encou- ragement which these opposition lords gave the ministers and the fanatics counteracted all the efforts of the government to suppress that spirit of revolt and subordination which Mess John Welsh and others of his fraternity taught in their ser- mons. The disbanding the army was the worst expedient, in the present posture of affairs, that could have been devised ; and it led to the insurrection that broke out in the spring of the following year. No SOONER had the regular forces been disbanded than the conventicles began to meet as formerly. On the 14th May, one, very numerously attended, was held in the parish of Cathcart and county of Renfrew, only a few miles from Glas- gow ; a party of the horse-guards w ere sent to disperse them : a good many of the citizens of Glasgow were captured, but the ministers made their escape. The bond was tendered to the prisoners, some of whom took it, and were immediately set at liberty ; but those who refused to sign it were sent to Edin- burgh for trial. Those who refused to inform the council of the ministers' names, or the names of any of the parties who were present, and likewise for refusing the bond, were banished to Virginia. When they with some others arrived at Graves- end, they were removed from the vessel that brought them from Leith into another vessel ; but the commander was bribed by the dissenters in London, and encouraged by lord Shaftes- bury, " who was always friendly to the ])resbyterians," and they were all put ashore at Gravesend, and allowed to escape without any bond or imposition wliatever^" The country [people] were very kind to them, when they knew the cause of their sufferings, and they generally got home safe, after they had been absent from their homes about nine months^." Another and more formidable conventicle assembled in East Lothian, opposite to the state prison of the Bass; the • ' Scots Worthies ; Life of Alexander Pedeii, p. 412. - Wodrow's History, ii. 475-76. 108 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVII. lieutenant-goveraor of which sent an ensign and the insignifi- cant force of forty foot soldiers to disperse them. Infantry can never act well against mobs ; but it is a great mistake to send a small force against a multitude, as they are tempted to make resistance, and occasion bloodshed, whereas an over- whelming force renders resistance impracticable, and there- fore is really the most merciful procedure, by preventing bloodshed. In the present case the people came armed to the meeting, and seeing such a paltry force, they attacked the sol- diers, and one of them, John Hogg, was killed by a shot, and the others were wounded by swords and halberts, and the whole party were disarmed. For this murder, and the assault upon his majesty's troops, one James Learmont was tried and found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged; and Wm. Temple, another person who was very active on this occasion, was sentenced to be transported ^ On the scaffold, Learmont compared himself, and the other sufferers in the same cause, to the souls of those saints whom St. John saw under the altar, that were slain for the word of God and for their testimony ^ ; and in their words he asked, how long it would be before the righteous Lord would avenge the blood of the Covenanters. And he said, " I declare my blood lieth at the bishop of St. Andrew's door, to stand against him ; for since I received this sentence of death it hath frequently been brought to my ears that he pressed the king's advocate to take my life, although he needed not for want of malice 3." Whilst the duke of Lauderdale was placed in an attitude of defence by the advice given to the king by the opposition, and by their means some of his plans for the pacification of the kingdom were counteracted, he had the address to gain the king's consent for the assembling of a convention of the estates in June. The king, therefore, wrote to the privy council on the 7th of May, authorising them to issue out writs for a con- vention ; and he says, " finding, by good information, that the fanatics there, expecting encouragement from such as oppose you, and taking advantage of the present juncture of affairs here [the popish plot], have of late, with great insolence, flocked together in open and field conventicles, these rendezvouses of rebellion, and have dared to oppose our forces. Though we neither need nor do fear such insolent attempts, yet, from a just care of our authority, and kindness to our subjects there, we have thought fit to order some more forces to be levied ; and for that effect we have commanded the lords of our Trea- > Wodrow, ii. 476-80. • Revelations, vi. 9, 10. » Naphtali, Appendix, 18. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. lOi) sury to take an effectual course for providing what money we shall find necessary, for raising and maintaining these troops at our charges." The kesult of the Hamilton party's advice was the in- crease and audacity of the field conventicles, which shewed the sagacity of Lauderdale's policy, and compelled the govern- ment to re-embody more forces almost immediately after having disbanded the former body of troops. Besides, the covenant ing chiefs and ministers had entered into secret correspond- ence with the English conspirators, who were at that time forming treasonable combinations and plots. The duke of Lauderdale was appointed high commissioner ; and on the 26th of June the convention sat down. One regiment of in- fantry, and a few squadrons of cavalry, were voted, and a cess of ii' 1800,000 Scots was imposed for their pay and equip- ments, to be paid in five years; but this sum, when turned into sterling money, only amounted to £150,000. It is acknow- ledged in the act, that the troops were designed for the sup- pression of field conventicles, which are here truly designated " rendezvouses of rebellion," that " do still grow in their num- bers and insolences." With singular and wicked ingenuity, Wodrow contrives to ascribe the raising of this small body of troops, and the imposition of the cess, entirely to the tyranny and cruelty of the bishops: "their friends," he says, " are provided for in the army." How few their friends must have been, if one regiment and a few ti'oops of cavalry could con- tain them, unless, indeed, they served as privates in the ranks, " presbyterians are first divided, and then borne down by the soldiers; and by the severities of this new army they are forced to a rising next year^.^' But this cess was another source of division among the presbyterians, and an alleged cause of persecution ; " it divided those who were already disjointed, and the debates upon the lawfulness or unlawful- ness of paying the cess here imposed were not few." The Jesuitical niceties and hair-splitting distinctions that were ad- vanced for and against paying this tax, would do honour to Loyola himself: — " Some were upon both sides of this debate, and the heats and heights among ministers, preachers, and people, were not small." That most malicious and evil-dis- posed nest of traitors who had sheltered themselves in Hol- land " were warmly against paying this assessment ; and such ministers here, who were of the same sentiments, preached against the paying of it, and some of the hearers violently 1 Wodrow's History, ii. 189, -190. no HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVII. pressed ministers to preach against it, whilst those of the other side asked how they would keep it, and much more, out of the soldiers' hands." They were all, however, obliged to pay it, but not without lifting up their testimony against it. In the cla- mour raised against this cess, the episcopalians of the esta- blished church are entirely left out of the question ; presbyte- rians could not sympathise with their being burthened with a tax rendered necessary by the turbulent and unruly principles of the Covenant. The established church submitted to every ordinance of the government with the dutiful obedience of christian men and loyal subjects; whereas the presbyterians first gave occasion for the severe measures of government, and then raised a clamour, which has been re-echoed by their suc- cessors to this day against the bishops and clergy of the esta- blished church, who suffered every indignity and persecution at the hands of these disobedient " angels" of the Covenant. The field conventicles still increased in the presbyterian districts ; and in the month of August a great many were sum- moned before the council for this breach of the law; but they obstinately refused to depone who were present, or to what transactions took place. Some were fined, and others sen- tenced to be transported to the colonies. At the muir of Gran- holm, near Maybole, in Ayrshire, there was a very numerous conventicle held on the 4th of August, to which the men went fully armed, and marched in formed troops and companies, and thus were drilled for the rebellion that broke out next year. To prevent conventicles in Fife, a detachment of the guards were quartered in Cupar. The folly of placing in- dulged presbyterian ministers in the vacant parishes was now seen and appreciated, and therefore the council sent a peremp- tory order to the marquis of Douglass to present a regular orthodox clergyman to the parish of Duuglass, which was (hen vacant. The countenance which the covenanters received from the Whig lords, and the disbanding of the troops, were great en- couragements to the covenanters, who now convened in all parts of the dioceses of Glasgow and Galloway, and even in other places that had formerly been uninfected by that delusion. In consequence of the quartering of the Highland Host in that country, the two noblemen already mentioned, and many of their people, were perverted from the paths of loyalty and true religion to hold conventicles in Perthshire, which hitherto had been uninfected. One of these " rendezvouses of rebel- lion" was held on the hill of Coltenachar, in the parish oi Forgondenny, in the county of Perth and diocese of Dunkeld. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 1 1 1 This conventicle was dispersed by a party of high landers, who, upon resistance being offered, fired upon them, when one man was unfortunately killed, and who left a widow and four oi-phans to lament his folly. This attack and dispersion is considered by Wodrow to be much aggravated by its performance on the Lord's day ; but it never occurs to him to pull the beam out of his own eye first; for had they not assembled on that sacred day, to break the statute laws of the land, the military would not have been engaged on any such service. As he considered this a great breach of the fourth commandment, it is certain that his friends must be the most criminal, in having caused the breach ^ In October another attempt was made to hold conventicles in the parish of Methven, near to Perth, and in the diocese of St. Andrews. Mr. Patrick Smylhc, the proprietor of the lands, was at that time in London, but in his absence his lady main- tained his baronial rights and patriarchal authority over his vassals and tenants ; and she shewed that the bond which had been considered so oppressive in the south was in reality no hardship to those who were loyally, religiously, and peaceably disposed. One of these conventicles met not far from the mansion-house, on Sunday, the 13th of October; but Mrs. Smythe, at the head of her tenantry, drove them off her hus- band's estate. Her own despatch to Mr. Smythe, her " heart- keeper," gives a better and more graphic account of this ex- ploit than any abbreviation could do, and she seems to have possessed not only courage, but military skill. The spelling only is modernised. It is addressed, " for my Heart- Keeper:" — " My PREcrous love, — A multitude of men and women from east, west, and south, came, the 13th day of- this October, to hold a field conventicle two bows' draft above our church ; they had their tent set up before the sun on your ground. I, seeing them flocking to it, sent through your ground, and charged them to repair to your brother David, the baillie and me, to the Castle-hill, where we had but sixty armed men. Your brother with drawn sword and bent pistol, I with the light-horseman's piece bent on my left arm, and a drawn tuck in my right hand, all your servants well armed, marched for- ward, and kept the one half of them fronting with the other, that were guarding their minister, and their tent, which is their standard. That rear party that we yoked with, most of them were St. Johnston's [Perth] people; most of them had no will ' Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 484. 112 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XXXVlf. to be known, but rode off to see what we would do. They marched towards Baslie, we marched by west of them, and gained ground before they could gather in a body. They sent off a party of one hundred men to see what we meant by hin- dering them to meet; we told them, if they would not go from the parish of Methven presently, it should be a bloody day; for I protested, and your brother, before God, we would ware our lives upon them before they should preach in our regality or parish. They said they would preach. We charged to fight or flee. They drew to a council among themselves what to do; at last, about two hours in the afternoon, they would go away, if we would let the body that was above the church, with the tent, march freely after them; we were content, knowing they were ten times as many as we were, and our advantage was keeping the one half a mile from the other, by marching in order betwixt them. They seeing we were desperate, marched over the Pow ; and so we went to the church, and heard a feared minister preach. They have sworn not to stand with such an affront, but are resolved to come the next Lord's-day ; and I, in the Lord's strength, intend to accost them with all that will come to assist us. I have caused your officer warn a solemn court of vassals, tenants, and all within our power, to meet on Thursday, when I intend, if God will, to be present, and there to order them in God and our king's name, to convene well armed to the kirk-yard, on Sabbath morning, by eight o'clock, when your brother and I, with all our servant men and others we can make, shall march to them, and, if the God of Heaven will, they shall either fight or go out of our parish; but, alas ! there is no parish about us will do the like, which discourages our poor handful ; yet, if the heritors of the parish be loyal and stout, we will make five hundred men and boys that may carry arms. T have written to your nephew, the treasurer of Edinburgh, to send me two brass hagbutts of found, and that with the bearer. If they come against Saturday, I will have them with us. My love, present my humble duty to my lord marquis (of Montrose) and my lady, likewise all your friends ; and, my blessed love, comfort yourself in this, if the fanatics chance to kill me, it shall not be for nought. I was wounded for our gracious king, and now in the strength of the Lord God of Heaven I'll hazard my person with the men I may com- mand before these rebels rest where ye have power: sore I miss you, but now more as ever. " On Monday the 14lh, your brother, the baillie, and I, rode into the town, and I called on the provost, who came to lady Margaret Hays to me. I told him how matters went the day 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 113 before with us. He promises to cause guard the ports [gates] Saturday and Sunday next, to keep in the rabble of rebels. The sheriff was away to Edinburgh, else I had spoke to him that he would charge Balgowan and Tippermallo to cause their men assist us. More of this you will hear the next week. This is the first opposition that they have encountered, so as to force them to fly out of a parish ; God grant it be good hansel : there would be no fear of it if we were all steel to the back. My precious, I am so transported with zeal to beat the Whigs, that I almost forgot to tell you my lord marquis of Montrose hath two virtuous ladies to his sisters, and it is one of the love- liest sights in Scotland, their nunnery. I see many young gentlewomen there helping them to close a very fine ]3iece of sowing. Our honest bishop Lindsay is lying sick of the gout in his knees, and down to his foot ; he was heartily remem- bered to you. So is all I meet with. I wrote to you formerly to expect me up, if you would not come; now I have engaged with the conventicles, from whom I will not fly. I know ye will allow me to do what I am able to suppress them; I'll do good will, God give the blessing, is the prayer of your, &c. " Anne Keith." " MPthven Wood, 15th inst, 1678," In a subsequent letter, Mrs. Smythe, who, according to the Scottish fashion, signs by her maiden name, complains to her " heart-keeper" that " it was a grievous matter we dare not draw their blood, yet must disperse them; how should that be, if they come well armed to fight? The acts against them are for and against; — riddles indeed, not easily understood. My love, if every parish were armed, and the stout loyal heads joining, with orders to concur, and liberty to suppress them as enemies to our king and the nation, these raging gypsies would settle." Here, then, we see the policy of the times. Laws were made against these "raging gypsies," which were neither intended nor allowed to be put in execution. The loyal gentry were commanded to subdue the covenanters by force of arms, but yet were prohibited from " drawing their blood." And as her ladyship well remarks, how could that be avoided, when the fanatical whigs appeared in the field better armed and in greater strength than their opponents. But the con- tinual agitation in which conventicles kept the nation, an- swered the political views of some of the great men of ihe day, and the fugitives in Holland kept up that excitement which had its consummation in the total subversion of the national VOL. III. Q 114 HISTORY OF THE [OH A P. XXXVII. church, and the rabbling and persecution of the clergy, at and after the Revolution. Towards the end of this year a great schism broke out among the presbyterians, which their own authors ascribe to the cess imposed by the last convention of estates ; but which, in truth, was the effect of their principles and government. The young ministers and probationers of the covenant would not be restrained by the older ministers, and very justly, for upon their principle of parity one minister has an equal power and authority with another, and each being on an equality with another, it is unreasonable to expect that one will obey an equal when he assumes an authority to which, by their own principles, he can lay no claim. A correspondent of Wodrovv says, " the gospel was for some years generally preached in the fields through the south of Scotland, and that with success ; God was unquestionably at work upon the hearts of the people by the ministry of the Word, both in the fields and in the churches of the indulged, and that both in conversion and edi- fication ; and no doubt Satan was busy sowing his tares, the seeds of dissension and division, which afterwards sprung up. Albeit, even from the very first, not a few of the judicious had their own doubts as to the Indulgence, some thinking their way to be a little too submissive and pliable to such usurpations and encroachments as were daily making ; others judged that they should have accepted no favour from declared enemies, but what was generally extended to their brethren in the same cir- cumstances with them ; others smelled much cunning and craft in the design, and feared the event ^." Here, then, we have a genuine avowal of their principles, which was resistance to all lawful authority, and a determination to accept of no favour, but to claim every thing as a right due to them ; but, in fact, like their prototypes, the papists, nothing short of supremacy would satisfy them. One of their most esteemed authors says — " Our first reformers never resigned nor abandoned that frst and most noble privilege of resistance'^ ^^ He proceeds to say, "about this time the zeal and love of many being revived by the preaching of the Word, and a considerable accession of great numbers of young people, brought in by the gospel, whose zeal and fervour, geii lally speaking, runs high, the genius of the people seemed to me to be quite altered, and, from a fearful and discouraged temper, to turn to a high san- guine constitution : no strength of the enemy was then thought ' Wodrow's History, ii. 497. ' Hind Let Loose, p. 24. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 115 upon, nor danger was regarded, and little else among some was matter of thought and conversation, but projects of dis- appointing our enemies' designs against us. The zeal and good success of our first reformers, and our more immediate predecessors, in the year 1638, was a pleasant subject cf dis- course, and much admired^ This is the witchcraft of rebellion j it is never repented of, but is gloried in, made pleasant subjects of discourse, and copied ; and so the sin becomes perpetuated, and " worse than the sin of witchcraft," which in Scripture is reckoned one of the damnable sins. On the subject of the cess, Mr. Shiels says, " The paying of subsidies to the present government is to furnish that party of the dragon's legions in their war against prince Alichael and his angels with sup- plies, which no mortal force can excuse, no more than it can do the shedding of the blood of their innocent children, or sacrificing them to Moloch .... and in evidence of their op- position to Christ ; and iu recognition of Satan's sovereignty, and their subjection, they are appointed to pay these black- mails^" [taxes]. The indulged ministers were asmuch the objects of hatred and misrepresentation to the " vagrant" Mess Johns as were the established episcopal clergy ; accordingly, one Kingsland formed a party among the itinerants to bring the indulged minis- ters into odium and contempt in their own regular congrega- tions. Cameron, Kidd, Hogg, and Dickson, were leaders iu this divisive band, and they were commonly called " Kingsland's curates." This fact is communicated by bishop Paterson, of Galloway, in a letter of the 26th of October, to archbishop Sharp, in which he endeavours to convince the primate of the impolicy of granting any further indulgence to the fanatical party of the presbyterians^. This division is also admitted by Wodrow's correspondent, who says, " It may also be remarked, that many of the most wise, aged, and experienced of the ministry, were taken off the field, some by the indulgence, some by age and infirmity, and others by keeping themselves quiet in towns, preaching very seldom and very quietly to some per- sons of note ; so that the preaching of the gospel in the fields, which was at this time mostly in repute, was followed with the greatest numbers, and most zealous of our way, fell, generally speaking, to the weakest, and most inexperienced of the minis- try : and it was observable that where old and experienced ministers did frequently preach in the fields, either in their ' Hind Let Loose, p. 712. •^ MS. Papers in the Episcopal Chest at Aberdeen, No. B. Ah. 116 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XXXVII. own charges or elswhere, there our breaches were not so wide, nor did people run to such great heights ; whereas the younger and less experienced ministers, not being aware of the evil of division, and therefore not so careful to avoid the first causes of it, did either moth-eat, or too much suffer to be moth- eaten by the vulgar, the reputation of such who did not follow their way, by putting hard constructions upon their actions in ordinary conversation, and did not know how to cultivate the minds of a good and zealous, though young and iveak people ; yea, some might too much cherish %omQ frothy professors, not duly considering the difference betwixt a proselyte to a party and a true christian Likewise at this time many other papers were reprinted and carefully spread, such as Mr. Dou- glas's coronation sermon [which was so seditious as deterred that gentleman from accepting a bishoprick], and the oaths the king took [much against his will], 'the Causes of God's Wrath,' ' Gillespie upon associations with his dying testimony ;' and these [seditious books], with other concurring circum- stances, blow our smoke to a flame." At the same time the preaching of Kingsland's curates against the indulged ministers helped to widen the breach ; and some began to consider the famous itinerant preacher Welsh to be an Achan in their camp ; and their jarrings and quarrels ran so high that many of their followers became dis- gusted with their intemperate zeal, and left off following them, and returned quietly to their parish churches. Both the in- dulged and the itinerant ministers took the alarm at the suc- cess of Kingsland's curates, and at the wild imprudence of the probationers, and "judged it high time to essay some remedy." A number of both sorts, therefore, assembled in Edinburgh, "where they had well-attested informations of the excesses to which these young men had run in their discourses to the people." They conversed with two of these fiery youths, but upon whose excited tempers they made no impression, and a third refused to hold any converse with them, nor submit to their admonitions. This is only the natural consequence of the pres- byterian system ; and instead oftquenching the flame, this meet- ing, and its abortive attempt at discipline, only added fuel to the fire that was fiercely burning, and "the heats continued, yea, rose to greater heights, as we shall hear." There was another meeting in September on the same subject in the west country ; but here again the turbulence and fiery zeal of the probationers and young ministers set the authority of their seniors at de- fiance. Now they were beginning to feel the effects of their own division and separation from the church ; for division and 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 117 schism having been their criine,lhese sins had now become their punishment, and one of them exclaims — " what shall we run to at last, if such manifest and scandalous schisms be not early prevented !" The fiery youths of the covenant now began to disturb the meetings of their elder brethren, and one of them, supported by a man raamed Hamilton, and some armed men, entered the meeting of Mr. Selkirk, the indulged minister of Monkland, near Glasgow, forcibly ejected him from his pulpit, and preached a most inflammatory sermon against the indulged ministers, and those who advocated sobriety and peace ^ Thus was retribution coming round upon these men, who were now preaching up soberness, but who had formerly been active in their persecution of the e])iscopal clergy, and who only saw the evil effects of such disorderly conduct and of division when they themselves became the sufferers. The council ordered by proclamation a day of fasting and humiliation to be observed by the established church, on Wednesday, the 18th of December, on account of the popish plot which was discovered in England this year, that his ma- jesty's person and government might be preserved from such imminent danger as then hung over him from that restless, in- tolerant, and ambitious party. The council also wrote a con- gratulatory letter to the king, expressing their horror, indigna- tion, and profound amasement, at " that execrable and hellish plot against his majesty's most sacred person." They assure his majesty that the ramifications of the plot, as far as they had been able to discover, did not extend to Scotland : in fact, his Scottish subjects had their hands full with plots of their own: but there is little doubt but that their divisions and out- breaks were fomented by secret emissaries from the Jesuits, who were more actively engaged in England. The discovery of this " execrable and impious cons))iracy" set the council on looking after the papists in Scotland, and a number of them were arrested by the earl of Moray, when a committee of the council was appointed to examine them and their papers. Strict search was made in Edinburgh for priests, and their meetings for the celebration of mass ; and the priests were, if caught, to be imprisoned. The bishop of Galloway was intro- duced and sworn a member of his majesty's privy council. As THE church r;s in the Roman obedience have by their own act excommunicated themselves from the church catholic, by the adoption and imposition of a new and heretical creed, so the Scottish presbyterians have likewise cut themselves off ' Wodrow's History, ii. 499-501. 118 HISTORY OF THE [c HA P. XXX VI I, from the universal church by their adoption of the Westmin- ster Confession of Faith, and the Solemn League and Cove- nant, and by their forcing the latter as a term of communion wherever they have the power. The family likeness betwixt the mother of harlots and her child is striking, and they both come under the judgment of the Council of Ephesus, a.d. 431, which was confirmed by the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451, which councils have been received by all the particular churches in Christendom ; whose decree was, — " The holy synod determined that it should not be lawful for any one to set forth, write, or compose, any other creed than that which was determined by the holy fathers who assembled in the Holy Ghost at Nice : and that if any shall dare to compose any other creed, or adduce or present it to those who are willing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth, whether from heathen- ism, Judaism, or any heresy whatsoever, such persons, if bishops, shall be deprived of the episcopal office ; if clergy, of the cleri- cal ^" The mother added twelve articles to the creed of the whole church, and so established image worship, transubstan- tiation, and a reiteration of the personal sacrifice of Christ, which is declared in Scripture to have been once only offered ; the daughter has cast away the ancient creed of the church altogether, and substituted the Westminster Confession of Faith, which consigns all men to eternal flames except the members of the kirk of Scotland, who alone being the members of the catholic church, as they affirm, can alone be saved. Both these communions have broken the canon made by one general council, and confirmed by another, and therefore the bishops and clergy of the one and the ministers of the other have incurred the penalty of deposition decreed by these holy synods. Vincentius Lirenensis compares the ancient creed, as to its parts, to the limbs and members of a child's body ; which, although they increase and grow to the stature of a man, yet they remain the same limbs and members, without either addi- tion or change. Both the Trent and the Westminster assem- blies imposed new articles of belief that never grew out of the " limbs and members " of the ancieut creed, but differ entirely from it. The advocates for the doctrines contained in the popish and presbyterian creeds can neither show that they are ancient orthodox doctrines, that have been generally received and reverenced by antiquity, nor that they possess Vincentius's three marks of catholicity — antiquity, universclity, and consent. The new doctrines which each have superadded to the christian ^ Perceval's Roman Schism, pp. 33, 37. 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 119 faith are not to be found in the Apostles' Creed, nor by just inference can they be deduced from it ; yet both the Trent and the Westminster assemblies declared their own superadded creeds to be the true catholic faith, and without the profession of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. Both these communions also have their own oaths for the destruc- tion of the catholic church ; the Roman bishop takes a solemn oath on entering to his office, — " heretics, schismatics, and rebels to our said lord [the pope] , or his aforesaid successors, I will to my Yfower persecute and oppose;" and the presbyterian minister by the Solemn League and Covenant swears to " en- deavour the extirpation of prelacy ^ The aim of both these communions is supremacy. The Romanists deduce their divine right to supremacy over the civil power from Ib'th verse of the first chapter of Gene- sis, where it is written, " And God made two great lights, the greater light [the sun] to rule the day ; and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night." Their most es- teemed writers, Bellarmine and others, explain this passage to mean, that the greater light, or the sun, typified the pope ; and the lesser light, or the moon, represented the emperor and all other sovereign princes. And hence, as the sun was the supreme ruler, not only of the day, but also, by reflection, of the moon, so the pope is the supreme ruler not only in the church but in the state also, and over the sovereign of every country. The presbyterians contended that the king was only entitled to govern in subordination to the covenant and to Christ's crown and kingdom, which meant the commission of the kirk ; and this they founded upon the nature of the Jewish constitution, which was a theocracy or divine government, through the official instrumentality of the high priest, who was empowered to declare the will of God to the civil magis- trate. " The crowning of king Jesus," — " Christ's crown and kingdom," — " His crown and dignity," — and such like expres- sions, meant nothing less than a supremacy of the commis- sion of the kirk, or of a few of its leading ministers, similar to the authority which the pope formerly exercised and still claims over crowned heads. The pope calls himself the vicar of Christ upon earth, in things temporal and spiritual ; and the presbyterians declare that they are infallibly jiossessed of the " mind of Christ," which renders them incapable of erring in directing the affairs of church or state. And, says Shiels, " In the covenants we are not bound, Am^ only conditionally, to maintain the king's person and authority ; that is, only that he should be a loyal subject to Christ [which means to the com- J20 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVII. mission of the kirk], and a faithful servant to the people ; which he cannot be thought who does not cause all to stand to their covenant engagements, as Josiah did ^" In another place he explains what he means by the king being a faithful servant to the'people : — " The inferior," he says, " is accountable to the superior; the king is inferior, the people are superior; ergo, the king is accountable to the people 2." These antiscriptural doctrines and views shew what were the real meaning and intentions of the leaders in the assemblies and commissions of the kirk during the progress of the grand rebellion, and which have been faithfully detailed in this work, from their own acts of Assembly and approved authors. In their struggle for the supremacy they overturned both the throne and the altar, and deluged the three kingdoms wilh blood. They attempt to throw the guilt of blood upon king Charles L who, in the execution of his bounden duty to God, his only superior, and to the people committed to his charge, drew the sword in defence of the church which they had sworn to ex- tirpate, but of which he was the appointed nursing-father and protector, as well as a member, and of the religious and poli- tical freedom of his country. We have now seen the persecution and bloodshed that have arisen out of the persecuting principles embodied in the Covenant. It has been most justly called a perpetual bond of rebellion ; and its persecuting obligations are acknowledged by an author whose opinions have been already cited. He says — " In the fourth article of the covenant we are obliged to en- deavour that all incendiaries and malignants, &c. be brought to condign punishment ; therefore is it imaginable that the head of that unhallowed party [the Wx\^'\^ the great malignant enemy, who is the spring and gives life to all these abomina- tions, should be exempted from punishment? Shall we be obliged to discover and bring to punishment the little petty malignants, and this implacably stated enemy to Christ escape wilh a crown upon his head ? Nay, we are by this obliged, if ever we be in a condition, to bring these stated enemies to God and the country to condign punishment, from the highest to the lowest : and this we are to do, as we would have the anger of the Lord turned away from us, which cannot be, with- out hanging up their heads before the I,ord against the swn. .... By the fifth article of the covenant we are obliged to endeavour \hdX justice be done upon such as oppose the peace and union between the kingdoms ; but this man and his bro- ' Hind Let Loose, 206. "^ Ibid. 389. 167S.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 121 iher have destroyed and annulled that which was the bond of these kingdoms' union — viz. the Solemn League and Cove- nant ^" The covenant having been framed by Jesuits, there is as much of their serpentine wisdom in it, as marks the union of doctrine betwixt their rules and the obligations of the covenant; for there is a saving clause in that document which obliges its votaries to accomplish its infernal obligations only when they are " in a condition" to execute its threats. Accordingly we find, that whenever the pressure of military compulsion was removed from them, then, feeling themselves to be in " a condition" to fulfil their covenanted principles, they began to assemble in armed conventicles, and to wreak their malice on the weaker party — the clergy of the established church. Their fears for the vengeance of the laws only pre- vented their adding murder to their " invasion," as assaults were called, house-breaking and robbery of the episcopal clergy, who, living at great distances from each other, and per- haps apart from near neighbours, were common. They were attacked in tlieir beds, their own and their wives and families' persons brutally beaten, their furniture destroyed, and the porta- ble parts of it carried off, as well as whatever money and other valuables they might have were made prize of; and they were often compelled to swear to abandon their churches, and not even to complain of the bad usage they received. But the church of Rome has quite altered the primitive ecclesiastical government by erecting a monarchy in the church, and setting up her bishop as the universal pastor and sovereign of the whole catholic church, and making all other bishops to be but his vicars and substitutes in point of juris- diction. The presbyterian communion have also quite altered the primitive ecclesiastical government, by setting up a demo- cratical 7'epublic, consisting partly of ministers and partly of lay elders, in a gradation of republican courts comprised in kirk sessions, presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies. And as the pope endeavours to subject all christian bishops to his obedience, so the presbyterians endeavour to extirpate all the fathers of the church who are independent princes, within their own dioceses. The church of Rome has changed the primitive rule of faith by adding twelve neio articles to it, as necessary to be believed in order to salvation. The Westmin- ster Assembly imposed a new Confession of Faith, consisting of thirty-three ariicles, out of which it entirely excluded the ancient creed of the universal church. The church of Rome ' Hind Let Loose, 411-12 VOL. in. R 122 HISTORY OF THE [c HAP. XXXVII. most miserably eorrupted the primitive liturgy of the church ; for a corrupt faith must produce a corrupt worship, the one be- ing based on the other — viz. prayers in an unknown tongue, contrary to the apostle's express command, conducted by the priest alone, during which the people are mere spectators, or employ themselves at their private devotions. Their liturgy is full of most humble prayers to the ever blessed Virgin St. Mary, as their only mediatrix betwixt them and God ; they have taken the cup of blessing from the people, and they are guilty of idolatry in the direct worship of images and the wood of the cross. On the other hand, the presbyterian com- munion have entirely dismissed both ancient and modern litur- gies, as means " to make and increase an idle and unedifying ministry ;" and as the minister is " the mouth of the congre gation," the people listen simply to what he says without join- ing with him ; having no priesthood, of course they have no christian sacrifice, so the people are deprived entirely of the eucharistical sacrament, for although they eat and drink the bare elements, yet these are altogether deficient of the " Spirit that giveth life." No MAN has given the enemies of the church greater op- portunities of blaspheming and triumphing over her, than Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury. He has shewn a deep- rooted hatred against archbishop Sharp and his brethren throughout the whole History of his Own Times ; and though a churchman in profession, yet he was a presbyterian in heart and affections. He therefore omits no opportunity of displaying his " keen hatx'ed and round abuse ;" and insinuates that piety and morality were only to be found during the usurpation and amongst the rebels. He asserts that that joy and festivity which were happily indulged in after the Restoration, were the effects of men having thrown off the very professions of virtue and piety. It would require some ingenuity to con- vince a reasonable person that piety and virtue suffered by the Restoration ; for some of the most pious and virtuous men, both lay and clerical, that have ever adorned the church of the three kingdoms, flourished subsequent to that event. But, on the other hand, if we are to consider as piety and morality, revenge, censoriousness, evil speaking, lying and slandering, perjury, robbery, sacrilege, injustice, murder, op- pression, rebellion, impious pretences to inspiration, the most consummate hypocrisy, the decrying of all morality as malig- nancy, and the overturning of every civil and religious institu- tion ; if these works of the flesh be piety and morality, perhaps the times of the civil war and tlie uT?urpation were the most 1678.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 123 moral and pious since the piety and morality of the antidilu- vians down to that time. The murder of the king, the robbery of lands and houses, the sacrilege committed on what had been solemnly dedicated to God, were all, indeed, professed to be done in the name of the Lord, and, like certain hypocrites in the Jewish church, with long and ostentatious prayers. It is not to be wondered at that an extravagant joy should overspread the length and breadth of the land, when the peo- ple of all ranks escaped from the grinding tyranny of such a multitude of tyrants, who had the absolute disposal of their lives and properties, and when they were on a sudden restored to the full enjoyment of all the comforts and blessings of life. The duke of Lauderdale is much blamed, of course, by the presbyterian authors, but particularly by bishop Burnet, after he broke with him, for suppressing the combinations of " Messiah's angels." But when it was notorious that the field conventicles were contrived for the convention of armed i-ebels, who only waited for assistance from Holland and a favoura- ble opportunity to attack the king's troops for the overturn of the government, his grace must be justified before all the world, in trying every method, both of severity and concilia- tion, to prevent a revolution. He found that moderation only encouraged these " angels " of the covenant in their barbarous treatment of the episcopal clergy, and in their insults to go- vernment. It is to be observed that neither Burnet nor Wod- row give any real instances of oppression and tyranny, al- though they make such an outcry about " the sufferings of the presbyterians ;" unless, indeed, we are to put out the eyes of our understandings, and consider that exacting fines, which were always remitted upon submission and the promise of future obedience, upon men who would have been hanged under any other government, may be called oppression. These conventicles became more frequent and audacious after the formation of an opposition to Lauderdale's government ; and there is not the least doubt but that the opposition secretly encouraged the meetings of conventicles, in order to embar- rass the government and effect a change in the administration. But Lauderdale's sagacity in bringing three armies to bear upon the disaffected district at once, from as many different points, shewed them the folly of making head against an at- tack from the royal troops, with their undisciplined though en- thusiastic followers, and so it was not only a skilful but a mer- ciful measure, inasmuch as it prevented their adopting Welsh's advice, and " drawing to a head." If there had been no other forces to opjiose them tliau the king's regular troops in Scot- 124 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [cHAP. XXXVII. land, they would undoubtedly have taken the field, and from the superiority of their numbers, and their fanaticism and bravery, the issue might have been the shedding of much blood both in the field and on the scaffold. Much has been said against Lauderdale for his policy at this time, but especially for having introduced the wild uncivilised highlanders into the country of the conventicles ; but the cause has been always concealed, under the flood of indigna- tion and obloquy which has been vented against the military and the " highland host." The cause was altogether the pres- byterian principles of resistance to all regular government, of intolerance that bound them to extirpate the church, and their bond of pei'secuiion, which bound them to put all malignants to death ; also the turbulence of their preachers, who would not confine their ministrations to the parish churches to which they were legally inducted, but collected field conventicles, where they chiefly preached sedition and the principles above named. With so much excitement, the ignorant people con- sidered themselves as the peculiar people of God, and all others as His enemies ; and therefore, like the Canaanites and Amalekites of old, the episcopalians were to be utterly extir- pated if they did not yield their christian liberty to the su- premacy of the presbyterian preachers. Hence the cruel treatment that the episcopal clergy experienced at their hands, who were assaulted and abused in their very pulpits and during their administration of public worship, as well as on the roads, in the fields, and in their own houses, besides ihe destruction of their furniture and the robbery of their property. It was only when government kept military possession that the episcopal clergy in the dioceses of Glasgow and Galloway had any protection from their ruthless persecutors. In the other parts of the kingdom, where the people were churchmen in heart and affections, there were no military stations, nor dis- turbances to call for their interference, but the utmost tran- quillity reigned, which was the result of christian principles, which, when persecution arises, teaches men to suffer but not to fight for Christ. They bore the hardships patiently to which the government was compelled to subject them, owing to the turbulence of the fanatics, and especially the extraor- dinary taxation which the maintenance of a standing army brought upon them. Wodrow can find no "■ sufferings" to re- cord any where in the kingdom out of the province of Glas- gow ; and he always places the due and not too severe execu- tion of the law on notorious offenders foremost among the "sufferings" of his saints, — " angels," indeed, as he calls them. 125 CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 1679. — State of the presbyterians. — A visitation of the universities. — Overture for suppressing schism — turned into an act of council. — Non-residence.^ Bishop of Galloway licensed. — Oppression of the church. — Proceedings against the Jesuits. — Mr. Veitch. — Earl of Danby — his speech — sent to the Tower. — Duke of York. — The king's difficulties. — Duke of York goes abroad. — Bill ot exclusion — the king opposed to it. — Covenant renewed. — Opposition to Lau- derdale.— A conventicle in Edinburgh. — Town-major assaulted. — A proclama- tion.— Mrs. Smythe — letter to her from the primate. — Conventicle at Cum- berhead. — Death and translation of bishops. — Murder of two soldiers. — County meetings. — Proclamation against conventicles. — The king's letter. — State of the country. — Remarks. 1679. — Dr. Cook says, that at the commencement of this year " the presbyterians themselves were split into parties ; one division of them cleaving to the indulged ministers, ano- ther declaiming against them, warning the people not to attend them, and poisoning their minds by the most fanatical and rebellious tenets. The efficacy and the security of a regular government were at an end; the nation was torn by faction, and vast multitudes attributing all this to the bishops, and particularly to 8hai"p, who was regarded with peculiar abhor- rence, considered themselves as warranted to proceed to any extremity. The conventicles were now attended by formi- dable bodies of desperate and armed men ; small detachments of these were constantly passing through different districts, and the public mind was raised to a degree of frenzy which pre- pared it for the most disgraceful enormities'." And AVodrow, in a melanchol}' mood, admits, that in " January, this year, some preachers formerly pointed at began warmly to preach up separation from the indulged, and in such a broken time as this, no doubt such doctrine would take, when people's spirits were rankled with so many evils. When this flame was rising, several ministers and probationers in and about ' History of the Church of Scotland, iii. 344. 126 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVIII. Glasgow, with a good many of the solid of the old elderships in that city, who had been witnesses to the sad consequences of the last rent in this church upon the public Resolutions, had frequent meetings, and endeavoured what in them lay to put a stop to the growing division, but were not able to do so much as they wished ^" That spirit of division and schism which is inherent in the constitution of presbytery was now making havock of " the cause" itself; but with their usual blindness to their own sins and infirmities, they accused the government as being the cause of their own internal dissensions. The government was, however, equally puzzled how to preserve the peace of the kingdom, and to protect the established clergy from the " for- midable bodies of desperate and armed men" which peram- bulated the south-western parts of the country. There was what was called a standing army in small detachments quar- tered at various places in the disturbed districts, but so small and so scattered as to be no terror to the unruly, but rather an incentive to attack or resist them, from the probability of being able to conquer them. There can be no greater mistake than to employ too small a force against insurgents, for they are sure to engage in a conflict where they have a prospect of success, whereby much bloodshed will follow, whereas they will make no resistance to a superior force, the employment of which is, therefore, the most merciful and judicious plan. On the 2d of January the council addressed a circular letter to the two archbishops and the bishops of Edinburgh and Aberdeen, requiring them to visit the universities of their se- veral cities, and to ascertain whether or not the professors and masters had taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and to cause them to be administered to those who had not taken them. The reports from all these prelates were satisfactory; but there were some individuals in the university and schools of Edinburgh who had not taken the oaths, and the council ordained them either to comply, or to be removed from their offices. A Mr. Warner, whom Wodrow says was " the last of the antediluvian presbyterian ministers; that is, such who had seen the glory of the former temple, and were ordained before the Restoration," was outlawed for not obeying the summons of the privy council for holding lleld conventicles, although he had an indulgence to the parish of Balmaclellan, in the diocese of Galloway. On the 9th of January the council submitted some over- > History, iii. 23. 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 127 tures to the king for his approbation, for the suppression of the present schism and disorders in the church, and the fre- quent insurrections of which they were the cause. In these overtures the council very truly say, that " notwilhstan(hng their former endeavours, manifold disorders do still abound, arising from withdrawing from the public w^orship, and from the dangerous and pernicious principles instilled into the minds of unwary people by seditious preachers in their scan- dalous conventicles, whereby many are hardened in a most violent and unreasonable schism, and animated to most turbu- lent virulent practices, threatening the subversion of the pro- testant religion, as well as the peace of the kingdom, have thought it their duty (now that the forces are raised whereby these seditious disorders may be easily and effectually sup- pressed) humbly to represent to the king's most excellent majesty: — That many of the enormities are committed in re- mote parts, where probation cannot be easily found, nor the laws receive their due execution, and therefore they proposed that the sheriffs-deputes, and some other hjcal magistrates, should receive additional authority, and be empowered to "put the laws in execution against withdrawers from public ordi- nances, keepers of conventicles, such as are guilty of disor- derly baptisms and marriages, resetting and communing with fugitive and intercommuned persons, and other vagrant preachers. That soldiers be authorised to disperse disor- derly meetings and conventicles, and that they may not be prosecuted, if, from resistance, death or mutilation should en- sue: That the soldiers be instructed to arrest the preachers at conventicles, and hold them to bail, except those that had been declared traitors ; and to seize upon all the arms of those who were present; That a reward be offered for the capture of the intercommuned traitor Welsh, and some others: And lastly, that his majesty may be pleased to give order to the council, to take exact notice of, and proceed against, those indulged ministers who do not observe the rules and instructions pre- scribed to them at their indulgence ; and that upon the decease or removal of any of these indulged ministers from their kirks, the council may be careful to see orthodox ministers planted in these kirks; and if the patron do not present such persons within the time prescribed by law, that the ordinary be or dained to present jure devoluto." His majesty approved of these overtures, and returned them to the council with his superscription, and they were im- mediately turned into an act of council upon the 28th of Ja- nuary; and instructions were prepared and sent to the sheriffs, 128 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVIII. and other magistrates, for their guidance ^ The disputes and divisions among the presbyterians became more violent and extensive ; and not even the pressure of the new attetnpt to curb their licentiousness had any effect in uniting them. The cess created many disputes, but the law settled that cause of divi- sion by compelling them to pay it; but the Indulgence was the source of much deeper and more inveterate contention among them. " Kirkland's curates" were particularly active in preaching the necessity of separating from " the council curates," and with great success, for numbers began to secede from the indulged ministers, and this circumstance both swelled the conventicles and multiplied their numbers 2. And notwith- standing the large offers of reward for the capture of Welsh, he was so well guarded by an armed party of horsemen, that always attended him, and by the protection of the people in the disaffected districts in which he itinerated, that he was never apprehended. At the same meeting of council, a dispensation from his majesty for non-residence, granted to the lord bishop of Gal- loway, was read and recorded ; and as it is a complete refuta- tion of the numberless falsehoods charged against the Scottish hierarchy, that they were constantly at the ear of the council, instigating them to cruelty and persecution, and always the suggestors of those measures for which Wodrow and his friends cannot otherwise account, I here insert it entire : — " Whereas none of our archbishops or bishops may lawfully keep their ordinary residence without the bounds of their dio- ceses respective, unless they have our royal dispensation, warrant, and license for that effect : these are, that in regard John, bishop of Galloway, is not provided in a competent manse or dwelling-house in the diocese of Galloway, and for the better promoving of our service in the church, to allow and authorise the said bishop to live in or near the cities of Edin- burgh or Glasgow, or in any other convenient place, where he may be able to attend the public affairs of the church. With whose non-residence in the diocese of Galloway, we, by virtue of our royal supremacy in causes ecclesiastical, do by these presents dispense, as well with the time past preceding the date hereof as for the time to come, during our royal plea- sure; any canon of the church, or acts of parliament, enjoin- ing residence, notwithstanding. And we strictly enjoin all our subjects, church officers, and others, never to quarrel or call in question the said John, bishop of Galloway, during the ' Woilrow's Hiseory, iii. 1-21. - IbiJ. 23. 1679.] cnuucii of Scotland. 129 continuance of this our royal dispensation and license, as they shall answer to us at their peril." Thus it appears that the bishops were tied down to a con- stant residence within their respective dioceses, and could not reside beyond the limits of them without a royal dispensation. This has fully as much the aspect of persecution as the con- fining the indulged ministers to their parishes ; the conduct ■of the two parties, however, decidedly shews their respective principles. The bishops and their clergy, who were also bound to reside within their parishes, complied with the law, and when they were desirous of residing elsewhere, they ap- plied for permission, and did not remove without it ; but the indulged ministers rambled about the country in spite of the utmost efforts of the government to prevent them, and gathered conventicles at considerable distances from the parishes to which they were indulged, breaking the peace of the kingdom, and inflaming the minds of their hearers by seditious sermons. The church owed its bondage and servitude under the royal supremacy to the obligations of the covenant, and the con- tinual insubordination and sedition which it produced. The king and his government having the remembrance of the grand rebellion ever before their eyes, and having seen the desolation of three kingdoms produced by the covenanting madness of the ministers, extended the royal supremacy to the verge of op- pression ; lest the same principles might again produce simi- lar calamities. In consequence of this jealousy they did not sufficiently make a distinction betwixt the principles of the gospel professed by the one, and those of the covenant followed out by the other. Therefore, in those times of rebuke and blasphemy, the church was nearly crushed, yet never mur- mured nor complained, betwixt the upper millstone of the supremacy and the under millstone of the barbarous cove- nanters. The popish plot that had been discovered in England set the privy council to look after the Jesuits and priests in Scot- land, and a proclamation was issued empowering magistrates to search their houses for arms, and to commit all Jesuits, priests, and trafficking papists, to prison, and to prohibit all papists from being appointed to public offices or to commis- sions in the army. And the reason assigned for this measure was, "because many of the Romish church do delude and abuse our people, under the profession of some or other of those who refuse to conform to the worship of this reformed church, as it is established by law." It therefore api)ears that the Jesuits were busy fomenting the religious distraciions of the kingdom, VOL. III. s 130 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVIII. under the assumed characters of rigid presbyterians and cove- nanters, in the same manner as the same unscrupulous fra- ternity had founded the puritan schism and the numerous sects in England. If Melville, the founder of Scottish presbyterian- ism, was not himself a Jesuit, there can be no doubt but many Jesuits co-operated with him in his efforts to introduce and perpetuate presbytery ; and now we have the authority of a royal proclamation that they were pursuing their usual voca- tion amongst the itinerant preachers of the covenant, and doubtless stimulated their naturally pugnacious principles. Mr. Veitch, a minister of the covenant, and who is de- signated as " a notorious ringleader in field-conventicles," was apprehended in Northumberland, and lodged in Morpeth gaol. He had been actively engaged in the Pentland rebellion, and in consequence had found it convenient to retire into England, where he " preached with much acceptation;" that is, he created dissension and introduced schism and rebellion among the peaceable church-going peasantry of the parish of Long- Horsley, where he had fixed his abode. Mr. Bell, the clergy- man, appealed to the bishop of Durham, in consequence of the unruly state into which Veitch had preached his parishioners ; and the bishop applied to the duke of Lauderdale to be relieved from the nuisance of the Scottish preachers, who were spreading infection in England, but particularly from this man He was removed from Morpeth to Edinburgh, and the privy council committed him to the Bass prison till the king's pleasure was known, because he had been forfeited on account of his having been engaged in the rebellion of 1666", the record of which was found in the eleventh act of the first ses- sion of the second parliament. After several postponements Veitch was at last tried and acquitted, and set at liberty upon condition of retiring altogether from the realm of Scotland, not so much from his decided innocence of the guilt of re- bellion as from the intercession of powerful friends that had been made with the king ^ About this time the affairs of England had some influence on those of Scotland. A violent burst of popular odium was excited against the earl of Danby, whom Burnet has much misrepresented ; and which was produced by the exertions of that nobleman to extricate the king from the entanglements into which the former niinisters had brought his majesty's affairs. On account of his rejecting the offers made to him by the court of France, it had become a maxim with tliem that ' Wodrow's History, iii. 8-9. 1679.] CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 131 the earl of Danby must be ruined before their intrigues could be successful in England. The French agents in England entered into secret negociations with a Mr. Montague, who had been formerly ambassador at the court of France, but who now represented the borough of Northampton. He produced some copies of official letters written to him by lord Danby, which the commons considered sufficient matter for the im- peachment of that nobleman. When the articles of impeach- ment were brought to the bar of the House of Lords, lord Danby spoke at some length in his own vindication, and alleged that nothing of importance had been transacted with- out his majesty's warrant under the sign manual. That it was impossible that any thing could be more contrary to his own interest than to prevent the discovery of the popish plot, or to contrive the assassination of the king. That the happiness of no man living depended more than his own on the preserva- tion of the king's person. He had been so far from con- cealing any information respecting the plot, that the very person who had given the information at the bar of the House of Commons, had acknowledged that he had received the ut- most encouragement from him ; and besides, that he had been particularly instrumental in seizing the papers of Mr. Coleman, which had been the most material evidence of the plot. That so far from wasting the public money, he had not seen in the course of six years one farthing applied to any other purpose than according as the acts directed ; and that he had not re- tained any part of it for his own or his family's use. Although he was accused of being popishly inclined, yet he was so far otherwise, th a t i f h e had been either a papist or friendly to French interests, no accusation would now have been brought against him, at least not by his present accuser, who, he had good reason to believe, had been assisted by French advice. And if, he said, " that gentleman were as just to produce all he knows for me, as he hath been malicious to shew what may be liable to misconstruction against me, or rather against the king, as indeed it is, no man could vindicate me more than himself, under whose hand I have to shew, how great an enemy to France I am thought, how much I might have had to have been otherwise, and what he himself might have had to liave got me to take it. But I do not wonder this gentleman will do me no right, when he does not think fit to do it to his majesty, upon whom chiefly this matter must reflect ; though he knows, as will appear under his hand, that the greatest invitations to his majesty for liaving money from France have been made by him;ieif : that if his majesty would have been tempted for 132 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVIII. money, he might have sold towns for as much as if they had been his own, and the money have been conveyed as privately as he pleased : that his majesty might have made matches with France, if he would have consented to have given them towns ; and yet that the king hath always scorned to yield the meanest village that was not agreed to by the Spaniard and the Hollander. .... That ever since 1 have had the honour to serve his majesty to this day, I have delivered it as my con- stant opinion, that France was the worst interest his majesty could embrace, and that they were the nation in the world from whom I did believe he ought to apprehend the greatest danger, and who have both his person and government under the last degree of contempt; for which reason alone, were there no other, I would never advise his majesty to trust to their friendship ^" Burnet's insinuations against the king and his minister are given with his usual maliciousness. Lord Danby was also accused of the murder of sir Edmunbury Godfrey, although his accuser afterwards withdrew his affidavit, and declared that the saints had set him upon making the accusation. Lord Danby was, however, sent to the Tower, where he remained ibr several years, before the Court of King's Bench would ven- ture to admit him to bail, owing to the tyrannical interference of the House of Commons. " The duke of York," says Wodrow, " was reckoned, by such who appeared for the liberties of England, to be at the bottom of all the maladministrations they would have been rid of. Even before the parliament sat down, the king found a party forming against his brother, and towards the end of February gave it him as his mind that he should retire from court ; the duke was in amaze till the king sent it him in writ under his own hand 2." The machinations of the papists at this time had created such a ferment in Eng- land, that in the House of Commons there were violent debates respecting the exclusion of the duke of York, on account of his religion, from the succession to the throne. At that time there was no law in existence to prevent a person professing the })opish religion from succeeding to the crown ; and it is rather a curious anomaly in the presbyterian religion, that it is laid down with authority in their public formulary, that even "Infi- delity, or difference in religion, doth 7iot make void the magis- trate's just and legal authority, nor free the people from their due obedience to him^." ' Salmon's Examination of Bisiiop Burnet's History, ii. 831-32. " Hibtory, iii. 27. ^ Westminster Confession of Faith, cli. xxiii. scot. 4. 1670.] CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 133 Burnet misrepresents Charles as being so indolent and indif- ferent to every thing but his own pursuits, that he would sacrifice his dearest friends, and even his brother, rather than be disturbed. Instead of which, Charles exhibited the greatest steadiness and firmness in supporting his brother's rights; and he main- tained his ground on this point against three successive parlia- ments, which had thrown England into the greatest confusion with their strides towards independence and arbitrary power. They shewed some symptoms of imitating the proceedings of the memorable Long Parliament, and the whig party attempted to force the king into similar concessions as those that had effected the late king's ruin. The king, however, had pro- fited by his father's misfortunes, and he firmly kept possession of the sword and the power of the militia in his own hands ; and at length, by firmness and resolution, he not only extricated himself from the difficulties of his position, but obliged the parliament to return to a sense of their duty. Charles's con- duct shews how grossly he has been misrepresented by Burnet in his malignant gossip ; for he displayed talents and address of a superior order, and of which Burnet everywhere insinu- ates that he was incapable. Burnet again represents the king as so far from entertaining any affection for the duke of York, that he dreaded and dis- liked him ; yet so false was this, that when a bill was brought in for banishing the duke, and excluding him from the suc- cession to the crown, he steadily opposed it. The commons would have passed any money bill, or have obliged the crown in any thing the king could have asked, in order to gain this point; yet he cheerfully ran more hazards in support of the duke's claims than he had ever before done, and which must have been the result of affection as well as from a sense of recti- tude. To allay the agitation which had arisen on the score of popery, and the dread which the prospect of a popish suc- cessor to the crown had excited, the king requested the duke of York to retire abroad till the storm should subside. He re- tired to Brussels with his family ; and lord Nottingham, in his speech in pailiament, said that the separation between the royal brothers was attended with more than ordinary sorrow on both sides ^ In England, Charles " constituted a new privy council, consisting of a medley of whigs and torics," and amongst the rest took in the lord Shaftesbury again. The commons resolved, That the duke of York being a papist, the hopes of his .succeeding lo the crown had given the greatest ' Salmon's Examination, ii. S3J-oC. 131 HFSTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVIII. countenance and encouragement to the present conspiracies of the papists against the king and the protestant religion, and ordered the lord Russell to carry up the said vote to tlie lords for their concurrence. They addressed the king also for the execution of several condemned popish priests and Jesuits. The king steadily opposed the exclusion of the duke of York from the succession; and on the 30th April he came down to the house, and offered to put any restrictions on his successor, or to consent to whatever laws the parliament might propose for the security of the protestant religion, except the altering of his brother's right of succession. So earnest was he to preserve the duke's rights, that he offered to limit the authority of a popish successor, so that no papist should sit in either house of parlia- ment; that none of the privy council or judges should be put in or displaced, but by authority of parliament, which would have been a most dangerous precedent ; that none but protes- tants should be justices of the peace, lords lieutenants, deputy lieutenants, or officers in the navy, during the reign of a popish successor ; and that none of these officers should be put out or removed but by parliament. He offered, besides, to consent to any other limitation, so as that the duke's right of succession was not defeated^. The faction in Scotland kept pace with the schemes of the whig party in England, and while the latter were intriguing against the duke of York, the former were engaged in a real plot. Burnet says, " the party against the duke of Lauderdale had lost all hopes, seeing how affairs were carried in the con- vention of estates ; but they began to take heart upon this great turn in England. The duke was sent away, and the lord Danby was in the Tower, who were that duke's chief sup- ports : and when the new council was settled, duke Hamilton, and many others, were encouraged to come up and accuse him 2." The covenanters now assembled in formidable bodies, the men being well armed, and some of them mounted, and at these unlawful conventicles that Covenant was renewed and sworn by which their fathers had effected the ruin of three flourishing kingdoms. And, says Salmon, " the fanatics were grown so insolent and assuming through the whole island at that time, that most men are apt to think at this day that the popish plot was originally designed for a blind to cover their seditious practices, and screen their friends from the just re- sentment of the government ; though the saints afterwards imi)rove(l the design, and made it serve to several other wicked ' Salmon's Chronological Historian, i. 213. - Own Times, ii. 229 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 185 purposes, which were not thought of at first ^" The king ad- mitted Hamilton and the others to an audience, and the earls of Essex and Halifax were present ; sir George Mackenzie, the lord advocate, was also present to defend Lauderdale's ad- ministration, while Lockhart and Cunningham were retained on the other side. The opposition dwelt chiefly on the uncon- stitutional act of maintaining a standing army in time of peace, and the free quarter of troops on the inhabitants, besides a general accusation of misgovernment. Sir George, on the con- trary, shewed that it was very far from being a state of peace, but of actual w^ar, for which he had but too good evidence, since the covenanters were in a state of armed rebellion, and the laws actually denominated their conventicles "rendez- vouses of rebellion." Burnet insinuates that the king liked to hear his prerogative magnified, and that he had set up an interest distinct from that of his people ; but it would have been an extraordinary interest for either the king or his people, to suffer armed rebels to assemble weekly in vast num- bers, insolently to arraign the conduct of their governors, and to rob and plunder all such as they were pleased to con- sider the enemies of their kirk and Christ's crown and king- dom. The duke of Monmouth, it seems, " was beginning to form a scheme of a ministry ; but now the government in Scotland was so remiss that the people apprehended they might run into all sorts of confusion. They heard that Eng- land was in such distractions that they needed fear no force from thence. Duke Lauderdale's party was losing heart, and were fearing such a new model there as was set up here in England. All this set those mad people that had run about with the field conventicles into a phrenzy: they dreiv together in great bodies; some parties of the troops came to disperse them, but found them both so resolute and so strong that they did not think fit to engage them : sometimes they fired on one another, and some were killed on both sides 2." As Burnet can now no longer defend or apologise for the barbarous cruel- lies and treasons of his friends the covenanters, he turns round u})on them, and calls them madmen and crack-brained enthusiasts. He insinuates, in his Own Times, that all their nnn-ders and robberies were piously designed, and executed in the name of the Lord, and thinks that the govennnent ought therefore to have connived at them, and have suffered them to ' Examination, ii. 8-10. • Own Times, ii. 231. 1:30 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXJ'VIM. crown king Jesus in their own way. Notwithstanding all the efforts of the duke of Hamilton, assisted by the " underspur leathers," the Mess Johns and their " angels," Lauderdale maintained his place in the king's councils. About the 10th of March a new scene of violence oc- curred in Edinburgh. John Kay, son of a minister of the covenant, sent notice to Johnston, the town major, whose business it was to preserve the peace of the town, that there was an illegal conventicle assembled in a house in an obscure part of the town, and requested him to come to disperse it- As in duty bound, major Johnston took a party and went im- mediately to the house indicated, but instead of a conventicle he found he had been trepanned into a house where Kay and a company of armed men were met for the purpose of murder- ing him. They secured the doors, and fired upon major John- ston and his men, and then assaulted them with their swords ; when the major was dangerously, and several of his party were mortally, wounded. In excuse for this daring outrage, Wodrow alleges that Johnston was " a most violent persecu- tor ;" but how that could be, when he only put the law, as it stood, in execution, must be left to covenanting casuistry to de- cide. We no where read that the primitive christians, who suffered a real persecution, ever trepanned their persecutors into solitary places, and attempted to murder them, or even, as Wodrow delicately describes this murderous assault, to " threaten and soundly beat" them. No, they suffered for Christ, they took up their cross of afflictions, but never fought for Him, nor attempted to set up His crown and kingdom by murdering the servants of heathen governors. This natural effect of covenanting principles occurred on the very day that the council were sitting, and they immediately issued a pro- clamation for the apprehension of Kay and such of the others as had been recognised. In this proclamation they say : — " %Gvexa\,pretending to be of the protestant profession, have not only disgraced and en- deavoured to ruin the true refoimed religion established in this our kingdom, and overturned the principles of all society and government by a bloody and distracted false zeal, which hath prompted them to open rebellion, to the printing of Jesuitical murdering tenets, and the deforcing and invading such as are clothed with our authority ; but have also proceeded to such extravagant and inhuman practices as tend to the destruction of mankiiul itself. Amongst many instances whereof, some villainous murderers did lately lay a design to kill and assas- 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 187 sinate the town-major of Edinburgh, for whom they having sent, upon pretext to dissipate a conventicle, they did dis- charge many shots at him and other soldiers who assisted him, and thereafter wounded him and them mortally in several places of their bodies, threatening to kill him if he would not swear never to put our laws in execution. Which affront being done publicly to our authority in the capital city of our kingdom, the very day of the meeting of our council, and be- ing a practice laid down to terrify all such as serve us, and to involve all in a confusion, which they most earnestly wish ; therefore, &c." a reward was offered for their appi'ehension ^ Wodrow is indignant that such principles should be ascribed to his beloved covenant, and fairly expresses his ignorance that any such murdering tenets had ever been published by his friends, although he could not have been ignorant of the Hind Let Loose, Naphtali, the Cloud of Witnesses, and others, and he afiects to consider this true and appropriate expression in the proclamation merely " a piece of necessary style." It became necessary to order the widows of the cove- nant ministers to remove from the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, as conventicles were held, and the " vagrant jninis- ters" sheltered, in their houses ; and it was in the house of a Mrs, Crawford, " a known and most irregular fanatic," that the outrage on major Johnston had been perpetrated. Mrs. Smythe, of Methven's, heroism has been already re- corded, and her military talents were again required to put down conventicles that attempted to establish themselves on her husband's estate 2. In another letter she informs "her heart-keeper" that the provost and dean of guild of Perth had waited on archbishop Sharp at St. Andrews, to solicit his apjn-obation and induction of a clergyman whom they had presented to the vacant living of St. Johns, the parish church of that town ; and, she continues, " the archbishop was very civil to them, and after he had tried [inquired] at the provost all the way of my proceeding against the conventicle, which was truly repeated, the archbishop drank my good health, and said the clergy of this nation were obliged to me. But it was the Lord God's doing, who made me His instrument ; praise, honour, and glory be to His great name." The church of Methven also became vacant about this time, and Mrs. Smythe interested herself in behalf of Mr. .John Omey, in whose favour she wrote to the archbishop, who appreciated ' Cited in Wodrow's History, iii. 31. ' Vide ante, ch. xxxvii. p. 111. VOL. III. T 1 38 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVIII. the merits of this loyal and religious lady, and made the fol- lowing reply to her letter, dated St. Andrews, 27th March, 1679:— " Madam, — I had the favour of your ladyship's letter, sig- nifying to me your purpose that Mr. John Omey be presented to the church of Methven, vacant by the decease of Mr. Hew Ramsey. I am well satisfied with Mr. Omey, who is a good man and a worthy minister, and shall be ready to go along with your husband, the laird of Methven his design in re- ference to him. I am glad to find that your husband, a gen- tleman noted for his loyalty to the king and affection to the church, is so happy as to have a consort of the same princi- ples and inclination for the public settlement, who has given proof of her aversion to join in society with separatists, and partaking of that sin, to which so many of that sex do tempt their husbands in this evil time, when schism, sedition, and rebellion, are gloried in, though Christianity does condemn them as the greatest crimes. Your ladyship, in continuing the course of your exemplary piety and zeal for the apostolic doctrine and government, shall have approbation from God and all good men, which is of more value than a popular vogue from an humourous silly multitude, who know not what they do in following the way of seduction. You are commended to the establishment of God's grace in truth and peace, by, &c. " St. Andrews." Field conventicles were of weekly occurrence, and also became '^ more formidable both in the immbers who attended, and the army-like aspect which they began to wear. The preachers were generally accompanied by a band of armed men, who were resolved to protect theii: ministers at the hazard of their lives ; and when they met for public wor- ship, they chose strong positions, and posted armed senti- nels all around them, to watch the movements of the enemy, and to warn their friends for a timely flight or a resolute resistance ^" One of these " army -like" conventicles met at Cumberhead, in the parish of Lesmahago, in the diocese of Glasgow. A party of military was sent to disperse them, but on their arrival they found them so well posted and fully armed that it would have been imprudent to have attacked them ; and therefore they contented themselves with seizing, according to the council's orders, the outer garments of some ^ Hetherington'fi History of the Church of Srotland, p. 148. 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 139 stragglers and some women's plaids, to be kept as evidence of their having been at this conventicle. The military saints determined not to allow these trophies to be carried off"; and they drew up in order of battle, and attacked and fired upon the military, took some of the soldiers prisoners, and wounded the officer commanding the detachment and several of the men. It was therefore necessary to retreat, and upon the re- port being made to lord Ross, the commander of the forces, he marched out of Glasgow towards Lanark, to prevent the fighting mania from spreading farther. A commission was granted to several of the privy councillors to meet at Lanark, and to inquire judicially into this affair. In their report to the council, dated the 25th April, they say that they had received " frequent informations from divers places, of murdering some, wounding and robbing of others of his majesty's forces, when sent to bring in the cess .... two soldiers were killed, and others wounded .... a tumult and insurrection made with- in the town of Renfrew, upon the sheriff'-depute taking of one Walter Scott, a noted ringleader of conventicles and of such- like disorders, and of the beating and wounding the laird of Beltrees, sheriff'-depute, to the hazard of his life, and deforcing them and rescuing the prisoner In the shire of Lanark and other shires adjacent, those rebels who keep field conven- ticles have formed a design of keeping strong and armed con- venticles in many distant places, of design to necessitate your lordships to keep his majesty's forces together in considerable numbers .... and are resolved to hinder the inbringing of his majesty's cess .... and if small parlies [of military] be employed, to murder them as they have actually done, intend- ing thereby to obstruct the payment of his majesty's forces, whereby we, conceiving that these rebellious courses are now come to that height, thought it our duty to advertise my lord chancellor, &c. to meet upon Wednesday next, being the last of April, to deliberate and consult what is fit to be done in this juncture, for obstructing the groulh and increase of these disorders, now come to so great a height, and for seciu*'- ing the public peace in time coming'." The pugnacious propensities of the covenanters occupy so much of the history of this period, that the calm and peace- ful current of the church is entirely lost sight of, and little else is recorded but the deaths and translations of the bishops. .John Paterson, lord bishop of Ross, died early this year, and Alexander Young, the lord bishop of Edinburgh, was imme- ' Report of the Comm. of Council at Lanark, citetl l)y Wodiow, ii. p. 35-36. 140 HISTORl OF THE [CHAP, XXXVIII. diately translated to Ross. Jolm Paterson, lord bishop oi Galloway, and the son of the late bishop of Ross, was trans- lated to the see of Edinburgh on the 29th March; and Keith, citing an original letter of Lauderdale to archbishop Sharp, says the translation of bishop Young was owing to the power- ful interest of the duchess, in order to make room for the ad- vancement of bishop Paterson, who had received a royal dis- pensation to reside out of his diocese. William Lindsay, lord I'ishop of Dunkeld, died this year, having only sat two years, but the new bishop was not consecrated till October ^ " It is very certain," says Wodrow, " that about this time matters were running to sad heights among the armed fol- loivers of some of the field meetings :" coming from such a quarter, this is a powerful admission of the desperate state of anarchy and rebellion which then existed among his " angels." Murders of the soldiers were very common, and two which were perpetrated by these "armed followers" excited much public indignation. In the presbyterian districts, when any one refused to pay the cess imposed by the last convention, one or more soldiers were billeted on them at free quarters, till they paid, when the men were removed. One of these recusants, a farmer on Loudon-hill, had three soldiers quar- tered on him for about ten days, and Wodrow admits that they were peaceable and well-behaved men. A female in the family had warned them, that unless they removed they might meet with rough treatment ; but they replied, that they could not leave the premises without orders, or unless the cess was paid. One of the men, however, went in the after- noon to the village of Newmilns, and the threat of violence having made an impression on his mind, he remained there all night. The other two slept, as usual, in the barn, and early on Sunday morning, the 20th of April, they were awoke by a " rude knocking at the barn door." Thinking it had been their comrade returned, one of them got up and incau- tiously opened the door, which he found besieged by five men on foot and five on horseback, one of whom shot the sol- dier through the heart, when he fell down and never spoke. The other, in alarm, got up for the purpose of closing the door against his assailants, and received a pistol shot in the thigh from the same assassin, who appeared to be the leader of the party, and who now dismounted and knocked down the wounded man. The covenanters then robbed the soldiers of their clothes and arms, and made off" with all speed. The ' Keith's Catalogue, passim. 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 141 wounded soldier languished till the following Saturday, when he died. These barbarous murders were committed on the morning when a field conventicle was to have been held; and for which it was a fit and proper preparation, being under a solemn vow to pursue all malignants to death. Wodrow is anxious to remove the stigma of these murders from his party, but is forced to admit, that " it is uncertain who were the actors," and wishes to land it on " a tool and spy" whom, he says, was emjDloyed by government to do such dirty work. The wounded soldier lived long enough to give such informa- tion as identified a man Scarlet as the actual murderer, and who was one of Welsh's armed guards, as Scarlet himself swore before the privy council ; and although Wodrow "jaloused" him to have been an emissary of government, yet he declares that this Scarlet " came and joined himself with some others in arms who were a kind of guard to Mr. R. Cameron, who preached in the fields ^" But these murders had not been an accidental " incident," but a plan and con- spiracy ; for although the people of the farm-house are not im- plicated as having directly assisted in the murders, yet they must have had a previous knowledge of the murderers' inten- tions, or they could not have given the men warning of their danger. This circumstance alone must exonerate the govern- ment of having autiiorised the perpetration of such an infa- mous transaction ; but it the more firmly fixes it upon the armed followers of the covenanting party that were running to such heights. This oriTRAGE occasioned a meeting of the nobility and gentry of the county of Ayr, who agreed upon an address to the council, and sent three of their number into town to pre- sent it ; in which they lament the recent murders, and throw the whole of them and other outrages on " a few unsound, turbulent, and hot-headed preachers — making it their work to draw people to separation and schism from pure ordinances, and to instil in them the seeds of rebellion by their informa- tions, exhortations, and doctrine." This denunciation of co- venanting doctrine by men who lived among, mixed with them, and could not be ignorant of what doctrines were taught, is evidence not to be refuted of the antichrislian nature of the covenant and its adherents, Wodrow is much at a loss to know how to account for the enormous wickedness of his li'iends ; and he enters into a sort of apology, and says: — " It is very certain that about ihi.s time matters were running to sad ' History, iii. 37. 142 HISTORY OF THK [CHAP. XXXVIII. heights among the armed followers of some of the field meet- ings. Whether the information here was true, I do not know ; but as far as I can learn, there was yet no disowning the king's authority, though it was some of these the gentlemen point at, who afterwards did come this length : and until this spring, nothing of unsafe doctrine could be at all charged upon field preachers, and it was but some few run this w^ay either. Indeed, separation and schism from the indulged was now violently inculcated ; and at one of the meetings this month, the letters before me bear that Robert Hamilton spake publicly to the people, and discharged [that is, forbid] any hearers of the indulged, any banders or payers of cess, to join with them, or bring any arms with them. One of them cried out, ' We are all almost cessmen !' and after some confusion among them, Mr. Richard Cameron, who preached that day, settled the matter by telling Mr. Hamilton that it would be impossible to purge the meeting that day : yea, some of them did openly threaten they would insult the indulged ministers if they met with them ; upon which, some of these [the in- dulged ministers] found it needful to retire from their houses ^" Among the episcopal paj^ers at Aberdeen, there is a copy of a royal proclamation of Indulgence to House Conventicles and Nonconformist Ministers, who were to be permitted to assemble in houses any where except in Edinburgh, Musselburgh, Dalkeith, St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Stirling. At the same time armed field conventicles were sternly prohi- bited, under the penalty of being considered in open rebellion, and to incur punishment accordingly — the ministers capitally, and the hearers by fines. But the indulged nonconformists were not at liberty to marry or baptize out of their own con- gregations, and were to administer their sacrament all in one day, so as to avoid the assembling of a great concourse of people to any one sacramental occasion 2. The numbers that attended the field conventicles, and the audacity of the covenanters, now excited serious alarm in the council for the peace of the country ; and they issued a pro- clamation, stating, " the lords of his majesty's privy council, considering that it is notour that there is a party who conti- nue in arms and follow Welsh, Cameron, and some other of their accomplices, at their several field conventicles, do there- fore give warrant to the earl of Linlithgow, major-general and commander-in-chief of his majesty's forces, to order a com- ' Wodrow's History, iii. 38. = MS. Aberdeen Chest, B, 42. 1679,] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 143 manded party of his majesty's forces, horse, foot, and aragoons, lo prosecute and follow that party into whatsoever place Welsh, Caineron, Kidd, or Douglass keep their field conven- ticles, or any other whom that standing party follows ; with power to the commander of that party to give money for intel- ligence where those conventicles are appointed, that thereby the}' may be able to seize and apprehend such as shall be found at the said conventicles, and, in case of resistance, to pursue them to the death ; declaring the said officers and sol- diers shall not be called in question therefore civilly or crimi- nally. And recommend it to the earl of Linlithgow to mus- ter his majesty's forces, and see that they be full and ready for action." This proclamation, but especially that necessary clause in it to protect the military from legal penalties in the execution of their orders, is charged home upon the primate as his " last legacy, and an earnest of what he would have es- sayed had he got up to court ;" but which the author of the True and Impartial Account says, is " neither more nor less than a manifest falsehood." Before issuing the above procla- mation, the council sent it up to court for the king's approba- tion, who not only signed it, but, when it was returned, he wrote the following letter to the council : — *' Charles Rex. Right trusty, &c. — Having seen and con- sidered the proclamation for the suppression of field conven- ticles, which, in your letter of the 1st instant, to the duke of Lauderdale, you sent hither for our perusal and approbation before the publication thereof, we are so well pleased with it, and do judge it so fit for that purpose, as that we do give you our hearty thanks for that good effect of your care and dili- gence to promote our service, and preserve the peace of that our ancient kingdom; and do return it to you without any de- lay, to the end that no time may be lost in the prosecution of so good a work; whereof that you may have our full and so- lemn approbation, we have thought fit ourself to sign the draft you sent up as you have it here enclosed; and we are fully resolved upon all occasions to assert and maintain our autho- rily, and to put the laws in execution as well against those who by private and underhand dealings, endeavour to create any disturbance to our government there, cither in church or state (where the same shall be made manifest to us), as against those who of late have assumed the boldness more openly to attempt the raising of a rebellion there, by frequent and numerous convocations in arms at field conventicles, (these nurseries of rebellion,) and many other irregular and illegal 144 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXVIII. courses ; so we do hereby give you our assurance, that you shall have all due countenance, encouragement, and protection from us, in the discharge of your duties in our service, against all who shall traduce or asperse any of your proceedings, which have been so agreeable to law and reason, as we cannot but admire the impudence (no less than the malice) of such per- sons as study to create a contrary opinion of your actions. We did receive such full satisfaction from these lords, you sent up last year to inform us when there was some noise raised (indeed very unjustly) against your procedure, as we do now think fit to desire that some of your number may repair hither with all convenient expedition, to the end we may not only receive from them a full account of the state of our affairs there, but also may have an opportunity to signify our plea- sure in many things (after conference with them) which at pre- sent we cannot impart in a letter. And because the noblemen who are employed in our service are either of our privy council or have command of our forces, or both, and therefore cannot well be absent at this time, we have thought fit rather to require you to send three of our officers of state ; viz. our clerk-register, our advocate, and our justice- clerk, together with the president of our college of Justice, and sir George Mackenzie, of Tarbert, our justice-general, seeing from them we can have full information, as well in matters of law as in fact. So expecting from them a ready compliance with this our pleasure, and not doubting the continuance of your care and diligence in all things that concern our service, and the peace and quiet of that our kingdom, we bid you heartily farewell. — Given at our court at Whitehall, the 6th day of May, 1679, and of our reign the thirty-first year- By his majesty's command, (Signed) " Lauderdale," The southern part of the kingdom was at this time in a dreadful state. Religion had assumed the reality of armed rebellion; and conventicles, under the pretence of preaching the gospel, were the rendezvouses for preparing their warriors for the field, and that in such numbers, too, that the handfuls of troops that were sent to disperse them were frequently beaten and dispersed. The Covenanters complained of the insolence of the soldiers; but this was occasioned by the rough usage that the military met with from the saints, and which provoked retaliation. Many of the soldiers were murdered by the saints, and there cannot be any doubt but that the mur- ders at the farm-house on Loudon-hill, already related, had been resolved on by those who attended the conventicle that 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 146 same day, and that the farmer's family were engaged in the conspiracy, otherwise they could not have given warning, by which one of the men preserved his life. The shooting an officer in the execution of his duty, and the trepanning of major Johnstonin to a house, with the attempt to assassinate him and his party, are instances to show that murder was not an accidental circumstance, arising out of collisions with angry opponents, but the cool deliberate determination to fulfil the obligations of the Covenant, by despatching those whom they considered their enemies. But these enemies of law and order could not have become so outrageous, had they not been secretly instigated and protected by the great men connected with the party in opposition to Lauderdale's government. The feudal powers of the nobility and gentry were such, that they could have suppressed the nuisance at once, by their pa- triarchal authority over their tenants and servants, if fhey had chosen; and their having declared their inability to do so, clearly marks their connivance with the field conventicles. The alone King and Head of the church, which is His body, and who is also King of kings and Lord of lords, hath said, " The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat; all, there- fore, whatsoever they bid you observe, tliat observe and do^." In Scripture, Scribe is a name of office, and signifies one who makes his living by writing^; a secretary of state — as Shebna the Scribe^; an officer in the church, or an expounder or in- terpreter of Scripture*. The Pharisees were a sect, or frater- nity, in the Jewish church, that pretended to live by peculiar rules, and more strictly than other men; among whom there were priests, scribes, and laymen^. These w'ere to be obeyed, because they sat in Moses' seat; which means, first, the throne or seat of civil government; and, next, the seat of doctrine and spiritual jurisdiction proper to the governors of the church. The meaning, therefore, of Our Lord's words is, that in all things that belong of right to the office and authority of the crown and the mitre, the people are bound to honour and obey the king, and all that are put in authority under him ; and to submit themselves to all their governors, teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters, because the office of instructing and prescribing was entrusted to them. And, therefore, the right conclusion is evident, that it was the duty of the Covenanters to have submitted to the directions and prescriptions of their temporal and spiritual rulers, but especially to the latter, because St. Matt, ixiii. 2. Isa. xxxvi. 3. * St, John. iii. 1-10— * Psalm xlv. 1. ■• Ezra, vii. 6 — Matt. xiii. 52. Acts, v. 4. VOL. in. u 146 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. XXXVIII. they succeeded to and represented a greater than Moses in the oversight and government of the church, even Christ and his apostles, in all those things that they persuade or pre- scribe, which are not contrary to the Word of God and the established government of the kingdom; not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. But the prophets of the cove- nant prophesied falsely, and the people loved to have it so; their ministers taught them to believe that the bishops were limbs of antichrist, the liturgy a rag of popery, and conformity a mark of the beast; and the much-abused prelates might, with justice, have complained, in the language of Isaiah, " O, my people, they that lead thee cause thee to err." 147 CHAPTER XXXIX. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. MCRDER OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF ST. ANDREWS. 1679. — The government suspicious of the intentions of the covenanters. — The primate resolves to go to court — his murder resolved on. — An attack on sheriff Carmichael feig^ied — their real views. — The primate crosses the Forth —slept at Kennoway — set out next morning — his deportment — Hackston chosen captain — his reasons for declining the post — Balfour of Burley chosen — their mani- festo— previous operations of the conspirators — deposition before the privy council — names of the conspirators — their fanaticism. — An account of the primate's escape on a former occasion — the pursuit — the primate wounded — o second wound — Russell's speech — their violence — Miss Sharp wounded — his last appeal to the murderers — the finishing assault — Miss Sharp — they rob the coach — Burnet's account. — The primate is accused of being a wizard — his composure and christian spirit — his character. — Remarks. — Hind Let Loose. 1679. — In a note to his History of the Church of Scot- land, Dr. Cook says — " The account which this historian [Wodrow], who was not partial to Sharp, gives of the murder, must, I should think, shock every mind not sunk in depravity^" And Dr. Bums, in the spirit of the covenant, says — " It is true he [Wodrow] does not deal in the harsh invective of the high cavalier party on such an occasion, and he would he far from maintaining that the prelate did not, in point of fact, deserve to die. . . . He just takes that view of it which every mode- rate and fair man on a proper knowledge of the dreadful state of the country at the time, and the agency of Sharp in the persecutions, will be inclined to take." Perhaps we shall be considered neither " fair nor moderate" by the descendants of the covenanters, if we say with Mr. Skinner — '* At last, by the repeated instigations of him who was a murderer from the be- ginning, and under the permission of heaven, for the filling up the measure of their iniquities, they put in execution the horrid purpose, which they had once [twice] attempted and ' Vol. iii. p. 346. 148 HISTORY OF THE [cUAP. XXXIX. still had their hearts set upon, against the one person in the kingdom whom, next to majesty, they most feared and hated.' It was surmised by government that the fanatics had some dangerous projects in contemplation at this period, and that they were encouraged in their seditious designs by some noble- men who kept themselves in the background. The Covenanted presbyterians were merely, in the language of the times, the " under-spur leathers," while " in the court itself there were then an Absalom and an Achitophel too, who were stealing away the hearts of the people; and they did not want many abettors, some of whom, perhaps, were the king's own ser- vants ^" To complain of these traitors, and to warn the king of his danger, archbishop Sharp resolved to take a journey to court; but it was previously necessary for his affairs, to return to St. Andi'ews. The murder of the primate had been long premeditated, and, in fact, it was a natural consequence of the principles dis- played in the Covenant, and the murderous doctrines taught by the field preachers. Wodrow delicately calls his execrable mur- der " a violent death," and himself " a bloody and perfidious man 2." Russell, in his account of this " fact," as it is likewise cautiously denominated, calls his murder a " duty,''' and says, " they resolved to fall upon Carmichel at St. Andrews;" that is, to murder him who was the sheriff-substitute, and an agent of the councils for the suppression of the conventicles. " Some objected, what if he should be in the prelate's house, what should be done in such a case ? Whereupon all present judged duty to hang both over port [gate] , especially the bishop, it being by many of the Lord's people and ministebs judged a DUTY long since, not to suffer such a person to live, who had shed, and was shedding, so much of the blood of the saints, and knowing that other worthy christians had used means to get him upon the road before^." So determined were these " saints" on their bloody work, that a short time before they sent John x\rchie and Henry Corbie into the western counties " to know the minds of other ministers and christians, which was evidently enough made known, by what was coming to their ears every day, of their resisting of soldiers, both at meet- ings and for paying cess." Going armed to their conventicles, resisting the troops, and murdering the soldiers, were therefore ])arts of an organised plan for the extirpation of the bishops ; ' True and Impartial Account, p. 72. * Vol. ii. p. 40 •' Russdl's Account of the Murder of Archbishop Sharp, appended to Kirkton' History, pp. 107, -108, 1()71>.] CHTRCH OF SCOTLAND. 149 not, as Wodrow falsely alleges, for self-defence, but for the bloody purpose of murdering their adversaries when opportu- nity offered. Russell continues — " One Alexander Smith, a wearer at the Struther Dyke, a very yodly man, after })rayer anent^ their clearness in tiie matter about [the murder of] Carmichel, desired all to go forward, seeing that God's glory was the only motive that was moving them to offer themselves to act for his broken-down work; and if the Lord saw it meet to deliver Carmichel into their hands, he would bring him in their way, and employ them in some piece of work more honour- able to God and them both"^; namely, the murder of the arch- bishop, which these " very godly men" premeditated. On Friday, the '2d of May, the primate crossed the Forth, accompanied by his eldest daughter Isabel; on the evening of that day he slept at captain Seton's, Kennoway, where he remained all night. Two of the murderers, well mounted and armed, came into that village about midnight, and made anxious enquiries whether or not the archbishop slept at the house of captain Seton. Upon receiving the required infor- mation, they hastily rode off and joined the conspirators, who were on the alert the next morning, when several ])arties t)f horsemen were seen to traverse the road betwixt Kennoway and St. Andrews. Dr. Monro waited on the primate on Sa- turday morning, previous to his leaving Kennoway, and found that his spirits were very much de|)ressed ; and it was re- marked, that on Friday night and Saturday morning he ate and drank very sparingly. He was likewise longer and more fervent than usual in his private devotions, as if he had had a presentiment of his approaching and fearful end. His reli- gious deportment on Saturday morning was so impressive, that the learned and pious Dr. Monro said he believed he was inspired. On Saturday morning, about nine o'clock, they continued their journey The primate was a man of good natural cou- rage, and having been so providentially preserved from the merciless hands of these fierce zealots for nearly twenty years, - he had brought his mind to entire confidence in the protection of God. In his conversation he dwelt entirely on the vanity of life, the certainty of death and judgment, the necessity of faith, good works, repentance, and daily renovation by the Holy Spirit; and, as if he had presaged sudden death, he gave his ' A vulgar Scotticism, whicli means " respecting," " regarding," " opposite to," " over against.'' ^ Russell's Account of the Murder of Archbishop Sharp, appended to Kirkton's History, pp. 409, 410. 150 HISrORVOFTHE [CHAP. XXXIX. daughter much pious counsel and advice; her answers to which were so satisfactory, that he embraced and formally blessed her, about half an hour before he was assaulted. As he passed the farm-house of Magus, he remarked to his daugh- ter, " There lives an ill-natured man : God preserve us, my child." The name of this ill-natured man was John Miller, and he was certainly in the secret of the murderers' intention, for on the 1st of May the conspirators met, and concerted the plan of the murder at his house, which they would not have done had he not been privy to their design. When the con- spirators passed his house, they inquired of him if that was the bishop's coach? From fear he made no answer; but his servant-woman ran up to Russell, who made the inquiry, and assured him that it was. The conspirators, except Rathillet, dropt their cloaks here when pursuing the archbishop, and he, like Saul, kept them till their return, for which he was on the watch, and delivered their cloaks, remarking, " Lord for- give you, sirs, for doing this so near my house, for it will herrie [ruin] me." — Not for doing the bloody deed itself, but for doing it so near to his house, and so too, by consequence, to im- plicate him. The party engaged about this " very godly" work, chose Hackston of Rathillt;t for their captain, and " blessed the Lord that had put it into the minds of his people to offer them- selves for carrying on the Lord's work !" They had appointed the next Saturday for seeking the Lord's mind further into the matter, and "that the Lord would stir up the minds o{ his people to appear for his cause." Hackston declined to act as captain, because he had a personal quarrel with the primate. The aichbishop's chamberlain had arrested him for embez- zling the property of one Lovel, of Cannuchie, to whom the primate was guardian. This Lovel was the archbishop's vassal, and had left Hackston guardian to his children, who was confirmed in his office by the primate, as the superior, in February, 1677. The rents of the estate of Cannuchie were due to the primate by decree and sentence of the judges; but out of kindness to Lovel's children he authorised Hackston to collect the rents, and sell the produce, that he might allow them an annual maintenance. Hackston collected the rents and sold the produce; but instead of accounting for the pro- ceeds, he purchased arms for the Covenanters. The primate accepted his bond for the debt, but Hackston still evaded the payment; and in March, 1678, during the primate's absence, and without his knowledge, his grace's chamberlain arrested him for the debt. His grace would not have consented to 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 151 his imprisonment, had he not been credibly informed that the rents of Cannnchie, and'the prodnce sold, had been dis- posed of by Hackston for horses and munitions of war, for equipping the conventicle saints, which they considered only as a spoiling the Egyptians. He continued in prison, till Dr. Falconer, his relation, became bound for the debt; and in consequence, " private pique, aggravating presbyterian ran- cour, inflamed him against Sharp." As he declined to act as their captain, John Balfour, of Burley, was chosen to com- mand this body of very godly men, and whom Wodrow always delicately terms " the captain," but carefully abstains from naming him, but whom Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharp describes as a ferocious enthusiast, " although he was by some reckoned none of the most religious. He was a little man, squint-eyed, and of a very fierce aspect!" They commenced operations by drawing up the paper below ^, which Hackston posted on the church-door of Cupar, in Fife, on Wednesday, the 30th of April. Next morning this paper struck terror into the whole inhabitants of Cupar, but particularly those employed in the execution of the laws; and they were further encouraged in their bloody purpose by Andrew Turnbull, who infoiined them that " all the west was already in arms^." ' " To all and sundry to whose hands these presents shall come, but especially to the magistrates and inhabitants of the town of Cupar, in Fife : — " Be it known to all men. That whereas under a pretext of law, though most falsely, there are most abominable, illegal, and oppressive robberies and spoils com- mitted in this shire, by captain Carnegie, and his soldiers, by virtue of a precept from that adulterer, Wm. Carmichel, held on to it by that perjured apostate, pre- late Sharp, a known enemy to all godliness : These are therefore to declare to all that shall any way be concerned in this villainous robbery and oppression, either by assisting, resetting, levying, or in any manner of way countenancing the same (however they thought themselves at present guarded by a military force, and these persons spoiled, despicable), that they shall be looked on as accessory to the robbery, and should meet with a punishment answerable to the villainy, and that by a party equal to all who durst own them in these courses; and that so soon as God shall enable them thereto, whose names they shall find under subscribed, in these following letters. A, B, C, &c." — MSS. Ep. Chest. Russell's Account, p. 411. True and Imp. Account, Appendix to the Preface, p. liii. ^ The following facts were deposed on oath before the privy council : — " On Thursday, the first day of May, in the morning, there were three or four of the villains at John Millar's house in Magus, and they had a discourse of my lord St. Andrews, and that his daughter was a high-handed gentlewoman, indeed, who refused the laird of Bams, who was seeking to marry her : he was a well-bom gentleman, and they were not so good, but lower than he. Another answered. We shall make him lower ere it be long. Then they fell all a wliis- pering for some space, and thereafter one of them broke out thus : — • We will be able to do it amongst ourselves, we need no other help ; Robert Black will be one. John Millar was present all the while ; and this Robert Black is the tenant in Baldinn^ at whose house either all the nine, or most part of them, were either all 162 HISTORY OF THR [CHAP XXXIX. The plot to murder the primate was of long standing ; and it appears that his grace was not the only one marked out for slaughter. There is no doubt but that at this lime they intended to have murdered Mr. Carmichael, the sheriff-sub- the night before, or breakfasted with him ia the morning; and it is reported, that at their parting, Black's wife, (when one of them kissed her), did bid God bless him and prosper him ; and if Long Lesslie [the incumbent of Ceres] be with him, lay ham on the green too : at which he answered, ' There is the hand shall do it.' "It is also reported for a certainty, that Andrew Turnbull, tenant to Broom- hall, crossed the water the same tide with my lord, and was the man that came to Kennoway, asking if my lord was quartered there, and thereafter was present at the fact, and encouraged the rest to it ; and said that all the west was up already. " When the murderers returned, to the spot, John Millar spoke with them, and his first expression was. Lord forgive you, sirs, for doing this so near my house, for it will berry me ; and thereafter he and his servants gave them their two cloaks and coat, which they dropped at his dykes, when they rode to the action, " Some four hours after my lord's corpse was brought into St. Andrews, Henderson in Kilbrachmont his son rode through St. Andrews on a bay horse, and at the Abbey-gate asked twice at one Habistone, if the good man of the abbey was dead ? and then rode peaceably away, and now talks of it freely enough, and the most part of this time since hath kept his father's house un- questioned until this hour, although it be not doubted that he was an actor. " The night before the murder. John Balfour and Rathillet came to the house of Rathillet, with a webster [weavei] in Balmarino parish, and stayed no longer but till the horses were baited, and Rathillet changed his breeches, and imme- diately horsed. John Balfour had his b^ard long, at least ten weeks grown ; and there was no mention of the murder at TlathiUet, till about nine o'clock at night the next day, at which time there came in a person to the house, and rounded [whispered] something to John Balfour's wife, who, within a little, (without any change of countenance), said, the bishop has taken a sleep in the home-going. For certain, John Balfour was not at Kinloch since the murder, nor for two days before. " In the beginning of the week after the murder, John Balfour's wife fled from Rathillet, leaving behind her a child, to whom she gave suck, and was dislo- cate in one of the arms, whereof the child was hke to die : within two days after, all the servants about the house fled, except one lass that attends that child. Robert Dingwall, son to William Dingwall, in Coldhame, near Leslie, is reported to have been at the murder ; and his father being examined at Cupar, depones, that on Saturday morning, young Inchdalrnie and Henry Shaw took away his son, well mounted and armed, but whither he knew not, and that he had not seen him since. "There is also one Robert Forrest, a bonnet-maker, who left Dundee for adultery, who drinking that Saturday morning with William Leslie, my lord chancellor's gardener, and John Colville, his rider, refused to drink a health, with this expression — ' Ere forty-eight hours ye shall get a health to drink indeed ;' and before the news came the length of Leslie, he fled, and hath not since appeared. " Robert Black and John Miller, with their servants, know all the persons, and for certain have prevaricated in their examinations at Cupar, and ever will, except the truth be extorted ane other way, for it is well known that the mur- derers are all as dear to them as their nearest relatives, and their giving in delations against them is called by them and their party a betraying of the godly." — MS. Papers in the Episcopal Chest at Aberdeen, A. 18. 1 lfc>79 ] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 153 stitute, as well as Mr. Leslie, the parish priest of Ceres, and made many eflbrts, both on the 2d and 3d of May, lo fall in with the former, in which they were hapj)ily disappointed. These blood-thirsty saints intended to have committed three mm'ders on Satnrday, the 3d of May, as a preparative to keep- ing a field-conventicle on Sunday, the 4th, " resolving to resist such as should offer to oppose the meeting, and there was one away for bringing of a minister i." This is a lively commen- tary on their principles ; and shows with how little reason the government of Charles II. has been accused of tyranny, in suppressing such " rendezvouses of rebellion," and '' nurseries for murder." On Friday night, the 2d of May, the thirteen murderers met on the moor, north-east from Gilston, one of whom was sent away, the rest " not being clear to reveal to him what was designed." He knew of their intention to murder Carmichel ; but it seems they did not consider it prudent to communicate to him their intention of murdering the primate 2, "These, after a whiles advising what to do, and no more coming, and fearing they should be discovered, went all to Robert Black's in Baldinny, himself being absent for fear of being taken, where, putting up their hor.ses, and praying (!) they laid down in the barn to sleep." They afterwards went eastwards, and were met by Andrew Guillon, who advised them where to go, so as to fall in with the archbishop. At this time "Balfour said, he was sure they had something to do, for he being at his uncle's house, intending towards the Highlands, because of the violent rage in Fife, tvas pressed in spirit to return ; and he inquiring the Lord's mind anent it, got that word borne in vpon him. Go AND PKOSPER. So he, coming from prayer, wonder- ing what it could mean, went again [to inquire the Lord's mind], and got it confirmed by that Scripture, Go, have not I SENT YOU .•* whereupon, he durst no more question, but pre- sently returned^." So here these murderers proceeded under a strong delusion, and by the instigation of the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning, as if acting under as divine a warrant as that under which Saul went forth to " slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ' Russell's Account, p. 411. ' The twelve conspirators names were — David Hackston of Rathillet, John Balfour of Kinlock, James Russell in Kettle, George Flenian in Balbath'.e, Andrew Henderson and Alexander Henderson in Kilbrachmont, William Daiziel in Caddam, James, Alexander, and George Balfour, in Gilston, Thomas Ness in F , and Andrew Guillon, weaver, in Balmarino. •'' Russell's Account, p. 413. VOL. III. X 154 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXIX. ass." Searching for Carmichel was a mere pretence ; and as a proof of this, that amiable lady, Mrs. Black, of Baldinny, sent a boy on Saturday morning, to inquire how they had sped, and to inform them that the archbishop's coach was approach- ing ; " which they seeing betwixt Ceres and Blebo-hole, said, * Truly this is of God, and it seemeth that God hath delivered him into our hands ; let us not draw back, but pursue ;' for all looked on it, considering the former circumstances, as a clear call from GoD io fall upon him^" Here Rathillet surrendered his command of the party, saying, " as he had a private quarrel with the primate, his re- venge would mar the glory of the action." James Russell said, " it had been borne in upon his spirit some days before in prayer, having more than ordinary overlettings of the spirit, that the Lord would employ him in some piece of service, ere it was long, and that there would be some great man who was an enemy to the kirk of God, cut off. . . . And seeing he had been at several meetings, with several godly men in other places of the kingdom, who not only judged it their duty to take that wretch's life, and some others, but had essayed it TWICE before, and came to the shire [of Fife] for that purpose, and once wonderfully he escaped aX the Queensferry,for he went down to Leith with the chancellor in a boat; in the meantime they were on the other side coming over, but knew nothing of it; and the Lord had kept them back at that time, he having more blood to shed, for this was about eight days before Mr. James Mitchel was executed ; but he said he was sure that he had a clear call at that time, and that it seemed the Lord had delivered that wretch into their hand, and he durst not draw back, but go forward, considering what engagements the Lord had taken from him the day before ; for though the Lord had kept him back formerly, he doubted not but his offer was acceptable to the Lord 2," This is the language of one of the principal actors in this horrid drama, Mitchel's attempt was not the solitary act of a desperate fanatic, impelled by a sudden impulse and a favour- able opportunity ; but the formed and systematic design of the whole party. Those who were capable, and whose reli- gious principles taught them to premeditate, and make so many attempts to take away the primate's life, as well as the lives of the other bishops, had no right to complain of the severities of the government. Such principles would disgrace a horde of Tartars, and ought not to have been tolerated by any govern- * Russell's Account, p. 414. ' Ibid. p. 415. 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 156 ment. Those men who justify and applaud the murder of the archbishop in the present day are partakers of the guilt of those fanatics who actually imbrued their hands in his blood. But what must be thought of those ministers of the Solemn League and Covenant who taught and inculcated such bloody tenets as works well pleasing and acceptable to God ? As THE archbishop's equipage drove past the Struthers, he sent a servant to say to the earl of Crawford that it was not in his power to wait on him at that time. Soon after passing the farm-house at Magus, between eleven and twelve o'clock, the coachman, looking round, saw the conspirators riding at full speed, pistols in hand, with swords drawn, and hanging from their wrists ; and he immediately called to the postillion to drive on, for he suspected their pursuers had evil intentions. Finding his coach driven at such an increased speed, his grace looked out to see what was the cause. Rus- sell was by this time so near as to see and recognise the arch- bishop ; and he immediately fired, and called to the rest to come up. The primate urged the coachman to drive on, and he kept on for half a mile before they overtook it; and would certainly have escaped, had not Henderson, who was best mounted, got ahead of the postillion, wounded him in the face, and cut his horses' hams ; by which means the coach was stopped, and the conspirators got up. On this, the archbishop, turning to his daughter, exclaimed, " Lord have mercy on me." " My poor child, I am gone !" They then fired into the coach, and wounded his grace two inches below the right clavicle or collar-bone, the ball entering betwixt the second and third ribs. This pistol was fired so close to his body that the wadding burnt his gown, and was rubbed off by Miss Sharp. This shot, which alone would have caused his death, was fired by George Fleman, who then rode forward, and seized the horses' bridles on the near side, and held them till George Balfour had fired into the coach. James Russell alighted, and taking Fleman's sword, opened the coach-door, and desired "Judas" to come forth, calling him " dog, betrayer of the ^oc?/y.' persecutor of Christ's church, &c." Russell, when he opened the coach-door, furiously desired him to come forth, for the blood he had shed was crying to heaven for vengeance on him, and thrust his shabel or hanger at him, and wounded him in the region of the kidneys. With the disgusting cant of the sect, Russell now said they committed this murder for the glory of God, and said he " declared before the Lord, that it was no particular interest, nor yet for any wrong that he had done to him, but because he had betrayed the church as Judas, 166 HISTORY OP THE . [CHAP. XXXIX. ai d had wning his hands these eighteen or iiineteen years in llie blood of the saints, but especially at Pentland, and Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Mitchel, and James Learmonth ; and they were sent by God to execute His vengeance on him this day, and desired him to repent, and come forth ^" John Balfour, who was still on horseback, also commanded him to come forth, and fired his pistol at him ; James Russell desired him again to come forth, " and make for death, judgment, and eter- nity 2." They called to him to "come out, cruel bloody traitor !" to which he answered, that he never wronged any man, and added, " Gentlemen, if you will spare my life, whatever else you will please to do, you shall never be questioned for it." They told him there was no mercy for a Judas, an enemy and traitor to the cause of Christ. Miss Sharp now sprung out, and falling on her knees, with tears and prayers, begged her father's hfe ; but her tender appeal had no effect on the fanati- cal enthusiasts ; they threw her down, trampled on her, and wounded her. Seeing the brutal treatment of his daughter, the archbishop came composedly out of the coach, and calmly told them, " he did not know that he had ever injured any of them, but if he had, he was ready to make reparation ; be- seeching them to spare his life, and he would never trouble them for that violence ; but prayed them to consider, before they brought the guilt of innocent blood upon themselves." '* The reverence of his person, his composed carriage, and his undaunted courage in addressing himself so resolutely and gravely to them, surprised and awed the villains, and one of them, relenting, cried. Spare those grey hairs! but their hot zeal consuming their natural pity, replied — ' He must die, he must die,' calling him ' traitorous villain, Judas, enemy to God and his people (!), and telling him he must now receive the reward of his apostacy, and enmity to the people of God 3.'" He now said, " Well, then, I shall expect no mercy from you; but promise me to spare my poor child, and for this, sir, give me your hand," offering his hand to John Balfour, and added, " I will come to you, for I know you are a gentleman and will save my life ; but I am gone already, and what needs more ?" By this time his grace felt the pain of his wounds increasing, and that death would ensue even though the blood-thirsty murderers had done no more. Reaching out his hand to him, to entreat the murderer to spare his daughter's life, and look- ing him full in the face, the fdoody villain started back, and ' Russell's Account, p. 417. " Ibid. p. 418. ^ Fanatical Moderation, Second Letter, p. 65. 1679.] ClIDRCH OF SCOTLAND 157 by a mighty blow cut him more than half through the wrist. Wodrow and Dr. Burns most malignantly and falsely say, the archbishop could not be prevailed on to pray ; and that there was no sign of contrition in him. This was rather an awful moment for the calm exercise of prayer; notwithstanding, such was the composure of this good man in his present peril, that he did pray, and that for his murderers too. The falsehood of saying he refused to pray was fabricated for the purpose of blackening his character, and keeping up the delusion in the public mind, that he was familiar with the devil, and prac- tised necromancy. But so far was he from refusing to pray, as they falsely and maliciously allege, that seeing all hope of softening the barbarians vain, he requested a short space for prayer. But this the assassins refused, exclaiming — " God would not hear the prayers of such a dog.'" " I hope," says he, *' ye will give me some time to pour out ray soul to God, and I shall pray for you ; and presently falling on his knees, he said, Lord forgive them, and I forgive you all ; Lord Jesus, receive my spirit '^T Whilst he was praying for himself and his murderers, they cut at him furiously on the hands ; and Balfour gave him one tremendous back-handed cut above the left eye, on which his grace exclaimed, " Now you have done the turn;" and then fell forward, with his head resting on his arms, as if he had been to compose hiiBself for sleep. The murderers then cut and hacked the back of his head, as he lay extended on the ground, and gave him sixteen wounds on the head, till they gashed the back part into one hole. " In effect, the whole occipital part was but one wound," Some of them, to make sure work, stirred his brains in his skull with the points of their swords, and pieces of the shattered skull and brains were found some days afterwards on the ground. After finish- ing their long-desired work, they made his servants swear not to discover them, and then bade them, in derision, take up their priest and be gone. In the acting of this dreadful tragedy. Miss Sharp was held fast by Andrew Guillon, from whom she struggled hard to escape. She screamed, and said, " This is murder." To whom G uillon replied, " It is not murder, but God's vengeance on him for murdering many poor souls in the kirk of Scotland." In her efforts to save her father, she was severely wounded in the thigh; and likewise in one of her thumbs, while she threw herself ' Account of the Privy Council. 168 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXIX. between the murderers and her father, on whose lifeless body she swooned. After this, they rifled his grace's pockets and robbed the coach, in which they found Miss Sharp's dressing- case, containing some gold and other articles. They carried off' his grace's night-bag, bible, girdle, and some important papers. They disanned and robbed his servants, one of whom, named Wallace, offered to make resistance, but he was se- verely wounded in the face by Russell, and his pockets rifled by the pious and godly executors of God's vengeance. There was no money found on the archbishop nor in the coach, save what they stole from Miss Sharp ; but it is singular that the eulogists of this parricide are most highly indignant that the saints have been accused of robbery; which is, indeed, a straining at gnats and swallowing camels. " Thus fell," says the account published by authority of the privy council, " that excellent prelate (whose character and worthy acts deserve, and no doubt will find, some excel- lent pen), by the hands of nine fanatic ruffians. That they were so is not to be doubted, their names being all now known, and all of them denounced or intercommuned, for frequenting field conventicles, and the known champions of that party in the shire of Fife. Besides, their bloody sanctified discourse at the time of their bloody actings shews what temper and spirit they were of. I have done with my relation (attested to me before famous witnesses, by my lord's daughter, and those of his servants that were so unfortunate as to be spectators of this execrable villainy) when I have observed how ridiculous the author of the pretended true one is, when he endeavours to discover the occasion of that murder of the archbishop of St. Andrews ; for what need was there of anything more to provoke them, than his being an archbishop and the primate of Scotland ; and the most active as well as the most reverend father of this church ? Was it not for this reason that he was, on the streets of Edinburgh, shot at by Mr. James Mitchel, while in his own coach .' Was not this the reason that these fanatical books fi-om Holland, both some time ago and of late, marked out his ' sacrum caputs as they term it, and devoted him to a cruel death, and gave out predictions that he should die so.? which they easily might, being so active in stimulat- ing and prompting instruments to fulfil their own prophecies. * O Lord, how unsearchable are thy judgments, and thy ways past finding out ! ^ ' " ' Narrative of the manner of the execrable murder of the late lord arch- bishop of St. Andrews, published by authority of the privy council, in folio, in 1679.] CHURCH OK SCOTLAND. 159 That presbvterian authors, even of the jtresent day, should exult over this effect of the principles of their own co- venant, is not to be wondered at ; but that a bishop should have identified himself with these murderers, and speak of this murder as " the just judgment of God '," is passing strange; and Burnet farther insinuates the accusation that the arch- bishop was a wizard, and had purchased a spell from the devil to kee}) him shot-free. " One of them," says he, " fired a pistol at him, which burnt his coat and gown, but the shot did not go into his body 2." In contradiction of this diabolical falsehood, there is a certificate of three surgeons and a doctor of medicine, who were sent by the privy council to view and embalm the body, that the pistol-shot entered " two or three inches below the right clavicle, betwixt the second and third ribs ;" and this wound alone would have occasioned his death, even if he had received none other. After murder had done its worst, he gives him one stab more, and endeavours to sacrifice the archbishop's memory to the obloquy of posterity ; and it is likely, if the " magical secret and suspicious things" had really been found upon him, his informer, Welsh, and others, would have better explained such a sin to the world, and made more noise about them. Having done their " very godly deed," the murderers did not stop to search his pockets or to examine his wounds, and therefore they could not tell whether the shot had entered or not, or whether he carried " a magical spell," for they hastened the murder in the most furious manner, and then rode off in haste. No man could have shewn more christian courage and resolu- tion in such a trying moment than did this christian martyr. He cautioned his murderers, who " gnashed on him with their teeth," against shedding blood ; but when he saw^ their deter- mination not to allow him the least time to recommend his soul to God, he bespoke their mercy for his daughter, and had only time to say he forgave them himself, and to pray God to forgive them also. This is an instance of composure and magnanimity in death, which is, perhaps, (mparalleled in his- tory since the first christian martyrdom ; and if death by ston- ing be justly considered martyrdom, surely murder by shoot- ing and stabbing, on account of episcopacy, may merit the same title. This was the crime with which his murderers up- braided him when they killed him, that he had embraced epis- copacy and had been tnie to it, as the truth and institution of the Advocate's Library, and likewise attached to the True and Impartial Account, pp. 140—144. ' Own Times, ii, 134. ' Page 222. 160 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XXXIX. God ; and he had now the christian fortitude to die for it, and also to pray for his murderers. But Burnkt slill farther maliciously concludes, " this was the dismal fate of that unhappy man, who certainly needed a little more time to have fitted him for an unchangeable state. But I would fain hope he had all his punishment in that terri- ble conclusion of his life." All men are not alike prepared for sudden death ; but, as before mentioned, this martyr's con- duct on the morning of his murder shews that he was in a very fit state to die, and his sufferings were such as his Lord and his God, into whose custody he recommended his parting spirit, had warned him and all His true disciples to expect. " The time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service." Now this prediction may much more literally be applied to their successors than to the apostles themselves, because they were put to death by heathens who knew not God, and therefore could not pretend to serve Him ; but this worthy martyr's murderers called themselves chris- tians, and actually boasted of the acceptable service they had done to God. The author of the Hind Let Loose vindicates this fulfilraent of prophecy, and all similar " attempts for cut- ting off such monsters of nature, as lawful and laudable ;" and to this vindication Dr. Bums adds his approving note, — " in the circumstances of the country at that time." No cir- cumstances can justify murder, or render it lawful or laudable ; but it becomes more heinous when perpetrated on the persons of those who by their office are consecrated to God's service, and represent the person of Jesus Christ. Whosoever receive the apostles and their successors, receive Christ ; yea, the gift to any of His disciples of a cup of cold water, in the true spi- rit of faith and obedience, has the promise of reward. But this christian martyr imitated his heavenly father's perfection, and not only forgave those who cursed, hated, and despitefully used him, but he blessed them and prayed for them, which was fulfilling the condition which our Lord exacted for the forgiveness of his own sins and infirmities. Burnet would insinuate as much as that the archbishop went straight to hell, an opinion which he probably adopted from his friend Mess John Welsh ; but if it be original, it verifies his own maxim of thinking and speaking ill of all churchmen. Under the guise of affected charity, he reflects most mali- ciously on the archbishop ; but he utters not one word against the " godly men" who committed this most atrocious murder. He seems rather, by his silence, to approve of their cruel ful- filmeut of prophecy. " No age," says Mr. Elliott, " or his- J 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 1(J I tory can scarce parallel so cruel, so barbarous and horrid a piece of villainy, as this of the murderers was ; so likewise we will no less find an unparalleled baseness in the historian. The murderers fell upon him with all the fury that their vile and wicked hearts were capable to vent or perform ; they dragged him out of his coach, and when he desired of them time to pray, they said, he need not pray, for he was in hell already." And if we were to take archbishop Sharp's charac- ter from Wodrow and his party, we should conclude that he " was as false as Judas ;" being, says Crookshanks, " an apos- tate from, and a betrayer of, the cause of Christ .... the actors could not, therefore, be charged with murder, nor the action be esteemed any other but an extraordinary execution of the law of God against such a capital offender. Besides, they looked upon themselves as in a state of war, and conse- quently as having a right to cut off their great enemy. . . . Only it is obvious, that whether the actors were right or wrong, he met with the just reward of his deeds, and God was righteous in the providence." Hetherington says, ** his death may be justly viewed as an instance of the retributive justice of God." The archbishop's character may be gathered even from his enemies, who have exhausted their malice and ingenuity in heaping calumnies upon him, and, as far as lies in their power, of murdering his memory and his character ; but they are declared to be blessed who are reviled, persecuted, and have all manner of evil falsely spoken against them by men for Christ's sake, and they are desired to rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is their reward in heaven. In these particulars, few men have had such good reason to rejoice as this worthy martyr ; and few men have borne such great indignities while living, with such patience and meekness, as he did. Mr. Elliott says of him, " I can justly and on good grounds say, that he was a most reverend and grave churchman, very strict and cir- cumspect in his course of life ; a man of great learning, great wit, and no less great and solid judgment ; a man of great council, most faithful in his episcopal office, most vigilant over the enemies of the church, and most observant of performing the duties of divine worship, both publicly in the house of God and privately in his own family. In a word, none could deserve better the place and dignity of primate of all Scot- land. I could say a great deal more in commendation of this most reverend and most worthy primate .... But if Burnet could have said any thing to stain the archbishop with immo- VOL. in. Y 162 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, XXKIX. rality in his life, he would certainly not have forgotten to have brought it in here ; but seeing he had nothing to say upon that head, why should he presume to pronounce such an uncha- ritable and unwarrantable judgment, ' that he certainly needed a little more time to fit him for an unchangeable state?' Hear what the unjust judge says ! He pronounces judgment without evidence. I am confident no good christian will ever pronounce any such sentence as this upon any man that has not been profligate and vicious in his deportment, but will rather have charity for him, and so much the more if he had been of civil and sober conversation ; and Burnet hath nothing to say to the contrary of the archbishop, and therefore his malicious reflections upon him give us a full demonstration of the baseness of his own spirit^ ." Mr. George Martine, of Claremont, who was commis- sary clerk of St. Andrews, and one of the primate's house- hold, says of him, that " he was a man of profound wisdom, great courage, wonderful zeal for God and his church, prudent in conduct, and indefatigably laborious. By an unusual sagacity, piety, sense of duty, foresight, and providence, he re- vived and cherished the small remainder of loyalty that re- mained amongst the ministry of this church [during the grand rebellion] ; and, for seven years, maintained the same in life and being, against all the invidious insinuations, and secret and open practices of the undermining party, till the happy change. And then he piously and dexterously contributed his effectual endeavours most successfully to the resettling of the church of Scotland, in its ancient and primitive offices and government, maugre all the opposition which he met with from divers parties and persuasions ; and by God's blessing, and the king's favour on his labours, he effectuated that great work, as if he had been born thereunto, which, it is thought, hardly any other could have done. He got the highest and greatest ecclesiastical dignity in the kingdom from king Charles H., after his restoration to the throne, as a debt \o his great abilities, and as a reward to his merits and services, in labouring might and main to effect and compass the king's restoration ; and he no sooner acquired this honour, but the enemies of kings and bishops m ScoilsLud persecuted him with slander and invectives, and tlie streets swarmed with libels * Specimen of the Bishop of Samm's Posthumous History of the Affairs of Chorch and State, pp. 2 — 10. — Iieslie's Cassandra, vol. vi. of the Rehearsals, p. 212—215. J 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 163 against him, and all because of his endeavours to set up epis- copacy, which was subverted by the Solemn League and the usurper Cromwell. Of this fabric he was the sole Atlas ; up- holding the same by his extraordinary prudence, watchfulness, courage, prayers and tears, against all his enemies, secret and avowed, in the state and in the church ; disappointing their designs and defeating their projects. Supported by his own innocency and duty, witli the reverence, constancy, and mag- nanimity proper to himself and his character (undervaluing all perils and dangers), he encouraged some and awed many into compliance ; which eminent services to God, the king, and the church, wrought and brought him to a crown of martyr- dom : for these procured him the inveterate, irreconcileable envy of the fanatic^ turbulent party P The w^hole body of the presbyterians have taken the blood of this martyr on themselves and on their children, by approv- ing of the deed, and I have never met with any of them who ever formally, and in aright spirit, disapproved of this murder, but who always reckoned it an act of justice. They wish it 10 be considered an accidental rencontre, but the circum- stances already detailed, and the fact attested by sir William Sharp, that there were twenty-seven men engaged, and there being three roads that he might take, they divided into three parlies, each taking one of these roads, so as to make sure of his murder, prove it to have been designed. A presbyterian author, of standard authority, speaks of this sacrilegious and most detestable murder as laudable and lawful : — " Nevertheless," says Shiels, " such lawful^ (and, as one would think,) laudable attempts for cutting off such monsters of nature, beasts of prey, burthens to the earth, as well as enemies to the commonwealth, are not only condemned as murders and horrid assassinations, but criminally punished as such; and upon this account the sufferings of such as have left a conviction upon the consciences of all that knew them, of their honesty, integrity, soundness in the principles, and seriousness in the practice of religion, have been several, sin- gular, and signally severe, and owned of the Lord, to the ad- miration of all spectators; some being cruelly tortured and executed to the death for essaying such execution ofjudgmenty as Mr. Mitchel; others for accomplishiny it, as Mr. Hackston, of Hathillet, Siud others, who avowed their accession to the cutting off that arch-traitor. Sharp, prelate of St. Andrews, and others, for not condemning that act of justice, though they were as innocent of the fact as the child unborn." — " However this may be exploded by this generation as odious 164 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XXXIX. and uncouth doctrine, yet in former periods of this church it hath been maintained with courage, and asserted with confi- dence. How the ancient Scots, even after they received the christian faith, served their tyrants and oppressors — how in the beginning of the Reformation, the killing of the cardinal [Beaton] and of David Rizzio were and are generally to this day justified^.'''' All the three parties rendezvoused, after the mur- der, on the afternoon of that memorable day, at a place called the Tewchits, where the whole party went to prayers, first to- gether, and afterwards individually, " with great composure of spirit, and enlargement of heart more nor [than] ordinary, blessing the Lord, who had called them out, and carried them so courageously through so great a work, and led them by his Holy Spirit in every step that they stepped in that matter, and prayed that, seeing he had been pleased to honour them to act for him, and to execute his justice upon that wretch (whom all who loved the welfare of Zion ought to have striven who might have had their hand first on him), might let it be known, by keeping them out of the enemy's hands, and straight in his way, that they did nothing out of any self-prejudice nor self-interest, but only all they were commanded of God; and as now he had been pleased to lead and guide them by his Spirit, and made them act valiantly as soldiers of Jesus Christ, not being ashamed of what they had done, but desiring to glorify God for it, and was willing, if he should be pleased to see it for his glory, they were willing to seal the truth of it with their blood, through his grace and strength enabling them, who would send none a warfare on their own charges 2." It is very shocking to think what a " strong delusion" pos- sessed the minds not only of these murderers, but of the whole presbyterian party. These men truly verified our blessed Lord's prophetic words ; and the reason which Christ assigned for evil-treating the apostles is fully as applicable to those who killed their successor as to them — " because they have not KNOWN the Father nor me^.''' Had they known the Father, or had they been guided by the gospel of his Son, they would have obeyed those who were set in authority over them, and have held such in estimation, — they would have obeyed every ordinance of man for Christ's sake, and would have known that the prayers o( unrepentant murderers, and of men swollen with spiritual pride, are an abomination to the Lord. Burnet most maliciously and falsely asserts, that all ranks * Hind Let Loose, pp. 635-638. ' Russell's Account, p. 422. 3 St. John, xvi. 2, 3. 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 165 of the clergy of the church of England, in those days, " were the most corrupt body of men in the nation ;" — " they allowed themselves," he says, " in many indecent liberties — railing scurrilously — cherishing profaueness — implacably set on the ruin of all that separated from them ; and, in a word, many of them were a reproach to Christianity and their profession." His words having been cited by a most illustrious contempo- rary as a gross libel on the clergy, he goes on to refute Burnet's assertions, and says, " That England never saw before a more learned, pious, and eminent clergy, than they were at that time, of which this history speaks. That it is never to be expected but among so many there will be some who live not up to their profession ; but this accuser of the brethren draws his con- clusion against the whole body ' as the most corrupt body of men in the nation.' This was not meant as an admonition to them, to amend them, but left as a character upon them for after ages, when they were dead, and could not justify them- selves However, how could so much tenderness of conscience and charity as he pretends to, think it no crime to leave so black and odious a character to posterity of the church, his mother, had she deserved it? But when the brightest state of our church since the Reformation is thus represented, what name shall we give it? and coming from a person of figure in it, and living in that time, what would hinder foreign churches to believe it, and our dissenters at home to make their own use of it ? . . . And yet in that most corrupt state of the English church, which he does instance, in the reign of Charles II., he might have found, if he had been inclined to have inquired on that side, that more acts of public charity and benefit to the nation were done by the bishops and clergy, in proportion to their revenues, than by five hundred times as much that was in the hands of the laity; and by one single bishop, at one time, more than the saints had done with all the bishops' lands in England during the many years they had possessed them on pretence of making better use of them." 106 CHAPTER XL. THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP BURNET. 15;9._Council's letter to the king— the king's reply.— A proclamation.— Car- gill's intercepted letter. — Council's proceedings. — Wodrow's remarks. — Pro- posed union between a body of papists and the covenanters. — Conventicle at Galashiels. — Symptoms of rebellion. — Sedition at Rutherglen. — The Ruther- glen declaration. — Burning acts of parliament. — Graham of Claverhouse. — Marched against the rebels — seized King — set out for Drumclog. — Amount of the rebel's forces. — The action there. — Retreat of Claverhouse. — Rebels march to Hamilton — and Glasgow — retreat to Hamilton. — Cameron. — A pro- clamation. — Lord Ross retreats to Kilsyth. — Duke of Monmouth takes the command of the army. — Transactions of the rebels — they advance to Monk- land — order the ministers to preach to a certain text. — A reinforcement from Galloway. — Cessnock. — Gordon of Earlston. — A council of war. — Lord Melville held intercourse with the rebels. — Negociations. — The battle of Both- well Bridge. — The retreat. — The royal clemency. — The prisoners. — A procla- mation.— Disposal of the prisoners. — ^Two ministers and others hanged. — Concluding remarks. 1679. — The murder of the archbishop took place about one o'clock in the afternoon, and the intelligence was brought to Edinburgh the same night ; when the privy council imme- diately assembled, and addressed a letter to his majesty, to in- form him of the parricide ; in which they say, " The arch- bishop of St. Andrews, primate of this your majesty's ancient kingdom, one of your majesty's privy council, having been yesterday assassinated upon your majesty's highway, at noon- tide, by ten or eleven fanatic ruffians, bare and open faced, by so many wounds as left one of many instances of their un- paralleled cruelty, most of his wounds having been given after he was visibly dead; we could not but acquaint your sacred majesty by this express, by which your majesty may easily consider whether we have been needlessly jealous of the cruelty of that sect that is by our enemies said to be so unnecessarily persecuted by us ; and by which, and the many late murders committed upon your soldiers, and others, for doing your service, your majesty may, and we may certainly concludA 1679.] HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 167 these of that profession will be insatiable, till by crimes and cruelties they do all that in them lies to force your majesty from your royal government ; this being the natural product not of their humours, but of their principles, out of which these flames will undoubtedly at last arise, that will consume even those who accuse the necessary zeal of your servants, as illegal, oppressing of tender consciences, albeit we never straitened the liberty of any religion save that which dissolved the principles of human society, and unhinged your majesty's royal government ; nor can we omit upon this occasion to in- form your majesty, that this assassination has been revived by a paper lately spread here, whereby the just execution of Mr. James Mitchel, who died for attempting formerly the same crime, is charged upon your ministers and judges as as illegal a murder as that which he designed to commit, though he died inveighing to the greatest height of bitterness against your ma- jesty in his last speech." In a letter the duke of Lauderdale was informed at the same time of the murder, and of the steps that had been taken ; and that some of the forces had pursued some suspected per- sons who made resistance, and, in consequence, that one oi them, who proved to be Andrevy Ayton, esq. younger, of Inchdairny, was mortally wounded by a pistol-shot in the scufile, and that Henry Shaw, an intercommuned person, had been taken. The king wrote to the privy council a long letter with his own hand, in which he expresses his abhorrence at the barbarous effects of presbyterian principles ; " an action," he says, " attended with so many circumstances of inhuma- nity and barbarity, as that were it not certified to us from so good hands, we could not have believed that in any nation civilized (much less where Christianity is professed) there could have been such a hellish design contrived, much less put in execution. . . . For we do look upon them [the ac- complices] as no less guilty thereof than the wretches that as- sumed the boldness and impiety to shed that innocent blood, and that to so high a degree of cruelty and barbarity as can hardly be paralleled in any nation." On the 4th of May the council issued a proclamation, commanding all the heritors in the county of Fife to bring their tenants and cottars to St. Andrews, Kirkaldy, Dumferm- line, and Cupar, in order that the witnesses of the horrid tra- gedy might be able to identify any of the murderers, if any were present ; and rewards were offered for the discovery of the murderers, or those who had " hounded them out." The council expressed t!)e just indignation and horror with which all 168 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XL. christian and upright men ought to speak of such villainy, and say, " which barbarous and inhuman assassination and parri- cide will (we doubt not) spread horror and amazement in all the hearts of such as believe that there is a God, or a christian religion ; a cruelty exceeding the barbarity of pagans and heathens, amongst whom the officers and ministers of religion are reputed to be sacred, and are by the respect borne to the deity which they adore secured against all such bloody and execrable attempts ; a cruelty exceeding the belief of all true protestants, whose churches have justly stigmatised with the marks of impiety all such as defile with blood those hands which they ought to hold up to heaven ; and a cruelty equal to any with which we can reproach the enemies of this true and reformed church, by which also not only the principles ot human society, but our authority and government (the said archbishop being one of our privy council), is highly violated, and example and encouragement given for murdering all such as serve us faithfully, according to the prescript of our laws and royal commands, daily instances whereof we are to ex- pect, whilst field conventicles, those rendezvouses of rebellion, and forges of all Moody awe? Jesuitical princijdes, are so fre- quented and followed, to the scandal of all government and the contempt of our laws : and which murder is, as far as is possible, rendered yet more detestable by the unmasked bold- ness of such as durst openly, with bare faces, in the midst of our kingdom at mid-day, assemble themselves together to kill, in our highway', the primate of our kingdom, and one of our privy council, by so many strokes and shots as left his body as it were but one wound ; and many of them being given after they knew he was dead, were remarkable proofs they were ac- tuated by a spirit of hellish and insatiable cruelty." The murderers did not continue longer in thebarn than the approach of darkness enabled them to escape with safety across the Forth, to join their friends in the presbyterian dis- tricts. By an intercepted letter from John Cargill to his brother Donald, one of their most esteemed ministers, it would appear that the rebellion had been preconcerted, and that the archbishop's murder had been a preliminary step ; for on the date of the murder he alleges that there were 10,000 men already in the field. It would also appear that the conspiracy had included the murder of several other prelates ; but who had providentially escaped their fury. Cargill says — " I am glad to hear of your welfare, and that you continue in the faith, which I wish you may retain, and persevere in to the end. You shall know that our forces daily increase, and are now 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 169 surmounted to the number of 10,000, and there are daily adding to the number of those who shall be saved. I hope you have heard of the dreadful death of the old fox, who was clothed with the sheep's skin, and countenanced with the king's authority. The same was intended for others also, but it seems God hath not altogether forsaken them, and given them over to themselves ; but it may be supposed that they are referred to a greater judgment, which God in his own appointed time will cause fall upon them, and send deliverance to his people, which shall be the daily prayers of him who greets you in the Lord. I am infonned that the king is sending down 5,000 English, under the command of the duke of Monmouth, to assist the prelatical party, and to suppress the godly : but God knows how to deliver the just from the hand of their enemies. But I hope within a few months we shall see an end of thir things ; and then shall the righteous flourish like a palm-tree, which shall be the evening, morning, and mid-day prayers of your beloved brother in the Lord, " 3d May, 1079. J. C. " Directed to Mr. D C 1, minister of the gospel at Glasgow. With care deliver these." A PROCLAMATION was issued to prevent any one under the degree of a nobleman or gentleman of estate, from travelling with arms without license; at the same time giving warning to the people that the meeting in arms in an illegal manner in- curred the guilt of high treason. And although such breaches of the law had been hitherto overlooked, yet now finding such meetings of armed men at "these rendezvouses of rebellion" were with criminal intentions, " which grow in proportion to the clemency" which had been shewn, it was determined that all judges and officers of the forces should proceed against all such as go with any arms to those field-meetings, as traitors. And it is added, " we being fully convinced both by reason and experience that those meetings do certainly tend to the ruin and reproach of the christian religion and discipline, to the introduction of popery and heresy,, the subversion of monarchy, and the contempt of all laws and government." Upon which Wodrow observes, " it will certainly, when remarked by posterity, leave a lasting reproach upon this period and govern- ment, to find such a public declaration concerning the pure and peaceable preaching of the gospel. . . . No wonder .such a proclamation drove ])eople to measures which otherwise they had no mind to. The former laws and their severe exe- cution forced people to come with arms to hear the gospel [but VOL. III. z 170 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XL. not to pray] ; now this is made treason, and they traitors. And when no way of relief was possible, but by standing their ground, we need not be surprised, after what went before, and this proclamation, to hear of a rising very scon, especially if we consider the further severe methods agreed upon at this time.i" In anticipation of a designed "rising," attempts were made to divide the king's forces, and withdraw them from the scene of the *' pure and peaceable" gospel ; but the council had the good sense to order the earl of Argyle, and some other lords, to call out their feudal array, with forty days' provision, and suppress " the rebellious and disorderly practices of the lord Macdonald and his accomplices," to whom the whigs had made overtures for union and co-operation 2, and who are de- nominated " rebels and papists." Herod and Pontius Pilate can be politically reconciled as well for the extermination of the ch urch, as for the crucifixion of her Head and Redeemer ; and the " pure and peaceable gospel," and " the idolatrous mass," can be united when their mutual necessities require such an un- natural union. But the extirpation of the reformed catholic church was the real object of both the rebel parties, although the one pretended to seat King Jesus on his throne, and the other to exalt the supremacy of the pope. Colonel James Graham, of Claverhouse, surprised a con- venticle at Galashiels, in the diocese of Glasgow, and cap- tured Thomas Wilkie, the minister, who, with Francis Irvine, an intercommuned minister from Dumfries, were sent to the Bass. The PRESBYTERIANS were now sensible that the sacrilegious murder which some of their body had committed on the per- son of the archbishop of St. Andrews, and who was also a privy councillor, would not be overlooked by the goverament. And they were, besides, inflamed by the presence of the raur- deters, who had sought shelter among them, who, says their historian, " might help on the warmth upon that side to which they joined, and endeavour to bring matters to such an issue as to serve themselves by a formed rising 3," The bickerings and disputes among themselves, too, about the indulgence and cess, their right-hand defections and left-hand backslidings, as- sisted gieatly to hasten the open rebellion which was now on the eve of breaking out. The itinerant or " vagrant" ministers,with their followers, hated the indulged ministers almost with as ' Wodrow's History, iii. 58-60. " Vide Lord Macdonald's petition, Wodrow, iii. 88. 3 Wodrow's History, iii. 08. 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 171 cordial a hatred as they did the episcopal clergy, and it was with difficulty that they were brought to act in concert. If they had been unanimous, and had had leaders of any military sagacity, their rebellion might have been much more formida- ble than it was. Douglas, Cargill, Cameron, and " Kirkland's curates," were divided against Welsh, Hume, Semple, and Others, who, although holding the indulged in equal contempt, yet thought it expedient at present to court them. These two parties were, however, fiercely exasperated against each other, and their military councils were governed by the party ani- mosities of the leaders who might happen at the moment to preponderate. The strict pursuit of the conventicles made the presbyterians unite several of the smaller meetings into one considerable one. In consequence of parties of military that were sent to disperse them, their numbers in arms increased, " and warm persons coming in among them, projects were spoke of k la-volee [rashly] ; and some put upon courses they at first had no view of, nor design to come to. They continued together in parties through the week ; and their tempers, by hai'dships and conversation, being heightened, there it as talk- ing of going some further length than mere self-defence : but any thing that way came never to any bearing till Drum- clog i." Multitudes of armed men congregating and exciting each other with their real and imaginary grievances, now thought themselves equal to effect a revolution, especially as the whigs in England gave them secret encouragement to perse- vere. Mr. Hamilton, a nephew of bishop Burnet, and a " lively and hopeful youth" whom " he bred himself," but who, he now says, had ** become a crack-brained enthusiast, and, under the shew of a hero, was an ignominious coward 2," moved " that somewhat farther should be done by them as a testimony against the iniquity of the times 3." This is a tolerable speci- men of Burnet's " breeding," and shews that whilst he wore the habit of a churchman he had been at heart a presbyterian, and had insinuated his principles into his " lively and hopeful nephew." After serious consideration and prayer, they re- solved to continue to hear that other'^ gospel which was pro- pagated at the point of the sword, and to publish their testi- mony against the sins of other men, who were obedient to divine and human laws. The conventicle which was held in the latter end of the month of May, therefore, sent this " crack- » Wodrow's History, iii. 63. » Own Timea, ii. 233. 3 Wodrow, iii, 66. * Gal. i. 8, 9. 172 HISTOKY OF THE lCHAP. XL. brained enthusiast" Hamilton, Douglas, a preacher, and eighty ' armed men, to the burgh of Rutherglen, about four miles east- ward of Glasgow, on the afternoon of Thursday, the 29th oi May, being the anniversary of the king's birth-day, and of the Restoration. To evince their contempt for that memorable day they extinguished all the bonfires, and read the following Declaration and Testimony of some of the presbyterian party in Scotland, and afterwards affixed it to the market-cross of that burgh with great formality : — " As THE Lord hath been pleased to keep and preserve His interest in this land by the testimony of faithful witnesses from the beginning, so some in our days have not been want- ing, who, upon the greatest of hazards, have added their tes- timony to the testimony of those who have gone before them, and who have suffered imprisonments, finings, forfeitures, banishment, torture, and death, from an evil and perfidious adversary to the church and kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in the land. Now we, being pursued by the same adversary for our lives, while owning the interest of Christ according to his Word, and the national and Solemn League and Covenants, judge it our duty (though unworthy, yet hoping we are true members of the church of Scotland) to add our testimony to those of the worthies who have gone before us, in witnessing against all things that have been done publicly in prejudice of His interest, from the beginning of the w^ork of reformation, especially from the year 1648 downward, to the year 1660. But more particularly those since ; — as, " 1. Against the Act Rescissory, for overturning the whole covenanted Reformation. — 2. Against the acts for erecting and establishing of abjured prelacy. — 3. Against that decla- ration imposed upon, and described by all persons in j)ublic ti'ust, where the Covenants are renounced and condemned. — 4. Against the act and declaration published at Glasgow, for outing of the faithful ministers who could not comply with prelacy, whereby three hundred and upwards of them were illegally ejected. — 5. Against that presumptuous act for im- posing a lioly anniversary day, as they call it, to be kept yearly upon the 29lh of May, as a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving for the king's birth and restoration ; whereby the appointers have intruded upon the Lord's prerogative, and the observers have given the glory to the creature that is due to our Lord Redeemer, and rejoiced over the setting up an usurping power to the destroying the interest of Christ in the land. — 6. Against the Explicatory act, 1G()0, and the sacrilegious sui)vcuiacy 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. ] 73 enacted and established thereby.— Lastly, Against the acts of council, their warrants and instructions for Indulgence, and all other their sinful and unlawful acts, made and executed by them, for promoting their usurped supremacy. *•' And for confirmation of this our Testimony, we do this day, being the 29th of May, 1679, publicly at the cross of Rutherglen, most justly burn the above-mentioned acts, to evidence our dislike and testimony against the same, as they have unjustly, perfidiously, and presumptuously burned our sacred Covenants. And we hope none will take exception against our not subscribing this our testimony, being so so- lemnly published, since we are always ready to do in this as shall be judged necessary, by consent of the rest of our suf- fering brethren in Scotland." After burning the above-named acts of parliament, extin- guishing the fires, reading their Testimony, and affixing it upon the market-cross, which might be considered as a decla- ration of war, Hamilton and his party quietly retired to Evan- dale and Newmills, in the county of Ayr, where a conventicle was to be held by Douglas on the Sunday following. This exploit created a considerable sensation both at Glasgow and Edinburgh. The council had conferred extensive powers on colonel Graham, who was then at that city, and he deter- mined to pursue the party who had been guilty of the insolent act of rebellion at Rutherglen. On Saturday, the 31st May, he marched from Glasgow, at the head of three troops of horse, and in the afternoon he seized Mess John King, at Hamilton, where he intended to have held a conventicle the next day, in the immediate vicinity of the duke's residence, which gives good reason to infer that the duke of Hamilton connived at, if he did not encourage, these unholy meetings. King had his well-mounted body guard, as well as Welsh, for Claverhouse seized fourteen men, and all strangers who were with him in the house. " There was some pretence," says Wodrow, " to seize King, being a vagrant preacher, and I think intercom- muned^" Some of his guards, however, made their escape, and entertained thoughts of rescuing the preacher and their friends, and took the direction of Loudon -hill, for the purpose of securing the assistance of the armed saints at that con- venticle. Here Claverhouse first heard of the meeting at Loudon hill, and he determined to attend it with his troop ; so, on Sunday morning, the 12th of June, he set out, and carried • History, iii. 69. 174 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLI. his prisoners along with him. At the village of Strath aven he received certain information that Douglass was to preach that day at Loudon-hill, a few miles distance southwards, whither he proceeded. Their scouts brought notice to the conventicle of the advance of Claverhouse just after the preach- ing had begun; and immediately those who carried arms left the women and others with the preacher, and advanced to a strong position, called Drumclog. Burnet's hopeful nephew- commanded the rebels; Balfour, of Burley, and some of the other murderers of the archbishop, also held commands. Wodrow says " they had forty horse and two hundred footmen, very ill provided with ammunition, and untrained, but hearty and abundantly brisk for action." De Foe says they amounted to two hundred and fifty ; but " before the action began, it's thought they were near four hundred. The assembly was great, and the people sat all on the ground, on the side of a steep hill, the minister preaching to them from a little tent near the bottom of the hilP." The rebels were posted behind a stone fence with a ditch in front, from which they fired with security and effect. It was found that no impression could be made on the sti'ength of their position with cavalry, and after several attempts to force their defences, Claverhouse was obliged to retreat precipitately, with the loss of forty men killed, besides a great many wounded. He himself was nearly taken by a Mr. Cleland, and his horse was severely wounded ; the rebels pursued the king's troops for some distance, and liberated King and the other prisoners 2. Five prisoners were taken, one of whom was shot by Hamilton, who had issued an order, previous to the engagement, that no quarter should be fiiven; that is, to put the prisoners to death. The other four were saved by the humanity of some of the other rebels 3. Only one of the rebels w^as killed in the action, and Dalziel, one of the primate's murderers, died some days after of his wounds. This unexpected victory elated the rebels, and made them think that it was an answer to theirprayers; and visions of the enthronization of King Jesus flickered across the mind's eye of both the ministers and the soldiers of the Covenant. Ha- milton resolved to continue in arms, because, having com- mitted such an overt act of treason, " they could not separate without evident hazard. After an unnecessary delay of seve- ral hours, the rebels marched to Hamilton in the evening, ' Memoirs of the Church of Scotland, p. 196. ' Ibid. 197— Wodrow, iii. 69. — Vide " Old Mortality." ' Note by Wodrow's editor, p. 70. 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 175 instead of making all haste to Glasgow, where lord Ross, with the king's troops, were in the utmost consternation. The news of their victory brought together all the covenanters in the neighbourhood, and on Monday, the 2d of June, their numbers were increased to two thousand men, when they advanced on Glasgow; but before reaching that city their army had in- creased to seven thousand men. In this brief space lord Ross had thrown up barricades of overturned carts in the leading streets, through which the rebel saints might be expected. About ten o'clock the rebels entered the town in two divi- sions, one under Hamilton by the Gallowgate, and the other by the cathedral and college, and attacked the barricade in the High street. Hamilton shewed the utmost poltroonery. He took shelter in a house while his men attacked the barri- cades, but they were unable to force them, and therefore both divisions of the rebels retreated, and uniting, took up a posi- tion immediately outside the town, and waited in order of battle for the attack of the king's troops, who did not think it con- venient to leave their intrenchments. The rebels behaved with great courage and intrepidity, and had they been properly commanded, or led on by inferior officers acquainted with their business, they might have dislodged the king's troops. Lord Ross sent out some videttes to ascertain the position of the rebels, but took no active steps to attack them. On the evening of the primate's murder, we are informed by Cargill that the organized members of this rebellion " were now sur- mounted to the number of ten thousand;" but they had not all at this time joined their standard. Seeing that lord Ross lay inactive at Glasgow, the rebels marched back to Hamilton, a distance of about ten miles, " where they formed a kind of camp; the people not being unfriendly, and the duke and duchess at London, they took the liberty to put their horses into their parks." Numbers now began to join the rebel stadnard; and there were no less than eighteen fighting mi- nisters of the Covenant, whose watch-word was — The sword of the Lord and of Gideon! Thr privy council issued a proclamation on the 3d of June, in which the rebels were commanded " to desist from their rebellion, and to lay down their arms, and to render and present their persons to the earl of Linlithgow, &c. or to some other of our officers or magistrates, within twenty-four hours after publication hereof, with certification to them, if they continue in rebellion after the said time, they shall be holdcn and proceeded against as incorrigible and desperate traitors, and that they shall be incapable of mercy and pardon." The 176 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLI. council also called out the militia, and the nobility with their feudal retainers from the northern counties. Lord Ross became alarmed at the sudden increase of the numbers of the rebels, without reflecting that they were un- disciplined rustics; and instead of attacking them with his disciplined and well-appointed troops, he evacuated Glasgow, and retreated to Kilsyth, on the 3d of June, where he was joined by tlie earl of Linlithgow, the commander-in-chief, with the forces under his command. The council ordered the earl of Linlithgow to concentrate his forces at Edinbnvgh, which he did accordingly; and his lordship requested the coun- cil to apply to the king for the assistance of English troops. " When," says Salmon, " the news of the insurrection arrived at London, the Whigs, it seems, and particularly the lord Shaftesbuiy, opposed the sending of any English troops to suppress it ; but the king was so happy as not to be governed by them, and immediately ordered the duke of Monmouth for Scotland ^" On the 18th June the duke arrived at Edinburgh, and was admitted a privy councillor, and the next day assumed the command of the army, which was put in motion towards Hamilton, in the slowest and most dilatory manner, which it was thought was for the purpose of giving the rebels time to make their submission. In the meantime the rebels were wasting their time in theological disputes and hair-splitting dissensions about their stumblings and short-comings, their defections and back- slidings, instead of taking any measures either for offence or defence, while their partizans were daily adding to their strength, and they amounted at one time to eighteen thousand men. Hamilton proposed to publish a Testimony against the Indulgence and the payment of the cess; but he was opposed by those who had enjoyed the one and paid the other. The indulged wished to make the old distinction betwixt the au- thority and the person of the king, and to fight for the king against Charles Stuart; while Hamilton and the vagrants wished to declare that the king had forfeited the crown, be- cause he had disowned and burnt the Covenant. This he called the right stating of the quarrel; but in this council of war there were eighteen ministers, some of whom had been in- dulged, and others were " vagrants." " Neither party would submit to the other, and all their councils became scenes of tunrnlt and angry contention, discouraging the army, keeping back many who would have joined them, inducing others to ^ Examination of Burnet's History, ii. 846. 1679.J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 177 abandon a divided and falling cause, and holding Iheia spell- bound, while their enemies were preparing to crush them^" The rebels moved to within four miles of Glasgow, and the kirk of Monkland seems to have been their head quarters. On Sunday, the 15th,when the ministers were to ply their vocation, " a council of war called the whole ministers, and told them, if they did not preach name and surname against the Indul- gence, they should preach none. They [the ministers] thought it very hard to be kept within guard, and to be commanded what to preach. They told them they were to receive their commission from Jesus Christ what to preach, and not from them. . . . We told them, it was the height of supremacy to give instructions to ministers what to preach: we would hear no such doctrine 2." Ure's Narrative shews, that what they called councils of war, which they held daily, were rather presbyteries or synods than the debates of sane men, banded in arms against a powerful government, without resources of any sort, magazines, or even a supply of provisions. In one of these anomalous meetings, Ure very justly told them, that instead of preparing to face the king's troops, " ihey were come here to fight among themselves; and if they got their wills, they would be a reproach as long as the world stands ^." The Same narrator says, " We marched after tliat about a long mile north from the moor towards Cumbernauld, and when they came there they called a council of war, and we marched immediately back again, the way we came, to the moor, and over to Hamilton town," where they were joined by one thousand horsemen from the diocese of Galloway *. This was the party that were raised in Nithsdale, and in which a cornet Smith served. On their march, Smith says they were supplied by several secret friends, among others by sir Hugh Campbell and his son, sir George, the former of whom was afterwards arrested and tried for this act of treason, and is duly enrolled among the martyrs. At Cessnock, the scat of these gentlemen, cornet Smith says, sir Hugh and his son made these rebels a present of four hundred lances as " a free and voluntary gift." Smith then narrates an anecdote of one of the rebel chiefs: — " There was one passage in this march which I cannot forbear to relate ; viz. that as we were passing by the old castle of Thrieve (...), old — Gordon, of Earls- ston, who in a few days afterwards was killed at Bothwell ' Hetherington, p. 151. — Vide " Old Mortality." ^ Ure's Narrative of the Rising at Bothwell, in Memoirs of Veitch and Brysson, pp. 466, 67. 3 Ibid. 468. * Ibid. 473- VOL. III. 2 A 178 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLI. Bridge, in my hearing, spoke to the officers about him as fol- loweth: — " Gentlemen, I was the man that commanded the party which took this castle from the late king, who had in it about two hundred of the name of Maxwell, of whom the greater part being papists, tve put them all to the sword, and demolished the castle, as you see it. And now, though an old man, I take up arms against the son, whom / hope to see go the same way that his father did, for we never can put trust in a covenant-breaker: so, gentlemen, your cause is good; ye need not fear to fight against a foresworn king^." It was necessary to hold another council, or rather pres- bytery, to inform these new recruits of their disputes, and to engage them on the different sides; and after they had fought all their theological battles over again, the draft of a petition to the duke of Monmouth was read, but which one of the par- ties thought was too " humbly drawn," and before they could agree upon another, a private messenger brought Welsh infor- mation that the royal army was advancing. Ure says, they were no more concerned for an enemy than if there had not been one within a thousand miles of them; and he distinctly accuses the ministers of preventing any overtures from being made to the duke, " for they did not desire us to agree. . . . Our men, with our divisions, slipped away still from us; for it was our common discourse, that we could do no good'^." MiLLEK, who brought the private message to Welsh, was sent by lord Melville, and he again had a written declara- tion from the duke, " warranting lord Melville to send a mes- senger to the rebel army, to Mr John Welsh and Mr. David Home, and to tell them from him that they might send a pe- tition to the duke of Monmouth, and that they might expect good conditions^." Lord Melville told Miller, that "if he were at Mr, John Welsh, he would sit down on his knees and beg them to lay down their arras ; for if they will not follow advice, and these people be broken, it will ruin the presby- terian interest." But the chiefs of the rebels and the ministers were more intent upon their theological disputes than pos- sessed of common military prudence, and " had it not been for the intelligence brought by the said Miller, the king's army liad surprised the rebels, and got all of them, as it were, in a hose net*." This communication was with the privity of the ' Smith's Information, A.ppendix to Bishop Spratt's Account of the Ryehouse Plot, p. 174. - Ure's Narrative, p. 47-1. 3 M'Crie's note to Memoirs of Wm. Vcitcli, p. 109-110. ■ M'Crie'fs note lo Ure's Narrative, 475. 1G79.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 179 duke, and had been preconcerted at London before he left it, by Shaftesbury and other \vhig.s. Miller's message was de- livered on Saturday the 2 1st, and on Sunday morning the royal army was within sight of the rebels. The duke sent some cavalry to the bridge of Bothwell, and desired some of their chiefs to come to him ; so Hume and Welsh, ministers, and ano- ther gentleman, went to his grace, and requested that he would prevent the effusion of blood. " He told them their petition ought to have been more humbly worded, and said, lay down our arms, and come in his mercy, and we should be favourably dealt with : so he returned and told us. When Robert Hamil- ton [their hopeful commander] heard it, he laughed at it, and said, ' and hang next.' So we sent over word, we would not lay down our arms." The battle then commenced b}' the royal army crossing the bridge, which had not been sufficiently guarded, and entirely routed the covenanters, whose native va- lour was entirely paralysed by the disputes and insane conten- tions of their commanders, who '"' in all this hot dispute never owned us. . . . The Lord took both courage and wisdom from us." Mr. Ure alleges there were only 4000 foot and 2000 horse engaged on the side of the rebels, and which, but for the vvranglings about the indulgence, he says, might have been tripple ; " but when they came the one day, they went the next ^" Ure says there were few slain in the battle ; but it is said that upwards of four hundred men were killed in the pursuit by the royal cavalry, and about twelve hundred surrendered at discretion. In the council's despatch to the king, of the 13th June, it is stated that the presbyterians in Fife had collected for the purpose of co-operating with their friends at Bothwell, but were attacked and dispersed by the earl of Moray's retain- ers, under the command of his steward, and forty of them made prisoners and lodged in Stirling castle. Crookshanks savs these rebels " deserved to be had in great repuiation. Let re- bellious Jacobites call this rising rebellion; none who own the glorious revolution . . . can esteem it so. . . . It is certain they who were for bearing their testimony against it, did no- thing but act according to the principles of the Presbyterians'^.'^ To be sure they did : who ever doubted it ? Mess John Welsh was the first to flee in the day of battle, and he never stopped till he reached London, where he took shelter in the earl of Shaftesbury's mansion, where he assisted in the plot of the re- volution, and crammed Gilbert Burnet for expectoration in his Own Times. ' Narrative, y. 179 — 181. = History, ii. l.T. 180 * HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLI. When the rebels fled, the king's troops might have taken or destroyed ihe whole of them ; but they were stopped in their pursuit soon after the flight. The horse at first intended to retreat to the east quarter of Ayrshire, called Carrick, and into the Rhynnes of Galloway; and " their chief encourage- ment to prosecute this design," says Smith, " was the confi- dence they had, that the duke of Monmouth would not put any hardshi}) upon them, which I have good reason to believe was true ; for when I was in company with all the rebel horse (about 1600), less than a mile from the field of battle, march- ing u]:)on a rising ground (in our retreat), I looked over my shoulder an 1 saw the king's horse at a stand after they had pur- sued us a little way, which we looked upon as having been done to favour our escape ; for if they had followed us, they had certainly killed or taken us all, a few only excepted, who were very well mounted ; and we were afterwards told that they were stopped by the duke of Monmouth's positive com- mand, when they were violently pursuing us after they had quite broken our foot (consisting of upwards of 4000), and were within less than half a mile of the body of our horse, which then were in great consternation and confusion^." Burnet attempts to deprive the king of the credit due to him for the clemency shewn to the rebels after their rout, and to transfer it to the duke of Monmouth , he has even the auda- city to say that his majesty and the duke of York expressed regret that the I'ebels were not put to death on the field in cold blood ^. This story must have a better voucher than Gilbert Burnet,before it can be believed, as such an atrocity is altogether repugnant to the nature and characters of the royal brothers. But whether Charles executed or spared his rebellious sub- ject, Burnet is determined to represent him as a ruthless and implacable tyrant. " It appears very inconsistent," says Higgons, " and strange, that the sword of war should be so very sharp, and that of justice so very blunt, in the same hands ; if these princes were so sanguinary and so cruel in their tem- pers, why did they not gratify their thirst of blood upon that part of those miscreants \\ho fell into their hands ^ ?" The prisone s were placed in the inner burial ground of the Grey- friars churchyard, which has high stone walls, and some wooden huts were erected for their shelter. The council is- sued a proclamation, in which they denominate the Bothwell Brig-whigs " traitors," and their attempt " a desperate and ' Spratt's Ryehouse Plot, App. 177. - Own Times, ii. 2'?G. •* Historical and Critical Remarks, j). 218. 1079 ] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 181 avowed rebellion ;" which gives deep offence to Wodrow, who says it is hard to be stigmatised with such epithets. The pre- lates also were directed to cause the proclamation to be read from the pulpits of their dioceses ; which Wodrow considers iniquity unto iniquity, and he calls it a new and nnheard of pro- fanation; although his friends formerly made the pulpit " amar- kct-cross," as honest Spalding says, for reading the proclama- tions of the committee of estates. The king wrote to the council to set the prisoners at liberty, " upon their enacting themselves not to take arms against his majesty or his authority," under certification, if hereafter taken in arms at any field conven- ticle, they should forfeit this indemnity. Three hundred of these men refused these easy and reasonable terms, and they were ordered to be ti-ansported to the West Indies, and the others were dismissed. I3ut the signing of this bond is called a " suffering /' for their historians say, " it is plain that they who signed this bond, acknowledged that the rising of Both- well was rebellion, and obliged themselves against defensive arms for the future ; and therefore it is no wonder, though many stood out and refused to accept deliverance upon terms they thought not only contradicting their principles, but also trampled upon the blood of their brethren, who died in the caused" The MURDERERS of the archbishop, and some others, were excepted out of the indemnity ; and among these were King and Kidd, two preachers who had been active in preaching rebellion for many years. The two ministers were tried and hanged; their heads were cut off, and placed beside Guthrie's, on the Netherbow Gate. Five persons were hanged on the spot where the archbishop had been murdered ; who, in their dying speeches, said that they suffered because " of our refus- ing of a bond which we could not take, no, not for our lives that we should acknowledge our being at Bothwell Bridge to be rebellion, which we profess to be our duty. . . . In our appearing at Bothwell Bridge we count it no rebellion, but our bound duty, and no sin. ... As for our part, when we considered the obligations of them [the covenanters], we thought it was not a time for us to lie at ease in Zion, lest we should bring the curse of Meroz upon ourselves, if we went not up to the help of the Lord against the mighty So we give our witness and testimony to the cross of Christ, and bless the Lord that ever we appeared at Bothwell Bridge for the defence of his persecuted cause, which within a little ' De Foe's Memoirs, p. 202. — Crookshank's History, ii. 51. 182 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP XLI. while we shall seal with our blood ^" Those who had refused to sign the bond to keep the peace were put on board a ves- sel to be sent to Jamaica, but which was wrecked among the Orkney islands, and through the inhumanity of the captain and mariners, the unfortunate covenanters all perished. Thus ended this ill-managed rebellion, through the incapacity and cowardice of its leaders, and the dissensions of their minis- ters. " The hopeful " Hamilton was amongst the first to secure his own safety by flight, " leaving the world to debate whether he had acted most like a traitor, a coward, or a fool." " The amazing height," says Guthrie, " to which it [the rebellion] arrived in less than fourteen days after the archbishop's mur- der, leaves me no room to doubt, notwithstanding the sugges- tions of Mr. Wodrow to the contrary, that it was preconcerted both with the discontented party in England, and with the exiled covenanters in Holland 2." Charles himself was not only a prince of a firmer and more resolute disposition than his father, but he was better and more honestly served ; otherwise the same scenes would have been enacted as produced the horrors of the rebellion in the late reign. The same principles that had overturned the throne and the altar in the previous revolution, prompted and stimulated the presbyterians in the rebellion, or " rising," as they delicately call it, of Bothwell ; for in their proclamations they declared that the " covenant was the original contract be- twixt God, the king, and the people. Thereforoj they said, king Charles II. having broken it, forfaulted his crown ; and being to be considered only as a private subject and enemy to God, they declared a just war against him, and that it was lawful to kill him and all who served him. 3." These were the principles of the men who were then struggling to effect that revolution which was afterwards accomplished. In the publications of the time it was shev\Ti that the whigs entirely owed the severities which they suffered to their own aniichristian principles, their obstinacy and fanaticism ; and that so far were they from acting on principles of civil or religious liberty, that many of their preachers were Jesuits and popish priests ! Wodrow cannot deny it, and a proclamation about this time actually charges it home upon the " vagrant preachers." Wodrow, of course, accounts for this phenomenon ' Naphtali, Ajipendis, pp. 83 — 85. - General History, x. 192. ^ Sir George Mackenzie's Vindication, 4to. 1661, p. 7. 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 183 in his own way, and accuses the duke of York, but the fact is allowed to remain uncontradicted, that Jesuits and popish emissaries did ply their craft among the presbytexians. And it would have been contrary to the avowed principles of the Jesuits if they had not ; and their interference may very ra- tionally account for the insane and unnatural divisions among the presbyterians themselves, Wodrow cites Dr. Oates' nar- rative to shew the participation of the Jesuits in the commo- tions in Scotland : — " Wright, Morgan, and Freeland, he says, were sent over to Scotland to preach under the notion of Scots presbyterians . . . Deponents saw fathers Moore and Saun- ders, alias Brown, despatched to preach among the Scots presbyterians . . . that letters from the fathers met at Edin- burgh, dated August 10th, 1678, bear, that they had 8,000 catholics ready to rise when the business grew hot, and to join the disaffected Scots under the directions of the Scots Jesuits .... that twelve Scots Jesuits were sent with instructions to keep up the commotions in Scotland, and to carry them- selves like nonconformist ministers among the presbvterian Scots 1." But this rebellion was not a matter of chance or of surprise. It had been long premeditated The following informa- tion given by Robert Smith, who was a native of the parish of Dunscore, and a cornet of the rebel horse, sets this fact beyond dispute. He says, " At all the conventicles for nearly two years beforo the rebellion in 1679, there were great contribu- tions of motley (which were cheerfully given) under the pre- tence of subsistence for their ministers and the poor of their persuasion (the only design that was known to the meaner sort of people) ; but the greatest part of the money was employed ^or arms and ammunition for a general rising, in order where- unto, the fanatics, in the months of April, May, and .fune, 1679, were preparing themselves by keeping several great field conventicles, both in the west and in the south, in which were considerable numbers of armed men. And although they were generally very fond and forward to put their design in execu- tion, yet it was hastened a mouth sooner than was intended by the skirmish [at Drumclog], that happened about the middle of June, within two miles of Loudon Hill, between a party of his majesty's forces under captain Graham, of Claverhouse, and a strong field conventicle, in which I was myself with a party of a troop of horse, levied in Nithsdale, ^ Wodrow's History, iii. 150. 184 HrSTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. XLI. whereof 1 was cornet .... The same mght 1 was at the earl of Loudon's house with Robert Hamilton, John Balfour, and David Hackston, both murderers of the archbishop of St. Andrews, and several others, in number about twenty- seven horsed ' Copies of the Informations and Original Papers affixed to Bishop Spratt's True Account of the Ryehouse Conspiracy, p. 173. 185 CHAPTER XLIT. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP BURNKT. 1C79. — Whigs in England correspond with the presbyterians. — Prisoners set at liberty. — King's letter to bishop Leigh ton. — An Indulgence. — Meeting of presbyterian ministers. — An attempt to displace Lauderdale. — Duke of Hamil- ton— admitted to the king's presence. — King's illness — his declaration. — Duke of York's arrival. — Translations and consecrations. — The crown vassals fined. — Duke of York goes to Scotland — admitted a councillor without the oaths. — The Meal-Tub Plot. — A riot in London. — Court intrigues. 1680. — Trans- lations and consecrations. — Cameron and Cargill. — Several conventicles. — Plan to murder the Duke of York. — Conventicle at Darmead. — King's letter. — Council permits the use of the English liturgy. — Duke of York left. — Henry Hall arrested. — Queensferry covenant. 1679. — " Thus were the rebels happily reduced, and the kingdom restored to a quiet condition, to the great mortifica- tion of the Whigs in the south, who proposed to have made as great advantages by this insurrection as they had done by their sham Plot." The duke of Monmouth was secretly well disposed to the presbyterian rebels, in order to assist his own views on the crown, and at the same time the English Whigs were favourable to his unwarranted claim. It is, however, extra- ordinary that the presbyterians should have opposed the duke of York's undoubted right of succession, when their confes- sion of faith determines, that difference of religion ought not to exclude papists, or even Mahometans, from the throne. As soon as the duke of Monmouth's appointment to the chief command in Scotland was known, the Whigs sent secret no- tice to their friends, and Wodrow has inserted a letter from one of them, but who has not signed it: — " I told the duke," says he, " that some of your persuasion should come and wait upon him, and give him an account of your peaceable incli- nations. I have encouragement from him to invite you, and some of your number [the ministers], from all places, to ad- dress yourselves to him — he will take it kindly; and by it I am confident you will much engage him to be your friend j where- voL. III. 2 n 18G HISTOKV OF THE [CHAP. XLIl. fore let me entreat you not to omit so great an occasion of advantage to your affairs. My brother will be with him, and he will introduce you to him; or if you miss my brother, the lord Melville will be always with him, who is very friendly to your interest. There shall be nothing left undone here that may advance the interest of all honest peaceable men." The PRESBYTERIAN ministers near Edinburgh accordingly took advantage of this invitation to wait upon the duke, and entrusted to him a petition to the king, which he undertook to present, and he promised " that nothing should be wanting that was proper on his part." The effects of this petition, and the duke's interposition, were a proclamation to suspend the laws against conventicles, and which paved the way for the third indulgence ; in which the field conventicles are ascribed to the intrigues of Jesuits. In consequence, a number of pri- soners, both ministers and their people, were set at liberty, after engaging not to rise in arms again, although they con- sidered it a contradiction of their principles ; and sure enough it was : but does not Satan say, " skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath, will he give for his life ;" and here, the principle being bad, the prediction was verified. Another royal letter, designed to make late favours eflfectual, granted permission to the presbyterian ministers not only to preach, but also to ad- minister their so-called sacraments, and relieved them of such fines as had been imposed but not yet paid. The political friends, therefore, of the " vagrant ministers" " pressed the prisoners to carry very soberly, and wished the persecuted party would leave field conventicles, at least for a little, till the duke came down again; and adds, he, God willing, would not stay long. And assures them, some in the council are gaping for field conventicles, in order to get things marred ^" It is asserted that the fears of the prelates induced them to send up the archbishop of Glasgow to court, in order to counteract the surprising favours that had been shewn to the presbyterians. Wodrow acknowledges that he has no ac- counts of what he did or said whilst there ; nevertheless, he ventures a " no doubt, he fell in heartily vs ith the duke's party, and in a few weeks there was a change above, and piece by piece this favour was curtailed by the council 2." It is more probable that the archbishop was sent for, as the murdered primate's successor had not yet been appointed ; and perhaps there was some intention in the royal councils of placing Leighton again in the see of Glasgow ; for after a retirement • Wodrow's History, iii. 119. ^ Ibid. iii. 152. 1679. J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 187 of five years, the abdicated prelate was surprised and alarmed by receiving a letter from the king, written by his own hand, threatening to recal him to actual service. It is dated Windsor, July W, 1679. " My Lord, — I am resolved to try what clemency can jnc- vail upon such in Scotland as will not conform to the govern- ment of the church there; for eflecting such design, I desire that you may go down to Scotland with your first conveniency, and take all possible pains for persuading all you can of both opinions to as much mutual correspondence and concord as can be: and send me from time to time characters both of men and things. In order to this design, I shall send a precept for a£200 sterling upon my exchequer, till you resolve how to serve me in a stated employment. Your loving friend, « Charles R." This, it seems, was a proposal of the duke of Monmouth's, . and to which he had probably been prompted by the presby- terians before he left Scotland ; and as they had formerly found the bishop of Dunblane so pliable, they thought he might now, in conjunction widi the ascendancy of whig councils at court, be made an instrument for the advancement of Christ's crown and kingdom ^ Leighton was willing to carry out the king's views, and he could now have occupied the bishoprick of Glas- gow in a canonical way, which he did not before ; but the duke's designs becoming apparent, he fell into disgrace at court, and Leigh ton's advancement fell with him. The Indulgence was granted by proclamation, dated the 29th of June, which, after relieving the presbyterians from cer- tain penalties, ordains — " But to the end that none whom we may justly suspect, shall under the colour of this favour con- tinue to preach rebellion, schiam, and heresy, we hereby ordain all such as shall be suffered to preach to have their names given in and surety found to our privy council for their peace- able behaviour, only one preacher being allowed to preach ; and none to be allowed who have appeared against us in this late rebellion, nor none who shall be admitted by the uncon- form ministers in any time hereafter : assuring all those to whom we have extended this favour, that if they, or any of them, shall for the future frequent any field conventicles, or disturb the peace of these our kingdoms, we will secure our people, and maintain our authority and laws, by such effectual ' Pearson's Life of Leighton, caUv. v. 188 HISTORY OF THE [cilAP. XLII. courses as, in ruining the authors, cannot be thought rigid after so insufferable and unnecessary provocations ^" In a letter from Edinburgh, the writer says, '' I find the generality of the best men here much troubled at the Indulgence the duke of Monmouth got for the fanatics here, after they had been beaten, and say it will encourage them to another re- bellion 2." The PRESBYTERIANS considered "this breathing time" to be a prelude to their complete restoration to supremacy and poli- tical power, and in this delusive hope, " a very large meeting" of their ministers took place in Edinburgh on the 8th of August, and agreed upon some " conclusions and rules," which, Wodrovv alleges, shews "they had the principles of presbyterian govern- ment at heart, and the preservation of the church from any hazard from persons who should afterwards be licensed and or- dained ; and had they not been stopped by the new turn of affairs at court, it is very probable this indulgence would have been so managed, as to have cured our divisions, tended to a com- fortable change in Scotland, and might have proved of great use, not only to the church, but even to the state. But very soon the popish party prevailed at court^." The English wliigs allied themselves to the presbyterians in Scotland from political and factious motives ; and they opposed Lauderdale's administration so much as to make seve- ral ineffectual efforts to dislodge him from the councils of his sovereign. The present juncture seemed favourable for making another and more powerfid attempt to " discourt" him. The duke of Hamilton, therefore, had gone to London in May, and was followed by several noblemen, and by sir George Lockhart and sir John Cunningham. They laid before the king a written statement of their grievances, which was afterwards printed ; and Wodrow and others say, " it certainly contained a material vindication of the people at Both well ;" but had they "laid many things contained in it at the door of the pre lates, as well as at that of Lauderdale, the representation had been more full and just. But Sharp, the primum mobile, was gone ; and so the duke was charged with all." This short acknowledgment shews what an amount of calumny and m - lignity was heaped upon the head of the late primate, all of which was now to be transferred to the duke of Lauderdale, Th e publication of this statement was declared a libel, and the king ' Proclamation, June 29, 1G79. ^ Cited in note by the editor to Burnet's Own Times, ii. 237. * Wodrow's History, iii. 153. 1G79.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 189 ordered the jjrivy council to make inquiry after the parties who had been active in dispersing it. On the 8th and 13th of July, the king admitted the duke of Hamilton with his friends to his presence, at Windsor Castle, where they were met by sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate, when the debates lasted from ten in the morning till one in the afternoon, and from four till nine in the evening. The lord's advocate vindi- cated the duke of Lauderdale's administration ; and the king was firm in the sujiport of his minister, and resolved still to ])lace full confidence in him, and therefore the opposition de- sisted from making any farther attempt to oust him from office, and relumed home. The duke of Hamilton's party and the presbyterians were supported by lord Shallesbury, who was the leader of the English whigs, and his faction was distinguished by the name of " Green Ribband Clubs;" and of the members of this club it was said — " he has his emissaries everywhere lo whisper treason and sedition, smite the king through the duke [of York's] side, libel and lampoon him, make liim the author of the present miseries ; cry out daily of property and liberty that it is like to be in- vaded ; when quite contrary, their designs are absolutely to invade the prerogative of their prince, and render him only the bare compliment of a king, and no more^" The king w-as seized with a severe illness at Windsor on the 2d of September, and for some time his life was despaired of, and a general consternation seized all ranks ; for he was extremely popular, and many entertained strong apprehensions from the religion of his successor. The duke of JVIonmouth disgusted the loyal subjects,and alienated his father's affections, by publicly asserting that bethought himself heir presumptive to the crown, because it had been alleged that his mother, Mrs. Lucy Walters, had been married to the king. To set this matter at rest the king commanded a declaration, which he had formerly made, to be entered in the books of the council : — " His majesty was this day pleased to command that the de- claration hereafter following be entered in the council book, it being all written and signed by his majesty's own hand, in a paper which his majesty this day delivered at the board, to be kept in the council chest, viz.: — " For the avoiding of any dispute which may happen in time to come, concerning the succession of the crown, 1 do 1 The Present Interest, both of King and People, in a Letter, &c., by F. K , in the Somers Tracts, i>. 53. 190 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIf. here declare, in the presence of Almighty God, that I never gave nor made any contract of marriage, nor was married to any woman whatsoever, but to my present wife, queen Catha- rine, now living. Whitehall, the third day of March, 1679. "(Signed) Charles R.i" The ministers, Essex, Halifax, and Sunderland, were ap- prehensive that a new civil war might be precipitated, espe- cially as Shaftesbury, and the whigs in both kingdoms, were favourable to the pretensions of the duke of Monmouth. They advised the king, therefore, to send for the duke of York secretly, that in the event of a demise of the crown, his royal highness might be in readiness to assert his rights. On his arrival, however, he found the king out of danger, and it was agreed to conceal the invitation which he had received ; and he returned to Brussels after having obtained leave to retire to Scotland. The earl of Shaftesbury was dismissed from office as president of the council on the 15th of October, and the duke of Monmouth was stripped of his command as captain- general, and ordered to reside in Holland. " Whatever," says Guthrie, " late writers may pretend, the duke of York appears to have received from the duke of Monmouth and his party sufficient provocation for rendering him their enemy ; and the more sober part of the people of England were of the same opinion." In consequence of the various events that have been de- tailed, the new translations and consecrations did not take ]>lace till September and October. Arthur Ross, lord bishop of Argyle, was translated on the 5th of September to the see of Galloway; and the venerable Andrew Bruce, archdeacon of St. Andrews, was elected to the bishoprick of Dunkeld, va- cant by the death of Dr. Lindsay. On the 15th of October, Dr. Burnet was translated from Glasgow to St. Andrews ; and after having sat about a month in the see of Galloway, bishop Ross was again translated to Glasgow. Keith says Colin Falconer, minister of the town and parish of Forres, in Moray- shire, was elected to the see of Argyle on the 5th of Septem- ber, but Mr. Scott, of Anstruther, informs me "there is good reason to suppose, from the records, that he was elected in May." From the records of the presbytery of St. Andrews, the bishops elect of Argyle and Dunkeld were consecrated at St. Andrews by archbishop Burnet on the 28th of October. Mr. Lyon says, " This day the presbytery met in the town kirk, ' Somer's Tracts, p. 83 — Ellis's Original Letters. IG79.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 191 but without any publ-ic exercise, in regard that Dr. Moor, wlio was appointed to have it, did yesterday preach by appoint- ment from my lord St. Andrews, at the translation of my lord St. Andrews to the archbishoprick of St. Andrews, and the consecration of the bishop of Argyle." And by a private communication I am favoured with another excerpt from the same record. — " 1679, October 28th. Received at the trans- lation of the archbishop of Glasgow to St. Andrews, the bishop of Argyle to Glasgow, the consecration of the bishop of Dunkeld and the bishop of Argyle, £38 12s. Scots ^" It w'as found necessary to inflict some punishment on those feudatories of the crown who had refused orneglected to join the royal standard when summoned at the rebellion of Both- well-bridge, or who had deserted it after they had joined it. In former times, when there were frequent rebellions of the powerful nobles, it was reckoned a capital crime to refuse or neglect to join the royal standard; and death was the conse- quence, when the crown had the power to execute vengeance for this Clime. A committee of the council awarded, however, the milder punishment of fines for refusal or desertion, and on the 18th of November his majesty approved of their decision ; and the officers of the army were appointed to send in the names of the heritors who did not attend the king's host. The duke of York re-embarked for Holland, but having received permis- sion to retire to Scotland, his royal highness and the duchess, with the princess Anne, arrived at Whitehall from Brussels, on the 12tli of October^; and on the 16th, the Scottish privy coun- cil began to prepare for the reception of his royal highness with his family at Edinburgh. The council met him at the borders with every mark of respect; he slept at Berwick on Friday, the 31st, and arrived at Holyrood-house on Monda}', the 24th of November ; " he was received into town with the greatest solenmity, and sumptuously entertained by the town of Edin- burgh and the nobility^." Next day the lords of the session waited on him, and sir James Dalrimple, the lord president, made a congratulatory speech, when he said, among other things — " it was a matter of great joy to the nation to see one of the royal family among them, alter being for so many years deprived of that honour, and the nation being entirely pro- testnnt, it was the fittest place his highness could make his recess to at that time*." * Private Letter from Rev. Hew Scott, minister of Wester Anstruther, 26th Fel). 1844. — Lyon's History of St. Andrews, ii. 103. - Salmon's Chronology, ii. 215. — Wodrow's History, iii. 154. ' lb. 174. ■• Skinn'jr's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 482. 192 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLII. The PRESBYTERIAN ministers had several synodical meet- ings in the autumn of this year ; one in Edinburgh in Septem- ber, and another at Paisley in December, but where they did not assume any jurisdiction; only they agreed on and sent secret notice to their brethren to hold " a general meeting [assembly] of ministers at Edinburgh in February next, and the warning was sent in thither with one of their number. But the times growing worse, and some noise being made by the managers about that meeting, it was found convenient to drop the meeting ^" Meantime a letter was received from the king, directing the council to admit his royal highness to the privy council without taking the usual oath: — " It is our pleasure," says the king, " that he continue to act as a privy councillor in that our ancient kingdom, without any oath, being named in our last commission, 1676 ; it being the privilege of the lawful sons and brothers of the king not to be comprehended under any general words, as those of the 11th Act of our first parlia- ment ; though that doth comprehend all others except them alone." In England both the real and the supposed intrigues of the pa]HSts had created a very great alarm, and the plot sworn to by Titus Oates, and some others, was succeeded by " the Meal- Tub Plot," which was got up by the papists to bring the wit- nesses in the former popish plot into discredit. It obtained this extraordinary appellation, from a paper, containing the heads of it, having been found in a tub of meal on the 25th of October. Burnet, whose politics required him to be at enmity with the duke, asserts that his royal highness's party endea- voux'ed to inflame matters; but, if he did so, Monmouth and his enemies were equally active in exciting agitation, and at- tempting to incite an insurrection. On the 17th of November, which was the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's birth-day, the Wliigs collected a mob, and, in a tumultuous procession, ihey carried the effigies of the pope, the devil, sir George .Tefferics, and the effigy of " the dead body of sir Edmnndbury Godfrey, on horseback, with one riding behind him; and a bellman went before, to remind the people of his murder : priests in their copes with crosses, friars, and Jesuits, were part of the shew; and after these, to expose the established church, and to insinuate that the bishops and clergy had a share in their sham plot, bishops in lawn sleeves and mitres were in their train." The effigies were burnt at Temple Bar. The Whigs also procured fictitious signatures to petitions, in * Wodrow's History, iii. 176. 1679.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 193 a riotous manner, for the sitting of parliament, which had been prorogued, and many treasonable pamphlets were pub- lished at this time, to recommend the duke of Monmouth to their choice as successor to the crown. And when loyal men objected to the obvious defect in Monmouth's title, it was answered, " that he who had the ivorst title ever made the best king^." The plots hitherto seem to have been discredited, and Salmon says, " When the party thus openly discovered their intentions, and had procured Whig sheriffs to their mind, so that they were secure from being brought to justice, no wonder that the king was apprehensive of plots from that side : Dan- gerfield's discoveries were thought to carry an appearance of probability with them at first. Had there been a Shaftesbury on that side to have managed him, here was a much better foundation to have built upon than ever the popish plot had; and there is all the probability in the world that this disco- very, as well as others, was set up, or at least managed, by the faction to amuse the people, that they might not see into their real plots and designs against the government, and to support their pretended popish plot, which now began to be the jest of all companies 2." With his usual mendacity, Burnet pretends that he was consulted about the Bill of Exclusion, and in all other impor- tant matters; although he most unmercifully abuses the bishops and clergy for interfering in any way in politics. He tells one of his gossipping stories about the king being desirous of rais- ing his son by the duchess of Portsmouth to succeed him on the throne, and that the duchess entered into intrigues with the exclusionists. To this intrigue she was prompted by the king, in order to penetrate the designs of the party; for his majesty was firmly resolved to support his brother's title to the crown. " But it is merry enough to observe," says Salmon, " how the saints at this time, to serve their cause, could court a popish French mistress ; and while they were ready to impeach the harmless honest queen, take a courtezan, her rival, into their bosom confidence, to defend them against France and popery ; even that very mistress whom the faction formerly exclaimed against, as sent over to promote popery and French councils. Till now we were unacquainted with the advantages the nation might reap by royal concubines. . . . Here we see the party ' Somers Tracts. — Salmoii's Chronology, ii. 215. — Salmon's Examinations of Burnet's Own Times, ii. 856. Salmon's Examination, ii. 856 VOL. III. 2 C 194 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLII. first expressing the greatest tciulerness and concern for the king's person, and insinuating that his brother was in a con- spiracy to destroy him, then they raise their mobs, make their rebellious processions, and spirit up the deluded people against their sovereign, by their treasonable libels and discourses. When this won't prevail, they not only refuse to grant his ma- jesty money for the necessary defence of the kingdom, but they declare every man an enemy to his country that lends the king any money, and arbitrarily and illegally imprison his friends ; and, as their last refuge, apply themselves to his mistress, that he might have no rest, day or night, till their importunity was satisfied. But here his majesty shewed a superior reach, and by advising the lady seemingly to comply with them, disco- vered all that black scene of treachery and rebellion they had laid to accomplish his ruin^" 1680. — James Aiken, lord bishop of Moray, was translated by the king's letter, dated at Whitehall on the 6th February, to the bishoprick of Galloway, vacant by the translation of the late bishop to the see of Glasgow. He received a royal dis- pensation to reside in Edinburgh, because it was thought un- reasonable to oblige a reverend prelate of his years to live among such a rebellious and turbulent people as those of that diocese were." He never visited his diocese but only once ; and bishop Keith asserts, that he " has seen letters of ordina- tion by him performed in Edinburgh;" and then innocently adds — " He so carefully governed this diocese, partly by his letters to the synod, presbyteries, and single ministers, partly by a journey he made thither, that had he resided in the place, better order and discipline could scarce be expected." The king's letter is dated on the 7lh of February, for the trans- lation of Colin Falconer, lord bishop of Argyle, to the bishop- rick of Moray, and it is addressed to the dean and chapter of that church, who elected his lordship accordingly. The earl of Argyle had interest at court to procure a conge d''elire to the dean and chapter of Argyle, to elect the rev. Hector Maclean, of the family of Lochb«i»c, to that see. His loyalty in his younger years had induced him to follow the profession of arms during the presbyterian wars of the usurpation, and he ' was in the field for the king; but being of a religious disposi- ^j tion, he was admitted minister of Morvern|| v. Kilcolumkill, in the presbytery of Haddington; from thence he was moved to Dunoon, in the presbytery of the same name, and county of Argyle; from this parish he removed again to Eastwood, in ' Examination, ii. 858, 859. 1680.J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 195 the presbytery of Paisley. Patrick Forbes, lord bishop of Caithness, died, and was buried amongst his predecessors ; and immediately bishop Wood was translated from the Isles to Caithness. Archibald Graham, of the family of Kilbride, and parson of Rothsay, in the isle of Bute, was elected by congt d^elire to the bishoprick of the Isles ^" Cameron and Cargill, two rabid preachers, whom even Wodrow denounces, the former of whom came home from Holland, where he had been to purchase arms and ammuni- tion, and had been well instructed in the mysteries of re- bellion, soon after the defeat of their confederates, began to hold conventicles in remote and secure positions; and go- vernment offered a reward of five thousand merks for the capture of either of them. Cameron kept a field conventicle within a mile of sir Robert Dalzell's house, in the county of Lanark, where there were about three thousand j^cople con- gregated. Smith was present, and he said the reason for holding it was to see how the county stood inclined, and who would join them. From thence, Cameron, with a guard of twenty men, of whom Smith was one, went to the laird of St. John's kirk, about thirty miles from Edinburgh, where he and his guards staid four days, during which time there were conventicles held each day, at which the laird and his lady were always present. The following Sunday, Cameron kept a conventicle on Tinto-hill, in Lanarkshire, where there were between three and four thousand people present, " whereof many were well armedJ" From this place, continues Smith, " I went with Richard Cameron, and about twenty men, to the widow lady Gilkerscleugh's, in Clydesdale, staid a week, and kept several conventicles with her. About this time the duke [of York] was come to Scotland, and whilst we were in this house, it was one night at supper proposed by Hackston [one of the primate's murderers], to kill his royal highness, the said lady being present, together with the two Camerons. Hackston said he would do it himself, if he could come at him ; and thought it might be best done when the duke was at dinner: whereupon he asked if there were any there who would go and observe all the manner of his royal highness's dining? — whetlier people might get into the room to see him at dinner, &c. ? So Michael Cameron undertook it; and took nie along with him. We were particularly instructed to observe whether people could go in with large coats or cloaks on them, and women vvitli plaids ; and whether they ' Keith's Catalogue, pasuhn. — Perceval's Apology, 2d edit. 252. 196 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLII. could pass the sentinels with their swords." These men went and gained admission into the apartment, and saw the duke at dinner ; but as they were returning to their lodgings they met a person who recognised Cameron, whereupon they betook them- selves to their horses, and were piursued for several miles i. Cameron visited many of the ministers " who formerly kept up the public standard of the gospel in the fields ;" but they Iiad got such a salutary check at Bothwell, and the govern- ment kept such a vigilant eye upon them, that all his eloquence was insufficient to persuade them to run any more hazard. Cargill, however, united with him, and they held " a public fast-day in Darmidmuir, one of the chief causes of which was the reception of the duke of York, that sworn vassal of anti- christ, into Scotland, after he had been excluded from Eng- land, and several other places 2," This, with some other con- venticles, roused the government, and measures were taken to secm'e these worthies; but their escapes are certainly most wonderful, and even romantic. This recommencement of the conventicles induced the king to circumscribe the late Indul- gence, as there was now every indication that it would be abused, and the people seduced by the preachers to their for- mer tm'bulence. He therefore wrote to the privy council on the 14th of May, regretting the ungratefiil return of the pres- byterians to his unparalleled clemency and tenderness; for, " notwithstanding all their insolencies, murders, and treasons, and our gi'acious indemnities and indulgencies, such is the perverseness of that schismatical and rebellious generation, that they, in contempt of our greatest condescensions and favours, continue to run out to field conventicles in several parts of that our kingdom, which as om* laws have declared, so in experience have they been found, to be rendezvouses of rebellion; their insurrections against us and our authority, in the years 1666 and 1679, have been nothing else save so many limning and continiied field conventicles, and by force and violence to oppose the legal settlement of regular ministers, beating, stoning, and wounding them i7i a most savage and bar- barous manner, and to invade the pulpits of orthodox ministers, preaching and baptizing in avowed conventicles in our capital city of Edinburgh. By all which insupportable and unne- cessary provocations, they having notoriously forfeited oiu* favour and indulgence, none could judge it severity to main- tain our authority and laws by such effectual courses as should ' Appendix to Spratt's Ryehouse Plot, 179. * Scots Worthies — Life of Cameron, p. 334. 1680.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 197 ruin that unsatlsfiable and ungovernable tribe and faction. .... And at this time, as upon all occasions, we cannot but express our firm resolution to maintain, and inviolably preserve, the sacred order of episcopacy, to the subversion whereof nothing tends more than the contempt too frequently and injuriously thrown upon our bishops: therefore we do heartily recommend unto you, as your best service unto us, your countenancing and encouraging, and supporting of them in their persons, credit, and authority, the lessening whereof we do justly esteem a weakening of our government. We must also recommend our orderly and orthodox presbyters to your care and protection, and that you particularly require and command all magistrates, in their several jurisdictions, to own and assist them in the exercise of discipline against scan- dalous offenders, and in all other parts of their function, which Ave will take as very acceptable service done unto us^" But the church, in her state of splendid misery, felt the want of that liturgy which, in the first paroxysm of covenant- ing madness, a faction of the people had rejected ; and the hearts of the devout were now yearning after something more substantial tlian extempore effusions — something that might be seen and examined, and enjoyed in the secret chamber. Some noblemen and members of the council made a represen- tation to that body of their own desire to be permitted to use the English liturgy in their families ; and this good beginning would in the course of time, and with divine help, have lea- vened the whole church ; and there are various incidental cir- cumstances occur, which, as we proceed, will shew that the "leaven" thus thrown into the "meal" was beginning to work. The order is dated on the 12th of February. " The lords of his majesty's privy council, having considered a re- presentation made to them by some of their own number, that divers persons of quality, and others of this kingdom, were very desirous to have the allowance of the use of the solemn form of divine worship, after the laudable and decent custom and order of the church of England, in their private families, do hereby allow the same, and give assurance to them of the council's countenance and protection therein 2." On the 15th of February the duke of York took his leave of the council, and set out on his journey to court. He in- fonned the council that he had been sent for by his majesty, and thanked them for " the civility and kindness" which they had shewn to him. In their letter to the king, the council say » Wodrow's History, iii. 185-188. - Ibid. ii. 232. 198 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLII. that his presence had had a very sahitary influence on the peace of the kingdom, and what was rather wonderful, " the most malicious had abstained from all manner of risings and undu- tiful speeclies," and neither libels nor pasquils had disgraced their city during his royal highness's abode among them ; "so that this too short time has been the most peaceable and se- rene part of our life." When they wrote thus, they were not aware of the attempt of the Camerons and of Hackston of Ra- thillet, above narrated, or perhaps they would have modified their language. Mr. Hetherington very truly says, " the year 1680 was remarkable for what appears a new aspect assumed by a sec- tion of the persecuted presbyterians, but what in reality, if imj^artially considered, may rather be regarded as a more full development of presbyter ian principles y somewhat biassed and exaggerated through the force of circumstances After that fatal day [Bothwell Bridge] the division between the two parties not only continued, but became wider, till it ended in a complete separation, Richard Cameron and Donald Cargill being the only ministers whom those zealous opponents of all practical tyranny andlax submissiveness would acknowledged" Along with these two stern and uncompromising representatives of " presbyterian principles," there was associated a " Scots worthy," Henry Hall, esq. of Haughhead, in the parish of Eckford, in Teviotdale, who, with Cargill, had taken shelter in Borrowstounness, and other parts of the coast of the Forth, waiting for a favourable opportunity to hold a field conventi- cle. The acts of parliament which denounced intercom- munion against the field preachers, at the same time obliged the established clergy, under heavy penalties, to give informa- tion of the whereabouts of any of these daring intruders into their parishes. The knowledge that the notorious Cargill, who had been an approved disciple of the remonstrator Guthrie that was hanged after the Restoration, was lurking in their parishes, made it necessary for the Rev. John Park, the incumbent of Carriden, in the county of Linlithgow, to give Mr. Middleton, the governorof Blackness Castle, information that these worthies were then in Queensferry ; and for which Mr. Park and the minister of Borrowstounness are called, by Hall's biographer, " two bloody hounds." In attempting to arrest them in a public-house, there was a scuffle, in which Hall received so violent a blow on the head from a carbine, that he died on the road to Edinburgh, whither he was being * History of the Church of Scotlaud, 153. 1680.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 199 conveyed to gaol : and thus, says his biographer, "this worthy gentleman, after he had in an eminent manner served his day and generation, fell a victim to prelatic fury." Cargill, however, made his escape, although he had been severely wounded, and went to Loudon, where he preached to a field conventicle the next Sunday, at a place called Cairnshill ^ In Mr. Hall's pocket a paper was found, which was evi- dently intended to have been circulated amongst the presby- terians, and was a species of covenant to which they were to be bound to adhere. From the place and the circumstances, it was denominated the Queensferry Covenant ; and its po- litical sentiments were so extreme, that Wodrow, Crook- shanks, and even Hetherington, acknowledge that they can- not be justified. Some extracts from it will shew the exqui- site cunning of the Jesuit, united with the natural obstinacy of the prcsbyterian. ..." Seriously considering that the hand of our kings and rulers with them hath been a long time against the throne of tlic Lord .... and Christ's reigning over his church .... and there is no more speedy way of relaxation from the wrath of God . . . but of rejecting them [their governors] who have so manifestly rejected God .... Our ancestors neither did nor could bind us ; they did not buy their liberty with our thraldom and slavery . . . neither did they bind us but to a government which they esteemed best for the commonwealth and subjects ; and when this ceascth, we are free to choose another. . . . The covenant only binds us to maintain our king in the maintenance of the true esta- blished and covenanted religion. . . . We do declare that we shall set up over ourselves, and over what God shall give us power of, government and governors according to the word of God, Exod. xviii. 21. . . . that we shall no more commit the go- vernment of ourselves, and the making of laws for us, to any one single person or lineal successor, we not being by God, as the Jews were, bound to one single family ; and this kind of government by a single person being most liable to inconve- niences and aptest to degenerate into tyranny, as sad and long experience hath taught us ^." After preaching at Cairnshill, Cargill sought out his friend and co-worthy, Mr. Cameron, with whom he held sweet counsel, and they determined to carry the war to extremity. These men had broke off' from the rest of the prcsbyterian ministers, and denounced the indulged preachers as only a ' Scots Worthiea : Lives of Hall and Cargill. ' Mackenzie's Vindication, 4to. App. 200 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLII. shade less the children of darkness than the established clergy. On THE 22d of June they collected about twenty of their in- fatuated followers, well anned, and entered the small royal burgh of Sanquhar on the 22d of June, and there, with such forma- lities as they deemed gave their proceedings the sanction of divine law, read a Declaration founded on the Queensferry covenant, in which they renounced their allegiance, and declared w^ar against the king, as a tyrant and usurper. After having read this treasonable paper, they affixed it to the market-cross, in the manner of legal proclamations, and then marched oft" to their hiding-places in the moors. From the place, this act of treason is usually called the Sanquhar Declaration. The in- dulged ministers, however, disavowed this declaration ; but whether their disavowal arose from their being shocked at the genuine devolopment of their own principles,or from the fear that such treasonable proceedings would inevitably draw down the vengeance of government, it seems certain that none but these two leaders of the ultra-section of the presbyterians were en- gaged in this outrageous insult to the king and his government^ Scots Worthies — Lives of Cameron, CargiU, and Henry Hall, passim. — Wodrow's History, iii. 205-213. — Cloud ofWitnesses. — Sanquhar Declaration, 1680. It is not among the smallest of the Lord's mercies, that there have been always some who have given their testimony against every course of defection (that many are guilty of), which is a token for good, that He doth not as yet intend to cast us off altogether, .but that He will leave a remnant in whom He will be glorious, if they, through His grace, keep themselves clean still, and walk in His way and method, as it has been walked in and owned by Him in our pre- decessors, of truly worthy memory, in their carrying on of our noble work of reformation in the several steps thereof from popery, prelacy, and likewise eras- tian supremacy, so much usurped by him, who, (it is true so far as we know) is descended from the race of our kings, yet he hath so far deborded [departed] from what he ought to have been, by his perjury and usurpation in church matters, and tyranny in matters civil, as is known by the whole land, that we have just reason to account it one of the Lord's great controversies against us that we have not disowned him and the men of his practices (whether inferior magistrates or any other), as enemies to our Lord and His crown, and the true protestant and presbyterian interest in thir lands, our Lord's esjmused bride and church. Therefore, though we be for government and governors, such as the word of God and our covenant allows, yet we for ourselves and all that will adhere to us, as the representatives of the presbyterian kirk, and covenanted nation of Scotland, considering the great hazard of lying under such a sin any longer, do, by thir presents, disown Charles Stuart, that has been reigning (or rather tyrannizing, as we may say), on the throne of Britain these years bygone, as having any right, title to, or interest in, the said crown of Scotland for government, as forfeited several years since, by his perjuiy and breach of covenant, both to God and His kirk, and usurpation of His crown and royal prerogatives therein, and many other breaches in matters ecclesiastic, and by his tyranny and breach of the very leges regnandi in matters civil. For which reason we declare, that several years 'ince, he should have been denuded of being king, ruler, or magistrate, or of aving any power to act, or to be obeyed as such. As also, we being under the 1680.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 201 Such a daring act of rebellion immediately succeeding the discovery of the Queensferry covenant, clearly evinced that the ultra-presbyterians had designs in hand for setting Christ on his throne, that would render them more obnoxious to go- vernment than ever. " Their friends in Holland," says a pres- byterian writer, " were a desperate set of enthusiasts, al- ways ready to print and publish the ravings of the party, than which nothing could be more despicable, and sending them missionary preachers, whose civil principles were subversive of all government. Those missionaries formed a seminary of young zealots, who soon broke into a bm'st of treason and re- bellion ^" The council communicated these recent transactions to Lauderdale on the 30th of June ; and added that Cameron was at the head of seventy horsemen fully equipped. The king approved of the measures which the council had adopted, and ordered them to issue a proclamation offering a reward for the apprehension of the traitors. The military detachments were also redistributed, so as that some of them might fall in with the party which was now in the field " in effeir of war," and who had entered into a bond for mutual support, and for the repudiation of both the king and the duke of York. Information having been received at head quarters that the presbyterians had " drawn to a head" at Airs-Moss, in the parish of Auchinleck, in Ayrshire, under the command of Hackston of Rathillet, one of the late archbishop of St. An- standard of our Lord Jesus Christ, Captain of Salvation, do declare war with such a tyrant and usurper, and all the men of his practices, as enemies to our Lord Jesus Christ, and his cause and covenants ; and against all such as have strengthened him, sided with, or any way acknowledged him in his tyranny, civil or ecclesiastic, yea, against all such as shall strengthen, side with, or any wise acknowledge any other in the like usurpation and tyranny, far more against such as would betray or deliver up our free reformed mother kirk unto the bondage of antichrist, the pope of Rome. And by this we homologate that testimony given at Rutherglen, the 29th of May, 1679, and all the faithful testi- monies of those who have gone before, as also of those who have suffered of late. And we do disclaim that declaration published at Hamilton, June, 1679, chiefly because it takes in the king's interest, which we are several years loosed from, because of the foresaid reasons, and others which may after this (if the Lord will) be published. As also we disown, and by this resent, the reception of the duke of York, that professed papist, as repugnant to our principles and vows to the most high God, and as that which is the great, though not alone just, reproach of our kirk and nation. We also by this protest against his succeeding to the crown ; and whatever has been done, or any are essaying to do in this land, (given to th^ Lord) in prejudice to our work of reformation. And to conclude, we hope after this none will blame us for, or offend at, our rewarding those that are against us, as they have done to us, as the Lord gives opportunity. This is not to exclude any that have declined, if they be willing to give satisfaction ac- cording to the degree of their offence. Given at Sanquhar, June 22d, 1680." ' Guthrie's General History, x. 200. VOL. III. 2 D 202 HISTOKY OF THE [CHAP. XLII. drew's murderers, and under the supreme direction of Cameron, the general ordered sir Alexander Bruce, on Thursday, the 22d of July, to proceed to the spot. A folio pamphlet, however, which gives a minute account of the skirmish, says the place where the rebels were posted was in the parish of Crawford- John, in tlie upper part of Lanerkshire, which is much at va- riance with other accounts. The author says, " On Thursday, the22d of July, 1686, the general hearing that Cameron was at Crawford-John with a considerable party of horse and foot, he immediately commanded sir Alexander Bruce, of Earshall, lieutenant to captain Graham, of Claverhouse, to take his troop, and a troop of dragoons, and go in search of the rebels. Cameron's party consisted of a hundred men, mostly horse, who retreated to a bog, where the dragoons dismounted and attacked them on foot, and after a combat of half an hour, Cameron and fourteen men were killed, though fighting the battles of the Lord ^" When they saw the cavalry approach- ing, and that there was no possibility of escape, the people gathered round about Cameron, " while he prayed a short word ; wherein he repeated this expression thrice ovei-, — * Lord, spare the green, and take the ripe.' When ended, he said to his brother, with great intrepidity — ' Come, let us fight it out to the last ; for this is the day that I have longed for, and the day that I have prayed for, to die fighting against the Lord's avowed enemies ; this is the day that we shall get the C7-own /' And to the rest he said — ' Be encouraged, all of you, to fight it out valiantly, for all of you that shall fall this day, / see heaven! s gates open to receive you ! 2' " The rebels fought like brave men, and did considerable execution in the ranks of the royalists ; but the courage of despair and enthu- siasm could not long stand against better discipline and supe- rior arms. In this fierce skirmish twenty-eight soldiers and fifteen of the rebels were killed; but among them was their pugnacious and ripe minister. He had seen heaven's gates open to receive him ; but in the meantime his head and hands were immediately cut off and sent to Edinbm'gh, and placed on the Netherbow gate. The assassin Hackston was severely wounded, and captured ; he was also sent to Edinburgh, and in his own account of this affair he twice acknowledges that he was very kindly treated on the way, his wounds dressed, and refreshments given to him. • Account of the Defeat of the Rebels at Crawford- John. Folio. 2 Wodrow's History. — Cloud of Witnesses. — Scots Worthies. — Lives Oi Cameron, Cargill, and Hackston, pasnim. 1680.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 203. WoDROW speaks of the preparations made by governrae it to suppress this rebellion, with an air of martyrdom, as a monstrous cruelty and persecution in checking tlie pranks of these wandering stars. Hackston declined the king's autho- rity at his examination ; but a jury unanimously found him guilty of the primate's murder, accessory to the Sanquhar Declaration, and of having levied war against the king. He was hanged on the 30th of July, and Wodrow complains that " the sentence was executed with great solemnity and severity, though he was a gentleman of good descent, excellent parts, and remarkable piety /" Bishop Burnet speaks of the covenanters as a "harmless sort of people" — " that they never attempted any thing against any person" — " that they never offended any person." " If," says Salmon, " Burnet can thus become an advocate for rebels and murderers, with what face can he fall so severely upon common failings ? But so happy a thing it is, as I have ob- served already, to be of the number of the elect ! the grossest crimes, the greatest immoralities, become virtues in the saints ! They shall be represented as innocent, if not meritorious, while the best deeds of unsanctified churchmen are accounted exceeding sinful ! and not only their failings, but their vir- tuous actions, entitle them to nothing better than damnation, in the opinion of our author and his brethren i." Donald Cargill was now left alone in his glory, and he still continued to preach out of the reach of the military, who were on the watch to secure him ; but, says Hetherington, " the blood-stained banner which fell from Cameron's dying hand, was caught up, and borne aloft by Cargill with unshrink- ing resolution." Cargill displayed this figurative banner bravely at Torwood, in Stirlingshire ; where, he said, " he had a tout [blast] to give with the trumpet that the Lord had put in his hand that would sound in the ears of many in Britain, and other places in Europe also 2," This astounding tout, therefore, was given at the field-preaching on the 30lh of Sep- tember, at the Torwood, when, " moved with zeal against the indignities done to the Son of God, by overturning His work, and destroying His people, he delivered up to Satan some of the most scandalous and principal promoters and abettors of this conspiracy against Christ 3." He commenced with the chief malignant, the king, saying — " I, being a minister of Jesus Christ, and having power and authority from Him, do ' Examination of Burnet's Own Times, ii. 897. '^ Life, in Scots Worthies, p. 353. ^ Cloud of Witnesses, p. 342 204 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLII. in His name, and by His Spirit, excommunicate Charles the Second — James, duke of York— James, duke of Monmouth — John, duke of l^auderdale — John, duke of Rothes — sir George Mackenzie, the lord advocate — and Thomas Dalzell, of Bins, for executing the tyranny of the preceding parties ^ The following Sunday he preached at Fallow-hill, where he said, " X know I am, and will be condemned by many, for excom- municating those wicked men ; but condemn me who will, I know I am approven of 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 generation- Vtork, it was that 2." His majesty published a second declaration in the London Gazette, on the 10th of June, respecting the duke of Mon- mouth, whose unlawful pretensions to the crown might have involved the empire in all the horrors of a disputed succession. The declaration embodies that already given ; and narrates that — " we found the same rumour not only revived again, but also improved with new additions ;" several lords were named as having been present at the marriage, one of whom pos- sessed a written contract betwixt the king and Mrs. Walters. These noblemen were examined before the king and council, and solemnly denied all knowledge of any such marriage or contract : " yet we think it requisite at this time to make our declaration above recited more public ; and to order the same {....) to be forthwith printed and published. And we do again upon this occasion call Almighty God to witness, and DECLARE, upon the faith of a christian, and the word of a king, that there was never any marriage, or contract of marriage, had or made between us and the said Mrs. Walters, alias Barlow, the duke of Monmouth's mother, nor between us and any woman whatever, our royal consort queen Catherine, that now is, only excepted. . . . Given at our court at Whitehall, the second day of June, in the two-and-thirtieth year of our reign^." The natural dispositions of some men are often better than the principles of the religious sect to which they attach them- selves ; and this is conspicuous in the conduct of the religious body whose affairs have occupied so much more of our atten- tion than is consistent with the title of this work. Their principles tended directly (o murder their religious opponents ; but when we consider the constant call upon them to extir- ' Cloud of Witnesses, 312-315. '- Life, in Scots Worthies, 353. ^ Sotners' Tracts on all Subjects, 4to. pp. 82-85.— Salmon's Chronolog)', i. A.D. 1680, 217.— Ellis's Original Letters, vol. iii. p. 345, anno 1824. 1680.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 205 pate, which means to murder, the episcopalians, it is most wonderful to think how few were assassinated. There cannot be a doubt but that the presbyterians laboured under an in- vincible " delusion to believe a lie ;" and which seemed to increase with opposition. The severe measures, and the mili- tary coercion, to which the government was obliged to resort, were not the result of any inherent tyranny or disposition to exercise arbitrary power ; but they were driven to them to preserve the peace of the kingdom, the lives of the episcopal clergy and people, and the dignity and power of the crown, all of which wei'c in perpetual danger from the Jesuitical prin- ciples of the covenanters. When interrogated whether or not the archbishop's death was murder, the universal answer was, that it was not murder ; but with the same universality the just execution of Hackston, who assisted at the primate's murder, was at Bothwell Bridge, and was finally taken in the act of fighting against the king's troops, was indeed reckoned murder. Patrick Forman said on the scaffold — " I adhere to all the faithful testimonies that have been given for the tmth since the year 1638, especially the Sanquhar Declaration, the Rutherglen Testimony, and the papers found on Henry Hall at the Queensferry, called the new covenant, and to the law- fulness of the Torwood excommunication ^" And John Potter, in his dying speech, said — " I bear witness, and leave my testimony against the reception of the duke of York .... and now he must have this our blood to quench his thirst upon ; but that heart of his, that is so rejoicing at the hearing and seeing our death, ere long my heart shall sing hallelujah to the I jamb of God, and join in my note, and pass my seritence with the Great Judge against him and all the enemies of God, if great repentance and free grace prevent it not 2." Wodrow pretends to disown the extravagant sentiments of the last props of the covenant — Cargill and Cameron ; but he speaks of them with fraternal and apologetical tenderness. And Hetherington as- serts that tlie sentence pronounced at Torwood " was one which these peijured and blood-stained men deservedly The root from which all the heresies, schisms, rebellions, delusions, and enthusiasm, of the period sprang, was fixed and imbedded in that device of the Jesuits — the Covenant, with its antichristian, antisocial, and murderous obligations. The covenant was that other gospel, to hear which is so severely condemned by St. Paul ; and their blind enthusiasm made them court death joyfully, but especially egotistical scenes of ' Cloud of Witnesses, \->. 145. ^ j^jj p 75 3 History, p. 135. 206 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLII. display and dying speeches, which partook more of madness than of sober and vmdefiled religion ; for the spirit of enthusiasm puts out the eye of reason, and extinguishes the sobriety of reli- gion. Instead of following a proper rule or principle of action, it leaves a man to the impulses and excitement of imagination and the delirium of fancy, and makes him believe that he is in the highest exaltation of charity, whilst he is in the very gall of bitterness. As Ham was not afraid to uncover his father's skirt, so the religious enthusiast is not afraid to speak evil of dignities either in church or state ; and whilst he is persecuting the church for which Christ died, he is perfectly persuaded that he is actuated by zeal for the honour of God, and actually doing Him service. This delusion sanctifies in his eyes, schism, rebellion, murder, and the most uncharitable opinion of his neighbour, who, he thinks, ofiends of malicious wickedness, whilst if he can see any infirmities in himself, he only considers them mere human frailties. An enthusiast, says Leslie, "is of all men the most impatient of contradiction, or of any reflection upon his [own] reputation ; and yet he seeketh not honour of men, and thinks himself an holy and humble man of heart ! He is all made up of contradictions ; proud in his humility ; meek in his rage ; charitable in rail- ing ; zealous in lying ; patient in his revenge ; for unity in schism, and loyalty in his rebellion !" The power of the keys which Christ left to his church has ever been a subject of unmitigated ridicule to presbyterians ; and when it has been exercised by any portion of the church catholic, they have invariably denied the authority of men to forgive sins, whereas it is not man, but God, that forgives sin, through the official declaration of His ministers. Yet they claim most distinctly for their " church officers," " the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; by virtue whereof they have power respectively to retain and remit sins, to shut that king- dom against the impenitent, both by the word and censures ^" Their claiming the power of the keys for themselves, and deny- ing it to the Greek, Roman, Anglican, and other branches of the holy catholic and apostolic church, is a powerful evidence that, as has been before observed, like the Romanists, they confine the catholic church to their own body, and out of wliich both parties assure us " there is no ordinary possibility of salvation." It is singular, and contrary to apostolic doc- trine, that the presbyterians have ever exercised the power of the keys " to destruction," " to shut out of the kingdom" of ' Cbap. XXX. Sec. 3. 1680.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 207 heaven ; but never to edification, to admit by absolution into it. At all periods of tlieir history they have shewn the most reckless barbarity in thundering out anathemas and pronounc- ing excommunications, and which they never relaxed nisi in extremis. Believing that promise of Christ to His holy and universal church, with equal sincerity as I do all His other " gifts unto men," I as firmly believe that all those acts performed by unauthorised men are of no value whatever, but that they are sins of presumption in " the church officers" that venture to usiup the priest's office. Whilst they had law on their side, however, their excommunications, though scatheless in regard to heaven, yet they had tlie most tremendous temporal conse- quences— the loss of life, fortune, and reputation. In the Tor- wood drama, the parties that came under Cargill's ban were exposed to the knife of the assassin ; and such was the fanati- cism of these " harmless saints" and " angels of Michael," that opportunity only w^as required, for any of them to have carried Cargill's sentence into execution. Cargill himself as- serted the justice of his excommunication, and added, "there are no kings nor ministers on earth, without repentance of the persons [which, upon Calvinistic principles, is an impossi- bility], can reverse these sentences upon any account: God, who is the author of that ordinance, is the more engaged to the ratifying of them ; and all that acknowledge the scripture, ought to acknowledge them." The excommunications thun- dered out by the Glasgow Assembly in 1638, against the whole apostolic company of Scotland, have never been to this hour removed by any presbyterian public act, or repented of by any private repudiation of their dreadful crime ; but, contrariwise, it is gloried in, and the unhappy actors extolled " as the most heroic spirits that ever God inspired and raised up in this last age of the world." These extravagances and fanaticism may excite "our spe- cial wonder ;" but they are merely the natural consequences of the principles on which their wdiole system is based. I'he presbyterians arc bound to the utter extirpation of the glorious company of the apostles, and of course to renounce their fellow- ship, (although St. Luke calls it one of the marks of tlie church), not only in their own land, but wheresover the sword of the secular arm can reach. They are also bound to discover, bring to trial and to condign punishment, all whom they choose to designate malignants ; and these sins they bind on themselves " in the presence of Almighty God, the searcher of all hearts, with a true intention to perform the same, as they shall answer at that great day when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed." 208 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. XLII. Charlks was a most merciful prince, and he was most unwilling to treat his Scottish subjects with severity; and whenever their complaints reached his ears, he gave orders for a relaxation of the penalties they had incurred. But, asks Mr. Skinner, " what could government do .? Here was the first man in the church, and a privy councillor in the state, openly and inhumanly murdered, and his murderers protected and abetted, the king's authority renounced, and his person set up as a mark for every private ruffian to shoot at ; his offi- cers insulted, his laws defied, his very mercy affronted ; and all this by a pitiful parcel of hot-headed fanatics, not the thousandth part of the nation, either for number, figure, or property '," Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, ii. 484. 209 CHAPTER XLIII. THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP BURNET. 1680. — Bishops' houses repaired. — Presbyterian tradesmen refuse to work to episcopalians — Complaint of the synod of St. Andrews. — English parliament meet — motion for disinheriting the duke of York — the duke's arrival. — Earl of Moray made principal secretary of state. — Riot of the students. 1681. — A regency proposed. — English parliament dissolved. — King published his reasons. — Two women executed — their testimonies — enthusiasm. — A de- claration. — CargUl's capture — condemnation — execution. — Reflections.— Whigs dismissed. — Duke of York high commissioner. — Meeting of Parliament — king's letter — act recognising the duke of York's succession. — Lord Hatton accused in parliament. — The Test Act. — Dissatisfaction. — Bishop and clergy of Aberdeen's resolutions. — Clergy averse to the test — many deprived. — Council modify the oath. — Act of council. — King's letter. — Remarks. — Earl of Shaftesbury's trial. — Reflections. 1G80. — The crime of sacrilege had been so universal and so extensive after the destruction of the Romish church in Scot- land, that the reveiuies of the difl'erent sees were insufficient to maintain the prelates, and keep up the fabrics of their houses. And this year it became necessary for the conned to authorise the lord bishop of Dunkeld to appropriate ^£200 sterling of the stipends of the vacant parishes of his diocese for the repair of his dwelling-house ; and his grace the archbishop of Glas- gow was allowed £300 sterling from the same source for the repair of his mansion-house. It became also necessary for the council to protect the episcopal clergy in the province of Glasgow from a most annoying species of persecution, to which, since the suppression of open rioting and rebellion, the presby terians had resorted, probably at the advice of the Jesuits that lurked among them. " About the same time, the council considering the insolences committed against the orthodox clergy in Galloway, in defrauding them in their stipends, and indirect methods taken to force them to leave that shire, by tradesmen and others, their refusiny to work for them, ordain VOL. III. 2 E 210 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIII. the sheriff to give sentences against such, and upon complaint upon such as refuse to work to them, that he fine them and call for soldiers to execute his sentences ^" The breaking down of this confederacy was considered part of their " sufferings I" It was founded on the popish doctrine of non-intercourse with heretics, " that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast," or of the covenant ; and we have divine authority for saying, " Here is wisdom ;" nevertheless, it is of the serpentine sort. Great complaints were made at this period by the clergy in the disaffected districts, of the indifference and slack atten- dance of many of the people on the eucharistic sacrifice, and of their falling off in their part of that sacrifice in their alms and oblations, " many persons giving but one copper doyt at their offering." This melancholy state of things was entered on the records of the synod of St. Andrews on the 2d of Sep- tember, as follows : — The archbishop and synod being deeply sensible of the great discontentment the orderly and orthodox ministers labour under, by reason of the many vagrant con- venticle preachers and others, that in certain places of this diocese, especially in Fife, do keep weekly preachings in their houses, to the great disturbance of the peace and unity of the congregations where they reside, and the next adjacent ; therefore it is thought fit that the moderators of the several presbyteries should give in to the clerk of the synod a list of the names of all such, whether itinerant or settled, that his grace may make use thereof as he shall find expedient. It being complained, that in several places so many withdraw from the church, and refuse to be examined, so that the ministers of these parishes are doubtful whether or not they shall administer the sacrament of the eucharist; it is appointed that it shall be given to those who are desirous of the same, though they be but few. On the 21st of October the parliament of England met at Westminster ; and, in his speech from the throne, Charles offered to give them any satisfaction they could desire for the security of the reformed catholic church of England, except the alteration of the succession ; and he recommended a far- ther examination into the Popish Plot. On the 2d November, lord William Russell brought in a bill for disinheriting the duke of York, and it passed the House of Commons on the eleventh, notwithstanding that the king sent a message declar- ' Records of the Diocesan Synod of St. Andrews, cited in M'Crie'a Memoirs of Veitch and Brysson — Appendix, p. 507. 1680.J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 211 ing his readiness to concur in any other measure for the secu- rity of religion than the deprivation of the duke of York of his j ust rights. The Commons presented a remonstrance to his ma- jesty, in which they complained of the practices of the papists, and of the encouragement they had received ; and they repre- sented, that unless a popish successor was excluded, every other remedy for the security of the church of England would prove ineffectual. On the 15th, lord William Russell carried up the exclusion bill to the House of Lords, but it was thrown out there at the second reading by a majority of thirty-three votes, the king himself being anxiously present in the house. It has been asserted that three of the bishops voted in favour of the bill ; but this is a mistake, arising from three of them hav- ing voted for its committal on the first reading. Burnet says, " the whole bench of the bishops was against it ;" and in a note on the place, his editor says this error can be now cor- rected, " a list of those peers who voted for the bill of exclu- sion having been lately found by the head librarian of the Bodleian library. Dr. Bandinel, among the Ormond papers bequeathed to the library by Carte, the historian ^ They are all temporal peers, thirty in number, and to the list of their names this note is subjoined, ' thus all the fourteen bishops and forty-nine temporal peers (sixty-three in the whole) voted Ibr its being rejected,'" against thirty temporal peers. Wod- row, in evident chagrin, remarks, that " when the news of the rejecting of the exclusion bill came to Edinburgh, the chancel- lor offered to cause set on bonfires and ring bells, and order public rejoicings there ; but the duke of York declined this, and told him there was no haste in this matter, for he ex- pected an impeachment ; but his fears were soon over 2." The duke and duchess of York and their family sailed from Woolwich on the 20th October, to which place the king accom- panied them, and, after a very stormy passage, they landed at Kirkaldy, where they were received by the duke of Rothes, with the nobility and gentry of the county. They were enter- tained at Lesly-house till the 29th, when they repaired to Holyrood-house. On the following day, the lord bishop of Edinburgh and the city clergy presented a loyal address to his royal highness, expressive of their attachment to his illustri- ous family, and of the satisfaction that was felt at his arrival. The privy council also informing the king of the duke's ar- rival, expressed their hopes that they should be able to suppress ' Salmon's Chronology, i. 218. Ann. 1680.— Burnet's Own Times, ii. 252, and Editor's Note in loco, • Wodrow's History, iii. 241. 212 HISTOKY OF THE [cHAP. XLIII those principles that liad formerly ruined the kingdom ; and assure his majesty of their determination to support the duke of York's succession to the imperial crown. On the 2d No- vember the earl of Moray was appointed sole secretary of state, in the place of the duke of Lauderdale, who, from age and in- firmities,had resigned the seals which he had held from the Re- storation, a period of twenty years. Lord Fountainhall says there was a riotous assemblage of students in Edinburgh, on Christmas-day, when they burnt the pope's effigy, and paraded the streets with banners and mottos, which produced an order of council to shut up the college, and to banish the ringleaders fifteen miles from the city ; a punishment that excited Wodrow's indignation. 1681. — In England the revolutionary party still continued their persecution of the duke of York ; but finding the nation against the exclusion of his royal highness, they proposed some expedients instead; viz. upon the death of Charles II. to vest the whole government in a regent, who should be the princess of Orange, and if she died without issue, then the princess Anne; but if the duke of York should have a son, and be educated a protestant, that the regency should last no longer than his minority. That the regents should, during the duke's life, govern in his name; but that he should reside five hundred miles distant from the British dominions; and should he return to this kingdom, that he and his adherents be deemed guilty of high treason, and the crown devolve upon the regent. The Bill of Exclusion was read a first time, and ordered for a second reading; but the king came to the House of Lords, and having summoned the Commons, he told them that he observed such heats amongst them, and such differ- ences betwixt the two houses, that he thought fit to dissolve the parliament. The Whig members had brought a multitude of people to overawe the houses, and the king fearing lest he might be insulted, set out for Windsor, but returned next day to Whitehall. On the 8th of April he published a declara- tion, and assigned the following reasons for having dissolved the parliament: — Their entire neglect of the public business, and falling into factions ; their issuing arbitrary orders for tak- ing his loyal subjects into custody in matters unconnected with the privileges of parliament; their declaring many emi- nent persons enemies to the king and kingdom, without any order or process of law, or any hearing of their defence, or any proof so mucli as offered; their resolutions against any person lending the crown money, or to buy any tally of anticipation, and thereby endeavouring to reduce him to a more helpless J 1681.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 213 condition than the meanest of his subjects; their taking upon them to suspend the laws and acts of parliament, by voting against the prosecution of dissenters. This declaration was ordered to be read in all churches and chapels. Immediately addresses of congratulation w ere presented to his majesty from all quarters, for his happy deliverance from the thraldom of the republicans; at the same time loyally promising to stand by him and to support the throne with their lives and fortunes, and for the preservation of his majesty's government, both in church and stated Two WOMEN, named Isabel Allison and Marion Harvey, were executed ; and the martyrologists have raised a terrible howl of cruelty against the duke ; for his presence in council now relieved it from the accusation of persecution. Sir George M'Kenzie says, " there were, indeed, two women executed, and but two, in both these reigns, and they were punished for having received and entertained, for many months together, the murderers of the archbishop, and who had been likewise openly in rebellion at Bothwell-bridge : they declined the king's authority, as being an enemy to God, and the devil's vicegerent. And though pardon was offered to them upon their repentance, they were so far from accepting it, that they owned the crimes to be duties 2." On the scaffold Allison left her testimony " against the receiving that limb of antichrist, the duke of York, and against the Indulgences. Harvey adhered to the Queensferry covenant, the Torwood excommu- nication, and the excommunication of the bishops; and in lifting up her testimony, she said — " I leave my blood upon the traitor that sits upon the throne ; then on James, duke of York, and on the bloody crew that call themselves rulers. And I leave it on James Henderson, in the north ferry, who was the Judas that sold Archibald Stewart, and Mr. Skeen and me, to the bloody soldiers. I leave my blood on scijeant Warrock, who took me : I leave my blood on the criminal lords, as they call themselves ; and especially on that excom- municated tyrant, George M'Kenzie the advocate, and the fifteen assizers; and on Andrew Cunningham, that gave me the doom ; and on that excommunicate traitor, Tom Dalzell, who threatened me with the boots ^. Such enthusiasts w^ere fitter for Bedlam than for the scaffold ; but their madness was infectious, and it had me- thod in it. The presbyterians in Fife were smitten with the ' Salmon s Chronology, i. 220, 221. - Vindication, Ito. 3 Cloud of Witnesses, 83-103. 214 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIII. desire to imitate Cameron and Cargill, and they affixed a de- claxation on the church-door of Kettle, disowning the king's authority, besides other extravagances ; but as no one appeared to own it, it was torn down, and no more was said about it. What between the preaching of the indulged and of the vagrant ministers, and the displays on the scaffold and in presence of the council, the mad enthusiasm spread, and a set of blas- phemers arose in Borrowstouness, where Cargill had so long lurked, headed by one John Gibbs, a sailor; hence they were called Gibbites, and also Sweet Singers, and whose extrava- gance exceeded that of the fifth monarchy men. They emitted a long declaration, which is in the appendix to " M'Kenzie's Vindication," and attested as a true copy by William Patterson, the clerk of council; in which they said — " It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to take out of our Bibles the Psalms in metre .... for the Revelations say. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are mentioned in this book; and we did burn them in our prison-house, and swept away the ashes. . . . We being ])ressed to this work by the Holy Ghost, do renounce the trans- lation of the Old and New Testaments, and that for additions put into them by men. We renounce and decline all authority throughout the world, and all that are in authority, and all their acts and edicts, from the tyrant Charles Stuart to the lowest tyrant, and burn them^. They also renounced their own habitations, and betook themselves to desert places; and at a ]>lace called the Frost Moss, they burnt the Bible, using many blasphemous expressions, not fit to be repeated 2. These fanatics were humanely sent to the House of Correction to hard labour, which proved a sanative process; for in a iitvf months they were liberated, and returned to their own homes, and were restored to their right minds. The time of Cargill's glorification in the Grass-market was now at hand. He was seized at Covington Mills, on the bor- ders of Lanarkshire, after having preached his last sermon at Dunsire common, and with barbarous cruelty he was placed on a horse's back without a saddle, and having his feet tied painfully tight under the animal's belly ; in this state he was taken to Edinburgh. Cargill's case was so " notour," that he was sentenced to death by the council, but sent to be tried by a jury, and that, too, by the casting vote of one of their own martyrs, the earl of Argyle ; for the council were equally di- ' Appendix to Sir George M'Kenzie's Vindication, 219, 220. ^ Cruikshanks' History, i. 135, 136. 1681.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 215 vided — one-half intending to confine him for life in the Basa. But Argyle, the future martyr, decided Cargill'sfate, and he was ordered for death; nevertheless, he was offered his life, if ho would say " God save the king^" but which he refused to do. He declined to answer the council's interrogatories respecting the Torwood excommunication or the Sanquhar declaration, because they were ecclesiastical matters, and the council was only a civil court. He asserted the lawfulness of rising in arms, and denied the slaughter of the archbishop to be mur- der. He died consistently, and when at the foot of the ladder, he said, " The Lord knows I go on this ladder with less fear and perturbation of mind than ever I entered a pulpit to preach ;" and when he mounted the scaffold, he said — " Now I am near the getting of the croivn which shall be sure ; for which I bless the Lord, and desire all of you to bless him that he hath brought me here, and made me triumph over devils, men, and sin." This was one of the most extraordinary men of the age ; and had he exerted the same zeal and fidelity in the service of God as he bestowed in the service of him who was a mur- derer both of souls and bodies from the beginning, there could have been little doubt of his receiving the crown of righteous- ness. But when we consider that even to give up the body vo- luntarily to be burned will avail nothing without charity, of which he was notoriously deficient, it is to be feared that his expectations were but the mere ravings of enthusiasm, mixed with a love of display, and the desire to maintain his character as a prophet. He had many good points in his character: he loved religious solitude ; he was affectionate, sober, and tempe- rate in his diet, saying " it was well won that was won off the flesh," and he was " a great hater of co v etousness." B ut if he him- self was not a Jesuit, he was at least the tool of that fraternity ; for he not only broke charity by dividing the church, which an ancient father saith, even the blood of martyrdom will not wash out, but, after the manner of the Jesuits, he divided his own sect, the presbyterians, among themselves, and denounced the indulged ministers, calling them as bad as the clergy, whom he denominated " the priests of Baal"^." All the concessions and favours, and acts of conciliation, tliat the government had essayed, had failed to reclaim or to subdue the presbyterians; but the defeat of their rebellion at Both well, and the execution of some of their ministers, had ' Chronological Notes of Scottish Affairs, from 1680 till 1701; being chiefly taken from the Diary of lord Fountainhall, 4to. p. 17. * Wodrow — Cruikshanks — Hetherington — Scots Worthies — Cloud of Wit- nesses. 216 HISTORY OF THE [CH\P. XLIII. a salutary effect upon the rest of them. Besides, the government was now more firm and steady since the king had emancipated himself from the Whigs at court ; there was less vacillation in his councils, and the law was steadily but temperately enforced. He had dismissed the earl of Shaftsbury and others, who were the heads of a desperate faction at court, and who were in alli- ance with the presbyterians ; and in order to exalt themselves in power, they excited the covenanters to keep armed field meetings. Monmouth, Shaftsbury, and some others, persuaded the presbyterians, that by helping the Whigs into power at court, their own sect would be again established in as arbitrary a supremacy as they had formerly held. But the king laid the axe to the root of the confederacy, by dismissing the chiefs; and so the underspur-leathers having no prompters, and being more steadily governed, became quiet and peaceable, and even began to return to the church. Even Wodrow himself ac- knowledges, that since the execution of the prophet Cargill *•' there was not one who preached at field meetings, neither were there many sermons in houses; yea, some presbyterian ministers, now deprived of all other opportunities, did, at some times, even communicate ivith the episcopal clergy ... to ma- nifest their holding communion with them in those things which they held in common with other protestant churches ^" The king transmitted a commission, dated the 22d of June, to the duke of York, constituting his royal highness the lord high commissioner to the parliament, which was summoned to assemble at Edinburgh on the 28th of July, after an inter- val of nine years. Wodrow presents every act of the govern- ment, however innocent or necessary, as a" grievance," and a cause of " suffering." " It was now nine years," says he, "since we had a parliament in Scotland, and it may be, considering all circumstances, the kingdom was at no great loss 2." This parliament was " ridden" with the greatest magnificence, and Dr. Patterson, lord bishop of Edinburgh, preached before them ; and the whole of the spiritual estate, except two, were present. The marquis of Athole was appointed the president, and he presented the king's letter, dated from Windsor Castle, the 12th of July. Wodrow very justly observes, that " papers of this nature contain as much of the mind of the ministry and minions about the king, as his own ;" but although this " observe" be true in general, yet it was not so in this instance, for Charles had a mind of his own on the subject that lay nearest his heart at this time. In his speech from the throne • History, ii. 242 — vide /)0s^ ^ Fountainliall's Chronological Notes, 4to. 19. 1681.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 217 the duke said, the king " hath commanded me to assure you, that he will inviolably maintain and protect the protestant re- ligion as now established by law in this his kingdom ; and that he will, upon the same account, protect and maintain the government of the church by archbishops and bishops, and will take their persons, and all other their concerns, into his royal care and protection; and doth seriously recommend to you to fall upon eflectual courses for suppressing those sedi- tious and rebellious conventicles, from whence proceed all dis- order and confusion, and these horrid and extravagant doc- trines, which are a scandal to Christianity, and tend to the subversion of all public and private interests." The next topic of the speech might, perhaps, have come more gracefully from the king himself in his letter ; but it was left to the diike to inform the house, that the king " doth expect that you will not be short of the loyalty of your ancestors in vigorously as- serting and clearing his royal prerogative, and in declaring the rights of his crown in its natural and legal course of descent." The answer to the king's letter was an echo of it and of the duke's speech; and, to the horror of Wodrow and the Whig party, they affirm their resolution to maintain the rights and prerogatives of the crown and monarchy, " the nati\e succes- sion whereof cannot be invaded, without utter subversion of the fundamental laws of this your majesty's ancient kingdom." In conformity with this resolution, they passed the following act, recognising the duke's right of succession, to which it is most astonishing to hear any presbsterian object, when that clause of their confession is considered, which every one is bound to obtemperate as the confession of his own faith. " Infidelity, or difference in religion, doth not make void the magistrate'' s just and legal authority, nor free the j^eople from their due obedience to him ; from ivhich ecclesiastical persons are not exempted^. ^^ " The estates of parliament, considering that the kings of this realm deriving their royal po^^'er from God Almiglity alone, do succeed lineally thereto, according to the known degrees of proximity in blood, which cannot be interrupted, suspended, or diverted by any act or statute whatsoever; and that none can attempt to alter or divert the said succession without in- volving the subjects of this kingdom in peijury and rebellion, and without exposing them to all the fatal and dreadful con- sequences of a civil war, do therefore, from a hearty and ' Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. xxiii. sect. iv. p. 14.4. VOL. III. 2 r 218 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XHII. sincere sense of their duty, recognize, acknow'ledge, and de- clare, that the right to the imperial crown of this realm is, by the inherent right and the nature of the monai'diy, as well as by the fundamental aiid unalterable laws of this realm, trans- mitted and devolved by a lineal succession, according to the proximity of blood; and that upon the death of the king or queen who actually reigns, the subjects of this kingdom are bound by law, duty, and allegiance, to obey the next imme- diate and lawful heir, either male or female, upon whom the right and administration of the government is immediately devolved; and that no difference in religion, nor no law, nor act of parliament, made or to be made, can alter or divert the right of succession and lineal descent of the crouTi to the nearest and lawful heirs, according to the degrees foresaid, nor can stop or hinder them in the full, free, and actual adminis- tration of the goveniment, according to the laws of the king- dom. LiKEAS our sovereign lord, with advice and consent of the said estates of parliament, does declare it high treason in any of the subjects of this kingdom, by writing, speaking, or in any other manner of way, to endeavour the alteration, sus- pension, or diversion of the said right of succession, or the debarring the next lawful successor from the immediate, ac- tual, full and free administration of the government, conform to the laws of the kingdom ; and that all such attempts or de- signs shall infer against them the pain of treason'." WoDROW expresses due horror at this act; nevertheless it shows the wisdom and piety of our ancestors; and he de- nounces it as an " iniquity established by a law ;" but after reading this and a subsequent act, I hope my readers will en- tertain charitable thoughts of our blessed fathers in Christ for abdicating their establishment in the next reign, when they see how stringently they were encompassed with oaths and acts of parliament. An act was passed for securing the peace of the country against seditious and rebellious field con- venticles, which for so many years had been the bane of both trade and agriculture, and destructive of charity and goodwill among neighbours. " As they were going on in public busi- ness, one stood up in parliament and accused lord Hatton, the duke of Lauderdale's brother, of perjury on the account of Mitchel's business'^." The name of this mysterious one is not mentioned ; he produced copies of the letters written at the ' Act 2, Pari. 3, Charles II. acknowledging and asserting the right of succes- Bion to the imperial crown of Scotland; August 13, 1681. ' Burnet's Own Times, iii. 306. 1G81.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 219 time by lord Hatton to lord Kincardine, who was now dead, but his widow had given them to this one, out of spite to Hatton. By misstating the facts of Mitchel's case, perjury might be made to appear i but upon referring back it will be found that that charge cannot be substantiated ^ Burnet's editor has added the following note to the place : — " ... it is re- lated, that lord Kincardine sent a bishop to duke Lauderdale, desiring him to consider better, before he denied, upon oath, the promise of life which had been given to Mitchel, because lord Kincardine had letters from the duke and the duke's brother in his possession, which requested him to ask the king to make good the promise. On which place of bishop Burnet's his- tory, the late lord Auchenleck, judge Boswell, who was grand- son of the earl of Kincardine, has written the following ob- servation, inserted here by the favour of his lordship's grand- son, James Boswell, esq. of the Inner Temple, a gentleman well known by his own and his father's merits : — " The bishop who was sent by my lord Kincardine was Patterson, bishop of Edinburgh, and those very letters were the cause of Lauder- dale's disgrace. For when the duke of York was in Scotland he sent for my lady Kincardine, and these letters of hers. My lady told the duke she would not part with the originals; but that if his gi-ace pleased, he might take a copy of them; which he did, and shewed to his brother, the king, who was stunned at the villainy, and ashamed he had employed such a minister ; and immediately ordered all his posts and prefeiTnents to be taken from him 2." The test, " a self-contradictory oath," was enacted on the 31st August, in which it was required of the parties taking office, either in church or state, to swear that resistance to the crown was unlawful, and at the same time to acknowledge Knox's " uncatholic" confession of faith to be the confession of their own faith, which pointedly advocated the lawfulness oj resisting the powers that be. At first sight, it would appear to have been inconsistent with the duke's own principles, to have admitted into it words expressing adherence to the pro- testant religion ; but that clause is so loosely mentioned, that it might easily be explained away. In fact, this oath cut di- rectly at the established church, whose confession was the apostolic creed, at the presbyterians,who adhered to the West- minister confession of faith, and to the papists, who clove to the Tridentine creed ; neither of whom could conscientiously ' Vide ante, vol. ii. ch. xxxiii. pp. 686, 687. ■ Note to Burnet's Own Times, iii. 307. 220 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XLIII. swear to maintain a form of belief which was obsolete to all the parties. It was a most insidious and an erastian device of his royal highness's secret comicillors, whose brethren had been so long engaged in prompting the ringleaders of the field conventicles. Opposition would have been generally made, andQueensberry and Argyle made some show of it, and which might have been effectual ; but it was voted treasonable, and others were intimidated, so the bill passed. The only clause of the act that need be repeated, is that which required "that the ministers of each parish give up in October yearly, to their respective ordinaries, true and exact lists of all papists and schismalical withdrawers from the public worship in their re- spective parishes j which lists are to be subscribed by them, and that the bishops give in a double of the said lists subscribed by them to the respective sheriffs, Stewarts, baillies of royalty and regality, and magistrates of burghs, to the effect the said judges may proceed against them according to law^" The effects of this fifth-ribbed clause will appear afterwards ; but the Test itself is as follows : — " I solemnly swear, &c. that I own and sincerely pro- fess the true protestant religion, contained in the confession of faith recorded in the first parliament of king James VI., and that I believe the same to be founded on and agreeable to the written word of God : and I promise and swear that I shall adhere thereunto during all the days of my lifetime, and shall endeavour to educate my children therein, and shall never con- sent to any change or alteration contrary thereupon ; and that I disown and renounce all such principles, doctrines, or prac- tices, whether popish or fanatical, which are contrary unto and inconsistent with the said pi'otestant religion and confes- sion of faith : and for testification of ray obedience to my most gracious sovereign, Charles II., I do affirm and swear, by this my solemn oath, that the king's majesty is the only supreme governor of this realm over all persons and in all causes, as well ecclesastical as civil ; and that no foreign prince, person, pope, prelate, state, or potentate, hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or civil, within this realm : therefore I do ut- terly renounce and forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiorities, and authorities ; and do promise that fiom hence- forth / shall bear faith and true allegiance to the king's majesty, HIS HEiiis and lawful successors ; and to my power shall assist and defend all rights, jurisdictions, prerogatives, privi- ' 6 Actiii. Pail. Charges ii. Aue;. 31, 1681. 1681.] CHURCU OF SCOTLAND. 221 leges, pre-eminences, and authorities belonging to the king'js majesty, his heirs and lawful successors: and I further affirm and swear by this my solemn oath, that I judge it unlawful for subjects, upon pretence of reformation or any pretence whatsoever, to enter into covenants or leagues, or to convo- cate, convene, or assemble in any councils, conventions, or assemblies, to treat, consult, or determine in any matter of state, civil or ecclesiastic, vvitliout his majesty's special com- mand or express license had thereunto, or to take up arms against the king or those commissioned by him ; and that I shall never so rise in arms or enter into such covenants or as- semblies, and that there lies no obligation upon me from the national covenant, or the solemn league and covenant (so com- monly called), or any otlier manner of way whatsomever, to endeavour any change or alteration in the government, either in church or state, as it is now established by the laws of this kingdom : and I promise and swear that I shall, with my ut- most power, defend, assist, and maintain his majesty's jurisdiction foresaid against all deadly ; and I shall never de- cline his majesty's power and jurisdiction, as I shall answer to God, And finally I affirm and swear, that this my solemn oath is given in the plain genuine sense and meaning of the words, without any equivocation, mental reservation, or any manner of evasion whatsomever. So help me." This test laid the axe to the root of the presbyterian tree, and accordingly it is fiercely denounced by all their writers as " conscience debauching," — " for engaging them to own the king's supremacy over all persons and in all causes ; to re- nounce our covenants with defensive arms^ and all the former steps taken for carrying on the reformation ^" But their own leaders were principally to blame for its inconsistency with their principles. Sir James Dalrymple, president of the coiu-t of session, and the earl of Argyle, had got the old con- fession of faith put into the act, for the purpose of excluding the duke of York from the throne, but being dissatisfied with the other parts of it, they refused to take the test without a qualification. This beng refused, the former resigned his office and retired to Holland, to wait the progress of the re- volution ; the latter was committed to the Castle on a charge of treason. The earl of QueensbeiTy also, and several of the nobility and those high in ofiice, refused to take it, and there- fore they resigned their offices. The bishops and clergy generally demurred to take tlie ' WilUson's Tcstiinoiiy, p. 17. 222 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XLIII. test, and they prepared to sufFer for conscience sake. The bishop of Aberdeen was appointed by the council to administer the oath to the university and commissariat of that city ; but both his lordship and his clergy demun-ed, and in a synodical meet- ing drew up the following resolutions, in the shape of que- ries:— " When an oath is of the strictest obligation, and must be taken in judgment, truth, and righteousness; and when con- science is the most tender thing in the world, and not to be constrained, I cannot but inquire, for my satisfaction, anent the present Test, and desire to be resolved — " 1. How CAN I sw^ear that confession of faith recorded par. 1, James VI. to be the true standard of the protestant religion, and the rule of my faith, and sincerely swear it to be founded upon the word of God, and bring up my children in that ftiith, which in some passages is obscure and doubtful ; as chap, iii., where the confession says, ' that the image of God is utterly defaced in man;' and ch. xix. 'the marks of the true church, the power of expounding the controverted sense of scripture and the supreme judge of controversies in the church, are dubious and disputable things.' In which some things are contrary to the doctrine of this present church and all other reformed churches ; as ch. xxiii. where the con- fession denies the ministers of the popish church to be true ministers of Christ ; for the reformed churches never reor- dained popish priests when they turned protestants- Ch. xiv. the confession denies that to be a true church where the sacra- ments are not rightly administered — where they are not ad- ministered in the elements appointed in the word. Whei'eas the christian churches do not unchurch one another, because of the different circumstances in administration, because some use pure wine, and some wine mixed with water; nor did the church baptize such as were not baptized with water. And in which some things are contrary to the test itself, and the sound principles of protestants ; as ch. xxv. the confession enjoins obedience and paying tribute to rulers only condition- ally, while they travel vigilantly in the execution of their office; and in ch. xv. the confession forbids the resisting of the magistates only conditionally while they pass not over the bounds of their office ; and ch. xxv. he that resists the power, doing that which pertains to its office, resists the ordinance of God ; and the chapter, of good works, says it is a good work to bear down tyranny. 1 think such a confession would teach us religion about as well as the solemn league and covenant. " 2. How CAN 1 swear that I believe the king's majesty to be 1G81.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 223 the only supreme governor over all persons and in all causes ? when the forementioned confession obliges me to believe Christ to be the only head of the church. And when I believe all ecclesiastic authority to be derived from Christ, and not from secular princes ; when I believe no judge on earth is supreme judge in error or heresy, albeit they can punish the same ; and w^hen I believe the king's power to be cumulative, and not de- structive of the intrinsic power of the church. I ask, there- fore, whether the king's supremacy, as it is extended by the act, November 16th, 1669, doth deprive the kirk of her intrin sic power? when the disposal of the external government in all ecclesiastical matters, persons, or meetings, is put in his majesty's hand without any restriction, distinction, or limita- tion, by former laws or customs ; all acts, laws, customs, or constitutions, contrary to the said supremacy, being ex- pressly rescinded and annulled, which is to be well marked. " 3. If I BELIEVE the present established church to he Juris divini et aposfolici, how can I swear that it is in the king's power to alter or change the same } And if it be in its nature indifferent, how can I swear to that which the king can alter at his pleasure ? " 4. How CAN I swear to defend the king's privileges and prerogatives, until I know them, and consider them if they be consistent with the principles of religion ? And if acts of council, founded upon the supremacy, be a just commentary on the king's supremacy, perhaps it will not be found to be con- sistent with the principles of the christian churoh. " 5. How CAN I svvearthat I judge it unlawful, upon any pre- text whatsomever, to enter into leagues and covenants without the king's express license and consent, when it was lawful enough, in the first days of Christianity, to enter into a cove- nant with Christ and a league with one another, though not to cast off the yoke of secular princes, yet to cast off the yoke of paganism, Judaism, and idoltary, even contrary to the express commands of the earthly sovereigns. And, put the case of avowed and professed popery in the kingdom (which God forbid), would it be unlawful for subjects, without tu- mult or force of arms, to shake off the Romish yoke, and to enter into a covenant for that effect ? Will not that clause in the test condemn our reformation in Scotland ? " 6. How CAN I swear sincerely that I judge it unlawful for subjects to convene in any assemblies, to treat, consult, or de- termine, in any matter of state, civil or ecclesiastic, when I have no security from the test, or the laws of the land, but that clause may comprehend the assembly and meetings for 224 HISTORY OF THE lCHAP. XLHI. the worship of God and the ordinary exercise of discipline ; especially when all ecclesiastical meetings are put in the king's hands by the act November 16th, 16G4, and all acts, clauses, and constitutions, civil and ecclesiastic, to the contrary, re- scinded and annulled? Can I condemn it as unlawful to meet or assemble for preaching the gospel, administering the holy sacraments, or exercising church discipline, unless I con- demn the apostles and primitive christians, who did meet for such purposes ? Again, if the license which we enjoy for meeting for God's worship and the exercise of discipline ac- cording to our reformed customs, should be in process of time recalled (which God forbid), would it be unlawful for us to as- semble with one another for the said purposes? " 7. Can I swear there lieth no obligation upon me, any manner of way to endeavour any change or alteration in the government of the church or stale, as it is now established by law ? For if there be any corruption in the government or administration thereof, may I not, if I have opportunity, adver- tise his majesty, his commissioner, his council, or some of his court ? May I not desire quietly what I would have reformed ? And though there were no corruptions at present, may not some creep in in process of time, and may not I in the least endea- vour to reform these, though I may not in the least endeavour any alteration or change in the government ? It must be a perfect constitution that needs no alteration in any of the least circumstances ; and yet a change in some circumstances is a change: yea, the confession prescribed by the Test, ch. xxi. teaches me that no policy or order of ceremonies in the church can be appointed for all ages, places, or times, because what is now convenient may prove burthensome at another time, or in other circumstances. May I not pray to God Almighty to ]>ut it into the hearts of men to reform what is amiss ? and yet to pray is some sort of endeavour. What if the king's power in national synods, by act of parliament, be destructive of the true church power ? What if there be something in the act of restitution of bishops to be amended ? " 8. I ASK if there be no more in this test, than in the acts of parliament whereupon it is founded, albeit there be a vast dirterence betwixt an act of parliament and an oath ; and though it be said there is no more in the test nor in former oaths ? But in act 8, par. James VI. and in act 4, par. 1. Charles II. against convocating and assembling the king's lieges without his license, there is an express clause put (but except in ordinaryjudgments) ; now this considerable clause is kept out ol' the Test, \\hich should be well marked ; for I 1681.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 225 swear by it, that 1 judge it unlawful to convene or assemble upon any pretext whatsomevcr, even though it were to wor- ship God with others. Again, in the declaration, act 5, ses. 2, par. 1, Charles II., these words are mentioned: ' There lieth no obligation upon me from the covenants to endeavour re- formation ;' but the Test adds, ' any manner of way,' may I not be under some obligation, though from neither of the cove- nants ? And though I be under no obligation at present, may I not be under some afterwards ? Again, if there be no more in this Test than in former oaths, how comes it to pass that the Test is imposed upon them who took the declaration and oath of supremacy formerly, and upon ministers who take the oath of supremacy and canonical obedience at their entry ? To all this may be added the evil of imposing and multiplying of oaths." The established clergy generally refused to take this oath ; for, by virtue of his prerogative and supremacy, the king might, according as the law stood, dispose of the external govern- ment of the church as he might choose, and so, according to the policy of the reigning monarch, it might be changed to cither presbytery or popery. The queries of the bishop of Aberdeen contained the sentiments of the other bishops and clergy generally, and others of them drew up protests in their synodal meetings to the same effect. Many of the clergy were dej^ived for refusing to take the test, and some of them volun- tarily resigned their churches, rather than take an oath which contained so many and so great inconsistencies. Wodrow cannot refuse his praise to the episcopal clergy for their pa- tient endurance of what he calls " wholesome severities." " Although," says he, " these wholesome severities wanted not their effect, yet it must be owned, to the credit of a great many others [besides those sufferers whom he names] among the episcopal clergy, that upon this occasion they made the best appearance that ever they did^" Many of them were deprived of their parishes by the privy council, and others abandoned their preferments, rather than commit such mani- fest perjury, and, moreover, to give a decided acknowledgment and consent to the assertory act, to maintain the king's privi- leges upon oath. Their christian courage, however, was not exhibited by an armed resistance to the law, nor in preaching tl)e people into sedition and mutiny ; but in meekly and pa- tiently preparing themselves to suffer the vengeance of the privy council. • History, iii. 304. VOL. III. 2 G 226 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIII. The bishops of Dunkeld and Aberdeen published the sense in which they and their clergy were willing to take the Test ; but which was evidently not the sense that the literal meaning of the oath would bear, or that in which the govern- ment intended it. Bishop Patterson, of Edinburgh, also drew up a sort of explanation to salve consciences ; but it could not supersede the plain letter of the law as it stood. After about eighty of the clergy had been deprived, and seeing the firm determination of the rest, not to betray the inherent rights of the church, which had been so flagrantly invaded by the duke of York as commissioner, and the earl of Moray as prime minister, and whom the celebrated Dr. Hickes calls " a good churchman," the government became alarmed at the unex- pected but calm resolution of the clergy. Their christian fortitude extorted the admiration even of their enemies, and Wodrow says," This stir among the clergy, which was new and unprecedented in any thing imposed by the state, made the mangers about Edinburgh begin to reflect a little, and to huddle up a declaration, and act explanatory anent the Test." Ministers therefore found it necessary to frame and issue the following act of council, without waiting for the king's appro- bation, dated the 3d of November : — " Forasmuch as some have entertained jealousies and pre- judices against the oath and test, appointed to be taken by all persons in public trust, civil, ecclesiastic, or military, in this kingdom, by the 6th act of his majesty's third parliament, as if thereby they were to swear to every proposition or clause in the Confession of Faith therein mentioned, or that invasion were made thereby upon the intrinsic spiritual power of the church, or power of the keys, or as if the present episcopal government of this national church, by law established, were thereby exposed to the hazard of alteration or subversion ; all of which are far from the intention or design of the parliaments imposing this oath, and from the genuine sense and meaning thereof: therefore his royal highness, the royal commissioner, and lords of privy council, do allow, authorise, and empower the archbishops and bishops to administer this oath to the ministers and clergy in their respective dioceses, in this express sense, that though the Confession of Faith, ratified in parlia- ment 1567, was framed in the infancy of our reformation, and deserves its due praise, yet by the Test we do not swear to every proposition or clause therein contained, but only to the true protestant religion, founded on the word of God, con- tained in that confession, as it is opposed to popery and fana- 1681.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 227 ticism. Secondly, that by the Test, or any clause therein con- tained, no invasion or encroachment is made or intended upon the spiritual power of the church, or power of the keys, as it was exercised by the apostles, and the most pure and primitive church, in the three first centuries after Christ, and which is still reserved entirely to the church. Thirdly, that the oath and test is without any prejudice to the episcopal government of this national church, which is declared by the first act of the second session of his majesty's parliament, to be most agreeable to the word of God, and most suitable to monarchy, and which upon all occasions his majesty hath declared he will inviolably and unalterably jireserve : and appoints the archbishops and bishops to require the ministers in their re- spective dioceses, with their first conveniency, to obey the law, in swearing and subscribing the aforesaid oath and test ; with certification, that the refusers shall be esteemed persons disaffected to the protestant religion and to his majesty's go- vernment, and the punishment appointed by the foresaid sixth act of his majesty's third parliament shall be impartially and without delay inflicted upon them" This act was sent to court for the king's approbation and superscription ; and as he himself had no intention of ]ierse- cuting the church of Scotland, he not only supersigned the act, but wrote the following letter to his privy coiuicil, dated November the 15th : — Charles R. — Most dear and most entirely beloved brother, &c. — Whereas, by one of your letters directed unto us, bearing date the 8th instant, we do find that some having entertained scruples and prejudices againt the Test, by mistaking the true sense and meaning thereof, and others having put false and unjust glosses and senses upon it, tending to defeat its excellent design for the security of our government ; and that upon this account you found it necessary, by an act of that our council (which we have seen), to declare its true and genuine sense, and to allow and empower the bishops to administer the same in this sense to the clergy in their respective dioceses : We are so well pleased with that explanatory act, that we will not delay to send you our cheerful approbation thereof, with our hearty thanks for your zeal in our service upon all occa- sions, especially in what relates to the security of the persons, rights, interests, and privileges of our orthodox clergy, which we do now (as we have often done before) in a particular manner recommend to your care, as a matter wherein you 228 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIII. may render unto us the most acceptable service ; and there- fore we do expect that you will, upon all fit occasions, give them all possible encouragement, as these whom we have re- ceived, and will constantly shelter under our royal protection, against all their enemies." The POPISH party certainly intended this Test to have been a very " heavy blow and great discouragement" to the church; and although the explanation made it more acceptable to the clergy, yet it was not the sense in which it was enacted. One of the objects contemplated by the framers of the Test was insensibly to engage them to acknowledge the Assertory act, by which the popish party could have restored that hierarchy when the crown came to be favourable to their designs. The Test bound the clergy under heavy penalties to maintain the king's supremacy, and all his other assumed privileges that had been granted and confirmed to him by that sacrilegious act. The design of the Test was to inveigle the clergy into an acknowlegment and recognition of that extraordinary supremacy or popedom, which the Assertory act had conferred on him ; but their sagacity discovered the trap thus cunningly laid for them, and they had the christian courage to refuse it. They were ready to obey every lawful ordinance ; but their duty to God and the church made them ready to suffer all the penalties for disobedience to laws that usurped the rights of Christ's church ; and rather than betray them they pre- pared themselves to possess their souls in patience, and to sufter the last extremities of persecution. Their christian courage was successftil ; and when the privy council saw the calm resolution of the clergy to suffer persecution under the form of law rather than to betray the rights of the church, they passed that declaratory act which removed ths evil, when the rising storm of persecution exhausted itself, and the unnatural claim of supremacy was resigned. " They rid out the storm," says Leslie, " and they prevailed, as others would do if they tried it. The inherent rights of the church are so flagrant, that a christian state will hardly invade them, but where they are tamely given up. The king, seeing the clergy resolute to suffer and to assert their rights, found he could not bear the odium, nor was able to maintain his claim. Therefore a de- claration was published by the king and council (..••) where- in they renounced all pretences to the intrinsic poiver of the church, and left entirely to her all the ecclesiastical power, authority, and jurisdiction, exercised by the church for the first three centuries, which being llie whole that could be asked, 1681.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 229 the breach was made up ; and the deprived clergy were re- stored. And by this all the erastian teeth of that Assertory act were drawn out^" In July, the earl of Shaftesbury was committed to the Tower for high treason ; and on searching his papers a trea sonable association was discovered drawn up for excluding the duke of York from the throne, and to compel his majesty to submit to such terms as this whig association might impose. On the 24th of November, an indictment for high treason was preferred at the Old Bailey against Shaftesbury, for having framed this association for the duke's exclusion by force, for the intention to destroy the king's guards, and the attempt to impose terms on his majesty. These facts were proved, and the paper containing the proposals was produced ; but, says Salmon, " though positively proved by eight witnesses, and the association itself found among the earl's papers, the grand jury being packed by the whig sheriffs, refused to find the bill, and returned ignoramus 2." This verdict so mortified the judges that they proceeded no farther against him ; but he was not discharged till the following February. It is a christian maxim that we ought not to do evil, al- though good may be the result ; and this rule stood good in the case of the duke of York. His right of succession was undoubted, from the laws of nature and of the kingdom ; for at that time there was no law, as at present, which regu- lated the principle that the sovereign must be a member of the anglo-catholic church. And, as before mentioned, the pres- byterian confession of faith absolutely bars all coercion on the conscience of the sovereign ; and so far from making po- pery an obstacle, it does not even admit that infidelity itself is any impediment to the just and lineal succession to the crown. The duke's attachment to popery was notorious and bigotted, yet his arbitrary exclusion from succeeding to his brother was an act of injustice which ought not to have been done, under the expectation that good would follow, as it is not to be supposed that he and his adherents would have been deterred by an act of parliament from attempting the recovery of his rights. This would have produced civil war and blood- shed, the destruction of property, and party feuds, instead of the good proposed ; but it is to be feared that Shaftesbury and thewhigs made opposition to popery an excuse to veil their own designs of establishing a republic. This was one of the arti- ' Case of the Regale and Pontificate stated, ed. 1703, pp. 233, 23i. ' Chronology, i. 222, 223.— Somcr's Tracts, p. 111. 230 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XLIII. cles against that nobleman at his trial, " that he had imagined to compass and procure the death of the king, the subversion of the government, and the known laws of the land, by re- ducing this ancient monarchy into a republic." Shaftesbury was in close correspondence and league with the chiefs ot the covenanters in Scotland ; hence his principles, and hence the origin of the political party in England known by the name of the Whigs, whose principles always have been anti- monarchical and revolutionary. The duke of York was not only a bigotted papist himself, but he was surrounded and secretly advised by Jesuits about his person. The Test was a corollary to the Assertory act, and was devised by his secret advisers to have set that act in motion in due time, had it succeeded. But the firmness of the clergy, under God, saved the church and nation from the infliction of a papal sujDremacy, which had all the ajjpearance of having been designed, and which could have been legally accomplished by the operation of the Assertory Act, which em- powered the sovereign to change at his pleasure the external government of the church. This would have introduced a religious anarchy of another sort; for the people had too firm an abhorrence of popery to have complied with the re- establishment of the dominion of the see of Rome. But by means of the Assertory act, James's successor on the throne gave the church that stab below the fifth rib under which she suffers to the present day. His priestly councillors had taught his royal highness to practise deep dissimulation, and to assume the appearance of great moderation, so that he managed affairs in Scotland with great dexterity. He was a man of unquestionable abilities, and perfectly understood commerce and navigation; and, from his judicious suggestions on these subjects, he had gained considerable popularity amongst the mercantile part of the nation. 231 CHAPTER XLIV. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP BURNET. 1681. — Objections to the Test. — Argyle's reservation — tried and condemned- made his escape from the castle. 1G82. — Test a cause of suffering to the clergy — theirresignations. — Test burnt at Lanark. — Apologetick declaration.^ Council's retaliation. — Death of bishop Scougal. — Translations and consecra- tions.— The king goes to Newmarket. — Letter of the bishops to the English prelates. — Duke of York goes to Newmarket — embarks on board the Glouces- ter frigate — wrecked — account of it — number on board, and saved. — Burnet's account. — Changes in the administration. — The duke leaves Scotland. — The clergy compelled to make reports. — Recusants summoned. — Presbyterians came to church. — Death of the duke of Lauderdale. 1683. — Presbyterian reasons for refusing to say God save the king. — King returns from Newmar- ket.— Rye-house conspiracy. — Views of the conspirators. — Plot discovered. — Renwick — some account of him — commences preaching. — Andrew Guilion ar- rested— his execution. — Thanksgiving. — Decree of the university of O.xford. — Twenty- seven propositions condemned and books burnt. — Cambridge address to the king. — Views of the Whigs. — Monmouth's confession. — Effects of the Test. 1681. — ^The PRESBYTERIANS objected to theTest because it contained a renunciation of their beloved covenants, and bound them also not to attempt any change in the government of either church or state as by law established ; " which," says Hetherington, " of necessity, implied the entire and final abandonment of every presbyterian principle \ ''' Several of the nobility and gentlemen in office hesitated, and shewed re- luctance to take the test. The earl of Queensberry took it with an inoffensive explanation ; but the earl of Argyle was the most unfortunate in his evasions and explanations. On the adjournment of parliament, he declared that he would ei- ther not take it at all, or else with a reserve of his own expla- nation,which he put in writing, and dispersed for the edification of the public. He ofiered to take the oath with the following ' History, p. 157. 232 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIV. qualification : — " That he was desirous to give obedience to the Test as far as he could, and now took it so far as it is con- sistent with itself and with the protestant religion : but that he did not mean to bind himself up in his station from endea- vouring in a lawful way any thing he might think for the ad- vantage of the church or state, not repugnant to the protestant religion and his own loyalty : and this he understood as part of his oath." The duke of York did not object to this quali- fication at first, till after consultation with his priestly coun- cillors ; but Argyle was not satified with urging his own scru- ples, he had used some means of agitation which was then considered in the light of sedition. The privy council de- cided that his qualification was destructive of the intention of the act, and brought his lordship within the statute of high treason for limiting his allegiance ; and they pressed Argyle to withdraw his conditions, and the bishop of Edinburgh waited on him, and earnestly urged him not to ruin his noble house by persisting in what the law had made high treason. He was prosecuted for treason ; and bishop Spratt says the privy covmcil were well informed of the earl's seditious car- riage in city and country, and were satisfied " of his traitor- ous purposes in that fallacious and equivocating paraphrase on the Test, which he owned in their presence, perverting thereby the sound sense and eluding the force of his majesty's laws, in order to set the subjects loose from their obedience, and to perpetuate schism in the church and faction in the state." On the 12th of December he was brought to trial before a juiy of his peers, who unanimously returned a verdict as follows : — " They all in one voice find the earl of Argyle guilty and culpable of the crimes of treason, leasing-making, and leasing-telling ; and find, by plurality of votes, the said earl innocent, and not guilty of peijury." The court sen- tenced his lordship to be beheaded ; but the bishop again as- serts that " the king was far from any thought of taking away his life, and that no farther prejudice was intended against him but the forfeiture of some jurisdictions and superiorities which he and his predecessors had surreptitiously acquired and most tyrannically exercised ^" Not trusting to the king's clemency, he made his escape in the character of a footman to lady Sophia Lindsay ; and in company with Veitch, a pres- byterian minister, he took shelter in London, where, under an assumed name, he entered into plots and conspiracies against 1 Dr. Spratt, lord bishop of Rochester's, True Account, &c. of the Rye-house Conspiracy ; Preface. 1680. 8vo. 1682.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 233 the king's life and government, particularly into that of the Rye-house; and after some time, to avoid capture, he made his escape to Holland. " Thus," says Mr. Skinner, " these two eminent champions of presbytery [the earl of Argyle and lord Stair, president of the court of session], who, whatever sentiments of affection they might have had for the crown, were avowed enemies of the church, and had introduced this double-faced oath to entangle the episcopal clergy, were un- expectedly caught in the trap of their own devising, and drew down upon tliemselves the effects of an act which they had intended and hoped should have operated another way ^" 1682. — Notwithstanding the explanation that had been given by the privy council, the Test was the cause of much suf- fering to the clergy. On the 5th January, the archbishop of St. Andrews, in the name of the council, wrote to the magistrates of Aberdeen, that having received information that the clergy ol their city had undutifuUy refused the Test, their churches were now vacant, and required them, as patrons, to present fit and qualified persons, within three weeks from that date. Among those who resigned their charges on account of the Test, was Mr. George Meldrum, who afterwards became a chief leader in the presbyterian establishment, and Mr. JohnMenzies, who objecled to the renunciation of the co- venant ; the latter was restored to his church, but Meldrum went to Irvine, and became a preacher among the presbyte- rians ^. Many of the clergy had fled to England on their re- signation or deprivation, and Burnet fails not to take the merit of having provided for them. He says, " About t\N'enty of them came up to England ; I found them men of excellent tempers, pious and learned, and I esteemed it no small happi- ness that I had then so much credit by the ill opinion they had of me at court, that I got most of them to be well settled in England ; where they have behaved themselves so wor- thily, that I have great reason to rejoice in being made an in- strument to get so many good men, who suffered for their con- sciences, to be again well employed and well provided for 3." There is an order in council directed to certain patrons, to fill up exactly twenty churches which were then vacant, and which corroborates what Burnet said above ; and the order was issued, in the name of the council, by archbishop Burnet, to present fit persons within twenty days. Those clergy iu ' Ecclesiastical History, ii. 489. ^ Sage's Letters on Toleration : Preface. ^ Own Times, iii, 315. — Wodrow's History, iii. 360. VOL. in. 2 H 234 HISTOllY OF THE [CHAP. XLIV. the city and county of Aberdeen, who had resigned or had been deprived, were now reponed by an order of council dated the 23d of February, which says, " His royal highness and lords of privy council, being informed by some of the lords of the clergy that several loyal and learned chmchmen within the diocese of Aberdeen had for a time some scruples anent the oath and Test . . . but being fully cleared and sa- tisfied, did, before the decease of their late ordinary, take and sign the Test in his presence . . . the council allow them to return to their former charges, and to enjoy the emoluments and profits thereunto belonging." In March and April other clergymen, in different parts of the kingdom, were reponed, and on the 11th May the council authorized the bishops, who had acquired the right of presentation jure devoluto of those churches that still continued vacant, to present fit and qualified persons to them immediately ^ " When Cargill perished on the scaffold, that determined band of covenanters who had adhered to him were left without a minister, no man for a time daring to take uj) a position so imminently perilous. In this emergency these fear- less and high-principled men resolved to form themselves into an united body, consisting of societies for worship and religious intercourse in those districts where they most abounded ; and for the more effectual preservation of their opinions and security against errors, in the absence of a stated ministry, these smaller societies appointed deputies to attend a general meeting, which was empowered to deliberate upon all suggestions, and adopt such measures as the exigencies of the times required^." There had been a meeting, and some resolutions formed, in December last year ; and upon the I2th of January, about forty well-armed horsemen, and twenty foot, entered in a body the burgh of Lanark, burnt the Test with great formality at the market-cross, and also burnt the act of parliament that recognised the duke of York's right of succession to the crown, which marked their connection with the Shaftesbury faction, and then read their proclamation, previously agreed on, against the king as a tyrant and persecu- tor, called, " The Act and Apologetick Declaration of the True Presbyterians of the church of Scotland ;" after which they formally fixed it upon the market-cross in the manner of legal documents. No sooner were the council informed of tliis transaction than they imposed a heavy fine upon the magis- trates of the burgh for not having used any means to prevent 1 Wodrow's History, iii. 361, 362. 2 Hetherington p. 158. 1682.J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 235 this insult ; and tliey ordered the League and Covenant, the Rulherglen .'\nd Sanquhar Declarations, Cargill's Queensferry Covenant, and this last act and apologetick declaration, to be publicly burnt at the market-cross, by the common hangman ^ Dr. Patrick Scougal, lord bishop of Aberdeen, died at the age of 73, on the 12th, or, as Keith says, on the 16th of February ; he was held in great and deserved estimation, and had sat bishop in this see since the year 1664 ; he was one of bishop Burnet's early patrons, but latterly had reason to with- draw his friendship from him. Bishop Halliburton was im- mediately translated from Brechin. A conge df^ire was issued to the dean and chapter of Brechin to elect Mr. Robert Douglas, the dean of Glasgow, to this see. Keith says, " he was a lineal branch of Douglas of Glenbervy, in the shire of the Meanis, afterwards earls of Angus, now dukes of Douglas, and was bom anno 1626 2." jjg must have been consecrated by archbishop Burnet ; but Keith omits, as usual, to chronicle that circumstance. The king, with the court, went to Newmarket on the 4th of March, and the duke of York obtained permission to wait on the king there, and he arri\ed on tlie 1 1th, and Burnet says he prevailed on his majesty to give him leave to return and reside at court. A joint letter was written by the Scottish bishops, and signed by the two archbishops, and five of the others, to the archbishop of Canterbury, and entrusted to the lord bishop of Edinburgh, who accompanied the duke of York. It is dated March the 9th, and they say — " His royal highness having passed from hence on Monday last, being called by the king to attend his majesty at Newmarket, we should prove very defective in duty and gratitude, if, upon this occasion, we should forget to acknowledge to your grace how much this poor church and our order do owe to his princely care and goodness, that his majesty and the worthy bishops of England may, from you, receive the just account thereof. Since his royal highness's coming to this kingdom we find our case much changed to the belter, and our church and order (which, through the cunning and power of their adversaries, were exposed to extreme hazard and contempt), sensibly relieved and rescued ; which, next to the watchful providence of God (that mercifully superintends His church), we can ascribe to nothing so much as to his royal highness's gracious owning and vigilant protection of us. Upon all occasions he gives 1 Wodrow's History, iii. 362, 363. — Fountainhall's Chronological Notes, \. 21 * Keith's Catalogue. — Fountainhall's Chron. p. 23. 236 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIV fresh instances of his eminent zeal against tne most unrea- sonable schism, which, by rending, threatens the subversion of our church and religion, and concerns himself as a patron to us in all our public and even personal interests ; so that all men take notice of his signal kindness to us, and observe that he looks on the enemies of the church as adversaries to mo- narchy itself : nor did we ever propose to offer to his royal highness any rational expedient which might conduce for the relief or security of the church, which ho did not readily em- brace and effectuate. The peace and tranquillity of this kingdom is the effect of his prudent and steady conduct of affairs, and the humours of om* wicked fanatics are much re- strained from dangerous eruptions upon their apprehensions of his vigilance and justice ; for they dread nothing so much as to see him upon the head of his majesty's councils and forces against them." The king arrived at London from Newmarket on the lOtli of April, and the lord mayor and aldermen attended his ma- jesty, and congratulated the duke of York on his arrival from Scotland : and on the 22d the duke accepted an invitation from the artillery comjjany, and dined with them at Merchant Taylors' Hall. His royal highness having received the king's pennission to return permanently to court, he embarked in the Gloucester frigate for Leith, on the 3d of May, on pur- pose to bring up the duchess of York and his family; and on the night of the 5th, the Gloucester struck on a sand-bank, called the Lemon and Ore, about sixteen leagues from the mouth of the Humber. From that fierce hatred which Burnet bore to the duke, he has not scrupled to set down a most malicious and false statement of the circumstances at- tending this fatal accident. But the accounts of the survivors show that there is no manner of colour for his malicious re- flections, and those of his disciples. An extract from a letter written by sir James Dick, of Priestfield, lord provost of Edin- burgh, who was on board, and in the duke's suite, will shew the true state of the case. After mentioning that there was a great retinue of noble- men and gentlemen on board when the ship struck in conse- quence of the wrong calculation of the pilot, and that the duke and all his retinue were in bed, he says, " when the duke got his clothes on, and inquired how things stood, she had nine feet water in her hold, and the sea fast coming in at the gunports ; the seamen and passengers were not at com- mand, every man studying his own safety. This forced the duke to go out at the large window of the cabin, where his little boat was ordered quietly to attend him, lest the passen- 1682.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 037 gers and seamen should have thronged so in upon him as to overset his boat. This was accordingly so conducted, as that none but earl Winton and the president of the session, vvilli two of the bedchamber-men, went with them. They were forced to draw their swords to keep the people off. We, seein"- they were gone, did cause tackle out, with great difficulty, the ship's boat, wherein the earl of Perth got, and then I went by jumping o f the shrouds ; the earl of Middleton immediately after me did jump in upon my shoulders ; withal there came the laird of Touch, with several others, besides the seamen that were to row, which was thought a sufficient number for her loading, considering there was going so great a sea by the wind at north-east ; and we, seeing that at the duke's boat- side there was one [boat] overwhelmed by reason of the great- ness of the sea, which drowned the whole in her, except two men, whom we saw riding on her keel. This made us desire to be gone, but before we were loose, there leaped from the shrouds 20 or 24 seamen in upon us, which made all the spectators and ourselves think we should sink; and all having given us over for lost, did hinder 100 more from leaping in upon us." After describing his difficulties and dangers in the boat before reaching a yacht, which lay about a quarter of a mile distant, he says, that on looking for the Gloucester, he " could only see about a Scots ell-long of the staff upon which the royal standard stood," that is, probably, the main- mast— " for with her striking she had come off the sand-bank, which was but three fathoms, and her draught was eighteen feet. If she had remained half an hour longer, the men might have been saved by boats ^" Sir James Dick says there were eighty noblemen, gentle- men, and their servants, on board, and he reckons about 330 persons in all, of whom only about 130 escaped. Burnet accuses the duke of being more solicitous for the safety of his dogs and his priests than of the other persons on board ; which has been proved to be a direct falsehood, no priests having been on board, and only one dog, named Mumper, be- tween whom and sir Charles Scarborough was a struggle for the possession of a plank, on which each was endeavouring to save their lives 2. Lord Dartmouth, in his letter to Mr. Erasmus Lewis, refuted Burnet's calumny as soon as his Own Times was published, by saying — " My father was on board the Gloucester, but so little deserves to have the drowning ' Letter from Sir J. Dick to Mr. Ellis. — Ellis s Original Letters, iv. 64-73. ' Higgon's Historical and Critical Remarks, tkc. 235. 238 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIV. 150 men (which the bishop has so liberally bestowed upon him) laid chiefly to his charge, that it was in a great measure owing to him that any escaped. After the ship had struck, he several times pressed the duke to get into the boat, who re- fused to do it, telling him that if he were gone, nobody would take care of the ship, which he had hopes might be saved, if she were not abandoned. But my father, finding she was ready to sink, told him if he staid any longer they should be obliged to force him out. . . ■ Before he went off he in- quired for lord Roxburgh and lord O'Brian, but the confusion and hurry was so great that they could not be found. When the duke, and as many as she would hold with safety, Avere in the boat, my father stood with his sword drawn, to hinder the crowd from oversetting of her, which, I suppose, was what the bishop esteemed a fault : but the king thanked him pub- licly for the care he had taken of the duke. ... I cannot guess what induced the bishop to charge my father with the long-boat's not being sufficiently manned ; for if that were true (which I much doubt), it was not under his direction, he being on board in no other capacity but as a passenger and the duke's servant. And 1 believe his reflection upon the duke for the care of the dogs to be as ill-grounded ; for I remember a story (that was in every body's mouth at the time) of a struggle that happened for a plank between sir Charles Scar- borough and the duke's dog. Mumper, which convinces me that the dogs were left to take care of themselves (as he did), if there were any more on board ; of which I never heard until the bishop's story-book was published ^" When the crew of the Gloucester, though ready to perish, saw their brave admiral was safe, under whose command the British navy had achieved so much glory, they gave three hearty cheers. Boats from the other men-of-war in company were sent to take off the men ; but before they could reach the wreck she had sunk, when all on board perished, except the commander, sir John Berry, who escaped by a rope over the stern into captain Wyburn's boat. Burnet's account is iucredible. He asserts that the duke's boat, w^hich was the sliip's pinnace, could have held eighty more persons than he would suffer to get into it. The pinnace of a frigate is a very small boat, and supposing there had been twenty persons in it, it is an utter impossibility that it could have held eighty more, that is, a hundred ; whereas earl Dartmouth says, he saw her so deeply loaded as to be in danger of sinking, and he would ' Note by editor of Burnet's Own Times, iii..325. 1682.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 239 not go on board himself, but prevented more from getting in, and it is not likely that he and sir John Berry would have suffered a boat that could have contained eighty more persons to put off without getting on board themselves. Nothing, says Bevil Higgons, " can be so astonishing as the implaca- ble malice of this man [Burnet] ; though sure to be contra- dicted, he would sacrifice his own reputation to the indulgence of his revenge. He shows how that passion was so fixed in his nature as not to be eradicated ; he must have known that there were thousands alive who could have confuted him in this matter ; but he chose rather to poison one man than not be censured by twenty. If he had been more guarded, and carried on his design with greater address and cunning, the mischief that he would have done might have been irrepai-able ; but the wisdom of Providence and nature, who gave him horns, to make good the proverb, thought fit to contract and blunt them i." The duke arrived in Edinburgh on the 9th, and intimated to the council his majesty's pleasure that certain changes should be made in the administration. Lord Haddo, now created earl of Aberdeen, was made lord chancellor, the earl of Queensferry was appointed lord treasurer, and the earl of Perth lord justice-general ; and on the 15th of May the duke took his leave of the council. He recommended the council to continue the same steady and firm administration of the laws that had been recently so effectual in suppressing the re- bellious field conventicles ; and he particularly exhorted them to protect the bishops and clergy in the peaceable performance of their sacred duties, and from the violent " invasions" of their implacable enemies. He then embarked in the Hajipy Return for England, with the duchess of York and the j^rinccss Anne. He arrived in the river on the 27th of the same month, and was met at Erilh by his majesty in his barge. The lord mayor and aldermen congratulated his royal highness upon his return, and his providential escape fi-om shipwreck; and at night the cities of London and Westminster were illumi- nated, and bonfires, and other demonstrations of joy, were ex- hibited 2. One of the many evils resulting from the principles of the covenanters, was the planting and nourishing a constructive * Higgons' Historical and Critical Remarks on Burnet's Own Times, p. 233- 236. — Salmon's Examination of the same, ii. 901-903. 2 Salmon's Chronology, i. 225. — Burnet's Own Times, ii. 326. — Wodrow'6 History, iii. 365. 240 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIV. enmity betwixt them and the established clergy. In the many efforts that the government made to reduce the presby- terians to the rules of peace and order, a clause was inserted in the Test act, which " statuted and ordained that the minis- ters of each parish [shall] give up, in October yearly, to their respective ordinaries, true and exact lists of all papists and schismatical withdrawers from the public worship in their re- spective parishes, which lists are to be subscribed by them j and that the bishops give in a double of the said lists, sub- scribed by them, to the respective sheriffs, &c., to the eflfect the said judges may proceed against them according to law ; as also the sheriffs, &c. are hereby ordained to give an ac- count to his majesty's privy council, in December yearly, of their proceedings against those papists and fanatical separa- tists, as they will be answerable at their highest peril." This abominable clause in the act compelled the clergy to report those in their parishes to their bishops who absented themselves from church, and the bishops to the privy council; a duty which the clergy very much disliked, and as much as possible avoided. This disagreeable duty is commented on with ex- cusable severity by the presbyterian authors; but they break the rule of charity by representing the clergy as willing in- struments of oppression, whereas it was a compulsory duty, which they considered one of the many stabs under the fifth rib which the church so frequently received. I have now before me " the sum, if not the verie words, of a conference betwixt a nobleman and a minister, on the QOth of January, 1682," which took place in consequence of the anxiety of the latter to avoid reporting him as having " withdrawn from church." " I doubt not," says he, " but you have heard how my lord St. Andrews, in obedience to the act of parliament, hath required us that are ministers to send him the names of all those per- sons in our parishes that are withdrawn from the church, and that before to-morrow night ; which we neither can nor will refuse. But yet, before I should give up your lordship's name, I thought it my duty to acquaint your lordship with it, and entreat you may prevent the same." His lordship com- plained of the harshness and unreasonableness of this law, and of the shortness of the time allowed for consideration ; when it was replied, " It was, my lord, with great entreaty wc got so much time ; but if your lordship will take a longer time to advise, I will take that as a sufficient ground of delay- ing the inserting of your lordship's name with the rest. And although we be required to take no less than a bond, yet, if you will insinuate so much by your word that ye resolve to 1(^82.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 241 be orderly and keep ordinances, I shall take mj' hazard. So loth am I that your name should be heard'." As A CONSEQUENCE of these unnatural reports, the sheriff- deputes in the dioceses of Glasgow and Galloway summoned the recusants to their courts, and pressed them to sign a bond obliging themselves to a regular attendance at their parish churches, and not to harbour or abet any interconnnuned per- sons or vagrant preachers, under the penalty of an hundred raerks. Burnet says, " When the people saw this, they came all to church again ; and that in some places where all ser- mons had been discontinued for many years." This is a re- sult, however, which all his own fine schemes of comprehen- sion and indulgence were never able to effect. But he says, " they came in so awkward a manner that it was visible they did not mean to worship God, but only to stay some time within the church walls ; and they were either talking or sleeping all the while. Yet most of the clergy seemed trans- ported with this change in their condition, and sent up many panegyrics of the glorious services that the duke had done their church." No doubt the clergy would be pleased with such a change, and doubtless some who came only to " talk and sleep " would eventually remain to pray ; but at all events their sleeping and talking at church prevented their invading the houses and properties of those who always did regularly attend public worshiji. Burnet libels the presbyterians also, and arraigns their cowardice in submitting to the laws ; for he continues, " this compliance shewed how soon the presbyte- rians could overcome all their scruples, when they saw what they were to suffer for them, so that the enemies of religion gained their point by observing the ill-nature of the one side and the cowardliness of the other, and pleased themselves in censuring both." Now this was the unkindest cut of all, and that too from a fiiend ; but it was happier for the country that they came to church, than that they should exercise their cou- rage upon their defenceless neighbours who were there. " And by this means," he adds, " an impious and atheistical leaven began to corrupt most of the younger sort. Thish as since that time made a great progress in that kingdom, which was before the freest from it of any nation in Christendom. The beginnings of it were reckoned from the duke's stay among them, and from his court, which have been cultivated ' MS. in the minister's own hand- writing, and published in the Episcopal Magazine for September 1835. VOL. III. 2 I 24*2 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIV. since with much care, and but too much success ^" It seems strange that the duke's residence in Scotland should have in- fected that kingdom with atheism and impiety, when Burnet represents him as such a bigot to his religion as to sacrifice the lives of a whole ship's crew and passengers, in order to save the lives of one or two priests. So inconsistent is malice; " for surely," says Salmon, " so much malice and detraction was never expressed by one man against another, as our au- thor [Burnet] has shewn in his history towards the duke of York 2." The duke of Lauderdale died at Tunbridge Wells, on the 24th August. He was, says Fountainhall, the leamedest and most powerful minister of state in his age ; discon- tent and age [corpulency also, it is said] were the chief ingre- dients of his death, if his duchess and physicians were free of it ; for she abused him most grossly, and had gotten all from him she could expect, and was glad to be quit of hira^." The author of the Scots Worthies says that he " went to his own place ;" meaning, like Judas, tliat he went to Gehenna"*. 1683. — The recent measures of government had so far subdued the spirit of the covenanters that the field conventi- cles were mostly discontinued; but many trials of individuals for former transgressions took place during the course of this year. All those who gave utterance to the words God save THE KING, had their sentences remitted ; but the greater num- ber refused to accept this gentle alternative. Their reason for refusing to use this scripture expression is characteristic, and it is but fair to give it from the dying testimony of James Robertson on the scaffold, who was executed for high treason. When under examination before the privy council, he was asked, '* Will you say God save the king?" He evasively an- swered, " Prayer ought to be gone about with composure and deliberation, and I am not in a composure for it." And on the scaffold he said, " I refused to say ' God save the king,' which we find was the order that was used among the chil- dren of Israel at the king's anointing to that office, and used in our nation at the coronation. Now this being due only to a lawful king, ought not to be given but to a lawful king, and so not to him [Charles], being a degenerate tyrant; for if T .should, I thereby had said Amen to all that he hath done against the chui'ch and liberties thereof, and to all his op- ^ Own Times, ii. 327. ^ Examination, ii. 905. Chronological Notes, p. 25. "* Aj-pendix. xxx. 1683.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 248 pressions by unlawful exactions and raising of armies for no other effect but to deprive us of the hearing of the gospel, and troubling or molesting the subjects both in their consciences and external liberties, and also to their bloodshed and mur- ders made upon the people of God and free subjects of the kingdom ; and so bid him God speed, contrary to that in the 2d Epistle of John, v. 10. And seeing it cannot be given unto any that have thus used their power to a wrong end, in such a measure and manner, so nuich less when they have set him up as an idol in the room of God incarnate. And shall I ])ray to bless that man in his person and government whom God hath cursed ? For it cannot be expected but that he shall be cursed that thus ventureth upon the bosses of the buckler of God Almighty 1." The king and the duke of York had been residing for some time at Newmarket; but a fire broke out, on the 22d March, in the house in which the king lived, and which consumed half the town, and occasioned his majesty's return to London eight days sooner than he intended. In consequence, the royal brothers escaped assassination at the Ryehouse, by Rumbold, a maltster, who occupied it, and the rest of the re- publican conspirators, who had a plot of their own, indepen- dent of Monmouth and the noble conspirators that met at Sheppard's, a wine-merchant in the city. The Rye was a farm-house near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, through which his majest}' usually passed in his road to and from New- market. Rumbold, the proprietor, laid a plan of the house and the road before the other conspirators at Sheppard's, and shewed them that by overturning a waggon in a certain place, the king's coach would be stopped, and he proposed that, dur- ing the confusion, the conspirators should attack the king and his guards by firing upon them from the outhouses, whilst another party, at the moment when they wei'e separated by the gates, and embarrassed by the enclosures, should fire on them from behind the hedges. The buke of Monmouth, Shaftesbury, and other conspira- tors, had prepared a military rising in the city and in the west of England, whilst Argyle had engaged to raise his own clan ; and those in Scotland who were in the secret were to hound out the presbyterians, under pretence of establishing Christ's crown and kingdom. Thus the English whigs and the Scot- tish covenanters went hand in hand in their projects; but the views of the different parties were altogether diflerent. The ' Cloud of Witnesses, 182. 241 HISTORY OF THK [CHAP. XLIV. presbyterians desired the establishment of their own system, and tlie operation of the solemn league and covenant, not only at home, but throughout the empire, — the prostration of the church and the extirpation of the bishops. Essex, Sydney^, Romsey, Ferguson, a presbyterian minister, and some others, were violently bent on a republic. Monmouth hoped to clutch the crown for himself, while Russell and Hampden were attached to monarchy, and only desired to exclude the duke of York from the succession. Howard and Shaftesbury seemed to have had no other principle than the love of mis- chief, and the selfish motives of personal gain by the revolu- tion ; the latter fled to Holland on the first suspicion of dan- ger, where he very soon died. The correspondence with Argyle, who had also fled to Holland, was conducted by Mr. Carstares, a presbyterian minister, who had a peculiar talent for intrigue. The plot was providentially discovered, through the fears of one of the conspirators of the name of Keilling, a dry-salter, who had arrested the lord mayor of London, at the suit of the outed sheriffs, and thus became liable to a prose- cution. In order to secure his own pardon, he communicated the intelligence of the assassination plot on the 12th of June, to the secretary of state, Mr. Jenkins ; but who was for some time incredulous, till the confession of one Barker, an instru- ment-maker, that had been arrested, corroborated Keilling's re\'elations. FnoM the trials and confessions of the prisoners, it cannot be doubted that the plan of an insurrection, and the design of an assassination, had been regularly formed ; the latter was providentially avoided by the king returning a week earlier than he at first intended, and the former by the information of Keilling. The account of this plot as given by Buniet gives some reason to suspect that he himself was intimately ac- quainted with it ; and he endeavours to make light of it by saying the designs of the conspirators was but talk — all was but rambling discourse. It is not much to the credit of the prince of Orange that he protected all the notorious conspira- tors against the life and crown of his uncle and father-in-law ; and gives good reason to suppose that his invasion of England proceeded from other motives than simply the delivery of this nation from arbitrary government and popery 2. ■ Fountaiuhall says, Sydney " was gallant, but so misfortunate as ever to be on the dhloyal side ; of republican principles, and was a colonel against the royal martyr, Charles I." — Cliron. Notes, \i. 31. 2 Burnet's Own Times, i. ;;18— 3'Jl.— Saliuon's Chronology, i. 227.— A True loss.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 215 There being no probability of the sun of presbytery rising into the ascendant, a number of that i)crsuasion determined to emigrate to the Cai'olinas, and some of them being at Lon- don, negociating a passage for themselves and friends, fell into correspondence with the llyehouse conspirators, and by this means the ramifications of the plot were extended to the pres- byterian body in Scotland. The ultra section of the presbyterians, that had called Cameron and Cargill successively "masters," were left as sheep without a shepherd, and w^ere known by the title oi the "society people:" since their deaths, the mantle of these extraordinary men, however, had fallen upon James Renwick, who had witnessed the execution of Cargill. Renwick was indebted, as in fact most men are, to the pious care of his mothei-, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Corsan, for his early and determined zeal in the service of God. O (hat the sons of God had an equal zeal for His service as the sons of men exhibit ; and perhaps the latter will be accepted, whilst the former, for their lukewarmness, may be cast out of the king- dom of glory. Many children had been taken from her before James's birth; when " pouring forth her maternal grief, her husband used to comfort her with declaring that he was well satisfied to have children, whether they lived or died young or old, providing they might be heirs of glory. But with this she could not attain to be satisfied, but had it for her exercise to seek a child from the Lord, that might not only be an heir of glory, but might live to serve Him in his generation ; where- upon, when Mr. James was born, she took it as an answer of prayer, and reputed herself under manifold engagements to dedicate him to the Lord^" Good Mrs. Renwick will not lose her reward •, " for if there be first a willing mind, it is ac- cepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not." Her dedication was mistaken, yet her in- tentions were good and praiseworthy ; and happy would it be were her piety imitated, and mothers, like Hannah, would lend their sons unto the Lord, for by Him actions are weighed. Her genuine piety was, however, mixed with much fanaticism, and we are told that this child " aimed at prayer even in the cradle," and that at six years old " some sproutings of gra- cious preparations exercised him, with doubts and debates above childish apprehensions 2." He went to Groningen, and Account and Declaration of the horrid Conspiracy against the late King, by Dr. Spratt, Bishop of Rochester. — Salmon's E.xamination, ii. 923 — 935. > Scots Worthies, -120. - Ibid 427. 246 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP, XLIV Studied there for six months, when he was admitted by a classis who took his subscription to the Westminster Confession and Covenant ; and then he set out for Scotland. In Sep- tember he commenced in the fields, among the " society peo- ple,"— " taking up the testimony of the standard of Christ where it was fixed, and had fallen at the removal of the former witnesses, Messrs. Cameron and Cargill, which, in the strength of his master, he undertook to prosecute and maintain against opposition from all hands." His first public exhibition was at the Moss of Darmead, ^^■here, after stating his own tenets and determination, he declaimed against the defections of the indulged i)resbyterians from their covenanted work of reforma- tion, and denounced their ministers. Meantime his sudden irruption into the pacified districts, where field preaching had ceased for some time, alarmed the council, and they forthwith proclaimed Ren wick a traitor and rebel ' . On the 12th of July, Andrew Guillan, one of the murderers of the late archbishop, was apprehended whilst at work in the parish of Cockpen ; he ^\ as pressed to drink the king's health, which he refused. It was only suspected that he was one of the murderers, and he was cautious in his answers ; but being off his guard, when the lord advocate, expatiating on the ag- gravating circumstances of that murder, said that they killed the archbishop whilst he was on his knees praying, Guillan, i:)eing touched at this remark, lifted up his hands and eyes, and exclaimed — " O dreadful ! — he would not pray one word, for all that could be said to him.'''' On his trial this confession was produced and held to be conclusive. He was executed on the 20th of July. As part of his sentence his right-hand was cut off, and the spirit of delusion was so strong on this wretched felon that he was guilty of blasphemy in the very article of death : " he held up the stump in view of the multitude, say- ing— ^ As my blessed Lord sealed my salvation with His blood, so I am honoured this day to seal His truths with my blood.'' " He died glorying in his sin, and Fountainhall says, " hardened and insensible 2." In his written speech, which he gave for circulation, he shewed to what a dreadful state he had been reduced by the delusion of that spirit that is at enmity with God ; he said, " I declare I die not as a murderer or as an evil-doer; although their covenant-breaking, perjured, murder- ing generation lay it to my charge as though I were a mur- derer, on account of the justice that was execute on that Judas that sold the kirk of Scotland for 50,000 merks a-year. And ' Scots Worthies, 420—433. - Chronol. Notes, p. 29. 1P83,] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 24/ we being bound to extirpate popery and prelacy, and that to the utmost of our power, and we having no other that were appearing for God at that day, but such as took away his life, therefore I was bound to join with them in defending the true religion, and all the land^" His glorification took place in the Grass-market ; but his carcase was sent to the scene of that tragedy in which he gloried, and hung up in chains ; but the saints came some days afterwards and cut his body down, and buried it at the foot of the gallows. It is a singular cir- cumstance that this enthusiast, and Hackston, of Rathillet, were the only men engaged in the archbishop's murder that were ever brought to justice, and it is also remarkable that they were not actual participators in the murder farther than that the one looked on passively and approvingly, and the other held Miss Sharp whilst the murder was being perpetrated. They were, however, as much guilty of the murder as the actual perpetra- tors ; but the escape of the others has been duly proclaimed as an infallible proof of the sanction of heaven upon this sa- crilegious murder. And it has been gravely said of Hackston — " Thus fell this champion for the Cause of Christ, a sacri- fice unto prelatic fury, to gratify the lust and ambition ot wicked and bloody men. Whether his courage, constancy, or faithfulness, had the pre-eminence, is hard to determine ; but his memory is still alive ^ !" A GENERAL thanksgiving was ordered by proclamation to be observed in all the three kingdoms on September the Oih, ft)r the king's late wonderful " deliverance from the fanatical conspiracy" — " to offer up devout praises and thanksgiving to Almighty God for the eminent and miraculous deliverance granted to us, and in us to our loyal and dutiful subjects." The University of Oxford met in convocation on the 21st Oi •July, and after expressing their detestation of the Ryehouse conspiracy, formally condemned those principles, and the books teaching them, which had spread such a principle of rebellion and schism over the three kingdoms. This famous decree condemned no less than eight Scottish ])ublications, and ordered them to be publicly burnt, namely, Buchanan's De Jure regni, Knox's History, CdX^QXwood^^ Altare Damascenumf Rutherford's Lex Rex, Naphtali, the Apologetical Relation, the History ot" the Indulgence, and, as a worthy crown to the whole, that master-piece of the Jesuits and of all iniquity, the Solemn League and Covenant. They selected twenty-seven propositions drawn out of these several publications, all teach- 1 Cloud of Witnesses, pp. 201-203. - Scots Worthies, p. 3J3-44. 248 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XLIV. ing the most seditious, treasoncable, and heretical principles ; and said — " We decree, judge, and declare all and every one of those propositions to be false, seditious, and impious, and most of them also to be heretical and blasphemous, infamous to the christian religion, and destructive of all government in church and state. We further decree, that the books which contain the aforesaid propositions and impious doctrines are fitted to deprave good manners, corrupt the minds of unwary men, stir up sedition and tumults, overthrow states and king- doms, and lead to rebellion, murder of princes, and atheism itself; and therefore we interdict all members of the univer- sity from reading the said books under the penalties in the statutes expressed. We also order the before-recited books to be publicly biu:ned by the hand of our marshal in the court of our schools. . . . Lastl}', we command and strictly en- join all and singular readers, tutors, catechists, and others, to wdiom the care and trust of education of youth is committed, that they diligently instruct and ground their scholars in that most necessary doctrine, which in a manner is the badge and character of the church of England, of submitting to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors as unto them that are sent by Hira for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well ; teaching that this submission and obe- dience is to be clear, absolute, and without exception of any state or order of men." The readers of this history will not fail to have traced much of the rebellions and schisms that afflicted the British empire to the principles inculcated in the publications which the University of Oxford so worthily condemned ; but it is to be feared they have taken too deep root to be easily eradicated. The University of Cambridge also, the year before, shewed her loyally by an address to tlie king, delivered by Dr. Gower, ihe vice-chancellor. He congratulated his majesty on the happy situation of his aflairs, and said — " we still believe and main- tain, that our kings derive not their titles from the people, but from God, that to Him only they are accountable : that it belongs not to subjects either to create or to censure, but to honour and obey their sovereign, who comes to be so by a fundamental hereditary right of succession, which no religion, no law, no fault, or forfeiture, can alter or diminish ^" The object of the whigs in both kingdoms was the acquisi- tion of power. Shaftesbury, and the parly formed by him, Salmon's Chronology, i. 223. 1683.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 249 wanted political power ; but the tools by whom they worked in Scotland, and whose principles they adopted, thought only of the religious supremacy of their own sect, as it had flou- rished in the days of the rebellion. So long as the whig party were encouraged at court, they kept the presbyterians in a constant state of excitement and expectation of recovering " Christ's crown and kingdom ;" hence their mischievous schemes of indulgences and comprehensions, and their undue severities to provoke and irritate their dupes. The whigs at court cajoled the original whigs in Scotland with the hopes of their arriving at that tyrannical command over the state which had been enjoyed by the commission of the kirk ; and per suaded them, nothing loath, that the only way to secure it was by that general turbulence and rebellion which they kept up during the whole of this reign. So long, therefore, as the po- litical whigs were tolerated and trusted at court, and had a prospect of getting the whole government into their own power, neither indulgence nor severity had any effect upon the pres- byterians, because lliey were conscious that their secret friends at court would protect them. The Shaftesbury party were in close correspondence with the rebels in 1679, and bishop Spratt says, " The lord Melville was descended from pro- genitors of such principles as have been ever against the crown, when they have fancied their kings not zealous for the reformation. This man had the management of the duke of Monmouth's affairs in Scotland many years : and when the duke marched against the rebels near Bothwell Bridge, the said Melville (as the earl of Shaftesbury had advised) sent to them to capitulate*, assuring them that the duke of Monmouth had orders to give them good conditions ; and when they would not submit, Melville was overheard to say — ' that all was lost ;' for the beating of them would lose the said duke with his friends in England^." And this negociation was conducted by warrant iiom the duke of Monmouth, who was engaged in Shaftesbury's intrigues. The roots of the Scottish rebellion were fixed at the court of England, and when Charles plucked them up by the dis- missal of Shaftesbury and tlie whigs, comj)arative peace was restored to his northern kingdom. One of Shaftesbury's plans for effecting the revolution, which was the object of the Rye- house conspiracy, was to hound out the Scottish i)resbyterians; and so to embarrass the king's affairs in that quarter. As soon ' Vide ante, vol. iii. ch. xli. p. 178. ' True Account and Declaration of the Ryehouse Conspiracy, p. 35. VOL. III. 2 K '250 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIV. as their patrons were dismissed from court, the field conven- ticles ceased, and the steady, firm execution of the laws were found sufficient to preserve the peace of the country. But " in all plots and conspiracies," says a contemporary writer, "there are the upper and the under-spur leathers; there are the managers and the managed; there are those who act upon the stage, and the prompters who stand behind the curtain. And when these invisible springs are taken away, the play stops, and the whole machine stands still. There is often too a wheel within a wheel, as one plots begets another, or is branched out by several undertakers. Thus the assassination designed at the Ryehouse was formed by lesser men, whom Monmouth and the quality had drawn into their plot, only to seize the guards and the Towner, &c.; not to hurt the king in the least, for- sooth ! but only to distress him so as that he should change his counsellors, and accept of their lordships in i.heir place ^ . . . But this was as much treason in the eye of the law, and of reason too, as the Ryehouse itself, of which I believe some of the quality knew nothing. . . . And therefore when Charles II. had purged his court of these, the faction fell before him, with- out any noise or trouble. ... If the spring be clear the streams cannot long be muddy, they purge themselves of course ; and now it is plainly to be seen that with some men power is conscience, and conscience is nothing else hwi power. What a jest is it to see men of profligate lives cry out conscience and religion /" Burnet insinuates that Monmouth had no share in this con- spiracy, but the following note, taken on the duke's surrender- ing himself, will prove that the bishop's predilections had deceived him. It is dated November 25, 1683. — " Yesterday the duke of Monmouth canft and surrendered himself to Mr. secretary Jenkins, and desired to speak alone with the king and the duke ; which was granted him. He first threw himself at his majesty's feet, acknowledging his guilt and the share he had in the conspiracy, and asked his pardon ; and then con- fessed himself faulty to the duke, and asked his pardon ; also assured him, if he should survive his majesty, that he would pay him all tlie duty that became a loyal subject, and be the first that should draw^ his sword for him, should there be occa- sion, lie then desired his majesty would not oblige him to be a witness, and then gave an account of the whole con- spiracy, naming all those concerned in it ; which were more ' Fountainhall says, " They pretended only to seize the king till he called a parliament, and disinherited the duke of York," p. 30. 1683.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 251 than those that had already been mentioned by the several witnesses. He denied any knowledge of the assassination. When he had made an end of his confession, his majesty ordered him to be put into the custody of a serjeant-at-arms ; this day admitted him to his presence, and ordered a stop to be put to the outlawry, and promised him his pardon. He further added, that Drs. Owen, Mead, Griffin, and all the con- siderable nonconformist ministers, knew of the conspiracy I''' The firmness of the bishops and clergy preserved the whole nation from the contradictory and false swearing of the Test, which the parliament, acting under the secret influence of the Jesuits in the duke of York's train, had imposed on it. There was not the least inclination in the clergy of the esta- blished church either to popery or to fanaticism ; against both of these errors their oaths of supremacy and canonical obe- dience were sufficient barriers, and they warned their people from the pulpit against the Roman heresies with zealous care. This Test was so ingeniously contrived, that it would have been the cause of division and of alienation to many of the indulged presbyterians, who joined with the established church not only in the public worship, which was at that time the same as the presb} terian, but also in the sacraments. It was calculated to have encouraged popery, and to have disgusted the people, by compelling the clergy to make annual reports of those who seceded from the church, or who were careless in attending divine worship, so that dissenters might be pu- nished by the secular arm ; whilst at the same time the king's brother and their lawful sons, who might be papists, were to be excepted from taking this Test. By virtue of the Assertory Act the king could make any changes in the external govern- ment of the church that he himself chose, or that a profligate minister might suggest; and no doubt the presbyterians or the papists would have worked it for their own advancement if either party had gained the predominance in the royal councils. The Test rivetted this chain round the necks of the established clergy; but they saw this consequence, and had the christian firmness to expose themselves to suffering and persecution rather than to betray the rights of the church and the christian liberty of their people. Their moral in- trepidity not only saved the church from the infliction of the Test, but it relieved the presbyterians also from its pressure. The presbyterians made the same conscientious ol)jections to this " self-contradictory oath," though upon different grounds, that the episcopalians had. They even objected to it after the church had i)rocurcd the modification of it by the king 252 HfSTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. XLIV. and council, and in their own way shewed their opposition, by solemnly burning it; but we hear of none of their indulged ministers having resigned their charges, or having been de- prived by the privy council for refusing it. Upwards of eighty of the episcopal clergy, however, suffered in this way, and many more would have been added to that number, had not the government yielded to public opinion, and explained the Test. One of the most unpleasant parts of the Test act was the compelling the clergy to report the disorderly people in their parishes, and those who did not keep the church regularly. This, of course, laid them open to much ill will and obloquy, and many lies and false reports were fabricated and circulated against them. But, in fact, they only reported 7iotoriously bad characters, and concealed many more than were reported. Dr. Monro says, " What the clergy in the west of Scotland did, I know not ; but if I make an estimate of their proceed- ings against non-conformists, from the practice of our clergy- men in other parts of the nation, I declare sincerely to you, I never knew of one of them that prosecuted the dissenters without great reluctance ; nay, I knew many of them that in- terposed with sincere kindness and vigour for their parishion- ers, frequently and with success too, when they were ob- noxious to the laws. But let us suppose that the clergy did prosecute the dissenters according to law, they did nothing in this but what they were obliged to do ; the peace of the na- tion was endangered, the legal and lineal monarchy was undermined, and the government, by such frequent shakings, most likely to relapse into its former state of civil war and confusion ; and the souls of the people committed to their care were poisoned with darli and enthusiastic principles; speaking evil of dignities took the place of the ten command- ments, and a schism unreasonable in its beginnings, and dis- owned by all protestant churches and the learnedest presby- terians, was propagated in all corners of the nation, with all vigour and diligence ^" ' Apology for the Clergy of Scotland, p. 11. 238 CHAPTER XLV PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS 1684. — Deaths, translations, and consecrations of bishops. — Death of archbishop Burnet. — Archbishop Ross translated. — Death of bishop Leighton. — Presby- terians attend the parish churches. — Lord Perth made chancellor. — Charge against the duke of York, — Churchwardens — Baillie of Jerviswood — the evidence — is condemned. — Burnet obliged to abscond. — Prosecutions of the Rye-house conspirators. — A field conventicle — the troops attacked, and minis- ter rescued. — Renwick's preaching. — Apologetical declaration — affixed to market-crosses — its eflfects. — Opinions of the crown lawyers. — Act of council — its justification. — Distress of the episcopal clergy. — Two gentlemen of the Life Guards murdered in their beds. — Proclamation against the apologetic. — Passports and oaths required. 1685. — Many of the clergy resign. — Rev. Peter Pearson — his murder. — Minister of Ajiworth " afironted" — an ecclesias- tical Court of Inquiry held at Elgin by the earl of Erroll. — Colonel Douglass, action with some Whigs. — Assault on Mr. Shaw. — King Charles's last illness — father Huddlestone's statement — account by the chaplain of the bishop of Ely — the king's last moments and death — his character — his letter to the duke of York. 1684. — The death of Dr. Ypung, lord bishop of Ross, and of Dr. Burnet, lord archbishop of St. Andrews, caused a trans- lation of several bishops in the course of this year. The for- mer was afflicted with a calculous complaint, and went to Paris, and there underwent an operation, which he did not survive above a week, but died in that city, aged about fifty-five. He was a man of great worth and moderation. He was succeeded by Dr. Ramsay, lord bishop of Dunblane, who was translated to the see of Ross, by letters patent, on the 14th of April; Dr. Robert Douglass was translated to the see of Dunblane, from that of Brechin, and to him succeeded Dr. Alexander Caimcross. This prelate was the heir of an ancient family, possessing the estate of Cowmislie; but from pecuniary em- barrassments was compelled to follow the occupation of a cloth-dyer in the Canongate of Edinburgh for many years, and with such success as to enable him to recover " some part 254 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLV. of the estate which had pertained to his ancestors." After " many years" of successful industry, he took holy orders, and was presented to the parish church of Dumfries; and in this year, by the recommendation of the duke of Queensberry, he was elected by a conge d'elire to the bishoprick of Brechin. He was consecrated at St. Andrews by archbishop Burnet on the 19th of June, among the last acts of that prelate's life^ Archbishop Burnet died on the 24th of August, at St. Andrews, and was buried near the tomb of his illustrious predecessor, bishop Kennedy, in the church of St. Salvador. Fountainhall says, " he died at his house, in the abbey of St. Andrews, 22d of October, and was buried in St. Salvador's church : he was a man of much moderation, especially since he was laid aside in 1669 2." The ancient stone pavement of this church is now covered over with a deal flooring, and, in the spirit of the Covenant, it covers over any monumental in- scription that may have been recorded to the memory of this very worthy prelate. Even the spiteful Burnet, of Salisbury, admits, though with a qualification, that he was " good- natured and sincere;" yet he records his death in four words — " Bm*net died in Scotland." Of this excellent prelate Mr. Lyon says, that on account of his submitting to the unjust exertion of the royal supremacy, Wodrow " accuses him first of acting contrar\^ to his ' passive obedience' principles, and then of tamely submitting to the royal sentence of ecclesias- tical deprivation. It is very difficult to make writers of that school comprehend the simple scriptural, though unfashion- able and unpalatable doctrine, of what is called (...)' passive obedience.' Burnet, on this occasion, acted in strict confor- mity with it; that is, he dutifully obeyed the lawful commands of his sovereign, and he patiently suffered for disobeying his unlawful ones. The presbyterians of that age did neither one nor the other. So far from dutifully obeying all lawful com- mands, they would not obey even the most indifferent, if un- suited to their taste : and, so far from patiently suffering for their disobedience to unlawful commands (or those which they considered to be so), they took up arms to force the go- vernment to rescind them." He left a piece of land in the neighbourhood of St. Andrews, for the benefit of the poor of the guildry, for ever, which still goes under the name of " bishop Burnet's Acre." Tt yields at present an annual rent of £b. 10s. but which has been diverted from its original purpose by the presbytcrian corporation, and contributes to the general reve- ' Keith's Catalogue, jiassim. • C'laonclogical Notes, p. 42. 1584.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 255 nue of the burgh, contrary to tlie will and intention of the donor; so that they have robbed God. Martine. of Clave- mont, in a dedication to archbishop Burnet, alludes to his " exemplary and inflexible virtues, piety, and honour (as much above flattery as your grace does generally despise it), that have justly raised your grace beyond the reach of their malicSj under whose tongues lies the poison of asjis^" Soon after the death of the late primate, Arthur Ross, lord archbishop of Glasgow, was translated to the see of St. Andrews, by the king's letters patent, dated the 31st of Octo- ber. This last of the archbishops was a man of sound judg- ment and great integrity; and Mr. Lyon shews that he was originally brought to Glasgow by archbishop Burnet on ac- count of his high character and abilities, and who evinces his good opinion of him by requesting him to engage some de- serving persons to come to Glasgow to fill up vacancies, and for whom the archbishop promises to provide as Dr. Ross might "think their parts and experience do deserve 2." But the bishop of Salisbury had some pique at his grace, and is there- fore of another mind : he says, " Burnet died in Scotland. And Ross, a poor ignorant worthless man, but in whom obe- dience and fury were so eminent, that these supplied all other . defects, was raised to be primate of that church : which was, indeed, a sad omen, as well as a step to its fall and ruin 3." It was easy for Burnet to be a prophet, who was so deep in the secrets of courts and plotters, and who could form a tolerably correct guess at coming events, from his intimacy with the court at the Hague. Alexander Cairxcross, lord bishop of Brechin, was trans- lated to Glasgow, by royal letters patent, dated the 3d of December, and he was elected by the dean and chapter on the 6th of the same month, and the mandate for his confinna- tion is of the same date. The earl of Perth, the chancellor, recommended his relative, James Drummond, minister of Muthill, to the crown, to be promoted to the bishoprick of Brechin. The king's warrant for his consecration is dated the 6th of December, and he was consecrated by the new pri- mate, in the chapel royal, Holyrood-house, on Christmas day, the 25th of December*. Upon lord Perth's coming to London he expressed to Dr. Burnet a strong desire to see bishop Leighton. Burnet wrote ' Rev. C. J. Lyon's History of St. Andrews, &c. ii. 102 — Burnet's Own Times — Keith's Catalogue. " Lyon's Hist, of St. Andrews, ii. 105. ^ Own Times, ii. 139. * Keith's Catalogue, passim. 256 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLV. to him to that effect, and the bishop came up to town. Burnet was amazed to see Leighton, " at above seventy, look so fresh and well; that age seemed to stand still in him: his hair was still black, and all his motions were lively; he had the same quickness of thought and strength of memory, but, above all, the same heat and life of devotion, that I had ever seen in him." It is therefore very strange, and not much to his cre- dit, that he should have deserted his master's service; but, in fact, Burnet killed him by bringing him to London; for he was seized with a pleurisy, and died in two days afterwards, at the Bell Inn, in Warwick-lane. " He used often to say, that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an inn; it looked like a pilgrim going home, to whom this world was all as an inn," — and he had his desired A GREAT change had taken place in the religious aspect of the presbyterian districts since the change of men and mea- sures. The men all resorted regularly to their parish churches, but their wives were less constant in their attendance, because they had not been named in the act, and therefore thought themselves at liberty to follow their own inclinations. This flaw in the act was brought under the notice of the council, and it was debated whether or not husbands should be fined for their wives' offences as well as their own, seeing that in law husband and wife make but one person. Lord Aberdeen argued in favour of the literal interpretation of the act ; for it only made husbands liable to a fine, if their wives frequented conventicles, but not for abstaining from going to church. Lords Queensberry and Perth were decidedly of opinion that the husbands should be fined for the absence of their wives from church. The dispute was referred to the king, and the earl of Perth was sent up to court for his decision ; but the king was most likely biassed by lord Perth's opinion, and de- cided against the ladies; which, Burnet says, " was thought very indecent." There were violent disputes in the cabinet betwixt lords Aberdeen and Queensbeny, which ended in the dismissal of the former, and the appointment of lord Perth to the chancellorship'^. Bishop Burnet seizes on the advance- ment of the earl of Perth to attack the character of the duke of York, whom he represents as a most cruel and remorseless tyrant, and one who delighted in the sight of the sufferings of prisoners in the torture of the Boot. This drew from Mr. Lockhart a letter, in which he remarks, that Burnet's accounts do not correspond with the character given by all other au- ' Own Times, ii. 436-438. « jbid. 425-428. 1684.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 257 thors of the duke's natural temper; and he gives it as his opinion, that if the duke had acted as Burnet represents him to have done, it was impossible but that others must have seen and heard of it, as well as Burnet, and would also have re- ported it. " We see what a clamour was made on the idle- grounded story of his favouring his dogs when shipwrecked [a story wholly of bishop Burnet's making] ; and such an ex- traordinary instance of his cruelty and barbarity, in so public and conspicuous a manner [as putting Mr. Spreul to the tor- ture of the Boot], could not have been unknown to all the world but the bishop ; and it nevertheless was, I may safely aver, seeing that no part of this calumny was ever so much as suggested, or laid to the duke's charge, by any one of his many inveterate enemies before or since the Revolution ^" In April the king issued a proclamation, by virtue of the powers vested in the crown by the Assertory act, commanding and empowering the clergy to give in lists, to their bishops, of such persons in their respective parishes as they considered fit to serve as elders or churchwardens. By that perverseness which actuated the presbyterians, they immediately raised a cry of persecution against the bishops, and complained that " this proclamation was undoubtedly designed to force country people and heritors to join in with the episcopal ministers in the exercise of discipline; and was another handle of perse- cuting not a few." How that could be is not so easy to per- ceive, inasmuch as, unless the clergy had been madmen, they would never have selected presbyterians for that office. The clergy wem to nominate the fittest persons, and these, again, were to be approved of by their bishop : so that it is hardly pos- sible that any but known episcopalians would be appointed; but the cry of persecution must be supported by some plau- sible circumstances, and if the reader's judgment is not called into operation, that now related might pass current. The ramifications of the Rye-house conspiracy were most extensive, and the whole presbyterian interest in Scotland, with their affiliated brethren in Holland, were most extensively implicated in it. In consequence, the whole of this year was occupied in searching for, examining, and trying the multitude of the better sort of the presbyterians that were more or less engaged in the plot; and the due execution of the laws is called by a presbyterian author 2, " the last and bloodiest pe- riod of the persecution." But the trial of Baillie, of Jervis- wood, has made the most noise, because he was the most > Lockhart Papers, p. 600. * Hetberington, p. 161. VOL. III. 2 L 258 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLV. deeply implicated. His trial displayed the extent of Argyle and Sydney's, and lord Russell's conspiracy; The earl of Tarras deposed, that Baillie went to London, in order to urge the English conspirators to enter upon action. Alexander Monro deposed, that Baillie solicited the English traitors to supply Argyle with money, Robert Martin deposed, that at a meeting in Baillie's lodgings, in London, it was agi-eed to send the deponent to Scotland, to report in what condition the Scots were, and to direct them not to rise or stir till there should first be a rising in England. William Carstares de- posed, that about the end of the year 1682, James Stuart, bro- ther of the laird of Coltness, wrote to him from Holland, to the import, that if any considerable sum could be procured from England, sometliing of importance might be done in Scotland, That he communicated this to Mr. Sheppard, of Abchurch-lane, at whose house Monmouth and the other con- spirators met, who informed him he had communicated the contents of the letter to colonel Sydney, and that colonel Dan- vers was present: that colonel Sydney was averse to employ the earl of Argyle, or to have any connection with him. That the deponent saw and conversed with the earl of Argyle in Holland, who said that less than £30,000 would not be suffi- cient to equip a thousand horse. The next day after his return to England, he acquainted sir John Cockrane Avith the earl's demand, who took liim to lord Russell, to whom the deponent made the proposal of raising ^£30,000, but who declined to enter into the transaction with a perfect stranger. Afterwards, hovvever,Carstares met lord Russell accidentally at Sheppard's, who had gone to speak about the money wanted by Argyle, and there reiterated his former proposal for the money and dragoons; the lord Russell told Carstares " they could not get so much money raised at the time, but if they had £10,000 to begin with, they would draw people in, and when they were once in they would soon be brought to more ; but as for the thousand horse and dragoons, he could say nothing at the present, for that must be concerted upon the borders." Carstares communicated the conspiracy to Dr, Owen, Mr. Griffin, and Mr. Mead, of Stepney, nonconformist ministers, who all concurred in its promotion. Baillie informed Car- stares that it was impossible to raise the money for the use of Argyle, when he and sir John Cockrane lamented the disap- pointment. Upon Baillie's jury there were two noblemen and thirteen gentlemen of rank, who unanimously found him guilty of high treason, although a bare majority would have been sufficient. Ti)e evidence given on the trial is such a con- 1684.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 259 firmation of the guilt of the English conspirators, as cannot, by any sophistry, be confuted. The facts having been proved beyond all dispute, the crown of martyrdom which all pres- byterian authors have awarded to this convicted traitor pro- ceeds as much from the love of the " good old cause" for which he suffered, as for that " wisdom that is from above, [which is] first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to bo entreated, full of mercy, and good fruits." They all dwell most movingly upon the hardships and ill usage in prison that Baillie and the other prisoners underwent, and the barbarous circumstances attending their executions,in order to excite com- passion, and to draw attention away from their guilt Prisons at that time were a disgrace to humanity for filth and incon- venience; and the chopping off the hands with an axe pre- vious to their execution, was a cruel and unnecessary punish- ment. But as it was the known and established custom of the country, and its being awarded to Baillie and others at this time, does not mark the government with any inherent or unusual cruelty of disposition. " Baillie, of Jerviswood," says Mackenzie ^, " was executed for being accessory to, and con- cealing of a design of raising 20,000 men, and of seizing the garrisons of Berwick and Carlisle, and the officers of state. Nor would the advocate raise an indictment, until sir George Lockhart, one of the learnedest of the present judges, did declare that the point of law and probation were both most clear, and therefore concurred in the process — (concealing of treason is beyond all debate punishable as treason in our law), — and some of the witnesses were his own relations, who swore plainly and positively against him." It was well known that Gilbert Burnet was not ignorant of the plans of the con- spirators, and an occasion was seized, from his preaching a political sermon at the Rolls Chapel, to dismiss him, and as he was considered disaffected to government, he feared they might not be satisfied with the slight punishment of prevent- ing his preaching treason ; he therefore prudently set out on a "ramble about Europe 2." Though, says lord Fountainhall, the government could not directly reach Burnet for the Rye- house plot, yet the bishop of London sus|)ended him from preaching at St. Clement's, because he had been active in penning the dying speeches of the cons])irators, and " he got liberty from king Charles II. to go off the kingdom, and ^>«/ on grey clothes, when he wrought muckle mischief against the » Vindication, p. 21. » Own Times, ii. 450-52. 260 HISTORV OF THE [CHAP. XLV. king and his successor king James VII. at Rome, and other foreign courts ^" During the whole com-se of this year scarcely any thing occurs but the prosecution of the underspur leathers in Scot- land of the Rye-house plot; and every arrest, examination, and committal of the guilty parties, are denominated religious persecutions ; although religion was no farther concerned in it than that with the presbyterians; rebellion and religion were so intimately related, that they might be called convertible terms. The ordinary test by which they were known was their answers to the questions, Whether or not the assassination of archbishop Sharp was murder? — the rising of Bothwell-bridge, rebellion ? — or whether or not they would say, God save the king? The answers to all of which were invariably in the ne- gative. Many of the soldiers were assassinated ; and on one occasion five soldiers, who were conveying a prisoner to Glas- gow, were attacked by seven Whigs, who killed one of the guards, and rescued the prisoner 2. Burnet says, " that the severity which the presbyterians formerly had used, forcing all people to take their Covenant, was now returned back on them in this Test [the above questions] that they were forced to take^," The monotony of the state prosecutions, however, was broken up by several incidents that illustrated the character of the presbyterians ; the first of which was, a meeting of that body near Drumlanrig Castle, in the stewartry and diocese of Galloway. It was very numerous, and there were sixty sen- tinels, witli firelocks, planted at proper distances, and scouts were out, besides, in all directions, to give timely notice of the enemy. It was not long before an alarm was given that two parties of dragoons were approaching; the old and unarmed men, with the women, dispersed and went homewards; but the sentinels having fallen back, the main body presented a determined front of three hundred men well armed with fire- locks, and advantageously posted on a hill, where the cavalry could not act. It being impossible to attack them in this po- sition, the dragoons spread and pursued the retreating multi- tudes, and seized several of them, and among others the minister who had been preaching. They carried him to Dumfries, whence he was sent, under the charge of a lieutenant and his guard of cavalry, to Edin- burgh ; but the covenanters were determined to rescue their ' Fountainhall's Chronological Notes, p. 34. '^ Ibid. 29, 30. 3 Own Times, ii. 425. 1684.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 261 minister at all hazards ; and, crossing the country, they inter- cepted the party at a dangerous pass. The Entrekine is a hill three or four miles northward of Moffat, and has been so gra- phically described by the Great Unknown, in his novel of *' Redgauntlet," that it cannot be more minutely sketched. The road at that time, for more than a mile, wound by a gradual ascent along the side of this hill, and on the right hand going upwards there is a deep and nearly perpendicular ravine, called the Devil's Beef-barn, and the hill on the opposite side rises also nearly perpendicular. The roads then were neither Mac- adamized, nor were they so broad as the modern highways; and if the unfortunate traveller had slipped over the edge ot this road, he would have been precipitated to the bottom of the " Devil's," or the " Johnston's Beef-bara," as sir Walter Scott calls it. Just as the military party were at the steepest and most dangerous part of this pass, and riding in a straggling manner, and at some distance from each other, they were challenged by the leader of the covenanters from the hill-top on their left. The day was foggy, and the rebels being con- cealed, their numbers were not discovered : their commander ordered the dragoons to halt, and deliver up their minister. The officer in command resolutely refused to comply; " at which, the leader of the countrymen fired immediately, and aimed so true at him, that he shot him through the head, and he immediately fell, and his horse fluttering a little with the fall of his rider, fell over the precipice, rolling to the bottom, and was dashed to pieces." The rest of the covenanters had levelled their pieces, with the intention to fire upon the sol- diers, when the surviving officer called to them to desist, and desired a truce. The dragoons were now in the greatest pos- sible danger, and had the countrymen fired, they might have been all cut off; and to add to their consternation, they found the road in their front in the possession of a strong body of the insurgents, ready to dispute the passage. The officer then delivered up his prisoners, upon the insurgents engaging not to fire upon his men, and to withdraw ^ The surviving officer was afterwards tried by court-martial, and very undeservedly broke for cowardice. Mr. Renwick's field-preaching did not escape the notice of government ; for few besides him ventured to violate the laws. He was proclaimed a rebel and traitor, and inlercom- muned ; yet he still continued his " vagrant" preaching, " which made the [indulged] ministers inform against him, as if he had ' De Foe's Memoirs of the Church of Scotland, pp. 188-193. 262 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLV. intruded on other men's labours ^ ;" and sir George Mackenzie says, one of these informers gravely solicited him to hang Renwick, because he divided their kirk ! He had many hair- breadth escapes from capture after he had been proclaimed, " in which perplexity, having neither a possibility to flee, nor ability to fight, they were forced to pubUsh an apologetical representation of the npproven principles and practices, and covenant engagements, of our reformers 2." On the 15th of October, at one of their meetings, his followers proposed to publish a declaration " against the wickedness of the severities used by their persecutors." Renwick was at first averse to this dangerous step ; but having been vehemently urged, and pretending that " the necessity of the case admitted of no de- lay," he drew up what was called " the Apologetical Decla- ration, and Admonitory Vindication of the True Presbyterians of the Church of Scotland " It commences — " Albeit we know that the people of God in all ages have been cruelly per- secuted, &c. . . . therefore, as hitherto, we have not been driven to lay aside necessary obliging duties because of the viperous threalenings of men . . . so we declare our firm reso- lution of constant adherence to our covenants and engagements . . . and to our faithful declarations, wherein we have dis- OTTNEDthe authority 0/ Charles Stuart, and all authority de- pending upon him . . . and wherein also we have declared war against him and his accomplices . . . yet we do hereby declare unto all, that whosoever stretches forth their hand against us by shedding our blood, actually either by authoritative com- manding, such as bloody councillors . , . especially that called justiciary, general of forces, adjutants, captains, lieutenants, and all in civil and military power, who make it their work to embrue their hands in our blood ; or by obeying such com- mands, such as bloody militia men, malicious troopers, &c., likewise such gentlemen and commons who . . . ride and run with the foresaid persons, or who deliver any of us into their hands to the spilling of our blood. . . informers . . . such as viperous and malicious bishops and curates . , . who raise the hue and cry after us . . . we say all and every one of such shall be reputed by us as enemies to God and the covenanted work of reformation, and punished as such, according to our power and the degree of their offence Therefore all those aforesaid persons be admonished of their hazard ... we desire you to take warning .... for the sinless necessity of self-preservation, accompanied with holy zeal /"or Christ's ' Scots Worthies, 433. - Ibid. 434. 1684.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 263 reigning in our land [the dominion of presbytery] and sup- pressing of profanity, will move us not to let you pass un- punished." This treasonable apologetic was formally fixed to the market-crosses and church doors of several burghs during the night ; and even Wodrow admits that " it wanted not its de- signed effect." For " the most venomous malignants were affrighted, informers and intelligencers in the west and south for some time were deteiTed from their trafficking, and the most virulent and persecuting of the curates in Nithsdale and Gal- loway thought fit to retire for some time to other places^'' even before some dreadful murders startled the whole kingdom at the atrocious principles which this document developed. The privy council met, and submitted the following query to the judges, crown lawyers, and several advocates: "whether any of his majesty's subjects being questioned by his majesty's judges or commissioners, if they own a late proclamation, in so far as it declares war against his sacred majesty, and asserts that it is lawful to kill all those who are employed by his ma- jesty, refusing to answer upon oath, are guilty thereby of high treason, and art and part in the said treasonable declaration ?" It was answered — " It is the unanimous opinion of the lords of council and session that a libel in the terms of the said query is relevant to infer the crime of treason, as art and part of the said treasonable declaration against the refusers ^" The answer to this query was made the basis of an act of council, more tyrannical and atrocious than any thing that had hitherto proceeded from the privy council ; but which sir George Mackenzie vindicates upon the principle of retaliation. " It being put to the vote in council, whether or not any person owns, or does not disown, the late traitorous declaration upon oath, whether they have arms or not, should be immediately killed before two witnesses, and the person or persons who are to have instructions from the council for that effect ? Carried in the affirmative. The lords of his majesty's privy council do hereby ordain any person who owns or will not disown the late treasonable declaration upon oath, whether they have arms or not, to be immediately put to death ; this being always done in presence of two witnesses, and the person or persons having commission from the council for that effect 2." Sir George Mackenzie attempts to justify this terrible act by alleging the dreadful condition of the country, and the many murders committed by the presbyterians : he says, " As to the ' Wodrow's History, iv. 154. -' Ibid. iv. 155. 264 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLV. act made in council, allowing soldiers to kill such as refused to own the king's authority : it is answered, that there being many proclamations issued out by the dissenters declaring that the ' covenant was the original contract betwixt God, the king, and the people ; and therefore king Charles II. having broken it, forfaulted his crown, and being to be considered only as a private subject, and enemy to God, they declared war against him, and that it was lawful to kill him and all who served him :' many, accordingly, being killed, it was thought neces- sary by some (upon fres'h news of murdering some of the king's horse guards at Swyne-abbey, in their beds) to terrify them out of this extravagancy, by allowing the soldiers to use them as in a war in which, if any call — ' for whom are ye ?' and the others owning — ' that they were for the enemy,' it is lawful then to kill : and thus they felt their folly and the necessary effects of their principles ; but still it was ordered that none should be killed except those who were found in arms owning that principle of assassination, and refiising to clear themselves of their having been in accession to the declaring of war which they had then begun ; nor were these killed, but when their deliberate refusal could be proved by two witnesses. But that it may appear plainly that no more was intended in all this by the governors, but to secure the public peace by terrifying those assassins who had so manifestly invaded it, secret orders were given, that this should not last above a fortnight, and that none should be killed except those who were found in the publicly printed list, declared rebels, who may be killed by the laws of all nations ; and but very few even of those rebels were killed, though this has been made the foundation q/* many dreadful lies. This mischief was intolerable in itself, and we desire to know how it could have been otherwise remedied, for the law must find cures for all mischiefs, and those who occasionea them should of all others be least allowed to complaint" After the publication of the Apologetic Declaration, the presbyterian districts became uninhabitable by the episcopal clergy and their people, and many of the clergy, from the effects of terror, were obliged to remove fi'ora their charges into towns for protection ; for Mackenzie observes, "no man who served the king could know whether or not his murderer was at his elbow, and that they had reason to look upon every place as their scaffold." Two soldiers, or " gentlemen of the lifeguards," were barbarously murdered by the adherents of the apologetic on the night of the 20th of November, in their beds ; the par- ' Vindication, pp. 15-16. 1684.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 265 ticulars of which were not known, for the fanatical murderers escaped detection. Kennoway, one of the victims, was much employed against the presbyterians, and was perhaps the pro- totype of Serjeant Bothwell, in Scott's novel of the Cove- nanters, and both he and Stewart, the other man, had inciuTcd much odium among the presbyterians by their activity. They were quartered at a place called Swync-abbey, in the ])arish c^" Livingstone, county of Linlithgow, and diocese of Edin- burgh ; and the former had a list of the names of persons whom he was directed to arrest. Wodrow says this atrocious murder " shows how righteous Providence was that this wicked man is cut off in the midst of his days and prospects ^" The council ordered a strict search to be made for the murderers, but they were never discovered ; but provision was made for the widows and children of the murdered men. On the 30th of December, the council published a procla- mation against the Apologetic Declaration, in wliich they assert that tlie rebels having at last " pulled off" the mask under which they formerly endeavoured to disguise their bloody and execrable principles, and . . , declared that they have disowned us and our authority, and have declared war against us ; and . . . that it is a duty to kill and murder all who do any manner of way serve us or bear charge under us, &c Therefore we do hereby ordain that whosoever shall own the said most execrable and treasonable declaration or assassinations therein mentioned, and the principles therein specified, or whosoever shall refuse to disown tlie same, in so far as it declares war against his sacred majesty, and asserts that it is lawful to kill such as serve in church, state, army, and country, shall be tried and executed to the death And since these rebels, after declaring their hellish intentions, for the better perfoniiance of their mischievous designs, do lurk in secret, and are never discerned but in the acts of their horrid assassinations, and passing up and down unknown amongst our loyal subjects, take opportunity to murder and assassinate, and it being necessary to provide a remedy against so imminent a danger . . . we hereby command and require all our subjects — both men and women past the age of sixteen years — not to presume to travel without tcstificates of their loyalty and good principles," of which a fonn was given ; but this restriction was entirely confined to the counties within the dioceses of Glasgow and Galloway, with the capital ; the other parts of the kingdom which were free from p-esbyterian prin- > History, iv. 153. VOL. III. 2 M 266 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLV. ciples enjoyed the same freedom of locomotion as formerly- It was also declared that those who travelled without one of these passes were to be " holden and used as concurrers with the aforesaid execrable rebels, and as guilty of the aforesaid treasonable declaration, and accessory to the designs therein." The pass was in words of similar import to the following oath, which all were required to take before they could be entitled to receive their passport, and all military men were authorised to administer the oath : — " I, A B, do hereby abhor, renounce, and disown, in presence of the Almighty God, the pretended declaration of war, late aflfixed to several parish churches, in so far as it declares a war against his sacred majesty, and asserts that it is lawful to kill such as serve his majesty in church, state, army, or country." 1685. — It is impossible to contemplate the horrible state to which the principles of the covenant had at this time re- duced the southern parts of the kingdom, without shame and sorrow. Their own madness and murderous designs, and which were adopted as a principle of religion, produced re- taliatory cruelties and restrictions on liberty in those parts of the kingdom that were afflicted with their presence ; and it is an extraordinary symptom of delusion that those severities which they may be said to have extorted from the government are looked upon as unprovoked persecution, and the execution of convicted traitors as martyrdom. If the Jesuits could feel either shame or compunction, the fruit produced by their in- strument, the covenant, would move them to both ; but in this covenant, which murdered both souls and bodies, they thought they were doing service to Him whose attribute is love. Whereas their works, but especially the covenant, are chiefly calculated to advance the kingdom of him who was both a LIAR and a murderer from the beginning of time. The established clergy in the southern counties were kept in constant terror of their lives, and even Wodrow ad- mits that their treatment by his friends was " uncivil and rude enough^ and that in consequence many of them were driven to the necessity of resigning their cures and removing out of the country ; upon the principle that " when they persecute you in this city, flee ye unto another." One of a more intrepid character than the others, Mr. Peter Pearson, incumbent of the parish of Carsphairn, in Galloway, met the fate designed for others, had matters been allowed to proceed. He was un- married, and lived at his house quite alone ; but, according to the policy of the time, he had been compelled to attend the court held by the military commander, and to accuse ]685.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 267 or else to excuse his parishioners. For his own protection, he kept firearms and other means of defence in his house, and it seems he had provoked the whigs by saying that he was not afraid of them. He taught the cathoHc doctrines of the church, which were fiercely denounced, as they have ever been, and ever will be by Calvinists, as popery and ar- minianism, and Wodrow calls this an " unwarrantable pro- vocation !"' Some of the whigs, therefore, entered into a com- bination to compel him to desist from what they called perse- cution, and to teach more orthodox doctrines, according to their standard of divinity. Two of them gained admission to his house at night, some say after he was in bed, when he pre- pared for defence, but the others coming to the door, he incau- tiously went out to reason with them, as he now saw his peril was imminent, and he was shot dead on the instant. " Several of his brethren," says Wodrow, " about the time of the so- ciety's declaration, had the caution to retire for a little, but he would needs brave it out," and murder was the reward of his courage ; and he continues, " in his narrower sphere, he came the nearest to the primate who met with the same fate." Although he pretends to abhor and detest murder in the abstract, yet he most circumstantially and apologetically relates all the circumstances connected with this sacrilegious murder, and protests against its being laid to the charge of the whigs ; but it is chargeable on their principles^ and particularly on their apologetic declaration. The council ordered the whole parish to be pursued for the murder done on their minister ; and like- wise the parish of Anwoth, in the same diocese, for affronts done to their minister. I cannot find any account of what were the nature of the " affronts" done to the clergyman of that parish, but it is probable they wei'e short of murder. The council wrote to the lord bishop of Moray to advertise all his clergy to meet at Elgin on the 22d January, to attend a court to be held by the earls of Erroll, Kintore, and some others, and to bring with them lists of " persons guilty of church disorders, or suspected of disaffection to the present established government in church or state." This is the fruit of the former insane practice of having banished the whig ministers from the diocese of Glasgow into Morayshire. Wodrow very justly says, " the seed sown by the banish- ments, after the first introduction of prelacy, of Mr. D. Dick- son and Mr. R. Bruce, and others ; and more lately by minis- ters and gentlemen banished thither by the high commission, and by the labours of Messrs. Hogg, M'Gilligue, and others, 268 IIISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLV. were not yet worn out fiom that country." To inquire into the disorders which a few presbyterians introduced and kept up in that diocese, the council sent these noblemen as com- missioners, and their report states that the lords sent a " va- grant preacher to Edinburgh ; and cleansed the country of all outcd ministers and vagrant preachers, and banished four of them for not taking the oath of allegiance, keeping conventi- cles, and refusing to keep the kirk." The commissioners seem to have restored order amongst the few delinquents in Moray, without having resorted to any very harsh measures ; except in the cases of Grant of Grant and Brodie of Brodie, both of whom were heavily fined. They appealed to the king in council, but their fines were confirmed. They report also, that " the l)ishop and clergy of the diocese of Moray attended the lords in a body, and gave them their hearty thanks for the great pains and diligence they had used to the good and encourage- ment of the church and clergy in that place, and begged the lords would allow them to represent their sense and gratitude thereof to the lords of his majesty's most honourable privy council^." Graham of Claverhouse had traversed the stewartry of Galloway in the end of the preceding year; but had failed in entirely suppressing the field conventicles. Colonel Douglass, with two hundred men, was sent into the stewartry, and on the 23d of January he came upon six men atCaldunes, a farm- house in the parish of Minnigaff, when, Wodrow affirms, with- out any other provocation than that of their being engaged in prayer, and without any process, he shot them all dead! ■■This is not true ; but this falsehood served to " aggravate the crimes of his enemies," and to keep up local prejudices against both the church and the king's government. Lord Fountain- hall relates, that Douglass was in the fields on that day with eight men, and accidentally encountered these fanatics, " who killed iivo of his men and captain Urquhart, and had very nearly shot Douglass himself dead, had not the whig's carbine misgiven, whereon Douglass pistoled him presently." Instead of having shot six men at prayers without any pro- cess, it thus appears, upon undoubted authority, that the six men at prayers shot three of the king's life-guards in the exe- cution of their duty. His lordship adds, some companions of these whigs came to Kirkcudbright and killed two men, " and caused a minister, called Mr. Shaw, to swear he would never 1 Wodrow's History, iv. 194-196. 1685.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 269 preach again in Scotland." This oath was extorted from hira under the threat of instant murder, but yet he was so tender of his oath that he preached no more in Scotland. His majesty king Charles II. was seized with a fit of apo- plexy on Monday, the 2d of February ; on the 4th, hopes were entertained of his majesty's recovery, but growing worse, he died on Friday the 6th, at Whitehall, in the 55th year ol his age and the 37th of his reign, about twenty- five years after the Restoration ^ Burnet alleges that one Huddlestone, a ])riest of Rome, administered the sacrament and extreme unction to the king previous to his death ; and Huddlestone published a " Brief Account of particulars occurring at the happy death of our late sovereign lord king Charles II. in regard to religion ; faithfully related by his tlien assistant, Mr. John Huddlestone." That paper is now before me, in which the priest says, " The king then declared himself, ' that he desired to die in the faith and communion of the holy Roman catholic church ; that he was most heartily sony for all the sins of his life past, and pailicularly for that he had deferred his reconciliation so long; that through the merits of Christ's passion, he hoped for sahation ; that he was in charity with all the world ; that with all his heart he pardoned his ene- mies, and desired pardon of all those whom he had anywise otfended; and that, if it pleased God to spare him longer life, he would amend it, detesting all sin 2.'" Bishop Bcjrnet's account of the last hours of the king partakes of all that malignity and misrepreseniation which run through his whole history ; but fortunately we have another account by one who was present in the room, and who was chaplain to Dr. Turner, bishop of Ely. It is in a letter ad- dressed to the Rev. Francis Roper ; but the signature was torn away. It is preserved among the Ellis Papers, dated Ely House, February 7th, 1684-85 :— " Reverend Sir, — Yesterday noon, I do believe the most lamented prince that ever sat upon a throne, one of the best kings, after near five days' sickness, left this world; trans- lated, doubtless, to a much more glorious kingdom than all those which he has left behind him, now bewailing of their loss. It was a great piece of providence that this fatal blow was not so sudden as it would have been if he had died on Monday, when his fit first took him, as he must have done if Dr. King had not been by by chance, and let him blood. By these ' Salmon's Chronology, 232. = Deutera Eikon Bazilike, 317. 270 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLV. few days' respite he had opportunity (which, accordingly, he did embrace) of thinking of another world ; and we all pre- pared the better to sustain so great a loss. He shewed him- self, throughout his sickness, one of the best-natured men that ever lived ; and by abundance of fine things he said, with re- ference to his soul, he shewed he died as a good christian ; and the physicians,who have seen so many leave this world, do say they never saw the like as to his courage, so unconcerned he was at death, though sensible to all degrees imaginable to the very last. He often, in extremity of pain, would say he suffered, but thanked God that he did so, and that he suffered patiently. He every now and then would seem to wish for death, and beg the pardon of the standers by and those that were employed about him, that he gave them so much trouble; that he hoped the work was almost over ; he was weary of this world ; he had liad enough of it, and he was going to a better. There was so much affection and tenderness expressed between the royal brothers, the one upon the bed, the other almost drowned in tears upon his knees, and kissing of his dying bro- ther's hand, as could not but extremely move the standers by. He thanked our present king for having always been the best of brothers and of friends, and begged his pardon for the trou- ' ble lie had given him fi*om time to time, and for the several risks of fortune he had run on his account. He told him now he freely left him all, and begged of God to bless him with a prosperous reigii. He recommended all his children to his care except the duke of Monmouth, whom he was not heard so much as to make mention of. He blessed all his children, one by one, pulling them to him on the bed ; and then the bishops moved him, as he was the Lord's anointed and the fa- ther of his country, to bless them also, and all that were there present, and in them the whole body of his subjects. Where- upon, the room being full, all fell down upon their knees, and he raised himself on his bed, and very solemnly blessed them all. This was so like a great good prince, and the solemnity of it so very surprising, as was extremely moving, and caused a general lamentation throughout; and no one hears [of] it without being much affected with it ; being new and great. " It is not to be expressed how strangely every body was concerned when they perceived there was but little hopes. To all appearance, never any prince came to a crown with more regret, with more unwilliugness, because it could not be without the loss of one he loved so dearly, than did our gra- cious sovereign (whom God preserve). He joined as heartily as any of the company in all the prayers the bishops offered 1G85.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 271 up to God. He was as much upon his knees as any one, and said Amen as heartily ; and no one doubts but he as much de- sired God would hear their prayers as any one of all that prayed. " The queen, whom he [the king] had asked for the first thing he said on Monday, when he came out of his fit (she having been present with him as long as her extraordinary passion would give her leave, which at length threw her into fits, not being able to speak while witli him), sent a message to him to excuse her absence, and to beg his pardon if ever she had offended him in all her life. He replied, ' Alas ! poor woman ! she beg my pardon ^ I beg hers, with all my heart !' " The queen that now is was a most passionate mourner, and so tender-hearted as to think a crown dearly bought with the loss of such a brother. There was, indeed, no one of either sex but wept like children. " On Friday morning all the churches were so thronged with people to pray for him, all in tears and with dejected looks, that for my part I found it a hard task, and so I do be- lieve did many more, to go through with the service ; so melan- choly was the sight, as well as were the thoughts of the occa- sion of it. " The bishop of Bath and Wells [Kenn] watching on Wed- nesday night (as my lord [Dr, Turner, bishop of Ely] had done the night before), there appearing then some danger, be- gan to discourse to him as a divine ; and thereupon he did con- tinue the speaker for the rest to the last, the other bishops giv- ing their assistance, both by prayers and otherwise, as they saw occasion, with very good ejaculations and short speeches, till his speech quite left him ; and afterwards, by lifting up his hand, expressing his attention to the prayers, he made a very glorious christian exit, after as lasting and as strong an agony of death almost as ere was known ^" The character of this prince has been altogether mis- represented, by the malignity of bishop Burnet and the pre- judices of presbyterian authors, Mdio, mistaking their own sins of rebellion for true and laudable service, have represented him as a monster of iniquity and tyranny. But better and less prejudiced judges give him a very different character. Dr. Charlton says, his majesty's natural endowments were highly improved by a numerous train of accidents commonly un- known to other princes ; his mind was adorned by such vir- tues as might, if they had continued, have proved a perpetual > Ellis's Original Letters, iii. 333-338. Published 1824. 272 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLV. source of happiness to himself and kingdom, as justice, forti- tude, temperance, clemency, and sobriety. Sir William Temple says, no prince had more qualities to make him loved, with a great many to make him esteemed, and all without a grain of pride and vanity in his constitution : nor could he suf- fer flattery of any kind, growing weary upon the first approaches of it. Echard says, the king's own clemency was apparent and remarkable ; and it was the king's opinion, both before and after his restoration, that the best means to restore the de- cayed body of the kingdom to its former health, was not to cure one part by afflicting the other, but to heal those wounds, which were already festered, by their proper lenitives, and to remove all causes of future animosity. And that he never in- tended to have enslaved his people, as Burnet maliciously in- sinuates, is evident from his voluntarily passing by two fa- vourable opportunities : first at his restoration, and next in the latter end of life, when he reigned so entirely in the hearts of his subjects, always excepting, however, the presbyterians, that they would have denied him nothing that he could have asked from them^ Hume says of him, "though not en- dowed with the integrity and strict principles of his father, he was happy in a more amiable manner and more popular ad- dress. Far from being distant, stately, or reserved, he had not a grain of pride or vanity in his whole composition; but was the most affable, best bred man alive. He treated his subjects like noblemen, like gentlemen, like freemen ; not like vassals or boors. His professions were plausible, his whole behaviour engaging ; so that he won upon the hearts even when he lost the good opinion of his subjects, and often balanced their judgments of things by their personal inclina- tion. In his public conduct likewise, though he had some times embraced measures dangerous to the liberty and religion of his people, he had never been found to persevere obsti- nately in them, but had always returned into that path which their united opinion seemed to point out to him. And upon the whole, it appeared to many, cruel, and even iniquitous, to remark so rigorously the failings of a prince who discovered so much facility in correcting his errors, and so much lenity in pardoning the offences committed against himself 2." It was frequently remarked of Charles, " that he never said a foolish thing, nor ever c^ic? a wise one," a severe and unjust censure ; but when it was related to the merry monarch, he readily accounted for it by saying that nothing could be more Salmon's Examination, i. 138-442. 2 Higt. of Eng. viii. 121. 1685.J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 273 reasonable than that, " for his discourse was his own, where- as his actions were his ministers'." Lord Fountainhall says of him, that " he was certainly a prince (whose weak side was to be carried away with women, which had wasted his body, be- ing only fifty-five years old when he died) endued with many royal qualities, of whom the divine providence had taken an especial care : witness his miraculous escape at Worcester battle ; his treatment in the royal oak, when thousands were rummaging the fields in quest of him ; his restoration with- out one drop of bloodshed, so that the Turkish emperor said that if he were to change his religion he would only do so for that of the king of Great Britain's God, who had done so wonderful things for him. His clemency was admirable ; wit- ness his sparing two of Cromwell's sons, one of whom had usurped his throne. His firmness in religion was evident, for in his banishment great offers were made to restore him if he would turn papist, which he altogether slighted^." His religious firmness is confirmed by the following letter, which he wrote to the duke of York with his own hand, to pre- vent his apostacy, and which corresponds with his own con- duct before embarking for Scotland 2, It is dated Cologne, November 10th, 1654: — " Dear brother, — I have received yours, without a date, in which you mention that Mr. Montague has endeavoured to pervert you in your religion. I do not doubt but you remem- ber very well the commands I left with you at my going away, concerning that point, and am confident you will observe them ; yet the letters coming from Paris say that it is the queen's purpose to do all she can to change your religion ; which, if you hearken unto her or any body else in that matter, you must never think to see England or me again ; and whatever mis- chief shall fall on me or my affairs fi'om this time, I must lay all on you, as being the only cause of it : therefore consider well what it is, not only to be the cause of ruining a brother that loves you so well, but also of your king and country. Do not let them persuade you either by force or fair promises ; for the first, they neither dare nor will use ; for the second, as soon as they have perverted you, they will have their end, and will care no more for you. I am also informed there is a pur- pose to put you into the Jesuits' college, which I command you, on the same ground, never to consent unto ; and when- ever any body will go to dispute with you in religion, do not ' Chronological Notes, p. 40. 2 vide ante ii. ch. xxiv. p. 320. VOL. III. 2 N 274 HfSTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. XLV. answer them at all ; for though you have reason on your side, yet, they being prepared, will have the advantage of any body that is r)0t upon the same security that they are. If you do not consider what I say to you, remember the last words of your dead father, which were, to be constant to your religion, and never to be shaken in it. Which, if you do not observe, this shall be the last time you will ever hear from your affec- tionate brother, " Charles R." Burnet most mendaciously asserts that the proclamation of king James's accession was a heavy solemnity ; few tears were shed for the former, nor were there any shouts of joy for the present king^ Few princes have descended to the grave more generally lamented than Charles II. ; he was a most po- pular severeign, and was beloved by all his subjects, except the whigs, who were in constant plots both against his crown and his life. Mr. archdeacon Echard says, " sure it is that since the murder of his father, there never was a deeper sor- ro 'V, nor more tears shed in England, than appeared upon the first news of the death of this beloved monarch, king Charles II., which was looked upon as the greatest misfortune and calamity that could befal the nation." Burnet's malicious in- sinuation, that there were no shouts of joy at the proclamation of king James, is equally unfounded : Mr. Welwood says, that " upon king Charles's death, James, duke of York, mounted the throne; all the former heats and animosities against him, and even the very memory of a bill of exclusion, seemed to be now quite forgot, amidst the loud acclamations of his people at his accession to the crown." 1 Own Times, iii. 5. 27f) CHAPTER XL VI. THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. 1685. — Proclamation of James II. — his speech in council. — Archbishop San- croft's address. — King goes publicly to mass — sets up the popish ritual at Holyrood-house. — Charles II. 's prophecy — king Charles buried. — James VII. proclaimed at Edinburgh. — Bishops' address to the king — did not take the coronation oath. — An action with the covenanters. — Free pardon to preachers and others. — Renwick in the field — refuses to join Argyle. — The Sanquhar Declaration. — Meeting of parliament — king's letter — duke of Queensberry commissioner, his speech — the chancellor's speech — act for the security of the protestant church — against the covenant — other acts — act for the clergy. — Argyle's movements — arrives at Orkney — bishop of Orkney arrests his officers — arrives in Kintyre — issues a declaration — the declaration — makes a descent on the lowlands — is defeated — and captured. — Address of parliament. — Argyle ordered to be beheaded. — Monmouth lands at Lyme — proclaimed king at Taunton — writes to the diike of Albemarle — defeated at Sedgemoor — beheaded — his fanaticism — his declaration — Argyle's prophecy — his behaviour on the scaffold. — Rumbold executed. — A thanksgiving ordered. — Dispensing with the laws. 1685 , — About four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day on which king Charles II. died, James the Second was proclaimed at London with the usual solemnities, with great acclamations of the people, " together with a decent concern for the loss of so good a prince." At night the council met, and his majesty made a very gracious declaration, wherein he assured the lords that he should endeavour to follow his brother's example, es- pecially in his great tenderness and clemency to his jieople ; that though he had been reported to be a man bent on arbitrary power, yet he should invade no man's property, but endeavour to support the government both in church and state, as it was by law established. I know, he said, the principles of the church of England are for monarchy, and that the members of it have shewn themselves good and loyal subjects, and there- fore I shall always take care to defend and support it. He re- peated the same assurance to the lord bishop of Ely, with solemn protestations that he would not in the least disturb the 276 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVI. established government of the church, " either by toleration or any othei way whatever." The next clay archbishop San- croft and some of the bishops had a private audience of his majesty in his closet, when the archbishop made a very elo- quent speech, by way of thanks, in the name of the whole clergy, for his majesty's gracious declaration in council, " giving him all assurances of loyalty in the clergy, as what he might depend upon, as it is both the doctrine and practice of our church, beyond any church in the worlds" His majesty again repeated his former declaration, and added, moreover, that he would never give any sort of countenance to dissenters. On the 8th of February, king James went publicly to mass at St. James's chapel ; and the Romish ritual was ordered to be established in the chapel royal, Holyrood-house ! This in • fatuated king thus early laid the foundation of his own ruin, and the verification of the late king's prophecy, as related by sir Richard Bullstrode, a papist, in his Memoirs. He had been the resident at the court of Brussels, and he says, " about two years before the death of king Charles II. he gave me leave to come into England, and sent the Katharine yacht to Ostend for me. Some days after my arrival at Whitehall, he com- manded me to walk with him to Hyde-park, and as I walked with him, the rest of the company kee])ing at a good distance, he told me that I had served him very well at Brussels, and that his brother had given him a very good account of my carriage there. . . . And after having asked me many ques- tions about the nobility of those countries, he said, that during his exile abroad he had seen many countries, of which none pleased him so much as that of the Flemings, who were the most honest and true-hearted race of people that he had met with : and then added. But lam weary of travelling, I am re- solved to go abroad no more : but when I am dead and gone, I know not what my brother will do. I am much afraid that when he comes to the crown he will be obliged to travel again. And yet I will take care to leave my kingdoms to him in peace, wishing he may long keep them so. But this hath all of my fears, little of my hopes, and less of my reason ; and I am much afraid, that when my brother comes to the crown, he will be obliged again to leave his native soiiy This idea must have made a strong impression on the king's mind, for he remarked to the prince of Orange, that " he was confident, whenever the ' Ellis's Original Letters, iii. 338-39.— Salmon's Chronology, 234.— The Life of King James II. late King of England, anonymous, p. 74, 2d edit. London, 170;«. 1685.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND- 277 duke should come to rcigii, that he would be so restless and violent, that he would not hold it four years to an end ' :" little did the king think, however, that this prince, who was James's son-in-law, was to send him on his travels. On the 14th, king Charles was buried privately from the painted chamber at Westminster in Henry VII.'s Chapel in the Abbey ; " but hardly was ever a crowned head so ob- scurely interred, he having not so much as the Blue-coat boys to walk before him 2." On Monday evening, the 9th of February, the news of the late king's death reached Edinburgh, and the privy council assembled immediately, and after expressing their giief, they resolved to proclaim the duke of Albany and York the following day as James VII. At eight o'clock next morning they again met, and the lord chancellor, having first taken the oath of allegiance, the test, and the oath of a privy councillor, ad- ministered them to all the other members. Then they all signed the order for proclaiming the new king, and went to the cross, where they were met by the lord provost and magistrates in their robes and insignia, and the lords of session, with such of the lords spiritual and temporal as were in town. The lord chancellor ascended the cross, and read the proclamation amidst the shouts and acclamation of the people ; and after- wards the privy council despatched a letter to the king with an account of their proceedings. At the same time the arch- bishops and bishops sent an address to the king, in which they expressed their deep sorrow for the death of their late sove- reign Charles II., but which was mitigated by the happy and peaceable succession of his majesty to the throne. They also congratulated his majesty on his accession " with all the marks of joy imaginable ;" and requested that his majesty would be pleased to permit the archbishop of St. Andrews to wait upon his royal person, that he might express his own and his brethren's sense of duty and affection more fully than could be done by letter. On the 16*th, king James was proclaimed in Ireland by the duke of Ormond with equal splendour, and with every mark of loyalty^. In the proclamation an oath is inserted of adhesion to James's heirs: "and we hereby give our oaths with uplifted hands that we shall bear true and faithful allegiance unto our said sacred sovereign James Vll. king, &c., and to his lawful heirs and successors." But it is remarkable that the king had ' Note by editor of Burnet's Own Times, ii. 415. ' Salmon's Chronology, i. 231. — Life of King Tames, 75. ^ Ibid. 75-76. 278 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XLVI. no coronation oath for Scotland tendered to him ; and Wodro\^ sneeringly remarks, " the loss was not very great to Scotland, since his religion, which led him to keep no faith with heretics, could have furnished him with a dispensation from his oath, though he had taken it ;" as the covenant furnished a dis- pensation to his subjects from their oath of allegiance to him at the revolution. On the 13th of February, colonel Buch an defeated eighty of the covenanters who had assembled in arms, killed one of them, and took three prisoners. And the lord advocate was ordered to prosecute the parishioners of Irongray, in the diocese of Galloway, for one of those fre- quent invasions of the clergyman's manse, and an attack on his person ; which Wodrow delicately calls " an abuse," and adds, " I know no more about it." On the 2d of March, the king published an indemnity, with some exceptions, in which he freely pardoned and indemnified all his Scottish subjects, under and below the degree of heritors, &c. — including " va- grant preachers, of all rebellions, seditions, insurrections, reset, iutercommuning, fire-raising, &c., in any time preced- ing the date of this our royal proclamation." Out of this in- demnity, however, the murderers of archbishop Sharp and Mr. Pearson were excepted. Extensive as this indemnity was, yet it failed to gratify the party that derived the greatest benefit from it ; for, says Wodrow, " it is so narrow, that it scarce deserves its name, and very much agrees with the nature of those favours protestant subjects may expect from a popish prince. The king is made to commend his brother's clemency as what aggravated what'is now called rebellion. I am apt enough to suppose, that king Charles's government might have been 7nuch more easy than it was, had it not been /or the duke and the bishops^." It is in this way that such inveterate pre- judices have been instilled into the minds of the people of Scotland. The bishops had nothing to do with the mea- sures of government, but the people were taught to believe that they had, and the traditional fieeling of hatred and malice has been transmitted with such intense repugnance also to their sacred office, that it seems almost to be invincible. By a despatch from the council to the officer commanding in the south, we learn that Renwick held a conventicle in Clydes- dale, that might be considered a military muster. " May 25th, the lords of his majesty's privy council, being this day cer- tainly informed, that there was a considerable meeting of per- sons hearing that supposed preacher (a disturber of the peace ' History, iv. 205. 1685.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 279 and of all honest men), Mr. James Renwick, between the King's-hill and Durmond, upon the borders of Carluke and Cambusnethan parishes, in Clydesdale, where there were an hundred armed men, who were exercised betwixt sunrising and eight of the clock in the morning upon Friday last, and then after sermon, began again and continued the rest of the day. At which meeting there were several persons made their repentance for their offences in taking the oath of abjuration, the test, and hearing and communicating with indulged minis- ters ; and so were by him received into their society, and some were delayed till a new occasion, their offences being many ^." But this w^as not enough, "Mr. Renwick's spirit was stirred within him at the proclamation of king James, a professed papist," and therefore he " could not let go this opportunity of witnessing against that usurpation of a papist upon the govern- ment of the nation, and his design of overturning the cove- nanted work of reformation, and of introducing popery. Ac- cordingly, he and about 200 men went to Sanquhar, May 28, 1685, and published that declaration, afterwards called the Sanquhar Declaration 2." The council sent orders to the lord Carmichael to examine all suspected persons, to secure; their arms and horses throughout the county of Ayr, to prevent their joining Argyle, whose invasion was now daily expected. Renwick was strongly solicited to unite his armed followers, who had been in training at the last conventicle, with those of Argyle ; but as that traitor had not given his testimony against the designs and defections of the times with sufficient explicitness to satisfy Renwick, he refused. He chose to make war on antichrist in his own way, and he thereby in- curred the wrath of those ministers that came over with Argyle, one of whom wrote and published a most vindictive letter against him ; and one Cathcart protested in the name of the presbyterians against Renwick's preaching, or even conversing within their jurisdiction 3." The following is an abstract of the Sanquhar Declaration : — " It hath pleased the holy and wise God to exercise the church of Scotland now^ of a long time with wrestling under the yoke of cruel oppressions ... all this . . . we have met with as just upon the Lord's part, though unjust upon man's, for our manifold sins and iniquities ; and in a special manner for our not purging our judicatories and armies, when the power was in our hands, of men disaffected to the cause and interest ' "W^odrow, iv. 209-10. - Scots Worthies, Life of Renwick, p. 435. 3 Scots Worthies, Life of Renwick, 436. 280 Hisroiiv OF the [chap, xLvr, of Christ [i. e. to presbytery] . . • and for inordinate affection to, and lusting after, the deceased tyrant Charles II., and ad- vancing him to the royal throne, even when known ... to retain hisheartenmityatthecovenantedwork of reformation. . . . And howbeit . . . when we were brought to a very small remnant, we did, by open declaration, disclaim his pretended authority ; . . . all which we do hereby ratify and approve. ... So now ... a k\\ wicked and unprincipled men having .... pro- claimed James duke of York, though a professed papist and an excommunicate person . . . to be king of Scotland, &c. . . . We, the contending and suffering remnant of the true presbyterians, . . . dohereby deliberately, jointly, and unani- mously, protest against the aforesaid proclamation . . . in regard it is the choosing a murderer to be a governor who hath shed the blood of the saints . . . the height of confede- racy with an idolater . . contrary to the declaration of the Assembly, July, 1649, and to many wholesome and laudable acts of parliament . . . and inconsistent with the safety, faith, conscience, and christian liberty of a christian people, to choose a subject of antichrist to be ... . their supreme magistrate. Also conceiving that this pretended parliament is not a lawful parliament . . . and further, seeing bloody papists, the subjects of antichrist, are become so hopeful, bold, and confident, under the perfidy of the said James duke of York, and popery itself .... like to be intruded again .... upon these covenanted lands, and an open door being made thereunto, by its accursed and abjured harbinger, prelacy, which these three kingdoms are equally sworn against [and to extirpate]. We do, in like manner, protest against all kind of popery, in general and parti- cular heads . . . abjured most explicitly by our national cove- nant, abrogated, annulled, and rescinded by our acts of parlia- ment, and against its entering again into this land, and against every thing that doth, or may, directly or indirectly, make way for the same, disclaiming likewise all sectarianism, malignancy, and any confederacy therewith." The government had the good sense to take little notice of this Declaration, and it passed off harmlessly. The parliament met on the 28th of March, the same day that the king and queen were crowned at London. The king's letter was read, which, among other things, said — " That what he had to pro- pose to them at that time was this, which was both necessary as well for his safety as service, and had a greater tendency towards their securing their own pri\ileges and properties than the aggrandising his power, which, however, he was resolved to maintain in its greatest lustre ; that he might be the better 1(395.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 28 J enabled to protect and defend their religion established by law, their rights and properties, against fanatical contrivances, murderers and assassins, which only the steady rcsolutioiis of his brother, and those employed by him, could have saved ihem from. That nothing had been left vnidone by these inhuman traitors to overturn their peace ; and therefore he hoped they would be wanting in nothing to secure themselves and him." The duke of Queensberry was sent down as royal com- missioner, and after the king's letter had been read, his grace spoke, among other things, as follows : — My lords, his majesty certainly expects from the prudence and loyalty of this par- liament that effectual ways will be fallen upon for destroying that desperate, fanatical, and irreclaimable party, who have brought us to the brink of ruin and disgrace, and are no more rebels against the king, than enemies of mankind, wretches of such monstrous principles and practices, as past ages never heard, nor those to come will hardly believe : what indemnities and acts of grace and clemency have they not contemned ? and all the use they made of them, has still been to pardon and confirm them in their execrable villainies : and how incon- siderable soever they appear, assure yourselves they ought not absolutely to be coutemned,ybr if they had not support and cor- respondence not yet discovered, it is not to be supposed they could have so long escaped the care and vigilance of the government." The earl of Perth, the lord chancellor, said : — " To en- courage us to do all we can towards the service and the honour of our gracious monarch, let us consider him in all his personal advantages ; whether in what relates to war or peace, where has the world afforded such another? One whose natural endowments have been improved by his great expe- rience at home and abroad, in armies and in courts, by the greatest trials of the most differing kinds — those of prosperity and success, and of adversity and opposition ; of hazards and toil, and of authority and command. Did ever man shew so exact an honesty in the strictest adhering to his word, such temperance and sobriety, so indefatigable a diligence in affairs, so undaunted a courage upon all occasions, and so unwearied a clemency towards the most obstinate malicious offenders ?" Wodrow calls the chancellor's speech " a very remarkable discourse ;" and what he says of the king was very true, and his speech is not less remarkable for its plainness respecting " a new sect sprung up amongst us from the dunghill, the very dregs of the people, who killed by pretended inspiration, and instead of the temple of the Lord, have nothing in their VOL. III. 2 o 282 HISTORV OF THE [CHAP. XLVI. mouths but the word of God, wresting that blessed convey- ance of His holy will to us, to justify a practice suggested to them by him who was a murderer from the beginning, who having modelled themselves into a commonwealth (whose idol is that accursed paper the Covenant, and whose only rule is to have none at all), have proceeded to declare themselves no longer his majesty's subjects, to forfeit all of us who have the honour to serve in any considerable station, and will be sure to do so ere long by this great and honourable court. It is, how to rid ourselves of these men, and of all who incline to their principles, that we are to offer to his majesty our advice, con- currence, and utmost assistance. These monsters bring a public reproach upon the nation in the eyes of all our neigh- bours abroad, while in their Gazettes we are mentioned as acting the vilest assassinations and the horridest villainies; they render us unquiet and insecure at home, they bring re- proach upon our religion, and are our greatest plague. Let us, for the sake of our allegiance, for his majesty's honour, for our reputation abroad, for the vindication of our religion, and for our own peace and tranquillity, make haste to get our selves cured of it." The answer to the king's letter was an echo of the king's own words; and they next proceeded to act agreeably to his instructions. Their first enactment was " for the security of the protestant religion," as follows: — " Our sovereign lord, with consent of his estates in parliament convened, ratifies and confirms all the acts and statutes formerly passed for the security, liberty, and freedom of the true church of God, and the protestant religion presently professed within this king- dom, in their whole strength and tenor, as if they were here particularly set down and expressed." Their second act was for annexing and uniting the excise of foreign and inland commodities to the crown of Scotland for ever; — the third ordained, that all such persons as being cited in cases of high treason, field or house conventicles, or church irregularities, and who shall refuse to give testimony, shall be liable to be punished as guilty of these crimes respectively in which they refuse to be witnesses; — the fourth made a dutiful offer to the king of a£260,000 yearly during his life; — and the fifth act was passed without the least opposition, and Wodrow says, " nemine con- tradicente, and all of them . . . were that same day touched with the sceptre, to the lasting reproach of this parliament, jind as evidences what n:pn, protestants and presbyterians in particular, may expect under a popish prince." It declares " Our sovereign lord and estates in parliament do hereby de- 1685.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 283 clare, that the giving or taking the National Covenant, as ex- plained in the year 1638, or the League and Covenant (so commonly called), or writing in defence thereof, or owning them as lawful or obligatory upon themselves or others, infer the crime and pains of treason^." The deplorable state of the clergy in the presbyterian districts was such, that they lived in continual apprehension for their lives and properties. Many of them had been obliged to resign their livings ; and one of them, more courageous than his brethren, had been murdered on his own threshold. It there- fore became necessary for the parliament to pass an act for their protection, entitled, "An Act for the Clergy," on the 13th of June. It ratifies all the former acts for their protection, and ordains, that the assassinators and murderers of bishops and clergymen should be punished, and that the parishioners, where the attempt is made, shall pay such sums to the wives and heirs of murdered clergymen as the council shall think fit. It ordained also, that the attempt to break into or rob the houses of the clergy should be punished with death. The prosperous commencement of James's reign was in- teiTupted by the consummation of the Rye-house plot of the last reign. Some of the conspirators had made their escape to Holland, then the head-quarters of all the presbyterian and Whig malcontents in both kingdoms. These plots were con- nived at by the prince of Orange, although he did not make any appearance of countenancing them ; and to save appear- ances, he ordered the duke of Monmouth to leave the United Provinces. The duke retired in displeasure to Brussells, and this circumstance precipitated the meditated invasion earlier than was intended. The earl of Argyle, who had lived in Friezeland, where he had purchased a small estate, came now to Amsterdam, where he met with the conspirators, some of whom formed a council, something like the Tables in Charles the First's reign. On the 17th of April a sum of d£ 10,000 was raised, and Argyle with his friends embarked in three small war-vessels on the 1st of May, at the Vlie, and sailed with a fair wind for the Orkneys, where he arrived on the 5th. He had got possession of four brass guns and a considerable quan- tity of ammunition and the fireanns that Donald and Michael Cameron had purchased in the year 1679, and were on the point of shipping to their friends, when they heard of their defeat at Bothwell, " whereupon tliey put them up in a secure ' Wodrow's History, iv, 259-271.— Life of James II. — Skinner's Ecclesias- tical History, ii. 495. — Salmon's Chronology, i. 235. 284 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVI. place ill Amsterdam, until there should be occasion for therai." He sent two of his officers on shore to collect information, and to ascertain the inclinations of the inhabitants; but by the vigilance of the bishop of Orkney, tliey were arrested and sent to Edinburgh. This was a great disappointment, and Argyle proposed to storm the town of Kirkwall, in order to recover his friends and punish the loyal inhabitants. He was, however, persuaded to proceed on his voyage ; for, says Wod- row, " so much of the late imposed oaths corrupted the gene- rality, and so great was the influence of the managers [the government], that there appeared a very general opposition against the earl's attempt." The expedition sailed, after los- ing some days at Kirkwall, and after many days arrived in Kintyre, a remote district of the county of Argyle, and there he sent through the fiery cross amongst his clan, when about a thousand of his clansmen joined his standard; and at Camp- bellton, its chief town, his lordship published his declaration and apology. But " the furnace had not altogether healed the rents and breaches among the presbyterians ; and the party who were in arms wandering and hiding in the fields, too many of them were gone to those heights which did not permit them to join with any frankness in this design, and the rest were miserably borne down and frighted with the soldiers and militia; and most of the honest country gentlemen were either in prison or forfeited, and so scattered, as they could do nothing in favour of the earl. And above all, the self-conceit- edness, cowardice^ ignorance, and miserable differences among some of them who were embarked in the design, spoiled aW^^ Their declaration had been drawn up in Holland, and approved by their council there. It was the composition of " James Stewart, that arrant rogue (after advocate to Queen Anne), son of that nefarious villain, sir James Stewart [of Coltness], some time provost of Edinburgh^." It narrated the great advantages that had accrued to the protestant reli- gion by the success of the rebellion against Charles I., which was ascribed to the blessing of God and the goodness of the cause ; it extolled the loyalty of the covenanters, and accused the parliaments of both kingdoms of having repealed the ordi- nances made during the grand rebellion; it denounced the whole reign of Charles II. as a constant uniform course o. peijury, apostacy, and violence, begun with open rebellion against God, and the cruel shedding of protestant blood ; it ' Smith's Information aflSxed to Bishop Spratt's Rye-house Plot, p. 178. - Wodrow's History, iv. 284. ^ Fountainhall's Chronological Notes, 57. 1685.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 285 accused the government of putting men to death contrary to the law, and of desolating the churches, changing the ordi- nances of God into the inventions of men, of conniving at papists, and keeping up standing forces; the exalting the king's supremacy, and the stifling of the detection of popish plots. It declared against the accession of the king, as de- prived by the exclusion bill [which was never passed, and consequently was not law], calling him barely James duke ot York, and against the English parliament, as illegally elected ; for which reasons the rebels rejected submission to James duke of York and his accomplices, whom they stiled their un- known enemies. It declared that the end and design of the rebellion was the restoring and settling the true reformed pro- testant [presbyterian] religion, the suppression and perpetual exclusion of antichristian popery, with all its idolatrous super- stitions and falsehoods, as also its most bitter root and off- spring prelacy, with its new and wicked head the supremacy and all their abuses, and the restoration of all men to their just rights and liberties. And, finally, that such had been the treachery, perfidy, &c. of the present government, the rebels would enter into no treaty, capitulation, or agreement with James duke of York, but proceed in the prosecution of the war till their ends were attained, and assured all that joined them of indemnity against a persecuting tyrant and an apostate party. This declaration, which was " fiill of sound and fury," made no impression; for Argyle had deeply offended the presbyte- rians by voting for the death of Cargill ; besides, they had a little war of their own on their hands, and union in any shape is not an attribute of presbytery. In short, Argyle began to find that " all was but faint probabilities." Although Bar- clay, the quaker, assured him that every effort had been made to dispose the country to befriend him, yet few or none joined his standard, and even his own vassals were extremely back- ward in obeying his summons. He suffered himself to be persuaded to make a descent on the lowlands, and with diffi- culty he transported his followers to Cowal, thence to Greenock, where they dispersed some militia, and procured provisions ; but none of the people would join his standard, and he re- crossed the Clyde, and returned to Cowal. An indecisive skirmish took place betwixt the rebels and the king's troops, under the duke of Athole. Argyle then crossed the river Leven, a little above Dumbarton, but found the local militia ready to oppose him. He took up a strong position, and kindled watch-fires. The carl of Dumbarton kept the militia 286 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVI under arms all night, in expectation of being attacked ; but the rebels retreated during the night, and their guides having mistaken the way, they fell into a morass, in which many pe- rished, and the rest were put into complete disorder, when they were attacked and dispersed by the loyal militia. It being now impossible either to rally the fugitives or to raise more men, as the presbyterians distrusted him, he disguised himself as a countryman, and crossed the Clyde, and went straight to the water of Inchinnin, where he was stopped by a party on the 17th of June, who overpowered and captured him. The laird of Greenock recognised and took him to Glas- gow, and delivered him to the earl of Dumbarton ^. As SOON as parliament heard of the landing of Argyle, they passed a loyal address to the king, promising to stand by his majesty with their lives and fortunes without reserve ; but, says Mr. Skinner, " not meaning thereby to introduce a blind slavery, as has been maliciously pretended, but merely to ex- clude those treasonable limitations of obedience invented by the covenanters, contrary to standing laws, and on purpose to seduce people into rebellion 2," This rebellion is a lively commentary on Argyle's limitation to his allegiance at the time of the imposition of the Test, and perhaps he might have contemplated this rebellion at the time when he refused to take it. On the 10th of June the parliament passed an act against " the hereditary and arch traitor Archbald Campbell, sometime earl of Argyle," wherein they enact, that the earl's family, the heritors, ringleaders, and preachers that joined liim, should be for ever declared incapable of mercy, and of bearing any honours or estate in the kingdom. He was brought to Edinburgh, and committed to the castle ; and the council wrote to the king, requesting to know his pleasure respecting his disposal. The king, in reply, ordered Argyle to be executed on his former sentence within three days after their receipt of his majesty's letter; but he left the manner of his execution to their own decision. On the 29th of June, therefore, he was brought to the bar of the high court of jus- ticiary, " who intimated his old former sentence t3 him, and ordered him to be beheaded the next day, and his head to be set on the Tolbooth, and fixed on a high pole, which was done accordingly^." Upon this inevitable consequence of his trea- son and rebellion, good Mr. Skinner has the following re- marks:— " This early piece of justice immediately opened the ' Life of James II. — Woorow's History. — Burnet's Own Times. 2 Ecclesiastical History, ii. 496. ^ Fountainhairs Chronological Notes, 54. 1685.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 287 mouths of the secret malcontents, and awakened the remem- brance of the prosecutions for the late plot, which in the next reign the successful party magnified with great bitterness, and to this day exclaim against, as flagrant instances of the cruelty and sanguinary tyranny of the two Stuart brothers. These people would do well to remember what happened not many years before to the two marquisses of Huntly and Montrose, to president Spottiswood, to the laird of Haddo, and hun- dreds of gentlemen more, many of whom fell a sacrifice to the resentment of this very Argyle's father in the bloody days of the Covenant, besides the many thousands who died in the civil war, the guilt of ivhich lies on them that raised it, and never made the least profession of repentance for it^" It was supposed that upon Argyle's descent all the troops would have been withdrawn from England into Scotland, and that Monmouth would thereby find an easy victory; but Burnet despondingly says, that he " had as yet made no preparations ; so he was hurried into a fatal undertaking before things were in any sort ready for it ^." And lord Fountainhall says, " the prince of Orange prompted Monmouth to come over, that Ae might fall in the expedition, and thereby make way for his usurpation of the crown of England,which he knew he could never obtain whilst he lived ^." The duke landed at Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, with about 150 followers, and 5,000 stand of arms. He pub- lished a declaration reviling the khig, and charging him with having introduced popery and arbitrary power ; and having col- lected about 3,000 men, he took possession of Taunton on the ISth, and was there proclaimed king on the 20th June. On the 22d he published another declaration, in which he set a price upon king James's head, under the title of the duke of York, and declared the parliament then sitting a seditious assembly. The king sent a message to both houses of parliament, to ac- quaint them with the duke of Monmouth's landing, and they waited upon his majesty with an address of thanks for the in- telligence, and offered to stand by him with their lives and fortunes against the duke and all other rebels and traitors, and all his majesty's enemies whatsoever. A bill of attainder against the duke passed both houses, and received the royal assent on the 16th of June'*. Monmouth assumed the style and title of king, and wrote on the 23d from Taunton to the duke of Albemarle — " Whereas we are credibly informed that there are some horse and foot in ' Ecclesiastical History, ii. 496. ' Own Times, iii. 24. ^ chron. Notes, 62. * Salmon's Chronology, i. 237. 288 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVI. arms uwder your command for James duke of York, which are purposely raised in opposition to us and our loyal authority. We thought fit to signify to you our resentment thereof, and do promise ourself, that what you have transacted therein is through inadvertency and mistake, and that your grace will take other means, when you have received information of our being proclaimed king, to succeed our royal father lately de- ceased," &c.; and signed himself, "James R." The duke of Albemarle acknowledged the receipt of his letter, and said, " Since you have given yourself the trouble of invitation, this is to let you know that I never was, nor ever will be, a rebel to my lawful king, who is James the Second, brother to my late dear master, king Charles II. If you think I am in the wrong, and you in the right, whenever we meet I do not doubt but the justness of my cause shall sufficiently convince you that you had better have let this rebellion alone, and not to have put the nation to so much trouble." And he addressed it, " For James Scott, late duke of Monmouth ^" The rebkls were defeated at Sedgemoor, near Bridge water, on the 6th of July, by the earl of Feversham and the lord Churchill, and the duke himself and lord Grey were taken two days afterwards. His capture was thus announced in the Gazette: — " Whitehall, July 8, at 12 o'clock at night. His majesty has just now received an account that the late duke of Monmouth was taken this morning in Dorsetshire, being hid in a ditch ; and that he is in the hands of lord Lumley." After the battle of Sedgemoor, which is in the diocese of Bath and Wells, bishop Kenn took particular pains and trouble to relieve the prisoners that were taken after the battle, and to assist the wounded men, both out of his own pocket and by moving the wealthy in their favour. " He thought it no ex- cuse to his chanty that they were taken in open rebellion, and had forfeited their lives to the laws. Let the law then judge them; but whilst God preserves life He gives space of repent- ance, and charity will assist to preserve that life which God gives. Nor did his master, king James, take this ill from him, or reprove him for supporting of rebels against his majesty^." Monmouth does not appear to have had any trial, but merely the attainder passed in parliament; and the Gazette says, " This day the duke of Monmouth, being attainted of high treason by act of parliament, was beheaded on a scaffold erected for that purpose on Tower-hill." He was beheaded on the 15th of July, and was attended by the bishops of Ely ' Ellis's Original Letters, iii. 341, 342. - Lesly's Rehearsals, iv. 218, 219. 1685.] CHURCH of Scotland. -2^9 and Bath and Wells, Dr. Tennison, Dr. Lloyd, and Dr. Hooper, who laboured to make him profess the doctrine of non-resistance, and confess his crime of living in adultery with ihe lady Hamet Wentworth, but all to no purpose. He said, " I declare that she is a very virtuous and godly woman ; I have committed no sin with her; and that which hath passed betwixt us was very honest and innocent in the sight of God." He persuaded himself he was innocent, and said, when he died, " he was sure he should go to God ^" The bishops and clergymen who attended him on the scaffold could not move him to any thing more than to a general repentance ; neither would he own his crimes of rebellion and adultery, and seems to have been a fanatic in religion, although he professed to die " a protcstant of the church of England," He wrote in the Tower the following declaration, and to which he referred on the scaf- fold— " I declare that the title of king was forced upon me ; and that it was very much contrary to my opinion when I was proclaimed. For the satisfaction of the world, I do declare that the late king told me he was never married to my mother. Having declared this, 1 hope that the king who is now, will not let ray children sutler on this account. And to this I put ray hand this 15th day of July. (Signed) Monmouth." And it is attested as having been written in their presence by the signatures of Francis Ely, Thomas Bath and Wells, Thomas Tennison, and George Hooper 2, This earl of Argyle is also considered a martyr for pres- bytery, and he is enrolled among the " Scots Worthies;" he was also a prophet, such at least as many of their worthies were ; that is, he could foretel that which he perfectly knew had been previously determined upon by those who had nourished all the British traitors, and had connived at, and secretly assisted, the present rash and ill-concerted rebellion. On the morning of his execution he said to a friend, " Though I will not take upon me to be a prophet, yet having strong impressions thereof upon my spirit, I doubt not but deliverance will come very suddenly." This was a dark prognostication of the prince of Orange's designs; but he was more particular on the day on which he was taken prisoner. At Renfrew he presented Mr. Crawford, of Craw ford sb urn, with a silver snuff-box, as a token of friendship, and then said, " Thomas, it hath pleased provi- dence to frown on my attempt; but remember, 1 tell you, that ' Salmon's Chronology, i. 238.— Ellis's Original Letters, iii. 347. * Somers' Tracts, pp. 216 to 221. VOL. III. 2 P 290 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVI ere long one shall take up this quarrel whose shoes I am not worthy to carry, who will not miscarry in his undertaking i." It is a curious circumstance that, notwithstanding his fana- ticism, he desired to be attended in his last moments by Dr. Annand, dean of Edinburgh, and Mr. Charteris, whose dis- course and prayers with him, even the writer of the Scots Worthies asserts, " on this tragical occasion were very perti- nent and becoming." On the scaffold he said, " I freely for- give all men their wrongs and injuries done against me, as I desire to be forgiven of God." The dean repeated these words after his lordship, in a louder tone, to the people, and added, that " this nobleman dies a protestant." The earl then stepped forward again, and said, " I die not only a protestant, but with a heart-hatred of popery, prelacy, and all superstition whatsoever 2." And in^summing up, Wodrow makes the fol- lowing characteristic "observe:" — " Father and son, indeed, in the style of the late times, were sufferers ybr rebellion; but that language is now out of doors, and I hope ever shall; and to all persons of consideration and reflection, they both shine brightly as martyrs for religion, liberty, and their country 3." Colonel Rumbold, who was the lessee of the Rye-house, and who undertook to murder the late and present kings, was taken among other prisoners after the rebels were dispersed, and their leader taken. This vanquished traitor and rebel is called by Wodrow " a gallant and good man.'''' He was tried and convicted, and executed the same afternoon, the 26th of June. Lord Fountainhall says, " he was a man of much na- tural courage ; his rooted, ingrained opinion was for a republic against monarchy, to pull which down he thought a duty, and no sin . . . and that, if every hair in his head was a man, he would venture them all in that cause." Burnet and the friends of the cause say that Rumbold denied the intention of murder- ing the king; but all that he denied was, that all the measures of the conspirators were not concerted at the Rye, which is true, but which does not make his guilt any the less. But, says Sal- mon, " the good bishop did well to make haste out of England on the news of Argyle's landing, for if half the evidence had appeared against him of his correspondence with the rebels which he acknowledges in his History, it might have been difficult for his holiness to have escaped the halter, how light soever he may make of that matter*." The parliament of IG81 had voted a certain sum for the erection of a church in the Grass-market, of which there was then much need, and now there is still greater ; and the money ' Wodrow's History, iv. 299, 301. - Scots Worthies, 548, 549. 2 History, iv. p. 306. * Examination, ii. 999. 1685.] CHURCil OF SCOTLAND. 291 was lodged in the hands of the magistrates. By a letter from the king, of the 14lh July, the provost and magistrates were or- dered to apply the money, with the interest accruing upon it, to the erection of a manse or residence for the bishops of Edin- burgh. But even this does not appear to have been done, as there is no house in that city that is known to have been built or appro- priated to the bishops of that see. The council issued a pro- clamation for the observation of the 14 th October as a day of thanksgiving, being his majesty's birth-day ; and they farther " recommend it to the right reverend the archbishops and bishops, that they cause the ministers in their respective dioceses for this year and yearly hereafter, upon the said ibur- teenth day of October, with the people at divine service in the church, devoutly to give solemn thanks to Almighty God, and celebrate his holy name, for his so signal goodness and pi'otec- tion to our said gracious sovereign, and in him to these his kingdoms." The king commenced in England with dispensing with the laws in favour of men professing the popish religion, but was firmly and respectfully opposed by archbishop Bancroft. He extended this power to Scotland through the privy council, which was more obsequious to his will, by a letter dated Whitehall, the 7th of November^ in which he says, " there is a clause ordaining all the commissioners therein named to take the oaths and test appointed by law, which clause we judge fit for our service to require you to put vigorously in execu- tion, excepting to these in the list here enclosed, wliom we have dispensed with for taking the same, and such as we shall here- after dispense with under our royal hand. For doing whereof this shall be your warrant." And then followed the names of a number of popish noblemen and gentlemen, who were to be admitted to offices without taking the Test. Mr. Andrew Cant, one of the ministers of P^dinburgh, and the principal of the university of Edinburgh, died on the 4th of December. " He was a stout eneni}- of papists and arminians," — that is, he maintained the dogmas of Calvin, and considered the catholic doctrine of the church to be merely the opinions of Arminius ; but, on the other hand, the opinions Oi Calvin to be sound doctrine. " And Dr. Monro (an excellent man) was chosen in his place, being then professor of divinity in St. Andrews ^" King James had been under the influence and direction ot the Jesuits from the time that he disiegarded his brother's com- mand, and fell into the idolatrous communion of Rome. The order of Jesuits was founded for the express purpose of com- ' FoiinUiiiiliall's Chron. Notes, p. 6.j. 292 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [cHAP. XLVI. bating and overturning the Reformation ; and they have ever since been its most subtle, powerful, and implacable enemies. They have fulfilled their wicked destiny beyond expectation ; for, under the pretext of religion, they have zealously endea- voured to extinguish the light of truth, and to obstruct the pro- gress of civil liberty throughout the world. They were the soul that animated the Holy League against Henry III. of France, and of all the plots and conspiracies and the religious dissensions in England, during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. They took advantage of the religious animosities in the reign of Charles I. by originating the Covenant, which has l)een ever since a fruitful source of calamity both to the church and state ; and they produced the stubborn obstinacy of the presbyterians, with all the divisions and animosities which existed among them in the late reign. They were now driving James on to his ruin, and they induced that unhappy sovereign to break all the solemn and voluntary promises which he had given to the established churches of both king- doms, of his protection and of the maintenance of their rights and privileges, which were so intimately connected with the liberties of his people. James was known to have been a man of integrity, and his word alone was received in both king- doms as a sufficient guarantee for the tranquillity of both the national churches. But his gracious promises were made in the first moment of his elevation, and before he had time to consult with and to receive the instructions of his Jesuits, whose morality disregarded even an oath, much less a mere verbal promise made in a moment when his heart was momentarily affected by his change of position. " On all occasions," says Hume, " the king was open in declaring that men must now look for a more active and more vigilant government, and that he would retain no ministers who did not practise an unreserved obedience to his com- mands. We are not, indeed, to look for the springs of his administration so much in his council and chief officers of state, as in his own temper, and in the character of those per- sons with whom he secretly consulted. The queen had great influence over him ; a woman of spirit, whose conduct had been popular till she arrived at that high dignity. She was much governed by the priests, especially the Jesuits; and as tiicse were also the king's favourites, all public measures were taken originally from the suggestions of these men, and bore evident marks of their ignorance in government, and of the violence of their religious zeal^" ' llisfory of England, viji. 219. 293 CHAPTER XLVII. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. 1686. — Fears entertained of the advance of popery. — The chancellor pen/erted. — A riot — ring-leuder executed. — State of the presbyterians. — Preliminary measures for admitting papists to office. — Clergy preach on the controverted popish doctrines. — Synod of Aberdeen — address to their bishop. — Synod of Edinburgh. — Meeting of parliament. — King's letter — the answer. — Bishops opposed to the repeal. — Bishop of Edinburgh. — Bishop of Ross censured. — Papists defeated. — Parliament prorogued. — Ambassador sent to the pope. — Dispensing with the laws. — Opinion of the judges, — Court of high commis- sion.— Archbishop Sancroft. — Bishop of London suspended. — Scottish bishops present a paper to the king. — Bishop of Dunkeld deprived. — Dr. Hamilton elected. 1687. — Letter of a Jesuit. — King's letter to the council. — Laws against papists suspended. — Alarm of the nation. — Indifference of the presbyterians — their manner of preaching. — Clergy preach against popery. — Edict of Nantz revoked. — Public liberality to the French refugees. — Note. — Exertions of the clergy. — Dr. Canaries — his sermon — is prosecuted — goes to London — publishes his sermon. — Archbishop of Glasgow examined — deprived. — Bishop of Edinburgh elected to Glasgow. — Death of bishop of Moray. — Dr. Rose elected bishop of Moray. — King's declaration. — Presbyterians irre- solute.— A third toleration. — Commencement of the great schism. — Renwick opposed to the toleration. — Address of the presbyterians to the king. — Ren- wick protests against it. — Refugees in Holland. — Exercise of the prerogative. — Prospects of the church. 1686. — It has been justly remarked by Mr. Archdeacon Echard, " that the king, to feel the pulse of his subjects in England^ resolved to raise a superstructure of arbitrary power in Scotland, in which he had laid the foundation by his popu- larity, and jmblic dissembling his religious designs, when he was lord commissioner for his brother." The church now generally began to entertain fears of the king's sincerity in his declarations of support and protection ; but what first created alami in the minds of the bishops and clergy, and of the peo- ple generally, was the open profession of popery by the lord chancellor, the earl of Perth. He was a man of only mode- rale capacity, but of infinite ambition, and was treated with 294 HISTORY OF THE lCHAP. XLVII considerable contempt by the earl of Queensberry, who had long suspected that he and his brother, lord Melfort, medi- tated a compliance with the court religion. This produced a quarrel betwixt Queensberry and the two brothers, at whose instigation, and on account of his opposition to the establish- ment of popery, James deprived him of his office. The people became alarmed at the designs of the court, and on the 3 1st of January there was a riot at Edinburgh against the popish priests, who were now beginning to celebrate mass publicly. The rabble seized one of the priests, and placing a dirk at his breast, with a threat of plunging it in, compelled him to swear the Test on his knees, and to renounce popery. In this riot there were three men killed ^ The earl of Perth had set up a private chapel in the court for mass, but many frequented it ; this roused the mob's fury, and they broke into it, and defaced all the idolatrous gear and furniture, and the earl of Perth himself escaped with difficulty and in disguise. The military dispersed the mob; some were taken, and the ringleader was executed. He told Mr. Malcom, one of the city clergy who attended him, that he was offered his life by the chancellor if he would accuse Queensberry of having in- stigated the riot ; but he said he would not save his life by so false a calumny. He charged Mr. Malcom to make what he had just communicated to him public, but he neglected to call the by-standers on the scaffold as witnesses ; " but in the simplicity of his heart, he went from the execution to the archbishop of St. Andrews, and told him what had passed." The primate acquainted Queensberry with it, who wrote to court and complained of it ; and the king ordered the affair to be investigated. But Mr. Malcom, whom Burnet calls " an honest, but weak man," having no witnesses to attest what had been said, was declared the forger of a calumny, and was turned out of his living. " But," Buniet observes, " how severely soever those in authority may handle a poor incautious man, yet the public is apt to judge true; and in this case, as the minister's weakness and misfortune was pitied, so the earl of Perth's malice and treachery was as much detested 2." WoDROW informs us, that at this melancholy time " a good many [of the presbyterians] complied in some things, and now and then heard some of the better sort of the established clergy, especially such who shewed themselves hearty protes- ' Fountainhall's Chron. Notes, 66. * Own Times, iii. 114. — Fountaiuhall's Chron. Notes, 159. J 686.] CHURCH OK SCOTLAND. 2.^)5 tants by opposing popery, now coming in so fast. In short, except as to church irregularities, there was not much ground for the persecutors to work upon'." This account is con- firmed by bishop Sage, who says, " I take my rise from the death of that great prince, king Charles II. He left this church of Scotland in more peaceable condition than it had been for a long time before : generally all Scotchmen were of one communion ; for those of the popish persuasion were scarcely one to five hundred. The quakers were not one to a thousand. The presbyterians, a good time before, were divided into two sects ; one (but by far the smaller) was against all indulgences given by the king ; the other had taken the liberty which he had several times granted, but which was then retracted. This party had for the most part returned to the church's unity ; their preachers were generally become our hearers, attended duly our public assemblies, and many Ox them participated of the same sacraments with us. There were no separate meetings kept (at least publicly), but very rarely, and only by that other party now commonly known by the name of Cameronians^," and who were at this period luider the leadership of Renwick. Before the parliament met, several eminent persons were called up to London to concert measures for granting ease to the papists in the matter of the Test, so as to admit them to parliament and to offices under government. The duke of Hamilton and sir George Lockhart, then president of the court of session and the greatest lawyer in the kingdom, the archbishop of St. Andrews, and the bishop of Edinburgh, were the parties pitched upon. The court did not find these to be such willing instruments as it was expected they would have been. " They made a condescension [representation] too," says Sage, " which afterwards was very much talked »>f, but I can assure you, sir, it was nothing so odious in itself as it was represented to be : I have seen and considered it ; it did not go the length (by far) of pensionary Fagel's letter ; and to tell the truth freely, so tar as I can comprehend things, they had great reason to go so far as they went ; and I doubt not it shall be sometime published to the world and fully vin- dicated^." The advice of these gentlemen being disagreeable to the king, he determined to hold another session of the " episcopal parliament," as Sage calls it ; and he appointed ' History of the Sufferings, iv. 353. ^ An Account of the present Persecution of the Church in Scotland, in several Letters, pp. 7, 8. Original edit. 4to. Lond. 1600. * Ib'd. p. 9. 206 HISTORY v7F THE [CHAP. XLVII. the earl of Moray, who had also turned papist, his high com- missioner. Wodrow asserts that all former parliaments, since the Restoration, had, " in all their acts relative to church af- fairs, been tools to the prelates i" but it is now refreshing- to find that, instead of " aggravating their faults," he positively commends them for having " had the honour to make the first gallant stand to the court measures, at least in point of our holy religion and reformation, rhat hath been since the return of king Charles 11.^" And this candid acknowledgment is in some sort a proof of bishop Sage's assertion above, " that generally all Scotchmen were of one communion." WoDROW " is well informed " that " several of the inferior [established] clergy, in a good many places in the country . . . did begin to preach upon the popish controversies, a'nd warn their people of the hazard the protestant religion was in." He is obliged to c{ualify his admiration, however, with the senseless declamation that they were " deeply tinctured with arminianism and other errors, and several, either through ig- norance or something worse, were running headlong into a great many popish tenets. . . . The body of the clergy were a fixed company, and some few of them made a stand in par- liament." The truth is, calvinists, ever since that doctrine was broached, have denounced the catholic doctrines of the church as arminianism and popery ; and this very accusation shews the truth of bishop Sage's assertion, — that " since the restitution of episcopacy, our divines have had better educa- tion, have been put on better methods of study, than ever they were before. They have learned to lay aside prejudice, and to trace truth ingenuously, and to embrace it where they find it. With our predecessors, especially in the times of presby- tery, the Dutch divinity was only in vogue. The Dutch com- mon-place men were the great standards, and are still so to that party ; and whoever stepped aside one hair's breadth from their positions, was forthwith an heretic. But the pi'esent generation [of the clergy], after the way of England, take the SCRIPTURES /or their rule, and the ancients and right reason for their guide for finding the genuine sense of that rule. I con- fess philosophy was never less practised ; but for that we may thank the presbyterians. Do not think this a slander ; for if thej , during their twenty-four years' usurpation, had not made many things ^wre divino, such as rebellion and presbytery ; if they had not baffled people's credulity by making all the ex- travagancies of the late times God's own work, and the cause ' History, iv. 3.'i8. 1686.] CHUUCU OF SCOTLAND. 297 of Christ; and if they had not made it their chief work since, to create and cherish divisions and schisms amongst us; I doubt not, the gospel (with God's blessing) would have had more desirable success than it has had in this kingdom ^" Bishop Sage here meant that the episcopal clergy of Scot- land plainly and seriously recommended to their people the reformation of their lives according to the christian standard ; for christian morality, in its true extent and latitude, is nothing else but evangelical obedience and holiness, without which, we are told, no man shall see the Lord. Thp: synod of Aberdeen again took the lead in defence of the church against the ap))roaching danger. The synod met in April, " and after some struggle wilh a ])arty who were for boating with every wind and tide," they agreed on tlie ibllow- ing address to Dr. Haliburton, their bishop, " as their com- mendable testimony against the attempt to be made in parlia- ment." It is addressed " to the right reverend father in God, George, lord bishop of Aberdeen, the humble address of the diocese of Aberdeen :" — " May it please your lordship, — We look upon it as a favourable providence that we have this opportunity of meet- ing with your lordsiiip, before your going to parliament. The constancy of our loyalty, both as to our principles and prac- tices, is known to all, and, God willing, we shall continue it. We need not tell your lordship what apprehensions there are of the hazard of the true protestant religion in the church, seeing there is so great fear of losing the legal securities of it, by taking off" or weakening the force of the penal statutes against the papists, which we look upon as one of the hedges thereof. We cannot persuade ourselves that your lordship, or any other of the governors of the church, will consent there- unto, were it no more ; but when we consider the great obli- gations that lie upon all persons in public capacity, by the late solemn oath and Test, wherein they and we have lifted u]) our hands to the eternal God, and sworn, not only to adhere to the protestant religion all the days of our life, but never to consent to the alteration thereof, or any thng c>)iitrary there- unto ; as also to the utmost of our power to maintain the ])rivi- leges of his majesty and his lawful successors, which cannot but be highly prejudiced if the nation should be leavened with popish principles. But whatever any may do, we judge ' Account of the present Persecutiou, 4to. 45, 46. VOL. III. 2 Q 298 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, XLVH. ourselves humbly obliged in conscience to entreat and obtesi your lordship, that, as you tender the honour of Jesus Christ, the interests of our holy religion, your duty to the king and his lawful successors, the obligation of your office and trust, and the reputation of your order, not to give consent to any such alteration. The eye of God is upon you, and the eyes of the world also, at this juncture of time; and we have just ground to presume that your standing vigorously for the pre- servation of the established laws may be of great conse- quence for the end foresaid ; but whatever may be the issue, we shall liave peace in this, we have discharged our own con- sciences, leaving this humbly to your lordship's consideration; and it is and shall be our earnest prayer to Almighty God to direct your lordship, and all concerned in this weighty affair." The diocesan synod of Edinburgh met on the 13th oi April. In the sermon ad clerum, toleration was much pressed to those who were opposed to the present evident views of the crown and ministry, and " insinuating a charitable accommo- dation to papists." The bishop of Edinburgh told his clergy in his speech that the king was resolved to defend the esta- blished episcopal church ; but he craved for himself, and for all of his persuasion, the privilege of exercising in private the rites and ceremonies of the popish religion, without any hazard from the laws. And this, the bishop significantly added, " could not be denied him, because he might take it by his prerogative," and from the powers vested in him by the vile Assertory Act. In fact, James's whole procedure with regard to the church rested on that most infamous and most pernicious act. He farther informed the synod that the king had given an ample commission to him and to the archbishop of St. An- drews to suspend and deprive any that preached what was then construed into sedition, even '" although they should be bishops." Dr. Strachan also preached before the synod, and urged moderation strongly upon his brethren, which alarmed many of them, because it was thought that he was too much in- clined to favour the politics of the court. His sermon had a contrary efl'ect on the minds of the clergy, and made many of them more zealous than before against popery ; " and it was said the bishop of Edinburgh [and several noblemen, w^ho are named], who appeared for toleration, would have been against it, which is a tacit acknowledgment that they blushed to own avowedly what they did . . . some talked of staging Patter- son for saying in his last synod [1G85] ' that God had set a ]686.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 290 popish king ovei* us for a punishraent ; which, if true, we can- not pray for the continuance or long life of a judgment ^"' The second session of James's only Scottish parliament met on the 29th of April. The two archbishops and nine of the bishops were present, and there was a numerous meeting of the other two estates of the realm. It was evident to all men diligently studying the signs of the times, that the princi- pal object of this parliament was to repeal the penal statutes, which had accumulated since the Reformation, against the pa- pists, and which had even received a sort of ratification in the first session of this parliament. At their first meeting the lord commissioner presented the king's letter, which was read by the proper officer. Among other things it contained the fol- lowing paragraph — "We have considered the trouble that many are put to daily, by prosecutions before our judges, or the hazard that they lie under for their accessions to the late re- bellions ; and to shew the world (even our greatest enemies themselves) that mercy is our inclination, and severity what is by their wickedness extorted from us, we have sent down to be passed in your presence, our full and ample indemnity for all crimes committed against our royal person and authority : and whilst we shew these acts of mercy to the enemies of our person, crown, and royal dignity, we cannot be unmindful of others our innocent subjects, those of the Roman catholic re- ligion, who have with the hazard of their lives and fortimes been always assistant to the crown, in the worst of rebellions and usurpations, though they lay luider discouragements hardly to be named : them we do heartily recommend to your care, to the end that as they have given good experience of their true loyalty and peaceable behaviour, so by your assistance, they may have the protection of our laws, and that security under our government which others of our subjects have, not suffering them to lie under obligations, which their religion cannot admit of 2." In their answer to the king's letter, the following paragraph is all the return made to the above recommendation. After thanking his majesty for his intention to remove some barriers to the extension of the trade and manufactures of the king- dom, they say — " As to that ])art of your majesty's letter, re- lating to your subjects of the Roman catholic religion, we shall, in obedience to your majesty's commands, and with tenderness to their persons, take the same into our serious and dutiful Fountainliall's Chronological Notes, pp. 1G9, 170, 174, 182. Wodrow's Hiatory, iv. 3G0. 300 HISTORl OF THE [CHAP. XLVII. consideration, and go as great lengths therein as our conscience will allow, not doubting that your majesty will be careful to secure the protestant religion established by law." The com- missioner spoke to the same effect as the king's letter, and urged the repeal of the statutes against the Romanists; but without avail. A bill was brought under the consideration of the lords of the articles, of which some of the bishops were always members ; but it was thrown out, and never was brought into parliament. " The penal statutes were still kept on foot by that episcopal parliament (pardon the phrase, it is ordinary in this kingdom), and some of the bishops, too, were active in the matter. This is to let you see whether the episcopal party in this kingdom can be said to be inclined to popery ^." At this crisis the bishops were divided in opinion. As a branch of the legislature it might have made them unpopular to have concurred in the removal of laws which had been re- peatedly confirmed as necessary barriers to the constitution, whereas, on the other hand, it might be considered contrary to christian charity to oppose the extension of lenity and cora- pas.sion to the iew that were obnoxious to the operation of severe statutes. Those who were chosen of the spiritual estate, as the lords of the articles, effectually opposed the mea- sure, whilst some of the others withdrew for the time being from the house. Dr. Aitken, lord bishop of Galloway, " an old man, made a noble stand, and died shortly after ; other- wise probably he had been turned out." Dr. Bruce, lord bishop of Dunkeld, had a remarkable sermon at this time against popery ,and the proposed repeal that was generally nmch commended, but which brought down the royal ven- geance upon him. The bishop of Ross used great freedom with the commissioner in private upon this all-absorbing sub- ject. And Wodrow says, " That prelate, who was heartily again.st papists being admitted to places of trust, happened to be with the earl of Moray in his closet, and after much home reasoning against taking off the penal statutes, came at length to use an argument ad hominem, and took the liberty to tell his grace, that he was surpri.sed to find him so keen in pushing that affair; and with some peremptoriness assured him, a project was already laid to turn his lordship out of his post as secretary, as soon as the parliament was up, and to bring in a papist to it. The earl essayed to pump him upon that sub- ject, and the bishop opened himself, and let him know all he had heard upon that head, scarce expecting his grace would ' Account of the Persecution, p. 9, 1C86.") CnrTRCIl OF SCOTLAND. -301 have propaled what he had said to him alone, and as a friend. Upon what reasons the earl best knew, he was pleased very soon to give a full account of the bishop's conversation with him to chancellor Perth, who meditated revenge, and woidd not be satisfied till the bishop was brought under a censure for what had passed in private and friendly conversation ; and so far did the chancellor push the matter, that he gave in a re- presentation to the primate. He stated the whole conversa- tion, and concluded, ' And this being prejudicial to his majesty's service, and the honour and interest of the persons concerned, it is therefore desired that his grace, with advice of such of the clergy as he thinks fit, may take notice of it, and do therein as by the rules and customs of the church is usual in such cases, or such a crime deserves^.'" It does not appear that the primate had taken any steps in this extraordinary case farther than perhaps a private admoni- tion, for bishop Ramsay continued his opposition as resolutely as before. After considerable opposition the lords of the articles transmitted to the house on the 27th of May a draught of an act in favour of the papists, but which was very far from reaching the point desired by the court. It was, therefore, re- mitted back to the lords of the articles to be amended ; but the amendments were still more decisively protestant than before, and therefore the chancellor withdrew it entirely. The Test was still to be exacted, and the popish worship in public was sternly prohibited. On these heads the majority were in- flexible, and the king's popish counsellors had the mortification to witness the complete discomfiture of their scheme. As soon as the king heard of this disappointment, he sent an ex- press to the earl of Moray to prorogue the parliament, which was accordingly done. Such of the ministers as were opposed to this popish plot were dismissed from their offices. The eai'ls of Mar, Lothian, Dumfries, Kintore, and the lord Ross, made way for the duke of Gordon, the earls of Traquair and Seaforth, and other papists. Sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate, an able lawyer, and a most loyal subject, was dis- missed, and his office bestowed on sir John Dalrymple, eldest son of lord Stair, late president of the court of session. This appointment surprised the public, because he inherited his lather's princijiles, who was at that moment engaged in the conspiracy which had long existed in Holland. The emphatic words of the lale emperor Napoleon might with equal, or perhaps greater, truth be applied to the Jesuits ; ' Wodrow iv. 304 65. 302 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVII. that " the political economists would grind a kingdom to powder althougli it were made of adamant." From the moment of his ascending the throne James shewed decided symptoms of monomania, and attempted to execute all the illegal and arbi- trary projects, to which the Jesuits secretly stimulated him. In the course of this year he sent the earl of Castlemain as his ambassador extraordinary to the pope, in order to offer his obeisance to that prelate, and to make advances for a recon- ciliation of his kingdoms to the obedience and jurisdiction of Rome. Any communication with the court of Rome had been made treason. Dr. Burnet " had wrought muckle mischief" at the court of Rome, and had prejudiced the pope against James, and that prelate treated Castlemain with great coolness, and even neglect, for he had sagacity enough to foresee that a scheme that was conducted with so much precipitation and indiscretion could never be successful. His secret advisers now pushed him on to the fatal step of dispensing with the laws ; but he first cautiously demanded the opinion of the twelve judges, wdiether or not his majesty could dispense with any person Irom taking the oath and test, before he were admitted to hold any office or place of trust in the kingdom. After a considerable debate all the judges, ex- cept one, returned the following answer : — " 1st, that the king was an independent prince ; 2d, that the laws of the kingdom were the king's laws; 3d, that the kings of Elngland might dispense with alt laivs that regarded pains and punishments, as often as necessity required ; 4th, that they were judges and arbitrators, who had power to judge of the necessity which might induce him to make use of those dispensations ; and, lastly, that the kings of England could not renounce the pre- rogatives annexed to the crown ^" The delivery of these opinions was a mighty step towards the accomplishment of James's views ; and it threw open the door for the admission of the Romanists to place and power. The king's first exertion of the prerogative was on the .3d of August, when he established a commission of ecclesiastical affairs, or Court of High Commission, "by force of our supreme authority and prerogative royal." "And we do by these presents give full power and authority unto [those named in this com- mission], or any three or more of you, . . . whereof the lord chancellor to be one, by all lawful ways and means . . . during our pleasure, to inquire of all offences, contempts, &c., done and committed contrary to the ecclesiastical laws of this our realm ' Life of James II. 145. 1686.] CIIUKCII OF SCOTLAND. 303 . . . and of all and every the offenders llierein, and them and every one of them to order, correct, reform, and punish, hy cen- sure of the church. And also ... to inquire of, search out, and call before you, every ecclesiastical person or persons, of what degree or dignity soever, as shall offend in any of these particulars before mentioned ; and them and every of them to correct and punish . . by suspending or depriving them of all promotions ecclesiastical, and from all functions in the church, and to inflict such other punishments or censures upon them, according to the ecclesiastical laws of this realm'." Archbishop Sancroft refused to act, but the bisliop of Chester was substituted, and the court was opened immediately after. The archbishop's refusal was made by letter, in which he shewed his majesty his sense of its illegality, and that he was wide awake to the object contemplated in its erection. The first fury of this court fell upon Dr. Compton, bishop of London, who modestly excused himself in a letter addressed to the earl of Sunderland, from suspending Dr. Sharpe, rector of St. Giles, for having preached against popery, which the king considered a reflection on his government. The bishop was cited before this court, and the lord chancellor Jeffi'ies de- sired a positive and direct anvver — " Why he had not sus- pended Dr. Sharpe, when the king had sent him express order so to do, and had told him it was for preaching seditiously, and against his government." After several delays and ad- journments, to give the bishop time for his defence, he was with some diflliculty allowed the assistance of counsel ; but the}' failed to make any impression on this arbitrary court. The substance of his sentence was — " That Henry, lord bishop of London, being convened before the commissioners of eccle- siastical affairs, for his disobedience and other contempts, and being fully heard, upon mature deliberation of the matter, was by them declared and })ronounced suspended from the function and execution of his episcopal office." An order was im- mediately sent to the dean of St. Paul's, commanding him to cause the said sentence to be affixed upon the door of the chapter-house, and the south door of the same cathedral, that public notice might be taken of the said suspension 2. Thk Scottish parliament would only consent to a snspen- sion of the penal laws during the king's life; but Burnet says, " the king despised this." To mitigate the king's displeasure the archbishop of St- Andrews and the bishop of Edinburgh ' Life of Jarnes II., 145-151, where the whole commission maybe seen. 2 Ibid. 151-157. 304 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVII. went lo court, where they drew up a paper, inleucled for the king, in which they said, " It seemeth reasonable and dulif'al to grant what his majesty desireth may be done for him; viz. to take off the sanguinary laws concerning religion, in so lar as they infer the pains of death or forfeiture against those of his persuasion merely for their religion, and that the papists have an ease and immunity frtnn the execution of the other iienalties, civil or criminal, contained in the laws, merely and allinarly for their religion, and exercise of their worship in private houses. This seemeth lo us, who are not lawyers, to be equitable and reasonable to be done, considering that the execution of sanguinary laws has fallen into an absolute dis- suetude for many years past; and since upon doing hereof his majesty is so gracious as not to intend or desire the repealing of any laws already made for the security of the proteslant church, but is willing further to establish and confirm the same by any other laws or acts of parliament that can be made for that end. Nor do we see any danger or insecurity arising to our established protestant religion by so doing, but rather an ap- parent benefit, by his majesty consenting to a more full and ample security thereof. And this is but our own private opi- nion; for we cannot undertake to say that this would be the opinion of others. For as we are clearly determined, by God's grace, to continue firm and constant in the reformed protestant religion to our lives' end, so also are we to serve our most gra- cious sovereign, and to comply with his proposals and desires, as far as they do consist with the safety of our consciences and religion, upon which we assure ourselves his majesty's grace and goodness will never impose ^." This submissive paper neither pleased those in whose name it had been written, nor would it have mollified the king's wrath had it been presented; but Burnet says they shewed this paper to the earl of Middleton, who persuaded them to return home without presenting it^. James was so displeased at the bishops for daring to oppose his will, that he wrote to the privy council, and commanded them to deprive the bishop of Dunkeld, who both by his speeches and sermons opposed the po})ish bill with great spirit, and this order was immediately ]^ul in execution. The bishops of Ross and Galloway had also been marked out as victims, but the tempest lighted on Dr. Bruce, bishop of Dunkeld, *' who, it seems, had either been more active in his opposition, or had fewer fi-iends than his brethren 3. Although great care had been taken to shut up ' Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 499, oOO. ^ Own Times, iii. IIG. •* Keitli's Catalogue, 99. — Skinner's Ecclesiastical Hlstoiy, ii. 500, 501. 1()86.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 806 tile press, yet many bold papers were published at this time against the dispensing power, the exercise of which was anti- cipated. " It may be argued," say some of these writers, "that by refusing to consent to this moderate ease to papists, a most dangerous, and almost incurable, blow and wound maybe occasioned to the protestant church and religion; for if the king please, (and if he be irritated and provoked, it is hard to say what his majesty will do,) he may, without violating of any laiv, at one stroke, remove all protestant officers and judges from the government of the state, and all protestant bishops from the government of the church; and so the whole govern- ment, both of church and state, may come to be lodged in the hands of such as cannot be judged so friendly to the protes- tant interest: and is not the extrusion of protestants from all power and authority, either in church or state, a greater hurt and prejudice to our religion, than anything that can ensue upon a few papists enjoying their estates and lives?" The church was indebted to presbyterian influence in the council for this evil, which was prognosticated by the manner of the first Indulgence and the Assertory act, which laid the church at the king's mercy. The prediction of sir Roger L'Estrange, in the above quotation, was in part quickly veri- fied; for a letter came from court, in which the king declared, that his consulting the parliament about repealing the penal statutes did not arise from any doubt that he entertained of his not being able to effect it by virtue of his own preroga- tive, but merely to give his subjects an opportunity of shewing their loyalty. The letter adds, " We have also thought fit to let you know, that we have performed our part in supporting those of the protestant religion ; the professors thereof are per- fectly under our royal protection; so we resolve to protect our catholic subjects against all the insults of their enemies and severities of the laws made against them heretofore; notwith- standing all which, wc hereby allow to them the free private exercise of their religion in houses, in which we authorise and require you to support and maintain them, as under our royal protection, in all things, as well their persons as estates; and we hereby do discharge any sentences to be given against any of them, for the things above allowed of us. Willing and requiring you to make intimation hereof to all our judges, civil and criminal, as well as to ecclesiastics; and declaring that the allegiance of this shall be a sufficient defence against any pursuit, civil or criminal, for the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, profession thereof, or using any of the rites VOL. III. 2 R 306 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVII. and ceremonies of thai church, or doing what by any law or act of parliament is called trafficking in all time coming. And we further require our judges to do herein according to our undoubted right and prerogative, as they will answer the contrary. And to the end Catholic worship may with the more decency and security be exercised at Edinburgh, we have thought fit to establish our chapel within our palace of Holyrood-house, and to appoint a number of chaplains and others, whom we authorise and require you to have in your most special protection and care, as persons whom we are resolved to maintain in their just rights and privileges, and to secure under our royal protection. You are likewise to take care that there be no preachers or others suffered to insinuate to the people any fears or jealousies, as if we intended to make any violent alteration , and if any shall be so bold, you are to punish them according to law; for it is far from our thoughts to use any violence in matters of conscience con- sistent with our authority and the peace of our ancient king- dom. We are also resolved to maintain our bishops, and the inferior clergy, in their just rights and privileges, and the pro- fessors of the protestant religion in the free exercise of it in their churches, and to hinder all fanatical encroachments upon them." The same letter that brought tlie king's arbitrary order to deprive bishop Bruce, contained a conge, d'elire to the chapter of Dunkeld to elect Dr. Drumraond, bishop of Brechin, to the see of Dunkeld; but that worthy prelate refused to accept of the translation, and bluntly said, " he knew of no vacance" in that bishoprick. When it was found that bishop Drum- mond was not to be cajoled into taking possession of another man's vineyard, the Rev. John Hamilton's name was substi- tuted for the bishop of Brechin's in the conge d'elire, and the chapter was ordered to proceed to the election; but many of the clergy demurred to elect another while their own lawful bishop lived. One of their number then threatened those who were of this resolution with a prosecution of treason for questioning the king's prerogative. The lord chancellor also, in anticipation of such an independent course, had received a command from court to commit to prison any of the clergy who should oppose the election. Dr. Hamilton was elected, therefore, on the 19th of October, and consecrated by arch- bishop Ross, at St. Andrews, on St. Andrew's day. This prelate was lineally descended from archbishop John Hamil- ton, the last Roman Catholic primate of Scotland, through his illegitimate son, William Hamilton, of Blair. Our prelate's IG87.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 307 mother was Barbara Elphinston, daughter of James, the first lord Balmerino by his second wife, Sarah Mentieth. On the same day, the 30th of November, the papists, who were now in the ascendant, re-consecrated the chapel royal of Holyrood- house with all the pomp and circumstance attending their gorgeous ritual^. 1687. — In the beginning of this year a startling discovery was made through the phenomenon of ingenuousness in a Jesuit. Bishop Burnet asserts, that the Jesuits of Liege wrote a letter to those of Fribourg, in Switzerland, giving them a long account of affairs in England. He says they shewed the letter to a protestant minister, on whom they were taking great pains to convert, and thought him worthy of being trusted. He obtained permission to take a copy of this letter, which he sent to a Mr.Heidigger, professor of divinity at Zurich, who shewed it to Burnet when he was on his rambles through Europe. The bishop's testimony would not weigh very hea- vily against the known prudence and mysterious proceedings of the Jesuits ; but archdeacon Echard has given the whole let- ter in his history. It is dated February 2, 1687, and commences with stating the favourable reception that father Keynes, a Jesuit, had from king James; who was closeted with the king whilst earls and dukes were waiting in the anti-room. The king asked him how many candidates for orders and students he had at his college ? Keynes answered, they had about fifty. The king replied, there would be occasion for double or treble that number to effect what he designed for that society's per- formance, and ordered that they should be all exercised in the art of preaching; for now, said he, "England has need of such." In an audience given to father Clare, a French Jesuit, when their business was finished, the king entered into a fami- liar conversation, and among other things he said, " that he would either convert England or die a martyr, and he had ra- ther die the next day and convert it, than reign twenty years piously and happily, and not effect it." It would appear from this letter, that the priestridden king had joined the society of the Jesuits, as Louis XIV. is said to have done. " Finally, he called himself ' a son of the society, of whose good success,' he said, * he was as glad as of his own.' And it can scarcely be expressed how much gratitude he shewed when it was told him ' that he was made partaker, by the most reverend our provincial, of all the merits of the society,' out of which he is ' Keith's Catalogue of Scottish Bishops, p. 100. — Fountainhall's Chronolo- gical Notes, pp. 194-195, 202. 308 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XLVII. to nominate one for his confessor . . . many are of opinion, that father Edward R. Petre, who is chiefly in favour with the king, will obtain an archbishoprick, but more believe it will be a cardinal's cap. To him was granted, within this month or two, all that part of the palace in which the king used to reside when he was duke of York, where there is not a day but you may see I know not how many courtiers waiting to speak to his eminence, for so they say he is called. For the king ad- vises ^vith him, and with many catholic lords, who have the chief places in the kingdom, to find a method to propagate the faith without violence. Not long since some of these lords objected to the king, ' that they thought he made too much haste to establish the faith-' To whom he answered, ' I am growing old, and must take large steps, else if I should happen to die, I might perhaps leave you in a worse condition than when I found you.' When they asked him ' why, then, he was so little concerned about the conversion of his daugh- ters, who were the heirs of the kingdom,' he answered, ' God will take care of that; leave the conversion of my daughters to me. Do you, by your example, convert your own tenants and others to the faith.' " In the end of last year the king recommended his popish subjects in Scotland to the protection of the privy council, as a feeler preparatory to his grand design. On the 12th of Fe- bruary he sent down a proclamation of Indulgence, enclosed in a royal letter, the purport of which was, that he had in- formed them by his letter of the 21st of last August of his design of easing his Roman Catholic subjects, to which he had their dutiful answer soon afterwards. He now thought fit to publish these his royal intentions, and to give additional relief to those of tender consciences, to convince the world of his inclination to moderation, and to be an evidence that those of the clergy who have been regular, were his most particular care. Although he had given some ease to those whose prin- ciples he could with most safety trust, yet he had at the same time expressed his highest indignation against those enemies of Christianity as well as government and human society, the field conventicles, whom he recommended to them to root out with all the severity of law. He doubted not but the other particulars of the proclamation would appear as just and rea- sonable to them as they did to himself, and that they would therefore assert and defend his royal rights and prerogatives, which he was resolved to maintain in that splendour and greatness which would alone make them safe for him, a sup- port to his friends, and a terror to his enemies. He said, it IC87.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 309 was evident that he did not encroach upon the consciences of any, and what he would not do he was resolved he would not suffer in others ^ The proclamation is very long, and is to the same effect as the royal letter; but there are some peculiar expressions in it. The prologue sets forth, that having taken into his royal consideration the many and great inconveniences in his ancient kingdom, through the different persuasions in the christian religion, and the great heats and animosities among the profes- sors thereof, to the decay of trade and the extinguishing of charily; and being resolved, as much as in him lay, to unite the hearts and affections of his subjects, he thought fit, by virtue of his sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and abso- lute power, which all his subjects were to obey without re- serve, to grant his royal toleration to the several professors of the christian religion, &c. ; viz. the moderate presbyter tans, meeting in their houses, and willing to embrace his indul- gence, and so as they did not build meeting-houses, nor make use of out-houses or barns — quakers — and papists, " in favour of whom he did suspend, stop, and disable all laws or acts of parliament made or executed against them." They were, however, confined in the exercise of their religion to their houses or chapels, and no where else. He also discharged them from all oaths whatsoever by which they were disabled from holding oflnices or employments in the kingdom ; instead of which he required them to take an oath embodied in the proclamation. He indemnified the papists and quakers for whatsoever they had done contrary to the laws or acts of par- liament in limes past; and for the encouragement of the pro- testant bishops and regular clergy, he declared that he would protect them in their functions, rights, and properties. He also promised to use no invincible necessity to force his sub- jects to change their religion 2. The words invincible necessity clearly flowed from the pen of a Jesuit, and betokened a determination to make some change in the established religion of the country, else there was no necessity for introducing them; but the words mode- rate presbyterians are perhaps as ambiguous as could have been devised, as we have seen none of them in the course of this history. In some judicious reflections on this proclama- tion, it is remarked, " There are a sort of people there tole- rated that will be very hardly found out, and these are the ' Life of James II. 168. — Burnet's Own Times, iii. 181. — Wodrow, iv. 417. * Wodrow — Life of James II. 810 HISTORVOFTHK [CHAP, XLVII, moderate presbyterians. Now as some say that there are very few of those people in Scotland that deserve this cha- racter, so it is hard to tell what it amounts to; and the calling any of them immoderate cuts off all their share in this grace. Moderation is a quality that lies in the mind ; and how this will be found out I cannot so easily guess. If a standard had been given of opinions or practices, then one could have known how this might have been distinguished; but as it lies, it will not be easy to make the discrimination ; and the declaring them all immoderate, shuts them out quite ^" But it is sin- gular how the quakers are classed along w'ith the papists, which looks as if that hypocritical sect had been the pioneers to their parent popery ; and Wodrow says, " not a iew of the leading men among them were in close friendship with the Jesuits^ The council returned an answer to the king's letter on the 20th of February, acquainting him with their obedience, and their resolution to prosecute the object of the proclama- tion. Among those who signed the letter are the names of the archbishop of St. Andrews and the archbishop elect of Glasgow. The duke of Hamilton, the earls of Panmure and Dundonald, refused to sign it; and by a royal letter of the 1st of March they were turned out of the privy council 2. No PARTY in the kingdom were, more astonished at this In- dulgence than the presbyterians, and they frankly confessed their surprise; there w'ere, however, sagacious men among them, who clearly foresaw the consequences that would naturally flow from it ; and at first they had nearly resolved not to accept the benefit of it. At all events, " this all know," says bishop Sage, " that for some months after the publication of it, no considerable breach was made; they still continued in the same communion vsith us 3." The proclamation, however, had quite another effect upon the papists. Such a strong public avowal of the king's inclination in their favour, M'ith the chan- cellor's countenance and protection, and the revocation of the edict of Nantz, intoxicated them with visions of power and supremacy, and emboldened them to emerge from their ob- scurity, to propagate their tenets, and to establish their idola- trous worship in all the corners of the kingdom. Their inso- lence alarmed the whole nation; and the clergy, as faithful watchmen, preached zealously everywhere on the controverted doctrines, and on the idolatry and superstition of the Roman schismatics. Popish priests overspread the whole kingdom, and made the most strenuous exertions to gain converts, com- > Sect. V. 2 Wodrow, iv. -110-423. => Account of the Persecution, 4to. 9. 1687.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 311 passing even sea and land to make proselytes ; but the pres- byterian ministers never uttered a word against popery. " Whether," says Sage, " it was that they thought it indis- creet to fall on their brethren, who stood upon the same bottom with themselves, or they had received it amongst their injunc- tions from the court party, not to meddle with those of the Roman church ; or they did not understand the controversies (which seems the most probable), and so found themselves obliged, in prudence, to let them alone, I am not concerned to determine. It is certain it was so de facto (for once to make use here of that term), and I have twenty times heard it confessed by their constant auditors. Nay, to this very day (though now they make bold with popery, without the hazard of giving the present court a displeasure, and it might be ex- pected they should do it, for very obvious reasons), they very rarely meddle with it. Their great work is to batter down * antichristian prelacy and malignancy. Prelacy [they say] has been the cause of all the calamities this nation has groaned under for so many years: king Jesus has been banished, the gospel has not been preached in this land these twenty-seven years bypast.' Upon my word, sir, I am serious ; there is nothing more ordinary in their sermons than such cant; and though their texts are commonly taken from the Old Testa- ment, yet they are all pat and home to the purpose^." " While in these conventicles popery was so kindly for- born, in our [established] churches these controversies were our most frequent subjects ; especially in those places where [popish] priests were setting up. This is well known all over the kingdom ; some suffered, and many were terribly threatened for it." Lord Fountainhall fully corroborates this statement, and mentions in particular the case of the Rev. Alexander Ramsay, one of the clergy of Edinburgh, who was silenced by bishop Patterson for speaking against popery and preach- ing upon the points in dispute with the papists ; he was, how- ever, restored to his church afterwards 2. Most of the bishops had done their utmost in opposition to the designs of the Jesuits, supported by the whole power and influence of the crown, except bishop Patterson, of Edin- burgh, who seems to have been a good deal of a time-server. But the inferior clergy throughout the country were most zealous, not only in preaching against popery, but in exerting their influence with their parishoners, in truly stating to them ' Account of the present Persecution, 1.^. ' Account of the present Persecution, 13. — Chron. Notes, 1 63. 312 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVTT. the nature of the battle which they were now called upon to fight. The usual insolence of the papists themselves, when they have any probable prospect of recovering their supre- macy, gave alarm and dreadful note of the oppression that might be expected from them should they in reality attain to it. This alarm was considerably increased by the perfidious and unexpected revocation of the Edict of Nantz. Henry IV. had granted the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion to the French protestants, or Huguenots, as they were called, and this Edict, which had been passed at Nantz, had been rati- fied and confirmed by his successor, and by Louis XIV. himself, among the first acts of his life. " Louis peremptorily required the protestants in France to sign a declaration of sub- mission and strict obedience to his royal orders ; and that they should promise to attend the mass, and entirely omit their own religious meetings ; for otherwise they should forfeit, not only their lands and all other property, but also their personal liberty ; the men being doomed to slavery in the king's galleys for life, and the women to be shut up for life wherever their enemies should choose to immure them ^." It is supposed that in the course of this persecution about a million of protes- tants preserved their lives by quitting their country, and taking shelter in England, which they enriched by their industry ; and at least 100,000 individuals suffered death in various ways ^y Yet James's private conduct on this occasion is somewhat inconsistent with his public declarations and transactions, and shews that his public conduct was entirely under the con- trol of the Jesuits ; whereas, when left to his own good dispo- sition, he acted with that charity that became a man and a christian. He gave large sums of money himself, and liberally granted several briefs through the three kingdoms, for the relief of these unhappy refugees, the French Huguenots, when ^ Sharpe's Inquiry into the Description of Babylon, 39. - Faber's Dissertation on the Prophecies, ii. 273; who says — "'They that lead into captivity, and they that kill with the sword,' is so general and compre- hensive an expression, that it seems necessarily to include, not only the secular instruments of papal persecution, but likewise the ecclesiastical promoters of it: accordingly, both Daniel and St. John connect the fate of the ' Beast' with that of the ' little Horn, or the false prophet.' We have beheld, then, in France, the descendant and successor of those, whose memoi-y has been rendered infamous by the diabolical crusade against the protestants of Provence, by the blood-stained night of St. Bartholomew, by the perfidious revocation of the Edict of Nantz, himself led into captivity and slain with the sword. We have beheld numbers of his papal clergy crowded together hi to gaols and put to death [in 1792]. We have beheld the sovereign pontiff, that man of sin, who had led so many thousands captive, himself go into captivity." 1687.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 313 they sought for the protection and hospitality of England. He made no objections to their being protestants and presby- terians, and as it was declared in the Westminster Confession of Faith, that no difference in religion could deprive him of the right of succession, so he concluded that no difference in religion should shorten or contract his charity and liberality. The large contributions also of the bishops and clergy, and of the episcopal nobility and gentry, upon that occasion, given to professed presbyterians, shews that they thought that their charity ought not to be confmed to those only who were or their own communion ^ Tins BREACH of national faith, so characteristic of the papal church and of the influence of the Jesuits, occurring at the same time as the unconstitutional proceedings of king James at home, himself a member of the same church, and governed by the same unprincipled society, tended greatly to increase the fears of the episcopalians. " It looked like a designed combination between the two monarchs to distress, and even to exterminate, their protestant subjects : and while the Romish priests here were, under the support of so favourable a con- juncture, exerting themselves to propagate their doctrines and make proselytes, it was not to be thought, neither would it have been justifiable, that the established clergy could or would be slack in defending the dignity or purity of their religion by any method which the laws allowed them 2. " Dr. Canaries, rector of Selkirk, in the diocese of Glasgow, made the most powerful assault upon the papal array of any his brethren. He i^reached in the high church of Edinburgh on the 14th of February, 1686, before the privy council, the judges, and many of the bishops, from Galatians, v. 6. — "For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision ; h\xl faith which ivorketh by love" In this sermon he pointed out and argued against the various and great corruptions of popery, and shewed the dates at which these conniptions arose. He then warned and exhorted his audience to beware of them, as they tendered their eternal welfare, and not to allow them- selves to be perverted to a religion which is so defiled with idolatry and superstition, and so contrary to the spirit and so destructive of the great design of the gospel ^. This powerful sermon created a great sensation in his auditory, and highly incensed the lord chancellor, who was a papist. He sent for Dr. Canaries next day, and threatened > Leslie's Rehearsals, iv. 219. ^ Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 501. ^ Skinner's Ecclesiatiical History, ii. 502. VOL. III. 2 S 314 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP, XLVII him with pains and penalties for having so vigorously assaulted the court religion ; and he even used abusive and scurrilous Ian guage. Finding he could not draw the preacher from his de- termined purpose of exposing the Romish tenets, he ordered the archbishop of Glasgow to punish him for his presumption by deposition; and threatened the archbishop with the royal ven- geance if he allowed Dr. Canaries to escape without punishment. The Assertory act, and the exercise of the king's uncontroled prerogative, gave the chancellor such extensive powers, that he might have put his threats in execution according to law. But as Dr. Canaries had really committed no ecclesiastical offence, but had, on the contrary, ably performed a duty, which was also executed with more or less ability by all his brethren, the archbishop recommended the doctor to go out ot the way for a little, till the storm should subside. He accord- ingly w^ent to London, under pretence of making friends at court, and shewed his sermon to Dr. Turner bishop of Ely, and several others It was highly approved of, and the bishop recommended Dr. Canaries to publish it, under the title of " Rome's Additions to Christianity," with a long letter, by way of vindication, prefixed to it. 'I'his inflamed the chancellor and the popish ]3arty still more against both the archbishop and the rector of Selkirk, and menaces of deprivation from his see were communicated to the timorous archbishop. " To save appearances, therefore," says Mr. Skinner, "he summoned the doctor before the synod of Peebles, and having in vain tampered with him to demit, for preventing worse conse- quences, laid a kind of inhibition on him, not to use his minis- try for some time." The chancellor savA' through this com- promise, and was indignant at the partial censure, which he considered rather in the light of approbation than of punish- ment. " In short, the contention about the sermon and the doctor's errand to London, which the chancellor exclaimed bitterly against, as injurious to him, was kept up after a strange manner for some months, till in the end, the aflair reaching the king's ears, orders came down in December [of 1686] to have the archbishop and Cai:iaries confronted together, and ex- amined by the chancellor, in presence of the primate and other two bishops ^" The ARCiiBiSHOP,having been cross-questioned by the chan- cellor, was declared by the court to be highly blameable, for having played the politician too much, and bishop Keith says, " deservedly, if all be true which Dr. James Canaries, minis- ' Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 503. 1687.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 315 ter of Selkirk, relates in the letter prefixed to his sermon." The archbishop now declared his readiness to enter into the views of the conrt, and in favonr of popery ; but his advances were rejected by the chancellor and the popish party. The king was unhappily advised by his Jesuit councillors to fall back upon the Assertory act, and deprive the archbishop sum- marily ; he wrote, accordingly, to the privy council, on the 1.3th of January, and that body passed an act on the 20th, in which they " Declare and enact, the said Alexander, late arch- bishop of Glasgow, removed from that metropolitical see, and deprived of any right, title, benefit, or privilege, which he had or enjoyed of the said archbishoprick any manner of way ; and that from the day and date of his majesty's letter, recorded in their books ; and appoint intimation of this act to be duly made to the said late archbishop." This, bishop Keith quietly records as " a very irregular step, surely ; the king should have taken a more canonical coursed" The same messenger that brought the king's letter ordering the deprivation of Dr. Cairncross, brought also a conge d'tlire to the dean and chapter of Glasgow, to proceed to the election of Dr. John Patterson, bishop of Edinburgh, to be their metropolitan. Accordingly, on the 21st of January, the dean of Glasgow, with Dr. Fall, the convener of the synod, and eighteen clergymen, of whom the chapter consisted, met, not in their proper place in the cathedral of Glasgow, but in St. Giles's church, Edinburgh, and there, in conformity with the king's letter, nominated the bishop of Edinburgh to be their ordinary. He had been removed from the privy council in the year 1684, owing to a " bad impression" that the ministers of the crown had given to king Charles; but he now took his seat in council as the elect of Glasgow, with his proper place and precedence as archbishop, on tlie 23d of February 2. Dr. Colin Falconer, bishop of Moray, died at Spynie Castle, near Elgin, on the 11th of November, 1686, in the 63d year of his age ; and his remains were deposited in the south aisle of the parish church of St. Giles, in the city of Elgin, at the bottom of the tower, towards the east. It was a noble gothic structure, and stood in the centre of the main street, in the form of a cross, and which the writer is old enough to have seen ; but it was pulled down a few years ago, and a mo- dern Grecian kirk has been built on its foundation. On the 1 7th of December, the dean and chapter of Moray received a ' Keith's Catalogue, p. 269. —Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 503. ^ Fountainhall's Chronological Notes, 211. 31t> HISTOKYOFTHE [CHAP. XLVII. ■* conge d'elire to elect Dr. Alexander Kose on the king's recom- mendation ; and he was chosen accordingly i. His father was the protestant titular prior of Monymusk, in Aberdeen- shire, a monastery formerly possessed by the Culdees, and dedicated to St. Mary the blessed Virgin, and it was annexed to the impoverished bishoprickof Dunblane, by king James VI. This illustrious prelate took his degree of M.A. at Aberdeen; but afterwards studied divinity, under that " notorious rogue,'' as Fountainhall calls him, Dr. Burnet, at Glasgow. He was presented to the church and parish of St. John's, Perth, and on the resignation of Burnet he was appointed professor of divinity at Glasgow. On the 22d of October, 1686, he was appointed by the king principal of St. Mary's College, in the University of St. Andrews. He was consecrated on the 8th of jMarch this year, but he never took possession of the see of Moray, having been translated to the bishopiick of Edinburgh in the month of September 2. The Scottish papists enjoyed the utmost liberty of con- science, and the free exercise of their rites and ceremonies; and as his dispensing with the laws in Scotland had not excited any very violent opposition, he pursued the same system in England. On the 4th of April a proclamation was issued, being his majesty's " Declaration for liberty of conscience," in order, he said, " to make his subjects happy, and unite them to us by inclination as well as duty." The subjects here meant, however, were the popish dissenters, and he cunningly united the protestant sects along with them, just to save appearances, and to unite their iiiterests. Several of the presbyterian minis- ters in London and its neighbourhood waited on the king with an address of thanks ; to which he replied, that — " It hath been his judgment of a long time that none has or ought to have any power over the conscience, but God," and he solemnly protested " he had no other design in his declaration, but the easing and pleasing his subjects, and restoring to God the power over conscience^." This paved the way for a second declaration to the Scottish dissenters ; for the first one had not the designed effect with the presbyterians. They stood amazed, as much as other men, at this new and unconstitutional power which the king assumed, and saw the evil consequences of dis- union at that time. " This, themselves frankly confessed at the beginning; and I know," says Sage, "it was therefore once very near to a general resolution amongst them, never to take ' Fountaiuhall's Chronological Notes, p. 237. ^ Ibid. — Keith's Catalogue, passim. ' Wodrow's History, iv. 425-6. 1087.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 317 the benefit of it." This agrees with Wodrow's statement, who says, " the presbyterian ministers refused to accept of a liberty with the former clogs." " This," continues Sage, " all know, that for some months after the publication of it, no considera- ble breach was made ; they still continued in the same com- munion ivith us. You will easily believe this grated the ])opish party ; they saw, evidently, if the unity of our church was not broken, their interests would advance but very slowly ; so pains were taken with the presbyterians to make them sepa- rate. And because, perhaps, they might scruple at the oath contained in the first edition of the Toleration, a second edi- tion, without that oath, was obtained and published. Whetlier the arguments which were made use of to engage them, pre- vailed with them, or by that time the second edition came out, they had considered the strength of their party, and found they would be able to make' a figure; or they had got secret instructions fi*om Holland, to comply with the dispensing power, in subserviency to the ensuing Revolution (for which I know there be very strong presumptions), I shall not readily determine ^" The dispensation formerly given to the papists made them quite easy ; but it was necessary to break up that union and communion that the wise measures of the late king had effected, and accordingly, says Wodrow, " for reasons known to himself, and without any application from the presbyterian ministers or their friends, he saw good to cast the liberty in more general terms, and not to connect it with that to papists, nor restrict them to private houses, or clog his favours with oaths 2." The king's proclamation for a third toleration was dated at London the 28th of June, and at Edinburgh the 5th of July ; audits design was the same as that intended by the first. i!Jpon a comparison of the two proclamations there was found to be no material difference, only that in the second the obnoxious oath is omitted. They both maintained the king's power of repealing the laws, and required that whoso- ever would have the benefit of this toleration must acknow- ledge the king's absolute dispensing power by Avhich it was granted. The oath in the first had not been rigidly enacted • but it had been entirely removed by the king's dispensation contauied in his letter to the council of the 31st March: " so that it can never be pretended as a reason why they ' Account of the present Peraecution, pp. 9-10. 2 History, iv. 426. 318 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVII [the presbyterians] did not separate for three months here- after i." Thus the great schism commenced, and when once begun it was carried on with wonderful celerity : " Toleration was its parent, and that was the child of the dispensing power." All of a sudden the presbyterians laid hold of it, and within a few weeks began to build meeting-houses in many places, especially in the two dioceses where their strength lay ; and there the churches were drained, pulpits were set up against altars, and the pretended presbyter against the bishop. " All arts were now used to increase their party, and to render the regular incumbents contemptible ; people were not left to their own choice to join or not to join with them, but all methods of compulsion, except downright force, were taken to engage them. If any man went to church (whither all had gone very lately), he was forthwith out of tivour with the whole gang ; if he was an husbandman, his hap was good if his neigh- bour's cattle were not fed amongst his corn in the night-time ; if he was a tradesman, no employment for him ; if a gentle- man of an estate (a laird, as we call them), his own tenants would abuse him to his face, and threaten him with twenty violences ; in short, nothing was left untried that had the least probability of weakening our hands or of strengthening their own 2." Mr. Renwick alone and his followers refused to accept of this dispensation ; and he " found it his duty not only to de- clare against the granters, but also against the acceptors of this toleration; warning also the people of the hazard of their accession to it. At which the indulged were so incensed, that no sooner was their meeting well settled than they began to shew their teeth at him, calling him an intruder, a Jesuit, a white devil going through the land, carrying the devil's white flag ; that he had done more hurt to the church of Scotland than its enemies had done these twenty years 3." On the other hand, the presbyterian ministers held a meeting at Edinburgh on the 20th of July, and after considerable dissension among themselves, they agreed, on the 21st, to the following address, accepting the benefit of the toleration, and thanking him for this liberty so surprisingly granted them, even althQ.ugh it was granted in the face of unrepealed acts of parliament, and solely by an exercise of the king's prerogative. " At that ' Present Persecution, 10. '^ Present Persecution, 11, 12. 3 Scots Worthies, 437-38. 16*87.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 319 time," says Wodrovv, " some exceptions were made against it in conversation, as containing a little too much from pres- byterians to a popish prince ^ :" — " We, your majesty's most loyal subjects, the ministers of the presbyterian persuasion in your ancient kingdom of Scot- land, from the deep sense that we have of your majesty's gra- cious and surprising favour, in not only putting a stop to our long sad sufferings for non-conformity, but granting us the liberty of the public and peaceable exercise of our ministerial function without any hazard ; we bless the great God, who hath put this in your royal heart ; do withal find ourselve ^ bound in duty to offer our most humble and hearty thanks to your sacred majesty, the favour bestowed being to us, and all the people of our persuasion, valuable above all our earthly comforts ; especially since we have ground from your majesty to believe that our loyalty is not to be questioned upon the ac- count of our being presbyteriaus ; who, as we have amidst all former temptations endeavoured, so are firmly resolved still to preserve an entire loyalty in our doctrine and practice (con- sonant to our known princijoles, which, according to the Holy Scriptures, are contained in the Confession of Faith, generally owned by presbyteriaus in all your majesty's dominions), and by the help of God so to demean ourselves as your majesty may find cause rather to enlarge than to diminish your favours towards us ; thoroughly persuading ourselves, from your ma- jesty's justice and goodness, that if we shall at any time be otherwise represented, your majesty will not give credit to such information until you take due cognition thereof; and hum- bly beseeching that those who promote any disloyal principles and practices (as we disown them) may be looked upon as none of ours, whatsoever name they may assume to them- selves. May it please your most excellent majesty graciously to accept this our humble address as proceeding from the plainness and sincerity of loyal and thankful hearts, much en- gaged by this your royal favour to continue our fervent prayers to the King of kings for divine illumination and conduct, with all other blessings, spiritual and temporal, ever to attend your ro3'al person and government ; wdiich is the greatest duty can be rendered to your majesty by, &c.'^" This same king, whom they were now thanking and bless- ing, had been excommunicated by one of their body not many ' History. \v. 428. - Wodrow's History, iv, 428. 320 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVII. years before this ; and never had been relaxed, as they say, from it ; and we have seen the sort of loyalty to the crown of which they now boast. It is (rue, many of them were ignorant of the conspiracy that was then maturing in Holland ; but it is certain that the most eminent among them that had been in Holland were in close correspondence with the traitors who had taken shelter there. " Now," says Mr. Skinner, " what appellation belongs to these men, who could either frame or allow their consent, tacit or open, to such a deceitful address to a king, or indeed to any one, whom they were at the time caballing to ruin, may be referred to every conscientious protestant, who hates the infamous practice of Jesuitical equi- vocation with the same zeal with which his Christianity teaches him to condemn the doctrine of it^." WoDROw puzzles himself to defend this address, and one still more fulsome, from the presbyterians residing in Edin- burgh; and at last he fairly gives them up as " not the deed of the body of presbyterians, but the proper fact of the signers of them 2." Renwick, however, more honestly, denounced both the granters and the acceptors of the toleration ; and ^e lodged a " testimony" against both in the hands of Hugh Kpjnnedy, the moderator of the meeting, and he afterwards published it as the protest of the " suffering remnant" against " Ecclesiastical History, ii. 508. - Wodrow, iv. 429. — May it plaease your most sacred majesty, we can- not find suitable expressions to evidence our most humble cjid grateful acknow- ledgements for your majesty's late gracious declaration, by which we are hajipily delivered of many sad and grievous burthens we have long groaned under, and (all restraints to our great joy being taken off) are allowed the free and peaceable public exercise of our religion, a mercy which is dearer to us than our lives and fortunes. Could we open our hearts, your majesty would undoubtedlj' see what deep sense and true zeal for your service, so surprising and signal a favour hath imprinted on our spirits ; for which we reckon ourselves highly obliged (throw- ing ourselves at your majesty's feet) to return your most excellent majesty our most humble, dutiful, and hearty thanks ; and we desire humbly to assure your majesty, that as the principles of the protestant religion, which, according to our Confession of Faith, we profess, obligethusall the days ofourlivesto that entire loyalty and duty to your majesty's person and government, that no difference in religion can dissolve ; so we hope, and through God's assistance shall still endeavour, to demean ourselves in our practice in such manner as shall evidence to the world the truth and sincerity of our loyalty and gratitude,, and make it appear that there is no inconsistency betwixt true loyalty and presbyterian prin- ciples. Great sir, we humbly offer our dutiful and faithful assurances, that as we have not been hitherto wanting in that great duty which our consciences bind upon us, to pray for your majesty, so this late refreshing and unexpected favour will much more engage us in great sincerity to continue still to offer up our de- sires to the God of heaven, by whom kings reign and princes decree justice, to bless your royal majesty's person and government, and after a happy and com- fortable reign on earth, to crown you with an incorruptible crown of glory in heaven ; which is most ardently prayed for by, &c. 1687.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 321 their hypocritical brethren*. So, says bishop Sage, "was the schism circumstantiate ; but before I proceed to shew how it was carried on, let me remark one thing : it is, whatever now they may pretend, it was no ways any principle of conscience which made them separate from us on that occasion. My reasons are these : they lived in communion with us for some months before the first edition of the Toleration, viz. till they got the second ; at least, very few broke off in that interim. While they lived in communion with us, they ac- knowledged their consciences allowed them ; indeed, what sort of christians had they been if it had not been so ? Many thanked God that they were reconciled to us, and frequently protested all the world should never again engage them in the schism. Nay, some of the ablest of their preachers (within a very few weeks before they embraced the toleration) said to some of the regular clergy, they should never do it ; they were resolved never to preach more in their life-time. Further yet, some of them, even after the second edition, continued for a long time resolved never to engage in it ; and it cost their bre- thren much pains before they could overcome that resolution : yea, they tell us, to this very day, if they were deprived of their liberty, they could return to us again. Can there be clearer evidences for any thing than these are, that it was not conscience, but some other interest, that involved them in such a general apostacy from one of the greatest concerns of Chris- tianity— the unity of the church? Indeed, how could ever conscience be pretended in the matter ? We had not the least sinful condition in our communion. We still maintained with themselves the same articles of faith ; we worshipped after the same manner : there is no imaginable difference between them and us in the administration of the sacraments ; if the orders of the church of England be valid, so are ours. All that was ever controverted amongst us was the point of church government. It is true we use the Lord's Prayer and the Doxology, and commonly require the Creed in baptism, which they do not ; if these can justify a separation, we are guilty ; but if they can, let the world judge. And now these things being so, I would only ask any man this question, — whether, when they make such clamours now concerning their by-past sufferings, it can be said that ever they suffered for conscience sake?"^" Holland, says Mr. Carstares, " swarmea with British re- > Scots Worthies. 438. * Account of the present Persecution, 10, 11. VOL. III. 2 T 322 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVII. fngees ; the prince's court was their asylum, where nothing was to be heard but the murmuring and complaints of an in- jured people calling for redress ^" William was certainly deeply implicated in all the plots and conspiracies during both these reigns, and he protected such of the British su.bjects as found it inconvenient to remain in their own country. Mon- mouth's and Argyle's conspiracies were well known to the Dutch government ; and when James's ambassador expostu- lated with the pensionary Fagel for such unfriendly conduct, lord Foinitainhall says they issued an order to stop the sup- ply of arms, after they had fully supplied them, and when it was too late. And Smith, who has been already cited, says he had seen several of the "" whig ministers" at Rotterdam, some of whom he had seen at Bothwell Bridge, where they had meetings in houses for sermon. These sermons were dis- loyal and seditious in the highest degree ; and at a private meeting at Thomas Hogg's, a fanatic preacher, he heard the proposal made to assassinate king Charles, " and that being done, they doubted not but they could soon overcome the duke, and all others that would oppose them." This language, however, " they speak only among their confident friends, for they make the common sort of people believe that there was no such thing as fanatic plots : but that the raising of that report was a contrivance of the papists to make use of false witnesses for taking away the lives of true protestants." The opinion of the English judges, that James could dis- pense with the laws, was the commencement of his arbitrary proceedings in Scotland. He had remodelled his privy coun- cil, and placed as many papists and popishly inclined mem- bers in it as enabled him to try the experiment of superseding all the fundamental laws in the kingdom. The parliament, although sufficiently pliable in many things, were inflexible in maintaining the protestant church ; and as he could not ac- complish his designs through the vote of the legislature, he therefore resorted to his prerogative. And here the presbyte- rian dagger that had smitten the church under the fifth rib — the Assertory act — enabled him to assail her without in- fringing any law. That act placed the church at the king's mercy, and enabled both Charles and James to deprive bishops of their jurisdiction at their own caprice. During all the period of her captivity to the state, even at the time of her greatest apparent prosperity, she was in a state of persecu- tion, not only by the presbyterians, but by those who ought to ' M'Corrnick's Life of Carstares, 32. 1()87.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 323 have been her nursing fathers. By virtue of this act, James could have legally removed all the protestant bishops, and have placed popish prelates in their sees ; and, to all appear- ance, measures in Scotland were ripening to that object. He had deprived two prelates, for the performance of their duty in preaching against the withering blight of popery, which was then making such rapid strides ; and he threatened others with the same vengeance. Few of the writings of the clergy of that period have come down to our time ; but even their adversaries admit that they both preached and wrote power- fully against tlie Roman schism. It was their faithful bold- ness in their official duties that brought many of them into trouble with the court, and the popish ministry were not slack in prosecuting them ; so that, in fact, they were now called on to endure a new species of persecution. Neither were the clergy in England negligent of their duty at this trying season, nor did they escape the tender mer- cies of the crown, now entirely in the hands of Jesuits. It is said the see of York was kept two years vacant, that James might place his Jesuit confessor, father Petre, in it. " To their immortal honour, they [the English clergy] did more to vindicate the doctrine of their own church, and expose the errors of the church of Rome, both in their sermons and in their writings, than ever had been done, either at home or abroad, since the reformation ; and in such a style, and with such an inimitable force of reasoning, as will be a standard of writing to succeeding ages. The discourses and other writ- ings which were then composed, ibrm collectively, perhaps the most powerful bulwark against those adversaries which has ever been produced*.' The Scottish reformed catholic clergy have been accused by their presbyterian enemies of having preached the doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience ; but we have seen the disastrous effects of the contrary doctrines, that were taught by the presbyterian ministers. The catholic clergy preached none other than the true christian doctrines, which can never be overthrown by all the attempts of papists and presbyterians conjoined. They maintained that in every government there must be a supreme legal tribunal, from whose decisions there can be no a])peal on earth, and that this supreme tribunal was not to be resisted ; and that the frequent insurrections of the presbyterians, and their constant disobedience, was rebel- lion in its most rigorous conception. But presbyterian resis- » Dr. D'Oyley'b Life of Sancroft, 132. 324 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. XLVII. tance and rebellion arises from their setting up their own in- dependency and supremacy over the crown; for there cannotbe two supreme powers in one kingdom. Wherever the supreme tribunal may be resisted and controled, there the party so re- sisting and attempting to control is superior to the supreme power, which is an absurdity ; and this was the point at which the presbyterians have always aimed. The sovereign is supreme over all estates of men, and, by the advice and as- sistance of parliament, makes laws which are binding on every man ; to these the church always inculcated obedience, according to her wan-ant in holy scripture. But the presby- terian general assemblies have, even in modern times, set both the sovereign and the parliament at open defiance, and en- acted or repealed the laws of the land according as it suited their own convenience. This is an assumption of papal su- premacy over the crown, which has had the most disastrous effects ever since the days of Andrew Melville, when presby- tery was first introduced into Scotland. This is a doctrine which would overturn every government, and which under- mines the foundations of all civil society. The struggle for mastery between the king as supreme, and the presbyterians who desired to be supreme, created all the bloodshed and con- fusion, and occasioned all the severities of the preceding cen- tury ; for " the crowning of king Jesus," and " Christ's crown," meant nothing else than their own supremacy over king, parliament, and laws ; and therefore, whatever name the resistance of the presbyterians may receive from their par- tizans, it is decidedly rebellion. The Romish clergy never pleaded their exemption from the secular powers more vio- lently and factiously than the presbyterian ministers did ; and it is remarkable that the latter always watched the politi- cal embarrassments of the affairs of the king, and whenever they found him perplexed with either foreign or domestic troubles, then they always commenced tumults, riots, and in- surrections. 825 CHAPTER XLVIII. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. 1687. — Meeting-houses erected. — English universities. — Arrival of the Pope's nuncio. — Perplexities of the nobility. — Consecration of Popish bishops. — Mag- dalen College, Oxford. — A general meeting of the presbyterians. — Petre the Jesuit sworn of the privy council. 1688. — General thanksgiving. — Another Indulgence — Deaths, translations, and consecrations of bishops. — Renwick — arrested and condemned. — Position of the clergy. — Birth of the Prince of Wales. — Action betwixt the presbyterians and the king's troops. — Declaration for liberty of conscience — the English prelates refuse to read it. — Their peti- tion to the king — their interview with the king — their petition declared a libel, and themselves committed to the Tower. — Behaviour of the people. — Prelates' conduct in the Tower. — Dissenting ministers waitonthem. — The bishops brought to Westminster Hall — admitted to bail, and acquitted — ^joy of all ranks, and of the army. — Proclamation for liberty of conscience — another, announcing a Dutch invasion. — King's retrograde movements. — King sends for the arch- bishop of Canterbury — his speech. — Prince of Wales' baptism. — William's preparations — his manifesto. — Address of the University of St. Andrews to the king — address of the bishops to the king — the king's answer. — The prince of Orange — Correspondence with the prince. — A formal invitation given to William. — Sunderland's treachery. — Prince of Orange embarks — lands at Torbay — his declaration. — The king sends for the bishops — his military pre- parations— deserted by his army — offers to treat with William — consults with Petre — resolves to retire to France — his departure — put ashore at Feversham. — Mob of London's exploits. — Alarm of a popish massacre. — Meeting at Guildhall. — King returns to Whitehall — receives orders from the Prince of Orange to retire. — He finally denarted and arrived in France. — His letter to lord Feversham. — Remarks. 1687. — In the Presbyterian districts the liberty now granted was speedily accepted, and the presbyterians began to build meeting-houses; and Wodrow asserts, what is not truth, that the churches were emptied of all the parishioners, and all that the curates could muster was their own families. This is not truth ; but it is true that the presbyterians erected meeting-houses, and were permitted to meet in them without molestation. The king i)ressed popery faster upon his English ,326 HISTORY OF THE [CHA.P. XLVIII. even than he did upon his Scottish subjects. In April his majesty published a declaration, allowing liberty of conscience to all his English subjects. He suspended and dispensed with the penal laws and tests, and e\'en with the oaths of allegiance and supremacy on admission into offices, civil or military. All the different sects of dissenters made haste to return thanks for this unexpected and Jesuitical favour, and vied with each other in the most abject and slavish professions of loyalty and gratitude. James had his own views in caressing the dissenters and in persecuting the church. The vice-chancellor and senate of Cambridge were summoned before the High Commission court in April, to answer to wdiatsoever might be objected to them. On the 11th the king sent a mandate to Magdalen College, Oxford, commanding them to elect An- thony Farmer, a papist, their president, and on the 27th of April sentence of deprivation was passed against Dr. John Peachall, the vice-chancellor, for not having admitted the said father Francis without taking the oaths ; and the senate was repiimanded, and ordered to send up copies of their sta- tutes. They refused to elect Farmer, and elected Mr. John Hough; they were therefore cited before the court of High Commission on the 6th of June, to answer for the said refusal, and consequent election of Mr. Hough. The court declared Mr. Hough's election to be void, and suspended Dr. Aldworth from being vice-president, and Dr. Fairfax from his fellow- ship, for their contempt in not electing Mr. Farmer^. Early in June, signior Fernando d'Adda, titular arch- bishop of Amasia, arrived in London, as nuncio from " the protestant pope," as he was called. James did not think it safe to receive him in London ; but he thought it due, both to his own person and to the pope's dignity, to give him a public reception. This placed many of the nobility in a most un- pleasant position, for the law made all intercourse with the pope treason. The duke of Somerset, as a lord of the bed- chamber, was included in this unusual ceremonial. He there- fore consulted with his legal advisers, who informed him that he could not watli safety do those duties in this ceremonial that his office required him to fulfil. The duke of Somerset in- formed lord Lonsdale, " that the nuncio might have all the honours done that was possible ; it was resolved that a duke should introduce him. The matter was therefore proposed to the duke of Somerset. He humbly desired of the king to be excused ; the king asked him his reason : the duke told him 1 Salmon's Chronology, i. 242, 43. 1G88.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 3-27 he conceived it to be against law ; to which the king said, he would pardon him. The duke replied, he was no very good lawyer, but he thought he had heard it said, that a pardon granted a person offending, under the assurance of obtaining it, was void. This offended the king extremely ; he said pub- licly, he wondered at his insolence, and told the duke he would make him fear him as well as the laws. To which the duke ansNvered, that as he was his sovereign, he should ever have all the duty and reverence for his person that was due from a subject to his prince; but whilst he was no traitor or criminal, he was so secure in his [majesty's] justice, that he could not fear him as offenders do. Notwithstanding the ex- treme offence this matter gave his majesty, yet, out of his good- ness, he was pleased to tell the duke that he would excuse himi." During the brief remainder of this reign, the nuncio re- sided openly in London. Four individuals were publicly consecrated after the popish ritual, in the chapel royal, St. James's, and sent throughout England as the pope's vicars apostolical. They published ostentatiously pastoral letters to the laity of their own communion, which were printed and dispersed by the king's express allowance ; and their priests and dignitaries appeared at court in the habits of their order. Some of these men were so indiscreet as to boast that, in a little time, they hoped to walk in public procession through the streets of London. The king sent a second mandate to Magdalen College, re- quiring them to choose the bishop of Oxford their president, but which they refused. After the public reception of the pope's nuncio, the king made a progress through the west of England, and on coming to Oxford, on the 4th September, he threatened the fellows of Magdalen College for their con- tempt in refusing to elect the bishop of Oxford. On the 16th November following, sentence of expulsion was pronounced against the fellows, by visitors whom his majesty had ajj- pointed to visit that college ; and the court of high commis- sion disabled them from holding any ecclesiastical prefer- ments in England. On the 10th November, father Petre was sworn of the privy council ; which, says Mr. Skinner, but without giving his authority, " we are told his Italian queen, popish as she was, begged on her knees, though to no pur- pose, might be forborne 2." In a short time, these arbitrary 1 Note to Burnet's Own Times, iii. 189. ' Skinner's Ecclesiastical Hist. ii. 497. — Salmon's Chronology, i. 242-44. 328 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIII: proceedings alarmed and disgusted all Englishmen, and pro- duced that alienation from James and his family, that termi- nated in the revolution. The archbishop of St. Andrews went to court on the 16th June ; and a letter was, about the same time, received from the king, ordering an indictment to be preferred against Dr. Bumet, whom lord Fountainhall calls " a notorious rogue, who had been undermining the king, as also his brother, king Charles II., at several foreign courts," for converse with Argyle and other traitoi"s in Holland. The town council placed popish priests in Herriott's Hospital, contrary to the statutes of the founder, under pretence of teaching the chil- dren to sing, but in reality to pervert them from the faith of Christ crucified, to the worship of the blessed Virgin and the crucifix. The presbyterian ministers had a meeting at Edin- burgh, at which they drew up and agreed to certain rules of discipline, and for providing ministers to preach in their meet- ing-houses ; and they received letters from several places, craving ministers to be sent to them. This is a sure symptom that presbytery was neither in the prosperous condition that its advocates pretend, nor that it was by any means the favourite of the people, on which its establishment was founded at the re- volution. " Mr. James Kirkton being designed by the meet- ing to be one of the ministers in Edinburgh, finding it a great toil to one of his age to lecture and preach every Sun- day and once every week, and having an invitation to New- battle, declined it ; and they resolving to use authority, [he] protested against their power, and that his former parishioners of Morton were not cited or acquainted. This made some animosity among them," and shews the inefiiciency of the presbyterian discipline to compel obedience, when the parties that ought to obey have no inclination to yield obedience^. 1688. — The council appointed a day of general thanks- giving for the queen's pregnancy, to be observed at Edin- burgh on the 17th, and throughout the other parts of the kingdom on the 29th of January ; but the presbyterian ministers did not keep it. The king published another pro- clamation for liberty of conscience in Scotland, commonly called the Fourth Indulgence ; against which Renwick and his " suffering remnant" still stood out and testified. The popish priests established a school near Holyrood-house, which they dignified with the title of the royal college, and where they taught the children of the poor gratis, so as to in- » Fountainhall's Chronological Notes, 214, 216, 226, 227, 1688.] CHD^CH OF SCOTLAND. 329 veigle them into compliance with their doctrines ; notwith- standing, that schism made no progress then nor at any time since, in Scotland, till now that the non-intrusion mania has drawn a number of Jesuits into that kingdom, and it is said they are at the present time making a number of proselytes among the presbyterians. Dr. Murdock Mackenzie, lord bishop of Orkney, died at Kirkwall in the month of February, at the advanced age of one hundred years ; nevertheless, he enjoyed the perfect use of all his faculties until the last. From some motive, either of shame or remorse, the king rehabilitated Dr. Bruce, the deprived bishop of Dunkeld, to the exercise of his ministerial functions, by a royal dispensation through the privy council, and bishop Keith most justly calls it, " aright strange paper, truly !" " The king perceiving the disagreeableness of such proceedings," sent down a conge d'elire to the dean and chap- ter of Orkney, and recommended them to elect bishop Bruce to be their ordinary ; and his lordship was accordingly elected on the -1th of May. Dr. .James Aitken, bishop of Galloway, died at Edinburgh, of apoplexy, on the 28th of October the preceding year, in the seventy-lburth year of his age. His lordship was one of those who most zealously opposed the re- moval of the penal statutes from the papists, and was conse- quently marked out for the vengeance of the court, but by some unexplained means he escaped, and he lived not to see the destruction of the church. The celebrated Dr. Pitcairne wrote his epitaph, and he was buried within the Greyfriars church. Dr. John Gordon, chaplain to his majesty at New York, was elected to this see, and was consecrated by bishop Patterson, at Glasgow, on the 4th of February ^ A conge d'elire was brought down by Mr. Blair of Blair Drummond, for Dr. Rose, bishop of Moray, nephew to archbishop Ross, to be bishop of Edinburgh ; and a Mr. Hay, minister of Perth, to be bishop of Moray. The bishop of Moray, Dr. Rose, was translated to the bishoprick of Edinburgh ; and lord Fountainhall says, " The chapter of Edinburgh, by the king's letter, and Mr. Andrew Cant, minister of the college kirk of Edinburgh, having the vote next to Dr. Robertson, he declared he only elected Rose, bishop of Moray, to be bishop of Edinburgh in obedience to the king's letter, and the rest followed his way of voting. At which the archbishop of St. Andrews, his [bishop Rose's] uncle, took exceptions, as a reflection and a mark of their siding with Patterson, arch- ' Keith's Catalog\ie, passim, VOL. III. 2 U 330 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVHi. bishop of Glasgow, against him; there having arisen great animosities betwixt the two archbishops, becanse St. Andrews had so far eclipsed Glasgow at court, and got his nephew to be bishop of Edinburgh, contrary to his designs, and, which was worse, contrary to the forms ever observed before, viz. that his majesty did never recommend any by his conge till he had an appi'obation of his person by four or five bishops at least ; and here there were three bishops in a band received without advice, viz. Rose to Edinburgh, Hay to Moray, and Gordon to Galloway, who is Glasgow's suffragan, and yet is borne in upon him without his knowledge ; and though a Scotchman, yet he is bred in England, and knows not our ec- clesiastical laws and customs ; and Edinburgh is a stranger to the clergy he is come amongst (although afterwards he was well acquainted with them) ; and so the earl of Balcarras, or any one who has access to the king, may make a bishop in time coming without examination what he is^." Notwithstanding all the encouragement given by a popish king, acting by the secret council of the Jesuits, Mr. Renwick and his " suffering remnant" would neither accept nor acknowledge the present reiterated toleration. He, Shiells, and Houston, railed incessantly in their sermons against their brethren who had taken advantage of it. These unmanage- able and bold men created alarm in the minds of their tolerated brethren, lest they might be the cause of curtailing the liberty that they now enjo} ed, and they renounced all con- nection with them. " In the meanwhile, the persecution against Renwick being so furious, that in less than five months after the toleration fifteen most desperate searches were made for him ; to encourage which a proclamation was made, Oc- tober 18th, 1687, wherein a reward of £100 sterling was offered to any one who could bring in the persons of him and some others, either dead or alive. On the 29th of January he preached his last sermon at Borrowstoness ; and then came into Edinburgh, and lodged at the house of a friend in the Castle hill, who was a smuggler, or, as his biographer delicately calls him, " a dealer in un-customed goods." He was disco- vered, not having used his ordinary circumspection, and " his time being come," he was arrested on the 1st of February, but not before he had discharged a pistol at his assailant. He was examined before the council, and committed to close pri- son, where he was put in irons. Tliat the fanatical man was sin- cere, there can be little doubt ; for in gaol he " made a free offer * Chronological Notes, 137-141. 1688.] CHUKCH OF SCOTLAND. 331 oi his life to God, requesting for thorough bearing grace, and that his enemies might be restrained from torturing his body ; all which requests were signally granted, and by him thank- fully ackno\\ledged before his execution ^" Although Ren- wick thus devoted himself to God, yet his brethren of his own communion had now become so courtly that they offered him up as a sacrifice to propitiate the pupish propensities of the so- vereign, and petitioned a known fanatic, sir John Dulrymple, the king's advocate, " to hang the man because he was likely to divide their church !" Whether or not the advocate complied with their request, or the laws in force were sufficient to condemn him, I cannot say, but it is certain that a jury found him guilty of high treason. He was assaulted in prison by popish priests, for the purpose of turning him to their religion; but he would not listen to their arguments, and in his dying testimony he recommended his followers to " beware of the ministers that have accepted of this toleration, and all others that bend that way, and follow them not, for the sun hath gone down upon them 2." Archbishop Patterson often visited him, and on his last visit declared " his sorrow for his being so tenacious," and said, " it had been a great loss he had been of such prin- ciples, for he was a pretty lad^ ;" meaning a man of talent. Those very men who alone reaped the benefit of the khig's indulgences were the first to lift up their heel against him ; whilst the established clergy, who were really the sufferers, attempted in quietness to explain to their people the true nature and the real sin and danger of schism and heresy. And, says Mr. Skinner," it was repeatedly observed at the time, that while the churchmen, who were the only sufferers by this indulgence, were in their station vigilant and zealous against the threaten- ing increase of popery, the prcsbyterians, though they knew this was the design at the bottom, were generally silent upon that delicate point, as not choosing to give offence to those on whose account they had met with so much favour. Indeed, the situation of the established clergy at this time, in the dis- charge of their functions, was of a most ticklish and embar- rassing nature. On the one hand, any particular appearance of zeal against the errors and corruptions of the church of Rome, was considered as affronting the king and exposing them to the severity of that legal power which had already chastised the bishops of Glasgow and Dunkeld. On the other hand, the prcsbyterians, taking hold of the comprehensive in > Scots Worthies, 438. « Cloud of Witnesses, 328. » Scots Worthies, 443. 332 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIIl. dulgence, gave the parochial ministers all the disburbance they could, by trumping up accusations against them, and fomenting malicious inquiries into their moral character. Such was the posture of our established church between the weight of popish jealousy upon the office, and the insults of presby- teriau malevolence upon the reputation of her clergy; and all the support they had under these different attacks, which the laws could not screen them from, was the maintenance of a good cause, and the comfort of a good conscience ^" A PROCLAMATION was issued, announcing the birth of the " most serene and high-born prince, the Prince and Steward OF Scotland," which event took place on the 10th of June. The days appointed for a public thanksgiving were the 21st of June for the diocese of Edinburgh, and the 28th for the other parts of the kingdom ; and Wodrow congratulates himself that the presbyterians were not called on to observe it 2. The last action that the presbyterians had with his ma- jesty's troops was on the 20th of June, at Carbelly-path, in Ayrshire, and the diocese of Glasgow. David Houston, one of the " vagrant preachers," had gone over to Ireland, and was there arrested, and sent back to Ayr ; and as a party of mi- litary were conducting him to Edinburgh, " a good number" of presbyterian rustics collected, and resolved to rescue him. They attacked the soldiers, several of whom were killed, and others severely wounded; a great many also of the presby- terians were killed, among whom " was a singularly pious, man." The king issued another declaration, for liberty of con- science in England, on the 27th of April, in which that of the preceding year was recited ; and on the 4th of May he passed an order in council, commanding this declaration to be read in all churches and chapels in the kingdom; and further, he ordered the bishops to cause it to be sent and distributed throughout their several dioceses, to be read accordingly. The effect of father Petre's admission into the privy council was the insulting and degradation of the clergy of the church of England. On this occasion Petre used very contumelious expressions towards them in the exultation of his joy at mak- ing them instrumental to their own degradation, by actively concurring in forwarding a measure to which they felt con- scientious objections. The clergy " highly disapproved of the declaration ; they had given great offence to James by the activity they had shown in their writings and discourses, in ' Ecclesiastical History, ii. 510-11. - Wodrow's History, iv. 441. 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 333 opposing the disseminatiou of popery ; and by their influence and exertions they opposed the most efFectual obstacles to the success of his designs. The device, therefore, of making them instrumental in forwarding a measure to which they were known to be decidedly adverse, seemed calculated, above every other, to gratify his resentment against them, and to humble them in the eyes of the people ^." The order was publislied in the London Gazette, but it was not conveyed in the usual manner, through the archbishops and bishops, to their clergy; " the eyes of the whole nation were fixed on the prelates," to see how they would act in this ex- traordinary crisis. Burnet says, " The archbishop of Canter- bury, Bancroft, resolved, upon this occasion, to act suitably to his post and character." He found that the bishops and clergy were all agreed not to read the declaration ; and the bishops of St. Asaph, Ely, Chichester, Bath and Wells, Peterborough, and Bristol, met at Lambeth Palace, besides a number of the London clergy. After fidl consideration it was resolved, that the order for reading the declaration should not be complied with; but that a petition should be presented to the king, shewing him the reasons that determined them not to obey the order in comicil. The exercise of the dispensing power created so much alarm, that even the non-conformist ministers in Lon- don laid aside their hostility to the church, and urged the clergy to make a firm stand for religion and liberty. After long consultation a petition was drawn up, and signed by the archbishop and the six bishops who were present. It is as follows: — " That the great averseness they find in themselves to the distributing and publishing, in all their churches, your majesty's late declaration for liberty of conscience, proceedeth not from any want of duty and obedience to your majesty, our holy mother, the church of England, being both in her principles and constant jiractice unquestionably loyal, and having (to her great honour) been more than once publicly acknowledged to be so by your gracious majesty, nor yet from any want of due tenderness to dissenters, in relation to whom they are willing to come to such a temper as shall be thought fit, when that matter shall be considered and settled in ])arlia- ment and convocation ; but among many other considei*ations, from this especially, because the declaration is founded upon such a dispensing power as hath often been declared illegal in parliament, and particularly in the years 16G2 and 1672, and » D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, 153. 334 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIII. in the beginning of your majesty's reign; and it is a matter of so great moment and consequence to the whole nation, both in church and state, that your petitioners cannot in prudence, however, or conscience, so far make themselves parties to it as the distribution of it all over the nation, and the solemn publication of it once and again, even in God's house, and in the time of divine service, must amount to in common and reasonable construction. Your petitioners therefore most humbly and earnestly beseech your majesty, that you will be graciously pleased not to insist upon their distributing and reading your majesty's said declaration ^ His majesty was very much displeased with this paper, and called it a standard of rebellion, and said it was a great surprise to him. They all disclaimed with horror the thoughts of rebellion ; but the king insisted it was nothing else. Bishop Kenn said — " Sir, I hope you will give that liberty to us which you allow to all mankind:" the bishop of Peterborough said — " Sir, you allow liberty of conscience to all mankind ; the reading of this declaration is against our conscience." The king made no answer to this appeal, but said he would keep the paper, for it tended to rebellion. He added, that he had been informed of their designs before, but did not be- lieve it, neither did he expect such usage from the church of England, especially from some of the petitioners there; how- ever, if he changed his mind they should hear from him; if not, he expected his commands to be obeyed, and they should be made to feel what it was to disobey him. They answered, " GoijS will be doner The lord chancellor Jeffreys told the king, after the departure of the bishops, that the petition might be adjudged tumultuous, consequently a seditious libel, and therefore liable to a legal prosecution. In pursuance of the chancellor's advice, the bishops wei*e sent for to the council on the same day, the 9th of June, and because they refused to enter into recognizances to appear in tlie court of King's Bench to answer the misdemeanour in framing and presenting the said petition or libel, as it was called, they were committed to the Tower. " In the meantime," says Dr. D'Oyley, " the bishops were cheered by the expressions and approbation which reached them from every quarter, for the firmness and spirit they had displayed." Evelyn states, *' that the behaviour of the bishops was universally applauded, and reconciled many adverse par- 1 Life of James II. 179.— D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, 159. — Salmon's Chronology, i. 211. — Own Times, iii. 226. 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 335 ties, the papists only excepted, who were exceedingly per- plexed." Hume has best descinbcd the extraordinary excite- ment of all ranks of the people upon this unprecedented scene: he says — " The people were already aware of the danger to which the prelates were exposed, and were raised to the highest pitch of anxiety and attention with regard to the issue of this extraordinary affair. But when they beheld these fathers of the church brought from court under the custody of a guard, when they saw them embarked in vessels on the river, and conveyed towards the Tower, all their affections for liberty, all their zeal for religion, blazed up at once, and they flew to behold this affecting spectacle. The whole shore was covered with crowds of prostrate spectators, who at once implored the blessing of those holy pastors, and addressed their petitions towards Heaven for protection during this extreme danger to which their country and their religion stood exposed. Even the soldiers, seized with the contagion of the same spirit, flung themselves on their knees before the distressed prelates, and craved the benediction of those criminals whom they were appointed to guard. Some persons ran into the water, that they might participate more nearly in those blessings which the prelates were distributing on all around them. The bishops themselves, during this triumphant suffering, augmented the general favour by the most lowly submissive dejjortment; and ihey still exhorted the people to fear God, honour the king, and maintain their loyalty ; expressions more animating than the most inflammatory speeches. And no sooner had they entered the precincts of the Tower than they hurried to chapel, in order to return thanks for those afflictions which Heaven, in defence of its holy cause, had thought them worthy to endure^." The SECOND lesson appointed for that day's evening service, the 8th of June (the 6th chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians), was peculiarly applicable to the present case of the imprisoned prelates, and by many people it was thought a special interference of providence — " 1 have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation I succoured thee ' behold, notv is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed; but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessi- ties, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments" On the fol- lowing day persons of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, > History of England, viii. 209, 270. 336 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIII. went in crowds to condole with the imprisoned prelates, to express their gratitude for their patriotism, and to exhort them to persevere in the course they had so nobly commenced. But what is most remarkable, a deputation of ten of the non- conformist ministers waited on them, in admiration of their christian meekness and fortitude, and to encourage them to a firm perseverance. This so incensed the king, that he sent for the ministers, and condescended to reprimand them ; but they answered, that they coidd not but adhere to the bishops, as men constant to the protestant religion. Mackintosh states, that Jeffries and the popish lords used every argument to per- suade the king that the birth of the prince of Wales afforded a favourable opportunity for signalising that season of national joy by a general pardon, which would comprehend the prelates in the Tower, without involving any apparent concession on the part of the crown. The king would have been glad to have extricated himself so easily from this difficulty, but his secret advisers, Petre and others, prevailed over sober and rational counsels. The bishops were imprisoned on the 8th, and ihe prince of Wales was born on the 10th; and thus the customary official attendance of the archbishop of Canterbury was effectually prevented. The Whig party had circulated a ruraovir, that the birth was supposititious, and the public now suspected that the king had purposely contrived his imprison- ment, to prevent the archbishop's attendance, and in order to preclude the detection of the frauds On Friday, 15th of June, the seven bishops were brought up by writ of habeas corpus, from the Tower to the bar of the King's Bench. During their passage on the water they were greeted with acclamations and prayers for their safety by the people on both sides of the river; and the multitude formed a lane for them from the waterside to Westminster Hall, and kneeling as they passed, begged their blessing. The arch- bishop laid his hands on those who were nearest to him, all of whom were dissolved in tears, he exhorted them to continue stedlast in the faith and in their loyalty. They pleaded Not Guilty to the information laid against them, and they were ad- mitted to bail, on giving their own recognizances to appear from day to day till legally discharged; the archbishop in i^*200, and the other bishops in <£100 each. Their trial was a])pointed for the 29th of June, which is St. Peter's da\^, and some thought it ominous, because they feared St. Peter's suc- cessors might prevail; whereas others said the trial was, whe- ' D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, 174, 175. 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 337 ther or not St. Peter's doctrine should continue among us^ With one exception the jury were unanimous. Arnold, the king's brewer, dissented from the verdict, and occasioned considerable delay, because he was afraid to join in a verdict against the crown, lest he should lose his appointment I^ In consequence of this man's sin of avarice and inordinate self- affection, the verdict was not given till the next morning, and the jury were shut up all night: their verdict was, Not Guilty. This occasioned unusual rejoicings, not only in London, but in the army, and also in the navy ; and the king having ordered mass to be said on board the fleet, the priests ran considerable danger of being thrown overboard 3. The king hoped that the verdict would have been quite different, and he went on the morning of the acquittal to the camp at Hounslow, to overawe the army by his presence, as the soldiers were in a state of the utmost excitement. The general joy and satisfaction soon reached the camp, and the soldiers gave three hearty cheers, which astonished the king, who was then in the general lord Feversham's tent. He sent the earl to inquire the occasion of such an unexpected signal of mirth : on his return the earl informed his majesty, that it was nothing but only the soldiers' joy at the acquittal of the bishops. Their joy, and the general's indifference, were very dis- pleasing to the king, and he said, " and call you this nothing ? " The king deprived sir Richard Holloway and sir John Powell, judges of the King's Bench, for having given their opinions in favour of the bishops, and against the Court. The Court of High Commission issued an order to all archdeacons, commissaries, and officials, to inquire in what churches and chapels his majesty's declaration had been read, and to transmit an account of them against the I6tli of August next; where- upon the bishop of Rochester refused to act any longer on the commission. On the 24th of August the king declared his resolution, in council, to call a new parliament, and writs were issued to be returned on the ^Tth of November. The king could not now rely on the army. He proposed to the officers and men to sign a writing, in which they were to engage, to the utmost of their power, to procure the repeal of the test and penal laws. This was ordered to be offered to every re- giment singly, and the first on which the experiment was tried was the earl of Litchfield's. The major having opened the matter to them, commanded all those who would not com- 1 Own Times, iii. 233. ^ ^otg ^q Own Times, iii. 236. ' Salmon's Chronology, i. 245. w^GL. III. 2 X 838 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XLVIII. ply with his majesty's desire to lay down their arms. To the king's astonishment, wlio was present, the whole regiment grounded their arms, except tw^o captains and a few soldiers, who were papists. After a short pause the king ordered them to take up their arms again, remarking, that for the future he would not do them the honour to ask their advice; and dread- ing a similar result, the matter was dropt, and no other regi- ment was tried ; but six Irish regiments were immediately transported to England ^ The king published a proclamation on the 21st of Septem- ber, in which he declared that he intended to give a legal establishment, by act of parliament, to liberty of conscience ; that he would inviolably preserve the church of England ; and that be was contented that the papists should remain in- capable of sitting in the House of Commons. On the 23d he received certain intelligence, that the military preparations going on in Holland were intended against England. He therefore issued a proclamation on the 28th, announcing the expected invasion, and requiring all persons, civil and mili- tary, to prepare for the defence of their country; and the writs that had been issued for calling a parliament were re- voked. Next day a general pardon was proclaimed, and the bishop of London's suspension was removed. He now, when it was too late, made haste to undo all his former illegal and ar- bitrary proceedings; he restored the city of London's charter; dissolved the High Commission Court; displaced the popish magistrates, and replaced the protestants, whom he had de- prived of office; he issued an order to restore Magdalen Col- lege to its rights, and gave directions for restoring corporations to their ancient charters, liberties, rights, and franchises. He also commanded the primate to compose a form of prayer, to be used during the apprehension of an invasion. Viscount Preston was made principal secretary of state, and the earl of Sunderland was, dismissed, it having been found that he had betrayed the secrets of state to the prince of Orange 2. The king now found that his secret coimsellor, Petre, had pushed him to the verge of a precipice. With the view, in this state of alarm, of extricating himself, he sent for the arch- bishop of Canterbury and some other bishops, and anxiously asked their advice. On their being admitted to the royal pre- sence, the primate addressed his majesty with becoming meek- • Salmon's Chronology, i. 244. — Burnet's Own Times. — D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft. — Life of James II. * Salmon's Chronology, i. 245, 246. 1688.] cnuRCH of Scotland. 339 ness, gravity, and courage, to the following effect: — requesting his majesty that he would annul the Court of High Commis- sion ; that the king should restore all things to the state in which he found them at his accession, by committing all places of trust to protestants, and to redress such grievances as were most complained of; that he would refrain from exer- cising the dispensing power; that he would restore the uni- versities to their rights and privileges; that he would suppress the schools established by the Jesuits; that he would inhibit the four Romish vicars apostolic from exercising their functions in England ; ihat he would issue no more quo warrantos against corporations; that he would immediately fill the va- cant sees in England and Ireland; that he would no more exercise the dispensing power; that he would restore their charters to the corporations, and summon a new parliament; and that his majesty would permit some of his bishops to lay such arguments before him, as, through the blessing of God, may bring his majesty back to the communion of the church of England, into whose Catholic faith he was baptized, in which he was educated, and to which it was their daily prayers to Almighty God that his majesty might be reunited. The king thanked the bishops for their advice, and promised to comply with it; and he soon gave proofs of his sincerity; but his concessions to the necessity of his affairs came too late, and they had not the desired effect ^ On the loih of October the prince of Wales was baptized in the chapel royal, St. James's, by the Romish ritual, by the name of James Francis Edwai'd. The pope was his god- father, and was represented by his Nuncio Ferdinando D'Adda, titular archbishop of Amasia ; and the queen dowager was his godmother. At the same time the deposition, of forty persons of honour were taken as to the certainty of his birth, and enrolled in Chancery, of whom twenty-three were pi'otes- tants^. But, says archdeacon Echard, "to such a poor ebb was the unhappy king's credit reduced at thi^ time, so that the body of his subjects would neither believe what he said himself, nor any of those who swore in his favour^." Bishop Burnet has disgraced himself by a number of inconsistent falsehoods respecting the birth of the prince of Wales. First, he asserts that the queen was not pregnant; then that she mis- carried ; and again, that a child was supposed to have been » D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, 204-207. — Echard's Revolution, 143. -Life of James IL 201-203. « Salmon's Chronology, i. 246. ^ History of the Revolution, pp. 147-148. 340 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIII. iutrodiiced into her majesty's bedchamber in a warming-pan. Fourthly, perhaps no child to have been carried from the bed- room into the next room. Fifthly, the child seen by all in that room to have died. Sixthly, a substituted child to have died. Thus, as Swift observes, we have three children ; the new- born infant seen in the next room by all, the substituted child, and the prince of Wales. It is lamentable that such a man as Burnet should have disgraced himself by the recital of these stupid and inconsistent falsehoods ^ None in Scotland were acquainted with the preparations making in Holland, except a few presbyterian ministers who were in cori'espondence with their brethren in that country. The prince of Orange still kept up appearances with his father- in-law and uncle, and James first received intimation of the prince's views from the French court. Mr. M'Cormick says, " That consummate politician, who well knew that the success of an invasion would depend upon the secresy with which it was conducted, and the expedition with which it v^as executed, had fully digested the whole project in his own mind, had formed his resolution, had begun, had almost finished his pre- parations, whilst he appeared with reluctance to hearken to the invitations he daily received, or to suffer any mention of it in his presence. Under various pretexts, which the situation of affairs then afforded, an army was ready to embark, and a fleet prepared to receive them, before William published his intentions, or the world began to suspect them. And the in- fatuated James scarcely saw the cloud gathering, when it burst with vengeance on his head 2." In October it began to be surmised in Scotland that the prince of Orange meditated an invasion of the British domi- nions, and the privy council of Scodand sent up on the 3d an offer of their lives and fortunes to his majesty, and asked for direction how to act. He thanked them for their offer, and directed them to arrest all suspected persons, to levy forces, and bestow commissions in the militia. About the middle of October, William's manifesto made its appearance in Scotland. All the faults and arbitrary proceedings of the government of both Charles and James were ostentatiously pointed out and aggravated ; and his wife's proximity to the crown afforded him a plausible pretext for inquiring into the birth of the prince of Wales, whom he pretended to believe was a surreptitious child. It of course made great professions of i-egard for the interests of Great Britain, and disclaimed all intention of seiz- * Note to Burnet's Own Times, iii. 257. ' Life of Carstares, 32. 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 341 ing the crown ; but only of mediating betwixt the king an I his people. It was in substance declared, that he and the princess laid no claim to the crown at present : that the design of this expedition was, that the late king's murderers be brought to trial in parliament; that the impostor [the prince of VV^ales] be sent back to his natural parents ; that the succession to th( crown be secured by the administration of six peers under the king, whereof the lord Halifax to be one ; that the dispensing power be left to the parliament; that the ecclesiastical commis- sion be examined and tried in a free parliament ; that tlie church of England, as by law established, be confirmed and restored to her freedom ; that all offenders be brought to their trial and punished ; that liberty of conscience be given to all dissenters except to papists ; that there be a free parliament ; that papists be excluded from all public trust, offices, and em- ployments ; and that the charge of the present expedition be paid by the king. In consequence the council issued a pro- clamation for raising and rendezvousing the militia, and setting up beacons on North Berwick-law, Arthui-'s Seat, the Bass, St. Abb's Head, and other places ; and directed the bishops to cause their clergy to read this proclamation from their pulpits. Immediately on the certainty of the prince of Orange's move- ments being known, the whole of the regular army was marched into England to reinforce the army there. The news of the prince's invasion difiused universal delight among thf. presbyterians, whose secret correspondents in Holland had long prepared them for it ; but the members of the established chui'ch were proportionably cast down and alarmed. The University of St. Andrews prepared a loyal address to the king, which was signed by archbishop Ross, as chancellor, and by all the heads of colleges and the professors, testifying in strong language, and with abundance of argument, their stedfast adherence to the christian principles of loyalty and obedience to their lawful sovereign. They advert to the constant liberality of the royal family of the Stuarts to their church and university ; they expatiate on the nature and prin- ciples of government generally, God, not the people, being the only source of power — absolute power, they say, must reside somewhere in every regularly constituted society ; they shew the superiority of an hereditary monarchy over every other form of government, and that more evil is to be feared from popular excesses than from absolute power ; the monarchy never to be resisted, and to be disobeyed only when it opposes Scripture. And, in conclusion, they say — " And we dare, with the sincerest boldness of our honest hearts, assure your ma- 342 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIII. jesty, that the just and never unfashionable notions of ovur duty, with the entire trust and confidence which we repose in your majesty, shall ever preserve us from being diverted or frighted from our love and obedience, and shall excite our perpetual prayers for the happiness of your majesty and your king- doms i." These were not mere words of course ; they were the genuine sentiments of the church catholic, in all times and places, from the days of St. Paul 2, and will be " till the last syllable of recorded time," except where she has been polluted by the popish and presbyterian heresies. As soon as the pri- mate had signed this address, he hurried to the capital, and there finding all the bishops, he assembled them on the 3d of November, and they signed the following loyal and affec- tionate address. Wodro w, of course, calls it flattering and ti me- serving, and compares it with the petition of the seven bishops of England, which, he says, was " heartily against popery," whereas he asserts that the Scottish prelates were " time- servers, court flatterers, and ready for any thing, to fall in with popery itself, to please the king, and keep their benefices." Our readers will, however, have observed that more than one of them were sufferers for their opposition to popery, and two of them were actually deprived of their bishopricks for not fall- ing in with that heresy. " May it please y'our most sacred majesty, — We prostrate ourselves to pay our most devout thanks and adoration to the sovereign majesty of heaven and earth for preserving your sacred life and person, so frequently exposed to the greatest hazards, and as often delivered, and you miraculously pros- pered with glory and victory in defence of the rights and honour of your majesty's august brother, and of these king- doms ; and that by his merciful goodness, the raging of the sea and the madness of unreasonable men have been stilled and calmed, and your majesty, as the darling of heaven, peaceably seated on the thrones of your royal ancestors, whose long, illustrious, and unparalleled line, is the greatest glory of this your ancient kingdom. We pay our most humble grati- tude to your majesty for the repeated assurances of your royal protection to our national church and religion, as the laws have established them, which are very suitable to the gracious coun- tenance, encouragement, and protection, which your majesty ' Wodrow. — Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 512. — Lyon's History of St. Vadrews, ii. 106. '■' Rom. xiii. 1-7. 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 343 was pleased to afford to our church and order, whilst we were happy in your presence amongst us. We magnify the divine mercy, in blessing your majesty with a son, and us with a prince, whom we pray, heaven may bless and preserve to sway your royal sceptres after you, and that he may inherit with your do- minions the illustrious and heroic virtues of his august and most serene parents. We are amazed to hear of the danger of an invasion from Holland, which excites our prayers for an universal repentance to all orders of men, that God may yet spare his people, preserve your royal person, and prevent the effusion of christian blood, and to give such success to your majesty's arms, that all who invade your majesty's just and undoubted rights, and disturb or interrupt the peace of your realms, may be disappointed and clothed with shame, so that on your royal head the crown may still flourish. As by the grace of God, we shall preserve in ourselves a firm and un- shaken loyalty, so we shall be careful and zealous to promote in all your subjects an intemerable and steadfast allegiance to your majesty, as an essential part of their religion, and of the glory of our profession, not doubting, but that God, in his great mercy, who hath so often preserved and delivered your majesty, will still preserve and deliver you, by giving you the hearts of your subjects, and the necks of your enemies. So pray we, who, in all humilit}^, are — Arthur St. Andrews, John Glasgow, Alexander Edinburgen, John Gallovidien, John Dunkelden, George Aberdonen, William Moravien, James Rossen, James Brechinen, Robert Dunblanen, Archibald Sodoren, Andrew Arcaden, Andrew Caithness, Alexander elect of Argyle." This loyal and affectionate address of these confessors for the truth calls forth the insolent remark of a modern non- intrusionist, and the eulogist of a murderer — " Our only regret is, that a door so wide was ever opened to the entrance of such men into the revolution chuixh [the present establishment]. To this I am disposed to ascribe most of the evils which soon sprung up in our church ; and an accommodating policy has from that period to the present aggravated the mischief ^" Dr. Cook also, from whom we might have expected better tilings, in his remarks on this address, shews that he inherits all the genuine sentiments of the covenant, although the forms of modern civilization require him to give utterance to the principles of the covenant in smoother language than in that ^ Burn's Note on Wodrcw, iv. 469. 344 HISTORY OF THE lCHAP. XLVJII. of the Camerons and Cargills of former days. To the foregoing address the primate received from lord Melfort the king's an- swer, dated at Whitehall, November the 15th: — "James R. — Right, &c., We have received your most dutiful letter of the third day of November, in which we are glad to see, that you are far from being of the number of those spiritual lords by whom the prince of Orange pretends to have been invited : as we have likewise had repeated assurances from all the bishops of England, of their innocency in that and duty to us ; we have now by this, thought fit to tell you, how sensible we are of your zeal for our service, and for ihe dutiful expres- sions of your loyalty to us, in a time when all arts are used to seduce our subjects from their duty to us. We do likewise take notice of your diligence in yoin- duty, by your inculcating to those under your charge, these principles which have always been owned, taught, and published by that protestant loyal church you are members of: we do assure you of our royal protection to you, your religion, church, and clergy, and that we will be careful of your concerns, whenever there shall be a suitable occasion offered to us : you and every one of you, being most perfectly in our royal protection and favour, &c." The prince of Orange was one of those uncommon men who, in the good providence of God, are raised up at extra- ordinary times, either as scourges or blessings to mankind, as the case may be. At the present juncture he was destined to check the ambition of the French king, who grasped at uni- versal dominion. He appeared at the head of the counsels of Europe against France ; for to him war and activity both of mind and body were his greatest delight. But still, says the historian of the Revolution, " he had a peculiar felicity from the present situation of affairs, that whatever might possibly be the effects of temper and ambition, seemed purely the result of accident and necessity ; and the high pretensions of restoring the balance of power and the invaded liberty of oppressed nations, must at least give a beautiful varnish to all his under- takings ^" One of these felicitous circumstances was the death of the archbishop of Cologne just at this precise nick of time. The succession to this palatinate was likely to in- Tolve France and Austria in war. This gave William a rea- sonable pretext for increasing and concentrating his army ; and when the British ambassador remonstrated with him, he * Archdeacon Echard's History of the Revolution, p. 120. J 688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 345 led him to believe that he intended to invade Franco. It is a curious fact that the most bigottcd of the popish governments, nay, even Rome itself, concurred in the protection of the pro- testant church of England from the measures of her own sovereign to papalize her, and at this particular juncture (lie court of Rome was in opposition to the church of Rome. Tlie ambition of the Frencli king, and his invasion of Germany, " o]iencd a new scene of action, and brought a new turn oi affairs, that proved highly necessary, or wonderfully commo- dious, for the relief of England ^" It appears from cardinal D'Estrees's two letters, published by Dalrymple in the appen- dix to his Memoirs, that the pope highly approved of the league against France, and that the intended alteration of the Eng- lish government was spoken of at Rome near a year before it took place 2. A GREAT NUMBER of the nobiUty and gentry applied to the prince, and a secret correspondence was maintained for some time betwixt them and the court of the Hague. In the month of July, one Flight brought over eight score of letters to as many of the nobility and gentry, and carried back answers, with the greatest despatch and safety ; and this correspondence was facilitated by lord Dunblane, who commanded a frigate. He betrayed his master's interest, and crossed and recrossed the sea to carry despatches and resolutions. The earl of Shrewsbury, also an eminent convert from popery, mortgaged his estate for a large sum, and went over to the prince with the offer both of his sword and his purse. Yet William pondered long on the hazard as well as on the grounds for this invasion before he finally resolved upon it ; and when pressed by the English at his court, he said " he must satisfy both his honour and conscience before he could enter upon so great a design, which, if it miscarried, must bring ruin both to England and to Holland. He protested that no private ambition, nor par- ticular resentment, could prevail upon him to make a breach with so near a relation, or to engage in a wai", of which the con- sequence must be of the last importance both to the interests of Europe and to the protestant religion : therefore he expected more formal and direct invitations-" But when lie was told of the danger of trusting such a secret to great numbers, he re- plied, " that if such a number of men as might be supposed to understand the sense of the nation, would do it, he would ac- quiesce in it." After the trial of the bishops and the birth of the prince of Wales, such a number, alleging they understood 1 Echard, ii. 125. - Editor's Note to Burnet's Own Times, iii. 1I>0. VOL. III. 2 Y 346 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIII the sense of the nation, did give him the wished-for invitation, and he acquiesced, nothing loath. His confidential agent, Zuylestein, brought him, besides, such advices from England of the fermentation of the nation, and ttie discontent, almost amoimting to mutiny, in the army and navy, as fully and finally fixed him in his purpose. The same persons who invited the prince made application to the states general, who very graciously listened to their arguments ^ The royalist party charged lord Sunderland with having betrayed the king's coun- sels to the traitors in Holland, and to the prince of Orange ; that he had diverted the offer of the assistance of 30,000 men from France, and generally with assisting the prince. Lord Dartmouth says, " The duke of Chandos told me, as a thing he knew to be ti'ue, that the king of France wrote to king James, to let him know that he had certain intelligence that the de- sign was upon England, and that he would immediately be- siege Maestricht, which would hinder the states fi'om parting with any of their forces for such an expedition ; but that the secret must be kept inviolably from any of his ministers. Soon after the states ordered 6000 men to be sent to Maestricht; upon which the king of France desired to know if king James had revealed it to any body, for he himself had to none but Louvoy, and if he had betrayed him, he should treat him accordingly. King James's answer was, that he never told it to any body hut lord Sunderland, who, he was very sure, was too much in his interest to have discovered it. Upon which the king of France said, he saw plainly that king James was a man cut out for destruction, and there was no possibility of helping him 2." The treachery must lie betwixt Louvoy, whom the king of France trusted, or Sunderland, whom the British king trusted ; but the greater probability is that the latter nobleman was the traitor. After William had persevered with the utmost diligence and the most profound secresy, and James had permitted him- self to be deceived by treacherous advisers into a fatal security, if not to the most demented infatuation, his mad attempt to pa- palize his dominions vanished " like the baseless fabric of a vision." On the 19th of October the prince of Orange sailed from the Brill, with 50 men of war and 300 transports, with about 15,000 land forces, accompanied by a number of English noblemen and gentlemen. The small amount of the force that he carried with him evidently shewed that he did not depend 1 Echard's Revolution, 126, 128. - Editor's Note to Burnet's Own Times, iii. 315. 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 347 on them alone for the conquest of three mighty kingdoms ; but that the amount of his friends was so great as to render op- position impossible. The fleet was driven back by a terrible storm ; and in order to deceive the infatuated British king, it was announced that many of the vessels had been lost, some thousands of the troops drowned, that an epidemic had got among the remainder, and that it would be impossible to proceed with the expedition till next spring. The damage in reality was very inconsiderable, and the fleet sailed again on the first of November, and when approaching Dover, intelligence was bi'ought to him that the English fleet lay at the Nore. He then tacked and stood down channel, and on the fifth of November disembarked his army at Torbay, and marched directly to Exeter, of which city he took possession, and lodged in the dean's house. Next day, in a full auditory, his declaration was read, which was in substance — to vindicate the religion and Hberties of England from popery, and from the arbitrary and dispensing power which had lately been assumed ; to assert the succession to the crown ; to inquire into the birth of the pretended prince of Wales ; and, briefly, to redress all other iiTegularities in ecclesiastical, civil, and military things, which, he said, were so great that the nation was in danger of being ruined by them^. On the 1st of November, king James again sent for the bishops, and demanded whether or not they had invited the prince of Orange into the kingdom, as he asserted in his decla- ration. The bishop of London, who had joined in that invita- tion, although the others had not, evasively answered — " I am confident the rest of the bishops would as readily answer in the negative as myself." The archbishop denied all knowledge of it in the strongest terms ; but they all refused to sign a paper declaring their abhorrence of the invasion, unless his majesty would join as many temporal lords with them as could be called together. The Scottish bishops, however, readily signed a paper expressing their abhorrence at the prince's invasion ot the kingdom. The king was again urged to call a free parlia- ment , but this he declined, saying,justly, how coulditbey*ree when a foreign enemy had possession of part of the kingdom, and could influence most of the elections P^ King James shewed a firm resolution to beat back the i)rincc. He had ordered up the whole of the standing forces from Scot- land, and his English army was ordered, with a large train of 1 Life of James II. 205-6. — Salmon's Chron. 2 Life of James II. — Salmon's Chron. i. 246. 348 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIII. artillery, to march from Hounslow Heath, and the earl of Tyr- connel, lord lieutenant of Ireland, sent 3000 men over to his assistance- The army rendezvoused at Salisbury, and on the 19th the king joined it there, and lodged at the bishop's palace. The lord Cornbury, son of the earl of Clarendon, with three re- giments of infantry, deserted to the prince ; and his example was followed by the king's nephew the duke of Grafton, son of the late king by the duchess of Cleveland, the lord Churchill, and several other persons of eminence, with a large body of the king's troops. Lord Cornbury had been bred at Geneva ! and when his father, the earl of Clarendon, heard of his desertion, he ex- claimed— *' O that my son should be a rebel ! the Lord in his mercy look upon me, and enable me to support myself under this most grievous calamity ^" The king published a procla- mation offering a pardon to all the deserters, provided they would quit the prince of Orange's service and return to their duty. Besides these desertions the king was informed that several of the nobility were raising forces in his rear, with the view of joining the invader. He therefore returned to London, when he received the mortifying intelligence that his son-in law, the prince of Denmark, his daughter, the lady Anne, the duke of Ormond, and others, on whose fidelity he depended, had also deserted to the enemy 2. He sent the queen and the young prince over to France; and on the 8th of December he sent the marquis of Halifax, the earl of Nottingham, and lord Godolphin, to the prince's head-quarters at Hungerford, to offer to call a parliament to settle all the difl^erences that had arisen betwixt him and his people. William's answer was in the language of a conqueror- He dictated terms to his majesty which virtually dethroned him, but with which the king thought it inconsistent and dis- honourable for a crowned head to comply. On the evening of the 10th of December, the king sent for the lord mayor of Ijondon, and charged him with the care and protection of the city, and ordered the privy council to meet the next morn- ing. In this time of trouble and dismay his majesty was con- founded and perplexed betwixt good and bad advice, ha- rassed in his body, disordered in his mind, and disheartened with ominous apprehensions, the effects perhaps of conscious- ness, as well as superstition^. The king entered into a deep consultation with his evil genius, father Petre, and his other popish councillors, who had ' Editor's Note to Burnet's Own Times, iii. 331. - Ellis's Original Letters, iv. ^ Ecbard's Hist, of the Revolution, 174. IfiftS.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 349 brought him to this crisis. They abhorred the thought of a free parliament, well knowing that such a parliament would propose laws that would effectually bar the return of popery ; but they shewed that they were resolved to sacrifice both their sovereign and the liberties of their country, rather than forego the establishment of popery. They represented to his majesty the dishonour of submitting to the terms dictated by the prince of Orange, and magnified the power and zeal of the king cf France. They persuaded him to break faith with his people, and not to summon a parliament, contrary to his solemn j)ro- mises ; but rather to trust to the arm of flesh, and fly to France, than to submit to a victorious prince and an offended parlia- ment. Their advice prevailed, and his majesty resolved to hear no more proposals, but to abandon his subjects, and to throw himself into the arms of that prince whose offer of thirty thousand men he had declined. It has since appeared that this advice had been resolved on a fortnight before, and was sent in writing to the king, at Salisbury, by the Jesuits and priests, who had wrought his ruin. The king paid no atten- tion to it at the time when he was at the head of a gallant army that might have driven the Dutchmen into the sea; but when the soldiers dishonoured their military oaths and character, and deserted their sovereign in the hour of his utmost need, the plan recurred to his thoughts, and on the night of the 10th ot December, without consulting any one, he adopted their fatal advice : '*' In which little compass," says Mr. Echard, " he brought about four things that can hardly be paralleled in history. The^r*^ was his sending a letter to his general, the earl of Feversham, encouraging him to disband his army, which took effect. The next was, the ordering all the writs to be burnt that were not sent out for the calling of the parliament, and entering a caveat against those that were already sent out ; the third was throwing the broad seal into the Thames; just as he was finishing the fourth, his leaving his palace and making the best of his way towards France ^" Apprehensive of falling into the hands of his enemies, and having the bloody fate of his father, and of his predecessor Richard II., before his eyes, his majesty communicated his intentions to none of the Jesuits, who still clung to him as to their last support ; but of his own voluntary act, withdrew himself from the government. Between two and three o'clock of the morning of the 11th of December, his majesty took barge at the Privy Stairs, accompanied only by sir Edward * History of the Revolution, 190. 350 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVTII Hales, Mr. Sheldon, and Labaddie, who the night before had conducted the queen with the prince of Wales to her vessel. He went on board a small ship, which immediately put to sea ; but having been forced by foul weather upon the coast of Kent, he was put ashore at Feversham on the 14th, where, being sus- pected to be a Jesuit, he was seized by a rude rabble, who used his majesty with great indignity, and rifled him of all his money and some jewels that he had concealed about his per- son. Some one, however, recognised his majesty, and informed the mob of his rank ; when they shewed, in their rude manner, the utmost sympathy with fallen greatness, expressed their penitence, and offered to return his property. James was affected at their rude loyalty, and with princely generosity for- gave their sin of ignorance, and accepted the jewels, but de- sired them to keep the money. Here seems to be the end of the Revolution; for what the king did afterwards was forced, and therefore not to be compared to this voluntary act, any otherwise than as it was a confirmation or reiteration of the same thing ^ As SOON as it was known that the king had withdrawn, the mob of London fell furiously upon the newly-erected mass-houses, pulled them down, and utterly destroyed them. They likewise made an indiscriminate gaol delivery, and the felons mixing with their deliverers, committed many robberies, especially in the houses of the papists, and even some of the ambassadors' houses did not escape pillage. From interested motives, the friends of the prince of Orange raised a false alarm, simulta- neously throughout England and Scotland, of a general mas- sacre being at that moment perpetrated by the Irish troops. It was alleged that they were burning towns, cutting the throats of all the protestants, and worse ; that death was the least evil to be expected, for saws, gridirons, protestant bridles, and numberless unmentionable instruments of torture, were said to be provided to destroy those that would not turn pa- pists. This false report put the city of London into the utmost state of alarm, and every man provided arms to defend himself from the Irish papists. This fabrication was intended to pre- judice the public mind against the king, and to excite an ab- horrence of popery 2. When it became public that the king had taken this fatal ' Life of James II. 212.— Echard's Revolution, 174. — Salmon's Chronological Historian, 247. 2 Ellis's Letters, vol. iv.— Salmon's Chronological Historian, i. 247.— Echard's Revolution, 174. 1688.1 CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 351 step of withdrawing from the kingdom, a number of lords, spiritual and temporal, met at the Guildhall, and sent a De- claration to die prince of Orange, suggesting to him the pro- priety of assembling a parliament as soon as possible. And having received information of the king's detention at Fever- sham, " they thought it convenient to send certain persons there to attend him, and to signify their earnest desires that he should be pleased to return to his royal palace at London." But before their an-ival, the carl of Winchelsea had, with some difficulty, persuaded his majesty to return ; he said to his lordship, " the best service you can do me, is to facilitate my departure, and procure means to carry me beyond sea." He was at last prevailed on to stay, but more by constraint than by inclination. This, says Echard, " was an accident that seemed of no great consequence, yet it begun that turn to which all the difficulties that afterwards disordered the Eng- lish affairs may justly be imputed." " The manner," he says, " of this departure was surprising to all men of all jjarties ; and it was the conclusion of all the breaches of faith in this reign, particularly that of the promise of his stay and of a free parliament. All this was done without any public reasons given ; so that it appeared to the world a voluntary, open, and unforced desertion of the government of England, at least as much as was consistent with a secret and incompatible desire to retain it, and at a time when thousands in the nation would have been glad to have seen an accommodation. And thus in a moment was an army in effect disbanded without money, parliament writs destroyed, the broad seal thrown away, and the people left without a governor, like sheep with- out a shepherd. And if ever there was a real desertion of a kingdom, and ever a people left to take care of themselves, this was certainly the time ^." The king arrived at London on the 16th, and was escorted by the inconstant mob, in a triumphal manner, to Whitehall,with acclamations and the greatest demonstrations of joy ; and the same night his majesty issued a proclamation against tumults and the demolishing and plundering of houses ; and this was THE last regal ACT HE EXECUTED IN ENGLAND. There weie bonfires and other demonstrations of popular joy, but the in- fatuated king went next day publicly to mass, which was so- lemnized by the Spanish ambassador's priests ; and thus it may be said he sacrificed three crowns for a mass. On the 17th, the Dutch troops took possession of all the posts about * Echard's Revolution, 190-192. — SalmoD's Chronology. — Life of Je/nes II. 352 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIII. Whitehall and St. James's ; and the same day the king received a communication from his son-in-law, signifying that it would be very convenient, both for the quiet of the city and the safety of his person, that he should remove his court to Ham, where he should be attended by Dutch guards, but perfectly at liberty. When the marquis of Halifax, with other two noble- men, arrived at Whitehall with this delicate message, his ma- jesty had gone to bed ; nevertheless, they were admitted to his bed-side. After reading the prince's letter, the king replied that his order should be complied with ; but upon second thoughts, his majesty wished, with the prince's permission, to remove to Rochester. He asked if he must get out of bed and travel immediately; but they had the decency to say he might remain till morning. Mr. Dell, however, says, when the prince heard of the king's having been at mass, he " sent the lords Macclesfield and Delamere with a verij sharp letter to his majesty, signifying that he expected his immediate departure to Ham ; nor were the peers wanting in expressing their re- sentment of that action in so improper a coujnnctui*e." The prince was overjoyed at his majesty's having chosen Roches- ter for his retreat, as he suspected that it was with a design to facilitate his escape out of the kingdom ; for he instantly sent an order for his removal to Rochester. No circumstance since his landing at Torbay had so annoyed the prince, or dis- concerted his secret intentions, as the king's return from Fever- sham. As one of the extraordinary signs of the times, tending to develope William's views, he arrested the earl of Feversham for high treason, who had been sent by the king, under a flag of truce, with a kind message to invite him to St. James's palace ! The princess Anne, in a letter to Mr. Ellis, says, " the king went accordingly [the next day, the 17th], at one o'clock, and lay that night at one Mr. Eckinse's house, an at- torney in Gravesend, and about ten next morning set forwards for Rochester. His majesty's barge was follow^ed by ten or twelve boats of the prince's soldiers'." At Rochester the king took up his residence at the house of sir Richard Head ; and in the afternoon of the same day the prince of Orange ar- rived at St. James's, attended by Scomberg and a number of nobility and gentry. The king remained several days at Rochester, and on the 23d of December withdrew himself entirely out of the king- dom. He secretly and cautiously passed over to Dover, and » Ellis's Original Letters, vol. iii. 352, 353; iv. 179.— Life of James II. 214. — Salmon's Chronology, 248. 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 353 there embarked for Calais, and was kindly received by the king of France. He was accompanied only by Mr. Sheldon and Mr. Delabaddie ; but, before leaving, he wrote to lord Fever- sham, stating, that if he could have relied on his troops, " he might not have been put to the extremity he was then in, and would at least have had one blow for it." He likewise left a paper, written with his own hand, and which he desired might be published, which cannot be read without some emotion. " The world cannot wonder at my withdrawing myself this second time. I might have expected somewhat better usage after what I writ to the prince of Orange, by my lord Feversham, and the instructions I gave him. But instead of an answer, such as I might have hoped for, what was I to ex- pect after the usage I received, by the making the said earl a prisoner, against the practice and law of nations ; the send- ing his own guards, at eleven at night, to take possession of the posts at Whitehall, without advertising me in the least manner of it ; the sending me at one of the clock at midnight, when I was in bed, a kind of order, by three lords, to be gone out of my own palace before twelve the same morning ? After all this, how could I hope to be safe, so long as I was in the power of one who had not only done this to me, and invaded my kingdoms without any just occasion given him for it, but that did, by his own Declaration, lay the greatest aspersion on me that malice could invent, in the clause of it that concerns my son .? I appeal to all that know me, nay, even to himself, that on their consciences neither he nor they can believe me in the least capable of so unnatural a villainy, nor of so little common sense to be imposed on in a thing of such a nature as that. What had I, then, to expect from one who, by all arts, hath taken such pains to make me appear as black as hell to my own people, as well as to all the world besides ? What effect that hath had at home, all mankind hath seen, by so general a defection in my army as well as in the nation, amongst all sorts of people." James concludes that paper with these words : — " And I appeal to all men, who are considering men, and have had ex- perience, whether any thing can make this nation so great and flourishing as liberty of conscience. Some of our neighbours dread it." To hear a bigotted papist speak of liberty of conscience has a very suspicious appearance; it is not na- tural to the papal system — it is like Satan reproving sin. But this liberty was only designed for dissenters in both king- doms ; for it is perfectly evident, from his treatment of the bishops, that no liberty of conscience was intended for the VOL.III. 2 z 354 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLVIU. members of the chmxh. Liberty of conscience, as suggested by father Petre, could mean nothing else than popish supre- macy and enthraldom of conscience. Upon this subject, James had a monomania; and his prejudices were so strong, and the consequences resulting from them so disastrous, as amounted to what archbishop Bancroft called deliricy. " And not without reason ; for there are many delirious persons who rave only on one topic ; and hardly any raving could be more delirious tlian was the conduct of James, who, though no apostle or missionary even from Rome, endeavoured to compel his subjects to adopt a mode of worship which their con- sciences abhorred." James was unhappily surrounded by evil counsellors, v^ hose advice he more eagerly adopted than that of his constitutional advisers ; and, with the cunning of the serpent, they adopted liberty of conscience as a watch-word, in order to raise up the prejudices of the dissenters in both kingdoms against the established churches. When some one remonstrated with James for hurrying the nation on to po- pery too fast, he replied, that to bring back his kingdoms to the'obedience of Rome would be his greatest glory, and for which he could submit to martyrdom ; that he was old, and therefore had but short time in which to accomplish it. His secret advisers brought him to ruin, and then coun- selled him to remove himself out of the kingdom ; by which means he parted with his birthright, through fear, and want of confidence in God. Nevertheless, his faults do not excuse the sin of rebellion, of which the nation was then guilty ; for although it may be said that he voluntarily withdrew, and left the throne vacant, vet there was a real force upon him, even in the /r5/ flight; but unquestionably so in his final retreat. " But it were in us but hypocrisy to use these pleas, and jus- tify the action of our forefathers, to say, that when a sovereign retreats from his kingdom before an advancing foreign enemy, his servants arrested, and his guards displaced, he is other than deposed; that they that join herein are not guilty of re- bellion; and that they who, in a self-called convention, made the prince of Orange king, did not act against their allegiance to the sovereign, to whom they had plighted their faith. The misconduct of one justifies not the sin of another. David, though of God anointed, lifted not his hand against him who had been once anointed by God, though now his princely spirit was taken from him, and ' an evil spirit from the Lord came upon him :' and so, while we thank God, we should hum- ble ourselves, and pray Him not to remember our sins, or the sins of our forefathers." 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 355 Had not a foreign prince invaded his kingdom, and had not his army and nobility deserted their colours and gone over to the enemy, there was no necessity for deserting his throne and kingdom. Had his army been faithful, he might have made the Dutch invaders prisoners; but it was otherwise permitted, and at this distance of time it is visible to us that the sceptre had departed from him; that God had given his kingdom to ano- ther. He attempted to introduce an idolatrous worship into the churches of these kingdoms, the abomination that maketh desolate, the accursed thing that had defiled the land, but which had been excommunicated from the empire for a hun- dred years, — the setting up of the Blessed Virgin as the mediatrix betwixt God and man. This would have been a real dethronization of the one only Mediator, and a giving of His glory to saints and angels, who, although the former enjoy that rest which is promised to the people of God, yet both are but our " fellow-servants." But God here interposed for the preservation of his church in England through means that in the actors v^^as rebellion, though perhaps they did not enter- tain the thought of dethroning their sovereign when they at first encourged William's ambitious design of seizing his father-in-law's crown. There can be no doubt but that his affections were placed on the crown from the first; for it is not consistent with worldly policy to have run such imminent risk, and with such a paltry force, for the charitable purpose of delivering a foreign nation from arbitrary power, and a church, of which he was not a member, from papal supremacy. 356 CHAPTER XLIX. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. THE RABBLING AND PERSECUTION OF THE CLERGY. 1688. — A proclamation. — Prince of Orange's declaration — its tendency. — A riot — attack on Holyrood-house — Proceedings of the council. — A persecution commenced. — A rumour of a popish massacre. — Alarm at Hamilton. — Rab- bling commenced on Christmas-day. — Case of Mr. Russell — of Mr. Finnic — of Mr. Simpson— of Mr. Milne— of Mr. White— of Mr. Brown— of Mr, Ross — of Mr. Guthrie — of Mr. Skinner — of several other clergymen — of Mr. Stirling— of Mr. Bell— of Mr. Dalgleish— of Mr. Chrighton— of Mr. Macin- tosh.— A representation by some clergymen. 1 689. — Case of Mr. Gregory. — Bishop Rose's letter — Two bishops sent to court. — Bishop Rose's interview with archbishop Sancroft — and bishop Stillingfleet — with bishop Compton — with bishop Turner. — Convention of Scottish peers and others — earl of Arran's speech — address to the prince. — Ambiguous meaning of the word protestant. — Writs issued for a convention. — Bishop Rose's difficulties — inter- view with the bishop of London — and with sir George Mackenzie. — Bishop Compton's speech — bishop Rose's reply. — Bishop Rose introduced to William — their conversation — bishop Rose's reflections. — Rabbling. — The clergy of Glasgow — riot at the cathedral. — Case of Mr. Milne — of Mr. George. — Threatening letter to the clergy of Glasgow. — Presbytery of Paisley. — Case of Mr. Taylor. — Riots at Eastwood — Kilbarchan. — Distress in the presbytery of Dunbarton — and of the province of Glasgow. — The clergy send Dr. Fall to court — got no redress. — A proclamation. — A presbyterian Interdict. — Riot on Sunday in Glasgow — public worship disturbed — riot 'n the church. — Case of Mr. Leslie. — Reflections. 1688. — On the very day that the Dutch invaders landed at Torbay, the king sent a despatch to his Scottish privy council desiring them to issue a proclamation against spreading of false news; and admonishing all men,of whatsoever degree, not to publish, disperse, or repeat treasonable papers or de- clarations, particularly that in the prince of Orange's name. But no attention was paid to this order by the presbyterians ; for the prince's declaration was altogether addressed to them. It dwelt chiefly upon the evil counsellors that had advised the king, and rehearsed all the complaints and grievances of the presbyterians, and in one olace says — " upon these grounds it TlAM Ml v/arwich Scjjare 4-- 1688.] HISTORY OF the CHUUCH of SCOTLAND. 35? is that we cannot any longer forbear to declare that to our great regret we see, that those counsellors, who have now the chief credit with the king, have overturned the religion, laws, and liberties of those realms, and subjected them in all things relating to their consciences, liberties, and properties, to ar- bitrary government, and that not only by secret and indirect ways, but in an open and undisguised manner." The presby- terians immediately discovered their natural propensities ; and in all the burghs in the province of Glasgow they read the prince's declaration at the market-crosses, and on the last day of November some of them burnt the effigies of the pope, and the archbishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, in the latter city. The prince had either been suspicious that the Scottish clergy would not transfer their allegiance to him, or his ad- visers, who were chiefly presbyterians, so persuaded him. For, says bishop Sage, " the declaration for the kingdom of Scot- land we found to be purely presbyterian. I am confident Dr. Burnet did not pen it ; otherwise the act of Glasgow had not been put into it as a grievance. He knows very well upon what reasons it was made, and if he pleases can easily justify it ; neither had the clergy of the west (for they must be the men) been so generally pronounced scandalous and ignorant. He was better acquainted with many of them than so ; I had rather think the doctor had never seen that declaration until it was published. But what although he had, and, for reasons of state, thought fit to let it go as it was \ It is no great matter." O, but Gilbert did see it, although he did not write it ; for he himself says, " There was another declaration pre- pared for Scotland. But 1 had no other share in that, but that I corrected it in several places, chiefly in that which re- lated to the chui'ch ; for the Scots at the Hague, who were all presbyterians, had drawn it so, so that by many passages in it the prince by an implication declared in favour of presbytery. He did not see what the consequences of those were, till I explained them. So he ordered them to be altered. And by the declaration that matter was still entire ^" "As I said, it was down right presbyterian, and presaged no good to us ; but God be thanked, it found us generally in good preparation for suffering persecution, for we had cast up our accounts before, and had foreseen that possibly we might be exposed to trials : though we had not much reflected that it was to be by the hands of protestants. We were confirmed further yet in our ' Own Times, iii. 302, 358 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. suspicions, when we found that those who were engaged in the presbyterian interests were flocking up to London, and making the most numerous as well as active appearances about his highness's court ; that they only had his ear, and seemed to be the chief persons, who (upon his majesty's retirement), transferred the government of this kingdom upon him. By these steps we began to see further, too, into the politics of our brethren, and upon what designs they had carried on the schism so vigorously the year before ; yet we never dreaded that such horrid barbarities would be our lot as afterwards were put in execution^." It has been already mentioned, that the Scottish standing army had been called to England to meet the invader, and there was not a soldier left in the kingdom "but an independent company under captain Wallace, at the Abbey '^." On Sun- day, the 9th of December, some idle people, returning from their walk in the park, found the usual passage through the quadrangle of the palace shut up, and the sentinels directed them to go round by the carriage road. This being reported with mighty exaggerations, tradesmen and apprentices col- lected and commenced a riot, attacked the provost's house, and demanded the keys of the gates, with threats of burning his house. They next forced open the door of the cross, and fi'om the usual place proclaimed an offer of £400 sterling to any one who should bring in Perth or Melfort dead or alive. Next day the town council ordered, by proclamation, all parents and masters to keep their servants and children within doors. This proclamation was torn down as soon as it was read ; and lord Perth, the chancellor, left the Abbey, and retired no one knew where. The town remained tranquil till towards night, when a mob began to collect in the Cowgate, and, marching up the Bow with drums beating, went down the High-street towards the palace. The city guard at the Canongate saluted them as they passed. When they reached Holyrood-house, Wallace with his company advanced to oppose them ; to whom they sent a regular summons for admission to the Abbey, which being, of course, refused, they rushed on the soldiers with loud shouts. Wallace now ordered his men to fire, when several were killed, and about forty wounded, some of whom died afterwards. The mob then fell furiously upon the military, two of whom were killed, and the remainder were forced into the palace, when the gates were shut. The dead bodies ^ Account of the Persecution of the Church in Scotland, 4to. 14. 2 Wodrow, iv. 473. 1688. J CHURCH of Scotland 359 having been carried up the street created a violent sensation, and a quorum of the privy council sent down two heralds, with their coats displayed, to summon Wallace to surrender, with orders to force him if he did not. Some firing took place, without much damage on either side, and Wallace would have defended his charge resolutely had not some of the train- bands gained admission by an unguarded back entry. Wal- lace and some of his men then fled, and the mob killed four- teen of the soldiers who had not been able to make their escape. An author, vvho would deal very tenderly with his friends the mob, says, " whether they got liberty, as some of my accounts say, from the town captains, I know not, but they fell pre- sently to rifle the chapel and schools, and brought the timber- work and library, with every thing that came in their way, to the close, and burnt them. It was some time before they could fall upon the images, to destroy which was their end in making the attack. At length they found them in an oven, with an old press set before it to cover its mouth. Those they took out, and carried them up to the town in procession through the streets, and back again to the Abbey-close, and there burned them. They entered the church, burned the new work there, and turned up the marble pavement, and rifled the chancellor's lodgings, and some others in the Abbey ; but none of the youths or apprentices laid their hand on any thing to carry it ofl', but all was burned. Next day they gathered again, there being no voiver to restrain them, and went through the houses of all papists they could hear of in the town, and required their books, beads, crosses, and images, which they bui-nt solemnly in the street. When the people were civil, they took what they gave upon their word, and if rude, they effectually searched their houses. Some took occasion to mix in for pillage, but the youths took all to the flames ^" The council met on Friday, the 14th of December, and it would appear that with the chancellor all the popish members had fled also ; for the council issued a proclamation ordering all sheriffs and magistrates to search the houses of papists within their jurisdictions, and to seize and secure all arms and ammunition that shall be found therein ; but at the same time they ordered the same authorities to protect their persons and properties. On the 24th of December the council made an()jher proclamation, requiring all protestant subjects to put themselves in a posture of defence for securing their religion, lives, liberties, and properties, for their own security against ' Wodrow's History, iv. 474. 360 HISTORY OF THE lCHAP. XLIX. the attempts of papists ; and heritors are called on to meet well provided, at their county towns, under the command of certain individuals who are named in the proclamation. And now the northern hail-storm commenced its desolating blast ; and a scene of persecution ensued such as the Scottish nor any other branch of the catholic church had ever before experienced ; and to make their malice the more profane and de- testable, the presbyterians commenced what was called rabbling the clergy on Christmas-day ; the anniversary of that day on which the Lord of Glory vouchsafed to be bom of a pure virgin, and to tabernacle among men for their salvation. The govern- ment, which had been almost entirely in the hands of papists, was now dissolved, and the whole of the military was removed to England, so that there was no protection for the parochial clergy. The Revolution came upon the church like a thunder- clap, not being in the secret, and not having the least sus- picion of danger. Thus, says an anonymous writer, "the Revolution found us : the crown in full possession of its an- cient hereditary rights and power, and able to exert itself; the church as fully settled as laws and acts of parliament could possibly do it, and filled with a great many orthodox, learned, and loyal clergymen; the subjects sworn by allegiance to their hereditary monarchy in the person of king James VII., their king dejure and de facto, being without competitor, and in full and quiet possession ; and the ancient constitution, by which they enjoyed as much liberty as they were the better for, and had their property secured by excellent laws ; parti- cularly the bishops had a full right to their revenues /or life ; courts of law were filled with judges learned in the law, and very just in their decisions. There was profound peace all over the kingdom, and ihe far greater, and much every way the better part of the nation, were very well contented with their circumstances, and not at all desii'ous of change. The heat of some new converts to popery, in king James's time, pushed that prince into some measures which his other loyal subjects, and even the old papists, were sony for ; but yet were passive, and would not rebel ^" " It pleased Almighty God (to whose providence it be- comes us humbly to submit in all conditions) to permit that we should have a trial of the cross ; whereof God forbid we should * A Short History of the Revolution in Scotland, in a Letter from a Scotch gentleman in Amsterdam to his Friend in London. London, printed and sold byhe book'"'! era of London and Westminster, mdccxii. 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 3G1 ever be ashamed ; and for that end to give us up to the malice of our enemies, that they might thrust lis into the furnace. For carrying on which glorious work, this was their opportunity ; when the certain accounts came of the prince of Orange's resolutions to come into England, all our standing forces were called thither : so that this kingdom was left destitute of such means as were necessary to secure the peace, if any disturbance should happen to arise amongst us when the prince landed. King James being deserted by his army, and soon after dis- owned by his subjects, was put upon the necessity of leaving Britain : and here in Scotland his council very soon dissolved of its own accord, so that in effect the nation was in a manner without government, by whose fault I am not now to inquire. Upon his majesty's sudden abdication, and the voluntary dis- solution of his council, our brethren found it seasonable for them to turn serious with us. But it was expedient to project how their game might be successful before they began to play it. Therefore a stratagem was contrived ; a general massacre of the protestants was pretended and alleged to be intended by the papists. But how to be effectual, seeing their num- bers were so very few, especially on the south side of the Forth, which was to be the chief scene of the tragedy ? For that, this salvo was at hand. So many thousands of Irishmen were said to be landed in Galloway, had already burnt the town of Kirkcudbright to ashes, and put all to the edge of the sword, young and old, male and female ; only three or four persons (like Job's nuncio) had escaped ; and those savages were post- ing hard to be over the whole kingdom, &c. The story flew at the rate of a miracle ; for within twenty-four hours, or so, it was spread everywhere through the greater half of the king- dom. Nobody doubts now but that people were appointed at several posts to transmit it everywhere at that same time, for it ran like lightning; and wherever it went, it was so confi- dently asserted to be true, that he was forthwith a papist, and upon the plot, who disbelieved it. At first we all wondered what it might mean ; but it was not long before we learned by the effects what was the politic ; for immediately in the western shires, where the fiction was first propagated, tumultuary rabbles knotted, and went about searching for arms every- body's house whom they suspected as disaffected to their in- terests. The pretext was, that the country might be put in a posture of defence against the Irish ; but the real purpose was, that all might be made naked, who were inclinable to retard them in the prosecution of their designs upon the clergy. Es- pecially they were sure no minister should have sword or jnstol VOL. III. 3 A 3(>2 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. (as, indeed, few had any) or any other weapon, that miglit be useful for his defence, if an attempt should be made on him. When they had thus made their preparations for the work (and you would wonder how speedily, and yet how dexterously it was done) they fell frankly toit^" Another account says — " In the month of December, 1688, a sudden and surprising report was spread all over Scotland, that 10,000 papists were landed from Ireland, with strange instruments of death, for despatching protestants; concerning which a letter was writ from the mayor of the city of Glasgow, to the magistrates of the town of Hamilton, bearing that they had already burnt down the town of Kirk- cudbright, and were come within two-and-twenty miles of Hamilton, in order to use them at the same rate. This letter came to hand upon Friday night, immediately before Christ- mas; and all the night after the citizens' wives were running about with their children in their arms, with hideous cries, ' what should become of them and their poor young ones!' Upon Saturday, the contrivance being speedily and warmly managed, against eleven of the clock there were got together, in Douglass moor, some 6,000 presbyterians, well armed, upon pretence of defending the country from these invaders- But their design was quickly discovered; for by three of the clock in the afternoon they were all divided into small detachments of two or three hundred in a company, whose business it was to disarm all that were disaffected to their cause, and which actually they did 2." " It WAS ON Christmas day," the author before quoted con- tinues, " (the day which once brought good tidings of great joy to all people;) that day which once was celebrated by the court of Heaven itself, and whereon they sung. Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and good will towards men : that day which the whole christian church ever since has so- lemnized for the greatest mercy that ever was shewn to sinfu! mortals ; that day I say it was (to the eternal honour of all especially of Scotch presbyterians), on which they began the tragedy ; for so were matters concerted amongst them, thai upon that very day different parties started out in different places, and fell upon the ministers^." About six o'clock on Christmas evening, a party of pres- byterians belonging to his own parish, and to some of whom he had done many acts of kindness, assaulted the rev. Gabriel * Account of the Persecution, 15-16. * The Case of the Episcopal Clergy of Scotland truly represented. Folio, p. 1. ^ Account of the Persecution, 16. — Case of the Episcopal Clergy, p. 1. 1688.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 363 Russell, minister of Govan, close to Glasgow, in the manse. They beat his wife and daughter, and himself, so inhumanly, that it endangered his life. They carried off the poor's box and the communion plate; and when they departed they threatened greater severity and insult if he should ever again presume to preach in the church of Govan, to which he had been legally inducted. About eleven o'clock the same night another party forcibly entered the manse of Cathcart, but Mr. Finnic was then from home. The weather is naturally cold at Christmas, but this year there was a very " vehement frost," yet they thrust his wife, with five small children, out of doors, and then broke and destroyed his furniture, and threw it out of the windows. It was not till after half an hour's entreaty, that the unhappy gentlewoman, with her tender infants, were permitted by the inhuman rabble to shelter themselves among some straw in the stable, without fire or covering of any sort. The severity of the cold, and the fright, threw the younger children into fevers. Next Sunday a presbyterian preacher took forcible possession of Mr. Finnie's pulpit. Another party of the presbyterian reformers attacked Mr. Simpson, the incumbent of Galston, took him also out bare- headed, and caused his sexton substitute his morning gown for his canonical robe, and to tear it from his shoulders. He had hid his robe, so as it could not be found; they took his dressing-gown, as it seems it was necessary that a gown should be torn. After this insulting ceremony they broke the ice, and forced him to wade through the river Irvine, for a consi- derable time, at a deep place, and then, turning his face north- ward, bid him begone to his own country, and never venture, on peril of his life, to return there. The rabbling continued for several days, and another party of presbyterians attacked the manse of Calder, in Lanarkshire, but Mr. Milne, the in- cumbent, happening to be from home, they took his gown, and carried it in a mock solemn procession to the church-yard, where one of the godliest of them made a long harangue, ex- pressive of their zeal for the glory of God and the good old cause; after that a long prayer. After these preliminaries they rent the gown in fragments, and fired a volley of shot over it, to shfnv their hatred for prelacy ; but therein they disho- noured God; for although they could not reach His minister, as they intended, yet they put the greatest mark of contempt on such robes as were used in His service, " for glory and for beauty." At Ballantrae the Whigs entered the minister's house, and a mean pedlar struck the rev. Mr. White on the face with the butt-end of his musket, because he kept his cap 364 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. on his head whilst he spoke to the sovereign people, and en- deavoured to persuade them to more christian conduct. Ano- ther of these reformers thrust at his breast with a sword, and wounded him; "though such was the good providence of God, what through the throng that was in the room, and what through the distance the miscreant stood at, who made the thrust, the wound was not dangerous." They rudely beat and abused his wife, and frightened her into a premature con- finement ^ The Whigs took the rev. Mr. Brown, of Kells, but who was then residing in New Galloway, out of his bed at four o'clock in the morning, and in that state, during a snow-storm, tied him to a cart with his face to the weather, and there left him exposed naked to the frost and snow, and where he would certainly have perished, had not a poor woman compassion- ately thrown some clothes about him, and then untied him. The Whigs in Renfrew attacked the house of the rev. Francis Ross, the incumbent, and after beating and insulting him, they forced his wife, with her tender infant, out in the snow, on the third day after her confinement, and when both mother and child might have perished, but for the humanity of some neighbours, who took her into their house. The presbyterians in the parish of Keir, in Nithsdale, beset the manse, and beat Mr. Guthrie, the parish minister, turned his wife and three of his children out of doors, although two of them were ill of small-pox, and the other sick of a fever: in consequence of this treatment, two of the children shortly afterwards died. They broke and destroyed his furniture, and ended by making a bonfire of it. The PRESBYTERIANS in the parish of Daly, in Ayrshire, attacked the manse, and abused Mr. Skinner, the incumbent, in such a shocking manner, that what between fright and brutal usage, his daughter, a young lady about twenty, was thrown into a fever. A few days afterwards, when she was in the height of it, the rabble returned again, and turned her out of her bed, under pretence of searching for arms. This inhu- man conduct drove her raving mad, and she died in a day or two, repeating, " O, these wicked men will murder my father I^'* A body of ninety armed presbyterian reformers attacked several of the ministers, and proceeded through Ayrshire with similar atrocities to those above narratec?, and the sys- tem was the same in all cases, although they may differ in pome particulars; the same desolating rabblement was carried ' Account of the Persecution, pp. 16, 1". ^ Ibid. 16, 19, 1688.] CHDRCH OF SCOTLAND. 365 on in all the presbyterian districts ; that is, in the two dioceses of Glasgow and Galloway. In general, when they had com- pleted their insults and injuries to the clergymen themselves, they carried off the key of the church door; and when any of these ministers were so courageous as to ask by what rule, either of religion or morality, they could justify such excesses, they usually replied, " By the rule and law of the Solemn League and Covenant, by which they were bound to extirpate prelacy, and hxm^ malignants io condign punishment ^" Upon Christmas day, about ninety armed men forced the minister of Cumnock out of his chamber into the churchyard, where they discharged him to preach any more there under his highest peril. They ordered him to remove immediately from his manse and glebe, and never to receive the stipend. After this " they rent his gown in pieces over his head ; they made a preface to their discourse to this jDurpose, that this they did not as statesmen, but by violence and in a military way of reformation. In this manner, in the same place, and at the same time, used they the minister of Auchinleck, who dwelleth in Cumnock." From this village they marched the same day to Mauchline, " and missing the minister himself, were rude beyond expression to his wife; and finding the English Liturgy, burnt it as a superstitious and popish book: thereafter they went to the churchyard, where they publicly discharged the minister from his office and interest there .... Upon the 27th of December they went to Rickarton, whence they brought the minister of the place to Tarbolton, where they kept for a whole night the ministers of these two parishes under a guard, and next morning brought them to the church- yard of Tarbolton, where they rent the minister's canonical coat, and put the one-half of it about each of the ministers' necks, commanding the church officer of the place to lead them thereby per vices as malefactors, discharging them from all exercise of the ministry, and from their houses, glebes, and stipends, under the highest peril ^." On the same day a party of presbyterians violently broke into the manse of Baldernock, in Stirlingshire, about nine o'clock, and threatened Mrs. Stirling and her servants in a ' Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 517. •• Case of the present Afflicted Clergy of Scotland truly represented. To which is added, for probation, the attestation of many unexceptionable witnesses to every particular ; and all the public acts and proclamations of the Convention of Parliament relating to the Clergy. By a Lov jr of the Church and his Country. London: printed for J. Uinduiar.sh, at the Golden Ball, over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhill. IG'JO. First Coll. of Papers, p. 2. 366 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. XLIX. barbarous manner. With horrid imprecations they threatened to cut off her popish nose, and to rip up her prelatical belly; but they were prevented from putting their threats in execu- tion by the arrival of some friends, who protected her. The rev. Walter Stirling was not at home at the time. 1689. — On the 11th of January, Mr. Gregory, the first minister of Ayr, received a paper, commanding him and all his brethren to leave their ministry against the 15th of the month, under pain of death ; and because he did not regard this order, " there came to his house, upon the 15th, about eight o'clock at night, eleven armed men of them, who com- manded him, under pain of death, to preach no more in the church of Ayr till the prince's further order ; and at the same rate did they treat his colleague that same night. Much about the same time these armed men, with their associates, went through all the ministers' houses within that presbytery [of Ayr], and discharged them any more to exercise their minis- try, and appointed them to remove from their manses, or par- sonage houses and glebes, and discharged them to meddle with their stipends, under the penalty aforesaid. So that now the most of the clergy, through force and violence, have left the country; none in it undertaking their protection, but all the rabble of it in arms against them. And to complete their miseries, those who are indebted to them refuse to pay even so much as may carry them to places of shelter; which ex- poses them to the greatest hardships imaginable. " To OBVIATE the impudent denial of these things, the undersubscribers are able, and shall (if called) in due time, produce sufficient proof of the whole, and that both by writ- ing and witnesses. — Given under our hands at Edinburgh, upon the twenty and sixth day of January, one thousand six hundred eighty-nine years. Signed, J. Gregory, parson of Ayr; Will. Irvine, minister of Kirkmichael; Fran. Fordyce, parson of Cumnock ^" The treatment of the rev. Robert Bell, parson of Kil- marnock, upon the 26th of December, written by himself, re- quires longer notice, and it shall be given chiefly in his own language. Mr. Bell having been requested by his neighbour minister at Rickerton to celebrate the marriage of two persons at that church, in the minister's necessary absence, as he was walking thither, he was seized by two anned men, who came from a great party which he saw at some distance. One oi them, as he came near to him, presented a musket at his head ; ' Case of Afflicted Clergy, First Collection of Papers, 1-3. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 307 whei'eupon he told him he was his prisoner, and would go where he had a mind to carry him. He having recovered his musket, placed Mr. Bell betwixt himself and his companion in arms ; in this posture he was brought to the minister of Kickerton's house, where he was commanded to pull off his hat, calling him rogue and rascal at the same time, and other- wise treating him very rudely. The good gentlewoman set before them abundance of food, and when they had plenti- fully regaled themselves their passion and rancour wore a little off. Mr. Bell then asked the commander of the party by what rule or law they proceeded, in their appearing thus in arms ; he replied, ' by the rule and law of the solemn league and covenant ; by which they were obliged to extirpate pre- lacy, and bring all malignants to condign punishment.' Mr. Bell then said, they would do well to take care that those their proceedings were justifiable by the word of God, and conformable to the practice of Christ, his apostles, and the primitive church, in the propagation of the christian religion. The presbyterian answered him, ' that the doom of all malig- nants is clearly set down in the word of God, and their ap- pearing thus in arms was conformable to the practice of the ancient church of Scotland.' From this house the minister was carried prisoner to Kilmarnock, and in his journey thither, the laird of Bridgehouse, who having come to meet him, took courage to tell the party that their appearing in arms and abus- ing the clergy in this hostile manner were but insolent out- rages against all the law of the nation, and that they would do well to remit their illegal forwardness, together with their pretended grievances, unto the parliament that was now very quickly to be assembled. They answered him ' to stand ofl", and for])ear giving rules to them, for they would take none from him or any man, and that they would not adhere to the prince of Orange, nor the law of the kingdom, any flirther than the solemn league and covenant was fulfilled and prosecuted by both.' By this time they were come near the town, and they counnauded Mr. Bell to pluck off his hat, which order he obeyed ; yet, in the same breath, they threatened to throw him into the river. When they came to the bridge, they met the whole of the aforesaid party returning from the market- place, where they had compelled the church officer to deliver up the keys of the church. Then they discharged, by way of proclamation, the minister, whom, in an opprobrious manner, they called the curate of Kilmarnock, from all intromission with the benefice and casualty of the church, or the least exer- cise of the ministerial function. Mr. Bell could see nothing 368 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. in their faces but the most insulting joy, nor find any thing in their discourses but the most reproaching language that ever the greatest criminal in the world was treated with. After a long consultation among themselves, one of their chief com- manders came and asked him if he had a Book of Common Prayer. Mr. Bell desired to know of him why ho asked that question; he answered, 'that sure he could not want that book, since he had been educated at Oxford, and trained up in all the superstition and idolatry of the church of England.' Mr. Bell told him thatperhaps he hadhalf a dozen of Common Prayer Books ; but all they wanted was one of them, ' for that would do their business.' From this place they carried him back to his house, and there compelled him to deliver into their hands the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. After this, they led him as a prisoner, bareheaded, betwixt four files of musketeers, through a great part of the town unto the market-place, where the whole party, which appeared to be about the number of two hundred, was drawn up in Battalia. They were armed with firelock muskets and pistols. The market-crosses were large upright shafts placed on a flight of circular steps. On the uppermost step these rude guards placed Mr. Bell, with two of their number, one on each hand, and others ranged themselves downwards on the other steps. They called for fire, when one of their commanders made a speech to the people, whom curiosity in some and malignity in others had collected round the cross. He said, ' that they were assembled there to make the curate of the place a spectacle of ignominy, and that they were obliged so to do by virtue of the solemn league and covenant; in obedience to which they were to declare here their abhor- rence of prelacy, and to make declaration of their firm inten- tions and designs to fulfil all the ends of that oath : the pro- pagation of the discipline and the government of the church of Scotland, as it is expressed and contained in the aforesaid league and covenant. And all this they attempted to do, not by virtue of any civil or ecclesiastical authority, but by the mili- tary power, and the might of the posture they were in.' These are the very words of this speech. After this, another of their commanders, taking the Book of Common Prayei*, read the title of it, and, elevating his voice very high, told the people ' that in persuasion of the aforementioned league and covenant, they were now publicly to burn this Book of Common Prayer, which is so full of superstition and idolatry ;' and then throwing it into the fire, and blowing the coals with a pair of bellows, and catching it from amidst the flames, he 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 369 fixed it on the point of a pike, and lifted it up amidst the shouts of the conspirators, ' Down with prelacy, idolatry, and superstition of the churches of England and Scotland.' After all these indignities and impudent reproaches offfred to the most reformed and best constituted churches in the world, they turned themselves to the minister again, and, in a very rude and menacing manner, asked him ' if he was an episco- pal minister's man, and of the communion of the churches of England and Scotland ?' He answered, he was, and did there make full confession of it to the whole world. Then they tore his gown, one of the guard first cutting up the skirt of it with his sword and throwing it under their feet, telling him it was the garment of the whore of Babylon. A promise was demanded of him never to preach nor exercise the office of a minister any more ; but he refused, telling them that such a promise lay not within the compass of his own will, and could not be extorted by force ; and that though they should tear his body, as they had done his gown, they would never be able to reach his conscience. Well, well, said the presbyte- rian, do it at your peril ! Mr. Bell answered, that he would do it at his peril. This is an instance of christian courage and intrepidity, under very trying circumstances, which is rarely to be met with, which in some degree provoked their admira- tion, for they ceased to persecute him any farther, and only asked him what he had to say to them. All this time they ke])t him uncovered. He meekly answered them, ' he was extremely sorry to see protestants so ungratefully exasperated against the best protestant church in the world, that had done such eminent service to our common religion and interest against popery ;' " and withal praying God to forgive them, and not to lay these things to their charge." So they dis- missed the minister, telling him he was an ignorant obdurate curate and malignant. " This is a true copy of that account of those indignities and affronts that were done unto me, Robert Bell, by the presbyterians now in arms in Scotland'." Upon the 27th and 28th of December, Mr. John Dal- gleish, minister of Evandale in Lanarkshire, was taken out o, his house by a company of armed men, who carried him bare- headed to the kirkstile, where many people were collected . the leader railed against him with many opprobrious anc insulting insinuations, and commanded his beadle to tear hi^ gown over his head. The beadle refused to execute thi: insult, when they threatened to kill him ; and they treatet ' Case of the Afflicted Clergy, First Coll. of Papers, 33-36. VOL. Ill ;3 B 370 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. him in such an inhuman manner, that Mr. Dalgleish com- passionately desired him to comply with their commands. They prohibited Mr. Dalgleish from either preaching, or re- siding within his own parish, on peril of his life. Another party of presbyterian legislators treated Mr. James Chrighton, minister of Oilbridge, in the presbytery of Hamilton, in the same way, only with this difference, that they tore and burnt his dressing-gown instead of his canonical one, and then com- pelled him to deliver up the keys of the church with all the communion plate, and made him promise to remove all his fur- niture and property out of the parish within a week, which he did ; and they beat and otherwise ill used his wife to such an extent that she miscarried the same day. A party attacked the manse of Stenhouse, or Steenson, in the presbytery of Irvine, in the county of Ayr. Mr. Angus Macintosh, the in- cumbent, was from home ; but the vagrant covenanters took his gown, discharged their pieces into it, trod it under their feet, and then burnt it. These three cases are attested by Dr. Robert Scott, dean of Glasgow, Mr. George Leslie, minister at Blantyre, and Mr. John Denniston, minister at Glasgow, on the 23d January, 1689 K The clergy in the presbytery of Irvine had been so miserably and sadly persecuted, since the beginning of Decem- ber, by the violent conduct of armed men and furious women, who had banded together in a most barbarous confederacy against them, that they had been forced to fly, and lurk so secretly, that they were unable to meet together in such a full number as to be able particularly to represent all their griev- ances, and which daily increased. Three or four contrived to meet and draw up the representation from which this is taken, and " do, from their own proper knowledge of what they have felt, and from certain accounts from the rest of their brethren, declare that all of their houses have been invadea by these armed men, not only in the day-time, but for the most part under the silence of night ; and so many of the ministers as did not secretly escape were most disgracefully taken to the market- crosses and other public places, and their gowns torn in pieces over their heads, and discharged with greatest threatenings of cruelty ever to enter their churches and preach again. They have also turned many of their wives and chil- dren out of doors, and are still proceeding to do so to others, exposing them to the extremity of the winter cold and to perish for want of bread, when the ministers themselves durst not > Case of the Afflicted Clergy, First Coll. of Papers, 36-39.. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 371 come near them for their relief. The particular instances are so lamentable, and the circumstances of them are so many, as that it would be a long work to enumerate them particu- larly, only this in the general is so well known over all the country that there needs neither particular evidences to prove it, nor more to be said to move the pity of any that are capa- ble to remedy it, and we undersubscribers are content to prove what is here said. Witness your petitioners at Edinburgh, 2oth January, 1689, Charles Littlejohn, minister of Largs ; Alexander Laing, minister of Stewartown ^" On the 27th December, Mr. Hugh Blair, minister of Rutherglen, had all his furniture broken and burnt, and the keys of the church and the communion plate carried otF. Mr. Gabriel Muschat, minister of Cumbernauld, was treated in the same manner. Some parishioners in the parish of Calder, near Glasgow, defended the manse, and prevented the presbyterians from attacking Mr. David Milne, the clergyman, otherwise he would have received the same treatment as his unfortunate brethren'^. We have not yet done with the rabbling work, but it is necessary to take up some proceedings of the bishops that oc- curred in the conclusion of the last year and commencement of this ; and as the fall of the church cannot be better told than in the simple language of the lord bishop of Edinburgh, Dr. Rose, I shall cite a letter of his addressed to the hon. and right rev. Archibald Campbell, which describes the recep- tion of the former at court, and the hints that were adminis- tered to him by the new powers. This letter is dated October 22d, 1713. When, in October 1688, the Scots bishops came to know of the intended invasion by the prince of Orange, a good many of them being then at Edinburgh, meeting together, they concerted and sent up a loyal address to the king [which has been already given]. Afterwards, in November, finding that the prince was landed, and foreseeing the dreadful con- vulsions that were like to ensue, and not knowing what da- mages might arise from thence both to the church and state, they resolved to send up two of their number to the king, with a re- newed tender of their duty ; instructing them also to wait on the bishops of England for advice and assistance, in case that any unlucky thing might possibly happen to occur with re- spect to our church. This resolution being taken, it was re- presented by the two archbishops to his majesty's privy coun- » Case of the Afflicted Clergy, 38. ^ Ibid. 39. 372 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. cil (in which the lord Perth sat as chancellor), and it was agreed unto and approven by them ; whereupon, at the next meeting of the bishops it was not thought fit, even by the archbishops themselves, that any of them (though they were men of the greatest ability and experience) should go up, as being less acceptable to the English bishops from their having con- sented to the taking off the sanguinary laws against papists; and so that undertaking was devolved over upon Dr. Bruce, bishop of Orkney, and me, he having suffered for not agree- ing to that project, and I not concerned, as not being a bishop at that time. And accordingly a commission was drawn and signed for us two, the 3d of December, 1688. The bishop of Orkney promising to come back from the country in eight or ten days' time, that we might journey together, occasioned my stay. But when that time was elapsed, I had a letter from him signifying that he had fallen very ill, and desiring me to go up post so soon as I could, promising to follow so soon as his health could serve. Whereuj)on I took post ; and in a few days coming to Northallerton, where, hearing of the king's having left Rochester, I stood doubtful with myself whether to go forwards or to return. But considering the various and contradictory accounts I had got all along upon the road, and that in case of the king's retirement matters would be so much more dark and perplexed, I resolved to go on, that I might be able to give just accounts of things to my brethren here from time to time, and have the advice of the English bishops, whom I never doubted to find unalterably firm to their master's interest. And as this was the occasion of my coming to London, so, by reason of the bishop of Orkney's illness, that difficult task fell to my share alone. The very next day after my arrival at London I waited on the archbishop of Canterbury (to whom I had the honour to be known some three years before), and after my presenting, and his grace's reading of my commission, his grace said that matters were very dark, and the cloud so thick or gross that they could not see through it. They knew not well what to do for themselves, far less what advice to give to me ; that there was to be a meeting of the bishops with him that very day, and desired me to see him the week thereafter. I next waited on the then bishop of St. Asaph [Dr. Stillingfleet], be- ing of my acquaintance also, who treated me in such a man- ner that I could not but see through his inclinations ; where- fore I resolved to visit him no more, nor address myself to any others of that order, till I should have occasion to learn something farther about them. Wherefore, the week there- 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 373 after I repaired to Lambeth, and told his grace all that had passed betwixt St. Asaph and me ; who, smiling, replied, " St. Asaph was a good man, but an angry man ;" and withal told me that matters still continued dark, and that it behoved me to wait the issue of their convention, which he suspected was only that which would give light and open the scene ; and withal desired me to come to him from time to time, and if any thing occuiTed he would signify it unto me. In that wearisome season (wearisome to me, because ac- quainted with few save those of our countrymen, and of those I knew not whom to trust), I waited on the bishop of Lon- don, and entreated hira to speak to the prince to put a stop to the persecution of our clergy, but to no purpose. I was also with the then Dr. Burnet, upon the same design, but with the same success ; who told me, that he did not meddle in Scots affairs [!]. 1 was also earnestly desired by the bishop of London, and the then viscount of Tarbat and some other Scots peers, to wait upon the prince, and present liim with an ad- {h'ess upon that head. I asked whether I or my address would readily meet with acceptance or success, if it did not compli- ment the prince upon his descent to deliver us from popery and slavery ? They said that was absolutely necessary. I told, that I neither was instructed by my constituents to do so, neither had 1 myself clearness to do it ; and that on these terms I neither could nor would either visit or address his highness. In that season also I had the honour to be ac- quainted and to be several times with the worthy Dr. Turner, the then bishop of Ely, whose conversation was very useful to me and every way agreeable ; and besides these bishops al- ready mentioned, I had not the honour to be acquainted with any other. And thus the whole time of the convention passed off, excepting what was spent in necessary duties and visiting our countrymen, even until the day that the dark scene opened by the surprising vote of abdication, on which very day I went over to Lambeth ; and what passed there be- twixt his grace and me (being all in private), it is both need- less, would be very tedious, and perchance not so very proper to write it. In the close, I told his grace that I would make ready to go home, and only wait upon his grace once more before I took my journey ^. The episcopal clergy in Scotland had not the same reason to rejoice in the revolution that their brethren in England shewed; for tiicy now had to take up the cross of persecution, ' Keith's Catalogue, Go-G9. 374 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. and to endure those afflictions that Dr. Burnet insinuates they all along deserved. They had been deserted by their civil governors, and left to be plundered, abused, and dispos- sessed by the rabble, without the form or semblance of law. Nevertheless, Wodrow calls this revolution " adorable, and never to be forgotten ;" and it certainly never was forgotten, by the patient sufferers in the province of Glasgow. Mr. Echard says, " as the prince shewed himself active and vigi- lant with respect to the affairs of England, so he shewed a suitable regard to those of Scotland and Ireland. On the 7th of this month [January] he assembled all the Scotch peers and gentlemen that were about the town, and by a proper ap- plication to them he obtained from them an address, begging him to take upon him the full administration, as he had done in England ^" On this occasion about thirty peers and eighty commoners attended the prince's summons, in the coun- cil chamber at Whitehall, and chose the duke of Hamilton their president. The prince solicited their advice respecting the security of the protestant religion and the restoration of the laws and liberties of Scotland, agreeable to his Declara- tion ; he then retired, and left them to deliberate. After they had deliberated, and just before the meeting broke up, the duke's elest son, the earl of Arran, moved an amendment that was unanimously rejected, and by none more vehemently than by his own father, that they should move the prince to desire the king to return and call a free parliament : — " I have all the honour and deference," he said, " imaginable for the prince of Orange ; I think him a brave prince, and that we owe him great obligations for contributing so much to our deliverance from popery : but while I pay these praises, I cannot violate my duty to my master. I must distinguish betwixt \i\%popery and his person : I dislike the one, but have sworn and do owe allegiance to the other, which makes it impossible for me to sign away that which I cannot forbear believing is the king's my master's right ; for his present absence from us in France cannot more affect my duty, than his longer absence from us [in England] has done all this while. And therefore, as the prince has desired our advice, mine is, that we should move his majesty to return and call a free parliament, for securing our religion and property; which, in my humble opinion, will at last be found the best way to heal all our breaches 2," This amendment embodied nearly the sentiments of the whole Scottish church, but as matters now stood it was an impossibility to comply with it, for the prince had got posses- ' History of the Revolution, 220. » Skinner's Eccles. Hist. ii. 519. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 375 sion of the whole power of the crown, although the litle of king had not yet been bestowed upon him. Next day the same parties met again in the same place, and agreed upon an address to the prince, thanking him for his pious and generous under- taking, and desiring him to assume the administration of the government of Scotland, and to summon a convention of estates to meet at Edinburgh on the 14 th of March next. They also recommended that the electors and members of the said convention be protestants, without any other exception or limitation whatsoever. The duke of Hamilton presented the address to the prince, who thanked his grace for it; and on the 14th signified his compliance with it, assuring them that they should always find him ready to concur in every thing that may be found necessary for securing the protestant religion, and for restoring the laws and liberties of the nation. The earls of Crawford and Lothian, who arrived in London subsequent to the meeting, waited on the prince, and desired permission to sign the address, which was granted ^. It may be observed, that both in the address and in the prince's answer there is an ambiguity and vagueness about the word protestant, that boded no good to the Scottish branch of the Catholic church. And the fact of their not summoning this pre- late, who was a member of one of the estates of the kingdom, to attend their meeting, gives strong reason to suspect that their intentions were unfriendly to the church ; besides, we know that they were all from the presbyterian districts, had been the secret abettors and instigators of all their tumultuary and rebellious proceedings, and at that very moment were secretly encouraging the rabbling of the clergy, and conceal- ing the truth from William. Both the addressers and the prince might employ the word protestant in any sense that might afterwards be found convenient; and from the proceed- ings of the convention of estates they evidently intended it to mean the presbyterian faction. This meeting, however, was an unauthorised body: they were not called together by any lawful authority; for granting the prince's power to have been made subsequently lawful, he was neither recognised, nor had he accepted the government of Scotland at that time, and they had no delegation from the people in any way what- soever; so that their offering the crown to William was in every sense an unauthorised act, and his accepting such an offer only shews that he wanted but a colourable pretext for his usurpation. ' Cruikshank's History, ii. 491. 376 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. As SOON AS this complimentary farce had been enacted, Wil- liam ordered writs to be issued in his own name, though he was a foreigner, and not recognized in law, for a convention of estates to meet at Edinburgh, but which he was not en- titled to do according to law, for James was still acknowledged as king, and writs ran in his name. Hearing how matters stood, and being a legal member of the convention, bishop Rose determined to return home; and, he continues — While I was making my visits of leave to my countrymen, I was sur- prisingly told, that some two or three of them attempting to go home without passes, were the first stage stopt on the road, and that none were to expect passes without waiting upon the prince. Whereupon I repaired again to Lambeth, to have his grace's advice, who, considering the necessity of that com- pliment, agreed to my making of it. Upon my applying to the bishop of London to introduce me, his lordship asked me whether I had anything to say to the king? (so was the style in England then). I replied, that I had nothing to say, save that I was going for Scotland, being a member of the conven- tion; for 1 understood that without waiting on the prince (that being the most common Scots style). I could not have a pass, and that without that I must needs be stopped upon the road, as several of my countrymen had been. His lordship asked me again, saying, seeing your clergy have been and are so routed and barbarously treated by the presbyterians, will you not speak to the king to put a stop to that, and in favour of your own clergy? My reply was, that the prince had been often applied to in that matter by several of our nobility, and addressed also by the sufferers themselves, and yet all to no purpose: wherefore I could have no hopes that my interces- sions would be of any avail ; but that if his lordship thought otherwise, I would not decline to make them. His lordship asked me farther, whether any of our countrymen would go along with me, and he spoke particularly of sir George Mac- kenzie. I replied, that I doubted nothing of that; whereupon his lordship bid me find him out, and that both he and I should be at court that day, against three in the afternoon, and that he should surely be there to introduce us. All which (having found sir George) I imparted to him, who liked it very well, and said it was a good occasion, but wished that several of our nobility might be advertised by us to be there also. To which T replied, that I doubted much whether coming in a body to the prince, he would give us access, and that our nobility would be much offended with us, if, coming to court upon our invitation, access should be denied them ; and there- 16S9.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 377 fore I thought it best that we alone should meet the bishop at the time appointed, and advise with him what was fit to be done, which was agreed to; and upon our meeting with the bishop, sir George made that overture to his lordship, which he closing with very warmly, said he would go in to the king, and see if he would appoint a time for the Scots episcopal nobility and gentry to wait upon him in favour of the clergy of Scotland, so sadly persecuted. Whereupon, the bishop leaving us in a room of Whitehall, near adjoining to the place where the prince was, stayed above a full half hour from us, and upon his return told us that the king's answer was, that he would not allow us to come to him in a body, lest that might give jealousy and umbrage to the presbyterians [!] ; neither would he permit them (for the same reason) to come to him in numbers ; and that he would not allow above two of either party at a time to speak to him on church matters. Then the bishop, directing his discourse to me, said — ' My lord, you see that the king having thrown himself upon the water, must keep himself a-swimming with one hand, the presbyterians having joined him closely, and offered to sup- port him, and therefore he cannot cast them off, unless he could see how otherwise he could be served. And the king bids me tell you, that he now knows the state of Scotland much better than he did when he was in Holland: for while there he was made believe that Scotland generally all over was ]iresbyterian, but now he sees that the great body of the nobi- lity and gentry are for episcopacy, and it is the trading and inferior sort that are for presbytery; wherefore he bids me tell you, that if you will undertake to serve him to the purpose that he is served here in England, he will take you by the hand, support the church and [your] order, and thro c off the presbyterians.' My answer to this, was — ' My lord, I cannot but humbly thank the prince for this frankness and ofl'er; — but withal I must tell your lordship, that when I came Ironi Scotland, neither my brethren nor I apprehended any such re- volution as I have now seen in England, and therefore 1 neilhtr was, nor could be, instructed by them what answer to make to the prince's offer; and therefore what 1 say is not in their name, but only my private opinion, which is, that I truly think they will not serve the prince so as he is served in England ; that is (as I take it), to make him their king, or give their suf- frage for his being king. And though as to this matter I can say nothing in their name, and as from them, yet for myself I must say, that rather than do so, I will abandon all the interes*. VOL. III. .'J c 378 HISTORY OF TH2 [CHAP. XLIX. that I have, or may expect to have, in Britain.' Upon this the bishop commended my openness and ingenuity, and said, he believed it was so ; for, says he, all this time you have been here, neither have you waited on the king, nor have any of your brethren, the Scots bishops, made any address to him. So the king must be excused for standing by the presby- terians. Immediately upon this the prince going somewhere abroad, came through our room, and sir George Mackenzie takes leave of him in very few words. I applied to the bishop, and said — * My lord, there is now no farther place for application in our church matters, and this opportunity of taking leave of the prince is lost ; wherefore I beg that your lordship would in- troduce me for that eflfect, if you can, next day, about ten or eleven in the forenoon;' which his lordship both promised and performed. And upon my being admitted to the prince's presence, he came three or four steps forward from his com- pany, and prevented me, by saying — ' My lord, are you going for Scotland ?' My reply was — ' Yes, sir, if you have any commands for me.' ' Then,' he said, ' I hope you will be kind to me, and follow the example of England.' Where- fore, being something difficulted how to make a mannerly and discreet answer, without entangling myself, I readily re- plied— ' Sir, / loill serve you so far as law, reason, or conscience shall allow me.'' How this answer pleased I cannot well tell; but it seems the limitations and conditions of it were not acceptable, for instantly the prince, without saying anything more, turned away from me, and went back to his company-. Considering what had passed the day before, I was much sur- prised to find the prince accost me in those terms; but I presume that either the bishop (not having time) had not ac- quainted him with what had passed, or that the prince pur- posed to try what might be made of me by the honour he did me of that immediate demand: and as that was the first, so it was the last time I had the honour to speak with his highness, when the things I now write were not only upon the matter, but in the selfsame individual words that I have set them down. Whether what the bishop of London delivered as from the prince was so or not, I cannot certainly say, but I think his lordship's word was good enough for that; or whether the prince would have stood by his promise of casting off the presbyterians, and protecting us, in case we had come into his interest, I will not determine, though this seems the most pro- bable unto me, and that for these reasons : he had the presby- terians sure on his side, both from inclination and interest, 1639.] CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 379 many of them having come over with him, and the rest o* them having appeared so warmly, that with no good grace imaginable could they return to king James's interest. Next, by gaining, as he might presume to gain, the episcopal nobi- lity and gentry, which he saw was a great party, and conse- quently that king James would be deprived of his principal support. Then he saw what a hardship it would be on the church of England, and of what bad consequence to see epis- copacy ruined in Scotland, who, no doubt, would have vigo- rously interposed for us, if we, by our carriage, could have been brought to justify their measures^. We must now return to the rabbling, which went on at this lime with great fury ; and as the popish government had dis- solved itself and fled upon the abdication of James, there was now no administration to protect them from " the pelting of this pitiless storm." Till about the middle of January the clergy in the city of Glasgow suffered little save personal rudeness and incivility from the rabble ; only they received letters ordering them to for- bear the exercise of their ministry ,and the houses of some of them were searched for arms. On every Thursday it was their cus- tom to have prayers and a sermon in all the churches. On Thursday, the 17th of January, a multitude, chiefly women, surrounded the cathedral, with the design to have dragged Mr. Milne, the clergyman, out of the pulpit. He endea- voured to escape without going into the church, by the advice of some of his brethren ; but the brutal women caught him, tore his gown off" with his other clothes, stript his shirt off, and were proceeding to remove his small clothes, when he begged of them, for the sake of decency, to be allowed to re- tain them. They beat him most severely, and " used him in such an indecent manner as is not fit to be named; but it cost him his life." He had been one of the clergy of Glasgow for twenty -four years; but he sunk under this species of martyr- dom, and died shortly afterwards. The same day the mob broke open the house-door of Mr Alexander George, incum- bent of the Barony parish, with sledge hammers, and although he was confined to bed by a dangerous fever, they rudely en- tered his chamber, and were proceeding to administer the discipline of the Covenant to him, when the provost and an armed party rescued him from their murderous hands. On the next Sunday, the 20th, the voice of prayer and praise had 1 The Bishop of Edinburgh's Letter to Bishop Campbell, cited in Keith'3 Catalogue, 65, 72. 880 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX entirely ceased, the sanctuary was closed, and " the abomina- tion that maketh desolate" was supreme over the whole city. There was no divine service in any of the churches ^ A COPY of the following letter was sent on the 22d of Janu- ary to each of the clergy in Glasgow : — " We are credibly informed that our pretended provost, Walter Gibson, and his malignant associates, are upon a design of having you restored to your churches some time this or the next week, but if you will take advice and prevent your own trouble, and perhaps ruin, do not listen to their motion, for they are but laying a snare for you, without reflecting upon their own being taken in it themselves : therefore consider what you are doing, and if you desire safety, forbear to attempt any thing suggested upon that head, for assure yourselves that it will not be now the female rabble you will have to engage with, but must resolve in all time coming for such a guard as will be sufficient and diligent to protect you, not only in the church (which even we doubt of), but also in your houses, and that both by night and by day : if you take this warning, you will both save your- selves and prevent the effusion of much blood, but if not, stand to your perils which in all probability will be more formidable than that of Mr. Milne. Let this be a sufficient warning to you, from those who by this desire to exoner themselves 2." This alarming letter, and the case of Mr. Milne, are attested on the 26th by Mr. Alexander George, minister of the Barony, and Mr. John Sage, one uf the ministers of the city of Glas- gow, who say — " We doubt not but there are other instances of the aforesaid violence within our bounds before this time ; but because of our present dispersion, we cannot give any more particular accounts ; only as to the instances above named, we can make them fully appear when called to it 3." The outrages committed in the presbytery of Paisley in January were equally atrocious as some of those that have been narrated already. On Saturday, the 12th of January, several better sort of tradesmen of Paisley, with a rabble at their heels, went to the beadle's house and treated him very cruelly, and wounded him, although he was an old man upwards of seventy, and took the keys of the church from him ; by which means they prevented the clergymen from officiating the next day. They never returned the keys to the lawful owner. On Thurs- day, the 17th, a party of armed men went to Mr. Taylor, the clergyman's house, and required him to quit the parish, and deliver up the manse within two days, threatening him with » Case, &c. 39-40. =" Ibid. 40. » Ibid. 41. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 381 personal maltreatment if he did not comply, or if he ever at- tempted to preach within the parish again. On Sunday, the 13th, Houston, one of the ministers attached to the late Ren- wick's " suffering remnant," usurped the pulpit of the parish of Eastwood, near Paisley, whose lawful incumbent had been several times warned to remove, under threats similar to those already detailed. On Monday, the 14th, about 200 men and women, armed with clubs, went to the manse of Kilbarchan in a tumultuary manner about eight o'clock at night. Three only of them entered the house, the minister being from home; they insulted and ill-used his wife, and ordered her to remove herself and family from the manse ; and directed her to inform her husband never to preach in that parish on peril of his life. " And, to omit more particulars, all the several ministers in the above-mentioned bounds are now forced for the safety oj their lives to fly from their several habitations, and leave their wives and children exposed to their [the rabble's] cruelty ; and to add to their calamity, their parishoners (a very iew discreet persons only excepted) refuse to pay them any part of the stipend, or any otlier debts they may owe them, by which cruel usage many of our number are reduced to extreme ne- cessity^." This document was signed by John Fullerton, moderator ; J. Taylor, minister in Paisley, commissioner. In a letter dated 14th of February, there is a statement drawn up by four clergymen, which embodies all the cases above enumerated, and in conclusion they say — " The whole presbytery of Dumbarton are banished from their charges. In Glasgow the ministers are not secure of their lives, for some nights ago they beat Mr. Milne in the street the second time .... Sir, we who are here are patiently waiting for the effects of the prince's Declaration, which was solemnly pro- claimed over the cross on Wednesday last. If it quiet the country, we are resolved to return to our charges ; a little time will inform us. We had almost forgot to tell you, that on Sunday last the [presbyterian] meeting-house preacher at Douglass caused them to break open the church doors there, and went in and preached. We have wrapped up things in as narrow a compass as was possible : we have written nothing but truth in matter of fact, and which, upon legal trial, shall be made good. Sir, besides all this, they have robbed the minister of Stralton's house, and left him nothing. And they have carried away the minister of Kirkmichael's presentation, decreet of locality [for his stipend], and all his other papers, ' Case of the Afflicted Clergy,, pp. 41, 42. 382 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. with the communion cups. Signed, George Gregorie, Francis Fordyce, William Irvine,minister of Kirkmichael, James Hogg, minister of Ochiltree ^" In this sudden calamity that had befallen that part of the church which was comprised within the two dioceses of Glas- gow and Galloway, the rabbled clergy sought shelter in Edin- burgh and Glasgow. Whilst the barbarous rabbling was in progress, the clergy applied to such of the noblemen that were privy councillors, and had not gone to London ; but they could bring no relief in the present interregnum, whilst the old government was dissolved, and the new had not yet as- sumed the regal authority. This resource failing, they sent up private letters to their friends at London, entreating them to make their afflictions known to the prince. But this ex- pedient had been foreseen by their enemies, and they " had their instruments ready to nin down all private letters as the blackest lies and forgeries ; and we were called all the in- famous things that could be : our design, they said, was to work mischief, and breed disturbances. We were said to be popishly affected ; and the politic of such reports was to hin- der the settlement of the peace, and establishment of the [new] government. In a word, they said we were mortal enemies to the prince of Orange, and all his glorious designs for securing the protestant religion. They alleged that they received letters to the quite contrary ; sure they were, their correspon- dents were men well acquainted with whatever passed ; and besides, they were men of [tender] conscience, and undoubted integrity. They would not conceal the truth, far less would they write lies and falsehoods ; yet they said their accounts bore daily that there were no such persecutions of ministers, no tumults, no rabbles, &c. They alleged the kingdom was in the most profound peace, and every man had all imaginable security, especially the clergy I With such bold affirmations as these, they persuaded his highness, on whom was transferred the government of this kingdom, that all our accounts were most false and villainous, and he ought not to believe them ; only by them he might believe what a pack we were 2," Some friends at court gave the clergy intimation of the way in which they were represented to William. In this dis- mal condition, therefore, the rabbled and dispossessed clergy of the seven presbyteries of Glasgow, Hamilton, Lanerk, Ayr, Irvine, Paisley, and Dumbarton, all within the diocese of Glasgow, where this horrible persecution had first fallen, and ' Case, &c. 43, * Account of the present Persecution, 19. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 383 lay most heavily, " communicated counsels," and came to the resolution of sending up Dr. Fall, then dean of Glasgow, and principal of the University, to London. Living in the midst of these horrors he was well acquainted with the particulars ; and the rabbled clergy drew up a petition beggingWilliam's pro- tection for their persons, for of property few of them had any, together with a commission to himself to act to the best of his judgment in his brethren's name. That the evidence with which he was furnished might be the more unquestionable, he carried up attested accounts from all these presbyteries, under the hands of their moderators, some of which have already been given, and which they undertook to prove on their highest peril. What more could be done to convince unprejudiced minds of the horrible persecution that the episcopal clergy were enduring ? Yet when Dr. Fall arrived in London he found that the prince's ear was preoccupied by the scandalous falsehoods of the presbyterian party, which alone possessed his confidence. William listened, however, to Dr. Fall's representations, and seemed shocked at the barbarities that he related, and appeared willing to protect the clergy. He or- dered a proclamation to be made for the preservation of the peace of the kingdom, dated the 6th of February ; but Dr. Fall was disappointed at not getting some clauses inserted that would have been very useful to the clergy. They had the greater reason to expect protection, as in his declaration from Holland the prince faithfully promised to preserve the episco- pal church, as then established by law, from any alteration^ and even said it was the chief end of his invasion. But all the satisfaction he now gave to the distressed clergy was this proclamation, and to refer them to the convention of the estates, which was to meet on the 14th of March ^ By this proclamation all persons whatsoever were strictly forbidden, under the highest pains, to molest, disturb, or by any manner of way to interrupt or hinder the clergy in the exercise of their ministry, and the peaceable possession of their livings, they demeaning themselves as it became peaceable and good men. For those who had already suffered, this pro- clamation came too late ; but it was of no service even to those who had escaped the " rabbling," as this persecution was called. Upon the promise of protection and the keeping of the peace required, many of the principal inhabitants of Glasgow solicited their clergymen to resume their functions, and to officiate as formerly in the churches. The parson of ' Account of the present Persecution, 20. 384 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. Glasgow accordingly ventured to the pulpit in the Cathedral on Sunday, the 17th of February, after the presbyterians had laid an Interdict upon the public service since the 1st of January I But for the greater security, the magistrates thought it prudent to wait upon Thomas Crawford, the captain of a guard of presbyterians that had assumed this post since the troubles began, and " that keep up themselves in contempt of the law of the kingdom and the prince's Declaration, to the terror of the magistrates and all good and peaceable people in this place," Baillie, or alderman James Gibson, went to Craw- ford, and requested him to dismiss his company, assuring him that the magistrates would provide for the peace and security of the town in obedience to the prince's Declaration. Crawford peremptorily refused to comply with this request ; and therefore Gibson protested against his usurpation of this force upon the municipal authorities, and how far the said pretended captain of the guard despised both the prince and the provost's authority. After this intercourse between Gibson and Crawford, " both those parties of the presbyterians that go to the hills and the meeting-houses began to whisper about their illegal and bloody designs against the ministers of the town, and that great body of the people that keep still very- steadfast in frequenting the assemblies of the church, threaten- ing publicly all kinds of persecution unto them in the legal exercise of their religion^." On Sunday morning, the 17th of February, a promiscuous rabble took possession of the street, and hindered the ringing of tlie bells ; but unfortunately the magistrates thought it best to wink at this insolence, which had the effect of encouraging the rabble to greater audacity. The respectable inhabitants were hooted and insulted as they went to the different churches, and threatened to be buried under their ruins. One of the clergy they attacked in the street, but he happily escaped their fury, and got into a house. The magistrates in all the burghs walk formally to church with the burgh officers carrying hal- berts before them ; upon this occasion it was found necessary to make these halberdiers clear the street the whole way from the Guildhall to the Cathedral. The rabble attacked them with sticks ; but the officers cleared the streets, and effected an en- trance for the magistrates and the respectable part of the con- gregation into the Cathedral, " seating themselves according to their ranks and qualities in the usual postures of devotion in which the service of God is performed in our church. " After ' Account of the present Persecution, 21. — Case, &c. 50-51. 1689.] CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. 385 prayers were ended," says the attested account of this sacrile- gious uproar, " towards the middle part of the sermon, the foremenlioucd Thomas Crawford, the pretended captain of the guard, came into the church, and cried aloud to the people that ' the town was in arms.' He was answered — ' that five or six hundred people of the best quality in town were assembled in church to the service of God, according to law and the prince's last Declaration ; that they were naked men without arras, or the least intention to make any resistance ; and if the town was in arms, he was more concerned to look to it than they, he being the pretended captain of the guard.' And like- wise he was told — ' that if the people in the church had de- signed any opposition to such as might disturb them in the exercise of their religion, they would have appeared in an armed posture (which, out of a due respect to the house of God and the prince's Declaration, they did forbear to do) ; and then he should have found them too strong for any party that durst have assaulted them : but they came not thither to fight, but to serve God.' The parson continued preaching until he finished his sermon;" an instance of moral courage that has only been paralleled by the late bishop of Bristol during the sacking and burning of that city by tlie patrons of the Reform Bill. " Towards the latter end of the prayers after sermon, the meeting-houses being dismissed and joining the hill party that appeared by this time in arms upon the streets, [another account says this junction was formed at the desire of the presbyterian ministers from their pulpits before they dismissed their congregations], and together with the company that was upon the guard, they formed themselves in a great body, and then marched off under the conduct of the laird of Carsland, taking their way straight to the Cathedral church ; when they came to it, they fired both upon the people that had fled to the pinnacles and buttresses of the church, and through the door, where there was a little boy dangerously wounded on the face ; but at last they broke open the doors of the church, and searching diligently for the parson, they found him. They were desired by the magistrates to dismiss the armed men and go in peace, but they refused it, telling — ' they would have out tliose people that beat off the women and the men from the church door upon the first uproar.' They were answered — ' Tliat the disorders were begun by the rabble against the prince's Declaration ; and that the magistrates could not, without doing infinite injury to the service of God, the honour of the prince, and the authority of government, forbear com- manding the officers and town servants to beat off the rabble VOL. III. 3 D 386 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. that opposed their entry into the church.' But ' that if they would lay down their arms, or go home in peace, and forbear the encouraging and protecting of the rabble in those uproars, they would return in the same peaceable way from the chmxh that they came into it.' But this they absolutely refused to do, telling us — ' They would not desert their sisters, the women, that by this time were assembled in great numbers upon the streets, and in the churchyard.' After this they took up the names of the people of the best quality in church, and then they hurried us out by fives and sixes at several doors of the Cathedral, and so exposed us to the fury of the rabble,' which we might have escaped if they had permitted us to go out in a body. Others of us they pretended to conduct by guards, but carried tis no farther than into the very middle of the rabble. The whole congregation being thus maliciously dissipated, very few of them did escape without wounds or blows ; and particularly the lord Boyd was rudely treated, and had his sword taken from him. Sir John Bell had above a hundred snow-balls thrown at him. The laird of Barrowfield and his lady, together with his two brothers, James and William Walkingshaw, were five or six times beaten to the ground. James Corbett was very dangerously wounded in the head by the stroke of a scythe. George Graham, one of the late bailies, was deeply cut in the head in two places. Dr. Wright and his lady, and her mother and sisters, and several other w^omen, were very roughly handled and beaten. Mrs. Anna Patterson, the archbishop's daughter, Mrs. Margaret Fleming, and several other gentlewomen, were cruelly pinched after their clothes were torn off them. There were scores of others severely beaten and bruised, which would be tedious to make mention of here, but only this we must observe, there was a certain carpenter, who was very dangerously wounded by four armed men that promised to conduct him through the rabble, and to whose protection he innocently committed himself This is a true account of what passed upon Sunday last, the 17th of February, 1689, which I, as magistrate of Glasgow, in ab- sence of my lord provost, give under my hand as truth. Signed, James Gibson. For the further testification of the premises, we, under-subscribers, attest the same. Jo. Gillhagie, Patrick Bein."- Upon the authority of the same Declaration, the rev. James Little, minister of Tinwald, in Nilhsdale, with Trailsflat an- nexed, resolved to repossess himself of his church, but was ' Case of the Afflicted Glcrgj-, Second Collection of Papers, 50-53. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 387 exercised most inhumanly by a rabble of females, who not only tore his gown and coat, but also his shirt from him. He was warned by six presbyterians belonging to his parish to desist from the exercise of his ministry at these two churches. He demanded their authority, and warned them of the prince's Declaration, which they laughed at, and informed him that the obligations of the covenant were their authority. He preached the two succeeding Sundays at Tinwald, but it was his turn to preach at Trailsflat the third Sunday. When he went there, he was attacked by about fifty women with clubs, who beat him therewith severely, and then tore his gown from his shoulders and rent it into rags ; they tore his coat and vest, and his shirt also, and were proceeding to strip his breeches off", when he prevailed on them to leave that article of dress upon him. He reminded them that the prince had com- manded all violences to cease till after the Convention of Estates ; they answered, they could not obey man's law, but only the laws of their king in heaven, and that their present outrage must be acceptable to Him. They kept him in this naked state for two hours, exposed to the severity of the cold, all the time pinching and slapping him w'ith their hands. Then they took him to the church door, and ordered him to con- fess all his wickednesses — such as preaching under a popish and tyrannical king, and informing against those who did not keep the kirk. To this address Mr. Little meekly answered, " God Almighty forgive you and me all our wickednesses, and if you will have the patience, I shall preach a sermon to you, ^vllerein I will shew you upon what ground you and I may build the forgiveness of all our wickednesses, because every one that asks forgiveness does not obtain it." They then pelted him with mud, and left him in that naked state to find his way home. They took possession of the keys of the church, and carried them off^. "When the sufferers pleaded with these fanatic ruffians of both sexes, the prince's Declaration, they readily answered that his declaration was all a sham, and published merely for form's sake ; they knew his highness's mind and resolutions better than to think he was opposed to their godly work. Re- peated and unanimous answers to this effect at length o])ened the eyes of the episcopalians, and they began to see more clearly the nature of the presbyterian intrigues than they had hither- to done ; then they began to discover that the rabble had, in the first instance, been hounded out upon them by the whig * Account of the Persecution, 20.— Case, &c. 58, 59. 388 HisTORy OF the [chap. xlix. gentry ; and, says bishop Sage, " it required no great skill, either in logic or poliiics, to conclude that they had got their instructions from their agents at London to continue in their laudable zeal, notwithstanding that Declaration ^" In the meantime, an account of this outrageous contempt of authority was despatched to the prince by the magistrates of Glasgow, by an express ; but no notice whatever was taken of it, far- ther than to refer their complaint to the meeting of the estates which was now at hand, and when the prince's authority would cease for a time. During the interval betwixt the dissolution of the govern- ment in Scotland and the assumption of the sovereign power by the prince of Orange, the principles of the covenant had full scope to exercise their antichristian sway over the minds of its followers. No sooner was the just and salutary pre - sure of lawful government removed by the desertion of the popish members of the government, and to whom, in fact, alone had the government been recently entrusted, than the mob yielded to all the natural evil proj^ensities of the unre- newed heart. History, it is said, teaches by example ; and here is the most unequivocal testimony to the blessings of re- gular and lawful government ; for the same obligations to ex- tii'pate the church were upon the presbyterians during the late reigns, as they now felt suddenly called upon to execute, but the season was not then propitious ; they were not in a con- dition to fulfil its obligations ; the arm of la\^'ful government was extended to suppress their turbulence and to protect the weaker vessels. The princij)les inculcated in the covenant were bad, and the practice of its disciples was no better. Those men who, only a short time before, were most vociferous for liberty for their own consciences, and expressed thankful- ness in words full of the most abject and fulsome flattery, when they were suffered to exercise power, tyrannised over both the persons and consciences of men who were quietly, legally, and inoffensively performing their duties to God ac- cording to the dictates of well-informed consciences. In no country, not even among heathens, was persecution conducted in the way that these presbyterian barbarities were pursued. In all former persecutions, law and supreme power have al- ways exercised dominion, goaded on and stimulated by the bigotted priesthood of either pagan or of papal Rome ; but in this Scottish presbyterian persecution, it was conducted by what the psalmist calls " the beasts of the people," or in the ' Account of the Present Persecution, 21. IG89.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 3S9 language of the times, the " rabble.'''' It will be evident to the meanest capacity, after reading this account of popular excesses, how dangerous it is to suffer the madness of the people to remain unchecked by the salutary restraints of su- preme power ; but how much more dangerous it is to encou- rage the profane vulgar in their violence ! The heart whose sins have not been washed away in holy baptism needs only the absence of restraint to shew how desperately wicked it is, and how ready it is to break out into all the savage lawless- ness of the worst passions, and to bring forth all the fruits of the flesh. Again, on the other hand, had it not been for the furnace of affliction through which the suffering clergy passed, their names would altogether have been unknown to fame. Their moral courage, their christian resolution and christian forbearance, stand out in bright contrast to the turbulent and audacious contemners of all human laws, the presbyterian ministers, who formerly drew down the anger of a justly incensed government for their invincible principles of sedition and schism. Yet the latter have been praised as the founders of our civil and religious liberties ; whereas the fonner were the real sufferers, not from any misdirected execution of the law, not for their alleged crimes, nor for the neglect of their sacred duties, but from the fiendisli malignity, the emulation and hatred, en- gendered by the covenant and the principles of the presbyte- rian religion. The extirpation of episcopacy was the object of this rabbling persecution : that is, the destruction of that office which God incarnate exercised in his own person on earth, and now sustains in heaven, and that which his apostles exercised and conveyed to their successors, to be main- tained and transmitted to the end of the world, when the Chief Bishop shall come again to judgment. It was there- fore for this principle that the clergy in the dioceses of Glasgow and Galloway were persecuted, and for which they had the christian fortitude to suffer the loss of all their worldly goods, — to be willing to lay down their lives — to resist even unto blood; and some of them actually did so, for the truths of those doctrines which came down from Heaven, and for the beauty of those offices, that they had taught had descended from the beginning. But what will these ruthless persecutors of God's church say, when the last trumpet shall thunder through the mighty abyss, and summon them to judgment, and when they shall fmd that a bishop, the Bishop of bishops, shall be their judge — when the original bishops, who were consecrated by our Lord's own hands, shall be sitting on thrones, judging 390 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. XLIX. the twelve tribes of Israel ? Perhaps He may then say to these persecutors as He said to Pilate — those who delivered Him, in the persons of his representatives, unto them, namely, the Jesuits who \ii\(\. these heavy burthens upon their souls, have the greater sin. These meek sufferers for conscience salce had much occasion to mourn; but they, having passed tlirough much ti'ibulation, rest from tlieir labours, and are in joy and felicitv in Abraliam's bosom. They were persecuted for righte- ousness sake, for which a blessing is promised ; they endured afflictions, they fought the good fight, and suffered for the christian cause, like good soldiers; they finished the race that had been set before them, and they kept the faith. And no faith- ful son of that persecuted church will doubt that the crown of righteousness is laid up for them, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to them, " at that day," as well as to all those who, along with them, faithfully adhered to the cross of Christ, when both they and their persecutors shall be called on to answer for the " deeds done in the body." St. Paul defines saving faith to be one that worketh by love; not that specula- tive faith which distinguishes the devil, but an honest and sincere obedience io all God's commandments, which, by put- ting the cause for the effect, the gospel calls faith. If a man love Christ, he will keep His commandments. This rabbling of the clergy, the sacrilegious desecration of the house of God, and the stealing of the communion plate, which had been ex- pressly consecrated and used in His service, cannot be called keeping the commandments of God ; therefore the Covenanters did not hold the true faith. The rabbling of the clergy took place 07ily in the presbyte- rian districts ; a few samples of which, out of a much greater number on record, have been given. That rabbling which we have described from the attested accounts of the sufferers, and which are all drawn up with remarkable modesty, are called by Dr. Cook " incidental ebullitions of popular sentiment!" and he attempts to perpetuate the false witness which he and others have borne against tlie episcopal clergy, by saying, " improper as were these excesses, how light were they, when put in the balance, against the enonnities which, under prelacy, had been perpetrated." But if any enormities had been per- petrated, they were not inflicted because of their religion, but vurely and solely on account of their invincible sins, and enormi- ties of rebellion, 7nurder,a.ndsedition. However, he is compelled to bear witness to the good conduct of the episcopalians '' in tlie nortli of Scotland ; for he say s,where, from the prudence and mildness of the bishops, or from the inclination of the people. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 891 there had been little persecution, the prospect of the change in the ecclesiastical polity excited no ferment*." And Hetherington, in giving vent to his malignant exultation at the triumph of presbyterian principles, says, " they resolved to take that opportunity of expelling the prelatic curates from the parishes which they had so long polluted with their pre- sence, and devastated with their cruelty. They accordingly seized upon these wretched men, turned them out of their usurped abodes, marched them to the boundaries of their re- spective parishes, and sent them away, without offering them any further violence ^ !" Presbyterian authors entirely cover over the enormous atrocities that disgraced their sect at the period of the Revolution, under a few general sentimentalisms. But while affecting to call " these excesses improper," they never forget to give the last stab to the characters of these con- fessors for Christ, who has Himself pronounced a blessing on those who suffer as they had been made unjustly to suffer: — " Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against y on falsely, for my sake. Rejoice ana be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in Heaven." » History, iii. 438. « History, «mj. 173. 392 CHAPTER L. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. CONTINUED RABBLING AND PERSECUTION OF THE CLERGY. 1G89. — An order for the meeting of a Convention in England. — National debt commenced. — Convention. — Resolution of abdication. — William and Mary declared king and queen — proclaimed. — Several bishops refuse the oaths. — The prince's declaration — and for Scotland. — Movement of the rabble. — Col- lege of justice take arms. — Foot-note. — The rabbling proceeds — at Manse of Livingstone — at Bathgate — Midcalder — a general description of their treat- ment.— Convention of estates — manner of its election. — Prince of Orange fa- vourable to episcopacy. — Prince's letter read. — King James's letter — answer to the prince's letter. — A committee of estates. — Covenanters brought into Edinburgh — their conduct. — Claim of right. — Allegiance transferred to William. — The prince and princess of Orange proclaimed king and queen. — Convention turned into a parliament. — William accepts the crown. — The oath, — Petition of the presbyterians. — Proclamation. — Vote of thanks to the rabble. — Effects of the proclamation — not read in Edinburgh. — Irregularity in send- ing the proclamation to the clergy. — Presbyterian ministers did not read the proclamation. — Committee of estates cite the clergy. — Dr. Strachan — his de- fence.— William and Mary take the oath. — Rabbling. — Mr. Macmath. — Burgess. — Mackenzie. — Hamilton. — Selkrig. — Spence. — Mowbray. — Presby- tery of Stranraer. — Mr. Ramsay. — Scott. — Alison. — Gillis. — Mackgill. — An affray. — Craig and Buchanan. — Remarks. — The liturgy. 1689. — Immediately on receiving intelligence of king James's departure from the kingdom, the prince of Orange published an order requiring all those who had served as mem- bers in any of the parliaments held in the reign of king Charles II. to meet him at St. James's on the 26th December the pre- ceding year, together with the aldermen and common council of London. Some of the lords spiritual, and the lords tem- poral, assembled at Westminster on Christmas-day, and ad- dressed the prince, requesting him to summon a Convention to meet on the 22d of January ; and the commons concurred in the same request. The prince returned an answer, saying that he would endeavour to secure the peace of the nation, and is- sue his letters for assembling a convention, as they desired. To remove any apprehensions of a design to alter the disci- 1689.] HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 303 pline of the established church of England, the prince re- ceived the sacrament from the bishop of London on the 30th of December. The same day, he issued a declaration, autho- rising all officers and magistrates, except papists, to continue to act in their rcsj)ective offices and places till the meeling of the convention. On the 10th of January he laid the founda- tion of the National Debt, by borrowing £200,000 irom the City of London ; so that, however glorious or bloodless it was at the time, it has not been a cheap revolution, but has since cost the nation much blood and treasure to maintain it. The CONVENTION assembled at Westminster on the 22d of January ; the marquis of Hastings was chosen speaker by the Upper House, and Henry Powle, esq. by the Commons. A letter was then presented by the prince of Orange, wherein he recommended to them the settlement of the kingdom, the con- dition of the protestants in Ireland, and, above all, despatch and unanimity in their resolutions. The archbishop of Can- terbury, with some of the other bishops, did not attend this convention, although he was urgently pressed by several of his friends. He considered the meeting to be illegal ; neverthe- less, he ought to have attended it, if it had only been to have maintained the rights of his absent sovereign, and to have re- corded his protest. Both houses addressed the prince, and re- turned thanks to his highness for delivering them from popery and arbitrary power, and for his care in the administration of the public affairs, which they desired him to continue. King James hearing of this convention, sent a letter addressed to the lords of his late privy council, asserting that his absence was involuntary, and only temporary; and he recapitulated his complaint against the late proceedings of his son-in-law. Notwithstanding this letter, the House of Commons agreed, on the 28th, to the following resolution : — " That king James TI. having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the king- dom, by breaking the original contract between king and people, and by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental laws and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, hath abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant." This resolution was carried up to the Lords by Mr. Hamp- den, for their concurrence, to which the peers agreed, with these amendments : that instead of the word abdicated, the word deserted should be inserted, and the words the throne is thereby vacant should be wholly left out. The Commons pe- remptorily declined to admit of these amendments, and there- fore sent to the Lords to desire a conference, which was agreed vol.iii. 3 E 394 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. L, to, and a committee was appointed to manage it. The Lords were anxious to substitute the wovd desertiott, but the Com- mons would not agree to it, for their managers said desertion implies fear and compulsion, and they would not admit that coercion had been used, but that the king had made a free and voluntary abdication of the throne. The conferences conti- nued till the 7th of February, when the peers sent a message to the Commons, saying that their lordships had agreed to their vote without any alterations ^ The princess of Orange arrived from Holland at White- hall on the 12th of February. Both houses of the convention attended the prince and princess of Orange at Whitehall, witk a declaration asserting the rights and liberties of the subject, and with a resolution, — " That William and Mary, prince and princess of Orange, be, and be declared, king and queen of England, France, and Ireland, to hold to them during their lives, and the life of the survivor of them ; and that the sole and full exercise of the royal power be only in, and executed by, the said prince of Orange, in the names of the prince and princess during their joint lives. Remainder to the heirs of the body of the princess Anne of Denmark, and the heirs of her body ; re- mainder to the heirs of the body of the prince of Orange." The prince refused the crown upon these conditions, unless the power as well as the name of king was conferred upon him, and he insisted that the princess should have no share in the government. If they would not yield to this demand, he threat- ened to withdraw his army and return to Holland, and leave the kingdom to the mercy of their exasperated sovereign. This threat silenced all opposition ; and on the 13th, William Henry and Mary, prince and princess of Orange, were pro- claimed king and queen at the usual places and with the cus- tomary soleiunities. It is a curious coincidence, that William was bom on the 4th November, 1650; married on the 4th November, 1677 ; and landed at Torbay on the 4th Novem- ber, 1688. His household and ministry were immediately formed, and bishop Burnet observes that there was a majority of whigs, both in the council and among the great officers of state. On the 1st of March, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Gloucester, Ely, Norwich, Bath and Wells, and Peterborough, refused to take the oaths to king William ; ' Life of James II. 221-277 ; where a full account of the Conference is given. — Salmon's Chronological Historian, i. 248, 249. — D'Oyley's Lifeof San- croft. 1689. J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 895 and it is a remarkable circumstance, that four of these bishops were of the seven that had been sent to the Tower, and tried for disobeying king James's illegal orders. In his additional declaration the prince of Orange said — " We are confident that no persons can have had such hard thoughts of us as to imagine that we have any other design in this undertaking than to procure a settlement of the reli- gion and of the liberties and properties of the subjects upon so sure a foundation, that there may be no danger of the na- tion relapsing into the like miseries at any time hereafter." Yet the whole of his actions tended to shew that he had long fixed his firmest affections on the crown. He alleged several points that require to be proved before they can be admitted, but which were entirely forgotten as soon as he had secured the object of his ambition and of his expedition — that the prince of Wales was a supposititious child — that king James made a league with the king of France for the destruction of his j)ro- testant subjects — that Charles II. had been poisoned — and that the earl of Essex had been murdered. These are such hea\y accusations, grievous charges, and horrid crimes, that they require to be proved before they can be believed; for if it were enough to accuse^ there would not be an innocent person found. Although the Jesuits into whose hands James had resigned himself were capable of any atrocity to serve the end that they had in view, and whose principles are such as to create a deserved detestation of popery, yet " to see a father setting up a pretended son against the interest of his own undoubted children; to behold a king bargaining for the destruction of his own subjects; to represent to our minds one brother pre- paring the deadly cup for the other, who yet ventured his crown rather than he would exclude him from the hopes of it in reversion; to look upon the same royal person plotting and managing the assassination of a captive and helpless peer ; are such dismal sights and melancholy scenes, so full of horror and barbarous cruelty, that they must needs make sad im- pressions on the hearts even of the boldest spectators i," and they require better proof than the mere declamation that has been hitherto produced for them, to make them credible. In the prince's declaration for Scotland there was a clause commanding all parties then in arms, except garrisons and the company of foot kept up by the city of Edinburgh, in- stantly to be disbanded, and forbidding any one either to con- tinue in arms or to take them up. This appears a very innocent I Somers' Tracts, 319. — The carl of Essex committed suicide in the water-closet 396 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. L. order; but there was more meant than met the ear. After the successful rabbling in the west, but especially in the city of Glasgow, the few presbyterians in Edinburgh took courage, and formed the resolution of following the example of the west country rabble; and they were also animated in their patriotic intentions by the solicitations and the correspondence of their friends. The magistrates of Edinburgh received an intima- tion that it wast^he intention of' the western rabble to proceed to the capital, to reform the church in that city; and, in fact, they were daily pouring into it. The magistrates determined to defend their city and clergy from the insults of these ferocious reformers, and in addition to their own powers, they invited the College of Justice to join them. The College of Justice means all the gentlemen of Edinburgh connected with the su- preme courts of judicature ^ ; and these, " to their eternal glory," readily complied with the invitation, took up arms, formed themselves into a regiment, and kept guard for several days, according to military discipline. This intrepid body soon daunted the courage of the covenanters, and they com- plained of this opposition to their malevolence as a part of their sufferings and of their persecution ! But the military posture of the College of Justice was " certainly a most ge- nerous action; an undertaking becoming good patriots (thus to appear against tumults and rabbles, the greatest plagues of society, and enemies to the peace of mankind), and deserves to be transmitted to posterity with the highest encomiums." But it was a mighty disappointment to the presbyterians, who thought to have carried the reign of terror into the capital ; for if any tumult had arisen, these gentlemen would very soon liave put it down. The presbyterians, therefore, sent up grievous complaints to their friends at court, who entirely en- 1 In the year 1657 a judgment was given by the Court of Session which de- cided the question of whom the " College of Justice " was composed ; and the following persons were declared by this important judgment to be the privileged members of this very numerous body : — The lords of session — advocates — clerks of session — clerks of the bills — writers to the signet — deputies of the clerks of session, who serve in the outer house ; and their substitutes for registrations, being one in each clerk's ofBce — the three deputies of the clerks of the bills — the clerks of exchequer — the directors of the chancellary, their depute, and two clerks thereof — the writer to the privy seal, and his depute — the clerks of general registers of seisins and hornings— the macers of the session — the keeper of the minute book — the keeper of the rolls of the inner and outer house. But com- prehensive as this list is, the privileges are not confined solely to them ; the following personages are included : — One actual servant of each lord of the session — one servant of each advocate — four extractors in each of the three clerks, offices of the session — two servants employed by the clerk of the register in keeping the public registers — and the librarian of the advocates, library. — Author's Book of the Constitution, p. 459. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 397 grossed the prince's ear, and they easily imposed a plausible account upon him, and thereby procured that clause to be put into the declaration. The prince ordered " all persons to lay down their arms, and therewith their animosities and cruel re- sentments, ordaining also that all ministers that had been violently ejected should return to their respective charges, and so continue, without molestation, until the settling of the go- vernment by the convention of estates; and, in a word, that all things of that nature should be restored as they were in the month of October preceding ^" The gentlemen of the College of Justice, accustomed to shew all deference to the least shadow of authority, imme- diately laid down their arms ; and the clergy imagined that the presbyterians would do the same, albeit contrary to their prin- ciples. On the contrary, they not only continued in arms, but became more audacious than before, and the riot in Glasgow already mentioned was the first-fruits. After the presbyterian government was established, a committee was appointed to cite and examine several of the advocates for having taken up arms at the call of the magistrates, and for the protection of the clergy from the attack of the rabble. " But it seems (whether it was from shame, or some other cause, I know not) they thought fit to let it fall, for they have not yet proceeded farther; yet, on the other hand, the western rabble were never called in question; on the contrary, they were still encouraged, as you shall hear incontinent 2." The rabbling still went on, notwithstanding the prince's order; for the presbyterians said they knew his mind better; they said he only pretended to protect the clergy, but in reality required them to purge the kirk of all malignants. Accord- ingly they attacked the manse of Livingstone, in the county of Linlithgow, and robbed it of all the valuables, insulted the clergyman, and alarmed his wife, who had recently lain in ; and on the following Sunday they prevented the performance of divine service, and forcibly ejected Mr. Honeyman from his cui'e, threatening him with death if he should ever venture to ex- ercise his ministry there again. Another strolling party (for it was remarked that it was not their parishioners who engaged in these sacrilegious afl'rays) attacked Mr. William Mann, mi- nister of Bathgate, in the same county, carried off' the keys of the church and the communion plate, then took and tore his gown over his head, and burnt it. A strolling rabble attacked 1 Case of the Afflicted Clergy, 6, 7. — Account of the Persecution, 20. ^ Ut supra. 31)8 HISTOiiY OFTHE [CHAP. L. the house of Mr. Norman Mackinney, minister of Midcalder, broke open the doors in Iiis absence, insulted his wife, burnt his gown, destroyed his furniture, and carried off the commu- nion plate. It is shocking to humanity to relate every individual case of rabbling of the clergy performed by the presbyterians : in most cases the process was pretty nearly the same : a rabble in arms attacked the clergy in their houses generally at night, beat them, destroyed their furniture, generally robbed them of portable articles of value, and always of the communion plate ; took away the keys of the church, and ordered them to remove from the parish under threats of worse treatment, or even of death. The names and cases of a multitude of these Confessors for Christ are now before me, all of whose depositions it would be impossible to give ; for it was ascertained that the whole clergy of the dioceses of Glasgow and Galloway were served in a similar manner, and with many others in the diocese of Edinburgh, There were upwards of 800 clergy ejected or rabbled out of their churches, and thrown entirely out of bread. " Upon all this, the afflicted ministers saw clearly there was nothing left for them but to suffer patiently the good will of God, which they have done, without the least public com- jjlaint, waiting with all christian submission for a reparation (^f their wrongs from the justice of God, and till those in power shall be graciously pleased to commiserate their condition, since they and their poor families are in very hard and pinch- ing circumstances, having been turned out of their livings and jjroperties in the midst of a hard winter, and suffered not only the spoiling of their goods, but some the loss of their children, and many marks and bruises in their own bodies ; and now are in a state of desolation, not knowing where to lay their heads, or to have bread for themselves or families ^" The PRESBYTERIANS iu the western districts held a numerous meeting at Lesmahago on the 3d of March, where they re- newed the Solemn League and Covenant, and at the same time took a solemn oath to stand to the defence of his highness the prince of Orange. The CONVENTION OF ESTATES sat down on the 14th of March, at Edinburgh, to whom the present persecution of the clergy had been referred. The adherents of king James in it were lew in number. There were present seven bishops — the archbishop of Glasgow, the bishops of Dunkeld, Moray, Dunblane, Ross, the Isles, and Orkney — forty-two peers, forty -nine barons or ' Case, &c., p. 8. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 399 members for counties, and fifty burgesses or members for the burghs. The bishop of Edinburgh said prayers ; and prayed for the safety and restoration of king Jumes. The duke of Hamilton was chosen president. Among their first transactions they laid aside the Lords of the Articles, who till then had ever been thought an essential part of the constitution of a Scottish parliament ^ Before recounting the proceedings of the convention, it will be necessary to notice the manner in which the meeting had been called, the number of the nobility that were absent, the scruples of many, and the manner of the elections. At the time when the prince of Orange issued out writs he was in the eye of the law a foreigner ^ for he had not then assumed the sovereign authority. Many of the nobility were in conse- quence afraid to attend the convention, and the gentry to per- mit themselves to be elected, as they were summoned by no legal authority, but in opposition to the known will of James, who was still acknowledged as the sovereign. If this revolu- tion had miscarried, and James had recovered his crown, their meeting without his writ would unquestionably have been con- sidered high treason. For the same reason, many who did come to attend the convention went away again as soon as they discovered that the convention was not to act by James's authority, and others entered their protests against the legality of the meeting. " All these things," says an anonymous writer, " gave the presbyterians an opportunty of managing their own designs with much the less opposition. For such a number of people, from their scruples, either not coming to, or afterwards leaving, the convention, soon gave the presby- terians the majority into their own hands, which they being once possessed of, contrary even to their own expectations, were not such fools as to part with it, though some who had left them had got over their scruples, and were willing to re- turn ; but then, no right nor reason could induce them [the presbyterians] to admit any amongst them who were not alto- gether the same as themselves : and the truth is, that the people who staid in the convention, and voted there, were so few, that they looked more like a small committee, than the re- presentatives of the nation, and several of them were persons under the sentence of forfeiture and banishment for high treason ; and yet there they sat and voted in the most con- siderable points before them, before they were restored to their blood, or indemnified or had remissions from any mortal ; and ' Crookshanks, ii. 492. 400 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. L. it was not till after the convention was turned into a parliament that their forfeitures were rescinded! " The whole estate of burghs who were members of that convention were chosen in such an [illegal] manner as was never before heard of or known in Scotland, entirely different from what our law and practice did direct. For the prince of Orange ordered the burghs in particular and expressly to choose each its commissioner by the poll ; and the}^ v.ere ac- cordingly chosen by the mob, who chose anybody they were directed to choose, and who they were told would be favoura- ble to his interest who had invested them with a new power they never had before and were fond of. This, however ne- cessary some thought it, cannot be denied to be a plain break- ing in upon our constitution in a matter of great importance, and a manifest violation of our three standing laws and cus- toms in such elections, and such as even the king could not have made, at least without a parliament ^" This extraordinary care for securing a majority in the convention is confirmed by M'Cormick, who says — " By the advice of lord Stair, and the activity of his son, the elections for representatives were so conducted, that the friends of king James could not avail themselves of that influence which he had acquired in the burghs ; and at the same time as the mem- bers were returned, according to this plan, by a poll of all the inhabitants, what they determined was considered as the voice of the people l^" The viscount of Dundee, and some others, betook themselves to arms, and most of the royalists re- tired home to their country houses. " But certain it is," says Mr. Lockhart, " had they [the loyalists] been unanimous among themselves, they were strong enough to have opposed the fanatic party, and crossed them in most of their designs with relation to both church and state. The opinion, likewise, that matters could not long stand in the present posture, in- duced many of the royalists to shun being elected members of that convention, not desiring to homologate any of the prince of Orange's actings, and thereby many more of the fanatics came to be elected than otherwise would have been^." ' Short History of the Revolution in Scotland. — The burgh members were always elected by the magistrates and town council of every royal burgh, and not by the people. This custom continued till the Reform Bill altered the whole constitution of the kingdom. ^ Life of William Carstares, prefixed to State Papers and Letters addressed to William Carstares, confidential secretary to king William during the whole of his reign ; afterwards principal of the University of Edinburgh, p. 37. •* Lockliart Papers, 4to. vol. i. p. 40. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 401 The prince of Orange shewed his anxiety to induce the bishops to transfer their allegiance to him, by the instructions that he gave to the duke of Hamihon ; and bishop Rose was of opinion that if they had complied with his desire, he would have vigorously supported them, and maintained the establishment of the church. " And I am," says the bishop, in that letter which has already been cited, " the more con- firmed in this, that after my down-coming here, my lord St. Andrews and I taking occasion to wait upon duke Hamilton, his grace told us, a day or two before the sitting down of the Convention, that he had it in special charge from king William, that nothing should be done to the prejudice of episcopacy in Scotland, in case the bishops could by any means be brought to befriend his interest ; and prayed us most emphatically, for our own sakes, to follow the example of the Church of Eng- land. To which my lord St. Andrews replied, ' that both by natural allegiance, the laws, and the most solemn oaths, we were engaged in the king's interest, and that we were, by God's grace, to stand by it in the face of all dangers, and to the greatest losses :' subjoining, that ' his grace's quality and in- fluence did put it in his hands to do his master [king James] the greatest service, and himself the surest honour ; and if he acted otherways, it might readily lie as a heavy task and curse, both upon himself and family ^.' " On the second day, a letter from king James was offered to the house ; and at the same time another was presented from the prince of Orange. This occasioned a debate whe- ther or not the letters of James or William should be first read ; but it was carried by a considerable majority that the preference should be given to the latter. In it William expressed his sense " of the kindness and concern that many of their nation had evinced towards him and his undertaking, and of the con- fidence they had in him. He recommended them to enter with all speed upon such consultations with regard to the public good, and to the general interests and inclinations of the people, as may settle them on sure and lasting foundations of peace 2." It also recommended the union of the two kingdoms. Before king James's letter was read, the following minute was entered upon the books of the assembly : — " Forasmuch as there is a letter from king James VII. presented to the meeting of the estates, they, before entering thereof, declare and enact, that notwithstanding of any thing that may be contained in that letter for dissolving them or impeding their procedure, yet they ' Vide Keith's Catalogue, 65-72. * Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 524. VOL. in. 3 F 408 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. L. are a free and lawful meeting of the Estates, and will continue undissolved, until tliey settle and secure the proteslant religion, and the government, laws, and liberties of the Icingdom ^" The letter from king James was dated in Brest harbour, on board the St. Michael, March 1st, requiring them to stand by him, and to own his authority. — " Whereas we have been informed that you, the peers and representatives, .... of our ancient kingdom .... were to meet ... by the usurped authority of the prince of Orange ; we think fit to let you know, that as we have at all times relied upon the faithfulness and affection of you our ancient people, so much that in our greatest misfortunes heretofore we have had recourse to your assistance, and that with good success to our affairs, so now again we require of you to support our royal interest, expecting from you what becomes faithful and loyal subjects, generous and honest men, that will neither suffer yourselves to be ca- joled nor frighted into any action misbecoming true-hearted Scotsmen. . . . And you will likewise ha\ e the opportunity to secure to yourselves and your posterity the gracious pro- mises which we have so often made, of securing your religion, laws, properties, and rights, which we are still resolved to per- form, as soon as it is possible for us to meet you safely in the parliament of our ancient kingdom . . . We further let you know, that we will pardon all such as shall return to their duty before the last day of this month inclusive, and that we will punish with the rigour of our laws all such as shall stand in rebellion against us or our authority 2." James's letter was read in silence, and no member proposed to make any answer to it ; and Mr. Crane, an English gentle- man, who brought it, was first put under arrest, and then dis- missed with a passport instead of an answer ! But on the 23d the convention returned an answer to William's letter, in which they congratulated him on the success of his expe- dition, thanked him for taking upon him the administration of public affairs, and assured him Ihey would come speedily to proper resolutions for the establishment of the government, the laws, and their liberties, upon the solid foundation of the in- clinations of the people ! The conclusion of this letter was very refreshing to those of the rabbled clergy who were then at Edinburgh, and excited a hope that their case would soon be taken into consideration ; for they were as good proteslants as the presbyterians, and they had also rights and liberties as- ' Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 524. — Guthrie's Gen. Hist. x. 284. 2 Life of James II. 287,288. 1689.1 CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 403. serted by the laws, which ought to have been settled and secured as much as the rights and liberties of their persecutors. But tlicir hopes and expectations were not of long continuance. As we have already mentioned, the constitutional body, called the Lords of the Articles, was set aside ; so on the 26th of March a committee was appointed, which boded no good to the established church. A certain number of the bishops were legally entitled to be chosen members of the Articles ; bat the bishops were excluded ; and for this committee of estates there were appointed nine peers, nine knights of the shires, and nine burgesses. This indication of the views cf the convention disheartened the clergy, and excited an apjjre- hension in their minds that the chief object of those who appeared so zealous for the revolution and the protcstant re- ligion was more for the destruction of the episcopal order, than with any design to settle the kingdom on its just and ancient basis. Their apprehensions became stronger when they observed that the convention did not take the clergy of the province of Glasgow under their protection that had been ejected by the rabble fi-om their parochial cures. The PRESBYTERIANS in the western counties had rendered such important services to the cause, that it was considered a judicious movement to bring them into Edinburgh, to over- awe those members of the convention who were attached to king James. Accordingly, about a thousand of these ardent and godly reformers were marched into Edinburgh, and placed under the command of the earl of Leven, and put under mili- tary discipline. Their disorderly conduct was connived at. They placed themselves in groups round all the entrances to the house of parliament, insulted those of the nobility and gentry who stood for episcopacy, and outrageously abused the bishops on their entering and leaving the house. This riotous conduct had the effect desired, for most of the nobility, and all the bishops, refrained from attending a convention where their lives were in danger from excited and bigoted partizans. In consequence, the presbyterian party had every thing ihcir own way; for it immediately placed them in the majority, and, as the author already cited justly observes, the whole conven- tion was now reduced to so small a niunber as to appear more like a committee than the representatives of the nation. Still farther to serve political purposes, a body of regular troops from England was marched into Edinburgh, under the com- mand of general Mackay, consisting of four regiments of in- fantry and one of cavalry. The business of transferring their allegiance to William 404 HISTORY OF THE [CHA.P. L. was managed in the committee, and sir John Dalrymple pro- posed it to the house. After ridiculing the debates in the Enghsh parliament upon the word abdication, where their throne was declared vacant, he made the following motion : — " The estates of the kingdom of Scotland find and declare that king James the Seventh, being a professed papist, did assume the royal power, and acted as a king, without ever taking the oath required by law ; and had by the advice of evil and wicked councillors invaded the fundamental consti- tution of this kingdom, and altered it from a legal and limited monarchy to an arbitrary and despotic power ; and had governed the same to the subversion of the protestant religion, and violation of the laws and liberties of the nation." Here follows a long list of those acts of maladministration of which they accuse him, and then the same clause is repeated ; and the paragraph strangely concludes with — " All which are utterly and directly contrary to the known laws, statutes, and free- dom of this realm, Therefore the Estates of the kingdom find and declare that king James the Seventh . . . hath forfeited THE RIGHT TO THE CROWN, and the tlironc is become vacant. And whereas, &c. . . . that by the law of this kingdom, no papist can be king or queen of this realm, nor bear any office whatsoever in it ; nor can any protestant successor exercise the regal power until he or she swear the coronation oath. . . , That prelacy, and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters, is and hath been a great and insupportable grievance and trouble to this nation, and contrary to the incli- nations of the generality of the people ever since the reforma- tion (they having reformed from popery by presbyters), and therefore ought to be abolished . . . Having an entire con- fidence that his said majesty, the king of England, will perfect the deliverance so far advanced by him, and will still preserve them fi'om the violation of their rights, which they have here asserted, and from all other attempts upon their religion, laws, and liberties, the said estates of the kingdom of Scotland do resolve, that William and Mary, king and queen of England, France, and Ireland, be and are declared king and queen of Scotland, &c. ;" and the remainder of the paragraph is an exact copy of the English declaration. This declaration is commonly called the Claim of Right. It was carried by a large majority, there being only nine nega- tive voices, of whom seven were bishops. It is said, coming events cast their shadows before them ; and this saying was verified in this convention. The son of the late earl of Argyle, who was beheaded for high treason, and attainted, now 1689.] CHURCH CF SCOTLAND. 405 assumed his father's title, and sat in the convention as eavl or Argyle ; most likely on an understanding, before he left Holland, where the revolution was planned, that his blood and title would be restored as soon as William had attained the object of his ambition. Argyle, sir James Montgomery, a nd sir John Dalrymple the lord advocate, were despatched to London with the Claim of Right, and tender of the crown to William and Mary, which they very readily accepted, and Argyle ad- ministered to them the coronation oath. On the 1 1th of April they were proclaimed at Edinburgh king and queen, with the usual formal ties ^. The earl of Crawford moved that a clause should be inserted in their letter, requesting William to turn this conven- tion of estates into a parliament. In answer to this motion the duke of Hamilton declared that king William had been pleased to appoint him his commissioner, and that he was empowered to give the king's consent to an act for turning this meeting into a parliament, and that the earl of Crawford was appointed its president. It is highly probable that these two noblemen understood each other before this subject was broached, and were prepared with an act to transmute this convention into a parliament, when it was immediately prorogued. This was a greater stretch of the prerogative, and an act of more arbitrary power, than ever James had attempted; for the members of the convention were unconstitutionally elected in the first place, and now, without giving the people the freedom of choosing their own representatives, the convention, by the exercise of the prerogative alone, was created a parliament. " And as they had created him their king, so in return he would not be short of them in civility ; he created them his first, and, indeed, his only parliament; being so fond of them, that he continued them all his life, and also took care that they should outlive himself six months, which they did: so that the last session of the Revolution-convention-parliament, chosen in the manner I have told you, did sit and do business since this queen [Anne] came to the throne 2." But the new government was afraid to call a new parliament, lest the churchmen might, as they certainly would, have been elected. " The revolu- tioners," says Lockhart^, " being sensible of this, and afraid to ' M'Cormick's Life of Carstares, 08. — Wodrow s History, iv. 482-84. — Salmon's Chronological Historian. — Account of the Persecution. — Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 526. — Guthrie's General History, x. Short History of the Revolution in Scotland, in a Letter from a Scotch gen- tleman in Amsterdam to his friend in London, 1712 ; cited in Episcopal Maga- zine, 1840. ^ Lockhart papers, 41. 406 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. L. call a parliament, lest the royalists, seeing whither they were driving, should lay aside their scruples, and stand candidates for being elected, had recourse io a shift altogether, I shall say no worse, unprecedented in this kingdom ; and that was, to pass an act turning the convention of estates into a parliament To these above-mentioned unfortunate jealousies of the roy- alists, the turning tlie convention into a parliament, and the framing and imposing the assurance, may be imputed the diffi- culty that has been since found in opposing the fanatic and court party's designs and projects. For having once settled the government as they pleased, and got a parliament that consisted entirely of a set of men of their own stamp and kidney (being mostly old forfeited rebels and gentlemen of no fortune, respect, or families, in the kingdom), they took care to continue that very parliament all king William's reign, and part of queen Anne's too." William received the deputies of the estates with much more civility than his usual phlegmatic manner warranted, and readily condescended to accept that which, in point of fact, he had seized, and then held in secure possession, and that which had been the object of his ambition from the be- ginning. The following fanatical oath was then tendered to him: — " We will serve the eternal God to the utmost of our power, according as He has commanded in His holy word, and the right and due administration of the sacraments, now received and preached within the realm of Scotland : and shall abolish, and gainst and, aW false religion, contrary to the same, &c. And we shall be careful to root out all heretics, and enemies to the true worship of God, that shall be convict by the true kirk of God of the said crimes, out of our lands and empire of Scotland : and all this we faithfully affirm by our solemn oath." Their majesties were undoubtedly bound to be perse- cutors by this oath, and as there could be no doubt at whom heresies, false doctrine, &c. pointed, he was bound to proceed with that rabbling and persecution of the episcopalians which they had begun. William himself saw it in this light, and refused to sign it, till the commissioners replied, that neither the meaning of the oath, nor the laws of Scotland, did import persecution ; which a presbyterian author denounces as false and inconsistent. Then, said he, " I take the oath in that sense." No words can more clearly import persecution ; and although the persecuting clause is a dead letter in the present amiable hand that wields the sceptre, yet she is bound by oath to persecute that church which is in full communion with 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 407 that in which she received her new birth, and from the hands of whose chief minister she received her temporal crown. Soon after tlie meeting of the estates, the presbyterian mi- nisters prepared and presented a petition to the convention, upon the basis of Renwick's and the Sanquhar Declarations. It is headed, " The humble petition of the poor people who have suffered grievous persecntion for their religion, and for their revolts from, and disowning the authority of, king James VII., pleading for devolving the government upon the prince of Orange, now king of England." I'hey rehearse tkeir sufferings for what the law called sedition, treason, and mur- der, but which they themselves denominated religion ; and then they say, " we prostrate ourselves, yet under the sorrow- ing smart of our still bleeding wounds, at your honour's feet, who have a call, a capacity, and we hope a heart to heal vis. .... That you will proceed without any delay to declare the wicked government dissolved, the crown and throne vacant, and James VII., irhom ive never have oivned, and resolve, in conjunction with many thousands of our countrymen, never again to own — to have really forfeited, and rightly to be de- prived of, all the right and title he ever had, or could ever pretend to have thereto, and provide that it may never be in the power of any succeeding ruler to aspire unto or arise to such a capacity of tyrannising ^" The affairs of the rabbled clergy were not noticed at all by the convention for some time. On the 28th of March all the bishops, and many of the nobility, with some of the com- mons, deserted the house, considering it no longer consistent with that allegiance which they owed to king James, to sit in it. After that, the presbyterians easily carried every thing their own way, and their first act, after forfeiting king James in absence, was to publish a pkoclamation against owning the late king James, and commanding public prayers to be made for king William and queen Mary. It ran as follows : — " The estates of this kingdom having proclaimed and declared Wil- liam and Mary king and queen, &c. ... to be king and queen of Scotland, they have thought fit, by public proclamation, to certify the lieges that none presume to own or acknowledge the late king James VII. for their king, nor obey, accept, or assist any commissions or orders that may be emitted by him, or in any way correspond with him; and that none presume, upon their highest peril, by word, writing, in sermons, or any other manner of way, to impugn or disown the roval authority ' Cruikshank's History, ii. 279-80. 408 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. L. of William and Mary, king and queen of Scotland ; but that all the lieges render their dutiful obedience to their majesties; and that none presume to misconstrue the proceedings of the estates, or to create jealousies or misapprehensions of the act- ings of the government; but that all the ministers of the "ospel, within the kingdom, publicly pray for king William and queen Mary as king and queen of this realm : And the estates do require the ministers within the city of Edinburgh, under the pain of being deprived and losing their benefices, to read this proclamation publicly from their pulpits upon next Sunday, being the 14th instant, at the end of their forenoon's sermon : And the ministers on this side of Tay to read the same upon Sunday thereafter, the 2 1st instant; and those be- north Tay upon the 28th instant, under the pain foresaid: Discharging hereby the proclamation of the council, dated 16th September, 1686, to be read hereafter in churches. And the estates do prohibit and discharge any injury to be offered by any person whatsoever to any minister of the gospel, either in churches or meeting-houses, who are presently in posses- sion and exercise of their ministry therein, they behaving themselves as becomes under the present government; and ordains this proclamation to be published at the market-cross of Edinburgh with all the ordinary solemnity, that none may plead ignorance." At the same time the estates passed a vote of thanks to the presbyterians who had come into Edinburgh in such an illegal manner to overawe such of the members as continued faithful to king James. Now these men were the very men that had been engaged with others in that barbarous rabble- ment of the clergy that has been already partly described. It was, therefore, virtually a vote of thanks to that lawless rabble for their most atrocious abuse of the clergy, the plundering of their goods, the sacrilegious robbery of the communion plate that had been solemnly dedicated to God's service, and the depriving them of their benefices and livings ; all of which the estates called important services. But this was not the worst; for the above proclama- tion was designed, as it actually had the effect in part, to eject the whole of the established episcopal clergy; and besides, the convention did not take the clergy in the west, that had been rabbled, under their protection, far less to re- store them to their churches. During the whole time that the convention had sat, the rabble were as busy and barbarous as at the first, and only a few days previous to the proclamation, Mr. Stewart, incumbent of Ratho, presented a petition, com- IG89.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 409 plaining of having been rabbled and ejected from his benefice, and praying for protection. This, says bishop Sage, " gave them occasion to talk of the clergy indefinitely, and of the troubles many of them had met with. But what should be done in relation to them? It was moved, and the motion was entertained, that a proclamation should be ordered, requiring them to disown king James, &c., and promising obedience to all that should give dutiful obedience. But then another proposal was made by the duke of Hamilton, that those who had been thrust from their stations might be likewise com- prehended, commanded home to their respective churches, and promised protection upon their compliance. This was vigo- rously opposed by several of the members, particularly by sir James Montgomery, of Skelmorly, who said, that was down- right taking the whole west upon their top; it would disoblige all the presby terians, and might have very fatal consequences ; therefore the meeting must not look so far back: it would be enough if protection was promised to those who were in the actual possession and exercise of their ministry, which rea- soning prevailed; so it was carried that the proclamation should run as it stands above ^ This proclamation divided the clergy into two classes ; those who, on the 13th of April, were in possession of their churches and in the actual exercise of their ministry, and those who had been expelled by the rabble, and were then living precariously on the benevolence of their fiiends. To the former a conditional protection was promised; to the lat- ter none at all, but moreover the lawless acts of the rabble were confirmed, and they were excluded from their churches. It is to be remarked, that this important proclamation was only pub- lished at the cross at eleven o'clock in the forenoon of Saturday the 13th, and did not appear in print till eleven o'clock that evening. The clergy of Edinburgh were required to read the proclamation from their pulpits on the following day, yet they received no notice of this order, nor received a copy of the proclamation, till about eleven o'clock on Saturday night, and some of them not till Sunday morning. This was rather short notice for complying with a matter of such importance as the transference of their allegiance from one king, to whom and to his heirs they had sworn obedience, to another, and to re- commend and preach it to the people, licsides, at the time that they were required to read the proclamation, William and Mary had not accepted the crown ; and it was requiring ' Account of tlie present Persecution, j). 24, 25. VOr,. Til. 3 G 410 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. L. of them the implicit faith of 'che Roman church to make so light of their consciences and of their oaths so suddenly, with- out time for reflection. Moreover, the order for reading the proclamation did not come to them legitimately, through their bishops, but by the officials of the law. The judicious words of an adversary may well apply to this case: — " The dethron- ing of a king, and the settling of a crown upon the head of a new sovereign, is certainly a matter of so great weight, of such vast importance and concern, that it requires the most serious and deliberate, the most calm and unprejudiced minds to de- termine it: a hasty and undigested resolution, if in any case dangerous, would unquestionably in this prove fatal and remediless ^" That class of the clergy that had escaped the merciless rabble till after the 1 3th of April, had the promise of a preca- rious protection; but such as, perhaps, no government ever before offered. That is, those who should read the proclama- tion, and pray for the new king and queen, were to be ex- empted from the violence of the rabble ; but those who, under whatsoever circumstances, should not read it, " to your task, O rabble; you shall not be questioned for it. Is it not an ex- cellent government where rabbles are constituted judges and executors of the laws ? Was not that brave protection at a juncture when the greatest statesmen and casuists of both na- tions were makiuff protection and allegiance reciprocal? Yes, verily, sir, considering the posture of affairs then, no man without doing violence to his own sense, could put a better gloss upon it. In many men's opinion, these words, * they behaving themselves as becomes, under the present govern- ment,' were designed to comprehend more than reading and praying, and were put in of purpose to expose those to the mercy of the rabble, who (though they should obey that pro- clamation) should at any time thereafter refuse obedience to any thing that a presbyterian meeting, council, or parliament, should enact or determine. Certainly, the words will go so far easily, and without stretching. It is as certain the rabble herefrom took new encouragement, and kept up the persecu- tion as hot as ever; and, for my part, I can see no other thing like law for turning out some ministers afterwards, who had both read and prayed, for not observing the late fast 2." The clergy of Edinburgh had no time allowed them for deliberation, for some of them did not receive the proclama- * Vindication of the Proceedings of the Convention of the Estates in Scotland. ' Account of the present Persecution, 30. 1G89.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAXD. 411 lion till after they were in the pulpit and had commenced the service, and so could not satisfy their consciences about it. The illustrious seven bishops of England that had incurred James's wrath for refusing to read an illegal proclamation, shewed by their example that the clergy were not bound to fol- low the Romish doctrine of an implicit faith, and in blind obedience read every proclamation that may be forced on them by the civil power. This present proclamation con- tained as important and illegal matter as that for which the seven bishops suffered, or as that act of the English parlia- ment for which so many of the English clergy were sus- pended. Yet there was not the least time given to the Edin- burgh clergy, not even to communicate with their bishops ; but they were ordained to open the proclamation from its first folds, and read it without knowing its contents. The clergy all refused to read it, and the clerk in one of the churches having got possession of it, began to read it in opposition to the minister, when the whole congregation got up and indig- nantly left the church before he had read above the one half of it. The clergy were cited to appear before the committee of estates in the course of the next week, to answer for their con- tumacy ^ The proclamation was not delivered to the clergy in the country in proper time by the sheriffs' clerks, who kept many of them back till the days appointed for reading were passed. Yet this legal and sufficient excuse did not save the clergy from deprivation ; init they had also another plea, that the pro- clamation was not delivered to them in due form — that is, by their respective bishops. In all preceding times, public papers that were to be read during divine service v^^ere always transmitted to them by their ordinaries ; and the order of bishops had not yet been abolished. The bishops were the -first estate of parliament, and their government was still in force ; and the inferior clergy could not lawfully be obliged to read any public paper that had not been transmitted to them in the customary legal manner. By the words ministers of the gospel, used in the proclamation, there is no doubt the presbyterian preachers were meant and included as well as the establishetl clergy. The proclamation was sent to each of them, in the same way as to the parochial clergy ; but they universally disobeyed ; yet they were never called in question for their disobedience in not reading it, from mere self-will and insolence, though it was made a sufficient cause for the ejec- ' Account of the Present Persecution, 31. 412 HlSTOllY OF THE [CHAP. L. tion of the episcopal clergy. But the committee knew with whom thev had to do. They very well knew that the presby- terian ministers would not make any compliances, or read any proclamation, until William had first declared in favour of their idol presbytery and their beloved covenant ; and that is the true reason why the oath of allegiance ^vas never exacted from the presbjterian ministers i. After the convention of estates had sent up their commis- sioners to offer the crown to their majesties, they appointed a committee of the estates, as in the time of the dictator, to exe- cute the government till William's will was made known. Information having been laid before them, by the presbyterian party in Edinburgh, that the clergy had not read the procla- mation upon the day appointed, they cited them to appear before the committee. In general, the clergy pleaded scruple of conscience, and want of time to make up their minds upon so momentous a subject as the transferring their allegiance from their natural born hereditary prince to a stranger. These reasons were disregarded, and the committee, by a formal sentence, deprived them of their livings, and declared their churches vacant. Tht: first that appeared to answer their citation was the Rev. Dr. Strachan, professor of theology in the university, and one of the incumbents of the Tron church, and heisrepre- sented, by bishop Sage, to have been " an ingenuous man, and a truly primitive christian." He made a most ingenious and unanswerable defence. He said the estates had declared in their claim of right that none can be king or queen of Scot- land until they have sworn the coronation oath. For this very- reason, they said king James had forfeited his right to thecrown simply because he had assumed and exercised the regal power without having taken the coronation oath. He next shewed them that all that the estates had yet done was only to nomi- nate the prince and princess of Orange, as the persons to whom the crown should be offered; but that they had not yet actu- ally made the offer. These illustrious personages had not ac- cepted it, and it was just possible that they might decline it; but even if they should condescend to accept the crown, as they had not as yet taken the coronation oath, they could not, upon the principles now laid down by the convention, be considered king and queen of Scotland, and therefore he could not pray for them in that character. The committee were mute, and could make no answer to these points ; yet his Case of the Afflicted Clergy, 13. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 413 defence was not sustained, no further lime was allowed for deliberalion, his confession that he had not read the procla- nialion was deemed sufficient, and, although he had a family of thirteen children, he was deprived, and made the first sacri- fice to the exercise of the prerogative. Some other clergymen used the same line of defence, but added, they were willing to pray for the prince and princess as king and queen, so soon as they had taken the coronation oath. But even this availed them nothing, for the real object of this prosecution was to re- move the episcopal clergy from their charges, to make room for the Mess Johns ; they were therefore deprived for not having read the proclamation as ordered. In the course of three weeks the committee deprived about thirty clergymen in Edin- burgh and its neighbourhood ; " and all, too, before William and Mary had sworn the oath, or (which is all one) before ac- counts came from London that they had done it ; for upon their assuming the royal power (you know), the execution of the law belonged to them and their council, and so there was no more place for that committee ^" William and Mary took the coronation oath at Wliitehall, on the 11th May; and the former announced to the council that he and his queen had signed that document, and had appointed their councillors for Scotland. For the most part, these were persons of no experience, and who had never been councillors before : " they came in upon a new found ; they had new and untried rules to walk by, new designs to carry on ; in a word, they had, as it were, a split new system of go- vernment to temper and establish. Besides, there were great varieties of humours at that time in the nation. Armies were in the field, and a parliament was to sit ; so the council had a vast ocean of business before them : and so for some weeks they had not leisure to fall upon the clergy — that is, till about the middle of July 2." In THii INTERIM, the rabbling went on as ferociously as when it commenced on Christmas-day. It was immaterial to the rabble whether the clergy had or had not read the procla- mation ; they were both treated alike ; but of the two, those who complied with the orders of government had the worst treatment. The rabble imagined that the proclamation would have emptied the pulpits as eifectually as their exertions, and therefore there was a short respite — a lull in the terrible hail- storm of popular fury. They imagined that those who had * Account of the present Persecution, 31, 32. — Case of the Afflicted Clergy, 13. '^ Account of the jiresent Persecution, 32. 414 HISTORY OF niE [CHAP. L. taken the Test, and had sworn never to disown king James, would have refused to read the proclamation ; but when they discovered that several of those in the country had swallowed their scruples, and read the proclamation, they recommenced rabbling. If the episcopal clergy should give obedience to the orders of the estates, they must be allowed to remain in their cures, and consequently the presbyterian ministers who coveted their churches would be disappointed of their prey. " Besides," says bishop Sage, " if we may believe the rab- blers themselves, it irritated them to see any man give com- pliance upon this head, for they looked upon them as perjured, and men of no conscience." The first who felt the effects of the tender mercies of these presbyterian legislators was Mr. Macmath, the incumbent of Laswade, a village about six miles from Edinburgh, and in that diocese. One evening, as he was returning home from Edinburgh, four fellows attacked him with awls, and gave him several wounds in the abdomen ; they knocked him down, and filled his mouth with horse dung till he was nearly choked, and left him in that state ^ Mr. Burgess, minister of Tempel, near Dalkeith and dio- cese of Edinburgh, was so anxious to read the proclamation, and to pray for king William and queen Mary, that, finding it was not likely to be sent to him in time, he carefully provided himself with a copy, and read it on the appointed day. On a Sunday morning in June, about two hundred men from other parishes came to the church before the service began, and in- formed him flatly, " Our will is, that you preach no more here, and you shall preach no more." They guarded the church the two following Sundays, and eventually obliged him to quit his parish. Mr. Mackenzie, minister of Kirkliston, who had been for several years chaplain to major-general Mackay's regiment in Holland, and was actually w'ith him at the battle of Killi- cranky, Mr. Hamilton of Kirknewton, Mr. Nimmo of Colling- ton, Mr. Donaldson of Dumbarton, all read the proclamation ; yet were all rabbled. Mr. Hamilton, " a man for the integrity of his life, purity of his doctrine, knowledge, and gift of preach- ing, beyond exception," was first minister of Pennycook, but was deprived by the Test in 1681 ; then of Irvine. He was attacked by a rabble from other parishes, in January, who dragged him in mock procession round the town to the cross, and tore his gown over his head, and told him that was their testimony against episcopacy. They commanded him to va- cate his manse and church, which he the more readily pro- ' Account of the present Persecution, 33. IQSi).] CHUllCH OF SCOTLAND. 415 mised to do as he had just been presented to the parish of Kirk- newton, eight miles from Edinburgli. On the 18lh of April, a company of armed men from another parish, about nine o'clock at night, commanded him, in king William's name, to preach no more at Kirknewton. He procured a protection from the committee of estates ; but notwithstanding, in the month of June, another armed rabble came to the manse about six o'clock, when he was absent, and ejected his wife and six young children, one of whom w^as ill of a fever, and soon died. The act of the convention for the protection of the clergy was produced and read to these men ; to mark their contempt, they took and tore it, and trampled it under their feet ; saying they valued it not, they knew the king's mind better. Sir John Maitland, one of the committee of estates, made some inqui- ries into this rabbling, and Mr. Hamilton was restored to his church ; nevertheless, his house was again attacked, and him- self and wife ejected, when they entirely destroyed his furni- ture, which was afterwards used for firewood. He w^as at last obliged to leave the parish, as his life was in danger^. Mr. William Selkrig, incumbent of Glenholm, in Peebleshire and diocese of Glasgow, read the proclamation, and prayed for king William and queen Mary nominatim. About the middle of June he was rabbled. The presbyterians began to throw his furniture out ; he threatened to complain to the authorities, and they told him they acknowledged no authority but the covenant. He then persuaded them to allow him a fortnight to remove his effects, which, with some diffi- culty, they agreed to. They earned off the key of the church, and padlocked the door, and, as they kept him out of the church, he was obliged to leave his parish and go to Edin- burgh. Mr, David Spence, minister of Kirkurd, in Peeble- shii'e, was rabbled in January by strangers, and they dis- charged him from receiving his stipend, although there was then a whole year in arrear. On the 21st of April the church was again beset by a large armed company, who prevented his reading the proclamation, and carried off the keys of the church. Mr. Spence received a protection from the commit- tee, with orders to the heritors to protect him ; but they pre- tended that it was not in their power. In September the heri- tors cited him before the privy council, who deprived him, and declared his church vacant, because he had not read the proclamation in his house ! Mr. Mowbray, at Uphall, in Lin- lithgowshire, complied with the orders of the council, yet he ' Case of the Afflicted Clergy, 02-65. 416 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. L. was rabbled in the usual way, which so terrified his wife that she died in a few days. He applied to lord Cardross, patron of the parish, for leave to shelter himself in some of his lord- ship's cottages, which his lordship not only refused, but took the keys of the church from him, and thus effectually deprived him of his benefice. The whole of the clergy in the presbytery of Stranraer read the proclamation ; but the presbyterians in that district hired some poor Irish protestants, who had been driven out of their own country whilst popery had the supremacy, during king James's brief tenure, to go in a body and eject all the clergy fii'om their churches and manses, and to commit all the barbarities usual on these disgraceful occasions. They were asked by some of the clergy, why they who had themselves fled from persecution in Ireland, and had received hospitality from them, should persecute men who were obedient to the laws. " Some of them being confounded at this, said that they were pressed^ yea^ hired to what they had done ; yea, some of them vowed they would never go on such an errand again." After the clergy were cast out of their manses, they sheltered themselves in their barns, until they were ejected from them next ; and on^ farmer who took his minister into his house, was rabbled, and obliged, with the minister, to flee to the fields at midnight, to avoid being murdered ^ Wil- liam Fergusson was the leader of this ungrateful and ferocious band, and on Whitsun-eve went to most of the clergy of that oresbytery, and commanded them, on pain of death, not to oreach longer at their respective churches. The rabble had nailed up the doors and windows of the church of Stranraer. Fergusson, with his party, led Mr. Ramsay, the incumbent, to the cross, and shouted, " I discharge you, in the name of king William and queen Mary, and of the convention, upon the pain of death, io preach any more in the church of Stran- raer." To which Mr. Ramsay intrepidly replied, " If he could have open doors he would preach, and would hazard to undergo their cruelty rather than desert his charge, unless he could ])roduce him some warrant from authority for what he did." Mr. Ramsay produced the proclamation, which, he said, was a sufficient order for him to continue his ministry ; but Fergusson attempted to tear the proclamation. Mr. Ram- say then said, " that he was a proper servant of theirs to tear their public orders when he attempted to execute their private commands, for which he could produce no voucher." ' Case, &c. 70, 71. — Late Letter concerning the Sufferings, &c. 9. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 417 An Irish preacher then said, " that Mr. Ramsay, and all the rest of Baal's priests, had been too long permitted to live, let be suffered to preach and to seduce that people any longer 1" To which Mr. Ramsay answered, " that neither he nor any of his brethren could be called Baal's priests ; that they had preached against the idolatry of tlie church of Rome, when the presbyterian ministers were sinfully silent, out of fear king James would have taken away their indul- gence ; that while the church was opposing popery, they did their best to bring it in : and had the episcopal parliament con- descended to abrogate the penal statutes, as the presbyterians did (notwithstanding they had the impudence to call them pa- pists), they would never have got an indulgence." The pre- sence of some resolute friends deterred Fergusson from offer- ing any farther violence to Mr. Ramsay, and having more clergy to rabble that day, he suffered him to escape at that time ^ Mr. Francis Scott, of Tweedsmuir, in Peebleshirc, was ejected, although his wife was only confined four days before. Mr. V»'aliam Alison, of Kilbucho, in the same county, al- though he had complied, was rabbled, his furniture broken, his cows driven from their pasture, and his corn entii-ely destroyed. The indulged presbyterian minister immediately took posses- sion of both church and manse, and Mr. Alison could get no redress. Nine of the heritors of the parish of Airth, in Stir- lingshire, and diocese of Edinburgh, wrote a joint letter to the earl of Eglantine, then at London, to request his lordship to intercede with king William for the restoration of Mr. Paul Gillies, the incumbent of that parish. " He was removed from his charge upon the deposition of two flagitious fellows, who had resolved to damn themselves to get him out of his ministry." It mattered not to the presbyterians whether or not the clergy had complied with the orders of the convention of estates, for whatever might be the consequences, they were determined to fulfil the obligations of the covenant, and dispos- sess the clergy from their livings, by means of the rabble, and to extirpate the episcopal order. All the clergy in the presbytery of Glasgow^ had been rabbled out of their parishes, except Mr. Macgill, the minis- ter of Kilsyth, who was spared till after the l'3th of April. He read the proclamation on the precise day, and prayed in terms of the statute ; but the following Sunday a rabble con- vened from other parishes to interrupt him. Ilis own pa- ' A late Letter concrniiup: the Sufferings of the Epitcoiml Clergy in Scotland, small 4to. Loudon, 1091, p[). 9-11. VOL. III. 3 II 418 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. L. rishioncrs drew up to defend their minister, when an affray took place, in which one of the rabblcrs w as killed. Before the fight, the old clergyman fled to the house of the earl of Kilmarnock, in the neighbourhood, and knew nothing of the death of his assailant. Mr. Maxwell, who was lord Kilsyth's land agent, posted off immediately to Edinburgh, to acquaint the committee of estates with what had happened. He told them the minister had given obedience to the proclamation, and therefore had a right to the protection promised in it ; that when the rabble came upon him, his parishioners thought themselves obliged to defend him, not only out of the respect they entertained for him, but also for their own security ; for they might have been liable to the law, which obliges pa- rishioners to protect their minister. And he added, that unfor- tunately one man had lost his life in the affray. The lord Ross Avas then president of the committee, who replied very gravely to Mr. Maxwell, that he wished the rabble had not been opposed ; such people cared not what they did, and it had been better to have yielded to their humour : he was truly sorry that one of the minister's friends had been killed, but that affair had better be hushed up, for it would be hard to discover the actor, or to get him punished. But, my lord, says Maxwell, it was none of ours, it was one of the rabblers that was killed. " What do you say, sir?" said his lordship, briskly ; " one of the rabblers that was killed ! that may draw deeper than you are aware of !" ^ This is a specimen of the even-handed justice that was exercised by the revolutionary leaders ; but in fact, the rabblers were secretly instigated to their lawless devastation, and were protected afterwards by men in power. The day after they had buried the unfortunate man who had been killed, " the whole company fell upon Mr. Macgill's manse, rifled it, broke and tore all his furniture to pieces, destroyed all his books and papers, carried ofl' about £10 streling of money, plunged his hats and periwigs in the churn amongst some milk, and pounded them with the churn- staff, emptied all his meal out of its repositories, and then the chamber-box amongst it ; in a word, you have hardly read or heard of such barbarous tricks as they played. The poor gen- ' This, says the bishop, reminded him of Hackerston's cow. A tenant of the iaird of Hackerston came to him to excuse himself, that his cow had broken the laird's fence and trespassed on his ground, but hoped his worship would forgive it. " No," said the laird, " you shall make up the fence and pay for the tres- pass."— " O, sir," said the tenant, " I mistook; it was your cow broke over wy fence." — " Then your fence was not good," said the laird; "you should have kept it better." 1688.] CUDRCU OP SCOTLAND 419 tleman sustained a loss to the value of X*150 (a good stock for a Scotch minister), and to this day has got neither repara- tion nor protection ^" Bishop Sage mentions two other instances of the injustice of the new government ; and as they shew the real animus of the new powers, they shall be given in the bishop's own language. " The other two instances," he says, " shall be Mr. Craig and Mr. Buchanan, both ministers within the presbytery of Dum- barton. 1 do not adduce them for any thing that was odd and singular in ihe treatment they had from the rabble, for so far they received only the common measure, but to let you see how little it avails men not only to have complied, but to have done good services, if they have once owned episcopacy. These two gentlemen are barons in Stirlingshire ; that is, they hold such lands of the king in capite as gives them the privilege of voting at the choosing of commissioners for par- liament, or being such themselves if they should be chosen. Now, when the members were a choosing for the late meeting of estates, the gentlemen of that shire of Stirling were almost equally divided about the persons to be elected fur their repre- sentatives. Four were listed [as candidates] ; two were downright malignants, cavaliers, who would have been clear for king James's interest, and two who were as clear for the prince of Orange, ^\^len it came to be determined, the votes ran equal till it came to the two laird ministers who were last, so they had the casting of the balance, and both did it in fa- vour of the new statesmen. What could they have done more for the prince of Orange? Their votes made (and by conse- quence were equivalent to two votes of) two members of the meeting for him ; besides (not being turned out before the 13th of April), they did all duty, read and prayed, &c. Yet, now that they are rabbled, there is no more protection for them than for the rottenest jacobite in the kingdom. These are the advantages of compliance amongst us ; not one of all those whom I have named (and, as I said, it were easy to name as many more) has protection to this day ; none of tliem dare venture to their churches, few or none to their houses 2." King William was not disposed to have been a persecutor, and it would appear from bishop Rose's narrative, already cited, that he would have given the preference, on political grounds, to episcopacy, if he could have prevailed on the bishops to have transferred their allegiance to him. By some preceding acts of parliament, the bishops and clergy were ' Account of the Persecution, 31, 35. ' Ibid. 35. 420 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. L. bound to James by the most stringent oaths, and not only to James but to his heirs ; but William, prince of Orange, was not his heir, although he was very nearly related to him. He founded his claim upon the prince of Wales having been sup- posed not to have been James's son, but one that been intro- duced into ihe queen's apartment in a warming-pan. To this incredible fabrication, bishop Burnet has not failed to add several falsehoods purely his own ; but although one of Wil- liam's declared objects was to inquire into the birth of the prince of Wales, yet that subject was allowed silently to drop, after he had secured the object for which he had in- vaded the kingdom. It is but too evident that William had thrown the affairs of Scotland into the hands of the whig or presbyterian party that had been in opposition to the govern- ment of the duke of Lauderdale, and who were intimately connected with the Mess Johns, from whose principles they had formed their political creed, and whose agency they now employed to " seat king Jesus on his throne." From the pre- sent persecution, and what has still to be narrated of it, as well as the previous history of presbytery, few will dispute the truth of Leslie's assertion, that " it is particularly remark- able of presbytery, that it never came yet into any country upon the face of the earth but by rebellion: that mark lies upon it." It is a mark that has been clearly demonstrated in this history, and, perhaps, at no time has presbytery shewn its natural ferocity more conspicuously than in this persecution. Two THINGS may have been remarked in the details of the horrid atrocities which have just been described, that the epis- copal clergy were taken from a superior class of men to the pres- byterians, who have succeeded them. Then the nobility and gentry devoted their sons to the service of God in the church; but at the present day no gentleman's son ever thinks of enter- ing a presbyterian pulpit, and it is seldom that even respecta- ble farmers' sons ever turn their attention that way. Although the public worship was conducted in an extemporary manner, yet we have seen that the war of extermination was also di- rected against the Book of Common Prayer, and that almost all the clergy had it in their possession. Unhappily, from the want of an authorised public liturgy as a standard of doctrine, the clergy had no Rule ; neither were the catholic and primitive rites, which were afterwards adopted, used in the administra- tion of the holy communion. Although the clergy were pres- byterian in their mode of worship, yet the works of such of them as are still extant decidedly prove that their doctrinal o-pinions rose far above the antinomian coldness of the Cal- 1689.] CHURCH of Scotland. 421 vinistic theory. " It should not be forgotten, liowcver," says a most eminent modern divine, " that the episcopal church, though it had no liturgy, was not destitute of forms to distin- guish it from naked presbytery. The observance of the festi- vals was no slight mark of difference ; the constant reading of the Scriptures, the use of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Doxology, were badges of distinction equally significant. The general tendency was towards liturgical forms. Dr. Monro ^ observes, ' our clergy came as near the best liturgies in their public prayers as might be, and composed prayers for their own use, such as they seldom varied from ; especially in the administration of the sacraments, they took care, by the plainness, gravity, and coherence of their words, that the people might not be left in the dark as to their meaning.' In Orem's History of Old Aberdeen, we have the Order of Morn- ing and Evening Service compiled for the Catliedral, by Henry Scougal, in which occur the General Confession, the Te Deum, and Decalogue ; nay more, the English liturgy had been in- troduced into several churches before the Revolution. Bishop Burnet, w^hile incumbent in Salton, is said to have read it constantly in the parish church ; nor was this a solitary in- stance. Dr. Monro, just quoted, opens a sermon on Good Friday with an allusion which would have been scarcely in- telligible unless the liturgy had been read. He says, * I need not the help of a preface to reconcile this text to this day, it being a part of that gospel which the church appoints to be read on this solemn fast ; when the universal church puts on mourning, and beholds her Redeemer dying in the arms of love.' The scnnon was preached in the north-east auditory of St. Giles's Church, Edinburgh, from St. John xviii., which is the gospel for the day in the Scottish liturgy, but the second Lsson in the English. Does not this indicate the use of the Scottish Service-Book ? In a sermon at the funeral of lord Slrathmore, on St. John xi. 25, &c., he says, ' the first sentence that I have read is placed in the frontispiece of the ofiice for the Burial of the Dead.'' Such allusions are remarkable. The incidental way in which they are introduced indicates the familiar use of the ritual to which they refer. When the clergy were rabbled, as the phrase went, it was not uncommon to hear of their being dragged to the market-cross, where their prayer-book and robes were comiuitted to the flames, as a holocaust to the yentle spirit of presbytery- Such notices as these shew the feeling on the part of the clergy, — the ten- ' Disli'ij] elect of Argyle. — Inquiry into the ucw Oiiiiiiuns, &c. 422 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. L. deiuy towards a better order of things, — the progress towards conformity with the pure example of primitive worship. They shew that the presbyterian mode was submitted to, not chosen, and that it was departed from to a greater extent than is generally supposed ^" In addition to the above, Mr. Green- shields, in his petition, to be afterwards noticed, says that the use of the English liturgy " was no new thing in this place ; I having seen and known that form of worship practised and observed within this city in several places for upwards of twenty years past 2," The English parliament discovered that king James had abdicated the throne, for the law does not admit of his being dej^osed, and it is established by a fiction that the king can do no wrong. When wrong is done, it is advised or executed by his ministers, and therefore they are the responsible parties- James encouraged and fostered a power behind the throne which became greater than the throne itself. He was sur- rounded by Jesuits, and his official ministers, both in England and Scotland, were almost all papists ; and he was hurried on by their evil advice to his own ruin. When one remonstrated with hira upon his extraordinary haste to papalize his king- doms, he said he was growing old, and if he did not make haste he should not live to have the merit of succeeding, or the honour of martyrdom if unsuccessful. Alihough he es- teemed the Jesuits his best friends, yet they were his worst enemies. They advised him to court the dissenters in order to play them off against the church in both kingdoms, by which means he lost the affections of his English subjects, and made them more readily listen to the prince of Orange's specious promises 3. On the fust landing of the prince, James deter- mined, like a brave man, to oppose force to force ; but he found liimself deserted by his army, and not only so, but they had gone over to his adversary and strengthened his ranks. All his councillors had deserted him, and he found himself left to the fatal advice of Petre, and others of his cloth. He found a powerful enemy had taken possession of his kingdom and of his capital, who gave him notice to quit at midnight, • Episcopal Magazine for March, 1836, v. iv. 84, 85. ^ A True State of the Case of the Rev. Mr. Greenshields, 12mo. p. 25. ^ One morning, as he rose, the king found the following lines in his slipper:— " The hearts of all thy friends are lost and gone ; Wondering, they stand and gaze about thy throne, Scarcely believing thee the martyr's son. Those whom thou favour'st merit not thy praise, To their own ends they sacrifice 'thy ease. And will in sorrow make thue end thy days.'' 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 423 as that adversary took possession of his palace the following day. He had now no other alteniative but to abdicate or to retire from a government that had been seized by another party ; and although the wisdom of parliament declared it a voluntary abdication, yet there is no doubt there was a real force upon the king. The PRESBYTERIANS have accused both church and stale of persecution. This is a very unjust charge, unless indeed it may be defined persecution to prevent their murdering the bishops, and shooting and murdering the king's soldiers in their beds and on the highways ; to punish them for excommunicating the king, and declaring that he had forfeited the crown, because he had burnt their covenant ; to send armies into the field to fight and oppose them in three distinct and formal re- bellions ; and to hang individuals of them who had been guilty of treason and murder. If these things can be called persecution, there are few countries wherein so much cause was given for this species of it. But there is not one instance of punishment of any one, purely on account of his religion ; for although the principles of their religion prompted the pres- byterians to all their lawless wickedness, yet it was not for their religion, but for their crimes of rebellion, murder, or sedition, that the vengeance of the government fell upon them. Wodrow presses every trifling circumstance, and the natural consequences of all their crimes against the state and against society, into his category of " sufferings.''' Those who were fined had their fines remitted, and many of those who were sentenced to be hanged would have been reprieved, upon the simple condition of giving utterance to the scripture words — God save the king. Yet such was their obstinacy and delu- sion of mind, that rather than say these words they suffered themselves to be fined, imprisoned, transported, and hanged ; and so, without doubt, they were accessory to their own deaths. In the previous pages of this History we have always found the presbyterian ministers foremost in all seditions and re- ])ellions, and ever ready to instigate their followers to all the breaches of the laws of which they were guilty. And after the horrible persecution to which they subjected th(! episcoi)al clergy, they added the most gross calumnies on their charac- ters, asserting that they were cruel, lewd, and profane ; whereas, says Dr. Leslie, a contemporary, " I have made in- quiry, and am told by persons of known integrity and un- doubted reputation, who lived upon the place, that the episcopal clergy in Scotland, particularly in the west where this rabbling was, were at the time of tlic Ivcvolution, for i)iely, 421 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. L. learning, and diligence in their vocation, the most eminent that country had seen since the reformation, or most churches have enjoyed since the primitive times. And we have seen the proof of it here [London] by the conversation of severals of them, who have been driven hither, as well as by the learned works of others, well acccepted in this nation, by scholars of the first form." — " And if the presbyterians there would speak the truth, they must own that they received great favours from the Scotch bishops, who often skreened them as much as they could from the rigour of the law, and treated them with humanity and tenderness. And particularly the lord arch- bishop of St. Andrews (whom they most barbarously mur- dered) made it his practice to interpose for them at council, and mitigated many severities against them. He was noted for this, and their vengeance fell most upon him according to their wont. Nay, to this day, they will not own that inhuman butchery to be a murder, or any crime at all, but a glorious action to desti'oy the enemies of the Lord." To THE WORDS citcd from Leslie may be added the words of one of those authors who were obliged to write anony- mously, and to publish in London : " What reasons were given them by our clergy in the two last reigns to provoke them to lay aside all humanity, and against the common rules of so- ciety, let be Christianity, to become so cruel and barbarous, I am altogether ignorant ; and I am sure our clergy are able to defy them to give one instance where any dissenter suffered death, or were any ways injured by the information or instiga- tion of any [episcopal] minister of Scotland, or that any dis- senter did suffer purely for dissenting, but only in the case of open rebellion, which being destructive of civil government, no civil magistrate can tolerate ; or in the case of the murder of archbishop Sharp, or the wounding of Mr. Honyman, bishop of Orkney, with a poisoned bullet, that occasioned his death ; or the murder of Mr. Peter Pearson, minister of Cars- phairn, in Galloway ; or the murder of Mr. Stewart and JNIr. Kennoway, two gentlemen of the king's life-guard, at Swyne Abbey; or the horrid butcheries and murder committed on the person of Mr. Blair, one of the duke of Hamilton's chamber- lains, they ripping up his body alive and taking out his bowels, at his own house ; or the barbarous cruelties committed on the person of Mr. I/awson, minister of Irongray, whom, after he had plentifully regaled them at his house, he being a lame man, they brought out and woinided him in nineteen several places of his body, whereof thirteen were in his head, leaving him, in their apprehension, dead, although afterwards, by 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 425 God's good providence, to the admiration of all men, he re- covered ; and also for their barbarous cruelties committed upon Mr. Ramsay, then minister of Auchinleck, Mr. Shaw, of Anworth, and several others ; and 3'et when any of them were punished for these notorious crimes, as the authors, abettors, or actors, the clergy never appeared against them, either as judges, accusers, party, or witnesses. Yea, when the govern- ment commanded the clergy to inform against these people, they generally declined it, until at last, when the justice-courts went through the country, they summoned the clergy to give in catalogues of their parishioners and dissenters upon oath, or otherwise to be committed to gaol to abide trial for disobey- ing authority ; so that being upon oath forced to give in the names of dissenters, yet they did it with such excuses and mitigations, that very few ever suffered, either in their persons or estates, upon their information, which sufficiently testified the ministers' aversion to any thing that in the least might give them reason to suspect them, in having any dealing in what was inflicted on them by the government. Even oftentimes the clergy employed their power and moyen [influence] to save them when accused ; and now those who, by their inter- cession, escaped, will not acknowledge those clergymen as active instruments, but tell them it was against their inclina- tion to save them, but that Go(\. forced them to do what they did . . . and indeed those who escaped by the intercession of any minister are now become the greatest enemy and per- secutor that such a minister hath, . . . For all the loud clamours of a persecution against the presbyterians in the two last reigns, I can confidently affirm, and am able to prove, that the episcopal clergy were the only persons persecuted all the time, either in their names, goods, or persons, several of them murdered, some wounded, and others affrighted from their houses, and forced in frosty and stormy nights to wander about for fear of their lives. And, indeed, because the pres- byterians were not suffered without punishment to supplant government, murder, plunder, and defame, then they rung it abroad that they were persecuted ; and because the episcopal clergy were established by law, and countenanced by the government, as more consonant to monarchy , and of more apos- tolical, quiet, and better ]>rinciples, than the others ; when only the civil powers took cognizance of the fanatic crimes, therefore they gave it out, that by prelacy they %vere perse- cuted '.'• ' A late Letter concerning the Sufferings of the Ejiiscopal Clergy in Scotland. London, small 4to. pp. 22-25. 1601, VOL. III. 3 I 4£6 CHAPTER LI. THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. 1(589. — Message to the English parliament. — King James lands in Ireland.— Oath of allegiance refused by some of the bishops. — Carstares appointed chaplain — his advice and opinions. — Meeting of parliament. — Act abolishing episcopacy. — First estate of pai'liament removed. — Origin of parliaments. — Observations. — A respite to tlie rabbling. — Address of the presbyterians to parliament. — Bishops ejected from their houses. — Council commence to per- secute— their mode of proceeding. — Deprivations. — The earl of Crawford's hostility. — Proclamation inviting the people to accuse the clergy. — Inatten- tion in sending copies of the proclamation to the clergy — cited before the privy council — falsely accused. — Difficulties of the presbyterians. — A fast ordered — causes assigned. — Distress of the clergy. — Deprivations. — Mr. Ramsay — deprived. — The number rabbled and deprived, — The design of the government. — Dr. Robertson and Mr. Malcom. — The clergy slandered — the learning of the clergy. — The four pleas of presbytery confuted : First plea, ignorance, manner of examination, method of study, philosophy — The second plea, immorality — The third plea, negligence — The fourth plea, error. — The plea of persecution. — Wherein the clergy plead guilty to the four pleas of presbytery, — Reflections. 1689. — On the 5th of March, king William informed his English parliament that king James had sailed from Brest with a body of 1500 French troops, in order to invade Ire- land. Both houses agreed to an address to king William, that they would stand by him with their lives and fortunes in supporting his alliances abroad, in reducing Ireland, and in defence of the protestant religion and of the laws of the kingdom. In answer to this address, William recommended them to give timely assistance to the Dutch, and to repay them the charges of his expedition. He directed them to provide for 20,000 troops to be sent to Ireland, and such a fleet as might make them masters at sea, and to settle a revenue upon himself. Kino James sailed from Brest with the pitiful detachment of 1500 men, under the command of field-marshal de Rosen, and landed at Kingsale on the 12 th of March, and went 1689.] HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 427 straight to Dublin. On the 20th of April he laid siege to Londonderry, which, after enduring incredible hardships from famine, was relieved by major-general Kirke on the 30th of July, who threw in a reinforcement and provisions, and the seige was raised on the following day. Dr. Walker, who so bravely defended Londonderry, received a reward of £5,000, and was afterwards killed at the battle of the Boyne. King James summoned a ]iarliament to meet in Dublin, and coined brass money, to which he gave, by proclamation, the value of silver. The Lish parliament attainted the duke of Ormond, and several of the Irish protestant nobility, and deprived the archbishops and seven of the bishops. It was prorogued to the 12th of January. On the 1st of March the oath of allegiance to William and Mary was taken by both houses of parliament; but manv of the peers refused it. The archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Bath and Wells, Kenn ; of Ely, Turner ; of Glouces- ter, Frampton ; of Norwich, Lloyd; of Peterborough,White ; of Worcester, Thomas ; of Chichester, Lake; and Chester, Cart- wright, from a conscientious regard to the oaths of allegiance tliat they had taken to James, absolutely refuseel to take the oath of allegiance to the new sovereigns. Bishops Thomas, Cartwright, and Lake, died in the course of this year, before they were suspended. Bishop Thomas, just before his death, sent for Dr. Hickes, the late dean of Worcestei*, and declared to him, in the strongest terms, against the new oaths: he said, " it is time for me now to die, who have outlived the honour of my religion, and the liberties of my country. If my heart deceive me not, and the grace of God fail me not, I think I could burn at a stake before I took this new oath." Lake, bishop of Chichester, made a similar declaration on his death- bed ^," As the other prelates were firm in their resolution not to transfer their allegiance, nor to talce the oath, they were sus- pended on the 1st of August, and about four hundred of the clergy, of different degrees, in the two universities and in the different dioceses of the kingdom 2. Mr. Carstares, who had been the medium of intercourse betwixt the Ryehouse conspirators in England and Scodand, and the prince of Orange and their other i'riends in Holland, was rewarded for the dangers he had undergone in his many intrigues by being ap])oinled their majesty's chajilain in Scot- land. He enjoyed William's entire confidence, and being constantly about his person, with free access to him at all ' D'Oyley's Life of Sancioft, 260. » Life of KtUlc\M.ll, app.,\iii.-xx.\v. 428 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. times, he persuaded him, contrary to his own political saga- city, to establish presbyterianism. His biographer says, he represented to William " that the episcopal party in Scotland were generally disaffected to the Revolution, and enemies to the principles on which it was conducted ; whereas the pres- byterians had almost to a man declared for it ... . that the episcopal clergy in Scotland, particularly the prelates, had been so accustomed to warp their religious tenets with the po- litical doctrines of regal supremacy, passive obedience, and non-resistance, that it became inconsistent with the very end of his coming to continue episcopacy upon its present footing in Scotland." These political doctrines, of which he was so much afraid, might rather have recommended the church to William's protection, in preference to a sect that had given the late sove- reign so many and such bloody instances of the opposite princi- ples,and which, by implication,were threatened to be continued under William's government, unless they could reach supre- macy. " Mr. Carstares," says his biographer, a presbyterian, " though the best friend ever the presbyterians had at court, knew too well the spirit of the party not to foresee the danger of their abusing that power which was to be put into their hands: that some, from the narrowness of their principles with respect to church government, others irritated by the personal injuries they had received from those of the episcopal persuasion, might be disposed to push vadXiexs farther against them than was consistent with his majesty's interest, or the maxims of sound policy ^" The convention-parliament met as appointed on the 5th of June pro forma, and was adjourned till the 17th, when it met for despatch of business. Very little power was given to the high commissioner, the duke of Hamilton, especially in the disposal of places, which was his own and his party's grand object. William made lord Melville secretary of state, whom he knew in Holland, and therefore could trust; for the same reason he trusted chiefly to Dalrymple lord Stair. Both of these noblemen had been too deeply implicated in the plots and conspiracies of the preceding reigns to be suspected of any secret attachment to the exiled king. The hopes of the presbyterian party were still deferred. Although the church had been declared " an insupportable grievance and trouble," yet nothing had as yet been done to gratify the " inclinations" of that small minority that called themselves the people. The duke of Hamilton became discontented that his merits had * M'Cormick's Life of Carstares, 40. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 429 been overlooked, and he turned sulky, and began an opposi- tion to Melville, and the disputes were so keen, that many people thought there would have been a new revolution. They repealed all the former oaths of allegiance and supre- macy, declarations and tests, and substituted a new oath, " to be faithful and bear true allegiance to their majesties king William and queen Mary." On the 22d of July they laid the axe to the root of the establishment of the church, by passing the following act : — " Whereas the estates of this kingdom, in their claim of right of the 11th of April last, declared that ' prelacy and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters, is, and hath been, a great and insupportable grievance and trou- ble to this nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the ge- nerality of the people ever since the Reformation, they having reformed from popery by presbyters, and therefore ought to be abolished;' Our sovereign lord and lady, with advice and consent of the estates of parliament, do hereby abolish riiE- LACV, and all superiority of any office in the church of this kingdom above presbyters; and hereby rescinds, casses, and annuls those acts of parliament under Charles II., and all other acts, statutes, and constitutions in so far allenarly as they are inconsistent with this act, and establish prelacy or the superiority of church officers above presbyters : And their ma- jesties do declare that they, with advice and consent foresaid, will settle by law that church government in this kingdom ivhich is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people.^'' The people whose inclinations were to be gratified meant the presbyterians in the western counties, few and insignificant in number, rank, or wealth, compared with the great body of the people whose conscientious attachment to the reformed Catholic church was never once consulted. The clause in the claim of right, and which is again repeated in the above act, is denounced as an absurdity by a respectable presbyte- rian author, who says of it, " though this vote was absurd, and founded upon more falsehoods than one, yet it was ex- pedient, if not necessary. The friends of prelacy, in general, had slavish notions of prerogative ; and it was found neces- sary not to represent episcopacy as a grievance, but to make its abolition one of the pacta conventa of the new settlement. It is to this bold vote that I chiefly ascribe the establishment and preservation of revolution principles in Scotland'." ' Guthrie's General History, x. 21)2. 430 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. The parliament confinned all the transactions of the con- vention. But although prelacy was now abolished, and the bishops declared to be no more a part of the constitution or an estate of parliament, yet they did not pretend that episco- pacy was sinful, but only, they said, it was not agreeable to the inclinations of the people. Truly there are many things not agreeable to men's inclinations, but which must be submitted to nevertheless. But the meaning of the leading men in the construction of this sentence, was, that whatever the people's inclinations might be, theirs were to possess themselves of the bishops' power, lands, and revenues; and therefore the funda- mental principle of the presbyterian establishment is not the word of God, but "the inclinations of the people," and also the root of all evil, covetousness. No conditions were offered to the bishops to retain them in their places, neither were they al- lowed, as an estate of parliament, an opportunity of declaring whether they favoured or objected to the revolution. So that two only of the estates of parliament advised the crown to establish presbytery; not because it was conformable to the word of God, but because it was agreeable to the inclinations of the presbyterians, who alone had possession of the seats and votes of parliament. But that they might not lose the name of three estates of parliament, although they extirpated one of them, they called the nobility the first estate, the barons or members for the counties the second estate, and the bur- gesses or members for the burghs the third estate. The poli- tical party called Whigs having been produced by the Covenant and the wild presbyterian preachers of the seventeenth cen- tury, have always been inclined to precipitate revolutions ; and it is somewhat remarkable, that from the time of their first acquiring power down to the present moment, they have continually attempted, and have sometimes accomplished, revolutions'^. From the very first moment of parliamentary history, both in England and Scotland, the church has ever been the first estate. Parliaments in both kingdoms had their origin in councils or synods of the church, in which the sovereign pre- sided, and the lay nobility were called to assist. At these synods temporal laws were sometimes enacted, merely as a matter of convenience; and hence originated parliaments, when, in process of time, the Commons were added, as a sepa- rate estate, to the other two estates of the clergy and the ' The last Reform in parliament was declared by Lord John R^'issell to have been a. llevolution, — " we cannot afford to have two Revolutions in one year." 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 431 nobility. This is not a popish corruption or usurpation, but a laudable constitution, arising out of experience and the reli- gious feelings of antiquity; for this combination is not to make the church political, but the state religious. The minis- ters of religion are guardians of public morals, and their estate, sitting and voting in parliament, is a security for the religious character of our legislature. To the readers of this History it will be abundantly evident that the popish clergy, the mock episcopal superintendents, and the catholic prelates both in the line of Spottisvvood and of Sharp, were always es- teemed an estate of parliament. The latter line were " redin- teffrate" with the constitution ; and the very fact of the present powers resorting to the expedient of splitting the Commons into tioo estates shows their consciousness that they had broken in upon the constitution, by blotting out the first estate of parliament. Upon this point bishop Sage has the following judicious observations: — " If tivo estates can vote out one, and make a parliament without it; if they can split one into two, and so make up the three estates ; why may not one split itself as well into three? Why may not the two parts of the s])litted estate join together, and vote out the estate of burghs } Why may not the nobility of the first magnitude join with the burghs to vote out the smaller barons ? Why may not the smaller barons and the burghs vote out the greater nobility ? After two have voted out one, Why may not one, the more numerous, vote out the other, the less numerous? When par- liament is reduced to one estate, Why may not that one divide, and one half vote out the other } and then sub-divide, and vote out, till the whole parliament shall consist of the commis- sioner of Rutherglen, or the laird of [Dumbiedykes], or the earl of Crawford .' Nay, Why may not one vote out himself, and leave the king without a parliament.? What a dangerous thing it is to shake foundations! How doth it unhinge all things ! How plainly doth it pave the way for that which our brethron pretend to abhor so much; viz. a despotic power, an absolute and unlimited monarchy ! To conclude this point; there is nothing more notorious than that the spiritual estate was still judged fundamental in the constitution of parlia- ments; was still called to parliaments; did still sit, deliberate, and vote in parliaments till the year 1640, that it was turned out by the then presbyterians. And our present presbytcrians, following their footsteps, have not only freely parted with, but forwardly rejected, that ancient and valuable right of the chinch: nay, they have not only rejected it, but they declaim constantly against it as a limb 0/ antichrist, and what not ? And 432 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. liavc they not manifestly deserted the undonbted principles and sentiments of our reformers ^?" For a short interval the rabbling had ceased, and the clergy were willing to suppose that they owed this cessation of their sufferings to the intervention of king William. Those who had escaped the first trial hoped there was to be no fur- ther persecution; and the lenity and tenderness with which the clergy saw others treated who were sufficiently obnoxious to the government, inclined them to expect similar indulgence when their case came to be duly and impartially represented. " For, seeing his [William's] mercy extended to outlaws and criminals of the grossest size, they who were God's ambassa- dors doubted not to partake of it; their excesses, if such they may be called, being only in points very dubious and immate- rial^." Their hope seemed reasonable for some time, for no mention had been made for any further proceedings against them. They received some encouragement from the circum- stance that the clergy were not comprehended in the act that obliged all civil and military officers to take the oath of alle- giance. They flattered themselves that more tender measures were about to be adopted towards them; but in this they were altogether mistaken. The true reason for their escape from taking the oath of allegiance was, because it was very well known that the presbyterian preachers would not have taken that oath till presbytery was established by law, and William had himself taken their covenant. The PRESBYTERIAN preachcrs were becoming impatient for possession, and therefore they presented a long address to parliament, in which they thanked God for the great delive- rance wrought out for them by the pious and magnanimous William, then prince of Orange, but now their gracious sove- reign ; they complimented the commissioner and the members of the parliament ; they shewed their " keen hatred" with some " round abuse" of episcopacy and the bishops, and all who adhered to them ; and then petitioned the parliament to relieve them from such oppressors. They likewise petitioned that the church government might be established in the hands of such only as, by their former carriage and sufferings, had given evidence that they were known and sound presbyte- rians ; they requested that the church, thus established, might be allowed, by their lordships' civil sanction, to appoint visi- tationsybr purging out insufficient, negligent, scandalous, and ^ Fundamental Charter of Presbytery, 407, 408. ' Case of the present Afflicted Clergy, 14. 1 689.] CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 433 erroneous ministers. " What apostle," says bishop Sage, " if you give him apresbyterianjury, shall not come within the comprehension of one of these four" appellations ? As SOON as the act passed which made the " inclinations of ihe people" the basis of the new establishment, the bishops \v ere obliged to quit their houses and their churches ; and ikey were most unjustly and oruelly deprived of their reve- nues for the current year. " But," says an anonymous writer, " there are some, tliough, alas ! but few, christians still re- maining in Scotland, who are not ashamed of the doctrine of the cross, nor afraid to contend for catholic and apostolic unity in the faith and practice of the primitive church, though at all the hazard of all they have in the world ; and who, by the grace of God, dare even resist unto blood for the truth of those doctrines which came down from above, and for the beauty of those offices which were from the beginning ^ ." Their address awakened thedormant zeal of the privy coun- cil, and stimulated them to the work of persecution ; and the lord advocate was instructed to issue summonses against all the clergy who had not read the late proclamation. Cita- tions were issued accordingly, and the council shewed as ^\■arm a zeal, and proceeded as summarily, as the presbyte- rian ministers could have desired. When the person cited appeared, a long libel was read to him concerning the irre- ligion, the ingratitude, the contempt, &c. of his disobedience. After that, the president of the council asked him if he had read the proclamation upon the appointed day, and if he had ever since prayed publicly for king William and queen Mary, as king and queen of Scotland ; and when the earl of Craw- ford was present, he added, by " surname." If the unfortu- nate clergyman answered " No" to both, there was no mercy for him, whatever the cause might be for his not having com- plied. Few were able to escape the comprehensive wording of this libel or indictment, for it ran, " whereas the ministers, by a proclamation dated the 13th of April, were commanded and required to read the same upon the respective days therein contained, and pray ; yet, when the said proclamation of the estates was sent to him, at least came to his hands, or of which he had knowledge [mark tlie gradation and the equity of the several steps, especially the last], he was so far from testifying ' " Memoirs of the Episcopal Church of Scotland from the memorable Revo- lution of 1688," in MS. ; a copy of which the author took from the original manuscript in the possession of the late lord bishop of Edinburgh and primut: Scoii<£ episcopus, the right rev. Dr. Walker. VOL. III. 3 K 434 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. LI. his gratitude and giving due obedience thereunto, that, &c." If the clergyman pleaded, and was ready to swear to it, that the proclamation had never come to his hands, it availed him nothing ; for he was brought in guilty by the third step in the above gradation. And if he had not read the proclamation, it did not save him, although he could plead that he had prayed for the king and queen by name. The worthy gentlemen who were chosen to carry on this great work, says an anonymous satirist, " accordingly sent out their emissaries into all the quarters of the kingdom, to encourage and invite persons of all ranks to bring in libels against their ministers, which was accordingly done ; and it was looked upon as very modest if they contained no more than a breach of all the Ten Commandments, when the minis- ters upon a citation compeared before the privy council (a ju- dicatory not tied down to common rules), the libel was read, to which the minister pleaded not guilty, and craved a trial, but that was far from their meaning, for both the accusers and judges knew very well that there was little of truth in them ; however, some pretence or other was found to deprive the minister, the libels were recorded in the council books, and copies of them were sent to the respective presbyteries to cause them to be read from the pulpits to their people ; so that the pulpit, which formerly went by the name of the chair of verity, wdiS, now made the common-sewer of all the lies and scandal of the times, and those who ought to have been made the ambassadors of the God of Truth were made heralds to the accuser of the brethren. But to do the council justice, they soon became weary of such shameful proceedings, and gave them over in some measure ; but no sooner was this storm over, but a tempest arose which did terrible execution ; what the council had let fall, the kirk judicatories took irp, and that they might carry on this work with the greater success, a select committee was appointed to search the journals of the year 1638, and to find out such precedents as could make for their purpose in carrying on so good a work, and it was agreed upon that the ecclesiastical courts, in all their proceedings against the episcopal clergy, should be tied down to these few clear following rules : — I . That no episco- ])al minister should know his accuser ; for if it were otherwise, it would discourage a great many good people (who were well inclined) from bringing in libels, which would very much re- tard this work. 2. That it was sufficient to name the offence, without condescending upon time and place when and where it was committed, for that might sometimes x>rove of great use 1689. J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 435 to the pannel. 3. A minister might be libelled upon com- mon fame ; that is, if a malicious fellow should invent and spread a scandal upon any minister, a libel should be raised upon it, which, if it served no other purpose, it would be sure to defame him. 4. Witnesses should be put to answer super inquirendis ; that is, what know you of such a minister ? did you ever see him drunk or hear him swear, &c. ? If a witness was so stupid as not to fix some scandal upon a minister, he was dismissed with contempt I will venture to say that such rules could never be brought from precedents in any courts of justice in the world, except from the green tables in 1638, or the journals of the Inquisition. The only pleasant part of this was, that when the apostle's canon, ' receive not an accusation against an elder, but before two or three wit- nesses,' was objected against them, the short answer was, ' that some rules are good in ecclesia constituta which must not be followed in ecclesia constituenda ; but the misfortune was, that this rule Avas laid down in ecclesia constituenda ; for so I believe the church was in St. Paul's time. And now what minister could stand his ground in a court that proceeded in this manner, especially if you will take along with you tlie weak pretences that were laid hold upon to turn them out ; some for reading and recommending the Whole Duly of Man, which approves of set fasts, as Mr. Johnston at Burntisland ; some for dancing about a bonfire, as Mr. Hcrriott at Dalkeith, though the whole town knew it to be false ; and Mr. Peacock was deposed for not appearing at the bar of the presbytery that very day on which his wife was buried !''' Mr. Guild, minister of North Berwick, told the council that he had prayed for their majesties from the first time he had heard they were proclaimed, and none in the kingdom was more joyful than he that a protestant king and queen were set on the throne. Nevertheless, he was deprived. There were several other similar instances ; but if they had both read and prayed, if it was not done on the precise day, there was no escape; deprivation infallibly followed. Mr. Hay, of Kilcon- quhar, in Fife ; Mr. Hunter, of Stirling ; Mr. Young, of Monyvaird, in Perthshire; Mr. Aird, of Torrieburn, in Fife, with many others who had both read and prayed by the word of command, but not having read on the precise day, they were dci)rived. The case of Mr. Aird was peculiarly hard. He was an infirm old man, of great gravity and serious- * The Causes of the Decay of Presbytery in Scotland ; in answer to a Letter from a Clcij^yman of that Persuasion. London. 8vo. 1713. pp. 5-7. 436 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. ness, and had brought a certificate from the sherifF of Fife, cer- tifying that he had not received the proclamation on or before the proper day, but that he had read it on the Sunday imme- diately after he had received it. There was no remedy ; he was deprived. One thing was remarked as an extraordinary circumstance, that the question was never put to any of them whether or not they would give obedience for the future. There was no place left for repentance. " And I remember," says bishop Sage, "that some of the magistrates of the town of Perth, after both their ministers were deprived, came to the earl of Crawford, and insinuated to him that they were hopeful Mr. Anderson, a good- natured man and a very good pastor, who had been one of the ministers of the said town, perhaps might yet be induced to comply, and that he would be extremely acceptable to the peo- ple if he were reponed. But presently his lordship turned huffy, and told them that that was not so much as once to be mentioned. So they were forced to let fall their design. Indeed, his lordship is a most zealous reformer, and as fit for being pre- sident at a board for turning out episcopal clergymen as could have been fallen upon. I remember a certain minister who had been a good time of his lordship's acquaintance, went to him, thinking to have prevailed with him to have got the diet de- serted ; and they had a very pleasant conversation. His lord- ship asked whether he used publicly to pray for king William and queen Mary. He answered, he prayed as the apostle directed ; and cited 1 Tim. ii. 1,2. * Well (says my lord), this is enough for us to deprive you.' After some more discourse, the minister said ' he was sorry for the desolation of the church :' and his lordship answered very quaintly, ' But so am not /.' The work had never gone on so successfully if hehad not been on the top of it ; for many times they had enough to do to get a quorum of the council (which can consist of no less than nine) on those days that were set apart for the clergy (in effect it was no wonder though ordinary stomachs had some kind of loathing to it) : and then his lordship was in a strange pickle, and you would have seen strange running of macers through the city, calling them from their lodgings ^" The council began to find it to be a very tedious affair, to cite the whole clergy of the kingdom by the lord advocate's warrant. They took a shorter method of effecting their design, by inviting and allowing the parishioners of such ministers as had not obeyed to cite them before the council. The following pro- ' Account of the Persecution, 38. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 437 clamation was therefore issued, dated the 5th of August, from which it is evident that the clergy that had been rabbled are entirely excluded from the protection of the government. It sanctioned and applauded their late atrocities, and in effect condemned the innocent sufferers as traitors and criminals. Whereas the meeting of the estates of this kingdom, by their proclamation dated at Edinburgh the 13th day of April, 1689, did command and require all the ministers of the gos- pel within the kingdom of Scotland, publicly to pray for king William and queen Mary, and to read that proclamation from their pulpits upon the several Lord's days therein expressed : as also the estates did prohibit and discharge any injury to be offered by any person whatsoever to any minister of the gos- pel, either in churches or meeting-houses, who were then, viz. on the 13th of April last, in possession and exercise of their ministry either in churches or meeting-houses, they behaving themselves dutifully under the present government. And it being most just and reasonable that the foresaid proclamation be fully performed and obeyed, as most necessary for the se- curity of the peace of the kingdom, and that such ministers who gave obedience should be secure under the protection of the law, and that the pain of deprivation be inflicted upon all those ministers who have disobeyed the proclamation. There- fore the lords, &c. in their majesties' name and authority, do strictly command and charge that none of the lieges take on hand to do any violence or injury to any of the ministers of the gospel, whether they be preaching in churches or meeting- houses, and that all such as were in possession and exercise of their ministry upon the 13th day of April last be allowed to continue undisturbed, and that such ministers as have been removed, dispossessed, or restrained, without a legal sentence, in the exercise of their ministry since the 13th day of April last, shall be allowed to return and exercise their ministry without disturbance. And ordains the sheriffs, &c. . . . to give their assistance for making the premises effectual ; as also that such ministers who have not read the proclamation, and prayed, &,c. according to the tenor thereof, may be deprived of their benefice, and restrained to officiate in their churches. The lords, S^c. do invite and allow the parishioners of such ministers as have neglected and slighted the reading of the proclamation, and praying, ^c. to cite such ministers before the privy council, and grant warrant for citing and adducing witnesses to prove the same, that such ministers as have disobeyed may, by a legal sentence, be deprived of their benefices, and that none 438 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. of the lieges at their own hand, without a legal sentence and warrant, presume to meddle in this matter. It may be remarked here, that in an affair that was made of so much importance, particular care ought to have been taken to transmit copies of the proclamation to the clergy in proper time ; " yet never was less care taken since the world be"-an." — " There were hundreds of ministers to whose hands it came not till the days prefixed were expired ; particularly in the shire of Fife there are betwixt seventy and eighty pa- rishes, yet .... only sia; copies came to the sheriflF-clerk's hand, who was ordered to distribute them ; and there was no such clause in the proclamation as allowed, far less required, them to obey it any Sunday after ^ This general invitation, coming from such an authority to the presbyterians, received instant and ready obedience, and it served a double purpose. First, it made quicker despatch ; and secondly, it ajfforded an opportunity for every malicious person in any parish to frame what calumnies they thought proper against the clergy. One or two of the meanest or most disreputable in a parish, and frequently the agents of the faction, borrowed men's names without their knowledge to fill up these citations, and either of these were sufficient to accuse their minister. Summonses were issued out, upon ma- licious accusations, to appear at Edinburgh within ten days, before the privy council. " Whereupon has followed the de- priving of such as came before them, and had not read the pro- clamation ; and by this process they outed upwards of two hundred of the parochial clergy, which was all they could despatch, in about sixteen days 2." Deprivations were now more expeditious than formerly ; and under cover of this procla- mation, charges of many most atrocious crimes and scandals were included in these citations against the clergy. The council never examined witnesses, nor sustained themselves judges respecting these scandals, but passed them over as the well-known tricks of their party ; confining themselves only to what was contained in the proclamation — the reading and praying. To the first, their defences were either that they had never received the proclamation, or that it had not come to their hands till the day appointed for reading it was passed ; or that it had not been delivered to them in a legal manner — that is, from their ordinaries. But none of these defences ' Account of tlie present Persecution, 36. 2 Case of the Afllicted Clergy, 15. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 439 were sustained in their case, and when they requested that these charges of scandals and immoralities might be either examined or expunged from the charge, the falsehood of them was so well known, and so gross, that the council declared they would not sustain them. " Yet the libels, with these things in them, stand still on record ; and I hear full accounts of them are sent to London, and daily printed there, and mak- ing good company in the coffee-houses ^" And there is no doubt that these malignant and uncontradicted false witnesses have tended considerably towards begetting a feeling amongst English churchmen, which has traditionally and unconsciously descended, that the Scottish confessors of Christ's holy church were really what their enemies falsely designated them, — " in- sufficient, negligent, scandalous, and erroneous." The introduction of these scandalous lies into the cita- tions had an insidious object ; and when the presbyterial visi- tations should take place, they were designed to be sustained as known and uncontroverted truths ; for had they not been ])roved before the council, and sentence followed ? " It is true," says the author of the Case of the Afflicted Clergy, " their libels were generally stuffed with a great many scan- dalous and vicious practices alleged against them (a malicious design to expose them to the present age, and to blacken them upon record to the future), but it is as true that when the ministers came to the bar, the scandalous and immoral part of tlie libel was wholly omitted by their judges, although the ministers themselves craved, for their vindication in those points, to be particularly tried upon them ; but the sentence passed against them upon the two heads before mentioned [not reading or praying], and yet, in the accounts they sent to court, the immoralities of the ministers' lives, which were only pretended in the summons, but never spoken of in the trial, were represented as grounds of their deprivation; but it were far more easy to give the true reasons, for truth tells best ; and it is this: — " The PRESBYTERIAN prcachers in Scotland of the old standing, who only can pretend to be owned in any church meeting (if the government should think fit to call one), are but very few in comparison of the episcopal clergy now in place. It was highly debated amongst them what should be their behaviour if the parliament restored them to their churches from which they were put out in the year 1G62. They could not think it advisable to meet in presbyteries by themselves, ' Account of the present Persecution, 39. 440 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. since in some presbyteries they would make but two in number, in some but one, and in others none at all. So that if they should join with the regular clergy in such presbyteries, they might reckon to be out-voted in all businesses, and to signify nothing ; nay, if a national synod should be called, they would be at the same loss, for the members thereof, chosen by presby- teries, behoved to be episcopal men, the plurality by far of voters being of that way. So, to take off all difficulties attend- ing this matter, it seemed to be the most plausible and effectual way to make as many vacancies as was possible, and that also before the meeting of next session of parliament, lest other measures should then be taken. And for this design, the pre- munire of not reading the proclamation, seemed, next to rab- bling, the fittest and shortest expedient. I call it the shortest, because it was not possible to make greater despatch for va- cancies than it occasioned, for a dozen of ministers were ordinarily turned out in a forenoon, and as many more some- times in an afternoon. So that this method made clear way for the presbyterian brethren to be the greater part in all eccle- siastical assemblies, and by consequence to carry any thing they please there. Hereby also they have a fair opportunity of setting out young vagrants to take possession of the vacant churches, by which the number of their preachers daily in- creases'." Notwithstanding the wholesale way in which the presby- terian government rendered the Lord's house desolate, and laid his vineyard waste, yet it was not sufficiently rapid to meet the desires of the ministers ; neither had it all the desired effect. In many parishes there were none who would cite their clergymen ; and those who did cite them, therefore, found it very expensive. Another proclamation was issued, dated the 22d of August, to shorten and simplify the form of process, in- tituled— " For citing ministers who have not prayed for their majesties." The people were again invited to impeach their clergy, and the heritors, sheriffs, and magistrates of burghs, were also invited to join in the accusation, and cite them be- fore the council, on any Tuesday or Thursday six days after the citation, for all on the south side of the river Tay, and four- teen days for all on the north side of that river. And it was further declared that the said proclamation was without preju- dice of any citations already given, or to be given, upon the former act of council. This would appear sufficiently expeditious ; but it did not * Case of the present Afflicted Clergy in Scotland, 18, 19. lb'89.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 441 satisfy the persecuting spirit of the prcsbyterians. So, at the instigation of their ministers, as the privy council asserts, another proclamation was issued, dated the 24th of August, for a general fast, to be kept on two Sundays ! " No question," says Sage, " it was designed for a choaking morsel ; for perhaps you never saw any thing like it." It was on account of " great and long-abounding sins amongst all ranks of persons — the falling from their first love — great faintings and failings of [prcsbyterian] ministers, and others of all ranks, in the hour of temptation, in their zeal for God and his work — and con- tinuing divisions amongst some — the many and sad tokens of God's wrath, in the hiding of his face, and more especially in his restraining the power and presence of His Spirit with the preached gospel, in the conversion of souls, and edifying the converted, &c. — having seriously and religiously moved the presbyterian ministers, ciders, and professors, of the church of Scotland, humbly to address themselves to the lords of his majesty's privy council for a general fiist and day of humilia- tion to be kept throughout the whole kingdom — on this side the water of Tay, upon Sunday, the 15th of September — and by all others benorth the same on the 22d day of the said month " It was virtually to deny the faith, to compel christian men to fast on the weekly commemoration of Christ's resur- rection, when He entered upon the regeneration ^ obtained pardon for our sins, and gave us a pledge of our own resurrec- tion to immortal life, if we keep His commandments. There was an abominable insult offered in it both to God and his set van ts, the clergy ; for it is expressly asserted that the Holy Spirit had withheld His gifts and graces from the episcopal clergy ; for it could mean none other. Although there were men then in the church equal in holiness of life to any of the primilivechris tians, yet the presbyterian ministers made the council say that they were in a state of reprobation; for there is no doubt, if the Holy Spirit of God be withdrawn from the hearts of men, a s])irit of another sort will enter in and take possession. If the Spirit of God had not been with them, they could never have borne the cross with the exemplary and uncomplaining patience that they did ; for wicked men bear not the cross ; that is an honour that is reserved for the true disciples of Christ alone. This puoclamat/on was ordained to be read from every pulpit twice. These twin proclamations wrought wonderfully towards the end and design of the presbyterian ministers. ' St. Math. xix. 23. VOL. III. 3 L 442 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. Some of the clergy with hard straining had contrived to digest the April proclamation ; but no straining could induce them to swallow the Sunday fasting. Two of the Edinburgh clergy were deprived the very next week on this account. Mr. Ram- say, one of the incumbents of the Old Church, " a man of un- blameable life, a judicious and accurate preacher, gave obe- dience in ail things to the act of the meeting of estates of the 13th of April, read the proclamation, prayed in express terms for king William and queen Mary, the very first day these things were enjoined to be done on ; but that availed nothing, for the design was to remove all the episcopal ministers from the pulpits in Edinburgh at any rate, and upon any pretence, how little so ever.^" Mr. Ramsay was immediately cited before the privy council, and it being his turn to preach on that day on vvhicii he was summoned, he took the opportunity of making a valedictory address, well knowing what would be his fate. After the morning service, his churchw^ardens and many of his congregation accompanied him to the door of the council- chamber. He was interrogated whether he had read the April proclamation and prayed for their majesties ; and he replied that he had read the proclamation, and had prayed for their majesties by name. But, says the earl of Crawford, the presi- dent, " you only prayed for them as declared king and queen, not as those that were really such." He replied, that he " had prayed for William and Mary, whom the estates of the king- dom had declared king and queen, and since they had no liturgy, and they had given to them no form of prayer, he thought, seeing he had prayed for William and Mary, no more was to be required. And as for the words ' declared king and queen^ he had taken them from one of their own i^roclamations." This was denied, but the proclamation being produced, it was found he was right ; and, therefore, as he could not be caught upon this point, earl Crawford said, " but, Mr. Ramsay, you pray for the late king James." Mr. Ramsay replied, " my lord, I pray in these words — ' Lord bless William and Mary, whom the estates of this land have declared king and queen, and bless all the royal family, root and branch, especially him who is now under affliction; sanctify it unto him while he is under it, and when it seems good to Thee, deliver him from it.' This is the form I made for myself, for you prescribe none; and is it not a sore matter, that where nothing is left to king James in reversion of three kingdoms, but the prayers of poor men, that you should deny him those .-'" He was then removed 1 Caie of the Afflicted Clergy, Fourth Coll. of Papers, 95. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 443 from the bar till they had consulted under what pretence they could deprive him. When he was called in, Crawford said — " But, jNIr. Ramsay, you did not read from the pulpit the pro- clamation for the fast." " Now, my lord," said Mr. Ramsay, " you have nicked me ; indeed I did not intimate the fast." " But why did you not ?" " For many reasons, my lord." " But pray let us hear some of those reasons." " Excuse me, ray lord, it is sufficient that I confess that I did not read it." It was the custom of this presbyterian inquisition to screw out men's minds and make them accuse themselves, and to pro- voke them to speak that which might be made matter for accu- sation. They urged him so vehemently, that he at last replied, because " it was against the practice of the universal church and primitive canons to fast on a Sunday : and although there were no other reasons than that one, yet he could not intimate that fast." This was sufficient ; he was deprived for not having read this last proclamation. Dr. Gardner, " a man of great parts and piety," one of the ministers of the Tolbooth church, was deprived also, for not having read the fasting proclamation, though in every thing else he had complied with all their demands ^ TiiKSE WERE not the only clergymen whom this persecuting fast-proclamation was the cause of depriving. Some clergy- men, who had been cited from the county of Moray, were likely to have escaped in consequence of no accusers making their appearance ; but to make sure work, Mr. Brodie of Brodie in that county, and the member for it, came to the bar from his place at the board, and, smiling, told them he would be their accuser. After preferring a charge against them, he returned to his seat on the bench, and voted as a judge for their deprivation ! ^ At the era of the Revolution the number of parochial priests in Scotland was about one thousand. Of these about three hundred were rabbled by the presbyterians, who acted only in strict conformity with their principles. Their expul- sion was connived at and justified by the new government; and about one hundred more were deprived by the sentence of the privy council. The names of some of the most prominent of the sud'erers have been given ; but it would only have been a repetition of the same scenes of cruelly and insolent opjires- siou to have enumerated every solitary instance of presbyterian intolerance, and of the calamities which their sudden elevation to uncontroled power brought upon the church. Those who ' Case, &c., 95, 96. * Account, &c., 41. 444 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. LI. were able to keep their benefices, which were chiefly in the north, may be divided into two classes — the compliers and the non-compliers with the arbitrary order of the government. These owed their escape not so much to the justice of the government or the clemency of the presbyterians, as to their distance from Edinburgh and from fanaticism. The fate of neither of these parties was doubtful, although from the ope- ration of the above-named causes it was for the present jDost- poned. Those who had complied had not done enough, and those who had not obeyed could expect no mercy, and there- fore neither party could escape the persecuting fury of the now dominant faction. Alas ! how true is the old adage — " set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride to the devil !" In truth. Dr. Morer's hyperbole was, in this instance, plain matter of fact : — " The church of Scotland," he says, " is at this time trader the claw of an enraged lion ; episcopacy abolished and its revenues alienated, the clergy routed, some by a form of sentence, and others by violence and popular fury ; their per- sons and familes abused, their houses ransacked, their gowns torn to pieces, with many other injuries and indignities done to them 1." Bishop Sage states, upon personal knowledge, and could name a certain minister, " to whom a nobleman and a privy councillor, who makes a considerable figure at present, and who is presbyterian enough too, (though it seems he has more than the ordinary ingenuousness of the party), said, he was truly glad that that minister had made no compliances (they were cousins ; perhaps that might make him speak more freely), and assured him the present compliance would save no man ; for the resolution was, that none of the episcopal clergy SHOULD BE SPARED. This I know to be of certain truth. Besides, the council of late were beginning to let so much out; for wlien some ministers in Argyleshire (who preach in Irish, by consequence whose places cannot be so easily supplied, whom, therefore, they were not earnest to lay aside altogether), were before them, though they made them the gracious off'er, made to few or none before, that they should be continued in their ministry, upon their yet obeying the proclamation, yei they would not allow them their own churches. The secret of the matter is, all must be once out, none must enjoy their benefices by virtue of a presentation from a patron, and col- lation from a bishoj^. If any shall be permitted hereafter to bear oflicc, they must come in upon the new foundation that * Account of llie iircsrut Persecution, page 1. 1689.] ciiurtCii of Scotland. 446 is to be erected after the presbyterian model. This, I am told, the statesmen are clear for ; but then the kirkmen must have their terms too. . . . Presbytery, presbytery in folio, must be one ; perhaps the covenant may be another. . . . " This is certain; no compliances that any of the confoimod clergy have yet made have brought them so much as one inch nearer to a reconciliation with the presbyterians. Some have been at work enough to get their countenance, particularly Dr. Robertson and Mr. Malcom, two of the ministers of Edin- burgh. They have preached once and again against the pride of prelates and the corruptions of the church, especially the former, whose great comi)laint has been of late, that he has groaned these twenty- seven years by-past under the yoke of episcopacy, although at the restitution of the government he did not think his mission good, having had only ])resbyterial ordination, and therefore was reordained by a bishop. 'I'hey have sent once and again to llie presbyterian elubs, entreating that they might be admitted into their fellow.shij), and to sit in their presbyteries. They have used all arts for gaining belief that they are in earnest ; for instance, they are both j)rebenda- riesof the Cathedral of P"dinburgh,and the bishop pays to each of them £10 sterling per annum. Through the long surcease of justice that has been in the kingdom ^ till of late, his lord- sliip had got none of the revenue for the year 1()88, and wanted not reason to doubt if he should ever have it ; so their fees for that year were resting [owing] . Wherefore, in August or September last, they pursued him jointly belbre the bailies of Edinburgh (no competent judges), merely to cast dirt upon him [the bishop], that thereby they might ingratiate themselves with the godly. Yet all has nut prevailed ; they find the party inexorable." Aftkr relating the real sufferings of some of the Scottish episcopal clergy, it remains to say something in vindication t)f men who have been treated in such a cruel and anlichris- tian manner; and 1 shall adopt the language of bishop Sage, who lived among them, and knew their merits as well as any man of his time. 1 know, he says, there were strange things talked of them in England; " for, besides that the i)rince of Orange, last year, declared them generally scanda/oiis and iijiwraat (as was beibre noted), the good parly have long had, The long surcease of justice is vouched for by a judge of the session, who says, " Harvest vacance, l(i88, and there was asitrceaxe of juxtice till November, 1689 ; for albeit the session sat during November 1GS8, yet by the vnnatnral usurpation of the prince of Orange, no business was done, save deliverances on a few bills." — Fountainhall's Cliroiiologicul Notes, page 2tj5. 446 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. and still have, their instruments busy, printing and publishing odd stories of them." Two or three sentences might serve to give a general explanation; for it might be sufficient to say, that general indictments ought to go for calumnies, and might be denominated broad lies. Their enemies were chal- lenged, but never ventured to name particular crimes to any individual clergyman ; but contented themselves with a general declamation of ignorance, scandal, insufficiency, and such like. " Dare they, for their hearts, pronounce all ignorant ? or all scandalous ? or all negligent ? or all erroneous .'' or all of a persecuting temper? If they dare, I hope they are bound to make it good against every individual ; and let them try that where they will. If they dare not (as certainly they dare not, even Machiavel himself, iheir master for that politic, were he alive, durst not), then who sees not the iniquity of these indefinite aspersions? Where were christians taught to mix the innocent with the guilty so indiscriminately ?" The fact is, when much dirt is thrown, even against the purest characters, some will stick, and sully them for the time being; and the whole of it has stuck to these patient confessors from that day to the present; but 1 hope it has now become so dry that it may be rubbed out, and that their characters will shine more bright here below, whilst they themselves are walking in joy and felicity in their white baptismal robes in paradise. He continues, — " I have more to say, and I can say it con- fidently, because / know it to be true. The church of Scotland, since the Reformation, was never so well provided with pas- tors as at the beginning of the present persecution. It is true she has sometimes had some sons, such as Dr. Forbes, Dr. Baron, and some others, more eminent for learning than per- haps any of the present generation will pretend to; but what church is there in the world, wherein, every day, extraordinary lights are to be found? Neither can it be denied that there are amongst us some of but ordinary parts; but in what church was it ever otherwise ? It would be an odd thing if the poor cold climate of Scotland could still afford a thousand Augustiues or Aquinases. Perhaps, too, there may be some who are not so careful to adorn their sacred office with a suit- able conversation, as they ought to be; but what wonder, when Our Saviour himself had one, a devil, of twelve in his reti- nue? What country is it where all the clergym-cn are saints ? And therefore, I say it over again, the church of Scotland was never so well planted, generally, since the Reformation, as it was a year ago. This is a proposition which I confess cannot be demonstrated by a private man sitting in his chamber so 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 447 as to convince the obstinate, or to give full satisfaction to strangers; but so far as things of that nature can be made to appear plausible, and at a distance, I think this may be done very briefly, in answering the charges commonly given in against them. " The first is ignorance. But what is the standard to judge by, whether or not men have such a competency of knowledge as may {ceteris paribus) qualify them for the mi- nistry ? Till that be condescended on, 1 might very well bid them put up their objection in their i:>ockct, till they can make palpable sense of it; at least, till that be done, this pretended ignorance cannot be sustained as a sufficient argument for justifying the present persecution. But how can the Scottish clergy be so very ignorant? No man (since I remember) was ever admitted to the ministry till he had first passed his course at some imiversity, and commenced M.A., and generally none are admitted to trial for being probationers till after that com- mencement, and the}' have been four or five years students in divinity. The method of that trial is commonly this, — the can- didate gets first a text prescribed to him, on which he makes a homily before some presbytery ; then he has an exegesis in Latin, on some common head (ordinarily some popish contro- versy), and sustains disputes upon it. After this he is tried on his skill in the languages and chronology. He is likewise obliged to answer, extempore, any question in divinity that shall be proposed to him by any member of the presbytery. This is called the questionary trial. Then he has that which we call the exercise and addition ; that is, one day he must analyse and comment upon a text, for half an hour or so, to shew his skill in textual, critical, and casuistic theology; and another day, for another half hour, he discourses again, by drawing practical inferences, to shew his abilities that way too. And then, lastly, he must make a popular sermon ( ) All this done, the presbytery considers whether it be fit to recommend him to the bishop for a license to preach (and many have I known remitted to their studies) : if they find him qualified, and recommend him, he gets his license, he com- mences probationer for the ministry, and commonly continues such for two, three, four, or more years thereafter, till he is presented to some benefice. Then he passes over again through all the aforesaid steps of trial, and more accurately, before he is ordained. What greater security would you desire as to the point of knowledge ? " But besides that, since the restitution of episcopacy, our divines have had belter education; [they have] been put on 448 HISTORY UK iUli [criAP. LI. better methods of study than ever they were before. They have learned to lay aside prejudices, and to trace truth inge- nuously, and to embrace it when they find it. With our pre- decessors, es]iecially in the times of presbytery, the Dutch divinity was all in vogue. Their common-place men were the great standards, and are so still to that party; and whoever stept aside one hair's breadth from their positions was forth- with an heretic. But the present generation, after the way of England, take the Scriptures for their rule, and the ancients with right reason for guides, for finding the genuine sense of that rule; by which method, in my opinion, they are come to have their principles and thoughts much better digested." For the evidence of this assertion he refers to those clergy who were still alive, and had confoniied at the Restoration, who were the ablest men then in office, but who had been educated in a less strict manner. If a comparison was insti- tuted betwixt these and the men who had been educated since the Restoration, the bishop emphatically affirms " that all ingenuous and impartial judges would determine in favour of the latter sort, and confess that they have clearer and more distinct ideas of things, and understand the christian philo- sophy better. In a word, I will affirm it confidently, that philosophy was never understood better, nor ever preached better, in Scotland, than it has been these twenty years by-gone. " I MUST confess," he continues, " it was never less prac- tised ; but for that we may thank the presbyterians. Do not think this a slander; for if they (during their twenty -four years' usurpation, i. e. from '38 till 'C2 inclusive) had not made many things, such as rebellion and presbytery, jure divino; if they had not baflfled people's credulity, by making all the extravagancies of the late times God's own work, and the cause of Christ, &c.; and if they had not made it their chief work, ever since, to create and cherish divisions and schisms among us, and to keep up a party for themselves by all means possible, I doubt not the gospel (with God's blessing) would have had more desirable success than it has had in this king- dom. What a pernicious thing is it needlessly to break the unity and distvu'b the peace of a church! I have often thought of that saying of Ireneus^ ^ Nulla ab Us {schismaticis) tanta fieri potest correptio, quanta est Schismatis pernicies'^', ' Lib. iv. Adver. Haeres, cap. 62. '^ No reforms introduced by schismatics can compensate for the ruinous effects of schism. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 449 and the move I think on it, I still find more of important truth in it. And believe it, sir, if ever there was a sect, since Christ came into the world, to whom that father's words in that same chapter were a])plicable, they are (only one thing excepted) to our Scottish presbyterians; — Suam utUitatem potius consi- derantes, quam unitatcm Ecclesice ; propter modicas et quasli- bet causas, maynum et gloriosum Corpus Christi conscindunt et dividunt et quantum in ipsis est interficiunt ; pacem loquentes (here it only fails,) et bellum operantes; vere liquantes, Culicem et Camelum transglutlentes^. By their divisions they have still kept up such rancours and animosities amongst us, that the meek, calm, gentle, peaceable spirit of Christianity could get no footing. And how can religion flourish without that? and by their bold entituling all their unaccountable freaks in the late times to God's authority, and abusing His holy word to justify them, they lost all the credit of the ministry. For, so soon as people's eyes opened, and they began to see what legerdemain had been played in the pulpits, especially under such high pretensions to godliness, they looked upon the sacred office of the ministry (and continue to do so ever since) as a mere imposture; so that though we are at never so much pains to persuade and convince, yet our labours are not regarded; and if they be not that, how can they be successful } " What I have said methinks may pass for a good enough account of the abilities of the conformed clergy; yet I have one thing more to add. I will not recriminate, nor go to tell our presbyterian brethren back again, that of all men alive they ought to have been the last for charging us with igno- rance. But this I will undertake for; let them, out of their whole number within the kingdom, choose what number they please, and the episcopal clergy shall be content that even out of the diocese of Glasgow (which so much pains has been taken to make infamous for its ignorance) the like number be chosen, for debating all the points in controversy between us, before any sufl^cient and impartial judge in Christendom. Is not this enough, ad homines ? The second thing is immorality. — '' We are generally [called] scandalous as well as ignorant; but I doubt if, amongst all the episcopal clergy in Scotland, they shall find a match for their own Mr. Williamson. I^et them shew me a ' " Regarding their own advantage more than the unity of the church, for the least cause they divide, and rend the glorious body of Christ ; and, as far as in them lies, crucify Him afresh. Tliey speak peace, while they wage deadly war. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." VOL. III. 3 M 450 HISTORY OF THE [CilAP. LI. man that played such tricks while a minister, and was so little challenged as he is by his brethren. Not to mention how, for all his lewdness, he is now a leading man of the party, and was lately one of their commissioners at London. Indeed, sir, what greater pains can be taken, either to keep or to piu'ge out scandalous men from being of the clergy than our consti- tution prescribes? After any man is presented to a benefice, before he is either collated or put in orders, an edict is read publicly, before the whole congregation, in the church where he is to be settled, requiring and inviting the heritors, or any within the parish, who have any thing to object against his life, to do it on such a day, before the bishop, or some one de- puted by him; and if any blemish be found that way, he is rejected. And for those who are once in the ministry, I be- lieve there is hardly a sharper discipline any where than in Scotland. The least crime proven against any has its punish- ment; i.e. an act of drunkenness clearly made out will sus- pend him; and two, though some years intervene between them, are sufficient to depose him, and to deprive him for ever. " But I need not dwell on these things. The bishop of Salisbury, it he pleases, can tell the world, that when Dr. Leighton was commendator of Glasgow, and he himself pro- fessor of divinity there, the clamour about the ignorance and immoralities of the clergy of that diocese was such, that the said commendator turned very eai'nest to have it purged. For this end he allowed and invited all people to accuse their pas- tors, and to give in what indictments they pleased against them ; neither was this done scrimply, nor out of mere form; but if there was any partiality, it was against the minister. And yet, after all, how many were found worthy of deposition ? only one of some hundreds, and he, too, not without great suspicion of injustice. Dr. Burnet can tell this, if he pleases; for no man was deeper in that inquisition than himself, being one of the commendator's chief counsellors and instruments. And after all, when both had done what they could, they were forced to confess the clergy uere injured, and it was nothing but the spirit o^ fanaticism which made the people so unkind to them, and raise such calumnies against them. The third thing is negligence. — " But can that be.^ for there were no such things as non-residence or pluralities in use in Scotland. Every presbyter is censurable who is two Sundays together from his church, without license from his ordinary ; and generally they preach twice every Lord's day through the whole kingdom. But negligence is like ignorance; it will be hard to find that definition of negligence which will 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 451 be able to justify such a general persecution as has been al- ready accounted for. The fourth is error. — "But how shall that be tried.? But I think I can easily give you satisfaction as to that matter, by telling you, that I know not so much as one amongst us M'ho could not live in communion with the church of England, and subscribe her Thirty-nine Articles. It is, indeed, true, there be many who are no ways inclined to be every day talk- ing to their people of God's decrees, absolute reprobation, and justification by faith alone in the presbyterian sense, and such like doctrines. They think their hearers may be much more edified by sermons that explain the true nature of evan- gelical faith, the necessity of repentance, and the indispensabi- lity of a gos})el obedience, &c. ; and what error is there here ? But the last thing is, that we have been persecutors. — " Grant it to be true, sure I am, by this tiine we have been paid homeprett}' well in our own coin; and God, of his infi- nite mercy, grant unto us all, that we may exercise a true chris- tian patience under our present sufferings, and that they may work a better temper in us than it seems their pretended per- secutions have wrought in our adversaries. Sure I am, it is nowhere written in the gospel, that suffering for Christ may laudably end in malice and revenge, and the most horrid bar- barities. But how can it be proven that we were such ])erse- cutors? Dare any man say that the severities against the presbyterians, since the restitution of episcopacy, have been near so great as the severities against the episcopalians were during the reign of presbytery ? Dare any man say that the presbyterians have suffered anything for conscience sake these twenty-seven years by-past? It is true, indeed, the slate found there were a number of people of such seditious and imgovernable teini)ers, that they could not be well kept from daily breaking out into open rebellions; therefore they made laws for keeping them low and curbing them; and who can blame this? It is also true, some of these laws obliged the clergy to give an account of those of that temper who lived or haunted in their parishes: and could they top with the go- vernment, and disobey law, when the obedience required waji so reasonable ? Besides, believe me, the clergy did as little that way as was possible for them ; and I can make it good, whenever I am put to it, that where one was pursued upon their informations, twenty were befriended by their intercessions; a single instance whei-eof I learned not long ago. It was in September last, when the deprivations for non-comj)liance were very frequent. Amongst others, Mr. Chisholm, minister at 452 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. Lilliesleaf, in the diocese of Glasgow, was cited at the instance of sir John Riddel ; the minister had given no obedience, and his case was very soon discussed. When sir John and he were coming from the bar, where the former had stood his accuser and heard his sentence, he told Mr. Chisholm, before a good many witnesses, that he confessed he held his life and fortune of him, and protested he would never have treated him so as he had done, if it had not been matter of conscience to him ! What do you think of a presbyterian conscience ? I could give you a hundred more such instances, for indeed it has been observed generally all along, that those have been the greatest enemies to the clergy to whom they had done the best offices'^. " I WILL now tell you briefly that our ignorance lies mainly in being unacquainted with the principles of sedition, and the jus divinum of presbytery ; our scandal, in our being so gene- rally looked upon as nothing fond of change and revolution ; our NEGLIGENCE, in parting with our benefices rather than our consciences ; our erroneousness, in adhering so stubbornly to the principles laid down in Scripture, and maintained by the primitive christians ; and our itch for persecuting dis- senters, to lie chiefly in our inclinations to live and behave as becomes good subjects ; or, if you would have it shorter, we are ignorant, scandalous, negligent, erroneous, insufficient per- secutors, and whatever men please to call us, because we are not PRESBYTERIANS. As I Said before, I will not recriminate with our presbyterian brethren ; I will not go to tell them back again, that they are ignorant or scandalous, &c. ; I will not treat them so uncivilly as to throw back their dung in their own faces ; but this I will say, if they plant the church of Scotland, so well as it \A'as planted, when the prince of Orange came to England, so long as he lives ; if for all their preten- sions to the Spirit, the gospel be preached so purely, so ra- tionally, and so disinterestedly, under their government, as it has been by the episcopal clergy these many years by-gone ; if ever the state have peace, or the church come to a settlement; if ever our king sits securely on his throne, or Coesar have the things that are Caesar's ; if ever the church of England fas * The Rev. Mr. Naesmith saved John Ross, of Carnebrook, from a heavy fine, by pleading with the judge in his favour ; and the return his son Andrew made was to assist in rabbling Mr. Naesmith, find to tell him " that it was not fit that either he or any other minister should be suffered to live in that country, lest they might afterwards do them harm, and give information of their designs. Ross also drew up a summons of ejectment, left it at the manse, drove Mr. Naesmith away from his church, and was the cause of much trouble to him. — A late Letter, &c., 25. 1689.J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 453 little as she has been concerned hitherto in her sister's afflic- tions) want a thorn in her side, or be secured against attempts for her ruin ; and if ever there be peace or order, or desirable concord ; if ever animosities, divisions, contentions, and such other plagues of human society, and christian unity be want- ing at home, so long as their Dagon stands in the temple ; experience has deceived me, and I have mistaken my mea- sures." Persecution is the last resort of a false church, or of a true church tainted with heresy and schism ; hence wherever either popery or presbytery have had the power they have always been persecutors. The former is a true church tainted with heresy and idolatry ; but the latter is not a church at all. Pres- bytery has none of the apostolic marks ; it rejected and vowed to extirpate the Q?pos\\es^ felloivship ; it substituted the dogmas of Calvin for the apostles' doctrine, which they called Armi- uianism and popery ; it rejected and abhorred all public liturgies founded on the apostles' doctrine^ with that prayer taught the church by her Lord and Head, and being cut off from apostolic fellowship, it was incapable of 6rea,^?'7z^ the bread or offering the eucharistic sacrifice commemorative of the only real sacrifice on the cross. This melancholy truth is not said in an uncharitable, but in a most affectionate spirit, and from a sense of duty to my prejudiced countrymen, who having rejected Christ's own appointed representatives, have, awful to think ! rejected Him. Take our blessed Lord's own word for it — " He that heareth you heareth Me ; and he that de- spiseth YOU despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me," " as I send you" — the apostles and their successors — with the same power and authority, that He sent Me. The greater part of the nation clove faithfully to the apostolic fellowship ; it was only that small party in the western districts that had been with so much difficulty and bloodshed kept under during the last two reigns, that declared for presbytery. Their agents in Holland completely deceived William, whom they led to believe that the presbyterians were the majority of" the nation, whereas he found and ac- knowledged that they were a mere fraction of the people. But they had been accustomed to the temporal sword, knew how to wield it, and were countenanced and encouraged by their chiefs, who kept in the background ; and they brought down the arm of persecution like a tornado upon the clergy, who were living, as they imagined, in peace, under the protec- tion of the law. The introduction of presbytery into Scot- 454 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LI. land has always been by unchristian means. Melville com- menced his agitation in 1574, and it cost him twenty years of the utmost turbulence and fierce contention before he accom- plished its establishment. Its struggles for supremacy, and its insolent encroachments on the civil rights of the sovereign and the legislatvu-e, obliged king James VI., before the expira- tion of the eighth year, to deprive it of its establishment. It continued to ferment, and occasionally to break out into acts of violence, till the nobility allied themselves with it to accom- plish their own peculiar sacrilegious views, when the atrocities committed under its sanction, and by its means, were enough to sink the nation in everlasting infamy, and bring down the curse of God upon it. The people, sick of its tyranny, gladly sought relief from its manifold oppressions, and returned cheerfully to the apostolic fellowship. From the Restoration to the Revolution, its history was little else tlian one long- continued rebellion ; yet the punishments of various kinds, Avhich their sedition brought down upon them, were not re- ceived as God's chastenings to lead them to repentance ; but were considered aswrongs to be revenged whenever they found themselves in a condition to accomplish the obligations of their covenant. And we may say with the Patriarch of his treache- rous sons — " O my soul, come not thou into their secret ; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united : for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel." A REMARKABLE feature of presbytery is its constant tendency to division and separation. It is one of the marks of God's .anger. The prayer of God incarnate, when He was about to lay down His life for the church, was, that not only the glorious company of the apostles might be one, but that all that shall believe on Him through theii' word may be one also, even in such a mysterous harmony as that of the divine Unity. He also informed them that unless those who believe on Him through their ministry should continue steadfastly in His mysti- cal body, they " cannot bear fruit," " but are cast forth as a branch," to wither and die. He assured the apostles that He was the true Vine, and they were the branches ; and that if they abode in Him, He would dwell with them. But " as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me;" that is, in my mystical body the church. The successors of the apostles being branches of the vine, it is also necessary to salvation to remain steadfastly in their fellowship, in order that we may 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 455 partake of the christian sacraments, which are the channels of divine grace, and are as necessary to our spiiitual birth and after growth in holiness, as the sap is to the growth of a tree-. But the prcsbyterians cut themselves off from that branch of the vine which was established in their own country, and so the channels of divine grace were dried up, and the fruits of the Spirit were changed into those of the flesh. A withering blight overspread and broke in upon them, and instead of love, unity, and concord, there has been the fiercest hatred and wrath, not only against all the branches of the vinCy but even against the various divisions of their own sect, which, as a curse following their own division, has tormented themselves. The Holy Spirit was one of the gifts which Christ promised at his Ascension to send, and He is the principle of grace and immortality to Chiist's mystical body the church. But the Holy Spirit can only be obtained through the branches that abide in the vine, according to Christ's promise ; and He has ordained the sacraments to be the channels for conveying His grace to the hearts of men ; for by one Spirit we are all baptized into the one mystical body of Christ, and " all drink into one Spirit." Therefore those who have cut themselves off from the vine cannot baptize into the body of Christ, but only into their own secty nor draw of that living water which shall spring up into everlasting life ; and their ministers, not having spiritual life themselves, cannot give their people that " bread indeed," and that " drink indeed," which were given " for the life of the world." The same principle that creates seditions and tumults in civil governments breaks also the peace and unity of the church, to which all the promises of God are made, and to none other ; and therefore no man can expect to obtain these promises by rejecting the church and joining himself to those who have separated themselves from it. Noah's Ark was a pattern and pledge of Christ's church ; and the whole church, which then only consisted of eight persons, were saved by water, which typically shewed that the christian church is saved by baptism. Those coundess myriads who were out- side the ark, to some of whom Christ afterwards preached in paradise the consolation of their redemption, perished in the raging ocean of the deluge : the parallel will suggest what great danger there will be to those who cut themselves off from the church. Papianus separated from the communion of the church, but boasted that he held communion with the bishops, much in the same way that, although sworn to extirpate the bishops, the presbyterians assort that their communion 456 HISTORY OP THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. LI. comprehends the whole church catholic. But St. Cyprian, writing to this man, told him, as we compassionately tell the presbyteriansjthat " the bishop is in the church, and the church in the bishop; they who are not with the bishop, are not in the church : and they miserably deceive themselves, who, not maintaining communion with the bishops of God, think cun- ningly to insinuate into the church, by communicating with certain others; whereas the church, which is one and catholic, will not endure separation and schism, but is united and con- solidated through all its parts by the cement of an united epis- copate.^'' And all the bishops throughout the whole world hold a part of the episcopate conjunctly and severally, which the same father has inimitably described in the following often quoted passage : — " The episcopate is one, of which every bishop holds a part, so as to have a concern in, or to be interested for, the whole. The church also is one, which, by a fruitful increase, grows up into a multitude of members ; as the sun has many rays, yet but one fountain of light ; or as a tree may have many branches, yet but one root fixed deep in the earth ; or as when many streams descend from one fountain, they a]>pear indeed divided in their number, yet all preserve the unity of their original." 457 CHAPTER LII. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. 1689. — Viscount Dundee — leaves Edinburgh — takes the field — joined by a few recruits from Ireland. — Killicrankie — the battle — death of lord Dundee.— Letter from lord Melfort to lord Dundee. — Difference between William and the presbyterians — William's views — and sentiments. — The bishops deprived of their rents. — Proclamation. — sacrilege. — Clergy reduced to starvation — the arrears of tithe due to them stopped. — Some of the prelates go to London. 1690. — Meeting of parliament. — Distress of the clergy. — Dr. Monro — — accused — his sentiments. — Acts of the presbyterians — their immorality — and some of its causes. — Diocesan fund for the clergy seized — a new fund commenced. — Meeting of parliament — king's letter — transactions — Assertory Act repealed — presbyterians petition — against patronage — act dispossessing the clergy — Confession of Faith ratified. — Presbyterian government established — repeal of acts — churches declared vacant. — Reflections. — The Directory. — Assurance. — A. petition from the clergy. — Anniversary of the 29th of May abolished. 1689. — The viscount of Dundee was now the only prop of James's cause in Scotland. He was the celebrated James Graham of Claverhouse, a branch of the Montrose family, and was created Viscount Dundee, and lord Graham, of Cla- verhouse, in the county of Forfar, by king James VII., on the 12th of November, 1688, after the Revolution had begun. When the estates brought in the rabbling presbyterians, to protect, as they said, the convention, they assaulted all the members, including the bishops, who were opposed to the revolutionary proceedings of the times. In particular they shewed their hostility to lord Dundee, and even threatened to assassinate him, which, according to their principles, would have been a religious duty. When he heard of the design for his assassination, he complained to the convention and de- sired their protection. No notice was taken of his complaint, and he renewed his application, and offered to prove that suc^" a design was on foot, declaring that without the assis- tance of their authority, he held it not safe to attend any longer. The only answer he received was, that " his non- VOL. III. 3 N 458 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LII. attendance would be no great loss^" He therefore retired from the convention, partly on account of the proceedings in it, and partly from the just apprehension of danger to his life. In retaliation, the convention proclaimed the viscount a rebel, traitor, and outlaw. This rash proceeding, accompanied with an attempt to arrest his lordship, precipitated his measures, before he had received the promised support of some troops from Ireland. Edinburgh Castle had been placed by king James imder the command of the duke of Gordon. George, fourth marquis of Huntly, was created by Charles II. duke of Gordon, and by king James made governor of Edinburgh Castle, which he defended so long as it was practicable, and behaved with great humanity to the city, although it was in his power to have much distressed it. The convention ordered the Castle to be besieged, and after holding it out for three months in expectation of promised relief from Ireland, the duke was obliged to surrender it. Lord Dundee left Edinburgh on the 19th of March, at the head of a few horse ; but halting them at a spot near the West Kirk, which is now the noble terrace called Princes Street, he clambered up the rock to the postern gate, and held a con- ference with the duke of Gordon, and exhorted him to defend the Castle to the last extremity, at the same time promising him relief. He retired to his own house of Duddop, near Dundee, whence he entered into correspondence with tlie chiefs of clans in the Highlands. About two thousand joined his standard, and he drove colonel Ramsay at the head of some cavalry before him ; but general Mackay advancing with strong reinforcements, Dundee fell back to Lochaber. The Athole highlanders, who had been raised by the marquis's son, lord Murray, deserted their young chief, and declared for king James. About three hundred miserable recruits also joined Dundee from Ireland, instead of the numerous reinforcements that James and his minister had promised to send him. This was a sad disappointment to Dundee. He had pressed king James himself to come over to Scotland ; but at the same time he advised him not to bring the earl of Melfort with him, who was most obnoxious, on account of his religious bigotry ; and also recommended him to be contented with the exercise of his own religion without forcing it upon his subjects. His advice was disagreeable to king James, and was deeply re- sented by lord Melfort. All the assistance, therefore, that the viscount received was this wretched company of undis- * Account of the present Persecution, p. 3. 1689.] CHDRCH Of SCOTLAND. 459 ciplined militia, a few stands of arms and some ammunition. Mackay was a good officer, and had served with reputation in Holland, and Burnet saj's, " he was the piousest man I ever knew in a military way." He cautiously followed Dundee's motions; and after much marching and counter-marching, both armies met in a small field, surrounded by hills on all sides, and with a very narrow passage on the north, where there is only room at present for the high road betwixt Perth and Inver- ness. This magnificent pass is called Killicranky, and is the grand entrance into the Highlands, not far from the junction of the Tummel with the G arry. It is formed by lofty moun- tains overhanging the latter river, which rushes violently through a dark, deep, and rocky channel, almost concealed by trees, and forms a scene of most magnificent grandeur •. At the time when general Mackay madly placed this pass in his rear, the road, if it could be called such, was one of much difficulty and danger for ordinary travellers, and threatened instant de- struction to the least false step. To the northward of the pass there is a narrow haugh or low field, on which the battle that decided James's destiny was fought in July. Mackay's army was completely routed, and to make their escape had to make the best of their way through this defile. Two circum- stances saved his array from annihilation ; the first was, the devotion of the highlanders to plunder, and the want of artil- lery, but as it was, the slaughter was very great. The other circumstance was the death of the gallant Graham in the moment of victory. Dundee had elevated his arm to point his men to some orders for the pursuit, when he received a shot at the joint of his harness under the armpit, which is called " a random shot" in most of the accounts ; but it has been very justly surmised to have been a pistol shot from a treacherous bystander, as from his position a shot from the enemy, and after all firing on both sides had ceased, and the flight began, could scarcely have taken effect and been mortal. The loss of the highlanders was so insignificant as not to have been named ; but after the fall of their heroic commander, they fell into confusion ; Mackay seeing this rallied his men, and dispersed his victors, who could never again be formed. Lord Dundee was interred in the churchyard of the parish of Moulin, in which the battle was fought, and there is a rude monument erected to his memory about the centre of the field where he was killed. It is usually pointed out by the guard or coachman of the stage-coach, which now runs on a splen- * Personal observation. 4b'0 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, LIl. did Macadamised road that has been cut through the pass, and traverses the field of battled Some solitary tears have suffused the cheeks of some of the race of hereditary Jaco- bites, which is not yet extinct, though perhaps their feelings are modified, when whirling past the stone that marks the last breathing-place of the " bonnie Dundee." He was the last hope of the house of Stuart, and the life of their cause. His death was considered so fatal to king James's interest, that most of the chieftains put up their swords and retired to their homes, except the earl of Dumfermline, who rashly ventured an action at Perth, but was completely routed, with the loss of four hundred men 2. The NEXT day after the action at Killicrankie, a jacobite officer picked up a bundle of papers, near the spot where Dundee fell, which those that had stripped his body had cast away as valueless. He found they contained letters and com- missions, and papers of considerable importance. There was a letter from Melfort to lord Dundee, which enclosed a decla- ration from king James, containing an offer of indemnity to all such as returned to their duty, and of toleration to all persua- sions. " Now this declaration the first of these lords had ad- vised and prepared purposely to bridle the rage of the last against the fanatics ; and the latter, we are told, was calcu- lated to sweeten that bitter pill to him ; for it imported, * that notwithstanding the seeming promises of indulgence and in- demnity in the declaration, he had so worded them that king James might break through them when he pleased, and that his majesty did not think himself obliged to stand to them.' It is fit to point out to posterity that this passage is taken from the account of Scotch affairs which lord BalcaiTas himself thought fit to lay before that unfortunate prince ; and that his lordship observes upon it, that it not only dissatisfied Dundee, but many of his majesty's friends, who thought a more inge- nuous way of dealing would have been more agreeable to his honour and his interest ; that it did no small prejudice to his affairs, and that it would have done more if it had not been carefully suppressed 2." Although the parliament had abolished the establishment of the episcopal church on the 5lh of July, yet presbylerian- ism had not been established in its place. The ministers, * Personal Observation. 2 Life of James II.— Life of King William III., ii. 41-57.— Burnet's Own Times, iv. ^ Ralph's Hist. ii. 109 ; cited by editor of Burnet's Own Times, iv, 49. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 461 however, had become impatient to get }3ossession, but the set- tlement of their polity was postponed for a short time ; and thus, says Dr. Cook, " was Scotland ibr some time left with- out an establishment." A draught of an act was sent down by William himself, in which he shewed much good sense in modifying the high-flying sentiments of the presbyterians, and in reducing their claims to supremacy. They demanded for presbytery " to be the only government of Christ's church in this kingdom ;" but William changed these words with his own hand, to "to be the government of the church in this kingdom established by law." Neither would he consent to the abolition of patronage. He sent down a draught of an act dated the SSd of July, which revived the act of James VI. 1592, " in the whole heads, points, and articles thereof ; with \h\^ express Declaration, that the necessity of occasional as- semblies be first represented to his majesty by humble suppli- cation,'''— " and in regard that much trouble hath ensued unto the estate, and many sad confusions and scandalous schisms have fallen out in the church, by churchmen meddling in mat- ters of state .... do hereby discharge all ministers of the gospel within this kingdom to meddle with any state affairs, either in sermons or judicatories, publicly or privately, under pain, &c." And to prevent political discussions, " that their majesties shall always have one present in all the provincial and presbyterial assemblies, as well as their commissioner in the general assemblies." The draught then went on to ap- point the first meetings of their synods and presbyteries. William desired that his draught might be passed into an act for the settlement of the kirk ; but the constraint upon their de- sire to control the civil government at their pleasure, and for the erection of the old Commission, with all its assumed powers, was exceedingly unsatisfactory. The control of royal com- missioners in all their three courts was intolerable ; but it shewed William's sagacity in preventing that trouble to his own government which had been so fatal to the preceding. When this draught was read previous to its being proposed, it excited the utmost indignation, and was forthwith rejected with scorn and contempt. " The presbyterian minister, who was then in quality of a chaplain to the parliament, said that they would, rather than admit of such a mangled mongrel presbytery, bey back the bishops again; and that it was nonsense not to allow the clergy to impose other oaths as well as that of allegiance." Bu( let the presbyterians swear allegiance to all the kings in Christendom, it will only be in obedience to the omnipotence of presbytery ; for they are 462 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIT. taught, by their hopes of heaven, to resist the king, when he either counteracts or contradicts the decisions of their General Assembly, which they contend may and ought to meet when and where they please, either without or against the king's expressed will. At the reformation, the protestants thought they did the christian world an essential service when they re- moved the tyranny of the papal supremacy from the necks of christian magistrates ; but the presbyterians hug the identical doctrine of their own supremacy as the great palladium of the protestant religion ! ^ William's sentiments upon ecclesiastical matters were natu- rally formed upon the practice in Holland, where all religions are tolerated ; but where one only is established. His great object now, when he was able to use his own eyes and ears, and understood British interests better than he did before he left Holland, was to pursue the same policy as the four pre- ceding monarchs had done ; that is, " to have the same form of church government established over the whole island." There could not have been any proposition more reasonable or consistent with sound policy ; but why should the Stuarts have been so reproached and insulted for executing what William now found by experience was the only method to se- cure the peace of the empire ? And although, says M'Cor- mick, in the event of uniformity, " presbytery would have been more agreeable to his own principles than episcopacy, yet an union of the two churches, upon any reasonable terms, was so very eligible, and the points in dispute betwixt the two, in his estimation, so very trifling [!], that, could the church of England have been brought to lower their terms of communion, so as to comprehend the bulk of the non-con- formists in that kingdom, he was fully determined never to abolish episcopacy in Scotland.^'' It would appear, that with all his imputed sagacity and love of toleration, William's liberality wa^ all on one side ; nevertheless, M*Cormick says, " it is certain that it required all the influence which the friends of that [the presbyterian] form of church government could exert, to prevail with him" to establish it. The church, as if she had been a political sect instead of a society bound by God's laws, was to lower her terms of communion; that is, to allow a mei*e sect to acquire a supremacy over God's heritage ; but the dissenters were not to advance one step to- wards her — she was to crouch to receive their burthen, but > Case of the Afflicted Clergy, 98-102.— Life of Carstares, 44-49; Appen- dix.— Account of the present Persecution, 05. 1689.] CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 463 they were to ride triumph.ant. O, liberality! thou art the same intolerant, persecuting, selfish thing in all ages. M'CoRMiCK goes on to say, " And it was not till he found that all attempts towards a comprehension in England would probably be rendered ineffectual by the violence [firmness] of the high church party, that he yielded to the establishment of presbytery in Scotland. Nor had he sooner consented, than, by the indiscreet management of those who were en- trusted l3y him in the direction of Scottish affairs, and the headstrong violence of the presbyterian clergy, he began to REPENT of what he had done in their favour. As his own sen- timents in religion were abundantly liberal [latitudinarian] , so it was a maxim with him, that, upon religious subjects, every man ought to be left at full liberty to think for himself; and he abhorred from the bottom of his heart, as the worst of ty- ranny, every prostitution of civil authority to the base purpose of lording it over the consciences of men ^" Then king Wil- liam was decidedly guilty of " the worst of tyranny ;" for if he did not authorise, he at least permitted, " the prostitution of the civil authority" to the most inhuman persecution of those who thought they were "at full liberty to think for themselves." For by this " prostitution of the civil authority," the episco- pal clergy, in the most profound and confiding security, were driven, in the midst of a very severe winter, with their wives and tender children, from their residences, their property de- stroyed, and their persons insulted and abused. " Nor is this to be imputed so much to the barbarous executioners as to the bloody and enthusiastic company [of ministers] that inspired them. There is no safety for some men but in the universal shipwreck of church and state ; the shaking of the nation was so terrible, that all the scum got uppermost, our state and our church were at once levelled with the earth, and the protes- tant religion lost its former signification, and now it is no more than every man's fantastic humour, new models of govern- ment, and a liberty to pull down the things that are most an- cient and most sacred 2." The establishment of presbytery was, however, only post- poned till the government could accommodate itself better to the inclinations of that small faction that called itself the people. Although the country " was left without an esta- blishment," yet the spoliation of the church proceeded with alacrity. On the 19th of September the privy council issued ' Life of Carstares, 43. * Account of the present Persecution, 64. 464 HISTORY OF THIS LCHAP. Lll llie following proclamation, discharging the payment of the rents of the bishopricks to any but to certain persons therein named, one of whom was Alexander Hamilton, of Kinkell. He was one of the prisoners taken at Bothwell Bridge, and an at- tainted traitor; but whose life, by Charles's clemency, was then spared, although he was always a great ringleader among the rebel presbyterians. It is a suspicious circumstance, that all the traitors and rebels to the former governments were re- warded and promoted to office after the revolution, which gives reason to suspect that they were actually in William's service even before he invaded England, and afterwards re- ceived the reward of their treason. Whereas the meeting of the estates of this kingdom, in their claim of right of the 11th of April last, declared that prelacy and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters is and hath been a great and insupportable griev- ance to this nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people, ever since the reformation ; and that their majesties .... have by their act of the date of the 5th of July last by past, abolished prelacy and all superiority of any office in the church above presbyters ; and his majesty, considering the prejudice it may be to his interest if fit per- sons be not appointed to look after and receive the rents and emoluments, particularly those consisting of tithes, which formerly did belong to the bishops, hath therefore signified his royal pleasure that the lords of his majesty's privy council should give warrant to Alexander Hamilton, of Kinkell, for drawing and uplifting the tithes and other rents of the arch- bishoprick of St. Andrews .... formerly belonging to the bishops, deans, or any other person of superior order or dig- nity in the church, above presbyters Therefore the said lords of privy council, in their majesties' name and au- thority aforesaid, prohibit and discharge all and sundry heri- tors, feuars, life-renters, tacksmen of tiends, tenants and others whose tiends were formerly in use to be drawn, and who were liable in payment of any rent or duty to the said archbishops or bishops, or others foresaid, to draw or suffer their tiends to be drawn, and from payment of any rental, tolls, few blanch, or tack duties and other rents, casualties and emoluments, formerly payable to the said late archbishops, bishops, and others foresaid, except to such persons as shall be authorised by the said lords of privy council for uplifting thereof; with certification to them, if they do any thing in the contrary hereof, they shall be liable therefore, notwithstanding of any 1689.] CHURCPI OF SCOTLAND. 465 pretended discharge that may be impetrate or obtained from any other person or persons, for the said crop and year of God aforesaid. Thus we find that sacrilege accompanied the most mon- strous injustice, as it has ever done when the uncatholic party in Scotland have been dominant. Here was a direct and bare- faced robbery of God, a taking of that from Him which had been given lay the piety of former ages for supporting His worship. But, as a certain noble counsellor had confessed to his cousin, the parish priest, it was the determination of the whig government to carry out the antichristian obligations of the covenant, and to extirpate episcopacy root and branch. Those clergymen who had, in compliance with their princi- ples of non-resistance, obeyed all the requisitions of the privy council, were not one whit better off than those who resolutely, though meekly, declined to concur in acts which their con- sciences told them were sinful. Those whom the council could not reach through the forms of law, the rabble dealt with in their own fashion; and they were as busy in ejecting the clergy as those who had in this way so worthily celebrated the anniver- sary of our Lord's nativity. The government neither checked nor inquired into their barbarities, but had given them a vote of thanks for their good services. This, says Mr. Skinner, " was quick and summary work, and a much more oppressive measure than was given at the Reformation to the popish bishops, who were allowed to hold and possess two-thirds of their benefices, at their own calcu- lation, to their dying day. But our protestant bishops v.ere not to be so gently dealt with, even by a protestant adminis- tration, which at one dash could thus sweep away the small remainder of church spoil into the exchequer, without allow- ing the old titulars the smallest portion of it for their necessary subsistence. In this strange state of confusion and anarchy stood the external constitution of a christian church, in a christian land, all this while! The bishops turned out of their government, and most of the presbyters out of their mi- nistry ; episcopacy itself, which had been confirmed by so many acts of free and unquestionable parliaments, struck down at one blow, and nothing as yet set up in its room. The Cameronians, indeed, these true sons of the covenant, driving up and down, in the gracious employment of empty- ing kirks by strength of hand, and the popish kings indulged and addressing friends, the bastard but most numerous brood of that mother, running here and there in quest of prey, and taking hold, though but for a day, of the kirks and stipends VOL. III. 3 o 466 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. LII. which tlieir active Lvcthven were every now and then vacat- ing for them ; whilst the once legally settled episcopalians, whether outstanders or compliers, durst, in such places as these rabblers had access to, scarcely shew their heads, and had little or nothing but the charity of friends on wlxvch. to support themselves and their dependents."^ The privy council went further than simply thanking the persecutors. They also rivetted the injuries of the persecuted clergy, and stepped between them and the civil courts that now- had resumed tlieir functions, after having been a year in abey- ance, by the following act of council, which prevented their recovering the arrears that were due to them of their sti- pends. Some of them had not received any stipend for the year 1687, and almost none of them had received that for the year 1688. They were consequently reduced to the lowest condition of poverty, and many of them were actually in a state of starvation. At Edinburgit, December 24th, 1689. — The lords of their majesty's privy council, considering that by the act of the meeting of the estates of the date the 13th of April last, there is a difference made betwixt the ministers then in pos- session and exercise of their ministry at their respective churches, and those who were not so ; and that the case of the ministers who were not in the actual exercise of their ministerial function the 13th day of April last by past lies yet under the consideration of the parliament ; and lest in the meantime they may call and pursue for the stipend alleged due to them, or put in execution the decreets and sentences al- ready obtained at their instance for the same, before the estates of parliament can meet and give their determination as to that point : Therefore the said lords of privy council, finding that the case foresaid depending before the parliament is not obvious to be cognosced and decided upon by the inferior judges, but that the same should be left entire to the decision of parliament, have thought fit to signify to all inferior courts and ministers of the law that the matter above mentioned is depending before the parliament; to the effect they may regu- late and govern themselves in the judging of all processes to be inlented before them, upon the said matter, or in execut- ing sentences already pronounced thereupon, as they shall be answerable. Sic subscribitur Crawford, J. P. D.^ No MAN, says Mr. Skinner, " can doubt that this was a most cruel as well as a most unjust decree. Cruel to the 1 Ecclesiastical Hist. ii. 539. - Account of the present Persecution, 62. 1689.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 467 wretched sufferers, who had been by law installed in their pos- sessions, and against whom no process had been laid, nor so much as accusation intented ; and unjust, in thus overawing the standing civil judicatories, which, not many years ago, would have been a flaming grievance if it had been attempted. But it had the designed effect. For the judges did not choose to meddle after the passing of such an act, when they saw how darkly and indistinctly it was worded, and could not but know how ready such a council would be to bring them to trouble, if they should give it an interpretation contrary to its original intention, however consonant to the standing rules of both law and equity. So these poor clergy were in a most melancholy condition, not only deprived of the yearly emolu- ments annexed to their office, but likewise, by this iniquitous interposition of the privy council, debarred from any possi- bility of recovering what arrears were due to them for former services, which their persecutors could pretend no title to, and which, after this authoritative step, their debtors would not be much inclined to pay. And hei-e, again, let it be men- tioned how diflerent the procedure in a like case was at the restoration of episcopacy in 1662. The parliament then, though they found that the presbyterian ministers, who had taken possession of kirks without presentation from the legal patrons, had no right nor title to the benefices, and therefore declared all such kirks ipso jure vacant, yet they declared at the same time, ' that this act shall not be prejudicial to any of these ministers in what they have possessed or is due to them since their admission ;' which, whether we shall call it jus- tice or not, was at least a singular instance of favour and in- dulgence ^" By a letter from earl Crawford to Mr. Carstares, dated December 19th, we are informed some of the distressed pre- lates repaired to London, in the hope of finding intercessors with the king to mitigate their sufierings, and to save them from the fury of their implacable enemies. " I am told," says his lordship, " there is a great repair of abolished bishops and deprived inferior clergy, who arc stretching their wits to have this parliament dissolved ; and if that cannot be obtained, to lay the foundation for reviving their interest when it sits. .... If we can stave off all representations from our adver- saries unent our church government and deprived ministers, until the convocation of the [presbyterian] clergy are dis- missed, I would expect that after applications would have ' Ecclesiasitcal History, ii. 536-7. 468 HISTORY OF THE - [CHAP. LII. less weight. What is printed for the council's vindication would be well digested and couched in generals, rather than condescend to particulars^." 1690. — The pakliament met on the IStli of April j and as the duke of Hamilton had conceived some disgust at the proceedings of the presbyterians, and moreover, as he dis- liked both Melville and Stair, he refused to accept the post of commissioner if he was to be tied down to co-operate with them. The earl of Melville, a genuine presbyterian, and formerly a traitor, was therefore substituted, and sent down to fill that high office, and the earl Crawford was made president. These appointments were very gratifying to their party. The persecu- tion of the episcopal clergy still, however, continued; and some idea of the sufferings of those who had been rabbled may be conceived when it is stated that they had no means of subsistence but the charity of friends. They had not received their stipends for the previous year, 1688, and those who ought to have paid them were now prohibited by an act of counicil. Besides these privations, they were robbed of their good name and reputa- tion, and assailed by the accusation of immorality of private character, as well as incapacity in their ministerial office, un- der pretence of securing the protestant religion and making the kingdoms happy. Dr. Monro, who has been already mentioned, was most furiously assailed with the calumny of scandalous immorality. He did not disdain, for the sake of outraged religion and truth, to come forward and prove a ne- gative, so far as the positive and written testimony of the best members of society could prove his and his brethren's worth. The sentiments of this great and good man shew how false the imputation of immorality was, and as they were the sen- timents of the majority of the clergy, it is here extracted from the Dedication of a volume of his Sermons : — " I am heartily sorry that our country should be the theatre of so many com- plaints and disorders, and that the immediate servants of the sanctuary, both bishops and presbyters, should be run down with clamour and violence, for no other reason, that I know, but because they are separated from the world to the peculiar service of the living God. Notwithstanding of all this, we ought to j)0ssess our souls in patience, and to believe that not a hair of our heads falls to the ground without our heavenly Father. And this one truth may compose our spirits against all storms and disasters, and teach us to resign ourselves with- out struggling to the disposal of heaven. When we are sin- 1 Carstarcs's State Papers, 125, 126. J690.J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 469 cerely humbled for our sins, both national and personal, ' He will visit us again in the multitude of His tender mercies ;' and therefore it is more our duty to look unto Him that smites us, than to complain of our oppressors. It may be that they themselves who have been most active in our calamities are somewhat sensible of their cruelty ; and if not, we heartily pray that God would ' bring into the way of truth all such as have erred and are deceived.' The present desolations of our church may be palliated with many little excuses ; but all the rhetorical colours imaginable can never hide the consequences of so monstrous a charge." The same christian spirit appears to have guided those persecuted men generally; for similar sentiments are to be found in the writings of Sage, Garden, and others, that have been published. Men actuated by such humble and charita- ble sentiments cannot, with justice, be accused of immoral lives. The pulpits of these confessors, who were men of learning, polished manners, and many of them of high birth, were now occupied literally by " the lowest of the people," who, having a bad cause to sustain, brought a railing accusa- tion against those whose churches they had usurped. A charge of immorality, therefore, was one of the artifices to which they resorted in order to blacken and malign the characters of the clergy. If, says Dr. Monro, in another publication, " there be so many libels gathered by presbyterians, it may provoke their enemies to recriminate; and if the vindicator thinks that such scurrilous writings can serve the common cause of reli- gion, I wish him more wisdom and sobriety : I condemn all such methods in all parties; but if the thing were allowable, we could tell him, that many of his associates in the ministry are very scandalous, some of them adulterers, some fornicators, some blasphemers, some whole presbyterian families inces- tuous; but if I rejoiced in this recrimination, I were not a good christian. It is necessary to put these proud and su- percilious men in mind, that they are but ordinary mortals, encompassed about with the same infirmities with other men, and that they should consult the Scriptures and the fathers for arguments, rather than the Cameronian zealots in the western shires, and if they ill treat the clergy at those exercises they ought to be chastised. For a conclusion to this, I must tell you, that God will clear our innocence as the sun in his meridian elevation, and I hope to the conviction of our ene- mies, that in the simplicity of our souls wc designed the reformation of sinners, and that we look upon ourselves as dedicated to the immediate service of God, and the sooner we 470 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LII. retire into our own consciences, and discover the secret springs of our own calamity, the sooner will our Heavenly Father re- move the marks of his indignation i." It was a common subject of declamation that was malici- ously charged against the episcopal clergy, that they indulged men in their sins. This was a falsehood. It served, however, as a text to enable the presbyterian ministers to magnify and extol their own pharisaical discipline, the violence of which soon cured itself. " I know of no effect," says the above au- thor, " that ever the presbyterian disciplhie had towards re- forming the world, unless you reckon that the murdering of bastard children was of that nature. It cannot be denied but that the presbyterian ministers use long discourses to the women that sit on the stool of repentance, but they cannot name three of them that ever mounted that public seat but they became prostitutes ; and when once they made shipwreck of their modesty, one may guess what followed. Their public appearance in this manner made them impudent. This is all the reformation I know that their discipline most eminently promotes. If by their discipline they mean that endless and pragmatic inquisition into all actions, it is as impracticable as it is burthensome; and though it be a natural step to ad- vance their supremacy, yet it is attended with so much confu- sion and animosity, that neither true religion nor liberty can endure it. It is pleasant to hear them declaim against the ty- ranny of the papal power, and yet meddle with all that the pope ever meddled with. We know what profanations of the name of God were occasioned by this discipline in the year 1648, when the best of the nobility and gentry, and others, were made to profess their repentance for the ' unlawful engage- ment.' This new fantastic and apish imitation of strictness is inconsistent with reason, as it is indeed destructive to true and regular devotion 2," At this time the whole of the episcopal clergy suffered in their reputations, liberties, and property, fi'om the pulpit, the press, and the laws, by fines, banishment, and imprisonment. One instance is so glaringly unjust and oppressive, tliat it must not be omitted. In the year 1673, Dr. Young, then lord bishop of Edinburgh, proposed to the clergy of his diocese 10 form a widows' fund. This was readily agreed to, and every clergyman in the diocese contributed one merk annually for every hundred merks of which his stipend consisted, for the benefit of their widows and orphans. This fund pros ' Apology for the Clergy of Scotland, p. 15. " Ibid. jip. 22, 23. 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 471 pered amazingly, and was placed under the management and control of the magistrates of Edinburgh. At the Revolution it had accumulated to the sum of 7,500 merks, and the clergy now proposed to commence the payment of annuities to the widows and orphans of those who had contributed to it, and also to the clergymen of Edinburgh whom the persecution and deprivation of their benefices had reduced to absolute want. As soon as the presbyterian ministers who had sup- planted the episcopal clergy heard of Hie existence of this fund, and of the bishop's intention to divide it among the rightful owners, they laid claim to it. They got an interdict from the Court of Session to prevent its payment to the clergy, and commenced an action at law against Dr. Rose, the lord bishop of Edinburgh, to compel him to give them possession of it. The plea that they advanced was, that this fund belonged to those who were actually in the possession of the parish churches; and as the contributors had been expelled from their benefices, they had consequently forfeited their right! Absurd and unjust as this reasoning was, it was sustained by the Court of Session, and the widows and orphans of the de- ceased contributors, and the starving clergy themselves, were deprived, by law, of their just rights. And perhaps this sa- crilegious robbery was the foundation of the present flourish- ing Ministers' Annuity Fund. This most unjust and iniquitous robbery was only a following out of the principles of the Covenant, and a certain method ot extirpating God's heritage, whom they denominated the priests of Baal. Perhaps, with a slight alteration, the words of St. James might be applied not only to this transaction, but also to the rabblers, — " Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries oi them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.^' Upon the occurrence of this distressing calamity, bishop Rose and his clergy pro- posed to raise a fund by subscription to supply, in some mea- sure, the extreme penury of the whole body of the rabbled clergy. The account which is now before me, states — " The episcopal church being now at a very low ebb, her bishops and clergy having been deprived of their houses and livings, and many of them in very low and strait circumstances, the bishop and clergy in EdinlDurgh, being assisted by some of the principal laity, set on foot a collection for the relief of the most indigent, appointing iwo of the clergy in P^dinburgh collectors of tliat charity, which has been of inexpressible use to very many who have shared of it; God accompanying with his 472 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIl. blessing the endeavours of all concerned in the administra- tion of it, by opening the hearts and hands of many, even of presbyterian principles, to contribute for the relief of the poor episcopal clergy, which collection of charity has subsisted upwards of threescore years, does yet subsist, and may it subsist, whilst God, in his wise providence, is pleased to allow the remains of episcopacy to continue in the severe furnace of affliction ^" On the opening of the session of parliament king William's letter was read, dated the 18th of April. It stated, " the re- solution we had to have been personally present with you in the second session of our parliament, did occasion the first adjournment; and though the sitting down of our new parlia- ment of England, and other most important affairs, do hinder us to prosecute that design at present, yet we are so desirous of the happiness and contentment of our ancient kingdom, that we have determined our expedition to Ireland shall not delay your meeting; and to that effect we have nominated and authorised our right trusty, &c. earl Melville, whom we have instructed to give you full assurance of our tender affection and great care towards that our ancient kingdom, and particularly in relation to the esiablishment of church government in that way which may be most conducible to the glory of God, and agreeable to the inclinations of our people, that the security and peace of the country, and payment of our forces, may be provided for, and such other laws may be enacted as may render you happy and contented 2," A PETITION was presented by the presbyterian ministers, w^hich, after having been twice read, it was moved to be sent to a committee : but it was answered, " there could be no com- mittee appointed till the act anent the articles was rescinded, anent which there was a vote jjassed the last session of parlia- ment; as also an act for rescinding the act asserting his ma- jesty's supremacy in matters ecclesiastic; and that being done, they were content to proceed to name a committee ^." The parliament then proceeded to demolish the king's supre- macy over the kirk; but " the thorough-paced presbyterians were sadly nicked in that matter, for it was only the act of '69 that was rescinded ; for other acts that asserted the supremacy to a degree entirely inconsistent with the prerogatives of the ' MS. Memoirs of the Church of Scotland. — This manuscript was lent to me by the late primate, the right rev. Dr. Walker, lord bishop of Edinburgh, of which I took a copy. The original is now, probably, with other papers, in the possession of his lordship's successor. =* Acts of Parliament of Scotland, vol. i.x. pp. 109, 110. ^ Ibid. p. 110. 1690.] ciiURcn OF Scotland. 473 kirk were kept in force, and unrepealed ^" The repeal of the Assertory Act was a most wise and patriotic proceeding; yet it did not remove that legitimate supremacy over the kirk which the crown had at all times possessed, and has ever since actually, though quietly, exercised. The first act, therefore, was the repeal of this iniquitous act, whose erastian teeth had been drawn by king Charles's explanatory letter; but it was now incapacitated from ever again biting. " It was thought not a little preposterous," says Mr. Skinner, " to condemn an act of parliament, because inconsistent with an imaginary thing, which had no real being, and only existed in the desires and wishes of a certain party : and though they got this one offensive law out of the way, there still stood, unrepealed, many other acts asserting the supremacy in terms equally in- jurious to their bold claims:" — " Our sovereign lord and lady the king and queen's majesties, taking into their consideration that by the second article of the grievances presented to their majesties by the estates of this kingdom, It is declared, that the first act of the second parliament of king Charles II., en- titled an act asserting his majesty's supremacy over all persons and all clauses ecclesiastical, is inconsistent with the esta- blishment of the church government noiv desired, and ought to be abrogate ; therefore their majesties, with the advice and consent of the estates of parliament, do hereby abrogate, re- scind, and annul the foresaid act, and declare the same in the haill heads, articles, and clauses thereof, to be of no more force or effect in all time coming^." Melville's private determination was to grant all the de- mands of the presbyterians ; but he had peremptory orders from William not to concede either his supremacy or the right of patronage. The former he partly did. Episcopacy was abolished, because it was said to be " contrary to the genius of that church and nation ; for the king would not consent to a plain and simple condemnation of it." It was not, however, so easy to establish presbytery, because there were so few presbyterian ministers in the kingdom, and they did not think it safe to suffer the episcopal clergy to have any share of the government. Therefore it was pretended that such of the pres- byterian ministers as had deserted in IOG'2 ought to be consi- dered the only sound part of the kirk^. Of these there hap- pened not to be more than between fifty and sixty, whicli shews the enormously exaggerated account of the number that * Account of Church Government. ^ ^p^g ^f Parliament, vol. ix. 110, 3 Burnet's Own Times, iv. 113. 1 14. VOL. III. 3 r 474 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LII. were said to have deserted at the Restoration. The presby- terians came forward with the same petition which had been rejected last session, and was now received graciously; in which they say " and we also request, that the church thus established may be allowed by your lordships' civil sanc- tion, to appoint visitations for purging out all insufficient, negligent, scandalous, and erroneous ministers. And seeing patronages which had their rise in the most corrupt and latter times of antichristianism have always been a great grievance to this church, as the source and fountain of a corrupt minis- try, that these may be abolished, and that the church may be established upon its former good foundations, and confirmed by many acts of parliament since the year 1560." This peti- tion was word for word the same as that which had been pre- sented to parliament the year before ; for although presbyte- rians are against all set forms of prayer to God, yet they were clear for a set form in their petitions to parliament. Last year the duke of Hamilton objected to this petition, because they then craved that " the church government might be es a- blished in the hands of such only, who, by their former carriage and sufferings, had evidenced that they were known sound presbyterians." " For what was this," said his grace, " but to pull down one sort of prelacy, and to set up another in its place; to abolish one that was consistent and intelligible, and to establish another that implied contradictions ? ^" The following act was passed on the 15th of April: — Forasmuch as by an act of this present parliament, relative to, and in prosecution of the Claim of Right, prelacy, &c. is abolished: And that many ministers of the presbyterian per- suasion, since the 1st of June, 1661, have been deprived of their churches, or banished for nonconforming to prelacy, and not complying with the courses of the time, therefore their majesties, &c. ordain and appoint that all those presbyterian ministers yet alive who were thrust from their charges, &c. . . . have forthwith free access to their churches, that they may presently exercise the ministry in those parishes, without any new call thereto; and allows them to bruick and enjoy the benefices and stipends thereunto belonging, and that for the haill crop 1689: And immediately to enter to the churches and manses, where the churches are vacant; and where they are not vacant, then their entry thereto to be to the half of the benefice and stipend due and payable at Michaelmas last for ' Account of the Late Establishment, &c. 9, 10. 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 475 the year immediately preceding, betwixt Whitsunday and Michaelmas, declaring tliat the present incumbents shall have right to the other half of the stipend and benefice pay- able for the Whitsunday term last by -past: And to the efl'ect that these ministers may meet with no stop or hindrance iu entering immediately to their charges, the present incumbents in such churches are hereby appointed, upon intimation hereof, to desist from their ministry in their parishes, and remove themselves from the manses and glebes thereto belonging be- twixt and Whitsunday next to come, that the presbyterian ministers formerly put out may enter peaceably thereto. And appoints the privy council to see this act put in execution ^ In Scotland Whitsunday is a legal term, and has nothing to do with the high festival of that name, and it is always kept on the 25th of May. Servants enter to their service, and leases generally commence and terminate, on that day. Such of these persecuted men, therefore, as had not been rabbled out of their manses, had only one month's warning given them to remove from their houses and seek others, besides being impoverished and robbed of nearly two years' stipend. These clergymen who were now so summarily thrust out of their livings were legally possessed of them by presentation from the patron, and induction by the bishop. The men who were now, by the above act, put into their livings, had got possession of them by force and fraud during the usurpation of Cromwell and the tyrannical rule of the remonstrators, and never had any just right to them. It was on account of illegal intrusion that the remonstrator ministers had been dispossessed, and not alone for their non-compliance. The settlement of presbytery now, therefore, was upon the footing of a double injustice — approving of the first intrusion of the presbyterians, and now removing the lawful incumbents, and placing men in their benefices who were to receive two years' stipend which had been due to the episcopal incumbents ! I The next proceeding was to settle the presbyterian form of government and the Westminster Confession of Faith. The seventh act, therefore, was to ratify it. The whole of that long and complicated document was read, and it composes part of the act itself. On the 26lh of May " the Confession of Faith underwritten was this day produccil, read, and consi- dered word by word, in presence of their majesties' high com- missioner and the estates of parliament, and being voted and ' Acts of Parliameut, Lx. 111. Act Second. 476 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, LII. approven, was ordained to be recorded in the books of par- liament ^" After it had been read the following act was passed, which makes the Westminster Confession the creed of the presbyterian establishment. Our sovereign lord and lady the king and queen's majesties and three estates of parliament, conceiving it to be their bound duty, after the great deliverance that God hath lately wrought for this church and kingdom, in the first jDlace, to settle and secure therein the true protestant religion, according to the truth of God's word, as it hath of a long time been professed v/ithin this land: And also the government of Christ's church within this nation, agreeable to the Word of God, and most conducive to the advancement of true piety and godliness, and the establishing of peace and tranquillity within this realm: and that by an article in the Claim of Right, it is declared that prelacy and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters is and hath been a great and insupportable griev- ance and trouble to this nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the Reformation (they having reformed from popery by presbyters), and there- fore ought to be abolished ; like as, by an act of the last session of this parliament, prelacy is abolished : " Therefore their majesties, &c., do hereby revive, ratify, and perpetually confirm, all laws, statutes, and acts of parlia- ment made against popery and papists, and for the main- tenance and preservation of the true reformed protestant re- ligion, and for the true church of Christ within this kingdom, in so far as they confirm the same, or are made in favour thereof Likeas, they by these presents, ratify and establish the Confession of Faith, now read in their presence, and voted and approven, as the public and avowed confession of this church, containing the sum and substance of the doctrine of the reformed churches. "As ALSO they do establish, ratify, and confirm the presby- terian church government and discipline : that is to say, the government of the church by kirk sessions, presbyteries, pro- vincial synods, and general assemblies, ratified and established by the 114th Act, Ja. VI. pari. 12, anno 1592, entituled, Rati- fication of the Liberty of the True Kirk, &c., and thereafter received by the general consent of this nation, to be the only government of Christ's church within this kingdom ; reviving, renewing, and confirming the foresaid act of parliament, ex- ' Acts of Parliament, ix. 117. 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 477 cept that part of it relating to patronages, which is hereafter to be taken into consideration. Rescinding, annulling, and MAKING void — act anent restitution of bishops — act ratitying the acts of assembly, 1610 — act anent the election of arch- bishops and bishops — act anent the ratification of the Five Articles of Perth — act entituled, for the restitution and re- establishment of the ancient government of the church by archbishops and bishops — act for acknowledging and asserting the right of succession to the imperial crown of Scotland — act anent the test — with all other acts, laws, statutes, ordi- nances, and proclamations, in as far as they are contrary or prejudicial to, inconsistent with, or derogatory from, the pro- tesiant religion and presbyterian government now established: allowing and declaring that the church government be in the hands of, and exercised by, those presbyterian ministers who were outed since the first of January, 1661, and are now re- stored by the late act, and of sucli ministers and elders only, as they have admitted, or hereafter shall admit ; and appoint- ing the first meeting of the General Assembly of this church, as above established, to be at Edinburgh on the third Thurs- day of October of this present year, 1690. And because many conformed ministers either have deserted, or were re- moved from preaching in their kirks, preceding the 13th of April, 1689, and others were deprived for not giving obedience to the act of the estates in their proclamation of that date ; therefore declares, all the kirks deserted, or removed, or de- prived from, as said is, to be vacant^ and that the presbyterian ministers exercising their ministry within any of those parishes, or where the last incumbent is dead, by the desire and consent of the parish, shall continue their possession, and have right to the stipends, according to their entry in the year 16!:<9. And that the disorders which have happened in this church may be redressed, they allow the general meeting and representatives of the foresaid presbyterian ministers and elders, either by themselves, or by visitors authorised by them, to try and purge out all insufficient, negligent, scandalous, and erroneous ministers, by due course of ecclesiastical process and cen^,;ures : ordaining, that whatever minister, being sum- moned before these visitors, shall refuse to appear, or on ap- pearing shall be found guilty by them, every sucli minister shall by their sentence be ipso facto suspended from, or de- prived of, their kirks, stipends, and benefices ^" PEiiHArs so much barefaced inic^uiiy and injustice was never ' Aclb of I'ailiaiueiit, ix. IIG to loo. 478 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIT. before established by law, as there is within the compass of this act. The presbyterians raised an immense clamour about the act Rescissory, which swept away all the memorials of their infamy, during their reign of terror in the grand rebellion, but here is an act rescissory that remorselessly repeals the funda- mental laws of the kingdom, that had been solemnly enacted by legitimate kings and lawful parliaments. The Confession was read, and it was proposed also to read the Catechisms and Directory for Worship ; but on reflection the ministers with- drew the latter, as it was not convenient to allow it to be seen that they had so entirely thrown aside the directions therein given. Besides, it was in some measure a set form, and re- quired an uniformity which was abhorrent to their prejudices against popery, prelacy, &c. It peremptorily prescribes the reading the Holy Scriptures — " All the canonical books of the Old and New Testament shall be publicly read in the vulgar tongue, out of the best allowed translation, distinctly, that all may hear and understand ^" Farther than a text for their ser- mons, or a citation to illustrate them, they had entirely thrown aside the reading of the Scriptures, and therefore they were not disposed to be reminded of their negligence. But there was another ordinance, which has always been omitted, and considering that they lay such exclusive claim to the head- ship of Christ, and to the infallible knowledge of His mind, it is not very respectful or decorous — that is, the entire omission of the Lord's Prayer. Here again they would have been re- minded of their insolent sins of omission ; for it says — " be- cause the prayer which Christ taught his disciples is not only a pattern of prayer, but is itself a most comprehensive prayer, we recommend it also to be used in the prayers of the church'-^." Being conscience smitten, the ministers, who were in constant attendance, advised their friends to allow the duke's objec- tions, and not to insist upon reading these documents. In the act which repealed the act of supremacy, and abo- lished episcopacy, they did not pretend to establish presby- tery because it was agreeable to the word of God, but only because it was alleged to be suited to the inclinations of the people. And, says Lockhart, " to prevent the designs of the royalists, in being elected in room of any vacancies that should happen in parliament, they framed a Test called the Assurance, wherein they declared before God that they believed king William and queen Mary to be king and queen of this king- dom dejure as well as de facto ; and engaged to defend their » Directory, &c,, i>. 529. 2 ibid. 539. 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 4fl^ title as such with their lives and fortunes, which Declaration they required all persons capable to elect or to be elected members of parliament, and all in any public trust or office, civil, military, or ecclesiastical^ to sign, together with the oath of allegiance, under the pain of deprivation^." The rumour that it was the intention of the house to put the whole government ecclesiastical into the hands of the sur- viving presbyterian ministers, created some alarm in the minds of those who were to be the sufferers under this extraordinary establishment. Accordingly, some of the clergy, who had submitted to the new government, met, and hastily drew up a petition to the house, praying that they might be secured in the possession of their benefices ; but the time was so short that they could not consult the commissioner before presenting it. The following is the substance of this petition : — " That they for themselves and others of the episcopal persuasion who have submitted to the government of king William and queen Mary, according to the protection that had been promised them, may be secured in the possession of their benefices. They humbly conceive that to put ecclesiastical jurisdiction entirely into the hands of the presbyterian ministers, and to establish them as the sole judges of their lives and doctrine, will be in effect to turn them out of that protection, for they shall not only thereby be deprived of all share and interest in eccle- siastical government, though they have every way as good a right to and are as capable of managing that trust as the presbyterian ministers, and do very far exceed them in num- bers ; but also shall be subjected to the arbitrement of a party who profess it their duty to purge the church of all ministers who have at any time declared for the lawfulness of episco- pacy : whom, therefore, (though they are not afraid of the strictest impartial trial) they decline as their judges ; which declinature the presbyterian ministers themselves cannot but in reason acknowledge to be just and equitable, considering that they [themselves] have all along refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the bishops upon the like reason : that it has been still matter of regret to them that the differences upon the account of opinion about church government have been so much kept up. That therefore it would please the parlia- ment to appoint a conference betwixt some ministers of both persuasions, which they most hximbly conceive may prove a good expedient for curing the distemper, or at least to find where it lieth." ' Lockhart Papers, p. 40. 480 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. CHAP. LII. They did not expect that the fundamental point of church government would have been brought under the consideration of the house so soon ; and therefore this petition was got up rather hastily. At the time when the duke of Hamilton was disputing the equity and reasonableness of their article of church government, and of their placing the clergy at the mercy of fifty presbyterian ministers, James Moir, esquire, of Stony- wood, member for the county of Aberdeen, presented the above petition, and craved that it might be read. The duke of Hamilton warmly seconded him, and permission having been given, it was read ; " but it was immediately hissed at. The noise was great, the cry was loud, that it w as indiscreet, unmannerly, arrogant, &c. and all this forsooth because they called themselves ministers of the episcopal persuasion ; com- pared themselves for abilities with the presbyterian ministers ; declined them as their judges ; craved a conference ; and un- dertook to maintain the lawfulness of episcopacy. Extrava- gant impudence sure ! i" The fifty-eighth act repealed several acts of former par- liaments, and among others that which ordained the anniver- sary of the Restoration of the church and monarchy to be kept as a perpetual holiday. And there were a multitude of acts passed to repeal the attainders of all the traitors in the late reigns down to the laird of Cessnock, commencing with that notorious traitor, Johnston of Warriston 2. ' Account of the late Establishment of Presbyterian Government, 47-49. ^ Acts of Parliament, is. 199. 1 481 CHAPTER LI 1 1. THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. 1690. — Patronage abolished — the act. — The kirk government placed in the hands of sixty ministers. — The clergy present a petition — the petition — not re- ceived.— Synod of Aberdeen — their petition — rejected. — Duke of Hamilton's speech. — Churches declared vacant. — The duke's opposition — leaves the house. — Presbytery established. — The liturgy. — The universities — acts for their visita- tion— for the peace of the church. — Act rescissory. — Excommunications. — Pains and penalties removed. — Superiorities vested in the crown. — Parliament prorogued. — Act of council. — Presbyterians dissatisfied. 1690. — The subject of patronage now came before parlia- ment, and lord Melville found himself placed in a dilemma betwixt the " inclinations of the people" and his master's pe- remptory command. Mr. Carstares dreaded the consequences that might ensue from enti'usting the government of the kirk and the disposal of its benefices " in the hands of a set of men who were tainted with all the prejudices of the people, and at the same time irritatedhy a sense of recent injuries. Whilst he advised, therefore, the establishment of presbytery, he was of opinion that it ought to be of the most moderate kind, and so modelled as to admit of the assumption of such of the episcopal clergy as took the oaths to government, upon the mildest terms. This he foresaw would not be the case unless the right of patrons were preserved as a check upon the clergy ^" Melville differed in opinion with Carstares, who was William's bosom confidant, and may be considered to have been his minister for kirk affairs. Melville was the head of the presbyteriau party, and the whole influence and credit of his administration depended on them ; and therefore he was obliged to yield to them in points that his own judgment and the commands of his master required him to oppose, I'he concessions that had been already made to that jiarty encou- raged them to demand more ; and Melville found himself so ' Life of Carstares, 49. VOL. III. :J y 482 HISTORY CF THE [CHAP. LIU. situated that he must either disobey his master, or else break with the presbyterians entirely. The pressure from without was too strong to be resisted, and he accordingly yielded to their demand for the abolition of patronage, and the 53d act of this parliament was passed into a law : — " Considering that the power of presenting ministers to vacant churches, of late exercised by patrons, hath been greatly abused, and is incon- venient to be continued in this realm, do therefore, with the advice and consent of the estates in parliament, hereby discharge, cass, annul, and make void the aforesaid power heretofore exercised by any patron, of presenting ministers to any kirk now vacant, or that shall hereafter happen to vaik within this kingdom, with all exercise of the said power .... and to the effect the calling and entering ministers in all time coming may be orderly and regularly performed, their majes- ties .... do statute and declare that, in case of the vacancy of any particular church, and for supplying the same with a minister, the heritors of the said parish (being protestants) are to name and propose the persons to the whole congregation, to be either approven or disapproven by them. And if they dis- approve, that the disapprovers give in their reasons, to the effect the affair may be cognosced upon by the presbytery of the bounds, at whose judgment and determination the calling and entry of a particular minister is to be ordered and con- cluded. And it is hereby enacted, that if application be not made by the eldership and heritors of the parish to the presbytery, for the call and choice of a minister within the space of six months after the vacancy, that then the presby- tery may proceed to provide the said parish, and plant a minis ter in the church tanquam jure devoluto^T William loved power, and he was exceedingly displeased with his commissioner for the concessions he had made ; but, to compensate for the loss of his supremacy, the parliament kindly granted him " chimney money !" Presbytery was now triumphant. If, says Burnet, " they had followed the pat- tern set them in 1638, all the clergy in a parity were to as- sume the government of the church ; but those being episco- pal, they did not think it safe to put the power of the church in such hands ; therefore it was pretended that such of the presbyterian ministers as had been turned out \i. e. who de- serted] in the year 1662, ought to be considered as the only sound part of the church; and of these there appeared to be not more than three score alive : so the government of the ' Acts of Parliament, 53 Act, v. ix. 396, 7. 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 483 church was lodged with them ; and they were empowered to take to their assistance, and to a share in the church govern- ment, such as they should think fit. Some furious men, who had gone into \exy frantic principles, and all those who had been secretly ordained in the presbyterian way, were presently taken in. This was like to prove a. fatal error at their first setting out. The old men amongst them, what by reason of their age or their experience of former mistakes, were disposed to more moderate councils ; but the taking in such a number of violent men put it out of their power to pursue them : so these broke out into a most extravagant way of proceeding against such of the episcopal party as had escaped the rage of the former year. Accusations were raised against them ; some were charged for their doctrine as guilty of arminianism ; others were loaded with more scandalous imputations. But these were only thrown out to defame them. And where they looked for proof, it was in a way more becoming inquisi- tors than judges; so apt are all parties, in their turns of power, to fall into those very excesses of which they did formerly make such tragical complaints. All other matters were carried, in the parliament of Scotland, as the lord Mel- ville and the presbyterians desired. In lieu of the king's su- premacy, he had chimney money given him ; and a test was imposed on all in office, or capable of electing or being elected to serve in parliament, declaring the king and queen to be their rightful and lawful sovereigns, and renouncing any manner of title pretended to be in king James ^" The rabbled clergy, seeing now no hope of recovering their benefices, drew up and presented a petition to the parliament ; and as they were anxious to conciliate the bigolted presby- terians, they took the presbyterian petition, which had been pre- sented in Charles I.'s time, as their model, which accounts for the frequent repetition of the word whereas. It was supposed that the presbyterians' own style and language would not give offence. It was presented by sir Patrick Scott, of Ancrum, and its reading was most earnestly urged by the duke of Hamilton, but postponed " until the act itself was once passed, and then there ivas no place left for it''' " Whereas your petitioners (though they entered to their offices and benefices at their respective churches according to law, and were in uncontroverled possession of them) were thrust out from their offices and cures by notorious force and ' Own Times, iv. Ill, 484 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. LIII. violence ; cast out of their dwellings with their families and iurniture, and threatened with death if they should offer to return to the exercise of t'heir ministry at their respective churches. " Whereas your petitioners upon such violent treatment made application to his present majesty, then his highness the prince of Orange (who, at the humble desire of divers lords and gentlemen of this kingdom, had then taken upon him the government and administration of the affairs of this realm), by their humble petition for protection, of the date at Glasgow, 22d of January, 1688-9, presented to his majesty by Dr. Robert Scott, minister at Hamilton, empowered by your petitioners for that effect, as will appear from his commission of the same date ; and upon that application his majesty did emit a decla- ration for keeping the peace, &c., in the kingdom of Scotland, 6th February, 1688-9 ; whereby he did expressly prohibit all disturbance and violence upon the account of religion, and authorise all protestants to enjoy their several opinions and forms of worship, whether in churches or meeting-houses, whether according to law or otherwise, with the same freedom, and in the same manner, in which they did enjoy them in the month of October preceding, as the said declaration at more length bears- Whereby it is evident that his majesty and his councillors and advisers for Scottish affairs at that time were clearly convinced of the violent wrongs your petitioners had met with, and of the irregularity and illegality thereof. " Whereas, notwithstanding the said declaration the perse- cution of your petitioners continued as hot as ever ; as is evident from a second tumult at Glasgow upon the 17th of February, 1688-9, being the Lord's day, on which both minis- ters and hearers (having assembled for divine worship accord- ing to law, and upon the protection and security contained in the said declaration) were most violently assaulted by an en- raged multitude in the high church of that city ; and a great many other instances, which may be easily adduced ; and a representation of that tumult in Glasgow, and a second appli- cation for protection, were made to his majesty by Dr. James Fall, principal of the college of Glasgow ; and his majesty referred the matter to the meeting of estates, indicted by him to meet at Edinburgh, 14th March, 1688-9. " Whereas the said meeting of estates did not think it con- venient in that interim by their authority to repossess your petitioners of their just, legal, and undoubted rights, as appears from their proclamation of the date at Edinburgh, 13lh April, 1689. So that your petitioners, wanting protection, durst never 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 485 since, without the manifest peril of their lives, adventure to return to the exercise of their ministry at their respective churches. " Whereas, your petitioners (besides the nnspeakable grief it is to them, to be thus restrained from the exercise of their sacred functions), are generally reduced io great necessities, and many of them with numerous families are at the point of starv- ing, having no livelihood but their stipends, and being refused payment of these by the debtors thereof, upon pretence of an act of council, dated December 24, 1689, whereby intimation is made to all judges that the case of the ministers, who were not in the actual exercise of their ministerial functions on the 13th of April, 1689, lieth under the consideration of parlia- ment, and they are required, in executing of sentences already recorded, and in judging of processes to be intented at the instance of such ministers, to behave themselves as they will be answerable, which act, not only the debtors of your peti- tioners' stipends pretend for not paying the same, as said is, but also many inferior judges do so construct, that they will grant no decrees in favour of your petitioners. And " Whereas, by the laws of this realm, your petitioners (being ministers of the gospel of Christ, and having entered legally to their offices and benefices, as said is), have right to protection in the exercise of their ministry at their respective churches, and to their benefices ad vitani vel culpam, and can neither be deprived of either without a legal sentence ; and now that your grace and the estates are met in parliament, to which the case of your petitioners is referred by the aforesaid act of privy council. May it therefore please your grace, and the honourable estates of parliament, to take the premises under consideration, and interpose your authority for restoring your petitioners to the exercise of their ministry at their re- s])ective churches ; for causing to make payment of the sti})cnds that are due to them by law ; and for protecting them both in their offices and benefices according to law^"" This petition met with silent contempt; for compassion for their misfortunes, or justice to their legal right, was deadened in the breasts of these presbyterian legislators, who were burning with the fierce hatred of exasperated party spirit, and actuated by the obligations of that most wicked contri- vance of the Jesuits — the Covenant. A petition from the ' Case of the Episcopal Clergy of Scotland truly Represented. Folio, p. 3.— Account of the late Establishment. 486 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIII. synod of Aberdeen of the 2d of July met with no better suc- cess. That learned and loyal body, who have always been the champions of primitive truth and order, sent up two of their number empowered to present a petition to the parlia- ment craving a general assembly of the clergy for healing the wounds of the chm'ch. They said — " The ministers of the said synod, as they did give their free testimony in the late years against popery, and have generally concurred in render- ing thanksgiving to the divine majesty for putting so seasona- ble a stop to the designs of that antichristian party, and in praying lor king William, the great instrument of our de- liverance, so are we earnestly desirous of an union with all our protestant brethren, who differ from us only in matters of church government; not doubting but that if we would mutually lay aside our unchristian heats and animosities, we might be so reconciled as that we might serve the Lord with one heart and consent, and tolerate one another in these things wherein we may still differ ^" This petition met with no attention w^hatever ; in fact, the now triumphant presbyterian ministers were afraid to shew the nakedness of their party, both in point of numbers and of theological attainments, by meeting the clergy upon the grounds on which they challenged them, and therefore they wisely declined the conference. An amendment to the act that placed the government of the kirk in the hands of the sm'viving presbyterian ministers was proposed by a member, but it was also rejected. It was, " That at least these presbyterian ministers who had been de- posed by their own judicatories, before the restitution of epis- copacy in 1662, might not be included in the number of those known sound presbyterians in whose hands the government was to be established in the first instance." In support of this amendment the duke of Hamilton exposed the injustice and partiality of the act, and said, " for what was this, but instead of fourteen prelatical bishops, to give unlimited autho- rity to fifty or sixty presbyterian ones, from whom the episco- pal clergy could expect little justice, and less mercy?" The duke's prognostications were very soon verified in the after proceedings of these presbyterian prelates. The article which met with the greatest opposition, and excited the greatest in- dignation in every one that had not been infected with the presbyterian malignity, was the hardship fastened on those cler- gymen that had been expelled from their benefices by the lawless and inhuman rabble. In supporting that petition ' Acts of Parliament, Apiicudix, ix. 129, 130. 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 487 presented by sir Patrick Scott, the duke said, with great jus- tice, and some warmth, " It was wonderful to call these men c?e5er^er5, when it was notorious all the kingdom over, that they were driven away by the most barbarous violence; and it was no less wonderful to declare their kirks vacant because of their being removed from them. For what could be the sense of the word ' removed^ in this case, but just neither more nor less than ' rabbled;' and what might the world think of the justice of the parliament if it should sustain that as sufficient ground for declaring their kirks vacant? These men had en- tered to their churches according to law; ho\v then could they be depriv^ed without a legal trial ? What evil had they done ? They had never had an opportunity to disobey the govern- ment. They were violently thrust tirom their churches by the rabble before the 13th of April, 1G89. So it was impossible for them to obey the authority of the meeting of estates in that day's proclamation. Nay, consider that proclamation, and it will be found that it did not bind them. Were they chargeable with any other crimes or scandals } Why, then, let them be first tried and convicted, and then deprived by due course. Was it ever heard of, that ministers of the gospel of Christ were turned out of their offices and livings without the least guilt fixed on them ? What a reflection would it cast on the king, if such an act should be made? Did he not come to these kingdoms to deliver us from arbitrary power? To secure liberty and property as well as religion ? But how was it consistent with this, to deprive so many protestant mi- nisters of their churches and livings, for no imaginable rea- son in law or equity? Besides, when first the government of this kingdom was transferred to his majesty, did he not receive these men into his protection by his declaration dated February 6, 1689? But how was it consistent with the com- mon protection due to subjects to deprive them of their un- doubted rights so very arbitrarily?" But honour or equity were banished from the bosoms of partizans inflamed by all the rancour of long-suppressed feelings of hatred and revenge. No man attempted to reply to these unanswerable arguments; but the duke ought to have known the result of admitting the sworn enemies of the church of God to legislate for it, and not placed himself at the head of the presbyterian interest at the meeting of the convention the previous year. The following article was brought before the house on Friday, the 23d of May ; and as it was prepared by the com- mittee, it ran thus: — And because many conform ministers have deserted, or arc removed from their churches preceding 488 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIIl. the 13th of April, 1689, and ought not to be reponed, and others were deprived for not giving obedience to the act of the estates of the said 13th of April; therefore their majesties, &c. do hereby declare all the churches either deserted, or from which the conform ministers were removed or deprived, as said is, to be vacant, and that the presbyterian ministers exercising within any of these parishes, or where the last in- cumbent is dead, shall continue their possession, and have right to the legal benefices and stipends forth and from the time of their entering, and in all time coming; aye, and while the church as now established take further course therewith." The duke of Hamilton argued that this clause was not only needless, but that it would necessarily follow that those that had been rabbled ought not to be reponed; that clause was therefore left out. The other, that the presbyterian ministers who had accidentally, as it were, exercised their calling in any of the rabbled parishes, should have right to the benefice. The duke opposed this also, and said, " that many presbyterian ministers had exercised their ministry in several parishes, and possessed themselves of the churches from which the conform ministers had been forced, who had neither presentation nor call from the greater or better part of the parish: and what title could such men have to the benefice ?" So the following clause was added in the printed act — " exercising their minis- try by the desire or consent of the people." The third clause was — the presbyterian ministers were to have the benefice from the time of their entering, without specifying any definite tenn or year fi-om which their entrance might be dated. This, again, was intrepidly opposed by the duke, who said, " this was very strange, for many presbyterian ministers had exer- cised their ministry in several parishes ever since king James's toleration, which was in the year 1687. So that this clause gave them title ever since that year; although both in that year and in the next there was a legal incumbent in the actual and uninterrupted exercise of his ministry in the pa- rish ! What iniquity was this ?" Upon the statement of this notorious fact, the term of entrance for the presbyterian mi- nisters was limited to the year 1689. Severe and unjust as the act is, it would have been much more so had the draught passed as it was originally intended. The aird of Kelburn, member for the county of Bute, pro- posed that " such ministers as had not free access to their churches, and consequently could not give obedience to the proclamation of the estates of the 13th of April upon the day appointed, but were willing to obey when they should 1690.J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 489 have opportunity, might be excepted out of the number of those whom the parliament were to declare deprived, and their churches vacant." This equitable amendment was rejected with scorn. On Wednesday, the 28th, the great point in the Article was moved, whether or not " the deed of the rabble should be justified, and all those ministers deprived who had been driven from their churches by the rabble." After some farther fruit- less opposition it was put to the vote, and the duke of Hamilton then moved, that the vote be stated, " approve or not approve the deed of the rabble.'''' That was really the true stating of the case; but it was too barefaced, even for the disciples of the covenant, to put such a monstrous iniquity upon the sta- tute book, and therefore it was put in smoother terms — " ap- prove or not approve the Article^.'''' Whilst the duke of Hamilton was making these efforts in favour of the persecuted clergy, a member stood up and said, " the duke would do wisely to temper his language; for what was this but to reflect on the house, and fly in the face of an act of parliament?" The duke instantly replied, " It was a mistake; it was but a vote of the house, and had not yet got the royal assent, so it was no act of parliament. But seeing matters went so (though he was very much afraid the reflec- tion would go further than the house was aware of), for his part he would say no more, but put his hand upon his mouth." And with this he left his seat, and went out of the house, a good number of members following him. All that now remained to be done was to vote the act in cumulo; and this was hastened by the impertinence of a pres- byterian preacher, who had got into the house, and exclaimed to the members next to him, "Fie! make haste; despatch, now that he is gone, lest he return again, and create more trouble." The act was accordingly instantly " read, voted, and passed;" only four or five staid to vote against prcsbyte- rian government, that it might not be said that it was carried nemine contradicente, and some few others, who would not vote for that establishment of presbytery, because, as they pretended, it was not established in its proper " plenitude of power and independency '^." The act was voted on the 28th of May, but it did not re- ceive the constitutional touch of the sceptre till the 7th of June. It was necessary to acquaint William with the nature of it before it could be enacted; and it is pretty certain that ' Account of the late Establishment of Presbyterian Church Government, 64. 2 Ibid. CO-63. VOL. III. 3 R 490 HISTORY OF THB [CHAP. LIII. he did not receive a just account of it. " I cannot forbear to tell you, that I am fully persuaded he did not get a just and impartial information of the several articles in it ; which, had he got, it was impossible that he should ever have approved or ratified the act: for why? That article concerning the rabbled ministers is plainly inconsistent with the express words of the coronation oath. Now who could believe that the king wotild have consented to such notorious oppression as more than three hundred protestant ministers met with from this act, if that matter had been duly represented to him? But I cannot find what can be said for my lord Melville, who, knowing very well the whole matter, abused his master by not fairly representing it to him ^" Presbytery was now triumphant; and the church was cast off by the state, and left to her own resources. In the state of desolation and persecution to which she was now reduced, one of her first efforts was to draw near to God, in that admi- rable form of prayer, the English liturgy. She had been so accustomed to be bullied and domineered over by her late ally, the state, that from habit she thought it necessary to have law on her side, or at least the protection of the government, before she adopted it. Accordingly, on the following day after her depression, the 29th of May, and the anniversary of her own Restoration, the earl of Linlithgow moved for leave to bring in a bill " for giving toleration to those of the episcopal per- suasion to worship God after their own manner, and particu- larly that whosoever were inclined to use the English liturgy might do it with safety." It would appear from this, too, that war had been declared, or at least threatened, against the Book of Common Prayer, which contains the whole teaching of the church catholic, and is a complete compendium of catholic doctrine and true piety. And now that the external pressure of state tyranny was removed, the clergy, and of course their people, were seeking a resting-place for their faith, and were inquiring for the good old paths where is the good way in which their fathers walked, before the innovating hand of Andrew Melville forced upon them extemporary declamations. The Prayer Book did not come into immediate use, but it came gradually in, and has ever since formed a consj)icuous and distinctive mark betwixt the church and the disciples of the covenant, by whom she was supplanted. The draught of the act was read, but rejected; and no more was heard of it. Now THAT PRESBYTERY was established, it was necessary - An Account of the late Establishment of Presbvterian Government, 64-65* 1690.] CHURCH of Scotland. 491 that the sixty ministers, which was the numerical amonnt of their force, should also be put in possession of the seats of learning, that they might secure the rising generation. As the universities stood under the episcopal constitution they were a great eye-sore to the party, and therefore none could expect that the presbyterians would be satisfied unless the public schools were put into their hands. Besides, the education ot youth added much to their strength and national settlement ; so they were resolved, with or without law, to seize very spee- dily the most conspicuous and the most eminent places. The ministers were so warm in this design, that ihey importuned their patrons in the state to remove such professors as they judged most opposite to their government, even before the affair was considered by parliament. But the wiser sort among them withstood this precipitancy ; for since they might frame an act of parliament such as they pleased, it was thought most convenient to delay their revenge for a little while, because the masters of the universities might be more effectually turned out under the covert of an act of parliament than by the methods that they first devised ^ At the Restoration the universities were purged only of those intruders who had for- cibly ejected the lawful possessors, and had taken their places without any other form of law than a vote of their omnipotent assembly. The expulsion of these intruders was denomi- nated the utmost stretch of tyranny ; but now, when the power is placed in their own hands, they summarily ejected men who had been legally established in their colleges, which were adorned by their learning, and illustrated by the piety and the respectability of their lives. An act was passed for the visitation of universities, colleges, and schools, which statuted and declared, " that from this time forth, no princi- pals, professors, regents, masters, or others bearing office in any university, college, or school within the kingdom, be either admitted or allowed to continue in the exercise of their said functions, but such as do acknowledge and profess, and shall subscribe to, the Confession of Faith, ratified and ap- proven in this present parliament, and shall swear and sub- scribe the oath of allegiance to their present majesties, and shall be of a loyal and peaceable conversation, of sufficient literature, and submitting to the government of the church now established by law. And appoint to be visitors, with full power and commission to them, or a quorum of them, to meet, visit, take trial, pnrye out and remove, ac- ' Account of the late Establishment of Presbyterian fiovernment, Ito. 1C93. 492 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LUI. cording to the aforesaid qualifications ; and their first meeting to be at Edinburgh on the 23d instant [July], with power afterwards to adjourn and meet as they shall see convenient, aye, and while their majesties recal and discharge this com- mission ^" Parliament next passed an " Act for settling the quiet and peace of the church j" wherein " our sovereign lord and lady, &c. ratify, approve, and perpetually confirm, the fifth act of the second session of this current parliament, intituled, an act ratifying the Confession of Faith, and settling presbyte- rian government in the whole heads, articles, and clauses thereof . . . That no person be admitted or continued for hereafter to be a minister or preacher within this church, un- less that he subscribe the Confession of Faith ratified in the foresaid fifth act of the second session of this parliament, de- claring the same to be the confession of his own faith, and that he owns the doctrine therein contained to be the true doc- trine, which he will constantly adhere to ; and likewise that he owns and acknowledges presbyterian church government, as settled by the foresaid fifth act of the second session of this parliament, to be the only government of this church, and that he will submit thereto and concur therewith, and never endeavour, directly or indirectly, the prejudice or subversion thereof And their majesties . . . statute and ordain, that uniformity of worship and of the administration of public or- dinances within this church, be observed by all the said minis- ters and preachers as the same are at present performed and allowed therein, or shall be hereafter declared by the authority of the same ; and that no minister or preacher be admitted or continued for hereafter unless that he subscribe to observe, and do actually observe, the foresaid uniformity^." This uni- formity was to consist in a negation of the then practice of the church — that is, that none of the forms be retained in the public worship of God that are not used by the presbyterians; that the Lord's Prayer, the Doxology, and the Apostles' Creed, be rejected from the public worship, and that the Holy Scriptures be no more used in the public assemblies as heretofore. Thkre was another act Rescissory passed about the same time, which repealed all ff)rmer acts against non-conformity that liad been passed since the year 1661, or that enforced conformity witli the established episcopal church and its go- 1 25tli Act, 4th July.— Acts of Parliament, ix. p. 1G3, 164, "^ Acts of Parliament, Act 23. 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAxND. 493 veniment under archhishops and bishops. This act " re- scinded, cassed, and annulled all acts for denouncing excom- municate persons, and anent sentences of excommunication, with all other sentences of the same import, and bot [with- out] prejudice of this generality, all acts enjoining civil pains upon sentences of excommunication whatever." In the church of England there are excommunications minor, major, and ipso facto. The former are passed on those who know- ingly converse with an excommunicated person when there is no necessity for their so doing ; and by this censure men are merely deprived of the sacraments. The major excom- munication deprives men not only of the sacraments, but of all communication with other christian men without as well as within the church ; but they are not deprived of communica- tion with christian people except in the church, till they have remained three months under this sentence without seeking the benefit of absolution. An ipjso-facto excommunication means by a man's own act ; such as the wilful falling into schism or popery, which last was as bad as the ancient Thuri- ficati, who were lapsed christians that burnt incense upon the altars of the heathen gods, and were reckoned the worst and vilest sort of idolaters. In the case of schism or idolatry, al- though excommunication is not denounced, nevertheless it really takes place, and a clergyman may refuse to bury men if they die in this condition, and no one can testify to their re- pentance ^ In Scotland, the old popish temporal pains and penalties attached to excommunication were in force up to the period at which we are arrived. The parliament wisely and humanely took away the power of inflicting the dreadful pains upon excommunicated persons, that the law till then allowed; for the barbarous cruelty of the presbyterians, in using this engine of tyranny, during their former usurpation, had not been forgotten. This act, says Mr. Skinner, " took out the sting of excommunication which had been so terrible, and had produced such grievous effects under every prevailing system of chui'ch discipline. Indeed, it was much to be regretted that any scheme of reformation, real or pretended, should have re- tained one of the most scandalous corruptions of popery intro- duced in one of the darkest ages, and first put in practice by one of the most overbearing popes, Gregory VII., to the manifest hurt of civil society, and to the total disregard of the original design of that spiritual power committed to the church, not fur destruction but for edification ; by mortifying the soul, not ' Johnson's Clergymen's Vade-Mccum, 180.185. 494 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIII. by punishing the body or seizing the goods of the offender. This abuse was now luckily removed, and the episcopal clergy both then and since, amidst all the hardships of subjection which this parliament laid them under to the new establish ment, are in so far obliged to it for thus curtailing the danger- ous extent of ecclesiastical jurisdiction by this salutary act, and thereby putting it out of the kirk's power to distress those of a different persuasion so much as by their avowed princi- ples, and with their former privileges, they would in all pro- bability have done^." Parliament vested in the crown all the superiorities which had formerly belonged to the church, and made an act for the plantation of kirks and valuation of tiends or tithes, founded upon the laws made by Charles I. Their majesties are made to say they were resolved to prosecute this good work for the universal good of their subjects, and especially for the encouragement of the ministers of the gospel. Hav- ing now a second time " cast down the walls of Jericho^," and raised a new fabric with the untempered mortar of the " in- clinations of the people" and the sacrilege of the "rabble," the parliament was prorogued on the 22d of July, and the exe- cutive power was devolved, as in times past, upon the privy council. But complete and sweeping as this revolution was, it failed to give satisfaction to the presbyterians, who only took what they got as an instalment till time and opportunity enabled them to follow out the obligations of the covenant. The anti- burghers, who are consistent presbyterians, as late as the year 1829 have borne their "testimony against the public evils'''' which were then perpetrated, and which they say introduced many corruptions into the kirk. They say, " the settlement both of church and state was accompanied with sinful defects, and followed by acts and proceedings which deeply affect the interests of religion to this day. The conduct of the nation and its representatives, at the Revolution, was faulty in dif- ferent respects. The estates of the nation .... did neither then nor afterwards faithfully and plainly inform their rulers of their duty, or of the peculiar obligations under which Scot- land lay, in consequence of her national attainments and vows. The parliament abolished prelacy as a great and insupportable grievance to this nation, and contraiy to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the reformation ; but they did not, as had been done in former times by the competent ' Ecclesii'stical Hist. ii. 554. - Vide ante, i. ch. xiv. p. 634. 1000.] CHURCH OP SCOTLAND, 493 authorities, consider it as contrary to the ivord of God, and abjured by our covenants. They ratified the presbyterian go- vernment according to its establishment in 1592, in the way of sinfully overlooking and passing by all the legal securities given to it between 1638 and 1650, which, together with the reformation attained to in that period, was left buried under the infamous rescissory act, which stands in the body of our Scotch law to this day. In like manner they ratified the Westminster Confession of Faith, as the public and avowed confession of this church, without any reference to the act of the General Assembly, 1647, by which it was received as a part of the uniformity in the churches of the three kingdoms^ and with an explicit assertion of the inherent right of the church to call her own assemblies — an omission which paved the way for dangerous encroachments by the state. Though certain laws which subjected persons to penalties for owning the National Covenant and Solemn League were repealed, yet these covenants were allowed to remain under the indignities done them by the rescissory and other acts ; nor were they excepted from those oaths which were removed to make way for a general and unqualified oath of allegiance to the sove- reign. The draught of an act for excluding from places of power and trust such as had been accessory to the oppressions of the late persecuting period, was laid aside ; in consequence of which, persons were entrusted with the management of the affairs of the nation who were hostile to its best interests, and who, though they yielded to the establishment of the pres- byterian church, took pleasure in clogging her operations, and were ready to embrace the first op])ortunity to infringe her rights and invalidate the security which she had obtained ^" ' Testimony of the Associated Synod of Original Seceders, 37. 496 CHAPTER LIV. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. Effects of the Assertory Act. — The church the candlestick — the gospel the light. — Westminster Confession — schisms. — Defects in the church — defects in ex- temporary worship. — Advantages of a liturgy. — Fundamental charter of pres- bytery— objections to it. — Arts practised at the Revolution. — Objections to prelacy being a grievance. — Whether prelacy was popular ? — The number of the presbyterians — numbers of episcopalians. — First reformers not justified. — the principle of reformation. — Wherein the presbyterians differ from Knox — in faith — in the use of a liturgy — in discipline. — Episcopal authority and succes- sion— whence derived. — Despised — and why. — Patronage. 1690. — By WHATEVER motives the duke of Lauderdale may have been actuated in passing the Assertory Act, we have seen its calamitous effects in several instances, — in the de- gradation of christian bishops, the imposition of a self-contra- dictory and impious Test that caused a persecution of the .clergy, and now the total overthrow of the church of Christ. It gave the new sovereign the power to " order and dispose of the external government and policy of the church" at his plea- sure. Although William himself had no desire to make any change, yet those into whose hands the desertion of James's ministers from their posts had throvi'n the executive govern- ment, were not slack to take advantage of the power that this act confen'ed on the crown. The presbyterian convention- parliament shewed wisdom in repealing it; for so long as it stood in force, William might have again changed their new policy, and have restored the hierarchy to its former establish- ment. Although the presbyterians were justly opposed to it from first to last, yet they took advantage of its provisions be- fore they removed it from the statute-book; a species of ser- pentine wisdom which they imbibed from their friends the Jesuits, The events of the last year in Scotland were the triumphs of Jesuitism. The grand object of the papacy, and its most devoted agents, the Jesuits, is to overturn the re- 1690.] HISTORY OF THE CHUIICH OF SCOTLAND. 497 formed catholic church of the three kingdoms; and by divine permission they accomplished the disestablishment of it in Scotland. Could they accomplish their desire of overthrowing the united church of England and Ireland, they would make short work with the dissenters of all denominations, whether they be established in Scotland or tolerated in England. It is the reformed episcopacy alone that is, under God, the grand bulwark against popery ; hence the incessant efforts of the papists to undermine the episcopal power by assertory acts, by perjuring themselves in parliament, and legislating for her so as eventually to accomplish their designs, and by voting for the suppression of bishopricks. In Holy Scripture the church is represented under the emblem of a candlestick ; and the christian doctrines — the faith delivered once for all to the saints, and which requires no further confirmation, neither will admit of any alterations or additions — are the light set upon it. Hence if the candle- stick be removed, the light cannot burn vvith safety, but must be extinguished. In His wise and merciful providence, God was pleased to remove our candlestick out of its place ; for there was no appearance of repentance among the people. No sooner was the candlestick removed, than, nationally speaking, the light of gospel truth was extinguished, and the monstrous heresy of the Calvinistic Westminster Confession was established in its stead, which teaches for truth the most enormous falsehood. The case of the presbyterian establish- ment has not been an exception to the general rule, that the removal of the candlestick has always been followed by the extinction of the light of gospel tiTith. The plague of Cal- vinistic darkness fell upon the presbyterian kirk ; a darkness that might be felt in all the unmitigated atrocity of the cove- nant; whilst the rabbled and disestablished church has had the light in her dwellings. Since the pressure of the regal supre- macy has been removed, and the church permitted to exercise her own intrinsic powers, she has adopted a liturgical worship, and in her admirable Communion Office has preserved the catholic doctrines unimpaired; whilst the presbyterians have been di- viding and subdividing, and " disputing which heresy is the more orthodox blasphemy." The church being " the ground and pillar of the truth," the candlestick and the light cannot be separated, without the danger of extinguishing the truth ; a verity that has been made evident whenever the experiment has been tried. " In all the annals of the church," says Leslie, " whether under the law or the gospel, there is not one in- VOL. III. 3 s 408 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIV. stance of a schism against the priesthood which God had appointed, but great errors in doctrine and worship did follow it. Thus the priesthood which Micah set up of his own head, and that which Jeroboam set up in opposition to that of Aaron, both ended in idolatry. Thus the Novatians and Donatists, who made schisms against their bishops, fell into grievous errors, though they did not renounce the faith. What hydra heresies and monstrous sects, fifty or sixty at one time, flowed like a torrent into England, in the times of forty-one, after episcopacy was thrown down. So evident is that saying, that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, that we can hardly find any error which has come into the church, but upon an infraction made upon the episcopal authority." Those men on whom the tower of Siloam fell were not sin- ners above all men, neither was the church of Scotland defi- cient above all other churches in bearing fruit, at the time when the divine justice was provoked to pull down her fence and to leave her exposed to the wild boar out of the wood, and to the " obligations of the covenant." There were, nevertheless, politically speaking, defects in her, that weakened and sapped her foundations, and exposed her to a falling away from the faith. Among the most prominent was her yielding to her fears of offending the prejudices of the presbyterians, in not authori- tatively appointing a liturgy for the public worship of the whole church. It is evident that the clergy had furtively adopted parts of the English liturgy in their public prayers ; but still they were repeated without book, as if extempo- raneously, which was a species of hypocrisy, and a practising deceit on the people, in their solemn addresses to Almighty God. The absence of an authorised liturgy left the keeping of the faith to every man's own strength, and as there was no standard it was liable to degeneracy and corruption, as it has notoriously degenerated in the presbyterian establishment. In the eucharistic sacrifice no catholic rites were practised, nor any authorised form of sound words that had descended from antiquity, or that embodied the language of apostles and of apostolic men. There was no form of words for the other sacrament, but the infant disciple was left to the discretion and the orthodoxy of the priest, who might or might not be sound in the faith. Yet He, who is love itself, would regenerate, adopt, and justify the child according to His own institution, although the priest himself might be deficient in impleading the merits and promises of Christ. In short, the church was entirely left, in their public worship, to the discretion, the 1090.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 499 growth in grace, the gradual attainments, and the fidelity of every individual clergyman ; and all of them might not bo Timothies in faith, although some of them might be Apollos in eloquence, and in might in the Scriptures. This was a great sin, inasmuch as it was a neglect of that mark of the apostolic church which consisted in continuing steadfastly in the prayers of the whole church. Had she continued to be established, it is hard to say how far God in his mercy might have preserved her from swerving from the faith. We have seen great defects, however, in that body that supplanted her at the Revolution, and we have heard loud and repeated complaints by many of her own members of the uncertainty of her doctrines. One in particular, in address- ing the presbyterian establishment, says, " I have come from my house a sound orthodox christian, and have hardly taken my seat in the chui'ch, when 1 have found myself praying, or at least one was praying in my name, as a rank Socinian. I have been made an Arian as to my praj^ers very often ; and, in short, there has hardly any whimsical opinion been broached among the clergy for these forty years, that I have not some time or other found mixed with my public prayers . . . Some- times, indeed, for my heart I could not have told upon what particular principles my prayers were offered ; they were so excellently well contrived, and so free from all narrow notions, that they would have served a Jewish synagogue, a Mahome- tan mosque, or a congregation of Persian magi, as well, or better, than a christian assembly. If the minister be a sceptic, I am made to pray like a sceptic ; if an enthusiast, he ad- dresses God in my name, according to his enthusiastical no- tions. When he chances to be a factious firebrand, my prayers breathe faction, my public devotions are flaming with party heat, and tinctured with the fury of his faction. When any disputes happen and differences arise in their synods and assemblies, both sides appeal to heaven in their public prayers, and force the laity to appeal with them. But what is even worse, by an unlucky change of ministers, or by stepping into another church, I have often been made to appeal to heaven as an advocate for both sidesoi the question, and to pray for and against each of the parties in one day : for though our churches have the appearance of the same worship, yet, in fact, their worship is as different as the tempers, principles, and parties of the men who manufacture it ; and this leads us into he dangerous blunder of offering contradictory petitions, and praying at different times upon principles as opposite to one 500 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIV. another as light is to darkness. . . . I have thanked God for His decrees of election and reprobation in the forenoon, and in the afternoon offered my humble thanks that all men have equal access to salvation by faith and virtue. In a word, there is no party nor different principle among our ministers with respect to which I have not been made to play fast and loose with the Deity, to ask what I did not want, and to pray against what I most earnestly wished for." Although this is a description of the presbyterian worship true to the life, yet the church, from her want of a liturgy, was liable to the same lamentable absurdities. This w^as felt and lamented by the established clergy, and many of them composed forms for themselves, grounded chiefly on the ines- timable liturgy which the church of England has provided for her sons. The advantage of a liturgy is, that we can examine it, learn its import, and prepare ourselves to pray with the spirit as well as with the understanding, which is an utter im- possibility when listening to an extemporary prayer, as no man can tell what the minister is going to say, nor remember ■what he has said ; and may not perhaps approve of the matter of the prayer, and so cannot say Ameri to it. Extempore prayer is as bad, if not worse, than to speak in an unknown tongue ; the minister may edify himself, but the people cannot under- stand him, " howbeit in the spirit he may speak mysteries." In a volume of sermons, by Mr. Lunan, parish priest of Daviot, in Aberdeenshire, on " The Five Solemn Festivals of the Church of Scotland," published in the year 1712, there are prayers added for each festival, which he composed and used on each of these occasions. They are compiled from the Liturgy and the Psalms ; but still, though most excellent, they came upon the ear of his congregation as strange sounds. This sad defect in public worship was rectified, after the church recovered from the effects of the stunning blow she received at the Revo- lution, as shall be related in its proper place, which enables her now, and all her faithfid sons, to pray with the spirit, and with the understanding also. " It is a remarkable fact," says bishop Walker, in his Life of Archbishop Whitgift, " well worthy of the most serious reflection, that the church [of England] reformed by the most sober-minded and judicious divines of that most remarkable age, stands now, as she stood then, the same in doctrine and discipline, — the acknowledged bulwark of pure, true, and undefiled religion, against popery, fanaticism, and all the various degrees of infidelity, — which unity of faith and discipline cannot be predicated of any 1690.] CHUKCH OF SCOTLAND. 501 Other church of the reformation which we know ; while of most of them the direct contrary must with equal grief and indignation be acknowledged." The article in the Claim of Right ^, which is the funda- mental charter of the presbyterian establishment, has been proved by the preceding part of this History to be entirely false. It is needless to go over the whole history again to prove they were not all presbyters who overturned, but did not re- form, the church of Scotland, which was then under the obe- dience of the see of Rome, There were some nominal bishops, a few presbyters or priests, but the greater number were mere laymen, and farther, from the year 1560 until 1610, there was not an ordained priest within the kingdom, save Knox, and perhaps half a dozen others. But let us ask how these pres- byters, who they say were our reformers, got their ordination. Those who really were priests had their orders from bishops ; but those "certain zealous men," of whom Knox speaks 2, had no ordination whatever; and even the real founder of presbytery, Melville, was a mere layman. Not one of these lay-brethren, however, attempted to work miracles to prove their mission, or to shew that they had divine authority to pluck up and destroy, and to assume the characters of ambassadors of Christ, and to represent Him. But even the ministers, not of Christ, but of the Covenant, that were now established, had no orders of any sort but what they received from unauthorised men, who were bound to extirpate that very order of men who could alone have conferred authority upon them. But even sup- posing that the gospel had been preached by priests, must we, then, infer that those priests and all others were to be ever after not only exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, but bound under an oath to abolish the apostolic office ? If that were to hold good, then the Samaritans should have rejected and murdered both priests and apostles, because they happened to be reformed by a deacon ! Some nations were first converted by laymen, and others by Jesuits, and some, it is said, by ^vomen, and therefore, upon the principle laid down in the Claim of Right, these churches ought still to be governed by laymen, Jesuits, and women ! The inclinations of the people, however, were adopted at ■ " That prelacy and the superiority of any office in the church above presby- ters is, and hath been, a great and insupportable grievance and trouble to this nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the reformation, (they having reformed from popery by presbyters), and therefore ought to be abolished." ^ Vide ante, i. ch. v. p. 139, 140. 502 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, LIV. the Revolution as the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesia — the article of a standing or a falling church. But prelacy was unanimously consented to and established at the refoima- tion, and continued so without challenge, till Melville, fifteen years afterwards, proposed his new scheme of presbytery, and maintained a continued struggle of seventeen years more be- fore he accomplished its establishment. It was not the incli- nations of the people which first gave life and motion to the monstrous confederacy against the prelates in 1637 ; for the conspiracy was far advanced before the leaders fixed on pre- lacy as one of the reasons. They protested to the marquis of Hamilton that they had no intention to abolish episcopacy ; and in cajoling the people to sign their covenant, they asserted it might be svrorn without prejudice to prelacy ^ It is true, this was only the policy of the leaders ; but it shewed that the people were favourable to prelacy, otherwise no such de- vices and subterfuges need have been necessary. It was not tillJames Vllth's Indulgence that the presbyterians broke com- munion with the church, and avowed themselves schismatics. But it may be said, says bishop Sage — " that those presby- byterians who lived anno 1637 and downwards, shook off prelacy, and would bear it no longer ; and was it not, then, an insupportable grievance to them } True, indeed, for removing ihe pretended corruptions of prelacy, they then ventured upon the really horrid sin of rebellion against their prince ; they embroiled three famous and flourishing kingdoms ; they broke down the beautiful and ancient structures of government, both in church and state; they shed oceans of christian blood, and made the nations welter in gore ; they gave themselves up to all the wildnesses of rage and fury ; they gloried in treason and treachery, in oppression and murder, in fierce- ness and unbridled tyranny ; they drenched innumerable misled souls in the crimson guilt of schism and sedition, of rebellion and faction, of perfidy and peijury. In short, they opened the way to such an inundation of hypocrisy and irre- ligion, of confusions and calamities, as cannot easily be paral- leled in history. And for all these things they pretended their antipathies to prelacy ; and yet after all this, I am where I was. Considering their foresaid principles and practices as to the unity of the church, they could not call it an insup- portable grievance ; they did not truly find it such. Had they ' Bishop Sage has demonstrated the absudity of that allegation, in his Funda- mental Charter, a scarce work, but 1 am happy to see it is to be republished by the Spottiswood Society. 1690,] CHDRCH OF SCOTLAND. 503 really and sincerely, in true christian simplicity and sobriety, found or felt ii such, they would no doubt have looked on it as a forcible ground for separating from the communion in which it prevailed, as the protestants in Germany found their cen- tum gravamina for separating from the church of Rome. To have made it that indeed, and then to have suffered patiently, if they had been persecuted for it, without turning to the anti- christian course of armed resistance, had had some colour of an argument that t-hey deemed it an insupportable grievance. But the fiercest fighting against it, so long as they could allow themselves to live in the communion which owned it, can never infer that it was to them an insupportable grievance ; at most, if it was, it was to wanton humour and wildfire only, and not to conscience and real christian conviction." The PRESBYTERIANS were secretly forewarned of the prince of Orange's intention to seize the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland ; and they had concerted their measures for co-operat- ing with him in his designs. As soon as they heard of his success, they hounded out the rabble in the western counties against the episcopal clergy, and committed the barbarities, some of which have been detailed, and thereby created con- fusion and disorder. Their next step was to control and in- fluence the election of members for the convention ; and in which they succeeded to their wishes. Taking advantage of this appearance of a popular movement, they declared prelacy to be " a great and insupportable grievance and trouble to the nation, and contrai'y to the inclinations of the generality of the people." There was no other indication of popular inclina- tion. Such indication could not be collected from the separa- tion of the people from the established episcopal church upon the proclamation of king James's Indulgence ; for not the tenth part of the kingdom separated, namely, the western presby- lerians. It could not be collected from their covetousness to seize the rich possessions of the bishops, for the whole of their united properly did not exceed seven thousand pounds sterling ; and William seized on them for his own share of the spoil. It could not be collected from any suspicion that the people might entertain of the bishops' defection to popery ; for it was very well known that they had made much more powerful op- position to popery, both in their place in parliament and also in their pulpits, than the presbyterian ministers had done. But so powerful had the bishops' opposition been, that some of them were deprived of their bishopricks for that political sin. But " the members of that meeting of the estates had received no instructions from their respective electors, either in counties 604 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIV. or burghs, to turn down prelacy and set up presbytery. I could name more than one or two who, if they did not break their trust, did at least very much disappoint their electors by doing so. There were no petitions, no addresses presented to the meeting by the people, craving the eversion of prelacy or the erection of'presbytery. They never so much as once offered at polling the people about it. Shall I add farther ? After it was done, they never received thanks from the ' gene- rality of the people' for doing it. There was never yet any thing like an universal rejoicing among the people, after it was done. They durst never yet adventure to require from * the generality of the people' their approbation of it. And now, if the article was thus established at first, entirely upon the foot of rabbling the episcopal clergy in the west, I think I might reasonably supersede all further labour about this con- troversy ; for not to mention that they were but the rascally scum of these counties, where the rabbling was, who per- formed it, and that even in those counties there are great numbers of people who never reckoned prelacy ' a great and insupportable grievance and trouble ;' but lived and could have still lived peaceably and contentedly under it, particularly the most part of the gentry. But granting that all the people in these counties had been inclined, as is affirmed in the article, yet what were they to the whole nation ? Is it reasonable to judge of a whole kingdom by a corner of it ? to call these the senti- ments of all the kingdom, which were only the sentiments of four or five counties ?" An anonymous author, with the view of undeceiving the public on the subject of the popular inclination, published ten questions ; and the tenth was, " Whether Scottish presbytery was agreeable to the general inclinations of the people ?" Arguing for the negative, he says, " that the nobility of the kingdom (a very few, not above a dozen excepted) had all sworn the oath commonly called the Test, wherein all fanatical principles and covenant obligations were renounced and ab- jured; that not one of forty of the gentry but had sworn it also, and not fifty in all Scotland (out of the west) did, upon the indulgence (granted by king James, anno 1687), forsake their parish churches to frequent meeting-houses ; that the generality of the commons live in cities and market-towns ; that all who could be of the common council in such corpora- tions, or were able to follow any ingenious trade, were obliged to take the test ; that the clergy stood all for episcopacy, there being, of about a thousand, scarcely twenty trimmers betwixt the bishop and the presbyterian moderator, which twenty, 1G90.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 505 with all the presbyterian preachers, could not make up the fifth part of such a number as the other side amounted to ; that in all the universities there were not four masters, beads, or fellows, inclined to presbyter}'; that the college of justice were so averse to it, that ihe generality of them were ready to take up arms last summer in defence of their episcopal ministers." Bishop Sage's testimony is important: he says, "lean affirm, with a well-grounded assurance, that if by the people you mean the commonalty, the rude illiterate vulgar, the tJiird man throughout the kingdom is not presbyterian ; and if by the people you mean those who are persons of better quality and education (whose sense, in my opinion, ought in all reason to go for the sense of the nation), I dare boldly aver, not the thirteenth. For notwitlistanding all the clamours that are made on that head, it is well known to all the kingdom that fanaticism has all along had little footing in that far wider half of the kingdom which is north of the Tay. And though the party has been infinitely earnest and active to increase and multiply their numbers every where, yet, in all that country, they could never get above three or four meeting-houses erected, and these, too, very little frequented or encouraged. Nay, even on this [the south] side of the Tay (except in the five associated shires) the third man was never engaged in the schism." This is a demonstration that the inclinations of the people were not unfriendly to episcopacy ; for with such an ample toleration as the Jesuits, for their own purposes, had ad- vised James to grant, and even encouragement given to sepa- rate, they might have shewn it by seceding from the com- munion of the church, but which they did not. Dr. Merer, chajDlain to an English regiment in the Castle, says, " the church party, both for number and quality, are predominant in this nation. The nobles and gentry are generally episcopal, and so are the people, especially northward, where, to my own knowledge, they are so well affected that it would be no hard task to bring them to subscribe to the rites and worship of the English church, as Buchanan says the ancient Scots did. . . My frequent reading of our service, and preaching in their churches, to the auditories' satisfaction, the caresses of the gentry and respect of the ordinary people whenever I met them, infers so much, and plainly discovers that they neither abhorred me nor my way of religion." Immediately before and at the beginning of the Revolu- tion, the presbyterian party exerted all their energies to get a meeting of estates formed to forward their views. The unhing- ing of all things, the desertion of the ministers of the crown, VOL. III. 3 T 506 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIV. the surprise, confusion, and irresolution of the rest of the na- tion, occasioned by the violence of the presbyterians, contri- buted considerably to the advancement of their designs. Notwithstanding, at the first meeting of the estates, they had well-grounded fears that they would be outvoted ; and they certainly would have been so, had not so many of their oppo- nents deserted the house before they ventured to introduce that clause into the claim of right which is their fundamental charter. Yet it was June of this year before they accom- plished an establishment, in a thin house, not one-third of the whole parliament. Had they not got ])atronages abolished, and the plantation of kirks thrown into their own hands, they would have been experimentally convinced that the inclina- tions of the people were antipresbyterian. But even although the reformation in Scotland had been effected by presbyters, yet it does not follow that prelacy was either a grievance or ought to have been abolished. But Scottish episcopalians never did, nor do they at present, think them- selves bound to embrace and maintain all the sentiments, and to justify all the practices, of Knox and the other reformers. They were not endued with the gifts of infallibility, inerrabi- lity, or impeccability ; they had no commission nor authority to establish new articles of faith, nor to make new conditions of salvation. When they receded from conformity with the original and immoveable standard of the christian religion, the church of Scotland felt herself at liberty to differ from them, and by no means to follow them. Bishop Sage pro- duces the following instances of this difference betwixt the church in his days and the reformers : — " We cannot allow of poptilar reformations, as it was asserted and practised by our reformers. We own, indeed, that it is not only lawful but necessary for every man to reform himself, both as to prin- ciples and practice, when there is corruption in either ; and that not only without but against public authority, w^hether civil or ecclesiastical. Further, we own it is not only lawful, but a plain and indispensable duty in the governors of the church, to reform her, acting within their own sphere, even against human laws, in direct opposition to a thousand acts of a thousand parliaments. I say, acting and keeping within their own sphere, i. e so far as their spiritual power can go, but no farther ; keeping within these their own bounds, they may and should condemn heresies, purge the public worship of corruptions, continue a succession of orthodox pastors, &c. In a word, do any thing that is needful to be done, for putting and preserving the church committed to their care in that state 1690. J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 607 of orthodox purity and unity wliich Jesus Christ, from whom they have their commission, aud to whom they must be an- swerable, has required by his holy institution. But we can- not aUow them to move eccentrically, to turn exorbitant, to stir without their own vortex. We cannot allow them to use any other than spiritual means, or to make any other than spi- ritual defences. We think they should still perform all duti- ful submission to the civil powers ; never resist by material arms ; never absolve subjects from their allegiance to their civil sovereign; never preach the damnable doctrine of deposing kings for heresy ; never to attempt to make those whom they should make (/ood christians, dad subjects ; but to teach the great and fundamental doctrine of the cross, and exemplify it to them in their practice when they are called to it. This we profess, and we do not think it popery ; but our reformers taught quite a different doctrine. Their doctrine was, that it belonged to the rabble to reform religion publicly and by force ; to reform the state, if it would not reform the church ; to ex- tirpate all false religion by their authority ; to assume to them- selves power to overturn the powers that are ordained of God ; to depose them, and set up new ])owers in their stead." The church did not recede from the reformers in any one catholic doctrine or principle which they maintained in com- mon with the universal church before she was tainted with the corruptions of popery. But the presbyterians notoriously de- serted the principles of the reformers, 1st, in the faith ; 2dly, in the worship ; 3dly, in the discipline ; and 4thly, in the government of the church. 1. Knox and others drew up a Confession of Faith, which was ratified in parliament in 1560, and again in 1567 ; and which continued to be the national standard till the year 1648. From that year, the presbyterians set up an entirely different standard of orthodoxy, wherein many abstruse and mysterious points are nicely, minutely, precisely, and peremp- torily determined, such as Knox very properly expressed in general and accommodable terms. But this parliament sta- tuted and ordained, " that no person be admitted or conti- nued for, or hereafter to be, a minister or preacher within this [presbyterian] church, unless he subscribe the Westminster Confession, declaring it to be the confession of his [otvn] faith, and that he owns the doctrine therein contained to be the true doctrine, to which he will constantly adhere." 2. The presbyterians have entirely deserted the practice of the reformers, in the article of jjubiic worship. It has been already convincingly demonstrated, that the reformers 608 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIV. used a liturgy, kept the festivals of the church, and repeated the Creed and Lord's Prayer in the public worship. The re- formers uncovered their heads when they entered the church, and used private prayer at their first entrance, but presbyte- rians, at and since the revolution, consider these laudable practices superstitious and popish. " Now a-days it is plain superstition to a presbyterian not to enter the church with his head covered. Mess John himself doth it as mannerly as the coarsest cobbler in the parish. In he steps, uncovers not till in the pulpit, claps straight on his hreech^ and within a little falls to work as the spirit moves him. All the congregation must sit close in the time of prayer, and clap on their bonnets in the time of sermon. This brings me in mind of an observe an old gentleman has frequently repeated to me ; ' that he found it impossible to perform divine worship without ceremonies, for the presbyterians themselves, who pretend to be against all ceremonies, seem, even to superstition, precise in observing the ceremonies of the ^reec^, &c."' The custom has been, ever since the writer of this can remember, to stand, or rather to loll listlessly over the backs of their pews ; and he has seen the minister enter the pulpit with his hat on, and then hang it up on a peg behind him. The pulpits are always against the south wall, and betwixt two windows. He has also seen men put on their hats or bonnets during the sermon ; so that custom is not yet obsolete. 3. In point of discipline, there is nothing more notorious than their desertion of Knox's principles and practice. The former part of this History in- controAcrtibly proves that he established an episcopacy, such as it was, in superintendents, and afterwards in titular arch- bishops and bishops ; whereas the discipline of the revolu- tion presbyterians now consists of ministers and elders, with progressive classical assemblies. 4, and lastly, Knox's epis- copacy constituted one of the three estates of parliament, but the presbyterian ministers have not any recognised rank, and have no place in the heralds' office or in jsarliament. In "WHAT has been said, I have chiefly followed the unan- swerable arguments of bishop Sage ; and, fully concurring in his sentiments, I conclude this subject in his words : — " I wish all men christians, and I wish all christians christians indeed ; in a special manner, I wish our presbyterian brethren and we may yet be so much honoured and blessed of God, that in the sincerity of brotherly kindness we may be all united in one holy communion. I wish we may all earnestly contend, with all christian forbearance, fellow iceling, and charity, as be- cometh the members of the one church whereof Christ Jesus 1600.] CriUllCH OF SCOTLAiND. 509 is the head, to have the poor, divided, desolated church of Scotland restored to that peace, purity, and unity — that order, government, and stability — which our blessed master hath in- stituted and commanded. JMay Almighty God inspire us all with the Sjiirit of His Son, that our hearts being purified by an humble and a lively faith — the faith that worketh by love, — and our lives reformed according to the laws and great purposes of our holy religion, we may be all unanimously disposed for so great, so glorious, so desirable a mercy ^." Separation from episcopal communion places the separa- tists in a state of insecurity respecting their eternal salvation, which is ordinarily to be found in the participation of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. God has ap- pointed these as the ordinary means of grace, and of obtain- ing the benefits of the gospel ; and they are not to be attained by merely hearing of sermons, nor even of prayer. The vali- dity of the sacraments depends on the authority of the persons who administer them, and that they be really and truly such as God has commissioned to act as His ministers, to represent Him, and whose ministerial acts He will ratify in Heaven. God has not obliged himself to bestow spiritual benefits on those who receive so-called sacraments from persons who are not thus authorised; for their administration by unauthorised persons is an usurpation of God's authority, and a deception on the people. This authority was first committed to the apostles, and by them to the order of churchmen, whom we now call bishops, and which is derived to other bishops by a regular succession " of faithful men," who had authority to give it to them ; and therefore this authority is no where to be found but in the episcopal communion. At the period of the Reformation the church was, without any doubt, everywhere governed by bishops, who had come down by a regular suc- cession from the apostles; but when they ordained presbyters or priests, although they conveyed to them authority to admi- nister the sacraments, yet they did not confer on them the power of ordaining other presbyters. Men, therefore, who underwent the ceremony of ordination from presbyters, had not the power of administering the sacraments, and of con- veying divine grace to the souls of the receivers. And if they lacked authority, how much more were those who were ad- mitted to the ministry by laymen deficient of divine power ? ' Fundamental Charter of Presbytery, 7;a4i»«.— Account of the present Perse- cution in Scotland. 510 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LIV. Although God's mercy is over all his works, and He will not condemn a man for that which he hath not and cannot procure, yet He has expressly informed us that Christ's intercession is only made for those who are within the visible church, and all out of it are deprived of that inestimable benefit — " I pray for them [the church] : I pray not for the world [who are not in the church], but for them whom thou hast given me; for they are thine: — sanctify them through thy truth; and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." This might be paraphrased, — I offer my- self, that they may be enabled, as my representatives, to offer the encharistic sacrifice ; " neither pray I for these alone, but for [their successors, and for aW] them also which shall believe on me through their word^" This last expression clearly implies a succession of apostles, or, as they are now called, bishops. St. John informs us, that " he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life ;" as Christ himself had previously done — " for without Me ye can do nothing." Communion with the Son, therefore, is necessary for obtaining etemal life, and this communion can only be had through the apostles and their successors, who are declared to be the branches of the divine Vine. St. John speaks of a " sin unto death," for which he says it is needless to pray ; but it must be left to the uncovenanted mercies of God. Wil- fully and maliciously to cut themselves off from communion with Christ, and not only so, but to take a solemn oath to ex- tirpate his representatives, must therefore be a " sin inito death," according to the apostle's reasoning ; which, although not strictly impossible to be forgiven, is yet highly improbable or difficult to realize. And another apostle says, " it is im- possible for those who were once enlightened [by baptism], and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted of the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance." But as the grapes that were beyond reach were considered sour, so the apostolic descent has always been considered unnecessary in the pres- byterian communion; and that this may not be thought an uncharitable assertion, the words of one of their standard writers is here faithfully quoted: — "As to the channel through which our [prcsbyterian] orders have been transmitted to us from the apostles, / can solemnly assure you, that we give our- > St. John, xvii. 9, 19-20. 1690] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 511 selves very Utile trouble about it. We believe that emergencies may occur, and that such emergencies have actually occurred in time past, wherein any man who feels himself disposed to proclaim the good news of salvation, and is qualified for the office, may, very warrantably, consider our Lord^s commission, which is recorded for the instruction of all in the New Tes- tament, ' Go ye and teach all nations, &c.' as addressed to him, and may take out a commission immediately from Jesus Christ. This was the way in apostolic times, as appears from various parts of Scripture, particularly the eighth chapter of the Book of Acts. It was the way with bishop Calvin and bishop Knox, who, though they were, I believe, in priests' orders before they ceased to be episcopalians (Calvin was cer- tainly a priest)^, ratlier chose to take their commission, as ministers of the Reformation, from Jesus Christ, than from a popish bishop 2." Patronage has always been a grievance to presbyterians. They consider popular election of ministers a divine right, which they say Christ bequeathed to his people. It is, they say. His legacy to them, an unalienable part of their spiritual property, which cannot be taken from them without directly crossing Christ's institution, and committing the horrid sin of robbing His people of their indisputable privilege. When the Revolution-parliament repealed the act of patronage, per- haps they " outfooled the people" as much as the rebel parlia- ment did in the year 1649, at which time it was decided that " the direction was the presbytery's, the election the session's, and the consent [oi^ly] the people's 3." So, whether patronage was administered by a lay patron or by a presbytery, the people were not a bit better ; for it appears all their divine right was to consent to that which in either case they could neither help nor control. It was a mere trick on the people; but it was a wrong and an injury to the patrons, who have generally exercised their privilege with prudence, and who at all events must select the object of their patronage from men whom the presbytery have already approved and licensed. Besides, an educated man will always judge with greater circumspec- tion than a multitude of the lowest of the people, who are imposed on by specious appearances and popular tricks, and ' Calvin certainly was not a priest, nor even a deacon. Knox was in orders. ^ Presbyterian Letters addressed to Bishop Skinner, of Aberdeen, by Patrick Mitchell, D.D., minister of Kemnay. 8vo. 1809, p. 354. •" Vide ante, ii. ch. xxiv. p. 314. 51*2 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. LIV. whose votes are more worthy of being counted than weighed. The patronage was transferred from the patrons to the heritors and elders of the different parishes, who were required to pay a sum of about £33 sterling as a compensation to the patron; but the fact is, that betwixt the years 1690 and 1711, when pa- tronages were again restored to their former owners, only four parishes in the whole kingdom complied with the conditions. This is a sufficient and convincing proof that either lay pa- tronage was not practically the evil which they alleged, or else that the privilege of choosing their own minister was not so highly valued by the people as it was maintained. 513 CHAPTER LV. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. 1690. -^Address to the earl Crawford. — Visitation of the universities — of Edinburgh. — The Test. — Principal Monro — charges against him — his answers — commissioners' report, and sentence. — Dr. Monro deprived. — Dr. Strachon — charges against him — deprived. — University of Glasgow. — Dr. Fall de- prived.— University of St. Andrews — earl Crawford's qualification — Dr. Wymess — all the professors deprived. — University of Aberdeen — professors not deprived — the citizens petition in favour of the clergy. — Principal Mid- dleton deprived. — A Jacobite plot — proposal to king William. — Meeting pre- vious to the assembly — the number of ministers — the transactions. — A fast on Sunday. — State of the kirk. — A new persecution begun. — Mr, Crawford — Cooper — Graham — causes of individual persecution. — Procedure of the pres- byteries.— Mr. Heriott. — Mr. Purves. — The public disgusted with the presby- terians. — Meeting of the assembly — king's letter — earl Crawford — Hugh Kennedy — primary proceedings — Assembly's answer — appointments for preaching — their prayers — their difficulties — discussion about baptism. — A fast — the nature of their fasts. — Sentence of deposition removed from the deposed members. — Two commissions appointed. — Assembly dissolved — tlie covenant not mentioned. — Modern strict presbyterians dissatisfied with this assembly. — Reflections. — Character of the clergy. — Presbyterian opinions of the sacraments. 1690. — In a satirical dedication, that worthy confessor, Mr. Robert C alder, compiler of the " Scottish Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed," thus addresses the earl of Crawford, who had been the oppressor of the episcopal clergy after the Revolution. " To your courage and conduct, which are equal, you have added such a success as to raise the church and state of Scollaud to be the wonder and amazement of the world : such burning and unquenchable zeal, such strange un- accountable prudence, and unparalleled piety, have appeared in all your actions, that if others had but wrought together with your lordship in any measure, then, I dare say (as your lordship expressly words it, in your pious printed speech to the parliament), ' a greater despatch had been made of the prelatists, and many honest suficring ministers, ere now, had VOL. 111. 3 u 514 HISTOEY OF THE [CHAP. LV. been delivered out of their pinches ;' and the enemies of the kirk and covenant had evanished when your lordship conde- scended to appear in person at it. It is to you that the na- tion owes her miraculous deliverance from the idolatries of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Gloria Patri. It is your lordship that hath rescued us from the superstitions of observ- ing Christmas, Easter, and Whitsunday, and from all the popish fopperies of cassocks, close-sleeved gowns, and girdles. It is your lordship that has enriched their majesties' treasury with the revenues of fourteen fat bishops, and with admirable ex- pedition have voided more than half the churches of the kingdom ; and advanced such a set of preachers, as, it is certain, never flourished in any period of the church of Scot- land under any of their majesties' predecessors ; and now that some malignant lords have been brought into the council again, your lordship hath retired from it, bravely scorning to sit at the same board with the opposers of the Caused In obedience to the clause in the act for " purging the universities," the noblemen and gentlemen named in it as com- missioners met on the 23d of July, and selected four sub- committees, one for each of the universities. The earl of Lothian and others were appointed to the University of Edinburgh — duke of Hamilton and lord Carmichael to Glas- gow— the earl Crawford to St. Andrews — and the earl Mari- schal to Aberdeen. The pamphleteutituled " The Presbyterian Inquisition" gives the names and designations of all the members of each of the committees, but it is of little im- portance to repeat names long since forgotten. They were, however, assisted by some of the presbyterian ministers. Gilbert Rule, of controversial memory, who was designed to fill the Principal's chair of the metropolitan university, took the chief lead, and, assuming a high legal authority, " required and commanded," on their own authority, " the messengers, &c. to pass to the market-cross, &c., and warn and summon all the lieges to come in and make what objections they can against the masters," professors, &c. All the masters and pro- fessors w^ere deprived, except one, Mr. Andrew Massie, who with contemptible meanness turned an accuser of his brethren, in order to keep his own place. At this, as at all the other universities, the professors and teachers were ordered to take the following Test or Assurance — " I, A. B. do, in the sincerity of my heart, acknowledge and declare that their majesties king William and queen Maiy are the only lawful and un- doubted sovereigns, king and queen of Scotland, as well de jure as de facto, and in the exercise of the government : and 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 515 therefore I do sincerely and faithfully promise and engage that I will with heart and hand, life and goods, maintain and de fend their majesties' title and government against the late king James and his adherents, and all other enemies, who, either by open or secret attempts, shall disturb or disquiet their majesties in the exercise thereof." The inferior men were soon disposed of, but Dr. Monro, the principal and the elect of Argyle, was the chief butt of their malice. Ten articles were exhibited against him ; but they were neither signed nor authenticated by any accuser ; hence the proceedings were designated an inquisition. He was ac- cused, first, of having renounced the protestant religion, whilst abroad in France, and of having deborded to popery. 3. That he set up the English liturgy within the gates of the college. 4. It is well known by all that Dr. Monro is highly disaflecled to the government in church and state, as appears by a mis- sive letter written by him to the late [i. e. the present] arcii- bishop of St. Andrews, dated the 5th of January, 1689, which appears by his having left the charge of the ministry ; his not having prayed for king William and queen Mary ; and his having rejoiced on the day that the news of lord Dundee's victory was received ; and how much he dislikes the present government of the church, may appear by his bitter perse- cuting of all of that persuasion to the utmost of his power. 5. At the last public laureation, he sat and publicly heard the Confession of Faith ridiculed by Dr. Pitcairne, yea, the ex- istence of God impugned, without any answer or vindication. G. He caused to be taken down all the pictures of the pro- testant reformers, that, as he alleged, " the sight of them might not ofl'end the [popish] chancellor at his visitation." 7. He presented some eucharistic^ verses to the chancellor on the birth of the prince of Wales. 8 and 9. That he is an ordinary curser and swearer, and a neglecter of family worship 2. The inquisition was postponed for some days, and Dr. Monro in the interim prepared written answers to these false allegations, which had no foundation in truth. 1. He peremp- torily denied the first charge as a spiteful and malicious calumny, and appealed to his whole life whether or not he had ever shewn the slightest indication of that heresy against which he had been bound down by the most solemn oaths ' Perhaps meant for eulogistic. * Presbyterian Inquisition, as it was lately practised against the Professors of *he College of Edinburgh. 1690, 4to. 516 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LV. and tests at his ordination. He shewed that had he been so inclined he had the fairest opportunity in the late reign, when such an apostacy would have led to profit and honour. "Was it," says he, " any of the sermons I preached against po^^ery in the High Church, and in the Abbey of Holyrood House, when our zealous [presbyterian] reformers were very quiet, to all which some hundreds of the best quality of the nation were witnesses ? But as I have been in France, I must there- fore behove to be a papist, and this is enough for this libeller. I am sure none of the papists ever thought me so." 3. He admitted the alleged sin of having read the liturgy in the college; but against which, however, there was no law then in existence. By this, among other circumstances that have occun-ed, we see the growing attachment to a liturgic worship, which had made considerable progress both amongst the clergy and the people. He added, they must be odd kind of papists who read the service of the church of England on the 5th of November. He then goes on to refute the libellers' assertion that a liturgy was never allowed in Scotland since the Reformation. " But the plain matter of fact is this," he said : " when I left off preaching in the High Church, I advised with some of my brethren, and the result was, that we should read the Book of Common Prayer, and preach within our families, per vices, since most of them were acquainted with the liturgy of the church of England ; neither did we think, when quakers and all other sects were tolerated, that we should be blamed for reading those prayers within our private families, which ive prefer to all other forms now used in the christian church. Nor had we any design to proselytize the people . . . but the matter succeeded beyond what we pro- posed or looked for. We preached to the people upon the Sundays. They came by hundreds more than we had room for, and very many became acquainted with the liturgy, and perceived, by their own experience, that there was neither popery nor superstition in it. I look upon the church of Eng- land as the true pillar and centre of the Reformation, and if her enemies should lay her in the dust, which God forbid, there is no other bulwark in Britain to stop or retard the pro- gress of either popery or enthusiasm. And 1 wonder [presby- terian] men should retain so much bitterness against the church of England, valued and admired by all foreign churches, and whose liturgy, as it is the most serious and comprehensive, so it is the most agreeable to the primitive forms. 13ut if there was no law for it, there was none against it ; there was no 1G90.] CHCRCH OF SCOTLAND. 517 national church government then, and why might we not read the prayers of that church from which we derive our ordina- tion to the priesthood since the Restoration of Charles II. 4. The principal was obliged to admit that he had not trans- ferred his allegiance from him to whom he had sworn it ; but denied that he resigned the High Church because he would not pray for the king and queen ; he denied, also, the charge of persecution, and thanked God that " he had no such pres- byterian temper." With respect to rejoicing at lord Dundee's victory, he said — " I assure him of the contrary, for no gentle- man, soldier, scholar, or civilized citizen, will find fault with me for this. I had an extraordinary value for him, and such of his enemies as retain any generosity will acknowledge that he deserved it ; and the libeller should consider that the vic- tories obtained in a civil war are no true causes of joy, for our brethren, friends, acquaintances, and fellow christians, must fall.'''' 5. To the allegation that he had heard the existence of the Deity impugned, he replied — " the sneaking libeller is grossly ignorant and malicious, for the doctor only . . .en- deavoured fairly and like a true philosopher to load some propositions in the thesis with this absurdity," as a conse- quence. 6. He shewed that he had been requested to remove the pictures by the then lord provost, sir Thomas Kennedy, lest they should have produced an altercation betwixt the popisli and the protestant visitors. 7. This he admitted. 8. " It is not usual," he said, " for the presbyterians to load men of different opinions from them with ordinary escapes ; they must repre- sent them as abominable, and sinners of the first rate, for all that are not of their cause have no fairer quarter, yet I could not easily guess who should first invent this prodigious ca- lumny ; a lie so notorious, that it could not come out of the mouth of an ordinary sinner." He had been obliged to expel one Robert Brown for having been a notorious ringleader in several tumults, and for having threatened to shoot the princi- pal, and who, out of revenge, had made up a libellous story against the principal, which was greedily laid hold of to fill up their libel. 9. " Sometimes I am accused for having too many prayers in my family, and now, that I ordinarily neglect prayers (for I guess, by the worship of God, he only means that part of it). But this is a common plan, and all of tiie episcopal persuasion must be represented as atheists and scan- dalous, void of all devotion and piety : but very few of any sense or ([uality will believe this impertinent slander, either in the country or in the city of Edinburgh, where we are known ; therefore I thought it not worth any answer." " But it is na- 518 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LV. turally impossible for the libeller to forbear calumny; the viper must either burst or spit his poison ^" The Parties to whom the principal's answer was remitted made their report on the 25th of September, and the following sentence was pronounced : — At Edinburgh, Sept. 25, 1690. — The lords and others of the commission appointed by act of parliament for visitation of universities, colleges, and schools, having this day heard and considered the above-written report of the committee of the college of Edinburgh, anent Dr. Monro, primar of the said college, depositions, and other instructions produced; and also Dr. Monro being asked if he was presently willing to swear the oath of allegiance to their majesties king William and queen Mary, and to sign the same, with the Assurance and the Confession of Faith (. . . .), and if he would declare his wil- lingness to submit himself to the present church government as now established; the said Dr. Monro did judicially, and in the presence of the said commission, refuse to sign the said Confession of Faith, and to take the said other engagements required to be done by the said act of parliament; and also did judicially acknowledge his written answers produced be- fore the committee, and did confess he caused the removal of the pictures of the reformers out of the library : Therefore the said commission approves of the foresaid committee's report, and finds the same sufficiently verified and proven, and hereby deprives the said Dr. Monro of his place as primar of the said college of Edinburgh, and declares the said place vacant^. — Sic subscribitur. Crawford, P. 1 HAVE been thus particular in detailing the case of Dr. Monro, on account of his eminence, and because the whole of llie others in all the universities were treated exactly alike; and it being tiresome to repeat the same circumstances so often, I only now extract the concluding remarks of the ano- nymous author of the Presbyterian Inquisition : — " Reader, Thou hast now heard how the presbyterian inquisition pro- ceeded against those two doctors; with the same rigour and severity they persecuted all such as they judged to be of the cpiscojml persuasion in that college, and in all the colleges of the mother university at St. Andrews. One instance more of the presbyterian partiality in judging I must not here omit, and it is this: — ' Presbyterian Inquisition, 27-ib. ' Ibid. 46, 17. 1690.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 519 "They admitted and sustained libels against all the raas^ ters that they thought were episcopal, without the least shadow of any accuser or informer, when themselves also knew the article to be most false ; yet, if any of the masters who were pres- byter! £ins, or who had insinuated themselves into their favour, if any such were informed against, though the indictment was subscribed by men of undoubted reputation, and contained many things that justly deserved deprivation, yet the matter was huddled up without examining any one article. As in the case of Mr. Andrew Massie, against whom an information was given in, subscribed by two gentlemen of great learning and reputation — the one a doctor of medicine, the other a master of arts; but the inquisitors knew that these informers were not of their gang, nor had any liking to their cause, and therefore they took no notice of the charge i." The inquisitors next accused Dr. John Strachan, incum- bent of the Tron church, and professor of divinity in the uni- versity. They alleged that in a sermon before the diocesan synod he had recommended a reconciliation with ihe church of Rome ; that he was an Arminian, a Pelagian, and innovated the worship of God in setting up the English service; that he neglected his duty in the college; that he was disaffected to the government, and neglected family worship. He defended himself against all these falsehoods and calumnies; but he was in the hands of men who had prejudged him, and co- veted his preferments. In addition to their adhering to their own charges, they offered him the Test, which he declined, and therefore he was deprived. The purgation of the university of Glasgow fell into better hands, says Mr. Skinner — " the lord Carmichael, though a staunch presbyterian, was a man of temper and good breed- ing." Good temper and good breeding, however, will not be preservatives against injustice and persecution, when these two points are predetermined. The same system was pursued at Glasgow as at Edinburgh; proclamation was made charg- ing the professors with every species of immorality, and invit- ing the lieges to accuse them of any farther offences. The presbyterian inquisition proceeded in the same summary way as their fellow inquisitors had done at Edinburgh. Dr. Fall, the principal, and three of the professors, refused to take the Test, but with which, notwithstanding his good breeding and good nature, lord Carmichael would not dispense- These gentlemen were accordingly deprived'^. ' Presbyterian Inquisition, 98. * Skinner's Ecclesiastical Hist. ii. 556, 5*20 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. Ii.-.hop \^ alkcr's Gaelic Sermon, note, p. 42. 1691.] CHUKCn OF SCOTLAND. 5G9 should not enter the church of Erroll." The presbyterians then began to offer blows, but they were soundly beaten, and Tullidaff with his friends were obliged to retreat. During this scene, Dr. Nicolson, who, though he had been deprived, yet, by favour of the heritors, still kept posses- sion of the manse, was engaged in divine worship, with his own family in it. In a few days he was summoned before the council, and accused of having been the instigator of that day's tumult. The public prosecutor cited a great many acts of parliament, from the Reformation to that time, to shew the care that had ever been taken of the clergy. He was ordered to quit the manse, and leave the parish, which was declared vacant. " A great many more acts of parliament might have been cited ; for we have had enough to that purpose, occa- sioned by the insults, invasions, and murders, committed by the presbyterian party in Charles the Second's time. But that for which I haye transcribed this narrative is chiefly this, that on the one hand you may see the piety of our former parlia- ments in the protection of clergymen, so, on the other, you may take occasion to consider what a spirit prevailed in the last session of our parliament, which justified and approved the deed of tlie rabble against so many clergymen ; and whether we have not now a very impartial government, when the same laws which must be buried in deep silence, when the case concerns the episcopal clergy, are thus awakened and made cry so loudly when the presbyterian interest stands in need of them'." But all the oppressions of the late Assembly and its com- missions were far from satisfying the desire of many of the ministers for vengeance on the episcopal clergy. " It is wished," says Willison, " that the act [appointing the fast] had been more full and explicit with respect to the shedding of the blood of God's saints and martyrs under prelacy, the king's ecclesiastic supremacy then advanced to a most blasphemous height, the self-contradictory oath of the abominable Test, and the fearful indignities done to our covenants, which Ave find mentioned by subsequent assemblies, and for which there is cause of mourning and humiliation to this day. Likewise we wish they had done more to retrieve the honour of these broken and burnt covenants, by openly asserting the lawful- ness and obligation of them, and applying to the civil poivers for their concurrence to renew them .'" Here is the incon- • An Account of the late Establishment of Presbyterian Government, 4to. 77-78. ^ Fair and Impartial Testimony, p. 25. VOL. in. 4 D 570 HISTORY OF THE . [CHAP. LVI. sistency of false principles ; they theoretically deny the regal supremacy, but yet in reality are obliged to succumb to it. The affairs of Scotland gave William much trouble, and he began to find the grand mistake he had made in the outset of his government by suffering the presbyterian pai'ty to gain the ascendancy. It is admitted by their own partizans that he was thoroughly disgusted with the presbyterians, and Helherington says, he was " irritated at the failure of his scheme [of relieving the episcopalians] based on a compro- mise : the king adjourned the meeting of the Assembly from November till January, 1692, in the hope that this mark of his displeasure might render the church more compliant^ ." William found it necessary to assert his supremacy, not indeed by blustering words, which was not his way, but by substantial actions ; and therefore he would not suffer the Assembly to meet that had been appointed for the first day of November. He prorogued it till January next year, and even Hetherington admits that " the conduct of the church [that is, the As- sembly,] is perhaps more censurable than that of William." This prorogation was very disagreeable to the ministers, but as their number was so small they dared not venture on attempt- ing to meet in opposition to the royal authority ; especially as the episcopal clergy might then have regained the court favour. " The spirit of presbytery," says Dr. Monro, " is a spirit of tyranny, and cannot endure to obey, and therefore such as are fully poisoned with their principles (whenever the decisions of the public contradict their own peculiar plan and scheme) immediately fly in the face of that authority they formerly pretended to support, and by general words, which at the bottom have no particular signification, but what they please to put upon them, they pick quarrels and exceptions against their own judicatories and governments, civil and ecclesias- tical 2." The day after the Assembly had been adjourned by royal proclamation, Mr. Erskine,in his sermon in the Tron church, said — " Sirs, ye heard a strange proclamation the other day, which I hope the authors may repent of some day ; it brings to my mind, sirs, an old story of king Cyrus, who once set his hands fairly to the building of God's house, but his hand was not well in the work when he drew it out again : all is well that ends well, sirs; for what think ye became of king Cyrus, sirs } I'll tell you that now, sirs ; he e'en made an ill end — he e'en died a bloody death in a strange land. I wish ' History, 184. " Apology, p. 69. 1691.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 571 the like may not befkl our king : they say comparisons are odious ; but I hope he will not think that Scripture compa- risons are so. Whatever you may think, I am sure of this, that no king but king Jesus has power to adjourn our General Assembly ^" 1692. — The history of the church at this period is ex- ceedingly defective ; the bishops, having been expelled from their houses, and from all legal jurisdiction, retired to such places as their poverty enabled them to procure. The history of the inferior clergy and their severe sufferings are so mixed up vvith that of the presbyterian ministers, that they cannot be separated. The episcopal clergy observed not only the fasts and festivals of the church, but also the state fasts and festivals, particularly the martyrdom of king Charles on the 30th of January. A short time before that occasion, the privy council, by the advice of all the judges, sent one of their number to the Commission, which was then sitting, to desire them to appoint a minister to preach before the council in St. Giles's church on the 30tli of January, according to custom and the act of parliament which had not been re- pealed, intimating, at the same time, that the council expected a sermon proper for the occasion, according to the laws and customs of the nation. To observe that fast would have been very inconsistent, for it was the principles as well as the actions of their predecessors that occasioned the great na- tional sin for which they were required to fast and mourn. But they had not so far repented of that execrable crime as to comply with the desire of the privy council ; and so they returned the following characteristic answer : — " Let the council mind their own business, for we are to receive no direc- tions from the state, nor to take our measures from the council, especially in preaching anniversary sermons." Upon a little reflection, however, they found William's supremacy was one of real effect, and was not to be trifled with ; they thought it better to appear to consent, rather than to be compelled by the council. They appointed Shields, one of the most wild and bigotted of their number, and as it happened that the anniversary fast fell that year on one of their own weekly preaching days, the compliance did not carry the appearance of yielding to the authority of the privy council. All the notice, however, which he took of the king's murder was — " Ye, sirs, perhaps some of you, may foolishly fancy that 1 came here to-day to preach to you concerning the death of ' Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed, p. 31. 572 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVI. king Charles the First. What ! preach for a man that died forty years ago ! If it be true what some histories tell of him, he is very much wronged ; but if it be true what we believe of him, and have ground for, he is suffering the vengeance of God in hell this day, for his own and his forefathers' sins!" ^ The marquis of Tweeddale was made lord chancellor, and lord Melville was reduced to an inferior post, and most of his creatures were dismissed; several of those who had been in Montgomery's plot were brought into the council and minis- try, and Johnston of Warriston was recalled from Branden- burgh, and made secretary of state. The adjourned meeting of the Assembly took place on the 15th of January. The presbyterians had very much offended the king, and their fury was instrumental in raising great jealousies of him in Eng- land. He foresaw the bad effects that this was likely to pro- duce, and therefore he recommended to the Assembly, (Willison says, " he pressed strongly, '') to secure the episcopal clergy to an union with them in the government. In case the Assembly could not be brought to comply, he instructed his commis- sioner to dissolve it, and not to name any other day or place for their meeting again. In his letter the king desired them to admit such of the episcopal clergy as were willing to submit to, and comply with, a formula which he sent down, and ap- pointed to be the terms of communion betwixt the parties. The terms proposed were such, it seems, that presbyterians of moderation might have rejoiced at; but they were "inso- lently rejected, and exclaimed against by all the Assembly." They asserted that king William designed to dethrone king Jesus ; that the prescribing any formula to them was an en- croachment on Christ's kingdom, and a violent usurpation of his privileges ; that any formula but the covenant is of the devil's making, and ought not to be tolerated by presbyterians. Burnet observes, " the presbyterians, who at all limes were stijf and peevish, were more than ordinarily so at this time : they were jealous of the king; their friends were now disgraced, and their bitterest enemies were coming into favour: so they were surli/, and would abate of no point of their government." As the earl of Lothian, the commissioner, found them so in- tractable, in accordance with his instructions he dissolved the Assembly without appointing any other time or place for another meeting. At first they were disposed to have disputed the supremacy, but the commissioner was firm ; the modera- tor asked whether his grace would not appoint a day for the * Presbyterian Eloquence, 30. 1692.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 573 next meeting, and he was informed that his majesty would appoint another in due time, of" which they should receive timely notice ; and, says Dr. M'Crie, " the Assembly of 1692 remains to this day a blank in the printed records of the c>iurchi." The moderator then declared their intrinsic power to meet annually in the name of their king Jesus, either with or with- out the consent of the crown, and spoke as follow^s: — " This Assembly, and all the members of this national church, are under the greatest obligations possible to his majesty; and if his majesty's commands to us had herein any or all our con- cerns in the world, we would have laid our hands upon our mouth and been silent; but they being for a dissolution of this Assembly, without indicting another to a certain day, therefore, having been moderator to the Assembly, I, in their name, they adhering to me, humbly crave leave to declare, that the office-bearers in the house of God have a spiritual intrinsic power from Jesus Christ, the only head of his church, to meet in assembly about the affairs thereof, the necessity of the same being first represented to the magistrate: and fur- ther, I humbly crave that the dissolution of this Assembly, without indicting a new one to a certain day, may not be to the prejudice of our yearly General Assembly, granted us by the laws of the kingdom." Here th« members rose up, and with one voice declared their adherence to what the moderator had said; and so pretending to act independently, they ad- journed themselves, and the moderator named the third Wednesday of August, 1693, for their next meeting. " The moderator, in his prayer immediately after its dissolution, re- flected upon king William, as sent in wrath to be a curse to God's kirk. He and the whole Assembly protested against the king's power to dissolve them; and before his commis- sioner disclaimed all his authority that way. Afterwards, to make their testimony (that is, their word for treason) public, they went to the cross of Edinburgh, and took a formal pro- testation, after the old manner, against the king, in behalf of the people of God, by which ihey intend their own subjects. The magnanimous earl of Crawford vowed, before the com- missioner, that he would adhere to the protestation with his life and fortune — two things equally great and valuable." " These proceedings," says Burnet, " were represented to the king as a high strain of insolence, that invaded the rights of ' Testimony Assoc. Synod Orig. Seceders, note, p. 39. 574 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. LVI. the crown, of which he was become vevy sensible. Most of those who came now into his service made it their business to incense him against the presbyterians, in which he was so far engaged that it did ahenate that party much from him'." The PRESBYTERIAN ministers began to consider that the throne of their invisible king, that is, their own dominion, was in some danger from their visible master, and were accordingly preparing to assert the rights and dignity of the former, when an event occurred which startled the whole island from its pro- priety, and drew both their own and other people's attention to another scene of the Revolution. Although William had seized the crown, and had long had secure possession of it, yet many had never acknowledged his right, and some especially of the Highland clans had never submitted to his government. The earl of Bredalbane had formed a scheme of reducing the High- land chiefs to obedience by bribing them ; and having repre- sented the practicability of this project to king William, he was entrusted with fifteen thousand pounds, to be distributed among the chieftains. He cajoled them, through the medium of emissaries, that the best way of serving king James was to bide their time, and to take the oaths to William in the mean* lime, which would be satisfactory to the latter, and they might still act for king James when a favourable opportunity oc- curred. But when the chiefs nosed out that Bredalbane had money to distribute, they instinctively rose in their demands, and their price became greater than he had funds to satisfy. They increased their price also, in the consideration, saga- ciously enough entertained, that their noble briber intended to keep the largest share of the allegiance-money to himself, which gave a keener edge to their appetite. " Amongst the most clamorous and obstinate of these was Macdonald, the chief of Glencoe ;" that is to say, this unfortunate chief stood out longest, in hopes of getting a better share of the money, and of course of reducing Bredalbane's own proportion. This was, no doubt, very irritating to his lordship, who was obliged to disgorge the whole sum ; and Burnet says, " the head of that valley had so particularly provoked lord Bredalbane, that as his scheme was quite defeated by the opposition that he raised, so he designed a severe revenge.^'' William had offered an indemnity to all that were in arms, or who objected to the oath of allegiance, on their taking the oaths against a certain day, 1 Burnet's Own Times, iv. 155-157— rresbyterian Eloquence, 31, 32— Willi- soa's Testimony, pp. 25, 26. 169-2.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 575 which had been several times prolonged, but at last was fixed to the 31st of December, 1691, with a threat of military exe- cution against outstanders. The terrified chiefs complied with more or less reluc- tance, except Macdonald, of Glencoe, who stood out to the last day; but on the 31st of December he went to the governor of Fort William, and offered to take the oaths. Not being a magistrate that officer could not administer the oath, and Mac- donald had to seek his way, in the best manner he could, through the deep snow, in search of a magistrate, which, in that country, and at that time, were few and far between. It was therefore the 5th of January before this unfortunate chief could travel through the deep snow, in a mountainous and thinly-peopled country, and discover a magistrate, who admi- nistered the oath to him, although, in strict law, the time had expired. This fact was concealed from king William, when the earl of Bredalbane came to court to restore the allegiance- money; but he accused Macdonald of having been the chief instrument of defeating his designs; " and that he might both gratify his own revenge, and render the king odious to all tho Highlanders, he proposed that orders should be sent for a military execution on those of Glencoe. An instruction was drawn up by the secretary of state [Dalrymple, the master of Stair], to be both signed and countersigned by the king, (that so he might bear no part of the blame, but that it might lie wholly on the king,) that such as had not taken the oaths by the time limited should be shut out of the benefit of the in- demnity, and be received only upon mercy. But when it was found that this would not authorise what was intended, a se- cond order was got, to be signed and countersigned, that if the Glencoe men could be separated from all the rest of the Highlanders, some examples might be made of them, in order to strike teiTor into the rest." Ralph observes, that if lord Bredalbane was a jacobite, the master of Stair was not, any more than his brother secretary Johnston; and that how i'ar soever Bredalbane might have been instrumental to the mas- sacre, by his rejiresentations at court, Stair was the man who took such pains to make it as terrible as possible." William signed this atrocious paper, it is said, without knowing its contents; for he procrastinated business till there was a great heap of papers came before him for signature, and then he signed them without any inquiry ; but at all events he was Tiept in ignorance of Macdonald's having tardily signed the oaths. Dalrymple, the secretary of state, wrote most pressing letters to Livingston, the commander-in-chief in Scotland, 576 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVI. giving him " positive orders that no prisoners should be taken, that so the execution should be as terrible as possible;" and he described all the passes in the valley so minutely, that none but one intimately acquainted with them could have done, and ordered them all to be secured, to prevent the escape of the unfortunate inhabitants. He pressed this, says Burnet, " with strains of vehemence, that looked as if there was some- thing more than ordinary in it ; he, indeed, grounded it on zeal for the king's service, adding, that such rebels and mur- derers should be made examples of ^" For the accomplishment of this most perfidious and cruel slaughter, a company of Argyle's Highland regiment, undei the command of captain Campbell, of Glenlyon, was sent into the valley in the month of February, under pretext of levying the taxes. They were kindly received by the unsuspecting inhabitants, who thought themselves secure from all hostilities. Macdonald was at first somewhat suspicious of his new guests, but captain Campbell's assurances were so friendly, and his men lived upon such social terms with the clansmen, tha their suspicions subsided, and animosities were forgot. Even the night before the massacre the old chieftain and the perfi- dious commanding officer spent some hours together at cards ! Some circumstances revived the suspicions of one of the younger Macdonalds, who, with his brother, left the house to ascertain what was going on. From the conversation of the sentinels their suspicions became certainties; but before they could return and put their father on his guard, the massacre had commenced. Old Macdonald was murdered in his bed and in his wife's arms, who survived him but a few hours. A neighbouring gentleman, in the house on a visit, shared the same fate, although he had a government protection in his pocket ; and Drummond, a subaltern officer, coolly stabbed a boy of eight years of age, while he was embracing his knees and imploring his mercy. The whole number that were butchered, and the most of them in their beds, was thirty - eight; and when the sword had done its worst, then fire com- pleted this atrocious scene. The houses of the wretched sufferers were set on fire, and the women, and old men above seventy, who were not included in the order to be massacred were turned naked into the fields in that inclement season and desolate country, to starve of hunger, cold, and lacerated feel- ings. The murderers drove off nine hundred cattle, two hun- dred horses, besides a great number of sheep and goats, to * Ralph's Historvi ii. 333 — Burnet's Ovm Times, iv. 157-160. 1692.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 577 the garrison of Inverlochy, where they were divided amongst the assassins. Providentially the severity of the weather pre- vented other troops from being sent to secure the passes, so that the two younger Macdonalds, with about a hundred and sixty males, made their escape; but many of the women pe- rished in the cold. Two officers were sent under arrest to Glasgow, because they had refused to break their parole to Macdonald, or to take any share in this inhuman massacred " This barbarous massacre," says Smollett, " performed under the sanction of king William's authority, answered the immediate purpose of the court, by striking terror into the hearts of the Jacobite Highlanders, but at the same time ex- cited the horror of all those who had not renounced every sen- timent of humanity, and produced such an aversion to the government, as all the arts of the ministry could never totally surmount. A detail of the particulars was published at Paris, with many exaggerations, and the Jacobites did not fail to expatiate upon every circumstance, in domestic libels and pri- vate conversation. The king, alarmed at the outcry which \vas raised upon this occasion, ordered an inquiry to be set on foot, and dismissed the master of Stair from his employment of secretary: he likewise pretended that he had subscribed the order amidst a heap of other papers, without knowing the purport of it; but as he did not severely punish those who had made his authority subservient to their own cruel revenge, the imputation stuck fast to his character, and the Highlanders, though terrified into silence and submission, were inspired with the most implacable resentment against his person and administration 2." The sentiments expressed by Dr. Fitzwilliam in his letter to lady Russell were those that actuated the whole non-juring body both in England and Scotland, and therefore we cannot wonder at their acting as they did in refusing the oaths to the new dynasty. The deprived bishops made part of the epis- copal college in both kingdoms, and they entered into close union and communion together. Nevertheless they acted on the church's principle of non-resistance to the powers that were in possession of the crown, and raised no rebellion ; they neither appealed to the people, nor preached them into tumults and riots. The episcopal church, when it was established in Scot- > Burnet's Own Times, iv. 157-161— Guthrie's General History, 308-313— Hume's England, ix. 145-151. ' Continuation of Hume, ix. 149. VOL. III. 4 E ■is^ 578 HISTOKY OF THE [CHAP. LVI. land, celebrated all the fasts and festivals of the christian church throughout the world, but presbyterians observed no festivals at all, but only the fasts of their own appointment. These were generally held for factious purposes, and it is somewhat remarkable, that whenever they had any conspiracy in hand, either against the church or the state, it was always preceded by one or more of these humanly appointed fasts. The festivals of the church preserve and increase true devotion, and her fasts assist in mortifying the spirit of men ; but the christian church has not left these anniversary observances to the ca- price of individual ministers. By her excellent discipline she has so ordered them, that it is impossible to forget the faith into which christian men have been baptized; and this visible practice of the church preaches faith and repentance more effectually, and makes more indelible impressions on the hearts of both young and old, than the ordinary sermons and the daily service. The festivals remind the human heart, which is at all times apt to become cold and insensible, of the great mer- . -ies of redemption, and enable the heart to expand in thanks- giving and praise. Fasting fixes the attention of the heart, delivers the soul from the oppressions of the body, and restores it to its true and native sovereignty over the lusts and pas- sions. " The public seasons of devotion," says one of the lights of that generation, " are the catechism of the people. It is true, where there is no day fixed for the uniform celebra- tion of a mystery, it may be remembered by some ; but it is not credible that all the people will remember it ; but when the day is fixed, we cannot forget it; and from our infancy we are easily trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and in the simplicity of the christian religion, free from Jewish superstition (' touch not, taste not, handle not,' with which all our sectaries are unhappily leavened), as well as from giddi- ness and enthusiasm." But the presbyterians inverted the very nature of the Lord's day, and the very ends for which it was appointed, by appointing their fasts to be held on that dav of thanksgiving and rejoicing for the resurrection of Christ. Their fasts also were generally ajjpointed for envy and strife, and to tear the prelates and clergy in pieces, as limbs of antichrist and priests of Baal, as they usually called them. Although they will not celebrate the anniversary festivals of the church, yet the presbyterians annually commemorate the birth-day of the worthy George Herriot, who founded an hos- pital in Edinburgh for the education of the sons of tradesmen, perhaps on account of his having left five pounds to the preacher for the anniversary sermon ! This is a sad reproach, 1692.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 579 and from my heart I wish it were wiped away, that men, call- ing themselves christians, will keep an anniversary festival to commemorate the birth of a fellow-sinner, because he has paid for it, which is " the root of all evil," and obstinately re- fuse to celebrate the birth, passion, mighty resurrection, and glorious ascension of the blessed Redeemer of all mankind, and who is " the author and finisher of our faith !" WoDROw and others, when chronicling what they called the " sufferings of the presbyterians," have not produced one single fact of tyranny or oppression against the prelates, in the course of twenty-eightyears. No sooner, however, did their party acquire power and an establishment, than they com menced and continued a system of tyranny and oppression unequalled, perhaps, by any similar persecution since the days of the fu'st christian emperor. Their cruelty consisted not only to the bodies and families of the clergy, but to their cha- racters and reputations; and these slanderous invectives have been kept up, nourished, and propagated to this day, with as much virulence and animosity as at the period under review. All this is the effect of the Covenant, which is a constant bond of rebellion against both church and state, and it may truly be called the master-piece of the Jesuits; for certainly none of their most wicked contrivances have ever caused so much pub- lic and private evil as this fundamental principle that that most Satanic body have imposed upon presbytery. The rev. Robert Calder, compiler of the Presbyterian Eloquence Dis- played, has ingeniously demonstrated that the Solemn League and Covenant contains the number 666. I know not whether or not St. John, in the visions of the Apocalypse, designed to intimate the existence of the Jesuits and their Solemn League and Covenant, as the name of the Beast, or the number of his name, and the mark which should distinguish the buyers and sellers in the spiritual market; but sure enough the initial letters of the title and the six articles of that popish document, without the preface and conclusion, contain precisely the " num ber of a man," 666 : — the first article, 131 ; the second, 93 ; the third, 88; the fourth, 99 ; the fifth, 83; the sixth, 172=6()6. Whether or not the decided opposition of the presbyterians and their contempt for the cross, is as likely to be the 7fiark of the Beast, as the idolatrous use, and constant abuse, of that sacred symbol of our salvation by the papists, I leave the learned in these matters to determine. 580 CHAPTER LVII. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. 1692. — Threatened invasion. — Archbishop of Glasgow arrested, and sent to the Castle. — Affairs at Aberdeen. 1693. — Meeting of parliament. — The As- surance.— The opinions of the English presbyterians. — The Assurance refused — pressed on the episcopalians — their position. — Petition for an assembly — no meeting of assembly. — An assembly summoned and adjourned. — Difficulty in collecting the bishops' rents — tithes given to the patrons. — Death of archbishop Sancroft — character. 1694. — Oaths of Assurance and Allegiance. — Com- missioner applies for instructions — his instructions — revoked, and others sent. — Remarks. — The ministers not required to take the oath. — A commission — instructions. — Objections to signing the Confession of Faith. — Ministers sent to the north. — Death of archbishop Tillotson. — Death of queen Mary. 1695. — Assembly adjourned. — A session of parliament, — The affair of Glencoe — three clergymen deprived and imprisoned — an act favourable to the clergy — some of them take the oaths. — Itinerating ministers. — Act against intruders. — Troops employed to collect the bishops' rents. — Act against bap- tism.— Death of the bishops of Brechin — of Caithness — and of Galloway. — Agitation. — Meeting of assembly — commissioner's speech. 1696. — Pro- gress of atheism. — Scarcity and dearth of provisions. — Bishop Ramsay's death. — Publication of the Fundamental Charter of Presbytery. — Mr. Sage — his Cyprianic age — is obliged to conceal himself. — A session of parUament. — An association. — Acts. 1697. — Clergy arrested. — Plan for asserting the inde- pendence of the kirk. — Meeting of assembly. 1698. — An assembly — a commission — a session of parliament. — Increase of immorality. — Act against rabbling. — Seasonable warning. — Position of the bishops. 1699. — An assembly. — King's letter. — Colony of Darien. — An union proposed. — The prin- ciple on which the Revolution turned. — Application to the queen of Bohemia. —Consequences of the Revolution. — Disputed successions. — Royal supremacy — ^The presbyterian ministers. — Reading the scriptures. — Remarks. 1692. — We ARE informed by a modern writer, that " a sea- son of half-suppressed dissatisfaction, intrigue, and jealousy, prevailed [among the presbyterians], tending greatly to alien- ate the mind of Scotland from William, and fostering the hopes of the Jacobites, that they might, ere long, succeed in 1692.] HISTORY OF TPIE CHURCH OK SCOTLAND. 581 overturning the government, and bringing back the exiled king^" And Burnet says — " While we were pleasing ourselves with the thoughts of a descent in France, king James was preparing for a real one in England. It was intended to be made in the end of April: he had about him 14,000 English and Irish, and marshal Belfonds was to accompany him with about 3,000 French. They were to sail from Cherbourg and La Hogue, and some other places in Normandy, and to land in Sussex, and from thence to march with all haste to Lon- don 2," From the letters of a Mr. Mackay to lord Melville, we learn that an extensive correspondence was carried on with the Jacobites in Scotland, for their co-operation in this invasion. This Mackay had insinuated himself into their confidence, and had betrayed them. He states, that the archbishop of Glas- gow was a principal correspondent with the exiled court, and from whom he derived his best intelligence. He sj^eaks also of another bishop, but does not name him, as giving him iu forma- tion. The lord archbishop of Glasgow was arrested, and committed to the Castle of Edinburgh; a circumstance that disconcerted Mackay's plans; and he says, " there could have nothing fallen out more unluckily than the apprehending the bishop of Glasgow at this juncture, he being the person from whom I had my surest intelligence, and one whom I am sure cannot be more active than in contriving against the go- vernment, and which he can do in prison as well as out of it^." This man also mentions, that he met the archbishop on his first introduction to his grace " at his elder brother's of St. Andrew's;" and perhaps archbishop Ross is the other bishop alluded to in Mackay's former letter. The refusal of the clergy of Aberdeen to observe the fast that had been imposed on the church as a Test, and the de- claration of the people of that city to defend and maintain their clergy, gave great offence to the government, and therefore they instituted an inquiry into the circumstances. In a letter to Mr. Carstares, the earl Crawford says, " the affair of Aber- deen is found very dirty, and the probation distinct. It is warrantably suspected that some of high quality, and in the government, had a deep share in the contrivance of that foul affair. There is likewise a sort of bond of association sub- scribed by all the disaffected in the place, not only undertak- ing to stand by their ministers, but protesting against anything the commission should do. I presume his majesty will not * Hetheiirigton, p. 181. - Own Times, iv. 165 =* Carstares" Stat' Papers, 128-135. 682 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVII. approve them in such a procedure to a comraission of the assembly, delegated by that venerable noeeting, consented to by his commissioner, and carrying the authority of parliament with it. . . . It does not sound well that presbyterian govern- ment being the legal establishment, their judicatories should be appealed from ; which is a consequential, if not a direct, disclaiming the authority both of king and parliament. The deprived episcopal men are every where transgressing the law ; preaching without qualifying themselves before the council; and, cross to the act of deprivation, preaching in their own parishes ; yea, many of them setting up for calls, and muster- ing all the disaffected in the country for hearers to them. His majesty's former letter is the pretext fur this behaviour. If some speedy course be not taken to remedy this, I am much ulraidit will shake both church and state ^." U)93. — Burnet informs us that " affairs in Scotland grew more and more out of joint ;" and " the presbyterians began to sec their error in driving matters so far, and in provoking the king so much ; and they seemed desirous to recover his favour and LO inanage their matters with more temper 2." The Gene- r.il Assembly had been dissolved by royal authority, and was livt permitted to meet by the visible head of the kirk, notwith- :s';uudingits boasting of its intrinsic powers ; but the commis- sion sat regularly, and kept up the purging system. The country north of the Tay still presented difficulties to the su- jneniacy of presbytery, and Willison says it was their " chief care and business for many years to get the north and high- iands supplied and planted with proper ministers; they sent (livers committees of the most experienced ministers to purge mtd plant the north, and transported many of the best minis- ters to that country 3." As William found the presbyterians were now courting his favour, he thought there might be no risk in holding another session of parliament ; and as means had been found to recon- cile the duke of Hamilton to his government, he was ap- jjoiiited the commissioner. The session was opened on the 18lh of April, by reading the king's letter, which was replete with compliments and cajoling expressions ; and Smollet says, " the parliament proceeded to exhibit undeniable specimens of tlieir good humour." They drew up an appropriate an- swer to the royal letter ; they voted an addition of six regi- ments to the standing army ; they granted a supply of above * Carstares's State Papers, 146. * Own Times, iv. 216. J 1692.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 583 £150,000 sterling to his majesty ; they enacted a law for levy- ing men to serve on board the royal navy ; they fined all the absentees ; and they purged the house of all the members that would not take the Test or Assurance, which was equiva- lent to an abjuration of king James. Secretary Johnston told Carstares, " we keep off church affairs till those of stale are done ; but there is room enough even for them ^" King William was most thoroughly disgusted with the presbyterian ministers ; but he had convinced them that he was the head of their kirk, by proroguing and dissolving their Assemblies. And he still farther humbled them by an act which was passed in this session, which obliged all in office to take the oath of allegiance to their majesties, and at the same time to sign the Assurance orT^est, acknowledging Wil- liam to be king de jure as well as de facto. The presbyte- rians thought it highly proper that the episcopalians should be called on to sign the Assurance, but they highly resented the meting out to them that measure which they had measured to the episcopalians. The presbyterian ministers accordingly took the alarm, and imagined that it was determined to in- volve them in the same trouble that they had contrived for the others ; and they considered the imposition of this oath as a snare, in order that the king might consider them to be as un- friendly to his go\'erument as the episcopalians were supposed to be. They also considered the attempt to comprehend the episcopalian clergy with them, as " an engine to destroy pres- bytery ;" and, in consequence, their irritation against Wil- liam was very great. They considered the imposition of any civil oaths as a qualification to sit in church courts, as an eras- tian encroachment upon the freedom of a christian church, and therefore were resolved not to take the Assurance 2. A LETTER from an English presbyterian, after making some very sensible remarks upon revolutions, and the doctrine of deposing kings, and the deluges of blood which have always followed such events, says, by this oath, " you are not only obliged to assert this king-dethroning principle, but to seal it in the presence of Almighty God, by swearing allegiance to king William, whose royalty is founded upon this principle alone. How can you, with any manner of reason and justice, declare that your present governor is king de jure as well as de facto, seeing you will not pretend that you have looked into your ancient laws and constitution so narrowly that you have ' Carstares's State Papers, 154, 155. — Smollet's Continuation of Hume, 8vo. ix. 210. * Life of Carstares, 51. 584 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. LVII. examined the grounds and reasons of king James's forfeiture, so exactly as to enable you to make so grave and so important a declaration? Or rather, have you not, by asserting in your Confession of Faith that difference of religion doth not vacate the subject's allegiance, given up what w^as declared by the meeting of estates to be the most important reason for forfault- ing king James ? There is a more particular tenderness ex- pected from ministers of the gospel than from other men ; they are not obliged implicitly to obey orders of state, nor to engage in the decisions of questions so intricate in them- selves ; for you do not know iu what sense it is you are to de- clare your present governor king dejure — whether by right of blood, of election, or of conquest. All the three have been pleaded for; nor has the parliament decided the point." If these reasons stood good in the case of the presby terian minis- ters, why should not the episcopal clergy have enjoyed the benefit of them } The letter writer goes on, " Amidst all the struggles amongst you about controverted titles to the crown, the church was never obliged by oaths to either of the con- tending parties. It never entered into the heart of any magis- trate, either among you or among any foreign nations, to pur- sue such a policy, until of late that set and party began to bear sway in our public council. I find no instances of it in the history of England or Scotland, neither do the annals of the Roman empire, of France or Spain, where we have the most monstrous example of contending parties, furnish us with any precedent of this nature. The church of England, indeed, upon the revolution, has been by order of parliament obliged to take party oaths ; for the present oath of allegiance is no other. But a great many of their clergy have stood out, though their laws give some countenance to a king de facto ; whereas there is no such pretence by your laws. There is countenance to a king in possession without right [in blood], to be found in the language of your law ; and yet you are obliged, by the last orders of your parliament, to declare a rifjht as well as a possession, and a right, too, of an unknown, indefinite, and illimited nature ^" The reasoning in this letter determined the presbyterian ministers to refuse all subscription to the Assurance ; and as they bullied the government, they escaped the infliction of the penalty, but there was no relief for the episcopal clergy. This parliament, however, appeared to be desirous of granting the episcopalians some relief; but the conditions which were re- 1 Cited in Life of Carstares, 52-5 7» 1693.] CPIURCH OF SCOTLAND. 585 quired to obtain it, were such as exposed ihem more Ihau ever to the fury of their adversaries. The conditions were, to ac- knowledge that the presbyterian was the only government of the church of Scotland ; to subscribe the Westminster Confes- sion of Faith, as the confession of their oivn faith ; and to observe such uniformity of worship as was then, or should be afterwards, practised in the presbyterian kirk. This act sta- tuted also " that uniformity of worship [this was levelled at the Liturgy, which was coming into use in the chapels of the episcopal clergy], and of the administration of all public ordi- nances within this church, be observed by all ministers and preachers, as the same are at present performed and allowed therein, or shall hereafter be declared by authority of the same ; and that no minister or preacher be admitted or con- tinued hereafter unless that he be subscriber to observe, and actually do observe, the said uniformity: and withal declaring, that if any of the said ministers who have not been hitherto received into the government of the church, shall offer to qua- lify themselves, and apply in manner aforesaid, they shall have their majesty's full protection, aye, and while they be so admitted: Providing always, that this act and the benefit thereof shall no ways be extended to such of the said minis- ters as are scandalous, erroneous, negligent, or insufficient, and against whom the same shall be verified within the space of thirty days after the said application." Burnet says the episcopal clergy were only required to make an address to the General Assembly, offering to sub- scribe to the Confession of Faith, and to submit to presbytery as the only government of the church. Within a fortnight after they had done this, if no matter of scandal was objected against them, the Assembly were to be obliged to receive them into the government of the kirk ; but the act had expressly provided this loop-hole to evade the king's intentions, lor it was an easy matter for them, in their loose way, to prove any or all of these four pleas of presbytery. But if the clergy would not agree to these terms, then tlie act engaged that the king should take them under his protection, and maintain such of them as had not been rabbled out of their churches, without any dependence on the presbyterian courts. The act farther provides, " that if any of the said ministers who have not been hitherto received into the government of the church, shall offer to qualify themselves, and to apply in manner fore- said, they shall have their majesty's full protection, aye, until they shall be admitted and received in manner foresaid." This, says Burnet, " was a strain of moderation tliat the presbyte- VOL. III. 4 F 586 HISTORY OF THE [CH4P. LVII. rians were not easily brought to ; a subscription that owned presbytery to be the only leffal government of that church, without owning any divine right in it, was far below their usual pretensions. And this act vested the king with an au- thority very like that which they were wont to condemn as erastianism ^" The privy council was empowered to tender the Assurance to all when they should see cause for it, and to fine and imprison all who should refuse it. The act for " settling the quiet and peace of the church V' besides enacting as above narrated, contains a humble request to his majesty to call a General Assembly for the ordering of the affairs of the church, and the admission to the exercise of church government of those ministers possessing churches who had not yet conformed. This clause was very offensive to the ministers, for they considered that it made them " ho- mologate" the supremacy, and wounded the rights and privi- leges of the kirk, " since it supposes that there is no assem- bly in being by which the king's dissolution of the last Assem- bly is approved ; the Assembly's protestation of adjournment is condemned, and the intrinsic power of the church in calling and continuing of assemblies joro re nata, with the right of annual assemblies, given him by the act of settlement, are struck off. .... So that, in effect, an address of that nature is an address for the extinguishing rather than calling General Assemblies^." The earl of Lothian had named no day for the convocation of another Assembly, but the moderator appointed the third Wednesday of August for their next meeting. Not- withstanding their bluster about their intrinsic powers, when that day arrived not one of the ministers ventured to come to the capital, or to convene as an assembly ; and therefore they abdicated their privileges, which, if they were jure divino, as they allege, they were guilty of a great sin ! Dr. M'Crie says, this " was a blank in the printed records of the church *;" and on turning to the " printed records," we find no assembly betwixt the 16th of October, 1690, and the 29th of March, 1694. The privy council, by order of the king, who was then abroad, issued a proclamation summoning an Assembly to meet on the 6th December of this year ; but before that date he adjourned it by proclamation till the 29th of March next year 5. Willison apologises for the ministers ; but he adds, " though still it must be owned it would have been much for ' Own Times, iv. 217 ^ Acta Parliamentorum, fol. p. 303 ' Life of Carstares, 53. * Testimony, note, p. 39. '' Acts of Assembly, p. 235. 1693.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 587 the church's exoneration, that matters had been more plainly and closely laid to the door of the state, that the world might have seen where the stop was^." Although presbyterians wink hard at it, and count it among the predestinated things that could not be helped, yet " the world" can very easily see that " the stop'''' lay with the royal supremacy, which in William's hands was a matter of fact, and not of theory, as it unfortunately had been in former days. It REQUIRED all secretary Johnston's dexterity to ward off an inquiry into the massacre of Glencoe, at which several of the members expressed great indignation. All that had hitherto been done was the dismissal of Dalrymple from the office which Johnston now filled, of principal secretary of state. There was one Payne, too, an agent of king James's, who had been arrested, and the parliament was clear for bringing him to trial ; but he gave Uiem to understand that he could reveal much more than would secure his pardon ; this so alarmed the commissioner and some other noblemen that he was allowed time to prepare his defence beyond the sitting of parliament, which was a device to allow him to escape. Sacrilege had been rampant in Scotland ever since the Reformation ; and of course it was perpetuated at the Revo- lution. The whole of the lands and tithes belonging to the fourteen bishopricks were conveyed to the crown, and an act of parliament was made to authorise the government to quarter troops upon the tenants and others of the bishopricks of Argyle and the Isles, who were described as refractory. " Considering that several of the inhabitants within the bounds of the synods of Argyle and the Isles are very refractory in paying to the chamberlains and factors those rents which were formerly payable to the bishops of Argyle and the Isles, and to their majesties ; and that the distance and inaccessibleness of these lands render legal executions not only difficult but ineffectual for inbringing of these rents, &c. ;" therefore ihey authorise the quartering of troops upon the refractory parties. Doubtless these refractory gentlemen had desired to follow the example of their betters, and commit sacrilege on a small scale and upon their own account^. And a further robbery of God was perpetrated in another act, wherein " it is statuted and declared that the right of the tiends of parishes whereof patrons had fonnerly the prcsenlalion by that act abolished, and vvhich tiends are not heritably disposed, should by virtue of that act belong to the patrons, with burthen always of the ' Testimony, 26. ■'' Acta Parliamentorum, p. 268. 588 nisTORY OF the [chap. lvii. minister's stipend and others therein expressed ; and that it is just and reasonable that the said benefit should be extended to the patrons of all parsonages and other benefices without exception ^ !" Archbishop Sancroft died on the 24th of November, and his remains were committed to the earth in the church^'ard of Fresing-field, his native village, on the 27th of the same month. Dr. D'Oyley has drawn his character with great can- dour and ability. The non-juring bishops and clergy did not consider that any schism existed betwixt them and the esta- blished bishops, till after their sees had been filled up by other bishops ; and although they were of opposite political senti- ments, yet they were on the best terms with each other as churchmen. The non-juring bishops considered the new bishops that had been appointed to their sees, as schismatical intruders, and the other bishops, who acknowledged them, as abettors of schism and betrayers of the catholic church. From that period, they looked on themselves and their adhe- rents as constituting the only church in England that was in communion with the catholic church of the four first centu- ries. Of his private character. Dr. D'Oyley says, he " was greatly eminent in his generation for the manner in which he fulfilled all the private and public duties of life. The various excellencies and virtues which adorned his character are suf- ficient to claim for him the tribute of admiration of posterity in general ; but by the protestant members of the church of Eng- land (and we may add, by protestants of all denominations in Britain) his name must ever be cherished with grateful recol- lection for the noble stand which he made at the hour of trial, in defence of the religious aaid civil liberties of the country ; a stand to which the preservation of that goodly fabric in church and state, which they inherit from their forefathers, is principally to be attributed." 1694. — The Assurance was a bitter and most unpalatable pill for both parties to swallow ; but the presbyterians were now pushed to a point from which there was no escape. It must be taken before the Assembly could sit, by every mem- ber. They applied therefore to the council, to dispense with the law which enjoined them to take the oath of Assurance and allegiance. Dispensing with the laws was one of the very sins for which king James Avas forfaulted ; yet they could practise that themselves, which they condemned in him ! The privy council not only refused to exercise the dispensing power, but ' Acta, p, oOo. J 1694-] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 589 they issued an order that no member should be allowed to take his seat till he had first taken the oaths. The ministers were resolute in two things — first, not to take the oaths, and secondly, to hold their Assembly even if William should again exercise his prerogative, and either adjourn or dissolve them. Lord Carmichael, the commissioner, was however instructed, if they refused the oaths, to dissolve the Assembly in his ma- jesty's name. The Edinburg.h ministers assured his lordship, " that if this measure was persisted in, it would spread a flame over the country which it would not be in the power of such as had given his majesty these counsels to extinguish." The commissioner thought that a dissolution of this As- sembly would be fatal to the kirk, even although it was de- clared to have been built on the inclinations of the people ; he therefore sent an express to court, stating the opposition of the ministers, and requesting instructions how to act in this dilemma. With the same express the ministers also sent a despatch to Carstares, who was William's confidential chap- lain, urging him to put out his hand and support their ark, now tottering to its fall. The lords Stair and Tarbat, although presbyterians, represented this obstinacy of the ministers as rebellion ; and William would not encourage that sin by which he himself had risen; so an answer was returned that same day to the commissioner, instructing him to enforce the oaths, and if the ministers still persisted in refusing to take them, to dissolve the Assembly. Carstares was absent during this transaction, but he returned at a late hour, and before the messenger had set out on his return. After reading the memorial that had been sent to himself, he ascertained the nature of the answer that had been returned to the commis- sioner's despatch. There was no time to be lost. He ran in breathless haste to the messenger, whom he found on the very point of starting ; in another minute he had been ofl", and the perusal of the despatches with which he was entrusted would have been the signal for " Michael's angels" to have " drawn to a head." The " mother of harlots," and her oflspring, are not at all particular as to the means employed, provided the endin view may be obtained ; so in this case Carstares thought the imminency of the danger justified him in telling a lie. He demanded the despatch from the messenger in the king's name. It was delivered on such an authority, and with which Carstares hurried to his majesty's apartment, who was then in bed and asleep. The lord in waiting refused him admit- tance, but gave way on being informed that he desired to see the king on business of the lust iujjiortauce. 590 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVII. On reaching the bedside he found his majesty fast asleep; so falling down on his knees to the visible head of the kirk, he made free to awake him. Astonished to see such an appa- rition, and in such an unusual posture, he hastily inquired the cause of such an intrusion on his privacy. Carstares said he came to beg his life, and then produced the king's despatch. Fierce is their wrath " when the rich blood of kings is set on fire." " Have you, indeed, presumed to countermand my orders ?" said the king. Carstares acknowledged his fault, and entered into a long explanation ; and, that he might not be farther interrupted, the king took the despatch, tore it up, and desired Carstares to " draw up the instructions to the commissioner in what terms he pleased, and he would sign them. Mr. Carstares immediately wrote to the commissioner, signifying that it w^as his majesty's pleasure to dispense with putting the oaths to the ministers ; and when the king had signed it, he immediately despatched the messenger, who, by being detained so many hours longer than he intended, did not arrive in Edinburgh till the morning of the day fixed for the sitting of the Assembly ^" Here was the exercise of the dispensing power to some pur- pose, which had cost James his crown. It is a constitutional maxim, that the king can do no wrong; because whatever wrong is done, it is the effect of the evil advice of his consti- tutional advisers: but Carstares was not a minister of state, had not consulted with any minister before achieving this daring and unconstitutional act, and the advice of ministers of state was set aside, and other counsels adopted in an im- portant case, by the advice of a private chaplain. Father Petre, the Jesuit, who was a privy councillor, did no more than Mr. Carstares, the presbyterian minister, now ventured to do. It was made a count in the indictment against king James, that he followed Petre's advice; but no blame was ever at- tached to William for this irregular transaction; and one ol Carstares' correspondents had the modesty to write to him, that he could, " as plainly as sunshine, see Tarbat and old Stairs' hand in it." He calls the advice that these noblemen had given the king, " a gross act of leasing making;" and adds, " it were of great consequence that the fears of such fu ture escapes were likewise removed, which can never be, so long as the procurer [Tarbat] is in that post, which may en- danger a relapse. On my conscience, he should lose his head for it, if it were right; but to continue him in his post is un- ' Life of Caistiicb, 5801. ( ',' t ,/: l^//^ 1694.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 591 pardonable, and the sooner he is turned out the better, as it would appear such a favour to the nation. . . . Now pray let the king be urged to remove him, and presently. He can have no great need of secretaries till he return; and then, if he be not convinced that it is best to rest on a single secretary, let him have another ^" As THIS important despatch did not reach Edinburgh till the morning of the day on which the Assembly met, both the com- missioner and the ministers were in the utmost perplexity ; but both parties had screwed up their courage to act their respec- tive parts — the one to enforce the oaths and dissolve the Assem- bly, the other to refuse them, and to sit, in spite of the crown, as they did at Glasgow, in the year 1638. " Both of them were apprehensive of the consequences, and looked upon the event of this day's contest as decisive with respect to the church of Scotland, when, to their inexpressible joy, they were relieved by the return of the packet, countermanding the dissolution of the Assembly." King William had become extremely un- popular among the presbyterians, because he had been as good as his word, " that his authority should never be a tool to their irregular passions f but this unconstitutional transac- tion reinstated him in their favour, and also established Car- stares' credit, of whom they began to be jealous. The Assembly met on the 29th of March, when the laws were dispensed with in the case of the presbyterian ministers, and they wei'e not required to take the assurance or the oath of allegiance: that was one advantage, at all events, they had gained by placing their hand on the sword. There is nothing connected with this history occurs till the 13th of April, when a commission for the ensuing year was appointed, chiefly with an eye to purging out the episcopal clergy in the north. Among their instructions there are the following clauses: — " 6. That this Commission may receive into ministerial com- munion, such of the conforming ministers as (having qualified themselves according to law) shall apply personally to *hem, one by one, duly and orderly, and shall acknowledge, engage, and subscribe upon the end of the Confession of Faith, as follows: viz. — ' I, '■ — do sincerely own and declare the above Confession of Faith, approven by former General As- semblies of this church, and ratified by law in the year 1690, to be the confession of my faith; and that I own the doctrine therein contained to be the true doctrine, which 1 will con- ^ Life of Carstares, p. 63« 592 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVII. stantly adhere to; as likewise, that I own and acknowledge the presbyterian church government of the church, now set- tled by law in kirk sessions, presbyteries, provincial synods, and general assemblies, to be the only government of this church ; and that I will submit thereto, concur therewith, and never endeavour, directly nor indirectly, the prejudice or sub- version thereof; and that I shall observe uniformity of wor- ship, and of the administration of all public ordinances within this church, as the same are at present performed and allowed.' And the commission is to have especial regard to their minis- terial qualifications; and if any of the said ministers so ap- plying, or any other ministers within this church, of what persuasion soever, shall be accused or informed against, of any scandal, error, supine negligence, or insufficiency, then the said commission shall make inquiry thereinto, cite parties, lead witnesses, take depositions, and do every other thing that may clear the matter of fact informed against them, and report the same, and their diligence therein, to the next General Assembly. Providing always, that if any be accused of gross uncontroverted scandals, and these clearly proven, in that case the commission shall proceed to determine as they find cause ^." These instructions were evidently based on the act of parliament. Although it acted as a barrier, and was so in- tended, to the admission of those who retained their livings, into their presbyteries and other courts, 3'et Hetherington has the assurance to say that it " approached more nearly to «'hat may be termed undue concession than to persecution; and, indeed, heavy complaints were made by many, and severe re- proaches uttered by some, against the conduct of the Assem- bly, as indicating great laxity of principle, and tending to unfaithfulness in the important duty of preserving the purity and efficiency of the church — a charge which it would not be easy to meet with a complete and satisfactory vindication ^2." Was it no persecution, even to tough consciences, much more to tender ones, to be compelled to sign a document which contains the grossest heresies, inconsistencies, and contra- dictions ; not as a bond of peace, but as the bond fide belief and confession of their own faith ? It certainly was very great persecution to compel christian men to sign a system of doc- trine that is corrupt and unsound in the faith, and antinomian, wherein those whom they count the elect are made secure in ' Acts of the General Assembly, 239, 240 : Sess. 13, Act xi. - History, p. 186. MAM.Y II 1694.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 593 their sins, however heinous, and though these sins are perse- vered in to their last breath. A system that makes God the author of sin, by denying free will in man, and asserting that men's actions are so predetermined, that they cannot be al- tered; and that the number of men and angels that arc to be saved or condemned are so minutely fixed, that God himself can neither add to nor diminish their number! But this act itself is persecution ; for instead of comprehending the epis- copal clergy, as it was their pretence, it was as seveie a test as could be worded in order to exclude them. Moreover, the words ot the act of parliament make it an act of uniformity in " worship, and which worship they must subscribe to observe, and declare that actually they do observe it." These are the words of the act, and the episcopal clergy were called upon to observe " that worship which, to the great scandal of all other protestant churches, hath thrown out that comprehensive prayer which Our Lord hath taught, and com- manded us, when we pray, to say; with that religious hymn, so anciently enjoined and so constantly used in the church, to the honour of the Holy Trinity; rejecting also the apostolical creed in baptism, the great standard and summary of the chris- tian faith, into which we are to be baptized, and admitting no other standard of our intercessions and prayers to Almighty God, no other forms of sound words, than the private con- ceptions of every pretender to be the mouth of a whole church assembly or congregation of God's people. And yet this is ' the uniformity of worship which they must subscribe to ob- serve, and declare that actually they do observe it.' And if in any ways they dissent from any of these, then they incur the penalties contained in the act. Is this a toleration ? . . . But as to the penalties, they must be suspended tarn ah officio quam a benificio; that is, both from their offices and benefices. First, from their offices; and that is, ' not to exercise any part of their ministeral function in any parish within the kingdom.' And is not this a penal law ? The penalty, methinks, is heavy enough, to be deprived of bread, which the benefice implies; but yet heavier to be deprived of the exercise of all those sa- cred offices of religion to which they were consecrated. But this is not all, nor doth this negative consummate the penalty of this law ; for if they continue to exercise any part of their ministerial function without subscribing and declaring as aforesaid, then they must incur banishment, and be for ever exiled from their native country, and exposed to all the mise- ries of poverty and distress among strangers, If this be a VOL. III. 4 G 594 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVII. tolei'at'ion, they have it; and if these be noi penal laws, where are they to be found ? i" " The inclinations of the people" in the northern parts of the kingdom had still resisted the advances of presbytery, and it was found necessary to make an act " for the supply of the North," on account of " the many vacancies in this church by north the water of Tay, and the paucity of ministers in these parts." Sixteen ministers, being all that could be spared, were sent to itinerate in that large portion of the kingdom, which was then filled with the episcopal clergy, to whom the people steadily adhered, in order to introduce division and strife, and by these means to plant presbyterianism, " and to illumine those parts where prelatic darkness prevailed 2." On the 17th of November, archbishop Tillotson was taken ill, while officiating in the chapel at Whitehall, of a fit of the dead palsy, and died on the 22d at Lambeth, in the 65th year of his age. Burnet preached his funeral sermon, and says, " he was not only the best preacher of the age, but seemed to have brought preaching to perfection ; his sermons were so well heard and liked, and so much read, that all the nation proposed him as a pattern, and studied to copy after him." Both the king and the queen were much afi'ected with his death, especially the latter, who seldom mentioned him without tears. Burnet says, " he died so poor, that if the king had not for- given his first-fruits, his debts could not have been all paid : so generous and charitable was he, in a post out of which Sancroft had raised a great estate, which he left to his family." Malignity and mendacity are here most transparently blended. It is well known that Dr. Sancroft expended the revenues of his see in hospitality and charity, and died in great poverty; and left no other estate to his family than his father had left to himself — of about £50 per annum, in his native village. Dr. Tennison, bishop of Lincoln, was elevated to the see of Canterbury — a dull and covetous man, " a zealous party man, and the only divine in the church of England over whom the Roman Catholics had any advantage in king James's reign 3." Queen MAiivdid not long survive her favourite archbishop ^ Tillotson. She was taken ill of small-pox of the most malig- nant sort, and Dr. RatclifTe had been both negligent and un- skilful in the treatment of her malady. She died on the 28th ' The Case of the Episcopal Clergy of Scotland truly represented. Folio, 1, 2. ^ Acts of Assembly, Act 4, Sess. 14. ^ Salmon's Chronology, ii. 273 — Burnet's Own Times, and the Editor's Notes, iv. 243, 244. 1694.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 595 Dscember, in the thirty-third year of her age, and the sixth of her reign. She was attended in her last moments by arch- bishop Tennison, and received from him the blessed sacra- ment of the Body and Blood of Christ. The earl of Dartmouth, in a manuscript note to Burnet's Own Times, says, " the earl of Nottingham, who was much in her confidence, told me, he was very sure, if she outlived her husband, she would have done her utmost to have restored her father; but under such restrictions as should have prevented his ever making any attempts upon the religion or liberties of his country." Out of a long and exceedingly high character which this queen has received, I shall only select one paragraph: — " She was a perfect example of conjugal love, chastity, and obe- dience. She set her husband's will before her as the rule of her life ; her admiration of him made her submission not only easy, but delightful; and it is remarkable, that when Dr. Tennison went to comfort the king, his majesty answered — ' that he could not but grieve, since he had lost a wife, who, in seventeen years, had never been guilty of an indiscretion.' .... To sum up all, she was a tender and respectful wife, a kind friend, a gentle mistress, a debonair queen, a good christian, and the best of women ^," 1695. — When the last Assembly rose, the commissioner appointed the next meeting to be on the first Thursday in April, but the king thought fit to adjourn it to the 11th of July, and again to the 20th of November ; and it appears that the ministers were obliged to petition king William to call another Assembly. Sir James Stuart, the lord-advocate, writing to Carstares, says — " I desire to know your thoughts, if it be advisable that they [the synod of Lothian] address the king for a new Assembly, to sit some time before August next, and the sooner the better; if it can stand with the conveniency of his majesty's affairs, it may be it will not be unacceptable to the king. You can judge of the obvious consequence of it. I know some who would be glad of it, although it should be but a very short session, if it were no more but to appoint a commission for the north, for taking in some of the best of the incumbents, in some places almost a whole presbytery : as, for example, that of Strathbogie, in Moray; in other places but three or four in a presbytery, as they can be had; that so there may be a more full representation of the national church in the next ensuing General Assembly." William, > The History of King Williana, vol. ii. 407— Burncl's Own Times, iv. 245-250, 696 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVll. however, did not suffer the Assembly to meet till the 17th of December ^ A SESSION of parliament was held, and the marquis of Tweeddale was sent down as the royal commissioner. After the royal letter had been read, in which the king regretted that public affairs prevented his presiding in this parliament in person, the marquis expatiated on his majesty's care and concern for their safety and welfare, and his firm purpose to maintain the presbyterian discipline. The earl of Annandale, who was president for this session, took notice of the fresh assurances they had of his majesty's fii'ra resolution to main- tain presbytery, and added, " he hoped the moderation and calmness that should at this time appear in all their proceed- ings, in church matters, would satisfy the world that this is the government most agreeable to the temper and inclination of this people, and most suitable for the interest and support of their king, the civil government and peace of this kingdom." A dutiful answer was voted to the king's letter, and an address of condolence on the death of queen Mary. The perfidious and barbarous massacre of Glencoe had never been inquired into ; but a precognition of it was or- dered to be taken under the Great Seal. The course of this inquiry was excessively unfavourable to Dairy mple, the late secretary of state, as well as to the parties employed in the massacre. In his instructions, king William left a door open, upon their taking the oath of allegiance, for those who were imwilling to acknowledge his sovereignty ; but the parliament found that Dalrymple's letters had exceeded the king's instruc- tions. Bredalbane was committed to the castle, and the par- liament requested the king to send the officers concerned in the massacre home from the army in the low countries for trial ; and the censure of Dalrymple was referred to the king. But Burnet says, " the king seemed too remiss in inquiring into it," and notwithstanding the detestation that he expressed of the massacre, he inflicted no censure on Dalrymple, and instead of sending the officers home for punishment, they were protected and advanced in the service ! Burnet says, " it ap- peared [from the report of the precognition] that a black de- sign was laid, not only to cut off the men of Glencoe, but a great many more clans, reckoned to be in all above six thou- sand persons So the parliament justified the king's instructions, but voted the execution in Glencoe to have been 1 Carstares' State Papers, 200, 201. 1695.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 697 A BARBAROUS MASSACRE, and that it was pushed on by the secretary of state's letters beyond the king's orders : upon which they voted an address to be made to the king, that he and others concerned in that matter might be proceeded against according to law^." Three of the ministers of the synod of Aberdeen, Messieurs Craven, minister of Newhills; Burnet, minister of Aberdeen; and Thomson, minister of Fintrie, who had protested against the commission of the last General Assembly, were called before the House, and examined. For this heinous offence, and their attachment to the episcopal church, their churches were declared to be vacant, and they were debarred from the exercise of their ministerial function, until they should qualify themselves by taking the oath of allegiance and subscril)ing the assurance. They were imprisoned in Edinburgh till they gave security not to go on the north side of the river Forth, under a penalty of 56IOO sterling^." But Gilbert Ramsay, one of the ministers of the synod of Aberdeen, who had signed the protest also, having been called to the bar of the House, was dismissed without any censure, because he now disowned the protest, and took the oath of allegiance and the assurance^. The CHURCH had been exposed to the presbyterian perse- cution from the Revolution till this time; but the civil govern- ment, " not willing to have the remains of episcopacy quite rooted out, by an act received into its protection such of the clergy as would take the oaths then required, but confined them as to the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline within their own parishes; the far greater number of such as, till then, continued in possession of their churches within the diocese and shire of Aberdeen, embraced their peace on the.se condi- tions, and qualified themselves in terms of law. But this did not free them at all from the vexatious persecutions of their adversaries, who from time to time libelled [indicted] several of them, though they rarely found a plausible pretence to ])ass sentence"^." This is confirmed by Burnet, who says, " In this session an act passed in favour of such of the episcopal ' Own Times, iv. 281. - Acta Pari. 18, p. .389. ^ n,id, 423. * A Representation of the State of the Church in North Britain, as to Episco- pacy and Liturgy ; and of the Sufferings of tlie orthodo.x and regular Clergy, from the Enemies to botli. But more esjiecially of the Episcopal Churches within the diocese and shire of Aberdeen. To which is])relixed, A DisauisiriON concern- ing Ecclesiastical Censures, in causes civil and criminal, i)articularly in matters of Treason and Rebellion. With Original I'apers and AttesUilions. Hvo. Lond. printed for W. and J. Innys, at the Princes Arms in St. Paul's Churchjard : and told by James Bettenham, at the Crown in Paternoster How, 1713. p. 17. 598 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. LVII. clergy as should enter into those engagements to the king that were by law required ; that they should continue in their benefices under the king's protection without being subject to the power of presbytery. This was carried with some ad- dress, before the presbyterians wei'e aware of the consequences of it ; for it was plainly that which they call erastianism. A day was limited to the clergy for taking the oaths ; and by a very zealous and dexterous management, about seventy of the best of them were brought to take the oaths to the king ; and so they came within the protection promised them by the act^" The London Gazette, however, states that upwards of one hundred of the clergy complied. And sir James Oglevy, in a letter to Mr. Carstares, says — " There are a hundred and sixteen of the episcopal ministers in churches qualified, besides those formerly assumed. The presbyterian ministers have declared several of the non-jurant churches vacant, particularly my parish church at Cullen is so vacated. This was without my knowledge, yet I do not blame them ; for he was disaffected to the civil government, and it was necessary to make some examples 2." Lest some of those who had taken the oaths, and against whom they had not been able to establish either of the four Pleas of presbytery — of scandal, error, negligence, or insuffi- ciency— should be able to take their seats in their presbyteries and synods, parliament passed an act to guard against this occurrence. The act declares — " That all such as shall come in and duly qualify themselves, as said is, and shall behave themselves worthily in doctrine, life, and conversation, as becometh ministers of the gospel, shall have and enjoy his majesty's protection, as to their respective kirks and stipends, they always containing themselves within the limits of their pastoral charge in their said parishes, without offering to ex- ercise any power, either of licensing or of ordaining ministers, or any part of government in general assemblies, synods, or presbyteries, unless they be first duly assumed by a competent church judicator3^ Providing, nevertheless, that as the said ministers, who shall qualify themselves as said is, are left free to apply or not to the aforesaid church judicatories, so the said judicatories are hereby also declared free to assume, or not to assume, the foresaid ministers, though qualified, as they shall see cause." The vague manner in which this act is expressed left it optional to the presbyterians to assume the episcopal ■' Own Times, iv. 282.— Ralph's History, i. 580. * Carstares' State Papers, p. 263. 1695.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 590 clergy or not, as it suited their own caprice or their " irre- gular passions." " Howf:ver," says Mr. Skinner, " with all all those arts, and after all the mighty boasts of their numbers, and of the gene- ral affection of the people towards them, it would seem they still found it a difficult matter to get all their kirks filled, owing either to the paucity of their preachers, or to the inclina- tions of the people running still in the old channel : for we find an act of parliament in July, narrating — 'That there are many churches vacant on the north side of the water of Forth, which cannot be soon legally planted, nor in the meantime otherwise supplied than by the presbyteries, in whose bounds they lie, employing preachers who are not settled in churches, to preach in such vacant churches for some time ; therefore, and for the pious use of entertaining such preachers so em- ployed, his majesty, with advice and consent of parliament, doth hereby destinate, appoint, and allow, out of the first end of the vacant stipend of the respective churches at which they shall preach, by invitation or appointment of the proper pres- byteries, to every one of the said preachers, twenty merks Scots, for their preaching every Lord's-day, forenoon and after- noon, in the said vacant churches ; and that whether the said preachers be employed to preach at one church or at several churches within the bounds ^'. These itinerant preachers were among the vulgar called the "twenty merk-men,' and they made a tolerable living by that random method of supplying vacancies in which either their own insufficiency or the dis- affection of the parishioners kept them from being formally settled. Neither was the number of these itinerants found sufficient to answer all exigencies of this kind, for, from another act at the same time, it appears that even the settled ministers were obliged many times to be employed in that business, with the benefit of the former act extended to them,-, as well as to the itinerants, who were considerable sufferers by the extension 2." For the further security of the presbyterian government, parliament passed an act against intruders into churches, " that whosoever shall intrude into any church, or possess manse or benefice, or exercise any j)art of the ministerial function within any parish, without an orderly call from the heritors and eldership, and legal admission fi"om the presby- tery, shall, by letters of horning and caption in common form, be removed from such intrusion, possession, and ministration, * Acta Pari. 26, p. 415. ^ Ecclesiastical Histories, ii. 587-88. 600 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVII. and be declared incapable of enjoying any kirk or benefice for seven years after their removal. . . . Likeas his majesty doth recommend to the lords, &c. to remove all those who have already, since the establishment of this present church govern- ment, intruded into vacant churches without an orderly call from the heritors and eldei'ship of the parish, and a legal ad- mission from the presbytery, within whose bounds the said churches lie: as also to take some effectual course for stopping or hindering those ministers who are or shall be hereafter de- posed by the judicatories of this present established church, from preaching or exercising any act of their uunisterial func- tion, which they cannot do after they are deposed without a high contempt of the authority of the church, and of the laws of the kingdom establishing the same^." The act formerly mentioned for sending troops on free quarter upon the bishopricks of the Isles and of Argyle, was confirmed and renewed in this session ; and an act was passed, on the petition of Archibald, lord bishop of the Isles, ordain- ing those who were indebted to him for rent or tithes previous to the time at which he was ousted from that bishoprick, to pay the said arrears to his lordship 2. The most severe blow that had been inflicted on the catholic church was contained in the following act of this parliament. Fines and imprisonments might have been alleviated by the compassion of the judge, or the mitigating circimistances of the case ; but this act struck at their rights and privileges as christian ministers, and there was neither option left to the judge nor appeal for the sufferer. The presbyterians placed no value on the sacrament of baptism, which is the sign and seal of the covenant of grace ; but placed more reliance on keeping the first day of the week, which they heretically call the Sabbath, sdihough there is no other authority for the observance of the first day of the week than the authority and tradition of the church — it stands entirely upon church authority. To prevent, therefore, the episcopal clergy from making christians of the infants born in the kingdom from that time forward, that the people might be heathenised, they procured an act of that parliament to be passed, that " our sovereign lord, considering that the baptizing of children and solemnizing of marriage, by the laws and customs of this kingdom, and by the constitution of this church, have always been done by ministers of the gospel authorised by law and the established church of this nation ; and that notwithstanding whereof ' Acta Pail. 35, p. 421. - Ibid. 48, 40, p. 448. 1695.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 601 several ministers, now out of tlieir churches, do presume to baptize children, and to solemnize marriages, without procla- mation of banns, or consent of parents, and sometimes within the forbidden degrees: therefore strictly prohibits and dis- charges any outed minister to baptize any children, or to solem- nize marriage betwixt any parties, in all time coming, under pain of imprisonment, aye, and while he find caution to go out of the kingdom, and never to return thereto ^" James Drummond, lord bishop of Brechin, died this year, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. At the Revolution, he, with his brethren, was deprived of the temporalities of his bishop- rick, and driven from his episcopal residence. After this, having been reduced to great poverty, he chiefly resided with the earl of Erroll at Slaines Castle, in Aberdeenshire, who had married the chancellor's sister. Although this prelate had been promoted by the favour of his relative, the earl of Perth, then lord chancellor, yet he was a must vigorous op- poser of the measures of the court, then promoted by the chancellor ; and " it is certain," says Keith, " there were but very ihw of the bishops (if any at all) who favoured an altera- tion in religion 2." Indeed, if his lordship had said none at all, he would have been nearer the truth ; for even archbishop Patterson, whose public conduct was the most equivocal, was very averse to popery. Andrew Wood, lord bishop of Caith- ness, also died this year, at Dunbar, whither he had retired after his " exaucteration" at the Revolution. He was formerly incumbent of that parish, and was allowed to keep that living in commendam; and it is probable that he had retired to it when deprived of the revenues of his bishoprick, and officiated there as its pastor^. John Gordon, lord bishop of Galloway, who had been formerly one of his majesty's cha])lains at New York, in America, joined king James at the Revolution in Ire- land, and after the final ruin of the king's affairs in that kingdom he followed his royal master into France ; " and whilst he re- sided at that prince's court at St. Germains, he read the liturgy of the church of England in his lodgings to such protcstants as resorted to him*." The time of his death is uncertain ; but it is probable that he had died at St. Germains, where those of the reformed catholic principles were treated with marked contempt. Some or the Galloway presbyterians were beginning to shew their natural disposition, under tlie repeated cxliibilions Acta Parliamentorum Gulielini, v. x. 2 Catalogue, 169. Mbid. 218. Mbid. 283. VOL. HI. 4 H 602 HISTOEY OF THK [CHAP. LVIF. of the royal supremacy. A Mr. Blair writes to Carstares, that the meeting of an Assembly would be " the only means to restrain and curb the humours of some young ministers in Galloway, who talk much of doing something, at least by way of testimony, against the putting off the diets of assemblies^." Three young ministers — Cameron, Boyd, and Ewart — were the agitators of this testimony, and made overtures to their own synod, and also corresponded with some other synods, to induce them to " display a banner" against the encroachments of the head of the kirk. This agitation was allayed ; for after repeated adjournments the king at last permitted the Assembly to meet on the 17th of December, and lord Car- michael was again sent down as royal commissioner, and Mr. Patrick Simson was elected moderator, who represented to his grace " how great a mercy it was to this church and kingdom, that his majesty had called, and countenanced this national Assembly with his authority." In reply, the commissioner said, " Right reverend, and you the remanent members of this Assembly, you are now met in this Assembly conform to the king^s appointment ; and .... I am warranted to give you all assurance of his majesty's resolution to maintain pres- byterian government in this church, and to evidence his fatherly care for its welfare. His majesty expects that at this time you will chiefly make it your work to regulate matters of order and discipline amongst yourselves. It is the king's great re- gret that there are so many churches vacant within this kingdom, which obviously suggests that it would be your best work, as indeed it would be most acceptable to his majesty, that you should apply yoiu'selves princij^ally to the restoring the gospel to such churches ; and in doing of this, you may be very well assured of his majesty's countenance and authority. It is also evidently convenient, and likewise expected, that if good men apply to you to be assumed, you \a ill receive their appli- cations with all charity and moderation I recom- mend you to mind your business closely, without heats and unnecessary contentions, and to make all the despatch you can to bring this Assembly to a happy issue, both for the church's good and his majesty's satisfaction 2. In the above speeches, the royal supremacy is unequivo- cally recognized and acknowledged, as it was firmly exercised by king William ; and it is made matter of complaint by a modern sect of presbyterians, " that the mystery of that sys- tem of ecclesiastical polity, which has been predominant in » Carstarcs's State Papers, p. 264. * Acts of Gen. Assem. 1695, p. 247. 1695.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 603 the established judicatories of Scotland for a century past [1829], had then begun to work ^" On the 31st of December, an act was passed for " a more expedite and certain way of planting the north with fixed ministers." They had found the inclinations of the people of the north lean so decidedly to episcopacy, that the presbyterian system had not yet made any progress beyond the Tay, and the unwillingness of the presbyterian ministers to undertake a mission to the north of that river, for inoculating the people with their new principles, was so great, that the Assembly authorised their commission to suspend those who refused to undertake the task. They se- lected forty-four nainisters from the different presbyteries in the south, " of some considerable experience, fit to be trans- ported to the north," to be sent on a converting mission, and to supply some of the vacancies that had been made by the privy council 2. 1696. — For more effectually carrying into effect this mis- sion to the north, forty ministers, which were all they could spare from their own necessities in the south, as a commission for the north, was appointed to sit in Edinburgh, and to wield the whole power of the Assembly itself 3. As Burnet formerly informed us that the contentious wranglings of the presbyte- rian ministers had encouraged the growth of atheistical prin- ciples among the people, so the late events of the Revolution had considerably increased this lamentable evil; and it was found necessary to pass an act, on the 4th of January, " against the atheistical opinions of the deists, and for the establishing of the Confession of Faith ;" and it contained a clause authorising ministers to proceed against the teachers of deism, " as scandalous and heretical apostates used to be." Perhaps this meant that they were to be burnt at the stake, as " used to be" the custom in the Romish church. And they " discharged all ministers and other members of this church to publish or vent, either by speaking, writing, printing, teach- ing, or preaching, any doctrine, tenet, or opinion, contrary unto or inconsistent with the Confession of Faith of this church, or any article, part, or proposition therein*." The lord Carmichael dissolved the Assembly on the 4th of January, and appointed the next Assembly to meet in Edinburgh on the 2d of January, 1697. This was of course assented to by the moderator, who appointed the same day, ' Testimony Assoc. Sj-nod of Orig. Seceders, p. 40. * Sess. xii. ; Acts of Assembly, p. 248-50. ^ Sesd. xviii. January 3d, p. 252. * Acts of Asscmblj-, Sess. xviii. p. 253. GOi HISTORY OF THE [cflAP. LVII. sang the 85th Psalm, pronounced the apostolic blessing, and tiie meeting separated. The deprived clergy continued to suffer the greatest pri- vations, and had no other means of living but the charity of re- lations or Iriends, and they were subject to all the insults and indignities that low malice could inflict; and to add to their calamities, there was a scarcity which lasted for two years, and consequently a great dearth of all sorts of provisions. Al- though they had suffered so much at the Revolution, yet they received no relief or encouragement from the court of St. Germains. " King James resolved to prevent the coming of any protestant divines thither, and therefore sent major Scott and Mr. Macqueen to England, to let his friends know that he desired no such company, and ordered them to make use of other messengers ^" Dr. James Ramsay, lord bishop of Ross, retired to Edin- burgh at the Revolution, where he officiated as a priest to a congregation. He was reduced to the greatest poverty ; for, bishop Russell says, " he died in very low circumstances," on the 22d of October, and was interred in the Canongate church- yard 2. At the Revolution, our spiritual fathers, who were the iirst of the three estates of parliament, were not only turned out of parliament, but they were entirely deprived of all means of support and maintenance. Harsh and violent as Knox and his coadjutors were, and rapacious as were the great men of that time, yet they allowed the bishops in the Roman obe- dience to retain the revenues of their sees all the days of their natural lives. But " the love of money is the root of all evil," and the covetousness of those whom the events of the Revolution had elevated to power, made them " err from the faith," and not only commit the sin of sacrilege by seizing the revenues of the bishops, but actually to attempt to exterminate their sacred order. In this year bishop Sage's " Fundamen- tal Charter of Presbytery" was published at London; " for the severity of the then government would not suffer any such book to be printed in Scotland ; and it was judged no less than treason and subverting of the government, to publish any sheet against the tyranny of presbytery or in vindication of episco- pacy 3." This inestimable work excited the indignation of the presbyterians, and " although all care was taken to con- ceal the author, yet it was to no purpose. In spite of all 1 Kennett's Hist, of England, iii. 721. 2 Keith's Catalogue, 201 ; and Appendix, 517. '•' Dillon's Life of Sage, 1714, 8vo. p. 17. 1696.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 605 the caution that was used, it was soon discovered by the presbyterians that Mr. Sage was the person who, to their eternal reproach, had thus exposed their principles and prac- tices ; and this filled them with the highest resentments against him, which they did not fail to express as often as they had opportunity ; for his affairs, and a passionate de- sire of visiting his dear friends at Edinburgh, obliged him to venture thither for a few days. But though some of his col- leagues who had been banished with him were allowed to stay there, or at least were connived at, yet he no sooner came to the city than he was observed on the street by a privy council- lor, whose greatest pleasure was to persecute the episcopal clergy, and by his order he was carried before the magistrates of the city, and obliged to find bail to leave the town and never to return thither ^" This tyrannical treatment compelled Mr. Sage to go back to his former retirement in Kinross, where he wrote the " Prin- ciples of the Cyprianic Age, with respect to Episcopal Power and Jurisdiction 2," " This performance," says bishop Gil- Ian, " so much more incensed the party against him, that they resolved by all means to ruin him ; and for this end, being in- formed that he had adventured to return to Edinburgh, anno 1696, and his much-honoured friend, sir William Bruce, be- ing about that time committed close prisoner to the Castle of Edinburgh, upon suspicion of keeping correspondence with the court of St. Germains, they thought his intimacy with sir William was a plausible pretence for accusing him also, and throwing him into some nasty prison which might either put an end to his life or at least force him to petition for a volun- tary banishment, which had been the fate of some others. And therefore the same privy councillor who had shewn his spite against him before, ordered the captain of the town- guard, with a party of soldiers, to search all the houses where they were informed he was wont to lodge or visit. But, by the good providence of God and the care of his friends, he was concealed for some eight days, and put on board a boat at Leith, and safely landed at Kinghorn ; though at the same time all the passages and harbours of Forth were strictly guarded with soldiers. Yet even there he did not think him- self safe, for he was certainly informed that spies were sent to all places of the country for discovering and apprehending 1 Gillan'sLife of Sage, 1714, 8vo. pp. 21, 22. - This book, with the Defence of it, by the same author, is to be republished by the Spottiswood Society. 606 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVII. ' him ; and therefore he made his escape to the hills of Angus, where, under the name of Mr. Jackson, and the person of one that wanted good air and goats' milk for his health, he lurked many months, until his constant and faithful friend, sir Wil- liam Bruce, was at liberty, and those in the government were brought, by much pains and powerful solicitations, to a milder temper ^" Another session of parliament was held at Edinburgh, which commenced on the 8th of September, and the earl of Tullibardine came down as the high commissioner. The lord Polwarth, already mentioned by the name of Sir Patrick Hume, sat as lord chancellor. In his speech from the throne, all that the commissioner said respecting ecclesiastical mat- ters was : — " I am allowed by his majesty to assure you that he is resolved to maintain presbyterian government in the church of Scotland ; and that it will be very acceptabie to him that differences among churchmen be composed ; and he particularly recommends moderation in these matters." And lord Polwarth said, — " It is an inestimable blessing that God has set over us, and preserves unto us, a king not only pro- fessing the reformed religion, but who also is so pious in the practice and so zealous in the defence of it ; a king who has given to this nation many convincing demonstrations of his jieculiar favour towards it ; and among others, that of esta- blishing presbyterian government in this church, and giving us assurance that he will maintain it. Let our prudence, charity, and moderation, ever encourage him to do it 2." All the members of this parliament signed an Associa- tion similar to that which both houses of parliament in Eng- land had entered into, viz. — " Whereas, there has been a horrid and detestable conspiracy formed and carried on by papists, and other wicked and traitorous persons, for assassinat- ing his majesty's royal person, in order to encourage an inva- sion from France, to subvert our religion, laws, and liberty ; we, whose names are hereunto subscribed, do sincerely and solemnly profess, testify, and declare, that his present majesty king William is rightful and lawful king of these realms. And we do mutually promise and engage to stand by and assist each other to the utmost of our power, in the support and de- fence of his majesty's most sacred person and government, against the late king James and all his adherents. And in case his majesty come to any violent or untimely death (which ' Gillan's Life of Sage, 23, 24 Ed. 1714. * Acta Parliamentorum, vol. x. Appendix. 1696.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. (507 God forbid; we do hereby freely and unanimously oblige our- selves to unite, associate, and stand by each other, in reveng- ing the same upon his enemies and their adherents, and in sup- porting and defending the succession of the crown, according to an act made in the first year of the reign of king William and queen Mary, &c.^" And as the Revolution had plunged the nation into interminable continental wars, and consequently had incurred great expenditure, the parliament granted a land cess and additional excise, for maintaining the standing forces by sea and land, of £1,440,000 Scots. They passed an act for securing their religion, lives, and properties, in the event of his majesty's coming to an untimely end ; and another to oblige all who were in public trust to sign the Associ- ation. Also an act in favour of preachers at vacant churches, and in favour of the univei-sities, schools, and hospitals. Dr. Burnet, late one of the ministers of Aberdeen, who was imprisoned by order of parliament, presented a petition to the House, setting forth the hardship of his case ; that he and his family had resided in Edinburgh for fourteen months since his sentence ; that in consequence of his deprivation, and the dearth and extraordinary high price of provisions, he had been reduced to gi*eat poverty and distress. He therefore prayed to be discharged of the aforesaid sentence, and to be permitted to return to his own county. This was agreed to as far as concerned his confinement, but the other part of the sentence was allowed to remain in full force 2. On the 8th of October the parliament was adjourned to the 8th of December. 1697. — The catholic clergy were now insultingly deno- minated "dissenting ministers," and the upper rooms of houses M'here they were compelled to meet the faithful people were called " meeting-houses" and " conventicles." In these upper rooms the Liturgy of the Church of England was used, and the pure doctrine of the church catholic was taught, without any respect to politics. The following is the language of Cockburn of Ormiston, to Mr. Carstares : — " The dissent- ing ministers that preach in Edinburgh, are most of them taken up [that is, arrested and imprisoned] by the council's order. The field-meetings were formerly called ' the ren- dezvouses of rebellion ;' and I assure you, the conventicles now in Edinburgh are ' the nests of disaffection.' And therefore, as far as law will go, I wish them all banished out of the ' Kennet's History of England, iii. 706. ^ Acta Parliamentorum, voL x. p. 16. 608 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIl town ^" But notwithstanding of this pious wish, the presby le- lians were made to feel that king William was in sober ea - nest the head of the kirk. A Mr. Blair writes to Carstares, — " I would fain have the solution of a question ; and that is, what you take to be the best way of asserting the intrinsic power of the church ? Whether to prove it in the pulpit by the strongest and best arguments the Scripture can afford to that purpose, or to assert it by a stout assertory act of a General Assembly ? Or what would you think if a man should go up to the pulpit, and tell the people in the close of his sermon that the government of the church and . s intrinsic power should not rest upon so slippery a foundation as the in- clinations of the 'people, and therefore it were good that it were declared and asserted in the next Assembly } For the old men were going off the stage, and young men will faint for want of courage. What think you of these two last methods .'' For my part I would rather be for the first 2." King William did not, however, suffer from this insolent threat, for he allowed the Assembly to meet on the day that he himself had appointed. On the2dof January,lordCarmichael, his commissioner, presented his letter to the Assembly, wherein his majesty said, " The proceedings of the last General Assembly were very satisfactory to us, which hath encouraged us to allow and countenance your meeting now The present juncture of affairs Avill not allow of your sitting long, therefore you are to lose no time in doing what is most neces- sary for suppressing and restraining of sin and profanity, and in planting of vacant churches with pious and moderate ministers As we have done formerly, so we do now upon this occasion, assure you that we are resolved to main- tain presbyterian church government in that our kingdom of Scotland ; and therefore we expect that, in all matters that come before you, you will proceed and conclude with calmness and moderation, which is the duty of all, especially in church meetings 2." There were no transactions in this Assembly, in any way connected with this History, that is \Aorthy of re- peating, except their anxiety for " planting and purging the north," where the people displayed a mighty disinclination to the dominion and tyranny of presby tery. A new committee was formed, and several ministers, some of whom had not gone on their mission, and others who had returned in despair, were cen- 1 Carstares's State Papers, 288. " Ibid. 365, 366. 2 Acts of Assembly, 257. 1698.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 609 sured. What they call " the barrier act, " anenl the passing of acts of Assembly of general concern to the church, and for preventing of innovations," was passed in this Assembly '. An act against those sins which generally follow the establish- ment of presbytery, of atheism, and profanity, was passed, and the commissioner dissolved the Assembly on the 12lh of January, and appointed it to meet on the second Tuesday of January 1698. 1698. — On the 17lh of February, the Society for the Propa- gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was founded in England, as a society for the reformation of manners had been some little time before. Both these societies were countenanced by great numbers of the nobility, judges, clergy, and gentry. The General Assembly met by the king's permission on the 11th of January. Lord Carmichael was again commis- sioner, and G eorge Meldrum was chosen moderator. In his letter, the king says, " We are so well satisfied with your pro- ceedings at the last General Assembly, that we agree to your meeting noio, though another time had been more convenient to our affairs; and we do now renew our assurances of our protection and countenance to the presbyterian go- verament now settled in the church of Scotland. You know it is our inclination, and we do recommend it to you, to as- sume the episcopal ministers, whose lives and doctrine do render them useful to the church ; and likewise the planting the churches in the north with the most prudent and pious of your ministers, &c." In answer to this portion of the king's letter, the Assembly wrote: — " The General Assembly is still ready to assume such ministers as served under the late pre- lacy, whose lives and doctrines render them useful to the church, and who apply to them in the terms and methods pro- posed by former Assemblies, and shall recommend the same to inferior judicatories. In the planting of the north, such pro- gress as could be attained hath been made since the last As- sembly, &c."2 The king's urgency for the planting of the north, and the Assembly's admission of how litde had been done, shews plainly the difficulty that they experienced in prcsbyterianis- ing the country beyond the Tay, and the fallacy of their men- dacious assertion that presbytery was the choice of the peo- ple. Hetherington calls this adherence to principle " perti- nacious obstinacy." " It has already been shewn," says he, ' Acts of Assembly; Act ix., Sess. vi. ^ Acts of General Assembly, pp. 267-68. VOL. 111. 4 I 610 HISTORY OF THE [CHAT. LVII. " that the pertinacious obstinacy of the northern Jacobites and prelatists, both in refusing to take the oaths to go\'ernment and in retaining their churches, and in intruding into those where presbyterian ministers had been placed, rendered an act of parliament necessary, to prevent such conduct ^" A ^fUMERous commission was appointed, with power to divide themselves into as many committees as they shall see fit, and to send them to any part, north or south, with power to meet quarterly. This was intended for the farther purga- tion of the episcopal clergy, and to plant the vacant churches. The instructions given them were, among other things, — " That when any of the ministers who served under the late prelacy, whose lives and doctrines may render them useful to this church, do apply for reception into the government, the General Assembly, in prosecution of the assurances given to his majesty in their letter written to him, do empower and re- commend to this commission and the other judicatories of this church, that they be ready to receive them 2." After some other business had been transacted, the com- missioner dissolved the Assembly in the king's name, and ap- pointed their next meeting to be on the 20th of January, 1699. The episcopal clergy in most places of the north were kept in their churches by the affection of their people ; but even if all the churches had been vacant, ministers of presbyterian principles could not have been found to fill them. They could not occupy the churches that had been made vacant by the merciless rabble and the tyrannical privy council ; and it must have been very injurious to the cause of morality, when these commissioners, assembling at different and distant places, with- drew the presbyterian ministers from their local duties, and obliged them to leave their congregations without the stated public worship. But that evil exists at the present day, when the kirks are all full ; because the ministers add the extra duty of legislative and executive government to their ordinary pa- rochial duties; one or perhaps both departments must, there- fore, suffer from the want of their undivided attention. Parliament met in July, and the earl of Marchmont was sent down as lord commissioner. In his speech from the throne, his grace said, — " His majesty has graciously given you full assurance that he is firmly resolved to make it his principal care to maintain your religion, laws, and liberties, and presbyterian government in the church ; and I am com- manded to let you know that he is fully resolved to continue ' History, 188. ^ Acts of Assembly, 272-274. 1698.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 611 the same." And the earl of Seafield, as the principal secretary of state, said, " His majesty has always judged his interest to be inseparable from yours ; he has been the powerful instrument of God Almighty in rescuing you from popery and arbitrary government ; .... in his reign you have the full enjoyment of your religion, laws, and liberties ; you have also presbyte- rian government established in the church, which his majesty has declared he will maintain, and you have many good laws and constitutions granted for the ease and satisfaction of the nation, &c.^" . . . Under the shelter of an act against intruders into churches, the ministers prevented the episcopal clergy from exercising any part of the ministerial function in any of the vacant churches ; and if they did venture to officiate, the law de- clared them incapable of enjoying any kirk or benefice for seven years afterwards. Inconsequence, many disorders oc- curred among the people, who, in some places, were entirely destitute of ministers of any sort, and left to the natural back- sliding of the human heart, which being of itself " desperately wicked," soon reduced them much below the standard of christian morality. For this state of things, and for the dis- orders that occurred at what they call the planting of churches, Helherington has the audacity to accuse the episcopal clergy of being the instigators. He says, " they privately instigated the lowest, rudest, and most immoral of the popiilace, to as- semble in a tumultuous manner at the churches to which the presbyterian ministers had been sent by the Assembly, or had been called by the more respectable and pious part of the congregation, and to offer every obstruction in their ])ower ; not unfrequently inflicting severe personal injury upon the ministers 2," This is a purely gratuitous assertion ; for such conduct was entirely opposed to all the principles which ac- tuated the conduct of the clergy, and to the doctrine that they taught to the people. Yet, says Skinner, all these stretches of legal precaution could not entirely prevent the ecclesiastical disorders which were perpetually breaking out ; for whether owing to the in- cessant janglings between the two contending rivals, or to the tumultuous mode of elections which was now substituted in place of the ancient method of patronage, the spirit of licen- tiousness and opposition was become so common and preva- lent upon these occasions, that the parliament saw it necessary to make a law, of which the following is an extract : — "It * Acta Parliamentorum. X. App. 16, 17. ' History, 188. 612 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP, LVII. strictly prohibited and discharged all persons whatsoever, by rabblings, tumults, or any other manner of violence to any minister lawfully authorised and sent to preach at any vacant church within the kingdom, either for supplying the vacancy or to be fixed minister within the parish : and that under the penalty of ,£100 Scots upon every heritor or life renter, and fifty merks upon every unlanded person, for every fault ; and that such delinquents as are not able to pay shall be punished in their persons as the privy council shall see fit. And further statuting and ordaining that where and whenever, after requi- sition made to the beadles or bearers of the keys of vacant churches, to deliver them up to the presbyteries or any having their orders, the same are refused and not given up, then the next magistrate, when required, shall repair to the said kirk, and there make open and patent the doors, and put new locks on them, and deliver the keys to the presbytery or their order, for their free use-making of the same : certifying every such magistrate who shall refuse when called, that he shall be liable in a fine of £100 Scots by and attour the presbyteries' expenses ^" The Cameronians, who had furnished so many would-be martyrs, and had been the cause of so much bloodshed, be- gan now to feel that all their testimonies for Christ's crown and kingdom had been entirely thrown away ; for they found themselves not any better under presbytery than they had been under prelacy. They now had made a schism in their own body, and by way of testimony represented the Revolution set- tlement as decidedly erastian, and their own newly-established kirk itself as having abandoned its very fundamental princi- ples, and as not having the courage to assert its own intrinsic powers. To counteract the effect of this testimony, the commission of the Assembly published a paper termed " A Seasonable Admonition ;" in which, among other things, they say, " We do believe and own that Jesus Christ is the only head and king of his church, and that he hath instituted in his church officers and ordinances, order and government, and "^ not left it to the will of man, magistrate, or church, to alter at their pleasure. And we believe that this government is neither prelatical nor congregational, but presbyterian, which now, by the mercy of God, is established among us ; and we believe we have a better foundation for this our church go- vernment than the inclination of the people and the laws of * Acta Parliamentorum, vol. x., Act. ii., p. 148. — Skinner's Ecclesiastical Hist. ii. 538. 1698.] CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 613 men ^" It may be all very well for the kirk to kick the ladder from under them, by which they had climbed up to an esta- blishment with all its advantages and disadvantages — to turn round upon the people and undervalue their attachment ; but when struggling for supremacy, they stated the inclinations of the people to be their fundamental charter. And we would here beg leave to remark, that the establishment of presbytery, instead of being " the mercy of God," was a most decided symptom of His wrath in removing the national candlestick from its place, and giving His heritage up to a most soul-destroying delusion ; and with having " killed her children with [spi- ritual] death." It was a decided symptom that He had car- ried His threat against the church of Sardis into effect against the church of Scotland. The names of those who apostatised from the faith were " blotted out of the book of life," into which they had been entered by holy baptism ; yet still He preserved a remnant whom, if they overcome the world, and keep their baptismal robes undefiled, He will per- mit to walk with Him in white. The outed ministers, says Mr. Skinner, " as they are called, though thus restrained, and even much terrified, were not altogether silenced, but still continued their ministerial functions when and where called, in the safest and most pru- dent manner they could, so as neither to lose sight of their sacred character on the one hand, nor wantonly to provoke their implacable enemies on the other, but in patience pos- sessing their souls, and depending entirely on their great Head, in whose cause they were both serving and suffering. In this patient and peaceable course, besides the example of the pri- mitive presbyters, which they justly looked upon as a pattern worthy of imitation, they were warranted by the countenance and authority of their own bishops, who were now their fel- low sufferers, and who, after being stripped of their temporal honours and disseized of their own legal revenues, were no longer distinguished by any particular notice, but were struck at in general under the degrading comprehension of ' outed ministers.'' These deprived fathers .... still retained their spiritual power and the superiority inherent in their com- mission ; and, under all their depression, had the happiness to possess the respect and esteem not only of their ejected sons but likewise of most of the compliers, and even many of the great ones among the laity who had been active in the late change. They had quietly retired from their episcopal houses » Hetherington, 188, 189. 614 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVII. on the first promulgation of the dispossessing act, and pro- vided themselves in lodgings where they best could. Such of them as had any little paternal inheritance of their own, with- drew to it ; others took shelter with their friends and relations, or were sustained by their ministerial labours in particular congregations which adhered to them^" 1699. — The General Assembly was permitted to meet on the 20th of January. Lord Carmichael was again sent down as commissioner, and George Hamilton was elected modera- tor. In his letter, the king tells them decidedly that they sat by his permission : — " We have thought fit," says he, " to al- low and countenance your meeting at this time, that you may have the opportunity to do what is necessary for promoting re- ligion and regulating order and discipline. And we do again earnestly recommend you to fall upon effectual methods for planting vacant churches with pious and learned ministers, which is so necessary for suppressing error and immorality ; in the doing whereof you shall have all due encouragement and assistance." In answer to this they say, *' the planting of the north hath been minded by them, and their commis- sion and committees empowered for that effect, to the remotest parts of the kingdom, and even to the isles of Orkney and Zetland; .... nor can we omit to notice that your majesty's royal bounty did very seasonably contribute to make our la- bours in that matter more easy and effectual." The revolution in the church was not a cheap experiment, for to this esta- blishment there has always been given a " royal bounty" out of the general revenues of the kingdom. This was never given to the church during her establishment. She depended on her own proper resources — the lands of the bishopricks and the tithes of the other lands of the kingdom ; but what between the expensive pageant of a commission, and the al- lowance of propagating the gospel in the highlands and islands, with the salaries to the purse-bearer, clerks, and others, the exchequer at present pays about £5000 sterling annually. There were no transactions in this meeting that require to be noticed, except that the acts of the commission were in ge- neral terms approved of, and consequently their " seasonable admonition" was adopted by authority ; and that an act was made for compelling all ministers, probationers, and school- masters, to sign the Westminster Confession, as the confession of their own faith '^. The commissioner dissolved the Assem- bly on the 4th of February, and appointed the next to meet ' Ecclesiastical History, ii. 597. ^ Acts of Assembly, 277-288. 1699.] CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 615 on the first Friday of February 1700. In both of these de- cisions the moderator was obliged to acquiesce. Great discontent prevailed in Scotland at this time, on account of the unfair means that had been employed to pre- vent the Scottish settlement at Darien from being founded and protected. Had it been properly encouraged, there seems no reason to doubt but that it would have been successful, especially now, when the two seas could be so easily connected by means of railroads. But William, whose heart was al- ways in Holland, listened to the interested suggestions of the Dutch and his English subjects, and did not permit the scheme to be completed. It was a national affair, and many families had embarked their whole property in it, and in con- sequence of its failure were entirely reduced to beggary. This disappointment turned the hearts of many towards St- Germains, and it is said that the duke of Hamilton, and about a hundred noblemen and gentlemen, joined in a letter to king James, promising him their services whenever he should call them into the field. To ALLAY this dangerous ferment, the king proposed an union of the kingdoms, and said, in answer to an address from the English House of Lords, " He took this opportunity of putting the House of Peers in mind of what he recommended to his parliament soon after his accession to the throne, to suggest that they would consider of an union between the two kingdoms ; that his majesty was of opinion that nothing would contribute more to the security and happiness of both kingdoms, and was inclined to hope that after they had lived near a hundred years under the same head, some happy expe- dient might be found for making them one peojDle, in case a treaty were set on foot for that purpose; and therefore he very earnestly recommended that matter to the consideration of the House. The peers cordially entertained the proposal, and passed an act to authorise commissioners from England to treat with those of Scotland; but the Commons would not give their concurrence, and so the project was dropped for the present. The clergy of both the churches of England and Scot- land were entirely ignorant of the preparations that were making for the Revolution, and had no hand whatever in it. In England the Revolution went upon the fact of there being a vacancy in the throne, or an abdication of the crown by king James, so that the hereditary descent of the crown still went on. The convention-parliament did not proceed on the 616 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVII. principle of deposition, or of the power of the people to change their governors, which is contrary to all the laws of England, but on the father's desertion or abdication of the throne, which they declared to be filled by his daughter, who was the nearest in blood. It was contended that the prince of Wales was not the king's son ; and besides, he was carried out of the kingdom, and was in the power of the abdicated monarch; and therefore Mary, princess of Orange, as the nearest in hereditary descent, was recognised as the sove- reign. The subsequent arrangement betwixt the royal sisters and the prince of Orange does not affect the principle of the hereditary descent of the crown. In Scotland the Conven- tion broke through all the fundamental laws of the kingdom, where the hereditary descent of the crown was as much re- cognised as in England. This may in some measure be accounted for by the fact already mentioned, of the irregular and unconstitutional manner in which the Commons of the kingdom had been elected, and consequently that branch of the legislature was entirely composed of men who had renounced their allegiance to the two former sovereigns, and who had been frequently in plots, and in arms in the field, to dethrone them. They went upon the principle, not recognised by the laws of either kingdom, of electing their sovereign ; and as a consequence of this illegal principle, they declared that king J ames had forfeited the crown. There were very few church- men in the Convention, and the presbyterian party had little opposition ; so that their principles predominated, and their transactions were in faithful correspondence with them. At every period of their history presbyterians have advocated revolutions and resistance to the sovereign powers, which is a principle utterly at variance with the precepts of Holy Scrip- ture, or indeed the custom of nature. For the kingly power being founded by God himself, on the obedience of children to their father, He has annexed a blessing in the fifth com- mandment to obedience to the fatherhood, w^hich consists of our natural parents, our political father (or mother as at pre- sent), the sovereign, and our spiritual fathers, the bishops. This restless desire for revolutions has always been one of the distinguishing marks of presbyterianism ; and it is fully developed by the following paper, in the hand-writing of sir John Dingley, who vt^as secretary to the king and queen of Bohemia: — " Mr. Mackdowal came from Groningen; desired private audience of the queen [Elizabeth, eldest daughter of James VI., and married to Frederic, count palatine of the Rhine, and king of Bohemia], and told her, that now the 1699.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 617 king [James VI.] had sent her brother into Spain to marry the Infanta, the greatest part of Scotland gave him as a prince lost in his religion, and therefore cast their eyes on her; and he had commission to assure her, that if she would go into Scotland she would be well received, and make the king de- clare himself, that he was a true protestant, and an enemy to papists and popery. And this he spake not of himself, but under the hands of the best in Scotland." Her majesty an- swered, " that he was mistaken in her; that she was confident neither the king, who had sufficiently declared himself, nor yet the prince, would ever favour the contrary religion ; or if they did, yet that sli^uld never move her to depart from the duly she owed to her father, nor love to her brother. And though God had deprived the king, her husband, of his estate and honour in Germany, yet she would never seek to be re- paired by such unworthy and disloyal means." Adding, " that if he would make the motion to the king, her husband, she doubted not but he would find him of the same opinion." But Macdowal replied, " that because the king was a foreign prince, he had no address to him, but left it to her majesty to acquaint him with it;" which she did, and the king abhorred the motion ^ This shews the animus of the party. The Revolution was in the first instance bloodless, and no doubt preserved the na- tion from a more violent convulsion ; yet it led to an unex- amjjled expenditure both of blood and treasure. Like a brave man, James intended to have measured swords with his son- in-law; but he was deserted by his army, and was obliged to fly out of the kingdom, to avoid being taken prisoner, and perhaps put to death. But it cost much blood afterwards in Scotland, and still more in Ireland, " where, it is modestly computed, that not less than 300,000 souls perished in two years' time, by the sword and the famine occasioned by it, be- sides the thousands of families that were ruined by it." Then the continental wars that succeeded, to keep out the exiled family, and the public debt which was commenced by king William to support these wars, have rendered the Revolution an expensive experiment. James left not a sixpence of debt in either kingdom, but William laid the foundation of the National Debt in the very commencement of his reign, that has accu- mulated since to so great an amount. The history of Europe since that period shews what a deluge of blood has been shed to maintain the different revolutions that have taken place ' Cited by Dr. Leslie, inhia Rehearsals, v. p. 108. VOL. III. 4 K 618 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVII. since the abdication of James the Jesuit. The histories of England and Scotland, as well as Ireland, are full of instruc- tion. The latter country having been unjustly conquered without any other motive than the lust of power, has been, as a retribution, a thorn in the side of England, and the cause of her weakness, ever since. In England the wars of the Roses deluged her with blood, in consequence of the usurpation of the duke of Lancaster, till the true line in the House of York was restored to the throne. In Scotland a disputed succession, after the death of the Maid of Norway, not only plunged the kingdom in blood, but laid it open to a foreign invader: the usurpation of the crown, in the reign oi^queen Mary, exposed the kingdom to the tyranny of regents and the miseries of civil war and dissention. The presbyterian principles developed in the Solemn League and Covenant crowned all the previous rebellions and revolutiofts, as having been the foundation of all the bloodshed of the Grand Rebellion and of their own sub- sequent rebelhons; of the murder of king Charles; of the de- struction of the church of England; of the utter extirpation of the church of Scotland ; of the persecution of the clergy of both kingdoms; of the expatriation and extinction of the direct line of the oldest, the most illustrious, and the most exten- sively allied royal house in Europe, or perhaps in the world. And this Covenant, which has wrought so much mischief, and whose principles are still in active operation, we owe to the JESUITS, who were its authors, and who delight in the extir- pation of the holy catholic and apostolic church, in order to advance popery. The regal supremacy, which never affected the presbyte- rians, but fell altogether upon the church, was one of their great complaints against king Charles. The only way in which they experienced it was in curbing and repressing their rebellions; but when William mounted the throne, he made them feel the royal authority by proroguing and dissolv- ing their assemblies. He dispensed with the laws fully as often as James had done, yet they never murmured against him, or laid such unconstitutional conduct to his charge; which shows the truth of the old adage — that one man may steal a horse, whilst another will be hanged for looking over the hedge. The PRESBYTERIAN temple was daubed with the untem- pered mortar of extemporary worship, and their violent into- lerance forced this unsatisfactory mode of adoration upon the church. The presbyterian ministers also were, for the most part, taken from amongst the meanest of the people ; as if Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had been 1699.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 019 their master-builder. These carried their vulgar ideas and manners into the pulpit, and thereby captivated the mob, but entirely disgusted and alienated the nobility and gentry. Con- sidering the wisdom of the serpent, which generally guides their consultations, it would appear to have been a false step in their first establishment, to have shut the door of accommo- dation with the episcopal clergy, who were of a superior class, and were men of learning and good manners, and some of whom might perhaps have been induced to amalgamate with the new establishment, and thus have united both classes of the people with it. The upper class was disgusted with the vulgarity and ignorance of the presbyterian ministers, who were proud and overbearing, and were men of a scanty education — " of no letters, and less manners." It was unfortunate that in those days there was no middle class of society from whom to have taken the priesthood or the presbyterian ministers; they must all be either the high or the low. The following, taken from an anonymous author, is a correct account of the state of so- ciety when Jeroboam's system was carried out: — " You must know, the most part of the landlords in that country did no otherwise with their farmers than as with slaves, who impose upon them what they please: if the tenant die rich, the laird must be tutor [executor] to his children ; or if he die in arrears to him, then the laird is executor, creditor, and seizes all. So that these farmers, like the Turks, are not sure if their chil- dren or relicts shall possess anything that belong to them after their death ; for some way or other the laird monopolises all ^" Although the episcopal church, when it was established, had not the inestimable benefit of a public liturgy, yet the Word of God was regularly read, according to the order in the Book of Common Prayer. But no sooner was the Revolution effected, than the people were deprived of that mark of the true church; and the reading of the Scripture, except as a text for their sermons, was entirely laid aside. The Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed, were immediately banished the public service, as superstitious Romish rags. Their opposition to episcopacy involved them in a separation from the whole church of Christ, from the very beginning. For bishops having succeeded, by hand to hand, from the apostles, the refusing to hold communion with them is a renunciaiion of communion with the apostles, from whom they have sprung, and with the noble army of martyrs * Letter concerning the Sufferings of the Episcopal Clergy in Scotland, p. 7. 1691. 620 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. LVII. and confessors throughout tlie world, of whom their chief leaders were bishops, who cheerfully and intrepidly offered up their lives for the testimony of Jesus. If the presbyterians will not only not hold communion with these on earth, but are sworn to extirpate them by the sword, we much fear that they cannot be judged worthy to enjoy communion with them in heaven. This is a painful and a melancholy conclusion ; but it is justified by the premises, and therefore we could ear- nestly and affectionately entreat the Scottish establishment to " remember from whence they are fallen ; to repent, and do their first works" — of love and obedience, true holiness of heart, and universal morality of life, which is the chief end of all that belongs to public worship and external religion. As God told the Jews, that he hated their superstitious observances of their new moons and feasts of their own appointment, so the sacramental fasts and occasions of presbyterian appointment must, on the same principle, be an abomination to Him. They are done upon the principle of the pharisee in the temple — thanking Him for observances which His " soul hateth." The moral duties of putting away the evil; of learning to do well; of seeking judgment, relieving the oppressed, judging the fatherless, and of pleading for the widow, are the virtues which God values for their own intrinsical goodness. He has made their performance the condition of pardon and jus- tification to us, as he did to faithful Abraham ; and this con- dition being agreeable to His own holiness, its performance will conform our natvn-e unto His, and make us holy as He is holy. But the kirk is in a state of revolt from the church, and not only so, but wages an exterminating war against the spouse of Christ ; and the wilful and habitual breach of one of the commandments renders a man a transgressor of the whole table of the law, even although he were not guilty in other particulars. 621 CHAPTER LVIII. THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. 1700. — An Assembly. — A fast. — The covenant. — The cutty-stool. — Parliament. — Death of the duke of Gloucester. — Colony of Darien. — Two clergymen harassed — others deprived, — Archbishop of Glasgow. — Death of Mr. Mather, — Death of the bishop of Orkney. — Act of security. 1701. — General Assembly. — Mademoiselle Bourignon. — Convocation of the church of Eng- land— and parliament — offer made to king James. — Duchess of Savoy protests. — Princess Sophia's letter. — King James's death — his speeches — his son pro- claimed— James's character, 1702. — General Assembly — Accident to William. — The abjuration oath. — Wilham's death. — Queen Anne's accession. — Parliament. — Duke of Hamilton's protest. — Proceedings of parliament — proposals for the Union — petition from the clergy. 1 703. — A change of ministry. — Queen's letter. — Address of the clergy. — Collection. — Assembly — dissolved by the commissioner. — The supremacy. — Rev. Robert Calder. — Ses- sion of parliament. — Mr. Meldrum. — A toleration — petition against it. — The Confession of Faith. — Oppossition to presbytery declared to be high treason. — Another Sanquhar declaration — hushed up. — A letter. — Assault on a chapel in Glasgow. — Petition to the queen. 1704. — Hurricane. — Archbishop of Glasgow. — Transactions. — Death of the primate — Remarks. 1700. — The General Assembly was again permitted to raeet on the 2d of February ; the lord viscount Seafield was sent down as commissioner, and Dr. Blair was elected mode- rator. It is somewhat suspicious that neither the king's letter, which the Assembly calls " most gracious," nor their answer to it, arc recorded in the printed acts. It gives reason to suppose that the king had exerted his supremacy and exercised his headship more energetically than it was prudent or agreeable to their self-love to shew to posterity. The Assembly appointed a fast to be held on Thursday, the 28th of March, for the national sins in general ; but in pai'ticular for "our continued unfaithfulness to God, notwith- standing of our solemn covenants and engagements, and many professed resolutions to the contrary." Ilethcrington says, " this may fairly be regarded as proving that the clnirch of Scotland had not abandoned the ground occupied by the 622 HISTORY OF THE [CIIAP. LVIII- fathers of the second R-eformation, but continued to acknow- ledge the binding and descending obligation of her national covenants ^" It is most absurd to call the work of a faction a national engagement ; for the presbyterian faction were no more the people of Scotland than the three tailors of Toolej Street were the people of England. At all events, William had seen enough of the working of the covenant in the reigns of his predecessors, to prevent his allowing any attempt at a national exhibition of it. The new establishment, therefore, quietly laid it on the shelf, only sending some sighing aspirations after it in the catalogues of the national sins ; but it remains in the Westminster Confession as a monument of national iniquity to this day. Among the divine rebukes, for which this fast was instituted, they mention " a stupendous burning within these few days of a considerable part of Edinburgh," a circumstance that T do not remember ever having seen mentioned by any historian ; but fires in that city are not wonderful, when we take into consideration the multitude of people that live under one roof They go on to state — '•' the atheistical and execrable princijDles so much vented and spread amongst us — the gross immoralities of uncleanness of all sorts, drunkenness" — and as a consequence of their own tyranny, " the great contempt and despising of church discipline^." Their discipline was a godless and intolerable tyranny, and was the cause of many of those sins which they included in their pharisaical declama- tions ; for when a young woman, w^ho had forgot the guide of her youth, was once set on the cutty-stool in the sight of the congregation, she was marked out for working folly in Israel ; modesty and self-respect after that were entirely effaced, and consequently she descended to the lowest depths of wicked- ness. " The truth is," says Dr. Monro, " there are no people upon earth that value government and sovereignty as the presbyterians do. It is the idol they bow to ; there is nothing gratifies their highest passions so much as a power to tyran- nise. If the whole world were once under their feet, they would look cheerful, their blood would circulate more briskly ; until this be obtained there is no rest nor peace for mankind. The discipline, the sacred discipline of Geneva, must wrestle with all authority until the consummation of all authority 3." The instructions for the commission contained a clause — " that when any of the ministers that served under the late prelacy, whose lives and doctrines may render them useful to > History, p. 189. ^ Acts of the General Assembly, 289, 290. ^ Apology for the Clergy of Scotland, 13. 1700.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 623 this church, do apply for receplion into the government, the General Assembly do empower and recommend to this com- mission that they receive them according " to the formulary already given in the Assembly of 1694 ^ The Assembly was still troubled with the existence of episcopacy in the north, and, as formerly, they appointed ministers and probationers to go to the unwilling churchmen, and offer them " supply of sermon ;" but which was in most cases rejected. Tlie com- missioner put an end to the Assembly in the king's name on the 20lh of February, and directed their next meeting to be on the 19th of February, 1701. The parliament assembled on the 21st of May, and the duke of Queensberry was sent down as the commissioner ; he is described by a respectable author as " one of the wisest and most insinuating ministers of that age," although fi-om political animosity Lockhart gives him a very different character ; and the earl of Marchmont was appointed lord chancellor. The king, in his letter, professes his sorrow for the unhappy affair of Darien, and his wish to contribute to the advancement of the national trade and commerce, and then said, " we give you full assurance that we will maintain your religion, laws, and liberties, and presbyterian government, as it is established. And it will be most acceptable to us, that you fall upon effec- tual methods for preventing the growth of popery, and dis- couraging vice and immorality." And the commissioner said, " His majesty's accession to the throne was the most seasona- ble and acceptable deliverance that ever happened to a nation, and the maintaining those blessings he then procured us has ever since been the chief design of his reign. You see his majesty is firmly resolved to preserve your religion, laws, and liberties, and the presbyterian government of this church as it is established ; and is desirous not only that you fall upon the most effectual methods for preventing the growth of popery, and discouraging vice and immorality, but that you also provide what may be further needful for the increase of piety and learning 2." The council of the Darien company pre- sented " a sharp representation," containing a rehearsal of all their losses and disappointments, and the agitation was so great that the parliament was prorogued. Many of the members met privately that evening, and sent the lord Ross with an address to the king, praying that he would permit his parliament to meet on the day to which it was prorogued ; to which the king answered, he would consider of it. In the » Acts, &c., p. 298. 2 Acta Pari. v. .\.— Appendix, p. 3 J. G-24 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. meantime he went over to Holland, and said, " as soon as God should bring him back, he was fully resolved his parliament should meet ;" but not till then. On the 29th of July the young and amiable duke of Glouces- ter died at Windsor Castle. He was the son of prince George of Denmark and the princess Anne. His death was occa- sioned by his over-heating himself at a juvenile party on occasion of his birth-day, the 24th of July, which produced fever, and a rash broke out on his skin. The greatest care and attention were bestowed upon him, but he died on the 29th, to the sorrow of the phlegmatic William, who loved him as his own child. He was a remarkably quick and forward boy in his understanding, and chiefly delighted in martial sports and hunting, and " his tender constitution bended under the weight of his manly soul ;" yet, says bishop Kennett, " never was so great a loss so little lamented : which may be ascribed to the different parties that divided England ; two of which, I mean the Jacobites and Republicans, looked upon that hope- ful young prince as a future obstacle to their respective de- signs. Grief, upon this sad occasion, seemed to be confined within the palace of St. James's, and to centre in a more sensi- ble manner in the royal breasts of the princess and prince of Denmark, who mourned not only for themselves, but for the whole nation 2." Soon after the prorogation of parliament, the melancholy news arrived of the colony that had been sent out to Darien having abandoned it, with the entire loss of all the property that had been embarked in it. William was now advised to let parliament reassemble on the J 8th of October, and he sent a letter from Loo, where he still remained, saying he was " heartily sorry for the [Darien] company's loss," and con- cluded with recommending " wisdom, calmness, and unani- mity." The parliament sat nearly three months amidst heats and threatening feuds about the miscarriage of the Darien settlement, which seemed to threaten a new revolution ; and at last concluded, with the resolution, that " in consideration of their gi-eat deliverance by his majesty, and in that next under God their safety and happiness depended wholly on the preservation of his majesty's person, and the security of his government, they would stand by and support both his ma- jesty and his government, to the utmost of their power ; and anaintain such forces as should be requisite for those ends^" A LETTER from the lord advocate to Mr. Carstares announces ' Campbell's History of England, v. iii. 786. " Acta Pari. r. x. 1700.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 62^ that Mr. Forbes and Mr. Ross, two episcopal clergymen who enjoyed a legal protection, were harassed by malicious infor- mations against them of " immoralities, errors, and supine negligence," beford the presbyteries of Ross and Inverness, and by them deposed for the above sins, and for having re- fused to appear at their bar. These were some of the usual pleas of presbytery ; but it is a new species of persecution to exercise discipline over men who were not only not within their jurisdiction, but who contemned it so far as not to an- swer to tlieir summons. 7/* they had been guilty of immorali- ties, they were amenable to the civil law; but errors in doctrine, and supine negligence, were faults for their bishop to inquire into, and not for a body that had no jurisdiction over them. This is a further evidence of the tyrannical disposition and grasping supremacy of presbytery, when left to its uncontroled inclination. Upon this new persecution the whole of the clergy took alarm, and the above-named clergymen went to Edinburgh, where it was agreed to carry their complaint to the foot of the throne, as they could get no redress from the govern- ment at home ; and lord Seafield says, " they are verj^ much afraid of the violence of the presbyterian ministers, for they had turned out lately two intruders that had taken the oaths." This alarmed the lord advocate^ and he wrote to the presby- tery, " that, though it was not provided in the act of parlia- ment that the protected men should be exempted, yet the parliament, on the other hand, did expressly waive the making them subject to presbyteries, and other church judicatories; but provided, that, upon their application, the church might assume them or not. And therefore it was his advice that the presbytery should look upon them as persons without, and ])ass from the judgment and censure they had pronounced, by letting it fall to the ground." The alarm of the clergy was increased by the council removing Mr. James Gordon, who had a small congregation of faithful men in Montrose, from his charge, and shutting up his chapel. The cause of this injustice was his administering the communion to his people, and admitting other deprived clergymen to officiate occasionally for him. In this manner the clergy and the faithful adherents of the church were persecuted by the presby terians, and by the govern- ment, that ought to have protected them from the oppression and tyranny of the kirk courts ^ About this time, Mr. Mather, formerly one of the clergy of St. Andrews, was deprived of > Carstares' State Papers, 495-97. VOL. III. 4 L 626 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. his church, had his chapel or meeting-house shut up, and he was banished the city of St. Andrews, although he had qualified himself according to law in all points. He retired to Edinburgh, and there died of starvation about three months afterwards ; his modesty being so great that he did not let his miserable condition be known till it was too late, and when the assistance of the benevolent was of no avails" His grace the archbishop of Glasgow still remained im- prisoned in the Castle, and lord Seafield informs Mr. Carstares that his grace threatened to prosecute his lordship " before the parliament, because that he is continued under confinement, contrary to the right of the subject. It is true," he continues, " I did countersign the letter which put him under confine- ment ; but yet I have enough to say for it ; for you know he was under [sentence of] banishment ; and it was at his own desire that he was confined in place of his sentence of banish- ment. However, I should be glad that I were allowed to acquaint the council, that his majesty leaves it to them to do in it what they think just; but I cannot at present desire a letter to the council taking off his confinement directly 2." In a subsequent letter, in which he reiterates his assertion that the change from banishment to imprisonment was at his grace's own desire, his lordship adds, that he left the privy council to act in the case as they shall see fitting 3. In the month of March, Dr. Bruce, lord bishop of Orkney, dejDarted this life, after having suffered severely both from Jesuitical and presby- terian persecution. When the parliament met again, an act was passed on the 23d of November, " for securing the protestant religion and the presbyterian government ;" and it contained this clause — " Our sovereign, &c. ratifies and approves, and per- petually confirms, all laws, statutes, and acts of parliament, maintaining and preserving of the true reformed protestant religion, and for the true church of Christ, as at present owned and settled within this kingdom ; as likewise for establishing, ratifying, and confirming the presbyterian church government, that is to say, the discipline of the church by kirk sessions, presbyteries, provincial synods, and general assemblies, to be agreeable to the word of God, and the only government of Christ's church within this kingdom. . . . Bot \i. e. without] prejudice, nevertheless, to the 27th act of the filth session of ' Case of the Episcopal Clergy of Scotland truly represented, folio, p. 2. 2 Carstares' State Papers, 596. ^ n^i^. p. 030. 1701.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 627 this present parliament, entituled, " Act concerning the church, as to the allowance therein given to certain ministers not actually assumed by the ordinary church judicatories ^" 1701. — Agreeable to the king's appointment, the General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 10th of February. The earl of Annandale was sent down as the royal commissioner, and Thomas Wilkie was chosen moderator. There is nothing in the king's letter, or the answer to it, worthy of notice, only that he seems to have drilled the ministers into a satisfactory state of submission to his supremacy ; for he acknowledges that their good conduct and management in the last and former assemblies had given him full confidence in their " good dis- position" to obey the powers that be. The providing the north in preachers still occupied their most serious care ; for the inclinations of the people beyond the Tay, in favour of epis- copac\', seemed to be invincible. But a new source of trouble started up, a real heresy, that bred them much trouble, and is one, although now unknown, against which the ministers are still required to testif}^ in their ordination formula, and to re- nounce it among other things. In the year 1696, a blasphemous book, written by a Ma- demoiselle Antonia Bourignon, was })ublished with the sanc- tion and assistance of M. Christian de Cort, a popish ecclesi- astic, superior of the Oratory, and pastor of St. John, at Mechlin — a sure symptom that it was intended to propagate heresy and enthusiasm among the dissenting sects. It was translated into English the same year ; and Dr. Garden, one of the ministers of Aberdeen, espoused her opinions, defended and attempted to propagate them ; for which he was prosecuted before the Assembly. Mr. Leslie says of its heretical points — " there are in it great flights of devotion and abstraction from the world. But the cloven-foot does appear ; — in su):)erlative and blasphemous j!>7'i^/e — in overturning all outward priesthood and ordinances of the gospel — in the height of uncharitable- ness and damning of all the world — in misrepresenting the design and import of our Saviour's doctrine — in heretical notions set up contrary to the gos]icl — in her contem])t of the Holy Scriptures — and in other wild and barbarous notions^." The act of Assembly picked out some heretical points ; one of them, which they at least considered such, assaulted the fun- damental doctrine that runs through their whole Confession of Faith, viz , " the denying of the decrees of election and repro- bation, and the loading of those acts of grace and sovereignty * Acta Pail. V. x. p. 215. - Snake in the Grass — Preface, iii. iv. 628 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. with a multitude of odious and blasphemous aspersions, parti- cularly wickedness, cruelty, and respect of persons." But they also named several really heretical positions ; and " therefore, being moved with love to the truth of God, and zeal for His glory, as also an earnest desire for purging the kirk of en-or and heresy, and every thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, did, and hereby do, ratify and confirm the sentence of suspen- sion passed by the committee against the said Dr. George Garden : and further did, and hereby do, in the name, &c. . . . according to the power entrusted by Him to them, and His peremptory command, actually depose the said Dr. Garden from the office of the ministry i." The clergy of the church of England were exceedingly dissatisfied, that the convocation of their church had not been permitted to meet for ten years ; and their dissatisfaction was increased by their observing that the presbyterian General Assembly frequently met, and were honoured with the king's particular notice and his letters. Dissenters of every denomi- nation were at full liberty to meet when and where they pleased, and to discuss the affairs of their different sects ; but although the clergy were part of the constitution of England, yet they were not permitted to meet to consider the state of religion, or to consult about the interests of their own body. Their discontent reaching the ears of government, a convoca- tion was summoned, and met on the 10th of February ; Dr. Hooper, dean of Canterbury, was chosen prolocutor. An address was agreed to, and presented to the king, giving him all possible assurances of their steady loyalty and affection to his person and government. The Lower House censured seve- ral injurious and blasphemous pages contained in Toland's book, entituled, " Christianity not Mysterious." They were next proceeding to censure Bishop Burnet's Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, but were stopped by the Upper House, which declared their censure was scandalous, and that they had no authority to examine the works of a bishop. The Lower House insisted that they had a right to adjourn them- selves, and were not subject to the archbishop's prorogation ; whilst the Upper House denied their right to adjourn them- selves, maintaining there was no precedent for it, and that it was a manifest violation of the archbishop's authority : that the Lower House was not an independent body, that both houses were but one body, and originally met together in one place. In consequence of the disputes betwixt the two ' Acts of Assembly, xi. session 15, 307, 308. 1701.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 629 houses, the convocation was dissolved without doing any business^. The English parliament met on the 10th of February, and in the speech from the throne the king said that the duke of Gloucester's death had made it absolutely necessary that there should be a further provision made for the succession of the crown in the protestant line. On the 1st of March, the clause in the king's speech relating to the succession was taken into consideration by a committee of the whole House. On the 12th their resolutions were reported, and agreed to by the Com- mons, and were to this effect: — 1. That all things properly cognisable in the privy council be transacted there ; and all resolutions taken thereupon, signed by the privy council. 2. That no foreigner, though naturalized, should be capable of a grant from the crown, to himself or any in trust for him. 3. That England shall not be obliged to engage in war for the defence of the foreign dominions of any succeeding king. 4. That succeeding kings shall join in communion with the church of England. 5. That no pardon shall be pleadable to an impeachment in parliament. 6. That no succeeding king- shall go out of the British dominions without consent of par- liament. 7. That no pensioner or person in office under the crown shall be a member of the Commons. 8. That further provision be made for the security of religion and the rights of the subject. 9. That the judges' commissions be (7Mfl??i(/iM se bene gesserint, and their salaries ascertained. 10. That after king William and the princess Anne, the crown be limited to the princess Sophia of Hanover, and the heirs of her body, being protestants. 11. That a bill be brought in upon the above resolutions. It has been affirmed, that after the death of the duke of Gloucester, king William made proposals to the court of St. Germains to take the prince of Wales into England, and to educate him in the reformed catholic faith, to succeed to the throne after the death of his sister, the princess Anne. Tliis offer king James rejected with great indignation ; he would have seen his sou under a tombstone rather than to have re- gained the throne of his ancestors on such a condition. The resolutions above were passed into a law, commonly called the Act of Settlement. On this occasion the duchess of Savoy, daughter of the princess Henrietta, who was the young- est daughter of king Charles I., and who married the duke of Orleans, protested against the alteration of the succession, be- ' Salmoa's Chronological Historiao, i. 303. 630 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIIl. cause she was the nearest in blood to the crown of England after the prince of Wales. A LETTER has been found amongst lord Somers's papers, written by the ])rincess Sophia to Mr. Stepney, in answer to a private one of his to her intimating the death of the duke of Gloucester, and the intention to settle the succession upon her and her family after the death of the king and the princess of Denmark without issue. In this letter the princess says how highly she thought of this notice of her and her family, but wishes that it might be well considered of with regard to some improprieties she mentions, of her family having the crown of England, that they were strangers, and used in their own country to a form of government very different from that of ours, and that we were so fond of. She then recommends, in a style of compassion, the unhappy case of le pauvre prince de Guiles, and wishes that he may rather be thought of than her family; saying, that he had learned and suffered so much from his father's errors, that he would certainly avoid all of them, and make a good king of England. This letter, speaker Onslow says, he saw and read, by favour of one of the sons of lord Hardwick, whose lady was a niece of lord Somers, and by her my lord Hardwick had many of his papers. They were mostly destroyed by a fire in Lincoln's Inn ; but this letter was among the few papers that were saved. The princess, however, met William at Loo, where the affair of the succession in her house was finally settled by pensionary Heinsius and the earl of Portland, without the ad- vice or knowledge of his English ministers, to whom it was only imparted when it became necessary to pass a commis- sion under the great seal for its conclusion ! Many who wished the succession to be in the house of Hanover were very apprehensive that many evils might arise to England from the two countries being under the same sovereign, and therefore wished it might be a condition in the new settlement of the crown, that whoever of the house of Hanover succeeded to it should not at the same time hold their German dominions. This proposal was made to the elector, who rejected it, de- claring he would not accept of the British crown on the terms of renouncing his birthright, where he had sure possession. It was then proposed that the crown should go to some other protestant of his family ; to which he answered, that if the crown of England was to come to his family, no one should wear it before himself except his mother ^ ' Salmon's Chronological Historian, i. 303, 304, — Burnet's Own Times, iv. 453, 50], 502 ; and editor's notes on the Places. 1701.] CHURCH CF SCOTLAND. 631 The death of king James opened up a new scene. On Friday, the 2d of September, his majesty fainted while on his knees at chapel, whence he was carried to his apartment. The fit lasted half an hour ; afterwards he vomited clots of blood in great quantity, and after that a stream of pure blood. When that stopped, a slight fever seized him, and on Saturday a drowsiness which approached almost to a lethargy, from which neither blisters nor stimulants could rouse him till Tues- day, when he revived. He was sensible of his approaching end, and desired to have the sacrament, which was adminis- tered to him by the curate of the parish, as well as all the other rites of their religion. He then ex})ressed himself as fol- lows : — " I am now going to make my exit out of this misera- ble world — out of a tempestuous sea, to a port of eternal rest, as I firmly hope, through the merits and passion of my dear Saviour. My integrity and innocency have been oppressed by infinite lies and calumnies; I never entertained a thought which was not levelled at the good of my subjects. O, sweet Jesu ! of thine infinite mercy forgive the authors and forgers of them; I offer up all my sufltrings in Thee, holy Jesus; sanctify them to me, for the eternal salvation of my poor soul. 0 forgive, sweet Jesus! my own bowels who have risen up against me ; forgive the chief contrivers of my dethroning, and give them grace to repent of their errors. Eternally praised be thy holy providence, who permitting me to be deprived of an earthly, has given me better means to gain an eternal crown. 1 thank thee, sweet Jesus! for giving me the spirit of re- signation amongst so many calamities." The king of France came to visit him after he was speechless, and in comforting the queen he promised to acknowledge and proclaim the prince lawful heir and successor to the imperial crown of Great Britain. The king again rallied, and having heard of Lewis's declaration, he sent for the prince, and said, — " I am now leaving this world, which has been to me a sea of storms and tempests ; it being God Almighty's will to wean me from it by many great aflSiclions. Serve him with all your power and strength, and never put the crown of England in compe- tition with your eternal salvation ; but if His holy providence shall think fit to set you upon the throne of our ancestors, govern your subjects with justice and clemency, and take pity on your misled subjects. Kemember, kings are not made for themselves, but for the good of their people ; set before their eyes, in your own actions, a pattern of all manner of virtues ; consider them your children ; aim at nothing but their good in correcting them. You are the child of vows and prayers j 632 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIH. behave yourself accordingly." He departed this life at three o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, the 16th of Sep- tember, in the 69th year of his age, a day on which he alvvays fasted, in memory of our blessed Lord's passion — a day on which he had always desired to die ; and his death took place at the same hour as our Lord's. His body was deposited privately, in the monastery of the Benedictines at Paris, and his heart was sent to the nunnery of Chaillot. The French king immediately proclaimed his sou, James Francis Edward, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by the name of James IH. and VHI. On which event, William re- called his ambassador from the court of France, and ordered Mons. Poussin, the French secretary in England, to depart the kingdom ^. Had it not been for his popery, James would have been a great and a good prince. When he was a subject to his bro- ther Charles, he was undoubtedly a valiant commander, a firm friend, and an immoveable observer of his word and pro- raise, and a man of the greatest application to business. His judgment was good when it was not warped by his religion or guided by his Jesuits ; and he was naturally addicted to truth, fidelity, and justice. James was greatly inferior to Charles II. in talents and understanding, and both were immeasura- bly inferior to their father and grandfather in that virtue which entitle its owner to " see God," — chastity ; but he was infi- nitely superior to Charles in industry, application to business, and temperance. He was familiar and courteous ; but cho- loric, and easily provoked. His government was conducted by his own will, without the advice either of parliament, coun- cils, or responsible ministers ; that is, he governed entirely by the suggestions of father Petre and other Jesuits, who were in such a violent hurry to papalise the empire that they preci- pitated him into the most unconstitutional measures, and he fell a sacrifice to their villainy, their treachery, and their indis- creet zeal for the propagation of idolatry. Burnet says, " he had no personal vices but of one sort ; he was still wander- ing from one amour to another ; yet he had a real sense of sin, and was ashamed of it. But [popish] priests know how to engage princes more entirely into their own interests, by making them compound for their sins by a great zeal for the holy church, as they call it." And Ralph judiciously remarks, " How sig- * Ellis's Letters ; Letter ccclxxxviii. vol. iii. p. 354. — Salmon's Chronologi- cal Historian, i. 309. — Burnet's Own Times, iv. 587. — Life of King James IL 419, 420. — The last Words of the late King .Fames to his Son and Daughter and the French King. Pamphlet. London: published 1701. 1702.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 633 nally soever his own frailties, prejudices, absurdities, and vio- lences, contributed to his misfortunes, it ought to be acknow- ledged that the measure would never have overflown in so astonishing a manner if it had not been for those fatal occur- rents, treacherous councillors, ungrateful servants, &c. ; all of whom, instead of warning him of the rocks that lay before him, according to the obligations which lay upon them, either sor- didly connived at the ruinous course he held, or wickedly flat- tered the phrensy that impelled him, for the sake of their share in the wrecks" It is to be well noted, that all his popish counsellors and advisers fled, and hid their diminished heads, the moment that his real power vanished from him ; and none of them, in the hour of need, assisted him either with their counsel or their sword. They well knew the grievous sins they had committed against both the religion and the liberty of the empire, and naturally enough dreaded the vengeance of an injured and indignant people. 1710. — In obedience to William's appointment, the Ge- neral Assembly met at Edinburgh on March the 6th. The earl of Marchmont, the lord chancellor, was the commissioner, and the ministers chose the notorious David Williamson, minister of the West Kirk, moderator. The king again assured them of his protection, and recommended calmness and una- nimity in their proceedings, and to eschew disputes. The commissioner communicated to the Assembly the intelligence of William's declining health, and the probability of his death; and he urged them to despatch all the most necessary business, lest that event might occur before their dissolution. In this gloomy state of their affairs very little business was done be- yond the appointment of a new commission for planting the stubborn episcopalian north, and the general commission of the kirk. After sitting five sessions, the earl of Marchmont dissolved the Assembly on the 11th of March, and appointed the next to meet on the 10th of March, next year. William had been long in a declining state of health, but was still able to transact business and to take exercise. On the 21st of February, as he was riding out from Kensington to hunt, near Hampton Court, his horse stumbled upon level ground, as he was putting him to a gallop, and, being very feeble, the king fell off" and broke his right clavicle. He was earned to Hampton Court, where his collar bone was set, and he returned to Kensington in the evening. Two days afterwards, he sent a message to the Commons, pressing upon ' Life of James II. — Burnet's Own Times, and the Editor's Notes VOL. III. 4 M 634 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. tlieir consideration tlie necessity of a firm and entire union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland. In the Peers, the earl of Nottingham moved that an address should be made to the king to dissolve the Scottish parliament, and +o call a new one, since it was only a prolonged convention, and the legality of its consent to an union might be questioned. This motion put an end to the projected union ; for the slate of public opinion in Scotland was such that the king durst not have ventured on dissolving his convention-parliament, and of call- ing a free and constitutional one. On the 4tli of March an act passed both Houses, " for the further security of his ma- jesty's person and the succession of the crown in the protes- tant line, and extinguishing the hopes of the pretended prince of Wales and all other pretenders, and their open and secret abettors ;" and in this act was embodied the abjuration oath, which was enjoined to be taken by all men on entering to any office under government. This oath was afterwards extended to Scotland : — " I do solemnly and sincerely declare, that the person pretended to be the prince of Wales during the life of the late king James, and since his decease pre- tending to be, and taking upon himself the stile and title of, king of England, by the name of James the Third, or of Scot- land, by the name of James the Eighth, or the stile and title of king of Great Britain, hath not any right or title whatsoever to the crown of this realm, or to any other the dominions there- unto belonging ; and I do renounce, refuse, and abjure any al- legiance or obedience to him, &c." On the 4th of March the king took several turns in the gal- lery at Kensington, and, being tired, sat down on a sofa and fell asleep ; on waking he had a shivering fit, which was fol- lowed by diarrhea. He observed in French, to the earl of Albemarle, " I approach my end ;" and he received the sacra- ment from archbishop Tennison, who, with bishop Burnet, re- mained with him to the last. He was too weak to sign the above-named act and oath of abjuration, but a stamp had been prepared, by which he affixed his name to it, in the pre- sence of the great officers of state. And thus, in the article of death, he left a legacy of dispute and contention, and an oath, says Mr. Skinner, " of such a dubious contexture, and so hard to be digested in all its parts, that even the presbyte- rians boggled at it." On the other hand, bishop Kennett says, " Above all, and without which all others had been void, was his wise and effectual care for the protestant succession, pro- vided for by two several acts of his last year ; and one of them his blessed dying legacy of admirable, and we hope per- 1702.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 635 petual, service to this church and nation, and indeed to the protestant interest and balance of all Europe." ITe died about eight o'clock on Sunday morning, the 8lh of March. The immediate cause of his death was a mortification of the up- per lobe on the left side of the lungs, and part of the pleura next to it. Immediately after death, lords Lexington and Scarborough directed a black ribbon to be untied from his left arm, by which there was tied next to his skin a gold ring, with some hair of the late queen Mary, which he had worn in this manner since her death. In their report, the physi- cians say, " It is very rare to find a body with so little blood as was seen in this ; there being more found in his lungs than in all the parts put together." And bishop Burnet says, " there was scarce any blood in his body." He died in his fifty-second year, having reigned thirteen years and a few days^ Smollett sums up his character in few words : — " Wil- liam was a fatalist in religion, indefatigable in war, enterpris- ing in politics, dead to all the warm and generous emotions of the heart, a cold relation, an indifferent husband, a disagree- able man, an ungracious prince, and an imperious sovereign^." He was bred a Calvinist ; but on his marriage he had a cha- pel fitted up for the princess JNIary, where divine service was performed after the rites of the church of England. The writer of the history of his reign says, that, ' whilst prince of Orange, he went either to the Dutch, French, or English churches indifferently! and whilst king of England, though he publicly professed the established religion, yet he still re- tained a great tenderness for the dissenters, and was ever averse to persecute people upon account of their belief. His piety and devotion were sincere, but unaffected. The only thing that looked like superstition in him was the avoiding to be- gin a journey or any great enterprise on a Monday ^.''^ Wil- liam does not appear to have been a persecutor ; his mind seems to have been intent on military affairs and ambitious projects ; but he suffered those in authority under him, and the rabble in his name, to persecute the Church of Scotland in a more severe, cruel, and wanton manner, than ]:)erhaps was ever practised since the last pagan persecution of the church. Being a fatalist, he probably thought the rabbling of the ' Burnet's Own Times, iv. 560, 561. — Kennctt's History of England, iii. 836,837. — Salmon's Chronological Historian, i. 311. — History of King Wil- liam III. vol. iii. 509-315. — Skinner's Eccl. History, ii. 598. * Continuation of Hume's History, ix. 443. ^ History of the Reign of William III. vol. iii. 517. 636 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. clergy of Scotland had been one of those things " predesti- nated and foreordained," and so " particularly and unchange- ably designed," that it could not be " either increased or diminished" by his interference. Hetherington says, that by the presbyterian establishment " his memory will ever be much and justly revered, as having been under Providence the instrument by which she was delivered from prelatic ty- ranny and persecution. But it cannot be concealed, and ought not to be forgotten, that his systematic treatment of the presbyterian church was both unwise, ungrateful, and inju- rious. If he did not succeed in bringing her under the eras- tian yoke, it was not for want of inclination to have done so ^." The princess Anne, only surviving child of James II. and VII., by the lady Anne Hyde, eldest daughter of Edward, earl of Clarendon, was proclaimed at Whitehall on the 8th of March, with the usual solemnity. A council assembling the same day, her majesty made a speech, in which she declared how sensible she was of the unspeakable loss the nation had sustained by the death of the late king, and the burthen it brought upon herself; which nothing could encourage her to undergo bather great concern for the preservation of the religion, laws, and liberties of her native country : and that no pains should be wanting on her part to defend and support them, and to maintain the protestant succession 2." The same day she caused a letter to be written to her privy council in Scot- land, in which she said — " And on this occasion, at our first accession to the throne, we give them, and all our good people, full assurance of our firm resolution during the whole course of our reign, to protect them in their religion, laws, and liberties, and in the established government of the church 3." LocKHAKT says, queen Anne was proclaimed, " to the great satisfaction of all those who were well-wishers to their country, and especially to the cavaliers, who expected mighty things from her ; but, on the other hand, the presbyterians looked on themselves as undone ; despair appeared in their countenances, which were more upon the melancholic and dejected air than usual, and most of their discourses from the pulpits were ex- hortations to stand by, support, and be ready to suffer for Christ's cause (the epithet they gave their own). They knew the queen was a strenuous assertor of the doctrine of the church of England. They were conscious how little respect the great men of their faction had paid her during the late 1 Hetherington's History, 189. ^ Salmon's Chron. Hist. i.-315. 3 Boyer's History of Queen Anne, folio, p. 10. 1735. 1702.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 637 reign. They saw the church party was preferred to places and favour in England. They knew the Scots nation, es- pecially the nobility and gentry, were much disgusted at them, because of their promoting the court interest in the last reign against that of the country ; and upon these and such-like accounts dreaded a storm impending over their heads ^" At the accession of queen Anne the ministers of the crown in Scotland were attached to what were called revolu- tion principles, and they were all of anti-monarchical affections. Nevertheless, says an anonymous author, " upon the accession of queen Anne to the throne, and the charitable and gracious letter she wrote to her privy council, the condition of the suffering clergy was made somewhat more easy ; the liturgy began to be set up in several families in the north, and the meeting-houses in the south and north were enlarged and better frequented ; but this calm lasted not long, for the pres- byterian tyranny, which was suppressed for some time, broke out with new violence a little after the union 2." The late king had provided that the Scottish parliament should continue in being six months after his death ; and it had been prorogued by the queen to the 9th of June, when it met, and the duke of Queensberry was sent down as her repre- sentative. At its meeting, the queen's letter was read, which contained the following clause : — " That it was her majesty's firm purpose and resolution to maintain the sovereignty and independency of that her ancient kingdom against all inva- sions or encroachments whatsoever ; that she should be ever equally tender of the rights, prerogatives, and liberties of the crown and kingdom of Scotland, as of those of the crown and kingdom of England ; and that she should make it the chief design of her reign to govern both according to their respec- tive laws and liberties, and to avoid all occasion of misunder- standings and differences betwixt them. That for this end she should think it her happiness to establish an Union betwixt the two kingdoms, upon an equal and just foundation. . . . That her majesty gave them full assurance that she was firmly re- solved to maintain and protect them in the full possession of their religion, laws, and liberties, and of the presbyterian government of the church as at present established." In their reply to the royal letter, they reminded her majesty that presbyterianism was established by law, and begged that in • Memoirs concerning the Affairs of Scotland, from Queen Anne's accession to the commencement of the Union of the Two Kingdoms, 8vo. 6-7. 1714. - Representation of the State of the Churcli in North Britain, p. 17. 638 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. the whole procedure of the treaty her majesty " will have a gracious and careful regard to the maintenance of the presby- terian government of the church as now established by act of parliament^." As SOON as the parliament met, and before the queen's com- mission had been read, the duke of Hamilton desired to be heard. In his own name, and in that of those who adhered to him, he expressed his satisfaction at the queen's accession, but protested against the legality of this parliament, which was originally only a convention of estates, that, by the exer- cise of the dispensing power and of the prerogative, had been converted into a parliament. Then his grace read a written declaration of his own and his party's reasons for their dissent. " Forasmuch as by the fundamental laws and constitution of this kingdom, all parliaments do dissolve by the death of the king or queen, except in so far as innovated by the 17th act, 6th session, of king William's parliament last in being, at his decease, to meet and act what should be needful for the de- fence of the true protestant religion, as now by law established, and maintaining the succession to the crown, as settled by the claim of right, and preserving and securing the peace and safety of the kingdom, and seeing that the said ends are fully satisfied by her majesty's succession to the throne, whereby the religion and peace of the kingdom are secured, we con- ceive ourselves not now warranted by the law to meet, sit, or act, and therefore do dissent from any thing that shall be done or acted 2." His grace immediately retired, and was followed by seventy- nine members " of the first quality and best estates in the kingdom." They withdrew to the Cross-keys Tavern, and resolved to send up lord Blantyre with an address to the queen, explaining the reasons which had induced them to take this step. Although her majesty admitted lord Blantyre to an audience, yet she not only peremptorily refused to re- ceive the address, but she wrote to the parliament expressing her resentment at the duke of Hamilton and his adherents, for protesting against the legality of this session, and for with- drawing from it. Her majesty also assured the parliament of her resolution to maintain its authority and dignity against all opposition 3. The parliament passed an act, or rather a resolution of the house, declaring this session to be a lawful and free meeting of parliament, and discharging any person to ' Acta Parliament, xi. * Lockhart's Memoirs, 12, 13. ^ Salmon's Clironology, i. 319. 1702.] CHDRCH OF SCOTLAND. 639 disown, quarrel, or impugn the dignity and authority thereof, under the penalty of high treason. Many of the people, however, adhered to the protest of the dissenting members, and nearly one-half of the nation refused to pay the taxes which were imposed in this session ^. An act was next passed to recognise her majesty's authority ; and another for the security of the presbyterian kirk government, in which, says Burnet, " they proceeded with such violence, that Alexander Bruce, moving that all those acts might be read, for he be- lieved some of them might be found inconsistent with mon- archy, he wasyb?' that expelled the house 2," This statement is confirmed by Mr. Ijockhart, who says — " And Alexander Bruce, upon account of a speech made against the same, wherein, amongst other things, he affirmed that presbytery was inconsistent with monarchy, was expelled the house 3." The faculty of advocates, also, were severely reprimanded at the bar of the house, for having declared their assent to the duke of Hamilton's protest, although no set of men could have been better judges of the law and usage in such a case. The session went on quietly, till the earl of Marchmont the lord chancellor, suddenly presented an act for imposing an oath to abjure the prince of Wales, or the Pretender, " in the most horrid scurrilous terms imaginable." This overture was contrary to the advice of his friends, and even the commands of the lord commissioner ; it divided the house, and excited considerable animosity among the members, and overtures were made to the duke's tail to return and assist them in de- feating the motion, which they would have done, had it gone on. But the commissioner stopped its further progress by adjourning the parliament to the 18th of August. " And I can assure you," says one of Mr. Carstares' correspondents, " the adjournment was generally well received by the people, of all ranks and persuasions ,; for not one set of people were unanimous for pressing it. The presbyterian members of parliament, and the very ministers of this place, were divided upon that question*." And so, says Mr. Lockhart, " we take leave of this monstrous parliament, whicli, from a convention, was metamorphosed and transubstantiated into a parliament, and when dead revived again, and all this to support the in- terest, and continue the dominion, of a set of men that would, notwithstanding their pretended zeal for the liberties of their country, break in upon the same, by overturning and trampling ' Lockhart's Memoirs, 14. * Own Times, v. 24. ^ Memoirs, 15. * Carstares' State Papers, 714, 1716. 640 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. Upon the most nice and sacred part of our constitution, the greatest preservation and bulwark of all that is near and dear to a free peopled" The project of an union of the kingdoms, which had baffled all the attempts of former sovereigns, was now prose- cuted in earnest, and to a successful issue. Commissioners for both kingdoms were appointed; on the English side was the archbishop of Canterbury ; but there was no presbyterian minister appointed by the other party. The commissioners met for the first time on the 22d of October, at the Cockpit, where, after reading both commissions, sir Nathan Wright, keeper of the great seal of England, spoke as follows : — " We do with great satisfaction meet your lordships on this occasion . . . that England and Scotland, already united in alliance under one head, the queen, may for ever hereafter become one people ; one in heart and affections ; one in in- terest; one in name and in deed ; a work which, if it can be brought to pass, promiseth a lasting happiness to all." This was responded to by the duke of Queensberry with equal frankness and cordiality. There not being a quorum of the Scottish commissioners in London, the meeting was adjourned until the 10th of November, when they met, and the negocia- tions commenced. During all this time there had not a word been said on the difficult point of religion, on either side ; but, like wise negociators, the commissioners on both sides were willing to feel each other's pulses in the smaller matters, before they touched the more weighty and difficult subject, which had been the rock on which all former negociations had split. The Scottish episcopal clergy, however, were not so cautious; for on the 10th of December, calculating on the queen's known attachment to the reformed catholic church, they petitioned her majesty to compassionate their poverty and distress, and to admit them to benefices. " We, YOUR majesty's most humble, dutiful, loyal, and most obedient subjects, look on it as no small blessing to have a queen of our ancient race of kings, who has always been a pattern of virtue, and a constant support and owner of the true reformed orthodox religion ; and who, since her coming to the crown of her illustrious ancestors, has shewn such good and generous inclinations to make all her subjects live happily, that we have presumed most humbly to address your majesty, to take into your royal consideration, the condition of the » Memoirs, 19, 20. 1703.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 641 subjects of the episcopal persuasion in this kingdom. It is not unknown to your majesty, the hard measures and dis- couragements they met with of late years, particularly those of the clergy, though they have always behaved themselves (as their principles obliged them to do), peaceably and sub- missively to supreme authority. May it therefore please your sacred majesty, to take those into your royal protection, and give liberty to such parishes, where all or most of the heritors and inhabitants are of the episcopal persuasion, to call, place, and give benefices to ministers of their own principles, which the presbyterians themselves can have no reason to complain of; for, if the plurality they pretend to be true, by this act of grace neither their churches nor benefices are in hazard; which favour will oblige us more and more, out of gratitude as well as duty, to send up our prayers to Almighty God, that the same good Providence which ])laced your majesty upon tlie throne, and has blessed the beginning of your reign with such glorious success, may preserve your majesty for a blessing to these lands, and that we may never want a true protestant, of the same royal blood, to govern us, while sun and moon endure ''." 1703. — It does not appear what answer had been given to this petition; but the episcopalians now conceived some hopes of relief to their miseries from a change of ministry in Scot- land, for the new ministers were chiefly episcopalians and anti- revolutioners. This produced a gleam of hope in the clergy; but it proportionably alarmed the presbyterians. It was deter- mined to dissolve the convention-Low^-parliament, which had sat more than fourteen years, and to summon a new parliament, to be elected in the ancient constitutional manner. The earl of Seafield, principal secretary of state, who, Mr. Lockhart says, " was a blank sheet of paper, which the court might fill up with what they pleased," came down to influence the elections, and it so happened " that a greater number of men of anti-revolution principles were chosen than had been known in any parliament since the Revolution." The duke of Hamilton (who was the earl of Arran, formerly mentioned, and the son of Anne, duchess of Hamilton, in her own right, by James, earl of Selkirk, who was created duke of Hamilton by Charles II.) obtained from her majesty a letter to the privy council, which contained the following clause: — " We do, in the first place, recommend to your care, the church • Salmon's Chronology, i. 323. — Boyei's History of Queen Anne, folio, pp. 25-27. VOL. III. 4 N 642 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII, now established by lavr, &c. . , . We are informed that tlicre are many dissenters within that kingdom, who, albeit they differ from the established church in opinion as to church government and form, yet are of the protestant reformed re- ligion, some of which are in possession of benefices, and others exercise their worship in meeting-houses. It is our royal pleasure that they should be directed to live suitably to the reformed religion which they profess, submissively to our laws, decently and regularly with relation to the church es- tablished by law, as good christians and subjects ; and in so doing, that they be protected in the peaceable exercise of their religion, and in their persons and estates, according to the laws of the kingdom : and we recommend to the clergy of the established discipline their living in brotherly love and com- munion with such dissenters." Encouraged by these expressions in her majesty's letter, and her repeated assurances that she would support the church of England, and even the least member of it, in all their just rights and privileges, the Scottish clergy framed another ad- dress to the queen. They sent up Dr. Skene and Dr. Scott to present it, and they were introduced to her majesty by the duke of Queensberry and viscount Tarbat. It is somewhat remarkable that the bishops seem at this time to have sunk into obscurity; for we never hear of their having taken any part in these addresses, nor of their having publicly executed any episcopal acts. " Dread Sovereign, — We, your majesty's most dutiful and obedient subjects, and most humble supplicants, being deeply sensible that the divine goodness hath raised your majesty to the throne of your royal ancestors, as a nursing-mother to the true church of God, for the support and preservation of the religion, laws, and liberties of all your dominions, and now especially, that it is a remarkable blessing to this your ma- jesty's ancient kingdom of Scotland, (in the present deplorable circumstances of this national church), do presume to offer our most humble and most sincere congratulations upon your majesty's accession to the crov^'n- " And beg liberty to lay before your majesty the sad condi- tion of the afflicted episcopal clergy, who, in the years 1688 and 1689, and some years after, the truly ancient and aposto- lical government of the church by bishops, were deprived of, and put from, the exercise of their sacred offices and posses- sions of their livings, and thereby reduced to great extremity and want. During the continuance of which suffering state. 1703.] CHUKcn OF Scotland. 643 many worthy ministers of the gospel have been taken away by death ; and we, whom it hath pleased God to continue in life, have laboured to sweeten tlie bitterness of our trials, by a christian and peaceable submission and resignation to His will. And in truth and gratitude we are obliged to acknow- ledge, that many of us in a great measure owe our lives to the charity and beneficence of such of your majesty's good subjects, as thought it a disgrace to Christianity, that a society of men consecrated to the altar, in the service of Christ, should perish in a christian kingdom for want of bread. So now that it hath pleased Almighty God to place your majesty upon the imperial throne of these dominions, the relief and ad- vantages which all your loyal subjects do enjoy, from the benign influence of your majesty's auspicious government, encouragelh us, your majesty's most humble supplicants, under the present distress, and miserable starving condition of many of our numerous families, to implore that princely commiseration and matchless clemency, which have ever been congenial and peculiar to the blood royal, and are eminently lodged in your sacred person. Humbly beseeching that your royal bounty and indulgence may be extended to us in such manner, and by such methods, as your majesty in your princely wisdom shall think fit, that we may find ourselves more and more obliged devoutly to pray that your years may be many and your reign glorious." The deputation was graciously received, and the queen returned the following answer: — "I take the expressions of your duty and loyalty very kindly, and you may be assured of my protection, and of my endeavours to supply your neces- sities, as far as conveniently I can : and I doubt not but you will continue in your duty ; and I commend you to live in peace and christian love with the clergy who are invested with the church government of that our ancient kingdom." As Mr. Skinner justly observes, this answer was " of a softer nature than any speech which the episcopal clergy had for some time been accustomed to hear from the throne; it en- couraged the whole of them to form higher hopes, and to concert such probable schemes for enlarging their subsistence as t'ney thought might now be carried on with safety, under such a mild administration ^" It has been mentioned that a fund had been established from subscriptions, and placed under the direction of the archbishops Iloss and Patterson, * Ecclesiastical History, ii. 601. 644 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. LVIII. and bishop Graham, of the Isles, with such of the clergy as resided in Edinburgh. These prelates gave a commission to the Rev. Mr. Arthur Millar, who was formerly the incum- bent of the parish of Inveresk, in which the "honest town" of Musselburgh is situate, but who had been deprived of his benefice under one or other, or all, of the Four Pleas of presby- tery, empowering him to go to Ireland, and " to collect money among the well-disposed there, for the relief of the suffering clergy of Scotland.*" On his arrival in Dublin, he obtained a brief from the duke of Ormond, who was then the lord-lieu- tenant, which enabled him to collect nearly a thousand pounds sterling. He was greatly assisted by Dr. King, archbishop of Dublin, with whom he maintained a correspondence, and who assisted him greatly in accomplishing the object of his journey, and in his letters expressed the most cordial good- will to himself and to his caused The Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 10th of March ; the earl of Seafield, lord chancellor, was nominated royal com- missioner, and George Meldrum, formerly an episcopal clergy- man, was chosen moderator. In the royal letter, the queen says, that they were now met " at the time appointed by her proclamation!'' — " we renew the assurance given by us for pro- tection of the presbyterian government, as that which we find acceptable to the inclinations of our people, and es- tablished by the laws of our kingdom. We are confident that you will . . . carry so with others of the reformed pro- testant religion, albeit differing from you in forms of church policy, that by your meekness and charity they may be the more inclined to live peaceably and dutifully under us, and in brotherly love and respect towards you and the established church 2." Now, although the " inclination of the people" be the fundamental principle on which they had based their claim to establishment in their Claim of Right, yet Hether- ington ungratefully asserts that this clause in the royal mes- sage " might be regarded as equivalent to a denial of its claim to any higher and more sacred authority^." To be sure it was ; but it was the claim which they themselves had asserted, and although they might have been ashamed to base their policy upon a more sacred foundation, yet they have no right now to complain when their oivn terms are employed. In their an- swer to the queen's letter they admit this to have been their foundation principle ; but in their address in their ninth * Ecclesiastical Histories, ii. 603. " Acts of Assembly, 316, 317> '■^ Hetherington's History, 1S9. 1703. J CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. G-i5 session, they assert the oft-refuted falsehood, that " the re- formation from popery was by presbyters, and that prelacy was a great and insupportable grievance and trouble to the nation." Then ihey boldly state — " Though we acknowledge ourselves to be unquestionably bound as christians, and more especially as ministers of the gospel of peace, to maintain charity and forbearance towards those who peaceably differ from us, and contain themselves within the just limits of sobriety and reason, yet we cannot but complain of the dis- orders of some of the episcopal clergy, who, with a few of their abettors, that have given as little evidence of their affec- tion to your majesty's government as to the established church, transgress your laws by preaching, though not qualified to your majesty's government — by despising sentences of depri- vation by the privy council, and deposition by church judi- catories— by invading settled churches — by intruding into vacant churches — and by irregular baptizings and clandestine marriages, and several other gross abuses ; all which tend to the weakening and frustrating the good ends of disci])line, the increase of licentiousness and irreligion, and the spreading of en'or and [catholic] doctrine contrary to our Confession of Faith, ratified in parliament ^" An invincible difficulty still retarded the spread of presby- terianism by the attachment of the people in the parts be- yond the Tay to episcopacy and to their episcopal clergy- men ; and it was therefore necessary to make an act for plant- ing the vacant churches in the north. The outrages on the episcopal meeting at Glasgow, to be afterwards narrated, be- came known in the Assembly ; and David Williamson filled them with exaggerated apprehensions of the return of pre- lacy, and encouraged them to stand firm to their covenanted work of reformation, assuring the Assembly " that prelacy should never come in there but by blood /" Ministers from the better supplied districts of the south were sent to itinerate as missionaries, to be reliexed every three months by others ; a circumstance which, of itself alone, would confute their vain boast that presbytery was agreeable to the inclinations of the people, unless the people had been figuratively represented by the three tailors of Tooley-street. There is nothing recorded in the acts of this Assembly from which it would apjiear that it was dissolved otherways than in the usual way ; but we learn from other sources that it was dissolved by an exertion of the prerogative, m the midst of preparation " for asserting ^ Acts of Assembly, sesdou 9, p. 321. 646 HISTOKY OF THE [CHAP, LVIII. the supremacy of Christ." On this fact, Dr. M'Crie's evi- dence is indisputable, for he was too keen a partizan to have told more than the truth — i. e. if it were to hurt him. He says, " And in 1703, when the Assembly had prepared the draft of an act for asserting the supremacy of Christ, the intrinsic power of the church, and the divine right of the presbyterian government, it was abruptly dissolved [in its thirteenth ses- sion] by her majesty'' s commissioner, without any recorded pro- test ^" Willison says they did remonstrate ^ ; but no protest or remonstrance appears on the minutes of the Assembly; nay, Hetherington says that they pretended there " was no parti- cular urgent business before it," and therefore they made a merit of necessity, and quietly separated, as if the dissolution had been their own act ! ^. When the presbyterians have so often succumbed to the royal supremacy, how absurd is it in them to taunt the anglo- catholic church with recognising the queen as her temporal head, whilst the church herself only recognises her as her supreme civil ruler. But whether the kirk will acknowledge it or not, she is obliged to submit to the queen as supreme, in just the same sense that the anglo-catholic church most cheerfully recog- nises her ; and we have now seen several instances in which she has been practically convinced that the sovereign is her head in that sense. When the catholic church in Scotland was oppressed by the operation of the Assertory act, during the reigns of the royal brothers, the presbyterians accused her of erastianism ; although her bishops and clergy were then the noblest and the most intrepid asserters of the rights of the church that any later age can produce. But presbytery has ever been erastian, and it was established in 1689 by merely lay autho- rity ; for there was not one spiritual person in that convention- parliament which changed the church government. " If," says Leslie, " presbytery was conceived in the womb of eras- tianism, has sucked its milk, and is still nourished by it, how decently does it look to see the presbyterians rail at it and ab- jure it ! Are they sworn to destroy that which first gave them birth ?" The rev. Robert Calder was imprisoned for some months in the common gaol of Edinburgh, and he was afterwards tried for what had been made high treason — that is, for speaking and writing against presbytery ; but he was acquitted. He was the compiler of the " Presbyterian Eloquence," and was very ob- noxious in consequence to the ministers. After escaping ' Testimony Assoc. Synod, p. 39. ^ Testimony, p. 31. ' History, 199. 1703.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. (517 from the toils of the lord advocate, Mr. Calder went to Aber- deen, and officiated to a small congregation in his own house, for which he was summoned to appear before the privy council on Good Friday. They fixed on that day in order to prevent his administering the holy communion to his little flock on Easier day. The episcopalians of that city were so much more nu- merous than the presbyterians, that the latter dared not ven- ture to rabble the clergy, but they obtained peremptory sum- monses from the privy council for each of the clergy to appear on Good Friday to answer for what was called their irregular proceedings. " So that now they are deprived both of bap- tism and the Lord's Supper, and can have them no otherwise than as in a heathen country, and as in the primitive church in times of persecution, under the peril of the lawless mob or of authority. In this great distress, they of the church in Aljer- deen,much superior in number and substance to the kirk party, have humbly addressed her majesty, representing the deplora- bleness of their condition, and imploring her majesty's protec- tion at least for their consciences ; but they must bear their chains." These Confessors had all intended to administer the Lord's Supper to their congregations which met in their own houses, for they had been driven from their churches ; but by summoning them to Edinburgh on Good Friday, they thus put an interdict upon the sacraments. " It must be said of the Scots clergy in general, that they have stood noble Confessors to episcopacy through a long trial of bitter sufferings and re- proaches. Perhaps the primitive times afford us not a greater example^." On the 6th of May the parliament was ridden with the usual solemnity ; the duke of Queensberry was the connnis- sioner, and the earl of Seafield was the lord chancellor. All that was said in the royal letter about religion was, " We have upon several occasions given you and all our good sub- jects assurance of our firm resolution to maintain and protect them in their religion, rights, and liberties, as at present esta- blished by law." — The queen's title was recognised, and after that, the earl of Marchmont proposed an act, which passed the House, for the security of the presbyterian government ; " ratifying, approving, and perpetually confirming all laws, &c. made for establishing and preserving the true reformed protes- tant religion and the true church of Christ, as at present owned and settled within this kingdom, and in its presbyterian ^ Leslies's Rehearsals, vi. Appendix, 256. 6-18 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. government and discipline, as being agreeable to the word of God, and the only church of Christ within this kingdom." They now took new ground ; for in the claim of right they did not assert that presbytery was agreeable to the word of God, but only to the inclinations of the people. Sir David Cunningham argued, that it was uncharitable to unchurch all other churches, and to affirm that none were of the church of Christ except presbyterians. To whom the marquis of Lo- thian replied, that " the clause was right, since he was sure the presbyterian government was the best part of the chris- tian religion !" The presbyterian party were very weak in this parliament, and Lockhart says, " if the queen had been as episcopal in Scotland as in England, she might easily have overturned presbytery ; for at this time the House consisted of about two hundred and forty members, thirty whereof voted against that part of the act ratifying presbytery, and eighty-two were non liquet (which last were episcopals, but chose to be [shamefully] silent), because there was no formed design against presbytery at that time, or to please the court ; so that there v^^as not, properly speaking, a plurality of above sixteen voices, or thereby, for the act ; amongst which [the ma- jority] several, such as the duke of Hamilton and many others, were no ways presbyterians. Now had the queen designed to introduce episcopacy, it is obvious it would have been no hard task to have done it^" A REPORT got abroad that it would be proposed in parlia- ment to grant a toleration to the episcopalians, which so much alarmed the presbyterians that they published several pamphlets against allowing any toleration to the church. On the 16th of Ma}"^, Meldrum, moderator of the last Assembly, preached before the commissioner and parliament, and very vehemently argued against toleration. His sermon was pub- lished, and is now before me ; in which he says, " Is it not ob- vious to any, then, that the consequence of such a toleration would be so far from the quiet and peace of the nation, that it would be a mean to raise division where it is not, in con- gregations and families, and heighten and perpetuate it when raised. . . . I know no ministers of that way who judge com- munion with us in worship unlawful, unless there be any of them who assert such a necessity of episcopal ordination as nullifies the ministry and all the ordinances dispensed by such who want it ; and that, I confess, is such an opinion that I * Lockhart' s Memoirs, 49.51. 1703.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 649 think should not be tolerated in any protest ant churchy being destructive to the truth and being of the most of protestant churches ^" This sermon was very severely criticised by bishop Sage after its publication. Mr. Meldrum was a fallen star, having been episcopally ordained ; he held a living at Aber- deen, which he vacated in 1681, when the Test was imposed, because it bound him to renounce the covenant, to which he had been secretly attached. When king James granted the toleration in 1687, he was desirous of re-occupying the church that he had vacated, but it having been canonically filled, his desire could not be complied with ; and meeting with another disappointment, " he grew piqued," and went to Kil- winning in Aryshire, where he set up a presbyterian meeting- house, and continued this schismatical meeting till the llevo- lution, when, being greatly superior to the other ministers, lie was presented to the Tron church in Edinburgh, and made pro- fessor of divinity in that university. He must have been an eye- witness of some of the atrocities that were committed on the episcopal clergy in Ayrshire, which had perhaps case-hardened him against granting any relief to their sufferings. The earl of Stratiimore brought in an act on the 1st of June, " for a toleration to all protestants in the exercise of re- ligious worship ;" but it was more particularly intended forthe relief of the episcopal church. It was read a first time, when a remonstrance from the commission of the kirk was presented against it, signed by George Meldrum, importing in substance " that there could not be a just ground to desire or grant a toleration to those of the episcopal persuasion, seeing there was never in any nation a toleration allowed where there was no pretence of conscience against joint communion. That in Scotland the people had no scruple in their consciences against communion and worship with the legal established church, till of late, in some places, they had been practised upon, and divided by, prelatic ministers. That difference in opinion about church government is not sufficient reason for separa- tion in worship. That to grant a toleration to that party, in the present circumstances of church and state, must unavoid- ably shake the foundation of their present happy constitu- tion ; overthrow those laws upon which it was settled ; need- lessly disturb that peace and tranquillity which the nation had enjoyed since the Revolution [!] ; disquiet the minds of her majesty's best subjects ; increase animosities, confusions, dis- ' Sermon, p. 18, 19. VOL. III. 4 o 650 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. cord, and tumults ; enervate discipline, open a door to vice, popery, and oilier errors, and bring the nation into the same or worse miseries and mischiefs from which it had been mer- cifully delivered [!]. We do, therefore, most humbly beseech, yea, we are bold in the Lord, and in the name of the church of God in this land, earnestly to obtest your grace and the most honourable estates, that no such motion of any legal tole- ratio7i to those of the prelatical vrinciples be entertained by the parliament. Being persuaded that in the present case and circumstances of this church and nation, to enact a toleration for those of that way {which God of his infinite mercy avert), vjould be to establish iniquity by a law, and would bring upon the promoters thereof, and upon their families, the dreadful guilt of all those sins and pernicious effects that may ensue thereupon. Edinburgh, January the 1st, 1703. Signed, in the name and at the appointment of the said commission of the General Assembly, by George Meldrum, moderator." In consequence of this very unchristian remonstrance from the commission, the motion for toleration was lost, tt shews, however, that the atrocities committed by the rabble at the Revolution were approved and " homologated " by the whole presbyterian establisliment ; and therefore they cannot be laid solely on the shoulders of an enthusiastic and thoughtless mob, acting from the brutal instinct of their nature and the impulse of the moment. Mr. Meldrum says, " he knows no episcopal minister who judges communion with the presbyte- rians unlawful." His knowledge of them must have been very limited. It certainly is unlawful to hold communion with churches whose orders, though they may be really valid, yet which require sinful terms of communion ; but particularly with so-called churches, who not only have no orders at all, but whose terms of communion are likewise sinful. Subscription to erroneous propositions, such as many of those in the Westmin- ster Confession, is a sinful term of communion ; so is sub- scription to doubtful propositions, " for whatsoever is not of faith is sin," and must incur damnation. Many of the propo- sitions in the Confession have been opposed and confuted by holy and faithful men ; and as subscription to the Westmin- ster formulary does not merely import an obligation to preserve the peace of the communion, but signifies an assent io these sin- ful propositions, and that such subscription is a confession oi their own faith ; it cannot, therefore, be signed by faithful men without sin. Besides, the presbyterians required a subscrip- tion to more for admission to ministerial communion than is 1703.] CHUUCII OF SCOTLAND. ()51 contained in their Confession. They required a real abrenun- ciation of catholic principles, and of episcopacy itself ^ The unconstitutional manner of the election of king William's convention, and the turning of it into a parliament by the mere prerogative of the crown, was now liable to so many grave objections, and was occupying so much of public attention, that it became necessary to pass an act to ratify and confirm all its irregularities, and in particular the violent breach that had been made on the constitution by abolishing the first estate of parliament, and splitting the third estate into two. It was therefore declared to be high treason " to disown, quarrel, or impugn" its authority. Another clause of the act made it likewise high treason " to quarrel, impugn, or endea- vour, by writing or malicious and advised speaking, or other open act or deed, to alter or innovate the Claim of Right, or any article thereof^'' particularly that famous one respecting the " intolerable grievance" of episcopacy. It shews a consciousness of having been in the wrong, when it w^as found necessary to stifle public opinion by acts of parliament. The last clause oc- casioned a warm debate, and Mr. James More, of Stoneywood, said — " That he was sure, and everybody knew, that the shire of Aberdeen, which he had the honour to represent, was of the episcopal persuasion ; and if, after this act was passed, his countrymen should, in discharge of their own consciences, in a regular way address the sovereign or parliament (which, by the Claim of Right, is the privilege of every subject,) for a rectification of the present presbyterian establishment, which, in his opinion, was neither infallible nor unalterable, he de- sired to know whether or not such an address should import treason?" To this sir William Hamilton, of Whitelaw, an- swered— " That this act did not, indeed, preclude addressing for a toleration; but if, after it were passed into a law, any person should own that he thought presbyterian government was a wrong establishment, and that episcopacy ought to be restored, such a person ought to be guilty of high treason!''^ This act was " read, voted, and passed," and therefore it was noiv high treason to oppose presbytery in any way!"^ This act gave presbytery as firm a settlement, and as full a security, as the law could give it; for it was now declared high treason to attempt any alteration in it. King William had often been ' See this subject extensively and conclusively handled in Bishop Sage's Rpa- sonableiicss of a Toleration inquired into, purely on Church Principles. * Lockhart's Memoirs, 52, 53 — Boyer's Reign of Queen Anne, 6(i. 652 HISTORY OF THE [cHAP. LVHl. importuned to pass an act similar to this, but he would never consent to it^ Although the queen had graciously assured the presbyte rians of her determination to support their establishment, it neither satisfied them nor shortened their desire to extirpate episcopacy in both kingdoms. On the 20th of May about 700 discontented presbyterians met in arms, during the sitting of parliament, at a country village, or perhaps farm-house, called Cairntable, near to the royal burgh of Sanquhar. Here they spent some time in prayer, and in singing the 48th and 50th Psalms, concerning God's coming to judge the wicked. After that they marched into the burgh of Sanquhar, and affixed, with all the usual formalities, upon the cross, " the Apologetic Declaration, and Admonitory Vindication of a poor wasted and misrepreseuted remnant of the anti-popish, anti-prelatic, anti- erastian, anti-sectarian, true presbyterian church of Christ in Scotland, united together in a general correspondence." Pre- vious to entering Sanquhar they renewed their covenant for the extirpation of episcopacy ; and in the Declaration, which is a very long document, they renounced Anne, princess of Den- mark, from being their queen, because she had promised to maintain episcopacy in England. " Therefore we, finding the like, esteem ourselves obliged also so to do ; and to declare to the world, that we cannot own princess Anne as our lawful, chosen, covenanted princess, such as we ought to have, nor can have no prince or princess but a covenanted one ; and such as will not accept of the qualifications of a covenanted subject with God, shall never (through grace) be chosen, owned, or subjected to as a prince by iis^." They ordered their emissaries to fix this Declaration on all the market-crosses in the kingdom ; and they accomplished it in Dumfries and some other burghs. Their friends in the government, howe^■er, managed to hush up this act of high treason, and, like the massacre of Glencoe, all inquiries into it were stifled. But had a similar party of the oppressed epis- copalians done such an act of treason, the government Avould have punished them with the most exemplary rigour, and their historians would have very faithfully recorded the seditious act; \Ahereas it was hushed up, and has never been alluded to by any presbyterian writer whatsoever. It was now made high treason for any member of the church even to write or ' Burnet's Ovva Times, v. 94, 95. 2 Appendix to Wolf Strict — Leslie 'sTlieological Works, iv. 478. Oxford edit. 1703.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. GoS speak against presbytery ; but had the whole of the 700 armed raeii that met at Sanquhar, and committed that real act of treason, been episcopalians, they would have been decimated at least. The following letter gives such an excellent account of some persecuting transactions that occurred this year, that I shall give it entire. It is dated Glasgow, the 2oth of October. The writer says, — " I am sorry that I cannot confirm to you the satifaction you express in yours of the 17th instant, that we, of the episcopal communion here, have enjoyed greater ease and liberty as to the exercise of our religion since her majesty's happy accession to the crown, than we did before, especially since her gracious letters to our privy council in our favour. You had reason to expect that they would have produced the desired effect. But alas ! sir, you are not acquainted with the spirit of presbytery, which ever grows more insolent the more power it obtains, and will never be satisfied till it has crushed its opposers into an impossibility of attempting any thing against it. They thought they had gained this object, as in a great measure they had, after their establishment in the last reign, and seeing no enemy but what was perfectly under their feet, they began to abate of their former rigour; and we had, though not a toleration, yet such a sort of connivance, that we kept our j^rivate religious meetings without much dis- turbance, except now and then, just to shew us that we were in their power. But no sooner was her majesty upon the throne than they conceived new apprehensions and jealousies ; and all her majesty's gracious assurances to them of presen- ing and continuing their presbyterian constitution made no impression at all upon them. " At the first meetings of their provincial synods, after her majesty's accession, they framed new associations and co- venants for the more complete extirpation of episcopacy, to which they engaged their lives and fortunes, and these were published by both the provincial synods of Edinburgh and Glasgow; and they persecuted some of the most temperate of their own ministers, who had neglected to subscribe these new covenants and associations, whereby they have now made that compulsory which at first they pretended was vo- luntary. Their new covenant is the same with the old one^, but more broad and comprehensive. I must tell you withal that by our statutes, yet unrepealed, it is high treason for any subjects to enter into such covenants or associations, without ' Vide anle, voLii. ch. iix, p. 123. 654 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. IVIil. the allowance of the supreme authority; but they reckon little of these matters. Having laid this foundation they proceeded to put their resolutions in execution; and the instrument they made use of was, their steady allies the mob, as they gave birth to their former rebellion. " They chose to begin the rabbling on the 30th of January, that they might shew their detestation of the celebration of the memory of king Charles's martyrdom; but it was much more detestable to them now that they saw his grand- daughter on his throne. In the reign of king William the church was allowed to commemorate the martyrdom of king Charles, without any other molestation than ' their flouting at us,' and sometimes calling us disaffected to the government for doing of it, and saying, * we intend to bring this man's blood upon them.' On the 30th of January, this year, they raised a hi- deous mob upon us, as we were at our devotions in sir John Bell's house in Glasgow. Sir John had patriotically appro- priated the largest room in his. house as a chapel, or meeting, for some of the episcopalians of that city, in which as many as it would contain regularly assembled. The mob attacked the house, threw stones in at the windows upon the congrega- tion, broke open the doors, and fell upon them with sticks, whereby many were dangerously hurt. They bullied the cler- gyman that officiated, although he was well affected towards the government, and was qualified according to law, and threatened to beat him severely if he ventured to officiate again. After this they durst no more meet for public worship till her majesty's letter was received by the privy council, allow- ing the episcopalians liberty of conscience. In consequence of this grace, an episcopal clergyman, who had taken the oaths, and had qualified himself, was sent from Edinburgh to officiate in the meeting in sir John Bell's house ; and, besides, he was furnished with a letter from the lord chancellor to the magistrates of Glasgow, ordering them to protect him. The congregation met again on Sunday the 7th of March, but in- stead of protection, we were more furiously assaulted than before; many were wounded, among whom was a son of sir John Bell; his house was broken through, and his very garden and summer-house destroyed, even to the rooting up and break- ing of the trees, &c.; the magistrates, who were presbyterianSy looking on, and rather countenancing than suppressing the rabble, which were gathered together by the secret instigation (as we have good reason to believe) of these magistrates and the presbytcrian ministers from several of the neighbouring parishes in the country, for this godly work! For though this 1703.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 655 city is the nest and chief rendezvous of all the presbyterians in Scotland, yet the episcopal party, even here, are the most considerable, both for quality and estates, and in number suffi- cient to defend themselves, with the allowance of authorit}', against the insults of the mob of this place; therefore they called to their assistance the presbyterian rabble of the coun- try adjoining ^" The damage to property, and danger to the lives of the clergyman and congregation, would have been much greater, had not lord Kilmaurs dispersed the mob with a detachment of cavalry. There was also a combination of women engaged in this rabbling, headed by a virago called Maggy Steen, or Stephen, who were regularly marshalled, and under her command. She consulted with the presbyterian ministers the previous night, and obtained their instructions how to proceed. She was called colonel, and her party the Ww^e regiment; they assisted gi*eatly at the first rabbling at the Revolution, and they had been kept embodied ever since, to let loose upon the episcopal clergy or their adherents. I liave, says Mr. Leslie, '* from eye-witnesses, several circum- stances of these women's cruelty, that cannot be told for the filthy obscenity of them, which cost one of the clergy then preaching his life, who was thus treated by them in the church, if not in the pulpit '^." On receiving notice of this outrage and insult to their au- thorit}-^, the privy council ordered the magistrates of Glasgow to repair the damages sustained by sir John Bell, and to be careful to prevent similar tumults for the future. The magis- trates, however, boldly answered, that they could not under- take to protect any episcopal clergyman or meeting-house ; and they never made any reparation to sir John Bell for the damage done to his property. " And the further proceedings of the privy council against them were stopped by the general indem- nity at that time granted by her majesty, wherein she was minded to except these rioters at Glasgow in such open con- temj)t of her authority. But the council's hopes of overcom- ing them by condescensions and over-goodness did prevail ; they were pardoned, and our episcopal meetings have ever since been totally suppressed'^. '^ In the course of the summer some of the episcopalians in ' Some account of the treatment whicli the episcopal clergy in Scotland have met with from the presbyterian government, since her majesty's accession to the crown. In a letter from a gentleman at Glasgow, in Scotland, to his friend in London ; bearing date October 25, 1703. Cited in Appendi,\ to The Wolf Stript of his Shepherd's Clothing, pp. 485-488. * Rehearsal, vol. vi. 241 — Appendix to Cassandra. ^ Some account, &c. 056 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. Glasgow sent the following petition to the queen, subscribed by three hundred and twenty-two names of the chief and jjrin- cipal men of that city, " both for interest and substance:" — " The humble petition of the heritors and other inhabitants of the town of Glasgow, sheweth, — That your majesty's most loyal and dutiful subjects, being most sensibly afflicted, and still groaning under the heavy yoke and domination of pres- bytery, whereby we are deprived of the care and inspection of our pious episcopal pastors, and of their regular and holy administrations amongst us, do, in all humility, implore your majesty's compassion for ease and relief to our consciences, by allowing us to invite or call one or two episcopal ministers to officiate amongst us, and grant to them a right to the legal stipends in those parishes where they shall serve; that so they may enjoy the comfort of true pastors, duly and canonically ordained and authorised, according to the rules of the pure primitive and apostolical churches, to bless us in our Lord and Saviour's name; to offer up our prayers and devotions to God; to preach the gospel, and administer the sacraments unto us, of which we conceive ourselves now deprived, by the pretended ministry of such men, who (as we believe) have no true mission or authority for exercising the aforesaid sacred functions. King Charles II., of blessed memory, in the year 1669 and afterwards, did grant, even to presbyterians and their preachers, under the legal established episcopal govern- ment, as much, if not more, than we now humbly address for, although they were equally enemies to himself as to the mo- narchy: and therefore we humbly presume your majesty will prove no less favourable and gracious to us, your peaceable and loyal subjects in this city, who are true and hearty well- wishers to your majesty, to our ancient monarchical govern- ment, and to your most serene royal family. In granting this our humble and earnest desire and petition, your majesty will afford great ease to our consciences, and true comfort to our souls; and oblige us more and more to pray for your majesty's long life, and happy and glorious reign over us; and that God may preserve your most ancient and royal family in honour, greatness, and prosperity, so long as the sun and moon en- dureth." There was no notice taken of this petition, for the presby- terian faction altogether misrepresented Scottish affairs to the queen, and suffered her only to know what they chose she should know. The author above cited, says — " And though we have had no redress, we do not in the least impute it to her majesty, being fully assured of her goodwill and favour to- 1703] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 657 wards ns, but to the necessity of her affairs, and the bold inso- lence of the presbyterian faction, in not only disobeying, but despising and acting in direct opposition to her royal autho- rity, signified in her gracious letters on our behalf to her privy council here. And we know that one great end they projiose to themselves in this is, that they may appear mure cons-ider- ahle than really they are, especially to the court of England, where, we fear, they are not truly represented." The act in the last session of parliament, which made it high treason ibr any to speak, act, or write in defence of episcopacy, or against presbyterian government in the church, enabled them to repre- sent their jiarly as superior in the parliament, and conse- quently in the nation. That act was carried " by trick and surprise ;" but the veal superiority of the episcopal members was afterwards demonstrated by the great majorities, and " the great contempt," with which several bills were thrown out, though supported by the wlu)le presbyterian strength, and by the ministers of state, " wherein it was designed to have en- tailed presbytery upon us to succeeding generations. And the mortification which the faction received by this does far ex- ceed the triumph they made in the artifice of some (from whom we did not exiiect it), whereby they gained the other; and will now find it more difficult to impose upon us in the like manner." The writeu adds : " however, this is no small article of our oppression, that we had utterly defeated, and even silenced, the writers of the presbyterians, particularly by the labours of the learned author of the Cyprianic age . . . our adversaries now take refuge in the brachium seculare, and bring the only remaining argument that they have left, which is, high treason against those that shall write or speak any more against them. This is some degrees beyond the Spanish Inquisition ! set for- ward by the patrons of christian liberty and toleration ! [and by men of tender consciences] as we are told they rcjjresent themselves to you in England. Since this act was passed, they have run on more violently to persecute us in all places. Where their numbers are superior, (which is in very few parts of Scotland), they mob us ; and where the presbyterians are too weak in any parish, they call in their fellows of the neigh- bouring parishes to fall upon us. And where the episcojjal party are so strong (as they are in most places), that even tliis will not do, then they bring processes from the ]»rivy council pursuant to the law, against our clergy who olliciate for us, and as many of the laity as they can reach : wherein they arc mightily encouraged and assisted by our present lord advocate VOL. III. 4 p 668 HISTORY OF TUB [cHAP. LVIII. [Stewart of Coltness], whose office is tantamount to that of the attorney-general in P^ngland. We have been treated in this manner at Stirling (where our minister was imprisoned) ; at Dundee; in the parish of Kinnaird; in Old and New Aber- deen (where the tenth man is not presbyterian) ; in the town of Elgin , of Haddington ; at Kilmadock, in the shire of Fife, w^here four of our eminent clergymen were turned out ; and several other places I could name, but that you know them not ; in all of which the episcopal people are far superior to the presbyterian. In some of these, the churches, now in possession of the presbyterians, were almost wholly deserted, and our episcopal meetings crowded ; which has raised their spleen against us." In conclusion, he says — " We were assured here, that her majesty had declared she would not transfer the revenues of the bishopricks here (which had been annexed to the crown since the abolition of episcopacy), to any other use than the support of the surviving bishops amongst, and of the de- prived episcopal clergy, who have suffered great hardships, and now more than before ; and that her majesty has given orders to this purpose. But if any such were given, tliey have not been observed : on the contrary', care has been taken that all the bishops' rents have been applied to other uses, in pen- sions to one and another, &c. ; so that her royal bounty is totally defeated : and the common report of her gracious in- tentions towards the bishops and clergy has withdrawn the assistance of many [to a fund for the support of the clergy that had been commenced in June, 1690,] which they before afforded to the clergy, now in a miserable condition. I have told you the naked state of the case. We beg your prayers, and those of all good men, for us. And we beseech God, that you in England may never feel the dreadful weight of -presbytery^ under which we now groan^T 1704. — On the 19th of January a solemn fast was observed in England, on account of one of the most terrible storms of wind and lightning, that happened about midnight of the 26th of November last year, that ever was known, either in the memory of the living or on record. The wind blew from West-south-west, with such violence that it unroofed many houses and churches, threw down the spires of several steeples, stacks of chimneys, and tore up by the roots whole groves of trees. The leads of some churches and public buildings were rolled up like scrolls of parchment, and several vessels, 1 Some Account of the Treatment, &c. App. Wolf Stript, 489-491. 1704.] CHUllCH OF SCOTLAND. GoO boats, and barges, were sunk in the Thames. The royal navy sustained immense damage ; nine line-of-battle ships were wrecked upon the coast, besides many smaller vessels of war and merchant ships, and upwards of two thousand sea- men perished. Many people were killed in their beds by the falling of their houses, and among these were the bishop of Bath and Wells, Dr. Richard Kiddar and his lady ; and many miraculous escapes were made. It pleased God that this dreadful hurricane was not universal ; for the northern parts of the kingdom escaped its fury^ I CANNOT discover when the lord archbishop of Glasgow was liberated from his imprisonment in the castle ; but Lock- hart introduces him about this time as having gone to London at the request of the duke of Queensberry, " to avouch to the tories and the church party in England, the duke's inclinations to serve and protect the tories and the church party in Scotland^." He says the archbishop lived privately alter the llevolution ; but he gives him a very bad private character, and even calls his grace a " renegade ;" an account which seems too highly tinc- tured with political venom to be true. His grace solicited queen Anne to bestow the bishops' rents, which had been sacrilegiously seized by the crown after the Revolution, upon the impoverished bishops and the starving clei'gy ; and it would appear that he had been successful, if Lockhart may be be- lieved. I am very doubtful of the truth of his allegation, because it is well known that the miseries of the clergy were not at all alleviated, as they would have been had they received so large a sum as he s])ecifies. He alleges that the archbishoj) received a grant of X400 ])cr annum ; and we know from other sources that the lord bishoj) of Edinburgh received a pension from the queen. At this time, a plot, which Lockhart calls "'a sham-plot," for the invasion of Scotland by a French force in favour of the Pretendei", made a great noise, and attracted the attention of the English parliament^. The General Assembly met on the 16th of March ; William, lord Ross, was a]i})ointed commissioner, and they chose Thomas Wilkie for their moderator. The queen's letter presents nothing particular, but her recommendation to plant vacant churches, to observe calmness and unanimity in their proceedings, and to avoid all unseasonab/e debates. The only transaction in this Assembly that concerns the object of this work was, " An Act approving the Actings and Proceedings • Salmon's Chron. i. 328. — Boyer's Reign of Queen Anne, 100. - Memoirs, p. 87. ^ Lockhart's Memoirs, 87, 88. — Skinner's Ecclesiastical History, i, 602. 660 HISTORY OF THE [CHAP. LVIII. of the Commission of the General Assembly, anno 1703." In which they say, "the whole actings, proceedings, and conclu- sions ... do evidence much wisdom, prudence, zeal, and diligence . . . and therefore this Assembly, by an unanimous vote, did, and hereby do, ratify and approve the whole actings, proceedings, and conclusions of the said commission .... and the moderator gave them the thanks of this Assembly for their good service done to this church ^" By this act they made Meldrum's remonstrance against toleration, which caused the defeat of the motion, the approved measure of the whole presbylerian body, and gave an indisputable proof of their intolerance in principle, and of their determination to suffer no other religious body to exist where they have the power and the opportunity to prevent them. Their answer to her ma- jesty's letter was a mere echo of it ; yet Hetherington exult- ingly picks out the following " significant passage," as he calls it — " we are now again, with your majesty's countenance and favour, met in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in a national Assembly." Party spiiit alone could have made any thing of this passage, which appears highly proper and decorous. There is no one will doubt that they met in Christ's name, else they had not been even professedly a christian meeting; but Christ's presence does not alter the fact of their meeting having been permitted by the queen's countenance and favour. But Hetherington meant to insinuate that this was an act of defiance to the crown, to which nothing in the letter gives the least countenance. There had, however, been some demur at court to permit the future meetings of assemblies ; for in a letter from the earl of Seafield to Mr. Carstares, whose influence at court ceased with the life of king William, there is a clause that strongly indicates the queen's repugnance to their meeting. His lordship says, " I still hope and wish that this may be a calm and nioderate assembly ; and if needless questions be not brought in, I believe that assemblies, for the future, may meet with as great facility as they did in king ^Vi^iam's timei." Mr. Stirling presented a letter from Mr. Brown, minister of Glasgow, to this purpose. " Upon Sunday last, Mr. John Hepburn preached and baptized within four miles of this place ; there was a great confluence of people from the neigh- bouring parishes, and he has a])pointed a meeting next Sab- bath, within a mile of this town, his design being to raise a schism in this kirk, and, I fear, is set n})on this way by the ' Acts of Assembly, session xi. p. 331. - Carstares' State rapers, 725. 1704.] CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 661 enemies of Christ's kingdom, though it is like he is so blind as not to see it. But I wish the reverend Assembly would take a speedy way to extinguish this flame, lest, as a fire kindled in one corner of a city consumes the whole, it may burn this poor church to ashes." This letter was considered j an able production, and an overture was brought in to put their ! discipline in execution against this Mr. Hepburn, who was causing a schism, and also one Macmillan, whom the synod of Glasgow had found it necessary to deposed After this transaction the Assembly nominated and instructed their com- mission, of which it was proposed iha.t/ou7-teen ministers and seven lay-elders should be a quorum. Mr. Foyers, minister of Stoneyhouse, Lanarkshire, hastily observed that fourteen was a very improper and unlucky number, for there had once been /burteen bishops in this kingdom. This observation was reckoned good logic, and therefore upon this grave and weighty consideration the number was made fifteen. In the evening meeting, a malignant observer, who was present, says they met at four o'clock, " and, after a good sturdy prayer, we fell to our synod books, and upon them had some very learned, and one very odd remark. 1 . The synod of Argyle ordered one of their presbyteries to separate a man from his wife, because he was married by a husbandman in Lochabar, albeit they had co- habited as man and wife several years. 2. The synod of Moray had ordered a married woman, who judicially confessed adultery, to be proceeded against as a slanderer of herself. These two cases were earnestly pressed by some to be very well worth the consideration of the Assembly; but that was shifted. Tt was remarked by the visiters of the synod books of Aberdeen, that that synod, without any legal proof of his having been guilty of the crimes laid to his charge, had ordered the presbytery of Garrioch and Turriff to excommunicate sum- marily Mr. Ross, of Rothiemay. In support of this decision, Mr. Hay, the minister of Byrse, said that the reason why the synod had proceeded against that person after that method, was, because he was a very debauched and pi'ofligate man, it being most certain that he had lain with five several women atone and the same time, and that all the five proved with child, and so the aforesaid presbyteries confessed their great sin with that abominable man 2." The agkd primate, archbishop Ross, lived in Edinburgh in a private manner, and there are no accounts extant respecting ' Session xiii., March 30. ' Leslie's Rehearsals, vi. — Postscript to Cassandra, p. 273-71- 662 HISTORY OF THU [CHAP. LVIIT. his latter years ; he died at Edinburgh on the 13lh of June, " and is supposed to have been buried at Restalrig." All that is now known of this distinguished prelate, who concluded the illustrious line of the archbishops of St. Andrews, has been obtained by the Rev. C. J. Lyon, the present episcopal incum- bent of that city, and of whose source of information I thankfully avail myself. The primate's " daughter Anne married lord Balmerino, whose son Arthur was executed for being out with prince Charles in 1745. I may be permitted to add, that I wrote to a venerable Jacobite lady, a descendant of the arch- bishop through another line, to inquire if she could direct me to any source where I could learn more concerning him. The following is an extract from her answer: — * Arthur, lord Balme- rino, his grandson and nameson, had undertaken to be the biographer of his grace, and had collected all the best ma- terials for the purpose, viz, letters from the prince of Orange, from the king of France, from prince James, the bishops of England and Ireland ; in short, all the great names of the day ; and was busied with a talented scholar at this work, when the ill-fated hero of Culloden cast himself into Scotland. Now, whether these documents are still in the deposites of his nearest kin, the following families — the earl of Moray, Balfour of Fernie, Robertson of Inches, John Crawford Aitkenson, sir John Malcolm of Grange, — I know not. — I am certain from circumstances they did not fall into the hands of the con- fiscators ; and those with me, (who am the only other sur- viving branch of his only grand-daughter), are on secular subjects, wherein the archbishop acted as a trustee for properties once in our family. They testify to the rectitude of his mind, and his excellent private character ; but if the above docu- ments could be recovered, they would be at once interesting and creditable to the church ; for neither threats nor favours could tempt those good men to cede a principle, or teach others to make light of oaths once taken. So very deeply was the loss of Arthur of Balmerino felt by the whole connection — for he was truly amiable — that the half- finished work was hushed up in the awful and almost unjust catastrophe which severed his warm heart from our widely lamenting family ; and thus his very purpose was quenched in his blood, and was a subject never touched on, unless mentioned as one of his last emjiloyments by those now passed from this life themselves, but whom I re- member to have seen drink to his memory on the anniversary of his birth-day with much affectionate respect. I would not have troubled you with these by-gone griefs, but to account for the non-appearance of those papers, more the property of 1704.J CHURCH or Scotland. 663 the church than of any individual, and to point out where they may be sought ^" TiiK OFFICE and jurisdiction of archbishops have been in the church since the days of the apostles: they are not, how- ever, superior in order, but only in jurisdiction, to other bishops. St. Paul invested Timothy in the Lesser Asia, and Titus in the island of Crete, with metropolitical or archiepiscopal powers, as it has been very distinctly shewn by archbishop Sancroft, in one of his sermons. From the time that the bishoprick was translated from Aberncthy to St. Andrews, after the conquest of the Picts, by Kenneth 11. till the episco- pate of Patrick Graham, the bishops of St. Andrews had precedence, and exercised metropolitical jurisdiction over the other bishops. When the churches of England and Scotland were under the dominion of the see of Rome, the archbishop of York made pretensions to jurisdiction over the Scottish church. To relieve the church of Scotland from this unjust claim, bishop Graham " earnestly entreated the pope that the metropolitan authority might be fixed in the see of St. An- drews; ' because it was unjust that the Scots should be obliged to look to the archbishop of York as their primate, when, on account of the frequent wars between England and Scotland, there must be a corresponding interruption between their churches.' " The pope Sixtus J V. yielded to Graham's entreaty, and erected the bishoinick of St. Andrews into the archiepiscopal and metro])olitan dignity on Sunday, 6th Kal. Sept. 1472. " But not only did the pope make Graham arch- bishop and primate; he farther bestowed upon him, and his successors for ever, the dignity of legatns natiis, and upon himself, personally, the still higher office of legatus n latere for a period of three years, with full power to correct all abuses in the church." The rank of the archbishop of St. Andrews in the stale corresponded to that of the archbishop of Canterbury in England; and the revenues of the see were very considerable before the Reformation, at which time it was stripped of its property by those rapacious nobles whose an- cestors had formerly delighted to honour and enrich it'^. Arthur Ross was the last of the illustrious line of arch- bishops who bore that title, among whom may be found the sons of kings and of nobles; indeed, Patrick Graham, who was the first archbishop of St. Andrews, was the grandson of king Robert III., his mother being the lady INIary Stewart, > History of St. Andrews, ii. 113, 114, * Lyon's History of St. Andrews, i. pp. 230-233. 664 HISTORY OF THE [CIIAP. LVIII. who married first the earl of Angus ; second, sir James Ken- nedy, of Dunraore; third, the lord Graham, to each of whom she bore two sons. James Kennedy, her eldest son by her second marriage, was bishop of St. Andrews immediately be- fore his uterine brother, Patrick Graham, the first archbishop. The lady Mary married a fourth husband, to whom she does not appear to have had any children ^ His successors in the primacy of the church have never assumed this title, which is much to be regretted, as there are many associations attached to it that are dear to the hearts of the faithful among their subjects. Part of the ancient diocese of St. Andrews is now called the diocese of Fife ; but why the title of that diocese alone should be changed, which is amongst the oldest in the kingdom, is not so easy to account for, whilst all the other dioceses retain their original designations. The office of Primus is now elective, and may be held by any of the bishops, without respect to seniority of consecration or priority of see: within the writer's memory it has been held by the bishops respectively of Aber- deen, Brechin, Edinburgh, and again of Aberdeen. At present, however, the Primus has no metropolitan jurisdiction, but is only a primus inter pares. The following is the canon " regu- lating the election and office of the Primus : — " Before the distinction of archbishop was introduced into Scotland, one of the bishops had a precedency under the title of Primus Scotorum episcopus ; and the episcopal college having for a century past adopted the old form, it is hereby decreed that the bishops shall, without respect either to se- niority of consecration or precedency of diocese, choose a Primus, by a majority of voices, who shall have no other pri- vilege among the bishops but the right of convocating and presiding; and that expressly under the following restric- tions:— 1st, that he shall be obliged to notify to the other bishops the reasons of his calling a meeting, as well as the time and place for holding it ; and if the majority shall dissent, as judging either the reasons insufficient, or the time or place im- juoper, the ))roposal of such meeting shall be either \vholly set aside, or the time or place altered, as shall seem to them most expedient. 2dly, that if the Primus shall at any time refuse to call a meeting when desired by a majority of the other bishops to do so for some specified purpose, or if he shall refuse to consecrate or sanction the consecration of a priest, canonically elected to a vacant diocese, when that election shall have been confirmed by a majority of the bishops, they ' Lyon's History of St. Andrews, i. 219. 1704.1 CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. fiG5 shall, in such cases, have authority to meet and act without him. 3clly, that the Primus thus chosen by the majority is to con- tinue in that office only during their pleasure. That the church may suffer as little inconvenience as possible, by the death or resignation of the Primus, the senior bishop shall iustantly succeed to his powers, until a majority of the bishops sliall appoint one to the office by a formal deed of election ^" The subject of sacrilege has been frequently alluded to iu these pages, and this volume cannot be better concluded than in citing the words of Mr. Lyon, in his article shewing the "punishment of sacrilege" within the bounds of one single diocese. " The following examples," he says, " selected from the diocese of St. Andrews, according to its boundaries before the Reformation [which comprehended the modern dio- cese of Edinburgh], will corroborate the general doctrine con- tended for throughout this work, that sacrilege has ever been punished in the present life, and chiefly by the failure of male issue. It is, however, not easy to ascertain the numerous families and individuals to whom the church lands, or portions of them, were granted at and after the Reformation I know that in this sceptical age, or ' enlightened,' as some consider it, many will refuse to subscribe to the doctrine I contend for. They will allege that failures in male issue have happened, and do constantly happen, to families who have not been contaminated with sacrilege. No doubt this is true, but I believe that a very great difference will be found in this re- spect ; and that what is the rule in the one case, is the excep- tion in the other. But not to enter on this inquiry here, I will content myself with quoting sir Henry Spclman on Sacri- lege, who tells us that in the year 1616 he described a circle on the map of Norfolk which comjirehended a given number of gentlemen's seats and the lands of as many dissolved re- ligious houses. The succession in the former had continued uninterrupted for many generations, whereas the latter had changed owners ' four, five, or six times, not only by full of issue or ordinary sale, but very often by grievous accidents and misfortunes.' Even they who first obtained the church lands had seldom much enjoyment from them. I'heir revenue generally arose from vai'ious detached properties re- mote from each other, whicli it was both difficult and cxpen- ' The Code of Canons of the Episcopal Church of Scothuid, aa revised, amended, and enacted by an Ecclesiastical Synod, holden for that ^rpose at Edinburgh, on the 29th day of August, and continued by adjournment till the 6th of September inclusive, in the year of our Lord mdcccxxxviii. Canon ii. pages 10-11. VOL. in. 1 (J 666 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. [CHAP. LVIII. sive to collect. Many of the smaller rents they could not col- lect at all, owing to the disorder of the times, or the unwilling- ness of the lessee to pay to an unknown and perhaj)s rigid layman what he had been always accustomed to pay to a libe- ral and indulgent monastery. And out of this reduced reve- nue, pensions had often to be paid to certain court favourites, who had had interest previously to secure them. Thus it happened that what was thought at first to be a valuable prize, turned out in the end to be rather a source of disquietude and disappointment than a substantial benefit. This was the first punishment of sacrilege. I would remark farther, that the inference I deduce by no means involves a defence of papal abuses, but merely that what has been solemnly granted to God cannot be taken away from Him without sin and punish- ment." Mr. Lyon then proceeds to establish this general doctrine by a multitude of instances of the visitation of heaven in this world on their impiety. He then continues : — " These are only a few out of the many examples that might be given, even in Scotland, of the 'visitation' of heaven 'unto the third and fourth generation' of those that have committed the crime of sacrilege. I have looked into the history of the other commendators of abbey lands in Scotland, and I find that, with hardly an exception, a similar or worse fate befel them- And with respect to the sovereigns of the house of Stuart, who, by diverting these lands from their legitimate purpose, were participes criminiSy and of William 111., who annexed the Scottish bishops' revenues to the crown, it is needless to point out the disasters of all kinds, and extinction of issue which marked their final destiny. I will now finish this article with quoting the words which the marquis of Strafford addressed to his eldest son, immediately before his execution : — ' I charge you never to meddle with the revenues of the church ; for the curse of God will follow all who do!"" ^ Lyon's Hist, of St. Andiewis, App. ii. pp. 400-406. END OF VOL. III. Wilson and Ogilvy, 57, Skinner Street, Snowhill, London. BW5360 .S832 v.3 The history of the Church of Scotland, nil'rilll nil |]ir 1?'°^'"' Sf-^'nary-Speer library 1 1012 00035 9812